Steeplechase (6 page)

It is like a conversation but one where I can only hear the uninteresting part. The good bit of it is going on in Emily's head. It must be a game. It is a game to fill in the time till I am awake. Now I am here I crook my fingers up against my head, my thumb to my ear, my little finger to my mouth. I walk quietly into the room thinking that she will be so surprised and pleased to have someone to play this game with.

‘All right then I am back again now,' I say into my pretend telephone and watch her snap her head up sharply like a startled bird, her beak in the air, her eyes glazed as if she is having trouble focusing on the room around her.

‘So what were we talking about again?' I say, quite loudly into my telephonic hand.

‘You've scared him,' she says sharply. ‘You've scared him away.'

And she seems truly upset by this. She puts her hand onto the telephone as if it were an animal that needs calming.

‘Who?'

She glances at the phone and then back in my direction and she is coming back into herself. Her expression changes from one of bewilderment to the hard, one-sided smile my sister often has.

‘You're too young,' she says, ‘you wouldn't understand.' She reaches up to her hair, tightens the ribbon she has tied there and makes her way out through the back door. With the sound of it slapping, faster, coming to rest after a dozen little reprimands, I am alone in the lounge room. The phone is still warm from where her head rested against it. I lift it out of its cradle and listen. Nothing, of course. There was never anyone on the other end, but there is something in the flat, empty tone that makes me wonder, and listening closely for the longest time, it is as if I can hear someone breathing, regularly, in time with the note of disconnection.

It is true. I can hear it. Someone is there, hiding behind the idea that it is a dead line. Someone is listening to me, breathing out when the low beep starts, breathing in when it finishes. The more I listen the clearer the breathing becomes. A cold wave creeps up the back of my neck and I slam the phone back into its cradle. I should walk away now. There are goose-bumps crawling along my upper arms. I am cold despite the warm air. I lean close to the phone and even though it is set in place, I whisper into the back of the mouthpiece.

‘Hello?' And then when I hear nothing, ‘Who are you?'

Now would be the time for a voice to come to me and I am tensed and ready for it.

‘Who are you?'

I pick up the phone again and I am afraid. But Emily has been here before me, Emily is brave and I will be brave too. If Emily has found a friend hidden here then I will dig him out. I will not be separated from Emily's games. I will not be a stranger to her friends.

‘Who are you?' It is just a whisper and I am so tight in my limbs that my leg is turning to pins and needles with my fear.

No sound, just the flat low tone and yes, there, the breathing. Someone breathing through it.

‘It's okay to talk to me,' I say to the sound. ‘I'm her sister.'

Tone, and breathing. I listen for a while and then when I hear the creak of the floorboards I put the phone back in its cradle and scuttle onto the couch. It is our mother, the zombie shuffle of her feet, tentative on the floorboards. For once I wish she would settle in the seat beside me as she sometimes does, but instead she stands at the window and I imagine she is watching Emily instead of me. It is ridiculous, but it seems that maybe they are keeping a secret from me, Emily and our mother and whoever it is on the phone. I stand and creep towards her, hovering beside my mother where I can see out to the back garden. My sister is nowhere to be seen.

Séance

‘You know this is ridiculous.' I am wearing the wrong thing of course. I changed four times and still I made the wrong decision. I am overdressed. It is a pretty frock, possibly my prettiest, a flattering black and pulled tight and low at the breasts, taking the attention away from my stomach. It is the first thing he noticed, I could tell. He stood at my door and his eyes kept darting to my breasts in a way that made me blush a little and made me want to slip out of the dress quite a lot. Still, he didn't reach for them, no soft kisses, just an awkward shuffling of his feet as he waited for me to get my purse.

This is our first date, if you can call it a date. I suppose he made an effort. He is wearing a jacket. I have rarely seen him in a jacket. This is an old one from a suit that is too big for him and he has matched it with his uniform old jeans and taped-up shoes. His hair has been brushed which is another sign of the care he has taken. It is a date, I suppose. I should not be going on a date with him.

‘Do you promise there will be no uni people there? No friends of friends? Or even friends of friends of friends?'

‘Do you want to wear a disguise? I think we have time for you to put on a fake beard or maybe just a moustache.'

‘You know what I mean.'

‘Do you have a coat? You're going to get cold if you don't cover your chest.'

‘I'm overdressed, aren't I?'

‘No! You are not overdressed. You are beautiful. You have beautiful breasts.'

‘Too much cleavage?'

‘Never. How can you say that? Too much cleavage? Whoever heard of such a thing?'

My smile is my reward for him. I should be laughing because he likes to make me laugh but I am too tense to laugh. In the car I ask him if there will be anybody else the same age as me.

‘I went to high school with these people,' he says. ‘Maybe someone repeated a year or two but I don't think anyone was held back that long.'

‘I'll drop you there. I should just stay home. Really.'

‘Can you just shut up? Really?'

I miss the turn and we have to negotiate a series of one-way streets before I finally get us back on the right path.

‘You know I'm proud to be seen with you,' he tells me suddenly. ‘I wouldn't want to take you if I wasn't.'

‘Okay.'

When we pull up outside the low brick house he asks me about my grandmother. ‘How was she?'

‘We are about to go into this party aren't we?'

‘Dinner party.'

‘Dinner party then.'

‘Yes.'

‘And you ask me now about my grandmother?'

‘Long story, huh?'

I wrench the handbrake on and put the car into gear. It is a steep hill and I wonder if I should find a brick. I glance around the perfectly manicured suburban gardens. The car will be fine. I lock the doors and take a deep breath. He puts out his elbow like a leading man from a forties movie and I take it with that same thin smile.

‘You look nice,' he says, and kisses me lightly on the cheek.

The truth is my grandmother did not look well. She has lost weight. When I was free of the angry tapping of her finger and the implied threat of her half-scowl I realised how frail she actually seemed. The right side of her body has been thin and slack-skinned since the stroke. I am used to a certain emaciated drag, but it has been too long between visits. She seemed old.

Still, in the safety of retrospect it would be easy to misread exhaustion for a softening.
You have a boyfriend.
All the accusations were there in her silence. Even if she could speak there would be no questions. Oma never asked questions.
You must not take your students as boyfriends. You are a disappointment to me. You should be smarter than this.

She would never approve. Not even I approve. The only way to hide John from her is to see her less often. I will abandon her, the last fragment of my family, for someone who is just over half my age. The weight of guilt makes me slump-shouldered.

I wonder if John's friends will see me the way I saw my own grandmother, a physical reminder of the grave we are all slouching towards.

He knocks. I slip my hand off his arm and his fingers reach for mine so that we are holding hands when the door opens.

The young man at the door is a child, a fresh-faced Aryan boy. He has a thick leather band around his wrist and a short leather jacket to match. I did not even know that this was a style. Certainly none of the art students wear leather wristbands and the jacket is padded at the shoulders like the jackets I remember from the eighties.

‘Well,' he says and he is looking at me. Pale blue eyes and a stare that could cut glass. He is smiling and he sways just slightly and I realise that he is a little drunk and we are only just arriving. ‘Welcome,' he says and John shrugs.

‘Bec, Charles, Charles, Bec.' The boy tilts his head to one side. His gaze is too intense and I am relieved when another, taller boy with shaggy brown hair and a wide jaw leans over his shoulder and takes my hand and shakes it.

‘And Andy,' John tells me. ‘But I went to school with Charles not Andy, which is a shame because Charles used to beat me up and Andy would have been nicer to me.'

‘What? No.' Charles leans into Andy's shoulder, staring thoughtfully at the eaves and I realise they are a couple. ‘Oh maybe that one time. But you have to admit…'

‘No,' John chuckles. ‘You have to admit. You were horrible. You did have to admit it.'

‘Well yes, that one time but only that one time and I so could have beaten you up on plenty more occasions than that.'

‘You know how boys are,' Andy tells me. ‘They hit someone if they have a crush on them.'

‘No, we wrestle,' Charles corrects him and reaches out to jostle playfully with John.

Inside there are too many people to remember. I am introduced quickly and just as quickly forget everybody's names. They are all in their twenties. Some of them, like Charles, look almost like teenagers; others, like Andy, might be a little older, maybe thirty at a stretch. I am overdressed. The girls all wear short skirts and tights or jeans. The boys are more formal in jackets and coats and one boy, a pretty Asian boy who looks no more than sixteen, is even wearing a skinny tie.

There is an open bottle of vodka on the table and they pour shots from it, some of them mixing with cranberry or orange juice. Charles pours a straight shot and knocks it back in a flamboyant toast to the mother of all goats as Andy brings a great roasted beast to the table, the legs still on it and sticking up straight towards the ceiling. It looks inedible, but the serving that arrives on my plate is surprisingly tender, with a pleasantly charred flavour. The meal is nice, spiced vegetables, hot bread cut in thick slices to soak up the juices. I glean from the conversation that Charles and Andy are known for their culinary expertise. It seems it is an honour to be on their guest list. John puts his hand on my knee and I notice one of the girls watching the gesture with a slightly confused expression. She might have thought I was his mother, or at least an aunt.

They are talking about some movie they have all seen, something about a vampire, but not the vampire one that is really bad and terribly uncool apparently. This other vampire movie is less bad, but still quite awful and not worth the price of a ticket although it seems that they have all forked out the $9.50 to see it, or whatever a student movie ticket is worth these days. Someone calls my name and I turn too quickly and my neck clicks painfully. I didn't realise I was quite this tense and I put my hand to my neck as if I am scratching it, pressing my fingers into the tender spot until it hurts less.

‘Sorry? What was that?'

‘I was just wondering where you met John.'

‘Bali,' John tells the young girl without flinching. ‘Over a pina colada and a game of craps.'

The girl is very pretty, delicate pixie face and long blonde hair that she keeps folding back behind her ear in a self-conscious, slightly flirtatious manner. When she screws up her nose and mouth her pixie look becomes slightly rattish. She will not age well. It is an unkind thought, but it is a comforting one.

‘Art school,' I say and she seems interested. She leans forward.

‘What strand are you studying?'

‘Sculpture.'

‘Oh cool. What, like clay?'

‘Polymers,' I tell her quickly, surprised by my own ability to lie. ‘Industrial materials. I want to fill the art gallery with polystyrene, make the punters cut their way into the exhibition with a hot knife.'

‘Oh cool,' she says.

‘Actually that is very cool,' John looks at me warily.

‘Will they let you do that?' the girl asks and I shake my head.

‘Nah, probably not. Shame.'

‘Yeah, it is a shame,' John says, ‘because that actually would be excellent. Dibs.' I shake my head, a warning, and he winks.

There is sharp ringing laughter, which sounds surprisingly like someone is clanging a dinner bell. When we turn to look there is a board spread out on the table. Letters of the alphabet fanning out along the circumference of a circle. The words
No,Yes, Maybe
and
Re-phrase your question
, mark the corners of the board outside the circle. It is a ouija board. I have never seen one before but I have read about them. There is a pentacle in the centre of the board and a triangle of what looks like stone but is probably plastic perched in the middle. I feel my neck tightening yet again. I lean over to John.

‘Maybe we should go,' I whisper and he turns to me with such startled wide-eyed despondency that I settle back down in my seat.

‘We must all hold hands,' Charles tells us. ‘Clear your minds of all scepticism. You lot will skew the results with your cynical little brains sending out bad magnetism.'

There are a few nervous titters from the guests and I feel a small clammy palm slip into mine. I turn to see the pretty young pixie smiling shyly at me before giving her concentration over to the master of ceremonies. On the other side John squeezes my hand and I squeeze his back.

‘You know I saw a ghost once.' This from a young man with severe square glasses and a shaved head.

‘That what happened to your hair, Stan?'

Some laughter and Stan lets go of his neighbours' hands briefly before Charles tuts at him and he reconnects the circle.