At first he was only dimly aware of her, until that beloved hand had seared his shoulder and filled him with a pain that yet was not a pain. He did not need to be able to reason to divine the change in her, the self-admission that she loved to touch him as much as he had yearned to touch her. He had leaned back to feel her breasts against him; her hand on his belly numbed and electrified him, he could not breathe for fear she would puff away. Their first kiss all those months ago had set him quivering with a hunger he had not known how to sate, but this second kiss filled him with a queer, triumphant power, armed as he was with what Pop had told him. He had wanted to feel her skin and could find only a part of it, frustrated by her clothes, but he had managed to command himself enough to do what had to be done, take them from her gently so as not to frighten her.
His steps had led him down into the garden because he hated the house at Artarmon; it was not his the way the cottage was, and he did not know where to take her. Only in the garden was he at home, so to the garden he went. And in the garden he felt her breasts at last, in the garden where he was simply another of its myriad creatures he could forget he was not the full quid, he could lose himself in the honeyed, piercing warmth of her body. And he had lost himself so for hours, alight with the unbearable pleasures of feeling her and knowing she was with him all the time in every part of her.
The sadness had come when she banished him to the house, and he realized they must part. He had clung to her as long as he could, carrying her small body within his arms and aching at the thought of having to let her go, wondering how long he must wait before it happened again. It had been dreadful, putting her into her bed and turning to go to his own; when she had drawn him back and made him lie beside her he had done so in numb astonishment, for it had not occurred to him to ask his Pop whether they would be exactly like his Mum and Pop and sleep together all through every night.
Then was the moment he knew he really belonged with her, that he could go down to the ground in the last, endless sleep safe and free from fear because she would be there beside him in the darkness forever. Nothing could ever frighten him again: he had conquered the final terror in discovering he would never be alone. For his life had been so very lonely, always shut out of the thinking world, always on some outer perimeter watching, longing to enter that world and never able to. He never could, never. Now it did not matter. Mary had allied herself to him in the last, most comforting way. And he loved her, loved her, loved her. . . .
Sliding down in the bed again he put his face between her breasts just to feel their softness, the fingertips of one hand tracing the outline of a hard, tantalizing nipple. She woke with a kind of purring noise, her arms slipping around him. He wanted to kiss her again, he wanted to kiss her badly, but he found himself laughing instead.
"What's so funny?" she asked drowsily, stretching as she wakened more fully.
"Oh, Mary, you're much nicer than my Teddy!" he giggled.
Twenty-seven
When Mary rang Ron to tell him that she was home and that Tim was well and safe, she thought he sounded tired.
"Why don't you come and stay with us for a few days?" she asked.
"No, thanks, love, I'd rather not. Youse'll be better off without me hanging around."
"That's not true, you know. We worry about you, we miss you and we want to see you. Please come out, Ron, or let me pick you up in the car."
"No, I don't want to." He sounded stubborn, determined to have his way.
"Then may we come and see you?"
"When you go back to work you can come over one night, but I don't want to see youse before then, all right?"
"No, it isn't all right, but if that's the way you want it there's nothing I can do. I understand you think you're doing the right thing, that we ought to be left alone, but you're wrong, you know. Tim and I would be very glad to see you."
"When youse go back to work, not before." There was a tiny pause, then his voice came again, fainter and farther away. "How's Tim, love? Is he all right? Is he really happy? Did we do the right thing and make him feel a bit more like the full quid? Was Mr. Martinson right?"
"Yes, Ron, he was right. Tim's very happy. He hasn't changed at all and yet he's changed enormously. He's rounded out and become more sure of himself, more content, less an outsider."
"That's all I wanted to hear." His voice sank to a whisper. "Thanks, Mary. I'll see youse."
Tim was in the garden, repotting maidenhair ferns from the rockery. With a swing and a lilt in her walk that was new, Mary crossed the grass toward him, smiling. He turned his head and gave her back the smile, then bent over the fragile leaves again, snapping off a fine, brittle black stem below the spot where the frond looked pale and sick. Sitting beside him on the grass, she put her cheek against his shoulder with a sigh.
"I just talked to Pop."
"Oh, goody! When is he coming out?"
"He says he won't come until after we've gone back to work. I tried to convince him he ought to make it sooner, but he won't. He thinks we ought to have this time to ourselves, and that's very kind of him."
"I suppose so, but he didn't need to do it, did he? We don't mind visitors. Mrs. Parker is always dropping in and we don't mind her, do we?"
"Oddly enough, Tim, we don't. She's a good old stick."
"I like her." He laid the fern down and slid an arm about her waist. "Why do you look so pretty these days, Mary?"
"Because I have you."
"I think it's because you don't always dress up as if you're going to town. I like you better with no shoes and stockings and your hair all undone."
"Tim, how would you like to go up to the cottage for a couple of weeks? It's nice here, but it's even nicer up at the cottage."
"Oh, yes, I'd like that! I didn't like this house much before, but it turned out to be real nice after you came home from the hospital. I feel as though I belong here now. But the cottage is my favorite house in all the world."
"Yes, I know it is. Let's go right now, Tim, there's nothing to hold us here. I only waited to see what Pop wanted to do, but he's left us to ourselves for the time being, so we can go."
It never occurred to either of them to look further than the cottage; Mary's grandiose schemes of taking Tim to the Great Barrier Reef and the desert evaporated into the distant future.
They moved into the cottage that night and had great fun deciding where they were going to sleep. In the end they moved Mary's big double bed into his room, and closed the door on her stark white cell until they felt like going into Gosford to buy paint for redecoration. There was very little to do in the blooming garden and less inside the house, so they walked in the bush for hours and hours, exploring its bewitching, untouched corridors, lying with heads together over a busy ant hill or sitting absolutely still while a male lyre bird danced the complicated measures of his ceremonious courtship. If they found themselves too far away to get back to the cottage before dark they stayed where they were, spreading a blanket over a bed of bracken fern and sleeping under the stars. Sometimes they slept the daylight hours away and rose with the setting of the sun, then went down to the beach after dark and lit a fire, revelling in the newfound freedom of having the world entirely to themselves and having no constraint between them. They would abandon their clothes, safe in the darkness from eyes out on the river, and swim naked in the still, black water while the fire died away to ash-coated coals. He would make her lie afterward on a blanket in the sand, the urge of his love too strong to resist a moment longer, and she would lift her arms to draw him down beside her, happier than she had ever thought was possible.
One night Mary wakened from a deep sleep in the sand and lay for a moment wondering where she was. As thought came back she knew, for she had to accustom herself to sleeping clasped in Tim's arms. He never let her go. Any attempt to move away from him woke him at once; he would reach out until he found her and pull her back again with a sigh of mingled fear and relief. It was as if he thought she was going t
o be snatched away by something out of the darkness, but he would not talk about it and she never insisted, divining that he would tell her in his own good time.
Summer was at its height and the weather had been perfect, the days hot and dry, the nights sweetly cooled by the sea breeze. Mary stared up at the sky, drawing in a breath of awe and wonder. The massive belt of the Milky Way sprawled across the vault from horizon to horizon, so smothered with the light of the stars that there was a faint, powdery glow even in the starless parts of the sky. No haze conspired to blot them out, and the leaching city lights were miles to the south. The Cross spread its four bright arms to the winds, the fifth star clear and sparkling, the Pointers drawing her eyes away from the still, waxy globe of the full moon. Silver light was poured over everything, the river danced and leaped like cold, moving fire, the sand was struck to a sea of minute diamonds.
And it seemed to Mary for a still, small space of time that she heard something, or perhaps she felt it: alien and thin it was, like a cry teetering on the edge of nothing. Whatever it was, there was peace and finality in it. She listened for a long time, but it did not happen again, and she began to think that perhaps on a night like this the soul of the world was liberated to throw itself like a veil over the heads of all living things.
With Tim she always spoke of God, for the concept was simple and he was uncomplicated enough to believe in the intangible, but Mary herself did not believe in God; she had a basic and unphilo-sophic conviction that there was only one life to live. And wasn't that the important thing, quite independent of the existence of a superior being? What did it matter whether there was a God if the soul was mortal, if life of any kind ceased on the lip of the grave? When Mary thought of God at all it was in terms of Tim and little children, the good and uncorrupted; her own life had driven the supernatural so far away that it seemed there were two separate creeds, one for childhood and one for full growth. Yet the half-heard, half-felt thing coming out of the night disturbed her, there was an other-world suggestion about it, and she remembered suddenly the old legend that when the soul of someone who had just died passed overhead the dogs howled, lifting their muzzles to the moon and shivering as they mourned. She sat up, clasping her arms about her knees.
Tim sensed her going immediately, waking when his gropings did not find her.
"What's the matter, Mary?"
"I don't know. ... I feel as if something's happened. It's very strange. Did you feel anything?"
"No, only that you went away from me."
He wanted to make love to her and she tried to divorce herself from her sudden preoccupation long enough to satisfy him, but could not. Something stalked in the back of her mind like a prowling beast, something threatening and irrevocable. Her half-hearted cooperation did not disconcert Tim; he gave up trying to rouse her and contented himself with wrapping his arms about her in what she always thought of as his Teddy-bear hug, for he had told her a little about Teddy, though, she suspected, not all there was to know.
"Tim, would you mind very much if we drove back to the city?"
"Not if you want to, Mary. I don't mind anything you want to do."
"Then let's go back now, right this minute. I want to see Pop. I've got a sort of feeling he needs us."
Tim got up at once, shaking the sand out of the blanket and folding it neatly over one arm.
By the time the Bentley pulled up in Surf Street it was six o'clock in the morning, and the sun had long been up. The house was silent and seemed curiously deserted, though Tim assured Mary his father was there. The back door was unlocked.
"Tim, why don't you stay out here for a minute while I go inside and check by myself? I don't want to frighten or upset you, but I think it would be better if I went in alone."
"No, Mary, I'll come in with you. I won't be frightened or upset."
Ron was lying in the old double bed he had stared with Es, his eyes closed and his hands folded on his chest, as if he had remembered how Es was lying the last time he saw her. Mary did not need to feel his cold skin or search for a stilled heart; she knew immediately that he was dead.
"Is he asleep, Mary?" Tim came round to the other side of the bed and stared down at his father, then put out his hand and rested it against the sunken cheek. He looked up at Mary sadly. "He's so cold!"
"He's dead, Tim."
"Oh, I wish he could have waited! I was so looking forward to telling him how nice it is to live with you. I wanted to ask him some things and I wanted him to help me pick out a new present for you. I didn't say goodbye to him! I didn't say goodbye to him and now I can't remember what he looked like when his eyes were open and he was all happy and moving."
"I don't think he could bear to wait a moment longer, dear heart. He wanted so badly to go; it was so lonely for him here and there was nothing more to wait for once he knew you were happy. Don't be sad, Tim, because it isn't sad. Now he can sleep with your Mum again."
All at once Mary knew why his voice had seemed so remote over the phone; he had begun his death-fast the moment Tim left the house in Surf Street forever, and by the time Mary came home from hospital he was already weakening badly. Yet could it be called suicide? She did not think so. The drum had stopped beating and the feet had stopped marching, that was all.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, Tim got his arms under his father's back and lifted the stiff, shrunken form into his arms tenderly. "Oh, but I'm going to miss him, Mary! I liked Pop, I liked him better than anyone else in the whole world except for you."
"I know, dear heart. I'll miss him too."
And was that the voice in the night? she wondered. Stranger things than that have happened to more staunchly doubting people without swaying their doubt. . . , Why shouldn't the living cords which laced a being together flick softly against a loved one in the very moment of their unraveling? He was all alone when it happened, and yet he had not been alone; he had called, and she had woken to answer him. Sometimes all the miles between are as nothing, she thought, sometimes they are narrowed to the little silence between the beats of a heart.
Twenty-eight
Mary hated Ron's funeral, and was glad she persuaded Tim not to come. Dawnie and her husband had taken charge, which was only right and proper, but as Tim's representative she had to be there and follow the little cortege to the cemetery. Her presence was clearly unwelcome; Dawnie and Mick ignored her. What had happened when Ron told them she and Tim were married, she wondered? Since the wedding she had only spoken to Ron that once, and he had not mentioned his daughter's name.
After the sod was turned on Ron's coffin and the three of them moved slowly away from the graveside, Mary put her hand on Dawnie's arm.
"My dear, I'm so sorry for you, because I know you loved him very much. I loved him too."
There was a look of Tim about his sister's eyes as she stared at Mary, but the expression in them- bitter and corroded-was one she had never seen in Tim's.
"I don't need your condolences, sister-in-law! Why don't you just go away and leave me alone?"
"Why can't you forgive me for loving Tim, Dawnie? Didn't your father explain the situation to you?"
"Oh, he tried! You're a very clever woman, aren't you? It didn't take you long to delude him as completely as you did Tim! Are you happy now that you've got your pet moron by your side permanently and legally?"
"Tim's not my pet moron, you know that. And anyway, does it matter as long as he's happy?"
"How do I know he's happy? I've only got your word for that, and your word's not worth two cents?"
"Why don't you come and see him and find out for yourself what the truth is^"
"I wouldn't soil my shoes by entering your house, Mrs. Tim Melville/ Well, I suppose you've got what you wanted, you've got Tim all to yourself with the conventions nicely taken care of and both his parents out of the way!"
Mary whitened. "What do you mean, Dawn?"
"You drove my mother to her grave, Mrs. Tim Melville, and then you drove my father
after her!"
"That's not true!"
"Oh, isn't it? As far as I'm concerned, now that my father and mother are both dead, my brother's dead too. I never want to see or hear from him again! If you and he want to make a public spectacle of yourselves by flaunting your sick fancies under society's nose, I don't even want to know about it!"
Mary turned on her heel and walked away.
By the time she got from Botany Cemetery to her house in Artarmon she felt better, and was able to greet Tim with a fair semblance of serenity.
"Is Pop with Mum now?" he asked her anxiously, twisting his hands together.
"Yes, Tim. I saw him put in the ground right next to her. You needn't worry about either of them ever again, they're together and at peace."
There was something odd about Tim's manner; she sat down and examined him keenly, not alarmed exactly, but puzzled.
"What's the matter, Tim? Aren't you feeling well?"
He shook his head apathetically. "I feel all right, Mary. Just a bit funny, that's all. It's sort of funny not having Pop or Mum any more."
"I know, I know. . . . Have you had anything to eat?"
"No. I'm not very hungry."
Mary walked across and pulled him up out of his chair, looking at him in concern. "Come out to the kitchen with me while I make us some sandwiches. Maybe you'll feel like eating when you see how pretty and dainty they are."