Part 30 (1/2)

”Rosa,” Lenny said, ”you are being selfish,” but he put out his hand to her, to touch her shoulder. Rosa shrugged his hand off.

”Of course I am selfish,” she yelled, suddenly very angry. ”I have always been selfish.”

”You gave them the house,” Izzie said and Leah, who had begun to feel physically ill, found a strong s.h.i.+ver of dislike pa.s.s through her. gave them the house,” Izzie said and Leah, who had begun to feel physically ill, found a strong s.h.i.+ver of dislike pa.s.s through her.

”What else could I do? You make it impossible for me to do anything else with your stupid charity. You are a wishy-washy. You know you are.”

Izzie's face tightened and his pretty mouth became a slit. ”Who owned stocks and shares? Some Marxist!”

”I did,” Rosa shouted. Leah wanted to block her ears, to run away and hide from this nightmare. ”I did.”

”You are making Leah embarra.s.sed,” Lenny said, but Rosa was staring at her son and something nasty was happening between them.

”Joseph would never have done this to me,” she said. ”A real communist would do nothing so sentimental.”

Izzie stood up, his face quite pallid. ”Shut up,” he screamed. He looked ugly with hate. ”Shut your d.a.m.n mouth.”

Lenny began to rise. Leah put her hands across her ears. The caravan rocked and swayed as Izzie ran from it. They heard his feet on the path and the squeak of the gate.

”Go and find him, Leah,” Rosa said wearily. ”Go and find him. Tell him you love him.”

When she had gone, husband and wife went back to the matter that they had been discussing for two days. They circled round and around it, talking, talking, but in the centre of their talk there was nothing, a hole-the sc.r.a.p-metal business was bankrupt.

22.

Amongst some fleshy plants with leaves like ear-lobes, she found him, high on the cliffs of Tamarama where the wet Cellophane wrappers of Hoadley's confectionery a.s.sumed the same wet snotty look as the used contraceptive-that repellent thing-she had found there while walking as a dancer, her head high, her arms swinging, as fluid as a seagull, on a day when Rosa had been happy with the world and that other fleshy plant, the one called pig-face, had lain across a corner of the cliffs like vivid pink shantung flung across a draper's counter.

He was curled inside a weather-worn piece of soft yellow stone a hundred feet above the sucking sea. If he had wrists like a girl, he suffered hurt like a man, privately, ashamed of tears or perhaps, Leah thought, seeing the black ball of pain in the arms of the rock, like an animal withdrawing from the herd. It seemed to her to be a deeply conservative att.i.tude to pain-to withdraw from society as if one would be destroyed for one's weakness or incapacity.

All away to the south the sky was hung with thunder blue and down along the beach at Bondi the sand glowed an odd deep mustard yellow and she wished she had been up on the cliffs on the day of Rosa's birthday party to see the procession along the beach: the mauves, the yellows, blacks and pinks, the wonderful Silly Friends parading noisily and emptily along the sand.

She chose a course towards Izzie that would allow him to witness her approach and thus have time to compose herself. She walked with her head down, one hand on her hat, the other controlling her dress which rose recklessly to show the sky her dancer's legs.

When she arrived at the rock he was sitting up, looking sheepish. She sat down beside him and took his hand, not as a lover might, but as a concerned stranger taking a pulse, and indeed it crossed her mind to wonder if such skin could ever be truly familiar, if it might not always be slightly alien.

”Talking to my mother,” Izzie said, not looking at her. ”Talking to my mother is not a game you can win. You are in check from the first move.”

”Do you know what I think?” Leah said at last.

”What do you think?”

”I think the chooks are making everyone unhappy.” She smiled, but she was quite serious. When Izzie had made the chooks they had been snow-white creatures with wise black eyes but now they were malevolent and mad-eyed and their red combs were obscene.

Izzie shrugged his shoulders irritably.

”She has never been any different,” he said. ”It was always Joseph who could do no wrong. Whatever I did, it didn't matter-I was wrong. Oh, Goldstein, if only you could meet my slimy big brother. She loves him. She thinks he's the ant's pants. Have you seen how she wraps up his dull translations in tissue paper? Jesus Christ! He's such a fraud.”

”Izzie, why didn't you tell me about Rosa?”

”I am telling you, Goldstein,” he smiled, ”now.”

”She's unhappy. She looks sick and miserable. And your father has a funny look too-disappointed and bitter.”

”I forgot.”

Leah looked at him incredulously.

”How could you forget?”

”I forgot forgot. And there's a southerly buster coming.” He pulled her to her feet and they began to stroll back to Bondi. ”You don't know how busy I am. You don't understand what I do. You haven't even asked.” asked.”

He gave her an odd sideways look. ”I've got more to worry about than Rosa and Lenny.” He pulled his grubby hands out of his pockets and started striking off points on his dainty little fingers. ”Each day I teach. I get up at five. I do my preparation. I get to school at eight thirty. I'm busy till four. Then there's work to do with the local branch. Then,” he hesitated, ”I've got other stuff.”

”I am going to take Rosa on a picnic.”

”Leah, it is a secret. I'm working for the UWU.”

”Oh,” she said. ”I see.” But in fact she didn't understand at all.

”The Unemployed Workers' Union.”

”Good,” she said, still not appreciating what this meant, that the UWU was mostly communist and that Izzie's members.h.i.+p of it was enough to have him expelled from the Labour Party.

”I train speakers,” he said.

”You're a good speaker, Izzie.”

As they walked back to Campbell Parade he began to talk about his dissatisfaction with Lang, that he was nothing but a fraud, and Leah-who remembered all those nights they had worked to get Lang elected-suddenly felt weary and sick of all these bright futures.

Campbell Parade was rich in leather shoes and double-coned ice-creams dripped frivolously on to the sweaty footpath. Izzie was still talking, gesticulating, b.u.mping into people.

”Izzie,” she said when he, at last, paused for breath.

”Yes-sie,” he grinned.

”What Rosa said about Jack Lang was right.”

”Yes.”

”Well, why don't you tell her so?”