by Kim Lock
‘Maybe.’ Father Brian looked thoughtful. ‘Although let me ask you this, Mr Mullet. Is it quite that black and white? We are all human, and that means we’re all a little imperfect.’ He chuckled and leaned in closer. ‘Even me.’ He waggled his cigarette pack. ‘So is it a question of a person being definitively good or bad – or is it that sometimes we’re all guilty of having a flaw or two?’ He slid another cigarette from the pack and considered it. ‘Granted, some are more inclined to vice than others.’
Thomas pictured Elsie’s face: the soft curls of hair covering her sticking-out ears, the sweet curve of her bottom lip. The sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of her nose that shifted upwards as she smiled – the smile that warmed him from the inside as though he would never know a rainy day in his life. Thomas shook his head. Imperfection, vice, badness – these were concepts incompatible with Elsie.
‘And let’s say you could know such a thing about a person,’ the priest added, ‘why might you need to know? To stay away from someone bad? Or to befriend someone good?’
Thomas recalled how happy Bob Smith made his mother. When his father died, grief had been their constant companion, hanging thick in their house like fog and robbing his mother of happiness. But time brought back his mother’s smiles and laughter, along with Bob Smith, and eventually, Thomas’s half-brother, David. And Eliza-Jane’s family could tut all the reproach they wanted: they were happy. They were whole again. What else mattered?
‘Maybe if I knew someone was a good person,’ Thomas said, ‘it would be easier to forgive them.’
‘Ah, that old chestnut.’ Father Brian smiled. A pigeon strutted close by their feet, cooing.
Forbidding Elsie to see Aida had been a knee-jerk reaction. It was what he had assumed would be expected of a slighted husband. Thou shalt not, and all that. He was punishing her. Holding the grudge that he – the man of the house – was expected to hold.
‘You know that forgiveness isn’t about the other person though, don’t you, Mr Mullet?’
Thomas looked at him.
‘It’s about you.’ The priest pointed his finger at Thomas’s chest. ‘You forgive, so you can be free. When we don’t forgive, we make any wrongdoing our own. We cling to it. With non-forgiveness – it’s only ever ourselves that we harm.’
Thomas loved his wife. He loved Elsie in ways for which he didn’t even have words. Didn’t that mean he also loved those whom she loved? Elsie claimed she did not want to leave him, that she loved Thomas and was devoted to him. Only, that devotion was no longer singular. It had also grown, extended, to include her friend – the woman next door.
Thomas said, ‘Wasn’t it Jesus who said something about loving your neighbour?’
Father Brian nodded. ‘That’s true. He did.’
One of the toddlers had fallen off the swing and sent up a howl. The child’s mother bent down and gathered it into her arms and the child’s sobs quieted. Like magic. Looking over, the priest chuckled. Thomas thought of Aida. Her kindness, how she had comforted and rallied Elsie after the loss of the pregnancy. He thought of how much Elsie had bloomed within their friendship, and he realised that he couldn’t condemn Aida for loving his wife in that way. Because he loved her that way, too.
Love thy neighbour.
Well, Elsie sure did. But could he?
*
Another month passed, and Thomas continued to ask himself that question.
41
The fence went up faster than Elsie could have anticipated. In the space of a morning, a corrugated iron division sprung up between the two houses and the yard was snipped neatly in half.
It had been the intention all along, to divide the yards in half respectably and properly, to give each house its clearly demarcated space. But now that the fence had finally appeared, Elsie felt it like a small act of war. A statement from a wronged party to the party who had done the wronging: this is my place.
The builders had arrived not long after Thomas left for work. Elsie was washing the dishes when she heard the grumble of a ute outside, then the thud and clang and bang of tools and sheets of tin.
Suds dripping from her wrists, she raced into the backyard. Two men paced up and down between the two houses, hurrying as if they had somewhere much better to be. One was swinging a shovel into the earth, the other laying out posts and rails on the ground.
‘Mornin’, Mrs Mullet,’ one man called. ‘Sorry for the delay getting this here. Your husband sure has been insistent the past few weeks.’
Elsie couldn’t do much other than stare. The ground she had once crossed so easily, between Aida’s door and her own, would now have a great iron barrier blocking her way. In the early months she had awaited this final declaration of the boundaries of her very own backyard, but now she looked upon it with mounting horror as the builders nailed and banged and the tin loomed up and up.
This was Thomas trying to make a point, she decided angrily. A point not only to her, but to himself as well. Clearly, he remained bewildered and hurt and wanting to mark his territory.
But, she wanted to shout, we’ve stayed apart. Like you wanted. Thomas had made it clear he was struggling to find a way to be comfortable with Elsie’s friendship with Aida, and Elsie, who loved her husband dearly, and Aida, who respected that, had spent the past two months as neighbours, barely exchanging more than greetings across the yard, gazes that lingered with the weight of what could have been but was not.
She missed the mornings she had shared with Aida in the kitchen filled with the scent of baking, the afternoons on the couch, reading aloud from magazines and laughing. She remembered the press of Aida’s body, the unbelievable thrill of it. But Elsie loved Thomas. And she knew he had been betrayed. So she looked at the fence, let her frustration stew, and tried to accept it.
By lunchtime, the fence was up and the builders were packing up their tools, driving off down the road and leaving a silence into which the magpies carolled. The fence sat there, a giant guillotine blade gleaming ugly in the sun; it reflected so lewdly Elsie covered her eyes with her hand.
She stared for a long while, before Aida’s back door opened and her head popped up over the fence. Green eyes wide, dark hair tousled.
‘This is a line in the sand,’ Aida said.
‘Oh, my stars,’ Elsie said, sadly. ‘It does appear to be.’
*
When Thomas came home and examined the new fence, Elsie wept. Lately, it seemed to Elsie, the tears simply would not be staunched. She cried tears into his coffee before Thomas left for work; she cried when he returned at the end of the day. She wanted to gaze upon his face but he seemed to look at her as though she wasn’t there anymore; as though she had been replaced by a pseudo-wife, a fraud. Her heartache and loneliness became a palpable thing, a sentient creature that sat bloated in the gap between them on the couch, that dined with them at the dinner table as Elsie pecked at her food and grew gaunt. Elsie berated herself for her selfishness.
She watched Thomas ball his hands into helpless fists. He touched her wrist, miserably, and he let her curl her fingers into his own. She felt the heat of his skin, the pulse in his wrists, and it filled her with tenderness and grief.
*
The fence was three weeks old when, on a Saturday morning, Thomas strode into the garden shed. Elsie was half-heartedly raking up straw from the chicken yard when she saw him cross the yard, then thump around for a minute or so and reappear with a claw hammer.
Elsie watched, puzzled, as, at the far end of the yard, where the new dividing fence butted against the fence that ran along the rear of both houses, Thomas set to removing nails from two sheets of iron. The nails inched out with pained shrieks. A first panel fell onto the grass – thoinngg – then a second. Galahs lifted noisily from the gum tree and flapped away, squawking.
He removed the empty rails, shored up the last post as a strainer and tur
ned the gap into a gate.
Holding the rake at her side, Elsie stood by the newly created gate between the two houses, pieces of straw stuck to the bottom of her boots and her eyes wide, not quite believing.
Thomas propped the gate open with a brick. He stood back, rubbed beneath his nose, then said, ‘There you go.’
42
The end of 1961 approached, passed, and 1962 began. Over three months had gone by since Thomas had come home to discover his wife on the couch with the enigmatic woman from next door.
Thomas reflected on this as he shook his customer’s hand and waved the man and his family goodbye. It was late afternoon, the summer sun skimming the tops of the eucalypts. Thomas was pleased with another sale, pleased to be heading home while there was still daylight in the sky. As he walked to his car, a pair of noisy miners nesting in a thicket of golden broom dive-bombed his head, peeping indignantly, their wingtips feathering his hair.
Elsie had begun to hum again. She hummed tunes while she cooked, while she showered or darned his socks. She kissed his cheeks and caressed the back of his neck when he sat at the table.
Thomas packed his equipment into the car and slammed the boot. The keys rattled in the ignition.
Of course he had feared that Elsie’s messing about with the lady next door would encroach on his relationship with his wife. Who wouldn’t? Emasculation was a petrifying concept for any upstanding red-blooded bloke.
Thomas set the car in gear and pulled onto the street.
But Thomas could not deny, however incredulously, that that fear had started to wane. That his disembowelled sensation had changed into something less painful, but equally as startling.
Thomas braked belatedly for a stop sign and received a reprimanding horn blast from a motorist crossing the intersection. He smiled and waved. ‘Lovely evening!’ he called out the window.
It felt like madness.
When he arrived home, he opened the front door and was greeted with a pleasantly rich, unusual aroma. Peals of laughter erupted from the kitchen.
Elsie was pouring pasta into a colander in the sink; a cloud of steam rose around her and fogged up the window. Aida was at the stovetop, doubled over with laughter, a wooden spoon in one hand dripping red sauce onto the floor.
‘What’s so funny?’ he asked.
‘Hello, darling.’ Elsie came around the bench to kiss him. She tsked and used the corner of her apron to wipe a smear of sauce from the corner of his mouth. ‘Evidently I’m not quite fluent in Italian.’
Aida was wiping the floor. ‘I asked Elsie if the pasta was cooked, and she told me it was “al fresco”.’ Laughing again, Aida had to stop wiping and place both hands on the floor to steady herself.
‘I didn’t know the correct phrase, obviously.’ Elsie snatched the cloth from her and rinsed it in the sink.
‘Who’s Al?’ Thomas asked.
The women launched into shrieks of laughter again. Eventually Aida wiped tears from her face and said, ‘She meant al dente.’
‘I see,’ Thomas said. He didn’t. And he still didn’t know who Al was.
When he sat at his place at the table, he noticed the table had been set for three. Elsie placed a foil-wrapped loaf of hot bread on a board in the centre; in front of him she set a steaming bowl of pasta, topped with dollops of meaty red sauce.
‘What’s this?’ he asked.
‘Spaghetti Bolognese,’ Aida said. ‘There’s Italian on my dad’s mother’s side.’ The statement caused her levity to falter, and Thomas saw her and his wife exchange a weighted glance.
Elsie sat at her usual spot on his left, and Aida sat across from Elsie, on Thomas’s right. They both picked up their forks and ate; their topic of conversation now was how many tomatoes they could fit in the vegetable plot to make chutney at the end of summer. All three swigged from their own bottle of beer.
Thomas copied the way Aida twirled her fork into the slippery whorls of pasta. Pieces of it whipped hotly onto his chin, and red sauce spattered his shirt, but Elsie was having the same trouble and she didn’t seem to mind at all. The sauce was delicious: flavoured like ripe tomatoes and red wine. Thomas reached for a piece of bread and found it equally delightful, dripping butter flavoured with garlic. He savoured his meal, his head turning back and forth from the women each side of him. At one point, Elsie squeezed his hand and gave him a bright smile. The smile that lit up his life.
Beers were emptied and three more were opened. Under the table his feet were tapped from both sides.
After tea, Thomas sat in the lounge room with another beer and listened to the wireless and the sounds of the women cleaning up in the kitchen. Later, when they joined him in the lounge room, each with a glass of sherry, Thomas switched off the radio and all three bent their heads together over a crossword puzzle. Elsie brought him another bottle of beer and things became blurry.
When the crossword puzzle was finished, and Elsie put her hand on Thomas’s knee and said, ‘Let’s go to bed,’ and took up Aida’s hand, the idea of saying ‘no’ didn’t enter Thomas’s head at all.
The office of Harvey Greene, BPsych
Recently
Even as Thomas took a seat on that brown couch with its colourful throw pillows, with that camera staring at him from the corner of the ceiling and that box of tissues, he remained unsure if he wanted to go through this ordeal for a second time.
Driving here, only a few blocks away from his own home (a fact that didn’t necessarily ensure a sense of comfort in the arrangement), Thomas had waited for his foot to stomp on the brake pedal all of its own accord and make the decision for him. Stupid idea. Go home. Face it like a man.
Problem was, he still had no idea how.
‘How are you feeling today?’ the shrink asked. Harvey wore shirtsleeves this morning, on account of the warm spring weather. Thomas wore one of Elsie’s knitted jumpers and thick socks, and had driven here with the heater on.
‘I’m all right, doc,’ he replied. The shrink went to speak and Thomas added, ‘Sorry, not a doctor. I remember now.’
Harvey smiled. He glanced down at his clipboard and Thomas wondered what the man had written on there, after everything he had disclosed last week. Did he think Thomas a bigamist? Some kind of religious patriarch? Or just a downright dirty old man?
‘Did anything come up for you after our last session?’ Harvey asked.
After the last session, he wanted to say, I didn’t want to come back. He’d left the shrink’s office – or house, or whatever it was – feeling as though he’d been pulled through a mangle. If his recollection of the beginning was tough, how the hell was he going to get through the rest of it? The next five decades?
‘I feel like I need to explain myself more,’ Thomas said. ‘Last week, I got a bit carried away with the beginning. There’s a lot more to explain. Only, I’m having trouble knowing how.’
Harvey appeared to wait for him to go on, but Thomas stopped there. He mulled the next part over in his head.
‘More than fifty years – it’s a lot of time,’ the shrink said. ‘I imagine you have a lot of memories.’
‘That’s not even the half of it.’
‘You said there’s a lot more to explain?’
Thomas glanced at the camera. The codeine hadn’t kicked in yet; he wished it would hurry up. ‘I didn’t come here to tell my whole life story.’
Harvey’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. He waited, and when Thomas didn’t elaborate, he said, ‘You mentioned you have children. Grandchildren.’
Thomas smiled. It was an automatic reaction to the mention of one’s grandkids, wasn’t it? Can’t help but smile at the thought of them. All that noise, that overflowing, guileless innocence. ‘Five grandkids,’ he said. ‘All teenagers now.’
‘Wonderful.’ He paused. ‘So you have kids – you and Elsie?’
‘That�
�s right.’
‘So after that miscarriage, you and Elsie went on to have children?’
‘Eventually, yes.’
‘That must have been a relief and a joy for you.’
‘Of course it was. For all of us.’
‘Any children with Aida?’
Thomas said, ‘That’s a bit personal, isn’t it?’
Harvey didn’t reply, he simply watched him, his rounded face fixed into that calm expression of non-judgement. Outside, lorikeets were kicking up a ruckus. A car drove past on the street, stereo thudding dully.
‘No,’ Thomas replied. ‘No children with Aida. After what happened, she wouldn’t. Never again, she said.’
‘After her baby was adopted out?’
Thomas’s eyes stung. Bloody hell.
‘What was it like for Aida, then, watching you and Elsie have children? I assume, since you’re still together now, that she was a willing part of your family.’
‘More than willing,’ Thomas said crossly. ‘She was delighted. They’re her children too. Of course it was hard for her at times, especially during Elsie’s pregnancies, but . . .’ Damn him for digging at the subject. Thomas snatched a tissue, mopped his face and closed his mouth, annoyed.
Harvey set the clipboard aside. He clasped his hands together, leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees. ‘Just now, you said that you weren’t here to “tell your whole life story”. Do you want to jump forward in time, a little?’
‘I guess I don’t have a lot of time to spare,’ Thomas conceded. ‘Haste might be a smart idea.’
‘I realise this is difficult for you, having lived this life in obscurity for so many years. But I think it may help to consider the origins of your reticence, your feelings of being all clamped up. Did your families know about your relationship? Parents, siblings? And Aida’s parents – you’ve alluded to the fact that her father was someone prominent. Did they know about you and Elsie?’