Hold

by Kirsten Tranter

  I wondered whether the glimpse of plaid shirt I had seen at the bar had really been Kieran, earlier on. I remembered that moment of recognition, when I had seen Conrad in him. All those other times, too, the mistaken faces and backs and silhouettes in cars and streets and on buses, and the sadness of letting them go, letting them be who they were and not him. I let them go. I let them go every time. But I could bring him back.

  It was a wish I had made so many times. In the weeks immediately afterwards it had hummed in my thoughts constantly like a mindless drone. When the shock wore off it would come at me sometimes unawares, and sometimes I would fight it and sometimes I would give in to it. I knew it was unwise to inhabit it too fully, that it was a curse in disguise. Every other time it had delivered me straight to a sense of sinking down in deep water, knowing I had to fight to leave it aside, to get back to the surface. But now it felt light and dry as hot sun on burnt skin, easy as breathing. The wish made a magic space around itself, a pocket of isolation from real time, real life. It didn’t feel like infidelity; it felt like stepping into a different life, stepping outside time, outside myself.

  Midnight. Five minutes. I pressed send. The chill left my skin.

  At yr service.

  *

  The gate swung open as I lifted my key to the front door, but I waited until I was inside before turning around to see him standing at the bottom of the low steps up to the verandah, swaying a little, hands in his pockets. He was all lit up in the halogen glow of the motion-sensitive front light, smiling and squinting up at me with his eyebrows raised. How old was he? Was it possible that he was not yet thirty? He suddenly aged as the front light switched off, leaving only the ghostly light of the street lamps, showing new shadows under his eyes and cheekbones. I beckoned him in, with a short second of guilt as I wondered whether any neighbours would see him, or care. That pocket of insulation from time seemed to envelop us in a hushed bubble. He took my hand and pulled me upstairs, then opened the door in the closet and led me into the room. The door swung shut and it was dark, and neither of us switched on the light. His mouth tasted sweet, with a tang from the beer he’d been drinking. I undid the buttons of his shirt, the plaid shirt that matched Conrad’s. When I put my hands in his hair it seemed to be just the same length, and tangled and smooth in the same way, and I felt myself move with a new, uncanny kind of certainty against him.

  ‘Come here,’ I said, and led him over to the sofa, where he pulled me to him, his hands on my waist. He laid me down, settling my head on the plush armrest, adjusting my body while he kissed me — I was almost taken aback by the confidence of his gestures, feeling my limbs being positioned in a practised way. The sofa felt strangely filled with echoes, ghosts. I imagined him performing exactly these moves at other times, fucking customers or girlfriends on the sofa after closing time, with the lights out, while it sat on the shop floor, waiting for me. Maybe it was unlikely. I had no way of knowing, and it didn’t matter. I ran my hands over his arms and back and kept my eyes open in the dark, where we moved like shadows, and the redness of the sofa was reduced to a silvery black.

  Five

  I was working at home a few days later, a quiet Wednesday, when my phone buzzed. I didn’t recognise the number that showed on my phone, but it was a local area code. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, Shelley? It’s Kieran, from Oxford Antiques.’

  I straightened up from where I had been sitting — reclining, really — on the sofa, computer open on my lap. His voice sounded brisk, professional; it sounded as though he was calling from the shop.

  ‘I remember you said you were interested in buying a lamp.’

  ‘Did I? I mean, yes, I need a lamp. For the room.’

  ‘For the room with the sofa, that’s what I thought.’

  I waited for him to continue. A siren sounded in the background.

  ‘We just got one in and I thought it might be a good match.’

  ‘That’s so thoughtful of you. Thanks.’

  ‘I could put a hold on it for you. If you want to come by and see it.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘It’s a standing lamp, fairly tall; brass but not shiny, you know what I mean . . . I think it’s nineteen-thirties, maybe early forties . . .’

  I let him talk for a while, describing the glass shade, the heavy base, the way it could be adjusted to various angles, the length of the cord, the type of switch, the wattage of the bulb it would take.

  ‘It sounds perfect.’

  ‘So you want to come in to see it?’

  ‘No. I’ll buy it. Can I do that? Can you just bring it over?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and I heard pleasure and relief in his voice. ‘Why don’t I bring it over and you can write me a cheque. Or cash. If you like the lamp, if you want it.’

  ‘I’m home right now.’

  A couple of seconds passed; I heard muffled voices, as though he’d covered the phone with his hand while he talked with someone else. ‘I can be with you in about twenty minutes.’

  ‘I’ll see you then.’ I put the phone down and closed the computer, and wondered whether I had time for a shower.

  *

  I decided to wait for him on the sofa; I had left the front door ajar so he could let himself in. I had showered, and then had been unable to decide what to wear, and in the end stayed in my dressing gown, an old silk kimono. When Kieran came through the door with a lamp in his hands it surprised me; I had forgotten that he was bringing it, that there was a pretext for the visit.

  ‘Special occasion?’ I asked, inspecting his suit.

  He smiled and pulled at his tie to loosen it. ‘I’m doing a valuation later today. Big property over in Vaucluse. Family’s downsizing.’ He shrugged. ‘I think the husband’s either going to jail or he’s done a runner. Anyway. Here’s your lamp.’ He set it down just next to the sofa and glanced around the room with the plug in his hand, looking for a socket. I tried to remember whether there was one; I had never had a reason to use one in here before. He found one eventually in a corner near the window and plugged the lamp in, then pulled a light globe from his jacket pocket.

  Conrad had rarely worn suits; he owned just one, an old charcoal grey outfit that always made him look more disreputable than less, the few times I had seen him in it. Kieran’s suit fitted him better, but had something of the same look, the jacket tailored just a little too loosely around the shoulders. His was blue, and made from a lighter fabric. The resemblance between the two men had been more obvious in the plaid shirt. He shrugged the jacket off and laid it over the back of the sofa before he fitted the new globe.

  ‘Let’s see if this works,’ he said, and pressed the switch set into the cord. The lamp brightened with a quick buzz.

  He smiled, and put his hands on his hips in that way I was coming to recognise. ‘Sit down,’ he said, glancing at the sofa. I sat, and wondered whether he was going to arrange me again like he’d done the other night. The lamp cast a cold light on my skin, more like daylight than the soft glow of other lamps in the house with their pale linen shades. The stand had a hinge two-thirds of the way up, so that the lamp could be bent, and another near the glass shade. Kieran bent it carefully and adjusted the angle of the light so that it shone on me even more directly.

  ‘Open your legs,’ he said.

  It was the opposite of the other night, when we had been covered in darkness. I was sober, not half drunk on cocktails. The daylight gave sharp, uncomfortable edges to everything, however much the room seemed to insulate us from everything outside. I hesitated, nervous now that he was actually here, then complied. It was easy to recall that sense of stepping outside time, after all. All I had to do was let my focus drift and sink into that resemblance, the contours of his cheeks and eyes, so close. So uncannily familiar. He put one hand on my thigh, and adjusted the light with the other, as though he were training a spotlight on me. My pubic hair shone, the same dark brown as the hair on my head.

  He knelt. ‘I want
to see you,’ he said.

  I opened my legs wider and lay back, one knee over the armrest, my head resting on the seat, and closed my eyes. He lowered his mouth between my legs. I stroked his hair, and clenched it between my fingers as we moved together. I felt the boundary between my skin and the sofa’s velvet covering dissolve, and gravity shifted for a moment, as though I were falling through the cushion of the seat into soft, deep space.

  *

  ‘Do you like it?’ Kieran asked afterwards, as he straightened his tie. ‘The lamp.’

  I sat up and crossed my legs. My thighs were shaky. I had been so conscious of being sober, minutes earlier, but now I felt unsteady, strange to myself, as though the day were unravelling around me into a shape I didn’t recognise, showing me to myself as a person I wasn’t sure I knew. I wanted to rewind the morning, erase it. And then I watched him, his profile, and didn’t want him to leave.

  I touched the stand and pushed it gently, making it swing away. There was every reason for the lamp to suit the room. It made sense to have a lamp in there. But the room seemed to reject the extra object, as though with the addition of the sofa it had reached its full complement of furnishings and didn’t want or need any more. Perhaps the sofa was such a strongly styled piece that it dominated the room entirely, not leaving any space for other things. ‘I don’t know. I mean, I like it, I just don’t know whether it fits in the space.’

  Kieran collected his jacket from the back of the sofa. I wasn’t sure whether I had hurt his feelings or not.

  ‘But it suits the room,’ I said. Using the lamp as we just had seemed to constitute a contract of some sort. It stood there like a kind of witness. I would get used to it. The room would get used to it. I pulled the kimono around myself and sat up straight, took my eyes away from his hair and that familiar shape of the jacket around his shoulders. ‘Thank you — you didn’t even tell me how much it is.’

  He shrugged. ‘One thirty. I think it’s good in here.’

  I found enough cash in my wallet downstairs and pressed the notes, stiff and plastic, into his hand.

  *

  When I saw Kieran a week later, I mistook him for Conrad again. I had just turned the corner into my street, and there he was, two doors down from the house. The resemblance had been slow to occur to me that first time we met, had waited until he raised his hand to his hair in that familiar way. Now it was exactly like all the other times I caught sight of a stranger and thought it was Conrad, that warm tiny fraction of a second where it seemed natural to run into him, and the awful adjustment of memory that followed. The adjustment came this time, but the resemblance and sense of recognition stayed for a long moment, as though some part of my mind was having trouble catching up to reality, or just refusing. For another fraction of a second it was Conrad, even though I knew that was impossible. Then he turned his head at a sound, a sudden thump of bass from a nearby car stereo, and he was a stranger for another moment before I knew it was him, Kieran.

  My only thought was that he had dropped by to see me. It was a flattering idea although it also seemed presumptuous. Did he think I stayed at home all day, doing nothing, waiting for him on the sofa in a dressing gown? I was on my way back from a meeting at the office, dressed in a linen suit that was a mess of wrinkles after sitting for hours.

  He noticed me and smiled. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘You’re on your way home?’ He glanced back at the house. ‘I was delivering a couple of chairs,’ he said. ‘Just a couple of blocks away.’

  ‘Chairs?’

  ‘Folding chairs. For a garden.’ The car stereo stayed loud, turned to distortion, just a bass line.

  He was explaining his presence on the street, I realised, and I felt stupid for being so slow. He hadn’t come to see me. Or maybe he had, on his way back. But if he had, he would have said so. The silence between us went on a beat too long. The car with the stereo revved loudly and drove on, the music fading.

  ‘I’ll let you get back to work,’ I said.

  ‘You’re dressed up,’ he said, giving me that appraising look.

  ‘I’ve been at the office.’

  He took a step closer. ‘Come in and say hello,’ he said. ‘If you’re out later, shopping, whatever.’ He reached his hand inside my jacket and rested it on my waist, warm through my thin shirt. ‘Come in,’ I wanted to say. But he took his hand away, then he stepped back and walked on. I lifted my hand in a wave, expecting him to turn around, but he didn’t. I remembered his hand on my waist, in that same place, days before, pressing harder. Letting that one recollection in seemed to turn my whole body into a busy geography of memory, every piece of skin hot with a sense of recall, sharpening my sense of disappointment. A hand, fingers, mouth here and there. It stayed with me as I walked the few steps home, and fell away when I reached the gate and touched the rough metal.

  The front door of the neighbouring house opened and Rob stepped out onto the narrow porch. He was wearing clothes that looked as though they may have once been white or cream but had been washed too many times with other colours that ran and had turned a pinkish-grey. There were streaks of rust along the sleeve of his shirt.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ he said, cheerful, stretching and pushing his belly out. ‘Shelley, is it?’

  I nodded, opening the gate, and said hello. He scratched his head. Thinning grey hair reached down almost to his shoulders. ‘Listen,’ he said, so suddenly I jumped. ‘I’ve got something for you.’

  What could he possibly have to give me, I wondered? Mail that had gone to their house by mistake? Once an envelope addressed to Alicia had made its way into our mail slot, and I had put it into the rickety metal mailbox that rested on top of their fence.

  Rob pushed his hands into his pockets. He was a big man, with surprisingly slim feet. At first I thought he wasn’t wearing any shoes but then saw he had on old thongs, a size too small so they virtually disappeared under his feet. He pulled one hand out, holding something in it. He beckoned to me, and walked over to the front fence, and I let go of the gate and went to meet him.

  ‘I thought they might go nicely with your gravel,’ he said, holding out his hand, opening it, and I saw a handful of round, greyish quartz stones there, each the size of a small peach pit. Some of them had little marks and striations inside, each one a small galaxy of detail. He gestured towards our front yard.

  The gravel was a mix of greys and sandy colours, a combination that David had carefully chosen. It complemented the sandstone foundation, the iron-grey fence, the pale walls of the house. The pieces were smaller than the stones Rob showed me, but not by much.

  I didn’t want the rocks, however oddly beautiful they were, but it seemed rude to refuse. I wondered if he would expect something in return, and wondered what would reciprocate for a handful of rocks. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘They’re pretty.’

  He met my eyes and nodded, and for a moment he looked sorry for me, as though this gift was meant to be a compensation of some kind, a piece of sympathy. His skin was tanned, the face of a man who works outside, although I always thought of him as indoors, beating metal in his workshop. Days’ worth of silver stubble glittered on his cheeks. ‘I have a friend at the garden art shop over in Marrickville,’ he said. ‘Had an extra order in. I can’t use them.’ His hands were twice as large as mine, with flattened, bitten nails, and it took both my hands cupped together to take the heap of stones, close to a dozen. I thought of that weird bruise on Alicia’s neck, the screaming arguments we overheard, and tried not to picture him using those hands against her. They were callused and rough, dry like Alicia’s had been, but gentle as they tipped the stones into mine.

  I thanked him again. He smiled, showing me surprisingly white, even teeth, with a hole on one side where at least two were missing.

  ‘They’ll match nicely. See you round, then.’ He gave me a low wave and opened the creaking gate before setting off down the street, leaving his front door open. Alicia was probably home.

  I had to set the rocks
down by the front door so I could get to my keys, but I picked them up again once the door was open. I dropped my bag and jacket in the hall and took the rocks out to the backyard, placing them in a pile at the foot of the gum tree. They looked like an artistic, miniature cairn of some kind. My hands felt warm where they had held the stones. I went upstairs to our bedroom, undoing the buttons of my shirt as I went. The space felt cool and stale from being shaded all day. I pushed the clothes in the closet aside and opened the door to the room. Sunlight shone through the window, laying a thick shaft of brightness across the sofa, sprinkling the walls with faint rainbow patches from the chandelier. The velvet was hot against my hand, rough, smooth.

  The room didn’t feel attentive, as it had done that first time I had entered it. There was a strangeness to it, a disturbing sense of independence to the space, as though it were complete in itself without my presence, and I was an extraneous thing. The globes on the chandelier glowed, although I didn’t remember having switched it on the last time I was in here. I pulled the cord; the light in the room barely dimmed. The lamp was on too, I noticed, its light lost in the sun on the sofa, its long neck craning down at an angle. I took off my shirt and dropped it over the arm of the sofa. That feeling, the memory of Kieran’s touch, returned as I looked at it, lying where other clothes had lain, where my head had rested, where my feet had touched, the soles of them, the front of them. I knew how the velvet there felt against my face and my arms. That other echo returned too, the sense of other bodies and presences embedded there. I thought of him on his way back to the shop, probably halfway there by now, and wished he had come back with me, wished I’d asked him to, but in a half-hearted way, entertaining the thought of the desire more than the desire itself. It was late, Janie would be home soon, it wouldn’t have worked.