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Ben smiled. ‘I’m glad.’
Helen wiped the corners of her eyes. ‘And,’ she said brightly, ‘you’ve got all your hair!’
‘All over,’ Ben agreed.
‘It shows virility!’
‘I tell the girls that, but I’m just told. I’m a fire-hazard.’
She laughed at him: ‘Oh, Ben …’
He smiled, then picked up the new doorlocks and the coil of electrical cable. ‘Well, I’ll fix the locks and extend that generator switch to your bedroom. To outwit the spooks.’
Helen brought her mind to this change of subject.
‘Oh, that’s very kind of you, but Clyde said it’s best where it is.’
Ben said: ‘You’re the one who lives here all alone each night with the spooks, not Clyde. It’s just a simple override switch, so you can shut down the generator from your bedroom when you go to bed. Clyde will still be able to start it and stop it from the kitchen.’
‘Really?’ she said. ‘Why didn’t he know that?’
‘Maybe Clyde’s not a smart-ass like me.’
Ben changed the locks while Helen got her laundry together. Then she fed Dundee while Ben started work on the switch. The puppy wolfed down his food. ‘Like he’s never had meat before!’ she called happily from the yard.
‘Probably hasn’t, living with Jack Goodwin.’
‘Oh, he’s gorgeous!’
‘Jack or Dundee?’
‘Dundee! Oh, Jack’s a real miser. And a terrible gossip. “Radio-Jack”, we call him – tell him anything and it’s all over the Outback by nightfall. Who’s a beautiful boy, then?’
‘Me. Ask my mother.’
‘Oh, you ass!’ She came back into the kitchen, holding a glass of wine. ‘Oh, dear … I’m having a lovely day. Now then – got any laundry you want done? Smart-ass.’ She burst into giggles.
Ben picked his wine glass up from the floor and took a sip. ‘No, thank you, only dirty people need machines to do their laundry. I did mine by hand this morning.’
‘Well, it can’t be very dry. Where is it? In a plastic bag in your saddle-bag?’
‘Right.’
‘Right, and where is it?’
‘Just behind the saddle.’
‘I mean the bike, you fool. Even I can figure out where the saddle-bag is once I find the bike. But I didn’t see it when I came back from Billy’s.’
‘Outside your front door. Black, you can’t miss it, the only black 1000cc Harley-Davidson there.’
‘Oh, you ass!’ She marched to the front of the house. She ferreted through his saddle-bag and found the wet clothes. She took them to the line in the yard, and hung them up. Socks, underpants, vests, shirts. Then she took one shirt down again and returned to the kitchen.
‘Well, this garment needs strong machinery.’ She stuffed it into the washing-machine with her own laundry.
‘Thank you. But you can’t start up the generator to do the washing while I’m working on these wires.’ He added: ‘You could, but you’d have to bury me soon afterwards.’
‘Standing up beside Oscar?’
‘So the grave would have to be a bit deeper, and that ground’s hard. Not that much deeper,’ he admitted reasonably.
She prepared lunch while he led the cable along the kitchen walls and down the passage, tacking it to the skirting board. He bored a small hole in the doorframe and fed the wire through into her bedroom.
It was not very feminine; it seemed a worn, hard-up sort of room. On the far bedside table was a framed photograph of a man, doubtless Clyde: Ben peered across at it, but couldn’t make out much. On the dressing-table near the door was a photograph; four children. Taken recently, Ben thought. The boy, Tim, looked about sixteen: he was a strapping, good-looking lad; short hair, a generous open face, white even teeth – he was going to be what Americans call a ‘hunk’. The three girls were all pretty, with neatly combed blonde shoulder-length hair and generous mouths like their mother; the little one, Cathy, was going to be a beauty. Ben glanced around the room. The double-bed was neatly made. The rugs on the floor were patchy. The wardrobe door was open, he could see dresses hanging, the shelves jumbled with underwear. Below lay a muddle of high-heeled shoes, several mauve pairs among them. So she likes mauve? It would suit her, too her blue jeans suited her, with her blue eyes and blonde hair. One pair looked very sexy, with thin leather straps that she would wind around and tie above her ankles. He felt a desire to tiptoe across and pick them up. He could imagine them on her. Her toenails painted red? Oh dear, dear … The dressing-table was old and chipped. The little jars and bottles of lotions and creams and perfume had a frugal, husbanded air. He felt sure most of them were almost empty, kept for the last smear or drop. Between the dressing-table and the wardrobe was the bathroom. He glanced towards the kitchen, hesitated, then went to the door and looked inside. Untiled walls, an old tub with claw-and-ball feet, the enamel worn away near the plug. An overhead shower with a dull plastic curtain. A toilet. A bidet, obviously recently installed because the cement around its base looked newish. Some towels, a big, damp bathmat, a broken laundry basket. And, on the floor beside the basket, a pair of panties. They lay there with an air of abandonment, as if she had just stepped out of them.
Ben Sunninghill looked at them. They were red, and lacy. And see-through, and brief. He had an almost irresistible desire to tiptoe inside and pick them up. To feel them between his fingers, to hold them to his face …
‘Gotcha!’
He jerked around. Helen was in the bedroom doorway, smiling, Dundee in her arms. ‘Lunch is ready when you are!’
Ben recovered himself, and said easily: ‘I was considering the best place for this override switch. Here by the bathroom door, which is easy for me, or by your bedside? That way is easy for you, but I’ve got to lead the cable right around the room.’
Helen considered the problem tipsily. ‘Bedside makes sense, provided you’ve got enough cable. Then I haven’t got to get out of bed in all my nakedness when I’ve finished reading, hit the switch, dash back, trip over the rug, bark my shins, cuss, scramble up in the dark, feel for the bed, et cetera.’
Ben grinned. ‘Right.’ He added: ‘You’re a funny lady.’
‘Funny ha-ha or funny peculiar?’
‘Both. But delightfully so.’
‘I knew it. Now I’m not only bushwhacked, I’m peculiar!’ She entered the room. ‘Trouble is, if it’s on my side of the bed, that means Clyde’s got to get up – when he’s at home – if he reads later than me, and switch the damn thing off. That’ll irritate him.’
‘Look, who’s this switch for? And how often is Clyde home?’
She pondered a moment. ‘True. To hell with Clyde?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Okay, on my side of the bed, please.’ Then she happened to glance into the bathroom and see the panties. She went in, scooped them up and stuffed them into the laundry basket. On her way back she closed the wardrobe door. ‘Lunch is ready!’ she repeated. ‘Finish the switch afterwards.’
She had gone to some trouble over lunch. Ben fetched another bottle of wine from his saddle-bag. But he ate very little. ‘I had two meat pies in Burraville just before I left,’ he explained.
‘That’s not very good for you – have some more salad, grown with my own fair hands!’ She was thoroughly enjoying herself.
‘Yes, I saw your vegetable garden. Very impressive.’
‘We’re lucky to have enough water for it – it’s a good well. And we swim in the holding reservoir.’
Ben imagined her in a swimsuit. He suggested: ‘Shall we do that, after we’ve finished work?’
‘Why not?’
Great things can happen in a swimming pool after a long boozy lunch. Ben couldn’t wait. At the very least, the prospect of being semi-naked with her in the common caress of cool water was wildly erotic. He said, for something to say:
‘So Clyde’s a Catholic? And Catholics were bad news in Australia?’
‘Oh, in those days, yes. Australia was very provincial when I was a kid, stuck out on the end of the world, and the majority of us are Protestants. Catholics were regarded as blighted with misinformation. Wops were Catholics – Italian immigrants who ran milk bars. As a girl I felt sorry for Catholics. And marry one? Never! It’s different now, of course.’
‘And Jews? How were they regarded?’
Helen hesitated. ‘Well … Jews have always had a hard time, haven’t they? I guess Australia Fair was no exception.’
‘Go on,’ he smiled: ‘say it. Regarded as furtive. Devious. Clannish. Money-grubbing. And too successful.’ He added, regretfully: ‘Present company excepted.’
She felt uncomfortable with this subject. ‘Well, maybe when I was a girl, but it’s quite different now, of course.’
‘Is it? Jack Goodwin evidently doesn’t think so. And that was before I started bargaining.’
‘Forget Jack Goodwin.’ Then she decided to be bold on this touchy point. ‘But why is it that Jews are so successful?’
He grinned. ‘Because they’re superior.’
‘Seriously.’
‘Seriously. Because we believe we’re the Chosen Race. Says so in black and white in the Bible. We’re different from other people, we’re privileged. So, as the Chosen Race, we have to work hard to justify it, and help each other, to maintain our position. We’ve got an Us-against-Them clannishness. So, we’re rather disliked. And we’re generally physically conspicuous, identifiable as Jews; an obvious target for prejudice.’
‘Well, I’m not anti-Semitic.’
‘No … But do you want your daughter to marry one?’
She was taken aback by the bluntness of the question, even though feeling so jolly.
‘I couldn’t care less, provided he’s a good husband!’ But then she added: ‘Well, I suppose every mother hopes her daughter will marry into her own culture. Religion …’ She faltered, then went on a trifle hastily: ‘But do you believe yours is the Chosen Race?’
He sloshed more wine into their glasses. ‘Yep. Learned it at my mother’s knee. And I’ve only got to look around at all my successful Jewish brethren.’ He grinned. ‘Heard a joke in the Burraville pub this morning. I suspect it was told for my benefit. Anyway, what did the Australian Prime Minister say in his telegram to Golda Meir congratulating her on winning the Six Day War? “Now that you’ve got Sinai, can we please have Surfers’ Paradise back?”’
Helen laughed. She’d heard it, but it was funny again coming from a Jew.
‘No, it wasn’t said for your benefit!’ She took a sip of wine, then asked: ‘Did Jack Goodwin know you were buying the puppy for me?’
‘Yes. Why? He asked me what I wanted a puppy for, on a motorbike. I told him about Oscar.’
Helen puckered one corner of her mouth. ‘Hmm. Did the other blokes in the pub know Dundee was for me?’
Ben shrugged. ‘Sure. Why?’
Helen sighed, but said cheerfully: ‘No, it’s okay. But it’ll be all over the Outback on the bush telegraph.’ She shrugged. ‘So what, I’ll say you’re my cousin from New York!’
‘Your cousin? With this nose?’ Ben sat back. ‘I see. It’s a matter of “What’ll the neighbours think?”’
‘To hell with them!’
‘But would Clyde be annoyed?’
She frowned. ‘No, Clyde knows I would never be … silly.’
Silly? That was a dampener. He wished he hadn’t mentioned Clyde – Clyde wasn’t a subject to bring up when nursing ambitions about that swim with his wife. But all he could do was make light of it. ‘To have an affair with me would be silly?’ Then he added: ‘You’re right, of course. So – to hell with the neighbours; I’ll be gone tomorrow, anyway.’
‘Oh Ben, you shouldn’t talk yourself down so! You’re not so …’ She paused, wishing she hadn’t started the sentence that way.
Ben wished she hadn’t started it that way too. ‘… Totally unattractive?’ He smiled.
She tried to avoid grinning, and tried to speak earnestly: ‘You know what I mean … You’ve a very attractive personality, Ben …’ (Oh Gawd, why’d she put it like that?) She waved a hand and blundered on: ‘You’re charming. Amusing. Witty. And I’m delighted to have your company …’ She trailed off, then ended brightly: ‘And beauty is only skin-deep!’ Oh, God, why had she said that?
Ben smiled wanly. ‘But ugliness goes right to the bone?’ His optimism about that swim was going right out the window. He stood up, embarrassed. ‘Well, I’ll finish rigging that switch—’
‘Oh Ben,’ she cried, ‘you’re not ugly! Finish your wine! Let’s have another bottle …’
He grinned. ‘Sure, bring it to the bedroom and talk to me while I finish that switch.’
CHAPTER 8 (#)
She sat cross-legged on the bed with Dundee, sipping wine, aglow with wine, thoroughly enjoying herself. ‘I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to be a lawyer or a teacher. So I took a general arts degree – or started it – majoring in English Literature, but I squeezed in two years of Roman Law, to get credits in case I went on to do an LL.B.’
Ben was crouched at her bedside table, under Clyde’s photograph, rigging the cable along the skirting board. He indicated the picture. ‘Is that Clyde?’
‘Yes.’
‘May I?’ He picked it up. Clyde smiled self-consciously at him, a burly, nice-looking, no-nonsense balding man, uncomfortable in a suit and tie for the occasion. ‘Looks a nice guy.’
‘He is. Very.’
‘Wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him, though.’
‘No. But he’s a softie, really.’
Ben replaced the frame on the table and resumed work. ‘I took a degree in English Literature,’ he said.
She blinked. ‘I thought you did whatchacallit – gemology?’
‘I did. But a few years later I decided to do English Lit on the side. University of New York, night classes.’
Helen sighed. ‘Oh, wow. Good on yer. Wish I could do that. Did you think you wanted to teach English?’
Ben tapped a tack into position. ‘No, just for interest. Had a vague idea I’d try writing one day, or try to get into publishing. But, bought a motorbike instead.’
‘But a degree like that’s never wasted! Oh Ben, why do you say you’re not a success? I so envy you your life.’
