The Precipice

by Virginia Duigan

  ‘Shouldn’t it be books do furnish every room?’

  ‘Yes, it probably should. Especially when there are only four poky rooms to furnish. Snug and charming with limitless potential, as the estate agent would have burbled. Dark, decrepit and dwarfish, more accurately. A Black Hole of Calcutta for pygmies.’

  When I built the new house I suppose I was reacting to years of feeling cramped and stifled. That’s why I endowed it with such grand dimensions. If I hadn’t been so profligate I might have been able to hang on to it. Delusions of grandeur – they were my undoing, like others before me.

  Her mouth had fallen open. I realised I’d got carried away and was talking loudly. Usually I keep my rants to myself and Teddy, who’s used to them and thinks nothing of it.

  ‘Don’t you like this house, Ms Farmer?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I loathe it,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah?’ The emphatic black eyebrows shot up in cartoonish astonishment. ‘But I like it.’ She saw my expression and made a faint sound, like a smothered snort. ‘Well, it’s not that bad. It’s kind of homely. I think it’s nice.’

  It struck me that she’d very likely lived in a lot worse than this. ‘Your house is much nicer,’ I said. And thought: your house is also the catalyst for you being here, if you only knew it.

  I remembered I had three quarters of leftover ginger cake from the fire brigade stall. It was a few days old and looked on the dry side. Anyway, she probably didn’t like ginger; it was an acquired taste.

  Oh no, she’d acquired that taste already, a while back, actually. And she was sure it would be totally fine if we cut off the desiccated bits. We could feed them to Teddy, yeah? Or hadn’t he acquired the taste yet? No he hadn’t and we certainly could not, I said. Sweet things are bad for his teeth. Teddy still has excellent teeth because I give him lots of bones and proper meat, none of that tinned muck, and he’s never tasted anything sweet in his life.

  ‘So he doesn’t know any better, right? Any worse, I mean.’

  Quite so, I said. And she should make sure her new dog didn’t either, when she got her new dog.

  ‘Yeah, if I ever do,’ she said, looking wistful. ‘They’ve never had pets so they don’t know much. About how to look after animals and that. I s’pose I could check on all that stuff with you, right?’

  ‘I suppose you could. As long as you don’t make yourself into a menace,’ I said.

  ‘Good point. I’ll do my best not to make myself into a menace. My level best.’ This was said solemnly, with just a hint of acceptable cheek. I was always good at categorising cheek. There were entire repertoires of it. Some crude, some insolent, others I quite enjoyed.

  I employed her to carry the tray out to the rickety garden table for a change. The table and four chairs live outside and have done for years. She looked the chairs over critically. ‘Hmm, reckon these’ve seen better days, right? Will I try and wipe all the bird poo and gunk off? Or, you know, some of it?’

  ‘Very well, you can take a dishcloth to them if you insist. Dampen it first.’

  True, a great deal of gunk had accumulated. Bird poo, dead insects, leaves, twigs, snail trails. I hardly use the table these days, it’s easier to sit on the verandah if it’s just Teddy and me. But it’s nice in the garden, even if it is overgrown.

  She did some surprisingly energetic scrubbing, and then dried the chairs with kitchen paper before we sat down. Paper was better than a tea towel, she said, because it didn’t have to be washed. For a girl of her age she seems unusually domesticated. It probably comes from having had to fend for herself.

  So, how was the new school? She took a large bite of cake. Screwed up her eyes and shrugged. It was okay. She obviously didn’t want to talk about it.

  ‘When’s your birthday, Ms Farmer?’

  ‘I can’t remember. As I told you.’

  ‘You can but you don’t want to?’

  ‘Not in the slightest. Birthdays are best forgotten at my age. An annual intimation of mortality that needn’t concern you.’

  ‘But they’re an excuse for a celebration.’ She must have heard that phrase from some other old fogey. A pollyanna type, of which there are legion.

  ‘I don’t go in for those.’

  ‘But didn’t you use to, once? Go in for them?’

  ‘Don’t speak with your mouth full.’ I considered the question. ‘No, I don’t think I ever did.’

  She chewed and then swallowed with a degree of emphasis. ‘Why not? If,’ lips pursed, ‘you don’t mind me asking.’

  ‘I don’t mind. Because there wasn’t a great deal to celebrate.’

  ‘No? Not ever?’

  She leaned forward intensely, chin in her hands. She looked so concerned that for a moment I toyed with the notion of promoting myself as a giddy party girl just to please her. After all, I had recently shown a flair for creative embroidery.

  ‘Twas a fine demonstration

  Of wily improvisation

  When with a touch of artifice

  She raved about the precipice.’

  The lines floated into my mind. Better stay honest with this particular child, I concluded. She probably deserves it.

  ‘Not ever is probably overstating it. Nearly not ever is probably more like it, I should say.’

  This elicited a wry smile. ‘Yeah, right. But dogs are different, they like a good party. When’s Teddy’s birthday?’ He was lying in the shade under the table and she was resting her bare feet comfortably on his rump. Like I do from time to time.

  I said that Teddy detested parties even more than me. And I never knew exactly when his birthday was because he was an abandoned puppy from the pound. He was two months old when I got him, which was in October, so that meant his birthday must be some time in August.

  Same month as mine, she said. From a pound? Did I mean a lost dog’s home?

  Some of them are lost and some are abandoned, I said. I saw her take this in and stow it away for later.

  August. Then he was most likely a Leo. A lion dog. That’d be right, Teddy was so a Leo it wasn’t true – much more than her. I was not going to dignify this with a response, but she was waiting for one and I relented. Astrology, I said, was gibberish. It was bogus, unmitigated drivel, on a level with Scientology and every other mystical belief, and all intelligent people should make it their business to shun it. As well as all the other nonsensical superstitions.

  She looked momentarily startled, then made the stifled noise again, midway between a snort and a giggle. Then she surprised me by agreeing. Yeah, astrology was a total waste of space, but it was really odd, right, how often people seemed to conform to their star sign? My turn to shrug. This was merely the gullible seeing what they want to see.

  ‘You have such –’ She broke off, chewing her fingers and burrowing her feet in Teddy’s fur.

  ‘Go ahead,’ I said, ‘I won’t bite.’

  ‘I like it that you have such strong opinions, Ms Farmer. You know, about things and stuff.’

  ‘Opinions are usually about things and stuff. Doesn’t everyone?’

  A pause while she thought this over. ‘If they do, they don’t express them, like, how you do, exactly. You’re very –’ she raised her eyes to mine. I saw a gleam of humour. ‘Very certain. And very, um – emphatic.’

  ‘That’s probably because I know I’m right. When you get to my age this happens. And I’m not used to being argued with.’

  ‘No. I guess Teddy doesn’t usually contradict you.’

  ‘Usually not, no. Mostly he agrees with me. He knows which side his bread is buttered.’

  ‘That must make him a dream to live with. Kind of like,’ she searched around, ‘you know, kind of like an ideal husband, only with four legs instead of two.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘kind of like that.’ This had never occurred to me before, oddly enough, but it has a whimsical kernel of truth.

  Then she wanted to know Teddy’s story. Was he lost, or was he abandoned?

 
I explained how I’d made two previous expeditions to the pound, which was quite a drive from where I lived at the time. How there were dozens of adult dogs there, which was very distressing because they were all jumping up and down in their cages, wagging their tails, barking hysterically, doing anything to attract your attention. Willing you to take them home with you.

  I told her I’d have taken almost any one of them home. But I was adamant I wanted a puppy.

  A nod. I’d set my heart on bringing it up from babyhood, she could perfectly understand that. And then? she prompted. The third visit. It was a case of third time lucky, right?

  ‘Third time lucky, yes. There were several puppies to choose from.’

  I found I remembered them quite well. A dachshund, a spoodle – spaniel-poodle cross – two Jack Russells and a Dober man. Very sweet and engaging, every one. But somehow, I felt they weren’t quite for me. None was the just-right dish of porridge.

  A serious nod. Ah, no. And then? This is not a child who suffers from attention deficit disorder. Her concentration was total. The lustrous black eyes were fixed on me.

  And then, I said, in an enclosure all to himself, I came upon another puppy. He was lying down in one corner, seemingly relaxed, but I could see he was keeping a weather eye on everyone as they went past. He was a scrap of a thing, with pricked ears that were far too big for his head. A pretty boy with thick, red-brown fur and black markings, amber eyes and a handsome white blaze on his chest. On the board attached to the pen was a chalked sign: ‘red cattle x’.

  What was the x for?

  Cross, I told her. They didn’t know what he was crossed with, but I’m pretty certain there is some brindle Staffordshire bull terrier in there. Either that or some thylacine, the extinct Tasmanian tiger. Her eyes widened even further.

  ‘The attendant was an Indian girl. She opened the pen, picked him up and handed him to me. He was so thin and light he hardly weighed a thing. I cradled him. He was unusually calm and settled in my arms. He observed me with a steady, unafraid gaze, looked directly into my eyes, and then all of a sudden sprang into action and licked my face.’

  I had asked the attendant how big he was likely to grow. He would be medium-sized for sure, she said. You could tell that from his paws. He had nice macho paws, but they were not huge.

  Kim listened to this recital with a small, inward smile. I found the recounting as absorbing as she did. I found I remembered it all quite vividly. She leaned forward with her elbows on the table. We were taught never to put our elbows on the table, but this was not the time.

  ‘You were smitten, right? He was the just-right dish of porridge. Was it like, you know, love at first sight?’ Her eyes were rapt and shining at the idea.

  ‘Just like that, indeed. It was love at first sight. There was something about him, you see.’

  She nodded and wiggled her feet. ‘Oh yeah, of course there was, I can see that exactly. Anyone could.’

  ‘Yes. I knew at once he was the one for me and I didn’t hesitate for a minute. I’ll take him, I said to the attendant. She said some other people had liked the look of this little chap too, and they were maybe going to come back later. You can tell them they’ve missed the boat then, I said in my most authoritarian, not-to-be-contradicted voice – I was used to being obeyed then – because I want him right now, and I mean now this very minute. I’m taking this little chap home.’

  ‘Yay!’ She clapped her hands. ‘Brilliant. That would’ve sorted them. Your school principal voice, right?’

  ‘I’d retired by then.’

  ‘But you still had it.’ She looked at me, assessing. ‘You’ve still kind of got it now, actually. Like, I don’t mean on a regular basis, but when you need to dredge it up for something.’

  Perhaps I still had it on a regular basis then because I had only just retired. And not retired, exactly. Resigned, to be honest. Been induced to resign, to be brutally honest. Been toppled from the perch.

  They gave her the heave ho, the ticket of leave ho …

  How lucky that you cannot read my mind, I thought.

  She was still focused on the story. Questions came thick and fast. Did I ask them about the puppy? Did I find out anything else? Like, where he came from and what’d happened to him and how he’d been found?

  I told her what they said. There wasn’t much more to tell, but this was the bad bit.

  ‘He had been picked up late one night by the side of an isolated road outside Wollongong. It was a deserted country road on the South Coast. A lorry driver spotted something in the headlights, a tiny bundle lying in the road. He pulled up just as he was about to run over it and got out. It was a shivering little puppy, half-frozen in the cold.’

  A shocked ‘Oh.’ She gazed at Teddy.

  ‘There were unseasonable gale-force winds that night. It was pouring with icy, sleety rain, and he was soaked through to the skin. His fur was matted with mud, the man thought he’d been in the ditch and managed to drag himself out. He must have been abandoned there. Thrown out of a moving car. Teddy’s always had a tendency to arthritis, and I’m sure it was caused by that experience, alone for hours in the wet and cold. If that man hadn’t come along just in time and rescued him, he would have died of exposure.’

  There was silence. I glanced at her. Her face was set. Then I saw the tears welling. Two spilled over and ran down her cheeks. She got out of her chair and knelt down beside Teddy, and hugged him round the neck, convulsively. She looked stricken.

  She said, in a whisper I could hardly hear, ‘And then he was rescued again. You rescued him for the second time.’

  I said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone the full story before.’

  I would like to have added something else. Because although this was all true, it wasn’t the whole truth. It wasn’t what really happened. What really happened was that Teddy rescued me.

  I forgot to mention her card again. It was still on the mantelpiece. I hope she saw it there.

  The gingerbread cake was quite all right with the cut edge removed, as she suggested. Between us, we finished it all up.

  I went to Lisa’s and said to Sandy, ‘What have you got for a twelve-year-old girl?’

  ‘That one, Thea?’

  ‘Yes, that one.’ The waif and stray. She identified with Teddy, that was obvious.

  Sandy bustled about the shelves. Young adult fiction – he was thinking of setting up a separate section. Trouble was, he didn’t get that many young adults in the shop.

  ‘Still, if I build it they might come,’ he murmured obscurely.

  ‘Isn’t that a misnomer?’ I said. ‘They’re pre-teens and teenagers first, surely?’

  No, no, they were all lumped into young adult these days. It was contracting by the day, childhood. It was being abolished, like old age, while middle age was getting longer and longer and taking over everything.

  ‘You and me, Sandy, we’re teetering on the verge of our prime.’

  We chortled together in an unforced way. The woman Monica wasn’t in the shop, thankfully. Sandy is always more fun when she’s not around, I’ve noticed.

  He came up with several possibilities. I left with Beau Geste and The Yearling. I dithered between that and The Scarlet Pimpernel for a while, but three books might be overdoing it. I remembered reading these when I was around her age and finding them exciting, as well as romantic and inspiring.

  These days young adult fiction was all about drugs, date rape, incest and suicide, Sandy said. He confessed to relief that I was opting out of all that hairy realism in favour of flights of the imagination. Fiction that was unafraid to take the moral high ground.

  A moral tone of any height was in short supply nowadays, I observed. Children badly needed it, in my opinion. And were today’s in-your-face stories any more realistic, really, when it came down to it?

  We considered this. It might be selective realism, I concluded, but the way they shoved it down the throats of the poor, unfortunate young adults verge
d on the prescriptive. Sandy, who is unworldliness personified, said he was a fence-sitter on this one. He said he’d keep the Pimpernel aside for another time, no worries.

  Both books still had their dust jackets, very tattered and torn, but I always think children like to have the coloured picture on the front. The titles are a bit – well, they are very old hat, as Sandy did comment, but Kim doesn’t strike me as a conspicuously modern girl, not at all what Davy calls a hip chick. Although she does possess a certain awkward maturity. Not physically, especially, and not in any unpleasantly precocious sense, but she has what I think of as a nascent mature sensibility. And she is much more respectful than many.

  We had an interesting discussion about what Sandy called her ‘readerliness’. This is one of his favourite words, although I am not entirely convinced it is a word. He said it was particularly surprising because she learnt to read unusually late. When she was about seven, he thought. Or it might even have been eight. She was staying with friends at the time and the mother of the family gave her lessons.

  ‘She said, and this is verbatim, Thea,’ Sandy reported, as if it were information of great import, ‘“the mum took pity on my ignorance.”’ He seemed struck by this sentence and repeated it over again to me, rather unnecessarily. Learning to read had been a revelation for the little girl.

  As you would expect, I said.

  The friends had a library in the house and she had become a bookworm, more or less immediately. The idea filled Sandy with rapture. Although her stay had been cut short, evidently.

  I enlightened him as to the reason for this. It wouldn’t have been friends she was staying with; it would have been a foster family. He looked mystified. I outlined Kim’s disadvantaged background. Sandy clearly knew nothing about this at all.

  ‘It’s wholly understandable that reading would have enabled her to escape into another world,’ I explained, ‘as well as being the means to an education. When did she tell you this?’

  The other day. On closer questioning it sounded very much as if she might have left school early on that particular afternoon, although Sandy seemed unworried when I called it to his attention.