Our Magic Hour

Jennifer Down was born in 1990.
Our Magic Hour
was shortlisted for the 2014 Victorian
Premier's Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. Her work has appeared in
the
Age
,
Sydney Morning Herald
,
Saturday Paper
,
Australian Book Review
, ABC's
The
Drum
and
Blue Mesa Review
. She writes a monthly column on words and language for
Overland
.

jenniferdown.com

textpublishing.com.au

The Text Publishing Company

Swann House

22 William Street

Melbourne Victoria 3000

Australia

© Jennifer Down 2016

The moral right of Jennifer Down to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of
this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise) without the prior permission of both the copyright owner
and publisher of this book.

Cover and book design by Imogen Stubbs

Typesetting by J&M Typesetting

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Creator: Down, Jennifer, author.

Title: Our magic hour / by Jennifer Down.

ISBN: 9781925240832 (paperback)

ISBN: 9781922253477 (ebook)

Subjects: Australian fiction.

Love stories.

Melbourne (Vic.)—Fiction.

Dewey Number: A823.4

For my parents, and for Sophie and Lilly.

All The World Was Alive

For months afterwards Audrey tried to make sense of things. She wanted to remember
what had happened.

She knew one morning she'd put on
Horses
and paraded around in front of Nick. Jerky
shoulders, wishbone legs. She was wearing his shirt. It fell to her knees; the sleeves
swallowed her hands. He sat at the kitchen table and pretended to ignore her until
he couldn't, then he said
You look like you're about to perform an autopsy
, and she
flapped the cuffs at him and said
I can't! I've got no hands!
and he said
Come here,
you idiot
. They made love in the backyard while the tea and toast went cold. The
threadbare towels hung stiff on the clothesline. That was a morning hazy with heat.

Katy had called one night.

‘My shift finishes in an hour. Do you want to get tea? Just us?'

Audrey drove to her side of the city. They took fish and chips to Stony Creek Backwash,
sat under the bridge in the cooling hour. It was just them and the gulls. The factories
were quiet.

‘This is my favourite view of the city,' Katy said.

‘Mine's Ruckers Hill. Reminds me of living with your parents. Trams to school.'

‘That was fun, having you sleep over all the time. Adam got so jealous. He was a
real bitch about it.'

Katy's family ate dinner together every night. Her parents umpired at weekend netball
matches, took orange quarters for the girls in their pleated skirts. Audrey's parents
destroyed each other.

‘I only ever come here with you,' Audrey said. ‘You're the only person I know on
this side of town. Is that the new uniform?'

‘Your taxpayer dollars at work.' Katy arched her back in mimicry of a preening model.
‘You ought to see the dress. It's awful, makes my tits look enormous. A
shelf
of
bosom.'

‘And you get to wear those sexy non-slip shoes.'

‘I know. One of the girls said I looked like a TV nurse. You know, the matronly one
who's firm but fair, never has sex,' Katy said.

‘We could do something with your hair—something Nurse Ratched.'

‘Get fucked.'

Audrey slung an arm around Katy. ‘There's no face I'd rather see if I were in a hospital
bed,' she said.

Katy grabbed a couple of soggy chips and mashed them against Audrey's lips.

The gulls wheeled and cawed for the scraps. Audrey looked across the creek to the
city. Katy brushed her hands together, wiped them on her skirt. She lit a cigarette.
She had to try again and again, one hand cupped. The lighter was almost dead, or
it was windy. Audrey was never sure afterwards. She could only see Katy sitting there
on the boardwalk: navy skirt, ankles crossed primly, face a rictus of effort as she
tried to light her cigarette.

There'd been a housewarming one night. Audrey knew because there were photos.
Patrick fussing with the camera.
Hang on, hang on
. She and Nick standing by a window
with a heavy curtain, arms around each other. Audrey's cheeks ached. Nick slid his
hand down the back of her jeans.

‘You're smiling like a nice Liberal couple,' Paddy said.

Audrey laughed, and that was when he took the photo.
‘
A pair of young homeowners
who do it missionary style,' he said. Audrey stretched up on her toes to bite Nick's
earlobe and the camera flashed again. Paddy moved on. Nick said
That won't look like
us at all.
They hid behind the curtain to kiss like a couple of kids.

By the time the pills hit at last they'd already started home. They looked at each
other in the back of the cab. Everything was funny. In the shower Audrey said
Make
it hot.

‘Pill chills,' said Nick.

The air conditioning broke at work around that time. There were no windows in the
conference room. Audrey dragged in one of the ancient portable units, the kind that
only shift hot air around a room. On the way back to the office she'd stopped to
buy the kid an icy pole.

Audrey emptied the pencil case onto the table.

‘How old are you, Hayley?

‘Five.' The skin around her mouth was stained red like a birthmark.

Audrey traced her own hand on a piece of paper, then the child's.

‘Audrey?'

‘Yeah?'

‘Can we go on the floor? I like lying on my tummy when I'm drawing.'

‘Of course we can. Grab the textas.'

‘Brady has connecter pens but I'm not allowed to use them.'

‘You can use as many of these as you want.'

Audrey sat beside her on the carpet. Someone had scratched BETH PIG CUNT into the
side of the table. She spread the paper in front of them. Two sheets, two red outlines
of hands.
How many fingers are there, Hayley?
The child's hair was in a ponytail
and damp strands stuck to the back of her neck.
Can you tell me about five people
you can talk to when you feel sad? Or five people you can tell a secret to?
It was
slow work.

The air conditioning was broken for three days, but a cool change came through before
then, and it stopped feeling so urgent. That might have been the week when the newborn
baby died in a parked car, or it might have been the week the inquest was announced.
After a while it was hard to be sure.

Audrey went to see her mother one afternoon. Must have been the Saturday. Visits
to Sylvie began with the long drive out to the peninsula. Audrey kept watch for
the familiar markers: the silos under the Nylex clock as she slipped on to the freeway;
the overpasses; the flat ugly road lined with native trees; the hill in Frankston
where you could look back and see lights dotting the bay line. The guilt and forgiveness
happened in the car, like a Catholic ritual. Audrey's knowledge of Christianity was
patchy, censored by her father, but she'd read about indulgences. Exceptional forgiveness;
less time in purgatory.

The drive was longer than the visit. Sylvie was in the shower when she arrived. Audrey
sat on the end of her mother's bed and listened to the monologue drifting from the
bathroom. Sylvie spoke mostly about getting older. She was afraid of ageing, she
didn't like living alone, she wished Bernard hadn't moved out so young, she missed
their father.

‘What if I paint your nails?' Audrey said.

‘No, I don't want it.'

‘Come on. You'll feel better.'

Audrey chose the colour: ballet pink. They sat at the kitchen table, Audrey holding
her mother's bony fingers. She still wore her wedding band. She regarded Audrey impassively,
giving the occasional murmur to point out where the varnish was too light or had
smudged onto her cuticles. Audrey worked with her face bent close.

‘There. All done,' she said. ‘See—they're nice.'

Sylvie looked at her with such open, childish gratitude that Audrey was disarmed.

After her nails dried Sylvie smoked a cigarette by the sink, her features puckered.
Audrey waited at the kitchen table. She felt twelve again.

‘Je vais faire du thé. T'en veux?'

‘
Non
, Maman
.
Sit down and relax for a moment.'

‘How's your brother?' Sylvie asked.

‘I don't know. I haven't seen him in a while.'

‘Why not?'

‘I've been busy,' said Audrey. ‘I called Bernard on Thursday. He said he'd been to
school.'

Sylvie stubbed out her cigarette and flicked the butt into a potted maidenhair fern.
She looked at the white wall, where a shadow of the jacaranda outside was stencilled.
She began to twist her knuckles.

‘Your sister calls me every second night,' she said. ‘She has news.'

‘Irène's always been the one with the emails and photos.'

‘You don't like talking to me.' Sylvie was winding up.

Audrey looked at photographs lined up on the sideboard. ‘Have you been taking your
medicines?' she asked.

‘Of course I take the medicines.
Sois pas condescendante avec moi
.'

‘I just wanted to make sure.'

‘You just wanted to make sure. Why don't you make sure your brother is okay? Why
don't you call me more?'

Audrey picked up her handbag. ‘I don't need to sit here and listen to this.'

‘
C'est bien le problème.
You never want to listen to me.'

‘I'm going to leave now,' Audrey said.

Her mother's cheek smelled of talcum powder and tobacco. As Audrey closed the door
she knew that Sylvie would still be watching the murky projections of the branches
on the wall.

Audrey and Nick lay on the couch with the pedestal fans spinning.

‘How was your mum?' he asked.

‘Twitchy.' She turned to him and touched the neck of his T-shirt. ‘I'm scared I'm
going to be like her.'

He kissed her. ‘You won't be,' he said.

Another morning—Sunday, Audrey knew, because Adam had told her—Katy and Adam ate
breakfast at the Espy. They went back to his place past the market stalls and the
flats. Audrey could picture it: Adam chattering, jubilant; Katy pulling her hair
into a braid as they walked. Him in a crumpled jacket, her in a sundress. They would
have sat on the lawn, played at lazy fantasies.