Chapter 30
I have a theory: Tilda adored the idea of motherhood but was relieved we never went through with it. She’d had a lovely, if brief, experience of having life inside her without the reality to deal with. If the episode haunted her she had me, Colin, to blame. She had the upper hand on me. Morally, I mean. She was absolved.
Makes me feel better, this theory. Why else would I have invented it, sitting in that café? It helped rid the sewer smell. It was a comfort once the abortion was done and I drove Tilda to a motel in North Melbourne. She was silent and pale in the passenger seat, head back, eyes closed. Her hand over her stomach as if nurturing it.
The motel wasn’t some cheap dive. It had air-conditioning and a king-sized bed and six pillows for Tilda to treat herself.
‘Treat myself for what?’ she said. ‘You make it sound like I’ve achieved something.’
‘Treat yourself in the convalescing sense. We can afford two nights. I’ll wait on you.’
Doctor’s orders banned her from exerting herself or having baths for three days—baths can bring on haemorrhaging. She had pads between her legs, which made walking uncomfortable. She reclined, legs apart with the blankets over her and looked at the television, more staring at it than watching. She didn’t laugh when the canned laughter prompted us. Or look sad when movie music wanted it.
The only food she felt like was wonton soup. I found a takeaway place and ferried in two lots a day. She craved the salty juice and hardly pecked at the wontons.
I asked, ‘Is there nothing else I can bring you?’
She shook her head, said no. There was an irritable sound in the no. My theory put that down to punishment. The more I wanted to do some little thing for her, the more she was determined to deprive me of the pleasure.
It worked too. I had never felt so miserable. I hoped that by telling her this she would converse with me, be finished with punishing. ‘I want you to know I feel terrible,’ I said.
‘How does that help me?’
‘I don’t know.’
On one visit to the toilet her bleeding became heavier.
I panicked. ‘Is it normal? You want me to call someone?’
‘No,’ she said. Still an irritable no, but she repeated it quietly and then said, ‘I’ll make a call. I want to call my lawyer.’
Was she intending to sue me? I didn’t know what law I’d broken. ‘Lawyer? About this? We can solve this. No need for lawyers.’
‘About Scintilla. I want to speak to him about my place. I want to check something with him.’
‘If you want to get out of the sale, I’m sure they can do that.’
‘Who wants to get out of the sale?’
‘After what’s happened. We, well, we wouldn’t be going ahead.’
‘I am going ahead. I want to speed up the settlement date.’
‘What, go ahead alone?’
‘Not alone. You’re going to lend a hand for a while. I’ve thought up a businesslike arrangement.’
I frowned and shrugged my confusion and sat on the end of the bed while Tilda puffed up pillows behind her shoulders.
She said, ‘You help me move in. I’m moving in to my Van Gogh garret and you must help transport my things in the van. And once I’ve moved in, the next part of the business arrangement can begin.’
‘Are you ordering me?’
‘Let me finish. You can putty the walls, plug the holes in the floors. Replace where the tiles have fallen off in the bathroom. I want to be able to get straight to painting my paintings. You can tart up the place for me. Patch the ceilings where the plaster’s come down. Rehang all the doors. You owe me that, Colin. You bloody well owe me that.’
‘For how long?’
‘A year.’
‘A year? A year of that?’
‘A year of work to clear your Richard or Alice debt. Consider us business partners. We’ll be assigned domestic duties. I will cook. You can plant a vegetable garden for me. I will pay the bills and do my art. You will work on my place and pay off your debt that way. We will be like friends. We will sleep in separate beds, in separate rooms. You futoned on the floor in one room. Me in my bed in another. I’m going to buy myself a nice four-poster one.’
A year. It sounded a long time, though in my heart I was convinced I deserved it. A year, and at the end of it my absolution would be the reward.
Chapter 31
A convenience of the arrangement was money. I wouldn’t need any: Tilda was in charge of that. Buying the Van Gogh garret meant there was nearly $8000 left over from her $40,000. She would top that up by painting. In no time her new studio would be wet with canvas paddocks and sunsets. She’d sell pictures to loyal aunties and cousins. Charge them $1000, which I called robbery given they were relatives.
The arrangement included guidelines for socialising. If either of us met a Scintillan who attracted us for dating, that was perfectly reasonable, part of the arrangement. Reasonable too if we wanted to bring them home for congressing. Or so we said—it was never tested. Scintillans took some getting used to for Tilda. I was accustomed to country people—hairy-eared, bull-sized men who talk rainfall as if rain was life’s measure. Tilda’s type was more…well…a feckless me. Besides, she was back to the Tilda I’d first met in London: art not men in life, that was her decree.
If only we humans didn’t have the sweet poison in us, wouldn’t that be simpler and save us so much misery?
Six weeks after we moved in Tilda made a suggestion. She couched it as a slight amendment to our business agreement. Did so not with coldness or unfeeling calculation; there was fondness for me in her face. At least that was my surmising. Her cheeks were blushed ashine from the cask reds of the evening. But the blush was also a red shyness and boldness blend.
It was late autumn, which still means summer if you’ve stoked the fireplaces. Your skin slicks with sweat after showering. Hot temperatures, I’m sure of it, thin the poison and flood the body with it easier. ‘You can come into my bed tonight if you want,’ Tilda said, her top lip teasingly attached to the wineglass rim.
The poison slushed through me. My breathing wouldn’t behave. ‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously.’
Week after week and only me had touched me.
Tilda put her hand on the kitchen table as if swearing on a Bible. She said, ‘Let’s not call it congressing. Let’s call it servicing. You can service me and I will service you.’
I said, ‘You make us sound like Herefords,’ though it was not a criticism. I was so excited no amount of mathematics was going to prevent me from having to let the first expelling go.
We serviced each other, nightly, then I would go back to my room.
But the servicing got more serious. One night, I did not go back to my room. I fell asleep in Tilda’s arms. Same the next night. Our servicing became more like congressing again. We pushed the business arrangement out a bit, to thirteen months. Then fourteen months, fifteen. Then sixteen.
Month sixteen: that’s when I discovered the egg.
Chapter 32
It was lodged deep in her right breast, stuck against the breastbone. For all our congressing I had felt no hint of it before. I must have groped harder this time, her arms reaching over her head in pleasure, arching her frame out. An egg like eggs feel when they’re hard-boiled and peeled and have rubber give in them. Though this egg wasn’t smooth—it had rough portions on it. Three kisses down from the nipple it made the skin bulge.
I flicked my fingers away as you do if suddenly touching a spider. And like a spider the feeling of it remained, tingling. I wiped my fingers on the sheets but the revulsion was too strong. I spasmed with flicking. I shuddered and hid the reason for doing so by groaning as if in the throes of a fierce expelling. Stomach to stomach I lay in the fork of her, my left side lifted up a little so as not to have the egg pressing on me.