Everyone streaming out now through the doors into the quiet street and cars were being cranked up, lorries full of yelling farm hands chugging away into the night, a few sulkies and buggies lurching off, their lamps bobbing in the warm darkness, goodnight kisses and laughter, the admonishments of tired mothers: ‘Gracie, you come right home now; don’t stop out with Alfie.’ ‘Good-oh, Mum.’ ‘Better say ta-ta; eight cows to milk in the morning.’ ‘See youse all at the flicks Satidy night.’ ‘Wait for Elsie; she forgot her purse.’
She was looking around in the glare of headlights. ‘Where’s Alice?’
‘What do you want Alice for?’ Logan said, and took her arm and they walked down the street towards the hotel. They hummed together, danced a few steps, walked again.
‘Be here long?’
‘Perhaps till Friday; whenever Alice is finished the sewing she’s doing for my cousin.’
‘I’ll tell Alice to go slow.’
At the hotel door now, shaking hands formally. ‘Goodnight, Logan.’
‘Night, Vanessa.’ Holding on to her hand. ‘What do they call you for short?’
‘Ness.’
‘G’night, Ness.’
Creeping now across the hot dark bedroom so as not to awaken snoring Cousin Ettie, opening the lattice door on to the balcony, seeing, with half-expected delighted shock, him still standing under the yellow light at the hotel door, grinning up at her, then performing a deep bow, finally ambling off into the dark; listening to his hard echoing footsteps disappearing up the sleeping street.
Wakening next morning, she thought, What is it? What is so rich and new? Oh, yes. Put on her best skirt and blouse, spent a long time with hairpins and combs, could not touch the big country breakfast of steak and eggs, answered Ettie’s fussing with monosyllables, almost spilled her tea when, glancing again hopefully at the door, she saw Logan standing there looking around the dining room. Breathlessly she performed introductions, upset the sugar bowl.
‘That’s joy,’ said Ettie.
‘Yes, joy,’ she said.
‘Then off we go,’ said Logan.
‘Ness, take my parasol, lamb. The sun, dearest.’
Into the bakery to meet his brothers, ghostly with floury faces and arms, Dave, Jock and Alan welcoming her in the heat of the ovens, poking fun at their lazy bugger of a brother, warning her not to believe a bloody word he said, informing her that Mum had spoiled him. Insisting that she eat a hot fresh roll. Everyone as warm and friendly as the smell; knowing that as long as she lived she would never again smell newly baked bread without thinking of this day. The first of many such days bumping along dust roads in his rattletrap Dodge, meandering through cool dairies past bored cows, walking through a sea of wheat.
Always, on looking up and seeing him beside her, she was renewed with the wonder of it. His physical presence was still miraculous to her, reacted upon her senses to such a degree that at times she felt intruded upon and stifled with unendurable joy. When these moments rushed upon her, she would blot him out, wishing to hold only the image of him, to be with him and yet not to be. For she had discovered that the deepest core of her happiness lay in the voids when they were apart, when alone she could examine the gifts of love from her own standpoint, lift them up and caress them uninterruptedly. Often at the end of a long afternoon she parted from him with relief, for now, grown into a miser, she could count her hoard alone and savour the hours until the evening, when she would receive more. When she was with him she felt nothing, she was capable only of stowing every look and word of his into an immense sack which she would later lug home to her secret cave. He seemed to be aware of her stealthy comings and goings, for he had developed a habit of stopping dead in the middle of something he had been saying and allowing her to be caught red-handed, wandering away into the corner of her musing where her sack was hidden, and he would say:
‘Well, how do you do? How are you?’
She would say, ‘I heard you,’ going red, and then he would laugh that disconcerting laugh of his which presumed that he knew exactly what she was up to and was vastly amused by it. Then bristling with delightful anger, she would ask what was so funny, please; and usually this produced another gift, for he then would put his hand on her shoulder and up along the back of her neck under the bun of hair, smiling now but seriously fond, so fond that again she would feel sick with elation, not wanting it to happen but to be remembered as happening.
Then Alice, bent horse-faced over Ettie’s batiste blouse and pulling a needle through her exquisite scalloping, said quietly as Vanessa crossed the hotel room in a dream:
‘We all think Logan’s got a crush on you.’
Jarred, she wanted to say, ‘Don’t come in, don’t come in here, it’s private,’ but she smiled and said, somewhat primly:
‘Oh, he’s just showing me around, Alice.’
‘I s’pose you know he’s the favourite. Mum and my sister Jean have spoiled him rotten.’ Alice went on sewing and dropping trite remarks about bad pennies, black sheep and blood being thicker than water. All of them worried about Logan, wished for him to settle down, but he’d always been restless, never took things seriously, worried them to death. There was a girl, Alice said, biting off a thread, a real nice girl he had over at Parwan, a few miles away. They all hoped that one day soon—
Vanessa, hugging the sack to her, wished the girl dead immediately, struck by lightning. Yet she could not be sure of Alice’s implication. Could not decide if this was a gentle warning or the vaguest sisterly hint that any nice girl would do, even Vanessa, if it would make dear old Loge settle down.
Now she was musing about this in the flickering dark and had completely lost track of the story on the screen, hearing only the tinny piano playing the ‘Indian Love Lyrics’ while Norma Talmadge, black-lipped and awash with glycerine, jerked across a tapestried room in a hobble skirt, fell on a mountain of pillows, warding off the carnal advances of Conway Tearle with a torrent of silent vilification that resulted in a subtitle reading, ‘Not that, you beast!’ And produced a thunder of catcalls, boos and stamping of farm boots on the wooden floor; cries of ‘Do ’er over, yer flamin’ jackass.’
She heard a voice in the dark say, ‘Well, how do you do? How are you?’
‘I’m watching,’ she said.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’m sick of this mush.’
Stumbling over people and up the aisle, bending low so as not to get in the way of the projection, outside into the cooler night and into the old car.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Just for a ride.’
He cranked the car and they shuddered and jolted off in a series of explosions that shook the windows of the darkened shops, tore off down the main street and now past sleeping farmhouses on a rutted country road into a night ablaze with the eyes of rabbits, through a broken gate into a paddock where he stopped the car, turned off the lights, and darkness covered them.
‘Cool here,’ he said.
‘Yes.’ Hearing her own voice, tight and constricted.
‘How about a cigarette?’
‘Yes, please.’ She would have her first cigarette and to hell with Mater, lace curtains and aspidistras. To hell with Lila too, and her Christian Temperance Lectures on Men Aflame with Demon Rum.
The cigarette seared her throat and burned her nose, destroyed what was left of her composure in a violent fit of coughing. He laughed, took the cigarette from her fingers and threw it out of the car, pulled her to him.
She felt no surprise. It had happened a thousand times before alone in her hotel bedroom, over dinner while Ettie rambled on, in the haberdashery store while she bought pink elastic; she and Logan had kissed and clung fiercely, promised to love forever, forever.
But now it wasn’t true. Now, with the reality of him all around her, she felt alone. Felt arms, mouth, the beat of heart above her, but again she was outside of it, an observer of herself, watching herself cling and kiss, be kissed with care and technique, made
love to and wanting to be made love to, and in her sudden yearning and desperation she cried to herself, ‘Be here. Be part of it. Oh, God, oh, God, be part of it now.’
She closed her eyes, wanting only to be lost in the utter forgetfulness of herself, to sink and die with him forever. Willed it to happen. You, outside of me, die now this second. Die. You can. You can!
But it was nothing. She could not even remember his face now that she could not see it in the darkness. She saw only a ridiculous silent film of two people squashed uncomfortably in the front seat of an old car and a lonely paddock, saw her own legs entwined around the gears, her good linen skirt all twisted up, her garters showing, her hair coming down, hairpins in her neck, a faceless man with curly hair lumped heavily across her so that she could scarcely breathe.
‘I can’t,’ she screamed, ‘I can’t.’
Pushed him violently away. Sat up, pulling frantically at her skirt, for Lila was watching, knocking on the windshield, Mater was hurrying across the paddock, furious, the other girls were laughing, everyone had seen her! She was disgraced and ruined, she was a slut, worse, she was common. Necking with the baker’s boy in a paddock and her father a Cambridge scholar. Vanessa! Serve her right, said Mater. Mixing with tradespeople after all she’d been taught. How vulgar and common, common, common!
Fiercely she dug hairpins into her scalp, wounding herself savagely, hoping she had drawn blood.
After a long silence he said, ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I can’t.’ Not that, you beast!
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I just can’t. I’m sorry.’
‘Did I scare you?’
‘Scare me? Why, I should say not. How silly. I’m twenty-three, for goodness’ sake, I’m not some little schoolgirl!’
‘Seems to me you’re behaving like one.’
‘Really? I just happen to believe there’s such a thing as decency.’
‘Oh, come on. You can do better than that.’
‘I just think—well, one has to believe in right and wrong.’
‘And you think this is wrong?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘No, and neither do you or you wouldn’t be out here parking with me in the first place.’
Parking! What a vulgar way of putting it.
‘Well? What’s the real reason?’
How could she explain about herself when she didn’t understand her own untouchability? Quickly she grabbed for an alibi.
‘What about your girl?’
‘What girl?’
‘Alice says—’
‘Alice says!’
‘Well, is there a girl or isn’t there?’
‘There’s a girl I take to dances sometimes. Her name’s May.’
‘Alice says everyone hopes—’
‘Oh, what do you care what Alice says?’
Not a rap, really. But …
‘I wouldn’t want to hurt her.’
‘Oh, I see. This must have been bothering you quite a bit.’
‘Well, yes, it has, as a matter of fact. I mean, I wouldn’t like it done to me if I were in her shoes.’
‘Of course, if there wasn’t any girl, never had been any girl, it’d be all right to go the whole hog?’
‘Yes.’ If you must put it that way.
‘I see. Nice to meet a girl nowadays with scruples.’
‘I hope to keep them.’
‘Oh, you’ll keep them, all right. Don’t you ever worry about that, Vanessa. That’s one thing you’ll always keep. Among others.’
‘I hope so.’
‘Dignity, pride, honesty? All those things? Better than behaving like savages, eh?’
‘Oh, yes, yes, Logan.’
Now he was understanding, now it would be all right again. She put out her hand and caressed the back of his neck, wanting now the sweet safe embrace of the dream, the absolutely sanitary kiss, one she could carry home. The muttered words of contrition and love, plans to visit her in Sydney.
‘Dear, dear Logan,’ she said.
He guffawed.
‘Honest to God, you take the cake. When it comes to frauds you take the bloody cake.’
He got out, cranked the car, and they roared off at such a speed that she had to hang on to the door to prevent being thrown out.
They sped back along the road, bumping furiously over ruts as rabbits scampered, a wallaby leaped in the headlights. Stunned with the suddenness of it, the pain and humiliation of being mocked by him, she could think only that now everything was ending in a shambles, that he had stripped her naked and laughed at her and that now the gifts she had hoarded would be worthless unless she could stop the car and put things to rights, stop the car before they reached the little bridge that led to the town. But what to say? It was like being caught with your hand in someone else’s handbag. Explaining that you were looking for a handkerchief, a lipstick, anything! Then why was she sitting stiffly beside him saying nothing when every bump in the road led them nearer to town? Quickly, quickly, for now the white posts of the bridge were in sight.
Now she must speak, confess to any wild thing, promise anything to stop the wild rush to oblivion. But she was mute and he was singing. To her amazement, he was singing as if he was relishing the situation and mocking her at the same time because he was singing ‘Three o’clock in the Morning’. And singing, he drove the car over the rattling wooden bridge and up the street towards the hotel as wretchedness and defeat enfolded her, lifted momentarily into hope when he drove into a dark side lane beside the hotel, returned redoubled when she saw that he was merely backing up to the hotel steps.
She wanted to scream and cry and stamp her feet, do all the obvious feminine things; cry out that he didn’t understand her at all, no one did except Pater and Pater was dead; that she was all alone and terribly afraid and inexperienced; that she cared nothing for scruples and honesty, only for Logan; blubber like a child that she was wrong, wrong, wrong and that she would never pretend with him again if he would only love her and put things back where they had been.
But all she could say was her old prim reflex party thank you.
‘Thank you, Logan,’ she said. ‘Goodnight.’
He leaned out of the car as she turned on the steps.
‘Night, Vanessa.’ He was gone in a roaring second, was now only a red tail light disappearing down the sleeping street.
All through the night, lying awake, she made up speeches for tomorrow. ‘Last night was only—’ ‘You were right to be angry with me—’ ‘I’m glad it happened, Logan, because in a curious way it’s brought us closer together—’ All through the night she talked reasonably and Logan listened, pressed her hand, agreed.
She arose early, tired but calm now and confident. They were leaving today and so he must come to say goodbye. It was only polite. She dressed carefully, helped with the packing, grew uneasy as the morning drew towards noon, made frequent trips downstairs on feeble excuses about keys, timetables and taxis. Shamelessly, she telephoned the bakery to say goodbye to the brothers. The brothers said goodbye and they hoped that she had had a good time. She dared not ask if he was there. Speechless, she helped Ettie into the taxi. Well, they’d have no time alone but he would be at the train.
Eagerly she scanned the small crowd on the platform but there was only Alice with a giggling girl friend to see them into the first-class compartment, present them with bunches of wilting flannelflowers and the prescribed remarks for departing strangers. A couple of times she caught Alice looking at her with the sympathetic eyes of a devoted but not very bright dog. A whistle blew. Alice and the girl friend waved handkerchiefs, diminished into blurred dots as the train chuffed off and Bacchus Marsh disappeared, dissolved into open paddocks of wheat and lucerne, cows and tin signs advertising Dr Morse’s Indian Root Pills.
She sat bolt upright, turning the pages of the Women’s Weekly, finding Sinden’s new story and trying to concentrate on it, thankful that they had the compartment to themselve
s so that when Ettie at last wandered off to the ladies’ room, she was able to give in completely to the misery that engulfed her. Pressing her face to the gritty windowpane she wept, and wished to die. Then standing aside, watching, saw suddenly that she was not weeping for Logan but for the irretrievable loss of herself, the missed chance to become wholly part of that mysterious area of her being where she had always been afraid to venture and on which a door had slammed. Grabbing at this spear of truth, she stabbed it again and again into the weeping girl until the weeping stopped and the eager, flirting Vanessa who had led her into all this was dead and bloody, propped lifelessly against the train window.
Then, over the noise of the rattling window, against sudden gusts of wind and rain, she became aware that someone was saying something. What?
‘What?’ she asked, resuming her present shape, turning her head back towards the room, towards the man sprawled in the wing chair.
‘Hello,’ said Logan. ‘Well, how do you do? How are you?’
She sat up straight, brushing away the dead leaves of Bacchus Marsh that had settled in her lap. Stupid of her to let him catch her wandering away, laying flowers on her own grave. He knew where she’d been during this silence between them. She could tell by the amused look in his eyes, by the knowing grin, and by his childish delight in remembering his old ‘How do you do?’ joke with her. It was ridiculous. It was in bad taste. Pathetic, really. He was pathetic with his thinning hair and his ulcer; putting on that worn-out act, that passé charm. In a few years he would be a Dirty Old Man ogling girls on trams. Disgusting. She felt secretly pleased about his diminished power yet he seemed unaware of it, grinning at her and turning the china figurine over and over in his big hands.
Careful, He Might Hear You Page 19