Names for Nothingness (3 page)

He smiles now as he remembers those trips into town with Caitlin. There was no stopping him on those drives, his words would tumble out in a rush, his chatter broken only by bursts of song, old rhymes that he remembered from his childhood, sung to her loudly and tunelessly.

Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John, went to bed with his trousers on.

At first he had wanted her to laugh, to squeal in delight, to utter some sound in response to the joy he found himself expressing in her presence.

One shoe off and one shoe on.

He would sing to her over and over again, altering his tone, his voice, his facial expressions, while her smile deepened, her eyes danced, and her hands clapped in merriment – and her voice remained silent.

It was a lesson for him. He came to enjoy entertaining her as a pure act within itself. He stopped seeking a response that he was never going to receive, and he told himself that he had no right to urge her to be anything other than what she was.

But perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps his constant failure to act has always been, as Sharn tells him, not just a matter of him being relaxed (his description of himself). Perhaps it just isn't enough.

On the days when he is meant to be working, when he has told Sharn that he is cutting a corporate video, that he will be back late, he sits by himself in the room that he has hired as an office, and goes through his old Super 8 films. He knows he should be ringing around for work, calling people he has done jobs for in the past, chatting about this and that before he tries, casually, to slide in the question: ‘So, you guys been busy?'

And they will tell him, always, that they've been frantic, run off their feet, because no one in this business ever dares to admit anything other than success.

‘That's great,' and he hates the sound of his own voice as he says that he, too, has a whole lot of work in the pipeline, but in the meantime, if there's ever any call for an editor, you know, whatever, even just a small job, his words trailing off as he waits for the standard response, the sure thing, we'll be in touch, to round off a conversation that he has come to realise will never be anything other than this: a shameful display of his own vulnerability.

He needs them, but he is not part of their world. He doesn't know how to go out drinking after work. He can't pretend that an ad or corporate excites him. And so he has stopped trying. Not suddenly, just slowly, from a few calls a day to a couple a week and, now, none.

When he loops the Super 8 onto the projector, the film a smooth plastic ribbon that runs taut from spool to spool, he braces himself for the images of what he was before he met Sharn, what he became with Sharn and what he is now.

The dust dances in the thin beam of light and the spools
whirr, the end of the film clicking against the body of the Elmo as he runs it back to the start, threading the beginning through. He reaches across to turn off the desk light, and with the curtains drawn the room is dark, broken only by the white square on the wall, and then the first splash of colour, the first frames of his life, captured, flickering like moth wings before his eyes.

There he is. Trekking in the Himalayas. He is seventeen, handsome and completely carefree, grinning into the camera, doing as his then girlfriend, Lise, had directed him, pointing to the snow behind him, holding it in his hand, while the camera zooms in and then out again to capture him rubbing it into his face with glee.

Or, another reel. Jen asleep in a car. Her face resting against the window, her long pale hair hiding her expression from the lens. They were driving to Sassafrass. She had inherited money, and when she heard about Simeon she decided that he was the one who could help her. She wanted to be a writer. Why not? She had paid for both of them, but when he had stayed on (not because of the workshops; it was Sharn that had kept him there), he had called Margot to cover six more months of courses.

And then there is Sharn herself. Beautiful and young. Grinning at him cheekily, smiling shyly; there are boxes and boxes of footage. Sharn and Caitlin, him and Sharn, Sharn on her own; he knows what each reel is from the label, and he is surprised at how closely the images reflect his own memories of the past, at his own ability to edit out the bad, grey days that never made it onto film and have failed, until recently, to leave an indelible stain on his own heart.

‘You have an unwavering ability to ignore the negative,' Sharn would tell him, and when she was happy she would say it with delight, leaning forward to kiss him as she spoke.

But when the hard times came, her words were impatient, his inability to face up to reality became the mark of a fool, and he would flinch under the sharpness of her tongue.

He knows where it is, the third box on the fourth shelf, the label: Sharn, Sharn, Sharn, the first footage he ever shot of her, sixteen years ago. He had brought his camera with him, hiding it in the bottom of his bag when they arrived (suddenly aware that he did not want to put his own creativity under Simeon's gaze), bringing it out only when he met with her, away from the others. She is sitting outside her shack with Caitlin, washing her daughter in a tub of water, scrubbing the river mud off her, her long, curly black hair damp with sweat. She glances up as he approaches but the directness of her gaze does not last for long. She was changeable with him at that time. Forthright one minute, gently confiding the next, and then distant, as though she had no interest in him whatsoever.

It is Caitlin who registers delight. Jumping out of the tub, she runs towards the camera, her arms wide, her naked body wet and still smeared with mud. He remembers how he dropped the camera (the last few seconds of footage show a blur of grass, yellow green rearing up towards the lens) and ran, only to let himself be caught by her moments later.

This is the reel that he has marked out as a possible first. The beginning of his labour of love, an editing together of their life in an attempt to immerse himself in what he would like to see as reality. This is what he has been doing on all the days he has been pretending to work, and it is a task that has, until recently, absorbed him. But he knows that it cannot go on forever, the money he borrowed from Margot has almost gone, and he flinches at the thought of confessing to Sharn that he is once again without work.

More pressing still is the question of Essie.

She meets his glance in the rear-vision mirror as he finally starts the car. He has been sitting without moving for some time now, he has no idea for how long. This is what he does. Time seems to just drift through his fingertips.

‘Ba,' she tells him, slipping her thumb out of her mouth to utter the syllable, and he agrees with her, yes, it is a bus, rounding the corner up in front of them.

He does not even know what her name is, the name that Caitlin used (if any) when she held her, a tiny baby in her arms, because he hadn't been there when Sharn had gone to bring Caitlin home. Essie is just a name they made up after Sharn admitted to not knowing what she was really called (‘she didn't tell me, she wasn't speaking, no one was, she only told me to take her'), and because of this he does not use it often.

She is looking out the window, an old T-shirt of Caitlin's clutched in her hands, and he croons to her, softly, under his breath. The nursery rhymes that he used to sing – still there, lodged in his heart.

S
HARN HAD ONLY BEEN AT SASSAFRASS
for two months when she went into labour. It came on so fast; she was down on all fours and vomiting, and there was no time to get over to the house for help. It was Simeon who heard the screams, and he halted the workshop, momentarily, to get Mirabelle.

‘Go to her,' ‘he said, quick.'

And she did.

When Sharn remembers that afternoon, it is the screams that she hears. First her own and then Caitlin's, a piercing newborn howl.

The heat was unbearable, and the blood and the stench, and she could neither move nor call out, don't leave me, as Mirabelle stepped out into the milky haze of the day.

‘I'll fetch water,' she said, ‘from the river,' but Sharn knew she just wanted to get away, and as she watched Mirabelle disappear she held that baby in her arms, her tiny head rolling back on her
shoulders, and she knew that if she had the strength, she, too, would have done the same. Walked. As far and as fast as she could go. ‘See,' she muttered to herself, ‘there I go.' Through the long grass by the side of the river, up the path to the main house and then along the track to the main road, and in her mind she is standing there, one arm held out, hitching her way out of there, flagging down the first ride to come her way. Gone.

‘She is a beautiful girl,' Liam would sometimes tell her in those first few months after his arrival, when they would talk, just the two of them, by the river.

He was not the first to comment on Caitlin's beauty; her pale oval face, the dark liquid of her eyes, and the stillness of her expression were remarkable. Even Sharn would sometimes stop and just look at her, overwhelmed by her existence. But she is not mine, that's what she kept telling herself. She is someone else's child. It is all just a terrible mistake, a wrong turn, the real me is still out there somewhere, striding down the side of the highway, alone.

In the gardens, up in the house, by the side of the river, Caitlin looked for Liam, following him wherever he was. And Sharn, too, did the same. Listening for the coolness of his voice, turning to see the softness of his gaze, watching him staring into the distance at each of Simeon's workshops, not really there, just looking out for them.

His touch was gentle as he helped her shift the furniture so she could sweep. His knock on the door was hesitant as the darkness descended. He didn't want to wake Caitlin, he didn't want to bother her, but did she want to walk?

‘Not really,' she would say, ‘too tired.'

His skin was smooth as she watched him take off his clothes and jump from the boulders into the cool depths of the swimming hole. His hair gleamed, sleek as an otter's, as he swam towards her. ‘Come in,' he would say.

But she would stand up and tell him that she had to go, work to do, because she didn't want to wreck this. She was scared. She could see herself, miles away, wanting to come back now, but too scared to take those first steps.

‘Sex was my thing,' she once told Liam. ‘You know, some girls are bright, some are good at sport; I was good at fucking.'

She remembers those words now, and she finds it hard to recall the bravado she had once had, bravado tinged with fear at falling in love.

‘Well, you took your time with me,' he had grinned.

And she had.

As she waits outside work now, looking for Lou who has promised to bring the key, she wishes, once again, that she had not become so hard. She is worn down. That is how she feels, and it does not seem ever to lift.

At night-time, sometimes, or during the day when it is quiet, she lists what she would like, the few things that she tries to believe have the capacity to make everything okay. It is, she knows, an attempt to contain the anxious sadness that seeps like vapour through her being, defining her worries into a simple inventory of items that are lacking, no more, no less.

This morning she is particularly ill at ease, unable to find any distraction in finalising her list, unable even to add up the figures.

New shoes: $50

A stereo (second-hand would be fine): $350

Air conditioning in the car: $1500

Saucepans: $100

A couch: $700

She glances down the street, and forgets the total again. She can't even remember what it is she thinks she wants.

‘Why?' Liam asks her every time she brings home something new, and she used to attempt to answer him, to explain that they only had two plates left without chips or cracks, that their knives were all blackened from the days when they used to spot hash together after they moved back to the city, that the blankets are worn through, that it depresses her, all of it.

Liam, on the other hand, has always had next to no interest in possessions, and this has not changed. Caitlin, too, had the same irritating lack of regard for the material. She would not have cared if she had gone to school in dresses that were too small for her, or socks that did not match. As she got older, she would listen to their disagreements over money and side with Liam, not in words, but in her actions, in her clear preference for his company over her own.

When they first left Sassafrass, in all those months before Liam began to do the odd freelance job, there had been times when there was not even enough money for food. She had finished her schooling at night, and worked during the day, waiting in cafes, typing; she had taken whatever she could get. She had been horrified at how much money they needed just to survive. She would wake at night, anxious, and he would attempt to soothe her, telling her it was all right, it didn't really matter, and, if the worst came to the worst, they could always borrow from Margot.

She had, at first, tried to blame Simeon for their poverty. She had gone to him before they left Sassafrass, hoping to receive some payment, even if it were only token, for the years of labour. She had been genuinely surprised at his harshness, his refusal to help her.

‘We housed and fed you. God knows what would have become of you if we hadn't.'

She told him that she had thought they were friends, and she raised her voice slightly, both of them aware that she
would be heard by the others in the hall should she choose to increase the volume a little further.

‘I mean, we've fucked each other.'

‘That doesn't enter into it.'

‘Obviously.'

She looked around his room, at the Indian wall hangings, the books of teachings, the candles, his robes, washed daily by Mirabelle, and she shook her head in disbelief, both at his words and at her own stupidity for having had any faith in him.

‘You are not fair,' she said, hating her childlike complaint. ‘I am not even asking for full payment,' and she stared straight back at him as she told him she would have no hesitation in revealing their meetings to Mirabelle.