March Hollows

              In Sydney, things happen in scenes.  And I see myself the major player.  I am a girl, who suddenly catches sight of herself in a train’s double-glass doors.  I am there at the instant she becomes aware of the dormant power lying just within a certain tilt of her neck.  I am lecherous, watching her.  Feel the air become slightly less charged when she leaves.  I find myself within a group of adolescent boys.  When 1994 was a long time ago—the colour of burnt sienna.  We almost smell like men.  I am posing now in the middle of a baseball swing, invisible bat raised above a large forearm.  I have a story to illustrate.  I am for a second dazed in Sydney’s underground, an old woman with dyed lilac hair sitting on a bench.  I have chosen my skirt carefully to match.  As the train pulls up, I feel the wind rush in from the tunnel to lift my lacquered hair.  Feel the sudden chill on my scalp.  I am toothless, stinking, dirty.  My skin has become the colour of oxidized iron or dried-up blood, a colour that grows naturally on my skin if I do not wash it off.  It claims possession of me.  Unadulterated.

              Au Naturel.

I could have been anybody.  But I was Elizabeth.  In Sydney.  Six years ago. 

***

              Paul had left a candle burning in their bedroom.  Elizabeth noticed it as she moved towards the front door.  It caught and mimicked the late-afternoon shadows forming just outside the window.  It illuminated—just so—a fine layer of ash that covered the new hardwood floors and somewhat prematurely aged the fresh white paint on the walls.

            The day before, the ceiling fan in their bathroom had overheated, caused a minor fire, and then scattered a fine powder of ash around their new house before blowing itself out.  Of course there was much to be grateful for.  The house was still standing.  And the paint in the backroom looked almost untouched.  And of course the furniture had all been covered.  Thank god they had not yet had time to remove the couches from their protective plastic.

            So there was just the small matter of the ash to attend to.  The ash and the wedding.  The ash covered every inch of available surface in the house, though was less obvious in the back rooms.  Like a sort of visible silence, it covered the floors of the front room, the living room, the dining room; it floated onto the kitchen counters, worked itself into the top-most corners and light fixtures to settle finally across the backdoor screen, lending a darker shade to the netting there. 

              So just this ash to see to before the wedding.  Before her mother and father arrived next week.  It was August in Australia, but Elizabeth would wear the dress she had always imagined she would to her wedding, her summer wedding.  She would wear a simple white dress, crocheted, with yellow flowers on the straps.  So simple that some people might not even know she was getting married and would think she was out for the day on a picnic.  The reception hall—a renovated castle—would offset its simplicity.  She could already see the picture album and how the yellow flowers would stand out underneath grey arches.

              But first she needed to see to all of this.  The ash and the silence.  She could do it.  In a week.  She had been in worse situations.  

              And Paul had left her a candle.  Had left her with that stubborn human faith in the power of light to heal.   

              It would be five months since she had known him.  Hardly any time at all, Elizabeth’s rational mind told her, to be getting married.  And yet maybe time enough.  She remembered, even at the beginning, how they had fallen comfortably into being a couple before she realised that she had only known him a week.  It was only when she put it to herself like that that she felt any amount of shock.  Because it didn't feel like she was moving too quickly.  Setting herself up for disappointment.  Everything felt almost frighteningly normal.

              And when they met in late March it had been a sort of falling towards one another.  They had met in a club on George Street.  A club not renowned for its flavour of men; indeed, Elizabeth was not thinking of other men.  She was full of those she had left behind, in Cyprus. 

***

              And yet, there Paul was (“Peull” it was pronounced, with a hard ‘l’, though Elizabeth could only ever pronounce it in its anglicised, biblical form).  He was in front of her now.  Smiling and nodding, his eyebrows raised, his face open and honest.  She couldn’t think of how exactly they had started talking.  Perhaps she had taken a step to the left and bumped into his shoulder.  One of them must have said “Sorry.”

              She must have leaned in first.  Because his mouth was warm and soft.  She sucked at the tanginess of the beer still on his tongue.  His kiss was wide and generous.  He gave to her with his mouth.

              It was something she had missed, this searching within the thick, fragrant nightclub air.  The way the music fell to a low insistent drumming in the ear.  The way the people around her blurred into one another, like a picture of streaming city lights taken from a moving car.  She knew every part of it, from the surface of the painted faces, to the thighs and hips beneath swaying fabric, all the way to the deep hollow that tugged and pulled from somewhere just below her ribcage.  He was moving towards this hollow now—lulled precisely because it is unassuming—moving, as things will, to occupy a void.  And she wanted to push him deeper into it; holding on to the back of his neck, she anchored him to her, felt him lean and fall inward.

              Elizabeth timed the precise moment when the swelling seemed to peak, and stepped back, as if coming up for air.  They looked at one another and laughed, surprised by the intensity of the kiss, embarrassed now.  Paul raised a thumb to his eyebrow.

              Something in her rippled and was smooth for a moment.

              It was then she supposed that she found out his name.  And that he was French.  From the Pyrenees.  He had learned English in Ireland, and the Irish lilt broke out every so often from his thick French accent.  Probably the amount of alcohol caused her to focus on this almost obsessively.

              “But of course!” “Not at all!” “Oui oui oui!”

              Her friends had already left.  Elizabeth was aware enough to know that she was now unsteady on her high heels.  Paul alternately held her hand and wrapped his arm around her shoulder to steady her.  His step was athletic.  He steered her securely towards Hyde Park.

              She pissed behind the bushes.

              They stood in the middle of a concrete pathway, the streetlight full on them.

              Flooding them against the trees.

              His “Hs” were soft.

              As they kissed, she touched his face. Traced the soft lines of his jaw with her finger. Rubbed her thumb against the stubble there. She felt him hard against her stomach. She had to hold onto his waist to keep from falling backwards and sinking into the flood of light.

              His hands were moving over her thighs.  Underneath her skirt, over the lift of her buttocks, pulling at her underwear. As though standing somehow outside of herself, she let him slide his fingers under them, noticed his breathing getting heavier. Then the fingers reached further inward, under her. With a quick breath, she drew away from him abruptly.

              The streetlights faded as the sky lightened.

              She said, “I'm cold,” and he untied his light beige and grey jumper from around his waist. He helped her into it, and Elizabeth allowed herself to be dressed. When she'd put both arms through the soft fabric, she stood before him, limply, and he held both ends together, zipping her up. The sound of the zip propelled Elizabeth back to her childhood, and suddenly she was facing her mother in a bulky winter coat.  The zipper had about it the sound of surrender.

              “There,” he said, and was suddenly fatherly. “Now I'll have to see you again to get it back.”

              Oui oui oui. But of course.

***

              But the next day Elizabeth woke up, and, unable to picture his face, broke into a panic.  A rising nausea grew in her stomach and she recognized this as more than just the signs of alcohol leaving her body.  She rose and looked at herself in the mirror.  Her lips were unusually red.  Wandering back towards the bed, she saw the jumper—she had thrown it on her couch, then on her bed, where it lay sprawled, one arm thrown across the hump in the blankets. She picked it up and smelled it. It had the faint odour of cologne, cigarette smoke, and clinging nightclub air.

              When she met Paul that evening, he was crisp and wide-eyed.  Taller and better looking than she remembered.  He had a straight nose and a pursed, neat mouth. She was relieved when he took out his pack of cigarettes.  They sat awkwardly at first, trying to grow into the intimacy of the night before.  Paul's hand cupped her knee.  It was eager.  Animated.

              He was waiting to meet her on her way back from the bathroom.  The kiss he gave her was forceful and familiar.  She had spilt wine on her jeans, and he smoothed the spot with his hand, as if he could brush it off.  She grabbed it.

              “It's okay. It'll dry.”

              But he kept her hand in his. With her thumb she absently smoothed his large knuckles.

***

              At her house, Paul voluntarily chose to watch Moulin Rouge from the pile of DVDs in her cabinet.

              On the couch they couldn't get comfortable. Every time Elizabeth moved, his elbow jabbed into her. Her lower back twisted to fit alongside his hips. They pretended not to notice. Her arm fell asleep in time to Paul's soft humming.

              It was only getting later. They would have to go to bed at some point—Paul lived too far away to go home now. They had only managed to finish half a glass of wine each.

              Elizabeth stared at Paul's feet in white sport socks, criss-crossed under her own. She propped herself up on her elbow. The blood rushed forward in relief.

              Paul carefully prepared for bed. He spent a long time in the bathroom. When he came out he hopped neatly over her and lay next to the wall. They kissed for a little while, the hollow receding to a damp pull within them. Elizabeth knew it had to be over quickly—this intimacy sat like an awkward child swinging its legs on a bench. 

              He was no longer polite. The force of his thrusting left her dry and bewildered.

              He took off the condom with an irritated snap.

              was nice to have someone to sleep next to.

***

              In the morning she woke before he did.  He came outside to join her later.  He seemed to have settled into her house during the night, the walls and shadows growing comfortably around him.  He sat on the wooden chair next to her, blowing on his tea.  He pointed to two birds huddled together on the stone wall.

              “Look at them. They are like an old married couple. Look. He's kissing her.”

              Elizabeth thought that it is always bizarre to see the way affection is manifested in the animal kingdom. Surely, birds can't kiss. They cannot process an emotion so highly evolved as endearment, or the growing into of one another's habits, the resigned acceptance of what cannot be changed.  And yet there they were.  Their faces touching.  The smaller one's shoulder tucked securely beneath the other's wing.  They bowed their heads together.

              Inside Elizabeth, something rippled. She thought, “There is no loneliness like theirs.”

              Funny how we assume the larger bird is the male, though with birds it is mostly the opposite. 

***

              In the early days, Elizabeth felt that she had been hit over the head with normality, and it felt wonderfully strange.  There were no deep, dark layers to Paul.  Everything about him could be read at a glance in the open spread of his features, in the absence of lines around his mouth, in the way his ears stuck out eagerly.  There was no hidden turmoil, no tortured soul waiting to be unearthed.  He walked her to her bus stop. Bought her chocolate milk (remembered to get soy) in the morning.

***

              They were sitting in a café on Oxford Street . Paul's right side sloped in his chair, aligned with the angle of the uneven sidewalk.

              “So you never introduced me to your friends.”

              It was true.  Paul was her secret.  Her hurried breath at night.  He broke himself on her during those nights, but always seemed to steady himself in the morning.  Ready to meet a new, firm day.

              Paul anchored himself to Elizabeth .  He planned vacations for them.  No deep, dark layers to get in the way.  No hollows.  Simply wide-open spaces where she was welcome to come and sit for a while.

              And then they were headed for the Blue Mountains.

***

              Elizabeth was surprised to find that the Blue Mountains, like all places that relied on tourism, had given up a large portion of themselves and surrendered to the dead tackiness of that industry.  And yet such an attitude seemed incongruous with what they were.  The splendour of nature rose from out of stagnancy and knick-knacks. The place seemed to represent the end chapter of life, when time is truly measured by how fast a mountain grows.  The smell of burning wood met Paul and Elizabeth at their hotel room. Velvet flowered wallpaper surrounded ornate mirrors.  The stairs seemed to rest on aging air heavy all around them.

              Their room was flowered as well; the frills on the bedspread and curtains moved to crowd all the available space in the room. Paul and Elizabeth tried to fit in to a space that seemed suddenly too small.

              They left quickly.

              It was a short walk to Echo Point.  Paul held Elizabeth’s hand, and they looked like all the other couples.  In the picture, she is alone, staring painfully into a low sun, the Three Sisters standing like disapproving aunts in the background.  The wind was powerful and insistent; it never let Elizabeth stand comfortably in any one place.  She put her arms around Paul and put her forehead against his chest to escape it.  Felt the carpet of hair push against his T-shirt.

              Back at the hotel Elizabeth’s cheeks were red from wine and fire.  The cushions were soft, and they sloped towards one another.  They kissed between sips.

              There was a jacuzzi in the far room.  The windows steamed on the outside. Elizabeth changed into her bikini, then darted through the poolroom where some old men had gathered. She was a flash of skin.

              When Elizabeth stepped into the jacuzzi, the hot water brought sudden goose bumps to her skin.  The heat pulled at her abdomen.  Paul jumped into the swimming pool first, then came to join her.  They faced each other, legs floating, joining in the middle.  A silence fell between them and contained itself within the low hum of the jets.

              Elizabeth spoke, and her voice popped the silence sitting around them like a bubble.

              “So do you want to see other people?”

              “What?” (A soft “t.” An Irish “t”).

              In answer, Elizabeth pressed her foot against one of the lower jets, flexing her leg against its force.

              The silence had given Paul time to hear what she had said.  He looked at her as though humouring a child.  

              “No.”  Not at all!  “Where did all this come from?”

              “Haven't you thought about it?”

              “No.” He smiled. “I'm just floating.”

              “I know but, I just want—I guess—I just want you to be there—”

              Elizabeth stopped talking as Paul moved forward. It was easy, through water, to pull her closer.

              “I'm here.”

              “Okay then.”

              They kissed, and Elizabeth liked the way his body felt in the water. She thought that it is hard not to be happy in water. She took off her bikini top, feeling the light tickle of bubbles against her breasts.

              Soon he was tugging at the bottoms.

              “Take them off.”

              Elizabeth laughed. “No. What if someone sees?”

              “Then we'll give them something to look at.”

              Wet skin slid against wet skin. He was slower in the water. It felt better. Elizabeth closed her eyes and leaned back against the tiles. She could hear the soft tapping of the water against her back.

***

           The next morning, Paul woke up Elizabeth, excited.  He wanted to go bushwalking.  Elizabeth opened her eyes to the confusion of frills.  She looked up at Paul.  His excitement was pushing the sleep out of his eyes.  The skin around them had taken on a burgundy hue.  He was close above her, unembarrassed by the morning, unembarrassed by the skin on his cheeks that had formed itself into two red points overnight.  Elizabeth moved her hands to her abdomen.  It was sticky from the night before.

            “C’mon, sleepyhead,” he said, pushing her.  “Let’s get out of here.”  His “h’s” were soft.

            She was careful to lock the bathroom door behind her.  In the shower, there was not much pressure, but she felt the image of him above her fade as the water fell across her skin.

            When she came out, Paul was fully dressed, lying on the bed with his feet crossed.  He was watching the small TV in the overhead corner.  She had dressed in the bathroom.  Now she stood self-consciously by the mirror, fixing her hair.  It somehow felt as if they hadn’t earned this intimacy—that the stage within the relationship where you dress easy in front of one another, pull on tight jeans while holding your lover’s gaze—was not yet theirs. 

              She sat heavily on the bed and Paul adjusted himself to her weight.  Stopped himself from rolling towards her.  Then he sat up and put a hand on her back.  Its heat gently spread into the wing of her shoulder blade.

              They were lucky in the weather.  It was a short walk to Echo Point.  Elizabeth thought she might be too dressed up for a bushwalk—with oversized dark sunglasses, a short white jacket with faux fur collar, and brown suede boots.  Paul had not changed his jeans from the day before and wore his tan thermo-lined raincoat in case the weather turned. 

              When they got to Echo Point, it seemed like a different place to what it had been the day before.  The wind, which had been forceful, had calmed to lightness.  The sun was gentle as well.  Elizabeth waited as Paul walked the large semi-circle, looking at signs.  He had gotten it into his head that he wanted to take the bush trek from there to Scenic World.  Elizabeth looked at the shuttle bus headed towards them. “What about that?” she said to him as he approached.

              “What, the shuttle bus?”  Then he saw her face, and laughed.  “No, not today.  Today we are Bush Walking!”   

              Once they had walked down the stairs, Paul paused for a moment on the soft patch of dirt that began the trail.  He was busy, impatient, determined they should be organized.  He reminded Elizabeth of a host on a travel show.  His body primed itself for adventure.  His small neat mouthed pursed as he looked her up and down, seeming to notice what she was wearing for the first time.  “Here, let me take your jacket.  You’ll be too hot in a bit.”  Elizabeth handed him her jacket and he busied himself clipping both of their jackets to the sides of his backpack.  He took the water bottles she was holding and put those in the backpack too.  “Do you have anything else?”

              “No.  I think that’s it.”  Elizabeth smiled.  She was enjoying being fussed over.  She could picture Paul on the mountains of Sweden, in the snow.  Hiking.  Skiing.  She looked at him and suddenly wanted to take off around the world with him.  She felt she could even sleep in a tent.  Rough it.  She suddenly saw him as the traveller he was, before Sydney, before his job at the restaurant.  This Paul she could not see settling any time soon.

              He adjusted her own smaller backpack and tightened the straps.  She felt the pull on her shoulders and the welcome stretch in her spine.  Then he looked at her once more as though to check if he had missed anything.

              “Are you going to be alright in those?”  He pointed to her boots.  “Here, let me see.”  He bent down quickly and lifted her ankle to see the sole underneath.  Elizabeth, caught off balance, screamed and laughed and grabbed onto his belt.  They both peered over at the sole.  Though flat, it was smooth and shiny, with no grips. 

              “It’ll be okay.”  He put her foot down.  “You can just hold on to me for the steep parts.”  She was still holding on to his belt.  She was suddenly excited as well, as though they were setting off on a long journey.  She pulled on his belt to bring him forward, kissed him. 

              The sign said that it was four hours to the ruined castle. 

***

              Paul was on fire.  As they walked he spoke about the places he had been to— Thailand, the ski slopes of New Zealand, the forests around his home in the Pyrenees.  It was as though the slopes of the mountains, the hard dirt underfoot, had stretched something within him—he sprung forward with a tautness kept even more firm by the tension in Elizabeth’s slower pace.  He moved his hands as he walked, swiping at flies and stray branches, and spoke towards the pathway ahead.  Every now and then he turned back to see if Elizabeth was keeping up.  He had become bird-like—the restlessness within him manifesting in sharp quick movements barely contained by the narrow path.  It seemed as if he would find no release.

              They continued in this way for a while.  Then Paul spoke less.  After a while, she could hear the relative silence around them gather its own distinctive pace, interrupted only by the occasional erratic scream from a bird.  They stopped sometimes for Paul to get a close-up of a cockatoo.  He didn’t try to take any more pictures of the two of them.  Elizabeth kept her eyes on the back of his legs.  On the sure swinging of his knees.  She mostly listened to the companionable tramping of their feet.

            But she was growing tired.  Even Paul seemed to have spent most of the energy he had had during the first part of their walk, and he became patient, holding his hand out for her frequently.

            The path was getting more difficult to follow.  Elizabeth’s thighs started to ache from climbing over rocks that stood in her way.  Paul seemed to be slowing down as well.  Then they emerged from the cover of trees into a sunlight bright and welcoming.  Rocks were scattered across a clearing.  Elizabeth sat down heavily and Paul got comfortable on a rock just behind and above her.  He pulled out the sandwiches they had brought.  As they ate, people occasionally passed them, on their way to the ruined castle.  It stood directly across from them on the other side of the mountain.  The forest floor spread out below them and sloped upwards—from this vantage point, the trees seemed to be holding up the small grey stone structure.  The path continued to the right of them—it wrapped itself around the side of the mountain and disappeared into darkened bushes.  The whole of the mountain to their right was in shadow. 

              Bees swarmed around the remnants of their lunch—the paper from Elizabeth’s sandwich hung limply to the side under the weight of mayonnaise and smeared tomato seeds. 

              They grew lazy with the sun and the food.  Standing up, Elizabeth felt fresh protest from her aching legs.  Paul saw it in her glance.  They would be going no further.

                They abandoned the idea of reaching the castle.

***

              I have been thinking late of Paul.  He is like something that should have happened but did not.  He is something left unfinished—not terribly important—more like an errand that you have left off completing until tomorrow.  And yet the feeling stays with you; nags, pricks at your brain, makes your heart jump that much faster in little anxious, probing beats.  It’s hardly enough for you to outright worry about—you were together, now you are not.  You wish him well.  But there are the nights when you wonder what you could have done differently.  What could you have said across a wooden table at an over-priced Greek restaurant that would somehow soften the hard insistence of the wind coming off of the mountains, what could you have done to warm you both during the dark walk home?

***

            Afterwards, Elizabeth would always think back and find that the blame lay with the bees.  Or the sunlight.  Or the heavy mayonnaise spreading eternal apathy across her soggy bones.  When she thought of it at all, she came invariably back to this place.  To her decision to turn back.  To the consequent dejected slope in Paul’s shoulders.  She had felt it then.  Paul’s irritation.  A new thing to her.  Keeping pace with the rising heat.  His insistent buzzing. 

***

            Of course, it is absurd to think that this was the reason why he left.  True, that the Blue Mountains became the beginning of his leaving.  After that he took his time, leaving in shades over the next five years.  What I didn’t know was that there would come a time when Paul would sit me down at a nondescript café and tell me he was going to reject his boss’s contract for permanent residency.  I did not know that my features would remain unchanged except for a rational blinking.  That I would think of a ruined castle.  And how I had known him for five years.  Five years of March-shaped hollows filled in.   

***

              In Sydney, alone, I feel my perception sharpen.  It isn’t only that I have begun to see the world differently—the things—the outward shape of things—have changed.  It’s the angles, I’ve realised—the change lay all in the angles.  Buildings stretch quite differently.  The dim light in train stations blurs the corners of advertisement billboard posters—I can feel the ticket machines sloping towards me.  Objects have became softer—blurred, so that even brick walls lean into me.            

***

            In this way I walk through Sydney.  A watcher.  A schoolgirl playfully pushes her boyfriend beyond the yellow line at Central.  He punches her back.  I don’t know if he meant to hit her that hard.  But it means that now his apologies can rush to mix in with the wind hurrying through the tunnel.  Now he can wrap his arm playfully around her shoulders. 

            But only I can see the longing that tightens his veins.

Amy Prodromou’s fiction has been published in some small magazines, such as Cadences: A Literary Journal of the Arts in Cyprus, EAPSU: An Online Journal of Critical and Creative Writing, and most recently in R-KV-R-Y Quarterly Literary Journal.  She is currently a Ph.D. student at Lancaster University and completing a novel.