Gatherers and Hunters (21 page)

‘I am keeping you, Charles. Miriam always forgave you your habit of looking at your watch, did you know that? My husband, she said, my husband lives by the clock, whereas I live by the moment as it comes. She was a wonderful person, your wife. But of course you know that. She tolerated so much. Even me, but I knew I released the girl in her, and what a wonderful girl that was. Do you know, just one month before she flew off to that Greek conference – we didn't know, we didn't dream – we had coffee in the Moravia and she said to me, ‘It's Charlie I worry over, since he retired. I have to find him routines to follow. We play chess and Scrabble on alternate nights, that sort of thing.' And all the time it was Miriam who was … but I must not go on, it is too sad, it is all too sad.' And she dismissed him with her lipstick curved into a huge smile, or a wreath.

Had he ever really known Thelma? He had encountered her often enough, in a hallway and vestibule sort of way. A truly horrifying thought insisted itself – had he ever known Miriam? Of course he had known HIS Miriam, but Thelma seemed to be speaking of another person altogether. One can only cling to one's own explanation.

As he walked, briskly he hoped, towards the foreshore path and away from the town centre, he saw the old curmudgeon (What was his name? O'Connor?) sitting at that park bench, as if he had never left it. Was it a month already? He was dressed in identical rags. It was almost pitiful, really. But Charlie recalled the vehemence and bigotry in the old boy's voice, and the figure transformed itself into an image of stubborn insult.

Rigid and impossible. God forbid that Charlie would ever devolve to that! The horror was: for the first time he recognised a sort of possibility.

He veered away. But he knew if he were to live here he had to come, somehow, to terms with the locals, the regulars. He could have found plenty of old bigots like O'Connor around Melbourne, he had only to scratch the surface. But it had been possible, there, to carve out your own life, your own friends, even the suburb congenial to you. Everything was compressed up here. Close at hand. Inescapable.

The last time he had walked this particular way back towards Westaway Towers, the weather had been noticeably cooler. Now it was oppressively sultry. He felt the sweat trickle down his back, before his shirt stuck. He was aware of the dark stains under his arms and the body odour, even though he had showered before he went out this morning.

This morning. The supermarket and that encounter seemed now something distant, remote.

Thelma Jennings had caught him by surprise, she had caught him out. But she had also taken his mind from the preoccupation that had been becoming a sort of idealised fantasy, of that young woman reminding him of Beatrice, a fantasy that somehow had tricked him into dreaming of all those decades back, of himself as a burgeoning young sprig.

Thelma in that sense brought him into context. Miriam was not to be exorcised, nor should she be. Miriam was herself, her magnetic self. Thelma had been certainly wrong: it was not a running away at all; hadn't he in his mind still shared so many things with Miriam, almost unconsciously, like the way he kept to the routine of that Bushells Espresso, or her preferred breads. Even the selection of TV channels echoed Miriam's preference, and indeed, as he had to admit to himself, the hollow feeling of not being able to share the game of Scrabble while they watched
The Bill
. The shadow of Miriam was still there, all right.

They had developed a routine, certainly, but it was an affirming thing.

He must not allow himself to become tetchy like this.

And he must not allow himself to return to chafing over that silly incident in the supermarket this morning. No point. No point in feeling angry at that perfectly innocent and self-centred young woman. No point in feeling angry with himself. What's over is over. We always think of the clever reply twenty minutes after the confrontation or the irksome encounter. No point, any more, and particularly no point in willing it all back again, to brood over and to lick, like an old sore. How ridiculous.

Thelma Jennings. What Miriam always enjoyed about Thelma was her ebullience, she was the world's most unselfconscious extrovert.

But when she had first hailed him, waving that large fleshy hand and shaking her thick coloured mass of hair, he knew what had been his first, surprised, thought.

‘Is that Beatrice? Beatrice in her maturity, the Beatrice who was the same age, the same generation as myself, old Charlie?

+++++

He had automatically wandered on from the end of the promenade, through the lightly timbered picnic area and then through a little break in the retaining fence onto the beach itself. It was at the point where the Stillwater of the Passage swept over towards the tip of Bribie Island and formed a wide bank, the other side of which was surf.

He was tempted to take off his shoes, but then decided otherwise and stomped gingerly through the soft sand until he came to a groin of black volcanic stones and here he did give up on the thought of trudging much further so he ­clambered up a set of rough stairs and found himself at a turnaround for vehicles; bitumen and the first clustering sets of low-rise units. A sign said Dingle Avenue and he knew this led uphill to the ridge and, in a little way, his set of ­apartments.

The climb was steeper than he realised and he found himself puffing and looking stolidly at the ground in front of him as he pushed himself, foot by foot, up the steep grade, keeping mainly to the grassy sward rather than the road.

Which was why, as he came to a pause at the higher ring­around, he was so surprised when he almost bumped into the little group striding down from the shops. Beatrice was among them.

‘Excuse us, sir,' one of them jumped aside, onto the road, to avoid a collision. ‘Oh, it's him. It's your admirer, Trish!' And they all laughed and waved to Charlie as they bounced around him, leaving him stranded.

She had gone on with them, and he could distinguish her laughter from all the others. She did not look back.

Still breathing heavily, eventually he continued his trek uphill, the last leg of that climb. He was thinking nothing, nothing. He was concentrating on his climb, one foot after the other, counting the number of steps now, as if that might somehow ease the distance.

Those young people. As if they owned the footpath, the whole street and no doubt they would be sprawling out on the sand shortly, littering it with their presence and their papers and plastic castaways and their towels and beach umbrellas and whatever else made them territorial.

She had seen him. She had recognised him. She had ignored him.

That was the order of things, of course it was and it would remain that way. Until he could get the opportunity – ­privately, he now realised, without her cohorts urging her on to adopt that defensive, yes defensive, stance.

The question was so simple, merely to satisfy himself that the amazing coincidence between this girl and Beatrice would be explained by some genetic inheritance. She would be curious, and probably slightly excited at the accident, and might be able to tell him about her grandmother (he had ­convinced himself it must be that) and where she lived, what she had done in her life, where she had finally settled.

When he did reach the top of the incline, instead of taking the easy gradient on to his building, Charlie made a quick decision. He was glad he had worn his sun hat. It was sticky and oppressive now, approaching 11.30. He went downhill again. He made his long away to the approaches of Kings Beach. He guessed already that the little group would not head right for the main surfing area with the lifesavers' hut and the green parkland, nor up to the rocks and the artificial rock pool. They would have erected their shade among the further dunes, back toward the Passage a bit. More privacy.

He was right. He congratulated himself on his acuity, but remembered, of course, that back in the old days they themselves had sometimes chosen that section, though back then nobody would have dared to sunbake topless.

For a minute or two he stood, leaning his hand on a splintery fencepost dividing off the dunes from the encroaching flats. These had not been here before. But he caught sight of Beatrice running back from the surf with one of the young men. She beat him, and threw herself down on the sand near a blue and red umbrella and then with a towel she vigorously mopped her hair and under her arms. Charlie watched every move.

They were not twenty yards away, perhaps less. After a while the others went back into the water but Beatrice remained. After a few minutes, without bothering to look round to scrutinise the dunes she undid the top of her bikini. She lay with her face in the shade of the umbrella and the rest of her out in the open.

Charlie did not move. Initially he had determined that this was the moment to go up to her and ask his simple question. But once he saw that she had armed herself with that exposure he hesitated. He did not want to be thought a voyeur. He remained where he was. He mopped his face. He adjusted his spectacles. He was sweating.

How long he remained like that was not the question, time in a sense had been stilled. But he was suddenly and abruptly grabbed on the shoulder. With a wrench that nearly unbalanced him he was twisted round.

‘Bloody old pervert!' The young man had sprung over the little retaining fence and, wearing only swimming gear, his muscles were conspicuous and tensed. ‘You miserable old bastard, get right outa here or I'll get the cops. Or the Beach Inspector.' He shoved Charlie backwards without releasing his grip. ‘Or, better still, some of the blokes at the Lifesavers, they'll teach you a lesson!'

It was the young man of the white sports car. He was ­carrying in one hand two ice-cream buckets. His other hand still like a vice upon Charlie's shoulder, he shook him with each word.

‘I saw you. All the way back from the kiosk I was watching you perving on her.' He gave Charlie another shove so that he almost unbalanced. ‘I know it was Trish you were perving, you've been sniffing around her for ages now, don't think I haven't seen you.' He released his grip and the older man shuffled involuntarily to regain his footing, aware that this gave him a further disadvantage. ‘What do you think you're up to, an old man like you? You should be ashamed.'

He was looking at Charlie more closely, with more quizzical curiosity, rather than anger. The ice cream buckets were clearly melting and he made as if to move onto the dunes toward the umbrella.

‘You've got me wrong,' Charlie finally exclaimed, and his voice sounded strangely high and broken, as if he had a frog in his throat. He grunted, and then began again, this time pitching his words from the lower register.

‘Do you think at my age I want to ogle young women? I'm a grandfather myself, godsake, I was just waiting until she got herself dressed a bit more respectably …'

‘Bloody hypocrite, that's what you are! I saw you, I tell you. Not only here on the beach this morning. Or at the supermarket earlier on, don't think we didn't see you the other day, sneaking after us into the pictures, and the day before that, further along this very beach, when we were surfing and sunbaking, don't think we didn't all see you sitting in your car and perving, stood out like a beacon.'

‘I wasn't on the beach.'

‘Wearing those reflector sunglasses; couldn't get enough from the car, you walked right out onto the beach, with your shoes and socks, looking like a bloody South Right Whale, drooling over all the nice young flesh.'

‘That wasn't me.'

‘Everyone on the beach saw you, not that you took any notice, perving and drooling.'

‘One moment. Look, that girl reminds me of …'

‘Your granddaughter, oh yes, all of that, tell me another.' The young man cast a glance at the sodden containers, and began to stride onto the sand dune, but he called out, ‘Just clear out or I really will lose my temper and it will be more than soggy ice cream I shove into your face and rub it in.'

‘I once knew somebody …'

‘Off!'

‘Somebody she reminds me of …'

‘OK. That's it. Here, you come along with me and we'll soon sort this out.'

‘Very well, I will leave. But ask your friend if she is related to someone who was once called Beatrice Linton …'

‘Never heard of her, and Trish is my sister. Now move! Move, I tell you.'

But the young girl herself had come over, her bikini top now adjusted. Charlie had not noticed as she came up behind him.

‘Peter, what on earth is it? Oh, my ice cream! Peter, you've let it all melt! Oh!'

Then her voice changed. ‘Oh, it's you again.'

She looked Charlie up and down quite frankly, her face screwing up with distaste. How could he possibly ask her the question now?

‘This your grandpa, Trish? That's what he claims he is.' And the young man gave loud chortle as he passed over the bucket. ‘Sorry about the ice cream. Come on, another.' He put his arm around her waist. ‘Beatrice Linton, that's the name he said, you heard of a Beatrice Linton?'

‘Peter don't be silly. Isn't this … aren't you the old man we helped this morning, over at the supermarket?'

Charlie nodded but his opportunity was lost. ‘You look like someone …'

‘Off, I said. Leave the lady alone.' Peter now assumed genuine command and moved back to Charlie and gave him a shove on the chest. ‘And don't keep tailing us around like you have been. You're a marked man, know that? We've got you tabbed. Did I tell you, Trish, I saw him down at the picnic grounds on Bulcock Beach two or three weeks back, talking to your uncle Bernard? He's been hanging around like a bad smell.'

‘Really? Look, old man, I don't like being followed. Everywhere I go, everything I do. Especially if Uncle Bernie is around …'

‘This is ridiculous. I only wanted to catch you because you look so remarkably like …'