‘I don’t know yet.’
‘I see.’
The mother smiled at Cecil who brought in her drink and placed it in her hands. But refusing to be daunted, for she had never yet failed to begin an enthralling conversation with anyone, she began to poke around for other leaders.
‘And you’re an accountant?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘In the city?’
‘In Hunter Street.’
‘Oh how nice. In one of those big tall new buildings I suppose.’
‘No. It’s a small old one.’
‘And do you have other partners?’
‘There are twenty partners. It’s a large firm.’
The mother widened and expanded. ‘I never could understand all those figures,’ she exclaimed.
‘No,’ Adrian replied. He sat down with the beer which Cecil had presented him.
The mother giggled nervously, and it was then that Persia realized Adrian had won, and would always remain supreme and never be toppled or prised off. For the mother was not apt to giggle, and to be forced to do so was indication of his superior strength, and the mother always fell victim to superior people as long as they were of the opposite sex.
So it came to be that she sided with Adrian and he was always perfect and correct, and a paragon to be pitied for what he had taken to himself. And the evening was quite successful, and the more they vied across the table, the more Persia was forgotten in their titillating confrontation, so that Cecil clapped and applauded the wit of the mother and the solidity of Adrian who would not be shaken by her clever attacks, and Persia grew more silent and more white, and wished for the evening to be done with.
*
Adrian had friends who were older and married and embedded in respectable ways with gardens and roses in spring and tricycles on the lawn. Mostly these friends favoured barbecues. Then Adrian would tell Persia they were to go, and they went.
She spent half an hour preparing herself to be presentable, and then as soon as she arrived was pushed into a corner with ten other dreary women with cotton patio gowns and handbags to match, and given a glass of red punch that was sticky and looked like the vomit of an over-indulgent drunk; and not one man bothered to speak with her for the whole afternoon, the masculine fraternity being concerned with the price of shares, mortgages, interest rates and land.
It was hard to be solemn and polite. Having never produced her own children it was difficult to enthuse over first teeth, and equally unpleasant to commiserate with nappy rash just as the underdone steak was served.
‘Martin is starting kindergarten next week.’
‘James has been going three months.’
‘In some places there are no kindergartens,’ Persia tried to say.
‘He likes it so much.’
‘Are you glad you have children?’
They stared at her aghast. All conversation ceased. She was assaulted by seven outraged women defending themselves. Then after a few moments of sipping punch and trying not to condemn, they began again.
‘Tommy fell over and grazed his knee . . .’
Persia went away. She went and stood beside some men and picked up a thread of something and followed it along, hoping it would come to an end and that they might notice that she was in fact there and listening, and would then explain the beginning of the discussion so that she could join in the end.
But if one of the stalwart fellows ever happened to notice her, he would have had far too much respect for his mates to ever admit to it. And thus by tacit agreement they would continue talking to each other, never once glancing at Persia, hoping like local councils that if they ignored the slum it would eventually pack up and leave.
So then she started saying, ‘I think it is time to go now Adrian,’ but by this time he was mellowed with beer and flies and undercooked sausages and bitter coleslaw all tasting of paper plates and tomato sauce. And he was involved with some solicitor with a long nose discussing the shortage of labour and office footage as though price was the beginning and end of existence, so that Persia went away, and found the pet dog which was a snappy little mongrel anyway, and fed it too many sausages in a corner, in the hope that it might be sick on the hostess’s new carpet.
Then when at the last minute he did agree to go, they filled his pewter again, and she had to stand by his side for half an hour watching him take each sip while he carried on about the inflated economy with some bloke he knew from school and hadn’t seen for ten years, and finally when he had finished the last pewter, it took another half hour to get him through the door because he had to go round and bid goodbye to each of his gentlemen friends personally, although of course he never would have farewelled the ladies.
‘You were rude, Persia,’ he said going home in the car.
‘I did not insult anybody.’
‘You were impatient. We were the first to leave.’
‘Adrian I must talk to you.’
He was concentrating on traffic lights.
‘Can you hear me?’
‘Yes, go ahead.’ But he was fiddling with the radio knob, and tuning into the football results.
‘I can’t cope with another dried chop, not ever again.’
‘We must have missed the sporting results.’
‘It is not my way of life. My direction is different from yours.’
‘You don’t know what you mean. That’s your trouble. You enjoy yourself.’
‘I cannot be content with chatter to strangers.’
‘But it’s good to see all your friends once in a while.’
‘Those people are not my people.’
‘The damned thing. We must have missed it. I’ll have to listen tonight. Remind me will you.’
*
The other entertainments of life included occasional nights at restaurants when everybody seemed to spend most of the night looking at what the other person was eating, or giving a dinner party in the flat on a Saturday night. In the latter case Adrian would sit doing cheques or reading his latest paperback while Persia scuttled around with vacuum cleaners and wrestled with menus.
Once when Adrian did not come home until 11 o’clock, and did not ring Persia to tell her he would be late, and she had imagined he had been killed on the road, she said to him, ‘I am learning you are just ordinary and like all people.’
‘It would be as well to get married then before you are further disillusioned.’
‘I could never be disillusioned about you. From the beginning I have known how you are.’
‘You didn’t sew on my pyjama button.’
‘But I will have to go away if I go on finding the same thing.’
‘I left it out especially as a reminder.’
‘If you cannot ring me up, then I cannot sew on buttons.’
He smiled indulgently at this little outburst and climbed into bed with his bare chest showing, and rolled over Persia and raped her as an act of good will.
*
One time on a Saturday Adrian said he had to watch the cricket. He said it as they were lying in bed and were arm in arm. He had an ear which was brittle inside to make it stiff and flexible like tailored shirts, crisp, smooth and well-fitted.
‘But this is a spare day when we can use it together,’ Persia said.
‘The Sheffield Shield is starting.’
‘I would like to lie in bed with you after breakfast.’
‘It’s New South Wales versus Queensland.’
‘Under sheets.’
‘Somebody might come.’
He was stiff now, except for his ear which he could not manipulate and which remained independent.
‘It’s all your inherited inhibitions,’ Persia said.
But Adrian, before he could be restrained, put aside Persia’s arms, which he removed so that they lay over the place where he had been, and he went and shut himself alone with himself in the shower, and forgot about anything except the cricket, and sung under the water in time with the tra
nsistor which blocked out sounds of Persia’s life, and steam came from under the door which said he was there, locked and independent in himself.
After a while he came out and walked around the room, knowing Persia watched, but brushing away how she did. And she knew she was repelled because of the hard red cricket ball which was thrown about, and had stitches on it. And even though she lay, and wanted and waited and asked, he denied her because he was intent on escape, and was done with her, and fulfilled.
Soon he dressed in the shirt she had ironed but did not want to know she had ironed, and his pants (which were not to the minute because he lived mainly in suits, and his casuals did not wear out). His whole life was lived in other places with other people. In his suit pockets were slips and notes which smelt of foreign matters and which he produced with no explanation, and dealt with, and disposed of again. He had the tobacco smell about his coat and lapels, and sometimes a biro in his briefcase which other people had held. He had an office which was more of him than anything else, and yet Persia had only seen it once.
At his desk he had been nothing to do with her. His intercom, and telephones with buttons and his pads and paperwork were there more fully. He belonged to the tittering women who did his work, and fell to his command, and knew his most intricate foibles more completely than his mistress.
So this day she watched him comb his wet hair, and he did not talk to her and she could not talk to him. And there was an ending which the day said, because she could not be herself anymore, or remember any joke with him, or any laughter. For he was so heavy that she was ashamed of most of herself, because his expectations of perfection in other people, being mostly disappointed, turned then to exasperations.
He put his comb in the bathroom cupboard, considering even this a martyrdom because it was an action outside himself, and folded a clean handkerchief in his pocket. He kissed Persia with cold lips from the shower, his skin still damp, holding down her arms so that she could not snare him. He said he did not want any breakfast, as though that might clasp and hinder him further.
So he went from the bedroom with his wallet, with a bounce in his legs, smiling so that she could not ruffle his day or intrude. And after he had gone she continued to lie, feeling discarded and exploited like ravaged landscapes.
Because it was necessary to do something, and try to pass off this terrible ending as though there was another reel to come, she went to the art gallery, because it was a place that had nothing to do with Adrian. And she knew then, when she was alone, that her loneliness with Adrian was far greater, and with him she was roped in a corner; whereas alone at least she was free.
In the art gallery was a most magnificent painting which took you down its great purple mouth to the middle of the world so that all around you everything turned and you were the centre.
And while turning, Persia was not surprised to feel a touch on her arm, and she saw Paint, who was wiry and dark, and brown from sun.
‘Hello Persia,’ he said and just looked, and looked too hard.
‘Paint,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said.
They were there, and there were pictures, and they looked and smiled because of the being.
‘Like it?’ Paint asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps it is about ends and beginnings.’
‘Yes. Having seen it is a new beginning.’
‘And the before ends.’
‘No. Because of the purple line. It just goes on.’
‘Perhaps.’
They looked at each other and laughed then, and some other people drifted by. They might have looked scruffy in their jeans and their coloured tops and their sandals, and their hair longer than it should have been. They were right in the middle, and young and full and bright, and growing in importance.
‘There is another one along here,’ Paint said. They went then, their feet sounding on the tiles, and people going in drifts and fog like angels on dislodged clouds, in choirs. With Paint it did not matter if you did not talk. To be in his same mist was not to be lonely. They walked through the brightness and felt the air and felt their muscles, and felt every unwinding of all their magnificent working, and were linked, because it was useless not to be.
‘Do you like that one?’ Paint asked when they stopped somewhere.
‘No. It is not the right colours.’
‘I’m glad you don’t. Because I don’t.’
They grinned. It was easy to grin. You did not have to fear recriminations or rebuff.
They walked on and they looked at many things. Then they crossed the road into the park where there were Moreton Bay figs, and they sat on the grass in the shade, and the world was alive, and bit, and snapped, and was vital.
They arrived under the Moreton Bay, neither one leading the other, but just coming to rest there, not agreed upon by words or gesture, just a drifting in the same direction. And there were a few ants and a twig which snapped. The details made the day more sharp, and were reminders of material remnants.
‘I suppose you see Adrian all the time,’ Paint said.
‘Yes. All the time.’
‘Now you are engaged, will you marry him?’
‘I live with him already.’
Paint looked at a twig and snapped it in half, and stuck his finger into the grass and squashed an ant which he immediately regretted.
‘Did you choose it that way?’
‘Yes because I want to discover first.’
‘And will you marry him then?’
‘I respect him very much. Do you like cricket?’
‘I hate it. Did he go today?’
‘Yes. He went today.’
‘He just left you to go today.’
‘Yes, he just left me today.’
‘I could not be like that.’
‘I cannot be like that either.’
They sat for a little while. Persia listened to his sounds of living, his throat, his fingernails scratching his neck. He had his own individual sounds. It was enough to close your eyes and hear those sounds. You could hear his hair grow and his tongue in his mouth and his eyes revolving under the lids.
‘I like the sounds that you are,’ Persia said.
‘I would prefer to look, rather than listen.’
‘To touch?’
‘Animals can do that best. The cat that rubs.’
They did not say anything for a while and went on sitting under the fig which had knots and was very old and which had loved and grown according to its kind without ever saying so.
Therefore they were content for each other’s presence to be present, and it did not matter what else was happening anywhere else, nor if the world was blowing up, nor if flames would come and lick around the earth, nor angels, nor God nor devils for the moment had finished itself and added to growing wise. And although it might have been going to end, as distinct from its completion which had already occurred, it would never stop, because it could be held and revered to always savour.
‘I have this house,’ Paint said.
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Would you like to come and see it?’
‘I would like to come and see it.’
‘I have this little car.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes. Would you like to go in it?’
‘Yes. I would like to do that.’
So they stood up and shook themselves. People were always shaking or brushing themselves when they moved from one position to another, to remind themselves that they were still intact and present. You were stealing the day, and it was temporary, giving the responsibility of bearing too great a happiness, so that it was too heavy to hold. And knowing it would end, and knowing it was not even yours to take, it was better not to consider at all.
The car was a station wagon with the back bumper lop-sided and a dent in the door. The duco had faded in patches and the seating was torn at the seams. Paint led Persia to his car, and opened the door, and put her into it, and when sh
e was sitting he shut the door, so that she was encased in his possession. Then he came round to his side of the car and climbed in and began the engine to run, his hand on the key, his hand which was most perfect.
There was a city which they drove through, and might have dislodged a path. There were cars in clustered places, and everybody going in ways and matters separately.
They came to the house, and Paint opened the door. He said, this is my house, and he went in, and shut the front door so that they stood in the hall which was dark and high, with the coloured light of the stained glass from the architrave drenching them in geometry.
‘What a strange house,’ Persia said, and began to laugh so that they both laughed, although it was not laughable. The hallway was sculptured in heavy plaster with heavy wood and there was green chipped lino on the floor. Also they had painted over the wood so that it was thick and coated with the finger marks of distant occupants still on doorways.
‘I will show you the rooms,’ Paint said. ‘There are four kitchens because it was a boarding house.’ He led the way up the stairs. There were antique wooden verandahs enclosed in fibro and painted duck egg blue, with cast iron stoves thick with grease, and bashed saucepans hanging from nails on the window ledges. There was an old bathroom with chipped porcelain tiles and there were locked rooms that could be opened only by removing their keys from hooks screwed into the lintels.
The rooms were stuffy and closed, with no furniture and worn feltex on the floor. They gazed out of the cobwebbed window of the attic at the Glebe world below, and the dusty streets which were quite unreal and in no way related to the house with its hanging cords and electric switches swinging on ropes from doorways.
‘Will you redecorate?’ Persia asked, and was ashamed to sound like Adrian would have wanted her to be.
‘Of course not,’ Paint replied. ‘It would ruin it. I don’t want to cover the full living of other people in a thick veneer of gold tinted wallpaper.’
It was an afternoon. Persia did not remember how Adrian might have been sitting under the hot sun somewhere while the ball slapped on the bat among white men who ran. The moment was total in its experienced present, as in babies who cannot extend beyond the immediacy of their own hands. For having always believed in freedom, it was now important to show you could use it, and were not afraid of an open space.
The Beginning of Everything and the End of Everything Else Page 7
