Clowns At Midnight (20 page)

Authors: Terry Dowling

Though Raina being ill and the hieroglyph gave me reasons to phone.

I needn’t have concerned myself. It was barely an hour later that Carlo called.

‘David? It’s Carlo.’

‘Hello, Carlo.’

‘
Mi dispiace
. The day did not go as we planned. The tower always troubles Raina. The hieroglyph. It was too much. That it was there.’

‘I understand. Is she feeling better?’

‘A little. She is resting. But it is not what we intended.’

‘The hieroglyph. Any ideas what it could mean?’

‘I’m looking into that. But I will call as soon as I have anything.’

‘I’m very interested.’

‘It is good to have you here, David. Good to share this. We will speak soon.’

‘Thank you, Carlo. Give Raina my regards. Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye.’

Somehow the call only added to the disappointment. I made a pot of tea, then set to work on the novel, determined to make use of the day. It was what I called a ‘sewing whole cloth’ session, where I took fragments of action and conversation in Rollo Jaine’s busy life and stitched them together, added to the overall garment of the book as a whole thing. I usually found it tricky, but today it flowed well. If anything the fitted sections added a new dynamism to Jaine’s character, made him seem less the aimless and frantic wanderer always rushing around and more the thoughtful and calculating professional I always saw him as. If only I could sew up the pieces of my life the same way.

At 4:10, I made myself a salad roll and ate it on the veranda, a late lunch, then went for a walk up through the bonsai garden, checking that the little trees were all being watered by the irrigation sprays as they should. I ended up back on the veranda thirty minutes later, relaxing in one of the sling chairs and drowsing through the last of the afternoon.

At 6:52 I was roused by the phone ringing. It was Gemma.

‘David, can we talk?’

It was unreal, marvellous. ‘You got my message.’

‘Are you free right now?’ This was the sharp, direct Gemma; none of the boondocks farm girl about her.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m at the front gate.’

The suddenness of it startled me. ‘Come in.’

‘Can you come down here?’

Neutral ground. And she was asking, not demanding. ‘See you in five minutes.’

CHAPTER 14

Then I was in the car and heading over the side of the hill. Thankfully, there were no new surprises, just a grey Laser parked on the other side of the gate in the rich twilight.

I stopped on my side of the fence and got out, passed through the gate, opened her front passenger door and climbed in.

‘Thanks for coming down,’ she said.

‘Thanks for calling. I was hoping you would.’

We sat in silence, watching the cattle settling and the rich light drawn low across the fields.

‘You don’t live in that house at the corner of Sellen Road,’ I finally said.

‘No.’

‘Why did you want me to see you in a swing?’

‘What did Raina say?’

‘Just that you wanted me to see you that way. She said to ask you.’

An expression crossed Gemma’s face that looked very much like contempt. ‘So much for keeping confidences.’

‘What does the swing mean?’

She faced me. ‘You don’t know?’

‘Why would I know? I only have what Raina said.’

‘Which was?’

‘That it probably means you like me.’

‘Probably?’

‘That you like me, then.’

‘She can be so sure of herself. It’s not as simple as that.’

‘Oh? Tell me why.’

‘I can’t. I can’t yet. There are—Things have to be done a certain way.’

‘Why, Gemma?’

‘Just accept it, will you?’

There was no way I could.
‘What about the party?’

‘What about it?’

‘You were kind.’

‘The party.’ They were strange words, the way she said them, oddly disbelieving.

‘Yes, and in the car the other day. You were kind. Or humouring me. It mattered.’

‘Maybe it was my twin.’

I seized on it. ‘You have a twin? Zoe?’

Gemma’s gaze hardened at the name. ‘I don’t have a twin.’

‘Then who is Zoe?’

‘Raina shouldn’t have mentioned that either.’

‘Why not? She thinks I should meet her.’

‘I thought you wanted to meet
me
. You just want a fuck!’

The bluntness rocked me. ‘What? That’s not it at all. I need to get beyond that. So it isn’t confused as that.’

‘Right.’

‘I can’t put it any better. It’s more.’

‘But that too.’

I refused to take the bait. ‘What does the swing mean?’

‘That’s something you’ll have to earn.’

‘Earn? How?’

‘However. You’ll think of something.’

‘All right. So tell me about this thing between you and Raina.’

‘There’s nothing between me and Raina. We’re friends.’

Present tense. Nothing had changed.

‘But there’s something. She knew mentioning Zoe would have an effect.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

But she did. Of course she did. She was playing again. Her eyes showed that she had modelled all of this, had adapted some plan since receiving my note, prompting her to mention the name Zoe now, and was waiting for me to catch up, with the implicit caution that I would have none of it, nothing, unless I qualified. Maybe I was projecting again, but that’s what I sensed.

And I still found myself drawn to Gemma. In spite of everything, something here did matter. I tried again.

‘All this distracts me. You distract me –’

She gave a raucous bray that shattered any certainty I had of her. ‘I bet.’

‘No, listen. You distract me from the rest of it. What I read in you.’

‘Yeah, well good try, David. Soon you’ll be saying you like me for my mind, or that I’m special and pretty –’

‘You are, Gemma. You’re lovely.’

She looked around her. ‘I don’t see guys falling over themselves. Must be a slow burn thing.’

‘It’s more. I can’t put my finger on it.’

Again the awful bray, this time followed by a snigger and an appraising eye. ‘You are horny, aren’t you? That Nelson Syndrome really kicks in!’

‘For God’s sake! Just let me see you. Forget about the sex.’

‘Yeah? As if. Well I think you’re reading things. Got me mixed up with someone else.’

Zoe. But neither of us said it.

‘So let me find that out.’

‘Can’t you see I’m not interested? I’ve got a life here you know nothing about?’

That made me stop. It went in the face of what she’d said in the car on Wednesday.
None of the above
. But it cautioned me—this tall, leggy, 29-year-old, plain enough, pretty enough, yes, but sharpened and glossed by an intelligence, a presence, a sheer intensity, being here and unmarried, undiscovered by others. What were the chances of it? She masked her qualities, played them down, but again why? Always why? The double picture. A minute might have gone by before I spoke.

‘I saw you differently.’

Perhaps it was ‘saw’ instead of ‘see’ that did it, a lucky choice of words. I hadn’t meant to say it, hadn’t wanted to sound peevish or desperate. I was so aware of the old saying: Men talk their way into women’s hearts and talk their way out again.

And she softened. I could tell by the way she settled back in her seat.

‘God, David, give it time. You’re—so intense.’

It was as if she had relaxed out of a role.

‘Now there’s a word I’ve heard before,’ I said, smiling in spite of myself. ‘Something here matters.’ That word again.

‘Yeah, well it still sounds like the rebound, holiday romance syndrome to me.’

Once again I had to smile. Because it did. It truly did.

‘So just let me see you. Spend time. Forget the etchings.’

It was her turn to smile, such a wonderful transforming thing to see. ‘Itchings?’

We laughed at the old word-play, both needed to. ‘Good ones,’ I said. ‘Top quality.’ I wanted to see her smile again. Even as a strategy—allow the smile now!—it was so welcome.

An approaching car broke the silence, the distinctive sound of tyres on gravel coming up behind, growing louder, the shuddering rush as the vehicle plunged by, the sight of it moving away in its dust trail. It was a four-wheel drive towing, of all things, a boat on a trailer, a small metal dinghy—but with someone in it, sitting on one of the cross-boards and holding onto an upright; no, holding a broom handle or something. Holding a staff.

‘Look at that!’ I said, watching the figure dwindle in the twilight. It was an odd, incongruous sight, one more strangeness in yet another strange day.

Gemma seemed to ignore it altogether. ‘Tell me more about the clown thing?’ she said.

‘The clown thing.’ I managed to repeat the words, blindsided as always, feeling the accelerated drumbeat behind the ribcage, the familiar tattoo. ‘I told you on Wednesday.’

‘You started to. You told me what it did to you and Julia. You told me about Jack and the band. But I want to know what’s it
like
. I want to hear you talk. I’ll tell you about the swing. Tit for tat.’

There was no special inflection to her final comment, no glint in the eye or twist of the mouth, but the measured delivery, the evenness of her gaze, said it all. She was flirting, delivering the next instalment on
None of the above
.

I hesitated long enough, met her gaze steadily enough to let her know I was accepting her on her terms again. Then I told her, staring ahead for most of it, looking through the windscreen at the growing dusk, smelling dry grass with the sudden sweetness of apple-box and Rhodes grass on the light breeze, hearing insects and night birds and cattle lowing in the fields.

I related it as a learned and familiar recitation, not thinking of shattered bottle-trees or the Risis or the tower or the mysterious petroglyph we’d found, not really thinking of Gemma and what she might think, not then, not yet. I was getting it out one more time, reaffirming my world, giving my skewed slant on it.

It was the sort of telling that had won me Julia. Talked me into her heart. Begun the finding, having and losing. Yet what else was there?

And as always when I spoke it, I challenged every part of what I said. I was terrified of clowns, yes, but was more terrified by far that I might be lying to myself, biasing, dramatising and exaggerating, mouthing rote words about a condition, a falsehood so familiar, so comfortable, that I took it at face value, used it as a catch-all excuse out of habit. I had to test it, challenge its fundamental truth with every attempt.

Yes, I am still this, right now, determined not to be buried alive inside my own life and discover only later, when it was too late, that, as precaution, as protection, I’d been lying to myself for years.

I needed to be at both the true centre and the sharp edge of what I was—needed fervently to believe I was.

I spoke on and on, fiercely concentrating, accepting, denying, testing, raging at the condition, hating the note of self-pity that I feared underscored it all. But it sounded right. It sounded fair. Again, inevitably, it led to Julia and the inevitable shutting down, pulling away, the qualification of all that caring and desire.

Feeling the anger there I shied away, went to another hot-spot of emotion. I told Gemma that I’d wanted no-one to know about my condition, that somebody—probably the Rankins (surely not Jack or Dr Constantiou) must have told the Risis, probably trying to be helpful. Hide the statues. Get rid of the dolls. You have a coulrophobe coming. It was good to talk out my anger at that, simple honesty to tack on the admission that it would probably have me heading back to Sydney sooner rather than later.

‘It’s a wonderful mask,’ she said, an odd comment, perhaps a compromise or a way of talking me down.

‘Yes, it’s—potent.’

‘I keep feeling it’s looking up my dress. It makes me want to do up an extra button.’

More flirting, more deliberate loading of words, her tone oddly playful and encouraging again.

It was time to make an end. ‘Anyway, I needed to be out of it. It’s so full on, Gemma. Always there.’

I had no idea how long I’d taken. The evening had deepened, yes, when I was done, but much had stayed the same: the breeze, the scents and sounds, her deeply attentive presence.

‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘Why haven’t you settled?’

‘Married you mean? Found a partner? As if that completes something.’

‘It can. It does. It may not be enough, may not even be right for a person at any particular time, but it does. Being with Julia taught me that.’

Being without her, I didn’t add.

‘I’ve had important relationships,’ Gemma said, ‘but being yourself comes first. Meeting yourself. Why settle for less?’

It was such an echo of my own recent thoughts that I proceeded with extra care. ‘When haven’t we?’

‘What?’

I’d surprised her. ‘We all do. Considering our talents, dreams, opportunities. Not quite the job we wanted. Not quite the life we planned or the partner we expected to have.’

‘That’s a bloody cynical thing to say.’

‘I say it to hear myself say it. To remind myself. It’s another test.’

‘Don’t you ever relax?’

‘I like to. I try to. You’re the one who asked about clowns.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I did. But sometimes I really do think the
bravest
thing people do is go to that next stage. Lose themselves in a conventional relationship. Even though it’s the most thoughtless thing, too, as in not thought out.’

I wasn’t sure what she meant; the comment seemed so elliptical, so potentially loaded.

‘Why bravest?’

‘Because with familiarity, the routines, the mystery and beauty of self often goes.’

That threw me even more right then, though I sensed the urgency behind it. What to say?

‘Raina was brave today. We went to the tower.’

‘Raina did?’ Now I’d surprised her again. ‘Did she go inside?’

‘We all did. We found a hieroglyph carved on the wall.’

‘What sort of hieroglyph?’

I described the spike-legged table, the spoked wheel, the single down-thrust line like the support stand of an old hand-cart.

‘It’s ancient Egyptian.’

‘We figured it was.’

‘Carlo identified it?’

‘Not yet.’

I could no longer see Gemma’s face clearly now, but I sensed the frown there.

‘David, he knows. He’s an archaeologist, for heaven’s sake!’

‘He’s what!’

‘He’s dug on Crete, all through the Aegean. Of course he knows what it is.’

It was too much, just getting larger and larger, like time-lapse footage of a flower opening or blood billowing from a wound in warm water.

‘Ask him,’ she said. ‘He’ll tell you it’s a totally new coining, a neologism blending two other hieroglyphs.’

‘So tell me what it is.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s his tower. His call. Raina went there.’

Raina went there
. What did
that
mean?

‘Gemma –’

‘David, listen. We’ve done well. We’ve moved along. Don’t spoil it!’

‘Just tell me. Please.’

‘You’ll lose too much if I do. It has to come from them now.’

Not him. Not Raina. Them.

‘Then it moves along again,’ I said.

‘Exactly.’

What elaborate private game was going on here? What could I believe?

But I counted blessings, saw what I did have. Gemma was here now, wanted to be, it seemed, but not wanting questions. Just acceptance of some dutiful playing out.

Pride, fear and ego demanded answers, but that was out of the question.

‘So tell me about the swing. Tit for tat.’

‘I don’t want to now. It’s an ancient Greek thing. Later.’

The news about visiting the tower had had an effect.

‘It must be difficult,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Deciding what to do next. Dealing with all this.’ I wanted to sound knowing; it was all I had.

Dealing with all what?
She couldn’t ask it.

What could she say?
It’s an old game? It’s the rules? Protocols?

‘I should go.’

So that was it. The easiest endgame.

‘Can I take you to dinner?’