‘What happened to Tim? I thought you were still seeing him.’
‘Why can’t I come? I met him too! I promised on the phone that I’d come.’
‘Tim’s gone on holiday. We, well, we don’t have all that much in common, really.’
‘That’s a shame. He seemed very polite. Well, which beach are you going to? Take something warm, because I don’t like the look of those clouds.’
‘I could take my spade. I could dig holes and tunnels in the sand. We could make castles. Will I get my Speedos? I’ll only be a second!’
‘No, Jeremy, I’m sorry. I’m just going by myself. It’s a grown-up sort of thing. Hey, what about Sam? Isn’t he coming over?’
Jeremy shook his head. His shoulders sagged. ‘Sam’s busy. He’s going to lunch at his auntie’s. They’re going to have chocolate cake, because it’s his mother’s birthday.’
Mum raised her eyebrows at me. I knew that look.
‘Couldn’t he come? He won’t be in the way. He’d have such a nice time in the fresh sea air’. I looked away.
‘No one ever invites me anywhere,’ said Jeremy.
Mum’s eyebrows practically shot up into her hairline.
I went to the door. I didn’t look at either of them. ‘See you later, then. Have a good day!’
I could hear Jeremy start to cry as I reached the gate.
THE ONLY KNOWN portrait of Caroline Herschel as a young woman is a silhouette. It was painted before she left Hanover to join her brother William in England, in 1772. She’s in profile. We see only one side of her, in matt black. There is no light or shade.
The man in front of me in the bus to Manly had a portable radio. He was jerking his neck back and forth in time to the music, like a chicken pecking in a yard. He turned up the volume. I could hear the words now—it was an old song, ‘When a man loves a woman’. It made my blood pound. I thought of Richard’s mouth. I wondered if Caroline Herschel had ever felt like this. Perhaps when she discovered her first comet. But did she have this dissolving, runny kind of excitement, as if her bones were made of whipped cream? We’ll never know. History only gives us one side of her, a black silhouette.
I sang the words of the song under my breath. I looked out the window. Beyond the rooftops and trees a slice of sea lay like icing on a cake. I wanted to remember this bus ride—the song, the anticipation like an infinitesimal pause between notes, the sugar-frosted horizon.
We passed the deli where Mum bought her caramelised tomatoes. Sometimes she throws caution to the wind and buys 200 grams. I saw Carlo, the deli man, arranging buckets of flowers outside the shop.
The bus driver whistled ‘When a man loves a woman’ at the red light. He stared at a girl in a short skirt crossing the road. I wondered if we only ever see one side of people—even people we love. How did Mum see Grandma, for instance? In the mould of Caroline Herschel? When Mum was little, she only saw Grandma’s profile, proffered to the sky. She must have seen Ruth from the back, her shoulders hunched at the table as she studied her maps. That night, when I was twelve, Mum said, ‘Your Grandma always looked at the sky more than she did at me.’
When you take a photograph with the sunlight behind the subject, the person becomes a silhouette. It’s hard to get them in the right position, with a balance of light and shade. Part of the moon is usually in shadow. Sometimes it’s almost invisible.
Richard has shadows under his eyes. The colour of his eyes is grape-green—the seedless kind you can get in summer, fresh, tight with juicy flesh. But it’s darker underneath his lashes, more like evening.
If you’re a sneak like me, and you read people’s diaries, you get a glimpse of the other side. The part turned away from the light. You can see details shining through, islands of truth you never would have imagined. But around them float areas of exaggerated shadow.
As the bus turned the comer, past the aquarium, I smelled salt water. A rush of feelings crowded into my throat. I saw Jeremy’s face in the kitchen, his lips saying ‘please’. I imagined him in his red Speedos, filling his blue bucket with sand. He kneeled at the edge of the waves, shrieking as the sea gushed into his tunnels. I saw Tim racing up the beach after a surf, flinging himself down on his Mambo towel. Droplets of water scattered on his skin like dropped pearls.
Salt rises up from the sea, dissolving into the air in clouds of sea fog. I breathed in salt and the slur of waves on sand, and I thought, this could be something new. I didn’t want to feel guilty. I knew how to do that. Mournful, like bells tolling in an empty church yard. The imminence of Richard was igniting me. I could feel sleeping cells, strands of thought waking up. I could tell them to Richard. We would discover things together as we talked. He would listen. He would look at me and say wonderingly, ‘I’d never really thought of it like that. You animate things, Cally, you bring them to life.’
Did Grandma, did Mum, did old Caroline Herschel ever ride like this, toward heaven? Did they struggle like me? Caroline Herschel’s top lip was full and round, generous. It sat like a promise above its companion. Her chin was a small circle, like a child’s. You can see the straight line of her nose and rise of her throat in the silhouette. Perhaps she was very beautiful. She was William’s assistant for half a century. In the early days of his career, she even put food into his mouth, when he was busy grinding a mirror and dared not take his hands from it, allowing it to cool. On nights when he was sweeping for ‘nebulae’ Caroline sat at a table near the telescope, recording descriptions as her brother shouted them out.
She became a skilled comet-hunter. She was rewarded for her work. But what I wanted to know was, did she ever feel her bones turning to whipped cream? Did she ever want to live in her own house, have her own children, be a blazing star herself? Perhaps she wouldn’t have found the comets if she’d done that. It’s not fair, is it, that you have to parcel out your passion, as if you were slicing pastry into an even number. Something gets lost in the slicing, I bet. Caroline Herschel’s top lip was so articulate. It was poised, ready, as if saying ‘p’.
As soon as I stepped off the bus, I saw Richard. He had his back to me. He was leaning against the stone wall, gazing out at the harbour. There was the dark hair, curling like the tail of a ‘g’ down his neck. Beneath the curl was a small round vertebra. When I’d put my arms around his neck, that little bone had felt like a pebble under my thumb. I’d rippled it back and forth under its veil of skin, the way you roll a river stone in your palm.
A green and gold ferry glided into the bay, like a plump bird landing on a pond. I hurried toward Richard, willing him not to turn around. All the way in the bus, past the bank and the bread shop and the deli that sells caramelised tomatoes, I’d been hoping that he wouldn’t be there first. Have you ever seen those old movies where lovers run through high grass to meet each other? It was a very sixties’ thing. My mother reruns those scenes on video. She loves them. My father reads the newspaper. Anyway, the lovers ran with open arms, long hair flying, eyes locked, galloping like young horses across the fields. This kind of scene always made me nervous because the poor things had such a distance to cover, and it would be so easy to trip. Imagine if you fell flat on your face at your lover’s feet.
I didn’t want Richard to see me run. I’m no athlete.
I wanted to surprise him. I wanted to be perfect.
The 163 bus stops near the tobacconist and the milk bar at the wharf. People were streaming out of the ferry toward me. They jostled past with flinty elbows and fluorescent shorts. Hats and baseball caps bobbed together in an undulating rainbow. I wove through the crowd, grateful for the camouflage, dissolving like an oil smudge under a brush of bright colour.
I felt like a spy as I hurried along. Eyes on the ground, looking for cover. I put on my dark glasses. But, like James Bond, I longed for adventure and dangerous revelations.
The curl at the base of Richard’s neck grew closer. I could see it over a man’s yellow Hawaii shirt. I felt tired suddenly at the thought of disguise. I i
magined charging into the spotlight of Richard’s gaze. I’d throw off my sunglasses and hold out my arms. A spurt of bile came into my throat. It tasted like green ginger wine. I rubbed my lips together. There was an acidy chemical taste. I’d spent ten dollars on this black lipstick, you’d think they’d have at least given it a nice flavour. It cost so much to be cool. You had to look practically dead. Maybe Richard wouldn’t like black lipstick.
‘Hi, handsome,’ I said coolly, tapping Richard on the shoulder. He jumped like a startled rabbit.
‘Hullo!’ he practically squeaked.
I grinned. The line of his back had looked so relaxed, but maybe backs are unreliable. ‘Sorry I gave you a fright. I didn’t mean to.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Richard, and grinned back. ‘I was far away.’ He pointed out to the harbour. ‘This is a dreamy place.’
We laughed. Maybe he had gone over our every word on the bench, too. Was it possible? Was there life on Jupiter?
We decided to walk down the Corso, toward the beach. The smell of hamburgers and frying fish made my stomach turn. I thought of that night at the Cross, the fast food outlets and the gritty mixture in my teeth.
‘Do you want to get a hamburger?’ Richard said. ‘I’m hungry already.’
‘I brought sandwiches,’ I said quickly. There had only been avocado and sprouts in the fridge, but that was better than standing outside fish shops that made my stomach heave. ‘I’ve got enough for both of us.’
As we wandered down the Corso, I felt the sun sprawl over my shoulders. It was warm and mesmerising. But it made me worry. It was almost bikini weather.
We came to the end of the food shops and bargain boutiques and there was the long blue streak of beach. We found a table and bench on the concrete stretch overlooking the water, and sat down. I brought out the packet of sandwiches and gave Richard the one with extra sprouts. (I hoped he didn’t mind herbivore food.)
‘Ah good, avocado,’ said Richard. ‘My favourite!’
I nodded, my mouth full.
We talked in little bursts, in between bites of sandwich and picking sprouts out of our teeth. We looked at the ocean. Far out, beyond the ruffle of waves, heads bobbed about like small black watermelon seeds.
Richard asked me about school, my family. I tried to talk normally, but it was hard when there was such a sense of danger. Or was it excitement? Everything was too bright. The sun was dazzling, glancing off Richard’s shirt in waves of light, the sea was sapphire, the sand glinted. I felt as if I were in a war, I’d be blown up any minute. Maybe I would say the wrong thing, and set off a landmine.
‘What do you think you’ll do when you finish school?’ Richard asked.
‘You mean what am I going to be when I grow up?’
‘Something like that.’
‘I don’t know.’ I suddenly felt exhausted. I wished I didn’t care so much. ‘At the moment I just want to get through the week.’
Richard looked at me. The gold flecks in his green eyes were like flashes of sun. I shivered, it was as if he had X ray vision.
I wished we had met after eight, under the cover of evening.
‘What are you sitting on?’ Richard said suddenly.
‘A wooden bench, same thing you’re sitting on.’
‘Ha ha. No, I mean, what is it you’re not telling me? You look all worn out and weary with something, and I have no idea what it is.’
I knew I should have worn my other lipstick. ‘This is just my usual look,’ I said. I started to babble. ‘It’s called cool—you train your face to look immobile in the face of catastrophe and you appear years older than you are. With this black lipstick, you can achieve the vampire effect with accelerated decay. At least that’s what my father says.’
‘Can you reverse the look when you’re thirty?’
‘Ah, that’s the question. Will we all still be alive at thirty, chatting on benches in clean air, eating food that won’t give us salmonella?’
There was silence for a while, and it wasn’t comfortable. It was what you might call pregnant.
‘Anyway,’ I blurted into the gap, ‘what about you? What do you need to be forgiven for? You know, you said that thing at the Observatory last night, something about the water and the quiet there, that it was forgiving.’
‘Oh, that was just something to say.’
‘Oh.’
Silence. I watched the watermelon seeds bobbing.
Romance is so much more satisfactory in your head. People say the right thing at the right time when your eyes are closed. Why is real life such an anxious sort of anticlimax?
‘Well, that’s not really true,’ Richard said, lurching into the quiet. ‘It was a good place to come that time.’
‘What time?’
‘Oh, years ago. The Observatory was like a sanctuary then, a place of prayer.’
‘You mean like a monastery?’
Richard smiled. ‘Not quite. I wasn’t training to be a priest or anything, but I guess I did need to confess my sins.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Okay, if I show you mine, will you show me yours?’
‘Maybe. I can’t commit myself. I’m sure my sins are a million times worse than yours.’
‘Well, I’ll risk it.’
‘That’s what stars do,’ I nodded at him. ‘See, I had you pegged from the start. You can’t expect an old moon like me to take nuclear risks. It’s just not in our nature.’
‘God, you’re a smartass,’ said Richard. ‘Well, when I was sixteen, I had a really shitty year. It’s like everything suddenly went speeding downhill.’
‘Me too!’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
He waited, but that was all. He looked down at a crust of avocado sandwich. ‘I spent most of that year crying,’ he said.
‘Really?’ I don’t know if I was more surprised at his honesty or his tears. ‘You mean at school and everything? That must have been a social nightmare for you. I mean, boys don’t, do they.’ God, that sounded lame.
‘I had some sort of breakdown, I suppose. In the beginning people just kept telling me not to be so heavy. “Lighten up, Richo!” they’d say—you know, I was filled with this dread about the world ending, and I’d tell people about global warming and tidal waves, or the new breed of killer mosquito. I used to search for news items that would contribute to end-of-the world evidence. I remember Kerry O’Brien on the “7.30 Report” saying after an item on lead poisoning, “Well, there’s another thing to worry about.” I had such a rush of fellow feeling. I wanted to ring him up at the ABC and commiserate. As far as I could see, every day was another nail in the earth’s coffin. And nobody else understood. Only Kerry and I. The world just kept denying all the evidence, and saying, “Lighten up, Richo!”’
‘That must have been awful. I wish I’d known you then.’
‘You did meet me.’ Richard gave a lopsided smile. ‘Once, I came with Dad to your school. I remember because you were so pretty and I was such a mess. You took one glance and turned back to Dad. You never looked at me again. In that moment I could see those little wires in your brain making the decision. “Nerd,” they said. “Absolute dork.”
‘I didn’t!’ But even as I protested the blush crept over my cheeks. There was a faint image crystallising of a tall darkhaired boy all twisty with shyness. ‘You never said!’
‘Well, whatever. Mum kept telling me that I wasn’t so badlooking, any girl would be pleased to go out with me. I had all this potential under my skin, etc. etc. I told her the only thing I had under my skin was pimple pus. She said, never mind, girls have always worried far more about the way they look than boys—that’s what feminists are fighting, the tyranny of this perfect female body image. Blah, blah. It’s hard to believe all that when girls like you swan around, flicking back your shiny hair and showing your long legs. You look like a wet dream. You’ll never know how scary you lot are.’
‘Boys still rate girls one to ten for looks,’ I put in, ‘as if that�
�s the only thing that’s important.’
‘I don’t. Anyway, this is from my point of view, right, so do you want to hear it or not? Girls the same age won’t look at you if there’s someone there who’s been through the pimple phase and come out the other side—with their P plates and the family car. You feel like a nothing compared with them, just a damp spot on a sunny day. Especially if you have this crying thing.’
‘But why were you crying?’
‘Well.’ Richard’s face was working. ‘Well. I suppose it was some sort of reaction.’
‘To what?’
Richard sighed. ‘I stole some money at school. Quite a lot of money.’
‘Oh.’ I couldn’t imagine it. Richard, with that assured voice and searching eyes. He was looking down at the table. There was a big white splotch of seagull poo near his elbow. I wondered if I should tell him. I decided not to. There’d obviously been enough shit happening to him already.
‘See, there were some soccer guys who were looking for team members. I’d been practising like crazy. I would have done anything to be friends with them. Nauseating, isn’t it?’ Richard glanced up at me. His eyes were a green flash. ‘They were older, you see. One of them had a motor bike. They went out drinking at night. They said I couldn’t go round with them unless I had money to buy beer. They knew my dad was a teacher, and that was really uncool. Christ, they were like pirates, Cally—they got girls, they had tattoos, they didn’t give a shit. I stole the money from the canteen. One of them, Wacko, was with me. He ran, but I got caught. I didn’t even have a chance to buy one beer.
‘When they caught me, I blurted about Wacko. I couldn’t help it—I was petrified. The soccer gang never forgot it. I got suspended from school. Mum and Dad were so miserable, it was like someone just died. After two weeks I was allowed back in, but it was even worse than at home. At school, everyone knew. Not just that I was a thief, but I was a coward. I had no friends. Before I’d been an invisible pimply nerd with no friends. Now I stuck out like dogs’ balls. Everyone knew who I was, and what I was. It’s terrible to lose your anonymity like that. There’s nowhere to hide. No way out.’
Borrowed Light Page 17
