‘Bye handsome,’ she says, still holding that beer glass and making her way through the party and back out to the front yard.
She’s an impressive woman. And she knows she is too. A woman who grows on you. The more you see of her, the more impressive she is. You don’t see women like that now. Not often. At least I don’t. Not with that kind of look. They went out with the war. All except her. She’s the last of a kind.
I used to know women like that. I don’t any more, but I did. I used to get them around the backs of the dances. And in the back lanes. Anywhere quiet and private. I’d pull their pants down. Their slippery nylon pants. Their frilly pants. Their lily-white pants. In the back streets, up against a fence. Anywhere quiet. I’d pull their pants down and empty out the old sago bag right there.
Afterwards, we’d go back to the dance hall and we’d dance some more, or listen to the band, or lose each other in the crowd. Those were the days. Now, as soon as I hear someone say to me it’ll be just like the good old days I know it’ll be bulldust. It’s one of those lines that gives the game away straight off. The fact is we don’t have days like that any more. And we don’t have women like that any more. Except for her. ‘Bye handsome,’ she says, with that look in her eye. And she knows exactly what she’s doing. And I thought her type went out with the war. Get a woman like that and it just might be like the old days. It just might.
But what have I got now? Huh? A single bed. A bloody single bed. I’ve got mine, and madam’s got hers. Two bloody single beds.
Vic is leaning against a wall, away from the party, near the back door. Evie has just left the lounge room. She quickly disappears, leaving the dancing and all the talk behind her while she returns to the front yard of the house to rejoin Rita.
Vic is now leaning against a wall by himself. He is filling a large pot glass with beer and watching the foam settle before taking a large gulp. He has reached that point in his drinking when his humour begins to fade, when the smiles begin turning into sneers. When his eyes lose their affability and harden. When nothing is right, and there’s everything to gripe about. When he’d prefer to be by himself. When he’d prefer to be what he was. Precisely that point in the evening where he should stop drinking. But he doesn’t. Instead, he watches the foam settle in his glass, then takes a giant swig.
Outside, on the front lawn, the two women are silent. There is a song playing on the record player. A slow song. A familiar ballad that is already old enough to be layered with memory. Evie is swaying slightly to this song, swaying her hips from side to side, as if she were dancing with an invisible partner.
Rita is looking down at her feet oblivious of the music, of her friend and of the party until she is suddenly drawn back into the world by the sound of a worn tennis ball hitting the wooden pickets of Bedser’s front fence.