Down in the City (26 page)

It was true that Vi had claims on him—not for money, of course, only for her company, really—but still, if it had to end, whose fault was it? Hang it all, he was
married
to Est. She had to come first even if it was tough on Vi.

His mind veered from side to side, stopped and started as easily as the car responded to the fingertip control of the wheel. It was time to be reasonable, Stan decided, and he allowed every variation of his mind and will to come under the scope of the term.

When he reached Vi's rooms she was out, and he wondered with a touch of apprehension if he shouldn't take this as a sign and disappear before she returned. Seeing Est later on was going to be bad enough without acting the hero and coming back to make a farewell speech.

Hands in pockets, head bent, he scuffed from room to room, his mind turning on Esther, on Esther exclusively. When he believed that she would not come, he heard a key in the door, and a moment later Vi was in the room holding a brown paper shopping bag, looking at him blankly.

‘Stan!' she said, not putting the bag down, staring at him as if she would read his thoughts.

He noticed now, though he had not earlier in the morning, that she was wearing a dress he had not seen before.

‘Well,' she said, letting the bag drop to the table, ‘what's happened?'

‘Nothing. I just came back. Nothing else to do.'

Though her mind was almost paralysed with worry, she smiled, for this was not bad news, and said distractedly, ‘Oh, is that all.' She heaved her groceries a stage further, to the kitchen. ‘When are you going to go…?'

‘God knows.' He ambled over to the door and looked at her as she distributed her purchases around the various cupboards and bins.

Sunlight exploded from every piece of nickel and chrome in the room. It fell refracted on walls and ceiling and floor. Vi's face was creamy in it, her arms pale apricot.

Stan stared and stared at her, gloomily, not seeing her in the present, but looking back from the future and reliving this moment in memory. His eyes dulled. What a nostalgic value she assumed when he looked at her, perhaps for the last time!

‘I'll have to go soon.' She was wretchedly aware that the time during which she might ask questions, exact promises, was passing. After all my threats, she thought, and though everything depends on it, I just sit dumb and wait for things to happen.

Forcing herself to look at Stan with something of her old assurance, she said, ‘Have you thought…Do you know what happens to us? To me?…This won't make any difference to us, will it?' She gave him a smile but he kept his eyes on the ground.

With a sudden frenzied premonition of grief she put her hands on his face and turned his eyes towards her own.

‘Oh God!' she cried when she had gazed at him for a second. ‘Was this you coming back to say, “Cheerio, Vi. I have to go home and be a good boy now”?'

Aggrieved to find himself so easily read he did not reply, and she said, ‘That was it, wasn't it…?' A moment's thought made her ask, ‘What if she won't have you back?'

‘Don't you worry about that,' he said smoothly, convincing her—for how could she know how they were together?—at some cost to his own confidence.

At his tone, and her belief, Vi was diminished. ‘Oh, come on, honey, we haven't got time for a row. But you're not going to tell me it's all over, are you? We're too used to each other. I don't know what's right and what's wrong about it, Stan; lately none of it's been good. I only know we've been together too long for it to happen like this—haven't we?' She brought her face close to his for her eyes seemed strangely blind.

‘Sure, sure. That's right,' said Stan. ‘We won't lose touch.'

‘Oh…I see…We won't lose touch.' She said it very slowly, deliberately, to give herself time to think again after those words had reached her brain and heart. ‘So that's why you haven't seen her yet—why you haven't talked to her. You've decided to get me off your conscience first so that you can tell her it's all over. That's the way it is, isn't it?'

‘Well, what if it is?' he said, crossing his legs. ‘You have to be sensible about these things. You and me, we've had our good days. You've been a great pal, you were my whole family, for years, I
know
it. But…'

‘You'd better remember to put that in your reference.'

‘And I was the same for you. All right. But I've given Est a pretty rough time and I think it's about time she had a fair deal. As long as she didn't know, well, there was no harm done…'

Vi exclaimed in disgust, ‘How funny can you get? Don't try to make me laugh because I can tell you, I don't feel like it.'

‘You'll be all right,' he persisted. ‘You don't want to stick to a character like me all your days. You ought to settle down. You won't be short of offers.'

After a protracted silence Vi said in a dull, flat voice, ‘Well, well…You're a gentle little boy, aren't you? A real nice kid! Still,' she roused herself somehow and moved, ‘that's not news. You haven't changed, I'll say that for you. Still the same boy I always knew.' She had been holding her hands tightly together, now she half laughed and put a hand to her cheek.

Her resistance seeming to have ceased, Stan was abruptly halted. It was time for him to go if he meant to go—if he did not, this course was no longer safe. Vi's resignation might procure in him a perversity of will, a switch of motive, that neither tears nor recriminations could have achieved.

On an impulse he lied to her, retaining to himself wordlessly, in a distant country of his mind, the right to decide in the vague future, when events were clear, his exact intention.

He said, ‘It's not the way you see it, Vi. I need Est. I have to keep in with her. Why do you think I married her?'

She was quite still, suspended and pulseless, unhopeful, knowing that he wanted her to say, ‘Why did you?'

‘She's got money,' he said uneasily and their eyes came together, held, parted.

Vi dared not breathe until she believed. ‘Oh God, is that true? Was that it? Is it true, Stan…? For heaven's sake, look at me and tell me.'

The reluctance with which he repeated the statement began to persuade where protestations would have failed. She knew that he was proud, above all else, of his ability to make money—that it showed him to be, after all, not self-sufficient must make this admission doubly shameful to him.

She said, ‘What about me…? I've got some money. You could have told me.'

‘I said
money
.'

‘So you did…Then what was all that just now about being sensible and so on? What were you trying to do?'

He stood up impatiently. ‘Oh, use your head!…Got anything to drink?'

‘In the fridge.'

He came back with two glasses of beer and handed one to her. ‘Look, I've told you. I've got to keep in with her. I thought, now she knows, maybe I'd have to stay away a while: I thought maybe it'd be better if I didn't tell you about all this, if we broke it up so you'd have a chance to get out and maybe—oh, I don't know what I thought. The whole bloody business is enough to drive anyone round the bend, isn't it, kid?'

Vi took this in while he drank his beer. She looked from him to the glass he had given her and held it up. He took it willingly.

‘You changed your mind,' she said.

Stan wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He drew a mock-solemn face. ‘Looks like it.'

There could be heard a laugh of shock and relief which seemed not to have come from the woman who, unsmiling, rose to wander a few steps across the room.

‘Whatever you meant to do,' she turned to say, ‘you did it too damned well. It was a rotten thing to do to me, Stan. Don't ever try anything like that again—just don't!' She fell back on the sofa and flapped her hands in front of her face. ‘God, I feel as limp as a jellyfish. I'm dead…And
you
!'

Looking at him, without warning she began to cry hopelessly, not knowing why, but knowing there was reason. ‘After all those months away—you didn't have to stay so long—and you never told me why—it wasn't fair—and never coming near me all that time…'

‘Sure, sure. It was lousy.' Stan tried to take her hands. Disregarded, he walked away, but presently said, ‘How about a drink now?'

She nodded. ‘Tea.'

‘Go and fix yourself up and I'll get some, then.'

Shortly afterwards they sat talking: Stan was saying, ‘Remember that time I came into your dad's place in Brisbane? That was a day wasn't it?…Remember that shindy when old Salty Marshall…'

‘Went and told Eck…?' Vi laughed.

‘Yeah,' Stan chuckled.

‘What made you think about that?'

‘Dunno.'

‘Bet I've got some snaps we took up there. I'll have a look for them tonight.'

With a flash of excitement Stan said, ‘I don't remember seeing them. Wonder how old we were then? What do you think? Twenty-one?'

‘About that—must have been.'

Stan lifted her fingers one at a time, testing each one to see how far back it would bend. He had fallen into an abstracted silence and was living over some old adventure when all at once, remembering, he groaned and stretched his arms above his head.

And Vi, who had not forgotten, said, ‘Yes.'

He grimaced and rubbed a hand over his face. ‘Well…I suppose I'd better go.' Then in answer to her unspoken question he said, ‘I'll have to see how I get on—oh God, I should get back to Eddie, too—well, I'll ring, or come in tomorrow for sure. If I have to keep away from here for a while we'll see what we can do. Maybe you should move—I don't know. Anyhow!' He kissed her, and then, slightly loosening his hold, their faces just a few inches apart, breathing each other's familiar breath, they stared in a kind of heavy calm. After what seemed a great tract of time, Stan said stolidly, ‘Well, this is it!' At Vi's instant change, he added, ‘I just meant—I'd better be off.'

‘Oh! Yes.' She began, ‘You'd better…' and stopped. She was unsure how she had meant to go on. Almost anything, at this point, could be wrong.

Watching him go, she was assailed by feelings of a complexity she did not care to probe.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Bob Demster hailed her from the open doorway of his flat. ‘Tell Stan I've fixed up a game for him and Bill Maitland for next Saturday, will you?'

‘Yes,' she said, not smiling, not turning her head, and he looked after her, surprised and disgruntled.

An uneven circular route had brought her home through miles of busy, sun-swept streets: perhaps one hour had passed. Now like a visitor she sat in the armchair that was never used, and gazed with an occasional flicker of her lashes at what lay in front of her. It was the table, still covered with breakfast dishes. She could see that the butter had begun to melt. After a time, with a movement, stiff, somehow burdened, she rose and shifted the dish six inches into a spar of shade cast by the window frame, and, having done that, went onto the balcony. It was hot there. She felt the heat strike her body and the heat rise in her to meet it. The rough edge of the brick wall penetrated the soft pads of her fingers as she leaned, for a moment, forward. An inclination to rest her cheek against the warm brick was halted by the sight of two women passing below.

Inside again, she returned to the chair which seemed by virtue of its lack of associations the only place in the room where she might with safety rest.

When, much later, from the wireless in a neighbouring flat, an announcement of the time was understood by her, she crossed to the table and, stacking plate on plate, collected crusts of toast in a hand that seemed uncertain what to do with them. Some seconds passed while she eyed them with dismay—hard crusts of toast—their disposal so grievous a problem that her fortitude might fail before it could be solved. The slow realisation that a postponement of decision was, after all, possible, brought with it a sensation of relief that made her lean against the sink for support. She dropped the scraps in a heap on the draining board, and the telephone in the bedroom rang. With cold curiosity she listened to the screech-screech of its bell, held more by the sound than what it signified, until at length it stopped.

And then she thought: It could have been him.

By no moisture of eye, or trembling of hands, by no frown did she betray the blankness of her spirit, the exhaustion of her heart. That she was she, that this was her one life, her past and future, she most tiredly knew.

The dishes done and put away, in the middle of the small kitchen, Esther slowly smoothed her narrow dress. A sound at the door suspended her thus, head bent, palms flat against her thighs, the warm movement of skin on silk never to be completed.

Straightening, as he could be heard in the hall, she gave a sigh, and turned on the empty room, into which he was about to come, a look that changed at last to one of calm. Going forward to meet him, she said, ‘Hello, Stan.'

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