What Greg had wanted to say was something quite different, but he could not bring himself, out of perversity, out of the sort of pride too that his father did not credit him with, to put it into words. It would only have increased his father’s scorn for him, he thought, if he had asked for love.
Vic too had wanted to say something quite different. What he wanted to speak of were the things in his life that when he stopped and looked at them created panic in him.
To have put this into words might have been a relief, but it would have exposed him, and he believed that in his son’s eyes he ought not to appear weak.
Then, too, if he put his fear into words he might, in some magical way, give it a place in the world, where it would grow, increase its power and work against him. The desire to keep it inside, where he alone knew what it was and could control it, was enough to keep him silent, even at the risk, as he saw now, of his losing control of the very thing that lay at the heart of his panic — his vulnerability through Greg.
So nothing new was said. They went over the same accusations and counter-accusations they always used and at the end of it nothing had been said. Only this time Greg took him at his word, or decided out of pride to stick to his own. He quit the house.
One Thursday when Iris was in the front room ironing, with the television on ‘just for company’, there was a ring at the door. It was after nine, too late for neighbours to be calling.
Digger, reading in the sleep-out, looked up with his glasses on his nose. He saw Iris step out into the hallway; then a moment later she was at the entrance to the sleep-out with Vic. Her eyebrows were raised. It was a look he knew well.
Digger too was surprised. He thought there must be some sort of trouble. But Vic had no explanation to offer. He appeared to be in high spirits, he was a little drunk in fact, and had three bottles of Cooper’s Ale with him. When Iris took them, and with another little look in Digger’s direction went off to fetch glasses, he stepped into the sleep-out as if dropping in on them like this were the most natural thing in the world. Digger found it took a little getting used to.
He had forgotten till now that when Vic first appeared at the Crossing, and Jenny had come up and pointed to him mooching about there under the she-oaks, he had felt the same little sense of intrusion.
It had faded in time. Vic had come to be as much a part of his life at the Crossing as anything else. Only now did the echo of it come back. Why, after all this time, had he taken it upon himself to break in on them?
But if Vic recognised a coolness on Digger’s part he gave no sign of it. When Iris, pleading the excuse of her ironing, left them to it, believing there must be something special he had come for, he cast a glance around the sleep-out and said, ‘This is nice. All these books yours?’
‘No,’ Digger said, and folded his glasses, ‘not all of ’em.’ And then, because he still felt irritated, he said, ‘Most of them were Mac’s.’
Was it the first time Mac’s name had come up between them? Digger could not be certain. Other names came up from time to time. It would have been unusual if they had avoided that one. But they had, of course.
There was a little beat of silence. Outside in the loquat tree Digger could hear a shuffling. Possums. They had possums that sometimes came right into the house and would take a bite out of some piece of fruit in the bowl on the kitchen table, leaving paw marks all over the floor.
Digger was sorry now that he had said anything. He had done it in a moment of spite. He watched Vic take a book from the shelf, open it and look at the flyleaf as if he needed to see the name there: as proof. Or perhaps it was to feel another twist of the knife. But it wasn’t Mac’s name he would find. Hardly one of these books had Mac’s name in it. Other names, yes, and Digger, being Digger, could have reeled off each one of them. The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’, for instance, which was the book he happened to be re-reading, had belonged to Janet Dawkins, Year Twelve, at Randwick Girls’ High School in 1936. Mac had picked it up at Tyrrell’s. He could have gone on to list dozens, even hundreds, more.
What Vic had in his hand was a tooled leather edition of Tennyson. The flyleaf, Digger knew, would read:
To Mr John Darnell
from
B. J. Checkley
10th May, 1889
all in sepia copperplate, and underneath it:
Kind hearts are more than Coronets
And simple faith than Norman blood.
He watched Vic read it in a sober way, then close the book and put it back.
He looked around the room, frowning a little. Perhaps he felt the oppressiveness of so many volumes set so close on the shelves, or was wondering how many he would have to open before he came to one (he might find one, an old school algebra maybe) with I. R. McAlister in it.
Outside in the front room, he settled on the arm of a lounge chair, one leg thrown easily across the other, a little subdued at first but quickly recovering his spirits. Iris turned off the television, and offered to put her ironing aside as well, but he insisted he didn’t mind, in fact he liked it. So with some embarrassment, since she scarcely knew him, she went on damping down pillowslips, handkerchiefs, an apron, one of Digger’s shirts, and the smell of heat and damp filled the room.
She was wary of him, he was out to charm her, and she kept shooting little sideways glances at Digger to see if he had noticed it. But she relaxed at last and began to enjoy herself. He was full of light notes and odd, old-fashioned sayings that surprised her. Nothing she knew of him from Digger had suggested this. Digger himself was surprised. There was no sign now of that moment on the sleep-out, or of any of that side of him; and Digger, who had little to say, went even quieter.
What he was doing, Digger thought, was restoring a kind of order in himself, making up for that little reversal out there, when for a moment his image of himself had been disturbed, by winning her approval.
Digger had never seen him playing up to a woman before. It was new to him, the way he paraded his repertoire of charms; this concentration of energy, of interest in him, that made a woman aware of herself. He was all attention, you could feel it. Digger, who knew him so well, was irritated that Iris should be so easily taken in.
She finished her ironing. He leapt up and helped her fold the board. What he wanted her to do now was play.
Lately she found playing difficult. She had arthritis, all the joints of her fingers were swollen; but she sat down, and it was ages, Digger thought, since he had seen her play so easily or with so much heart.
She played Schubert, a great favourite of Digger’s, and once or twice as she played she looked aside at him and smiled; but she was playing, he saw, for Vic, and once again he felt a pang of jealousy. Which was foolish, he knew, but he couldn’t help it.
Vic sat very silent with his head bowed, and Digger for some reason thought again of Mac, and again of how foolish it was of him to feel hurt, or to feel anything in fact but what the music spoke of — union and peace. Remote, mysterious, yet so full of quiet optimism, it took you right to the heart of things.