The Watch Tower (30 page)

Laura said nothing. Felix ambled over to pick the ring up, talking. ‘Lucky I happened to come in here just now. I nearly stood on the flaming thing. Well, don’t you want it?’ he asked, aggressive, gravel-voiced.

‘Of course I do. It isn’t lost, after all,’ Laura said with a composure that could have sounded like irony. ‘They’ll be glad.’ Taking the ring from Felix’s outstretched hand, she slipped it on her finger and raised her eyes to her husband’s face. Felix’s face: it would never change substantially except in the natural ways of age. Faces were intractable. They were what always made it hard to believe anyone could alter. Dispassionate, Laura took in his thick greying hair that he smoothed with coconut oil, his restless dark-brown eyes, the pores of his tough skin, his wrinkled sinewy throat and his, in some way, horribly incongruous, imported, impeccable clothes.

If he had crossed a frontier and plucked the least self-knowledge from this act (which was in no way
outstanding by his lights) he could never be held responsible for the other Felix’s deeds. If he understood his act, he literally would not be the man who had performed it.

Watching him steadily, Laura had a wordless perception that in human affairs in an absolute sense there can never be any victors, there is no such thing as self-interest, and no way of being right.

‘So all the fuss was for nothing. Tearing off and everything.’

‘Yes.’ Laura saw signs of self-justification already struggling to express themselves about his mouth and eyes. She blew her nose and then said briskly, ‘Well, I have to damp down the ironing,’ and with the air of one about to tackle an important task, went away. But she only went to her bedroom, closed the door, and sat on the hitherto sacrosanct bedcover, hairbrush in hand, pressing the nylon bristles down and letting them spring up.

Left alone, Felix cleared his throat and patrolled the room, feeling sick, grimacing violently, glaring through the windows, his hands plunged deep in his trouser-pockets.

***

Central Station’s sooty spaces reverberated with hollow booming sounds. Yellow luggage vans swinging trailers laden with suitcases and crates tooted past, startling
travellers who hardly expected to be hunted down by motorised traffic even here indoors.

A bag in each hand, Bernard steered a path through the shifting crowds towards the restaurant. It was five days since he and Clare had left the house. Now she followed him bearing in the pocket of her waterproof jacket a ticket to a country town hundreds of miles distant, the first stop on a journey of no fixed duration.

‘I wish you were coming to Europe.’ Bernard watched the anonymous hands of the waitress place a battered coffee-pot on the table between them. ‘You won’t change your mind now, but you should think about going some time. I know I’ve chosen not to live there, but there’s everything to see.’

‘I suppose there is.’ Rearranging the cutlery minutely with a forefinger, Clare went into mental battle, thinking: then people who like to look at things can go, but I only—

She agreed, ‘
Later
,
it would be—’ She lifted her cup and drank to gain time, for she had no inclination to force her intuitions through the sieve of language. But false, unreal, an act implying self-deception, she knew it would have been, to have left the country now. To the world you had to offer a disinterested self and had not only to be, but to appear to be so, though not an eye watched and no one cared. Every instinct rose even now to reject the idea of leaving the country, as though
her course had still to be decided. A false gesture. As though pretending to believe what she did not: that the
real
,
significance
,
existed in another country and might be found in a specific geographical position, like the Pyramids.

‘Would be what?’ Bernard prompted. All the changes, shocks, momentousness of recent times jammed his voice.

‘I don’t know,’ Clare lied. For she had deduced long ago that no thrilling of the senses, no increase in wealth, social contacts or handsome objects would take her anywhere but further away from the state that would be natural to her. She hoped to be known, and she hoped to have to know to an extent that taxed, extended and outreached her powers. But if none of her hopes came to pass, it would be bearable. She knew from experience that everything was bearable because it had to be. All that happened was that people changed, and that was sometimes sad.

‘Hullo. It’s only me.’ Laura stood beside their table, wrapped in a new coat of soft black-and-white tweed.

‘Laura!’ Clare jumped up to kiss her and stood back. ‘My, you smell delicious. Sit down. Have some coffee.’

Laura patted Bernard’s arm and sat down at the table. ‘No, I won’t have anything, thank you. But aren’t you having any breakfast? You have to eat, you know.’

Bernard smiled at this familiar message. ‘You never
set us a good example.’

‘I eat as much as I need. But you’re a growing boy,’ Laura said solemnly, drawing off her French suède gloves, resting her lizard-skin bag on her lap. ‘Now I’m not staying. I just had to tell you that Felix and I are going away. It’s just decided. We’re going for a trip to America and South America. We might even live there. You see! Everything’s different now. Once I couldn’t have come here like this to the station, and I know he’s been funny about you talking to me on the phone these last days, but this morning I just said, “I’m going to run in for five minutes to Central to see Clare off on the train,” and he said, “Right-oh! I’ll drive you in.” He would never have offered to do that before. So I’d better not keep him hanging about too long. The Jaguar’s so hard to park. He was still having a bit of trouble with it when I left him, so he said he’d just drive round for a few minutes if that was all I was going to be.

‘I don’t know why you both rushed away like that. Felix was dreadfully upset to think you might think he
meant
anything that day you went away. When I told him what he said he was dumbfounded. He said he didn’t think you thought so badly of him to think he could mean a thing like that. He’s fonder of you both than you give him credit for. He’s always—with Clare—he would always do anything to please her. Much more than he’d ever do for me. She could have
got him to do anything.’

Laura went on, ‘It really jolted him when you went away, though. I think it’s made him appreciate for the first time in his life that he mightn’t like it if everyone left him. And he’s getting very nervous suddenly. The other night the doorbell rang at eight o’clock, and do you know—he didn’t want to open the door. It’s so quiet in our district and nobody ever comes to the house at night. You know that long dim hall. I said, “I’ll come with you,” but he said, “Why should we open it? Who could it be?” But we crept down together and peeked through the curtains and it was that little plumber man coming to see about the sink. He does jobs for himself after work. We’d forgotten about him with all this turmoil going on.

‘Oh, well. If you think,’ she looked in Clare’s direction but not exactly into her eyes, ‘you’ll be better off roaming about the countryside or driving some old car from place to place through the bush till you’ve used up all your savings—Doing hard jobs when you could have any number of good jobs here in the city. Be careful, though, Clare. I’m not joking. It’s dangerous for a woman. You should take some sort of protection with you. I don’t mean a gun—If you’d even gone to Europe! It wouldn’t cost you any more, either. Hills and rivers you want. I’m sure there must be better ones everywhere else than here. I loathe this country. The people are barbarians. They only think about money and horses and drinking. Really, I hope I can persuade
Felix never to come back. I feel we’d make friends in another place. I’d like a different sort of life. There’s no culture here. I’m not surprised you decided to go home,’ she said to Bernard with partisan heat. ‘To all your theatres and beautiful buildings.’

‘But I’m coming back for the beginning of the university year.’ He looked at Laura with surprise. ‘I told you.’

‘Oh?—I don’t remember. Everything’s been so topsy-turvy. You probably did.’

‘No, the year doesn’t start for five months.’ Bernard explained, ‘Max—the solicitor who’s helping—thought that if I got work on a ship going home I could see my family and help to finalise the compensation claim. With the money I earn going over I can pay my passage back. Or I might find work on a migrant ship as an interpreter.’

‘Well!’ Laura was flabbergasted by this degree of optimism and organisation. She said, ‘At least you know what your plans are, which is more than Clare seems to do. But how did you manage to get your job on the ship? We had another presser before you who’d been a steward, and he said it was very hard.’

‘It is. But Max arranged for me to meet a man he knows—’

‘Ah!’ Laura’s exclamation was sage and bitter. ‘That’s the only way to get on. It isn’t fair, really, all this pulling of strings. Probably many another boy in your position has tried to get home and had to give
up in despair.’ Laura’s fellow-feeling for these disappointed lads was evident. ‘I mean,’ she added hastily, catching Clare’s eye, ‘that it’s nice that
you
were lucky, but it isn’t right that other boys aren’t, too. Still, that’s how the world goes. You need a rich father or influential friends. And Bernard,’ Laura hurried on with propitiating politeness but no concentration, ‘you’re still going to do this botany course.’

‘Yes. For sure.’

‘And what will you work on when you finish, I wonder?’ Laura’s foot tapped out the seconds anxiously.

Bernard felt reproachful about something, but said, ‘There’s a good deal of scope for research, but it’s a bit early to say.’

‘Dear, dear!’ Laura sketched a show of distress and indignation. ‘Shut away in a little laboratory. Anyway, here we are, all off in different directions. I hope you’re both going to write me nice long letters about all your doings?’

‘Yes. But South America! Where will you be?’ Clare asked her.

Laura exclaimed at her own foolishness and clapped the hand that wore the diamond ring to her chest. Extracting a notebook and pen from her bag she wrote several addresses out for Clare, who made copies of them for Bernard, who was writing out yet other addresses for Laura.

Exchanges made, instructions given, there was a
sudden painful pause, then Laura stood up, her eyes going from one to the other unhappily, her hands busy smoothing on the fine suede gloves. ‘I’d better get back to poor Felix. He hates driving in the city, but he came in specially so that I could say goodbye. He hasn’t been very well,’ she said gravely, looking out over the tables sprinkled with industrious and silent eaters, as she canvassed still, at this late hour, for disciples, hearts, minds, souls, to offer up to Felix. ‘And he’s had a tremendous amount to do—letters and ’phone calls in—connection with our trip.’

She kissed Clare. They both said, ‘Look after yourself.’ She took Bernard’s big hand between hers. ‘Now remember to eat up and keep well. I must go. But everything’s quite different now.’ She gave an odd little laugh. ‘The worm’s turned.’

Her desperation was such that the two she appealed to could only murmur good wishes and release her instantly to see her running off to the entrance in her pretty new shoes. She did not look back once.

Bernard sat down again and glumly refilled Clare’s cup and his own and clanked the empty pot back on the table. They drank in an armed silence, only accidentally giving each other the shadowed looks intended by their reflections for the absent ones.

Bernard looked at his watch and emerged in the moment, and as he regarded Clare’s face and absorbed her presence for the last time for months or years, there
began to emanate from him the least tinge of reproach: his trusted adviser and consultant was unseasonably casting him off.

Meeting his eyes, Clare felt disloyal, cagey, ashamed of herself and surprised. But there it was: she would be relieved to go. Nothing she had done had been with the surreptitious intention of attaching him to her side, dependent. On the contrary. Exclusiveness in personal relations, owning, being owned, being walled up,
exclusiveness
,
she thought again, felt like a trap. To be bound, at this stage in her life, by any attachment, were it ever so well-phrased or congenial, felt as welcome as the prospect of strangulation—and rather similar.

She was fond of him. How could she not be? Because of him that futile, wasted, lacerated thing behind her—her life—was transmuted into an apprenticeship of infinite worth, undergone in surroundings of surpassing richness. Her hand had studied all those years, and each least part and facet of her had learned some small relentless task again and yet again in order to become the person who had been useful to this boy.

Life had agreed to find her useful. It knew, something knew, at last, that she was here. Anything was possible. Everything was true. People could indeed change out of recognition, permanently, between two breaths.

‘I won’t like Sydney without you.’ Bernard’s eyes looked and looked with static alarm and nostalgia.

‘You’ll be away in a couple of weeks yourself,’
Clare rallied him. She had begun to suspect that affection, love, were things about which there was nothing to be done. People might love each other dearly, sleep together, live harmoniously or tempestuously together for years, but still, in a way, there was nothing to be done about it. She felt herself to have emerged at a point on the road she was in nature bound to have reached even at the end of decades of joyful living. It was a pity, perhaps, to have bypassed innocent happiness on the way—‘You’ll become a magnificent, great botanist, and you’ll discover six new flowers the first time you go into the field. And you’ll be sought after, but you’ll remain simple and unspoiled and content in this quiet backwater.’

Bernard grinned. ‘And you’ll become a nursery gardener and watch the weather. At a vast distance from that house.’

‘What a lovely idea!’

‘A long way from that house.’

‘No, no. That doesn’t matter any more. And even at the worst it was very instructive.’