After She Left

by Penelope Hanley

  ‘It’s true,’ said Maddie. ‘He’s a slave driver. That’s why we all hate him.’ She kissed Signor’s cheek.

  Groups of guests chatted and laughed, drank and ate, and the afternoon drifted by. The spectacular view of the ocean and expensive champagne helped the guests to relax and forget about their problems for a few hours.

  More guests came towards the edge of the cliff as the shadows lengthened. They watched the roiling blue waves of the ocean, falling into silence for a few moments, until some people said it was time they were going.

  Olivia had come out and she stood on tiptoes and whispered something in Howard’s ear. He considered and then nodded, announcing, ‘We’re going to the Fifty-Fifty Club for dinner tonight. Please, take what you like. No good all this food going to waste. Everyone, take something as you leave. I insist.’ And he walked away to say goodbye to the guests.

  ‘He can be obnoxious, but one has to grant that he is generous,’ said Janet.

  ‘Generous with his ill-gotten gains!’ said Deirdre.

  7

  MAUREEN

  August 1946

  At 7 Beach Lane, Jim was holding Keira in the pale yellow bunny rug that Jim’s mother had given them. One of her plump little arms poked out and she was clinging to his index finger with her tiny pink hand. She gazed solemnly up at him for some moments, her blue eyes shining. All at once she smiled, kicking her legs, her whole body expressing delight.

  Maureen looked at them both. ‘No wonder she’s so happy,’ she said, ‘with a father like you.’ Jim smiled at Maureen and down at the baby again.

  He loves her just as if she were his own, thought Maureen. Why risk spoiling that? No one need ever know.

  She said, ‘You know what, I don’t think it will ever be necessary to tell her.’

  Jim took his gaze from the baby to glance at Maureen and back to Keira again. With a deadpan expression on his face, he drawled, ‘Tell her what?’

  They looked at each other again and smiled. Maureen went close to him and stood on tiptoes. She put her arms around his shoulders, the baby between them, and hugged him.

  *

  Nine years flew by, or so it seemed to Maureen. Jim’s plumbing business was thriving. Maureen enjoyed being a stay-at-home mother, now with three lively children and another on the way. After two boys in a row they were hoping for another girl, but they didn’t really care as long as the baby was healthy.

  In the middle of the August holidays the house in Beach Lane usually rang with the sound of children’s voices and laughter, squabbles and questions. Keira’s gang of nine-year-old friends were usually around and five-year-old Rowan and his best friend Tim, along with some cousins, were all as noisy as a flock of raucous seagulls and as difficult to control. If Jim was home he insisted on having ‘a bit of quiet’, but even his strictness could not still the frenetic activity of backyard soccer, tree-climbing and general wrestling, bickering and giggling. But this day was an exception.

  ‘Isn’t it quiet?’ said Maureen, sitting on the turquoise corduroy sofa and scratching the white cat on the side of his face.

  Jim, on the other end of the sofa, did not look up from the Sun. After a few moments he said, ‘Mmmmm.’

  ‘Your sister will drop the children back this evening as planned.’

  ‘Mmmmm.’

  ‘Ann’s doing us a favour and I’m going to take advantage of it,’ she said. ‘Is that all right with you, my Man of Few Words?’

  ‘Mmmmm. Fine.’

  ‘Are you being funny on purpose? Or just your normal self?’

  He kept reading. Maureen supplied her own answer. ‘Just your normal self, I guess.’

  She tried again. ‘Cup of tea?’

  ‘Mmmmmmm.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, going into the kitchen and putting on the kettle.

  When she came back she unloaded the tea things from a tray and brought Jim his cup of black tea. ‘I’m catching the tram over to Dover Heights to see Olivia.’ She sat close to him on the sofa. ‘Mrs Kettlewell’s bought a new house there. She says that Olivia can make a new start.’

  Lifting his gaze from the paper, Jim said, ‘Are you now?’ He looked in her eyes and put an arm out to touch her knee.

  ‘Mrs Kettlewell telephoned a couple of days ago and said Olivia has been released from Broughton Hall. She was very good to me when I was little and I feel I ought to visit her.’

  ‘You ought to, but you don’t want to?’ Jim said, looking concerned.

  ‘Yes.’

  Jim put the newspaper down and turned to her. ‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, Mo. I don’t want you getting upset or being reminded of horrible things in the past.’

  ‘Oh, darling, that’s sweet of you, but it’s not necessary.’

  ‘I can come with you – I can at least give you a lift there,’ he said, taking her hand in his.

  ‘Oh, no – it’s not far on the tram. I’ll be fine,’ she said, squeezing his hand.

  He took her hand and kissed it. ‘Are you sure?’ he said.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ said Maureen, nodding. She kissed his cheek and turned to her tea.

  *

  Olivia’s mother, Mrs Kettlewell, opened the front door.

  ‘Hullo, Maureen. Thank you for coming. Olivia will be thrilled to see you again.’

  Mrs Kettlewell led her down the cool, dark hallway into the living room. Olivia was sitting on one of the two brocade couches in a compact bundle, as if afraid of taking up space, wearing an old-fashioned pale pink cotton frock. A mauve cardigan was falling off one shoulder. She had put on weight and her fair hair had silvery grey streaks through it and was cut in an unflattering short bob. She sat with an air of extreme passivity, as if she were a doll that had been placed there.

  Maureen went forward, bent down and kissed her cheek, soft and smelling a little of antiseptic.

  ‘Olivia,’ said Mrs Kettlewell, ‘put your shoulders back. Maureen has come to see you. Isn’t that nice?’

  Silence. Olivia straightened her shoulders a little.

  Maureen wished Mrs Kettlewell would leave them alone. She sat on the sofa near Olivia. Her stomach churned a little with conflicting emotions: gratitude to Olivia for stabbing Howard with the scissors all those years ago, guilt that it was that action that had made it easy for Mrs Kettlewell to install her in the mental asylum once more, and hope that this visit of hers would not set off unpleasant memories and unhinge her again.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Olivia,’ said Maureen. ‘How are you?’

  ‘She is doing pretty well, all things considered,’ said Mrs Kettlewell.

  ‘Are you glad to be back? I suppose it feels strange at the moment,’ said Maureen.

  ‘She’s happy to be home again,’ said Mrs Kettlewell. ‘She just needs to settle in. I’ll make some tea. Milk and sugar?’

  ‘Just milk, please,’ said Maureen. She watched Mrs Kettlewell disappear to the kitchen and then turned to Olivia. ‘How are you really?’

  Olivia turned her grey-blue eyes to Maureen’s face. ‘I am glad to be home,’ she said, speaking slowly, as if weighing her words to see if the air between them could hold them. ‘My old clothes don’t fit me. Mother made this dress.’ She paused as if the words had tired her. ‘And you, how are you?’

  ‘I’m well. The children are well.’

  ‘Please, tell me about them.’

  Maureen smoothed her hands down her checked wool pinafore dress, the knubbly texture somehow soothing. ‘Keira is nine, Rowan is five and Michael is three. I am expecting another one in January.’

  Olivia digested this information. ‘You have a vast family!’

  ‘Not vast!’ Maureen said, laughing. ‘A lot of Catholic families are larger than this.’

  Mrs Kettlewell entered the room with the tea things and put their cups on the French polished coffee table. ‘Shoulders back, Olivia.’

  ‘But as Catholics, you can’t stop them coming,’ said Olivia. ‘There mig
ht be many more.’

  ‘Olivia – please! You must forgive my daughter,’ said Mrs Kettlewell. ‘Nothing to forgive,’ said Maureen. ‘I don’t mind. The rhythm method sometimes works – and sometimes it doesn’t!’

  ‘Quite,’ said Mrs Kettlewell, tight-lipped and no doubt having her opinion of Catholic barbarism reinforced. Olivia sat there like a straight-backed doll, smiling faintly.

  ‘Would you like a walk in the garden after we drink our tea?’ said Mrs Kettlewell.

  ‘That would be nice,’ said Maureen, sipping her tea.

  As Mrs Kettlewell led the tour around the manicured lawn with its shrubs and camellia bushes, azaleas and bulbs, Maureen wondered what could be done about Olivia. She had lost her independence. She needed to get out of her mother’s house, away from that less than benign maternal influence.

  She used to be a photographer and an artist’s model. How could she get any sort of job now? How could she make long-term plans? And what man would be attracted to this plump yet fey creature, so frail she looked as if she might blow away in the breeze, in spite of the extra weight?

  It was very sad. She was glad Deirdre was not there to see the state of her old friend. When they went indoors again Maureen talked to Olivia about her old friends and was glad to hear that she and Alfred Foote had remained close.

  They talked about the books Olivia had read in Broughton Hall and Maureen was surprised to hear that Olivia, when not sleeping or too drugged, had read extensively while there – Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, and poetry and plays, as well as Australians like Henry Handel Richardson, Ruth Park and Martin Boyd.

  ‘After a while they let me look after the library,’ said Olivia.

  This was hopeful. Once she was weaned off the drugs, Olivia might be able to regain something of her former energy and grace.

  *

  Maureen returned home and had just put her feet up for a rest when the doorbell rang. It was Ann with all the children, her three as well as Maureen’s three. She took one look at Maureen.

  ‘You, sit down. And you,’ she said, gesturing to the children, ‘go outside and play while we have a bit of peace and quiet.’

  A few minutes later the two women were smoking cigarettes and sipping tea.

  ‘You should get your licence, Maureen.’

  ‘Oh, I manage without driving.’

  ‘You’d manage a lot better with driving. It saves heaps of time.’

  ‘Jim needs the car.’

  ‘But if you got your licence, you could drive the car when he’s not using it. Ask him.’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t feel very confident about it,’ said Maureen.

  ‘Asking him or driving?’

  She considered for a moment before replying, ‘Driving.’

  ‘It’s easy – look at some of the moronic men on the roads – if they can do it, anyone can.’ Maureen was unconvinced.

  Ann persisted. ‘Promise me you’ll think about it?’

  Maureen blew a pale bluish swirl of smoke into the air. She nodded.

  ‘That was the most unconvincing affirmative I’ve ever seen. You don’t want to get too swamped by family – adorable though they are. You’ve got to keep sane by keeping some of life just for you.’

  ‘Family is supposed to be enough.’

  Rowan and his cousin Peter dashed into the room from the side door. ‘Mum!’ said Peter. ‘The ball’s gone up a tree.’

  ‘Climb the tree and get it down then,’ said Ann. ‘And I don’t want to hear from you again unless there’s blood!’

  The boys disappeared, calling out to the others.

  Ann continued smoking and looking at the portraits of the children that Maureen had painted. ‘When is the last time you painted a watercolour?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  8

  KEIRA

  September 1972

  Steve was out with his girlfriend Melanie and Nessie was out with her latest beau, an Alitalia pilot called Stephano. It was the night that Keira usually visited Beach Lane to help Sean with his English homework. When Keira arrived they were watching the news. The newsreader was saying, ‘Indictments have been made against Hunt, Liddy and the Watergate burglars.’ Jim and Michael were watching intently.

  The white wire-haired terrier skittered around the corner, her nails going tap-tap-tap-tap on the lino, and leapt up on Keira.

  ‘Lady! Hello again, my little woolly friend!’ She scratched Lady’s head.

  ‘Do you mind?’ said Jim. ‘We’re trying to watch the news here.’

  Maureen ushered Keira into the kitchen.

  ‘Have you heard from Jimmy?’ said Keira.

  ‘No. I wish he’d find somewhere sensible to live. Bad enough to be living in Glebe, even if it were a proper abode.’

  ‘The pub’s only temporary,’ said Keira, patting the dog’s head. ‘You sound as if you’re worried that you’ve got two black sheep in the family!’ Maureen didn’t share her laughter. Keira asked, ‘What’s wrong with Glebe?’

  Lady, eyes bright and mouth in an apparent smile, basked in Keira’s affection.

  Maureen looked grim and said, ‘It’s bristling with subversives. Life’s a lot easier if you don’t set yourself against conventions just because they’re conventions.’

  ‘But what if you’re against conventions because you’ve thought about them and honestly disagree with them? Isn’t having the courage of your convictions important?’

  ‘Of course, and I know what you’re getting at. Rowan is right to be a conscientious objector. He behaved as his conscience told him he must. But Jimmy is not a deep thinker like his brother. He has such a penchant for trouble.’

  ‘It’s the way things turn out for him. He can’t help it.’

  Maureen invited Keira to stay for an early dinner. Keira’s youngest brothers Michael and Sean ambled in and scoped the kitchen for food.

  Keira was still determined on her new topic for honours next year but she knew that her father would agree with Maureen about it.

  Keira and her father had hardly spoken to each other since she had left home a few years back but this evening, after the meal and after she’d helped wash up, she specifically asked him about Deirdre.

  ‘Dad, what is it you don’t like about her?’

  Jim gave her one of his long, silent looks, an unfathomable expression in his dark eyes, and said, ‘Deirdre Wild was beyond the pale. That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘But why? What did she do? I need to know for my honours project.’

  ‘Pick another project,’ said Jim, turning back to his Daily Telegraph with a rustling snap of finality.

  Keira bit her lip and returned to the kitchen to finish tidying up and putting things away. It was hard not to think about Deirdre as if she were dead. Her mother always made light of their estrangement, claiming that Deirdre just didn’t write many letters. Keira didn’t know much about Charles Wild either. His blood also ran in her veins and he must have had some influence on Deirdre’s work. It would just be a matter of research and somehow finding the right people to ask, she thought. She would have to broach the subject again with her mother. If only her mother would help.

  She went to find Maureen pottering in the back garden. Maureen mimed sipping a cup of tea, little finger stretched out in a parody of English upper-class good breeding, eyebrows raised enquiringly.

  ‘It’s hard,’ said Keira as they walked down the clipped gold-green grass towards the back door of the house in the balmy spring evening, Maureen in a red floral sundress and Keira in blue jeans and black T-shirt, her pony-tail swinging. Maureen’s glossy rose-painted toenails peeped out of her wedge-heeled sandals and Keira smelt the familiar Tea Roses perfume mingling with the traces of her last cigarette. ‘I’m no good at writing, and I can’t get anything about Deirdre out of you or Dad. It’s so frustrating.’

  Maureen swung the back screen door open. ‘You’ll feel better after a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘Maybe you’ll think up a
n easier topic.’

  ‘I want to do this one.’

  Keira put the kettle on the stove then poured milk from the fridge into two cups.

  ‘Mum,’ she said, ‘can I ask you something?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Could you help me track down some contemporary artists in Deirdre’s circle from those times?’

  ‘I can’t.’ Her mother’s lips tightened. ‘It’s too long ago. They’re probably all dead.’

  ‘Look, I know you find the subject upsetting for some reason, but – ’

  ‘It’s not upsetting.’ Maureen’s tone was determinedly cheerful but Keira could hear the strain in her voice as she scattered melting moments onto a plate. ‘I have no special knowledge. I was mostly away at boarding school.’

  Keira frowned. No special knowledge about her own mother!

  ‘Can you give me Deirdre’s address, at least?’

  ‘She moves around a lot.’

  ‘Well, give me the last one you have – please. I’ll write to her, at least try to.’

  ‘I will, but don’t be surprised if it comes back “Return to Sender”.’

  The hot scent of Bushell’s tea filled the small kitchen as Maureen poured the water into the pot. It smelt like home: claustrophobic. Maureen put the tea things on a tray and they went into the dining room, followed by the dog.

  ‘I don’t know why people want to go raking over the past,’ said Maureen as they sat at the dining room table with their tea and biscuits. Maureen’s framed watercolours of Keira and her four brothers as small children looked down on them from the cream walls. ‘It’s like these biographies of film stars. All their secrets and scandals and whose marriage they’re breaking up now, I mean, who wants to know?’

  ‘You always know a lot about them!’

  ‘Extracts in the Women’s Weekly are enough for me. Have a biscuit. You’re too young to be interested in the past, Keira. Young people should be interested in the present. I’m much more interested in the future than I am in the past.’

  ‘Heide says if you don’t know what happened before you were born, you’ll always remain a child.’