THE DINING room had a fine English table, silver candlesticks, and heavy knives and forks set for four. Under the table was a Persian carpet of soft faded pattern as if coated in dust. Otherwise the floorboards were bare, dark jarrah. It was a long room. Maroon-striped wallpaper decorated one side, and the stripes were very nearly obliterated by rows of official photo-finishes from Randwick, Warwick Farm, Flemington, Caulfield, Eagle Farm – Australian suburbs, endowed with a more concentrated purpose. To the untrained eye the outstretched horses strung out in a line all looked the same; their names were printed underneath, back to the one bringing up the rear. The rest of the room was empty, except for a shotgun leaning in the corner.
This matter-of-fact masculinity was modified by Lindsey coming in wearing a dark velvet dress and earrings.
It took Sophie by surprise. ‘And I of course didn’t think to bring anything to wear. All I brought,’ she swung around to Erica, ‘is virtually what I have on. In other words, nothing.
’ Lindsey Antill’s smile widened and remained wide. ‘Our father and his iron laws, dressing every night for dinner being one. It’s not uncommon on the older properties. Our father took it to extremes. Even in the middle of summer he wouldn’t dream of coming in and sitting down without a coat and tie.’
Mention of the father and Sophie would rush to collaborate. After all, her own situation was exasperating too, and cried out for description.
‘Oh, that’s interesting. Tell me more. Did you find you could talk to him, I mean easily? Were you close to your father? What I have noticed is they assume in their little heads they are close enough, while we – the poor confused, misunderstood daughters – may not think so at all. Don’t you find? I know with my own, who’s still alive, touch wood, he’s completely impenetrable! Do I understand him? I’m his only daughter, if you please. He keeps me at arm’s length, in every sense, which makes me want to scream. Normal intimacy is foreign to him. He resembles a lump of granite.’
But then she smiled as she remembered how easily he made her laugh.
Lindsey had a rectangular face, a pink shoebox with worn edges, and therefore appeared to be a practical sensible woman.
‘Fathers are interested in things we are not,’ she said. ‘The way he was hard on my brothers, Wesley especially. He did it without so much as blinking.’
‘Women like us who have a father-problem have difficulties with men.’
‘Do I have a father-problem?’ Lindsey frowned. ‘I don’t think so.’
Brushing a speck of dust off her hip Sophie gave the impression she was perhaps more knowledgeable in this particular area, at least when it came to the behaviour of men.
Half-listening to them, Erica, with no warning, had a dizzy spell. She almost keeled over. Although she sat down, she felt like limping.
Sophie and Lindsey were smiling at something they each said.
‘I am sorry,’ Erica got to her feet. ‘I think I need to lie down.’
Sophie came forward. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’ She touched Erica’s forehead: it didn’t tell her much.
All Erica wanted to do was lie down. She’d go to bed. In the country, people got up early.
The bedroom was quiet.
At crucial moments in her life, Erica paused; it had become something of a habit. If she happened to be advancing along a promising path, such as a line of abstract thought, she would, at the moment of possible resolution, hesitate, and remain in one spot, like a car waiting at the lights – just to be sure – an afraidness of continuing, of embracing result. If she took the next step it might all unravel, perhaps. Instead of taking one more step she took a step back. With people too, a similar story. At the moment when all the instincts nudged and whispered, continue, go forward to this person, Erica, while remaining friendly enough, held back – reluctant, just then, to allow her true feelings. It would mean opening up – to what exactly? It had happened with a number of men. By withholding she remained in an uneven state, and some days she felt incomplete.
And now, inside a strange house which made her feel small, where for many years her designated subject, Wesley Antill, had lived hidden away, a philosopher unknown to the rest of the world, she was expected – and she had agreed! – to rifle through his papers, his life-thoughts, and cast a judgment on them, that is, on him. What she had imagined back in Sydney to be a privilege was swirling with presumption. No wonder she felt sick at the thought.
The house was so large Erica wondered what she was doing there. It was as if she was already asleep.
For a philosophy to be possible today it would have to begin afresh – ‘begin with nothing’. Go back to the beginning where there was no thinking, no philosophy, and from there begin again. Otherwise what was the point?
The light angling in from one of the windows varnished the floorboards, lit up the Tasmania-shaped stain on the wallpaper and concentrated a magnesium triangle across Erica’s pillow, splitting her troubled face. At the same time a crowd of large birds she was told were white cockatoos set up a hectic overlapping racket outside.
When she opened her eyes again Lindsey was holding out a cup of tea and buttered toast.
‘Don’t for a moment think you’ve got to get up. You’re not in a mad rush, are you?’
‘I don’t know what’s got into me.’ Lifting an arm took an effort. ‘What time is it?’ And Erica immediately worried that her voice sounded frail – or not frail enough.
As for Lindsey, a childhood of sunlight, tank water and calling out across paddocks had given her an outdoor voice, steady and clear, capable of distance, and to Erica it came as no surprise later to learn she once had vague ambitions to take over from where Melba had left off. Resting back on the pillows Erica examined one of Lindsey’s eyes, then searched her face for traces, if any, of suffering, kindness, cleverness, disappointment, serenity. She knew nothing about this woman bending over whose face was rectangular and hair could have been cut with kitchen scissors.
‘This is Wesley’s bedroom. You’re in his bed.’
As Lindsey went on, Erica noticed the tan rubber band tying her hair, its simple suggestion of modesty. At the same time it worried her that most people she met soon became of little interest to her.
‘Next door is where he had his piano. It’s still there, under wraps. He’d sit and play for hours on end. Honky-tonk, that type of thing.’ Lindsey tossed her hair back. ‘It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. At least there wasn’t any static, which is what you get out here when you turn on the wireless. He said the piano was necessary to calm his thoughts, to settle himself. When he’d come in exhausted from his work he’d spark up after a few minutes playing. Wesley was the only one of us who could play a musical instrument. Basically he was a city man – the tall buildings. It took me a while to realise. He liked the bright lights. He did not really have an agricultural calling. He didn’t take the slightest interest, not that we minded.’
If only Erica wasn’t feeling so feeble. Now instead of turning over questions of a philosophical kind she was finding herself picking up the slightest scraps of information on Wesley Antill’s personality. Perched on the end of the bed, his sister now busily gazing out the window still hadn’t said where he actually did his work.
‘He took us by surprise when he came back here to live – the way he straight off began decorating his room with fancy chairs, sofas, some statues, silk curtains – you name it – it cost an arm and a leg. He had some idea in his head of the perfect environment. Anything that could help him in his chosen work. I don’t know how he could make sense of the problems he was trying to solve. Way over my head.’ Lindsey rubbed her eye. ‘It wasn’t long before he threw it all out, the cushions, the lot, and just had a card table, a kitchen chair, no books, not one, and nothing on the walls. I called it the “piano room”. He called it his “simple room”.
‘A woman came to stay with him once. She was from Sydney. I wasn’t sure about her. She had a nice figure, and she knew it. Perhaps that was it. After about a week she left.’
Listening to Lindsey talking about her invisible brother, Erica felt her energy return and found herself nodding at the bits and pieces on him, though she held back even in anticipation from what remained ready and waiting for her, his life-work.
Later in the morning, she decided to get up.
Sophie called out from her room. Seated naked in a small chair she was removing her nail polish; her body, exaggeratedly soft and pale, overwhelmed the chair. It made Erica consider the smallness of her own body. ‘What is a comparison?’ had been the subject of one of her earliest papers (took an early things-in-themselves line; well-received).
‘And you are feeling?’ Without looking up Sophie went on, ‘I’m not sure I enjoy staying in someone else’s house. What to make of that woman? I’m talking about Lindsey. She cultivates a sort of privacy, which I assume encourages us to try to look at her. Do you know what I mean? I’m not sure what she thinks of the two of us. What do you think?’
Finished with her nails, she smiled at Erica.
Sophie wanted always to understand the other person, every person she met. She liked nothing better than trying to fathom a person’s behaviour. She waded in. It was what she was good at. Unable to stop, she would first try to establish the source of the behaviour, and by so doing she could for a moment put her own self to one side; at least it seemed that way to her.
‘Guess what? The brother didn’t turn up. You don’t suppose he’s run away from us and is out there hiding behind a tree?’
Erica smiled. If anyone should be running away it was her. Through the window she saw a tall pale-grey eucalypt surrounded by a darker cluster of pines, elms, cedars. It pronounced a solitary, take-it-or-leave-it way of being. The simple strength of the tree: stand it alongside the lack of statement, on her part. For a moment – before looking away – Erica saw herself as resolute only in a few minor things.
Sophie, she professed a low opinion of nature. ‘Basically, it is merely visual,’ she had been heard to say. ‘It just happens to be there, and that’s it.’