Relief

by Anna Taylor

  ‘If you don’t have your what, dear?’ said Grandma.

  ‘If you don’t have your hearing,’ Howard Strom said to her, ‘you don’t have anything!’ Clearly he was making a last-ditch attempt at joke of the day. He laughed at himself, but no one laughed with him.

  ‘Oh, indeed,’ said Amy’s Grandmother. ‘But at least we’ve got each other.’ She smiled almost smugly then, though not at Grandpop, even though the smile was certainly meant for him.

  Outside, the sound of carols grew louder, a wordless, jolly sound, almost like birds. Were they coming closer, the carol singers? Amy’s father heard them too.

  ‘Listen to that!’ he said, as if he had organised the musical interlude himself. ‘Merry Christmas, everyone.’

  Amy’s mother made a sound of agreement in her throat, but she looked about as merry as someone who’d been hit on the head with a frying pan.

  They all sat back down again, scraping their chairs against the floor, their glasses clinking a little as they found their places. Grandma and Grandpop were the only ones left standing—still holding their glasses out in front of them, not ready to let gravity push their creaky joints back into their seats. They both looked out the window at the rain.

  ‘Do you think they’ve made trifle again this year?’ said Grandpop out the corner of his mouth, unaware that the whole table was his audience.

  Grandma blinked chirpily, her milky blue eyes staring out the window as if she was waiting for a colourful bird, an angel perhaps, to descend from the sky.

  ‘Oh I hope so!’ she said, with such vigour it was as if she had more life left in her than all ten of them combined.

  *

  The Stroms left earlier than usual, taking their friend Bill with them. In previous years they had stayed until it was dark, to watch the Queen’s Christmas message broadcast on TV. This, it had always seemed, was Howard’s favourite part of the day, when he could make the same jokes about the corgis, and the corgis and Prince Phillip, and the corgis and Prince Phillip and the Queen. Ann and Amy’s parents, and whoever else was pretending to pay attention, would make a show of being amused and horrified, which was the required reaction. Their performance—this unwavering ability to hold up their side of the bargain—was the most impressive performance of all. But this year no one, including Howard, seemed to have the stomach for it, not even for the evening news.

  ‘This was the nicest Christmas I’ve ever had,’ said Bill as they were getting ready to leave. He had a limp that seemed to have been acquired recently, sometime between Christmas dinner and dessert. Was he being polite or trying to be funny? No one could tell, and so no one responded or even acknowledged his statement. He announced it to the room, and the room wouldn’t hear it. His limp was the only thing that made him seem crestfallen—and the limp, surely, was to do with a bad hip or displaced joint. He continued to smile, though, following Ann and Howard all the way down the hall, smiling all the time.

  ‘That really was a nice Christmas,’ he said again once they’d reached the front door.

  ‘Wasn’t it?’ said Amy’s mother, trying to smile back, though she narrowed her eyes as she said it—perhaps in disbelief.

  ‘Come along, Bill!’ Ann called to him, and just like a dog, or a badly shaped horse, he began to trot along towards the car in a lopsided canter, still favouring his left leg.

  ‘What a lovely day!’ they all called to each other, from a safe distance.

  ‘Bye bye! Thank you! Great day!’

  ‘Bye! Great day!’

  To Amy’s ears—though perhaps delirium was simply setting in—it sounded like something else entirely. Hate day! Hate day! Everyone waving and smiling and the truth was slipping out of their mouths in disguise.

  Grandma and Grandpop, standing at the back of the huddle by the front door, waved too, though seemingly at each other.

  Amy’s mother closed the front door.

  ‘Well!’ she said. And she turned back towards the rest of the group. Nobody else moved. They all stood there. Amy’s parents, and Meredith and Michael and Grandma and Grandpop and Amy herself. The top button of Amy’s mother’s dress had come undone, possibly during the exertion of the waving and goodbyes. She looked as though she’d just been caught in a gust of wind or, even worse, some kind of appallingly passionate sexual encounter.

  ‘Well,’ she said again, but with less purpose this time.

  They all looked at the floor, or the walls, but not at each other.

  ‘That might have been my last Christmas,’ said Grandma suddenly, a defiant edge in her voice. ‘At my age you start thinking things like that.’

  Amy’s mother started to laugh, but then stopped herself. Perhaps she knew what was coming next.

  ‘Mine too,’ said Michael. ‘I think that too.’ And then he paused and smiled. ‘Shouldn’t we all think like that?’ he said.

  Amy’s mother looked perplexed, and then dismissive; muttering just above her breath—about calling Zoë, and putting the trifle back in the fridge—she began to slide away from the rest of the group. Grandma and Grandad followed her, shuffling along like bags on a conveyor belt.

  Michael was still smiling wanly, and when Amy looked around she saw that her father was nodding back at him, his face alight with admiration. He nodded again as he stood aside, gesturing to Michael to go before him, bowing his head a little as Michael passed.

  ‘We should all think like that,’ he said quietly in agreement, and he continued to nod as he followed Michael down the hallway, matching his steps, the two of them turning—a small procession—into the faded evening light of the living room.

  Going Under

  Tim and Bella were on their way to the lake, on a balmy April evening, when they hit something on the road, something bigger than a possum or rabbit, something that made a thud against the front of the car, an almost human sound.

  Bella cried out, as if it was her, hurt on the road. She covered her eyes like a child.

  It was just after six, and the sunlight was bending down over the hills, in through the windscreen. Bella had been dozing, her head rolling back and forth across the headrest, her mouth slightly open, showing the edge of her pink tongue. Tim looked at her, just for a second, and suddenly wondered what he was doing, in this car, with this woman. He had wondered that, and felt a slight stirring at the top of his stomach, a fluttery uneasiness, and then thud, they had hit it, and Bella’s eyes were open, wide.

  They had set out just after three.

  It was a plan they had had, ever since meeting, to take off for a weekend, just hop in the car and drive and see where they ended up. The thought of it was exhilarating, as if planned spontaneity could actually seem spontaneous once the plan was in action.

  ‘Wouldn’t that be fun?’ Bella said to him, tugging the end of his finger, using a tone that sounded like she wasn’t sure if it would or wouldn’t be and needed reassurance. She pursed her lips a little, waiting for his response. ‘Don’t you think? Fun?’

  Tim said, Yes, yes it would. He sounded like he meant it. He did.

  Bella had been given Friday off work and her call wasn’t until 11.00 on Monday. She had a main part in an English TV series shooting in the studios on the edge of town. Cast and crew came cheap in these parts, Bella said. It was like shipping in black slaves—or going to the slaves, actually. And yet it wasn’t slavery, it was a hell of a good gig to get—well paid, fun. She played a medieval warrior princess with some ridiculous name, which was hard to imagine, given her short dark hair and diminutive size. She wore a wig, apparently made of human hair, all the way from Russia, and silicone pouches stuffed in her bra.

  Smoke and mirrors, Bella had said to Tim hazily, and he felt suitably impressed, although the statement seemed intended for him not to be. It was as if he had his finger on the pulse, as if he were in the presence of a magician’s apprentice, or a magician even, keeping her cloak under wraps just for now.

  Tim had picked Bella up from her flat, and had felt exh
ilarated for a moment, just as he’d hoped he would. She reminded him of a Jack Russell, some sort of small, strong little dog, nicely compact, perfectly packaged. She had a quick, definite quality about her movement, as if she was always in a hurry, always on important business.

  ‘Hi-de-hi,’ she called to him as he drew up in the car. She was standing on the pavement with her bags by her feet. She swivelled herself from side to side. ‘Howdy cowboy,’ she said. ‘Howdy.’

  Tim smiled at her and tweaked her waist with his fingertips.

  ‘Hi there,’ he said, and winked. A soft pulsing moved through his chest, like the time he touched Patricia Clarke’s thigh in the movies when they were fifteen. Patricia was his best friend’s girlfriend and wasn’t his to touch. The feeling had started at his toes and moved up towards his neck, almost choking him. Every now and then he got that with Bella: that forbidden surge. He was fourteen years her senior—nearly old enough to be her father—and he felt it sometimes when she looked at him with her bright, impish eyes and said things like that: things like howdy, and cowboy, in her light youthful way, as if life was really a bit of a joke.

  But he liked it today, the way she said it. He liked the feeling it gave him. He was on the verge of an adventure, albeit a dangerous one.

  ‘Fun!’ Bella said. ‘What fun.’ And she slid into the passenger seat.

  They headed north. It was warm and still, and at first they drove with the windows down, feeling the air move around the car, in under their clothes. Once they were on the main road Bella seemed unusually weary, subdued. She looked out the open window and blinked fast, presumably to try to counter the wind in her eyes. She yawned even, a couple of times, and ran her hand up and down her neck. Tim wondered if she was bored, if he should be entertaining her. He turned on the radio, and just about drove into a ditch, looking for a station. Bella didn’t seem to notice. She smiled at him vaguely when he looked at her. She placed one hand in her lap.

  They stopped in some small town with an unpronounceable name for a coffee at the local tearooms. Bella was charmed, she said, by the Formica tables and netting curtains, and the rotund woman who served them who wore an apron that looked like a doily round her waist.

  ‘It’s so cute, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Quaint.’ She leaned over the table towards him as she said it, and a fleck of spit shot out her mouth and landed somewhere—Tim couldn’t see where. For the first time that day, for the first time since he had met her, in fact, he felt a pang of disapproval, even embarrassment for her.

  ‘It smells like dirty hair, to me,’ he said. ‘Places like this are the places of my childhood. Quaint isn’t the word. Depressing, I would say.’

  Bella looked at him quite blankly, as if she hadn’t heard what he said. She blinked rapidly, just as she’d been doing in the car—it clearly wasn’t the wind—and then she made a sound in her throat, a soft sort of humph. She slid out of her chair and sauntered up to the counter to get herself some gum.

  They got on the road again, still with no clear destination in mind, but they were heading in the direction of the lake—that’s where the road was taking them. Bella found a tape in the glove box, slipped it on, and rested her head against the headrest and chewed away at her gum. The sun was getting lower, and the paddocks and trees were bathed in it. They slipped by, field after field, fence after fence, and then the road grew steeper, started to climb upwards, winding a little as it did so.

  Bella rested her hand on the back of Tim’s neck, fiddling her fingers through his hair. Her skin felt cool, he thought, like water. She spoke every now and then, pausing in her chewing to remark on something out the window, something that always seemed to have passed by the time Tim turned his head to look. He continued to try, though, feeling somehow that he was missing out on all the fun. It seemed to make Bella edgy, his rubbernecking, even though it was she who was instigating it.

  ‘Never mind,’ she said to him after a while, almost tersely. ‘Let’s not drive off the road!’ And then she flicked the gum out of its resting place in her cheek, and started chewing again, not loudly, but with a certain vigour, an elasticity.

  They climbed higher and higher, and Bella started to blink slowly. Tim could see that out of the corner of his eyes. She closed her lids intermittently, lifted them, closed them, and then, suddenly, she seemed to be asleep. Her head lolled a little and her mouth was open, and Tim wondered if he should hook a finger inside her cheek to rescue the gum, to stop her from choking. He wanted to do it, wanted to search around in there against her tongue, almost wanted her to open her eyes while he was doing it, get a fright. But he didn’t. He just kept a watch on her carefully, noticing the white downy hair on her neck—illuminated by the sun—and the line of three tiny moles dotted along her hairline, and then he felt that sense, the sudden uneasiness, and then they hit it, and Bella opened her eyes and cried out, seemingly in pain.

  It was a bird.

  That’s what they’d hit. And Bella wouldn’t get out of the car. She kept her fingers over her eyes, and made a low sound in her throat like the far-off drone of an engine.

  The car was stopped in the middle of the road, and Tim stood there, with his arms crossed over his chest, and he felt shaky, shakier than he would have expected to. It was not just a bird, it was a hawk. And it wasn’t dead.

  Bella’s voice came snaking out through the open door.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘What is it? Tim? Is it very bad?’ She paused. ‘Tim?’

  He swallowed hard.

  The hawk was half sitting, half lying on the road, one wing outstretched awkwardly. The other was tucked in under itself, and its neck bent down towards that side, as if it could tuck its head under there too. Tim could see one open eye, and its beak, which was opening and shutting on itself, opening and shutting like a mechanical gate that was broken, stuck in one repetitive movement. There was a streak of blood on the road—not much, but enough—and it was coming out in one thin line from somewhere under its body.

  ‘Tim?’ Bella called. ‘Is it bad?’

  He took one step, tentatively, towards it. The hawk tried to move itself, dragging its outstretched wing a couple of centimetres along the road, but then it fell back onto its side, breathing heavily. The lower side of its body seemed to be crushed, one leg hardly there at all.

  ‘Christ,’ Tim said. ‘Would you come and help me please, Bella?’

  She didn’t respond.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘What is it?’ she cried.

  *

  They had met a month before at a friend’s birthday dinner at some swanky restaurant in town.

  Tim hadn’t even noticed Bella for the first half of the evening. She was at the other end of the table, and didn’t seem especially worth noticing. That’s how it seemed to him at the time. But somehow, as the night wore on, they ended up sitting next to each other, and she turned to him as if he were a pet project.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘Tell me. Are you having fun?’ She whispered the last part, conspiratorially. He could smell her breath against his cheek, the twang on it from the wine. Her nose twitched slightly. She was cute.

  Tim suddenly felt happy, a great rush of it. He laughed.

  ‘I am, as a matter of fact,’ he said. ‘I am now.’

  Later, she leaned over as if to whisper something in his ear, and licked the lobe instead: a quick flick of her tongue, like a cat.

  Much later, she slid her warm little hand under his shirt at the back and rested it there above his belt, against the skin.

  How could he refuse?

  *

  The hawk was in the back seat, loosely wrapped in a sweatshirt. Its bad wing sprouted out from under the fabric, so big that it made Tim’s chest do a little thump every time he looked at it. Every now and then the sweatshirt shifted. It was Bella’s, and had ‘Hawaii’ printed on its front. She didn’t even like it, she said. She was glad for it to be put to good use. She didn’t seem to be able to put herself to good use though. Every tim
e she looked at the hawk she cried out, though the cries were getting fainter and fainter as time went along. She couldn’t touch it, she said. She was sorry, but she just couldn’t.

  The sun had gone down, and they drove in silence. It was not totally dark yet, just a heavy tainted grey, and the headlights swung across the road in front of them as they wound down the hill.

  ‘Where did it come from?’ Tim said. ‘I didn’t even see it. How could that be?’

  Bella was driving, and she flicked one hand up off the steering wheel. She touched his hand, lightly, and he noticed how much hotter it was now, slightly wet.

  ‘Let’s talk about something else,’ she said. ‘Hey? Let’s just change the subject.’

  The sweatshirt rippled.

  Tim rubbed at his face. ‘I’m pretty tired, Bella,’ he said. ‘I don’t really feel like playing let’s pretend.’

  It sounded sharper than he’d meant it to. He heard her exhale slightly, a little puff coming out from between her closed lips. She lifted her hand up off his and returned it to the steering wheel.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry not to be much help. I’m sorry our weekend is ruined. I’m sorry you hit the damn thing.’ She made a little clicking sound in her throat, licked her lips. She turned the tape back on, and the music lurched into the car, cutting in right in the middle of a song.

  They came across the Oasis Motel just after eight. It had a large lit-up sign with two palm trees on it, a bright blue pool of water, a hibiscus flower. The top left-hand corner of the sign had been smashed so that the edge of the flower was gone, the yellow cylinder of light pulsing behind it. It was like seeing under a woman’s skirt, Tim thought, and discovering that she was wearing beige underpants. Maybe not as bad as that, actually, but still. He ran his hands through his hair.