The Golding

by Sonya Deanna Terry

  But there he was again, doing what Dalesford suggested he do but doing it badly: interpreting symbols. It might have been a symbol, the dream, a coded instruction as to how to make his future life better, or it might have just been the result of that mustard and pickled onion sandwich he’d fixed before bed, a sure-fire way to induce psychedelic nightmares.

  Now inside, Matthew rested his briefcase in the hall, then scooted up the marble staircase. The Audi was not in the garage. He didn’t need psychic powers to know Bernadette wouldn’t be visiting at the hospital. That was something Matthew would be expected to do on the weekend, with Laura and Sara. How was he going to say to the poor lady coughing her lungs out from pneumonia that her granddaughter was still ‘a bit busy’ a second time?

  ‘Tell her I’m ill if you have to,’ Bernadette had roared. ‘She hates me you know. She doesn’t deserve my attention.’

  Any mention of Grandma Carmody or her frail condition infuriated her, and yet Matthew was sure the senior woman—a sunny and motherly sort—did not hold grudges in the way Bernadette did.

  From what Matthew could gather, it had been two upsetting incidents that Bernadette could never forgive. The first had been the grandmother telling her at seventeen that a red dress she’d worn to a disco made her look ‘a tad too provocative’. The second had been undiluted criticism of the buttons on a jacket she’d made in high school needlework. Grandma Carmody said they were too big. Matthew had seen the 1987 yearbook. Grandma Carmody was right. Venturing all the way up to Bernadette’s chin had been a line of flat circular objects the size of mini-compact disks. Bernadette, normally stunning in anything she wore, had quite possibly channelled Pierrot in that pic, the teary French clown who courted the moon.

  As far as Matthew knew, these comments alone were the basis of Bernadette’s wounded indifference, despite Grandma Carmody’s unswerving loyalty. Birthday and Christmas gifts sent by the war-widow pensioner, whose financial situation was far from healthy, were ever extravagant, quite beyond her affordability and smartly presented with ribbons and bows, along with letters in elegant copperplate requesting photographs of the kids.

  He galloped up a second flight of stairs and strode down the hallway to his study, intent on checking for emails from Gallilani to ensure no nasties lurked around what seemed so far to be a clear deal.Ten minutes before he had to go out again. He’d grab a drink, spruce up a bit and look in on the girls to make sure they weren’t killing each other over some minor dispute.

  The computer was taken. Sara had beaten him to it.

  ‘Hey, sweetie,’ he said.

  No answer.

  ‘Why here? Everything okay with your notebook?’

  ‘It’s not working. I want another one.’

  ‘Not working? It’s not that long since I got it for you.’ All Matthew could see of his stepdaughter was the back of her head and a single straw-coloured plait. He watched for signs of nodding. ‘Why not go and get the notebook and I’ll try and figure it out.’

  ‘Nah, too much trouble. I’m busy.’

  ‘Sara, I’m sorry, but I’m about to go out, and I’ll need to look at my emails before I do. You can have that back once I jump in and check them.’

  The young teen turned, making a face. ‘Matthew, I’m online with my two favourite buddies. I can’t leave them hanging.’

  Getting impatient now, Matthew consulted his watch and said, ‘Okay, five minutes longer then, in order to tell Tyson and Lizzy—’

  ‘Tyson and Izzie.’

  ‘...In order to tell Tyson and Izzie that you’ll be leaving them hanging for two.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  He wandered across to Laura’s room, knocked on the opened door and smiled down at the little girl chatting on her mobile. ‘Hi Laura Lou. Everything all right?’

  ‘Fine,’ she snapped in a six-year-old’s squeak, then whispered something into the phone. ‘You can go now, Matthew!’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Matthew!’ The little girl rolled her eyes in exasperation. ‘Can’t you see I’m having a private conversation?’

  Not bothering to answer that, Matthew wandered to the bathroom and wrenched the shaving cream out of the chrome cabinet, looking forward to the time Bernadette’s daughters would learn to value manners. He’d now come to accept that they didn’t like words such as ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’ and ‘thank you’.

  He’d been looking forward to being a father, even though it was only the role of stepdad. Next to making exorbitant amounts of money, marrying a glamour and buzzing about in a sports car, having a couple of kids to care about had been one of his major goals.

  He lathered his jaw and proceeded to shave. He’d always fancied he’d have children he could make a fuss over, perhaps even spoil occasionally, but spoiling Laura and Sara had already been efficiently seen to, long before Matthew’s time. The most coveted technology had been handed over to Bernadette’s girls within nanoseconds of their asking. Every movie they’d viewed or wished to view bought outright, although never revisited, and archived in a towering DVD spine that looked as though it were trying to nudge the fifteen-foot ceiling.

  Eyeing the imposing cornices, he undid his tie and strode to his room. It hadn’t been his first choice, the pseudo-Georgian, but its location was closer to the girls’ schools than his Milsons Point penthouse, and joint decisions were to be expected now that he was responsible for a family.

  Since Bernadette had her heart set on hiring the flamboyant furnishings consultant known to be an Einstein when it came to colour schemes, Matthew put mention of the cost aside. Quibbling over the cost of gold-plated faucets or baroque-era chandeliers was hardly productive. Decorator Dan had turned Sara and Laura’s bedrooms into the sort of living spaces princesses would envy, each with a walk-in robe to rival the coat-hanger-clanger of their mother’s. ‘Aladdin’s Cave,’ he called it. She’d had it done out to resemble a Turkish circus.

  He crossed back through the elaborate indoor balcony hallway. A quick long-black, a squiz at the inbox and then he’d be on his way.

  It was possible she wouldn’t be upset with him for going out. She’d surprised him the night he returned from Alice Springs. Instead of ranting or freezing him out, she’d been gentle, demure even, the woman he’d originally married. If she’d always been like that, he’d have no cause to question the partnership’s longevity, but he also had to caution himself against judging her too severely. Whenever he recalled the disturbed Burwood woman hopping about in the dark, he felt a surge of gratitude at being married to someone sober. Before getting trapped in substance abuse, she might have been as dignified as Bernadette. Assuming she had a husband, how would the poor sod be dealing with all that? Would he have contemplated breaking up, as Matthew was doing, or was he resigned to enduring the strangeness?

  ‘Where are you going, anyway?’ Sara yelled as he passed the study in a brisk march.

  Matthew grinned at that. The one time one of Bernadette’s girls wanted to know where he was going, it was somewhere embarrassing. ‘Poetry reading,’ he called back. ‘On a friend’s recommendation.’

  The younger daughter poked her head out of the bedroom and chanted in a sing-song voice, ‘Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet eating her curds and whey.’

  ‘That’s a good one, Laura,’ Matthew commented. ‘I might use that.’ Laura collapsed into a fit of squealing giggles, ran to her bed and began jumping on it, aiming her hands towards the ceiling. ‘When are we getting a trampoline?’ she shouted. ‘I’m sick of jumping on this.’

  It was the ingratitude that got to him: the girls’ dissatisfaction with all that they had and bottomless pit nagging for all that they hadn’t. He didn’t blame them of course. Kids were primarily a product of their upbringing. ‘I don’t know whether Mum wants you jumping on your new bed,’ he said finally.

  ‘You can’t tell me what to do. You’re not the boss of me. Mum is. And so is Dad. And Mum’s here all the time, and she doesn’t care what I do.’
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  ‘Where’s Mum tonight, do you know?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Shopping, I bet,’ Sara shouted from Matthew’s study.

  ‘You’re probably right about that.’ He headed towards the kitchen. ‘Anyone want a drink?’

  ‘Nah.’

  An equation concerning the role of stepfather often nagged at him, especially on the nights he woke from unpleasant dreams. Numerals would rollick through his thoughts to a rhythm as insistent as a military drumbeat. Company totals, his own personal budget. He’d calculate and re-calculate them until his eyelids grew heavy or the alarm clock went off. The equation that assailed him in the early hours, though, was a formulation of conundrums rather than digits and caused him to ask how his stepdaughters could grow into considerate, disciplined adults with the ability to live within their means when raised by an indulgent mother and obliging stepfather.

  Bernadette’s housekeeper was in the kitchen, chopping vegetables for a roast.

  ‘Hello there, Rhoda. I didn’t expect to see you here this late.’

  Rhoda beamed. ‘Mr Weissler! How are you?’

  ‘Matthew. Please.’

  ‘I mean Matthew. Sorry.’

  Matthew filled a mug from the espresso machine and took a few gulps, then filled two glasses with spring water.

  ‘Your Mrs Weissler had a late appointment and asked me to cook dinner tonight and supervise the kids. Normally it’s my day off.’

  ‘That’s good of you. Loved the celery and watercress soup you made the other day.’

  ‘You liked it? I’ll cook it again on Thursday then.’

  ‘Rhoda, you’re a star.’

  The girls would at least have someone looking after them until Bernadette got home, although it niggled at him that she might not be there to say goodnight to them when they padded off to their beds. ‘Sara’s old enough and responsible enough not only to babysit her sister but to look after kids professionally,’ she’d say when he’d offer to bring in a minder on their nights out. ‘I babysat my cousins from the time I was twelve. And you couldn’t get a more secure home than ours, Mattie.’ She was right of course, and Laura and Sara were never far from her mind. She would discuss them on dinners out, her face aglow with tender pride, and once home, would smile down at their sleeping faces before filling their slippers with after-dinner mints, careful to ensure the wrappings protruded conspicuously enough to prevent crunch damage from warmth-seeking feet.

  Nights out, nowadays, of course, were blemished with disagreement. Vanuatu had been brought up again, and again he’d opposed her plans. Bernadette wanted to go during the school holidays. Matthew felt she was being unfair to her children. ‘They need to be with their mother. Take them with you. Give them a chance to see the islands.’

  ‘But don’t you get it?’ she’d wailed. ‘I need time to myself for once.’

  ‘What fun are the girls going to have at home on their own while I’m at work? Most nights I can’t get back any earlier than eight-thirty. What sort of school holiday is that?’

  Bernadette had frozen him out; had eaten opposite him in a fork-stabbing sulk.

  On the way home, they’d arrived at a compromise. He’d agreed that a nanny for the entire two weeks wasn’t such a bad idea, a firm but amiable stand-in-mother whose duties would include keeping them company during Matthew’s work hours and taking them to the movies or friends’ parties, or Luna Park. They’d given Rhoda first option, but Rhoda could only maintain her evening cooking shift—on the days of the holidays she’d be minding her school-age grandchildren—so Bernadette conducted interviews with candidates. He’d coached her in interviewing, and she’d quite enjoyed the responsibility of chatting to potential employees.

  Returning to the study, Matthew found Sara tapping on the keyboard while talking on his office phone. ‘Charlotte, wait,’ she was saying. ‘Is Tyson getting online? Cool. Speak to you soon.’

  He placed a glass beside her as she smacked the phone down. ‘All wrapped up now?’

  ‘Hardly. I’ve got heaps to speak to and I have to speak to them now. What’s that? Water? You know I hate water.’

  ‘It’s good for you,’ Matthew murmured, retrieving his laptop from the stationery cupboard. ‘Soft-drink dissolves teeth. Okay Sara. I need my computer please. Now.’

  Reluctantly, Sara stepped aside. Matthew settled into his seat and clicked onto his emails. Nothing in his inbox from Gallilani’s. He’d check again on his laptop once he arrived at the venue.

  He knocked on Laura’s door and placed her glass on the bedside table. Her back was turned. Matthew smiled to himself at the sight of the silent munchkin busily arranging new outfits for one of her dolls. ‘Water for Laura Lou,’ he announced.

  ‘Okay,’ she said softly.

  ‘Now if Rhoda asks you to go to bed, you have to do as she says, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Not like last time, okay?’

  ‘Okay, Matthew. I’ll go to bed nicely.’

  ‘Good girl, Laura. See you tomorrow morning.’

  He called goodnight to Sara as he thundered down the stairs.

  ‘Night, Matt,’ she called. ‘Have a good time.’

  Matthew halted on the landing. Have a good time? Was that Sara Belfield speaking? Touched by this, he called back, ‘Thanks, sweets. Try to have some of that water if you can.’

  He was two minutes late arriving at the community hall, a stubby building strangled by the sort of gigantic ivy leaves that protruded from stone walls and overlapped in compact curves like the scales of a mythical fire-breather.

  Matthew reached for the laptop on the backseat. He’d risk another couple of minutes for peace of mind over the Gallilani deal.

  Within a matter of days this relentless grapple for deals would be history. Just a fortnight more and he’d be finishing up as a mere manager in his mid-thirties, immediately following a task that had floundered pathetically. Not that this had been the final decider. The stifling level of discontent and the feeling of not making any tangible difference in an occupation that threatened to beckon mundanity had pushed him to think the unthinkable.

  Comforted by the good news of no news in his inbox, he snapped the laptop closed, switched off his phone, grabbed the folder of loose-leafed poems he’d packed in the glove-box that morning—a leftover from his youth, which he believed still held merit—and sauntered down a ferny path to the doorway, wondering why the hall’s committee didn’t get a gardener in to smarten things up.

  * * * *

  In the foyer on his way to Room Five, Matthew could hear the meeting had started on time. Someone was introducing a poet’s recital.

  Great, he thought, angry at himself for not leaving work earlier. The other thought he had was: You bastard, Dalesford.

  Poetry reading? Was the man the product of a first-cousin marriage? What was the alpaca farmer-turned-author thinking when he suggested Matthew attend something as wimpish as this? ‘I predict you’ll be addressing great amounts of people in the future,’ Dalesford had told him. ‘Get into practice by speaking to groups. This mustn’t involve heading meetings at your work, mind you. Try a local type of gathering. A writers’ club would be good. Somewhere people go to read out their work.’

  ‘I’ve toyed with the idea of getting into politics,’ Matthew had said. ‘So getting up in front of people makes sense. I want to make a difference to society.’

  ‘You’ll be making a difference to society all right,’ Dalesford had said. ‘But I don’t think it’ll be through politics.’

  Aware that he was just as crazy as Dalesford to go along with those pie-in-the-sky presumptions, Matthew wondered whether he’d be wise to quit now and return home. At the exact instant of that thought, something seemed to buzz, or trill, in his ear. He drew to a stop. Waggled his head.

  ‘Okay, first up tonight, we have a lovely new guest, courtesy of our fellow member, Darren Eddings. She’s no doubt a bit nervous, so I’ll ask you all to put your hands toge
ther and extend a warm welcome to...I hope I’ve got the name here right. Darren, your handwriting’s very, very small and I haven’t got my reading glasses.’

  This would be as palatable as unthawed beans, worse than trailing behind Bernadette on those voracious shopping expeditions, worse than attending a church service with Bernadette’s pernickety great-aunt on Christmas Day, probably up there with wondering whether he’d done the right thing by resigning from his job and the year he lost half-a-million in shares.

  And he hadn’t had time to eat. A hot Italian meal was calling. A plate of Napolitana at Amaretti’s. A radish side-salad, a basket of crunchy garlic bread. Better to quit now than to endure a rumbling stomach throughout boring declarations of love and heartbreak. Did he really want to pretend he was another one of these loser poets by reciting verse he wrote some twenty-odd years ago?

  An attractive, overly made-up brunette, resplendent in a shawl that sparkled gold and silver, opened the glass door from outside and hurried into the foyer. At that moment, Matthew made a sharp turn and bumped his poem-folder against the wall. It sprang open and folded outwards to release each of his writings into the air. Carbon copies of the originals, which he’d tapped out on an electric typewriter as a gawky eighth grader, wafted down to the linoleum floor. He crouched to collect them.

  ‘Clumsy!’

  Matthew looked up to see the brunette grinning down at him. She placed one ring-less left hand self-consciously on her hip, gave an eyebrow raise and fake pout, then resumed grinning. Dammit, she was still watching him, and he was no more in control than as the gawky eighth grader he’d once been, a butter-fingers nerd who dropped things whenever he hoped to make a good impression.

  ‘Sorry, folks, all has been sorted out,’ chuckled the amplified voice from Room Five. ‘The name of our first poet for this evening is Rosetta Melki with “The Piper”. A big hand for Rosetta.’