by A L McCann
“Are you all right?”Anna asked, half asleep.
“Yes. A bit seedy. Tired.”
“Come to sleep then.”
She was so trusting, so unsuspecting. How was it possible? He felt sick at the thought of his own potential for depravity. But as he lay down beside his wife and closed his eyes, the thought of the girl – malevolent and vulgar – smouldered away within him until the embers caught again and the darkness of sleep was consumed with flames.
CHAPTER TWO
Anna tried to look at ease as she sat on the couch and read a novel about the perils of love. She could hear Albert stomping impatiently around the bedroom. He’s too big for the house, she thought. When he appeared at the threshold of the cramped living room, her eyes wandered away from the page in search of his, but he walked past her as if she were not there. She returned to the novel, so anxious she couldn’t concentrate on the words. They skipped and blurred in front of her as she listened to her husband groaning into the kitchen.
“Are you all right, Albert?” she asked, dropping the book on her lap.
“Hmm, hmm,” he said groggily, as if he’d just woken up. “Headache. Just a headache.”
She closed her eyes, resting her hand on her stomach, pressing it for signs of life. Only the thought of the child let her pull herself above the loneliness of her marriage, the fear lurking at the bottom of her.
At times she suspected he felt trapped, as if he had been tricked into marrying her, or that living in her house offended his pride. When her aunt died Anna inherited her small cottage in South Melbourne, and Albert had moved in shortly after the marriage. It was a dank little place in Brooke Street, a narrow, curving lane crowded to the point of congestion with similar single-storey cottages. There was no sewerage in the area and the yard at the back of the house was often plagued by puddles rising up from the swamp beneath it. Compared with the larger brick and stone houses with nice wide verandahs only blocks away from them, it felt dilapidated.
Albert muttered something to himself. When she stood up and went to check on him, he was sitting opposite the sink. She put her hand on his shoulder.
“What’s the matter?” she said gently. She knew it was futile asking.
He shook his head and shrugged off the question. “Nothing, love,” he said. “Just work. I’m feeling worn out.” He couldn’t look her in the eye as he said it.
She thought it prudent not to push him, sat back down on the couch, and gave in to the atmosphere of unease he generated, deciding to make the best of it, for the sake of the child.
Sometimes, when a mood of tenderness overcame him, her gratitude seemed to embarrass him back into his usual remoteness. Only when they had company did his spirits seem to lighten. When Sid and Sadie Packard came over, or his brother Robert, he was comfortably distracted and regained some of the simple amicability he’d had when they’d first met.
Usually Sid and Albert discussed politics, but in a language that was alienating to Anna. Early in the new year Sid had started talking about joining an anti-Chinese league. Cheap Chinese and Kanaka labour was putting real Australians out of work, he said. Anna thought that Albert merely kept up the tone of these conversations to save face, and in fact she pitied him when she suspected that he was being pulled along by Sid’s sense of urgency.
She thought it was strange that people could talk about real Australians in a country that was so young, in a country that, in fact, was not even a country at all, at least not in the old European sense of a Volk with a shared history etched so indelibly into the landscape. It seemed so wishful to her, innocent even. At the same time she was bewildered by her own lack of connectedness to the place. Sometimes she felt that she was floating just above the ground, light enough to be blown away altogether, while others around her were walking with their feet firmly planted on the solid terrain.
“Don’t you think it’s a little odd to talk about an Australian people,” she ventured timidly, “at least if you mean a people other than the original blacks?”
Albert poured another beer, deferring to Sid.
“That might have been true once upon a time,” Sid explained patiently, “but nowadays a real change is occurring. White Australians are standing up for their rights more than ever. For the first time we’re coming together as a people.”
“It’s different, of course, for you Barossa Germans,” Albert added. “I mean not really speaking English and all.”
“I suppose,” said Anna.
“But on the other hand,” Sid went on, “the English and the German races are really the same. And here we have a chance to protect ourselves from the low influences of Latin and Slavic peoples that have mixed everything up in Europe.”
Unconvinced, Anna decided then and there that she’d have to teach her child to speak her parents’ language, as a bulwark against people like Sid. She had noticed him glancing quizzically at the tattered volumes of Goethe and Heine on the shelves and the wistful Rhineland vistas on the wall. The banality of the coming Australian nation, concentrated in his suspicious eyes, filled her with dread.
“How’s the tummy coming along?” Sadie asked, patting Anna’s knee.
“You can’t really see much,” said Anna.
“Well, they say the muscles are firmer the first time.”
As Sadie examined Anna’s unobtrusive belly, there was a knock at the door. Jack McDermott, a next-door neighbour who worked on the wharves, peered in through the open front window.
“I say, Albert, you wouldn’t have a bottle of disinfectant, would you? Hamish has damn near cut his bloody hand off.”
“Oh, poor kid,” sighed Anna, moving into the bathroom while Albert let Jack inside.
“What did the young fella do?” he asked, welcoming the new visitor with a friendly pat on the shoulder.
“I don’t know. Bloody idiot was mucking around with a penknife and sliced his finger.”
Anna and Sadie accompanied Jack next door, determined to be of assistance. In the kitchen of the neighbouring cottage Sarah McDermott was clutching the bleeding hand of her three-year-old son, who whined with a look of petrified shock on his pale face.
“We’ve got some alcohol and a bandage, Sarah,” Anna said. As she spoke the child stopped crying and looked at her blankly, apparently distracted by a new face in the house, though he had seen his neighbours several times before.
“Ach, Liebchen,” said Anna under her breath as she doused the boy’s hand in spirits. Hamish winced, but didn’t cry as she wrapped the bandage tightly around his hand.
“Probably needs a stitch or two,” Sadie said.
Jack had already vanished in search of a doctor a few blocks away in St Vincent Place. Hamish clutched at Anna, who tried in vain to pass him back to his mother once the bandage was secure.
“Little bugger won’t let go,” Sarah said nervously. “Thanks Anna.”
“Lieb,” the child lisped as Anna finally managed to unload him.
When Dr Winton arrived he lifted Hamish onto his knee and slowly undid the bandage that Anna had worked so hard to put on. The cut on the child’s hand opened again and in a second or two filled with blood, which the doctor tried to conceal with the bandage.
“This is going to need a few stitches,” he said calmly, rummaging about in his leather bag. “Mustn’t let the little man here get his hand infected, must we?”
Jack held Hamish on the kitchen table while the doctor swabbed the wound and then, with no more finesse than a short–sighted seamstress, proceeded to sew the folds of skin together.
When the operation was complete, and mother and child had both been lulled into a tentative calm, the doctor strolled out onto the pavement in front of the McDermotts’ house. Albert and Sid were leaning on the fence, smoking cigarettes.
“Hello there, Albert,” Dr Winton said in a subdued, but good-natured tone of voice.
“Hello there yourself, Doc.”
Anna and Sadie had walked out onto the pavement behind
him.
“Feeling all right then are we, Albert?”
“Fine, thanks.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
He bowed respectfully at Anna and then walked off down the street with a curious, self-satisfied swagger that put one in mind of an old-style dandy or flâneur of the sort that might have flourished when Melbourne was still a gold rush city able to afford such social extravagances.
“What an odd bloke,” said Sid.
Anna had noticed it too. The doctor seemed to be amused at Albert’s expense, as if there were a secret understanding between the two that played to his advantage. She wondered if Albert had been ill recently. Anyway, it was inconsiderate of Dr Winton to insinuate like that, and she resented him for it.
“You know,” said Sid after a minute, “that doctor bloke reminds me of someone, but I don’t know who.”
“Let’s go in,” said Albert, rubbing out the butt of his cigarette with his shoe.
It was twilight and the hot afternoon had faded into a warm, but dull grey. The street was silent and motionless. It put Albert on edge and he felt a tension arise in him that, he knew, was related to this strange sense of inertia as evening approached. He would have liked to have gone out somewhere, the Limerick Arms for a drink or a stroll along the bay, but knew he’d feel the inertia of nightfall all the more intensely as he tried to wrestle free of its clutches. The world took on a flatness that offered nothing but the same old amusements, frayed and threadbare, over and over again. It left him feeling empty and finally a bit hateful.
“We got to get going, Bert,” Sid said. “Going to walk back through the gardens. Look after yourself, Anna.”
Sadie and Anna hugged, then Sid took his wife’s hand. Anna and Albert stood on the street watching them walk away.
“They seem very happy,” said Albert listlessly.
“Yes they do,” said Anna.
Albert felt bored and tired. It wasn’t anything to do with Anna specifically. Not really. But she was there, in the midst of the drabness, and that made him indignant.
“Are you all right, Albert?” she asked, noticing his remoteness.
“Yes, I’m fine.” He took her hand and they went inside.
Something in him throbbed. He thought about the prostitute. Was he in love with her? The wretched, cobbled alleys snaking off Little Lonsdale Street had the sickening smell of brimstone seeping up through the pores of the city. The stench was palpable. Only in those filthy, labyrinthine streets, he imagined, would he find love. He would have given anything to possess that girl, anything to know her shameless, impersonal surrender, the dreamlike compulsion of commerce and carnality, the pleasure of places so remote they will never see the light of day.
He watched Anna move about in the kitchen, putting on the kettle, washing up a few dirty dishes. The sounds of such ordinariness grated on him. Weary, he threw himself down onto the couch and closed his eyes. He admired the beauty of his wife as one would admire a handsomely painted portrait. But on the other side, in the dark, frantic city of his dreams, he’d forget all about her. Maybe this is the beginning of madness, he thought. He imagined himself as a raving idiot at Yarra Bend.
Anna had moved to the edge of the living room, and watched as his mouth curled into a smile.
“What are you so amused at?” she asked, smiling herself.
“Nothing, darling,” he answered calmly.
“Would you like a cuppa before dinner?”
“Nup, but I’ll help myself to another beer.”
He sat up on the couch, opened his eyes and looked at her, feeling momentarily refreshed. Yes, she was beautiful. His German wife was a domestic angel of the sort that was celebrated to the point of ridicule in the papers and popular journals. A slight neurotic tremor rippled out along his arms all the way to his fingertips.
“Isn’t that Dr Winton a strange man?” Anna said as Albert stood up and walked into the kitchen.
“Haven’t thought that much about him, to tell you the truth.”
“But the way he talked to you just now was so mysterious.”
“That’s just his manner I suppose. You know he’s a literary type as well. Writes little pamphlets about social issues. I reckon he likes making a bit of a show of himself.”
“Have you read anything he’s written?”
“Wouldn’t waste my time.”
Albert poured himself a beer and took the Herald off the sideboard, returning to the couch.
“This Crimea Street business is a nasty piece of work,” he said, scanning the paper. “They say the woman was probably locked in the wine cellar for days before the bloke strangled her and, well, it says here he must have ‘tampered’ with the body. It’s like something from a horror story.”
Anna looked at him as he read the paper. How do they know all that, she wondered. A terrifying image of bleeding, white hands clawing at the earth and stone of the cellar wall sent a chill through her. She closed her eyes. The thought of the violated corpse, still dirty with clay soil, hovered at the limits of her imagination.
“I hope you don’t do anything like that to me,” she said after a moment’s silence.
“Don’t be absurd,” he said. He knew she was being deliberately perverse, that it was her uneasy way of expressing affection.
As she sat down beside him he didn’t notice her anxiousness. Without moving his eyes from the paper he took her hand and kissed it.
A few weeks later on a warm March day, Anna was walking through Emerald Hill past the South Melbourne Town Hall, on her shopping rounds, when she bumped into Dr Winton on the corner of Bank and Clarendon Streets. He had appeared out of nowhere, almost as if he had been waiting for her, his auburn moustache neatly trimmed, his hazelnut eyes sparkling with a mischievous delight. He was, she guessed, in his forties and handsome, in a way. She acknowledged it despite herself. Behind him a cable tram rattled towards the river, disturbing the eerie silence of the afternoon, while an old beggar woman with a wicker basket shuffled across the road in its wake.
“Hello Anna,” said the doctor, lifting himself out of his repose and, with a twirl of a gold-handled cane, positioning himself at her side.
It struck her as forward of him to use her first name like that.
“Hello Doctor,” she said, repressing the faint unease she felt at his open, unflinching, but still very gentlemanly manner. She noticed a large ring on his hand, a golden claw clutching a round, turquoise stone.
“My husband tells me that you’re a writer,” she said, afraid of the silence that might engulf them if she let the conversation flag, for Dr Winton was now walking beside her with a confidence that suggested a more familiar acquaintance.
“Well, yes. I do write a little. I translate short pieces as well, from the French and the German.”
“You speak German?” she asked, barely able to conceal her interest in the idea of a fellow speaker.
“Read it would be more accurate.”
“I’d like to see something you have written.”
“I’m not so sure you would. I don’t mean to be condescending.”
“You don’t believe me?” she said with a laugh.
“I think beautiful young women like you, Anna, would have better things to do.”
“You’re mad,” she said, blushing.
“And your husband is doing well?” he asked.
“Quite well.”
“That’s very good.”
“But I wasn’t aware he had been ill.”
“No?” the doctor asked. “Well, who’s to say that he has?”
“You. You said as much just then.”
“I’ll tell you what, Anna. If you would really like to read something I’ve written, there’s a bookshop in Flinders Lane, quite close to the station. You can normally find the odd book and a pamphlet or two there. In fact, I’d be flattered to think that you’d seek me out like that.” He stopped himself. For a moment he seemed ill at ease. “But they’re dry works,” he sai
d with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Written for medical men. Dull stuff for a lay reader.”
“I’m stopping here,” she said, pausing in front of a haberdashery. She was embarrassed at the suggestion of the illicit in the idea of seeking him out, but her curiosity was also aroused by his sudden reserve.
“Well, good day then,” he said, tilting his hat politely and resuming his course with a strut and a twirl of his cane.
What an unusual man, Anna thought to herself. All intrigue and innuendo. He certainly does fancy himself. She watched him move away from her down Clarendon Street until he vanished into the sparsely populated shade of the wide verandahs covering the pavement.
But when she was alone again she suddenly felt aroused. He had called her beautiful, and his completely unabashed manner left her with a sense of well-being. She lingered in front of the haberdashery for another minute or so, looked up ahead to make sure the doctor was not coming back, and then with a truant’s guilt stepped towards the side of the road to hail the next tram into the city.
Half an hour later she alighted at the corner of Queen and Collins Streets and, with a sense of excitement at being driven by a secret purpose, made her way towards Flinders Lane and the bookshop the doctor had mentioned.
She hadn’t expected to find such an odd collection of industries thriving in the narrow alleys of the city. Amongst the warehouses and businesses dedicated to the city’s rag trade, a shop selling glassware cradled undulating pools of multi–coloured light in its dark interior. An optician’s store was marked by two enormous, sombre eyes looking down at her. There was a place selling casting irons and another selling fishing tackle. There was a fancy dress shop with a grotesque collection of masks leering through the glass and a bric-a-brac merchant whose window was crammed with obscure, dust–covered artefacts. As she strolled down the lane she dwelt upon the magical possibilities of what seemed to her a forgotten part of the city into which the bustle of the larger streets had not yet reached.
