Read Online The Children's Bach by Helen Garner - Free Book Online

could . . .
    In the street there was a dusty summer wind, a morning not quite hot enough. If they walked shoulder to shoulder, if they sat side by side, it was in order to become the world’s audience instead of being obliged to perform their personalities for each other. They bought tickets, they travelled. Their mutual curiosity was intense, but oblique. They watched one another witnessing the world: how two fat businessmen examined as merchandise the girl who pouted and pretended to read the paper in the cafe window with her skirt up round her thighs; how the waitress in Myer’s mural hall crossed the vast room with both arms high above her head and a dirty tablecloth hanging from each hand; the hippy boy on the tram who bought a ticket to St Kilda and announced to the other passengers, ‘I must go to the sea. To the ocean’; the girl whose lips moved as she read a book called Tortured for Christ . The world divided itself for them, presented itself in a series of small theatrical events. ‘Now,’ said a woman to a man at the bus-stop, ‘I’ll tell you the whole story. See the thing was that . . .’
    What was the thing? They pointed out these eventlets to each other. They did not discuss or pass judgment, but defined themselves against the attitudes revealed by the unwitting characters in these dramas. They wanted to know each other less than they wanted to agree. Harmony! To be each other. They examined clothes in shop windows.
    â€˜You could wear that jacket,’ said Philip.
    â€˜I’m afraid of looking like a small man,’ said Athena.
    â€˜I’m afraid of looking like an ugly woman.’
    The waiter had a face like an unchipped statue. He served them in a way Philip provoked in many waiters: with delicate sideways movements he swooped the cups on to the table, and shone into Philip’s eyes a smile of tender regard.
    â€˜Where does the other boy go all day?’ said Philip.
    Athena had to make an effort. People seemed to feel a duty to question her about this. ‘To a centre. They come for him every morning in a taxi. But only during the term. He’s with us all summer. Dexter and Vicki have taken him to the pool today.’ Was that enough?
    â€˜Do you work, or anything? Not that I –’
    â€˜I used to. I used to –’
    Two girls pushed aside the fly curtain and clacked into the cafe. They wore ear-rings like tombstones and blackish lipstick that made them look as if they had been sucking blood. Their legs were fleshless.
    â€˜Look,’ said Athena. ‘Look at those two. I bet they are the kind of girls you like.’
    One of them stopped and leaned over the table.
    â€˜Hi, Philip!’ she said, with her shoulder across Athena’s face. ‘Remember me?’
    Her spiky hair gleamed with gel; her eyes were dots. Philip ducked his head and turned up his wrinkling smile to her, and she passed on, satisfied. She and her friend arranged themselves at the next table, well within Philip’s eye-line. To Athena they looked very young, and rapacious.
    â€˜Sorry I couldn’t introduce you,’ said Philip. ‘I’ve forgotten . . .’
    â€˜Are you famous?’ said Athena. She laughed.
    Philip’s afternoon lurched in its tracks, and righted itself. ‘Better ask Elizabeth that,’ he said.
    *
    Poppy vacuumed the living room carpet and stacked the newspapers under the sink. When Elizabeth came they would go into Campion and buy her school textbooks secondhand. Poppy could not understand the mentality of kids who underlined their books and wrote stupid comments in biro: she longed for brandnew books, their glossy modern pages and luscious smell, but there was no point in going on about it. Even her uniform was secondhand. At the end of last term, Philip took her to the new school, Clever Girls’ High as he insisted on calling it, even out loud on the tram, and they