by Liz Byrski
‘And when you get back?’
‘Who knows? Perhaps I’ll be clearer about what I want by then. But I’ve felt for some time that it’s all falling apart and it’s not only because of Xavier. I think this arrangement has reached the end of its natural life.’ Putting it into words makes Flora feel stronger. The restlessness and anxiety that have plagued her for the last year or so are to do with the way she has tied her life to Suzanne’s. It’s time – more than time – to work out how she will spend her old age.
‘Then come,’ Connie says, ‘please do come!’
‘So where will we be going?’
Connie smiles. ‘It might be a bit dull for you – after all, you’ve been going back and forth to England for years – but I just want to go back to the places where you and I grew up: Tunbridge Wells, the school, home, Ashdown Forest, Brighton, and that part of the south coast. It’s just a sentimental journey for me. It seems to have been such a happy time, especially after Dad left, just Mum and me at home. We were hard up but it didn’t seem to matter. I want to wander around those places again.’ She pauses, breaking off a piece of croissant and dunking it in her coffee. ‘I’ve spent so long being a wife and a mother and then a full-time carer that I’ve almost forgotten who I was before … well, before Gerald.
‘Being married a long time you become so enmeshed with the other person that it’s easy to forget who you once were,’ she continues. ‘This trip is self-indulgent, but it’s about finding my old self, first by being with you and then by going back to some of those places. Honestly, I think I put myself on the backburner for too long, and let Gerald lead. It just felt easier that way.’
‘I noticed that when I stayed with you,’ Flora says. ‘I wanted to tell you that at the time, but I didn’t think you’d want to hear it then.’
‘No, I wouldn’t have,’ Connie says. ‘I would have resisted it. I suppose I became a bit of a cliché, the acquiescent, comfortably married woman. Even when he was sick, he was still the driving force – everything revolved around him. And now he’s gone, and I’m trying to find my way to the future.’ She pauses, gazing down into her coffee cup, then looks up at Flora, her eyes bright with tears. ‘I need to remember what I wanted from my life, who I might have become if I hadn’t married him. I did love him, you know, I wouldn’t want you to think …’
‘I know, Connie.’ Flora takes her hand across the table. ‘I’ve never doubted that, and you were the best thing that could have happened to him; he was incredibly lucky and I am sure he knew it.’
‘I never forgave him, though, for the way he cut you off,’ Connie continues. There is a short uncomfortable silence. ‘And I’m ashamed that I didn’t stand up to him, but you know what he was like, he wasn’t a man who could easily admit that he’d been in the wrong.’
‘Well, we’re here now, we still have our friendship and perhaps this is the time of life when we need it most.’
They are both quiet for a moment.
‘Okay,’ Flora says, eventually breaking the silence, ‘where else are we going?’
‘Well, London, of course. Bloomsbury, where Mrs Dalloway …’
‘“… said she would buy the flowers herself”,’ Flora cuts in. ‘I always imagined her walking down Marchmont Street to do it.’
‘Me too! So you’ll really come with me? You won’t change your mind and think you have to stay for Suzanne?’
‘I won’t change my mind.’ And she lifts her cup, holding it out towards Connie in a toast. ‘Here’s to the girls’ own tour. Bring it on.’
*
Andrew holds his razor under the tap, swishing the soap off it and leans closer to the bathroom mirror, running his hand over his chin. The signs of strain are showing in his face, no doubt about that; bags under his eyes, what seems like a small but permanent furrow between his eyebrows, and a generally washed out, pasty look. He pulls back a little, stands up straight, squares his shoulders and pulls in his stomach. He doesn’t look all that bad for forty-four, he thinks, but perhaps he should grow his hair a bit. He’d thought the very close cut would suit him and according to Brooke it does, even Linda had given it a nod of approval, but he feels strangely exposed and vulnerable. That’s the last thing he needs right now when each argument leaves him reeling, as though he has been slapped around to the point of exhaustion.
Linda is a formidable adversary, he’s always known that. She’s similar to his sister – perhaps that’s what he’d first admired in her. He’s always envied that ruthless terrier-like streak in Kerry too, admired it even when she was about to bury her teeth into his ankle – or more likely his jugular. He can hold his own most of the time but he lacks the head of steam that builds so quickly in his sister and his wife. And when he and Linda married he’d assumed he would never be on the receiving end. How stupid was that? He just wants to live in peace. Every day now he reminds himself that he once loved Linda enough to want to spend the rest of his life with her. She is Brooke’s mother and that has to be respected, it can’t be part of the fight. But of course that’s what it’s become.
He steps back from the mirror to study his body; he really needs to start going to the gym again, something to make him feel better about himself. There’s nothing like deadly emotional combat with someone you once loved to poison the way you feel about yourself.
‘You’ve completely lost interest in sex,’ Linda had hissed at him recently. ‘I can’t remember when we did it last, just after your father died, I think, because I thought at the time, oh yes, this is what people say about life being all about sex and death.’
He knows she was right about that, knows that he had wanted to make love that night in his mother’s house, because it was a sort of proof of life. But since then he’s felt disconnected from anything physical, lives in his head while his heart and his body feel numb. There has been relief in bringing things out into the open, but he’s still in much the same state and all he has the energy for now is fighting for what he wants to salvage from his marriage – namely Brooke.
But he has a few days of breathing space now because Linda is in Brisbane on gallery business. Andrew wonders if she realises that leaving him alone with Brooke is a tactical error. He’s decided to tell Brooke what’s happening. He knows he should wait for the two of them to be able to do it together, but Linda is insisting that Zachary be there at the same time. It will, she says, show Brooke that the three of them get on okay and they can all be friends. ‘In your dreams, Linda,’ he says softly into the mirror. Tonight, he thinks, I’ll make a nice dinner for the two of us and break the news then. He slips his arms into his shirt sleeves, and walks through to the kitchen doing up the buttons as he goes.
Brooke is sitting at the bench with a bowl of muesli, and reading something on her iPad. Sometimes Andrew wishes he’d never bought it for her; that or the iPod seem welded to her, like additional body parts. She’s made a pot of coffee and he pours himself a cup and sticks two slices of bread into the toaster.
‘How about I make risotto tonight?’ he asks, joining her at the bench. ‘Isn’t that your favourite?’
Brooke glances up at him; amazingly, she is not wearing earphones. ‘Mmmm, okay,’ she says and returns to what she’s reading on the screen.
‘No earphones this morning?’
‘Don’t need them,’ Brooke says. ‘Mum’s away, no arguments.’
Andrew stops his cup halfway to his mouth. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Like I said, no arguments, no need to block them out. Same as when there’s only Mum and me here.’
‘Arguments?’
Brooke gets up from her stool and starts packing books into her bag. ‘Get real, Dad. I’m not deaf or stupid. I know what’s going on.’
Andrew’s throat goes dry. ‘You mean … ?’
‘I know you’re splitting up, okay? I wish you’d just get on and do it – all this fighting is driving me insane.’
Andrew slides off his stool. He wants to put his arm around h
er but stops himself in time. Right now she looks as though being touched is the last thing she wants. He fidgets with his mug and spoon. ‘I’m sorry. We were going to get things sorted before we broke the news. Make it easier for you.’
Brooke laughs out loud. ‘Well, you stuffed that up, didn’t you? It’s like the West Bank, bombs flying in all directions. Anyway, don’t you think I’m entitled to know? I’m not a child.’
He nods. ‘Yes, yes of course, but … you didn’t say anything … I …’
‘I was waiting for one of you to tell me, giving you a chance to do the right thing.’
‘So I guess you know everything then?’
‘That Mum’s having an affair with that awful Zachary. You both want this place; you both want me to live with you. Yes, I know all that,’ Brooke says, continuing to rummage around with her school bag, not looking up. ‘And what really pisses me off is that neither of you have bothered to ask me how I feel or what I want.’
Andrew stares at her, then looks away, embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, you’re right, we should have told you. We thought we were doing the right thing.’
‘Well, you weren’t,’ she says and for a moment her bottom lip trembles slightly and she looks as though she might be going to cry, but then she seems to get control of it. She stands abruptly and heads to the sink, where she rinses her bowl, her back to him. ‘Fight over the house if you want but not over me. I should have a say in where I live and who with.’
Andrew nods. ‘Yes, yes, of course. All right, well, look, here’s how things are at the moment …’
Brooke turns suddenly to face him. ‘I told Nan.’
‘You what?’
‘I told Nan all about it. I emailed her. I had to talk to someone, didn’t I?’
‘You emailed or you actually talked to her?’
‘Both. I emailed her and then we talked on Skype.’
‘You shouldn’t have done that without …’
‘Fuck off, Dad. It’s not my fault all this is happening. I’ve got a right to talk to Nan.’
Andrew, shaken first by Brooke’s knowledge of the situation, is caught now between the shame and embarrassment of his mother knowing what’s going on, and a longing to ring her himself and ask her what he should do next. ‘So what did she say?’ he asks, hoping that he doesn’t sound quite as pathetic as he feels.
‘She said I should talk to you, tell you how I feel. She said I should remember that you both love me and want the best for me and that in the long run she believes both of you will see that I should be consulted about my own future.’
He nods, several times, slowly, having difficulty taking all this in. Somewhere in the background he hears his toast pop up and smells a faint scent of burning. He turns to retrieve the toast, thankful that Brooke has chosen now, this time when the two of them are here alone, to talk to him, because it means he has a head start. He nods again, dropping the toast onto a plate and looking around for the butter. ‘Yes, okay, that’s right, that’s good.’ His palms are sweating. ‘So … er … have you thought about what you want … d’you want to tell me?’
‘Yeah, okay,’ she says, looking him in the eye now, sitting back down on her stool. ‘Well, I don’t mind whether I live with you or Mum as long as I can see the other one every week without any fighting about it. But I am absolutely not going to live with that creep Zachary and I am not going to stay overnight in his house or anything like that, never, not ever – absolutely no way – so I don’t see how I can live with Mum, unless she’s going to live alone. And he’d have to promise not to visit when I’m there.’
A huge wave of relief surges through Andrew. ‘So you’d be happy to live with either one of us as long as we live alone – no third parties?’
‘Yep.’
‘So you and I could stay here together if … if that’s how it worked out? You’d like that?’
‘I just told you, it’d be okay. But it’s not my absolutely best choice.’
Andrew’s stomach lurches; for a moment there he thought he’d won. ‘So what’s the best choice?’
‘I want to go and live with Nan in Hobart.’
‘With Nan?’
‘Yes, it’d be great, really cool.’
‘That’s ridiculous, Brooke. I’m sorry, darling, I know we were wrong in not telling you – I mean, not asking you earlier. But Hobart, no way. What about school? You’ll be going into sixth form. Besides … we’re your parents. Children live with their parents, that’s how it is.’
‘No it’s not,’ Brooke cuts in. ‘I know people at school who live with aunts or their older sister or their grandparents when their parents split. They reckon it’s really good.’
‘Have you talked to Nan about this?’
‘No, not yet, but I bet she’d say yes.’
‘It’s ridiculous …’ he begins, ‘the school thing just makes it impossible, the upheaval; it would be very bad for you. You might stuff up and lose a year.’
‘This is very bad for me,’ Brooke says, ‘being stuck in the middle here. I could come home sometimes for weekends and in the holidays. The airfare from Melbourne to Hobart and back is really cheap, it’s not like you couldn’t afford it.’
‘But what about school?’
She grabs the iPad and turns it towards him. ‘I’ve found one, it’s in Sandy Bay not far from Nan’s house, near the river. I could ride my bike. See – small independent college for girls – brilliant, no dickhead boys to cope with – here, look …’
‘What is this?’
‘It’s the My School website, you can look up all the schools, ninety-six percent participation, that’s really good, and they specialise in languages.’
Andrew looks at the screen, the blocks of text in blue-framed boxes, percentages, charts, numbers of teachers, figures in categories that mean nothing to him. Suddenly he feels incredibly old and fragile, as though if he has to have one more argument with anyone about anything he might just burst into tears.
‘Let me think about it,’ he says eventually. ‘You’ve just sprung it on me …’
‘Will you talk to Nan?’
‘Whoa, Brooke, not yet. I said I’d think about it.’ He glances at his watch. ‘Shouldn’t you be gone by now?’
She jumps up from the bench, and zips up her backpack. ‘I’ve gone. Think about it – promise? I’ll leave you the iPad.’
‘I promise,’ he says.
Brooke bumps her face against his, landing a kiss on his ear, and then strides off up the passage. ‘I knew you’d say yes,’ she calls from the front door. ‘Love ya, Dad.’
‘I haven’t said yes,’ Andrew calls after her, ‘I said I’d think about it …’ but the front door slams and she is gone, leaving him with the iPad.
Andrew shakes his head, staring at the maze of words and numbers on the screen. Then he leans forward, folds his arms on the bench, rests his head on them, and considers whether he might just call in sick and go back to bed for the rest of the day.
Nine
Flora zips up her suitcase and stops in the open doorway to take a last look around the room. She’ll be back of course, but this feels like a defining moment and she’s struck by the enormity of it. It is so easy to contemplate big lifestyle changes when you’re young, and so daunting at her age. She thinks back to other times when she has felt the weight of change pressing on her. A dull and chilly March day in 1958 when she had been dragged by her parents into the throng of thousands queuing for entry to Wembley Stadium. She was ten and had envied Gerald who, being at boarding school, had escaped an afternoon of boredom. Flora had been in her bedroom singing along with The Chordettes to ‘Lollipop’ on the gramophone she’d got for Christmas, when her mother had called her to hurry up and get her coat on.
‘Why can’t I stay here?’ she’d called back down the stairs. ‘I promise not to go out, I’ll just stay in and read my book.’
‘Absolutely not,’ her mother had said. ‘Come along, quickly now, Daddy’s already sta
rted the car.’
Flora had switched off the gramophone, cast a longing look at Little Women, and struggled into her coat. Sermons in church were bad enough but this one sounded gruesome and would last for hours. But later, when they were in their seats high up in the stands and Billy Graham began to speak, Flora had known that God was speaking directly to her. The message, constantly repeated, was simple, and the passion of the delivery brought her out in goosebumps. This was no sermon, it was like nothing she had ever experienced. No complicated sentences mumbled in a monotone from the pulpit, no tedious and incomprehensible phrases from the bible; just passion, promises, and a call to action. When it finished and those who wanted to dedicate their lives to God were invited to leave their seats and come to the centre of the stadium, her father had got to his feet and Flora quickly followed.
‘Oh sit down, for goodness sake, and don’t be so ridiculous,’ her mother had hissed, as people began to stream into the aisles and onto the ground. ‘Evangelist indeed. He’s just a cheap entertainer. I told you we shouldn’t have come. Whatever would Father Barrett say if he could see you both?’
Her father had hesitated, begun to protest and then, with more angry urging from her mother, had dropped back into his seat while Flora, struggling to drag him up again, had wept hot tears of despair that she had not been allowed to give herself to God, and was now bound for hell and damnation. Something remarkable had happened that day; God had become real for her and from then on she would both chat and pray to him, ask for advice and confide her deepest thoughts. And a few years later she had known she wanted to enter a convent. The decision was not only about her faith, but also about her fear that she would never fit in with the wider world. She was confused about herself; drawn always to the company of girls and lacking the interest in boys that most of them shared. There was, she felt, something different about her. The only person she’d talked to about it was Connie.