‘What size are you?’ Abdhul asks. ‘For dresses. My wife wants to send you a gift.’
‘Please, it is not necessary …’
‘Please, it is. What colour do you like? I am asking you.’
‘Blue. Any colour. You don’t need.’
‘What size?’
‘10. 12. Medium …’ I don’t want Abdhul’s wife spending money on me or searching for dresses. I’ve only seen her in photographs and once on Skype, and even then could not communicate except through Abdhul. I have no way of knowing what she really thinks and feels, and am concerned she may not want to buy me a gift at all, but that Abdhul has asked it of her.
Sue comes back into the room and the conversation changes to her cottage at Bicheno and the time we spent there.
‘You can go there any time you like,’ she tells Abdhul. ‘Just talk to Sara.’
‘Thank you,’ he says.
Sue then addresses me directly. ‘I used to let others in the lab use it, but Dale took advantage. Invited friends and so on, so I’ve stopped that, but you’re very welcome.’
‘Do you know Claire well?’ I ask.
‘Not very. A bit. We’re pretty different, and I can’t stand the way Dale treats her. Or the way she puts up with it.’
‘Did she know about the incident with my predecessor? I mean what really happened?’
‘She knows Dale’s version if it, which Dale says she believes, for Christ’s sake. I don’t know.’ Sue shakes her head.
‘I certainly got the sense she was defending him,’ I say.
‘She does, and he doesn’t deserve it. He was a prick to Anna.’
Sue looks at Abdhul, who is standing and heading for the bathroom. ‘Oh, Abdhul, we’re boring you to tears.’
‘It’s okay,’ he says, but I can tell he is not comfortable with the conversation.
Sue keeps talking, surprisingly oblivious. ‘It wasn’t just hearsay. I caught him making advances to her in the darkroom. I’d opened the door, not realising anyone was in there, and caught him just as he groped her breasts from behind and she pushed him away. I can tell you, Anna wasn’t happy about him doing it. She didn’t ask for that kind of attention at all. She made a complaint, and he was horrid to her after that. Quite aggressive actually.’
‘Did you make a statement?’
‘Yes. I don’t think he’s forgiven me either.’
‘Have you told Claire what you saw?’
‘No. I thought about it, but I figured she would ask if she wanted to know. Claire’s given up everything for that dick. So he can pursue his career. She’s a speech therapist by training but stopped to raise their daughter.’ Sue stops talking. ‘Sorry, I’m probably saying more than I should. And I’m sounding very judgy about women staying home to look after their children. You’re probably friends. Her daughter’s at school with Ellie, isn’t she?’
I continue the thread a moment longer, determined to stop by the time Abdhul has returned. ‘I don’t know Claire that well, but she’s been good to me. And who knows what Dale told her about the incident with Anna. She might not have all the information.’
‘Still women should back up other women!’ Sue sounds angry now.
‘Yes.’ I think of Evelyn Forster and how lives were ruined because of her. ‘Yes, absolutely. I’m not defending her, defending him.’
‘You are, actually.’
‘Well I don’t mean to.’ I can feel my face flushing, and my pulse rate speeding up. I don’t want to be misunderstood, or to lose Sue’s friendship. ‘I’m just thinking that sometimes, when we’ve got our hands full with other things, we don’t have the energy to take on our husbands and tear apart our families. Our kids don’t deserve to pay for what their fathers do.’
‘So you think it’s okay to just turn a blind eye, to let them get away with it?’
I rub my forehead, letting her know I’m struggling, and that this issue is a bit close to home. I want her to back off and lighten up. ‘No, it’s not okay, but it happens. Claire’s mum’s been sick and I think they’re very close. Claire’s been caring for her at home, so I reckon she’s totally spent and Dale’s shenanigans are the least of her worries. That’s what I’m trying to say.’
‘I didn’t know about her mum. That’s the pits. Losing your mum is up there with the worst pain there is.’
I load the sequencing machine with the DNA of strangers. I enjoy the familiarity of doing what I’m good at, an experiment that will reveal the code of something hitherto unknown. With any luck, the results may help a fellow human being see the truth contained within their genes and offer them some protection against future harm.
While the sequencing machine runs its course, I take the time to go to morning tea with my lab group, a rare event, given my need to cram my work days into Ellie’s school hours. Consequently, apart from my friendship with Sue and Sean, I feel an outsider in the company of my colleagues. They are talking about which pub they should go to on Friday evening and the bands that are playing at the Falls’ Festival over summer. To my relief, Sean, back from another of his overnight hikes, comes and takes the spare seat beside me. He smiles and has such a peaceful presence about him that I automatically relax.
‘How’s it going?’ he asks.
‘Great. Good walk?’
‘Stunning. You should join us for an overnight sometime, although I guess it’s not easy with Ellie to get out.’
‘Yeah.’ I’m pleased that he has remembered Ellie’s name. I’ve been making a point of not talking about her too much, not even on our earlier day hike.
‘But when her dad has her again, sing out if you want company. There’s a group of us who go pretty often.’
I like the way his eyes narrow when he smiles. Is he flirting with me?
‘I’d love that.’ I estimate he’s in his early forties, and I find my eyes dropping down his body as he stands to leave the tearoom.
Sue catches me looking, and when he’s gone she winks. ‘You could do worse. He’s a top guy.’
A week later, the immigration minister fronts the national media and repeats the warning that Abdhul’s lawyer had given, but with a lack of heart and a total disregard for the truth. Although I have long known that the government lies for political gain, his comments astound me. He claims that many asylum seekers have been in Australia for four years and haven’t yet bothered to arrange interviews with the immigration department and are taking the Australian taxpayer for a ride. He warns they will be sent home if they don’t register by the deadline.
I close my laptop and storm into the kitchen, then my bedroom, then back into the lounge room. I am walking because I cannot sit. I see why Nina went for night-time strolls, but I cannot leave Ellie home asleep. I open my laptop and pull up the Sydney Morning Herald’s letter-to-the-editor page and pound out my response:
Having personally known an asylum seeker – a man who is kind and patient and, now, having been made to wait nearly four years by the ‘asylum seeker process’, clinically depressed – I am dumbfounded that the minister can claim asylum seekers are ‘taking the system for a ride’. My friend has followed The Process to a ‘T’. He was asked to wait for a formal invitation to apply (with the help of a lawyer) for an interview with the immigration department. The waiting has been incredibly damaging. My friend’s family fled Afghanistan – where they were targeted by the Taliban – to seek shelter in Pakistan, only for his brother to be murdered. He was then told he would be killed if he stayed another day. And now, being forced to wait for his refugee status to be approved is its own slow death. In his words: ‘Just kill me once.’
To my surprise and delight, the letter is published the next day, along with several others along the same vein.
My phone bleeps with a text message from my mother:
I saw your letter. Good for you. Nina would have been proud, and so am I. Helena xx
I call into Abdhul’s place on the way back from dropping Ellie to school. I have to see if he a
nd his friends are all right following the minister’s announcement, but he tells me he hasn’t heard about it. I explain and tell him that I wrote a response for the newspaper. I unfold a copy of the article, printed from the internet. Should I have asked his permission before I submitted my letter? Probably. He looks at what I have given him.
‘Thank you.’ But he appears unmoved. What did I expect? The only thing that counts is a visa that will allow him and his family to stay in Australia. Everything else is peripheral.
‘Have you got an interview time yet?’
‘No.’
‘Can I phone your lawyer and see that she has definitely registered you for the immigration interview?’
‘She has. Thank you.’
‘Good. Okay.’ Am I intruding? Worse, am I being patronising? ‘Do you want to go for a walk after I finish work?’
‘No, sister. I must work. In the restaurant.’
‘Is he paying you properly?’
‘Not yet. No.’
‘He should pay you every two weeks. How long has it been?’
‘A month.’
‘And he hasn’t paid you?’ I feel the blood rising in my neck and face.
‘Don’t worry. I will leave the job. It is making my headache worse.’
I consider phoning Sue or Jude, or even Ian, although I haven’t told him of Abdhul’s plight. Instead, I phone my mother. ‘Abdhul is not being paid by the restaurant where he’s working. Who do you think I should tell?’
‘Does he want you to report it?’
‘He hasn’t asked me to.’
‘So don’t, Sara.’ I hear her cover the phone and speak to someone else in the background, and I get the old feeling of not being significant enough to command her attention. She drops her voice, ‘Tell me, you’re not … You two aren’t?’
‘No.’ I’m taken aback by the question. She knows Abdhul has a family. A wife. I am his ‘sister’. Or is my mother implying Abdhul is using me to get a visa? I don’t know what to say. If I have overstepped a boundary with Abdhul by trying to help, then Helena has overstepped an even bigger one with me. Or is this how mothers and daughters are supposed to talk? Openly like this, with all our cards and paranoid thoughts on the table? I don’t know. It is all new to me.
23
Abdhul is at my front door, holding a parcel.
‘It is from my wife. A dress.’
‘A dress!’ Ellie looks up from beside me.
I am deeply moved. ‘Thank you, Abdhul. Please thank your wife. It is so kind of her.’
I think of Abdhul’s wife choosing this gift and posting it; addressing it with the unfamiliar street name, a place she must imagine as paradise on the other side of the world. What does she hope I will be able to do to help her and her family? I worry I have misled Abdhul that I have some influence in whether he gets his visa. Or is he indeed just happy to have my friendship? Is his wife grateful just for that? The kindness of neighbours was all Nina ever wanted, yet I feel I have already gained more from meeting Abdhul than I have given.
Inside the plastic-wrapped package I am greeted with a sweet perfume – Abdhul’s wife’s perfume? – and wonder what Abdhul must be feeling to smell this again. I peel back tissue paper to find a vivid blue dress with panels of brown and an intricate pattern of silver stitching and sequins. I am overwhelmed. There is a matching blue scarf and intricate gold-plated jewellery – long elaborate earrings and a necklace.
Ellie is gasping in awe. I bend to show her the treasures from the other side of the world, then look up at Abdhul who is watching us closely, a nervous smile on his face.
‘Do you like them? She could look for a different colour?’
‘I love it all. It is incredibly generous.’ Abdhul’s wife cannot be wealthy, with Abdhul’s low wage her only form of income, from what he has indicated. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Go and try it.’
‘Yes, okay. Take a seat.’ I urge him into the lounge room, and Ellie follows me into the bedroom.
Facing Nina’s mirror, I slide the long dress over my head and ask Ellie to do up the zip at the back. It is probably the most flattering garment I have ever worn, and I imagine Nina being pleased. She was always telling me to dress in a more feminine way, and reproached Helena for her masculine business suits. I wrap the scarf around my neck and put on the gold earrings, little cupolas with gold tassels, two inches long. I fasten the matching necklace.
‘You look so beautiful, Mummy.’ Ellie takes a photograph with her new phone. ‘Prettier than Sylvia.’
I chuckle. ‘Thank you, sweetheart.’ I breathe in the perfume and wonder if Abdhul’s wife tried this dress on also, or perhaps it was one of her dresses. If so, this is a communion of sorts, our skin touching the same fabric.
‘I’ll send that photo to Daddy,’ Ellie tells me, pressing send. Oh well, I think. It will have Ian guessing, just when he thought he knew me. I laugh again, and Ellie joins in.
In the lounge room, Abdhul stands up when he sees me. He is grinning widely.
‘Very good,’ he says. He claps his hands. ‘Next time we have a Hazara party, you must wear that.’
Ian has taken Ellie back to Brisbane with him for a week of school holidays and, as difficult as it was to see her go, I am enjoying a rare, guilt-free morning tea at work, knowing that I can make up the time at the end of the day. I feel remarkably relaxed and suppose this is how my childless colleagues feel most of the time. Not even the prospect of enduring a lab meeting later today, where I know for certain Dale will perform a monologue three times longer than necessary, ruffles my peaceful state. I sip my coffee and feel the sun warming my skin through the canteen’s window glass.
Sean comes and sits beside me. ‘Ellie’s with her dad so I can be sociable,’ I tell him, and he raises his coffee cup to me. ‘It’s so nice not to have to rush off early to get her.’
‘Well, if you’re free on the weekend, you’re welcome to join some friends and me for an overnight walk. Just a small one. Waterfall Bay to Fortescue, leaving early Saturday morning. We’ll overnight at Bivouac Bay.’
A blissful sense of freedom comes over me.
‘Actually, that would be wonderful. Thanks. I really need to get out.’
‘Do you have the right gear? No problem if not … A tent, sleeping bag, Gortex?’
‘Yes, although not the tent.’ I left that with Ian in Brisbane.
‘I can sort that.’ He looks up at me, slightly awkwardly. ‘If you don’t mind sharing.’
‘That’s fine. Thanks.’ I say it before I let the idea sink in.
I feel Sue poke me in the back.
We set out straight from work in Sean’s Subaru Outback with two of his friends, driving south from Hobart towards the Tasman Peninsula.
‘I think we should start at Waterfall Bay carpark,’ Sean says, ‘rather than walk the extra hour there. It’ll give us time for a quick dip tonight at Bivouac before setting up camp. What d’you reckon?’
I turn around and see the pair behind us kissing.
‘You lovebirds listening?’ Sean asks again.
Jane laughs and tells him he has her vote.
‘What do you reckon, Sara?’ Sean asks.
Jane looks to be in her early thirties and appears very fit. If she wants to cut an hour off the hike, I’m not going to argue. The walk we did at Mt Field was simply around the lake, and that had been enough. ‘Untaxing’ had been Sue’s request.
‘Sounds good to me. I reckon I’m going to be your weak link.’
‘There’s no hurry,’ Sean assures me.
We put on the packs and set out, immediately heading straight up a steep bank, fast. The others are talking, something about a football game on the weekend, and I have no idea how they have the oxygen to both talk and walk.
I take in the sounds around me, the stream running alongside the track, the wind in the trees, our feet on the path. I look up at the incline ahead of me and immediately wish I hadn’t.
Sean drops back and has a drink from the stream. He has a spare water bottle and fills it for me, says he’ll carry it. I’m already halfway through the half-litre bottle I brought.
‘Thanks, but I can carry …’
He stows the bottle and suggests I walk in front of him.
‘Take your time,’ he says. ‘Like I said. No rush. Hen and Jane always set a cracking pace. I think they’re super keen to get into their tent together.’ He winks. ‘Henry’s had a crush on Jane since high school but he only told her last year, and it turns out she’d felt the same way about him for just as long.’
I laugh and keep walking, focusing on our conversation rather than each breath. I realise how much I have neglected my body since having Ellie. I feel my thighs work and my feet bend around the rocks. I am aware of the weight of the pack on my back and the muscles of my arms as I take hold of tree branches and haul myself up the track. It is as if I haven’t noticed my physical self for years and, although it’s a challenge, it feels incredible. I take a dead branch from the side of the track to use as a walking pole to steady myself on the slippery steps. My pulse pumps loudly in my ears.
At the top of the incline, Sean and I are rewarded with a magnificent sweeping view of the ocean, several disappearing headlands, and distant white islands, aglow with seal guano. I breathe in deeply and feel my spirit lift. There is no sign of the other two.
‘Not a bad spot, hey?’ Sean says. He sits down and opens his backpack, taking out a stick of salami, a block of cheese and a packet of Vita-Weats.
‘No, not bad at all.’ I chuckle at the understatement.
He cuts up the salami and cheese with a pocket knife and layers the slices on the crackers, handing me two.
I think of Abdhul and what he would make of this place, where everything seems possible. He told me once that he didn’t like hiking, so I doubt I will be able to get him here. I think of Sue’s offer of a visit to her sister’s farm, and make a mental note to arrange that soon.
‘What brought you to Tasmania?’ Sean asks, taking out his watercolour pad, a brush and a small set of paints: bright pressed circles on a series of plastic interlocking discs. ‘Just the job?’
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