‘The Church has made a lot of mistakes.’ Father Dwyer nodded.
‘It doesn’t say so, though, does it? Listen to the Pope now, traipsing through Africa telling them from the safety of his cortège not to wear condoms. Just like the one before him. Stupid old men telling women about child-bearing!’ she spat. ‘Yes, the Bible’s beautiful, but it’s all men in there. What does that say to me?’
‘But Mary Magdalene is at Jesus’ right hand. And Jesus’ mother, Mary, is one of the most important people in the Bible!’
‘For getting pregnant without having sex, for being a chaste mother!’
‘That’s just allegory.’
‘Of what? Women going without?’
‘The Bible is the tip of the iceberg, Marie.’ Father Dwyer leant forward eagerly. ‘There are so many fascinating things still coming to light, especially about Mary Magdalene.’
‘This Church taught me to be ashamed of my gay son, and I passed that on to him,’ she said despairingly. ‘It never stops.’
Father Dwyer wrapped the rosary around his fingers until they disappeared beneath the beads. ‘Marie, we have to remember that we’re all human and all make mistakes. I’m not making light of this. Some of those mistakes are catastrophic, with lifelong consequences. In the end, we have to form our own relationship with the Lord.’
‘Well, what’s the point of the Church, then? Why do you wear the collar?’
‘Because I believe this is the best way I can live my life. I’m committed to the Lord, and for all its faults I’m committed to this Church.’ Father Dwyer changed his tone. He said brightly, ‘How many children do you have, Marie?’
‘Three.’ Marie shut her eyes but it did not stop the tears from trickling out across her cheeks. ‘This bloody religion has cast a shadow over my entire life.’
Father Dwyer began to pray.
The next knock on the door came from Rhys, who let herself in as the priest was leaving. Carla arrived as well and there was a moment of chaos. After the greetings and the priest’s departure, Carla checked Marie’s blood pressure and pulse. ‘You’ve picked up nicely. I think we can let you go home now.’
So, Marie thought, it was the next day. ‘What’s the time?’
‘Almost three-thirty. I’m going to give you an Endone as well. It’s a suppository. As long as you don’t mind, it’s a better way to medicate you because it doesn’t pass through your stomach.’
Marie rolled over. Carla drew the curtain to insert the small white egg. ‘It comes on pretty quickly.’
When the curtain was opened, Rhys offered to help pack her things. Her eyes were shining. ‘We just had a hailstorm. Was it hailing over here?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Hat looks great, Marie. Matches your eyes.’
‘Susan made it.’ Marie’s memory perked at the mention of her. She wondered if she was due to visit today as well.
‘Is your son coming to pick you up?’ said Carla.
‘I don’t know.’ Marie couldn’t find her phone. She didn’t seem to have brought her address book either.
‘And, um, how did you like Father Dwyer?’
‘He was nice.’ So it was Carla who had arranged that. She was forgiven.
Up out of bed, pulling things from drawers, Marie felt weaker. Rhys was packing her toiletries. ‘I can take you home if you like, Marie.’
‘Are you sure? What about Travis?’
‘He’s with his father.’
‘I’m going to give you some fentanyl patches and morphine to take with you,’ said Carla. ‘And I’ll be over in a couple of days.’
They took the lift to the ground floor and walked along the corridor towards daylight. Marie could see a woman illuminated in the doorway, huddled, expectant. Then she was coming towards her, calling her name. It was Susan.
Marie introduced her to Rhys. Susan looked Rhys up and down, then extended her hand. Rhys put down Marie’s bag and extended hers. ‘I really like the cap you knitted.’
Susan started in surprise. ‘Thank you. You’re going home,’ she said to Marie.
‘Yes. Time’s up.’
‘Can I give you a lift?’
‘We’re fine. Oh Susan, I’m sorry you drove all this way.’
‘It’s alright. I went to lunch at Rose Bay with Gina. She wants to come and visit you.’
‘Any time.’ A wave of exhaustion came over Marie. She would have happily sat on the ground right here. She mustered the last of her energy. ‘Come back to Sirius now, if you want.’
A man walked past with a face like crumpled, pale blue tissue paper, a cigarette between his lips. He lit it just before exiting, the smoke drifting back behind him.
By the time Marie got in the car, she was trembling. It took a lot of effort to clip the seatbelt in and put on her sunglasses. The arms dug into the side of her head and she wondered if it was possible to lose weight from one’s scalp, or if it was just that the pain had spread there as well. Rhys’s car smelt new. A water bottle and a toy clattered around her feet. Marie remarked on the car.
‘Yeah, it’s a hire car.’
‘Why are you driving a hire car?’
Rhys seemed to be driving east rather than north. ‘Bikies smashed my windscreen. Same ones that petrol-bombed the shop.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m not supposed to be talking about this.’
‘I’m hardly in a position to be passing things on.’
Rhys looked over. ‘Marie, the bikies run just about every tattoo outlet in this town. They avoided Darlinghurst and Surro a long time cos of the poofter factor, but now they want in. Tattooing is so popular now you can imagine how much the cunts’re rolling in it. Rob won’t pay them and I don’t blame him. But I think he doesn’t want to pay them for the same reason he doesn’t want to pay tax. So we’re getting full-on attacked cos Rob’s tight.’
‘So that’s what the scorch mark on the footpath was. It’s criminal.’
‘I don’t care about the law, I’m outside it too. I care about violence and standover. They think they’re such outlaws but they’re just fascists. Suits in leather clothing. They threatened Travis. I hate them. They touch my son —’
‘You don’t want to go to the police?’
‘I don’t run the business. I’m just the artist. God, listen to me. I’m sorry. Like you don’t have other more important things on your mind.’
‘Don’t apologise. I asked. I’m actually glad for the distraction. How’s Natasha?’
‘She’s going to live in London.’
‘Really?’
‘Her father bought her a house and she’s taken off on the First Home Owner’s Grant. I knew she wanted to leave Sydney, there was even talk of me going too, but I didn’t know she had a house coming to her. She was looking at real estate the whole time we were together but always said it was just a fantasy.’ Rhys slouched over the wheel, glum, angry. ‘Nowhere but Sydney, eh.’ She changed the subject. ‘I’m taking the scenic route. I want to show you something.’
As Rhys turned onto South Dowling Street, it began to hail lightly. All along the edge of the park, Gymea lilies like giant matchsticks poked from their beds of long green blades. The lawns were white with hail, like a fairytale winter. Marie wound down the window a crack. There was a cool nip in the air, her fentanyl patch was wearing off, and she felt a bittersweet awareness. She was back in the real world of working lives and argument and weather on your skin. She watched the city pass by, and every car, every building, every crane and cloud seemed to hold a perfect symmetry, as though they had all come together in this one choreographed moment. When they reached William Street, Rhys slowed alongside a dilapidated shopfront. The flash above the windows was still there, the interior empty except for some refuse across the floor.
‘The tattoo parlour,’ said Marie. ‘It’s gone.’
‘It was there for nearly thirty years, y’know. There was probably a tattooist working this street continuously throughout the w
hole twentieth century. And now there’s none. I think of the old places every time I drive down here. All those spirits of the skin, floating above the traffic.’
‘So I’m carrying a bit of history on my body.’
‘You could say that.’
‘I was drunk when I got those first tattoos.’
‘Really?’
‘As a skunk.’
Rhys laughed. ‘How old-fashioned of you.’
‘Did you know Neil?’
‘Vaguely. He’s a good tattooist in an old-school kinda way. I like old school.’
‘He’s a bikie, isn’t he?’
Rhys smirked. ‘Neil is a motorcycle enthusiast.’
At the lights she pointed down to Woolloomooloo. ‘And that’s where I was living when I first started tattooing. In a squat. Great place. We were there for years. It’s a freeway now. You’ll have to direct me, Marie. We’re just gonna beat peak hour.’
‘The bridge, so I can see.’
The car crawled up the hill towards the sunset. A bleating began at Marie’s feet.
‘Is that my phone?’ said Rhys. ‘No, mine’s here.’ She patted her pocket.
It was bleating in Marie’s bag, but the effort of bending down to get it was too much. She let it ring out. ‘I’m down to four months,’ she announced.
‘What do you want to do?’
‘Go for a bushwalk. See Nell. You know I wanted to get gauntlets, and we never finished the angophora. I feel incomplete.’
‘Maybe I can paint the gauntlets on.’
‘You never would have tattooed them, would you.’
‘Actually, yes. I just felt you needed to wait a bit longer. More people are getting their hands done now; it’s not such a big deal.’
‘I think I just want to make the most of this last fortnight in my house and garden.’
‘That sounds good. Then you move?’
‘Yes.’ Marie groaned. ‘I’m dreading it.’
Rhys turned onto the Cahill Expressway. The sun was low and she pushed down the visors.
‘I was cruel to Blanche.’
‘You’re very different from each other,’ Rhys said diplomatically.
‘Are you going to have another child, Rhys?’
‘Probably not. Why?’
‘You can’t love all your children equally, you know. They tell you that you can, that you have to, but you can’t. And you end up feeling guilty about it for the rest of your life.’
Marie’s little speech exhausted her. Her mouth was completely dry. The water bottle at her feet was empty. She could sense the familiar marching band of pain start up in the pit of her stomach. She looked at the girders of the bridge flicking by, the ribbed sky stretching either side. She found herself smiling a greeting or a farewell to the impervious, beautiful scenery. ‘Oh, Rhys. We had so much fun, didn’t we?’
‘We sure did.’
Clark spent the morning catching up on chores. He cooked the chick peas he had soaked the night before, did some washing then from eight-thirty onwards made a list of overdue phone calls, including one to Nell’s child care to check on her progress. Rachel, the manager, thought Nell was so precocious and one of the most on-to-it kids I’ve ever had here. Clark hung up feeling proud and satisfied. He wrote up his Progress Report for first semester, transferred Nell’s child allowance, read the backlog of emails from his department and paid all his bills. He wrote an email to Janice about Nell, so as to avoid talking to her directly. The chores he enjoyed the most were the administrative ones, the completion of each giving him a satisfaction he hadn’t felt since he’d stopped working in an office. The crispness of the morning had lasted into the heart of the day; he was tingling with energy when he finished. He thought that he might go back to an administrative job when he finished his thesis; it seemed to make him happier than writing. He would never be a writer, he realised that now, but it came to him more with relief than disappointment.
At midday he made hommus and a tuna salad. Sylvia’s car was being serviced so he went to pick her up from Bondi Junction. Beachside trysts were so rare. They had three hours together and Clark couldn’t wait to get her home.
Inside the car, she moved immediately into his embrace. ‘Franco confronted me today. He’s started to suspect something.’
‘Don’t you think it might be better just to tell him?’
‘I can’t.’
Clark headed down the hill. The sky in the east had turned pale grey. He drove with one hand, holding Sylvia’s with the other, surprised to find a spark of empathy for his rival glowing in his heart. It flamed to mistrust and again he considered that if Sylvia was deceiving her husband, she was also capable of deceiving him. ‘I have to pick up my mother at three-thirty. We’ve got three hours together, cheaptart.’
Sylvia squeezed his hand. Sunlight shafted through the light cloud cover then suddenly it began to hail. In seconds the patter became a violent, copious downpour. Clark moved into second gear and crawled to a stop below his building. Onto the roof, inches above their heads, the hail thundered. Sylvia was laughing in the mayhem.
Clark looked in wonder at it falling through sunlight, piling up on the windscreen. ‘It’s incredible!’
Sylvia was grinning from ear to ear. ‘Isn’t the apocalypse beautiful?’
Clark touched her face. ‘You’ll be alright, Sylvia. So will we.’ He got out his cigarettes, and they smoked holding hands beneath the harsh drumming of ice on metal.
‘I spoke to Maurice,’ Sylvia said. ‘He’s seeing Leon tomorrow.’
‘Thank you so much for that.’
‘No worries. Maurice is a really good barrister and a nice guy.’
‘Leon said he hardly had anything on him. I can’t understand why this has to go to court.’
‘Poor bastard.’
‘And I can’t understand why he’s carrying drugs around at a time like this.’
‘Maybe he wanted an escape. Have some fun.’
‘He was taking ice.’
Sylvia looked out the window. Again Clark sensed her strain. Getting out of the car was not an option. The hail poured down, enclosing them in a white pod.
‘Clark, he doesn’t deserve this. He’s being charged with indecent exposure and resisting arrest as well. They got him at a beat. That’s just between you and me.’
‘A beat. Where?’
‘Moore Park.’
Clark was silent. He couldn’t believe his lover, who had never met his brother, knew more than he did. He felt a twinge of embarrassment about the beat. Sylvia seemed to be hearing his thoughts. ‘The law is an ass, Clark.’
‘Well, why did you become one then?’
‘I don’t know. I thought I could make a difference. One day soon we’ll be getting arrested for having pictures of fags on our hard drives.’
‘So that’s why he said the cops were homophobic.’
‘No doubt they were.’
Clark tightened. ‘I don’t agree with gay guys doing that in public. Call me homophobic too, if you like. It’s a park, for god’s sake. What if a kid comes across that.’
‘Who takes their kids to the park at midnight?’
‘They do it in the day too. They’re everywhere.’
Sylvia pulled another cigarette out of the packet. ‘We’re living in a police state.’
‘Oh, come on, look at the rest of the world. It’s a fucking picnic here.’
‘The anti-terrorism laws might as well have no sunset clause and the sniffer dogs are a prime example of them being used against citizens for no better reason than good old oppression. The operation that got Leon would have cost thousands of dollars. For what? Shaming and intimidating, a couple of petty fines. It’s just revenue-raising and fear-mongering.’ Sylvia grew vehement. ‘And I’m sick of people pointing to worse places as an excuse for not opposing the creeping tyranny here.’
‘I’m way better informed than the average person and I care, you know that,’ Clark replied with equal vehemence. B
ut he knew they weren’t fighting about issues, they were fighting against each other pure and simple. He tried to calm down. ‘I didn’t know there was no sunset clause.’
‘Hardly anybody knows anything. Hardly anybody cares. The federal government has enclosed us in legislation so constrictive that the state government is forgotten. They pass these laws and nobody says anything. We haven’t even got a bill of rights in this stupid country.’
She was getting that awful shrewish tone. The thrumming of hail was now muffled by a thick coat of ice all around them, and their voices boomed inside the small car. Clark was surprised to find himself implicated, even defensive. He said, ‘Do you do anything?’
‘I screech away in a lecture theatre and write papers on law reform for musty old journals with a readership of one legal-aid lawyer and his dog. What do you reckon?’ Sylvia began to laugh. ‘I meant cigarette fags, by the way. Not men.’ She stubbed her cigarette out and ran her hand through his hair. ‘How’s your mother?’
‘Taking painkillers by the bucketload.’
As suddenly as it began, the hail stopped. Clark went to open the door, but Sylvia put a hand on his arm. ‘Let’s go down to the ocean.’
Clark drove slowly, the tyres crunching and slipping on ice. His neighbours were emerging, dazed and smiling, taking photographs, checking their cars for damage. It was surreal: Bondi icy in the sun, every street completely white. They drove onto Campbell Parade and the grassy slopes that ran down to the ocean glittered like snowfields. The waves moved in, one after another, huge, angry, relentless. He was elated by the day’s extreme weather yet scared of the tension emanating from Sylvia. He was sick of his single life in his little flat, his solo dinners, his paltry fortnightly meetings with his daughter. He wanted more. He thought of Sylvia’s body with its history and strength and private concerns. It seemed a cathedral, and a fortress. He pulled up in the car park facing the ocean and cut the ignition. On the path below, kids were throwing ice balls at each other. Everywhere were drifts of it. ‘I made us lunch,’ he said hopefully.
‘I don’t have time to stay for lunch, Clark. I have to go home.’
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