Cooee

by Vivienne Kelly

‘You hadn’t seen it?’ asked Charmian, misunderstanding my silence. ‘Likenesses are strange, I always think. Families often don’t notice them: it takes an outsider to see what’s right before your eyes. Funny things, genes. See you later.’

  I said something. Charmian left. I continued to sit, Sophie beaming up at me.

  I suppose I was slow. It didn’t all fall into place immediately. Right in front of me it had certainly been, but that didn’t mean I comprehended it rapidly. Comprehension was a tall order, at that moment.

  But as I sat there, some of the pieces started to fall into place. I recalled Kate’s new maturity, her unselfconscious indolence and her adolescent glamour, the new charge of sexuality flickering through her. I recalled the bikini, the hours around the pool. I recalled, quite specifically, the satiny way her skin shone when she climbed out of the pool. I recalled my week in Sydney.

  It’s always the oldest stories in the world that make least sense when they happen to you.

  And this one made no sense at all. For against my memories of these things, against my enforced new interpretation of absences and silences, of laughter and glances, of intonation and gesture, stood all my experience of Max, all the experience of our love and my trust. My absolute trust.

  It was not within the range of likelihood that Max had cold-bloodedly, deliberately deceived me. The understanding that we shared simply transcended that possibility. Max’s kindness, his loyalty and generosity and openness and sweet nature — all his qualities came crowding into my head. It was not possible that this man had betrayed me. Not with the icy intention of betrayal. Not knowingly, not as a plan.

  Yet betrayed I was. I gave my little finger to Sophie and she grabbed it, chuckling with that uncomplicated, entirely unmanipulative delight that makes babies such a joy. I drew it away gently and she pulled it back and stuck it in her mouth. She chuckled again, crinkling her nose.

  At this point, Kate entered. She took one look at me and nodded, quite calmly.

  ‘You’ve seen it, haven’t you?’ she said, rather as if we were discussing a television program.

  I couldn’t say anything.

  She bent over and took Sophie. ‘I knew you’d see it soon,’ she said, matter-of-factly. ‘It’s time for her sleep. I’ll put her down. I’ll be back in a moment.’

  When she returned she sat opposite me and regarded me levelly.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I understand it’s a shock for you. Do you want to talk about it?’

  I tried to speak and couldn’t. I tried again. I stood up. I didn’t want to be sitting down. She stood, too, and put her hand out as if she meant to comfort me. I winced away.

  ‘Talk. What good will talking do?’ In my own ears my voice sounded vicious, its bitterness spraying uncontrollably.

  She said nothing. She interlaced her fingers and looked down at them, as if she were considering some conundrum they posed.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why did you do it?’

  ‘You’re blaming me?’

  ‘You can ask that?’

  ‘Why assume it’s my fault?’

  I stared at her. ‘You’re telling me he raped you?’

  ‘Good God, no.’

  ‘Then you must have seduced him.’

  She actually laughed. ‘Mum, can’t you imagine making love outside rape or seduction? I was in love with him. I am in love with him.’

  ‘What the fuck do you mean?’

  She flinched, at the word, I suppose. I thought it was rich of her to take exception to my language when she’d just seduced my husband.

  ‘I’ve been in love with Max for a long time. Since I was sixteen or so, I think. You’re not the only person who’s allowed to fall in love, Mum.’

  I raised my hand to hit her, but she stepped back, alarm on her face.

  ‘I only slept with him once,’ she said. ‘You saw Max and you fell hopelessly in love with him and you decided you had to have him. I saw Max and I fell hopelessly in love with him and I slept with him once. It’s all I asked. I knew I couldn’t have him, not permanently. But why shouldn’t I make love with him, just once?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t you? My God, you can say to me, why shouldn’t you?’

  ‘Well, why would it matter, just once? The opportunity came. I didn’t think it would matter, just once.’

  ‘You caught the wave. I wondered what you’d meant, at your precious reception.’

  She nodded. ‘I caught the wave,’ she said, simply.

  ‘You’re obscene. What about Gavin?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘You’ve cheated on him.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Kate, with maddening placidity. ‘I don’t think it’s cheating on him. I wasn’t married to him then, anyway. Such concern for Gavin, Mum. You surprise me.’

  ‘You knew you were pregnant to Max when you married Gavin?’

  ‘I knew I was pregnant.’

  ‘Does Gavin know?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Sometimes I think he does; sometimes I think he doesn’t.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid I’ll tell him?’

  ‘It’s hardly in your best interests,’ said Kate, composedly.

  ‘You’re pretty bloody cool about it all.’

  ‘I’ve had time to think about it. You’ll be cooler, too, when you’ve had a bit of time.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Mum, let’s leave it for the moment. It’s been a big shock for you. In a little while, I’ll talk about it as much as you want.’

  ‘What makes you think I want to talk about it at all?’

  ‘It has to be dealt with,’ said my daughter. ‘It’s happened, that’s all. It’s something that’s happened, and we can’t make it unhappen. We just have to deal with it; we have to find the best way to deal with it.’

  I started towards the door. Something was thudding in my head, behind my eyes. I seemed to have lost peripheral vision, but I could see where the door was and I headed for it.

  ‘Don’t forget your bag,’ said Kate, holding it out to me.

  I snatched it, but something else occurred to me. ‘Who knows?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Who have you told?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘Have you and Max discussed it?’

  ‘Not a word.’

  ‘That’s absurd. You can’t expect me to believe it.’

  ‘It’s true, though.’

  ‘You expect me to believe Max doesn’t know?’

  ‘Of course he knows,’ said Kate, patiently. ‘He can’t help knowing. But so far we haven’t talked about it. I don’t think anyone else has noticed. I knew you would. I’m not at all sure Dad will notice, or Dominic. I’m not sure about Gavin. I don’t think it’s the sort of thing men necessarily do notice. Especially if they’re not expecting it.’

  I shook my head and fled, helpless in the fury and shock and disbelief that throbbed through me, possessing me outright.

  I caught the bus home. It was just as well Max had taken the car: I was in no fit state to drive. As it was I missed my stop and had to walk back to Rain. Images played themselves before my eyes: the young satiny sheen of Kate’s skin; Kate’s hair, its brightness and softness; Kate’s clear blue eyes, her pretty hands, the new confidence displaying itself in her stance, her languor, her suave new sexuality. Max’s hands, Max’s lean body, Max’s hands, his hands, his hands. His hands that caressed me; his hands that brought me such delight; his long, fine, strong, beautiful hands.

  He had not arrived home. I went into the lounge. I couldn’t sit down. I walked up and down, up and down. I poured myself a brandy. And another.

  When he came home, he looked at me just once and a kind of defeat came over his face, a resignation.


  ‘You know. You’ve seen it, haven’t you?’

  ‘How could you?’ I said. ‘How could you?’

  He shrugged, wearily, and went to pour himself a drink. ‘I don’t know how it happened, Bella. It was when you were in Sydney.’

  ‘I’d worked that out, thank you.’

  ‘We missed you, Kate and I.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘Well, I know it sounds fatuous. But we did. We missed you. Kate said, let’s do something special. So I went and got a crayfish. We had crayfish and a bottle of wine for dinner. Then we jumped into the pool.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I can’t explain it, Bella. These things happen. We’d had a glass too many. It was a hot night.’

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘It’s partly why I wanted to get rid of the pool. It kept reminding me.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  Max took a swig of his whisky and placed his glass on the shelf above the fireplace, next to the photograph of us holding hands, standing on the white sands at Point Leo, half silhouetted against the darkly golden sunset. He looked down, and then up. He partially spread his hands and then let them fall, in that puzzled, self-deprecatory movement so characteristic of him. His face was sad, drawn.

  He stood there, by the fireplace, one foot on its chunky hearth of slate with its streaks of amber and gold. I was by then sitting on the creamy leather sofa, leaning forward towards the coffee table, where we kept the beautiful object we had christened the meteor stone. I think I was clenching and unclenching my fists. I remember looking down and seeing my hands resembling claws — slight, powerless, little claws. They talk about seeing things through a red haze. I don’t recall the redness, but I certainly had a haze hanging thick over my eyes.

  I picked up the meteor stone and threw it at him. It struck him on the left temple.

  Max looked at me, for a moment, through clear and perplexed eyes. His right hand jerked up, slightly, towards me, and then fell, loose — as if it no longer belonged to him — to his side.

  Without a sound, without even swaying, without trying to save himself or break his fall, he toppled. He fell the way a tree falls, heavy and straight. As he crashed onto the floor his head struck the hearth’s rich slate, which we had chosen together.

  I don’t remember what I did next. I think I just sat there.

  Next thing I found myself crouched by him. I called his name. I shook him. I tried to feel his pulse, to detect his breath; I put my head to his chest to try to discern his heartbeat; I screamed at him.

  But there was no doubt about it. He was dead. All quite deadybones.

  Borrow came loping over and set up a shrill keening that vibrated through my skull. I hit him hard over his aristocratic nose and he stopped abruptly, with a look of astonishment. I’d never hit him before.

  Sometimes even now Borrow looks at me slantwise, his expression revealing his belief that I am someone not to be trusted, someone who at any moment might run amok, throwing, striking, killing. Perhaps I am. Well, obviously I am.

  I felt guiltier, at that moment, about hitting Borrow than about killing Max. Borrow’s pain was real and graspable; Max’s death wasn’t.

  I sat on the floor, next to my love, the love of my life, he who had fathered my daughter’s daughter, my granddaughter, my stepdaughter. Borrow lay on the other side of him, head between paws, his eyes dolefully fixed on me.

  I don’t know how long I sat there. Max’s eyes were open. I thought they might hold an expression of bewilderment, or recrimination, or hurt; but they just looked dead. Fishy, really.

  Finally I leant over and closed the lids, as gently as I could, and was startled by the slight but palpable fleshy resistance they offered. At some stage I went and poured myself another brandy. My hands were shaking. I remember watching my hand shake as it tipped the bottle over the glass. The brandy went all over the benchtop. Scrupulously I wiped it up. Max hated mess.

  I went back into the lounge. I sat on one of the deep leather armchairs and let my body sink into its resilient softness and rested my head against one of the honey-rust silk cushions and sipped my brandy while Max’s portrait, so lovingly commissioned, so triumphantly hung, gazed enigmatically down at me.

  I suppose there were all sorts of options open to me, but I didn’t consider many of them. It never occurred to me, for instance, to ring the police, or an ambulance, or to say there had been an accident. Of course I would have rung an ambulance if there had been the slightest chance of his still being alive. (It was amazing, how dead he was: I didn’t know you could die as fast, as decisively, as that.)

  It never occurred to me to ring either of my children, or my sister. Funnily enough, I did think of ringing Steve. There was something ineffably consoling at that moment about the thought of Steve — stocky, slow, practical, careful. I’ll take care of it, lovely, he would say. Just a little old corpse, is it? I’ll take care of that. Don’t you worry about a thing. A pity, really, that a phone call to Steve was out of the question.

  It didn’t occur to me either to go out, to come back a few hours later, to find the body and raise the alarm. Well, that would have been a daft thing to do, anyway. Someone would have cottoned on. Some balding, unnecessary neighbour, behind his curtains, straight out of a 1940s Hollywood crime movie, would have noticed, would have blabbed to the good-looking detective in his soigné hat and knee-length coat.

  It was clear to me that I would be seen as culpable — that indeed in some sort of technical sense I was culpable — and that I had to dissemble in order to save my own skin. It was a question of how best this deception could be managed, not of whether I would indulge in it. I could not bear it, that I might have murdered Max. I could not bear to have people saying I had murdered Max. I had to slip through the sudden giant padlock I had fastened on my life.

  I did think of disappearing. I had enough money in the bank. I had a passport; I had credit cards. I could lock the house and go and catch a plane somewhere. Anywhere. But it seemed too difficult, too unwieldy, too outlandish somehow. And it required decision and purpose, and a capacity to deal with complex activity, and these were things of which I was then incapable.

  I watched Max. I didn’t know much about rigor mortis. I supposed it would set in soon. I looked at the indentation in his fragile skull, at the darkness beneath it, the livid pool that had formed under the skin of his temple, near the roots of his thick and silvery hair. No blood had been shed. It was astonishing, that there was no blood. I thought it was good, a bloodless death: it would be easier to clean up. The pale oatmeal carpet was unblemished: it bore no trace of death.

  I contemplated the fact that Max would never again make love with me — nor, for that matter, with anybody else; not my daughter, not anybody. I thought of the cruel extraordinariness of time: approximately twelve hours ago I had arisen, a wife, a grandmother, a fulfilled and happy woman, singing in the shower, eating muesli for breakfast, brushing my teeth carefully afterwards to extract the little pieces of nuts and grains. And now, I was a widow, a murderess; my granddaughter was also my stepdaughter. The transformation had been breathtaking. I was astray in the awful bafflement of it all.

  I can see now, of course, that I was in shock. But at the time it seemed to me I was functioning with commendable lucidity, that the cogs were all spinning and connecting to each other with at least usual efficiency, that indeed I had somehow achieved a singular purity of vision.

  I breathed silently while death and guilt and anger and fear and other great nameless things swirled around me, while possible new, murky futures unfolded like dark, narrow paths on all sides, while Borrow uneasily snuffled and my lover gradually cooled and stiffened.

  After a while — it could have been twenty minutes; it could have been hours — I set down my glass of brandy, which under the circumstances I had managed to
stretch out pretty well. I walked over to Max’s corpse. I squatted beside him and I stroked his hair.

  His head was very cold.

  I didn’t know what to do. I felt in his jacket pocket and took out his wallet. It was an old wallet, but good quality: it was a soft, dark leather, with claret-coloured silk lining. I’d never looked at it closely before: Max didn’t appreciate people messing with his belongings; and I wouldn’t normally have dreamt of examining his wallet or his desk or his papers or anything else belonging to him.

  I opened it and found my picture inside. It was a nasty shock, considering everything. There I was, grinning insouciantly up at me. There were a number of credit cards and what appeared to be a huge amount of cash. I counted it, quietly and methodically, pleased in a way to have something to do. There were thirty-five crisp, neat hundred-dollar notes, and a medley of smaller denominations as well. It was a very orderly wallet.

  Steve used to stuff everything in his wallet: bits of paper, addresses, cards, advertising blurb, receipts. Max had been so meticulous about everything. I was amazed that he carried so much cash around. He was never short of cash, of course, but three thousand dollars plus seemed excessive. I was cross, in fact: it wasn’t only excessive but careless. Anything might have happened to him, carrying as much as that around with him.

  But I had no time or energy to think about it: I replaced the notes carefully and took the wallet upstairs, and put it on the table beside our bed, on Max’s side, next to the novel he had been reading, a murder mystery by P.D. James.

  Only a night or two ago he had asked lazily, as he closed the book and turned the bedside lamp off, why women wrote the best murder mysteries. I’d told him it was because we had the most devious minds, and he’d laughed and pulled me towards him and … Well, there was no point in thinking about that.

  I went back downstairs, stepping heavily on the carpeted treads. Max’s body was still there, exactly where I had left it. It seemed odd, somehow: I had so competently extinguished his spirit, it seemed as if his body should also have evaporated, vanishing into the air with a wreath of white smoke. Yet here it lay, stubbornly corporeal, dead but otherwise fit and svelte, as Max always was, requiring disposal.