Gerald Murnane - A Lifetime on Clouds

With her watching him, everything he did at school became important. When he answered a question in class, she waited anxiously to see if he was correct. If he cracked a joke in the corridor and made some fellow laugh, she smiled too and admired his sense of humour. When he rearranged the pens and pencils on his desk-top or looked closely at his fingernails or the texture of his shirt-sleeves, she studied every move he made and tried to guess its significance. Even when he sat motionless in his seat she tried to decide whether he was tired or puzzled or just saving his energy for a burst of hard work.

She was learning a thousand little things about him — how his moods changed subtly from minute to minute, odd little habits he indulged in, the postures and gestures he preferred. For her benefit he deliberated over everything he did. Even in the playground he moved gravely and with dignity.

Of course she couldn’t watch him every single moment of the day. Whenever he approached the toilet block she discreetly withdrew. He wasn’t embarrassed himself — he felt he knew her well enough to have her a few feet behind him while he stood up manfully to the urinal wall. But she was much too shy herself, especially when she saw the crowd of strange boys heading for the toilet block with their hands at their flies.

It was hardly ever possible for her to watch Adrian in his own home. She hovered above him on his walk home from Accrington station and saw that he lived in a nearly-new cream-and-green weatherboard in a swampy street. (She was intrigued to see him choose a different path each night through the lakes and islands in his street — it was one of those teasing little habits that made his personality so fascinating.) But when he stepped over his front gate she melted away so she wouldn’t have to see the dreary life he led with his family.

He was glad she would never see his bedroom furniture — the wobbly bed he had slept in since he was three years old, the mirror that had once been part of his grandparents’ marble-topped washstand, and the cupboard that came originally from his parents’ room and was always known as the glory box. He would have been ashamed to let her see the patched short trousers and the pair of his father’s sandals that he wore around the house to save his school trousers and his only pair of shoes.

After tea when his mother made him wash the dishes, he was relieved to think his Earth Angel was safe in her carpeted lounge-room on the other side of Accrington, listening to her radiogram while he was up to his elbows in grey dishwater with yellow fatty bubbles clinging to the hairs on his wrists.

Later at night when he was in trouble with his parents, and his father said that when he had been a warder he used to charge prisoners with an offence called dumb insolence for much less than Adrian was doing, he decided he would never even try to describe to his Earth Angel, even years later, how miserable he had been as a boy. And just before bed, when he stared into the bathroom mirror and pressed a hot washer against his face to ripen his pimples or held a mirror between his legs and tried to calculate how big his sexual organs would be when they were fully grown, he knew there were moments in a man’s life that a woman could never share.

As soon as he was in bed he was reunited with her — not the girl who watched him all day at St Carthage’s but the twenty-year-old woman who was already his fiancé. He spent a long time each night telling her his life story. She loved to hear about the year when they met on the Coroke train and he was so infatuated that he used to imagine her watching him all day at school.

While they were still only engaged, he didn’t like to tell her he had thought of her in bed too. But she would hear even that story eventually.

Just out of Swindon, the Coroke train travelled along a viaduct between plantations of elms. On summer afternoons when the carriage doors were open, shreds of grass and leaves blew against the passengers, and the screech of cicadas drowned out their voices. The dust and noise made Adrian think of journeys across landscapes that were vast and inspiring but definitely not sensual.

Every day in February his Earth Angel was in the same corner seat. Sometimes she glanced up at him when he stepped into her carriage. When this happened he always looked politely away. He was going to introduce himself to her at the right time, but until then he had no right to force his attentions on her.

One afternoon on the Swindon station Adrian saw two fellows from his own class watching him from behind the men’s toilet. He suspected they were spies sent by Cornthwaite and the others to find out who the girl was who had turned Sherd away from film stars.

Adrian edged along the platform before his Earth Angel’s train pulled in. That night he got into a carriage well away from her own. He did the same for the next two nights, just to be safe. During his three days away from her he kept humming the song If You Missed Me Half as Much as I Miss You.

When he went back to her compartment again he thought she glanced at him a little more expressively than before. He decided to prove that he really was seriously interested in her and not just trifling with her affections.

He waited for a night when all the seats in the compartment were filled, and he had to stand. He walked over and stood above her seat. He took out an exercise book and pretended to read from it. He held it so that the front cover was almost in front of her eyes. The writing on the cover was large and bold. He had spent half an hour in school that day going over and over the letters. It read:

Adrian Maurice Sherd (Age 16)

Form V

St Carthage’s College, Swindon.

She looked at the book almost at once, but then she lowered her eyes. Adrian wanted her to stare at it and learn all she could about him. But he realised her natural feminine modesty would prevent her from seeming too eager to respond to his advances.

During the next few minutes she glanced at his writing twice more. He was still wondering how much she had read, when he saw her opening her own school-case. She took out an exercise book. She pretended to read a few lines from it. Then she held it in front of her with her own name facing him.

Adrian heard the blood roaring in his ears and wished he could kiss the gloved finger that held the name out naked and exposed for him to stare at. He read the delicate handwriting:

Denise McNamara

Form IV

Academy of Mount Carmel, Richmond.

When the train reached Accrington Adrian pretended to be in a hurry and dashed off into the crowd ahead of Denise. He did not want to look at her again until he had thought of a way to express the immense love and gratitude he felt for her.

That night in bed he turned to her and said her name softly.

‘Denise.’

‘Yes, Adrian?’

‘Do you remember the afternoon in the Coroke train when you unfastened your case and took out an exercise book and held it in your dainty gloved hands so I could stare at your name?’

Adrian got used to calling her ‘Denise’ instead of ‘Earth Angel’. Knowing her name made it much easier to talk to her in bed at night, although he still hadn’t spoken to her on the train.

Each afternoon he stood or sat in her compartment and practised under his breath some of the ways he might start a conversation when the right time came.

‘Excuse me, Denise. I hope you don’t mind me presuming to talk to you like this.’

‘Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Adrian Sherd, and yours, I believe, is Denise McNamara.’

Whenever he glanced at Denise, she was grave and patient and understanding — just as she was at night when he talked to her for hours about his hopes and plans and dreams. She wasn’t anxious for him to babble some polite introduction. The bond between them did not depend on mere words.