DYING AIR DOZED in the King of Cornwall’s corridors. There was a weariness to the dim light. In the hotel kitchen it smelt like gas, though no leak had ever been found. In the rising floors and elaborate staircases, with their dusty carpet runners, there rose and fell odours Amy recognised as disappointment, of dust balls and dryness mixed with the slumping grease of defective meals and the doomed assignations of travelling salesmen and women bored or desperate or both. Am I one of these women? Amy wondered as she made her way to the top floor. Am I one too?
But once inside the corner room that they both now thought of as theirs—where the French doors with their corroding hinges and rusting lock creaked open onto the ocean and the ceaseless light across the road, where the room smelt of the sea and the air seemed to dance, there, where all things seemed possible—she knew she wasn’t. She had arranged some ice and two bottles of beer for him, but in spite of the ferocious heat they were unopened when she arrived.
Dorrigo Evans pointed to the green Bakelite clock on the mantelpiece. Though the minute hand had at some unknown point disappeared from its face, the hour hand showed he had been waiting there for three hours past the time she had said she would come.
I had to wait till the day staff were gone, she said. Until it was safe for me to come here unnoticed.
Who’s left?
Two barmaids, the head barman, the cook. Milly, the waitress. None of them ever come upstairs.
There doesn’t seem to be anyone staying here.
Not tonight. I had all the bookings put in the two floors below so it’s only us up here.
They went out onto the deep-set verandah and sat on the rusty iron furniture and shared a bottle of beer.
You’re a great punter, Dorrigo said, acccording to Keith.
Ha, Amy said. Look at those birds. And she pointed to where sea birds would suddenly drop like dead things into the ocean. She went over to the wrought-iron balustrade; all its paint had long flaked away, leaving only an ochre dust. She ran a hand over its gritty oxide, red as old rock.
Keith reckoned you’d have the gun tip, Dorrigo said.
The birds would rise back up, whiting in their beaks. Amy pinched the sandy rust between her fingertips. She turned her gaze to the long beach, which ran for some miles till it reached an ancient eroded headland, bare of all but the hardiest scrub. Her head seemed full of distant things. He went to take her hand but she pulled it away.
Keith said that?
He said you always know the track and the field and the weights and the best bet.
Ha, she said, and went back to her own thoughts. From the street below, the noise of a dog yapping startled her. She looked around uneasily.
It’s him, she said, and he could hear panic rising in her voice. He’s come back a day early. I have to go, he’s— It’s a big dog, said Dorrigo. Listen. A big dog. Not a mutt like Miss Beatrice.
She went quiet. The barking stopped, a man’s voice—not Keith’s—could be heard speaking to the dog, and then was gone. After a time she spoke up.
I hate that dog. I mean, I like dogs. But he lets it up on the table after we’ve eaten. With its obscene tongue leaping out like some awful snake.
Dorrigo laughed.
And slobbering, panting away, said Amy. A dog on a table? Can you imagine it?
Every meal?
Can I tell you something? Just you?
Of course.
It’s not about Miss Beatrice—and you can never tell anyone.
Of course.
You promise?
Of course.
Promise!
I promise.
She came back into the shadowed cave of the verandah and sat down. She took a sip of beer, then a long draught, put the glass down, glanced up at him and back at the beaded glass.
I was pregnant.
She was looking at her fingers, rubbing the now damp rust sand between their tips.
To Keith.
You’re his wife.
This was before. Before we were married.
She halted and craned her head around, as if searching for someone else along that long, shadowed verandah. Finally satisfied there was no one, she turned back to him.
Which is why we married. He just didn’t—this sounds so terrible—he just didn’t think it was right to have a baby out of wedlock. You understand?
Not exactly. You could have married. You did marry.
He’s a good man. He is. But—when I got pregnant—he didn’t want to marry. And I did. To protect the baby. I didn’t— She halted again.
Love him. No. I didn’t. Besides.
Besides what?
You won’t think me a bad woman?
Why?
Wicked? I am not wicked.
Why? Why would I think such a thing?
Because I said I was going to Melbourne to see the Cup. I said to people I always went. Well, I was new here, what did they know? But— But you didn’t go.
No. Not that. I went. But I also—