Vic sat twisting her hands. There would be a frost, an injustice when you woke up, alone, or perhaps Clem would stay. A moth hitting the wall made her shudder into herself. She had to think of that flying fox. Or a bat, they said, landing on your hair, made you bald. She picked a leaf off the cyclamen. It was withered, brown, it rustled in her hand. She used to play a piece called Autumn Leaves when she was at Marrickville, a descriptive piece she bought in a music pavilion at the Show, that she played with feeling, and Daisy said it made you feel the autumn leaves, it made you sad. But the cyclamen sat up straight with sap, its pink ears shivering, the way that plant behaved. She saw her face in the bowl. She patted her hair, her perm not quite, and Clem you could see by the way he looked, but what could you expect in the rain. And that girl.
Vic Moriarty clenched her hands. She went and leant against the mantelpiece, pressing herself against the mantelpiece, where glass was cold on her forehead. It was Ernest’s clock. Go on, she said, go on, tick tick, I can’t help it, she said, you egg, tick tick. The way there are certain things that open wounds, any wounds, such a thing was Ernest’s clock. She saw that girl get into the car, as if she could help notice when the number-plate drove off and he said, all right, we’ll see, relaxed. You might be a bundle waiting, without feeling, for the train. On her hands her face was hot.
When he came he threw down his hat. It stirred her up to hear the hat.
Coming to your funeral, I suppose, she said.
That’s right, he said. Without the flowers.
He began to kick the fender with his toe. Some soot fell down the chimney, on to the paper fan in the grate where Gertie should have lit the fire.
You’re doing me an honour, she said, having it in my house.
Oh dry up, Vic.
Or perhaps you’re having two.
He looked at her. His eyes made her cold.
Hagan kicked the fender with his foot, wanted to kick through or take with his hands, the way you pressed a sheep and the bleat came out, those white lashes on their eyes. Killing a sheep, or time with Vic, was the same, a bleat. And you killed a sheep, it meant nothing, or chops for breakfast, or…Why the hell couldn’t she stand still? She was talking about the Last Time, even if it was this she said. It was something he had heard before.
Even if you hate me, she said, you’ll always know I love you, Clem.
She fiddled about with the tablecloth. Her voice came out in lumps.
Well, we’ll let that be understood, he said. You needn’t rub it in.
Even when She, she said.
Who?
He shouted her pale, and looking like that.
No one.
Her voice fell in a whimper on the tablecloth, was plush.
Then he went and took her, she felt limp, it made him feel wild, wanted to shake, or kiss, was kissing a limp mass.
All right, he said. If it’s what you want.
His voice came against her teeth.
In the other room the candle flame was long on the wall the wax fell in slender silence, lay whitening in pools. He lay on the bed, his head against his arm, after a fashion satisfied. She smoothed his forehead, moist, with her hand. But he did not want to open his eyes and see Vic Moriarty, white and passive like a pool of wax. As if the flame had burnt down. She was a flame that danced with her face against his cheek. You could not touch, put out a hand but could not touch. Or stop as the car moved out, was steel and touching steel was cold, resistant. It made you hot and cold to think, so you closed your eyes, felt the hand of Vic Moriarty, of no one else.
It bewildered Hagan to think. It was a fresh experience. Sidney was a hard name. He resented his bewilderment.
Out of this silence that was like lying with a dead body by candlelight, Vic heard her breath rise, no more. She was not afraid now, even if not being alone was almost like being alone, the way he lay. But her arms were warm, her eyes rested that glanced along the line of his shoulder and closed upon his neck. What was this before her sleep fell and a key rattled she did not know her flying fox that she wrapped up in a shawl that night Ernest took the stick and said I’ll go out to turn off the tap in the frost he took the shawl but not that no is covered up not to see it isn’t what you think the light on leaves is not the pedal Daisy that he pressed was dead it feels funny like a leaf is being dead is the frost on the tap oh cold all right you think no pity in a voice said she had on had on diamond when the dog barked only turning off a tap but not in a shawl is dead Ernest only not to look at its face you see Ernest turn back the shawl it’s cold looking at your face Vic he said is dead.
Her voice stumbled out of sleep.
Clem, she said. Clem.
He stirred.
It was a dream, Clem. It was queer.
She sat up and saw herself touching her face in the glass.
You’re a caution, he said.
The bed grumbled when he moved. He felt hungry. He yawned. Going up north, the night train, there were frankfurters at Werris Creek with the girl sleepy against the bar, and she rubbed her eyes, and the steam told you how hungry you were, not girls, not Vic or any other bit. But his jaw tightened all the same. He got up sharply off the bed and began to put on his shirt.
She looked at him standing in his shirt. She began to feel bitter again.
You’re going? she said.
It looks like that.
She wanted to talk, she wanted to talk about anything, because that furniture was one long creak, the leg of his trousers made the shadow bend.
I knew a girl called Edna Riley, she said.
She wasn’t quite sure of her voice. She had to speak.
Why Edna Riley? he said.
Oh, I dunno. She just came into me head. And you would have liked her, Clem. Edna was a good sort. She was clever too. She’d passed a lot of exams and things. She wanted to be a stenographer. When her father died she was going out with a man I knew called Lassiter, insurance I think he was. But Edna, that was what reminded me, Edna had a book on dreams. Got it at the circus, I think she said. There was a woman with a handkerchief over her eyes that read your thoughts and things. And dreams were a sort of side-line, see? And Edna bought the book. And you worked it like, suppose you dreamt of a black horse, well you looked it up and it told you what it meant, a journey or whatever it was.
She had to talk. She couldn’t stop. Her voice fluttered in the candle flame.
And what about Edna? Hagan said.
He was tying his tie. He had a scarf-pin once, that he lost, with an artificial pearl.
Edna? she said.
Her mind bumped round. She had to speak. A dream made you feel queer, like looking at your face in a mirror when you turned back that shawl.
Don’t go, Clem, she said Not yet.
Her voice rose, flickered, on a candle flame. Edna and all, it made him laugh.
And what happened to Lassiter? he said.
God, how it made him laugh.
Then it began to go round. They heard it going round and round. They heard it one two, or drag and stop, or hit against the skirting-board, as it went round, in the sittingroom. It was a noise, a foot noise. The feet went round and round the sitting-room.
25
Rodney Halliday trailed about in the yard. There were a few stars, and the suggestion of a clothes-line, the smoke went up from the roof. He felt a bit alone, for it does increase your sense of isolation watching smoke go up at night. Smoke by day has substance in comparison. Rodney stood watching the smoke. He knew that some day he would die. He had not realized this before. Poor Mrs Worthington’s dead, said Mother, we must write to the girls, we must wire for flowers, a sheaf I think because wreaths are like a funeral. The Worthington girls in black, and Mother put her hand to her chest, and they were eating eggs and bacon, it was breakfast time, you went on eating in spite of death. Death was in the cemetery with a smell of laurels and those crossed hands on Mr Peabody’s grave. It happened somewhere else perhaps, but death reverted to the cemetery, enclosed by ivy, the gate grated on a rusty hinge. Going down the hill ivy droned. You went on down the hill to school and hoped you would not meet Andy Everett. Effie Worthington had chapped hands. She gave you a gingerbread cake at the farm, and you bit in, it was sticky inside, and a glass of milk afterwards. But death was not here, in the hen-cluck, in the blue shadow of milk on the glass. You would die, but not yet, not yet. The gingerbread.