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or thirty, working and with much more experience of men than she now
had. She had slipped into a custom-made story of which she had been
the necessary protagonist, a nest which exactly fit her measurements,
securely fastened to a strong and flexible gum branch overlooking the
sea, a dwelling of flesh and blood, pictures and sounds as well as twigs
and feathers that nobody had consciously built, that not even Jacques
had shaped with his own hopes: Jacques had apparently passed from a
state of angry inertia (when he had sent her to hell about her thesis) to
one of quiet expectancy and complete relief. If you did not care about
talking kitsch, you could say that he had been massaged back to life by
the hands of the season. He who had always mocked the proverbial Aussie
“She’ll-be-all-right-mate” attitude, now indulged in broad tolerance and
optimism. Was it happiness? “Are you going to put weight on too?” she
had laughed once, “I am not sure I will be able to make passionate love
to you if you come home with a fat beer belly one night.”
As she was driving her mother’s light blue Falcon from the City
to Harbord and on to Whale Beach this afternoon and listening to a
cassette of Charlélie Couture’s Victoria Spirit that Jacques had recorded
for her (it was not distributed in Australia), she found the white sails
even whiter than usual, the masts more silvery, the traffic on the bridge
at the Spit less aggressive, the trees greener than any other spring, the
air almost unpolluted, and she kept smiling to herself. Her charming
complicity with Jacques was also made of calculated irony about their
own happiness. A tone that they would both judge unbearable in other
couples only a week ago: it was not the gist of their play but it was
definitely part of its seduction. If she had not been at the wheel, she
would have clapped too.
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