The Narrow Road to the Deep North (15 page)

Amy felt the water reform her into something whole and strong. Things that a day before had seemed at the centre of her being dissolved into trivia and then washed away altogether: next week’s dining room menu; the difficulty of procuring new wool blankets for the hotel rooms; the odour of the chief barman; the sickly sucking noise Keith made as he lit his pipe of an evening.

Behind the wave line they turned, wet-faced and diamond-eyed. On the infinite plateau of ocean only their heads broke, they trod water, each gazing at the other. She felt him swim up from underneath and brush her body as he surfaced. Like a seal, like a man.

After, they rested in the cleft of a dune, where the roar of breaking waves was hushed and the wind deflected. As their bodies dried, the heat returned as a stupefying weight. Amy stretched out and Dorrigo followed suit. She let her back soak up the heat and rested her face in the dark shadow thrown by her head. After a time she burrowed around and nestled her head against his stomach. He lit another cigarette.

Dorrigo held his arm up to the white-streaked sky and thought he had never seen anything so perfect. He closed one eye and with his other watched his finger touch the beauty of a cloud.

Why don’t we remember clouds? he said.

Because they don’t mean anything.

And yet they’re everything, thought Dorrigo, but this idea was too vast or absurd to hold or even care about, and he let it drift past him with the cloud.

Time passed slowly or quickly. It was hard to say. They rolled into each other.

Dorry?

Dorrigo murmured.

You know it’s when I’m alone with Keith that I can’t stand him and I hate myself, she said. Why’s that?

Dorrigo Evans had no answer. He flicked his cigarette into a dune.

Because I want to be with you, she said.

Time had gone and everything had halted.

That’s why, she said.

Whatever had held them apart, whatever had restrained their bodies before, was now gone. If the earth spun it faltered, if the wind blew it waited. Hands found flesh; flesh, flesh. He felt the improbable weight of her eyelash with his own; he kissed the slight, rose-coloured trench that remained from her knicker elastic, running around her belly like the equator line circling the world. As they lost themselves in the circumnavigation of each other, there came from nearby shrill shrieks that ended in a deeper howl.

Dorrigo looked up. A large dog stood at the top of the dune. Above blood-jagged drool, its slobbery mouth clutched a twitching fairy penguin. He had the strange sensation that suddenly Amy was very far away, that he was hovering above her naked body. His feelings abruptly transformed. Amy, whose body an instant before had made him feel almost drunk with its scent and touch and sweep, its sweet salt rime; Amy, who a moment earlier had seemed to him to have become another aspect of himself, was now remote and removed from him. Their understanding of each other had been greater than that of God’s. And a moment later it had vanished.

The dog dropped its head sideways; the penguin’s now limp body flopped, and the dog turned and vanished. But the penguin’s howl—eerie and long, with its abrupt end—remained in his mind.

Look at me, he heard Amy whisper.
Only
me
.

When he looked back down, Amy’s eyes had changed. Her pupils seemed saucer-like, lost—and lost, he realised, in him. He felt the terrible gravity of her desire for him pulling him back to her, into a story that was not his, and now that he had all he had dreamt of in recent days, he wanted to escape it as quickly as possible. He feared losing himself, his freedom, his future. What had a moment before aroused him so intensely now seemed charmless and ordinary, and he wished to flee. But instead he closed his eyes, and as he entered her a groan escaped her lips in a voice he did not recognise.

A wild, almost violent intensity took hold of their lovemaking and turned the strangeness of their bodies into a single thing. He forgot those short, sharp shrieks, that horror of ceaseless solitude, his dread of a nameless future. Her body transformed for him again. It was no longer desire or repulsion, but another element of him, without which he was incomplete. In her he felt the most powerful and necessary return. And without her, his life felt to him no longer any life at all.

Even then though, his memory was eating the truth of them. Afterwards, he remembered only their bodies, rising and falling with the crash of waves, brushed by the sea breezes that ruffled the sand dune tops and raked the ash that ate his abandoned cigarette.

DYING AIR DOZED
in the King of Cornwall’s corridors. There was a weariness to the dim light. In the hotel kitchen it smelt like gas, though no leak had ever been found. In the rising floors and elaborate staircases, with their dusty carpet runners, there rose and fell odours Amy recognised as disappointment, of dust balls and dryness mixed with the slumping grease of defective meals and the doomed assignations of travelling salesmen and women bored or desperate or both. Am I one of these women? Amy wondered as she made her way to the top floor. Am I one too?

But once inside the corner room that they both now thought of as theirs—where the French doors with their corroding hinges and rusting lock creaked open onto the ocean and the ceaseless light across the road, where the room smelt of the sea and the air seemed to dance, there, where all things seemed possible—she knew she wasn’t. She had arranged some ice and two bottles of beer for him, but in spite of the ferocious heat they were unopened when she arrived.

Dorrigo Evans pointed to the green Bakelite clock on the mantelpiece. Though the minute hand had at some unknown point disappeared from its face, the hour hand showed he had been waiting there for three hours past the time she had said she would come.

I had to wait till the day staff were gone, she said. Until it was safe for me to come here unnoticed.

Who’s left?

Two barmaids, the head barman, the cook. Milly, the waitress. None of them ever come upstairs.

There doesn’t seem to be anyone staying here.

Not tonight. I had all the bookings put in the two floors below so it’s only us up here.

They went out onto the deep-set verandah and sat on the rusty iron furniture and shared a bottle of beer.

You’re a great punter, Dorrigo said, acccording to Keith.

Ha, Amy said. Look at those birds. And she pointed to where sea birds would suddenly drop like dead things into the ocean. She went over to the wrought-iron balustrade; all its paint had long flaked away, leaving only an ochre dust. She ran a hand over its gritty oxide, red as old rock.

Keith reckoned you’d have the gun tip, Dorrigo said.

The birds would rise back up, whiting in their beaks. Amy pinched the sandy rust between her fingertips. She turned her gaze to the long beach, which ran for some miles till it reached an ancient eroded headland, bare of all but the hardiest scrub. Her head seemed full of distant things. He went to take her hand but she pulled it away.

Keith said that?

He said you always know the track and the field and the weights and the best bet.

Ha, she said, and went back to her own thoughts. From the street below, the noise of a dog yapping startled her. She looked around uneasily.

It’s him, she said, and he could hear panic rising in her voice. He’s come back a day early. I have to go, he’s—

It’s a big dog, said Dorrigo. Listen. A big dog. Not a mutt like Miss Beatrice.

She went quiet. The barking stopped, a man’s voice—not Keith’s—could be heard speaking to the dog, and then was gone. After a time she spoke up.

I hate that dog. I mean, I like dogs. But he lets it up on the table after we’ve eaten. With its obscene tongue leaping out like some awful snake.

Dorrigo laughed.

And slobbering, panting away, said Amy. A dog on a table? Can you imagine it?

Every meal?

Can I tell you something? Just you?

Of course.

It’s not about Miss Beatrice—and you can never tell anyone.

Of course.

You promise?

Of course.

Promise!

I promise.

She came back into the shadowed cave of the verandah and sat down. She took a sip of beer, then a long draught, put the glass down, glanced up at him and back at the beaded glass.

I was pregnant.

She was looking at her fingers, rubbing the now damp rust sand between their tips.

To Keith.

You’re his wife.

This was before. Before we were married.

She halted and craned her head around, as if searching for someone else along that long, shadowed verandah. Finally satisfied there was no one, she turned back to him.

Which is why we married. He just didn’t—this sounds so terrible—he just didn’t think it was right to have a baby out of wedlock. You understand?

Not exactly. You could have married. You did marry.

He’s a good man. He is. But—when I got pregnant—he didn’t want to marry. And I did. To protect the baby. I didn’t—

She halted again.

Love him. No. I didn’t. Besides.

Besides what?

You won’t think me a bad woman?

Why?

Wicked? I am not wicked.

Why? Why would I think such a thing?

Because I said I was going to Melbourne to see the Cup. I said to people I always went. Well, I was new here, what did they know? But—

But you didn’t go.

No. Not that. I went. But I also—

Her fingers were moving quickly, trying to rub the rust off. Abruptly, she wiped them on the side of her dress, leaving a red smear.

I also went to see a man—a doctor—in Melbourne that Keith had arranged. Keith said it was the best way to deal with it. It was November. Well. He fixed it.

A silence opened up that not even the crashing waves could fill.

I never had a skerrick of interest in horses, said Amy.

But you picked Old Rowley to win the Cup. One hundred to one. You must know something.

I picked him because he
was
one hundred to one. I picked him to lose. I half expected him to be put down at the starting gate. I picked him because I hate the bloody Cup. I hate everything about it.

She stood back up.

I don’t want to talk about it out here.

They went inside and lay on the bed. She rested her head on his chest, but it was too hot and after a time she moved away and they lay side by side with only their fingertips touching.

He sat there—Keith, I mean. Keith sat there with Miss Beatrice in his lap and said he had arranged a man in Melbourne to look after me. A man. What does that mean? A man?

For a moment this question seemed to absorb her, then she spoke again.

And he patted his dog. I never hated anything like I hated that dog. He wouldn’t touch me, but there he was, patting and stroking that dog.

So what happened?

Nothing. I went to see a man in Melbourne. He just kept stroking and cooing at his bloody dog.

THE OCCASIONAL ROAD
and beach noises far below were swept up and swirled around by the ceiling fan’s blades as it slowly shucked time. He found he was listening to her breathing, to the waves, to the clock on the mantelpiece. At some point he realised Amy’s head was back on his chest and she had fallen asleep; at another that he too was asleep with her. The curtain yawned in as the late-afternoon sea breeze picked up, and with it the heat fell away and there came puffs of the smoky light of dusk. When next he stirred, he realised it was night and the lamp was on and Amy was awake, looking at him.

But after that? he whispered.

After what?

After the man in Melbourne?

Oh. Yes, she said, and halted and looked up at the ceiling or perhaps beyond it. It was a look at once of puzzlement and resignation, as though she expected the world to always come back to this mysterious place on the ceiling or in the stars beyond. Yes, she said several more times, still looking up. Finally, she looked back down at him.

I had to pretend I went to Melbourne for the race. I boned up on horses and betting and the like. Maybe I even got a little interested. It was something to think about, I suppose. And after, I didn’t care. It was like the horses. I just pretended. I don’t know. Anyway, that’s why I have a little flutter now and then.

And Keith?

When I came back he was kind. So kind. I suppose he felt guilty. And I was so upset. And he wanted to marry me, even though there was no longer a baby—maybe to make it up. Maybe he was more ashamed than me. I don’t know.

And you fell in love?

Just fell. Everything was snow. In my head. Have you ever had that feeling? You have a world and then all your thoughts have turned into snow. Keith was so kind and I was snow. Maybe I was ashamed. Maybe I just thought I was dirt. I did think I was dirt. I know I didn’t want to be a spinster. Maybe I thought we could make it right. Get pregnant again. And this time make it right. But it was all wrong. I hated him for his kindness. I hated him until he hated me back. He said I’d tricked him into marriage. And somehow that seemed as it should be. He said I tricked him, that I did dreadful things and that’s why the pregnancy. Maybe he doesn’t really think it now. But sometimes things are said and they’re not just words. They are everything that one person thinks of another in a sentence. Just one sentence. You tricked me, he said, and that’s why the marriage. There are words and words and none mean anything. And then one sentence means everything.

Amy lay on her side as she gazed out towards the sea. Lying at her back, he felt jealous of her pillow. They lay silently together for a long time. With a finger he swept the hairs that fell across her face behind her ear. The shape of its shell always moved him. He felt a terrible vertigo, as if he were being swept into a gigantic maelstrom that had no ending. The green Bakelite clock was reduced to its phosphorescent arm and numbers, a ghostly floating circle that seemed now to hover above them as it ticked away. She rolled into him and he could feel her breath brushing his chest. He saw her eyes open, stare intently across his body as if gazing at something far beyond, and then close.