Somebody's Crying

by Somebody's Crying (retail) (epub)

  It takes all Tom’s self-discipline not to break into a run as he makes his way out of the courtroom after her.

  alice

  ‘You two have gotta help me with Eric!’ Alice is walking the twins to the door of the office. ‘Come up with a bright idea or two.’

  ‘When does he arrive?’

  ‘Tonight, for three days. What can I do with him?’

  ‘Okay,’ Sylvie sighs. ‘Bring him out to the farm tomorrow and we’ll take him shooting.’

  Alice tries to imagine Eric standing at the back of a Land Rover with a shotgun in his skinny pale hands and she groans. ‘This is a guy who has hardly ever touched an animal in his whole life!’ she tries to explain.

  ‘Then he’ll probably really enjoy killing one,’ Sylvie says dryly.

  Alice thinks of the big round cow pats and lumps of chicken shit in the paddocks surrounding their little cottage, and of their father, Charlie, coming in from work, his overalls and hobnail boots bloody from a day at the meatworks. Like a lot of city people, Eric is fastidious about personal cleanliness. She bites her lip and frowns. How will he handle it?

  ‘What sort of car does he drive?’ Sylvie wants to know.

  ‘He’s coming by train.’

  ‘I thought you said he was rich!’

  ‘He is,’ Alice sighs, ‘but he tends to get lost driving.’

  ‘Hasn’t he heard of maps?’

  Eric has an old BMW that had belonged to his mother, but Alice has never seen him drive it. It sits in his parking spot at college, like a king amongst all the Holdens and nifty little Japanese numbers, and never seems to be moved. Once, when they were running late for something, Alice asked him whether they should take the car instead of waiting for the tram. Eric was evasive, ‘I enjoy my car,’ he said dreamily. ‘I just don’t really like driving it very much.’

  ‘So he’s the full and utter geek, is he?’ Sylvie says grimly.

  ‘Well, not exactly—’

  ‘Sounds like the complete package of pure nerd,’ her sister cuts in.

  ‘Just be prepared for a shock,’ Alice tries to explain.

  ‘A shock?’

  ‘He’s got carrot-coloured hair and big ears.’

  ‘Oh!’ Sylvie’s face twists with distain. ‘Do they stick out?’

  ‘Hmmm. Sort of.’

  ‘I won’t be able to take him seriously then,’ she declares matter-of-factly, ‘I’ve got a thing about ears.’

  ‘You’ll like him,’ Alice laughs, ‘I promise.’

  ‘Sure,’ Leyla sighs drolly as she leaves through the front door of Mullaney’s Law office, ‘I’m in love already.’

  To make matters worse, her grandmother is insisting on a formal dinner to meet ‘her young man’! When Alice tried to explain that Eric is just a friend, her grandmother gave one of her knowing little chuckles and said, ‘Oh I’ve heard that before, young lady!’ So what is Alice meant to do? Preparations are afoot for a formal meal! Helen, the housekeeper, has been asked to stay back to cook and wait on the table. Every time Alice thinks about it she feels sick.

  Alice goes down to the railway station in her grandmother’s silver Bentley with Colin, the gardener, driving. He is a quiet balding man of fifty, with a heavy gut and blunt features, who has been working for Phyllis for ten years. According to her grandmother, they’ve never had ‘cross words’ even once, and that makes him a certified saint as far as Alice is concerned. Either a saint or fundamentally flawed in some way. He is one of the very few of her grandmother’s employees who’ve lasted more than a year.

  Colin adores the car. He opens the door for Alice and insists that she sit in the back to be chauffeured like a lady. He positions himself behind the wheel, running his big rough hands reverentially over the leather seats and dashboard, whistling his appreciation under his breath. They get to the station early and when Alice suggests that they drive around for a while Colin’s blank expression changes into one of total delight.

  ‘You reckon she’d mind, love?’

  ‘She won’t know, will she?’ Alice murmurs. So they drive around town with Colin giving Alice an animated account of the car’s finer features. There is the purring gearbox and the oak dashboard, the quality leather seats and the second-to-none suspension.

  ‘They don’t make ’em like this any more, Alice.’

  Glad to have made his day, Alice pretends to be interested, but she’s heard it all before.

  ‘So you reckon these old cars are better, Colin?’

  ‘Well, of course the new cars have all the latest fandangles,’ he sighs, ‘but I’d pick this model any day over the new Jag XF, for example, or any of those Saabs or BMWs.’

  ‘You should take this car out more often,’ Alice says. She imagines herself swanning around in this grand old bomb, dressed in a fabulous shiny evening frock, jewels around her neck, a tall glass of bubbly in one hand and a long black cigarette-holder in the other. Maybe she could talk the twins into it for a lark.

  ‘Feel free to take the keys and go for a spin, Colin. She’ll never know. I promise you.’

  ‘I’d never do that, love,’ he sighs.

  ‘Think of it as a perk!’ Alice laughs.

  ‘I’d never go behind her back.’ Colin isn’t laughing. ‘She’s been too good to me.’ He catches Alice’s questioning eye in the rear-vision mirror.

  ‘Has she?’ Alice is genuinely curious.

  ‘Too right she has,’ Colin says warmly.

  ‘But doesn’t she drive you absolutely nuts?’

  He laughs. ‘There is another side to her.’

  They are pulling up in the railway car park now and Alice is already thinking about something else when Colin continues, ‘I done ten years inside, missy. No one would touch me as soon as they knew. Couldn’t get a job. Your grandma knew all about that. She just said if I mucked up, I’d be out on my ear, but that I could start the next day.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yep. She’s got guts that one!’

  Ten years! What for? Alice studies the back of his neatly combed head and his big square clean hands with the bitten fingernails, and tries to guess. Burglaries, kidnapping, murder? It is on the tip of her tongue to ask but . . . she likes Colin. Better not to know.

  The huge roaring train pulls up and Eric is one of the first of the small crowd to alight. Alice spots him immediately. It’s not just his flaming red hair, he is also about a foot higher than everyone else on the platform. She’d forgotten how tall he was. And so very thin! What a beanpole. She smiles as she pushes her way through the chattering crowd towards him. With his heavy-framed glasses, dark loose clothes and small leather suitcase he could easily be mistaken for a geeky scientist twice his age, or the fall guy in some thirties movie. Or, Alice smiles to herself dryly, a red-headed pencil!

  ‘Hey, Eric!’

  He turns from where he is staring at the huge old weighing machine outside the parcels office and flashes one of his delighted smiles. Alice feels a rush of immediate warmth and remembers in an instant why she grew to like him so much.

  ‘Well hello, Alice!’

  There is an awkward moment before they hug each other. Then, as they make their way along the platform; the previous few months seem to collapse down into a couple of days. They fall into familiar companionable ease.

  ‘It’s so good to see you!’ Alice says, meaning it.

  ‘Likewise,’ he says in his deep toffy accent. Before heading out into the car park, he stops, puts his case down and looks around the platform. ‘Wow,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘What an amazing place!’

  Alice smiles. Eric’s capacity for delight is infectious. He is looking at the dreary old platform of a country station just as though he’s arrived on Mars.

  They sit in the back seat of the old car as Colin drives. Alice quietly tries to prepare him for her grandmother.

  ‘She’ll case you over.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Eric ups his full-on BBC voice. ‘Case me over indeed!
Language my friend, language! Make yourself clear.’

  ‘She’ll want to know everything about . . . you.’

  ‘Alice.’ Eric squeezes her arm. ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll get on.’

  ‘Nobody gets on with my grandmother.’ Alice remains grim. ‘She doesn’t like anybody, so don’t expect her to like you or to get on with you. It’s just not part of her modus operandi.’

  ‘Alice! She’ll absolutely adore me,’ Eric cuts in dryly shaking his head. ‘Just you wait.’

  ‘Don’t say you weren’t warned.’

  ‘Never!’

  Dressed in a pale-blue silk blouse, heels and a pleated skirt, her hair newly styled, Phyllis is sitting waiting for them by the fire. When they come in the old lady looks up, opens her mouth and then, seeing Eric, closes it again in shock. But he seems not to notice. He glances appreciatively around the big beautiful room. After taking a casual peek out one of the nearby windows, he follows Alice over to where the old lady is waiting.

  ‘Eric, this is my grandmother, Mrs Hickey.’ Alice’s inner antenna is whirring with a red alert danger signal, wishing like crazy now that she’d warned her grandmother that Eric was a little odd-looking. ‘Gran, this is Eric. Remember I told you that we were at university together earlier this year? In the same tute actually . . .’ she blunders on self-consciously, trying for a casual tone.

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Her grandmother shudders slightly as she steadies herself before standing up. ‘How do you do, Eric?’ She extends her bony right hand, her eyes raking mercilessly over the red-headed streak in front of her.

  ‘How do you do, Mrs Hickey?’ Eric takes her hand and gives a small respectful bow. ‘So pleased to meet you at last.’

  ‘Yes, well!’ Phyllis replies sharply, then with another small involuntary shudder, her lips curled, she suddenly can’t help herself. ‘My goodness me!’ she exclaims furiously. ‘You’re a very unusual looking young fellow, aren’t you?’

  Alice braces herself. The whole evening is going to descend into a barrage of similar, barely-concealed rude comments.

  ‘That has to be the understatement of the year!’ Eric dismisses the old woman’s disdain with an easy laugh. ‘Unfortunately they ran out of oils when they were painting me.’

  A thin smile appears slowly on her grandmother’s face. No mean feat! Alice makes a thumbs-up sign behind her back, but Eric doesn’t see. He points to a small porcelain figurine of a girl on the mantelpiece, ‘That, however, is a very fine piece, if I may say so, Mrs Hickey.’

  ‘You may indeed.’ Alice’s grandmother takes the time to smile again, before picking the thing up and putting it carefully into his hands. She begins to point out some of the features that make it one of the best of its kind. To Alice’s astonishment, Eric can actually contribute to this conversation. He talks easily of the differences between work produced during separate eras in Europe. Is Mrs Hickey familiar with Louis XIV miniatures produced in Leon?

  Of course the old bat knows everything, but Eric gives her a run for her money. The names of manufacturers roll off his tongue as though they were all close relatives, and he listens to her stories of similar pieces that were broken by incompetent servants as though the whole area is one of deep personal interest.

  Alice looks on in bewilderment. She had no idea of his arcane interest in porcelain.

  When they are seated in front of the fire and her grandmother turns her back to pour the sherry, Alice makes a how come? face, but Eric only raises one eyebrow and stretches out his long legs.

  ‘A sherry!’ he murmurs taking the tiny glass. ‘Couldn’t think of anything nicer after that trip.’

  ‘How did you find the train journey?’ the old lady asks, sitting down opposite him, her beady eyes raking over his body yet again.

  ‘Delightful,’ Eric replies enthusiastically, ‘until I visited the dining car. The quality of the food was deplorable.’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ the old lady groans and shakes her head, sipping her sherry mournfully. ‘So what on earth did you do?’

  ‘Luckily I had thought to bring a sandwich and some fruit, but I could have done with more, to tell you the truth.’

  Alice groans inside as her grandmother nods approvingly and gives another thin smile. Another ten points to Eric!

  Alice hates sherry but she finishes the glass in one gulp and wonders how long she’ll have to wait before she can pour another without drawing attention to herself.

  ‘Then you’ll be hungry now?’ the old lady says sharply.

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Alice would you please go and tell Helen not to wait until eight, that we’ll have dinner as soon as possible. Poor Eric is hungry.’

  ‘Okay.’ Alice gets up meekly.

  ‘I hope roast beef will be to your liking, Eric?’ Her grandmother isn’t so much asking a question as declaring a fact. ‘I rang the butcher myself and asked for his very best cut.’

  There is a slight moment of hesitation as they wait for Eric to respond. Suddenly Alice remembers that he’s actually a vegetarian! Oh no. How could she have forgotten? Eric eats fish but not meat. Something about Australian beef and sheep farming ruining our fragile soils. He didn’t talk about it much and she never listened when he did. But Eric’s moment of hesitation is short. ‘Roast beef happens to be my favourite, Mrs Hickey,’ he says, hardly blinking. ‘And if by chance it’s accompanied by gravy and roast potatoes, why then . . . I’m in heaven!’

  ‘Then this is your lucky day,’ Phyllis says with a dry smile.

  By the time dinner is served Alice isn’t just relieved, she’s filled with awe. Eric is a master. Not just of small talk but of conversation generally. Why can’t she be like this? From the very start he is totally at ease with her grandmother, immersed in the old lady’s theories about growing roses. When the conversation moves on to her complaints about politicians and the local council he is equally involved, adding all kinds of amusing anecdotes and opinions of his own. Soup out of the way, Alice actually begins to relax. She can see that Eric knows intuitively that Phyllis will turn nasty if faced with serious dissention and so he doesn’t stray too far away from her biased, eccentric, often self-inflated opinions. Even so . . . he manages to be himself, which says a lot for his ability to dodge and neutralise issues before they get out of hand. When Phyllis gets onto ailments and the side effects of different medicines, and Eric pulls a medico uncle out of his formidable box of tricks to impress her with inside information about prescription drugs, Alice almost starts laughing.

  Phyllis is actually enjoying herself! Alice has never seen her so animated. Won over by Eric’s charm, she even makes a joke or two. Which is not to say that she stops being blunt and caustic – she chides him about the shirt he is wearing and for not knowing the first thing about the importance of wearing wool next to his skin in the winter, then tells him that he should take a tonic to improve his pale colour and maybe think about joining a gym in order to fill out a bit.

  Eric accepts, dodges or laughs off all the unasked-for advice with the grace and style of a chess champion. Rather than wait for the inevitable sly questions about where his family fits into the Melbourne class hierarchy, he implants small snippets of information into the conversation, all of which impress her grandmother greatly.

  ‘You say your father is in business?’

  ‘Yes.’ Eric smiles warmly as though the mention of his father brings up pleasurable thoughts.

  Easy now. Alice sits back to watch the performance. Don’t over-do it. She knows Eric is bored witless by his father.

  ‘He’s the managing director of Alchemy International. That’s a chemical company, you know. They make all manner of industrial cleaners, detergents and the like.’

  ‘Sounds useful!’ Phyllis says approvingly.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Eric smiles happily, ‘my father is a very useful man!’

  Alice starts biting her nails, remembering Eric’s rants about his father’s pugnacious attitude to everything, from his un
derlings at work to the man next door who wanted to lop off an overhanging branch. A gifted scientist, he’d sold out his passion to get into top management, purely for the money. Something that Eric swore he would never do.

  ‘That must keep him very busy?’

  ‘It’s a German company so . . . he’s overseas half the time.’

  ‘So he’s a German industrialist?’ Alice’s grandmother sits back, glowing with quiet approval.

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘She manages the house and—’

  ‘Sensible woman.’

  Eric eats everything, including a second serve of beef, which is, as far as Alice is concerned anyway, definitely overdoing things. By the time they are through with the lemon meringue pie, Alice is ready to scream, throw one of those prized ornaments at the wall, or stand on her head – anything to get away. Of course she’s relieved that it has gone well, but she can’t remember the last time she spent a whole hour with her grandmother, much less three! Surely Eric is starting to flag too. But no! Here he is launching into a description of some dreary uncle who is making a fortune selling rice into Asia.

  ‘Ah, wonders will never cease, Eric!’ her grandmother laughs, as though he’s her best friend.

  ‘When they do, we’ll know we’re dead,’ Eric retorts with an aptly chosen aphorism that has the old lady chuckling with delight.

  ‘Well, Alice, what have you got planned for Eric tomorrow?’ The old lady tries to stifle a yawn.

  ‘Not much,’ Alice mumbles, not bothering to stifle hers. It is after eleven now and she is beyond politeness. ‘Maybe look around the town in the morning.’ She turns to Eric. ‘Do you want to go out to the farm in the afternoon and meet the twins?’ She has told him all about the twins and he has already expressed interest.

  ‘The twins! Goodness,’ her grandmother snaps, ‘there must be more interesting people for Eric to meet!’