Euphoria

29

When I reached Sydney, I found there was no boat coming in for a fortnight, so I kicked around there impatiently, setting up an office of sorts at the Black Opal, but getting no work done. I frequented a pub called the Cat and Fiddle far too early and too often. My mother cabled more money, though I didn’t tell her that I would see her only for the two days the boat was docked at Liverpool, that I was going to go on to America.

The day before I sailed, I worked up the courage to go back and see the bark paintings at the Art Gallery. I simply wanted to walk where we had walked, stand where we had stood. She would have nearly reached the Continent by now, I calculated. On the way I passed the shop where I’d gotten the plasters, and the New Yorker restaurant. Across the lobby of the museum I heard my name.

‘My, my, someone’s taken a bath.’

It was Mrs. Swale, my dinner partner at the Iyneses’. She took my arm and never looked back at the group she’d come in with. I was aware of the scent of her, not the humid root smell of Kiona women or Nell by the time I met her, but an inorganic smell meant to cover it all up.

We went up the stairs to the exhibit. She began her questioning: How long had I been here, when would I leave, not tomorrow, couldn’t I change my ticket? And then just before we entered the hall, she looked at me quite gravely, more gravely than I expected her face to be able to look. ‘I was so sorry to hear about your friend’s wife.’

‘What do you mean?’ My lips went all rubbery in an instant. In fact my whole body seemed to be pulling away from me.

She covered her mouth and shook her head and with an intake of breath she said she was sorry, she thought for sure I’d know.

‘Know what?’ I said loudly into the vast room.

Hemorrhaging. Just before they reached Aden. Mrs. Swale put her hand over mine and I wanted to swat it away.

‘Did you know she was pregnant?’

‘Twins,’ I said before I turned away from her. ‘She thought it might be twins.’

I went to see Claire directly from the museum. She wasn’t home and I waited for several hours in her enormous house, listening to clocks chime and dogs bark and servants hustle about as if the world were on fire. When she did arrive and saw my face she dropped her parcels and called out for whiskey. I’d held out a faint hope that Isabel Swale, with her poor aptitude, had gotten it all wrong, but Claire doused it within seconds. They couldn’t stop the bleeding.’ She paused, guessing how much more I could handle. I held her gaze and took in a steady breath. ‘The ghastly thing is, Fen insisted on a sea burial. Her parents are apoplectic. Think he’s hiding something. They’ve started proceedings against him and the ship’s captain. It’s all been such a drama.’ She sounded quite bored by Nell’s death.

She poured me another drink and in the light breeze of her movements I smelled again the manufactured smell of these women. Her husband, she told me quite pointedly, was away for several days.

All I wanted was to call a cab and be delivered to my room. But I could not seem to ask for that, and sat in silence, willing my glass to stop shaking as I lifted it to my lips. I couldn’t seem to pull air into my lungs. I thought of Fen and Nell meeting on the boat: I’m having trouble breathing, she’d said. And then I broke down. No Southerner, Claire did her best to comfort me with palaver and awkward pats on the arm, but as soon as I could stand, she put me in a car that took me back down to the city.