The Pages

by Murray Bail

  ‘I was all right. But thank you.’

  Erica remained staring at the sheep.

  ‘It wasn’t deep. And I’m not entirely helpless.’ Also she could swim. She seemed to be talking to herself. ‘What are you laughing at? It looked as if an animal was in the midst of drowning.’

  Now she’d lost sight of the sheep. And she wanted above all to keep seeing it. As long as it didn’t die under the immense, almost white sky. To one side, he was gazing in the opposite direction at one of the paddocks.

  Suddenly she could have shoved or punched him.

  ‘You don’t care. Out here you become accustomed to the suffering of animals. It happens all around you – every single day. It’s part of the general situation. There might be an animal in pain, but you just get on with the job, don’t you? What does it matter to you? Each animal is merely a unit – I don’t want to say a cog – in the vast machine which is the producing farm.’

  ‘You sound like Wesley. Different voice, that’s all. All up here.’ He tapped his forehead.

  In wet trousers and top Erica climbed into the ute, folded her arms. Once more a misunderstanding. And it had happened early. Breathing through her mouth, she asked herself why it typically had to be like this. A mismatch of opinion or the way of expressing it triggered in her a sharper observation of a person’s defects, which suddenly protruded the way rocks appear in a paddock. It was awkward now sitting next to him. She felt unsettled. What was that all about? If she brought her intellect into the situation she knew he would suffer; and so she hadn’t. Sooner or later every man presented difficulties; and those difficulties came forward and remained almost as physical shapes. The other person as obstacle! It was why she allowed herself to live alone. She felt unadorned.

  Just the one hand resting on the wheel, Roger Antill appeared unconcerned. He didn’t have a clue what was going through her head. The men she came across were formidable for all the wrong reasons. An exception was Sophie’s father, the manufacturer. She was pleasantly hypnotised by the size of his head, and with it his experienced, deep-vowelled rotund way of talking. Her life was more placid in Sydney. She was holding onto the door again as they slowly drove downstream to where the creek widened. Seated beside her this man consisted of a large number of gaps. Everything he did or said was unsatisfactory to Erica, even when they saw ahead a sodden sheep struggle out of the shallows, and he said nothing.

  By the time they returned to the homestead her clothes had dried.

  From the veranda Sophie stood up from the planter’s chair and came forward.

  ‘Where have you been? Why didn’t you let me know? You know I would want to go. I don’t understand you.’

  As Roger sauntered off, Sophie’s confusion overflowed into Erica.

  ‘Why did you do this?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  Following her into the house, Sophie whispered, ‘What’s happened here?’

  Now it was Sophie’s turn to examine her friend’s confusion and be saddened by it; or so it seemed.

  ‘Please stop it. We’ve been looking over the property, that’s all, the extent of it, the scenery. We saw sheep and trees.’

  ‘Yes. And?’

  Erica couldn’t explain it either.

  ‘The creek’s turned into a torrent. Apparently it was a fox in the distance, running at an angle. Overall it was interesting.’

  ‘You’re not saying anything. Try me again.’

  To get a result, Sophie occasionally used a small amount of dynamite.

  For when Erica spoke it was as if she wasn’t interested in herself. She barely said ‘I’. Instead, Erica’s absorption in thought as a subject made her appear impersonal – which in turn was beginning to concern her. Already she was having doubts about her reaction to Roger Antill. She didn’t know what had got into her. If it had registered with him at all he’d see she was a stony, opinionated woman who flew off the handle – and she wasn’t like that, not really.

  The smaller woolshed of unpainted corrugated iron, patched with lighter grey sheets, had a slight tilt and two blank windows (no curtains). A woman could never fail to be amazed at how close it was to the house. Imagine: during shearing and crutching all those sheep crowding the yards, as more and more arrived, the dogs running around in semi-circles, and the rich collective smell of sheep, the clouds of dust kicked up, and the extra flies – not to mention the constant foul language of men knee-deep in sheep that the women in the house could not block from their ears. For this reason, and as the property grew in size and the flocks multiplied, the shed in the mid nineteen thirties was replaced by a much larger one, positioned at a good distance from the house.

  Machinery and buildings no longer used on sheep stations are left where they are. Over the seasons they change colour and subside, attracting rust, weeds and patient shadow, as they return to the earth, though not entirely.

  On the afternoon Wesley returned in his lightweight suit, and after washing his face and hands he went over to the small woolshed with Roger and Lindsey in tow, and pulled open the door. They stepped inside. Lines of silver light from the loose-fitting sheets of corrugated iron, and the various nail holes piercing the walls, intersected the brown stillness, silent from its previous activity, and illuminated the wool table like an altar. Along one side the wooden pens were in shadow.

  ‘Almost, but not quite cathedral,’ Wesley reportedly said, which had Roger and Lindsey scratching their heads. Evidently, Wesley still had one foot back in the old world. If it was all right by them, he’d like to take over the shed as his place of work.

  17

  FOLLOWING HIS struggle with Wesley Antill the orderly known as Sheldrake didn’t appear again in the courtyard. His stool stood empty. Surrounded by the different chairs occupied by figures each producing smoke, the chrome legs supporting a red vinyl seat took on a stubborn, accusatory presence. To Wesley the slit in the cheap red seat seemed to be pointing the finger directly at him. After all, it was he who…The other orderlies appeared unconcerned, but since the little scuffle to regain his chair he felt they had accepted him less easily, even though he hadn’t before taken much notice of them.

  Without Sheldrake there to crack the whip the conversation was certainly desultory.

  Then one of them sat down and came out with his name.

  ‘Poor old Hendrik, I hear he’s got cancer.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Cancer where?’ Wesley asked.

  Hendrik – has a Dutch ring; an English father, by the look.

  Someone made a sympathetic clicking sound.

  ‘You can’t possibly think it’s your fault,’ Mrs Kentridge cried out, as soon as he mentioned it.

  And when Wesley had told Rosie about the chair incident and the altered mood of the others she stopped what she was doing – writing a long letter to her married sister – and to his surprise concentrated on the problem (what ‘problem’?), and asked detailed questions from every conceivable angle, the original cubist, trying to give a shape to the situation. Analysing possible reasons-for could absorb Rosie for hours at a time.

  ‘Anyway, he’s in strife now.’

  ‘I can see you having a shocking temper,’ she said, still thinking of the business with the chair. And not for the first time she asked, ‘Why is that?’

  ‘The emotions are a difficult category,’ was all he could say – attempt at a joke. ‘I am working on it.’

  Strange how lead-footed he became during these conversations, even with Rosie. Wesley had wanted his chair back; it was his. That was all. But to march up and simply lunge at Sheldrake – where was David Hume’s courtesy of argument? He wondered whether the plainness of the dry-grass rural life could be responsible.

  Every day he and Rosie spoke to each other, and the nights he wasn’t at Virginia Kentridge’s they slept together. More and more Wesley wanted to talk to somebody about his latest philosophical understanding or misunderstandings, really a thinking al
oud. It was sometimes a matter of shaking off a loose idea. While he tried to narrow his way of seeing, Rosie encouraged him here and there to enrich his way of seeing. She had a broad take on subjects parallel to philosophy – religious thought and three ancient languages being some – which filled out her voice and shadowy flesh, her lips, and scented her skin, at least as far as Wesley was concerned. Areas of soaked-up learning had added to her; they were hidden, but came out as generosity. Her mouth was open. ‘I don’t want to be regarded as something like a sister,’ she said late one night. By then they were sleeping naked, his wrist warming her waist.

  Wesley asked if he could bring Rosie to one of his mother’s Thursday soirees. To be on the safe side, Mrs Antill didn’t invite any of her friends. From the sofa she held out her hand and let it droop. ‘Excuse this,’ she apologised, ‘I am feeling fragile these days.’ Mrs Antill wore a wheat-coloured satin dressing gown which added to her leisured watchfulness. She had a steady handsome face containing trace elements of Wesley’s jaw, all the more interesting for being haggard. Although she looked carefully at the younger woman she wasn’t sure what to make of her.

  Walking home Rosie said, ‘Definitely a statement, your mother stretched out there on the couch.’

  ‘I haven’t seen her like that before,’ Wesley admitted.

  ‘She’s smaller than I thought. I liked her. Is she still not speaking to your friend, the black widow?’

  Virginia Kentridge? In the space of an evening she’d go through three or four different moods. Overall she insisted on pulling him towards her; wanting to keep him there. Virginia was serious about this. During the day she couldn’t understand why he couldn’t be there, and when he was there how his mind seemed to be somewhere else. His large presence in her house, inside her, it was almost enough; for they didn’t talk much. She dressed up for him. She could be shameless. There was a general moist breathlessness, as when she directed his head to between her legs, as if there was not a lot of time.

  For Wesley it became confusing. It was not something he could discuss with Rosie, and as a sign of loss of interest he was especially attentive to Virginia – and in turn her happy response confused him further.

  With some difficulty he found where Sheldrake lived. It was near the hospital, off Forbes Street, a ground floor one-bedroom in a brown building without a locked entrance; Hendrik kept his front door ajar, to entice people to enter.

  When Wesley knocked and poked his head in, he showed no surprise.

  ‘This is mighty kind of you. The rest of those bastards couldn’t give a shit.’

  ‘They said to say hello.’

  ‘No-hopers all of them.’

  In flannel pyjamas on special from Woolworths, Sheldrake lay in bed, just a sheet covering the immense rise of his stomach which heated the entire room.

  ‘It’s all here,’ he prodded, ‘running amok as I speak. It’s in the stomach area. The bowel, liver, lungs. Nothing can be done. I had been feeling a bit tired, that’s all.’

  Wesley realised that at the hospital Sheldrake’s usual elongated stool would have been uncomfortable.

  Tomorrow, Sheldrake was due in the hospice. ‘Take a seat!’

  And Wesley too gave a smile at their recent history.

  Everybody was trying to be funny, while he wanted to remain serious. Why he had made the visit he wasn’t at all sure. He looked around the room. In the corner was a neat selection of news magazines. A bookshelf had on display a concise Oxford and an encyclopaedia held together by a ginger rubber band. Above, in a gilt frame, was a photo-realist scene of a perfectly mirrored lake surrounded by snow and pine trees.

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

  Wesley had always liked this aspect of Sheldrake, the large man, now having trouble breathing. Wasn’t it Schopenhauer who placed a gold coin on his café table every day, as he ate his lunch, to encourage one of the gawping onlookers to say something – anything – that would be of interest to him? (And any takers? Not one.)

  ‘Can I make you a cup of tea, or anything?’

  Sheldrake shook his head and looked up at the ceiling.

  ‘How’s the pain?’

  ‘I already know that.’

  ‘Pain, I haven’t had much experience of.’ Virginia would have quickly said, ‘Touch wood!’

  ‘You have something to look forward to.’

  Wesley wanted to know if he was afraid. What can it all possibly amount to – being alive, on two feet, and being aware of it, then, after a short time, it coming to an end.

  Instead, he stood up to examine the walls which he noticed had been papered over with printed pages, the walls blurring with columns of words, sentences.

  ‘That’s the Holy Scriptures you’re looking at,’ Sheldrake turned his head. ‘If you’re interested.’

  He had never thought of Sheldrake being religious.

  ‘I’ve glued them on the wall, as an aide memoire. Do you know what an aide memoire is?’

  Wesley said nothing.

  ‘I don’t know what’s worse, the Old Testament or the New,’ Sheldrake said in a loud voice. ‘I’ve glued them up in case I forget what a load of baloney it all is. I want to be reminded every day. Pick a verse there, any verse and read it out. Do you see what I’m getting at?’

  Now his ring of yellow hair took on the fallen halo look as he became stuck in a convulsion of hacking, spitting and reddening.

  ‘I’m being punished.’ He tried laughing, only to cough still further.

  ‘I was about to say,’ Wesley remained standing, ‘the accumulation of facts doesn’t always add up to much.’

  Did this man alone under the sheet have a wife somewhere? A few children discarded along the way? What about a black-sheep brother trying to grow coffee in New Guinea? A younger sister out at Bankstown bringing up three kids after the father shot through?

  ‘You’re a thoughtful character, I see that,’ Sheldrake searched around with his words. ‘You’re probably smarter than me. I didn’t mind the hospital. The job was a good one…the sitting around and talking out in the sun. I liked it.’

  Wesley waited as the large man closed his eyes.

  ‘Thank you, thank you. I’ll give it a rest now.’

  Hendrik Sheldrake would remain a small unravelled knot in Antill’s life – unexplained.

  The day, shortly afterwards, he died in the hospice was the day Wesley found his mother on the floor by the sofa, the television on. After phoning his father, Wesley sat by the window with its view of the Botanic Gardens, and ransacked the philosophers to explain turmoil, better still to correct it – his first life-shock. Only later would answers be available. Instead of being comforted by Rosie, it was Wesley who held her, as if he was comforting her, and for the first time slipped in, necessarily hectic in their immediate life-producing movements; once, and once more.

  Rosie stroked his nose with her little finger.

  ‘What might you be thinking?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet.’

  He was thinking it was time he hardened himself. Part of the attraction of softness was the enveloping sense of blurriness, while he wanted as much as possible to preserve the outline of his own self. As a result, he thought his understanding of the most serious of all subjects, philosophy, had become more and more out of reach. It was a mish-mash of the thoughts of others. Local complications, responses, confusions were coming in from all directions. It was true that a close-by death introduced a form of hardness. The death of a parent was nothing less than a before/after moment. He was an altered person. Already he looked at the world differently. And it was a long time since he had been forced into attempting to think clearly about what lay not on the page, but directly in life in front of him.

  Wesley hadn’t been returning Virginia’s calls. It was she who had been holding her lean finger on the buzzer to his door. If she’d had a rock she’d have thrown it through the window.

  She posted a card. ‘Is this a serious person, or what?�
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  She was right. But in some areas he couldn’t do much better. He wrote, ‘I’m sorry.’ Quickly added, ‘It’s time I left.’

  Later, with Rosie, he could hear himself sounding furtive. His words were not accurate enough. And yet in trying to be true to himself he considered he had the best of intentions – even though he wasn’t sure where he was going. Several times he said very firmly, carefully, he would keep in touch.

  18

  THE GREATEST of the great philosophers followed the solitary life, a life of relative simplicity, living alone, in that sense a hard life, just the candle on the table, whereas the founder of psychoanalysis and his disciples and rivals enjoyed married lives, children and gardens which provided the warmth and intimacy of the softer life. The philosopher is interested in silence. The psychoanalyst is drawn to the other person, to words strung out; they’re prepared to encourage the horizontal halting sentences, faint noise of traffic outside, someone on the street shouting. Spare a thought for these conduits in comfortable clothing: after listening at regular set intervals to a procession of people one by one thinking aloud about themselves, they return home in the evening to encounter more words, more cries for attention, where they are expected to apply not ordinary everyday understanding, but unusual additional understanding.

  More and more Sydney has come to resemble a word-factory the way it produces extra, spoken words.

  Psychoanalysts have not seen the need to set up rooms away from the city (Sydney). An overlay of voices and other distractions has separated city dwellers from their natural selves, in turn aggravating all manner of obstructions, confusions, the specifically named phobias, which cry out for treatment. It is the philosophers who have shown a penchant for pastoral areas, often up in the mountains. There’s been quite a history of it; many distinguished names hiding themselves away. And then what happened? The remoteness of the places the philosophers chose as their ‘work worlds’ drew curiosity and respect from the city dwellers who couldn’t help embroidering the distant uncomfortable huts, towers, the forests and lakes, until they became further isolated and frozen in the aura of myth.