The false bonhomie turned real in us. We arrived home laughing and hugging. All problems should be solved like this—a dab of colour on your skin, a few good mornings down the street. It doesn’t last but it’s a holiday for the heart. Tilda admired her carving so much she left her bra on as an experiment and wondered, ‘Can a woman be alluring if she never takes off her bra? What do you think? Am I alluring enough?’
‘You are.’
‘Truly?’
‘Of course.’
‘Prove it.’
We congressed.
Chapter 41
I have become more protective of this document. Eventually I had to run out of architrave and that’s what has happened—there is not a skerrick of space left. I’ve tried speeding up getting this thing written, secretly adding to it at work, pretending I’m typing up good rural copy. I smuggle the pages home and past Tilda by stuffing them down the back of my trousers. But I can’t fit any more sheets behind the dry wood areas. There are damp wood areas on one wall where my nook abuts the bathroom but that would turn the paper to mushy mould. I am too far gone now to bother with fixing leaky pipes and sealing bad plaster.
Fortunately our hot-water system is permanently on the blink. It is a gravity-fed arrangement in the roof cavity, so ancient a system its tank is rusted and the ballcock lever doesn’t shut off properly. Water drips through the ceiling and lands plop on the lino in front of the toilet. Up I go every third day, squeezing through the manhole to bend the ballcock arm down so it trips the water level to stop filling. I empty the tank’s tray of smelly slime by bailing it into a bucket and climb back down, dangling my toe until it reaches the ladder. Normally I would get the plumber in but I have thought up a use for my ballcock routine. Tilda thinks I’m too stingy to pay tradesmen. I am actually hiding pages.
It is not too dark up there when daylight pours in. The roof holes are like stars, creating an outer-space effect. I can see every cranny. I can lean across beams and misty cobwebs and architrave my testament safely. Tin foil and Gladwrap should keep out the rodents. At the Salvos I found a metal briefcase and slung it through the manhole when Tilda was at the dentist. It should provide extra preservation.
But preservation for what? For whom? I own nothing of any worth. I have only this story. And in thinking that very sentence I have my answer! This story is my most valuable possession. Nothing is more valuable than squaring your soul.
Chapter 42
I bet my soul was responsible for my touching habit. That and Tilda’s proper prosthetic arriving two months after the mastectomy. I wish I could say, ‘Colin, set aside a few minutes in the day when you don’t have the urge to do your touchings.’ But it’s impossible. I cannot escape their tyranny.
I only touch wood and I touch it in threes. Three touches of wood with the flats of my hands. I rest for a second, do another three touchings. Rest. Another three. Pause. Sometimes the urge to keep going, keep touching, is so strong that many sets of threes are performed in sequence. The worst I’ve done is 600.
If I’m in someone’s company I sit near wood. A table leg is my favourite position. I can touch wood while in conversation, keeping my hands down out of sight to touch and talk at the same time and not lose the rhythm of the counting. I don’t think I’ve been noticed. If so, no one has said. My explanation would just be Swahili to them.
At first I enjoyed the ritual, like my own version of a religious tic—crossing yourself and the like. It soon developed into the curse of my waking hours. Even now as I type away I must pause to do my touchings. It takes so much longer to get things done. The legs of my desks at work and at home are smudged from the touchings, and showing wear.
The new breast came by post. A plain brown box with a body part in it. That’s how real the thing looked, a credit to the designers. It was coloured beige to blend discreetly inside any shade of clothing. It had the weight of the real thing. It felt breasty in the hand. It was silicone but had a muscle-like firmness. Its skin wrinkled like skin does when pinched or handled.
‘I’m perfectly balanced upstairs now,’ Tilda said, jogging around the house. ‘I feel more whole.’
What a relief to see her bouncing and in good cheer. She had been anything but cheerful since our bonhomie occasion. She had been bitter. It was the fear doing it. Fear that she would not be alive very long. The constant, exhausting fear of dying. Fear of living too, because each day there was the fear of dying. There were no pills for that. There were pills to help you sleep and get a break from the fearing. There were pills to pep you up a notch, but nothing to reverse life back to the way it was. And the trouble with sleep was the fear was waiting when you woke. Hating the fear was no good; Tilda tried it many times a day. ‘Fuck life. Fuck life. I hate life. You know what life wants from me? It wants to torture me. It is a sadist, life. It is a fucking sadistic arsehole.’
Surgery just kids you along. It makes you elated because something is being done on your behalf, action is being taken. The relief it provides is short-lived, however. Tilda discovered there is a never-ending aftermath to it. There is waiting to do. Waiting for the tumours to grow back. Not the same ones, but their spider-egg brothers and sisters filling invisible spaces inside her. To delay that process more action was needed. There was chemotherapy to inject in her arm.
Mr Roff arranged for vials to be sent to Dr Philpott, Scintilla’s GP. He lived a few streets away, had clinical rooms in the front half of his house. Roff thought it might reduce Tilda’s treatment trauma if she just wandered up the road instead of travelling to Melbourne. If she felt sick after the injections she could lie in her own snug bed. Not that she should feel sick—she was on small doses. She might lose a little hair but not much, not baldness. It was rare to lose all your hair with the milder mix of drugs he was giving her.
Philpott’s place was a walk of two minutes if you crossed over the rail line beside Hastings Road and cut through the Methodist Hall carpark. Tilda preferred to make the journey alone. She enjoyed the idea of being brave, of not needing me to hold her hand. She insisted I go to work and not fuss.
Her jeans, which a few months ago grabbed her thighs, were now a size too loose. Fear is the most radical of diets: Tilda said it made food taste like sawdust.
Walking home she wore a swab on the back of her left hand where the chemicals had been trickled into her. She kept that hand hidden in her jeans pocket. Her hair plait was untied for the purpose of blowing across her face to conceal her wincing queasiness. The drugs put an aluminium tang in her mouth. She licked at her lips from the unpleasantness.
By the time she reached our back door she was in two minds.
One, to go to bed like a cotton bath to lie in. She would pop her head around the nook door to see if I was home. If I was she would say, ‘How’s your day? I’m going to take a nap now.’
Two was a very different popping of the head. It was a hang- ing of the head, a banging of it against my door while she cried. ‘My body has tried to kill me. It is going to keep on trying to kill me, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s not going to stop because of chemicals and surgeons. I don’t want any more treatment.’