The High Places Read online

  After lunch, he took her out into the garden and asked her to marry him. She answered, without hesitation, ‘Yes.’ Unsure of what to do next, he held her hand and kissed her. It was one of those days on the very edge of summer, when the light falls blankly from a strong sky and the grass is already beginning to brown. The towels on the clothesline flipped in the light wind. The kiss was not their most successful, and raising his eyes from it, Henry saw his mother’s face hovering in a window.

  ‘I don’t have a ring yet,’ he said. ‘I thought you might want to choose it yourself.’

  Ellie was looking around the garden as if she were not so much excited as interested by the turn of events, and Henry was surprised by the feeling of admiration that rose from somewhere beneath his feet and rushed toward his heart. His mother, unable to wait any longer behind the window, came running down the brick steps and embraced them both. She held Henry’s hand, and she held Ellie’s, out there on the browning grass, and said that she would see them married and then she would move. So Henry had been right: she had been waiting for him, and now things would proceed more quickly.

  * * *

  Ellie decided on an April wedding. Cool, blue April was her favourite month. Her mother approved, and so did Henry’s, who finally set a date for Victoria: the first of May. Henry’s mother wanted to pay for the wedding, so Ellie arranged a meeting with her parents at a city restaurant. Her parents were a poised pair: he was a teacher, though retired with back problems; she liked to paint, and had even sold one or two watercolours of the view from their dining-room window. There had once been money somewhere in her family. Everyone was grateful for Henry’s mother’s generosity, and there was a minimum amount of embarrassment, which was a relief to Henry, who found himself unexpectedly anxious for his mother among the sombre hover of the waiters. Ellie’s father also unsettled him, for no good reason; he was a pale, greying man, gentle with his back to the point of womanliness, but at one point he leaned across the table, took Henry’s wrist in a pinching grip, and said, in a low voice, ‘Isn’t the groom meant to ask my permission?’ Then he winked – the kind of sharp, jovial wink that bookies master and Henry never had – and carried on eating.

  That summer was damp and close: white skies and pressed heat. Henry had been busier at work since his promotion. It was the season of bushfires, and a mid-sized sugar company whose policy he managed lost a mill and much of a small township among its more southerly canefields. This involved some travel for Henry, who had never ventured far from Sydney. He caught the train up the long green coast, and although the sea on his right and the hills on his left looked very much like home, he was struck again by the new horizons opening before him with money and marriage. He was now prepared to admit that he had been a lesser man before his mother’s win. He resolved, in the flickering carriage of the northbound train, to stop going to Wentworth Park on Friday nights. This resolution survived his return to the city. Ellie, pleased with his decision, and unusually permissive – she had missed him, she said, while he was away – made no similar offer to give up her art classes.

  They spent Christmas at Ellie’s parents’ house because Henry’s mother had gone to her sister’s. Henry was wary of the differences between this house and the one he would soon inherit: the strong grey-green light that filtered through the gum trees and was reflected in the vague watercolours hanging on the dining-room walls, the simplicity of the furniture, and the surprising number of books. There was a balding in the carpet; his mother would have covered it with a rug. After the meal, Ellie’s father rose before the assembled guests – there were quite a number of cousins – and delivered his annual speech, in which he summed up the events of the past year, both private and public. Henry, who was attentive to the gestures of other men, to the small and large ways in which respect was granted and withheld, noticed – much as he had noticed the worn carpet and the books – that Ellie’s father never once met his eye during the speech, not even when announcing his daughter’s engagement. Her mother, in contrast, peered at her future son-in-law from behind her glasses.

  At an appropriate time that evening, Henry steered Ellie out into the garden and quizzed her about her parents. At first she wouldn’t say much, except, shyly, ‘They have ideas.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ he asked.

  Ellie made a small, anxious motion with her hands, as if someone, from a long way off, had thrown a ball in her direction.

  ‘Do they like me?’ he asked.

  ‘I told them you wanted me to give up my art appreciation,’ she said, without looking at him, and when he made a noise of irritation she began to speak very quickly about things that didn’t seem to matter. She told him that her mother was, in fact, a remarkable woman, and that if her family had held on to their money she would have done so much more – she’d have trained as an artist and would be famous now. Ellie said that her father had been adored by every student he’d ever taught, but that his pride had suffered when he was forced to retire; that they wanted, more than anything else, to see her go to university, but she was tired of living beautifully on too little money, tired of her parents’ belief that education was worthy of any sacrifice, and wanted to prove to them how possible it was to take a job in the world, so far into the heart of the world as an insurance firm, and still love art. Because she did love art. Then Ellie pressed herself into Henry’s arms and laid one damp cheek against his shoulder. All this while the mynah birds plunged from the junipers, frightening other birds away.

  He said, gently, ‘Did you tell them about the lottery?’

  Ellie shook her hidden head to say no.

  ‘Why not?’

  And she raised her face and said, ‘They would think I was only marrying you for your money.’

  Her face disappeared again, and her thin shoulders rose and fell. Now she was crying. She was so young – only twenty – and passing into his keeping. If marriage was going to be like this, with Ellie at his shoulder, exhausted by honesty and, despite her parents, sure of the way to happiness, then he could manage. He could flourish, in fact, and win; the threadbare carpet and the watercolours could no longer laugh at him. He moved his mouth amid her dark hair and said, ‘My Ellie, my sweet girl.’

  * * *

  Henry’s mother returned from Victoria on the arm of a man named Arthur. Arthur was short and fox-coloured, with freckles and a muddled smile under a neat red moustache. Like Henry, he was in the ‘insurance game’; he also liked to spend his ‘bit of money’ on a Friday night and was disappointed to learn that Henry no longer went to the dogs. He had a habit of jogging his shoulders up and down as he talked. Henry viewed him with suspicion and had to know everything. His mother offered it all up: how they had met (on the train to Melbourne), where he lived (in Sydney’s west), what he expected of her and she of him (she couldn’t say – not yet). There was no question she wouldn’t answer; there were also some she answered that he hadn’t asked. There had been no intercourse. She told Henry everything and then went away and told the telling of it to Arthur, so that Arthur sat Henry down one Sunday afternoon while Henry’s mother produced a purposeful clatter in the kitchen and said, ‘What you want to know is, am I on the make?’

  Henry liked Arthur’s candour; he liked straightforward talk. It showed a respect, he thought, for all parties. So the two men talked it all out in the shuttered light of the Sunday house: Arthur’s wages, his savings, what he knew of Henry’s mother’s winnings, what he knew her to have promised Henry.

  ‘Never an actual sum,’ Henry said. ‘But it’s understood. She wants to see me set up in life.’

  ‘Like any good mother,’ Arthur said, lifting and dropping his shoulders, ‘who has the means to do so.’

  Henry approved of Arthur after this discussion, and, when Ellie expressed doubts, came to his defence. She was jumpy in Arthur’s presence, and her refusal to respond to his mild flirtations made her seem prudish and ill-humoured. Henry could see that his mother was happy and that happ
iness suited her; that she was made for contentment, for padded hips, for the kind vulgarity of a man like Arthur (that was how Henry saw him – clearly, he thought, through Ellie’s eyes as well as his own). When Ellie kept away from the house and from Henry’s mother, Henry accused her of being a snob, which made her wrinkle her nose. He knew she was afraid of snobbery (afraid of having caught it from her parents). Arthur made jokes about Ellie’s art appreciation and Henry laughed at them without feeling disloyal. As the summer faded, he felt an increased impatience with the sanctity of Ellie’s Friday nights.

  One Thursday evening in mid-March, Ellie and Henry walked together in Hyde Park. Whenever Ellie made movements toward St James station he held her by the hand and wouldn’t let her go. The fig trees swung with bats and somewhere in the park a possum cried out. The water in the fountain threw light over the green legs of Apollo, who was otherwise lost in darkness. Here Henry pleaded with Ellie in a low, shameful voice to give him her Friday nights, to give him everything, to love him and only him, and he told her other things which before tonight he could never have predicted he might feel, let alone say, about his need and his loneliness and all the ways in which she had changed him. She was angry and wouldn’t promise; she said to him, hurt and soft, ‘I can’t believe you would even ask,’ and when he began to defend himself she raised her voice to say, ‘I didn’t know you doubted me.’

  And then, without thinking much about it, Henry thrust one arm into the water that poured from the fountain until it had soaked far beyond the elbow of his navy suit, and he held it there, or rather the water seemed to hold it, although it was cold and Ellie begged him to stop. He saw her confusion, but from a distance. He felt her kiss his face and submerge her own arm in order to take his hand and draw it out of the water; only then did he seem to be free of the fountain. They held each other and cried, both of them – in public, in Hyde Park, with other lovers and lustful young men skirting them, whistling and smiling and making comments. Henry considered his behaviour remarkable; he felt Ellie’s warm tears and the compassionate pressure of her shaking body, but was unable to believe that he was physically present for any of it.

  Their wet arms chilled them both. She led him through the park and down William Street, and this time, instead of going to a restaurant, they went to a hotel she knew of – how did she know? – and there she let him see all of her, all at once. There was no doubting her beauty and her devotion, and the most extraordinary thing about her giving herself up to him was that he felt, equally or perhaps with even more certainty, that he was giving himself to her. The room had a sour smell like turning fruit, not unpleasant. Afterward, they lay together, damp and listless, until he felt himself return to his body, and then he forced them both into action: dressed her and himself, took her out to the street to find a taxi, and gave her the money to pay for it. He walked to Central station in a state of luminous calm. It was two weeks until the wedding.

  * * *

  The next day, after work, Kath was waiting for him at the hamburger place.

  ‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing,’ he said in a low voice, with a polite smile, as if someone might be watching them.

  ‘I stopped by for a bite,’ Kath said. ‘It’s a free country, last I heard.’ She was pert and proud. There was a new copper to her hair.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ he said. He ordered his hamburger at the counter, distracted, and Kath called out, ‘No onions!’ People turned to look at her, as they always did. He took a deep breath. ‘No onions,’ he said. Nothing wrong, he thought, with sharing a quick meal with a good-looking woman, a friend of the family. He kept his eye on the station for any sign of Ellie, although he had already walked her to the train and ushered her with tender regret (on both sides) to her Friday class.

  ‘You look … greenish,’ Kath said. ‘A bit green about the gills. You all right, Henry? Not eaten up by remorse, are you? Now that you’ve thrown away the best thing you ever had?’ Kath laughed, delighted at herself.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ His hamburger arrived, steaming. But the solitary pleasure of it was entirely lost.

  ‘I just wanted to know if you were off to the dogs tonight,’ Kath said. ‘I fancied it, is all. Fancied a night out with a friend.’

  He had lifted his hamburger and now there was no putting it down. This placed him at a disadvantage. The thick slice of beetroot threatened to slide onto his plate – it purpled his bread and his tongue – and juice of some kind, silky with fat, ran over his fingers.

  ‘I’m getting married in two weeks,’ he said between bites.

  ‘Where’s the bride, then? Shouldn’t you be painting the town? It’s Friday night.’

  There was something submerged about Kath’s face – something private and sly. Henry disliked it. It reminded him of how well suited they used to be; of how they’d both liked to cultivate a secret life to which they could make coy allusions.

  ‘She’s got a class,’ he said.

  ‘And you’re not invited?’

  He snorted. The final bites of a hamburger were impossible in company; he abandoned them.

  ‘Take me to the track, then,’ Kath said. ‘We’ll go on a date.’

  ‘You never wanted to go on dates before,’ Henry said.

  ‘You never won the lottery before,’ Kath said, laughing, and two men at the counter looked over at her. They laughed too, and she seemed to absorb their approval and turn it back on them, brighter. The men watched as she put her hand on Henry’s arm. ‘You’re not a married man yet.’

  Well, that was true, certainly. Kath smiled from her long immaculate face.

  ‘I guess I’ve missed you,’ she said.

  They stood together and went out into the street.

  The city was scrubbed and pale after the summer, and the buildings rose from the street with a mineral sheen. There was a leisurely rush on the pavements. Henry was aware, as he hadn’t been in some time, of the anxious thrill of Friday evening. He bought a copy of the Daily Mail.

  ‘I usually walk to Wenty,’ he said.

  ‘All that way?’ Kath showed him her heeled foot.

  Henry liked the authority of hailing a taxi with a girl on his arm, and of getting into the back of it with her. Kath was wearing a short blue coat which drew attention to the bareness of her immoderate legs; Henry admired them, but with disapproval, as she stepped out of the taxi. Ellie was pretty in such a sensible way, but Kath required adjustments. She stood out on his arm. He and Ellie, he thought, stood out together. Ellie would be at her class by now. And here he was, at the dogs with Kath. Passing through the gates with this long girl at his side, Henry felt as if something had fallen over him: a soft cloak, maybe, made of silky stuff, invisible, that made him hot with knowledge and pride.

  ‘This feels like the Easter Show,’ Kath said, pressing him forward, lifting her face to the lights and the noise. ‘How do we make a bet?’

  ‘Over there,’ Henry said, and he pointed to the bookmakers, who stood under their umbrellas above the crowd, shouting, with their heavy bags strung around their necks. ‘You leave that to me.’

  ‘No,’ Kath said. ‘I want to know everything.’

  Henry found it gratifying to teach her. She frowned at the racing form in the Mail, tracing one polished finger over the names of the dogs, creasing her forehead and saying things like ‘I like Young Lightning. He’s got a good feel to him.’ She paid no attention to all the other information on the form, so he ignored it too. Kath took a small gold pen from her handbag and as she bent to mark the dogs she liked the names of, Henry saw the darkening roots of her copper hair.

  She held his hand and let him lead her to the bookies, and once there she scolded him for wanting to bet so little on each race. ‘For a man who talks big, you have no ambition,’ she said.

  Henry was enjoying himself. He felt as if he’d been drinking; he felt the warmth of the crowd, of Kath’s body against his, of having money to spend. If Kath liked Young Lightning, he wou
ld put five pounds on Young Lightning to win. Henry knew he would lose. And Ellie, right now, was in a room on the northern side of the harbour, among all those pink Madonnas, those green Apollos. She would never like it here with the noisy dogs. She would ask the wrong questions, and she was sentimental: she would worry about the treatment of the greyhounds. Kath sat beside him on the benches, tense in her blue coat, and watched every race. Young Lightning fell in the sixth race, but Kath only laughed; Henry couldn’t care about his five pounds. This time last night, he and Ellie had been on William Street, at the hotel.

  Kath turned to him and smiled. ‘These dogs love to run,’ she said. It was the right thing to say, and he kissed her mouth. The kiss was friendly and without conviction. She squeezed his knee with her left hand.

  ‘I’ll just pop to the loo,’ she said, and she went quickly, taking her handbag with her. Then it was as if she’d never been there, as if she were only a good feeling Henry had every now and then. He wondered how many of the men sitting on the benches around him were married. They leaned easy on their comfortable knees; they wore open coats and drank from brown bottles. He loved them, and everyone.

  Henry turned around to look for Kath’s return and there was Arthur, freckled and ruddy under the lights, sitting higher in the stand with a paper folded over his knee. He was watching the dogs parade before the seventh race, and making notes; he wore the kind of flat green cap that Henry associated with butchers or publicans or plucky men down on their luck. Arthur gave no indication that he had seen Henry, but it was difficult to tell with a man like him, a man of winks and nods and innuendo, a man of showy discretion. Henry turned back to the track, where the dogs were filing into the starting traps, and Kath passed in front of him, one hand on his shoulder, to resume her seat. She wore fresh lipstick.

  ‘Who’ve we got in this one?’ she asked, inspecting the form. ‘Is this Rowdy Jack?’

  Henry’s chest shook. He saw the future and Arthur in it, steering his mother by her happy elbow, smirking above the Victorian table, giving Henry quiet, confidential looks, tapping his nose, hating Ellie and wishing on the two of them a dull revenge. And in this future Henry saw himself in his mother’s house, always and only the lucky son of a lucky mother. An inheritor, before she was even dead. There was something indecent about it. He would be living in debt to his mother and to Arthur and to Ellie, and they would all make demands on him, and on this free and shouting life he’d given up: the bookies under their umbrellas and Kath beside him with her copper hair and lips. Generous Kath, who was his friend even now, was so quick and alert, and had never asked him for anything. And another life occurred to him, a life in which his wife came with him to the track and the rest of the week was happy Sunday lamplight, with a bed and newspapers.