The Best Australian Stories by Black Inc. Read Free Book Online Page A

but out on the sports field fluent and focused.
    â€˜Do you know him? He must be your age.’
    â€˜His name is Jonathan,’ I said. ‘He’s over from Michigan to work in an advertising agency.’
    â€˜I know that,’ Sylvia replied, in her middle-class voice. She screwed the lid back on. ‘Something to drink?’ I presumed that she had forgotten what she had been about to say, and our conversation petered out.
    I beckoned a waiter, gave him our order, putting it on my tab. Beside me, Sylvia seemed listless. She was grateful that I recognised her husband’s bravery. And, also, she was oddly unsettled by the discovery that Hugh had spoken to me.
    She picked up her magazine. But instead of reading it, she was looking at the diver. Thinking of her adventurous youth maybe. Boom. Splash. And it’s over.
    As he kept bouncing off, I became aware of the movement of his body as a series of outlines, as in a Futurist painting. There was a lot of tidiness, at least, on display. ‘He’s like a Hockney,’ I said. ‘He did a splash,’ and I mentioned an exhibition I’d seen in London, although immediately I did so, I felt embarrassed: Sylvia wouldn’t have any idea about painting. It was then that she lay down her magazine and removed her glasses and turned to her husband.
    â€˜Darling, may I smoke one of your … Oh … Darling’s nodded off.’
    She sneaked an arm under his chair and grabbed the packet, tapping one out. ‘I used to know a painter once.’
    *
    While Hugh had been ‘doing his heroics’ in Burma, Sylvia had had an affair in Delhi with an Indian artist and posed nude for him. I don’t know how many people she had told the story to. Not many, I suspect. But some of the spirit had gone out of her and I wondered if she was hoping to retrieve it by confessing a hazardous experience of her own.
    â€˜His name was Bhero Sethi. He wasn’t well known. We loved each other very much.’ She found an ashtray and struck a match. Her cheekbones became evident as she sucked in. ‘He had this Indian nickname for me, the only nickname I’ve ever had. He called me – oh, it’s gone. Infuriating at this age how a word goes. Just wait. It’ll come to me.’ But it didn’t.
    I was curious that she should be telling me this story so close to her sleeping husband, and I kept glancing at Hugh. How could she be certain that he wasn’t awake? But Sylvia took it in her stride, although she quite often looked towards him in a peremptory way, checking that he was asleep, then swivelling back to reveal more about Bhero.
    â€˜I loved his energy. That’s what you miss as you get older. I won’t explain the why of it. I hadn’t heard from Hugh in a year. Bhero could see that I wanted intimacy. He’d say: “Where do your smiles go when you’re not laughing?”’
    Smoke streamed from her nostrils. I had a sense of the lines on her face melting. She looked younger. ‘First time we met, know what he said? “Do you have a portrait in the attic?” Oh, he could never hide his attraction could Bhero. Nor could I. Once, I had on a pleated skirt and he compared my waist to a Christmas cracker. Imagine!’ She rested a hand on my wrist.
    Again she inhaled, hollowing her cheeks. In memory she saw him.
    â€˜Not fat, not thin – what Mother called “neat”. Slightly bloodshot eyes. Greying. A bit of black hair on his chest, a mole on his hip. He’d had meningitis as a child and wore leg-irons when young which left him with one very slightly withered leg, but he made sure he didn’t limp when I was around.’
    She had been seeing him for six months before he asked her to pose. ‘He couldn’t get a model who wasn’t a prostitute, so I said OK. I had a body then. It was no problem taking my clothes off. Never was. Funnily enough, it was when my glasses