Part 20 (1/2)

”She loves him,” Molly told the poet. ”She is infatuated with him. She wors.h.i.+ps him. Why would she do such a thing? What did she imagine would come of all that business?” all that business?”

The poet did not ask what all that business all that business might be, although he guessed that aeroplane wings would do little to m.u.f.fle the creaks of the marital bed. might be, although he guessed that aeroplane wings would do little to m.u.f.fle the creaks of the marital bed.

”She is a poet,” he said (as they rattled over cobblestones towards Footscray in search of a doctor's light), but it seemed a poor defence in the face of the evil bile the victim spilled forth from her once pretty mouth.

”I don't understand. He is so good to her. Poor Herbert,” she said. ”Poor man. She's broken his heart.”

She would never understand, although perhaps she should have. If they had taken three hours to find Dr Henderson's light the conversation would have continued its circular course, like an early-morning dream where the same problem spins on the edge of an off-centre black disc.

71.

I sat by the head of the bed and wiped her brow with a water-wet handkerchief. I wiped it to soothe, to erase, wiped slowly, sadly, as I willed my child to remain exactly where he was.

My wife wept and explained, argued, told the truth, lied and apologized while the spasms wracked her and I held her head above the basin.

”The doctor will come,” I said, ”the doctor will come. He's coming now.” I manufactured that d.a.m.n doctor in my mind. I built his car and gave him road. I turned on his headlights and drew him towards me. Sweat ran from my forehead and caught in the creases of my eyes and coursed down my cheeks in imitation of the tears I could never easily shed.

There were sounds locked tightly in my throat, sounds barely human, steel springs of misery which once released would have filled the room, speared the walls, and lacerated the smooth white skin of my bride and wife. I screwed them down with a lock nut and pierced the shaft with a cotter pin. I wiped.

”Why?” I whispered. ”Why?”

Phoebe was stunned by the question.

”Why?”

”No good,” she said. ”Can't have children.”

I soaked the handkerchief and wrung it out. I sponged her arms. ”Doctor's coming,” I said.

”Can't do it,” she said and gripped my hand as another spasm wrenched her womb.

”Can't do what, my darling?”

”Can't fly. Can't do it. Can't poetry.”

”We will,” I said.

”Did you want a baby?” she asked, very clearly. She raised herself up and stared at me in surprise. I straightened the sheet. I tucked it in.

”Yes,” I said, and began to wash the perspiration from her clumsy hands, wiping each finger, one at a time.

”Why?”

I could not look at her. She forced my chin up with her hand so she could see my face.

”I love you,” I said. I dragged the words up from the dangerous part of my throat, dragged it out and slammed the door shut behind it.

”Don't cry,” she said.

”I'm not crying.”

She sat up and held me. I put my arms around her and embraced her so hard she gasped for air. And I would give anything, now, to repeat that clean moment in the middle of such muddy pain.

Phoebe was astonished. She had not understood me. She had never thought me fatherly. She had not imagined me with children. They seemed trivial, beneath me.

”How could we fly? How could I write?”

”You will,” I said. ”You will do both. You will have the child. I promise you.”

Now Phoebe, even in her remorse and pain, was not without calculation.

”Do you really promise?” she said.

”Yes.”

”Promise you won't stop me, ever.”

”Have the child,” I begged, ”and, G.o.d help me, the aeroplane is yours.”

”Will you write it down,” she said, before the next spasm struck her and the bile she brought up changed from green to yellow.

”Yes,” I said. ”I'll write it down.”

She knew me better than I knew myself and I do not blame her for it.

”Better not die then,” she said, and smiled.

In any case, neither of us counted on Charles who was stubbornly clinging on, holding out against the raging seas that threatened to sweep him from his foetus world. He would not let go. Years later his wife would use the story against him and say it was this that had made him stubborn, that he would not go when he was not wanted, etc. However I fancy that Charles was always like it, from his very beginning, when he was a slippery pink thing without a proper face. So while we all made decisions, thinking it up to G.o.d, or the doctor, my willpower or Phoebe's connivance, it was none of our doing at all, and it was Charles who fought and won the battle against the cloudy liquid the actress bought in Carlton.

72.

Dr Henderson was a small broad man with a s.h.i.+ny ruddy face and thin ginger hair. He answered the door with a vase of lilacs in his hand.

Horace did not notice the vase. He noticed the doctor's tie. It was an Old Scotch Collegians tie and he was so desperate that he, quite literally, grasped it in his desperate hands and hailed his fellow Old Scotch Collegian as a long-lost friend.

”What year?” asked the poet, softening his vowels in accordance with the social requirements of such a tie.

It did not occur to the doctor that the dishevelled tramp on his doorstep might be claiming members.h.i.+p of a particular elite, but rather that he had lost his mind, knew not where he was or what year he was in.