After She Left

by Penelope Hanley

  Already in the water, Keira spluttered and removed her mouthpiece. ‘Don’t make me laugh!’ Sean grinned, put in his mouthpiece and dived downwards. Keira followed, moving weightlessly through the silky water just below the surface.

  Being able to breathe underwater was magic. It was timeless, drifting and gliding underwater with the fish, seeing the different species through the hypnotic bands of golden sunlight shafting down to the bottom, illuminating the gently waving forests of pink and yellow seaweed growing from rocky outcrops. They saw creepy brown eels hovering just above the bottom. They gave the stingarees a wide berth. They knew from their dad’s warning that stingarees can go backwards, aiming with their venomous tail – but unless you tread on them you’re usually safe.

  They swam to the rocky outcrop on the swimming pool side and it was there that they caught sight of a yellow seahorse family, the parents and babies, each so delicate, their shy eyes sensitive and intent, looking back at them, and Sean and Keira glancing from them to each other with joy.

  22

  DEIRDRE

  September 1946

  Maureen was sitting in the front room of the house breast-feeding baby Keira when Deirdre rushed in, brandishing a pale blue aerogramme.

  ‘I’m off to join Owen! After all these years!’ she said, waving the missive with a dramatic flourish. ‘He might have been dead! Killed in prison by Franco and his fascist thugs. But he’s alive and now he’s out! ’Tis a miracle!’

  ‘Well, that is miraculous. Great news.’

  ‘Aren’t you happy for me? You don’t look happy.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I am … I’m just trying to absorb it – so unexpected! But you’re not leaving now, not right away.’

  ‘I can’t wait to be with him again.’

  ‘But I’ve just had a baby,’ said Maureen, still looking as if she were having trouble taking in Deirdre’s news.

  The baby stopped feeding and howled.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done.’

  ‘I think she was finished anyway,’ said Deirdre dismissively. ‘I need a new start. I can begin a whole new phase of my artistic career. I’ll fling some clothes and as many paints and palette knives as will fit into my canvas bag an’ I’ll be off! Off like a bride’s nightie! And, Maureen, you’re in good hands. Your Jim is rock solid, anyone can see that. He adores you and little Keira. You’re settled now. And a miracle has happened. Owen is alive. I must go to him!’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so dramatic – you’re not just upping and leaving this minute!’

  ‘I am sailing on the Fairsky. I’ve bought the ticket – I leave in five days.’ Deirdre flapped the aerogramme again, then dramatically held it against her breast and her dark eyes took on a dreamy, faraway expression. ‘We’ll be together again. ’Tis a miracle.’

  Maureen had calmed Keira down and now held her against her chest and patted her little back.

  ‘Now don’t be lookin’ at me like that, young Maureen. There’s always Alfred Foote you can call on and my old friends like that if you need …’

  ‘I doubt I’d ever be that desperate – to have to rely on your bohemian circle of disreputable no-hopers.’

  ‘Don’t be like that. They’ve known you since you were a baby. Of course they would help in any way if you needed anything. Now, I have done something important for you as well and I want to tell you about it.’

  ‘Let me put her down first,’ said Maureen, standing up, ‘and then I can hear this terribly important news.’

  ‘No need for sarcasm.’

  A few minutes later, Maureen returned and sat in the armchair again. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘what’s so important?’

  ‘On the way back from the shipping office, I went and saw Stephen Field, who was good enough to squeeze me in during his lunch hour.’

  ‘Who’s Stephen Field?’ asked Maureen, looking at the faded curtains on the eastern window and wondering when she could afford to buy new material and replace them.

  ‘He’s the solicitor Charles used to see,’ said Deirdre. ‘When he discovered that he was ill, he went to Stephen and he signed this house over to my name – an’ I have just done the same for you.’

  ‘What? Are you planning on dying now?’

  Deirdre flung her a pained look. ‘Not just this minute.’

  ‘But – sorry, I’m trying to get my head around all this,’ said Maureen, looking distressed.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Deirdre. ‘Your face has gone even paler than usual, darling.’

  ‘Yes. But – I – does this mean you’re not coming back?’

  ‘Of course it doesn’t, an’ I hope there will be a place for me here when I do. But it means you will have a place to call a home of your own.’

  Maureen stared at her, a cloud of conflicting emotions shadowing her face.

  ‘I know you partly blame me for … well, I know that I was negligent and focused too much on my art and not enough on protecting you, but … can you see, darling, that I’m trying to make it up to you? In my own inadequate way.’

  ‘Oh, Deirdre, don’t be silly. And good has come out of what happened. I’m just … this house … a house of my own! We could have more children and never have to worry about money. I don’t know what to say. But then you disappearing suddenly is also a shock. I’m just trying to absorb it all.’

  ‘I just want you to be secure and happy, darling.’

  ‘Secure and happy,’ repeated Maureen. ‘I lost my father when I was little and now I’m losing you just after I’ve had a baby …’

  ‘Keira’s three months already. We’re over the really hard bit. Now who’s bein’ dramatic?’

  But when Maureen burst into tears she rushed to her side. ‘Oh, darlin’, you’re not losing me and it’s all going to be grand. And you have Jim’s family to call on now, all his lovely sisters and his parents, if anything did go wrong …’

  Maureen sniffed and said, ‘It’s not about things going wrong – it’s that you’re abandoning me!’

  ’Oh, darlin’, don’t think like that – you’re all settled now. No more tears – we both have love in our lives and it has all turned out grand.’ Deirdre pulled a hankie from her pocket and started ineffectually to mop up Maureen’s wet face.

  ‘Oh, give it to me,’ said Maureen and blew her nose loudly.

  Jim walked through the front door and into the room, and took in the scene.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked Maureen, going towards her.

  ‘She’s just a bit moody at the moment,’ said Deirdre.

  23

  MAUREEN

  April 1973

  Keira and Rowan were coming for Easter Sunday lunch, and Maureen was making roast chicken and vegetables, and a cheese and spinach quiche for Rowan.

  ‘Smells delicious,’ said Jim on his way out to pick up some bread for the table. Maureen smiled.

  ‘Oh. Don’t tell me you’re making that just for Rowan,’ he said, coming up short at the bowl of flour and open recipe book. ‘Quiche.’

  ‘I’m just so happy to be celebrating Easter together. You know, we haven’t been together as a family since Christmas?’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Jim, and he was gone.

  Maureen remembered with a flicker of worry how Jim had not spoken to Rowan at Christmas time. And he had ignored Keira as well. Laconic at the best of times, Jim might have got away without the kids reading much into it, but Maureen knew it was rude, and worse than rudeness.

  He was so stubborn! Would it kill him to be polite to his own children? Wasn’t disagreeing with people sometimes a part of life? Wasn’t there a better way to deal with differing views than to go silent?

  There was no time to bring it up with him, and Maureen doubted she would have got far anyway. She finished what she was doing and, since Keira had arrived, she enlisted her help to set the table.

  Over lunch, as she’d predicted, the rest of them talked and laughed and they all enjoyed themselves. But Jim’s coldness put
a dampener on Maureen’s spirits and Rowan left immediately after dessert, claiming to have a date with Suzy.

  Jim went to the park to play a game of cricket with Michael, Jimmy and Sean, while Keira stayed inside with her mother. They stacked the dirty plates and took them into the kitchen. Keira washed up and Maureen wiped.

  ‘Why don’t you sit down and have a smoke, Mum,’ she said. ‘You seem really tired.’

  ‘I’d love to do that,’ said Maureen. ‘I’d love to do nothing further all day, but we’re going to dinner at Ann and George’s and I said I’d make a lemon meringue pie.’

  ‘No wonder you’re tired, Mum; you do everything. Dad never does any domestic stuff.’

  ‘He buys bread and milk whenever we run short. He puts out the rubbish.’

  ‘Big deal. It’s not as if you don’t work, too.’

  Maureen put a pile of dry cutlery in the drawer. ‘He earns the money.’

  ‘Money’s not the only thing that matters. Things ought to change. Sometimes it gets beyond a joke. Remember that Saturday morning we went to town and when we were trying to get home the buses suddenly went on strike? He’d gone out on a job so we couldn’t contact him and when we got back hours after lunchtime, Dad was home and still waiting for you to make lunch for him? He couldn’t even make himself a bloody sandwich!’

  ‘Language, Keira,’ said Maureen, but half-heartedly. She sighed, shook her head and lit a cigarette. ‘He’s helpless. Men are pathetic.’ She sat down on a kitchen stool.

  ‘But we collude to keep them that way. I mean, the boys should all be in here doing this. And that Saturday, if you’d made a fuss and said he should have got himself something, it might have started a discussion about the way things were done. Instead, you said nothing and just put on your apron to make him a hot lunch before you’d kicked off your good shoes!’

  ‘It’s the way it is, it’s the way he was raised.’

  ‘It can’t be the way you were raised!’

  ‘No, but I always wanted the opposite of Deirdre’s way. And I got the opposite at Saint Vincent’s.’

  ‘Yeah, the nuns trained you well in sexist ways!’

  ‘They did,’ she said.

  They both laughed. Maureen caught Keira’s glance and said, ‘You’re right. Something has to change. The whole world is changing all around him but he refuses to see it.’

  But in her heart Keira knew neither of her parents would change.

  24

  KEIRA

  Late May 1973

  Keira opened a letter from a solicitor, which Maureen had re-addressed to her. She tried to absorb the message for a while before rushing to phone Maureen.

  ‘Mum, the most amazing thing: I’ve got a letter from this solicitor. I have to go and see him about a bequest from Deirdre Wild! Does this mean she died?’

  There followed that intense silence that only the telephone can produce. Keira said, ‘Mu-u-um, do you know what this is about?’

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ said Maureen, sounding hostile.

  ‘But you forwarded the letter.’

  ‘That’s all I did. I know less than you do.’

  ‘Do you know who Stephen Field is?’

  A small pause. At last Maureen said, ‘He’s the family solicitor. I haven’t thought of him in years. Your father and I consulted him when we made our wills. And my parents did for their wills. He must be very old by now.’ She changed the subject to something Sean had done at school.

  At the end of this frustrating conversation, Keira said, ‘I’ll let you know what it’s about after I see Stephen Field, shall I?’

  ‘If you want to,’ said Maureen tonelessly.

  *

  It was now three weeks after Easter and Keira was still tripping over the cat, this time while making a Waldorf salad. Steve was frying chips and grilling chops. Nessie was making her famous Tarte Tatin.

  ‘Isn’t it time Sylvia took that cat back?’ said Keira over the hiss of hot oil.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you,’ he said.

  Keira stopped chopping celery, knife held in the air. ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘Sylvia’s in love.’

  ‘How nice,’ said Keira. ‘Please convey my congratulations.’

  ‘Who’s the lucky guy?’ asked Nessie.

  ‘Someone we know?’ Keira scraped the chopped celery and apples into the wooden salad bowl.

  ‘Oooh, someone forbidden – a scandal – do tell, no, don’t tell us – she’s fallen in love with Alan!’ said Nessie, and they laughed.

  ‘And all the time I thought he was visiting his parents in Canberra he was diving in the Maldives with Sylvia!’

  Steve turned down the burner then held up his hands as if defending himself. ‘Look, she met this guy – Peter – in the Maldives but he’s from Sydney too, turns out he lives two blocks away from her. They have everything else in common too, are totally in love and want to move in together.’

  ‘And the relevance …?’ said Nessie.

  Steve paused.

  ‘Well?’ said Keira.

  ‘Peter’s allergic to cats. Something in their saliva.’

  Steve said into the charged silence, ‘She wants me to look after the cat until she finds another home for him.’

  ‘We’re not even supposed to have pets here!’ said Keira.

  ‘It won’t be for long. None of her boyfriends last long.’

  ‘Why can’t Mel look after it?’ said Keira

  ‘She’s a dog person.’

  Keira rolled her gaze heavenwards and turned to him, hands on her hips. ‘So am I!’

  ‘No, but I mean – she has a dog. He’d kill Butch.’

  ‘Problem solved,’ said Keira, dumping the walnuts into the salad. She tossed it with the mayonnaise and put the bowl on the table with an emphatic thud.

  *

  Stephen Field’s Paddington office was the ground floor of a nineteenth-century terrace house. The verandah had shiny new boards and the iron lace was painted a pristine white. Inside, sitting on a maroon leather sofa, Keira sifted through the pile of magazines on the glass coffee table. No Sight and Sound and no Now, only boring financial journals. The receptionist, with permed brown hair and rimless glasses, went tap-tap-tap on her typewriter.

  After a few minutes a short man in a brown suit with no tie emerged and headed for the exit. The receptionist nodded to Keira. ‘Mr Field will see you now, Miss Bolt,’ she said, and showed her in.

  ‘Thanks, Patricia,’ said the white-haired Stephen Field. Keira stepped into the room. Stephen Field’s nose and over-sized ears were brick-red. His stomach swelled behind his pinstriped shirt, straining the little white buttons. ‘Please, Miss Bolt, sit down,’ he said, gesturing with a plump, pink hand.

  She sat opposite while they got the generalities over with. He drummed his fingers on his desk. Keira noticed a gold signet ring too tight for his fat little finger. He would have to get that ring sawn off or else be buried wearing it.

  She blurted out the first question on her mind. ‘Does this mean my grandmother has died?’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘But if she isn’t dead, where is she?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say. My client …’

  Keira leant forward. ‘She’s your client. You’ve seen her? She’s been here?’

  He examined something microscopic on his shirt cuff. ‘No.’

  Keira nearly broke out in hives of frustration. She scratched a mosquito bite near her left elbow. ‘Did you know I’m composing a photographic essay on Deirdre Wild for art school?’

  ‘Are you now?’ He sounded patronising.

  ‘Yes, I am, and this … this bequest … might help me. Okay, you can’t tell me if she’s alive or dead or anything else. What’s the bequest?’

  She wondered if it was money or jewellery, a house in Ireland, or perhaps a pair of gold cufflinks that belonged to her grandfather.

  Stephen Field smiled as he stood up. ‘You believe in cutting to t
he chase, don’t you, Keira?’

  He reached for an object wrapped in brown paper that was leaning against a filing cabinet and passed it to her. The image of a kite flashed into Keira’s mind – childhood afternoons with her father and brothers, flying homemade kites with big smiling faces and long trailing rag-tails. She almost laughed.

  ‘This is it?’

  ‘That’s it.’ His eyes were watchful but not eager, giving nothing away.

  She looked at the object in her hands. It was just about as light as a kite but she thought she knew what it really was. ‘Can I open it now?’

  ‘If you like, or you could sign here and take it home to examine at your leisure.’

  ‘My leisure.’ She blinked. Her fingers were shaking. ‘I’ll open it now.’

  He handed her a pair of scissors, proffering the orange plastic handles towards her.

  ‘Thanks.’ Sitting the object on her lap, she carefully cut where the sticky-tape joined the bits of paper, shook off the paper and held the object up in both hands. It was a painted canvas stretched over a light wooden frame. Glorious blues and greens of water and sky splashed into the bland office. Keira gasped with pleasure.

  Her eyes drank in a limitless expanse of bright sky over a pale ocean. Two men were fishing from a hide-covered canoe. Their lines fell deeply into the sea, past big and small fish swimming about. At the bottom of the aqua sea was a village, with white houses and a little church, and cows and donkeys in fields defined by rows of white rocks. Chickens pecked at the turf. Children looked out of the schoolhouse windows. Everything looked normal except that it was a world underwater, a world the fishermen were oblivious to, a world where no one would think to look. She turned the back over. Printed in pencil was The Silent World.

  *

  Keira visited Beach Lane after work that day. She waited until her parents had finished watching the news, then she announced, ‘I’ve got news! I’ve got one of Deirdre’s paintings!’ She held it up.

  ‘Good heavens,’ said Maureen, staring at it. ‘Stephen Field gave you this?’