The Glass Canoe (20 page)

PRUDENCE

She drove in to the yard behind the Cross one Monday and every day except Wednesdays after that for four months. That's how long she worked behind the red bar.

The moment the Great Lover lobbed he put work on her and never let up for one minute of those four months, but he didn't come within coo-ee of getting it. After the first week he was so amazed he began calling her the Untouchable. He couldn't understand it.

Her car was a mess, she wore the same clothes every day, and long boots to hide legs that didn't have much calf, but there was something about her. Her face was pale, not interesting-pale, sort of ashen-pale. You couldn't work out, under the bar light, if it was because of a thick coating of powder or just bad living.

She had wide cheekbones, slightly out of line as if someone had once lifted her off her feet with a right
hook and the cheekbone had never come back into shape. She talked out of the side of her mouth, and it didn't look affected.

Nothing the boys said or did surprised her and she seemed to suffer no alarm at the frequent disturbances to good order that were normal near the Cross.

One day someone saw her at the trots with some of the trotting men who were really well in, and she was regarded with awe ever after. They were a race of gods, to the tribe. Then someone saw her at the races with a man who'd been a king at the prison where he'd spent years, one of those heavies whose names the other ex-prisoners never allowed themselves to even whisper outside.

Someone saw her at the baccarat just up the street from Darlinghurst cop shop. After that, even the Great Lover backed off a little. Not that he stopped putting work on her. With the Great Lover every sentence was sexual.

Her husband was dead and often her little boy was in the car with her on her day off.

‘Into it yet?' I asked the Great Lover after three weeks.

‘Still trying,' he said.

‘Lost your touch.'

‘Not me. No way, Meat. OK with me, whatever happens. If she does she does. If she doesn't, she's still apples.'

One day I was early at the red bar and Sharon had her day off, which was Tuesday, and Prue was alone in the bar. The pool cues were neatly laid out on the three tables, ready for the first game of the day. The red bar top was clean and dry, the racks of empty glasses under the bar were full.

‘All set to go,' I commented when she'd given me my schooner.

She looked at me for a long time and said nothing.

I felt my face.

‘I shaved,' I said.

‘It's not that,' she said.

‘Leprosy?' It didn't matter what I said, she didn't insult easy in the bar, her sense of humour was the same as a man's. I didn't have to talk nice to her. Matter of fact, she was one of those women that look down on you if you do.

‘Is it really that big?' she said.

Christ, they'd told her. She'd probably seen thousands. Why did they have to mention me? Big stalk in a little garden.

I didn't say anything, sucking in beer while I wondered what I
would
say.

‘I've always been partial to the organ,' she said with unchanged expression.

‘Let's you and me go to a party,' she said. It wasn't so much an invitation.

‘My sister will bring a friend. Tonight. I'll pick you up here. I go off at seven. I'll be back at eight. We'll go in my car.'

A sort of royal command performance. I said OK as if this was everyday stuff, but didn't say anything to the boys. It might not come off. Actually I decided I wouldn't say anything to the boys whatever happened. She might turn funny later. I didn't like that word heavies.

I drank the same as usual, then when she was going off at seven she said to me out of the side of her mouth, ‘Don't you bloody forget or I'll cut half it off and cook it for breakfast.'

We got to her sister's place. Her sister was a cheap prostitute in the pub where she worked—you know, a quick dip upstairs, then minutes later she'd be down serving beer in the bar—but she was keen on this guy I was about to meet.

I hardly met him. We had a quick drink and whipped straight into adjoining bedrooms.

Prudence was out of her gear in about three seconds and was helping me with my belt while I was still untying my shoes. All she did was get trousers mixed up with shoes. She pushed me over on the bed, still getting in the way.

When she saw him, she said, ‘I've seen three as big.' And I was glad of that, I didn't want to get mixed up
with her just because she had some hang-up over big ones. Just the same I wished it was a full metre. What am I saying? There've been times he was ten metres. With legs, to slither across the floor and up their legs like a python.

She paid a lot of attention to him, though, and mucked round quite a long time before he was given his head.

When she was ready she flung herself down on her back and said, ‘Watch it, boy. I've got very big piss flaps. There's a pox hole on one side and a melanoma the other. If you give any cheek I'll button 'em over your face like a balaclava.'

It gave me a slightly bitter taste, though. All the flesh, all the opportunity, no real sweat. Lashings of bare flesh. I thought: born naked, loving naked, and naked dead. But we weren't dead, and we weren't loving.

We finished first—she made a hell of a racket when she came—and she said, ‘Let's have some fun.'

We crept naked to the door of the next room, peered round the door jamb. They were going to town well and truly so Prue waits till he's just short of the vinegar stroke then races into the room and jumps on the guy's back yelling, ‘Wheeeeeeeee!' Riding him like a racehorse ten metres from the post in a tight finish.

Once a week she gave me the royal command and I obliged. But it was never the same as the first time. Each time later she would twist round to make me understand she wanted it in the back. The mini-door with the ballroom beyond.

About her sister she said, ‘She won't be in that again, with the guy you saw. She does it regular the first time, like I do, but her real kick is wanting it on her tongue. After the first time, if he does it in her, he won't see her for weeks. She has it the regular way in the course of the day's work, she wants it to be different for the guy that turns her on.'

It seemed reasonable.

Strange thing about Prudence. She never had a smell about her; no perfume, no sweat, not even a period smell. One thing she had, though, was a patch of darkish hairs down the middle of her chest, at the bottom of the cleavage.

And another thing. Three hairs round the edge of her left nipple. One at two o'clock, one at six o'clock, the third at ten.

Symmetrical. I used to tickle them, but she couldn't feel it. Just this ashen face looking at me, no expression, saying, ‘Get on with it.'

One day she said to me, ‘That's it, Meat. It's been a ball. I've got a friend if you want her.'

‘I've got a friend too, Prue.'

‘Sure you have.' She looked at me with the familiar absence of expression. ‘This one's got dark skin,' she added, half trying to persuade me.

‘I'm right, Prue. I'm fixed up.'

‘She's so dark, actually, you'd need a miner's lamp to go down on it.'

‘No sweat. I'm fixed up. Believe it.'

‘The man who's never gone down on it is a vegetarian,' she went on.

‘Sure, Prue.' I didn't mind one way or the other. ‘It's been a ball for me too.'

‘Schooner?'

‘Schooner.'

The boys saw me talking to her and wanted to know what about, but I never told about Prue. Those guys talked their heads off when they got on to something interesting.

It was hardly a sexual farewell. On the other hand, I preferred the beer.

UNDERWATER SHOTS

I got to see my darling as soon as I could after she got back from wherever she'd been. When I got to her place she had just arrived back with her brother. I didn't know she had a brother.

Usually she comes on very generous, but for some reason she was snotty with him.

‘You'll have to take a taxi back,' she told him. She wanted to see me, of course. ‘It's my car, not his,' she said to me. ‘I never let him drive it.'

She was so different from herself, the self I knew, that I felt a bit sorry for her brother. Actually, I'd got there earlier than I expected. The thought of seeing her again after missing her for so long made me cut short a five-game pool competition to two games.

‘Can I give you a lift?' I asked the guy.

‘No, you can't,' she said. ‘Off you go, Roger. There's a taxi stand on the corner two blocks up.'

Roger shrugged. He didn't seem all that put out. He grinned at me and grabbed a bag from the back seat of her car and said Chow and off.

‘I wouldn't have minded,' I started to say, but my darling ran at me, threw her arms round me and began kissing all round my face right there in the street. From the corner of my eye—she had me in such a tight grip I could hardly turn my neck—I saw Roger look back then resume his walk up the street. I guess he was used to the way his sister behaved.

She didn't want to go into her place just then.

‘Let's go to the beach,' she said. ‘I'd love to be near the water.'

Anything she wanted was OK with me. We parked her car and I drove her to the beach. The sea closed over me like those soft wet lips close over him when he's buried deep in her. She swam like she was washing off every bit of city dust and business worries. Then she wanted to go round the rock pools. We skipped over rocks and slipped on seaweed and made our way hand in hand on a headland where no other people come. I could see the devilment in her eye, but I didn't know what she had in mind till she got us both in this deep rock pool where you could see the bottom and the purple and gold and pink shells as clearly as if they were lit up.

‘Take your shorts off,' she said happily. I took them off happily. ‘Something I've always wanted to see.'

Under the clear water she got her two little hands—very narrow hands, fingers slim as pencils and the little fingers so tiny you'd think they'd fall off if she carried something heavy. And with these two little hands she worked on a friend of mine for a minute or two just to see what it looked like firing under water.

She thought it was cute. I thought they—the white shots—would have gone further. Out of the water they go quite a distance. I remember when I was fifteen, from a standing position I could reach six feet. Later, with a depressed angle of elevation—to constrict the bore—I could pass three metres. With the first and second shots, of course. The other seven or eight have less charge behind them.

Next day on the course I had to dig with the trench digger to lay PVC water pipes. A trench digger is a petrol-driven engine that has a steel belt like a chainsaw but much bigger teeth. It digs in and throws the earth back and to one side, leaving a clean trench about fifteen centimetres wide. You can adjust the depth.

I couldn't help it. I kept thinking of her and you should have seen that trench. If you go out to Carnarvon you'll see what I mean. It's from the southern bunker round the tenth green downhill to the water connection. The grass grows greener where you dig so
you'll see it easily. My trench—the first one I'd ever dug, but that's no excuse—curved like a snake. Wal reckoned I had the shakes from being on the piss the night before, Laurie looked at it and shook his head, Bob laughed and said I ought to leave it alone or I'd go blind, and the boss said nothing. ‘How's the fall?' he said. When it was clear that water actually flowed down the pipes, he let it go at that.

She'd never done anything like that before. She used to say she wanted it in her, to have it and keep it as long as nature and gravity allowed.

At her place I made love with her as if I couldn't be sure I'd ever make love again. As if I was dying tonight and she was going to die tomorrow.

HAVING AN EASY TIME

Pat was as wide as he was tall, and had been in food for years. That's one way of putting it. You might say food had been in him for years.

Every six months or so he'd come back from parts west where he travelled round with shearers, cooking. They ate well.

He was at the Cross yesterday and handed me an old piece of paper with a shearer's name on, and a poem. The shearer, long dead, had left the game and died in Essendon. The paper was frayed, very fragile where the folds were, with marks from a fire.

Pat didn't say if the man died in the fire, just handed me the paper.

‘You read a lot,' he said. ‘Take a look at that.'

I read:

Even now I could shear them with the best

There's many a shed I've rung in the west

But I'm sick of the sight of a shearer's pen

And the piddling grievances of the men

So I decided as I've said before

That I will go and work no more

I'm having an easy time.

I've travelled the bush with a trap and pair

And a black boy to comb and brush my hair.

I've painted the towns red white and blue

Had big tallies out on the Paroo

I've taken my share in the small round yard

And found the ground was always hard.

Now I'm having an easy time.

I am a sensible sort of man

I won't work for a publican

I'll lounge about in the heat of the day

Chat with bagmen that come my way

And when the winter time comes round

Shooting roos in the hills I may be found

Having an easy time.

It was written in ink faded black, though the burn
marks on the edges made me wonder.

Pat was a great reader. Burn marks are easy to make. How many times, when we were kids and it was winter and wet, had we made up messages in invisible ink—lemon juice or milk—and pretended to find treasure maps with judiciously burned edges? And Mum sniffing the air and yelling Who's playing with matches inside the house.

If the poem was really by an old shearer, it was sad. In the way that any man's sad that has delighted in a hard life and one day gets tired.

I didn't like the easy time he was giving the roos, though. Just stand there looking into the spotlight while you blow a hole through them. Not for me.

If they're on the run, well, maybe. Like the butterflies. But I don't shoot butterflies anymore.