Indelible Ink

by Fiona McGregor

  On Saturday morning, with Nell here, he was in the kitchen early making breakfast, thinking about Sylvia Martinez. When he went into his study with a glass of juice, he found Nell still in bed, the neighbour’s white cat crouched on her chest. Nell’s eyes were closed and she was running her hands down Kimba’s flanks, smiling. He was purring sonorously, his claws working the covers near Nell’s neck. Clark knelt next to the little fold-out bed and the cat jumped off. Nell whined and Clark placated her. ‘Have some orange juice, Nellie.’

  The cat returned when they sat down to breakfast and Clark let Nell take it on her lap. It sat in that same Sphinx pose, bum poking towards him. He peeled Nell’s egg and mashed it on the toast. Nell watched him, kicking her chair softly, stroking the white cat. Clark placed her breakfast before her. ‘Look how much your hair’s grown.’

  ‘Yep. I’m gonna grow it long.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Down to my knees. Down to my feet.’

  ‘How was America?’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘What was your favourite thing?’

  ‘We ate hotdogs.’ Nell chewed with a dreamy look. She ferried a little piece of toast and egg down to the cat’s mouth.

  ‘Don’t feed him, darling.’

  ‘He’s hungry.’

  ‘His owner will feed him.’

  Nell pursed her lips and tilted from side to side, then lowered her body over the cat and made purring noises.

  ‘Was it cold? In America?’

  ‘Yep. Nope.’

  He reached over and tucked her hair behind her ear. It was so thick and lustrous. Her mouth was a crystallised strawberry, her skin a peach. She looked so gorgeous he wanted to pick her up and squeeze every atom of air out of her body, and suck her chubby little arms. He almost had to grit his teeth against this ravenous love but, when Nell got up and went to the toilet, he saw how much more weight she had put on and repugnance shivered through him, followed by guilt. He wanted to love her unconditionally: to be the opposite to his cold, critical father. Nell toddled back in and climbed onto her chair.

  ‘You know Auntie Blanche was in America too?’

  ‘Yeah, but they went skiing, but we went to California where it was hot and we stayed with Chris’s friends at the beach and then we went to the desert and and and I rode a donkey!’

  ‘Wow, a donkey! Did you swim?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Want to go for a swim today?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘We can snorkel. Bondi’s completely flat and we can look at the fishies and seahorses next to the rocks. Did Mum pack your new snorkel?’

  Nell shrugged. Clark went into his study and looked through her bags but found only a change of clothes. He pulled a pair of swimmers off her shelf, gathered up towels, sunblock, hats, water. Nell was watching him from the door. ‘Daddy, can we take Kimba?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because his owner won’t like it.’

  ‘But he’s hot. He wants to go to the beach.’

  ‘Nellie, cats hate beaches.’

  ‘I saw a lady in America with a cat on the beach. We can put him in a bag.’

  Clark walked back into the living room and Kimba ran out the front door. ‘See? He heard “beach” and he ran away!’

  ‘Nooo. He ran away from you,’ Nell said with quiet conviction.

  ‘Are you going to put on Gran’s Christmas present?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come on, darling, it looks great on you. It’s a ladybird! They bring you luck.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Clark squeezed sunblock onto his fingers and Nell tilted her face, her blue eyes looking into his as he lathered. Outside, he took her hand. Again, he had the urge to squeeze her, to literally take her flesh into his mouth and consume her. She trotted by his side along the street. The she-oaks gave way to paperbarks.

  ‘Have you got my snorkel, Dad?’

  ‘No, Mum forgot to pack it. We can swim and you can use mine.’

  There was a pause, then Nell said firmly, ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t want to. I only want to use mine.’

  Clark didn’t know what to say to this. They walked along in silence.

  ‘I don’t want to go to the beach, Daddy.’

  They stopped and waited to cross the road. When the cars had gone, Clark stepped off the kerb but Nell wouldn’t move. She yanked back her hand and stood there glaring at him.

  ‘Come on, Nellie. You said you wanted a swim.’

  ‘I don’t wanna use your snorkel!’

  ‘Why not? It’s a great snorkel and it’ll fit you.’ Clark knew it wouldn’t but figured he could bluff something else by the time they got down there.

  ‘No.’ Nell began to cry.

  A car drove past tooting and Clark stepped back onto the kerb. The snorkel problem alerted him to the fact that Nell might no longer fit the swimmers he had brought down for her today, which were almost a year old. He was dreading another scene. A car stopped at the Give Way sign next to them and the woman in the passenger seat stared out her window. Clark felt ashamed of the fat, blubbering child by his side. He wanted to slap her. Then came the guilty aftertaste.

  ‘I don’t want to.’ Nell stamped her foot.

  ‘Nellie, you’re such a good swimmer. You’re like a fish!’

  ‘I don’t care. I wanna wear my new snorkel!’

  Around the corner, the cicadas grew louder. They marched up Clark’s ear canals and swelled inside his skull. He felt utterly defeated. The southern sky showed a pall of purple-brown moving up to Sydney from bushfires in the National Park. ‘Okay, darling, we’ll buy you another snorkel, okay?’

  Nell considered this a moment. ‘Can I have a ice-cream too?’

  ‘Yes. After we swim, we’ll get an ice-cream.’

  ‘And chips, I want chips.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  From the distance came the high white noise of humans and motor vehicles stretched by the ocean. Clark crouched to pick Nell up. He lifted her in front of him, feeling strength flow down his arms and across his chest. He pressed his face against her belly and growled, and she laughed, then he put her onto his shoulders. He enjoyed the weight, his morning swim muscles bracing it. And everything he did, everything he said, all of Nell’s behaviour as well, was for the imaginary audience of Sylvia. He felt a sensation rise at the back of his nose and realised his whole body had been carrying tension since Kimba’s arrival that morning. The sneeze rushed out of him with gale force as they crossed the road. Nell laughed, placing her hands on his cheeks. Then a section of ocean appeared, and they reached Campbell Parade and the beach stretched before them, a vivid kilometre of pale yellow sand teeming with people. Clark sneezed and sneezed, his arms either side of his head balancing his daughter on his shoulders.

  Marie thought her ideal house would have three rooms, a small garden and a water tank. Bedroom, spare room/office and a room for Nell. The garden would be completely drought-proof. The swamp gum, still not planted, would be the first into the ground. In the office, she would study for her psychology degree. It was like paradise. And what about solar panels, wouldn’t that be great? But whereabouts would this house be? A three-bedroom house could cost three million dollars in Mosman or a million in Dulwich Hill. In Surry Hills it varied between. Looking at the ads for houses in Domain, she felt a combination of fear and excitement but quickly grew bored. In spite of her need, the thought of looking seriously at properties nauseated her. She wished she could close her eyes and wake up on the other side of the whole process, the conversion to her new life complete.

  She escaped into town with a gardening book and some National Geographic issues to give to Rhys, as well as a pot of banksia seeds.

  Mel was working in the studio that day. ‘Hallo,’ she called as Marie walked in.

  ‘Hallo,’ Marie replied.

  The paintings of tattooed ladies in the front room
had gone. In their place hung embroideries of Chinese dragons. It was only two weeks since her last visit, but Marie noticed that Rhys’s hair had grown, spilling below her collar at the back. She had a new tattoo inside her left forearm, a small ouroboros that she got for Travis’s birthday.

  ‘Such a gorgeous boy. He looks so much like Rob.’

  ‘You think?’ Rhys laughed. ‘Rob says that too. Wishful thinking. The moth heal well?’

  Marie unbuttoned her shirt and let it fall from her shoulders. She could hear the rumble of Rob’s voice in the room next door, a female counterpoint, then a buzzing iron.

  ‘Lov-erly,’ Rhys drawled at her back.

  ‘I brought you some presents. You should see some shoots from this in the next week or so. Keep the soil moist.’

  ‘Oh, thank you!’ Rhys’s face broke into a surprised grin, but there was something else in her expression that retreated and hid, something sad. She placed the pot on the windowsill then sat on her stool, looking at Marie. ‘I haven’t done a design for the vines, just some flowers. I could do them freehand, but I also wanted to talk to you more about them. Have you had lunch?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I need to eat.’ Rhys took a shirt off the back of the door. ‘Let’s go and discuss the tattoo over lunch. There’s a good Thai down the road.’

  Marie knew the place by sight. She could orient herself in the area now. She knew the jacaranda branch that she saw from Rhys’s couch grew from a tree across the alley where she sometimes got a fluke free park. Further down was the electrical wholesaler, graffiti of little men running beneath umbrellas down its brick wall. She bought pastries sometimes from the sourdough bakery, and water from the corner shop, and often parked further up in front of the housing commissions. She knew the difference between the Sunday calm and midweek rumble of Crown Street a block away. The jacaranda was completely green now, not lilac as when she had first visited.

  ‘What happened to your tattooed ladies?’ she asked Rhys as they walked out onto the street.

  ‘Hmm, that’s a bit of a sore point. The artist took them back.’

  ‘I loved those tattooed ladies. Why?’

  Beneath the beating sun they put on hats and sunglasses. Rhys had a surprisingly heavy tread. She walked in strides, skirt clinging to her thighs, and talked looking straight ahead, making it difficult to read the expression on her face. ‘I had an affair with the artist and the paintings were here on a sort of long-term loan so when things didn’t work out they had to go.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Anyway, Rob got to hang his Chinese silks. He gave me a good dressing-down of course.’

  Marie felt bad for Rob. ‘Well,’ she said generously, ‘you’ve obviously got a very strong relationship.’

  ‘We’re good mates.’

  ‘I was never really mates with my husband. We were lovers — for me teenage sweethearts. Then partners running a family, then we were enemies. We never talked about the infidelity. That’s probably part of the reason it kept happening.’

  ‘I like that word lovers. It’s real. About the heart, and the body. Funny how we say partner these days, as though girlfriend is too frivolous and lover too emotional. Or carnal. Partner has only been around a decade or so. It’s kinda clinical, like even love has been economically rationalised.’

  ‘But it’s perfect for you and Rob, isn’t it? Working together. Living together.’

  ‘But we’re not lovers.’ Rhys laughed, horrified. They were entering a restaurant called Thai Me Up. Rhys sat at a window table. ‘We’re business partners. Rob’s like my brother. Always trying to set me up with someone. Natasha was his idea. Natasha’s the artist.’

  ‘Oh.’ Marie smiled politely and looked down at her menu. She felt somehow cheated. It had never occurred to her that it was a lesbian who had been injecting ink into almost every spare inch of her body these past three months. It was exciting in a retrospective way, like a feat of bravery accomplished because you had no choice but to go ahead and survive. It was also mortifying. She couldn’t look Rhys in the eye. She raked through all their past encounters for signs she had missed. She was overwhelmed by all she would have to rearrange. She worried she had become too intimate. She felt briefly angry, remembering Rhys laugh at her remark that Travis looked like Rob. And to think she had confided in her about David. Oh yes, she had been made a complete fool of.

  But there was still the question of paternity — and there were such things as bisexuals — maybe she wasn’t so stupid after all. She glanced at Rhys, who was sitting with her usual straight-backed posture, the menu lifted between her hands. Her skin in places was blotchy from the heat.

  ‘Forgot my bloody glasses,’ she muttered, as though aware of Marie’s eyes on her. Her shirtsleeves were falling away and her hands had become objects of discussion at the adjacent table.

  Marie felt a surge of defensive solidarity: she wanted to tell the whispering businessmen to mind their own business. Yes, she liked Rhys. A lot. She seemed so well adjusted. She was kind and sensible. Still, this feeling of revulsion at the thought of lesbians. Angry, ugly, overweight women, dressed like construction workers. Man haters. There they sat in judgement on her, anyone really. Leon didn’t have any lesbian friends, let alone Clark or Blanche or, of course, Susan. In fact, when Marie thought about it, she had never met a lesbian in her life, apart from Blanche’s surly, thickset PE teacher about whom the rumours had been rife. She wondered about Travis. She wondered about turkey-basters and IVF. What did they do? Syringe it in? It seemed a repulsive, if necessary, procedure. Like putting ointment onto a sore. Rhys signalled to the waitress who came over with a notepad, greeting Rhys in melodic Thai.

  ‘I’ll have the pumpkin snow peas, please. With beef. Marie?’

  ‘Paw-paw salad, thank you.’

  The waitress, around fifty, was petite, muscular and heavily made up. She wore a tight t-shirt with the logo It Ain’t Botox, Baby. ‘You wan’ drinks?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘So you’re a lesbian!’ Marie said when the waitress had gone, feeling the word clunk onto the table. ‘I don’t have any lesbian friends.’

  Rhys smiled, a little shy. ‘Gawd, Marie, I don’t know what I am. I think some of the capital L lesbians would have me burnt at the stake.’

  Marie thought about this for a moment. If the pyre were in Mosman, she might be on the stake adjacent.

  Rhys added cryptically, ‘Sorry, that was my Catholic half speaking.’

  Marie laughed, but the revulsion remained and she began to hate herself just as much. She didn’t want to be in the same camp as people like her ex-husband or the Mosman pyre-builders. She channelled this self-hatred into a glare at the businessmen staring at Rhys. She took solace in the fact that Rhys liked her. After all, she reasoned, if she were a crass, ignorant bigot, Rhys wouldn’t have anything to do with her. ‘I think it’s great all the ways women can have children these days,’ she said. ‘You have a lot more control. IVF, for instance, has come a long way.’

  ‘I guess so, but I’m hopeless at control. That’s why I fell pregnant with Travis. One silly night with a friend.’

  Their meals arrived and they began to eat.

  ‘... So you’re bisexual?’

  ‘No. I prefer women. I’m queer.’

  Marie still didn’t understand. Paradoxically, she understood that Rhys also had no definites, but that was the point. She felt marooned, as though she had turned the page of a book only to find a section missing. She forced the food down, her stomach clenched with embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘All my prying. It’s none of my business who you sleep with,’ she said vehemently.

  ‘It’s okay.’

  A woman carrying a huge backpack passed the window. If Marie craned her neck, she could see her car in the distance, parked behind a red Jeep. Across the road, workmen in helmets were waist deep in a manhole. The lawns of the park in front of the housing commissions w
ere completely brown, the colour of earth. An old Aboriginal man sat on a bench, taking white bread from a plastic bag, tearing it up and scattering it to the pigeons.

  ‘So, the vines. What did you have in mind?’

  ‘Down my arms.’

  ‘Like to your wrists?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How big?’

  ‘Quite fine, but with passionflowers here and there.’

  ‘That’s quite a visible tattoo, Marie.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  Rhys leant over her plate, chewing thoughtfully.

  ‘I love those gauntlet tattoos,’ Marie said to her.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Who did them?’

  ‘My first teacher. After my apprenticeship had ended.’

  ‘I covet them actually.’

  Rhys put her fork down. ‘I’m not gonna tattoo your hands, Marie. I think tattooing hands is illegal, though that could be urban myth.’

  ‘How can it be illegal?’

  ‘Some English law dating back to when people were considered the property of the Crown. On their death their head and hands might be delivered to the king, so they couldn’t damage the goods.’

  ‘So how did you get yours done?’

  ‘Oh, the king’ll have my head and hands chucked into a ditch, big time,’ Rhys said obliquely. ‘Seriously though, I cop a bit for these. I wouldn’t wish it on you.’

  ‘Why did you get them?’

  ‘Because while the English king is chucking me into a ditch, a Dayak goddess will be admitting me to heaven.’

  ‘I didn’t know the Dayaks had a heaven.’

  ‘Kind of. They had to encounter all sorts of obstacles and cross the River of Death to reach it. Only the souls of the tattooed could cross because tattoos provided light for them in the afterlife. The men would have their headhunting tattoos, and the women their gauntlets which described their talents like weaving or whatever.’

  ‘You see why I want them? I’ll need somewhere to go when St Peter refuses me.’