by Nicole Trope
‘You have a responsibility to these children,’ Mum would shout at him, and then he would be home in time to read me a story for a lot of nights.
‘My mum is angry and crying,’ I told Mr Winslow.
‘Why is she angry and crying?’ he said. He wasn’t like other grown-ups. He didn’t pretend he hadn’t heard me and he didn’t say, ‘Oh, I’m sure she’s not.’ He asked why and then he listened when I told him that my dad didn’t want two little girls anymore.
‘Don’t worry, little one. You can stay here until your mum feels better,’ he said, and then he poured me some Coke and put a straw in the glass. He took me to his study. He let me sit on his lap. He stroked my hair. His stroking made me feel sleepy and nice.
‘My daddy has gone away,’ I told him again.
‘I know he has, angel. I know he has.’
‘Are you going away?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I will always be here. Daddies shouldn’t leave their little girls.’
I looked up into his eyes, his blue, blue eyes, and I smiled.
He put his hands on my legs and I was happy to stay on his lap forever. He read his letters and he wrote things down but he let me stay on his lap. Daddy had never let me stay on his lap when he was busy. But Mr Winslow’s hand stayed warm on my leg. I didn’t mind that my dad had gone away then. I thought maybe he could be my dad.
‘Whatever is going on?’ said Mrs Winslow. She was standing at the door to his study.
‘Oh, my dear,’ he said, and I remember he said that because he always said that. ‘My dear, it seems Albert has left his family. Ellie is feeling unwell. Perhaps you could go over and see her?’
‘Come with me,’ she said to me, and she held out her hand and I had to go back to my house where Mum was angry and crying.
‘Oh, Ellie, this is just dreadful,’ she said to Mum. ‘Is there anything I can do for you, anything at all?’
‘Nothing,’ said Mum. ‘There’s nothing anyone can do. The bastard has just ruined my life.’
‘Shall I feed the children so you can have a rest?’ Mrs Winslow said.
‘Yes,’ said Mum. ‘Yes, please.’
I helped her find the plates. ‘What a good little helper you are,’ Mrs Winslow said, but I knew she was lying. If I was really a good helper then Mum wouldn’t be angry and crying and Dad wouldn’t have gone away because he didn’t want two little girls.
‘Birdy, it’s lunch,’ shouts Jess. I’m still standing in the cage. Sometimes I forget where I am and I have to remember.
I open the door of the cage slowly so the finches will stay calm and I walk out. I see Rose take off her hat and laugh at Jess. Sometimes Jess is funny, but I don’t want Rose to laugh at her. I don’t want Rose to laugh at anything.
Chapter Eight
Today we’re digging up the potatoes. It’s very satisfying. I wish now that I’d thought to have a vegetable garden at home. There was no reason why I couldn’t have had one. Perhaps when I get back home I could plant one. The area where the aviary stood is probably a good spot. It gets enough sun but is also shaded by the large gum tree in the yard. Simon had a concrete slab poured to be the base of the cage, so I will have to get that pulled up.
‘It’s to stop the rats getting into the cage,’ he told me. ‘They come for the seeds but aren’t above taking eggs and babies. Sometimes they bite the feet of birds that get too close.’
I sold all the finches back to the pet shop after Simon died. I couldn’t bear to look at them.
‘But Dad loved them,’ said Rosalind. ‘How could you have just got rid of them?’
‘I didn’t dispose of them, Rosalind. I sold them back to the pet shop. I’m sure they will go to good homes with people who know how to take care of them. They need a lot of care, and with everything going on at the moment I just don’t have the time or the energy.’
‘You could have asked me,’ said Rosalind. ‘I would have brought Sam over every day. He loved them as well. You can’t just eradicate Dad from our lives, you know. Have you thrown all his clothes away yet? Have you?’
‘Please, darling, I’m sorry I upset you. I can get the birds back. I haven’t thrown anything away. I miss him too.’
‘Do you?’ she said. ‘Do you really?’ It was the first time she had seemed angry at me; well, the first time since it happened. Both she and Portia have been a great comfort. In the first few nightmarish days after it happened, Rosalind slept next to me in my bed, soothing me when I woke. ‘It was an accident, Mum, you didn’t mean it, you didn’t mean it.’
It was inevitable, I suppose, that Rosalind would begin to question me. She has done her best not to, but I’m sure there are dark nights of the soul when she wonders about the truth. I could tell her. I could explain, but if I do she will have to know everything, and then it seems to me that I will be taking her father away from her again. To lose him to death was one thing, but to lose the memory she has of him would be worse, I think.
‘Make sure you get all of them out,’ says Jess to Mina and me.
I’m using a garden fork, pushing down hard with my foot and lifting the plant, and then Mina scrabbles around in the dirt finding the tubers. In the vegetable garden it’s easy to pretend I’m somewhere else—somewhere far away from here.
I have to cook tonight. It will be pasta again because that’s cheap and filling. I tried to think of a different sauce to use but so far I haven’t managed to come up with anything. We don’t have much to use for flavour beyond salt and pepper, and even though we have chilli I’m not sure I can use it. Everyone’s tastes are different. I’ve been here for almost a week but I still haven’t had a real conversation with any of the women in my unit. At first I thought it was because they were intimidated by my level of . . . of infamy, but now I think that they may just not be interested. Perhaps it is because women come and go so quickly here, or maybe they have their own concerns. I would like to have someone to talk to, but it seems it is not to be. I am so very different from these women. I’m pleased that I wear the same clothes as they do; at least until I open my mouth I am one of them.
Jess is happy to leave me to work on my own. She can see I know what I’m doing. I’ve always had an affinity for gardening. There’s a certain peace that comes from touching the soft underside of a petal. Vegetables are more sturdy, more serious, but flourish the same way with the right amount of love.
Busy hands are good for contemplation.
Rob has lodged the appeal and he’s certain we’ll have you out soon, Portia wrote in last night’s email.
Why are you calling him Rob? I wrote back.
Oh, Mother, she replied.
I know what that ‘oh, Mother’ means. Portia has fallen in love again. She has a habit of doing that, and of course she is so beautiful that men are happy to fall in love right back. There must be something illegal or immoral about falling in love with your mother’s barrister, but I know there’s no use in trying to persuade her to leave Robert alone. In truth, I’m a little jealous. I wouldn’t have minded getting the chance to fall in love with Robert myself. I have to keep reminding myself that that part of my life is over. I’m still young enough to find someone else, I suppose, but I’ve never been with another man. Being touched by someone other than Simon is unthinkable. Rob and Portia will make a beautiful couple, and if they have babies . . . Silly of me to think like that. Every time Portia mentions a new man I imagine her having babies. I don’t think she wants children. She is a dedicated social worker and sees ‘exactly how fucked up families can get’.
Portia likes to swear. Most of her sentences are punctuated with the word ‘fuck’. But she rarely swore in front of Simon. When she did so as a teenager, he would gasp and his face would flush a deep red. ‘You were not raised in the gutter, Portia,’ he said. He prided himself on never using an expletive, and I only remember it happening once, when he was very angry.
On that day the girls were both at school. I had left Simon inside the house talking
to someone who, I had assumed, was from work, on the phone. I was on my knees pushing a new rose bush into place when I heard yelling from inside the house. I stopped, shocked. Simon never yelled. If he was angry he would lower his voice and speak slowly. There was a moment of silence and then the yelling started again. I got off my knees and threw my garden gloves onto the ground. Back in the house I hurried over to his study but when I got there I was confronted with a closed door. I hesitated for a moment, listening. His voice was loud and coarse. He didn’t sound like himself at all.
‘You tell that fucker to check his facts before he accuses me of anything. You tell him I’ll fucking make sure that he never works in this town again. You fucking tell him that, you hear me?’
What alarmed me more than the swearing was his unfamiliar broad Australian accent. Even the pitch of his voice had dropped. He could have been an entirely different man. I touched the door and then turned away quickly and went back to the garden.
When I came in again an hour later he was seated in his favourite armchair in the living room with a whisky at his elbow and his collection of Shakespeare on his lap.
‘A little early for a drink, isn’t it?’ I said.
‘I suppose it is, my dear, but today has been a little trying.’
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing that you need to be concerned about—silly stuff from the studio, but it’s all sorted out now. Shall we go out to dinner? Will it be possible to get a babysitter, do you think?’
I could have asked, could have told him I had heard his shouting and pushed for an explanation, but I didn’t. I don’t know why I didn’t. It may have been fear of what his answer would be, or it may have been something else. Maybe I didn’t want to know.
I liked to believe that everything at his work, after many years of struggling, was going well. I didn’t want him to be like all the other men I knew, filled with some unexplainable rage from their forays into the world that had to be forever tempered by the women in their lives. I had watched my mother soothe and placate my father after an argument with his supervisor, and he was fairly mild compared to the fathers of friends. I watched my friend Joan pacify her husband through virtually every dinner we ever went to. I would see her catch a waiter’s eye, pat Myron’s hand and order him a drink whenever he began complaining about the food or the service. She never seemed to enjoy her own food and was visibly relieved when the dinner was over and Myron had not caused a fuss. Over lunch, we all agreed that the men we were married to were overworked. They came home tired and grouchy and needing to relax. They were, none of them, violent men. They just needed to be kept happy. They paid the bills. They went out to work while we stayed home. I nodded along with everyone, sometimes . . . how ridiculous I feel thinking about it now, but sometimes feeling smug at Simon’s equanimity.
It was a different generation, I suppose. But I didn’t want my husband to be like all the other Australian husbands. I wanted him to be Simon. I enjoyed the picture he painted of a fawning staff and high ratings. I struggled enough with the balancing act between him and the children. It felt exhausting to take on any problems he was having at work. I remember thinking, If he doesn’t wish to discuss it then it must not be a real problem. Naive of me. Terribly, terribly naive.
I let him be the man he wanted to be and did not think to question who he really was, and on the rare occasion when I did I quickly took my mind elsewhere. Maybe all of this is my fault. My tacit acceptance of his well-constructed facade may have allowed him to do the things he did, but even now I’m not sure what good confronting him would have done.
The truth is that my life was easier when Simon was happy, so I cooked the food he liked, I dressed the way he liked, I read the books he recommended and I guided him gently through his relationship with the girls. Portia and Simon didn’t get along. Portia has been fighting the world since the day she came into it. As soon as she was old enough, she simply added her father to the list.
‘Why must she fight me on everything?’ Simon said when she was a teenager. ‘She’s never quiet when she can make a noise, never compliant when she can be argumentative. I simply have no idea what to say to her.’
‘She’s just being a teenager,’ I said. ‘All teenagers are obnoxious.’
‘This is more than that, my dear. Every time she looks at me I can feel her judging me and finding me wanting. She is so different to Rosalind. Rosalind’s eyes still light up when she sees me. She is so interested in what I have to say and she loves hearing about my day. Portia barely speaks to me except to fight with me.’
‘Oh, Simon,’ I said, and then I would go and find Portia and force her to apologise to her father for the argument they had just had. I didn’t like to see him unhappy. Was that so very wrong? Does that make me an awful person? Not asking him about the incident in his study was just one more way of keeping him happy. He didn’t want to discuss it so we didn’t discuss it.
Portia is very perceptive, more so than either Rosalind or me. She reads people well, and now when I think back I wonder if she saw something we didn’t. She was never able to articulate it—or at least she never did so to me—but perhaps Portia understood from a very young age that her father was not the man he presented to the world.
I think she misses him, I know she misses him but she doesn’t want to talk about him at all. I know theirs was a fraught relationship, and I’m sure, I think I’m sure, that it was nothing more than a clash of personalities. Portia was as aghast as Rosalind and I were when the allegations about Simon first surfaced. If he had done anything to her, anything at all, I’m sure she would have yelled and screamed her distress at the time. It is perhaps a false level of comfort I allow myself, but I don’t think Simon was anything other than a father to our daughters.
He was surrounded by children all day long, and I feel dreadful for thinking it but I do take a deep breath every now and again and say a little prayer of thanks that he chose to look outside our home. Self-preservation above all else, I suppose. Sacrifice is all well and good in theory, but in the end the pain of a stranger does not have the same impact that the pain of a loved one does. I know that for certain people—people like Portia—the pain of others motivates them to try to change the world. I am not that way inclined. I hope he never looked inside our home; I hope . . . I hope he left this world before that happened.
Portia cried almost nonstop for the first few months after she was born.
‘Rose, is there nothing you can do about her?’ Simon would say, and then I would cry too because I was so sleep-deprived and so out of my depth. I was only seventeen, after all. Far too young to be a wife and a mother. Especially a wife and a mother with no support. I had left my parents behind, thinking myself Juliet to Simon’s Romeo. They were horrified at the age gap.
I met Simon when I was just fifteen. The first time I saw him I giggled, he was so unbelievably handsome. Not handsome like Robert, who has a strong jaw and permanent stubble, but softer, prettier, almost beautiful like a woman. He came to my school along with a whole group of actors to perform Shakespeare. He was Macbeth. I was standing at the back of the school hall because there were not enough seats, and he walked onto the stage and took my breath away. I remember running my finger over my lips, imagining how soft his mouth would be.
I was standing next to my friend Lulu, who at fifteen was almost a different species to me. Her breasts were large and her hips already looked as though they were preparing for babies. I was stick thin with two slight bumps on my chest. I hated everything about myself. My mother refused to let me cut my hair, so it hung straight down over my chest to my waist in a braid. I was an only child raised by overprotective parents who still carried thick Polish accents. They had never really adjusted to their new country. My mother found the heat too much and the Australian accent almost impossible to understand. They wanted to keep me safely wrapped up until they found a nice Polish boy for me to marry. I, of course, was desperate to escape.
&nbs
p; ‘He’s cute,’ said Lulu as we watched Simon roar at the witches.
‘Mmm,’ I said, unable to trust myself to open my mouth.
The play finished in the blink of an eye, and when Simon took his solo bow I thought he looked straight at me and smiled. I felt a stone lodge itself in my throat at the thought of having to leave his presence.
‘You can help serve tea to the actors,’ said Mrs Bennet, the English teacher, to Lulu and me as we were herded out of the hall. I was often chosen to serve tea to school visitors, because I always managed to make myself unobtrusive. Lulu was only sent along because she was with me. She talked too much and laughed loudly. Perhaps Mrs Bennet thought I would keep her in line.
I was giddy with joy as Lulu and I ran to the staffroom. I almost clapped my hands at the thought that I would have more time to drink in the actor’s beauty. I was going to say something to Lulu, but she spoke first.
‘The guy who played Macbeth is all mine,’ she whispered.
‘He must be a lot older than we are,’ I said evasively.
‘Who cares? Not me,’ said Lulu. I swallowed my disappointment. I knew I had no chance with him anyway.
I was put in charge of the rusty old urn, and Lulu went around the staffroom with the biscuits. ‘His name’s Simon Winslow and he’s thirty-one,’ she whispered to me after her first circuit of the room.
‘He’s an actor during the day but he works as a waiter at night,’ she said as she passed me a second time. I had to bite down on my lip to keep from giggling. I knew that Lulu would keep going up to him until someone stopped her. He’d had five biscuits by the time the rest of the actors began to return their teacups and get ready to leave.
As he placed his teacup on the counter, I took one last look at him, hoping to remember his features for future daydreams.