The Precipice

by Virginia Duigan

  I’ll wrap the books and deliver them next time I see her. They can be an official birthday present.

  She badly needs friends. A dog would be a good companion for her. A necessary companion.

  Teddy and I were on the verandah. We spotted her coming home on the bicycle. I think she must leave it chained up at the bus stop in the morning. I beckoned her over. When she saw us she rang the bell on her bike. Shrilly, several times, for emphasis.

  ‘See, Ms Farmer, I got one,’ she said. ‘I obeyed your command.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it, and even more pleased to hear you using it. Been at school all afternoon?’ She looked slightly nonplussed.

  I put the parcel in her hand. I’d found some wrapping paper full of animals and jungle greenery. Very Douanier Rousseau. At first she seemed not to quite comprehend she was being given a present. I had to remind her it was her official birthday. She seemed astonished that I had taken this seriously. Astonished and, I could see, touched. It occurred to me that she may not have received many presents in her life.

  She hadn’t heard of either book. Well, she wouldn’t have. They’re from another era. The era before the era before last.

  ‘Don’t worry if you don’t like them,’ I said. ‘If you’d rather read about date rape and drugs you can always sell them back to Mr Fay. He’s got plenty of realistic modern books, too. These are more on the escapist side. Funny old oddities, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Yeah well, that’s what I want. And I’m kind of a funny young oddity myself, right?’ she said. She was in her school uniform, an open-necked blue gingham cotton dress. Too short, the way they all wear them.

  I’d found a birthday card with a photo of lots of puppies, all different breeds. How awesomely appropriate, she said.

  Inside I’d scribbled a silly little jingle:

  ‘Take Kim and Queen Liz. You wouldn’t necessarily think

  With two persons so diff’rent there could be a link.

  But when birthdays are mooted they won’t settle for one,

  It’s two each or nothing, and double the fun.’

  ‘Wow, you’re an incredible poet, too, Ms Farmer!’ she exclaimed.

  I only write doggerel, I said, the lowest form of verse. But it seemed to amuse her. I wondered what she’d meant by ‘too’.

  ‘I’ve got more news,’ she said. She’d told them the story of Teddy’s rescue. Them being Frank and Ellice. They had made a joint decision that the new puppy should come from a pound, just like Teddy had. Frank said that they should give one imprisoned canine spirit a joyful liberation.

  ‘But only, you know, if you don’t mind. I mean, like us rescuing a puppy as well? The same way you did?’

  Why in the name of unmerciful heaven should I mind, I said. The finest dogs come from the pound. The very best. Pounds are the only places one should ever think of going to find a dog, in my opinion.

  ‘Absolutely in mine too,’ she said.

  She had looked on the internet and the nearest pound was about forty minutes away. They were planning to go there on the next available weekend. Sunday, she confided in a whisper, had a good chance of being the red-letter dog day.

  ‘Um.’ She looked down at the ground, scuffling her school shoes, which were badly in need of a clean. Did I think – would I perhaps, maybe – like to come with them? It was an abrupt return to her former constraint that took me by surprise.

  The question caught me off balance, too. Well, let’s see, I said neutrally. Perhaps, maybe, I might.

  Frank came over, gave her a kiss and chided her for not wearing her helmet. He fished it out of her schoolbag and plonked it on her head.

  ‘Wombats without helmets get picked up by the fuzz and thrown in the clink. Don’t they, Thea? And we’ll have to pay a queen’s ransom to get her back. Probably have to mortgage the house.’

  ‘Or else they get knocked off the bike and rendered quadriplegic,’ I said. I hadn’t noticed the absent helmet. There were no such things in my day. I’m in two minds about them. I never bothered to wear one up here, in the days when I rode a bike and Teddy ran along beside me. Don’t recall ever owning one. But perhaps they’re a good idea.

  She turned to Frank diffidently. ‘Ms Farmer might come to the pound with us. Maybe she might, she said.’

  ‘Cool. Gimme five,’ he said to her. They slapped palms in this curious habit young people have. He did seem genuinely pleased.

  I declined their invitation to come in. We all had things to do, I said. Frank threw a protesting arm round my shoulder. He’s a very demonstrative young man. About the same height as me, five ten, which was tall for a woman in my day but is unremarkable now. Not short, but not tall for a man these days. He hadn’t heard of the two books either, needless to say.

  ‘Don’t forget our assignation, will you?’ he said to me in an intimate voice. ‘Monday, eleven am sharp, coffee machine, staff common room. Right?’

  Kim looked at me. ‘Hey, are you two, like, dating now?’ She has a lively sense of humour, which only emerges as you get to know her.

  Frank transferred his arm to the small of her back, giving it an affectionate little rub. ‘Yes, but only when you’re safely tucked up at school. I’m a two-timing rat. It’s our guilty secret, Wombat. Don’t let on to Ellie, whatever you do.’

  She couldn’t seriously have thought I might mind them getting a dog from the pound. That really would have to give me pause.

  Oscar seems to have an intuitive grasp of what makes me tick. The new assignment is a case in point. Write a character sketch of an individual who has played a significant part in your life.

  We were the full complement of six again, with bearded Greg back. Turned out he hadn’t shot through, he’d only strained his back. Gilda the Dreaded was all over him, offering tea and sympathy and Bulgarian folk remedies for backs. Among other things, she offered to sit on it and bounce up and down. It always worked, she said. It was infallible. It was all in the way it was done.

  I was sitting on his other side. With his beard and that mass of straggly hair you can’t see much of his face, but it was obvious the poor fellow was struck dumb. Under no circumstances admit her over your threshold, I muttered into his ear, through the hair. Ring the police if you need help. Or ring me. He nodded with a strangled expression.

  Oscar rapped his coffee mug with a teaspoon. ‘Prepare for a surprise, ye troops. This week we are going to accentuate the positive. I’ve met someone new, and I’ve had a makeover in the seat of the affections. Yes, you see before you today an embodiment of sweetness and light. I’ve come over all warm and fuzzy inside.’

  A muffled ripple of excitement from the group. Titillated murmurs. Was the somebody a he or a she? No one was prepared to ask. I heard Greg say, ‘He means he’s come over all queer inside.’

  Oscar held up a cautionary hand. I hoped he hadn’t heard this, but he seemed insouciant. That was all he was saying, dears, not another word. He was nothing if not discreet, as well as shy and retiring, as we must all know by now. We laughed on cue.

  ‘But I felt I owed you some explanation for my momentary retreat from cynicism. While I’m still basking, I want you to think about an individual in your own life who has pushed your buttons. Write me a character sketch of someone who’s engraved their initials on your heart. Someone you admire or even – shall we, should we, can we risk the word – love? Or perhaps, loved and lost?’

  His eyes rested speculatively on our faces in turn, ending up, and I’m sure it was deliberate, on Gilda-lily’s pudding-like countenance. If no one came to mind, he said, we could always resort to invention and he’d be none the wiser. It could even be a celebrity icon, think Marilyn or Garbo, or Diana. Think George Clooney or, if we really had to, Prince William.

  ‘There, I can’t be more inclusive than that, can I? Now go forth and multiply – the goodwill, I mean.’

  Everyone left in rather a hurry and congregated in the pub I usually avoid. Even Greg and even me – I had no reas
on to stay behind today. Oscar had beaten a swift retreat himself, giving me a definite wink as he passed.

  They buzzed with speculation. The majority view favoured a he. Greg was more forthright than the rest. Early on he’d thought it was a classic closet case (nice tongue-twister) but now? No way known was Oscar not gay, in his book. Look at the celebs he listed. There were noises of agreement and judicious nods.

  I thought I was a lone voice in support of Oscar’s hetero credentials (cred, I should say) but Gilda backed me up. I might have known. She has a vested interest in wanting Oscar to be straight because she has designs on him, absurd as it sounds.

  I gave his assignment some thought. There have been significant individuals in my life, I can’t deny that. My high school English teacher was an influence. Loved her work and conveyed it day after day in the classroom. Exposure to such unalloyed fulfilment influenced my decision to go into teaching in the first place. But if ever there was a mixed blessing that was one. If she’d known the outcome she would have regretted her unwitting part in it, would she not?

  Matthew Rhode was one of the few members of staff I ever encountered who derived a similar satisfaction from teaching. Or seemed to. No, it is inconceivable that this was an act. There are limits to cynicism, even where Mr Rhode is concerned. By the time I appointed him I had almost forgotten how it might be. Seeing his exhilaration brought this back. It must have drawn me to him, I can see that now.

  But the seminal influence on my choice of career wasn’t a person at all. It was something much more prosaic: the existence of the bonded teacher-training scholarships. They helped hundreds, perhaps thousands of young people who wouldn’t otherwise have been able to finance their studies, including me. Which implicates an enlightened government policy in my personal debacle.

  Relatives? My mother was a strong-willed countrywoman, a natural feminist. That influenced me. She was a ‘character’, notably lacking in maternal instinct. I was not a loved child; she was far too angry and frustrated. Whereas my father was affectionate but an inhibited and rather colourless man. She ruled the roost, but it brought her no satisfaction because the roost was too confining.

  They were both ardent churchgoers. It was a crutch; no matter how grim things were on the ground, it was all going to come good in the afterlife up in the sky. Probably the fairytale that turned me off religion in the first place.

  Never be dependent on a mere male, my mother said to me. It was the only advice I can recall her giving me, and she gave it more than once. Make sure you earn your own living always and are self-sufficient economically. Then you will be free. Those words influenced me and do to this day. I became a self-sufficient woman, and I don’t just mean economically.

  I did take after her in one respect. I was similarly deficient in the maternal instinct department. Perhaps that’s just as well. I’ve never lost sleep over being childless, unlike many women I’ve known. And not only women. Matthew Rhode wanted children. I recall a discussion on the subject one evening after dinner in my flat. The conversation was brief. He wanted several children, three or four.

  You just want to perpetuate yourself with a tribe of little Matthew clones, I teased him. But it wasn’t that. I realised quite quickly that there was something else going on, something that was not subject to rational analysis or justification. He was unable to answer the question why, in any satisfactory manner. Why did he want children? He couldn’t say. You simply do or you don’t, I concluded.

  Which leads me to something else. I haven’t been conspicuously good at friendship, either. Some people have a talent for it, it’s even their raison d’être, but not me. Which is not to say I do not have friends. Just that the friendships don’t seem to develop beyond a certain point. None has crossed the invisible threshold between friendship and something deeper. Is it because the right person never came along? Is it a matter of luck, or – how shall I put this – is it to do with me?

  Because it is true that I feel a disenchantment with my own species. I don’t much like my own kind, quite apart from the ruination it has unleashed upon the world. I’ve liked some individuals, of course, but as a rule humans have been a disappointment. I think I have felt this all my life, but the feeling has grown on me, no question. It has become more firmly embedded.

  What was it Kim said? ‘Mr Fay must be a cool guy to have as a close friend.’ Well, I wish, as she might also say, because I’m not convinced that I have any ‘close friends’. Or, indeed, that I really want them. With the aforementioned exception, possibly.

  Colleagues? Some I liked. One I liked very much, but I am not prepared to pursue that any further, not even on the non-judgemental privacy of this screen. Matthew was perhaps, for a while, the nearest to a close friend I ever had. And look where that led.

  But I can’t pretend it was that experience that put me off people. After all, I didn’t cross paths with young Mr Rhode until I was in my late fifties. Fifty-nine, in point of hard fact. I was a bit of a misanthrope by then and a fairly well-ingrained one. We used to laugh about it together. He would take personal responsibility, I remember him saying, for divesting me of my disenchantment.

  Disrobing me of it, he even said once. From this distance I can see that was a very suggestive remark for a younger male teacher to make to the principal. Out of order? It didn’t occur to me to think so at the time. At the time, I recall, we were quaffing red wine in my flat on a cold winter’s evening. He had brought it. Matthew was in the habit of bearing gifts of excellent vintages. He was an enthusiastic wine buff, which may well have contributed to the eventual outcome, when I think about it.

  Yes, he was quite an accomplished bon vivant, as I became in his company. And as indeed I would remain, I suppose, if I had the chance. What was it we used to say? Make it one for my baby, and one more for the Rhode.

  I must have been similarly accomplished at concealing my subversive opinions, otherwise they’d never have appointed me head of the school. Like Mr Rhode, I must have given the impression of being a together type of person at the interviews. When the board of governors declared their wish to take the school to another academic level, they obviously had no inkling that this competent woman with a distinguished teaching record not only didn’t much like children as a species but had a jaundiced view of the majority of the human race.

  Just as I had no idea what lurked beneath Matthew’s friendly and convivial exterior.

  Still, in spite of all this there is something to celebrate, as I should have told Kim. One individual of the male gender has engraved his initial on my heart. One who, with the sweetness of his nature, delightful company and uncritical devotion leaves all others in the shade.

  And where did this train of thought come from? Kim initiated it herself. It was her observation – astute beyond her years – that Teddy, who never disagrees with me, must be a dream to live with. Like an ideal man, only with four legs.

  So I might try a little experiment. See if I can describe Teddy’s personality in some detail, but without telling any lies and without revealing that the subject is a dog, my red cattle x. I can truthfully say he happens to be the aforementioned bushwalking companion.

  Wouldn’t that give the group something juicy to think about? Never mind the queries swirling around Oscar’s ambiguous love life, let them speculate about mine instead.

  They had friends visiting today. A couple their age, no kids. We saw them drive up at midday in a snazzy VW convertible, with the roof down. It was very hot. Soon afterwards, the two couples piled into the Subaru and didn’t return until late in the day. They must have gone out for lunch. I didn’t see Kim, although I looked over there, from time to time.

  I embarked on my little composition. Like my previous piece of homework, the words flowed from the keyboard without effort. It must be because I know the subject so well. But how to portray him truthfully without letting on that he is a quadruped?

  Difficult? Not a bit of it. It turned out to be a breeze. I decided to cal
l him Ted. It sounds more plausible for a male my age or older. A legitimate little ploy, I think. No, Ted and I are not married. We live together by choice, I’ll say candidly, if they ask. Bearing in mind none of them knows anything about me, outside the little we have revealed in the group. We don’t socialise, or I don’t. I’ve avoided it like the plague. Last week was the first time I’ve ever gone to the pub with the rest of them, and probably will be the last.

  I began with a short dissertation on my special friend’s character. The fact that Ted, unlike most people, is never ill-tempered, even when he is feeling under the weather. He has an exceptionally easygoing disposition. He doesn’t go in for good and bad moods. He greets each day with enthusiasm in the same sunny frame of mind. And he responds to my darker humours with an unspoken empathy.

  Moreover, unlike many men, I can truthfully say Ted makes no secret of his feelings. I don’t want to boast but, even though it’s nearly fourteen years since we first met, he is always delighted to see me. He has never suffered from a fashionable male malady such as commitment phobia. He makes it clear on a daily basis that he thinks I am the most important person in his life. This endears him to me in itself.

  One of the reasons I find him so lovable is his loyal and straight-down-the-line character, which spills over into every part of his life. Deception, equivocation – these are quite foreign to Ted. He is direct and sincere. What you see is what you get. And, again unlike most men, he doesn’t indulge in gamesmanship. He’s not interested in messing with your mind, as the saying goes. On the contrary, he is almost entirely without guile.

  I say almost. His sense of humour is the one area where he has been known to employ a touch of artfulness. Ted has a delightful sense of the ridiculous. It is most original, peculiar to himself and unlike that of most people I know. It can be quite subtle, like the changes of expression in his eyes. He likes to conceal things occasionally and play little practical jokes. He finds it amusing if I hide and jump out on him. In that respect he’s quite childlike, I suppose.