Dorothy Eden (32 page)

So on the nights that Lola stayed in the scene must always be like this, the old lady in her high-necked black dress decorated with too many strings of beads, sitting alertly in the wing chair by the window, apparently busy with the multi-colored wools of her gros point, but missing nothing. Milton in his wheel chair, looking into space, until some irritation provoked one of his sharp outbursts, Mary at his side, pale-faced, subdued, rarely speaking, and Lola the restless one, not in the least intimidated by the oppressive atmosphere, turning on the radio too loud, talking incessantly, laughing.

There was no doubt that Lola was seen to great advantage when contrasted with her family. One had to admire her sheer vitality.

It was also not surprising that Luke had been a welcome and frequent visitor. They all, Lola particularly, must have regarded him as heaven-sent. But had he really only known the Moffatts since he had bought their piece of land six months ago and built his house? Were they, or Lola anyway, someone out of his past? Abby never knew why this thought niggled at her, but there was some element beneath the mere polite friendliness of neighbors. She wished she could ignore it or at least understand it. It didn’t seem as if Luke would ever tell her.

Mrs. Moffatt asked Abby to come and sit beside her.

“Did you have a nice afternoon shopping, dear?”

“Actually I didn’t shop.”

“Just window shopped. How wise. Think carefully before you spend, I always told my girls.” The brilliant brown eyes, slitted between their wrinkled lids, peered at Abby. “You’re looking so pretty tonight. But you English girls have beautiful skins. Not dried up with the sun like ours. Deirdre said you were going to use her lipstick tonight. How thoughtful of you, dear. You’re very kind to Deirdre.”

Abby felt Mrs. Moffatt’s eyes on her lips. Not wanting to hurt the old lady’s feeling by telling her that Luke had thrown the lipstick away, she just smiled, and wondered again whether she was ever going to hear the last of that tiresome present.

“Lola brings home so much muck from work. I’m sorry, I always call it muck. We didn’t use cosmetics like this in our day. But naturally they have to try out new things before recommending them to their customers. Mary thinks Lola is lucky being free to go to work. She’s so tied to Milton. And now there’s this hospital treatment coming up again. It makes him so edgy, poor dear. He only puts up with it because he refuses to believe he won’t walk again.”

The voice went on in its monotone, heard only by Abby, for the room was large and at the other end of it Lola and Luke were trying out a record on the gramophone. They were bending over it discussing it—or something else. Mary was pouring coffee, and Milton was looking at the ceiling, his narrow hands gripped together, his stone gray eyes as prominent as marbles.

“Elizabeth Street is a handsome street, isn’t it? And how all those skyscrapers going up. Oh, yes, it’s the country for young energetic people like yourselves. You won’t be sorry you came. I was born here, of course. This was my parents’ house. It used to be a fashionable area, but it’s come down in the world. Like us, I’m afraid. My father made bad investments, and then my husband died when he was quite a young man. I’ve brought up the girls as best I could.”

The music had abruptly come to an end, and in the moment of silence Abby heard Luke saying, “I’m sorry I can’t help more,” and stopping abruptly as he realized the silence.

Lola patted his arm.

“You’ve done enough for us already, honey. Just being around helps.” She turned to Milton to say, “I’ve just been telling Luke you’re due back in hospital next week.”

“I don’t want help,” said Milton edgily. “I can manage for myself. And don’t think I’m in this chair forever. I’ll walk again.”

“Of course you will, darling,” Mary’s voice was gentle and comforting. But the coffee cup she was holding rattled in its saucer, and she gave a small exasperated exclamation. “Oh, dear, I’ve spilt this. Lola, get a cloth.”

“Can’t you do anything properly?” demanded Milton. “Here I have to sit and watch you fumbling and bumbling.”

Mary’s pale cheeks went even paler. Lola said in her aggressive way,

“Cut it out, Milt. It was an accident. And no wonder. You make her nervous, watching like that. Why don’t you throw something at him, Mary?”

But she crossed over and pressed Milton’s shoulder and the tension went out of his face. Abby tried to feel genuine sympathy, but it was not easy with someone who was so difficult to like. Milton’s intolerant eyes glared at everyone, even his wife. Most of all his timid subdued wife.

Luke had come to sit by Mrs. Moffatt.

“Did Abby tell you about her adventure today, Mrs. Moffatt? She thinks the Cross is a sinister place. I’m taking her back tomorrow to show her it isn’t.”

“But it can be sinister, Luke.” Mrs. Moffatt was preparing to enjoy this promising conversation. “There are so many strange characters up there today. And there’s great wealth and great poverty, so things must happen. That’s human nature, isn’t it? But what did happen to Abby?”

Before Abby could reply, Mary had brought the coffee, and Lola had put another record on the gramophone. Milton said petulantly, “Instead of all that noisy stuff, Lola, can we simply be old-fashioned and have the weather and the news?”

“Sure, Milt. Coming up.”

“Sugar?” Mary asked Abby.

“No, thank you.”

“No coffee for me,” said Mrs. Moffatt. “It keeps me awake. Are you a television fan, Abby? Oh, it’s a time filler, of course. But to me it’s just retreating into a fantasy world. In my young days we were made to fill in time with constructive things. Needlework, if nothing else, and conversation. Informed conversation. We didn’t go about the city alone, either, but I expect we missed a lot of fun.”

“Be quiet!” said Milton suddenly.

Mrs. Moffatt looked up in surprise. “Sorry, Milton. I didn’t realize you were listening to the news. Is there something particular—”

The impersonal voice of the announcer continued calmly,

“…is thought to have tried to swim ashore from the
China Star
which came in from Singapore this morning. The captain says he must have been a stowaway making a desperate bid to enter Australia. It will be remembered that some months ago a similar incident—”

Milton had snapped off the set.

“Only a Chink,” he said dismissing the matter.

“But nasty,” said Mary in her soft distressed voice. “Poor man.”

Milton looked across to Abby, politely making an explanation.

“You may not know that Australia has pretty strict immigration laws. But from time to time some desperate Chinese or Japanese stows away on a ship and tries to swim ashore. Or else he dies on board ship, perhaps from suffocation in some locker, or from starvation, and his friends dump him overboard. Anyway, it isn’t uncommon to find a body floating in Sydney harbor.”

“That other one was white,” said Mrs. Moffatt, re-threading her needle.

“He was never identified. Some bum from the East, probably.” Milton took his coffee from Mary and said more amicably, “I’m sorry about that grisly bit of news. I only wanted to hear world affairs. What do you think of Mr. K’s latest, Luke?”

Luke jerked himself back to attention. It was so obvious that everyone looked at him.

“Afraid I haven’t been following it too closely lately.”

“Lucky devil, you’ve got enough affairs of your own.”

“I wonder if he had a wife and a horde of children at home,” Mrs. Moffatt was saying with detached interest. “They say Chinese do. And now there’ll be the problem of his family wanting to bury him with his ancestors. He must have badly wanted to get into Australia if he was prepared to risk the sharks. You have to be sorry for these people. They say Australia is the oldest continent in the world, but is it meant just for the white man?”

“Don’t forget the aborigines, mother,” said Lola. “And you go up to the Cross if you want to see different colored skins. All the Chinese haven’t been squeezed out.”

Luke stood up.

“Abby, it’s time we went.” He looked round the room. “Sorry, but Abby and I’ve had a busy day, and I expect you people have, too.”

He was almost curt. But he did look tired. He wasn’t inventing an excuse. And Abby was more than ready to go. The Moffatts were kind, but not the easiest or the most fun-loving people in the world. There were too many under-currents. And the fragment of human tragedy hadn’t helped with the gaiety. But at least it had prevented more discussion about that tiresome and trivial subject, the lipstick, which even Luke now seemed to have forgotten.

They walked down the slope in the fresh night air. Luke had left the light over the front door switched on, so that it wasn’t too difficult following the path. All the same the night seemed strangely dark. Something seemed different.

It wasn’t until Abby reached the door that she realized what it was.

“Luke! The boat’s gone. Jock’s gone.”

It was true, for not only was the yellow square of light from his cabin window missing, but the dark shape of the boat had vanished, and the river was empty.

“What a relief!” Abby exclaimed. “Listen to that heavenly stillness. No gramophone. Honestly, that tune of his was driving me up the wall. And I forgot to tell you, he called here today asking for work. I don’t know whether I’m too suspicious, but he really isn’t the type of man I want about. He sounds too deliberately servile.”

“I’m sorry he worried you that much,” said Luke. “But don’t be too optimistic. He’ll probably be back.”

“Doesn’t the swagman type move on periodically?”

“And comes back to his old haunts,” Luke pointed out.

However, Abby felt disproportionately light-hearted. They were stuck with the Moffatts as neighbors, but an itinerant boatman wasn’t there forever.

It was a pity that she couldn’t spread her light-heartedness to Luke. All at once he just seemed too tired. His face was drawn and there was a look in his eyes that might almost have been tormented. Abby said anxiously,

“Luke, aren’t you feeling well?”

“I’m all right. Just tired. I’ve had quite a day.”

“Then why did you say we’d go to the Moffatts?”

“I suppose I feel a bit sorry for them. They’ve got their tragedy, too, with Milton.”

“Too?” said Abby. “Who else has?”

“I was just thinking of that poor devil fished out of the harbor. So far from home. He’d come all this way to die.”

“Luke, how sweet of you to be upset about that. Milton wasn’t. He said it was just another Chink. But do these orientals think Australia is a paradise that they’ll risk the sharks to get ashore?”

“Men do desperate things for private reasons,” Luke said slowly. “Sometimes you don’t know which is worst, physical danger or mental hell.”

“What are you talking about?” Abby asked uneasily.

He attempted to laugh. Suddenly he put his arms round her.

“Forget it, sweetie.”

“But that didn’t sound like you. It sounded much more like your brother Andrew. Do you remember that night in my flat when Andrew went on and on about the color question? And we weren’t in the mood for intellectual discussions. But I adore him, all the same. I wish he could have been at our wedding.”

“So do I.”

“Have you heard from him lately? Is he really in Alaska?”

“He wanted to write about the primitive life,” Luke said. “He was always harking back to the simple state. Twentieth-century civilization had got itself into such a snazzle of complications, he said. He had this dream of trying to find out if a man’s heart could still be a spiritual thing, or just the engine of a machine. He was always talking about that. You remember?”

“Yes,” said Abby quietly.

Luke’s face was at last beginning to. relax. It always did when he talked of the older brother for whom he had so much love and respect, and who had looked after him since their teens when they had been suddenly orphaned. Andrew was all he had before he had met her, Luke had told Abby.

“At last he’ll have an excuse to grow that beard he hankered for,” Abby said. “I’ll bet it’s an enormous one. But I wish he would write. How long is it since you heard from him?”

“About six months. I don’t expect there’s a very frequent post on the icecap.”

Abby giggled.

“I can see a postman in a red uniform struggling through the snow—”

Red…She hadn’t escaped so far from the present after all.

“I should have worn a cotton dress today,” she said miserably. “It was warm enough.”

“Abby, you’re to stop thinking of that! I know things haven’t been amusing today. But don’t hold it against Australia. Or me.”

“Or you!”

“For leaving you to cope alone.”

“But you couldn’t know what I was getting into. It was one of my less predictable moments. Don’t you remember, you always said I was unpredictable?”

He smiled at last.

“And so you are. Tomorrow we’ll get to the bottom of this affair. Trust me?”

“Oh, Luke! Of course.”

They were close again. As he kissed her, first gently and then with a growing desire that almost had a desperation, as if this physical thing between them were the only real one, Abby caught his excitement and pushed away her disquiet.

It was only afterwards the thought came to her that Luke made love as if he were trying to exorcize ghosts. What ghosts? What was it that she no longer knew about him?

In the first hint of daylight Abby awoke to a faint chug-chugging on the river. Her heart sank. She knew with certainty what that sound was. It was Jock coming back in his old disreputable boat, from whatever jaunt he had made. At the same moment a pale square of light in the Moffatt house was extinguished.

Did it seem like a coincidence?

T
HE BRIGHT SKY ARCHED
over the sun bleached hills, the pointed cypresses and gum trees, and the conglomeration of buildings that scattered over the low hills down to the water’s edge. The bridge arched over the water and hung in a dark curve at the end of every street. As Luke swung the car round corners it was temporarily lost, only to appear triumphantly again, a threatening rainbow against the peaceful sky.