Carnival Sky (17 page)

SHEFF AND JESSICA MET several times at the same café, welcome breaks from the sad monotony of his parents’ home. but the meetings were fleeting pleasures during her lunch hours, or the less routine breaks in her working day, and Sheff wanted greater opportunity. He asked her if she’d like to walk with him along the river track to the Fraser Stream.

They could go on the Monday afternoon, Jessica said, but would need to be back in time for her to collect Emma, so well before one o’clock she came to the house and they walked through the quiet willows with occasional glimpses of the broad river, its deep currents boiling sometimes to the surface. Jessica walked strongly, at ease in the country, accustomed to outdoor places and outdoor people. She had an aura of physical capability that added to her attractiveness. Each time Sheff met her he found something new to admire: the small pause and smile she allowed before laughing, the absence of pettiness in her candid assessment of others, the habit of fingering her watch when thoughtful. Even the enthusiasm she maintained for her vocation: a contrast to his own disillusionment.

Occasionally cyclists came past, taking an alternative route from Clyde to link up with the rail trail at Alex. A surprising number were old by any reckoning, but came on with smiling yet earnest resolve as if engaged in some grand endeavour. At a familiar spot the bank
was worn clear of growth, and from the willow above hung a heavy rope that swimmers used to launch themselves into the flow. Farther on, the track curved into lupins and rough grass, and the river wasn’t always visible.

The Fraser Stream was close to the great, heaped tailings, and Sheff and Jessica stood by the footbridge in the shade for a time and listened to the water. He’d swum there as a boy, biking or running up after bell time, or at weekends, in some combination with Bunny, Albie or Paul, then scampering the strange landscape of the tailings: mountains of stones and grit sparsely bristled with thyme. They would swim naked and flick at one another’s bums with towels. They would bear down the already weeping willows, stalk lizards, dig out rabbit burrows, light fires, gather burnished rose-hips and clamber on massive and rusted skeletons of dredge machinery. When the pleasure of destruction waned, they would swim, then lie in the sun with towels over their faces.

Bunny had once sliced his head open on a broken branch, and had run howling for home, one hand held to the cut, and blood seeping from his handkerchief. Once they had spied on copulation, amazed at the woman’s hairiness, then the rhythmical rise and fall of the man’s white back, the atavistic sounds of a joy beyond their experience. All a long time ago, but the awe of the place wasn’t completely dispelled by commonplace adulthood.

Jessica and Sheff climbed up the tailings to a lookout point where they could enjoy the view, as well as the variety of colours and textures in the stones close at hand. It was a place Warwick used to come to, seeking rocks for his polishing tumbler. No shade on the scree, however, and so they walked down again to the stream. Close to the water was a log with the top surface levelled somewhat to make a rough seat. Jessica and Sheff sat there, with a willow behind blocking most of the sunlight and the water dappled and mobile before them. The shade gave the impression of coolness, but the air was warm and there was a jitter of tiny bugs above the river surface. Sheff was
shoulder to shoulder with Jessica and the closeness a pleasure. She was drinking from a plastic water-bottle, and when she lowered it, he put his arm around her. His face was close to hers, and rather than any fragrance he was aware of the warmth from her skin. The small birthmark was clear on her neck, so close to him that he could see slight irregularities in texture and colour. It was a blemish serving only to accentuate the attraction of all else about her. No, more than that, it was in itself a beauty spot just because it was hers, and he leant his head and kissed her skin there.

‘No, don’t do that,’ she said quietly.

‘I’m sorry. It’s just that I like you. I like talking to you, being with you. You’re sexy, you know that?’

‘I’m not into it,’ Jessica said, and she put one hand lightly on his shoulder to control the distance between them, but also maintain affection.

‘Why come with me, then?’

‘Because you asked me, because I enjoy talking to you and you need someone outside your family right now, but I don’t have sex with guys any more. That’s why I left my marriage. It wasn’t fair to go on the way it was. I’m a lesbian.’ It was said without emphasis, or hesitation. The midges continued to dance above the water that mirrored the shifting sunlight through the draped willows and the poplars at attention.

‘Jesus, I feel a fool,’ said Sheff. ‘I’d no idea.’

‘Why should you? Most guys don’t, and I don’t live with a woman.’

‘It’s just that you’re so attractive.’

‘You mean I look straight?’ She smiled, took her hand from his shoulder to pluck grass and flick it away. ‘What does a lesbian look like, then?’

‘Well, obviously I don’t know …’ He felt clumsy, almost adolescent. He’d acted in response to his own feelings without taking enough notice of hers. Maybe it was a small relief that she would have had said the same thing to any guy, not just a more appealing one. ‘I’m really sorry.’

‘No need,’ she said. ‘Let’s just forget it. I figure I’m not just someone you want to hit on. We can still be friends, can’t we?’

‘Sure.’

‘Just a reshuffle of priorities. Not everything has to be cock-driven,’ she said, and gave him a shrewd, direct look.

‘I guess it’s not a new thing for you: guys being interested because you’re on your own now.’

‘A divorced woman of forty-two? Yeah, you can be something of a target, but then having Emma is a protection in a way.’

‘Not with your looks,’ said Sheff.

‘Cut it out,’ she said. ‘Anyway, apart from having every guy’s eternal eye for opportunity, I reckon that you’re really searching for some escape from what’s happening with your dad, and that’s natural enough. It must be agonising for you all.’

Even while still embarrassed by the gentle rebuff, Sheff admired how Jessica managed it. She wasn’t indignant, or defensive. Her empathy meant that she could provide a perceptive justification for his actions more readily than he was able to do himself. Maybe what she said was true. As his father was dying he felt increasing need for closeness to those who had strong lives and healthy bodies.

‘I thought I might come round to the house sometime soon and see you all again. Georgie’s asked me to,’ she said. ‘That won’t be awkward? You don’t mind? Georgie needs a friend too.’

‘As often as you want. I’d like that, and I promise to keep my hands off you. I’ve never had a lesbian friend before.’

‘No different to other friends in any way that matters,’ Jessica said.

‘It interests me,’ said Sheff provocatively. He was consciously reclaiming the status of intellectual companion rather than aspiring and rejected lover. ‘I need a liberal education.’

‘Yeah, guys tend to be interested. You think I’m going to talk much about it to a journalist? You people would gut your own grandmother.’

‘I could be an impartial spokesperson for alternative sexuality.’

‘Funny,’ said Jessica. ‘I don’t belong to any sisterhoods. I don’t
march and wave placards. I’m just me. Anyway, no time for that discussion, or any other. I’ve got to get back and pick up Emma.’

She still sat beside him on the rough wooden seat, and so they were still at ease together, perhaps even more so, though for him there was some collateral disappointment.

‘We used to come up here as kids,’ he said. ‘I suppose you did too?’

‘No. Girls didn’t much, because some of the older boys would try to feel you up. We were scared.’

‘Nothing changes. I’m sorry.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that, really.’

‘I don’t remember anyone ever getting lost, even in the hills. All this bare, lookalike country stretching back to God only knows where, and yet as youngsters we seemed to have an instinct about how far we could go and how to get back to the tracks. Hunters had a few shooting accidents, but locals didn’t get lost.’

‘My father always said follow watercourses downhill and you must come out all right,’ said Jessica. She picked up a couple of stones, and lobbed them separately into the water. The circular ripples expanded on the gliding surface. ‘So you suggested coming here just so you could get me alone,’ she said.

‘I suppose I did really.’

‘I hope you don’t feel it’s a complete waste. I never thought, otherwise I would’ve said something before. I suppose I expected Georgie would have told you, and that was silly.’

‘I never asked. I never even thought of it, and I’m bitterly disappointed. I might go off in a huff.’

She just smiled, took up more pebbles, and so Sheff did the same. After each of her throws, he tried to land his stone in the same place. They still sat close and the action of throwing moved their shoulders together and he enjoyed the simple contact. ‘You’ve got Emma, though, from being with Kevin, so that’s a plus. She’s a great kid.’

‘She makes everything worthwhile, but Kevin and I had good times as well as bad. But sometimes you change, and you have to go through
stuff and it takes a while to find out that who you are isn’t the same as who everyone expects you to be.’

As they walked back along the foot track, they talked little, but there was no awkwardness: they walked as acknowledged friends rather than possible lovers. It wasn’t his expectation, or preference, but it was comfort all the same. He had few women friends who weren’t either former sexual partners, or anticipated ones. Jessica would be a new sort of friend, and he was mildly interested in the nature of it, but he felt still a physical attraction and a stubborn male conviction that her orientation was a waste of an admirable body. Not that he would admit that, even to himself. Most of his humiliations had sex as the cause, but there was an emotional flare in lovemaking, even more exhilarating than the physical pleasure, and in the midst of it a sense of being alive in a way no other experience could match.

When they returned to the house, Jessica chatted to Belize and Georgie for a few minutes, not about bridge, or sickness, not about family, but flower gardens. She was knowledgeable, yet Sheff’s recollection of her section was of minimalism: silver birches, self-sufficient shrubs and parched lawn. He supposed a single, working mother had little time for the cultivation of blooms. At the end she left hurriedly to collect her daughter. ‘See you,’ she said at her car, and smiled. If anything he thought her even better-looking than before: not just the figure and the tan, but the slight parenthetical smile creases at the corners of her mouth, and the carelessly tied-back hair, the natural assurance in her movement. What fortunate woman took hold of her in the most intimate way, and was embraced in return? He supposed it made sense that one woman would know how to pleasure another.

‘Did you know Jessica was lesbian?’ Sheff asked his sister when they were sitting outside on the patio after dinner. Before their return to Alex he would never have confided in Georgie about such things.

‘Yes.’

‘How did you know?’

‘She told me. That’s why she left Kevin Hutton. You didn’t make a fool of yourself this afternoon, did you?’

‘Of course not, but she told me about it.’ A lie and a truth surely cancelled each other out, and already Sheff was reshaping the afternoon’s debacle in his favour. ‘She doesn’t live with anyone,’ he said.

‘I know,’ said Georgie. ‘It can’t be easy for her in such a small place, though. What the bridge club knows, the town knows. Fifty years ago they’d have been breaking her windows.’ Dusk was gathering among the garden shrubs and the fruit and citrus trees in the unkempt orchard paddock. It was full summer, and with a glimmer of yellow and red among the foliage. Sheff had the passing inclination for a cigarette, although he hadn’t smoked for twenty years.

‘I can’t stay much longer,’ Georgie said. ‘It’s not fair on the hospital and my private patients. When Dad’s at the end, you call me and I’ll come straight back.’

‘How will I know?’

‘Andrew North will tell you. You’re able to stay?’

‘I suppose so. I must get off my backside and write some more pieces for the paper to take my mind off things. I might do a piece on Jessica as a country vet. Maybe go on a day’s round with her. And I thought I might make something of the annual bunny shoot: thousands of corpses laid out on the park and the winning team with the trophy.’

‘You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, if you really needed money?’

‘I’m okay.’

But he wasn’t okay. How could the three of them be anything but undone as Warwick was dying? To brood on that brought a sort of sickness in itself, and to find respite from it occasioned guilt. Constant buffeting forced the spirit into unresponsiveness as protection. Much of ordinary life assumed a gloating irrelevance. Sheff had been there before, except then the agony was after Charlotte’s death: there had been no warning before.

‘He’s slipping,’ said Georgie, ‘and there’s such pain. Andrew came
when you were away and I got a bit angsty about that. There’s way too much suffering, but he’s conservative in palliative treatment and I can’t interfere.’

‘I wish you could be supervising everything,’ said Sheff.

‘So do I, but it doesn’t work that way in medical practice. It’s an ethical convention not to treat your own family.’ Georgie looked for a moment as if she was going to say more, but then got up. ‘Anyway, I’m going in.’

‘You must see a lot of people die in the cancer wards.’

‘I see most of them before, or after, but it’s different with Dad. You’re doing the right thing by getting out of the house when you can. You need to do that even for an hour or two. It’s like coming up to the surface after holding your breath for a long time.’

She gathered the empty mugs and went inside, leaving Sheff seated among the patio furniture, and with the shapes of the world losing outline in the evening. She was right. It was just like that. A sort of growing suffocation and being unable to open your mouth, and the burst of relief to be away from the sickroom and at the surface of life once more. And Jesus, if that was what it was like for Georgie and him, what was it like for their mother and father?