To tempt your appetites!
THERE’S TOO MUCH TIME TO think on a train, and then a bus. Normally, Arthur takes the night train to Melbourne, tries to sleep. He won’t sleep this time, hasn’t slept since the party, which is why he’s travelling by day, hoping the views will distract him.
Through the train window’s grimy glass, a herd of kangaroos bound across the cracked, brown earth. Something must have spooked them because it’s too hot even for ’roos to move fast. Arthur squints, searching for signs of a fire. There’s nothing bar flatness intersected with barbed wire fencing and an occasional tree sending a long shadow in the early evening light. He looks forward to the hillier, although no greener, landscape nearer Melbourne. Mostly he looks forward to the long journey’s end.
This day time travelling is more than about distraction. It’s a lot to do with not hanging about the city any longer than he has to. He can’t face his and Maggie’s friends right now.
(Find it here.)
Teddy, Maggie’s brother, will be furious with him, not bothering to consider it isn’t Arthur’s idea to break up. Raine, Teddy’s wife, will be hurt on Maggie’s behalf.
As for Alf … Thank God he and June have a telephone, which means Arthur didn’t have to go to their home to tell them in person he was leaving earlier than expected, and wouldn’t make their planned outing to see the newly released ‘Rear Window’. It was still a difficult conversation.
‘Pity,’ Alf said. ‘Work emergency?’
‘No.’ Arthur tugged at the telephone cord in the public phone box, breathing in the scent of the bodies which had gone before. He was tempted to make up an emergency, except the truth would come out quickly, so why lie to his best friend? ‘It’s, well …’ He couldn’t say it, because if he said the words out loud – me and Maggie aren’t engaged anymore – they would take on a reality Arthur wasn’t ready to face. If he ever would be. He fudged, blurred the truth to match the blurred heaviness in his head. And his heart. ‘Need to get my head straight on some things, need time to myself.’
‘Ah.’
Arthur sent a silent, desperate plea into the black mouthpiece. Please don’t ask if you can help, mate. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he blurted. ‘Say hi to June.’ And he hung up.
It will be out by this time. Maggie will see June at work, thick as thieves those two, and spill all. It’s true what Arthur said to Alf. He needs time to think things through. Starting with Maggie’s accusations, which rewind in his head day and night.
It began as a regular conversation at the New Year party, about Maggie’s mum pushing her to set a wedding date. This time, Maggie didn’t mock her mother like she normally did. She pushed too.
‘Not yet.’ Arthur rubbed his short beard, wishing he’d thought to shave it before coming down from the cooler mountains to the hot city. ‘A bit longer. I mean, we planned to wait to afford a house, have a home of our own to raise our kids, a roof forever over our heads.’ He clasped her gently by the shoulders. ‘It’s what we both want, always has been.’
Maggie shifted her gaze to stare over his shoulder into the shadows of the moonlit garden. The shrill cacophony of crickets fought against laughter and the bass thrum of music from inside the house.
‘I know why you so badly want it, Arthur, I do.’
Maggie wriggled out of his grasp and placed a warm hand on his arm. He wanted to cover the hand with his own, draw her close, not let go.
‘You’ve told me, and I thought I understood,’ she murmured. ‘But now … Well, these days it’s an obsession. An unhealthy one.’
Yes, he’d told her. The day after Teddy’s 21st birthday party back in 1949. The end of a long, fun evening, the few remaining guests lounging about on the floor and the sofas in the camp’s Nissen hut, the talk desultory. Someone mentioned the Snowy Mountains Scheme, saying it had been launched that day. Arthur, and their Italian friend, Sep, had said they’d like to go, save a lot of money in a short time and be set for life, or for a good part of life at least.
My birthday present, to amuse me, Teddy had joked, while claiming anyone who went there to tunnel into mountains, live in tents in the cold and snow, would have to be mad.
‘Then I’m mad,’ Arthur said to Maggie the next evening. He’d asked her out to see a film, just the two of them. Afterwards, strolling over the river along King William Road to the bus stop in a mild spring warmth, he took up the conversation which had been playing in his mind all day. ‘A bloke could save enough to buy a house.’ He was pleased at the glint in her dark eyes.
‘You could. Wouldn’t take long to put together a deposit.’
‘No.’ Arthur shook his head. ‘I mean enough to buy outright, own it, nothing they could take from you.’ He’d expected the straightforward Maggie to ask questions about the bitter edge to his voice. She didn’t. She frowned, murmured good idea, and talked about the film.
It wasn’t until much later, the night he asked her to marry him, that he spoke of all of it, of what drives him to want the permanency of ownership.
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