Australian Love Stories (18 page)

She knocked on the door and he opened it straight away. He was in his Levis but the belt and shirt weren't there.

‘You okay?' he said.

She nodded, looking over his shoulder into the gloomy room where a
TV
flickered.

‘What do you want then?'

‘Nothing.'

He stood without moving, one hand near the top of the open door, the other on a hip. It reminded her of the game they used to play at school when they were little. Oranges and Lemons. Two kids made an arch and the others skipped through, half hoping, half afraid the arch would come down and trap them.

‘I can't ask you in.'

She shrugged.

‘You should stay away from me.'

When she was twenty-eight and he was thirty-six she accepted a marriage proposal. She was a journalist living in Perth and her husband-to-be was a sports writer. She'd lost touch with the Clarks since her parents moved away from Katanning and even her brother hadn't been in contact with Judy for years. But she heard and read of Bill from time to time. He was an environmentalist and he liked making trouble, but not enough to land himself in jail.

Her female friends—other journalists—took her out for a few drinks. They ended up in Fremantle at the Norfolk. They sat in the courtyard still warm from the sun and listened to a guy with a guitar.

‘Are you counting the days till your honeymoon?' one of the women asked.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I've never been to Italy.'

‘Lucky you.'

Someone filled her glass and she watched the bubbles spiral to the surface. She wished she was excited about being married. It had seemed like a good idea to say ‘yes', and it probably still was. She gulped down the bubbles.

When she went to the loo, she had to walk through the main part of the crowded bar. It was a bit of a blur but she got to the toilet all right and out again.

Bill was waiting for her.

‘Hey,' he said.

He was close enough for her to see that he looked just the same. His hair was a bit silvery in places, but he was the same. Even his belt.

‘Hey,' she said. ‘It's my hens' night.'

‘Bad timing then. I was going to ask you if you fancied some spag bol. I don't like eating alone.'

‘I'm hungry.'

She told her friends that she and a mate from way back were going to a restaurant. She didn't care what they thought.

Bill took her arm and steered her toward the cappuccino strip half a block away. He ordered for them both.

‘It's good to see you,' she said. She was stone cold sober all of a sudden.

He had no idea how to twirl the pasta, but she was the one who ended up splattered with
sugo
because her hands were shaking.

‘I want to go to bed with you,' she said as he paid for their meal.

‘I know.'

‘It could be a wedding present.'

‘No,' he said.

When she was forty and he was forty-eight she read his name on a program for a rally to save native forests. He was one of the speakers and she couldn't wait for his turn to get up on the dais outside the Concert Hall and address the crowd. She wanted to see him sooner, closer. She found him with a group wearing red, black and yellow. He was in a suit and tie and he looked up from the makeshift desk as she approached.

‘Can I interview you for a magazine I'm freelancing for?' she asked.

‘Not now. I'm psyching myself up. I don't like public speaking. It makes me nervous. But I have to do it.'

‘Afterwards then.'

He spoke well. He knew what he was talking about. She pictured some of the places he mentioned. Katanning. Ewlymartup. She knew the precious orchids that clung on by the sides of roads and on hills too rocky for crops.

He asked her to join him and his group for a drink when it was over, when it was all packed up and the man dressed as a numbat and the women in their rainbow t-shirts had gone. Everyone wanted to talk to him, to sit near him, to buy him a beer. She tagged along because she still liked the look of him, the way he tossed the end of his tie over one shoulder. A young woman with a baby in a sling kissed him and he lifted the baby out and kissed its forehead. My grandson, he told Susan.

After a few drinks he told his group he'd promised her an interview. They went outside and she got a few quotes from him about the campaign.

‘I need a photo too,' she said. ‘The readership of this magazine is right behind you. Be their friend. Smile.'

She wasn't used to the heavy camera and she accidentally clicked twice.

When they were developed, the first photo showed him confident in his suit, a natural leader, enjoying the lights sparkling on the river. In the second, when he'd dropped his guard, he was looking straight at her.

When she was fifty and he was fifty-eight she drove to Katanning for the funeral of a school-friend's mother. Penny was there too, and invited her to the farm.

‘Do you still ride?' Penny asked.

‘I haven't for years.'

Penny's son saddled up two horses and they cantered along the firebreak where the racehorse goanna had been. The bush was mostly dead trees, the paddocks turned to salt.

‘We're planting trees like crazy, trying to keep the water table down,' Penny said.

Tomatoes and white cucumbers still grew by the rainwater tank and Penny made a salad to go with the roast lamb.

‘Do you remember Biscuits?' Penny said.

‘Bill Ware, yes.'

‘I read in the local paper that he's back in town. He's with a group doing a survey of water birds and something else, something about an orchid I think.'

The next day Susan drove to the public car park at Ewlymartup but nobody was there. A few black swans rested on the rocks and she wondered how they found enough to eat in the puddle the lake had become.

She called into Katanning to get petrol before heading back to Perth and Bill was filling his ute at another bowser.

‘You busy right now?' he said.

‘Not really.'

‘I want to show you something.'

She got in beside him and they drove a few miles down the main road before turning off onto a gravel track where sheoaks made a curtain above them. Leschenaultia grew underneath, bundles of lace in every shade of blue.

He stopped the vehicle and led her on foot to a fenced-off bit of bush.

‘This is our project,' he said.

She went close to the fence but couldn't see much.

‘They're hammer orchids,' he said. ‘
Drakaea.
They're growing really well just here. Something about the soil. They're not that spectacular to look at, not like your donkey orchids, but they're clever.'

He climbed over the fence and bent to point out a small brick-red bud. ‘The orchid makes itself look like a female wasp and the male wasp flies down, thinking he's about to get lucky, and gets a face full of pollen instead.'

‘Love's like that.'

He stepped out of the enclosure. ‘Not always,' he said, taking her hand and putting it on the silver buckle of his belt.

Moses of the Freeway

DAVID FRANCIS

My boyfriend Arthur's adopted a child. A little Latin one. Truth be told, I suspect it's a Latin lover he's after, a kind of sublimated lust, but Arthur doesn't know from lust. He's a merchant banker, swimming along in his own oblivion. And me, I didn't want to adopt. Well, not with him. I have a project of my own. But Arthur doesn't know about that.

Because we're still the royal bloody couple, standing atop the tacky plush stairs of the Kodak Theatre. Arthur, in his Hermès tux, flush-faced from sucking in his tummy, me alongside, sporting
his
Dries Van Noten pinstripe, pretending it fits. Keeping up appearances for the sake of his mewling newborn and the portrayal of gays in the media—the Alliance Against Defamation
très
gay awards. A river of suited homos with cocktails in hand, a crowd that used to be fashion-forward until the straight boys overtook them.

The lesbians just look awkward as usual.

A boy with the smile of an underwear model holds a tray of blue Martinis, stares like I might really need one. ‘I don't drink,' I tell him. ‘I just audit the intake of others.'

Arthur, a second Cosmo under his belt, takes on the glazed, contented buzz of the perpetually bereaved. He's a lightweight and the second glass never makes him more attractive; it's just the early phase of what usually ends in tears, but manifests first in a false elastic smile.

He ushers me down the wide, vomit-coloured stairs to another level of the circling fag fest. A river of the almost attractive but not quite—the truly pretty can't really afford this, except to occasionally hang on a robust arm.

‘Let's bid on the Qantas Round the World,' says Arthur, momentarily invigorated by my melancholy, as we swan across the black and puce to the silent auction. Dinners at Melisse and Providence. Facials.

Arthur bids high on a cruise down the Danube.

Sotto voce,
I remark on the irony of a gay Jew on the Danube.

‘Oh, is it
that
Danube?' he says.

Wanker
.

But I can see it from here—a boatload of the tanned and muscled wearing lederhosen for fun, visiting the quaint Nazi villages. Next he'll bid on some Gay Atlantis adventure. Arthur bare-bellied with Stoli in hand, pretending he belongs on a floating crystal meth gymnasium slash bathhouse, dancing all the way from
Barthelona
to
Ibitha
.

‘You're a father now, Arthur,' I whisper. ‘Remember.'