Treading Air

by Ariella Van Luyn

  The nurse must feel eyes on her because she spins around and sees that Lizzie’s awake. She walks over, touches Lizzie’s arm. ‘Watch her, will you? Make sure she doesn’t take anything else.’

  Lizzie wants to tell her, for starters, that she can’t see a goddamn thing properly – no point recruiting her eyes for anything – and, for second, that she has no desire to watch this woman pass a bit of wire through her. But the nurse is already leaving, and Lizzie isn’t sure it’s worth the fuss. The nurse probably just asked her so she could make herself a cuppa with a clean conscience.

  Townsville, 1923

  Late one afternoon, Lizzie drops by fifty-one for a quiet game of fan-tan before her shift. She’s at the table before she makes out their faces: Dolly has her stockinged legs thrown over Colin’s lap, and she leans into him, her spine curved so her face is close to his. Her arm, circled with a nickel bracelet – probably Thelma’s – is slung over his shoulder to hold herself there. She has the stillness and sense of discomfort of an artist’s model left standing too long. Colin’s face is turned towards hers. They’re both laughing.

  A few of the regulars sit around the table with them – Scarcella, Old Bill, Zhang. Murray’s at the bar polishing glasses, looking vacant.

  ‘Thought Bea told you to stay away,’ Lizzie says, glaring at Colin.

  He shrugs, and Dolly squints up at her. ‘He’s alright,’ she says.

  ‘Bea knows he’s here?’

  ‘’Course.’

  Lizzie stalks off down the hallway and knocks on Bea’s door. She doesn’t like the crotchety tone of Bea’s voice when she tells her to come in. Lizzie finds Bea in a silk dressing-gown, strips of blue fabric at the sleeves, neck and hemline, which join up with a pom-pom closure at the hip, pink bouquets of tulips bursting across her chest and waist.

  ‘You know that Colin bloke is out front?’ Lizzie asks.

  ‘Thought he looked familiar when Dolly brought him in.’ Bea doesn’t seem worried.

  ‘You told him to never come back.’

  ‘Did I? I’ll handle it.’ Bea waves her hand.

  ‘He’s all over your niece. She better be careful.’

  ‘Listen, Betty, she told me she’s his cheese. Let it go. Dolly’s had a rough time of it, and he treats her nice.’

  ‘He didn’t treat me nice. He’ll turn on her.’ Lizzie feels the heat of her own body, the bleariness behind her eyes. She wants Colin out before he insults her in front of Scarcella or one of her other regulars.

  Bea comes closer and rests her hand on the crook of Lizzie’s elbow, awkwardly. ‘You’ll appeal to different men for different reasons, darling. One girl can’t please ’em all. That fella and Dolly, they just match. Don’t think he’ll make a fuss now.’

  ‘But he said –’

  With a sigh, Bea closes her eyes and takes her hand off Lizzie’s elbow. ‘Leave it be, Betty.’ Her words flat and cold.

  Lizzie stamps out of the room and hears Colin’s high-pitched laugh. Dolly is on her knees in front of him, her hands pushing her breasts together and higher up. As Lizzie walks nearer, she spies the toothpick skewering a cherry that’s held between Dolly’s breasts. Colin buries his face between them too, mouthing the cherry. The other men, even Old Bill, are laughing, cheering him on. Dolly throws her head back and squeals, ‘It tickles! It tickles.’ Lizzie can’t understand how she can bear to have that man touching her, his dry mouth on her flesh. She’d like to whack them both, send them to the ground.

  Though she’s more than an hour early, she stamps over to fifty-three to wait for Joe. She stews on the verandah, sitting in a squatter’s chair, the anger washing through her in waves. She lets loose before Joe’s even up the stairs. ‘You know Bea’s let Colin back in?’

  ‘Who?’ He looks bewildered.

  ‘That bloke who insulted me, broke the chair. Now he’s making goo-goo eyes at Dolly. Bea’s letting him waltz all over the place.’

  Joe comes up to her and wraps his arms across her shoulders. ‘I’ll make sure you’re safe, peach. Won’t let him up here when you’re around.’

  She allows herself to be comforted. Joe hasn’t held her like this in a long time. It’s good to have his warmth around her, his smell of lye soap and sweat. She presses her face against the muscles of his chest, her vision limited to the white cotton weave of his shirt, the wooden button at the collar with a splatter of gravy across it.

  Joe’s talking to someone out the front. It takes a little while for Lizzie to recognise McWilliams’ voice. She listens from the lounge room, her bedroom airless. She often comes in to find it thick with Dolly’s perfume, or her makeup snowed over the dresser. Lizzie hates to think of her in there with Colin – or any of the men, really. That they’ll like Dolly more than her. If Lizzie stays in there too long, she starts picturing what kind of a performance Dolly puts on for them. So when she’s not chatting with Thelma on the verandah, she spends most of her time in the open air of the lounge, where she can arrange herself, a display for the men. Her legs stretched over the arm of a chair and her suspenders exposed.

  Now she tries to eavesdrop on Joe and McWilliams but doesn’t catch any words. Both the men’s voices are kindly, and she’s grateful that McWilliams still talks to Joe. With what happened at the meatworks, and now this job of his, turning men away from fucking, he’s not popular. She’s seen other men cross the street to avoid him. Joe avoids some of them too. He must find it strange to run into the ones who’ve slept with her. She and Joe have made themselves outcasts, but they won’t stay here forever. Maybe go back to Brisbane when they can afford to buy property. She’s filling up that old tin. They’re both working; they can put money aside.

  She peeks through the front door. At this distance, she can only see the men’s outlines. She notices for the first time the depth of McWilliams’ voice, which rumbles under Joe’s. But it’s softer too, without the harsh edges and clipped ends.

  Joe leans towards him, gestures largely, his hand waving in the air, sketching out some game of cards, excited. McWilliams scuffs the dirt, glances over to the lighted interior of the cottage. Lizzie tucks back into the doorway, realising he’s not come just to talk to Joe, but to buy. She imagines McWilliams pushing her against the bedroom wall, his mouth on hers. Heat runs through her body, surprising her.

  It would be better if McWilliams went with Thelma, although some of the white men don’t like her. One said to Lizzie, ‘It’s alright when you’re on the station and there’s no other choice, but hell.’ She hadn’t known what to say to that. Thelma talked of a cousin of hers at a station out west, locked up each night with a key that the owner lent out to jackaroos and used himself from time to time. Lizzie feels sick at the idea.

  Joe doesn’t suggest Thelma, just says the girls are busy. He points McWilliams to the next cottage. She knows why he’s done it, but in the secret space between the door and the verandah, she allows herself to feel disappointed.

  Later, she and Joe walk home in the dark wee hours to find McWilliams waiting on their front step – Joe’s asked him over for a drink. ‘Your missus keeps odd hours, bad as yours, Joe,’ he says, and she and Joe look away. He’ll either guess what’s going on or not worry about it, but she won’t say anything.

  The men move inside, already talking about a match, while she fills a bucket from the tank and takes it to the outhouse so she doesn’t have to walk past them slopping water or clean up in the bedroom knowing they’re just down the hall. She doesn’t like to think about what she looks like while she crouches over the bucket and uses her fingers to get the water all round inside her. Usually she douches with a splash of vinegar after a full night, but now she doesn’t want to take too long. She’s ready for a slug of beer. She knows she’ll regret this later – the hop beer without the vinegar will make her pussy burn, but right now she can’t be arsed.

  She slips on a green cotton dress, thick enough that she only needs a chemise. Its skirt flares out from the hips, flattens her belly.
She bought it last week in town. Doesn’t look at prices anymore, just chooses the ones she falls in love with.

  As she walks to the living room, she hears the men talking about the meatworks, where McWilliams still works. ‘Happened, mate,’ he’s saying, ‘was the result of poor management. Just wanted a body, thought some cheap halfwit could do the same job as a man’s been an apprentice. No wonder –’

  Joe and then McWilliams look up at Lizzie standing in the doorway. Sudden silence, then McWilliams scratches his head. Seems they were talking about Joe’s accident, but she might be getting that wrong, doesn’t want to ask. It’s in the past. She helps herself to a longneck and arranges herself on the lounge next to Joe, taking a gulp from the bottle and running her fingers over its logo, Tooth’s Beer, and the embossed horse, rearing up.

  McWilliams smiles into the neck of his beer as though he has a secret.

  ‘What?’ Joe asks, leaning forward.

  ‘Other day, this little calf turned up among the cattle. Shouldn’t have been there, but the fella on the ship reckoned the girl couldn’t be separated from her mum. Poor mite just dug her hooves in. Funniest thing to see. Every time we tried to move her away from mum, she’d do this.’ McWilliams spreads his arms and legs out, notching his heels and the balls of his hands. ‘Me and the other bloke didn’t know what to do. The mum was for the chop. Ended up coaxing the calf away with a bottle of the mum’s milk. I’m keeping her at work, getting in early to feed her. She lets me touch her now.’

  Lizzie looks at McWilliams properly after this story. He’s decent, this man who saves young animals. She notices the downward curve of his eyebrows, the blue eyes that make his face gentle.

  Joe barks a laugh. ‘What you do that for? Going to kill it sooner or later.’

  He’s missed the point. The calf will get a bit more life, at least. McWilliams shrugs, turning his mouth down, and Joe falls silent, his head back against the couch, eyes shut. Minutes tick past. McWilliams clears his throat and says, ‘Reckon he’s gone to sleep.’

  Lizzie nods. ‘Been a long week.’

  ‘Joe says you’re from Brisbane. Me sister moved down there a couple years ago. Doris McWilliams – heard of her?’

  ‘Not ringing any bells, sorry.’

  ‘I’m proud of her, going down there. I like girls with an independent streak.’

  Not many men ever express admiration for a woman, and something about his presence, his generosity to her and Joe, makes her feel safe. She smiles. ‘Thanks for being a friend to Joe. Lots of blokes turned their backs.’

  ‘I know what it’s like to be on the outer in this town. Me dad nicked things. Not much: watches, trinkets, that kind of thing. Went down a few times, came back out, started again. Last time, took me with him. Coppers pinched me straight up, fucking grabbed my ankle, pulled me down off the wall I was climbing. Took the till from a shop in town, owner told everyone who ever bought so much as a tea leaf in that place. People round here can be bastards.’

  She thinks of the men’s treatment of her, their desperation, which sometimes makes them do things that only animals would do, but she understands that somehow they can’t help it. Seems to her that she and McWilliams live in different places, but they’re both on the edges, looking in at the others. He can go out in the daytime, though, and she only has the night.

  ‘Sorry that happened,’ she says.

  He grins with one side of his mouth. ‘Partly me own fault,’ he says. Then, ‘Don’t think anyone’s ever apologised to me before. Not like they meant it. Maybe a man stood on me toe in the street, but not really.’

  ‘Poor you.’ Sounds stupid, but she doesn’t know what to say. ‘Might have to wait until a rellie dies for the next one.’ She hopes this doesn’t sour the mood and is relieved when he laughs. Her instinct is to shy away from this kind of conservation, and Joe’s habit is to withdraw, say nothing. She doesn’t know what to make of this opening up.

  McWilliams keeps talking. ‘The boys in gaol thought they could have a go at me ’cause of me leg. So I learned to take the caliper off real fast, slamming it round their heads. Guards couldn’t work it out. A man with his head split open, not a weapon in sight. Practised whipping it off in me cell at night.’ He rolls up his trouser leg, and Lizzie sees the whole caliper for the first time, its metal bolts, the leather strap that buckles at the top of his calf. He fumbles with the buckle – ‘Out of practice,’ and a quick, embarrassed grin – but slips off the rest into his hand in two seconds flat. ‘I remember now,’ he says, ‘used to walk around with the buckle undone, clinked when I walked, like I was wearing spurs, a real ringer. Paid a lot of money to get it shipped from Brisbane when they first started making ’em. Sent a tracing of my feet. Before that, had to hop everywhere.’

  She asks what happened to his leg.

  ‘Lead poisoning,’ he says. ‘Froze up the whole foot.’ So he wasn’t in the war. He shows her his foot, unchanged since he was fourteen, when he caught water dripping off the roof and drank it. ‘Dad had just painted the roof – doctors reckoned it was that.’

  She holds up the caliper, scissors the joint.

  ‘State of the art,’ he says.

  He’s a machine-man, modern, while Joe’s from the jungle, a Tarzan, an animal – he takes her and fucks her without asking. He moves repetitively, like the monkeys she saw once at the botanical gardens, bringing a stone down on a nut to crack the shell, eating the innards, holding their fingers in their mouths a long time, as if they might forget what to do with the food and let the nut fall out. McWilliams has metal in him, something of the new era, the guns that shot at Joe in Egypt and the railways that pierce the country, breaking through up north. She runs her fingers over McWilliams’ caliper and watches him when he’s not looking.

  Their conversation peters out. Drowsy, she sleeps and wakes to see Joe and McWilliams passed out, Joe with his mouth hanging open, his legs too far apart and slipping down, and McWilliams curled up with his hands to his chest. She thinks of Joe getting shot at in the war, crouching in trenches. They seem so helpless now, the survivors. The dead ones have walls built around them; they’re given flowers. But she’s heard men in pubs call the returned soldiers ‘mongrels’. They’re like the hermit crab she once found on the Shorncliffe beach. She picked up the shell, thinking she’d discovered some treasure, and the crab’s whole body fell out. Its abdomen was soft, twisted into the shape of the shell.

  McWilliams still has some gentleness in him. Since she’s known him, Joe’s held himself like a boxer in public, and usually in private too. Since the beating, he’s always coiled up. She’s come to recognise his stance, out on the cottage verandah. His shoulders raised, arms tucked close to his body.

  Now he wakes and looks at her, empty-eyed with sleep. ‘Hello,’ she says, and he doesn’t answer. She’s offended even though she knows he mustn’t be awake, but somehow this makes it worse. His sleeping mind has rejected her. She doesn’t feature in his dreams. He breathes a word and collapses into the chair. She’s been abandoned with the smell of beer dregs, hot sour ferment, a fly drowning in the bottom, crockery spotted with crusty food, pots hanging on the hooks and turning gently in the breeze.

  While she’s washing the dishes, Joe wakes properly and comes over to squeeze her bottom. She feels better about everything. He can do this to her still, fix her up by loving her.

  Lizzie hasn’t been in the fan-tan parlour since she walked in to find Dolly and Colin occupying the territory. Today she has a craving for the game and some spare sugar in her pocket. She enters the darkened room carefully, watching out for Dolly and Colin. She’s bitter at her naivety in thinking Bea would be on her side.

  Neither of them are there. She sees Chris at the end of the table, away from a group of Chinese blokes crowded around the tiles. That one named Lee from the grocery store, with his distinctive haircut, is there.

  She pulls up next to Chris and gives him a grin.

  ‘You free tonight, love?’ he asks.
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  ‘For you, yes.’

  ‘And for that beautiful answer, you get a drink.’ He goes up to Murray and orders two G & Ts. She doesn’t think much of the sharp quinine aftertaste of the tonic, but Chris tells her it keeps away dengue, an intoxicating medication. Gritting her teeth, she waits for the kick of alcohol.

  She buys in at the fan-tan table and picks herself a tile. Lee rests his hand next to the pile. He watches her when she’s about to make her choice and says, ‘You should take this one. It means “luck”.’

  Lizzie slides her finger along the groove of the Chinese lettering. The tile heats up quickly in the palm of her hand, and she does feel lucky. ‘Thanks,’ she says, smiling at him.

  He smiles back. She’s surprised by the whiteness of his teeth, their straightness. Not many men have a complete set, unbroken or uncapped with gold. Some of Joe’s have been knocked away in fights or falls.

  She asks Lee if he runs the Rising Sun grocery near the market gardens, and he nods. She recalls him standing at the counter, sweeping off spilled flour with a dustpan and brush, the cash register hulked in front of him, keys bristling. Now he watches her, the smile still on his face, and his hand, square-palmed and clean, stretched out along the top of the table. She holds his gaze and something moves in her. Then she wonders what this bloody trade is doing to her, making her able to stomach one of his kind. She turns from him, shifts back down the table to Chris, who’s stuffing stale-smelling tobacco in his pipe, chin to chest.

  Still, over the next couple of weeks, she finds herself making excuses to go out to Lee’s store. In the daylight she has to keep her hat pulled low. She tells Joe that it’s the best part of town for her, where she’s least likely to be recognised. And anyway, she likes the Rising Sun tea leaves better. He screws up his face, saying, ‘Don’t taste no different to me.’ Another time: ‘Long way to walk for a drink that’s had dirty chow hands all over it.’ These comments close off her body, make him seem smaller.