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moral, its own pace that could easily overcome you, leave you behind,
everything true and unbearably beautiful, unable to be repeated ever.
“Listen, she said, I think I am falling in love with you. I am very scared.
Because of all that... (she made a sweeping gesture which involved the
whole room before her). Because of all you have lived that I have not,
that I don’t want to live, although, if I love you, it will be for it... It’s
so hard to explain, to understand oneself. —If..., if it works between
us, we can go somewhere else, anywhere. You decide. To a different part
of Sydney, or up North to Brisbane, if you want, I would even return
to Europe... —Jacques, I’m very thirsty. Have you got anything nonalcoholic
to drink?” They had icy-cold orange juice from the same glass,
the only clean high ball glass he could find. They set the clock for eight
thirty (she had a class at twelve noon and had to pick up her things in
Ashfield before); they switched off the lamps, pulled the sheets up to
their necks. “Just now, I love you more than anything in the world,” he
whispered, so that she might or might not hear it. “I am very scared too,
Kathy. I could die of fear.”
Two hours later she had to get up to vomit. She had high temperature,
a sore throat and a splitting headache. She had surely caught
a chill after Muriel’s party. “I better go home.” He drove her back to
Ashfield. “Take care! Don’t attend class today or tomorrow, if you’re
still not well. I’ll help you catch up, if you want. I’ll call you in the afternoon.
—Please don’t. I’ll call you. —When? —I’ve said I’ll call you.
Don’t you trust me?” She had gone all stiff and distant, sitting in the
car before her gateway, looking absently at the boot, the dark trunk of
the tree planted in the bitumen and a few yards of grassy sidewalk in
the light of the low beams punctuated by the ticking orange hue of the
left blinker. She took his hands from the wheel, squeezed them rapidly
between hers, opened the car door and almost ran to the front porch
without looking back. Jacques waited until she had found her key and
entered the house. He closed the passenger door on his left, that Kathy
had left ajar, and drove away, very slowly. The streets were now completely
empty, he had no idea what time it was; his aging car, a Toyota Corona,
had sheepskin seat covers but no working clock.
When she had eventually tucked herself safely in her bed, Kathy
dreamed he had got lost in the suburbs, he could never find his way
to Coogee, there came huge trucks from everywhere, directing high
powerful spotlights to the windscreen of Jacques’ old orange sedan,
circling around him, blowing their horns. At the same time the trucks’
chromes were glittering as if they were reflecting a blinding midday sun
in mid-January. She could not see Jacques’ face. She wanted to ring him,
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