Praise (18 page)

‘Gee, at this hour, I don't think so.'

I hung up.
Damn
Brisbane.

We drove home. I stopped at a Seven Eleven and bought some Panadol. Cynthia took six of them and went back to bed. The cramps continued. I kneaded her stomach. She was tiring, half delirious. It was hot. We were lying naked on the bed. Cynthia wasn't wearing any sort of pad. There were blood stains on the sheet. The latest set of cramps hit. She curled up.

‘Help me,' she said. ‘
Fuck me
.'

‘I can't.'

She grabbed my prick and pumped it with her fingers. ‘
Fuck me
.'

‘You know I can't.'

‘I don't
care
.'

She started sucking me, jamming her mouth up and down. She rubbed her cunt against my legs. I didn't know what to do. She was mad with pain and exhaustion.

She slid off me, rolled onto her stomach.

‘Fuck my arse,' she said.

‘Cynthia ...'

‘It's better than nothing!' She was crying. ‘Please.'

I sat up between her legs. She reached behind and grabbed my penis, pulled it towards her.

‘Put it in. Put it in
now?

I was hard. I nudged it against the hole, pushed. There was no lubrication. We needed time. We needed the K-Y.

‘Oh
fuck?
she hissed. It was hurting her.

I pulled away.

‘No! Put it in.'

I moved in again. Pushed. I felt her arsehole widen and the tip of my penis was in. Cynthia buried her face down in the sheets. I pushed more. It went right in. I started fucking. Cynthia's hands were balled up into fists. She made sounds like pain. I kept going. I had her arse bunched up in my hands. I moved faster. Cynthia was choking, retching. ‘Fuck,
Fuck
.' I came, ramming away.

I pulled out, rolled off.

Cynthia lay there.

‘I'm sorry,' I said. I didn't know why. I felt helpless. This was worse than giving birth. This was worse than anything. Whatever you did with a pregnancy, it seemed, you paid.

And then the next set of cramps began.

Somewhere towards dawn we both fell asleep. When we woke next afternoon, the cramps and the bleeding had stopped. There was black blood all over the bed, all over us.

Three days later Cynthia went back to work.

Three days after that, four days ahead of schedule, we started fucking again.

Two or three months passed.

Cynthia worked at the Queen's Arms. Four days a week. I sat around at home all day and picked her up at night. It was good. We fought occasionally, but our lack of ambition, for ourselves, for the relationship, for anything, kept us going smoothly. We went out, drank with Leo, Molly, Frank, Maree, Rachel. Not much happened. Life was calm.

I travelled out to the farm twice more. Cynthia came with me the first time. She smoked the weekend nervously away in front of my parents. We slept in separate rooms. The second time she stayed in Brisbane. I arrived back and found her curled up in bed, sleepy and bored. She'd picked up another man. Someone she met over the bar. There was no malice in it.

Around us the house carried on. The old men drank and fought and some moved out and some moved in. Vass remained. Lewis remained. Cynthia's lightbulbs disappeared. She screamed in the hallway. They didn't reappear.

Raymond and Cathy were still there. They walked to the methadone clinic every morning. When they came back, Raymond would change into a white bathrobe and saunter up and down the hallway, smoking. The old men hated him. There was no real reason, they just needed someone to hate. The bathrobe singled him out. They swore they only suffered his presence for Cathy's sake. They all liked Cathy. She was quiet and submissive and she had that scar ...

Some time late in March we all received a letter from the agent about the power bills. We all paid for our own electricity. Each flat had its own meter. But the hallway lighting, the bathroom lighting, the hot water system for the showers, and the washing machine downstairs, were all on a general circuit. The agent was responsible for the running costs. Now, the letter said, this particular expense had abrubtly doubled. The agent was unhappy. He was threatening to transfer the costs over to us, if things didn't improve.

The old men were disturbed. They saved a considerable amount of money with the current scheme. None of us had our own hot water systems turned on. We all got our hot water from the hot water taps in the bathroom, the agent's hot water. We used buckets. Vass went from door to door, discussing the problem. No one understood why we were suddenly using more power. The hot water stealing had been going on for years. The letter gave us a month.

A few days later, Vass came to my door. ‘Come downstairs,' he said, ‘there's something you should see.' I followed him downstairs, under the house. There was plenty of space there. Mostly it was full of old furniture. Wardrobes and broken beds. We threaded through them, down to the far end. The ground rose. We had to duck our heads.

‘Look,' he said, pointing.

I looked. There was an electrical socket on the wall. An extension cord was plugged into it. The cord ran up the wall and vanished into the floor above. Someone had drilled a hole there.

‘I've never seen this before,' I said. ‘How'd you find it?'

‘I was looking, I had my suspicions. You see where it goes?'

I looked up again.

‘That's Cathy and Raymond's room,' he said. ‘The bastards have got all their stuff running off this point here. You ever been in their place? There's leads all over the place. For the TV, the lamps, the toaster, the stereo.'

‘Ah.'

‘You see? He's the prick that's stealing the electricity. This socket runs off the general circuit. They're gonna up our
rent
because of him.'

‘So what are you gonna do?'

‘I'm gonna tell the agents, that's what. Get the arsehole thrown out. First, though, I'll tell everyone else. I'll call a meeting. Tonight.'

‘A meeting?'

‘We gotta
punish
the bastard.'

‘It's only a few dollars worth of power, Vass. We haven't paid anything for it yet. Just tell him to stop it.'

‘No, the prick has gotta learn.'

Cynthia was working late. I wandered around the house. The old men were gathering in Vass's room. Bill and Douglas and Harry. Lewis. They drank their cask wine. Vass explained about the socket downstairs. The mood turned ugly.

‘The prick.'

‘The fucking bastard.'

‘The fucking little piece of shit ...'

I went back to my place, switched on the TV.

About an hour later it started. The old men were yelling in the hallway. I could hear Raymond yelling back. It went on. Cathy started screaming. I got up, opened my door.

They had Raymond outside his room. Five of them, everyone except Lewis. The old men were wild, howling, sinking in their bony fists and elbows. Raymond couldn't believe it. He was backing away. They kept him surrounded. They could all move fast, the old men, when it came to it. He put his arms over his head. ‘Fucking old
cunts
!'

Then he just stood there. He went down on his knees. The old men kicked and cursed. Cathy went on screaming at them. It was grotesque, ludicrous. The old men were zombies. They were gonna tear his throat out, drink his blood. It was Night of the Living Dead.

Then Vass pulled out of it. He was coughing and spitting. The others gradually lost interest. They moved away. Raymond was left kneeling on the floor. His arms were still up around his head. He looked like he was waiting for the final bullet. He looked like Christ.

Cathy was standing in her doorway, her hand over her mouth, crying. ‘We didn't fucking
know
,' she screamed.

The old men wouldn't look at her. Her scar gave her character, power, they couldn't face it. They were moving back down the hall, shaking, grunting, examining their knuckles.

Lewis was waiting there for them.

He saw me. Winked.

I shut my door.

Raymond and Cathy unplugged their lead. There were no lights in their flat the next night. Cynthia went and spoke to Cathy. It turned out their own power wasn't even connected. They couldn't afford the deposit. I thought about them sitting in there with nothing, in the dark. Vass meanwhile reported them to the agents. The agents agreed not to raise the rent, but they refused to evict Raymond and Cathy.

It didn't matter. A few nights later Cynthia and I were woken by more screaming and fighting from their flat. It sounded like four or five people. It sounded like people were getting killed. Cynthia got up and dialled the police. The police said they'd already had reports, a car was on its way.

We sat up in bed and listened. More voices. More screams. Then there were people in the hall. Yells. The fighting stopped. Someone was crying. Someone was talking on a two-way radio.

We waited. Finally I got up and opened my door. There were police in the hallway and two ambulance officers with a stretcher. A black man with his hands handcuffed behind his back was sitting on the floor. The police looked at me.

‘What happened?' I asked.

‘Did you make the call?'

‘We made one of the calls.'

He nodded. ‘You can go back to bed. Nobody died.'

Next morning there was only Cathy in the flat. Raymond was gone. Cathy packed all their gear into boxes. A man with a station wagon came and helped her load it all on board. Then she too was gone.

The old men went back to their business.

Saturday night. Cynthia and I were drinking over at Maree and Frank's house. Rachel was with us. I was drinking with the same people week after week, on the same nights, in the same places. It was comfortable, but it had its dangers.

Maree, meanwhile, was still unhappy about the way things were going with Frank. It was over but it wouldn't end. They were clinging on, arguing, fucking out of bitterness and fear.

In some ways, I envied them that.

Cynthia and I were fucking on something else, something much more gentle. It worked, but all we seemed to have now was affection. We lacked anger. We lacked confusion. And sex needed those things. It was another kind of death to accept it all, to be at peace.

Cynthia saw it. I couldn't keep up with her. I was saying no to her every so often, losing interest. And when she was away at work, I masturbated. I was dreaming about violence. About other women. About Rachel.

‘We should go somewhere,' Maree suggested.

It was a little after midnight. The drinks were making us restless. We were on wine. Casks of Lambrusco. We discussed destinations. No one had any money. The only thing left seemed to be a drive.

‘There's a little lake,' said Frank, ‘about an hour from here.'

‘What? You mean swimming?'

‘We don't have to swim. We can just go and look at it.'

We agreed. Frank volunteered to drive. He was in a black mood. He wanted the speed. We took my car. We could've all fitted into Maree's little Fiat, but if you're going to be driving drunk and fast, the car might as well be a big one.

We drove. We were out of the western suburbs in twenty minutes and gliding through the hills. The road was dark, winding, shadowed with trees. We were in a forestry reserve. Fire tracks peeled off on either side. It was where people went to dump their unwanted cats and dogs. Bodies. We stuck to the main road and Frank let the Kingswood roll.

I was in the back seat with Cynthia and Rachel. The windows were down. The cool air was streaming in and the cask was going round. Frank let the car swing wide on the curves. The tires slid from time to time. Maree screamed in the front seat. It was better in the back. You couldn't see what was coming.

We made the lake in less than an hour. I peered out the window. There was no moon and no stars, only low clouds. They glowed orange, reflecting the lights of Brisbane.

‘Frank,' I said, ‘you didn't tell us there was a graveyard.'

‘Didn't I?' He pulled up in front of the gates. The headlights shone over the stones. Frank stopped the car, left the lights on. We piled out and went reeling through the graves.

‘A woman,' I said. ‘There's gotta be a woman around here somewhere.'

I went from stone to stone, trying to read the inscriptions. It was an old yard. I couldn't find any stones that had a date later than the 1940s. They all seemed to be male. ‘I need a woman,' I yelled. ‘Can anyone find a woman?'

I found a woman. She had died eighty years ago, at the age of twenty-two.

I fell on the grave. It was a rock slab, with deep cracks running up and down. I whispered into one of the cracks. ‘C'mon babe. Let's go. You're only one hundred and twenty-two, you still got it.'

Rachel wandered over. That's sick, really sick.'

‘C'mon Rach. She might even want it.'

But the stone was cold, and it was a dark, lonely night. I got up and let the dead lie.

We found a raised slab and sat on it, pouring the wine into some cups we'd brought along. I took my cup down to the water. The shore was muddy and tangled. I could just make out the top branches of drowned bushes, a few yards out. I rolled a cigarette. It wasn't a very good roll. Getting the filter in wasn't so easy in the dark.

I lit up. Rachel stood beside me.

‘I think I'm drunk,' she said.

‘There's nothing wrong with that.'

‘I drink too much.' She had her arms wrapped around herself. ‘I'm depressed.'

‘Things aren't going well?'

‘With what?' With uni? With life in general? Take your pick.'

‘That bad.'

‘I'm hopeless, Gordon. I'm so fucked up.'

‘We all are.'

We stared at the water for a while.

I heard the car start up.