A Body of Water

by Beverley Farmer

  He had a long drive from the hills to Melbourne and back. A Saturday came when he had to ring up to say he was stranded and couldn’t make it. My mother shouted into the phone, slamming it down before I could speak to him. I sobbed on my bed, unable to believe it, while she and Auntie Jan had one of their fights about who had to stay home and mind us. (Auntie Jan moved out soon after that and I was relieved, I think.) I fought fiercely against being left with the babysitter who sometimes came and minded the twins: my mother only tried it that once. Another frosty Saturday afternoon she dressed us all and I stood on the porch for an hour watching the pigeons among leaves as red and shiny as apples, until she came running out and hugged me, lifted me up in her arms (and I was heavy): ‘He mustn’t be coming, love,’ she said. ‘Come in now and we’ll watch TV.’

  ‘Did he ring up?’ She shook her head. ‘No! I want Dad!’ I struggled. I howled. The sky turned yellow before I would give in. My head was exploding. My bad headaches had started about that time and a hot bath helped to take the pain away; that night when she walked in to soap my back she found me doubled over with my face in the water and in her fear she made me sleep in her bed that night, the first of many. I was put on sedatives. The headaches lasted whole days. I cried and vomited. I fell asleep a lot in class and at playtimes I hid in the grounds of the tall church of which my school was part, a grey stone monument with ruffles of cold leaves alive with pigeons.

  The Saturday outings lapsed after that and instead my father started picking me up once a fortnight and taking me for the night (my sisters were too small, he said) through silvery gum trees to his windy house on the hill. Bellbirds and crows woke us there. We walked through bracken to a creek spilling over a staircase of brown stones and paddled with numb feet, drank out of numb hands. He wanted to live there now, not with us. Why did he? Well, they fought too much, he and my mother: I’d understand one day. Yes, I said, but there was still us children. None of it made sense.

  Now that it was harder for my mother to go out, she filled the house with visitors all weekend. Not many old friends came. These were new ones, strangers in coloured leather clothes, who if they had children came without them. They ignored us, crowding into the courtyard or on cushions around the fireplace, their flagons of black wine flickering, jazz on the stereo; we children played games and watched television upstairs. The babysitter was all right, I had conceded, as long as my mother was still in the house.

  ‘I want Dad.’ That was my refrain, and I did, but back home where we both belonged. Every weekend in the hills was lonelier and sadder than the last. Nevertheless, the first time he cancelled one I plunged into a panic. I was packed and waiting when the phone rang. ‘At this short notice?’ my mother shouted. ‘I’m going out, that’s why. He won’t stay with the babysitter, he goes berserk. Jan can’t. I told you she’s left.’ She stood and sobbed. So I knew: I was ready for her with sobs of my own. She held my fists and tried reasoning with me. She made phone calls. In the end, sighing, she cancelled the babysitter and read aloud on my bed until the girls fell asleep and my eyes were glazing. She kissed us all goodnight. I jammed my face in the pillow.

  Some time later I woke up hot, wet, my head aching, and having struggled out of my pyjamas, lay there covered with nothing but the dusty still light of the lamp that stayed on all night by the bed. The girls inside their white plaits shone like china dolls. If my mother was asleep it would be naughty to wake her. But I heard her laugh and a splash, so I wandered along the passage. The bathroom door half-hid the steamy light. She was standing with her back to me with a glass of red wine in one hand and the soap in the other, and thunderstruck, I saw beyond her my father’s head and knees above a dazzling swirl of water.

  ‘On your knees and I’ll do your back,’ she said, the way she always used to, and he rose up and sent a surge of water out over the tiles, but instead of scolding she laughed. Only he wasn’t Dad. This was some other man whose large soft thighs and genitals were striped with shadows, spotted with long plaques of light inside a loincloth of bubbles. He sipped her wine while her hands spread froth in spirals around his shoulders. Froth clung to her dress, her best, most beautiful dress, a grey silk that moved with the opal shimmer of a pigeon’s neck. Suddenly she shoved his head under, so suddenly that the wave he made surfacing, snorting, splashed over her.

  ‘Oh!’ She tugged the darkening silk open.

  ‘See. I told you to take it off,’ he said, twisting her round so that she squealed, off balance, and taking a wet nipple in under his moustache – but the eyes under his wet ginger hair had caught my shadow’s movement in the doorway.

  ‘Jesus.’ His lips spoke round her nipple as if round a cigarette and the hand holding the glass threw wine over her.

  ‘Luke!’

  ‘Thought you said they were in bed asleep,’ he muttered.

  ‘Mu-um?’

  ‘What’s wrong now?’

  ‘Mum, my head’s hurting.’ But the wet hand that she laid on my brow I angrily shook off.

  ‘Will I get you some medicine?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come on, then. Sorry.’ Her hand dipped into the bath in passing. Downstairs in the bright kitchen she crushed a tablet and mixed it in a spoon with apricot jam. I leaned my head against the slimy wine-scarred belly of her dress, mumbling bitter chalk, thick sugary fruit. ‘Who’s that, Mum?’ And gulped some water.

  ‘Don’t you know? He’s been here before.’

  ‘Mmm?’ So had lots of people. ‘Has he got a headache?’

  ‘A headache?’

  ‘When’s he going home?’

  ‘When he’s out and dry. Where are your pyjamas?’

  ‘I was too hot.’

  After the stairs she gave me a piggyback to bed, bounced me on the lamplit sheets, covered me and kissed my head. ‘Sleep tight,’ she whispered.

  I put my arms round her neck. All that autumn her eyes were red and puffy, but that night they were more than usual. ‘Stay here, Mum.’

  ‘No, it’s time you went to sleep.’

  ‘Can I come into your bed?’

  ‘Not tonight.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The pain’ll be gone in a minute.’

  ‘Why can’t I, Mum?’

  ‘Just do as you’re told.’

  ‘I want Dad!’

  ‘Ssh. You’ll wake the girls.’

  ‘I want Dad.’

  I should have been there with him in his windy house.

  ‘I’m going to get angry with you in a minute.’

  I wailed for a long time and she rocked me, whispering ‘Ssh,’ her hand on my forehead, until with a quick kiss she left. The twins, who had slept through it, sighed, slowly breathing. When I heard that the house was still I crept out again to the door of the spare room. Closed. My mother’s. Closed. In there I thought I heard her rustling, but I was too dazed with tiredness and bafflement to be sure. I thought of opening the door, stumbling in and putting my head on the pillow beside my mother’s, sobbing, waiting for her arm to go round me. ‘Mum, my head’s still sore,’ I mouthed. But she might get angry with me. Why should she? She never had before. In the end tiredness and the cold sent me back to bed.

  I woke to find the courtyard already full to the brim with sunlight like warm water in a pool edged with red weed, though above the walls a high wild wind was spinning the leaves off trees. The girls were dressed and in the sandpit. My mother had set the table outside. A few of the Sunday crowd were there already. A woman with orange hair popped open some champagne, half of which frothed over the bricks. There was a cheer. Scowling across the table waving his arms was the man who had been in the bath. ‘Well, hullo.’ He raised his ginger brows at me: ‘Luke Sleepwalker, eh? Bugger you pigeons,’ he muttered, and now I knew who he was.

  Someone snickered. My mother was there with a basket of toast and hot jam croissants wrapped in cloths. ‘Watch out,’ she said, ‘the pigeons’ll fight you for these.’

  I tugged at her
sleeve. ‘Where’s Auntie Jan?’ It was a while since Auntie Jan had been to our place.

  ‘Later, Luke, I’m busy now, love.’

  I only wanted one croissant but I had to have toast first and not be greedy. Everyone had toast except the man, whose every move I was watching: he only had croissants. They were all talking at once. My mother washed the twins’ hands under the tap, sat them up and fed them and let them down to play again. I shook out the cloths. The pigeons gathered round with soft sounds like sobs. When she poured the tea she put some in my milk, so that black leaves spun down to the bottom of my glass and settled. Someone played a jazz tape and a couple danced. The man, Uncle David, sang along. A flagon of claret passed round. A soft ache had taken root in my head. I dug and filled buckets with the twins, drifted in and watched television and out again.

  A pair of hard hands suddenly grabbed me round the ribs. With a yell I fought free. He roared laughing in my face: Uncle David. I said, ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Hop on my knee,’ he said, and my mother nodded to me, giggling, red in the face. People were looking on. I hung my head and did as I was told.

  ‘What a lump of lard. Hey. Give us a tickle, Luke,’ he said, and I scrabbled my hands in his armpits while he sat there stiffly frowning. ‘My turn,’ he said and tickled hard. I yelled and gasped and rolled, clamped relentlessly. His beer glass fell with a splash on the cloth. ‘Hell. Stronger than he looks. Now hit me. Go on, I know you want to. I want you to. I’m telling you to. Biff, come on. Biff! Ready set? Go!’

  I writhed, throwing myself back against him as if he were still fiercely tickling me, laughing in deep, rhythmic, helpless barks. ‘No,’ I gargled. ‘No! Mum!’ I flung her a glance: she was standing his glass upright, her face set in its smile, her head on one side.

  ‘Go easy, Dave.’

  ‘Luke can take it.’ His moustache rasped hot on my ear: ‘I mean it. Hit me hard! Are you a sook or what? No? Go on, then!’

  I reared up and twisted to face him, my eyes watering, my fists clenched at my throat until I dared to shoot the left one out hard against his cheek. ‘Biff!’ I yelled, and my eyebrows rose into my sweaty hair with the effort of holding my breath. With a roar his head whipped back. My mother spluttered, widening her smile. At that I burst into a high quaver of a laugh, so my mouth was wide open when his open palm, swung wide from the shoulder, smashed into it and sent me thumping onto the bricks at his feet like a sack of flour.

  ‘Luke!’ All I could see was dew-slopped ivy leaves on moss and bricks. The breath from her mouth was a chilly flow along my cheek and down my collar. Parts of my face stung hot and numb. She touched them and her fingers came away dipped in red. ‘Why did you do that?’ she shrieked up into the silence.

  ‘Got a blood nose, has he? Give us a look.’

  A boot stepped forward. I flung an arm over my head and screamed as the sleeve grazed my split lip.

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘That’s what life’s like. You know it. I know it. I reckon the sooner he knows it, the better off he’ll be.’

  ‘Get out.’ She turned. ‘Get him out, for God’s sake, someone. Don’t you ever come near us again.’ Tears were dripping down her chin. She sat and hoisted me into her arms. ‘Open your mouth, love, come on,’ she kept saying into my hair until with a whimper I did as I was told. Her finger running over my teeth wobbled some of them. My mouth tasted inky. A burning lump was sprouting in the wetness of the temple where I had landed. She wiped the tail of blood dangling out of my nose. ‘Is it broken? Thank God.’

  ‘That’s what life’s like,’ I heard him protesting as they took him away. ‘You all know that, don’t you? I know that –’

  ‘You’re going to have a black eye by the look of it,’ she said. ‘Come on, love. A nice hot bath’s what you want.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes, it’ll help to take the pain away. You know that.’

  ‘No! I want Dad!’

  ‘Come on, I’ll carry you.’

  ‘No,’ I howled. ‘No!’ I pushed and kicked at her but she was holding me too tight and in her rough hair, ropy and wet against my throat, I could feel sobs bubbling and bursting, hers, my own.

  JUNE

  RAINY SHEOAKS, bronzy all over now with pollen, shade these roads. The start of winter; and of my second year in this house.

  The past only comes back when the present runs so smoothly that it is like the sliding surface of a deep river. Then one sees through the surface to the depths. In those moments I find one of my greatest satisfactions, not that I am thinking of the past; but that it is then that I am living most fully in the present…But to feel the present sliding over the depths of the past, peace is necessary. The present must be smooth, habitual. For this reason – that it destroys the fullness of life – any break – like that of house moving – causes me extreme distress; it breaks; it shallows; it turns the depth into hard little splinters.

  Virginia Woolf: Moments of Being

  ‘Among Pigeons’ is ready to send out: I’ll try the Australian Literary Supplement with it. My time in the ivy room at the College is nearly up now. I’ve fallen in love with ivy – Boston Ivy, Virginia Creeper, which loses its leaves in winter. How would the bare brick walls of the yard of the Carlton house look, ivy-covered?

  John Updike, in his New Yorker review of The Left-Handed Woman, wrote of Peter Handke that his ‘exacerbated nerves cling like pained ivy in the landscape.’

  I developed the habit of responding to everything that happened around me with language, and I noticed how during these moments of experience language momentarily came alive. In these moments of language, everything which happened seemed to be no longer merely private, but turned into something universal.

  Peter Handke: The Weight of the World: A Journal – quoted in a review on ‘Radio Helicon’. (Where can I find it, is it in print?)

  I think I’ve done all I can, for now at least, with the ‘Vase with Red Fishes’ story – called ‘Interior with Goldfish’ now (or not?) to emphasise its flat surface. I wanted to have the two characters alternately rising from the painted interior to move and be, then flattening back into the picture. Trompe-l’oeil. To have them behave like an M.C. Escher drawing, modulating from plane to plane, form to form, dovetailing…In his Reptiles, lizards rise off the page in the picture and crawl in single file over the items on the desk to re-enter the page; in Drawing Hands, two hands rise off opposite ends of a pinned sheet of paper, each holding a pen with which it is drawing the other’s cuff, having by implication just been drawing the other hand. In Dragon, a dragon has broken through his sheet of paper, his tail in his mouth, and with this in mind I’ve added a few lines that show the woman convulsed, lashing in some inner struggle which she wants to bring to the man’s attention. (I fear the story is clotted, clogged by this. And still, something is missing.) Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid quotes Escher on this picture:

  However much this dragon tries to be spacial, he remains completely flat. Two incisions are made in the paper on which he is printed. Then it is folded in such a way as to leave two square openings. But this dragon is an obstinate beast, and in spite of his two dimensions he persists in assuming that he has three; so he sticks his head through one of the holes and his tail through the other.

  The woman in the story insists on depth, on her own depth of being, where for the man she is part of the surface. She is this dragon biting its tail.

  Rereading The Alexandria Quartet…A sentence from Justine keeps preying on my mind:

  In love they give out nothing of themselves, having no self to give, but enclose themselves around you in an agonized reflection.

  Lawrence Durrell: Justine

  They are the Moslem women of Alexandria, ‘shut in a stall with the oxen, masked, circumcised’. (Compare the Sexologia Chris had when we met, which advised circumcision to cure women’s frigidity and stop them masturbating…) But those words: my heart sinks. Is this how I love? Do I enclos
e myself around a man in an agonized reflection?

  In Paul Zweig’s Three Journeys, on a camping trip alone in the Sahara (by way of a footnote to ‘Red Fishes’):

  Sometimes I take a walk at night, placing a light on the table to guide me back. At a distance of a few hundred yards, my island seems vulnerable and strange. Yet the feeling I have is not fear, but sumptuousness, luxury.

  I don’t have to worry about the view. The desert is all view. I feel like a fish moving its tiny bowl from place to place in the middle of the sea.

  14 June: Taki’s birthday. Fifteen years ago. How I cling. Clamped on the past like pained ivy.

  On the phone to Chris I mentioned The Nets, Sheelagh Kanelli’s crystalline short novel about the twenty-one schoolgirls who drown when a fishing boat taking them for rides overturns, and all the nets spread and hold them under. She based it on a true story – it happened in Crete in the summer of 1971. Remember? I said. In the novel the young fisherman, who had left the drying nets in the boat, can’t swim; he takes refuge in insanity. Remember – he, Chris, said – the island we crossed to once in a storm? How they brought out a coffin no one had known was on board? And the relatives and the priest all waiting on the quay? I had forgotten. It was autumn, nearly winter in 1971, before the snowbound Christmas in the village. I wrote a poem about it this morning. Can I translate it?

  CROSSING TO ZAKYNTHOS

  For Chris

  At the roaring quay, with the ferry tied

  and still at last, we saw a commotion –

  we saw men shouldering down a coffin

  and jostling women in black robes who shrieked

  and received their dead: a boy. Men in arm-

  bands, a priest. A loud funeral wound off.

  No one had known a coffin was on board.

  Who would, on such a day of winter storm,

  knowing have embarked on Charon’s ferry?