Joyful

by Robert Hillman

  The sound of the planks of the little bridge thudding broke his trance. He hurried to the balcony in time to see the Enchanted station wagon below, pulling up under the oaks. ‘Not that mad husband again,’ he whispered. But it was Emily Williams who stepped out of the vehicle in a loose summer dress of a past age, lemon and white, surprising.

  ‘Hello!’ he called.

  Emily looked up, shielding her eyes. She called: ‘I’ve brought you what you wanted!’

  Leon helped her unload half-a-dozen white bin-liners full of clothing and shoes and bits and pieces from the back of the station wagon. He glimpsed items that had once belonged to his wife, a little blue blouse of French linen, the Catherine Deneuve dress, a Kenzo sarong. He hoped Emily would go away as soon as everything was stacked on the verandah, and deflected her attempts at conversation with a firm silence.

  ‘I’ve started writing,’ she said, climbing the steps behind him, ‘but only because Daniel says I have to. I honestly don’t know what you’re trying to achieve.’ She dropped a parcel of folders held together with two rubber bands on the top of one of the cartons, then stood gazing at what she’d just delivered with a sorrowful shaking of her head. ‘I honestly do not know.’

  ‘It’s not something that should concern you,’ said Leon.

  Emily nodded, hands clasped below her waist. She lowered her head briefly, as if allowing a tactical pause before continuing with whatever she had in mind. ‘I can’t call you Mister Joyce,’ she said. ‘Do you mind if I call you Leon?’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘Why are you so unhappy?’ Emily said, turning her head to one side and softening her gaze, as if this were a genuine question rather than a type of accusation. ‘Why is that?’

  ‘It’s not a question I wish to answer.’

  With her hair brushed away from her face, the fullness and density of Emily’s eyebrows were more completely revealed to Leon. He thought she might have taken the trouble to pluck the stray hairs that grew just above the bridge of her nose.

  ‘I’m happy sometimes,’ said Leon. ‘Is that dress from Tess?’

  ‘No. I do have some nice things of my own, you know.’

  ‘May I see the label?’

  Emily offered her back and lowered her head. A single hook-and-eye secured the neck, leaving a tailored gape down to the waist.

  ‘It won’t be on the neck. It will be on the side stitching halfway up. It’s an Ellen Hoskins, I think. She had a shop in Collins Street in the fifties and sixties.’

  Emily lifted the skirt of the dress and found the Ellen Hoskins label. ‘I wanted to show you that I can look nice without Tess if I want to.’

  ‘Well, you’ve succeeded.’

  ‘Can we have a talk? Would you do that for me, at least?’

  ‘I’d prefer not.’

  ‘It’s just that I don’t understand you. I wish I understood you more.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bother.’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ve made myself look as nice as I can for you! Isn’t that worth something?’

  Leon sighed and acquiesced with a vague motion of his hand. He was desperate to be rid of Emily but could not find the words that would make her go away.

  ‘Did you know that Tess liked to dress me?’ said Emily. She was now resting against the balustrade, facing forward with her sandalled feet parted. ‘She bought me some very lovely things. Do you know why?’

  ‘No. But I imagine you will put it in what you’re writing for me.’

  ‘Tessie was very controlling,’ said Emily. ‘Did you find that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Leon. The leading questions were intensely irritating.

  ‘At first she tried to stop Daniel from sleeping with me when she wasn’t here, then she had a better idea. She made me into a present for him.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Leon.

  ‘She told me how to “please” him. Seriously!’

  ‘I can imagine that.’

  ‘She told me words to call him. She told me what to say when we were in bed.’

  What was so exasperating to Leon about Emily’s manner was her assumption of engagement. All intimacy was conveyed by the crude agency of confession.

  ‘Mrs Williams, is this serving any purpose? I have established a procedure for you to follow. You are meant to write your memoir down on paper. No oral account is called for.’

  Emily ignored the objection. ‘Do you know the weird thing about me? Do you know the weird thing that makes me stay with Daniel? I can’t love anyone who loves me. I can’t.’ She struck herself on the chest. Her face had flushed an uneven pink as she spoke, tears mounting in her eyes.

  Leon said, ‘You must try to calm yourself.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to embarrass you. And you needn’t stand so far away. I’m not going to hug you.’

  ‘Mrs Williams, passion nearly always leads to disaster. That is its nature. I don’t know what else I can say.’

  Emily nodded, not in agreement but in acknowledgment of Leon’s attempt at a response. She turned her head and watched the currawongs stalking in the grass beneath the elms. ‘Please don’t give him all that money,’ she said, still looking away.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve made an agreement,’ said Leon. ‘I can’t alter it.’

  ‘You could,’ said Emily. She was looking at Leon now. ‘Why don’t you say you made a mistake? Say that.’

  ‘No.’

  Emily nodded. She remained silent for the space of a minute, then gathered herself and spoke again. ‘I know I’m not beautiful,’ she said. ‘But maybe I’m okay enough. Maybe. If you help me with Daniel, I can come here and wear nice clothes for you. Tess told me you liked to dress her in nice clothes. Like this dress. And other things I could do. I could show you around the bush. I’ve got two horses, Nutty and Jo. I could take you riding and show you the bush. You’d love it, I promise. And anything else. Anything you want.’

  ‘Mrs Williams, I don’t want anything from you. Nothing. Except what I’ve put into our agreement. Would you please go now.’

  Leon doubted she would leave and so even as he spoke he was preparing to turn his back on her and step back inside. But then he saw an impediment. What if this madwoman took her boxes and bags away with her? He waited, dithering in his need.

  Emily remained propped against the balustrade. Without looking down, she used the toe of her right sandal to shuck off the left one, then the toes of her left foot to remove the right sandal. She pushed the two sandals clear and stood upright in her bare feet. As soon as she bent her head forward and reached behind her neck, Leon realised what she intended. He waved his hands at her in crossover fashion, like someone in the middle of a road signalling to an oncoming driver to stop.

  ‘Mrs Williams, no!’

  The waist of the dress was loose enough for the garment to fall past her hips. It gathered at her feet with a sound like an abbreviated sigh. She stood naked in the bright daylight, hands reaching back to rest on her buttocks.

  The feature of Emily’s nakedness that saved Leon from giving way to anger was her extraordinary mass of dark pubic hair, luxuriant enough for her to tie it with ribbons if she’d wished. It imparted a biscuity wholesomeness and made her more nudist than seductress. Leon noticed, with an interest that lasted half a second, the peculiar deepening of Emily’s hair colouring running from crown to crotch, hazel topmost, then the solid brown hue of her eyebrows, finally sable. For a few months of Leon’s marriage, Tess had favoured the girleen look of a waxed pubic area, but it required too much maintenance for her to persist with it and she’d given it up with glee at about the time she’d met Daniel. So this must be his taste, Daniel’s taste: the free-range female groin.

  ‘Mrs Williams,’ Leon said, ‘your body is attractive no doubt, but I am not the person to reveal it to, I do assure you. Tess must have told you that. I want to thank you for bringing all of this, but I hope you will now leave me to myself.’

&nbs
p; Emily took two slow steps toward Leon, toes pointed like a dancer. She drew her hands over her body with a caressing motion. Leon thought himself in grave danger of screaming. He glanced quickly at the cartons and bags, trying to gauge if he could gather them all—no, he couldn’t!—in a giant embrace, run inside and slam the door behind him. It was not Emily’s nakedness that was working on him so violently, but the absurdity of the temptress role she’d adopted.

  Emily didn’t quite risk an embrace or kiss but held Leon by his shoulders and kneaded his flesh through the fabric of his shirt. She’d assumed a drowsy look of longing.

  ‘I can be a boy for you. Do you want me to be a boy for you?’

  ‘No I do not!’

  Now she did attempt a kiss. Leon held his face away but Emily managed to get her mouth on his earlobe and chewed away like a puppy with a shoe. Leon’s attempts to free himself succeeded only in initiating a ludicrous wobbling dance around and around on the marble floor of the verandah.

  ‘Mrs Williams! Stop it! Please!’

  Emily thrust her lips at Leon but failed to find his mouth. Then abruptly, blessedly, she froze, her face motionless before him. It was as if the message of his aversion had reached her after a technical delay in which it circled the earth blindly twice or fifty times, and was only now having its impact. The strength left her body and she snatched up her dress, wailing, ‘I can’t do this! I can’t do this!’

  Leon took his handkerchief from the pocket of his slacks and dried his ear. He kept a wary eye on Emily as she stepped into the dress, drew it up over her nakedness and felt for the clasp behind her neck.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Her face and neck were crimson. She smoothed the dress with both hands, found a small handkerchief in one of the pockets and rubbed the wet tip of her nose.

  ‘That was…that was very bad of me. I’m truly sorry. Daniel will use that money to go back to Poland. I know it. I’m sorry for…for all of that. You loved someone who didn’t love you. Can you see? Don’t be so hard on me.’

  She stooped to pick up her sandals and went down the steps barefoot, one sandal in each hand. She didn’t open the door of the station wagon but stood in an agitated state half-turned away from Leon. Her lips kept parting but it took a little time before she gained control of her voice. She looked up to where Leon stood at the top of the steps.

  ‘It’s all Tess!’ she said, her voice catching after the first syllable. ‘She’s still here! She makes you do what you’re doing and she makes me do what I’m doing! Even Daniel, she makes him do what he’s doing! Except that he doesn’t care.’

  Once in the driver’s seat she had some trouble untwisting her seatbelt. By this time her shoulders were heaving with sobs. She reversed twice before gaining enough leeway to complete the turn around the oaks.

  =

  A vagrant breeze had picked up the two pages of Sandra Perelman’s letter and dropped one on the small stones of the driveway, the other in the barley grass against the rusting frame of a child’s red tricycle. Leon made a mental note to retrieve the letter but for the time being stood quite still on the verandah, his handkerchief dangling at his side. He was badly troubled not by his own distress, but by Emily’s. He thought, ‘It’s unkind of me to think of her as such a fool.’ But he could get no further. Finally he sighed and made a waving motion with his hand to dismiss his unease. He pulled the two rubber bands off the folders and papers Emily had left him and read through a list at the top of the pile.

  All the things Tess gave me are here. The notes are on the next five pages. E. Williams

  1—My Catherine Deneuve dress

  2—My Catherine Deneuve bra

  3—Black stirrup slacks

  4—Black shoes high heels + Red shoes high heels +Trainers + Yellow plastic slip-ons

  5—Jeans x 3 pairs

  6—Prada coat

  7—Underwear

  8—Ski wear

  9—My French blouse

  10—Make-up

  11—Circus Soleil calendar 2007

  12—Opera Australia program 2007

  13—Ticket Opera Australia Don Pasquale 2007

  14—Books x 17

  15—Invoice Golden Fleece Hotel Albury (green envelope)

  16—Invoice Maxi Bistro Albury (green envelope)

  17—Invoice Hyatt Hotel Melbourne (green envelope)

  18—Invoice Cressida Wine and Dine Melbourne (green envelope)

  19—Invoice Sportscraft Melbourne (green envelope)

  20—Invoice Borders Melbourne Central (green envelope)

  21—Invoice Readings Carlton (green envelope)

  22—Fountain Pen Mont Blanc

  23—Ballpoint Pen Mont Blanc

  24—Kandy Kolor Kondoms x 2 packets

  25—Sunglasses

  26—Vibrator ‘Atomic’

  27—Tibetan dildo

  28—Vibrator ‘Dee-Lite-Full’

  29—My gold chain necklace + earrings + bracelet

  30—Dalai Lama prayer beads

  31—Fruit juicer

  32—In the brown envelope letters + emails + cards + notes

  The Catherine Deneuve dress and the bra had been purchased by Leon in a moment of weakness from a dealer in Paris who specialised in stealing garments from celebrities. It was a shame that Tess should think of giving them away. They were collection pieces, too small for Tess, certainly too small for Emily.

  He looked them up in the notes.

  Tess wanted me to have the Catherine Deneuve dress and the Catherine Deneuve bra because I was feeling horrible after the termination (which I did not desire) and also I had very low libido due to depression. I never wore the dress and bra; neither one was my size but it was nice to have them.

  Leon didn’t read any further. Instead he gathered dry twigs and branches from about the property and tried to start a fire by holding the flame of a Bic lighter to the twigs. When that didn’t work he searched the sheds and outbuildings for paper and found some old pornographic magazines with captions in two languages. He tore the pages out and used them to get a blaze going.

  The fire made short work of Emily’s garments. Below the taller flames, her shoes roasted on a glowing bed of embers. When the garments were gone, he tossed the two vibrators and the Tibetan dildo into the flames. One of the plastic vibrators came to life and writhed on the embers; the other developed a web of fine cracks before splitting lengthways. The dildo, ornately carved from wood, painted and lacquered, resisted the heat for a few minutes. The jewellery, the make-up, the pens, sunglasses, prayer beads and juicer he threw on last. Or almost last. He’d kept the books back, thinking of the bonfires in Germany in 1933. But in the end he burned the books too.

  chapter 19

  Little Courtney

  THE POSTER had been distributed far and wide within the shire. Everybody had seen it.

  The girl pictured was dark-skinned, pretty, her lips full and defined. The lettering read:

  MISSING—OUR DAUGHTER—COURTNEY SINGH—

  SEVENTEEN YEARS OF AGE—HAVE YOU SEEN COURTNEY???—

  RESIDENT OF BEECHWORTH

  Four contact numbers followed.

  ‘You would’ve seen this in your travels, Mr Delli?’

  Emmanuel Delli leaned forward from the waist to study the poster. He stroked his chin and narrowed his eyes. The policeman displaying the poster on a green clipboard held it a little higher and a little closer to Delli.

  ‘With milk?’ said Emmanuel. He and the policeman were standing in the kitchen of the Delli home in Braidwood Street. Senior Constable Cuff had accepted the offer of tea.

  ‘No milk. Black. Thanks. You would’ve seen this in your travels, Mr Delli?’

  ‘As black as the ace of spades?’

  ‘If you like. You would’ve seen this in your travels, Mr Delli? If I can have your attention for a minute?’

  ‘Starting from now? One minute?’

  ‘You would’ve seen this in your travels? I assume?’

  It w
as a weekday. Emmanuel Delli’s wife was not at home. No impediments to amusement. Senior Constable Cuff had come calling with smooth-shaven cheeks and fair hair and a spray of tiny freckles across his nose. Also an unpoliceman-like silver stud in his left ear.

  Delli handed Senior Constable Cuff his tea in a mug that had been a gift from a lady professor at Melbourne University. It was ornamented with a picture of Ludwig Wittgenstein and a quotation that read: ‘Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must shut the fuck up.’

  Delli sipped his tea from a plain white mug. Before responding to Cuff, he allowed just enough time to pass for his silence to act antagonistically on the policeman.

  ‘Little Courtney,’ he said. ‘Little Courtney has gone missing. Little Courtney with the alluring bosom. Like a palace dancer. Yes, I have noticed that little Courtney has gone missing.’

  ‘And no sign of her, as far as you’re concerned?’

  Emmanuel smiled. ‘“The constable watched closely for any telltale sign of guilt in the visage of the professor. But when the dusky stranger from the tragic land of Iraq finally answered the constable’s question, he seemed perfectly composed. ’Aven’t seen bloomin’ ’ide nor ’air of the lass, he said.”’

  ‘That’s a “no” is it, Mister Delli?’

  Emmanuel said, ‘You’ll wish to take notes. May I suggest we sit?’

  Cuff took a chair at the kitchen table. Emmanuel sat opposite. The table was covered in a fringed cloth picturing a koala in a gum tree, two kangaroos, a kookaburra and a man on a galloping horse swinging a whip. The lettering on the cloth read, ‘Kuddly the Koala’, ‘Boomer and His Missus’, ‘Giggles’, ‘The Man from Snowy River’. The lash of the whip wielded by the man on horseback had been elongated to form the words, ‘Aussie Icons’. The cloth was a gift from one of Daanya Delli’s patients at the clinic in Wangaratta. Emmanuel adored it. A country—imagine this!—that derived its sense of identity from marsupials!