The Best Australian Stories (53 page)

Ulla arrived loaded with gifts, though it was a long walk from the bus stop. She and George allowed themselves a peck on the cheek. She offered him a large bunch of orange zinnias – the colour of life, she murmured, to no one in particular. Also some bottles of cider – she was now a tee totaller – and a Swedish crispbread for which Kristina had once expressed a liking. Later Kristina would realise she'd forgotten to thank Ulla for this.

Jerzy's hair was longer and greyer, slicked back from his sallow face. He strode through the house to the courtyard, like a Polish cowboy bringing news home to the ranch. Old Perth wasn't so different from other places, he said, opening one of his cans at the courtyard table, there was mediocrity and complacency all over the world.

‘But the air isn't as clear,' said Ulla, smiling primly across the table. When feeling shy she often adopted a contrary stance. She was wearing evening glasses with a rhinestone in each corner and a Nordic-looking embroidered shirt. Ulla always looked a little at a loss away from the workplace, sitting still, her hands idle.

Jerzy ignored her. George could see that he didn't warm to Ulla. He would sum her up as bossy: he suspected all middle-aged women of being bossy. George remembered that Jerzy, eternal bachelor, liked women with leather miniskirts and blonde tousled hair. He leaned across to Ulla and asked her to select some dinner music.

*

Grace stood in the doorway to say goodbye. She kissed George and told him she'd stay the night at Denny's. Soon she would move out with him. She kissed Ulla and for a moment Ulla came alive, beaming, her brown eyes moist behind her glasses. They were all silent for a moment after this vision of radiant youth had disappeared. The fragrance of George's char-grilled capsicum and eggplant wafted over the table like a consolation for the middle-aged. From within the house came the rich strains of
Les Nuits d'été.
A three-star disc. George signalled his approval to Ulla. Was this her taste, or did she know he'd planned to select it?

In the dark courtyard next door he could hear lushly flowing water. Connie was watering. A year ago her husband Sam had died of Alzheimer's and Connie had not yet lost the habit of nurture. She could be heard watering Sam's garden at all hours of the day.

*

What they had to understand, Jerzy was saying, was that the whole world had entered a new epoch. That this was just the beginning. In these last days of the millennium they were in the grip of historic change. The forces of pragmatism had finally taken over. It was the end of history, the end of knowledge. Knowledge had been replaced with information.

‘One thing never changes,' Ulla said. ‘Human nature.' She meant: like half-drunk men who hold forth.

After dinner, Kristina had muttered something about making coffee and wandered off into the house. Long ago she had given up on Jerzy, had pronounced him sexist, irredeemable, Polish, like her father, the worst kind. He was a colleague of hers in the laboratory, and used to be a mate, but she had handed him over to George. George and Jerzy used to meet for drinks on Friday night.

Jerzy propped his boots up on Kristina's empty chair and addressed himself entirely to George. He had visited laboratories in hospitals and universities all over the world. All you needed now were networks and publicists, he said. It was global. He'd visited his cousins in Poland and they had given him their name for it. The new Dark Age.

‘I've heard that before,' Ulla said. She was less and less discreetly slapping at the mosquitoes that loved her healthy flesh. George felt achingly tired. Kristina was probably asleep. Ulla was not appeased. The evening was a dud. A bore, a waste of time. As all things were which didn't come from the heart.

When Ulla gathered up her bag for the last bus, George rose at once and insisted he would drive her home. Jerzy could stay and wait for his return if he liked. But Jerzy, taken aback, took his boots off the chair and said he'd find a late-night bar.

Jerzy would have travelled the world from bar to bar. George envied him that careless trust of his own body. They used to talk of going to Cuba together. Now George knew he would never make a trip like that, whisky and cigars and reeling down crumbling avenues at dawn. He had lost the necessary bravado, the necessary romantic belief. Some quota of his mortal energy had been used up. What was left he needed for something else.

Kristina was lying on the bed, a dark shape washed up beneath the fan, as George ushered Ulla out.

*

He and Jerzy would grow apart, George thought as he drove away from the house. Jerzy would think that George had had the stuffing knocked out of him: the stoic response was to carry on as if nothing had happened. And in some ways he was right. But what George wanted, more than anything else, was to change. George had never quite understood why Jerzy persisted in liking him. He would miss him more because of that.

It was pleasant bowling though the night streets. Ulla was relaxed, looking out the window with her own thoughts, a little smile on her lips. The old ease was back between them. She was pleased with him again.

Over the years he'd probably spent more waking hours with Ulla than with Grace or Kristina, but there were many things he did not know about her. Ulla did not give reasons. Why she'd migrated to Australia, for instance – he suspected a love affair. Why, with her energy and acumen, she continued to work for him.

For a moment he felt nostalgic for their friendship too as it used to be. When he had been raw and lost, the shop a desperate gamble, only Ulla had believed in him. When the sight of Ulla, in her neat black and white, had been pleasing to him every morning. The customers had commented on the good vibe in the shop. On
George's
first anniversary there was champagne for everyone at closing time. Afterwards he and Ulla allowed themselves a little sentimental self-congratulation and finished off the bottles. For some reason, Ulla pulled out from her bag a photograph of herself at seventeen and showed it to him, and he remembered being touched to see how soft her eyes were then, in the round face of a mid-sixties European schoolgirl. It was very late and somehow they ended up on the floor of the office. There had been laughter, an upturned wastepaper basket, carpet burn. George had blotted out most of the details. A last-minute intimation of danger on his part. Ulla's patience. A subdued brushing down. They must never drink again at work! they said the next day. He was relieved they both felt the same. After all, he told himself, he and Ulla came from the same generation. Those were rough-and-ready, more forgiving days.

*

When did he understand the grip that some people's love could have on you? Its weight, even its peril. In the hospital, Ulla's bunch of wattle had a scent of such virulent sweetness that it seemed to penetrate his brain. He couldn't have peace until, dragging his post-operative drip with him on its trolley, he carried the vase out of his room down the corridor and left it on the reception desk. But back in bed the scent found its way to him. Off he trundled again, this time to dump the flowers in a bin marked ‘Hospital Waste'. It took a night for the scent to drift away.

‘Of course you'll have to live differently,' Ulla said when she sat by his bed. ‘Diet, exercise. No drinking or smoking. A more natural life.'
You caused this. You did this to yourself.
He didn't look at her. ‘Does Kristina understand this?' she said.

*

‘I'm re-thinking everything at the moment,' he said suddenly to Ulla when they were a few blocks from her place. ‘About my involvement in the shop. The sort of hours I want to put in, the sort of commitment. Even whether to close the shop and turn the whole business into mail order, work alone from home, have a catalogue on the Web, that sort of thing.'

‘What aren't you happy with?'

‘Nothing. I just want to simplify my life.'

‘You're good with customers, George. Much better than with computers. You need people.'

‘Maybe,' he said as he pulled up. ‘Anyway, I'm giving it some thought.'

As usual, Ulla offered him a crumpled five-dollar bill to pay for the lift, though she knew this annoyed him. He shook his head at her and pushed her hand away. She walked slowly up the pathway to her dark-brick home unit through its drab bush garden.

He knew as he drove off how cruel he'd been. She didn't deserve this. For years her first thoughts had been for the shop. She really deserved to be made a partner. Or perhaps she'd known all along how it would end. On the freeway he opened his window to a rush of weedy river breeze. He felt cool and hard and savagely light-hearted.

It was clear at last that it must happen. Ulla would have to go.

*

Kristina was sitting on the front steps of the veranda, her bare feet on the footpath. The road was awash with the yellow light of the street-lamps. Behind her the black zigzag roofline of the row of houses ran like a spine up the hill.

Kristina said she felt stifled in the house. She couldn't sleep. He sat down next to her. How unhappy she was, hugging her knees, not able to look at him, her mouth too set to speak. He wished she would tell him what was wrong. They were often at their closest when Kristina had a problem. An insult at work. What a colleague had said. She seemed to attract jealousy. He was very good at helping her.

‘Did Jerzy say goodbye?'

‘Yes. By the way, he wants to invite you to a game of squash.'

‘Good God. I didn't know Jerzy played squash.'

‘He doesn't. But he thought it might be good for you. Build you up a bit.'

In spite of herself Kristina laughed. George laughed too, warmed by Jerzy's loyalty.

They heard a trickle of water on the veranda next door and looked at each other: Connie, giving her rubber plant its late-night drink.

Connie had lived in her house all her life. She had seen many occupants come and go in the row. George would be one of the oldest residents now. When he first moved in, Des, in the furthest house, used to organise street Christmas parties, but nine years ago he died of AIDS. In the next house down, a couple of academics, Clare and James, had moved out to a serviced apartment when Clare became crippled with arthritis. Ted, of Ted and Mavis, had a stroke and died in a nursing home. Sweet Mary van Beem died three years ago of breast cancer. After she died, Kristina had seen a white heron circling over the roofs of the terrace. Then Connie's Sam. Then George.

Every two years. You had to wonder if it was higher than the national average. Or if there was a reason why this row of houses had attracted the attention of a particularly vengeful angel. Death Row, George privately called it. One night last winter he asked Kristina if she ever thought of this. ‘It's coming our way,' he said.

‘No it's not,' Kristina said instantly. ‘It jumps around. Ted and Mavis lived further down than the van Beems, remember?'

So she had thought of it. She was surprisingly superstitious for a scientist.

When he opened his eyes from the anaesthetic, the first thing he saw was Kristina picking out the corned beef from a hospital sandwich, looking haggard and exasperated. She was wearing the little gold cross from her long-repudiated Catholic childhood, which she'd always worn to interviews and exams.

His mood had turned sombre. He felt his limbs grow heavier by the moment. He touched her shoulder. ‘I'm off to bed.'

*

Before he left, Jerzy had stood at the bedroom door and called into the darkness: ‘Is he going to be all right?'

Kristina said that no one knew. If he made it through five years, his chances were good. He was in remission for the time being.

‘Don't do anything to upset him,' Jerzy said suddenly.

In one bound Kristina rose up from the bed and stood blinking in the hall. She didn't dare ask Jerzy what he meant. They talked about George.

She'd been sitting on the steps since Jerzy drove off. From down the hill came the distant static of Fremantle on Friday night, shouts and crashes, feral drumbeats, the pulse of car radios. Her stomach hurt.

This afternoon, the man who used to be her lover had phoned her at work. He was a doctor at the same hospital. They'd had a long infrequent affair that she ended when George was diagnosed with cancer. No contact at all, she had said. She didn't tell him about the pact she'd made, giving him up for George's survival.

The doctor said today that he'd heard George had recovered. He wanted to see her again. Just for a walk or a drink, to see how she was. He said he missed her. In fact – his voice broke and he whispered – he was beginning to think he couldn't live without her. And Kristina croaked back that she never stopped thinking about him either. A hoarse craving voice seemed to be speaking through her. At the same time she was filled with foreboding.

Later she rang him from the car at the Monument to tell him she wouldn't meet him. They agreed to try not to meet.

The more they denied themselves, the more they desired. Kristina knew this. She also knew that the doctor wasn't as nice as he was charming. When she first met him she thought he would be funny, with his long upper lip and ironic hang-dog look. But he wasn't funny, in fact he turned out not to have much of a sense of humour. He didn't like her to cry, or even to dress carelessly. He could have a whining tone when he talked about his colleagues. He had a capacity to sneer. For all his height and authority, it sometimes crossed her mind he was a sleaze.

The one person whose advice she'd trust she could not tell. Her lover was not half the man George was, she knew. And yet her thoughts returned to him, over and over, like a mantra.

One seagull circled silently over the street, lit up white in the darkness.

The angel had got it wrong.
It should have been her, not George
.

She had kept her pact and the angel had flown off again. But it was watching. It had left its mark on the door.