The Fall

The Fall

By John Ellison Davies

Within the house the creaking sounds of night began to ease. Outside a bird's sharp questioning call echoed among crooked iron-hard gum trees, followed by an excited murmur of feathers and a flap of wings.

Sliding out of bed, she ran in slippers into the kitchen, her tracksuit and three pairs of socks a thin defence against the cold morning air tightening around her chest. She had a cramp in both feet. Her fingers were numb. Her face ached. She hurried and carried her tea back to bed and hugged the two heavy blankets up under her chin, the cup warming her hands, a book open on her knees.

Through the narrow window she traced the stain of sunrise spreading across low folded hills. Shabby trees blushed and whitened under their peeling bark. Slowly the border of sunlight tilted into her room, touching a litter of sketches and the slanting edge of an unfinished canvas.

It was almost midday when she heard the expected skid of tyres on gravel, the piercing car horn, and looked up from her book to see through the window Fiona's braceleted forearm waving snakily from an open sun-roof.

"I don't suppose there's any need to lock it," Fiona boomed, "is there, out here?" She was already out of the car, slammed her door and pulled two bags from the back seat by the time Jenny offered a hand. "Careful with that one darling - the vodka's in it."

"Two bags, Fiona?"

"An overnight stay is a serious adventure, sweetie. Any handsome types around?" she asked. "Just us girls? Let me look at you then. Quite the artist aren't you," she commented, frankly appraising the paint-flecked jeans, the oversized pullover, the band holding Jenny's hair back too tightly.

"Nobody sees me. I can be dowdy if I want to be."

"On you it looks good. You know what I mean. Authentic. I couldn't fake it even at art school."

"You look marvellous." Jenny noted the long tartan skirt, the knitted bees and flowers drooping from her cardigan, and the familiar constant tinkle of earrings, bracelets, charms and fine chains.

"I do not. I'm fat. Well, I've put on a little. How's the painting business?"

"Slow. How's the television business?"

"Dreadful. I'm doing children's shows. Ugh! Children! Me! Chalk and cheese! That's television for you."

"I threw mine out."

"Heaven."

Fiona's breezy self-mockery made Jenny feel guilty for wishing secretly that she wouldn't come at all. She had not invited her, merely mentioned in a letter that she was alone in the house now, to which Fiona immediately replied: "Bringing a dry shoulder - unfortunately mine." Wary, Jenny had tried to call her to put her off. There was no answer. Fiona, she remembered, lived in restaurants and other people's houses. Undecided, she left it to the reasonable chance that Fiona's complicated life would delay her interminably, that today's whim to drive five hundred miles would be displaced by another, probably with blue eyes.

Now, she realised, she was genuinely and simply pleased to see her again. Fiona's elbowing, pushing loyalty brushed comfortably with her own quieter, evasive nature.

"Do you really need all this space?" Fiona surveyed the lounge room, canvases, crusted tin cans, stained rags, yellowing piles of newspaper. "Isn't one room enough?"

"I'm expanding," said Jenny, with pride.

"What I mean is, couldn't we find you a little place in town? Near human beings?"

"No."

"Hmm." Fiona squinted, unconvinced. "Time for girl talk."

"You talk like a man."

"That's why women like me, dear. Men too."

"So when did the bastard leave?" Fiona came straight to the point.

"Three weeks ago."

"What happened?"

"I told him I didn't want to live with him any more."

"And?"

"And he left."

"That's it? No punch line? What a hoot!" Fiona slapped the table. "Well, we all knew it wasn't going to last fifty years, didn't we?" she offered as consolation.

"Did we?" Jenny asked herself if she knew that when, with arms stiffly folded, she watched his rusting green van pass the limit of the wheat fields and turn right onto the highway.

"You know what I mean," Fiona added diplomatically. "What really happened?"

"I said "I don't want to live with you any more"," Jenny began, trying to piece it together in her mind, not because she wanted to talk about it but because Fiona was so doggedly determined to listen. "I didn't plan to say anything. I was washing up, over there," she pointed towards the sink, "and I said it. Just like that."

Fiona nodded.

"He said "OK. I'll leave in the morning.""

"OK?"

"OK."

"Hold it there, kiddo." Fiona rinsed two glasses in the legendary sink, fished the vodka from the smaller of her two overnight bags and poured for both of them. Observing her movements, Jenny could not help noticing that she was indeed getting heavier where it showed most.

"Cheers." They each took an encouraging gulp.

"I suppose," Jenny confessed, "I was surprised he took it so calmly."

"Peeved, I would say."

"I thought we might have a fight and make up and try again for a week or two. It was over, but..."

"But he chose sooner rather than later. Wasn't that for the best? The short and sharp treatment?"

"He owed me a fight."

"Be fair, darling."

"I mean it!" Jenny's voice rose an octave. She thought of him packing his few clothes and possessions, scrupulously separating what was his from what was hers. What he could not fit in cardboard boxes he dumped loose in the back of the van. After he had gone she discovered that he had left a sea shell that he knew she liked. "You want to know the worst part?" she continued. "He slept on the couch that night, in front of the fire. When he came into our...my room in the morning he looked so red and tired that I wanted him to stay. Am I awful?"

"He always looked nice when he was red and tired," Fiona said gently, changing the subject to mutual friends and their loves and disasters. "You've been away so long." She reported one marriage and two separations. "Someone had a baby. One of the blondes, I think." Tossing her thick dark hair aside she began a story involving herself and four friends driving home from a restaurant, and the police, acting the voices, swinging her arms. Like all her stories, it was completely absorbing while she told it and thin as air when she finished.

"You're funny, Fi."

"You like that story?" She shrugged. "Tomorrow you won't remember a word."

"You are funny. I wish I could tell a story like that." Jenny scratched her leg.

"Outside your range. That's a part of getting older, you know, learning what you're not good at."

They were silent for a while. A gap had opened and neither wanted to look into it too closely.

"Tell me about you masterpieces," Fiona asked, recovering first.

"They're clouds," Jenny said indifferently. "I'm painting clouds."

"I can see that. Why? Out with it. I'm not a total flake you know. I have a soul."

"I like their accidental quality." Jenny was almost defiant. She did not like being cornered to explain her painting. She became short of breath trying. "Miles high and always changing - wouldn't you like to be always changing? I...it's hard to believe an accident can be so beautiful."

"That one looks like a dolphin playing, splashing backwards on its tail."

"Or a cat about to leap."

"You see that?" Fiona examined the painting again. "I worry about you, girl."

Evening wrapped the house. Jenny warmed up yesterday's casserole. Fiona tried to start a fire but heavy-handedly raised a small storm of cold ash stuffing the newspaper in and Jenny had to help her. They talked on for hours, overcoming occasional awkwardness in the buoyant way old friends sometimes recapture, of all they knew, and wondered about what they did not know.

"I'll make up a bed for you," said Jenny shortly after midnight.

"Ta." Fiona used the bathroom first. "Don't say a word," she warned, reappearing in red pyjamas. "Can I say something?" she asked, watching Jenny pull the blankets high on the pillows.

"Yes."

"I don't know how to say this. Maybe I shouldn't."

"What?"

"Don't stay alone too long."

Fiona woke when the kettle boiled.

"How do you bear it?" she shivered inside two layers of clothing. "I think I'm in love with your toaster."

"We'll go for a walk after breakfast."

"Are you serious?" Fiona groaned. "Out there?"

"You should see the land while you're here."

"I've seen it. I drove past it."

"That was the healthy country, for tourists. I want to show you my back yard."

"No strenuous outdoor stuff. No forced marches."

"Just a walk, Fiona."

Jenny stamped in her boots. Fiona, in sandshoes, followed gingerly across a blackened field, trying not to step on the few green shoots that had begun to assert themselves. On a rocky dung-peppered ledge they found a small delicately bleached skull.

"Poor thing. Poor little thing." Fiona crouched beside it, fascinated. "I suppose it was caught in the fire?" She touched the empty eye sockets that seemed to stare into a safer distance. For a moment she considered taking the skull with her.

"Come on."

"Country life is making you insensitive. You should come back to the city."

"Where everyone's so sensitive?"

They walked another fifty yards in silence.

"Can we take a break?"

"Just a little further."

Fiona tried to breathe evenly, to keep up, troubled by a growing sense that something was missing. Of course, she realised, there was nothing to hold onto, no walls, no protection. Far behind, the house was a small grey box. The gum trees, strong and durable to touch, viewed from here suggested split and shrunken pegs around a tent. The tent was the sky, pulling at the pegs.

At last Jenny stopped and stretched out on the short dry grass. Fiona settle uncomfortably beside her.

"I come here to think. Look at the clouds."

"I'm looking."

"Put everything else out of your mind. See that one?"

"Looks like a dolphin to me."

"Now watch it change."

The cloud mass expanded like boiling milk, then contracted as if someone had turned down the heat. Pushed by a high wind it drifted and broke up, shedding leisurely threads in the surrounding air.

"That was a dud," Jenny admitted. "But you can see anything up there if you look long enough."

"Mountains and canyons?"

"Always."

"Castles in the air, where the giants stub their toes?"

Waiting for a new cloud, they lay quietly side by side under the streaked sky, listening to each other's breathing and the inquisitive scratching of insects in the grass. Fiona kept brushing off imaginary ants. A faint droning sound brought Jenny up on her elbows.

"Here come the jumpers!"

"The what?"

"Sky divers. You know - with parachutes!"

Fiona sat up.

"Actually they land a couple of miles over that way, but we can see them jump. It's quite a show."

"I couldn't do it. Step out into nothing like that."

"That's the thrill."

"I get dizzy at a window seat in the cafeteria."

"I'm going to do it one day. I will."

A small figure fell from the aircraft. Fiona squirmed. A second figure fell and a third. She clutched Jenny's arm. The first parachute opened, and the third.

Fiona screamed.

"No.! Please..." She crushed her face against Jenny's shoulder, clawing at her arm. Jenny did not blink as the figure fell, turning in the air, reflecting sparks of sunlight. "Please."

The second parachute emerged thin as smoke from a gunshot from the falling figure's back, and inflated.

"It's all right, Fi." Jenny soothed and rocked her. "You can look now."

Fiona would not look. She pushed her away, turned her crushed puffy face away and stumbled, awkward and heavy, back to the house.