by Alex Miller
He sat looking at the neatly inscribed phrases on the new page of the notebook. What intrigued him was the question of how he was to bridge the gap between this real self and the person who struggled to write the story of his friendship with Frankie. It obviously wasn’t simply a matter of setting down the facts. The confused struggle to be real and to exist decently and with some purpose. The serene certainty of this inner self. How was he to bridge the gap between these two senses of himself? He leaned forward and wrote beneath the last phrase: You’re ambitious. But you don’t know what for. Was he ambitious? He’d never associated any of his feelings with the idea of ambition.
Then, with his softly smooth new fountain pen, which he had begun to love, he wrote, giving to each phrase its own private blue line in the exercise book, His fury and his helpless anger. Her admiration for his drawing thrilled him. Her beautiful woman’s body naked beside him in his bed, warm and close and trusting, her desire for him. He should have run after her and jumped on the tram and insisted on going home with her. He wrote, and it was as if he wrote a sacred text that only he would ever understand or decipher, The fighting man. Her voice in the phrase. ‘All this energy. And the strength.’ His own strength. He said aloud, ‘I love you, Wendy.’ What was her surname? She was married. Divorced. Did she have children? How old was she? Where did she live? Alone with her cat?
He was confident the notebook would accept any thought or idea he cared to put to it, no matter how intimate or how deeply concealed. He thought of his mother, when they were alone during the war, and she was sitting in the window smoking a cigarette some rainy afternoon, taking a break from the chores and reflecting on her life, as she used to do, telling him stories of her hopes when she was a young woman at the convent in Chantilly before she returned to England and met his father. If she were here she would read these phrases and smile and touch his hair. ‘My difficult child.’ And she would turn away and look out into the street, reminded of herself and her regrets.
It was very late and he was tired but he was reluctant to close the notebook and go to bed. He wrote one last phrase: The close acquaintance of my soul. He heard himself speak the phrase aloud, his voice in the hollow throat of the empty room.
8
He sat on the bench in the middle of the locker room at Myer on Tuesday after work, smoking a cigarette and waiting for her, his elbows on his knees, staring between his legs at the floor. He had decided to try writing about his friendship with Frankie as if it was a letter to Wendy. Even just thinking this, he could hear the phrases flowing smoothly in his head, the story unfolding of its own volition. He was smiling at the thought of just listening to the voice of the story and writing it down.
The door to the passage swung open and Wendy came into the change room. She was wearing her brown and yellow bandeau and her pale brown Myer-issue overalls with the yellow embroidered M on the breast, pushing her cart with its brooms and mops and bags. He stood up, a huge wave of relief and love sweeping through him. ‘God, you’re so bloody beautiful!’ he said, and he stepped across and took her in his arms and kissed her.
When he paused to breathe, she said in a small, teasing voice, ‘So you still want to know me, then?’
He dared not tell her he loved her in case it angered her, so he said the second thing that came into his head, which was just as true: ‘You smell wonderful.’ He had liked her smell from the beginning. She didn’t wear perfume, but when he was close to her she had a lovely warm womanly smell that made him feel deeply good. He did love her. He would keep it a secret. Friends and lovers, she’d said. He would be content. She snuggled close to him in his arms and he held her tightly against him, the starched, cheap material of her overalls under his hand. There were obviously multiples of this woman. She might run away any minute and jump on another tram. He might never see her again. She might elude him forever. Now she was in his arms. He said, ‘You’re a mystery and an inspiration to me.’
She laughed and freed herself from his embrace. ‘Well, you won’t mind giving me a hand to clean up this room then, will you?’
He grabbed one of the canvas bags and went around the change room emptying the ashtrays and picking up the bottles and papers and cigarette butts the cleaners had left lying around. When they were done he left her and went out into the street and waited till she came out wearing her dress and Cuban heels, her thick dark mass of hair flowing around her shoulders. She kissed him and put her arm in his and they walked down Swanston Street side by side and got on his tram. On the tram they sat close together and kept looking at each other and smiling. He leaned close and kissed her. ‘You are even more beautiful than I remember you.’
The landlady was coming down the stairs as they were going up. She nodded to Wendy and said good evening to Robert and they went on up to his room and the landlady went on down to her kitchen. When he had closed the door to the room, Wendy turned to him and they embraced, their hunger for each other urgent. They laughed and grabbed hold of each other wildly, moaning and swaying around, kissing and nearly losing their balance, their hands going everywhere, bumping into the door, then staggering over to the bed and struggling out of their clothes.
It was dark when he woke, the cool vertical of the window leaking a weak illumination into the room. He was lying on his back. She lay with her arm and one leg over him, her face nuzzled into his chest. He folded his arms around her and kissed her neck. ‘I do love you,’ he whispered. She murmured and rolled away to lie beside him. He sat up on his elbow and looked down at her. She was laughing softly to herself. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘I’m happy,’ she said. She reached and ran her finger lightly across his lips. ‘You make me feel like a girl again. I’d almost forgotten it could be like this.’
He could see the pale rectangle of the window reflected deep in her eyes.
They kissed then lay beside each other in the silence. The sounds of the house, the screeching tram wheels going around the corner into Glenferrie Road, were sounds from another world, her sweet breath in his face.
She said, ‘Did you start writing Frankie’s story?’
‘I’m writing it for you,’ he said.
‘Can I read it?’
‘Not yet. I’m imagining you living thousands of miles away in another country waiting anxiously to hear from me. It’s my letter to you from the outback.’
‘So where am I?’ she said.
‘You’re in the country where your people came from originally.’
‘And where is that?’
‘It’s over there, somewhere. It’s dark and cold in the winter. It doesn’t have a name. You’re waiting for the postman to bring you my letter. You look out of your window every day and watch for him coming down the road on his bicycle. Your mother worries about you.’
She was silent a while, then she said, ‘You’re such a romantic. Your mother must have waited in England for a letter like that from you after you came out here as a boy.’
He leaned over the side of the bed and felt in his trouser pockets for his cigarettes. He lit a cigarette and handed it to her. She had a puff then handed it back. He lay on his back and looked at the pale window. He said, ‘Can you see the clouds going by? They’re lit up underneath by the lights of the city.’
Wendy said, ‘I’ve been offered a job with the union. It’s part-time. I’ll still be able to work with the paper.’
‘Are you saying you’ll be quitting Myer?’ He had a nasty feeling she was going to tell him this was goodbye.
She took the cigarette from between his lips and had another puff then set it between his lips again. ‘I’m finishing up next week. I’ve done this job for long enough anyway.’ She sounded relaxed about it.
‘Will we still see each other?’ He was afraid of her answer.
She put her hand on his thigh, the touch of her fingers sending an electric pulse into his balls. ‘Of course we’ll see each other. We’re friends now.’
Friends and lovers, he thought.
‘And, anyway, I want to read your Frankie story when it’s done. It’s important. You’ll need help to get it published.’
‘You scared the shit out of me there for a minute.’
She sat up and leaned over him and kissed him on the mouth, her breasts pressing against his chest. She sat back. ‘Let’s go and have a meal at the Greek cafe. I’m hungry.’
‘So you didn’t mind me saying I love you just now?’
‘Just don’t make a habit of it.’ She kissed him again, her breath smoky. ‘Okay?’ She put her finger to his lips and pressed it hard. ‘I mean it. I’m not going down that track with you or with anyone else ever again.’ Then she said, ‘True love is a bucket of shit, believe me.’
‘That bad, eh?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You taught me something about myself,’ he said.
‘It’s what friends do. It always takes someone else to tell us the truth about who we are.’
9
He was sitting at the table in his room, his fountain pen in his left hand, a new exercise book open in front of him. He was writing his long letter to Wendy, the woman who waited for him on the other side of the world, the woman he loved and longed to be with all the time. Writing to her was a way of being with her. And with himself. While he was writing he never asked himself what his life might be, or what the meaning of it all really was. When he was writing his letter to his lover he did not doubt the meaning of his life. He had found that the more he dwelled on those days in the Gulf with Frankie the more detail he was able to recover. The detail of their lives, which he thought he had forgotten, was still there; as he wrote, so it opened out to him. He was deep into a memory of Frankie and himself dogging a wild micky when there was a sharp knock on his door. He stopped writing and sat looking straight ahead out the window into the night. The knock came again. He heard the door open and swung around in his seat.
A man looked around the door and smiled at him. ‘Sorry,’ the man said. ‘I saw your light under the door.’ He came into the room. ‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything.’
Robert said angrily, ‘Do you always barge into people’s rooms like this? You want to watch yourself, mate.’ Robert had seen him driving in the little green car. He was not one of the workers but was always smartly dressed in a suit and tie, as he was now. A man in his mid-thirties. Smooth.
‘Sorry!’ the man said, but he didn’t turn around and go out again. He walked over and stood close beside Robert, a broad smile on his face as if he thought he was sure to be made welcome. His confidence irritated Robert.
The man held out his hand. ‘John Morris,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen you about.’
Robert didn’t stand. He reached over and shook John Morris’s hand. The skin was dry and crinkly, as if it had a fine plastic covering over the bones. He was over six feet, taller than Robert by a couple of inches. His teeth were astonishingly white and perfectly even. He had the smile of a movie star. Robert thought of Rock Hudson, only leaner. His face was tanned, his skin smooth, his features sharp and cleanly made, his hair thick and dark and glossy, swept back from his broad forehead. Robert caught a faint whiff of cologne. John Morris was wearing a white shirt and tie and a greenish tweed suit. Very smart, the whole outfit.
‘Meg’s always talking about you,’ he said, ‘so I thought I’d come and see for myself.’
‘Who’s Meg?’ Robert said.
John Morris leaned over the table and looked at the exercise book. ‘Meg’s our landlady. So what are you writing? Can I have a look?’
He didn’t wait for Robert’s permission but picked up the exercise book and started reading. Robert watched him. He was thinking of snatching the book out of the man’s hands and telling him to get the fuck out of his room and to mind his own fucking business. What held him back from doing this was a queer little desire in him for this man’s approval. Instead of kicking the man out, Robert said nothing, but sat there glumly watching the intruder reading the words that were meant only for the eyes of the woman he loved.
There were times in Robert’s life when he felt nothing but contempt for himself. This was one of them. He lit a cigarette and sucked the smoke deep into his lungs. What disgusted him in particular was that he was seeing in John Morris the same authority he had known in his teachers. An educated man of the middle class, someone who knew what was what. Robert believed in his Frankie story. He thought it was just as good as his fighting man, or maybe even better, and he wanted to have this opinion confirmed by John Morris. The work, he might be about to say, of a naturally gifted writer. Something like that. Robert smoked his cigarette and crossed his legs and looked up at John Morris, waiting for the verdict. And he saw that John Morris was reading with concentrated care, turning each page slowly and frowning through his horn-rimmed glasses. Downstairs a woman’s voice was raised in anger and then a door slammed. Robert knew there were a number of boarders in the house he’d never met, people who had rooms on the other side, close to the drive, where painting and repairs had been carried out.
John Morris closed the exercise book and set it down on the table beside Robert’s hand and he looked down at Robert. ‘Well,’ he said, measuring Robert with his gaze, not particularly friendly now but not altogether unfriendly either, examining his new find.
Robert said, ‘Well what?’
‘Don’t get upset.’ John Morris laughed, his even white teeth flashing. ‘Well, you’ve had an interesting life.’
Robert butted his cigarette in the ashtray and looked out at the night. The leaves on the elms shining in the light from the window, the distant sound of traffic, not a breath of wind. Robert turned around and looked at Frankie’s hat and his spurs and leather leggings, blackened and stained and smelling of the sweat of horses, hanging on the brass hook behind the bedroom door like the skin of some old carcass. That life he had known with the legendary stockmen on the great plains of the Gulf Country. He and Frankie hadn’t needed many words. In Frankie’s company, silence had its own way of delivering their thoughts. It was his silence that Frankie shared. Robert looked up at John Morris standing there beside him, standing far too close for comfort, his expression serious, thoughtful, pondering something. A man who would perish alone in the Gulf. A man who would have no chance of making any headway in those boundless grasslands. Frankie and his mob were contemptuous of the kind of man John Morris was and they made no secret of it. A useless poor bastard, that was how they would describe him. He would need rescuing. He would not stand alone for longer than a day. And yet Robert knew that just then this man was more powerful than the superior race of men who had stood with him in the Gulf, and this knowledge made him sorrowful. Morris’s eyes were grey and pale and the look in them made Robert uneasy with feelings of a deep inadequacy to ever prosper in the same world as the world in which John Morris prospered. He was powerful. His presence. What he stood for here. The privilege of education, money, success. His substance in the life of the city. His authority. Part of Robert hated him.
Robert said, ‘So what do you do for a living?’
‘I’m a lecturer in the economics department at Melbourne University.’ John Morris smiled down at him. ‘Before that I was a high school teacher. I haven’t had an interesting life the way you have.’
Robert said, ‘It sounds okay to me.’
‘If you want to be a writer,’ John Morris said, ‘you’ll have to go to the university and learn something about the history of your culture. You’ll have to read the great literature.’
‘I didn’t say I wanted to be a writer.’
‘But you do,’ he said vehemently, impatient with Robert’s denial. ‘Those guys downstairs aren’t sweating over their writing in the evening. You are. Don’t look so down about it, for God’s sake. You might not enjoy the university but you’ll meet people like yourself there. One or two, if you’re lucky. And maybe get one or two good teachers who’ll inspire you.’ He gestured dismissively at the exercise book on the table. ‘Y
ou’ll soon improve on that. You might even make something readable of it. It’s basically a good story. You just need to learn how to write. And you will. I’m sure of it. You’ve made a start on your own. That’s important. You’ve got ambition.’
Robert didn’t say anything. This man’s recommendation that he go to the university sounded like Wendy’s recommendation that he go to the Swanston Family Hotel and meet her artistic friends. A place to meet your own kind, she had said. Loners. Robert doubted it. What were they doing drinking in a mob if they were loners? At least this John Morris character hadn’t said he was a loner. John Morris stood there looking down at Robert, and when Robert didn’t say anything, John Morris said, ‘There are coaching colleges in the city. Taylor’s is the best of them. You should enrol there for your university entrance exams.’
Robert said, ‘I’m not bright enough for the university.’ What he really meant was that in his mind the word ‘university’ stood for Oxford and Cambridge, a world of birth and privilege as far removed from the world of the Council estate where he’d grown up as it was possible to be; a world he knew to be insulated against the entry of people like himself. Secretly, of course, his inner self knew very well he was intelligent enough to go to the university. In that place where things touched his soul, where the sources of his self-esteem were guarded, his confidence in his intelligence was pure and unlimited.
‘That’s bullshit, and I think you know it,’ John Morris said, his confidence washing around him like a tide of excessive goodwill. ‘You’re as intelligent as any of my students. And you’ve made a start on your own! You wouldn’t have done that if you’d thought you weren’t up to it. You’ve got a bit of catching up to do, Robert, that’s all. You’ll benefit at once from being guided in your reading and writing by people who know their subjects. On your own you’ll flounder helplessly and get frustrated. Or, God forbid, you’ll become one of those self-taught fools who think they know better.’ John Morris placed a hand on Robert’s shoulder and leaned down; Robert flinched when he caught a whiff of the other man’s sour breath. ‘We all need the help of other people,’ John Morris said confidingly, his lips uncomfortably close to Robert’s face. ‘None of us does it alone. None of us!’ John Morris straightened and took a step away, then swung back, as if the energy of his conviction moved him. ‘Just do it!’