For Love Alone by Christina Stead Page B

paused carelessly, and then finished: “Good-bye, I won’t see you again before you go.”
    â€œGood-bye. Thank you for the book.”
    â€œYes, yes. Good-bye. Read it, read it, that is all.”
    The creaking door opened and shut. Did she sit in the laundry or go into the garden? The moon flooded the garden, everything could be seen in it, but there was no sign of the woman.
    When Aunt Bea came, Teresa showed her the book and then remembered her cousin. “Anne is in there, on the bathroom floor.”
    â€œOn the floor? What doing?”
    â€œCrying.”
    â€œOh, my poor child—”
    Teresa put her hand on Aunt Bea’s thin arm. “Don’t go in.” “You mean—” Bea’s eyes flew back. She said: “Anne?”
    Teresa laughed. “No, it’s because she’s not married. A woman who is ready to marry must marry.”
    â€œNo, no, she must have a pain, poor baby, she often has,” and Aunt Bea flew in. Teresa heard their voices, Anne’s sobbing, Aunt Bea’s consoling. She felt annoyed, because she had given the wrong advice. She put away the things, hung up the towel, and trailed gracefully up the hall to get her hat. When she was dressed, hat, gloves, bag, she looked in at the bathroom door and said: “Good night!”
    â€œAre you going, Terry?”
    She went after Bea had brought Anne into the bedroom; and when she went past, in the street, she saw their dim forms at the open window. She waved. They waved back. She walked home, along the unpaved roads, her long gown gathering dust and prickles.

5
It Was High Tide at Nine-thirty
    I t was high tide at nine-thirty that night in February and even after ten o’clock the black tide was glassy, too full for lapping in the gullies. Up on the cliffs, Teresa could see the ocean flooding the reefs outside, choking the headlands and swimming to the landing platforms of jetties in the bays. It was long after ten when Teresa got to the highest point of the seaward cliffs and turning there, dropped down to the pine-grown bay by narrow paths and tree-grown boulders, trailing her long skirt, holding her hat by a ribbon. From every moon-red shadow came the voices of men and women; and in every bush and in the clumps of pine, upon unseen wooden seats and behind rocks, in the grass and even on open ledges, men and women groaned and gave shuddering cries as if they were being beaten. She passed slowly, timidly, but fascinated by the strange battlefield, the bodies stretched out, contorted, with sounds of the dying under the fierce high moon. She did not know what the sounds were, but she knew children would be conceived this night, and some time later women would marry hurriedly, if they could,like one of her cousins, who had slept the night with a man in one of these very grottoes; and perhaps one or two would jump into the sea. There were often bodies fished up round here, that had leapt when the heart still beat, from these high ledges into waters washed round these rocks by the moon.
    Some fishermen came slowly up through the rocks to the edge of the curved lipped platform over which they began casually to drop down by the iron footholds to the lowest ledges, wet by the unusual tides, and from these they waded out smoothly to their fishing posts on the edge of the square-cleaving shale. The bay, the ocean, were full of moonstruck fish, restless, swarming, so thick in places that the water looked oily; their presence, the men thought, with other signs, meant storms at hand.
    Terry, who knew them all and to whom they said: “‘Lo”, in their meditative voices, watched them go over, some by the front cliff, shining blue, some by a small funnel where volcanic rock had crumbled in the sandstone. She went up to watch the latter and stood against a giant boulder staring out to sea. Nothing was between her and a two-hundred-foot plunge from the pale rock but a hand’s breadth. She