Treading Air (9 page)

She leans over to pick up the toy, aware of the man watching her. Even from this distance, she can sense his approval at her display of kindness to the boy. She holds the car out awkwardly, almost drops it again. Feels the heat in her cheeks and laughs at her clumsiness. The boy stares at her sternly – it's no laughing matter – and inspects the toy for scratches. His mother tugs on his hand.

Lizzie looks back at the man, and he smiles at her. Heat in her groin. She panics, gathers her hat, doesn't glance at the man as she pays. She's sure he's watching her leave, and she feels bad for looking at him, bad that she's not able to stay and look some more.

When she steps outside the sun floods her vision, and she pauses. A voice behind her says, ‘Afternoon.'

Her eyes adjust, and the man's there. ‘Afternoon,' she says. ‘Bright, isn't it?' She shades her eyes – a useless gesture with her hat on – and her hand is shaking. She pulls it away from her face.

‘You off somewhere special?' he asks. He has a line of freckles across his nose.

‘No. Home.' A pause. She doesn't want the conversation to end. ‘You?'

‘I play a game. Just a few friends at a house on Heurand Street.'

‘What game?'

‘Fan-tan. Among friends.'

That Chinese betting game her dad sometimes plays in the Valley.

‘Want to join us?' the man asks.

She does, but the thought of Joe coming back and finding the house empty frightens her. It must be past four. She shakes her head. ‘Sorry.'

‘Another time, then. It's number fifty-one. We'll be there most afternoons. If you come round, say that Chris Stephens asked you.'

She nods and walks off quickly, feeling the shape of her body moving through the thick air. She sweats without being hot. Her feet slip in her shoes, and she turns them outwards to avoid blisters. She doesn't look back. She wonders what it is about her that's attracted this shady business, whether her father's mark is on her, broadcasting that this woman will gamble and doesn't mind which side of the law she's on. She gets an itch to be back at the trots with her dad, placing bets, and misses the press of the race crowd, the anticipation of the horses about to start, the way they fling their bodies around the circuit. There, she had a sense of being part of something.

Walking home through the baked streets bordered with palings crooked like loose teeth and yards burnt to dust, she longs for a presence, human or animal, doesn't matter. But they're all sheltering from the sun, and fences and walls separate her.

In the trapped heat of her rented house, she wonders what she's doing. She spends the afternoon listening out for Joe, going to the front door every time she hears something. A woman pushing a pram along the street, then a man leading his dog on a rope. When Joe finally arrives and kisses her, she's stiff and unresponsive. Then she pictures Chris Stephens and kisses Joe back, remembering the man's gaze on her body. She imagines Joe's hands are his. She has to work hard to keep the fantasy up.

When she pulls away, Joe wanders off to change his clothes. She's surprised that he doesn't notice anything different about her. He hangs his stiff work shirt under the house. The first night he hung it in the bedroom and its smell crept in. She dreamt of dead things trapped in the ceiling, of the rabbit-oh's skinned hares. She told Joe to keep his dirty clothes under the house, and he grumbled but did it anyway. Now underneath has been given over to him, to his blood-stained, dirty shirts and boots.

Lizzie spends the next day thinking about the fan-tan game. By afternoon, she's making her way to Heurand Street. Number fifty-one squats on its haunches between the back of the Causeway Hotel and Ross Creek. She hears the men's voices from the pub. The front door and window are shaded by a tin awning that seems too small in the afternoon glare. She knocks on the blank wooden door and wonders if she's got the right place or if she's going to wake up some bristling housewife.

A woman opens the door, and Lizzie steps back into the sunlight at the sight of her exotic silk dress that falls just below the knee and crosses over her breast to knot at the waist. A white crisscross pattern threads the neckline and sleeves. Lizzie longs for the woman's shoes, black and sharply pointed at the toe, with cut-out triangles fanning across the upper. The woman asks, ‘Help you?'

Lizzie glances into the house, where a wide room opens out. She glimpses a man leaning back with a cigarette in his hand, another man bent towards him. Surely she's come to the right place: the men out there, and the woman in front of her, like nothing she's seen in Townsville yet. ‘I met a man – Chris – said you have a game here now and then. He invited me.'

‘Chris who?' The woman is staring beyond her to the street, probably checking to see if she's with anyone.

It takes a moment for the man's name to slip into Lizzie's head. ‘Stephens,' she says. ‘Chris Stephens.'

The woman looks her full in the eye for the first time, brings a hand up to her turban and slides her fingers over the knot of material that twists down her shoulder. She doesn't smile. ‘Come in,' she says. Kohl is thickly smeared on her eyelids and underneath too, the whites of her eyes stark and compelling.

She steps back, and Lizzie moves through the door into the high-ceilinged room. The rest of the table becomes visible, three men and a woman sitting around it, talking and smoking. Drinking spirits from glass tumblers, whisky by the look of it. In the middle of the table, someone has drawn a chalk grid divided into four and numbered. The curtains are closed, and the room lit with a gas lamp that casts a dim, warm glow, odd to Lizzie after the washed-out afternoon. A sharp second of disappointment that Chris isn't there.

One man blows smoke through his nose, looks her up and down. The bloke with a glass of whisky in his hand is the best-dressed Chinese man she's ever seen. His hair is startlingly white, while his face is hairless and young-looking, and his waistcoat hugs his narrow chest and flat stomach. A pocket watch hangs from a chain at his middle.

The woman says, ‘I'm Bea, and these are some of the blessed strays and waifs that gather at my door.'

The four of them grin at that, but only the men look at Lizzie. The other woman, younger than Bea, with a bob that crowns her head in a blonde wave and fluffs out at the ears, ignores her. She wears a cotton dress with a square neck outlined by a crooked row of bugle beads, a bracelet on each arm pushed above the elbow. She keeps her eye on the dark bloke, an Italian maybe, and he looks away from Lizzie, who sees from side-on that he waggles his eyebrows at the woman. Lizzie doesn't like the look of him, and she feels the churn and froth like she used to at the races. ‘I'm Betty,' she says.

Bea offers her a seat, and Lizzie chooses one of the padded chairs. The dark bloke puts his hand out and introduces himself as Mr Scarcella. The Chinese man introduces himself as Mr Zhang, then fills a glass two fingers high with whisky and slides it over to her. The other white man doesn't have a tie or coat. His suspenders rise from the table and cover a collarless shirt ripped at the elbow and where the sleeve joins the trunk. The shirt is unbuttoned, another one underneath. He says his first name is John, then his surname, but Lizzie forgets it, startled by his green eyes, the way he looks at her straight from underneath his brows.

‘This is my niece, Dolly,' Bea says about the blonde girl, who looks at Lizzie at last and gives her a smile as though it hurts. Lizzie pegs her for a jealous type who doesn't like the competition. Lizzie doesn't much either.

‘You played before?' Dolly asks. She lifts a cigarette to her mouth.

Lizzie shakes her head.

‘Easy. Chow game. Even a monkey could do it.'

Zhang shoots her a look. Lizzie moves away from him, to the end of the table where Bea has her right hand in a calico bag. She runs her fingers through what sound like chips – reminds Lizzie of the rush of rain at night. Bea pulls a chip from the bag and shows it to Lizzie. It's not a chip but a ring of metal with a square hole in the centre and marks engraved at the edges.

‘These coins are worth something where he's from.' Bea points to Zhang. She tips the coin back in the bag, dives her hands inside and pulls out a handful, which she spreads across the table and covers with a metal bowl. ‘I'm banker,' she says. ‘Idea is, I'll count these out in lots of four.' She picks up a hooked wooden rod from the table. ‘Usually get Georgie to use the chopsticks.' Zhang takes the rod from her and holds it deftly between thumb and forefinger. ‘Put your chip on the square you think will be the number of coins remaining.' She points to a chalked grid in the middle of the table, with the numbers one to four. ‘Buy in at a shilling. More if you're game. True odds, three to one, and a five per cent commission.'

Lizzie slides across two shillings, pocket money left over from the races.

‘Good girl,' Scarcella says. That dago, Lizzie thinks, doesn't seem hard to impress.

Bea gives her an ivory tile with a foreign symbol etched out in red paint. Some colour has spilled over the lines, sloppy. Has she just given away two shillings to a bunch of crooks? But Scarcella and John put their tiles on the two and three squares readily enough. She takes a sip of whisky and is warmed, floating.

‘This stuff's alright,' she says to Bea.

‘I'll charge you for the next one.'

Lizzie laughs, embarrassed she'd just assumed the drink was free. It's clear Bea runs a serious operation – more than the casual game between friends Chris Stephens made it out to be. She wonders if she should leave.

‘You gonna bet or not?' Dolly snaps.

Lizzie places her tile on the one square, and Dolly on the four. Zhang deftly slides the coins across the table with the rod, lining them up in groups of four.

Bea turns to Lizzie. ‘You been here long?'

‘Less than a month.'

‘Golly, you're quick, finding us.'

Lizzie smiles, flattered. ‘Just met Chris at the Garden of Roses. He told me.'

‘He's a good man, sharing my place with those who appreciate it.'

‘He likely to come round?' Lizzie's not exactly sure why she asked. Hopes she isn't too obvious. She'll need to tell them about Joe – the wedding ring is right there on her hand, not that it seemed to bother Chris any.

‘Chris? Usually can't keep him away. He'll turn up. If not this afternoon, tomorrow.'

‘This place all yours?' Lizzie peers through the curved archway where another room opens out. A long lounge faces two armchairs, a small table set up in the middle. The curtains are drawn on a large window. A hallway runs parallel to the room, a door open along it.

‘Yeah,' Bea says. ‘I own a couple places along this road.' Lizzie wonders where she gets the money from, whether the five per cent commission off these games covers her for that. It doesn't seem as if it could, but then Lizzie's judging by her father's standards. He was never able to hold on to his coin.

Zhang finishes the count. ‘One left,' he announces. Dolly sighs, and Lizzie feels a fizz of elation at the small win. She settles in for another round.

When she leaves Bea's house, the afternoon light blinds her. Bea follows her out and says, friendly enough, ‘Coppers here are lazy buggers. If you go to them, talk about this place, they're more like to arrest you for gambling than chase anyone up about it.'

‘Wasn't thinkin' of it,' Lizzie says, and Bea nods at her.

Lizzie meets Joe at the gate and feels pleased that the time until his arrival has gone so quickly. She's stopped herself from counting the hours.

While he's under the house getting changed, she calls to him through the slats. ‘Let's have dinner at the pub tonight.'

‘You not cooked anything?' His voice is muffled with the shirt going over his head. He never bothers undoing the buttons.

‘Don't worry, I'll pay.' She comes in under his shirt, and she's hit with the thrill of seeing his bare chest and the hair coiling across it. She holds out her hand with the winnings.

‘Where'd you get that?' he asks.

‘Found a little fan-tan parlour up the road.'

‘That oriental game?'

‘Yeah. You should come sometime.'

‘Be careful, Lizzie. Don't lose all my money to a bunch of chows.'

‘'Scuse me –' she rattles the coins in her closed fist ‘– but who's the one with the sugar?'

He takes the money and ignores her. ‘If you're paying, let's go. I'm starving. Just don't make a bloody habit of it.'

She holds his hand. They head back up Roberts Street towards Charters Towers Road. The Causeway Hotel juts out against the gravel roadway. She finds a seat in the ladies' lounge and watches the bikes moving outside, framed by the darkened doorway. Joe gets them drinks. A man on his bike, one leg held out stiffly, slows down to peer through the open doors. He disappears from sight, and a minute later sticks his head round the doorframe, silhouetted in the bright outside light.

Inside, the floor heats up, sweating out the booze spilt the night before, the floorboards opened like pores. Joe returns with two beers and sits with her on a stiff-backed rattan chair. She arranges her legs around the table so she can touch his feet, lets her husband wait on her as though she's a proper lady, a woman with a future. A woman who wins. Voices fall in on her, the vibrations of a man's baritone and, once, a woman's high-pitched laugh. Joe leans in to speak to her. She's light-headed with gazing at his face, his dark eyebrows sweeping across the brow. She wants to touch them.

Behind Joe, a man ungums himself from the bar and walks unsteadily out back. The bloke with the bike orders two pints, balances one in each hand, the foam trembling. He has a funny way of walking; something's wrong with his leg – wounded in the war, probably. Is it even real? She's heard stories of whole limbs blown off, wooden prosthetics strapped on in their place.