Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You (42 page)

In.

At last.

Industry, order, light. Mouth opened in wonder, you are gulping the space, roaming it as you would a museum in miniature, this pale box of loveliness. Photos cram an entire wall on a corkboard painted white; there are typed quotes, postcards, feathers and leaves and seed pods from the bush, watercolour scraps. Paint samples, scribbles of words, sketchy diagrams of – what? Narrative arcs for some kind of article or movie script or story; yes, that. Photos of people in magazines he’s scrawled names across and circled fragile eyes, a clenched hand, a woman’s ready lips. Along one wall are bowed stacks of shelves on bricks reaching to the ceiling, then more books on the floor in high stacks. Your eyes assess with the thoroughness of a forensic detective. Trying to unlock it all, trying to guess.

He leans against the doorpost, watching the looking, amused. You roll your eyes at him, once, as if ‘God knows’, and get back to your examination. A collection of antique ink wells that appear to have been dug up from the nearby earth
are lined up along a windowsill. Filthy fountain pens cram a ceramic jar –
James Keiller & Sons, Dundee, 1862
, reads its beautiful type. The scrap of your work shirt lies on the desk. An old black typewriter is dead centre. A blank sheet is poised. The scrap of your shirt. The scrap of your shirt. You finger it, prickle up, step back.

‘So?’ He throws across.

You dangle the piece of cloth in front of him and with laughing eyes dip a fountain pen in waiting ink and write
yes
across his empty sheet in scratchy blobs of messiness.

‘A writer.’

He pings a rolled up piece of paper at you in affirmation. You laugh and catch it in an overhand snatch, just like your dad taught you, and flick it back hard with a boyish twist of your wrist.

Of course a writer. The pale hands that just failed to catch your paper ball, the hopelessness with life, the face that feels too much. The thick black glasses, the hair never brushed. Now the room is unlocked, now you see him; of course.

You jiggle the scrap of your cloth in front of his eyes.

‘This one’s off limits, mate.’

‘But I’ve never met anything like her,’ he teases. ‘She’s a fascinating specimen.’

‘No. Way.’

You waggle your finger at him in warning and he nods, concurs. Satisfied, you gleefully spin on his factory stool and play the typewriter keys like a piano, with pretend expertise, your back secretarial straight. Your fingers hover above all the waiting letter circles, almost touching but not quite.

‘You still use one of these things?’

‘Yep. It means I have to consider every single word. Make everything count. It also means I take a very,
very
long time. To Julian’s despair.’

‘What’s he got to do with all this?’

‘He’s my agent. And I’m extremely behind on a manuscript that he managed to get a lot of money for, which is driving him absolutely bananas. I might have to give the money back. He’s furious –’

‘I don’t blame him.’

You look at Tol with an eyebrow raised, the mother with
their child over the latest homework excuse. Back to the typewriter.

‘I’ve never met one of you before.’ Staring at everything, gulping it up; the working mind laid out before you. So, this is him, finally, his core, his life.

A sigh. ‘We’re terrible people, the worst type. You should leave immediately.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we’re deeply competitive and insecure and our work is never good enough – which we know, despairingly, and just hope that no one else ever finds out. And because everything is fuel for our fiction, which is why no one should come too close. Everyone is a possible subject.’ He glances at the scrap of cloth back in its place; you snatch it up and point your finger, again, in playful warning.

‘Don’t worry, I promise.’ Hands high, all innocence. ‘But believe me, it’s wise not to get too close. We’re full of frustration – for our publishers for not pushing us enough, for our critics for not getting it, our families for giving us a rotten childhood and our kids for exhausting us. We’re wary of every other writer, never want them to succeed. Friends clutter up our time. We need someone to do everything for us because we’re completely hopeless at life, yet crave being alone more than anything else. We will do anything not to work. Make a cup of tea, go for a walk.’ He looks around, shaking his head and laughing. ‘Strip a house. Believe me, writing is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And it only gets harder. I don’t know why I persist. I’ve only published one book –’ His eyes wince as if he really can’t bear it.
‘Don’t ask, I hate talking about it – and am appallingly stuck with this next one. It makes me tremendously grumpy and it’s why I’m exiled in this place. Why
Julian
has exiled me …’ A deep breath, a hopeless sigh. ‘Your father wouldn’t think much of me, I’m afraid.’

‘Why?’ Knowing he’s right.

‘There was this Sydney writer called Michael Dransfield, who said that to be a poet in Australia was the ultimate commitment.’ He shakes his head as if he’s just about given up. ‘All I can say is, I know
exactly
where he’s coming from.’

You step away from his typewriter. Swirl around slowly, breathing his world in. Knowing now what you want more than anything else.

This life. Him. All of it.

The ultimate commitment.

There are no words but the Bible’s in your own home. Your life with your father is all gristle; there is no meat in it, no juice. He left school at fourteen and never got around to proper punctuation and when he writes a letter it presses through several pages of his writing pad underneath, the words are so painstakingly formed. The amateur writer, still, like a schoolboy just learning; trying not to betray his ignorance.

He’s only ever written you one letter in his life. He sent it to your boarding school the week you left home. No punctuation, of course.

It was preserved in the back of your diary.

Burnt, of course.

‘Why does Julian stick you all the way out here?’

Because everything about them says they’re city types.

‘It’s my choice. Sydney’s too noisy to work in. Everything invades my life there too much. And … I’m a bit shy in it, to be honest. I feel stronger in this place.’ He looks at you; you cock your head, believe him – he’s stripping himself here and it’s something new and you smile, slowly, at it and nod. You feel stronger too in the bush.

‘It’s like, when I’m not given the space to do what I really want to do I get agitated, I’m all at sea, lost.’ He shrugs. ‘I’m a nightmare to be around.’

‘Mmmm.’ You’re smiling in vigorous agreement.

He chuckles; alright. Takes a tumbler from the book shelf and lifts a glass stopper from a crystal decanter and pours out a golden liquid, swirls it, and teases its tart earthiness under your nose. You jerk back like a spooked horse. He laughs, examining you afresh, and downs it.

‘Not for you, eh?’

You sit again at his seat and arch your back with your hands stretching high above you, then flop them over your head and slowly spin, surveying his lovely cocoon of a world.

‘I want to stay here forever,’ you breathe deep. ‘Dive, right into this life.’

He steps back. Holds up his hands as if everything’s – suddenly – galloping ahead too fast.

‘Oh no, no. Don’t say that. This world would crush you in a week and you’d end up being anything but a writer. A banker, an accountant, anything. You’d be scarred for life.’

He raises his glass to you, it’s not quite celebratory.

‘You, young lady, have what Harper Lee calls “one’s original promise”. And believe me, it’d be lost around here quick smart.’

You screw up your face. ‘What are you
on
about?’

‘You’re an appreciator,’ he says. ‘I am not. I’m far too cynical for the likes of you. You seize life, I watch it. The difference is too great.’

A prickly silence. He’s right; he’s a watcher, like a cat. You’re a participator, every particle of your body is roaring to muck in, to grab and cherish and savour and possess.

The difference, yes, is too great. He said it. Something slinks away in you in that moment like a dog with its tail between its legs.

‘I don’t want any of me rubbing off on you,’ he adds gently. ‘Don’t want you changing. You should go home immediately and never come back.’

He means it.

‘Go on. Scat.’

You’re standing, confused, stopped. Can’t tell if he’s joking or not, can’t tell anything anymore. Everything a sign, everything a signal – or not – you’re breathing fast, too young for this. You’ve entered a new phase of play in this room and cannot read it, it’s so confusing, adult; he doesn’t seem grumpy and cynical in any way in here, he’s like a man supremely happy with this secret life that he has chiselled out for himself and he doesn’t want anything to invade it.

Which you have, of course. Which you want.

This room, this house – they’re all teaching you the importance of living a light life, of surrounding yourself with things that are beautiful but do not weigh you down and you are learning the great balm of simplicity here; a house that envelops you with reassurance and it’s been so long since you’ve had that. You want it and he knows it and he’s let you in too far. Yes, that’s it.

The ‘annoyance’, he saw that from the start.

With a thudding heart you pick up the ocean-blue bottle from your father’s shed. It’s in front of a row of books, Patrick Whites, all covered in careful plastic. You place the beautiful little object squarely in front of his typewriter, right in his line of sight. As if in ownership. Then you slip out his little Victorian volume from your pocket – that always accompanies you now – and slide it in snugly next to the Patrick Whites.

You turn and look straight at him.

He does not move. He does not speak. But he is smiling, from the corner of his mouth, just. Intrigued, surprised; it’s in his eyes, you note it. He looks at the book shelf and shakes his
head – uh uh – something’s wrong, it can’t work like this. He plucks your little leather volume from his shelf and hands it back, insists. The tone has switched again.

So, an unspoken game, a gift for a gift.

You flip open a random page.

You do, and your insides peel away as if he has slipped his fingers into a secret place and brushed a whisper of a touch. You smile, can’t help it. At the book, at the blue bottle, at this speaking silence.

It has begun.

Whether he likes it or not.

Every time you come from now on – and you
will
come – a gift will accompany you.

That you will place.