Hagan brushed past Mr Belper, that heap of troubled mackintosh, on his way downstairs. He did not stop to
speak to Belper, had seen that hat on its way down, and a face. Hagan hurried after a face. He would perhaps have called out, only in this case you couldn’t, a bit of class. So instead he jostled, and what did he think he was at, they said, unimpressed by the contortions of a man trying to be recognized. A face turned in the rain. It looked past Hagan’s head, resting casually not on Hagan, those eyes, looking for what in the rain. It made you want to swear. He bumped out of the crowd and went into the bar.
Walter Quong was giggling. He was already rather drunk.
Hello, Hagan, said Walter, quaking like a gin-something that he held in a yellow hand.
A double Scotch, Hagan said.
Then I said, said Walter Quong, it isn’t far to the cemetery. Oh, she said, you’re telling me. Nettles sting. It was the Sunday after they buried old Mrs Falconer. She was covered with dead flowers.
Walter sighed. There was a bubble on his mouth.
Hagan drank his whisky. It had the limp, watered flavour of the whisky you get in country bars, not worth spitting out even. He felt, like the whisky, kind of flat, clenched the glass that did not, would not break, splinter into the hand. He wanted to break her. She danced round, and you put your arm round her waist, she was that small, and bent back, the sort of face that came just a certain distance and said that Mother was going home. She looked past, you might have been air, or something she didn’t want to touch, even if last night you could have sworn, against your face, and Mrs Moriarty’s gone, she said. He
had forgotten Vic, was whisky standing too long in the glass, was time to throw out and go sober, you wouldn’t get drunk on vinegar.
Furlow’s mare’s in form, said the barman.
Furlow? he said. Not a chance.
He slammed down his glass.
Too full of tricks, he said.
She looked past his face in the rain. He wanted to lam that girl.
Arthur’s won the Cup, said Walter Quong.
The Cup? said the barman. Listen to Walter. The Cup hasn’t been run.
Walter’s mouth plunged on a glass.
Oh well, he said, Arthur’s going to win the Cup. She was covered with dead flowers.
Hagan was feeling wild. To listen to a randy, drunken Chow made you feel—white. He went outside.
Oh, said Vic Moriarty, it’s you!
She sauntered over to Oswald Spink and began to inquire the odds. Because that will fix you, she said. And Sir Galahad, Mr Spink, she said, no, I’m not taken by the name. Looked back to see if Clem, if Clem had stood. She could feel the water soaking through her shoes. Didn’t it make you cry, the races, when back turned said nothing, and you wanted to say you didn’t mean it, really, Clem, whether the horses went out or stuck in the mud or what, because who cared if a horse. Vic Moriarty crumpled ten shillings in her hand. I’ve got to get hold of him, she said, listen, I’ll say, honest, Clem, you don’t know what it means, and he’s going to Moorang, just to-night, because then I
won’t care any more. Vic Moriarty’s face was crumbling under its beauty hints.
Even money Interview, they called.
The horses were going out. That glint is steel is eye turned is his first race Stevie Everett and shirt sticks to the skin the orange conjunction with green where the barrier stirs a nerve and Furlow’s mare with all that weight treads mud said Interview the paper said balancing a cloud on flagpole feels his stirrups stretch to what depth to what underneath whether muscle or air or Quong’s colt keeps the store the awful twisters these Chows in a country of possibilities and ideals at 2 or 5 to 1 the collar sticks on a lozenge from shouting from stretching the neck to see the starter’s two-day importance lead into place a bridle when the balloon goes up.
They shuddered in a bunch against the barrier, then streamed out, that long trajectory of colour against an indifferent landscape, the muscle whipped by rain, by the sudden emotional compact of breath and wind. They urged into the wind and the flat, grey with trees. The colour broke fiercely on the grey. It whipped round the bend. The horses coiled back in a long elastic thread. You could hear their hoofs dulled by the mud. You could hear the approach of frantic breath. You could almost hear a flash of colour breaking through a clump of trees. And the crowd leant over the fence, drawing the horses on with their hands, so many puppets on so many strings, of which the jockeys, balled up on their saddles, had no ultimate control.
Arthur Quong held on to the fence. Upright, he did not breathe with the crowd, was something apart, or part
of the colt, could feel his muscles, touched in the stable, stretch out, watched that coloured bead move on the string and fuse with the one ahead. He felt the wind. Hoofs dealt mud on his face. Hoofs ebbed in a wave of sound. Interview was done, they said, with the mud, with the weight. They swirled out on the second round. Arthur Quong fixed his eyes ahead, felt a singing singing, as he waited, felt himself smiling, tapping his foot, as he waited, as he clung to the fence. He had stopped breathing. Because this was no longer Arthur Quong, was out there threading through the trees one green and orange bead. That colt of Arthur Quong’s, they said, was leading, they said. Did not hear this, but the whinging of breath. They eased up slower along the landscape. He felt a kind of long lassitude, almost closed his eyes, if it were not for the motion of air that pressed open lids. The ears heard the approach. Stevie Everett’s face was pale against the neck of a bay colt. Arthur Quong dropped his shoulders. The wind died.
A Chow! somebody shrugged. It’s the day. No horse could carry weight in all that mud.
Mr Belper tore up two more tickets. Who would have thought that the Cup, that Arthur Quong…
Almost touched Vic Moriarty, Arthur leading in the winner, she looked up, saw the nostrils blown out pink, and a horse was going past, and vaguely she knew the Cup was over. She looked down, she had a ticket in her hands, Sir Galahad, she had asked for only so that she could turn, turned and was no one but backs closing. She let the ticket fall from her hands. I got to see him, she said. She pushed past Mrs Everett, who had a newspaper over
her head because of the rain. She went round the corner of the stand by the urinal. She went along the line of stalls. I got to see him, she said. She heard her feet plopping in the mud. It went on jabbing in her head, one idea, I got to see, I don’t care, but I got to see. He was standing at the back of the bookies’ pitch lighting a cigarette.
Clem, she said. Clem. I’ve been looking for you every-where.
I haven’t been so many places, he said.
Don’t get wild, Clem, she said. I didn’t mean it.
Mean what?
Giving you the go-by like I did.
He caught in his breath. She was mauling his arm. Vic Moriarty making a scene, when as if he would have given a damn whether she thought what she thought he thought. He looked hard at his cigarette. A drop of rain became smoke on its point.
Did you? he said.
Yes, I thought.
Well, I didn’t. Now let go my arm.
She wanted to cry.
Clem, she said, don’t be hard.
Sidney Furlow walked past. Her hair was plastered at the sides against her face, that did not see, was cold eyes with the lids half dropped. He could have run after her, twisted her round, and said. He did not know what he would have said. He looked down.
Damn you, he said. Let go my arm.
She began to whimper, the rain on her lips. Sidney Furlow got into a car. He wanted to run, stop, stop, firing
its exhaust. And Vic was holding on to his arm. God, what a sight. The car moved slowly out.
Now, he said, are you satisfied? Now that you’ve had your scene?
I didn’t want to make a scene.
No, he said. You couldn’t help yourself.
But last night, and to-day, I wanted to say, Clem, I had to, you’ll tell me when it’s finished, Clem, you won’t walk out, you can’t.
Words in a whimper made her lips swell plumped out face and wet in the cracks. A mouth said Mrs Moriarty’s gone. He wanted to press on a mouth his mouth not this plumped out for a song.
Ernest’s gone to Moorang, she said.
She watched him, anxious to suggest, or seize the expression in his eyes. Her voice halted for this.
We can’t stand here like a couple of fools. You’d better do something about your face.
His voice at least was flat.
But Ernest, she said. You will, Clem?
She stood and waited.
Yes, he said. We’ll see.
Would go perhaps because nowhere else, and you could not wring a neck that wasn’t there to wring, and Vic what a sight was still nothing wrong, if only he got that out of his head and could not feel her dance.
The crowd, its stare glazed, its emotions spent, trampled cards underfoot, the Cup was run, the day without expectation after this. They wandered without much purpose waiting for another race. It was over, or as good
as over. Thought hung limp like a flag on its pole. It was over for another year, they said, all that had happened and that had not happened, the money lost and the hat worn. But they waited without animation, for some last-minute frenzy perhaps, for some sign that it wasn’t time to go home. Because going home is acceptance of the ultimate defeat.
I took my girl to the races, sang Walter Quong.
He was lurching about behind the stand, trying to catch the rain.
Being alone made her feel a bit afraid. That zooming of a moth over-life-size on the wall, or two moths, shadow and substance, had also the implication of dead things, a moth or a bird, that she could not bear to touch. When Tiny died she could not touch him, lying in a shawl, though I love all dogs, she said, and when you think of the affection of a dog, but before it goes stiff of course. Ernest took Tiny by the hind-leg, she cried to see her poor pet, he was almost a whippet, hang stiff like a flying fox, in the Museum with Ernest, who said that the flying fox was a curse, with the rabbit, the prickly pear, and the briar, and none of them aboriginal except the flying fox perhaps. Though Ernest liked Tiny. Oh dear, my poor Tiny, she said, I wish we could have had a child, because Tiny dead makes you feel there is nothing else left. Ernest said yes. He shuffled in his slippers and coughed. She had embroidered slippers from a
pattern, two pairs, but the first hadn’t come off, so it shows my industry, she said, that I didn’t give in on one. Ernest called it application.
He had forgotten to take his slippers to Moorang, they lay under a chair, she saw, because Gertie had forgotten to move, Gertie always forgot. It made her sort of guilty looking at the slippers. She looked away. She thought of a flying fox. They hung upside down from the fruit-trees, or brushed through trees, and squealed. The zooming of a moth made her twist her hands. If he comes as he said, she said, I shall hear him coming up the path, if he comes. The slippers made her feel guilty. She took them from under the chair and threw them into a cupboard, where they made a softish thud. Perhaps I’m fonder of Ernest, she felt, hearing the slippers thud, fonder than I, at least after standing in the rain, and you couldn’t move his arm, only touch his arm, and that was what Ernest would not understand, what made you want to hold on to Clem, when he touched you in the bed. That’s lust, Ernest would have said, all right, she said, it’s lust that makes you wait for feet coming up the path. Like the Bible, and Daisy giggled at the curate reading the lesson, that big brass eagle standing on balls, and she said at the bazaar the ice-cream slipped down her throat when he touched. She wished she had lit the fire.
Vic sat twisting her hands. There would be a frost, an injustice when you woke up, alone, or perhaps Clem would stay. A moth hitting the wall made her shudder into herself. She had to think of that flying fox. Or a bat, they said, landing on your hair, made you bald. She picked a leaf off the cyclamen. It was withered, brown, it rustled in her
hand. She used to play a piece called Autumn Leaves when she was at Marrickville, a descriptive piece she bought in a music pavilion at the Show, that she played with feeling, and Daisy said it made you feel the autumn leaves, it made you sad. But the cyclamen sat up straight with sap, its pink ears shivering, the way that plant behaved. She saw her face in the bowl. She patted her hair, her perm not quite, and Clem you could see by the way he looked, but what could you expect in the rain. And that girl.
Vic Moriarty clenched her hands. She went and leant against the mantelpiece, pressing herself against the mantelpiece, where glass was cold on her forehead. It was Ernest’s clock. Go on, she said, go on, tick tick, I can’t help it, she said, you egg, tick tick. The way there are certain things that open wounds, any wounds, such a thing was Ernest’s clock. She saw that girl get into the car, as if she could help notice when the number-plate drove off and he said, all right, we’ll see, relaxed. You might be a bundle waiting, without feeling, for the train. On her hands her face was hot.
When he came he threw down his hat. It stirred her up to hear the hat.
Coming to your funeral, I suppose, she said.
That’s right, he said. Without the flowers.
He began to kick the fender with his toe. Some soot fell down the chimney, on to the paper fan in the grate where Gertie should have lit the fire.
You’re doing me an honour, she said, having it in my house.
Oh dry up, Vic.
Or perhaps you’re having two.
He looked at her. His eyes made her cold.
Hagan kicked the fender with his foot, wanted to kick through or take with his hands, the way you pressed a sheep and the bleat came out, those white lashes on their eyes. Killing a sheep, or time with Vic, was the same, a bleat. And you killed a sheep, it meant nothing, or chops for breakfast, or…Why the hell couldn’t she stand still? She was talking about the Last Time, even if it was this she said. It was something he had heard before.
Even if you hate me, she said, you’ll always know I love you, Clem.
She fiddled about with the tablecloth. Her voice came out in lumps.
Well, we’ll let that be understood, he said. You needn’t rub it in.
Even when She, she said.
Who?
He shouted her pale, and looking like that.
No one.
Her voice fell in a whimper on the tablecloth, was plush.
Then he went and took her, she felt limp, it made him feel wild, wanted to shake, or kiss, was kissing a limp mass.
All right, he said. If it’s what you want.
His voice came against her teeth.
In the other room the candle flame was long on the wall the wax fell in slender silence, lay whitening in pools. He lay on the bed, his head against his arm, after a fashion satisfied. She smoothed his forehead, moist, with her hand.
But he did not want to open his eyes and see Vic Moriarty, white and passive like a pool of wax. As if the flame had burnt down. She was a flame that danced with her face against his cheek. You could not touch, put out a hand but could not touch. Or stop as the car moved out, was steel and touching steel was cold, resistant. It made you hot and cold to think, so you closed your eyes, felt the hand of Vic Moriarty, of no one else.
It bewildered Hagan to think. It was a fresh experience. Sidney was a hard name. He resented his bewilderment.
Out of this silence that was like lying with a dead body by candlelight, Vic heard her breath rise, no more. She was not afraid now, even if not being alone was almost like being alone, the way he lay. But her arms were warm, her eyes rested that glanced along the line of his shoulder and closed upon his neck. What was this before her sleep fell and a key rattled she did not know her flying fox that she wrapped up in a shawl that night Ernest took the stick and said I’ll go out to turn off the tap in the frost he took the shawl but not that no is covered up not to see it isn’t what you think the light on leaves is not the pedal Daisy that he pressed was dead it feels funny like a leaf is being dead is the frost on the tap oh cold all right you think no pity in a voice said she had on had on diamond when the dog barked only turning off a tap but not in a shawl is dead Ernest only not to look at its face you see Ernest turn back the shawl it’s cold looking at your face Vic he said is dead.
Her voice stumbled out of sleep.
Clem, she said. Clem.
He stirred.
It was a dream, Clem. It was queer.
She sat up and saw herself touching her face in the glass.
You’re a caution, he said.
The bed grumbled when he moved. He felt hungry. He yawned. Going up north, the night train, there were frankfurters at Werris Creek with the girl sleepy against the bar, and she rubbed her eyes, and the steam told you how hungry you were, not girls, not Vic or any other bit. But his jaw tightened all the same. He got up sharply off the bed and began to put on his shirt.
She looked at him standing in his shirt. She began to feel bitter again.
You’re going? she said.
It looks like that.
She wanted to talk, she wanted to talk about anything, because that furniture was one long creak, the leg of his trousers made the shadow bend.
I knew a girl called Edna Riley, she said.
She wasn’t quite sure of her voice. She had to speak.
Why Edna Riley? he said.
Oh, I dunno. She just came into me head. And you would have liked her, Clem. Edna was a good sort. She was clever too. She’d passed a lot of exams and things. She wanted to be a stenographer. When her father died she was going out with a man I knew called Lassiter, insurance I think he was. But Edna, that was what reminded me, Edna had a book on dreams. Got it at the circus, I think she said. There was a woman with a handkerchief over her eyes that read your thoughts and things. And dreams were
a sort of side-line, see? And Edna bought the book. And you worked it like, suppose you dreamt of a black horse, well you looked it up and it told you what it meant, a journey or whatever it was.
She had to talk. She couldn’t stop. Her voice fluttered in the candle flame.
And what about Edna? Hagan said.
He was tying his tie. He had a scarf-pin once, that he lost, with an artificial pearl.
Edna? she said.
Her mind bumped round. She had to speak. A dream made you feel queer, like looking at your face in a mirror when you turned back that shawl.
Don’t go, Clem, she said Not yet.
Her voice rose, flickered, on a candle flame. Edna and all, it made him laugh.
And what happened to Lassiter? he said.
God, how it made him laugh.
Then it began to go round. They heard it going round and round. They heard it one two, or drag and stop, or hit against the skirting-board, as it went round, in the sittingroom. It was a noise, a foot noise. The feet went round and round the sitting-room.