by Anna George
He stirs. Definitely time for the legal firepower.
Telephone in hand, he searches his contacts. He’s relieved to see the number’s survived. With a shaky tap-tap, he dials. Inhales, waits. It rings. It rings so long it’s obvious an answering machine won’t be picking up. As he waits, he scans his contacts. They’re pathetic; so much for the legal fraternity. The telephone’s in his palm when an elderly voice squeaks out of it.
‘Hello?’
Dave’s right eyelid tremors.
‘Hello?’
Reginald Jeffrey Priestly QC had been his dad’s closest friend. Dave last spoke with his godfather before Christmas, after he and Elle were married. The two men had talked about Dave’s plans for children and dogs and a house at Apollo Bay. He can remember the pride in Reg’s voice, and the surprise.
‘Hello?’ The voice breaks as it rises. ‘Who’s there?’ The phone thuds as if dropped. ‘What a pest.’
Dave has seen this man in full flight in court: sure-footed and direct, his cross-examinations pure grace. He can’t connect tonight’s quavering voice with the booming, black-gowned figure. Ageing is decline in one thousand humiliations. Some, perhaps recently, more dramatic than others. Thank God he was spared the process with his father, dead so young. Some men crumble into old age, some collapse. His faith in his firepower falters.
He fingers his dictaphone. The voice on the telephone snaps: ‘Speak up. I can hear you breathing. You’re a smoker.’
It’s one thing admitting this stuff onto a tape, another thing altogether face to face with a Queen’s Counsel. He imagines how Reg’s face will become thoughtful as he listens. How Reg will weigh each word, holding it to the light like a jeweller with a gemstone. How, eventually, he’ll take a magnifying glass and shine a bright light into that blind spot.
Dave’s thumb hovers over the end-call button.
He hears his father’s voice: ‘Reg likes getting his hands dirty in other people’s lives. Me, I prefer their cars.’ And it was true; Reg’s passion was other people’s vices. The grimy and base: gloves off.
‘Reg,’ he says, his voice a croak, ‘it’s David Forrester.’
‘What a night to be calling. You see that fire?’
Dave frowns. ‘No. I don’t know.’ Over the ringing in his ears, he can make out the wail of sirens. ‘Look, I need to see you.’
The old man doesn’t ask a question. Maybe he’s recognised the breathless tone.
‘Give me an hour,’ says Reg, ‘to feed myself. The wife’s at her kid’s.’
An hour, thinks Dave. Too much can screw up in one hour.
Dave parks beneath a tree in a side street. This time, starting the tape, he addresses it to Reg. Nudging the tap, his memories stream. Vivid and bewitching. He tells himself to apply the principles of interviewing – focus on the facts in issue and their precursors. Nothing else.
‘It was bliss,’ he says, ‘for a good three months.’
It was early December, a Tuesday, about 3 p.m. and they were in her bedroom. Late for a meeting in Collins Street, he was towelling himself dry. Only twice had they been to his Middle Brighton house and he hadn’t let her out of the car. ‘What is the big secret?’ she’d taken to teasing, and, ‘Who have you got hiding in there?’ He’d sacked his cleaner and his gardener in the weeks before they met. And, though he’d lived in the five-bedroom house for six years, his oven trays were still plastic-wrapped. She said she didn’t care – ‘Let me see.’ But he cared. From his circular driveway she’d studied his house, finally declaring his ‘mansion’ fit for an architectural spread. ‘It’s stunning,’ she’d said, ‘but I didn’t picture you as a man with turrets.’ He’d played along with her banter, knowing she was biding her time. Sooner rather than later he’d have to let her in.
During those early months, he saw that their time was spent wisely – at the cinema, eating out, in her bed. Her time was even more precious than his and she divvied it up accordingly; he was allocated, at best, only two nights each week. She was always having meetings or working on her script and knocking back other people’s. She, like everyone else, had high hopes for her second feature. ‘Otherwise,’ she told him, ‘they’ll think the first one was a fluke.’ Getting the script right was crucial. Without prompting, she showed him her script editor’s notes. It appeared Mira wasn’t a believer in love’s absolute power to transform. (‘That’s a bald lie sold by too many romantic comedies,’ wrote Mira, ‘even the ones we like! Aren’t we wanting to play with this convention?’) Elle had warmed to her premise and he could see she was thrown. ‘She’s a ball-breaker,’ he told her. ‘But you can rejig it. It’s all there, sweetheart, story-wise. Just adjust the levels again: a little more violin, a little lighter on the cymbal.’ He didn’t know what he enjoyed more – being her de facto script editor or her relish for his input. Apparently he had the knack. Appeased, she’d rewritten for days.
That Tuesday afternoon, he tugged up his trousers as she watched from her bed. His Italian suit was new, for summer, and she noticed. That morning, she’d commented on his newly matching socks. It was unreal, how much she took in. His suit had fine blue and red lines in the grey cloth, and he matched it with a mauve shirt. She said she liked how his ginger highlights picked up the blues, was reminded again of fire. A contained fire: a gas fire. His star sign was fire and his sign in Chinese astrology was the fire horse, but he didn’t believe in that baloney. He didn’t tell her about it, not even when she mentioned that she was watery: the fish. He liked the suit too, liked the blues and reds toning together. Beneath her gaze, he matched his tie, his cufflinks, his belt. He tucked in his belly, puffed out the crinkly shirt, and raked his hair. But by the time he was scrubbing his teeth in her ensuite, he was almost angry, drawing specks of blood from his gums.
‘Mr Forrester, why do you keep going back?’
When he returned to the bedroom, she shone up at him, with eyes so white he still wondered what she did to them. He sighed. He’d been dreading this conversation. Happy people were sometimes a lot like God-botherers.
He sank onto the bed and she wrapped herself around him. ‘It’s clear your heart isn’t with the law,’ she said. ‘And misery doesn’t become you.’
‘I don’t know anything else.’
She gave his excuse air, as if it were new to her. ‘You can’t need the money,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you paint? Or draw? See where it takes you.’
He coloured; did she miss anything? ‘I loved to draw as a kid,’ he said. ‘But since then it’s never crossed my mind.’ He kissed her forehead and rose.
‘Well, think about it.’ She flung her sheets and stood with him, perfectly naked beside his suit. ‘I’ll support you, whatever you choose.’
Looking into her shining eyes, he believed her.
Driving to Freeman & Milne, he tried. He tried to find an answer to his gloominess as if he saw the world as she did. He knew if he came up with something, she’d expect him to move towards it. Drawing or painting. Rising above himself. If only it were that easy. Self-actualisation. Swiping his key at the lift well, he couldn’t fathom the first step. He wasn’t like her: gifted and brave.
That evening, he lay alone in his bed. It was only a matter of time, he realised, before he disappointed her. He’d guessed, months ago, that his persona jarred with hers: corporate versus creative. Maybe this was the beginning of her push. For change. For his sake or hers, he couldn’t tell. His head began to pound.
The pain, throbbing and familiar, was behind his brow. It got worse around sunrise, when he was almost asleep. It shut his eyes and honed his hearing. He could hear everything in his street: the old man spitting en route to his dawn dip, some kid on a mechanised scooter, his neighbours’ slamming doors and the crunch of their heels. The smells seeped in after that: the exhaust, the aftershave, the dog shit, and a cigarette smoked two backyards away. His nose became a magnet, his ears antennae, his eyes inoperative.
The pain itself didn’t alarm him so much
. But its return did. Almost a decade ago, when his headaches first began, he’d attributed them to his ex, her crazy ways. When they persisted after she’d left, he figured it was age. Over the years, he’d told himself that if people could beat cancer or survive an avalanche, he could outrun a headache. It’d become a question of competency, character. But over time he’d lost the battle. Tablets expired in his bathroom and books on the psychology of illness gathered dust on his shelves. Then he met Elle. And the headaches stopped. Or at least, they had.
A week later, he arrived at Elle’s house after a tedious day in court. He’d decided midway into his walk back to the office that it was time to let her in a pinch more. He tiptoed into her bedroom to find her reclined, reading the autobiography. He kissed her ear and she kept reading.
They’d spoken only briefly about their families and friends. Fortunately, her headmistress mother was on long service leave in the Northern Territory. And Elle wasn’t speaking with her younger, actor brother. A falling-out that had begun when Jude was overlooked for a part in Daisy – not because he was untalented; no, he was chronically unreliable. And a drinker . . . Sitting on the bed, Dave dropped his shoes and listened to the thuds.
He had managed to duck her friends as well, crying ‘too busy’ or ‘too tired’. Likewise he’d kept his mates away, forestalling the culture clash. But sooner or later it would happen. He slid his tie from its collar with a cool hiss. He’d have to meet the would-be mother-in-law, the best-friend producer, maybe even the naughty brother. And she would meet Alex. One day, before too long, their sweet relationship would be exposed to the outside world, and their outing would incite expectations. Worse, strangers would try to know him and appraise him. To date, he’d kept his boorish ways in check but that, he feared, could change.
‘Everything okay?’ She was watching him, of course, from behind her book.
‘Yeah.’
He sat then, naked and cross-legged, beside her. He told her about his parents: Bart, the workaholic grease monkey; Lillian, the fussy typist; how they looked like siblings, flaxen-haired and hazel-eyed; and how they loved and fought as viciously. He told her how their love was tangible in their small, picture-perfect house. Photos of them were everywhere – on a motorbike, at the footy, the races. How, when he was five and six, he spent teatime under the table, where he drew their toes or pretended to be a dog. He glanced at Elle and she put her book aside.
‘Keep going,’ she whispered.
He told her how, one Saturday night when he was seven, they went to a hotel in Port Melbourne. His parents were in high spirits, dressed up. St Kilda had won. Kids weren’t allowed at the pub, so the plan was that he’d stay under the table. ‘It’ll be like our usual game,’ said his mum. Dave had his tin of pencils and notepad. If he was quiet they’d give him hot chips and lemonade, and he was always quiet. But as his parents smuggled him towards their booth, he spotted an oil painting. He stopped. In the foreground was a white archway in partial shadow, and beyond it a cobalt sea. Dave had never seen anything so beautiful. Mouth open, he stared. In the busy dining room, his mother became agitated. ‘Sit down,’ she hissed. But he was spellbound. ‘How did the artist make those shadows?’ he asked, ‘and that creamy light?’ His mum shoved him then, hard and low. Her face was so ugly, and as he fell he dropped his pencils. Horribly self-conscious, he watched them scatter. He heard his father curse. If this was a game, he realised, he and his parents were on different teams.
‘The waiter helped me pick everything up. My parents screamed at him but he still kicked us out, the prick,’ he said. ‘After that, Saturday nights, they left me with a neighbour; most other nights I ate in front of the TV.’ Seven again, he felt that hurt and his abrupt aloneness. ‘My dad died twenty-odd years ago; he was forty-nine. Mum was forty-seven. She’s never remarried. I don’t see her much.’
Aware now of Elle sitting up, he felt embarrassed and was no longer sure of his point. But it seemed to work. In the silence she touched his cheek with the back of her fingers. It felt to him as if she was making a decision, though it probably happened instinctively. A piece of her dislodged and floated to him; it stretched and wrapped itself around him.
He didn’t realise how powerful his revelations would be for her. His pain matched hers in ways he couldn’t have foreseen. After his purge they lay together, then to his surprise she opened up. She told him about the wet winter’s afternoon she’d returned home from netball, aged ten, to discover her father catatonic on the couch, her brother crying in a cupboard. ‘Mum? Where are you?’ she’d sung out as she searched their baggy old house. ‘Mum?!’ It took her brother half an hour to come out of his cupboard. ‘She’s gone,’ he’d screamed, ‘and she’s not coming back!’
‘I felt as though I’d been punched in the kidneys,’ she said. After that, she explained, their mother wasn’t discussed, though in recent years Isla Nolan had tried to make amends. ‘She told me last year that “maternal instinct” was a myth. Like lifelong romantic love. And that her leaving wasn’t personal.’ Elle’s lip was quivering as she added, ‘The sad thing was, Dad adored her until the day he died and he never divorced her.’ To Dave’s stunned silence, she added: ‘Perhaps our lineage isn’t so great.’ She gave him a lingering kiss, ‘But we can get this right.’
Dave was struck by their parallel stories and their binding effect. For once, dropping his guard had paid off. He lay with his eyes closed and she stroked his forehead. He slept until dawn.
4
The week before Christmas, Dave had a burst of energy. He tidied his house as if he was putting it on the market. He even bought a vacuum cleaner – his cleaner and his ex must have each had their own. That his ex had taken hers was unsurprising. He was still finding new things missing: his Great Gatsby, his Everest photographs. Only last week his favourite Fred Williams had walked. Elle suggested he write a list. And change the locks. But they both knew he wouldn’t. He didn’t have time for life’s admin. In her home, Elle teased him about it as she restocked his toiletries, fed him fruit and poured him water.
But there were moments when he was more than capable. Tonight each living room was a burst of colour – white, orange, yellow – thanks to the tulips he’d purchased for their four-month anniversary. The fridge was stocked with Asian vegetables and salmon fillets for their dinner. He’d bought a wok and the plastic had been unwrapped from his oven trays. The garden paths were swept and the closets tidy – at least on the ground floor. Even his favourite music was playing, courtesy of a group of joyous old Cubans. Chuffed by his efforts, he felt like a fully functioning middle-aged man.
He heard the knock and spied Mr Sheen on the foyer’s windowsill at the same time. It was 8 p.m. exactly, of course. She’d been waiting four months for this invitation. He hid the cleaning agent behind a shutter and double-checked the central foyer and its surrounding spaces. The white curtains were open and the sinking sun was pouring its apricot light into the main living room. Beyond the glass, the summery sea was lively. Two large, curved cream sofas faced the window, and a dozen orange cushions sat up expectantly. The glass coffee table reflected the sun without any hint of fingerprints. Across from the main living room, a red-gum staircase beckoned to the upper levels, and ahead was the kitchen. The cigarette butts, empty glasses and dirty laundry were gone and the space looked clean, but empty – only a lounge setting and an enormous flat-screen television graced the nearby family room. At least the walls were dressed. His art was mostly contemporary; his new favourite was a large Tim Storrier that dominated the furthest wall – ‘Blaze Line at Williams Creek’. He hoped she liked its contained, fiery beauty, because he loved it.
You couldn’t see the mid-renovation flux upstairs from the ground floor, but he’d swept the bare floorboards and rolled the smelly carpet. He’d dusted the bedrooms and tossed throw-rugs over the red divan and two empty bookshelves in the adjacent television room. He’d closed the doors to the two towers. But tidiness could only go so far. Wires jut
ted from the walls like bones, holes winked in the plaster, and broken tiles were scattered about the third ensuite like lost teeth. It looks like we ran out of money, he thought. He’d sacked the architect and the builder and burned the drawings. Whether work would start again depended, pretty much, on the woman at the door.
He would show the view from upstairs last, he decided. And maybe skip the turrets.
Nervous now, he slid the bolts, turned the handle and gasped. On his mat was his ex. Dressed in a purple singlet, blue jeans and thongs, Natasha looked as though she’d just ducked out for milk. ‘Aren’t you going to let us in?’ she said.
Dazed, Dave took in her crimson toenails, long, loose hair and startling green eyes against dusky skin. Eight years ago, when they’d met, she was gorgeous. But lately, she’d turned into a taller, sassier version of her well-fed mother. Next to Nat was her kid, his twelve-year-old ex-stepdaughter. A rookie beauty herself, with her mother’s eyes, dressed tonight in leotard and tights.
‘Hey,’ said Amelia, twirling inside. ‘Have you got a new cleaner?’
Dave couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. He waited for the blow, for Elle to appear and his world to topple. He tried to breathe, to gather his wits. He and Elle had spoken briefly about his marriage. She’d known before he’d told her. He wasn’t sure how she knew but he’d been relieved. He’d told her that Natasha was Elle’s exact age: thirty-four. That they’d been married seven years when she’d left him, finally, for her dodgy French teacher. Nat, he’d told Elle, had liked to party and was inclined to lying. She was also an untalented sculptor. He’d made no mention of a stepdaughter. Maybe because it would’ve hurt.