by Fiona Capp
A kind of numbness set in. I could function well enough – but life was muted. The edge was gone. I told myself this was what happened when you reached a certain age; it was unavoidable. You had to accept that you would never feel that hunger, that intensity again. And then, out of the blue, I would wake from a dream that shocked me with the depth of its yearning. For his cock. For his knowing hands. For the animal glint in his eye. And everything that had gone underground would come roaring back.
With David asleep beside me, I started thinking about the time, not long after we’d met, when I realised why they call it ‘falling’ in love. You’re in free fall, I remember saying to myself. Completely helpless. And I didn’t care. I was walking across the university lawn when I saw him on the far side, his face all but obscured by a megaphone.
‘Esther Chatwin, I have something to tell you.’
I remembered how I held up my hands, frantically pleading with him to stop. And how he dropped the megaphone and watched me as I ran towards him.
‘Don’t you want to hear?’ he said.
‘Just tell me. Not everyone else. You don’t always need a megaphone to make yourself heard.’
‘Hey, I like that.’ He grinned. ‘Can I use it?’ He looked at me quizzically, then bent his mouth to my ear. ‘Why do I feel naked with you, Esther? And glad to be.’
I knew he wanted to take me to bed and I wanted it, too. But there was a rhythm to what was happening between us, a rhythm that had to unfold at its own pace. That evening, after dinner at a pub, he dropped me home. We kissed goodbye on the footpath. David was about to go when I heard myself say, ‘Wait.’
I turned towards my house where my parents lay sleeping and pointed to the upstairs window on the right. ‘That’s my bedroom.’
David raised his eyebrows. ‘And?’
‘Just wait.’
I ran up the concrete path without looking back, let myself in and went to my bedroom where I turned on the bedside lamp and threw a purple scarf over it to soften the light. Then I raised the blind.
It took a few seconds before my eyes adjusted and I could make him out on the opposite side of the street, his silhouette and the orange firefly of his cigarette.
I began slowly, my fingers clumsy as I undid the buttons of my blouse and shrugged it off. I tried not to think about what I was doing because I knew if I did, I would feel too silly to go on. Next, I untied my skirt, wriggled my hips and sent it billowing to the floor. I was in my bra and underpants now. Stopping to take a few deep breaths, I bent forward and rested my hands on the windowsill and stared out into the night.
I could feel him waiting for me and I knew he would wait as long as it took. I reached around and unfastened my bra, cupping my breasts, offering them to him, imagining his hands and his mouth. After a moment, I let my fingers move down the sides of my body until they drove my knickers to my ankles. Then I kicked them off and stood there with my palms facing outwards. My reply to his confession that afternoon. In the distance, the bells at the railway crossing began to clang. I waited for the train to pass through the crossing and the bells to fade and then reached for the blind and pulled it down.
The next morning the doorbell rang when I was still in bed. I found him standing on the front porch, his face shadowed with stubble, his eyes bleary from lack of sleep.
‘Have your parents gone to work?’
I nodded and invited him in.
He looked at me with a kind of desperation. ‘Do you mind if I hold you?’
I stood, stunned, as he put his arms around me.
The next thing I knew we were on the floor in the lounge room furiously wrestling our way through the layers of clothing to the body underneath, taking what was rightfully ours. And just as quickly it was over and we came up gasping for breath, the carpet rough beneath our skin.
‘I thought I’d go mad last night,’ David said, gently stroking my arm. ‘I couldn’t sleep. When I did, I had this dream. You were standing in front of me but I couldn’t touch you. Every time I tried you were just out of reach.’
All these years later, it was his turn to be out of reach. More distant by the day. Somehow we had allowed this to happen, had managed to convince ourselves it was beyond our control. That sacrifices had to be made. Once this kind of thing starts, though, how do you stop it? Outside forces take over and suddenly you’re being swept along by this raging current that is political power and it’s all you can do not to drown in it.
David gave a small moan and turned over. I didn’t know which was worse. Having him so close yet lost in sleep, or sleeping alone. He would fly to Canberra around dawn, and Kate and I would go back to our normal routine – although normal was hardly the word. There was no such thing any more.
I turned away and buried my face in the pillow.
10
GOTLAND
September 2010
With Ros gone, the island felt deserted. Even more so when I got back to the hotel room and saw her empty bed and the space where her bag had been. I didn’t know what I was doing there any more.
Although it was almost eleven, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I grabbed my coat and headed for the path by the grassy green slopes of the moat outside the town wall. Lit up by spotlights from below, the wall looked eerily like a giant skull with the crown lopped off. The strong sea breeze blowing through the trees in the nearby botanical gardens filled the moat with the sound of flowing water. The beach called but when the path began to veer away from the wall and into a grove of trees, the darkness made me jumpy. I thought of the town square twinkling with those fairy lights and decided to head back and find a café. I would have a sticky liqueur and try to distract myself with the view.
There were many entrances around the circumference of the wall. In my eagerness to get back inside, I came in through a different portal to the one I had taken earlier. For a moment I had no idea where I was. It was like being in one of those tales where different doors take you into different worlds or times. Then I spotted the cathedral spires and headed for them. Before I knew it, I was passing Sven’s house. The light was on in his studio. I could see him through the French doors clutching a chisel in one hand, the other raising a mallet. Even after two days spent in his company and two evening meals together, it struck me that I knew very little about him. Watching him now, as he stood poised above the block of stone with his muscles flexed, I felt I was seeing him for the first time. Seeing who he was when he was alone with himself. Although he was perfectly still, something was going on, a kind of motionless dance as his eyes moved over the unfinished sculpture, weighing up where to make his mark.
I thought I was hidden in the darkness but he must have sensed my presence because he lowered the mallet and came across to the door and said, ‘Come in,’ as if he had been expecting me. I said I didn’t want to disturb him but he insisted he’d done enough for the night. He dragged out a stool from under his work bench and said he had some ideas about things I might like to do over the next few days.
Whatever strange pull I had felt towards him seemed to have gone with Ros. The memory of what had passed between us – the looks, the singing, the charged silences – just left me feeling ashamed. Sven’s mood, too, seemed to have changed. He had become more subdued and polite. Perhaps we had both come to our senses. I thought of the five awkward days ahead of us. It was clear now how things would go. Sven would play the gracious host and I would play the grateful guest and we’d pass the time doing touristy things that would have no meaning because Ros wasn’t there.
‘Your sister is a mysterious one,’ Sven said suddenly. ‘I can’t help feeling that I did something. Or that I should have done more.’
I gave a bleak laugh. ‘You too?’ I was tempted to tell him not to worry, that it was me who had driven her away. But then I would have had to explain what I meant, and that would have meant revealing the hopes I was sure Ros had harboured. And she would have hated me for doing that. ‘Don’t blame yourself. When Ros
makes up her mind, there’s nothing anyone can do.’
It was the most convenient version of events – Ros being difficult and changeable – even if neither of us believed it.
‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘about when you lived together in Cambridge. I hear it was a wild time, lots of people coming and going.’
Sven looked at the ceiling as if trying to remember. It was a long time ago, he said, and most of it was a blur. A lot of drinking, drugs and partying. The household would have been a shambles without Ros. She held it together. She had this boyfriend, a guitarist who played in a band that thought they were the next big thing. When he was stoned he was morose and when he wasn’t, he was obnoxious. ‘I couldn’t understand what she saw in him. He would do the most stupid, idiotic things and she put up with him and kept her cool. Nothing fazed her.’
‘She’s good at giving that impression.’
Sven sighed. ‘She had this ugly little dog. A terrier, the kind that yap all the time. One day she found it dead in the gutter, after it was hit by a car. At first she seemed okay but when I saw her later that day, she was lying face down on the grass on the banks of the Cam.’
He called her name and when she looked up it was clear she’d been crying. She stared at him as if she didn’t know who he was and finally said, ‘Bugger off, Sven,’ and put her head down. He knew she liked the dog but it surprised him that she took it so hard. Weeks later, he said, it slipped out that she’d had a miscarriage the day before the dog was killed.
Sven prodded at the warm wax that had pooled at the bottom of a candle on the bench. I watched the shadows flickering across his face. It was almost too sad to think about, all the confusion and regret that must have followed. It was another thing she’d never told me. She was a puzzle I’d never solve, no matter how hard I tried.
Sven had sunk into himself, as though he, too, was wondering what might have been. What course his life might have taken if he and Ros had got together all those years ago. I pushed the thought away, shocked at the jealousy I felt. Funny how you can imagine you know yourself – right until the moment those lurking U-boats of the unconscious surface and show you how wrong you are. All these years and I had never acknowledged it – just how deep it ran, the competition between Ros and me. I suppose I couldn’t bear to because it was counter to everything I believed in. The way I wanted to be.
Suddenly I’d had enough of thinking about Ros, of trying to understand her, of trying to understand us. I knew I should go to bed but I would only lie awake mulling.
I glanced across at Sven, who was still looking distracted, and recalled his dance with the stone and the intensity I had glimpsed behind the mild, smiling face he presented to the world.
‘Ros told me you went to Ireland for a week’s holiday and didn’t come back for years.’
‘Did she now?’
And there it was, something I hadn’t noticed before, the slightest lilt of Irish in his Swedish accent. He wandered over to a tall block of milky grey stone that looked untouched, except for the top, which was smooth and round like a shaved head, and ran his fingers gently over it. Almost lovingly.
He hadn’t meant to stay, he said. His travels took him to County Monaghan, where he met two Irish sculptors, a husband and wife, who lived in a big house overlooking a lake. One thing led to another and before he knew it, years had gone by.
‘You make it sound like a fairytale.’
He shook his head, toying with a chisel. It was disturbing to see the sudden change in him: the bewildered expression, the way he was lost for words.
‘The young man I was is a stranger to me now,’ he said finally. What had brought them together were their shared ideas about art. They formed a kind of society, a secret society of three. Under the cover of darkness they would take their stone sculptures to a chosen spot, perhaps a field, a grassy verge by the side of the road or even a park, and leave them there. The next morning a farmer or passing motorist or someone going for a walk would stumble across them, these sculpted stones that had sprouted overnight like some magical plant or a message pushed up from the bowels of the earth.
Inevitably, stories would start about how they got there and what they meant, and people would flock to see them. There would be speculation about who was behind them; all sorts of theories, some plausible, some mad. Occasionally journalists would try to find out, but Sven and his friends always eluded them. It was their hope that, over time, the stories would wither for lack of substance or evidence, would become less important than the sculptures themselves; that people would lose interest in who had made them and simply accept them for what they were.
‘And did that happen?’
‘The fuss would die down after a while. And then we would erect a new stone and it would all start up again. People are never content with what is in front of their noses.’
‘You created a mystery they wanted to solve.’
‘It was an experiment. We did want to create a sense of mystery or wonder – but not about us. We wanted to turn people’s minds away from the artist. To take the artist out of the equation. To focus attention on the stones themselves.’
I looked at him keenly, trying to see the young man driven by these ideals, and found myself thinking of David and the rest of us at university and our dream of anarchy. To be self-governing, what more could you want? But the truth was that most people didn’t want that responsibility. They just wanted to get on with their lives and let someone else worry about building roads and making sure there was food in the shops. I guessed it was the same with the sculptures. People weren’t interested in mystery. They wanted answers, they wanted certainty. They wanted to know who was in charge. I had the feeling from the way Sven talked that he’d never let go of this dream, or at least the convictions behind it. Ros had said he was a bit like a monk and I was beginning to understand what she meant.
Here on Gotland, Sven added quietly, most of the churches were built by anonymous stonemasons who carved the baptismal fonts and the friezes over the archways. Some were later given pseudonyms like Majestatis or Egypticus. But even when their names were known, who they were was no longer important. ‘What matters are their marks, their work. This is what we were trying to celebrate. The lost art of anonymity.’
An odd sensation rippled through me. The lost art of anonymity. I thought of Kate, could almost hear her saying, ‘Yeah, cool.’ She would understand, she would love the purity of it: the sense of recovering something missing from modern life. I would have to tell her about him. My mind slid to thoughts of home and I wondered how Kate and David were getting along, and what the next few months held. The main thing was to get through the rest of the year. The exams. The election. After which – I didn’t want to think. Never had the idea of anonymity been more appealing.
‘I am boring you. I’m sorry,’ Sven said.
‘No, you made me think of my daughter. Do you still do it here?’
‘Here?’ He laughed, his face splintering into lines, like rays of light. ‘Do you know how hard it is to keep secrets on an island like this? These days I am very conventional. The need for money makes one pragmatic. I get commissions or I find a place with the right atmosphere and I ask permission.’
The cathedral clock began tolling. We both counted the chimes. It was midnight.
I got up to go.
‘In the morning it’s your turn,’ Sven said, opening the door for me.
‘My turn?’ Then I realised what he meant.
11
MELBOURNE
August 2010
Kate had been in the bathroom for almost an hour getting herself ready for a party. When she finally emerged she was holding the large plastic yellow duck that had been sitting by the side of the bath since she was a baby.
‘Isn’t it time you got rid of this?’ she said.
I looked at it fondly. ‘I don’t think so.’ I wasn’t ready to part with it yet. It was as simple as that. I liked to see it sitting on the tiles, a reminder of
a time that had vanished with frightening speed. I still have it with me here in the ensuite bathroom at the Lodge. God knows what the cleaning staff think.
Kate put the duck on the kitchen table and, to my surprise, came and gave me a hug. She was almost a head taller than me now and had taken it upon herself to tell me when the grey roots were showing in my hair. I pulled her close, inhaling the freshly bathed scent of her, her womanly body still strange to me, and reflected on how rarely I held her any more. When they were born, they were yours to hold all the time. You strained to hear their breath at night, you knew every stretch of their skin. When they began to speak, they had so much to tell, all of it urgent. Thoughts, feelings, needs bubbling up like a fountain. No one in the world knew them better than you. And then it happened so slowly you barely noticed, or noticed but couldn’t admit, that with each day you held them less and they told you less, even though you asked them more. Somehow the fountain went underground.
And when it went underground, you never really knew where it might take them. Kate had only recently told me about her first go at graffiti when we were staying with Gerald and Fay at their beach house a few years ago. While the adults slept in after a boozy night, Kate and Max and Abbie got up early and sneaked down to the beach, pretending – if challenged – that they were going for a swim. They knew the tide would be low and that there would be a great stretch of smooth flat sand, like a blank canvas, just waiting for them to make their mark. Kate had her stencil prepared and when she stepped back from spraying the paint, the sight of her work gave her a thrill she’d never forgotten. They went back to the beach later, when the tide had come in and washed everything away. It felt, Kate said, like the perfect crime.
So, I knew there were things she got up to that she didn’t always tell me – at least not at the time. And I knew it had to be that way. There had to be secrets. She needed that room to become herself. But I liked to think we had a special understanding, that I knew her world and its language, its codes. We talked about all sorts of things, and in a way I could never have done with my parents when I was her age. I also knew that our time in the cocoon of her childhood was almost over. She would turn eighteen two weeks before Christmas and after that she’d flit here and there, coming and going, until she was gone more often than not and the house would be emptier than ever before.