Night Street (21 page)

The mention of a doctor gentles her, making her think of her own Doctor. ‘So am I. The mind's potential is larger than our common idea of it.'

The redhead's eyebrows seem to have lifted, but not unkindly. Clarice smiles again, recalling the face of that old dear over by the window; she is a little worried for her.

33

Paul is elsewhere; you could not quite say where he is. Louise, the gloating, glowing one, is in the kitchen with Mum. Exultant accomplices, they are making peanut biscuits. The steep spirals of their laughter are as sweet and forbidden as the biscuits that are still cooking. If you do not wait till they are ready, the dough will make you sick.

But in the drawing room, in shadow, Rosamund, who is a doll but also an imposing princess, reclines in her bower that is regal with wattle and velvet ribbons—a shockingly vibrant vision, this, which Clarice has orchestrated.

‘Puss. Puss!' She tempts Daffy forward with a twig.

Daffy's grey-flecked yellow eyes are ripe with cat madness. Spontaneous and calculated, she leaps into a pool of sun, like an actor into a spotlight. The rabbit trap might have taken her leg but not a whit of her spirit; cats have stupendous freedom in them.

Clarice, bored: ‘Then the fairies floated cartwheeling to the top branch of the oak. The children did not realise the fairies were keeping watch over them. Louise skipped off along the bank of the Yarra, Clarice just behind . . .'

A little distracted, Rosamund and Daffy listen to the end of the latest episode of Mum's before-bed story. The doll and the cat love Clarice as crazily, as perfectly as Mum loves Louise.

When the Nocturne begins, Clarice understands that she is not in fact with Rosamund and Daffy, because that music came after and it has been a while, so long since the three friends were the points of a magic triangle.

34

She is not taken to the solarium.

Sleep washes tentatively against spiky islands of coughing. Breathing is a chore. Light slides across her sickroom trailing shadow, like the train of a gown; then it begins its late-afternoon metamorphosis. This moment—her evening work session approaching, the second daily reward of three hours—always lifts her. Because what she yearns for is close: soon she will be pulling her cart along the coast road.

Once or twice, the redhead tries to entice her with food. Clarice would oblige if she could, but appetite is one more emptied box. She gratefully accepts water from a cup, however. The doctor comes, listens to her chest and does some other things to which she does not pay much attention.

‘I was here before,' Louise says. Her sister in the visitor's chair, beside the desiccating pinkish roses. ‘I came the other day.'

‘I know.'

‘You're even paler than usual. Look at you.' Not managing to be humorous: ‘Clarice's ivory skin.'

‘You're wearing my bracelet.'

‘This? Well, I've been staying at the house and I borrowed it. Anyway, you remember that time, with my jumper.'

‘No, I've forgotten. I love the green in the glass bits. So I'll be wanting it back.'

‘Makes you think of a fancy motor—the green.'

‘It does. I'm going to need some things from home. My trolley. Some supplies. I'll make you a list. While I think of it, here's the key to the shed. Father can't be trusted with it.'

‘He can't?'

‘Absolutely not.'

‘I'll take your word for it.'

‘Good of you. Take that, too.'

‘What's the second key?'

She feels panic. ‘Take it.'

‘Okay, okay.'

‘It's for a bathing box.'

‘A bathing box?'

‘At Half Moon Bay. Go before Thursday.'

‘Thursday. You're becoming demanding in your old age.'

‘I am, but it's important, Louise. Please. You'll leave a note there for me. And a painting, won't you?'

‘Oh God. A tryst?'

‘You will, won't you?' She hears herself coming across as desperate.

‘Calm down. I'll do whatever you want.'

‘So. Are you shocked?'

‘Not really.' Next to Louise, the roses are a paltry gesture at beauty; she puts them to shame.

‘I imagined you'd be shocked.'

‘Relieved, I think.'

‘I'm not going to tell you who it is. It's not the Carruthers boy.'

‘Suit yourself.' Louise laughs a little, appearing stricken. ‘You're always secretive.'

‘I know. I'm sorry. Well, no—not really. That's how I am. Louise?'

‘Or how you decide to be. What? Don't tire yourself out.'

‘I'm not tired now. How are you?'

‘Fine.'

‘Really?'

‘You know.'

‘The kiddies?'

‘Troublemakers.' She smiles unevenly.

‘You really do look a lot like Louise Brooks. You could be twins.'

‘Do I? Still?' She sinks one hand into her glossy cropped hair and pouts. ‘Everyone always used to tell me that.' Her face becomes sweet and sisterly.

One time as she sleeps, pressure on her bladder lends her dreams an erotic mood that does not seem to have anything to do with the dreamed events; it passes over them, a savoury odour on the wind, coming from someone else's cooking.

Collins Street. Her city is enfolded in mist, which she wears like a stole. She can make out the spiky silhouette of the Manchester Unity Building, that man-made mountain, its tower and spire triumphantly lit. There is no one else around to enjoy it. Good to be alone, though, finally. It is late. Her only city. All the things that others find unsightly are extra reasons for tenderness, as far as she is concerned, as would be the idiosyncrasies of an adored child.

Mouth open, she is tasting wood and coal smoke, a woman's perfume, the moist cold of a Melbourne night, its streamlined thinking in black, blue, purple, when a motorcar approaches from behind. She steps quickly out of the road and onto the footpath.

A girl, a woman. Olive of the summery frock and the twirling? It seems to be, but then she turns further and—how quickly one person can melt into someone else—it is Ada. Slim, almost a shadow. Her friend, Ada, peering out through the rear window into the motor's wake, as its refined, funereal form disappears.

She would like to stop the car and ask Ada one or two things. What has she been painting? It would be wrong for Ada to let her painting go, though so many do. Too late. Clarice waves, but cannot tell if Ada has seen her.

Woken by her throbbing bladder, she is mildly aroused. So full with that ache at her centre, replete, she delays ringing the bell on the nightstand. She lies there until she cannot postpone it. She rings. Depending on others is new and awkward, like borrowing a showy person's clothes. She rings again. The quiet suggests collective sleep, but subconscious adventures are a private matter, each dipping into his well. Or do all the wells draw from the same body of water?

The redhead. Yawning but amenable. ‘Do you need the bedpan, love? Cold night, isn't it?' In the lamplight, her red hair sticks out, a charming coppery chaos of angles.

Clarice nods, sorry to have disturbed her. She was unaware of the cold, although they are halfway down the path of winter. She savours winter's austerity, the dramatic things it does to sky and skin, and hates to be away from the weather. Even when Mum was bad, near the end, she could steal the odd moment to lean against the garden fence and breathe. Her hands, then and now: hot, itchy and unhappy; not using them for painting makes her hands bereft.

She tinkles against the enamel, appreciating the nurse's tact. Her thighs are mauve-grey and unusually feeble. Those do not appear to be the legs that stride the streets of Beaumaris day after day, the legs grasped by the Doctor's hands. Are they really the same that have always held her up?

Her nightgown rearranged, she finds herself perched on the side of the hard little bed, as if she were her own visitor—sick Clarice's visitor. But no one is lying in the bed; there is a feeling of expectation, as though sick Clarice might soon return. She does not want her to.

The Clarice who is only visiting the ailing, absent Clarice sees the moon. Where the curtain does not meet the window frame, she recognises the midwinter moon, coyly incomplete, clouded. She is as dizzy as a girl.

‘Could you please open the curtain?' she asks.

‘What's that?'

‘The curtain.' She shakily lifts her arm to mime pulling it across.

The redhead considers this. You would think looking at the moon was bad for the health. An old idea, no? The moon and madness.

There is a heavy thud. From which room it has come, Clarice is not sure; she cannot find the layout of this place in her memories. How many days is it since the storm? Some unlucky thing must have fallen out of bed. Low groaning follows the initial sound. The old woman from the solarium? She did not look sturdy and Clarice fears for her.

‘Good gracious,' exclaims the nurse, resigned.

She hurriedly helps Clarice into bed, but—about to rush off—pauses and pulls the curtain aside.

Some time after, the redhead's consoling voice can be heard, far off.

Clarice calls, uneasily, ‘Is she alright?'

No reply, but there are other sounds and she imagines the movements of limbs and mouths causing those vibrations—metallic, wooden, human—that cruise the air to her ears. The senses. She kicks at the tight sheet, then, weary, allows her focus to narrow. Now she listens only to the air coming in; a sort of ragged sucking on the inhalation. Her lungs are an accordion expanding and contracting, but the sound is of a humbler instrument. A rattle, a baby's half-broken rattle. Is this reflex, instinct?

But another breath and she treats herself to the strange moon. The pleasure of it, more intense for having earlier been denied, makes her think her loneliness could be a form of union in disguise.

The sun pokes over the horizon. Globular and glistening. Like illicit lovers creeping back into clothes, the few gum trees she can make out ease stealthily into their daytime selves.

35

Though she has heard the name of this doctor on several occasions, it will not stick, so, copying the redhead, she calls him the doc. For fun, but also out of loyalty—to differentiate him from the Doctor. ‘We'll have to try a bit harder,' the doc says. There is affection overflowing from this. He seems to be telling a circuitous joke, the punchline just around the corner; she cackles a little, sensing it, as a spiritualist might a presence on the other side. This levity has been coming in waves. ‘Clarice,' he murmurs, brushing her stringy hair from her eyes.

Concern, in his face, and she must look a fright, but she has no use for mirrors. For some time, she has been lightening her load, dispensing with unnecessary burdens; there is an elegant simplicity to it. She has the impression—although it is not the case, for obvious reasons—that Mum is at the foot of the bed, attentively overseeing. Mum beams her approval, thrilled; she is kidding herself that Clarice might marry the doc. Marry, no, not this time around, but he is pleasantly quiet and methodical, his breath cleanly saline, maritime.

‘In the last days,' Clarice finds herself saying, ‘before my mother was bedridden, she had a funny way of walking around the house.' He leans close, nods. Now Clarice sees a later moment but does not describe it, the shape that Mum took as she was going, like a baby animal curled around a placenta, a seashell, a crescent moon.

The doc does not comment. Again, he moves her hair out of her eyes, off her forehead; it could be another man caressing her, expert, blissful hands and inscrutable motivations. She should probably say something appropriate, be reassuring, but there is an anarchic impulse building in her, some disobedience.

Clarice suffers, thinking of Half Moon Bay. She thrashes against the sheets, and finally there is a loosening, her legs are unbound.

The air has changed. She had taken this room at face value, taken it for a nursing-home room like any other; she judged it too quickly. She strains to lift herself onto her elbows, tilting her head like a dog struggling to identify a pattern in nonsense.

Something quite unusual is happening. Are the walls shimmering? She squints. Objects that moments before had names like
table
or
chair
now elude their names, which is as it should be; but they are also swimming free of their habitual moorings, their positions, tones and forms becoming unidentifiable. And colours are taking advantage of this situation to similarly defect from their countries of origin and generally horse around. It is all disintegrating in a horrifying or rather exciting way, turning abstract, awaiting reinvention.

The wild state of affairs shows her the secret nature of the room in which she is lying. It is not just any room, no—it is a studio. A space consecrated to art. With this realisation, the moody Nocturne starts up again. She curls and uncurls her fingers, limbering up. Impatient to be working, she consoles herself with the idea that she has already begun; the work, after all, is mainly seeing.

Olive is in the corridor, just beyond the doorway of the studio. Everything is apparently much as it always was, in the corridor, although it is possible the woman no longer calls herself Olive. Clarice wonders what is wrong with her, if she could be cured already; she looks in perfect health, chirpy even, but sometimes the problem is convincingly hidden.

‘Hello,' mouths Olive, who is far from shy, bless her.

She has elaborately tangled hair. A string of fake-looking pearls cinches her neck, giving her a whiff of downtrodden glamour. What is strange about Olive? Those pearls? That she persists in underdressing for the weather—today sporting a light blouse and skirt? Her bare feet?

‘Aren't you cold?' Clarice speaks loudly. She would like to invite Olive into the studio to get warm. ‘I should really be going,' she says. ‘There's something I have to do.' She is panting: it is like noticing you have begun to speak a foreign language, like giving up a portion of control. She fights it, asking herself what other roads there might be.