The Precipice

by Virginia Duigan

  Teddy disposed of a full bowl of water. I emptied an entire tray of ice cubes into our drinks and then regretted it because the freezer is so iced up it takes forever to make them. The faithful old fridge is on its last legs. A new one – a new pre-loved one – is becoming an urgent necessity.

  My peripheral eye was caught by something white emerging from their kitchen. Frank, I guessed, heading out to the deck. The deck that is so adroitly positioned as to be partly in the shade and partly in the sun at almost any time of day. The luxury of such wide-open space. The luxury of choice that money can buy.

  I couldn’t face a walk but I had to get out. It might wake me up a bit, and the library has an air-conditioned room. Teddy was still spread-eagled on his back in a somnolent stupor. His favourite position, which amuses Kim no end. As I proceeded slowly down the steps in the torrid heat I snatched another quick glance in Frank’s direction, then looked away. I had no wish to appear inquisitive, but I was gripped by a strong suspicion.

  Coming back later on I avoided driving any closer to the other house, or much closer than usual, but just enough to confirm it. Frank was lying on the deck in the shade, the ancient cotton hat – his grungy thinking cap – over his head.

  He was completely unclothed, there was not much doubt of it. I couldn’t be sure if he was lying on his front or his back.

  Not without slowing down even more.

  I looked at my watch. I’d purposely returned a good half hour before Kim was due home from school. I parked myself back on the verandah with the paper and the radio and tried to stay on the qui vive. It was hard to concentrate in the baking heat. Teddy hadn’t moved a limb.

  I thought idly of the old bird-watching binoculars I used to leave on the verandah and take with me on bushwalks. They’re rather heavy and I’ve got out of the habit now. The unholy ghost alone knows where I put them last time. But more pertinently, the idea of peering through binoculars struck me as distinctly on the nose. Beneath one, I think, even if motivated by legitimate concerns.

  A few minutes later there was a little flurry of activity on the deck. I thought at first Frank was getting up and going inside to fetch his clothes. Instead he’d gone and got the hose, and turned the sprinkler on himself. I knew that because I could see the lights sparkling in the arc of the spray. He was lying down again in the sun. Basking in it, presumably.

  I was in a stew of indecision, aware of the minutes ticking by. Finally I went inside and picked up the phone. I resent being put in the position of a busybody, I was going to say lightly, or of a moral tutor. That was a term we had at college for certain senior figures in authority who were not of the church. After only two rings the answering machine came on: an interminable, effervescent message. Ellice, of course. They should have asked Kim to do it, she’d have been more succinct as well as wittier.

  I put the phone down without leaving a message. There was no alternative; I resigned myself to paying Frank a personal call. I could hear jangling noises as I came nearer. It sounded like his music, with plangent nasal vocals by a person who couldn’t sing. I repeated his name with as much force as I could muster. No response, although I kept calling out until I reached the corner of the deck, only a few yards from his inert, outstretched form.

  He sat bolt upright. ‘Hi there, Thea!’ All the insouciance in the world. Uh, how was I going? Anything he could do for me? He’d been lying on a towel. On his back, as I’d thought. His torso, very white and lean, was drenched with spray from the hose. I was careful not to come any closer, or to appear to scrutinise anything too closely. I did not feign embarrassment, but neither did I feign any neighbourly bonhomie I was not feeling.

  Yes, there was something he could do for me, and right away, I said. He could pull the towel out from under him and cover up his nether regions because this wasn’t a nudist colony. His niece was only a schoolgirl, don’t forget, and she was due home any moment now.

  There was no response to this for several seconds and I thought he hadn’t heard. Then he threw me an openly facetious look in which I detected no trace of an apology and scrambled to his feet, winding the wet towel dexterously around his middle. As he tucked the ends in I heard the vigorous ringing of a bicycle bell. Kim, riding up at speed. She dismounted next to me, out of breath and dripping with weat. No helmet, I also noticed.

  ‘Hey, you guys. Am I interrupting something?’ Her wide eyes were fixed on Frank, I noticed.

  ‘Thea’s just giving me a lecture,’ he said. ‘Come and chill out under the hose, Wombat.’

  I told him he should stop wasting precious resources and turn off the hose at once. There were water restrictions in place. And I told Kim to go inside and have a long, cold drink. A full glass at least. And she should always wear her bike helmet religiously, even in hot weather. Or rather, rreligiously.

  There was a convincing report in the paper last week. The use of helmets definitely reduces head injuries in children.

  I went and lay down with the fan a few inches from my face. My mind was in something of a turmoil. After twenty minutes, which they are saying is the optimum time for a power nap, I returned to the car. There was no one on the deck, I ascertained.

  I needed to canvass a second opinion, and the only possible person was Sandy. When I got to Lisa’s he and La Harmonica had their heads together over a large art book. I hung round, increasingly restive, not even pretending to look at the new young adult section or anywhere else. Finally I could stand it no longer and said I wanted to talk to him.

  Sandy looked up, seemed to realise I was there for the first time. Come and look at this, Thea, he said with unconcealed enthusiasm, a monograph on le Sidaner. Have a look at the quality of these reproductions!

  She butted in before I could say a thing. Henri le Sidaner, one of the lesser known French Impressionists. A later one, but a wonderful painter of moods, oh my goodness yes, so talented.

  I know his work, I said to her. I thought he painted scenes, not moods. I don’t recall him ever painting a mood, not in my book.

  ‘It’s not in the pink of condition,’ Sandy was going on.

  ‘Lots of loose pages, we’ll have to get it rebound. Some spotting. But I really think it’s rather a rarity. An exceptional find.’

  Sandy, I said, I’m sorry to interrupt your scholarly tête-à-tête, but can I have a word?

  Of course, Thea, he said, fire away. He was still leaning over the book. Bent double, no wonder he has back problems. A private word, I stressed, with a nod in her direction.

  I saw them exchange a glance. ‘Can you hold the fort, Monnie?’ he said.

  We went outside. If and only if he could spare the time away from the citadel, I said, I’d like to go to the café and sit down. It may not compete with the fortress in terms of excitement, but at least we might get a word in uninterrupted.

  Monnie, are we? I wonder what she calls him. Mr Sandman? Her sandbag? Her sesquipedalian sausage?

  It seemed to dawn on him then that I was in a bit of a state. He took my arm solicitously and steered me next door. When I realised where we were I turned to him in consternation.

  ‘We can’t go here,’ I hissed. He looked baffled, but let me lead him back outside. I glanced over my shoulder. The other girl was behind the counter, the bovine one. No sign of Ellice. Sandy and I ended up in the old post office café, where they do special iced coffees, sitting outside in the shade on iron chairs.

  After we’d both ordered the specials I said urgently, ‘Sandy, listen. Tell me honestly, do you think it’s all right for Kim to see Frank in the nude?’

  He didn’t reply immediately. Didn’t seem to take it in.

  ‘In the nude. In the altogether. Buck naked.’ He’s no fool, but sometimes Sandy takes forever to grasp an elementary concept.

  He nodded with exasperating slowness. ‘Yes, I know what you mean. Well, I –’

  ‘Is it all right, or is it not all right, for a twelve-year-old girl to see her uncle naked?’

  He r
an a hand through his hair. Although it has been white for years, Sandy has never lost his thick hair and it’s quite long at the moment, which suits him.

  I was chafing at the bit. ‘Is this how they behave in modern, with-it families, do you think? Or is it well and truly beyond the pale?’

  ‘Thea, I think you’d better fill me in,’ Sandy said. ‘Can you tell me what’s happened?’

  I explained with as much brevity and calmness as I could muster. He listened intently. When I stopped he didn’t reply straightaway. I was on tenterhooks, but I made myself wait.

  At last he said, ‘I believe some families do have an unusually relaxed attitude to nudity. Frank probably comes from one of those. And to things in general. It ties in with what you’ve said about him peeing in your garden.’

  It wasn’t my garden, but I put that aside. I relayed Frank’s description of his stick-in-the-mud parents, now ensconced in a home for the prematurely senile. They didn’t sound like naturists to me. What was much more likely, I said, was that he and Ellice had got in the habit of prancing about in the nude together and hadn’t bothered to modify it when Kim arrived on the scene. Or Frank had not.

  Then I remembered another thing. Ellice’s trip to Melbourne. Come to think of it, Ellice wasn’t working in the café. She may have left already.

  ‘They’re going to be alone in the house, Sandy. Together, the two of them. I think we should talk seriously to Frank about how to manage this.’

  ‘We?’ Sandy’s brow was creased in deep furrows. He hadn’t touched his drink and the vanilla ice-cream was melting.

  ‘It has to be we, doesn’t it? There’s no one except us. Kim has no one else.’ I turned this over in my mind, rapidly. ‘No, I think you’re right, it would be better coming from another man. An older man he respects. He’s probably never had the benefit of a proper father figure. It would be much better coming from you, Sandy.’

  ‘A father figure?’ He took off his glasses.

  ‘Because it’s inappropriate behaviour. In front of a child. Surely you can see that, Sandy?’

  He put his head in his hands. After a long silence, in which his fingers ploughed repeatedly into his hair until it was standing on end, he said he could not be entirely convinced that this was an appropriate matter for an outsider to interfere in. As far as he could make out, Frank had an ideal relationship with Kim. Very caring and affectionate.

  I know you think that, I said. He put up a hand. ‘Slow down, Thea. Let me finish.’ He must have felt some emotional involvement, he’s not usually as forthright.

  ‘When you saw Frank just now he had been relaxing. Outside. On a hot day. In his own backyard.’ Sandy held up one, two and then three fingers as he recited these points. Yes, I can count to three, I said. The hand came up again. This didn’t mean Frank necessarily walked around the house naked in front of everyone. Sandy thought Frank’s wife would have had a view on that.

  He doesn’t answer the door starkers, that’s true enough, I said. But that’s because he never bothers to lock it. Even when he’s puffing pot and watching blue movies. Also, he knew Kim was about to return and he hadn’t moved.

  Well, perhaps it might be best, if I was seriously concerned about this, for me to have a quiet word with the wife? What was her name again?

  Ellice, I replied wearily. And she had most likely already gone, as I said before. Sandy thought I meant Ellice had left Frank. He doesn’t listen; tries to but doesn’t. He’s like most men in this respect.

  I would have expected him to be more alarmed. To show more solicitude, more of a protective, paternal concern for Kim. Instead of which he seems more concerned to take the man’s part. Frank’s behaviour is increasingly inexcusable the more I think about it, but Sandy seems mainly interested in excusing it.

  I went back to the café and forced myself to speak to the girl. To pre-empt her, I said I didn’t want Ellice’s phone number this time, I merely wished to confirm that she was on holidays. Was she rostered on tomorrow? I wasn’t asking for classified information, I added. There was no risk of jihad, or not that I could discern.

  The girl said, and I quote: ‘She can’t be on tomorrow.’ Why not? ‘Because she’s away.’

  As I seized the door handle she called out, ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ I thought I must have misheard.

  ‘It may never happen,’ she said.

  I must remember to ask Ellice when she comes back if the café has an altruistic policy of employing semi-retarded people. If so it is misguided, as nothing would persuade me to order anything from that girl, except her prompt dismissal.

  It’s an unprecedented happening, but Sandy telephoned. At first I thought he had reconsidered, and was willing to speak to Frank. Not a bit of it. Monica – that was his priceless assistant, I knew Monica, didn’t I? – had taken in a stray pup. He’d seen it. Dear little thing, a mutt with a lot of blue heeler input.

  Why was he phoning to tell me this? Of course I know who Monnie is, I said. Priceless had two meanings. Which one did he have in mind? I hadn’t noticed Monnie telling lots of uproarious jokes. Didn’t recall seeing people convulsed on the floor of the shop. I must make a note to ask her to tell me a corker from her extensive repertoire.

  Sandy can be hard to provoke. He did not respond to this. The thing was, he said stoically, Monica mentioned the stray dog again when she dropped by just now, and he remembered me telling him Kim wanted a puppy. Monica couldn’t keep it herself; her husband refused to and they’ve already got two elderly poodles. The nervous small breed.

  Monica said she was about to ring up the dog shelter. The words dog shelter triggered his memory and he suddenly thought of Kim. What about someone, the uncle or aunty, bringing her round to see it after school this arvo?

  ‘The uncle or aunty? This very arvo? What’s with this patois? You’re coming over all colloquial in your dodderage,’ I said. ‘The aunty’s away, as I already told you, so it would have to be the unsavoury uncle, or maybe just the dotty old crackpot, yours truly.’

  I wasn’t trying to hide the fact that I am aggrieved. I still feel strongly that Sandy has let me down. I feel a deep and pervasive anxiety about the whole situation vis-à-vis Frank.

  Well, he was afraid it had to be this afternoon – Monica was adamant on that score. Her husband was making a fuss. ‘Her husband is a little difficult at the best of times,’ Sandy said.

  ‘Difficult, is he?’ I said. ‘I wonder why that would be?’ I’ve been giving Davy’s theory about Sandy and Monica some thought. Davy’s an inveterate gossip, but I think he may be right after all.

  Sandy said he couldn’t chat now, much as he’d like to, as there was someone delivering some books. Wasn’t the pearl beyond price working today, then? I inquired. Not today, evidently. He gave me her address, in a tone of mild rebuke.

  Two nervous elderly poodles? For ‘old and nervous’ read neurotic. That follows. It’s no accident that people’s dogs often take after them, as is frequently claimed.

  No sign of the car. No sign of Frank either. The front door was locked, for once. If he has not turned up by the time Kim comes home I’ll take her, if she likes. It has cooled down again, thank hypothetical heavens.

  The prospect of visiting Harmonica Hostel is less than alluring, however. Would any puppy be indelibly tainted, I wonder? On the other hand, delivering it from a dismal existence chez the hapless Harmonica and her brace of hostile poodles could only be an act of philanthropy.

  I gave Kim my old Swiss Army knife. ‘I don’t have much use for it anymore,’ I said, ‘and I thought you might like it. It’s always a good idea to have a penknife handy, living out in the bush.’ She looked surprised, but pleased.

  Frank had gone to the city for the day, Kim told me, taking his completed score to the director. Wasn’t it awesome, him composing the music for an entire movie? She was tucking into cheese-and-tomato sandwiches. Two rounds, to be followed by a third of jam, and a glass of c
hocolate milk. I have a dim memory myself of being similarly ravenous after school.

  She’d made a beeline for the kitchen and removed the sandwiches from a container in the fridge. Makes them herself every morning, she explained, so they’re ready for later. Always way too starving to do it when she gets home. She had her own key on a key ring with several attachments, including a tiny wombat and the letter K.

  The film must be a big opportunity for Frank, I agreed cautiously. Did she know what it was about?

  A vigorous nod that tailed off. Second thoughts kicking in. She did a bit, yeah. It was kind of, um, funny. Kind of like an adult fairytale movie. She took a large bite of her sandwich and added, funny peculiar.

  I was on the verge of asking a follow-up question, but decided to wait. I remember overhearing a conversation between two younger female staff members in which they said they always avoided discussing sex or anything touchy or tricky with their children until they were driving in the car. No one had to look at each other, they played music, and it was much more relaxed and less confrontational. They often elicited a surprising amount of sensitive information that way.

  ‘Remember my advice about talking with your mouth full?’ I said instead. ‘Half-masticated food should be concealed considerately from the casual observer.’

  An appreciative look, if satirical. ‘Didn’t realise it was advice. Thought it was an order.’ She chewed the food at exaggerated speed and swallowed it in one go, with an effort. ‘You better not say another word to me until I’ve finished masticating,’ she said. ‘Can I take the rest to eat in the car?’ She’d been consumed with impatience since hearing about the abandoned puppy we were going to see.

  Not can I take. May I take, I said. Crumbs and stale-food smells in cars are not a good combo, I said. I don’t hold with picnics in the chariot.