Cornelius, that rather ascetic Jew, heard that Mr Brown lived at Sarsaparilla, and wasn’t he perhaps acquainted with a certain family.
Waldo interrupted to explain that his own family had made too great a demand on his time.
And Parslow. Parslow, who remarked that by next Sunday he should have wangled petrol enough to drive out through Sarsaparilla, with Merle, and perhaps look in, Parslow had to be choked off. Because Mr Brown of the intellectual breathers in the Botanic Gardens must never be confused with the subfusc, almost abstract figure, living on top of a clogged grease-trap and the moment of creative explosion, under the arches of yellow grass, down Terminus Road. Waldo Brown, in whom these two phenomena met on slightly uneasy terms, would have suffered too great a shock on looking out, from behind his barricade of words and perceptions, to discover some familiar stranger approaching his less approachable self — as happened once, but later.
So Waldo, who was in frequent demand, continued to refuse, on principle, by formula.
To submit himself to the ephemeral, the superficial relationships might damage the crystal core holding itself in reserve for some imminent moment of higher idealism. Just as he had avoided fleshly love — while understanding its algebra, of course — the better to convey eventually its essence. He had the greatest hopes of what they had begun to refer to as the Peace. Remembering Miss Glasson’s success with The Bulletin (though you could never tell; she might have been somebody’s cousin or niece) Waldo almost wrote, not an article, more of an essay, embodying his reactions to the Peace. Searching the faces in the streets for reflexions of his own sentiments, he almost composed a poem. But men were either dull or dazed, incapable of rising to the ecstasies of abstract more-than-joy — die Freude, in fact — which he could not help visualizing as a great and glittering fountain-jet rising endlessly skyward — never, till then, plopping back into reality.
He was so exhilarated.
Then the Peace, the crucial moment, came, and naturally it brought its disappointments. It had its mundane aspects. It was a grand opportunity for everyone to get drunk as though they hadn’t done it before. Waldo accepted to drink a glass of something at a pub down near the Quay with Parslow and Miss Glasson, though he had not cared for Parslow since his colleague’s projected, practically immoral, assault on his private self. As he chose a port-wine, Waldo wondered whether Parslow realized the degree of his forgiveness.
On that night, when he unavoidably missed his usual train, swamped as he was by the chaos of drunken faces, hatched and cross-hatched in light and lust, laughing right back to their gold, singing, sweating, almost everybody dancing as though it came naturally to them, Waldo was accosted by a woman in Bent Street. On such an occasion, he decided, he must return at least a token civility by listening to her. But how relieved he felt that Arthur was not present to pervert an already dubious situation.
It was not a question of listening, however, for the woman, of vague age and positive colours, her face and body blown up over-lifesize by drink and emotion, fastened her greasy lips on his mouth, and as though she had been a vacuum cleaner, practically sucked him down. Waldo had such control of himself he was able to laugh afterwards while re-adjusting his hat.
The reeling woman refused to believe in failure on such a night.
“Come down by the water, brother,” she invited with her body as well as with her tongue, “under oner those Moreton Bay ffiggs, and we’ll root together so good you’ll shoot out the other side of Christmas.”
But Waldo declined.
And so did the Peace. Though not at once. On his way home from work some weeks later, still intellectually drunk on that idealism which an almost blank future can inspire, Waldo bought the doll for Mrs Poulter. Certainly it was cheap, considering its size, and rather ugly. Nor did Mrs Poulter come spontaneously to mind, more the desire to exercise his generosity on some unspecified human being. Then, who else, finally, but Mrs Poulter? There could not have been anyone else.
All the way home in the train Waldo was conscious of the huge doll lying on his lap, and of the eyes of his fellow passengers boring through paper wrapping and cardboard box. Long before Lidcombe he resented buying what had started as a bargain and a gesture. The dolls were being offered at one of the stores to demonstrate the versatility of plastics. So that he might enjoy the reality of plastic flesh the young lady at the counter had even undressed the doll for Waldo, and buttoned her up again in what she referred to as “the little lass’s bubble-nylon gown.” Waldo’s first qualms set in. The continued weight of the doll on his crotch did not lighten them. Nor was it probable that the idealism or the outlay of his gesture would be appreciated at the other end.
Mrs Poulter, less firm than fleshy now, warier of spontaneity, still lived in the house across the road built by her husband and the lad from Sarsaparilla soon after their arrival. The speed and necessity of its construction had possibly given it that abrupt look, not so much of house, as of houseboat moored in a bay of grass. Never putting out in its semblance of boat, the alternate illusion of house had been strengthened by fuchsias and geraniums springing up to dare the waves.
Even so, several times a day, Mrs Poulter used to come on deck, and lean upon the gunwale of her boat, in her capacity as captain and look-out. It would have been tempting, Waldo thought in rasher moments, to ask Mrs Poulter what she had done with her telescope. Although not exactly inquisitive, her eye clearly yearned to see farther than it could.
On the evening Waldo brought the doll down Terminus Road Mrs Poulter was, as a matter of course, leaning on her gunwale. Whether Bill Poulter was at home or not, Waldo had no time to consider. The speed of events was carrying him along, and the obscure, by now half-frozen desire to present the wretched doll. He was appalled by Mrs Poulter’s cheeks alone, which by this period had started turning mauve.
“Good-evening, Mrs Poulter,” Waldo said.
And then stood. Time had stuck for the two of them. Nor did their familiar surroundings offer for the moment any sign that it might be set going again.
It was Mrs Poulter’s smile which released them both, for it could not be stretched indefinitely, but snapped back into its normally perished self.
“I brought,” Waldo began to eruct, “I lugged this thing all the way down Terminus Road, and think you had better have it as — well, there isn’t anybody else.”
Mrs Poulter did not retreat, for after all it was a good-will offering, not a bludgeon, he was handing, or thrusting, over the gunwale.
She had turned practically puce. She was licking her lips for the brown parcel. Her fingers were fiddling to no effect.
“What — a present, Mr Brown?” she said. “I don’t know what I done to deserve it. Not a present.”
Waldo could not have felt more foolish if he had been sure Bill Poulter was inside. Or Arthur behind their own hedge. What would Arthur, what would anybody think? When, after all, there was no cause.
While Mrs Poulter, clutching her parcel, was again overtaken by paralysis.
“I don’t know, I don’t really.”
Presently he got away, and Mrs Poulter went inside, but although he waited behind their protective hedge in the dusk, there was no indication of what she might have felt on unpacking the huge plastic doll.