With My Body

by Nikki Gemmell

  ‘I need a pump.’

  You’re reaching down to help; he’s snatching things up, doesn’t want you or need you—scat!

  ‘What?’ Incomprehension. ‘Could you go now, please, or I will call the police.’ And he bundles away his groceries, awkwardly cradling them in his arms and they’re tumbling to the floor but he doesn’t pick them up, he’s in too much of a hurry to get away, to his study, to get you out.

  ‘Wait.’ You stride after him but he shuts the workroom door, leaving the dog and you looking at each other in perplexed solidarity. The dog whines, you rap loudly. Silence. Almost laugh, ‘Haven’t you got the wrong room there for the shopping?’

  No laughter in response.

  Right.

  ‘Um, my bike has a puncture. I need a pump. That’s all. To get home.’ And never come back, you almost add.

  ‘I am not a cyclist.’

  Quick as a flash: ‘What about that shed? Out the back.’

  You had a look earlier. Behind a dusty window was a stack of cobwebby bikes.

  ‘So what else have you sized up?’

  Silence. Your hot cheeks.

  ‘Help yourself to a pump—if there is one—then go, immediately. Thank you.’ You’re a pest, nothing else. ‘And don’t even think about the bikes.’

  Yep, you know exactly what he thinks of those Beddy people.

  ‘Or the books.’

  I bet he never even knew he had bikes until this moment. The anger rises in you, magnificent.

  ‘I wasn’t taking your book, I was reading it.’

  God this would never work. You want to throttle him.

  ‘And don’t worry, I wouldn’t dream of coming back,’ you throw at him in parting, in the voice of a kid with their tongue stuck out.

  Lesson 57

  If you want a thing done, go yourself

  There is a pump, of course; you know bike sheds. You find it in the fumbly gloom, dragging cobwebs furiously from your face. Fill the tyre outside, fast, the light is now rapidly fading. He’s watching from his kitchen window; watching like you’re going to curl up in that shed and make a right home of it or grab for the taking a different bike.

  You fling his pump back inside the shed. An almighty clatter. Don’t care. Ride off without looking back. Cycling fast, swerving wildly at a twisted bit of muffler rearing up like a petrified snake and righting yourself hurtling on but in less than three minutes the tyre is flat, again; now you’re speeding on the rim and feeling every jeering bump. You fling the bike down in disgust, it’s not going to work. Turn back to the window. Yep, still watching. Of course. The little girl inside you screams. You sweep your hands out theatrically before the carcass of your useless bike: behold. You’re going to have to go back, whether he likes it or not.

  A loud rap on his workroom door.

  ‘I’m stuck.’

  ‘So I see.’

  ‘You’ll have to drive me home or I’m here all night. And you’ve got a lot of books.’

  Despite himself, the snort of a laugh.

  The door snaps open. Car keys are in his hand. The voice is low, warning, but there’s just a hint of a smile.

  ‘Never, ever mention that you’ve found this place.’

  ‘What’ll you give me?’ You grin, can’t help it, naughtied up. ‘My uncle knows the inside of every house in this valley … except this one.’

  The shudder is almost visible. You eye the book in his pocket. He clamps his hand protectively to the little Victorian volume and turns on his heel, to the car.

  ‘Your reward is a lift home which I’ve really got no time for because I’ve got a hell of a lot of work to finish. Tonight.’

  He pats his pocket, his back to you.

  ‘And besides, she may have something to teach me. Thanks for that.’

  Lesson 58

  They who are little spoken of in the world at large

  You’ve overtaken him, leaping into the passenger seat before he’s near his car. Bec is flurrying all over you with snuffles and licks, all the unconditional love which you return, laughing in relief; at least someone appreciates you in this place.

  ‘You’re very … alive … aren’t you?’ the man says in bemused distaste, as he starts the ignition.

  ‘And you’re not?’

  Annoyance is smoothing your self-consciousness, and being in a car, and with a dog; if you were in any other situation you’d never be able to talk like this. Just the careful way he’s dressed would usually stumble your talk—all he’d need is a Gauloises to complete the image and Lune has told you, wild-eyed, about the men who smoke them. He takes a deep breath.

  ‘I’ll drop you on the outskirts of Beddington. And remember, you’ll never be able to come back here, I’ll see to that. Don’t even think about it.’

  Intrigued. By all of it. Too much you don’t know and it’s right at your doorstep and you’ve got weeks of holidays ahead of you and a home you need to escape and he’s reeling you in and has no idea of it.

  His voice is smooth and sure, a hidden creek overarched by the bush, strong and cool and self-sufficient. You, on the other hand, are a desert before him: wide open, ready, aching for nourishment. And he smiled, he laughed—was it once, twice—you got him to do it, just.

  The car roars through a cathedral of trees, you’ve never driven so fast.

  ‘Whoo hooooo!’ You’re suddenly laughing, winding down your window and butting the wind with your face.

  ‘Get your head in,’ he snaps, ‘or you’ll lose it.’

  Silence, glary, as he flies down the axle-breaking road. Trees lean in close, branches slap against the car and your hand sneaks back outside: trying to grab the night’s coolness with your palm.

  ‘Get in!’

  You withdraw your hand from the slap of the air but put your bare feet on the dashboard, as you always do.

  Violent braking.

  You jerk forward.

  The car’s clicking stillness.

  He looks at you in that stopping as if he’s never come across anything like you: half wild, half human, utterly incomprehensible, impossible to contain.

  You spurt a laugh, in nervousness as much as anything. ‘What?’ You shrug, perplexed. Your feet remain on the dash.

  He revs and shoots forward, your feet can’t grip, they drop.

  ‘Good one, mate,’ you giggle and raise your thumb.

  He chuckles, shaking his head; he’s given up. For a moment there’s a slipping into something else.

  His hand. On the leather gearstick. The fingers you’ve never seen before. Not worker’s fingers. No coarseness, no calluses, no grubby black collecting in crevices. You want to lick them, like an animal; learn them. Hold each tip still and savouring in the cave of your mouth. You lift up both your own blunt hands in front of your face and turn them around in wonder, as if you’ve never seen the like of them before; staring at the dirt compacted in crescent moons under the nails and the river map of lines in the cracks of your palms and not just your hands, of course, but your bare feet, too; you sit cross-legged on the seat and drag them up—yep, filthy black, as they always are, with the skin ridged up the sides in deep fissured cracks; and then your knees, you’re curving right over now and examining the coal dust permanently tattooed across them in thin leeches and you lick them and of course the black doesn’t come off and how bizarre you must seem to someone like him and it is as if you have awareness of your bush self, for the first time in your life—all the raggedness, the loudness, the rawness in this place—the vast affront of who you are and what you represent. To someone like him.

  You stare across, at his eyes, resolutely not engaging with you.

  With everything he is not.

  Lesson 59

  The age of chivalry, with all its benefits and harmfulness, is gone by for us women

  The gate to his property.

  Locked.

  You burst out laughing. Despite himself, he does too.

  ‘Yes, I am going mad. Alright. Y
ou win. Don’t ask. Too much in my head.’ He shakes it as he stops the car, as if trying to clear it out, takes the keys from the ignition and hands them across. Looks at you. Cocks his head.

  ‘It’s the small silver one.’

  Well, that’s one rule of the bush he’s absorbed. You jump out grinning and swing the two halves wide. Glad to help, mister, glad to help. He drives through and stops abrupt.

  ‘Padlock it.’

  ‘Aren’t you coming back?’

  ‘You might get back before me.’ He raises his eyes to the heavens. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’

  You fiddle with the lock, standing with the sole of one foot resting on your knee, as you always do; it takes a while, you can’t make the loop click. He toots in exasperation.

  ‘Come on. Your dinner’s getting cold.’

  ‘But it’s not fair, I want to come back,’ you tease, standing tall at the front of his car, your feet on his bumper and balancing with your hands on the bonnet, the ten year old wheedling to her dad. ‘Pleeeeeeeeease.’

  Something shuts down his face like a roller door on a shop. In an instant his mood has changed. You’ve gone too far. He gets out of the car.

  ‘I have work to do. Alright? And you’re not welcome in this place.’ He grips your shoulders hard and lifts you out of the way and propels you towards the passenger seat. You rub your collarbone and examine the affronted skin on your upper arms, the bruises like pale yellow petals already rushing onto it.

  A clotted silence.

  That you’re wrong in some way. That you have no idea.

  A silence you have faced for much of your life.

  Lesson 60

  It is in transactions between women and women that the difficulty lies

  No more talk, no more teasing, as you bullet south to Beddington. Dust hangs among the trees like smoke. You drink in the watchfulness of the moon, it’s following the Volvo like a hovering mother on the edges of a first date. Dusty old cassettes under his car radio have Ephemera 1, 2 and 3 written on them. You’d love to know what’s on them, would love to know what Ephemera means. You run your fingertip along a spine, tracing the distinctive boldness of the handwriting. Someone who is very sure of themselves, oh yes. Glance across to a stony concentration on the road. You retreat. Drum your hand on the car roof.

  The lights of Beddy. Not long now.

  Your heart accelerates. You don’t want to go back, it’s too soon after the diary incident; you have an instinctive wariness at the thought of home, it’s no longer a sanctuary in any way. You gaze at this new specimen in your life, so rarely get someone new in it. There’s a halo of aloneness around him, a pushing away that’s flinty in him. And wounded, somehow. There’s something about it that you want to enfold. You haven’t caught nearly enough of him, time is running out.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  His look says you don’t need to know. ‘There’s no point. We’re not seeing each other again, remember?’

  What you’re not telling him is that you left your bike behind. It gives you a purchase on his world. You will be back. Somehow. Because you are a work in progress and he can teach you.

  What, you’ve got no idea.

  Lesson 61

  Small minds expend themselves in meddling, gossip and scandal-mongering

  He drops you on a ridge overlooking your home. You must walk in from the high road. You understand that there is something adult about this; that he will not come near your world, your family, he would never do that. Because of misunderstandings. A grown-up world, all that; an unbreachable gulf.

  He hands across the little Victorian volume.

  ‘Not a whisper,’ he grins. ‘Alright?’

  Doesn’t say another word, doesn’t say goodbye, just turns the car around and drives off.

  An enormous smile plumes through as you look at the book; you’re like a goddamn firefly blazing in that dark.

  You’ll find a way back. He said the author might be able to teach him something—he’ll need this returned.

  Tell the truth and don’t be afraid of it.

  Lesson 62

  A torment from which there is no escape but death

  That night the memory of him, all of it, soaked through you, like smoke; in your hair, your clothes, in the pores of your skin. The memory of his fingers, his desk, his dog, his hand on the gearstick, his waiting house.

  The sky has released its payload at last. Rain pummels the tin roof. You open the canvas flaps, fling them up and breathe in the earth as you lie on your stomach on the pillow, and watch.

  Your sky, his sky.

  The only thing you have in common, and you are caught.

  Lesson 63

  One only ‘right’ we have to assert in common with mankind—the right of something to do

  You cannot stay away. He is a brake on your life, stopping everything else.

  It takes an hour and a half to walk back. You are wearing your denim overalls cut off at the knees and a Bonds singlet; the book with its cover cellotaped back on, and a screwdriver and hammer and new inner tube of a bicycle in your pockets: an excuse. You do not know what to expect when you get to the fence, you will walk the perimeter if you have to, to glean some way in; to firm everything about yesterday, that it was real.

  The gate is ajar. Well, well. His head is in another place. You slip through, kicking a stone in a wide arc in triumph. Weren’t expecting this.

  A second car is beside the Volvo. A Mustang, as decrepit as his. So, a friend. You slip off your Blunnies and sneak onto the verandah, heart thudding—please not a woman, you’re not ready for it.

  A man.

  Through the window of the drawing room. Much older, of no interest. Curly hair, already greying. Tall, a wide, round face. The two of them are playing cards, half-heartedly; the vigour is in their conversation which you can’t quite catch. They have glasses of red wine and bread and cheese on a plank of plywood and thick weekend papers, unread, and a scattering of books. It looks like they’ve been there for some time, rabbiting on, mates.

  Your bike is not where you flung it. Odd. As odd as a gate still unlocked. As if you’re being enticed further into this. No, surely? You feel a prickle of a something as you watch, and watch.

  You slip through the gap of a front door soundlessly. Hesitate, then knock softly, apologetically, on the doorpost.

  The door into your new life.

  His friend jumps as if he’s seen a ghost.

  Your man from last night does not.

  As if he was expecting this. As if you had misread him entirely. You look at him and he stares back but his face says nothing. He stares with the detachment of an anthropologist, waiting to see what will come next.

  A blush.

  Vining your face, neck, body. Saying more than words ever could, of course; and how you hate that.

  Lesson 64

  In moral and mental growth it is impossible to remain stationary

  ‘Who is—?’ sputters the friend. ‘Hello? Can we help you?’

  ‘Hello indeed,’ your man replies coolly without taking his eyes from you, which only pushes the blushing deeper.

  ‘You never said anyone else was in on this,’ the friend says indignantly.

  ‘They aren’t.’

  Your hands ball at your hips: excuse me. The friend is confused.

  ‘But you seem to know each other … ’

  ‘Oh no. This is some wild thing from Beddington that the bush keeps coughing up. That keeps coming back—no matter how many times they’re told they can’t.’ As if you’re not quite there.

  You point your hammer at him—the gate, mate, the gate. He smiles, distracted, looking at your bare feet; can’t make head nor tail of how you’d get here like that.

  ‘Your bike’s in the shed. For safekeeping. I had no idea when you’d be back.’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘Today. Yes. Of course.’

  ‘You left the gate open,’ you blurt indignantly.

  ‘Oh. Right. Yes.’ />
  ‘No distraction, mister,’ the friend warns, waggling his finger.

  ‘I know.’ The snap back.

  ‘You told me you’d sworn off the entire world and universe until everything was done.’

  ‘I’m here to work.’

  ‘Swore off wine—’ he looks down at his glass, shrugs, there goes that one—‘bars, all night benders, parties, mothers, travels, women … ’

  ‘It’s not a woman.’

  ‘Excuse me!’ you yelp.

  The friend steps back, examining, his eyes resting on your hammer gripped tight. ‘Weeeell … what is it then?’

  ‘An annoyance.’

  ‘That wants her bike back,’ you retort. ‘You can’t go stealing it, you know.’

  Your man smiles a ragged smile, despite himself. Touché.

  His friend winces in exaggerated disgust. ‘I do apologise. He’s beyond repair.’

  ‘He was so rude to me!’

  ‘He always is. Especially when he’s got a project to finish … and will not.’ The friend gulps the last of his wine and wipes the rim of his glass unceremoniously on his shirt. ‘Would you like some?’ he asks absently, as if he does this automatically to anyone who crosses his orbit. ‘Sorry I can’t offer you another glass. He’s only got two. He lives rough out bush. Disgustingly.’

  You look at him dubiously. ‘That’s a goblet you’re holding. It’s not a Vegemite jar.’

  The friend holds the glass at a distance and looks at it theatrically, as if he’s seeing it for the first time. ‘Oh? Really?’

  Your man snatches it away. ‘No.’

  You redden again. Have never drunk before, your father doesn’t allow it in his house. But here, now, there is an inkling of a want, to crash catastrophe into your life; in some way, to allow it. God knows what. Before everything vanishes, before your proper life comes scuttling back.