Dark Palace

by Frank Moorhouse

  ‘Sit down with us,’ Edith said, unnecessarily, bringing herself back to self-control, and taking him at his word about excessive politeness, adding, ‘though you seem to have done so, already.’

  Laughing from unease.

  Scraper ordered tea. The waitress seemed to know him well.

  He looked Edith over, a disconcerting experience because the appearance of his face made him seem to find looking an act of some effort. His neck did not move freely. ‘You’re a big wheel in the League of Nations, Edith—that’s what I hear.’

  ‘Edith gave a stirring talk this afternoon in the history lecture theatre,’ Alva said.

  Was this Alva being sarcastic?

  ‘Would’ve come if I’d known. Interested in the future of war.’

  The three of them lapsed into another silence. The tea arrived and when the waitress had left them, Edith offered cognac and he accepted with alacrity. She gave Alva and herself another boost in their now empty cups.

  ‘Tell me what you’ve been doing, Scraper? You did law?’ Edith said, now slowly recalling the student named Scraper. ‘You were a couple of years ahead of us?’

  ‘Well done, Edith! I practise law in a small way. A very small way. I practise away from the public gaze. Whatever scraps of work are thrown on my plate. And I write, you know.’

  ‘Novels?’

  ‘Verse.’

  ‘I’m sure my father warned me about lawyers who practise a little law and who write poetry,’ Edith said, laughing, trying to be light-hearted in the presence of such physical tribulation. ‘Married?’ she asked, immediately regretting the almost certain insensitivity of the question. No one could live with that face.

  He laughed darkly. ‘Stop being conventional, Edith. You never were before. Or was it a cruel question? And, no. The answer is no.’

  ‘Alva hasn’t married either,’ she said, disobeying his rule on convention, and realising that, in a more conventional situation, it would be a horrible joke towards matchmaking. Oh dear, what a day. She couldn’t get control of her conversation.

  He seemed to examine the question and the additional statement for possible motive. And then he became black as a storm. ‘Don’t pretend I’m normal. And don’t pretend to flirt. I have no stomach for that.’

  Flirt! Edith could not imagine anything more remote from her intentions.

  He then changed immediately, the black cloud passing, looked at them and laughed, ‘ “The Newtown Tarts.” ’

  ‘You remember!’ Edith exclaimed. She turned to Alva, ‘See, he remembers.’ She turned to Scraper, ‘We were talking about that just now. Alva claims not to remember. I think it’s because she’s a reformed woman. Putting her wicked past behind her.’

  ‘I may indeed be a reformed woman,’ Alva said laughing, but her voice indicated that she too was heartily dissatisfied by the way the conversation had gone and with the inclusion of herself in the repeated references to tarts.

  Scraper slurped down his tea, holding the cup in both hands, wanting the brandy, impervious to the heat of the tea.

  Alva chose at this time to excuse herself, looking deliberately at her watch and saying, ‘Time flies.’

  The coward. How could she!

  Edith had also enough social life for the day. Regardless of how callous it seemed, she also grabbed at the opportunity to leave. ‘I suppose I should go too.’

  He looked at them with a cynical smile. ‘Don’t like the look of the face of war?’

  Alva and she both coloured.

  Edith made no effort to leave, knowing that it was now impossible. ‘The war is a long time over,’ she said, rather harshly.

  ‘For me it’s never over.’

  ‘Touché.’

  Edith gave in to the idea that she was stuck.

  ‘Please stay,’ he said in a more courtly tone. ‘Conversation is hard to snare these days. And you are just as I remember you, Edith. If you take away the conventional gambits.’

  Edith now began to picture Scraper before his injuries—the boy Scraper was now back in her memory. He’d been so cocky, and so much a son of the sheep station.

  Alva held to her resolve to leave, gathered her things, shook Scraper’s hand and then held out her hand to Edith. ‘I hope we can all get together again before Edith goes back to her fine life in Geneva. And, Scraper, you must look me up—I’m working at the Commonwealth Laboratories. Call me some time.’

  ‘I do hope we have another chance to talk, too,’ Edith said, feeling trapped and abandoned.

  Alva left, saying to Edith, ‘I’ll contact you at the Victoria Club tomorrow.’

  ‘Do that, Al, please.’

  ‘I will.’

  War Work

  Scraper turned to Edith. ‘Don’t stay from compassion.’

  ‘Why not from compassion? Won’t that do?’

  He moved his mouth in what was probably the shadow of a grin. ‘That’s better. Edith, the implacable foe of cant and humbug. Compassion will do. Anything that wins me a conversation will do. Some days I feel I would be happy to pay for conversation.’

  ‘You aren’t married?’ he asked.

  Edith to her consternation again found herself considering her answer.

  ‘I am,’ she answered, as firmly as she could.

  ‘Australian?’

  ‘British.’

  ‘In the War?’

  Must the War remain the pivot of all their lives? Yes. ‘Dardanelles. Lancastershire Fusiliers.’

  ‘Rank?’

  ‘Captain. He was wounded at the Dardanelles. Shrapnel.’

  ‘Are you happily married?’

  She again considered her answer. Some people did not deserve to be trusted with the truth. Could this freakish man be trusted with her truths? She decided that she had better carefully lie to him. ‘Yes, perfectly.’

  He looked down at his tea. ‘Perfectly.’

  He made a smile with his tight, unnatural mouth. ‘Why no ring?’

  She gave her explanation about having forgotten to put it on after hand washing.

  He smiled his twisted smile. ‘Have you read much Freud?’

  She nodded. ‘I’ve been analysed,’ she boasted.

  ‘You must know about forgetting things and losing things—they are signals to ourselves.’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  The waitress cleared away the things. ‘Leave them,’ he said. The waitress shrugged as if accustomed to his ways, and went off. ‘Have you any more of that cognac?’

  Edith took out the flask and poured them two more drinks in the cups. She left the flask on the table.

  ‘I like a little harsh honesty. It’s how I remember you. Given the way I am, I’m denied anything to do with honesty. Except by the mirror. Are you back here because the League is finished?’

  How astute he was. He was not so far submerged in his self-pity that he was unable to see what others were doing around him. And by praising her honesty he was demanding it from her.

  He pointed his question more sharply. ‘Jumping ship?’ he said.

  She would have to work out soon—in reasonably honest conversational form—just what it was she was doing with herself back here.

  ‘Very interesting. Your answer is a long time coming and I can’t read your mind on this,’ he said. ‘Ah, we have an interesting case here in our dashing Edith. You can have time to answer and you may also revise your answer to the marriage question.’

  ‘I can’t read my own mind. I’m here on home leave. I’ll go to Canberra to look at the possibilities of working there. Yes.’

  ‘From Geneva to Canberra?’ He seemed to find this incomprehensible. ‘You may be the first person to go to Canberra voluntarily.’

  She grimaced slightly. ‘I may return to help build the nation.’ She tried to make it sound sardonic.

  ‘It’ll need some help.’ He said this through the circular black, seemingly toothless hole of his mouth, a joyless laugh.

  ‘I could give it a push,’ she said.
<
br />   They then chattered lightly about the university days which helped her remember further, his brilliance and his gangly sort of handsomeness coming back to her. And the arrogance of an older student.

  He looked across at her and smiled, his smile now appearing like a crack in a plaster wall. He touched the flask, which she didn’t like him doing. ‘An elegant flask. I like a woman who carries a flask. Of all that crowd you would’ve been the one I’d expected to carry a flask. And to wear a cape and gauntlet gloves.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You were going places even then.’

  ‘I thought of myself as a rather earnest undergraduate.’

  ‘You were that—and more than that. You were dashing. Dashing is the word.’

  She was rather flattered to have a glimpse of her younger self and to have been remembered so. She looked down at her flask.

  ‘And the flask?’ he asked.

  She touched it. ‘A special memento.’

  ‘And not of your husband.’

  She smiled at his observation and at the same time had a flash of recall about Scraper. ‘I remember now—you were friendly with Arthur Tuckerman.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said softly. ‘Poor old Arthur.’

  Ye gods, what dreadful thing could have happened to Tuckerman that would make Scraper feel sorry for him?

  ‘He was so good looking and he got those impressive marks for essays as well,’ she said.

  ‘He was a rare spirit, old Tuck. He’s dead you know, Edith.’

  ‘I didn’t know. What happened?’

  ‘He did himself in.’

  ‘But potential always gleamed out of him! He shone with it.’

  ‘He had a breakdown remember, and then he went back a few years later.’

  ‘I went to Melbourne—lost touch—and you were both older.’

  Tuckerman came rushing back to her mind. ‘Everyone wanted to be around him and to talk with him. For him, each conversation was a playlet and everyone had a part.’

  ‘He was doing brilliantly and then broke down again and went to work the land. He built something of a pretty little orchard out of nothing near Windsor. He thought simple work might save him but he slipped into the mental shadows and never recovered. He took his life with a shotgun.’

  ‘I didn’t hear.’

  She found herself wondering why Scraper hadn’t taken his life.

  ‘You are thinking why is it that I haven’t taken my life?’

  She opened her eyes wide. He was impressive. ‘Oh Scraper, you’re dangerous. I know nothing of your life. Tell me.’

  ‘It’s a rotten life. And I often think of joining Tuck.’

  ‘It must be hard. How’d you become a mind reader?’

  ‘It does me no good—mind reading.’

  ‘But it means that there’s no need for me to speak. I’ll sit here and think and you can read it.’

  He stared at her. ‘You want to know how and where I live?’

  That wasn’t on her mind. She said, ‘Ah, you have two sorts of occult: you can read minds; and you can implant thoughts.’

  ‘I’ve a third sort of occult, as you call it, but that will be revealed.’

  She didn’t care for occults of any sort.

  ‘Let me show you my poet’s garret. I live around the corner in Macquarie Street.’

  He stood up fumbling for money with his bent fingers. She thought it was probably exaggerated to avoid getting the money from his pockets. Don’t be like that, Edith.

  ‘Let me pay,’ she said, reaching for her purse.

  ‘Let the world pay? I like that idea. But a gentleman pays, crippled or not.’ He found coins and a note in his pockets. He appeared to carry no wallet or coin purse. ‘I’m not poor. I’m rather well off. I do not play a musical instrument on street corners and I do not have to operate a lift. Or run a tobacco shop.’

  She apologised that she couldn’t visit his garret that day—perhaps some other time? She was fagged from the talk and the whole damned day.

  ‘Where are you staying, Edith?’

  ‘At the Victoria Club. Which is also just around the corner.’

  ‘I’ll walk you home.’

  She laughed.

  ‘That’s about all I’m capable of—walking.’

  ‘What happened to you during the War?’

  ‘I was blown up in France and when I landed, everything was broken or missing. The War only lasted another two months.’

  He was a walking entitlement for charity and indulgence. A requisition on humanity. He was the damned War.

  ‘Macquarie Street’s hardly a starving artist’s garret.’

  ‘Inherited the flat. Come on, Edith, pay me a visit—for old times’ sake. I want to hear about the League and France. And let me in on the secret about when the next war is to start. I may rejoin. I have precious little to lose. A pre-dinner drink and then you can go. I haven’t had a chance recently to talk with someone fresh from Europe.’

  ‘I couldn’t face a dinner table, I’m afraid.’ The word face had jumped into her conversation.

  ‘You mean to say you couldn’t face me over dinner. I won’t press dinner on you, promise.’

  She let that pass. His bullying of the conversation was becoming tiresome. She was sick of his guesswork as well.

  Scraper went on, ‘We were talking about Tuckerman. He was a manipulator of glamour. I’m a manipulator of the gruesome. And I manipulate through close observation.’

  His candour made her laugh genuinely and with relief. She reversed her idea of him—for the first time she could see the possibility of liking him. But only the possibility. ‘That is the first time I’ve ever heard anything honest about Tuckerman. When he was alive he was constantly given what he sought so desperately to get—popularity. You are so right.’

  ‘Popularity instead of love. Charm instead of fame. I’d settle for it. Either.’

  She tried to remember how popular Scraper was before. Not very. ‘You had friends but you weren’t popular,’ she said.

  ‘At university, no. In the army I was accepted. If you didn’t shirk you were accepted and that was something special. It meant you were taken in and you belonged regardless. The army life was good for me. The belonging. I miss it more than anything. I think it was the nearest I got to marriage. Living with a platoon of men.’

  She turned to him, ‘Please, I don’t like calling you Scraper and I can’t think of your first name.’

  ‘Warren.’

  ‘I shall call you Warren. It’s a little more grown-up.’

  ‘No one ever calls me that. I am forever Scraper. It’s perhaps easier for people. Makes me something other than a man.’

  ‘I will call you Warren.’

  His flat was surprisingly pretty. He had done much the sort of thing she would have done if she had been living in the flat. Curious. It had the smell of male hair oil and strong soap and shaving lotion.

  ‘Oh,’ she said involuntarily.

  ‘What is it?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing, I like the place—it’s what I might do with it. If it were mine.’

  He was opening a bottle of cognac and pouring out large drinks for them both.

  ‘That’s more than enough for me. I was dosing the coffee all afternoon.’

  He didn’t accede to her request and went on to fill the glasses generously.

  ‘That wasn’t why you gasped,’ he said. ‘You gasped at the lithograph of Les Deux Soeurs. Why did you gasp?’

  ‘I like the lithograph. I’m surprised that you have a Laurencin print on the wall.’

  He looked at her, head to one side, and with his damaged smile. ‘You have the same lithograph!’

  She was reluctant to confirm it but said, ‘Yes.’

  She sometimes thought of the faces of the two sisters as Ambrose and herself. Ambrose’s feminine self. At least Scraper had not been able to read her mind about that.

  ‘You like her work?’

  ‘Yes.’
<
br />   She did not want to establish another connection with this man. This man who was once a boy and then disappeared to reappear as a … wreck. ‘May I ask why you are attracted to her work?’

  ‘When I was in France.’

  ‘You had time for art as well as soldiering?’

  ‘I had time for art. During convalescence. Much time for art. I like her hardness. I suppose I like the idea of hard women.’

  She sat, deliberately choosing a chair rather than the couch. She had one sip of her cognac and then stood up again and walked around. ‘I think you’ve made the flat a work of art.’

  ‘By fastidious decorating of the flat I’m compensating for what I am.’

  She looked again at the flat—its resemblance to her own taste and its painful contrast with his disfigured self appalled her.

  ‘I should be off. I’ve had a rather straining day.’ She put down her unfinished drink.

  ‘Please stay. Indulge me for a few more minutes.’

  She sat back in the chair. The flat was, in fact, another way he drew attention to himself, to his disfigurement.

  He went on, ‘Don’t sit all the way over there. Come and sit beside me, here.’

  ‘I’m comfortable where I am, thank you.’

  ‘I am hard of hearing.’

  She thought it a lie but there was no reason to think it a lie.

  She tried to find a way of responding to this monstrous visage which, in turn, had become something of a monstrous personality.

  Reluctantly, she stood up and went to sit on the couch with him, as a nurse might.

  ‘You are like Tuckerman. You are right to compare yourself with him,’ she said.

  Harsh.

  ‘Manipulators?’

  ‘Yes.’

  What she had intuitively but not consciously suspected but had dismissed as beyond the bounds, now began to happen. Something so far from being humanly legitimate or acceptable as to be, itself, monstrous.

  He had moved his leg next to hers.

  She plunged into a confused swirling of feelings, of compassion and of indignation. And, just as unacceptably, she felt a twitch of carnality in herself from the touch of his leg.

  She moved her leg away and said, ‘Regardless of how life has treated you, Warren, you should perhaps hold on to the conduct of a gentleman. And of an old mate.’