David Malouf - The Great World

If she was surprised she gave no indication of it. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Any time. Only not on weekdays. You know, because of the shop. This time Saturday is good.’

‘Oh, I saw you coming,’ she laughed. ‘Saw you a mile off.’

They were lying together on the narrow bed in his room, high up on the third floor of the Pomeroy.

‘What d’you mean?’ he asked, turning his head so that she wouldn’t see his smile. He loved it when she presented him to himself. It was like seeing someone else. He had had no opportunity before this to indulge himself.

‘You had messages written all over you,’ she told him. ‘In nine languages.’

‘Did I?’

All this delighted him.

But after a moment he said solemnly: ‘It was Mac that I was coming about, that first time.’

She might have questioned this. She did not think so. And the second? But Digger was sensitive on the point. He did not want it to appear that he had used Mac, or the letters, to come to her. He was too scrupulous, she wouldn’t have minded; but it was his own integrity he was concerned with. When she saw that, she let him have things his way, and clung to what she knew.

He had gone out the second time on foot. It wasn’t much more than a mile and he wanted to take things slowly, no need to rush.

He was going now on his own account. The other business, Mac’s, had been settled on the first occasion; so far as it ever would be. He felt light-hearted, youthful. It didn’t worry him that he didn’t know the right forms for this sort of thing. She would understand that and make allowances. She had an infinite understanding (that’s the impression he had taken away) of all sorts of things; things he had no notion of.

He was very conscious of the fact that at twenty-five he was entirely without experience in some matters. Courtship and that — the sort of gallantry that some fellows can manage by instinct, he had none of. But he had a great tenderness in him. Surely if he let that speak it would be enough.

Still, he had armed himself, just in case, with a bunch of flowers, purple and red anemones wrapped in pale tissue. The old girl he bought them from, who looked after six or seven buckets in a laneway, and sat reading the Bible all day on a folding stool, had recommended them as the freshest at this time of the week, and seeing how nervous he was had taken trouble with the wrapping. The flower heads with their strong colours and black furry centres, as if fat bumblebees were at them, just peeped out over the sky-blue tissue, and there was a bit of ribbon, a darker blue.

He felt awkward carrying flowers. He held them downward at arm’s length where they were not so noticeable; he wasn’t one of those blokes in light suits and polished shoes you saw ringing the doorbell of apartment houses, stepping about impatiently in front of the bronze door and checking how they looked, their parting, their ties, in its diamond panes. Still, he didn’t care if he looked foolish. Who was looking, anyway?

He had felt such a warmth of life in her. He was chilled to the bone sometimes, for all the strong sunlight here.

She was dressmaking when he arrived. She came to the door in her stockinged feet, in a frock of some shining material, green, with the pins still in it; and when he followed her into the front room a neighbour, a young newly-married woman, was there. They were drinking beer. Snips of the material like big pointed leaves were in pools all over the floor, and the neighbour, who was a blonde, had a mouthful of pins. She said hullo through them and giggled.

Apologising for the mess, she put the flowers for a moment on the piano stool, just as she had the letters, and promising him a beer in just a moment if he would be patient till they got round the last bit of hem, climbed on to a chair. He saw then that the hem was not quite fixed.

The blonde girl, whose name was Amy, got down on her knees with the pins in her mouth and went on with it, glancing up every now and then to take a look at him. He guessed from this that she already knew about him. So Iris had mentioned him! Her quick little glances were glances of appraisal; she was a second opinion. He laughed at this and did not feel intimidated. Quite the opposite, in fact. He was enjoying himself.

Iris turned in a slow circle above them — Amy kneeling, he in one of the genoa velvet chairs — shifting her stockinged feet very daintily, an inch at a time, with her arms at her side and her head lowered a little to follow the progress of the work.

It was a quiet business and took a bit of time; the quietness imposed by the fact that one of the two parties (he thought of himself as a mere spectator) could not speak because of the pins.

To Digger it was a lovely moment, he had known nothing like it. He was happy just sitting. But the hem was done at last, found satisfactory, and she got down, told him how patient he had been, took the flowers to put them in water, got him a beer, brought the flowers back in a glass vase, and they sat and chatted.

She was a lively girl, Amy. She kept them laughing with tales about her three sisters-in-law, who were called Faith, Hope and Charity — could you believe it? — so that they hardly spoke to one another. Just sat sipping the cold beer and looking. Once or twice Iris turned away in profile and he saw that the hairs on her neck, where she had pinned it up so that Amy could fix the collar of the new frock, were darker, damp with sweat.

‘Do you dance, Digger?’ Amy asked him in her uninhibited way. ‘Ben and I go every Friday night. Do you like Perry Como? Have you seen The Sign of the Cross ?’

As she fired off her questions, and he answered them, Iris gave him half-amused, apologetic looks that assured him that she was not responsible for this inquisition, and he believed it; she was quite capable of putting her own questions. But she didn’t cut Amy short either.

The only thing that worried him was that he might be too old-fashioned for them, for her ; too out of it. He was embarrassed still by the number of things people took for granted here that he had not yet caught up with. Amy was full of them. He didn’t want to be shown up. He bluffed, made a mental note of these puzzles, and wondered who he could go to later and ask.

When the boys arrived they came in a storm, shouting and dumping their boots in the hall. Ewen’s team had won, six-three. That was a cause for celebration. With a quick little look that dared her to protest, he took a good swig of his mother’s beer. His eyes were on Digger, summing him up, Digger was aware of that, but gave no indication of what they saw.

Jack, the younger boy, was already off out the back and was soon calling.

‘I’ve got to fly,’ Amy said, gathering up her things. ‘Here,’ she told Ewen, ‘leave your mother’s beer and finish mine. It’s only a few drops,’ she told Iris. ‘I’ll get murdered if Ben’s tea’s not on time.’

She took one last look at the frock, which was hanging now from the picture-rail, to satisfy herself of her own workmanship, took a look at Digger too, actually winked at him, and went.

He went himself a minute later; he had to be at the club by six. So that was all there was to it. But it was agreed that he should pick her up after work on Monday and they would do a show.

Lying quietly at his side she got him to tell her stories, and what he had to tell — his mother and father, Jenny, everything about Keen’s Crossing — seemed stranger than it had been in the living of it. Why was that? Because he was seeing it through her eyes.

One thing he told her shocked him. He hadn’t thought about it for nearly twenty years. If his memory were not so good he would have said he had forgotten it. It was the cruellest thing he had ever done.