The Idea of Perfection (20 page)

Rather than showing the proper interest, the woman from the Museum had gone on about
old horrors.
She had talked about
old horrors
as if they were something you might want to have, and bring along for other people to see. Personally, Felicity thought the appropriate place for any kind of
old horror
was in the incinerator.

 

 

There had been a little moment’s
awkwardness
at the end of the meeting. She did not want to remember it, in fact she had already put it behind her. No one would guess that it was what she was thinking about now as she stood in front of the mirror, smoothing the special cream around her eyes.

It had been nothing more than an instant’s
awkwardness,
and no one who had witnessed it knew about the other, larger,
awkwardnesses.
Hugh knew about the larger
awkwardnesses
but did not know about this small
awkwardness.
Only she herself knew about both, and her secret was safe with her.

Frankly, in a little place like Karakarook, you would not think that there could be too much scope for
awkwardness.

The woman from the Museum had been saying that other museums sometimes took photos of all the things in their collection before they stored them away, like a kind of catalogue. Alfred Chang had volunteered to do it.

I’ve got the studio set-up, he said.

Felicity had felt him glance over at her.

It wouldn’t be like a professional, but I’m free. If you’ll trust me.

It seemed to Felicity, although she was not looking, that he was speaking straight at her. She was not looking, but she could feel him, across the table, watching her.

All at once it had seemed a kind of moral dilemma. It would be terrible if the bank manager’s wife did not appear to trust the butcher. And how much worse considering he was Chinese. And in love with her.

Oh, yes! she found herself crying out. I’d love you!

That was wrong.

To do mine, I mean!

She had almost been shouting.

Why had she done that? Jumped in so fast, and called out so loud?

In the mirror her face smiled calmly back at her, a smooth, slightly smiling, unlined face with special cream on its eyelids and nothing to reproach itself for.

That was the first
awkwardness,
she thought. There had been enough
awkwardnesses
to start ticking them off on your fingers, because there had been a second little
awkwardness
not long after the first one.

At the end of the night, when everyone was scraping back their chairs and gathering up their things, she could not find her handbag. She looked around among the clutter on the table and heard herself saying in a high voice, a voice just about to tip over into being the kind of voice that would make everyone stop and look around:
My bag! I’ve lost my handbag!

There was a little silence, and then Mrs Fowler announced it in her carrying voice.

She’s lost her handbag. Mrs Porcelline can’t find her handbag.

Felicity could not help noticing how she made it sound like
hambag.

Everyone scuffled around, looking for it, and then in the end, it turned out it had somehow got all the way over the other side of the table, where Alfred Chang was sitting. He picked up Helen Banks’ antique baby’s shawl, and there it was, her own little tan bag, swinging out from its concealment in the folds of the shawl.

Watching her face in the mirror, she wondered now whether it had really been an accident.

Not to worry, Mrs Porcelline, he had said.

She tried to remember just the kind of smile he had given her.

Here it is.

Then he was coming around the end of the table towards her, holding it out.

Oh! she heard herself exclaim.

It was too loud again.

Oh! Goodness! However did that happen!

She laughed and then she stumbled over the leg of her chair, and somehow there she was, falling against Alfred Chang’s chest. She put out her arms, just a reflex, and for a moment — well, for a moment it was almost as if she was hugging him.

She got herself upright in a blink. Really, in terms of time, it had hardly happened.

The trouble was, then she laughed. It was just to show how it did not matter at all. Just a little laugh to throw it off.

She remembered the laugh. It had not been quite right, the laugh. Mrs Fowler had looked at her, and so had Coralie Henderson, and all at once there was a whiff, like a fart, of something extremely
awkward.

 

 

She had watched the photo of the bank in the incinerator, this morning: it had fallen in face-upwards, and had begun by writhing in the heat like a thing in pain, curling itself almost in two and then suddenly folding out flat again. She had watched as the flames poured all over the brown surface and swallowed up the columns, the men by the buggy, the blur that was probably a dog.

A lot of very smelly black smoke had poured out of the top of the incinerator. Even when she clanged the lid down, it kept gushing out from the chimney. Perhaps the paper was really some form of plastic. Plus, there were chemicals on the surface of the paper, the actual electrons or atoms or whatever it was that had made up the picture. Toxic, probably.

She could see the smoke drifting out over the backyards of Karakarook South. Other people would smell it, but they would not know it was coming from her incinerator, and even if they did, they would not know what she was burning, and once the smoke had gone, there would be nothing left whatsoever.

That was the nice thing about burning. Once things were burned, it was just as if they had never been.

CORALIE HAD GIVEN Harley elaborate instructions about getting out to her sister’s place on the Yuribee road. She had been watching out for the landmarks, and had passed the little creek, and the big red hay shed, but she was starting to think she must have missed the burnt-out car.

In the city it was gauche to be on time, but she had a feeling it might be different in Karakarook.

Just a bit of a barbie,
Coralie had said.
Out at my sister’s place. Just a few people.

The Yuribee road was a homely little thing. Yellow flowers bobbed along the broken edges of the road and the thick stems of thistles burst up through the bitumen. There were no cuttings and no culverts. It was a matter of up around the hills and down the other side. The Datsun laboured up, whined down, swinging out on a sharp corner so the back wheels snatched at gravel.

The landscape was laid on in layers, the distant mountains the airiest of blues, overlaid with the curves of hills, each a darker blue, until the closer ones were almost black with thick bush softening every contour of the land like mould. In the foreground each individual hill had only a remnant cap of bush, and where the slope grew gentle it had been cleared altogether into a band of bleached bare paddock.

At the end of a line of pine trees there was a sagging post-and-rail fence, where a group of cows nosed at the straw-dry grass. One seemed to have given up and was standing pensively staring into the distance, its shadow a small black shape underneath its belly. A cockeyed shed near them seemed to be kneeling sideways into the grass. In the next paddock, all by itself, was a small brick dunny with a pointy roof, like a miniature church.

There it was finally, the burnt-out car, upside down, with a small tree growing through the driver’s window. She had to
go past that.
Then there would be a sharp bend, and she had to
go past that,
and she had to go past the shed and yards, but not far, because when she got to the gate and grid, she had to turn in there.

She felt a little clutch of fright, getting out of the car to undo the gate. It had been like this for a long time now. There was that sense of all the faces turning towards her.
Oh, it’s Harley.
In that moment, when she could feel them all visualising what had happened with Philip, she had to gather her personality around her like a cloak. It was for protection, but she knew it could look like bad temper.

The first gate was held closed with a chain-and-pin arrangement, but the pin had twisted in the wood of the post and it took her a moment to work out how to twist it back around so you could lift the chain over it. Some sheep nearby raised their heads and watched her suspiciously. She found she was over-acting innocence.
Just here for a barbie,
she was explaining in her imagination.
They’re expecting me.
As she drove through the gate and got out again to close it behind her, the sheep tossed their heads in fright and scattered away with their bandy back legs looking silly. From behind an egg-like boulder that had been cracked in half by a tree erupting out of it, she could hear them going
Baa! Baaaaah! Ba-ah!
in an indignant way.

Each of Coralie’s sister’s gates was kept closed by a different arrangement of chain and loops, some from the shop and some home-made out of fencing-wire. Coralie had told her there were three of them, not counting the first one, but she had lost count when she came over a rise and saw the house in front of her.

From a distance, as she drove up the last stretch of pot-holed track past the last gate, feeling all her loose flesh jiggle and jolt, Coralie’s sister’s
place
reminded her of Gran and Grandfather’s
place.
There was the same bald paddock in front of the house, the same bush-covered hill behind it, the same kind of big black pine tree at the side. There was even an old bulbous-nosed truck, its red paint turned to pink powder, standing up to its doors in weeds, that was just like Grandfather’s old Dodge.

She got out of the car, hearing how loud the door-slam was in the midday silence, and took a deep breath of the sweet straw-scented air.

She wished she had some other Harley she could offer them.

But now Coralie was coming out smiling from the verandah, where she must have been waiting for her. From the back of the house she could hear voices, splashing, children shrieking.

Good on you, pet, Coralie said. Glad you could come.

From the sound of it, she had thought Harley might not come, and that was clever of her, because for a while it had been true.
An attack of gastric,
she had planned.
What a shame.
At the last minute, though, she thought of all the complications
an attack of gastric
would cause. Coralie would come to the house, and want to look after her. She would have to pretend to be sick, then pretend to recover, but not too quickly.

In the end, it was probably easier to face
just a few people.

She followed Coralie around the side path past the water tank and along beside the chook-yard. The chooks’ water bowl was a cracked pink bathroom hand-basin with the plug in, tilting on the ground. Stretched out on the wire with plastic clothes pegs, a fox-skin had shrivelled and cracked in the sun.

She felt her mouth jerk into a spasm of premature smile, as if practising, and made it stop. It might look funny to come around the corner with a big smile already stuck on.

She need not have worried, because just as they came into the backyard, someone threw a cupful of something at the barbecue and orange flame erupted with a
whump.
Everyone jumped back.
Steady on, Don,
someone shrilled.
Call the Brigade, quick!
someone else called, and a man’s voice shouted,
Not to worry, love
,
we’re all here,
so they were all laughing and only half paying attention when she and Coralie joined them.

There was the barbecue with the men around it poking at the cooking meat, and a big table in the shade under a tree, the food all covered with little domes of fly-wire, and a square of bright blue swimming-pool where children were jumping in, splashing up water that was like chips of glass in the sun.

Coralie’s sister Donna was just like Coralie, only without the glasses, and her hair was dyed red instead of black. She fussed around Harley, getting her a drink, getting her a little biscuit with cheese on it. Then she and Coralie stood side by side, smiling at her, as if at handiwork they were proud of.

A big man who had been methodically splitting wood for the barbecue put his axe down and wiped his hands on his blue singlet so he could shake hands.

My husband Henry, Coralie said, rather formally, but then she laughed.

Mind you, nobody calls him that.

Call me Chook, he said. Everyone does.

In fact, Harley thought, he did look a bit like an old boiler, stringy in the singlet. It was the kind of dangerous, or at least nasty, thought she had hoped she might be able to avoid,
unwinding
in Karakarook, the kind of thought that belonged to the
old
side of her
leaf.

To make up for it, she tried to be especially friendly.

You’re in the Heritage Committee too, then? she asked, but she could see straight away that was wrong. Coralie and Chook exchanged a glance.

Not exactly, Coralie said.

Not on your life, he said at the same moment.

It’s a bit of a sore point, Donna explained unnecessarily. As a matter of fact.

In the little silence, the man who had brought the old bushranger shirt to the meeting came up.

Mr Cutcliffe, you remember? Coralie said.

Mr Cutcliffe sat Harley down on a stool he had brought for the purpose, and sat on another himself, and started to tell her a lot of things about the bushrangers.
Wonderful,
she kept saying.
Goodness.

Chook went back to splitting kindling with small deft strokes of his axe, and Coralie and Donna went over to the food table to do things with plates.
Really?
Harley said.
Fancy that.