The Best Australian Stories 2013 Read online

  I went up to my room, lay on my bed, and listened to my sisters’ low voices, the faraway sea.

  After that summer, we never went back.

  The Age

  Solstice

  James Bradley

  Adam lifts an arm to shield his eyes against the sun, still low despite the date, the cold hitting him with a shock that never lessens. It is late afternoon, although that has little meaning here, where the sun has been above the horizon for months now, its path tracing a long, looping oval in the sky.

  As his eyes adjust he steps away from the building, the sound from within falling away, absorbed into the larger emptiness. It is quiet here today, the only sound that of the wind, the squalling birds overhead. Down by the water an elephant seal lies on the stones, its vast bulk mottled and sluglike; around him the tracks of human activity scar the snow like rust, turning it grey and red and dirty.

  Inside they are celebrating the solstice, a date Station personnel have long marked with a communal meal and drinking and dancing. It is not just convenient: although the Station is staffed all year, midsummer always marks the period of greatest activity, and from here on the arrivals will slow and departures increase, until only the skeleton crew who maintain the facility through the months of darkness and cold remain.

  Passing the Klein blue of the buildings housing the Power Distribution Units he finds himself wondering again about this celebration, about what it means. Humans have celebrated the solstice for tens of thousands of years, but, is it really a celebration or something more ambivalent? A symbol of loss, of the running down of things. After all, today also marks the beginning of summer’s end, the start of the year’s long retreat back into the dark.

  Beyond the building the land opens out, the dirty brown of stone giving way to the white glare of ice. With the buildings no longer shielding him from the wind it is colder as well, so he walks faster.

  Back in Sydney it is midday. Ellie will be in the waiting room of the clinic. They have been there so many times in recent years he can picture it easily, calling forth not just the textures of the chairs, with their tasteful brown upholstery, or the fake slate of the detailing under the reception desk and along the wall dividing the reception from the suite next door, but its particular scent, the whiff of geranium and sandalwood oil they use to disguise the medicinal smell of the consulting rooms.

  Ordinarily he would be there with her, flicking through a magazine or checking email on his phone, but before he left they agreed she would continue the cycles in his absence. And so, over the past fortnight, she has been in half-a-dozen times: initially for the daily hormone injections, then for the extraction and implantation.

  Today’s appointment is the last in the series, the session with their gynaecologist, at which she will take blood one last time, test it for the markers of pregnancy.

  He would say he has lost count of how many times they have been through this ritual, how many times they have seen the gynaecologist purse her lips, then assume the mask of bland concern she uses to soften the blow. Except he hasn’t. He remembers all of them.

  It is strange to him, that they have ended up here. Seven years ago, when they met, their conversations were never of children. They were students: he in the last months of his doctorate, her deep in the middle of art school.

  That meeting still seems miraculous to him, a gift. She was working on a project about botany and biodiversity, an installation involving drawings and photographs, and in the hope of finding suitable material she contacted the university. That query led her to his supervisor, who referred it on, first to Adam’s officemate and finally to Adam himself.

  He didn’t pay it much attention at first: made a note about the time to see her, sent her a few images and links that might be useful. Indeed he forgot so completely that he was surprised when he arrived at his office to find her seated on the sofa under the window.

  At first he didn’t realise she was there for him, just smiled at her absently. She wasn’t particularly made-up, but even that first day he could see there was something in the way she carried herself. She didn’t look like the sort of young woman he usually saw around the corridors – she was too limber, too stylish for that. Not university admin either, although even if she were he couldn’t imagine why someone from admin would be waiting outside his office. And so it was only when she stood and smiled expectantly that he turned to look at her properly.

  ‘Adam?’ she asked. He smiled back, knowing even as he did she could see he didn’t know who she was.

  ‘I’m Ellie,’ she said, ‘from COFA? You told me to come by?’

  For a long moment he stood, staring, then it all came back to him in a rush. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry, I’d forgotten.’

  She hesitated. ‘If now’s not a good time …’ she began, but he waved her down.

  ‘No, now is fine. Just let me get the door open.’

  Inside the office she waited while he put down his bag and started up his computer. He shared the room with two other postgrads, one of whom, Vann, had decorated his side of the room with printed images of his own face looming into his webcam and other creations, such as a mask made out of a photo of Adam’s face and the tinfoil hat he wore for a week the year before, as well as an assortment of holiday snaps. For most visitors these images were the main source of interest in the otherwise spartan room, but when Adam turned back to Ellie he was surprised to find her leaning towards the card above his computer, a delicate nineteenth-century drawing of a radiolarian, its geometric edges rendered carefully in pen and ink, its sea urchin-like shell as fine and delicate as a jewel.

  ‘It’s Haeckel, isn’t it?’ she said, as much to herself as to him. He nodded, pleased and surprised.

  ‘It is. How did you know?’

  She shrugged. ‘I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the period.’

  Reaching up he pulled the card from the wall. ‘Is this the sort of thing you’re working on?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, although I’m interested in the thinking behind it.’

  He looked at her for a moment, then smiled. ‘Let me see what I can help you find.’

  That morning she spent two hours with him, looking at specimens, being shown around the department’s collections.

  ‘Doesn’t it frighten you?’ she asked as he pushed one of the drawers away.

  He hesitated. ‘What?’

  ‘That soon this might be all we have left?’

  The truth was it terrified him, but he knew no way of giving that fear expression without it all flowing out. So he just nodded.

  ‘Better we have a record of what’s lost.’

  When she was done he walked her out, and was surprised to see she was on a bike. He liked that about her, not just because he approved but because, as she mounted it, he was struck by the way its independence suited her.

  Over the following weeks he emailed her a number of times, first with suggestions for specimens she had missed, later with other, more spurious ideas, the correspondence quickly taking on a natural and playful intimacy, until at last she sent him an email suggesting he might want to come with her to an exhibition.

  After three weeks of chatting online it was strange to see her again. He had looked at pictures of her on Facebook and had his memories of their first meeting, but in the flesh, she seemed different: smaller, less perfect. Seen in the light outside the gallery her skin was more battered than he remembered, scattered here and there with moles. Later he would learn she had the same reaction, and that she, like him, had been awkward at first when it came to speaking in person, the intimacy and immediacy of their online friendship replaced by an uneasy combination of familiarity and unfamiliarity.

  Yet as they made their way through the gallery they grew more comfortable with each other. The exhibition was by a Japanese artist, delicate sha
pes carved from wood, shell and cool, raw metal – at once ancient and exquisitely modern, each poised midway between the biological and the mechanical. Some resembled skeletons, articulated and beautiful. Adam paused by one.

  ‘What?’ she asked and he shook his head, smiling.

  ‘There’s a platypus skeleton in the department this reminds me of,’ he said.

  By the time they finished moving from exhibit to exhibit they were speaking more fluidly, the rapport of that first day re-established, so that when they emerged, into the quiet space of the cafe, they were surprisingly relaxed with each other.

  She told him things about herself that surprised him. About losing her mother as a teenager, her attempts to erase herself in the aftermath, about her father and his second, much-younger wife, her dislike and suspicion of their relationship and sense she was the wrong woman for him.

  And when the day was done and they were parting, she leaned in and kissed him, her hands against his chest, the gesture so direct, so certain it surprised him, and for a moment or two he did not respond, but then did, kissing her back with his eyes closed until she laughed and broke contact.

  What had impressed him then was how easy it was, the way they just seemed to mesh. Even the sex, when it happened, was without tension or uncertainty, although not without passion. Within a week they were sleeping together, within a month he was living with her most of the time, in the old garage she rented in Marrickville, the two of them already like old friends, save for the urgency of their physical relationship, the wonder of each other’s bodies.

  That first year passed almost without them noticing. He worked on his thesis, huddled over his laptop at a desk under the high windows while she wrote and played on her tablet and shaped things in the computer. Unlike many of her contemporaries she was prepared to farm work out, to employ Chinese and Indian and Pakistani programmers to build the things she imagined, leaving her to concentrate on the music and the larger picture.

  Towards the end of their first year together she received her first major commission, a work for a festival in Singapore, and he was offered a position in the department, which he accepted. Though neither was quite sure how it happened, they found themselves a couple with careers and a future.

  By the time they had been together for two years they found the social landscape around them changing as friends got married or entered into commitment ceremonies. But neither of them saw the point, although they discussed it, and by the time they owned their first apartment it hardly seemed relevant.

  Then, in the winter of their third year together, her friend, Holly, was diagnosed with a brain tumour and died, the event so sudden and shocking neither of them quite knew how to respond. For Ellie it was inconceivable that Holly was gone: they had been friends since childhood, their lives overlapping so much it was almost impossible for her to imagine themselves without each other.

  Adam expected Ellie to fall apart, but instead she lost herself in her work. Although she resisted the lure of darkness and despondency, she was altered nonetheless, her manner growing more brittle, as if the person he had known had been absorbed by someone he barely knew.

  It was somewhere towards the end of that long winter that she first raised the idea of children. It was a subject they had discussed occasionally in their first year or two together, both of them agreeing that they liked the idea in principle, but there was no rush. Yet somehow, in the aftermath of Holly’s death, that changed and, before he knew it, they had agreed upon a program, to her ceasing contraception and seeing what would happen.

  He wasn’t against the idea, although part of him suspected it was too soon, that they would be giving up something they wouldn’t know was gone until it was lost.

  Perhaps that is why he didn’t give much thought to her not falling pregnant, at least at first. They were busy, and although they still fucked most nights it was not quite as often as it had once been, making it easy enough to explain away the first few failures as the result of her body returning to fertility after more than a decade on the pill, or by them missing the window for intercourse. But by the fourth or fifth month she was concerned enough to start counting dates, and insisting they have sex on the right days.

  The first time they had this duty sex it was funny. It was September, the beginning of spring, and although it had been warm, both of them were tired. When she rolled towards him and told him he had to do it, he laughed. Lifting himself on one elbow to look at her, he asked whether this was how it was going to be from now on.

  The sex that night was pleasant enough, and it was not until the end that he realised she was turning away from him, as if preoccupied. They finished lying on their sides, her back to him, and when they were done she rolled onto her back and looked upwards, the two of them separated by a foot or so.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked, and in the moment she didn’t answer he understood she was not, or not really.

  They waited another three months before they saw a doctor. As they walked into the clinic they did not touch, their bodies separate in a way that was new to him.

  The consultation was professional, even polished, the doctor’s manner managing to make it clear that while she had had this conversation many times before they had her full attention now. The doctor was a woman, not much older than the two of them, and as she spoke she made eye contact with both of them, pausing almost imperceptibly as if to emphasise each point.

  Unsurprisingly the first stage was tests, but even with that in mind the doctor was happy to sketch out the scenarios they might face, explaining what would happen, and why. At one point she handed them a folder filled with documents, information on pricing and rebates.

  Ellie sat listening in the chair beside Adam, her body tensed with an attentiveness he had not seen before. Where did it come from, he wondered, this focus? How had he not spotted it before?

  Perhaps that was the first moment she seemed truly different to him, as if the woman he knew were replaced by a stranger, her need closing him out, excluding him.

  At their second appointment the doctor was encouraging, telling them there were no clear reasons for their failure to conceive, and suggesting they move straight into the program. As she spoke Ellie looked around, her eyes meeting his. Startled, he hesitated, the costs of the various procedures confusing him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘of course.’

  Afterwards, in the car, Adam listened as she ran through the various options and scenarios again. She had found the doctor’s words encouraging, even exciting, and as she spoke he could sense that she wanted him to share in that excitement, to be part of it. But instead he found himself pulling back, offering only vague words of encouragement or even caution, until at last she paused.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  He glanced at her and said nothing.

  ‘If you’re not okay with this you should say.’

  He shook his head and smiled. ‘Of course I’m okay with it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  And he was sure, at least when he spoke. Sure, too, when he took her to the first appointment. The procedure was surprisingly invasive, something he had not considered, and as he watched her climb into the chair for the extraction he felt his embarrassment at providing a sample evaporate.

  Afterwards, in the recovery room, she was talking and smiling, her conversation circling endlessly around the question of whether it would work. She wanted him to tell her it would, that was obvious, yet part of him held back.

  It didn’t work, of course. Not that time nor the next, nor the next, nor even the next. And with each failed attempt he felt the distance between them grow. It wasn’t that he didn’t want this as well, that he didn’t share her desire for a child; it was that he hated this process, the way their life had been reduced to this enervating cycle of biology and tec
hnology. Ellie was different too, thinner, more tired, distant in a way she had not been before. But more importantly he felt like the ease they had shared was gone, replaced by something deeper yet less easy, a shared wanting that was almost like pain. Sometimes when they fucked she would close her eyes, moving beneath him with a quiet, inward intensity that frightened him, the familiar wonder of her body lost to the movement, to the act, until the release she was seeking shuddered through her, and she turned away, hiding her face from him.

  In these moments it was easy to lose himself to whatever it was that moved between them as well, but afterwards, when she lay with her back to him, he felt her withdrawal as a kind of loss, something almost physical, as if something had been taken from him.

  Others saw little of this. At the beginning they – or rather she – had decided to be open about the process: ‘I don’t want to be lying about why I’m sick or tired, or hiding things from my friends.’

  But as the months passed and the unsuccessful attempts multiplied, they began to withdraw, to keep details to themselves. Sharing the truth was too difficult, too exposing.

  Yet others knew, and that was enough. He came to know the signs, the way friends would pause or clear their throats, then ask how it was going. Their masks of concern as he either told them or said he’d rather not talk about it. Sometimes he could see the question in people’s eyes: Was it him? Was there something wrong with him? He knew it was ridiculous, but he wanted to tell them it wasn’t. The problem was undefined, but his sperm was fine.

  Worse were the well-meaning pieces of advice, the recommendations they speak to a particular naturopath, or investigate natural remedies of one sort or another. Usually this advice came from female friends, and Adam learned to accept it with a look of interest even as he rebelled against it. In truth it had become a point of tension for the two of them anyway, her desire to invest particular events with meaning conflicting with his scientific approach to the variables.