In Certain Circles (4 page)

Silently, lids lowered, she leaned back on one elbow, took a red polished apple from the basket and handed it to him. She dusted dry sand from her arms and legs.

Looking at the apple before biting, Russell said, ‘The two kids were quiet, but the house was earthquake country. Atmosphere turned on day and night. This aunt—Nicole—needs an audience. Keep in touch with Anna, Zo. She's…'

‘Did he tell you all this?'

‘Only a few things, and Anna's said nothing. But I've been out there. I've seen them together.'

Zoe pulled on a yellow cotton jacket, and her hair came down, and she fastened it up again. ‘I can't make it all out. Do you think it's true? It sounds a bit…And a salesman! He must be doing it on purpose to amaze people.'

Over his apple, as she spoke, Russell seemed not only to watch her with those startlingly blue eyes, but to listen with them, too. He said, ‘You don't know him. He'd never think anyone was interested enough to be amazed.'

To live without the interest or attention of other people, without making an impression: in her mind, Zoe groped to imagine such a state. All she could find was a feeling of irritation.

Russell said, ‘He might do something yet. I've been working on him. Maybe one day people won't be wasted; talents won't be wasted. But when you think of that far-off time, you wonder how the not-wasted could ever flourish, with their fulfilment resting on so much'—he lightened his tone and finished off—‘so much of what we've just been talking about—waste.'

Zoe looked at him dubiously, and dug her heels into the sand.

Under his breath, he said, ‘All that innocent fertiliser.'

‘But Russell…' Inwardly, she had started to shake. Even her voice shook slightly.

‘What? That isn't the way it is. There have always been individuals who've known how to use their lives. It always will be individuals who reach fulfilment. So that was a fairly rickety flight of fancy.'

‘But Russell,' she said again. ‘There's Stephen. Everything's just happened to him. But what about the men who've been little pit boys, down in the coal mines at thirteen, and then they work and turn into cabinet ministers.'

‘What about them?' He started to pack methodically.

‘Are we going? I'm trying to be serious.' She helped gather up the remains of the picnic, then plunged an arm into her beach bag for her mirror. What a very pretty face! What a lovely face, really! And still there!

Russell watched. ‘But it's hard for you. Rising from pit boy to cabinet minister is a little more complex than going up in a lift.'

‘Yes, sir! Yes, sir! I'll remember that, sir!' That glimpse of her own silken face had made her gay.

They smiled, and walked along the beach, then climbed the grassy verge to the roadway.

‘We'll now go and mingle with our parents and that cheerful gang they're having a conference with. Educationists. What a word! Optimists.'

‘Aren't you optimistic?' They started to trudge up the short hill as Zoe spoke.

‘According to my lights. Not according to theirs.'

‘How many weeks is it till the wedding?' Even to Zoe, her tone was unexpectedly sombre.

‘Eight.' He bumped her arm to rally her spirits. ‘We're not going away forever.'

Russell drove his friend's young sister into the country.

The company Stephen worked for had commanded him to appear in Melbourne; he would be away from Wednesday till Tuesday. Having heard the details of the trip, Russell volunteered to take Anna out, if this happened to be her Saturday, and Stephen made the arrangements with his uncle. Lily and Zoe were both busy, but wished the expedition well. Mr Howard gave up his car. Everything conspired.

It was a flawless, new-world morning, with every leaf reflecting sunshine. The sky was boundless. Anna had stood by while Uncle Charles and Russell exchanged a few words, then they were through the streets, out and away. After a split-second of awe and awkwardness when she met him at the door, she was relaxed as a cat, but so full of life that she could have jumped out of her skin. Russell had only smiled into her eyes with the intense attention he gave to everyone. She had only smiled back with the same quality of attention. Among the glittering facets of the morning that they both noticed with surprise was this equal meeting of attention.

‘We're going to see the best of everything today. Do you like the country? Tell me things, Anna Quayle.'

In the process of realising that she liked everything, that everything delighted her, Anna did as she was told. It was the beginning of the happiest day of her life.

She wore sandals and a pale yellow cotton dress. Her short fair hair curled naturally, trailing in fronds down the back of her neck, falling over her forehead, leaving her ears bare; her large golden hazel eyes were the colour of Stephen's eyes. Russell observed the details of her appearance with the surface of his mind; but as they continued to drive through miles of eucalypts, down into tropical valleys, up through rolling pastoral land, she seemed to fuse with the intense, direct and open light of the day, with the scent of the bush. They had both disappeared into the day.

A sun-dappled clearing overhung by tall trees drew the car to a stop. They crunched over the dry undergrowth of leaves and ferns, looking at the red and gold and white of wildflowers. Pale dust powdered Anna's toes. The silence was stupendous. There was a sense of branches and trunks leaning and listening.

They rested on a satiny silver-grey tree, long felled by age or storm. Lily had given Russell a pipe. Smoking had abandoned him in the camp, but Lily had given him this new pipe, so he tried again and again to light it. Anna laughed. He laid the stone-cold object in a bed of leaves and covered it. ‘Lost. Our secret.'

While they leaned against the curves of this woodland chaise longue, Russell began to tell the girl about the camp. He thought she might be interested. It had never occurred to him to tell anyone else. He thought he had information that might be useful to her. He told her about his friends. One had been to Spain and there, between battles, had learned the local dances.

Tearing a sprig of pink blossom from a plant at his side, Russell clamped it between flashing teeth and gave a demonstration. It was the most vital physical action Anna had ever seen. ‘Is that what Spain is like?'

Laughing, he flung himself down beside her again. ‘An artiste needs a wooden floor.'

He told her about ingenuity, and the sharing of skills, about hope in a hopeless place. He told her about death and survival. They were silent for a while.

From a basket prepared by Mrs Howard, they took thermos flasks of tea, and home-made biscuits. They drove on through a landscape fragrant with fruit and flowers.

‘I didn't know Australia was so beautiful!' Anna exclaimed, as though she were a foreigner, seeing it for the first time. She leaned out into the day, wind streaming over her. ‘I thought it was dull.'

‘That's the cunning part of our route. There's plenty of flat scrubby stuff around.'

At a coach house turned restaurant, they had lunch. After that, they drove to the edge of a river, one of the tributaries of the Hawkesbury. Anna paddled her feet to wash the dust off, then let them dry in the sun. They lay on the grass, watching birds and afternoon clouds. Afternoon. The afternoon came on.

They drove back towards Parramatta. Anna would have grieved to see the sun sliding down the sky, but for Russell's intention that she should not. The omissions in her story told him her life. Passionate, dispassionate, truthful, she might have been any age. What was it about the mingling of these qualities that made her so uniquely likeable, so agreeable to be with?

‘We'll see you again soon,' he said, and they smiled, then he shook hands with Uncle Charles.

Mrs Howard led the friend known to the family as ‘poor Ellen' through the house, explaining the manifold activities of workmen, caterers, acquaintances and relations.

‘The house is hotching with people. I don't know who half of them are. It's the smallest possible wedding, Ellen.' (This was apologetic, for poor Ellen had not been invited.) ‘In a church, but not elaborate. Then a small gathering back here—her family and a few of their young friends, and then off they go.

‘(Oh, the reception is here—I could see you thinking—because they have three rather elderly invalids at Lily's house. Rather frail. Wouldn't be fair. Her mother and father are really attending to all this.) And then a week later, they leave for London. Lily's going to work on her thesis, and Russell's finally agreed to buckle down, too. He's exercised in the local gym and practised swimming and diving and judo. He went off to the outback for a few weeks. He's devoured a couple of libraries, and played every record a hundred times. He also practises walking on his hands along the verandah. What he wouldn't do was think about a profession. Clive had I hoped he might opt for law and politics, but he's decided on political economy and later, social science. I can't quite see why. Luckily, he has that money from his grandfather, so they won't starve. We hate to lose him, but he must travel. If he and Lily hadn't had this—juvenile agreement, or if Lily had changed her mind while he was away, he'd have gone off as a free agent. Not that we wish it, of course!'

‘Your voice can be heard all over the house.' Zoe came upstairs from her darkroom in the cellar.

‘Did I say anything incriminating? I'm wound up. You take Ellen to my room for a moment while I see what those men are doing.' She dashed off.

Leading the way to her mother's small sitting room upstairs, Zoe explained that a marquee had been erected in the garden but was now being dismantled because everyone quarrelled about it.

Ellen listened to the wedding talk. Thin, small, white-faced, with the bones showing through transparent skin, the possessor of a German husband named Hans, Ellen lived in a handsome house, made excellent crème caramel, and was once known to a younger Zoe as ‘that sad lady'. The only words she ever seemed to utter to Mrs Howard in Zoe's hearing were, ‘Hans and I can't go on like this, Alice.'

She was always so anguished, so convinced that a change of some quite fantastic nature was due to occur within the hour that, non-existent though Zoe's interest was in these adult matrimonial troubles, she was always jolted when she heard, months later, that nothing whatever had changed. It seemed uncanny that a grown-up woman could want and expect an event, and the event refuse her.

Just the last time Ellen was in the house, Zoe had said to her mother, ‘What on earth
is
it?' But she only shook her head, saying, ‘Ah, well…'

All that exhausted murmuring from her mother's room, as she dashed to the telephone, engulfed in her own affairs, struck Zoe as very feeble. ‘Either Ellen should initiate some change and stop waiting for things to turn up, or put up with it better.'

Mrs Howard raised her eyebrows eloquently, saying nothing.

‘Don't you agree?' Zoe insisted. ‘Ah, you're such a sympathetic friend.'

‘And you're so the opposite.'

‘Ah, well…Ah, well…' Mimicking her mother, she had rushed out of the room, away from miserable white faces and wasted years.

‘I haven't seen you for weeks, Zoe. You're not a schoolgirl any more.'

‘It's my hair. That changes every day.'

Mrs Howard arriving to rescue and replace her, heard this. ‘No, Zoe's practically a student now. But we'll be keeping her at home with us for a few years, we hope.'

Rising from her mother's blue velvet chair, Zoe stood by politely before retreating, the object of attention even at this frantic time.

‘Have you seen her photographs?' Mrs Howard asked. ‘It's only a hobby. But she's spending more and more time on it. You knew she won that competition?'

Ellen made sounds of astonishment and respect, and watched Zoe with some avidity while her mother continued. ‘Sometimes she takes one of her followers, and he stands about draped in paraphernalia while Zo has all the fun. She makes use of these young men.'