‘Maggie, no. That’s the sort of thing you do. Not me. I’ll just get mad with them.’
‘I don’t know why you would. It’s not the bank’s fault. Anyway, get the documentation and find out what is owing, at least.’
‘I don’t know why you had to go for so long. I’m having to do everything,’ said Kristo plaintively.
‘You can sort this out, darling. I have every faith in you.’
There was a silence and he seemed to remember that he was supposed to be on his best behaviour. ‘Sorry, baby. I’m just pissed off with everything. And, as usual, Nico has buggered off just when I need help, and dumped me right in it.’
‘Where’s he gone?’ Maggie felt a prickle of discomfort. She glanced around out of habit, even knowing it was completely absurd.
‘No idea. Just decided to take a trip. Have a nice holiday somewhere. Why now? Hang on.’ She waited while he called out, ‘Mum! Where did Nico go?’
Maggie could hear Yia-yiá coming closer to the phone, giving a detailed explanation in Greek until Kristo interrupted her. ‘Yeah, yeah … okay … okay. Maggie? Nah, she doesn’t know …’
‘With Effie? Has he gone with Effie?’
‘How the hell would I know? I don’t keep in touch with her. Oh, Mum says he went off on his own. Left his wife behind. Typical. Why are you so interested, anyhow?’
‘I’m not. It just seemed unfortunate that he would choose right now.’
‘Yeah, but he was always a selfish piece of …’ Maggie could hear Yia-yiá scolding him; tough on her boys, she never tolerated them speaking badly of each other.
‘Hang on, I just have to go outside … Mum, you don’t need to follow me … stay there …’
Maggie heard the glass door to the back deck slide shut.
‘It’s a long time till you get back, Maggie mou,’ he said in his mushy voice. ‘If you get sick of those girlfriends, can you come home earlier?’
Maggie knew if she got into that discussion, Kristo would start to campaign. She wanted to ask how the twins were, but that too would start a whole new discussion she didn’t want to have right now. She said her goodbyes, put the phone away and turned back to the river but the light had changed and her fleeting sense of contentment vanished.
She felt breathless walking back to the flat. Her imagination was working overtime and Agnes’s plight had taken a backseat to Nico suddenly going away on his own and being secretive about his destination. Was that coincidental? He did go away from time to time, usually to Bali or somewhere else in Indonesia, but it was unlike him to go alone. Did he know where Maggie was? She stopped dead at the realisation that she had printed Rose’s itinerary and stuck it on the fridge for Kristo.
She couldn’t get back to the flat fast enough. She hurried up the three flights of stairs and was panting by the time she got inside the door.
It was warm inside the flat, smelling of coffee and fresh bread. Fran and Rose sat at the table having breakfast. Maggie was immensely relieved to see them, as if there was a possibility they might have abandoned her.
‘You okay? Someone chasing you?’ said Rose, getting up. ‘Sit down. I’ll get you some coffee. We’ve got delicious rolls and jam.’
Maggie sat down, still puffed from the exertion of the stairs. ‘We need to change our itinerary.’
Rose poured a cup of coffee and placed it in front of Maggie. ‘Why, exactly?’
‘Not so much the locations. Just the accommodation. Mix it up a bit.’
Fran asked, ‘Mix up what with what?’
Maggie tried to sound upbeat. ‘You know, be more spontaneous.’
Fran and Rose exchanged puzzled looks.
‘There’s something very wrong when you’re the one advocating spontaneity,’ said Rose. ‘That’s your least-favourite thing. What’s going on?’
Maggie had guarded this secret for so long, it had become a part of her. Over the years she had kept it well away from Rose and Fran. For the longest time she’d wanted to pretend that it wasn’t happening and talking about it would only make it more real. Had she confided in Rose, she would have been under pressure to bring everything out in the open. Even now, there was a high risk that Rose would take things into her own hands and talk to Kristo. That simply couldn’t happen. There wasn’t a single person in her life who wouldn’t be affected. The family would collapse. The business would collapse. There was no question in her mind that it was partly the burden of this secret that had led to her collapse.
But now she’d gone the wrong way about dealing with this problem. ‘Sorry, look, we don’t need to change everything. What’s our accommodation in Vienna?’
Rose reluctantly scrolled down the screen of her phone and handed it over, as Maggie put her reading glasses on. Thinking furiously, she flicked through the site. ‘It says we can cancel for fifty euros. I’ll pay that, and we can get a flat like this.’ She gestured around cheerfully, ignoring Rose’s gaze. ‘This sort of thing is perfect.’
Rose and Fran watched her in silence.
‘Maggie, tell us what’s going on. If you want to change it, fine. But at least explain,’ said Rose.
‘I will. Just let me think it through. It may be nothing …’
‘What may be nothing? Are you in danger?’ asked Fran. ‘Are we in danger?’
‘No, of course not. When the time is right, I’ll explain everything. Promise.’
Maggie picked up her coffee and gave them both a reassuring smile, but they looked unconvinced.
Chapter Twelve
Rose lay in bed, wide awake. She hadn’t enjoyed one single full night’s sleep since she’d left Australia. Overstimulated. Strange beds. Too hot. Too cold. Roommates chomping on earrings. Worries about Maggie. Every night there was a different reason with the same result. The worst part was not being able to complain about it. She longed to have a jolly good moan. Her phone lit up with a text.
Fitz: Make it to Vienna?
Rose switched on the bedside lamp, positioned her phone and took a shot of the hotel room replete with gold flocked wallpaper, red velvet curtains and baroque-style furniture. It looked like the set of a Chekhov play. Maggie had clearly spent too much on this accommodation. It was over the top.
Fitz replied with a ‘wow’ emoticon. Rose found the whole emoticon business tedious. Whenever she felt the urge to use one, she would spend ten minutes trying to decide which expression truly illustrated her point. Was she that tragically sad? Or that boiling mad? Or that stupidly happy? She considered moaning to Fitz about how tired she was but couldn’t be bothered. She sent an emoticon of a moon face catching some z’s. If only. She switched off the lamp and tried to relax.
Good old Fitzy, he was a decent bloke. He’d been married at one point – no kids, but on friendly terms with his ex. Always a good sign. Unlike Peter, he had a wide variety of interests: played clarinet in a jazz band, was involved with a running group and on the roster of a soup kitchen in the city. Also, unlike Peter, he had mates with whom he periodically sailed or skied or snorkelled – any sport that started with an S, as he sometimes quipped. He had a background in journalism but since that sector had dwindled, he’d reinvented himself as a wordsmith and seemed to have steady work as a ghostwriter and editor for self-publishers.
Part of Fitz’s appeal was that he was his own man and, while he was always keen to see Rose, he didn’t need her or depend on her. At first she found that confusing, but now it was hard to separate her true affections for him from this refreshing attribute. Was she involved with him simply because he was the opposite of Peter? She certainly trusted his opinions. And she liked him – a lot.
This trip had been constantly pulling her back to the past, bringing up times in her life that she hadn’t thought about for years. It had forced her to think about the turning points and why she had taken a particular path. There was a point in her marriage when everything changed and, all these years later, it still unsettled her to think about it.
She had been on
her way to drop some documents off to Peter and had stopped to get a takeaway coffee. As she stood waiting at the counter, she gazed idly around the café. A couple sat at a table towards the back, artfully lit by a wash of sunlight from the rear courtyard. First, she saw a couple in love. Then she recognised her husband. It wasn’t a movie scene; they weren’t clasping hands or blowing kisses. They weren’t even touching, but Rose sensed the vibrational energy between them. As though their molecules were drawn to each other by magnetic attraction. Caught in the moment, they probably had no awareness of how transparent their feelings for each other were.
The young woman laughed, arching her slender neck. Peter smiled, his eyes seeming to rest on the curve of her throat. Rose recognised her: Lisa? Liza? Elissa. She’d attended a party they had given, earlier in the year, for Peter’s faculty. Rose remembered the way the young woman had glowed around Peter, enthralled by his anecdotes. She remembered that Peter was Elissa’s PhD supervisor, so not unusual that they would meet, but the fact that Peter was tucked away in a café off-campus was evidence that something more was going on. The campus was his kingdom. He needed a good reason to stray from it. Staring at them, a number of recent anomalies in Peter’s behaviour clunked into place – his cheerfulness for one thing.
A younger Rose would have stormed that love-fest and made a scene but something held her back, some tangled internal debate. Had she seen what she thought she’d seen? Or had she seen nothing but a professor and student sharing coffee? Was she romanticising the woman’s neck? Was she simply tapping into the cliché of a professor shagging his PhD student? Was she the victim of her own vivid imagination?
Shaken, she left without her coffee and went straight home. She sat on the back verandah, staring into space, numbly recalibrating all her perceptions of her marriage as stable and predictable and secure. She no longer felt safe.
Elliot was ten years old and Max had just turned six. Rose had been a stay-at-home mum from the outset. She had recently decided to train to teach English as a second language so she could work around the boys’ schedules and get out of the house more. She had never sought stability but knew it was vital for the boys. What she had seen was hardly enough to file for divorce and upend the family and their life together.
Peter was a good husband and father in many ways; he brought in a solid income year after year, he wasn’t outdoorsy or sporty but he was a kind dad, always willing to talk to the boys and educate them. He could be vague and sometimes pompous but she had great respect for his considered and educated perspective on the world. The prospect of losing him crystallised all his good points in her mind. She had never imagined that Peter could be organised enough to conduct an affair, but now she realised, armed with the right woman, he could leave her. She would become a single mother and Peter a weekend father.
Peter had come home that afternoon, annoyed that she hadn’t dropped off the documents he needed. She said she’d forgotten, which she had. There was nothing in her head apart from what she had witnessed. She wanted to demand answers, have it out and release some tension. But the words didn’t come. She was afraid to light the fuse.
She waited until they were all together as a family at the dinner table, knowing she would keep a grip on herself in front of the children. ‘How are you going with your PhD student?’ she asked casually, between ticking the boys off for toying with their food and kicking each other under the table.
‘Elissa,’ he said and she knew he had been longing to say her name out loud. It had been pent up in him, waiting to be released, like a song. Rose imagined him doodling at his desk, writing their names side by side – Peter & Elissa – in his strange, primitive handwriting. That was ridiculous. He was a grown man. ‘Fine so far. Clever girl. Industrious.’
‘Just remind me of the topic?’ She directed her scowl at Max’s appalling table manners. ‘Max, don’t eat with your hands.’
‘I’m not sure you need reminding, since I doubt you’ve ever asked. Why the sudden interest?’ Peter finished his meal and crossed his cutlery neatly on the plate.
Rose reached behind her and flicked the kettle on, trained in this task so long ago she never thought about it. ‘Well, I’m asking now, and you’re being cagey.’ Her tone was combative, her grip slipping. ‘Boys, if you’ve finished, you can go play outside for half an hour.’
‘Can’t we watch TV?’ asked Max.
‘No, outside!’ Rose got up and poured the boiling water into the teapot as the boys chased each other out the kitchen door into the garden.
‘Not cagey, simply doubting the sincerity of your interest. Thank you for the tea.’ He reached out to take the cup and saucer from her, as though he didn’t want her coming too close, then turned his interest to the newspaper in front of him. ‘It’s a feminist analysis, not something you’d be interested in.’
‘Am I not a feminist?’ Rose cleared the table and wiped it vigorously, relieved to have something impersonal to argue about.
‘Not of the radical bra-burning variety,’ he said, without looking up. ‘An armchair feminist, perhaps. A fuzzy feminist who enjoys railing against the so-called patriarchy after a few too many wines.’ He turned each page and scanned the newspaper thoroughly, pausing occasionally when something interested him.
‘Peter, bra-burning was in the mid-sixties, for goodness sake, before I even had boobs. I don’t have the time to be an activist, I’m too busy running the household, bringing up our children and working on your … stuff. If you mean, do I believe that women are equal to men? Obviously. You may recall that I started a consciousness-raising group at uni, and I’m quite sure I’d be able to grasp Lisa’s thesis.’
‘Elissa,’ he said, enjoying another opportunity to savour her name. ‘Her name’s —’
‘Yes, I know what her name is,’ snapped Rose. Inside she was trembling with rage and indignation. She always felt like slapping him in this superior mood, never more than now. ‘How did you become her supervisor? It’s hardly your area of expertise.’
‘It has its roots in history. Obviously. Not just my era but beyond that. She seems very satisfied. I don’t know why you’re challenging it. Do you know something I don’t?’
‘That you’re screwing her?’ The words leapt out of her mouth before she could stop them.
He paused for a moment. ‘Rose, that’s an unfounded accusation and I’m not going to dignify it with a response.’
‘Pleading the fifth amendment? Afraid of incriminating yourself?’ She was dizzied by the vision of her marriage slowly toppling over, about to crash and splinter. Why was she pushing it? She couldn’t stop.
‘Where are the boys?’ he asked, glancing around unhurriedly.
‘They’re in the garden. Just tell me the truth. You owe me that.’
‘I have no debt to you, Rose. I did the right thing at the time it was needed and have done it ever since. I’m beyond reproach in that regard.’
The coldness of his comment knocked the breath out of her. ‘So the answer is yes?’
His expression, when he finally looked up from the newspaper, was one of mild contempt. ‘Think about whether you’re in a position to demand “truth”, given the scope of the lie you’ve perpetuated, and the burden that places on me.’
‘You promised you’d never bring that up again,’ said Rose, suddenly on the brink of tears.
He shrugged philosophically and returned to his newspaper.
Her lack of planning left her nowhere to go, apart from castigating herself in the months to come for not being intellectual enough, letting herself go and not having a neck like a young swan. The discussion was over – his response made that clear. She watched him carefully but found no new evidence. The only comfort was that he didn’t want to upend their marriage.
Sometime later she heard that Elissa had been awarded a research grant and gone to live in Chicago or Denver or somewhere suitably far away. Even now, Rose googled her occasionally in the hope that something unpleasant had befalle
n her but derived no satisfaction from the exercise. The incident had scarred their marriage. It wasn’t his straying that eroded her trust so much as the smooth, unruffled way he deflected it back to her and dismissed her enquiry, as though he considered it to be none of her business. Her younger, more impulsive self would have retaliated in some spectacularly destructive way, but the responsibility of parenthood weighed heavily on her. She loved being a mother far more than she ever imagined. She wasn’t free to act on her every emotion. And a good thing too. Keeping the family together was the only thing that mattered at that point. She had to keep a lid on it. Make the best of things.
Rose had always thought there would be a great love in her life. Peter was not that love. Neither was Fitz. Bass guitarist Charlie had been her only great passion, but he was never meant to be. The time for finding a soul mate had most likely passed. She’d been busy doing other things. On a bus recently, a young woman had stood up to offer her a seat. Rose had stepped aside for the elderly person she assumed was behind her. It took a moment to dawn that this courtesy was for her. She almost wept. It happened so quickly and suddenly, as though she’d gone to bed young and woken up old, like Rip Van Winkle.
Rose looked at her phone. It was nearly midnight. Desperate times. She got up and dug around in her suitcase where she’d hidden the bag of weed she’d bought in the hostel bar in Berlin. There was no balcony, so she’d have to stick her head out the window. She pulled the curtains aside to discover that the windows didn’t open. Frustrated, she stamped around the room and would have kicked something if she hadn’t learned from bitter experience that she always came off worse.
Then she had an idea.
She thought about a music selection to lift her mood while she patiently untangled her earbuds. She pressed them into her ears, found what she was looking for online and began to sing along to Carole King’s Tapestry album, every song dear to her heart. She rolled the joint and, sitting cross-legged, pulled the bedcovers over her head to form a tent. It was a bit like being inside a bong. She’d probably only need half the joint. She didn’t want to get completely wrecked. Normally, it worked like a charm, partly because she smoked regularly. An occasional joint carried the risk of the opposite effect.
Sixty Summers Page 17