by Liz Byrski
Adele glances at her watch hoping she won’t have to wait too long and standing as far back as she can from the man in front of her, who reeks of stale alcohol.
The assistant serves a woman with a packet of Panadol, then takes the next customer’s prescription from him and hurries up the steps to hand it over to the pharmacist while the customer joins a couple of other people standing to one side, obviously also waiting for scripts to be filled. Adele remembers now that this young woman had served her recently when she came in to get a prescription filled for Judy, and that she had been struck by her beautiful dark eyes and pale caramel complexion framed by the hijab.
The man in front of her is getting restless as the assistant serves a woman who wants to speak to the pharmacist. He turns to look behind him at Adele, stares at her then turns away again. Adele thinks he’s hungover – he certainly smells like it, his eyes are red, and although he’s wearing an expensive-looking suit it’s severely crumpled, as is his shirt, and the end of a silk tie is sticking out of his jacket pocket.
Adele watches as the next customer moves down to the counter. Now there’s only the man in the suit, then it’s her turn. She hitches the strap of her handbag, which she’s wearing crossed from shoulder to the opposite hip, and glances back at the door. No sign of the others yet.
The man in front of Adele grunts and swears. Charming, Adele thinks, taking a further step back from him, and she watches as the assistant takes the payment for the prescriptions and hands them over. Then at last the man in front of her moves down to the counter.
Adele checks over her shoulder past the people in the queue behind her and back by the door she sees Ros, Simone and Judy waiting. She waves, points to the counter then points at her chest. Judy waves and gives her the thumbs-up.
At the counter the man in the suit pulls a handful of crumpled papers from his pocket, singles out two dog-eared prescriptions and slams them down on the counter.
‘About fucking time,’ he says to the pharmacy assistant, pushing the prescriptions towards her. ‘I’ll have one of each of these.’
‘There’ll be a bit of a wait for the prescriptions, I’m afraid,’ the assistant says, and Adele, straining her eyes at the badge she’s wearing, remembers that the name on it is Neha. ‘We’re very busy today and there’s only one pharmacist on duty. Would you prefer to come back later, or tomorrow perhaps?’
‘For fuck’s sake, I want them now, so get a wriggle on. And while you’re at it you can open up the post office, I want to pay a bill and some other stuff.’
Neha maintains a completely neutral expression. ‘The pharmacist is working alone,’ she repeats. ‘I think yours will be ready in about twenty minutes, and we can only dispense this one, I’m afraid.’ She pushes the other prescription back towards him. ‘This other one has expired; you’ll need to get a new prescription from your doctor. And the post office is not open on a Sunday.’
‘Listen to me,’ the man says, leaning forward, and Adele thinks he sounds quite menacing. ‘I want my fucking tablets and I want them now. And I want things from the post office, so open it up.’ He is leaning as far as he can over the counter and reaches out to grab her wrist, but Neha sees it coming and steps back. ‘You people, you bludgers come here whenever you choose and think you can treat Australians like shit.’
Neha flinches.
Adele turns to the man behind her. ‘Could you go and say something to him,’ she says, ‘wind him down a bit?’
He stares at her briefly, then turns on his heel and heads out to the entrance.
‘Well thanks a lot for that,’ she calls after him, and the other people in the queue shuffle forward and avoid eye contact with her. Adele feels her anxiety mounting.
Neha’s face is flushed and there is fear in her eyes. ‘I can’t open the post office on Sunday,’ she says again. ‘It’s not allowed, and there are no post office staff here on Sundays. And we can’t dispense an expired prescription. I’m sorry . . .’
‘You’re sorry, are you?’ he says, pushing his face towards her.
Neha glances around as though in search of help, then looks back to where the pharmacist is now on the telephone. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, her voice shaking, ‘we can only fill the one prescription.’
Adele feels a chill creeping over her – something nasty is going to happen and no one is doing anything about it.
‘Open the Post Office!’ the man barks, reaching out in an attempt to grab her again, but she is too quick for him and steps back out of reach. Adele sees the fear and horror on Neha’s face. She feels the fear throbbing in her own chest, but there is something else, something stronger happening too. Rage is building in her now, overwhelming the fear. She steps forward, so that she is standing just behind him.
‘Hey you,’ she says loudly, ‘leave her alone. Shut up and leave her alone now, she’s only doing her job.’
He jerks back in surprise, turns and looks her up and down.
‘Mind your own business,’ he snarls, turning away again.
‘I said leave her alone.’
‘And I said fuck off, ’ he growls with his back to her.
Behind the counter Neha seems rooted to the spot.
Adele, rage seething within her, takes a step closer to him and waits, somehow knowing instinctively that he will eventually turn around again. Sensing her presence, he turns to find her still looking at him. She stares him in the eye.
‘Who do you think you are, bitch?’ he shouts, poking her in the chest with his forefinger.
She can feel his foul breath on her face, and it’s as much as she can do not to turn away, to flinch, to step back. She slips her hand into her bag, feeling for her keys, grasping them and jiggling them around until the ends of some of them protrude between the fingers of her clenched fist.
‘I’ll tell you who I am,’ she says in a voice she doesn’t recognise. ‘I’m the bitch who’s going to call the police and get you arrested.’
He makes to poke her chest again, but she holds her ground.
‘Don’t even think about it!’ she snaps. ‘Take your foul mouth, your foul breath and your disgusting racist attitude out of here.’
Everything seems to be happening in slow motion. There are just the two of them now locked in this standoff. Neha, the people in the queue watching transfixed, her friends who were heading towards her and have now stopped in their tracks, all seem irrelevant. It’s a battle of wills, and no way is she going to back down. He makes a slight move towards her and she pulls her hand out of her bag, the metal keys jutting towards him.
‘Make one more move and I’ll have your eyes.’ She sees a flicker of uncertainty cross his face.
There is a moment of absolute stillness between them, and Adele maintains her unwavering eye contact. Then, quite suddenly, he shoves his way past her and strides back out through the shop.
Adele stands there, unable to move; the fear is surrendering to relief and then, quite suddenly, she is consumed in a fierce and powerful rush of triumph that leaves her reeling. As it subsides she sighs, like a rapidly deflating tyre, rocking back on her feet, swaying perilously, and Simone grabs her arm and steers her to a nearby chair.
‘Did I do that?’ she asks. ‘Did I really do that?’
‘You did it,’ Simone says. ‘You were amazing.’
‘Amazing,’ Judy says, looking anxiously into Adele’s face.
Neha drops down beside the chair and reaches for her hand. ‘Thank you so much,’ she says, with tears in her eyes. ‘I was terrified and you were so brave.’
‘You were so strong and calm,’ Adele says. ‘That made me strong too.’
Neha shakes her head. ‘In my heart I was dying,’ she says. ‘And you were the only person who would speak for me.’ She looks up at the other three. ‘I will always remember your friend,’ she says, getting to her feet again. ‘Always,
’ and she bursts into tears and rushes off behind the counter to the back of the shop.
For Adele everything now becomes a bit blurred. People are patting her on the back, shaking her hand, talking about what happened, but she is longing to get out of there, to be in the fresh air. Finally they escape and wander slowly back to the car, where they pack their market purchases, along with the wine, cheese and other nibbles, into the boot, and climb into their seats. Since they left the pharmacy silence has descended on them and Adele feels strangely flat, as though all her energy has been sucked from her.
Simone buckles her seatbelt and starts the engine. ‘So – is it home now?’ she asks, and they mumble in agreement. She slips the car into reverse but Ros, in the passenger seat, puts a hand on her arm to stop her.
‘Hang on,’ she says, ‘hang on. You just did an amazingly courageous thing, Adele: you took on a nasty, vicious bully and you won! That’s a triumph, and we’re all sitting here like half-dead fish when we should be celebrating, not sloping quietly off home.’
‘Good point,’ Simone says, twisting round in the driver’s seat to look at Judy and Adele.
‘We should go to the pub, get plastered, dance on the bar,’ Ros says.
Adele laughs. ‘I don’t think I’m quite up to that,’ she says, but her mind is revving up again now and she is starting to feel the satisfaction of having won something significant. ‘But I’d love a gin and tonic or three. Judy?’
‘I could murder one,’ Judy says, ‘but what about the book club?’
‘We can talk about Unless in the pub,’ Ros says. ‘It’s pretty straightforward, and it’s very pertinent to Adele’s victory this afternoon.’
‘Is it?’ Adele asks.
‘Of course it is.’
‘Oh do let’s do it,’ Simone says. ‘We’ll probably be in time for the Sunday session, and the prospect of gin has got me going.’ And she swings the car around, and they roar off out of the car park and up the hill to the pub.
‘I hope you all wrote your sentences about Unless and can remember them,’ Adele says, feeling the excitement bubbling within her.
‘I have mine,’ Ros says.
‘Me too,’ says Simone.
‘Mine’s on a piece of paper in my handbag,’ Judy says.
A few minutes later they pile out of the car, and Ros fronts up to the bar and orders the first round.
Chapter Seventeen
As Adele sips her drink she wonders if the way she feels is what people mean when they say they feel unworldly; not out of body or anything like that, but as though the world has dislodged her, thrown her up in the air and she is still suspended somewhere, waiting to land. A bit like a plane circling an airport waiting until it can descend onto the tarmac. The incident in the pharmacy runs through her head again, and she remembers not just the relief, but that sudden brief flash of triumph that raced like a bolt of heat through her body and left her reeling.
‘We should start on Unless,’ Ros says, eventually, ‘but we should get another round in to see us through it.’
Adele wonders whether she is capable of talking about the book and, glancing at her watch, she sees that they’ve been there for half an hour and she hasn’t heard any of the conversation so far.
‘Another gin for you, Adele?’ Judy asks. ‘Are you still with us?’
‘She’s in there somewhere, in shock probably,’ Simone says. ‘Do you think you’ll be all right with another drink?’
‘I’m feeling fine and I definitely want another drink,’ Adele says, forcing herself into the present, and putting her empty glass down on the table.
‘My round,’ Judy says, getting up. ‘Same again, everyone?’
‘I think we should also have some food to soak up the booze,’ Ros says. ‘We can do cheese and wine another night.’ She scans the menu and stands up. ‘How about I order a big bowl of fries and some chicken nuggets, then we can all pick at those?’
‘Meanwhile I’ll just pop out to the bathroom,’ Simone says, getting up.
Adele is left alone at the table, thinking of the moment when, standing transfixed, she suddenly decided to act. But did I actually decide? she wonders now. Did I stand there making a decision or did it just happen? She can’t remember weighing it up and thinking, oh yes, I’ll do this now. She can’t remember whether she even paused for a second thought. All she can remember is the compulsion that drove her, and the way she felt when he turned on his heel and walked away. What really happened to me, what did he see in me in that moment when he backed off? she wonders. And she holds that moment in her head: the fear, the triumph, the way he turned away looking straight ahead, past the onlookers and out of the door. And she feels again the sense of power that surged through her just before her legs seemed to weaken and she thought she was going to collapse. That was me, she tells herself, really me, no one telling me or urging me, it was all me. And that’s who I could . . . who I can be. And the realisation makes her feel at first giddy, then joyous, as though something that has for so long been bearing down on her has suddenly lifted and set her free.
‘Off you go then, Adele,’ Ros says when they are all back at the table. ‘Food will be along shortly.’
Adele takes a deep breath. ‘I’ve had trouble working out where to begin talking about this book,’ she says, ‘because although I love it I feel something in it is evading me. I can’t quite pull it together. But maybe I’ll start by telling you something about myself, so you’ll understand why it’s so significant for me. I’ll start with my father. He was very much a man of his time and his need for control was of epic proportions. He was the youngest of three brothers but his older siblings both died during the war. He’d wanted to join the air force, but because of a weakness in his lungs none of the services would sign him up. I think he saw that as failure, because he seemed obsessed with trying to prove himself in other ways, and although he was very successful in business and civic affairs it was never quite enough. He couldn’t bear to be in the wrong, couldn’t tolerate disagreement, or having anyone question him. He believed that my mother “let him down badly”, and I’m emphasising that because those were his exact words every time he spoke of it. “She let me down badly.”’ Adele she sighs, shakes her head. ‘What actually happened was that she had a heart attack and died just a few hours after I was born. And of course she had also let him down by producing a daughter when he’d desperately wanted a son.’
‘Oh my god,’ Ros says, ‘that’s appalling. Your mother let him down by dying?’
‘That was his reality,’ Adele says, realising that she is now actually enjoying telling her story. In fact she’s enjoying being the centre of attention. ‘He liked women, but only when they were doing what he wanted, and when they “knew their place”.
‘He hired a woman to live in and look after me. Her name was Barbara, and she was a very sweet person. She lived with us until soon after I started boarding school when I was twelve; I came home for the holidays and Barbara was gone. Dad said she’d had to leave to go back to her family in Perth. I was sure it wasn’t true, because she’d been writing to me until two weeks earlier and she would have warned me if she was making a choice like that. I was sure he’d sent her away. When I was in my twenties and living with my aunt, my mother’s sister, in Perth, I managed to find Barbara. She told me that they’d had an affair and he apparently thought she must have told someone because people started talking in the bank. One day he was in the men’s toilet and the chairman of the board came in, slapped him on the back and made a joke about him fucking the help. He told her about it that night and said she had to leave the next morning. He paid her fare back to her family in Perth and gave her money to stay away. He told her he couldn’t have it known that he was involved with a servant. A servant! This was the early sixties! I should have mentioned that he was a terrible snob, as were his parents, and appearances were everything.’
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‘It sounds like an Edwardian novel,’ Ros says.
‘Anyway, I was devastated, especially as he replaced Barbara with a much older woman, Mrs Richards, who is the only person I’ve ever met who could honestly be described as hatchet-faced. She was humourless, haughty and behaved as though it was beneath her dignity to have taken the job.’
Adele pauses, realising that until now, the only person to whom she has told all this is Jenna. She has a strange and rather pleasant sense of the story unwinding, and herself unwinding along with it. The others are watching her, waiting for her to go on. There is no disapproval or embarrassment in their faces.
‘Dad stayed out of the house whenever he could,’ she continues, ‘and I had to eat most of my meals with Mrs Richards. She took me shopping for clothes that seemed to be made for someone of her age rather than mine. I was always hugely relieved when it was time to go back to school and I could wear my uniform most of the time.’
‘Was he kind to you, though, your father?’ Judy interjects. ‘Was he at all loving?’
‘I believe he loved me in his own way, which was stern and demanding. He had no idea of fun, or how to be with a child or a teenager, he wasn’t physically affectionate, but I do believe he wanted to do his best for me,’ Adele says. ‘But he was a hopeless man in many ways; for example, he had an unfortunate habit of saying that I must never think that it was my fault that my mother died as she did. He said it so often that it had the opposite effect! Oh, and he named me Adele because he had recently won a seat on the Adelaide City Council, and he was confident he would become mayor, which he eventually did.’
‘Crikey, that all adds up to a pretty stressful childhood,’ Ros says. ‘You must be tough to have emerged from that, Adele.’
‘Well emerge I did, but I’m sure you can understand where my anxiety and my need to please everyone comes from. I wasn’t the son he wanted and I could only ever be second best. I tried very hard, for a very long time, to be what he wanted, although it was far from what I wanted, which was to have a husband and a big family, and live in a comfortable house where people were always welcome. I envied the other girls at school who went home in the holidays to what I thought of as normal homes, with parents who were kind and funny, and took them to the zoo or the beach or away on holidays. Parents who cuddled them and praised them; mothers who cried when they dropped them back at school after the holidays.’