by Alex Miller
She and Ed were passing the short end of a joint—the old one or a new one?—back and forth between them and looking up at the sky and mostly just laughing about nothing. Had he ever seen Lena this carefree? He couldn’t think of any time when he had. Ed was making her happy. He was pointing with exaggerated excitement to a bird he’d seen way up in the dazzle of the sky and was trying to make her see it. ‘There! There!’ he yelled, his arm extended, index finger pointing. She sat up and leaned over him, sighting along his pointing arm. ‘I can see it! I can see it!’ she cried. Ed pulled her down to him and kissed her. She didn’t resist. A stab of affront went through Robert, sharp and sudden, a spear in his side. He was fascinated and stirred by the sight of them. A strange perverted kind of excitement in it, a feeling of loathing, an excuse for violence. Sex and violence swirling together, a free ticket to beat the shit out of this hippie.
Lena looked across and saw him. She rolled off Ed and sat up, laughing. ‘My serious husband’s standing over there watching us, Ed. I don’t think he approves.’ They both convulsed with wild laughter, rolling around on the grass, struggling and giggling, Ed dropping the joint in the grass and groping around for it.
Robert walked over and stood looking down at him. He met Ed’s blue eyes and held his gaze. Ed grinned his gap-toothed grin and reached his hand up to Robert. ‘Give us a hand up, Robbie, old mate. I’m getting stiff in my old age.’
Robert didn’t take his hand.
Ed giggled and rolled onto his stomach and stood up. Lena held out her hand and he helped her to her feet.
‘I think we’re being told off,’ she said. She stood looking at Robert. ‘You’re out of focus.’ She laughed helplessly, staring at him as if she couldn’t work out why he was standing there in front of her.
Ed gripped Robert’s shoulder with his fingers and steadied himself while he reached down and adjusted his sandal. Their eyes met and he gave Robert a cheeky grin. He was like a boy, a boy in a man’s body, something innocent and yet deeply manipulative about him—edgy, cunning, working things out, his eyes shifting their focus. Robert saw in his eyes that he was amused by Robert’s desire to give him a hiding, not cowed by the threat of it. Robert felt a grudging respect for him.
Robert said, ‘We’ve brought some Chinese.’ Lena slid her arm through his and pressed herself unsteadily against his side. The three of them walked across to the house. Phil was sitting on the floor with Ed’s girlfriend. They were eating steamed dim sims and drinking beer, talking earnestly about the meaning of life.
38
It was two in the morning when they arrived home. Robert pulled into the drive and sat with the headlights playing over the garage. He had a headache and was feeling nauseous.
Lena said, ‘What are you waiting for?’
‘I’ve never seen anyone walking on our street. It’s weird. We’re living on the side of a hill in the middle of nowhere. No shops, no people, no signs of life. Nothing. That hill’s been there since the beginning of time. Now we’re here.’
She opened her door and stepped out of the car.
He followed her. He walked over to the demarcation line between the end of the suburb and the beginning of the wilderness. It was marked by an abrupt bulldozer scrape in the shallow soil at the edge of their block. He unzipped and took a long steady piss, directing it into the fleshy clay. The bare clay glistened with his piss. He thought of the slaughtered pig in Warren’s yard one winter morning when he was a boy, the pallid flesh aching in the savagery of its death, the skin scraped clean of hair, the cold stillness of it, the pig screaming in his head, steam rising from its entrails in a bucket beside the carcass, its blood curdling in a bowl.
Lena was standing at the front door watching him. He zipped up and went over to her and put the key in the lock. The faintly chemical smell of the new building materials whenever they entered the house from the fresh air. The stillness and the silence. They didn’t turn the lights on. She stood in the middle of the long front room, the shadow of a woman.
She said, ‘You and I have never made a home.’
He was lighting a cigarette, the match flaring in the half-dark.
‘Give me one of those,’ she said. ‘I need something. My throat’s aching.’
He went over and gave her a cigarette and lit it for her. They had both drunk a lot. Robert had no memory of the drive home. He had been thinking about Ann. She had not returned to the party.
Lena took a drag on the cigarette. ‘So Phil’s another novelist?’
He didn’t say anything. He was looking out into the dark.
She was watching him, waiting for him to say something. When he didn’t speak she said, ‘What’s happened with your rewrite of Frankie? You’re not writing, are you? You promised you’d do it. You swore you’d stick at it.’
He could see the silhouette of the dark forest going up the slope. Not a sound out there. No bells, no car horns, no trams, no Saturday night drunks. No sirens. Nothing. Just the forest. He felt as if he was waiting for something. His life at a standstill. He hadn’t answered Martin’s letters. He was letting everything good and worthy fall away from him. He was drifting out in the blackness on his own, this house a chamber of solitude.
She said, ‘You used to be so strong and determined. I was frightened of you when we first met. I admired you. What’s happened to you? You’ve given up!’
He turned around from the window. Her dark shape against the pale windows on the other side of the room. He stood very still, looking at her for a long time.
She said, ‘You’re giving me the creeps!’
‘We’re supposed to be enjoying nature out here. Have you got that? Those people in the office with me every day, keeping their heads down, keeping out of trouble, hoping for a promotion, forever checking the gazette to see if their position has been confirmed or if someone’s appealed against them, talking about the size of the house they’re building. Surrounded by parks and forest and perfect roads. This is it. You don’t think it’s fucking weird?’
‘You have given up,’ she accused him, her tone flat, final.
‘You want to have it out here and now? You want to accuse me of something. But it’s not just me. It’s us. Our lives aren’t real anymore. I can’t be a writer here and I’ll tell you why: because I’m not here. I’m lost.’
‘You’re drunk. You’re talking rubbish.’
‘And that shit this afternoon, you and Ed rolling around in the grass almost fucking each other. Was that rubbish too? Or is that how you want to live? Living here is killing something in both of us. You know that. The sooner we face it the better for us. I don’t know what else we have to do, but if we stick with this it will finish us.’
‘I like Ed,’ she said, a fierceness in her voice. ‘We weren’t fucking. We were playing. Ed’s free. He’s himself. I feel as if I’ve known him forever. He’s got energy. He’s not blocked the way you are. You’re just making excuses. People who really have something to say write their books even in prison. People write no matter what their circumstances. They do it because they have to do it.’ Her cigarette glowed in the dark. ‘I used to think you were one of those people. You’re not.’
‘And you?’ he said. He felt strangely calm, disconnected, unprovoked.
‘What about me?’
‘What sort of person have you decided to be?’
‘I didn’t make any promises.’ She walked across to the coffee table and stubbed her cigarette in the ashtray. ‘I’m going to bed.’ She left the room.
He said quietly, ‘You start this stuff, then you walk out. We never settle anything. On Monday morning I’ll get in the car and go to the office in the park and enjoy the view of the trees and the grass.’ He laughed.
Robert was hanging out the washing on the clothes hoist behind the house when he heard a car door slam. It was followed by the sound of voices. He finished hanging up the clothes then went in. Ed and Lena were standing at the kitchen table. Lena was holding up an unframed ca
nvas. She looked at Robert as he came in from the laundry. ‘Look what Ed’s given me.’
Robert went over and stood next to Lena at the table. She was holding an oil painting of a grey-haired old woman sitting on a red-painted garden bench at a red-painted table in a green garden. The woman had a glass of beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and a cat on her lap. She was in three-quarter profile, looking off into a vacancy of daydream. The cat faced the viewer, its golden-yellow eyes looking straight at Robert as he stood there looking back at it.
Lena said, ‘It’s a portrait of Ed’s mum. Isn’t it wonderful?’
The old woman was as scrawny as Lena. There was something poignant and beautiful about her. A vanished life. A life used up and gone. The knowing cat gazing directly into the eyes of the viewer was surely the artist himself. The picture had been painted with great feeling. Robert said, ‘Yes. It’s wonderful.’ He looked at Ed. ‘I like it a lot.’
Ed gave a sideways grin and said, ‘I’m glad you like it, Robbie.’
Robert saw that Ed was sensitive about his work, believing in it, knowing it had worth. ‘Where did you do your training?’
Ed laughed. ‘Self-taught, Robbie. Like Gauguin.’ He was wearing a khaki shirt with two button-down breast pockets, a black-bound notebook sticking out of the left shirt pocket along with a red pencil. His woven headband holding his long hair back off his face. There was something in the headband that reminded Robert of Frankie’s woven hatband, subdued colours from nature plaited together. The green and red in the painting. Robert thought Ed had probably made the headband himself.
Ed looked at Lena. ‘I’m going to do a portrait of Lena when I get back.’
Robert said, ‘Where are you going?’
Lena said, ‘Ed’s won an important art prize in Adelaide.’
‘Congratulations,’ Robert said.
‘Ten grand,’ Ed said. ‘I’m gonna be rich.’ He laughed, his gappy mouth wide, letting it all out.
They went onto the balcony at the side of the house and Ed got out his black sketchbook and started drawing Lena. She sat on the boards with her back against the railing, her eyes closed, the sun in her face, Ed sitting maybe a yard away squinting at her. Robert left them to it for an hour then carried out three beers. Ed took the beer and passed his sketchbook to Robert. Small, exquisite likenesses in which he’d uncannily captured the strength of Lena’s features, and even something of her elusiveness, in a few simple pencil lines.
Robert leaned down to Ed, holding the sketchbook open. ‘This one’s just brilliant. It’s Lena.’
Ed took the sketchbook from him and carefully tore out the sketch and handed it to Robert. ‘For you, Robbie.’
Ed said he couldn’t stay for lunch. ‘I’ve got to go and front Mary’s people.’ He looked sheepish. ‘I had a row with her old man. I’d better straighten things out with him before I head off.’
Lena said, ‘Do you love her?’
Ed pursed his lips and thought about the question. ‘Yeah, I suppose I do.’ He smiled. ‘She’s bloody pregnant, so I’d better love her.’
Lena laid her hand gently on his arm and asked in a concerned tone of voice, ‘Will Mary have an abortion then?’
‘Jesus! No way!’ Ed recoiled. ‘We want the kid. If her old man doesn’t kill me, the brat’s gonna have a proper daddy.’ He giggled. ‘Fuck, I can’t wait!’
‘Any chance of that?’ Robert said. ‘Her dad killing you, I mean?’
‘I reckon he’s been giving it some thought.’ Ed smiled. ‘He’s not a happy pappy right at this minute.’
Robert wondered if Ed had had a proper daddy himself.
They went out with him to where his Land Rover was parked in the drive. Lena hugged him and thanked him emotionally for the painting of his mother. There were tears in her eyes. They stood and watched him leave. He tooted the horn and hung out of the window and waved and yelled something as he turned into the road at the bottom of the drive. They stood a while, the elaborate silence of the forest rising around them, birds somewhere high up the hill crying and wailing. They turned around and went back inside the house. Robert wondered if she was thinking of Mary’s fortunate child. He said nothing. The clothes would be dry by now. He went on through to the back and took the basket out to the clothes hoist and unpegged the shirts and handkerchiefs and towels and folded them into the washing basket.
39
The minute Robert walked into the office, Phil came straight over to him, looking pretty pleased with himself. ‘Shake my hand, Rob,’ he said. ‘I’ve been awarded a scholarship to Harvard.’
Robert shook his hand. ‘That’s great news, Phil. Congratulations!’
‘Yeah. Pretty good, eh?’ Phil stood looking at him, expecting something more, waiting for Robert’s eager questions so he could unload his excitement.
Robert set his satchel down and sat at his desk. ‘So when did you hear?’
‘I got a fax last night. I haven’t slept much. We’ll have a few cleansing ales after work.’
‘My shout,’ Robert said. ‘And how about Ann? How did she go?’ He managed to mention her name without his voice stalling. She was leaving. Nothing had come of their moment, imagined or real. He could still see that look of vague discontent in her eyes, the way she had held his gaze then looked away with almost a shrug of regret. Was he making it up? His inner voice insisted it had been real. He believed his inner voice.
‘Ann missed out,’ Phil said. ‘She’s going to try for something at the Sorbonne. It could make things a bit complicated, me living in the States and her in Paris. But I guess we’ll jump over that one if and when we get to it.’
‘When are you leaving?’ Robert said.
‘We’ll stay with my brother out on the farm for a couple of weeks over Christmas then head to the States in the New Year.’ He rested one buttock on the edge of Robert’s desk and looked down at him—a happy man, eager to share his good fortune. ‘It’s lucky you and I met when we did. We’re all in transit to somewhere else in this place.’
Robert said, ‘We don’t have any plans to leave Canberra.’
‘But you will,’ Phil said. He looked around at the sea of heads bent dutifully over their desks. ‘This is not you, mate. Don’t try telling me you’re going to be doing this for the rest of your days. I’m not going to believe that.’
Robert said, ‘Have you heard from Ed since he went over to collect that prize?’
‘You don’t hear from Ed. Ed just turns up.’ He stood up and stretched and looked out the window. ‘God, I feel so fucking good!’ He laughed. ‘We’ll have a farewell party closer to the time. I hope you and Lena are going to be around for it.’
It was an evening party. Cars parked along the kerb and up the driveway. Robert drove around the corner and found a spot and he and Lena walked back to the house. He was carrying the beer. A starry summer night, the smell of the bush on a drift of air from the mountain. Lena holding his arm, being close, concerned for him. She said, ‘This place sometimes makes me feel like a refugee in my own country.’ He squeezed her arm.
People going into the old house ahead of them, a knot of friends greeting each other in the doorway, talking and laughing, inching aside to let them in, smiles and apologies. The tabla player’s fingers frenzied, candle flames wavering as if in time to the flickering rhythm of the drums, the shuffling darkness of the hallway with its smell of books and incense, a press of bodies. The living area seething with people, loud with laughter and talk, the air already thick with cigarette smoke. Lena said something but he didn’t catch it. He headed for the bathroom and set the beers among the ice in the bath.
When he came back into the big central room Lena was standing over on the far side by the open doors to the patio and the paddock. She was talking with Phil and another man, a drink in her hand. One of the crowd now, no longer a refugee. He looked around the room but he couldn’t see Ann. He made his way over to the fireplace and stood in front of a large rectangular painting t
hat was sitting on the mantelpiece, leaning against the wall. He had no memory of having seen it there before. It was difficult at first to make out what was going on in the picture. Small figures and details of the interiors of rooms in a child’s idea of a house open to a blue sky in which an old-fashioned plane was circling, leaving a white smoke trail behind it, tiny pieces of text written in here and there across the canvas, as if the artist had been telling himself a story by painting it, things flying through the air between the people, a brown loaf describing a perfect arc above the heads of an old man and an old woman, both looking up to watch it fly. The whole thing detailed, colourful, highly active, the numerous figures agitated. In the bottom left-hand corner of the canvas a bubble of writing inscribed with a fine brush in green against the brick-red background: The Food Fight with Daddy—Family Life in Girilambone, Christmas 1953. The year of Robert’s first Christmas in Australia. Beside the bubble of text a signature, also with a fine brush in vivid green: Ed.
A woman’s voice close behind him said, ‘Hello, Robert.’
He turned around. Ann was looking directly at him, that slightly puzzled, questioning look in her dark eyes, as if she wasn’t quite sure of what she was doing but was doing it anyway. He felt a start of excitement. She had sought him out! He said, ‘Hello, Ann,’ and held her gaze.
The intensity of his look made her shift uneasily and look past him at Ed’s big painting. She was wearing a soft grey t-shirt and faded blue jeans, her arms bare. Her face without makeup, her brown hair loose. The dark circles under her eyes, her Jeanne Moreau lips.