Between a Wolf and a Dog

by Georgia Blain

  Out on the street, Hilary drives slowly to Henry’s house, the wipers clearing a small arc of vision. She can feel the rain on her skin, sweet and cold, slanting through the window, which is open to clear the fog that persists despite the loud drone of the demister.

  It is only a couple of kilometres, a walk if the day had been fine, down the twist of streets to the gully, Henry’s home a small flat that looks out on a sandstone cliff, where morning glory tumbles through the cracks, its drooping purple flowers and tissue-thin leaves tangled in the rock.

  Once, when Maurie was very drunk, he told a reporter at an opening that Henry was the artist he admired most.

  ‘Henry who?’ the reporter had asked.

  ‘Henry Goldstein.’

  ‘Do I know his work?’

  Maurie had laughed, his great deep belly laugh rolling through the gathering, making heads turn. ‘He’s probably produced two finished works. And both have disappeared. So I doubt you’ve even met his work, let alone know it.’

  They had gone to art school together, the three of them; Maurie the loud, confident one, she quieter and more serious, a beauty then, with a tumble of blonde hair and long, slender legs, and Henry, tall, thin, dark-eyed beneath a fall of fringe, softly spoken and alive with ideas.

  Henry was in the sculpture department, his work a search for purity, minimalist and austere. He once told her that the only logical conclusion to this desire was to create nothing, which was one of the reasons that he never finished his degree. But then, when she first met him, he was working in marble, making perfect eggs that slid apart, another one inside. Smooth Russian dolls. She had noticed his elegant hands first, and had asked him if she could sketch them.

  He had smiled shyly (but with a certain amount of pride) as he held them out towards her. ‘How would you like me to pose?’

  She thought about it for a moment, the palm of his hand in her own, his beautiful flat almond-shaped nails, smooth olive skin, and the delicate shape of his fingers creating lines and planes of perfection.

  ‘In prayer position,’ she told him. ‘Here.’ And she adjusted the direction just slightly so that the light fell right along the arc of his thumb.

  She still has the sketch she did. It is pinned on the wall in her studio, a square of thick creamy art paper with the beauty of Henry’s hands almost captured, there in the centre.

  (She slept with Henry once — long before Maurie claimed her as his own — and she has never told anyone. She remembers it now as soporific, a blur of limbs, soft and undefined, but they had both taken smack, and the haze of the whole day had wrapped everything, including the sex, into the slow passing of time. In truth, Henry was always asexual, surrounded by friends but never in a physical relationship, nor seemingly interested in one, and her memory of their intimacy is without any sense of his corporeality.)

  Over the years, she was the one who stayed in touch with him, not Maurie. Sometimes she would spend the afternoon in his apartment, sipping tea and talking about a film she was making, always grateful for his quiet insights and suggestions. His calm was an antidote to Maurie’s ebullience. She knew he had other friends, but he kept people separate, giving her the strange sense that he belonged to her alone.

  Outside his block of flats, she stays in the car, watching the rain. There is a sad, seeping slowness to the drizzle now, a blank grey sky and a steady dampness. She can see it rising up the sandstone wall, the gold and pink darker where the rain has soaked into the porous stone. The potholes and cracks in the road form tiny ponds, offering blank reflections to the stillness of the sky above. It is only plants that gain any true beauty in this weather, she thinks. A grevillea is jewelled with rain drops, silver pearls clinging to the trembling tips of the flowers and the fine ends of the spiky fronds; a passionfruit vine gathers clusters of rainwater in the open hold of its leaves, shaking them out in a shower with each whisper of breeze.

  The world is a place of wonder.

  The gallery opposite Henry’s is opening up for the day. Hilary watches as the young woman unbolts the heavy glass doors and steps out under the awning for a moment. She is dressed in red: a crimson wool dress, vermillion fishnet stockings, and rose suede boots, her long black hair styled like a seventies rock star. If it weren’t so wet, Hilary would cross the street and tell her that she is her own work of art, no doubt more spectacular than the ordinary paintings lining the high white walls of the front and back rooms.

  Next door to the gallery is a small travel agent’s. A man hovers in the doorway, smoking a cigarette, cup of coffee clutched in his hand. He glances across to the woman in the gallery, and they nod and smile at each other. He is dressed in grey, a dull foil to her brilliance — charcoal sweater, and jeans that sag at the crotch and run tight along his calves down to his black boots. He blows out smoke, a faint wisp that disappears into the milky sky almost as soon as it appears, and then he drops the last of his cigarette onto the pavement, leaving it to smoulder and sizzle in the damp.

  The rest of the street is quiet. This is not a day when people go out unless they have to. It is a day for staying inside.

  Hilary told Henry she would get to him by eleven. It is half past. Not that it matters. He isn’t concerned by time. She has never noticed a clock in his studio, nor does he have a mobile or a computer.

  When she buzzes on his doorbell, he lets her in without a word. The hallway is damp, hard lino floors smeared with crushed leaves, mud, and rain, a row of locked letterboxes along the wall, and a pile of suburban newspapers covering the bottom step, never picked up, just replaced by the new issue each week.

  Henry’s flat is at the back of the block, his door slightly ajar. He stands awkwardly next to the fold-out couch, thinner than ever, his body like a stretched elastic band, hair still falling over his eyes, silver now, dark pupils an ember of intensity cloaked by a shy hesitancy as he looks at her, uncertain whether to step forward and embrace her in greeting or stay where he is.

  Looking across at him, she is overwhelmed, the tightness with which she has bound herself momentarily loosened at being in the proximity of the only person who knows of her decision.

  He takes her hand, his skin like cool, crisp paper, the shape of his fingers still beautiful, and he kisses her on the cheek. He hasn’t asked her if she is sure, if she knows what she is doing, but she nods all the same.

  ‘I don’t quite know how to behave in this situation,’ he eventually says.

  She smiles slightly.

  ‘Do we have a cup of chai, and just talk as we would always talk?’

  She nods again, not trusting herself to speak.

  The spices are rich, and their aroma fills the single room as he takes the only two cups he owns out of the cupboard. She sits on the couch, staring out the window at the sandstone. At her feet is a copy of Derek Jarman’s Chroma, opened at the second last chapter ‘Iridescence’.

  A beautiful word.

  Biting hard on her lip, the salty taste of her own flesh there on her tongue, Hilary looks up at the ceiling, and then, as she takes the cup from him, she tells him she has sent her film off. Work. This is what she could always turn to — safe when all the rest of life was too unbearable to hold; calm, contained, manageable.

  ‘And are you pleased?’

  ‘There was no more I could do,’ she says with a smile.

  He stretches out his long thin legs, crossing one over the other, and takes her hand again. ‘That’s the place you want to reach.’

  He looks at her now, his eyes resting on hers for a moment, and then he turns his gaze down, focusing on his knees, bony beneath his trousers. ‘Do you remember when we were at school together?’

  She smiles. ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘I was in love with you. And I was in love with Maurie. I was in love with both of you.’ He brushes his hair out of his eye, and there is the faintest tremble in those fine f
ingers. ‘But then I found the drugs, and I chose to live my life with them, so there was no sadness, loss, or bitterness where either of you were concerned. Just a faint memory of a love I had. A memory that’s still there, on certain mornings when I wake and look back.’

  She strokes his hand.

  ‘I once told Maurie I loved him, and do you know what he did?’

  Hilary shakes her head.

  ‘He squeezed me so tight my bones rattled, and he laughed.’

  It is like Maurie is there with them, the recollection of his hold and that laugh filling the small space.

  ‘After you called I had a brief moment of wondering whether I should be brave and go with you. Living as I do is becoming harder. I’m getting too old. But I’m too much of a coward to do anything other than hope that the decision will be made for me by accident.’

  Behind them the refrigerator hums, the motor whirring into life and then dying again, the silence afterwards more pronounced.

  Taking his face in her hands, Hilary turns him to look at her, because she wants to say: ‘I can’t talk about this, please stop.’ But she doesn’t speak, she just leans forward and kisses him, closing her eyes so that she can feel as if they are young again, his mouth cool on hers, a trace of tears that could be hers, just there, and then gone.

  She doesn’t want him coming with her.

  She looks around his flat, the complete containment of his life within these walls. Even this has a pulsating beauty. Henry once told her he had calculated his life, exactly. The cost of heroin with price fluctuations built in, the other bare necessities he needed to survive, and the money he had from an inheritance. An equation that was occasionally tinkered with, but that had ruled his life with an iron grip for so long, never allowing more than the most minor deviation.

  He stands now, the deep softness of his corduroy pants like the ocean, and she picks up the book, the pages opening to ‘Into the Blue’, and she smiles as she reads the first few paragraphs. This was a film she could have made, an exploration of colour. There were so many films she could have made. She looks up at Henry, watching him as he searches behind one of the piles of books, his body bent down low to reach the package.

  Snow white.

  Ghost white.

  Whitewash. White lies.

  ‘Here it is.’ He holds the plastic bag out towards her. ‘Jerome was flummoxed when I changed my order. He’s been delivering the same amount to me for so long without any need for conversation or question. When I asked him for this extra delivery, he questioned me, several times.’ Henry smiles. ‘I told him there must be very few dealers who refuse to take a larger order. I was very specific with him about the purity so that our calculations are correct. I’ve tried it, and I am as certain as I can be that he has told me the truth.’

  She puts the heroin in her bag, laughing as she looks at it. ‘Imagine if I were arrested on the way home.’

  ‘You remember everything I showed you about how to take it?’

  She does. He had been surprisingly businesslike when it came to the logistics.

  Outside, there is the sound of a door opening and then closing with a heavy thud, followed by footsteps down the stairs and then the ring of a phone. A woman answers, her voice shrill as she tells the caller to fuck off.

  ‘The tone of the neighbourhood seems to be on the slide again.’ Henry raises an eyebrow. ‘I’ve seen it go up and down, and I’m sure it will rise and fall again. The other day I realised I have now been living here for forty years. It’s a long time. And I spend most days inside this room, only occasionally going out for a walk or seeing people such as yourself. Some would say I’ve had a limited life.’ He shrugs. ‘But it’s never really felt that way.’

  ‘Sometimes I wish you’d kept sculpting, or creating in some way,’ she tells him.

  He looks at her, both of them aware that she has never before commented on his life choices.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I would like to have seen another one of your works.’

  He smiles. ‘I couldn’t now. I probably couldn’t have for quite some time. I made the choice before I really knew what choice I was making. It’s the danger of youth. And then there was no turning back. The only blessing is that the choice I made has given me a certain insulation against regret.’

  The warmth of the gas burner has diminished now, and the room is cold. Hilary shivers. She puts her bag on her shoulder, the weight of the small package inside it amplified in her consciousness. She doesn’t want to say goodbye, and she couldn’t bear Henry asking her to stay, or telling her he will miss her. She hopes he knows this.

  ‘The chai was beautiful,’ she says.

  He replies just as she had hoped, with one hand on the door, opening it to the dullness of the hallway as he leans forward to kiss her on the cheek.

  ‘I’m glad you liked it.’

  And he brushes his hair out of his eyes as he steps aside to let her pass.

  THREE YEARS EARLIER

  APRIL HAD BEEN alone at the shack for ten days when Lawrence arrived.

  Each morning, she woke with the first sunlight momentarily soft through the curtain-less windows but soon intensifying, the glare harsh and hard. She hung a blanket, hammering nails into the worn grey corners, but it wasn’t enough. There was always a gap at the side, a chink that allowed the daylight, insistent, demanding, to reach across the room and assault her, not as cold as a slap, more a thudding punch in the face.

  And so she would lie there, eyes closed, and try to pretend it away. Like when she was a child and she hated Ester, or one of her friends who had come to stay with them for the week and wanted to be with her all the time. She would bend all the force of her will to wiping out their existence, denying every cell of their body with a high-pitched focus like a sonar scream that obliterated all in its path. And so it was now; with eyes tightly closed, fusty bedding pulled over her head, she would grind her teeth and tell herself the day was not yet there, not for her, not at all, trying to summon the denial she had once found so easy to access.

  But it was too airless, too unpleasant, to stay there for long. And so she would get up reluctantly, head heavy, and wonder how she was going to fill the slow stretch of daylight until the evening came again, bringing with it the relief of a few hours of unconscious sleep.

  She had arrived with a car full of supplies and a heart full of the best intentions. The afternoon had been soft, a pale mauve tinging the gold of the westerly sun when she pulled up outside the shack, the music from the car stereo seeming suddenly loud in the stillness. Here she was. Two bags of clothes, her guitar, a laptop to record herself, and three boxes of food, all healthy, of course: teas and vegetables and fruit, and even brown rice and tofu.

  She brought everything inside with a brisk efficiency, play-acting the role of someone else; the creak of her step on the dry boards of the verandah, the thud of the door swinging shut behind her, the rattle of the glass as she opened each of the windows, all too loud, like the sounds an actor in the theatre makes. And that’s what she was, April Marcel playing the part of Someone Who Had Come Away To Write.

  When she was a child, they had driven here most weekends. She and Ester would sleep in the back seat of the car, surrounded by blankets, pillows, clothes, and food, waking occasionally to the soft glow of the light from the dashboard and the low muttering of Hilary and Maurie talking, sometimes arguing, the radio a hum behind their words.

  ‘Look at the stars,’ Maurie would whisper as he carried her in, and she would stare up at the dancing swirl, like a splash of silvery lace under the hem of a twirling skirt, only to close her eyes again straight away, waking hours later, miraculously no longer in the car or his arms, but on one of the divan beds underneath a window.

  She had loved that, the transition from one to the other seemingly happening by magic.

  She was always the fi
rst up, heading down to the river on her own, oblivious to how damp and dirty her pyjamas became as she sat in the silky sand of the bank and built castles and palaces, singing to herself in the still clarity of the morning light, staying there until Hilary or Maurie’s voice rang out from the shack, calling her — breakfast was ready — and she would run up, barefoot, smelling the sugary lemon of the pancakes or the salty fat of the bacon, starving now, the table out on the verandah, Ester setting it as she was told, the birds hopping forward and back, beady eyes alert for any crumbs.

  The place had not been used since she was here some months ago. There was the smell of dust, the must of the ash still in the fireplace, and, lingering below it all, smoke from her cigarettes.

  As she opened the door to the back bedroom, there was a foulness, the rottenness of death, and she stepped back momentarily, tempted to just close the door and leave it, to sleep in the old divan bed. But once she’d let it out, it was no longer possible to ignore it. It was a bird, only recently dead, ants crawling across the dullness of its once glossy feathers, and she looked, not sure how to deal with it, before regaining some measure of practicality and scooping it up with a plastic bag — the lifeless body a small concentration of weight in her hands — and throwing it some distance away into the bush.

  She had nothing to drink.

  She had done this on purpose, thinking that purity might help creativity.

  How could she have been so stupid?

  Outside, the darkness was thickening, soaking into the flat expanse of grass and beyond that the row of poplars, their first spring leaves trembling along the skeletal branches, pale and new.

  She would need a drink.

  And so, only half an hour after arriving, she got back in the car and headed into town, arriving at the pub just before dark.

  The decision was fraught. Should she get one bottle and ration herself to a glass a night until she had to come back for more supplies, or should she be honest with herself and buy half a dozen?