Absence Makes Page 6

  ‘Let’s sit down,’ she said.

  For a few moments there was silence.

  ‘I’d like us to live together. I love you, June.’

  She did not appear surprised.

  ‘Ross.’

  He looked at her, steadying himself for the response.

  ‘Ross, we need to talk before anything gets decided.’

  ‘Talk?’ He felt the warmth on his neck. ‘Can’t you just say how you feel?’

  She was wrestling with something, he could see that.

  ‘Ross, I’m very fond of you. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here, talking like this.’

  ‘Well, that’s a good start,’ he said, sounding more abrupt than he intended.

  June sighed. ‘It’s not easy to say this.’

  Suddenly it came to him. France. ‘You’ve got a boyfriend?’

  ‘Not a boyfriend. But I’ve been with someone.’

  He felt as if he had been punched in the guts.

  ‘Who? Where? For how long?’ The questions tumbled on top of each other like disturbed wasps. He struggled to control himself.

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

  ‘Tell me!’ His voice rose, and she shrank slightly.

  ‘Please don’t get angry. We can’t talk if you do.’

  He sat immobile, breathing in bursts and listening as she confirmed his worst fears. At Grenoble she met – of all people – a ski instructor. To cut the story short, she fell for him and they embarked on an affair.

  ‘Is he married, this Frenchman?’ He’d already formed an image. A bronzed Gallic charmer with a wife tucked away in some mountain village had woven his magic. June, his June, was too smitten to separate the wheat from the chaff. Or, he thought bitterly, the snow from the slush.

  ‘No, he’s single, just a few years older than us.’

  Her reply enraged him. ‘So this smarmy bastard got into your pants. What the hell were you thinking?’

  ‘I knew I couldn’t talk to you,’ she said, making to get up.

  He grabbed her arm. ‘Sit down. Tell me what else.’

  ‘Not unless you promise to calm down.’

  He assented, grappling with the fury inside. She attempted to explain the relationship. There was nothing casual about it. Though she felt a strong attraction, she did not respond to the Frenchman’s overtures until she had been nearly six months in Grenoble.

  ‘And now? How do you feel about this joker?’

  She paused before replying. ‘I don’t know. A lot has happened. Please give me some time.’

  He snorted. ‘We’ve spent a year apart. I’ve waited for you. Now you want time.’ As he spoke he remembered Laura.

  ‘What about you? What have you been up to?’ It was as if she read his mind. ‘It doesn’t sound like you’ve spent the year studying.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ he snapped, suddenly overcome with a seething rage. His fling with Laura meant nothing. Nothing like the blazing romance just described by June. And nothing he was going to mention right now.

  The next few weeks were hellish. He hardly saw anything of June. She wanted time to herself and to prepare for uni. He began his new job, grateful in a way to have something to distract his mind from her. At Duncan Street, the boys trod warily around him. He found he could talk with Rachel but even with her he did not share the full depth of his feelings. Wracked by jealousy. This is how it feels to be wracked by jealousy. As he spoke these words aloud, Ross felt the hurt, a stabbing pain that ate into him and erupted when he could no longer contain himself. At first he cursed and threw cushions at the wall. But this felt so feeble and unsatisfactory he went to the pub with Ben and drank. After a couple of severe hangovers – and dozy days at his desk – he transcended the beer and resurrected the violence. Instead of cushions he used dinner plates from an old collection his parents had given him. The brick wall of the outhouse was a perfect target and he found a measure of release in splattering the crockery when his spleen demanded. He sensed Ben and Jacob were relieved he did not direct his sorrow at them.

  The months dragged on. On impulse he rang June, but the conversation went nowhere. He decided to give up. His job was undemanding and he could save money. The Cortina was treated to a new set of tyres. Jacob and Rachel booked a cottage at Rottnest for the long weekend. He was welcome.

  They were due to catch the nine o’clock ferry. Ben helped with the luggage, cramming it into his station wagon. He would stay back, content to have the house to himself. Ben – even Ben – had found love.

  The phone rang. ‘It’s for you,’ said Jacob.

  He took the receiver. ‘Hello Ross.’ It was her. She wanted to see him.

  ‘I’m about to go to Rotto.’ He knew he sounded colder than he felt. ‘Do you want to come?’

  The words were out before he realised.

  ‘Okay,’ he heard her saying. ‘Can you pick me up?’

  The four of them spent the weekend in a stone cottage near the lighthouse. He and June, vulnerable and raw, got it together, as the expression goes. At last, he thought, though not without a trace of bitterness. She cried a lot. His feelings were mixed, wanting to comfort her one moment and to punish her the next. The sex was mixed too, more complicated than with Laura. He wondered if it was him. Later, June told him she thought it had more to do with her. She was still confused, acknowledging her attraction to him but feeling split and indecisive. ‘I know I’ve avoided you,’ she said, ‘but I knew we would need to meet up eventually to sort out our stuff.’

  Sort out our stuff? He soon realised that below the surface lay a smorgasbord of tyrannical feelings. Angry episodes exploded out of nowhere, as they swung between holding back and then dumping on each other. He confessed about Laura. ‘The truth can’t hurt’ might sound like a good adage but it’s a crock of shit, he thought, as June fled from the beach.

  If it wasn’t for Rachel and Jacob, who never seemed to squabble, the weekend would have been a disaster. They tag-teamed in the dire moments, with Jacob taking him off on a ride to the Quokka Arms and Rachel sitting with June and talking woman to woman about God-knows-what.

  Yes, Jacob and Rachel had rescued them. They knew when to listen and when to speak. Their understated, commonsensical approach eased the pain and set June and Ross back on course. As he reminisced, Ross made a mental note to get their friends around for dinner. Some of that wisdom could rub off right now.

  After the island interlude, he bought her You’ve Made Me So Very Happy, the latest album from Blood, Sweat and Tears. June reciprocated with Joni Mitchell’s Clouds. Like him, she loved music, and their tastes matched. As June studied on most weekends, Ross took a casual job on Saturdays. With the extra money they began to go to concerts as well as movies. He fantasised about taking her on a surprise visit to Sydney where Hair had recently opened. Gradually, his bruised heart began to heal. He felt the two of them opening to one another and developing a delicate trust. On his part, the trust was fragile, for it took very little to knock his equilibrium about. If June was late, he agonised what or who was delaying her. If another man took her attention at a party, he could feel the bile rise in his throat, and his attempts to talk himself into reason were no match for the primal furnace below. If he came out with his fears, June would laugh and tell him not to be stupid. She said she was not missing Patrick, the Frenchman, and there was no reason to doubt her. But when left to his own devices, he dwelt on their affair and wondered what might be lingering.

  They talked about living together. He knew his parents would not be keen but he could deal with their objections. On the other hand, June’s father, the grandson of a Methodist minister, was a formidable roadblock. Though Martin Preston never set foot in church, he exuded a pompous and rigid faith that left his daughter no room to manoeuvre. Even if she and Ross entered into an engagement, it had to be respectable. Martin had no time for the new-fangled notion of living together without the blessing of a God in whom he barely believed. His attitude, thought Ross, was more motivat
ed by social status, and of course money. He would use his daughter’s nuptials to flaunt his wealth, a recently acquired honeypot into which he’d plunged by virtue of the mining boom. As Martin was fond of pontificating, it was not half-arsed luck but smart-arsed courage that led him to pick up Poseidon shares at two dollars a pop. The shares took off through the roof and were still climbing. June’s father sat on a pile.

  The couple cooled their heels but not their growing ardour. As they relaxed, their sex lives improved. He was relieved, as the ghost of Laura had fluttered on the fringes, inhibiting his flow as it were. However, the ghost slowly faded, and Ross wondered if the same had happened for June. He did not want to bring the subject up – it hit him too hard if he did – but, from the unfolding variety of their cavorting, he deduced June had exorcised any ghosts of her own. He certainly hoped so.

  Gender balance and a peculiar decorum came to Duncan Street, where most of the activity took place. Diet assumed a prominence hitherto unknown. Rachel and June took the lead from Ben’s new girlfriend. She introduced the household to wheat germ and other wholesome foods. Meals took on a new shape and, to some extent, so did the occupants. Ross admitted the food was an improvement. He had grown tired of pasta and even Ben’s salads lost their lustre when Ariana took over the kitchen. She sought out the best vegetables at the markets and chose exotic fruits like papaya and mango which were not then in vogue in the suburbs. With their own grapes, and passionfruit from the neighbour’s vine, fruit salads became plentiful, while muesli, goat’s cheese and Greek yoghurt appeared at breakfast and ousted ham and eggs from the menu. At the rear of the block, the decrepit vegetable garden underwent a transformation, so much so that it became out of bounds for the boys on party nights.

  The boys looked on, bemused yet proud and enchanted by their consorts. Defeated and surpassed at the culinary level, they began to update their alcoholic tastes. In the coolest part of the laundry, Jacob knocked up a wine rack. Trips were organised to the Swan Valley, and a generous assortment of reds and whites began to fill the shelves. As a group they gelled, and the only arguments occurred when they played cards together or if Ben regressed into his bachelor habits. These, in Ross’s recollection, were halcyon days.

  As far as weddings went, the girls talked among themselves but nobody made serious plans. The boat was steady so why rock it? That seemed to be the broad consensus. To be sure, it became his view and, in spite of the admonitions of their elders, June stayed overnight on a regular basis.

  In the end they settled on February 21st, a Friday. John Bailey booked the Methodist Church in Bagot Road. Baxter did not object. Christened by Presbyterian parents, he’d served his time in the pews on many a Sunday though not recently. He was unsure of the depth of Alice’s faith. As she moved on from her grief over Tom, their conversations ranged across all kinds of topics. But, for whatever reason, religion did not come up. Happily for him, she was neither Catholic nor one of those High Anglicans he encountered from time to time in his old neighbourhood. Methodists, he thought, are much like Presbyterians anyway.

  Joan Bailey put him straight. He liked Alice’s mother but, when the subject of her faith came up, she was unbending.

  ‘We are different. It may not be obvious to outsiders but it is to us.’

  He listened to her, feigning interest. She spoke of liturgical distinctions and administrative disparities and the historical origins of both branches of Christianity. Despite himself, he was impressed.

  While Joan spoke, her husband said little. With religion, his wife took the floor. Baxter began to understand why.

  ‘You know the most important difference?’

  She was addressing the question to him. ‘No,’ he admitted.

  Joan did not immediately answer. From a cabinet drawer she pulled out a poster and held it up. An armour-clad warrior stood astride the globe, his right arm bearing a lance aimed at a coiled serpent. This was the Temperance Crusader, determined to end the infamous equation of Alcohol, Drunkenness, and Ruin depicted on the poster. Baxter felt his temples tighten. He sensed John Bailey was not much of a drinker but he did not place him as a complete wowser. This is going to be difficult, he thought.

  ‘Now our church,’ Joan continued, ‘has a big role to play. Alice may not have told you but I am a member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. We have held a number of rallies in Subiaco and they are always well attended.’

  He thought she was disappointed he did not pursue the discussion. On the other hand, she did not pin him down about his attitude to liquor. Alice may have warned her mother this would not prove useful. How would they handle the wedding, he wondered?

  Three days before the due date he went down to Fremantle to meet his brother. George travelled with other returning soldiers aboard the City of York. As he watched his brother move gingerly down the gangplank and onto the wharf, Baxter was struck by how thin he looked. After disembarkation procedures were over, George gathered his duffle bag and they strolled the streets, stopping at the Oddfellows Hotel for refreshments. The next day, Bram arrived by train from Adelaide. He looked in better shape but Baxter noticed the rasping breath. ‘Copped a spot of gas,’ Bram said, spitting into the gutter.

  On the Thursday, the brothers met up with Jennie and Ann and paid a visit to their mother. Lizzie Moncur rented a house in North Perth. She was unwell and confined to her chair but overjoyed to see her children. For the first time in a decade, they were all together. Baxter put arrangements in place for her transport to the church. He hoped she would be up to it. He also put his mates on notice it would be a dry wedding. One or two swore loudly. Others simply shook their heads.

  Honour was saved. The night before the nuptials, he put on a keg in a room he’d reserved at the Criterion. His brothers seemed to hit it off with his friends. Ann’s husband distinguished himself with a string of bawdy jokes and an insatiable thirst. Never had Baxter seen Keith in such fine form. Unable to choose between his soldier brothers, he’d settled on his brother-in-law as his best man. Fingers crossed, sobriety would return come the morning, and Keith would arrive with the ring.

  He need not have worried, at least about Keith. The ceremony went without a hitch. The Wedding March, pounded out by a diminutive organist, bounced off the walls and hurt his ears. He stood stiffly as Alice came into the church, escorted by a proud and equally stiff father.

  Alice looked wonderful. Her wedding outfit, the subject of much speculation and secrecy, became the principal talking point for the ladies. According to the social notes in the Sunday Times, saved by Aunty Eve for the honeymooners to peruse, the dress was ‘ivory silk crepe de chine, rimmed with shadow lace and ninon,’ complemented by ‘a long court train, trimmed with orange blossom and lover’s knots, which fell from the bride’s shoulders.’ A veil partially hid Alice’s face but not, Baxter noticed, the rosiness of her cheeks and a slight upturn of her lips into a faint smile, suggesting a mixture of surreptitious pleasure and self-consciousness.

  In his starched shirt and high collar, Baxter felt like a trussed-up chicken. He would have preferred to wear his tweed jacket and comfortable trousers but Alice would have none of it. ‘You’re getting a new suit,’ she declared, before packing him off to the tailor.

  As the ceremony unfolded, he squirmed and resisted the impulse to grasp Alice’s hand, paying scant attention while Reverend Rogers rambled on and on. Eventually, vows were exchanged. After what seemed an eternity in those war-ravaged years of treading water, he and Alice were finally man and wife.

  That, Baxter noted with a slight shock, was fifty-five years ago, almost to the day. A lot of water had washed down the river. What was it his mother, a walking encyclopaedia of aphorisms, would say, in a tone of resignation and mild rebuke? ‘You can’t wind back the clock, dear.’

  No, you can’t wind back the clock, worse luck. He signalled to a passing waiter. Another schooner, if only to commemorate a forgotten anniversary. Fifty-five years. He shook his head. Together, th
ey’d lasted a mere five.

  The attitudinal change towards marriage could not be put down to a single cause. Ross theorised it had more to do with mutual freak-out than deep commitment. The household began to fragment. This did not happen overnight but was incremental and, for some members, unobserved. Communal necessities, accepted in the early days, began to grate. Sharing a bathroom was one of them. After late nights, there was a morning stampede as bedrooms emptied and half-clad figures manoeuvred for position. In the kitchen, they managed to skirt around each other but, with only one shower, the challenges in the bathroom were formidable, especially for the boys, who felt they occupied the high ground with their two-minute splashes. It was a mystery to them how their partners could hold up the show for an inordinate amount of time, both under the shower and in front of the mirror. Thankfully, the single loo was outside.

  Nocturnal behaviour created another source of contention. An elderly weatherboard, the Daglish home lacked insulation. Sound-proofing was basic, which was fine if you were whispering in bed but completely ineffective when less dainty activities were underway. Most members of the household maintained a steadfast suppression, through dint of upbringing, Ross presumed. But Ariana – Ariana appeared immune to any inhibitions. When she moved in with Ben, bedtimes became infused with her song. Ross and June would cease their own canoodling and listen, amused at first but later inert with frustration. And, he was forced to acknowledge, a touch of envy.

  The build-up was slow but matters came to head one evening after dinner. ‘We all need to talk,’ said Jacob. Rachel nodded vigorously. Ben looked at Ariana. They may have guessed what was coming. Into the lounge they trooped. Someone brought the wine.

  In the discussion that followed, things got heated. Nobody could produce a sensible proposal about the use of the bathroom. Someone mentioned a roster but they all knew it would prove unworkable.

  ‘We’ll just have to try harder to be more sensitive,’ Rachel offered.

  ‘Very practical,’ Ben scoffed. ‘What about a timer? Five minutes max for a shower and all the rest of it.’ Naturally this fizzed. With the three women rolling their eyes, he must have known he did not have the numbers.