“Are you okay? Do you want to come with me?”
“You better go,” he said and disappeared again.
John pointed the bat at the woman, who was kneeling over Jason now. “Either of you touch him and I’m coming back. I’ll put you both in hospital if I have to.”
John threw the bat in the back of the ute and drove off, wondering what the fuck he had got himself into.
The next time Billy showed up at Camperdown he had no new injuries.
“They leaving you alone?”
“Jason left. Mum won’t talk to me.”
John looked at him. “That’s a good thing, right?”
Billy tried not to smile.
“So, if you’re going to hang around here do you want to help me? Instead of just watching.” The boy looked uncomfortable. “I’ll pay you,” said John.
That got his attention. “How much?”
“Dunno.” John scratched his neck. “Say ten dollars an hour, see how long you last.”
Billy nodded his agreement and John found a spare set of gloves for him. They looked huge on the boy, like his skinny arms were sticking out of baseball mitts, but he worked hard, filling and emptying the wheelbarrow. Once they had settled into a rhythm of work they didn’t talk much, just got on with it. Occasionally John had noticed Billy looking at his scars, but the boy never said anything.
The Cathay Pacific A330’s attitude changed slightly as it began its long descent. Betty Lawrence opened her eyes, leaned forwards and slid the plastic window blind up, letting the pale dawn light slip into the cabin. A bank of cloud lining the eastern horizon was outlined in gold and pink, but the ground beneath her was still dark, just a grey presence waiting for the new day. Waiting for Betty. It was an empty land, its people clinging to the edges in the east and south. That was where she was going, to the far side of the continent, back to Sydney.
She had to come back because she had fallen down. Just a few steps, just enough to change her life. She had told Madame Chaput about those worn steps. More than once, but nothing was done. The maddening thing was that she knew she was going to fall. As soon as she put weight on the foot she could feel it. But there was nothing she could do about it. Nothing. She tried – she grabbed at the balustrade, but that sudden movement just unbalanced her more. Her foot slipped. Her arms flailed for balance, for a hand hold that wasn’t there. Madame Chaput was standing at the bottom of the stairs, their eyes met for a single moment before Betty landed hard on her hip, and slid down. Each jarring step a new slice of pain through her shattered femur.
She was in hospital for two months. Her leg was full of plates and screws now, she had to tell them about it every time she went through the security check at the airports.
So here she was on her way back to Sydney. After forty years away. A lifetime.
John had insisted. “You can’t stay here, Mum, you’ve got a broken leg. What are you going to do? Your apartment is on the fourth floor. There’s no lift. There is no one left here to look after you. Your old mates, they’ve all gone away. Temps de partir. It’s time, Mum.”
But Paris was her home. Since 1966, since she was twenty-five and in love. “It’s your home too,” she said to John, “you were born here.”
“I know, Mum, but I live in Sydney now. I’m more Australian than French, I always have been. If you wanted me to be French, why did you send me to school in Australia? You made that choice for me.”
He had said the same thing many, many times over the years, reminding her of her shortcomings as a mother. Betty didn’t need reminding, by him or anyone else; she was well aware of them.
“Sydney is my home now, Mum. It’s where I live, and I’m the only one left to look after you.”
Yes, yes. He was right. He had an annoying habit of making perfect sense. Always had, even as a little boy. Betty knew she wouldn’t be able to get up the stairs or walk to the little market near the Métro to get her vegetables and meat. John, always very rational, very sensible. Well, fuck rational. She had every right to be angry. At the world, at John, at Madame Chaput and her stupid stairs, but mostly at herself for being so careless. For becoming so dependent.
While she was in an awful rehabilitation hospital near the Gare Montparnasse, waiting for her old bones to mend, John had packed up her things and let her apartment go. Shipped everything back to Australia. Now it was all waiting for her there, he said. John being practical, efficient. She presumed he had got that from the army. Certainly not from his father, the romantic. Betty supposed she had been a romantic too. Once upon a time. That was how she found herself in Paris in the first place, following her heart. Following the bastard Michel. Following his soft, dark eyes, and that sexy voice. He was like something out of the movies. Totally different from the men she had grown up around in Sydney, and the men she had met in America. How could she not fall in love with him? She had watched him working in Alabama, the Civil Rights marches and Bloody Sunday. Betty the awkward amateur, feeling her way on her first paid assignment, Michel the slick European professional, at ease in any situation. He always seemed to know what was going to happen before it did, was always able to put himself in the best position to get the best shot. He always looked cool, laughing and joking with the rest of the press corps. Noticing her, smiling at her.
After the march on Montgomery, she followed him to Paris. She was in love. For a few months she lived in a dream, in love with being in love, in love with being in Paris. The city overwhelmed her, the light and the smells and the tastes. Her senses were alive for the first time, it seemed. She was so young. Just a baby.
When they weren’t in bed she went exploring, wandering the streets, soaking in the romance of the city. At first she looked at Paris with her photographer’s eyes, a collection of wonderful images. Later she learned to go for walks without her camera, content to just be part of the scene. It was her first time in Europe and she was entranced by the textures of the city. So different from Sydney, where you could still see the first scars of history being laid down, the native landscape being hacked back for new suburbs. But Paris was layered with stories, reflected in the buildings and the streets. And the food. In Paris she discovered real food: patisserie. In Sydney, her culinary highlight had been vanilla ice cream with hot butterscotch sauce at Cahill’s. She was amazed and delighted by the importance that was placed on the preparation and consumption of food in Paris. Michel enjoyed cooking, enjoyed cooking for her. He was very proud of his skill in the kitchen, nearly as proud as he was of his skill in the bedroom. On weekends they went out, shopping at the little markets or walking hand in hand along the Seine. In the evenings they went to jazz clubs. Michel took her to see Miles Davis at Salle Pleyel. She fell for the music, and the man. The king of cool. That was when she started to buy jazz records.
Betty became a flâneuse. When Michel was working, and when the weather allowed it, she would be out, strolling about Paris on her own. In a daze, her eyes and ears wide open, telling Michel each evening what she had seen during the day. He laughed at her. “But of course. It is Paris – what did you expect?” She didn’t know what she had expected, but it hadn’t been the beauty, or the light. Nor had it been the people. At first they intimidated her with their assurance and their indifference, but she found they could be won over. This tiny blonde Australian was so obviously in love with their city, so keen to speak to them in their language, and so willing to try anything, that they embraced her. With her schoolgirl French she struggled to make herself understood, but she persevered and found she learned quickly the more she threw herself into life in Paris.
But the dream of Paris did not last. After three months, Michel told her she had to leave because his wife was coming back.
Wife? The bastard.
She cried, she shouted. She hit him, threw things at him. Then she packed her bag and walked away. But where could she go? She spent an afternoon crying at a café on the Boulevard Saint-Michel, her bag tucked under the table and a café crème go
ing cold on top of it. She couldn’t stop crying. The bastard. She loved him, she had loved him. Had he loved her? Hadn’t he? Was she just ... What had she been? A convenience? Until his wife came back? Was this how people lived in Paris? She drank the cold coffee and ordered a glass of wine, making it last, not knowing what she was going to do next, where she could go.
Eventually the exasperated waiter spoke to her. “Mademoiselle, you must stop crying, you are upsetting the other customers.”
Betty looked around, catching a number of patrons suddenly returning their gaze to their own business. Betty sniffed and blinked dumbly up at the waiter.
“No man is worth this many tears,” he said.
This set Betty off again, appalled that her miserable plight was so obvious, that she had fallen for the oldest, most clichéd betrayal of all. Such a fool.
She left the café and wandered aimlessly, immersed in self-pity. Swinging like a pendulum between grief and anger. She caught sight of her reflection in a jewellery shop window, a small pathetic figure. With her suitcase in her hand, she looked like a refugee, like an image from the World War Two newsreels she had grown up with. It shocked her: this was not who she was, not how she had grown up thinking of herself. The world had not ended, she had just fallen in love with a shit. She was not the first to have made a fool of herself for a man. She didn’t expect she would be the last either.
That night she found a hotel and sat up, deciding what to do. She didn’t want to leave Paris. She didn’t want to go back to Sydney, to her father, having to tell a tale of betrayal and failure to everyone who knew her.
In the morning she looked up the telephone number for Hubert Foss. She had met Hubert at a party, one of many she went to with Michel that spring. Between glasses of wine, he had talked about starting a new photographic agency. He wanted to develop the work of new young photographers. She had told him about her work photographing the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi and Alabama. At the time she thought that maybe she could get some work through the new Agence Foss but hadn’t done anything about it.
Hubert was surprised to hear from her. “Betty? Oh oui, Michel’s little friend. L’australienne.” Yes, Agence Foss was still looking for new photographers. Betty got the impression that it was struggling to get established. Hubert liked her work. “You have an eye for the heart of a scene, for the emotional detail,” he said after he had finished flipping through her portfolio. So she went to work for Agence Foss.
The plane was much lower now. Khaki paddocks with scattered gum trees had given way to farmland, a patchwork of browns and dull greens. The rivers and creeks had water in them, and the roads were more frequent. Some of them were even sealed. Civilisation. They must be close to the coast now.
The assignments took Betty all over Paris. To places she would not have seen otherwise, to crime scenes, factories and political rallies. She was an outsider, but she gave Hubert something that his local photographers did not. Details and juxtapositions they did not notice. Fresh eyes, he called her.
It was only three months after she started working for Hubert that he sent her to the war in Vietnam. In Saigon, her senses were assaulted by the glare and the smells, but she fell in love again. It was her first time in Asia and her first experience in a war zone. She found that she got on well with the soldiers. Being a woman helped of course, an outspoken Australian, her blonde hair shining against her oversized jungle greens. The local Vietnamese ARVN and the Americans looked after her and in return she tried to portray the war, particularly their experience of it, with honesty and compassion. That first trip was only for two weeks, but it changed her. It was horrific, but also exhilarating. Addictive.
When she got back she decided that if Paris was going to be her home she would embrace it. No more sweaty, borrowed jungle greens, no more living out of a suitcase. Now that she had a bit of money, she was going to enjoy herself, enjoy Paris on her own terms. She found an apartment in the 14th arrondissement near Montparnasse, bought herself some beautiful clothes, made new friends. Took new lovers. She immersed herself in indulgence and beauty, slipping easily into the new social milieu that Hubert introduced her to. His friends were more interesting and more fun than Michel’s stuck-up crowd. They were journalists, photographers, models and designers. Of course, Hubert fell in love with her. Betty let him down as gently as she could. Pressing her fingers to his lips to stop him talking. “Hubert, no. I’m sorry, no. You are like my brother.” Hubert took the rejection with good grace, as if it was just something that had to be settled. He became her friend and mentor. Paris became her home.
Betty felt the plane bank and looked out the window again. Bushland slid past below her, then yellow sandstone cliffs glowing in the morning sunlight, and the sea. Beyond the fringe of white foam at the foot of the cliffs, the ocean was flat and calm. A fishing boat on its way down the coast was cutting a brilliant white vee across the deep blue surface.
“C’est votre première fois en Australie?” The businessman in the seat next to her was leaning over to see out the window.
“Non, je suis de retour,” said Betty. “This is where I came from.”
When she had eventually given in and agreed to be shipped to Sydney, she thought she was going to be living with John.
“No, Mum,” John had said on the phone, “my place is no good. I’m renovating, I’ve only got floorboards in one of the bedrooms, I told you that. Don’t worry, you’ll like Forest Court. It’s in Glebe, close to everything, not far from me.”
An old people’s home. Independent living, they called it in the brochure John had sent, but it was just an old people’s home. What else do you call a place full of old people?
Glebe. She couldn’t remember what Glebe was like. Near the city she thought.
The plane levelled out of its long turn and they floated over Cronulla Beach and Kurnell. To the west Betty could see the edge of Botany Bay. Ramsgate and Brighton-le-Sands, her old haunts, flat, built on ancient sand.
Then they dropped onto Sydney, shiny and bright in the morning sun.
Welcome home, thought Betty.
The flight was twenty minutes late. John stood with his back to the wall and sipped suspiciously at a cup of coffee while his eyes scanned the arrival hall. He still didn’t like crowded places. There were too many people, too many possibilities – and too few of him. He knew it didn’t make sense, it was just training, conditioning. The plastic brain, rewiring itself. Always on the lookout for threats. He knew he had to let all that go, but he didn’t know how. They didn’t tell you how to unwire your brain. How to forget. He finished the coffee and binned the paper cup. It had been better than he expected airport coffee to be.
John was tall enough to see over the crowd to the two exit ramps his mother could appear on. He scratched idly at the twisted flesh above his elbow while, behind black wraparound sunglasses, his eyes scanned the crowd, sorting out the family relationships and then reassessing them when new arrivals turned up. Looking for the anomaly, the one that didn’t fit – vaguely amused by the thought that this was probably him. Lots of Asian and Middle Eastern families here today. A few groups of Islanders too. The people coming down the arrival ramps from the customs hall split about fifty-fifty, he guessed, between those being greeted by family groups and those just trying to find a quick path through the crowd to get a taxi or to change some money. Backpackers, young surf dudes with curly blond hair and unwieldy surfboards. A couple of old surf dudes too, fit and very tanned. Young women in sarongs, some in ugg boots and track suits. Business men in blazers over polo shirts, minimal luggage, travelling light, in a hurry.
Then his mother was coming down the left-hand ramp. She looked tiny and frail in the wheelchair. A big Indian-looking man steering her down the ramp, leaning over and saying something to her. His mother nodded and looked up for the first time, peering out across the crowded arrivals hall. If it had been anyone but Betty, John would have thought she looked scared. He started to move through th
e crowd, navigating a route to arrive at the bottom of the ramp at the same time they did. She’s changed, he thought. It was only three weeks since he had seen her at the rehab hospital but she seemed different now, smaller somehow. Maybe it was just the wheelchair. He squeezed past a large group of Chinese tourists, sidestepped an errant luggage trolley and stopped in front of his mother.
“Hello, Mum. Welcome home,” he said, smiling and bending down to kiss her on both cheeks. Then he straightened up and smiled at the wheelchair pusher. Not sure of the niceties, he stuck out his hand, “Hello, I’m John. Betty’s my mother.”
The man smiled, lots of white teeth in a brown face, and shook his hand briefly. “Here she is then, all safe and sound, and here is her luggage,” he said pointing to a luggage trolley another man had pushed up beside them.
Betty was looking up at them, eyes flicking from one to the other. The man who had been pushing Betty bent down over her. “Goodbye, Mrs Lawrence, I hope everything works out at your new home.”
“Merci, Sajit. You have been very kind to me, but I can walk from here.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course.”
John held Betty’s walking stick while Sajit put the brakes on, folded up the foot plates and helped Betty to stand. She wobbled a bit then took the stick from John. “Which way?” she said.
Sajit nodded to John then the two men disappeared into the crowd, making their way towards the staff security door.
“Et le pourboire?” said Betty.
“Non, je ne le pense pas.” John looked at her then back at the men moving quickly through the crowd, “Not in Australia. We don’t tip, not in airports.”
“It is too late now anyway,” she said. “We better go, we’re blocking the way here.”
She was right, the ramps were becoming crowded as people tried to make their way through the crush at the bottom. “Yes, okay,” he said, stepping behind the luggage trolley. “Straight ahead, through those doors. I’ll follow you.”
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