Suddenly nothing else seems important. So what if the next band makes platinum? So what if Play 360 signs to Sony US? What am I planning to become—a name on a plaque in the reception room of some recording agency? A footnote in some outdated history of Australian rock, total print run: ten thousand. Was that going to be my legacy? Not now. Now my life’s taken a sharp left, is running off the tracks and heading for the forest, the deep impenetrable forest, and, my God, does it feel great.
As soon as I opened the door I knew. He had a blissed-out look in his eyes and yet, for the first time in our marriage, he was shut off. An invisible veil drawn between us. I’ll remember that moment until the day I die. Tragedy is like that: it dresses down, hides itself in an arbitrary moment that suddenly spirals out into a drama that will haunt you for life.
He stood there dressed in that thing, that monstrous piece of theft, unable to look me in the eye.
“Georgina,” he stammered, “I’m leaving you for Madeleine. I have to, she’s having our baby.”
“Robert, for Christ’s sake, come in,” I said, “and have a cup of tea.”
We sat opposite each other, the kitchen table running between us like a no-man’s land between enemy trenches. My grandmother’s Victorian teapot stood in the middle like an aberrant watchtower, the sugar bowl a stationary tank that promised to take no prisoners. I kept sneaking glimpses at the shirt, that shimmering travesty that smelled of profound betrayal, of blood.
The gray-gunmetal tint gave it away immediately. I knew; how could I not? I’ve slept with him for sixteen years, saturated in his juices, breathing the shifting nuances of his pheromones as he matured beside me. How many times has his hair fallen across me as he held himself over me making love? How many times have I shut my eyes beneath that gray tent? How many times have I plucked a stray hair from the pillow, out of the plug-hole, from his shoulder as he left for work? Of course I knew.
I couldn’t tell you what we said that afternoon. I vaguely remember talking about splitting the mortgage, sorting out the bank accounts, the stock portfolios. I remember him trying not to weep, his shoulders wrestling with painfully silent tears. But most of all I remember thinking that whatever I did I had to get my hands on that hair shirt.
This morning I put on my pearls, the strand he gave me for our wedding anniversary. It must have
been a premonition, as if all the ghosts of all the abandoned wives of my family were guiding my hands to the necklace. Or was I inspired by Vermeer’s blue lady, also on the brink of receiving very bad news?
Whatever, the gesture crystallized into this moment, when I embrace my soon-to-be ex-husband. We move together, and as we do the catch on my pearl necklace snags on the hair shirt. As I step away, that tiny thread pulls a ladder down the fine weave—an innocent little descent into hell.
“Oops,” I say, smiling slightly.
The spasm is sudden, violent and excruciating. Like the worst period pain you could ever imagine. I’m on the balcony, watching the bats streaming across from the Botanical Gardens like they always do, umbrellas of black beating their way heroically against the fading light. I am thinking about Robert, the joy of trust, of being able to plan holidays together, of introducing him to my friends, being Mrs. Tetherhook—when the pain strikes.
I double over immediately, grasping the rail to stop myself from falling over. The contraction passes but before I can catch my breath another sharp jolt shoots through my body. I hobble to the bathroom; already I can feel the sticky gush between my legs. Out of my mind with agony I pull my pants down and place myself on the toilet, just as another heaving pain rips through my abdomen.
Ten minutes later, with tears streaming down my face, somehow I find the courage to stare down between my thighs. There it is: the shiny dome of its forehead showing through the mucus and blood, the tiny arms curled up toward its closed eyes. A perfectly formed male fetus.
Life’s strange. Rephrase that: life’s fucking out there. I used to think we had some control, that things happened for a reason, even the weirdest things, as if a sequence of events created a pattern that made sense. Now, looking back over the past few months, I think that’s total bullshit. We know nothing. All we can hope for is that we survive this terrible getting of wisdom called life.
I still manage bands. Actually Pear Records got voted most innovative Australian record company last week, not that there was that much competition given that there are only two real players in the race. I guess what’s really changed is that I’ve fallen in love for the second time in my life.
It’s different this time around. At our age there’s so much baggage that sometimes you have to be prepared to shove it all into an attic, throw away the key, and then look for a new bed in which to hold, kiss, and rediscover each other all over again. Just ask Georgina—I know she’ll agree with me, she does that a lot these days. And we’ve started to laugh at ourselves. Fuck, it’s good. Almost as good as the kissing.
As for Madeleine, I had to let her go. Don’t get me wrong: I felt bad about it, really bad. I even went into therapy. But she’ll bounce back; smart girls like her always do. It wasn’t like I abandoned her. After the miscarriage I helped her get a new job, bought her a new car, even gave her money for a mortgage. Then I went out and got myself a haircut.
Custodian
To look at him, you would think him an average elderly gentleman: that is to say, a seasoned individual of some two score and ten, with a generous but not ostentatious income of one hundred guineas or so per annum. A man of sound disposition.
His hat is tall and of French origin, a trifle youthful perhaps for his age; his suit is elegant, his pumps well-polished. His face is typical of a gentleman in his fifties: jowly, worn, with remnants of beauty still visible beneath the ruin. His hair is gray with streaks of silver, full tresses he wears to his shoulders—again, the affectation of a far younger man. Something of the cynic plays around his lips; it is a mouth that looks as if it might once have been given to humor, but has been tempered by some past humiliation. He is an upstanding citizen who exudes an air of casual indifference, but if you were to examine him closer you might notice that under the shiny hat rim his eyes are bright with suspicion. They dart about the fashionable teahouse as if he is frightened…of what? Of recognition perhaps? Of somehow being exposed?
A young woman in a striped dress and bonnet enters, a parasol swinging off her belt. Her beau, a handsome swain, obviously a local merchant from the Haymarket, walks beside her, laughing. Except unto themselves they are not interesting, but the sight of the maiden with her air of joie de vivre, the very embodiment of youth, causes our gentleman’s hand to suddenly tremble, spilling his coffee across the glass table and into the lap of his immaculate trousers.
A waiter immediately appears to sponge away the offending fluid but his customer pays no heed to his ministrations. He cannot tear his eyes away from the exuberant couple. Suddenly he grasps the sleeve of the waiter.
“How old do you take me for, boy?” he asks in a low gravelly bass.
“A mature gentleman, sir. A man of some standing, around five and fifty, I’d wager, sir.” The waiter hopes to receive a larger tip by dropping ten years off his honest estimation.
A great weariness settles upon our protagonist, melting his features into despondency.
“I was born in 1824, boy, which makes me, as of today, twenty-six years old—no older than the gentleman over there,” he states, pointing to the swain.
The waiter looks at him for a moment, his head cocked as if to question the man’s sanity. “In that case, a happy birthday to you, sir,” he replies a little too cheerfully then, bowing, rushes away to share the gentleman’s eccentricities with the kitchen. The gentleman slumps back in his chair, tea forgotten, as he recalls the beginning of his strange story. Three years before in the year of our Lord 1851 on a wintry January afternoon in that bastion of English colonialism, the British Museum.
In a dreary office located in the bowels of the department of Greek and Roman antiquities a youth bent over a crumbling clay pot. With gloved hands, he carefully examined its markings through a magnifying glass. At twenty-three Alistair Sizzlehorn was of a delicate mien: his long wavy blond hair, his blue eyes and narrow face spoke of an aristocratic heritage, enhanced by his soft white hands and long fingers, all suggestive of a consumptive nature. In actuality, the archaeologist was of a far more robust disposition. The son of a Presbyterian minister and his dour unsentimental older wife, Alistair had grown up in the harsh Yorkshire dales. Isolated as a child and left to his own devices, he had developed a fascination for the primitive ruins the valleys held and his overactive imagination quickly plunged him into a mythical world of mysterious burial mounds and rings of archaic stones.