The Sundowners by Jon Cleary

Author:Jon Cleary
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Angus & Robertson
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

9

Ida paused at the door for a moment as she came back into the bedroom. Earlier she had turned down the lamp that stood like an immense stylised mushroom on the chest of drawers, and in the shadowed room firelight taunted the dark corners. There was a low sharp moan from the bed and an arm came up in a convulsive movement: the fire suddenly blazed in the grate and for a moment the star-fingered hand was red, as if with pain. Then the fire just as suddenly subsided, the hand folded into itself, and the arm sank back into the shadows of the bed. Ida came into the room and put the towels she was carrying on a chair.

She wasn’t comfortable in this room. She had noticed the feeling, without really putting her finger on what had troubled her, as soon as she had come up here from the cookhouse almost an hour ago. She didn’t feel uncomfortable only in this room: in the rest of the house through which she had passed the feeling had persisted.

There was another moan from the bed and she turned, concern clouding her face. “How is it, Liz? Is he making a start?”

“Not yet. I don’t think so.” Liz Brown spoke with her lips almost closed: the clipped accent was blurred with pain. “How long will Bluey be?”

“Not long. He should be here soon.”

“Why doesn’t he come?” A fist beat fretfully on the bed. “Why doesn’t he come home?”

Ida, hanging a couple of towels over the end of the bed where they would be easier to reach, stopped and looked around the room again. That was the trouble: the place had no feel of home. Bluey could come back from Cawndilla to this room where his wife was struggling in labour, but he wouldn’t be coming home: Ida felt it was no more of a home to him than it was to the people who owned it. Throughout the whole house there was nothing that suggested the identifiable living of particular people: it had the barren personality of a room meant only for passers-by, people who hadn’t come to stay. The tall dark wardrobe with the full-length mirror in which the fire glowed coldly; the chest of drawers with the white china knobs that somehow reminded her of giant staring eyes; the wide double bed with its brass glinting without warmth and its spring muttering metallically with every movement of Liz’s body; the plain green polished linoleum and the darker green mats, like strips of preserved turf, beside the bed; it all had the impersonal stiffness of a shop window. You looked for price labels, then realised the window was already a home: the owner had just forgotten to move in.

A long shuddering moan burst from Liz; she seemed to chew on the sound as it came out of her. She flung an arm behind her head and it smacked against the brass bars of the bed: the room shivered with the sound.

Ida moved to the head of the bed.

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