Men with shaven heads embraced nearby, paralysed by the wonder of each other.
‘Come upstairs,’ said Emmie. ‘You see better.’ She glanced at him, on her own ground, sending him up. ‘Unless you want to dance?’ He caught her arms, held them to her as the support band thundered around them.
‘Drop it, Emmie. Just for once. Just for tonight, OK?’
‘OK.’
They sat drinking sour wine at a table on the mezzanine, hands touching as the support band thundered and the crowds danced and waited. It was too long since he had been surrounded by such a blast of sound, such beat. The hedonistic anarchy of the sound was therapeutic. He was grateful to Emmeline. It was her idea.
The local group blared and screamed to an end. Chainsaw appeared to swirls of dry ice, strobe lights and roars of applause. You couldn’t even see the drummer. He was lost in special effects. Occasionally he loomed frenetic from the mist, flicked sweat from his hair and sank once more.
The large man opposite (drunk? stoned?), a man in need of help, spilled his beer. The tide flowed slowly towards them across the table. Emmie mopped with tissues, the drunk held out his hand, Emmie, her smile gentle, gave him the dripping thing. He blew his nose on it and handed it back. ‘Ditch it,’ snapped Robin.
Chainsaw were warming up. The grunge chords, the full tilt power, the guitar/vocal’s strutting hips and rumbling rasp were having the right effect; guitar riffs twanged and scorched and were rehashed with gusto. The band were transfigured, the crowd reaching critical mass. The dust-ridden streams of light swept and soared and soared again above the yelling, the screams, the endless driving thump and roar of sound. He could feel it in his crotch and knew it was a cliché and didn’t care.
Rows of black shapes jumped up and down, pogoing in unison below the stage. The audience were away, gone, lost in ecstasy and dust and the passionate conviction of the true believer.
Emmie clutched his arm. ‘He’s going to dive. Watch the bouncer.’
‘What?’
She slammed her palm on the damp table. ‘Sssh.’
Her face was shadowed, lit from below. Downstairs was a cave, a darkened cave of worshippers pushing and shoving before the lit shrine.
He gripped her arm. ‘Let’s get nearer. Go down there.’
She shook her head. ‘Later. Watch.’
A thin guy scrambled on the stage in front of the bass guitar, dashed across the stage, was chased by a man so tough, so beautiful, so trained to kill that Robin’s heart moved. Emmeline’s mouth was open, her lips wet. The crowd roared their support for the diver. The bouncer was stripped to the waist, a double-headed eagle tattoo moved between his shoulderblades as he ran, his trousers were rolled to the knee, his hands encased in leather mittens, his head cropped. He was a powder-monkey between the smoking decks of HMS Victory. Stooped, effective and hard as nails, he tossed the flyer through swirling gas onto the pogoers and slammers below. The crowd shifted, supported the arms and legs and head for a moment before the diver sank, disappeared, went with the flow and surfaced.
‘It’s regulation,’ yelled Emmie. ‘No stage diving. That’s why he’s here.’
The half-naked figure squatting at the side of the stage was hypnotic. Another flyer appeared, and another, a woman. Each time the bouncer uncoiled, raced, seized and flung with economy. He was pretty to watch. Each time the diver rolled and sank and the bouncer waited for more. His smile was amiable, deadly but amiable. Nothing personal. Chainsaw lifted their game. The crowd were alight.
‘Let’s go down,’ yelled Robin again.
They shoved through the death-trap crowd on the stairs down to the front, to the action and the heartbeat, the anarchic arousal, the sock of excitement of the drums and the noise and the heat as the dry ice rolled and swooped. Robin screamed something at her against the noise, the throbbing in his ears. ‘What!’ She was dancing. Emmie was enjoying herself.
He tried again. Hopeless, but it didn’t matter. He could tell her later of his astonishing discovery. Of ease. Of more than that. Of bliss. What a word. Katherine Mansfield, betrayal, bodice-rippers swam before his eyes. But still it was the word. The bliss of abandoning, of not trying, of not giving a stuff lifted the hair from his head, weaved his legs faster. Sharper than happiness and more ruthless, unsolicited and more dangerous, bliss is transitory and to be seized. Bliss from the cacophony of Chainsaw lifted his heart and head.
‘Let’s go home.’
Robin opened his eyes, saw the light jigging on the mirror at the foot of the bed and shut them again. Emmie was still asleep.
This should not have happened. He did not love Emmeline. Emmeline did not love him. Sex without love is death. An expense of spirit in a waste of shame. All that. But last night had not seemed like that. Anything but. It had seemed … Well. Yes. He lay remembering. What Spiro would call an opener for the eye. And Lisa was dead and all grief is self-pity and self-pity is sin and there is no God but God. Oh Jesus fucking Christ. Robin stormed out of bed, tripped on his abandoned clothes and headed for the door.
‘Where’re you going?’ she murmured.
‘For a pee.’
‘Put the kettle on, would you?’ Emmeline yanked the duvet over her side and snuggled down. Snuggled.
She was sitting up when he came back, the duvet wrapped chastely above her breasts.
‘Didn’t you make the tea?’ she said.
Rob laughed. He sat on the wreck of her double bed and laughed and laughed and laughed. He laughed till the tears splashed on his naked legs, till he mopped his face on his underpants and pulled them on.
‘You take milk, don’t you?’
‘Mmn.’
The room was resolutely shambolic. An old mangle by the window was draped with an unstable pile of clothes, a chaise longue covered in mock leopard-skin sleaze was piled with scripts and books and three pairless shoes and a green hat whose brim was pinned back with a purple daisy. Stills of past productions were Blu-tacked to the wall or hung askew. There was a squash racquet. Leaf-pattern reflections danced in the mirror, reformed and danced again as he climbed back into her bed. The languorous Christ figure with the floating hair stared him in the eye from alongside the mirror. Rob gulped his tea.
‘You brought him in then?’
‘The funny Jesus? Yes, I like him.’
‘It certainly gives the phrase Bride of Christ a new slant.’
‘Your arse is too smart, Mister.’ She was lightening things, defusing so she could slip away from the subject they were talking about. He would not play.
‘Last night …’ he said.
She put up a hand. ‘Don’t say it.’
‘Because we don’t love each other.’
She put down her cup in silence and stretched. Her feet touched the end board, dorsi-flexed, lifted the duvet. She turned; that look of polite enquiry, the head cocked to one side. ‘You think I’m a slut?’
‘God, no. I meant me.’
‘So that’s all right, then?’
Hopeless. He changed the subject. Searched for something irrelevant. Something easy and long ago. ‘What were you and Calvin doing up in the Orongorongos that time? In the pool?’
She blew her nose hard and stared at him. Her night-tangled hair looked even more dangerous. It looked like a pelt, a matted trophy of blood and fur, an end product of slaughter. ‘Walking in the bush,’ she said. ‘Tramping. Why do you ask?’
‘I didn’t know you did.’
‘I don’t very often.’
He saw the skinny legs splashing the rainbow against the tree, the shot-silk chest of the matronly pigeon clattering above Lisa’s head. ‘Who carried Calvin?’
‘Me, in the backpack, but he walked a lot of the way. He was nearly three by then.’ She looked at him. ‘And another guy at the end.’
Sun spots and long shadows were now jiggling above the mirror. ‘Where was he?’
‘Gone for a pee I suppose. It’s years ago, remember.’ She sat upright; the duvet which h
ad reminded him of the whole incident in the first place, or rather not the duvet but its chaste placement when he had seen all and known all, had slipped. She readjusted it and turned to him.
‘Drop it will you? I’ve told you before to lay off. The guy was a friend of mine, the same as Murray is a friend of mine. What do you think I am, what do you think I do? Grow up! I don’t sleep around any more, who would in this day and age, and if I did, what’s it got to do with you? Besides there’s Calvin.’
Her muddled thinking left him breathless. Here was a woman lying beside her last night’s lover telling him she didn’t sleep with men and if she did it was nothing to do with the man she had just slept with. It should have been laughable but it was not. Robin chose his words with care.
‘You’ve always fascinated me,’ he said. She looked at him in silence. ‘You and Miss Bowman. Both of you. Your amorality.’
‘Gee thanks,’ she snarled.
But amoral was good didn’t she see, or rather not necessarily bad. Nothing to do with immoral, quite the reverse, well not exactly the reverse but … It just meant she was non-moral, was unconcerned with convention, didn’t make moral judgements, didn’t speak evil of her neighbours behind the iceblocks like Bernie.
‘What’ve you got against poor old Bernie?’
He was banging the duvet now. ‘You are unconcerned about restrictive traditional morality,’ he said. ‘And I admire that! And I respect the fact that you have a talent for friendship and are generous to a fault. But you’ve got to use your head. Otherwise you’ll get hurt again and again and then you’ll get mad and what’s more you’ll get more mad than you would have in the first place if you’d used your nous. You’re thirty-five years old and it’s time you grew up.’
She sprang out of bed, snatched an old kimono from the mangle and tied it with a vicious tug. ‘You are the most
A slow smile spread across her face, lifted the corners of her mouth and widened. ‘Where’d you leave your car last night? On the road? With any luck both Bernie and Eileen will have seen it, and all three of you can,’ her voice was harsh, stiff fingers indicated direction, ‘go jump in the lake.’
The idiotic school phrase finished him. He was back running to help her, jumping across concrete to defend her against thugs. Last time she had lammed it at him. This time he laughed.
She tugged her belt tighter. ‘Oh, fuck you,’ said Emmeline and marched out.
They drank coffee across the yellow daisies, the naked branches of the cherry tree grating against the silence.
‘What time are you picking up Calvin?’ he said eventually.
She was busy with her dregs. ‘Thea’s dropping him off.’
He watched the slowly revolving spoon, the wrist, the angle of attachment, touched one of the cherry leaves. ‘These are the last,’ he told her.
‘Nnn.’
Everything was dead. Finished, blown, shot to hell. He might as well risk it. ‘Tell me about Alice O’Leary.’
‘What about her?’
‘Everything.’ He leaned forward, put his cards on the table. ‘Please, I mean it. She was here for months and I need to know.’
Emmeline rubbed the nape of her neck. Both hands lifted the mane high on her head, twisted, held and draped the coil over one shoulder. She had other routines involving rubber bands but at least she didn’t fling it about like a demented filly besieged by horsefly.
‘Six weeks.’ Emmeline inspected her fingernails, clenched her hand and inspected them again. He waited. ‘I didn’t like her,’ she said.
He was very quiet, very professional, a mild seeker after truth. He realised how lucky he was, that anyone less good natured, less easy going, as Eileen called her with emphasis on the easy, would have kicked him out long before: a man who had fucked her head off and been fucked back with enthusiasm, who had told her next morning it was all a mistake and he did not love her and followed it up by giving her a rundown on her inadequacies at best, her sheer bloody stupidity at worst. Shame swept his neck, scratched behind his eyes.
‘Why not?’ he said slowly and gently as a second applying ice to the battered face of his charge.
She chewed a red tendril, tucked it away, finished with it. ‘Look, I was only eight or nine. It’s …’
A black and white cat stalked along a nearby fence-top, black paw, white paw, black, then dropped from view. ‘If you really want to know I thought she was a wimp,’ she said at last. ‘She drifted about looking sad and she sort of sucked up to me and wanted what she called talks, I remember, which made my toes curl and she—oh I don’t know—kids sense these things. What was she on about? I kept wondering. She made me shy. You know how tough, how austere Aunt was. She hardly ever hugged me but I knew she loved me, which is all wrong according to those books I showed you in the middle of the night. The recovery ones. I mean it’s meant to be the kiss of death not to demonstrate affection. That’s what makes me wonder about the whole thing. Why I want you to read them to see what you think. But at the time, even when I was little, somehow I knew Aunt loved me even if it meant Emmie O’Malley with the cast-iron belly biking upwind for half her life to another school instead of the one here. I knew she was on my side. And all those years of ballet. Think about it. All that money, support, endless bus rides and her sitting around waiting for me and never a word when I ditched it. She seemed to accept I was me. Different. Not her. Right from the start. Whereas Alice …’
‘You called her that?’
‘I had to call her something, and there she was drifting and dreaming while shadows fell all over the place. There was a sort of, no, not phoniness, but something about her, an unease, a sort of hopeless … sorrow or something.’ Emmie’s hands moved. ‘Oh, I don’t know.’
‘But I don’t get it. You’ve read her books?’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re tough, cynical. Brutal almost. “All grief is self-pity.” La Rochefoucauld couldn’t beat that.’
‘It’s not true.’
‘It is for some.’
She placed both elbows on the table, cradled her face to mock him. ‘You mean the abyss?’ she drawled. ‘Those who can face the pit? “Who thank whatever gods may be / for their unconquerable souls” and stuff like that.’
She leaped to her feet, her legs moving in dreamy concentration beneath her knee-length T-shirt. ‘Strictly Ballroom.’ She circled around the table, her face blank with concentration as she danced her loopy dance, her dip and glide and dip again. ‘The best bit is the old guy dancing all by himself. You see it?’
‘No.’
‘He’s always wanted to break out like his son does—be innovative, imaginative, not strictly ballroom, but he’s scared, or his wife won’t let him or something and he dances how he wants to—alone at night. Sad. Sad. We’ll go.’
Would they? Yes, they would. Apart from anything else, any apologies or concern for her, he must keep talking to Emmeline. Things must surface. If people can forget their childhood memories of sexual abuse, which admittedly seemed to him unlikely, then a house guest who drifted and dreamed and embarrassed a nine-year-old for six weeks must have had more daily impact than had been revealed so far. Robin wanted everything; Alice’s thoughts, clothes, gestures, her walk, everything about her must be laid out for inspection if not dissection, so that he could understand, could dive into the depths armed with underwater camera and spear gun. His casual approach as a student to the lives of authors he had studied astonished him. How could he have been so cavalier about Sylvia Plath, felt that Beckett was entitled to his privacy? The text? Oh yes, of course the text came first but it needed to be clarified and all Emmie had done so far was to muddy the waters. Where was the bitter observer of grief, the steely survivor of the work in Emmie’s memories? Even Alice’s doggerel did not sound to Robin like that of a moist and drifting dreamer.
A cat swung by the tongue
Cannot squeal
The nail has got it.
His image of the dormant lilac
and the locked shed and the all-engulfing tears of the woman filled his mind. It was all very odd. ‘Verr inter—esting,’ as Miss Bowman used to say. He must go and inspect, check on the lilac, and the back bedroom. Something must tell him something.
He was grateful to Emmeline who was loving and generous and loopy and beautiful. Who had revived his interest once more in his research subject. Had breathed life into the house guest and mucked things up, but then nothing is simple, is it. He held out his arms, grinned at his benefactor. ‘Emmie?’
But Emmeline had stopped dancing. She was now washing up, her back towards him, her hands submerged in a plastic bowl in the horse trough. ‘You don’t have to,’ she said as he picked up a tea towel with the Eiffel Tower stamped in black.
‘Don’t be nuts.’
‘No, no. I meant Strictly Ballroom. You don’t have to come.’ She wiped her nose, left detergent bubbles, wiped again. ‘I know your views. You told me last night.’
He was still miles away. He took off his glasses as though that might help. ‘What?’
‘Sex without love. You said. I’m going again anyway.’
What man could be such a monster? ‘I didn’t mean … I’m sorry.’
Her shoulders twitched.
‘You’re always sorry. You’re the sorriest person I know. Maybe she was just no good with kids or something. Some people aren’t.’
Calvin came chugging down the bare hall on his decrepit plastic trike, its rear-end design based loosely on that of a purple-shelled snail, its handles curved like drooping tender horns. He was followed by his friend Ruby pushing a cart, again plastic, but equipped with bells and a klaxon-like wail. She was a tiny brown child, one of those minute little kids you’re surprised to see walking, let alone pounding along behind sirens in pursuit of drama. Her hair was wisps of black, her face cheerful. Bernie’s niece Thea brought up the rear.
‘Hi,’ yelled Emmeline with outstretched arms to swoop. ‘Good to see you.’
‘There’s one thing I haven’t told you,’ she said standing at the gate which leaned beside them.
The House Guest Page 14