A lump like that is just popped muscle, I reasoned in myself. A lump like that just goes away, no need to think of it again. A lump like that is not a growth, as in disease, as in old women’s talk—growths. If it was a growth, wouldn’t it be painful? Look at Tilda smiling, eyes closed, content to go to sleep now. No look of pain in her face, which you’d have if you had a bad lump.
I slid into position beside her. ‘Everything okay?’
‘Yes,’ she yawned. ‘Why?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Night.’
‘Night.’
She turned rump-to-groin to me, wriggled in closer, reached behind herself to take my wrist and cross my arm under her arm to have my palm cup her breast. But it was the spider-egg breast, so I couldn’t cup it. I cupped her hip instead, which was not very comfortable but clear of the cold tingle and crawl. Clear of obligation to have a proper feel, a more medical probe. If I touched it again, if it was not a mind trick but real and pronounced, then I would have to say so. I would have to point and poke, guide Tilda’s fingers, asking, ‘Is that normal, that lump right there?’ We were two people who needed our sleep rather than be up all night worrying about egg lumps.
It was bound to be nothing, I decided. I slipped into sleep. After all, tomorrow I had a job to go to. My sixth freelance job reporting for the Scintilla Gazette Weekly. A dozen culvert pipes had gone missing from the racecourse—concrete and brand new. Someone had used a winch to uncouple a drain and thieve them. The day after tomorrow Tilda was off to Melbourne. Principally to hawk paintings around galleries, but also to tie in a doctor’s appointment for the usual swabs and top-to-toe. Preparations, Tilda called it. Preparations and maintenance for her future pregnancy hopes. No Richard or Alice fiasco this time, but a proper planned making of a loved child. I figured if the egg was still there the doctor could appraise it.
The loved child plan involved an ultimatum to me: if I, Colin, was not prepared to take the step to fatherhood; if I was still the Colin of sixteen months ago and not father material; if I did not feel it in my heart and head, if the urge had not come upon me, then, decreed Tilda, we should say goodbye once and for all. She would find herself a man more committed. Her body would not be in working order forever. It would dry up like a dam eventually and be barren.
She did remind me how I had let her down. ‘Richard or Alice—do you ever think on it? It would be seven months old now.’ She knew it was futile to force me into fatherhood. ‘I could try saying You owe me,’ she said, ‘but what good would that do? If you don’t want a child, deep down in yourself, You owe me is pathetic.’
I was not the same Colin of sixteen months ago. If you could have x-rayed my thinking, if all the wires and locks could be picked away to expose the very spot you’d call true-me, there had been alterations. I was warmer on the pregnancy idea. I had an inkling that I’d found my niche in life in Scintilla. That’s what a bit of steady work will do for you. Not that there was an immediate hurry for pregnancy, surely. I committed myself to the idea, but suggested Tilda keep using a diaphragm until Gazette work became more frequent and lucrative. ‘Let’s get things bedded down,’ I said.
She relented, ‘Okay. As long as it’s not an excuse. Bedding down is not never ever.’ She agreed the Gazette opportunity was an exciting development, one I should not be distracted from at this moment. It gave her a sense of pride to see me march out the door so purposefully of a morning, pad and pen in hand like real tools of trade. My plastering wall cracks gave her a house-proud pleasure, but ‘Look at you!’ she smiled as I put a tie on. ‘Mr Professional. Quite the respectable fellow.’
The Gazette even let me use its vehicle for assignments—a latest model Commodore with a CB radio, like police have. ‘Assignments,’ Tilda quipped. ‘Sounds very James Bond.’ She hated ironing but wouldn’t see me walk out crinkled: crisp and creaseless is how shirts must be when there’s a job to do that you call ‘responsible’.
The work came via a chance conversation of Tilda’s. Because of her art degree she’d been asked to judge the primary school’s prize for collage. At the fairy-bread supper after the award ceremony a mother, stuck for conversational subject matter, asked, ‘And your man friend, Tilda, is he of a creative bent?’
‘Oh yes,’ she replied. ‘Goodness yes. He was accepted into a very exclusive academy for drama in London. He became disillusioned, however. He’s more a business brain, that’s his bent. He has thrown himself into renovating the old building like you wouldn’t believe. He’s a roll up your sleeves and get on with it sort of guy.’
The mother, it turned out, was the daughter of Hector Vigourman, grazier, Gazette owner, former state member of parliament for the district, amateur actor and president of the Scintilla Footlights Community Theatre Company.
Two days later there he was, knocking on our back door, stout and dapper in fawn cashmere cardigan and proper leather shoes—not the elastic-sided boots and flannelette shirt of a normal Scintillan.
He had a proposition for me. Would I be willing, as a favour to the town’s few but passionate amateur thespians, to cast my eye over their new production of Arsenic and Old Lace? If I would perhaps sit in on a rehearsal? If I could perhaps impart some advice—a few tips I had gleaned from my experiences in London? In fact, would I be willing to review the play for the Gazette? As its proprietor he would be honoured to print me.
He described the Gazette as a very modest enterprise, smiling a mix of apology and boasting, and given that his sister was the editor he could assure me prominent placement on, say, page three or five. He would be delighted if I included a paragraph or two about my RADA days. It was bound to pique the interest of locals.
‘I don’t think so. Those days are far behind me.’ I was too busy with my renovating project, I said.
‘Oh please,’ he persisted.
‘I wouldn’t want to be seen as a Scintillan newcomer who is blowing his own trumpet.’
‘Not at all.’
Tilda elbowed encouragement. ‘It’s not blowing your trumpet. It’s community spirit.’
‘Too true.’ Vigourman nudged me. ‘Go on.’
‘Sweetheart, go on. Do it.’
‘All right then,’ I said. ‘A review. A short one.’
‘Excellent.’ Vigourman clapped his hands together. ‘A review that gives us a little pat on the back. After all, we are not RADA material.’
I drew the line on the subject of RADA. I said RADA was a very unhappy time for me. I hated talking about, let alone writing on, the topic.
‘Of course, of course,’ Vigourman said. ‘We don’t want to stir up unpleasant memories.’ We shook hands like two notable men agreeing on terms. ‘The troops will be so excited. They’re getting on in years, you’ll find, but they are always willing to listen and learn.’
Getting on in years—he wasn’t kidding. I sat beside him at the rehearsal worried about them surviving the ordeal of speaking lines: two or three needed to sit between scenes and catch their breath. One fell asleep doing it. All the lines were fluffed—sometimes the stage went silent for twenty seconds while the cast waited for offstage prompts.