Our Magic Hour (19 page)

‘How's your mum?' Nick asked.

‘Pretty loopy.' Audrey saw his patient face reflected in the television screen.
‘Last week she turned up at Irène's place virtually naked except for her dressing-gown.
They were having David's parents over for dinner.'

‘That's fucked.'

‘Yeah, but Irène doesn't help, either. She was threatening to take her to the Peninsula
triage.'

‘Let her. They won't admit her.'

‘I know.' Audrey brushed her hands together. ‘What about yours?'

‘Everyone's good. Will's still in Amsterdam. Mum's worried he's not coming home.
She keeps asking about you.'

‘Remember me to her.'

Nick looked up, his mouth twisted into a strange smile.

‘What?'

‘Such an old-fashioned way of saying it,' Nick said.
‘Remember me to her.'

They were already forgetting each other.

Audrey threw the orange skin into the compost bin. She finished her wine standing
by the kitchen sink. Nick staggered down the hallway to the bedroom. ‘I'm rooted.'
Audrey followed him, but stopped in the doorway. He sat on the bed, unlacing his
boots, and he looked surprised when he saw her standing there at the threshold, still
in her coat.

‘What are you doing?'

‘I didn't think—I don't want to—'

‘Christ, Audrey, I don't want to, either. Just get into bed.' He
turned around while
she undressed. She stripped to her stockings, and pulled on an old jumper of Nick's.
It fell to her thighs in slack folds. She felt ugly and small.

They faced each other on the mattress. Cold space between them: they were not enough
to fill the bed.

‘I read your book,' Nick said.

‘Which book?'

‘
L'Assommoir
, however you say it. The French one you've been re-reading. I went to
the library and got it in English.' Audrey stared at him. ‘Here,' he said, reaching
for the paperback. Its pages were age-softened and discoloured; it smelled fusty
and dank. She opened the book and unfolded all the turned-in corners before she said
anything.

‘How did you find it?'

‘Fucken long.' He rubbed his eyes. ‘I don't know if I'm just a dickhead, and I know
your dad loved Zola, but I didn't get it. I didn't get what his big message was.'

‘At the time it was all science and reason. They thought everything was hereditary
back then. You know, if you're born into—'

‘No, I get that, but what's the point of it? If you're fucked, you're fucked, that's
it, and you can't do anything about it?'

‘Maybe.'

‘I don't think it's true,' he said. Audrey put her hands to her face. Her fingers
smelled like oranges. ‘Spence? I don't think it's true. That was a hundred and fifty
years ago.'

Audrey didn't answer. They curled like babies and sleep swarmed in.

In the early morning they sat on the back step looking out at the fence. The sky
was wide and chalky. The magpies sang. Audrey's bum was cold. She kept passing her
hands through the steam purling from her tea.

‘Remember that time we both got that lurg after Christmas, and we didn't leave the
house for a week?'

‘Yeah,' Audrey said. ‘It was so hot, remember?'

Nick had come down with it first, a virus that made him sweat and shake and vomit.
Audrey dampened washcloths under the bathroom tap and made ice cubes from orange
juice and kept the blinds drawn until she was sick too, clammy and aching. Every
morning they got up and changed the bedsheets, and collapsed again, swaddled in
their sickness. They joked about painting an X on the door. One sweltering night
just before New Year's they sat in front of the pedestal fan watching
Twin Peaks
,
and Audrey fell in and out of fever dreams about red rooms and mountain roads.

‘You working today?' she asked.

‘Not till tonight. You?'

‘No, I'm taking a couple of days off. I've got a lot of time in lieu.'

Nick nodded. He stretched out his legs so that his toes touched the weeds poking
through the cracked pavers. ‘Wanna go and get breakfast?'

‘I'd better not. I've got to go round to Bern's and give him a driving lesson. His
test's coming up.'

Nick tipped his tea down the gully trap. Audrey stood to leave. They were done.

Audrey tried to make a routine. She got up, ate breakfast with Adam, walked to Barkly
Street for coffee, then came home and settled to a day's work. She was full of steel.
She applied for positions with migrant aid centres, palliative care facilities, out-of-home
care organisations. She was diligent. She wrote painstaking responses to dozens of
selection criteria, made adjustments to her CV, hunched over drafts of cover letters.
Sometimes when Adam came home he'd look over her handwritten list of jobs or proofread
an application.
It looks like a lot
, he'd say. When Audrey talked about finding her
own
place or overstaying her welcome, he brushed her off.
You can't leave. I'll be
lonely without you.

Vanessa was kind. She sent messages.
Trapeze called for a reference
.
Peter Mac called
.
Odyssey House called
. There were a few interviews. Audrey went along in too-formal
clothes, feeling like a fraud.

Some afternoons she filled Adam's bathtub and lay there to read.
What you do for
children, you make a bath
.

Adam's key in the lock. She half-expected Minh's voice, too, but it was all quiet.

‘You home?' he called.

‘In the bathroom.' The door swung open. She scrambled to cover herself.

‘Relax. I don't want to bloody look at you.'

‘Are you going to piss? I'll get out.'

‘I'm not going to
piss
,' he said. He slid down the wall to sit beside the tub. ‘What
book?' he asked. Audrey held up the cover. ‘Read me something.'

She read half a page, uncertainly. The story was about a Belgian man on a train.
Wartime. Rolling hills and young love and danger everywhere. It was a skinny book,
so Audrey was persevering with it.

‘Westmead called today,' she said. She set the book on the tiles.

‘The hospital in Sydney?'

She nodded.

‘I didn't know you'd applied there.'

‘They had a position in the paediatric oncology ward.'

‘Kids with cancer,' Adam said, ‘that'd be heaps more uplifting than your old work.'

‘Well, they offered me the job.'

‘Good on you! That'll make you more confident with the others.'

‘I think I want to take it,' Audrey said.

Adam picked up the book and thumbed through it. ‘Is that a bit rash?' he said.

‘I've thought about it.' He glanced at her. ‘Irène said something a while ago. Bernie's
almost done with school. Maman doesn't really need me like I think she does. There's
nothing keeping me here. And I can't explain it, but there are so many places I can't
stand here since Katy. And Nick. It's like I've wrecked them all.'

‘You didn't wreck them,' Adam said.

The water had turned tepid. Audrey was cold. ‘I can't live here with you forever,'
she said.

‘I didn't mean to sound negative,' Adam said. ‘I just want you to do it for the right
reasons, not because everything's gone to shit.'

‘I'm not. I want a change.'

‘Okay. Then it's great.' He stood up and passed her a towel. ‘I've got a couple of
friends in Sydney. I could see if they know anyone who needs a flatmate.'

‘Thanks, Adam.'

He was leaning against the sink, back to the mirror. He gave a small smile. He said
I love you
.

Yusra phoned to see if Audrey was coming to Tilly's birthday, made it sound casual.
‘I told her you had a bit going on.'

‘Thanks,' Audrey said.

‘And actually, I'm pretty stuffed this week. I don't know if I'm up to it, either.
Do you feel like coming round here?'

Yusra cooked fish. Audrey sat on the bench and watched her. When she sliced the onions,
her eyes wept so much she was blinded. She said
Oh—it's a really bad one
and put
down the knife. Audrey offered to take over, and then they were both bent double,
pressing palms to their eyes, laughing. Yusra's mascara had run down to her chin.

‘We look miserable,' Audrey said.

‘You know what I need,' Yusra said. She disappeared into her bedroom, and emerged
a moment later wearing swimming goggles.
She struck a pin-up pose in the doorway.

Adam came by late, alone, halfway to drunk. He'd walked from the train station, and
Audrey felt the stinging cold on his cheek when she kissed it.

‘I've got some K,' he announced.

The three of them climbed into Yusra's bed and sat shoulder to shoulder against the
wall, wrapped in blankets.

‘I don't think I want any,' Audrey said.

‘Go on,' Yusra said. ‘It'll just make everything go sideways for a bit.'

It didn't make things go sideways; it only made her sleepy. She dozed between their
warm bodies. She heard Adam say
I thought the music had been going the whole time.
She heard Yusra say
Don't do any more yet
. Before she fell asleep properly, hot in
the heart, she heard Yusra say
I don't want you to go
. It was so much like things
had been with Katy, the three of them curled beneath a doona, that she had to think
very carefully about where she was.

Audrey borrowed Adam's car and drove over to Charles Street.

‘You could have just let yourself in,' Nick said.

‘I thought you were working today.'

‘Not till tonight.' He stepped aside. The house still smelled like their house. Dust
motes floated in the hall.

She turned to face him. ‘I'm just coming back to get some things,' she said. ‘I got
a job in Sydney.'

‘Sydney. Congratulations.'

He stood with his hands in his pockets.

‘So it's okay if I—I'll just be in the bedroom—?'

‘Yeah, knock yourself out.'

She worked efficiently, packing her clothes and shoes neatly into bags. Nick helped
her cart boxes of books out to the car. Afterwards they stood on the pavement.

‘Thank you. Thanks for helping me with my stuff.'

‘That's okay.'

She wrapped her scarf around her neck. Nick's face lightened; he gave a strange laugh.

‘You've sort of stopped looking like a person wearing a coat,' he said. ‘You look
like a coat with a person in it.'

‘I'm sorry. Don't be sad.'

‘You want me to be the bad guy.'

‘That's not true.'

‘I can't make you feel better,' Nick said. ‘Do you understand that? So don't, don't
apologise.'

Audrey nodded at the footpath, arms folded across her chest.

‘I'll write. Let you know my address up there.'

‘Yeah, let me know.' He stepped towards her and they hugged sharply, bone and bone.
‘Take care, Spence. Look after yourself.'

‘You too.' She touched his arm. ‘See you.'

Badlands

In Sydney the light was strong. Audrey's shadow was more certain. In the days before
her job began, she walked the streets as a tourist. She sent postcards home with
pictures of the glittering harbour. In Glebe she found a book of Marjorie Barnard's
short stories. It had been raining and the sky was greenish. Audrey paced back and
forth in front of the bus stop and looked down the streets that sloped to the city.
The glass of the tall buildings turned gold and winked, then the windows became hundreds
of lit squares, and the weird mushroomy clouds pitched and rolled.

She sat on a crowded train on another rainy day. The girl opposite her was reading:
her head bent forwards into the book, her serious brows drawn together. She had milky
skin and thick arms. When she stood to get off the train, their legs brushed, smooth,
shaved knees, and Audrey could have shuddered: longing rushed into her pelvis. She
felt savage. She was surprised when anyone spoke to her.

She moved in with Adam's friend Claire for the first few weeks. Sweet, languid Claire,
who welcomed her wholeheartedly, who boiled eggs and made cups of tea in the morning.
She and Adam
had met in a hostel in Byron Bay—
We were in a four-bed dorm, and the
other two people started fucking one night, and we had to evacuate
, Adam had explained,
though Claire told it differently. There were always friends calling by the house.
Audrey was grateful for the noise. For three weeks she occupied the bright room at
the end of the hallway. Claire's son, Elliott, six years old and clever, slept in
the room opposite. Audrey heard him moving around in there at night, turning lights
off and on, singing to himself and reading aloud, shuffling down the hall to his
mother's bedroom.

The Redfern streets were sleepy in the mornings. The train to the hospital took half
an hour. Just before Westmead there was a mason with a sign that said MONUMENTAL
MEMORIALS and sometimes Audrey chanted the words to herself like a skipping rhyme
while she walked. The big hospital was a terrifying, brutalist building. It seemed
to take up the entire suburb. The Children's Hospital was at the end of the road,
orange and terracotta coloured, opposite flats and motels. It was quiet in the mornings,
but by the time Audrey left for the day, there were kids on the play equipment out
front and people smoking by the entrance, waiting at the bus stop. Everyone wore
crabbed, hesitant smiles.

The Camperdown ward staff seemed surprised when she said she'd come from child protection.
They all said how young she looked. Audrey worked to remember names and answers to
questions. She tried to summon up things from the only hospital placement she'd
ever done, years ago. That first week was a deluge.