Past Perfect

by Karen Zelas

  ‘Russell,’ said Ben, in a flat tone.

  ‘Yes,’ Sue replied, turning to her husband, still smiling.

  ‘You called him “darling”.’

  ‘A manner of speaking.’

  ‘You sent him your love.’

  ‘What’s good for the goose …’ Sue giggled. It was not like Sue to giggle. Ben frowned. ‘I do believe you’re jealous. Russell is lovely,’ she said, spinning out her enjoyment; he deserved it. ‘But then, so is his partner, Guy.’

  ‘He’s gay?’

  ‘As gay as they come. Charmingly so. No need to worry, darling.’

  ‘Don’t start calling me darling.’ Ben shuddered, and a strange sound emanated from Sue, somewhere between a guffaw and a sob. ‘Where did you meet him? You don’t tell me anything these days.’

  Sue paused. ‘I’m surprised you’ve noticed.’

  Rachel moved in with her essentials – computer, make-up, clothes and car. Ben did not trust Rachel with their cars, so she drove them to the airport in her red convertible – the poor man’s Ferrari, Ben called it; sour grapes, Sue called it. She sat hunched with her knees under her chin in the back seat, one suitcase riding beside her, the other in the microscopic boot. Sue declined Rachel’s offer to put the hood down. It was not worth braving the August cold in order to sit upright.

  A truce had been reached with Charlie and Jason about Rachel’s “babysitting”, consolidated by her arrival. Jason had been obviously reassured by the decision, finding it preferable to having Patrick there, and Charlie was won over by Rachel herself. Sue was relieved at the resolution and settled back as comfortably as the car would allow, pleased to be on their way at last. She was thankful, however, that the airport was only fifteen minutes away. Even Economy Class leg room would seem generous in contrast to this.

  As they winged their way across the Tasman, chasing the sun above a carpet of cotton wool cloud, Sue stretched her legs and sipped a gin and tonic. This was to be a make-or-break holiday. And, by a considerable margin, “make” still seemed better than “break”. She opened the latest Patricia Cornwell, which she had bought at the airport, smiled at Ben and, leaning across, kissed his cheek.

  ‘What have I done to deserve that?’ he queried.

  ‘Well you may ask,’ Sue replied, then sighed. ‘We’ve both had a lot on our minds lately. I’m sorry.’ She placed her hand on his, as it lay on the armrest. Ben remained quite still for a few seconds, then slowly entwined his fingers with hers and squeezed them. Sue stroked the soft down on the back of his hand with her thumb. Warmth spread through her. She could sense her muscles relaxing, one by one. She was reluctant to risk disrupting the intimacy by saying more. There would be time enough when she felt confidence in their relationship again. Or, perhaps, at that point, it would no longer be necessary. Or, perhaps I’m just chicken, she thought, a “conflict avoider”, as Annie would say. With thoughts ebbing and flowing, Sue drifted asleep, Patricia Cornwell slipping unnoticed to the floor.

  14.

  The Singapore days passed without crisis. Having made her decision, Sue went out of her way to be solicitous. It was not difficult. She massaged Ben’s ego as well as his back and persuaded him to spend money on clothes. She wanted him to look his best at the conference; she wanted him to feel confident. Something told her that the more self-confident he was, the less likely he would be to need a younger woman to bolster his ego. All part of her campaign to repossess her husband.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked as she slipped into the shower with him one afternoon. ‘I’ll be out in a moment. There’s only room for one.’ She had to show him her purpose; it did not require much room. Her husband was naive, she decided; a prude, even – she had been a long time reaching this conclusion. But the traits did have an endearing quality. Sue was determined to surprise Ben, to keep him slightly off balance. She wondered what would happen if she did something more outrageous – she was not sure what; she wondered what it would take to disgust Ben rather than turn him on.

  Each air-conditioned morning they woke in a tangle of sheets and limbs. As planned, they drank gin slings in the Writer’s Bar at Raffles and ate the most adventurous dishes they could find at food-stalls in China Town. They walked for miles in the hot, moist air, taking refuge in air-conditioned shopping complexes and restaurants when they started to wilt, or returning to their hotel for a siesta; it was a luxury to make love in the afternoon. On Emerald Hill, away from the crowds, they admired the colonial houses of the pre-war British administration, while, with hundreds of others from many nations, they gazed at the Merlion, recently repositioned to guard the harbour entrance. They noted how westernised Singapore had become since their last visit, and mourned together the loss of so many old buildings, acknowledging all the while that they could not expect people to live in continuing squalor so they could exclaim, ‘Oh, how picturesque. How traditional.’

  But, most importantly, they were gradually rediscovering each other. They talked and laughed as they had not done in years. Sue felt noticed and appreciated, felt herself unfolding, becoming more expansive. She was bolder in expressing her opinion, even when it differed from Ben’s. And, much to her delight, Ben listened; he seemed to find her interesting.

  It was as if time had rolled back. Sue wondered how they had reached such a nadir, without even noticing the downward slope. Almost to the point of no return.

  It was a much more optimistic, relaxed and sensuous Sue who stood in the immigration queue at Heathrow Airport. A long, winding snake of a queue, multicoloured, multiethnic, its head directed by an exasperated and officious little Cockney woman, nearly as wide as she was high.

  ‘You’d think our sole purpose in being here was to cause her angst,’ Sue whispered in Ben’s ear, the scent of his aftershave arousing in spite of her weariness, or, maybe, because of it. She would have liked nothing better than to slip between crisp, cool sheets with Ben, right there, in Immigration.

  Akaroa,

  9th February, 1843.

  Ma chère Maman,

  The memory of this day will always arouse the strongest of emotions for us. Today, the English Magistrate, Mr. Robinson, raised the British flag next to his house, signifying that it stands on British land! Can you imagine the betrayal we feel? There are still only five or six British families here. Mon Dieu! We French are the people who have slaved on empty bellies! It is we who have wrested arable land from inhospitable scrub to establish a homeland for ourselves, as we thought, in the name of France. And, worse, it seems that Captain Lavaud and the Company may have been aware of this all along and kept it from us. Such perfidy!

  Ah, Maman. What will Papa say about his daughter and grandson being British subjects? Claude is so angry he can scarce contain himself. It was all I could do to prevent him taking an axe to the flagpole.

  I am most despondent. We still have our land – although the Nanto-Bordelaise Company holds title to it – unless the British decide it should be confiscated. Here I am, expecting the arrival of our second child at any time, and we are in a most insecure situation. Yet, in other ways, we have never been better off. Peace continues with the local Maoris, at least for now. It seems their recent show of strength was mere posturing, thanks be to God. And relations with the British here in Akaroa have been congenial and cooperative until this point.

  Break the news to Papa gently. Assure him it is a situation not of our making and that we are not in danger. Let Papa see that I have not betrayed him.

  Love to you all,

  Your Bibi

  It took forty-five minutes before Sue and Ben stood in the arrival hall with their trolley of luggage. Sue scanned the sea of faces. She noticed her heart pounding in her throat. She should not feel nervous; this was her young sister she was searching for. Her only remaining family.

  Then she saw them. Her breath caught at a glimpse of Jayne’s fair curls and smile bobbing behind a row of tall, brightly-dressed West Indians, her hand raised and waving. ‘There’s Jayne,
’ she gasped, darting ahead of Ben. ‘And Nigel, too.’ She stopped at the barricade, as Jayne pushed her way to the front. They embraced, the waist-high steel and glass a barrier pressing between them.

  In that moment, as at their father’s funeral, Sue felt a deep desire for a sister, her sister. Suddenly she realised that never before had she thought of herself as needing Jayne. It had always been the other way around: Jayne had needed her.

  ‘Come on, you two. Let’s get out of here,’ Nigel called from behind.

  Reluctantly, Sue relinquished Jayne, who continued to cling, her face stained with tears. Perhaps Jayne was as much in need of a sister as Sue.

  ‘Women,’ said Nigel, with an expression Sue was unable to read. ‘Anyway, how are you, Ben? Good to see you.’ He shook Ben’s hand firmly.

  ‘And you.’ Ben’s response was more restrained.

  Jayne took Sue’s arm and steered her towards the parking building, the men trailing with the luggage. ‘It’s a good time to be here. We’re in the middle of a heatwave,’ Jayne said, blowing her nose. ‘It’s so humid.’ How English, Sue thought; when emotion threatens, revert to discussing the weather. Still, her sister had spent half her life here; she could not expect it to have had no effect.

  Sue actually thought the air mild and dry after Singapore, but did not say so. Instead she said, ‘It’s a novelty to be here in the middle of good weather, rather than having just missed it.’

  ‘Now, now,’ said Jayne. Naa-oo, naa-oo. Sue was always amused by Jayne’s accent. The rounded and elongated Pommy vowels, combined with a slight nasal drawl, were even more conspicuous face to face than on the telephone. More English than the English, their father used to say. Sue gazed at Jayne’s profile: sharp features softened by a fall of ash-blonde curls, short upper lip and prominent even teeth. Add to that her lean but shapely figure and you could think her a model. And brainless. But you’d be mistaken. Jayne did wear her clothes with ease, though; today, low-slung cargo-pants. There was envy in Sue’s eye, she knew, as she followed her sister between the cars. She wondered at two sisters being so different.

  The density of the traffic and the cheek-by-jowl housing struck Sue anew. It both intrigued and closed in on her, delighted and appalled her. She leant forward against the webbing of the seatbelt to peer up at the façades as they passed, one High Street much like another: shops with no verandas; hanging baskets of red and blue petunias and white alyssum decorating quaint brick pubs. Window boxes of geraniums studded rows of dull terrace housing and the occasional rose thrust its head over the clipped hedge of a tiny front garden. The colourfulness of summer banished the winter grey Sue remembered so well.

  A final right turn brought them off Thurlow Park Road into a street of neat, late-nineteenth-century semi-detached houses that had escaped the bombing raids of World War II. Each had a small, well-tended front garden with a bay window protruding into it. Sue admired the detailed plasterwork, picked out in white against brick above the bay window and entrance arch. A bearded white head gazed paternally down as she followed Jayne into the tiled entrance porch. Jayne swung the door wide and stood aside. The lead lights cast a golden glow down the hallway.

  ‘Come on through. Let me show you our home.’ Jayne hugged Sue tightly. ‘I can’t believe you’re really here.’ She pulled away. ‘I’d better stop, or I’ll start crying again.’ She sniffed and laughed and blew her nose, all at once. Sue had not expected such a show of emotion. It did not fit with her recollection of her sister. Granted it was a recollection primarily founded on Jayne’s adolescence, an adolescence that seemed to have extended well into adulthood. Sue herself was feeling surprisingly numb; so much had happened in the last months. Her energy was sapped; she was so tired.

  ‘I nearly wasn’t here,’ she said. ‘Well, I might not have been.’ Jayne clung to her again and shed tears into her hair.

  ‘I was so scared when you told me. Even though it was all over,’ Jayne whispered. Sue winced; she felt bad that she had thought Jayne self-centred at the time: wrapped up in herself, rather than feeling what the cancer scare might be like for Sue. ‘I mustn’t let Nigel see me like this,’ Jayne added. ‘It upsets him.’

  Tough, thought Sue. But she had not seen Jayne so constrained by another’s feelings before. Had Nigel tamed the shrew, or was she merely growing up?

  The time passed in a blur of preparing food, eating, drinking, walking it off, talking about neutral subjects – usually as a foursome. The nights and early mornings were balmy. In spite of the Singapore stopover, Sue found herself falling asleep over dinner on the terrace at dusk, yet wide awake at 3am.

  The first morning, unable to sleep again after an hour of trying, she slipped out of bed, crept down the stairs, stepping carefully to one edge of the treads, and let herself out into the garden. In the nascent dawn she sat on a wooden bench under the pear tree, halfway down the long, narrow section. Looking up, towering deciduous trees created a vista that extended beyond the confines of the fences. A bird feeder hung from the lowest branch of the pear tree, perhaps to entice the birds to eat seed-mix instead of the fruit. As the dawn expanded, Sue watched a grey squirrel run along the fence and, with a wary eye, jump across to hang upside down and steal grain from the feeder. He was so perfect, straight from a Beatrix Potter book. Sue really was in England. She could have reached out and touched the squirrel. His tiny, dark paws scooped grains from the cylinder and daintily stuffed them into his mouth, whiskers quivering and a spray of seed falling on the path. Sue sat like Lot’s wife until the small creature had eaten his fill. The still, grey air was heavy and redolent with unfamiliar birdsong.

  Sue felt a long way from home. She wondered if this might be how Brigitte had felt sitting and listening to strange birdcalls in Akaroa – bellbird, tui, karoro, morepork – on the opposite side of the world from her home, from Sue now. Did Brigitte miss her family? she wondered. Did she have family to miss? Or had she had nothing to lose?

  Sue was missing her family, even though half of it was here with her. She wondered what Jason and Charlie were doing and then thought perhaps she might rather not know. She and Ben had rung twice, but both times they were out. Rachel said they were fine and not to worry, to just enjoy themselves. Sue wondered if she could trust Rachel, but really she had no option.

  Monday would see Ben heading to South Kensington and the conference, while Sue and Jayne headed to Gatwick Airport. Jayne had succeeded in booking cheap seats to Paris and not-so-cheap seats back to London from La Rochelle.

  The sun climbed rapidly over the slate roofs of the row of semis. Sue heard a toilet flush and water gurgle through hundred-year-old pipes. Shortly, the drapes at an upstairs window were drawn back and Jayne paused in the frame, stretching, her slim waist and hip-bones displayed between pyjama top and bottom. She still looked like a child. Catching sight of Sue in her nightgown below, she pushed up the sash window, waved, and called in a stage whisper, ‘You’re up early. Didn’t you sleep?’

  Sue shook her head and gestured that it did not matter.

  ‘I’m going for a run. Before it gets too hot,’ Jayne added, glancing up at the cloudless, blue sky. ‘Want to come, Suzie?’ Sue gave her sister a benign, Madonna-like smile and gently shook her head once more. ‘Won’t be long. Make yourself a cuppa, if you want. There’s Earl Grey in the cupboard.’

  In that moment, Sue felt more like Jayne’s mother than her sister.

  Breakfast was on the terrace. ‘We may as well take advantage of the weather,’ said Nigel, as he set the table, complete with white linen napkins and silver rings.

  Sue felt ready to go back to bed, in spite of a shower and efforts to mask the dark rings under her eyes. By contrast, Jayne was bouncing and beautiful, obviously enjoying being hostess in her own home, her new house, the first they had owned. Sue felt old and dowdy. Well, she was older, but not that much – only five years. She would feel better when she was over the jetlag and her hair settled down, she reassured herself. Going to France w
ould be a welcome respite. Jayne and Sue had spent so little time in each other’s company as adults. Perhaps they would get to know one another better – now they were orphans, cut loose in the big, wide world. It was a funny feeling. Even though she was used to the pall of death, had grown into adulthood with it, the loss of two parents was exponentially greater than the loss of one. Sue had not expected it to be like this, not at her age – middle age. It was perplexing: at the same time as feeling old, she also felt more child-like; conscious of being the child of parents no longer available. Suddenly, her position as the older sibling seemed too great a responsibility. All she really wanted to do was sleep.

  The aroma of steeping coffee brought her back to present surroundings.

  ‘… made you decide to buy?’ she heard Ben say.

  ‘We had to get a foot in sometime, or it would be impossible, the way prices are going,’ Nigel explained. ‘Think of it as compulsory saving.’

  ‘That’s the accountant speaking.’ Sue noticed a sharpness in Jayne’s voice.

  ‘You agreed.’

  ‘I know. And I love it. Don’t know why we didn’t do it years ago instead of paying those astronomical rents.’

  ‘We didn’t do it because – ’

  ‘I know. I know.’ Jayne silenced Nigel with a gesture and a brittle laugh. They’d obviously been through it a million times. ‘Buying meant moving further out, into suburbia. But it’s grown on me.’

  ‘Next thing you’ll be having kids,’ said Sue. Nigel and Jayne both busied themselves in silence with the complex task of buttering toast, and Sue realised she had said the wrong thing. Obviously there was no connection between the antics they had heard last night and the task of procreation. ‘I hate to think what would happen if we had to move,’ she said in an attempt to make amends. ‘I doubt that Ben could be dug out of his study, anyway.’ She playfully punched Ben’s bare forearm, which was conveying toast, spread with shreds of translucent marmalade, to his mouth. ‘Oops. Sorry.’ She knew she had overstepped the mark. It was as if she were watching herself from some remove, able to see what was about to happen, but powerless to intervene. She seemed to be oscillating between being half asleep and over-the-top. She reached across with her serviette to wipe marmalade off his cheek.