The Art of Unpacking Your Life

by Shireen Jilla

  Lizzie was so lucky.

  Connie sat dangling her legs into the pool, rocking them rhythmically up and down until her scarlet toenails winked out of the water. Her white vest had dried out. She was only wearing her knickers underneath. It was blazing hot. The storm might have never happened. The water stopped Connie from overheating, though she wanted to bake. Empty and free. She took several deep breaths and stared at the far horizon. Miles and miles of wild flowers, wild shrubs, wild life, freedom and space. It was achingly beautiful. She was emotionless. She had been rubbed out from the landscape and her own life. She couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. The rest of her body had calmed down, but her fingers wouldn’t. They quivered as if to remind her she was alive.

  Someone sat down beside her. She didn’t look round. The sun was overpowering, the sky deep blue and the wild life teeming and she wanted to sit it out in this heat on her own. Stay here until she was ready. She resented the invasion of the long slim legs that splashed into the water right beside her. Katherine, she assumed.

  ‘Your husband’s a bit of a handful, I hear,’ stated a voice, matter of fact with not a shade of sympathy.

  She looked up. It was Helen, the wife of the ex-head of the British Army. Connie had already forgotten their surname. She was in an ancient swimming costume, the type that slashed Union Jack coloured stripes unflatteringly straight across the thighs without a nod to a curve. She must have been in her sixties, but she had lean legs and boyishly short hair.

  Connie didn’t say anything. What was there to say? Helen’s statement didn’t seem to demand a response. Helen repeatedly dipped her hands into the water, pouring it over the loose skin under her arms.

  ‘Political ones are the worst, I find. It’s a haven for emotional cowards. They crave the power they don’t feel inside.’ She added wryly, ‘Though, believe me, army men are a close second.’

  Connie tried to smile. This straightforward conversation was a relief. The horror she couldn’t acknowledge was being given ironic context.

  ‘He is having a baby with our housekeeper, Sally. She’s been living with us for ten years.’

  She expected that would shock Helen. It would shock everyone in London. Can you believe? Have you heard? What kind of woman would put up with that? How low can he stoop? They would never know how it was at home in their daily life together. Sally was not some slut. She had been Connie’s most trusted friend: a warm, unthreatening brunette who had been intimately part of her life journey, helping her bring up their children.

  ‘Chekhov wrote, “No one can know the joys and the horrors within a marriage.” Well, something along those lines,’ Helen said.

  Connie looked into the older woman’s face.

  ‘I’ve got my own saying: marriage is like hacking out,’ Helen continued. ‘You turn up at the stables and pick your horse: the constant grazer, the slow-moving nag who needs to be whipped into action, the frisky, high-maintenance thoroughbred and so on. The last will probably knock you for six at some point,’ she paused, letting the thought sink in. ‘You decide.’

  Connie thought of Luke. Helen was right. She made her choice. She chose Julian. She turned to look at her. She wondered whether the army chief with his obsession with close up wildlife photography was the high-maintenance thoroughbred.

  Helen continued, ‘When you fly off, land heavily, bruised, your pride in tatters, your buttocks sore, do you get straight back on the horse? They say you should.’

  ‘My husband Julian’s going to back to London. To try and clear up the…’ What was it? Connie wondered. How could a new life be a mess? It was a baby. Her shaking intensified and she crossed her arms over her belly.

  Helen looked at her calmly, ignoring her state. ‘Are you going with him?’

  ‘No. I’m staying here with my friends. They’ve come all this way especially for me.’ Even now Connie was hiding, only this time behind the group. Had she always been a coward deep down?

  Thankfully, Helen didn’t comment. ‘You are lucky. You have a close gang of friends. I never quite managed that. We moved too often. Friendships came and went.’

  Connie nodded. She was lucky. She appreciated Helen for sharing some confidence, however small.

  ‘I suppose when your holiday’s over,’ Helen said, ‘you have to make a decision: do you chuck him out or not.’

  Connie stared at her. She was disconcerted by having her choice put so crudely. ‘I might stay on here for a while.’

  ‘Well, it’s the most beautiful place on earth. We come here twice a year.’ She looked out across the horizon. ‘Although, I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t hide in paradise forever.’

  Why not? Connie was tempted to ask.

  Chapter 20

  Sara hovered anxiously in the sitting room, watching Connie by the pool. How on earth would she survive this? When the army wife appeared and settled down beside her, Sara sat down, but continued to eye Connie protectively through the window.

  Gus silently appeared, standing in the middle of the room. ‘Ready, Sara?’

  The sleepover. She had no desire to bounce back a witticism. ‘Gus… how can I put it?’ She paused. ‘Something shocking has happened.’

  Gus looked at her concerned, though he didn’t ask what was wrong, or superficially fill the space she had left.

  ‘I understand,’ he said calmly. ‘Why don’t I wait round, eh? In case I can help in any way.’

  She nodded.

  He crouched close enough to the other end of the sofa to make it sag. It was the first time they had found themselves together without the group or the vivid backdrop of the safari. She could do smart retorts, but she didn’t have an easy repertoire of small talk. She hadn’t grown up around it. Sandra, her mother’s best friend, only did gossip. This was why Sara stuck to asides, which involved her in conversation without complication or intimacy. One to one, she was lost. Only Gus didn’t seem to be worried by her silence, or his own.

  ‘You’re a criminal lawyer?’

  She nodded. He must have gleaned it from the others.

  He smiled. ‘High-flying, eh?’ From anyone else, his tone would have been mocking.

  ‘Not sure about that,’ she retorted, back on comfortable territory.

  ‘Connie said that you’ve won a big high-profile case, eh.’

  He shifted his arm. His hand stretched towards her shoulder. His left knee was bent up and his boot missed the cream cotton ribbing. The thick tread of its sole turned up. His groin glared at her. Why were men oblivious of forcing you to stare into their crotch? She thought about escaping to lie down in her room, but she was worried about leaving Connie.

  She didn’t want to talk about the Jade Sutton case, let alone explain it to someone who knew nothing about the British legal system. Yet again, she tormented herself: if only she had never boarded that First Great Western train from Paddington.

  She paused. Then, in a voice she hoped was sufficiently light, she said, ‘Yes. A couple accused of murdering their child. They were found not guilty. I was representing the woman.’

  Joanne Sutton. Would she ever get away from her?

  Gus cut into her reverie. ‘How did you know she was telling the truth?’

  She stared at him. She was about to formulate a platitude, but decided against it. ‘Why do you ask?’

  He shrugged. ‘Well I’m curious. I imagine it must be a problem for lawyers, eh. Locating the truth.’

  She nodded.

  He waited for her to reply, before elaborating as if she had failed to understand him. ‘Is it the truth? You must always ask yourself that, eh?’

  She answered automatically. ‘The law is not about truth. It’s about proof.’

  ‘Maybe. But you, Sara Wilson, are a member of the human race. The truth matters to you, surely?’

  ‘My only duty is to put my client’s case forward, and not to mislead the court,’ she insisted, trying to imagine he wasn’t such a gentle, thoughtful person.

  Sara ha
d been sure the Suttons were innocent. Obviously. She didn’t press Joanne Sutton as hard as she might a woman who was more deprived and desperate. She didn’t question the middle-class perfection of Joanne Sutton until it was too late.

  ‘Sure. I get that. As long as they tell you they are innocent, you’re in the clear, eh,’ Gus persisted.

  Back with the cake in the garden. It was too much. ‘It’s far more complicated than that.’

  There was the fear she had drowned in whisky chasers in The Elephant.

  He paused and eyed her thoughtfully. Unlike Julian, who picked apart the facts, Gus was probing beneath the points of law to a place Sara couldn’t go.

  ‘Go on, try me.’

  Sara saw a stubbornness she recognised and admired. When he wasn’t working he was probably opinionated and headstrong.

  ‘It’s boring legal stuff.’

  ‘No, I’m genuinely interested. Tell me what happens.’

  ‘Is this some sort of out-of-court confidential?’ she quipped, trying to avoid being drawn into the determination in his green eyes.

  ‘Let’s suppose they say they are innocent, but then change their minds? What happens then, eh?’

  His stare was unfaltering. Something in Sara wanted to confide in him. Try out the truth on someone disconnected with her daily life.

  ‘Well, I would have a duty to tell Joanne Sutton’s—’ Sara noticed her slip a second too late. ‘My client’s solicitor.’

  He shrugged. ‘What if you didn’t?’

  ‘God, Gus. You’re getting down into dirty law.’

  ‘Or dirty morals?’

  She felt the blow. She thought of her mother and her considerable sacrifices she had made for her daughter’s career. How could she explain to her that she had let her down? She knew Gus had no idea what he was talking about. He was simply making conversation. It was not meant as a criticism of her career or her behaviour. He knew nothing about the Jade Sutton case. Yet it was as if he could sense her discomfort.

  She avoided his eye contact. ‘Planning on retraining?’

  ‘My cousin’s a lawyer in Cape Town, but no, it’s not a job I would ever consider.’

  She tried to joke. ‘What, the law’s beneath you?’

  He answered it as if it were a serious question. ‘You know it’s difficult to explain. My family is unbending. My father’s a man of huge integrity, strong and inflexible. Not designed to be beholden to a set of rules, certainly not anybody else’s. I am exactly like him,’ he leaned forward. ‘I know what I believe and what I feel. And I draw huge confidence from that.’

  People didn’t usually confide in Sara. Unless they were clients.

  ‘We are a strong clan, who are extremely close. Farming families grow up together in the middle of nowhere. Integrity is our cornerstone. My dad or my brothers would horsewhip me for doing wrong.’

  Wrong was a word that Sara hadn’t heard in a long while.

  He smiled gently. ‘My dad is the strong, silent type with a dry humour. If he’s unhappy about anything we do, he lets us know.’

  ‘You’re like him,’ she smiled. ‘You are hauling me up.’

  ‘No I’m not. I admire you, Sara. The downside of a big happy farming family is you never have to make your own way, because it’s expected you will eventually go home and farm the land. I am too comfortable to make the extraordinary effort you have for your career.’

  She paused and spoke quietly. ‘I had to make my own way.’

  ‘Sara, I’m not knocking you, eh? Believe me, far from it. You are super smart, funny, strong and you care deeply about your friends.’ He blushed faintly. ‘They are clearly proud of you, eh. I’ve been wondering, why do you look deeply uncomfortable whenever they mention your victory?’

  She searched in her mind for the appropriate response.

  ‘I’m assuming that something went wrong?’

  She almost confided in him, but she resisted.

  ‘Are you going to be a farmer?’ It was a diversion from the mess of her own life, but she was genuinely curious. She had never met anyone like him before.

  He sighed. ‘Eventually, yes. My family is one of the oldest farming families in South Africa. It’s an estate, really: animals, crops and a vineyard. It’s a huge undertaking. The Hamiltons are farmers. It’s the way it is. My younger brothers already run the estate with Dad. They are expecting me back.’

  She smiled. ‘Rangering is a gap-year holiday?’

  ‘Only I’ve been doing it for nine years. More escapism, eh.’

  ‘What are you escaping from, Gus Hamilton?’ she was imitating his tone, only he refused to deviate into pointless playfulness.

  ‘Commitment, in all ways.’

  ‘Oh, that old chestnut.’ She smiled easily. ‘Well you’ve come to the right person.’

  ‘My life is mapped out. I can wait before I get on with it. I’ve always said that I’ll go home when I fall in love and get married.’

  ‘Settle down. How ghastly. Well don’t do that in a hurry.’ Sara mocked, ‘No girlfriend then?’

  ‘Jess and I split up. A few days ago, actually. She used to work here. We were properly together for five months and we’ve been trying to make a go of it long distance, but we’ve drifted apart.’

  He blushed. A deep red that spread right under the roots of his thick hair.

  ‘Oh dear. I’m sorry and all that.’ Christ. One thing Sara couldn’t stand was men who confided their emotional heartache. It was going to be worse because Gus was decidedly younger than her.

  ‘No. It’s fine. I wasn’t in love with her.’ His green eyes were straight. ‘And she finds me too reserved and cold.’

  ‘Are you?’ Sara considered him for a moment. ‘You don’t strike me like that. Anyway, don’t worry about it. The world’s not reserved enough in my opinion. Why people go sharing their innermost thoughts with randoms, I’ve never understood.’

  His face lit up. He was definitely shaggable.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Have you got a boyfriend?’ He was tugging at his leather bracelet, his head buried beneath his floppy hair. He was boyish, which made Sara more relaxed than she usually was one-to-one with a bloke.

  ‘Do I look like the kind of woman with a boyfriend?’

  He didn’t answer.

  She relented: ‘No, I don’t do boyfriends: tiresome little shits the lot of them.’

  He eyed her drily.

  ‘Nothing personal. I’m sure that you are the exception.’

  He changed the subject. ‘What about your family, eh?’

  Sara gave him a warning stare. He completely ignored it and waited for her answer. She breathed in to affect that breeziness she had perfected.

  ‘Once there were three: Mum, Dad and little me. Now there’s two: Mum and me. Next question.’

  Gus didn’t say anything. He didn’t move either. She was irrationally angry and knew she was going to say something she would regret.

  ‘Not like your cosy clan of comfortable farmers communing on their chunk of South Africa. My mother has slaved at Manchester airport for years, doing all the shitty shifts to pay for my education, and paying the rent on a minute flat above a shop in the wrong part of Hume. She won’t let the job go. Too proud, too independent to accept help from me.’

  Sara couldn’t shut up. She rarely talked about her childhood that she couldn’t get away from her deep-rooted anger.

  ‘No gap year for me. I had to make my own way, the hard way. Which is why this case is difficult and important for me in a way you cannot even begin to understand.’

  He touched her gently on her shoulder. ‘Okay, I get that. Let’s return to the easier question of your legal morality.’

  His gentle teasing gave her a way out. She was grateful. A rare emotion.

  ‘If your client said don’t tell my solicitor, what would you do?’

  ‘I would be in serious danger of misleading the court,’ she paused. She h
eard her voice fade. ‘I would have to walk away.’

  ‘Walk away?’

  ‘Drop the case.’

  ‘Okay.’ He was subtly intelligent. ‘I see.’

  ‘Do you?’ She whispered. ‘Do you really?’

  Gus frowned, reflecting the anxiety, which must be wrinkling round her eyes.

  At that point Connie wandered in, protectively wrapped in a thick beige pool towel, which only made her look thinner and more fragile. She reached for Sara and hugged her gently.

  ‘Oh, Connie.’

  Connie didn’t make eye contact. She nodded quickly and then looked at Gus. ‘When are we leaving?’

  Sara started, ‘Look, Connie, I don’t think…’

  Gus segued, ‘I was saying to Sara, you guys have got three more nights. The sleep out doesn’t have to be tonight. After a storm’s come in, maybe it’s better not going down to the deck, eh?’

  ‘No, we are keen,’ Connie half-turned towards her. ‘Aren’t we, Sara?’

  She was trying to work out if Connie really wanted to go.

  ‘I am, anyway. Let’s go. I might have a cold bath now. Half an hour?’

  ‘Sure,’ Gus soothed. ‘Don’t rush, eh?’

  Connie nodded. ‘Gus, can you do something for me?’

  ‘Sure, Connie.’ Sara was grateful for his warmth.

  ‘There is a notebook of my grandfather’s in the last cabinet in the library, furthest from the spiral stairs. I would really love to read it. Might I be allowed to do that?’

  ‘No worries. I’ll bring it with us, eh.’

  Connie’s wet feet marked the brick path. Sara turned to thank him for everything, but he had gone.

  Chapter 21

  Dan carefully considered which photo to show Alan first. Logically, it would be their generous landscape of olive trees, stretching suggestively into the middle distance with only a hill top hamlet peaking through the morning mist. The olive tree in the foreground looked like a menorah. He would gratuitously point this out to Alan, creating a spurious link between their Tuscan countryside and Alan’s Jewish ancestors. He would try and create a sense of destiny about this move.