Free The Life of Houses by Lisa Gorton Page A

sprang into the shrubbery.
    They were heading to the beach. Not speaking, not looking at each other, they might have been sleepwalkers. The gardens were full of shadow and shifting leaf sounds: a secret existence alongside them, which composed their togetherness. Anna thought: two people side by side are not apart if they are listening. She only realised how far they had depended on that fenced-in unquiet darkness when they came to Beach Road, which never was calm; where the cars, rushing into their headlights, made her conscious of exhaustion, vacancy.
    They went down concrete steps to the sand. To their right, at the end of a long curve, the city rose unreally over the bay. From thisdistance it looked as though the buildings themselves, concrete and stone, gave off a reddish haze. The beach, its thick sand pitted with the day’s footsteps, seemed more manufactured than those glowing outcrops. He bent to take off his shoes.
    â€˜Needles,’ she said.
    Without comment, without looking at her, he straightened up, plunged away down the sand. Beyond him the sea was almost black, its surface oily with light. Small waves ran reflections of light up the beach. Out of nowhere she remembered sitting at the restaurant the previous night, drinking in solitude. Here was the sound that had been missing then: these waves sounded less like waves than like dry leaves turning over.
    Without turning his head he said, ‘I can’t keep doing this.’
    â€˜I know.’ She remembered how he had laid his shaver and shaving cream, his toothpaste and toothbrush, in a neat row by the hotel basin. Loneliness had released in him an implacable humility. These last weeks, exiled to a Sydney hotel, the friends who had supported him most had been the ones he liked least.
    He said: ‘I’ve asked about a transfer.’
    â€˜When?’
    â€˜Last week. They said they’d look around.’
    â€˜But, when will they tell you?’ What she should have felt was gratification, a sense of the future widening out. She dug her fingers into the sand. Damp-cold, it felt greasy.
    Along the beach a wooden jetty extended out under old-fashioned lights. They seemed to pour down bright swirling dust, the light they gave off only like light where it touched on water. It looked to Annaunbearably lonely. A few dinghies, moored alongside the jetty, made metallic sounds.
    He said: ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’
    â€˜But you know you can’t stay in the house with Kit.’
    â€˜They’re looking for an apartment for me.’ He glanced at her and added: ‘It’s all right. A client asked for me to move here.’
    Behind them on the footpath a couple passed. The girl’s laugh— mocking, raucous—broke up the overwarm stillness of the street. She is laughing at us, Anna thought. How desolate we must look: a middle-aged couple, the man in a business suit, sitting out on a beach after midnight.
    A passing car sent their shadows sweeping across the sand in front of them like a clock being wound. Peter stretched out his legs and drew them in again. Usually he took any discomfort as an affront: he would not tolerate a cold coffee, a seat in the draught of a door.
    She took hold of his arm. ‘But I am pleased,’ she said.
    A wave ran high up the sand—a cargo ship perhaps, silently crossing the bay. Did they cross the bay at night? She thought of it out there, sliding through black water.
    â€˜We came here,’ she said. ‘Matt and I, straight off the plane. Our first afternoon.’ Steel-coloured, greasy-looking in the rain, the sea, matching their jetlag, had released in them a sort of delirium. ‘It was pouring.’ The beach deserted, beer cans and faded ice-cream wrappers sinking into the wet sand…Under that grey sky, with freighters sliding across the horizon, the holiday park by the sea that Matt had been dreading had shown itself as an industrial