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

by Gemmell, Nikki

  Perhaps.

  You couldn’t bear it.

  But what if …?

  Just in case, you’ve parked your car at the back of the house, near the bike shed, so as not to spook anyone arriving late.

  A little after ten o’clock you hear what you have been waiting for, dreading, anticipating. A car. As you knew you would. A beam of light through the trees, twisting and turning as the road to this house twists and turns, every bend you know so well, and you rise in a rush from his desk like a schoolgirl caught in the headmaster’s office. You run outside, drink up the air, the sexy pungent air of this night, waiting on the verandah, in the shadows. Your heart pounding.

  The moment you have been waiting for.

  Your entire adult life.

  Lesson 189

  Nature as well as custom has instituted this habit of life

  It is Julian.

  You pull back in the darkness, behind a pillar, he does not see you.

  Physically, he is much changed. Thickened, with completely grey and receding hair. Shorter, yes, you’re sure. He stops to light a cigarette. Tiredness has dragged down his eyes, dulled his glow. So, a small-of-stature, balding, middle-aged man now, with all the anonymity that comes with that. As if his life has become one huge sigh, of regret. It is in his stance. His face. The way he drags on his cigarette. You always think men age more startlingly than women and he is the proof.

  You galvanise yourself, take a deep breath, this has to be done. You step forward, emboldened. He starts in shock, a hand grabbing a verandah post to steady himself.

  ‘Hello you,’ you say low, strong, warm.

  He knows instantly who you are.

  ‘Where is he?’ you ask before he can say anything. He steps back down the steps, looks around, bewildered, panicked, can’t quite believe you’re here.

  ‘D–don’t you know?’

  You shake your head.

  It must be something then, in your face, your bitten lip, suddenly, something haunted, because he comes forward and takes you gently by the arm and he sits you on the top step. Quite changed, all of a sudden. Fatherly, authoritative. Asking about your life – England, work, your kids, husband – leeching from you two and a half decades of experience. Telling you all the while about his divorces, his five children, the crazy maintenance arrangements, his job as a high-end property consultant but it never pays enough – two broken marriages and school fees have seen to that – the constant poverty, the ex-wives, the shifting from place to place.

  ‘The one constant – the one true friend in it all – has been Tol.’

  You look at him.

  He nods.

  Then he tells you a story.

  Lesson 190

  The involuntary thrill that we call ‘feeling happy’ does come and startle into vague, mysterious hope our poor, wondering heart

  Of a man who fell in love.

  With a teenage girl.

  Who asked him once if she could be taught about life.

  And so he did. After much resisting, reluctance.

  He moulded this rough, raw, scrap of a bush kid, with eyes as knowing as a cat’s. Shaped her, learnt from her, cherished her, marvelled at her. Grew to love her, oh yes. He taught her to understand the artist’s life; to give him space. It was perfect, it worked. He would never hurt her, he was so afraid of hurting her. He would always be generous to her. His aim was to empower her. A new woman for a new world – so strong and aware that no other man would ever want her, would be afraid of her so she would be his, forever, trapped. As he was.

  ‘He was a writer,’ Julian chuckles ruefully, ‘with a novelist’s eye for the narratives of life.’

  ‘Was? What do you mean was?’

  Julian brushes aside the question.

  The transformation was recorded, in the most beautiful prose, at his desk. You see, by coming into his life this sparky, demanding, stroppy country kid had unlocked him – with her hunger for experience and her enormous curiosity – and miraculously, he was able to write again. He was freed. The words came strong, in a way they never had in his life.

  Because of you.

  His muse.

  Lesson 191

  No one can hold the reins of family government for ever so brief a time, without feeling what a difficult position it is: how great its need of self-control as the very first means of controlling others

  On an afternoon of sullen sky a car drove up. A man stepped out. A valley man. Tol knew it instantly; it was the gait, the shoulders, the face. He also knew exactly who he was – the imprint was clear on his face. You shrink back on the step and shut your eyes, can’t bear to hear what’s coming next. Before Tol could say anything the man strode up to him and in one enormous fell swoop, punched him hard across the temple before a word had been exchanged.

  ‘It wasn’t …’ Dread in your voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  You had been seen. That last day you came here. By Colin, your father’s old mining mate, who used to look at you with leery, rheumy drinker’s eyes. His car had a puncture and his spare tyre was shot and he was walking back into Beddy and he had caught a glimpse of the schoolgirl – the la-di-da convent girl now, Miss Goody Two Shoes who never gave him the time of day anymore – slipping from a gate he’d never given a second glance. Until that afternoon.

  And so on that final day – after you came home and shut yourself in your room in splendid shock and exhilaration and release – your father left your house and slipped through Tol’s wire gate.

  To investigate.

  As soon as he saw Tol’s face – the awareness, the defensiveness – he knew exactly what had been going on.

  The first blow was so savage it knocked Tol unconscious. He lay in the dust as your father crashed and banged his way through Woondala’s rooms, bluntly, ferociously, with no respect. In Tol’s study he found a manuscript.

  The reckless honesty.

  The filth.

  His daughter, through all of it.

  Tol was coming to, reeling in the dirt, trying to get up. Your father came out roaring. With his heavy work boots he kicked Tol in the head and the back and the stomach and he stamped on his hands. Both of them. Stamped and stamped until all the fingers were a bloody, flattened, jellied mess. Stamped out words, stamped out writing, stamped out creativity – all that airy-fairy, namby-pamby good-for-nothing patheticness – stamped out everything he didn’t like about this country and this world and this life; everything he couldn’t believe existed in his daughter. His daughter, for Christ’s sake.

  An act of extreme and unremitting violence.

  Tol was unconscious again, from the brutality of the assault.

  Then your father went back through the study and took away every word that was in it. The typewritten manuscript, the only copy that existed; every book, quote, diary, notebook, every narrative arc and worksheet. Because of course Tol had a hopeless memory and wrote everything down, he had told you that once and you had learnt from it.

  Your father filled the tray of his ute. Every word. Every stinky rotten filthy perverted word from this godforsaken shithole of a place.

  Everything, except several scraps of sentences glued to a wall.

  Because he couldn’t get them off.

  The only words left in this entire place.

  Lesson 192

  Do not harden or brutalise the child, and make them virtually disbelieve in love and goodness for the remainder of their existence

  ‘I still have …’

  ‘That little housewife’s book. I know. Tol told me. It’s the only book Woondala has left.’

  You both pause in the dark. Julian puts an arm around your shoulder.

  ‘Treasure it,’ he says soft.

  Your father left this place. His last words? As Tol was stirring in agony in the bloodied dirt. You shut your eyes, don’t want to hear them, must.

  ‘Try taking this to the police, you cunt. Just fucking try.’

  Because of course Tol coul
dn’t. You were a schoolgirl. He knew the risks.

  ‘But you know what?’ Julian shakes his head. ‘It’s such a crazy thing … Tol said that as your father was doing it all, as he was ruining all his work, life, opus, there was something about the man that he admired, that he couldn’t condemn.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The love. He did it out of love. For his daughter. His blood. He was literally beside himself, driven mad. It was the only way he could express it. He wept over and over as he was stomping on Tol, “Give her a chance. Let her finish school, you dirty fucker … give her a life. A chance …”’

  You’re weeping now. Julian squeezes your shoulder tight, holding in your sobs.

  ‘And Tol knew that your father was right. He got the gate locked.’ A pause. ‘And for years he kept it locked.’

  ‘Why?’

  He looks at you as if it is obvious.

  ‘To give you a chance.’

  Lesson 193

  I think I was not quite correct about such a thing

  Your world detonating.

  With knowing. Realigning.

  You had always thought your father didn’t love you anymore. Had always thought your stepmother had won, that you had lost that particular battle from the moment she arrived in your life. Had always thought he never cared enough about your study, work, life; it was why he never went to speech nights or father–daughter dances, to formals and school masses.

  Because he couldn’t.

  Couldn’t talk to those people. Didn’t want to be showed up. Didn’t understand that world, was afraid of it. You squeeze your eyes shut on hot tears. That little, little man, who you once thought so huge, untouchable, heroic. Remembering how he used to talk to you when your stepmother wasn’t around – how he still talks to you when she isn’t around – remember that, remember it, nothing else.

  The purity at the messy, shocking, reeling, cluttered heart of all this. Hold onto it, nothing else.

  It is like bursting through the surface of the water, after a drowning, a near-death; bursting through it with a great zooming rush into the air, the light.

  Lesson 194

  One ounce of kind feeling, tact, and thoughtfulness for others be worth a cart-load of ponderous etiquette

  ‘Why didn’t Tol explain any of this?’ you ask, rubbing your eyes. ‘I went mad with it. For years. All the uncertainty, the not knowing. There was just one measly note that told me nothing, really. It ate me up.’

  ‘He couldn’t tell you. He was too injured, at first. It was only luck that I found him. I’d driven up to check on the manuscript, time was running out. I found him on the verandah, a day later. He’d crawled that far, as far as he could get before collapsing. He was in hospital for so long. In and out of consciousness. He refused to press charges, of course. He couldn’t write to you. His hands were no use. He was a cripple. He pleaded with me to go back to his typewriter, get something to you, anything. He trusted me to do it. I’m hopeless at these kinds of things. He wanted you to soar, to live your life strong –’ he paused. ‘But I was so furious, at the whole thing; the loss of his manuscript, his hands. I – I bashed something out.’

  ‘What? But …’ You murmur, your mind whirring. Tol, Tol. ‘Where is he? I need to see him.’

  Julian puts his arms around you. Fatherly, firming.

  ‘Come back tomorrow.’

  You take a deep breath. Wipe your hands furiously across tear-stained cheeks. Right. OK.

  ‘Thank you, Julian,’ you say, businesslike, firm.

  He walks you to your car. Smiles the old smile, from the very first time you met him at this place. As you shut your door he yells out.

  ‘Tol wanted you to have a life. He was mortified. Your father’s words really shook him. He’s the best person I know. The most generous.’

  You nod. ‘Yes.’

  As you drive past you idle the car. One last question.

  ‘What’s his real name?’ Because you always wanted to know, and never asked. What on earth was it short for?

  ‘Ptolemy. He hated it. It never went down well in an Aussie playground.’

  ‘Ptolemy,’ you repeat in wonder and laugh. No wonder he didn’t let on.

  ‘We all have to carry burdens from our parents,’ Julian grins. ‘He wanted to spare you that one.’

  You honk your horn in gratitude and speed off, your hand butting the night air in farewell.

  Scarcely able to concentrate on the road, veering and wildly correcting yourself as the car sluices off the dirt; stopping abruptly at a roo, its eyes silver coins in your headlights and then driving on with a frantic, churning heart. At all of it.

  Lesson 195

  The new generation which brightens life with a perpetual hope

  To your father, to your jumbly tumbly boys. Your stepmother is out, visiting her sister. You stride in the door of your old home feeling like icy water is washing over you, gasping for breath, voice. You look at your dad – on his fake-leather recliner rocker he’s so proud of – with various little men perched on him or scrunched beside him; four cheeky little boys at home, alone, with the run of the house and gleeful with it. Your father’s flannelette pyjamas are poking from his trouser legs and all four of them are devouring the Batman movie, The Dark Knight, with shiny eyes, you’ve never allowed your boys to watch it. Even your youngest, Pip, is still up and they’re all pleased as punch they’ve been allowed to stay awake so late, it’s the latest they’ve ever been up in their lives.

  You stand there, your heart thumping. So much to say to this old man before you and yet in the heat of the moment, you can’t. Just can’t. All you remember are Julian’s words; that in his violence was a supreme act of love. It was the only way he could express it. Tol had to respect that.

  And the sight of all of them together, soldered by blood, your blood, is breaking you.

  With happiness.

  Because your father only became alive to you, fully human, when you had these kids; he could only relate to you, understand you, when you were a mother. But the intensity of the loving never changed.

  And now you understand.

  At last.

  He told you once – in those reeling days after the locked gate, when he was driving you the three-hour trip back to school – that you must never, ever care for a man more than he cares for you. Treat ’em mean keep ’em keen and never forget it, he had ruefully laughed and later you had written his words down. He told you that if anyone ever hurt you he would hunt them down and kill ’em and you saw but did not truly comprehend then that he was scared of the enormity of his love for you, and you held that in your heart for a while but then life took over, and you forgot.

  But now.

  You understand. That some things in life, you must let go.

  Lesson 196

  Be very patient with this person; bear their little faults as they must bear yours; make allowances for the unintentional slights, neglects or offences, that we all in the whirl of life must endure

  You bury your face into the snuffly, lovely, giggly warmth of the boys as you pour them into bed. Your stepmother not only bathed them but washed their hair before she left for her sister’s. You smile your gratitude, a warmth towards her nudging through you. It is how she speaks to you, by these solid, simple gestures; how she has been speaking to your father their entire married life.

  You do not hate her, at all, oh no. You are intrigued by her. She is a type of woman you didn’t know still existed; a woman who has devoted her entire adult life, completely, to one job and one only. Wife. A woman from a generation that put themselves last. And what you both know is that you would never want to be her. That you will manage your own life rather than let someone else do it for you. It is unspoken and enormous between you – your difference.

  You pity her. She is not educated, not particularly intelligent; your father has told you with relief that she is a simple woman. You sensed it even at fourteen, the narrowness of her world. Not a reader, no
friends beyond family, no curiosity or greed for a wider life. You pity the fear that has dictated her choices in life. Of her husband. Of divorce. Of risk. Of work. Of her watching stepdaughter – suddenly, vividly, hugely, in her life. Who never saw her acutely enough.

  Her childlessness. Children of her own never came and you never discussed it with her and can only imagine the vastness of her silent anguish over the years, at the core of her life, and you wish you’d been there for her at some point; that she’d allowed it, that you’d been able to talk about it at least. But she wouldn’t have wanted that. She has devoted her whole life to her allotted role within matrimony and she does it with rigorous attention and grace.

  You are grateful for her. For your father’s sake.

  For she is the best type of wife for a man like him.

  There is a dignity to it. You curl your body around little Pippy and smile, breathing in deep the smell of his cleanliness.

  Lesson 197

  Labour is happiness

  A new heart. At last.

  Radiant with relief.

  You have your father’s love. It is like a banner, proud in its breeze, flapping across your wounded soul in this enormous, shifting night. His immense love, and your stepmother can never take that away from you and she knows it as do you, now, and it is enough.

  You are free.

  You have worked and had children and travelled and lived a life of varied and extraordinary experiences, that a generation ago could scarcely be imagined, and for years you never saw the richness of it. How lucky you are.