The Life to Come

by Michelle De Kretser

  She forgot that well after the boy in the orange T-shirt had disappeared into the trees, the shock of their encounter continued to vibrate: the way he had laughed so brazenly, showing all his bitey little teeth. There was such lightness in him! As he capered away, the day seemed to darken. Pippa’s dress, of printed cotton, sat heavily on her encumbered body; it seemed to be sending an ache down to her calves. She took a bottle of water from her bag and drank from it, tilting her face to the sky. The sun knocked all the leaves into light, transforming them into birds.

  There had been barbecues and picnic tables by the playground; Pippa returned to it and sat down. She gave a little, unconscious shake—it was useless, she couldn’t rid herself of what she had seen. That rowdy visitation didn’t belong to the past but to the future. There were no memorial plaques in the future, only a daunting horde to which Pippa was of no account. It called over its shoulder as it rammed past: ‘You missed everything important.’

  Pippa’s phone rang. It was no one who mattered; she let voicemail pick it up. What she needed was the reassurance of a virtual new world that offered the hope all new worlds extend: an unlimited expanse in which she might live out her best idea of herself. Her profile picture on Facebook was overlaid with a transparency of the French flag, and there were one hundred and ninety-three responses to Rashida’s post. On Twitter, @gloriahallelujah’s pinned tweet was a photo of the opera house lit up in red, white and blue with the caption ‘Vive la France!’ Someone quoted Christina Rossetti: ‘Does the road wind uphill all the way? / Yes, to the very end.’ Someone else wondered why cats just allowed themselves to be stereotyped like that. @warmstrong said, ‘Patrick White was a genius. Up to a point.’

  V

  OLLY FAITHFUL

  SEVENTEEN MONTHS HAD PASSED SINCE Bunty died, and she had been living at Waratah Lodge before that, but Christabel still woke daily to a feeling of surprise—or rather, bewilderment and resistance on finding herself alone. Bunty’s bed with its candlewick coverlet was still there across the room. Christabel woke early and slept lightly, unlike Bunty, who had snored—how many times had Christabel cried, ‘Bunty!’ in the middle of the night? Sometimes it was necessary to get out of bed and prod until Bunty turned onto her side. She maintained that she didn’t snore, or hardly ever, and would accuse Christabel of exaggeration. Another thing that they couldn’t agree on was the cold. Bunty didn’t feel it and refused to have a heater in the bedroom. ‘That’s because you’re fat,’ Christabel said. The memory of that kind of remark was a torture, although Bunty had merely observed that Christabel ought to dress more warmly—ignoring her flannelette nightie and ribbed red socks.

  On the morning of the Sydney Writers’ Festival, Christabel sat up in bed and reached for an old jumper with a loose roll neck; it had wide sleeves, making it easy to get her arms in before dropping the rest over her head. There was no one to object to a radiator now, but without Bunty to share bills, Christabel couldn’t afford to heat the room except in the coldest months. She switched on her clock radio and caught the forecast: ‘A medium chance of showers, clearing to a fine afternoon.’ What help was ‘a medium chance’? Christabel used to say, ‘Bunty, do you think I should take an umbrella? A coat?’ Whatever Bunty answered was right some of the time, which was no worse than the weather bureau and inspired more confidence because it had been customised for Christabel. Whether the official forecast said, ‘Partly cloudy,’ or ‘Thunderstorm developing,’ or ‘Strong south-westerly winds turning light in the evening,’ what it was really saying was, ‘Now you are alone in the world.’

  Bunty and Christabel had met in Ceylon when they were girls. Fa took one look at Bunty: ‘The Mediterranean type: exquisite at seventeen, overblown at twenty, fat at twenty-five.’ Christabel was twelve when Fa said that, and Bunty was fourteen, and the Sedgwicks had just moved into the street. Mr Sedgwick was English—the wrong kind, who drank. He had failed to manage a tea estate in the hills. In Colombo, he was employed as some kind of clerk.

  Kiki Mack informed everyone that Bunty’s Italian mother had run off with a Creole bandleader when Bunty was only five. Excitability, too, came with the type, said Fa.

  When Bunty turned up at Christabel’s school, her white skin was admired, and the way her breasts crowded her uniform; but her strong features were judged rather plain. Her real name was Alfrieda, but very soon not even the teachers called her that.

  The two girls had little to do with each other, being in different forms. Outside school, it was the same thing: the Sedgwicks’ house was screened by tall flowering shrubs. It was known that there were older boys, who had been to school in England. One had gone to the dogs: he had been seen around the place with a Chinese girl.

  Fa ran into Mr Sedgwick at a club where Englishmen didn’t go. Christabel heard him tell Moth, ‘Trim Sedgwick has the sincere blue eyes of a born liar.’

  Trim!

  Moth was no longer strong enough to play the piano. When Christabel was small, people had come to the house every evening to hear Moth play. Years later, Fa would talk about those evenings. ‘A brilliant company’ was the phrase that recurred. It encompassed a local diva, and a Danish painter, and a former prime minister who believed himself in love with Moth. Fa described them all. By then he and Christabel were living in a flat where rats ran behind the walls. What Christabel recalled about the early part of her life was a morning when she was four or five. She had risen while it was still dark and wandered out of the house. The crows were already calling. The lawn lay in deep shadow, but the upper part of the air was full of light. It announced the approach of something loose and strong and expansive. Christabel sat on a step and waited for her life.

  Rehearsals for the carol service began. The choir was ruled by Miss Felton-Fowler, who taught music throughout the school. At every rehearsal, the Old Fowl interrupted the choir to cry, ‘All ye faithful! Enunciate! E-nun-ci-ate!’

  ‘O come, Olly Faithful,’ sang the girls, as they did every year.

  The carol service always opened with the first verse of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ sung by a Sixth Former. But the Old Fowl chose Bunty as her soloist that year.

  With the first notes, all the girls hushed.

  The Old Fowl rubbed her crabby red eyes and addressed Bunty: ‘There were Sedgwicks at Horsley Hall in Derbyshire. Are you related to them?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Bunty. ‘I’ve lived here all my life.’

  That was the way she spoke. There were teachers who went on giving her lines for failing to say ‘Miss’. But Christabel saw that Bunty wasn’t rude, only indifferent. It was as if her mind were attending to matters known to her alone, far removed from the petty laws of school. Punished, she remained large and placid, and blinked with no discernible sense of disgrace. Her teeth looked sharp and were surprisingly small. She gave no sign of the perfection she carried inside her. At netball, she threw powerfully from the shoulder, like a boy.

  Moth died. She hadn’t left her bedroom in years. A delegation of girls came to the house and pressed Christabel’s hand.

  From the corridor a step led down into Moth’s room, setting it apart. Long before Moth became ill, the sunken back bedroom had made Christabel feel sad. Even when the curtains were open, the dressing table mirror swallowed all the light. Moth’s books still lay by the stripped iron bed. Christabel looked through a few. A pencil line marked a sentence: ‘We should live life neither as it is, nor as it should be, but as we see it in our dreams.’ How beautiful that was! Then she realised that it wasn’t ‘live life’ but ‘show life’.

  In time the pieces of the world came together again. But now all the seams showed.

  A Sedgwick roared up and down the street on a motorcycle at inconsiderate hours.

  Fa’s lecture on ‘The Romantic Imagination’ was disrupted when a group of undergraduates invaded the amphitheatre to chant, ‘Sinhala only! Sinhala only!’ A very low class of student was being admitted to the university these days.


  Bunty had to repeat a year at school. She was only one form higher than Christabel now but remained remote. It wasn’t clear whether she sought solitude or was shunned. She was as tall and radiant as a queen, and like royalty had no need to be kind.

  On her way home from her elocution lesson at Kiki Mack’s Academy of Speech and Drama, Christabel practised vocal clarity: ‘Parp-pope-poop-pawp-pape-peep. Barb-bobe-boob-bawbbabe-beeb.’ Very fast, she recited, ‘He hits his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.’

  The street was lined with shade trees. Birds grumbled as she passed. Out of the green gloom came the blare of Bunty’s arms, Bunty’s face. A lanky black-and-white dog materialised, too, running up to inspect Christabel.

  The girls drew close and halted—uncertainly, as if they might yet pass each other without a sign. The face Christabel saw was as white as a bandage and as blank. For comfort, she thumbed a hard object in the pocket of her skirt. The sweet, held out, was round and orange in a cellophane twist. For a frightening moment, she thought Bunty would strike it from her hand.

  They still hadn’t spoken. Having accepted the barley sugar, Bunty just stood there. The dog, sniffing about, lifted his leg against a wall.

  Bunty said, ‘He’s called Oliver.’ She gave a barking sort of laugh: ‘Olly Faithful!’

  At dinner, Fa said, ‘The Sedgwicks’ dog has a boy’s name, and the Sedgwick boys are named for dogs.’

  It was quite true that Bunty had a brother called Sizzle. And another who answered to Raven. A third, who had been in the war, went out to Nyasaland around this time and was never heard of again.

  In January, Bunty wasn’t there when school began. It was learned that she would have had to repeat the year a second time if she had stayed. A boarder whose family lived up-country reported that Bunty had been seen in a hill station; she looked well and had put on weight.

  By the end of the year it became known that Bunty had gone abroad. Kiki Mack decided that she had gone out to join her brother in Africa. She launched her gentle, throaty laugh and said, ‘Girls are in demand in places like that.’ Thereafter, if Christabel’s thoughts turned to Bunty, she pictured her on horseback with a white hat and a gun. Men with categorical jawlines—also hatted and armed—buzzed in her wake.

  Christabel began teaching in Kiki’s academy as an amusement, to pass the time until she married. There was Len Raymond, Fa’s most promising student. Len took Christabel to the Varsity Ball. On a veranda strung with Chinese lanterns, he had opinions about Yeats. Afterwards, in the shadowy garden, the length of their bodies pressed.

  Another time Len came to the house and sat with Christabel for over an hour, drinking tea with his knees sideways. One of his socks had lost its elastic—out of compassion Christabel looked away. They discussed modern literature and agreed on the importance of the subjective view. A weighty silence followed. At last, Len gazed into the crotons that jazzed in the garden and announced that an uncle in Canada had paid his passage there. He said, ‘This is no country for young men.’ His voice shot up, and he laughed to cover it—it was obvious that he had rehearsed the line.

  Christabel discovered that she was sensible and practical. ‘You’ll need warm, waterproof clothes,’ she said. ‘And it’s said that seventy percent of body heat is lost through the head. You’ll find a hat essential. Preferably fur.’ This newfound briskness lasted years, at least where Len was concerned.

  News of Sedgwicks—though never of Bunty—reached Christabel now and then. Sizzle married a well-to-do Sinhalese girl. Soon afterwards, Raven and his father returned to England. Fa said, ‘They should have left in ’48.’ He meant with the rest of the English. Fa was a patriot. All through the Sixties, there were departures; Len Raymond was only the start. Looking back, Christabel would never understand how things could have come to an end so quietly and so fast. People she had known all her life queued for the gangplank. Later, they walked in line across the tarmac to the waiting plane. A world collapsed in an orderly way. Christabel realised, We are going down with it.

  At every farewell party, Fa found an opportunity to say, ‘My own, my native land.’ Christabel, standing off to one side, saw the smiles and recognised embarrassment. Serves them right! she thought. They had been reminded of a beautiful and noble sentiment. But as the years passed, she moved away when she saw Fa getting ready to speak. He wore a weak, foolish smile on these occasions. Afterwards she wanted to go over and place her palm against his—she never did, believing this assault of tenderness to be an admission of his defeat. In fact it sealed his victory, since pity fastened her to him more securely than any lock and chain.

  The farewells always seemed to take place on particularly lovely evenings with attentive breezes and a giant moon. Christabel liked to find a vantage point beside a window or on a veranda where it was easy to look away from the faces of those who were to leave. They were the faces of victors, gleeful and exposed. A girl Christabel knew from school said, ‘Why are you staying? They don’t want people like us here.’ She meant people whose European surnames—Portuguese, Dutch, British—were studies in empire. They had no place in the modern nation: they embodied shabby bargains, old defeats. ‘If your father won’t leave, you should go,’ said the girl, fingering the ripe pimple on her neck. ‘I’ll write when we get to Melbourne. You can stay with us when you come.’

  She never wrote. Or maybe she did; Christabel and Fa were no longer at their old address, having had to move to two third-floor rooms in a slummy wilderness on the wrong side of Colombo. Fa’s illness had intervened, and the spiteful magic of inflation. His savings disappeared while his pension bought less each month.

  Christabel inserted herself into a bus that would take her to work. Upright in the crush of bodies, she became aware of a peculiar pressure in the small of her back. The bus braked, causing her to stagger. The pressure increased, shifting to her buttocks. As her stop approached, she squirmed around to begin the slow journey to the door and saw, through lowered lids, a trousered leg. Western clothes: A gentleman, she thought automatically. That evening, she read to Fa after dinner: ‘Nothing in the world is single; / All things by a law divine / In one spirit meet and mingle.’ After a while she excused herself, pleading hoarseness, and went out onto the landing. The barred window there was open, but the air in the stairwell was always foul. Christabel was conscious of an urge to touch her tongue to the rusted flakes on a bar. A gentleman! She couldn’t have said which was more painful to contemplate, the foolishness of her reflex or the depth of her need. She was thirty-four. She had believed, briefly, that her life could be joyful. Now a clutching in her ribs told her that she was moving towards defeat.

  Fa died—awfully, among the opals of phlegm on the floor of a public hospital. Some hours earlier, he had opened his eyes and said, ‘What is done is done. And what is not done is not done.’

  Without his pension, Christabel could no longer afford the flat. That was when Kiki Mack offered her garage. ‘Many would call it luxurious,’ said Kiki. Her eyes grew larger and dreamier and closer together. She said, ‘You’ll find the rent very reasonable. Even though I’ve had shelving put in.’

  Christabel placed Fa’s Keats on one of the shelves. All the other books, with which Fa had steadfastly refused to part, had been sold. Silverfish had infiltrated all seven volumes of Gibbon. ‘They’re leather bound,’ said Christabel to the bookseller standing over Fa’s trunk. He scratched his head; his yellow moustache was sorrowful. ‘No demand,’ he told her. She agreed at last to his price. His assistant came forward, and the two men began wrapping the books in old newspapers. Christabel saw a headline about insurgents. Another announced that Charles Manson had been sentenced to life.

  At Kiki’s, Christabel had to use the servants’ bathroom, the servants’ lavatory. She learned to walk past the kitchen veranda as if going to a ball, clutching her cake of Lux.

  Kiki supplied her meals, deducting the cost from her wages. Christabel put on weight. For years, she had
fed Fa nourishing, expensive chicken or fish while dining on bread sprinkled with sugar. Now she was well and strong, and her mind was very clear. When she remembered the moment on the landing, she felt only scorn for her former self. A gentleman! Christabel looked into the square of mirror on the slimy wall of the servants’ bathroom. She watched her eyes slip all over the place and brought them back to face facts. ‘No demand,’ she said.

  Calmly, she tidied the garage and set out for the station. She should have had only a minute or two to wait, but the train had been delayed. From the edge of the platform, she watched the direction from which it would come. People had walked out to the end of the tracks and were standing there, smoking to pass the time: blue ringlets hung in the sunny air. Christabel’s bag was over her arm, and her arms were crossed at her waist. Her small sharp bones were full of light. She looked down to check that her shoes were clean. She heard the train and felt its breath, and turned into a column of lead. Commuters pressed forward around her, while others attempted to alight. She was shoved aside and stumbled. Her bag slid from her arm. The clasp broke when it struck the platform and everything fell out. Everything was a piece of paper with Kiki’s name and phone number. A thick brown sandal stepped on it as she watched.