After She Left

by Penelope Hanley

  Deirdre gasped and pushed the cat off her lap. ‘Who are they from?’

  Janet peered at the back of one of the envelopes. ‘Ms Keira Bolt. I’ll make some coffee,’ said Janet, and left her with the little pile of correspondence.

  Deirdre put them in chronological order, opened them and smoothed out the onion-skin airmail pages. She began reading.

  13 Woodstock Street,

  Bondi Junction

  15 September 1972

  Dear Deirdre,

  I hope that you are very well. It has been many years since we met, but I would very much like to re-establish contact with you.

  Next year I will do the Honours year of my Visual Arts degree at East Sydney Tech. I was thinking of writing about your work as a surrealist painter and a collage artist, if that is okay with you.

  My supervisor is called Heide Johnson and she believes that such a project would be worthwhile and interesting. I cannot get any information about your life from my mother and I was wondering if you could write and tell me about your life and work, if that is convenient.

  Thank you.

  Love,

  Keira.

  Then the February 1973 one was an update about going back to her topic and trying to find out information, even though Jim and Maureen were against her doing it. The next was postmarked May 1973 and was written in a very excited tone thanking her for the bequest of The Silent World. She wrote that it was on the mantelpiece in her room so that she could look at it often.

  Another dated later in May had an imploring tone to it. She was definitely doing her photographic essay on Deirdre and her work, but she needed more information and she needed to find more paintings and collages because a photographic essay needed photographs.

  Deirdre looked up. Janet was sitting in a chintz armchair with an expectant look on her face. She pushed her glasses further up the bridge of her nose and leant forward. ‘Well?’

  ‘Oh, God in Heaven – I can’t believe that poor Keira’s letters have taken so long to get to me! What must she be thinking? This mysterious painting appears – and then nothing!’

  ‘Maybe you’d better make up for lost time.’

  ‘Yes. I think I must go and visit. But I can’t stay with Maureen. I don’t want her to know I’m there, at the start. If I see Keira first, I can break the ice gradually. I don’t want to be an imposition on Maureen.’

  ‘No, be an imposition on someone else.’

  ‘Seriously, who could I stay with? I’ve been a terrible correspondent. I hardly wrote any letters back to Australia. I just lived in the present and painted and had adventures. Oh, God, I’m a terrible person, I suppose!’ said Deirdre, looking mortified.

  ‘Yes, there’s no doubt about that,’ said Janet, ‘that’s why I invited you here. Now, finish your coffee and come with me for a walk on the Heath and we can figure out a plan. Do you have the air fare?’

  ‘Yes, I have some savings tucked away.’

  ‘Well, that’s the first step taken care of. I’m in touch with Geoffrey and I do have Alfred Foote’s address somewhere. We haven’t written for a while but let’s you and I write to him tonight.’

  32

  MAUREEN

  August 1973

  ‘But he’s in danger, Jim!’ said Maureen. ‘We are his parents. If he can’t come here, where can he go?’ She lit a cigarette. ‘Those bikie bullies will hurt him!’

  ‘Mum …’ said Jimmy. They were in the kitchen and Maureen had automatically put the kettle on. ‘They’re more than bullies, they’re pretty violent.’

  ‘He can’t stay here,’ said Jim.

  Maureen was shocked. ‘If we’re not here for our children, what are we here for?’

  Jim said nothing.

  Maureen said, ‘Can’t you see that Jimmy is my priority? I’m his mother!’

  ‘And you’re my wife.’ Jim turned from Maureen to Jimmy and said, ‘I’ve had just about enough of your shenanigans. You get yourself into these things because you have never learnt that your actions have consequences. You can go and find protection somewhere else.’

  Jimmy took his helmet from the table and started pulling on his leather gloves.

  ‘Wait, Jimmy,’ said Maureen. ‘Jim, you can’t be serious. Think about it!’

  ‘I have thought about it. We raised them to be morally upright, responsible human beings – and they grow up to be juvenile delinquents and anarchists! It’s gone beyond a joke. He’s got himself into this situation and he can get himself out of it.’

  The kettle began its high-pitched squeal. Maureen switched it off. She said, ‘Jimmy, wait. I’m coming with you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m serious.’ She walked quickly to the bedroom and grabbed her cardigan and bag, and they were out the door before Jim said a word. The whole scene had a bizarre unreality to it, as if she were acting in a play. But she was sure of her lines and she knew that she had to exit the stage.

  Jimmy gave her the helmet plus his leather jacket, hopped on his Triumph 650 and waited for her to get comfortable on the back. He kicked the spark plug into action. ‘Hold on tight,’ he shouted above the revving noise.

  ‘Tightly,’ she yelled. ‘A verb must be qualified by an adverb, not an adjective.’

  They both laughed as they sped off into the afternoon.

  33

  KEIRA

  August 1973

  Keira was to go round to Alan’s on Saturday morning for croissants and coffee. She walked up to Bondi Road for the 353 to Central then waited only five minutes – a record – for a 433. She was wearing her brown corduroy skirt and a dark pink jumper, black tights and brown leather boots.

  The bus roared through the trafficky buzz of Broadway, past the rows of terrace houses in Glebe, some with peeling paint and skew-whiff shutters and others recently painted in pastel colours. It trundled over Glebe Island Bridge and on through the industrial part of White Bay and Rozelle, then turned down Darling Street.

  At the laundromat Keira hopped off and crossed the road. As she opened the white cast iron gate she tilted her head towards the upper storey windows and called out, ‘Alan! Hello!’

  His head appeared at the far left-hand window. ‘Be down in a sec.’

  He opened the door. He was wearing his caramel-coloured corduroy pants and a cream jumper. She breathed in the familiar limey smell of his aftershave. They kissed and he followed her upstairs to the dining room.

  ‘Oh, no!’ he said. ‘I forgot to get more coffee. We’ll have to have instant.’ He indicated the squat bottle with the red and gold label.

  ‘That’s okay. Mochona Freeze-Dried is good.’

  He plugged the kettle in and spooned the Mochona into mugs. ‘I bought a new book on Matisse,’ he said. ‘Have a look – it’s on the coffee table. Hungry?’

  ‘Sure.’ Keira wandered into the next room and saw the book, a massive tome with the Madame Matisse in Blue Hat portrait on the cover. She hefted it up, took it to the dining-room table, sat down and opened it at a random page. It turned out to be a double-page spread of the three naked women dancing. Keira smiled at the glorious pinks, blues you could drown in and velvety greens, at the effortlessly harmonious lines evoking such joie de vivre. She sat with her hands either side of it, and turned her head to watch Alan bend down to put the tray of frozen croissants into the oven.

  ‘Mmmmm …’ she said.

  ‘Hmm?’ He stood up, looking distracted.

  ‘Has anyone ever told you you’ve got a lovely bottom?’ she said, echoing something he would say to her sometimes.

  ‘You’ve got a pretty lovely one yourself.’ He turned off the burbling kettle and poured boiling water into the cups.

  Keira grinned. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look embarrassed before.’ He stirred their coffees and brought them over to the table. Keira’s nostrils flared with the bitter smell of instant coffee. She held out her arms to him and he came over and stood in front of her. Since Keira was sitting and he wa
s standing, her arms, when she wrapped them around him, were at his hip level, and she rubbed the side of her face against him, feeling him hardening straight away.

  ‘Oooooooh,’ she said. ‘The oven is on very, very low, isn’t it?’ She unzipped his trousers.

  ‘Yes, but Keira, don’t …’ He held her arms and tried to push her back on the chair. She shifted off the chair and knelt on the lino, not letting go of his trousers and butting her head gently against his cock, which was now wonderfully tumescent.

  ‘Never heard such a half-hearted “don’t” – now, lie down on this nice lino and let me have my way with you.’ Keira could feel her nipples hard against her jumper. She pulled down his trousers and he pulled them up again, she pulled them down and he pulled them half up but was prevented by her tugging at them. Then he allowed her to pull them all the way down to his ankles. He sighed and stepped out of them, holding onto her shoulders for balance.

  ‘Keira … Keira … No, no … I don’t think … Oh … you’re impossible.’ He groaned, lifted her up to more or less his level and they stumbled towards the doorway. She grabbed his hand and they went down the three steps into the bedroom. Keira took off his jumper and her own, dragged the zipper on her skirt down, stepped out of it and tugged off her tights. She hugged him, bare breasts against smooth chest, and revelled in the heart-skipping feeling of bliss.

  They fell onto the unmade bed, kissing and kissing. He took one of her nipples in his hot mouth and sucked till she thought she might come then and there. He put the other one in his mouth and kept squeezing the other with his fingers. Keira thought she might faint with pleasure and gasped with the joy of it.

  Her arms were caressing his back and ribs then around down the slope of his hips and between his suede-like thighs, teasing, teasing, keeping her fingers away from his cock deliberately for a while. He kissed her, panting. He shifted his mouth down and sank his teeth into her neck. ‘You’re just so lovely,’ he said.

  ‘You give me goose-bumples when you do that,’ she said, pushing him over on to his back and sliding her body onto his, while avoiding his keen cock, teasing them both. It would have been the easiest thing in the world but she wrestled with his arms and wrangled his body, avoiding the very thing they were both dying for, and she was panting while at the same time laughing with the effort of her restraint.

  ‘Come on.’ He panted and tried to get what he wanted so badly, but she was determined to prolong the blissful agony. They were kissing deeply and he was urgent and sweating but she pushed him away. He pulled her to him and manoeuvred himself so he was very close – one might say a hair’s breadth from – what they both wanted.

  The sheet had become tangled around her leg during their wrangling and she was partly trapped by it and partly by his weight. He pinned her arms down with his determined hands, ran his pointy tongue along the edge of her ear, and when he finally penetrated her it was so powerful that she cried out and could have wept with happiness.

  It took only a few glorious strokes for them both to come and she called out ‘Alan! Alan! Alan!’ into his ear. They collapsed, limp and exhausted.

  She slept briefly, and lay there until he made moves to get up.

  ‘Mmmmm,’ she said. ‘We could just hang around here, where we can be sure of being alone.’ Keira flicked her tongue across his earlobe, back and forth, back and forth. He drew back out of range. She said, ‘Not necessarily in bed. We could just be together all day, go out for lunch, maybe see a gallery or something. I know I’ve been incredibly busy but I should make more time for you. My work’s going okay now so I can afford more free time.’

  ‘Let’s get up. I didn’t really mean this to … Put your clothes on and let’s have a coffee and talk.’

  Keira sniffed the air. ‘The croissants! How much time’s it been?’

  ‘Shit!’ he said and leapt out of bed. He grabbed the pale blue terry-towelling shave coat Keira had given him for his birthday and put it on, tying the belt round his waist as he dashed out of the room. Keira knelt up in bed and looked around for her discarded clothes. When she came up the three steps and into the dining room she was in everything but tights and boots and he had the croissants on a big plate and had put a block of butter and a bottle of strawberry jam on the table beside the Matisse book. He brandished two knives. ‘Sit down.’

  ‘Okay, if you want to order me about like that.’ Keira moved Matisse’s happy dancing nudes a bit further away and sipped her coffee. ‘Ugh. Freezing!’ She took a knife. ‘But the croissants look okay. Well, not very burnt. Alan – is anything the matter?’

  He looked miserable. ‘That coffee’s dreadful.’ He took her mug and poured its dreadful contents into a little red enamel saucepan, then poured his coffee in too, put the saucepan on the stove and switched on the electric burner underneath.

  ‘The coffee’s dreadful? Alan, what’s wrong? There’s something else, isn’t there? What?’ He was silent and she repeated, ‘What?’ He looked so serious.

  ‘Keira, I … I think we need to … see …’ he paused and the rest came out in a rush: ‘to not see so much of each other.’

  Her mouth opened in shock. ‘What?’

  It was hard to take it in. It didn’t make sense. ‘We don’t see all that much of each other as it is. How much less would you like?’

  Her stomach growled. She sat there folding her arms around it. ‘You want to see me less. Less than now, which is not very often.’ She paused. ‘You mean you’d like to see me so rarely that you’re really breaking it off, is that it?’ Her words sounded dull because she couldn’t absorb the meaning properly and was just trying that explanation out, praying it would be a total misinterpretation.

  He said nothing! Her throat was terribly sore and tears started sliding down her cheeks. ‘Ow!’ she groaned.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he said.

  ‘My stomach hurts.’ He put the box of tissues on the table beside her. She grabbed one and blew her nose, grabbed another and used it up too, trying not to let the floodgates open, but her throat had a big, sore lump in it. ‘I just …’ she sniffed. ‘You invite me round for breakfast, make love and then break it off?’

  ‘I’m not breaking it off.’

  ‘You are. Why? What have I done wrong?’ She started crying in earnest, taking tissue after tissue, sobbing and snorting and snuffling into them, then discarding them on the table between her fragrant hot croissant and the still-open Matisse book displaying naked pink brunettes having a wonderful time.

  ‘Keira, it’s nothing you’ve done, you’re a great girl, it’s just that you were spending so much time on your work that we haven’t been seeing much of each other anyway, and –’

  ‘But you understood that, I thought you accepted the importance of this degree for me! You should have said something if –’

  ‘I did understand. I do, and I have my own work too. But I just got used to having more time away from you than I really wanted – at first.’

  ‘This is so unfair! It doesn’t make sense … Oh,’ Keira smacked her forehead with her hand. ‘You’ve met someone else, haven’t you? God, I’m so dim!’

  ‘No. I mean …’

  She stared at him, sitting there so pale under his after-five shadow, vulnerable and young-looking in his sky blue shave coat with his tousled fair hair. Keira’s hands were shaking. ‘You have met someone. When? How long?’ He sat there saying nothing. ‘Tell me the truth! Have you been two-timing me?’

  ‘It’s unfair to put it that way. But I couldn’t go on …’

  Keira burst into a fresh lot of tears.

  There was a hissing noise. They both turned their heads. The coffee was boiling over the rim of the saucepan and onto the stove’s white enamel. ‘Shit!’ he said, leaping up and pulling the saucepan off the burner. ‘Shit!’

  The metal handle must have burnt him. Good, she thought. He turned off the burner.

  ‘You couldn’t go on … what? Seeing us both? How long has this been going
on? Look what you’re doing – forcing me to utter clichés!’

  ‘Don’t be melodramatic. Look, I was going to mention there’s a Godard double on tomorrow night at Sydney Uni. I’d really like to go with you.’

  She did a double take. ‘What? Why would you want to go out with me? Changed your mind? Bored with her already?’

  ‘Look, we’re not married, Keira. And you agreed with me that jealousy’s an outmoded bourgeois concept to do with possession and that everyone is free. In all those discussions we had about hypothetical situations …’ He sat on the chair next to her.

  ‘They were hypothetical!’ She was screaming at him now. ‘This is real! And you’ve been dishonest with me!’

  ‘I’m being honest with you now. I couldn’t go on … I’ve been wanting to tell you.’ He paused and swallowed so hard she could see his Adam’s apple shifting. ‘I’ve been seeing a colleague at work. And when we started seeing each other, well, the relationship was not without latitude...’

  ‘Not without latitude? Is that how you interpreted our relationship too?’

  Alan said nothing. He sat there looking guilty, not meeting Keira’s intense gaze.

  ‘Oh, let me guess: at first you could see other people but now it’s got serious she wants fidelity and has made you an ultimatum, is that it?’ He was silent, setting his jaw, so she rushed on. ‘Okay, it’s a game where I have to guess what happened. And, and … you left it until the last minute and thought you’d just squeeze one more fuck out of me before you broke it off! Is that right?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Or – no, wait – she doesn’t even know about me! And so, breakfast – I mean, why here? Why now? Breakfast is not the usual time to –’

  ‘I didn’t know there was a usual time.’

  ‘You shut up! You made it this early because you’re going out with her tonight!’

  He tried to pat her shoulder. She jerked it away from him as if a funnel-web spider were trying to crawl onto her arm. ‘Fuck off!’