The Passage of Love

by Alex Miller

  She turned to look where he was pointing and the lizard flicked into the water and was gone. ‘I missed it!’

  ‘I reckon there’ll be plenty more of them,’ he said. ‘I’m going in.’

  ‘It’ll be freezing,’ she said. ‘It’s been running through the frost all night.’

  He took off his clothes and stepped into the water. It was bitingly cold. He gave a yell and ducked under and pushed off from the bank. He rose up out of it, yelling with the cold and shedding water around him in a spray of sunlight. The water was up to his chest, a coloured mosaic of river stones and yellow sand on the bottom, glints of mica. A shoal of small brown stripy fish gathered in the disturbance around his legs. He called out, ‘It’s wonderful!’

  She took off her t-shirt and jeans and her underclothes and set the doll on them. Naked in the sunlight she stood on the bank facing him. Then she walked into the water and, with a slow elegant movement, slid beneath the surface, swimming past him under the clear stream and surfacing against the rock face of the far bank, the water to her chin. She didn’t cry out with the shock of the cold but stood silently, the sun in her eyes, the water reflecting the light upwards across her features, looking around her with wonder at the ferny rock bank. He was remembering her swimming away from him out towards the rusting hulk of the sunken ship at the beach that day, confident and unafraid of the sea, beautiful then, now scrawny and aged.

  He said, ‘Water’s your element.’ He climbed out and palmed the water off his skin then put his clothes on. His body chilled and refreshed.

  Lena swam across and stood in the shallow water, her back to him, wringing the water from her hair. Every one of her ribs stood out sharply in the clear light, her buttocks fleshless, reduced to the bony structure of her pelvis and hips, the sunlight through the casuarinas etching the lines of her skeleton, something strange and poignant and slightly repellent about her, something unreal that eluded and fascinated him—as she had always eluded him. His bond with her was beyond his understanding. She was so intimate, so much his familiar, and yet she was still a mystery to him. A deep stream of her inner life was unshared with him. And he was sad thinking of the lost beauty of the tanned young woman in the expensive black swimsuit; and he couldn’t help himself in that moment from asking her the forbidden question, the foolish question. It was uttered before he considered it. ‘Would you put on weight if we lived down here?’ He was imagining making love in the sun on the bank of the creek with the tanned young Lena who had seduced him with her beauty and the promise of her intensity.

  She went on wringing out her hair, then she bent forward and shook it out, running her hands through it. ‘The water smells beautiful,’ she said. She turned around and stood looking at him without saying anything for a long time; not a cold examination, but with a kind of wonderment. ‘And if I were to put on weight, would you write a great novel? Is that to be our bargain?’

  He said nothing.

  She said evenly, ‘We’re both doing our best. That’s what we’re doing. It isn’t everything the dream of love is supposed to be, but it’s the best we can do. It’s us, isn’t it? This is who we are. You and I doing our best. That will have to be enough, won’t it? Haven’t we learned not to make foolish promises to each other and to ourselves? It’s harder than we thought it was going to be. We’ve learned that. It’s not as simple as we thought it was. We’re no longer the people we were then.’

  He said, ‘I shouldn’t have asked you that.’

  ‘No, it’s all right. You should have asked. Especially now. Here! Today! So long as you don’t expect to get the answer you’re hoping for you can ask me that any time you like.’ She stood there, naked and thin as a starving prisoner—the prisoner of her compulsions. The shifting shadows of the trees on her, as if her skin undulated. She stepped out of the water and stood beside her pile of clothes. ‘You know what you want to do. Maybe you can do it here.’

  ‘I believe I could try,’ he said, and he meant it. He could see himself repairing the cottage, the two of them living in this little cleft in the valley, growing their vegetables, running a small herd of breeding cows. He didn’t quite dare to imagine himself writing. But he would not be an alien here, he did know that. And Ray McFadden would lend his support and encouragement. He would be a fine neighbour to have. And Martin would come and stay with them. He could see it all. A new beginning. Another new beginning.

  ‘And you can’t promise more than that, can you?’ she said. ‘We can do our best.’ She was looking across at the orange trees and the little cottage. ‘There’s a quality of peace here that I believe would have saved my father’s life. In Canberra there’s no room for ideas as small and uncertain and vulnerable as ours. I’ve made my peace with this small thing in my own mind, and it is safe there and maybe it will become something. I can’t say and I’m not going to try to say. Who knows if I will put on weight? I don’t want to put on weight. It’s you who wants me to put on weight. Let’s be clear about that. I’m glad for you that you know what you want to do and I hope you will do it. If you don’t do it, I have seen that you will go down the same deadly track I went down myself. I wouldn’t forgive myself for that if you did.’

  He said, ‘I don’t see a long-term alternative for me but writing.’

  ‘And if I stay at the hospital in Canberra I’ll go on doing what I’m doing and one day I’ll wake up in that terrible house in that terrible suburb and I’ll know I’ve missed it, whatever it was. Something beautiful. Something that was mine. My meaning. It is this serious for me.’ She stood looking at him. ‘You looked grand, you know. Standing there naked in the sun with the water coming off you just now. I wanted to kiss your body.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. He felt helpless.

  She smiled. ‘And don’t tell me I look grand too, or I’ll chuck one of these rocks at your head.’

  ‘I believe you would,’ he said. ‘But as a matter of fact, you did look grand.’

  She said, ‘I suppose there are springs coming down from these hills or it would have dried up in the drought by now.’ She looked up quickly, as if the idea had suddenly struck her. ‘I bet Ray would love to have us as his neighbours.’

  They stood looking at the sparkling water, the small brown fish reclaiming their domain.

  She said, ‘I feel as if I’ve known this place all my life. There’s so much to think about. So much to say.’

  He said, ‘I wonder how big it is. It might not support us.’

  She laughed. ‘Now you’re being careful. I’ve made you careful. I fell in love with a cowboy. You were the freest man I’d ever met.’

  ‘I didn’t have anything to be careful of back then.’

  ‘Being careful of our possessions is being trapped by them,’ she said. ‘It’s not what we have, it’s our state of mind. It’s what Dad did. He did it for Mum’s sake. Now you want to do it for my sake. Being careful is what killed Dad. It’s what killed them both. Dad should have chucked his city job and taken on a rundown place like this. He would have come alive. Instead of that the hope slowly drained out of him until his heart weakened and he died. By then he was filled with bitterness and regret. Being careful is what killed the fear and the excitement and the intensity in my parents’ lives. They risked nothing and lost their dreams. They risked nothing and lost everything. Their lives were smoothed out from being careful, as if a bulldozer blade had ploughed through their dreams the way the dozer must have ploughed through that block of land where we’ve been living.’ She leaned down and picked up her pants and put them on. ‘I know about that,’ she said. ‘I know about people being careful.’

  Robert said, ‘Look at that!’ He pointed. A white-bellied sea eagle was floating silently over the cleared paddock beyond the line of trees. ‘She’s looking for a rabbit, I’ll bet.’

  Lena said, ‘She’s beautiful.’

  They stood very still in the shade of the casuarinas watching the great bird gliding over the country. Its cry a sudden warning o
r lament as it swung abruptly away and gained height and was gone.

  She said, ‘I feel as if we’ve been welcomed here. First Ray and now the eagle. I’ve never seen a sea eagle that close before.’

  She looked at him. ‘I’m happy. Shall we go and look at our new house now? Did you notice there’s a wattle tree growing up through the middle of it?’

  ‘There’ll be rats,’ he said.

  ‘So we’ll get a cat.’

  42

  It was a warm summer morning in Canberra and Robert was out in the driveway in his singlet helping the man who’d come with the moving van. He’d asked them to send two men but they’d sent only one. He was unfit and in his late fifties. His name, he said, was Oliver Green. Lena’s Rönisch was enormously heavy and the truck didn’t have a hydraulic lift. Oliver Green would not have been able to get the piano to the ramp on his own, let alone up it and into the truck. He and Robert had manoeuvred it onto the ramp and were struggling to push it further up the slope towards the open back of the truck. Robert had his shoulder padded with a towel between his skin and the sharp edge of the wood, Oliver on the other side of the piano, his face contorted with effort and anxiety, a trembling bead of sweat trying to cling on to the end of his nose.

  Lena was standing outside the front door watching them, a hand held to her mouth, ready to cry out in horror if the Rönisch crashed to the concrete driveway. Or maybe she was half hoping to see the end of it. In some ways, the beautiful instrument must have been a reminder to her of her failure to be the person her mother had hoped she was to become—this weighty symbol of family love and the dutiful life from which she had struggled to liberate her spirit.

  Oliver and Robert paused to gather themselves. Robert knew it wasn’t going to happen. They were underpowered for the job.

  ‘You ready, mate?’ Oliver said hoarsely, and the drop of sweat let go. ‘On the count of three, give it everything. One, two, three, heave!’

  Together they put all their strength into it. The piano inched up the ramp a few meagre centimetres then stuck fast, the ramp bending alarmingly under its weight. They paused again, the piano rocking gently from side to side like a boat at anchor, Oliver and Robert catching their breath, staring at each other across the width of the piano’s polished veneer, Oliver’s thinning hair plastered to the skin of his pale skull. Robert smiled, hoping to give him confidence. Robert was worried Oliver was going to have a heart attack and die before they got the piano in the truck. To get the great instrument all the way up the ramp and to then tip it forward onto the floor of the truck had begun to look like it was a job that was beyond them. But how to get it down again now that they had it halfway up was just as big a problem.

  There was a sudden roaring, as if a Harley was coming up the hill at full throttle. Ed’s Land Rover came flying around the bend, its rusted-out muffler bellowing. He pulled up and jumped out and, without a word of greeting, stepped onto the ramp between Oliver and Robert, laid his back against the piano and shouted, ‘Heave-fucking-ho, you fuckers!’

  The three of them kept her going, yelling encouragement to each other. The instant the piano’s weight tipped it forward onto the level floor of the truck, Ed jumped down to the road and bent over, his hands on his knees, and had a violent coughing fit. Mary was sitting in the front seat of the Rover with her dress up around her thighs looking like a very pregnant schoolgirl. She was staring at Ed with a look of dismay on her innocent face, as if it had just dawned on her that she was partnered with a sick old man who was about to die and leave her and her kid without a daddy.

  Lena ran over and took Ed by the shoulders. ‘Ed! Are you all right?’

  He straightened up and grinned at her.

  She said, ‘I’ll get you a drink of water.’

  He waved her away. ‘I’m okay! I’m okay!’ He sucked in air and coughed a couple more times. He fingered the crushed butt of a cigarette from the pocket of his jeans. He lit the butt with a match and took a deep drag on it, his eyes closed, the lit butt touching his lips, pinched delicately between thumb and forefinger, sucking the smoke hungrily into his lungs. ‘So,’ he said, opening his eyes. ‘You guys are heading out? What’s going on?’ He’d lost another front tooth. Had it fallen out or had someone hit him?

  Lena said, ‘We bought a farm, Ed.’

  ‘Fuck off!’ he said. ‘You’re fucking kidding me!’

  The pair of them, he and Lena, delighted with each other. Watching them, Robert decided they must have been lovers in a previous life.

  An hour later they headed off in a column for Braidwood and the valley. Lena and Robert in the Holden following Oliver Green’s brown truck, Ed and Mary coming on behind in the Land Rover, making their way to freedom and the simple life in the country—this was the story Lena insisted on. The sign coming up on them, YOU ARE NOW LEAVING THE AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY. Lena reached across and tooted the horn. Ed flashed his lights in their rear-view mirror.

  Once they were in New South Wales the road narrowed to two lanes and began following the natural undulations of the landscape instead of cutting through it.

  Robert said, ‘So, do you reckon Ed and Mary are going to have their baby with us? Are we going to become a little commune down there?’

  Lena said, ‘You know Ed doesn’t have plans. He just lets things happen.’ A minute later she looked across at him. ‘Would you mind all that much if Ed and Mary did decide to stay with us for a while?’

  ‘Let’s see how it goes,’ Robert said. ‘They may leave tomorrow. They may not even stay the night.’

  She reached across and put her hand on his leg. ‘We’re not going to let anything spoil this, are we? I can’t wait to have a swim in the creek.’

  The farm was to be an investment, and Robert was to run it. That was Lena’s idea. After all, she said, ‘You know about these things.’ And, of course, he would also write his novels. She was confident there would be time for both. It was not clear what she was going to do herself. Apart from an enthusiasm for growing their own vegetables and planting an orchard, she didn’t talk about having any special plans.

  The place had turned out to be vastly larger than they’d imagined. All up it was fifteen hundred acres, most of it leasehold and too steep and heavily timbered to be productive. The main freehold section was a forty-acre portion around the house. Several other smaller freehold blocks were dotted along the creek. Most of these had originally been gold leases. The lower boundary of the property was the Deua River, which the creek they had swum in joined at a place Ray called the junction. The main river was their boundary with Ray’s place. Up the river, Ray said, was wilderness: hills and forests and wild cattle.

  As he drove through the dry summer landscape behind Oliver’s truck that morning, Robert was thinking that this new beginning they were making had better work out. He had the feeling it was probably his and Lena’s last throw of the dice.

  Oliver stopped in the high street in Braidwood. Robert pulled in and parked next to him. Ed came in beside them. They all got out and stood around together. They had packed the essential stores from the Canberra house but Lena said she was going to buy some fruit and vegetables from Dom Alvanos at the Royal. Mary offered to go with her. Robert said, ‘You just want to perv on the beautiful Greek.’ Mary said, ‘How did you guess?’ Ed went across the road. Robert watched him go into the Commercial Hotel. A minute later he came out carrying a cask of red wine which he put in the back of the Rover.

  There was an old farmhouse table upended against a shopfront near where they were standing. It was the same type of table as had been in the kitchen where Robert had his first job in Australia. He went over and asked the man how much he wanted for it. The man considered the table. ‘Three pound ten,’ he said. Robert gave him the notes, then ran his hand over the surface of the table, which had experienced years of scrubbing with sand soap and was pale and smooth with a lovely undulation in the grain. Oliver helped him put the table in the back of the truck. The sun and the c
ountry town and the old kitchen table made Robert feel happy. There was only one thing missing. He went into the general store and bought a packet of Champion Ruby tobacco and some papers and a box of matches. He came out and stood in the sun and rolled a smoke. Oliver came over and stood with him. Ed and Mary were sitting in the front of the Land Rover cuddling. Robert passed the makings to Oliver and Oliver thanked him and made a cigarette for himself. The two men stood in the sun smoking their cigarettes and watching the activity on the main street. The old Victorian buildings and the utes and stock crates nosed into the kerb, knots of women and men standing around talking as if they had all the time in the world, the smell of cattle from the stock truck parked nearby.

  They got back into their vehicles and drove on across the granite tablelands and down the winding Araluen mountain road into the valley. They unloaded everything directly from the back of Oliver’s truck onto the raised floor of the barn through the side door, the Rönisch sliding in without a hitch.

  They were all tired out, and after a meal of baked beans on toast the four of them camped on the floor of the barn. Robert woke in the grey light of early morning and got up and went outside and took a pee around the back of the barn. A hunch-backed wallaby saw him and fled. It was just getting light, a night chill in the air. A mist rising along the line of the creek among the grey shadows of the casuarinas. Standing there looking at the scene, the situation of the cottage and the barn seemed to Robert more tightly enclosed by the densely timbered hills than he remembered from their first visit, the buildings and yards clustered into this narrow pocket of cleared land at the bottom of the valley, the immense stillness of the morning, birds making a racket in the timber. The place seemed smaller and older and more distantly abandoned than he remembered it.

  He fetched their large saucepan from the boot of the Holden and walked down to the creek. He kneeled at the edge of the deep hole where Lena and he had swum and sluiced his face with the cold water then cupped his hands and drank. The water was sweet and fresh, the smell of it in the still air. A small bird dropped from an overhead branch of a casuarina and dipped into the water then flew straight up again and perched on the branch. It made a small twittering sound repeated rapidly, then dipped down to the water’s surface again. It was not a bird that was familiar to him. It showed no sign of fear at his presence there by the pool’s edge.