After She Left

by Penelope Hanley

  ‘I would like to meet her.’

  ‘That can be arranged.’

  He stood and moved around the room. ‘Always intriguing, looking at people’s books,’ he said. ‘Vance Palmer, Robert Louis Stevenson, lots of poetry, Shakespeare … ah, you have some esoteric interests too. Jung, Theosophy. The Tibetan Book of the Dead.’ He pulled it out. ‘A well-thumbed copy – with the Adyar Bookshop stamp. In Market Street, next to the State Theatre. I used to go there.’

  ‘Yes, I go there a lot – for the books and magazines, for yoga lessons, and the lectures. Charles sometimes went with me. We met some interesting people. But we didn’t meet you.’

  ‘Fate meant us to meet at the right time,’ he said, ‘don’t you think?’ He slid the book back onto the bookshelf and walked over to sit on the sofa close to her.

  She looked at him and said dreamily, ‘We’re two lost souls meeting and discovering a strange rapport.’

  ‘A rat’s paw,’ said Owen, laughing and taking her hand.

  She took her hand away and said, ‘I hate puns.’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t know why such a puerile thing came into my head! But I do feel the connection, as if we’ve known each other forever. Do you think you could teach me some yoga?’

  ‘I could. We must have known each other in a previous karma,’ she said, laughing.

  ‘Look at the cat – he’s picking up what we’re saying!’ said Owen. Merlin was sitting in a sphinx position staring at them. He transferred his gaze and appeared to be meditating on his front paws. He emanated an immense and powerful aura of serenity. He looked up at them again then closed his eyes slowly, ignoring their laughter.

  Owen continued. ‘It’s funny that you actually chose to come here. I never felt I fitted in here. I mean, I was born in Australia but I always felt in exile. It only made sense when I discovered Buddhism. I could easily imagine I’d lived previous lifetimes aeons ago and now, because of the bad things I’d done in those lifetimes, I was being degraded, and my karma this time around was to be born in Australia where no one has any fun or believes in anything except gambling and beer-drinking.’

  They both laughed loudly. Merlin looked disdainful at the sudden noise. He stood up and did the downward-dog position that his species do several times a day, then strolled off towards the kitchen.

  ‘You’re a Buddhist?’ she asked Owen.

  ‘I’m intrigued by it but I couldn’t describe myself that way. I’m on a journey, searching for answers. My mates accuse me of dabbling in things.’

  ‘You – a dabbler? I don’t believe that for a minute,’ she said. ‘What about Trisha?’

  ‘She’s a communist.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘No, I’m a Fellow Traveller. You see, I am a dabbler.’

  She laughed. ‘You’re like me – keeping an open mind.’

  ‘Yes, I’m agnostic. But one thing I am sure of is that I don’t want to leave you. I could talk to you all night.’

  *

  In the morning, Deirdre slipped out of bed, put on her green silk dressing gown and disappeared. A few minutes later she returned with two glasses of water and set them on a bedside table. Owen grabbed her wrist when she was close to his side and pulled her onto the bed beside him. ‘Come back here, Deirdre Wild, you wild witch, into my wilderness, into my wild patch – and look how you’re inspiring me into composing poetry – you’re a muse and where’s my notebook?’

  ‘I am more than a muse, and don’t forget that I don’t like puns!’ she said.

  ‘I can’t help it. You must stop them coming out of my mouth!’ he said and kissed her roughly, his morning stubble like sandpaper against her smooth skin, until they both started laughing. ‘Funny how sex and humour don’t go together!’

  ‘Sex is a serious business,’ said Deirdre. ‘An’ so is thirst.’ She drained three-quarters of his glass of water. She put it down and he drank the rest. They lay back and kissed some more, neither feeling any more levity. He untied her belt and took off her dressing gown.

  ‘Wait,’ she said, ‘I wonder what the time is?’

  Stretching his arm over her and up to the bedside table he grasped his watch, turned the face the right way round, peered at it and groaned. ‘I’ve got to go or I’ll be late for work.’ He pulled her close for a moment, then leapt out of bed. ‘I miss you already,’ he said. ‘When can I see you again?’

  *

  They had found each other and they danced a journey through time, a dance of loving and laughing, dreaming and daring, a dance each of them hoped would never end.

  ‘The lease on my room is up at the end of this month,’ Owen said one Saturday morning as they lay on the bed reading the papers at Beach Lane.

  Deirdre looked up. ‘You must come and stay here,’ she said.

  ‘Would that be all right? You don’t think Maureen will mind?’

  ‘She won’t mind. You know what she said? With your white hair, you match our pets.’

  He laughed. ‘So I’ll fit right in aesthetically. That’s the important thing. And you don’t mind that I’m seven years younger than you?’

  She laughed. ‘If you don’t mind that I am seven years older!’ She looked in the wardrobe mirror at their reflections and said, ‘Look at us – you with your tanned face and white hair and me the reverse, with black hair and a white face!’

  ‘We make a handsome couple,’ he said, ‘if I do say so, myself, since I’m half of it.’

  *

  Maureen observed that Owen cooked good scrambled eggs and bought her chocolate milkshakes at the Paragon Milk Bar in Coogee. He took her to the aquarium there and helped her with her school assignments and compositions in the holidays. He walked Sir Dudley, fed Merlin and played cards with her.

  At a party they had one night, Merlin, with his pretty face, his pure white fur and pistachio green eyes, walked into the room, and one of the guests, Dorothy, said, ‘What an enchanting cat!’

  ‘He is enchanting – when he’s not vomiting on our bed!’ said Owen.

  ‘Ugh,’ said Deirde, playfully punching Owen’s arm. ‘He doesn’t make a habit of it! Don’t give them the wrong impression, Owen!’ And she picked up the cat and kissed his whiskers. ‘Come to Mummy, darlin’. Your reputation is being endangered. You are enchanting and you’re my muse.’

  ‘This is the cat that’s in so many of your paintings!’ said Dorothy.

  Merlin had joined the array of animals in Deirdre’s work, immortalised among the flying white horses and black swans, the echidnas and the fish, the seahorses and foxes.

  ‘He’s her familiar,’ teased Owen, ‘isn’t he, my gorgeous Celtic witch?’ And he put his arm around Deirdre’s shoulders, kissed the side of her face and ruffled the cat’s head.

  *

  It was the Anzac Day weekend and Deirdre had been in the studio since dawn. She was absorbed in another image of a sinister-looking Captain Cook that had wormed its way into her latest landscape. She was mixing viridian with a little China white and Prussian blue when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Oh, my God! Olivia! You scared the life out o’ me!’ Deirdre said, her hand on her heart. ‘What’s the matter?’ And she put down her palette knife and wiped the blade with a rag.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt you when you’re working,’ she said, ‘but if I don’t talk to someone I’ll go mad.’

  Deirdre looked back at her work and then forced herself to focus on Olivia. Her fair hair was unbrushed and her pale hands were shaking. Her normally graceful, expensive clothes looked as if she had slept in them. She was dressed in a grey velvet skirt and a white silk shirt half tucked in and half not. Instead of the leather sandals or boots she normally wore, her feet were in an old pair of tennis shoes, the laces on the left undone.

  Deirdre wiped her hands on the old white shirt of Charles’s that she used to protect her clothes before taking it off and putting her arm around Olivia’s shoulder.

  ‘You’ll feel better after some tea and
you can tell me what’s wrong.’ They walked down the backyard and into the house.

  In the kitchen, Owen was already up and making tea.

  ‘Is Mo awake?’ Deirdre asked him, telling Olivia, ‘She’s home for the holiday.’

  ‘No, still asleep. She could sleep through an earthquake, that one.’

  ‘Olivia is upset,’ Deirdre told Owen. She turned to Olivia. ‘What’s wrong? What has happened?’

  ‘Luke has disappeared – if anything has happened to him I’d be utterly bereft! I’ve just been worried sick and I had to talk to someone about it.’

  Olivia was pacing. She blew her nose on a Swiss-embroidered cotton hankie.

  Owen put out another cup. ‘Let me knot this or you’ll trip over,’ he said, bending to tie up her shoelace. ‘Are you hungry, Olivia? Would you like some soda bread and butter with honey?’

  ‘I can’t eat. I can’t concentrate on anything. I haven’t seen Luke for three days. Something’s happened to him, something ghastly, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Deirdre. ‘You look awful. Sit down and tell us what happened.’ Deirdre exchanged a quick glance with Owen. There were greyish-blue shadows under Olivia’s eyes and she couldn’t keep still.

  ‘I haven’t been sleeping properly,’ said Olivia.

  Owen put a jug of milk and the china sugar bowl on the table.

  Olivia took a deep breath. ‘Luke and I were sitting on a Hyde Park bench looking at the leaves fluttering down. Under those oaks that touch in the middle. And we were so happy in that beautiful greenish light. You know, I’d just bought some new underwear –grey satin French knickers and matching bra and slip, and now I’ll never wear them! Luke leant his head over to kiss the back of my neck.

  ‘Thank you.’ She put her hands around the china cup of hot tea that Owen had set in front of her.

  ‘I put my head back and saw the shifting leaves with little pinpricks of sunlight through them. I felt so happy, in that beautiful moment and I had this feeling of a future sparkling with possibility, and when I faced forward again I saw Jake Phipps! He was standing there, stock-still and staring at us, his Mussolini jaw stuck out and his expression gleeful, as if he couldn’t believe his luck.’

  Olivia started crying again and Deirdre put her arms around her. ‘Shhhhh, now. Drink your tea.’

  After a few sips, Olivia said, ‘What were the chances of that? How unlucky! One unguarded moment in the park, one moment of carefree tenderness on a sunny day – transformed into poison. It was like suddenly seeing a hyena or a wolf.’

  ‘But you don’t know that Jake has done anything,’ said Owen, and sipped his black tea.

  ‘Then why haven’t I seen Luke since that day? We’d made plans for the following day and he didn’t turn up. He wasn’t at his flat. Jake owes Howard some money and he’d have seen it as an opportunity to get in good with him.’ She started crying again.

  ‘Please stop crying, Olivia. Look, there might be some benign, logical explanation. We just have to wait. He will probably turn up again one of these days,’ said Deirdre, although the situation did look grim.

  ‘Why don’t you come with us tomorrow?’ said Owen. ‘Deirdre and I are going to Coogee Pier and the aquarium for the holiday. You could stay here tonight if you like and we can make a picnic. It will take your mind off it.’

  Olivia blew her nose and considered. ‘That’s very kind of you. I’ll cycle back now, but I will join you tomorrow. Thanks.’ She hugged Deirdre tightly and kissed Owen’s cheek. ‘What time tomorrow?’

  Deirdre shrugged. ‘We’ll probably leave about eleven, but come as early as you like.’

  17

  MAUREEN

  November 1972

  At first Maureen had nearly fainted with horror when Rowan’s pure young face had looked out at her from the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald. He was standing on the Town Hall steps, a lock of his long dark hair blown across his cheek, his draft card held aloft as it burned, the other hand at his side holding his chrome cigarette lighter.

  Two other bearded youths stood behind him holding their draft cards, about to do the same illegal thing. In the background stood a mini-skirted young woman – on closer inspection Maureen saw that it was Suzi, Rowan’s ex-girlfriend – had they got back together again? Suzi held a placard that said: ‘Is it better to burn a draft card or a child?’

  Maureen had not been able to get the image on the paper’s front page out of her mind. Jim had refused to talk about it so she had gone to the library and found some books and other publications on conscription, its history and the Vietnam War.

  There was Rowan on the front of a Draft Resistance Movement magazine called Peacemaker too! He’d written an article on conscientious objection. She turned to page five.

  Conscription harms Australians. It is opposed to any concept of democratic freedom. If a government exists to protect the liberty of its citizens, then surely conscription is inconsistent with this notion. One hardly preserves a person’s freedom by taking it away … Men who are nineteen and twenty cannot vote but they can be forced to fight someone else’s war. By following the United States into Vietnam, Australia is Mussolini’s Italy. There is no difference …

  How articulate he was, what a clear, persuasive writer. She had to admit it: she was proud of him.

  But that night when she had gone to tell Jim about her discovery he cut her off. His mind was closed. If anything, Rowan’s stand had hardened his position. He never once visited Rowan in jail, never offered to drive Maureen there on the weekend journey that otherwise required two buses.

  *

  ‘God, I can’t stand this generation of long-haired layabouts,’ said Jim from the couch. The TV was on, showing in real time a crowd gathering at the Blacktown Civic Centre waiting for the prime ministerial contender, Gough Whitlam, to deliver his Policy Speech.

  ‘You’re talking about your own children there, darling,’ said Maureen, who had just taken a break from dinner preparation to have a smoke with him, though they sat a seat apart.

  ‘Don’t I know it.’

  ‘Mu-uuum – Daa-aad,’ said Keira from the kitchen, ‘It’s hard enough getting Sean to focus on his English homework without you two fighting!’

  ‘We’re not fighting,’ said Maureen. ‘We never fight.’ She took a drag of her cigarette.

  ‘Draft resistors are putting their principles into action,’ she said to Jim.

  ‘Daft resistors!’ said Jim. ‘Are they stoned out of their minds or what? How did we end up with one of those for a son?’ Maureen stayed silent so he continued. ‘I don’t know how Rowan got mixed up in all this. Other men serve their time in Vietnam while our son remains a boy, a coward in jail.’ He mashed his cigarette butt out in the shared ashtray on the coffee table.

  ‘It’s not laziness,’ said Maureen. ‘It’s not cowardice. It’s courage of convictions.’

  ‘Well then his convictions are wrong-headed.’

  On the telly, Gough Whitlam was called to the podium.

  ‘Keira, Sean – come and watch this – this is important,’ Maureen called. ‘Leave the homework for now.’

  They wandered in and Keira found a position on the four-seater couch by shoving Maureen closer towards Jim.

  ‘This is boring,’ said Sean, sitting on the edge of the couch, away from the smoke, which he didn’t like.

  ‘This wanker,’ said Jim.

  ‘Shush, everyone, I want to hear him,’ said Maureen.

  ‘Men and women of Australia,’ Whitlam said, ‘the decision we will make for our country on the second of December is a choice between the past and the future, between the habits and fears of the past and the demands and opportunities of the future. There are moments in history when the whole fate and future of nations can be decided by a single decision. For Australia, this is such a time.’

  Maureen looked at Jim’s profile, still handsomely rugged in middle age, she realised with a tug on her stomach, but the half yard or so
still between them on the couch felt like half a mile.

  Jim scowled as Whitlam assured his audience that the most rapidly growing sector of public spending under a Labor Government would be education, and Maureen turned her attention back to the TV.

  University fees would be abolished. Conscription had divided the country and alienated good people; a voluntary army is better and it was ‘intolerable’ to ‘cull by lottery’ the youth of a nation just to save on defence. There would be no further call-ups.

  ‘All men imprisoned under the National Service Act will be released,’ said Whitlam, met by loud cheers from the crowd, in contrast to the silence in the living room.

  The air felt charged as they all thought about Rowan. Jim was saying nothing now. Gough Whitlam was saying there would be a universal health insurance scheme and Labor would legislate against discrimination on the grounds of race but these words were not really registering.

  ‘He is a real leader,’ said Maureen, her heart pounding. For decades she’d smoothed over potential fights with a diplomatic sentiment or with a silence that Jim took for assent.

  Jim said, ‘Who’s supposed to pay for everyone’s free education?’

  ‘Why are you even talking about that? He’s going to release Rowan from prison. Isn’t that reason enough to vote for him?’

  ‘You can’t be serious. You’re not voting for him.’

  ‘I am.’

  Jim shook his head, looking at her as if she had grown an extra head. ‘I don’t believe this. He’ll run the country into the ground, that’s what he’ll do if he gets in.’

  ‘Jim, I am entitled to my own vote, and a majority of people seem to think he’ll do okay.’

  He scoffed. ‘Hardly a majority. I’ve got some paperwork to do,’ he said, and left the room.

  Maureen and Keira turned to each other.

  ‘Pretty amazing, eh?’ said Keira.

  Maureen nodded.

  ‘I reckon he’s going to get in,’ said Keira. ‘Whether Dad likes it or not.’

  ‘If he does, Rowan could be home for Christmas,’ said Maureen.

  Keira’s blue eyes shone.