by Liz Byrski
He shrugged and looked down at the floor, and Sally realised he was trying to get a grip on his voice, fighting back the tears that threatened to embarrass him, just as he had the day she had sat with him on the wall outside the art room. That was on his first day back at school after his father had died after falling from a cooling tower in the power station where he was supervising a routine repair job. ‘Adam …’ she began.
He looked up quickly. ‘It’s all right, Miss Erskine, I’m all right, not going to blub in the art gallery.’ He grinned and blew his nose. ‘Y’know, I’m going to do the things I want when I want, because you don’t know what might happen, do you?’
Sally looked at him thoughtfully. ‘No, Adam, you don’t, and even if you have a long life you could end up still not having done the things that were important to you.’
Adam drifted away and Sally wandered on, paying more attention now to her thoughts than to the photographs. She came to an abrupt halt in front of a picture of a two-tier traffic bridge broken apart, the upper level collapsed onto the lower, trapping cars and their occupants. She bent to read the caption and caught her breath.
October 1989, Loma Prieta, San Francisco. A 250-ton section of the Oakland Bay Bridge collapses in the earthquake.
Photograph: The Oakland Tribune.
There were other shots of the earthquake: a couple climbing cautiously down the crumbling masonry, a three-storey apartment block collapsing as its footings broke loose, burning buildings, people searching for their possessions in piles of rubble, exhausted relief workers gratefully accepting coffee from a proffered flask. And in the background the familiar span of the Golden Gate Bridge and the broad expanse of San Francisco Bay.
Sally sank down onto one of the low benches and stared at the photographs, her heart beating faster, a prickly sensation heating her skin, not just a hot flash, this was something different. San Francisco, the photographs unleashed a confusing welter of memory and emotion. Such eerie synchronicity: San Francisco, the conversation with Adam. Sally shivered in the warm gallery and then looked around her. She had lost track of her students and must round them up again. She took a long last look at the photographs and walked out to the central staircase where an hour and a half of restraint was starting to tell on the students, who were becoming noisier by the minute.
‘Come on now, guys!’ Sally said. ‘Keep the noise down. It’s time we got out of here and you can go and get something to eat.’ And she led the way down the gallery stairs and out into the plaza, where they spread out on the stone benches by the fountain and ate their sandwiches.
‘Good, eh?’ Adam grinned at her, signalling back at the gallery.
‘Very good,’ she smiled. ‘And you’re right, Adam. You must do what you want when you want it.’ And she sat on a stone seat and began to unwrap her salad sandwich.
Robin couldn’t wait to get out of court. For one thing she was dying to go to the toilet, but mainly it was because she was feeling claustrophobic. The prosecution’s closing argument had been exceptionally long and tedious, and Justice Simpson had delivered a ponderous and deeply flawed summing-up. The jury was almost obliged to return a guilty verdict, and there would have to be an appeal on grounds of misdirection.
As soon as the court rose she bolted for the toilets and then, picking up her papers, turned back to the robing room and got out of her wig and gown.
‘If only the good Lord would save us from the likes of Justice Simpson,’ said Malcolm Wells, who was prosecuting the case Robin had been defending. ‘You must be hopping mad, Robin.’
‘I really thought he’d lost it this time,’ she agreed.
‘You’ll have to appeal, of course. You’ve got grounds,’ Malcolm said, pre-empting the jury in words as Robin had already done in her thoughts.
She nodded. ‘Meanwhile, my client gets to cool his heels in jail.’
Malcolm shook his head. ‘Well, I’ve got to say you put up a very strong case. Without Simpson’s interference you could have been certain of an acquittal. That police evidence was always problematic.’
‘He should have retired years ago.’ Robin sighed irritably, pulling on her jacket. ‘He’s been a real worry recently.’
Malcolm Wells removed his wig and smoothed his hands over his thinning hair. ‘I know that a couple of other counsel have considered filing complaints with the chief justice. We should get together and make a complaint,’ he said. ‘See you in the bar? The jury’ll be out for at least a couple of hours.’
Robin shook her head. ‘No thanks. I’m going to have a walk, need the fresh air. I’ve got a bit of a headache.’
She did have a headache, but she was going out because she wanted to be alone. She was desperate to shake off the claustrophobia that had descended on her since Isabel had broken her news. And she also wanted to make a call without being overheard. Slinging her bag over her shoulder Robin walked out of the court building and across into the park, where dozens of pigeons and a few seagulls were harassing the tourists and city workers eating their lunch in the shade of the peppermint trees.
Robin was a dark horse. That’s what her friends said. It’s what her mother used to say. ‘Our Robin, she’s a dark horse, that one, and no mistake,’ Mrs Percy would say, standing at the old earthenware sink in the stuffy kitchen of the little house in south London. ‘Secrets, secrets, nothing but secrets with that girl.’
It was a survival tactic. The second of seven children, sharing a bedroom with three sisters, the only way Robin got any privacy was by keeping her cards close to her chest. She had learned that the greatest power resided in those who had the least to say, and she knew when to keep her mouth shut. In that corner of Battersea, privacy was a rare commodity and Robin knew its value. In Australia in the nineties she still put a high price on it, now more than ever because she had something to hide.
She found a shady spot on the grass and, leaning back against the tree trunk, dialled the number that connected her to the private phone on Justice McEwan’s desk. ‘Me!’ she announced when the judge picked up the phone. ‘Jury’s just retired.’
‘How was it?’ McEwan asked.
‘Bloody dreadful, honestly, Jim. Lionel Simpson is really losing it.’
‘Misdirection?’
‘To a gross degree. Even Malcolm Wells commented on it.’
‘You’ll have to talk to some other people and get a complaint to the chief justice.’ He paused. ‘Shall we meet at your place?’
‘Mmm. Six o’clock, okay? I’ve got some fresh trout I could grill.’
‘Sounds wonderful,’ McEwan said. ‘Take it easy, darling, you sound terribly harassed.’
‘I’m furious. Ashby is innocent. And a homophobic judge has misdirected the jury. This poor man is going to spend five or six months in jail while this is sorted out.’
‘We’ll talk about it tonight over the trout … or something.’
Robin grinned. ‘Yes, or something … it’s over a week since I saw you.’
‘I know,’ he replied. ‘Probably won’t recognise you. Good thing your distinguishing features are engraved on my memory! I’ll be there at six.’
Robin closed her eyes and rested her head against the tree, savouring the moment of peaceful isolation amidst a crowd of noisy strangers. She pushed her fingers into the grass and its moist warmth filled her with a longing to be out of town, to be somewhere still and silent, where she could rest and run. Run along a forest track or a cliff path, run so hard that she got the red mist in front of her eyes, and her lungs started to burn and her calf muscles screamed for mercy. Running along the beach at five o’clock every morning was never quite enough to force the knots of anxiety from her chest and gut, and clear her head. Isabel’s announcement had resonated with the book Robin was reading. The author had done what Isabel was doing, taken time out of her life, found a remote cottage on the Welsh coast and retreated to it. There she ran daily along the cliff tops, and dedicated her time to writing a novel about the life of Be
ethoven. To Robin it sounded like ecstasy.
The problem for dark horses is that they have to carry so much in their heads, plans for protection, plans for evasion, contingency plans, camouflage and evidence; evidence they have collected in case they need it in arguments with themselves. On her forty-fifth birthday Robin had decided to change by the time she was fifty. She put quite a bit of mental energy into working out what she wanted to be like at fifty: calm, steady, more open, and enjoying a less stressful life. She would cut down on work, fit in some long weekends away, spend more time with her women friends. She visualised being like Sally, colourful, warm and wise, with that easy flowing energy she seemed to radiate; or perhaps like Isabel, thoughtful, outspoken and full of moral courage. Her five-year plan had been to simplify her life, but six years later she was just as busy, just as stressed and had complicated her life by falling in love with Jim McEwan, who was married.
About once a month Jim and Robin had intense and painful conversations about their future. They lived in one of the most isolated state capitals in the world with a population of around a million. It was a parochial environment, conservative and inward looking. The circle they moved in was small and the ensuing scandal would damage both of them. Were they ready to risk their careers, their status, their reputations, in order to be together? What would they do? Ideally, they’d move out of town. Jim would let his wife take the house, Robin would sell her house by the beach and they would live together in peace and harmony in the karri forests of the southwest, or by the wild and craggy white sands of the Great Southern.
The conversations had been the backdrop of Robin’s life for four years. Should they make a move now or wait a while? And what about Monica, Jim’s wife? How would she cope? She and Robin had once worked together, could they really inflict this on her and the children? And then there was Robin’s career to consider. She was likely to be invited to take silk this year, but there were times now when her private life seemed more precious than her career goals. Time and again they discussed it, moving each time towards taking action before one of them would draw back in caution. They were just about due for one of these conversations.
Robin was an outstandingly good lawyer, a hard worker, conscientious and intelligent, but it wasn’t easy for her; she wasn’t naturally brilliant and she had struggled to get where she was. At sixteen she had been a typist in a solicitor’s office in Battersea. Pregnant at seventeen, she had married in haste to protect her own and her family’s reputation. But the baby was stillborn. Robin and gentle, well-meaning but boring Tony had been left facing each other across the breakfast table in a one-bedroom flat in Putney, with nothing in common but memories of uncomfortable lust in the back seat of a Morris Minor, and a dead baby.
The divorce took ages but it was amicable and Robin, still typing, had gone to night school to get her A levels. When she was twenty-five, and the day after she got her results, her father, after a lifetime of disappointment on the football pools, finally managed to put the crosses in the right places. Thanks to the combined efforts of Watford, Liverpool, Queen’s Park Rangers and Wolverhampton Wanderers doing what he alone had predicted, Frank found himself in possession of a cheque for seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, which in those days was a not-so-small fortune. Robin was able to stop trying to calculate how many years it would take her to do a law degree part time and do it full time at London University. From there it was a short step to articles and then the Bar. And in 1984, when a former colleague set up a practice in Australia and invited her to join his chambers, she couldn’t get on a plane fast enough.
She had done well, made money and had an architect-designed house of rammed earth and jarrah, with huge windows and a view of one of the best beaches on the west coast. She had more work than she could handle, a wardrobe full of black and charcoal suits for court, regular attacks of acute indigestion, occasional severe migraine headaches, several original works of art by significant local artists, a large ginger cat called Maurice, and the love of Justice McEwan.
The mobile rang. The jury was back. Robin looked at her watch. Only thirty-five minutes – what did that mean? She got up, brushed the grass from her skirt and headed back to the court building, a slim woman in a charcoal grey suit and a white blouse, tired eyes hidden behind black-framed Ray-Bans, sleek dark hair cut to fall to the collar now ruffled by the afternoon breeze. She imagined running along a cliff path on the south coast, and not having to stop. Running for her emotional life, her spiritual life, her physical life, running until her body ached and all she could feel was the pull of her muscles, the beat of her heart and the rasp of her own breathing. She would talk to Jim again, this evening. Last time he was the one saying it was time to do it. Now she would agree with him. She had had enough. Forget taking silk, forget ambitions for the judiciary, forget Monica. She was too worn out to cope with it all anymore. At fifty-one surely it was time to reach out for bliss, time for change, renewal – transformation, even.
But did taking off with one’s lover constitute an inner journey or renewal, and what would the other three say about Jim? None of them was a prude but Robin suspected that while they would relish the falling in love, they might have something to say about an affair with another woman’s husband. She would be a failed feminist … again. What price ideology when it comes to passion? Robin shook her head to free it of the imagined reproaches. Was that really how it would be or was it just her guilty conscience working overtime?
THREE
‘A year?’ Doug said, swinging around so fast he knocked over his glass of wine. ‘I thought you were talking about three or four weeks. You can’t mean a year.’
Isabel went inside for a bucket of water to sluice the wine from the floorboards of the deck. It was early in the evening, and they were sitting watching the sunset. She had steeled herself to tell him, having backed off from it the two previous evenings when he came home with a pile of files to read before a meeting with the minister. Now the meeting was over, and he had come home relieved, able to think of other things. She knew it must be tonight.
She watched as he wrapped the broken glass in an old newspaper and put it in the bin, his face flushed from bending, his fine grey hair falling forward across his forehead. She looked at him with the love and knowing of thirty-four years; she was about to hurt him dreadfully. They went back out to the deck. The sun had sunk a little lower, the sky turned a duller shade of rose.
‘Now, tell me again,’ he said.
And so she told him again. A year alone, wandering around Europe, the places she’d always wanted to visit, the need to get away from everything, from everyone, an inner journey, solitude, reflection, renewal.
‘You’re leaving me,’ he said. ‘That’s what this is about.’
Isabel put her hand on his arm.
‘No, Doug, I’m not leaving you. This is not about you, it’s about me. I’ve been looking after everyone, everything, for years. I just want to have some time looking after only myself.’
‘But you’ve always been able to do what you wanted,’ he said, his face tight with distress, his eyes fixed on the horizon.
‘Within the limits imposed on me by our situation, the family, your job, the need to look after Mum and Eric. I have fitted my expectations and my aspirations around all that. Now I want to expand the horizons.’
‘You would leave us all for a year? A whole year? You can’t mean it.’
She poured herself another glass of wine. ‘You left us for a year.’
‘That’s unfair, that was work. The department loaned me to the Vietnamese government.’
‘Yes, and you were mad keen to go. Couldn’t get there fast enough and so involved with it that you didn’t even bother to use the two trips home they wrote into the contract for you. If I hadn’t flown up there and forced you to take a couple of weeks off, I wouldn’t have seen you at all that year. And the kids didn’t see you at all.’
‘You never said you resented it at the time, now
you’re throwing it back at me.’
‘I didn’t resent it at the time and I don’t resent it now. I’m simply pointing out that it was okay for you to go away for a year then, so it ought to be okay for me to go away for a year now.’ She was struggling to stay calm.
‘It’s different.’
‘How?’
‘You’re choosing to go away for no reason –’
‘I’m going for a very good reason, which is that I want to, that it’s a challenge, it’s something I need to do. Just the same as when you went to Vietnam, the same as when you went to PNG for six months. The opportunities were there. It would have made sense for you to send someone else but you wanted to do those things and you did them. This is just the same.’
‘What about the children?’
‘They’re adults, all three of them.’
‘They need their mother here, you’re not being fair.’
‘Doug, that’s ridiculous and you know it. They’re adults. If they can survive their father going away for a year when they were in their teens, they can certainly survive their mother going away for a year when they’re grown up and married. It’s not as though I’m going forever. I’m not leaving you or them.’
They sat in silence as the sun slipped down behind the horizon and the rose glow faded to lavender and then grey. She took his hand but he would not return her grasp. The conversation began again. It went on and on; explanations, justifications, exaggerations, recriminations. Isabel was bone tired and nauseated. She could put her arms around him and tell him that it would be all right, she wouldn’t go away, she would stay here, that nothing would change, but she knew it wouldn’t work. It would be a bandaid for him and a fatal wound for her.