On Brunswick Ground (10 page)

‘Are the owners Japanese?' I ask.

‘No, she's an older woman … Australian,' says Kim.

‘Is she nice?'

Kim doesn't usually answer this kind of frivolity, but to my surprise she smiles and puts a hand on my shoulder.

‘She is.'

I start work, still wondering what's going on. Today the hard digging passes me by. Then the day flushes itself out as usual. Mitali and I are back kneeling next to each other and Kim is lopping a tree, called to high things because of her long limbs.

‘Have you been here before?' I ask Mitali.

She nods and looks over her shoulder.

‘Bea's a bit like a fucking garden herself.'

I look around. Everything manages to be both personal and universal: the low-browed house steeped in shade; the big, wise tree at one end, supervising our lesser activities; the wandering paths that always take you somewhere; the aromatic herbs and flowers that both define and weave into each other; the bins behind an asymmetrical row of bamboo, which you'd never think to call a hedge, restrained by sheets of corrugated iron under the earth; the small grey bench, so simple it could have grown there.

A little later, when I am weeding by the bins, I see a woman in her seventies and hear her call out.

‘Hello, I'm Bea.'

Her grey-blue eyes are smiling down at me, as if I had willed them into an appearance. She's been standing on a stone trying to secure a plant to the fence. I extend a hand up to her, feeling like a character in a Nativity play. She grabs it and jumps down nimbly. Mitali and Kim have vanished. I can still hear them in the other part of the garden, but their voices are swallowed by the sunlight. The unknown woman and I seem quite alone in another garden of time. She moves to the grey bench and pats the wood next to her.

‘I know you should be working, but will you sit down with me?'

‘But what would the owner of the garden say?'

Bea laughs.

‘Oh, we needn't worry about
her
.'

I sit down and two butterflies lace the air in front of us, settling on a flower, then on a leaf, drunk with summer air.

‘You have to wait until their wings are closed, you see, then you can pick them up without hurting them at all,' she explains. ‘I saw a lot of butterflies in London during the war. It was as if nature
knew
what was going on, as if it were trying to restore some sort of balance.'

The war, for the child Bea, was a shortage of toilet paper. She remembers the Americans giving millions of rolls away to the Londoners.

I notice her clothes. They have a season of their own. Then the neighbour's dog wriggles under the fence into her garden. She introduces him to me.

‘Here's Larry,' she says and pats his head. ‘I like dogs with pointy noses, they remind me of horses.'

She has just come back from a trip to Langkawi, an archipelago off Malaysia. There she met a Muslim family, the women veiled, all waving to her in the midst of their Pilates exercises on the beach. Bea found unexpected friends in them. Then, without warning, she veers into another, suddenly more personal topic.

‘I had a Malaysian husband once.'

She smiles peacefully.

‘He was a drunk. He would disappear for whole nights and come back in the early morning, pale, washed-out, composed. He needed to disappear from his mind. There was no other way, he told me, and he couldn't explain it any further.'

She knits her brow.

‘He'd come home and I'd say goodnight or good morning, maybe. It was no use saying anything else. Apart from that, it worked well between us. We were good in bed, good out of bed, good at living together. But, even though I like wine, the drinking got to me in the end. It was like having a python, even if it is a mild carpet snake, living under the house, knowing it was
there
, all the time, whether he drank or not.'

She glances at me, calmly in control of her story.

‘When I finally left we both cried. A few years later, living quite alone, he stopped drinking. He asked me to come back, but I'd already married someone else.'

Like her garden, Bea's story settles me. It transforms the pattern of my day, changes its chemistry, shifts it into serenity, as if her words expressed something beyond their immediate meaning.

‘Do you like gardening?' she asks me.

I nod. ‘I do. But each garden is different. You never know how you are going to feel about a garden. I imagine men must feel that about women.'

The grey-blue eyes rest on me.

‘What about women? Do they feel like that about men?'

I shake my head.

‘Oh, no.'

Her eyebrows go up.

‘No?'

I grin at her.

‘Men are not gardens, only women are.'

‘Oh, I see.'

I glance around for two bent backs. Bea cocks an eyebrow at me.

‘Are you religious?'

I smile at her before getting on my feet.

‘No, just guilty.'

I hear her chuckle as I wave before moving to another garden bed to try and catch up. Kim winks at me. This is vaguely disquieting. An hour later, I am back in a green cloud of work. When the last path is swept, I look around for Bea but she is nowhere to be seen. We pack up the tools in the late dusk. They are like old friends. I know their shapes now in my hand and recognise them by the worn places on their handles. Then we stand by while Kim packs the van.

Up there, the sky mirrors a bloodied garden bed of purple with gashes of orange. Back in the van, the sun is still smeared on our faces. It makes me think of Bea's Malaysian husband coming back in the light of dawn. I imagine her waiting for him in her nightdress through the night. We sprawl on the seats. Now that the fertiliser and potting mix have lost their bulk, there's more room. The van rumbles to life. After telling us to meet her earlier tomorrow, Kim drops us both in front of Mitali's house. Ian is at the gate. Again, this is unusual. He's making gestures, inviting us in, a bit like Bea's Muslim friends on Langkawi beach and, like Bea, I wonder if he means me. Mitali, surely, doesn't need to be ushered into her own house.

As we stand on the footpath, Kim also waves to us, a pilot flying off into action, not sure if she is ever going to see you again. When her van has vanished, we both stare at the

empty spot left behind. Mitali touches my arm.

‘Come on, let's go inside and see what Ian wants.'

We walk over and, again, the morning eeriness returns. Something is slipping out of my grasp as if time were flowing past me without me in it. Ian steps out onto the street towards us.

‘Why don't you have dinner with us? It's all ready.'

I blink.

‘No, thanks. I need a shower. I think I'll wander home and go and check on Sarah's bar later.'

They exchange a glance. Then Ian jerks his chin in Mitali's direction.

‘Please come. I'll explain.'

I give in.

‘I'll just walk back for a shower and come right over.'

He looks at me firmly.

‘Sure?'

What else can I say?

‘Sure.'

The day is just one big question mark. When I get back I jump into the shower and try and sluice it off me. Then I walk back, feeling a bit too tense for a quiet evening with neighbours. Ian is more talkative than usual. He has just finished his PhD on Kawabata and Chekhov. His love for them sounds more amorous than academic. He knows their lives and works backwards, and seems to breathe something of the air they once breathed. In return, they infuse his presence with Siberian steppes, old Russian railways stations, and Japanese lakes surrounded by beautifully misshapen trees.

I don't ask, and Ian never tells me, why they were so insistent I spend the evening with them. This is a first. Usually, I may dribble in for a cup of tea or a drink – always a last-moment thing. When I leave, the moon is low, enormous, blue-white. They keep me at the gate a while and even propose to walk me home, but I shake my head and wave them my thanks. The security of women is still on people's minds. Around the corner, as I walk I hear footsteps. It's the woman I met with Sarah, whose daughter committed suicide. She seems to grind round the corner as if she were ploughing the footpath, with the immense, desperate patience of a peasant still tilling his field after dark. The next thing I notice is the 7-Eleven. An Indian who misses Delhi keeps it. His shop is resolutely charmless in daylight, but at night his wares seem to glow and shimmer exotically, the atmosphere acquiring the detached excitement of an airport.

Then, without really meaning to, I find my way to the familiar vibe of Sarah's bar. But it's not Sarah's night. A friend who works for her is there instead. She has blond hair and clear-cut features, a bit like a tennis champion. A loose-limbed man is sitting at the bar talking to her.

It's Jack.

I stand in the doorway. I don't move or think. I am just a body there, overwhelmed with this feeling of
mistake
. He turns and sees me too, but it takes him a few seconds to compute me. Then, he smiles and puts a hand out in welcome.

‘Hey, how are you?'

The words are so unreal, they flick out at me like the tails of a whip, unquiet in their quiet politeness. Jack also touches my back and lightly pats it. I smile back blindly. I move to the bar and hold on to it. Sarah's friend offers me a drink. I thank her and shake my head. Jack insists.

‘Please, have one. I should have called you, but I was only here for two days, so I thought it would be easier to go to a hotel.'

He has been here for two days
flashes through my mind. It's clear now: Mitali, Ian and Kim were all trying to keep me away – away from Jack. I feel cold and calm as if a bomb has just gone off and I'm still alive in the silent aftermath.

‘Of course, Jack,' I say to his sighting, to his appearance.

There is nothing else to do but stay a few minutes and go.

10

AIREY'S INLET

Outside Sarah's car window, the sea along the Great Ocean Road is a wild thing. It intrudes somehow on sky and earth, taking over as the rightful owner of the continent. Even in summer, it doesn't kowtow to flesh-covered beaches. It presides, calling out its challenge. I am back in the chunky station wagon with Sarah's tonic driving. Mary is sitting in front. They're not talking. They've called me on this Sunday morning, proposed the trip, and are both on my doorstep ten minutes later. Suddenly, I am in the car and that's it. We're gone – Melbourne peeling away behind us.

Sarah's eyes have a dark sparkle as if she were going to rob a bank. Her black jeans and pullover confirm this with a cat-burglar look. Mary, sitting shrouded in the front seat, waves demurely. She could be the Queen of England wearing a burqa. I clamber in the back and they both put up high fives, which I meet inexpertly. Then we're off. I may be wrong but something seems to have changed between them. Even if they don't talk, as on the road back from the airport, their silence is chummier. I can't quite fathom what it is, but it's there. I relax in the back in my wellington boots and look at the inside of Sarah's car. The colour of the seats is a peaty brown, there are a few copies of
The Age
on the floor. An antique Melways is thrust in the distended kangaroo pouch at the back of Mary's seat, which has obviously held more than its fair share of thermoses, bottles of wine and books. I concentrate on any information, however minor, as if I were suddenly in a foreign country all over again. The yawning ashtray is pristine.

The wind is up, a lion rampaging through the clouds. We are slightly rocked with it. It's tougher than Sarah's tough driving. Even though my boss, Kim, is also wildly assured with the clutch and the wheel, the ride with her is merely a rugged experience. This is a getaway car. Excitement climbs into your throat. Any passenger of Sarah's is taken away, kidnapped from thoughts and desires. Mary puts the Easybeats on: ‘Friday on my Mind.' Suddenly, in spite of it being already Sunday, there is a big smile hanging in the air. Neither of the two in the front seat dispense sympathetic looks in my direction. Something tight and comradely seizes us. We are all making a getaway from a heist, and there is no time for small talk.

After two hours of road that melts into the clouds, we get to Airey's Inlet, past Anglesea, and wilder, smaller. Sarah slows down, stops and parks. Mary kills the music. We all sit there. A liquid silence, a negative of the sea outside, flows into our bloodstreams. When we get out, the wind pounces on us and bites at our clothes. We clamber down to the sand and start walking alongside the waves.

Mary has her job now. Money is coming in and the
Monthly
people are a decent lot. Layout, she tells us, is her thing. It's a hovering, before she knows where to put the image on the page, and then a snap decision slays it or brings it to life. For her, it has a kind of Zen magic. I think of how, strangely, people let fall important chunks of their lives on a beach. The wind tears the insubstantial clutter away – the Ikea furniture, the telephone bill, the sneaking fear of failure at work.
What does it matter
? yells the sea.

A sudden squall billows Mary's veil and, at one point, nearly rips it off her face. I see her hand leap up to batten it down – a drowning hand, clutching at survival. Her burqa returns to the forefront of my mind. It was beginning to weld onto Mary, to be part of her laugh, her gestures, the blue swish of her walk. I was no longer curious as to her reasons for wearing it – too busy liking her as a person. Maybe every woman should try out the burqa, as a more subtle way of connecting.

Keeping a tight hold on herself, Sarah stares straight ahead. I am sure she's noticed Mary's desperate tug at her veil. Sarah never slackens her interest in her daughter's burqa – it's there, taut, awake, and yet almost humble. Mary moves on unconcernedly, detached from her hand's movement and the quiet frenzy that betrayed her. The newfound camaraderie of mother and daughter seems to have settled into its groove, giving them more room for the unspoken. My dull ache pushes through the wind and the dancing sea, bonding me to these two women as our steps blend into a synchronised crunch.
Pain
, says the sand,
they know about pain
. They rally around it. The grandmother brought them both up that way – echoing an Irish pain as old as hunger.