View from the Beach

by JH Fletcher

  His mouth was contemptuous. ‘Make us rich, will it?’

  Better than sitting around all day feeling sorry for myself.

  She was shocked and contrite that she could have thought such a thing. Dougie’s sufferings were real, however hard to live with. But peace she was determined to have.

  ‘It might.’

  ‘And might not.’

  For the first time she understood that he did not want her to succeed, would resent it if she did. ‘Either way, I intend to do it.’

  ‘And to hell with your husband.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Still, for much of the time, she was reasonably happy. Not content, but she had always been suspicious of contentment.

  In the afternoons, after Ruth’s work was finished for the day, the two of them walked together through the Ranges. Short distances to begin with then, as Dougie’s body grew stronger, further afield. They watched the growing crops turn from green to silver to brown as winter gave way to spring and eventually to summer. The puddles dried, dust instead of mud coated the sides of vehicles, it grew hot. One day Dougie said, ‘Reckon I’ll ask your old man if I can give him a hand.’

  ‘You sure you feel up to it?’

  ‘Can’t spend the rest of my life sitting on my bum.’

  So he came back to life. He suffered less from nightmares, they made love more often. Ruth began to believe that things might come right between them after all.

  The book was slotting together better now. At last, as summer came to an end, it was finished.

  Deliberately, she put it aside for two weeks then read it through in one sitting. When she was finished she got to her feet, stretching her back, cramped after sitting still for so long. Her eyes were gritty. A succession of images surged and twittered in her head. She needed to run in the open air, to throw her head back and breathe freshness. To express the exuberance and fulfilment that flooded her.

  It was good, as good as she could make it.

  That evening she offered it to Dougie, shyly.

  He weighed the pile of papers with his eye. ‘No wonder it took you so long.’

  ‘You can read it if you like.’

  ‘Yeh.’ But was reluctant, she saw.

  His rejection was like a blade in her heart. ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘Never been much for reading.’ He obviously felt he should say something to compensate for his unwillingness to read the book. ‘What you going to call it?’ he asked.

  ‘I haven’t decided.’

  A week later she knew. There was a programme of Elgar’s music on the wireless, The Dream Of Gerontius. She listened to the announcer as he introduced the work, the quotation from the Latin liturgy. ‘De Profundis …’ the man said.

  ‘That’s it,’ she said to Dougie, who had just come in.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The title of my book. Out Of The Depths.’

  ‘What you going to do now?’ Dougie wanted to know.

  ‘Have a break for a week or two then start another one.’

  He stared. ‘Another book?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I thought, when you finished this one, that would be it. I didn’t know you were planning on doing any more.’

  He was perturbed. One book he could handle but a succession, a lifetime of books, was something else.

  ‘I’m a writer. It’s what writers do.’

  ‘Who’s going to read them?’

  That was a question, indeed.

  She got the manuscript typed, sent it to London, she waited.

  Once again foreboding gripped her. The writing had flowed more easily towards the end; perhaps it had been too easy. Too glib. Superficial. Perhaps Richard, pleased that she had made contact again, had been willing to indulge her by being nice about her book. For her sake and the memory of old times, not because of the book itself. She had not answered his letter. She had been tempted, had on several occasions picked up a pen to do so, but somehow had always drawn back.

  It would be unfair to him, she told herself. I am a married woman. It would be wrong to give him any reason to hope.

  It was not the reason and she knew it.

  Waiting for his reply she was scared that his firm would not take the book, after all, that all her work and hopes had been in vain. Or that they would take it, that by agreeing to publish her work Richard would re-enter her life.

  The news came, not in the form of a letter but a telegram.

  ‘We congratulate you on a work of extraordinary depth and perception that has set a new standard for literature inspired by the war. Am writing to make a formal offer for the book. Yours, Richard.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Shortly after eleven Ruth heard the sound of a car approaching the house through the dunes. The engine stopped, the door banged. One door; one person, then. She put her book down and waited expectantly, beginning to smile even before the rangy figure of David Clark came around the corner of the house. Patty and Johnno’s grandchild. Like his grandfather he was tall and stretched, thin as wire, with a large nose and blue eyes. Ruth loved him to bits. David was twenty-two years old, the walking proof that something good had come out of the disaster that had been his mother’s life.

  ‘How you doing, Ruth?’ Smile as brilliant as his eyes. Unlike her own son, David Clark had never had any problem with her first name.

  ‘Good. And you?’

  ‘Okay.’

  He flopped on the deck beside her, long legs drawn up beneath his chin; all his life David had preferred to sit on the ground.

  ‘The others should be here soon,’ Ruth told him.

  ‘Who’s coming?’

  ‘Hannah Browne, my editor. She’s got a project she wants to talk about. She’s bringing an American woman with her. Someone called Barbara Getz.’

  ‘Is she involved in the project, too?’

  ‘No, she’s a journalist. A big deal. She wants to take a look at me. I can’t imagine why.’

  ‘I thought you were the big deal around here.’

  Ruth laughed. ‘Not that big.’

  ‘When’s the girl coming?’

  ‘When she gets here.’

  ‘Does she want to take a look at you, too?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. Her father’s an old friend of mine. She’s coming with him.’

  ‘Have I met him?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him myself for over forty years.’

  David raised his eyebrows. ‘Right.’

  ‘I’ve got some homemade lemonade,’ Ruth said, ‘if you’d like a glass.’

  David got to his feet, what seemed like two yards of leg unwinding with all the smoothness of young muscle. ‘I’ll get it. You want one, too?’

  ‘Why not?’

  He wandered indoors, at home both in another person’s house and in himself. He was still more youth than man but that would soon change. It was good to see yet sad, too, the final passing of another phase in her life. He’s the last one, she thought. In a year or two I won’t have any children left at all. It was a gloomy prospect. A life without children, without growth and newness, would be no life at all.

  I shall have to get him married off, she thought, this boy-man whom I love as though he were my own blood, but I’d better not waste too much time or I won’t be around to see it.

  All her life she’d had this sense of urgency. So much to do, so little time to do it. Time for one more book, she thought, that’s what I would really like. To try again to do what I have spent my life doing. To challenge the false prophets. Heaven knows there are more than enough of them.

  That man who had written such searing poetry of the First World War had said something about that, about tanks and corpses being mocked by jokes in music halls.

  What a poet Sassoon had been, yet in his day they had called him mad. No doubt there had been those who had called Baudelaire and Dürer mad. And Christ mad.

  ‘Judging by what some of them had to say about Joshua’s Children,’ R
uth told the sea, ‘there are people who think I’m mad.’

  ‘Talking to yourself?’ David had come back with the lemonade.

  ‘Why not?’ Ruth told him, taking a glass. ‘I like my own conversation better than most people’s.’

  They heard the sound of a car labouring along the track behind the house.

  ‘Here they are,’ Ruth said.

  She smoothed the front of her blouse. Franz … She was suddenly, dreadfully, nervous. He had been right, she thought. This is a mistake. Forty years is too long. The past is best forgotten, especially our past. We shall have nothing to say to each other. We may not even like each other.

  Car doors banged. She took a deep breath, practising her smile, sickened by nerves.

  Footsteps sounded on the decking.

  Hannah Browne, followed by a tall, blonde woman in an immaculate golden suit with a sheen to it.

  ‘Sweetie …’

  They embraced, Ruth tolerant of her editor’s affectations. She was good at her job, the best, and that was what counted.

  ‘And this is Barbara.’

  The Getz.

  They shook hands, eyes measuring each other.

  ‘How you going?’ Startling herself. Ruth Ballard the stage Aussie. I must have been more nervous of this woman than I thought.

  ‘I’m fine.’ Some American accents were like ratchets but Barbara’s was mellow, well-modulated. ‘A great view you have here.’

  Ruth went into the house to make coffee. David slid away while she was gone. When she came back she could see him in the distance, striding long-legged along the beach.

  The three women sat around the table and talked, first about the general climate of the literary world, then moving to an examination of Ruth’s career, recent publications and the enormous, worldwide success of Joshua’s Children.

  ‘It’s put you in the front rank of women authors,’ Getz said, ‘particularly in the States.’

  ‘That’s too sexist for me,’ Ruth said. ‘I think of myself as an author who happens to be a woman, not a woman-author. Whatever that’s supposed to mean.’

  Barbara Getz smiled; for the first time Ruth saw how formidable she could be. ‘Like it or not, that’s what you are. You’re a symbol, a sexist symbol, if you like. Sure.’

  ‘I have never taken any interest in the feminist movement.’

  ‘What is Joshua’s Children but a feminist novel?’

  ‘It’s a story of Amy —’

  ‘Who is abused by her father, her husband and her son. And yet who triumphs in the end because of her innate strength. It is a wonderful, inspirational book in feminist terms. You must surely see that.’

  ‘What I see is a human being in conflict with adversity. Amy overcomes because I believe strongly in the capacity of the human race to triumph over the trials that beset us.’

  ‘Amy is a symbol of a woman —’

  Decisively Ruth shook her head. ‘A person, not a symbol. If you must make her a symbol make it of all humanity, not just half of it.’

  By her expression Hannah was in agony. No wonder, Ruth thought. She brings this influential woman to see me and I blow it. It must be like seeing a favourite lap-dog savage the rector. Except I have never been a lap-dog and do not plan to become one now. Political correctness, I hate it.

  She smiled sweetly. ‘I’m sorry if you’ve come all this way for nothing.’

  Barbara Getz shook her head. ‘The reason Joshua’s Children went over so big in the States was because it was seen as a major feminist novel. I frankly don’t think it would be in your interests to deny it too publicly.’

  ‘My aunt was a feminist.’

  ‘Aunt Dorrie,’ Barbara said. ‘She certainly was.’

  ‘You know about her?’

  ‘I do my homework. All writers are influenced by the events and people in their lives. To understand your work I have to understand the context in which you wrote it.’

  Hastily Hannah said, ‘On the plane Barbara was suggesting we should arrange a Collector’s Edition of your books to coincide with the articles she’s going to write about you.’

  It would be brilliant publicity. All the same …

  ‘I wouldn’t want to be portrayed as one of the bra-burning brigade.’

  ‘Bra-burning’s out of fashion. I wouldn’t stress that even if you did favour it.’

  Absorbed in their conversation, Ruth had heard neither the car nor the slam of doors. She looked up and saw a figure standing at the end of the deck. A face. Forty years fell away. The shock stole her breath. Franz smiled at her over the generations. She was on her feet before she knew it. Someone said, ‘I’m glad you found it all right.’ A stranger’s voice, echoing hollowly in her ears. Her own voice.

  Hannah Browne, Barbara Getz had ceased to exist. Ruth went to him. They embraced and she felt the change in him. An old man’s body. An old man’s limbs, the juice gone out of them.

  She stood back and looked at him, saw for the first time how the years had blurred the face she remembered. Her first impression had been false. The man looking back at her had heavily-lined, parchment-coloured features. Big-knuckled hands. A patch of grey stubble at the corner of his jaw where the razor had missed its stroke. His clothes hung loosely on him. He had grown old, as Ruth had grown old. Of course. Yet was still Franz.

  She smiled at him, happy to welcome him back into her life, then he turned and for the first time Ruth became aware of the young woman standing a step or two behind him.

  ‘My daughter Louise,’ he said.

  ‘My dear …’ Ruth went to her, took her hands in her own. They were of a height yet Louise was so slender that she appeared taller, ash-coloured hair tied back, eyes a vivid blue. Franz’s eyes. Franz’s daughter. ‘Welcome to my house,’ Ruth said.

  She remembered her other guests, turned to them apologetically. ‘I’m so sorry. I should have told you I’d invited some dear friends of mine to join us for lunch.’

  She was about to introduce them when Franz intervened. ‘George Frey,’ he said, smiling at the two seated women, ‘and this is my daughter Louise.’

  How many times had he done this over the years? Ruth wondered. It would have become second nature to him by now. She had known yet had been about to introduce him as Franz Vogel. George Frey, she told herself. Louise Frey. Don’t forget.

  She organised them with drinks and went indoors to finish off the lunch. Barbara Getz followed her but Ruth did not mind, more at home with her now.

  ‘I thought we could chat while you’re working,’ Barbara said, ‘if that’s okay?’

  Ruth smiled. ‘I might dragoon you into helping me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Answer me one question first,’ Ruth said. ‘Why do you want to do this series of articles about me?’

  ‘Because I believe you are one of the most significant writers of our time.’

  ‘Writer? Or woman-writer?’

  Barbara laughed. ‘Writer.’

  ‘I’ll go along with that.’

  Ruth lifted the top of a large cast-iron pot simmering on the back of the stove. Steam and the aroma of coq au vin jetted into the room.

  ‘Smells good,’ Barbara said.

  ‘Coq au vin.’ Ruth’s eyebrows questioned her guest. ‘I hope that’s all right for you?’

  ‘Kosher food?’ Barbara said. ‘Who needs it? Coq au vin will be great.’

  Ruth replaced the lid on the pot, took a large bowl of the chilled soup out of the refrigerator and began to spoon it into individual bowls.

  ‘The war had a great impact on your life,’ Barbara said.

  ‘It had a great impact on everyone who lived through it. Particularly the ones who were involved.’

  ‘Would you say the motivation for much of your writing was the war?’

  ‘I hope not. What concerns me in my work is not war or violence but how people cope with them. Some sit down and wail, some do nothing, some fight back. That’s what interests me.’

 
; ‘Why does it interest you?’

  ‘Because it tells us something about the human condition. What has happened in the past and will happen again in the future. If we don’t watch out.’ She took lettuce from the crisper drawer. ‘You any good at making salad?’

  ‘I have my moments.’

  ‘Then you can do that while I check the vegies.’

  The two women worked amicably together. Ruth laughed. ‘Women’s work. We slave in the kitchen while George drinks beer and looks at the sea.’

  ‘I’ll make you a feminist yet.’

  ‘Except that I like working in the kitchen.’

  ‘That shows you’ve been conditioned by our masters. The slave who loves her chains. Who is George?’ she asked presently.

  ‘An old friend.’

  ‘His daughter is very young. More like his granddaughter, really.’

  It was a journalist’s job to speculate, Ruth told herself, and warned herself once again to be careful. ‘I believe he married late.’

  Everything was ready. Ruth stared at the array of dishes, the soup, the chicken, the plate of cold meats she had thought Franz might prefer to coq au vin, the salad and vegetables, the sweets and array of fruit and cheeses.

  ‘Feeding the five thousand,’ she said.

  ‘Wrong religion,’ Barbara told her, ‘but I know what you mean.’

  ‘We’ll eat on the verandah,’ Ruth said. ‘I’ve a perfectly good dining room but I hardly ever use it. I like to be outdoors as much as I can when I’m not working.’

  In their absence David had come back from his walk and was talking to Louise. Ruth broke into their conversation without compunction, getting them to carry out the soup while Ruth herself brought rolls, butter and wine.

  ‘Or more beer, if anyone would prefer it,’ she said.

  She sat at the head of the table and looked around her with pleasure. ‘I can’t remember the last time I had six people around this table.’

  The old and the young, she thought. Franz (I must stop calling him that) and myself; David and Louise. The past leading to the future.

  Barbara Getz was talking to Franz. He’s probably forgotten everything in his past, had to put it out of his mind to survive at all. But I have not forgotten. Oh no. I shall never forget what he told me, the last time we met.