Muck (17 page)

The Members bar has a tide that goes out and comes in. A men-tide dictated by the loud-speaker din: “Horses are parading for the next race on the card. Riding changes—K. Moses for R. Quinton on number six.”

When the tide is out men lean on the white birdcage rail, cheeks red from sun and drink. Race books hang open like a little wing span. They study the loping machinery of horses. Peering for flaws, for an imperfect setting to the pink breathing, the legs’ cog rhythm. Skin must be tight scrim that shows compression of the ribs heaving, veins visibly threaded like electrical wiring. When jockeys mount, the settings must start speeding, the cogs bounce and spring as if combusting.

The tide-men crane and cup an ear for a trainer’s confi-dent whisper. They bet their fancy across the way with the bookmakers. They climb to the stands and watch with binocular eyes. They barrack throwing their hands forward as if themselves attached to reins. The process takes twenty minutes, then the tide returns casting ticket litter before it.

Meanwhile, the women remain on the islands of stools and beer-sticky tables. Some are wives, others girlies. Wives wear more jewellery than the girlies, their fingers are racks for rings, wrists for gold bracelets, bangles. Their hair is shorter and stiffened in circles and swirls. Many are attractive with my safe-signs. But many are too ugly in their saggings for me to offer them a wine. Their husbands—would they harm me if I tried?

Most girlies have no safe-signs at first glance. They have no obvious sagging. Their hair is still long. Their breast-line still above their ribs. Their backs have a goose-skin tan. You must get close up to see the masks they make with their makeup. The lip-corner crackings, and cracks around the eyes. Skin pores becoming too open. But even the oldest would be better than the youngest ones—eighteen, twenty—who would compare me, I’m sure of it, like girls of my own age. They’re too close to being children to do otherwise. Yet, no matter how big
their
noses and their ears, to the bulge-belly men they are beautiful, adorable. Just as to girlies at the safe-sign stage—the Genevieve stage—my revolting features will be handsome as a movie-perfect face.

They, the safe-sign girlies, will have apartments to take me to; cars to get us there. If they are regular girlies for just one man, there are hotels with penthouse bedrooms instead of risking being caught in their homes.

I will have to buy them dinner. Drinks, a show of flowers.

It’s the third race now. I have twenty dollars from one winner and place.

At The Mansions the English text has been
Catcher in the
Rye
. In it Holden Caulfield hires an older woman, yet he didn’t want sex with her though she was a prostitute and wouldn’t have cared. A book about people being phony that’s fake itself, a lie! What boy-lust ever reasoned his penis down except in books? What boy-lust ever had a woman pull her dress over her head and is too depressed like Holden Caulfield for more than a bit of talk?

The Duke has no time for drinks or girlies today. He has a horse running. He prefers to stand beside the stall for an hour and say “Good boy” in worried ownership. He’ll postpone his harmless flirting, his keeping his eye in, till after the race. Winning puts a gleam of smugness in his flirting eye; the swagger of riches in his step.

He likes first-time girlies—they’re not wise as yet to his game.

“You’ve not been to the races before?” he’ll smile. “There’s a first time for everything. Let me buy you a champers and bid you welcome.”

He’ll introduce himself as proprietor of agricultural interests overseas. “There’s money in commodities. Yes, they’re doing all right by me.” Then, “I’m owner of Bazza—my little extravagance. Not that I can’t afford it. We should have the best in life if we have the means.” And when he’s had his pleasure of breathing them in, of placing his palm on their hip, then arm around their waist, then their arm threaded on his as if for chaperoning support, he will suddenly look at his watch. “Well, I best be getting home. My wife will wonder what’s become of me. She would throttle me to see me enjoy myself.”

The girlie will unthread her arm, step away from him, a scowl-smile of embarrassment, of having wasted time on him. She will glance at his left hand where he never wears a ring and say, “That’s tricking not to warn a girl.”

I light a cigarette and squint through the shield the smoke protects me with. I am not alone and shy with a cigarette and its smoke-shield. I have an action to perform, the action of smoking, sucking, sighing, locking my jaw to mouth a smoke of Os. I come with clouds between me and others. I am aloof but have companionship: I am the friend of a cigarette. I look older with him than with him not in hand.

I buy a glass of beer. Beer looks a real drink to be holding. Whisky and soda could be ginger ale to a watcher.

T
HE MEN-TIDE IS
going out. I am to be left the only man with girlies and their safe-signs. I have twenty minutes. I must look their way and use my eyes to invite talk. I have learnt by noting The Duke that a man does not stand about, paralysed by fear. A man cannot
stand about
and be attractive to a woman. He cannot
sip
his beer and be manly. He must gulp it and sigh his satisfaction with each mouthful. He mustn’t fidget with his cigarette, concealed in smoke. His confidence must cause him to bound when in motion, to rub his hands together in excited expectation, cock his head to one side and take charge. This way the girlie has no chance to refuse. His “What can I get you?” will be answered with an impressed “Champagne.”

I must pick one out. Attract her eye.
There’s
one—over there. Choose her. Dark haired. Of safe-sign age.

My chest thuds. It beats the breathing from me. My legs falter, powerless at the knees. Far too weak for walking.

Two there are laughing. Are they laughing at me? They are definitely laughing. It must be me. I am certain it’s me.
They are not safe-sign girlies. No saggings, face-cracking anywhere. They are in their children-twenties. I have no doubt about those two—they aim their laughs at me.

No, they haven’t even looked at me. I’m not the only fig-ure of fun in the world. Others have noses, ears. Those two laughers, cacklers, how would they like it if I laughed at
them
in front of other girlies? In front of the men-tide when it comes in: “
You
have noses too, hooked and bent, a revolting pair.
You
have ears big enough to wrap an anchor round!” I will spit in their faces. I will stab a cigarette in every part of me I hate. Starting with my head and stab downwards from there, arms, groin, thighs. Let them laugh then as my flesh hisses with pink holes.

“Are you all right?” A woman, a woman-girlie. Hair black and flared to the shoulder. Skin tanned so deep dark her freckles seem to blend. Cleavage that bears the beginnings of a V-branch crack in the soft. “You look angry standing over here. Is something wrong?” Her teeth are dark too—white enough as teeth go, but with stain between them. Her voice has the smoker’s thin gurgle.

“I was just thinking,” I reply, shocked to have company, this company, a safe-sign girlie. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what? For thinking?”

“For disturbing you.”

“You weren’t. You looked scary, angry. Or not well, like a seizure.”

She is laughing, but not in
that
way, the cacklers’ child-girl fashion. She is amused and intrigued. It is in her voice—a voice gentle as affection.

Yes, I was thinking, I tell her. Thinking that I have a horse running today and it is a nerve-wracking business. But where I come from we don’t bother with nerves because we have so many responsibilities, my family and me. What with owning an agricultural enterprise overseas.

“Tudor Park. You’ve probably heard of it.”

No, she hasn’t, she says.

I tell her she will do because I intend to be mayor of the district one day, its political chief. A word-gush that makes her stare at my mouth as if my talk has become visible. She is smiling. “That’s impressive.” She touches my forearm and says, “You’re a card.”

I flick my cigarette into an ashtray. Take out another. Offer her one. She accepts. “Madeleine.” No prompting. She simply leans to my light and puffs “Madeleine.” And then, “You’re young to have so much on your plate.”

“I’m not that young.” I puff a cloud to cover my too-boyish face. I gulp the beer followed by an “ahhhh” exhalation and belch into my closed mouth.

The tide is coming in. Madeleine glances at it then back at me. She turns to go but stops and smiles a thank-you for the cigarette and says I am going to get very lonely standing here all day by myself. “You ought to mingle more.”

I tell her I have just been speaking to the Prime Minister and the Premier. In fact I’m waiting for the Prime Minister to join me any moment.

“Oh.” She arches her pencil eyebrows. “Goodness. I better leave you to it.” She drifts with the tide.

And what will happen when no Prime Minister appears?
Stupid. Better to have said I know no-one. She might have stayed sympathetically at my side.

My beer glass is empty. My cigarette has burned down to near smokelessness, hardly any company to deflect being in this bar alone.

Madeleine befriends no one belly-man for long. A group of the older tide, wrinkled and bald, vie for her attention by interrupting each other’s sentences in good cheer with “Oh don’t listen to him” and “He’s a notorious liar.” Child-girlies already have a toucher of their own. Their bare skin stroked where the dress leaves their back exposed. Those touchers are the younger-old. It is Madeleine who does the touching in her arc of antique men: shirt cuff touching, shoulder; finger-tips pressed to the tongue of a tie.

I order whisky and soda, leaning one elbow on the bar. I say the “whisky and soda” loud enough that Madeleine might hear me now that I stand close behind her. I don’t say please with the order because it has a weakening effect on a man’s bearing. Madeleine looks over her shoulder to me. I lift my finger to acknowledge her. I gulp the whisky, the fire taken out of it by the soda and ice. It allows for three gulps before my throat scorches. Another three gulps and it’s time to order again. Another cigarette for a cloud mask. Then at last the loudspeaker calls out the tide.

It is so easy to be at ease. Whisky is the master of it. It says, “Follow me into the mist.” Not the mist for hiding in that smoke conjures, but the mist of all the world’s warmth and good intentions. I am the world’s centre in that mist. I am the world’s most perfect man.

Madeleine is coming my way. “Now you’ve got a happy look. Not a care at all. Quite a turn-around,” she says.

“Yes,” I laugh. I cannot stop the laugh. It’s as if my laughter is outside of me, independent and free-willed.

“You’ve been on the happy juice.”

It takes me two goes to pronounce, “Want some?” There is a need to talk loudly now because the loudspeaker is calling out a race from its perch in the sky.

“Your Prime Minister friend doesn’t seem to have shown up. Just as well given the present state of you. You should sip not slurp if it’s whisky in that glass.” She takes the glass from me and sniffs it. She pulls a face and places the glass on the bar.