Praise

by Andrew McGahan

  ‘If you want to change anything around,’ I said, ‘feel free. You’re paying half the rent.’

  ‘No, it’s okay. It just needs cleaning. And some new curtains. And the walls need washing.’

  ‘The walls?’ I’d never heard of anyone washing walls. I let that one pass.

  We sat on one of the couches and watched TV. We had a couple of glasses of cask wine. Cynthia started rearranging my legs and arms. ‘You sit all wrong,’ she said. ‘You could look so good if you wanted to.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what you want. I’m the one who has to look at you.’

  It made a certain amount of sense. She made me lie back, unbutton my shirt, undo the top button of my jeans. She took my penis out and kissed it and looked at it, talked to it, then put it away. I’d never seen anything like her. Then she started studying my face and neck.

  ‘You’ve got blackheads!’

  ‘So?’

  She pulled my head down into her lap. ‘You can’t just leave them there. They’re dangerous.’ She began pinching the back of my neck.

  ‘Cynthia, stop this ...’

  ‘But some of them are huge!’

  ‘There’s nothing there.’

  ‘Be quiet. I’m concentrating.’

  I let her go. It was nice to be mothered, nice to be bossed. Maybe that was my problem, unresolved complexes. I needed someone to be in control. The difficulty was people kept offering me the opposite. They let me do whatever I wanted, as if I knew what I was doing, as if I had credibility. It’d ruined the few relationships I’d had. Sooner or later the woman had started asking meaningful questions and I gave meaningless answers, and somehow they’d got taken seriously. It occurred to me sometimes that women listened too much, they considered too much, they paid attention to the wrong things. They didn’t just look. If a man was there with them, he was there with them. That was the most important thing.

  Cynthia seemed to understand. She could see I was there with her. I was safely under control. What I said hardly mattered. That was just conversation. Underneath it all, she knew I had no worthwhile opinions. Even on blackhead removal.

  So I suffered it for twenty minutes. She showed me the results. She’d picked out tiny bits of skin and blood. They were stuck under her fingernails.

  I said, ‘I haven’t had a pimple on my neck for years. There was nothing there, you just wanted to make me bleed.’

  ‘Bullshit. You don’t look after yourself.’

  The afternoon passed.

  We started thinking about dinner.

  There was no food in the fridge. Cynthia felt like steak. She was a big meat eater. Steak and chicken. I preferred sausages, or pasta, or Chinese. Things you didn’t have to chew. We decided to go shopping.

  We drove to a mall at Annerley, across the river. We parked and walked around, looking at all the food. Cynthia held my hand. I was her man now. We found a butcher and studied the selection.

  I said, ‘I think I’ll have rissoles.’

  ‘Rissoles?’

  ‘I feel like rissoles.’

  They had them ready made. Garlic, pepper and beef rissoles. Big and round. I bought three of them, Cynthia went for rump steak. Then we found some potatoes, broccoli, and beans. And some Gravox. You had to have gravy.

  We drove home. We picked up a sixpack of Toohey’s Old on the way. Cynthia said she’d cook. I drank beer and watched TV and wandered into the kitchen from time to time.

  ‘Burn the fuck out of those rissoles,’ I said.

  Everything smelt good. I grabbed Cynthia from behind while she stirred the gravy. I ran my hands up under her skirt. I felt like fucking her there and then, over the stove. I was turning into a husband. After one day.

  ‘Not now,’ she said. This is important.’ Maybe she was turning into a wife. She leaned back against me and we watched the gravy bubble.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Not long.’

  We served it on the dining table and turned the TV around. There was nothing much on, so we broke out the Scrabble set and started playing while we ate. Our plates were overflowing. Mashed potato, meat, beans, gravy — no class, but it was what we needed.

  When it was finished we cleared the plates away and concentrated on the Scrabble. Cynthia was a good Scrabble player. Not many people I knew were. I played a lot of Scrabble. You had to believe in Scrabble to be any good at it. You had to be prepared to play strategically, to agonise. Most people couldn’t be bothered, they put down the first word they saw just to end the pain. And they lost.

  Scrabble, if I cared to think about it, was like a lot of things I could see about life. If you really worked at something, the chances were you’d pull it off. The problem was that the success never seemed that good in the end. The struggle robbed it of joy. There was no real gain, no satisfaction. I didn’t want to work at things. What I really wanted was to win without trying, to throw down brilliant words without even having to think, to be a natural.

  I wasn’t a natural. I had a working class brain. It took me time. And then sometimes you just didn’t get the letters, there was nothing you could do. And sometimes they fell into place like a dream. Luck was the real decider. Luck was what it all came down to. Scrabble was exactly like life. And when luck was on your side, when it was running your way, then it was a wilder and richer thing than all the hard work in the world could ever be.

  Cynthia knew it.

  I knew it.

  For the moment, we had it on our side. We were riding it, right there over the Scrabble board.

  The game was close. We sweated over it for about an hour and a half, but Cynthia got there in the end. It was my first defeat in months.

  We set up the tiles and started another game. This time I won. Cynthia was genuinely angry. She hadn’t lost much lately either. She took the pen and drew two columns on the inside of the lid of the Scrabble box. One column she marked with a C, the other with an G, then she put one stroke in each.

  ‘This is going to be serious,’ she said.

  She settled down on the couch. I washed up.

  ‘When do you write?’ she said, when I came back in.

  ‘Whenever. Mostly at night, I suppose. It’s not very regular with the poetry.’

  ‘Am I going to be in your way?’

  ‘God, no. I’m not writing anything at the moment. Nothing has happened to me lately.’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘That might come later.’

  ‘Can I read some of your poems?’

  ‘One of these days, I suppose. They’re pretty negative. Especially about sex. I think you’d find them ridiculous.’

  ‘I wouldn’t make any judgements. I just want to see how you write.’

  ‘Judgements aren’t the problem. It’s letting you know how I think that worries me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’d kill us before our time, that’s why.’

  THIRTEEN

  Next day I filed my first official dole form. The day after that, Cynthia went job hunting. She took off in the Kingswood late Wednesday morning. I had a shower, ate breakfast.

  In the hall I finally met the new neighbours, Raymond and Cathy. Raymond was thin and dark. Fine-featured. He did look Spanish, but there was no accent. Cathy was slim and blond. She had a long sharp face. A fresh cut ran from just below her left eye to the bottom of her chin. It was deep. It had stitches. She wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  Cynthia came back after about an hour.

  ‘Two offers,’ she said.

  ‘Already? Which pubs?’

  ‘The Queen’s Arms and the Brunswick. They were the first two I tried.’

  ‘Which one will you take?’

  ‘The Queen’s Arms, I think. The manager seemed nice enough. He knows you.’

  ‘He knows me?’

  ‘He said you used to work for him. At the Boundary Hotel.’

  ‘A really old guy? Brian?’

  ‘Brian.’r />
  ‘That was years ago.’

  ‘He remembers you.’

  ‘We did get on well.’

  ‘He said he could even find a place for you, if you wanted.’

  ‘What’d you say to that?’

  ‘I said I didn’t think you were really looking.’

  ‘And what’d he say to that?’

  ‘He said he wasn’t really suprised.’

  ‘Well, he’s good to work for. He’d like you. You’ve got the soul of a barmaid and he’s got the soul of an alcoholic. He couldn’t help but like you.’

  ‘The soul of a barmaid?’

  ‘That’s good. As long as the beer and the scotch are running, Brian will keep off your back. He respects the profession.’

  ‘Alcoholics do run the best pubs.’

  ‘Indeed they do.’

  ‘I’ll take the Queen’s Arms, then. The Brunswick is closer, I suppose, but to hell with it.’

  ‘Why did the Brunswick like you?’

  ‘They said I was the first well dressed applicant they’d had in months. They wanted me to start straight away.’

  ‘Well dressed?’ I looked at her. She was wearing the standard long black skirt and white blouse.

  ‘Better than most,’ she said.

  We did nothing all week. We slept long and late, watched TV, drank occasionally. We spent the afternoon planning the evening meals. It wasn’t much, but neither of us was an outdoor person. And it was hot. Brisbane that week was going through something of a heatwave.

  We fucked every night and every morning. Cynthia could’ve done it forever. She already had been doing it forever. I was struggling to keep up. Even after a few nights I was running out of stamina and ideas.

  ‘You have to use your imagination,’ she said. ‘You can’t just get on top and thrust away all the time, it gets boring.’

  ‘I don’t have an imagination.’

  ‘Pretend you have. Tie me up. Get mean. You’re too nice.’

  ‘Tie you up?’

  ‘You’ve heard of it, haven’t you?’

  And I was coming too fast. Or not coming at all. Always at the wrong times. Cynthia didn’t mind so much. My body wasn’t going anywhere. She knew she could get whatever she wanted from it in time. But it bothered me. It was even harder to get imaginative with a prick that you couldn’t rely on.

  Sunday rolled around. It was time we got out. The flat was closing in on us and the old men were becoming cranky up and down the hall. Sunday afternoon was never a good time.

  ‘I want food,’ Cynthia said. ‘I want steak.’

  We went to the Story Bridge Hotel, under the Story Bridge, in Kangaroo Point. It wasn’t far. New Farm was one side of the river, Kangaroo Point was on the other, the bridge crossed between. We drove over and parked in the car park. Inside we got ourselves drinks, ordered lunch at the counter, then found ourselves a table out in the beer garden. It was a good beer garden. There was no sun, only the bridge above us. You could hear the cars and trucks thumping over the concrete slabs.

  The meals came. Cynthia got her steak. It was big. She had a plate of fat fried chips with it. She wolfed it all down. She could eat. I was having fish. A delicate little fillet in light sauce. With salad. It was all the wrong way around. Cynthia was more of a man than I was.

  ‘How did I ever find you?’ she said. ‘I always said I’d never meet the sort of man I wanted because the sort of man I want never goes out to meet people. He’s always at home in bed, or watching the football, or just doing nothing. Just like you. And I found you. How did that happen?’

  ‘You didn’t ask me out for drinks, you asked me over to your place for drinks. That’s how it happened. The difference is significant.’

  ‘It took me a long time to make that phone call.’

  ‘I’m glad you did.’

  After lunch we settled down and drank. We talked. It became clear we weren’t going anywhere. The bar and the beer garden filled up as the afternoon progressed. The normal mix. It was a popular place. Around three a jazz band started playing. We didn’t like jazz, but we stayed on. We had a table and it was a warm afternoon and all the better places seemed a long way away.

  Cynthia asked, ‘You put the Scrabble set in the car, didn’t you?’

  ‘I did.’

  I went out and brought it in. We set up, started playing. We played two games. We won one each. By then the score was seven games to five, in Cynthia’s favour. It was important business. People came over and watched us play. We dazzled them with seven, eight, nine letter words. We drank.

  At some stage someone called my name. A woman’s voice. I looked up and there was Rachel.

  Rachel.

  I’d seen her only three or four times in the last couple of years. Lately I hadn’t even thought about her. But from the ages of about thirteen to twenty-one, she was more or less all I had thought about. She was my past. More or less my only past.

  ‘Rachel,’ I said.

  ‘Hello Gordon.’

  She was smiling. She looked pretty much the same. Tall. Short cropped hair, blonde, a little more blonde than I remembered it. Square face, big-jawed. She had a few large pimples on her chin. Rachel didn’t pick at her pimples. She let them grow till they burst.

  ‘So how’s it going?’ she said.

  ‘Fine. Good. Rachel, this is Cynthia.’

  ‘Hello Cynthia.’

  ‘Cynthia has just moved in with me.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re still in New Farm? I heard you moved.’

  ‘I did, but I’m still in New Farm.’

  ‘And what’ve you been doing?’

  ‘I quit work not long ago. That’s about it. I’m on the dole now. What about you?’

  ‘Not much. Study.’

  Rachel was studying Administrative Sciences at Q.I.T. It was her second attempt at a degree. Originally it was Psychology at Queensland Uni, but she abandoned that around the same time that my own studies were faltering. Then we lost track of each other. I was working here and there around the country and she was unemployed and neurotic and living on Social Security in Brisbane. There was a man. She was in love with him. Hopelessly. She wanted his child. He didn’t love her. For that, at least, I thought he was a fool. Meanwhile Rachel and I still met from time to time, but it was never very good between us. I wasn’t the one she wanted around anymore, and we both knew it. She was depressed, tearful, wildly irrational, walking the streets at night, alone and drunk. I had my own problems. I stayed away. Later she pulled herself out of it and enrolled at Q.I.T. I heard about it from friends. I didn’t know what it meant.

  ‘How is the study?’

  Terrible. Nothing new there.’

  ‘Do you want a seat? Are you here with anyone?’

  It turned out she was there with a lot of people. Uni friends. But she sat down and we organised more drinks. Beer. We all drank beer.

  It took Rachel and me about half an hour to catch up. Cynthia sat mostly silent, drinking. Then Rachel got up and said she was going back to her friends. After she was gone, Cynthia turned on me.

  ‘She wants to fuck you.’

  ‘Rachel? C’mon, she’s had the chance to do that for years. I don’t think she’s changed her mind just tonight.’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘I told you about her. She’s the one I went to school with, back in Dalby. The one I was obsessed with. The one I only ever held hands with. The one I never kissed.’

  ‘Her?

  ‘Her.’

  ‘But she’s ugly.’

  ‘Cynthia, everyone I know is ugly.’

  ‘Well, she’s still in love with you.’

  ‘She isn’t. She never has been.’

  ‘You wouldn’t know. You never look at people. She’s jealous. She hates me.’

  ‘That’s crap, Cynthia. We haven’t even talked in months. Besides, even if she had changed her mind about me, I’d say no.’

  ‘Would yo
u?’

  ‘Of course I would.’

  It was true. Rachel wasn’t for me, life had taught me that much. We’d met each other in the first year of high school. She didn’t live in Dalby, she was from a farm in the mountains, about an hour’s drive away. She boarded in town during the week, for school. Her parents wanted to give her a Catholic education. On weekends she went home again. I was in love with her. I wasn’t sure why. She was a serious girl, there was something incorruptibly sensible about her. No one else at school had it. Throughout the three years that we were at the same school I begged her to stay in town for just the one weekend. There were parties we could go to, things we could do.

  She’d shake her head. ‘Gordon, I’m needed at home, you know I can’t.’

  Cynthia and I finished the Scrabble game. We packed it up and Cynthia brought her seat around closer to mine. She draped her legs over my lap. We drank and talked. She reached over and moved my legs and arms around, getting them right. Then she leaned back, surveying. She smiled at me. ‘My beautiful boy.’ She was my mother, all right. She was crazy. I wondered if Rachel was watching us, what she would think. There was something of the mother in Rachel too, but it was a very different sort of mother.

  But to hell with Rachel, I thought.

  I was with Cynthia now.

  We sat there until closing time. The table was covered in empty glasses. We decided to walk home and leave the car. The police drink-driving teams often had the bridge covered on Sunday nights. We left the bar and climbed up to the bridge. The river was there, moving slow. It reflected the city towers and the lights. I liked this part of Brisbane. I liked the towers. Towers were okay. They were artefacts. The bigger the better. Like the pyramids. Just as long as you didn’t have to work in them. The city, as a workplace, looked odious. In that respect, maybe the World’s Tallest Building really hadn’t been much of an idea. Ten thousand office workers, that was how many they’d been hoping to squeeze into the thing.

  We took it slow across the bridge. We stopped to look down at the water. The bridge was just high enough to make jumping worthwhile. And people sometimes did, although there was one better, higher bridge to jump off in Brisbane. It was because the Story Bridge had class, it had age. It was all iron and rivets and arches. The only problem was, if you jumped off the highest parts of the arches, you didn’t hit water, you hit solid earth. The high parts were over the river banks. Not that it mattered, once you’d got enough free fall behind you.