by Liz Byrski
‘Come with us!’ he said later that day as he walked back to town with her to finish her shopping. And there, inside Sainsbury’s near the counter where a man in a white apron was slicing bacon, she made up her mind.
‘Okay,’ she said.
Shock flickered across his face and he stepped back slightly.
‘Sorry,’ she said, blushing, embarrassed now by her own stupidity. ‘Sorry, for a moment I thought you meant it.’
‘Well . . .’ he hesitated. ‘I didn’t think you . . .’
‘So can I go with you, then?’
‘Yeah . . . of course, if that’s what you want,’ Blue said, a smile spreading across his face. ‘But no strings, eh, Jean? No strings attached.’
‘No strings,’ she nodded. ‘What about your friends?’
He shrugged. ‘No worries there. There’s already a couple of girls in the group. They’ll be right.’
She was strangely calm and orderly in what she did next. She finished the shopping, and then went to the bank and withdrew the contents of her savings account. Back home she packed a bag and hid it in the spare room and sat down at the kitchen table to wait for Roger. The least she owed him was to tell him to his face, and all through that long hot evening, with the sounds of children playing in the neighbouring gardens and the BBC news droning in the background, she tried to summon the courage and failed.
It was the same the next day. She operated on automatic, waiting for him to get home so she could break the news, dreading the encounter but never wavering in the commitment she had made to herself.
‘I’m off to squash,’ Roger said that evening, his back turned to her as he rummaged in the hall cupboard.
‘I need to talk . . .’ she began, her voice faltering.
‘Yep, okay, but d’you know where my squash racquet is?’ he asked, without looking at her. ‘Ah, got it! I’ll be late, don’t wait up.’
She didn’t. Knowing she couldn’t face it, she waited until he left for work the next morning, propped a note on the kitchen table, took a last look around the house and the possessions that had once seemed so important, and knew that what she was doing was unforgivable. She wondered whether she had all she needed in the bag and realised that it didn’t matter. If she needed something she would get it somehow – earn it, borrow it, whatever. The thing she really needed was to leave, and leave now, before her courage evaporated and she found herself back in the mind-numbing domestic rut. She was running away and Blue was part of it but only a small part. He was simply the catalyst and, despite what happened later, the fact that he had opened the door was something she would never forget.
THIRTEEN
The room was a little too warm for Oliver’s liking. Winter sun poured in through the west facing window, and in one corner a column heater seemed to be radiating more heat than was appropriate for its size. Oliver fiddled with the neck of his sweater, shifted his position in the green leather armchair, and wondered if this had been such a good idea after all.
‘So, Oliver, where’re we going with this?’ Andrew asked. ‘I have all the notes from your sessions with Elaine, but I’m not quite sure why you feel a change of therapist might help.’
Oliver hesitated. He had no idea where to start. The trouble with psychologists was that they always wanted you to sit straight down and start talking, just like that. They smiled and waited for you to kick off, but what if you couldn’t kick off? What if you needed them to kick-start you? Elaine had been like that too. He wished they’d just interrogate him and then tell him what was wrong and how to fix it. But apparently that was contrary to the principles of most therapists, who insisted that the client be encouraged towards their own resolution. Oliver was dying for someone to give him the answers.
The idea of changing therapists had struck him when Elaine’s receptionist told him she was on leave and he’d have to wait three weeks for another appointment. He didn’t want to wait and in that instant he asked instead for an urgent appointment with a male therapist in the same practice. Now, facing a complete stranger who was waiting for him to open up, Oliver wrung his hands and wondered if he were seriously neurotic or just averagely so. Andrew’s face was impassive; he sat with his hands clasped on Oliver’s file, looking at him over his half-glasses.
‘So, tell me what’s troubling you,’ he finally said. ‘Take your time.’
‘Well,’ Oliver said, twitching his wrists further out of the sleeves of his sweater, ‘it’s complicated, and it goes back a long way. To my mother, actually, and to . . . well, to my relationships with women.’
Andrew smiled. ‘Of course,’ he said nodding sympathetically. ‘So let’s begin with your mother.’
Two and a half hours later, Oliver sat on a wooden bench in the park opposite Andrew’s practice gazing at, but not actually seeing, the silken surface of a small pond, broken only by brown and gold leaves that fluttered onto it from nearby trees. His life, it seemed, had been transformed, the scales fallen from his eyes. It had taken a while for him to warm to the telling of his tale but Andrew made it easy, helped him along, prompted him in ways that Elaine had never done. As the consultation drew to its close, Oliver was talking as he had never talked before and was close to weeping with the frustration of having to stop.
‘My next appointment has been cancelled,’ Andrew reassured him. ‘You’re welcome to the next hour if you’re not too tired.’
Oliver wondered why it was only now that he had chosen to speak to a man. Whenever he talked about important things it had always been with women and he was suddenly shocked to realise that he had no male friends. Joan had insisted that women were so much better at dealing with serious issues, especially emotional ones. Why had he not understood how constrained he had always been with Elaine, and with other women, on the subject of his mother? Each time he had ventured into counselling he had done so wearing Joan’s politics like a banner, quoting her like some guru, but he couldn’t talk about her as a person, and certainly not in relation to himself. Mothers, Joan had always said, were all too easily blamed for their sons’ hang ups or misdemeanours; it was a sign of weakness, a shifting of responsibility onto women.
‘They always blame the woman, Oliver,’ she had said. ‘If the child gets into trouble it’s always the mother’s fault. Don’t fall into the trap of blaming mothers.’
‘But speaking frankly about the way your mother raised you isn’t blaming her,’ Andrew pointed out. ‘It is not anti-woman to relate the facts, or to discuss how your upbringing might have influenced your relationships with other women. In fact, it’s all part of the process of taking responsibility for your own behaviour.’
Oliver had stared at him open-mouthed and accepted the second hour. And as he spoke aloud about his mother and about the dreams in which her edicts were constantly repeated, he began to realise how the complexity of her personality had been lost in his assumption of certain maxims. She was a woman to examine every shade of grey, so why had he etched her in his memory in stark black and white? Quite suddenly he recognised that he had used it to create a blueprint for himself and his life, thinking that if he followed it word for word things would work out right, but, of course, they hadn’t.
‘I accepted what she said like some magic formula,’ he said to Andrew, grasping at this new clarity and trying to articulate it. ‘It never occurred to me to try changing the ingredients, to try interpreting it in my own way. I feel such a fool, as though all my life I’ve been walking around wearing a sign saying “trained by eminent feminist”.’
He paused for a moment. ‘It’s as though I separated what my mother said from who she was. She was a passionate, eloquent and . . . sensuous woman, but somehow I’ve left that out of the whole equation. I listened to the words but didn’t look at the woman who spoke them. I guess I didn’t look at the women I was with either – I suppose I thought I had a formula that would work with any woman in any situation. But people are individuals. I’ve been mouthing this stuff all the time and not
actually engaging with the women I was with. What’s wrong with me?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with you, Oliver,’ Andrew said. ‘But these are big questions and we’ll have to leave them for another day.’
Oliver made an appointment for five days later, and wandered out into the sparkling winter sunshine. He was pretty drained emotionally but the door to understanding had been opened to him. It would be onward and upward from here. As he sat in the sunlight watching the water, the simplistic way he had interpreted Joan’s words, indeed her life, troubled him deeply. He had misused her – no wonder she haunted him – but now he had seen the light, and he felt quite exhausted with relief.
That night he fell into a deep and troubled sleep and woke in the cold pre-dawn darkness unable to stop shivering. It was three days before he was able to do more than stagger between bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. Three days before he could eat anything solid without throwing up, three days before the headache and the alternating hot and cold sweats abated. On the morning of the fifth day he ate some toast and drank a cup of tea, showered, dressed and drove to the psychologist’s rooms as though in a dream.
‘No crisis, then?’ Andrew asked, opening his file.
Oliver shook his head. ‘A touch of flu, I think, or something I ate,’ and he described the symptoms.
Andrew took off his glasses and smiled. ‘How easily we mistake emotional crises for physical illness,’ he said. ‘This is all part of the healing process and the beginning of change.’
The worst was indeed over, but now the hard grind began. The women who had been his friends or lovers over the years ran through his mind like actors in a speeded-up black and white movie: foolish, poorly made, jerky and simplistic. Cautiously he began to describe his marriage to Alison, recognising how he had behaved in that and subsequent relationships, wondering how any woman could ever have related to him. His past seemed to be unravelling, constantly acquiring different meanings, and this time when he left Andrew’s rooms, Oliver felt profoundly sad. Now the black and white film showed him lost opportunities, chances for happiness slipping through his fingers because of his own failure to question, to learn and to grow in this aspect of his life, as he had grown in others.
‘Water under the bridge,’ Andrew told him as they shook hands at the door. ‘You’re only in your fifties – plenty of time left to do things in a different way. This is the best time of your life, Oliver, take my word for it.’
‘A live band?’ Sonya said, looking at Marissa in disbelief. ‘You never mentioned that before.’
Marissa reached across the verandah table for the gin bottle. ‘I didn’t want to worry you.’
‘So you’re doing it today instead?’
‘You’re more confident now, both of you. You’re dancing really well.’
‘But suppose they don’t play the music we know?’
Marissa held up her hand. ‘They will. I know them, I’ve worked with them before and so have you. The CDs we always dance to are theirs. It’s just that this time they’ll be playing at the back of the stage while we dance.’
‘But why?’ Sonya asked, gulping at the fresh drink Marissa had poured for her and thinking how close the musicians would be to her wobbly bits when they were in full wobble.
‘Why not?’
‘Well . . . I don’t know, but . . .’
‘Look,’ Marissa explained, ‘we’re part of the entertainment. There’s more than a hundred women attending this conference.’ She tossed each of them a copy of the conference brochure. ‘It’s all about older women’s health, and the entertainment at the conference dinner is designed around healthy, self-esteem building activity.’
‘But the band . . .’ Gayle began.
‘These guys are here, on tour, so I asked them to play for us too. It adds to the whole package of the performance and we’ve got plenty of time to rehearse with them before the big night.’
‘Suddenly it seems rather important and sort of professional,’ Sonya said.
‘I think it’s all important and professional,’ Marissa said crisply, ‘otherwise I would never have applied for the grant.’
‘Yes, yes, I know,’ Sonya responded, flushing. ‘I know that, it’s just a bit scary, I suppose.’
‘You’ll like them,’ Marissa assured her. ‘They’re nice guys and I can guarantee that once you dance with a live band you’ll never look back. The CDs will always be second best.’
Gayle sipped her drink. ‘We’ve come this far so I guess we’ll manage this.’
‘Of course you will, you’ll love it,’ Marissa said, getting up and unhooking her bag from the back of her chair. ‘Now I’m just going down the road to see them and arrange a time to rehearse tomorrow. Stop worrying. Have a rest or a swim and then we’ll go for dinner. We’re in glorious Broome, the pearl of the northwest. Enjoy it!’
‘Thank you, Aunty Marissa,’ Sonya said. ‘I’m contemplating the thought of those guys getting a close-up view of my rolls of fat shimmying across the stage.’
Marissa laughed. ‘They’ve seen far bigger dancers than you or I, Sonya,’ she said, and she made for the door. ‘I’ll be about an hour,’ and she went out of the chalet and down the steps.
Sonya looked across at Gayle. ‘You don’t seem worried.’
Gayle shrugged. ‘I’ve other things on my mind.’
‘Sorry,’ Sonya said, ‘of course. Does your son know you’re here?’
‘He knows we arrive today,’ Gayle said. ‘I haven’t seen him for eleven years.’ She paused. ‘It was you who told Oliver, wasn’t it?’
Sonya nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Gayle. Angie had told me and I just assumed Oliver knew because you’d been friends so long.’
Gayle added tonic water to her glass. ‘It’s okay. Best in the long run, I suppose. I’d sort of quarantined my friendship with Oliver from the rest of my life. It allowed me to feel like the person I wanted to be.’
‘And now it’s messed up?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. We’ll see. I’m sick of secrets anyway, sick of hiding things and pretending. I so much want to see Josh, to explain things to him, things I should have told him years ago.’
‘And Brian?’ Sonya asked.
Gayle shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Too hard to think about at the moment. I’ll have to sort things out when I get back. Anyway, you said you’d had an email from Oliver?’
Sonya laughed and got up. ‘I did. He’s seeing a therapist!’
‘Don’t tell me,’ Gayle said. ‘I bet it’s about his mother.’
‘Right first time, but it’s a new therapist, a man, and Oliver feels he has had an epiphany.’
‘Dear Oliver,’ Gayle said affectionately. ‘He’s a lovely man but he gets himself so tangled up trying to do the right thing that he does it all wrong.’ She sipped her drink. ‘Do you like him, Sonya? I mean, really like him . . . I mean . . .’
‘You mean am I sleeping with him? No, I’m not. We did once, the night of the wedding, but then we both backed off. I like him a lot, but not in that way – at least, I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t fancy him?’
‘I did that night. But it didn’t seem to work the next morning. It’s odd because he’s clever and funny and he’s got a really sweet nature, but he’s . . . well, he’s just not sexy.’
‘He can’t be spontaneous because he’s always running himself through this filter he’s created about being a feminist man,’ Gayle said.
‘That’s exactly right! I couldn’t have put it into words but that’s exactly what he’s doing. And that was why he was such fun the night of the wedding, all those lethal champagne cocktails made him completely spontaneous. As though that filter was switched off.’
‘His mother was an amazing woman,’ Gayle said. ‘I looked her up on the Internet: prominent feminist, human rights activist, PhD on women and the electoral system. Oliver looks just like her, that same beaky face, big glasses, rather floppy dark hair. It must be hard to step out of her s
hadow.’
Sonya nodded. ‘I suppose so,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I’d never thought of it like that.’
Frank woke suddenly, sitting bolt upright in the bed, sweat pouring off him. The clock radio said four-fifteen, and his body was burning despite the chill in the bedroom. Resting his head against the wall he waited for his heart rate to slow and for the prickling of his skin to ease. The nightmares always left him low and exhausted but tonight was worse because it was so unexpected. It was months since the last time, so long that he’d dared to hope they’d stopped. There was a time when he’d fought this battle night after night, and he’d staggered through the fatigue of the days, with no period of reprieve. But time, and careful adjustments to the way he lived, had helped.
He got up slowly, pulled on his grey towelling bathrobe and wandered in the dark to the kitchen to make some tea. There would be no more sleep now, just a tangle of horrific images: burning bodies, flesh shrinking back from the faces of the dead, the screams of children. And he would struggle through the day trying to stay in the present, battling depression and exhaustion, struggling to control his anger and to make even simple decisions. Sudden shafts of sunlight would make him flinch and each small sound startle him like gunfire.
Taking his tea he switched on a small lamp; shadows of memory crawled around the walls. He could smell burning flesh, and the acrid mix of sweat and urine that made up the scent of fear. It would have helped to have someone to talk to at times like this. In the early days of their marriage, Anna had been endlessly patient, talking him down, helping him to a point at which he could start the day. She had hung on through the mood swings, the brooding silences and those times when he had seemed suspended in another world. But he’d been so fucked up in those days that he’d driven her away.
After all this time, Frank had learned something about the external factors that would set him off – casual sex, too much alcohol, violent movies, heavy metal music. He knew he was in the wrong job, that he was always better when he wasn’t confronted daily by the uglier aspects of human behaviour. He shuffled through his CDs, selected a couple and dropped them into the tray.