The Idea of Perfection (46 page)

 

 

When he came out to join her on the step, one of Douglas’s cheeks was flushed from the pillow, and the little tuft of hair made him look surprised.

There had been moments last night when Harley had felt that things could go wrong in all the old ways, or even in some completely new way. There had been a moment or two when it had been a close thing. But he had seemed to know how much damage the wrong word could do, and had not said much.

She sat a little tense now. The
night before
was one thing, but in her experience the
morning after
was often where it all came unstuck.

She did not want any speeches.

But Douglas Cheeseman was not the man for speeches. He sat with her, saying nothing, but it did not feel like a special, significant
saying nothing
. The possibility of things going wrong, and having to prevent that by working too hard at making them go right, did not seem to be troubling him.

Down on the grass, the dog worried away at the stick. When it split a long piece off the end, the little splintering sound seemed loud in the still morning. Then it set to, crunching up the end with its back teeth as if it was a bone.

It’s the wolf in them, Douglas said at last. It’s in the blood.

The dog let go of the stick and gave him a look. It was just an accident of the angle of its ears and the way its mouth was, but it looked a little reproachful.

Well, way back, I mean, Douglas said. Stone age, cave-man. Not you personally.

Harley found that she had forgotten to worry about how things were, or the way they could go wrong, and without planning any particular, correct sort of laugh, she had simply laughed. She felt him move closer to her on the step. He was jammed up against her hip: warm, solid, not going anywhere.

There was a silence that was nothing more complicated than two people together who did not need to say anything. Against the pale sky, the leaves of the gumtree swept softly backwards and forwards over each other, providing all the conversation that the moment called for.

 

 

The thing about the dog was, whatever she did, whether she left it behind or took it with her, it would be a
declaration.
She had always thought that it was possible to avoid them, but that was silly. Life itself was a
declaration.
You might as well get used to the idea.

What would most likely happen was that she would open the car door, and the dog would jump into the back seat and rest its chin on the back of her seat, the way they had both got used to, for the drive back to Sydney. Douglas would be there, waving them off, and then he would go out to the bridge and start the business with the modules. She had only partly understood it, but she knew it was a kind of gift.
See you,
she would say, and wave.
See you later.

Later, when he came to see her in Sydney, he would take it for granted that the dog would be there, under the kitchen table or lying in front of the fireplace.
Hi, feller
, he would say, and tickle it behind the ears the way he did.

By then, she might have stopped thinking of it as
it.
She might even have given it a name.

That far she could visualise: sitting at her table with him across from her, his hands rearranging the things between them, the dog on the floor.

Beyond that she could not imagine.

The dawn air was cool and sweet. Up in the sky a flock of birds heeled sideways. The sun had not reached the earth yet but up there the wings were catching the first high rays. They went on turning and wheeling, catching and sending the light through the air, the sky with the dipping and turning birds in it a great bowl of light above the waiting earth.

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