Elsewhere in Success

by Iris Lavell

  She calls a tea break.

  ‘Morning tea. Apparently we have Danish pastries, coffee, tea and chocolate biscuits out there. Yum,’ she says. ‘Fifteen, twenty minutes?’

  Louisa stares at the Buddha, seeking answers. He smiles back. A magpie lark is pecking at something on the ground next to him. Harry is rattling away at the front flywire door, trying to fix the latch.

  Tom used to say, if you win, you lose. Then he’d laugh. When you lose, you win. What did he want to win? What did he think he had to lose? With Tom, everything was always the wrong way round. He opposed everything she tried to teach him. He’d say, ‘Don’t plan for the future. Put yourself first. Act first, think later.’

  He’d always been impulsive. It was in his nature. If something occurred to him, he’d do it regardless of pain. When he was quite small, he’d repeatedly hit his forehead against the wall. She’d distract him and, a couple of hours later, find him doing it again. When he was older, he’d hold his hand over a candle flame, to see how close he could get.

  ‘All right. You’ve proved your point,’ she’d say.

  ‘There is no point.’

  No point. Words hold clues. Her sister Zoe used to follow her opinions by a question: ‘Does that make sense?’ When did she start that? Had someone once challenged her ability to make sense so that she had to keep checking back? She’d use it like punctuation at the end of a sentence. It’s the sort of thing that doesn’t let a person off the hook. It makes them pay attention, like a kid that might be singled out and tested on what the teacher just said. It gets stuck in a person’s head like an ear worm. Does that make sense? It makes a person feel quite irritated, because even when things are obvious it makes them have to confirm that. Of course it makes sense. Except that these days Louisa also increasingly feels that it is important to check the same thing. The virus of self-doubt is easily caught.

  Seeing is believing – there’s another one. Louisa thinks of Tom, switches it around, says, I’ll see it when I believe it.

  Believing is the hard bit. Seeing follows.

  What can she see?

  She sees some sort of fuzzy stuff in the space between herself and the wall. After she cleans her glasses it is still there.

  She reaches her hand out, into the space. Her hand tingles. Her heart and her jaw ache.

  ‘Is that you, Tom?’ she says. ‘Is that you?’

  The space doesn’t answer.

  Neither does Harry. He is out of earshot. He has stopped rattling at the door and has gone into the bedroom.

  Sometimes when she is semi-relaxed, Louisa allows herself the luxury of trusting that things are as they appear. On those rare days she holds Harry too long in their goodnight embrace. He has his own issues. After tolerating her uncharacteristic intimacy for a few seconds he shrugs her off.

  Louisa hears the water start. He is taking a shower. She considers walking in on him, standing beside him beneath the falling water, bringing them both back to life, but she thinks better of it. He has the door to the bedroom ajar but that to the en suite closed behind him. He has started singing something unrecognisable and apparently wordless – a kind of tortured yodel. Buster sleeps in the passage. The other dog follows Louisa about, looking hopeful. She holds out her empty palms to show that she has nothing to offer, but the dog misses the point completely, and persists.

  A moment later, both dogs have started barking because a van has pulled up outside the house. A man, a stranger, sits there in the driver’s seat, not getting out, speaking on his mobile phone. It is late afternoon.

  Louisa pushes the vertical blind aside and watches him. He looks young, around his late twenties, about the same age that Tom would have been now. In a parallel universe Tom might be sitting in a white van outside some woman’s house, talking on his mobile phone. He might be living his life somewhere. He might have a wife and a child at home. It looks as though this young man has dark hair and is wearing a white business shirt. Louisa thinks that if he weren’t sitting in a van, he could easily be a real-estate salesman or a Mormon. He doesn’t turn his head, but perhaps he senses her looking at him, because he finishes his conversation, and drives off. The dogs settle down.

  Harry calls out from the shower to say that he has forgotten his towel and could Louisa get it off the line for him. Buster barks to reinforce his request, just in case she missed it. The other dog struggles to her feet to be on stand-by in case she is needed.

  Nothing else of note happens today.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Wednesday morning. The mid-autumn rain has hardly begun before it’s gone again. Now a hot spell is back after too short a reprieve.

  Some time after Louisa has gone to work Harry notices a van parked in front of the house under his tree, which is annoying because he’s been thinking about moving the car to the shade, to cool it off before he went out. The fact that it’s warm, and isn’t raining, adds to his frustration. He walks to a spot where he is visible to the driver and stands his ground, with his hands on his hips. Buster takes advantage of the open door, pushes past him, and hoons off down the street. The driver notices Harry and the passing dog, and winds down the window.

  ‘G’day, mate,’ he calls out.

  ‘G’day.’ Harry acknowledges his good intentions.

  ‘You don’t mind me parking here while I have an early lunch, do you.’ It isn’t a question.

  ‘No,’ says Harry. ‘No worries. But I need to water around there soon.’

  It is an obvious lie given the water restrictions, the day, and his house number, but it saves face, and avoids a sticky confrontation for both of them.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ says the man. ‘Good tree.’

  ‘No worries,’ says Harry, checks the mailbox, whistles the dog back, and goes inside.

  The guy is good to his word. After about five minutes, Harry hears the engine start up and when he looks out the spot is clear.

  When Harry tries to start his car to move it into the shade it won’t turn over. This always happens in the heat, so it probably has something to do with the solenoid heating up. This is what he tells Louisa. He’s no mechanic, but neither is she. Once the car has cooled down again it usually starts. Now Harry is stuck there for the rest of the day – unless leaving the bonnet up will help.

  He curses the van for causing the problem, opens the bonnet, waits five minutes and tries to start the car again, but it’s completely dead. Harry is sick of this heap of junk, and thinks about his missed opportunities for a regular, middleclass life.

  He decides to call the mechanic when he gets around to it, but later in the day lets it go when the car has cooled down, and starts first go.

  It’s Monday morning. Louisa has the day off and Harry has gone out somewhere with Buster. At about ten she glances through the front window to discover the man is back, in the same van, parked on the verge under a tree that she and Harry planted for Tom just after they moved in. It looks as if he has the seat tilted back and, from what Louisa can make out, he appears to be sleeping.

  She could ignore him. It isn’t as if he’s officially on their property, but it’s odd that he’s parked at the front of their house again. And Harry said he was there just the other day. She ought to confront him. She’s feeling restless, and a bit reckless, so she decides to take a closer look. She’ll check the box for letters, and work out what steps to take from there.

  At the mailbox she sneaks a quick look and finds that he is, as she initially thought, asleep at the wheel. He’s wearing a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes so that only the bottom third of his face is visible. His mouth looks as if it is smiling, but it could be a trick of the light.

  She thinks what she might do if she were a braver kind of person. She might walk across to the van and knock sharply on the window. She imagines the man startling and sitting up, pushing his cap back to reveal a boyish face. She imagines him around twenty-five or thirty, no more. She’d indicate to him to wind down the window. She should d
o that.

  ‘Hello,’ she’ll say, and wait.

  ‘Hello. What do you want?’

  ‘What do I want?’ she’ll say. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Then what?

  The man shifts in his seat and turns awkwardly onto his side, as if he is trying to get a comfortable position in his sleep. He has his back to the driver’s window now.

  Louisa looks at the advertising material she has taken out of the letterbox. Someone has opened a beauty salon in the local hairdressers. She should try it out sometime. She returns to the house and positions herself by the front window so that she can keep an eye on the van.

  What next?

  ‘I’ve noticed you seem to have taken up residence lately,’ she’ll say to him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve been hanging around on our verge.’

  ‘I didn’t know verges were private property,’ he’ll say, looking uncontrollable. No, not uncontrollable. Looking uncomfortable. That’s right.

  She’ll start feeling awful because she’s gone too far. She’ll wish she’d pulled the curtain across the window and ignored him, but something has started now, travelling with its own impetus.

  ‘No, it isn’t private property,’ she’ll say. ‘No,’ she’ll say. ‘I’ll put the kettle on. Shall I?’

  Is he safe?

  ‘You might as well come in then,’ she’ll say.

  ‘Sure.’

  He’ll get out of the car and follow her in.

  ‘Que sera, sera.’ She’ll start singing the song to herself as she walks ahead of him. He’ll recognise the song and hum along, his voice familiar, almost childlike. She used to sing that song to Tom when he was a toddler. He’d join in with his baby voice, getting the words wrong. They’d sing when Victor was away. That was her, trying to create a world of safety and predictability for him. For Meredith and him. What if Tom had grown up to be this young man parked in his car on the verge? Come on in, son, she’d say.

  I should stop, she tells herself, but she can’t. She gives in, and continues with the story she has made for herself. He’s not her son, but he could be someone her son would have become.

  He’ll say something nice to her. He’ll have been brought up by a good woman who is proud of her boy. He won’t be a drug user, not even recreational. He won’t be filled with anger and hate. He won’t be the sort to blame his mother for not being perfect. He won’t have pain that needs anaesthetising. He’ll be an ordinary, decent young man. He’ll be a bit cheeky.

  ‘I like your house,’ he’ll say, ‘and your tree. It’s a nice place to sit just there. There aren’t many quiet shady places to sit and meditate.’

  ‘You looked like you were asleep,’ Louisa will say sharply, ‘not meditating.’

  Why would she needle him like that? To see how he’ll react? To put herself at risk? He might attack her and steal all her things. She doesn’t care. He could kill her for all she cares. The reality of pain, of death probably, is less than its anticipation. It’s the people left behind who suffer most. In her case there would be no one. Not really anyone to care. Not for long.

  ‘You decided to wake me,’ he’ll say. ‘I wonder why?’

  She’ll say, ‘We’ve noticed you sitting out there before, not meditating. We wondered what you were doing.’

  This will be an excuse to say ‘we’, so he knows she has a man in the house and doesn’t get any ideas about attacking and robbing her. She’ll sneak a look at his face as he takes a seat, but it will be blank.

  She wonders again if he has a mother somewhere, if his mother knows where he is and if they keep in touch. She wonders again if he’s ever got involved in anything bad and if he’s okay now, if he’s straightened himself out and got himself a good steady job.

  ‘What sort of work do you do?’ she’ll ask him.

  ‘I’m a salesman.’ No, something less everyday. ‘I’m a merchandiser. I hate my job.’

  ‘Hate’s a pretty strong word,’ she’ll say.

  She tries to conjure up his face as she says this. Her mind jams, turns digital – half picture, half coded pattern. She tries to make out the picture, gets an inkling of something she doesn’t want, tries to move it on, but it is frozen, forcing her to look. Her heart begins to pound. She thinks: One day you’ll give up hating. It takes up all your energy. What is the point really? What point does it serve? There really isn’t any point. She is struggling to speak her thoughts aloud, but her voice has dried up. Now she can see the man standing before her, grinning. He looks older than she first imagined him, more hardened.

  She is in the kitchen, staring at the bench. She can’t remember moving from the window. She feels as though she is being watched, as if someone can read her actions, can see right inside her head. She’ll confound them. She gives her change of position meaning, puts the kettle on, shakes her head, and chastises herself for being so silly. No one is watching – no one but herself. She is indulging in a harmless fantasy. She’s just fine.

  She attempts to conjure him up again, to control his coming and going, the way she wants it to be. A vague picture appears. She’s given him a friendly smile this time, made him more relaxed. She’s made him younger again.

  ‘What next? What next?’ she murmurs.

  There’ll be something else, not specified, and then it will be time to go.

  ‘Thanks for the tea,’ he’ll say, ‘and for the charming company. I’m John.’ No, ‘I’m Brad.’ You are not, Louisa says to herself. It’s the name Victor insisted on when Tom was born; Tom’s middle name. Of course her mind is playing tricks on her. And people don’t use words like charming any more – it was old-fashioned even when she was young. Brad will straighten his cap and leave. That’s it. He’ll straighten his cap and he’ll leave.

  Louisa watches the man from the window. He seems to have woken up. He sits up and it looks to her as though he is wiping his hands over his face. There is some reflection on the car window. He starts the van, revs it a couple of times and drives off. She stands there, looking out, feeling disturbed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  When Harry’s number came up he felt as if he’d won the lottery. Others told him he’d lost, but they were wrong. Life had been all right but he’d been starting to drift, and the call-up gave him a sense of purpose.

  He thinks fondly of his days as a conscript in Nashos during the Vietnam War. He never got to see active service because the Whitlam Government was voted in before he could go. At the time he was relieved – he’d seen some of the footage by then and had been starting to have his doubts – but he’s since looked back on his National Service with a certain amount of nostalgia, especially when he watches the Anzac Day parade on television.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re so proud of it,’ says Louisa.

  ‘Us blokes are just designed that way,’ he says. ‘We’re hardwired to protect our territory, our women and our children.’

  ‘Us women are hardwired to protect our children, our homes, and our men.’

  ‘I’m trying to make a point, Louisa.’

  He goes on to explain to her how good it felt to be tested in that way. He tells her how fit he was from playing football at school so he didn’t find the basic training as hard as some, and how being in the army taught him what they meant by mateship.

  ‘All the boys together,’ she says. ‘Doing boy things.’

  ‘And your point is?’ he says.

  He watches the parade and the rising of the sun at Gallipoli. The cameras pick out faces in the crowd, young and fresh, kids learning about respect and duty and filling his heart with hope and pride. These young blokes must understand what he’s on about better than Louisa – the value of sacrifice and mateship. There are girls there too, a sign of the changing times.

  ‘What is mateship anyway?’ she calls out from the kitchen. ‘I mean, does it include women?’

  ‘It could do,’ he says. ‘The way I see it is this – mateship is
how society should be organised. Men work together and women do their own thing. See, men and women could mostly work and live separately and then come together for sex, family celebrations, and so on. But the strongest bonds would be outside the family, between men. And a similar sort of thing between women I guess, like they used to have with the Country Women’s. Or whatever. We’d be more or less equal but different.’

  ‘What about the kids?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Who’d look after them?’

  A red herring. He treats it with the contempt it deserves. But a separation between men and women – the more he thinks about it, the more he likes the idea.

  ‘They ought to bring back a separation of male and female roles,’ he tells her.

  ‘It’s not going to happen,’ she says, handing him his tea.

  The conversation is leading nowhere. He shrugs it off, goes back to remembering his youth. It’s the prerogative of an old soldier. She leaves him to watch the parade on his own.

  In Nashos it was good to be a man among men all working together towards a common goal. It was hard work and straightforward. You’d be just fine as long as you followed orders. It took away all of the uncertainty, and all the anxiety. There was no time to think. You fell asleep as soon as your head hit the pillow, and then you slept like a log, physically exhausted from the day’s work. That was the best sort of tiredness you could have. He’d wake refreshed, feeling strong and energetic, ready for the next challenge.

  Plus his early success as a musician gave him a certain amount of kudos with the blokes. There were times when he’d take out his sax and jam with a few of the others who’d brought their guitars with them. There was one bloke with a tin whistle and a couple of guys with harmonicas. Not that there was much time for that with long days, short nights, and sadistic NCOs bursting in on them. Not a lot of privacy, but that was intended to cultivate a sense of joint purpose. You had to know you could rely on your mates. What you saw was what you got. There was no room and no real desire for reflection or sedition, unless you counted the guy who took off and ended up in gaol as a conscientious objector. No, they didn’t want to give you too much time to think. Everything they did was done for a reason.