The Precipice

by Virginia Duigan

  Yes, Thea, you are. Pleasure, he repeated, with what I have come to classify as his patience-of-Job expression. Isn’t that how people usually behave in this situation?

  Well, is it? I countered. I wasn’t at all sure of that, I said. And anyway, this wasn’t a usual situation, not by any manner of means. Kim was already the odd one out, and Ellice and Frank having a baby would only intensify that feeling of not belonging.

  Why should it do that, Sandy wanted to know. It was more likely to make her feel she was part of a family. Had she told me she felt excluded?

  She doesn’t need to tell me, I said. It’s glaringly obvious.

  I could see Sandy was not going to budge. He started to rhapsodise about what a good relationship Kim and Frank have. Unsurprising, he said, since he’s a nice bloke and she’s such a special girl, but it was unusual, really quite heartwarming to see an uncle and niece who got on so famously.

  They’d left the shop with another heap of books for her only yesterday afternoon. Pride and Prejudice was on top of the pile. A good choice, didn’t I agree? And what about this? She’d asked for some Vietnamese history and he had located just the thing. Wasn’t that a turn-up for the books? Not too dry, sound on the war, quite readable. She was part Vietnamese, did I know that?

  I suppressed a sigh and butted in before he could get started on the rest of the pile. I outlined the problem of the graphic film Kim’s nice uncle Frank – who drinks and smokes dope while he’s working, by the way – is working on. Nice uncle Frank has a decidedly irresponsible streak, I said.

  Hmm, they all smoke dope, I’m told, was Sandy’s phlegmatic response, even when they’re not working. A surprising comment, coming from him. Unexpectedly savvy. Who could have told him that? Not the arch square Monica Harmonica, surely. She wouldn’t know a joint from a leg of pork.

  I described the toolbox and my purchase of the combination lock.

  Do you think he’ll use it? Sandy asked. This is what worries me. We had to cut the conversation short because a nosy parker had marched in and was hovering at Sandy’s elbow.

  Well, at least he has finally worked out how Kim and Frank are related. Like most men, Sandy doesn’t make a parade of his sentimental side, but now and again he gives himself away with a throwaway phrase. He is really quite tender-hearted.

  Heartwarming was the word he used. A heartwarming relationship. If that is to be the case, Frank needs to get his act together.

  No car but someone home, doors unlocked as usual. Found Frank leaning back and wearing a filthy old cotton sun hat of indeterminate hue, tilted low over his forehead, legs propped on the desk. And in blessed quiet. Nothing on the screen for once. Blinds pulled back and light streaming in. Beside him: three empty mugs and an ashtray with two mangy butts. Looked like discarded joints to me. I saw a new bottle of tequila on the desk. Unopened, as yet.

  I could tell he wasn’t asleep and I coughed. He opened his eyes. He seemed quite sanguine.

  ‘Good day, Mr Composer,’ I said. ‘Sorry to wake you from your beauty sleep, or should I say, befuddled stupor?’

  No worries, he said cheerfully, he’d been contemplating his navel. ‘Mulling over the background muzak for the orgy scene.’ He winked. ‘Can’t you see I’ve got my thinking cap on?’ He took it off, gave it and then me a smacking kiss. ‘A trusty heirloom. Only use it in times of extreme crisis, and it always works.’ He scribbled some crotchets and quavers on a pad ruled for musical notation. ‘There. Time for another caffeine hit.’ He insisted it wasn’t an intrusion. I suspect he actively likes being interrupted.

  How much coffee did he drink in one day? Whoops, no idea, he said airily. Masses. It was not beneficial in large quantities, I pointed out. And neither, I added en passant, was spirituous liquor. Or marijuana. There was another study in today’s paper suggesting marijuana could have long-term effects on the brain. Deleterious effects. I had cut the article out, I said, and just happened to have it with me. I put it into his hand. ‘There you go,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, everything’s bad for you, Thea,’ he said. And I shouldn’t believe everything I read in the paper. There would be another study next week saying the opposite. Which was something I might have said myself, but in this context I found it provoking.

  He saw me looking around for my toolbox and pointed to it. It was on the end of the bed. ‘Two-four-six-eight,’ he said. ‘I’ve committed it to memory. Forget you ever heard it.’

  I thought that was far too obvious a code and said so. Anything more complicated, he said, and he wouldn’t have a hope in hell of memorising it. And anyhow, although she might wonder why it was there, no way would Kim ever think of looking in a funny old toolbox.

  I pointed out that she might look inside as a direct consequence of wondering why it was there.

  He put his hands together in supplication. ‘Let’s not second-guess ourselves, Thea, please. Give me a break, huh?’

  ‘You mentioned an orgy?’ I said.

  Poetic licence, he declared promptly. I doubted that, especially when he did not offer to show it to me. We took coffee out to the deck for ten minutes. It was cloudy but intermittently bright. They’d acquired some comfortable cane armchairs instead of the Queen Anne numbers.

  I decided to raise another matter. ‘You and Ellice are an unusually close couple,’ I said. ‘And Ellice is pregnant.’

  He patted me on the knee. ‘Yeah, well, the two sometimes go together. So?’

  I said I couldn’t help thinking this made it difficult for Kim.

  ‘Difficult? You mean –’ he seemed to find this puzzling.

  ‘The two of you are such a tightly knit unit she’s likely to feel excluded.’ And the pregnancy news could well intensify her feelings of being the odd one out, rather as she had been all her life. It was always hard with three, I conceded, and the person who was not part of the couple was inevitably going to feel resentful. This was to be expected. It wasn’t that he and Ellice had done anything wrong, exactly, but they needed to keep in mind the psychological side.

  Frank put down his coffee. I could tell he was finding this hard to come to grips with. He opened his mouth, shut it, and then subjected me to a playfully helpless look.

  ‘I’m not just any old fruitcake you know, Frank,’ I said. ‘I’ve had some contact with children who’ve been through the kinds of experiences she has.’ There was no one-size-fits-all solution. But I felt it was as well to be aware of the problem, and to be sure to pay her special attention. In particular, to avoid too much cosying up with Ellice when Kim was around.

  I’d been speaking fast, maybe rather too over-emphatically. He jumped to his feet and stepped behind my chair. ‘Thea, baby – I’m thinking you need another dose of my patent stress-buster. That’s what I’m thinking.’

  Before I could object his hands were on my shoulders. I had the same feeling of instant relief as before. An identical surge of physical gratification. He chatted away as his fingers and thumbs kneaded into my stiff shoulder muscles. I tried to keep my mind on what he was saying.

  There would be no more cosying up for a while anyhow, because Ellie was going away for a bit of a break, a spot of R and R. She was going down to Melbourne to stay with a friend, an old schoolmate, so he and Kim would be baching. They’d have a golden opportunity to connect a bit more, and I could relax, he said.

  He stepped back before I was ready. ‘Good?’ he asked.

  I nodded. If this is stress-busting I can endure more of it, I was thinking.

  ‘Any time,’ he said.

  I didn’t overdo the subject of Kim’s marginalisation. I’ve made the point, I hope, and there is nothing to be gained by labouring it. I’d laboured it already, his actions seemed to be suggesting. His successful diversionary tactics. For the second time I basked in an inexplicable feeling of wellbeing. It persisted for a good hour afterwards. Was it a release of serotonin, the so-called ‘pleasure’ hormone? Or is it what they mean when they talk about endorphins, supposedly releas
ed after demanding exercise routines?

  These inscrutable substances are all the rage. I have been properly sceptical about them in the past and remain so. But is it conceivable I was experiencing an irrational flood of endorphins? I find this idea rather disturbing.

  They do say almost everyone is afflicted by stress these days, with the daily outpouring of grisly news from every direction. I suppose there is no good reason why I should be immune. Can you be stressed subliminally, without knowing? This is another bleak idea.

  There are advertisements for massage practitioners in the local paper – plenty of them, but I do not feel inclined to try out anyone. I have the same ingrained resistance to the idea of a stranger touching me as I have had all my life. That is not going to change.

  How much time do I have left? Of quality, that is. I must be using up a fair ration of my remaining quality time on this journal. The writing muscles ought by rights to be mightily flexed. So much so that I didn’t think enough about Oscar’s assignment in advance. When I came to it after Frank’s patent stress-busting treatment I was at a loss, initially. And only partly because I was in a dazed condition.

  Last week Oscar made an announcement. Our Chairman Mao moment had arrived. We were about to take the Great Leap Forward. Before we began the course, we were given a short questionnaire. The questions boiled down to two, in effect: what did we hope to get out of this course, and which branch of creative writing – fiction, non-fiction, biography, memoir – was our principal interest? I was tempted to say poetry, but opted for fiction because it seemed more achievable.

  We never saw each other’s responses, but he told us the preferences were confined to two areas, memoir and fiction. Now it’s approaching the end of term he thinks we’ve done enough preparatory donkey work and should get down to business. He wants to collect our best pieces for a boutique anthology.

  We might get it published, he declared. Who knows? Madder miracles have come to pass. But piggywigs have not been known to take to the air, I murmured. Or, he went on, with a reproving glance at me, we can always make an e-book. What you might call a group blog.

  Who on this godless earth would want to read our ramblings? I said. I was feeling bolshie. No one would read them in all probability, Oscar said, save our nearest and dearest, but that needn’t stop us from aiming them into cyberspace. And on the plus side it wouldn’t cost a sausage. Not even a gourmet snag.

  I cast an involuntary glance left and right. Did anyone have such a thing as a nearest and dearest raring to read their work? Certainly not me – Teddy is illiterate. Gilda-lily is a divorcee. Twice over, someone insisted. That she found two men prepared to marry her beggars belief. Mousy Mary was also rumoured to be married once, but that has to be a furphy.

  Not a child, spouse or partner, as the gruesome modern term would have it, has ever been mentioned by anyone. I think we have in common a spinsterish air of disconnectedness, Oscar and Greg included. Perhaps this is why I have found some kind of niche in the group. I don’t especially care for any of them, Oscar excepted, but for the most part we rub along well enough.

  The idea of a little collection caused a buzz. Oscar said he ruminated on it in the bath, where he chews the cud on a daily basis. He’d noticed that our best pieces were those with a strong sense of place. What did we think of Where It Happened as a working title?

  ‘It’s non-specific enough that you can pretty much write what you like, but it also has a subtle specificity,’ he said. I thought this sentence was very characteristic of him.

  Then he pulled out a folder from the satchel he always carries. His ‘manbag’, as he calls it. He extracted a framed photo in black and white of two people, very blurred and indistinct, seated at a table. Both were smoking, and the twin columns of smoke entwined above their heads with a clarity and definition they themselves lacked. The background was anonymous, might have been a house, café or bar.

  This was made by a photographer friend, inspired by an Edward Hopper painting, Oscar said, passing it round. It was a personal favourite because it told you nothing about the subjects. ‘We don’t know who these characters are. We can’t even tell what sex they are, if any. Or if they’re talking to each other. They might be total strangers.’

  They were just there, a pair of anonymous objects inhabiting the moment. Nevertheless, there was something elegiac about them, in Oscar’s opinion. They were once in the world, and now they were figures in a landscape of the mind.

  Oscar said he’s had this photo for years. He keeps it on his desk as a talisman. When he is hit by writer’s block, when he is blundering around like a bull in the china, he ponders it and then buggers off and takes a nap. Then, with a bit of blooming luck, the elusive words come cascading down like manna. We could try doing the same thing. Select something with a special meaning for us and confer upon it inspirational status.

  ‘Couldn’t we just say um or Om?’ suggested Greg, rather wittily I thought.

  Whatever moves your mojo, Oscar said. Sometimes these unlikely things connect with the psyche and move in mysterious ways. Or they do not connect with the psyche or move in any mysterious way, shape or form, I muttered, and there was a general titter. I did spare a thought, however, for Frank’s filthy thinking cap. Maybe there’s a grain of something in the theory.

  I could see the others were a bit thrown by it, though. Is the big O going off his rocker at last? Greg demanded on the way out. Not at all, he’s got a point, I told them. Graven images have a proven track record, do they not? A couple of them looked censorious, I was pleased to see.

  In the questionnaire I had listed my principal interest as writing fiction. Now, as I look at my ‘best’ pieces, a mangy bunch, I see that this was misguided. Plain wrong. I have no talent for fiction, no mind for making things up. My imagination is ploddingly earthbound.

  This journal has energised me over recent weeks. Could I cannibalise it, use parts of it in a new way? Kim is coming to the class tomorrow. Her presence would preclude the use of some material. In the longer term, if there is one, would it also be too inhibiting?

  I might have tried, for example, to follow up that conversation with the deputy head. What was the word she used? Rumble. There had been the odd rumble in the staff room. Well, as principal you quickly become immune to the parochial little jealousies of the staff. Is it any wonder that you’d gravitate towards the odd person with whom you have something in common?

  Matthew Rhode was an outstanding teacher and a first-rate mind, probably the finest I ever came across in my career. If I hadn’t promoted him and created opportunities for him to work individually with my best students I’d have been derelict in my duty. If that is favouritism I plead guilty. Why would you allow mediocrities to take advanced tutorials and waste students’ time?

  As for her other concern, it was all double-dutch to me then. Students getting overextended and excitable? Those kinds of amorphous complaints are always floating round any school, and always traceable back to one disaffected teacher or another. The staff room of a girls’ boarding school is a seedbed of neuroses and a hothouse of petulant plants, Matthew informed me once. He was telling me nothing I didn’t know.

  When did he say that? Could it have been directly after I gave him a rundown of that particular conversation with my deputy? Perhaps that is why I have such a seamless recall of the dialogue. He was particularly disparaging of her, and I may have enjoyed relaying her cadences. It is not easy to admit this, but I may well have taken a deplorable pleasure in it.

  On balance, I don’t think it would be wise to expand on this subject. Or desirable. Can’t think why I imagined it would be a good idea.

  I was feeling quite hot and bothered, and nearly jumped out of my skin when the phone rang. Davy – I might have known. None of my other friends uses the blower much, but Davy has a symbiotic relationship with it. His phone bill must be astronomical. He was full of the news that he’d just been in the café and drunk one of Ellice’s excellent coffees.
Had an intriguing chinwag, he said. What a comely wench I had living across the way, although he doubted if that would cut any ice with me. No ice at all, I said coldly. Her coffees were nowhere near as good as her husband’s, I added.

  What did you talk about, I asked. He was uncharacteristically vague. This and that. She had a most engaging personality, didn’t she? Very amusing and vivacious. Too vivacious by half, I said. Doesn’t leave much elbow room in the personality for anything else.

  Oh, you are such an unreconstructed curmudgeon, he scolded. I should know that she found me entertaining, however. Regaled him with several of my bons mots, she did.

  ‘And oh how you laughed,’ I said uneasily. I should never have introduced them to Davy, never have asked him to the drinks. They had an intriguing chat, he said. Talked about me. Could he have talked about my past? I wouldn’t put it past him.

  I considered asking, but couldn’t bring myself. Too demeaning. And any request for discretion would produce the exact opposite, I’m sure of that. I wonder if I might employ Sandy as a go-between? To ask Davy to keep his mouth shut? Davy respects Sandy, everyone does. Sandy has a kind of unconscious moral authority I clearly lack.

  And yet I have been raking up the past myself. Why, and for what conceivable purpose?

  I thought it might settle me down if I forced myself to work on a different subject. Was quite unprepared for what came into my mind: an account of the building of my house. Such an impulse is a departure in itself. Until now I’d never have entertained the idea of writing one word on such a topic.

  I might even preface it with the page I already gave Oscar: the dialogue between a woman and a girl. The dialogue whose intended subtext, which no one grasped, was the impossibility of realising the woman’s dream of an earthly paradise.