Under the Influence

by Jacqueline Lunn

  Then she wrote the words ‘Boarding. Special. Best friends’. She put a line through ‘Best friends’. It was childlike, and she berated herself for not being able to find a more sophisticated expression to explain that time, those moments, to a sophisticated man.

  Further down, she wrote ‘Rebecca?’, then ‘Inheritance’. Meg hadn’t left Kat much. The farm was gone. Bill had had to sell it when he got sick. That’s what they all called it. It was better than saying he drank the last few years of his life away. Drank the farm away. Drank himself away. Bill got sick, and it took Meg a long time to realise how sick he was. He hid it well. Eve’s hand shook when she wrote the name ‘Bill’. She couldn’t finish his name, just the scratchy letters ‘B’, ‘I’ and ‘L’. That big man who ended up so small. She put her pen down and paused. She traced over each individual letter with her fingertips; they were so kind and black and silky. Then she closed her eyes and crossed them out until no one would be able to see what lay underneath.

  She decided the best course was to concentrate on the future. At the bottom of the inside cover, she wrote, ‘Age difference of babies if they conceived in six months around twenty-one months. Not working anyway. Would take full responsibility. Doesn’t mean can’t have our own. Sometimes shit happens, Richard, and you just have to deal with it.’

  She laughed to herself. Then she laughed to herself that she had been away for a week. One week. The front cover flicked shut and Eve reread the subhead: ‘Discover your passion and your best life in ten days’. She should have bought the book eleven days ago.

  She rubbed the front pages up and down with the palm of her hand until the book sat open on the desk and she could read her notes easily, without the cover closing. She put in her handbag the book and a pen and made a mental note to ask for a glass of water when she got downstairs in case she got a tickle in her throat when on the phone. She needed to be organised, efficient, in control. This was not a time for vague, spacey, can’t-you-remember-anything Eve.

  ‘Hi. Is it all right to make that call now?’ Eve asked Breanna through the half-open door to reception.

  Breanna, the young girl who helped on reception on the weekends, was stacking a folder back in the bookshelf by the wall. She turned. ‘Sure, come in.’

  It was a small office, with papers and business cards scattered all over the desk. Eve put her handbag on the floor by the chair. The shutter was closed and padlocked in front.

  ‘You just need to press “one” to dial out,’ Breanna said, making her way past Eve. ‘Must be different to London – not even being able to use your mobile.’

  ‘A little,’ Eve smiled. ‘But then you can’t see the stars in London.’

  ‘Can’t you?’ Breanna stopped by the doorway.

  ‘Not really. There’s too much light, too much pollution.’

  ‘But it’s London,’ Breanna said.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘I’m going to go to Europe. I’m going to save up and go,’ Breanna said. ‘Just shut the door when you’re finished.’

  Eve shut the door behind Breanna. Then she pushed some papers to the side of the desk and took out her notes and her pen and put them on the laminate desk in front. She realised she forgot to ask for a glass of water. She turned to the closed door. Too late now. She started to worry she would get a tickle in her throat and swallowed a few times to lubricate her oesophagus.

  It was Saturday evening Tallow time, which made it Saturday morning London time. Richard would be back from his three-day last-minute skiing trip. The funeral, Eve’s quick departure, had created an opportunity to join some friends over there, to ski without Eve. She was a hopeless skier, could only do beginner runs. He was probably standing in front of his open wardrobe choosing which coat and scarf to wear out the front door into the blast of thin, cold morning air. The sunrise outside would be emphysemic – weak and tired. Richard would be asking himself how the cleaner could have missed that spot behind the side table, again.

  ‘Richard?’ she said, as though the voice that answered might not be his.

  ‘Hello, gorgeous. Missed you skiing. Wished you could have been there. How are you? How are your parents?’

  She could hear running water in the background, his footsteps and the flick of the kettle being switched on. He was walking and talking, on automatic with both.

  ‘I haven’t seen them yet.’

  ‘What? Where are you?’

  She could hear the footsteps stop. She scanned the small office. ‘Listen, Richard, have you got a minute?’

  Her long fingers pushed down hard on the cover of the book, opening it so far she could hear the spine rip and the front few pages come loose. ‘Something’s happened. Not to me. Well, kind of to me.’ She forced herself to keep on subject and not meander. ‘Meg had a baby. Her name is Kat. Katherine. She’s five months old.’

  Eve read the first of her notes over the phone and filled the silence on the other end in on the drama that Meg had placed her in the centre of. She thought it best if she just laid out the facts – well, some facts – and then they could discuss it. There was no need to mention Sam.

  She tried to slow herself down when Richard kept repeating the word fuck as if it was a backbeat, but words spun around Eve’s head, lifting from the page and prodding at her. Having a game. Rushing by her face, tantalisingly close but not close enough to catch and conquer and therefore allow her to talk to Richard in an informed, assertive and calm way. As much as she tried, she meandered. Her voice quivered. She could only find runner-up words. She swallowed hard. When she started describing to Richard the floor plan of Meg’s house in Tallow and the way the hot water took forever to come on when she washed the teacups, she shook her head and threw her pen on the table.

  ‘Hold on. Hold on, Eve. Fuck. I’ve just spilt tea on my jacket.’ There was silence, and Eve could hear rubbing and patting. ‘I spoke to you last on Wednesday morning, your Wednesday afternoon, three days ago,’ – he was emphasising time as if it was time’s fault– ‘and you were nearly at your parents’. On Wednesday, you were nearly at your parents’.’

  ‘Everything was fine then. I mean, I didn’t know about this. I found out on Wednesday night late, really late. You had left for Val-d’Isère. Richard?’

  ‘Eve. Stop. Stop talking. Now. Eve, we need to slow this down. This is about both of us. We want a family of our own one day. This is about completely changing our lives. It’s not a conversation to have when you’re over there and I am here.’

  ‘When is a good time, Richard?’

  ‘Helpful. Great time to be a smart arse. Do you seriously want to bring up someone else’s child? Someone you haven’t had a close relationship with for years? Someone who didn’t even tell you she had a child?’ He paused, not requiring an answer, and there was a rustling sound and then an intake of breath as thin as a needle. ‘I am just saying there are a lot of things to weigh up before a decision is made. Before we make a decision. Do you want this, Eve? Do you really want this?’

  The deep roundness of his pronunciation was steadfast. It pulled at her, reminded her where she belonged. She dropped her head forwards suddenly and mouthed, ‘It’s not a “this”, Richard. It’s a little girl.’

  ‘She tried to tell me last time she called,’ Eve said. ‘She’s been calling for months. Emailing. You know that. She had a reason for not telling me. I was pushing her away. I’ve been pushing her away.’

  ‘Probably for a reason, Eve.’

  Richard didn’t speculate about what the reason was, and Eve didn’t say the reason was him. One look and Meg would know.

  A sudden breeze swept in the office window, lifting up the venetian blind and slapping it back down hard against the sill. Without looking, Eve reached her arm out sideways and yanked the blind cord, opening the blind fully, giving the wind nothing to kick other than herself. Maybe rain was coming.

  ‘Richard. Meg and me. It was special. I can’t explain.’

  ‘Yes, it was special with
Big Bird and me for about two years when I was four, but I wouldn’t look after his baby for the rest of my life just because he asked me.’

  ‘I know it’s huge. I know. But she asked me. I can’t ignore that. This is about a baby now.’ Eve flicked a loose page from the book onto the floor. ‘Does it even matter whether it was special between Meg and me? Someone died and has asked us to take her baby. What’s done is done.’

  ‘Fuck. She’s asked you, Eve, and she’s given you a perfectly good substitute to do it if you can’t. Nothing has been done unless you let it be done, unless you sit there and let it be done to you. What about Sarah? She’s already got kids. She’s in Australia. She’s a pleasant woman.’

  ‘Meg wants me.’

  There was a long silence where breaths were exchanged down the line.

  ‘Listen, Eve, we need to talk about this. Talk about it properly. Why don’t you come home and we can talk?’ His voice turned warm and smooth, patting her on the small of her back and directing her onto the couch to have a lie down. He slowed down.

  ‘We can set up the spare room and both go back to Australia and get Kat, if that is what we choose. But we need to choose this together. You can’t be talked into this. It’s our decision, not just yours. Let’s talk about it, properly. That’s all I’m saying. We should both think and then talk. Look, let me get you an early flight home so we can talk.’

  Eve could feel her heart pick up speed. The book, crammed at the start with all her rehearsed thoughts and arguments, slipped and fell to the floor with a thud. She knew he would say no; she just didn’t know how he would say it.

  ‘Eve, you need to come home so we can talk.’

  ‘Okay.’ Then she remembered. ‘Richard, I need more money. I don’t have any cash left.’

  ‘You still have the credit card?’

  ‘Yes, but I can’t buy a packet of crisps with a credit card.’ The words were hard to dislodge, the effort to get them out making her breaths short. ‘Can you put some money in my savings account?’

  ‘Right. Jesus, Eve. I’m putting in a hundred pounds. That should do. Don’t do anything until we talk properly. I mean it, Eve.’

  The phone went dead, and Eve stuck her thumb down hard on the slanted button to hang up. She pushed the messy papers back to where they belonged. She concentrated on her breathing and tried to count to fifty, slowly, in her head. The office phone rang, interrupting ‘Twenty-seven hippopotamus’. Her finger was still on the button. Eve jumped and turned around, looking for permission to answer it. She took her finger away. ‘Hello?’ she said tentatively.

  It was Richard.

  ‘I’ll book you a flight for tomorrow. Make your way back to Sydney first thing in the morning, and I will call you and confirm details later. I will get you on a flight tomorrow. You need to come home, and then we can talk. I’m not saying no. I’m just saying we need to talk.’

  Eve went to argue, but she kicked the broken book on the floor instead.

  ‘Thirty-one hippopotamus. Thirty-one hippopotamus.’

  ‘What? Do I need to come and get you, Eve? I can come and get you. I don’t want you talked into something you’ll regret later.’

  Now she felt so heavy. It was exhausting knowing you were always about to fuck up. ‘No, Richard. I’ll go to Sydney tomorrow.’

  She hung up. ‘Fuck.’

  Eve grabbed her handbag and ran out the office. She pushed past two men cradling a beer apiece at the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Where’s the fire?’ one asked to her back.

  Eve ran up the stairs into her room. She opened up the wardrobe doors and slammed them shut, repeating the action again and again and again. She kicked the chair, knocking it over, and kicked it again on the floor, into the wall. She picked up the bedside light and held it by its neck, aiming it at the wall. Then she froze, with the light held up above her head. The electrical cord dangled beside her like a dead snake. Her hand was gripping the neck so tightly it began to turn white, the tips of her fingers around her fingernails going blue. She let the light drop to her side, her hand still tight around its neck, and for the first time in a long time she wept. Before she could stop crying, Eve stopped breathing.

  Sam sat on the chair on the verandah outside Eve’s room. He needed to talk to her and, after looking through the long pane of glass and finding her hotel room empty, he decided she couldn’t be far so he would wait. He deliberately turned his chair to the street so he wasn’t staring into a hotel room like a peeping Tom and watched people below doing the last of the clean-up from the markets. Most had retreated underneath into the pub for a cleansing ale.

  It wasn’t yet 8 pm, and Sam could already hear someone with a scratchy microphone singing ‘Poke Salad Annie’. It drifted upwards and swung its legs over the balcony. His foot tapped without thought to the beat. Occasionally, he turned and peered through the French doors to check whether Eve was back. Car boots were slammed shut. Engines were started. A few low, dark clouds sat like silver rocks on the horizon. A wind picked up, and Sam could hear an empty beer can blow down the street. The air smelt fresh, as though someone had opened a window on a room that had been closed up for too long.

  Across the street and around the corners, people in squat homes began flicking on lights in kitchens, living rooms and halls, and Sam could make out the blue and red glow of the TV behind curtains and through the cracks of blinds. People were retreating for the evening or getting ready to advance.

  Sam turned instinctively towards a loud noise coming from Eve’s room and found her standing over an upturned chair holding a lamp in her hand above her head. She looked odd. He realised she was crying when she wiped her eyes with the crook of her free arm.

  He was watching her cry, a woman who didn’t know she was being watched. It was time to go, but as he stood to leave she simply fell to the floor. She didn’t make a sound.

  Sam ran inside. Eve’s body was limp at the bottom of the bed. Her neck and face and chest were glistening from sweat, and her mouth was a pale blue, like a two-day-old jacaranda flower. ‘Shit. Eve. Eve!’ he yelled. She was breathing and conscious; her heart was racing. ‘Eve!’

  ‘Mmm?’ She gazed up at Sam crouched beside her and looked around the room. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I must have fainted.’ She tried to sit up.

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay to sit?’

  ‘I’m fine. I’m okay,’ Eve said, resting her back against the side of the bed.

  Sam checked her eyes and her pulse. He found a blanket and put it over her legs and chest. He put a glass of water beside her. Eve followed him around the room with her eyes but didn’t move.

  ‘Has that happened before?’ he asked, sitting beside her on the carpet, his back next to hers against the bed.

  ‘What? Fainting? When I was a kid, I fainted once or twice at school when it was really hot.’

  ‘Eve, you were having trouble breathing. You couldn’t breathe. That wasn’t fainting. When you faint, your pulse is weak. Your pulse was racing. You just collapsed.’

  ‘Can I ask you a favour, Sam? Can we not talk about it right now? Please?’

  Sam looked at the colour coming back into her pale, blotchy face and nodded. He straightened her blanket and took her pulse again, placing her arm under the lightweight blanket when he had finished. They sat like that for a while, looking at their feet and their long legs sticking out in front of them, Eve’s poking out the other side of the chenille blanket.

  ‘Richard wants me to come home so we can talk about it. Talk about Kat. He’s told me to go back to Sydney tomorrow, and he will get me on a flight home. It’s too big a decision to discuss over the phone.’

  Eve leant into Sam’s shoulder. Sam squeezed Eve’s thigh hard.

  ‘Would Meg want me’ – Eve waved her hands over her legs, stomach and face with the rehearsed grace of a pretty assistant on a TV game show unveiling the prize of a new hatchback – ‘to take Kat if she could see me now? Look at me.’ She did the looking h
erself, her eyes fixed on her knees. ‘What have I become? I haven’t even seen her in two years.’

  ‘Meg wasn’t an idiot. She asked you.’

  Eve ignored him. ‘I said “Thirty-one hippopotamus” to Richard. “Thirty-one hippopotamus.”’

  ‘As in “One hippopotamus, two hippopotamus”?’ Sam said, as though it made all the sense in the world.

  ‘Yes, you know, thirty-one hippopotamus.’

  ‘And?’ Sam said.

  ‘Since I can remember, since I started playing the cello half-decently, whenever I get stressed or upset I play the cello in my head. I go over hard pieces where the fingering is quick and tricky. I go over easy pieces in high repetition so my brain isn’t in gear. When they buried Meg, I was playing Bach’s “Prelude in G”. When Rebecca would pass notes around the class about me, I would play Verdi’s Aida or ‘Silent Night’ or do scales if I was desperate – something. When Richard gives me a talk, I play, I don’t know, Wagner’s Lohengrin or something by Saint-Saëns. You know, something like that.’

  Sam didn’t know.

  ‘It’s what I do. It calms me or something. Takes me somewhere else. I’ve always secretly liked the way it’s mine and no one knows what I am doing. And, just then, on the phone to Richard, when I started to get … I don’t know … worked up … I started counting in hippopotamuses. I didn’t play my cello. I counted like a four-year-old. In hippopotamuses. I’ve never done that.’

  Eve began to cry again. Her eyes shut, tears sliding down her neck. Silent.

  Sam put his arm around her shoulders and drew her into his chest, his chin on her head, his lips in her hair. He could feel her teeth clicking against each other on his chest. ‘It’s okay, Eve. Maybe it has to do with missing work. You can make it come back.’