The Long Prospect (26 page)

They stood in a circle, and their faces gradually set like stone. The picture held, held fast, would not be jogged. Belief could not be counterfeited even in imagination.

For there, inside, a few minutes ago, she had held a glass of milk and looked at them.
That
had not been the direction of their pretence. Silently, insistently, they had said, ‘You've lost. Make up your mind to that. We've had our way, so let's be friends and forget all that...You belong to us.' No joke.

Will you come into my parlour
Said the spider to the fly,
It's the neatest little parlour
That ever you did spy.
There's a something in the...

She trod deliberately on an ant and looked up, looked suddenly round as if to identify the nature of her own murderer. And it was everything and everywhere. Polished pale-blue sky, white streaky clouds, grey smoke—relentless. Painted wooden houses overlaid with grime; gutters, telegraph poles, insensate wood and brick—relentless: all part of what was opposed to her, what was cold, implacable. And the pale-skinned people in the house behind her, to whom she was, she felt, no more than a troublesome force to be held in check by will—what they had done to him...

Some tears slid down her cheeks and fell on the mottled paintwork of the gate. She paddled a finger in them; spread them out neatly till they soaked into the wood, brought her shoulder round to wipe her face against the short sleeve of her dress. Leaning forward she pillowed her forehead on her arms. The sun burned her back.

The black and yellow taxi drove away. ‘Don't go,' she said.

Somewhere over to the left, the garage doors ground open and the car came out. Rosen and her father. With a zoom they went down the hill, throbbed out of sight.

Other noises came then to offend ears drugged by the perpetual humming of machinery—a thin hooting of horns, the rooster-like throat clearing of a solitary bicycle bell as a boy sped past. At Emily's side the uncut hedge scraped its twigs and leaves monotonously under the tutelage of a small monotonous wind.

Across the street a pale-green van pulled up under a veil of swirling dust. A man jumped out, jerked open the doors at the back, lifted out a tray of cakes and ran with it into Sim's shop.

In the house Dotty switched on the wireless. For a moment, unadjusted, it sent the inhuman clashings of a brass band out into the hollow Saturday morning. Someone could be felt to fly to modify it. Lilian's reproof was followed through the window by a song so old that one could only conclude it had been requested as a treat for some elderly relative. ‘Look for the Silver Lining.'

Sweeping the steps, Dotty jerked her head at the window as she called to Emily, ‘This is for you, love.' And inside, hearing, Lilian and Paula exchanged shocked smiles. There was no answer from the garden. Lilian snorted a little, Paula sighed and they resumed.

Free of the men, they had dropped relievedly into the velvet cushions hollowed out by them on the sofa, and gone again over dates, finances, clothes, aims, and resolutions in regard to the now much-favoured reconciliation with Harry—he returned to Coolong that afternoon to press for the transfer he was confident of obtaining.

On another level, Lilian, at least, held herself ready to be at any moment besieged by
his
return. (None of them—even in thought—allowed that Max possessed a name.)

His quietness, apart from having left her with a quantity of unspent bluster, had not so much convinced her of the truth of her accusations, as concerned her about his intentions. Someone—she had forgotten which of them—had said, ‘Sue.' Whether he could, whether he would, whether he thought of such a thing she did not know; she simply felt—she could not have said on what grounds—that it would be just like him.

She bit her teeth together, clasped and unclasped the band of her diamond wrist-watch, and accidentally said aloud, ‘Too damned clever!' making Paula, who had been stolidly setting out the advantages of being again supported by her husband, flush, and say, ‘Me?'

Later, after a meal which gave the curious impression of having been achieved in the face of difficulties, Paula changed her dress, climbed into the car, which smelled still of the concoction poured on Harry's head by the barber, and went to the station with him. Rosen, as usual, drove.

But the horses were running at Randwick this afternoon and Lilian stayed at home. Emily could not be found even to say goodbye to her father, though five minutes after they set out, she was at the gate, leaning over it, occasionally pulling from the hedge a green-black leaf which left dust in the whorls of her forefinger and thumb.

When the black and yellow taxi drove away with Max, she said, ‘Don't go. I don't know what to do.'

Though she trembled, she watched it go feeling little more than weak surprise at the extraordinary power that was able to overcome the very essence of her will. She
loved,
but he had been taken. All her willing, all her concentration, all her promises to unseen gods—unheeded, unheard. She was a very little animal.

And even he had been defeated, could be defeated, in spite of all...

With widened eyes she looked at her dusty fingers, along the quiet street, at the corner round which he had gone away—and the scene was ordinary, familiar. Yet somewhere in the midst of it her intangible opponent had suddenly unveiled himself to her, disported in her tears and weakness. And he was very big.

Thea left the bus and walked along the road on the crest of the hill. It was deserted and, when the bus had disappeared, very quiet. At this point the road ran in the cleft between two crumbling, yellow cliffs, one of which supported a wooden railing, a footpath, and a row of old but rather more elaborate than average bungalows. The other was thin and sloped quickly down to a bank of trees: these trees as yet hid the valley, the river, the factory, the monastery.

At the edge of the road the tar had come sluggishly to life, trickled warmly over sharp stones, held itself in plastic readiness to accept the imprints of a tyre or sole or paw.

And up from the river the summer wind blew, humming its almost peaceful song of distant industry and clamour, smelling ever so faintly of water and weeds and trees, making itself known to Thea's senses, bringing with it such a pang of nostalgia that she had to smile even as it made her heart quake.

For Forrester had asked, when she declared herself finished with the conference after one and a half days, ‘What the blue blazes will you find to do with yourself in this dump for a whole afternoon?'

‘I'm not sure,' she said, ‘but at least I do know what I'll be missing.'

He pressed, ‘Oh, come on, stick it out! We'll probably break it up by three o'clock and then we'll all do something together. God knows what! Swim. Have a drink. See the sights.'

Blake said dryly, ‘Sounds irresistible. But Thea used to work here for A.C.I.L.' He nodded to Forrester. ‘There's your answer. She's off on a sentimental journey to see the old galley, and maybe discover some state secrets from our rivals. Which reminds me. Wasn't it a bit queer that they didn't send their head boy along?'

‘No obligation,' Forrester said. ‘He sent the stuff, all right. Hear he's leaving any day now. You used to know him, Thea, didn't you? Wasn't a social type, they say.' At her expression, he said humourlessly, ‘Oh, sorry, sorry. Mustn't stop the sentimental journey.'

And both men half rose, Forrester dabbing his pale Air-Force moustache, as she left the table and went to her room.

Fifteen minutes later she left the hotel and caught a bus to Greenhills.

Now she emerged from the tunnel of cliffs, walking slowly, her hair, her dress, beating back under the waves of wind: she emerged on a magnificent panorama of sky. Leaving the road on the right, she crossed a few feet of rough ground and reached the fence below which everything lay, serene, familiar, looking exactly as it had when she went away.

Her fingers pressed the top of a grey weathered post which had once been a sapling. Now, grey-blue wire passed through two small holes inexpertly bored by someone long ago. Leaning slightly against it, Thea felt the warmth of the wood. She was so stirred by what she saw, by what she had been told, by her isolation on this particular hill on this hot Saturday afternoon—most of all by memories—that she could have embraced the post, would have been relieved to weep against it, sleep beside it, waken healed and unmoved.

A sentimental journey.

At half past ten in the morning, coffee had been brought into the conference room. Delegates and observers had circulated, formed and re-formed in small groups, talking shop, gossiping, holding cups and saucers high as they edged in and out, and fought their way to some familiar face on the other side of the room.

It was then, quite accidentally, that Thea had heard his name, learned, from a slightly dazzled young man, that Max was in Ballowra, still with A.C.I.L. at the old factory.

She was jarred and sick as if she had fallen in a faint.

When she was able she had been obliged to say, ‘Do you suppose we could reach those chairs by the window?' and her informant had eagerly rushed to clear a way, racking his brains to think of something else to tell her—approximate date of arrival in Ballowra, approximate date of departure for Melbourne...

He noted with disappointment that his companion was less interested than he had at first thought. He was himself with A.C.I.L., he told her, but new, and he didn't know where his chief lived, except that he boarded somewhere in Greenhills. However there was someone over there, that chap in the dark suit, who would be sure to know; he would find out for her like a shot.

She seemed mildly puzzled, or amused, by his insistence, and blushing, he subsided in his chair. A moment later he took her empty cup with unnecessary force and clanked it on the table behind him. Just the same, he stayed, and very soon he was talking about himself with rare fluency. How glad he was that he had taken science. And it had been the purest fluke!

It was very likely, Thea thought, that this nice young man would not remember where their conversation had begun. It was almost certain that he would not mention it—or her—to Max. Her involuntary revelation of their past connexion would never reach him, never disturb him.

Yet that seemed hardly to be borne.

She looked down the wind-ruffled slope, became aware again of its shine, the absence of all human life, the susurration of the grass and trees.

After years during which he might have been—for all she knew—thousands of miles distant, he was now perhaps in one of those square buildings at the bottom of the hill. Or in a bungalow some hundred yards behind her. By the river. Anywhere.

With a shifting of panic, of self-preservation, she felt an instinct to hide: her visibility was made suddenly to seem full of danger, her vulnerability brought home to her.

The extremity of her unwisdom in returning to Ballowra had struck her like a physical blow the moment she left the train on Thursday night. Until then she had allowed herself to believe that some slight official pressure, and, less convincingly, Lilian's letter, had made it necessary for her to come.

Yet that was hardly true. She had never tried to deceive herself as to her reasons for coming back: where she had been mistaken, as she now recognized, was in pre-judging the effect on her equanimity and discounting it. But an hour in the climate of the past had confirmed the impact of that first astonished blow. And
then
she had not known about Max.

Even in recollection the pressure of that temptation to say, ‘Yes. Ask the man in the dark suit,' exhausted her, made her mouth dry; exhausted her as in the morning resistance had done, so that she had heard nothing of the young man's story, so that she now turned her back on the quiet slope and its eye-level views of sky, and without volition began to walk away from it.

She could at least visit Lilian in indifference, find there distraction and talk, block up insidious supposition, if only for a time.

Wrapped about by silence and warm winds she walked downhill to Lilian's house, feeling a small comforting response to her entreaty for calm as she drew nearer.

The commentator announced that it had been a photo-finish. The decision would be broadcast in a matter of seconds, and Lilian sat—the racing-guide in one hand, a lead pencil in the other—staring at the small cream wireless set, waiting in suspended agitation for the result.

When Emily came in she was listening tensely to an advertisement for hair-oil, so far removed from the events of the morning that she felt no surprise at Emily's sudden appearance in the room, at the girl's expression, or her evident intention of speaking—merely irritation, and faint panic lest the result of the race should go against her. She held up an arm.

The advertisement ended. The result was announced. At the same time, so that Lilian seemed to hear neither and both, Emily said, ‘Thea's here. Thea's at the door.'

Catching the accusation, missing the words, Lilian jerked her head up, looked and saw, with a stranger's eye, the tall girl, malevolent, red-eyed, with at this moment, superimposed on her unhappiness, a look of doubting her own sanity. Lilian took in the eyes, the crumpled dress.

She turned to look at the wireless again and, as if in answer to her appeal, the result of the race was repeated. At that moment Emily spoke again, and the import of her first message was flashed to Lilian. She was on her feet.

Rapidly she stuffed the paper out of sight, switched off the voice and tried to tidy herself. Smiling and whispering with what seemed to Emily an odious mixture of ingratiating humility and excitement, she ran her fingers through her hair and looked in the mirror. ‘Thea's here, at the door? Quick, go and tell her to come in. No. I'll go.'

Before leaving the room she gave it a glance of inspection which turned, when it reached Emily, to an excited appeal for support, but Emily's face went blank and icy, and she moved away to lean against the wall, her hands behind her back.