Blue Skies (4 page)

It was Jonathan who diagnosed the complaint that we both suffered from, and I was surprised at what he had to say. Drunk or not at the time, he showed me a remarkable contrast to his usually insensitive exterior. There he stood, revealed and psychologically naked in that greasy neon-lit kitchen, his fingers stuck deep in a glass bowl of prawn cocktail. We were hiding in the kitchen, afraid to go outside because we feared that a drunk rugby team was waiting to bash us up. Jonathan said that if they didn't clear off soon he was going to call the police. Meanwhile we waited, eating up everything that wasn't likely to last through till Monday.

‘You know, old girl,' he said, ‘the trouble is that I am so piss-awful scared of people. They terrify me, especially when they gang together in groups. I suspect you feel the same way.'

I didn't say so. Obviously a whole bar-full of over excited athletes, convinced that he was homosexual and determined to put him right with a thumping, had unsettled his nerve.

‘I don't just mean that lot upstairs,' he went on. ‘They're much too obvious a manifestation of the syndrome. The really frightening ones are the people who cluster together in the so-called better type of suburb. The golf club joiners, those who keep other people out, who want them in their proper place in this so-called classless society, who like to have a good laugh at anything unusual, who are terrified of anything new and different—the worshippers of the great pepper-grinder god. I'm not putting it well. Never mind. Forget it. Silly to talk like this.'

It wasn't that silly. I thought of the women on the beach. I felt the same way. Perhaps I was scared of them— it seemed better to be scared than to be stuck up.

Before I left Jonathan's employ in a premature panic at finding myself pregnant, it was arranged that we should stay friends. Tuesday seemed a good day for it. I would go up to town and see him on Tuesdays.

Usually we would have lunch at his own corner table near the kitchen, so that he could go in there and fuss through the busy times without too much inconvenience. Lunch was always exciting; and I always drank a lot, and talked too much; he rarely listened.

Afterwards, after locking up, I would go back with him to his flat. While he slept in preparation for the night's excitements, I roamed around playing his records and tapes and soaking up the atmosphere. He was the first person I knew who had headphones, which were a bit unnecessary since his flat was above a warehouse.

The pink-and-grey vinyl radiogram with gold knobs that my parents gave me for my seventeenth birthday was never the same again, and I put it in the carport, along with other unwanted items. The carport slowly filled up with rubbish. Wedding presents went in first and on top of them piles of newspapers, magazines and worn-out obscene publications smuggled in from foreign parts; broken things that may have been mendable; large amounts of just plain garbage that I was ashamed to put out for our irate garbage-disposal men who grudgingly crawled round once a week at 2 a.m. or thereabouts. They wouldn't take cartons of rubbish, only two neat deodorised plastic garbage cans per house.

I fretted over where people put their excess rubbish. Surely they must have some. Probably a great deal went onto compost heaps and incinerators in back gardens, but both seemed mysterious and faintly dangerous to me. So all that shameful excess went into the garage. After a while I gave up packing it in cartons, and just opened the door enough to get my arm round to hurl the old tin cans and bottles inside as far as I could.

After some months of this I noticed, to my horror, that the double doors were beginning to bulge outwards. Terrified of exposure, I piled bricks in front and tried to forget all about it. On the hot days I thought I could detect a faint but sickly smell, and local dogs took to sniffing round the doors and moaning ecstatically. I became nervous and imagined germs and rats breeding out there: I saw the rats pouring forth in a seething stream to bite the sun-brown babies in their prams.

In the pink pages I found a refuse-disposal firm. They agreed to come and solve my problem, even though I wasn't an industrial unit—more a health hazard. Two men worked all day with shovels removing layer after layer. The further down they went, the more compacted and unpleasant it became. As I sneaked an occasional look, it seemed to me like the geological layers that are exposed in a cliff by erosion: thousands of years squashed into a one-inch stratum. Finally they scraped the remains of the wedding presents up from the concrete floor and drove the lot away in a truck. The pink-and-grey vinyl-finish radiogram with gold-plated knobs and luminous station-finder dial lay on the floor beside the driver. I was glad it had found a good home. For twenty dollars I had bought peace of mind and a sense of virtue. I just hoped nobody would find out.

I might have saved myself some embarrassment if I'd had them call on a Thursday. Thursdays I was out. Thursdays always started bright, and they always started early. Bright and early, there I'd be, pushing the pram up the road, round the corner and down the next road but one.

The pram squeaked, and my brain squeaked along with it, keeping time. It squeaked with the effort of wondering what to say to Mother-in-law waiting round the next bend. You couldn't just dump a baby and run. She wasn't that kind of person.

The truth is, I didn't talk much to anybody. But Mother-in-law I did talk to. There she would be, in bed in her lovingly crocheted pink bed-jacket, preparing for a standard Thursday-morning chat.

Her bedroom was at the front of the house; large windows faced the street, draped and discreet for no purpose. There were pink-painted peeling French windows at the side, opening onto a gloomy concrete verandah. This in turn led down by some steps at the opposite end, onto the front lawn. The lawn was badly drained and boggy—a very imperfect lawn. I thought of bringing my demented neighbour round to look at it, by way of reassurance.

Down the street we would go, shattering the early morning daze, making little puffs of dust as we kept carefully to the sides of the road. Safety first. Dust rose to settle all over the teak-veneer coffee tables in all the houses down the road. The sunny hum of early morning hoovers filled our ears.

A big daring swerve took us to the middle of the road, ready for the big run-up needed to carry us over the swampy lawn without getting stuck. We bumped backwards up the steps, front pram wheels spinning noisily in mid air. A final hearty shove across the concrete verandah and we were at the peeling pink doors. They were open.

‘Good morning, dear.' There she was, sitting up in bed, surrounded by litter and all the props of a poor sleeper, sipping milkless, sugarless tea from a thermos flask. I crossed the room and sat on the bed.

‘Good morning.'

‘How is James? He said he would call in to see me on his way home last night, but he didn't. I expect he'll telephone me today. Or call in this evening.'

James is her son: the youngest, the nearest to home, the one I'm married to. James hadn't come home last night.

‘Oh he's fine. But tired, you know. He's really busy at the moment. I'm sure he'll phone today.'

‘Well, my dear, you mustn't let him work too hard.'

Here followed various health warnings and gloomy predictions as to what might happen if James worked too hard.

Next, Angelica. Angelica is James's daughter, the baby, and her grand-daughter. ‘How is Angelica? Oh, do bring her in. I long to see her.'

An Angelica-sized space was cleared and she was carried in from the pram and placed face down on the bed. It may not look natural, but face down was how she liked to be: she got into the habit at the hospital where she was born; they programmed her to do it from birth. ‘It brings up the wind and is comfortable for Baby,' they said. Not only that. At the moment it showed off her plastic pants to best advantage. They had an extravagant rosette on the seat, made up of different-coloured ruffs of pastel plastic. I had bought them the day before at the Baby Bar in the local chemist. I awaited delighted reactions complacently.

‘Oh, how sweet. Oh, aren't they fun. You do look after her so beautifully, my dear. I will say that.'

Terrible vistas opened up of what she wouldn't say. We both have this problem of what to call each other. She has settled for ‘My Dear'. I have settled for nothing.

‘Do go through and make yourself some coffee, if you want. There should be some nice biscuits in the tin.'

I went—there was still a quarter of an hour before the bus to town passed the top of the road, and I was starving. The coffee made, biscuit tin placed under one arm, I returned to the bedroom.

‘My dear. Couldn't you find a plate? I'm sure you could if you looked.'

There wasn't much time left now. The rest of the conversation was obscured by the biscuit cramming my mouth. It kept getting stuck and the coffee wouldn't make it go down.

‘You'd better go. You'll miss your bus. I'd hate you to do that on my account.'

‘Goodbye.'

I kissed her cheek as she expected, and patted the baby on its plastic rosette.

‘I'll try not to be late.'

‘Don't worry, my dear. You know how I love to have her all to myself. You cut along now and enjoy yourself.'

I cut, and quickly. My left sandal strap snapped as I ran up the street to the main road. Just in time: I could see the bus approaching at high speed. It pulled up; the pneumatic doors folded back. I climbed up the steps, paid the driver, and fell into the nearest seat. I wound down the window and threw the other sandal out. Barefoot and free. You couldn't pile it on too thick on Thursdays.

From town I took another bus, a country-bound bus, square and slow. Full of mailbags and chicken crates, it went out through the surrounding bush townships in the early morning and came back in the late evening. The driver was young and greasy. I thought he must be English. He wore his hair in a beautifully oiled duck's tail; it must have left dreadful marks on his pillow or wherever he kept his head. He wore a purple suit and blue suede shoes. A large Japanese transistor radio balanced on top of his dashboard. It crashed against the windscreen at every hole in the road and was never quite on the station, but gave a pleasant blurred effect with occasional blasts of static. That bus had atmosphere. Today it also had a team of lady bowlers, who were off to an away match at a country ground. They were arranged two-by-two along one side of the bus, exchanging pleasantries and egg sandwiches, their starched white dresses and uniform hats giving off static of their own. Their bright enamel club badges glittered and flashed victoriously in the sun; their stringy brown calves rippled healthily above sterile white socks. The bus had a clinical air this morning; in contrast the driver looked dirtier than ever. The newspapers and loaves of sliced white bread in their waxy red-and-white wrappings were loaded into the back.

We moved off, creaky and overloaded, crawling through the suburbs to where the thin stream of weatherboard houses trickled out into a pool of rusting car bodies, rotting mattresses and ragged-edged beer cans. The telegraph poles continued, pulling themselves out of the tangled mess of the town into a taut straight line and marching purposefully ahead from horizon to horizon, ignoring geography and natural obstacles and playing tricks with perspective.