David Malouf - The Great World

That last time, Thursday, he’d turned up with a present. He was always bringing her presents. It was his way of getting round her. He’d been trying it for years. He never learned.

In the early days it had been little things. A plastic hair-clip in the shape of a bow, it was once. Pink. Another time scent, ‘Evening in Paris’. ‘Ta,’ she’d say, and put the thing aside. She wouldn’t even look at it. She didn’t want anything from him . He’d put some sort of a spell on the thing, that’s what she thought, and if she used it, put it on, the hair-clip for instance, he’d have her just where he wanted.

Later the presents got bigger and came with a lot of packaging. ‘Here,’ he’d say, offering to help. ‘I can do it,’ she’d tell him fiercely, shoving him off. She was only opening the thing to be polite.

A jaffle-iron, that one was. Useless! Then a pressure cooker that scared the wits out of her and which he was probably hoping would blow her to buggery. Then a special pan for doing poached eggs, which Digger never ate anyway. Then a tin-opener you stuck to the wall. He came in all ready with a screwdriver and in two minutes flat had it fixed to the wall beside her sink. ‘Here, I’ll show you how it works,’ he said, and opened a half-tin of apricots — what a waste! — when she’d already made a bread-and-butter pudding.

They were always things that were no bloody use, or that she couldn’t use anyway without a lot of showing.

‘Honest,’ he complained once, ‘you’re a hard woman to please.’

Yair, mister, you bet I am.

But once her heart almost stopped. He turned up with a little kid, a little blond fellow of maybe five or six, in jeans and a coat with buttons on it in the shape of wooden barrels. He had blue eyes and his front teeth were missing. She held her breath. What was he for?

He sat very quiet, swinging his legs, which did not quite reach the ground, and every minute or so would lean forward and peer down over his knees, as if he expected, since he last looked, that he might have grown a bit. Or maybe he was just fond of his boots. He was very pleased with himself.

And why shouldn’t he be? Someone, his mother probably, had got him up for a proper outing. Everything about him was neatly buttoned and tied, his hair combed, nails clean. He was perfect except for his teeth. She could have whipped him up in her arms and half squeezed the breath out of him. But little kids scare easily, she knew that from experience. She didn’t want to put him off. At last she got round him with a lolly.

She offered it and he looked sideways at Vic, who was busy talking, to see if he should accept, and when Vic nodded, put his hand out, undid the wrapper and popped it into his mouth. Then looked in dismay at his sticky hands. He was a very neat little fellow.

She took the wrapper from him and ran off into the house to get a flannel, but when she got back he was licking his fingers like a cat. What amazed her was the pinkness of his tongue. She laughed, just to see it, and squeezing up to him on the bench, said, ‘Hey, what’s your best colour? Mine’s yellow. What’s your best cartoon?’

He looked at her then, a little crease appeared on his brow, and he shifted on the seat, closer to his father. She’d lost him.

So all the years he’d been coming it was something different, the present he brought, and he was different too. Meatier.

Digger was the one he was after, but she was the one he tried to get around. She knew that and kept an eye on him. She wasn’t that much of a dill.

And each time the car he came in was different too. Bigger, a new one each time. He would drive up to where the track turned down sharp towards the store, park it there under the firs, then walk.

Sometimes, after they had had a bit of a talk, he and Digger would go back to the car and look it over. Walk round and round it, opening the bonnet, putting their heads in. Then Digger would get into the driver’s seat behind the wheel, the engine would turn over, and she would hold her breath, expecting them to take off. But all they did was let it run a little. They never went anywhere. They would sit in the car then and talk.

When they got out and were down the river again, she’d go and have a bit of a look for herself. She didn’t open the bonnet. Just stuck her head in the front window on the driver’s side and smelted the leather, and looked at the numbers and that on the dashboard.

There was a mystery about cars — they were men’s business, cars — that she had never fathomed. It had to do with going places.

Men didn’t like to stay put. She knew that from her father. From Digger too. You could see it in the way they got their hands round that wheel. Some power came right up through them when the motor started and they used their foot to make it roar. They were already on the way.

That’s why Vic let Digger do it. He was letting him in on the mystery. When they looked under the bonnet they were examining the source of it. When he got Digger into the driver’s seat and let him start the engine up he was offering him the chance to get away.

Unhappily she walked round the thing, looked at the tyres and kicked the back one hard. It had air in it, but if it hit a nail for instance it could go flat. She considered using a pin, only they’d know who did it.

The big shiny machine, always well polished and each time bigger, parked there at the entrance to the track, was a warning he set. It was meant to show her the power he had: what it was, out there, that he was in touch with, and that Digger might have too if he went away. Big, it was. All metal and shining. With an engine in it that roared and could take you off fast. Anywhere.

Once they came up on her when she was still looking.

‘Let me take you for a spin,’ Vic offered, but she was too smart to fall for that one.

He was grinning at her. Crafty bugger!

‘No thanks,’ she told him, and stomped off.

She did think she had him once. Just this once he arrived in a car driven by a chauffeur and was in a real state — she had never seen that before. She watched him and Digger walk up and down, then went off quickly to see what the chauffeur was up to.

He was sitting in the front seat with his cap off and his eyes shut, a good-looking young feller, sleeping.

But when she got up close he wasn’t sleeping at all. He had like little buttons in his ears and was tapping his fingers, with their bitten-down nails, on the steering-wheel.

Well, she knew what that was. Digger had one. Vic had given it to him. Only Digger’s had a metal band that went over his head, under his hat. He would sit out on the porch and be there for hours sometimes while she raged up and down looking for excuses to break in.

He had an old genoa-velvet lounge out there and a mulga-wood smoker’s stand with a tray, and he would sit for hours with that thing , that Walkman in his lap, plugged in. You had to shout to get him to come in for tea, and even then he didn’t always hear; he was too absorbed. She would have to go out and signal, do a slow dance, and he would look up puzzled, as if he was so far off that he couldn’t make out who it was galumping about on the horizon there and signalling to him.

He wore the phones to spare her the dirges he listened to, she knew that, but she resented them just the same, and suspected Vic of giving Digger the thing as another way of taking him off. Digger was a walkover. Anything mechanical he couldn’t resist.

She would have liked to listen in one time, just to see if the music told you anything, gave you a clue. It was classical, of course, but who knows? — she might have got something out of it. But all she caught when she got close was a high tinny sound, like some animal, a calf or a nanny-goat wearing a bell, that had strayed off and was wandering along a boundary fence somewhere trying to get through.