Affection (31 page)

A man shuffled out into the corridor to stare at me. They were all men. I could smell them, the horror of unwashed socks and stained underwear, old-man's long johns hidden under flannel shirts. The man was older than me, but not so old. Maybe in his fifties, probably not too much older than Brian. I clutched my bag, suddenly aware of the low swing of my shirt and my breasts swelling out of it. The man stared with the kind of unabashed curiosity that we must grow into, all shyness
abandoned after hard years of practice. I stepped back into the room that might be mine. A sink, a bed, a tiny desk, a stove and an oven that may or may not have worked. It was affordable and I could live there.

The caretaker shook his head at me.

“I won't rent it to you.”

I watched the old man shuffle back into his room. The door rattled closed. Loose paint flaked onto the musty carpet. He would be my neighbor. At night I might hear his pathetic attempts at masturbation. We would share the shower down the hallway. I would find his gray pubic hairs fossilized in the communal soap.

“I can afford it.”

“I won't.” He swept his arm across the shadowy view of the corridor with its myriad of closed doors. “Old alcoholic men. That's who live here. And junkies. I'm not renting it to you.”

I took a step back and the floorboards creaked. Outside the clouds were gathering. It would rain again.

He walked me to the front steps. “It's not for you,” he told me, concerned. “Look love,” and I could have hit him; my hand became a fist, the nails bit into my palm, “there.”

He pointed out toward the overcast sky. I squinted but I couldn't see anything—just a hill I would have to walk up and houses pressed hip to hip; coming rain.

“Up at the top, near the Fiveways, there's a block of apartments. Cheap. I know there's a couple free. You should check that out.”

“I've got the deposit,” I told him. “I've got it in cash.”

He eased me down the stairs, the flat of his palm in my back. “St. James Street,” he told me. “I don't know the number.”

Rain spat in my face when I glanced upward. Light rain, but it would get heavier. I breathed in jasmine. Exhaled gardenia. It was a Brisbane summer day and there was rain coming.

 

 

There were angels in the garden. White stone creatures perched on dry fountains. There were naked women hoisting stone basins onto their shoulders. There was a house behind these whitewashed figures. The house was perched at a lean, heavier on its top floor than it was below. Threatening to spill bathrooms and lounge rooms down into the weedy garden with its picket fence.

I climbed crumbling steps and knew as soon as I stepped up onto the tumbledown porch that I would live there. A blue heeler lifted its lazy head from its paws, its eyebrows crinkling over sleepy eyes. I smiled and bent and patted its solid head and I smelled its doggy scent on my fingers. This was the room, the one that the dog was guarding.

Beside the dog was a broken couch with a blanket thrown over its spilled stuffing. There was a man asleep on the couch. He was all elbows and knees and his breath caught in a discreet snore that sounded more like the purr of a contented cat. There was paint on his fingers, red paint. There was paint on his shirt and I noticed his sandals were an abstract work of red and yellow splatters. He smelled
like my family. Turpentine, linseed oil, nicotine. His fingers had the yellow stains of a heavy smoker. There was a pouch of tobacco on the couch beside him. Dr. Pat. The same tobacco that I had been smoking. The same tobacco my grandfather used in his pipe.

I was careful not to wake him as I stepped over the dog and slipped the key into the door.

There were two rooms inside. The first was nothing more than a large bay window but it was big enough for my bed and the view was fringed by frangipani flowers and bougainvillea. The floorboards were already dripped with a splatter from the haphazard paint job. The kitchen sink was half aluminum, half rust. No toilet, somewhere there would be a shared toilet and a shower, but there was a gas stovetop and a bar heater on the wall. I would be fed and I would be warm. I suspected I would be happy.

I stepped out onto the porch and the young man was awake and leaning on one hand as he rolled a cigarette with another. He blinked, squinted. He pushed himself up until he was sitting a little unsteadily. There was an odd, unfocused vagueness in his eyes, but he looked straight at me and he grinned as if we were great friends.

“Ah,” he said to me. “You're home then.”

Of course Paul will leave with this girl. Paul is single and she is pretty and we did not arrive together. There is no reason for him to be anywhere but here, leaning across this dirty café table scorching this young girl in the blaze of his attention. He is charming; I have been charmed. Now it is her turn to be flattered into adoration. He will leave with her, and our other friends will sidle up to their temporary partners and drift off into the dawn.

It is one in the morning and drizzling. Our apartment is less than an hour's walk away.

I stand and leave the table unnoticed. The rain comes harder when I am at the first set of traffic lights, rivulets finding the contours of my cheeks. No one has seen me leave. This is a game; teams have
been selected and I am here at the edge of things, watching for a while, leaving, finding my way home.

At the venue there were bands and I felt like dancing but they don't seem to dance anymore, this younger cooler generation. A night of sitting quietly in corners, everyone so young and self-aware and beautiful.

The rain is heavier the farther I trudge toward home. My dress clings to my body. The night is reflected in sad, damp puddles that lick at the edges of my shoes.

This is why married women who are forty do not go out to see bands with friends half their age. First there is the odd conversation with the Indian cab driver about the disposal of corpses in which somehow, in the time it takes to slide between one suburb and another, my body shape is likened to that of both a seal and a dugong. Then there is the line-up at the door where everyone is carded except me. Then there is the fact that I have more income than my student friends and it seems morally wrong to let them buy me a drink even though I have already bought them one or two. Then there is this pairing off, this settling into coupledom that will leave me walking home in the rain when they are all settling into cabs, snuggling up beside each other warm and dry in the hug of intimacy.

 

 

Inside my quiet apartment the calm takes me by surprise. The chaos of my day-to-day existence has been cleared away. Books shelved,
benches wiped, dishes washed and neatly stacked. The sound of the rain is a gentle lullaby. I have drunk too much but I am not reeling drunk. I am wet but not chilled to the bone, and there in my bed is my own prize. The boy I would have left with if I had met him at the bar—even now, in our harried middle age. I look at his sleeping face and know that I would have spotted him immediately, found some way to share a cab with him or entice him out into the rain.

I peel off my soaked clothing and towel myself dry in the darkness of the bathroom. Our bathroom. Our house. When I slip into our bed he nestles sleepily against me.

“Hello Beautiful.” A dreamy whisper.

“Hi there.”

“It's raining.”

“I walked home in the rain.”

“You should have caught a cab.”

“No,” I tell him and I touch his dry hair, curling my fingers through it gently. “It was nice, walking in the rain. Like I used to do.”

“How are your little friends?” he asks me, waking a little, grinning.

“Cute,” I tell him. “But you are so much cuter.”

“I know,” he grins and closes his eyes and shuffles closer. “And I know you know it, too.”

“I do. Please never forget that I do.”

I settle next to him. I smell the wonderful warm scent of him,
knowing that this will not be the last time I wander home, tipsy and wet and alone; abandoned by all my exciting young friends. Knowing also that my husband will be here for me, sleepy, dry, waiting. The man who I once picked out of a crowd, and who I would pick again and again if I were meeting him anew.

Krissy Kneen is a writer and bookseller. She has written short films and directed documentaries for Australian television. She is the author of a short collection of erotica,
Swallow the Sound,
and she lives in Brisbane, Australia, with her husband.
Affection
is her first book.

My writer and bookseller friends are the most supportive people that I know. They have stood by me for so many years and my joy with this book is theirs to share.

In particular I thank: Chris Somerville, Christopher Currie, Katherine Lyall-Watson, Fiona Stager, Nike Bourke, Benjamin Law, Kristina Olsson, Nick Earls, Angela Meyer, Kirsten Reed, Trent Jamieson, Ronnie Scott. Thanks to the crew at QWC and particularly to Kate Eltham. Also to the ever-tolerant team at Avid Reader Bookshop and Café who fed me scotch when I was crying and champagne when I was elated during the writing of this book.

I would also like to thank my family, Wendy, Lotty, Barry, Karen, Peter R., Sheila, Denise, Helen and Peter M.

Thank you also to the friends and lovers who were there with
me through my wild days. A special thanks to Elissa Freeman and Bec Harbison: twin pillars of support, and Judith Lukin-Amundsen, a most marvelous mentor.

The biggest thanks to Mandy Brett for the most amazing edit (a tighter, leaner, stronger book because of you), and to the team at Text Publishing. I stand in awe.

For more than thirty years, Seal Press has published groundbreaking books. By women. For women. Visit our website at
www.sealpress.com
. Check out the Seal Press blog at
www.sealpress.com/blog
.

 

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