by Liz Byrski
As the train rattled along its tracks towards the city, Emma did make a serious attempt to get herself back onto her own tracks. She forced herself to think about her sessions with Mara; she recalled the way she had begun by rambling on about everything, from being taunted in the playground to the sheer terror of being faced with the responsibility of the survival of a tiny human being. She remembered talking about the compulsion to spend whatever money she had – and a lot that she hadn’t – feeding her craving for something new to wear, to carry, to fix her face, her hair or her body, to make herself new, different, better, happy, whole. And she tried hard to focus on one particular session when, after resisting Mara’s questions about how these impulses, once fulfilled, made her feel, she had finally admitted to a sudden and brief rush of relief followed rapidly by an attack of guilt and self-hatred. And she forced herself to remember the crying, the really heavy duty crying that she did in those sessions from which she emerged with wrecked makeup, red eyes, blotchy face, damp strands of hair stuck to her forehead, and feeling as though she’d done three rounds in the ring with the Terminator.
She even thought, as the train pulled into a station and more passengers piled into the carriage, of getting out and going home. Perhaps Phyllida would help her, talk her down a bit and help her get through the rest of the day. After her first few therapy sessions Emma had avoided going straight home so that she wouldn’t have to face her aunt or anyone else looking how she felt. On one occasion however she thought that Phyllida was planning to meet Jean Dunne. But when Emma let herself into the kitchen through the back door Phyllida was sitting at the bench top reading a book and eating cheese on toast.
‘Good lord!’ she’d said, looking up from her book. ‘Whatever happened to you? You look as though you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards.’
And Emma had promptly burst into tears once again and told Phyllida about the therapist, and owned up to the fact that since the first few weeks she’d been using the money from Donald’s will to pay for it. To her surprise, rather than scoffing and telling her she ought to be able to sort herself out on her own, Phyllida had responded with a hug and told her she was proud of her.
So, there she was, apparently making progress, feeling different and hopeful, out of debt and with money in the bank, and yet this morning she was right back where she started – a prickling, twitching bundle of self-doubt and aching need. The only thing that had kept her on track during the day was the sheer pressure of dealing with the barrage of media calls relating to an overnight raid on Central Park by four men in a four-wheel drive who crashed through the glass doors and ransacked the various mobile phone outlets. Now, however, with the evening closing in, the pressure off and the shop windows alight with the promise of retail therapy, Emma is still in the grip of the beast. She is alone in dangerous territory, with no one to call to suggest getting a meal, or seeing a movie – Phyllida, Margot and Lexie are all at a meeting, and Laurence … well, despite the recent improvement in relations with her father she certainly isn’t going to turn up on his doorstep.
Emma turns out the light in her office, makes her way to the ground floor, steps out into the street and turns right in the direction of Bourke Street. The mall is alive with people hurrying and strolling, avoiding the trams or climbing onto them, heading home or into the department stores. In the narrow arcades leading through to Little Collins Street, women just like Emma are out shopping with their girlfriends, pointing to window displays, laughing, encouraging each other into the shops and emerging with carrier bags made of thick glossy paper and silk ribbon handles, handles that Emma’s hands itch to hold. The tantalising smell of leather draws her into a handbag shop but, with a huge effort of will, she backs out into the arcade and follows the scent of sandalwood to the shop that sells saris and silver jewellery. For a few moments she stands by the window drinking in the gorgeous colours of the silks and the sequins and then, in a move that she knows to be dangerous, she straightens up and steps swiftly next door to the lingerie shop, hesitating in the doorway where satin and lace in sexy designs and luscious colours promise to make a difference that will last, that will actually change how she feels.
Once inside it’s too late, she is in a different space now, a zone in which rational thought is suspended and there is nothing but that promise. She walks quickly between the racks, plucking out the answers to her problems on their small plastic hangers: bras in purple, red and black, matching lacy knickers, a satin teddy in shell pink trimmed with grey lace, and another in coffee satin trimmed with cream. There is no pain now, just relief, huge relief, she’ll only have these, it’s not like it was before, one little hiatus, that’s all it is, but it doesn’t mean anything, and she puts them down on the counter.
‘All these?’ the sales assistant says, drawing them towards her, and Emma nods.
The woman begins to key the prices into the register. It’s a slow task due to the curve and length of her gleaming, crimson-polished false nails.
‘Is that the lot?’ she asks eventually, and Emma nods again, reaches into her bag for her purse and takes out her credit card. It is in that moment, as she stands there at the counter, about to hand her card into the clutches of those deep red talons, that something freezes inside her. She stops and steps back slightly from the counter, folding her own fingers protectively around the plastic card.
‘Did you want to pay cash instead?’
Emma stares at her for a long moment and the woman exchanges a wary look with her colleague.
‘Is it cash or credit then?’ she asks again.
‘No,’ Emma says in a small voice. ‘I think … no … changed my mind …’ And she turns away from the counter and plunges out into the arcade, head spinning, looking around for the exit. She knows this place like the back of her hand and yet now she’s lost. All she wants is to get away, get out before she suffocates, and as people push past her, laughing and talking, she spins around looking for the way out, bumping into a low seat and then steadying herself against it. And then she sees him. Walking towards her, waving, his initial smile fading rapidly to a frown of concern, is Grant, dark suit, white shirt, blue and silver tie, briefcase in hand, cutting through the arcade as he does every night on his way from the office to the station.
‘Em … Em?’ he says, looking into her face and gripping her arm. ‘What’s wrong? Are you okay?’
Emma shakes her head. The place seems to be closing in on her, more and more people streaming in, the noise and the lights unbearable. ‘I must get out,’ she says, grasping the sleeve of his jacket. ‘Home, I must go home.’
‘Okay,’ Grant says cautiously, and he takes her hand and draws it through the crook of his arm. ‘Okay, home it is. But this way, this is the way to the station, or we can get a cab, just hang on to my arm.’ And he steers her gently back out of the arcade and through the darkening streets towards Flinders Street Station.
Dot drives home from the meeting in high spirits. Since her accident so much of the campaign has come together that she had lost sight of the scope of it, but the picture Lexie and Alyssa presented tonight has reignited her enthusiasm. And that fall, she thinks now, was perhaps a gift as well as a robbery. It has certainly robbed her of the torment of wanting to grab the reigns and show the young ones how it should be done; that has been driven out by concern about her ability to manage her own life. But it has also slowed her down, and perhaps that’s not a bad thing. Dot has often deliberately talked about herself as an ‘old woman’; she has wanted to acknowledge ageing, experience it fully, enjoy whatever it has to offer. But while she spoke of herself as an old woman she never really felt it or believed it. Despite the evidence of the calendar, the mirror and the creaking of her joints, within herself she felt suspended at a point of midlife, when the energy of youth fuses with the growing of wisdom. But that fall changed everything; now, after weeks of struggling with ideas of vulnerability and decline, she sees that she has been accustoming herself to fully exper
iencing what it means to be old and that this, in itself, is a gift worth exploring.
She drives into the garage, locks the door and walks through to the back of the house, just as there is a ring at the front door.
‘Can I come in?’ Patrick says.
‘No!’ Dot says. ‘You might have got that virus from Vinka and that’s not what I need just before I get my last chance to stand outside Parliament and stir a few passions.’
‘It’s not a virus,’ he says. ‘Vinka doesn’t have a virus and neither do I. We’re both …’ He pauses and takes a deep breath. ‘Well, it’s emotional not physical.’
‘And not contagious?’ Dot says with a smile. ‘Well then come on in, although I’m not the world’s best person when it comes to advice on emotional problems.’
‘I suppose it is contagious really,’ Patrick says, stepping into the hall and removing his sunglasses. ‘Contagious for you at any rate.’
He looks tired and anxious, exhausted, Dot thinks, probably due to the huge amount of work he has put into organising the rally.
‘I’ve never caught anyone’s emotional state before – perhaps I have a natural immunity. If you’ve come to see how the speech is going, it’s okay, I’m sure it’ll come –’
‘It’s nothing to do with that,’ he says.
There is something about his appearance and the tone of his voice that ignites a spark of anxiety in Dot.
‘Right,’ she says. ‘Tea? We drank a lot of it at the meeting, but I can make you some or would you prefer a drink?’
He shakes his head and drops into a chair, flopping back at first then, seeming to pull himself together, leaning forward, hands clasped between his knees. ‘I don’t know how to tell you this,’ he says. ‘It’s not like there is an easy way, so please just believe I’m doing the best I can, and with the best will in the world.’
‘Okay,’ she says cautiously, ‘I believe you.’
He hesitates and she waits in silence, her anxiety growing as she feels a sense of dread coming from him.
‘It was my birthday last month,’ he says.
‘I could have guessed you were an Aries,’ Dot says in an effort to ease the tension. ‘You have many fine –’
‘Don’t,’ he says, ‘please don’t.’
He seems almost paralysed by some sort of internal struggle and perhaps it is contagious because she feels herself being drawn into its grip.
‘March the twentysixth. Does that date mean anything to you?’
‘Why? Should it?’ she asks, with a horrible sense of foreboding.
‘Just tell me, please, does it mean anything?’
Dot looks at him long and hard and then she shrugs. ‘Well yes it does actually, but you needn’t bother asking me why because I’m not going to tell you.’
‘You don’t need to tell me.’
She turns back to him, gripping the arms of her chair.
Patrick reaches into his inside pocket, takes out a folded sheet of paper and holds it out to her with a shaking hand. Dot pulls back from it, blood pumping in her temples.
‘I don’t want it,’ she says.
‘No,’ Patrick says. ‘Of course you don’t, you don’t need to see it because you know what it says. It was left in Vinka’s care by my … my adoptive mother. I doubt this would have stood up in any sort of court,’ he says, unfolding the yellowing paper, turning it over in his hands. ‘After all, it’s an arrangement that was made outside the law, but I believe it’s genuine. It’s an agreement in which you waive all rights to your child, a son, born at eight in the morning of the twentysixth of March, nineteen sixty-six.’
Dot looks away, fixing her gaze on the window but seeing nothing. The silence in the room is almost unbearable and she can’t bring herself to look at him. What is she supposed to say? It is the secret that was never supposed to come out. She turns her head now, looking at him. How can she not have known this, how can she not have recognised her own child?
‘Do you remember the first time you came here?’ she asks; her voice breaks slightly and she pauses to clear her throat. ‘As we were talking then I had a feeling we’d met somewhere before, that I should remember you. You told me that your mother, Beate, used to show you my writing, kept clippings for you … do you remember telling me that?’
Patrick nods. ‘I do. And I told you I’d plagiarised something for an essay.’
‘Yes. Why? Why did Beate do that?’
‘I used to think it was because you were some sort of hero to her. Now I know, because I asked Vinka the same question. She did it because she thought I should have some sort of understanding of you, in case I ever learned the truth.’
Dot nods slowly, watching his face, anticipating the questions and knowing the painful answers she will have to give him. ‘She must have been a remarkable woman,’ she says. ‘And she was clearly a far better mother than I would ever have been.’
Silence again.
‘But you are my mother.’
Is it a statement or a question? Dot is not sure, but even through her fear and the longing that is now like a physical pain inside her, she knows that he actually needs to hear her say it. ‘Yes,’ she says, in a voice that sounds old and shaky and unlike her own. ‘Yes, Patrick. I am your mother.’
He sighs and closes his eyes briefly. ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘And my father?’
Dot looks down at her own hands, twisting in her lap. They are old hands, an old woman’s hands, the hands of a woman too old and alone to cope with the agony of this and what it may mean.
‘I can’t tell you that,’ she says, getting abruptly to her feet. ‘I never expected … truly I had no idea about you. I need you to go now. Give me some time please, later we can talk, after the rally – let me do this first.’
He shakes his head. ‘I can’t, you must know that I can’t,’ he says. ‘My mother … Beate … gave this adoption agreement to Aunty Win to look after for me. It was in a sealed envelope. Win knew what was in it and she kept it for me – unopened, so she never saw the name of the person who was with you at the time and who witnessed your signature. But when I opened it I saw it straightaway. The name of the witness is Laurence Attwood. You must tell me, Dot, is Laurence my father?’
TWENTY-EIGHT
‘I don’t know why she’s not coming, she just isn’t,’ Phyllida says as they stand at the foot of the Boatshed steps. She and Emma have walked here, arriving at the same time as Margot appeared from the car park. ‘She just sent a text saying she was sorry she couldn’t make it.’
‘A text?’ Margot says. ‘Dot hates text messages.’
Phyllida shrugs. ‘Well I don’t know about that, but that’s what the message said.’
‘Maybe she got that virus that Patrick and Vinka have,’ Emma says.
‘She seemed fine yesterday at the meeting,’ Phyllida says. ‘I’m disappointed; I was looking forward to hearing what she thought of the book.’
‘Maybe she just changed her mind,’ Margot says. ‘She’s never been much of a joiner, unless it was something political.’
They walk up the steps, along the boardwalk and in through a side door to a room with a sign for the book club.
‘Dad and I came here with Rosie after that awful Bunny party,’ Emma says.
Margot smiles, patting her arm. ‘Laurence told me. He said you were spectacular.’
‘And don’t you dare say a word about it being your fault, Em,’ Phyllida says. ‘We’ve been through all that, so you can just bottle it.’
Emma and Margot look at her in surprise and then look at each other and burst into laughter.
‘Well,’ says Phyllida, slightly embarrassed, ‘we have, we really have. In a way it’s a good thing it happened. It made you more aware of what was going on and it made me see that this campaign is not just about other people’s daughters and granddaughters; it’s on our own doorstep. Did you bring the fliers for the rally, Em?’
‘Phyllida, you came,’ Fran says, walking over to g
reet them. ‘And Margot too. Do come and sit down. Can I get you all a glass of wine or some juice?’
Phyllida takes a glass of wine, hoping it will bolster her confidence, although she has come not to talk but to listen. She has read the book twice, avidly, fascinated by the subversion of the expected, going back several times to the ways in which the two women, the widow and the former lover, who ought to be at loggerheads, end up in a strangely intimate and sometimes ambivalent friendship. She can’t make up her mind what she thinks about this, but what she does know is that she can’t let go of it, that she can’t stop wondering about the ways in which they negotiate the slippery edges of privacy and sharing, of intimacy and distance. ‘There’s a lot of people here,’ she says. ‘I didn’t expect so many.’
‘We usually get a good crowd,’ Fran says.
Phyllida takes a gulp of her wine and joins Emma and Margot on a low couch. A couple of women from the golf club wave to her from across the room, and someone else waves to Margot. Meanwhile, Emma is chatting to the woman sitting beside her, urging her to take a flier about the march. Phyllida tries to sink lower into the couch.
Tapping gently with a knife on the side of her glass, Fran eventually commands their attention. She hands out a list of books for the next six meetings, with the dates beside them, asks for recommendations for the rest of the year and passes around another list for names and email addresses of people who are here for the first time. She glances down at her notes.
‘Well that’s enough from me,’ she says. ‘Let’s get on to the discussion of Salley Vickers’s book Instances of the Number 3. This was May Wong’s choice, so where are you, May? Ah, way over there, well maybe you could move forward a bit so we can see you? Excellent; over to you then to introduce the book.’