The Precipice

by Virginia Duigan

  I detected a stir of surprise from Kim when I began to read. She hadn’t expected to hear anything to do with the house. Perhaps I was more critical because she was there, but I thought my effort sounded depressingly plodding. Pedantic, even, and weighed down with unnecessary detail. And my attempt to embrace the mythical dimension sounded laboured in the extreme, as well as borderline pretentious. Or well over the line.

  Afterwards when we were discussing our work I was more negative than usual. About mine, that is. The others were less ambitious but the better for it, I thought. Although nearly everyone seemed a bit dejected about their endeavours today.

  Oscar responded by saying he could see we all wanted to go up a notch and were feeling we’d slipped down the ladder instead. He told us to suspend judgement, not to even think about whether our writing was good or bad for the time being. Just do the thing, he said. And do the thing more than usual, to iron out the creases. To move forward, writing needed to become a habit we couldn’t do without.

  ‘You might think you have no control over habits,’ he went on, ‘but the opposite is the case. It’s a brainwashing thing. We have to indoctrinate ourselves in order to develop the habits we want. If we have aspirations to live a writing life,’ I was aware of Kim beside me, sitting up straighter, ‘the writing sensibility must seep into our daily routines, into all the nooks and crannies. Every experience, no matter how unpromising it may appear, is grist to an author’s mill.’

  I looked round at the others. They seemed to be drinking this in. ‘Even filling the pepper grinder?’ I said.

  ‘Especially filling the pepper grinder, Thea.’ Oscar was unfazed. ‘The writer’s life is an examined life, and the only way to have an examined life is by living in the moment. Do the small things intensely, wring every drop of juice from them, and then the big things will look after themselves. Waste some time, because that is an important activity, but not too much, because time has a habit of running out. And before you know it, you may find you’ve got yourself a writing life.’

  He gave Kim a challenging glance when he said that. She responded as if he’d thrown down a gauntlet, her eyes glowing. I had the feeling this barrage of New-Agey mantras was directed at her. It wasn’t quite Oscar’s usual style. But I didn’t want to rain on her parade so I forbore to say anything.

  Oscar asked her if she’d be back next week. Or was it, he added, with a nod in my direction, the chauffeur’s call? It’s Kim’s call entirely, I said coolly. She looked at me, then at Oscar. Oh yeah, she would, if that was okay. Would like to. Heaps.

  Nothing further was said until we arrived at the car, when she extended her arms above her head in a long, luxurious stretch. ‘Wow. He’s kind of an inspiring guy, isn’t he, Thea? Sort of like a literary guru, or something.’

  I turned the key in the ignition. Oscar a guru? ‘It’s unusual for him to be so soppy and wishy-washy,’ I said. ‘Those hackneyed exhortations to get a life and live it to the full, and so forth. He avoids platitudes as a rule; he’s more astute. And sardonic.’

  She wasn’t having that. Soppy and wishy-washy? She didn’t really think what he was saying was soppy, not totally. It was good advice, right, to make use of every experience? And live an examined life? It just made her want to go away and write something this minute.

  ‘I hear what you’re saying. Those slogans speak to you, right?’ I said testily. She darted a keen sidelong glance at me.

  ‘It must be really, really scary to read your stuff out. You know, in front of them? And then have to listen while they say things about it. Urgh. I’d be like, no way am I doing this.’

  I was non-committal.

  ‘It must sometimes make you think your stuff is crap even when it’s not. Like, when it’s not in the least crap.’

  I was aware of myself feeling absurdly mollified. ‘It’s daunting at first, and difficult, but it can be surprisingly useful,’ I conceded.

  ‘That’s a relief. You wouldn’t want to go through that ordeal if it wasn’t, right? But,’ suddenly anxious, ‘you do think Oscar’s, you know, a good teacher?’

  I agreed that he was a very good one, yes.

  ‘One of the best you’ve known?’

  ‘One of the best.’ One of the two best, but I did not say this.

  And it was good advice to live in the moment? ‘Like, not to get stuck in the past or the future? Because the past’s been, it’s over, right, and the future might never happen. Or, you know, might not happen the way you think.’

  ‘Well, that’s self-evident, isn’t it?’ I said, then thought this was unduly harsh. Truisms such as these are probably not as self-evident when you’re twelve. And are hard enough to act on whatever age you are. The future won’t happen the way you think. One more truth life has taught me.

  She gave me another disconcertingly shrewd look. She said she liked Oscar’s bow tie and those cool red straps holding up his trousers.

  ‘Braces,’ I said.

  Did he always come to class all dolled up like that, like he was about to open Parliament or something? He didn’t look at all like what she’d imagined.

  ‘How did you imagine him?’

  She hesitated. ‘I didn’t expect he’d be quite so fancy. Or quite so, um, fat. I guess I thought he’d be a scrawny old hippie with wispy hair. And a beard, definitely. Sort of, you know, more like what’s his name. Greg.’

  Was that how she imagined a writer looked?

  Well, she hadn’t met a real live one before. ‘But I guess they can look like anyone else on the outside, right? Even if they’re a bit weird on the inside.’ She reconsidered this, adding, ‘Don’t tell me. It’s self-evident.’

  ‘Oscar says all writers are a bit off their rocker,’ I said. ‘A degree of lunacy is a prerequisite, he thinks. Arguably.’

  ‘Yeah? Is that what you think too?’

  ‘It’s an agreeable generalisation. I’d say it was a persuasive working hypothesis, wouldn’t you?’

  She grinned. ‘Agreeable and persuasive. That’s good, then. You and me are fairly weird, arguably, so maybe we’ve got an outside chance of getting to be writers.’

  ‘You and I, not you and me,’ I said. The correction was automatic, a reflex I thought I’d abandoned long ago. ‘Oscar always wears a bow tie,’ I said. ‘He’s a very dapper dresser, for these days.’

  ‘Dapper. Oh yeah, certainly way dapperer than the run-of the-mill people round here. Like you and I, right?’

  ‘You and me, that time,’ I corrected. I explained the principle. It was clear she had never heard it before. They are supposed to be reintroducing grammar in schools, and not a moment too soon.

  Until recently it was light when I drove home after class. The days are getting shorter. It’s autumnal already. As we approached the dump the headlights picked up a motionless figure standing a few feet away from their house. It was Frank, I saw as we came closer. He was standing still with his back to the car.

  ‘There’s Frank peeing on the lemon tree,’ Kim said. She seemed to find this rather hilarious. It was supposed to be very good for lemons, did I know this? Ellie had bought a tree in a pot and planted it. She had given Frank instructions to water it regularly.

  I have heard that theory, yes, but this information gave me an uncomfortable feeling all the same. Frank looked over his shoulder and waved cheerily as he zipped up. He came bowling over and opened my door with a flourish. He was quite unabashed. Bashfulness doesn’t seem to feature in his repertoire.

  ‘The scribblers return.’ He kissed me on the cheek and threw an arm round Kim’s waist. ‘So, how was it, Wombat?’

  She was still buzzing, but concise. ‘Great.’ The class had left her on a high, it was nice to see.

  ‘Thanks a lot, Thea,’ Frank said. ‘Now Wombat, your turn.

  Thank Thea a lot.’

  ‘She already did,’ I said curtly. I might come over tomorrow, I added. The small matter of some outstanding business. Would he be in?

  The P wor
ds. Prim and proper, priggish, and – pretend god help us – pious. Puritanical, prudent, prude. Is that it? Am I becoming excessively prudish in my old age?

  Or was it ever thus? My prudish streak was the second of two ingrained attitudes the confident young Mr Rhode identified, of which he wished to relieve me. The two were joined at the hip, he opined. A beneficial adjustment to one should have a corresponding effect on the other. He sought to divest me of my disenchantment with the human race, and purge me of my prudery.

  I never knew what I’d done to convince him I was a prude. When I joked that I was on the contrary something of a libertine, he scoffed. I can see now that this was part of his strategy. He needed a lax environment in which to operate. And a permissive atmosphere. He wanted to goad me into a state of unwatchfulness.

  In the event, of course, he achieved neither of his goals. Subsequently and by his own actions he validated the views he ridiculed and succeeded in entrenching both positions. By now, I should imagine, they are set in stone.

  Sandy likes a double-shot cappuccino with plenty of chocolate sprinkles on top. A retrograde taste, those chocolate sprinkles, I tell him, but he is adamant. I ordered two takeaways from the café next door, where aproned waitress Ellice greeted me like a long-lost friend. Hold the sprinkles on one, I demanded, and double them on the other.

  Assessing her figure, I concluded she does look somewhat rounded under the apron. There was no one else in the café and I decided to confront her. It made me feel very awkward, I said, knowing about this pregnancy when the person it chiefly affected was in ignorance.

  She emitted a shriek of outrage. ‘Thea, per-lease! You are such a hoot. The persons most affected are me and Franko, and in that order, if you don’t mind.’

  I might well be a hoot, she could have it her own way, I said, but would she kindly address the issue. Frank had informed me she was about to go away. It was important, surely, that Kim be put in the picture before she left?

  At which point she planted herself down at a table. Yes, she was off to Melbourne for a fortnight at the end of the week. She was going to stay with an old school friend who was also preggers. She and Franko had decided to hang fire and give Kim the good news on her return.

  ‘Two whole weeks of decadent girlie stuff, Thea. Binge drinking, male strippers, Brazilians, daytime soaps. The last chance to let the old hair down, before the end of civilised life as we know it.’ She lowered her voice a few decibels to her idea of a confiding whisper and nudged me. ‘Just like the last weeks of freedom before getting married, all over again.’

  I made no response to this but may have conveyed attitude, as they say, because she embarked on a further round of specious explanation. I was in the know about their gyno history, right? Don’t squirm, she wasn’t about to enlighten me in glorious technicolour, but Frank had sketched it in? She was paranoid about this pregnancy, just didn’t want to let on to anyone about it until the last minute because it seemed too much like tempting fate.

  This was all fine and dandy, I said, but Kim was not just anyone. It was wrong to tell me ahead of her.

  She shrugged. ‘That’s Franko all over. I hate to say it, but he shouldn’t have let the cat out of the bag. He can never keep his big mouth shut.’ She saw my face and added, ‘You’ll just have to let us do this our own funny way, Thea. Humour us on this one, okay? If all goes well we’ll tell her as soon as I get back.’ Would I do her a big favour and promise to keep all fingers and toes crossed?

  I didn’t feel like doing her a favour, big or otherwise. I paid for the coffees but refrained from making any such binding digital commitment.

  Sandy, I found, already knew about Kim’s visit to the writing class. Which should not have surprised me.

  ‘They do say Lisa’s Second-Hand Bookshop is the fount of all gossip,’ I said. ‘Not for nothing do they say that. Might your source be Oscar Corne?’

  Sandy may disdain tittle-tattle himself, but Oscar is one of his regulars. It was on Sandy’s free community notice board that I first perused Oscar’s original announcement.

  I remember it word for word: ‘Creative Writing Class now taking applications from aspiring creators. Creationists need not apply. Age immaterial. Professional tutor Oscar Corne. Personal attention, limited numbers, experience unnecessary and undesirable.’

  It was the reference to creationists that did it. That got me in, as well as the clauses covering age and experience.

  The others must have seen the notice at Lisa’s too, I expect. Doubtless in idle periods between combing the shop for self-help manuals. Sandy would have redirected them towards literature. You can get more help from the classics, as he says.

  It is entirely typical of Sandy that he cared nothing for the fact that I hadn’t troubled to canvass his opinion in advance. Sandy is not stained with the sin of personal pride – more P words – unlike one we can name. And he thought it was a fine idea of mine to take Kim along. She was young for that sort of thing, chronologically speaking, but Oscar was an experience in himself and it might introduce a bracing breath of sophistication into her life.

  She’s already getting the odd whiff of that from yours truly, I remarked. And possibly even the odd sniff from you. Indeed, she probably is, said Sandy, but any opportunity to broaden her horizons should be taken up, shouldn’t it? Since conventional school was likely to be lacking in that regard and with that kind of child.

  He was probably right, I said. Schools did their damnedest to cancel out the original and the individual, to my mind. I had fought against this long and hard, I told him, but it was a losing battle.

  I didn’t care to analyse these two statements. Sandy said, ‘I’m sure you did your level best, Thea.’ I never know quite how to take it when he says things like that. At face value, I suppose. Sandy resembles no one else I know, apart from Teddy, in that he is without guile. Unlike Davy Messer.

  And unlike Davy, Sandy has never alluded to my teaching career’s explosive finale. I’ve always assumed he knows about it because of the press reports at the time, although anyone less titillated by scandal would be hard to find. But even if he hadn’t accidentally come across a newspaper account, a prurient stickybeak like Davy would have enlightened him. Still, chances are he forgot about it years ago.

  If I were to enlist him to urge discretion on Davy, I would have to remind Sandy exactly what it is that he wants Davy to be discreet about. I decided I couldn’t stomach that right now. Perhaps it would be better to confront Davy myself after all. I’ll think it over.

  Sandy said he had given Kim his prized copy of Lost Horizon the other day. What ho, I exclaimed, the famous first ed?

  ‘The 1939 Pocket Book,’ Sandy said with pride. Allowable, I think, in his case. ‘American. I wanted to be sure it was going to a good home so I showed it to her first.’ His eyes crinkled. ‘It was by way of being a little test. She’d never heard of a first edition before, or seen one, so I had to explain what this meant. She already respects books, and I could see she would value it from the way she held it in her hands.’

  He demonstrated, taking down a flimsy old copy of Boswell’s Life of Johnson and cradling it in his hands as if it were a wounded bird. Rare books, out-of-the-way books, they’re like narcotics to Sandy. I accused him of seeking to inculcate a drug habit she would never be able to support. He said this notion was unworthy of me.

  Which one? I queried. That it’s a drug, or the aspersions cast on Kim’s future earning capacity?

  ‘The viewpoint itself, Thea,’ he chided in his mild way. ‘The thing is, surely, to introduce something in life that may become, like music, a source of great joy and pleasure.’

  ‘All right, all right, I know when I’m beat,’ I said. Sandy usually has music in the shop. Most commonly baroque, but today it was a contemporary piece I recognised by Ross Edwards. The way it suggests the textures of the Australian bush always induces a reverie in me.

  I was out there in the vastness of the blue ravines, about to ba
lance on the dizzy edge of the precipice, when Sandy’s voice, one of the few sounds that is not an intrusion, broke in. Kim had confided her uncle Frank was writing music for a movie. She was quite excited about it.

  ‘I told you that last week.’ I was terse.

  ‘So you did. Yes.’ He had no memory of this, I could see.

  ‘Sandy, did she say she had actually watched any of this film?’

  He didn’t think so. Obviously hadn’t asked. Typical of a man. He seemed also to have forgotten what I’d told him about the problematic content of the film. I shouldn’t worry too much about it, he advised. He doubted that a young girl like Kim would have any interest in seeing a movie like that.

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ I told him. ‘Girls of that age are extremely interested in anything to do with violence and sex.’

  Sandy peered down at me. He looked perplexed, his glasses slipping down his nose. ‘Are they? I think that might be an overstatement. Probably not all of them, Thea. Kim seems to me to have an innate capacity for discrimination. She may be uneducated, but she has a natural refinement.’

  ‘All of them, Sandy, believe me. It’s possible that I may have rather more extensive knowledge of young girls than you.’ He had taken his glasses off and was polishing them assiduously. ‘Not,’ I added, ‘that I would ever presume to discount the breadth and scope of your experience.’

  This produced a gentle smile. He sipped his coffee.

  I intended to talk to Frank about this again, I said. I was going to see him about this matter, and that of the pregnancy, this very afternoon. The mention of a pregnancy bewildered Sandy briefly. I had to remind him. He was quite thrown. I realised that for an awful moment he must have thought I meant Kim.

  ‘Frank pees in the garden, you know,’ I said.