Dark Places (18 page)

‘By Jove, Norah,' I might say, ‘the business is certainly thrusting ahead now,' and she would say in that languid condescending way she had, ‘That is good, Albion, I am so pleased,' and suck the end of her cotton to thread the needle for a bit more rose petal. ‘Pens are coming along very nicely,' I went on. ‘I was working on Pens just tonight, and my word they are well worth looking at,' but Norah only squinted at her needle, poking the thread at it, and when she spoke, it was only to tell me that Lilian had cut her forehead, falling out of the jacaranda, and she had the gall to pretend surprise when I shouted, ‘What the devil were you doing, Norah, letting her up in the jacaranda in the first place?'

Her lack of interest in my doings verged on the pathological. It made me wonder. I looked across at her, pushing the needle through the linen, sighing a little, feet neatly crossed at the ankle as she had been taught as a girl. Norah's promise of solidity had been fulfilled: although not a large woman, her weight in the chair was measurable, her presence in the room indubitable. Here was a wife, a mother of two: Norah was a fact. As I watched her bland insistence on her rose petal, her obstinate silence about my own doings, it crossed my mind to wonder whether, behind the fact of Norah, behind the fact of those children she had produced, there might not lie other facts.

Those homunculi of mine, for example, that had made their way into the heart of my wife's emptiness and taken root there: were they all that met the eye? There was no question about Lilian, for she was already the image of myself, but what of John, in whom I looked in vain for the slightest resemblance?

With a determination not to flinch from any possible fact, I toyed with another possibility. On those mornings when I had left the house for the ferry and the city, Norah might have waited to see her husband's back, my back, walk down the hill to the ferry and then have sat, waiting, winsome and lustful, for some other man. Out of the hydrangeas he might have come, smirking. He might have taken my wife's soft palm in his and have crushed his vile pink mouth against hers. He might have heard the cries that should have been mine, and the embroidered rose might have fallen to the floor. ‘Oh yes,' Norah might have sighed, or, ‘Oh no,' inflaming him as she did me. He might have been engorged past bearing, and beyond bursting there might have been the tears running into my wife's lewd mouth, the sobs of her abandon. Later, full of another man, she might have sat and embroidered on, pricking her finger as she waited for Albion her husband, so the rose became speckled with blood.

It was possible. Either it was so, or it was not so: it reduced me to hollow rage that I could never know for certain. The doings of women could never be reduced to fact, could never be anything better than speculation. I scrutinised Mother's face when she came down
to do the shops
every few months; I stared at Kristabel, who stared back rudely as if she thought I had no right to look at my own sister's face. We were at their mercy, because no matter what we did, we would never know for sure.

The charms of Miss Dora Gibbs turned out fairly quickly to be finite, and before too long I was ready to move on.

Dora was sharp in some ways, but in matters of the heart she believed everything that twopenny novels and the shop-girls' magazine told her. Other women I had known had tortured themselves from time to time with the thought that I would leave them, or tire of them. ‘But do you still love me a little, do I still please you?' they would tiresomely pester as I loved them less and less. But Dora did not seem to consider that I might tire of her. Dora had not heard of the word
philanderer
, and in the world of her novels, love was ended only by death, never by ennui. To a person such as this you could not simply say,
Dora
,
I have finished with you now.

I had always prided myself on an artistic way of ending an entanglement: I loathed all the awkward scenes, with women becoming red and blotched with tears and having to be given a handkerchief. They did not seem to realise that it would be better all round to avoid these ugly noises and uglier noses. In addition, the handkerchief was never returned, I knew that from several experiences: the handkerchief was gone for ever.

I sat at my desk with my feet up on a drawer, considering how I might put it to her.
Dora
,
you have ceased to amuse me
, I considered, or,
Dora
,
my wife has discovered us
, or even,
Dora
,
the doctors have given me a week to live
,
this is to say goodbye.

In the end it was simpler to do nothing at all: I sat in the oak chair as always, but I no longer suggested that Miss Gibbs look over the new stock with me, although it was imperative that Miss Pearson (Betty to her friends) should run her eye over the new lines of blotting-paper.

It was disgraceful how a young lady could let herself go. In no time at all, Dora degenerated into someone a man would not glance at twice: she became pale, with a red nose—had she taken to the grog?—her face became puffy, her complexion rough, her eyes seemed to have shrunk, and there was no hint that that cheek could ever produce a dimple. Usually so immaculate of dress, she took to wearing a coarse skirt with the hem coming undone at the back, and she walked around slouch-shouldered, dusting things in a mournful way, and ignoring the customers. No man would give her a second glance: how could I ever have picked her out for my special attention? You
are a guy
, I thought to myself in amazement.
You are a guy
,
Dora
,
and I was fool enough to think you beautiful.

She needed to pull herself together, but she did not, and it was nothing to do with Mr Singer when Miss Gumble, in charge of the girls, came to me in confidence and wondered if perhaps Miss Gibbs would have to be let go, her appearance and the quality of her work in general had fallen off so greatly of late. ‘Oh?' I was all concern and surprise. ‘But she was one of our best workers, was she not, Miss Gumble?' Reluctantly, Mr Singer was persuaded that Miss Gibbs was now something of a liability in Pens. When pressed, Miss Gumble confessed to having given the matter thought, and felt that she could wholeheartedly recommend Miss Smythe from Despatch, who seemed an ideal type of lass for the job.

I did not bother with any silver-plated tray for Dora, but instructed Miss Gumble to give her a week's wages in lieu and wish her well. Miss Gumble could be relied on not to mince words.

Eighteen

SINGER ENTERPRISES
was fifty years old, and Rundle had suggested that some sort of celebration would be in order. To tell the truth, I would not have thought of it: as far as I was concerned,
Singer Enterprises
had begun with me. Father, for all his pendulous cheeks and substantial waistcoats, had turned out to be easy to forget.

‘A buffet type of a thing, Mr Singer, perhaps,' Rundle suggested. ‘The staff would be as pleased as Punch.' I did not care much about pleasing the staff—surely it was their job to please me rather than the other way around—but it seemed easier to agree.

But when I mentioned it to Ogilvie, his eyes lit up. ‘I would urge an elephant or two on you, Singer,' he said. ‘And a brace of monkeys, the winsome kind.' I could only stare and wonder what sort of joke this was, and he went on, ‘A net of coloured balloons, or even better, pigeons, I know a man who will be able to help you there. You will need the police, of course, but there is a set fee for such things.' I could smile now, I had the hang of it, this was one of Ogilvie's bewilderingly original ideas, and although I could not quite leap after it agilely, I was sure a smile would be appropriate. ‘Inside, maids with canapes of course, but something a little different: medieval wenches, perhaps, or a mermaid theme? And nothing much on display, Singer, tantalise them: just one ream of best bond on a snakeskin, a bottle of ink in a fishbowl.'

‘By Jove, Ogilvie,' I cried, ‘I must say I had in mind something a little humbler!' I found a terrible windy laugh coming out of my mouth, as if to make him admit that the elephants were going too far, but his face did not waver in its seriousness. ‘Look, Singer,' he said, ‘an elephant is guaranteed to make the newspapers, and making the newspapers guarantees trade, and guaranteeing trade is what being in business is all about. A few clerks dropping oysters on the floor in a shop full of blank paper is not going to make the newspapers.'

In the event, elephants proved unobtainable. We settled for two camels, the wisdom of which I privately doubted, and three unpleasantly hairless monkeys; but we managed a live python with a gentleman's desk-set in its coils, which proved a great success with the ladies. Norah, for one, could hardly be dragged away from the python's cage, watching with lips ajar as the python engaged with the ink-well in a grotesque way.

It was a good enough gathering: the high society of Vaucluse was well represented, and so were the professional men of Macquarie Street and their wives. There must have been an acre or two of gleaming silk, and several furlongs of best worsted, moving to and fro under the new chandelier. Everywhere I looked I saw the powerful shoulders and the bull-necks of Sydney's successful men, heard their braying laughs. So much massed achievement was not unlike a roomful of cattle. Even the women, showing their plump creamy shoulders and their substantial arms, made you think of slabs of beef.

The chandelier was a stroke of genius, and gave the shop a particularly brilliant effect. I would not have thought of a chandelier, but Ogilvie had not come down in the last shower. ‘I am told it is the most flattering light for the ladies, Singer,' he assured me. ‘A female who feels herself exquisite will lay about herself lavishly, but if she catches sight of herself looking plain in a shop-mirror she will close her purse and go home.'

Ogilvie was in his element with a glass of punch in his hand, standing in front of the massed banks of hydrangeas. There was some intimate thing about the way Ogilvie leaned in to speak to people, which I saw that others besides myself responded to. It was a quality I was somewhat conspicuous in lacking, and it made Ogilvie the perfect foil to myself.

Vaucluse and Macquarie Street warmed to his bonhomie, and even the reptilian gentlemen of the press watched and listened with some interest: the python and the camel would certainly make the newspapers, and
Singer Enterprises
would be remembered as a go-ahead and surprising sort of place.

I watched and admired him: what a man of parts he was! With dull worthy Rundle he could be dull and worthy, worrying away at a bit of conversation; with Norah the perfect lady he was the perfect gentleman; and with those cold-eyed hacks he was—well, I could tell by the quirk of his eyebrow and the shapes his mouth was making that he was entertaining them with something a little racier than the new improved bladder of the Bismarck fountain-pen.

Norah did not do too badly as the wife of the owner. She circulated and gushed conscientiously, quite the society hostess. I could see her exclaiming with pleasure and astonishment, and grasping the other gloved hands of other ladies, and puckering her lips in the air near their faces, as if sucking up their smell. This was the kind of thing Norah was good at, and I was reminded of why I had married her when I saw her shrinking away in a charmingly affrighted way from the camels as they rolled their eyes at the crowd.

I noticed Sir Jeremy Jones, that ancient fraud, who stood up in Parliament and like a Red advocated the unions, while sitting safe on his grandfather's fortune. I saw him take Norah's arm and his lips mouth ‘Mrs Singer!' in his trumpeting demagogue's way; and Mrs Jeremy Jones, with whom Norah often exchanged women's chit-chat over their Royal Doulton, reached out a gloved hand as if to touch the closer camel, and had to be reassured when it turned to her with its black lip curling. I overheard Norah cry above the din, ‘Do tell me about your work, Sir Jeremy, it must be so very interesting.' Norah had no more idea of what
work
might be than a fish would have, but she had various phrases of a conversation-starting kind at her disposal: in private she verged on the imbecilic, but I was pleased to see how convincingly she scrubbed up in company.

But her sparklings and bubblings were pathetic, for they were so sadly misguided. Poor fool, she thought it mattered that the old fraud Jones had come. How could she know—as even the least observant member of the Club knew—that he was to be seen anywhere the booze was laid on? She sparkled away at him, no doubt under the impression that Jones—leering down at her chest in a rapacious way—was admiring the cut of her gown, when any male in the room could have told her that he was not thinking noble thoughts about her gown, but dirty ones about what the gown just failed to reveal.

She glanced over and caught my eye for a moment, and I nodded at her, and let her see my teeth, so that she went back to listening to Jones with an extra flush of pleasure on her face, and she would never guess that it was contempt that was softening her husband's face.

By contrast, Ogilvie and I worked the room like a couple of professionals. Here he was, bringing up one of his journalists to ask the proprietor a few words; there was I, introducing Ogilvie to one of our account customers, and watching him lean forward and do that gently electric intimate thing he knew how to do. Several times Ogilvie rescued me, with a judicious
thing needing your attention
,
Mr Singer
, from some bore who could be of no use to
Singer Enterprises.
Several times more he came and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with me, helping me endure some other bore who had to be sent home happy.

When the crowd separated us, some part of my skin seemed always to know where Ogilvie was. When things grew desperate, and my smile became a rictus, I knew where to look in order to exchange a restoring glance with him. We worked like clockwork all evening and, now, as I let the din of laughing and talking wash over me, taking a breather between bores, I winked across the room to Ogilvie, and had his own larrikin wink in return, and I could never remember being happier.