On Brunswick Ground (17 page)

Mary's face has slotted into its empty space. The eyes and the urgent half smile ask me to rid myself of questions. I take a breath and nod.

She moves closer.

‘They're both going to see my face – at the same time.'

Her head moves from side to side, a bit like a neck exercise.

‘You will stay, won't you, until they rock up?'

I promise. I have no comment to make on her scar; somehow, in some strange way, it seems a part of her. Philip sighs.

‘These idiots,' he makes a dismissive wave of the arm around the gallery, ‘will probably see something political in this. I'll bet you anything. Jesus, I can hear them already.'

He glances at Mary.

‘This was way sexier than getting a girl to undress, I can tell you.'

Philip's eyes are on her burnt profile and his tone changes.

‘I thought I knew about beauty, but I didn't.'

It suddenly seems clear to me that, rather than a disfigured face or a beautiful one, he has painted all I haven't been able to sort out over this past year, all that Brunswick hasn't been able to resolve – a woman. Then people are talking to Philip, and Mary whispers to me:

‘They're here.'

I turn around and I see Sarah and a man I assume is Gerald. Sarah has no expression. She's just walking straight towards us. Gerald has piercing blue eyes with a frantic expression. But as he approaches us, it becomes clear that the electric blue of his eyes is what gives them that strange intensity. They must be where Mary gets her burqa-piercing blue stare. Now Sarah has stepped right up to her daughter. She doesn't say anything at first. Then her words come out in a voice I don't recognise.

‘Why didn't you tell me? Why did you hide it for so long?'

Her tone is as raw as meat in this white place. Gerald stands near them. He's not very tall but has the presence of a footballer. His hands go out as if he were going to place them on both their shoulders, then fall to tug at the scarf around his neck.

Mary's voice is husky and quiet.

‘It was an accident, Mum. I was taking photographs on a work site …' Before focusing on Sarah again, she looks at her father, ‘… for a magazine … There was an explosion and I suffered this electrical burn. I couldn't bear facing anyone. Sam helped with the Islamic stuff. We just cooked it up. He was kind …'

There is a silence like moss growing under trees, like a sheet of rain falling forever. Then Mary breaks it.

‘I saw the faces of the people who helped me when I had my accident … I just couldn't deal with it. I'd discovered my so-called beauty in kindergarten. I remember suddenly realising as a kid that I was a shop front, like a pastry shop people go
oh
and
ah
in front of. If I wasn't careful, I wouldn't be real. Do you remember that playground with the wooden swings and roundabouts down the road from where we used to live? I went there on my own one time and I swore to the bloody trees that I would never pretend, that I would never be a fairy princess. Every time someone would sidle up to me and tell me I was their dream girl or some crap, they had the same expression in their eyes. It was making us both cheap. I was only a kid, but I knew this was about death. Why do you think Sleeping Beauty sleeps a hundred years? Because they don't allow her be a real human being. Then I saw that look again at the time of the accident. Admiration, horror, what's the difference? My whole life had come full circle. I just couldn't take it. Mum?'

I look at them all staring at her – Philip Paulson, whose eyes seem to have enough room in them to contain this; Gerald, still and unhinged like one of Sarah's sculptures; and Sarah herself, nodding slowly, moving her lips back and forth, as if she were chewing, or fighting back tears.

‘I don't quite understand what you're saying Mary, but I think maybe I'd react like that too. I couldn't bear the pity. We're a tough lot, aren't we?'

And her straight, honest look is her gift.
It's all right
, it says. Gerald's hands move suddenly to where they wanted to be – one on each of their shoulders.

Even though there are so many other people here, I feel it's time for me to go. To stay would be an intrusion. It's dark now, but Sydney Road is full of lights.

17

AUGURIES

One afternoon the cat follows me home. He steps into the house after me as if he owns the place. Without even sniffing around, he aims straight for the kitchen. I give him the traditional feline offering, a bowl of milk. Several cans of tuna are stacked in the cupboard and a cat door is already there. Everything seems naturally ready for him. He then moves to the sofa and settles on the folded blanket before slowly turning his head round towards me. Nothing of his presence has changed from the one he sports in the street – same old Humphrey Bogart. He is giving me a chance. I recognise that. It's a strange opportunity I can't define.

I stare at him without attempting to pat him. It's about seven in the evening. I usually see myself as a dog person. You can always catch a dog panting, snoring, sighing, but I can't hear this fellow breathe at all. Cats are generally out of my ken, but from the start this one is in a category of his own. I pick up a book and curl myself up at the other end of the sofa. His benevolent gaze cradles me and my reading. He even suffers the squeal of my mobile: it's Bernice, asking if I feel like coming for a drink tonight. I look at the cat. His benevolence hasn't changed. His head is on his paws and his yawn seems to say:
Go on, it will do you good
.

‘Please come,' insists Bernice.

I tell her I'll be there in ten minutes. I don't move yet. I listen for his breathing. I still can't hear it but I sense the difference his presence makes to the room. I tell him softly that I hope he will be there when I get back. Then I go and get my coat. On the way I text Mitali, to tell her about Bogart. We have changed gears. It's strange to have to text each other rather than see each other every day in person.

The streets are unusually empty. My footsteps are swallowed by the winter. I suddenly wish I had stayed with the cat. Then I imagine him sniffing round the place thoroughly and fastidiously, giving it a good once over. It seems right to leave him to his privacy. I read somewhere that cats are the real owners of the home. When I reach Bernice's small tucked-away street, the cars start whipping by more remotely, making no more noise than a match being struck. Brunswick ushers me into yet another hidden place, a village of Victorian and Edwardian houses, a tad formal, but snug. As I walk through her garden gate and knock on her door, even the quality of the sky feels different.

I haven't seen her for two, three months. I don't even know if, overcoming her hesitations, she has gone on with her baby project, or if she's still tortured by the dating world. Instead of Bernice, a man lets me in. It's Francis, one of the two archaeologists, the one whose mother was killed in the bush. We shake hands and he steps back, with a welcoming grin. I walk into the sudden quiet created by the turning off of a gushing tap in the kitchen, as if, rather than the surprise of silence, it was the water's own surprise at being quashed.

We walk into the kitchen and Bernice squeals when she sees me. Her arms are flung out and her soft fingers fall on my shoulders, dragging me to her. She is rounder somehow and her face more childlike than ever. She whispers in my ear:

‘I'm having
a baby
. It's starting to
show
.'

But when she pushes me back to smile at me, I see she hasn't changed. The same candid light shines in her eyes, the same unfathomable purity. I stare at her wordlessly. What can words add to the fact that another person is arriving, with heart, eyes, hands, feet and soul to boot? Bernice giggles.

‘I knew you'd be happy for … me.'

I notice she stumbles on the last word. Then, I can't help it, I have to ask:

‘Have you bought a Silver Cross perambulator?'

Her eyes widen.

‘Do you know …' and she frowns in sudden realisation, ‘I haven't even thought about it.'

Just then I notice another man sitting on a stool with a crooked smile. Bernice walks me towards him.

‘Do you remember Harry?'

I nod and shake his hand.

Bernice eases herself into a chair at her small kitchen table and I'm sitting in front of her. Francis and Harry are opening cupboards or perched on stools with one leg dangling, tame as cats. Bernice heaves a sigh.

‘I may have twins. It's common in my family.'

She pauses.

‘That would be a bit too much though. I don't think I could manage.'

Francis chuckles.

‘It won't be too much, of course we'll manage.'

Harry lets out a laugh.

‘Even if it's triplets.'

There's some energy floating in the air, like a pact. It makes the kitchen tingle, its yellow light as warm as egg yolk. Bernice has baked an almond-meal cake and there's Persian fetta and rice cakes and cider, no wine.

‘How's Mitali?'

Bernice is a walking radio station, her waves connecting all human concerns in the Brunswick village. I explain that Mitali's aneurysm was not a rupture. It was just pressing on an area of the brain, which is what made her lose consciousness. There is only a slim chance of her having another one. They're still not sure if they're going to operate on her. Harry coughs.

‘I know her husband, Ian. I read his thesis on Kawabata and Chekhov. It's really good. I've only read a little Chekhov and no Kawabata at all, but I couldn't put it down. Do you think this will be a big change in Mitali's life?'

I look at his serious russet face.

‘The doctors seem to think that she can't expose herself to jet lag. She'll need to travel in short stages. And her gardening days are probably over.'

As I say this I think of how much I miss seeing Mitali every day. Kim is talking of taking on someone to replace her and I dread the change. However, it's not so hard to work with Kim anymore. The connection between us is better now than it was at the start. She has shown me her drawings and they make me draw my breath. I need make no comment. My appreciative silence suits her quiet endeavour. She gives me a proud and embarrassed smile, the one a Mona Lisa might give if you caught her without her clothes on. Now, when she moves on to explain the work ahead, I understand her. The rainmaker has done her job.

Bernice frowns.

‘You'll miss gardening with Mitali something awful, won't you?'

I nod. No wonder she's a wizard on the radio. She's simply on the human wavelength. The only wavelength she wasn't good on was her own. This may be exactly the same kitchen I've seen her in before – but there is some quantum shift. Surely neither Francis, nor Harry, nor the future child, are the only explanations. It's something more. I look around the room. I look at Bernice: her beautiful hands have come home somehow, they lie on the table, they're even smiling at me – in the way you are sometimes quite sure a bird is staring straight back at you from a tree. If happiness is not an equation, if it's not the answer to a dream, it must be the bird on our kitchen table.

Harry is rubbing his jaw.

‘No more gardening! But if she's a gardener, that's what her soul requires.'

His face sets in a stubborn slant and it makes him look even more like Raymond Carver. Francis slips off his stool, rocking from one foot to the other with his hands in his pockets.

‘Change isn't that bad.'

Bernice shakes her fringe and grins at him.

‘No, it isn't.'

Francis glances at her before carrying on.

‘When change happens with the inevitability of a Roman augury, it's best to go with the flow.'

Harry snorts.

‘An aneurysm may have the inevitability of a Roman augury, but it doesn't mean Mitali has to like it. Why would anyone like to be cut off from the work they love?'

There is a silence. Bernice settles her chin in her cupped hands. Francis takes his hands out of his pockets.

‘I personally – even if it is a loss at first – feel a sense of relief when there are no more doubts, no more vacillations, no more Freud, no more Lacan, as when everything depended on crows, tides, chicken entrails.'

Since Jack's accident I don't remember any feeling of inevitability, except when treading the Merri Creek water and feeling the cold current thrashing against my legs.

Bernice nods thoroughly, bending forward, her arms folded on the table.

‘Like having a baby. All you can do is follow.' She smiles blindingly at Harry, before adding with a crease between her eyebrows: ‘I never thought it would be so easy, like swimming.'

Her words are as simple and strong as the moon. The two men and I just stare at Bernice. Then I notice three loose tiles on the kitchen floor. I imagine Bernice's children playing with them or burying them in the garden.

There is a message on my mobile. I don't check it, I know it's Kim giving me the meeting place for tomorrow. I usually have a ‘participation mystique' with the phone, as if some being from outer space were on the other end of the line. But tonight, my hand doesn't even grab it instinctively. Tonight I stay in the golden, trustful kitchen – full of the beginning of new life.

The term ‘IVF' has not passed Bernice's lips again. It's like a sleight of hand. Neither she, nor Francis, nor Harry volunteer information. For a second I think the baby must be coming under its own steam. Either way, it's to the right place. No one is ashamed, no one is afraid. No one is prim and anxious.

I don't try to guess how their arrangement works. There's plenty of space. Bernice has three bedrooms in her house – which is why she was hunting for flatmates, though they certainly don't feel like housemates tonight. Harry and Francis are too obviously at home. It's easy to imagine them all nursing the baby when, in a few months, it will be living here too. That's all I need to know. I extend my legs and munch a piece of cake.