Mara's Choice

by Anna Jacobs

  A reclusive woman, his mother, communicating even with her own family mainly by email in recent years. She’d sent one to Hal every Friday, regular as clockwork, and the messages had followed him from country to country. In each she’d replied to his previous email – at least he’d just about always replied to her – then she’d given a summary of what she’d been doing. Even her briefest descriptions had been beautifully expressed. She’d always been good with the written word, even before she gained fame as a poet.

  The taxi stopped at the end of a street where large, luxurious houses lined one side, which ran along the edge of the water. Smaller but still quite large houses lined the other side without a water frontage. The main visual feature of the street seemed to be garages, triple or quadruple, with broad paved areas in front of them. Well, of course! These would be the rear of the waterside houses and the sides facing the water would be the front.

  Hal got out of the taxi and tried the front door keys the lawyer had given him on the ornate door to the left of the garage. To his relief it opened easily. When he stepped inside, a harsh beeping sound reminded him to enter the code he’d been given. That stopped the ghastly noise, thank goodness.

  After paying the driver, who had got his suitcases out of the boot by now, Hal refused further help and carried the luggage inside himself. He didn’t want any more meaningless chat, however kindly meant. By the time he’d moved all three cases and his backpack inside the hall, the taxi had driven off.

  Once he closed the door, he found that the late afternoon light filtering down into the hall from a window above the door wasn’t good enough for a stranger to find his way round easily. The stairs leading up to a dimness suggested closed curtains upstairs. He found a light switch then locked the front door behind him.

  He usually travelled with only minimal luggage but this time he’d brought three loaded suitcases with him, paying for the extra weight because he’d intended to spend some time here even before her lawyer had told him that his mother hoped he would enjoy her house for a few months before he sold it, or even settle there.

  Maybe he would stay on if he liked living here. He was tired of the rat race and wanted to chill out for a while. His only certainty at the moment was that he was making a much-needed major mid-life change, the sort people called a sea change.

  He’d meant to look round as they drove through the town but had got lost in his memories of his mother and his sadness at losing her so young. Well, sixty-two seemed to him far too young to die, only thirty years older than him.

  He’d been extremely surprised when the lawyer told him how much money she’d left him. She must have been more business savvy than he’d realised.

  He tried saying, ‘Good on yer, Ma!’ with an Aussie accent at that thought, but his voice broke and he had to stop and take a few deep breaths before continuing to explore. But his thoughts wandered on.

  Like her, Hal had come here to Mandurah on his own. He’d never married, though he still had a vague hope that it might happen ‘one day’. So far, however, he’d not cared enough about any woman to feel like spending the rest of his life with her. He’d enjoyed a couple of longer relationships, one lasting nine months and another just over a year.

  He’d made it plain at the start of each move into shared accommodation that he didn’t want to marry yet and had chosen partners who felt the same. Both had been intelligent women, successful in their careers, and the partings had been amicable, caused more by their jobs than by disagreements. He still kept in touch with them both.

  And why was he standing here like a fool thinking about his past? It was the future he should focus on from here onwards.

  He looked round again. To his immediate right was a door which he found opened into the garage, a big, dark space. Another fumble found the light switches on the wall. As the lawyer had said, there was a medium-sized Toyota parked there, looking rather lonely in a three-car garage. The car belonged to him now, already insured for him, thanks to his mother’s thoughtful preparations.

  It’d be good to have a vehicle to get around in, but Hal didn’t care much what a car was like as long as it was comfortable and reliable, so he didn’t go to check it out more carefully.

  He moved back into the hall, closing the garage door, leaving the suitcases near the front door until he’d done a tour of the place and chosen a bedroom for himself. The hall stretched right through to the canal side of the house, its length showing that behind the fortress-like outer wall was a much larger dwelling than he’d expected his mother to own.

  The first door on the right led into a splendid modern kitchen, which occupied the rear of a huge room. He smiled. She hadn’t been much of a cook, so he’d bet it was almost unused. Between it and the canal was a generous dining area and seating area.

  He walked slowly towards the other end, thinking how sad it was that the maroon leather suite near the window took up less than half the living space and that only one of the two recliner armchairs seemed to show any signs of having been used. The sofa and the other chair looked pristine, as if they’d never been sat on.

  Surely his mother would have made one or two friends here to come and visit her?

  This part of the ground floor ended at a wonderful wall of windows looking out onto a covered patio and, beyond that, water. These were artificial canals, his mother had told him when she moved here, and her house sat at the very end of the watery cul-de-sac, looking down towards the main canals. The canal ended in what would have been a turning circle in a street and he supposed served the same function here for boats. Not that he knew much about boats.

  She’d told him she’d bought the house because it faced some of the most beautiful sunsets she’d ever seen in her whole life and she loved watching them.

  He fiddled with the key ring until he managed to find one which unlocked the huge sliding glass door. As he stepped outside, he breathed in the fresh, salty air with pleasure and felt the tension in his shoulders start to ebb.

  The outdoor furniture consisted of a small table and four chairs, stacked now to one side of a patio which could have fitted several large tables on it without looking crowded. He could imagine her sitting here sipping a glass of wine in the evenings and enjoying the sunsets. He’d be doing the same.

  ‘Thank you, Ma,’ he said aloud. ‘You bought a beautiful home and I’m going to enjoy living here.’

  He went back inside, hesitated then locked the outer door again. Better safe than sorry, because people could approach the house from both sides.

  The other half of the ground floor contained three large rooms. The one near the street had French windows at the side of the house leading out to a Japanese-style garden. The room was unfurnished but contained several large cardboard boxes.

  He couldn’t gather together the energy or the courage to find out what was inside them and made a fending-off gesture with one hand. ‘Not yet.’

  The second room was totally empty and his footsteps echoed as he walked across to stare out again at the stark garden of strategically placed rocks and gravel.

  The final room might have been intended as a second living area. It offered more of those breath-taking watery views. His mother had used it as her office and it was set up with a desktop computer and other necessary equipment. He could use this room too, only to do that he’d have to deal with his mother’s computer. He wasn’t sure he could face her private thoughts yet, but the idea of wiping the whole system clean of her imprint seemed worse.

  No, he needed to check it for the last of her delicately beautiful poetry. He was immensely proud of the way she’d made a name for herself over the past twenty years, still remembered her joy when her first collection of poems was accepted for publication. After that, every year or two the same respected publisher had brought out a slender volume of her exquisite poems.

  It suddenly occurred to him that she might have written enough for a posthumous collection to be published. He would definitely have to check the c
omputer for that – but later, when he could summon up the courage, see past this wall of grief.

  He went back into the central hall and walked slowly up the broad staircase to explore the bedrooms, opening curtains and blinds to let in the light. Two huge bedrooms at the canal side each possessed an en-suite bathroom, walk-in wardrobe and dressing room. ‘Sumptuous’ was the word that came to mind.

  One of them still had his mother’s clothes in it, as well as some medical equipment. He moved quickly out again, closing the door, because it was another area he found it hard to face.

  He peered cautiously into the other front bedroom, relieved to find the walk-in wardrobe and drawers completely empty. The en-suite bathroom was dusty but not dirty, looking as if it had never been used. Good. He’d take this bedroom for himself.

  Four other bedrooms were arranged in pairs, sharing a bathroom each. They too were completely unfurnished.

  ‘Were you happy to be completely alone here, Ma?’ he asked softly as he closed the door of the last bedroom. It was increasingly feeling that she’d been like a wounded animal, coming here to die on her own terms, without having to pretend to others how she felt.

  He went back to explore the kitchen, hoping there would be some food left in the cupboards or freezer so that he wouldn’t need to go out until tomorrow to buy fresh fruit and vegetables.

  He glanced at his watch, set now to Perth time. It was only five o’clock but he was exhausted after the long flight from the UK, followed by the painful visit to the lawyer. He felt like lying down and giving in to the urge to sleep, but if he allowed himself to do that he’d wake up in the middle of the night.

  He’d found when he first started travelling to different time zones that it was best to try to fit in with the local time of day as quickly as possible. If there was something to eat and maybe a bottle of wine, he should be able to push himself on for another hour or two, but not much more because he hadn’t slept on the plane, for all the extra comforts of business class, only dozed occasionally. Aircraft beds weren’t adequate to fit a body over six foot tall.

  The fridge was empty and switched off, but there was plenty of food in the freezer, as well as dry goods and tins in the cupboards. He opted for soup and a roll from the freezer, and left half of it because exhaustion won over reason before he could open the bottle of white wine. ‘Tomorrow,’ he told it and put it in the fridge in solitary splendour, added a carton of long-life milk for his breakfast cereal and a packet of frozen berries that could defrost slowly overnight.

  It was all he could do to tidy the food away then trudge up the stairs with his main suitcase, but his mother had taught him that if you didn’t let things get untidy, you never had to do major clear-ups. He couldn’t bear to go against her lifelong habits in her beautiful home.

  The bedroom felt strange, as soulless as a hotel room. He unpacked some pyjamas and his toiletries, briefly debated fetching up the other suitcases, but couldn’t be bothered.

  He was half asleep by the time he approached the bed, newly showered and ready to let go of the world. But when he pulled back the fancy bedcover there were no sheets underneath it. Groaning softly, he trudged round the upstairs floor looking for a linen cupboard. There was a huge one at the rear of the landing, but it had only a couple of piles of bedding and towels in it, sitting forlornly on the middle shelf, presumably all she’d needed.

  A few minutes later he gave a long sigh of relief as he crawled into the newly made-up bed and let himself slip into oblivion.

  As Emma was fiddling with the TV she looked outside, stopped what she was doing and went over to the window. ‘There are lights on next door. Come and look, Aaron. Do you think someone’s broken in?’

  He went to stand beside her. ‘I doubt it. The security system makes that place seem like Fort Knox. Claudia told me on one of our rare encounters that she always slept soundly, because if she needed any sort of help it was only a press of a button away.’

  ‘Perhaps her son’s arrived, then. She said he was living in London and mentioned once that he would inherit everything. I was always amazed at how calmly she spoke of dying.’

  ‘I don’t think you get much choice once you’ve been handed a death-sentence diagnosis. You can either leave your family with memories of you ranting and railing, or grit your teeth and depart with dignity.’

  Aaron moved further along to get a better view of the neighbouring house. ‘I wonder if he’s as reclusive as she was. Look, the lights have gone off upstairs but a couple are still on downstairs. He was probably jetlagged and went straight to bed.’

  ‘We’ll no doubt find out tomorrow. Come on. Let’s watch that film we chose.’

  But Aaron couldn’t settle to it, or to anything. He was still too excited about George actually contacting his daughter. In the end he stopped pretending and went to sit outside on his own near the water, enjoying the path of shivering light the moon was painting along the calm surface of their canal. He was glad the other residents were having a quiet night. Parties could be a bit noisy sometimes, echoing across the water, especially those thrown by the weekend-only occupants.

  What would his daughter be like? He’d seen a photo now, but her solemn expression gave no clue to her personality.

  He hoped she didn’t take after her mother, hoped she’d get on with his two stepchildren, hoped most of all that he’d be able to form a good relationship with her from now on.

  Emma appeared beside him, took his hand and pulled him to his feet. ‘Come to bed, sleepy-head. You were starting to nod off, literally.’

  He fought back a yawn. ‘Sorry I spoilt your film.’

  ‘We can watch it another time. I couldn’t settle to it, either, after you gave up.’

  ‘I’m being selfish.’

  ‘No, you’re being a normal human being. It’s a momentous time for you. And remember, if you need me to do anything else to help you through it, you have only to say.’

  ‘I know.’ He smiled and they went upstairs hand in hand and fell asleep holding hands, as they often did.

  Chapter Six

  As George had foretold, three days later Aaron phoned him to say that he’d snapped up a very convenient cancellation and booked Mara on a non-stop flight from Heathrow to Perth for late that same evening. A messenger would be waiting for her at Heathrow near the business class check-in with the necessary paperwork and would be able to identify her from the photograph.

  Would George please arrange everything that end? Aaron had an important meeting coming up which he wanted to get over and done with before she arrived. There might be a possibility of the sale of his business.

  When George phoned her with the news, Mara closed her eyes briefly and muttered, ‘Thank goodness!’ because she was finding the atmosphere at home even more uncomfortable than usual. The air felt literally heavy with her mother’s simmering anger.

  ‘You can make it, then, Mara?’

  ‘I most certainly can.’

  Wishing Phil had come home from his golf game, Mara went downstairs to tell her mother and get the initial unpleasantness over with.

  ‘I forbid you to go!’ Kath said at once.

  ‘What? You can’t do that. I’m thirty years old, not thirteen.’

  Her mother burst into tears, so Mara went straight back upstairs to finish packing her clothes. She was feeling both excited and nervous. The shoes and various personal oddments she was taking were already in the suitcase, but she could now add more things than expected, given the extra luggage allowance. She’d never travelled business class before. It would be a much more comfortable way of travelling.

  When she’d finished packing, she would book a taxi to get her to Heathrow this evening and— She suddenly felt the presence of someone and guessed before she turned that it would be her mother. Her busy excitement vanished like a burst balloon.

  Kath must have come upstairs quietly. How long had she been standing in the doorway? She wasn’t sobbing now but scowling at the suitcase
and backpack. ‘So you’re definitely going there, however much it upsets me?’

  ‘Of course I am. Apart from meeting my biological father, it’s a great opportunity to see something of Australia.’

  Her mother’s tone grew harsher. ‘You pretend to care about me but you don’t. I’m the one who bore you and raised you. I’ve given my life to you, but you don’t care how I feel.’

  ‘I don’t like upsetting you, but this isn’t about you.’

  ‘Well, you’re wasting your time hoping it’ll turn out well. Aaron Buchanan is a liar. Don’t believe a word he says.’

  The venom in her voice upset Mara. ‘How do you know what he’s like now? You haven’t seen him for thirty years.’

  ‘I don’t need to. Leopards don’t change their spots. He’s a manipulator and he always has to be in charge. He’ll try to turn you against me.’

  ‘Why would he do that, Mum? Tell me why you keep saying it?’

  ‘Because it’s his nature to be king of the castle. I found that out the hard way. His wife won’t want you, either. Why should she welcome a stranger who might get between him and her children’s inheritance?’

  ‘Mum, really—’

  Kath suddenly raised her voice to a screech. ‘You’ll have broken up our family out of sheer selfishness.’

  She turned round, slamming the door of Mara’s bedroom before going downstairs again.

  As Mara’s bedroom door showed its resentment of being slammed so hard by bouncing open again, she heard her mother turn the kitchen radio up to maximum volume and a horrible thumping beat filled the air. Her mother was doing that on purpose, aware of how Mara hated that sort of din.

  It nearly drove her mad as she tried to concentrate on packing her things and she knew it would do little good to close the door. This was a small house, a two-up, two-down in a terrace in which bathrooms had been added over the stairwell during a modernisation phase decades ago, before she was born.