90 ELLE AUSTRALIA
ELLE
FICTIONinto his kitchen to prepare warm
cocoa for them both. In the distance,
as he moved between his shelves and his stove, he could
hearher tinkling, and the whirr of his toilet roll on the
holder.All the sweetness he’d felt for her came rushing
back, Ĵ
withgreat gentleness.
“What’s your name?” she suddenly shouted from behind
the bathroom door.
“Gerard,” he said, hoping it was a good name.
“Some loony’s been mucking around with your toilet
roll,” she shouted.
“I’m sorry,” he said, startled. He sank back into the kitchen.
“Have you got anything else?” she called. “Any other rolls?”
“They’re all like that,” he said.
Then he remembered the pile of recently dried tissues
inhis bedroom. They were wrinkled, he now saw with
alarm, ĚĴ
thebathroom door. He knocked, placed the tissues into
herdelicate hand and tactfully withdrew and sat on his
bed.He heard a snort of laughter from the bathroom, but
hetried not to listen. Suddenly, in the familiarity of his
room,with his foot bent against the old wardrobe from
hischildhood, he seemed to be no longer alone. Beside him
ina pool of grey light, he saw a being, transparent but
denting Ĵǰ ǰ
elegantnew clothes, with Gerard’s hair falling no longer
lankily onto Gerard’s forehead, but stylishly. Before his very
eyes, the ghostly Gerard got up, assured and poised, and
walked into a bar, the very bar Gerard had been in this
ǰ ¢ ęǰ
humble, unremarkable but respectable. In that moment,
Gerard felt a rush of joy. He believed that one day he could
bethat man, if the world was kind.
Right now, with Beate, the world had become bewildering.
When he heard the shower tap turning on, Gerard felt bereft,
more bereft than he’d ever been in his life. He saw with new
eyes, as if through the bathroom wall, the bath soap Beate
would be using right now. Last week he’d boiled down old
bits of leftover soap to make new cakes, except that they
hadn’t come out as cakes but as clumps. Then he remembered
that yesterday he’d almost run out of shampoo, so to get the
Ĵǰ ’ ę
readyfor his next hair washing. He was sure that she was
laughing at him as she showered. He tried instead to
concentrate on an image of her emerging pink and damp and
rosy and approving, wrapped up like a Christmas present in
his towel, but it didn’t work. So he set the light low and got
into his pyjamas. He was glad to remove his shoes before she
came into the room, because he’d been making his shoelaces
last by not using them. (Lately he’d thought that he should
Ĵ ¢ ǰ ’t
put that plan into operation yet, which he saw now was
taking things to extremes.) He wanted to disown his
thoughts,as if they weren’t part of him.She came into the room, arms folded.
“Are you the obsessive loony?” she asked.
It took all his courage to answer.
“Yes,” he said.
“Jesus!” she said again. She roared with laughter.
After a while, she picked up her cocoa.
“What are you drinking out of?” she asked.
So he had to explain how he saved up old jam jars. He’d
given her his only cup.
She sighed.
“I put up with a lot,” she said. “I’ve learned to.”
He was relieved, though sad, at the resignation in
hervoice.
“I’m nice,” he said, hopefully.
“I wanted more than nice,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
However, she got into bed beside him.
She was naked and warm, though damp. Her eyes
werebrown between thick lashes, and her nipples, high
onher freckled breasts, were shaped like stars.
ě ǯ
“At least my bathtub was clean, just like I promised,”
hetold her.
Love didn’t last more than two weeks, to Gerard’s relief.
Beate seemed quite eager to leave, to stay with her sister,
shesaid. Gerard hadn’t heard about this sister; in fact,
hehadn’t heard much about Beate, although she talked
a loton his mobile, which he seldom used because there
wasno-one to ring. What he’d learned was that she’d laugh
at him in her gravelly way whenever he came into a room.
When she wasn’ ǰ ě ¢
entrances – thoughtful, urgent, passionate, absent-minded –
to see if he could enter in a way that wasn’t absurd. But she
continued to laugh.
He made sure she had enough money to see her through
for several weeks, and he insisted on packing her a suitcase
with a week’s supply of his favourite food, cereal. After
ěǰ
time, tossing and turning as he tried to feel good about
ǯ ĝ ǰȱȱ ¢ȱȱ
lived seemed more and more shameful.After some months, old habits returned, and with them
anewtenderness,if not for Beate, then for the memory
ofę ǰ
alost, wild cat. He eked this memory out through the
nextę¢ǯ
But one Saturday night, his neighbours had a party. They
didn’t invite him. Gerard comforted himself that this was
probably because they didn’t know he existed. Not many
people did. Anyway, so much noise came through his wall
itwas almost like being at the party. He dragged his bed
to ǰ Ĵ
a woman’s voice, a laugh that almost became a song. It wasn’t
at all like Beate’s laugh. It was a song about summer and