Tim

by Colleen McCullough

  "This is your room, Tim," she said, showing him a plain but big bedroom with white walls and furniture; it looked rather like a nun's cell. "I thought perhaps if you like coming here you might think about what color you'd like your room painted, and what kind of furniture you'd like in it. We could shop for it one day in the city."

  He could not reply, too excited and overcome with the whole experience to assimilate this fresh delight. She helped him unpack his suitcase and put his few things in the empty drawers and cupboards, then she took him by the hand and led him out to the living room.

  Only here had she made major changes in the actual construction of the house, which had once possessed a dark, poorly lit living room extending the entire length of the front veranda. She had pulled the outer wall away piecemeal and replaced it with floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors all the way along, so that when the weather was good there was nothing between the living room and the open air.

  The view from this room was breath-taking. The grass sloped downward to the bright yellow sand of the sunny, immaculate little beach, the blue water of the Hawkesbury lapped gently along its border, and on the far side of the wide river wonderful cliffs, splendidly crowned with forest, rose to meet the clear, high sky. The only sounds of man to intrude were those coming from the river; the put-put of outboard motors, the chug of excursion ferries, the roar of speedboats towing water skiers. But the birds screeched and caroled from every tree, the cicadas deafened, the wind moaned softly as if filtered through the sighing branches.

  Mary had never shared her retreat with anyone before, but on many occasions she had rehearsed the imaginary conversation she and her first guests would have. They would exclaim and marvel over the view, pass endless comments on everything. But Tim said nothing; she had no idea how much assessment and comparison he could make. That he thought it "lovely" was apparent, but he thought everything was "lovely" that didn't make him unhappy. Was Tim capable of gradations of happiness? Did he enjoy some things more than others?

  When she had done her own unpacking and stocked the kitchen, she got him his lunch. He said very little as the meal progressed, chewing steadily through all the food she put in front of him. Unless he was starving or upset, his table manners were impeccable.

  "Do you swim?" she asked him after he had helped her wash the dirty dishes.

  His face lit up. "Yes, oh, yes!"

  "Then why don't you change into your swimming trunks while I finish up here, then we'll go down onto the beach. All right?"

  He disappeared immediately, returning so quickly that she had to make him wait while she tidied up the last few odds and ends around the kitchen. Carrying two canvas deck chairs, an umbrella, towels, and various other bits of beach paraphernalia, they staggered laden down to the sand.

  She had settled herself into her deck chair and opened her book before she realized that he was still standing looking at her, puzzled and apparently distressed.

  She closed her book. "What's the matter, Tim? What is it?"

  He fluttered his hands helplessly. "I thought you said we were going swimming!"

  "Not we, Tim," she corrected gently. "I want you to swim to your heart's content, but I never go into the water myself."

  He kneeled beside her chair and put both his hands on her arm, very upset. "But then it isn't the same, Mary! I don't want to go swimming all by myself!" Tears sparkled on his long fair lashes, like water beading on crystal. "Please, oh please don't make me go in all by myself!"

  She reached out to touch him, then drew her hand away quickly. "But I don't have a swimsuit with me, Tim! I couldn't go in even if I wanted to."

  He shook his head back and forth, growing more and more agitated. "I don't think you like being with me, I don't think you like me! You're always dressed up as if you're going into town, you never wear shorts or slacks or no stockings the way Mum does!"

  "Oh, Tim, what am I going to do with you? Just because I'm always dressed up doesn't mean I don't like being with you! I don't feel comfortable unless I'm all dressed up, it's as simple as that. I just don't like wearing shorts or slacks or no stockings."

  But he didn't believe her, and turned his head away. "If you were having fun you'd wear the sort of clothes Mum does when she's having fun," he persisted stubbornly.

  There was a long silence, incorporating, though Mary didn't realize it, their first duel of wills. In the end she sighed and put her book down. "Well, I'll go inside and see what I can find, only you must promise me faithfully that you won't play tricks on me in the water, duck me under, or disappear on me. I can't swim, which means you'll have to look after me all the time I'm in the water. Do you promise?"

  He was all smiles again. "I promise, I promise! But don't be long, Mary, please don't be long!"

  Though it galled her tidy soul to do so, Mary eventually put on a fresh set of her customary white cotton underwear, and over it one of her gray linen button-down-the-front weekend dresses which she hacked into briefer form with a pair of scissors. She cut the skirt off at mid-thigh, ripped the sleeves out and lopped the neck away until her collar bones were exposed. The cutting was naturally neat, but there was no time to turn a hem or put on facings, which irritated her and put her out of humor.

  Walking down to the beach she felt horribly naked, with her fish-belly white legs and arms and the support of girdle and stockings absent. The feeling had little to do with Tim; even when she was totally alone for days, she always put on every layer of clothes.

  Tim, an uncritical audience now that he had got his own way, danced up and down gleefully. "Oh, that's much better, Mary! Now we can both go in swimming! Come on, come on!"

  Mary waded into the water with shuddering distaste. As fastidious as the most disdainful of cats, it was all she could do to make herself continue wading out deeper, when what she wanted to do was turn tail and run back to her comfortable, dry deck chair. Displaying the important maturity of a very young male placed in sole charge of a treasure, Tim would not let her go out beyond the point where the water reached her waist. He hovered all around her like a sticky little fly, anxious and confused. It was no use; he could sense that she hated it, and she knew she was spoiling his day. So she suppressed a strong shudder of revulsion and dunked herself down to the neck with a gasp of shock at the coldness, and an involuntary laugh.

  The laugh was all he was waiting to hear; he began to frolic around her like a porpoise, as at ease and at home in the water as any fish. Forcing herself to smile and slapping the palms of her hands on the surface of the water in what she hoped was a good imitation of someone thoroughly enjoying a dip, Mary blundered about after him.

  The water was exquisitely clear and clean, her disarticulated feet wobbled like sickly white blancmange on the sandy bottom whenever she looked down, and the sun rested on the back of her neck like a warm and friendly hand. After a while she began to enjoy the feel of the mildly stinging saltiness; it stimulated and exhilarated, and to submerge to the shoulders in delicious, weightless coolness with the full strength of the sun rendered suddenly impotent was truly marvelous. The vulnerability of her lack of clothes faded, and she began to luxuriate in feeling her body so free of restriction.

  She did not lose quite all her good sense, however, and after twenty minutes or so she called Tim to her side. "I must go out now, Tim, because I'm not used to the sun. See how white I am, and how brown you are? Well, one of these days I'll be as brown as you, but I have to do it very slowly, because the sun burns white skins like mine and it could make me very sick. Please don't think I'm not having fun, because I am, but I really must get into the shade now."

  He accepted this calmly. "I know, because when I was a little boy I got so sunburned one day I had to go to the hospital. It hurt so much that I cried all day and all night and all day and all night. I don't want you to cry all day and all night, Mary."

  "I tell you what I'll do, Tim, I'll sit under the shade of my umbrella and watch you. I promise I won't read, I'll just watc
h you. Is that all right?"

  "All right, all right, all right!" he sang, playing at being a submarine but nobly refraining from torpedoing her.

  Making sure she was entirely shielded by the umbrella, Mary spread her dripping body along the deck chair and mopped her face. The bun at the back of her neck was trickling water down her spine in a most annoying way, so she took the pins out and shook her hair over the back of the chair to dry. She had to admit that she felt wonderful, almost as if the salt water possessed medicinal value. Her skin tingled, her muscles were slack and her limbs heavy. . . .

  . . . She was paying one of her infrequent visits to the beauty parlor, and the hairdresser was rhythmically brushing her hair, one-two-three, one-two-three, tugging at her scalp each time the brush engaged and drawing the tug out deliciously as the brush traveled down the length of her hair. Smiling with pleasure, she opened her eyes to find she was not in a beauty parlor at all, but lying in a deck chair on the beach, and that the sun was slipping down so low behind the trees that shadows had blanketed the sand completely.

  Tim was standing behind her with his head bent over her face, playing with her hair. Panic overwhelmed her; she sprang away from his touch in inexplicable terror, snatching at her loose hair and scrabbling frantically in the pocket of the cutdown dress for the pins. A safe distance away and more fully awake, she turned to look at him, eyes dilated in fright and heart thumping.

  He still stood in the same spot, gazing at her out of those incredible eyes with the peculiarly helpless, agonized expression she only saw when he knew he had done wrong but did not understand what it was he had done wrong. He wanted to atone, he wanted so badly to understand what sort of sin he had unknowingly committed; at such times he seemed to feel his exclusion most acutely, she thought, like the dog which does not know why its master kicked it. Utterly at a loss, he stood wringing his hands together, mouth slack.

  Her arms went out to him in a gesture of remorse and pity. "Oh, my dear! My dear, I didn't mean it! I was asleep and you frightened me, that's all! Don't look at me so! I wouldn't hurt you for all the world, Tim, truly! Oh, please don't look at me like that!"

  He avoided her hands, holding himself just out of her reach because he wasn't sure if she meant it or not, if she wasn't just trying to soothe him.

  "It was so beautiful," he explained timidly. "I just wanted to touch it, Mary."

  She stared at him, astonished. Had he said "beautiful?" Yes, he had! And said it as if he really knew what the word meant, as if he understood that it was different from "lovely" or "nice" or "super" or "grouse" or "beaut" in degree, these being the only adjectives of praise she had heard him use. Tim was learning! He was picking up a little of what she said, and interpreting it correctly.

  She laughed at him tenderly and went right up to him, taking his reluctant hands and gripping them strongly. "Bless you, Tim, I like you better than anyone else I know! Don't be annoyed with me, I didn't mean to hurt you, really I didn't."

  His smile came out like the sun, the pain faded from his eyes. "I like you too, Mary, I like you better than anyone except Pop and Mum and my Dawnie." He paused thoughtfully. "I think I like you better than my Dawnie, actually."

  There he went again! He had said "actually," just the way she did herself! Of course, to a large extent it was simply parroting, but not entirely; there was a suggestion of sureness about his usage.

  "Come on, Tim, let's go inside before it gets chilly. When the evening breeze comes up the river it cools things down awfully fast, even at the height of summer. What would you like for your supper?"

  After the supper had been eaten and the dishes washed and put away, Mary made Tim sit in her one comfortable armchair, then looked through her records.

  "Do you like music, Tim?"

  "Sometimes," he answered cautiously, craning his neck to see her as she stood behind him.

  What would appeal to him? The cottage was actually better equipped with the kind of music he might like than the house in Artarmon, for she had brought all her old, outgrown tastes here. Ravel's Bolero, Gounod's Ave Maria, Handel's Largo, the march from Aida, Sullivan's Lost Chord, the Swedish Rhapsody, Sibelius' Finlandia, melodies from Gilbert and Sullivan, Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance march: they were all there with dozens of other selections equally rich in mood and melody. Try him on stuff like this, she thought; he doesn't care if it's hackneyed, so see how it goes.

  Overwhelmed, he sat entranced and all but physically inserted himself into the music. Mary had been doing some reading on mental retardation, and remembered as she sat watching him that many retarded people had a passion for music of a fairly high order and complexity. Seeing that vivid, eager face reflecting every mood change, her heart ached for him. How beautiful he was, how very beautiful!

  Toward midnight the wind coming up the river from the sea grew cooler still, gusting in through the open glass doors so vigorously that Mary closed them. Tim had gone to bed about ten, worn out with all the excitement and the long afternoon of swimming. It occurred to her that he might be cold, so she rummaged in the hall closet and unearthed an eiderdown to put over him. A tiny kerosene lantern was burning dimly beside his bed; he had confided to her, rather hesitantly, that he was afraid of the dark, and did she have a little light he could keep near him? Treading noiselessly across the bare white floor with the eiderdown hugged close in her arms in case it brushed against something and made a sound, Mary approached the narrow bed.

  He was lying all curled up, probably because he had grown cold, his arms wrapped across his chest, knees almost touching his chest. The blankets had half slipped off the bed, baring his back to the open window.

  Mary looked down at him, hands twisting within the cuddly folds of the eiderdown, mouth open. The sleeping face was so much at peace, the crystal lashes fanned down across the lean planes of his cheeks, the wonderful golden mass of his hair curling around his perfectly shaped skull. His lips were slightly turned up, the sad little crease to their left side lending the smile a Pierrot quality, and his chest rose and fell so quickly that for a moment she fancied him dead.

  How long she remained staring down at him she never knew, but at length she shivered and drew away, unfolding the eiderdown. She did not attempt to pull the blankets up around him, contenting herself with straightening them on the bed and tucking them in, then dropping the eiderdown over his shoulders and twitching it into place. He sighed and moved, nuzzling into the warmth, but in a moment he had slipped back again into the world of his dreams. What did a mentally retarded young man dream about, she wondered: did he venture forth as limited in his nocturnal wanderings as he was during his waking life, or did the miracle happen which freed him from all his chains? There was no way to know.

  After she left his room Mary found the house unbearable. Shutting the glass doors silently, she crossed the veranda and descended the steps to the path which led down to the beach. The trees were tossing restlessly in the grip of the wind, a mopoke was calling, "more pork! more pork!," sitting with his round owl's eyes blinking from the blurred darkness of a low branch that drooped over the path. Mary glanced at the bird without really seeing him, and the next moment ran into something soft and clinging. As it stuck to her face she gasped in fright, then realized it was a spider's web. She felt all over herself cautiously, dreading the thought that the web's owner might be roaming on her somewhere, but her hand encountered nothing more than her dress.

  The beach fringes were littered with dead branches; Mary gathered them in her arms until she had enough to build a fire, then she stacked them in the middle of the sand near a convenient rock and put a match to the twigs at their base. The cold sea breeze at night was the East Coast's saving grace, but it was hard on the human body, sweltering all day and then chilling to the bone at night. She could have gone back to the house for a sweater, but there was something very friendly about a fire, and Mary needed comfort desperately. When the flames were spitting and spurting she sat herself on the rock and spread
her hands out to warm.

  Rocking leisurely back and forth upside down by its tail from a nearby tree, a possum stared at her intently from wise round eyes, its sweet face apprehensive. What an odd creature she was, squatting before the glaring thing he knew only as a danger, with the light throwing bizarre shadows in ever-changing patterns across her. Then he yawned, plucked a loquat from the branch above him and munched it loudly. She was nothing to fear, just a hunched-up woman with a face drawn in pain, not young or pretty or enticing.

  It had been a long time since pain had been a part of her life, Mary reflected, chin in' hand; she had to go all the way back to a little girl in an orphanage dormitory, sniffling herself to sleep. How long it had been then, so lonely there had been times when she had wished for the friendly ignorance of death. People said a child's mind could not comprehend or long for death, but Mary Horton knew differently. There was no memory of a home, of loving arms, of being wanted; her desolation had been one of pure, unrecognized loss, for she could not hunger after something she did not know existed. She had thought her unhap-piness was rooted in her unattractiveness, the hurt that came when her adored Sister Thomas passed her by, as usual, for a child who was prettier and more appealing.

  But if her genes had not endowed her with personal allure, they had carried the codes of strength; Mary had disciplined herself as she grew up, until by the time she was fourteen and the moment came to leave the orphanage, she had learned to subjugate and crush unhappiness. After that she had ceased to feel on a human, emotional level, contenting herself with the pleasure she got out of doing her job well and watching her savings grow. It had not been an empty pleasure exactly, but it had not softened or warmed her either. No, life had not been empty or lacking in stimuli, but it had been utterly devoid of love.

  Never experiencing the stirrings of a maternal drive or the urge to seek a mate, Mary was not capable of gauging the quality of her love for Tim. Indeed, she did not even know whether what she felt for Tim could rightly be called love. He had simply become the pivot of her life. In every waking moment she was conscious of Tim's existence, he sprang to her mind a thousand times a day, and if she thought, "Tim," she found herself smiling or she felt something that could only be called pain. It was almost as if he lived within her mind as an entity quite distinct from his real being.