Forty-Seventeen (4 page)

 

Belle introduced her friend Renée as a ‘trainee slut' to the visiting American poet, Mark Strand.

 

Belle's favourite character in history was, of course, Messalina. They were looking at Beardsley's illustration of Juvenal's
Sixth Satire
which Elwyn Lynn described as, ‘Evil … energetically attractive or repulsive, elegant or lurching, brutally like Messalina …'

Belle objected, in a letter to Elwyn Lynn, about the introduction of the word ‘brutally' into the description of Messalina. She said brutalisation occurred when motives other than sensual pleasure interfered with the activity.

Messalina, Belle explained, as the wife of Claudius worked in a brothel while Claudius slept, just like Severine, and was reputed not to have taken a break during her shift, always being the last to leave.

He told Belle that he'd found out that his great-grandmother sometimes took part in mock marriages with gold miners who had struck gold. They would
dress in formal clothing, hold a lavish reception, a mock religious marriage service, and then the consummation in the church in front of the guests. It was a high form of whore-theatre, desecrating marriage.

‘I like it, I like it,' Belle said, smiling. ‘Without a doubt I am part of your ancestral theatre, I come from a line which stretches back through your great-grandmother to Messalina. ‘Your seeking of your great-grandmother, your seeking of psychic traces, is a sluttish thing to do too. What I can't understand is why you can't just have a whore mother fixation, why do you have to have a whore great-grandmother?'

Among her many theories, Belle believed that we are parcel of our ancestors and that our friends and lovers are the projections of long-dead ancestors.

 

At the Katoomba cemetery, Belle posed at the grave of his great-grandmother.

‘Is this the way you want me?' Belle asked. ‘Is my sweater pulled tight enough over my nipples? Is my leotard tight into my crotch? Are my legs apart just enough to suggest unresisting submission? Are my lips pouting teasingly? Is my pelvis thrust forward enough as an invitation to enter me?'

She was not acting and her sluttish pose was no parody. He took her photograph against the gravestone which had his great-grandmother's name, the dates and the inscription, ‘Not changed but glorified'.

She then came to him there in the cemetery saying, ‘Let me be your great-grandmother who at seventeen
whored in this old resort town and for whom you're searching.'

As he embraced her there in the cemetery he realised why he'd taken her into the heartlands on his fortieth birthday and that even if she wasn't the full story, she was maybe a replica. Whatever she was for him felt all right.

That Christmas he went into the Budawang Ranges with Belle.

They had debauched in motel rooms and restaurants along the coast while he turned forty, bed sheets drenched with champagne and with all the smells and fluids that two bodies could be made to offer up in such dark love-making as, in their curious way, he and Belle were drawn into. But the conversations in the restaurants had become unproductively sadistic as they exhausted amicable conversation.

He'd gone increasingly into interior conversation with himself about ‘turning forty' because she was too young to have empathy with his turning forty. And he was trying to salve the loss of his young girlfriend who was overseas and ‘in love'.

He also had some home-yearnings which came on at Christmas. His family was not in town for this Christmas, but anyhow his home-yearnings had been displaced over the years away from his family in the town to the bush about fifty kilometres away from, but behind, the coastal town where he had grown up – the Sassafras bush in the Budawang Ranges.

He'd put camping gear in the car when they'd left the city and they drove as deep into the bush as the
road permitted and then left the car and backpacked their way.

As they walked deeper into the bush he kept glancing at Belle to see if she was being affected by the dull warm day and the bush. He knew the creeping hysteria and dread which the Australian bush could bring about.

She saw him looking back at her and said, ‘I'm coping. Stop looking back at me all the time.'

They walked for an hour or so and came to what is called Mitchell Lookout.

‘This is called Mitchell Lookout,' he said, ‘but as you can see it is not a lookout in the Rotary sense.'

It was a shelf of rock with a limited view of the gorge.

‘Lookouts are an eighteenth-century European act of nature worship which Rotary clubs have carried on. The growth is too thick – you can't see the river down there. You'll have to take my word for it.'

‘I can see that the growth is too thick.'

‘Laughably, the only thing you can see clearly from Mitchell Lookout is directly across the gorge – they could have another lookout which looked across at Mitchell Lookout.'

He saw her look across at the other side and back again. She made a small movement of her mouth to show that she didn't think it was particularly ‘laughable'.

‘I don't go into the bush for views,' he said.

‘Tell me – what do you go into the bush for?'

‘I go into the bush to be swallowed whole. I don't go into the bush to look at curious natural formations – I don't marvel at God's handiwork.'

For reasons he could not explain and did not record in his log book, he decided to put the tent on the rock ledge overlooking the gorge.

‘You'll find sleeping on the rock is OK,' he said, ‘it is really much better than you imagine.'

‘If you say so,' she said, dumping her backpack.

‘I go into the bush for raw unanalysed sensory experience,' he said, ‘I don't go in for naming things geologically or birds and so on.'

‘You don't have to apologise for not knowing the names of the birds and the stones.'

He cut some bracken fern to lie on, more as a gesture towards the idea of what made for comfort.

‘That'll do a fat amount of good,' Belle said.

‘It's a gesture.'

He put up the tent, pinning each corner from inside with rocks and tying the guy ropes to rocks.

‘I've even used rocks as pillows,' he said.

She sat, one leg crossed over the other, cleaning dirt from her painted fingernails with a nail file.

He instantly doubted whether she had ever used a rock for a pillow and whether sleeping on rock was in fact OK.

‘There,' he said, ‘the tent is up.'

She looked across at it, got up, went over and looked inside the tent but did not go in.

‘How about a drink?' he said.

‘Sure, it's the happy hour. Any hour can be a happy hour.' She laughed at this to herself.

He went about getting the drink.

‘I'll cook the Christmas dinner. That'll be my contribution,' she said.

‘No,' he said, ‘that's OK, I'm used to cooking on camp fires.'

‘Look – you may be fourth-generation Australian but you're not the only one who can cook on a camp fire, for godsake.'

‘All right, all right.'

As they had their bourbons he doubted whether she could cook on campfires. He thought about what they could salvage to eat.

‘I came through the Australian experience too,' she said.

‘Do you know what to do if you get lost in the bush?' he asked her.

‘No, I didn't mean to invite a test, but you tell me, what do I do if I get lost in the bush?'

‘You stay where you are, mix a dry martini and within minutes someone will be there telling you that you're doing it wrong.'

‘Ha ha. Wouldn't mind a martini now this very minute.'

He had never seen her cook a meal. It was always restaurants and luxury hotels, that was their relationship.

‘But it was my idea to come out here in the bush – let me cook it.'

‘I'll cook it.'

‘OK – if you feel happy about it.'

‘I feel quite happy about it, Hemingway.'

She made a low, slow fire, just right, and rested the pannikins and camp cooking dishes on the coals. It wasn't quite the way he would have done it but he didn't say anything.

Wood coals look stable until things tilt and spill as the wood burns away.

She squatted there at the fire. She first put potatoes on the coals. She put on the rabbit pieces – which they had not themselves hunted, he hadn't brought the guns – after smearing them with mustard and muttered to herself ‘
lapin moutarde
', laughing to herself. She wrapped the rabbit in tin foil and wormed the pieces down into the coals with a flat stick. Then she crossed herself. She put the corn cobs on to boil, candied the carrots with sugar sachets from the motel, put on the beans. She then heated the lobster bisque, throwing in a dash of her bloody mary, again saying something to herself that he didn't catch.

Maybe a gypsy incantation.

She put the plum pudding on to be warmed and mixed a careful custard.

She squatted there at the smoking fire, stirring and moving the pots as needed, throwing on a piece of wood at the back at the right time for some quick heat, all with what he thought was primitive control. He swigged bourbon from a First World War officer's flask and passed it to her from time to time. He liked to think that the flask had belonged to one of his great-grandmother's lovers. She squatted there in silence, full of attention for what she was doing.

He swigged the bourbon and, from time to time, became a First World War officer. She had slipped into a posture which belonged to the primitive way of doing things – what? – a few thousand years ago when the race cooked on camp fires. Or more recently, back to Settlement.

He sat off on a rock and took some bearings using his Swiss compass and Department of Mapping 1:25 000 topographic maps, trying to identify some of the distant peaks.

‘Shrouded God's Mountain,' he said.

‘Good,' she said, not looking up.

He kept glancing at her, enjoying her postures.

He opened a bottle of 1968 Coonawarra Cabernet Shiraz.

‘It's ready,' she said, muttering something.

She presented the meal with perfect timing, everything right, at the right time, no over-cooking, no cold food, no ash or grit in the food. She served it on the disposable plates they'd bought.

He complimented her.

‘Don't sound so surprised,' she said.

They ate their Christmas dinner and drank the wine in the Guzzini goblets he'd bought for camping, and as they did, a white mist filled the gorge and stopped short of where they were so that they were atop of it, as if looking out the window of an aircraft above the clouds.

It came almost level with the slab where they were camped and were eating.

‘Jesus, that's nice,' he said, staring down at the mist.

‘I thought you didn't go in for God's handiwork.'

‘Well I don't go searching for it. When he does it before my very eyes, I can be appreciative.'

She looked down at the mist while chewing the meat off a rabbit bone, as if assessing the mist, aesthetically? theologically? She ate the meal with her fingers, with their painted nails.

‘It's all right,' she said, emphatically.

It was warm and there were bush flies which worried her and she kept brushing them away with her hand, cursing at them.

‘Piss off you bastards,' she said.

‘I've made peace with the flies,' he said. ‘Sooner or later in the Australian bush you have to stop shooing the flies and let them be.'

‘I'm not going to let them be,' she said, ‘I'm going to give them a bad time.'

‘Please yourself.'

‘I will.'

‘You did the meal perfectly.'

‘Thank you – but you aren't the only person in Australia who can cook on a camp fire.' She then laughed, and said, ‘Actually it was the first time I have cooked a meal on a camp fire.'

‘It was perfect. You looked very primitive – you could have been out of the First Settlement.'

‘I felt very primitive,' she said, ‘if the truth be known.'

‘I meant it in the best sense.'

‘I assumed you did.'

They sat there with food-stained hands, smoky from the fire, food and wine on their breath. Belle exposed her legs to the misty sun.

She stared expressionlessly at him, her hand methodically waving away the flies, and she then began to remove her clothing. They had sex there on the rock slab surrounded by the mist. They played with the idea of her naked body on the rock slab, the bruising of it, the abrasion. He held her head by the hair and pinned her arms, allowing the flies to crawl over her face. She struggled but could not make enough movement to keep them off her face. She came and he came.

They drank and became drowsy watching, from a cool distance, the fire burning away.

 

During the night he got up because he liked to leave the tent in the dead of the night and prowl about naked. He said to himself that although he did not always feel easy in the bush, in fact, he sometimes felt discordant in it, he'd rather be out in it feeling discordant than not be there.

‘What are you doing out there for godsake?' Belle called from the tent.

‘Having a piss.'

He crawled back into the tent.

‘I thought for a moment you were communing,' she said.

‘Just checking the boundaries.'

In the morning he said, ‘Well, it wasn't unsleepable on the rock.'

‘No, not unsleepable,' she said, and smiled, ‘not unfuckable either.'

‘The rock tells our body things our mind cannot comprehend.'

‘Don't give me that bullshit.'

It was still misty and the air heavy with moisture but it was not cold.

Neither of them now wanted to stay longer in the bush although they'd talked initially of staying ‘for a few days'.

He thought he might have stayed on if he'd been alone.

They struck camp.

‘I liked having if off on the rock,' she said, ‘I seem to be bruised.'

‘But you were bruised enough?' he ritualistically asked, resolving that he would not make that joke again because of its tiredness, resisting what the tiredness meant about their relationship.

‘Ha ha.'

It was a grey sky. The dampness quietened everything down just a little more than usual and the dull sky dulled everything a little more, including their mood.

They hoisted on their backpacks and began walking.

‘I know all about abjection and self-esteem but for a slut like me it's all a game now.'

He gestured to indicate that he wasn't making judgements about it.

‘It's no longer the whole damned basis of my personality,' she said.

‘You have to be a bit like that to go into the bush anyhow. It's very easy to make it self-punishing.'

‘I was thinking that.'

They walked a few metres apart. They passed a stand of grey kangaroos some way off which speculatively watched them walk by. Belle and he indicated to each other by a glance that they'd seen the kangaroos.

‘More of God's handiwork,' she called.

He realised as they walked out that he had a disquiet about being there with Belle. When he looked at the Christmas they'd just had together – on paper – it was untroubled, memorable, an enriched event – the mist in the gorge, the perfect campfire meal, the good wine. Belle naked on the rock, his standing on the ledge in the dead of night, the melancholy bush.

The disquiet came because Belle had been moved
out of place
in his life. The Budawang bush was the place of his childhood testing, his family's bush experience, touching base, touching primitive base. He had learned his masculinity here.

She did not belong in that album.

He looked back at her up the trail, plodding through the swampy part in her Keds, dripping wet from the moisture of the bushes. He saw her again at the camp fire, primitively squatting. He felt a huge fondness for her.

They'd often said that they were not the sort of person either would really choose to spend Christmas or
birthdays with, they were making do with each other.

By bringing Belle with him on his fortieth birthday and on Christmas he had left an ineradicable and inappropriate memory trace across the countryside.

She was also somehow an embodiment of his great-grandmother, they'd divined that in Katoomba at his great-grandmother's grave. But this was not his great-grandmother's territory.

He was then struck by a splintering observation – the Budawangs and the Blue Mountains of Katoomba were part of the Great Dividing Range but in his head they were different mountains, different districts. His great-grandmother and Belle belonged at Katoomba, the decayed health resort and spa. It was there that his great-grandmother had used her charms and beauty to make her living, her fortune. The Budawangs were where he'd been the boy scout and the army officer.