The Point Page 3

  When she told me she was pregnant I was full of joy. I imagined our baby held safe within the great cave of her hips, nourished and beloved, and with what tenderness I would lay my cheek to the dome of her belly and listen to him growing there. I thought she would make a good mother, because she had a good mother shape, nature being trustworthy in these things. That there would be a simple single-minded concentration on the task in hand.

  A week later she came back from a business trip and after the dinner I’d cooked, a special one to celebrate her return even though the absence was only two days, worth a bottle of better wine than usual, she sat at the table and looked at me with a kind of speculation, so it seemed when I thought about it, over and over I thought about it. She took my hand and turned the wedding ring round on my finger, the wide white gold band that matched hers, though she did not always wear it, it marked her finger, she said. She turned the ring and fixed her eyes on me. I have had an abortion, she said.

  I didn’t say anything, or do anything. Inside me I screamed, but my body sat, and recognised grief. It was as though grief was a person she had brought in and introduced to me, a person I ought to have been expecting to meet and could never afterwards claim not to know. And there I was, acquainted with grief. Somebody else’s words again, you see. Acquainted with grief, and never afterwards able to refuse the acquaintance. Grief my guest often after that, and perhaps you’ll say that the only surprising thing was that I should have lived so long without getting to know him. And perhaps that’s why I needed to leave the Franciscans.

  I wasn’t ready, said Anabel. It’s a big step, and it’s too soon for me.

  Anabel had her own words, well, they weren’t her own, they were as second-hand as mine, only clichés not poetry, but she chose them, she clothed her thoughts in the current phrases of her day, and never seemed to notice how scuffed and worn they were.

  You didn’t think of saying something to me, I said. As I spoke I saw how a person could say something dumbly. I knew I was speaking dumbly.

  I knew you’d try and talk me out of it, she said. And I had to admit the logic of this.

  I wish you’d given me the chance, I said.

  But Anabel looked at me with surprise. Why take that risk, her expression said.

  It was my child too, I said.

  She shook her head, a vehement action. It’s my body. A woman owns her body.

  There will be no children, said a voice in my head.

  There’s plenty of time, we’re not in a hurry. I’m only twenty-six, in a few years the time will be ripe, it’ll be the right moment. People have children later these days.

  Yes, I said, that’s true.

  Within a year she had left me. To explore alternative relationships, she said. She said she needed to find herself. She had to have her own space.

  I could help, I told her, but she said no, it was something she had to do on her own, but of course she didn’t, quite soon there was a man called Nigel, a market gardener who was keen on windsurfing. I saw her once, skimming over the lake, she seemed quite skilful, turning the sail to catch the breeze, immensely statuesque, but graceful, she always was graceful. She married Nigel, but I have not heard that they have had children.

  And after that my slender brown Burmese Leonie died, and I wrapped her in a piece of cloth and buried her in the garden, under violets. Don’t for a moment suppose I think a cat is a substitute for a child, they may be the same size at certain moments of their lives but that is the only resemblance. As I said, cats enter into no bargains. There are no pacts where cats are concerned.

  I knew I would have another cat, in the fullness of time. The fullness of time: that is God sending his son. But he can send a cat as well, as doubtless he did the lion to my namesake.

  I saw a notice on the board at the local shops.

  2 cats 18 months

  need home

  owner dead

  There was a telephone number. When I rang there was only one cat, the other had run away. The voice at the other end had no energy for worrying about a runaway cat. And so I have my pretty tabby; the dead owner would have been good to her, and loved her, she is a cat who is trained to being loved.

  Flora was never one for cats. She would have liked a dog. I suggested an Italian greyhound, an elegant creature out of a medieval painting, it would suit her, as dogs ought. But it would be cruel for someone of her way of life to have a dog, she said, once. But really she was afraid. It would be another hostage to fortune. Another, I asked, but she simply shivered. When I retire, she said. But I doubted she would. Flora is an Italian greyhound herself, slender, lean, shaped by muscle. That is enough. But I don’t say this. Morgan le Fay, my greyhound. The words locked in my head.

  Maybe I was wrong about the no-pockets. Maybe they were not to prevent wanking, maybe they were a visible sign of our oath of poverty. Nowhere to carry money. But I had given up poverty too. Latin and bookkeeping: I taught myself to be very clever with computers. I made my own business. I thought of calling it Exegesis, after St Jerome. But contented myself with my own name: Jerome Glancy.

  3

  The man who sleeps in the shelter at the ferry stop, where no ferry ever does stop, though he imagines one day a barge resplendent with crimson banners pulling in and an important person disembarking – for the shelter’s seat is cold and hard and the mind needs something to do – imagines a queen with leopards and lilies on a flag or at least a prime minister … this man can see The Point from his sleeping place. See its tall oblong arched windows hanging in the darkness of the night like a lantern. Or if his head is muzzy with the drink the structure may begin to turn, a carousel, a hurdygurdy, with gaudy music spinning through the night faster and faster, its people flying out and round it like a razzle-dazzle. A merry-go-round. The merry-go-round on the point, he says to himself when he wakes up and sees it sitting solid and grey-paned in the morning light.

  Once he wore spectacles to see with but put them in his pocket for safekeeping and rolled on them. Now he does without and sees the world as God meant him to. This is not his idea, he read it in a book once, lucky he read so many books once to furnish his mind like a dog’s backyard with odd useful ideas to dig up and gnaw on. The book was about Cézanne, how he became short-sighted but refused to wear glasses, and of course that explains a lot. Or, he 24 suspects, nothing much at all. Certainly not how a man becomes a genius. But now he himself sees the world in simple blocks of colour and light, strong solid shapes that suddenly shift and mist and fuse. The nights are crowded with pinpoints of light that become enormous and starry, that haze and blaze, and shrink when he squints at them. Sees well enough not to get run over, so far. To find the paths that cross the vast deliberate spaces of the planned city. The places where the warm air is vented from the library and the art gallery, though they are a matter of learning too, and the noise the ugly price to pay for warmth. The great lit windows of the restaurant show blurred shapes, and just as well. He isn’t keen to see the fortunate in detail, to look at their faces and wonder, what did you sell to buy all this?

  Mostly he gives the restaurant a wide berth, plodding from the library down to the phantom ferry wharf and back up to the gallery, a trajectory like an arrowhead, a broad arrowhead with its point at the ferry wharf. It’s quite elaborate, this landing stage, with a pontoon that floats and is slapped by choppy grey waves. On this winter day he imagines a barge, royal, with liveried rowers and canopies of cloth of gold gliding round from under the bridge, with a Cleopatra on cushions, dissolving a pearl in wine to make her lover a priceless drink. Or even a poisoned one, as another story has it. Since no boat, not a tourist ferry or a police launch or even a dodgy windsurfer, ever stops here he might as well imagine Cleopatra as Princess Diana, though she of course is dead, so can’t be rowed across this lake with her dubious gallant sucking her toes. Or is that the other one, the ginger-headed blowsy girl. Cleopatra is easier to get right.

  Walking in the dusk past the restaurant a
nd up toward the gallery he turns to look back at the lake, its broad blocks of silver and the indigo of the sky with great purple shapes of cloud lit from underneath by a cold bright fire. A grand romantic scene to his eyes. Like the etchings that provided promising sinister landscapes for benighted travellers in the old books of his childhood. The restaurant from this angle a dark shape against the light. Until his squinting eye discerns the stirring of a small shape, huddled against the wall, a blank back wall that he supposes belongs to the kitchen. He peers closer. There’s a faint hum in the air, coming through narrow louvres just above ground level. The refrigerators, venting hot air. Welcome enough on this chilly evening, a clever place for a newcomer to have found. He knows she’s a newcomer, and a female; blurry though she is to him, he can tell both those things. He would not settle down so early to sleep, not so close to human entertainment as this. Ah, but it is not his business. He continues on his way.

  4

  Laurel liked to get to work early, before any one else was there. Well, the kitchen staff were in, and flat out, but none of the waiters, and she could imagine the restaurant was hers, as it was in a way, except when Flora zipped out with some idea or other. She checked all the tables, that the white cloths were as fresh as expensive laundering ought to be, the napkins stiff and precisely folded, the glassware and cutlery polished. There were only these necessities, no candles, no flowers. Not on the tables. Someone came every few days and constructed amazing floral arrangements in various places in the room, almost surrealist they were, or anyway abstract, like paintings or sculptures. Laurel always wondered how anybody could imagine such fantastic displays. A young woman dressed in black tights and tee-shirt and wearing neat little plimsolls came with dust sheets and strange assortments of plants and deftly put them together. But no flowers on the table, no distractions, only the food, and the necessities of eating it. Even pepper and salt were not provided, though you could ask for them.

  There were lanterns hanging from the high sloping ceilings, lanterns which glowed but weren’t what really lit the room. There were certain low lamps, but mostly it was concealed lights that gave the right level of brightness for eating. It’s the detail, said Flora, when she was employing Laurel to look after the restaurant, be the manager, the hostess, the maitresse d’ – here Flora pulled a face – there wasn’t really a decent word for what she was. It’s the detail, said Flora, in the food of course, but in everything else as well, that’s what makes a great restaurant.

  It was the detail that Laurel came in early to check, and yes, to admire. She stood and looked out of the window, across the small terrace that spread to the edge of the promontory, to the lake surrounding it. She opened the doors on the cool winter evening and went out on to the terrace, paved in semi-circles of old Canberra bricks, a faded bluish-rose colour, and edged with round river stones like cobbles. You couldn’t eat outside, it wasn’t serious enough, but you could wander about and have a drink. When she turned and looked back into the restaurant the dim lanterns repeated the shape of the building, the metal octagon with austere leadlight windows. On the rare occasions when the lake was still its reflection trembled upon the water, so there was the lantern repeated, beckoning its welcome, to those who could afford to pay.

  I think it’s the loveliest space that Marion Mahony ever did, Flora said, and when Laurel looked puzzled she said, The wife of Burley Griffin, you know, the architect who won the competition to design Canberra. His wife did the buildings, all those lovely things with slender lines and domes and cupolas like breasts. And all the water, that’s her idea. Look – and Flora fetched a large book with pictures of the buildings, done on gold silk with beautiful fine black ink lines. Look carefully and there is the restaurant, its reflection drawn in dotted lines

  The originals are in the archives, she said, but it’s hard to get to see them because they’re so fragile and people are afraid of light ruining them, they’re kept in darkness and even if they’re put on exhibition the lighting is so dim you can hardly see them.

  Flora’s fingers fluttered over the pages as though these were the fragile paintings, not to be touched.

  Laurel remembered the drawings when she looked at the restaurant, though it wasn’t the gold of the silk they were drawn on she saw at this hour but pewter, the silvery colour of the lake and the glass, the flashes of indigo that were the colour of the sky in a storm, the whole thing cool and severe and beautiful. In each facet of the octagon were lofty leadlight doors with fanlights, arched and paned, and the roof had the same round Art Deco arches.

  The kitchen was a long shaft that pierced the octagon on its only unglazed wall and extended on this, the side away from the lake, in a long rectangular block of offices and facilities and on the other repeated on a smaller scale the octagon shape of the room. There were no curtains, the intricate yet austere shapes of the windows and walls wouldn’t have worked with the bunchiness of curtains, but it wasn’t cold, because of double-glazing. When the weather was bleak and the room with so much night-filled glass might have seemed chilly there were fires lit in three fireplaces set on the facets of that piercing wall, and the reflections of the flames against the outside dark were mysterious and quite cheerful. Don’t you just love Mahony’s work, said Flora; it’s so strict, so uncompromising; she inspires me.

  Laurel had worked in some amazing restaurants, but never in one so idiosyncratically beautiful as this.

  She walked round the building, just casting an eye over it, making sure there were no cobwebs in the corners of the windows, no greasy marks or dust on the panes. Flora spent a lot of money on this orderliness, and in turn charged her customers; it needed to work. And it did; Laurel’s inspection was a ritual rather than necessary. Almost a meditation before the evening ahead.

  She stood near the back door of the kitchen and looked at the green slopes spreading away from the restaurant. A bunch of kids was walking idly across the grass. One of them had a baseball bat swinging from his hand. Another looked familiar: she worked out that he was the brother of Oscar’s friend, Hamish. What was his name … Chad. Nice to see him off for a game with friends. Oscar was a worry but nothing like Chad, and that was just what she knew about the boy. There’d be a great deal more she didn’t. Even Oscar thought he was awful, though that might be because he was a little brother. Good to see them involved in a bit of sport. The sun shone low over the slope, there were shadows and that particular yellow quality of light on grass that seems to hang in a splendid long hazy moment of leisure, when you can believe that games have rules and losing doesn’t matter. Not something that Laurel often had faith in. The boys straggled across the grass, tussling with one another, their voices loud but the words lost. The boy with the bat tossing it and twirling it like the staff of the conductor of a marching band.

  Back inside she checked the reservations book. The restaurant was full. A lot of regulars. Hugh Todhunter, the barrister who’s defending in a murder case that’s all over the papers every day. Marilyn Ferucci, who people are saying will be the next arts minister when the present sickly incumbent dies. She’s bringing a party of eight, the maximum allowed, and that at only one table, in the corner by the kitchen furthest from the front door, otherwise the restaurant gets too noisy, even though the dull indigo carpet is thick as the fleece of a sheep. Dr Glancy, at his usual table. Sir Billy Snape, who’s made a fortune in ice-cream, a table for two. It usually is, a different young woman each time. Sir Billy likes to tell people that he began with a barrow that he pushed himself and an oilskin bag of dry ice, moving on to a van and now his present ice-cream empire. He calls himself the emperor of ice-cream. And of course it is all a long time ago, when knighthoods could be had for money in the right place. And Queensland a good place for ice-cream.

  There are a couple of people whose names she doesn’t know. Two senators, in separate parties. A name that seemed familiar, but not very, that she worked out was the new ambassador for Brazil, remembering an article in the newspaper at t
he weekend. Dr Prelec, the orthopaedic surgeon, a party of four and a discreet birthday dessert ordered. Marina Ravel, who owns the dress shop called Alchemy, whose designer clothes Flora often wears. Not in the restaurant, when it’s always a white tee-shirt and the regulation fine black check trousers. A spotless white tee-shirt, because she keeps a pile of them in the linen cupboard, laundered with the linen tablecloths and napkins.