Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 10, Issue 1

by Marion Halligan

  The vase was nice, in its way, she thought.

  ‘Rare, Maureen,’ Roger had said, in the voice he used with his customers. ‘It’s Spode. Pearlware. 1820. There’s not many like it around. Certainly not in this condition.’

  She repositioned the slumping flowers. Roger’s vase was large and almost shockingly bright. It had a lapis blue background with broad green leaves entwined all over it. Here and there, an oriental eye of neon pink flower blinked through the foliage. Every leaf on the vase was yellowed at the tip, as if the pattern itself was at some kind of turning point, the moment when ripeness begins to spoil, when beauty becomes a far off thing. Those yellow edges bothered her.

  It was a Christmas present. The first real gift from him, surprisingly generous.

  ‘Now, I want you to unwrap this very carefully,’ he’d told her, setting it on the hall table. Before she could pull back the wrapping—she could see the colours flaring through the tissue—he blurted out, ‘It’s a vase,’ like a child.

  ‘It’s a lovely shape,’ she said to him, noticing the yellow-edged leaves, even then.

  Roger told her about its provenance but most of the detail washed over her. She knew nothing about porcelain. She did remember that he’d told her the vase was clobbered. She’d nodded at this as if she knew exactly what he was talking about. After he left, she checked the vase all over, believing it must be slightly damaged in some way. Later, when she admitted this to him, he laughed so hard he knocked over his wineglass.

  ‘Oh, Maureen,’ he said, patting her hand, oblivious to the pooling wine, ‘you do cheer me up.’

  While a waiter mopped at the spill, they ate small pyramids of cheese and shrivelled muscatels, and Roger explained the process of clobbering. As far as Maureen could work out it meant one layer of decoration put over another. Over-decorated.

  And that’s what it is, she thought, as she leaned against her kitchen bench. Those snarling bright colours, those throttling leaves. She preferred muted tones. Gerald had never been one for anything too showy. ‘It’s just not our thing, is it, love?’ he used to say.

  She looked around at her cream walls, the watery green plates stacked on an open shelf beside her. She wondered how someone, seeing this kitchen, this house, might describe its owner.

  Her pale roses were refusing to rally under her hand. They drooped against the wide lip of the vase, looking insipid. She pulled them out in one swift movement and drove them all, headfirst, into the bin.

  Perhaps, she thought, Roger never intended me to actually use the vase. This made the blood rush to her face. It still felt new, this life after Gerald, this confusing business of being alone. The glare of it, after so long in the pleasant shadow of married life. And now, this new world of dinners out, and makers’ marks, and Roger Kempton with his knife-creased trousers, and his good cologne that smelled, not unpleasantly, of the old leather hymn books from school.

  He’s quite handsome, in a broad-faced way, she thought, wiping a tiny mound of spilled sugar into her cupped hand. She hadn’t really noticed Roger’s looks until the time he’d been delayed by a big sale. He’d come striding through the restaurant towards her wearing a burgundy-coloured cashmere as thin as muslin. He always wore those pullovers. When the weather was particularly cold, he’d wear two, the polo neck beneath reaching almost to his jaw line. Maureen wondered whether it felt a little strangling, all that close-knit wool.

  Roger had good hair. Dark silver. He kept it cut very short as if he’d served in the military and couldn’t quite shake off its strictures. Perhaps he had, she thought, amazed to realise that, months on, she knew very little about his background. Why hadn’t she asked?

  There’d been a woman, a while back. He’d mentioned her in passing. ‘A good few years,’ he told her, when she asked how long they were together. ‘But that was a thousand years ago,’ he said, before changing the subject.

  The scent of the pudding was rising around her. Maureen caught sight of her profile reflected in the kitchen window. She drew back her wide shoulders into a better posture, put her hands on her hips, watched her breasts rise in the glass. She felt an unexpected longing for the shapely waist that had once been hers. It was never tiny. She’d always had an athletic build although she’d never had any sporting ability.

  She could see the outline of her hair, brushed into a soft helmet. The dark hanks that had once swooped heavily across her back were long gone. Stop being ridiculous, Maureen thought. A thousand years ago, indeed.

  Outside, the sky had turned a pale, flawless blue. Unaccountably, she shivered in the yeasty warmth.

  He brought flowers. Deep purple peonies, their petals drawing back from the centre leaving a creamy cavity open like a surprised mouth.

  ‘They reckon this is the last of it,’ he said, brushing epaulettes of snow from the shoulders of his coat.

  It had snowed for most of the previous night, and billows had pushed against the kitchen window all day as Maureen cooked. As she closed the hall door, she noticed high mounds forming either side of the path.

  ‘They’re beautiful,’ she said, taking the flowers, feeling a sudden gush of shyness. ‘I’ll put them in water straight away, before we sit down.’

  ‘Not in the Spode, I hope,’ he called after her, and his too-loud voice seemed to bounce down the hall behind her.

  Maureen felt a singe of heat in her cheeks. She did not turn. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course not.’

  She heard Roger stamp the snow from his boots onto the flagstones. He followed her in.

  Maureen had always thought it was a beautiful room, but now she wasn’t so sure. The expensive furniture she’d bought from Hempsey’s had begun, tonight, to look a little plain. The small table Gerald had made seemed, now, rather gauche and unfinished. She was thankful for the few nice pieces of inherited crystal on the bureau. She’d seen Roger’s eye settle on them with an approving, if brief, glance.

  His vase looked garish beside the crystal, but it was jolly and bright, and he was gratified to see it there, she felt sure. He would have found the rest of the room a little colourless, she imagined, as she watched him raise the brandy glass to his lips and stretch his legs towards the fire.

  She hadn’t been to his house yet. She looked forward to seeing what it was like, what pieces he prized enough to bring into his own home. She’d wondered about it. But so far she’d always met him at his shop. She didn’t even know where he lived, beyond the fact that it was a few miles out on the other side of town.

  She liked calling in to the shop. She’d sit on the floral slipper chair in the corner while Roger served a customer. She’d try to make herself inconspicuous by leafing through books on Edwardian glassware, or that great thick folder with pictures of spoons, nothing else. She’d imagine the families who once sipped and ate from these things. She’d think of the homecomings, the grand dinners, the empty places set by war or childbirth. All the clink and clatter across the decades. It made her feel, as antiques always did, a little sad.

  She liked hearing Roger discuss a piece of china or silver that had taken someone’s eye. Antiques did not make him sad; their beauty energised him. His big voice always seemed out of keeping with whatever delicate piece he might be handling: the miniature cruet set; that great arching spoon in heavy silver; the tiny pale teapot in the window. ‘It’s French, Maureen. Limoges. Lovely piece.’ She liked his commanding presence. Others did, too. The business did well.

  But tonight, Roger spoke rather quietly as they sat in her matching, string-coloured armchairs. The dinner had been a triumph. Stilton soup, roast beef in a light jus—he’d had two servings—and the fig pudding, perfect and scented, imported raspberries skirting the edges, a buttery clot of cream sliding in the warmth. A rich, wintry meal. Delicious, if she did say so herself.

  Perhaps this is the beginning of something, Maureen thought, as she watched him relax. Not a friendship. Since meeting at the shop, she felt they’d been friends, although the thought of what ha
ppened that first day still made her cringe. She’d been cleaning out cupboards all morning. In the hallway, she’d stacked a little cairn of Gerald’s old things, which she planned to throw away. She felt a jolt of guilt every time she looked at them, but relief, too. Stopping for lunch, she’d taken down the stack of painted dessert plates that were kept in a glass-fronted cabinet. On a whim, she’d wrapped them in a cloth, put them in a flat-bottomed basket, carried them into the village and up the narrow footpath to Kempton Antiques.

  She didn’t know why she did this. To get them valued? To sell them? The plates had been in Gerald’s family for years. They’d only been used for special occasions, then carefully hand-washed and stacked away. Before Gerald had inherited them, they’d taken pride of place in what had been known to generations of his family as ‘the good cupboard.’

  The basket was cumbersome. She’d spotted Roger through the shop window, sitting at a broad, carved desk. He looked up at her approach. ‘Come in, please,’ he called to her. He had not risen from his chair, but his face looked friendly.

  Maureen set the basket onto the desk without a word, unwrapped the plates with nervous hands. ‘We’ve had these a long time,’ she said, offering no further detail, finding herself overcome with emotion.

  Roger gave her a small, encouraging nod. He’d looked at her for a few seconds before taking up one of the plates, turning it over, turning it back, putting it down. His eyes narrowed into a hard, appraising stare. Then he told her in a kind but firm voice that they were very pretty plates but of no commercial value whatsoever.

  She’d stood for a moment, looking down at the stack of floral china, feeling a slight sway, wondering, stupidly, if the floor was giving way. Then she burst into great hiccupping sobs.

  Roger could not have been more considerate. He guided her to the slipper chair, where she cried into a series of tissues from a small box that’d he’d placed at her elbow. She tried to compose herself, but when she thought of the long years of reverence for those worthless plates, her life with Gerald also seemed to become something trivial, even bogus.

  Roger made her tea in the small kitchen at the back of the shop and brought it to her on a dainty, oval tray. ‘Take your time,’ he said. ‘It’s quiet today. Too sunny for antique lovers.’

  Maureen had seen people stretched in the sun beside the river as she’d walked into town. Lying prone on the bare grass, they looked like they’d been washed up in a flood.

  After her tears subsided, they talked a little. As if to soothe her, he showed her things in the shop he thought particularly beautiful.

  ‘This is Belleek,’ he said, holding up a large, basket-weave bowl, each creamy strand spaghetti-thin and perfect. ‘Parian China. From Northern Ireland. Black stamp,’ he’d added, almost in a whisper. ‘There’s nothing,’ he said, shaking his head like a doting father, ‘that could possibly upset the perfection of this piece.’

  Maureen had got used to this sort of fervour in the time they’d been friends.

  And now, as she watched Roger lounge before the fire, things seemed different. She was comfortable, that was it. She hadn’t felt like this for a long time. Since Gerald. Tonight, she didn’t feel that aching sense of being uncoupled, the scratch and prickle of eyes judging and pitying. Here in this room, with Roger, she didn’t mind being a widow.

  She worried the room was too hot.

  ‘I grew up in South Africa,’ he said. ‘The hotter the better.’

  She thought he was English. She found herself listening for the small rasp of accent. It was there. So obvious, now that she knew.

  She asked about his family. His father had been an engineer, he told her. A looming, sunburned presence who disappeared into the bush for long periods, building roads and bridges. He had not approved of antiques.

  ‘Dead people’s stuff,’ Roger said. ‘That’s what he used to call it. He’s dead now, himself, of course. Ten years, I think.’

  Something of a relief, Maureen thought. ‘And your mother?’ she asked.

  ‘She’s been gone a long time,’ he said. ‘Killed in a car accident when I was still at boarding school.’ Maureen was about to speak when he added, ‘She had an eye for beautiful things. Knew quite a lot about antiques, actually. And before you ask,’ he said, irritation rising in his voice, ‘I also have a sister, in Germany, but she’s rather strange. We don’t have much contact.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ he said, kindly enough. ‘Anyway, that really was a magnificent meal.’

  Although there was no question of it as far as Maureen was concerned, she was shocked to find she kept thinking about sex. Well, not sex, precisely. Nothing that involved her baring herself to him, perish the thought. Just odd flashes of something wonderful: bodies, warmth, happiness. She realised that it was a long time since anyone had touched her. Even a hug. The thought of this, and the tumbling images in her brain, flustered her. Her hands rose and fell in nervous movements. Four years, she thought. Gerald’s been dead for over four years.

  There were no children. A quiet kind of loss, like a sadness gone missing. One they never discussed in any deep sense. ‘It’s an awful shame, Maureen,’ Gerald had said, when they knew for sure. ‘Such a pity.’ He had hugged her that day, and she’d felt his body galvanize in a great, dry sob before he strode out to the car without another word, leaving her staring into the swirling grain of the kitchen table. They rarely mentioned it again, but the absence of a child sometimes sat between them, solid and immovable.

  ‘It’s pretty amazing, Maureen. I’ve had a few brilliant finds there. There was that time I…’

  Roger was enthusing about a flea market in Lyon. Or was it Dijon? Maureen wanted him to stop. She wanted to talk about herself now. Tell him everything. Tell him about that moment when she’d traced the lines in the oak with her finger, and listened to the thrum of the tap dripping into the kitchen sink, wondering what rhythm could exist in a life, in a marriage, without a child at its heart.

  ‘Coffee?’ she said.

  In the kitchen, she ran her hands under the cold tap, letting the water flow across her wrists, numbing them almost instantly. She was glad she’d kept the fire up so high: it was cold enough to freeze the pipes. On impulse, she rolled up the window blind. Far from stopping in the early evening, it had been snowing heavily for hours. The dark hedgerow on one side of the garden stretched back into the night, iced with a thick slab of snow.

  She took the tray into the sitting room. Roger was inspecting his vase, or the crystal, perhaps.

  ‘You need to see something,’ she said.

  She pulled back the heavy drapes. The snow had brightened the night. They could see cut-out shapes of trees and fences.

  ‘Look at that!’ he said, his hands on his hips. ‘Gorgeous. Bet the roads are going to be bad.’

  ‘They’ll be impassable,’ she said. ‘That’s the heaviest snow I’ve seen for years.’ She paused, feeling a little embarrassed. ‘But you’re welcome to stay. I have a spare room.’

  Roger plucked at his cashmered neck. ‘Oh, thank you,’ he said. ‘Looks like we’re going to be having breakfast together as well.’

  They both smiled. It was going to be fine.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘How about another brandy with that coffee?’

  It was over. Maureen pushed her heels against the base of the armchair as if she meant to stand up at any moment. She pressed the remote; the television blinked on. Four dead in the Pennines. A whole family gone, their little dog miraculously alive. What came over some people, she thought, setting out like that? Dying, unnoticed, in their snow-white car. The news returned to London. Even there, amidst the concrete and asphalt, bodies were being found. It was a tragic turn of events, as Gerald would have said.

  The snow had stopped at last, and the light was strong for late morning. She could see the sunlight pushing through the crack where the curtains stood slightly apart. Soon, there would be no snow, only slush and icy floodwate
rs, and the spaces in the world where those frozen souls had been.

  ‘You must come and have dinner at my place,’ Roger had said.

  This was late on the second night, the weather still too severe to leave. It had been a wonderful, unexpected time, cocooned in the house together. Leftovers for lunch, chess, some music. All very light-hearted. Innocent, really, she thought.

  The snow amazed them.

  ‘We’re no better than children,’ she said, as they stood together at the kitchen window, pointing out a heavy drift caught in a roofline, icicles hanging from the eaves. Once, she’d spotted her next-door neighbour looking down on them. Maureen waved up to her, feeling oddly proud. Her neighbour lifted her hand in half-salute, stepped back into the shadows.

  Maureen cooked another dinner, smiling to herself at the strange twist of it all. The food was nothing grand this time, but still good. They ate in the kitchen—Roger had insisted—chatting across the oak table. They went back to the comfortable chairs for more brandy.

  This second night seemed more open to possibilities. The fleeting images of bodies locked together—strangers’ bodies—had gone from Maureen’s thoughts, much to her relief. It was not impossible that they might share a bed tonight. The idea gave her a surge of happiness as well as terror.

  She’d not spoken much about herself in the end. The need to confide in Roger had surprised her. She realised how lonely she’d been. She did say a little about herself: how her family came from Scotland, her sister in the Philharmonic, even Gerald.

  ‘How long were you married?’ Roger asked. Just the one question. And his wordless nod at her answer seemed to shrink the forty-two years to something less substantial.

  ‘A long time to be with the same person, isn’t it?’ she said, hating the defensive tremble in her voice.

  ‘Unimaginable,’ he’d replied. And she’d heard the accent then, clearer than ever before.