by Susan Green
‘Well of course, my darling girl, but –’
‘It’s what I want. All I’ve ever wanted. You wouldn’t understand. I want to be a mother.’
‘But not yet, surely not yet. Your art course –’
‘You never listen to me. Art school was your idea, Bliss. Your idea, your plan. Not mine. You never hear what I say. You never pay any attention to what I want. You never listen.’
Insects and snakes, darling. Insects and snakes. The Qantas flight home took a long, long time.
Anne quit art school. We provided the best of care for her healthy and uncomplicated pregnancy, but I had nightmares even after the birth. About the Roman baths. The Pump Room, on top, is all tea-drinking and eighteenth-century elegance, but underneath, where the hot springs are, lurks an underworld of broken old stones. I was holding a baby, a tiny naked newborn, and suddenly it twisted like a fish in my arms and slipped into the steaming water. I jumped in, desperate, but the water was greenish and opaque and I couldn’t see beneath it. Every time I made a grab for the baby, it slipped out of my hands. Minerva turned her shining face away and the cavern throbbed with a dull, deep roaring.
Isn’t that too, too Freudian?
ANNE CAN’T SLEEP
In the perfect bed in the perfect bedroom there would be sex three times a week. There would be soapy sex in the spa and occasionally the husband would surprise the wife with a weekend at some posh hotel in Melbourne – no, not posh, luxe was the word: a luxe suite with fluffy white towels and robes and champagne and chocolates. And the sex would be unhurried and un-awkward and they would both come and then sleep, sleep, sleep . . .
Anne muted the TV as Matty emerged from the en suite. It was a rerun of Sex and the City and she wasn’t watching anyway because she’d been thinking about Matty in the shower. She could smell his soap as he crossed the room. Citrussy. Perhaps, later, she’d taste it on his skin.
‘You watching this?’ he asked, pointing to the screen.
‘No.’ She pushed the off button and followed the line of his arm and shoulder down his back to his neat buttocks. The perfect husband in the perfect marriage. ‘Busy day?’
‘Mmm. And I’ve got to be at the farm early tomorrow. Dad’s worrying about the fences.’ He began towelling his hair. It was fair, worn too long – she was always at him to get it cut – but there were no bald spots and no grey. His face under the damp curly mop was smooth, almost boyish. ‘How was your day? How’s Bliss?’
What if she stretched like a cat and said, ‘Let’s not talk about her. Come here, you.’ Would he still be sitting so far away on his side of the bed – why had she insisted on king-size when she redecorated the room? – and rubbing Eulactol Heel Balm onto the soles of his feet?
He turned towards her and the look on his face was so Matty. Concerned, serious. Here is a decent, thoughtful, caring man and I don’t give a shit about that, thought Anne. I want to forget about my day, your day, the farm. I want a fuck. It’s been too long.
Matty pulled on a pair of old white socks. She’d asked him to wear them because the heel balm was greasy and marked the sheets. ‘Is it as bad as Paula thought?’
‘Well . . .’ Anne reached for a tissue, giving herself time to control the tremor in her voice. ‘She’s a bit out of it with the painkillers, but . . .’ She busied herself with cleaning her glasses. ‘Actually, I don’t know what Paula’s on about. She lets Bliss get to her.’
‘But she’s okay?’
‘She has lost a lot of weight, I’ll give you that. The carers just don’t bother to make sure she eats. I spoke to the Director of Nursing about it. I think they need to get on top of the pain medication. And then of course there’s the heart condition. But she’s not dying, not by a long shot. Not yet.’
‘And how was Maura?’
‘Oh, well . . . you know. The eco-warrior – no fun to take shopping.’
He was putting on his pyjama pants now. ‘I meant about seeing Bliss.’
‘Oh. Yes. Upset. Very upset, actually.’
‘So did she come good? Bliss, I mean. Did Maura get to talk to her?’
Maura. It was always about Maura. ‘Oh yes, they all got emotional together.’
She put her glasses on the nightstand and slid down into the bed. It was years since every night there’d been the promise of skin on skin, and forgetting, and sleep. But still, there was a mild kind of pleasure in the newly changed sheets. They felt crisp and cold against her bare legs. What if she took her nightdress off?
‘Matty?’ She rolled over to face him and put her hand on his chest. Their eyes met for a few seconds and then he said, ‘Sorry, Anne. Too tired.’
She slid her hand down his rib cage towards his hips, but he wriggled away from her.
‘Ticklish,’ he murmured, and turned on his side.
She heard his breathing slow into the rhythm of sleep, but she lay there with her eyes open, looking at the dark.
. . . there’s the heart condition. But she’s not dying, not by a long shot. Not yet.
Anne had only missed a week but everything had changed. She’d stopped in the doorway, immobilised by shock, and Maura pushed past her. Under the thin cotton blanket, Bliss looked like a woman made of sticks. How could that be, in only a fortnight?
Paula nudged Anne forward as Maura dropped to her knees next to the bed and pressed Bliss’s hand to her cheek.
‘Oh, Bliss!’
‘The sun –’
‘What?’ Maura, face wet with tears, looked up at Paula. ‘What’s she saying?’
‘I don’t know, darling. Bliss – Maura and Anne have come to see you.’
Anne steeled herself to move closer. ‘Bliss, it’s Anne. How are you feeling?’
Bliss stirred. Mouthing and mumbling, blurring her words like a drunk. ‘The sun, oh God . . . Greek?’ She opened her eyes.
Paula’s face was flushed, intent. Anne knew that look, and hated it. She turned away when Paula bent over and kissed Bliss’s cheek.
‘What were you dreaming, darling?’ Paula took the withered hand and stroked it. ‘Can you try to wake up now? It’s Maura come to see you, and Anne.’
‘Anne?’ Bliss jerked her head up and said, with a return of her perfect diction, ‘So fucking boring.’
So fucking boring.
They laughed about it later, over a cup of tea in Paula’s kitchen.
‘I suppose it is fucking boring, lying there day after day waiting to –’ Paula looked sideways at Maura and didn’t finish the sentence.
‘She’s not going to die, Paula. Not yet, anyway. Honestly, I think they’re giving her too much morphine. Keeping her doped up so they don’t have to bother with her.’
‘Oh, Mum!’ Maura dissolved into tears again and Paula took her hand.
‘Well, you saw how she picked up once we got her awake.’ Anne sat up straight. ‘I have to say, I’m not overly impressed with that Dr Moran. I’m going to talk to Martine again next week. Maybe a second opinion . . .’
‘And she knew who you were, Maura,’ Paula soothed. ‘She sat up, she offered us tea. She really made an effort, didn’t she?’
‘She did,’ said Maura, nodding, taking a few deep shuddering breaths. ‘And she remembered about the colour wheel, and the watercolour paper and the unicorn-hair brush . . .’
‘Oh, darling!’ said Paula, and Maura burrowed her face into her neck.
Paula met Anne’s eyes over Maura’s head.
‘We’d better get going,’ said Anne. She picked up her phone and put it in her handbag. ‘Come on, darling. I don’t want to be late.’
Anne lay staring into the dark and wished Matty had been interested. It wasn’t that she felt incredibly horny – well, not any longer – but she liked the way sex emptied her mind. Steam-cleaned, blank, and she could turn to her side of the bed, drifting, with heavy limbs and no thoughts and then wake up six hours later to the sound of the alarm. It didn’t have to be great sex. Anything would have done.
Paula
didn’t sleep well, either. Never had, and today she looked shocking. Haggard, great bags under her eyes, and those new violet spectacle frames didn’t do her any favours. She didn’t want to talk about how things were with her and Dave.
Poor Paula. First there was Tony the serial philanderer and now Dave with his moods and failed business ventures. It was funny – mousy Paula and yet both Tony and Dave were outrageously handsome men. Not that Matty was ugly, but Tony had been movie-star gorgeous and Dave, well . . . those big, strong hands, the deep voice, the dark, springy hair. He had hair all over him, probably, like a caveman. Perhaps that was the secret: caveman sex . . .
Anne and her girlfriends talked a lot about sex. Not enough, too much. Boring. Not to mention menopause and impotence and libidos lost or mislaid in the rush. They read self-help books. Vary your routine. Go on a date. Spice things up a bit.
She’d gone to a Loverware party last year and, encouraged by the chardonnay, put some lingerie and a sex toy on the credit card. When the order came a few weeks later, she’d looked at the black fishnet camisole, G-string and oddly shaped plastic thing with a cold eye. She took the underwear to the op shop and put the vibrator in the bin. She told her girlfriends and they laughed at the thought of it burrowing through the landfill, trying to buzz its way home.
She could have done with it right now.
‘Matty?’ she whispered, without really expecting him to wake. He didn’t stir, and she began to scrabble in the bedside table for her earplugs and temazepam.
THE BIRD, A NEST
It was one of those moments upon which my fate hinged, but I didn’t know it at the time. Who does? There was no trumpet blast or celestial huzzah, just a youngish man with a horsy face, buck teeth and black curly hair like the astrakhan collar on Aunt Emu’s winter coat. The Australian accent seemed outlandish after months away from home.
‘Homesick?’ he said.
My eye had been caught by a blur of acid yellow in the window of a gallery, and I’d been staring fixedly at the painting on solitary, expensive display. The gilt-edged card said ‘Mimosa, Antibes’, but it was wattle. Wattle, in Bond Street.
‘Yes, I suppose I am,’ I said. Embarrassingly, I began to cry. Not for wattle; I’m not and never have been what you’d call a nature girl. I was simply lonely and, that day, feeling more than usually orphaned. It was the eleventh anniversary of my father’s death. He had died somewhere near here, on the night of the seventeenth of September – the first month of the Blitz. I’d thought I’d be flooded with memories of my father, but I wasn’t. I’d tried to imagine the sirens, the roar of flames and smell of smoke, the barrage of explosions, the lurid night sky – but I couldn’t do that either. Perhaps if there’d been a vacant block, one of those gaps that still disfigured parts of the city, I could have sat in the rubble among ragwort and rosebay willow herb. It is easier to grieve among ruins than in front of the windows of John Lewis displaying New Hats for Autumn.
‘Never mind,’ said the horsy young man. He patted me on the shoulder. ‘It happens to all of us. You just have to stick it out. I’ve got a mate sends me gum leaves. Come home with me and I’ll put some on the fire and you can cry nostalgic tears to your heart’s delight.’
‘I’m sorry, I . . .’
‘Don’t you recognise me?’ Big smile, bad teeth. ‘Life drawing? My name’s Rob Freeman.’
‘Oh, I – oh yes, I do remember you! You were one of the Army Greatcoats!’
The quarter past ten life drawing class at the Gallery School on Melbourne winter mornings. Through the heavy revolving doors, up the marble steps to the studio, accompanied by Aunt Emu, resplendent in fox furs and feathered hat, in full duenna mode. She’d stay until the teacher – the drawing master, she called him – entered, as if the assembled students could not be trusted, but she didn’t hover. She’d walk among them, chatting easily about materials and technique, while I placed my easel and set out my pencils and charcoal, feeling exposed and ill at ease. I was awkward with the girl students – so sophisticated – and simply shy of the young men. At the last moment, these two figures would stride in. They were ex-servicemen, wearing thick khaki coats, collars up, shabby but somehow dashing, and so much older than the other students. Men, not boys. I was seventeen.
‘And you were the baby art student. We used to watch Dame Edith walk you in. She stared quite fiercely at us blokes and we got the message. You know, we used to speculate that you were either a convent school girl or the heiress to some fantastic fortune . . .’
‘Oh no, neither! Aunt Emu – that’s what I called her – was . . . is . . . my guardian. I don’t know how she got me into the life classes.’
‘Probably because you were very talented.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’
‘I remember my easel collapsed one day and you helped me put it up again.’
‘Oh, I could never resist a damsel in distress. Did I ever know your name?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mr Freeman. I’m Elizabeth Adair.’
‘Rob, please. And I meant what I said. Come home, and I’ll burn some gum leaves for you. You’ll like to meet Judith,’ he said. ‘My wife. She’s a librarian and she writes for My Journal – you know: We’re famous for our fiction. Come on! We’re not far. Only South Ken.’
Was he picking me up? Would I have known?
A woman wearing a black turtleneck and with her thick auburn hair pulled back in a bun was standing over the gas ring. She was stirring a pot and reading at the same time.
‘Judith, look who I found wandering the streets all forlorn. Elizabeth Adair, an old chum from the Gallery School.’
She smiled a greeting but I was distracted. There was another person in the room. A man. My instincts should have told me Run, run, run, as fast as you can but my pulse quickened as he took my hand.
‘Gerry, this is Elizabeth. She’s homesick.’ Rob rummaged around in the box seat under the window. ‘She needs Australia. Quick!’
Gerry must have been about Rob’s age, but he watched Rob with the matches and the gum leaves with the amused indulgence of an older man.
‘Ah!’ Rob stretched his arms wide and sniffed the eucalyptus smoke.
‘Doesn’t have quite the same effect on me.’
‘You’re as sentimental as the rest of us, you just won’t admit it. We just need some billy tea for the whole thing to be perfect, don’t you think, Elizabeth?’ said Rob, putting his arm around my shoulders and giving me a squeeze. ‘But we’ll have to make do with champagne.’
Actually, the precious leaves were wasted. After the first few seconds I was entirely concentrated on Gerry. I was wondering how he fitted into this rather bohemian ménage when suddenly I realised.
‘You’re the other Army Greatcoat.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The other Army Greatcoat. That’s what I called you ex-servicemen at the Gallery School.’
‘Is that so?’ A lifted eyebrow, a quizzical smile. He looked like a sardonic young banker with his dark suit and formal bearing. ‘How flattering that you should have remembered me. And I much prefer Gerald to Gerry. As Rob well knows. Are you holidaying in London, Elizabeth? Have you come for the festival?’
In 1951 it was a reasonable assumption, and in fact the aunts had timed our arrival in May for the Festival of Britain.
‘Sort of. I mean, we did see a lot, but actually I’m studying. Art.’ I felt ridiculous, unworldly, like a child among adults. ‘I have a scholarship from the Society of Women Painters.’
By then Rob had produced the champagne. He popped the cork while Judith mopped up the spilt froth and fetched the glasses. ‘A toast!’ he said gaily. ‘The bird, a nest; the spider, a web; man, friendship.’
‘William Blake,’ said Gerald. ‘Our Rob has a quotation for every occasion.’
Quietly, reading all the while, Judith put the meal on the table.
The talk was unashamedly greedy and specific.
�
�Mushrooms, Rob!’
‘Champignons, mon cher ami. And not from a tin, Gerry, they’re fresh.’
‘The little onions are good, too.’
‘The man at the market called them golden shallots, though they don’t look particularly golden to me.’
‘Did you use leftover wine or open a new bottle?’
‘New wine, of course. What do you think, Elizabeth?’
‘It’s very nice,’ I said. I’d been brought up to believe it was bad manners to discuss food, except to thank the cook. ‘Thank you, Judith.’
‘Oh, I didn’t make it. Rob did. I just heated it. But I am responsible for the stewed apple and custard. And yes, Rob, it’s from a packet. Don’t sulk – I couldn’t get eggs. It’s not too bad.’
‘I like this Burgundy, Gerry.’
‘I thought you would. I got the tasting notes for you.’ Gerald produced a little printed leaflet from his breast pocket and handed it to Rob.
‘Not one of the great vintages of this superb cru,’ Rob read aloud in a mincing tone. ‘But nevertheless with an endearing – are you all endeared, dears? – suavity, and flavours of leather, berries and – and –’
‘And what?’
‘Forest floor!’
When the laughter finally died, the talk came around to me.
‘Elizabeth . . . that’s too long,’ said Rob. ‘Do you mind Liz? Or Betty, Beth, Liza, Lizzy . . .’ He twirled possibilities like spaghetti on a fork.
‘My family called me Bliss.’
‘What do they call you now?’
I shook my head. ‘Nothing. They’re dead.’
‘Bliss . . .’ Judith had a low, almost husky voice. She reached across the table and clasped my hand. For the first time I felt the full blast of her personality. ‘How perfect for you.’
‘Perfect,’ echoed Rob. They smiled at each other, then they both smiled at me.
Something happened in that moment. Don’t laugh, don’t be cynical. That can always come later. See it for what it was. The shell around me cracked as I moved towards their warmth; I was Bliss again, and I was home.
