The Pages by Murray Bail Page A

saying. ‘That’s a thought I’ve never had before. She’s my sister, I hardly think about her. We’re both of us part of the furniture. We’ve been in the house the two of us here I don’t know how many years.’
    Wasn’t it Lindsey who had said her brother kept his thoughts to himself ? There was nothing stopping him.
    â€˜I’m racking my brains trying to think of someone I’d call kind. Would you call yourself a kind person?’
    Erica shook her head. Definitions of goodness, truth, kindness – and their opposites – were best considered in philosophical terms, at arm’s length. With resignation she saw how others took an interest in people more than in austere principles which over the centuries had been erected around people. There was this rush towards the subjective, which had – part of the attraction – no firm basis. If Sophie were at the table she would have tilted this attempt at conversation towards her methods, the psychoanalytical. By asking question after question she would reach him. She would then surround him.
    As she got up to make tea, Erica spoke over her shoulder, ‘It bucketed down last night. You went out in it?’ Erica poured his tea. ‘Milk?’
    Facing this man with a reputation for wordlessness, Erica found herself talking more than usual. He was sitting there in his faded blue work-shirt sipping the tea the colour of wood stain she’d made for him. He had his hand wrapped around the fine china cup the way he would hold a beer glass.
    â€˜This morning,’ she announced, ‘I fully intend to start.’
    At the very thought, Roger Antill, who’d barely glanced in her direction, blew out his cheeks.
    â€˜I’m very much looking forward to going through your brother’s papers,’ she said.
    For a while he remained nodding. Then he closed his eyes. ‘I’ve got a better idea.’
    He’d give her a conducted tour over the place, the bulging paddocks, the eucalypts at mid-distance, the dams, the old yards, the flocks of sheep – the works. They’d bounce around in his dented ute, the two dogs keeping balance on the back.
    â€˜Should we wait for Sophie?’
    â€˜Let’s go.’ Already he had his hat on. ‘I’m not going to bite you.’

15
    THERE WERE men past sixty who had seen a lot – their interestingly mangled appearances. Some had been through hell in Europe or up in the islands, and God knows how many marriage break-ups. Others had endured economic hardship, rural and urban. Did experience of strange and difficult countries make a difference? Some had fled for their lives. Men otherwise living quietly had lost wives, children, brothers before their own parents. Surely they’d have news.
    Being a witness to death, or almost death, or to suffering – at least to be in the vicinity of extremes – would perhaps reveal the occasional truth not available in ordinary life.
    These were Wesley’s thoughts, obscurely felt, back then.
    At St Vincent’s Hospital he got a job as a porter. It was not hard work. The doctors and nurses took their rapid strides. Brown lino shining. His job was to deliver crutches, and wheel patients along corridors and into cavernous lifts to be x-rayed or operated on. In these circumstances, women were willing and easier to talk to than the horizontal men, who all looked as if they were severely wounded in battle and reaching out for the cigarette.
    Between shifts the porters sat outside on the concrete, white coats undone, and smoked and drank tea, and stared down at their shoes. In broad daylight they were a pale, blotchy, weary-looking bunch. One of them might announce the price of a haircut had gone up. No reply, just the faint sound of cigarettes being dragged on. Opinions on politicians and football results were delivered without pity, without expecting a reply. A heavy unsmiling man did most of the