Rita edges into the crowded lounge room and finds a spot near an open window beside Joy Bruchner. She is nervous, and she doesn’t know why. It’s not her giving the speech, but she’s nervous all the same. And as she watches George Bedser, shuffling from one foot to the other in front of the gathering and occasionally clearing his throat, she realises she is nervous for him.
The speech isn’t her responsibility, but some part of her has assumed responsibility. If it falls flat, if it is a disaster, if George Bedser is left looking like a fool and the party falls to pieces it will be because she didn’t will him on. She knows it is ridiculous, but for a moment, Rita is convinced she holds the fate of the party in her hands and she concentrates hard as Bedser begins.
From the moment he starts speaking she knows she can relax. George Bedser is a natural. A reluctant one, but a natural nonetheless. She’s never heard him talk so much. But he’s standing up there in front of all these people and he’s doing it well. And he’s got no notes, or paper. He doesn’t look like he’s prepared anything, but he has. Rita would put money on that. He’s been working towards this night for years. And he’s proud in that quiet way of his. He’s proud of himself for having done it all on his own. He’s been thinking about this speech for months, Rita would put money on that too. And it’s funny, this speech of George’s. Rita didn’t think he had a joke in him, but he’s got a few all right. And they’re all good. She can hear Vic’s laugh come from where the fridge is. He’s laughing. But at this stage of the game she knows it doesn’t mean much. Vic will laugh at anything after a few too many, except himself. But everybody else is laughing too. Including Rita. And nobody’s interrupting with any of the usual stupid remarks. They’re just letting George get on with it. And so he is. When the applause comes it nearly brings down the house, ’cause everybody knows what it all means to him. And even now, as he’s slipping away from the table, he’s got that sleepy-eyed smile on his face. And he’s pleased with himself, because he knows his job’s done now and he can sit back for a bit.
Relieved, Rita leans back against the wall and eyes Patsy’s fiancé as he stands to take his place at the front of the room. But her attention strays and soon she is studying Patsy herself because something troubles her about Patsy. With her hair like that, and her dress, and her smile, she looks the part. She laughs and talks like a woman who’s happy. Like a woman whose night it is. Whose night has arrived. But Rita feels sad for her and can’t figure out why. Maybe she’s just sad for herself, but something’s not there in Patsy’s eyes.
This young man, whose name she doesn’t know, is talking to the party. He clearly doesn’t want to be talking to anybody, let alone a roomful of strangers. Everybody is listening to him and watching him as he does. They’re all summing him up, and he knows it. That’s what happens when you talk to a roomful of strangers. They sum you up. But Rita is neither watching him nor listening to him. She’s watching Patsy, the way she observes her fiancé, the way she listens then looks down at the floor like she’d give anything to be somewhere else, the way she folds her fingers in and out of each other. Rita is watching all this, and something’s not there.
Next to Rita, Joy Bruchner is sitting beside a small mountain of ash. The two women glance at each other, and the most minute of greetings (a nod and a raised eyebrow), passes between them. Joy Bruchner stares at the floor and her eyes have the vacant look of a woman who is resigned to being left alone. The way she has of staring at the floor, or out through the lounge-room window, Rita thinks, is a way of turning herself invisible. For if Joy Bruchner is not looking at the room, then the room is not looking at Joy Bruchner, and nobody will notice her shame. The shame of being the wife who is led to her place, who is given her shandy, her ashtray and her chair, and who is then publicly ignored for the rest of the night. She could simply rise and leave, but that would draw the silent, sympathetic attention of the room, and everybody would then see her sadness and her sadness would be confirmed in the eyes of the street. And so she stares at the floor, or out the window, and her sadness remains inside her where nobody can see it because nobody is looking.
When the room laughs she looks up and her lips form a brief smile. When the room applauds, her hands clap soundlessly along before folding up under her chin. She could easily ignore the laughter and the applause, but when she joins in the laughter, when she brings her hands together in feeble applause, there is a moment when she could almost convince herself that she is one of them, however briefly. One of the room. Like all of those around her. A woman who laughs and listens and applauds and rejoices in the happiness of others. It is her link with them, for without that brittle smile, without the absent-minded slapping together of her palms that she offers as applause, she may as well give up entirely. A ghost by the window who need really not exist at all.
Rita almost reaches out, almost touches the tip of Joy Bruchner’s shoulder. For that slapping together of her palms that she offers to the room as applause, even if she doesn’t know what she is applauding, that flicker of a smile she offers instead of laughter, the extraordinarily concentrated effort required to produce those two unselfish acts, means that something in Joy Bruchner hasn’t entirely given up yet. Rita sees this and that is why she almost touches the tip of Joy Bruchner’s shoulder with her right hand.
But she notices Vic. He is beside the fridge and she is about to join him but the young man to whom Patsy Bedser has become engaged is still speaking and Rita leans back against the window, as Joy Bruchner settles back into her chair, her eyes upon the floor, waiting for that moment when the room will either laugh or clap, for that moment when she will bring her hands together in applause, when she will join them all and be one with the room.