The Time We Have Taken (12 page)

F
or many years he has been one of those people who are only ever known by their surnames. Mulligan. He has other names but nobody ever uses them. Not Michael, nor Bunny Rabbit nor Pussy Cat. Mulligan — like Rembrandt — says it all. And so, on this overcast Friday morning, Mulligan gazes upon the wall with bright, hungry eyes. He has sought such a wall all his life. He has seen such walls during his travels and his studies in foreign countries, but they were never
his
. A wall such as this, he knows only too well, comes along once in a lifetime. It is high and wide and dominates the entire foyer of the town hall. Once done, he knows, his name will live as long as
the wall itself and this wall looks like it’s not going anywhere in a hurry. It’s only just come into the world.

Mulligan is in his early thirties, not old, but old enough to feel immortality slipping away from him. Besides, he has a pact with himself that if he doesn’t make his mark by the time he’s thirty-three he will give up and accept the slow suicide of the public service or teaching. Or, he just might hasten the whole process and do himself in altogether on the spot. Thirty-third birthday. He’s not sure. He has been at it — painting, that is — for most of his life and as he stares up at the vast expanse of wall before him he suspects that this is what the labour was all for. This is where the study and the sheer slog of learning his craft were leading all along. The wall was waiting for him. And there is an unmistakable sense of the twain converging, wall and man, meeting for the first time as they were always destined to. For this is
his
wall, and if it hasn’t got his name written all over it, it soon will.

He paces back and forth across the foyer, black beard shining, black hair flopping over his forehead, intense, glinting eyes that, at times such as these, bear a striking resemblance to a Rasputin who never quite found his patron — a resemblance that has been commented on before. He did, in fact, train to be a Catholic priest when he was too young to know
any better, and the significance of choosing his thirty-third birthday as his year of reckoning has not escaped him. He continues pacing about, ignoring the committee members gathered about him, as he contemplates just what he will do with this gift of a wall, this wall that has come to him and was always meant to.

The committee, in turn, eyes him with a mixture of wariness and intrigue, not quite sure of what it is that they are letting into their midst, but the two priests recognise in this man the religious zeal that fired their youthful ambitions, and Mrs Webster recognises the look. She had seen it in Webster from the first, this
will
that seeks to impress itself on the world, and she sees it in this young painter, now gazing up in wonder at the wall.

When he is gone and they all confer, after viewing his folio, complete with photographs of his previous works, they all agree that there is indeed something curious about him but it wouldn’t be the first time a curious character got a council contract. Besides, that is artists. That is their way. They can be a funny bunch. But no funnier than others. Just as long as he can do the job, and the evidence is that he can.

T
hat night Mulligan and the whole house (as they often do on Friday nights) drink in the pub opposite. It is a simple pub owned by an Italian family, and on most nights, towards closing time, the older Italian men at the bar, who drink little and talk a lot, sing like a heavenly choir and warm the pub and everybody inside. They have not yet begun to sing. Mulligan is loud, talkative and expansive. He has found his wall. Michael is silent. He has just lost his Madeleine (driven away alone in a taxi that was meant for two), the first of the many times that he will lose her before losing her altogether. Pussy Cat and Bunny Rabbit are restless at the end of the table at which they all sit.

Rita, vaguely aware of that Friday-night feeling out
there in the streets and houses of the suburb, puts her feet up on the coffee table in the lounge room and sips wine while eyeing the empty rooms of the house and listening to the television. Mrs Webster, her chosen whisky in hand, stands at the drawing-room window dwelling on the corner of the gardens where Webster kept his one trifling infidelity, the keys to the newly installed resident in her dress pocket. Peter van Rijn, having stayed back late, shuts the door of his shop, while the lights of the Chinese take-away burn brightly and the evening bells of St Matthew’s roll softly over the dark streets of Centenary Suburb. Travelling south, on the last part of the long train journey down to where her parents and sister live by the sea, Madeleine sits in an empty carriage staring at her reflection in the window beside her, sad to acknowledge that she is happy being alone tonight, while, a thousand miles to the north of her, Vic sits in his usual chair in the Twin Towns Services Club and looks out through the wide windows of the club, onto the sprinkled stardust of the town’s lights, his hand wrapped round one of the evening’s many beers.

Lives cross and uncross, meet, merge or go singly through this Friday night. And those, like Pussy Cat and Bunny Rabbit, who sit restlessly beside each other, are, in some part of their wandering minds, preparing themselves for those Friday nights that will be spent separately. While those, like Michael and
Madeleine, who crossed and parted on the one night, gaze from separate windows into the blackness and wonder just how many times there are left for their lives to cross and part before parting forever.

Everybody, looking forward or looking back, on this late-autumn Friday night, the last of the sodden leaves trampled into the footpaths outside, the low clouds of winter already settling in for the season. Everybody, either looking back to a not-so-distant time when the adventures of life were new and fresh enough to sustain storybook identities, or, like Madeleine, looking forward to when ‘real’ life can begin, or those like Mrs Webster and Rita, hovering over that blurred line that separates what was from what might be. Needing only the slightest of nudges to cross over. But not tonight. Tonight everybody takes a deep breath. It’s Friday evening. The harking back, the straining forward, can stop for a few hours and everybody can give themselves over to the bright face of television, lose themselves in the noise of crowded places or in chosen solitariness.

Mulligan floats over it all, buoyed by the day. Mulligan doesn’t need people. He doesn’t need the past or the future. Mulligan has his wall, and this wall of his isn’t going anywhere in a hurry. He calls to the table for more beers. And it is then that they start up, the older Italian men at the bar who drink little and talk a lot. One moment they are ordinary drinkers at a bar, changed out of their tradesmen’s
overalls and dressed in their Friday best, and the next they are a heavenly choir and the whole pub lifts with their voices.

And all the time, the living suburb is constantly evolving, through night and day, weekend and working week, sunshine and rain, ever forward, ever onward, until that perfect day arrives, surely not too far away, when the straight line of History can lie down in its perfect summer gardens and pronounce its job done.

I
t begins slowly and quietly. A low moan, followed by ripples of laughter. But it is clearly the beginning of something. Of some secret ritual, inadvertently made public. Without knowing any more, without being told anything and without speaking, Michael and Madeleine (both sitting on Michael’s bed) know that this is the beginning of the thing. And soon they will hear the sound of two people at it.

It is late in the afternoon and clearly Pussy Cat and Bunny Rabbit think they have the house to themselves. Michael and Madeleine heard them tramping up the stairs, push open the door, then
neglect to close it. And, even though Michael’s door is closed, the sound travels easily from one room to another when doors are left open. First there is the sound of heavy objects (shoes, possibly) hitting the floor, then the first of the low, quiet moans and both Michael and Madeleine know it is just starting.

And, although they have done nothing but be in Michael’s room at this particular hour (and not be noticed), they are now compromised. Two people have begun to copulate in the room opposite, while two people sit on a bed with no choice — seemingly — but to sit, listen and wait for an opportunity to leave discreetly. And Michael knows the noise will grow louder because he has heard them copulate before. That and because of the structure of the house itself. It is a Victorian terrace and upstairs there are three rooms: a large balcony room facing the street, which is Michael’s, another on the side of the stairs (in which Mulligan stores his paints and materials) and another facing the back yard. This last room is the room of Pussy Cat and Bunny Rabbit. Its door faces the stairwell, and when the house is quiet, as it is this afternoon (Mulligan is with his wall), the stairwell amplifies all the sounds that come from their room. With the door open, every movement, every utterance, every moan, echoes and swells in the open air of the stairwell. And, along with these
sounds, the distinctive scent of tobacco and hash flows into the house.

And although the moans and laughter begin quietly, they soon grow in intensity and volume. Michael and Madeleine are caught. They could, it is true, rise quickly and leave the house, whistling on the stairs and in the hallway to announce the nonchalance of their departure. Or Michael could simply close Pussy Cat and Bunny Rabbit’s door, confident they would scarcely notice or care. Or, they can simply wait for it all to be over. Without speaking, they choose the last of the options and prepare to sit it out. It is a decision that automatically compromises them, as though they have chosen to remain near, chosen to listen to these sounds that are growing louder and more insistent by the minute.

And soon it seems to be all around them, as though the two lovers are right there in front of Michael and Madeleine and not in the room opposite them. The grunts of effort and labour and the squeals of pleasure mingle and pour through the open doorway into the ears of Michael and Madeleine. And as much as they never wanted to be eavesdroppers, they are now. Each drawn irresistibly, if guiltily, to the sounds that tell them that a process older than words, older than laughter, is now taking place. And they can’t help but listen. Its elemental simplicity demands their attention, and so they sit in
silence, an almost childlike fascination written on their faces while the mystery dance unfolds.

Michael is staring out the window, Madeleine at the floor. And although they try to avoid each other’s eyes, they can’t. And the look in Madeleine’s eyes (that mixture of the troubled and fascinated, in spite of everything) is surely mirrored in his. Had they been watching Pussy Cat and Bunny Rabbit going at it in their room, had they been sitting beside them observing the spectacle, it could not have been a more awkward matter. For that mixture of the troubled and fascinated has been made all the more intense for not having been witnessed but imagined. They both avert their eyes from each other, then find other things to look at in the room. And, as they do, there is a sudden collapse of sound, a sense of bodies flopping in the dying afternoon light, and of the thing being done.

In the silence that follows, it seems to Michael and Madeleine that Pussy Cat and Bunny Rabbit have fallen into instant sleep, expired or even died. So complete is the silence. And, at last, after having been trapped in the room for what feels like the better part of the afternoon, they prepare to leave.

‘Oh fuck, the door!’ Pussy Cat’s voice is so loud there is, once again, the feeling that she may as well be in the room with them.

‘Nobody’s in.’

‘Oh, what the fuck. Who cares, anyway?’ Pussy Cat, who must have jumped up in alarm, now falls backwards, sending tremors through the old bed. ‘Be good for them.’

‘Who?’

‘Them.’ And Michael and Madeleine can imagine Pussy Cat’s soft, white paw pointing in their direction. ‘What do you suppose they do?’

‘I suppose they don’t do anything.’

‘I don’t believe that. I can’t believe they don’t find ways of, well…letting nature take its course.’

‘Never. She’s a good Catholic girl.’

‘So was Heloise.’

‘She was a sinning Catholic. They’re different.’

Pussy Cat bubbles with laughter as Madeleine breathes in deeply and exhales sharply.

‘Pity,’ Bunny Rabbit goes on. ‘Bit of a waste. I rather fancy her, actually.’

There is a sudden short silence.

‘You what?’ Pussy Cat pounces, nothing playful in her tone.

Michael and Madeleine know that menace is in the air. Its presence is confirmed with the strange hiss of language that follows.

‘Don’t you
ever
fancy anybody else.’

‘Calm down.’

But Pussy Cat won’t be calmed.

‘You ever,
ever
go near anybody else and I swear I’ll kill myself. I might even kill you.’

It is all delivered in a loud, hoarse whisper.

‘Well,’ and there is a fragile flippancy to Bunny Rabbit’s voice. He is not someone to be frightened easily but he is now. ‘Well,’ he goes on, ‘if you’re going to kill both of us, don’t forget to kill me first.’

There is a sudden explosion of shrill laughter, their door slams, and the whole house trembles and shakes with the impact. And then comes the muffled sound of their bed swaying and squeaking as Pussy Cat and Bunny Rabbit return to what they do best.

Michael and Madeleine rise, flee the room, and carefully negotiate the carpet-covered stairs, breathing easily once out on the footpath. They walk quickly back towards the hospital.

‘Sorry.’

‘What for?’ Madeleine says, not looking round at him.

‘That’s just it. I’m not sure.’

It is then that she turns upon him.

‘Then don’t say sorry till you know why.’

But she has no sooner said it than she reaches out for his hand. Behind them, up in their room, Pussy Cat and Bunny Rabbit have collapsed into sleep, a long, late-afternoon doze that will go into the evening and leave Pussy Cat irritable and touchy upon waking. And the more her Bunny Rabbit tries
to smooth her fur, the more she will arch. And, later that night, when they are drinking and laughing with friends in the pub across the street where the Italian men sing each night like a heavenly choir, she will look for her Bunny Rabbit and find him staring out the window.