The Pages by Murray Bail Read Free Book Online Page B

player’s sinews in many parts of her body was only a few years younger than his own mother. No sooner had he begun that night to linger in her bed than she placed an extreme, restless importance on his feelings for her, and became different, making herself singular to him. So specific was the change, he wondered whether it could be true. He didn’t know that her anxiety was close to momentary happiness.
    Mrs Kentridge reached out to him. Oddly she complained he wasn’t talking to her, yet when he did she looked away and fidgeted, sometimes getting up and putting something in a slightly different position, as if she wasn’t interested.
    Taking him shopping gave her pleasure. Shirts in boxes, woollen tie, diamond socks, a rust-brown herringbone jacket, gave form to the idea she had of him. He appeared more sure of himself than he actually was.
    By now he no longer looked like a hick, which therefore you would think an improvement, but it caught the eye of his cosmopolitan mother – narrowed her glance, well-practised at isolating a situation. And when the happy and bold Mrs Virginia Kentridge insisted they go to hear a Russian pianist giving one and only one recital at the Opera House, which happened to be a Thursday evening, Wesley casually went along and didn’t go to his mother’s or get around to telling her.
    The following morning she phoned early.
    â€˜What have you been doing? I sat here and I added two and two together. The poor thing, that’s all I can say. We don’t know what’s the matter with Virginia. Why does she have to carry on the way she does? The fresh widow. She’s trouble. Listen to your mother. Are you listening? I know women like her. You have to be careful.’ The bridge club at Double Bay and the tennis group were full of them – and not only widows and divorcees – tanned, gaunt, large-eyed, fierce women. ‘Find someone younger. They’re around. I saw some lovely young things on the street yesterday.’
    The way she spoke rapidly as if to herself, his mother didn’t sound like a mother at all; to his surprise he saw the younger, single part was still there.
    Now she said, ‘I’ve got to go now. I’m going out.’
    He took ferries too, cream and green ones looking like nineteen fifties kitchen cabinets, and bus and train journeys – to Parramatta, more than once – stopping at the regular intervals – across to the North Shore – as far as Palm Beach. He preferred the buses where he could gaze at the haphazard mess of streets and the people on them, and glance at the passengers as they made their way to seats near him. Old ladies wearing coats on hot days and women clumsy with children he helped on or off. He began to wonder what he was doing with himself.
    On a noisy night the students next door invited him in, where he entered the source of the music, steady, blurry, blood-pumping, and the rising and falling laughter and shouting. He was dragged in. Men and women his age stood in the one spot and made pronouncements from what they had learnt that very day in the lecture hall. It was not possible to remain silent; Wesley was expected to agree or not.
    A woman he had seen once before brushed past him and went into the kitchen.
    She put her hands over her ears. ‘I don’t know where all these people have come from. And I have this terrible headache.’
    He filled a glass of water, and sat across the table.
    â€˜Where do you fit in?’ she looked up. ‘What’s your story?’
    â€˜Last time I saw you,’ he decided, ‘was up on the roof. I think I saw you there.’
    â€˜He only thinks it was me…’
    Sturdy thighs, Wesley remembered. Lying face down, reading a book.
    She said, ‘Up there, I’m all by myself. All I can hear is the traffic – and the pigeons. I hate pigeons. There’s nothing attractive about them. They’re both disgusting