The Life to Come

by Michelle De Kretser

  With Shandy, Glenice wasn’t sure that she could be bothered. But her unhappiness must have been plain: a student counsellor at the agricultural college where Glenice worked in the office invited her on holiday. Lorna was a single mother whose son, Ricky, was in Aidan’s year at school, and Glenice had had coffee with her once or twice. In January Lorna would be driving down to the Central Coast, where an old friend lived. ‘Why don’t you come with us?’ she said. ‘Bring the kids. Patonga’s great, and you’ll love Trish.’

  Trish lived in a fibro shack at the end of a row of houses that faced the water. She was nothing special to look at, Trish—thick brown hair, thick brown body—and her house was a mess. Glenice sat on the couch, eating a cake baked by Trish and taking in the room. In those days, contempt came readily to her—it was one of the things she had in common with Don—and contempt was what she felt as she glanced around. Pieces of rich-looking cloth, some set with little mirrors, were draped over chairs and the back of the couch, and none of the cushions matched. The walls were painted a dusty yellow, and the table was painted red. The floor was gritty with sand; a blue and red rug looked guaranteed to harbour germs. A floral chamberpot held a cheese plant, and glass vases in shouty colours stood on the windowsill—all the vases, like the window itself, needed a good clean. The standard lamp had a fluted satin shade like a little girl’s stiff party skirt. Glenice’s eyes went from thing to thing, and her mind turned them into patterns. She knew from magazines that a room should look nothing like that: it should be neutral and low-slung, ivory and beige. It had crossed her mind that she might very well get a taupe leather-look threeseater couch out of Don over Shandy.

  After the holiday, when Don asked what Trish was like, Glenice wrinkled her neat nose. ‘Bit of a hippy,’ she said. ‘Incense and that.’ She felt a strong if obscure need to protect Trish from Don. Something important had happened in Patonga—but what? It was the usual sort of beach holiday. The women ate toast and avos for breakfast, and the children ate toast and jam. Everyone went swimming. They lay on beach towels and ate cut-up mangoes. Lorna produced a bottle of polish, and the three women painted their toenails a vampish red. The children joined up with other holiday kids and played cricket on the oval that lay at the foot of a forested hill: a charmed place that remained cool on the boilingest afternoon. Time seemed to slow there, in the shadow of the hill. The big, grassy oval lay in plain sight, but struck Glenice as secret, a discovery; an ordinary place that was instantly memorable. There was nothing much to the rest of the village: fish and chip joint, bakery, general store; the fish came from the day’s catch. Boats moored in the shallows swung gently about with the tide. When Glenice closed her eyes, the sea was still there, a silvery dishevelment at the back of her mind.

  Dinner was barbecued sausages or hamburgers. Lorna, who was generous, you had to give her that, bought ice cream for the kids, bought wine in the small, classy kind of cask. When the light sank in the bay, and it grew too dark to play outside, the children watched old movies that Trish had taped off TV. The women sat out on the porch, drinking wine. They all smoked: Peter Jacksons for Glenice, Alpines for Lorna and rollies for Trish. Now and then a child would find a reason—thirst, a card trick, an injustice—to run out to the porch, wishing to assert a prior claim on the women’s attention.

  Trish and Lorna liked to talk with light, good-natured scorn about men they had got the better of, or who had got the better of them—there was no middle way. Whenever they paused, Glenice felt but refused to see the glance that Lorna sent her way like an invitation. Glenice mistrusted the oozy exchange of revelations that served as mortar in female friendships. Betrayal was never far off. On the drive down, Lorna had told Glenice that when Trish lived in Sydney, she had been involved with a no-hoper for years. Lorna’s voice was hushed so that the kids couldn’t hear, but the note of silky satisfaction at a friend’s idiocy came through. Sitting on the porch, Glenice swatted a mosquito, drank wine and looked out at the blank, bristling water. She could tell that Lorna was dying to hear her say that Don was a bastard, and no way was Glenice going to spill her guts. When Glenice thought that, she didn’t see the pinky spillage of intestines but a fire extinguisher pumping out foam. The foam smothered everything and ruined it and could never be retracted.

  Lorna and Trish had Trish’s bedroom, and the boys had the sleep-out at the back of the house. Glenice and Pippa had the pull-out couch in the living room—except Pippa wasn’t Pippa then but Narelle. Narelle yearned for the sleep-out, but Aidan had made an urgent face at his mother. That face remained as clear to Glenice as if it were pressed against the cafe window: it was pleading and angry, a characteristic male face, and it was the first time she had seen it on her son. Glenice knew that Aidan was afraid of what Ricky would say. She should have insisted—Ricky was a manipulative little shit, if you asked Glenice—but she didn’t want trouble with Lorna. Lorna had sharp edges on which you could scrape your shins. When Glenice pronounced ‘patio’ to rhyme with ‘ratio’, Lorna pretended not to understand. Then she said, ‘Oh: PAT-io, you mean,’ and slid a smile at Trish. Lorna’s voice was bright and dauntless, so why did she need so much make-up? That make-up spoke to Glenice of deep-rooted fear, and the frightened are dangerous. So Glenice controlled herself. She was doing a lot of that, at the time.

  After everyone had gone to bed, the moon appeared in a round mirror with wavy edges that hung in Trish’s living room from a silver chain. Glenice was awake, claimed by black, bitter thoughts. She was also conscious of shame because she was craving Don. When Glenice thought about what he was probably up to with Shandy right now, she filled up with rage but also with starry prickles of lust. Narelle flung out a dreaming arm and caught her mother on the breast, and Glenice tried to focus on the reflected moon. She had been impervious to the charms of Anita and Maeve, but sourly acknowledged that Shandy was pretty speccy with her bouncy black ponytail and her pert aqua dress. When Glenice watched her children running across the beach to fling themselves at the sea, she couldn’t help thinking of Shandy, who was so young and so perfect and offered herself so fully to adventure.

  Trish had worked for a publishing company in Sydney but now she was freelance. She showed Glenice a book whose cover featured Ned Kelly, Donald Bradman and an Anzac. It was called Australian Heroes and had never been out of print; Trish was preparing a new edition, updated to include Alan Bond. In the sweaty afternoon, while Lorna had a nap and the children were on the oval, Trish cleared the table, put on soft, jazzy music, set out her reference books and went on editing. The blinds were closed against the heat. A fan turned slowly. Glenice lay on the couch, leafing through a magazine but aware of Trish. It was deeply reassuring to be in the presence of peaceful, concentrated labour. Glenice listened for the kreek-kreek that meant Trish was sharpening her pencil. Sometimes Trish said, ‘Bugger!’ and sometimes she snorted. Sometimes she read aloud: Glenice heard, ‘Bond’s entrepreneurial vision has shown the world there is more to us than cricket and sheep.’ Trish knew heaps of stuff and also nothing much. Why didn’t she do something about the silver lines running like the diagram of a nervous system through her hair? It occurred to Glenice that while she often felt sorry for women, she didn’t much like them. She went into the kitchen, made tea and placed one of Trish’s coloured cups at her round brown elbow. ‘You’re a champion,’ said Trish, without looking up.

  One day, Glenice asked, ‘Weren’t you afraid? Giving up your job and everything?’

  ‘Petrified. Still am, sometimes.’ Trish said, ‘I’m always dipping into my savings. When I have to get my car fixed or the rego comes round, it’s panic stations. I don’t want to think what’ll happen if I get ill and can’t work.’

  Glenice’s face was a question.

  Trish picked a shred of tobacco from her lip. She lit up the rollie and said, ‘I was living a sort of double life: there was the life I kept fantasising about and there was my life in Sydney. One of those lives was never going to happen, and the other
never stopped.’ She added, ‘Sorry. That’s not very clear.’

  ‘No, it is,’ lied Glenice. ‘Now you’re living the way you used to dream about.’

  ‘Oh, no. This is nothing like I used to imagine.’

  On the last night, they bought flake and chips for dinner. Trish produced a bottle of Gilbey’s and mixed up G&Ts. Over dinner the women went on with wine. Trish was a boozer; for the first time, Glenice matched her glass for glass. They had all dolled up a bit: Lorna was wearing an off-the-shoulder dress, Glenice had put on earrings and perfume, and Trish was in a sea-coloured blouse with batwing sleeves. The children went to bed in the sleep-out—Trish said, ‘Seeing as it’s the last night, you boys are allowed to have Narelle in with you as a treat,’ and Ricky hadn’t dared to so much as roll his eyes. Further up the beach, towards the creek, some teenagers had a fire going. The moon rose, and the sea kept running up to the land for a gossip. The moon was only a day or so away from fullness. Glenice pictured it hanging, round and silver, in the round, silver mirror. She wouldn’t be there to see it. She felt slightly sick and also on edge. Instead of relaxing her, the alcohol had keyed her up. She kept thinking, Something is going to happen tonight. She lit up another Peter Jackson and hoped that she would be equal to whatever it was.

  What happened was that Trish and Lorna started reminiscing about the community choir where they had met. It was boring: people Glenice didn’t know, ancient disasters; someone called Warren who was a bass, and then he went on his honeymoon and came back a tenor; and that time the sopranos led the altos astray. Then one of them, Trish or Lorna, started singing, and the other joined in:

  And all I’ve done for want of wit

  To memory now I can’t recall

  So fill to me the parting glass

  Goodnight and joy be with you all.

  It was some time since muffled excitement had drifted from the sleep-out, so it was to be assumed that the children were asleep. But a few weeks later, Glenice heard a clear, untuneful voice as Narelle bounced on her trampoline in the back yard: ‘So fill to me the passing glass.’ Evidently she could remember no more and went on repeating: ‘So fill to me the passing glass.’ Glenice, at the sink, was transfixed. The picture in her mind showed her a glass of wine passing from hand to hand. She was on that porch with Trish and Lorna in the lantern-lit night at Patonga, and they were taking turns at drinking wine from the same glass—Glenice saw Lorna’s rings, and Trish’s kind, squashy face. But the three women had never handed around a glass like that, Glenice knew: the picture had been summoned by a child’s mistake. She also knew, with equal certainty, that she was looking at transformation. The scene on the porch was trivial, fanciful, alluring, and it told her plainly: What has been isn’t all there is. A vast amazement came over Glenice, quelling every petty emotion. Something of the same sort took hold of her every time she waded into the sea.

  It took her another two years to leave Don. When she did she wanted to tell Trish. Her mind reached for words like ‘wreckage’ and ‘dream’, but she ended up sending a Christmas card with a brief PS. There was no reply. Ricky and Aidan were in different schools by then, and Lorna had switched to part-time and moved in with a bloke who owned a tree farm. Glenice hardly saw her any more.

  In the cafe in Cuba Street, Glenice took a postcard from her bag—she always kept one there in case. She borrowed a pen from the waitress and wrote, ‘When your brother was born, he had small, mauve hands.’ What was that about? She had intended to say: Go to Patonga. You will see what you need to imagine. Glenice’s life since Don had been nothing like she imagined, and she could see no reason why things should be different for Pippa. But imagination had nothing to do with reason: its promise of change came from the same hidden, tidal source as catastrophe and luck. It was a lever that would provide whatever shift Pippa required. There would be cracking open and mess; things would be different, if not necessarily better. After a while, life would return to its monotonous groove.

  Glenice was addressing the card when her phone rang. It was the hospital—she’d almost forgotten about Vern. She was completely unprepared for what she was about to hear.

  Keith died that year, just before Christmas. By the time it was diagnosed, the cancer was in his lymph nodes and his lungs. The last time Pippa saw him alone was in November, when he was still at home in Bellevue Hill. Eva answered the door; she had just come back from the shops, she said, kissing Pippa.

  Pippa said, ‘How is he?’

  ‘You know he’s refused any more treatment?’ It was a sunny, breezy day, and Eva was wearing a cardigan. Her boneless hands, dangling from the sleeves, had the look of outdated appliances. She picked up the gardenias lying on the hall table and brought them to her face. ‘White flowers. His favourite.’

  ‘I brought him some soup. Organic chicken and veggies, very light.’

  ‘How kind,’ said Eva without interest. ‘Go in and see him. I’ll put these in water.’

  ‘Actually, I need the bathroom first. After the drive here…’

  Eva glanced at the globe pushing out Pippa’s dress and looked away. ‘Of course.’ She said, ‘Ronnie was here yesterday. She insisted on crying. It was very upsetting. I hope you aren’t going to cry.’

  Keith was in the living room, on the day bed by the window with a cashmere throw over his knees. A tiny white dog, with muddy stains under its eyes, lay in the crook of his arm. This animal, who was given to uncontrollable trembling, had been adopted by Eva from a shelter just days before Keith’s diagnosis, as if she had known that she would soon need a new pet.

  On the wall was a photograph of Keith’s father in his judge’s robes and one of his mother at her harp. Larger than either of these was a portrait of Eva, painted when she was seventeen, wearing white. The room was full of music and the smell of florist’s ferns. Pippa realised that she disliked every object in it. The music was a sonata for violin and piano. She told Keith, ‘I’ll always be sorry you and Matt didn’t play at our wedding.’

  Eva came in with the gardenias and a cup of the raspberry leaf tea that she had decided Pippa should drink for an easy labour. ‘Pippa has brought you soup,’ she told Keith.

  ‘Really? How very kind.’

  ‘I’ll heat some up for your lunch. You must say if it’s too rich.’

  Keith said, ‘I’m sure it’ll be just right.’

  He could have eaten all the roast potatoes he wanted, thought Pippa. It seemed the worst injustice.

  ‘The Zeldins are downsizing,’ Eva told Keith. ‘I ran into Marcie at the shops. They’ve put their house on the market and bought a place in Bronte. Only four bedrooms, but there’s a lap pool.’

  Eva looked rather wonderful that spring: her face was more finely drawn, quieter. She had squared up to specialists, dieticians, nurses, hospital administrators. There were the Loreto nuns to direct as well. Once a week her children received an email with links to cancer websites, summaries of discussions with medical staff and bulletins on their father’s progress. Eva had found a cause under her roof—a lost one, the best kind.

  ‘Marcie says they won’t have an ocean view,’ she went on.

  ‘Really? That is a shame,’ said Keith.

  Eva said that she had emails to send. The wider world still had to be kept up to the mark, and she was organising an open letter to the prime minister that called for an end to the offshore detention of refugees. It was to be signed by leaders of the business community: ‘Every time I sit next to one of those people at a dinner, I take out my phone and show them photos of refugees who have sought asylum here. Then I ask them to guess how many are still alive. The correct answer is none.’

  ‘How tireless you are, my dear.’ Keith made it sound like a compliment.

  Eva favoured him with her furtive smile. The gardenias, placed on a table near him, were crowded by a carnival riot of lilies and tight orange tulips. ‘I’m going to move Bethany’s flowers,’ said Eva. ‘They’re not very restful, to my mind.’ She picked
up the vase and placed it on a cabinet where Keith couldn’t see it. She drew out a tulip, frowned at it, reinserted it at a different angle and still she didn’t go away. Looking at Pippa, she said, ‘You know about poor Rashida, of course?’

  The previous day, Rashida had posted a photo of raw pork ribs on Facebook. She wrote, ‘Left outside my door the day after the Paris attacks.’ Pippa took to Twitter at once: ‘Lovely Muslim friend the target of abuse. #hate-crime.’ While Pippa was typing this out, tears came into her eyes: she was watching herself place her arm around Rashida’s bowed shoulders. Her tweet drew eleven responses expressing sympathy and asking if Pippa was OK.

  ‘I’ve tried to call her,’ went on Eva. ‘But she’s not picking up.’

  ‘I left a comment under her post. I made Matt leave one too. It’s so horrible—how can people do stuff like that?’

  ‘Joe tells me poor Rashida won’t take time off. She’s insisted on going in to work.’

  ‘People are sending heaps of support on Facebook.’

  ‘She’ll come through it, I know. She’s a very determined young woman.’ Eva plucked at her dress. Her rings burned recklessly blue. ‘Do you know what this husband of mine said when I told him what had happened? “I’m afraid Muslims have to expect this kind of thing as long as jihadists go about murdering innocent people.”’ Eva’s voice was bright and amused. It was the voice a mother uses to her children to downplay something of which she’s frightened herself. The voice went on, ‘It’s not as if poor Rashida could ever be a threat to anyone.’

  Throughout all this, Keith lay inert, his eyes turned to the window. He gave the impression of listening intently to something faint and far away. After Eva had spoken, silence fell, far louder than the music in the room. It swelled out from the room and from the beautiful, sleek house, and silenced everything that it didn’t wish to hear. At the centre of the silence stood Eva and Keith, glued hand to hand like wedding-cake figurines. The silence said: What happens outside this room is only manageable novelty. There is give and take in every relationship. Hush now: a young woman with bare white arms is playing civilised music on a harp.