The Point Read online

  Oh, she said. I dunno the knots, do you know the knots?

  No, said Clovis, but we can experiment.

  They stuck the branches in the damp soil by the edge of the lake, pushing them deeply in.

  What pattern, asked Gwyneth.

  Basic?

  No. Complicated.

  How?

  We’ll just make it up.

  They worked until the sun went and the cold seeped up out of the ground. Clovis tried out knots to hold them and ended up with reef knots with little bow-like ends protruding. Gwyneth proved deft and wove the willow in arching patterns from side to side. Clovis said it might not be very strong without grafts; Gwyneth thought that using a lot of knots would be just about as good. And no shitheads to knock it down. Not bad, she said. Not very good, yet, but not bad.

  They didn’t go all the way back together. The wine bladder was empty, so Clovis went to the wine shop while Gwyneth flitted through empty bureaucratic spaces to the warm vents of the library. The Point shone with a clear faint light. It was calm, no police, no kids, only, eventually, the arrival of customers, to the muted expensive thud of car doors closing. A powerfully excluding sound, even when the owners of the cars were on the outside, too. But then, what was on the inside might be what you were glad to be excluded from. Had worked at not being included in. It made Clovis think of the policeman’s hand on the head, maybe protecting you from bumping it on the frame of the car door, more likely shoving you in, certainly shutting you away. He was glad the lying low was over, and he was back to the chosen rhythm of his days, but that was no help to Gwyneth, she was always lying low, and the policeman’s hand hovering, ready to put her away.

  20

  Jerome

  One dark winter morning when I had got up late from Flora’s bed I thought I saw Anabel windsurfing on the lake. A gorgeously fat woman in a purple wetsuit that corseted but didn’t conceal her outrageous curves, indeed delineated them against the grey waters. Her shape and the long black plait down her back made me believe she was Anabel. Could there be two such windsurfers on this lake? She skimmed across the water, darting, turning, with nonchalant monumental skill. It was as if the figurehead of a ship had grown legs and taken sail, to disport at this skimming speed before the wind.

  There’s a story I read when I was a boy. I think it might have been R.L. Stevenson. About an immensely fat man who wants to lose weight, Pyecraft I recall his name was. He tries all sorts of means, none of them work. Then he’s offered some nostrum (my details are vague, but it is something he swallows) and this is successful. He loses weight. Loses a lot of weight. But alas he does not lose size. He remains an immensely fat man who weighs nothing, who hovers at ceiling level inside his house and dares not go out in case he floats away. Maybe he has to be tethered to the furniture in order to get around. Is that the end of the story? I’m not sure. It is the interesting bit.

  I imagined Anabel as weightless as Pyecraft, in her airy skimming across the choppy grey waters. Flora on the other hand, so slight, so lean, seemed dense and full of weight; Anabel all feathers, Flora not lead, but something precious and heavy. Not gold, not Flora worth her weight in gold, but maybe mercury, heavy, fluid, with its own mind. Difficult to grasp.

  Of course it might not have been Anabel at all. But somehow, on this cold winter day, the sun shining but the lake grey and the wind sharp as blades against the skin, it seemed just the sort of thing she would do. Possible, difficult, odd. Anabel exploring new experiences. A pneumatic woman in a purple wetsuit having fun, against the odds. Although you might wonder, what was the point of it?

  I wished her no harm. Well, I never had, but I could think of her benignly, and comically, zooming into and so cleverly exploiting the bitter wind. While I was warm from Flora.

  I got to work late and found my three lads clustered round the table, the one surface in my Augustinian study where I allow no computers, nothing electronic. They were looking at a pencil sketch on a piece of paper. Unusual for them, to be paying attention to a piece of paper, and one not generated by a computer. They were as outlandishly and as carefully dressed as usual, in shirts that hung straight outside their trousers. Novica’s seemed to have fluorescent piping on it, I gathered it glowed in the dark. Clement had a World War II type long leather coat on, not vintage, imitation, very glossy and black. Jake had his jeans tucked into high brown boots. Their clothes were an education for me, but not one that I could do anything with. The three heads, the blond curls, the bleached spikes, the dark cropped with beard, all leaning together; they looked like a painting, or a performance, something structured by a discerning eye.

  They were giggling a bit, in a bemused way, and not furtive about my looking, they seemed to want me to see. In fact to be a kind of tableau, inviting my attention. The sketch was of a circle, about the size of a fifty-cent coin, with a dot in the middle, and two sets of parallel and intersecting lines drawn across it; imagine a noughts-and-crosses diagram, on top of the circle. I supposed it to be a game.

  It’s Clement’s brother, said Jake.

  Curious-looking lad.

  Well, it’s part of him, said Novica.

  His penis, said Jake. If you see the circle as the head of it, then those lines are the four cuts he’s had made across it, so when it’s erect it blossoms like a flower.

  Good heavens, I said. They were looking at me to see how I would react. I felt quite squeamish. My own penis was shrinking up inside itself. Didn’t it hurt, I asked.

  Clement shrugged. His leather coat creaked when he moved.

  Have you seen it, asked Novica.

  Oh yes, likely. My big brother’s always waving his hard-ons in my face.

  He might have given you a demo, said Novica. Quite scientific.

  After all, said Jake, he’s the clever one, he should be interested in the experiment.

  Well, he’s not a scientist, really.

  I recognised a sibling dismissiveness in Clement’s voice.

  He’s got a PhD.

  Yes, but not in science, said Clement.

  Well, he could show a scholarly interest, said Novica.

  Scholarship is scholarship.

  Why don’t we all ask for a demo, said Jake. I’d like to see a dick blossoming like a flower.

  It makes for mad sex.

  If it doesn’t get poisoned and drop off.

  Where does this sort of thing get done, I asked.

  In Laos. This one did.

  Ah, I thought, it’s still with us, the mysterious East, where strange and wonderful things happen, to make us shiver and admire. Covet yet fear. Though these days it’s almost entirely to do with sex.

  There’s this guy Brent, said Clement, Clay Brent, he runs tours. Travelations he calls his company. George’s been working for him. Discovery tours. George is on the language side of things.

  What do they discover? (This of course was a disingenuous question; I had a pretty good idea. But wanted to see what they said.)

  Whatever there is, I suppose. The country, customs, food, that kind of thing. It’s awesome, George says. In fact he was saying that Brent might be keen to become a client, get us to sort his business for him. It’s quite big.

  Oh yes, I said. Remembering my conversation with Flora, on the picnic. And I realised: serving him your food in a restaurant is one thing, it’s quite detached, a commercial transaction, with no obligation of judgement on the part of the provider. As Flora said, you can’t stop a serial murderer reading your novels. But having him on your books as a client, with all that implies of care and promotion and acting for, and we do look after our clients very well, it seemed to me a very different thing. Well, we’ll play it by ear, I said, when the time comes. Right now, isn’t it time you chaps did a bit of work? That stuff from Treasury, has it come in yet? I reckon they’re going to be outsourcing quite a bit, let’s make sure it comes our way, hmm?

  George called in to the house a couple of days later. A good-looking lad, like his brother, but i
n a quite different style, a little taller than Clement, his hair longer, in a shapely cut with a lock that fell over one side of his face. He reminded me of an Englishman in a drawing room comedy. His clothes fitted that image too, a pale-coloured suit, exquisitely rumpled, a silk shirt open at the neck: maybe the play was set in a Raffles type of hotel, in the last days of Empire. Naturally I wondered about his penis, opening like a flower when it was erect, and now, how would it be, would he be aware of it? Would it be somehow consciously in bud, waiting to bloom? I have heard of women wearing certain underclothes that rub or pull in particular ways and constantly arouse them, which I have always thought counter-productive; isn’t the point of arousal that sometimes you are not? And the delight of it, moving from one state to the other, with satisfaction at least in the offing? I was also a bit irritated at being given to think of another man’s penis, it’s not a habit of mine.

  What a charming room, said George. Is it, do I detect a Venetian influence?

  Ah. I did have in mind a Carpaccio painting …

  Of course, the study of St Augustine, yes, I see.

  I had to respect him, he was indeed clever, and sharp with it. I said, Not a copy, of course.

  No, indeed not. An influence.

  Is this your field of study? The early Renaissance?

  Oh no. And yet, yes, of course, as it must be for any educated person. But it’s not, for my sins, what I wrote my thesis on.

  He told me what that was, and I almost immediately forgot it. There was a catchy beginning to its title, a normal English phrase, and I do remember that: Damned to Hell. But that doesn’t tell you a lot. I think linguistic intimations, or were they images, came into it somewhere, and so did salvation, and post-medieval, or maybe that was later. It struck me at the time as a fine example of post-modern jargon, and I did not even try to remember it.

  I said, So, that would be religious studies?

  Fuck, no. Language. Japanese is my particular area of interest, which is why my present job. But the thesis was a comparative thing, that’s where post-medieval Europe came in. Of course you should be careful how you talk about Japan in this particular context. That could straightaway label you as Eurocentric.

  I see.

  But a Phid is about precise distinctions, in a way that everyday conversation isn’t.

  Of course, I said. And now you work for Travelations.

  Like they say, an education takes you places.

  I sent George off to the lads. A very clever young man, indeed. And charming, so far as he could help it. And yet … I berated myself. It was his connection with Brent that made me doubtful. I was guilty of supposing he must be somehow tainted by his employer. Then again … I found myself thinking quite fondly of Clement’s culturally innocent expertise. I suspected that there might be a whiff of ancient cultivated corruption about George. Rather unfairly, really, since my main grounds for this was his knowing what I know. George would have understood my remark about summoning up Helen of Troy.

  I dismissed all that when I took a good look at Clay Brent. He did get in touch with me, about taking him on as a client. I have to say, the man fascinated me. Words like plump, beringed, curled came to my mind. His flesh was considerable, but there was something massaged, something tight about it, as though his skin and muscle were a corset holding in an even greater bulk. And his yellow curls, corkscrewing and greasy. I am sure his hair was not unwashed, nobody’s is these days, he must have put something on it. That would be part of the heavy perfume that hung in the room after he had gone, like an oily residue. He wore a lot of gold, a watch on to which worms and grubs of the metal had been extruded, a heavy linked bracelet, a huge embossed ring waiting to seal the fate of nations.

  I could fit him into my Renaissance painting. He is the slave merchant, just off to the left, you can tell by the way he smiles, a patient and sinister smile that knows it will have its way in the end. If he’s not actually fingering a dagger, it’s certainly tucked into his belt. What he is holding is a bag of gold, the painter has wonderfully delineated its heaviness, and you can see the man weighing it in his plump beringed hand: everything has its price, for selling and buying.

  Beside Clay Brent, I realised, George is a fine wholesome lad.

  I said no to Brent. Politely; I have no desire to fall out with anybody. Pressure of work, over-extended, couldn’t give him the attention he’d expect and deserved. He was not happy.

  And Clement was greatly disappointed. He’d liked the idea of bringing his brother’s work into a connection with his, of helping but also performing for him, he liked to perform, did Clement, and an older brother is an excellent audience.

  Of course, I jumped to conclusions, where Clay Brent was concerned. But not very far, I didn’t think. Not very far.

  21

  Elinor is looking at an invitation on the screen of her computer. It has been sent as an attachment to an email. It is formal and formatted and in full colour, a blushing cream with dark sepia print, a perfect picture of a real thing that Elinor understands has no existence, and quite beyond what she knows Flora’s skills to create. Flora does handsome invitations, from a printer in Fyshwick, on stiff cards with chosen fonts, and delivered by the postman.

  This is an invitation to Elinor and Ivan to come to dinner. Elinor rings: Alas they can’t, not on that day. What day will suit, asks Flora. And another invitation, formal and formatted, arrives with the new date.

  It is a dinner in honour of the Spensers, says Flora, because they are going overseas. But only for three weeks, says Elinor. That’s a long enough excuse to have you for dinner, says Flora. She is going to do her new thing, the main-course-less meal.

  This from one who has often said that the shape of the classical French meal is so perfect it could be a force of nature. The little nibbles, the amuse-gueules she calls them in this company, for entertaining the palate, or if you like, the gob, the entree, the main course – the plat de résistance, perhaps – the salad, the cheese, the dessert. It is a narrative, with a beginning, a development, a climax, a denouement, a conclusion. Aristotle would have recognised it, she says.

  Once Ivan asked, Aren’t some of those synonymous, and Flora said, Not really, overlapping maybe but not synonymous.

  So the main-course-less dinner will be a curiosity.

  Flora rented several apartments in the area before buying this one off the plan, and had it built without most of its interior walls, so there is a large space with the cooking area in one corner and sofas in another, with a long table to eat at in the middle. She has two large pale-coloured walnut armoires, one for linen, the other for china and glasses. One is quite plain, with small scallopy scrolls for decoration, the other is carved with ribbons and doves and roses. They remind Elinor of the armoires in the house in Séverac, not surprising, they are French. There’s an antique shop in Sydney where you can buy such furniture if you have enough thousands of dollars; Flora brought hers from England, one was her mother’s, the other came from her marriage. In this large white plain room with its bright Antipodean light they are old and decorated and beautiful; apparently complicated but in fact plain and useful.

  Elinor has expected there will be a number of people for dinner, but only four places are laid, on one end of the long table. The other has a hydrangea in a pot, bowls of fruit, and several tidy piles of books. There is a desk with Flora’s rarely used computer against a window, but the books pile up on other surfaces and on the floor. There are bowls of pistachio nuts and tiny radishes and olives on the low table between the sofas, but nobody will sit there for long; soon people will be standing round the kitchen space, then sitting on chairs at the table, even before dinner is served.

  The fourth person is already there, taking big white linen napkins out of the armoire, an intimate act not wasted on Elinor. Can he be the psalm dancer, she asks herself, meaning to remember to make this remark to Ivan, later. Jerome shakes hands and inclines his head in a courteous grave way.

 
The tiny radishes are grown by a woman at Pialligo, in a vegetable garden on lush river flats. You dip them in coarse salt and smear them with unsalted butter, and eat their crisp red flesh, stalk and all.

  First course is oysters Rockefeller. Flora’s thing of the moment. Large South Coast oysters domed over with a spinach puree and grilled.

  We used to eat them in the sixties, says Ivan. Or at least, people did. I think I was a bit of a purist then. Raw, with lemon, not even cocktail sauce; I thought that was the only way.

  These are, in some ways, quite pure. The oyster is still cool, quite uncooked, the spinach part is grilled and hot.

  I’ve got interested in sixties food, says Flora, I think we are unfairly critical of it.

  You didn’t live through it, says Elinor.

  It was quite good fun, I thought, says Ivan. I remember some great meals.

  Chicken Kiev.

  The real thing, not the industrial job, it’s rather good, says Flora.

  Yes, so it was, says Ivan.

  Jerome is not saying much. I’m trying to remember what I was eating then, he says. Stew, I suppose. A lot of pearl barley in it. Plenty of vegetables, that we grew.

  Good grief, says Elinor, I’d forgotten about pearl barley.

  Your good luck, wouldn’t you say?

  Oh no, says Flora, pearl barley’s lovely, if you treat it right. Turkish people do very good things.

  So’s everything lovely, if you treat it right, says Elinor.

  I can’t think of anything that isn’t.

  For a while they try, but everything they mention Flora vetoes, on the grounds that it’s an industrial version, or not done properly, or a matter of prejudice. Like Jerome’s turnips; has he ever had them gently sautéed in duck fat, with the duck? Or rice pudding; Elinor promises to make him her recipe, which has two teaspoons of rice to a pint of cream. Once Jerome would have said tripe, or kidneys, or liver, but he’s eaten often enough in the restaurant to learn about them. All food is good, says Flora. Pigs’ ears, chicken feet, ox cheek. Coming from thrifty people, making any food desirable. You mightn’t like it, that’s okay, but that’s not to say it isn’t delicious. And a good hamburger is a fine thing.