The Science of Appearances

by Jacinta Halloran

  She’d told her parents she was seeing a film with friends, she informed him on the way to the cinema. ‘They don’t know about you yet. It’s not that I’m hiding you, but they ask a lot of questions about everything I do. Sometimes I get tired of answering.’ He dwells on this now. She’s still the dutiful daughter, trapped in the family home, whereas he’s not answerable to anyone, at least not while he’s in Melbourne. The Nevilles treat his comings and goings with a benign surprise that evaporates, he’s quite certain, the moment he’s out of view. It’s only in his letters home that he holds himself to account, and even then he can obfuscate. A lot more at stake when your parents sit across the dinner table. Is he worth the risk?

  There are no free tables at the University Café, so they sit side by side at the bar. Hanna orders two espresso and a pastry filled with whipped cream. The coffee is thick and bitter, even when sweetened with a heaped spoon of sugar. He drinks it in one gulp, as if downing medicine. Hanna laughs. ‘It’s Italian coffee, the best in the world. You’ll get to love it. Just try to drink it slowly next time.’

  The pastry is easier to negotiate — and the whipped cream is not actually cream, Hanna tells him, but a light soft cheese. It’s good, though he’d prefer a piece of his mother’s jam tart any day. The place is warm and noisy, filled with arty types. Vapor condenses on the large glass windows that look out on Lygon Street — vapor from a hundred talking mouths, a hundred pairs of lungs, taking in oxygen, breathing out carbon dioxide. Plants do the opposite, so long as there’s light.

  Hanna puts down her cup, presses her hand over his. ‘I think it’s time we made love,’ she says.

  This is what Hanna proposes. Next Saturday morning her parents will go to her uncle’s cabin in Hepburn Springs, to return the following afternoon. She’s told them she has an assignment due and needs to stay home to complete it. ‘It’s actually true. I’ve just left out the part about your visit. That is, if you want to visit.’ When he doesn’t answer, she asks, ‘Don’t you think it’s a good idea?’

  He’d badly wanted to hold her in the dark of the cinema, but here in the light it’s harder to think clearly. Is it a good idea? He doesn’t think his desire for her has anything at all to do with the conceptual. His heart is pounding from the coffee, and its bitter taste is still with him.

  He walks with her to the tram stop on Swanston Street. She slides her hand into his, and in the dark the thrill of her presence is restored. ‘I want to see you next weekend,’ he tells her. ‘Of course I do.’

  She puts her arms around his neck and kisses him on the lips. ‘You know that I’m protecting you,’ she says.

  ‘From what?’

  ‘My parents. For a while longer, at least. They’re the most wonderful people in the whole world, and I know they’d like you, but I’m their only daughter. Do you see?’

  Orange Grove, East St Kilda. All that week he carries her address in his pocket, imagining a street lined with fruit trees, the sweet tang of citrus oil. Time again plays its childhood tricks: an hour stretches into eternity, a whole day passes in a senseless blur. Time that is moved by little fidget wheels is not my time. One of those poems Mr Welsh often read to them. He understands it now.

  ‘How’s it going with your femme fatale?’ Tibble asks on Thursday afternoon.

  ‘She’s not a femme fatale.’

  ‘That’s what they all say.’

  Sex before marriage. As a sin — and it must be — he’s fairly certain it falls somewhere between mortal and venial, if such a category exists. (He hopes it does, at least in some enlightened priest’s mind.) He’s surprised that he’s not sure, but then again, in the long list of temptations likely to befall a young Catholic — the list they expounded at school — sex before marriage didn’t even rate a mention. In primary school Father Clancy held forth on the consequences of theft, disobedience and envy as he moved around the classroom, hands clasped behind his back, bending low to inspect each child’s face in turn, as if to weed out the grubby souls among them. At Rosary House, Brother Crispin seemed consumed by the sin of masturbation. ‘He can’t bloody stop talking about it,’ Fairless said, as they huddled under dripping trees one wet and miserable lunchtime, a single fag between them. ‘Makes me suspect he’s got a lot to confess.’ Maybe Crispin was supposed to talk about sex before marriage, but never quite got round to it.

  Dominic rattles off the Commandments in his head. Thou shall not commit adultery. He thinks adultery’s more relevant to married people than to him. Perhaps if he confesses it before the fact, simply as an experiment, just to hear what the priest has to say on the subject? There’s still time this week. If the priest sees a way out, all well and good. And if he discovers it to be a mortal sin? He punts for ignorance: perhaps some sort of moral defence, if it ever comes to that.

  After Saturday lunch he shaves carefully, puts on his best shirt and goes to find Dot in the house. She’s in the sitting room, reading the Women’s Weekly. ‘I’m going to stay with a mate on the other side of town tonight,’ he says, as casually as he can. ‘See you tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘You won’t be here for tea then?’

  Saturday-night tea in Rose Street is eggs, sausages and beans. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Not tonight.’

  ‘Righto, love.’ Dot turns back to her magazine.

  In Elizabeth Street he looks for something to bring with him, but the shops are closed for the weekend. He crosses Flinders Street to the station, where he waits for the Sandringham train. The morning shoppers have already vacated the city and the platform is quiet, save for the pigeons cooing on the guttering and the hum of the football crowd at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Their battle cry reaches him from down the river, swelling before trailing away into silence. Again and again it rises and falls as he sits in his patch of sunlight, waiting for the train that will carry him to Hanna’s house.

  At Balaclava station he emerges on the other side of the city as if into a different world. He roams Carlisle Street, past kosher butchers, laundries and barber shops — all miraculously open and busy with customers — until he finds a small grocery selling food in unfamiliar packages. He selects a block of milk chocolate and a bag of walnuts: timid offerings, but they’re the only things in the shop he’s sure about. He hands his purchases to the shopkeeper. ‘You’re not from around here?’ the man says as he gives him his change.

  ‘No, I’m from the north side of town.’ Strange to hear himself say that.

  ‘Carlton?’ The man inspects him closely. ‘You know Saffer’s grocery?’

  ‘I’m from Coburg.’

  ‘Coburg? So you’re not Jewish?’

  ‘No.’

  The shopkeeper shrugs. ‘Maybe in a different life.’

  When he reaches the red-brick house in Orange Grove, he finds it shaded not by orange trees but a large date palm leaning towards the roof over a dark and tangled garden. Not wanting to ring the bell, he skirts the side of the house, only to stop suddenly when he sees Hanna through the kitchen window. She’s wearing an apron and beating something in a bowl. He pauses. He’s trespassing on a private moment, yet he can’t look away. Dom has never pictured her in a kitchen before, but here she is, doing the same work as his mother, or Dot Neville, or any woman he’s ever known. Hanna puts down the bowl she’s been cradling in her arm, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and turns the page of the scrapbook lying open on the bench. He guesses from the look of concentration on her face that she’s making something for dinner, something special that requires time and finesse, even though she has an essay due on Monday. His heart leaps. How wonderful she is, how capable. He’ll soon be with her, across the dinner table, in her bed, who knows in what order? His mother would call her pushy, but the pressure of her hand in his is just a fraction of what he wants. He’s thought about sex with Hanna ever since he first saw her. He’s dreamed of her often, awoken erect and masturbated to visions of her
breasts, her thighs, her arched feet against his back, her fingers encircling his cock. He’s thought, many times, of those red nails drawing blood, his blood. She’s nothing like his mother. He strides across the yard and knocks at the kitchen door.

  Afterwards, she tells him that it wasn’t her first time. He’d guessed it already. ‘I made up my mind years ago that I wouldn’t be afraid,’ she says.

  ‘Of men?’

  ‘Of anything.’ She sits upright, hugging her knees to her chest and pulling the sheets around her. ‘An opportunity presented itself. An older man, who was experienced.’

  He looks at the ceiling. ‘Why did it end?’ He’s not sure he wants to know.

  ‘I grew out of love with him. He understood. It had happened before, he said.’

  ‘Did your parents know?’

  ‘Yes, eventually.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They trusted me. He was someone they respected, from our community. A writer, a poet.’

  Dominic holds her, willing the knowledge away. ‘You’re my first.’

  She kisses him. ‘Yes. But now you’re initiated. It’s done. Are you relieved?’

  ‘Yes.’ He can’t lie.

  She laughs. ‘I can tell. You are positively beaming.’ She strokes his cheek; an Old World gesture, he thinks. ‘You’re so handsome when you smile.’ She throws back the sheets. ‘Are you hungry?’

  In the kitchen he lolls about, watching her at the stove. ‘Can I help?’ he asks.

  ‘Not this time,’ she answers. ‘Tonight you are my guest.’

  She sits him at the dining room table and brings him chicken in white sauce, a bowl of steaming rice dressed with herbs and a salad with walnuts and pungent blue cheese. She uncorks a bottle with a flick of her wrist and pours two glasses of white wine. ‘To us,’ she says, raising her glass.

  He drinks and eats and talks, this person other than Dominic Quinn, recently of Kyneton, now from the north side of town. The gas fire warms the room; rain thrums gently on the roof. His bare feet rest on soft, thick carpet. He’ll wake soon and find himself back in the bungalow on Rose Street, or in the rented house on Beauchamp — wake into the cold of early morning, the ride to Romsey ahead of him. It must be a dream, for how can a life change so much for the better from one day to the next? He feels expansive, eloquent: perhaps a little of the Old World has seeped into him. At the end of the meal he, too, raises his glass. ‘To Nuala Egan, who gave me the opportunity of finding you.’ His euphoria vanishes. If only he could find Mary as well.

  ‘And to Mary,’ says Hanna, as if she’s read his mind.

  The next morning he wakes early, stirred by the sounds of a foreign place — the hum of the refrigerator, a bird’s raucous call. He slips from the bed and throws on his shirt and trousers and wanders the house. At the front door he takes care to stay hidden: it would be stupid of him to be seen by a neighbour at this hour of the day, with his hair uncombed, his shoes in hand. A pair of green parrots in the date palm stop splitting fruit to eye him with mistrust. He almost laughs. ‘I take your point,’ he says, and returns to the bedroom.

  By now Hanna’s awake, propped on an elbow, her hair about her face. He sits nervously on the edge of the bed, combs his hair with his fingers and stares at the floor. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? Some toast?’ he asks. How should a bloke behave the morning after, with the woman he’s lost his virginity to the night before?

  Hanna solves his problem. ‘First of all, I always drink coffee in the morning. And secondly, please come here and kiss me.’

  Breakfast is rye bread, butter and jam, sweet-tasting cheese, and coffee dripped through a filter. ‘Shop-bought bread,’ Hanna says, holding up the bag. ‘Mama doesn’t have time to bake now that she’s working.’ Her mother teaches French at a girls’ school in Malvern, she tells him. ‘Mama wouldn’t call herself fluent, but still her French is better than that of most of the other teachers. Of course she’d find it much easier to teach German, but there’s not much call for it these days.’

  Coffee cups in hand, they drift from the table to the bookcases that line the walls. Hanna runs a fingertip across the crooked spines of ancient volumes, over a pair of plain silver candlesticks. She picks up a framed photograph and hands it to him. It’s of her parents, and was taken recently, she tells him. He sees a man and a woman, both slight and dark-haired. Although they’re smiling directly at the camera, he has the impression that their attention is elsewhere. They lean towards each other, their arms interlocked as if holding each other up. The man in the photograph has Hanna’s eyes, her fine, straight nose. ‘You’re very like your father,’ he says.

  She takes the photograph from him and studies it, as if for the first time. ‘I have my father’s looks and my mother’s temperament. At least, that’s the family wisdom.’ She places the picture back on the shelf. ‘What about you?’

  He shrugs. ‘I look like my mother. Other than that I don’t really know.’ He senses she is waiting for something more. Is there some-thing of his father he can salvage and make his? His mind is a blank.

  ‘And Mary?’ Hanna asks gently, breaking the silence. ‘Who’s she like?’

  He doesn’t know how to answer her.

  ‘I can’t walk you to the station,’ Hanna says, once breakfast is over. ‘Not today. Too many people around here with the ability to put two and two together, and none of them will see any reason why my parents shouldn’t be informed of their great skill with arithmetic.’

  He smiles. ‘It sounds just like Kyneton.’

  Balaclava, Windsor, Prahran. Alone in the train carriage, the long, narrow backyards of south-eastern Melbourne offered up through the rattling window, he dozes and dreams of Hanna’s naked body while his cock stirs and grows hard. He’d thought himself a man, newly minted, after his father died, and again on his first day at the post office, but that was before he knew that the borders of adulthood were not solely marked out by duty and industry. Pleasure must now be factored in. He opens his eyes as the train pulls into Richmond station, high above Punt Road. Pleasure: a silky word, secretive, almost seedy. It’s not one he often speaks, but maybe he should, at least to himself.

  13

  ‘My monthly is late,’ Mary tells Clarissa in their favourite corner of the Downbeat Club, near the arched window that overlooks Little Collins Street. ‘I didn’t plan to tell you. It’s just hard to keep it to myself.’

  Clarissa puts down her glass. ‘How late?’

  ‘Two weeks, I think.’

  ‘Not panic stations yet.’ Clarissa doesn’t smile. ‘Is it Sam’s? If you are, that is.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He won’t want to know about it. You don’t have any misty-eyed ideas about that, do you?’

  Mary drops her head. ‘No.’

  Clarissa’s expression softens. She puts her hand over Mary’s. Her fingers are cool, her nails salmon-pink, and Mary’s reminded of the tinned salmon she mashes with mayonnaise for the lunchtime sandwiches at the café — the tiny backbones crushed against the blades of the fork. Her stomach grumbles, as if it’s reminded too. ‘I’m sorry,’ Clarissa says. ‘I keep forgetting how young you are.’

  ‘I don’t think my age makes any difference. It’d still be a problem if I was twenty-five or thirty, not seventeen. It’s not being married, you know.’

  Clarissa nods. ‘Yes. Fair enough.’ She takes her hand away. ‘You want my advice? Sit tight for a bit. Nature has its ways.’ She looks over Mary’s shoulder. ‘Ah, here comes the man himself,’ she says in a false, flat voice.

  Mary turns to see Sam crossing the room. She and Clarissa watch as he weaves his way through the throng at the bar. A girl in a green satin dress touches his arm as he draws close, and puts her mouth to his ear. Sam smiles, lingers for the briefest of moments. He glances towards their table. Mary gives a little wave. I’m carrying your baby. At least, I m
ight be. Why, she could stand up right now and shout it across the room. She bites her lip. Clarissa’s right: Sam won’t be happy. Well, she’s not exactly over the moon herself.

  And yet, a baby — her own creation, a perfectly formed little being who’d smile and pull her hair like Mrs Carroll’s baby did, the day she lifted him from his pram in Mollison Street, the day before she ran away.

  A buzzing starts up inside her head and she has the sensation of tilting uncontrollably forward — the tottery vertigo of nightmares. For so long she’s been moving unimpeded, all the fussy rules of her childhood rolling away like water. She’s always loved the story of Moses parting the Red Sea. That’s how it’s been for her, too: a smooth, shining path ahead, the obstacles stacked on either side. Is she really going to have a baby? Is the deep, dark sea about to come crashing in?

  Clarissa beckons Mary to lean closer. ‘Let me know if you’re still not right in two weeks’ time,’ she says. ‘I know where to go.’

  ‘Go?’ Mary blinks. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Oh, you innocent. You don’t have to go through with it. It can be fixed, you know.’ Clarissa’s voice is low and persuasive. ‘It’ll cost, but the good ones do. Don’t worry: Lucien will pay, darling heart. We’ll just tell him I need a new dress.’

  The thing is, she feels so very ordinary. Impossible to believe — almost impossible — that inside her uterus there might be a tiny Mary-Madeleine-Sam paddling around in her blood, just as she once swam alongside her brother. I now know what you went through, she might write to her mother, carrying me inside you, all the while picturing what I’d look like: the shape of my face, the colour of my eyes and hair. She flings open her bedroom window and leans over the sill until the chill of the southerly brings her to her senses. A letter to her mother? She knows exactly what reply she’d get. You’re a sinner, Mary Quinn, a constant disappointment. Heck, she doesn’t want a baby. Hasn’t she told herself that a hundred times already?