Fresh Fields (34 page)

And this paper had classified ads full of poignant details about human lives. You'd learn, for example, that out at Tullibar a “recently separated grazier with two children under eight” wanted a housekeeper, and you'd wonder what those people were like and what the whole story of it was. You'd think how there were thousands and thousands of stories going on every moment all over the country. At times it gave the youth a peculiar shock to remember that he had actually been in the bush and had first-hand knowledge of a few stories. It was startling because it reminded him that those people and places had been real, not just figments of his own thought.

The
Rural Times
noticeboards gave the youth the same feeling he used to get from listening to
Country Calling
on the radio at Clem and Gladys's. He felt the romance of it, the grandeur, the sense of it going on over generations. A lot of it was tragic, of course, but tragedy was part of the tide of life, like with Romeo and Juliet. He had been determined to read that play ever since Meredith Blackett had talked about it. He'd sought it out at the State Library and, when he'd got used to the old-fashioned language, had become absorbed. He saw how the sadness of it was a proper part of its power and meaning. He saw that if the lovers had not had it in them to meet such drastic ends, they would not have been capable of powerful love in the first place. It was a kind of trade-off that lay at the centre of existence: you can only have the joy if you accept the misery as well.

It gave him a shudder to grasp that the whole country was packed with that intensity of life, from rabbits in burrows to eagles on cliffs, from insects teeming in the grass to farm families laughing or weeping in their kitchens. The shudder was of mingled pleasure and dismay that life was so vibrant, so
insistent
. A lot of the time it felt reassuring. If you spent your time being conscious of all that surging life across the generations it would sustain you. You would take some of the vibrancy into yourself just by the fact of your sympathy with it. There were moments when the youth yearned to work for the
Rural Times
, to come to this building each day and dwell on the eternal surge of life.

Of course he understood there was no chance of that, since he himself had only the bitter road of ruination to tread. But now he saw that the ruination did not cancel out the beauty, any more than Romeo and Juliet's grief cancelled out their love. It was just the two sides of that trade-off. The point was to keep faith with the side of the equation you found yourself dealing with.

It was Bosworth and the idea of the Battle of Honour that had given him the key. It was to do with the difference between choosing and accepting. The traitors had made a choice at Bosworth, to be on the winning side, whereas the loyal hearts had simply accepted that their post was with the King, whatever the outcome. Honour was in acceptance rather than in choosing. If you start doing your own choosing you are on a slippery slope. It was not for the lone Viking to choose his bridge, or Harry Dale his river, or the Bushranger his town, any more than for the true knights at Bosworth to choose the winning side. It was for each of them to accept his given post, the site at which the Battle of Honour was his to wage.

What excited the youth about this idea of choosing or accepting was its implication: the Battle of Honour wasn't only a matter of lonely roads and bitter ruin. It could equally apply to the happy side of life. It could be in accepting joy with as much courage as one would accept despair. Romeo and Juliet had to face both joy and despair in equal measure, but most lives aren't set in such a balance. The profound element in most lives is usually more on one side than the other. Person A is called on to have a happy marriage and to raise a family, whereas Person B is called on to die of leukaemia at eighteen. Each of them is at their post, and each is engaged in the Battle of Honour. And somehow each of them is fulfilling something for the other.

He walked for hours through the city and suburbs, his head down, going over and over the same ideas, trying to phrase them in the exact way that would make them clear. If you could stumble on the right way to say a thing, the whole idea would click for you, as in that pure moment when the words “The Battle of Honour” had come unbidden. At the edge of his mind another insight floated. It was about human beings doing things or fulfilling things for each other, and about acceptance rather than choice being the basis of it.

It darted in as a thought about Romeo and Juliet. They had more passion and anguish than most people ever have. And therefore . . . they
provide
it for those people! Then he thought of Ronnie Robson. Why did it always make you feel better in yourself to recall that Ronnie was the world's greatest, and always gave a hundred and ten per cent? Because most people can't do what Ronnie does, and so he does it
for
them. And again, most human beings are not enchantingly beautiful, so Grace Kelly embodies that for them, and an element of that beauty is brought into all their lives. And hardly anyone is a doomed leader going down with his people in a saga of heroism, so King Harold is that on everyone's behalf.

Things like passion and skill and beauty and heroism are granted to individual people, the youth reasoned, because the thing needs a person to embody it. In a much more important sense, though, those things belong to the entire human race. It was like someone being an excellent gardener and having gorgeous flowers in their yard. That the flowers are in
their
yard is just a kind of technicality, but that those flowers exist in the world is a splendour of nature and a joy of the human spirit.

And the acceptance is in the gardener's willingness to
be
the gardener. If he or she could choose, they'd probably rather be a great sports champion, or a world-famous beauty. But for better or worse those sites of the Battle of Honour are allotted to others. Being the champion is Ronnie Robson's bridge to defend, being the beauty is Grace Kelly's river to swim. The post that is actually
there
, to be accepted rather than chosen, is that of growing gorgeous flowers in a suburban yard. And though Ronnie Robson and Grace Kelly may never see those flowers, they are of the world made sweeter by them. And equally, though the gardener might never see Ronnie on the field, or Sweetheart on the screen, he or she is of the world made finer by the prowess of the one and the enchantingness of the other.

The youth was sipping a milkshake in a cafe as he mulled for the fiftieth time over this notion of people in the world
doing
things for each other. It was, he told himself with the clarity of truth, The Great Reciprocation. He knew the word “reciprocation” because he'd come across it a few days earlier and had looked it up in a dictionary: “mutual giving and receiving,” it said. How amazing, to find that word just when it was needed to click everything into place! But of course he knew it wasn't amazing at all. It was fate providing what was needed.

These concepts of The Battle of Honour and The Great Reciprocation had armed him in a way he'd never known before. He began to see what a crude implement a Schmeisser was by comparison. He would have liked to confer with Diestl about it all, but he feared Diestl would be suspicious—especially of the bit about accepting joy as readily as disaster.

 

A FEW
nights later the youth came home to Delia's house after dark and went to walk along the driveway to his room. There was a strong breeze that made the leaves rustle at the front, and he could hear it stirring and sighing in the tangles of vine down in the backyard. There were clouds moving fast in the sky, so that the moon kept going bright and dark as they swept across it.

The sounds of the breeze were loud enough that the youth did not feel he had to tiptoe on the gravel. And besides, it was only about ten o'clock. In fact he had started getting out of the habit of tiptoeing past Delia's lounge-room window. He'd decided that he had to live up to his new idea of accepting the good as readily as the bad. Delia's presence in his life was about as good as a thing gets, and he knew he must try to be open to it. He must allow things to happen, to unfold, to “blossom” even. “Blossom” was a nice word and the youth had it in his mind a lot. It came, he supposed, from those thoughts about the flowers and the gardener. Acceptance was allowing things to bloom as they are meant to. Like at that walk they'd had to the bus stop. Look what had blossomed from that, and all because he'd
accepted
that Delia wasn't going to let him wriggle free. And now, too, because of his insight about The Great Reciprocation, he could imagine that maybe Delia being in his life wasn't totally one-sided. If she was in his life, he was also in hers, and surely that meant there was reciprocation. He must be doing something for her, even if it was only the tiniest fraction of what she did for him by just existing. She'd said that she and Sunny had talked about him quite a lot. That was a scrap of reciprocation. He'd been a topic, a talking point, a help to her in occupying an idle moment.

As he came near Delia's window, he heard a faint sound of music from inside. It was the old-fashioned New Orleans jazz that she loved. She and Sunny and the youth had had a little conversation about it the morning before when the youth had come on them lounging in their deckchairs in the backyard. The old-fashioned New Orleans jazz was the real thing, Delia said, because it had melody and was based on tunes that people knew and could sing along with or dance to. All that got thrown away later, and jazz turned demonic, like so much else in the world. All the good karma was in the old style. Louis Armstrong was a great karmic force, Delia declared, and one that she often recommended to clients as an antidote to demonic energies. The youth had enjoyed the conversation and had promised himself he'd get into old-style jazz and Louis Armstrong and all that. Maybe he could even buy himself a record-player. It was another bit of the reciprocation system—Delia giving him guidance about something that could enrich his life. There was no doubt about it: once you cottoned on to a profound insight like The Great Reciprocation, you saw it constantly at work.

He paused near the window to try to catch the music properly above the noises of the breeze. The window was shut and the blind drawn, but the blind had a crease or curl at one edge, and this opened a space you could see through. The youth peered in. He could only see one side of the room, with the gramophone and the back of the sofa, and there was no sign of anyone there. The music was slow and sensuous. It was a saxophone playing, he thought. The youth looked up at the clouds and the moon, and listened to the faint, slow saxophone mingling with the rustling and sighings all around him. It all seemed to flow together and he felt calm and happy.

Then Delia came into sight. She had on an Oriental silk dressing-gown. It was shimmery and clung to her body, and her hair was flowing loose. She was looking across the sofa at someone and speaking to them. She smiled and gave whoever it was a long level gaze. Sunny came around the sofa into view. He had on only a pair of white shorts. They kissed. It was a very long and slow kiss, and the youth thought he could see their tongues working at each other's mouths. Suddenly he felt hot and excited and leant closer to the glass.

As they drew apart, Delia lifted her hands and drew her dressing-gown from her shoulders and it fell with a motion as quick and smooth as water. She gave a shake of her hair and it moved like water too, but darker and heavier. She stood there naked, smiling at Sunny, and he smiled back. Delia put her hands on the band of Sunny's shorts and began to pull them down off his hips. The shorts were bulging at the front and she eased them gently over the bulge and then let them drop on the floor. They kissed again, with Delia stroking the erection with her hand. The youth was erect too, inside his pants, and his throat felt so tight he could hardly breathe. He pressed closer to the glass. When the long kiss ended, Delia leant her bottom against the back of the sofa and moved her legs apart, then Sunny bent and began to position the end of his erection between her legs. Delia took it in her hand again, to guide it. She looked up and said something and Sunny gave her face a reassuring touch. Then they got their positions right and he slid into her and began to move quite slowly and gently.

They both smiled again and gave each other more of the reassuring touches. Even half-choking with excitement, the youth thought how sweet of them to be so
friendly
. He knew about lovers being sweet and tender when they cuddled. He'd had lots of sweet and gentle times with Sweetheart, cuddling his pillow. But he'd always imagined that actual fucking was abrupt and frantic, that you got it over quickly because it wasn't fair to the woman to make her put up with it. The sweet friendliness of
this
fucking was unlike anything he'd imagined. So was the fact that you could do it in a position other than lying down. And that the man got between the woman's legs. The youth had vaguely assumed the man lay astride with his legs outside hers. He had assumed a woman's opening was right up in front, but now he could tell, from the angle of the thrusting, that it must be further down between her legs. So that was how it worked. The woman held her legs apart to let the man in.

How sweet, he was thinking, how sweet . . .

He heard the crunch of gravel a split second before he felt the hand grab him by the shoulder.

“What are ya fuckin' doin'?” a voice bawled in his ear. “Ya fuckin' pervin', aren't ya!”

“No,” the youth said weakly, half-collapsed with fright.

“Yes ya fuckin' are, ya dirty little bastard!”

The youth tried to step away but the man grabbed him by the front of the shirt and held him. It was all happening very fast, but to the youth it felt like horrible slow motion.

“You're not goin' anywhere, ya dirty little hoon!” the man snarled, his face so close that the youth could feel the spit.