‘Do you want me to get rid of it? Is that what you’re saying?’
I acted dim, as if not understanding the question.
‘Do you want me to have an abortion?’
‘I never said that.’ Never said it, but was thinking it.
‘You do, don’t you?’
There was such a thinning of her lips and eyes it occurred to me she might hop in the van and drive off, leaving me there, stranded. I returned to the vehicle, just in case.
She said, ‘Well, I’ll tell you something. I’m going to live in Scintilla and have my Richard or Alice with me. And I’ll say, “Your father? He was the man who wanted you dead before you were born. No better than a murderer, that’s your father. We’re better off without the bastard.”’
This hit the mark, of course. I sat there on the heap of our bedding, shamed. No sun, no heat from the van’s metal frame could sweat that out of me. The only thing which would work was my saying, ‘Abort the baby? I’d never dream of it, sweetheart.’ But I wasn’t going to say that. As bad as shame feels I knew a secret word that was worse: inheritance. Into the honesty box it drops with a thud.
For all my pipedreaming I always knew it was there. A backstop if I failed—a thousand acres waiting for its heir, for Norm’s wayward prodigal to return from overseas. But a divorced and ageing Australian artist? No farming father would want that for his son, would he? ‘She’s just using you, you fool,’ I predicted him saying. ‘If she has your child, boy, she has dibs on half the property.’ Disputes of this nature are regular farm scandal.
So I said nothing to Tilda. I took the shame into me and sweated on it and said nothing. I let her slump and weep and weep.
Chapter 28
Two hours later in Ballarat I was at the wheel when the tyre blew—Tilda was sleep-sobbing in the back. I pulled over quickly enough so the wheel rim wasn’t damaged, but the problem was getting the spare from the roof. Tilda kept it there roped on the rack she used for transporting paintings. She didn’t know knots—hers you had to pick at to untie rather than one tug and the rope slips free. I picked and poked but the tightness wasn’t budging. It needed fingernails longer than mine and a screwdriver to get a good purchase.
‘I’ll do it,’ Tilda said as I climbed down. She elbowed me to get out of her way, gave a jump to catch hold of the rack and scaled the van’s side. The decent thing to say would have been, ‘Be careful, watch yourself in your condition.’ In me, however, some indecent door had opened and in had walked all the wrong crowd.
I watched her pick the knots and swear at the roof for being so scorching with sun. I watched her stand and heave the spare out of its ties. She knelt to roll it from the roof edge. It occurred to me that if she fell now it might bring on a miscarriage. Not a serious falclass="underline" I wouldn’t want a serious fall that broke a limb or got anywhere close to maiming her. Just a fall where the bump and shock of it churned her insides. It would be better than an abortion, wouldn’t it? A more natural process. It would spare her something more medical. The strain she was putting into taking the tyre’s weight in one hand and dangling it for passing to me might be enough to do the deed. It was my job to reach up and take the tyre from her. I should have. But I didn’t.
Tilda grunted and wriggled further to the edge. The rack rail must have been jagging into her pelvis but she didn’t make a moan. She held the hanging tyre as if a test of strength, eyes and mouth slitted from the hurt of what she was doing.
She unslit an eye and stared at me. I could see exactly what that eye said. It said: Are you watching? Are you seeing that I am thinking the same as you? She let the tyre drop and roll into the ditch.
Her eye did say it; I wasn’t dreaming. She had the miscarriage idea too. She was willing it. How else can the rest of that day’s trip be explained? We didn’t share a word for 100ks. No hostilities either; not a tear or cross word. She drove without one reckless jerk of emotional steering. Her bottom lip was pushed up over her top in concentration.
There was one sentence, Tilda’s, but with no obvious sub-meaning: ‘Cigarette, please. Can you light it?’ There was a ‘ta’ from her once I’d passed it to her mouth. I wasn’t about to ask, ‘What are you thinking?’ It might have been viewed too warmly as trying to bridge the distance between us. I was getting away with breaking her heart too well to risk that.
Chapter 29
Or so I thought.
On the futon above the Fitzroy lighting shop that night we congressed. No, we fucked. There was no tender playfulness to warrant congressed. We did not kiss as such, more a light grazing of two limp tongues. It was all body, as you’d have with fleetings. I would swear she was willing that baby dead, as if there was something wrong with it now, because there was something wrong with us: we drank two bottles of wine, Tilda going two glasses to my one. She chain-smoked a whole pack of Dunhills. You don’t do that and want good health for your unborn. She said, ‘I have such a desperate need to be entered, hard.’ I did as she wanted. It took place in the dark—we had dark to look into instead of each other’s faces. Not once but three times before finally we turned our backs to each other for sleep. Of all the perversities, I wouldn’t have guessed the lash of wanting a miscarriage was an aphrodisiac. The lash kept us at it all week. But no miscarriage came.
On the seventh night Tilda went to bed with her clothes on, didn’t even let out the belt to loosen her jeans. When my fingers tried to do it, she said, ‘No more entering.’
‘Why not?’ I reached out to the belt again.
‘Don’t touch me.’
‘Why not?’
‘Let me lie still and not be touched. Don’t touch.’
I sat up and kicked the blanket down to my knees. I was naked and expected that if I pushed and rubbed against her she would want touching. She put her elbow into my side to keep me off her.
‘I want this out of me,’ she said. ‘This is not how a child should be born. We are not what it should have. I want it out of me.’
I pulled the blanket back up, as if that was more dignified given what she was saying. I kept silent in case my relief in what she was saying showed in my voice. It’s her decision, I told myself. That frees me from being responsible. Or shares it between us. If I am a murderer (and I know what pious folk say—there’s a God of wrath and a day of judgment on the issue), then Tilda is co-murderer with me.
She said, ‘I’ll make a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. They’ll be looking up me, so no more entering.’ She spoke quietly, no tears. You’d have thought we would have one argument at least. One outburst of pleading—‘Change your mind, Colin. Let’s have this baby.’ Even some ‘stuck your dick in me’ savagery. But there wasn’t.
Not mentioning Richard or Alice was like living a convenient lie. But live that way we did. The abortion was arranged for the following Friday. I sat in a café across the road from where it happened, just around from her studio. The café’s still there; the doctor’s place isn’t.
I kept smelling the sewer under my feet. For all the concrete and tarseal, my mind had wind of it. Richard and Alice would be flushed down there, I expected. I lifted my soles off the ground. As if that would disconnect me! After all, sewers run to the sea. The sea gets turned into oxygen. My lungs would end up breathing it in. There was no escaping.
Ever since, if I go to Melbourne I avoid Fitzroy. I loop right around it.