Praise

by Andrew McGahan

  ‘Thanks, Gordon. I know what you mean. It’s nice of you to say that.’

  I didn’t know what I meant. It’d just come out. It was the pain. I was lonely already. But Rachel was never going to say yes to me, no matter how nicely I put it.

  Still, she was nice enough to me in the morning. She didn’t feel like studying, so we went for a drive out around the bay. Sandgate and Redcliffe. We walked along the beach, around the shops. She talked about her course, about what she thought she could do with it. I listened. Administrative Sciences meant nothing to me, but I was interested because it was what she was interested in.

  We drove back to her place. I pulled up outside.

  ‘Thanks, Gordon,’ she said. ‘It was a nice day.’

  ‘Yes. I enjoyed it.’

  ‘I might see you over the weekend.’

  ‘Okay.’

  She got out. I drove home.

  I had drinks with Frank that night. I told him about the genital warts. I told him about the hook. He was appalled. He knew he had to get himself tested too — he and Cynthia hadn’t used condoms.

  We were in a bar in the Valley. Frank was buying. I didn’t have the money. I wouldn’t have now, without Cynthia. Sooner or later I’d have to get a job. I wasn’t sure I was even employable any more. The idea of work depressed me greatly. It wasn’t just the hours, it was having to work for someone else, to act as if I gave a damn about their business, their customers, their money. I didn’t think I could fake it any more.

  Frank said, ‘What are you gonna do? Write?’

  ‘I can’t write, not anything that’ll sell. I think an institution is my only chance. The army, a hospital, a religious order... somewhere where they feed you, give you a bed, keep you alive. It’d be enough.’

  That night I sat down and wrote my first letter to Cynthia. It was long, emotional, drunken. Next morning I sent it off without rereading it. I couldn’t even remember what was there.

  This was Friday. I went down to the post office and mailed it Express Courier. I’d promised Cynthia I’d get it to her by the weekend. Monday would have to do. It cost me seven dollars. That night I called her. I spent a long hour listening to her cry and argue at thirty-seven cents a minute.

  I said, ‘I can’t afford these phone calls, Cynthia.’

  ‘I don’t care. I can’t make it if you don’t call me.’

  She wasn’t enjoying Darwin. It was hot, the house was too small, her parents were oppressive, there was nothing to do, no one to see. I told her about the warts. That cheered her up a little. She asked me questions. What had I been doing? What was I wearing? How was my penis?

  I answered, but it was unwilling. I was feeling trapped and hateful again. She was right, it wasn’t over. I loved her, I wanted her to leave me alone. If there was some way I could stop calling, never speak to her again. But there wasn’t. I couldn’t do it. It was bad now, but it’d get better. Something could be saved. Something had to be saved.

  I mentioned that I had spent the day with Rachel.

  ‘Rachel?’ cried Cynthia. ‘Oh shit. Of course. I’m out of the way now. You can fuck your little goddess at last. Christ, Gordon, she’s so dull! You don’t have to settle for shit like her!’

  ‘I’m not going to be fucking Rachel, not even if I wanted to. And leave her alone. You don’t know her.’

  ‘Sure. She’s frigid, Gordon.’

  ‘Cynthia, stop it.’

  ‘Why should I? What the fuck do you care?’

  It went on. I suspected it’d be going on for months, years.

  I’d always be paying for it.

  At thirty-seven cents a minute.

  FORTY-TWO

  I didn’t see Rachel that weekend, but she rang me the week after that. Her exams were over and she was going home to spend the weekend at her parents’ farm. No one else would be there. The rest of her family was holidaying at the coast. She wanted to know if I was interested in coming along. Just for a break.

  I was.

  I said, ‘We can take my car.’

  ‘I’ll pay for some of the petrol.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Rachel.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you along just for the sake of a free ride, Gordon.’

  ‘I know.’

  We drove out on a Saturday. Her parents’ farm was at the eastern foot of a mountain range that arched out into the wheat plains from the Great Divide. It was a forty-minute drive from Dalby. The mountains were low and rolling, bald and grassy in some places, heavily rainforested in others. Her parents’ fence line followed the boundary of a national park. They ran cattle. I’d been there only a couple of times before. Short visits. When Rachel and I were at school.

  I liked the mountains. They were modest and lonely and no one bothered with the national park much. From the top of them, looking west, with binoculars, you could just make out my own parents’ farm, maybe thirty or thirty-five miles away, out on the plain.

  We drove around for the morning and then stopped off for a late lunch at one of the small local pubs. There was no one else in the bar. We drank, talked, watched the odd car go by. Towards dark we picked up some drinks and drove on.

  Her parents’ house wasn’t so different from my own parents’ house. Large and ugly, bits tacked on here and there as the family grew. But the farms themselves were different. Cattle compared to grain. I knew nothing about cattle grazing, except that it seemed a harder, poorer life than grain growing. And things were different for Rachel, too. I was the ninth child out of ten, she was the first child of eight. She could ride a horse. She could round up livestock. All I’d ever learned to do was drive a tractor. To watch the world crawl by at three or four miles an hour. They were import-ant things to remember about each other.

  Rachel cooked dinner. We sat out on the back verandah in the cane armchairs and ate and drank and looked up at the hills. It was calm. Cynthia and the flat and Brisbane seemed a long way away.

  ‘It’s a pity I hate all this now,’ said Rachel.

  ‘You do?’

  ‘It’s not the farm itself, it’s the attitude. My parents, my family. They don’t understand what I’ve been going through in Brisbane, or what I want to do. It’s so incomprehensible from the point of view of life out here.’

  ‘Indeed it is.’

  ‘What is it they get from this sort of life, anyway? What do they want from it?’

  ‘Just survival, Rachel. That’s what it always comes down to, in the end.’

  ‘I don’t believe that ...’

  ‘No, I was talking from a personal perspective.’

  She looked at me.

  ‘I can’t believe that either. You couldn’t be content with that, Gordon. Just having existed for sixty or seventy years.’

  ‘It won’t be that long.’

  ‘You didn’t always think like that.’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Or maybe I did. It’s hard to tell, looking back, what I really believed.’

  ‘You should read some of the old letters you wrote me.’

  ‘God, no. All that love in them, Rach. No wonder you told me to stop it.’

  She didn’t answer.

  I asked, ‘Are you embarrassed by it, these days?’

  ‘You mean by me and you? No. I never understood what you were going on about. I certainly never felt the same. And for all that you kept telling me that you loved me, you never actually said much. You never do. I don’t know if you know this or not, but you don’t express your emotions very well. You act decently enough towards the people you care about, sometimes, but you don’t tell them anything.’

  I looked at my drink. I hadn’t expected this.

  I said, ‘Speech is such a definite thing.’

  ‘So?’

  I thought for a long time, staring at my drink.

  I started again. ‘Maybe it’s a matter of sincerity. I’m never that certain of anything I feel about a person, and talking about it simplifies it all so brutally. It’s easier to keep quiet. To act
what you feel. Actions are softer. They can be interpreted in lots of different ways, and emotions should be interpreted in lots of different ways.’

  ‘But people are never going to understand you.’

  ‘People are never going to understand you if you tell them things, either. It’d be even worse.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘It’s been weird,’ she said, ‘watching you go through the women. They get so infatuated with you. I don’t know why.’

  ‘You know me better than they do, that’s all.’

  She was staring at me.

  ‘You do have a certain sort of look, I suppose.’

  ‘It’s not the way I look. It’s more to do with the fact that I don’t represent any sort of threat to anyone.’

  It was an important statement. What I meant was that because I had no particular life or commitments of my own, I was never going to threaten the life or commitments of anyone else. It could be a frightening thing, looking at how a possible relationship might change the way you existed. In that respect at least, I was a safe option.

  Rachel was looking away to the hills again.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ she said.

  Around midnight we went to bed. Rachel put me in one of her brothers’ bedrooms. I didn’t kiss her goodnight and I didn’t make any offers. It was a cool evening. I curled up in the single bed and thought about Rachel, curled up in her single bed. I thought about her body, the way it would curl. It was a solid, angular body. It was almost sexless. But it did something to me.

  It was excitement and sadness.

  I’d seen her bedroom. There was a jar of Vaseline on the bedside table.

  They weren’t noble thoughts, but they were still sad.

  What did she do, I wondered, with that Vaseline?

  Next day Rachel saddled up her old horse and went riding. I didn’t like horses. Large animals in general. I had no sympathy for them, or for people who liked them. I watched her move up the hills. It looked awkward. A little stiff. She hadn’t ridden for some time. She disappeared.

  I didn’t know what I’d hoped for from the weekend.

  Depression settled.

  Things were back to normal.

  FORTY-THREE

  Rachel.

  Again.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Once we were back in Brisbane I travelled over to her place every few days, to get out of the flat. Life was slow. I was sleeping fifteen or sixteen hours a day, staring at TV. I needed the conversation.

  They were strange days. I didn’t understand why I was there, what it was I wanted from Rachel. I understood that she wanted nothing from me but friendship. I understood that all I could do was hurt her if I pushed it further than that. And I understood that she didn’t even have any of the qualities I was attracted to in a woman. Lust or greed or impatience. She was sympathetic, she was sincere. It was all wrong.

  And I had nothing to offer her. She told me about her men. They weren’t anything like me. She talked about the love, she talked about the sex. She discussed it all in emotional terms. What the love meant. What the sex meant.

  I didn’t care what the sex meant. I only wanted to know what happened. If she enjoyed it, if she came. I watched her talking and I thought how wide did she open her mouth to fit his penis in? Did she even do that? What did they do? How often? Where? How did she undress? How did he undress? Did they do it fast, did they do it slow? What noises did she make? What did she say? How did they sleep when it was over?

  I imagined Rachel naked. I masturbated over it. I wrote poems about her. It depressed me, disgusted me. I couldn’t keep away from her. I even tried to sort out the attraction, rationalise it the way Rachel herself might have, but there were no answers. When I was away from her I could make judgements. I could see the impossibility of it all. But once I was with her again, once I could see her, smell her, listen to her voice, it all slipped away. Something unnamable took over. Something deeper than reason.

  Reason said I should have stayed with Cynthia. Cynthia was everything Rachel wasn’t. It was obvious Cynthia was right for me and I was right for her. And yet it still hadn’t worked.

  Then it was a Sunday night. Rachel, Frank and I were drinking at the Queen’s Arms. Things were pretty slow, the crowd was small, but we were drinking steadily enough. We were talking about Cynthia. The bar staff, all her old workmates, kept coming over and asking me how she was.

  Frank had to work next morning. About nine he called a cab and left. Rachel and I drank on. When the bar closed, we began walking home to my place. We were both drunk.

  ‘Gordon,’ she said, ‘I think you should stop talking about Cynthia. You should stop calling her and stop thinking about her. You’re never going to get over her if you go on like this.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s really up to me. Anyway, I need the phone calls to Darwin. They’re difficult, but they’re important. It’s something to do with sanity.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Because Cynthia has sanity. It’s not obvious, but if I really think about her behaviour, it makes sense. I can’t say that for anyone else I know.’

  ‘She was crazy, Gordon.’

  ‘No. She just understands some difficult things.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like nothing bad should ever be accepted gracefully.’

  ‘Bullshit, Gordon. She’s four weeks out of your life and you’ve already forgotten all the reasons why you hated her.’

  She was wrong. I hadn’t forgotten.

  About a block from home I stopped off at a takeaway to order a hamburger. Rachel wasn’t hungry. She said she’d walk on and meet me back at the flat. She’d kept that old liking for walking the streets alone at night.

  I waited five minutes or so for the burger. Then I started off. Halfway there I looked up a side street and saw Rachel wandering along the footpath. I called out. She turned around and came back.

  ‘Help me, Gordon,’ she said. ‘I’m lost.’

  I put my arm around her. ‘Where were you going?’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’

  We made it home. We sat in front of the TV while I ate. Then I said, ‘I’m going to bed, Rachel. You can have half the mattress, if you want. I’ll drive you home in the morning.’

  She thought about it. ‘Okay. Thanks.’

  We went to bed. Normally I slept naked. This time I put on some shorts. Rachel took off her jeans and lay down next to me.

  We talked for a while. We were very close, our hips were touching. Rachel rolled towards me and put her head on my shoulder.

  ‘Rachel, I don’t think you should do that.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Touch me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I want more from this than you do.’

  She took hold of my arm. She was quiet a long time.

  Then she said, ‘Don’t be too sure.’

  I thought, Oh my God.

  I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  I kissed her.

  She kissed back.

  It was The Miracle.

  Our mouths worked open.

  I thought, I’m kissing Rachel, I’m kissing Rachel.

  And it was good. I couldn’t compare it to kissing Cynthia, or to kissing anyone. I couldn’t even remember what anyone else had been like. This was ten years of fantasy and repression coming true. This was frightening. This was Rachel, this was Rachel’s mouth.

  We rolled together. I was erect, but I didn’t press it against her. I was convinced that whatever Rachel was doing with me, it had nothing to do with my penis or my warts.

  I ran my hands along her sides, along her T-shirt. Rachel was tall. Her sides were long and smooth. They curved out with her hips and then ... then I was at the end of the T-shirt.

  I slid a finger under the hem. I thought, She can’t want this, surely she can’t want this.

  She didn’t stop me. I moved my hand under. I was touching naked skin. He
r stomach. It was hot, soft, dry. I moved my hand up. We weren’t kissing any more. I was lying on my side. She was lying on her back. I was running my hand across her stomach. Upwards. It was happening. And Rachel ... I wasn’t sure what she was doing. Maybe nothing. Maybe she was just lying there, waiting.

  I was at her breasts.

  If you don’t stop this now, Rachel, I thought, if you don’t stop this now ...

  Her breasts were small. With my other hand I raised the T-shirt to uncover them. It was dark in the room. I couldn’t see anything, but my hand was there, and the tips of my fingers. I found a nipple, rolled a finger around it, across it.

  She made a sound.

  She said, ‘I want you to touch me, Gordon.’

  And I was.

  Touching Rachel.

  My brain wouldn’t accept it. It was worse than I could ever have imagined.

  I was kissing her breasts, Rachel’s breasts, sucking them, catching them between my teeth. Her hands, Rachel’s hands, were on my back, in my hair ...

  Then my hand was moving down again, along Rachel’s side, over Rachel’s hip, Rachel’s panties, along Rachel’s leg, back up again, along Rachel’s thigh, down inside to the flat stretch of her panties, across it, feeling that it was wet, Rachel was wet, then down along the other thigh, back up again.

  Then my fingers were under the hem of her panties, into her pubic hair. It was thick, curled. Then on through the hair, down, under the stretch of elastic. The hair gave out and then there was just skin. A fold that opened into Rachel’s cunt. Rachel’s cunt. And Rachel’s cunt was warm and wet and open, just a little. I was running my fingers around the edges, up to the clitoris. It hardened, moved under my finger.

  And Rachel was making noises and pushing against my hand.

  Then I was kissing her breasts again. Then sliding down her chest, hooking my hands under her panties, pulling them down. Lifting her hips. Pulling the panties over her ankles.

  And then my head was between her legs.

  Vaginas.

  There were several billion of them out there in the world. Women were raised with them, examined them, got used to them, knew about them. But men, what could men do? What could they ever hope to understand? Vaginas were baffling. They spent most of their lives closed up and unthought of, but they were never still. They sweated and moved. They suffered disease, hid disease, harboured disease. They grew stale, smelt terrible, contracted so that not even a finger could get in, expanded so that a baby could get out. They tore open, healed, had spasms, itched, bled, passed urine. They took pleasure, took pain, lubricated, didn’t lubricate, stretched over the years, lost shape, had large lips, had no lips, had hair, had no hair, had depth, had curves, had lumps and creases and folds.