Trio Page 10

  But now much of her effort was spent on the undemanding, hard-working and chaste Luke! That is at least how he appeared to be. She felt herself the object of his gaze quite often. Why was that? It wasn’t her youthful looks anymore, she thought. And increasingly, arthritis was having its way with her; she knew her step was no longer such a stride as she walked along the streets. But she wanted to be seen, she knew this much, as something more than a repository of right answers to be scribbled down so as to pass next week’s exam. These thoughts came to her as she spooned the meat sauce onto the spaghetti and threw a salad together to be accompanied by a glass of a soft red wine. Bless Celia for showing her how to be a better cook.

  ‘Here’s to me,’ she raised a glass to the woman who’d come through a dubious upbringing, a dodgy yet unregrettable, unforgettable time with Celia and Mick, as well as several stop-and-start careers ending in bit parts with questionable theatre companies. She eyed the Camembert that was oozing drunkenly towards her. This is what old people are like, it occurred to her, concentrating their pleasures more on food. But she could never understand those who claimed it was a waste of time to go to trouble for oneself in the kitchen. The very idea, said Celia, once. Who else would you make this effort for? Fickle lovers or ungrateful offspring? The Marcia of today – formerly a reed-slender young woman who trod the boards on two continents – had became a slightly more rounded version of herself, but lately had lost condition. She also had an idea that you could eat yourself into good health; someone had told her that. It wasn’t true, she was sure, but it was a comfort in her off days. Today was not one of them.

  In another windswept country, as a young woman, she had started work as a schoolteacher, a feat, this, having worked her way into that role from a childhood where she had not shown any great academic promise. The pub had failed and her father had taken to the drink with resolute dedication. Marcia’s acting career had come later. How surprised her dad would have been – and pleased? with the teaching yes, but the theatre … he’d have thought it a tawdry atmosphere, beneath consideration for his daughter.

  She now cycled around the neighbourhood with a certain zest rather than agility, bearing her laundry basket (for groceries and a bottle of wine) on the rear rack of her bicycle. Youngsters in the area looked upon her as slightly eccentric, if they gave her a thought at all. Yet she had always felt conventional enough. When a former neighbour, Myrtle, was alive, Marcia still had someone around to share what Myrtle called the discrepancies of life with: the external appearance and the internal truth; Marcia’s formal manner that warred with an increasingly new-found irreverence; the strength of one’s mind and the treacherous frailty of one’s body. But since Myrtle’s death, she knew she was one step more isolated from the human race. Coupled with this was the annoying onset of decrepitude. She wanted to shake an admonishing finger at it, like an old-time schoolmarm and tell it to go away. It wasn’t that she wanted to be younger, simply to feel it.

  It was going to be a hot day so she was up and outside very early, barely dawn in fact. She was squatting by the burnt-out daisies on her verge, pruning them to smithereens, cleaning the area around the decapitated plants, creating piles of rubbish to put into large black plastic bags. This was the current activity that set her thoughts in motion. A wagtail came along, game as a cock fighter, and fussily picked up bits of brown leaf. The woman picked up a small piece of dried foliage and held it out to the bird who took it with little jerky movements of the head. It then hopped onto the back of her hand which Marcia held up close to her face, the better to study Willy. He toddled onto the pavement again, then jumped onto her back, tiny feet doing a dance there. It made her unconscionably pleased. A youth on a skateboard clattered towards them and the bird flew away.

  Kids now more than ever had a vast range of pastimes to choose from in their leisure time. She had a habit of eavesdropping in the shops and as she took the bus into town. Not that she was interested in vicarious living. It simply amused her to hear how they spent their weekends: sailing, trail-bike riding, waterskiing, barbecues and parties and surfing.

  Sailing she had done once here in Australia, yes. And little use she was as a crew member. A barbecue or three, and more than a few parties. Yet she couldn’t bear the thought of doing any of it now, even if she had the strength. It all sounded like a complete waste of time, in the end. The way Marcia now spent her time was: teaching, planting trees or vegetables; watching the antics of a cat on heat shamelessly teasing the lined-up toms; listening to a favourite opera on the radio; sitting in her back garden with a glass of beer. Years ago she would have been appalled at the tedium of all this, would have felt sorry for anyone having such a dull time of it. Adolescents, with all that fire and sex bursting out of them, would consider it deadly. It suited her very well. But what she had to do now was mend her bicycle.

  As though reading Marcia’s thoughts, the woman across the way, Mrs Thompson, who was ten years her junior, said in her penetrating voice: ‘Nice day, Miss Baxter – makes you wish you were a youngster, doesn’t it?’

  Like hell. ‘Indeed it does, Mrs Thompson,’ she said, bringing her limping bike out of the shed to fix it. An old stickybeak, Celia would have called her. If Marcia didn’t keep her head down, the next thing she’d ask was why not take her machine down to the repair shop.

  Luckily there was always Ivor who was rather fun to talk with; Slav Ivor with his modest mien yet the hint of a swagger in the powerful frame, as he walked nonchalantly from his house towards hers. Here he was now, coming to see how she was getting on, and she geared herself for one of their unique conversations, setting her face into its friendly mould. But it felt as though the very muscles were condescending.

  As they talked she looked at his hands, doubting that they had been smooth for the past thirty years, and wondering whether his wife looked forward to being caressed by them. Perhaps Ivor and his wife were no longer into caresses, she thought idly, using the vernacular she’d once deplored but which she now used, defiantly.

  She learnt a lot from Ivor – not so much on gardening and handiwork, for she was now a dab hand herself at that sort of thing, but she learnt about sending out a message that people in high places were always bleating about. Marcia liked the colour and the challenge of following Ivor’s accent and syntax – his meaning, that is. Every point he made was punctuated with the phrase ‘You tink me rongk?’ delivered in an aggressive Russian-commander manner. At first she had thought he wanted reassurance on everything, and would leave him in no doubt that she agreed. But after knowing him for some time, she realised that he used this expression in the same way as others use ‘you know’ or ‘in point of fact’.

  Distinctions of gender didn’t bother him at all; everyone was called ‘he’. When he gave her a report on the couple who had moved in down the road (he was a great gossip), he told her, with a sly look, that he was a schoolteacher, and then added: ‘He is painter.’

  ‘Oh. He teaches painting?’

  ‘No!’ annoyed. ‘He paint houses.’

  ‘I see,’ said the ex-schoolteacher. ‘She is the teacher.’

  ‘Zat what I say. He is teacher and hosband painter. You tink me rongk?’

  She gave the hint of a sniff. She’d like to try talking feminist politics with him, except that it had gone out of date, and he would frown in disapproval and say ‘Uh?’ So she cast about for something harmless.

  ‘Does your cat chase the birds away, Ivor, or attack them? Perhaps they all get along together?’

  ‘Zey all right. All live togezzer, because cats too well fed by the missus, you see?’

  They both nodded at the easy life of the modern cat who didn’t have to hunt for his supper. She looked at her own kitten, now scratching ecstatically and stretching in the newly prepared soil where Marcia’s seeds had just been planted.

  ‘Naughty girl,’ she scolded. But the cat heard the true timbre of her mistress’s voice and merely jumped over the low brick wall and serenely wal
ked away, tail held high, a skinny white and ginger periscope.

  Lessons continued despite the heat. She considered Luke anew: New Zealand born, along with three other siblings and brought up by his Indian mother. A patrician forehead from which brown soft hair was brushed back, smooth skin, trim figure and Kiwi dark tan eyes – maybe dad was Maori? – that were serious to the point of severity. Except when they were laughing with her, and that was often. He was the kind of boy whose looks would make a girl’s eye gleam with plans, but Luke wanted to join the priesthood.

  ‘And you know why?’ he’d said, months ago, in the same intonation he’d unquestionably used from the age of eight.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I want to be useful, Marcia.’

  Was there anyone else of her acquaintance who aspired to such a thing? People in her experience strove for Art, for fame or achievement. Or money: leaving behind on their road to success a littered trail of people with less nous though more integrity. She thought of the failed actors she’d known, their lack of success leaving that tang of unfulfilled promise around them, edged with a vague unhappiness.

  Luke’s homework read: He becam a raely strong swimer that sumer.

  ‘Let’s do some spelling and comprehension, shall we?’ she said after giving him a mark. ‘Gamble/gambol; vacation/ vocation; voracious/veracious.’ Too hard, this, probably.

  ‘Dictionary words!’ he said, eyes deepening in pleasure, shooting his cuffs. Last week when she’d pointed out the derivation of a word from Latin he’d been moved to shake his head in awe at both her knowledge and at the capricious nature of language.

  ‘Some English words come from Greek, don’t they?’ he said in a knowing way, as one scholar to another.

  ‘Oh yes, lots. And some even from Chinese, Indian.’

  ‘Words from all over the place!’ And he lifted and dropped a hand at the sheer breadth of it. Marcia smiled at him.

  Sometimes she helped him with his first aid booklet In Case of Emergencies − DRABC.

  ‘Just think of it as Dr ABC, Marcia,’ advised Luke. ‘It stands for Danger, Response, Airway, Breathing and Circulation.’

  She quizzed him on snakebite, spider stings, broken arms and the like.

  ‘Well you’re full bottle!’ she said with unfeigned admiration.

  His forehead puckered. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You know it all.’

  ‘And you know why?’ His voice took on that confidential lilt.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I sat up till midnight, learning it!’

  They both laughed heartily at the picture of him sweating over Dr ABC. But she suddenly pressed her palms to her temples and his eyes were on her.

  ‘I could give you a bit of massage for that headache, Marcia,’ he said. The lesson was almost over and she took up his offer, casting professional qualms to one side. As she sat back in her chair loosening her muscles, Luke in a most clinical manner massaged her shoulders and neck for a few minutes. She sighed and wiggled her head gently as he finished.

  ‘You should be doing something like this for a living,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you? Or pursue your St John Ambulance ticket?’

  He was calm and non-committal as he packed up his books.

  ‘You could earn more money getting a job with them,’ she persisted, knowing that he worked hard at what he described as a gardener/odd-job man for a small company. But the longer she knew him the more she suspected his place was at the unskilled bottom of the pile, mainly doing heavy manual work. He always showered before leaving the job and put on fresh clothes to come to his lesson.

  Well-intended questions, she knew, that started with Why don’t you … had never worked on her. And yes, he was now shaking his head even before she finished her advice.

  ‘I just want to be able to help the kids when we go on a church camp, in case they have any accidents Marcia; you know how kids are.’ The very notion of kids’ pranks and mischief made him throw back his beautiful head and laugh.

  ‘Just the same,’ Marcia pressed on, ‘you have a gift for healing. This massage – people make their living from it.’ Her neck and head were pain free. ‘Why not give people the benefit of your expertise?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I do. I give massage to my friends and relatives. Football injuries. My aunt’s sciatica. One of my brothers hurt his shoulder lifting furniture.’ She pictured the parade of brothers and sisters, nephews, nieces, all lining up for ministrations from Luke the healer. The lesson was over and he packed up his belongings.

  Big families with their comings and goings. What must it be like? Marcia had some idea of it and had been making do with a make-believe past for some time. When it was assumed or else asked with friendly (but impertinent!) interest whether she’d been married, she hinted – tired of telling the truth – at a husband in the background. It amused her to invent something to put them off the track. The nearest she’d had to a partner was of course Mickey and the thought of him as a husband made her grimace, amused. When the fishmonger, a pleasant man, serving her with a variety of seafood, mistook her for a woman with offspring and asked if she was feeding the family tonight or tomorrow, she fell easily into the lie, saying tomorrow.

  She’d taken it further, even referring, with strangers, to a daughter who lived in Africa, while in fact this daughter was a sponsored child whose education Marcia had paid for over the past seven years. When she said that she’d received a letter from her girl, it was half true.

  Equipped with these fictional relatives she found life easier for everyone, since people don’t know where to turn when they think you’re alone. Family is normal; solitude is suspect, sad. Parents needed to believe that she understood their problems and this could only be so if the teacher had experienced those same trials. So she nodded and allowed them to think there had been a husband in the background, possibly a daughter overseas, a difficult sister somewhere. Her contact with these clients was of a limited duration so she never had to keep up the pretence.

  In her private memory bank these so-called relatives were of her own choice. Whether acting or teaching, or doing a stint as a sales assistant in a department store, the ways of earning her living, in between acting, had provided her with a range of acquaintances whose company she’d enjoyed in the short term. She had to ask herself now if she had known how much she liked filling in for someone else in these jobs. As she moved about her kitchen now, the blue-and-white egg cup from Wexford that Mickey once gave her caught her eye. Was it possible he knew her better than she thought?

  She’d been formulating a little plan for Luke: something to be investigated was playing around in her head. Before she could go into action however, Fate – the bully with bad timing and no sense of fair play – stepped in.

  After his mid-week lesson (he had two every week) she was ushering him out of the front door, making sure he turned the right way; he still sometimes took the wrong streets in coming and going for his lessons. She had a headache that had settled as it usually did, behind her left eye. ‘For next week’s comprehension we’ll do the section on Pastimes That Interest Me,’ she started to say as they stood outside her front door. But her tongue gagged on the sibilants, the sounds squashing together as if someone had given her a fat lip. Her efforts to make a joke out of the predicament ended in an open-mouthed effect that could not have been an attractive proposition for Luke. As she gave up on trying to get the word out, her body took on a buzzing, numbing sensation. She’d have fallen and knocked her head on the verandah seat if he hadn’t caught her on the way down.

  She lay there looking up at him, wanting to say: I think I’m having an attack of high blood pressure – and you know why? Because of the rich food I eat. But Luke was already feeling her pulse and tenderly placing her on her side.

  ‘I’m going to call an ambulance, Marcia,’ he said gently. And did so, going through all the correct procedures.

  It may have been five minutes or four hours before they were bot
h in the back of the ambulance, he holding her hand, she telling him with her eyes that she couldn’t utter a word, dictionary or otherwise, and conveying that these people knew no more than he about first aid. His calm eyes – was that love she saw there? – and his nodding head answered: Yes, but see how I’ve made myself useful to you!

  Was she dying? Where was she in all of this? Luke stayed by her side in the vehicle and she worried that he would have no idea how to get home from the hospital. The ambulance staff were talking in such a matter-of-fact way that she realised her time hadn’t come yet.

  She would have bet her life on it: there was a man, not Luke, standing at the foot of her bed in the hospital. He was raising his eyebrows, pursing his lips, doing funny faces. Doctors didn’t do this. But Mickey of course couldn’t be here. Drugs do the most amusing things she thought, before she sank into a sound sleep.

  Back home from the hospital the following day, she rang Luke to see if he was all right. They confirmed next week’s lesson time. Putting on the kettle she wondered what Mickey would have made of Luke. Luke would have liked Mickey’s practical jokes whereas Marcia always saw them as childish – a puerile, primitive kind of humour, the aim being to mortify. Odd, really, that a man as gentle and intelligent as Mickey thought that someone falling off a chair, possibly hurting himself, could be funny.

  She had given more thought to him that he’d ever have guessed. Like many men from cooler climates he had fine-textured white skin (not unlike her own), and with it a play of expressions across those soft features which he never tried to disguise; it was a womanish face in some lights. Mickey didn’t do even a smidgin of tough-guy attitude. He was nice to look at, yet Marcia had not, at first, been drawn to that kind of man, at the same time not knowing what she meant by that kind of man. She had known quite a number of guys, blokes, chaps and fellows, but wouldn’t have been able to say what type she liked. Her father’s face was the most familiar one to her and she thought of him, as she looked through the window. The conundrum of his absurdly high expectations of her as he continued to violate her. Hatred for him had now been replaced by curiosity. She had survived and succeeded where he hadn’t.