by Thea Astley
‘You dirty drunk! You couldn’t stop me if you wanted.’
‘Couldn’t I! Try that.’ He lurched over to her, across the carpet on which their marriage was founded, and hit her hard, twice, on the face.
‘We’ll be without a substitute for two days,’ Findlay murmured, ‘but everything should be right by Wednesday. They’re sending me a man this time. We’ve saved the ship, my dear.’
‘Have we?’ his wife said with a rare scepticism, remembering ‘Sweetie’ Russell. ‘How old?’
‘Well he’s a one-one man, so he can’t be too young.’
‘Mrs. Striebel did teach well. You often said so.’
‘Maybe. But other factors must be considered.’
‘I always like to feel, Alec, that where I can have acted for moral good, I have done so.’
‘Jess, please. I missed the announcement. What did the man say?’
‘A concerto in D major for ‘cello and piano by Vivaldi.’
‘How do you do it? Talk and listen at once?’
‘I’m brilliant, darling.’
‘Are you crying, Robert?’
‘A little. How did you know?’
‘Your face was all wet when I kissed you.’
‘This is all back to front, Helen. You’re the one who should be weeping. Hard wench!’
‘I am inside. It rains in my heart … il pleut dans mon coeur comme il pleut dans la ville. Is that right?’
‘You know,’ he said, ‘this will be all right. I feel it. Holidays soon. We’ll have time together.’
‘The thing is complete in itself, though, isn’t it? Like a wave breaking. Rise, sweep, fall, backwash.’
‘It’s the after-effects that could matter, of course,’ Findlay said, slipping into his pyjamas. ‘Even now I feel there’s been something going on in the senior school. Poor tone, there, you know. Poor tone.’
‘You haven’t had your bismuth,’ his wife said.
‘Oh Greg!’
‘Will you? Will you marry me, Rose?’
‘Oh yes … oh, stop it, Greg!’
‘Why? We’re engaged, aren’t we?’
‘I suppose … oh no, Greg!’
Subsiding into the scuffling darks of acquiescence.
‘No more gingerbread, momma. I vil be op arf da night. Is lovely, t’ough. Yiss. I liked t’em real vell vot I knew, dat is to say. A nice lady. Always ‘allo. Not passing me as if I vos dirt. And ‘im, on okay fellow.’
‘Go on, Szammie. Joost a liddle piece. She sent me a big bonch of flowers, vunce, remember, the time I vos so ill. Sorry also, she is going.’
‘You’re being very moral all of a sudden,’ Cecily Cantwell said. She looked with near-hatred at the slumped, flabby figure of her husband.
The man glanced up quickly at the half-pretty, near-neurotic face.
‘Morals!’ he said. ‘I’ve known about you and Lunbeck for weeks.’
Welch steadied himself against the table (genuine walnut veneer) and nodded slowly over his words. ‘Now get to bed. Leave me alone, see.’
‘You hit me,’ Marian sobbed. ‘I’ll never let you forget that. Never.’
‘I bet you won’t. Go on. Beat it, before I do it again.’
‘How did you hear, Frank?’
‘Oh, Findlay dropped a hint yesterday. Asked me not to mention it.’
‘You beast! You might have told me!’
‘My dear, in that case I might as well have rigged up a loudspeaker system at the top of the hill and done the thing with éclat.’
‘That’s not kind.’
‘I know you women,’ Rankin said contentedly, sure that he did.
‘Everything except what I got married for,’ Ruth Lunbeck said bitterly.
‘But that’s how you like it, isn’t it?’ Harold said. ‘I always thought that was how you liked it.’
‘I’ll tell you something,’ his wife said, propping her venom on one elbow. ‘It’s the job, really. I married you for your job.’
‘There’s no need to tell me that.’
‘And all I’ve got out of it is a stinking little country town brimful of fornication.’
‘That’s a big word for you. You’re full of philosophy tonight, darling.’
‘Don’t darling me.’
‘When will it be?’
‘What?’
‘Come on. No kidding. The marriage. When will it be, eh?’
‘Oh, Greg! Soon.’
‘I’ll say soon.’ He looked lovingly at the car and thought of the spanking big beach week-ender. ‘Soon as you like, kiddo.’
‘I just thought of something, Robert.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Young Vinny. Remember I told you yesterday about her request. I haven’t had a chance to see her. She was away today, and I’m going early tomorrow.’
‘What of it?’
‘Well, I asked her to come down to the hotel after lunch to see if the book I phoned Margaret to send me had come in the midday mail. It’s one of those very good sex-instruction booklets we used to use at that private school I was at. Anyway, I wanted to have a talk to her.’
‘Think something’s the matter?’
‘Certain. But I can’t imagine what.’
Mrs. Farrelly sighed on the edge of sleep. ‘Has she left a sending address, dear?’
‘Yes. Everything’s to go on to Camooweal, but Bert’ll get it up at the post office before it reaches us.’
‘It’s good to know in case.’
‘Wonder if Herc will come to badminton any more?’ Freda pondered. She poured herself a brandy and settled back.
‘Probably. Hide enough for anything, that sort.’
‘Bet the Welches are tickled.’
‘Marian might be. Old Sam’s a queer fish. Don’t understand him, I’m afraid. Pour us a snifter, Freda.’
‘Fonny, poppa, ‘ow ve saw them that Sunday also, ven you took me for a run to the Bay. I ‘ope you never told ‘im.’
‘Vot you t’ink me, momma? Vot dey call’ere a no-good bastard? No so, my dear.’
‘Come on, Szammie. Vot talk for ’eaven’s sake! Let’s go to bed.’
‘You are brilliant, my dear. But you do talk through my music. You seem very pleased Helen Striebel is going?’ Alec Talbot said.
‘Why? Aren’t you?’
‘I’m glad the situation between Moller and her was brought to Findlay’s notice. I suppose her going does solve everything.’
‘You don’t sound certain.’ Her jealousy nagged her.
‘Goodness, Jess,’ mildly, ‘you seem suddenly annoyed. You must admit she was decorative.’ He was punishing her in his own special way for interrupting his evening’s culture.
‘All right, all right,’ Findlay said testily. ‘You’ve made me lose track of what I wanted to say next … ah yes! It’s the innocence of the other pupils that must be guarded. The freshness and the innocence.’
‘Whom are you thinking of particularly?’ his wife asked acidly.
‘Why, all of them. They’re all a nice lot of kids really.’
‘Don’t forget that one of them was nice enough to scribble knowing and obscene messages all over the road.’
Findlay’s speech stopped in its tracks. Sometimes he resented Marcia’s criticism. In a wife he expected a bulwark of confirmation.
‘Where’s that bottle?’ he snapped. ‘I’ll take the stuff now.’
‘You’re probably imagining things, Helen.’
‘Probably. Anyway, do me a favour and collect any mail that comes to the pub. If that book comes after I’ve gone, give it to Vinny for me.’
‘Shall I give her the little talk, too?’
‘Oh, darling! Still, the poor kid! I feel someone needs to do something for her.’
‘We need to do something for us, too, you know.’
‘Yes. But she’s so helpless. We’re not. I’ve never seen anyone so alone.’
‘Haven’t you, my dear? Wait until we’re parted.’
‘Will we tell the others?’ Rose Jarman asked hopefully, longing for the boasting, the flashing of the engagement ring.
‘Why not?’ he agreed, thinking of the wedding gifts they would receive. His mind trickled through green valleys of acquisition, around islands of possession.
‘Oh, Greg! I can’t believe it’s true.’
‘Neither can I,’ he said, looking at the car.
‘One thing about her,’ Farrelly suggested charitably. ‘She always paid on the dot. Never had to wait.’
‘Wassmatter?’ His wife rolled away from his voice.
‘I said one thing she always paid on the dot.’
‘Glad to see her go. Gives us a bad name having men up.’
‘She’s got some pretty rude friends, too. I never told you …’
Lunbeck sighed. ‘Well, if you don’t want to be darling’d please shut up and let me get to sleep.’
‘Now you won’t even talk to me. I suppose you condone that pair.’
‘What if I do? Helen Striebel’s a very good-looking woman.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you think she is, and I bet you wouldn’t have minded being in Moller’s shoes.’
‘Hardly his shoes, dear. And, seeing you mention it, no, I wouldn’t have minded at all.’
‘I hate you!’
‘All right, Ruth, think of that next time you pass Nev’s and book up lots and lots of cosmetics. Have a wallow. And I swear I’m not going to argue any further or answer one more damned question.’
‘It’s rather squalid, isn’t it, Frank? I mean being caught up at the Bay like that. And don’t forget Harold saw them together in Brisbane.’
Frank Rankin heaved his feet on to another chair.
‘Poor show, with his wife ill, too.’
‘Think she’ll get better?’ Freda asked. She didn’t really care one way or another except as the fact affected the scandal.
‘No hope.’ Rankin loved definite diagnosis. ‘The paralysis is too advanced. Three months maybe, if she’s lucky.’ He called it being lucky in spite of knowing the whole progress of her illness. ‘Certainly no more.’
‘I suppose Herc’s really laying in stock for the lean times.’
‘Oh, I think the whole business – between Herc and Striebel, that is – has been going on longer than we suspect.’
‘Frank, you know we make a point of suspecting back further even than that.’
‘Witty old thing,’ he said admiringly. ‘Pour another for yourself, darling.’
‘Do you think so?’ Jess Talbot countered. ‘Alec, did you ever notice her hands? And so often had half an inch of slip dangling. That’s unforgivable, in my opinion.’
‘Couldn’t I please hear the Vivaldi? Please?’
‘Well, they’re reaping their reward.’
‘Please, Jess.’
‘They might have been interesting to a Bohemian clique, but they certainly weren’t the type I’d ever have chosen as friends.’
Alec Talbot snapped the radio switch down. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Satisfied?’
‘You’re being bad-tempered and inconsiderate, Alec,’ his wife said. ‘And you know I like Vivaldi.’
‘That’s what I said a while back, Robert. I can hardly wait for our separation because the waiting itself is so painful.’
Moller had not let her go once as they lay in the darkness. He spoke with his lips placing words like kisses in the hollow between jaw and ear.
‘Aloneness. A very special problem,’ he said. ‘No carrion comfort until we met. Ah, my dear. The aloneness is going to make our togetherness an extreme of pleasure.’
No answer in the dark, in the dream within shadow and the warmth in his arms.
‘Who’s crying now?’ he asked, suspecting. ‘Don’t let’s talk any more, Helen. Not for a while.’
Twelve
Road into town once more on a Saturday of sunlight; and hope was the straw clutched at, the ticket in the lottery, the six chances for a shilling with the bamboo hoops. Hope kept the head raised and the eyes observant of the town-dwellers shopping and post-lolling, restored the senses of sight and hearing and taste and smell, sweetly, temporarily until hope secured the prize for itself, the fact in the pocket for the homeward journey.
Vinny had lived since Thursday hope-buoyed and fed, waiting for Saturday with an impatience that was almost pleasant. She had not gone to school on Friday, the fact that she had fainted the previous afternoon being sufficient argument for her mother, but had stayed in bed alternating moods of despondency with cheerfulness, picking at meals and dozing into calm from which she invariably awakened with a tug of apprehension. She tried not to worry. She tried to give herself respite from her panic by holding off all thought of her problem until Saturday should resolve it one way or another. She was only partly successful. Her hands kept creeping fearfully to her stomach and feeling it with a controlled dread. Friday was a no man’s land, the time between despair and hope in their essence, the waiting hours that do not exist even in memory, once they have been crossed.
On Saturday morning she came to breakfast more nervous but happier than she had felt for days. It was only days, she had to keep assuring herself. It felt like weeks and months and years. Her mother looked at her closely as she turned the chops frying in the pan. They made a heavenly smell and sizzling noise and Vinny realised with surprise that it was the first time for nearly a week that the sight of cooking food had given her any pleasure – or that she had even noticed what she would be eating, for that matter.
Her mother drained the fat expertly into a tin.
‘You look a whole lot better, Vin,’ she said. ‘There’s no denying a day in bed sets you up when you feel no good.’
Royce grinned as he spooned huge mouthfuls of cereal, and began to speak when a glare from his mother silenced him.
‘I’m okay, mum, thanks,’ Vinny said. She ate her breakfast without saying any more, wondering anxiously how she would be able to go to the township without her mother probing her with question upon question. Cunningly she decided not to mention it until that exact moment when she was preparing to leave, and then to give away nothing of her actual purpose. After she had finished her breakfast she filled in the morning doing her home-lessons, wrestling with the abstraction that was now an accustomed part of her. At half-past eleven she went to her bedroom to change into a clean dress. The quilt, the dressing-table, the wardrobe, and especially the stared-at ceiling and walls, all seemed to bear the imprint of her pain. She felt that never again would these four shabby walls hold her in quite the same innocent way, they would remind her again and again of the tears shed, the sleeplessness, the insanity of shame and guilt.
‘Where are you off to,’ Mrs. Lalor asked when Vinny came back to the breakfast room, ‘all cleaned up and smart?’
Now the moment had arrived Vinny found that she had developed a glibness for her self-protection that amazed her. Persecution has peculiar off-shoots.
‘I want a new homework book,’ she lied. The smoothness of her tongue gave her a feeling of pride. She had never lied deliberately to her mother before. ‘I want to get one before the shops close.’
‘Oh,’ her mother said. For the moment she could not put her finger on what gave her an impression of oddness in the girl’s remark. She shook her head as if to shake off some of the worries nesting in her untidy hair. ‘You’ll want some money then, won’t you?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Well, here’s two shillings. And don’t be late back. We’re having lunch soon.’
Lunch soon can look after itself, Vinny thought. Lunch soon or now or never, and
the excuses when I’m late can look after themselves, too. I’ll say there was a crowd in the paper shop. Something. Something will come.
Casuarina, fig-tree ramparts along the hill and the rain-brimming creek curling cleanly under the footbridge were unseen landmarks as she hurried towards the morning’s comfort. She came up by the hotel just as the rail-motor was pulling in at the station, emptying the bumped and rattled bodies with their stiff legs on to the platform. She did not notice. Purpose propelled her single-mindedly to the hotel where it squatted, roaring like a lion with the morning drinkers, packed with starting-price punters and farmers in for the Saturday beer while their wives did the shopping, under the shelter of the upstairs balcony that projected over the footpath the earth had been beaten flat by at least a quarter of the town. Cars and trucks fringed the road like boats along a jetty, and the patrons spilled their packed numbers out on the path, where they stood clutching their schooners and testing their geniality.
Vinny felt nervous about going into the hotel. The ranks of red faces frightened her in their sacred, packed male preserve. She had never entered the hotel before, though sometimes when the bar was empty she had stopped for a minute to gaze in at the wide dark stairs marching upwards, and turning on the landing and then marching up again. The sombreness of the brown linoleum in the hall, the grey air, and behind the stairs, on the ground floor, the number of doors closed or half-open, impressed her as a kind of magnificence. The majestic backdrop of sin. That was how she saw it.
She hesitated at the door, afraid to enter but longing to achieve her purpose. Mrs. Striebel would be waiting for her with kindness wrapped like a gift for her to take away. Two men standing near the bar entrance were watching her curiously and she turned her head quickly when she noticed them.
‘Hey, girlie, watcha want?’ one of them asked kindly.
Vinny looked round unsmilingly. ‘I want to see someone,’ she answered.
‘Hey, Joe!’ The man stuck his head in the door and roared down the length of the bar, his voice hurtling over the long room of wedged voices and bodies. ‘Hey, Joe! Girl here wants to see yuh!’
Farrelly bustled down the bar, wiping automatically the splashes and wet rings from the wooden counter. He handed the damp rag to the yardman, who always helped out on Saturdays. ‘Keep it going,’ he said, ‘and watch that change. I’ll be back in a minute.’
