The Precipice

by Virginia Duigan

  This is why I sometimes leave Teddy at home these days without too many qualms. He is a little clumsy now, a little careless. One small slip is all it would take.

  This is what I think of as my one truly spiritual moment, when I stand out, alone and exposed, on the very tip of the escarpment. It sheers away under my feet and plunges five hundred metres into the fathomless, shifting sea of the valley floor.

  No one can see me here. Framed by the arch’s incomplete embrace, my figure is dwarfed by ochre-striped cliffs that soar out of the sea of rippling leaves. Vertical cliffs that rear up from the depths of the ocean like gigantic ships of war.

  There’s nothing headmistressy or intimidating about me here, thank you very much, Mr Frank Campbell. However irresponsible I may have been in my life, however careless and out of touch, here in the timeless silence it matters not a whit. And neither do I. The small speck of materiality that is Ms Thea Farmer is unimportant. One might even say, sublimely irrelevant.

  Yet I have a rather diverting thought, as I gaze today across golden gorges and hazy, violet ridges to the distant horizon, as I balance on the lip of the precipice with the foaming water rushing over my boots. I have a feeling Oscar would appreciate it.

  I imagine I might remind an onlooker, fleetingly, of a figurehead on an ancient galleon. The carved female warrior on the prow of a pirate ship.

  This is my fix. This is how I imagine a heroin rush must feel. It floods over me and stops my breath. It catches me by the heart, and I have to take a step back for my own safety. I want to define it in verse, because it is the essence of poetry, but I can never pin it down. It always eludes me.

  I have never spoken about this to anyone, since that first visit. But perhaps in prosaic prose I might attempt to capture it.

  I found the writing exercise, an endeavour to transfer my visual pictures to words on the blank computer page, strangely exhilarating for the first time. Uplifting, even. What made it so different from all my previous assignments was that it came without my having to unearth it. Normally writing is such an arduous excavation, it’s like digging out the impacted roots of a dead tree. This time the words flowed. They arranged themselves in coherent sentences almost of their own volition, without my having to think about it. With scarcely any intervention from me, or so it seemed.

  I was amazed to find that nearly three hours had passed since I sat at my desk. Teddy must have traipsed in and out without my noticing. Must have padded in and out, in growing puzzlement, several times, before sighing and subsiding on my feet.

  Oscar read out my description of the precipice. When he stopped there was a brief silence, then he clapped and they all followed suit. My spine prickled.

  ‘That came from left field, Thea. Bravo, bravissima,’ he said. ‘No, I mean, really. You put your warrior heart out there for the first time.’

  My warrior heart. I could tell he was pleased. He didn’t cut it off halfway, perfunctorily, as he mostly tends to do when he reads out our homework. Of necessity, of course. Some of them can be very long-winded. Not me though, if anything I’m usually too succinct and to the point. Constipated, Oscar has caustically said, more than once.

  But even though this was the longest piece of writing I have submitted, I knew it wasn’t too long. The material will dictate the length, troops, he always says, if you lie back and enable it. Just let yourself fall into the caressing hands of the material and allow it to transport you, if you know what I mean.

  I didn’t, of course, and doubtless no one else did either, although we all nodded. Until today. For the first time I knew what he meant. I was transported by the material.

  Of course, they all clamoured to know where the unique place I had described actually was. Could I take them there? We could have a writers’ expedition, couldn’t we? A little field trip? No, I’m afraid we couldn’t because I don’t know where it is, bugger it, I said airily. I could see Oscar wasn’t too keen on a field trip, either. Two hours with this little group is probably his limit. It’s hard to see Oscar in bushwalking boots and a floppy hat. He’s probably never worn shorts in his life.

  There was nothing in my account to identify the location. Anyway, how could you possibly describe how to locate it? You couldn’t – you can only find it by going there. And unless you already know where to go you won’t find it. Not without a guide, which means us, and Teddy and I are not in the business of initiating anyone. It’s a catch-22 type of situation.

  I fed them a little story. We had stumbled upon it once accidentally, when we were lost. Which was half true. And although I tried many times I could never find it again. Which was a whopping fib, but they swallowed it, as the saying goes, wholesale.

  I expanded on the theme. I was there only once but it engraved itself indelibly on my mind. I could close my eyes and see every detail, I told them, even from this distance. It was on a three-day hike in autumn, many years ago. We came upon it accidentally when we lost a badly marked trail and got ourselves comprehensively bushed. We were more energetic and intrepid then. And a fair bit younger and more reckless.

  They gobbled up this farrago with no trouble at all. Lost in the bush, they all repeated in hushed tones. How long for? There weren’t any locator beacons to carry with you then, were there? It must have been terrifying!

  Gilda-lily leaned forward. ‘And who is we? I think we should be told, Thea.’

  Oh, we was just a friend, I said. No one you’d know. Satisfyingly, some eyebrows were elevated.

  We were lost for about eight hours, I said. But I wasn’t unduly worried because we had a good compass and were well equipped. It was not too hot and there was plenty of water. As we stood on the precipice at the top of the falls we could see the lay of the land, and plot our direction. We could see it quite clearly.

  Surely even intrepid little we must have been visited by a sliver of unease, Oscar put in. I think he was prompting me to milk this for all it was worth, and I didn’t need much encouragement. All the spontaneous invention came as something of a surprise, however. I was quite entertained by the virtuosity of my own performance, the unhesitating way it emerged, like a bright streamer unfurling. I never realised I had such a talent for improvisation.

  Or do I mean lying? That’s something else Oscar makes a big thing about. Good writers are usually bloody good liars, he says.

  Someone on high wrote it for me, I told Oscar afterwards jokingly when the others had gone. It was her up there.

  He looked complacent. ‘That’s what writers mean when they say they were channelled,’ he said. ‘What they mean is, it wrote itself. That, in a nutshell, is the beauty and the mystery of creativity.’

  ‘Why a nutshell?’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t it be in a precious stone, like a black opal? Or perhaps in a scarab beetle?’

  Oh, for pity’s sake don’t quibble, he scolded. We fell silent together for a moment in that dun-coloured utilitarian room, with the circle of empty plastic chairs and a couple of coffee mugs people had forgotten to take out and wash.

  Then he smiled at me and crooned in a dreamy, off-key voice, ‘I think she’s got it. By George, she’s got it.’ What ‘it’ might be he didn’t attempt to say. He wasn’t being bombastic, for once. He looked and sounded like a different person. He sounded like a teacher who was startled by the homework of an unexpected and hitherto rather gormless pupil.

  I recognised the response to ‘it’ because I had felt it myself, on occasion. Not very often, in fact quite rarely in my career, but when it did happen it made up for some of the drudgery and tedium. It made teaching, for a fleeting moment, worthwhile.

  The experience was described to me once, by a considerably younger member of staff. He seemed quite bowled over and expressed this in a roundabout way, like Oscar. Very much in that kind of way. I remember the incident well, because it was the first time I had really noticed this particular teacher. He was one of the few males on the staff, of course, so he stood out, but he wasn’t the good-looking one.


  There was one young man with classic film-star looks, although I can’t at this distance recall his name. He was the standard tall, dark and handsome type. The girls were always getting crushes on him – seniors, juniors, you name it. Not to mention the female staff. I was always having to deal with the fallout. A nice boy – well, he was in his late thirties. Apparently unaware of his appeal and rather bewildered by it. Always having his picture surreptitiously taken.

  He was the school pin-up, his face mingling with magazine photos of the heartthrobs of the day on the inside doors of the sports lockers and the boarders’ cupboards. Since it was a girls’ school nearly the entire population was susceptible. Hardly anyone was exempt. I’m not sure I was exempt myself to begin with, though later I found him as bland and unexciting as a male model.

  The other one’s face was not pinned up inside any girl’s cupboard door, as far as I know. I say he wasn’t the good-looking one, but that was my initial assessment. Later, when I came to know him a great deal better, I started to see him differently. That sometimes happens. As you get to like them, certain people’s looks grow on you.

  He’d made a special appointment to see me. He brought me the student’s handwritten composition to read for myself. Oddly enough, in spite of him making such a big thing about it, I can’t recall anything about it now, not even the subject, although I certainly recall the student whose essay it was. She was one of a hand-picked group of year eights and nines, in my special literature class. The names and faces of the majority of my students have been swallowed up in a black hole. Not this one. She was my star pupil.

  I remember the young man’s barely suppressed excitement, the particular quality of artistic reverence with which he handed the essay to me. As if it were a precious object, like a flawless diamond. This made an impression on me. An indelible impression.

  And I do, needless to say, remember his face. And his name. It was Matthew, Matthew Rhode. Not Rhodes as in Cecil, I teased him a while later. Or even Rhodes as in Xandra. Merely a singular Rhode. A very singular Rhode. The Rhode less travelled.

  I think this may be the first time I have typed out that particular name for a great many years. Is this a milestone? If so, what kind of a milestone might it be?

  My warrior heart. Where was it when I needed it?

  Today I reached another milestone. I award myself a pass – certainly not a distinction, not even a credit. But a creditable pass, which is an achievement in itself, under the circumstances.

  Frank turned up. Called through the open door just before eleven. The sun was streaming in, he had the coffee on, could I be tempted? Wombat was at school, Ellie was at the café, and he was all alone. In short, it was safe to come on over. Safe, was it? He is a mischievous young man.

  I hadn’t expected this. The other night he mentioned it, but I hadn’t taken it seriously. Now he had caught me on the hop. Put on the spot like that I couldn’t pull out of the air a convincing excuse.

  He must have seen I was flustered. After a pause in which he regarded me expectantly with his head on one side, I said, ‘I don’t think I can. What a shame. I’m on the point of going out. I was planning to grab a coffee on the run, in your wife’s café.’

  The colloquialisms – grab a coffee, on the run – sounded phony even to my own ears. Living out here in isolation leaves one singularly short of plausible pretexts. This has never been an issue until now.

  He groaned. ‘Don’t go to the café, the coffee’s shithouse. Ellie’s got no idea how to make it.’ He gave me a pleading look and put his hands together prayerfully. ‘I’d do anything not to start work, Thea. Well, you know – almost anything.’ Not the most disarming of invitations, one might think, but delivered with a knockout smile. There was nothing for it. I caved in, feeling craven and full of misgivings.

  ‘Very well, I suppose. You win.’ It sounded ungracious. ‘But only if you’re sure we won’t be rumbled.’ I added this as a sweetener. It must have been the effect of the writing class last night. I’d felt bathed in a rosy afterglow all morning. Dispersing now, however, by the nanosecond.

  We walked across together. ‘The coffee’s not exactly on – I lied in order to inveigle you over. It’s switched on,’ he said, tucking my arm through his. He’s very familiar, but some how you don’t object. There are men I would object to taking my arm (is that grammatical?) and there are men I wouldn’t.

  Teddy was trotting alongside. He paused at the threshold of the house with an uncertain air, tail at half-mast, looking at me as if to say, drinks on the deck was one thing, but this was quite another. This was more significant. The invaders were properly in residence now.

  As I walked through the door on Frank’s arm I had a swift, unsettling vision. It was as if I were a new bride being waltzed across the threshold by my young husband. I was not tempted to say anything to that effect, not remotely tempted, but as I glanced at Frank’s face, which is unusually mobile, I could have sworn he was thinking the same thing.

  I repressed the vision as we went into the almost state-of-the-art kitchen, but a cinematic sense of unreality persisted. Their kitchen. It looked different, occupied and messy. There were frivolous fridge magnets, Michelangelo’s David in boxer shorts and bra. A professional-looking electric espresso machine took up a prime position on the bench.

  Frank was maintaining a constant patter. A diversionary tactic? I found myself trying to keep up with it – instead of having to deal with the inescapable reality of where I found myself. Ellie had given him this fabulous new gizmo for Christmas, Thea. It could grind and foam and do everything you’d ever thought of doing to a coffee bean. Or almost everything, maybe I had some refinements? He threw me a teasing glance.

  He demonstrated, with a transparent sense of enjoyment, what it could do in the form of a flat white for me and double espresso for him. ‘You’re like a tub-thumping evangelist from the Deep South,’ I told him. ‘Only spruiking a shiny boy’s toy instead of superstitious mumbo jumbo.’

  He grinned. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  He put the mugs on a tray and ushered me through to the living room. If the kitchen looked different, this lofty space I had designed to be so spare and unadorned was nearly unrecognisable. It resembled a commonplace suburban living room.

  Rammed up at the kitchen end was the parents’ famous dining table. Repro, I’d guess, like the ten overblown Queen Anne chairs with their padded crimson seats. Beyond were two conventional sofas, piled with cushions, and at the far end, grouped around a vast flat screen TV, one of those angular L-shaped seating arrangements in black leather. Magazines, DVDs and CDs everywhere. And several of those impractical floor cushions obscuring the lovely timbers. At least there were books in my built-in shelves beside the fireplace.

  There was nothing I would have chosen for that spacious, airy room. I had planned on the bare minimum, two or three comfortable armchairs with loose covers in natural linen, lots of books and some interesting lamps, and a sturdy farmhouse table. I was going to leave the space to speak for itself by eliminating extraneous objects. My desire was to pare my life down to essentials. Instead of which it seems to be becoming increasingly encumbered.

  Frank, of course, was oblivious to such feelings. He stood there, surveying the room with a pride of ownership that pierced me. What did I think? All their stuff had fitted in amazingly well, hadn’t it? Even the crap dining suite wasn’t too crap.

  ‘So, Thea, how do we look? I haven’t tidied up for you, I’m afraid. Well, actually I have a bit, but you can’t necessarily tell.’

  That was certainly true. ‘How do we look? We look lived in,’ I said. Which displayed a capacity for tact I didn’t know I had.

  I sat down heavily on one of the unyielding navy sofas. It was on castors and immediately took off across the floor. The windows, shimmering with olive-coloured leaves, flashed by as if from a train. Frank put down the tray and hurried over solicitously, as the sofa and I collided with one of the black couches. I’ve never liked lea
ther seating or those ugly modular things.

  He put the mug of coffee into my hand and patted my shoulder. He apologised for the athleticism of the sofa. Teddy lumbered up and collapsed on my feet with a heavy sigh. I remembered the last time he and I had ventured here. I had slumped to the floor of the empty room.

  I struggled to put this shameful picture out of my mind. Teddy remembered it too, I’m sure. I’d been consumed with self-pity then. What did I feel now? Blank, like an empty blackboard waiting for something to be written on it. Something to ease the pain, which will probably never be written.

  ‘Did you say your niece is at school today?’ I asked Frank. At least my voice sounded normal. There were no audible tremors.

  He looked amused. Hadn’t I realised she was of school age?

  ‘But isn’t she going home? To her parents, or,’ I hazarded a guess, ‘her guardians?’

  ‘Do you mean we haven’t bored you with the Wombat saga?’ He rolled his eyes in amazement. It was a long one, he said apologetically. Was I sure I hadn’t any pressing engagements?

  To cut the story short, Kim is the accidental child of Frank’s much older brother – seventeen years older, I think he said – and a Vietnamese woman. The brother, as described by Frank, was a ne’er-do-well drug addict, a drifter who only lived with the mother for a matter of months. He disappeared well before his daughter was born.

  ‘We lost track of him years ago. He fell off the planet. He’s probably dead by now.’ Frank looked unconcerned. He didn’t sound regretful, rather the opposite. I could understand that.

  The rest was the type of history that was depressingly familiar to me from many years working in under-funded, inner-city schools. Kim’s mother had been a refugee, a Vietnamese boat person. She was uneducated, spoke little English and struggled to cope. For a while she kept the child, but jobs with low pay and long hours, and midnight flits from overcrowded flats, and from no-hoper boyfriends, all took their toll.