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A Consequence of Words by Ann Nugent Behind her the bang of the screen door finishes in a vibrato of tiny shudders. Suburban houses set in suburban lawns flick by like frames in a silent movie. Her old fawn coat flaps at her sides. She carries a brown cardboard suitcase. As she runs it bumps against her calves. She's taken nothing from the house but the case. It contains all she's salvaged from fifteen years of marriage, a suitcase crammed with words, the words she hadn't said, the words spoken and rejected, her hidden secret words. The case feels strangely light. When the agent told her that a small flat at the back of the shop was included in the lease she could hardly conceal her excitement. Immediately she paid the bond. For the next week she scrubbed every corner of the place, removing layers of paint and paper. Gradually the shop revealed its original character. Brass window frames emerged from beneath dark green paint. Several applications of soapy water exposed diamonds of crimson, purple and yellow glass around the windows and above the door. She decided that the shop had once been a jeweller's. That night she took a handful of her words and scattered them across the kitchen table. One by one she picked them up with her long silver tweezers. One by one she held them to the light. She hoped that among these words might be the one she was looking for: that single ineffable word that contained the essence of all others, her word of ultimate meaning. She believed that when she saw it she would recognise it at once, and in that moment all the other words of her life, the ones that jangled, cried out, protested, and even the bitter words of anger and hate, would fall into a harmonic order. Each night she took another handful of words and sorted them, delicately placing them across the grey formica table-top. Warm words she put with warm words, cold with cold, foreign with foreign and words of love with words of love. She kept a special box for palindromes. She rubbed the blue crinkle paper between her thumb and forefinger, as soft as flesh, she murmured. The words 'Je t'aime' and 'Je t'embrasse' trembled on the surface of the paper. She cupped the words in her hands, blew on them, warmed them, blew again until she felt them soft against her palms, palpable matter. 'Je t'aime' --she pulled at the stuff, twisting and shaping it. Two silver earrings in the shape of large teardrops emerged. At the centre of each earring the words ' Je t'aime, Je t'aime ,' sparkled. Around them she traced interwining curves which had all the energy of cresting waves. At the bottom of each teardrop she set a small blue bead. 'Je t'embrasse' --she clasped her hands around her neck'--a different feeling, a feeling of danger. She plaited the words, strand over strand into a choker, and thought of strangulation. With tiny pliers she pulled the soft bronze into little peaka. In black ink on white card she wrote the single word ' Gorget ,' more elegant she thought than 'choker' with its suggestion of a pea caught in the throat, or of a dog on a leash. That night she dreamed. Words tumbled around her, blowing against her like leaves in an autumn flurry. She saw herself in a parkland sitting on a bench holding a small rectangular box in her right hand. She couldn't see into its dark interior. And so in her waking hours she was left with a teasing memory. Her word loitered like a stateless person between her conscious and unconscious thought. Sometimes in her sleep she came close to it but when she stretched her hand out it slid into a shadowy zone just beyond touch. She pinned the earrings and gorget on two small black satin cushions and placed them in the display window. Her display looked very desirable, sure to tempt. She beamed halogen lights onto the word-jewellery ensuring that passers-by got its message. 'I love you,' semaphored the earrings. 'I embrace you', purred the necklace. From across the road the man looked at the old place. Someone had done it up. He crossed the street. In the display window he saw the silver earrings and spiky bronze necklace . It was then he remembered his mother taking strings of pearls from the window, holding them up for her clients' inspection and he thought of sandalwood, his mother's smell. She looks out from the dark interior of the shop. Each morning she sees him stop and then walk on. She wants him. That night she sets to work. She places the palindromes: 'noon', 'deed', 'madam', 'level'...evenly about a central axis, strong in their symmetry. And branching our from the axes she arranges words that might have been palindromes but for a miscast or missing letter, 'swallows', 'lunula', 'manna'. 'Lunula', she touches the white crescent at the base of her thumb as she hangs the mobiles from the ceiling of the display window. They look like little constellations, silvery stars against the shop's black interior. The next morning she sits in the back of the empty room and waits for the man. She watches as he moves his head from side to side and up and down, like a fish angling at a bait. He peers into the shop. He sees her shadowy figure perched on an old bentwood high-stool, her ankles crossed and the heel of her right shoe hooked over its bar. The woman uncrosses her ankles and walks out of the shop. 'Would he like to come and see the objects more closely?' she asks from the niche between doorway and street. The man follows her. He stands awkwardly in the centre of the room, glancing at the ceiling and walls as if looking for something, someone. She holds one of the earrings against her ear lobe, leaning her head slightly to one side. She walks towards him and stops an arm's length in front of him. He stretches out his hand and rests the earring on a curved finger; 'Je t'aime', he reads aloud. She slips the earring back onto its pin and picks up the gorget. 'Feel it,' she says, offering him the necklace. He takes it and unhooks its clasp. 'May I?' he asks. She turns her back to him. He placed the gorget around her neck. She feels its hard peaks like the teeth of a tiny animal pressing at her flesh. She turns back to face him. On each of its peaks he sees a ruby sparkling. 'Je t'embrasse ', he whispered under his breath. 'It's fascinating,' he said, 'if you don't mind my asking where do you get your stock?' 'Oh, I make it here,' she said. 'You have a workshop out the back?' he ventured. 'No, just the kitchen table, my words, a pair of pliers, some wire and glue, I have all I need...it's the words you know.' 'Your words are wonderful,' he said. It was then that she told him of her search for that single word the one that would make sense of all the others. Back in the street, the pavement hard beneath his feet, he was confused There was no doubt this was the shop of his childhood and inside the shop was a woman who walked and spoke, but who claimed she made jewellery out of words. He was becoming uncertain about what he'd experienced and what he'd imagined. The next morning she sat and waited for the man, but he did not return. The days went by and still he did not come. She tried to put him out of her thoughts, but the more she tried the more he was there. She worked harder and harder but far from giving ease words began to torment her. Invasions of words kept her awake at night. They wormed in her head, 'rumple to rumble to ramble, mind to ming to sing and sang, dream to dread, poster and paster to poster-paster, love to lobe, and then she began remembering them backwards. After three sleepless weeks she ran out of the shop into the city's dark and empty streets. And there, in a cul-de-sac, not far from her own shop she stumbled on the Night Markets. Brass poles supporting striped awnings glinted in the yellow light of swinging lanterns. Bolts of turquoise, purple and chartreuse silks, gleaming glass bangles and balls, the smell of musk and aloes, and fragrant oils warmed in tiny braziers, sparkling gems set in gold and silver invaded her senses. She glimpsed a young girl, barefooted, disappearing into a dark alley, a bright red apple in her hand. Here in the rustling of silks, in the foreign cries of the merchants, in the sweetly mournful note blowing from a bamboo pipe she heard the promise of the word she sought. But how, how is it possible, she asked herself, to possess the word when even people with names disappear? The next night she ventured further than she's been before and found herself in front of a curtained stall. The trader drew the curtain aside and invited her in. Gold rings heavy with jewels hang from his ears; his fingers are banded in silver and gold. She sees silver boxes richly jewelled resting in mirrored cabinets. Each box has a different design and each is large enough to hold a lady's little finger. 'The most precious objects deserve the most precious caskets,' the merchant smiles. She looks more closely and sees that the boxes are sealed with a little ball of amber gum. Her heart pounds. The next night she tries to find the stall again, it's no longer there. She asks, but no one remembers it. She returns to the place in full daylight but she can find no trace of the Night Markets, not even a lost scarf, a scrap of glitter, the persisting smell of incense, or a dropped apple core. She returns to her shop and puts a 'closed' sign in the window. She pulls down the heavy green fabric blinds and lies across her bed. Her body feels like lead, her brain as brittle as coral, her skin dry as wood. She waits. He comes. He takes a small rectangular parcel from the pocket of his coat. 'It's for you,' he says. She almost knows before she opens it what would be inside--a jewel encrusted box sealed with amber gum. She peels at the gum with her thumbnail. 'If you press it at the right place it opens,' he says. He stands beside her. She smiles. She presses the top of the jewelled box, the lid springs open. She looks inside. There she sees her word, three letters picked out in blood-red rubies, 'and', 'Yes,' she says, 'Yes.' © Ann Nugent – a short story by Ann Nugent She was a painter – a Sydney painter. Look at her canvasses and feel red soil crumble beneath your feet – shameless frangipani – deep pink stamens thrusting from fluted hibiscus like the moist tips of eager tongues – lilies with their creamy gorges – voluptuous green leaves – all promising the possibility of sun-drenched afternoons in beds with crumpled sheets. She was like that – showy. He’d never considered her work art, too immediate, too indulgent, all surface, no depth. He didn’t think there would be so many people at the opening; perhaps they’d been dragged along like him. That’s where he’d met her. He’d expected someone tall, glowing, exaggerated like the paintings. – The artist, said Bernard whose partner was the sister of the friend of her friend who’d invited them. – David Mulhouse, actor. He’d stretched his hand in her direction. Muscular, short, tanned, with blond short cropped
hair, Anna surprised him. Looking back he realised he’d heard
her before he’d seen her; gold bangles jingled on her brown
arms and ropes of tiny bells tinkled around her ears. And her bright
red lips. Walking along the back streets of Surry Hills he’d told himself that these warehouse shows were for hangers-on, the wannabees who know nothing about art but think they have the eye to spot an emerging Whiteley. Frankly he was not tempted. Six weeks after Anna’s opening and between parts, he’d moved in with Bernard and Marita, the result of one of those internal swaps that are an integral part of group housing and human relations in Sydney. Anna lived not far away, in a less leafy part of Surry Hills. It was always at her place, a studio apartment, shorthand for cramped flat in which jars of paint, rags saturated with turps mingled with the leavings of last night’s dinner and scattered, cast aside clothes. If you stand tip toe on a chair and look out the
top window you can see the Harbour. Anna ran her finger down the length of his spine. – You’re going to England then? the question she always asked after sex, well if not immediately, pretty soon after. He knew she did not want him to answer the question, not honestly. What she was looking for was the reassurance that he’d remain conveniently around the corner, available. – Yes, soon. As usual she took no notice of his practised reply. – We could go together. He did not answer. For all their light and brightness, her paintings were claustrophobic. Looking at them made him feel he was trapped in a miniature jungle, pulsating with uncertainty, not knowing from which direction an attack might come. – Marita and Bernard are planning to go together. She wrapped a bold patterned sarong tightly around
her compact body. Briefly he wondered if she’d copied her paintings
from sarongs. – Wine? Anna poured from an opened red, and unperturbed by the possibility of staining, placed it and a saucer of blueberries near his crooked elbow. He played through his usual post-sex tape: London, an audition, successful, a small part to begin with; sketching in fine lines the successes that would follow from the small opening role. But today his daydream was being spoiled, smudged by an irritation at its edges. Shadowing his vision was Anna, her red lips pouting and her firm bronze arms around him, holding him back. He longed to tell her once and for all that he was going; that she would not be coming with him, that he would make his mark overseas, that he could not afford to waste time with someone whose horizons stopped at the Harbour. But somehow the time was never right. And even if he did tell her, she would, he thought, smirk and say that the role at Belvoir Street had gone to his head. From the bed he heard her slingbacks tapping an urgent staccato on the bare red tiles. – I’ll be late for life drawing. Be sure to lock the door when you leave, she called over her shoulder, slamming the door behind her. It occurred to him that she’d never had a key cut for him. She’d said she would but she never did. He was the one left to close the door but never open it. After three days phoning Anna’s flat he decided to ask Marita if she knew where Anna might be; perhaps she’d gone to her sister’s. – Marita looked up from her bowl of morning
coffee and rolled her eyes; didn’t he know? To her parents in Tasmania, perhaps; perhaps New Zealand. – London. Marita’s reply had all the
inevitability of a pea shelled from its pod, a self-evident fact
to all but himself. Marita scrambled on a chair and flicked down from the top of the kitchen cupboard a small flat parcel wrapped in sickly yellow paper and secured with pink ribbon. She thrust it into his hands. He felt he was tumbling through space, with no clothes on, nothing at all except the yellow parcel gripped in his hands. – Open it, he heard Marita’s voice from a distance. He lay the parcel on the Formica and pulled at the pink ribbon, Poems from Sydney danced in front of his eyes. She’d left him a collection of recycled poems. The irony of her choice was not lost on him; the surprise was that he didn’t suspect she had it in her. She must have been planning to leave all the time and this her Parthian gift, the artist’s signature curlicue. He opened the book; and there in her fine peaked, artline black, diagonals across the flyleaf: Dear David He threw the book with a slap onto the table. ‘Lots of Love’ her juvenile, undifferentiated
‘Lots of Love’ stuck in his throat. ‘Lots of Love’ was first published
in Hecate , Vol 27 No. 2, 2001, pp.54-56; and is reprinted with
permission.
– a short story by Ann Nugent Her angel has gigantic wings;
layers of shining feathers, each bursting with tensile light, packed
all golden moist, honeyed like glistening toffee.
Sitting high on the bridge she feels safe. ©Ann Nugent |
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