‘This room’s no stranger to smoke.’ That was putting it mildly.
She took the Camel packet from an inside pocket, plucked one. I pulled a splinter from a piece of firewood, lit it and offered. She put the cigarette in her mouth, came closer, tilted her head back, looked at me though the flame, close, drew.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You know how to live off the land here.’
‘We get by,’ I said. ‘Subsistence living. Grow our own truffles, force-feed the geese. In the evenings, we make our own amusement.’
She laughed, a laugh seen in her eyes. How was it that you always knew whether people were really amused? Why was I so pleased to have made her laugh?
I drank a good bit of the Cooper’s and wiped my lips. ‘Anthony Kendall Haig,’ I said.
‘Yes.’
There was something more than affirmation in her voice. She smoked, blew the grey stream at the fire, it was claimed by the updraught. This fireplace sucked like no other fire chamber I had known. It was one of the most important survivors of the explosion that sent the building’s roof into the North Fitzroy sky, tiny pieces falling on the football oval, on St George’s Road, on the bowling greens. Pieces of my dwelling fell on the tennis court where I once played Drew Greer for almost three hours, and lost.
‘Yes?’ I said.
‘Mickey once worked for him too. In Brisbane. He’s an interesting man. Sophie said he was the money behind Seaton Square. There was some argument going on between him and Mickey, I think. You’ll have to ask her.’
‘I’d like to ask her lots of things. Your father promised to arrange it. Can you put me in touch?’
‘I’ll ring her.’
‘Why’s Haig interesting?’
She had some beer, smoked, looking at the fire. ‘He’s got this rough exterior, left school at fourteen, a self-made man. Then you find out he can talk about art, history, music. Unusual person.’
I waited, admiring her cheekbones. ‘And?’
‘I slept with him,’ she said.
‘During the Mickey affair?’
‘Yes. Just a fling.’
‘Did Mickey know?’
‘No. We were on the rocks, it was right at the end. The night I had the fight over the parking space, that’s the night I met him. He came to dinner at Mickey’s.’
I tried the names Charles Hartfield and Bernard Paech. No, she said.
‘Gary Webber. An artist. I understand you attacked him.’
Sarah closed her eyes. ‘Oh fuck,’ she said, calm voice, ‘that’s from my father, isn’t it?’
‘We don’t want it going off in our face in court,’ I said.
She drank. ‘I was about sixteen, trying to hang out with this bunch of painters. I thought they were so cool, they had this outlaw artist air, they were all drop-outs from something, school, art school. And Gary Webber, he was the coolest. One night, I went to the studio, upstairs in Smith Street, it was late, and three of them started pushing me around, they were off their brains. I thought it was a joke. You play along. I played along.’
Sarah threw her cigarette into the fire. ‘Anyway,’ she said, she sounded as if she wanted to end the story, ‘I was just a silly kid trying to pass myself off as street smart. I’d only had sex once before that night. I should still have been at school.’
‘What?’ I said.
Something between smiling and showing pain, dentists would know the facial movement.
‘They raped me,’ she said. ‘It went on and on and when I thought it was over, I was lying there, Gary Webber came in. He was totally bombed and he wanted his turn. I tried to fight him and he punched me in the chest a few times, hard, in my stomach too, he was dancing around like a boxer, he had his hands up, and then he was going to hit me in the face. I was against this counter thing and he took a step back, ready to hit me. There was a full wine bottle and I got my hands on it and I hit him first. I kept hitting him with it until it broke.’
Her voice, the small sag of her shoulders, touched me. I believed her and I felt an urge to put out a hand and say that. Instead I said, ‘I understood that you claimed to have no memory of what happened. Is this the newly recovered version?’
She looked at me, not the child eyes I’d seen at our first meeting: sad, grown-up. She put her glass on the mantelpiece.
‘Goodnight, Mr Irish,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the beer.’
She walked for the door. I said nothing, felt a clenched fist in my stomach. This had been a bad idea, I had made it worse.
The door was difficult to open from the inside, there was play in the doorknob, the small screws worked themselves loose, they needed tightening from time to time. She twisted the knob, and, without turning her head, anxiety in her voice, said, ‘Can you let me out?’
I crossed the room, reached around her, put my hand on the doorknob, pushed, turned, the tongue moved enough. I pulled the door open a crack.
‘I keep meaning to fix the damn thing,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you down the stairs.’
She was still, we were close, I could feel the electricity in her. She pushed the door closed, spoke without turning.
‘I wanted to die after that night,’ she said, voice thin. ‘Three men treated me like a toy. They did anything they wanted to. Then I almost killed someone. I would have killed him, I didn’t care. So if I’d been offered surgery to take that night out of my brain, I would have said yes, yes, yes. Yes, please.’
Her forehead was against the door. I was looking at the nape of her neck, the clean dark hairs in the soft and pale hollow.
‘I couldn’t speak about what had happened,’ she said. ‘Not to anyone. I didn’t have the words for it. So if I said I didn’t remember, then I didn’t have to speak about it.’
A silence, the crackling of the fire, the wash of rain on the roof, the swallowings in the downpipes.
‘I was just a young girl,’ she said. ‘Can you understand, Jack?’
‘Yes,’ I said, and I did touch her. I reached out and put my right hand on her shoulder.
Sarah turned and looked up at me, a sheen on her eyes. I took my hand away but I could not take back the touch. She moved closer and I drew her to me, no urgency in the embrace, just the desire to touch.
But she raised her face and we kissed. It was just a gentle pressure of lips, I tasted beer and nicotine and salt, and I knew that could not be the end of it. I put a hand on her neck, felt the taut muscles, she put both hands behind my head, pulled me with strong hands, strong arms, our lips opened.
There was a moment when we came apart and I said, gruffly, ‘Sarah, I don’t think…’
‘Think,’ she said, as throaty, ‘Don’t think. I want to lie down. Is that possible?’
‘Possible?’ I said. ‘It’s probably compulsory.’
19
I rose in the dark, pulled on the ancient garments and set out on my route. Punishment for the body in a cold, moist dawn. I ran over surfaces glistening, slippery, treacherous for ankles. In the parade, I saw the night’s sad survivors limping towards home. I saw the pioneers of the opening day, going to some dull task with narrow eyes and thin lips.
As I shambled along, I thought about sex and remorse. I always felt regret after the first sex with anyone. Something in my history triggered a feeling of wrongdoing. Enthusiastic consent wasn’t ever enough for me to look back with pleasure. I shook my head, ran the moisture off my hair with a hand. Never mind the past, this time I had other good reasons for feeling guilty. Linda had been gone not much more than a week. Sarah was almost a client, she had been in an emotional state. There could be no excuse for having sex with her.
‘Listen, Jack,’ she’d said, standing at her car in the small hours, not the old ute, a VW, ‘I was going to make a pass the first chance I got. But I didn’t mean it to be teary. I’m sorry about that.’
She took a fistful of my old T-shirt, pulled me close and we kissed goodbye, not a short kiss. I went back to bed, tingling, her scent on the pillows, dropped in and out of sleep.