by JH Fletcher
Hoss grinned at him. ‘Way you talk, people might ask you the same.’
True. He had the idiom off pat, never even thought in French any more, but the accent would be with him all his life.
‘How much does it cost, this Retro whatever?’ He looked at the advertisement. ‘Half a quid!’
‘Nothing for nothing.’
‘See how I go at the races this arvo,’ Charlie said. ‘If I back a winner, I might go and catch an eyeful of this relly of yours.’
He did win, and he went.
God knows why, he told himself.
He couldn’t make head or tail of a lot of it, but there was one painting in particular that took his fancy: a young woman who might have been striking once, even beautiful, but who now was ghost-grey, standing looking at a bed of brilliant flowers. There was a look on her face, hungry and wistful at the same time, as though she were trying to take hold of something that was slipping through her fingers: life itself, perhaps.
Charlie consulted the catalogue that came with his entry fee but it didn’t say much. Portrait of Katie. Whoever Katie might have been, her worn, wistful face stayed with him all the way home to Cape Solander.
‘Any good?’
Hoss hadn’t gone, had thought Charlie crazy to waste half a quid on such nonsense.
‘It was okay. I reckon she was pretty good, that Marie Desmoulins.’
‘Turning into an art expert, are we?’
‘Nothing like that.’
It had had quite an effect on him, all the same. That picture had seemed to depict not so much the woman as sorrow itself; it rang a powerful chord within a man who had recently lost his only child. He found himself wondering how Linda would have reacted to it. Not that he was going to suggest taking her: he didn’t have that many half-quids to spare.
He paid her a visit, instead, found her looking as tired and grey as the woman in the painting.
‘Coming racing with me?’
‘Would you like me to?’
‘Wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.’
She was so listless; it seemed to require a terrible effort for her to speak at all. He thought he’d never talk her into it but he kept on and on at her until eventually she said yes.
‘If you’re sure …’
So to the races they went.
They couldn’t have picked a better day for it. There was sunshine and horses and colours as bright as jewels in the sparkling air.
Linda ventured a five-bob bet on a horse Charlie chose for her. She scored a third place and clapped her hands, squealing like a kid.
‘Give me another one!’
It reminded Charlie how he had been, that first day so long ago. ‘You’ll only lose it if you carry on.’
Not that there was that much to lose, getting third place on a five-bob bet.
‘Doesn’t matter.’
So he gave her another horse to back and this time, sure enough, she lost: but she was right, too, because it truly did not seem to matter to her and, when they left the track, her face was brighter than he had seen it since Deirdre’s death.
‘I wish she could have been here …’
Deirdre would be with them always, but he thought that now at least some of the pain had been consigned, like so many other pains of their shared lives, to the past. It was the first step upon the pathway, if not to cure, at least to reconciliation.
3
Hoss said: ‘Hearing you talk about your family’s set me thinking.’
Such hair as Hoss had left was grey now. Charlie looked at him and saw a man no longer young. It came as a shock. Age wasn’t something he normally thought about but he did so now. He was thirty-eight years old, which would make Hoss somewhere around sixty. Come to that, thirty-eight wasn’t exactly young, either. He still thought of himself as a kid, but he took a proper look at himself in the mirror for the first time in years and saw the truth. He was certainly no kid; he wasn’t even young any more. Next thing he knew, he’d be an old man too. And what had he got to show for it? Sweet FA.
‘I got a cousin over at Wollongong,’ Hoss said. ‘Her old man works in the steel mill; leastways, he did.’
He hadn’t been in touch with her for twenty years; who knew what had happened to him? To her, either, come to that.
‘Might pay her a visit,’ Hoss decided, and Charlie knew that he, too, had become aware of age catching up with him. ‘Give her a surprise, eh?’
If she was still alive.
‘Should be,’ said Hoss. ‘She’s a coupla years younger than me, far’s I can recall.’
He was unsure even about that, but went anyway. When he came back he was thoughtful. He’d found her but her circumstances had certainly changed. Beryl was still in reasonable shape but Cedric, her old man, had been dead five years. They’d never had any kids and Beryl had been on her Pat Malone ever since.
For a week or two Hoss said no more about her but Charlie could see he had something on his mind and was not surprised when Hoss announced that he was going off to see Beryl again.
‘We got on all right,’ he said, seemingly surprised that there was anyone in the world outside Cape Solander and the various racetracks to whom he could relate at all. ‘She’s alone now. Reckon I got a duty to keep in touch.’
Which was much the way Charlie was thinking about Linda, also alone in the world now, with even Uncle Leo housebound after a stroke that had almost wiped him out a month after Deirdre’s funeral — although it was certainly not duty he was thinking about when he went to see her.
Age seemed to have improved her. There was still some aggression but a lot less than before. She seemed more like the girl he had first met at the cliff house all those years ago, the girl who had come with him to the secret spot amid the sand dunes where Deirdre must have begun her short life.
He found himself wondering about those sand dunes but hesitated before saying anything about it, afraid that it might scare Linda off. Then one day …
‘Wonder if those sand dunes are still there?’
She gave him such a look he thought he’d made a mistake. ‘I wouldn’t know.’
Neither of them said any more about it; then, when he came to leave, she said: ‘Those sand dunes …’
‘What about them?’
‘It’s too soon to be talking about that sort of thing. We need to get to know each other a lot better than we do at the moment. Neither of us needs any more mistakes in our lives.’
Charlie went home cheerfully. Wait and see was a lot more promising than No.
4
Linda never came racing with him again but they continued to see each other: once a week, then twice, then whenever they could manage it. Slowly, cautiously, they became friends again.
Charlie thought, No, not again. For the first time.
Perhaps that had been the problem before. They’d been lovers but never friends, had never trusted each other in the manner of friends. He thought that friendship might be more important than love. Or perhaps that love might develop from the mutual trust that friendship brought. He had still not mentioned the sand dunes again when one morning he was brought face to face with the reality that the clock was still ticking, this time for the way of life he had assumed would be his forever.
Hoss came to him and said he had made up his mind. He was moving to Wollongong to stay with Beryl.
‘We get on well.’ He spoke aggressively, as though Charlie had tried to talk him out of it. ‘A great person, Beryl. Pity I didn’t catch up with her years ago.’
‘What you going to do about the house?’
‘Sell it, I reckon. Only way of raising money I know of. Sell it to you, if you like. If you want to stay on.’
‘What do I use for money?’
‘Up to you, mate. I wouldn’t ask much. It’s been your home too.’
Hoss named a price; he was right, it wasn’t much, but it might have been a million for all the chances Charlie had of finding it.
Hoss saw his d
owncast expression. ‘Can’t let it go for less. It’s me life savings, for what they’re worth.’
Charlie went to see Linda.
‘We’ve had enough time to sort out where we’re going. If anywhere. I think we should give it another go. Either that or forget about it altogether. Might make a better job of it this time.’
Linda smiled. ‘You’re going to start talking about those sand dunes again, aren’t you?’
‘Damn right,’ Charlie said. And waited.
‘Funny thing.’ Linda smiled. ‘I been wondering about them myself, recently.’
5
Ten years down the track, Linda’s body had slackened off a bit but still wasn’t bad. Come to that, he wasn’t the bloke he’d been once, yet between them they managed all right. Enough, when it was over, to make him say:
‘That was great.’
‘It was, wasn’t it?’ Her skin was tawny with sand, sweat-stuck. He kissed it, and her, passionately.
‘You’ll get sand in your mouth.’
‘I don’t care.’
And continued, while she sighed and quivered. Before long they went through the whole performance again. And lay still.
‘Lovely …’ Linda was sprawled out, arms and legs everywhere on the warm sand. She said: ‘Where did we go wrong?’
Charlie told her what he’d been thinking about friendship and trust.
‘Maybe we needed to like ourselves better.’
In a way it didn’t matter, so long as they’d come to terms with themselves, and each other.
‘What you reckon?’ Linda asked.
He looked at the woman within the sandy flesh. He’d loved her once, then come close to hating her; now he thought he might be coming to love and even respect her once again.
It needed some thinking about, all the same. No use expecting miracles; they were still the same people they’d always been.
‘I wouldn’t want to go back to living the way we did before.’
‘You didn’t like the caff, did you?’
‘Hated it. And the city.’
‘I wouldn’t want to sell it. It’s been my ticket to freedom. That’s important to a woman; there aren’t many get the chance.’
‘Hang on to it, by all means, as long as you don’t expect me to work there. Or live there, either; I couldn’t handle that.’
‘Where would we live, then?’
A seagull came planing, hoping for an offering; disappointed, it sailed away again. Beyond the whale-backed dunes, the sea broke roaring along the shore.
‘At the house.’
‘That place on the cliffs?’ She sat up with a jerk; even her breasts looked indignant. ‘It’s a rat hole.’
‘It’s a mess,’ he acknowledged. ‘But it doesn’t have to be.’
He told her about Hoss’s plans and his willingness to let it go cheaply to Charlie.
‘A pretty good buy, I reckon.’
She stared at him, eyes as sharp as skewers. ‘That’s why you got me out here, is it? So I can buy your ruddy house for you?’
So much for trust.
‘It’s a nice place: you said so yourself once. It’s a chance to get somewhere of our own. It’s our one opportunity to get together again. And stay together.’
She stared at him, eyes unfriendly. ‘And that’s it? Take it or leave it?’
‘Unless you got a better idea.’
‘And if I say no?’
He returned her stare, silently; some questions needed no answer.
‘How much money you got to buy this dump of yours? And fix it up? I warn you, I won’t stay there in the state it’s in now.’
‘I can chip in,’ Charlie said. ‘Not the full amount, though.’
‘You expect me to find the rest, do you?’
‘Either that, or get a mortgage.’
‘No bank’ll lend us money on that.’ Linda was willing to flounce. ‘Let me get my clothes on.’
Charlie smiled at her. ‘Not yet.’
He was beginning to find it wasn’t so hard to be masterful, if you wanted something enough.
‘What’s happened to you? You turned into King Kong, or something?’
But she seemed less put out than her words suggested and, later, did not complain at all.
‘I won’t be able to walk in the morning,’ she said.
‘As long as you can still manage this …’
‘All you want, is it?’ But the sting in her voice was gone.
‘That and the money.’ He, too, was joking and in a moment she laughed with him.
‘What I really want is you,’ he told her in a very different voice.
‘Do you? Do you really?’
She put her hand to his face as though exploring the outline of the man she was beginning, for the first time, to discern beneath the structure of skin and flesh and bone.
Later, half dressed, limbs moving as voluptuously as though encased in honey, she stopped and laughed.
‘What is it?’
‘I was just thinking: what if someone had come along the dunes and caught us?’
Charlie said, ‘You never know; we might have been able to teach them a trick or two.’
6
They went to see the house together. Linda poked about, digging and ferreting, until Hoss couldn’t take it any more and took off: to the track, or the devil, or wherever. Even after he’d gone, Linda’s drum roll of exclamations, horrified and disbelieving, continued.
‘I wouldn’t have credited it!’
‘Filth!’
‘Mother of God!’
Until she turned to Charlie who, like Hoss, had felt like running for cover but had decided he’d better tough it out.
‘We’ll have to strip it right out,’ she said.
He was willing to make whatever concessions she wanted, now it seemed she had agreed to the one that really mattered.
‘Paint it right through.’
‘Right.’
‘Get a decent bathroom installed.’
‘Right.’
‘A new kitchen.’
‘Whatever you want.’
She would be paying, after all.
‘You’ll have to give a hand in the caff. That’s where the money comes from.’
He would not do it, not even if it cost him the woman and what he now saw as his remaining chance of happiness.
‘It wouldn’t work. Even the idea of it gives me the shakes.’
Yet concessions, he knew, would have to be made.
‘Why don’t you get rid of the one in town, buy yourself one in Brighton? That wouldn’t be so bad.’
She wasn’t willing to do that. They had both thought things had progressed too far to go wrong yet, for a time, it looked as though the problem of the caff might sink them after all. Then, timing it as well as everything else in his life, Uncle Leo made his final move, dying without fuss one cold July morning in the nursing home to which his stroke had confined him.
Bachelor Leo left a hefty sum to the church, a dozen or so smaller bequests to friends, the residue to Linda, his only niece.
‘A hundred and fifty grand?’
It seemed as though Charlie, too, had timed his move rather well.
Linda put in a manager to run the caff. The manager lived around the corner so they were able to let the rooms above the caff as well. The manager was on a basic pittance but a large share of profits; in no time, with the rent, Linda was making more out of the place than ever before.
With the inheritance she bought, not only the cliff house — although she expected, and got, Charlie to chip in the share he’d promised — but a milk bar on the beachfront.
‘Maybe you’ll be willing to work there?’
Charlie made a concession over the milk bar but wanted one in return.
‘Both of us or neither,’ he said. ‘I’m your husband, not the hired help.’
After a final fling of booze and bellowing at the ever-patient moon, Hoss took off for Beryl, a new life and, hopefu
lly, happiness.
‘It’ll have to work,’ he declared, winking and grinning up a storm, arms and legs dancing. ‘Got nowhere to come back to if it doesn’t.’
They helped him down the walkway with his last bits and pieces, junk that, for one reason or another, he had been unwilling to chuck into the sea; they stood and waved as the hired van took off in a stink of blue exhaust.
‘Now,’ Linda said, ‘let’s get to work. Or maybe not. Not straight off.’ She paused and slipped her arm through Charlie’s: enticing arm, enticing smile. ‘What you reckon to having kids?’
It came as quite a shock but Charlie was game. ‘I don’t mind.’
‘Maybe that’s where we’d better start then.’
And dragged him, stumbling and laughing, up the walkway to the house.
ARTHUR
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills …
Psalm 121
JUDY SPEAKING …
Charlie and Linda made a better fist of their marriage the second time around. They had discovered how to be friends, which compensated for a lot. Even so, life at the cliff house was like an unending Guy Fawkes Day, with Roman candles going off all the time. Arthur has told me of endless rows, of yells and blows, both of them drinking like champions, all mixed up with shouts and laughter and thrown furniture and general mayhem.
You couldn’t really blame Linda; Charlie had got out of the habit of responsible living and never picked it up again. The honeymoon with the Brighton milk bar lasted less time than it took for the paint to dry, then he was back to the races. This time it was Linda’s turn to keep the customers happy. She did it, too. I suppose she thought even a marriage like she had was better than no marriage at all, and by now those were the only options open to her. For all their tantrums, she and Charlie always had this thing going between them; they probably couldn’t have explained it themselves but it was undoubtedly there, and it stayed with them all their lives.
In the intervals between their warfare, they managed to have three kids to replace the one they had lost. Frances came first, in 1956; then Arthur, in 1959; finally Jacqui’s mother Bella, the baby of the family and six years younger than Arthur.