Australian Love Stories (7 page)

This mania for Karl had to stop. Mallory knew it. She must find a way to deflate it, to empty its absolutely overwhelming power over her. It simply would not do. Here they both were, deep in the skins of their relationships and families. What did she want, anyway? For him to leave his lovely wife? Abandon his children, the family he'd built up? Of course not. The reality would be awful. She wished to show him her life. Perhaps what
she needed was to show her life to someone who could really see it. And that person was not Rick.

On this realisation, her eyes filled with tears more stinging and poisonous than she'd ever felt, the manifestation of disappointment as deep as bile.
So what
, she told herself. If she could not show her life to anyone, she would show it to herself. And that would be enough. She would make it be enough.

A poem was not what she expected. It came upon her in a rush, and she scribbled it down. Later she fussed over it, patting it into ten syllable lines, and though it refused to rhyme she felt she'd found something better in herself.

Striding over the grass, leaving behind

your polished old ute, ukulele slung

loosely over one arm, in the other

a picnic basket, a warm blanket rolled.

We've some hours here at midlife, no more, no

tomorrow together, nor yesterday.

Through smoke-light passing over the mountain,

I skip like I'm a carefree child again,

bringing some humble, half transformed objects,

for you to test, to bite like a jeweller,

to find a measure of truth, and if not

a wholesome rebuke and a guiding word.

But first, I'll listen to your homemade songs

my head on the ground, my eyes toward sky

while your fingers pick keen melodies from string;

each note sawing the air, the earth, our selves.

By now your hands have cradled babies, built

houses, turned soil for sowing and seeking;

fossils and seedlings, worms and foundations

as you remake earth so the earth shapes you,

training your gist to more tender beauty.

Your life crosses mine for this brief moment.

Although we are barely more than strangers,

let me tell you: you're fighting the good fight.

Seeing your eyes softly battered by time,

baby wrinkles cupping each, like the feet

of hummingbirds, unbidden affection

rises in me like a bread loaf baking.

What kinship have we? What is this rising?

Who mixed the dough and who set it to bake?

Who eats from it, and whom does it nourish?

Speak here with me and rest, till violet

ends our tryst with her motionless shadow.

Breaking the bread of this incarnation,

we'll eat, commend ourselves to God, and part.

No cambric shirt for Karl, seamless and mystical. Just this imagined meeting where the unsayable could be said, and farewelled. She pecked out a clean copy on the old typewriter, read it over, and sealed it in an envelope marked ‘Karl.' She would drop it in a red post box, and never think of him again.

And so it might have been, if it hadn't been for a crisis in the bridal shop.

‘Your heart's just not in this,' accused Emily, as Mallory stood in the feathery, corseted gown, sweat filming the nape of her neck, staring at her hollow-eyed reflection. ‘You should be excited. Happy.'

‘I feel lumpy, that's all.'

‘Why are you even marrying him?'

‘Because he's nice.' She thought of Rick's brown curls, his laughing green eyes, his stubby fingernails. ‘Because he's the father of my daughter. Because when he asked me, I thought, I might as well marry him as marry anybody.'

‘They are not good reasons, if you ask me,' said the shop assistant, though nobody had.

‘Has something changed?' asked Emily.

Mallory hesitated. Should she tell her? The poem in its envelope lay in her handbag, a white corner sticking out; in fact, if the bag fell open another inch or two, the bold capital letters spelling
KARL
would give the game away.

‘I just—began to imagine what it might be to be
in love
.'

‘That's not a good reason either,' said the assistant, tweaking a feather on Mallory's gown. ‘Love is what's left when being in love is burned away. I read that somewhere.'

‘Very nice,' sighed Emily, with a barely disguised eye-roll.

Mallory retreated to the dressing room to divest herself of the boned dress. As it came away, she felt herself peeled free. She could never wear a dress like that. When she emerged, she was almost weeping.

‘I can't do it, can I?'

‘No. You have to tell him.'

‘Not tonight. Not on Valentine's Day.'

‘What rot,' scoffed Emily. ‘It's just a commercialized load of nonsense.'

‘Still, I don't want him to associate our breakup with this date forever.'

‘So—cancel tonight. Tell him tomorrow.'

That evening, in the fading warmth, she took one last walk past Karl's house, the house that Emily said he'd built. Pushing Daphne in the pram she looked in, on her way to the public post box. No-one was visible in the windows. His wife's car wasn't there. She heard a guitar strumming and children's laughter, and guessed they were in the back yard. And she thought, what harm would it do to put the poem in his letterbox? Immediately the answer came back: untold harm. But a typed letter? This was all she'd ever ask of Karl. To read something from her, to know he'd been thought of in this way… He would never know who it was from. He may not even show his wife. Of course he wouldn't!

The madness reared like a little tongue of flame, and she drove her hand into her bag, withdrew the letter, posted it and walked away, fast.

As soon as she had reached the safety of the shadows, she was possessed of an equal need to get the letter back. What utter stupidity! She turned around and marched back again, determined to retrieve her self-betrayal, and had to stop. There was Karl, walking through his front garden. She pulled the pram backward.
Don't see me, don't see me!

He wasn't getting the mail. Surely not. People don't get their mail so late? But he was. He was opening the letterbox, lifting the little pile of envelopes, glancing at them, pausing.
Oh no, he's seen it.
Mallory lifted a hand to her mouth.
You idiot
, she cursed herself.
You absolute idiot.
Karl sat on the swinging chair on the veranda and opened her envelope. He drew out the note. Read it.

Mallory chewed on a knuckle, watching. It was too dusky to make out any reaction. She watched him fold up the letter and put it back in the envelope, very neat and precise. He tucked it into his shirt pocket. At least she knew his wife wouldn't see it. But what was he thinking? What was he
thinking
?

Autumn grew bitter fast and the people longed for summer again, forgetting the fires that burned houses and bush, forgetting the bright claws of heat that held them back from sleep. Daphne learned to sit up. Mallory stopped stalking Karl, and forbade herself from looking at his picture on the internet. Their paths would not cross again if she could help it; this was the only way she could make up for the wrong she had done to his wife in leaving that poem.

Rick was more upset about breaking up than she'd expected. After some difficult meetings however, the rightness of the decision grew obvious even to him. They drew up a document about Daphne's care and signed it; and they agreed to stay friends. On that afternoon, she kissed him goodbye on the cheek and said:

‘You've been decent every step of the way, Rick. You'll make someone a really great husband.'
And Rick rubbed his cheek and shrugged, and she knew things would be okay between them.

Winter came and most people paid little attention to the shortest night. A few gathered at Emily's to eat roasted peppers, salted olives and delicious white cheeses, and drink mulled wine, and play music. When Emily rang to invite her, Mallory asked if Karl and his wife were coming. She didn't want to reawaken her obsession. She was feeling clean and clear. Hours passed where she didn't think of him.

‘What do you mean, Karl's wife?' asked Emily. ‘She died nearly five years ago.'

‘What? Could you—run that by me again?'

‘Car accident, poor things. Everyone knows that. That's why everyone admires him.'

‘Oh my God,' said Mallory. She felt winded by the shock of it, as though Emily had struck a lance into her gut, her primordial core, and something was splashing out.

‘But Em, who was—that woman he was singing to, at the folk festival?'

‘His sister, stupid. She moved in with him to help with the children.'

When Mallory turned up at the midwinter party, she saw Karl with his guitar among the others by the fire. His whiskers looked positively Dickensian, but raying out from his eyes was that rare intelligence, that radiant curiosity. Within her was some muted, anticipatory trembling. When she checked in with it, she found its quality was not obsessive or manic like before.