The Precipice

by Virginia Duigan

  This cannot be good for her. It must seem like a repetition on a daily basis of what she has felt all her life, or just another version of it. It’s always hard with a threesome. And she has not been with them for long, this is part of the problem. I should mention it, I think, to Frank.

  ‘I came home from work on Saturday all fired up, only to find no adorable new puppy,’ Ellice wailed as we sat down. ‘What a let-down, you slackers!’ It sounded boisterous and accusing. I was aware of Kim opposite me cringing in her seat.

  ‘We’ll find one in due course. There is no shortage of puppies in the world,’ I said briskly. ‘So you enjoy working at the café, do you?’ Abrupt, and somewhat clumsy. But I had to change the subject. And I was curious about Ellice – who in her way seems quite high-powered – and the café.

  She became animated at once. Enjoys talking about herself, like most people. She was on an extended bliss-out, she announced. ‘Taking orders for eggs Florentine on sourdough, with sides of home-baked beans, sautéed spinach and field mushrooms with sage.’ Such a glorious relief after torts and company law, she couldn’t tell me.

  So that’s it. She’s a lawyer. It came back to me when she said it.

  She was sick of the years of slog, she only ever did law to please her father. Now, and she exchanged a meaningful glance with Frank, she was taking a sabbatical. ‘You’ve earned it, baby,’ Frank said. He actually got up out of his chair and planted a kiss on her head.

  I said I could only assume this was a temporary glitch. But how would she pursue a career in law while living up here? It wouldn’t be easy. They just smiled at each other in their intimate fashion. A complacent habit that shuts out other people.

  One of them said, ‘We’ll deal with that when it comes.’ Love will find a way was the subtext I picked up. Far too saccharine a subtext for Oscar’s purposes.

  The pie was good, but I was so famished I’d have eaten slug and lettuce soup. Ellice may have made it but Frank refused to let her do anything else. He did most of the chores, brought the food in and out while Kim cleared the plates. And he had made the dessert – a delicious baked cheesecake.

  Ellice poked fun at my surprise. Franko was a very today guy, very metro, wasn’t he, Kimmie? Blokes were way better round the house than they were in my day, not much doubt about that. I must have winced. My day? Frank winked at me.

  ‘He cooks up a storm, most days of the week,’ Ellice effused, which was just as well because she wasn’t into it herself. She hated cooking, not to put too fine a point on it. She succumbed very rarely, and under sufferance.

  Well, lucky old her. She must be the moneybags, there’s not much doubt about that. Frank’s immediate family is clearly wanting in that regard, as in others. He made it quite clear that he’s not earning much at present. She’s bankrolling the family, I shouldn’t wonder, or her parents are. What’s the betting they forked out for the house?

  At one point they said they were thinking of taking down the wall between the kitchen and living area, to make it more open plan. I detest open plan. If I’d known they were considering doing that, I’d never have sold it to them, I said.

  After the meal I declined a coffee or herbal tea. Herbal teas were a travesty, I said. I would ban them when I come to power, along with daft homeopathic remedies that were an insult to the intelligence. This made Kim giggle, and I took the opportunity to suggest she might like to show me her room. Then I had to deter Ellice from tagging along. ‘You can sit down with your old pal Franko,’ I said, a suggestion that produced the ubiquitous fond glances.

  ‘Kim’s such a fastidious little thing, Thea,’ Ellice laughed. ‘She’s not a terminal slob like us two. You’ll be gobsmacked when you see her room.’ Us versus her. Another irritating comment.

  I had already visited the guest bathroom, which doubles as Kim’s en suite. I’d designed it with two doors so it could be accessed from the living area as well as the spare room. It was immaculate. Towels folded on the rail, clean bath, gleaming mirror, a few toiletries meticulously positioned. This would be Kim’s doing, I now realised.

  Most girls her age live in a pigsty and plaster their walls with posters of lame-brained actors and drug-addled pop singers. Kim’s bedroom was sparse and almost excessively neat and tidy. The obligatory TV and laptop, but no posters or girly knick-knacks like lava lamps or souvenir snow domes. Nothing cutesy at all. Not a scented candle in sight.

  Then I saw a squat little statue on the windowsill near the end of the bed. A grinning Buddha with chubby children draped around his shoulders and linking hands behind his head.

  Kim was watching me. She said, ‘The kids’ Buddha. That’s what it’s called. They often get given to Vietnamese kids.’ She picked him up and rubbed his stomach in slow, circular movements with the flat of her hand. The area was so shiny, I guessed this was a frequent action.

  ‘The dimples and the laughing face, they kind of give you a happy feeling. Even, you know, when you’re not, especially.’

  The rubbing slowed to a halt. ‘She gave it to me.’ I let an interval pass. ‘Your mother?’

  ‘That, and this.’ The jade bangle on her wrist. I’d seen her wearing it before. ‘The two things I got from my mum before she went.’ It was said in a meditative way, with a residue not so much of sadness as of resignation.

  ‘They are your keepsakes,’ I said.

  She looked up. ‘Yeah. That’s what they are. Keepsakes, to keep by me. And remember her by.’ She replaced the statue in the same position on the sill and patted the head, as one might pat a child. We were quiet for a moment.

  Usually girls pile their beds with cuddly toys. There was just one on Kim’s bed, a moth-eaten wombat scarcely holding together, with one eye and one leg. That would be the source of Frank’s nickname. She saw me looking at it, picked it up and hugged it.

  ‘He’s my oldest buddy. He’s on his last leg,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t have a name. Well, he sort of does. Just the Dear Old Wombat. He looks like he’s been through the mill, right? Or a whole bunch of mills.’ Like you have, I thought.

  There were no photos either, of friends or family – well, not surprising. Only one shelf of the bookcase contained actual books, which looked like school texts all arranged according to height, and there was a neat pile on the bedside table that included, I noted, my presents to her. Next to it stood a personal touch: a jam jar of gum leaves and wild flowers – old man banksia and sprigs of geebung and scarlet mountain devil.

  I approved of the simple furniture, white painted wood probably bought together by Ellice as a girl’s bedroom suite. The curtains were striped Indian cotton, white and an unusual shade of blue, with a matching bedspread. I was aware of Kim monitoring my inspection intently while pretending not to.

  ‘I think this is a very elegant room,’ I said.

  ‘You do? Huh. Elegant.’ She pronounced this with a careful emphasis in a way that suggested she had never imagined such a word being used in relation to herself. She was not displeased, I felt.

  ‘I like the Buddha and wombat and the wildflowers. And that particular shade of blue.’

  ‘I chose the material. She let me,’ a pause while she reflected on this, ‘which was nice of her, right? The colour’s called teal. I chose it because it was kind of ambiguous, like the sea. A mixture of blue and green.’

  ‘The room is very calming,’ I said. ‘A place for everything, and everything in its place.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ She nodded, rather lugubriously. ‘She says I’m anal retentive. I need to know where things are. Otherwise I get, you know, kind of anxious.’

  That follows. When you’re constantly moving from place to place you need to keep tabs on your belongings because you may have to lay your hands on them at short notice. If you stay in one place for years on end this is not such a problem. No matter how untidy you are, you know what you want is there, somewhere in the rubble.

  I said as much to her, adding, ‘Don’t take any notice of what anyone
else thinks, no notice at all. It’s the best policy, I’ve always found.’

  She nodded. ‘Absolutely the best. I’ve found that too.’ She folded her arms across her chest. ‘People don’t like it much, but. Do they? If they know you don’t give a stuff about what they think.’

  ‘But if you don’t give a stuff about what they think, then it doesn’t matter a stuff either, does it?’ I said.

  We laughed. She promptly opened a drawer on the bedside table and pulled out a photo in a pink, heart-shaped frame. She handed it to me. I recognised a younger and longer haired Kim, aged about nine or ten. She was wearing dungarees and kneeling on grass, thin arms tightly locked around a golden Labrador.

  ‘That’s Pippi, the dog I told you about? I don’t want to see it all the time, but I keep it in there so I always know where to find it.’

  We looked at it in silence. Normally girls of her age are beaming happily at the camera in all their photographs, but the body language here told a different story. The girl hugging the dog with such desperate possessiveness was not looking at the camera. She was frowning, lips sucked in and clenched together, eyes half closed.

  Eventually I said, ‘It was a bad day.’

  She drew a deep, sighing breath. ‘It was, yeah. That’s so right. A black-letter day, one of the worst. It was the day I had to leave there.’ She almost snatched the photo from my hand and replaced it in the drawer. She leant on the windowsill, rocking backwards and forwards, staring out. Her hand rested on Teddy’s head.

  There are two big-framed windows in the room. The curtains were not pulled, and one window was thrown wide open. The room was permeated with the tang of eucalyptus. By now it was completely dark, and in the faint evening melancholy lay a strong sense of the encircling bush. The hypnotic hum of cicadas rose, unnaturally loud, then fell into a lull. I sat on the bed.

  ‘This was going to be my spare room.’

  Kim turned and gazed at me, disconcerted.

  ‘I was very foolish, you see. I invested all my savings in a company that collapsed.’

  ‘It went bust?’

  ‘I was taken in by an investment offer. Which is as silly as being taken in by –’ I cast around for a comparison.

  ‘By horoscopes?’

  ‘Exactly. I lost all my money and had to sell this house instead.’

  She came and sat down next to me on the bed. ‘Instead of what? Oh.’ She closed her eyes. I saw it dawn on her in a rush. ‘Of course. Instead of the cottage you loathe.’

  ‘Instead of the hated hovel, yes.’ Teddy heaved himself up from the floor by the window and flopped between us.

  ‘You built this house, right?’ she said slowly, sitting up straight. ‘Not, like, built it with your own hands, but you created it. Out of nothing.’

  ‘Out of nothing, yes.’

  ‘And it was going to be your new home. You were going to live here. With Teddy. For, well, for –’ She stumbled.

  ‘For the rest of our lives.’

  ‘Oh shit.’ She exhaled. ‘The day you had to sell it to them must’ve been really, really bad. A black-letter day.’

  ‘It was, yes.’

  ‘One of the worst.’ We contemplated this together, silently. She drew the back of her hand slowly across her mouth. ‘It’s hard, right? Them and me being here? Living,’ she stared at me, her eyes widening as she thought this through, ‘in your house.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘Yeah, I knew it was. Like, you know, I just knew. I just didn’t know why, exactly.’

  I contemplated this too. ‘It’s not something I ever planned for. But that’s the way life sometimes is.’

  ‘That’s the way the cookie crumbles. And you have to grin and bear it, right?’ We exchanged a wry smile. Or perhaps it was a wan grin. ‘Do they know?’ she asked, gesturing at the door. ‘I mean, um, about the – about the circumstances.’

  ‘Frank and Ellice? I dare say they do, but I’ve never mentioned it and neither have they.’

  ‘Oh. But people gossip, I dare say,’ she said, with meaningful emphasis.

  ‘That sounds like a wise woman talking.’

  A grin. ‘I won’t tell ’em anyhow. In case they don’t know.’ She inspected the ceiling. There was something else in the offing.

  ‘Thea.’ She made it into two pensive syllables. She leant forward, elbows on knees, chin propped on cupped hands. With her cap of dark, shining hair she reminded me, for a second, of a rare flower. Of a black tulip.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Who did you have in mind? Like, you know, for here? To invite to stay in your spare room.’ That unusually direct, unblinking gaze she has was fixed on me.

  ‘Well, that’s the funny thing, you see,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I had anyone in mind.’

  ‘No? That’s good then. That’s a relief.’ She seemed to relax into herself a little. ‘Because, you know, I wouldn’t like to think I was sort of usurping anybody.’

  ‘No. You’re not usurping anyone at all.’ I found myself struggling, trying to distil some conflicting thoughts into one. ‘And it’s better this way.’

  ‘Better. Like, how? How could it be better?’ She sat very still, cautious and attentive.

  ‘It would have been an empty room. Now it has you living in it.’

  I watched as she processed this. She scanned the room, carefully and observantly, every wall and corner, then darted a quick glance at me. Bright-eyed.

  We got up and left without another word. Frank and Ellice were sitting together on a sofa watching something on TV, her feet in his lap. He was stroking her hair. I told them under no circumstance to move.

  ‘Teddy likes to take me home,’ I told them. Of course he does, Kim said, it makes him feel manly.

  He and I were halfway there, imbibing the moonlight, when I heard her running feet, as light as falling leaves.

  ‘Thea. With all that stuff we were talking about, that important stuff, I totally forgot to ask. To ask you when I should come?’

  The writing class, of course. There are only two more weeks of term. ‘You can come when you like,’ I said. ‘You can come when you feel a class coming on.’

  She said seriously, ‘That’s good, because, you know, I think I might. Feel one coming on. This week?’

  It was only when I was on the point of sleep with my feet against Teddy’s back that I realised all the important stuff we were talking about had caused me to forget something else important too. I had completely overlooked my intention to check on Frank’s purchase of a lockable box.

  And he hadn’t done it. I thought as much. Moreover, he seems quite blasé, worryingly careless about the whole matter.

  It was the second time I’d broken my own golden rule by not ringing first. The front door was open, no one in sight but an abundance of noise. Crashing cymbals – over a deafening rhythmic beat that shuddered through me – invaded the whole house. Teddy had picked it up, tail held at horizontal for danger, the minute we exited the hovel.

  In a too-brief interlude of a surprisingly refined harp melody I called Frank’s name as loudly as I could, twice. No response. We advanced gingerly down the passage towards the renewed racket. His door was wide open, needless to say, and Frank was hunched in front of the screen with his back to me. I was struck by how dark the room was. The wide bank of windows had been curtained off with a swathe of blackout material. The music had deteriorated further, the mind-numbing, repetitive rhythm overlaid by an undecipherable chant. Rap music, to my ear the most detestable of mindless modern genres.

  I stood in the doorway, hands over my ears, eyes adjusting to the gloom. Teddy, who has always hated loud noises, cowered behind me. The flickering screen was partially obscured by Frank’s back, but I could see a sandy beach and what looked like branches stacked in a pyramid. It was hung with motifs – the camera closed in on towels and surf boards, bikinis, rubber thongs and goggles. I found myself thinking quite incongruously of Breughel’s Tower of Babel.

  The room was not only dark, it was
hazy. As I came towards Frank I smelt an unmistakable odour, sickly and musty. Sure enough, I saw a column of smoke rising from a cannabis joint in his right hand.

  I placed a handkerchief over my nose ostentatiously and approached the monitor. A conga line of gyrating dancers had arrived, bronzed lifesavers, male and female. They started stacking things round the base of the pyramid, what appeared to be mummified figures swathed in colourful cloth. The scene was festive and celebratory and reminded me, incongruously again, of a Busby Berkeley musical.

  Frank’s eyes were glued to the screen. I repeated his name in a peremptory voice but he was oblivious, as immobile as a painted ship. I tapped him on the arm. He jumped an inch in the air, spilt another inch of ash on the keyboard and swore.

  ‘Fucking hell! Sorry, Thea – bloody fucking hell.’ He reduced the sound to a moderately acceptable level. ‘Hey,’ a marked change of tone, ‘what a nice surprise.’ The greeting seemed genuine enough, with every appearance of pleasure and not a smidgin of guilt. He blew the ash away and scrubbed at the keys with his T-shirt.

  ‘Anyone could walk in, Frank,’ I said. ‘And anyone has.’

  He was quite unrepentant. I wasn’t just anyone, and he was in the privacy of his own home, right? ‘We’ve only got the Wombat to worry about, and she’s safely at school. Anyhow, nothing wrong with this scene, is there?’ He pointed the glowing tip of the joint at the screen. ‘It’s a family friendly beach barbecue. Dripping with wholesomeness. Just get a load of all that colour and movement.’

  I peered round to right and left. ‘So, where have you put it? I don’t see it.’

  ‘It?’ He looked mystified. ‘Am I missing something, Thea?’

  You seem to be missing a lockable box, I said. The one you promised you were going to get, remember?

  Ah, well, he hadn’t quite got it yet. Hadn’t had time, been flat out, please don’t spank him. ‘Besides, it’s not necessary, because there’s a fallback position. Plan B’s in place.’