Candelo

by Georgia Blain

  I would look at her as though I didn’t understand. Although I did. Perfectly. And I would tell her I was just going out. With friends. Girlfriends.

  I just wanted you to know, she would say, that I’m here.

  Sure, and I would shrug my shoulders, without meeting her gaze.

  The talk would be over and she would tell me to have a good time, never knowing that she was too late. Two years too late.

  But she was not the only one to whom I lied.

  I didn’t tell my friends either.

  I pretended to be like them, face to face with a hurdle that was soon to be surmounted. And, at sixteen and a half, when I had sex with Matthew Cale in his parents’ bedroom, I marked that occasion as the first. He was as inexperienced as I pretended to be, and I doubt whether he ever knew the truth of the matter. I am sure that none of my friends did. They had no reason to suspect.

  But that was not how I lost my virginity. When it happened, I was not drunk. I was not at a party, slipping away into another room, pretending to be unaware of the knowing looks that shot backwards and forwards as we closed the door behind us. Confronted with his mother’s pear-shaped bed, we fell down on the satin bedspread, fumbling with each other’s clothes.

  Do you want to? Matthew had whispered into my ear.

  Sure, I had said, seeing no reason not to, particularly in light of the fact that it was, after all, nothing new.

  And, not wanting to remember Mitchell, I came to think of that drunken fumble as the first. Until I found that I had forgotten what had happened two years earlier. And when I did remember, when it darted, bent low and quick, into my consciousness, I would flinch, pushing it aside as rapidly as it had appeared.

  I did not tell Simon what happened by the creek.

  Just as I remember walking back from the rocks with Anton and seeing them, Marco and Louise, watching us as we climbed up the cliff path, both of us acting as though nothing had happened, I remember seeing Simon on the verandah, watching us as Mitchell and I came towards him.

  We had crossed the paddock without a word, shading our eyes from the glare of the sun, brushing at the flies with the backs of our hands, until we reached the barbed-wire fence.

  I could feel the sweat trickling down my back, and my T-shirt clinging to my skin, clammy and warm, as Mitchell lifted the fence to let me through.

  I did not look at him and he did not look at me.

  You okay? he asked and it was all he said. The only words spoken in what seemed to be a journey of interminable silence punctuated only by the sound of the gravel beneath our feet, loud in the stillness that surrounded us.

  He was on one side of the road and I was on the other. I ached between my thighs, but I did not want to look down, I did not want to see my legs moving as they had always moved, so I looked out, across the sweep of the paddocks gently rising, smooth and dusky, towards the hills.

  He lit another cigarette and I heard the strike of the flint. As he tossed the match across the road, we glanced at each other, for just a moment.

  The sharpness of his face beneath the high blue sky.

  And we walked on in silence.

  I do not know whether Mitchell was aware that Simon had sketched him, or whether Simon had tried to capture his profile in secret, furtively, stealing glances as Mitchell slept. The straight line of his nose, the wide mouth, the curve of his cheek, hair like straw hanging into his eyes. All of this.

  I had held the drawing in my hands and Simon had snatched it from me.

  And when I had looked at my brother’s face I had seen shame, and embarrassment.

  As we walked back, I, too, felt shame and embarrassment, but for different reasons. I did not want to look at Mitchell. I did not want to see, there, next to me, his face. A face that I, too, had stolen glances at, a face that I had conjured up before I went to sleep, painting in each feature, slowly, carefully.

  A face that was now too familiar.

  When I look back on that day now, I still feel shame as I remember. Shame that is confused with his death, but shame nonetheless.

  The white gate was ahead of us. Hanging from its one hinge, lopsided in the thick grass. The dark cypress trees, the old well, and beyond them the red roof of the house, those colours like beacons in the distance as we made our way slowly along the last stretch of that road, without a word.

  Later, when Vi would try to tell me that it would be a pity to lose my virginity too young, I would, for a brief instant, remember that walk. The heat, the stillness and the silence. The vastness around us. The dryness in my mouth, the taste of having been sick. She would speak and I would want to tell her she was too late. But I would keep my silence.

  When I tried to lift the gate, when I tried to pull it up from where it scraped through the grass, cutting ruts into the green, I found I had no strength.

  It was Mitchell who had to let us in. It was Mitchell who led the way, across the garden to where Simon waited for us on the verandah steps.

  And I followed, head down, three steps behind, to where he sat, there on the top step, knees drawn up near his chest, watching us.

  Watching us and saying nothing.

  Simon has dark eyes. Dark like mine. Dark like Vi’s. Dark like Evie’s. But different.

  The eyes of an innocent, Mari has said and not in affection, but usually in annoyance as Simon sits unaware of her frustration with his stillness, confused by her sudden bursts of anger when he has, once again, failed to pull his weight.

  Where have you been?

  It was Mitchell who told him.

  We’d been to the creek. Had a swim. The ordinariness of his words hanging in the stillness.

  A fly buzzed near my mouth and I brushed it away.

  An ant crawled, slowly, up my shin.

  You should have told me, and Simon scratched the side of his arm, awkward, uncertain as to what had happened, unsure as to where he stood.

  I tried to look at him. Evie’s joke book was open, dog-eared by his side, a glass of water sweating in the heat, a plate with the remains of a sandwich, all of this, and him.

  I looked. His words were hesitant. Everywhere.

  And standing out there with the sun beating down on my head, on my shoulders, with that taste in my mouth, and with the ache in my legs, I tried to say I was sorry but I was surprised to find that I had no words. An open mouth and not a thing to say.

  So it was Mitchell who apologised. It was Mitchell who told him we had meant to come back earlier. It was Mitchell who said that time had just got away. Slipped away. You know how it is.

  Reckon, I said, finally finding a word, any word, a word that was not my word.

  Anyway, we’re back, Mitchell said.

  We are, I repeated.

  And I bent down to do up my shoelace, to try to find a way of sliding away from the hurt in my brother’s eyes, but my fingers didn’t seem to work.

  I needed to get inside.

  I needed to be alone.

  I remember.

  I let Mitchell keep talking as I pushed my way past Simon, wanting to get into the house, wanting to get into the cool, wanting to be by myself, just for a little while.

  And I didn’t say anything to him.

  I didn’t even look at him.

  The door swung shut behind me and I left them, Simon and Mitchell, out there on the verandah.

  thirty

  It is Lizzie who takes me to have the termination.

  When I mentioned I had booked the clinic, she had insisted on taking me.

  Don’t, she had said when I had protested, when I had told her I was happy to go on my own. Let go of the stupid bravado. Just for once.

  She is, as always, calm and sensible. She reassures me that I am doing the right thing, that the situation is impossible, that there is, really, no choice.

  But I am still uncertain, I am still battling with the decision as we cross through the back streets of the city, Lizzie driving as she always drives, too fast, swearing loudly at other
drivers, beeping her horn at every car that is slow off the mark.

  I hold onto the dashboard and close my eyes.

  Her driving is the only chink in her calm persona. She once told me it was because her father died in a car crash, and she has felt a need to defy his death ever since.

  I tell her I am scared I will regret my choice, that I have made it when I have had too many other matters on my mind (although I do not tell her what these other matters are; I cannot bring myself to talk of Mitchell).

  She tells me I have to trust myself. I have to have faith in my own decision-making capabilities.

  I tell her I am worried I will never meet anyone else, worried I will never be pregnant again.

  She tells me not to be silly. Look at me, she says. All those years on my own and I’ve found someone.

  I tell her that I wanted to have a child while Vi was still alive, and I am looking out the window as I speak, not trusting myself to keep from crying, as she tells me that I cannot do something as momentous as this for my mother.

  Besides, she says, there’s no reason why Vi won’t live for a lot longer. The doctors have told you that, and she reaches for my hand, swerving dangerously as she does so.

  And I tell her what the doctor told me, that I may have problems conceiving, that I had tried earlier and nothing had happened, that perhaps this is my only chance, that perhaps I am being a fool.

  She is about to reassure me once again, but then she changes her mind. She pulls over, the car skidding on the dirt beside the road.

  With the ignition turned off, I can hear the wind in the Moreton Bay figs, stirring the last leaves, and I watch as they fall to the ground, to the roots, knotted like elephant hide at the base of the trunk.

  They all have a disease, I said.

  And she looks at me. She does not know what I am talking about.

  These trees. All of them. They’re all losing their leaves. And they don’t know what it is.

  She switches off the radio.

  I ask her if there’s any trick she’s learnt in meditation that helps you make up your mind in a situation like this.

  She tells me that ever since she rediscovered sex, she’s forgotten it all, and even if she could remember, she doesn’t think it was ever a question of tricks. Unfortunately.

  What a shame, I say.

  You know you don’t have to do this, and she looks at me. It’s not too late to change your mind.

  I know.

  I just needed to say all my doubts out loud. I just needed to put them on the table. I suppose I hoped that if I voiced them, they would vanish. Each one lined up, examined and put to rest, buried deep, deep enough to be forgotten.

  But that is not how it is. And I have to remember why I made my decision. I have to remember what it would mean to have a child and to keep silent as Anton has asked me to do, or to tell and face what that would incur; to be alone with a baby, to have a baby in those circumstances. I would not have the strength. I could not do it.

  You know, Lizzie says, you’ll probably hate me for saying this.

  Then don’t say it, I tell her.

  But it’s a pity it wasn’t Marco.

  And I tell her that I do hate her for saying it, that she shouldn’t have, and I am about to get out of the car. I am about to slam the door behind me and walk to the clinic, but she stops me.

  Do you want to do this? she asks me.

  No, I say.

  And she turns the key in the ignition. She knows that I have made up my mind. That I do not want to do it, but I will do it. She knows what I meant when I said no, and she squeezes my hand as we pull back onto the road.

  We’re late, I say.

  And she puts her foot on the accelerator.

  thirty-one

  It was cool on the morning of the funeral, and when I opened the front door to my flat and smelt the salt in the freshness of the air, I remembered what winter was like. The chill as the wind whistles through the gap between the door and the wall, the fog at night, the crisp clarity of the days; I remembered and I shivered.

  These were the mornings when I would get up and tell Marco that there were not many swimming days left for the summer.

  Probably more than you think, he would say, trying to keep me in bed.

  I would ignore him, feeling the change in the air as I pulled on my swimmers and wrapped my towel around my shoulders.

  The ocean was still rough.

  A great rolling swell that had the surfers up and out the back, black flecks against the morning sky.

  The pool was also wild. The waves slapped the sides, backwards, forwards, rolling over the cracked cement, sparkling, frosty green, icy as they surged against each other, pushing and pulling me from wall to wall.

  Standing under the shower, I washed seaweed from my body, slippery greens and browns, mossy and soft beneath my fingers, tiny red welts across my stomach from the end of a stinger’s tail, and sand between my toes. The steam rose and I let it all slide off me.

  Bernard had called the night before, telling me to ring him as soon as I got back. To let him know what had happened.

  Mari had also called, reminding me to look after Simon.

  I had listened but I had not really listened. I had held the phone away from my ear while they spoke.

  Promise, Bernard had said.

  Promise, Mari had said.

  And I had promised them both.

  Anton had also called, his voice a whisper as he left a message. I could hear him there above me, the scrape of his chair along the floor as he moved closer to the phone, and I could only guess that Louise was also there upstairs, somewhere out of hearing.

  He had told me he wanted to talk. He had messed it all up. But he was not deserting me. He promised. And I had turned the volume down on his words. I had wiped his message as soon as he left it.

  Standing by my rack of clothes and flicking through everything I owned, I saw all the different stages of myself on lurid display.

  Like Vi, I am a secret and compulsive shopper, but where Vi will buy hundreds of pairs of high-heeled shoes, cardigans, pastel skirts and blouses, each one almost identical to the last, I buy a constantly changing array of new looks.

  I once told Lizzie that I thought I would be able to mount a solo exhibition of every tragic fashion foisted on women in the last two decades. She hadn’t argued with me.

  Photographs of your haircuts alone would be enough, she had said.

  I had grimaced with embarrassment.

  I chose a skirt I would wear to work and then put it back, remembering that I did not intend to get out of the car. My jeans and a T-shirt were lying on the floor and I picked them up and held them in front of me for a moment before I decided to put them on. I wished I also had a pair of thongs.

  Simon was punctual, as always.

  If he felt any dismay at the way I was dressed, he said nothing.

  His jeans were new, dark blue, stiff like cardboard and straining at the waist. His shirt was also new, maroon and, like his pants, too small. As I opened the door to him, I realised it had been a long time since I had seen him in anything but his bus driver’s uniform. The clothes he wore outside work were not all that different.

  Shall we go? and he looked at me anxiously, wanting me to be ready.

  I told him to wait for me up on the road. I promised him I wouldn’t be long.

  But he didn’t.

  I could see him out on the path, smoking one of the cigarettes from his never-ending supply and kicking the toe of his shoe through the sand and dirt that had slipped down in the last storms.

  It has been so many years since Simon and I have been able to speak to each other. Since Candelo. But before then, it was different. I was always there, tagging along, wanting his attention, wanting to be part of his older and seemingly more impressive world.

  Whereas Simon was just Simon. Never really with me. Never really with anyone. Just complete within himself.

  And although I knew t
his, I didn’t give up.

  I would set up camp down by the waterfront, smuggling food and blankets down there, stashing them in a cave. I would try to convince him to run away with me, to hide, to make Vi worried. I could see it made no sense to him. But through sheer insistence, I would make him follow, both of us riding our skateboards down the steep hill that led to the reserve.

  Within an hour we would be bored.

  I would try to entertain him. I would want to keep him there with me. I would pretend we had no food. That we were starving. I would scramble over outcrops of sandstone, cutting my knees and feet as I scraped oyster shells off the surface of the rocks, eating them in front of him, urging him to eat with me. I would make us a fishing pole from bamboo. I would make up stories about children who had survived for months on their own without anyone to look after them. True, I would say.

  Nothing ever worked.

  Within a couple of hours, he would tell me that he was going.

  He would make me promise to come home before it got dark.

  And then he would leave me alone.

  Still, I didn’t give up.

  I would follow him after school, hanging with his friends, wanting to be where he was, even though it would be clear that despite Simon’s tolerance, the others did not want me around.

  Boys only, Steven Cobden would say.

  Oh yeah? I would challenge him, with my hands on my hips, daring him to make me go.

  Yeah, and he would take one step closer.

  Says who? I would ask, wanting to keep him there at bay, hoping that Simon would eventually notice what was going on, hoping that he would intervene on my behalf.

  But he never had any idea. He just kept doing whatever it was he happened to be doing. And I would march home, furious, let down, while he remained completely unaware of the indignity I had suffered.

  I had wanted it to be reversed. I had wanted the tables to be turned. I had wanted Simon to want me, to follow me, to chase me. And I had wanted to be like him. Oblivious.

  As he stubbed out his cigarette in the garden and told me we had to get going, we were running late, I remembered this and I thought about what it was like now. Different. But the same.