Borrowed Light (22 page)

‘Oww!' he yelled. ‘Oww oww, Cally pinched me! That hurts, you scumbuggit. I'll get you for this, you stink-butt wee-head! I hate you!'

He was wailing and shouting so loudly that I couldn't hear anything, even though the receiver was pressed tightly to my ear. The noise must have woken Mum, because she came rushing out into the kitchen in her chilly nightie. She was still removing slices of cucumber from her lids. Cucumber is
good for cleansing tired skin. You put it on just before bed.

‘I'm going to pick up the phone in my room, Mum—will you put this one down?'

She nodded over Jeremy's head. He pressed his nose into her tummy, flinging his arms around her bottom like a drowning man. He was such a drama queen. He had cucumber in his hair.

I dashed out of the kitchen.

H
OPE IS BUBBLY
and oxygenated and energising. It's like carbonated water in sunshine. It sparkles in a glass on a table that overlooks a valley of blue water, dotted with boats. You can hear the masts tinkling together in the wind.

That's where I wanted to go on Sunday.

But harbourside cafes are expensive. Neither of us had much money. And anyway, I only wanted the sparkling water as a backdrop for our celebration.

‘Why don't we go to the beach?' Richard's voice on the phone was a little deeper. ‘It's a beautiful day.'

Collapsed bikini tops loomed. I feel so much more comfortable with my clothes on—I wish I didn't, but there it is. There's a lot to be said for preserving illusions.

‘It might be a bit cold to swim now,' I said cautiously.

‘Yes, you might be right. But we can go for a walk round the rocks, and up onto the cliff.'

We arranged to meet at eleven.

I had a shower and worried about what to wear. In my room I decided on jeans and a nice silky blue shirt I'd had for years. I'd put my costume and towel in my bag and hope I wouldn't need it.

Mum and Jeremy were still in the kitchen. Mum was making coffee and Jeremy was doing something with his magnet set on the floor.

‘Where are you going?' he scowled, seeing my bag.

‘To the beach, with Richard.'

‘Oh, can I come?'

‘Who's Richard?'

‘He's a boy I met at the Observatory. It's all right, Mum, he's not a bank robber or anything, I know his father. He's a teacher at my school. Mr West.'

‘What happened to Tim? I thought you were still seeing him.'

‘Why can't I come? I met him too! I promised on the phone that I'd come.'

‘Tim's gone on holiday. We, well, we don't have all that much in common, really.'

‘That's a shame. He seemed very polite. Well, which beach are you going to? Take something warm, because I don't like the look of those clouds.'

‘I could take my spade. I could dig holes and tunnels in the sand. We could make castles. Will I get my Speedos? I'll only be a second!'

‘No, Jeremy, I'm sorry. I'm just going by myself. It's a grown-up sort of thing. Hey, what about Sam? Isn't he coming over?'

Jeremy shook his head. His shoulders sagged. ‘Sam's
busy
. He's going to lunch at his auntie's. They're going to have chocolate cake, because it's his mother's birthday.'

Mum raised her eyebrows at me. I knew that look.

‘Couldn't he come? He won't be in the way. He'd have such a nice time in the fresh sea air'. I looked away.

‘No one ever invites me anywhere,' said Jeremy.

Mum's eyebrows practically shot up into her hairline.

I went to the door. I didn't look at either of them. ‘See you later, then. Have a good day!'

I could hear Jeremy start to cry as I reached the gate.

T
HE ONLY KNOWN
portrait of Caroline Herschel as a young woman is a silhouette. It was painted before she left Hanover to join her brother William in England, in 1772. She's in profile. We see only one side of her, in matt black. There is no light or shade.

The man in front of me in the bus to Manly had a portable radio. He was jerking his neck back and forth in time to the music, like a chicken pecking in a yard. He turned up the volume. I could hear the words now—it was an old song, ‘When a man loves a woman'. It made my blood pound. I thought of Richard's mouth. I wondered if Caroline Herschel had ever felt like this. Perhaps when she discovered her first comet. But did she have this dissolving, runny kind of excitement, as if her bones were made of whipped cream? We'll never know. History only gives us one side of her, a black silhouette.

I sang the words of the song under my breath. I looked out the window. Beyond the rooftops and trees a slice of sea lay like icing on a cake. I wanted to remember this bus ride—the song, the anticipation like an infinitesimal pause between notes, the sugar-frosted horizon.

We passed the deli where Mum bought her caramelised tomatoes. Sometimes she throws caution to the wind and buys 200 grams. I saw Carlo, the deli man, arranging buckets of flowers outside the shop.

The bus driver whistled ‘When a man loves a woman' at the red light. He stared at a girl in a short skirt crossing the road. I wondered if we only ever see one side of people—even people we love. How did Mum see Grandma, for instance? In the mould of Caroline Herschel? When Mum was little, she only saw Grandma's profile, proffered to the sky. She must have seen Ruth from the back, her shoulders hunched at the table as she studied her maps. That night, when I was twelve, Mum said, ‘Your Grandma always looked at the sky more than she did at me.'

When you take a photograph with the sunlight behind the subject, the person becomes a silhouette. It's hard to get them in the right position, with a balance of light and shade. Part of the moon is usually in shadow. Sometimes it's almost invisible.

Richard has shadows under his eyes. The colour of his eyes is grape-green—the seedless kind you can get in summer, fresh, tight with juicy flesh. But it's darker underneath his lashes, more like evening.

If you're a sneak like me, and you read people's diaries, you get a glimpse of the other side. The part turned away from the light. You can see details shining through, islands of truth you never would have imagined. But around them float areas of exaggerated shadow.

As the bus turned the comer, past the aquarium, I smelled salt water. A rush of feelings crowded into my throat. I saw Jeremy's face in the kitchen, his lips saying ‘please'. I imagined him in his red Speedos, filling his blue bucket with sand. He kneeled at the edge of the waves, shrieking as the sea gushed into his tunnels. I saw Tim racing up the beach after a surf, flinging himself down on his Mambo towel. Droplets of water scattered on his skin like dropped pearls.

Salt rises up from the sea, dissolving into the air in clouds of sea fog. I breathed in salt and the slur of waves on sand, and I thought, this could be something new. I didn't want to feel guilty. I knew how to do that. Mournful, like bells tolling in an empty church yard. The imminence of Richard was igniting me. I could feel sleeping cells, strands of thought waking up. I could tell them to Richard. We would discover things together as we talked. He would listen. He would look at me and say wonderingly, ‘I'd never really thought of it like that. You animate things, Cally, you bring them to life.'

Did Grandma, did Mum, did old Caroline Herschel ever
ride like this, toward heaven? Did they struggle like me? Caroline Herschel's top lip was full and round, generous. It sat like a promise above its companion. Her chin was a small circle, like a child's. You can see the straight line of her nose and rise of her throat in the silhouette. Perhaps she was very beautiful. She was William's assistant for half a century. In the early days of his career, she even put food into his mouth, when he was busy grinding a mirror and dared not take his hands from it, allowing it to cool. On nights when he was sweeping for ‘nebulae' Caroline sat at a table near the telescope, recording descriptions as her brother shouted them out.

She became a skilled comet-hunter. She was rewarded for her work. But what I wanted to know was, did she ever feel her bones turning to whipped cream? Did she ever want to live in her own house, have her own children, be a blazing star herself? Perhaps she wouldn't have found the comets if she'd done that. It's not fair, is it, that you have to parcel out your passion, as if you were slicing pastry into an even number. Something gets lost in the slicing, I bet. Caroline Herschel's top lip was so articulate. It was poised, ready, as if saying ‘p'.

As soon as I stepped off the bus, I saw Richard. He had his back to me. He was leaning against the stone wall, gazing out at the harbour. There was the dark hair, curling like the tail of a ‘g' down his neck. Beneath the curl was a small round vertebra. When I'd put my arms around his neck, that little bone had felt like a pebble under my thumb. I'd rippled it back and forth under its veil of skin, the way you roll a river stone in your palm.

A green and gold ferry glided into the bay, like a plump bird landing on a pond. I hurried toward Richard, willing him not to turn around. All the way in the bus, past the bank and the bread shop and the deli that sells caramelised tomatoes, I'd been hoping that he wouldn't be there first.
Have you ever seen those old movies where lovers run through high grass to meet each other? It was a very sixties' thing. My mother reruns those scenes on video. She loves them. My father reads the newspaper. Anyway, the lovers ran with open arms, long hair flying, eyes locked, galloping like young horses across the fields. This kind of scene always made me nervous because the poor things had such a distance to cover, and it would be so easy to trip. Imagine if you fell flat on your face at your lover's feet.

I didn't want Richard to see me run. I'm no athlete.

I wanted to surprise him. I wanted to be perfect.

The 163 bus stops near the tobacconist and the milk bar at the wharf. People were streaming out of the ferry toward me. They jostled past with flinty elbows and fluorescent shorts. Hats and baseball caps bobbed together in an undulating rainbow. I wove through the crowd, grateful for the camouflage, dissolving like an oil smudge under a brush of bright colour.

I felt like a spy as I hurried along. Eyes on the ground, looking for cover. I put on my dark glasses. But, like James Bond, I longed for adventure and dangerous revelations.

The curl at the base of Richard's neck grew closer. I could see it over a man's yellow Hawaii shirt. I felt tired suddenly at the thought of disguise. I imagined charging into the spotlight of Richard's gaze. I'd throw off my sunglasses and hold out my arms. A spurt of bile came into my throat. It tasted like green ginger wine. I rubbed my lips together. There was an acidy chemical taste. I'd spent ten dollars on this black lipstick, you'd think they'd have at least given it a nice flavour. It cost so much to be cool. You had to look practically dead. Maybe Richard wouldn't like black lipstick.

‘Hi, handsome,' I said coolly, tapping Richard on the shoulder. He jumped like a startled rabbit.

‘Hullo!' he practically squeaked.

I grinned. The line of his back had looked so relaxed, but
maybe backs are unreliable. ‘Sorry I gave you a fright. I didn't mean to.'

‘That's all right,' said Richard, and grinned back. ‘I was far away.' He pointed out to the harbour. ‘This is a dreamy place.'

We laughed. Maybe he had gone over our every word on the bench, too. Was it possible? Was there life on Jupiter?

We decided to walk down the Corso, toward the beach. The smell of hamburgers and frying fish made my stomach turn. I thought of that night at the Cross, the fast food outlets and the gritty mixture in my teeth.

‘Do you want to get a hamburger?' Richard said. ‘I'm hungry already.'

‘I brought sandwiches,' I said quickly. There had only been avocado and sprouts in the fridge, but that was better than standing outside fish shops that made my stomach heave. ‘I've got enough for both of us.'

As we wandered down the Corso, I felt the sun sprawl over my shoulders. It was warm and mesmerising. But it made me worry. It was almost bikini weather.

We came to the end of the food shops and bargain boutiques and there was the long blue streak of beach. We found a table and bench on the concrete stretch overlooking the water, and sat down. I brought out the packet of sandwiches and gave Richard the one with extra sprouts. (I hoped he didn't mind herbivore food.)

‘Ah good, avocado,' said Richard. ‘My favourite!'

I nodded, my mouth full.

We talked in little bursts, in between bites of sandwich and picking sprouts out of our teeth. We looked at the ocean. Far out, beyond the ruffle of waves, heads bobbed about like small black watermelon seeds.

Richard asked me about school, my family. I tried to talk normally, but it was hard when there was such a sense of danger. Or was it excitement? Everything was too bright.
The sun was dazzling, glancing off Richard's shirt in waves of light, the sea was sapphire, the sand glinted. I felt as if I were in a war, I'd be blown up any minute. Maybe I would say the wrong thing, and set off a landmine.

‘What do you think you'll do when you finish school?' Richard asked.

‘You mean what am I going to be when I grow up?'

‘Something like that.'

‘I don't know.' I suddenly felt exhausted. I wished I didn't care so much. ‘At the moment I just want to get through the week.'

Richard looked at me. The gold flecks in his green eyes were like flashes of sun. I shivered, it was as if he had X ray vision.

I wished we had met after eight, under the cover of evening.

‘What are you sitting on?' Richard said suddenly.

‘A wooden bench, same thing you're sitting on.'

‘Ha ha. No, I mean, what is it you're not telling me? You look all worn out and weary with something, and I have no idea what it is.'