Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories (12 page)

Her office is on the twelfth floor, the top floor. It is a huge space of no space where she works with strangers, making calls to strangers, selling the unsaleable. Students and pensioners work beside her, manning the phones. Groups have formed. The smoker pack cleave, leave their butts on the roof at lunchtime. The Greenies bunch, eat greens, speak conservation. Sally sits with the leftovers, with old Ron, and the youth with pimples, with big Sue, and a lady with varicose veins.

Her work area is small, her salary is small, Sally James is small, but her dreams are not. She has come to big, bad Melbourne to find love.

 

Her mother is in hospital again. Sally's weekend is spent in Bendigo, her days at the hospital, her nights with Ross. He has loved her forever, now he's pushing for marriage.

On Monday morning she leaves Bendigo at six-thirty, leaves Ross's warm, safe bed and drives away. Stressed by the traffic, wearied by a weekend of will I, won't I, she is running for the lift when she sees him. He holds the door for her, smiles, and Sally knows what she wants. She wants him, wants his dark beauty, his fine eyes. And she will have him.

That night she rides down in the lift, certain she will see him again. He is not there. All week she looks for him, and on Friday she is rewarded. The lift stops at his floor and, for a moment, their black overcoats join in the crowded lift. As he walks away, she watches his back. He looks like an elegant black swan. Swans mate for life.

Two nights out of five Sally rides with her black swan to the ground floor while they speak of the weather and the likelihood of rain, then they walk together through the rain to the car park. Soon they laugh companionably, shelter beneath one large black umbrella.

 

A weekend before her; indecision and that hospital before her, it is a Friday when Sally gambles with fate. She takes the tram to work. ‘Had to put the car in for a service,' she lies to the black swan.
Liar, liar, your pants are on fire
. But she is in his car, locked in safe with him, while outside the Melbourne rain weaves a silver screen between them and the world.

He parks out front of her bed-sitter and he reaches across her, opens the passenger side door. His arm brushes her breast. And she wants him but he won't make the first move and she knows it.

‘I don't suppose you have time to come in for a drink,' she says.

‘I'd like that,' he replies.

They don't have their drink until much later. The door closing behind them, she slips her arms from her coat, hangs it to dry, reaches for his coat, and his arms take her, rock her, while his smiling, asking mouth finds her own.

Sally flies high that night with her black swan. He shows her scenes she has never glimpsed. Gone is the loneliness of the city, and the ravaged face on the white pillow. No more ‘Should I stay, should I go home, be with Mum, marry Ross, country boy, country love, country feet planted firmly on solid ground?' The black swan has given her wings and she can fly.

‘I'll have to go,' Matt says at ten. Her door opens, closes softly behind him.

Alone. She is lonely already. She runs to the door wearing her floral bedsheet as a toga. ‘Will I see you again, Matt?' she calls.

‘In the foyer at five twenty-five,' he says, returning, his lips finding hers, brushing them, promising a future. ‘Monday,' he says.

They make love three times the next week, and they ring for pizzas and eat them hot in bed, and they drink cheap wine from casks and make slow, shameless love. Then he leaves her. Alone. And the weekend looms.

Three months pass before he tells her of his wife. A wife in Hallam. A house in Hallam. Three boys in Hallam. When he leaves her at night he drives home to his wife in Hallam. But he doesn't love his wife. They are getting a divorce, sharing a house but not a bed.

Sally thinks of Ross. Waiting. She thinks of her mother, dying. Sally James has never felt such shame.

 

For the next two weeks she leaves the office at five, runs to the car park, drives to home through the cold blanket of rain. She telephones the hospice each night, speaks to her mother too long, running up STD bills she can't afford.

Her mother knows of Matt. She asks about him.

‘He's away. I'll see you on Saturday, Mum.' But for how many more Saturdays?

Sally goes to bed alone, singing the lullaby her mother used to sing to her when she was small.

Hush little Sally, go to sleep, into the land of dreams you creep,

Ride on the feathered wings of night, safe with stars and their gentle light
.

Her father, dead since she was eight, Sally has no one to share with her this waiting, for this awful waiting to end. Ross would share it. Ross would hold her and let her howl on his shoulder. She needs him, needs someone to hold, someone to take away the hurt. How she needs.

On the Monday evening, she fills in time at the office noticeboard, reading the advertisements: ‘Lost, small black briefcase.' ‘Wanted, female, 20-25, to make fourth for cruise.'

She's never been on a cruise. She takes down the details knowing she can't afford it; anyway, she's too old. She'll be thirty in March.

She catches the lift down, and Matt is waiting for her on the fourth floor, looking for her as the doors slide open. They are the only passengers. He steps inside, crushes her to him, and shame flies away.

Later, eating pizza on the tumbled bed, her finger moves the long lock of hair that falls to his brow, and she kisses the place where it has been. ‘Come up to Bendigo with me on Saturday. I want Mum to know the man I love.'

‘Not possible at the moment,' he says. ‘Later perhaps.'

‘For her there can be no later. She's dying.'

‘Poor Sally,' he says.

‘Come with me. Please.'

‘Don't press me, Sall.'

 

She begins to see glimpses of a different Matt, a not so gentle Matt.

‘I thought you were getting a divorce. How long can it take?'

‘As long as it takes, Sall.'

‘You're using me.'

‘We're using each other,' he says.

And Christmas comes. She has three weeks off to spend with the woman who will not survive this Christmas.

‘Can't you come, just for a day? It will make her feel better, knowing I'll have you when she's gone. She keeps asking when we're getting married, Matt.'

‘I've been down that track already. I don't like the ruts and bumps.'

He has a sharp tongue, and she tells him so. ‘It's only the bed, isn't it? That's all I am to you. A different bed.'

He pulls her to him, his mouth hard, his hands hurting.

‘No,' she says for the first time. ‘Not tonight. We need to talk.'

He doesn't want to talk. He leaves her and drives home early to Hallam, to his wife and three small boys.

Sally goes home for Christmas and stays on to bury her mother, and when the mourners are gone, she stands with Ross beside the grave. He holds her, lets her cry.

On her first day back at work, Matt is waiting for her. He hands her a tiny gift-wrapped parcel. ‘Merry Christmas,' he says, and he kisses her. Openly.

It is a ring. ‘Matt.' Her eyes fill. ‘Oh, Matt. It's beautiful.' One small diamond is set in a golden heart. She loves it. Loves him. Tears spill, and he kisses them away while she tries the precious thing on the blur of her finger.

It is too big. She swaps it over to her right hand. ‘Safer,' she says.

He doesn't suggest having it made smaller, but he follows her car home that night and he stays with her until two. ‘I've missed this,' he says as he is leaving.

‘I've missed you,' she replies.

She places the ring on her engagement finger when he is gone. It comforts her. But it slips off in the night. She finds it in her bed, and wears it to work the next day, a slim bandaid to hold it safe.

Her fingers play with the ring while she strives to sell the unsaleable. She is a failure when they don't buy. When they do, she feels guilty, hears her mother's voice in each anonymous buyer's. Mummy, like Sally, could never say no.

Sally wants to run to the hospice bed that is no more, or to fly with Mummy to the moon, to beyond the moon, away from this mad city and this spaceless space, and the faceless ones on the telephone.

But she can't leave Matt. He is all she has now.

And autumn comes, and one day Matt doesn't. He doesn't wait in the foyer. He doesn't ride the lift to the ground. It is March, and she is thirty. Thirty hurts, hurts more when Ross rings. ‘Happy birthday, love,' he says.

She buys a chocolate cake. Offers a slice to the ones who share the tearoom.

Varicose veins is on a diet. Old Ron doesn't eat cream. Pimples doesn't need more chocolate and cream, so Sally eats her cake until her stomach rebels and she vomits brown sludge into the toilet bowl.

There is an MJ Marsden on her list today. It is fate. Sally dials, gets an answering machine. ‘Matthew and I are not available to take your call. Please leave your name and number and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.'

She hangs up, but redials again, and again, listening to the voice of the woman Matt names Bitch. She calls ten times and when her supervisor comes to spy, Sally gives her spiel to the answering machine: ‘Good morning, Mrs Marsden, today we are offering five weeks' free membership of the . . . '

Friday. Bloody Friday with its memories of packing to go home for the weekend. Home to Bendigo, to Mummy, and dear safe Ross.

Sally rings her office. Her nostrils pinched between finger and thumb, she tells the supervisor she's sick, then she drives out to Hallam. Finds Matt's street. Matt's house. All day she watches for the woman he goes home to at night. For Bitch.

She sees a Range Rover pull into the drive at four, and she shrinks low in her seat, watching as three small boys tumble out, Matt behind them.

Then Bitch steps down. Stretches. Sleek, pretty bitch. Another black swan. They walk inside, his hand on her shoulder, their boys at their heels.

Sally drives away. Alone.

Sally pinches her nostrils and rings in sick again on Monday, and again she drives out to Hallam in time to see Matt's boys walk off to school. They look like him. She loves them because they look like him, and she wants a child of her own who will look like him.

His car isn't in the garage, but she sees Bitch drive out in the Range Rover. Sally follows her to a shopping centre, parks her car in the next parking bay, watches Bitch greet another woman. They walk to the food court, sit at a table.

Sally finds a table close by. Her fingers play with Matt's ring. For half an hour she sits sipping coffee and twisting, twisting the heart in circles on her finger, wanting – wanting what Bitch has. Wanting Matt.

He is waiting in the foyer on Tuesday evening. ‘Where were you yesterday?' he asks.

‘Where were you all last week?' she counters.

‘A business trip. I couldn't contact you.'

They walk quickly to his car. Only when she is safe inside it does she tell him where she has been. ‘I saw your boys, had a coffee and a doughnut with your wife,' she says. Then she calls him a liar.

His fingers close around her wrist and the car slews off to the left. He never loses control, of himself or his vehicle. He is a careful driver, his car unmarked.

‘You little bitch. You stay away from them.'

‘Why? You love me, not her. You're getting a divorce. Oh, and I saw my ring in the jeweller's too. Forty-five dollars. It's only a Zircon.' Her words are bitter.

‘What did you expect? A diamond?'

‘Let go of my wrist, you cheap lying bastard. You're hurting me.'

‘You don't know what hurt is. You go near my family again and you'll bloody well find out.'

‘Watch the road,' she screams. ‘Watch the bloody road.'

Then there is only the traffic noise to fill a silence neither of them will break until he parks in front of her block of flats, pulls on the handbrake and pushes her from his car. ‘Piss off,' he says. ‘Get out. I'm finished with you.'

That night Sally takes two valium tablets and she tells herself a bedtime story.
Once upon a time, there was a . . . Once upon a time was . . . Once upon a time . . .

She takes a valium before she goes to work, and another before she leaves the office. When she sees Matt downstairs, she runs after him, takes his hand. ‘I'm sorry,' she says. ‘I'm sorry, Matt. It's just . . . I miss Mum so much. I'm so sorry.'

He follows Sally's car to South Yarra, but he doesn't stay long. He gets it done, says they'll go away together, they'll have a weekend away. Soon.

‘A weekend,' she says when he has gone. She has learned not to like weekends.

That night she flushes her contraceptives down the toilet. She wants a baby, needs something that is her own. He has three boys. She will give him a girl. ‘What you get in this world depends entirely on how much you want it.' These are Matt's words but she speaks them to the small pills melting in the bottom of the green bowl.