Past Perfect

by Karen Zelas

  ‘No.’

  ‘I see it as a chance to get our relationship back on a better footing – that’s what I want most of the time. But I don’t know. It’s so confusing. Sometimes I think I don’t know Ben at all. Even worse, sometimes I don’t recognise myself.’ Sue sighed.

  ‘It will work out,’ said Annie, ‘one way or another.’

  ‘Dad and I did lunch today,’ Charlie announced over dinner that night.

  ‘Did you?’ Sue settled her serviette in her lap, smoothing its edges. ‘How nice.’ And she meant it. She was relieved to think there was some rapprochement between her husband and daughter. She glanced from one to the other, taking in the fact that there was no response from Ben, no effort to pick up Charlie’s opener.

  ‘Yes.’ Charlie, too, looked expectantly at her father, but he was busy trimming fat off his steak and setting it neatly on the rim of his plate. A little smile played around Charlie’s lips. ‘Patrick was at lunch, too,’ she added, turning to Sue.

  ‘Oh.’ Sue wondered what Charlie was up to.

  ‘You don’t need to sound so surprised, Mum.’

  ‘And you don’t need to speak with your mouth full, young lady,’ Ben said sternly.

  Battle lines were drawn.

  ‘Aren’t you going to tell Mum who else was there?’

  Ben scowled fleetingly then continued eating. Sue was perplexed; she did not understand what was being played out here, but found herself rapidly becoming uncomfortable. ‘Anyone I know?’ she enquired, addressing the question to Ben and avoiding the mischief in her daughter’s eyes.

  ‘No. Not really. More wine?’ Ben added, reaching for the bottle and brandishing it.

  ‘One’s enough for me, thanks. You, too, usually,’ Sue added. Even to her own ears she sounded censorial.

  Ben dropped his knife and fork on his plate. Sue clapped her hands to her ears; the sound was painful. ‘Am I no longer allowed to make my own decisions? How many glasses of wine I consume? Who I lunch with?’

  Sue’s mind flicked back to her lunch under the tree with Russell and Guy. She had felt sad about the dissonance she had sensed between them. Now she felt the same sadness, even more deeply, for her own relationship.

  With another sudden movement, Ben pushed his chair back from the table and strode from the room, leaving a hiatus behind him. Sue felt as if she had received a punch to the solar plexus.

  Jason, silent but watchful until now, sprang to his father’s defence. ‘Mum! Leave him alone,’ he snarled. ‘You’re always –’

  ‘Me? What did I do?’ Sue struggled to hold on, to be the reasonable one here, as rage started to bubble inside her. At the same time, she felt she had been picked up and tossed by a tornado that had suddenly appeared from a clear blue sky.

  The only one seemingly unaffected was Charlie. ‘Pass me the salad, lil bro,’ she said, her arm stretched across the table to receive it.

  ‘Get it yourself.’

  Sue reacted automatically. ‘Don’t speak like that, Jason.’

  ‘Don’t start on me now,’ shouted Jason, and he, too, swept from the room. His bedroom door slammed, shortly followed by the strident strains of punk rock, the very walls reverberating.

  ‘What’s happening to us?’ It was a rhetorical question; Sue had a pretty good idea what was happening, but did not want to face it. Charlie’s answering shrug infuriated her further. ‘You started this,’ she snapped, knowing she was not being entirely fair. ‘Do you want Dad and me at each other’s throats? Will that make you happy?’

  ‘He’s behaving like an arsehole.’

  ‘Don’t speak like that. Even if he is,’ Sue added in a mumble. ‘He’s your father.’

  ‘Then he should behave like a father, not like a randy old man. Don’t you two do it any more?’

  ‘Charlie!’ Sue was shocked by an urge to slap her daughter’s face. This was not a cosy woman to woman chat; she was under attack. Both her children were blaming her for her husband’s – their father’s – behaviour. ‘So who was he lunching with? Alisha?’

  ‘How did you know?’ Charlie’s amazement was spread all over her face.

  So Ben was persisting in spite of his protestations of innocence. Her fear confirmed, she straightened her back with tremendous effort and assumed a smile. ‘There’s not much gets past me,’ she said.

  She folded her serviette carefully and laid it beside her plate. Placing both palms on the edge of the table, she pushed back her chair. She felt tight, zingy, and could hardly breathe. She forced herself to walk slowly down the hall and paused outside the closed door of Ben’s study, her hand resting heavily on the handle. Without knocking, she opened the door and stepped inside. Ben’s fingers paused over the keyboard of his computer, but he did not look up.

  ‘You are going to tell me what is happening. Now,’ she said, wedging her hands on her hips and fluffing up like Tao in a territorial dispute. She felt twice her usual size.

  Ben lifted his head, his jaw hanging open. He swallowed, once, twice, and peered at her through a fan of hair. He gathered his feet under him as if he were about to stand.

  ‘Stay,’ Sue commanded, ‘and answer me. This is your last chance.’ She was not sure what she meant by this, and the words frightened her as much as they were intended to frighten Ben.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing’s happening.’ The words squeezed from his throat.

  ‘Don’t give me that. Alisha. Are you fucking her?’

  ‘No. No, no, no, no.’ Ben was shaking his head.

  ‘What then?’

  Ben crumpled and tears threatened to spill.

  ‘Tears won’t let you off the hook.’ Sue was amazed by her tenacity. ‘I want answers. I need answers. Words, Ben.’ She watched the colour of her husband’s face morph from pink to white, to white with crimson blotches.

  ‘I … I don’t know … what’s come over me,’ he gasped. ‘I think of her all the time. I know it’s wrong. She’s so …’

  ‘So beautiful?’

  ‘It’s not just that. When I’m with her … when I’m … I feel … young. Young in a way I never have before.’ He swallowed a sob, a terrible choking sound, as though he might never breathe easily again.

  Sue blinked rapidly. This was her husband. And he was suffering. And somehow she felt responsible. If she had been able to give him more … If she had not needed as much …

  Perhaps it was not so much about Alisha’s being young and beautiful, as about his wanting to feel young and beautiful, and she could identify with this want. ‘It’s not just you,’ she said; she felt like his tutor again, but now with more understanding and sympathy for herself. ‘We both missed out on something, didn’t we, all those years ago?’ She sniffed and pressed the back of her hand against her mouth. ‘But what we’ve got now … what we had before this …’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ll stay away from her.’

  ‘But she’s your student.’

  ‘I’ll think of something. Joint tutorials. Something.’

  ‘But you’ll think about her. You’ll still think about her.’

  10.

  The call came that night at 2am. They said her father was failing, that they feared he might not have much longer. He was conscious but very weak, eating and drinking little. They were doing their best to coax him, but he would not swallow. It had been like that for a day, two days. They thought Sue would want to know.

  Of course she did. But now? Why not twelve hours ago?

  They thought Sue might want to come and sit with him. No, they didn’t think it would be in the next few hours. They were just keeping her informed.

  Sue groaned. What she had guiltily wished for was happening. She had said goodbye to the father she knew months ago, wished him a speedy exit. But now, faced with his imminent death, her certainty gave way. There was a yawning gulf between theory and reality.

  Ben rolled over and put his arm around Sue. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked, his voice thick with sleep.

  ‘It’s D
ad,’ Sue managed to say; even that was an effort.

  ‘I know. But what? Do you need to go now? I’ll take you.’

  Sue’s heart swelled. She could rely on Ben – what had she been thinking of? He had his faults and he might be having a midlife crisis, but he could be relied upon for the important things. They would resolve their differences; he would get over his problem.

  ‘Not now,’ she replied. ‘I’ll go first thing. They said it’s not urgent.’ She felt torn between emotional exhaustion and the desire to sit with her father, hold his hand in his final hours. But the man lying in that bed, that shadow, was not her father. ‘He doesn’t even know it’s me when I’m there,’ she said. She would cope better with his impending death in daylight.

  Sue rolled over, Ben’s arm getting heavier across her body as he sank into sleep. But much as she willed it, there was no sleep for Sue. Memories of childhood flickered on her closed lids like snippets of old movie film – her parents laughing; the one time her father gave her a hiding; sitting with her father at her mother’s bedside; splashing each other in the cold surf at New Brighton; her graduation – random shots assembled by a quirky film director, the narrative available only to himself.

  Dad would weave the most wonderful stories and Sue and Jayne would enter another world with him. It was Dad who would stand in the frosty air on a winter evening, clouds of dragon-steam issuing from his mouth, as he repeatedly threw a basketball to Sue and shouted praise and encouragement. It was Dad she could go to when she had had a row with Mum. Dad could hold her disappointments, her failures, as well as her successes.

  And after Mum died, they were there for each other.

  Huge gratitude welled for her father and, after him, for Ben. She owed so much to them both. They were integral to who she was. Soon she was to lose one. She could not bear to lose the other.

  Sue rose at dawn, feeling kinship with death. She shuffled to the kitchen and plugged in the kettle. The sun passed behind a cloud and was not to be seen again. She shivered and drew her dressing gown tightly about her. The autumn nip in the air matched her mood; she had not expected to feel so bleak.

  7am. 6pm in London, allowing for daylight saving. Jayne should be home soon.

  Akaroa,

  28th May, 1841.

  Ma chère Maman,

  What a wonderful day this has been! The first mail arrived, delivered by an English ship en route to Hobart Town.

  The news of mail travelled fast. I was at the stream laundering our clothes with Rose and several other women, when young Pierre, Rose’s boy, came running up. He was so breathless he could barely get the words out. We all dropped our linen on the rocks, lifted our skirts and ran to the foreshore. There M. Belligny was receiving a modest bag of mail from a sailor with wild greying hair, an old tweed jacket, sea-boots and a pipe wedged between his teeth – you know the type? Clouds of aromatic smoke wreathed his head and made me choke. But I could not move away, so excited was I.

  And I was not disappointed!

  It is so wonderful to have news of you at last, Maman! How the children have grown and changed in the time we have been gone. To think of Jacques apprenticed to a printer and earning a wage. And Sophie in service at the Château. Young Sophie! It seems no time since I was helping her learn to read and form her letters. She should do well there. She is too able to remain a chambermaid for long. How strange it must be to have only Madeleine and young Albert now.

  I hope Papa has survived the long winter. It is very distressing to learn that he had such a bad chest even before the cold weather arrived in earnest. You say he is feeling more well-disposed toward me. If that is merely to console me, I thank you. But I hope it is truly so. I hate to think anything might happen before I have made my peace with him.

  And you, Maman. You say little about yourself. I do worry, even though it helps you not at all. You are so often in my thoughts.

  My husband will be pleased to hear news of his family, too. I shall read your letter to him this evening when he returns from milling. He has arrived in one piece every evening so far, praise be to God. Some have returned short a finger or two. I pray that he will remain whole, so that he can provide for his family. For he will soon be a father.

  I continue to tend our garden while Claude is away, preparing for winter so that it will flourish in spring. It is tiring work, bending and turning the soil, digging in compost in accord with Claude’s instructions. The other women tell me I should not be undertaking such heavy work so close to confinement and that it risks bringing the baby early. But I am fit and well and the sooner he comes, the better pleased I will be. Besides, if I do not do the work, it will not be done and we cannot afford to risk next season’s crops.

  Maman, I am so excited hearing from you that nothing here seems worth recounting at present. I want to send a reply when the ship sails again with the tide. So I shall write more another day soon. Rose had mail, too, and, for the first time in her life, was able to read the letters herself. She was so excited, and I for her!

  Please give my love to all the family and to Maman and Papa Dujardin. Hugs and kisses to the children and to you.

  All my love,

  Bibi

  The telephone rang and rang. Sue was about to give up when Jayne answered and spoke breathlessly into the handpiece.

  ‘Been running?’ Sue asked.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Anxiety penetrated Jayne’s puffing.

  Hardly fair to imply Sue rang only when there was trouble, although her news today would justify that view. ‘Actually, yes. I’m afraid there is.’ Choosing words carefully, Sue described the situation with their father. She was unsure how Jayne would react. It could be anything from the verbal equivalent of a shrug to a cathartic flood of tears, depending how far she had moved from the adolescent who had walked onto the plane without a backward glance. It gave Sue a jolt to realise how little she knew her sister; how little she knew Jayne, the adult.

  ‘I’m about to go and see him –’

  ‘You didn’t go when they rang? Sue. How could you?’

  ‘You don’t have to live with it every day.’ The accusation flew out of Sue’s mouth before she could stop it. Only guilt could create such a compulsion to defend: a dutiful daughter would be able to put aside her feelings of distaste, despair and distress and be infinitely available to this pathetic, unfamiliar, frail old man. She should have been visiting him every day; the less he knew her, the more vulnerable he was and the more he needed her. But her love for her father had kept her away. She could not bear to witness what he had become.

  And now he was dying.

  ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. You’ve done all the hard work. But it’s not easy for me, either – being so far away. I … I feel … left out.’

  Jayne’s apology allowed Sue to continue her complaint. ‘You could have come home. Years ago. When there was something you could have done to help.’ She recalled the years of supplying dinners because Meals On Wheels were not tasty enough; fielding distressed, paranoid calls about people stealing belongings he had mislaid; urgent trips across town when he had locked himself out of his flat or got lost. ‘But there’s nothing to be done now.’ Then, softening, she added, ‘There’s nothing either of us can do for him now. He’s not himself any more.’

  ‘Should I come home? There’s the mortgage, though …’

  ‘Only if you want to, for yourself. He wouldn’t know you.’

  ‘Surely he would. After a bit.’

  Sue could hear the disbelief in Jayne’s voice, as if Sue were telling her lies to keep her away. But perhaps she wanted to make peace and could not accept it was too late.

  ‘No. No, Jaynie, he wouldn’t.’ Sue’s voice was gentle. ‘He doesn’t recognise me. Or Ben. Or the kids. He’s gone,’ she whispered. ‘Only his body is left. An empty shell.’

  There was silence, a silence as it can be felt only over a telephone, as if the other person has suddenly ceased to exist.

  Akar
oa,

  4th June, 1841.

  Ma chère Maman,

  It has taken longer for me to write again than I had anticipated. I have been indisposed. I have had a chill which has sat on my chest for two weeks. My energy has seeped away and my husband obliged me to consult a doctor from “L’Aube” who was tending a wounded sailor at the hospital.

  The doctor thinks the chill has gone to my kidneys, as my ankles have become puffy and spill over the tops of my boots – not at all a pretty sight. Rose says I should have heeded their counsel and not worked outside in the chill wind. Perhaps she – and they – are right. But it is hard to refrain from undertaking tasks that are so necessary. However, I am now compelled to rest and I sit with my feet raised on a small wooden stool Claude has made for me and put the final stitches in the layette for our son. The pieces are so small, Maman, they appear to have been made for a doll. But Rose assures me they will be big enough.

  My condition does not stop me conducting lessons. In addition to Rose, I now have three other pupils, Mme Victoire Gendrot, and the two Etéveneaux sisters, Marie Celestine, who married Louis Veron in November – a very joyous occasion – and her younger sister, Marie Judith, who is too old to attend the priests. I receive a small payment from each – every little helps. They tell me I have a flair for teaching and we all have fun together, making the task easier.

  I hesitate to say it, but I am also taking whatever opportunity I can to learn words in the English language, as Akaroa is home to increasing numbers of English. I can foresee a time when our futures will merge and it is well to be prepared. I cannot say that others agree with me. They anticipate that any day soon Akaroa will be declared a French colony and the French flag raised. I find myself questioning the meaning of the delay. Perhaps things will not evolve the way we expect. Why, for instance, do we have an English magistrate in a French settlement? And why is it that only the French are subject to French authority? My husband says I should not trouble myself with such questions but leave them to better minds.

  The weather is quite cold at present with a biting wind which comes in from the southern ocean. Again we are in mud as soon as we step outside. Perhaps the –