When I didn’t respond he grabbed me friskily by the arm. ‘Thea, lighten up, huh? Never fear, there will be no glimpses of debauchery or adult themes. See the new blockades on the windows? I’ve resolved to keep them pulled and the door firmly barred against impressionable persons. I’ve put in place, here in my cockpit,’ with solemn emphasis, ‘an H and an F KP.’
He lingered on the letters but I was aggrieved. I refrained from batting even one inquiring eyelid.
‘A hard and a fast knocking protocol, Thea. Outside school hours, no admitting without submitting.’
I found myself stubbornly resistant to this. There was no point in putting in place a knocking protocol of any size, shape or form, I said, since with that infernal racket going on he would never hear a thing.
Nor was he listening now. ‘Not the Wombat, not Ellie, not you Teddy, and,’ sepulchral tone, ‘not even classy dames like you, Thea. Y’all didn’t knock? Waaall, y’all go haul your sorry asses outta here this minute!’
He stubbed out the joint. Then, without warning, he seized my hand, encircled my waist with his other arm and twirled me round and round in a waltz. When he released me after several spins I had a disorienting moment. It was a brief giddiness, due as much to surprise, I think, as to the whirling speed of the dance steps. He kept a steadying arm round me for a few seconds. With our similar height our heads had been close together. I smelt traces of alcohol mingled with marijuana on his breath.
I thought, Frank is stoned. That was a full-on, rather risky – the phrase popped into my mind from nowhere – charm offensive. And lo! Mentally, where it matters most, I am unmoved. What made me think of that? Charm offensive is an oxymoron, on the face of it, which is what gives it its potency.
I did, however, linger a moment longer while I got my breath back. The pyramid on the screen was computer-generated, Frank explained. It was a virtual structure. He invited me to listen to something he thought might be more my thing. He played the harp melody I’d heard earlier, in an extended version. It was quite captivating, I’ll give him that. I have always been susceptible to the emollient virtues of the harp.
‘And now get a load of this. It’s the ending of the movie. I think the harp will background it, but I haven’t joined up the dots yet.’
The pyramid was on the move. I realised it was sitting on what looked like a wide raft, and the raft was being pushed slowly into the sea. While we were talking one of the mummies had been strung up on a cross at the precarious-looking apex. There was a sudden close-up, rather unnerving, of his face under a surf lifesaver cap – I recognised Marlon, the handsome porn star who was the lead actor. The chanting mob is going to crucify him, I thought with an uneasy jolt, then it belatedly dawned on me that the pyramid was a giant bonfire about to be towed out to sea and torched. This too would be computer-generated, no doubt.
I ignored Frank’s plea to wait for the sensational conflagration. Call me old-fashioned, I informed him, but watching people get incinerated is not particularly family friendly, not in my book. Even if we’re only playing let’s pretend. I had no desire to see it, and it was high time Teddy and I hauled our sorry asses out of there.
‘Don’t lose any beauty sleep over Marlon,’ Frank called. ‘The other guys get burnt to a crisp but he’s miraculously snatched from the jaws of death. By guys in an incredible kind of homemade heli-plane. He gets away to fight another day. Hopefully in a sequel, if the movie goes gangbusters.’
‘I don’t intend to lose any sleep over Marlon,’ I said grimly, ‘beauty or otherwise. It’s you I’m worried about. And hopefully there won’t be any sequel.’ I’ll be right back, I added. You can expect me. He blew me a placatory kiss.
On top of his other skills – composer, chef, masseur – Frank is an accomplished dancer, that’s clear. He has several strings to his bow, this young man. Being so tactile he is probably a very good lover, I imagine.
In addition to the dump there are a couple of outbuildings on my remaining little parcel of land. This is an extravagant term for two decrepit structures: a dunny (now the woodshed) and a shed. You can find almost anything in my shed. I was too young to remember the Depression, but its residual influence permeated my generation. I have always found it hard to throw anything away because a use might be found for it one day. That day hardly ever dawns, but the chief advantage of the practice is that instead of having to dispose of every damned thing, one can just bung it in the shed and forget about it.
I went in and poked around the conglomeration of junk, the accumulated flotsam and jetsam of half a century. The best part of a life, I suppose. No one else’s life but mine, and Teddy’s too of course. A sobering thought. I had in mind an old metal toolbox with a hasp fitting. I’d seen it the other day while chucking out a moth-eaten bed of Teddy’s.
The toolbox contained a few screwdrivers, a length of picture wire and some rusty nails. It was fastened originally with a padlock. This was long gone, but it was a simple matter to get a replacement from the hardware store. I chose a good strong one with a combination lock, four rotating numbers to set. That way, there was no key to lose. And if you had a better idea you could alter the combination after opening it.
The house was wondrously silent when we returned an hour later with the booty. I rapped on the front door, which was closed for a change, and called out. No response. I pushed the door in an exploratory way, and it yielded. We found Frank slumbering in his cockpit, stretched out on the day bed. With the heavy blinds blocking the windows the room was uncomfortably dark and close. The cloying smell had intensified.
The film was still playing away, I noted, and the door was still open wide. On the screen a man appeared to be copulating with an inflatable doll. That’s what it looked like anyway, a full-sized, pink plastic doll. They were crammed inside an old-fashioned telephone booth. I was relieved when the screen went blank without warning. My reaction had been a blend of distaste and morbid curiosity, an uncomfortable pair of bedfellows. Nor had I looked away. That’s my upbringing showing: curious as well as prudish, as Matthew Rhode once proclaimed.
Frank was lying on his back in an attitude of abandon, his arms and legs flung wide. I pulled back the curtain behind his head, admitting a triangle of light across his sleeping face. He stirred but did not wake. His upper lip was bathed in a thin sheen of sweat. I once read that the longer the distance between the nose and the upper lip, the more sensual a person tends to be. This sounds preposterous but is often true, in my observation. Frank has an unusually long upper lip.
The thick auburn hair was curling over his neck. I put out a hand and touched it. A light brush with my fingertip. It wasn’t wiry, it was surprisingly soft.
I studied him neutrally. I know him to be twenty-nine and physically quite powerful, but asleep he looked younger and oddly defenceless. This is partly that pale Scottish colouring – I always think of it as Scottish, whether it is or not. The alabaster skin already taking on the beginnings of ruddiness, the soft and crinkly ginger hair, the nearly colourless eyelashes.
And the dusting of freckles across the retroussé bridge of the nose. I have something of a predilection for freckles, a frivolous taste, admittedly. For some unknown reason I’ve always found them decorative on a man. Particularly when they are artlessly scattered, like confetti, across the bridge of a turned-up nose.
I record this thought with an unsettling feeling of déjà vu. Matthew Rhode had freckles, although he was brown-haired with a straight nose. I recall admitting to him once, in an incautious moment: I have a soft spot for freckles. He had a penchant for puns. Does the fact that he had a dusting of them explain my continuing soft spot for freckles? It shouldn’t, should it? You’d think I should have been cured of this little weakness. You’d think I would find them hateful.
There is a surprising level of strength in Frank’s compact and sinewy frame. That was obvious from his massaging hands, and the expert way he twirled me through the waltz steps. I haven’t waltzed since – when, si
nce teenage dancing classes? When I was sixteen or so. None of the gauche country boys at dancing class showed anything approaching his competence or flair.
Today he was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt. Oscar wouldn’t be seen dead in such an outfit, but I haven’t seen Frank in anything else. Young women can look good, of course, but unquestionably it is on young men that jeans reach their, so to speak, apotheosis. When they are as narrow and well cut as Frank’s, tight around the hips and thighs, they are very – there is no other way to say it – revealing. Very sexy. They are a distinct improvement on the baggy trousers men wore in my youth. You can see why blue denim took over the world.
There’s something intrinsically masculine about Frank. This may be self-evident but it is not, perhaps, quite as silly as it sounds. I have come to think that energy is an essential component of masculinity. Energy as well as testosterone. Davy would like you to think he is over-endowed with both, which makes me wonder if he is deficient. Sandy may not flaunt his, but I feel he has them in good measure all the same.
Frank certainly has these credentials in spades, even if he is nowhere near as conventionally good-looking as his wife. Ellice is cover-girl material if she slimmed down a bit, but no editor would put Frank’s face on the cover of a magazine. Still, there’s no mystery as to what she sees in him, quite apart from his prowess in cooking and dancing. It is sexiness, plain and simple.
Or is it naive to think it can ever be simple?
I’d been wool-gathering for imaginary god knows how long. When I came round, I found Frank’s eyes were open and fixed on me with something like a wild surmise.
‘Thea, you’re still here. What is it? Is something wrong, or were you just deciding to do away with me?’ He thought I’d been staring at him, I realised. Well, I suppose I had, although if he imagined I’d been thinking only about him he was mistaken.
He stretched his arms above his head. The T-shirt rode up, exposing his navel and a narrow line of dense auburn hairs bisecting several inches of stark white torso. After an interval he rubbed his eyes and swung his legs over the side. ‘I must’ve dropped off. Power nap. I thoroughly recommend them.’ He appeared puzzled. ‘Didn’t you leave, or did I dream it and you were here all the time?’
I went, and then I came back again, I said evenly, perching on the edge of the couch. And something is wrong. He blinked as I flourished the toolbox close to his face. I’d removed the cobwebs and given it a rough wipe. I deposited it in his lap, rather too heavily. He winced. I’d forgotten it was a metal toolbox.
‘This is a box for your R-rated film discs. And this,’ I waved the padlock under his nose, ‘is for locking the said box. You choose a combination of four numbers to lock it. Don’t write them down in an obvious place, don’t choose obvious numbers like your birthday, and don’t get in a drug-induced haze and forget what they were.’
‘No, Miss. Yes, Miss. Whatever you say, Miss.’
I felt a rising annoyance and agitation. He must have picked up on this because he abandoned the jokey – and slightly impudent – tone and suggested a coffee. Just a quickie, as he must get back to work, but he had something important to tell me.
Well, I was right after all. Ellice is pregnant. Four months along and scarcely showing, he said. What I had not expected to hear was that this is her third pregnancy. The others ended in miscarriage. She is what is known as a high-risk prima gravid, for various tedious medical reasons I did not listen to.
On top of this she is easily thrown off balance, apparently. That doesn’t surprise me at all – I recognised the signs as soon as I had anything to do with her. Hyperactivity, excessive nervous energy. She got a good degree but couldn’t stomach practising law for too long at a stretch after graduation, Frank said. It was partly why they came up here, in search of a lower stress lifestyle.
‘So we have to take it easy, kind of tread on eggshells a bit. We’ve got our fingers crossed.’
‘You want a baby, do you?’ I asked. A reasonable query, although he seemed a little thrown by it. And very pertinent, I should have thought.
‘I don’t think I’ve been asked that question before, Thea. Or not quite in that way. Well, maybe I’d have waited a bit if it was only up to me, but it’s Ellie’s call and she’s gagging for one. You know how women are about babies.’
He must have seen from my expression that I did not, and broke into a broad grin. ‘Well anyhow, thank Christ her bloody parents are out of our hair.’ They hadn’t told the bloody parents, who were convalescing on an extended luxury cruise right now, her dad’s reward for surviving a quadruple bypass. He was a type A personality and was probably having to be tied to the deck.
Hadn’t they told Kim either? Not yet, they’d been waiting for the right time. Waiting for her to settle in properly. But they would have to broach the subject, of course, sooner or later.
‘Well, can you please broach it sooner rather than later.’ I made this into more of a demand than a polite request. ‘This afternoon, for example.’ I felt uncomfortable, I said, being in possession of such inflammatory information when Kim was in blissful ignorance. It didn’t seem right at all.
Inflammatory information? He queried Blissful ignorance? Not the most tactful way of putting it, I suppose. Because of my equivocal attitude to most children I’ve never quite understood people’s desire to have them. Never quite understood it? Poppycock – I was born with a quadruple procreational bypass. Fortunately Frank appeared more amused than offended. He seems distinctly laidback about most matters. Normally I would find this admirable, but there are limits.
I didn’t know you smoked dope, I couldn’t help remarking. He claimed he wasn’t a pothead, he only indulged in the weed when bogged down in a creative hiatus. And only when Ellie wasn’t looking. She was a bit uptight about drugs – about grass, he corrected hastily. And only during school hours, he added, with a weather eye on me.
I was glad to hear it, I said, because I was a bit uptight about drugs myself. And among children, I said, I took a no-prisoners attitude. I gave him the gimlet eye as I said that. Unused for many years, it seemed to have lost none of its potency, I was pleased to see. A glazed look came over his features, albeit only briefly.
Before leaving I asked him what numbers he had selected for the rotating lock. He was caught on the hop. Obviously hadn’t given it any thought whatsoever. I’ll be asking you again, Frank, I warned. Sooner rather than later.
‘I thought the whole point was so you wouldn’t be able to open it, Thea,’ he said.
The pregnancy news explains a lot. Frank’s excessively solicitous behaviour. Ellice’s rather wearing vivacity, which is as much induced as innate, I expect. No doubt the consecutive miscarriages would have taken a toll. Perhaps they are waiting to see if this pregnancy sticks, if that is the term, before informing Kim. All the same, I would prefer not to have been told in advance of her.
And Frank’s casual attitude to what is a serious matter, the whole business of this highly unpleasant film, is very vexing. And he drinks and smokes while he’s working. Rather a lot of both, I suspect. And while it may have been a casual reference, I also wonder if he was not downplaying a wider experience. One shouldn’t generalise, of course, but all the musicians the girls used to drool over were notorious for their indiscriminate drug use.
Seeing him smoking dope stirred some uncomfortable memories. I’d never seen it until Matthew Rhode smuggled some in. I only dabbled in it, and only occasionally, towards the end. Like Frank, I did so in the privacy of my own quarters, which unlike Frank’s were self-contained. But when I think about this now it was an extraordinary thing to have done. And in the presence of a male member of staff, too. Reckless. I was the school principal, for imaginary god’s sake. What was I thinking?
It must have been the frisson of excitement. The illicit allure of the illegal, as Matthew said. I didn’t even like the stuff. It did nothing much for me and, what’s more, it didn’t agree with me. It made me feel queasy.
Matthew maintained this was because I’d usually had some wine beforehand, but it wasn’t that. Just a whiff of that sickly smell turns my stomach, even now.
I know they all do it and maintain it’s no more harmful than booze. They may well be right. But booze is far more agreeable and aesthetically pleasing. Those soggy fag-ends they pass round would make you sick even if the smell didn’t.
I knew nothing about the cocaine. He never brought cocaine to my rooms. Never.
They’ve given me a present, which I’m not sure if I want. Their old DVD player. Frank carried it over. Works perfectly, he said. They’ve just replaced it with a multi-system model. Different countries have different operating systems, apparently. Although quite why you’d want to bother with them is hard to imagine.
The contraption sat quite tidily under the TV. He’d even brought a DVD, a drama about Churchill and the lead-up to World War II. He said it was very good, probably thought that was my formative period. He showed me how to put the thing on, not that I have much intention of using it. It was surprisingly straightforward but I insisted he write the steps down. ‘I’ll forget if you don’t,’ I said. I didn’t go so far as to refuse it. Nothing gained by being churlish.
And it was a nice gesture, even if prompted by recent guilt. I suppose it might come in handy on long winter evenings in front of the fire. There are masterpieces in film, as well as in literature. I doubt whether Kim has seen many of them yet, if any at all.
I wonder how she is going to react to this baby development. Will she resent it? The other two evidently want a child, both of them; I suspect Frank downplayed his attitude when I surprised him by bringing up the subject. So it will further cement their closeness as a couple. Kim is likely to feel even more of an outsider.
I told Sandy, in strict confidence. Sandy can be trusted with confidences. He shares my disdain for gossip. You can never predict his opinions, though, about anything on our mythical maker’s earth, and he confirmed this by saying he imagined Kim would greet the news with pleasure. With pleasure, I exclaimed. Am I hearing aright?
The Precipice Page 17
