By Roderick Heath
The fifth and last in an exclusive excerpt series from Claudia, the author’s as-of-yet unpublished fifth novel.
Claudia left him with a smile pitched carefully to linger. She approached Rémy who was in temporary, appreciated solitude. He saw Claudia and straightened, a redeemed light rising to fatigued eyes. They stood momentarily jangling and puppet-like before closing so he could lightly wrap hands around her shoulders and she laid a solitary soft kiss on his hard-boned cheek.
“Hello Claudia, I’m very glad you made it,” Rémy Larquey murmured as she parted; he still held her shoulders, looking her up and down. “You’re looking better than ever. Except in the eyes. You look a bit tired.”
“I don’t feel tired. Maybe a dash of ennui. You look well.”
“No I don’t. I’m yellow skin and bone, like Miss Havisham.”
“No, really, you look much better than last time.”
“I am eating these days,” Rémy granted, and smiled. It was an unfamiliar shape for his face, especially this evening, and the strain showed. “You don’t look to be eating at all, you’re thinner than ever. I bet you go days without food trying to keep that ridiculous modern damn scarecrow look.”
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“I’m made this way. Just like you.”
“Come on, let’s go talk someplace private, quiet. I’m dying for a cigarette anyway.”
Rémy placed an arm on Claudia’s bare back and escorted her across the gallery floor, past the quartet, and through sliding glass doors out onto the terrace of the café. Garden Island sat dark and steel-wreathed, apartment blocks rose in hives of light, the harbour writhed and glittered. Rémy leaned on the railing, removed from his jacket’s inside pocket a cigarette case in plain silver metal. He removed two cigarettes, gave one to Claudia and lit them both with a Zippo.
“Like this?” Rémy brandished the case.
“Beautiful. Very old-school classy.”
“Tania’s gift from last Christmas,” Rémy clucked dry-throated. “Said she was sick of seeing me carrying my crumpled up Gauloises packets getting my jacket pockets filled with tobacco scraps. This is the first time I’ve had a good reason to use it.”
“Now that you mention her, where is Tania?”
“Showing herself off. I am glad you came.”
“Why, Rémy? That’s what I’m wondering.”
Rémy shrank under her unblinking gaze.
“I wanted you here. I wanted you close to this. So both of us can say, there, we shared some fine moments.”
Claudia’s gaze wilted.
“Well thanks, Rémy,” she gave, knowing the feeling that welled in her now had to be suppressed, quickly.
“I’m not turning into a sentimental old bastard, Claudia,” Rémy returned. ” know you haven’t had everything you should have – ”
“Stop, Rémy, please,” Claudia held a hand up for emphasis, her green irises frigidly commanding. “I didn’t ask for anything. I don’t. And if you start trying to give me things you’ll only start infuriating the rest of them who think they’re so deserving. I’m I’m not bitter, Rémy, and I’m also not greedy and I’m not stupid. Let Tania and the rest have what they have and give me you, Rémy, all I want is you.”
She could see every blood vessel in Rémy’s flesh was quivering like trails of ants on tree limbs, his body and mind were so long used to pacifying drivel that her words were registered by his nerves as an assault.
“I always thought you had character, Claudia, I see you’ve got a lot, more than maybe anyone I know. But you know my problem? It’s my self that’s hard to give. Apart from the fact I’ve always . . . been a fucking egoist, let’s face it, I ah . . . well I’m owned by too many people these days. I mean look at this, this circus. This isn’t art, merde, this isn’t even success, this is . . . ”
“Mummification.”
“I want it very badly.” His smile was cracks in plaster. “It’s safety, I need safety. You don’t, I know. That worries me. I see you in for worse things than your mother. Or your father, for that matter.”
“I can look after myself. I’ve proven it. Don’t worry about me that way. Keep your worries home.”
Rémy Larquey’s face went mask-like. There was no reason Claudia should know about worries he might have at home, her sphere and his scarcely overlapped and this reeked of some knowledge of his life. Certain warnings he had received about Claudia seemed to have credence.
“What in my home needs worrying over?”
“Nothing,” Claudia shook her head, stubbing her cigarette out on the railing and flicking it precisely into a nearby rubbish bin. “I just mean, you know, I’m used to living outside the walls of the castle.”
I’ll give her that, Rémy thought; nothing has a chance to go septic with her, though her tongue stings. She’s hinting something, she wants to defend me, but does not know how, does not even know if it’s worth it. He knew he ought to press on and find out just what she meant, but even contemplating this robbed his energy, and he began to sink in sallow-eyed despondency. He fixated on the eastern sky where an incandescent scar lit across the dark, overture of a coming storm.
“Are you okay, Rémy?’ she asked, placing a hand to his thin, scarred cheek. He admired her eyes iridescent. He lifted his left hand and held hers in place; ‘ Just leave your hand there, it feels just right. It should have always been there.”
“I wish it could be.”
Rémy nodded slightly: “Here comes Tania.”
He and Claudia stood to attention as Tania Larquey approached in a saunter of swinging blue silk, a trail of followers behind her in skinny similarity. Tania, dressed and made up with expense and taste, wore an electric blue dress contoured exactly to her body with bobbing ruffles around her knees. She was twenty and walked with preternatural confidence, there were remnants of adolescent athleticism still in her frame – she had been a gymnast until she turned seventeen and let it slip her last year of school. She was very thin and wavering on pendulous legs. Tania had large impressive eyes that displayed the familial Larquey intensity, that sorrow and strength isolated as crystalline orbs, sea-green. Pure-grain loathing had usually inhabited Tania’s eyes when studying Claudia in the past, but recently they were more quizzical, searching, open perhaps even to some sudden, unexpected turn of events, as if she did not trust Claudia but expected her to bring interesting times in her wake.
“Hello Dad,” Tania offered first to her father, kissing his brow, and then turned to Claudia with a pleasantly serious smile. The pair swapped greetings and pecks on the cheek.
“Dad, this is the most boring fucking thing I’ve ever been too,” Tania guffawed with unexpected warmth.
“That seems the general impression.”
“Oh! Oh! I did just see something great. Alec Wakefield, the poet, he was being interviewed by that ABC lady, what’s her name, Fenella, something awful like that. Anyway she said to him, ‘Mr Wakefield, last week Sam Gillis said your work is insufficiently socially engaged. Do you have any response to this?’ And Wakefield, he scratched the back of his neck and said, ‘Well, I’ll look out to see if Mr Gillis’s next book is as socially engaged and godawful as his last four or five.’ I swear I almost died. Maybe he’s drunk but I’ll still love him forever.”
“I met him, he didn’t strike me as drunk,” Claudia injected.
“Well, he’s cute enough. Bloody genius and a total loser. Anyway, nice to see you here Claudia.”
“You look ravishing, Tania.”
“I should, you know, I spent too much money. But it’s a business investment. I’m here to get my photo taken so I can fill half a page of the Sun-Herald. You look great too, Claude. Shit I’m frustrated. I want action. Let’s steal a Monet or go strip in the renaissance gallery or something.”
Tania stamped a foot in comedy on the tiles, then leaned on the railing besides Claudia. They began conversing, slightly awkward but amicable. Rémy was enjoying listening to the two girls, and also studying them together, comparing their similarities and subtle diversions. For instance, that Tania had the slightly wider, patrician jaw of her mother. She had lighter hair, a coppery shade, without the subterranean stain of red in Claudia’s, had a slightly less fine nose than Claudia’s almost classical beauty but also had more animation than Claudia who kept her features rigid and almost unreadable. Rémy Larquey recognised he had the privilege of having fathered two supremely beautiful women and his heart was being cleaved by the knowledge they were created unequal. And a more selfish tint, too, because each represented memories of two fine women, who were both no longer alive, and one of those women, indeed the one he treated least well, had remained the finest memory.
Of course neither of the girls knew about those moments or could understand them, and for both of them, certainly for Claudia, those times had a double-edged savour. Rémy also knew the selfish aspect in his anger over her rejecting his persistent offers to bring her in some way into his legacy. She was right, she both deserved more and was likely to get less and so wanted nothing. There was, in so much she did, the unmistakeable mark of her mother, so independent in herself to border on arrogance, so proud to verge on disdain, pushing away even as she pulled you near, detesting you even as she avowed her love. Claudia’s mother had also been a supremely charitable woman, too, and Rémy could not see this in Claudia. Claudia, angrily self-supporting, seemed distrustful of the notion of charity. Rémy turned from the harbour view and saw now his wife Helena was striding purposefully his way accompanied by the gallery director, pushing out through the glass doors onto the terrace, and he knew his moment of self-indulgence was at an end.
“Rémy, come on, we’ve got work to do!” Helena announced with forced gaiety.
“Yes, coming,” Rémy nodded, he turned and spoke to Tania and Claudia: “C’mon girls.”
Tania and Claudia fell in behind Rémy as he walked inside. Claudia managed to be left behind before they reached the podium where the official events were taking place. As they came in the string quartet had been giving a special performance and most attention was focused on them. This night was meant to be a combined showcase for many young talents whilst celebrating an older one. Claudia watched Rémy and Helena took their places by the gallery director’s side, Tania hovering on the edge. Claudia studied Tania had felt no special envy to be at that spot. She then had her attention claimed by Blanca Van Gent, another poet she knew, reading words that riddled Claudia with the worst kind of envy. Claudia had spent many hours confronting blank pieces of paper and seeing nothing grow on them except proofs of her own mediocrity.
Alec Wakefield rose to give his piece next. He did not strike her as drunk, in fact he displayed a careful, hungry intelligence, a gravity that had been entirely absent when they talked before. Now he was focused on his performance. He had an actor’s ability that put across all the finer inferences and rhythms in his work, which was complex and deceptively casual, until certain words and turns of phrase twisted a knife-blade in coup-de-grace. Claudia found herself suddenly crying, some open wound he cleaned with surgical exactness, because he had, in one line, captured a certain cold, purposeful, male voice, familiar to her from those moments when you learned the limitations of a lover’s love for you. Women throughout the room gave similar small sounds of pain and anger. A few hissed, so exactly had he caught that tone that they responded with instinctive defence. Claudia felt it sink right through her chest, steely and inarguable. Alec continued after a moment’s private smile, his and the poem’s attitude only, “Some things are, and I shall say them as they are.”
A few lines later, Alec’s eyes locked upon her with recognition and a few slow seconds’ regard, as if he was reading the words off her face. He made her, briefly, the heroine. When he was done the applause was very strong, they had all responded to the dramatic tug and heave of his words and appreciated it greatly, especially those it had hurt, for he had managed that rarest of things especially in this hermetic atmosphere, to make them feel something, even as they were dissuaded from absolute trust by the allusive twists of his imagery. There was something he refused to put on the table. Alec quickly abandoned the podium amidst the applause, head declined. He seemed almost to be fleeing. He had commanded the whole space with his reading, but now this was swift retreat, before the big nothing at the end. Next came a speech by the Arts Minister that was miraculous in its combination of pallid wit and faked intelligence.
Claudia’s gaze lingered after Alec who had retreated to a corner, leaning against a pillar, then she checked her watch. It was past nine. Rémy would soon stand and say something suitably valedictory, before the exhibition would open and serious drinking could begin. Claudia wanted to leave, there was nothing else to be done that could not be done better elsewhere. She could find a pub or a dance floor and burn off all traces of her surface self, and become a force, respecting of no rules. It was a flagrant, scorching mood she knew well, it had driven her to the angriest, most dangerous acts, like once when she had sold herself like the corner girls to motor trade, been driven to a night’s fetid, frigid fucking in Tempe by a boyish civil servant. Nothing was so precious to her then as the twin sensations of degradation and alien anonymity. Claudia became no more at such moments, she was a hole, craving that precise friction that shot electric waters through her flesh, and then she could rise, that renewed woman, and she swam with such heat, her eyes must burn through the dark, like Blake’s Tyger. Or was it Medea. A tigress call me.
Claudia turned and cut a path through the listeners. As she neared the exit, Alec Wakefield’s hand on her shoulder stalled her. He had hurried to catch her, his mouth lurched in breathlessness.
“Hey, what’s your name?” he gaped. “I’m sorry, I almost missed you. I think I stepped over an old lady.”
Claudia gave her name, amused by the tremor she could detect in her voice, the parched spot at the top of her throat.
“Listen,” Alec was breathing hard, his breath had the scent of a body subtly starved. “I would kick myself for the next six months if I didn’t ask you out. So, can I see you sometime?”
Claudia rediscovered her command for the first time this night, and it dictated she take the lead from here on, partly from pride – and what man should be keeping her on her toes? – and also for self-preservation – the faster she moved him, the more breathless, and the less argumentative he would stay. This could only last so long, however. Here was an intelligent and perceptive man who sooner or later would see through everything.
“How about now?” she asked, setting her face in polite, challenging boredom.
“Right now I can’t,” Alec bowed his head slightly. “I have to do some more Vaseline bits here. I can meet you around ten, maybe.”
“Do you know the Hades over in the ‘Cross?”
“Dance club, right? Up Oxford Street.”
“My favourite DJ’s playing there tonight, starting around ten, so it would be perfect if you could meet me there.”
“You know we poets aren’t much noted for our dancing.”
“Some other night perhaps, then. Tonight I want to rage a little.”
“I didn’t say I couldn’t dance,” Alec grinned. “I just had more in mind a cup of coffee, something like that. But if you wanna rage, let’s rage.”
Claudia nodded once, stood without expression for several seconds, and then said in cool metre: “Mr Wakefield, there’s just something I want to say, just so there’s absolutely no possibility of misunderstanding later.”
Alec shrugged. “What, are you gay? Sorry I can’t tell these things just by looking.”
Claudia ignored his humour and stated carefully: “Alec, I work as a prostitute. I’ve done it for five years and I have no intention of stopping right at the moment. This actually has nothing to do with you but it’s my rule about being scrupulously honest with anyone I have more than casual contact with. So if you still want to come, I’ll be happy to see you, if not, I can handle it.”
“Is that supposed to scare me off?”
“No, it’s just to prevent our wasting time and energy.”
“I guess I should take it as a compliment,” he smiled stiffly. “You think I’m worth knowing, to make sure I know you.”
Claudia pointed to the ’10’ on her watch, a gold-cased trinket of value, then turned and walked on, heels clapping as she walked the short hall towards the stairs. She could feel Alec’s eyes on her back. Her ears were filled only with a protesting wail of fear, wondering why she had just made a fool of herself. Was it some desire to humiliate him, or herself? Both? Perhaps that was her secret attitude of herself and anyone who might love her, as only worthy of contempt. And his response, cool, questioning. No, he was not easy to throw. She had long known she wore her outsider status like a jailhouse tattoo, but something new had provoked her now. Too many ghosts had just waved their rag-and-bone scriptures in her face.
*
Claudia is still in need of a publisher. The author, Roderick Heath, can be contacted at wahe@optusnet.com.au. Non-publisher reader feedback welcome too.
*
The first four installments:
Monday: She had come to enjoy, amidst the scattered pleasures of that line of work, the arts of dressing and painting herself for a rendezvous.
Tuesday: A modern woman in the oldest profession. Fifteen hours, four thousand dollars.
Wednesday: A note of panic struck in her head as she realized if the photo appeared in a newspaper or any such place, her careful veneer of anonymity, vital to her job, would be endangered.
Thursday: Claudia sat at her kitchen table and sobbed as she felt all the muscles in her body grinding like gears on each other. Then came lucid emptiness, and it all seemed small, another of those daily absurdities life seemed to keep in store for her. Claudia dressed shortly after, donning her best, blackest dress.
Posted on March 30, 2007