The Children's Bach Read Free

together down . Who wrote that?’
    â€˜Browning. “My Last Duchess.”’
    â€˜Dear Morty,’ said Dexter.
    â€˜Also,’ she said, ‘I think I am about to get stuck with Vicki.’
    He shook his head. He was still not looking at her. ‘Morty. Morty. I know what it means to be stuck with someone. You mustn’t think about it like that. It’ll only make you miserable.’
    They stopped at the gate lounge. The door opened.
    â€˜Here she comes,’ said Elizabeth.
    â€˜Which one is she?’ said Dexter.
    The man walking behind Vicki was talking to his friend, he had a faint stammer, not much more than a hesitation. ‘ ’Mazing guy, Gaz. Always thinking about his mem, mem, member. There was something in his brain that just went sprong. He’d see a good looking chick dancing in front of the stage, he’d go down between sets and find her, and he’d be back five minutes later doing up his fly.’
    His story was bodyless. A mosquito might have been whining it next to her ear. The footsteps of the hastening passengers beat light and fast. Either the windows were tinted or Melbourne was already dark.
    The hostess at the open door showed her teeth. Vicki came out into the world. She saw the man beside Elizabeth and slowed down. That couldn’t be Philip. Philip couldn’t possibly look like that. Philip played in a band . She whipped off the rhinestone ear-rings and shoved them into her pocket.
    The freeway was dark. Vicki’s toes were so cold that they felt like rows of marbles inside her shoes. The strange boy was strapped into his car seat beside her. He mooed and murmured to himself. She stopped trying to listen to the conversation in the front, and stared out the window. Low down on the sky was a narrow band of apricot, all that was left of the daylight. Dexter threw back his head and laughed at something Elizabeth said. Vicki experienced the small prickle of power that comes to the one who rides in the back seat. She saw her captors as they would never see themselves: two silly heads of hair, two sets of shoulders, two unsuspecting napes. She hated them. She closed her eyes with hatred. Dexter saw her in the mirror and thought she had fallen asleep. Unresisted now, his tenderness for the whole world rushed to envelop her.
    *
    Athena flung in broken briquettes and clanged the door shut. The pot-belly stove began to roar, then settled into its long single note. She spread out the Herald on the kitchen table. In the sports section there was a picture of a footballer with his baby. She hastened to turn the page. Now every baby photo reminded her of the famous one of Azaria in its oval frame: the blurred form, pupa-like in swaddling, the wrinkled brow, the head turned sharply from the light, the fists and eyes squeezed shut. Athena kept her pointed scissors packed away, up high.
    There was soup in the pot. ‘Soup means lots!’ Dexter would say when he came in. Where were they? She propped the Kabalevsky open on the piano and tried again. She had laboured through a dozen bars when the car slid down the driveway outside the kitchen window. More than two doors banged. She got up from the piano and took a knife to the rest of the loaf.
    Dexter flooded in on a tide of cold air. He loved coming home.
    â€˜Athena! Look who’s here!’
    The three women stood still and stared at one another.
    â€˜Sisters,’ thought Athena, with that start of wonder which family resemblance provokes. ‘Big one’s tough. Little one’s miserable.’
    â€˜She’s beautiful,’ thought Vicki. ‘It’s warm. I wish I could live here.’ Her chest loosened and she began to breathe.
    â€˜She’s a frump,’ thought Elizabeth with relief; but Athena stepped forward and held out her hand, and Elizabeth saw the cleverly mended sleeve of her jumper and was suddenly not so sure.
    â€˜Come in,’ said Athena. ‘Dexter,