Lessons from the Heart (37 page)

Authors: John Clanchy

BOOK: Lessons from the Heart

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âAt first I thought it would be easy. Dwayne would leave Amanda â¦'

And I don't know why my blood surges, just hearing Toni discuss other people, Mr Prescott's wife, like this, calling her
Amanda
, almost as though it's the two of them, the two women, who are having the affair â¦

ââ¦ and he'd come and live with me and see the children -Gerry's the boy, and the baby â at the weekends maybe.'

âBut he's still living with her?'

âHe finds it hard. To make the break. Because of the children.'

âStill?' I say.

âBut at least I've got him on the weekends,' she says. And she brightens her voice, and I know we're not going to discuss this any further. âTill we sort it out.'

She reaches between us, and snatches up the book she'd tossed aside. âI like this bit,' she says, and reads:

Outside, the wind's incomplete unrest

Builds and disperses clouds about the sky,

And dark towns heap up on the horizon.

âThis is better than all that stuff we had to read,' she says. âWho was it, Tennyson and Keats and that? All that poetry poetry stuff.'

âYes.'

âI liked that other one best, the one who won the Nobel Prize. What was his name, Seamus Heaney?'

âShamus.'

âWhat?'

âYou pronounce it Shamus, not Seem-us.'

âYou know what he said? I saw him on TV. “Whatever you say,” he said, “say nothing.” '

âHe was talking about the IRA, not poetry,' I say.

But Toni's talking now, not listening.

âWhat does this bit mean?
“At this unique distance from isolation â¦”
What does that mean?'

âUs, I think,' I say.

âUs?'

âLying here. On the bed like this.'

âO-oh,' she says. âSo near and yet so far?'

âSort of.'

âO-oh,' she says again. Joking Toni, her voice says. But her eye, I notice, is more serious, scouring through the book, taking note of the title, of
Larkin,
of
Philip,
of the publisher, the date.

âDo you want to come and see?' she says.

âYour flat?'

âDuring the week,' she says quickly. âYou could see it, we could eat something â I cook now, we share this kitchen. And then maybe go into the city.'

After the exams,' I tell her.

âHead too far up bum?'

âYes,' I say. And she doesn't press me, we don't mention it again.

âWell â¦' she says, and casts about. And we both maybe feel a bit strange now, lying here, seemingly trying to think of something to say. When there's so much, and so little. Whereas what I'm actually thinking is, do I tell her now, in this lull, this silence, tell her that I know? And suddenly it's as if, in my head, I'm shouting, do it, do it, do it
now
, as if it's the most urgent thing in the world, and if I don't do it now, I never will. And my head is bursting.

And I turn to her to say,
Toniâ¦
but she's there already, before me:

âLolly?' she says.

And I know immediately from her tone, she's been thinking
exactly
the same thing as me. We lie there, looking at each other for a moment.

âWhat?' I whisper, and it's so unbearable I can't hold her gaze. My eyes look instead at the lovers, at the perfect, isolated point where their mouths meet.

âThere's something you don't know,' she says. And now that we've finally brought ourselves here, to this point, I have no choice but to turn to her and face her.

âThat day at Uluru â¦' she says, âwhen you came up the hill and found us â¦'

And I can see how much this is costing her, how alone she is.

âToni,' I say, wanting to meet her, to match her courage. âI know,' I say. âI know.'

âThat day,' she starts again, not hearing, not aware of anything beyond her own voice. âThat day â¦' But then she stops. And I can tell now she's heard me. She's staring at me, at my eyes, moving from one to the other.

âI know,' I say again.

And the truth of this finally reaches her.

âOh, Lolly,' she says, and suddenly, it's crazy, but we're both crying, crying like we've never cried before, and hugging each other so hard it's as if we're saying we'll never let each other go.

âWhat will you do?' I say eventually.

âNothing. Live, I suppose. Like everyone else.'

âBut how will it end?'

âI don't know,' she says, and seems resigned to it. As though she's made her way to this wall lots of times herself, by herself, and simply accepts she can't see over it. For the moment anyway. And it only really comes home to me then how different the lives are that we've led from the ones I'd always
thought
we'd led. And how much more complex Toni's has been. Then, and now.

âYou'll be in Greece,' she says, the tide of her thoughts already turning. âYou'll marry some wog over there.'

âCareful. My Dad's a wog, remember.'

âYou'll have a dozen kids by the time you're thirty â¦'

âJoke,' I say. âLikely.'

We're lying together and apart now, our fingers â splaying about â sometimes meeting. Our gazes, separately, assess
The Kiss.

âAnd I'll be back home again, living with Mum â¦'

I can tell, from the tension in her fingers, she's building to something.

âAnd every night we'll sit in the kitchen together and crack a new bottle, and sigh, and think about you, and say â¦'

âWhat? Say
what
?'

â
She could at least
â'

My knees lift then, involuntarily, helplessly, towards my stomach because I can already hear what Toni, my best friend â who can be
so
stupid â is going to say next:

â
She could at least have taken me with her.'

Acknowledgments & Cultural Note

I am grateful to the Trustees of the estate of Philip Larkin and to Faber and Faber Ltd for permission to reproduce “Talking in Bed” (from
The Whitsun Weddings
Â© Philip Larkin, 1964). Special thanks are due also to Brigid Ballard and Mark Henshaw who read and commented on early drafts of this novel, to Marianne Jauncey and Son Nguyen whose medical expertise saved me from even grosser technical error than my own wilfulness might otherwise have led me into, and to Judith Lukin-Amundsen and Rosie Fitzgibbon for their professionalism and redoubtable skills as editors.

Note
: The words of the Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara language which Laura overhears in the Park are
not
the words of any actual ceremony or
imma
associated with the Anangu people or with the hare-wallaby Dreaming (the Mala Tjukurpa). They are simply expressions which Anangu women of Uluru use in urging one another to begin such a ceremony â to get up and join in, if you like. (Re) framed here as a recitative or chant, they provide some sense of the authentic sounds of the language while avoiding any intrusion on restricted cultural knowledge.

First published 2003 by University of Queensland Press
PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia

www.uqp.com.au

This book is copyright. Except for private study, research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any foram or by any means without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

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