The Near Miss (7 page)

‘He looks like a bit of risky business to me!' Eddy blustered. ‘With that . . . earring.' He sounded stiff and old-mannish to himself, and he braced for a smirk from this woman, some mockery. But there was none.

‘You're right.' Melody picked a twig and snapped it carefully in half. ‘Van is a risk-taker. He rides a motorbike. He lives a bit more . . . well . . . But he's never crashed that bike that I know of. She'll be safe.'

Eddy wished she'd go inside and leave him alone. He burned with indignant shame, to be left with these people, to have his doubts about Romy peeled open so he was exposed, just the rotten core of his needy, suspicious love on show.

He sat outside alone, for how long, he did not know. He checked the ABC news on his phone for Melbourne road accidents. He could hear the others talking inside. The children were toasting marshmallows. The night that had been about to end had somehow found a second wind on the back of his misery. Melody popped her head out again. ‘Of course it's not
impossible
they could have had an accident,' she speculated. ‘Maybe we
should
call the police.'

‘They haven't,' he blurted, leaning on the letterbox pillar and biting his tongue. Unknown to the others, he had called Romy's mobile. The dial tone had been interrupted by laughter at the other end; Romy's giggles, and a male murmur, before the unmistakable sound of someone fumbling to press the hang-up button. Eddy had held the disconnected line to his ear for a full minute. That had been not been the sound of a woman held hostage, or injured on the side of the road. And yet, strangely, it was a sound that made his heart dive into freefall.

What had Romy said recently?
This year will be my year of trying new things.

‘Oh! You got onto her, then?'

‘No.' He put the phone back into his pocket. ‘Well, I called her but there was no answer. But I just know . . . that she's alright.' His gloom must be revealing it all. Such a despondent tone. ‘I know she's not dead.'

‘I guess you know these things. When you're close. As a couple. In a relationship.'

‘We're very close.'

‘You can see that.'

‘We're practically engaged.'

‘Oh, that's great!'

He took out the ring box and opened it. ‘Argyle diamond.'

‘Oh!' Melody took a step back and fanned herself. ‘
Shit
. Was that . . .' She gestured, dismayed, out at the night and back at Eddy. ‘Were you going to . . . tonight . . .?'

‘I still am. I hope.'

‘Absolutely! Absolutely! You know I think we should call the police . . .'

‘I thought you were worried about getting the police involved.' Eddy hadn't asked why this was so. Drugs, rape, murder, general hoondom, it went without saying just to look at the man. If Romy wanted to try new things, she had certainly found something new.

‘I was. But you know what? I think it's more important we get your girlfriend back.' Melody narrowed her eyes. ‘Van's a big boy.'

Eddy kicked some leaves into a pile, fear stabbing his heart. He dialed again, but the phone had been switched off.

‘Is your little boy asleep?'

Melody shook her head. ‘Not yet. Will you come back in? It's nice by the fire.' She touched his arm lightly and walked inside the open front door, raising her hand again as if she had
planted a line on him with her touch, and was now reeling him in.

Eddy cast one more despairing look into the darkness, but the line on his arm tugged him authoritatively. He reluctantly went back inside.

Years later Melody would wonder what might have happened had Romy and Eddy gone tidily home to their lives. The dinner party probably would have ended with them all saying goodbye at the earliest polite point. Some lives might not have ended in the way they did. Others might not have begun at all. Certainly she would not have bothered seeing Grace again, outside kindergarten. Even if Eddy had left for home after Romy left with Van, things might have been different. But he did not. He let himself be led back inside in front of the fire, and once there he began to weep. Horrible, cough-like sobs, water spraying from his face. Grace and Melody exchanged looks of alarm. Somehow the brittle shell of the whole night cracked and peeled off, and beneath it was a gentler world, with more of their real selves in it. They sat very late by the funny little woodburner with its clover-leaf wrought-iron door, roasting toast and then lighting clove cigarettes on glowing embers. Eddy had his first ever cigarette and coughed violently, and it sounded like he might start crying again, until Tom poured him a straight scotch and he laughed bitterly instead. Grace told them stories about her sadistic boss and did an imitation to show how like an ape she was, and she was actually quite funny. Tom told a story about having to take Lotte into a board meeting at work where he gave a presentation with her winding around his legs until she interrupted his PowerPoint display by tipping lemonade into the $2000 projector. Melody told them about Tuntable Falls, about the enchanted blue-moon parties and the all-night dancing, the strange and marvelous faces and hair sculptures and clothes concocted of leaves and vines and curtain scraps. About the mad people who had eaten too many magic mushrooms, and the ultramarine lobsters in the Tuntable
Creek, and the teenagers fleeing their greying, wrinkly, rainbow-clad parents for Sydney as soon as they were old enough, to become merchant bankers and real estate brokers, and to run internet startups.

Finally they were all talked out and dawn birds chattered outside. They stared into the dying fire. Romy and Van had not returned. The children slept on the floor, a blanket tossed over them, facing each other with lips pursed as if they shared secrets with each even, sleeping breath.

Eddy looked at his watch. ‘Well,' he said, and climbed to his feet. ‘I should go.'

‘Maybe you'll find her at home.' Melody cupped Skipper's cheek in her hand.

‘Maybe. Can I give you a lift?' he said.

‘There's sleeping bags, you can crash here.' Tom spoke sleepily. Melody slipped under the blankets which covered Skip, and laid her head behind his on the pillow. Grace rested sleepily on Tom's shoulder, but hastily opened her eyes and climbed to her feet. ‘Bye! Thanks for coming! It's been so great. Really. So much better than I . . .'

Tom clapped Eddy on the shoulder. ‘Give us a call. Keep us posted. We want to know if she comes back.'

‘
When
she comes back,' said Grace.

Thin branches scratched the dark glass; pale twig fingers flashed in and out of sight. Drops trembled their way down the pane. A paperback sat on his lap, lit by lamplight. A comfortable home, his girlfriend had fled. Where was she on this rainy, rainy night?

He sighed, closed his book and dialed his parents' number.

‘What's it been now, over a week? That girl was always going to go and join the circus,' his father growled.

‘That's not fair, Dad. Romy never got over losing her parents.'

‘We all lose our parents.'

‘She was young.'

‘She was an adult!' snapped his father. ‘I was only a kid when we lost
our
parents.' A farmhouse fire, an older brother who drove the siblings away from the inferno that their parents stayed to fight, and to die in. Eddy could be surprised anew each time he remembered it, his father orphaned and small.

‘You don't really know her the way I do.'

His father choked, as if on something unspeakable, and continued. ‘Well, I'm sorry. But you'll meet someone else—'

‘Don't say that! I don't want to meet someone else. And that's not the point. I'm worried about her. I want to know she's safe. And not . . . in trouble.' Safety. Risk. Loss. A farmhouse in flame while a truck full of children bumped away to the rest of their parentless lives. How much of his own life as a risk analyst, a hedger of disaster, had been influenced by that image passed down by his father.

‘Jesus, Eddy, of course she's in trouble. She's been in trouble since the moment you've met
her. That's the only place she ever wanted to be . . .' There were murmurs away from the phone; Merle's faint protests. Ray returned, grumbling. ‘Well, that's just my opinion. No one wants to hear the truth these days.'

Eddy watched his reflection, passive in the rainy window. His father was wrong; Eddy did want to hear the truth. If he'd wanted soft-edged comfort, soothing nothings, he would have asked for his mother. But it was his gruff, angry father he needed now. If he could argue with his dad, he might have a hope of convincing himself. ‘Should I call the police again?'

‘Sure. Tell them to look out for a bloody vegetarian university drop-out who thinks she should be an actress. They can head up to Brunswick Street and bring you back a truckload of them.'

‘Dad.'

‘Joking.'

‘Not very funny.'

‘Well, you wait 'til you have a kid and you work like a dog to give him every opportunity, to raise him right, and then some hussy comes along and wipes her boots on him.'

‘She didn't!' Eddy stared at the phone. What an awful image. And what was Romy doing for cash? His own wallet was unnaturally full.

‘Well, she didn't bother to say goodbye before she pissed off.'

‘Maybe she's been kidnapped.'

‘Then ring the police.'

He sighed. ‘Yeah. Maybe. Gotta go, Dad.' Examination of Romy's wardrobe and toiletries after the dinner revealed that she had probably stopped by and packed a small bag. He would not share this with his father, who would be so enraged on his behalf that Eddy would be sapped of his
own indignation.

‘Have you eaten? Why don't you come over here for dinner?' Behind the abrupt tone, Eddy could hear his father's worry, and his mother's murmuring
tell him . . . but . . . don't say that
in the background.

‘I'm fine. See you.'

He sat and watched the window some more. He had been Romy's hero, her saviour. But saving her from what? Her own vulnerability, her orphaned loneliness, even while he uncomfortably sensed a steely underside to her, a lack of compassion. ‘Damaged people are dangerous — they know they will survive,' she had quoted to him. He never believed her, always wondered whether a steady-enough love would stop the bouts of sobbing, the neediness, the despair. Had hoped his constantly applied warmth and kindness could thaw her occasional coldness. She was such a strange mix. She could maintain a silent rage over something as small as running out of coconut milk for a week, exhibiting an icy disdain worthy of a nineteenth-century headmistress. And then he could find her in the garden under the moon, singing in the dew, eating a whole box of ice cream. An artistic temperament, without the art.

Eddy went to bed, got up in the morning, made a tea and returned to his window. He didn't bother getting out of his pyjamas. He had spent the past ten days in them, and nothing had been lost. The world had kept turning. Outside, now, his neighbour walked briskly east along the street, his tie flapping over the shoulder of his white business shirt as if waving Eddy farewell. The man and his tie were heading off to catch the 8.08 train from Meadowview Station, express from Clifton Hill to Jolimont. Eddy double-checked his watch: no doubt about that, the man was definitely aiming for the 8.08. It was 8.01 now and it was about an eight-minute walk to the station. He, personally,
would have left nine minutes for the walk, and always did, but he knew that his neighbour, the father of a baby and a toddler, was a man who arrived running and breathless at the station platform each morning, often with the stain of creamy baby-sick on his left suit shoulder, sometimes too late and only seen looking desperate on the wrong side of the window as the train pulled away. Why don't you leave two minutes earlier, he felt like suggesting to the man: George was his name. Your whole life might change. And yet George was married with children, an achievement, it now appeared, beyond Eddy. If
you
had only stayed two minutes later each day, George might say back to Eddy, if you had only lavished those milligrams of extra attention, if you had only sometimes missed a train, if you had made more mistakes, if you had been more fun, and less
you . . .

Eddy studied branches of trees. Surprising, the little things that changed from day to day, if you spent long enough just sitting, and looking. This was what it must be like to be old. Maybe he was old. He watched a black bird with a long black beak, and a more delicate grey one with yellow wattles under a yellow beak. After a long pause, where his mind went pleasantly blank, the school children started wandering past, with backpacks that yawned open like clowns' mouths, holding mothers' hands and chattering up to the sky where their mothers' ears were:
and then we . . . and then she . . . what's your favourite . . . but why
? The child traffic dwindled away and there was the faintest chime of a bell. Eddy had rarely, in all his years of living in this house with Romy, heard the local school bell. After another pause the mothers reappeared, walking past on their way home, some in happy clumps, swinging bags and laughing and waving; others grimly tapping on iPhones while they half-walked, half-ran. Things to do. Nobody busier than a working mother, they all knew that. Pillar of the nation. Unlike him, sitting there in his pyjamas, in a daze.

He roused himself. Maybe Romy's departure was not a spontaneous thing; maybe it had
been coming for weeks, and he, obsessed with getting the right ring and making the right proposal, had missed the signs. Eddy carefully sent his mind scurrying back through the weekend before The Dinner, the last weekend he had spent with Romy before her dramatic departure.

It had been a long weekend, a public holiday. They had gone to the country, a place called Ten Mile, with Romy's friends. Eddy had been leaning back, quietly looking at the stars, before his folding chair broke. The sky, as he leaned back and gazed, seemed more like a dome than an infinite space, so closely massed were the stars. You forgot about stars, living in the city, or you started to believe those paltry few sparkles spotted through the night-time smog, around the tops of chimneys and at the tops of alleyways, were all there was. Then you came out to Ten Mile, and you remembered. He had carried the diamond in his pocket, as if he had plucked one of those blossoms from the night sky and mounted it on a ring, ready to present to his girl. He remembered hearing something about Mars being visible that night, a big red star, apparently, and he leaned back a little further to look for it. The beauty of the night sky, the roaring fire, the guitar, the singing of Romy and her friends, the ring in his pocket, all combined in a moment of quiet joy. Then he leaned too far back and the chair broke.

There were hoots, screams of laughter, wild applause, cries of ‘Taxi!' He laughed along with the crowd, hoping they thought he was drunk. Not likely, they knew him too well. He could sit on a single can all night, and surreptitiously pour out the remains behind a tree at the end. ‘Do it again, Eddy!' He clowned around for a while, dragging himself to his feet with a piece of chair in either hand, pretending to puzzle over fitting them back together, like a stupid giant. He mocked himself for the requisite amount of time until their attention waned and he could escape into the darkness. At last the singing started up again and he felt his way to the trampoline at the end of the garden, rubbing his arse. Ow. That really hurt.

‘Are you alright?' Mary, Andy's wife, lay stretched on the trampoline staring up at the stars.

‘My chair broke.'

‘I heard. You wouldn't want sympathy from that lot, would you?'

‘Landed right on my coccyx.'

‘Ouch. Here.' She rolled onto her side, leaving him room, and he crawled gingerly onto the screen, feeling the rolling motion of the web that held he and Mary, and the give of the steel springs. Her eyes gleamed in the darkness. ‘Can I do anything?'

‘No thanks.'

‘Rub your coccyx?' Was she teasing? He couldn't tell. Surely not Mary, too; he spent enough time feeling like the rest of these guys were privately laughing at him.

‘Uh, no thanks.'

‘Get some ice?'

‘No, no.' Maybe she was actually caring, but he wanted nothing that would draw the mob's attention again. ‘God, they're so pissed.' Romy's voice wailed high above the others, singing a Michelle Shocked song. The guitars played fast and wild, catching the songs' shapes rather than the notes.

‘Oh, they're pathetic.' Mary waved her hand, its outline blocking out the stars. ‘They get together down here and they regress to sixteen years old again. I'll never get Andy back to the motel tonight. He'll be passed out around the fire.'

‘Romy's the same. She always comes home from here so restless and grumpy.' How had he forgotten this about Ten Mile? Why on earth had he thought that this might be a good place to propose? It was the worst place in the world. Or no, he could have taken her back to London and
out the front of the theatre where she had narrowly missed making her acting debut, robbed by her parents' death. That would possibly be a worse place.

‘I know. How long does it take to get sixteen out of your system? I couldn't wait to get out of my teens. Seems like Andy never wanted to leave.'

‘Maybe they just had a better time than us.' Romy's friends had bonded in high school, and taken to hitchhiking down here every available weekend to camp. It was a circle knit close with histories of drunken adventures in the hills and valleys now around them; unusual in a time when most of their peers were seeing out their adolescence in the local shopping mall. One member had bought an old farmhouse and moved down here to raise a family, drawing back all the old gang again in a regular festival of nostalgia. Some of these adults had children of their own now, and these offspring were doing laps around the farmhouse, a mad tribe brandishing light sabers and running through stars, falling in long grass, city kids dizzy with so much space and freedom. From the trampoline, Eddy could hear shrieks and see gashes of torchlight bumping through the night.

Mary said: ‘Do you think you and Romy might have kids?'

‘I hope so.' He felt in his pocket for the velvet-coated box holding the ring. ‘My mother would love a grandchild.'

There was a pause from Mary at this, something that went unsaid. Then she spoke. ‘Romy's so lucky to have you.'

‘Why, cos I'm a bloke who wants a kid?'

‘Cos you're a bloke who thinks about his mum, and about what she wants.'

He exhaled, a little indignant, not sure whether to be flattered or feel silly. ‘Right.'

‘Hope my girls find men like you.'

‘Mary! I'm not that good.'

‘Yes, you are. You're better.'

Blushing in the dark, he squeezed the ring box tight; imagined losing it, in this wilderness of long grass and fruit trees; a pastoral island barely marked out by wire in a sea of paddock. You might never see it again; a month's salary trampled into the cow dung.\

‘Getting cold. Might head back.'

He returned to the fire and stood close to Romy. She wore a jacket of synthetic fur and she slipped her arm through his.

‘Where have you been?'

‘On the trampoline.'

‘Ah.'

‘Want to go for a walk? Look at the stars?' He rolled the velvet box around the tips of his fingers, out of sight.