Treading Air (18 page)

McWilliams still has some gentleness in him. Since she's known him, Joe's held himself like a boxer in public, and usually in private too. Since the beating, he's always coiled up. She's come to recognise his stance, out on the cottage verandah. His shoulders raised, arms tucked close to his body.

Now he wakes and looks at her, empty-eyed with sleep. ‘Hello,' she says, and he doesn't answer. She's offended even though she knows he mustn't be awake, but somehow this makes it worse. His sleeping mind has rejected her. She doesn't feature in his dreams. He breathes a word and collapses into the chair. She's been abandoned with the smell of beer dregs, hot sour ferment, a fly drowning in the bottom, crockery spotted with crusty food, pots hanging on the hooks and turning gently in the breeze.

While she's washing the dishes, Joe wakes properly and comes over to squeeze her bottom. She feels better about everything. He can do this to her still, fix her up by loving her.

Lizzie hasn't been in the fan-tan parlour since she walked in to find Dolly and Colin occupying the territory. Today she has a craving for the game and some spare sugar in her pocket. She enters the darkened room carefully, watching out for Dolly and Colin. She's bitter at her naivety in thinking Bea would be on her side.

Neither of them are there. She sees Chris at the end of the table, away from a group of Chinese blokes crowded around the tiles. That one named Lee from the grocery store, with his distinctive haircut, is there.

She pulls up next to Chris and gives him a grin.

‘You free tonight, love?' he asks.

‘For you, yes.'

‘And for that beautiful answer, you get a drink.' He goes up to Murray and orders two G & Ts. She doesn't think much of the sharp quinine aftertaste of the tonic, but Chris tells her it keeps away dengue, an intoxicating medication. Gritting her teeth, she waits for the kick of alcohol.

She buys in at the fan-tan table and picks herself a tile. Lee rests his hand next to the pile. He watches her when she's about to make her choice and says, ‘You should take this one. It means “luck”.'

Lizzie slides her finger along the groove of the Chinese lettering. The tile heats up quickly in the palm of her hand, and she does feel lucky. ‘Thanks,' she says, smiling at him.

He smiles back. She's surprised by the whiteness of his teeth, their straightness. Not many men have a complete set, unbroken or uncapped with gold. Some of Joe's have been knocked away in fights or falls.

She asks Lee if he runs the Rising Sun grocery near the market gardens, and he nods. She recalls him standing at the counter, sweeping off spilled flour with a dustpan and brush, the cash register hulked in front of him, keys bristling. Now he watches her, the smile still on his face, and his hand, square-palmed and clean, stretched out along the top of the table. She holds his gaze and something moves in her. Then she wonders what this bloody trade is doing to her, making her able to stomach one of his kind. She turns from him, shifts back down the table to Chris, who's stuffing stale-smelling tobacco in his pipe, chin to chest.

Still, over the next couple of weeks, she finds herself making excuses to go out to Lee's store. In the daylight she has to keep her hat pulled low. She tells Joe that it's the best part of town for her, where she's least likely to be recognised. And anyway, she likes the Rising Sun tea leaves better. He screws up his face, saying, ‘Don't taste no different to me.' Another time: ‘Long way to walk for a drink that's had dirty chow hands all over it.' These comments close off her body, make him seem smaller.

On her own in their back garden, the frangipani dropping heavy flowers at her feet, she can't make sense of her feelings, her attraction to McWilliams with his tiny foot, her response to Lee. Joe's disgust present in her own body, fighting with her fascination at these men's faces, their bodies, so alien to her. She picks up a frangipani with thick browning petals. They feel like flesh beneath her fingers. She throws it away from her. Not a chow or a gimp, she tells herself. Don't sink yourself that low.

Tuesdays are her nights off, and Joe invites McWilliams over for dinner and a drink. She gives them a feed of tongue. She remembers her dad picking up a whole tongue from the butcher's shop. He drew it out of its brown paper. The pimpled meat was much longer than she'd expected, with a mass at the end. And grey, not pink like her own tongue. Her dad slid the tongue across her cheek, mooing. She tugged herself away, and he pursued her with it, hounding her. Now she pounds the meat with a mallet and recalls a man who sucked on her tongue so viciously that she was worried he'd wrench it out. Trying to pull back was no good – only made it hurt more. When he let her go, pain washed through her, and anger. Little things like that can put her right off her game.

Others arouse her unexpectedly. A man's hand on the back of her head the first time he kissed her; another's mouth on the top of her thigh where she felt no one had touched her before. These things can send her wild, and she knows she'll enjoy the fucking, though she isn't sure if she's supposed to. But whenever she's put off, she has to work hard to get into the swing again, sometimes gives up and just lies there. With Joe, she wishes he'd wait a second before he goes for her breasts. She's tried to tell him, but he doesn't respond much to instructions and forgets them quickly.

McWilliams arrives first. He calls down through the hallway, saying Joe's on his way, just doing an extra chore for Bea. Lizzie pictures her giving Joe instructions in her quivering feather headdress and ropes of beads, and wonders what Joe makes of her outfits, if he thinks anything about them at all. Lizzie herself has become more flamboyant in the clothes she buys. She chooses silks and cottons for the heat, but picks out dresses that scoop low over her back, with wide ribbon bows at the neck or long sleeves embroidered with glass beads. In the mirror she hardly recognises herself.

When she pours McWilliams a drink, she's aware of him studying her. Her hands shake. She can't look at him. She leads him to the living room, asks him to take a seat, returns to the kitchen and pounds the tongue viciously. He leaves her to it.

Joe arrives, smelling of Bea's perfume. He looks sour. ‘Stupid biddy sprayed this shit all over me.'

McWilliams walks into the kitchen and leans in the doorway, grinning, his arms crossed.

‘I like it,' Lizzie says to Joe.

He scowls at her. ‘I'm not a girl.'

‘Wasn't suggesting it.'

He stands at the sink and lathers his wrists and neck, wiping up and down all along his arms like a man ridding himself of mud. Lizzie smiles to herself and catches McWilliams' eye. He grins back, and she looks at the slab of tongue pounded flat on the chopping board. She fumbles with the frying pan, knows he's watching her. She makes a show of stoking up the fire and pulls a slab of butter from the icebox, slides her knife through it. Chucks it into the pan where it dissolves, bottom-first, in yellow bubbles. She throws in some onion, drawing out tears. Lets herself cry because she doesn't know if she can stop what's happening between them.

Joe slips his arm around her waist. ‘Smells beautiful.'

‘Just onion,' she says, but it does, smells better than most other things she makes. She has no interest in trying to cook well for him anymore. She tucks herself into him and throws the tongue on, shivering her wooden spoon uselessly in the pan.

He lets her go and pours himself another beer. She worries about the heat of the pan searing the tongue. A few times, she's found potatoes in the oven she forgot about, blackened and shrivelled, and boiled-down soups crusted on the bottom of the pan – she doesn't want to get this wrong. The meat's all cut up from her slicing it to see if it's ready. Inside it's still too pink, but she's bored waiting and serves it anyway, with mash and watery peas, worried it's taking too long. Joe and McWilliams don't notice – is she being too fussy?

After dinner, they settle down to cards. Lizzie has too much beer and hiccups through a round. Joe and McWilliams take turns to scare her out of it, leaping from behind furniture and doorways, which just makes her hiccup louder because she opens her mouth to squeal and can't bite down on the sound. The men roll around with laughter, while she hiccups hopelessly on.

‘Stand on your head and drink a glass of water,' McWilliams says.

‘I'm not in the circus.'

‘I'll help you,' Joe says. He flings down a cushion.

She puts her head on it, tries to kick up her legs, tumbles with her skirts all askew. ‘It's indecent,' she says and feels herself blushing, even after everything she's done. Hopes neither of them notice.

‘A new act for the menfolk,' Joe says, and he grasps her ankles and lifts her legs.

Heavy-headed, Lizzie says, ‘I'm upside-down, now what?'

McWilliams rushes to fill a glass of water, while Joe tries to rearrange her skirts so they don't cover her mouth. She finds herself both ridiculous and aroused to be wrong way round in front of these men, her stockings and shift exposed to them. McWilliams' face comes into view. She tries to reach for the glass, almost falls over when she moves a hand, so he holds it up to her lips. She swallows a bit, chokes, hiccups, coughs, worries that she'll drown. She kicks Joe off her, up-ends, sits with her legs out in front. ‘Went up me nose.' She coughs, and Joe pats her on the back. She's laughing but feels as though she's been through the wringer. What a fool she is. She hopes McWilliams gets the message and leaves her alone. She thought she was done with being embarrassed, that the whoring had cured her of self-consciousness.

Joe puts his hand up and shushes them. ‘Are the hiccups gone?'

They sit in silence till Lizzie breaks it with a loud hiccup. They collapse, heads in hands. She appreciates Joe when he's like this – drunk and laughing, fun. McWilliams hands her the rest of the water, and she takes it without looking at him because she's not sure what happens to her when she does. She takes dainty sips.

Joe announces he's off to have a piss. Lizzie finishes the glass, and McWilliams says, ‘I think they're gone.' Lizzie nods, not wanting to let another hiccup out. She's supposed to be playing the unattainable whore. He puts his hand out towards her, and she longs to slide her fingers over the curve of his knuckles. Joe makes a sound at the doorway when he comes in, and they pull away from each other.

Lizzie gathers up the cards, shuffles them. Fumbles, and the cards spin out from her fingers. She laughs, gathers up the pack and hands it to Joe. When the cards get foggy in front of her eyes, she moves to an armchair. The men follow her. Joe tells her not to open another bottle, but ten minutes later he cracks a longneck. He waters hers down with lemonade. ‘Sip this and you'll be fresh all evening,' he says, as though passing on great wisdom.

‘Sounds horrible,' says McWilliams.

‘Drunkard.' Joe hands him a glass, and he takes a slug.

Joe downs his in two mouthfuls and rests his head on Lizzie's thighs. She strokes his hair. McWilliams lies with his head against the back of the chair. She shifts Joe's head so she can get up and go to the outhouse, the beer making its presence known, and takes a hurricane lamp with her, blinded except to the circle of light thrown at her feet. She feels McWilliams before she sees him, holds the light up so the glow touches his face. She asks him what's wrong. ‘I can't stand it,' he says, ‘feeling like this and not doing anything about it.'

She looks away from his face, where his longing's lit up for her.

After a while, he says, ‘Don't be cold.'

She doesn't want to hear it. She puts the lamp on the ground and crashes her body into him in the dark outside the glow. His tongue in her mouth. She catches herself and moves away from him. ‘You'd better go,' she says.

‘Let me see you? On your own.'

‘Not here. Not in my house with Joe.'

‘I just want to talk to you every now and then. Out the back of fifty-three.'

So he knows, and he's alright with it. Something lifts from her. But she doesn't say anything, can't make herself say no. He walks off. She hears him moving past the side of the house, through the dried leaves, a lopsided footstep. She goes back upstairs and lies down next to Joe on the couch, spread-eagled in sleep, and cries. She's shaking, drunk too much. Doesn't know how to get out of this one, doesn't even know which direction it came at her from.

A few days later, she and Thelma sit in the front room waiting for men to arrive. Thelma fiddles with a piece of ribbon and some glass pearls Joe found on a broken string outside the house. She says, ‘That Dolly, geez, she makes a racket. Time's you're not in, Betty. My god, what a performance. The men don't want theatrics.' This, although Thelma is the most dramatic person Lizzie knows.

‘Tell her to shut her trap.'

‘Did. Can't help it, she says. The sound just wells up.'

Lizzie rolls her eyes. ‘She still hanging around that Colin fella?'

‘Oh yeah, he's in here a couple days a week.' Thelma threads the pearls onto the ribbon, wraps it around her wrist, then starts wrapping the ribbon around her foot. ‘Bea took me aside the other day,' she says, ‘and told me to be nice to Dolly. Said that she was abandoned up here, right there at the harbour, man just up and left her. She waited for him for hours, sitting on her suitcase. He had both their wallets. She only had change from a drink she'd bought on the boat, tossed the coins in her pocket. Bea took her in.'

Lizzie softens to Dolly a bit when she hears this – never really thought about Dolly's past. But the way Bea let Colin stay 'cause of Dolly still makes her itch. She thinks too of Dolly's kohled eyes turned on Joe, the come-hither stare. ‘Yeah, well, that's just because Dolly's her niece,' she says. ‘Something worse than that happened to you, and Bea hasn't asked me to give you special treatment.'