by Alex Miller
‘That’s tough,’ Robert said and wished he could have thought of something better to say.
‘I’ve known Keith ever since I came to Melbourne from the country to go to university. He was a kind and thoughtful man. He loved the outback and often went off on long trips into the hinterland of Queensland and the north. You two would have had a lot to talk about.’
Robert took out his cigarettes. He held the packet out to John Morris, who took a cigarette and thanked him. Robert lit it for him then lit his own. There was a little moment of intimacy between them. They smoked and looked along the vacant street ahead of them.
John Morris said, ‘It’s a pity you couldn’t have met him. He would have helped you find your way in Melbourne.’
They sat smoking their cigarettes.
Robert said, ‘What did he do? Your friend’s father.’
‘Keith was a journalist. One of our best.’
‘A writer then?’
‘A writer and an accomplished watercolourist. You should get Lena to show you his drawings.’ John Morris sat there looking along the street, taking small puffs on the cigarette, as if he was sipping a drink. ‘You’ll like her mother. She was terrified Lena was going to marry me.’ He laughed, a full-throated bellow of amusement at the idea.
‘So was it sudden,’ Robert said, ‘or were they expecting him to die?’
‘It was dreadful. It went on and on. Lena and her dad used to go horseriding together. He was a good horseman, so people said. I wouldn’t know. They say she is too. Last summer Keith was injured in a fall and had to take time off work. He never really got better.’ John Morris butted his cigarette in the ashtray. ‘I suppose we’d better go in and meet them.’ He opened his door and stepped out of the car.
They walked up the path through the front garden. Flat greyish-green weeds growing up between the crazy pavers. The grass on the lawn dry, the shrubs sad and droopy, everything in need of water and attention. Nothing flourishing. A blackbird, the female, flew across the path in front of them, diving at full speed into the forlorn shrubbery, sounding its chittering alarm. The big brick house in its solid privacy. He had never been inside such a house. He and John Morris stood side by side in the cool darkness of the porch and John Morris rang the bell. There was the sound of someone playing the piano. ‘It’s a Schubert impromptu,’ John Morris said.
The piano stopped abruptly and a few seconds later the front door was opened by a young woman. She didn’t greet John Morris. She didn’t even look at him, but stood looking at Robert. He had the queer feeling she was expecting to know him. Behind her in the unlit hall the pale face of a tall grandfather clock seemed to be watching them, through an inner door the gleam of polished wood on a piano.
‘Thank you for coming,’ she said. She looked at John Morris then. ‘John said you probably wouldn’t come.’
She had dark brown eyes with faint half-circles of purplish shadow, her hair also dark brown, glossy and short, sweeping around her cheek in a sensuous curve. Her face was broad, a strong and slightly square jaw. She was wearing a pale linen blouse open at the neck and a grey cotton skirt with a narrow belt. He saw her as a well-groomed middle-class young woman he would have admired in the street or on the tram but would never have spoken to.
Usually people smile when they meet someone for the first time. Lena Soren didn’t smile. Standing at the door in the deep shadow of the porch, Robert’s attention was held by the peculiar steadiness of her gaze, the white face of the clock watching from the shadows. It was as if she expected something from him, was waiting for a response or some kind of recognition, a sign from him. Her steady scrutiny and her composed beauty made him feel inadequate and uncomfortable and he didn’t know how to react to her. He couldn’t imagine there was anything about him that would interest such a woman. What could she possibly be expecting from him?
13
The following Sunday morning, Lena Soren called him at the boarding house. He was surprised to hear from her. Nothing that had passed between them during the visit with John Morris had led him to expect that he’d ever hear from her again. She said her mother would like to meet him and could he come to lunch? ‘We’re having roast lamb, as usual. Don’t be late. Come early. Sorry for the short notice. Decisions aren’t that easy in this house at the moment.’
He hung up the phone and said aloud, ‘She’s beautiful and rich and educated and her mother wants me to come to lunch! So go on then, Robert Crofts! Get off your arse and go.’
He went into the city and caught the train to Red Bluff. When he got to the house, Lena answered the door at once. She surprised him by taking his hand, as if they already had an understanding. ‘Come and meet Mum.’
She led him down the dark hall and through into the kitchen at the back of the house. It was a small room with a low ceiling, most of the space taken up by a dining nook and a walk-in pantry. A radio was playing classical music. Lena’s mother was standing at the table of the dining nook shelling peas into a colander. She was short and roly-poly with a bun of grey hair and was wearing a blue and white cross-stitched apron over a flowered cotton dress. When Lena brought Robert into the kitchen, she wiped her hands on her apron, backs first then fronts, and offered her hand to him. ‘I’m sorry about my apron, Robert. It’s very nice of you to come and see us. Lena tells me you’re going to start an arts degree next year?’
‘If they’ll have me,’ he said.
‘Oh, I’m pretty sure they’ll have you. Don’t you think so, Lena?’
Lena said, ‘We’re going for a swim, Mum.’
‘All right, darling. You won’t be too long, will you? The potatoes are in the oven.’
He followed Lena out into the hall. ‘I haven’t brought any togs,’ he said. In fact he hadn’t owned a pair of swimming togs since he was at school and swimming in the freezing public baths was a compulsory weekly torture.
‘You can wear Dad’s.’ She went along the hall and into a room and came out holding a floppy old pair of black Speedos.
Robert looked at the togs. ‘Maybe we could give the swim a miss this time?’
‘You’ll be glad once you’re in the water.’
He knew he wouldn’t be glad once he was in the water. Just thinking about being in the water made him shiver.
They went out the front door and walked along the street together. He said, ‘We’re going to need towels, aren’t we?’ The day was cloudy and there was a chilly breeze blowing in off the bay. She said cheerfully, ‘There are plenty of towels in the bathing box.’ He said, ‘Why did you tell John you wanted to meet me? I don’t get it.’
She laughed and stopped on the footpath, turning to face him. ‘What don’t you get? That I like you and want to see you?’ She took his arm and they walked on. ‘I’m sick of young doctors and lawyers and architects and their endless table talk about their stupid ambitions. They’re all the same. When John told me a wild cowboy who had threatened to kill him had come to live in the boarding house, well, I had to have a look, didn’t I?’ She was laughing. ‘Did you really threaten to kill him? How were you going to do it? Strangle him? I’ve often felt like strangling John.’
‘He was exaggerating,’ Robert said.
‘But did you threaten him? I want to know.’
‘He probably felt a bit threatened. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I was angry. Can we leave it at that?’
They went on together, arm in arm. Her confidence in claiming him astonished him. He wasn’t quite sure how to interpret it.
‘I had to get out of that house,’ she said. ‘It’s like a morgue since Dad died. I could see how uncomfortable you were last week. What did you think of my mother?’
‘I liked her,’ he said. He’d been relieved to find Mrs Soren wasn’t someone who was going to condescend to him. ‘She’s homely.’
‘Everyone likes her,’ Lena said, dismissing his opinion of her mother. ‘She’s not as homely as she looks.’
‘But I don’t like everybo
dy,’ he said.
They crossed Beach Road and went down a steep earthen ramp through thick tea-tree and came out onto the sand at the bottom. A row of brightly painted sheds faced the beach and backed onto the tea-tree. A man was throwing a stick into the water and a dog was swimming out and retrieving it. Apart from these two the beach was deserted. Lena unlocked the door of a blue-and-white-striped bathing box. ‘We can leave our stuff in here,’ she said.
He stepped into the confined space of the bathing box with her. Piles of towels and cricket bats and stumps and various other stuff lay around in a general clutter. ‘Dad was always threatening to sort all this stuff out. It’s been stacking up in here since Erik and I were kids.’ She took off her blouse and stepped out of her skirt and kicked off her sandals. She was already wearing a black one-piece swimsuit. Elegant and expensive. Her perfect skin with its light summer tan glowing in the half-light. She stepped past him, giving him a quick smile, touching her hand lightly to his chest. ‘I’ll wait for you.’ She went outside and stood on the sand.
He took a couple of deep breaths and unzipped his pants. He was white as a maggot. He took his clothes off and pulled on her dad’s old black Speedos. He had half an erection and it showed. Her dead father’s togs clung to him. He wondered if they’d been washed since her old man last wore them. When she saw him coming out of the box, she headed for the sea at a run. He sprinted down the sand after her, the chill of the air on his bare skin, his lifelong dread of the sea.
There were no waves, just a listless slapping where the water met the sand, the cold onshore breeze ruffling the surface like a threat. The man and the dog had gone. There was no one else about. The bay looked grey and steely. He was sure it was concealing something sinister. Lena was up to her waist when she dived and began swimming without looking back to see if he was following her. He stood hesitating at the water’s edge, watching her. She might have been on her own, a solitary swimmer heading for some place she had in her mind.
He walked into the sea and swam as fast as he could, which was not very fast. He wasn’t able to catch up with her. She was sliding away from him through the water like a black seal, her effortless overarm. He was a thrasher, like a hooked fish in its death struggle. The harder he tried for speed the more seawater went down his throat. Swimming in the sea had always been for him a case of doing his best not to drown. She was heading out towards the rusting hulk of a ship. A couple of times he thought he saw a shadow moving through the water towards him. Lena had disappeared around the bulkhead of the dead ship.
He was on his own now, the little wavelets slapping into his face. He was out of breath and had to take a break. He stopped thrashing and floated on his back. Lying out there on his own, looking up at the low clouds, he could see himself from above, a bluish corpse drifting out to sea, Keith Soren’s Speedos billowing around his arse and his shrunken dick, his balls tight as wood knots with the cold and his fear. He was certain he was shark bait. He was wishing he had the courage to turn around and head back to the shore. But he was too proud, or too weak, to give up. It was not his intention to be humiliated by Lena Soren, the rich, educated, beautiful young woman who had hooked him onto her line for whatever reason she had in her mind. He would probably rather have drowned. He turned over onto his front and pushed on. Eventually he made it around the bullnose of the old hulk and began to swim along its outer side. The beach and the coloured bathing boxes were now hidden from him. There was nothing between him and the horizon. To his left the sheer cliff of the half-sunken ship’s rusty side towered above him, smooth and red, offering no chance of a handhold. He took in another mouthful of water and choked and flopped around for a couple of despairing minutes.
By the time he’d got himself around the far end of the ship and made it back to the shore, he was coughing seawater and close to exhaustion. He stood bent over on the sand, recovering, his hands on his knees. When he straightened up he saw Lena sitting on the step of the bathing box robed in a white towel, her tanned legs crossed at the ankles. She was smoking one of his cigarettes, watching him. He might have been a stranger who’d happened onto the beach and caught her attention. He walked up the sand and stood above her. She sat there like an Italian film star, the white towel loosely around her shoulders, the cigarette smouldering between her fingers, the fullness of her tanned breasts in soft shadow. She looked up at him and smiled. She moved over and he sat next to her on the step. He was still breathing hard. She offered him the cigarette. He was too wretched to smoke and waved it away. ‘You win,’ he said.
‘Are you okay?’ She put her hand on his bare shoulder. ‘You’re freezing!’ She got up and took his hand. ‘You’d better get dried off. I didn’t realise you were in trouble. Honestly.’
If she hadn’t said ‘honestly’ like that, he probably would have believed her. But when she felt the need to add the word, he knew at once she was secretly enjoying his defeat and discomfort. He got up and went ahead of her into the bathing box. She closed the door and leaned her back against it. He turned away and stripped off the clinging black things that were gripping his arse like the cold hand of her dead father. He picked up a towel from the pile and began drying himself. He was shivering. When he turned around she was still standing there against the door looking at him. He saw suddenly where she was going to take this. She stepped forward and stripped off her black costume in one long movement. When she straightened from stepping out of it she was blushing, her eyes bright and glittery with determination and excitement, something fierce in her. The pale untanned shape of her costume on her naked body made her skin look private and exposed.
She held herself for his inspection. ‘Well?’ she said tightly. ‘What do you think?’
He was transfixed. Her aggressive manner confused him. ‘I think you’re beautiful,’ he said helplessly. Did she do this with every man who came down for a swim with her? Or was this special for him? He dropped the towel and she looked at his nakedness. He stepped up to her and took her in his arms, the heat of her skin against his chilled flesh, a shiver of adrenaline shooting through his thighs as their bodies touched, her salty lips on his. They lay clasped together on the towels, a strange, almost panic-stricken plea in her eyes. She cried out as he entered her, her fingers digging painfully into his back. Her cries sounded despairing and hopeless, something so strange and unsettling in her fierceness he was shocked by it. There was nothing in her of Wendy’s confident pleasure.
Afterwards he held her in his arms and covered them both with the towels. He felt as if he held a stranger in his arms. The screaming of gulls outside. Her dark eyes fixed on him, glittering in the half-light of the bathing box. She stroked his hair and his forehead with her long fingers. ‘I could have drowned you,’ she said softly, a kind of wonderment in her voice, as if she was seeing his bloated corpse out there in the sinister gleam of the sea, his backside clad in her dead father’s horrible black Speedos, a small black bump on the steely water. He didn’t know what to think of her. ‘I’ve never met anyone like you,’ he said.
He sat at the table in the dining room across from Lena and watched Mrs Soren slicing the meat from the leg of lamb. She would have had to have been blind and stupid to be unaware of the intensity they carried with them into the sombre stillness of the house. They had walked back from the beach, Lena holding his arm tightly, and when they turned the corner into her street she had stopped and kissed him. ‘I’m not going to let you go,’ she said. ‘I hope you know that.’
‘I think maybe I do,’ he said. ‘You’re not normal. Do you know that?’
‘I’m glad you know it.’
He felt as if he didn’t know her at all.
They ate the Sunday roast in silence. The click and scrape of cutlery on china. The sedate order of things. The stillness. The long table with the eight dining chairs, five of them empty. Lena extending her feet under the table and touching him. She kept looking across at him, trying to make him laugh. He glanced at Mrs Soren.
&n
bsp; ‘Please help yourself to more potatoes, Robert,’ she said.
Lena said, ‘Yes, Robert. Don’t be shy.’ She laughed.
He reached and forked another roast potato onto his plate.
Mrs Soren said into the stiff silence, ‘Are you a believer, Robert?’
‘A believer in what?’ he said.
Lena laughed. ‘Mum wants to know if you’re a Christian.’
‘Well, I was baptised,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure why. We never went to church. My mother and father were married in a registry office. My sister and I went to Sunday school a couple of times, just to see what was going on there. And we sang hymns at school assembly. I can still remember them.’ He looked at Mrs Soren and smiled. ‘We don’t forget those sorts of things, do we?’
She was in her sixties. Her face round and pinkly flushed. She was shorter than Lena, but he could see something of Lena in her broad features. She didn’t match his idea of a rich woman. There was nothing haughty about her. She didn’t seem to be out to prove anything to him. He could imagine her being more at home in a cottage in the country than in this big house with its lush green fitted carpets and strange mixture of spare modernist furnishings and old-fashioned dark oak pieces. No clutter. Not a book spine out of alignment in the deep shelves either side of the fireplace. His father would not have been interested in the two oil paintings that hung on the walls, one above the fireplace in the dining room and another, its twin, above the fireplace in the sitting room, both beach scenes, a red cliff and a sweep of yellow sand with two figures and a dog beneath a blue sky.
Mrs Soren said, ‘You mean you haven’t forgotten the hymns you sang at school? Or was it something else you meant?’
‘I meant everything we learn when we’re children,’ he said. ‘It becomes part of us the way things never really become part of us later on, when we’re grown up.’
Mrs Soren had finished eating. She set her knife and fork side by side, handles perfectly aligned, like the spines of the books in the shelves behind her. He thought of her being obedient still in old age to the rules her mother had taught her. She dabbed her lips with her napkin. Then she turned to him and looked at him steadily for several long seconds without speaking. He was chewing a last mouthful of roast lamb. She waited for him to finish. He thought she might be going to tell him—politely, in an honest upright sort of way, even generously—that, regrettably, it was time for him to leave.