Cooee

by Vivienne Kelly

  It’s a fine sunny day, and the ritzier bits of Perth unfold before me, wide streets and bright gardens. I find the address I’m looking for, the only M. Ritter. Immediately I know I’ve hit paydirt. There’s an old silver Audi in the drive.

  The woman who opens the door isn’t statuesque, but she is blonde. That ash-streaked, expensive blonde that goes so well with a lustrous golden tan, which she has. She’s on the plump side, but she’s pretty. She’s in jeans and a T-shirt, but they’re classy jeans and a designer T-shirt, and her thin, gold leather sandals are just gorgeous: I feel like asking her where she bought them. Her expression is unfriendly.

  After a second or two I realise I am staring at her mutely, drinking in every detail of her appearance.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m really sorry. Please, can I talk to you. Just for a few minutes?’

  I’m stupid, of course: such an important meeting, and I’ve rehearsed nothing, prepared nothing. It’s not like me. I’ve been so consumed with it all, so consumed with the thought that I’ll perhaps actually be meeting one of the wives, that I’m not ready: I haven’t got my act together.

  ‘My name’s Weaving. But that won’t mean anything to you. I was married to Max Knight.’

  Her eyes widen and harden. She starts to close the door.

  ‘Please. Please. I’m from Melbourne. I won’t ever bother you again. I’m going home tomorrow. I came over here just to meet you. Please. I only want ten minutes. Then I’ll go and you’ll never see me again.’

  ‘What do you want to ask me?’ Her voice is cold.

  ‘I only want to ask you some questions. Please. I lived with him for five years. There are things I don’t understand. I thought if we talked we might both understand more about it, about him.’

  She hesitates. Then she steps back, nods. ‘Ten minutes.’

  We sit opposite each other in a remarkably pleasant room, all sun and chintzy wicker chairs and big extravagant pot plants and glass-topped tables. I don’t like wicker furniture very much, and I don’t like pot plants very much, but she’s put it all together (at least I suppose it was she who put it together) so that it looks summery and airy and fresh.

  ‘My name’s Isabel,’ I say.

  ‘I’m Meryl.’

  ‘Thank you for seeing me.’

  A long pause settles between us. We examine each other. I dare say it’s an unusually frank appraisal between two women who have never before met each other, but we need it. I certainly do, anyway.

  My initial impression is reinforced: this is a classy lady. She has that costly sheen of preservation about her that only really chic, really wealthy people get. She’s chubby but it’s fit chub, firm and gym-toned flesh. Her eyes are bright. She has terrific teeth.

  ‘How did you find me?’ she asks.

  ‘A policeman.’

  ‘Cops are pigs,’ she says, with a vigour that surprises me.

  ‘At least, he didn’t tell me how to find you, but he told me Max had married in Perth when he was calling himself Martin Ritter. So I looked up Ritters in the phone book. There aren’t many. It wasn’t hard.’

  ‘He left you, too?’ she asks, abruptly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Nearly a year.’

  ‘Did you know it was going to happen? Did he give you any warning?’

  ‘No,’ I say, reflecting that this would have been a difficult thing for Max to have managed.

  ‘Me neither. One day he just went away. He left a letter. Did he leave you a letter?’

  ‘No.’

  She raises her eyebrows. ‘Unusual. He usually leaves a letter.’

  ‘Usually?’

  ‘Well, he did with me, and apparently he did with my predecessors.’

  ‘Your predecessors?’

  ‘Didn’t you know? He’s a serial bigamist, dear.’

  ‘I knew there was one other wife.’

  ‘A whole trail of them, probably. I know of three.’ She looks at me. ‘Four, now.’

  ‘Are the others in America?’

  ‘Yes. Well, two of them are. God knows how many others exist, or where they all are.’

  More than two other wives, I think.

  ‘Meryl,’ I say, experimenting with her name. ‘How did he make his money?’

  She smiles, thinly. ‘You don’t know?’

  I shake my head. I’ve got a pretty good idea, or at least I think I have, but I want to hear it from her.

  ‘Three ways, mainly. He imports prostitutes from Asian countries, and he launders money. But principally it’s drugs.’

  Tax evasion? Prostitution? Drugs? White slave traffic? What an irony, I think. I must make sure Bea never finds out she was right after all.

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘As I understand it, heroin. I believe he dabbles in boutique stuff, too, from time to time. But the basis is heroin — at least, it was then, and I assume it’s the same now. That’s where most of the money came from. Honestly, didn’t you know?’

  ‘He told me he was a consultant of sorts.’

  ‘So he is. A consultant on whores and heroin. He has other interests, too, of course — legit ones, to give him a cover. I believe he does a nice line in hiring out heavy industrial machinery. But most of it’s prostitution and drugs. You must have suspected something? Did he throw money around?’

  ‘Yes. But I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to think anything was wrong.’

  ‘I was a bit like that, too,’ she says. ‘Common sense was telling me something was wrong. Nobody has as much money as that: I knew that. But I didn’t want to face up to it, either.’

  I realise her eyes are on my ring.

  ‘That’s a fabulous diamond,’ she says. She holds up her hand and waves it at me. The diamond ring on her middle finger glitters. Its design is similar to mine.

  ‘Tell me,’ she says. ‘Did he give you a Fred Williams?’

  I can only nod.

  ‘I sold mine. I didn’t like it. And I thought a painting might be repossessed. I wanted the hard cash. I advise you to sell yours, too.’

  This is an even more surreal conversation than I expected it to be.

  ‘What did he say in his letter? If you don’t mind my asking.’

  She sighs. ‘He said he loved me, we’d had a great time, he was an adventurer at heart, sorry not to live up to what I’d have liked him to be, ta-ta. Classic stuff. The cops turned up about a week after he’d left. He always manages to keep one step ahead of them, apparently. They weren’t very nice about it.’

  I stare at her. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. Probably it should have been, but it wasn’t.

  ‘Look,’ she says. ‘I know it’s hard. Try to see the bright side. He’s probably left you pretty well off?’

  I nod.

  ‘Well, take my advice, get rid of stuff like paintings. I did; I converted practically everything into cash. Except the diamond ring and the car. I liked the car, and I kept it. It still runs okay, though it’s really old now. But that’s a precaution: you probably don’t need to worry. Martin has excellent accountants. The cops made lots of threats, but they never actually took anything away. Martin never seems to leave a paper trail. Except when everything’s kosher, of course, and then he leaves a really clear one. He enjoys that.’

  Every time she calls Max Martin it’s a surprisingly intimate irritation, as if someone were stroking a feather across my face. I try to ignore it. ‘How long were you married?’ I ask.

  ‘Well, of course, we weren’t married. You weren’t either, I take it?’

  ‘No. Not as it turns out.’

  ‘We were together around four years.’

  I sit there, running through it all in
my mind. It’s so much to take in. Meryl looks at me with something rather like compassion. She actually leans over and pats my hand.

  ‘Listen to me,’ she says. ‘It gets better. Really, it’s only just happened to you, hasn’t it? He’s a bastard, and I know he’s a bastard, but at least he leaves people better off than he finds them, in a material sense, anyway. I mean, I’ll never have to work again. I bet you won’t either.’

  I stare at her. I’m overcome — well, nearly overcome — by a desire to sink my face into that plump, fit bosom and tell her everything. Everything. I come very close. She misinterprets my expression (which must be an odd one) and pats my hand again, almost in a motherly way.

  Then she starts blurting things out. ‘I’ve thought an awful lot about Martin,’ she says. ‘I think he just has different needs from most people. He is an adventurer. I mean, I know it’s no excuse. I’m not trying to make excuses for him. But I’ve tried to understand what happened to us. I just think he can’t help it. Honestly, I thought we were so happy. I believed we were so happy. I certainly was. I’ve never been so happy before, and I do believe he was, too, for a while.

  ‘And he’s very generous — he wants to give, all the time; he wants to shower you with stuff: you must have had that, too. Jewellery, clothes, all kinds of things. He loves doing that. He loves coming in and being Father Christmas, being a good fellow, and spreading good cheer and all the rest of it.

  ‘Mind you, it’s partly because he’s guilty, because he’s totally unable to be faithful. So he cheats, then he heaps presents on you because he feels guilty. But finally he gets bored. I mean, it’s partly keeping ahead of the cops, and he has to do that, because I reckon they’ve got enough to put him away for a thousand years if they ever caught him. The drugs alone — I mean, hell.

  ‘But it isn’t only that: he just wants to keep moving on. The woman isn’t born who can keep on satisfying him. He needs to be an impostor; he needs to have mystery and adventure and all the rest of it. You’ll never find him, you know. He sheds everything — name, identity, everything. He’s probably not even in Australia by now. He’s got friends who make him a whole new set of papers and off he goes again.

  ‘And listen, love, you’re well rid of him. I know you love him, and I know you miss him, but you think about how he makes his money, and you ask yourself if you really want to profit from that. Do you know any heroin addicts? Well, I do, and let me tell you, it’s not good, to be making your money out of poor lost souls like that. I’ve sometimes thought, if I had any principles, any real principles, I’d give it all away to a refuge and go and do work for addicts. But I guess I haven’t got principles. Sometimes I think it’s soiled money, I don’t want any of it. But look, it’s money, and it’s there, and all the harm’s been done already. So I keep it, and I live a comfortable life. And, after all, why shouldn’t I? I suffered enough, when he left me. I deserve something.’ She pauses. ‘Heavens, I don’t usually let go like that. I wasn’t going to talk to you at all.’

  ‘Why not?’ I ask, almost humbly.

  ‘I thought you might be a cop.’

  ‘Me?’ I start to laugh. It’s funny: you can’t get away from it. Imagine thinking I’m a cop.

  She smiles. She really has got excellent teeth.

  ‘That’s better,’ she says, encouragingly. ‘Look at me. I’ve lived through it. I’ve got my life together. You can do it, too. It’s amazing: at the time you think you’ll never recover, but you do: believe me. You do. Are the cops pestering you?’

  ‘Yes. A bit. There’s one cop. He comes around a lot.’

  She nods, recognising the scenario. ‘That’ll keep going for a while, probably. But look, Martin really is clever. They tried so hard to pin stuff onto me, but they never managed to. He didn’t leave anything that connected me with anything he’d done. He will have done the same with you. He tied up all the ends: really, he was so careful. They made lots of threats; they hung around. Then they got bored and they moved on, went to nobble someone who was easier game. These days, I never hear from them. That’ll happen to you, too, mark my words.’

  I suppose it will; but of course I didn’t give Max time to tie up all the ends. The impulse to confide has evaporated, now, and I’m in no danger of telling her anything else. There’s one thing I want to ask, though.

  ‘Was he unfaithful to you?’ I enquire, trying to make it sound as if this is a normal question to ask someone you’ve just met. Heaven knows why I’m worried: the rest of the conversation hasn’t exactly been normal.

  ‘Oh, God, yes. All the time. He can’t help it, you see. I just didn’t realise.’ She looks at me narrowly. ‘You poor darling. You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?’

  I nod. There doesn’t seem a lot left to say. We actually kiss goodbye, after a brief and embarrassed hesitation.

  ‘Did you have children?’ I ask her at the door.

  She shakes her head; her peachy face suddenly sags, slightly. ‘I’m infertile,’ she says, simply. ‘And you? Did you have children?’

  ‘Not with Max. From my first marriage, yes.’

  ‘Hang onto them. Kids are worth more than men, any day.’

  I suppose she’s right. I think about this, on the way home, on the plane. I think about Meryl, and about Max, and about Martin. I see what she means, about his being an adventurer, about his liking to move on, to shed old identities and don new ones like coats.

  It’s like an old fairytale, in a way: the swineherd who’s really a prince (or vice versa, come to that); the impostor who competes in arcane games and wins them, who appears from nowhere, whose real identity isn’t known till the end of the story, who changes his shape, pushes his luck, inveigles his way into bed with the princess.

  Well, Max was a good inveigler. And adventuring was the gift he gave Sophie: that makes more sense, now. I think, too, of what Meryl has told me about the drugs, the heroin. I still have such trouble thinking of this.

  All the evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, I cannot think of Max as anything but kind. I remember the photographs of Kylie and her friends; still I cannot imagine Max as malevolent or even uncaring. I know he betrayed me and lied to me, but in fact he didn’t leave me; I don’t believe he would have left me. Really, my only reservation, the only big black cross against his name, is his sin with Kate.

  And I blame Kate for that.

  I stare out the window at the apparently endless red desert beneath, and wonder what will come next.

  As it happens, to my surprise and relief, nothing much does come next.

  Gradually, very gradually, I start to relax. There’s a long period during which nothing really happens to disturb the even tenor of the way I’ve grittily carved out for myself. I don’t mind this: a patch of boredom is hardly unwelcome. I go to work. I cut back to part-time.

  Sophie grows; Liam is born and grows. We all get older. Dominic goes to university, leaves university, becomes a solicitor, makes a lot of money, has a succession of sophisticated untalkative girlfriends who all look down their noses at me.

  Steve, rather to my surprise, fails to find a new partner. Even after Dominic leaves home to set up the first in a succession of glossy bachelor pads, Steve remains in the old family home. It’s far too big for him on his own, but he says he likes it, likes pottering around.

  He and I mellow, a little, towards each other, or at any rate we pretend we do. Zoë and Henry continue to live energetic lives devoted to teaching, good causes and annoying as many of the family as they can. We all continue to turn up at the obligatory family gatherings.

  I turn fifty. I notice silver strands in my hair and an unattractively crêpey look to my neck. The years roll past. Suddenly, Sophie is twelve. Twelve! we all say to each other. Fancy our Sophie being twelve! as if we hadn’t all known that this would happen, as if she hadn’t had an eleventh birthda
y the previous year.

  The Lost Dream continues to return from time to time, always painful, always dislocating, always forcing home Max’s physical absence. Slowly it worsens. The bush is darker, the muttering louder, the path longer. The leaves still quiver above me, thin and sharp, but now they transform themselves into a thousand pale, silver knives: I know that if they drop they will split my flesh.

  I drink, perhaps, a little more than I should, from time to time. At first, I listen always for the knock that will herald my exposure and the retribution that it seems to me, in my more depressed phases, might in the end be inevitable. But curiously, miraculously, he doesn’t come. Gradually, I forget about Frank — or, at least, let him sink to the back of my mind.

  It’s hard to distinguish between days, weeks, months. At the beginning of these grey, flat years — in which Sophie is the only bright, distinctive feature, Sophie’s voice the only voice to touch a responsive chord in me, Sophie’s milestones the only events that matter — I still think about Max a lot.

  I try not to think about him, of course, and by dint of keeping busy, and still working most days, and making monstrous efforts, I do in fact manage to disengage my life from Max’s overwhelming absence, during the daytime at any rate. It’s in the long, lonely evenings, during the sleepless nights, that Max’s ghost and I chase each other wearily around the bleak arena of my memories. By the time Sophie is twelve, this happens less frequently.

  The drinking, on the other hand, probably happens more frequently. I can’t help it. It makes such a difference, to sit down with a brandy at the end of the day, to feel its warmth and vitality seeping through your tired, stringy veins. I always remember the night I nearly came to grief with Frank, when I nearly told him too much, because of that same inner glow; and I’m usually careful not to risk that. If I know people are coming, I don’t touch it.

  But people don’t come very often.

  And then, one night, Kate rings.

  ‘Mum,’ she says. ‘Sophie and I thought we might come and see you. Now. Is that all right?’