Best Australian Short Stories (38 page)

“It’s certainly going to be a fascinating evening,” she said, as soon as he had left them and they had stepped, discreetly, across the threshold and out on to the porch, a little distance away from the off ending door.

“How could I know he’d ring? Or even come to Australia for that matter? He was kind to me once, though I suppose he was under orders from Krisnam, who couldn’t come himself.”

He remembered, again, the airport, and Rao bobbing about playing the host. He’d certainly made things easy—got drinks, though warm, made porters and stewards and airport officials scurry round and be helpful too. He’d even changed some of his Indian currency, and, finally, loaded him with rather garish-looking magazines to read on the plane.

“I can’t think how you ever came to give him your address at all.”

“How could I know he’d ever turn up here?” he repeated, but she only looked at him, coldly, and then up at the stars. She would never give her address to anyone, anywhere in the world, she did not wish to meet again.

“You’d better get the car,” she said, and tapped her long pointed shoe lightly on the tiles.

The car was very large and quite black. Rao felt gay now, with relief, and told them in some detail of his recent trip—for this
was the only thing they seemed to be interested in—dwelling on the food and the comfort of the aeroplane.

“They had every single thing in that aeroplane,” he said. “Every old thing.” He caught a waft of Marie’s perfume and tried to find the knob for winding down the window.

He was not an easy man to entertain, and, heaven knew, they were used to entertaining all sorts of people, Marie thought, as she emerged from the powder room and found them waiting for her. Not even handsome, she mused bitterly, as she followed the waiter down the avenue of tables. She nodded her head slightly, on its long stalk of neck, at several acquaintances, furious with Harry that he’d chosen this place to have dinner with an Indian who so obviously was not a prince.

Ordering the meal was an ordeal they all wanted to forget as quickly as possible. Rao had never seen such large menus—whilst they were reading them they became quite isolated from each other, like people suddenly retiring into monasteries. And he did not understand French, so that they had to explain it to him, because of course he must know what every single thing was, in case he missed something he wanted to try. In the end he ordered plain roast chicken. Marie found this particularly irritating. Harry ordered some more martinis and orange juice while they were waiting.

“And how long have you been in Australia?” Marie asked, when the drinks arrived. She could hardly have cared less about the reply, which didn’t answer her question.

“I have seen a number of beautiful places. Although I have only visited this State. Australia is a fine place. We all love Australia, in my country.”

“Really?” said Harry.

“Yes, yes. We love the U.K. best, naturally. But next to the U.K. we love your country. And we love your Mr Casey like any old thing.” He pronounced the name Casee, for almost every single syllable he uttered bore the wrong stress.

“Really?” Harry said again; and Marie said, “And what exactly are you doing here, Mr Rao?”

“I am here to study deckniks,” he replied, and, seeing her questioning eyebrows, repeated, “Deckniks. I am a decknician.”

“Deckniks?” she asked.

“Yes, yes. I have come here for the purpose of studying deckniks. My firm is a management decknik firm. Deckniks…”

“Oh,” she said. “Yes. Deckniks. How interesting.” For she thought she was a lady to the tips of her pointed shoes, which she never had to have heeled.

When the food arrived there was more trouble. Several waiters were needed to bring it, and some of them wheeled little trolleys with things cooking on them. It looked like a bazaar, but the smell was different. He tried to help himself, but the condescending waiter pushed his hands aside, without actually touching them, and served the food himself. There were too many knives and forks and spoons to know for sure which would be the right ones, so he tried to remember the stories his cousin had told him of dining out in London. When he began, at last, to eat, he had taken up the wrong knife, but he did not notice this himself, and called loudly for the waiter. He called so loudly that Marie and Harry, heads over food, jumped, and the waiter, four feet away, waited just five seconds before coming to bend over Harry.

“You wanted something, sir?”

“I…”

“Some iced water,” Rao commanded.

“Iced water, sir?” Harry knew the insult was not meant for him, but he flushed as if it had been.

“You’d like some iced water, Rao? Yes, please, waiter.”

Marie stared up at the chandeliers and decided that tonight would be a good time to re-open the question of her new car.

“It’s strange, in a restaurant such as this one—it has every damn thing, but no iced water,” Rao said gaily. “I always insist
on water on my table. Everywhere I go.”

“Really, Mr Rao? And I expect you have travelled widely ?” she asked.

“In my country I travel many times a year. I make many journeys for my firm. Usually I travel to many interesting places.”

“And abroad?” she probed.

“This is my first journey abroad. But my father, R. K. Rao, has been many times in the U.K. And my cousin.”

“How fascinating,” she breathed. “Next time you must bring your wife.”

He glanced at her. She certainly had funny ideas about wives. “My wife would not wish to come,” he said. “She has her work. She is a teacher,” he finished, proudly.

Marie couldn’t think of anything more boring than a teacher. She was glad when the waiter appeared, tardily, with the iced water. Mr Rao had dropped a large piece of chicken onto the tablecloth, and the headwaiter, a man they knew well, hurried over with a big white table napkin, and placed it over the off ending stain, practically re-setting the table. It was very humiliating.

“And what have you been doing since you arrived?” she asked. Harry had withdrawn completely from them, and she felt that something must be said between now and the remote time when, they would be able to get up and leave.

“I have been very busy, generally, with my work,” Rao replied. “And in my free time I have visited some scenic spots. I have been to the mountains, where many foreign tourists are rushing at the week-end. It was cold at the mountain resort but I was well muffled up. I purchased a muffler specially for the journey.”

Marie, waving to friends, only heard half of this—something about a muffler, and wondered vaguely what it was: a word she knew well, and couldn’t be bothered placing.

“How terribly embarrassing for you,” she said, “to have a muffler,” for she had decided, at last, that it might be some kind of silencer —for a gun?—though it was hard to understand why he should have to carry a gun, and at the mountains. It would be too tiresome to try to find out.

For his part, Rao could not understand why a muffler was embarrassing. Perhaps it was not done to wear one or had he made some other kind of mistake while he was speaking to her? He couldn’t for his very life think what it might be. He wondered when he would be able to stop exchanging inanities with this tall, superior woman, when Greenberg would start talking to him about interesting topics—politics, business management, the international situation—when they would be able to bang on the table, glare at each other, shout. But Harry, his head down, was immersed in his food. He hardly seemed to be there at all. Mr Rao put his head down too, and became immersed in his own rather tasteless meal.

He did not spill anything else on the tablecloth, and he only once more used the wrong knife, but the dinner, far from getting better, trailed feebly to a dismal cup of coffee.

“It’s a very funny thing,” he said, and he threw back his head and laughed quite loudly, for he did think it a very funny thing, “you are white and you take black coffee and I am black, but I like my coffee to be white.”

“Very, very amusing,” she said.

They dropped him at his hotel, a shabby little one they took some time to find. As he put his head in her window to say good night they caught each other’s smell. She sank back a little, overpowered by oil on hair, by something she had never encountered, which was not the odour of his body, and yet was. And he caught, again, her perfume, which sickened him, and her wine-breath, and the sweetness emanating from her fur and her dress. They retreated from each other, while Harry drummed his fingers on the wheel and eased his foot on the brake.

“…a really splendid evening. I am most grateful,” he said, thinking of the long silences there had been in the restaurant, and wondering why he was grateful. At least the dinner had cost him nothing. Not one single farthing.

“Not at all. A pleasure. Nice to see you again,” Harry said, clenching and unclenching his leg muscle.

“Now. One evening perhaps I may offer you some hospitality? Would you like to come to see me? Perhaps I can give you some snacks?”

“That would be nice. Harry and I are going away for a month, but when we return…”

“Before you go? Tomorrow ?” He didn’t mean any of this, and actually allowed his eyes to follow a couple along the dark street while he was speaking.

“Oh, no. We’re…we’re dining out tomorrow. When we come back…you ring us, that’s the best thing.”

“Oh, sure,” he said, “sure, sure. Pardon?”

“You ring us,” she repeated, grimly, between her closed teeth, and Harry at length, transferred his foot to the accelerator. It was a powerful car, and as it jumped off it brushed him a little to one side. He watched the red tail-lights winking at him from the comer and then they disappeared.

As he went into the hotel he knew that he would never see either of them again, but he thought he’d wait until the morning before deciding whether or not to pretend to himself that he would.

AT the hour of seven on a fine June morning, two handsome glossy foxes are hurrying towards the store and teashop on Fat Chow Creek. The one who is closest is carrying no rabbit in his mouth; and that is a pity, for the great red fellow, trotting from the tea-tree to the golden rushes by the creek, ears up, plumy brush waving— a rabbit in his mouth would make him the perfect picture of a fox on the hunt in the morning.

As for Mr Hardcastle, his big, knuckly hands gripping the steer-ing wheel of his shiny red car—he’s got his rabbit all right, and you can almost see her in his mouth; the new Mrs Hardcastle—brand-new; only last night—snuggling beside him in her coney-seal coat. The tip of her small nose twitches.

“You’re coldl” shouts Mr Hardcastle. You can tell he’s a fox by the bark of his laughter. “You’re cold.” (Bark! Bark! Bark!)

“Oh, no,” she says, archly, sarcastically. She laughs, too, very loud and shrill and high, like a tremendous and surprising bell; the pealing of wedding bells.

“Hey, yes you are, you’re cold. It’s too early in the morning for you. Ha, we’ll make a man of you yet.”

“You wouldn’t want to do that.”

“Ha, that’s right!” Mr Hardcastle barks and barks. “But you are cold. I’ll warm you up. I’ll stop the car and warm you up.”

“You’d better drive on. Besides, I’m not a bit cold. Really I’m not. I love this South Coast in the morning. The mountains with the sun on them; and the sea that delicate, delicate blue; and the foam. It’s a wonderful place—for a honeymoon.”

“Honeymoon! Ha!” The big fox barks. His hair is silver, there is a bald patch on top, his eyes are grey and small; the character of his face is in his large, fleshy nose and his mouth, which sets firmly, even savagely, as he steers the big car round a bend. He makes it lurch round the corners.

“Just to be driving along,” says the rabbit. She smiles up at him, so that her frizzy hair and her horn-rimmed glasses seem to disappear, and all he can see are her red, red lips and her enormous false teeth. “And a whole week of it,” she says. “A whole week to Melbourne.”

If I can find that Middleton scoundrel in Melbourne prosecute the brute,” he says. “He took us down. Deliberately. We supply him with the goods—two years ago—and that’s the last we hear of him. I’ll get him and I’ll send him to jail.” Mr Hardcastle has a factory.

“Oh,” says the new Mrs Hardcastle, “don’t let us think about business. This is too heavenly.”

But the fox—the other red fox in the rushes—is certainly thinking about business.

He knows it is heavenly, all right. The sun is warm on his back; the creek before him glitters; he can smell the salt sea, the tidal mud, the crabs; he can see a black-and-white bird, a pee-wee, that runs along the path between the rushes. But he cannot catch that pee-wee. And if he could it would not be much for a fox’s breakfast. To run from dawn to seven o’clock, to hunt from dawn to seven o’clock, to hunt and sniff and hunt and sniff all the way from the rocky bush to within sight of Joe Packet’s store and teashop by the bridge on Fat Chow Creek, to watch the mist lift and the dew dry and the seagulls go over in a clear, shiny light, to have the scent of shellfish and birds and vegetation in your nostrils—all this is to make hunger grow immense, a madness.