The Good Parents Page 8

  He was in the shade and Arlene was in the light. If you had to guess, you’d say she’d be the survivor. Did Anton choose death, or did he escape to another life? Was his character weak?

  How exhausting procrastination was! He was pale and sluggish with dark rings under his eyes. He had no spirit for his old trick when he had the place to himself, of putting on the Four Tops and miming ‘I’ll Be There’ with a fist microphone in front of the long mirror. He had no desire to arrange the curtains ready for his evening pleasures. All that was behind him now, a pervert’s habit that had probably set him off on the road to mental ruin.

  If he wasn’t reading Tolstoy he fell asleep. On his rare excursions into the outside world, sneaking down the fire escape to the newsagent’s for a packet of Columbines or a Mad Magazine, he was shocked by the harshness of the light, the dust blowing down Fitzgerald Street, the banality of this desert town. He kept his head down to avoid people’s eyes. He was nearly knocked over by Rosser, the science dux from school, pounding along in running shorts. ‘I’m pacing myself,’ Rosser panted. ‘Four hours at the desk and then I run a mile.’ Jacob rushed home, longing for snow, dronskies, lanterns, long rustling dresses.

  It was too late for him now. All he could do was open Tolstoy, the last act of a dying man. Its effect was instantaneous, like plunging into a golden broth. Don’t end, don’t ever stop … He rang Beech to curse him for lending him the book. Beech sounded slow and distant, as if engrossed in work. Bastard! (Later it turned out that Beech had been back to the Capelli brothers, and was experimenting on his own in the rectory shed.)

  ‘Father! Father!’ says Prince Andrey’s young son Nikolinka in the last line of the story. ‘Yes, I will do something that even he would be content with …’

  But by that time, as Jacob closed the book, it was as if he were at the end of his youth, with all its happy expectations of success.

  He had two days left before the Leaving started. He was washed out, devastated, purified. Almost curious now about his impending disaster, he reached for his history notes and began to memorise some dates.

  His life wasn’t ruined, he scraped through, though like a slap on the wrist, with only a provisional pass in English, his best subject. Without a Commonwealth Scholarship he would have to be bonded to teachers’ college and study at university part-time. Beech, another star pupil, did even worse, but a parishioner of his father’s helped him get a job on The West as a cadet journalist. Beech was called up – or as he said, ‘my marble was pulled’ – but failed the medical. Flat feet was the official reason, but Beech said it was because he’d told them he was looking forward to writing real-life accounts of a soldier’s life in Vietnam.

  Jacob was never called up. Together they plunged into the heady days of the oncoming decade. But the Tolstoy factor would remain with Jacob as a distrust of himself, a suspicion that whenever there was something he should do, something vital, he would occupy himself with something else.

  Of course he found her. As she came to know him she realised that he would have sent one of the boys to find out who she was and where she lived and what her movements were. But as with most things that happened around Cy Fisher, she only saw the results, not how he achieved them. Her little trick with her address was never mentioned. Incidents in which someone got the better of Cy were rare and only meant that, sooner or later, without a word, he’d prove how futile such attempts were.

  After the Leaving, she took a Christmas job at Boans, selling gloves and handbags. One day she looked up from the counter and there he was. It was a shock to see him again in daylight, his black eyes and fish-belly white face, his solidity and assurance. She felt her heart beating. Her first thought was that she hadn’t really got away after all.

  ‘How are you?’ he said, with a businesslike nod, and straight away asked to look at a leather shoulder bag, the classiest, the most stylish, the one she yearned for. ‘I’ll take it,’ he said, handing it back. She was surprised to see her hands shaking a little as she wrapped it. ‘Merci,’ he said, as he gave her a cheque, and at last he smiled. He put the bag under his arm, nodded at her and walked away.

  The name Cy Fisher was almost childishly clear in the big black writing on the cheque. Who was the bag for? she wondered.

  He came back two days later, his usual span for the softening-up process. By then she’d had time to think about him. In fact, in the same way that he’d loomed over the counter, he now loomed in her mind. She felt haunted by him from the moment she woke in the morning, as if those black eyes had watched her while she slept. Cy Fisher, Cy Fisher, she muttered at the mirror, like a question to herself.

  This time her heart lurched violently as soon as she caught sight of him, as just before closing time he threaded his way through the Christmas crowd towards her. He stood out from everybody else, in his loose black suit, with his long, groomed hair and the villainous five o’clock shadow darkening his cheeks. Hardly the answer to a mother’s prayer, or a schoolgirl’s dream for that matter. But then she wasn’t a schoolgirl anymore. He asked her to have a drink with him after work and she accepted.

  Everything that happened around Cy Fisher was swift and simple. The Citroën was parked in a loading zone at the back of Boans. He always parked wherever was closest to his mission. If a ticket found its way onto his windscreen, he crumpled it up and threw it on the ground.

  He took her to The Riviera, a nightclub in the old part of the city on the other side of the railway line, where girls from her suburb never went. This is where migrants came when they first arrived in Perth, wave upon wave of them, setting up in the little dark terrace houses and shops until they could afford to move out to a quarter-acre block in the suburbs and become proper Australians. It was too early for The Riviera to be open for business but Cy knocked and was let in. He ushered her inside and as they entered he put one hand on her shoulder. To protect her or claim possession?

  It was a large bare room, naked-looking as a church hall at this time of the day. From small windows near the ceiling the summer twilight fell in beams across the swept wooden floor. There was a bar near the door and a table of men playing cards. As soon as the barman saw Cy Fisher he put down two glasses and a bottle. Cy pulled out a bar-stool for Toni before strolling to the table and shaking hands with each of the men. The barman filled the glasses with colourless liquid from the bottle, grappa, he told Toni, the very best. He was a small, quick man with sympathetic brown eyes and a professional manner. Cy sat down, clinked his glass against Toni’s and downed it in one gulp. Toni took a sip. She felt she was being watched but when she glanced over her shoulder, the men at the table were studying their cards. They were darkly well-groomed, of all ages, in suits or laundered shirt sleeves. I could be in Europe, she thought. She took another sip. Cy and the barman, Pino, discussed soccer scores. As soon as she had drained her glass, Cy stood up. He ushered her to the door and the card-players raised their hands. She felt their eyes on her back.

  In all their time together she never once saw him pick up a bill.

  His timing was impeccable. He drove her to the bus stop on the avenue close to where she lived – he seemed to know that it wouldn’t be a good idea for her to be seen alighting from a stranger’s car in her own street – and she arrived home only a few minutes later than usual. Everything went as if to a plan.

  He started to pick her up every day after work. He took her all over the city, to little restaurants where no English was spoken, or dark bars up stairways or jazz clubs in basements. She had no idea that such places existed in Perth. Mostly these establishments had not yet opened for the night, which gave a cosy family atmosphere to their visits. He knew all the owners and everybody seemed glad to see him. Doors opened before them, a table was always waiting, a bottle appeared, vodka or grappa or some other sort of ethnic brandy. The smoothness of their path, the warmth of their reception, made her feel languorous and secure. This is what grown-up life is like, she thought. There was an aura of authority
around him, and within it she felt safe. Nothing was going to happen to you once you stepped into his orbit. It was clear he was some kind of leader, though she had no idea what he was a leader of, exactly. Arriving somewhere with him was like entering a ball with the captain of the rowing squad.

  In all ways these excursions couldn’t be more different from what she had experienced up till now. The instinct of the boys she knew was to head for open spaces, the beaches or the river or King’s Park. Everything happened outside, sex, socialising, music, films. They went to drive-in cinemas, concerts on ovals or in grassy auditoriums, football games. They camped at Rottnest Island. Even at parties, everyone ended up on the porch or the terrace or the shrubbery down the back of the yard. At the end of the night their cars, or their fathers’ cars, invariably headed for the beach, or parking lots overlooking the river. When summer came all the boys wore as little as possible, shorts and singlets, bare feet, a sort of native tribe.

  As far as she could see, day or night, winter or summer, Cy Fisher wore the same black suit and white shirt. His only concession to the heat was to take off his jacket and roll up his sleeves to expose thick, black-haired forearms. He never exposed his legs or his feet and walked as little as possible in the street. His skin was so white it was as if the sun never reached him.

  His instinct was all for dark interiors, in the north of the city, amongst people he knew, none of whom had an English name. He had no interest in nature, and actively distrusted all insects, birds, dogs. The only time she’d seen him even slightly agitated was when a bee flew around his head. He’d cursed and swiped at it and didn’t rest until he’d crushed it beneath his boot. He said he wouldn’t know one end of a surfboard from another. She realised she’d never known a male under thirty who didn’t surf.

  She began to understand that he was of another species, those who slept late and stayed up all night. She thought of him as a sort of nocturnal animal, which had, for reasons of its own, decided to bring her into its world.

  He saw her for an hour or so after work each day and always delivered her home in time. Never laid a hand on her, apart from her shoulder or the base of her spine when they walked in or out of a door. She didn’t know what he wanted of her. Suspense grew. She sensed it was a breaking-in process and couldn’t help admiring his cool.

  What did she know of him? Sometimes she told him anecdotes about her day at work when he picked her up. He listened benevolently, without comment. He drove serenely, uninterested in small talk. The smile he gave her when she got into the car was enough to warm her through the journey. Why? Because he only ever smiled if he wanted to. It seemed to signal some deep, mysterious approval that carried her past the strangeness between them.

  He wasn’t afraid of silence. It was as if he said, it’s enough I’ve chosen you. I have made a decision.

  Christmas went by, but she applied to keep working at Boans. The Leaving results came out, she’d passed respectably. She’d been going to stay with some classmates on Rottnest, but she had no interest in this now, nor in the backyard parties – punchbowls, coloured lights, hired music – that broke out all over the suburbs by the river. She stopped returning phone calls. Soon nobody called her anymore. It was as if she’d moved to another city.

  She didn’t know if she liked Cy Fisher or not, she couldn’t think about it. All she knew was that these little sorties with him had a charm for her. With him, her life was suddenly exotic. In bed at home, this secret life, the places he took her to, the people she met, seemed like a fairytale.

  Cy Fisher was not someone she could talk about to any of the girls she knew. Unlike them, she had no close friendships. This was not just because she was reserved by nature. Beauty isolated her. By some genetic design, all her inherited features had harmoniously come together, her father’s olive colouring, her mother’s fine bones, to create its own fresh, perfect form. At seventeen she was like a new star rising in the firmament, gazed upon with wonder all over her small world. Wherever she went she attracted attention. There was a hush about her if she came into a room. Old people smiled at her. It was said that she looked like Natalie Wood, that she could be a cover girl for Seventeen.

  Girls gazed at her in class, wondering how one creature could be so blessed. They kept their distance. Face to face with some of them, it seemed to her that their eyes swam with something secret, some suspicion they were keeping to themselves. She sensed that they were on the lookout for any signs that she was pleased with herself. She had to work hard to compensate, be extra modest and nice, just to prove that she was the same as everybody else. This created tension inside her. She felt isolated, unreal, a fake. There was something unexpressed in her relationships with other girls, even those who included her. When they talked, daily, about appearances, their own or other people’s, Toni had to stay silent.

  And all the time she knew she was no vainer than they were. She took her beauty for granted, it had always been there, it was part of her, she enjoyed it unthinkingly, carelessly, as someone who has never been ill enjoys a healthy body.

  Boys, on the other hand, were always in favour of her. In fact, the cooller she was, the more they seemed to like it. Only the confident or very daring approached her and asked her out. But this too was unreal. She felt their eyes didn’t really see her when they looked at her. They didn’t listen to what she said. They liked her whatever she thought or did. She lost respect for them and was bored.

  In her own family, beauty was a word that was never mentioned. Her older sister Karen, with the ordinary good looks of youth, was twenty-two and soon to be married, distracted, fulfilled, lost in her own world of lists and plans and bridal magazines. They had never been close. Toni was a quiet, cool, even-tempered child, detached like her father, Beryl said. Karen was closer to Beryl. Karen’s social persona was warm, poised and chatty. Karen is the nice one, people liked to say.

  Their father, Nig (for Nigel, but also making reference to the tremendous tan he gained in the navy while on service in the tropics), never seemed to really look at his daughters, as if that was taboo. He treated them both with a distant, courteous affection. Perhaps he was only too aware of the trap of appearances – during the war he was as handsome as Cary Grant in his uniform, Beryl said, he was regarded as a catch, all the girls were wild about him. Her marriage was a coup, the triumph of her life.

  Caught, he always had the upper hand. It was as if he’d made a pact with himself, to let his marriage interfere with his private pursuits as little as possible. He resisted all of Beryl’s social ambitions. When he was home he sat silent behind his newspaper, indifferent to her rants and tears. He lived for going to the pub, to the football or cricket, or card games with old navy friends. He sold insurance to rural businesses and spent one week in three staying in old pubs, going to country race meets. ‘Look after your mother,’ he told his daughters, smiling as he left, freshly shaved and light-hearted.

  A tension grew in her as the weeks passed. Soon she would start university, the first step on the path to the future plotted out for her (an arts degree, a brief stint in the public service, a year in London. The word ‘marry’ hovered just where this path met the horizon). Cy Fisher was so very much not a part of that future that she didn’t know how she could keep on seeing him.

  But was this the future that she really wanted? And if not, what did she want? At night she lay in bed and thought about this. She felt as if there was something she had once known for herself, which now she had forgotten.

  She thought about Cy Fisher. She’d never expected to find him desirable – he was hardly the ideal of an attractive man – and yet she was more and more intrigued. She thought about his self-control, his calmness, the warm dry touch of his hands. He’d never even tried to kiss her. The way he was suddenly there, filling a doorway. The way he could, just as suddenly, disappear. The way his beard grew, virile and urgent, so he had to shave twice a day. But his carefully slick-backed hair, his ring, his clean, filed nails were almost fe
male. He cared for himself like a woman. What would her father think of that?

  He’d left school at fourteen. He’d never read a book in his life. But this was her mother’s voice in her ear. He was a king in his world. In that world, a graceful hospitality flowed around her. She could stay silent and no one said she was stuck-up. In Cy’s world she felt light and simple and at ease.

  By now she ought to have introduced him to her parents. Lately when she came home from work, her mother had leaned forward to smell her breath. Toni was running out of friends that she’d happened to meet or invitations to drinks from workmates.

  ‘Tell the truth,’ Cy Fisher said as he drove her to her bus stop. ‘Tell them you’re with me.’ There was a glint in his eye, a half-smile on his lips.

  ‘Then you’ll have to meet them,’ she said. He had no comprehension of how much they wouldn’t like him. Or perhaps he did. He was throwing her a challenge.

  She took a breath. ‘Come home with me now.’

  She knew at once that it would never be all right. Beryl and Nig were sitting in their armchairs, beneath the standard lamp, both absorbed in watching the news. Spotlit under the pleated lampshade, their old faces were bleached and sunken, fallen into worried lines. They looked up at the same time, startled by the vision of Toni in the doorway with a stranger. Nig jumped up to turn off the sound on the TV. Behind him Beryl whipped off her apron. Toni introduced Cy and the men shook hands. They all stood looking at one another. No one asked Cy to sit down.

  Beryl was unable to smile. Her eyes kept returning to Cy’s hair and ring. She would be thinking ‘common’, Toni knew, she would be thinking ‘flashy’. Her father cleared his throat a couple of times.