Islands

by Peggy Frew

  John: Come on, Helen, no more wine. Drink some water and go to bed for a while.

  Helen: I’m sorry.

  John: It’s all right. Just lay off the booze, okay? Things are hard enough, without you—

  Helen: No, I mean I’m sorry for everything. I think I made a mistake.

  John: What are you talking about? Are you talking about Anna?

  Helen: I’m talking about us. You and me.

  John: Oh God. Please don’t.

  Helen: But Anna too! If I hadn’t fucked it up, the marriage, then maybe Anna might not have—

  John: Just stop. There’s no point.

  Helen: I’ve failed you all! Everything’s my fault!

  John: Helen, I have to go. You’re being ridiculous. You’ve had too much to drink.

  (Helen cries into one hand, clutching at John’s arm with the other. John pulls away from her and walks out.)

  John (getting into the car): Look, Junes, I really think you should stay.

  Junie: No.

  John: Mum’s quite upset. I don’t think she should be by herself.

  Junie: She should be upset. It’s all her fault.

  John: Can’t you just go in there and be nice to her? She’s your mother.

  Junie (under her breath): Cannot wait to move out and get away from this family.

  John: What did you say?

  Junie: Nothing.

  John: For Christ’s sake! Are you not at all worried about what’s going on, or do you only think about yourself? Anna is missing. It’s been more than two weeks. We don’t know what’s happened to her, if she’s even alive. What if she’s been—taken, by someone? What if someone is doing terrible things to her?

  Junie: …

  John: Have you thought about any of that?

  Junie: …

  John (starting the engine): Yeah, well, you just think about it.

  1996, Avoca Street. Anna missing two years and two weeks. No presents for her under tree. No tree.

  For Junie from John: forty dollars cash in envelope, no card.

  For John from Junie: copy of Gabriel Gaté’s Television Recipes, purchased from second-hand bookshop in Carlton. Wrapped in paper torn from cheap A3 sketch pad.

  Ham, soft white rolls from a packet, lettuce, purchased at Safeway by John on Christmas Eve. Praise French dressing from fridge. Peanuts from pantry. Panettone, cream, purchased by Junie on Christmas Eve in boutique Carlton deli. Beer, Melbourne Bitter, from fridge. Wine, red, inexpensive, from pantry.

  John: I thought you could use it to get some art supplies. I didn’t want to get them myself in case I got the wrong thing.

  Junie: Thanks, Dad.

  John: Gabriel Gaté, how sophisticated. Let’s see, Classic Duck a l’Orange, ooh la la. Crème Caramel. I could host a dinner party.

  Junie: Are you going to see Nan?

  John: Well, I thought I might drive down and visit, but I don’t have much time off work and I want to go to Geelong, actually—I’m trying to get a hold of this bloke who reckons he saw Anna in October, about a month before she went missing. I had a chat with him a few weeks ago and I thought he might have some useful information, but I haven’t been able to find him again and the other day someone told me he’d moved to Geelong. Hang on, where’s my notebook …

  Junie: It’s all right, Dad, you don’t need to—

  John: No, no, here we are: Murray, aged mid-twenties, question mark—it’s hard to tell with these people, they can look a lot older than they are, drugs are very ageing evidently … Anyway, yes, blue eyes, short hair, tattoo on neck, spider or scorpion, met with me at Spencer Street Station on Friday, December the sixth, six-twenty pm. Fairly certain he saw Anna back in October ’94.

  Junie: Can we please talk about something else?

  John: Murray living at the time in squat in East Melbourne, dealing drugs to kids from various private schools, reckons he did a roaring trade, didn’t actually sell anything to Anna but claims she was with a group he met with a few times, which included that Grimmo character.

  Junie: Dad, can we please talk about something else?

  John: That Grimmo, what a nasty piece of work.

  Junie: Dad, are you looking after yourself?

  John: Never met a kid so damn rude.

  Junie: Dad? Are you eating good food? Vegies?

  John: I mean, you’d think he’d lift his game out of respect, or sympathy, or something, jeez. But every question I asked, it was just, Dunno. Yep. Nup. I dunno. This is an educated kid, good family, every advantage. Those dropkicks at the train stations, Murray and his lot, you can excuse them, they don’t know any better. But Grimmo, shit, if I was his dad I’d give him a good clip round the ears, tell him to smarten up his act. What on earth was Anna doing, hanging around with someone like that? I’m going to have another beer, how about you?

  (John opens two stubbies of beer, puts one down in front of Junie and drinks from the other.)

  John: Anyway, this Murray bloke, when I first met him what he said was …

  Upstairs, in Anna’s room: curtains drawn, dark, stuffy, smell of dust with very faint trace of vanilla. Bed made, sheets clean. Floor clear, carpet vacuumed. Desk bare. Posters and photograph still on wall.

  Downstairs, in John’s bedroom: dark, curtains drawn, human smell, bed unmade, chair with John’s clothes on it. Nothing on top of chest of drawers. On one bedside table, glass of water. In drawer, one pen. On other bedside table and inside drawer, nothing.

  1996, later same day, Helen’s townhouse. Tree, with present for Junie, and three or four bottle-shaped presents for Helen’s friends.

  For Junie from Helen: pack of Van Gogh notecards from the National Gallery; forty-five-dollar gift voucher for Eckersley’s Art and Craft.

  For Helen from Junie: Rose and Lavender Bath Soak.

  For Shanti from Helen: bottle of sparkling wine, mid-range.

  For Helen from Shanti: voucher for massage.

  Sliced turkey, cold, sliced ham, cold, cranberry sauce in a jar, potato salad, green salad, various cheeses, muscatel grapes, cherries, chocolates, crusty white bread, dips, sparkling wine, all purchased by Helen from shops on Acland Street, Christmas Eve. Supermarket plum pudding, custard, cream, brandy butter, courtesy of Shanti.

  Helen: Oh. Bath soak. Thanks. I’ll hang on to it, I suppose, for if I move again one day.

  Junie: Don’t you have a bath?

  Helen (laughs, cheerily): No! No bath.

  Junie: Oh. Sorry.

  Helen (laughs again, not as cheerily): Never mind. I know, why don’t I give it to Shanti? You’ve got a bath, haven’t you, Shanti?

  Shanti: Oh no, you keep it, Hel.

  Junie: Here, give it back, I’ll get you something else.

  Helen: No, no, it’s fine, really.

  Junie: No, really, it’s all right, I can get you something else. I forgot you don’t have a bath.

  Helen: Did you keep the receipt?

  Junie: No.

  Helen: Well, don’t worry about it then.

  Junie: …

  Helen: Open yours, Junie. It isn’t anything flash, sorry. But useful!

  Junie: Thanks, Mum.

  Helen: Pleasure! More champagne? Shanti? How was Dad, Junie?

  Junie: You sure you don’t want me to get you another present?

  Helen: Is he looking after himself?

  Junie: I’m sure they’d let me return the bath stuff without the receipt, if I exchange it for something else.

  Helen: I hope he hasn’t been making a nuisance of himself with the police again.

  Junie: What about soap? They have nice soap.

  Helen: What did you have for lunch? Did he cook?

  Junie: Can I turn this music down a bit, please? It’s giving me a headache.

  Helen: Of course. I’m sorry, I didn’t realise it was so loud.

  Junie: That’s okay, it’s just giving me a headache.

  Helen: It’s Maria Callas.

  Junie: It’s still giving me a
headache.

  Helen (laughs): Oh, Junie, you’re such a card. She’s always been such a card, hasn’t she, Shanti? Have some more turkey, you two. It’s not bad, for Safeway. Have some cranberry sauce, that’s the best part. I can’t wait for the pudding! Brandy butter, my favourite!

  Shanti: Mine too. Which genius thought to combine those particular ingredients?

  Helen: I love Christmas!

  Shanti: Well, I don’t. Christmas as a single woman with family on the other side of the world is often quite depressing. So thank you for inviting me, Hel. Cheers.

  Helen: Cheers. This champagne’s good, isn’t it?

  Helen’s room, seen from doorway: bed with white linen, neatly made, linocuts on wall, female nudes, green and pink, built-in cupboards, cane chair with cushion. On one bedside table, tube of hand cream, glass of water, copy of Cloudstreet. On other bedside table, glass of water, folded newspaper.

  In bathroom, two toothbrushes in holder. Shaving soap, man’s razor.

  In kitchen, in draining rack, two bowls, two coffee cups, coffee plunger. On kitchen wall, blu-tacked, sketch of Helen, nude, lying against pillows.

  Helen: Do you know what I’ve been doing?

  Junie: …

  Shanti: What?

  Helen: I’ve been playing squash!

  Shanti: Good on you!

  Helen: You probably don’t remember, Junie, but I used to play, when you and Anna were little. Shanti and I played twice a week, during our lunchbreaks, didn’t we? It’s great fun, and it keeps you so fit!

  Shanti: You are amazing, Hel. I don’t know where you get the energy.

  Helen: You should give it a go, Junie—it’d do you good to get some exercise.

  Junie: …

  Helen: Well, look at that, we’ve managed to polish off two bottles. Would anyone like a glass of riesling? I think that’s all I’ve got—hang on, let me have a look.

  Junie: I’d better get going.

  Shanti: So soon? We haven’t had the pudding.

  Helen: Here we go, have a bit of this, it’s not bad. I had lunch with Pauline the other day. She said she saw you, Junie, at the cinema.

  Junie: …

  Helen: She said you were with someone. A nice-looking young man!

  Junie: …

  Helen: Oooh, I remember those uni days! The world was your oyster! Although, of course, I managed to get myself involved with Dad pretty early on, so—

  Junie: Thanks for dinner, Mum.

  Helen: I don’t know about you, Shanti, but I had such low self-esteem then. I had no idea how gorgeous I was. I just wish I could go back. The things I’d wear! The things I’d do!

  Junie (muttering): Don’t want to picture it, actually.

  Helen: But you know what else? It’s all about your state of mind. Some days I feel just terrible, I look at myself in the mirror and I think, Who’s going to want you, you old crone?

  Shanti: Oh, Hel, what are you talking about? So many men want you.

  Junie (standing up): I’d better get going.

  Helen: It’s like Anna.

  Junie: What?

  Helen: It’s like thinking about Anna. There are times when the most awful thoughts come into my mind, about what might have happened to her. That she might have suffered. Or be suffering now. But then all I have to do is, I force myself to picture her floating through life, loving life and being free, and having a wonderful time. I can just see it, this gorgeous girl, this young woman, the world is hers. Radiant! That’s the word. She’s radiant, and—don’t worry, these are happy tears.

  Shanti: Oh, darling.

  Helen: It might have all ended so terribly, but when she was here we had some lovely times, some beautiful moments; she was so full of love, that girl, and that’s what we need to remember, to focus on, her spirit, that gorgeous spirit she had, and, you know, it’s still here! It’s here even if she’s not! We can keep it alive, by remembering those beautiful moments.

  (Shanti embraces Helen. Helen laughs, sobs and kisses Shanti’s cheek, then opens one arm to invite Junie into a three-way hug. Junie picks up her bag and walks towards the door.)

  Junie: I really have to go.

  THE BAD CAFE

  Junie caught the tram into the city. She was going to meet John for a farewell lunch, because in a week John was moving to Canada with Kathy, his soon-to-be second wife. Kathy was thin and short, with mousy hair she raked back into faux-tortoiseshell combs. She dressed as if from the Rivers catalogue, daggy jeans and chequered shirts and sleeveless parkas, and was prone to announcements about what she could and couldn’t eat, and why. I can’t eat eggs, they clog me up. Beer gives me thrush. Grapes make me toot.

  It was a Wednesday lunchtime and the tram was half-empty. Junie had a book she should have been reading, Primitivism in Modern and Naive Art; she held it open on her lap while looking out the window.

  Junie had not had much to do with Kathy. Every now and then John invited her to their house for a barbecue, but she’d only gone to three of them in two years. They were awkward. John seemed to have nothing new to say, instead retelling worn anecdotes about travelling with Helen in Europe in the early seventies, or about Junie and Anna as children. The Sheep’s Eye Soup in the Istanbul Cafe story, or the Argument Over the Map in the Black Forest story, or the Junie Hiding Under the Table at Her Own Birthday Party story, or the Anna Cutting Her Leg on the Steps at Nan’s story.

  When the stories concerned Anna, John’s chin might soften, his eyes become bright and moist, but there was nothing of the fixed expression that belonged to his time of being obsessed with finding her. This was a relief to Junie, although she still felt nervous every time the subject of Anna came up.

  The other thing about John telling these stories was that he didn’t leave Helen out of them. Helen in fact played a starring role in several, such as the Black Forest one, in which she threw the map to the ground and jumped on it. This also made Junie nervous, or at least very uncomfortable. Kathy didn’t appear to mind at all, but went on sitting in her plastic chair, nodding and smiling, holding her plate of whatever it was she was okay to eat.

  It was hot in the tram, and Junie took off her coat. She yawned. The swaying, the dinging of the bell—not a real bell now, a recording of one, but with the same brisk, officious tone—the stop-and-start rhythm, the sleepy overheated air, all made her feel like a kid again, riding home from school on a dull, wintry afternoon. She slipped into a half-dream of Avoca Street, from the time before Anna went, before the house took on the feeling of a stage with actors who squinted under their spotlights and paced along the curtains, clawing madly, seeking entry to wings that could not be entered, and in which certain players may or may not be waiting. The old Avoca Street, before all of that. Its after-school hush, its kitchen bench still littered with breakfast things. The strange pleasure of being the first one home, the only person in the whole house. A feeling of secrecy, something almost sexual—and also a shyness, as if the house itself was watching.

  Avoca Street had been sold. To a couple who were both doctors, Helen said. Very nice people. Very interesting. The house will be perfect for them—they’ll be very happy there. When she said this, Junie had prickled all over with annoyance. Why did Helen have to use the word ‘very’ so much? And how could she know the doctors would be happy? She couldn’t, it was impossible. Yet Junie felt jealous of this impossible happiness, and angry with Helen for bestowing it upon the doctors. Why did Helen always have to do this, always jolly things along? And in the process give away things that weren’t hers to give?

  Junie lived now in her own flat, above a shop, on the other side of town. She was depressed, really, but things were better than they had been a year ago, when she was still with Lee. Poor Lee. Lee had come at her like someone taking a test they have studied very hard for, and because Junie had believed that love was supposed to be effortless, and somehow complete—there, or not, cleanly, devoid of any messy mediating factors such as expression or communication—t
his, Lee’s trying, had eventually become intolerable.

  It had ended, untidily, during a week Junie spent at Nan’s house on the island, only a few months after Nan’s death. Late autumn, the chill rising from the ground. She had taken work for her university course but didn’t do much of it. She walked on the cold beach. She spoke on the phone with Lee, their voices fitting together like two heavy stones, their grinding pattern set.

  Running baths and lying in them until the water went cool. Dressing in the same musty clothes. To ease the ache in her throat, drinking what was left of Nan’s whisky, and then her sherry, and then her brandy, waking in the black night dry-mouthed and sick, the hollow knock of her elbow against the wall wrenching her back to childhood.

  She’d met a woman on the beach and they’d somehow come together for one reckless, drunken evening, an episode that flutters in Junie’s memory, tissue-thin, with Swiss cheese holes and a vague red pulse of embarrassment, not something she’d voluntarily revisit. She’d been an artist, the woman, and good—one of the wisps of memory holds a dim shore, a sketchpad, pastels, grey- and green-tipped fingers bringing forth waves that sprang and flicked with not only life but wetness—Junie has forgotten her name though.

  Now Junie was beginning to see that love probably had a lot more to it than she had thought. Also, and this was an uncomfortable thing to admit, that Lee’s diligence had not been completely voluntary, but inseparable from her own slackness, her refusal to contribute—that her reluctance had only drawn him, helplessly, into further effort.

  She still saw him sometimes, at uni, in the distance, and his sweet, round face and nervous, bouncing walk made her feel guilty, and relieved, and lost.

  John had chosen the lunch venue. It was an inner-city office workers’ cafe, the kind of place Junie would privately call a bad cafe. John favoured such places—greasy tables, bain-maries, misspelled whiteboard menus. He seemed to take pleasure in their basic, oversalted and generally un-nutritious food, and would always order the least healthy thing. Chips and gravy; roast pork with extra crackling.

  John was not fat—or not too fat, anyway. His small paunch had remained the same size for as long as Junie could remember, apart from the temporary shrinkage that took place during his search for Anna. He clearly didn’t eat like this all the time. Junie could remember the meals from when he and Helen were together—sensible, family food, lots of vegetables, dessert only occasionally. And she’d been to those barbecues with Kathy, where it was much the same, except without eggs, or beer, or grapes.