Touching Earth Lightly (3 page)

‘I’ll bet it’s that horrible block up there,’ said Chloe. ‘The sunburnt-brick one.’

It was, and the room inside was dank and blank and looked out on a concrete yard full of Hills Hoists and wheely bins.

‘The only way,’ mused Janey, standing in the middle of the lino floor, ‘would be to go the full Gothic-slash-Aladdin’s-Cave thing—drape everything, cover the windows. Red and purple cloth, I reckon, shiny, and with gold bits. Little lamps and stuff, huge cushions everywhere, a little low table to eat off. Rugs, vessels …’

‘You know, I think there’s actual blood on this wall,’ said Chloe in the bathroom.

‘From the last tenant slitting her wrists, probably.’ Janey’s voice boomed in the emptiness. ‘Let’s get out of here before we pick up some deadly
germ
.’

‘Face it,’ said Chloe when they were out on the street again. She had to shout over the noise of a passing train on the embankment opposite. ‘You’ll get something that’s either very small or very grotty, mostly both, for the amount you’re talking about.’

‘I know. I just don’t want a place that depresses me as soon as I walk in. Like when I’m on my own. Where do we go next? Oh, here.’ Janey slapped a charity bin in passing as they rounded the corner. ‘I’ll just hop into one of these every night. Run power from the overhead lines for my little teeve.’

‘Oh, come on, you can do better than that,’ said Chloe. ‘Like this, for instance.’ She rattled a hand-lettered Room-to-Let sign hanging off some fence railings and peered into the overgrown yard.

‘That looks pretty ancient,’ said Janey doubtfully.

‘Let’s give it a go.’

Janey moaned and dragged her feet. ‘I’m sick of looking at these dreary places. Let’s get something to eat.’

‘Just one last one before lunch.’ Chloe was already at the veranda steps.

An elderly man in a singlet and work shorts answered the door. ‘You’ll want Her-around-the-back,’ he said. They went out by the garden-choked path and in again at the driveway. In the high side wall were a few narrow, oddly placed windows, and many paint jobs had peeled back and worn through in a complicated, sun-bleached map. In the back yard a woman was pegging out washing. Her shape reminded Chloe of a potato.

‘Grass,’ Chloe whispered pointedly to Janey. ‘Excuse me, is that room still going?’

The woman squinted at them. ‘Yes, it is. It’ll only fit one of you, though, unless you get another bed.’

‘It’s just for me,’ said Janey.

The woman looked her up and down. If she thought anything it didn’t show. She nodded towards the house. ‘First on the left in there.’

The room was bigger than any they’d seen, and carpeted. Chloe switched on the light to show faded, leaf-patterned wallpaper, an intricate ceiling rose and French windows with mauve and dark blue glass panels. There were curtains already; there was a single bed covered with cream chenille.

‘Before I get my hopes up …’ Janey went to the windows and opened them to the back veranda and yard. ‘How much were you wanting for this?’ she called out to the woman.

‘Seventy-five.’

Janey looked at Chloe. It was five dollars over her limit.

‘It’s worth it,’ said Chloe. ‘It’s worth the money and it’s worth stopping looking.’

‘It is. I’ll take it,’ said Janey to the woman.

Joy came out onto the balcony when Chloe opened the front gate. She emptied a hole-punch onto her on the path.

‘Ah, the first snow. What’s this in aid of?’

‘Twyla just rang.’

‘Oh, bum. So I’m the princess.’

‘Yes, my darling. First rehearsal and fitting next Tuesday. Come in and have a goblet of mead-or-are-you-abstaining.’

‘I’ll have
one
, just to make you happy.’

She was scrabbling for her key when the door opened and Nick and Dane, in shorts, T-shirts and running shoes, came out. Dane bent to kiss her hello and Nick did flamboyant warm-up movements on the porch. ‘You better get going,’ Chloe said, ‘before he falls apart like a Crash-Dummy doll.’

‘Huh. You wish.’ Nick jumped off the veranda and vaulted over the spikes of the front fence.

‘You want to watch it, Nick—you’re going to impale yourself one day, doing that,’ said Dane, sedately opening the gate.

‘Yeah, yeah. Come on, let’s move. Been sitting on my bum all day …’

Chloe watched them jog away down the street, Nick just slightly taller than Dane now, his short blond hair gleaming under the streetlights, as did the streak of silver in her father’s. Then she stepped into the warm house, into the smells of wood fire and roasting lamb.

‘Isaac’s coming back next week.’ Chloe put the top shelf in place on the bricks and crossed the room for the book boxes.

‘Yeah?’ Janey was making up the bed with old red sheets borrowed from the Hunters. She had a cobweb caught in her hair—it looked like part of her hair, or an adornment to it. ‘D’you think he’ll have turned into a pain, with all the jet-setting?’

‘Wasn’t he one already?’

‘I guess Nick’ll emerge to greet him, at least.’

‘Maybe. Maybe he’ll just suck him into the vacuum of study he’s been in for the last six months. They can sit and be eggs together.’ Chloe sat on an upturned milk-crate and began to shelve handfuls of worn paperbacks.

Janey took her new bedside lamp out of its box and admired it, and read its guarantee ticket. ‘This is a bit flash, isn’t it?’

‘For a girl from the back streets, you mean?’

They looked at each other. It was exactly what Janey meant. She sparkled at Chloe, then looked anguished. ‘Ooh, if I can only—’ She held the ceramic lamp base in her hands like a crystal ball.

‘Of course you can,’ said Chloe, and was able to mean it. They’d got this far; pretty well anything should be achievable.

‘Oh, you think? I’ve got such a strong feeling, you know, that I just don’t deserve …’
This space, this comfort
, her gaze finished, taking in the room like an intruder’s. ‘You know, that some Department will turn up, with some by-law, and make me go back.’

‘No such department. No such law.’ Chloe went on shelving, and after a while Janey put down the lamp and began hunting among the boxes and bags for a light bulb. She found one and fitted it with the intense care of someone defusing a landmine. ‘Now, this shade. Gawd, luxury, a little
shade
. You don’t think it looks too
girly
, do you?’

‘Janey, that is the plainest, most neutral,
minimalist
—’

‘Just checking.’ Janey, smiling, placed the lamp on the plastic storage box that was her bedside table, plugged it in, switched it on and sat back. Chloe felt a twinge of pain at the enchantment on her face. Janey glanced at her and laughed in amazement. ‘You see, you don’t
buy
new stuff for your room, at my place. Nathan would either pinch this or smash it. It’d be like an invitation for him to be revolting.’

‘Well,
this
is your place now.’

‘I know, I know. Isn’t it
fab
?’

Chloe smiled, enjoyed the glow of her, looked away from the nakedness of it at the books in her hand. ‘
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
. I didn’t know you had this. Is it wildly sexy, like it’s supposed to be?’

‘Not really. Borrow it if you like.’ Janey stowed the lamp box under the bed.

‘Hmm—worth it?’

‘Oh, it’s a bit of a wank. He’s got no idea about orgasms—girls’, I mean. He sort of cuts to pounding waves and makes it all
spiritual
. The only bit I liked was at the end where the guy writes to her—and you think, “Oh gee, he can write!” because he’s, you know, the gardener or someone—’

‘Gamekeeper, it says,’ Chloe read off the back cover.

‘—and he writes—well, it’s really what’s-his-name writing, D. H. Lawrence, not the gamekeeper—he says, “We have fucked a small flame into being.” I kind of like that, don’t you?’

‘A small flame? Not a raging passion?’

‘Oh, I don’t know what they had, those two—I thought they were miserable. I don’t think they ended up in happy-ever-after land.’

‘Like
The Piano
, where you can’t quite see how it’ll work out, when they go off together—I mean, they
show
her, with her metal finger, but it’s all a bit
Oh yeah, sure
!’

‘Exactly.’ Janey picked up a plastic bag and started stuffing all the other bags into it. ‘But anyway, I liked the way he actually says “fucked” rather than “loved” or something sloppy. It’s got that much guts, at least. That’s probably why people were shocked way back when, because it called fucking fucking.’

‘People still are, a lot.’ Chloe shelved the book and went on shelving. ‘I mean, not many people do call it that—only old hippies like my parents who’re trying to sound
cool
.’

Janey paused in her prowling. ‘People—I’ve thought about this—’ She jabbed the air with a finger and they both laughed. ‘A lot of people, I reckon, don’t
believe
in fucking, in just sex. They want it always to be “making love”, you know. Lots of girls; it’s that romantic thing. They want, you know, their souls to be in communion or some garbage. Just only physical, the kind of fucking I do, they don’t like the idea of, they don’t want to know it even goes on. Whereas … I guess Theo was a making-love kinda guy, huh?’

‘He made love, to me.’

Janey laughed. ‘What, you slept? Read a book? Lay there with your eyes closed?’

‘Well, I did what I was supposed to. Responded, you know. I didn’t ever fake anything, but I never actually … went after anything for myself.’

Janey gazed at her in incomprehension. ‘I dunno, maybe you should take old Lawrence home. He might have something for you.’

‘I don’t miss it at all, the sex.’

‘What
do
you miss? Anything?’

Chloe began on the second box of books. ‘Not really. Funny how you can sleep with someone, do all that stuff, you know?, and still be so totally …
unconnected
.’

‘Yeah,’ said Janey, standing there with the bag of bags dangling from one hand.

Chloe shrugged. ‘Theo doesn’t count. Theo was a … an experiment.’ She met Janey’s gaze. ‘What are you
realising
about me?’

Janey looked surprised. ‘Oh, I’m not. Did I look like I was? I was more kind of wondering, about how
different
you are, and … how the things we want are so different.’

‘Why, what do I want?’ said Chloe, straightening books on the shelves.

Janey stared at her awhile. ‘Good question. I’m not just talking about, like, men.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m not even talking about wanting, really. Or knowing what you want. It’s—I know what I’d like, and I’m pretty sure I won’t get it, long-term. You don’t know, but it’s pretty certain that once you decide, it’s yours—A to B, there you’ll be,
with
it.’

Chloe looked at her. ‘What is it that you want and won’t get?’

Janey thought, and then Chloe saw her give up trying to find a place to start. ‘Aargh, I dunno. A pile of stuff,’ she growled, and laughed unhappily.

‘Like what?’ Chloe insisted.

‘I don’t know—you know, a man—like,
a
man—and a baby I could
keep
—like, be capable of keeping—and a
life
, you know, an
occupation
, some kind of thing that goes
on
—huh!—all we’ve talked about, all that fantasy stuff. Work that you love, you know. All that.’

‘
I
didn’t think it was a fantasy,’ said Chloe, feeling a tiny bit staunch in saying it. ‘Anyway, where do you start, otherwise? What do you aim for?’

‘Well, you aren’t aiming for anything. But I know you’ll get it.’

‘You
don’t
know. How do you
know
?’ But watching Janey smile and shrug, Chloe had the weird feeling it was possible that she did know. ‘I could spend my whole life down here in the
gutter
with you,’ she went on loudly.

‘You could! That would be
good
!’ Janey stooped and swept up another bag. ‘Maybe I won’t get a man, but you can help me look after the baby!’ she finished brightly.

‘Coo-ool!’ said Chloe in exactly the same bright tone.