Last Days of Ava Langdon Read online

  But she won’t go in. She’ll save that pleasure for a rainy day. Time is short. Time is pressing on her bladder, like a pupa stuffed in there, rank and oily, a mind of its own. She decides the red light is a sign of opportunity. God is looking elsewhere. Great big vicarious ears open to the despicable peccadilloes in the hearts of old ladies, the murderous intent as noxious as the deed. There are a few other old ducks sitting in the pews, finger-knitting their rosaries, waiting their turn to spill the beans. God be praised, she thinks, grab it while you can. Disillusionment is only just around the corner. She shuffles obsequiously – see Ava shuffling – there’s the human disguise – in a simulacrum of piety up the aisle past the gory portraits of the Stations of the Cross to the door at the rear of the church; a big wooden one, leading to the priest’s private chambre d’horreurs. Bound to have a thunderbox out here.

  The door creaks open. You can almost hear the oak. Soon she finds it. WC. Anonymous. Tucked away. Gender non-descript. Any wood will do to make a signpost, as her friends the Greeks say. Hermaphrodites welcome. Ah, here are the mops and buckets. She removes her coat and unbuckles. She sits and relieves herself on the priest’s throne. Unburdens. Whew. The world does not end. She is still whole. Look, a little religious homily pinned to the back of the door. One of those calendars where you get a snippet of holy wisdom for every day of the year. Today’s pithy aphorism reads:

  When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, and said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam. He went his way, and washed, and came back seeing … (John 9:6–7)

  Well, there’s something to think about: came back seeing. Here on the back of the toilet door. What about the deaf man? she wonders. Or the mute? Or the ignorant man? She lifts a page and reads tomorrow’s maxim: How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? Quite so. Or, indeed, a woman – there’s the rub. There is a mauve-uddered cloud floating across a glorious sunrise. There are several boxes, square ones, of toilet paper piled up on the cistern. She pops a few into her calico bag, and a few more into the pockets of her big hairy overcoat. They’ll come in handy, and God can afford them.

  She pulls up her duds, arranges the braces, and puts on the coat again. It’s quite a process. When she emerges the priest is standing there glaring at her, his eyebrows arched like circus tents. She starts.

  She says: ‘I’m sorry, Father, but confession is over for the day.’

  He says: ‘I think you’d best be on your way.’

  ‘Exactly what I was thinking myself.’

  ‘This is not a public facility, Miss Langdon.’

  ‘You know me?’ Ava asks, genuinely astonished.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Well, I’m very glad to make your acquaintance. The ear of God himself. Ava Langdon.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  She thrusts out her hand and takes the priest’s cold, reluctant one.

  ‘Father …?’

  He does not reveal his nom de plume. Could they be his initials on the door? Father William Congreave? No matter. Just Father, then. Even a dog may look at a bishop. Which Greek was that again? Two can play at the pithy-aphorism game.

  ‘You know there are public conveniences in the library.’

  ‘Don’t tell me about the damned library.’

  She clamps her jaw shut. She does not want to let him reduce her to anger.

  ‘This is a private lavatory.’

  ‘That insight,’ she continues, ‘somehow escaped me in my moment of desperation. I was busting, you see, Father. My bladder, you understand. I have a scybalum. A voice compelled me. Could that have been God’s voice? Perhaps I should follow you into your holy cupboard over there and tell you all about my venials, my sins of omission in particular. We can haggle over a suitable penance. Would that suit Your Holiness?’

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ he says, fingering the neck of his dog collar.

  ‘Do you know I once pulled the hair of a boy until his scalp bled?’

  ‘This is not the time or place—’

  ‘I’m quite prepared to recant,’ she continues. ‘Repent, even, and consider the possibility of joining the club, if the terms and conditions are not too onerous.’

  ‘Please … It doesn’t do to interrupt the congregants when they’re trying to pray.’

  ‘Pray schmay. That bunch of old biddies waiting to have their wrists slapped and their bottoms tickled. Don’t make me laugh, Father. I’m like to chunder all across your cassock.’

  At this point the priest (whose name is surely Father William Cataract – Congreave, what was she thinking?) backs away. He can smell the sherry. Ava can read the curriculum vitae in his eyes. He never wanted to come to Katoomba in the first place. He was more than happy in Rose Bay, but the higher orders ordained and obeisance is holy, or so they tell him. Holy holy holy. By Heaven, he’s annoyed at them though.

  ‘Please, madam. Just leave.’

  ‘Gladly, old sport.’ Ava adjusts her trousers, the machete. ‘I wouldn’t be seen dead in a rat hole like this. Let the church stand in the churchyard, as Aristotle used to say.’

  ‘Madam, I must insist. Your voice—’

  ‘Fine. Fine.’ Ava throws up her hands in mock surrender. ‘I know when I’m not welcome. Your loss, not mine.’

  She brushes past Father Cataract, who is reluctant to touch her. She throws open the sacristy door, is that what it’s called? – a door at any rate – and stomps her way up the echoing chamber of the nave – listen to those floorboards – past the old biddies waiting in the gloom. Statues of Jesus in nappies, staring up the nostrils of his holy Mam. The stained glass in the high windows faded and dull, wire cages on the outside to stop people throwing rocks through them.

  She calls to no one in particular: ‘It’s all a lie. Spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle.’

  Ava spits on the floor of the aisle.

  ‘There! See!’

  Father Cataract trails after her looking all serene and forgiving, rolling his eyes to the women in the pews. The trials and tribulations. Don’t roll your eyes at me, sport, thinks Ava.

  ‘Goodbye,’ says Father Cataract coldly from the steps.

  Outside the sun is still traversing the sky like the second hand of a clock. Old Ra. Parnassus. Golden glory. The wallpaper of Heaven. That’s what she’s expecting. Hang on, she notes, that dew on her cheeks, it’s raining. Ava holds up her face to be kissed. A sunshower. Fickle as a change of heart, butterflies touched by the fist of God. How can a sinner do such miracles? Despair and ecstasy, they’re two sides of the same drachma. Anguish can strike at any time. Not too late to dash back down to Echo Point and throw herself off. There’s always that option. Geronimo into the abyss. But no, get a grip, old girl, she tells herself. Calm down. That’s the sort of thinking that gets you locked up behind the unbreakable glass.

  She remembers when they came for her in New Zealand and interred her with sedatives and forced enemas; they tried to distinguish her thoughts from each other. Distinguish or extinguish? She can feel that sun again glowing in her mind. All is silent up in the belfry, apart from the squabbling of the pigeons, her mind leaping from conclusion to phosphorous conclusion. Calm. Breathe. Empty. So many secrets she has to keep in order to remain afloat. She can’t reveal them. They’re hers. There’s only a hair’s breadth between the fabulous and the forlorn, thin as a camel hair. While her dreams are magnificent they’re a double-edged razor. If anyone were to guess, if anyone were to get too close, she’d burst into flame. Shh …

  She takes a step onto the footpath. All these people on the street, are they here every day? They must be, for she recognises some of them. Yet do they recognise her? The priest did. That is the conundrum. Strangers, for all their familiarity, in this small world where everyone is isolated, held apart by the electromag
netic force of human apathy. What a phrase! Would one of them call on her, listen to her troubles, make clay from their spit and rub it in her eyes? It’s not likely. They didn’t come when she was locked up and needed help. They showed her her son through the reinforced glass, then led him away. The exile of the crowd. Her brain buzzes like a wasp in a bowler hat. She takes another step. Is every empty moment always this busy?

  Ava looks at the traffic rumbling slowly up and down the street. It’s her street, her turf. Every scrap of rubbish has a story for her: the dry patch by the side of the road, about the size of a blanket, where a car has moved off into the drizzle. When did it start raining? she wonders. The world in all its duplicity. All these things her senses have overlooked, she whose senses are normally so attuned to the machinations of the universe. A dog tied to a street sign speaks volumes to her. What might it say if only it had the powers of speech? Speak, dog. Has Immanuel Kant passed by today? Howl, mongrel, excoriate your maker. She gives the dog a perfunctory pat to which it does not respond. It’s wet and miserable. Looks at her with dolorous eyes. Its owner will come back soon and then what? She smells her hand. She hadn’t counted on rain, though it’s light enough. She’ll have to find some plastic to protect the rose ream in her bag. The rose ream. The rose ream drags her back out of her fever of distraction that damned priest has put her to. She breathes. Back to her body and the here and now. Don’t lose the purpose of the now, old girl.

  Agitation subsiding she steps out and crosses the road, halting the traffic with upraised palms.

  ‘Part, seas,’ she cries.

  A car slides to a halt.

  ‘Get off the road,’ grumbles a motorist out his side window. ‘Do you want to get killed?’

  She knows it’s not worth the dignity to argue the toss with a piece of work like him. Pack away mercy for the minute; vengeance is God’s. By the time she gets to the other side, not far from the Paragon café with its sprung dance floor, she is well aware, via the intermediary of the hole in her boot, just how wet the road is.

  Why can’t she just think the road is wet? Why is her brain always so fused with possibility?

  The red bricks of the post office are darkening now where a downpipe has leaked over the façade. May as well go in, she thinks, and mounts the steps. The door. The dimness. All that detail.

  ‘Never fear, I have arrived.’

  The door swings shut behind her, light, dark, light, dark. Several people at the counter turn to stare, she who is dressed so extraordinarily, the cravat like a golden goitre spilling down her shirt front, the pinstripes, the braces.

  ‘What do you want?’ asks Mr Menthol, less happily this time. He looks as though he’s had a busy morning.

  ‘To enquire about the mail that no doubt awaits my perusal, gasping for air, in your … receptacle out the back.’

  ‘Wait your turn,’ says a man in the queue, a bald man with a little goatee beard as well as blond eyebrows, who doesn’t bear describing.

  Ava thinks she might recognise him. Then again, she might not. If this was fiction all these people would mean something, but what? It would be her job to find the meaning, to imbue life with it.

  ‘Today’s mail hasn’t arrived yet,’ says the clerk. Ava can see his little moustache has thickened up a bit since yesterday. Was it yesterday?

  ‘Oh dear. I thought perchance an express delivery.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘A telegram.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Well, I shall have to return when they have deigned to reply.’

  ‘You do that,’ says Mr Menthol, stamping someone’s letter with authority, but it’s a pyrrhic victory. No one cares about his petty authoritarianism. He may as well be chained to the wall of Plato’s cave.

  ‘I shall.’

  Ava turns on her heel. People are so grumpy today. She can sense the animosity towards her, the way a cat can sense electricity in the air – or is it ultraviolet light? – but to her it’s like water off a mallard’s posterior. Bugger them. The predator targets she who is hesitant, she thinks, therefore she will not hesitate. Mr Menthol watches her go. He still hasn’t had his coffee break. The queue is endless, like the queue at St Peter’s lectern. She wonders if she shouldn’t dodge around the back and check for herself that the mail has not arrived. Just like a bureaucrat to tell you a lie.

  Ava lets the door swing behind her, a cowpoke leaving the Lone Star saloon. She hoicks on the steps.

  Outside again (all this entering and exiting, doors swinging open, light, dark, light, dark), a police car is waiting at the kerb. She recognises it from all the lights and garish colours. When she emerges, face upturned to the grey sky, one of the policemen opens his door and steps from the car, decorating his head with a smart hat. Ava loves a man in uniform and so waits to see what he has to say for himself, for he’s heading straight over and it’s obviously her he wants to talk to.

  ‘Good morning, madam.’

  Well, there’s a fine beginning. She may as well deduce from that that it’s still morning. The badge on his lapel says Officer Fowler. He’s young enough to be her grandson. Does she have a grandson? That’s another thing she doesn’t know.

  ‘Officer, what a pleasure, what an absolute delight. How can I be of assistance?’

  A part of her seems to remember him from somewhere. She holds out her hand and the policeman shakes it. Ava’s handshake is of the manly variety, solid and muscular, as if she’s pumping a cow’s teat. Bone crunching, if only she could crunch bones. What a skill that would be.

  ‘There’s been a complaint,’ says the policeman. Where has she seen him before?

  ‘I should hope so. The service in this establishment’ – jerking her thumb over her shoulder – ‘is certainly lacking in enthusiasm.’

  ‘I mean a complaint about you.’

  ‘Pray, do tell.’

  ‘A lady in Hinkler Park has said you were waving a knife around.’

  ‘A lady?’

  ‘You frightened her child.’

  ‘What child?’

  ‘The one with her, in Hinkler Park.’

  ‘First a lady, now a child. How the world doth multiply. What knife?’

  ‘You have a knife at your side. What’s that for?’

  ‘You mean this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well-I-never. That’s for self-defence.’

  ‘From who?’

  ‘From dogs and other beasts of the field.’

  ‘That’s why we have a dog catcher.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know at the moment.’

  ‘That’s another thing I’d like to complain about. Write that down. He’s never available in my area of the municipality. I have to take council orders into my own hands.’

  ‘Have you been drinking?’

  ‘Only holy-communion wine,’ says Ava. ‘Against which there is no law, so far as I understand. I’ve just come from confession.’

  The policeman seems to consider the likelihood of this. He doesn’t want to become exasperated, but it’s proved inevitable in the past when dealing with some members of the public, some members of the public who are, no doubt, well known down at the station. Ava can see his dilemma, but doesn’t necessarily wish to make his burden any lighter. He knows very well where he’s seen her before. They’ve had previous dealings. In particular, the time he was summoned to the library when she had taken this very knife and chopped a book in half for some suspicious reason. The librarian was quite upset, and young Officer Fowler had had to arrest the old lady in order to keep the peace and mollify everyone.

  Despite this, he’s a nice-looking boy who probably loves his work and he’s not going to let her get to him.

  ‘Miss Langdon—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That is your name, isn’t it?’


  ‘It depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On the nature of your correspondence. On the alignment of the stars.’

  ‘Listen. You can’t go around town, into shops and the like, waving a knife about.’

  ‘A machete.’

  ‘Whatever you call it. Show me.’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  ‘Show me the knife.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do that.’

  ‘Show me the bloody thing or I’ll arrest you again.’

  So much for resolve. He’s sick of humouring her. She can see that now. Why does she seem to have this effect on people? Perhaps he burned his toast this morning. Started off on the wrong foot. That could explain everything. Doesn’t she realise how annoying she can be? That’s a very good question. Perhaps she should show him her deed poll certificate. Ava slides the machete from its sheath and hands it to him hilt first, quite the cowgirl.

  ‘This is a dangerous weapon.’

  Officer Fowler takes it and casts a pretentious eye over the edge. It’s not an axeman’s eye. His fingernail scratches at a scab of rust.

  ‘Isn’t she a beauty,’ says Ava, eyes agleam.

  ‘It’s pretty blunt, but nevertheless,’ he says, ‘I’ve a good mind to confiscate this.’

  Immediately Ava bursts into wailing imprecations. She tries to snatch it back.

  ‘No no no no no—’

  ‘You can claim it back at the station.’

  ‘No. Please no. I need it. For my – I require it. Please, you can’t. It’s for dogs. It’s my most precious – I must – I need – Please. It’s – it’s an antique. You don’t understand.’

  She wipes a tear from her eye. It’s a genuine tear. Officer Fowler hesitates, holding her at bay.

  ‘It’s not for chopping any more books in half?’

  ‘No no no no no …’

  He weighs up the scene he feels she is about to cause, and the paperwork that would ensue, and the loss of an otherwise easy morning. Her face is creased with despair. It’s almost comical.