by Liz Byrski
‘Different entirely from all the other places,’ Gayle had commented as they’d made their way back to the hotel that evening.
‘That’s Hedland,’ Marissa said with some feeling. ‘Different. Too bloody different.’
‘It seems quite a nice town,’ Sonya said. ‘Much nicer than I expected.’ And Marissa just grunted and disappeared into her room as soon as they reached the hotel.
‘Whatever’s bugging her?’ Gayle asked.
‘She doesn’t like it here,’ Sonya explained. ‘She says she has bad memories and she doesn’t want to open it all up, but my guess is that that’s just what she needs to do.’
‘Opening it up,’ Gayle said with a wry smile. ‘Now, that’s where I’m the expert.’ They had stopped in the bar for a cup of coffee before going upstairs and Gayle skimmed the froth off her cappuccino with a spoon. ‘I’ve opened up the biggest can of worms imaginable. God knows what’s going to happen when I get home.’
‘But you did it,’ Sonya said. ‘You did it. You took control of the situation and now you’ll be able to manage the next stage. Whatever it is you decide, you’ll cope now, Gayle. You know that.’
Gayle had nodded. She paled suddenly as tiredness hit her. ‘I suppose. Anyway, Sonya, I’m sorry but I’m wiped out. I’m off to bed.’
Alone now in the empty lounge, Sonya swallowed the remains of her coffee and ordered another. Tessa had ensured that it would be hours before she could sleep.
‘What I’m not sure about is what it means,’ Oliver said, fiddling nervously with his cuffs.
‘It may not mean anything other than that you got drunk and made an inappropriate phone call,’ Andrew said.
‘But I’ve never done anything like it before. Surely it must mean something?’
‘Not necessarily. But it’s certainly part of this period of change, of loosening up, that you’re going through.’
‘But it could mean something significant, couldn’t it?’
‘Yes it could, and you seem to think it does, so what do you think it means?’
‘You’re the therapist.’
‘Indeed,’ Andrew said, ‘and you’re the client and it’s your subconscious we’re dealing with so let’s kick off with your analysis first.’
Oliver sighed. ‘Okay, well, I suppose it could mean that I have until now been suppressing an interest in large breasts.’
Andrew raised his eyebrows and gave a slight nod, waiting for Oliver to continue.
‘Or it could just mean that without realising it I really do fancy Sonya although I told her I didn’t . . .’ He paused. ‘That’s a possibility, isn’t it?’
‘Certainly,’ Andrew said. ‘Anything else?’
Oliver shook his head. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think that either of those is a possibility but there may be other, rather deeper issues here.’
‘For example?’
‘For example, it’s possible that your decision to change your mother’s photograph from one that symbolises intellect and academic achievement to a more lighthearted one that reveals a sensuous side – the ice cream on the lip, the dangling shoe – means you were acknowledging the sensuous side of your own nature, allowing it to surface, being prepared to risk exploring it.’
‘So it could be about the change in me, but might be nothing directly to do with Sonya herself?’
‘Possibly. She may simply be the focus. She’s a woman you admire and feel at ease with and the partner in your most recent sexual encounter.’
‘So I could be projecting something onto Sonya?’
‘Quite possibly.’
‘Like what?’
Andrew took a deep breath. ‘This could be primal stuff, Oliver. Exploring our sexuality always brings us back to our primary relationships – in your case, of course, one primary relationship.’
‘My mother!’
‘Exactly. In choosing to ignore or perhaps forget that aspect of your mother’s life, you have also chosen to suppress that side of yourself. Open up one and you open up your own sexual can of worms.’
‘You mean I could be a raving sex maniac?’
‘Unlikely, I think,’ Andrew replied. ‘More likely just a case of getting a little more balance into your life in this area and coming to terms with the Oedipus complex.’
‘Couldn’t it just be that I got drunk and made an inappropriate phone call, like you said in the first place?’
‘It could indeed be that, alone or in combination with any or all of the other elements.’
Oliver groaned. ‘So how will I know?’
‘We’ll need to do a bit more work around this,’ Andrew said.
‘I prefer the getting drunk or suppression of large breasts theory,’ Oliver said, panic-stricken.
‘Naturally,’ Andrew answered, ‘they’re far less challenging explanations, but as you said yourself they’re totally at odds with your nature. I mean, prior to this occasion when did you last have too much to drink?’
‘At Gayle’s daughter’s wedding, the day I met Sonya. I started knocking back these very strong champagne cocktails and didn’t stop.’
‘And prior to that, when were you last drunk?’
Oliver shrugged. ‘No idea, years ago . . . too long to remember. Ten years, maybe.’
‘Aha!’ Andrew said with a smile. ‘Interesting, and why do you suppose you chose to get drunk at the wedding?’
‘Did I choose it?’ Oliver asked in confusion. ‘Couldn’t it just have happened?’
‘In the light of what you’ve said it seems unlikely. Can you recall how you were feeling at the wedding? Before Sonya showed up, I mean. For example, how were you feeling about your friend Gayle, about being in her home?’
‘Oh Christ,’ Oliver said. ‘Where the hell is this going next?’
Marissa took the long route. She’d avoided the town for nearly forty years; another hour or so wasn’t going to matter. And in any case it wasn’t Port Hedland, or that particular house, that haunted her but what had happened there; avoiding the place had simply been the focus to stop her thinking about the rest of it. It was much more complicated than conquering her fear of motorbikes by climbing on one. What had happened here had determined who she had become and had kept her in emotional isolation for decades.
The town formed the backdrop to the memories that stalked her: the roar of the iron ore crushing mill; the trains, some almost three kilometres long, that hissed and clattered back and forth to Mt Newman; the red dust that coated everything and worked its way into skin, hair and clothing. Days after that terrible night she had stood watching the huge ore carriers in the port and the vast rustred equipment of the crushing mill, seeing so many opportunities to surrender to a physical mutilation as brutal as that which had already destroyed her spirit.
It would have been so easy to disappear. Who would have known or cared? Not Blue. Wendy and Mike maybe, but not her parents, or Roger, or any of the people who had made up the life she’d abandoned for . . . for what? Whenever Marissa remembered that day, she felt it was the salt that had saved her. She had walked for hours with no purpose and no sense of where she was heading, and ended up where the stockpiles stood, dazzling pyramids, their crystalline whiteness sparkling in the sunlight. Somehow they seemed a symbol of hope. Now, years later, it seemed extraordinary that those salt piles, their reflections sharp and clear against the glassy surface of the water, had given her the courage to go on.
They had been in Australia only a few days. The trek through Europe and the Middle East and on to South East Asia had been tougher and more challenging than she had expected, but she had no regrets. By the time they reached Australia their group had dwindled from eleven to seven and for six of them it was a homecoming.
‘Well, here you are, Jean,’ Blue had said as the small aircraft crossed the coast on its descent to the airport. ‘Welcome to the wide brown land.’
Apart from the clear blue water bordered by white sand, it bore no resemblance to the
sort of paradise Marissa had envisaged. The dusty red industrial landscape brooding on the coast had come as a shock and she longed to move on. She couldn’t remember now how they all came to end up at the house, but they had pounced on it as a chance to draw breath before they separated to go their different ways. It was a dreary place, a sprawling bungalow of yellowish brick with a barren garden enclosed by asbestos fencing; depressing but cheap – free, in fact, for a few weeks.
The relationship with Blue had petered out over the months of travel, his interest in her waning consistently in every place where it was easy for him to find casual sex. And although they sometimes shared a bed for the sake of convenience, the burst of sexual chemistry that had initially brought them together was a thing of the past. Marissa found their present friendship preferable, as at times his possessiveness had been oppressive. And, even after fifteen months of travelling, of close living in tents, hostels and caravans where the group had squeezed together to save money, Marissa knew little more about him than she had at the start. He was a cagey, secretive man, rarely revealing anything more than trivial anecdotes about himself or his family, from whom he seemed happy to keep his distance. And while she still felt connected to him because he had sprung her from domestic confinement, Marissa thought the time had probably come for them to go their different ways. She was tossing up between heading to Cairns with a couple of the others in the group, or down to the south coast of Western Australia with Wendy and Mike, to whom she had become quite close.
‘Come with us,’ Wendy had urged. ‘It’s great down there – fantastic forests, and the beaches are so quiet. You’ll love it, Jean.’
With a shiver of recognition, Marissa looked down the street which was much as she remembered it, just a little tidier and the houses showed signs of improvement, but it was still an ordinary street of single storey houses, a few cars parked on the road and in driveways, a couple of kids kicking a ball, two women talking on a front lawn, a blue heeler dozing on the pavement. She walked on slowly and was shocked as a soccer ball shot across her path almost tripping her. On the other side of the street, two boys, masking guilt with hostility, stared at her, daring her to say something. Ignoring them she walked on in silence, past the paved front yards, past scruffy lawns and dust-covered lantana, until she could see it, set back further from the road than the other houses, just in the curve of the turning head.
It looked better than she remembered, cleaner. The asbestos fence had been replaced with a low wall of similar yellow brick and someone had taken an interest in the garden. There was the old lemon tree and, beside it, neat beds of roses struggling to survive the climate and the clay. There was a shiny aluminium garden shed and a single room had been added onto one side of the house. So this was it, this ordinary house in this ordinary street. The place of nightmares, and she was standing right in front of it, almost inside the gate, feeling nothing but a little light-headed.
‘G’day, love, looking for something?’ An elderly man holding a pair of secateurs emerged from behind the lemon tree.
Marissa jumped and stepped back. ‘Sorry, no,’ she mumbled, blushing. ‘Just . . . just admiring your garden.’
The man looked around proudly. ‘It doesn’t do too bad, considering. Takes too much water, though. The wife’s always grumbling about the water. Mind you, she likes the roses.’
‘Have you lived here long?’ Marissa asked.
‘Bought it in eighty-four,’ he said. ‘Shocking state it was in then. We’ve done a lot to it.’
Marissa nodded. ‘I stayed here once,’ she said. ‘Long before that, though, in the late sixties.’
‘Did ya? Well, there’s a coincidence. Family live here, did they?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know who owned it. I was with a group, travelling, and we ended up staying here.’
The man grinned. ‘Dick Penfold, pleased to meet you,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Come on in and have a look round. You’ll see a few changes.’
Marissa hesitated in the gateway, about to refuse, but he had turned away from her and was already heading up the pathway to the front door.
‘I won’t stay . . .’ she began, but he didn’t hear her.
‘Molly,’ he called through the screen door, ‘put the kettle on, love. We’ve got a visitor.’
NINETEEN
Brian sat on the top deck of the Manly ferry looking out across the harbour where dozens of sailing boats raced across the choppy surface, their white sails plumped by the strong wind. Behind him the city and Circular Quay grew smaller and Manly beckoned. He’d always liked Manly: the wharf, the curving beach backed by Norfolk Pines and the lively atmosphere along The Corso. He’d always fancied owning an apartment near the waterfront, but he had no idea why he was here now, sitting on the ferry, no idea why he was in Sydney, except that he’d found it impossible to stay on in Perth, alone in the house.
He’d been due to fly to Sydney the day after his encounter with Mal in the Perth office. That day he’d driven slowly back home as though shell shocked and, not knowing what else to do with himself, he’d called Qantas to cancel his reservation, only to discover that it had been cancelled the previous week. It was the same with the hotel bookings in Sydney and Melbourne. And when he started on the client meetings he’d organised he found these too had been cancelled. Worse still, he couldn’t get past the secretaries or receptionists to speak to his contacts. It seemed that everyone knew he’d been ‘let go’.
He spent the next four days alone. There were no calls on his mobile, although Angie sent him a text message saying she hoped he’d managed all right at the weekend. The landline was also silent and he felt incapable of calling anyone to whom he might have to explain. Resisting the urge to think about what had happened, he also resisted the urge to think much about anything at all.
The televisions in the lounge, his study and the bedroom were left on all the time. He watched everything, from breakfast programs to Bananas in Pyjamas, from cooking shows, Days of Our Lives, Oprah and Dr Phil to current affairs; he watched good movies, bad movies, quiz shows, reality TV, American crime series, endless news bulletins, football, motor racing and home shopping. His attention span was annoyingly short but, terrified of turning a set off and being forced to think, he channel-surfed until his eyes hurt. His head buzzed with American accents, cheering crowds, images of Middle Eastern countries devastated by bombing, and scantily dressed young women with straight blonde hair and teeth so perfect they looked like dentures.
‘Bit crook, are you?’ asked the lawnmower man, who knocked at the front door to be paid on the morning of the fifth day.
‘Yep,’ Brian said, pulling notes out of his wallet and realising that he hadn’t got out of his pyjamas for almost a week. ‘Got a bit of a bug.’
‘Lot of it about,’ the man said, writing a receipt. ‘Nasty one, gastro thing. My kids had it. Went through us all like a dose of salts.’
‘That’s it,’ Brian said, rubbing the five days of stubble on his chin.
‘You take care. Mrs Peterson’ll soon be back to look after you, that’s for sure.’
Brian closed the front door. ‘If she even fucking remembers I’m alive,’ he said to himself, slumping once again in front of the television. The lawnmower man’s visit proved to be a wake-up call, though. He felt restless now and padded barefoot to the gate, collected the mail from the box and dumped it in the kitchen. The sink was full of dirty plastic containers from the food he’d microwaved, and the bin was overflowing with milk cartons and empty wine bottles. The time had come to do something. He made a negligible attempt to clear up the mess in the kitchen, and went upstairs to have a shower. And in the early afternoon, he drove across the Narrows Bridge and up to West Perth and sat outside the office for some time, staring up at the front of the building to the fourth floor window from which he had so often looked out across the park. Then he drove home and booked a business class flight to Sydney.
‘They never did!’ Col
lette said, sitting in one of the armchairs in the hotel room. ‘What, just dumped you on the spot like that? No notice or anything?’
Brian shook his head. ‘A decent payout, of course, that’s how it works in these big companies. Somebody’s head has to roll, and you’re gone the same day – same hour, in my case.’
‘That’s terrible, so unfair. I mean, I thought there were laws about unfair dismissal and stuff like that.’
Brian just shrugged. It would have been incomprehensible to Collette that such considerations had no place in the sort of levels at which he’d been working. How could he begin to explain to her the long and complex saga of the regulation board case and the final decision, or the internal politics that had left him exposed? And he certainly didn’t want to tell her about the last humiliation of Mal’s sanctimonious homily on family values, the woman seen leaving his Chicago hotel room and the unacceptable nature of some of those charges on his credit card.
‘So what did your wife say?’ Collette asked.
‘Haven’t told her yet.’
‘You what? I thought you said this happened on Monday – it’s Saturday now.’
‘She’s away,’ Brian said.
‘Yes but –’
‘You’re the first person I’ve told and I’m not telling anyone else, not yet anyway, maybe not for a long time.’
Collette looked at him in amazement. ‘You’re kidding. How’ll you hide it?’
‘They’re used to me being away, and Gayle’s away too. I’ll just keep shtum till it suits me, until I’ve decided what to do.’