Some Here Among Us (20 page)

‘
Ornament is but the guiled shore

To a most dangerous sea, the beauteous scarf

Veiling an Indian beauty
—’

‘I still think it’s racist,’ said Panos.

‘The play’s about race, Panos,’ said one of the people in the front row, a woman, or a man with a high-pitched voice. ‘It’s a play about racism. But thank you. For your comments.’

‘If I was an Indian . . .’ said Panos.

‘You’re not Indian,’ said the woman in lawyer’s robes.

‘People,’ said the person in the front row. ‘Panos.’

Race withdrew from the doorway. He folded the doctor’s prescription and put it in his shirt pocket. He touched the folded paper through his shirt, then went back and watched from the door.

‘
What find I here?
’ said Panos, his voice echoing around the hall. ‘
Fair Portia’s counterfeit! What demi-god hath come so near creation? Move these eyes? Or whether riding on the balls of mine
—’

‘Yes, yes, I know, it’s all very hilarious,’ said the man or woman in the front row. ‘I hope you’re over it by Wednesday, that’s all. Less than one week, people. Then we’ll be doing this – for – real. All right. Back here two o’clock sharp.’

The actors sort of stood at ease, changing into other selves. Panos jumped off the stage and came up the aisle to Race. He led the way into the vestibule.

‘ “
People
”,’ he said. ‘I hate it when people say “People” like that. How was that?’

He looked closely into Race’s eyes.

‘Good, good,’ said Race. ‘You’re what’s his name?’

‘Bassanio.’

‘He’s good. He’s OK, Bassanio. Maybe he shouldn’t sort of crouch over those things.’

‘The caskets?’

‘The caskets.’

‘He’s not crouching. He’s thinking.’

‘Good. That’s – good.’

The tall woman in black robes approached them and swept past, talking to another woman in Renaissance costume.

‘She has this phobia,’ she was saying. ‘Hot-water bottle covers. Tea-cosies. Anything like that. It’s a phobic reaction.’

She did not look at Panos as she passed.

‘You’re in love with her, right?’ said Race.

‘Bassanio is.’

‘What about you?’

‘No,’ said Panos. ‘There’s just no chemistry.’

He watched her go across the lawn.

‘Where’s the chemistry?’ he said.

They stood in the vestibule while other cast and crew members went out.

‘I’ll cook tonight,’ said Panos.

‘Good idea,’ said Race.

‘It’s not an idea,’ said Panos. ‘It’s a dire necessity. None of you cook.’

‘I cook.’

‘Busoni doesn’t cook.’

‘He can’t cook.’

‘He doesn’t try.’

‘I try.’

‘Can you grab something, I don’t know, green on the way home?’

‘Green?’

‘Leeks, peas, beans. Leeks would do. Peas. Where’re you going now?’

‘Movies,’ said Race.

‘What movie?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ he said.

‘On your own?’ said Panos.

‘I like the movies on my own.’

Panos was looking at him with his big Greek gaze but he was thinking about Portia and the caskets.

‘What was that about Morgan at school?’ said Race.

‘What at school?’

‘Did you say he was expelled?’

‘He was expelled,’ said Panos.

‘What for?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know why he was expelled?’

‘I don’t. I didn’t know him. I didn’t even like him.’

‘Oh,’ said Race.

‘Why?’ said Panos.

‘I don’t know. I just thought of him just then, getting expelled.’

‘So pick up something green,’ said Panos.

‘I’ll try,’ said Race. He felt bad then. He thought of the big dark dining room at King Street where at night the light bulb never seemed able to beam all the way into the corners. Busoni and his dog on the sofa. Race lifted his hand.

‘I’m off,’ he said.

‘Where you going?’ said Panos.

‘Library, then movies,’ said Race.

He lifted his hand again and went across the lawn into the library and up to the lockers. He took his satchel from the locker and looked down through the window at the lawn. There was no sign of Panos or any of the actors. Race went out the other entrance and through the park to the city. In Queen Street he went into a pharmacy. The girls in the cosmetic section were like beings from another sphere, their lustrous nails, lavender smocks, violet eyeliner,
we do not speak your language earthling
look. He went past them and handed in the prescription and waited.

After a while the pharmacist darted out from the dispensary and looked at Race over his glasses. ‘
One
only, at night, as needed, swallow with water,’ he babbled, reading from the label, his brow furrowed as if he had never seen such a thing. Race took the bottle and put it in his satchel and went back through cosmetic space-time, the swivel mirrors, the girls not looking at him, and into the street. He crossed over Queen Street and walked up Victoria Street to the western ridge. It was a part of town he didn’t really know. He went along Nelson Street and into a bar he had been to once before. This was where Race had last seen Bonnie. He had been in there with Busoni and Panos one night when she and her husband walked in. She looked excited, radiant. She was sailing to England that same night on her husband’s ship. She was wearing yellow and had a corsage on her breast. In a way she was very old-fashioned, Race thought. She had seen him and come straight over.

‘Race!’ she said. ‘I want you to meet my husband.’

Race shook the husband’s hand. They had chatted for a while, and even had a drink together, and then the couple left. The ship was sailing at midnight. Race watched them go out the door and thought: ‘I’ll never see her again,’ and then he thought: ‘I don’t even care.’ Yet here he was, back again. What had he come for? The place was empty. There were some empty glasses on the tables. The barman was standing at the bar, his head hunched over the racing paper, fingers outspread on the pages. He did not look up when Race walked in. Race asked for a beer. The barman looked up, only swivelling his eyes. He sighed, then unhunched, went to the beer-tap, poured the beer, took the money and resumed his position over the pages. Race took the beer to a tall table with four tall stools and sat there. There was a sling-shot of rain against the windows, and it stopped, and blue sky went past again amid bruised clouds.

‘Maybe something will happen,’ he thought, ‘and then I won’t do it.’

A young woman came out through a little low door behind the bar.

‘Pick up them glasses,’ said the barman without lifting his head.

‘Pick them up yourself,’ she said. ‘I’m a barmaid not a Mrs Mop.’

She went back through the little door, then she reappeared fast.

‘I told Brian that,’ she said. She was shaking her forefinger. ‘I said, “I’m bar staff, Brian, and I’ll go in the public bar, but I’m not collecting.” ’

She went away again. The barman then muttered the conversation again, wobbling his head as he spoke. ‘I’m bar staff, Brian, but I won’t collect,’ he said.

Race thought of Bonnie. He remembered the day they broke up. She had called him on the phone and asked him to come over in the mid-afternoon. He was pleased and a little puzzled. It was the first time he had ever been there during the day. Bonnie said she wanted to go out for a walk. They went up the street to the park on Mount Victoria and sat on a rock in the grass.

‘He’s coming back,’ she said.

‘Who?’ said Race.

‘You know who,’ she said. She touched his arm. ‘So now we stop seeing each other.’

‘
When?
’

‘Now, Race.’

The park was just a patch of long grass, unkempt, below the black pines of the town belt. It was a still, dry, cloudy day. Away across the harbour a US carrier lay at anchor, greyer than the rock of ages. Bonnie began to unpeel an orange. She had brought it with her in her bag and took it out. Her fingers, nimble, clever, divided the segments neatly, never breaking the integument.

‘
Now?
’

‘His ship is back this week. Maybe tomorrow. The letter came today. So we won’t see each other any more.’

She prised off a segment of orange, like a cradle, an eighth of the moon, fat as a baby.

‘Oh, Race, look at you,’ she said. ‘You’ll find someone. A nice-looking boy like you, a
student
.’

‘She’s lying,’ Race thought. And it was true, he couldn’t see her any more – he couldn’t look at her, only at her fingers, nimble at their work. ‘She’s a liar,’ he thought. ‘I’ll never find anyone else. I found her, and she’s all I want, and she’s said
no
.’

‘I’m going now,’ she said.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Race.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Home. I’m getting
married
, Race. He’s my
husband to be
.’

He couldn’t even remember her walking away. He was alone in the park. Even the peel had gone. She must have scooped it up, the bright curl, as neat and organised as ever. The US carrier had swung on its anchor and was pointing its bow straight at him. And so that was the end, he thought. And when he met her again a year later, by chance, he felt nothing. ‘So it was all an illusion,’ he thought, sitting in the bar on his own. Then he remembered the statue of the queen and the trolley wires curving up the hill in the dusk and something moved in his heart.

The double doors to the street opened. The rain slung at the windows again, and the girls who came through the door screamed, rain lashing their bare legs. They clattered in.

‘Ladies,’ said the barman, pushing himself back on his finger-tips to survey them. They ordered rums and coke and went away to the lounge area and sat at a low table. One of them crossed her legs then moved her head to one side to look at them.

‘Tarts,’ said the barman without looking up, hunched over the racing paper. Then he looked over at Race, his pupils hard black rings in a blue field. A clock struck somewhere down in town, but Race wasn’t sure he had heard the first chime so he couldn’t be sure of the total. But he knew nothing would happen now and that now he didn’t want it to. He stood off his stool and picked up the satchel and went to the doors. The wood around the doorplates was darkened by touch and scarred densely as a palm-print. He pushed the brass plate and went out.

He walked back through town and up through the park and the campus again; the rain came down briefly, and Race went on further up the hill and arrived at the apartment building where he and Panos and Busoni had lived a few months earlier. He let himself in through the street door and stood there, listening. There was a radio on in one of the ground-floor flats.

He unlocked another door in the foyer and went up the stairs quietly to their old apartment. No one had been in there, as far as he could see, since they had left. The rooms were bare apart from a mattress left behind when they moved out.

He took the mattress into the sitting-room and put it on the floor in one corner, then stood there for a minute or so. Then he went back to his old bedroom and stood looking, listening to the radio downstairs. There was a marble on the floor by the wall. He picked it up and took it to the middle of the room and laid it down. It rolled away and touched the wall.
Click
. That was why the building had been vacated. The whole block, four storeys of apartments, was on a lean. It was slated for demolition and the site would be turned into a car-park. Race went back into the sitting-room. The leaves of the gum tree that grew right past the window ticked against the pane. Race stood there. He was thinking about the tenants of the ground-floor flat. Of course they hadn’t moved out, he thought, Eloise and Ken. Eloise was a fighter. She would give battle to the evicting powers. Eloise was only twenty-five but she had the manner, and the clothes, and the weight, the solid round calves, of a matron. She was wealthy as well. She flew to Sydney to see Fonteyn and Nureyev – ‘darling Rudi’ she called him – and once a month a black car came to pick her up and off she went to court in a black suit and a wide-brimmed hat. It was some tremendous court-case about a family trust and raggedy cousins with their hands out. Of course Eloise was still downstairs, Race thought, she’d be giving the developers merry hell. As for Ken with his thick gleaming glasses that concealed his eyes, he did whatever Eloise said.

Race went quietly to the top of the stairs and looked down at the mottled-glass door at the bottom. Had he locked that or not? He didn’t want Eloise or Ken coming up to see who was there. The late sun struck through the door and coloured the stair-carpet a rich ruby red. It was almost five o’clock. He went back and picked up his satchel and went into the kitchenette and opened the bottle. This was easy now, it was easier and easier. ‘
Finally
,’ he thought. Finally meaning
at last
and finally meaning
finally
. He saw that the small window above the stove was broken. Did we do that, he thought, or the wind? He began to take the pills, one by one. There was no glass or cup in the kitchen. He drank the pills down with tapwater cupped in his hand. Then it was done. Jazz was playing on the downstairs radio. Ken with his black-rimmed glasses was a jazz buff.