The Precipice

by Virginia Duigan

  ‘Thea.’ Her face was a study in consternation.

  ‘It’s quite all right,’ I said. ‘Don’t even think about it.’ I’d planned to take her to the new Thai restaurant, but had already ditched that plan.

  ‘You’re certain? Totally?’

  ‘Do you really think I would have gone out gallivanting and left Teddy so soon?’

  She flashed me a look of fervent relief. ‘I couldn’t have kept my mind on gallivanting,’ she said. ‘Even on Oscar talking about writing, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. When it’s my deepest and most serious interest.’

  ‘Of course you couldn’t.’

  She scraped up the last of the muesli. Then she said soberly, ‘I suppose, you know, it’s the difference between your feelings for a living thing with its own personality, and something that’s an imanin – an inaminate –’

  ‘Inanimate.’

  ‘An inanimate object. You think you’re completely taken up with something, like it could be your life’s obsession, your number one. But when you put it up against something that you also care deeply about that is alive, like for instance this darling little creature –’ She swooped on Andie. ‘You just don’t hesitate. The inanimate thing is demoted to number two. No contest, right?’

  No contest. Then I said, ‘By the way, I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘No. For a change?’ she said.

  ‘Would you like to come on a picnic tomorrow? I thought we might take the two dogs on a little excursion. A bushwalk.’

  A picnic? A bushwalk? Awesome. High on the enthusiasm scale, I was pleased to see. ‘Where?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, I have somewhere in mind.’ Her eyes flickered. ‘I think Teddy is up to it. He can help keep Andie under control.’ She nodded, dark head bobbing like one of those fairground clowns.

  ‘Because, you see, I have something I’ve been wanting to show you,’ I said. I watched her face. ‘Something very important.’

  It was not an impulse suggestion. It is time for it. High time.

  We took Andie to the hovel with us after Kim went off to school. It seemed like a good idea, as Kim said, that she get used to homes in both houses. An anxious, interrogatory glance as she said this. Was I really, utterly sure I didn’t mind? I don’t mind at all, I said. Teddy could be in charge, it would do him good to have some responsibility. Kim added that she was deliberately not thinking about the possibility that anyone might call and claim Andie. If she stopped to think about that she would have a terminal collapse.

  It was a temperate day, I think we’ve had the last gasp of summer, and my secure little garden makes puppy-minding easy enough. Belated thanks to the previous owner in the sky, a finicky old biddy who put in wire fencing on three sides and a picket fence in front. The dump was more of a cottage then, with a well-maintained vegetable garden; that and everything else has decomposed under my watch. I didn’t touch the fence, although I always thought it was pointless out here, and Teddy was never a dog to wander off. Now it has a use. All puppies are not like Teddy.

  Besides, who could say when Frank would show up – if ever? He hadn’t even rung to check on her this morning, I noted.

  After she’d covered Andie with kisses and ridden off, helmeted, wobbling as she waved, I had a shower. My decrepit old bathroom had never looked so inviting.

  I’d been far too tired last night, as well as deterred. Their en suite, spotless when I’d last set eyes on it, when in another life I had watched it come into being, was in as dire a state as Kim suggested. Dirty ring around the bath. Frank’s dirt, this would be. Toothpaste trails in the basin. The lavatory hadn’t been flushed, and the seat was up. That follows – a gentleman always puts the seat down, we were taught.

  Is this how all young men behave when their wives are away, or is Frank an unusually slovenly example? Slovenly and decadent, both physically and mentally. This belief has been growing on me for some time, but it is now more than a belief. It is a conviction. I now know I am right.

  Last night I employed the dressing-table chair to climb up on the bed. I lay there, sleepless, as Teddy snored away on the floor. There were no blinds or curtains to keep out the moonlight. Or to keep anyone from peering into the room through the wide windows. But they would have to walk along the north side of the house, the side facing the dense, unpopulated bush. I’d deliberately given the two bedrooms a northerly aspect, for two reasons. They would be cool in summer and invisible from across the access road. Long years in the hovel made me do that. The years without end, amen.

  I recalled the day I went into the house just before Kim, Frank and Ellice moved in, wanting to experience it as mine for the last time. I’d had a feeling of bereavement then, almost as if the house was repudiating me. This time, although I was lying in darkness in Frank and Ellice’s bed, I felt none of that. The house seemed to welcome me back, even to embrace me. And yet I was restless.

  Things come to you, lying in bed at night. Especially lying wide awake in an unfamiliar bed. It’s a long time since I’ve spent a night away from the dump, more than a decade. I reviewed the situation, the sequence of events that had brought me to this singular point. I’d never occupied a bed that was anything like this size – I seemed to be swimming in it. There was a TV attached to the opposite wall. It had a built-in DVD player, but I had no desire to watch moving pictures.

  The downy mattress was unusually seductive, softer than mine, but not soft enough to subdue my unease. If anything, the comfort contributed to my pervasive misgivings about one member of the duo whose bed I was appropriating. Young and vigorous, both of them. Highly sexed, in Frank’s case, and doubtless in Ellice’s too.

  Had the baby been conceived here? No, from what Frank said it predated their arrival. I think, in a way I do not care to analyse, this came as a relief. My house was not a catalyst for that, in any way. Let not my heart be troubled more than it is troubled already, O long-forsaken lord.

  I got up at two am, carefully lowering my legs onto the seat of the chair. A sturdy one, fortunately. I had put in a door to connect the bedroom with what would have been my study. And why, I wonder, did I do that? Did I envisage inspiration striking like lightning in the dead of night? Eureka moments in which I got out of bed and rushed to the computer? Unlikely, surely. I was always a sound sleeper, like Teddy.

  Now, of course, my study is Frank’s music room. I ventured in. It was as dark as pitch with all the heavy blinds pulled, but I remembered the location of the light switches. Lingering over everything was a subtle odour, sour and stale. I had no trouble identifying the ingredients: tobacco, beer, dope and spirituous liquor. Unless steps are taken this will be a fixture. It will pollute the room with the contagion of Frank himself.

  I surveyed the clutter, the mind-blowing bank of electronic gadgetry. The toolbox was behind the computer screen, my padlock dutifully attached. I had no difficulty calling to mind his ridiculous code: two, four, six, eight. In all probability he had never used it because there was nothing inside. I guessed he’d taken all the discs with him.

  Not a bit of it. I located several in minutes. He had made not the slightest attempt to conceal them from anyone. They were scattered around the work area, and two more on the day bed, easily identified with scene names in thick black letters and the title of the movie in heavy capitals: VERMINVILLE. Copies, I assumed. It was tempting to try to put one on, but I feared the technology would defeat me. Or worse, the puppy might bark and alert Kim. I stacked them in the toolbox and punched in the code.

  I was on the point of leaving when something, some atavistic lesson dredged from past experiences, prompted me to lift the foam mattress on the day bed. Underneath, pushed to the back, were three magazines. I am not an expert but there was no need to open them. The covers were informative enough.

  I say I am no expert and it is years since I have confiscated such things, but some fairly sickening material passed through my hands. A high percentage of teenage boys went through a stage of lookin
g at hardcore porn. Yet another effing bloody boy thing, the teachers used to say, and not always confined to the most effing bloody boys either. I understand they watch pornography on the internet nowadays, more commonly, because it leaves no incriminating paper trail. Frank would do this too and in that room at night, I have not the shadow of a doubt. Or in the daytime, without locking his door.

  I appropriated the magazines. Then I reopened the toolbox and retrieved two discs, the ones that had been on the bed. I locked it up again, only this time, to cock a snoot at Frank, I changed the combination. The four numbers I chose are significant only to me: the year after I left teaching for good. The year after my disgrace. A thumb on the nose to you, Frank, should you ever try to undo the padlock.

  The two discs were marked, indelibly, MISTER WOLF, 1/2. Seeing the two words had triggered a memory, caused me to recall something Kim said yesterday about the film. It struck me as curious at the time, but I had not remarked on it. She said it was like an adult fairytale movie. Or, well – kind of like that.

  I rolled up the magazines and put them and the two discs into the canvas tote bag I’d brought over for the night. In the hovel this morning, having confirmed their contents, I tore the magazines to shreds and shoved them well down in the rubbish. They weren’t the worst I’d seen, but they were bad enough. A passing adolescent phase is forgivable at a pinch, but grown men who use porn are beneath contempt.

  The discs are safe for the moment. They remain zipped up inside the old tote bag under my bed. I cannot bring myself to examine them. Nor am I altogether sure I can operate the DVD machine. The one, ironically, that Frank gave me.

  Did I get any sleep at all? It didn’t feel like it, although my mind is uncommonly active. Seething, almost. Writing group tonight, and I have as yet done no preparation. The last meeting of the semester, term, whatever you want to call it. Once a week, one-third of a year of our lives gone. No one has been game to ask Oscar if he is prepared to continue.

  He has talked about going overseas, waxing lyrical over the beneficial vibes of a change of scene. But he has also talked about the vital necessity of routine in a writer’s life. Is he advocating schizophrenia? Would he favour a life at odds with itself? I must remember to ask him.

  Most successful writers lead boring lives, he says. That is, on the outside. In their heads it’s a different story. I would go along with this, although I could wish for less of the different story.

  For the moment, however, I shall take a power nap and then sit down at the computer.

  Mindful of Oscar’s remarks about a talisman, I hunt around the place for something that might inspire me. There are no photos in the dump, something that people have found odd. I did have one of myself with Matthew, taken by my star student after he begun tutoring her, but I burnt it.

  There are two of Kim’s drawings on the mantelpiece, both looking a bit dog-eared. I’ve been meaning to put them between perspex sheets. I take the second one, the thank-you drawing for her official birthday present. She and Teddy, round-eyed, reading the two books I gave her. I stand it between the salt and pepper shakers and place it in front of me on the little wicker table on the verandah.

  I’ve never done this kind of thing before. It feels like a new departure, and slightly peculiar. Like all new things, it will take a bit of getting used to.

  Polish the pieces you are best pleased with, Oscar had suggested. Don’t feel you have to produce anything new to knock my socks off. So I look over the account I wrote of the way Teddy and I discovered the precipice. My report: promising effort, room for improvement. I’d been pleased with it originally. Complacent, verging on smug. Now I see the flaws. Over-writing, clumsy transitions. There are only three ways of improving one’s work, Oscar says, and they are all foolproof: rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. He enjoys grouping things in threes, it’s one of his little quirks.

  It is always interesting to reread one’s past work. Sometimes it stands up, sometimes you can’t fathom what you saw in it. Just like people. You can start off liking and end up despising. No need to look very far to ascertain the truth of that, just look at the divorce statistics. Just look at Mr Matthew Rhode. And at Mr Frank Campbell.

  Matthew got on well with people to begin with. He was like Frank in that respect. The fact that he was also so unassuming was an effective smokescreen. It allowed him certain privileged practices. It allowed him to tutor individual girls in his private apartment.

  It allowed him? What am I saying? I allowed him. He was my favourite. I encouraged him. It was my decisions, unbeknown to me, that enabled Matthew to refine his ideas of tutoring.

  His coaching sessions transformed very slowly, over an extended period, we discovered afterwards. They evolved over several semesters and began with imperceptible changes. Nothing untoward, just a few minutes overtime at first. He and his pupil were so absorbed in discussions they lost track of the time. Gradually the sessions extended. Music was introduced, sophisticated Berlin cabaret songs from the 1930s, flattering to the impressionable mind. Later, sitting on the sofa, they began to watch films. Cosmopolitan foreign movies with subtitles. Wine was brought out, and later still, dope.

  Afterwards the police found a cache of cocaine in his flat. Wrapped in plastic in the lavatory cistern. The traditional hiding place of such things, they said.

  It was Matthew’s charismatic teaching style rather than his appearance that made him popular with the girls. My star pupil was thrilled to be the first of those selected for advanced tuition. In addition to being intellectually brilliant, she was blessed with good looks. She was an exceptionally attractive girl. Rather beautiful.

  Why did I not mention that before? Why was I not alert to it?

  I took Kim’s drawing of herself and Teddy and put it over the computer screen. The words I had just made myself write were successfully concealed. I took a moment to collect myself. Then I replaced the drawing on the table and began a new page.

  The mild weather was conducive to writing. So was the company: I worked on the verandah all afternoon with Teddy and Andie. Little Andie is already toning down her exuberance with Teddy, of her own volition, I told Kim. She realises she can provoke him so far and no further. And she knows her name already. I think she is going to turn out to be unusually intelligent and responsive. On hearing this, Kim glowed like the parent of a clever pupil.

  Frank hadn’t returned, and did not show up until just before I was due to leave for the class. Someone was pleased to see his car. Kim had been bursting to show off the new arrival. I watched her race out to greet him with Andie pulling on the lead. I was using the binoculars. I’d located them after a short search; they were under some books in the kitchen.

  Frank was alone. I am unsure whether this is cause for relief or the opposite. My mind is ringed by a minefield and I hardly know where to tread. There was no sign of Marek or Marlon. I watched Frank hoist the puppy in the air.

  I made a Spanish omelette for myself. Cancelled the early booking at the Thai restaurant. Much better for the two of us to go out in a week or two, when Kim has settled down with Andie, always assuming she can keep her. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about. We should pay a visit to the vet next week. There will be puppy business – registration, vaccinations and desexing – to schedule. Although she may not want Andie to be desexed. She may decide she would like her to have one litter. I wonder – Teddy was never desexed because there were never any dogs in the vicinity.

  When she is older, and being of mixed race, Kim is going to look exotic. In certain lights I can see this already. As I drove off the girl and her dog were frolicking together on the deck, burnished by the fading, early evening sun. It was a timeless picture of a childhood idyll. I am holding fast to this in my mind, as if to safeguard it against the encroaching dark.

  I have heard it said that once one has a child, one is never truly at ease unless that child is safely asleep upstairs. I assumed this was hyperbole. I realise now that I hadn’t an inkling of
what was meant.

  The class had an end-of-term feel. Normally I might have quite enjoyed it. At the end of the session Greg slipped outside and Gilda-lily, flushed with self-importance, made an announcement. We were all to stay put, because we were going to party, double exclamation marks!! I quelled the impulse to leave. It might take my mind off things, briefly.

  Greg returned carrying an esky. The group mood, already frothy, nearly frothed over at the sight of mixed nuts, stuffed olives and two bottles of prosecco. Gilda and Greg had apparently hatched this little plan in tandem, and were mightily pleased with themselves.

  The wind was taken out their sails somewhat when Oscar unveiled a bottle of Veuve Clicquot from a cooler bag, along with proper champagne flutes. A birthday bottle from his mama, he said. He hadn’t felt like drinking it all up in solitary confinement. Which must mean that his little amour has fallen through. I think we were all disappointed for him, although it had been a not inconsiderable stretch to see Oscar in a relationship of any kind.

  He is going on a writing retreat to Laos courtesy of our kind financial contributions, he announced, leaving next week for two months. Solo, not with other writers; he’ll be staying in a crumbling old guesthouse in Vientiane on the banks of the Mekong – nearly falling into it, from the photograph. Very romantic, less than twenty-five dollars a night for a room with balcony and river view.

  We were all envious. Sounds like my hovel minus romance and river, I said. What was he going to write? A new book, he said, and it was going to be all about us. Only very thinly disguised. Hair colour and a few sex changes to protect the guilty.

  ‘But you don’t know anything about us,’ Gilda-lily protested.

  Oh yes he did – we would be surprised what pickings he had gleaned. This, he disclosed, had been his ulterior motive all along. Not only an ingenious method of coping with writer’s block but a cash cow and a rich supply of source material to boot. By then we were well into the second bottle and there was a minor eruption. No one knew quite what to make of it. It was immoral, Greg chose to declare, and illegal.