The High Places Page 5

  Henry stood. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, and she followed him out, her hand on his back, and he let it stay there. He didn’t look at Arthur.

  ‘What’s the rush?’ Kath asked, and he pulled her by the hand into the darkness of a stand of trees. This whole part of Sydney had once been a swamp, and then an abattoir. There was rot and filth under all of it. Kath’s lipstick tasted chalky and sweet, and he felt with hectic hands under her coat; but she pushed him away.

  ‘Henry,’ she said, and he stopped. Her face was as pale as the bark of the gum behind her. ‘I could use some money,’ she said. ‘Just a loan.’

  He waited for the shouting of the crowd inside the racetrack to subside, and then he asked, ‘How much?’

  ‘I could use a hundred,’ she said. He didn’t answer. ‘That’s nothing to you. That’s a hundredth of what you won.’

  Henry reached out for her coat again, and this time she unbuttoned it for him. She was as thin as she had always been underneath it, and she shook like an arrow. She didn’t raise her face or body into his, and kept her arms behind her, wrapped against the trunk, so that he felt, kissing her, as if he were only pressed to a tree that had once had a girl inside it. But her mouth moved. She was willing. It was her being willing that made him stop.

  He stepped away from the girl and the tree. He took all the notes he had in his wallet and passed them to Kath, who accepted them without looking.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. She began to button her coat.

  Henry walked out to the part of the street that was most illuminated by the floodlights of the racetrack. The invisible cloak still lay across his shoulders; it was heavier in the light. He shook it off and walked home to his mother.

  His lucky mother, who was waiting now for Arthur with a lamp in her bedroom window.

  Mycenae

  What a terrible thing at a time like this: to own a house, and the trees around it. Janet sat rigid in her narrow seat. The plane lifted from the city and her house fell away, consumed by the other houses. Janet worried about her own particular garden and her emptied refrigerator and her lamps that had been timed to come on automatically at six.

  ‘Is six too early? Too obviously a timer, do you think?’ asked Murray. Janet was disturbed by this marital clairvoyance, and this was a new feeling, very recent. It had to do, she thought, with seeing the Andersons again. She took Murray’s hand and together the Dwyers leaned toward the small window and watched as the horizon lost authority. When the attendants came with trolleys they would know they were safe, but until then they held hands as they tilted into the sky.

  During the flight Janet allowed herself to remember her fear of the Andersons. She had forgotten this fear – or placed it aside – during the flurry of preparation. There had been an efficient period of To Do lists and of telling people, coyly, that they were ‘meeting old friends in Greece’. Now, necessarily idle on the plane, Janet recalled the Andersons’ sophistication; the decisiveness of their actions, which had always been without tremor or negotiation; the fact of their being American, which placed them at the centre of the world. Suspended above the revolving deserts of the Middle East, she feared the Andersons, who were from ‘good families’, however that might be understood – this was clear because they used to mention expensive New England schools and exotic family holidays. Or Amy Anderson mentioned these things on behalf of herself and Eric with an air of begrudging tenderness, as if obliged to give up a shameful but pleasant secret, and this fascinated Janet, who’d grown up in an asbestos house owned by the Australian government.

  Murray would never say he feared the Andersons, though in his anxious way that’s what he meant by ‘Is six too early?’ And Janet worried about him coming into daily contact with a man like Eric Anderson – what that might do to her husband’s self-esteem, given that Eric, since they’d met him, had gone on to an illustrious academic career and Murray’s contribution had been so small, though very solid. And to be seeing them again in Greece of all countries, in an old place that mattered, among the ancient terrors of history. The best thing was to be afraid along with Murray, to retain that sense of unity; later they could rally, once they’d been reassured by the goodness of Greek food and the number of people who spoke English. So Janet nurtured her fear over peanuts and warm washcloths, and pressed her leg against Murray’s, and together they watched the same in-flight movies and walked up and down the night-time aisles of the plane in their compression socks, treading softly over the slipped blankets of other passengers.

  In this way they flew to Greece, as if that were an easy thing to do: to board a plane in Sydney, spend a few hours in Hong Kong and then in London, and finally to arrive in Athens. They stepped out of the airport terminal and were surrounded by offers of help and information; they’d expected this and made their way to the official taxi rank with resolute faces. Murray held a piece of paper with the address of their apartment on it in Greek letters; he handed this over to the taxi driver like a man entrusted with the delivery of a sacred object. The driver understood. The apartment was, it seemed, a real place in a real city.

  The apartment had been Amy’s idea. Both couples would find one and spend the week as if they really lived in Athens. They would be neighbours, they would cook experimentally with market vegetables, they would carry keys and not hotel swipe cards. Here were some vacation rental websites Amy had looked at. Here was the apartment the Andersons were booking, a large white space with a roof terrace. Amy was sure Janet could find something similar nearby. Janet was less sure. She preferred the idea of a hotel. The apartments on Amy’s websites were too expensive, or unavailable. Her son Damian offered to help. This wonderful trip to Greece, said Damian. He’d talked her into it. Damian was an experienced traveller – he’d been to places like Lebanon and Cuba – and he would help them. Now he worked for a law firm in London, and they would visit him after Athens. They would visit Damian in London and take him to the town Murray and Janet had lived in all those years ago, when Murray was a graduate student and they were newly married. They had met the Andersons in those days, in that town.

  Damian found something not very close, but not so very far away from the Andersons’ apartment: a student sublet with too many stairs, crowded with plastic furniture. It was cheaper than it needed to be, but it was something and it was somewhere; it was their apartment in Greece. And Damian had spent time finding it. And the relief Janet felt, despite the furniture and the view of TV aerials, countered, briefly, almost all of her disquiet. Murray sent a deposit. Then came an email of apology from Amy: their apartment had fallen through, last-minute, a shame, hotel after all, so disappointing. Here was the hotel address – the website – the tasteful lobby – the Acropolis view. The computer screen gave Athens to Janet and Murray, and they peered at it from the safety of their house in Sydney. They saw the white buildings, cement towers among the hills, the brown smudge low in the sky, the many roads, the temple high above. A sensation of having made a terrible mistake, of having sunk into something disastrous. But they would survive this city. In their apartment.

  ‘We’ll save on breakfast with our own kitchen,’ said Murray. ‘Make tea of a night.’

  And Janet was reassured; they both were. When they entered the apartment – finally, having crossed the world to find themselves in it – they both looked for a kettle among the furniture. There it sat by the stove. It restored their confidence. They carried their suitcases into the small bedroom and lay on the student bed. Their limbs pressed into the sheets as if they were made of metal. Janet wanted to phone Damian at once but they fell irresistibly asleep, and when they woke later that afternoon it was time to meet the Andersons at their hotel.

  Janet was worried she wouldn’t recognise Amy. But of course she recognised Amy, who cried out, ‘It can’t be!’ and advanced across the lobby with a look of delighted surprise on her face, as if their meeting were accidental. Amy wore slim white pants and a navy shirt with its jaunty collar turned up. She gathered
Janet against her ribs. Eric’s great height still gave him an air of magnificent remoteness; the grey of his hair only amplified the effect. When he bent low to kiss Janet, she felt there was something exaggerated about the slow hinging of his body to reach the level of her cheek. She refused, at first, to stand on her toes to meet his approaching face, but capitulated in the end.

  ‘Welcome to Greece,’ said Eric. He said it with great seriousness, with a kind of weighty pride, as if he personally had prepared Greece, with effort but with no complaint, and with no particular thought for their pleasure; but he would share it with them anyway. Janet realised she was being uncharitable. She smiled apologetically at him. The Andersons had been in the country about five hours longer than they had.

  ‘Welcome!’ echoed Amy. ‘How was the flight? Such a long way!’

  ‘It’s just good to be here,’ said Janet. Amy was still holding her hand.

  ‘Isn’t it amazing to think: forty years, and here we are!’

  Forty years ago, Murray had been completing his chemistry PhD and had, in a state of constant anxiety, crashed their small car three times. He and Janet were exhausted by England, by its complicated rules and the constant worry about where they would live next and how they would pay for it. Reflecting on that time, Janet saw herself eating toast and carrying shopping bags through rain almost continually, as if there had never been a summer (but there had been – three and a half of them, each glorious). They lived in a little college flat, and next door: Eric and Amy, not yet married, Eric a year ahead in his PhD and a philosopher, Amy on a Fulbright; they had painted their walls red without asking the college’s permission. Amy invited them in one afternoon, fed them tiny pickles and gin, and after this had befriended Janet in a confiding, collegiate way, lending her books, giving advice. They had little in common and were very intimate, and their men were forced to befriend each other.

  Eric was famous for refusing to engage in small talk. At parties he used to sit in the most comfortable chair, holding a glass that was always refilled for him, quietly, unasked, as if he were actually asleep, when in fact he was reading; finally, later in the night, he would materialise in the centre of a group and begin to talk with an irresistible urgency about Kant or sex or Nixon or Freud. This used to fill Janet with fury. She complained to Murray that no one liked small talk, but only Eric Anderson felt he was above it. It’s sociopathic, she said, it’s intolerable. But Eric’s behaviour was not only tolerated, it was admired. Among their college acquaintances, Eric was always referred to, reverently, as a genius. No further explanation was offered or required. Alongside lively Amy, who danced and smoked, Eric seemed taintless and incorruptible; strange, then, that he should choose Amy, and apparently love her.

  The Athenian Amy was a trim, ingenious woman, a walker in the early mornings, a subtle rearranger of hair, a gatherer of people, and a maker of plans. Observant. The first to admit her ignorance – ‘I know nothing whatsoever about Greece!’ – and the first to master it. Within hours of her arrival she could direct taxi drivers, expertly manage her currency, and give a number of personally observed examples of the civility of the Greeks, their candour and charm. She had been, in England, a large girl, well made, with blond limbs and hair. There was a ripe blaze upon her. Now she was thin in what Janet thought of as an American way: hard-won. Janet admired it. She admired the smooth shellac of Amy’s adult hair. During the week in Athens it made her, for some reason, ashamed of her persistent desire to browse among the cheap ceramics of the tourist shops in Plaka, to shop for plates and bracelets rather than take a dusty tour of the Agora. In Amy’s presence she became a shy glancer in mirrors – glances accompanied by brave smiles and the rubbing together of lips. She and Murray walked behind Amy and Eric through the Greek streets, and they smiled a great deal. They walked hand in hand until they noticed the Andersons didn’t. They never voiced strong opinions on where to eat or what to see, except that Janet wanted to go to Mycenae.

  When Amy had contacted her with this Greek idea, Janet recalled a National Geographic article she’d once read about Mycenae, ancient home of kings. It had stayed with her for years: the death masks made of gold, the old name ‘Agamemnon’, the gate carved with two lions. When she looked up the magazine – Murray kept them all in yellow rows – it was just as she remembered it. There were the death masks with their precise eyebrows, there was the grey-green valley, and the ruins on the hill. She showed Murray, knowing it would interest him: he liked the layers of things, the way they fitted together. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘it was already a tourist destination in Roman times.’ She liked to think of the warriors buried in the old grave circles, sleeping for centuries with their gold faces, and of Agamemnon setting out for Troy. Janet checked the distances involved and found it was possible to make the trip from Athens in a day; she suggested this day trip to the Andersons.

  ‘I did hear it was just a hill with rocks on it,’ said Amy. Clearly she hadn’t factored Mycenae into her itinerary; she must be polite to Janet, but it would occupy a whole precious day. ‘I guess we could hire a car and driver. The hotel could organise it. I don’t like that phrase “day trip”, do you? It sounds so artificially lively. A minivan might be better. Then we’ll have room to stretch our legs.’ She looked pointedly at long-legged Eric, as if to emphasise the efforts she was making to preserve his dignity.

  ‘It was just an idea,’ said Janet, who knew she was being shrill and deferential. ‘We’re happy to go along with anything.’

  But Murray cleared his throat and said, ‘You’ve wanted to see it, haven’t you, for some time?’

  So Mycenae was decided upon as a special favour to Janet. Amy arranged it, just as she made the other plans. All week she led them through the streets of Athens with the enthusiastic gait of a tour operator; she was a sort of Hellenic shepherd. Eric co-operated with her silently until he noticed something that interested him. Then they stood and watched him be interested in it. He seemed oblivious to their waiting. When he was finished he stirred himself a little, a bear in spring, and they all moved forward again, the Dwyers wearing their accommodating smiles. Alone, Murray and Janet would have fussed about where to eat and when to withdraw money. They had done this in towns across Australia and England. Here in Greece they withdrew sums in the early mornings so as not to inconvenience the Andersons, and they allowed Amy to lead them into any café she liked the look of. There was one in Plaka she particularly favoured, a small place with tables on the street; she enjoyed watching the crowds of people as they took the sloping road up to the Acropolis, and observing their faces as they returned. The tourists made respectful space for these tables, looking at them longingly as they made their way up the hot hill, and they collapsed onto the café chairs in relieved exhaustion, crying out for cool drinks, as they descended. Amy never ordered cool drinks. She ordered coffee for herself and for Eric, but the Dwyers sipped at Cokes.

  The Dwyers were both too large for the chairs at the café in Plaka – they teetered, with the chairs, on the cobblestones – but Janet was relieved to be sitting down, however precariously. She was made uneasy by the marble pavements of Athens, over which she slipped in the soft soles of her comfortable shoes. The Parthenon was humourless above them; it meant too much. It was almost offensive. Janet felt that it was wasteful not to look at it while she had the opportunity; at the same time, it exhausted her. She could find nothing human about it –nothing like Mycenae’s shining masks.

  ‘Let me see your passport photos,’ said Amy, who was plainly proud of hers.

  ‘Oh, no!’ cried Janet, reaching into her handbag.

  Her passport was so new next to Amy’s. She saw Eric compare them. He turned to Murray, uncharacteristically expansive, and said, ‘Nothing prepares you for the Greek light.’

  The Dwyers nodded and smiled. Australia had prepared them for the Greek light. But it was still something different, if familiar: the great, burdened light, the Attic light. They sat among the flowers of the café as i
f prepared for sacrifice. In her embarrassment, Janet wanted to speak of Damian. It was a struggle not to talk about him too frequently. Into the silence of the table she wanted to say, ‘Damian has a lovely Chinese girlfriend.’ Or, ‘Damian was promoted last year.’ Instead she shifted her glass with her fingertips and noticed with surprise the dirtiness of her nails. She would have liked the café to smell of fish and rosemary, but instead there was the sun on dust, and sunscreen.

  ‘I had quite an adventure this morning,’ announced Amy, whose meaningful days began hours before anyone else’s. She told of setting out from the hotel at sunrise, of her walk among the early-morning streets and markets, her coffee at a café crowded with workers, her encounter with a man named Christos who wanted to take her to Marathon. She spoke with solemnity of her lone walk, of the café and workers, but her tone altered for the story of Christos: she became amused and worldly.

  ‘Why Marathon?’ asked Janet.

  ‘That’s where he lives,’ said Amy, crumbling a floury biscuit between her droll fingers. ‘The man from Marathon.’

  Eric stirred his coffee and looked toward the immemorial street.