Rita fixes the comet with her eyes. She squints into the sky trying to calculate the point at which the comet will become indistinguishable from the stars themselves or disappear altogether. Then the distant sound of a goods train, rattling down into the city, drags her away from the sky. Vic is lighting a cigarette on the edge of the paddock. The glow of the match is almost the colour of the sky. The faint, disappearing rattle of the engine fading in her ears, while she concentrates on the still, silent, glow of the match.
She hears the engine in another time, the hiss of the brakes. The crunch of the gravel beneath her feet. A suitcase beside her. Sees the grey country sky and the slate on the roof of the station, shiny like glass. She hears the carriage doors closing behind her and the platform whistle as the train leaves.
He stood there in front of me in his work clothes, not saying anything. No, of course not. We both just stood there on the platform, neither of us saying a word. Already, we’d started that childish game of who’d be the first to speak, the first to break. I was tired of it. I wanted to get on the train again and go back to my real home, back in the city, but the train had gone.
The platform was empty. Nobody hangs around platforms, but we did. It must have been two, three or five minutes. It’s hard to say.
‘How have you been?’
‘Good.’
That’s all. He looked away as he said it, across the rails to the shunted carriages and guard’s vans. Good. Nothing more than that. It had been two weeks since I left. Two weeks since we’d spoken.
I wasn’t coming back. Wasn’t even considering it. Not till he’d promised this, pledged to do that. Not till he’d smartened his act up. Not till he’d given up the grog and the useless mates he drank with that only dragged him down.
So I left and went back to mama’s. We’d been married less than a year. Poor mama. Watching over me all the time, and talking to me all the time, just to make me feel better. But she didn’t. It was either too much or nothing at all. No talk or so much it may as well be nothing. For the previous two weeks I’d been sitting in my old room, sleeping in my old room and waking in my old room like nothing had changed.
Every day I heard my mama in the yard. I heard the creak of the clothesline, the flap of the shirts in the wind, bright in the morning sun. My old things were still in the room. Movie magazines. Everywhere, movie magazines. I’d forgotten how many there were. The old wardrobe, with all the old dresses. But none of it was mine any more and I kept on just wishing he’d write or call. After the first week I knew he was waiting for me to break and phone first.
The country seemed like a good idea after we married. Get away from everybody. From the pubs, from the boozers. It’s no way to start a marriage, with that lot hanging around. A clean sweep, he said. And so off we went. At first I didn’t care where we were. All we could find was a half house in the town behind a fruit shop. I didn’t care. There was a yard, a vegetable patch, a fruit tree. For a while it worked. But there’s pubs and boozers everywhere.
I smell the pubs and the stale beer. Right here, beside this paddock. Beside the swaying grass and the schoolyard pines, I smell them all. Stale and sickly. I smell them as clearly as I heard the crunch of the gravel under my feet that evening on the platform. He carried my bag and we walked up the platform to the ticket collector who’d been waiting all that time.
I’d been away two weeks and if I hadn’t phoned he never would have written and I would have still been sitting back in my old room listening to mama. The ticket collector smiled and we walked down the asphalt path to the street. Without turning, he told me that he’d cooked dinner.
It was late in the afternoon and getting dark and the shops in the street were lit up. It was only then I noticed he was wearing his good shoes under his overalls. That they’d been cleaned and shined, the way only black can shine. We moved along under the verandahs. The shops were shutting but I could smell the bakery and we kept it open to buy cake. We were quiet and calm. Nobody was weeping. Nobody was shouting or sighing. And, without a word being said, it was clear that nobody was promising anything they couldn’t keep to.
And soon I was in that tiny room again at the back of the fruit shop. The one we cooked in, and ate in, and sat in for almost a year before I left. The radio was on and he was talking about work. About engines. My bag was in the bedroom, still packed.
It was cold that first night back, country cold, but somehow that room felt good. It had no right to, but it did. And the smell of the stew as he’s dished it up. Of all the meals I’ve eaten over all the years, I only remember a few. But I remember that one. The steam off the plate, the peas and the salty smell of the gravy, like it’s under my nose now. And I shouldn’t have felt hungry, but I was ravenous. Like I could have eaten the whole pot. I didn’t know what had come over me, as soon as my bowl was finished I wanted it filled again. And he was laughing all the time, saying tuck in girl, you haven’t eaten all day. I had. I knew I had, but that didn’t stop me.
And when I’d finished the third bowl, when I’d put the plate back on the table and licked the last of the gravy from the spoon. When I’d pushed the plate away after eating enough for two people and I was staring at the smoke rising from his fingers, with the taste of the stewed meat on my lips, on my breath, and the juices of the stew flowing through my veins and my skin tingling all over, then, I knew why I’d come back.
Afterwards, he washed the dishes. You sit down, he said, and turned back to the sink, still in his good shoes. Mind you, he hadn’t said a word about the previous two weeks. It was like I’d been on a holiday, or never been away at all. And I was the one who wasn’t coming back. I swore I wasn’t coming back, but I did. And that night I discovered why.
He whistled along to some song on the radio and it was a good sound. After the meal it was pleasant on the ears, so pleasant I could almost have forgotten I’d been away. Then there was the cool smell of the bedroom. My bag was by the chest of drawers and I put my clothes away. Back into the same drawers I’d taken them out of two weeks before.
The sheets of the bed were white and cold but I knew they’d soon warm up. He was in the kitchen, still whistling. Every now and then the sounds of the radio drifted up from the back of the house along the hallway. My toothbrush was in a glass by the bowl in the bathroom, all ready for the morning, and all the mornings and all the days after that. Outside, a cloud was swept from the sky and a big, white moon pressed its face up against the window.
Rita watches as the match flares and dies. Vic drops it at his feet on the footpath then turns to her, as if to say what’s keeping you. Rita’s not moving. She’s standing by the edge of the paddock in a dress that is just a bit too good for this street and the faint taste of that meal still on her lips.