The Question of Love

by Hugh Mackay

  Anyway, here she was – a very pleasant, very confident young woman, apparently unbowed by the burden of their shared history. And he was, after all, still her father. There was no getting around that.

  ‘We thought we might go out for something to eat,’ said Freya, and for a moment Richard thought she meant just her and Angie. He was initially offended, then relieved, then aware that he was mistaken. The three of them were apparently going together to ‘a little place in Glebe’ that Angie knew about.

  ‘My shout,’ said Angie, and that surprised both Richard and Freya. ‘I have some news.’

  Freya glanced at Richard and silenced his question with a slight frown and a quick shake of the head.

  ‘Lovely,’ she said to Angie. ‘Do you want to come back here to sleep, or will you stay in town?’

  ‘No – I wouldn’t inflict that on you. Think of the morning. I’m already installed at my hotel.’

  This felt to Richard like a rather off-key exchange, as if the spontaneity was a little staged. He even wondered if the visit had been set up some days ago. Then he wondered if he were becoming paranoid. And then he decided it didn’t matter either way. Here she was. And he was still her father.

  Freya fed Rondo. Richard went upstairs to change into something more casual. Angie mooched into the living room, flopped into an armchair and scrolled through her messages.

  After a few minutes, they reassembled and piled into Freya’s Alfa.

  ‘So,’ said Angie, after their meals had been served and the small talk was out of the way. Richard noticed that Angie was prefacing many of her sentences with ‘so’ these days.

  ‘I said I had some news. It’s big news actually. Couldn’t be bigger.’

  Richard and Freya looked at each other, both processing the same set of assumptions, supported by Angie’s refusal of wine.

  ‘So Al and I are pregnant.’

  ‘Both of you?’ said Richard, before he could check himself.

  ‘Oh, Dad,’ said Angie, too happy to be irritated.

  ‘That’s wonderful news,’ said Freya, scarcely able to control the maelstrom suddenly swirling within. So easy for them. Just like that! She kept a smile on her face, as broad as she could manage. ‘When?’

  ‘Pretty close to Christmas. Not ideal, I realise. But these things don’t always go according to plan.’

  Indeed they do not, thought Freya.

  ‘Actually,’ Angie said with a giggle, ‘we were a bit surprised by this. It’s not exactly unplanned, but certainly unexpected.’

  Too much information, thought Richard.

  She’s bragging about her fertility, thought Freya. Okay, so she came off the pill and bingo! Very clever.

  This doesn’t feel as warm as I expected, thought Angie.

  ‘How does Al feel about it?’ said Richard, struggling for something to say that might sound solicitous.

  ‘Oh, Al’s over the moon. He’s already drawing up lists of names.’

  ‘Avoid names beginning with A,’ said Richard, managing to mystify both women equally. ‘And go for a short name.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Well . . . Angelina, Alexander . . . isn’t that enough four-syllable names beginning with A for one family?’ He sensed he had lost his audience.

  ‘You’re well, obviously,’ said Freya, trying to calm herself. ‘Glowing, in fact. We should have guessed!’

  You’re glowing, and you’re not pregnant, Richard was thinking to himself. At least I hope you’re not. Surely not.

  ‘There’s more.’

  ‘What, twins?’ Richard asked.

  Richard really is in a strange mood, thought Freya.

  ‘No, no. Nothing like that. This is not IVF, Dad.’

  Don’t rub it in, thought Freya.

  ‘So, Al and I are moving to Sydney. We’ll be here before the baby is born. He’s got a promotion that involves a transfer, and I’ve already started talking to Sydney travel agencies. We’ll rent something around here – Glebe, Annandale – so we’ll practically be neighbours.’ Angie said this with a lilt.

  ‘This is all very exciting, I must say,’ said Freya, quite pleased to be living even as far away as Birchgrove; too far from Glebe to walk there and back with a pram.

  ‘Al says having grandparents around is so important for the baby’s sense of emotional security. You know, being part of a family? And what with Al’s dad having passed and his mother being so unwell . . . and of course Mum and Fitzy are basically going to travel for the next few years. They’re talking about semi-settling in Bali?’ A little frown; almost a pout. When she became earnest, Angie sometimes reverted to her teenage habit of giving statements the cadence of questions. ‘Mum doesn’t actually seem as pleased as I thought she’d be? She even said she’s not ready to be a grandmother. Came right out and said it? I bet she’ll change her tune when the baby arrives. But, whatever, they won’t be living in Sydney. Mum says she can’t bear the place?’

  As this monologue wound on, Richard found himself trying to imagine being a grandfather. Freya found herself calculating how long it would take Angie to bring up the subject of child care. She would need to understand, right from the start, that Richard and Freya were fully committed to their careers. It was Angie’s and Al’s baby – not theirs. (But where was theirs?)

  Richard’s first wife will become a grandmother, whether she likes it or not, thought Freya. No hiding place for her. Or for Richard, God help him. But me? I won’t be anyone’s grandmother. The child has two grandmothers already. Step-grandmother? Me? At my age? And with no baby of my own?

  Freya excused herself and went to the washroom, where she looked in the mirror at this potential step-grandmother who so desperately wanted to be an actual mother, no matter how complicated the process. But all she saw were the tears rolling down her cheeks.

  Later, in bed, Richard said: ‘Looks as if we’re going to have a baby around the house, after all.’

  ‘Don’t you mean two babies, Richard?’

  ‘Come on, Frey. Can’t we drop that? Especially now.’

  ‘The lovely Dr Costa awaits your call. She’ll handle everything. Just say the word.’

  26

  A Letter from Mother

  Wentworth NSW

  1 May 1977

  My dear little Richie,

  Forgive me, I know you’re not little – far from it – fifteen in a few months – almost a man! But you’ll always be ‘dear little Richie’ to me.

  Things have not gone well for me, but that’s no reason why they can’t go well for you. I am very proud of you, and I want you to do your very best at everything you do. When I think of that wonderful school and those lovely friends you have – Russell and Geoff and that other one – I know this is the right thing to do.

  This is no place for you out here – or for me, I realise. Uncle Eric and Aunty Iris have been very kind, but they have their own life here – their friends and their church and everything – and I don’t really fit in with any of that. I feel like a fish out of water, to be honest. Nowhere feels right for me now.

  The job Uncle Eric lined up for me hasn’t worked out. Uncle Eric has promised me that he will keep paying Grandma Davis for your board, so I can relax about that and so can you. He will include pocket money for you. I haven’t always been fair to Uncle Eric, but he has been a good husband to Aunty Iris and she says he is a good father to their girls when they come home for the holidays. He will be a good uncle to you.

  Uncle Eric will keep you informed of eventualities. I am enclosing a photo of you and me on that last ferry ride we had.

  There’s a poem I want you to read. Grandma Davis might have it in a book of poetry in that little bookcase in her sewing room. Or you could definitely find it in the school library. It’s called ‘Requiem’, by Robert Louis Stevenson. I want you to read it slowly, especially the line, where it says: ‘Here he lies where he long’d to be’. Where he long’d to be! Isn’t that a wonderful thought? Peace at last.
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  Much love,

  Mother x

  27

  If Only . . .

  If only Richard would share more. He’s a dear person in many ways, but so, so stitched up. When I catch little glimpses of his life before he met me, my heart is often torn. And yet I want to shake him. Why won’t he open up? Why won’t he share? His mother’s letter, for instance. He has kept that letter from me for twelve years of marriage and only brought it out when I finally snapped over his endless, endless ‘home is the sailor’ ritual. Once I read the letter, it changed everything, of course. Now I feel like joining in (though I won’t – he’d be too self-conscious). Richard was only fourteen when he received that letter, and I think he was simply dazed by the whole episode. I asked him why he didn’t ring his mum in Wentworth, but apparently he felt Grandma Davis wouldn’t want him to use the phone . . . it’s hard to imagine what life was like back then. I wasn’t even born when Richard’s world fell apart. He still thinks the letter was ambiguous – surely he can see now that it was a suicide note. I guess he doesn’t want to face it. He claims he doesn’t really know what happened to his mother. He didn’t go to the funeral; he’s not even sure there was one. And he simply refuses to talk about his father. I assume he’s dead, too, by now.

  If only I had paid more attention to my mother’s letter. I waited far too long to show it to Freya and I must admit I was shocked by her reaction. She was very sympathetic – don’t get me wrong. She is basically a very sympathetic person, even though she can be quite acerbic. But she just immediately concluded my mother had committed suicide and wanted to know why I had never told her. She assumed I had always known and been too ashamed to tell her, or whatever. Actually, I had not known, and I still don’t know. The whole thing remains shrouded in mystery. At the time, Grandma Davis – never what you would call an open woman – froze right up and said how sad it was, and how we must make the best of it. Looking back, that seems a bit cold – a bit weird, even. But she was weird. She was my mother’s stepmother and only came onto the scene when my mother was a teenager, so perhaps they were never close. I admit I was already getting a bit tired of ‘making the best of it’ in Grandma Davis’s appallingly oppressive house, though I stuck it out until the end of year twelve, when my father’s second wife found me digs in a student hostel near the university. It took Freya to point out to me that the date of my mother’s death, according to the notice in the local paper sent to me by Uncle Eric – which I had also kept – was the same as the date on the letter. So she died the day she wrote it. Whether by her own hand or not, who knows? Frey certainly thinks so. Frey thinks we should take a trip out to Wentworth to find my mother’s grave, possibly visit Uncle Eric in his nursing home. Closure, she says. I don’t know. I was more attached to my mother’s sister Iris than to Eric, but she died not long after my mother did. It was all a long time ago. I got over it. I’m a very different person now. I need to be.

  If only I could bring myself to tell Richard about my weekly sessions with Megan. He’s never home during the day so he doesn’t know I sneak off every Thursday morning to see her. (Why did I say ‘sneak off’? I’m not ashamed of it. It’s just that, for some reason, I can’t tell Richard, even though I’d expect to be told if he was seeing a therapist.) If he rang on the landline, he’d assume I was at rehearsal or a meeting, off for my daily swim, or maybe just shopping. Even if he was here when I went out, he wouldn’t pry. He’s interested in what I do, but he doesn’t ever pry. I just wish I had told him in the beginning. I don’t know . . . it would be an awkward conversation. He would think it was all about him, and it isn’t all about him. Well, not all about him. It is about him, and it’s about Daniel, and the whole Baby Question, and Angelina moving to Sydney and bringing her baby right into the middle of our lives, and my mother being unable to cope with what Felicity has become – symbolised by her ratty new name, Duskia – and Mum and Richard never quite managing to relax with each other. Oh, and it’s about Fern and Mike and their two distressingly adorable children . . . and of course it’s about the quartet and what will become of us, and what will become of me. Is it going to be such a struggle professionally forever? I know Richard would be hurt if he thought there was this great long list of things I needed to talk about that I couldn’t talk about with him. Well, I do talk about them with him, but he’s a solutions man.

  If only I could be more open with Frey. But, as she herself says, it takes two to tango. I sometimes find her quite secretive, in fact; quite evasive.

  If only Richard were more like Daniel. More open and demonstrative and, well . . . passionate, I guess.

  If only Freya could relax and accept that we have a pretty solid life together. I’d say this was a good marriage. This is not a bad way to live. We have friends. We both have jobs we love. We have a house that anyone would be proud to live in, let alone to own. But there’s always this sense in Frey that there must be something more, something more . . . something just out of reach.

  If only Daniel were more like Richard. More in control of himself. More responsible. More reliable. And, to be honest, a bit better at what he does. I think his future lies in arranging, not performing.

  If only I had kissed Angelina. No, not my daughter; the girl I took to the year ten formal. (My daughter is named after her, though her mother never knew why I was so keen on that name.) I remember being amazed when she said she’d come with me. It was all arranged through a friend. She was a spectacularly beautiful girl, but I’m afraid I was an emotional mess at that point in my life. My parents and everything, plus the whole puberty thing – the agony of concealing erections that came unbidden, especially in the presence of someone like Angelina. There’s no way I could have risked the embarrassment of pressing myself against her. Better not even to attempt a kiss. But if only I had, I might have been spared the humiliation of everyone finding out that I hadn’t. I thought it rather cruel of her to let that be known.

  *

  If only I had never slept with Daniel. He thinks that gives him the right, forever more, to a special kind of intimacy with me. The truth is, Daniel was hopeless in bed. We were both very young and totally inexperienced, of course. But even so.

  If only Briggs hadn’t developed this thing about Freya. It started when he watched her diving for Philip’s shoe and then scrambling back onto the boat. Her undies were saturated, of course, and practically transparent. I didn’t like everyone seeing that, but I expected a bit of discretion. Averted eyes. None of that from Briggs, though. ‘That woman has a bottom like a peach,’ he said when he saw her in the water, before he’d discovered she was my wife. Why did he have to choose those particular words? Then writing to her. My fault. I gave him her email address – what else could I do when he asked in the way he did? I just hope he doesn’t push her any further, or she’ll react very badly. The tragedy is, Madrigo has lost a lot of its appeal to me now. Knowing what’s going on in Briggs’s mind, the dream has turned to ashes, rather. I guess he won’t pull out, and all the design work is done, so it will still be a fabulous project, but I find I’ve lost heart. I don’t want anything to do with Briggs or his money, yet I’m stuck with it. Amazing how one thing like this can change your perspective so radically. I hadn’t realised my attachment to Freya was so protective until this happened. It reinforced that Freya means everything to me. To say she’s my top priority would be to suggest, mistakenly, that there is any remotely comparable priority. Does ‘protective’ ever feel to her like ‘possessive’? I hope not, though I can see there’s a fine line there.

  If only Richard had backed me up when I told Briggs, as politely as possible, to keep his hands to himself. I did not appreciate having my bum patted by that sleaze, on the pretext of helping to dry me off. And then, to make matters worse, asking Richard for my email address – ‘I want to write and tell her how much I admire her guts’ – and Richard gives it to him! So then the whole pathetic ritual. An apparently harmless, admiring email and a minimally polite re
sponse from me. Then a wish that we might have a drink sometime so he could tell me in person. A polite rejection by me. Then an apologetic follow-up – I must have misinterpreted his intentions – and a one-liner from me assuring him, with a neat touch of ambiguity, that I had not. Richard, meanwhile, hovering anxiously. Not anxious about what might transpire between Briggs and me – he knows I’m not an idiot – but anxious about how this might affect the Madrigo deal. I expected more credit from Richard for being so restrained. Under any other circumstances, I’d have been brutal.

  If only Freya could keep things in perspective. Things play on her mind. It can go on for weeks.

  If only Felicity – who is absolutely insisting we all call her Duskia – were not so determinedly feral. She drives Mum to distraction. Fern is more tolerant than I am, but even she is beginning to lose patience. The woman is in her thirties now, for God’s sake. The latest thing is Free Love. She is the very first person in the history of the universe to have concluded that pair bonding is a sensible arrangement for the nurture of children but that marriage as an institution is oppressive, repressive, anachronistic, the product of a male supremacist culture and just plain unnatural. Humans are not actually built for monogamy. Good one, Duskia. (I find that name really hard to say, especially to her face.)

  If only Freya’s mother had managed to warm to me. Don’t get me wrong, she’s very polite and friendly, but there’s some deep reserve there. I know I’m not imagining it. Something held back. She still seems, rather weirdly in my view, to hold that little shit Daniel up as if he’s some kind of paragon. Always asking after him and his wretched baby. And the vapid Lizzie. Am I to be compared with that? And she enjoys an extraordinary level of intimacy in her relationships with Fern and Freya. I don’t know much about the mothers of girls, or how they operate. I guess I don’t know much about mothers, period. Angelina’s mother was no shining example, I can tell you. And I simply don’t know what to think about my own. But I do wonder if there is such a thing as adult mothers and daughters being too close. I also wonder whether age is a factor in all this. I am fifteen years older than Frey, and only eight years younger than her mother. Her father was quite a bit older than her mother – these things are very complicated. I’m no psychologist, but maybe her mother is thinking of all the years Frey will be alone after I’m dead, or maybe she’s thinking I’m simply too old for her fresh, pure, lovely young Freya. Well, thirty-nine is not that fresh; not that young. The way Duskia – the sister formerly known as Felicity – is turning out, their mother is understandably inclined to focus on Fern and Frey for her maternal gratification. And she’s a very devoted grandmother to Fern’s kids, so there’s another thing. I can imagine a whole new set of tensions between her mother and me if Frey and I were to have a child, whether conceived right here in our bed or in a Petri dish sitting in some lab on the other side of the world.