Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You

by Gemmell, Nikki

  ‘Really?’ Julian puts on his glasses and examines you close, up and down, as if it’s the first time he’s properly noticed you.

  ‘From the valley,’ the voice adds. Pointed, as if that explains it all and concludes it all.

  ‘I bet she’d scrub up beautifully. Why don’t you take her on? Make it your project. Have a bit of fun. Get things moving again.’

  ‘What needs to get moving?’ you ask.

  ‘See? Enthusiasm! And we could all do with a bit more of that,’ Julian laughs.

  ‘The bike is in the shed.’

  ‘Hey, wait,’ you wail, not wanting this to stop just yet.

  ‘Let her help around the house. She’s up for anything.’ Julian lifts out your arms as if sculpting you for a dance then spins you around.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ you ask, stepping back, it’s a game veering too far.

  ‘It’s a most frightful situation,’ Julian explains, putting his arm around you and shaking his head sorrowfully. ‘My poor young friend has become quite the recluse up here. You see, his heart was broken most cruelly some time ago and since then he’s just shut himself away, hiding from all the world –’ his tone darkens dramatically – ‘not being productive in any way. It’s utterly crushed him. He’s never recovered. We all despair. His mother most of all.’

  ‘Julian …’ The growl is furious from the other side.

  ‘The situation is completely hopeless,’ he sighs in mock despair.

  ‘The shed. Now.’ The voice roars. You jump. Julian ushers you hurriedly away.

  ‘Well, it was worth a try.’

  He shakes your hand firmly in farewell, and winks.

  ‘Good luck … Annoyance.’

  Lesson 69

  That cleanness of soul which is not afraid of anything in earth or heaven

  The joy roguish through you as you retrieve your bike, slip out the new tube from your pocket, fix the tyre and leave the old inner tube looped jauntily over the handle of the shed door and ride off tall, knowing they’re both watching; zinging with life, and power, and light.

  Your difference.

  You’ll be back. Oh yes.

  V

  ‘… [Eros] made Helen’s heart fly like a wing in her chest and she went out of her mind for a Trojan man and followed him over the sea …’

  Alkaios

  Lesson 70

  Well, the man may come, or he may not

  Just as you know that you would never be attracted to a Julian, you also know that Tol has snared you and the trap is now binding your heart. And a flicker of something from him, too, in response; yes, no, surely? It is how he looked at you when you came back – how he didn’t look – how he talked to you and how he couldn’t. You are sure. You have no idea.

  How he left the gate open when he said he would not.

  Everything a sign, everything a signal and you fever it all in your head, over and over, trying to make sense of it.

  Only one way to find out.

  You return two days later. Around your waist is a leather tool belt worn to the softness of pelt. It is from your father’s shed, with its precise walls of sized screwdrivers and spanners, the most ordered pocket of his life. A skewer has worked through another hole in the belt so it sits perfectly across your hips.

  The gate is ajar.

  As you knew it would be.

  You walk your bike up Tol’s driveway. He is sitting on the verandah with his dog beside him; running his hands through the fur and looking for ticks. He glances up. He blushes, in annoyance or shock or something else, you can’t read it. He is looking at your tool belt. You come right up to him. He doesn’t say anything. He stands.

  He does not say to go away.

  Everything a sign, everything a signal.

  The heat of that afternoon weighted with it. As you stand, face to face.

  Lesson 71

  The heaven-given honour of being the workers of the world

  ‘I’m going to help you.’

  Because you can. Because you are better at this than him. Because he has no idea, he’s never been taught, it’s all in his hands.

  ‘I don’t need help.’

  ‘You so do.’

  He still doesn’t say to go. He walks inside. You don’t know what it means. You brush past him to thin carpet half-heartedly lifted in the hallway, it is curled over, abandoned, ripe for a tripping. With one vigorous rip you lift away the tiny studs holding it down.

  ‘Stop,’ he barks.

  It needs to be done, says your determined face as you turn and stare in response. You know how to do this, you have watched your father your entire life, his energy is yours: the worker who will die working and who gets affirmation from it. You have watched your father smooth cement in great fans the length of his arm and slice away fillings from bricks like icing from a cake, his eye, always, on the taut string; you have watched him rip away wallpaper like a sheet from a lover and plug pipes whose water threatens to crash through a bowed ceiling. And now, in this waiting house, you use your blunt, bush hands and work with vigour and expertise and grace, and Tol no longer tells you to stop.

  Assaulted by his stare.

  Suddenly, within it all, he is beside you. Your sweat, and soon his – the smell of work rising off your bodies. The clumsy, awkward city hands with their too-clean nails and pale wrists. You are ripping up the carpet in strips, shoulder to shoulder; you are ripping away sheets of tin from great windows and flooding stale rooms with dust-crammed air, anointing them with light.

  Saying nothing. Saying everything. In the shining silence.

  As his hand brushes yours, a crisis of touch.

  You are sure.

  Lesson 72

  We are actually ‘possessed’; cease almost to be accountable beings, and are fitter for the lunatic asylum than for the home circle

  No staying away now.

  Love has made you hopeless.

  It is as if a great fist has wrenched the heart from your chest and the sense from your head.

  The gate is still unlocked. Every day, and every day you expect the opposite.

  Everything a sign, everything a signal.

  Several days into the rhythm of this new life he corrects the fallen brace of your overalls as you drill a hole for a mirror. You are using your grandfather’s ancient, manual drill with its pleasing mechanics, intrigued by the precise, clockwork beauty of how the cogs work. He flits by and corrects that fallen brace with the lightest of touches. Flipping the strap up and you barely grunt your thanks. Without looking at him, without talk.

  The simplest of gestures, the simplest of responses.

  But your skin. Alive with possibility.

  Lesson 73

  Beautiful is youth’s enthusiasm

  You are arriving earlier, leaving later. In command, working strong, this is your domain in terms of skill and he is allowing it – it is as if your whole life with your father has been in preparation for this task. Everything you have gleaned over the years; you feel you know nothing about anything else. You caress the bones of this beautiful Woondala – built by convicts in 1842 with Georgian economy – marvelling at its simplicity and its strength. These valley houses are deep in your bones, the familiar sandstone and flagstone and timber and tin. You recognise this wood crying out for moisture, its groan and creak at the valley’s high winds; the persistent soundtrack of your childhood has been a tin roof, just like this one, warping and cracking in the heat. And then the release of nourishing, thundering, dancing rain.

  Barely able to look at him as you bury yourself in the work, the only way you are comfortable, no eye contact. It is like your father in the car – with distraction you can connect. If you were forced to talk to Tol over a dinner table, in formal dress, you would be blunted by awkwardness as if your mouth was broken. But painting and sawing and ripping and tacking you are strong – teaching this man your energy, to work farmers’ hours, first light to last, hauling him into your rhythms. If your father
stops working he will die, he’s always saying that and you want to impart something of that to Tol, the energy of it.

  The future has been wiped, the past has been wiped; there is only now, in this place, the vivid present. You steal glances that tremor you as you bury yourself in work, not knowing what’s next, planning nothing beyond this. And then at the end of each day with barely a word passed between you, you leave without a word; you put away your tools and jump on your bike and ride off.

  Knowing now the gate will always be open for you. The firming of that over the week here.

  It is the only conversation between you.

  Lesson 74

  ‘Young ladies’, who have never been brought up to do anything

  A painting in the piano room now dominates the space. A portrait of a woman with an impossible waist and dancing eyes – as if she’s secretly laughing at life – that until now has had its back to the room. But she needs to be shown. You had whooped with delight when you first peeked behind the loosened canvas.

  ‘Well, well, you, madam, need to come out!’ And you had flipped her around and dusted her down.

  Now it is late, hot, you are tired, you wipe the sweat from your eyes. It is Friday afternoon, you are not concentrating. The flap of your checked shirt gets caught up in the drill and before you know it the cogs have eaten the bottom corner of the fabric; it will not unwind.

  ‘Shoot,’ you murmur under your breath.

  The more you try to disentangle it the more it bunches into the cogs; grease now blackening it in tiny tractor treads. You groan in frustration, it’s your favourite shirt. Tol raises his finger, signalling to wait. The woman’s eyes look straight at you, and laugh.

  He leaves the room. You wait. He returns with a pair of scissors.

  ‘Hold still.’

  ‘I love this shirt.’

  ‘There’s no other way to do it.’

  He kneels, his face to your stomach, and cuts – so close you can feel his breath on your bare skin underneath and at one stage his hand brushes your belly and springs back like he has touched something hot and the electricity is shooting through you and you step back, need this to stop.

  ‘What?’ He looks up and laughs.

  Nothing, you shake your head. He pulls you forward by your shirt.

  ‘Uh uh. Get back here. I haven’t finished.’

  The steel blade. The shock of its cold against your skin. You gasp and hold his hair for a moment – ‘It tickles!’ – and he laughs again.

  You hold your breath. Looking down at him. His half-closed eyes, his concentration. His fingers that brush your belly again, which ripples in response. He must have felt it; he says nothing.

  His face so close, his skin to yours, his breath on your belly, you bite your lip. He looks up when he is done as though he is looking for approval and his lashes are so dark and you can see the little boy, suddenly, the child he would have been, the vulnerability he rarely shows; that you want to hold in the cup of your hands, here, now; that you want to bow down to and murmur on with your lips.

  In gratitude.

  The rescued cloth in his hand. That you do not ask for. That he does not give back.

  Everything a sign, everything a signal.

  And in the golden light of that late afternoon you fly home on your bike, standing tall on the pedals, laughing out loud, laughing at life. Because something between you is cracked.

  Lesson 75

  She alone can be a law unto herself

  A whole weekend away. Your stomach trembles at every thought of going back, you can feel it in your groin, a sharp intake of want. He has taken over your body – he has taken over your thoughts, your serenity and your life. He has shut up your future, locked it away in a box that only he has the key to.

  You retrieve an old apothecary bottle that has always lived on the window ledge of your father’s shed, sure his eye has stopped noticing it long ago. It is a tiny bottle of the deepest, richest, ocean blue. For Tol’s desk of mysterious objects. That you saw once through the window of that room always locked.

  He holds the bottle high to the sun, chuffed at its marine depths. ‘You don’t want it?’

  You do. You shake your head.

  ‘You could turn out to be useful, you know,’ he teases, pocketing it with a smile. ‘Thank you. I’ll put it in my study.’

  As you knew he would.

  ‘Where’s Bec?’ His dog who’s never far from him.

  ‘She’s Julian’s, actually. She’s gone home. Julian was kicked out by his girlfriend and was homeless for a while and I was just minding her. But Julian’s found a place now, with a big back yard.’

  ‘Oh.’

  You shiver in that moment, don’t know why. So. Utterly alone with Tol, now – not even a licky, laughy dog to flurry all over you anymore. You look about. It feels like you are suddenly in a bell jar of mysteriousness, a dome of seclusion here with just this stranger and the heat and the deafening cicadas, and your father and your stepmother and your school and your life are on the outside and you are completely alone with this man and no one knows it, not a single soul, you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, what’s next. It’s a new week, you don’t know him well enough.

  ‘So what’s in that room of yours?’ you ask as you follow him into the kitchen. He is making a cup of tea for you, weak and milky and sweet, just as your grandmother does; it’s how you always begin a day’s work. ‘What do you do?’

  He doesn’t answer. He dumps the dregs of the tea leaves out a glassless kitchen window, lost in thought.

  ‘I want to know.’ You persist.

  ‘I hate talking about work.’

  ‘I love it.’

  He sighs, wearily, and his face says it all: I know you do.

  ‘What do you think I do?’

  ‘I dunno.’ You’re examining a porcelain plate, a silver salt shaker, an ivory-handled bread knife; picking them all up and running your fingers over them, looking at anything but him. He’s uncomfortable suddenly and you have no idea why.

  ‘Drug dealer,’ you blurt, not sure where that came from.

  He looks up, abrupt.

  ‘Sorry,’ you giggle. ‘It’s the car. And the location. The cops’d never find you. It’s perfect.’

  He raises an eyebrow.

  ‘Oh I dunno.’ You roll your eyes. ‘Mad scientist. Smuggler. Pirate. Stolen goods. Museum stuff. Dole bludger.’ He shoots out a laugh. ‘Photographer,’ you prattle on, emboldened. ‘Yeah. That’s it. You shoot schoolgirls in swimming costumes, it’s highly controversial, creates the hugest stink –’ You can’t control your talk, it’s suddenly all zooming out wrong, just like before, with the teacher – someone else is taking over and pushing the real you out. You redden.

  He pokes his head into your space, forces you to look at him. His dancing eyes.

  ‘Hey. Hey.’ Forcing you to concentrate. ‘You are so, completely, wrong. About everything. Come on. Come and have a look.’

  He takes you by the hand, he leads you from the kitchen to his study, his secret space.

  Your stomach, steamrollered.

  The sharp intake, the little pull.

  Of want. Purely that.

  Lesson 76

  Our natural and happiest life is when we lose ourselves in the exquisite absorption of home

  In.

  At last.

  Industry, order, light. Mouth opened in wonder, you are gulping the space, roaming it as you would a museum in miniature, this pale box of loveliness. Photos cram an entire wall on a corkboard painted white; there are typed quotes, postcards, feathers and leaves and seed pods from the bush, watercolour scraps. Paint samples, scribbles of words, sketchy diagrams of – what? Narrative arcs for some kind of article or movie script or story; yes, that. Photos of people in magazines he’s scrawled names across and circled fragile eyes, a clenched hand, a woman’s ready lips. Along one wall are bowed stacks of shelves on bricks reaching to the ceiling, then more books on the
floor in high stacks. Your eyes assess with the thoroughness of a forensic detective. Trying to unlock it all, trying to guess.

  He leans against the doorpost, watching the looking, amused. You roll your eyes at him, once, as if ‘God knows’, and get back to your examination. A collection of antique ink wells that appear to have been dug up from the nearby earth are lined up along a windowsill. Filthy fountain pens cram a ceramic jar – James Keiller & Sons, Dundee, 1862, reads its beautiful type. The scrap of your work shirt lies on the desk. An old black typewriter is dead centre. A blank sheet is poised. The scrap of your shirt. The scrap of your shirt. You finger it, prickle up, step back.

  ‘So?’ He throws across.

  You dangle the piece of cloth in front of him and with laughing eyes dip a fountain pen in waiting ink and write yes across his empty sheet in scratchy blobs of messiness.

  ‘A writer.’

  He pings a rolled up piece of paper at you in affirmation. You laugh and catch it in an overhand snatch, just like your dad taught you, and flick it back hard with a boyish twist of your wrist.

  Of course a writer. The pale hands that just failed to catch your paper ball, the hopelessness with life, the face that feels too much. The thick black glasses, the hair never brushed. Now the room is unlocked, now you see him; of course.

  Lesson 77

  Such a life will not have been lived in vain

  You jiggle the scrap of your cloth in front of his eyes.

  ‘This one’s off limits, mate.’

  ‘But I’ve never met anything like her,’ he teases. ‘She’s a fascinating specimen.’