Night Street (3 page)

‘Did her husband pass away?' Henrietta asked reverently.

‘No, no. A spinster, poor dear. Daffy, out of the kitchen. Scat!'

The cat loped into the hallway on three nimble legs. A rabbit trap had stolen her fourth. Daffy gave Clarice a quick look that suggested raised eyebrows, then slipped, yellow-grey eyes emptying, into the frame of mind in which human matters were irrelevant.

‘But she's attractive.'

Miss McFarlane?

‘Yes, isn't she? That auburn hair. Bad luck, I suppose. She never met the right one.'

‘Poor thing.'

‘She could still, if she keeps her wits about her. She has a neat little figure that lots would envy. But she can't wait forever.'

Miss McFarlane; not married. Clarice was shocked by Mum's superior tone, Henrietta's
Poor thing
.

Amazingly, the windows in the front room, when she went to them, framed Miss McFarlane, who was still on Henty Street, outside the bank. Rummaging in her floppy bag. Had she lost something? The teacher looked as if she were talking to herself in her own head, thinking no one was observing. There was nothing unlucky in her appearance, certainly not in her dignified hands that were perfumed from an orange. Her beauty was not on account of her hair—that was somehow the least of it—but of there being nothing
extra
to her. She was gentle and stark, like silence. Spying, Clarice was a little frightened, as you can be of silence, even though you want it.

Miss McFarlane found what she was looking for, or remembered where she had left it, and was on her way. Clarice imagined the room that she lived in: it would not be in one of Casterton's more handsome homes, such as their own above the Colonial Bank; you would probably need a morose, bossy bank-directing husband for that. A modest room in which to loiter and draw in a restful half-light, eating fruit or just lying on the floor, face turned to the carpet. Perhaps with a cat, which would play only when in the mood.

When Miss McFarlane left for New Zealand to be near an ailing relative, Clarice mourned.

4

The day Miss McFarlane was framed by the front windows, so private and contained, searching then satisfied, could it have been then that Clarice realised there were roads you might choose over marriage, roads involving art? Before she got to Meldrum's classroom, she had received several proposals or near-proposals. She had come out at eighteen, her mother cooing over the official photograph for which she had scrubbed up so well, the implication being that she could be attractive more often, if only she would try. Louise commented that she was diaphanous in it, and laughed; Louise thought Clarice considered herself above everyone else, ridiculously ethereal, or something of the sort.

The first offer came the week after the photograph was taken, from an acquaintance of the family, Jim. When they used to vacation at Beaumaris, not imagining they would one day live there, Jim, his younger sister Nellie, Louise and Clarice all played together on Sandringham Beach, as children do, by turns improvising and regimented. Little Paul, who was slightly
different
in a way the adults, without explaining it, clearly found embarrassing and oppressive, never penetrated the games. Jim and Nellie had been judged good playmates because their father was an engineer and their mother a pious person, apparently, who kept a flawless house in Brighton. Jim was kindly and not unimaginative, with a good instinct for the arrangement of interesting driftwood or shells and a pleasant, light manner of teasing you out of a funk if you were sad.

But as can happen, he had flattened out in the process of growing older and trying to make himself into a man, and by the time he started coming to ‘visit' them at Casterton, he had a hardened posture and the makings of a cocksure swagger he was developing. A shame. There was no perspective to him anymore, nothing to look back into, no vista. Finding him rather insipid, when the proposal came, she turned him down. Mum was horrified; he was going to be an engineer, following in the proud paternal footsteps, with a bright future, et cetera, and Father thought him an upright citizen—high praise.

Nothing after Jim for years, then, in the way of attention from men. That is, other than the usual games of glances— at social functions, in the street—driven by off-balance impulses. She was sometimes prey to romantic daydreams; a man's quality of gaze or gesture could set off an odd quickening of her pulse, a piquant fancy, which usually deflated quickly.

The next open expression of interest in her came from the distinguished Mr Dagdale. She and Louise had been allowed to leave home to live in St Kilda, at Elenara, a guesthouse on Fitzroy Street, so they could attend the Gallery School. For Clarice, this was all intoxicating, but Louise's interest in study was half-hearted at best and she had immediately begun to play with the idea of dropping out. Mr Dagdale was often on their tram, going to or coming from the city. Clarice quite admired the clean, unobtrusive way he inhabited the fresh or softened creases of his pinstriped suits, and the diligence in his reading of newspapers, however his attraction to her felt courteously distant. It may have been that this distance was not on his side of the line that separates two people, but on hers. He delivered his proposal in a hushed monotone, standing on Fitzroy Street, his formal figure set pleasingly against the Cricket Ground, almost silhouetted; she had no notion of his substance. The sunset was beginning. The changing light made her think of getting down to the beach. His hands looked reliable, and rose-coloured reflections moved over the lenses of his glasses, but she was distracted by the saffron cloud formation above him—vast and majestic, like some recumbent god. Though she did not mean to offend him, she was brusque in her reply. Mr Dagdale folded his newspaper carefully before he walked away. Looking back on it, she would realise that she had been cold, possibly cruel.

The next offer—or almost-offer—of marriage was a more significant matter (for Clarice, at least: she did not know what she might have meant to Mr Dagdale). Thomas was a fellow boarder at Elenara, well ensconced when the sisters arrived, having been there for some years already. It was alleged he was in his forties, and a lifelong bachelor. Certainly, he was not very outgoing but had the attitude of one observing from the sidelines, which is perhaps why Clarice found herself warmly disposed towards him.

The first time they passed on the pretty, carved staircase, he expressed an interest in the sketchbook and boards she had with her. She showed him a couple of things and he was thoughtful and appreciative; he went on to tell her that he sometimes consulted art books at the Public Library. She liked that he was enthused by art and took her seriously. He was lanky and slightly stooped, his hair very ginger, his face grave.

‘Would you like to come up for a cup of tea?' he asked. This became their custom. The cups of tea were accompanied by impressive sweets, often Spanish, treacherously crumbling, enormously sugary concoctions made from pulverised nuts. He obtained them through his family's business—the importation of exotic foods and luxury items, such as the weighty bricks of soap from the south of France he once gave her—that was run by his older brother. They had lost money in the nineties, but there must have been plenty left over because there was never any evidence of Thomas doing a day's work. He tried to enlist when the war broke out but had not passed his medical; there was a problem with his hearing. After this, he abruptly changed his mind about the war, about war in general. ‘I was suffering from a patriotic delirium,' he confided, suggesting that his own infirmity had saved him from unimaginable horrors. Clarice nodded, indeed unable to imagine them, and said nothing. She herself had a hazy sense that nationhood should not be invoked to condone violence. Once she saw him on the banks of the Yarra, amid a group listening to what she thought was a communist speech; she did not join them, though for a moment she considered it. She planned to investigate politics, one day when she was less engrossed by the river, less troubled by how to bring it onto her board. Thomas seemed to settle into a kind of cheerful pessimism that only confirmed him as an epicurean and an aesthete.

Giving onto the Catani Gardens, where the rotunda, the palms and the pines, their tops like elongated drifting clouds, were all so elegantly outlined at dusk, Thomas's rooms were among the nicest at Elenara. They were clearly a bachelor's residence but were attractively chaotic, littered with books (Henry Lawson, Dostoyevsky, Baudelaire, Karl Marx) and gramophone records (Satie, Debussy, American jazz), biscuit tins, and invariably a saucer bearing a strainer clogged with swollen dark tea-leaves in a tannin-rich puddle. The first time she came, he insisted Clarice take a chaise longue patterned with red flowers. Impossible to imagine his angular length arranged along this piece of furniture. Keeping primly to the edge, she sat achingly straight-backed. The next time, however, resting on one elbow, she tentatively half reclined.

‘Is this what psychoanalysis is like?'

‘Tell me anything that comes into your head,' he said, with a wonky smile.

‘Must I talk?'

‘No, of course not. Have a nap, if you like. Don't mind me.'

During the following visit, she slipped off her shoes and stretched right out on the chaise longue. Early on, with Thomas, she might have been testing just a bit her ability to attract him; she was quite new to the effect she might have on a man. Would he be noticing her ankles and calves as she lay there? But soon she stopped asking herself such questions and was natural with him and rather serene in his room. She enjoyed his company, his relaxed manner. They developed a routine for saying goodbye. When she was ready to go, Clarice sat up and slowly put on her shoes. Then she stood at the window, looking out. Thomas came to stand beside her for a minute or two, close enough that their arms sometimes touched. It was companionable.

She was fond of him. If some weight had subtly shifted, their friendship would have tipped into romance or what is called romance; the possibility of it, though unacknowledged, was palpable. Clarice realised she was in danger of moulding herself to what she imagined was the shape of Thomas's desire, of playing a part, because it appeared scripted. She did hope for love: there was anticipation in her. But she resisted this, waiting for something more unequivocal and visceral.

She saw how it could have been between them, saw him make the first overture, his hand shaking lightly as it lowered over her hair, herself receiving the caress. She saw what a life with him would look like, the nights shared in bed, the two of them listening to the wind and laughing at random, minor jokes, the day's flotsam, and perhaps turning to each other eventually, comfortably affectionate. Their rooms tropical from the perpetually steaming tea-kettle, the surface of the table lingeringly sticky with sweet crumbs. A snug life. With a silly subdued merriment, she would call Thomas
T
and he call her
C
: ‘What do you say to that, T?' ‘I don't know, C—how about you?' She would have some time for her art and he would be proud of the results. When she returned from painting, he would hug her, saying, ‘I missed you. You smell like the sea.' From their peaceful indoor complacency, she could contemplate the park across the street, and the bay lying quiet or in different stages of turmoil beyond it. There would be days of virtual silence and days with the wireless on, days of reading—Clarice reading to Thomas, loudly so that, with his faulty hearing, he would not miss anything.

But she was quiet-voiced. Would she easily grow accustomed to speaking loudly? Would he occasionally fail to hear her? This might have been a foolish fear, as naturally no one ever quite hears your thoughts; they are too multiple and slanted. She saw herself after his death, some years before her own, distraught. How distraught?

About to put the kettle on for tea one afternoon, Thomas said he was all out of matches and would duck out for a box and be back in a jiffy. Clarice offered to go, but he insisted she remain, leaving her sitting at the table before a plate of Turkish delight. Next to the sweets, a book. She opened it idly: photographs. There were naked women in the photographs, some of which were beautiful. The models' faces were fascinating—either a little dead, or stunningly unguarded yet self-possessed.

She heard Thomas return, his footsteps, and the matchbox rattling on the landing before he came in. He found her bent over the book.

‘How dynamic,' she said.

‘I've got the matches.' He held up the box. ‘Yes, those are quite good, aren't they?'

There was a sudden strangeness between them, their bodies now a collection of angles jutting into space, where they had worn it smoothly. She closed the book and got up.

‘I'll have to skip the tea today, actually. I've some things to do. Can I take one of those?'

‘Of course,' he said, voice slackening. ‘Please help yourself.'

She picked up a pink gelatinous cube, gingerly carrying it away between forefinger and thumb.

That night she slept poorly, and she woke very early the next day, dressing straightaway. Most mornings she managed to creep out without waking Louise, a heavy sleeper. A force, some possession or homing instinct, would tug Clarice out of bed and across the road, through the park and towards the water. There, she sat on the stone wall, stood on the sand or got as far as the end of the pier.

But that morning, though she opened the door with exaggerated delicacy, it clicked and Louise was woken. A few moments before, her sister had moaned and flung an arm out from under her quilt.

‘Sorry.'

‘What time is it?'

‘Early. Go back to sleep.'

Louise rolled over, grunted and fumbled for the watch on her nightstand. ‘Lord. You must be joking.'

Clarice put her hat on.

‘You're truly insane.'

‘Probably. Bye.'

‘Hold your horses.'

Clarice sighed, took off her hat and stepped back into the room.