by Joy Dettman
‘What are you up to? Put the light out, love.’
‘Don’t you move. I’ve got you covered,’ she’d said. ‘If you want to come down to the big bad city and sleep in Goldilocks’ bed, then you take what you get and like it, Ross Bear.’
He’d liked it. He’d really liked it. No complaints at all, but he hadn’t been the same man on Sunday morning, hardly game to look at her.
They’d gone out to the Wantirna Trash-and-Treasure market and he’d bought a tonne of old tools, and she’d found a dusty ornament and named it number fourteen. It was a leprechaun man with long boots and a jaunty hat, and she got him for one dollar. The end of his walking stick had been broken, which made him fit in with the rest of the motley crew. She’d found a stick in the car park, sawed it to length with a kitchen knife, glued it into place, then applied half a dozen coats of brown nail polish; from a distance you couldn’t even see the repair.
On Sunday afternoon Ross had removed her sticking front door and cut a centimetre from its base with a blunt saw, also purchased at the market. The bikie walked from his room as they were sawing.
‘Got the demolition squad in there, De Rooster?’ he’d said.
She’d glanced through his open door. His flat was empty. No bed. No table. No chair. Just the same beige carpet on the same shaped floor as her own. Just the same walls, the same kitchen bench.
‘Moving out at last?’ she’d said.
‘Don’t get your hopes up.’
‘What is there if not hope?’
He’d walked downstairs, then turned. ‘And stop sticking junk in my letterbox.’
‘Stop parking in my space, then.’
‘He’s black,’ Ross said when the bikie was out of hearing range. ‘What are you doing, talking to him like that?’
‘How am I supposed to talk to him?’
‘What’s he do? Does he work?’
‘I don’t know. This is the city. You don’t ask a person’s occupation when you meet them on the stairs. He probably deals drugs or something. I saw him out at the casino one night.’
The old Bertram disapproval had reared its head. ‘I don’t know what’s got into you lately, Sally. You’ve changed.’
She ordered a second coffee and sat on. Better to stay away from the flats. She didn’t want to meet the little Asian guy on the stairs, hear the unsighted mother’s terrible keening wail.
No job to go to tomorrow either. Just one of the unemployed again.
No more Ratsus, though. No more Monday pep talks. No more telephones. She’d look around for a shop job. Plenty of those, plenty of waitress work, sandwich hands. She’d get something. Underpaid, but money hadn’t been a problem lately. Her Christmas Club thousand was in the bank, intact. Ross’s cheque was still in the bottom of her bag, probably intact. Her rent was paid and her petrol tank full, and she now bought her cigarettes by the carton from a discount place, cut the price per pack by seven cents.
The thought of cigarettes had her reaching for her packet, and she lit up. It was catching. The reader in the corner lit up, then the deaf couple, stilling their chatter long enough to join in. Sally frowned as a hugely pregnant woman opened the door and stepped into the haze. Quick to pick up the scent she hugged her stomach as she backed out again.
Backed into Matt.
‘Oh shit!’
He was apologising, then opening the door. He was coming in here. She moaned and cowered low in her chair. Her face shielded by her hand, she watched him walk to the counter.
He ordered coffee while Sally stared at his back. She hadn’t seen him since the day in the lift with Sue, and she didn’t want to see him. She was buying Cocky’s old guitar on Thursday and on Sunday they were going places. She was free.
But the back of his head, the shape of his ears, the collar of his shirt. His shoulders, not broad, but broad enough.
He’s not going to turn around, she thought. She drew on her cigarette and blew the smoke high. Let him smell smoke, buy takeaway coffee, and go. Make him go. She forced more smoke in his direction.
But the woman was putting a pastry on a plate. He’d sit down. He’d see her.
She glanced at the rear of the shop. No toilet. No back exit. Just the kitchen. She couldn’t run through the kitchen. She mashed her cigarette and took a don’t-care pill from her handbag, swallowing it with hot coffee. It caught in her throat. She gulped more hot coffee and it burned all the way down.
Then he turned around. Looked at her table. Walked to her table.
‘So,’ he said. ‘So, look who’s here.’
‘So,’ she replied. Hands beneath the table, fingers gripping the table leg, strove to draw strength from inanimate wood as she willed the tiny pill to get her together, to make her strong enough to tell him where to go.
‘So here we are,’ he said. Their relationship had not been based on conversation.
‘So here I am, and there you are too.’ Sally kept playing the game. She could keep it up as long as him, but her stomach felt weak and was still burning from the gulped coffee. And the pill wasn’t dissolving fast enough, wasn’t getting into her blood and saying ‘I don’t care’ fast enough.
She cared. She still cared. He was so beautiful. Why the hell did he have to come in here today?
‘Do you mind?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I mind. Plenty of vacant tables.’
He moved the ashtray, placed his coffee and pastry down, but remained standing while his hand went to his pocket and withdrew a small parcel. He offered it. ‘I knew I’d see you today. I woke up knowing it. When I walked out of the office I knew where I’d find you. A late Merry Christmas, Sall.’
Liar. She was always on the twelfth floor at this time. He’d probably bought the present for his wife, or his office girl. She looked at the door, reached for her coffee. He wasn’t going to buy his way back onto her bed, fridge, table, with his two-bit present. She was going to be all right. Her stomach had settled. Maybe the pill was kicking in. She sipped, uninterested, and he placed the gift beside her saucer, stooped, kissed her cheek.
‘That’s desperate stuff. This is a public place, Matt,’ she said, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand. But he was seated now. Paid for his seat with that kiss.
‘Desperation breeds desperate measures.’ He took her hand. Just his touch. Electric. And his eyes: sad, pleading. His half-smile, his lifted eyebrow.
How do you kill love? How do you kill it stone-dead?
‘How did you know I’d be down here? I’m never down here at this time.’
‘Mental telepathy. I told you we didn’t need telephones.’
He’s left his wife, she thought, and hope crawled. Hope rose to her throat, choking her, then disappointment followed on hope’s heels. She didn’t want to go back. She wanted to go forward. Her and little Cocky Roach and their guitars. That’s what she wanted. There would be no more circles in her life. No more breaking up and going back. That’s what she’d done with Ross, and she wasn’t going to do it any more.
Keep on running till you get to the place –
Straight ahead. Straight down the middle. No more Jim Beam to buy, she was going to have her front tooth capped next week and pay it off. That’s what she wanted. That’s what she’d do.
But stupid bloody hope and the don’t-care pill got their heads together.
He has left her. He must have. He’s got her to agree to a settlement. He said all along that, given time, he would get her to agree.
Don’t do this. Stand up. Run for your life.
She picked up her bag, slipped the strap over her shoulder, then two women walked in and eyed Matt as if he was something God only makes once before throwing away the mould, because He’s made something too good to be true.
Far too good to be true.
In her head she knew that; it was only her brainless heart she had to control.
‘Open it, Sall.’ Again he offered the gift. ‘I saw it, and I knew it was you.’
�
�What is it? A used bus ticket to Hallam? A pizza voucher? Sorry. The price has gone up.’
‘On the advice of your new financial adviser?’ He smiled, and her heart full of hope rolled over.
Don’t do this.
Catch a moonbeam, catch a star, hold it high and you’ll see far –
But she was doing it, and the two women were still staring, and so was the deaf couple. They watched her lift the sticky tape. Peel back the paper. Purple and gold, colours of royalty. They watched her remove a small grey suede pouch with a gold drawstring. Watched her pull the drawstring open. Upend the pouch.
And a ring fell into her palm. It was a golden heart, set with a single diamond.
‘Oh, my God, Matt! My God! It’s beautiful!’
‘So are you, and I can’t function without you in my life. I can’t get through a day, a night, without wanting you.’ He touched her face, stroked it with long fingers, then he lifted her pointed chin, made her look at him.
He’d bought her an engagement ring and the stone was huge. She looked at it, at him. Wasn’t this what she’d wanted? Wanted. Wasn’t he what she’d wanted?
‘God, Matt.’ The ring must have cost him a fortune, and she’d pushed him, she’d nagged him to leave his wife. ‘God.’ It slipped too easily onto her engagement finger. Of course it was too big. She had kid’s hands. But it fitted the second finger of her right hand.
He ate his pastry, drank his coffee, then he stood. ‘I’ve got an appointment,’ he said. ‘Tonight?’
She nodded, picked up the suede pouch, the purple and gold paper, folded it and dropped it in her bag as she stood. ‘Dinner. We’ll go somewhere to celebrate, Matt.’
‘I don’t want to share you with the crowd, Sall.’
His ring was on her finger. His ring. He and the don’t-care pill were engaged. The don’t-care pill nodded.
He stayed with her on the bed while their watches tick-ticked and 9.30 was lost, and the clock ticked on. She thought he’d stay the night, but he couldn’t, or wouldn’t.
Then he was gone and the flat was empty.
She walked to the bathroom, found the half-pack of contraceptive pills she’d been taking since her night with Ross. As she lifted the glass of water to her mouth, the light caught her ring, making the colours bounce. She slipped it off and placed it on her engagement finger, squeezing her fingers together to keep the stone upright.
He hadn’t mentioned his wife, and she hadn’t asked if he’d left her. Hadn’t wanted to know the answer, that’s why.
But he loves me. He needs me. He said it tonight, over and over.
She looked at the ring again. Even if he hasn’t left his wife, that ring, that rock, was his promise that he was going to. No man would buy that diamond just for the sake of a few hours in bed.
A wide, empty bed now. What would it be like waking up next to Matt? Would he be grumpy? Happy? Soon she’d know. Where would they live? The hand wearing his ring was beneath her cheek; she could feel it. Sharp.
So she slept.
But like Matt, the ring slipped off in the night. Sally found it gouging into her hip when the alarm woke her, and she remembered she had nowhere to go. She tolerated the alarm and the discomfort of sharp, tolerated it for minutes before her hand killed the alarm and sought the cause of sharp. And she found it, found the ring she had forgotten in the night, and by the light of a new day she loved it anew. She slid it onto her engagement finger, adding a small bandaid later, just to keep it safe.
It brought her luck too: she found a job that day, working three nights a week at the Riverdale Hotel, waiting on tables. She’d done it before at a Lakeside pub. The guy wanted her to start immediately, but today was Wednesday and Wednesdays had always belonged to Matt. He’d said he’d be there at six.
He arrived near seven and he drank a fast Jim Beam as he glanced around the flat.
‘You’re nesting. I preferred your cardboard cubbyhouse,’ he said, then he picked up the photograph of her father and stared at it. ‘Who is he?’
‘My father. He died when I was eight.’
‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘Very, very interesting. Freud might have written a paper on this one, Sall.’
‘Wasn’t he that dirty-minded old weirdo who could read sex into inkblots?’
‘You have a way of reducing the complicated to basics. I love your lack of complications, kiddo, your little cubbyhouse.’
She didn’t tell him she’d left her job at Phonepross, or about her new job, or what she was planning to do with little Cocky on Sunday. Didn’t tell him she was buying a guitar either. What had they spoken about?
Nothing.
On Thursday afternoon she rode up to the twelfth floor for the last time and she picked up her last pay from Ratsus. A portion of it handed to Cocky, she took delivery of her secondhand guitar.
It looked as good as the one her mother had smashed, if a little worn. Worn in, and it fitted in the old case. Made to measure.
But what use was a guitar in a closed case? She took it out and sat cross-legged on the floor, nursing it a while. Years had passed since she’d played. She couldn’t remember one chord. Then the ring and bandaid got in the way, so she peeled off the bandaid, slipped the ring from her finger, closed her eyes and allowed her ears to remember. They did.
Later she began humming the old songs. And it was coming, it was coming back. She sang then, quietly at first, aware that the walls were thin, then she forgot the walls.
Her fingertips were raw when she put the guitar away, but she soaked them in salty water.
That’s what her mother used to do.
‘Thanks, Mummy.’
Nightingale with a Broken Heart
March 2000
Matt was on his back, sleeping. He frowned, his eyes fluttered. Strange to see him like this, not a god, just a man with a little snore. He seemed younger than when she’d met him in September. Or maybe she had grown older.
They’d spoken of birthdays tonight, his and hers. He’d said that they’d go out somewhere special for a joint celebration. He’d turned thirty-four in February. He’d spoken about his sister too, thirteen months his senior.
She sighed, more at peace with herself tonight. They would marry, and she would meet his family. She could imagine Chari as dark, like Matt, stunningly beautiful. And his grandfather, he’d be Matt with grey hair. His parents she couldn’t see – or his wife.
Eleven-thirty and he slept on. She knew she should wake him, and knew if she did, he’d get up and go home to the faceless void that haunted her life. Wife. Bitch.
She didn’t wake him.
It was close to twelve when he turned to her clock. ‘You shouldn’t have let me sleep, Sall.’
‘Why not?’
No reply. He was up, in the shower. He never left with the scent of love on him. Why not? He didn’t share Bitch’s bed. She didn’t cook for him, clean for him, so why wash up for her?
Sally leant against the bathroom door, watching him wash. ‘Why me, Matt?’
‘You’re part of me, kiddo.’
She smiled, watching the water splash onto her floor. He always made a mess of her bathroom. ‘Is Chari married?’
‘No.’
‘Does she live with your parents?’
‘She has her own establishment. I’ll take you to visit her one day.’
‘I’d like that. Does she live with a guy?’
‘She’s got a lot of close friends, Sall, but she sleeps alone.’
‘Tell me about your parents, Matt.’
‘Daddy is a retired army man, and Mummy digs Jehovah, and Gramps has lost his onions and doesn’t know where to find them.’
‘Do they like your wife?’
‘No.’
‘Will they like me?’
‘No.’ He used the last of her shampoo and he laughed, tossing the plastic bottle at her. She picked it up, hoping there was a squeeze left in it; she wanted to wash her hair in the morning.
‘Who do yo
u see when you look at me, Matt?’
He stepped from the shower and towelled his hair, then he took her wrist and checked the time. ‘I see midnight, kiddo, and I’ve got to get home.’
Home. Why did he have to call that house home? Why couldn’t he say, I have to leave? I have to fly, Sall?
Home.
Busy days now, busy nights. What was home, other than a place to park the car and put your pillow? Busy weeks, and Sundays no longer days of rest, of sleeping until noon. Not these days. Her Sundays were crazy working days, and the money she made on Sundays had a different feel to it.
It was after five on a Sunday afternoon in mid-March when she lifted her guitar from the boot. Her handbag, heavy with coins, dragging her shoulder down, as she walked to her letterbox, sunburned, windblown, higher than high, and not a pill, not one glass of wine to lift her up there.
The Harley was parked in one of the front bays, the bikie polishing his chrome. She ignored him, retrieved her junk mail, which she redeposited in the garbage bin.
‘What’s wrong with my letterbox today?’ he said.
‘Don’t worry about it, there’ll be more tomorrow.’ She tossed the words over her shoulder.
‘You’ve been sprung, De Rooster.’
‘What?’ She’d lent him a cup of milk one night, left the chain on her door and passed the milk through the gap. He’d changed a flat tyre for her one morning, but that didn’t mean she was on speaking terms with him.
‘You’ve been sprung. My sister sells junk down at the Esplanade. I was down there this afternoon. Saw you singing up a storm in your mad hat.’
‘You didn’t?’ Now she swung around to face him. ‘Say you didn’t recognise me. Please say it.’
‘I could say it. It wouldn’t alter the fact that I did. I was going to give you a stir but threw you a dollar instead.’
‘How could you recognise me? Cocky promised me that no-one would.’
‘I’ve heard you before, haven’t I? The haunting tones of a nightingale with a broken heart flooding the barren halls at midnight.’
‘Smartarse,’ she said, taking a cigarette from her pocket, leaning her guitar against the concrete wall while she hunted for her lighter amid the coins.
