With buttons in mind, why not go the whole distance and replace all of these on her coat with something classier. Had she undergone a certain loss of interest in her appearance? She who could wield a needle with the best of them. Was Marcia as à la mode in that careless way as she once was in their London times?
At the London county council in those buoyant times when the Beatles had just come on the scene, she had taken up learning Italian. There had been a woman teacher who was a dead-ringer for one of these ladies in the draper’s. Celia would regularly beard the teacher in her den, ply her with questions about tenses and the meaning of idiomatic phrases and the use of moods. What was a mood, in language? What exactly, asked Celia the student, did these terms mean? And before she had finished her question her beloved teacher would be nodding her wise head, ready to embark on enlightenment. Nothing surprised or stumped the woman. She had that look on her face, agreeable and just slightly bored, like the ladies in the draper’s. Plumbers she had known assumed this same expression – they had heard and seen your troubles all before and would put it to rights.
Lately she kept thinking of things she wanted to tell Marcia; still saw items in shops she wanted to buy her. Thoughts she wanted to share, smells she wanted to ask her about, feelings about a man she couldn’t bring to mind without recalling the ignominy of their last meeting. Marcia the calm, the sane, with whom she could talk about examples of love she had witnessed lately. On one occasion Celia saw two women greet each other, one of them having emerged, not entirely unscathed, from a dreadful car accident. They were old friends and their gentle embrace was long and close as they looked at their truths in each other’s eyes. It was quite non-sexual and it was love.
Celia needed her old friend’s stability to discuss love and its opposite: this hot-tempered rancour that took hold of her. She already knew that Marcia would point out the raw fact, that Celia was frequently either blissfully happy or cast into an abyss. This was her way.
After a satisfying time at the draper’s, small pleasures, looking at a thousand buttons and finally buying the first that caught her eye, she set out for home. It would soon be dark and the temperature, ever volatile, had gone up. Cars crouched hugger-mugger outside her house, almost spilling onto the pavement; the scent of the sea was pungent in the air yet it was a windless night. Inner-city Fremantle: she’d had warnings of a sinister element that had infiltrated the streets since her girlhood. Not that she’d ever been familiar with old Freo, before it became more respectable in the 80s. In her mythic memory people talked of the port city as a place of dark streets where sailors felt up girls. But she’d never been nervous in any city, probably not wary enough. Now she loved this town with its vitality, day and night movement along the pavements; its leafy streets and thankfully restored early colonial buildings; the sturdy southern European houses, some again with vegetable gardens at the front; its less felicitous convict-built stone prison and former mental asylum – both buildings now living down the suffering and humiliations, the incarceration of inmates from a bygone era.
Her favourite coffee house was all a-throb with customers. Boy and girl waiters in long aprons seeing to everyone, walking to and fro, not rushing, that’s not the Australian way – to make too much haste for the customers. Everyone was on the same footing here. She sat down smiling at this, and a young man approached her, friendly and meeting her eye: ‘Hi Celia,’ he said, ‘the usual?’ They exchanged a word or two about the café filling up and she sat there for a while with elbows on the table, sipping her cappuccino, absorbing the sights and smells.
Away from the café, walking towards home, she lessened her pace as she approached her front gate, lingering in the late afternoon, air melting towards a warm evening as the atmosphere enveloped her on this cusp of another year. A real honey of a night; balmy, full of a jasmine scent. What magic this place can be. She used to decry it at every turn. What was that, a fading rainbow hanging over the northern sky? Dorothy and the Tin Man might have skipped around the corner to face her at any moment.
Tonight she would listen to an opera she’d been looking forward to, though she’d never heard of it before. Recently someone had said to her at a chamber concert: ‘It’s a matter of letting the music waft over you, isn’t it?’ Celia was appalled: Hardly: I want it to sink into me. As she made her way home she considered the difference between what they were now calling active versus passive listening. She could never call herself passive in any sense, she thought, coming through her gate. As she entered the front door she realised that the music had already started, and there it was, the opera, with the long-dead Gigli singing with all his heart, as she leaned against the door jamb. A manifestly Italian tenor this, giving out La Solita Storia – the usual story – (the same old story!) while Celia stayed still, inside her door, in semi-darkness, as tears stung her eyes. The cat wound herself around her legs, wondering, but not making any demands yet. ‘Barmy, I’m quite barmy,’ she said to pussy cat as the aria finished, gathering her up and burying her face in the warm soft neck. ‘But isn’t that just the place to have a man, Poppet, on the opera stage?’
There was something wrong, not as it should be. The cat suddenly went stiff with fright, ears up high, staring at the door. Celia realised that she too had heard the distinct click of the front gate and now a tread on the verandah. On such a soft, sweet night she had overlooked bolting the gate behind her.
The cat flew out of her arms and Celia’s back went rigid.
‘Who is it?’ she called out, making sure she chose anger rather than fear to confront this. It was only just gone eight o’clock, but friends didn’t turn up unannounced at night and there was no response, so she called out again, this time with exasperation.
‘I want Janelle,’ someone muttered.
‘No. No, there’s no Janelle here.’ And she looked around for a likely weapon. The blind was up in the living room and she heard his footsteps heading towards the window away from the door, to look in. There were drug-takers and dealers in the street and as she crouched low behind the door, in case he smashed through its stained glass, the pretty panes with pink roses that looked so graceful and easy to smash. She wondered if she could reach the other phone, in her bedroom that was out of sight to the intruder.
‘She’s got something of mine.’
What does a woman do, young or old, faced with an irrational stranger? Her shoulders were heaving up and down as she willed herself to take deep breaths, as though doing a meditation exercise. Then she came to a resolution, recalling the numerous dangerous-looking people she had seen in the parks, in the streets around here, as she walked around her old/new neighbourhood. And she did what she had always done. She called up her better self, pictured his confused, angry, bumbling presence and put all her moral strength into defusing it. And let the anger drain out of her voice.
‘I’m sorry, she’s really not here. You’re at the wrong house.’
‘Wrong house?’
‘Yes. The wrong street, I think. Now go away, there’s a good chap. There’s nothing for you here.’
And it worked. She heard him walk away towards the steps, into the night, murmuring something that sounded unbelievably like, she could swear: ‘Sorry to bother you. Have a good day.’
Sleep was now out of the question and she went to her favourite big chair in the living room near the standard lamp and took up her book. The reason why she didn’t pick up the phone was because she just didn’t want to hear any bad news. She imagined that Marse thought Celia had followed Mickey, but she hadn’t; she’d had her own plans. She now got up and looked for the tsatsiki in the fridge, got some crackers and a glass of brandy. A once-beautiful woman soprano was singing a song from an earlier era about love. Quietly insistent, the voice was as intimate as the fold of an eyelid. Here it came again, the refrain. What then was the essence of love? Something you couldn’t define but you recognised it when placed in front of you. This song was about the elusiveness of romantic love. Well, C
elia reckoned, it sure had eluded her, the specific oneto-one focus of sustained devotion. Or more truthfully, she had eluded it. And now the two or three people she might have settled with were far away or had died.
But one of them, Albie, had said years ago in a gallant, strangely reassuring way: ‘You have been loved, Celia.’ And he accompanied his statement with a long, kindly look, as if to say: Don’t forget that and give way to doubt. So this thing she sought, though no longer in any physical way, did exist in the past tense, if such a thing can be. And all she could think of doing was to lead the rest of her remaining years with as much generosity as she has received.
For her, Nature was the essence of love, not its ghost; the romantic poets knew this. As we tumble about like seeds in the wind, in confusion and half-dared hope, a salutary thought worth considering is that any form of art has an equal footing with personal love, in the scale of attainment. And then, if she had bound herself to someone – frightening thought – and accepted the necessary compromises, she wouldn’t have realised the modest potential she’d finally attained. She tidied away a couple of things and went to bed.
Sleep remained out of reach; she might as well stop trying so hard to claim it. Was it like this for everyone, then? Mental snapshots appeared of certain women she’d known when she was young and they were getting quite old (as she would before long): their patient though slightly grudging application to tasks such as fixing the lavatory cistern, or else their bending to pull out a few weeds among the roses. She had felt fleetingly sorry for them, in youth’s lofty way.
Being on your own had its rewards but it invited slightly odd behaviour – of which one had to be mindful! She had noticed involuntary habits now, such as emanating little grunts of satisfaction when getting into bed, as she had just done, or mumbling half-syllables, like someone in her dotage rather than at merely the age of fifty-something. Late-fifty-something. Sally, another cat owner, had said to her recently, and she’d known Sal from school days: ‘You make odd little noises these days, grunting noises.’ This had pulled her up short. She didn’t mind talking to herself, but grunting sounded as if you were truly alone in the world. Getting older she couldn’t help, but geriatric tics she would try to avoid.
There are, she decided, a few certainties about living, some successes of modern life are more reliable than ever before: weather forecasting for one, and two, fitted bed sheets, surely the triumph of the late twentieth century, eclipsed only by the final freedom, the television remote control.
Outside her bedroom window at 3 a.m. running footsteps pounded the pavement. For God’s sake, why so much activity lately? Panting noises in the night air. You could feel the terror, or was it her own again, on someone else’s behalf? Ever the protector, she nearly got out of bed to peer over the wall, to intervene, because a child, it seemed, was in mortal peril.
‘Go away,’ the voice sobbed, a voice to numb your mind and shrink the liver. The girl’s or perhaps a boy’s voice was that of say, a ten-year-old.
Who was the implacable follower and what was the story? ‘Go ’way,’ the child wailed again, before the noise died down as the footsteps became muted.
Celia lay waiting, breast heaving. Maybe the pounding had been the steps of the pursuer, those of the pursued, softer. Second thoughts prevented her from getting up. And where were others in the vicinity, the male-of-the-species next door?
‘Go ’way,’ the child yelled again, stronger this time. Was the follower someone the youngster knew and was he trying to recover a stolen item? Or was it a parent after a recalcitrant offspring? The young voice was querulous and whining this time, more put-upon than terrified.
Fading noise left her with memories prattling away, ending in a nocturnal inquietude that all over the city, at this very moment, through the land, across the earth, thousands of defenceless people were being chased, raped, terrorised, as she tried to sleep in her own warm bed. Marcia had always reminded her that she couldn’t save the world, one could do just a little. She started to doze finally, thinking of Marcia and that holiday together; the only time she’d seen Marcia’s habitual calm shaken. They had spent some time independent of each other – it seemed necessary – but when they came together there was the old harmony. Nevertheless, beneath it all was the silence.
Coming out of sleep, among the remnants of her crumpled dreams where everything had its own logic, she was reluctant to meet the day. A soft paw was placed on her cheek and she opened an eye to see two round green ones telling her with an unblinking look that it was time. ‘Is the sun shining?’ she asked puss who started to wash an ear. Ah! That was it. She’d been dreaming of this house, walking into it one night and finding every wall covered in graffiti.
What would this year bring, this New Year in the still-new millennium? She regarded her tabby now claiming exclusive rights to the very centre of the bed, slyly nudging Celia out of the way. Would Marcia have a cat? Celia wouldn’t make any real New Year’s resolution since she routinely forgot all about it two weeks into the year. She’d simply endeavour to get through her life without undue strife, because it was important to one’s well-being, just one good reason. On with the day. Time for her early morning walk.
There was the woman from the corner deli, the widow. Eyes full of reserve, saying as little as possible but imparting something, nevertheless. Mrs Whatsit, her face as bare as a board, went to Mass, listened to her symphonies (Celia has heard them, passing by), read her books, perhaps attended evening classes in Russian History or watercolour technique. Celia could feel herself smiling even before the neighbour, who was a stranger, would meet her gaze.
Then there was the dachshund owner, the woman in the big house, Lorraine, who always greeted her, and they chatted for a while. Celia listened to the broad accent with pleasure. Lorraine was the kind of Australian who thankfully still existed: looked directly at you, worked like a demon, a spare frame, no doubt ate plain food, took a beer with her husband before the evening meal. Good, straight people who didn’t look for questions they couldn’t answer; just enjoyed what was on offer.
Someone had planted, no, placed, because this stuff was already fully grown, a rich-looking lawn, transposed onto a formerly long bald stretch. It was the broad-leafed, brilliant green variety that surely had no place in the suburban Australia landscape with its southern, soft grey-green shades. Mickey would have said that such lawn-laying people had no soul where grass was concerned. She would tell these thoughts once home again to the cat, who’d give a sabre-toothed yawn and stretch.
Later that evening, her day’s work done, she strolled down to the spot in the river that held its particular colour of light. The trees were so still you’d think nature had forgotten its task, except for the wark-warking of ducks that meant life. The crows, exhibitionists all, were in full throat, rattling through their gamut of taunts to passers-by, from aaaaargh through to the sorrowful awwwww!
12
Perth, 2000
Celia made her way to James’s place for a meal. You had to be ready for anything with him these days. No, he’d probably always been eccentric. How long ago was it that he’d given Mickey a lift to the theatre – Mick recounting with delight the hair-raising journey on his return from the show.
But today the old musician was grumbling, putting the newspaper down as Celia arrived for a light lunch. She gave him a peck on the cheek and leaned, arms folded, against the door jamb, ready for talk, while he seized a ladle which he plunged into a cauldron of something. Two sports heroes had had pages (reams! he said) in the daily papers about their lives and their deaths. Aussie blokes who died within twenty-four hours of each other, doing the very thing they loved doing, as James insisted: ‘I could die playing the piano – would that make me a national hero?’ He didn’t want an answer. Dangerous pastimes, yes, he went on, car racing and swimming among wild beautiful creatures in the sea, and they gloried in doing these things, but they hadn’t done anything heroic for anyone else. Yet they were being cover
ed with glory; their families were being offered State funerals, for heaven’s sake! ‘The deaths of those who have contributed to the country’s cultural life go unnoticed!’
‘C’est la vie,’ said Celia, now looking at postcards on his fridge.
‘C’est la mort, if you ask me,’ said James, moving around his little kitchen, tasting, waving a spoon. ‘The death of civilisation.’ He was on a roll. Did she remember, he asked her in a non sequitur only he could get away with, Anthony the precocious boy from Malta whose parents were so crafty they pretended they were dirt poor? In fact they were socking money away, cunning sods, and buying up land while he, the piano teacher, was practically teaching the boy for nothing, out of the goodness of his heart! Later, to add to the insult, as an international concert circuit pianist Anthony was in town and contacted James with a free ticket to his concert that night. James accepted it, subsequently realised that he’d double booked and had to pull out. Anthony was outraged and shunned his old teacher thenceforth. This acrimony was all before the serving of the soup.
Celia clicked her tongue and called Anthony names. The good thing about being with James was that, faced with his furies, she was made to feel benign, tolerant and calm. James then went on to describe how, years ago when he, the teacher, had been in London and had offered to practise the Brahms No. 2 Concerto with Anthony. The newly-famous lad had been delighted. However when James arrived with music (and eager eyes – she could just imagine it and felt a pang for him), Anthony had been too busy, oh much too busy. It was for this work, the Brahms, subsequently in Perth that the free ticket was available.
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