Peter Carey - Bliss

It is possible she had asked Joel nothing. It is even likely that when the others became engrossed in the problems of mineral water he had simply smiled a sad resigned doggy smile and opened his suit coat for Bettina to see. The smile would have had an apologetic edge to it, as if he was sorry for causing the trouble, but something, obviously, had to be done.

For there, protruding at ninety degrees from his blood-stained shirt, was a pearl-handled pocket knife.

'You fool,' Bettina screamed. 'You damned fool.'

'They won't be back again,' Joel said. 'I saw to that.'

Honey Barbara watched with her mouth open.

'Don't worry,' Lucy told her, 'he does it all the time.' But she did not sound casual.

'It's your fault,' Bettina screamed at Harry. 'You're such a rock-'n'-roll star, flouncing about the office, you never think how he feels...'

She would not have an ambulance for him. Ken and David lifted him up and carried him down to the Jaguar. Bettina insisted on taking him to the hospital alone.

Honey Barbara knew they were going to turn on Harry. She sat and waited for it. They took their time. They complimented her some more on the cooking and she waited.

Bettina was a powerful witch.

'Poor Joel,' Lucy said.

'You've got to hand it to him, he works hard,' Ken said.

'What did you do to him?' David asked Harry.

'I didn't do anything,' Harry said.

Honey Barbara watched, but what was happening was worse than she thought. She did not know that Harry had been, all his life, a protected species. He had not been nipped like this before. He had not been held accountable for anything.

Yet this was the way it was going to be at Palm Avenue for as long as they all lived there, not just nipping like goldfish in an-overcrowded tank, although that would be common enough, but arguing, shouting, laughing, vomiting, attacking, counter-attacking, all too loud, too late, too abrasively. There was an irritable peevish excitement as if they were only a lie or a conceit away from some big discovery and once it was lanced or cauterized everything would become clear, but what revealed itself was never any more than the hungover morning of another day.

Tonight Harry would be 'it'. He would not accept any responsibility for Joel and Lucy wasn't going to let him get away with it. She didn't want him to be totally responsible. She just wanted to admit he was partly responsible like they all were. She felt irritated with him, as if he might be a hypocrite, and although it was a strength of her character to allow others to be weak, and flawed without judging them, she now found it difficult to extend this to her own father.

She only wanted him to admit a little responsibility, then she would leave him alone.

But Harry didn't see it like this. All he saw was an attack and he sought to defend himself in the best way he knew, the way he always had.

'I'll tell you a story,' he said and they should have seen that slight lack in confidence, the nervous flick of his eyes around the table as he tested their reaction to the idea.

Barbara and Ken had never heard one of Harry's stories before and they were, each in their own way, astonished by it, not so much by the content of the story, but rather the way it was approached, and they felt differently about him because of it, just as we feel differently about a man when we discover his secret passion is cabinet-making. There was, in Harry's stories, something of the skill of a cabinet-maker, the craftsman more than the artist. They were not usually stories at all, but incidents to which he applied himself with such dedication that, finally, the thing was like a folly or a carefully carpentered house for pigeons, a rotunda, a series of small pavillions with elegant roofs and perfect dovetail joinery.

There was something that happened to him when he told a story, a certain way he leaned back in his chairs, folding his hands in his lap, half closing his eyes. If there had been anyone alive who had known Vance Joy they could not help but be amazed at the likeness, particularly certain American pronunc-iations and the slow, confident drawl which had a soothing, almost hypnotic effect on the listeners.

The words of the story could be of no use to anyone else. The words, by themselves, were useless. The words were an instrument only he could play and they became, in the hands of others, dull and lifeless, like picked flowers or bright stones removed from underwater.

As usual the story was about and by Vance Joy. It came from the time of Vance's childhood and consisted merely of a journey undertaken by a small boy (Vance) with an old man (his grandfather) from the deep valley where they lived to the plateau country above them. It was called 'Journey to the Sunshine' and it ended with the old man and the boy arriving to see the sun set and the boy misunderstanding the nature of the world outside the valley, for he had never seen a sunset before.

Yet when it was finished the room was quiet. The candles spluttered a little on the table and you could almost hear Ken nodding his head. Honey Barbara squeezed his hand so hard she might have broken it, to let him know, silently, that she had misjudged his power to throw off devils, and asking him to forgive her for her blindness. Harry, held by the soporific power of his father's story, had become quiet and gentle.

But Lucy would not let him go so easily. She had waited out the story, just in case. She thought, perhaps, it might have had a moral, or a meaning that related to Joel. But it was just another story, and he was using it to grease away from her.

'You misuse it,' she said.

'What?'

'Your story. You use it to get away from having respons-ibility.'

'It is about responsibility,' Harry lied. 'It is about love and care, and the father puts his hand around the boy's shoulder.' But he could not look his daughter in the eye.

Lucy was a little drunk. She didn't know if what he said was true or not. He had thrown sand in her eyes. She had not meant to attack, but to clarify, to remove all doubt, but that all went with the wind and she attacked from another angle.

'But listen,' she said, and heard meanness in her voice, 'we never touched each other as a family. Aren't you being a hypocrite, telling a story like that?'

No one had ever talked about Harry's stories like that. She was shocked with what she'd done.

'Go easy... ' Ken said.

'We never did,' she insisted. 'Not like you hug Honey Barbara now. You never sat around hugging Bettina like that, or us.'

Harry held out his long arm across the table, offering his embrace.

'No,' she said.

He looked stung.

'Go easy... ' Ken said.

'No.' She did not recognize herself. 'It's too late for that... '

'What's this got to do with Joel?' David said, and Harry held out his arms towards him.

'You come to me,' David said. 'I'm not going to you.'

'You can kiss me, Harry,' Ken said. He meant to make light of it, but the effect was not well calculated.

Harry stood slowly. He was hurt but not angry. It was their nature to all hurt each other. He bid them all, individually, good night, except Honey Barbara who he kissed silently and tenderly and without ostentation.

When he had gone they were ashamed of themselves, all except Honey Barbara who was furious.

'Why did you do that to him?'

'Well, he gets up himself,' Lucy said sadly. 'But you're right. I shouldn't have.'

As became the pattern, they had another bottle of wine then, and even Honey Barbara had one more glass of Fleurie.

It was an old planter's house, designed to cool off quickly in the evening. To this end it was built on high stilts so that air circulated beneath the floor and the walls were only clad on one side, the inside, so that the uprights and cross-bracings became a decorative element in the exterior walls. As a direct result of this construction sound travelled easily from one part of the house to the other and those visitors who had been coy about the movements of their bowels had often left Palm Avenue severely constipated.