The Idea of Perfection (30 page)

If you‘re, you know, up to something you shouldn’t be.

She glanced at him because with the curtain closed there was nothing else to look at, and then she laughed.

She could hear herself doing it again: a long peal of laughter. It was not really all that funny. In fact, if you thought about it, it was not funny at all. She did not know why she was laughing. In fact, it hardly sounded like her at all, but some other woman, much more reckless and easily amused than she herself was, behaving
inappropriately
with the butcher.

She would have to do something about the laughing. It was just a matter of will-power.
No more of that laughing,
you told yourself It was that simple.
Control yourself, Felicity.
That was all there was to it.

AT THE BARBECUE, Harley had met the young man at the garage, the one with the rose tattoo on his arm. She had met too many people that day, and now she could not remember his name, but she knew he was someone’s son, or nephew. Everyone in Karakarook was related to someone else. At the barbecue she had admired his tattoos, and he had rolled up the sleeve of his tee-shirt to show her how the dragon went all the way up to his shoulder.

He had promised her a chest of drawers made of kerosene tins for the museum, and offered to pick up the old range that Mrs Trimm was donating.
I’ve got a lot of time for history,
he had told her.
Like to see the old things kept.

He leaned in intimately at the window, in a toxic aura of petrol fumes.

There was a sign, he said. But it’s buggered. Best bet is, watch out for the kero cans. There’s four of them.

Kero cans, she said doubtfully.

Bloody good letterbox, he said. On their sides.

He slapped at a fly on his forearm.

Only thing is, got to watch out for snakes.

Snakes! she exclaimed.

My word, he said. Put me hand in for the mail once, come out with a bloody great diamond python wrapped around me bloody arm.

She wondered privately how a diamond python would be able to climb up the pole and into the kero can, and also why it would want to. But she did not ask.

When he had shot the nozzle back into its housing, he turned towards her again and frowned, wanting her to be sure.

Four of them, he said, as he screwed the cap back on the petrol tank. Can’t miss it.

 

 

In the end, enjoying the little song the wind made in the window-frame and the way the roof-racks thrummed, she passed the kero cans and only caught sight of them at the last moment, hidden in tall yellow grass. When she stopped and wound down the window, a dry papery smell came in on the warm air. She could see the post now, standing upright in the long grass, and the
buggered
sign propped up against it:
Mount Olympus Panorama Cafe.

On the narrow side-road, the engine seemed very loud in the stillness of the afternoon. The road began to climb. As she passed a gate with FAIR VIEW on it, a flock of birds burst up in fright, then settled back along the roof of a shed that was collapsed at one end as if it had been sat on.

The car began corkscrewing up the mountain, and trees crowded in over the road. Straggly bushes hung by a thread from the edges of the cuttings, the gnarled knuckles of roots gripping the stones. The Datsun swung out on a sharp corner and for a moment the back wheels snatched at gravel.

She felt a kick of anticipation as she remembered where she was going. A
date.
But she did not know why she kept thinking of it as a
date,
when
dates
were so obviously something buried under the weight of her unhappy history.

When he blushed, as he had blushed getting his invitation out, you could see the sandy eyebrows that were otherwise camouflaged by the sandiness of his skin. She thought of him now, winding the wheel around on the corners. He had a way of looking at you sideways, as if you might bite.

She wondered what he was doing at the Caledonian in Karakarook. He did not seem to have the personality to be a manufacturer’s rep. She could not imagine him opening a case of samples of fly-swats or tea-towels and enthusing. He was more likely a public servant, someone from the
Egg Board
or the
Wool Board
Probably not from the
Cattle Board,
though.

He might get dull on the subject of eggs, or wool. She was starting to wish her mouth had not taken it upon itself to say
yes, of course.

The last few corners were so steep the Datsun had to be jerked into first gear. The car ground away up the dirt road as if boring against an obstacle.

She took the last bend too fast, hearing the gravel spurting up around the wheels, and burst into the parking area at speed. The white ute was already there, neatly backed in beside a tree waiting for her. She jerked to a stop in front of it and for a moment they stared at each other through their windscreens. She switched her engine off and in the silence a bird went
cachinka cachinka cachinka tweep!
and a twist of bark fell, spinning over itself, between them on to the ground.

He came around to Harley’s door and leaned, tentatively, in at the window, fingers curled over the sill. He bent himself in at her humbly but said nothing. She went on gripping the wheel in the approved ten-to-two fashion. Now that it was upon her, she was not sure how to go about this
date.
She breathed steadily.

You found it okay, he said at last.

Oh yes, she said, more eagerly than she meant to, and opened the door without thinking. He had to unlock his hands and get his head out of the way quickly.

Sorry, she said.

No, my fault, he said.

Another bird told a long story:
Pee, perepp, pereep! Anch anch, anch coop cooop coop coop trill!
In the transparent heat each droplet of sound was clear and echoing, as if snipped out and pasted on the air.

 

 

The tea-room was oily, the wood panelling sticky with streaked orange varnish. Someone had stuck up posters of other places. Gaudy flowers: SWITZERLAND. A glassy canal: HOLLAND. Grenadier Guards: BRITAIN. Flies circled at face-level. The tables were laid with white lace plastic tablecloths ingrained with dirt and in the middle of each was a clutter of clouded shakers and bottles.

Along one wall was a greasy glass case full of souvenirs. Tea-towels with waratahs. A fluffy platypus with a green plastic beak.

Hand-made signs were taped everywhere.
Do NOT touch display PLEASE. Kindly ASK for assistance. Do NOT lean on glass. NO change given for PHONE.

One side of the room was all glass, beyond which was the view: a great sheet of blank landscape, its colours bleached by distance, its contours flattened by the height. Cloud-shadows lay like dark mats across the patchwork paddocks.

They were the only customers.

From behind a flowered curtain, dirty along the edge at hand-height, came the sound of thick crockery being crashed into a sink.

It’s not very, um, I’m afraid, he said.

He gestured at the view.

But the view is. Well.

He stared out at the bland landscape beneath.

You can see a long way. Um, obviously.

He pulled out one of the wooden chairs and swatted at a fly that was trying to land on his chin.

You can see the river, he said hopefully, and pointed.

She craned to see.

But not very well.

She looked at his face and saw the way his mouth was, under his moustache: how he was biting his bottom lip in his teeth, hard. She knew, without knowing, that he had grown the moustache to hide behind. It was just what she would have done if she had been born a man.

He glanced up as if feeling her watching and met her eyes before looking away again. She had the impulse to say something reassuring but could not think of anything.

It was starting to look as though he might be as bad at
dates
as she was.

At least they had that in common.

She had not planned to, but she found herself having uttered a sudden laugh. The crockery behind the curtain had fallen silent so it was a loud sound in the tea-room, startling the Grenadier Guard and the beady-eyed green-beaked platypus.

He stood gripping the back of a chair hard, holding it out for her. His shoulders were hunched as if under a heavy overcoat. In the silence after her laugh, the gnashing of the crockery started again, louder.

In that humble hunch of shoulder, that desperate grip on the chair, she suddenly saw how it all looked to him: the circling flies, the dirty plastic tablecloths, the boring view, herself laughing. She heard how her laugh could have sounded like a laugh of scorn. It was, or could sound like, a playground laugh.
Made you look you dirty chook.
That kind of laugh: unkind.

Sorry, he said in a generalised kind of way.

A laugh once laughed cannot be unlaughed, and she could not think of anything to say, to soften the scorn of it.

She took the chair from him, feeling where it was warm from his hand on the top rail. As she sat down, her knee hit some part of the table underneath the hanging plastic lace. The table tilted and the sauce bottle fell over and began to roll. They both reached for it at once and then both drew back to let the other do it. The bottle fell with a crash on the wooden floor and began to roll slowly underneath the table. When they both bent down for it at once, they nearly cracked their heads together.

Sorry, they both said at the same time.

She let him get the bottle and sat up straight, feeling the blood a hard red in her cheeks. He did not look at her, but put it back on the table and carefully lined everything up in descending order of height: the greasy salt and pepper shakers, the sugar dispenser full of lumps.

She watched his hands doing it, his big blond knuckles.

They needed to get on with the
date
part of the date, the part where they had a conversation that was more than a lot of apologies.

She saw that he had his back to the view.

Sit round here, she said. Where you can see.

But before he could answer, a hand reached out to push back the curtain and the woman came over to them. She picked up the bottles and held them against her while with a damp grey dishcloth she wiped at the plastic lace tablecloth. They sat watching the movement of the dishcloth between them. When she had finished, she went back behind the curtain.

They call that crumbing down, Harley said. What she did.

Crumbing down? he repeated. Crumbing down. Ah. Well.

There was a silence. The woman came back with her pad.

Two teas, he said, with scones.

He looked at Harley. Unless you’d like coffee. Or something.

She shook her head.

Two teas, then, he said. In a pot, please.

A pot? The pots are just pots for one, the woman said warningly.

Yes, he said. That will be fine. But not too strong, please.

Not too strong? she repeated. It’s just the bags. Just the one bag then was it?

He was keeping his eyes on the underneath of the order pad. One hand was gripping the thumb of the other, hard.

Yes, he said. One bag will be fine for me.

When she had gone he let go of his thumb and hid his hands away under the table. He looked at Harley. A fly circled lazily and landed on the salt shaker between them.

I’m a bit fussy about my tea, he said. But there’s something to be said for being realistic.

He flapped his fingers at the fly, which flew up briefly and landed on his shoulder. The woman had put the bottles back in the wrong order, and he lined them up again, from right to left this time.

Harley was not looking for rings. She was certainly not looking for rings. But there was a ring, just the same: a plain band on his little finger in some kind of dull metal.

It was too dull to be a wedding ring and besides, it was on the wrong finger. Unable to think of anything to say, she went on thinking about it.

He was a lean man now, but perhaps he had been even leaner once. Perhaps he had married as that young, even leaner, man, and had thickened up.

She looked out at the sky, where distant clouds formed and melted away like thoughts. He’d have had to explain to his wife.
Darling,
he’d have said, and explained about the ring not fitting.
But I still love you, darling.

She found it hard to imagine his mouth saying such words. Somehow, he did not have that kind of mouth.

But other people, their lives, their love affairs, were always a mystery, the way they seemed to be able to reveal themselves without fear.

We’re sitting on a rarity, he said suddenly.

Harley twisted around to have a look at her chair.