Candelo by Georgia Blain Page A

Marco’s body.
    Don’t go
, and, half asleep, he would try to pull me back down into the tight grip of his arms.
    But I was gone.
    Bare feet on bare boards, bathers still damp from the day before, I would close the door behind me and step out into the freshness of the day, the brilliance of the blue sky, blue sea and the first of the morning glory, opening purple and full to the sun.
    The stairs that lead down to the beach are cracked and the path they make is overgrown. Thick, glossy mirror bush blocks out the light; dark, secret caves beneath their branches. I always stand at the top, still for a moment, and look out to the ocean. On the days when it is flat, I swim the bay; when it is rough, with king tides that sweep up to the rocks below the cliff path, I go to the pool.
    And this was how we got to know each other.
    I would find myself waiting, there at the top of the stairs,until I heard him coming up behind me. Setting it all in place, knowing what I wanted right from the start. Manoeuvring, piece by piece, until it was there in front of me. Anton smiling as he found me each morning waiting in the same spot, flicking me with his towel as he came down the stairs to stand next to me, asking me what it was going to be:
The pool or the sea for you and me?
    It was only later that I marvelled at how I failed to think of the others, at how determined I was, and when I do that, I remember Rebecca Hickson’s face, and I feel ashamed. I look at myself in the mirror, and I tell myself that Anton was no Simon, dragged there against his will and refusing to participate. Despite what he would say.
    But it doesn’t always work.
    As he stood there at my front door with his washing bundled in his arms, a peg still caught on the sleeve of a T-shirt, we could not look at each other.
    I can’t stay
, he said, uncertain as to why I had called him in the first place, glancing nervously up to the ceiling, up to where Louise was waiting.
    I know
, and I moved to close the door.
    I could see the rain rushing in torrents down the path and I knew that when it finally eased, the back steps would be sagging, rotting further; the rust that eats away at everything in this building would have crept a little higher into the pipes, and the paint on the walls would have peeled a little more. Slowly decaying around us.
    I was pregnant.
    And I felt like a fool as I told him.
    It was Marco who once described Anton as
something of a used-car salesman. All charm and no substance
.
    It was a comment that made me wonder how much he guessed. It was a comment that I did not want to remember as I stood there opposite him, knowing that he was going to fail me.
    Are you sure?
he finally asked, still not looking up at me.
    I told him I was.
    That it was me?
The ugliness of his words crossing mine.
    And as the impact of what he said hit me, I knew that if I had been another person, a third person who had walked in out of the rain and stood there at my front door, listening to this, I might have felt for him, I might have understood why he said what he said, but I didn’t.
    All I could do was hate him.
    And wonder how I had ever fallen for him.
    Don’t be afraid of single-minded pursuit
, Vi used to say, and she would look at me, checking to see whether I was listening.
    So long as what you want is a good thing
.
    And I would roll my eyes at the impossibility of her addendum.
    And so long as you can be certain of
. . . and she would pause, for one instant, perhaps for dramatic effect, perhaps to make sure that I was paying attention.
    Of what?
I would ask, impatiently.
    Of what you are going to find at the end
.
    I turned to the sink, to the pile of dirty dishes, and as I let the tap run, he reached for my hand, but I pulled away.
    Please
, he said,
don’t tell her
, and he glanced up to the ceilingagain, to where the telephone rang, to where a chair scraped overhead, to where footsteps clattered across the room, to where Louise