Read Online All That I Am by Anna Funder - Free Book Online Page A

old as the inmates. I think she goes there to ‘halp’ them so as to create a more definite distinction between her and them. She also goes to the Red Cross, partly because she wishes to be as good-hearted as she can muster, and partly, I believe, for the talismanic properties of ‘halping’. ‘There’s always someone more unfortunate than you,’ she likes to say, and she wishes to keep it that way. Bev brings me stories from both places and elsewhere, usually of cancers and deaths. Her expressions of sympathy involve ghoulish detail: the prostate ‘big as a rockmelon’, the hole in the throat where you ‘put the voice box straight in–so practical’ . She prefers the death of someone she knows, or once knew, or at least someone who knew someone she knew. The closer the death is to her, the more it is a sign of a cosmic reprieve: she has been passed over. ‘There but for the grace of God,’ she says with a small shiver, and feels blessed.
    Is to be passed over the same as being blessed? I do not feel blessed.
    But today it is not illness, it is her neighbours in the council unit next to hers.
    ‘Those people next door,’ Bev says, ‘you wouldn’t believe it. It’s still goin on.’
    Are they Portuguese? Pacific Islander? I can’t remember, but am still lucid enough to know I ought to remember, that this conversation has probably been going on for some weeks in instalments between us, and that she would break from me, internally, if I asked. I realise suddenly that I don’t want her to break from me, that I, Ruth Becker/Wesemann/Becker, with my thousands of lost photographs and my ostensible bravery, now have a need for company that surmounts both principle and distaste.
    ‘ Those people,’ Bev is saying, ‘they put all their rubbish out in the lane on a Tuesday. They know the collection is not till Thursday. It’s disgusting . I’ve told er!’
    Her bad eye is now uncontrollable. To be able to summon up righteous anger at will is, I think, a psychological skill more cathartic than meditation, or breathing into a paper bag. It is also quite entertaining to watch.
    Bev sniffs the air and her bosom expands like a pigeon’s. ‘She knows I’m watchin er too. From my winda.’ She collects a couch cushion. ‘So do you know what she does?’
    I say nothing; nothing from me is required.
    ‘She sends one of them children out with the bin.’ Bev punches the cushion. ‘ Disgusting . Won’t dare do it herself now.’ She throws the cushion back and spies the half-eaten packet of biscuits on the table. I am suddenly aware of the spray of crumbs on my jumper–I am probably disgusting too. I check my teeth with my tongue for mashed Scotch Finger. But Bev goes on, ‘ So many children. I think there are five . Disgusting . Like rabbits.’
    So they’re Catholic. Portuguese then? Still, I don’t think I’ll risk it. Last week we nearly parted ways over Bev’s conviction that Aboriginals are born liars.
    It strikes me that Bev must be lonely too, which might be why she rings the council to complain about her neighbour’s rubbish. They haven’t yet computerised the service and she gets some poor person on the other end whose every conversation is recorded as a guard against irascibility and other human responses. For Bev, it is as good as a friend.
    ‘You stayin here?’ she asks.
    I nod.
    ‘I’ll start out the back then.’
    She plods down the corridor to the laundry. Her bustling and banging out there gives me an odd reassurance. I am strongly enough in the present that I can go back.
    I could still find my way around the villa I grew up in with my eyes closed, if I needed to. I could slide my way down the four flights of the banister, I could trail my feet in socks over the parquetry, opening the double doors from room to room. I remember each of the eighteenth-century enamels–landscapes of the seasons–set into the magnificently tiled, floor-to-ceiling heaters. Ours was the grandest house in