The Amateur Science of Love (22 page)

I am glad I never gave Vigourman the pleasure of replying, ‘I understand.’ Saying ‘I understand’ was the same as saying ‘You’re right, Mr Vigourman. It was all urges and nothing more. Not love. Not a shot at joy. Just the equivalent of professionals in Melbourne.’ He could threaten me all he liked but my feelings for Donna were greater than worries about being called mud could ever be. Greater than any job with a Commodore. Greater than a bad conscience. What’s conscience when you’d rather die than beg to a woman you no longer loved?

Donna was another story. Her I could beg to if needed.

I left Vigourman to his smug tea-sipping; turned my back on him, breathed my chest and stomach out so they made a spinnaker of their own. I limped from the storeroom without a word. Donna was my priority. I went to my desk and couldn’t care less if Vigourman eavesdropped. I was going to speak to her like a man speaks to his loved one. I dialled. Her phone was working again. She picked up immediately.

‘Donna, sweetheart. Are you all right? You fine?’

‘Physically, yes. But rattled. Extremely rattled.’

‘Sweetheart, don’t be rattled.’

‘Why not? I’ve never had someone say they want me dead. I thought she was going to do it, kill me. I held Ruth and I thought: How do we defend against this kind of hatred? Abuse over the phone is one thing, but to come to my home and stand at my door screaming she will kill us. Try to set us on fire. Ruth was so terrified. I have to keep her in my arms or she shakes.’

‘I wish I could just fold you in my arms.’

‘I tried to lay charges. I was told:
bed-hopping
disputes aren’t why police are paid. You made your bed, you can lie in it, they said. I feel dirty. I feel I have made a dreadful mistake. And I have a child shaking in terror.’

‘Let me come to you right now. I will need to organise transport…’

‘No.’

‘The train to Ballarat leaves here at noon…’

‘No.’

‘From there I’ll get a connecting bus.’

‘No, I said.’ A sharp no with a wet growl in it.

‘But I want to.’

‘Let’s have a break. Let’s do that. Let’s have a break from each other.’

‘A break?’

‘I need to take stock of things.’

‘A few days’ break?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘A week? How long?’

‘I need to get Ruth back to normal. I want just her and me and a wholesome feeling back.’

‘How long a break?’ I was aware of being weak in voice suddenly. I was starting to beg. I bent forward over my desk, hand cupped around the mouthpiece so only Donna could hear. ‘How long a break?’

‘Indefinite.’

‘That sounds more than a break.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you saying forever?’

‘I’m sorry, Colin.’

‘Are you meaning the end?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why don’t we say a couple of weeks? Let’s say a month while you get over this.’

‘What then? Looking over my shoulder for Tilda? Looking over Ruth’s shoulder? I can take on small baggage. But this is not small.’

‘Let me hang up now and call you tomorrow.’

‘Please, no calling.’

‘Or a few days. Have a rethink and I’ll call you in few days.’

‘No.’

‘Please.’

‘I’m taking Ruth out of here tomorrow. We’re staying with friends interstate to get away from this and feel safe.’

‘Whereabouts? How can I reach you?’

‘No. No calls.’

‘Donna, please.’

‘I have to go.’

‘Donna.’

I said I loved her. I said, ‘Remember our Neutral Motor Inn; remember our happiness there.’ I was pleading so loud I didn’t hear her hang up. There was just silence and the seashell noise of air through the phone wires.

I called back straight away. No answer. I tried again. Same thing. I envisaged her standing at her phone, fists clenched against the temptation to answer it, against reconnecting our voices, our lives:
No more of this man I may love but who is too much trouble.

I waited a few minutes, dialled but got nowhere. She must have unplugged the line. This did not put me off. She would have to plug it in eventually. I spread the latest
Wheatman
edition on the desk and thumbed through it to look occupied, reading headlines aloud as if testing their petty poetry:

Soaring freight costs go against growers’ grain.

Boomspray ban near Wimmera waterways.

Agronomists warn over-till is overkill.

Vigourman was washing his cup at the staff sink. He dried it and put it on the tray beside the taps. He whistled a few notes with trills in them as if that would soften his officious mood. He kept whistling all the way up to me, scratching his sideburns. He complained how growing whiskers made a man itch. He leant close, put a hand on my shoulder.

He said, ‘Shouldn’t you go up to the hospital, to see Tilda? Don’t you think that’s your first priority?’

I bent down and rubbed my ankle. ‘My foot hurts.’

‘I’ll drive you.’

‘I’ve got a call to make.’

I dialled, delaying pushing down on the last digit until Vigourman had retreated. All I reached was the seashell static but pretended I had made contact.

‘Hello?’ I said. ‘Hello.’

I motioned to Vigourman that I’d go with him soon. I bowed my head, closed my eyes and rested that way a minute, stopped my life from anything more happening just yet.

Vigourman dropped me at the hospital.

He said, ‘You’ve come to your senses, I hope.’

Yes
, I nodded, an automatic gesture.

‘Good man. That’s the way. Good luck to you in there.’

He turned out of the driveway so slowly it was obvious he was checking for equivocation: my duty was to go directly and beseechingly to Tilda, not duck around the side of the building or hesitate at the glass entrance. I did hesitate but pushed through the front door anyway. It required a barging with my elbow to release the suction of the hinges. The cool inside air puffed my hair pleasantly but put a taste of antiseptic into my breathing. I stepped outside to spit out the taste.

Vigourman stopped his car and wound the window down. I waved to him that I was simply having a good cough and clearing of the senses and would be heading inside in a second. He returned a wave and resumed driving.

The hospital was all shiny lino and scuffed cream walls. The corridor ran left a short way, and a longer distance right. I went right, expecting someone in authority to appear and give directions. The six rooms either side of the corridor had beds in them, neatly made with blue covers. There were no patients.

I dreaded facing Tilda without people present. There would be less of a scene with people near. Tilda would be inclined to curb her fury. The dread put such a weight onto my head and shoulders I had to lean against a wall and double over, hands on knees. What marriage did Tilda and I have now? What future was there for me if I lived cap in hand? What kind of man would accept such a life? The only honourable course of action would be to kill yourself. That would be the only future, suicide.

And with that I stood to attention. I issued myself the following instructions: go to Hobbs’ Timber, Tacks and Twine this instant. Get a length of rope—make sure it’s twice your height. An inch in width should be strong enough to take your heaviness and not slice the skin or snap from tension. Do not engage in conversation with old Jock Hobbs. He might pat his leather belt and scare you away with, ‘What’s this for, the rope?’

Or go to Ringo Point and flush out a snake and stomp on it, taunt it to bite you. A tiger snake, not a red-bellied black. Red-bellied blacks are far less poisonous. Do not fear the pain. Pain is only temporary and then nirvana. Don’t dither, do it. What are you worried about? The
other side
? You don’t truly believe in God. Yet still you worry. What if death is not just the blackest darkness? What if you wake afterwards into this world’s complicated sequel—long-dead relatives pointing their accusing fingers; or Richard or Alice with ghostly infant faces wishing upon you the sewer life you condemned them to?

Do it, now, kill yourself and then good riddance, you’re gone.

No. I want to be alive. Even if it is only a second-best life. A life that
will do
. Who’s to say we aren’t all living that way—from Prime Ministers to Vigourmans, we’re all settling for second-best love; we just don’t let it show, we accept our fate in secrecy.

A voice from up the corridor spooked me. ‘May I help you?’

A thin woman, in a white smock a bit baggy for her. I tried to pick if I’d seen her around town. I had, in a just-another-face way. She’d had no presence like she had now in that white uniform. She looked into my eyes as if to challenge. There were deep spokes of skin around her mouth, a smoker’s wheel, made more obvious by her pursing.

I stood up. ‘I’m looking for my wife. My name is…’

‘I know who you are.’

She glanced at the watch on her lapel. ‘Tilda should have finished the little meal I gave her by now. Follow me.’

We went to the end of the corridor and turned right into an alcove where a metal ramp led outdoors. The nurse directed me along it. ‘She’s on the deck. I’ve set her up in a nice spot in the sun. Dr Philpott wants her to rest here for a few days, and I am going to treat her like a queen.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me. I’m doing it for her.’

I couldn’t see Tilda at first. Sun lit the metal railings around the deck too strongly. Leaves from a lattice climber were too transparently green and shimmering. Then my eyes adjusted. She was on a canvas banana chair, dappled in shade, placing the glass of water she was sipping onto a tea trolley beside her.

The blouse she had on—it was the yellow one, the sunflower one from my first sighting of her in London. I’d forgotten we’d kept it. Eight years in a bottom drawer and now its moment had come, given a sentimental airing to re-arouse my love for her, or so I presumed. Her hair was plaited her favourite, stump-tailed way, pulled back tight, very tight. It had the effect of distorting her face, stretching her skin smooth. The nurse must have helped her get the tension. Her makeup was tan-like and shiny.

She raised her chin and smiled, a proud, triumphant show of teeth made to seem whiter by silvery red lipstick.

She said, ‘Some females are doormats. Others can wield a sword. I think I’ve proven I’m the latter.’

Her grinning disgusted me.

‘Come closer,’ she said. ‘I want you to see something. I love Scintilla. I love the people. The people are so kind and compassionate. See these? Delivered first thing this morning.’

She was referring to two cards in her lap. The get-well and greetings sort with Monet-type landscapes on the covers, lots of purple wisteria and blue.

She read, ‘Dear Tilda. My wife and I extend our sincere sympathy and support to you during this tumultuous episode. Signed, Hector Vigourman.’ She shook her head. ‘What a decent and dignified man. If only more men were like him.’

‘Is that so?’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘He didn’t appear so decent just before, advising I use prostitutes.’

‘What are you talking about? Why do you want to say dreadful things?’

‘It’s what he said. Go to Melbourne and use prostitutes.’

‘Don’t make up lies to me. I don’t believe anything you say anymore. This town is all I’ve got left and you want to taint it. At least leave me that, while you go off with your Watercook whore. Why aren’t you with her?’

I blinked and lowered my head but made sure I lifted it up immediately so I didn’t look defeated.

Too late. Tilda had noticed: ‘Doesn’t she want you anymore?’

She grinned and read from the other card, ‘You showed him, dear. Signed, the ladies of Scintilla.’ She held the card for me to see. ‘These people understand the pain I’m feeling. A simple card like this and I think: There are good people left in the world. I think: If Colin wants to go off with another woman, then he can go off with another woman. He doesn’t deserve me. I will go off with another man. I will find a better man than he could ever be. I’ve proven how much I can love someone. I am prepared to kill to prove it. That’s how much I can love. Jealousy is proof of love.’

She began to cry. She covered her face with her right, gauntleted hand. Her fingertips were especially red and swollen. She must have done some violence to them at Donna’s.

‘Bastard,’ she said. ‘What a bastard you are. That’s what you’ve made me do, want to kill someone and humiliate myself by admitting to your face it was proof of my love. I bet you listen to me say it and deep in you it gives you pleasure that a woman would fight for you. Bastard.’

‘I don’t take pleasure.’

Tilda looked up at me.

‘I do not take pleasure. I promise.’

But here’s one final Swahili. There was pleasure. To be worth killing for is the supreme vanity. It places value on your life. And in having that pleasure I felt affection for Tilda. I didn’t kid myself that it was more than affection. It wasn’t the same as love. But seeing her reduced to a pathetic state was to see the power I had over her. To be the cause of her misery shamed me, yes, but left me affectionate and gentle. I wanted to heal her. Me loving her was all that could heal her. I wished I could offer her that. I even closed my eyes and willed myself to. I used the first time I saw her, that London moment. I let the memory of it circulate in my mind. I willed to be transported back there in spirit and have the original raw love sweep into my heart. Yet, when I opened my eyes, I only felt affection.

Tilda could tell I was trying from my clenched eyes and prayer-like rocking. It made her suffer even more that I had to try at all. She craned forward and snaked her arms under mine for embracing.

She said, ‘I can live with you not loving me. I can live that way. I can say to myself love changes and we have to change with it. I can say it’s time for us to be best friends now. We can stay together and be best friends and that’s how we live from now on.’

She kissed my cheek and my forehead, hard. She kissed me on the mouth. I let her, but I didn’t open my mouth. She said, ‘As long as there is no other woman, I can live that way. As long as there’s no other woman involved.’

She pushed me in the chest and swore
Jesus
and
fuck
. I was startled and braced for another push.

‘What am I saying?’ she said. ‘Look at what you’ve done to me. Reduced me to this. I hate you. And I hate her. I hate her so much.’

Tilda stood up. She stared me in the eye. I turned my head. She said, ‘I have to know, when did it begin? Where did it begin? Who made the first move? That Wilkins bitch did, didn’t she? She moved in on you, didn’t she? Pursued you and seduced you with her big fuck-me mouth and her fuck-me body.’

‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘Yes,’ I repeated, meekly, as if I too had been wronged.

‘I knew it. The bitch went after you. I knew it. The man who took those vows with me in that beautiful chapel, he wouldn’t betray me willingly. You were weak and that Watercook slut took advantage.’

I drew breath to say
Don’t call Donna a slut
. But where would that have got me? Tilda was showing me affection back, and pity, cradling my jaw.

She said, ‘Where did it begin?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Bullshit. I don’t believe you.’

‘The races.’

‘The races? Right under my nose at the races?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘What about those two lunches?’

‘What about them?’

‘There was nothing between you there?’

‘No,’ I said, trying to keep the betrayal contained and limit Tilda’s recriminations.

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Meetings. Where did you have your meetings?’

‘What meetings?’

‘Assignations. Where did you meet and fuck?’

‘Tilda, please.’

‘Where?’

‘Please.’

‘Where?’

‘At her place.’

‘With her daughter present?’

‘She was off somewhere.’

Tilda sucked in air. She sneered. ‘Where else did you do it?’

‘Nowhere else.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I promise.’

‘Just at the slut’s house?’

‘Yes.’ I was not going to tell about the forest. The forest was on Tilda’s home ground. The recriminations would not be contained if she knew about the forest. ‘Just at Donna’s place. I promise.’

Tilda poked her finger in front of my chin. ‘Never ever,
ever
utter that slut’s name again. Don’t even
think
that slut’s name again. You can use
slutty bitch
or
Watercook whore
, but don’t dignify her with a proper name.’

‘Jesus, Tilda.’

‘
Slutty bitch
or
Watercook whore
. Not even
her
or
she.
But especially her name. Never ever use her name. Or you can go. For good.’

‘I will go for good, then.’

‘You won’t renounce her? You won’t do it?’

‘Don’t tell me what to do. Don’t order me to say this and not say that.’

‘I
will
tell you what to do. That filthy slut broke my life. I want you to call her a filthy slut.’

‘No.’

‘Do it.’

I turned away.

Tilda yelled, ‘Go, then. Get away from me. Fuck off.’

The nurse came up the ramp, arms at her side like she was marching. ‘Tilda, dear. Shsh, settle.’

Tilda said to her, ‘He won’t say it. He won’t renounce her.’

‘Then he’s a fool,’ said the nurse. ‘Settle, dear. Shsh. Let him go if he wants to go.’

I walked off a few steps. ‘Goodbye, then.’

Tilda began following me but the nurse stood between us and tried to hug her, saying, ‘Let him go, dear. You’re worth twenty of him.’

I said, ‘This is just between us two, thank you.’

The nurse didn’t respond. She hugged Tilda. ‘Worth twenty. That’s the girl.’

I walked towards Tilda. ‘I need a key to get into the house. I want to get some things. More clothes. Things.’

The nurse said, ‘Shall we let him have the key, dear? I say, let him have the key and let him get his things and go. Let’s play his game.’

Tilda nodded.

The nurse unzipped the pocket of her smock and brought out my back door key, the one usually hooked on the Commodore ring. She winked to Tilda: ‘Shall I let him have it? Let’s let him have it.’ She winked again. She handed me the key.

Tilda started sobbing. I said goodbye to her, softly. I stood waiting for a reply but there was none. I expected a goodbye in return, then a beseeching of me not to go. But there was nothing. Which gave me a cut-adrift feeling, as if this was it, the true moment of our end, and I was as far adrift—the loneliest, the most lost—as I could ever be.

I wanted to step back out of the loneliness, back to the familiar. I wanted Tilda to call me back home to it. I said, ‘So where will I leave the key, Tilda? Under the back doorstep?’

The nurse answered. ‘That will do fine.’

‘I was speaking to Tilda.’

The nurse let out a grunt and shook her head. ‘It seems your husband wants to speak to you, dear. Do you want to speak to him more?’

‘I’d like to know where he will go.’

‘She’d like to know where you’ll go.’

‘I heard her. And I don’t know the answer.’

Tilda said, ‘Since I’ll be in here, he can stay at the house a few days.’

‘If I could do that, it would be helpful.’

‘You’re very generous to him, dear,’ the nurse said. ‘If it was me I’d say goodbye for good. Not
stay a few days
. Let him leave and go off and see what he’s given up. Let’s see what he’s worth without you, and Mr Vigourman’s charity. He’ll be back, dear. He’ll be back.’