THE OCCASIONAL ROAD and beach noises far below were swept up and swirled around by the ceiling fan’s blades as it slowly shucked time. He found he was listening to her breathing, to the waves, to the clock on the mantelpiece. At some point he realised Amy’s head was back on his chest and she had fallen asleep; at another that he too was asleep with her. The curtain yawned in as the late-afternoon sea breeze picked up, and with it the heat fell away and there came puffs of the smoky light of dusk. When next he stirred, he realised it was night and the lamp was on and Amy was awake, looking at him.
But after that? he whispered.
After what?
After the man in Melbourne?
Oh. Yes, she said, and halted and looked up at the ceiling or perhaps beyond it. It was a look at once of puzzlement and resignation, as though she expected the world to always come back to this mysterious place on the ceiling or in the stars beyond. Yes, she said several more times, still looking up. Finally, she looked back down at him.
I had to pretend I went to Melbourne for the race. I boned up on horses and betting and the like. Maybe I even got a little interested. It was something to think about, I suppose. And after, I didn’t care. It was like the horses. I just pretended. I don’t know. Anyway, that’s why I have a little flutter now and then.
And Keith?
When I came back he was kind. So kind. I suppose he felt guilty. And I was so upset. And he wanted to marry me, even though there was no longer a baby—maybe to make it up. Maybe he was more ashamed than me. I don’t know.
And you fell in love?
Just fell. Everything was snow. In my head. Have you ever had that feeling? You have a world and then all your thoughts have turned into snow. Keith was so kind and I was snow. Maybe I was ashamed. Maybe I just thought I was dirt. I did think I was dirt. I know I didn’t want to be a spinster. Maybe I thought we could make it right. Get pregnant again. And this time make it right. But it was all wrong. I hated him for his kindness. I hated him until he hated me back. He said I’d tricked him into marriage. And somehow that seemed as it should be. He said I tricked him, that I did dreadful things and that’s why the pregnancy. Maybe he doesn’t really think it now. But sometimes things are said and they’re not just words. They are everything that one person thinks of another in a sentence. Just one sentence. You tricked me, he said, and that’s why the marriage. There are words and words and none mean anything. And then one sentence means everything.
Amy lay on her side as she gazed out towards the sea. Lying at her back, he felt jealous of her pillow. They lay silently together for a long time. With a finger he swept the hairs that fell across her face behind her ear. The shape of its shell always moved him. He felt a terrible vertigo, as if he were being swept into a gigantic maelstrom that had no ending. The green Bakelite clock was reduced to its phosphorescent arm and numbers, a ghostly floating circle that seemed now to hover above them as it ticked away. She rolled into him and he could feel her breath brushing his chest. He saw her eyes open, stare intently across his body as if gazing at something far beyond, and then close.
Much later, he awoke to the sound of her voice.
You hear that? she said.
Through the open window he could hear waves, some men leaving the bar four storeys down, talking about football. Footsteps, the occasional car in the unhurried and largely empty esplanade street, a woman talking to a child, people being together, being allowed to be together.
The waves, she said, the clock. The waves, the clock.
He listened again. After a time his ear attuned, the street below fell quiet, and he could hear the slow rise and boom of the beach, the velvet ticking of the clock.
Sea-time, she said as another wave crashed. Man time, she said as the clock ticked. We run on sea-time, she said and laughed. That’s what I think.
If he’s so awful, why do you stay?
He’s not awful, that’s the thing. Maybe I even love him in my way. It’s not us.
But love is love.
Is it? Sometimes I think it’s a curse. Or a punishment. And when I am with him I am lonely. When I am sitting opposite him, I am lonely. When I wake in the middle of the night lying next to him, I am so lonely. And I don’t want to be. He loves me and I can’t say . . . It would be too cruel. He pities me, I think, but it’s not enough. Maybe I pity him. Do you understand?
He didn’t understand and he couldn’t understand. Nor did he understand why if he wanted her, and the more he wanted her, the more he allowed himself to become tied up with Ella. He couldn’t understand how what she had with Keith was love but it only seemed to make her miserable and lonely, yet its bonds were somehow stronger than their love that made her happy. And as she went on talking, it was as if everything that was happening to them could never be decided by them, that they lived in a world of many people and many ties, and that none of it allowed for them to be with each other.