by Alex Miller
She walked over to the table and looked at the drawing lying there in the open sketchbook. He did not know what was expected of him and was ashamed of his ignorance. He had never been alone with a grown woman in a bedroom. Maybe she really had only come to his room to see his drawing. How was he to know? Should he just walk over there and take her in his arms and kiss her? Get it over with? Do the manly thing? One girl of nineteen in Taunton. That was it. They’d made love in the doorway of her house, awkward, terrified, clumsy, both more than half drunk, her weeping afterwards with fear. The entire history of his love life in that darkened doorway one rainy night.
She turned and looked at him. ‘You’re an intense bugger, aren’t you?’
‘Intense? Am I? I don’t really know. Why do you say that?’ He moved away from the door and went over to the desk and stood next to her.
She turned to him and put her hand on his upper arm. ‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-two. How old are you?’
She let go of his arm. ‘Your drawing’s very good,’ she said. ‘It’s you.’
‘I suppose so.’ He reached and touched the drawing with his fingers. Her admiration pleased him. He looked at her and met her eyes, wondering about her. He might give her the drawing. Her eyes were grey. She seemed to be relaxed, calm, sure of what she was doing. She said, ‘You should come and meet the crowd at the Swanston Family Hotel. You’ll meet artists like yourself there. We’re all struggling after something.’
‘So you think the drawing’s okay?’ Her approval touched something vital and hungry in him and he needed to hear her tell him again that his drawing was good. ‘What do you mean, that it’s me?’ The ease with which she had touched him. He longed to feel the certainty of that confident connection himself.
They stood side by side looking down at the red ochre man in his nakedness. She reached and ran the tips of her fingers lightly over its surface, just as he had done a moment before, as if his gesture had given her permission. The drawing’s heavily worked surface inviting touch.
‘The fighting man,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘His fury and his helpless anger.’ She looked at him. ‘That’s you, isn’t it?’ She held his gaze, her own eyes filled with longing and understanding and sadness and many other things he could not and never would fathom. ‘All this energy,’ she said. ‘And the strength. And no idea what to do with it.’ She paused. ‘I’ve watched you at work.’
He couldn’t take his eyes from the pulse of the artery in her neck. He dared himself to feel her warm blood pulsing under his fingers, or under his lips, the lightest kiss there, her blood speaking to him of his own blood.
She said, ‘You’re ambitious. But you don’t know what for. I suppose you stood in front of that mirror in the nude posing for yourself?’
They stood looking at each other, the tension in him so great he forgot to breathe. ‘I just did it out of my head.’ His voice was hoarse, his heart pounding.
She smiled and reached to touch his lips with her forefinger. ‘My God, you have such deep lustrous brown eyes.’
The light brush of her finger across his lips sent an electric pulse into his groin. A fierce shiver of anticipation shot through him. He was trembling.
She put a hand to his cheek. ‘You’re cold.’ Her voice little more than a whisper. She took him by the hand and walked him to his narrow bed in the corner. At the side of the bed she turned to him and they kissed, her full warm body pressing against him. His uncertainty vanished, banished by a powerful wave of lust. They took off their clothes and lay down on the bed together. She lay on her back beneath him and looked into his eyes, then she took him inside her and she sobbed and cried out, her eyes closed, her white arms stretched out above her head as if reaching for something to hold on to, to save herself, and she cried out again and again.
He opened his eyes. She was looking at him. Her eyes with tiny flecks of green and blue scattered among the grey. She took his hand and kissed his fingers. ‘Thank you.’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘I’m old.’
He laughed. ‘Don’t cry!’
‘Women cry,’ she said. ‘I’m happy.’
‘You’re perfect. You’re not old. I’ve never made love with a real woman before.’
They lay close up together in the narrow bed. A door slammed downstairs and a man’s voice called.
He whispered, ‘I don’t know your name.’
‘Do you want to know my name?’ she whispered back.
‘Do you want to know mine?’
‘Wendy,’ she said.
‘Robert.’
She murmured, ‘Hello, Robert.’
‘Hi, Wendy. I’ve never been this happy.’
She snuggled against him and he held her close. Neither spoke for some time. Then she eased back from him and said, ‘You must have done other drawings. You know how to draw. How did you learn?’
‘My dad taught me when I was a boy.’ He kissed the pulse in her neck, touching the beating artery so lightly with his lips it felt like the struggles of a tiny trapped insect.
She put her hand down between his legs and held him with a sudden strong grip. ‘You’ve still got your lovely erection.’ She laughed softly. ‘What are you going to do with it?’
They made love again, gentle and slow this time. She whispered, ‘Stay inside me!’
5
Her voice close to his ear woke him. ‘Get me a cigarette. There are some in my bag.’ He opened his eyes. She smiled at him. ‘I haven’t had an orgasm as good as that for years!’
He said, ‘I’ve never had one like that.’ He lightly caressed her lips, her nose with the tips of his fingers. Then he leaned over the side of the bed and found her cigarettes. He lit two and placed one between her lips. He wanted to tell her he was in love with her, but he held back. He rested on his elbow and looked down at her, admiring her. Gently he caressed her nipples.
She blew smoke at him. ‘You’re an idiot. I must seem so old to you.’
‘You mustn’t keep saying that. There’s nothing old about you. You’re beautiful. I like you being older than me. You should be proud of your beauty.’ He placed his hand on her belly. ‘I love you! I want to know everything about you.’
She pushed his hand away and sat up. ‘You mustn’t fall in love with me! Promise me!’
The room was almost dark. She was silhouetted against the pale rectangle of the window. ‘It’s too late,’ he said. ‘I’m already in love with you. You’ve worked your magic spell on me. Lie down again. I need to feel you beside me.’
She stood up and stepped across him and off the bed. She picked up her underpants and pulled them on.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
She said, ‘I had true love. It stinks. True love is a bucket of shit.’
The harshness of her tone shocked him. He was shocked by this sudden turn. He watched her putting her clothes on. She turned and looked down at him. He said, ‘I shan’t say it again. I promise. I can’t help how I feel.’
‘You’re a loner,’ she said. ‘Face it.’ She buttoned the front of her dress.
‘So what if I am? What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You don’t need love.’
‘Everyone needs love.’
‘That’s crap!’
‘You sound bitter about it.’
She was sitting on the side of the bed putting her stockings on.
‘Anyway, how do you know I’m a loner?’ He was longing for the good feeling between them to come back but had no idea what he had to do to retrieve it.
Wendy stood up then bent forward, took her hair in both hands and dragged it forward over her face. She stood ruffling her hands through the thick mass of her dark hair. Then she straightened and pulled her hair back hard. She turned and looked down at him. ‘There’s no need to go all quiet and hurt. Okay? I like you. I like your drawing. We can be friends and lovers, can’t we?’ She picked her cigarette off the bed end and took a drag. ‘There’
s a wine bar off Glenferrie Road. We can get a drink there. There’s no need to go all sad and gloomy. We had great sex. We don’t need to spoil it by making a big deal of it. Sex is great. Love stinks. Get over it.’
6
They went out and turned into a small side street off Glenferrie Road. It was little more than an alleyway. He followed her down the steps. There were no lights. She knocked on a door. It was opened by a tall thin man with red hair and bright red lips wearing a large blue and yellow silk bow tie and a striped silk shirt. He stood examining them in the soft golden light of the interior. ‘Hello, darling, who’s your beau?’ He kissed Wendy on the cheek and shook Robert’s hand. ‘I’m Nigel.’ He bent and looked closely at Robert. ‘It’s lovely to meet you, Robert. Any mate of our Wendy’s is always welcome.’ He made a wide flourishing gesture with his right arm. ‘Sit anywhere.’ Nigel bestowed upon Robert a grave and gentle smile, then he closed the door on the night and the outside world.
A man was sitting on a stool on a raised platform in front of a curtain, playing a saxophone, the sound soft and intimate, drifting on the smoky air, almost going into a silence. There was a murmuring of talk from the people in the booths. When Wendy and Robert came in, one or two of the people looked across and waved to Wendy. A large woman stood beside the saxophonist, her eyes closed, swaying to the music, one chubby hand resting lightly on the saxophonist’s shoulder. She was wearing a blue floor-length silk dress cut very low. He was wearing a white open-necked shirt and slacks and was leaning over his gleaming instrument as if he was telling it a secret, his long blond hair falling in a curtain either side of his face.
There were several tables in the centre of the room and three booths along each side, their curved seating upholstered in worn red plush. There were people in each of the booths. The five tables in the centre of the floor were unoccupied. Wendy walked to the back of the room and pulled out one of the tub chairs at the last table by the wall. An amateurish mural in bright pinks and blues and greens on the wall behind her, naked boy and girl nymphs bathing in a mountain stream, unlikely-looking willows hanging over them.
Nigel came over and Wendy asked Robert what he would drink. She said, ‘It’s mine.’
He said, ‘I’ll have what you’re having.’
She ordered two martinis.
Nigel served the vermouth and gin in small Y-shaped glasses, and left them to it.
They lit cigarettes and sipped their drinks. Robert looked around with interest. ‘Your secret haunt,’ he said.
‘I love it here.’ She leaned back, crossed her legs and took a sip of her drink, looking at him through the drift of smoke from her cigarette. ‘So tell me about yourself.’
‘There’s not much to tell.’
‘Tell me anyway.’
He sat looking at her for a while, saying nothing, admiring her. ‘You just saved my life.’
‘Don’t start that shit again. Tell me your story.’
He was thinking that she looked tired around the eyes, older, more thoughtful, more elusive, remote, as if she had drawn back away from their too-sudden intimacy into her own place. He was deeply enchanted by her and wanted to reassure her. He said, ‘So what do you do when you’re not working at Myer?’
She said, ‘I work for a socialist workers’ newspaper, writing, editing, designing, distributing it around the factories and workplaces, having meetings, raising funds. We do everything ourselves.’ She drank the last of her martini and set the glass on the table.
‘Is the money any good?’
She regarded him narrowly. ‘We don’t do it for money. Now it’s your turn.’
As the night wore on, the tables in the middle of the room filled up with people and the big woman with her hand on the saxophonist’s shoulder started singing, a low, crooning, throaty accompaniment to the mellow, interior voice of the sax, the two of them weaving in and out of each other like playful lovers in a dream of their own. Wendy and Robert talked and smoked their cigarettes and drank several martinis.
He told her his life story, from the Blitz in London to his arrival in Melbourne. She didn’t interrupt but watched him. When he fell silent she said nothing for a long time but sat looking at him. Then she said, ‘So what you’ve lost your boyhood dream?’ Her voice was just a little slurry, tiredness and an edge of impatience in her tone. ‘We all lose our youthful dreams. We need to. It’s like losing our virginity. That stuff’s useless to us. We have to take ourselves seriously sooner or later. Youthful dreams confuse us if we don’t let them go.’ She signalled to Nigel and he brought over two fresh martinis and set them on the table. She said, ‘It’s time you faced up to yourself. You say you’ve got nothing and no idea what to do with your life. I say you’ve got everything and it’s time you started paying your dues.’ She lifted herself in her seat, picked up her drink and took a sip and gave a heavy sigh. ‘Everyone has to pay his dues sooner or later. It’s your job now to write about your time up north with Frankie and his people.’ She pointed her finger at him. ‘That’s your duty. It’s the least you can do for him, and for the rest of us.’
‘You think so?’
‘I know so.’
‘I’m not a writer.’
She mimicked his voice, giving it a whiny edge. ‘I’m not an artist! I’m not a writer! You’re a writer if you write! It’s that simple. I’m a writer when I write for our paper and I’m a cleaner when I’m cleaning at Myer. They taught you how to write at school, didn’t they? It’s disgusting that people like Frankie and his mob have to put up with that shit from us! It’s the middle of the twentieth century, for God’s sake. No one down here knows about it. I didn’t know about it. You say there’s nothing to be done. That’s bullshit. You can do something to help your friends up there. It’s what you should be doing now instead of sitting around moaning about losing your stupid dreams. It’s what you owe your friend.’ She regarded him with a look of contempt. ‘It’s time to stop moaning, Mr Robert Crofts, and to do something serious for others. Write the story you just told me. Make people sit up and take notice. Tell them the way it really is. Give them the facts. Okay? Our paper will publish it.’ She sculled her drink then sat back. ‘Do it! I’ll love you for it if you do.’
‘Promise?’
‘I’d be happy to edit your writing for you. We’ll work it up. I’ll see to it the story gets published.’ She uncrossed her legs and gathered herself. ‘I’m whacked! I’m going home to bed.’
‘Come home with me,’ he said.
‘Your bed’s too small. Anyway, I have to feed the cat.’ She stood up. ‘Some of us have responsibilities.’ She laughed. It was not a happy laugh.
They got up and said goodnight to Nigel. Robert followed her out of the wine bar and up the dark stairs. Outside on the street it was quiet, the night air cool. An empty tram was rattling slowly towards them along Glenferrie Road. Two men arm in arm greeted Wendy and went down the steps and knocked on the door. Wendy ran for the tram and jumped on board. Robert stood watching her. He was expecting her to turn at the last minute and give him a wave, but she didn’t. He stood watching the tram, swaying and clattering, until it went out of sight down the hill. He had a deep feeling of emptiness.
He turned and walked back towards Dandenong Road and the boarding house. He let himself into his room and lay face down on the rumpled bedsheets without undressing and he breathed in the smell of her body and her sweat and their wonderful sex.
7
On Monday after work he waited around in the change room but Wendy didn’t turn up. He’d been thinking about her all day, wondering how she was going to greet him when he saw her coming in wearing her bandeau and her overalls, pushing her rubbish cart. He sat on the bench smoking a cigarette, waiting for her. But she didn’t come. It was after six by the time he left. On the way down Swanston Street to catch his tram home he went into the art supplies shop. He bought a lined exercise book and a fountain pen, and when he got home he sat at the table by the window overlooking the
elm copse and he started writing the story he’d told her about Frankie and his mob. She had said, I will love you for it.
Two hours later he gave up. He knew the story by heart. He had lived it. Telling Wendy had been a pleasure. He didn’t have to make anything up. So why was it so difficult to make it come alive on the page? When he’d sat down to write he had assumed he would just put the story down more or less word for word as he’d told it to her. He sat at the table smoking another cigarette and staring out at the elms, wondering why it was that Frankie’s story resisted him now. There had been an enchantment in telling Wendy the story of himself and Frankie, a secret sexual pleasure between the two of them, thinking of her naked and hidden away in his bed with him, their bodies touching, the after-ache of sex in his loins, Nigel’s gin and the saxophone working their little tricks in his head. There was no magic in trying to write it.
He tore out the pages in the exercise book that were filled with his writing and screwed them up and chucked them on the floor. Then he leaned over the fresh clean page and with care in a neat hand he wrote at the top of the page: Speak to me of my blood. He knew what he meant. The phrase was in his head and it had to be said. It was like the graffito he’d written in pencil on the wall of the pub toilet in Townsville. A thought he could not share with anyone else. Why do I live? he wrote underneath the first phrase. Then, What is the purpose of my life? He sat back and looked at the three phrases, all written in his best handwriting. The first phrase was the most satisfying. The others had meaning but were less so. Reading the first phrase he experienced the surprising feeling that with the simple act of setting it down he had established a place from which to reach out beyond the mysterious thing itself. Not an answer or a starting point, but a place. He could not see why this was so, but as he carefully inscribed these thoughts in the pages of his notebook, he had the feeling he was not writing to himself, but was writing to someone who was even more real than he was. Someone; a nameless identity who understood him as precisely as he understood himself. He wrote: My first self. My inner self. The one who does not have to try to be real but who is real just by being there. There was an exhilarating satisfaction for him in this unexpected sense of an intimate communication with himself that he’d not felt while he was struggling to write the story of Frankie and his mob.