The Children's Bach by Helen Garner Page A

‘Patriotic, isn’t it,’ he said.
    She slept, he did not seem to need to. He went to work. She could not imagine what his work entailed, what he did, and tried to piece it together from his random remarks, without showing her ignorance.
    â€˜You put everything you can think of in at the beginning,’ he said, ‘and then you start taking bits out.’
    â€˜But how can you take bits of music off a tape, once you’ve . . .’
    â€˜There are . . .’ Philip was patient. ‘Well – you’ve got twenty-four tracks, right?’
    â€˜Oh! You mean they’re all separate! And you can put in and take out!’
    â€˜Now you’ve got it. They’re all separate till you put them together on another tape. And that’s called the mix.’
    â€˜Dear Arthur. We went’ – she crossed out we and put I – ‘to a famous beach called Bondi. I liked the way the women drivers brought the big buses swooping down the hill to the ocean.’ The tops of old buildings, the upper window frames that I see from the bus are all rotten and peeling. Things rot up here. It must be the sea air. Even the hotel we are staying in is rotting away. I looked down from our window and saw a big rat browsing on a rubbish heap. It is the kind of hotel where people leave their doors open and when you pass a room you see a pair of bare feet sticking out off the end of the bed. In the street the thin girls call to the passing men: ‘Wanna girl?’ In the afternoon a damp wind springs up and tears through the alleys that separate the buildings. Sometimes there is a storm. Clouds hang down in lurid loops, like a sagging ceiling. I have washed my white shirt and hung it in the open window. The wind makes it flap like a ghost: in the damp air things take longer to dry. On the bus I saw a tiny baby. Its mother lifted it to her shoulder without properly supporting its head: up it came, blind, its chin quivering violently. I walk round the city. I look at pictures, I look at the water. I went to a photo exhibition and saw a picture of a black man in New York who had just killed someone: he was lying on a bench at the police station with his head in a woman’s lap, and his face was quite peaceful. I was walking through Martin Place and I said good morning to an old woman who was selling flowers. She looked at me coldly and when I got past her she laughed. She went her her her . She was laughing at me. ‘Don’t forget to rinse the chlorine out of your bathers every time you get back from the baths. When I come home I will bring you a present. Lots of love, Mum.’
    *
    They took the cocaine off the flat part of her nail clippers, in a dogleg lane outside a cinema. They strode out of the lane in step.
    It was late, in the bar, later than the middle of the night. The girl had frizzy hair and black-rimmed eyes. She smiled at him from further round the bar. She got off her stool, left her friends sitting there, and forced her way through the pack. She inserted herself between Athena and Philip, and began to hug his head and kiss his forehead.
    â€˜What’s your name?’ said Philip.
    â€˜Don’t you remember? Angie. Down at the –’
    â€˜Yeah, yeah, I remember now.’ He kept smiling at her.
    â€˜I’m going to the toilet,’ said the girl. She staggered away.
    He turned straight back to the bar and said, as if to himself, ‘I should’ve followed her out there.’
    â€˜What?’ said Athena.
    â€˜I said, she probably wanted me to follow her out there. But I’ve, I don’t know how to do that stuff any more.’
    Athena watched the barmaid. She wore a little peaked yachting cap on the back of her head, and flared canvas pants cut very low and laced back and front to show her pubic hair and the cleft between her buttocks. From the hips up she was naked. She had small firm high pale-nippled teenage breasts.