by Alex Miller
I have received the copy of the journal with your story in it. Thank you for the dedication. I was moved to see it.
We see Lena, but not as often as we would like to. She seems to be very busy with her new vocation. Birte and I have never known her to be so free and so vividly energised by her life.
There was more. Robert could hardly bear to read it. He went out to his room and wrote a reply to Martin at once. He said how pleased he was to hear his wonderful news. He said other things too, light and without meaning.
56
That winter was bleaker than any Robert could remember having lived through. The weather stayed wet and cold for weeks and the creek was often in flood, the road to Araluen closed repeatedly. He saw no one. The rain thundering down day after day. Big Oakey and the gullies coming down off the hills roaring, rolling great stones and boulders over the crossings, old trees crashing down in the night.
The road stayed out for weeks and Robert was eating only tinned food and had no tobacco. During that time the darkly forested hills closed in more tightly over the cleared patch of ground around the house and barn and the pressure of his isolation was at times nearly too much to bear. He woke in the night and lay staring at the blackness of the window and could not get back to sleep, his limbs alive with a nervous tingling. Lying there hour after hour he began to wonder if he had walked into a trap when he had agreed to come and live on the farm with Lena, becoming the cowboy of her dreams. The dream they had shared of the cottage in the country had become his nightmare. As he lay there alone in his bed, the rain beating down on the tin, he felt fated to be on his own, alone with his own empty fantasies. Was he going to become like Ray? His life eaten up by solitary days here without a companion? The night panic of these thoughts thickened in him. Was it his fate to be led back always to his first choice in life? His leap to freedom nothing but a leap into loneliness. A loss of home and the familiar. Had he duped himself? His only thread of hope now was his Exmoor book. The need to get it finished was suddenly fierce in him. Without the book he would surely be done for. He struck a match and lit the lamp. He got up and put some clothes on and went into the study and began to write. He worked till the grey light crept in at the window, then left the work and crawled back into his cold bed, exhausted. He had seen the end of the story. It was almost done. He knew it was good.
He woke to a dripping silence. He went out onto the front verandah and marvelled at the beauty of the place: the hills black and smoking, golden patches of sunlight falling through dramatic rents in the clouds. His sense of his solitariness there overpowering, like a singing in the air. It awed him and frightened him and he knew he could never survive in the valley as Ray had survived, a strong and sane man till his humiliating end. How such a man could have endured his solitariness without losing his sanity was a mystery.
The creek had backed up from the flooded river and was a slow brown flood creeping over the lower paddock, the water coming in through the fence at the bottom of the horse paddock. He could not tell if the level of the water was still rising or had begun to fall. He went down to the water’s edge and hammered a stake into the ground.
By next morning the water had receded back beyond the horse paddock fence. After breakfast he set out in the Land Rover to see how far he could get. The narrow gravel road was covered with sticks and branches, weeds and grasses growing up through the surface, even little wattle trees sprouting here and there. The road looked neglected and abandoned, as if it had not been used for years, the lower valley uninhabited. He got through to the Araluen pub and picked up the mail there and bought some tobacco and wine.
The following day he left Toby and Ray’s dog Tip with Aunty Molly at the pub. Before leaving he opened the horse paddock gate just in case the rains returned and the river rose again. He told Molly he was going to miss a couple of mails and drove up the mountain. He filled the tank in Braidwood and drove on. The other side of Yass he pulled out onto the Hume Highway and pushed his foot to the floor, the buckles on the tarp cracking and whipping behind him, the smell of old grease and exhaust fumes in the cabin, the beautiful open road rushing by. The day was fine, the road dry, the paddocks green and fresh, the taste of tobacco in his throat. He flew along the open highway hour after hour, stopping only to fill the tank then pulling out onto the highway again and flattening her. The old Rover’s tyres were worn down to the wire, the wheels out of alignment, the steering wheel juddering violently in his hands. He powered the motor along full pelt till he hit the outskirts of Melbourne and was forced to slow to what felt like a crawl after the freedom of the Hume; snaking through the suburbs and crossing the Yarra River to the south side. He was exhilarated by the drive, his face burning with the wind. He was a free man. He had made his escape. He could do as he liked. He stopped off at a florist’s shop on the corner of Clarendon and Market streets and bought a bunch of mixed blooms.
It was a small crescent of old Victorian terrace houses fronting on to a neglected section of grass, then the deep cutting of the railway line, and behind the railway line the solitary monolith of a high-rise block of Housing Commission flats, casting into afternoon shadow the house on the extreme left of the terrace. Number eighteen was the middle one in the crescent. It was still in full sun. He parked the Rover by the grass and sat looking across the road at the house, trying to imagine Lena living there, the girl from Red Bluff. He rolled a smoke and lit it. There was no sign of life along the crescent. A train rushed through the cutting behind him, the ground trembling, the air filled with noise. Then silence again. A tabby cat watching from the top of a gate post at the house next to Lena’s. A magpie dive-bombing the cat from the branches of a gum tree. The cat curling its lip at the bird. It was Wednesday afternoon. The roaring of the city a general sound in the background. He had forgotten it. The voice of the city. His body was still vibrating from the violent shuddering of the drive, his blood still settling. Iron railings across the front of Lena’s place, one dry-looking bush in the middle of the patch of garden, weeds grown through it. The gate was sagged off its hinges and looked to be permanently open. A balcony overhung the front porch. The fancy cast iron of the balconies on the houses either side of number eighteen had been replaced on her balcony with grey water-stained fibro-cement sheeting and louvres. A deep crack ran from the pediment above the balcony where it joined the next-door house down through the front brickwork to the bottom of the lower porch. A head-sized piece of the pediment had broken away at some time and the old brickwork was showing beneath the plaster. Downstairs there was what looked to be the original front door and one window. The door was painted dark blue, the paint flaked and faded.
He reached behind into the back and took the blanket off Ed’s portrait of his mother and he cradled the bunch of flowers and stepped out of the Rover. He walked across the street and in through the gate. He wasn’t exactly nervous, but he wasn’t sure what to expect either. He set the painting down on the tiles and banged on the door with his knuckles. There was no knocker or bell. He stood waiting. Silence from within. He knocked again. Lena called down from the balcony above, ‘I’m coming.’ A moment later she opened the door. He thrust the flowers at her. ‘So, here you are!’ There was an odd momentary awkwardness between them.
She took the flowers and said, ‘So here I am.’ She looked at the flowers. ‘Thank you. They’re lovely.’ Then she saw Ed’s painting and her face lit up. ‘Oh, you brought it. You’re wonderful!’
He said, ‘The kitchen feels a bit empty without her and that yellow-eyed cat.’
She said, ‘You should keep it then. Really, it belongs in the cottage.’
He said, ‘She belongs with you. You must have her with you.’ He turned the picture face out and set it against the bottom of the wall. The colours were bright in the daylight, the yellow eyes of the cat vivid.
Lena and he stood looking at each other, uncertain what was to come next. Then, at some inner prompting, they hugged each other tightly. A flicker of arousal s
urprised him, a touch of their ancient Melbourne past. He stepped away. ‘It’s bloody good to see you!’
She laughed, delighted, colour coming into her cheeks. ‘You sound as if you mean it.’
‘I do mean it. I need you, your friendship. You learn stuff about yourself living alone in that valley.’
She took his hand. ‘You must miss Ray terribly. I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to him. He was the life of that place. Come in and see my house. Have you brought a bag or something? Are you staying?’
‘I came as I am. I didn’t know if you’d want me to stay.’
‘What an idiot you are,’ she said fondly. ‘Of course I want you to stay. Why wouldn’t I want you to stay?’
She was wearing a black t-shirt and jeans, her old Italian sandals on her feet and a red and green bandeau over her hair. He picked up Ed’s painting and followed her into the hall. She closed the door. The smell of the house was of an old musty dampness, something from a past time. The hall was dark, the air chill, light coming down from above at the far end, glinting on the wooden banister of the stairs, giving the impression that the upstairs was bathed in welcoming sunlight.
She went quickly up the stairs ahead of him, her tread light and swift. She said over her shoulder, ‘I’ll put these in water and we’ll have a cup of tea. You must be starving. I bought rye bread at the market this morning.’
At the top of the first flight of stairs there was a half-landing, three steps continuing straight on towards an open door, and on the left a further short flight of stairs. She started up the stairs to the left. When he hesitated on the half-landing she turned back. ‘Don’t look in there. It’s my studio. I’ll show you later.’
At the head of the second flight of stairs there was a door immediately to the right, the upstairs hallway continuing on to the front of the house and the balcony, the sun shining directly into his eyes through the front louvres as he turned the corner, the bare wooden boards of the hallway a dazzle of reflected light. They went into the first door on the right. It was a kitchen. The reflection of the sun was shining onto the lino from a window over the sink. The lino was black, a worn black-and-white cowhide lying across it. He set the portrait on the table, leaning it against the wall. His red ochre fighting man was hanging on the wall above the table.
She said, ‘I’ll put your picture in my bedroom. He should be there anyway.’ She lifted his drawing off its hook and set it on the table then picked up the portrait and hung it in place of his fighting man. She stepped back and looked at Ed’s mother, then stepped forward and adjusted the hang of it. ‘There! She’s home,’ she said. And she looked at him. ‘Thank you!’ She kissed him quickly on the cheek.
He said, ‘Ed has replaced me.’ He laughed.
‘That’s not fair. You’ve been promoted to the sanctity of my bedroom.’
‘The sanctity!’ he said. ‘That sounds pretty good. She looks great there. The cat suits you. Ed would have a laugh.’
She picked up his chalk drawing and went out into the passage with it. He sat on a chair at the table and took out his tobacco. She came back a moment later and put the kettle on. While the kettle was boiling he watched her at the sink arranging the flowers in a tall green ceramic vase. He thought of her living here alone, happy and free with her own arrangements, just the woman tenant downstairs. She brought the vase over to the table and set it down then stood back and admired the flowers, the green and red of the portrait above them. ‘I love being given flowers,’ she said and she turned to him. ‘It’s so good to see you sitting here in my kitchen. I’ve been longing to show you my new life.’
He said, ‘That sounds pretty final.’
She made no reply to this but set about getting the lunch. He smoked and watched her making the tea and arranging the slices of dark bread on one of her mother’s old flowered plates which she’d brought back with her. She sliced a cucumber and put the slices on another plate beside the bread. She seemed healthier and more energetic, deeply settled now into her extreme thinness and comfortable with it. It seemed to him that she had achieved a point of contentment with her body, the violence of her old inner struggle, her demon, pacified. For the moment, at any rate.
She looked at the table. ‘It’s not much to offer you.’
‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You should have let me know you were coming. I hope you’re eating properly. You’re looking a bit frayed.’
He laughed. ‘You sound like your mother.’
She thoroughly surprised him then when she said, ‘I suppose I am like Mum.’
‘Do you remember what you said when she died?’
‘Of course I remember. I’d rather not be reminded.’ She was standing at the sink with her back to him, the teapot in her hand, looking out the window at the chequerboard of backyards and small laneways. ‘But actually I don’t mind at all being like Mum.’ She turned around and looked at him. ‘I’m not her, however. Being like someone in some ways is not the same as being them.’
She went over to the bench and put three spoons of tea into the pot. ‘Your flowers are just what this room needed.’ She paused, looking at the flowers in their tall green vase. ‘I never thought I’d say this, but I’ll be a bit sad when Red Bluff sells. The garden was horribly neglected. It looked sad and abandoned. The house needs new people to care for it. A new start with a new family. But all the same, I’ll feel sad. Dr Eady died. Did I tell you?’
He said, ‘I thought at one time that you and I were going to have a life there together.’
She brought the teapot to the table and sat down. ‘That wouldn’t have been possible.’ She considered him. ‘The dreadful tangle of my childhood and growing up was embedded in the fabric of that house. The smell of it when I went through the door with the agent was enough. I nearly turned around and left him to it. If I were to live there, God forbid, those old emotional knots would never have been unravelled for me.’
She poured the tea and handed him a cup.
He said, ‘Would you mind if we sold the farm?’
‘Don’t be silly. We can’t sell the farm.’ She smiled at him. ‘You’re not serious. Our beautiful bathing hole? We both love the farm.’ She sipped her tea. ‘It’s where you’ve found your voice as a writer. It’s where I found my way as an artist. It’s going to take time for us to work it all out, I know that. But we will. We’re going on, you and I, but differently, aren’t we? You said you need me. I need you too. We’re part of each other. We need us. We’ve done it together all this way.’
‘We’re not doing it together now. I’m alone there. I can’t stand it.’
‘Yes, I know, it must be horribly lonely for you, and now without Ray, but we grieve and then we go on, don’t we? And you’re able to write there. It’s making sense for you. I thought you were happy.’ She was frowning, a tight furrow between her brows, a grey shadow in the circles beneath her eyes, as if the sun had gone in.
He said, ‘It’s not that simple.’
‘How’s the Exmoor book going?’
‘It’s nearly done.’
‘That’s wonderful! And you feel good about it?’
‘Yes I do. I think it’s just as good as “Comrade Pawel”. Just as real. Even more real in a way.’
‘We went to the farm so you could write in peace. Now that’s what you’re doing. You can’t sell the farm just because you feel a bit lonely. You can’t just give up. Where would you go? It’s unthinkable.’
He realised she probably imagined he was thinking of moving in with her once the farm was sold. The idea obviously appalled her. ‘Anyway, it’s your farm,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose I can sell it if you won’t.’
She looked up at him sharply. ‘How can you say that? The farm is ours. Your name’s on the title beside mine.’
He took a slice of the buttered rye bread and bit into it. ‘You needn’t think I’m going to turn up here looking for a home. It was your money.’ He hated
to hear himself saying this.
‘It was Mum’s money. Mum and Dad’s. Not mine. I didn’t do anything to earn it any more than you. And anyway, you’ve done all the work there.’ She looked down at the bread and cucumber on her plate, her face sad. ‘I don’t want to talk about selling the farm.’
‘It’s okay for you; you’ve got your new friends and the college and you live in the middle of the city. There’s action going on around you all the time. I’m stuck up there on my own with the mail run and no one to talk to. You’ve gone. Ray’s dead. And Martin’s gone to Israel to be with his family.’
She touched the bread but didn’t pick it up. He thought of a thwarted child. ‘What am I supposed to do about sex?’ he said. ‘I live like a monk up there.’
Her eyes were brimming with tears. ‘Stop this. Please.’
‘You and I,’ he said, ‘we haven’t had sex for years. I feel like a cripple. Emotionally.’ He had touched a sensitive nerve with her.
She said coldly, ‘If sex is so important to you, find a mistress.’
‘Where am I supposed to find a mistress? A mistress! You make it sound as if I’m looking for a mechanical transaction.’
‘There are women in Araluen. In Braidwood. In Canberra.’ Her voice was like stone. ‘Get out and meet people.’
‘And you wouldn’t mind if I had a relationship with another woman? A full-on sexual relationship? You wouldn’t mind that?’
She said steadily, ‘I would hate you for it.’ She looked up at him. ‘I’d kill you.’
‘So, I get a mistress, then you kill me? Is that the idea? Brilliant.’
‘I’m just telling you the truth. Being reasonable has nothing to do with any of this. If you were fucking someone else I would hate you. Forever.’
‘Well, I don’t have a mistress, do I? So don’t go working yourself up into a state of purple hatred about it. And I’m not likely to meet anyone anyway. Am I? Think about it. That’s not me. I live like a monk because the truth is in some way it suits me to live like a monk. But I don’t find being a monk easy. I don’t find it satisfying and warm and encouraging to have to talk to people along the mail run over their garden gate three times a week and hear that Daisy had her calf and the tomato crop is lighter this year than last year. I have empathy, but not that much. And Toby misses you. He’s sulking. Did you know that? He’s waiting for you to come home. Dogs know stuff we don’t know.’