With My Body

by Nikki Gemmell

  The future has been wiped, the past has been wiped; there is only now, in this place, the vivid present. You steal glances that tremor you as you bury yourself in work, not knowing what’s next, planning nothing beyond this. And then at the end of each day with barely a word passed between you, you leave without a word; you put away your tools and jump on your bike and ride off.

  Knowing now the gate will always be open for you. The firming of that over the week here.

  It is the only conversation between you.

  Lesson 74

  ‘Young ladies’, who have never been brought up to do anything

  A painting in the piano room now dominates the space. A portrait of a woman with an impossible waist and dancing eyes—as if she’s secretly laughing at life—that until now has had its back to the room. But she needs to be shown. You had whooped with delight when you first peeked behind the loosened canvas.

  ‘Well, well, you, madam, need to come out!’ And you had flipped her around and dusted her down.

  Now it is late, hot, you are tired, you wipe the sweat from your eyes. It is Friday afternoon, you are not concentrating. The flap of your checked shirt gets caught up in the drill and before you know it the cogs have eaten the bottom corner of the fabric; it will not unwind.

  ‘Shoot,’ you murmur under your breath.

  The more you try to disentangle it the more it bunches into the cogs; grease now blackening it in tiny tractor treads. You groan in frustration, it’s your favourite shirt. Tol raises his finger, signalling to wait. The woman’s eyes look straight at you, and laugh.

  He leaves the room. You wait. He returns with a pair of scissors.

  ‘Hold still.’

  ‘I love this shirt.’

  ‘There’s no other way to do it.’

  He kneels, his face to your stomach, and cuts—so close you can feel his breath on your bare skin underneath and at one stage his hand brushes your belly and springs back like he has touched something hot and the electricity is shooting through you and you step back, need this to stop.

  ‘What?’ He looks up and laughs.

  Nothing, you shake your head. He pulls you forward by your shirt.

  ‘Uh uh. Get back here. I haven’t finished.’

  The steel blade. The shock of its cold against your skin. You gasp and hold his hair for a moment—‘It tickles!’—and he laughs again.

  You hold your breath. Looking down at him. His half-closed eyes, his concentration. His fingers that brush your belly again, which ripples in response. He must have felt it; he says nothing.

  His face so close, his skin to yours, his breath on your belly, you bite your lip. He looks up when he is done as though he is looking for approval and his lashes are so dark and you can see the little boy, suddenly, the child he would have been, the vulnerability he rarely shows; that you want to hold in the cup of your hands, here, now; that you want to bow down to and murmur on with your lips.

  In gratitude.

  The rescued cloth in his hand. That you do not ask for. That he does not give back.

  Everything a sign, everything a signal.

  And in the golden light of that late afternoon you fly home on your bike, standing tall on the pedals, laughing out loud, laughing at life. Because something between you is cracked.

  Lesson 75

  She alone can be a law unto herself

  A whole weekend away. Your stomach trembles at every thought of going back, you can feel it in your groin, a sharp intake of want. He has taken over your body—he has taken over your thoughts, your serenity and your life. He has shut up your future, locked it away in a box that only he has the key to.

  You retrieve an old apothecary bottle that has always lived on the window ledge of your father’s shed, sure his eye has stopped noticing it long ago. It is a tiny bottle of the deepest, richest, ocean blue. For Tol’s desk of mysterious objects. That you saw once through the window of that room always locked.

  He holds the bottle high to the sun, chuffed at its marine depths. ‘You don’t want it?’

  You do. You shake your head.

  ‘You could turn out to be useful, you know,’ he teases, pocketing it with a smile. ‘Thank you. I’ll put it in my study.’

  As you knew he would.

  ‘Where’s Bec?’ His dog who’s never far from him.

  ‘She’s Julian’s, actually. She’s gone home. Julian was kicked out by his girlfriend and was homeless for a while and I was just minding her. But Julian’s found a place now, with a big back yard.’

  ‘Oh.’

  You shiver in that moment, don’t know why. So. Utterly alone with Tol, now—not even a licky, laughy dog to flurry all over you anymore. You look about. It feels like you are suddenly in a bell jar of mysteriousness, a dome of seclusion here with just this stranger and the heat and the deafening cicadas, and your father and your stepmother and your school and your life are on the outside and you are completely alone with this man and no one knows it, not a single soul, you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, what’s next. It’s a new week, you don’t know him well enough.

  ‘So what’s in that room of yours?’ you ask as you follow him into the kitchen. He is making a cup of tea for you, weak and milky and sweet, just as your grandmother does; it’s how you always begin a day’s work. ‘What do you do?’

  He doesn’t answer. He dumps the dregs of the tea leaves out a glassless kitchen window, lost in thought.

  ‘I want to know.’ You persist.

  ‘I hate talking about work.’

  ‘I love it.’

  He sighs, wearily, and his face says it all: I know you do.

  ‘What do you think I do?’

  ‘I dunno.’ You’re examining a porcelain plate, a silver salt shaker, an ivory-handled bread knife; picking them all up and running your fingers over them, looking at anything but him. He’s uncomfortable suddenly and you have no idea why.

  ‘Drug dealer,’ you blurt, not sure where that came from.

  He looks up, abrupt.

  ‘Sorry,’ you giggle. ‘It’s the car. And the location. The cops’d never find you. It’s perfect.’

  He raises an eyebrow.

  ‘Oh I dunno.’ You roll your eyes. ‘Mad scientist. Smuggler. Pirate. Stolen goods. Museum stuff. Dole bludger.’ He shoots out a laugh. ‘Photographer,’ you prattle on, emboldened. ‘Yeah. That’s it. You shoot schoolgirls in swimming costumes, it’s highly controversial, creates the hugest stink—’ You can’t control your talk, it’s suddenly all zooming out wrong, just like before, with the teacher—someone else is taking over and pushing the real you out. You redden.

  He pokes his head into your space, forces you to look at him. His dancing eyes.

  ‘Hey. Hey.’ Forcing you to concentrate. ‘You are so, completely, wrong. About everything. Come on. Come and have a look.’

  He takes you by the hand, he leads you from the kitchen to his study, his secret space.

  Your stomach, steamrollered.

  The sharp intake, the little pull.

  Of want. Purely that.

  Lesson 76

  Our natural and happiest life is when we lose ourselves in the exquisite absorption of home

  In.

  At last.

  Industry, order, light. Mouth opened in wonder, you are gulping the space, roaming it as you would a museum in miniature, this pale box of loveliness. Photos cram an entire wall on a corkboard painted white; there are typed quotes, postcards, feathers and leaves and seed pods from the bush, watercolour scraps. Paint samples, scribbles of words, sketchy diagrams of—what? Narrative arcs for some kind of article or movie script or story; yes, that. Photos of people in magazines he’s scrawled names across and circled fragile eyes, a clenched hand, a woman’s ready lips. Along one wall are bowed stacks of shelves on bricks reaching to the ceiling, then more books on the floor in high stacks. Your eyes assess with the thoroughness of a forensic detective. Trying to unlock it all, trying to guess.

>   He leans against the doorpost, watching the looking, amused. You roll your eyes at him, once, as if ‘God knows’, and get back to your examination. A collection of antique ink wells that appear to have been dug up from the nearby earth are lined up along a windowsill. Filthy fountain pens cram a ceramic jar—James Keiller & Sons, Dundee, 1862, reads its beautiful type. The scrap of your work shirt lies on the desk. An old black typewriter is dead centre. A blank sheet is poised. The scrap of your shirt. The scrap of your shirt. You finger it, prickle up, step back.

  ‘So?’ He throws across.

  You dangle the piece of cloth in front of him and with laughing eyes dip a fountain pen in waiting ink and write yes across his empty sheet in scratchy blobs of messiness.

  ‘A writer.’

  He pings a rolled up piece of paper at you in affirmation. You laugh and catch it in an overhand snatch, just like your dad taught you, and flick it back hard with a boyish twist of your wrist.

  Of course a writer. The pale hands that just failed to catch your paper ball, the hopelessness with life, the face that feels too much. The thick black glasses, the hair never brushed. Now the room is unlocked, now you see him; of course.

  Lesson 77

  Such a life will not have been lived in vain

  You jiggle the scrap of your cloth in front of his eyes.

  ‘This one’s off limits, mate.’

  ‘But I’ve never met anything like her,’ he teases. ‘She’s a fascinating specimen.’

  ‘No. Way.’

  You waggle your finger at him in warning and he nods, concurs. Satisfied, you gleefully spin on his factory stool and play the typewriter keys like a piano, with pretend expertise, your back secretarial straight. Your fingers hover above all the waiting letter circles, almost touching but not quite.

  ‘You still use one of these things?’

  ‘Yep. It means I have to consider every single word. Make everything count. It also means I take a very, very long time. To Julian’s despair.’

  ‘What’s he got to do with all this?’

  ‘He’s my agent. And I’m extremely behind on a manuscript that he managed to get a lot of money for, which is driving him absolutely bananas. I might have to give the money back. He’s furious—’

  ‘I don’t blame him.’

  You look at Tol with an eyebrow raised, the mother with their child over the latest homework excuse. Back to the typewriter.

  ‘I’ve never met one of you before.’ Staring at everything, gulping it up; the working mind laid out before you. So, this is him, finally, his core, his life.

  A sigh. ‘We’re terrible people, the worst type. You should leave immediately.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we’re deeply competitive and insecure and our work is never good enough—which we know, despairingly, and just hope that no one else ever finds out. And because everything is fuel for our fiction, which is why no one should come too close. Everyone is a possible subject.’ He glances at the scrap of cloth back in its place; you snatch it up and point your finger, again, in playful warning.

  ‘Don’t worry, I promise.’ Hands high, all innocence. ‘But believe me, it’s wise not to get too close. We’re full of frustration—for our publishers for not pushing us enough, for our critics for not getting it, our families for giving us a rotten childhood and our kids for exhausting us. We’re wary of every other writer, never want them to succeed. Friends clutter up our time. We need someone to do everything for us because we’re completely hopeless at life, yet crave being alone more than anything else. We will do anything not to work. Make a cup of tea, go for a walk.’ He looks around, shaking his head and laughing. ‘Strip a house. Believe me, writing is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And it only gets harder. I don’t know why I persist. I’ve only published one book—’ His eyes wince as if he really can’t bear it. ‘Don’t ask, I hate talking about it—and am appallingly stuck with this next one. It makes me tremendously grumpy and it’s why I’m exiled in this place. Why Julian has exiled me … ’ A deep breath, a hopeless sigh. ‘Your father wouldn’t think much of me, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Why?’ Knowing he’s right.

  ‘There was this Sydney writer called Michael Dransfield, who said that to be a poet in Australia was the ultimate commitment.’ He shakes his head as if he’s just about given up. ‘All I can say is, I know exactly where he’s coming from.’

  You step away from his typewriter. Swirl around slowly, breathing his world in. Knowing now what you want more than anything else.

  This life. Him. All of it.

  The ultimate commitment.

  Lesson 78

  Daughters should be early taught to check every tendency towards ‘a romantic attachment’—the insane folly of loving a man for what he is, rather than for what he has got

  There are no words but the Bible’s in your own home. Your life with your father is all gristle; there is no meat in it, no juice. He left school at fourteen and never got around to proper punctuation and when he writes a letter it presses through several pages of his writing pad underneath, the words are so painstakingly formed. The amateur writer, still, like a schoolboy just learning; trying not to betray his ignorance.

  He’s only ever written you one letter in his life. He sent it to your boarding school the week you left home. No punctuation, of course.

  Don’t forget the old man loves you have to go now crib time don’t forget all right.

  It was preserved in the back of your diary.

  Burnt, of course.

  Lesson 79

  If you waste time, you waste not only your substance but your very soul—not that which is your own, but your maker’s

  ‘Why does Julian stick you all the way out here?’

  Because everything about them says they’re city types.

  ‘It’s my choice. Sydney’s too noisy to work in. Everything invades my life there too much. And … I’m a bit shy in it, to be honest. I feel stronger in this place.’ He looks at you; you cock your head, believe him—he’s stripping himself here and it’s something new and you smile, slowly, at it and nod. You feel stronger too in the bush.

  ‘It’s like, when I’m not given the space to do what I really want to do I get agitated, I’m all at sea, lost.’ He shrugs. ‘I’m a nightmare to be around.’

  ‘Mmmm.’ You’re smiling in vigorous agreement.

  He chuckles; alright. Takes a tumbler from the book shelf and lifts a glass stopper from a crystal decanter and pours out a golden liquid, swirls it, and teases its tart earthiness under your nose. You jerk back like a spooked horse. He laughs, examining you afresh, and downs it.

  ‘Not for you, eh?’

  You sit again at his seat and arch your back with your hands stretching high above you, then flop them over your head and slowly spin, surveying his lovely cocoon of a world.

  ‘I want to stay here forever,’ you breathe deep. ‘Dive, right into this life.’

  He steps back. Holds up his hands as if everything’s—suddenly—galloping ahead too fast.

  ‘Oh no, no. Don’t say that. This world would crush you in a week and you’d end up being anything but a writer. A banker, an accountant, anything. You’d be scarred for life.’

  He raises his glass to you, it’s not quite celebratory.

  ‘You, young lady, have what Harper Lee calls “one’s original promise”. And believe me, it’d be lost around here quick smart.’

  You screw up your face. ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘You’re an appreciator,’ he says. ‘I am not. I’m far too cynical for the likes of you. You seize life, I watch it. The difference is too great.’

  A prickly silence. He’s right; he’s a watcher, like a cat. You’re a participator, every particle of your body is roaring to muck in, to grab and cherish and savour and possess.

  The difference, yes, is too great. He said it. Something slinks away in you in that moment like a dog with its tail between its legs.

 
‘I don’t want any of me rubbing off on you,’ he adds gently. ‘Don’t want you changing. You should go home immediately and never come back.’

  He means it.

  ‘Go on. Scat.’

  You’re standing, confused, stopped. Can’t tell if he’s joking or not, can’t tell anything anymore. Everything a sign, everything a signal—or not—you’re breathing fast, too young for this. You’ve entered a new phase of play in this room and cannot read it, it’s so confusing, adult; he doesn’t seem grumpy and cynical in any way in here, he’s like a man supremely happy with this secret life that he has chiselled out for himself and he doesn’t want anything to invade it.

  Which you have, of course. Which you want.

  This room, this house—they’re all teaching you the importance of living a light life, of surrounding yourself with things that are beautiful but do not weigh you down and you are learning the great balm of simplicity here; a house that envelops you with reassurance and it’s been so long since you’ve had that. You want it and he knows it and he’s let you in too far. Yes, that’s it.

  The ‘annoyance’, he saw that from the start.

  With a thudding heart you pick up the ocean-blue bottle from your father’s shed. It’s in front of a row of books, Patrick Whites, all covered in careful plastic. You place the beautiful little object squarely in front of his typewriter, right in his line of sight. As if in ownership. Then you slip out his little Victorian volume from your pocket—that always accompanies you now—and slide it in snugly next to the Patrick Whites.

  You turn and look straight at him.