MARCIA

7

Perth, 2000

The pupil gave the teacher a shrewd look as they reached the end. He could have been sizing up Marcia’s intellect.

‘Do you know philosophy?’ he asked. She inclined her head a bit and gave him one of her serious answers:

‘A little. It’s a big subject.’

He looked wise and world-weary, having to explain it to her.

‘Ouf, it’s big all right. There are at least seven kinds of philosophy: there’s your logic; there’s your criticism …’ But it was altogether too big for both of them and he gave up on it, gathering his things together to leave.

Funny chap. ‘I’ll see you next week, Luke,’ she said respectfully, though not without authority. And took up the money he placed on her dining room table. ‘Thank you.’

‘Right, Marcia,’ he said, standing up, his voice taking on the customary timbre of civility that she’d first thought, a year ago, bespoke a man of substance, which of course he was. Luke was thirty, a man-child, studying for his third year high school certificate. It was his voice that had made her think he was like everyone else. And his manner: he hovered rather than thrust himself forward. But it was the cadence in the voice that marked of an undeclared talent, only seen in the holding back.

Saturday – the longest teaching day of the week. Just two sessions to go. Lazy overfed Andrew first. In he came, sat down and indeed had brought a piece of paper to write on today. She made preparatory noises. Futile probably to expect a completed essay from him. He stretched, looked at his watch and yawned on a large scale.

‘Kindly cover your mouth or else turn your head away,’ she snapped. How she had changed. No longer the accommodating girl of long ago.

‘Sorry,’ he said, straightening. She forced herself to bring a more agreeable tone to the lesson by offering him a mint, smiling.

Early in her life Marcia had discovered the benefits to be gained by smiling and using her voice. She possessed from nature, as Celia had pointed out quoting James Joyce, one of the most beautiful voices that had ever been put into a throat. Without thinking about it at first, then purposefully, Marcia had cut a swathe through the worst accents she heard around her – affected mouthing, the rolling and whining of regional varieties – then settled on her own style, much in the way that some people look around and hit upon the kind of clothes that suit them. This was in England of course, where the choice was endless and where her father had leased a pub, for a short while. Helping behind the counter, she got into the habit of sorting out the range of idioms, serving the customers, pulling pints. She soon realised that she could mimic anything, anyone; it was a matter of choosing the diction she liked most for everyday use. That was probably the beginning of her acting career. Her best friends were the books she read plus her dictionary; the best outings – the theatre, in cheap seats.

In any event, here she was now, in Australia, and her house had become a place of learning. She made a little face to herself, at the thought. As well as being a place of learning this rambling old house was her sanctuary. A reign of silence prevailed now that Andrew was gone; it was like a library or a church – no never a church, but my God how your life changes.

Finally David Li arrived, smiling and deferential. So strong was his resolve to do well for university entrance she could see and hear it. Success was etched all over his studious head and graceful body. Before anything however he had to come to grips with Macbeth and Conrad.

‘What have we got today, Impending Doom and Symbols?’ she asked, making a comical face over her spectacles. They both rolled up their eyes and their sleeves and went to it. Teaching him was beyond a joy, more like the working on a script with a fellow thinker or an actor from another time. They considered two recent films of the play they had watched independently and talked about the possibilities in the extraordinary actions of the Earl of Thane and his lady wife. Marcia held that everyone, all around them in contemporary life, made wrong decisions and forced extravagant tyranny upon themselves and their close ones, but David disagreed: to him the Macbeths were larger-than-life people whose psyches had to be analysed in a particular, specific way. The lesson ended, they parted thoughtfully, each with eyes full of the mists and fierce vendettas of Scotland.

She tested the pasta as it cooked; she’d curb her appetite until it was al dente. Nearly there. A less than quiet belch escaped her. The various small muscles that were about her body and which had given her loyal support for all these years were beginning to abandon ship, leaving her with unseemly exhalations here and there. The pain under her arm she chose to ignore. And the quiet of the place clamoured for her attention so that, even now, she had to turn around just to check that she was alone. She looked at the massive living space; in commemoration of the Daglish house she had knocked out the walls with fervour. Any minute she might come upon a reincarnation of Mickey sprawling there, drink in hand, reading a script, and Celia sketching down one end, near the window.

The sojourn in Daglish, where the three of them had settled, if it could be called that, lasted for, let’s see, five years? And how could anyone have known that their threesome had only that span before it fell apart. James’s presence next door had helped, what could you say? diffuse their relationships, perhaps. A fellow artist next door was a bonus they hadn’t counted on and in hindsight James had exercised more tact than Celia or Mickey had given him credit for.

He was semi-retired even when they first met him, and in time gave fewer lessons. You wouldn’t say he threw parties so much as musical evenings, soirées, for selected friends.

She only had to half-close her eyes and she could see their house, that place of splendid isolation: Celia putting down her pencils, offering Mickey a dry biscuit, wondering out loud about preparing a Middle-Eastern concoction with chickpeas or sesame that wasn’t generally eaten then.

‘It’s a very thin biscuit this, almost like a wafer, isn’t it?’ Celia said.

‘As fine as the Host on your tongue,’ Mick replied.

They talked, Celia and Mick, failed Catholics both, like a priest and a nun, of the irreverent way that people received Holy Communion these days – according to hearsay – recipients clutching the Host in their own fingers, the body of Christ.

‘Things have gone downhill,’ said Mickey, pouring them more red wine.

‘Do you ever think you’d go back to it, Mick?’ Celia asked, taking a gulp.

‘It?’

‘Sure, the faith.’

‘Would the Pope ask you out on a date?’

Marcia, still thinking about the sacred Host, noted at the time how Celia had shifted her position. She still wondered about this pull people like Cele had towards the spiritual, the religious, the supernatural: saying what mumbo jumbo it was but almost secretly going into churches and gazing at the statues, lighting candles and making the sign of the cross. Oh yes, Marcia had seen her too! How anyone so earthbound could be drawn into the metaphysical. It was the romantic in her, Marcia decided, the attraction of something solemn and enigmatic that no one could understand, that had the power to enthral.

The people next door on the other side to James had an open-day party one Christmas and had invited their three neighbours in for a drink. They were easy-going folk with a large extended family that came and went all day. By mid-afternoon someone had set up a kero tin wicket in their backyard and Geoff the host commandeered his son’s bat. Marcia, wearing a caftan with a sunhat and dark glasses, volunteered to score. Celia, suntanned and slim, was in bare feet and a white mini skirt, with a sleeveless skimpy shirt, and Mickey for the occasion was wearing a purple sarong someone had given him, because he said, he was tired of having his crotch encased in trousers. The teams received enthusiastic if spasmodic encouragement from onlookers and Marcia kept calling out ‘Oh, well played, sir!’ and such phrases, as if she was on the village green in Yorkshire. Geoff, she remembered, made several attempts to kiss her as he poured more beer for everyone but Marcia was taking her pencil and paper very seriously, in between sips. The cricket ball was in fact a tennis ball and Celia was the first to hit a six, with such gusto that the ball sailed way over the garage roof to the house next door. For her next ball the force of her swing sent her into a complete spin on the spot; she’d completely missed the ball and was clean bowled. A slight wind came up and the bowling was kind but Mickey was still able to swing his bat into his skirt with some style, but no coordination whatever, Celia remarked with surprise from the sidelines.

‘Well, cricket isn’t a game that had any place in his childhood,’ Marcia said, watching him walk away quickly from the crease, the way he’d seen the vanquished do it on telly. Dear Mickey.