Walter Weaver, Chapter Three
Walter remembered the old days almost as if he had been there himself. They were when men were men, or close approximations at least. Women had been women, too, apparently, and that had been fixed like the constellations. It had been well known, if not well documented, which bits went where, and why, and for how long. Back then, war might have been hell, and not a marketing exercise for armaments conglomerates, but it would never have had the temerity to break up a marriage.
Walter sighed as a scrawny magpie hopped up the lawn in the general direction of the verandah. The bird had not yet seen them, but it was wary. Its head jerked back and forth vigilantly between pecks at the ground. The day was hot again, but it had rained overnight, moistening the soil and bringing the worms back to the surface.
"You know what gets me?" Ryan stripped three or four cigarettes from Walter’s pack and dumped them in his pocket without even a hint of guile. "This New Man stuff that everyone is buying into. It’s up to men to change now!" he scoffed. "Become self-aware and get in touch with your emotions, but hey, don’t abandon your masculinity! Combine it with sensitivity, but only at the right time, and by the way, we’ll leave it up to you to figure out when that is, because it’s up to you to change. Get fucked!"
"It certainly is a big responsibility being a bloke these days," said Walter. "Is wanking still allowed?"
"Help bring up the kiddiwinks, but bear in mind that women will always be the key nurturers. And naturally, it’s still important for a man to earn lots of money to support the family, no-one’s disputing that essential and basic truth of the world. Otherwise, how would a woman be able to choose between career and family? Or choose both."
"Precisely what does that entail? Bashing the little buggers’ heads against the glass ceiling?"
"All I’m saying is, be careful, dude. It’s a fucking madhouse out there. Take it from someone who wouldn’t have a clue either way." Ryan took a cigarette not from his pocket, but out of Walter’s pack, and lit it with Walter’s lighter.
"Help yourself," said Walter.
"Yeah, thanks man, I’ll pay you back next lifetime if we both come back as smokers."
"It’s a toss-up," mused Walter. "Do I call her?” That’s what it was all about.
"You're full of shit,” said Ryan. “You say you’re indifferent to her, yeah?”
“That’s right.”
“And that now, because you’ve waited and you don’t give a shit, it’s safe to call her?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Well that’s just an excuse to call her!”
"I don’t need an excuse to call her," said Walter.
"If you don’t need an excuse to call her, then just fucking call her! But any girl that makes you sit back and think, is it safe to call her, you really have to ask yourself, is it safe to call her?"
"That’s what I’ve just been doing."
"No, you have to ask, is it really safe to call her."
"It must be, because I’m indifferent to her.”
"Like I said, you’re full of shit."
*****
"Hello?"
"Hello, Rosalyn?"
"Speaking."
"It’s me. Walter."
"Which one? I know seven Walters."
Seven?
"Um....you remember, from the other night. Tara’s friend. I’m the tall guy, I drank too much, we..."
"I remember," she said. "I was joking. Nobody really knows seven Walters. Someone might somewhere I suppose."
"There’s probably a site on the Net. Walter dot com."
"You think so?"
"No, I was kidding," said Walter.
"Well, we don’t get each other’s jokes, so that’s a bad start. How did we do the other night? I don’t remember a lot about it. Although I do seem to recall the floor racing up to meet my face at one point. Did I make a fool of myself?"
"No, not really."
"I did, then. Sorry." She paused. "Listen, are you going to ask me out? It’s just that I’ve got something cooking, it’s close to boiling over on the stove, and...."
"Am I going to ask you out? Why? Do you want me to?"
She didn’t say anything.
"To tell you the truth, I hadn’t thought about it," he lied.
"No?" She sounded mildly surprised.
There was another long silence. He broke it,
"Maybe we could go and see a movie sometime."
"Okay, fine. When?"
"Friday night? What sort of films do you like?"
"What sort are there?" She laughed stupidly. "Look, you choose."
*****
Walking down the street he knew that the women he ran his eyes over could detect his mighty lust with their infallible radar. At parties it was the stupid intensity of his desire that drove them off. He connected with them on a subliminal level: they read the signs without knowing it and rejected him on their own instinctual basis. They were the selectors, after all. When you are oft chosen, he thought, that is when you don't care. And that is when you are oft chosen. When you remain unchosen, it becomes the most important thing.
*****
"Hey, Walter! Are you in?" It was Ryan, banging on the screen door. "We’ve got a man down out here!"
He had been dozing on his bed in the heat with the bedlamp on. It was dark out. There was another voice in the background, swearing, and a third, giggling softly. Walter roused himself in time to see Ryan letting himself in. Behind trailed Len and Roman. They were Ryan’s friends, old mates from the time before his circuits had blown.
He’d met them once or twice, but this was the first time they’d been in Walter’s flat. They clearly had precious little better to do if they thought that the four of them cramming into his bedsit made for a fun night.
From the look of satisfied mischief on his face, it seemed that Ryan had ushered them up onto the verandah precisely so that they would be attacked by the bees. Len had escaped unscathed, but Roman was holding a hand to his cheek.
"Hey Walter," Ryan drawled. "You know you’ve got a beehive out front?"
"Really?” Walter sat on the bed in his shorts. “Maybe I ought to talk to the landlord about that." "Jesus, Ryan!" Roman sounded querulous. Reflexively, he took his hand from his cheek and examined it for evidence of the sting. Naturally there was none, although on the cheek itself there was a small red lump.
He had a handsome, freckled face, and exhibited an air of polite containment, somewhat reminiscent of the proverbial boy next door. His hair was brown and short and wavy. He must have been close to thirty, but seemed a lot younger. He wore jeans and trainers and a cream shirt with a collar.
Len was a different kettle of fish, about the same age, but shorter than Roman, and thinner. His head was almost too large for his nuggety frame. He was wearing scuffed black shoes and a grey, tieless suit that dwarfed him even more. It looked like he’d come straight from work. His nobbly face was red and sweaty, his short dark hair plastered round his ears.
"Beer?" said Ryan, making for the fridge. "Hey, it stinks in here! Don’t you ever clean up?"
"Why don’t you come in and make yourselves at home?" said Walter, rummaging on the floor for a shirt.
"Sorry," said Roman, forgetting about the bee sting. "We just barged in." He was already raking clothes off the tatty armchair. "Do I sit here?"
"You can sit wherever nothing’s growing," Walter said.
"Walter, my man!" Len offered him a clammy hand in a high-five greeting. His voice was tinny, his accent broad and rural. He was jumpy, like Ryan. "What’s been happening?"
"Not a lot."
"No? So what is there to do in this place?" His eyes darted round the room as though it were a nightclub. "Hey, what’s with the skull?"
"We dug it up," said Ryan, back from the kitchenette with four cans and half a pack of Iced Vovos.
"What, from a grave?"
"No, from the compost heap," said Ryan. He distributed the beers. "Of course from a grave, you dick."
Roman was closest to the bookcase. He reached over and lifted the skull off its plate, sniffing at it and peering into the empty eye sockets.
"It’s a real one."
"It’s Sister Harriet," said Walter.
Ryan was boasting,
"You remember the Satan Gang, who dug up an old nun’s body in the convent school in Normanhurst? There was a big thing about it in the Mirror. All about devil worship and sacrifices."
"You think I read that tabloid shit?" said Roman.
"That was me and Walter. Took us all night. We only just got away."
"I read that tabloid shit," said Len. "I remember that story. That was just a while ago.” He peered at Ryan, then Walter. “That was you guys? You’re the Satan Gang?"
“That’s right,” said Ryan proudly.
Dubiously, Len looked around the bedsit,
“I don’t see much evidence of arcane tomes or incense burners. Where’s the goat’s blood?”
“Well, we only do it on a part-time basis.”
"If it was you, then why did you do it?" asked Roman. "If you can give me a good answer, I’ll believe you."
Ryan clearly had no idea. He looked expectantly at Walter, who was considering what might in this case constitute a good answer. Temporary - or permanent - insanity? An unlooked-for aberration, the kind of which might end you up in jail for a long, long time? No, if he answered, he would have to say something else. Something that would still incur the condemnation, the revulsion of society at large, but something that made sense. But I'm innocent, thought Walter, and he said nothing.
"It wasn’t them." Roman put Sister Harriet back on her dish.
"Oh, it was us all right," said Ryan defiantly. "Tell them, Walter."
"Tell them what?" Walter, wearing a t-shirt now, lay back down on the bed.
"Well anyway, it was us."
That seemed to settle it, in Ryan’s mind at least. He sat against the wall, knees drawn up to his chest, and began to devour the Iced Vovos, washing them down with beer. Len was standing, poking around the room, unable to settle.
"So let’s go see a movie," he said. "There’s a late screening at Roseville."
"Some worn-out classic," said Walter.
"We don’t want to do that," said Roman. "Four blokes going to the movies together, at our age."
"What’s wrong with that?"
"It’s a dicky thing to do. Think of it, all of us grown men sitting next to each other in a row in the cinema. Maybe if we were seventeen. We ought to do more adult things now."
"Like what?" said Len.
"We ought to be out there finding some women," said Roman. "We ought to be cruising for women."
"You mean we ought to drive around the streets looking for women?" Len was still on his feet, but he had stopped fidgeting. He took a deep swig on his beer.
"Sure, that’s one way," nodded Roman, almost to himself, as though he were idly recollecting the last time he had done it.
"And what do we do driving round, when we see a woman walking down the road? Stop the car and wind down the window and engage her in conversation?"
"That’s certainly a way of doing it. It has to be done right of course. It’s a difficult cruise."
"A difficult cruise!" Len scoffed.
"It’s one of the more difficult ones, yes."
Ryan was nodding along. It certainly sounded difficult.
"Roman, you’re an idiot," said Len. Roman waved a hand dismissively,
"I’m not saying it would be easy."
"Not fucking easy? What you’re talking about is fucking impossible. Have you ever done it?"
"Not as such, but it could be done."
"So go and do it now then," said Len. "Bring the woman back here after you’ve shagged her, or else get her to sign a statement confirming penetration. Because I don’t think you can do it."
“Yeah, bring her back here,” said Ryan.
"I don’t know if I could do it tonight." Roman frowned, "Like I said, it’s one of the harder cruises."
"Walter’s got a date," Ryan said. "Tomorrow night. That right, Walter?"
Walter nodded. He felt oddly grateful that Ryan had brought it up.
"She’s a fucking hot blonde bitch too, by all accounts," Ryan added. “A real hot blonde chick of a bitch.”
Walter wasn’t so grateful for this, but at least Ryan had temporarily broken into Roman’s train of self-regard. He looked at Walter with respect,
"You really got a date?"
"Well, yeah, I guess," said Walter. Now he was starting to feel foolish, complicit in all this juvenility. "We’re going to the movies, that’s all."
“What, Roseville?” said Len.
"Walter gets a lot of women," said Ryan drily. "He had two the other night, both of them while they were asleep."
"Isn’t that rape?" asked Len, unconsciously licking his lips.
"I could get a girlfriend," said Roman.
"You couldn’t get a girlfriend," Len shook his head. He seemed fairly certain of it.
"No, I think I could. There’s a girl at the factory who asked me out, but she’s only eighteen, you know? They’re too young at that age. Too frivolous."
"Too frivolous for Mr Serious, eh?" said Len.
"Plus, I’m saving up for the deposit on a flat. Women are expensive."
"So’s beer, but are you going to give that up?" Len said.
"I don’t drink much."
Len turned to Walter.
"So what’s she like, then, this hot bitch? Hey, you got any porn?"
"Have I got any what?"
"Porn, you know? Never mind."
*****
Hornsby in daylight meant shopping. It had done so forever. Walter could recall the time of transition, the days when the vast square shopping centre had gone up, bounded by the highway on one side and the railway line on another. They were the same years in which the vacant quarter-acre blocks in Fox Valley - Wahroonga’s fat southern penninsula, surrounded by a sea of bush - had begun to vanish, replaced by new houses filling up with families almost as new. A few years later the council had gouged out the pristine bushland and rammed through the sewage connection for the whole area. No more septic tanks.
No more lyre-birds or wombats. No more echidnas. No more platypuses in the creeks. He remembered how the water had died, choked with brown suds. The poison had been distributed evenly and fairly across the whole community.
Wahroonga was part of Kuringai, but Hornsby Shire too was made up of a dozen ill-defined little boroughs. The suburb of Hornsby itself bounded Wahroonga to the east and south. Travelling north from the Harbour Bridge there was no escaping suburbia, but Hornsby was suburban in a way that leafy Wahroonga wasn’t. The redbrick and dirty cream blocks of flats with their formulaic gardens and banks of iron-grey letterboxes were not so much ugly as calculatedly inoffensive. The houses were drear. Career drinkers sheltered in the refuse-strewn valley behind the public swimming pool.
A lot of people who had been brought up in Hornsby-Kuringai had gotten out as soon as they realised they were allowed to. He himself had never quite made it, but more than a few of Walter’s friends had done so in time, shifting down to the city proper or the inner west. Some had prospered; others had allowed themselves to become irrevocably yuppified, disdainful of their roots and those that had been sadly left behind. It was the creeping malaise: when who and where became more important than what, you could tell they had finally succumbed and bent over for the false gods. Perhaps one day they would wake up even more dead, strangled by their own ponytails.
*****
He took Rosalyn to Hornsby Cinema. With its memories of school holiday matinees about flying cars and small boys rescued by their dogs, it made Walter cringe. But there was no point staking a lot on a first date. The movie was an irrelevance, it was just to let her know he didn’t care too much.
Back at her place, on the front doorstep, he followed her in.
"A burb?" she said, standing in the middle of her living room, at ease and in control on her own turf.
"Maybe. What is it?"
"Bourbon and coke. You know you can sit down if you want."
He watched her into the kitchen. She had taken some time over her hair, styling it into curls and waves, and there was a new colour in it, another streak of gold. She had gone casual, in jeans and brown sandals, and a black leather jacket. And tonight she had worn make-up, not a lot, but it had transformed her face, made her seem worldly and in charge. The blush and eyeliner, the deep red lipstick had drawn the best out of the evening shadows.
Buying popcorn at the cinema, he had not failed to notice the eyes upon her. The women had glanced sharply and turned away, but the gaze of the men had lingered, sometimes almost to the point of rudeness. He didn’t care. In fact, he had revelled in it. It made him feel good, being with such a beautiful woman, especially being seen with her in public. As for Rosalyn, she seemed used to it. The attention neither pleased nor offended her.
He sat on the edge of the lounge, feeling nervous. Again the room’s emptiness struck him. It was too big to have so little in it. Apart from the unnoteworthy rug, the floorboards beneath and around the dining table were bare and polished. The lounge area had carpet, but it was thin and worn, a flat brown weave. The mustard divan and the unmatched armchairs looked like hand-me-downs. TV, video, stereo; and there was an oil heater in the fireplace. The white walls were spotless and hung sparely with those art prints on which the name of the artist competes with the picture itself. A large black-and-white photo print, taken sometime in the fifties, depicted a male bather on Bondi Beach. It looked vaguely familiar.
There were shelves in one corner, in an alcove near the divan. Photo albums dominated low down, outnumbering a handful of books. Above were the knick-knacks, sentimental bits and pieces, a netball medal, and framed photos of people that had the look of family. There was no photo of John Hillard.
Walter scanned the book titles. Oriental Cooking. A pictorial essay, Australia: Great Southern Land. The Female Eunuch. A couple of fat paperback offerings from Marion Zimmer-Bradley. From where he sat he fingered the spine of a hardback copy of Mailer’s The Executioner's Song before pulling it out and flipping through the pages.
Rosalyn came back in.
"That’s a good one," she said, handing him his drink. He sipped it. The coke had made it sickly sweet, but he could taste the bourbon. She sat beside him, her own glass in hand.
"Have you seen the film?” asked Walter. "Tommy Lee Jones as Gary Gilmour."
She nodded,
"The book is far clearer. You have to like Mailer, of course, but I prefer to think of Gilmour stripped of the drama. He lived without a conscience. No remorse at all for anything he did. He died the same way. He chose his own method of execution, you know. Firing squad."
"I guess that showed a kind of bravado."
"No, he was no fool. He probably would have preferred the guillotine. The least pain, you see? Economical. Rounded. Pure. Just like a bullet in the head."
"They shoot you in the heart, not the head."
"Your drink all right?"
She put some music on. It was an old disco record from the seventies, and she turned it up loud. He felt awkward, unable to talk above the music, but Rosalyn didn’t seem to care. She started to dance.
It was nothing like the other night, when he had come round to see Tara and she had fallen asleep. He was looking for it, hoping for it, but there was none of the strange, sensuous feeling that had hung over him for days afterwards. Tonight the room was harsh, bright and electric, and Rosalyn crackled with the energy of sex. He watched her sweeping through the room, once again as though she were on celluloid, charged with magnetic allure. It was a curious sensation, a partial dissociation: she was animated, fiercely sexual, demanding of his attention, and yet she seemed to be moving in only one plane, flat against the sterile backdrop.
So what was he supposed to do, grab her and swing her round the room? He didn’t have to.
"You’re no fun!" she cried, swooping past.
I guess not, he thought. Then she dived by again, and this time grabbed his hand and jerked him to his feet. He fell forward into her arms and they stumbled back precariously, all but losing their footing. As they swayed there, the disco beat throbbing in the background, her hands snaked round his waist and clamped onto his buttocks, squeezing hard. She looked up at him with mischief, then her eyes flashed away. He followed them with his own, taking her hand. Where was the heat? He searched her eyes again. Then he understood: it was a cold fire, burning deep yet bright, and he wanted it. Right now, with his humdrum days and cloying bedsit a million miles away, he needed it.
"What do you see?" she asked, smiling.
"You are so beautiful," he said.
“Do you really think so?”
"Don’t you?"
“I guess I’ll have to take your word for it.”
She took his hand and guided it between her legs, rubbing his fingers hard against the crease in her jeans. He accepted the invitation, and kissed her.
*****
Last time he had been in her bedroom, he’d been out of his head. Soberer now, he saw it was empty too, like the rest of the house. It was a master bedroom in the manner of others he’d seen. There was a double bed, a dresser and a built-in closet. Nothing more. No pictures on the walls. No books. The floorboards were dark and shiny. This is the room for sleeping and fucking, he thought as he divested himself of his clothing.
Rosalyn was already under the covers, waiting. She let him play the aggressor, grinning like a birthday girl as he entered her. For him, it had been a long time. He thought briefly of Belinda as he moved inside her, between her undulating thighs. It's good for me, he thought. How is it for you?
At one point, still smiling, she looked up into his face and said, "Don’t fall in love with me."
"What’s that?" he said. "A dare?"
But he couldn’t help glancing towards the window. The curtains were drawn, and he thought of how the glass would sound, shattering as a brick came through.
*****
It was still hot the next day. The bees were somnolent, and in the afternoon Walter sat out on his verandah and drank beer. It was the beginning of a holiday weekend. The freeway was choked with traffic escaping north out of the city, and the air was thick and hazy with low-lying photochemical smog.
Rosalyn was in his mind, in the crevices of his body, in every pore of his skin. He felt the lingering taste of their sex all over him, like a little miracle, and the germ of the notion - it both scared and excited him - that perhaps there was something good awakening within him which had been too long asleep. Certainly, it was early days, but then, weren’t early days the best?
Ryan had not been round for a day or two. Walter found out why at half past four when his friend came down to pinch a cigarette. He was in orange shorts and a sky blue t-shirt. His feet were bare. He was bleary-eyed, doped up. He looked a mess.
"They got me, man," said Ryan, collapsing in a heap on the step.
"What was it this time?"
"Don’t know much about it. Think I frightened some small children, ‘cause in the cells they kept on telling me I was a pervert."
"You’re a danger to society," said Walter.
"I prefer to think of myself as a menace." He tried to smile. He was slurring his words. "You see this?" He lifted his shirt and showed Walter his skinny ribcage.
"See what?"
"Exactly. Nothing there. They use telephone books so there’s no bruising."
"Really? So it’s true about the telephone books."
"It’s true all right. The proper term for it is being A-to-K-ed."
"Is that one word, as in aytakayed?"
"Hard to know at this stage if it’ll gain enough popular currency to find its way into the dictionaries." He sighed and lay down on the flat wooden boards.
"Why do you do it, Ryan? Go off the drugs."
"Don’t know really. Breaks up the monotony, I guess."
"But you always end up doing something stupid and get clobbered with a bigger hit when they catch you and put you back on."
"Yeah, well that’s the way it goes," said Ryan. He shook his head slowly, "You haven’t had these drugs, man. I’m telling you, those little pills persecute you. They slow you down, make you stupid. They suppress your libido. It’s a crime."
"So is frightening small children."
Someone Walter hadn’t seen before was walking down the garden path. It was a woman, in her late thirties he guessed. She was very thin, and wore dark baggy clothes and a headscarf against the sun. She looked European, Slavic maybe. She had an angular face and black hair flecked with grey.
"Someone new?" said Walter.
"That’s Marianna. She’s in the room next to mine. The accountant guy moved out. She’s been around a week."
"A week?" Walter was surprised.
The woman walked away along the grassy verge, taking care to stay in the shade.
"I think I might be going to get lucky with her," said Ryan. "I think she likes me. But how do you tell, for real, eh?"
"It’s when they put your dick in their mouth, that’s when you know," said Walter.
At last, Ryan sensed the change. Doped up as he was, it had taken him that long.
"You fucking bastard!" he said.
Walter grinned.
"You got laid, didn’t you? Jesus, you fuckwit! Who was it? That Rosalyn one?"
"Last night."
"Man oh man," Ryan shook his head. His envy was good-natured, but there was more to it than that. When they had both been going without, at least they could rail against the injustice of it together. “What’s she like, really?”
Walter hesitated.
“I hardly know her.”
“Is she a mental fuck-up bitch from hell, or is she all right? Hey, look, the old guy."
Mr Bojanks was walking slowly up the path. He was exhausted from the heat, and he stopped halfway to catch his breath, standing in the thin shadow cast by one of the turpentines. He was carrying a carton of milk, and for a moment the thought ran through Walter’s head that the old man had been walking so slowly that it had taken him a fortnight to make the round trip to the shop. But he was dressed formally today, not in pyjamas. He wore a suit and hat and brightly polished shoes. That's crazy, thought Walter. In this heat.
"We should help him," said Ryan.
"Fuck him," said Walter, who was remembering the look he had got the other day.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?” said Ryan angrily. “He’s an old guy!"
He stood and loped down through the garden. To Walter’s surprise, the old man, who as usual appeared as though his last breath had just wheezed out of his body and he was about to totter and fall, accepted Ryan’s offer of help at once, smiling gratefully as he took his arm and walked with him up the path.
A few minutes later, Ryan was back.
"He’s a nice guy, we had quite a chat," he said, sitting down again. He looked at Walter, "You know, you should have more respect for old people."
