Forever Young

by Steven Carroll

  It is cold. The capital is cold. And as he looks up from his newspaper during his lunch break at a nearby café, he sees her. Beth. And as happened on the steps of Parliament House the previous week, for a moment he doesn’t recognise her. Like one of those nameless refugees you see on documentaries, fleeing one war or another, she seems to have given up her identity. Become one of the crowd, but a one-woman crowd. She has that homeless look, hunched in her overcoat as if having slept in it. Her hair, usually brushed and shaped, has settled where the wind left it. She is eyeing the cakes in the café window and he is unsure as to what sort of manner he should adopt should she enter. But she lingers at the window, eyes blank, and he wonders if she’s seeing anything at all. Her face is inclined, eyes on the contents of the café’s window, but she is elsewhere. She does not see him, and he has every impression that even if he were to wave she wouldn’t notice.

  And then she moves on. Just anybody. And he has, for a reason he can’t name, the distinct impression that she’s not going anywhere in particular. That she is just going. An action without an object. That her path, were it to be mapped, would have no logic. She moves on, hands plunged into her coat pockets. And it occurs to him now that she had no bag: the bag, a satchel, always strung over her shoulder, which always contained her work, was not there. And he imagines that bag dumped on a chair or table back at her flat. Not so much forgotten as abandoned. And does this explain the look of the refugee? That without her bag, the work it always contained, the very thing that has always defined her, without that, she is adrift.

  She will, he tells himself, snap out of it. She is one of those who define themselves by doing. It is her nature. Always has been. And when the ridicule fades she will return to what she does and immerse herself in doing it. Her nature, he assures himself, will eventually assert itself and life will go on. All things pass. That, too, is in the nature of things.

  All the same, as he rises from his table, picking up his paper and a folder of work that he meant to look at but was distracted from, he concedes that the glimpse of Beth at the window brought with it the vaguely troubling suggestion that it doesn’t take much for a life to unravel.

  As first he doesn’t notice it as he scans the newspaper. The front page is dominated by stories about politicians and power, and all the incidental stories that follow are presented as news but aren’t news at all; they fill the newspaper but everybody could quite easily get by without knowing about them. There is, he muses, when you think of it, very little news. Not really. But gradually, a small piece, a paragraph actually, draws his attention, there in the bottom right-hand corner of the third page. Doyenne Journalist Dies. Even then, he is merely curious, until he realises that the Elizabeth of this short paragraph, this doyenne journalist who has just died, is Beth. And his first response is disbelief. They’ve got it wrong. He saw her only last week. Bedraggled, yes. The air of a refugee or a displaced person, yes. But not dead. He reads the whole paragraph in one sweep of the eyes. Died. In the night. Forty-four. No explanation. Great loss to the newspaper world. Funeral to be announced. That’s all. No details. Just a clutch of basic facts amounting to a death. His wife watches as he rises from the table. The kitchen, his surroundings, fade into insubstantiality.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I have to make a call.’

  And he leaves, forgetting that he is still holding the newspaper, clinging to the thought, which he knows is absurd, that it’s all a mistake and a phone call will clear it up. He is walking in a dream. The hallway, suddenly, like a hallway from dreams. Long, and with something sinister at the end of it. Yes, he will call someone. But who? Not Trix. Not the newspaper itself. He is now standing in his study asking himself, who? And after mentally composing a list he settles on a journalist who knows her. And he phrases it like that because he is still thinking of her in the present tense. Every part of him rebels at placing her in the past. No, not possible. He is walking in a dream and the call will snap him from it. So, hastily flicking through his book of numbers, he comes to the number he is searching for and lifts the receiver.

  When he puts the receiver down ten minutes later he has the details. Enough details to give a sketch of events. And to confirm the fact that, yes, she is dead. No mistake. And, of course, he never believed there was one anyway. She died, it seems, on the Thursday night. She’d been to the bar at Parliament House. They all went on Thursday evenings. Not him; last Thursday he skipped drinks. She left, although no one seems to have seen her go, and went home to die. Just how is not certain, and Trix was away. Beth was alone. But she was taking sleeping pills. She’d started taking them recently. She never had before. Possibly unaccustomed to them. For the general feeling, he learnt as he listened, was that Beth had never intended to die. She just wanted some sleep.

  After he has put down the phone he sits staring round at the room: paintings, bookshelves, desk and chair. All solid. More solid than life. Pills? Pills and sleep? Sleep and pills … Beth dead? Dead! He leaves the newspaper on the desk and wanders out into the hallway.

  And when he walks back into the kitchen he has the feeling of both being there and not there. Of being an outsider in his own house. Of floating over things, or through them. A bit of a ghost. And the home — wife, house, window, garden, tree, lawn (needs mowing), yard — pops up around him like a pop-up world. The Van Gogh chairs, the placemats, the whole Monet kitchen — not his, but somebody else’s. Beth dead! It was all a game. Wasn’t it? An exhilarating one. Can you invent truth? Start a whisper and watch the whispers gather — watch as whispers become events, and events gather to the point where you no longer control them but they control you?

  ‘Did you get through?’

  He stares at his wife, eyes blank. ‘What?’

  ‘Your call. Did you get through?’

  That was it. He left the room. He made a call. He gathered together certain facts that he needed to know. And now he knows them. And there’s nothing more to be added.

  ‘Yes, I got through.’

  ‘Good.’

  It’s a long, drawn-out ‘Good’, like a morning yawn, accompanied by a smile that says, hi, good to have you back. The world is returning. He’s had a shock, and a shock shakes you. Kate goes back to her book of rich reproductions. Immersed in it once more. Good, she’s noticed nothing.

  Pills and sleep, sleep and pills. Bunny Rabbit played a trick on Pussy Cat; Peter played a trick on Beth. Peter is naughty. Peter must run, for the eyes of Pussy Cat and the eyes of Beth — Beth dead, for God’s sake! — are upon him. Peter’s adventures have gone wrong and the farmer’s rake is poised to come down on him at any moment. Peter must be fast, or the blow will fall. The blow will …

  He is floating. A balloon. And his hands grip the back of the chair upon which he is leaning in an effort to anchor his weightless self. He contemplates the walk to the sink for a glass of water, but stays anchored to the chair, deciding that it is best to stay put for the moment. And it is then that his wife slams her substantial bound volume of reproductions shut and proposes a drive. A market somewhere. Knick-knacks. And that floating sensation, the feeling of somehow being a stranger in his own home, is dispelled as the volume snaps shut and the loud slap of the hardback covers reverberates around the room with the healthy sound of reality.

  As they leave the house she throws the keys to him and he notes, with satisfaction, that the catch is clean. The keys hit the back of his open palm with a smack as his fingers close instantly around them.

  He’s had a shock, and a shock shakes you. But the mind and the body are back, the catch was clean. And it is good to get out; streets, trees and clouds go by. Peter is fast. The farmer lowers his rake to the ground and leans on it, watching the disappearing figure of Peter. Streets, trees and clouds go by under a brilliant spring sun. Doyenne Journalist Dies. Pills and sleep, sleep and pills … The car is noisy with music from the radio, chatter and occasional laughter. And the farmer, trailing his rake and returning to his
work, recedes into the distance, but looks back over his shoulder as he goes, as if to say: I haven’t forgotten.

  It’s a small chapel on the outskirts of the city, as these places always are. He wasn’t even sure he should come, thought he might be intruding on a private affair, but old times, he eventually decided, did amount to at least this much. The act of being here a sort of duty. To say farewell to one of your number. Those who were there. All the same, he doesn’t really know anybody. By sight, yes — journalists and the odd politician — but not really. And is that the husband from the marriage that came and went with all the explosive brevity of the times themselves? Maybe, maybe just nobody. But in the end, it’s neither duty nor old times that brought him here — an intruder at a funeral.

  No, it’s that final image of her. Beth at the café window, almost as if blown there by the wind. That look of displacement, of having nowhere to go. A game. That was what it was. An experiment in invention. And he never imagined for one moment that it might come to this. They play games, we play games. Everybody does, and he won’t be the last to play games. It’s that kind of city. It was never meant to end here. But here he is, an intruder at a funeral.

  Then it all begins. The speeches, the songs that meant something in life and may mean even more in death. He looks around. It is a good turn-out. This is always the concern with a funeral. That not many will turn up. Which is possibly another reason for being here. There is a sort of responsibility in being here. To make sure that the numbers are good. For good numbers tell the world that this was a full life. One full enough to accumulate a good attendance. A meagre attendance, he can’t help but think, is a kind of failure. Not by any social measure of importance. But a life ought to amount, upon departing for the last time, to something more than a meagre attendance. And not to provide a good attendance is a sort of common failure. One speech blends into another, one song into another. Then the coffin slides into the furnace and soon they are all standing.

  And it is only then, as the funeral party turns into the aisle, that he catches sight of Trix for the first time. She looks pale, eyes either fixed on some distant point at the far end of the chapel or just blank. Pale, but strong, he notes. Supporting an older woman who may or may not be Beth’s mother. He doesn’t know. He never knew her. Old times didn’t extend that far. He is standing at his aisle seat at the back of the chapel, and as she draws near Trix looks up and notices him. Her eyes immediately lose the blank look and become focused and fierce. The eyes of a strong, solitary fox, sighting her enemy in her own domain, eyes relentlessly fixed on her quarry as if the stare alone were enough to drive him away. And as she passes, she removes an envelope from her coat pocket and slaps it into his palm. Then she is gone and he is left holding the envelope — small, like those envelopes containing cards we attach to presents or which carry brief expressions of thanks or good wishes.

  The funeral party, compacted into somebody’s appropriately sombre sedan, departs. Small groups — tears one minute, laughter the next — gather then slowly break up and drift off. Peter and a couple of strangers are eventually left standing at the front of the chapel. And it is only then, vaguely mindful of the broken talk around him, that he opens the envelope that has been resting in his palm, and reads the note inside: ‘Rape is a political act’.

  Amid all the tears, the cares, the consuming duty of arranging someone’s send-off so that it amounts to more than a meagre attendance and doesn’t take on the look of failure, among all that she found time to write this. And all on the assumption, the chance, that he might be there.

  And it is now that he clearly sees the accusation in her eyes as she passed him and thrust the envelope into his hand. You, you did this. No court will ever try you. No judge will ever pass sentence — but you know, and I know. And as he leaves the chapel behind, the note still in his hand, Trix’s eyes follow him. You know, and I know. And I will never, never let you forget it.

  And how did she know? Beth told her, who else? They shared such things, of course they did. And so Beth told Trix. Probably that very night he visited. I’ve got this story, she would have said. Peter just told me. And it’s preposterous, of course. The way the truth always is. But it’s mine. Peter just told me. I’ve got this story …

  Sleep and pills, pills and sleep. The eyes of Beth, the eyes of Pussy Cat, turn to him. You knew our weakness and you used our weakness. No court will ever try you, no judge will ever pass sentence. But judgement is always there in Pussy Cat’s eyes, in those fleeting moments when a sight, sound or a scent stirs the past and the memory of Pussy Cat pounces; it was there in the haunted look in Beth’s eyes as she stood on the steps of parliament and said: you used me. Just as surely as it was in Trix’s eyes as she passed him in the chapel and thrust the envelope into his hand.

  The envelope is deep in his pocket as he steers back to the city, and as much as he wants to forget about it, throughout the whole drive he’s preoccupied with thoughts of what on earth to do with it. For the moment, he leaves it stuffed deep in his coat pocket, like one of those pieces of wedding cake you forget all about until months after the event. All the same, it’s there. And he knows it is.

  3. Mandy Is Not in Love

  There’s unrest in the skies. No, upheaval. Mandy lifts a white blossom from her hair and stares at it as if studying some exotic creature blown in on the wind. What faraway place has it blown in from to land in her hair? And after studying the blossom a moment longer she releases it, like a bird freed from a net, and watches as a sudden blast of air lifts it back into the unrest of the sky.

  She is standing on the footpath outside the university, and all around her the trees that line the street are rioting. Leaves, scraps of paper and small birds are thrown upwards into the swirling currents that make no distinction between any of them. It’s beyond a riot; it’s a revolution. Everything, all manner of objects, animate and inanimate, thrown this way and that, at the whim of the wind. And which one was hers, she wonders, as the blossoms, blown in from who knows where, are swept out over the university grounds. The wind doesn’t care. The sky is indifferent. Do you think I stop to count the blossoms, the wind calls. It’s a revolution, you silly girl.

  Mandy, who normally hates this time of year, is enraptured with the sheer sweep of the spectacle and is thinking of revolution because she has just come from her history class. She is studying revolutions and the sky this afternoon is a perfect picture of one. Everything thrown into the air by a force indifferent to the upheaval it creates. Until this year she taught at the same school as Michael. That is how they met. They are, as the phrase goes, ‘seeing’ each other. She has come back to university to study for her Master of Arts. Not for her teaching, but simply because she wants to. She walked out of her tutorial room, leaving behind the ferment of Russia (to be picked up next week), only to be greeted by the sky in ferment. She is now making her way back to her car.

  A big English sheep-dog sits up in the front seat and barks his greeting as she approaches. The dog is infinitely patient and has done this many times. He requires only that the window be let down sufficiently to allow the air in and a soft seat to sit upon and wait. The dog knows the routine and knows that he will now receive a biscuit as a reward for his patience.

  He is munching on the biscuit, almost savouring it, as Mandy pulls out from the kerb and steers the car in the direction of Michael’s flat. She feels liberated, the week’s study is over and now her time is her own. She and Michael have been ‘seeing’ each other for a year now, and as often as not she drives by his flat after her tutorials. It is something to look forward to — and she is. Perhaps, she notes, looking forward to it a little more than the definition of ‘seeing’ each other allows. Perhaps. All the same, she is happy. For the last year has given her a kind of happiness she has not known for a long time, having somehow gone from one unsatisfactory affair to another, usually looking back and asking herself what on earth did she ever see in so-and-so or so-and-so. But she’s been
happy this last year. She does not call this happiness ‘love’; nobody does. At least, not the likes of Mandy and Michael. It is happiness. It is light. And she is content with that for now.

  And so it is with a light heart that she turns the wheel and steers the car past the parks in riot to Michael’s. Yes, she is happy. But he is going away soon and will, quite possibly, take that happiness with him. So although her heart is light, there is a weight pressing against it. But he isn’t going just yet, and so she will live in the moment for these last couple of months before he leaves. Let it be enough, for Mandy has decided to take her happiness where and when she finds it. She wonders what lies beyond ‘seeing’ each other. Perhaps, she muses, ‘knowing’ each other. But that’s a kind of Mandy and a kind of Michael that may exist in the future, if he comes back. Let it be. Let this happiness that comes from ‘seeing’ each other be enough for the moment, and the weeks before his going will be happy weeks. Besides, when he leaves, who’s to say he won’t come back? To her. And as she contemplates this, she knows full well that there is a part of Mandy that would wait. And will. He needs to go, she can see that. She almost wants him to go, so that when he comes back everything will be different. That is her hope. And, at the same time, he is a puzzle to her. You fear a lasting friendship, she says to herself, turning into Michael’s street, as if addressing him. You fear a lasting friendship … How strange, how very strange, when it is what I long for. Why do you fear such things? Why is that? Why does Michael have a lock on his heart?

  As she pulls up at the front of his flat she can see him, sitting on the couch, staring out the window. At first he doesn’t see her — his eyes are fixed on the park — then his head turns. She can’t, from this distance, see the expression on his face and if there is a light in his eyes or not. But she likes to think that he’s happy that she’s here. That this is what they bring to each other — and if that happy look were not there on his face it would be because she no longer brings it to him, that she has lost the knack of bringing it with her. And so she likes to think there’s a light in his eyes and that she still brings happiness to him. For, as long as she does, they will stay together and ‘seeing’ each other may well, one day, become ‘knowing’ each other. It is a kind of waiting game, a kind of hope, one that she rarely acknowledges, but one that she carries with her as she steps out into a gust of wind and closes the car door, after speaking briefly to the dog, and walks towards Michael.