Elsewhere in Success

by Iris Lavell

  ‘Come over and tell me all about it,’ she says. ‘That’s great news, Harry.’

  This is the point at which he knows that he will give it a go. He’ll tell Louisa when he gets home. She’ll be pleased, encouraging, but careful not to pressure him.

  He has a sudden urge to do something nice for her, to give her something. Some romance. Some flowers. A bit further down the track when he gets his first pay cheque, they’ll have a night out. She can get dressed up.

  He’ll make an effort.

  Harry negotiates the steep driveway and parks under the old lilac tree. His mother comes out to meet him and gives him an awkward hug. They have never been given much to displays of affection.

  ‘Well done, son,’ she says. ‘What does Louisa think?’

  ‘I haven’t told her yet. She’s out. I just found out myself.’

  ‘I’m honoured then.’

  ‘Don’t let it go to your head,’ says Harry.

  She has made a batch of cupcakes in the time since she spoke with him on the phone, and him getting there.

  You shouldn’t have,’ he says, taking one and disposing of it in two bites.

  ‘Looks like I should have made more.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  She gives him a playful punch on the arm.

  ‘Sit down then,’ she says. ‘Don’t stand around looking untidy.’

  He studies her as she goes about making tea. She’s slightly built and as energetic as ever she was. Possibly more so. She seemed to find a new lease of life after his father passed away. He can’t remember if she’s just turned seventy-five, or seventy-six. She climbs on a step to reach a packet of biscuits on the top pantry shelf.

  ‘Let me do that, Mum,’ says Harry, getting up. ‘You’ll hurt yourself.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she says. ‘You know what they say: use it or lose it.’

  ‘You’ll lose something all right, if you keep being so stubborn.’

  She arranges the biscuits on a fancy china plate, and places them next to the rapidly diminishing cupcakes. They sip their tea. She is watching his face closely, making him uncomfortable. She puts her hand over his.

  ‘I’m very proud of you, you know Harry. Not just this, I mean. It takes courage to keep going. Life.’

  ‘Yes, okay, thanks.’ He wishes she wouldn’t. She deserves something in return. ‘Me too. Of you.’

  ‘That’s my boy!’ she says. ‘Now come and see what I’ve done to the garden since you were last here. Bring your tea. You can tell me all about the new job.’

  Harry arrives home with ten red roses and a bottle of midrange bubbly. He dislikes bubbly so this is some concession. His enthusiasm rivals that of a teenage boy on the verge of his first licensed drive. He recalls the feeling. He is a bit of a lad again. There is a definite spring in his step. There might be sex later. His mood must be infectious. Louisa seems excited too.

  ‘Guess how much they’re going to pay me?’ he says.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘More than I get now,’ he says. ‘I start Monday.’ He kisses Louisa on the mouth. She takes the roses from him, looking flustered.

  ‘They’re beautiful,’ she gushes. ‘I’ll put them in water.’ They have their own home-grown roses, but tend not to pick them. ‘Red roses,’ she says meaningfully, bouncing her eyebrows playfully and tucking a strand of hair behind her left ear.

  ‘Sniff them,’ he tells her. ‘They smell.’

  ‘Beautiful,’ she says. ‘Where did you get them?’

  ‘From Mum’s. I got this myself.’ He indicates the wine. ‘Mum gave us some walnuts too. There’s nothing wrong with them. They get stuck under her plate, so she said we might as well have them.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice of her,’ Louisa says. She picks up the bubbly, coyly. ‘So this is a celebration for the new job.’

  ‘Yes. Then we might have a little lie-down, eh?’

  ‘Ooh!’

  The job is for a drug-testing contractor for an occupational health and safety company. Harry’s degree in chemistry is ancient and has barely been used, so they will give him some on-the-job training, and put him on roster to send him out in the middle of the night whenever there is a workplace fatality. He will be given a pager. He’ll like that, he tells her, walking around with a pager on his belt, playing the part.

  The job pays quite well with penalty rates and on-call fees, he tells her. Now that he’s a proper working man, he might start to demand more of her, if she knows what he means. Promises, promises, she says to that.

  They leave their wine and have their lie-down first. Afterwards, Harry falls asleep, snoring loudly. Louisa makes soup for dinner. She hopes he’ll be all right. She wonders about the changes ahead. She decides not to think too much about it.

  After an hour Harry won’t be woken; he barely struggles out after three. ‘Bugger!’ he says. ‘The day’s gone.’

  ‘Glass of bubbly?’ she calls out, too loudly. She is on about her third. She is standing alone outside watching the sky change. The colours are reflected in her glass of wine.

  ‘Oh, why not?’ he says, drains the bottle into a mug, and comes out to join her. He stands by her with his legs apart, a real man, mug of wine in one hand, his other arm around her shoulders.

  ‘Bloody beautiful,’ he says of the intensifying sunset.

  ‘You know you,’ she says. ‘You’re all class.’

  ‘Sometimes I feel like I’m floating through life,’ she tells him one morning, ‘like I’m half asleep.’

  ‘Floating’s better than sinking.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  Something strange seems to have happened all of a sudden. Maybe it’s the news of Harry’s job, or the gift of roses, or the return of their sex life after an unusually long hiatus. Or maybe she’s kidding herself. What does it matter what’s causing it? Something feels like a new start. It could be a false spring, but she’s feeling more optimistic. This comes with a freshness of perception she hasn’t had for some time. In the last few days it’s as if she is being shown wonderful things. She could force her old calmness back, but the idea of some sort of heightened reality stays in her mind, leading her to speculate on the possibility of a higher purpose. Everything happens for a reason. The Truth about everything is on the tip of her tongue. She looks for signs.

  In the afternoon she is driving along a familiar stretch of road when she sees a snake from the corner of her eye. It appears to her first as silver, then black as she turns her head to see it properly. She takes her foot off the accelerator so that she doesn’t run it over, and it moves off to the side, disappearing into the brush lining this section of road. Against a perfect sky two pelicans play over the familiar territory of the lake. She feels her heart slow and wonders why, at this moment of all moments, she is recapturing the ability to see beauty. It is something that she remembers from when she was small, but somewhere along the line of her life it fell away. She wonders if she will take out her paints today so that she can study the way that the light falls on objects, so that she can break this phenomenon down into its component parts and see what is really there.

  The last few nights she has been sleeping without dreams. She goes to bed at night, wakes refreshed in the morning, and it seems no time at all has passed. This has done something to the way she sees things, clearing her vision. Birds, snakes, trees moving against the sky – everything seems remarkable.

  When she returns home, Harry is wheeling and dealing on the phone in the study. He has the door closed and Louisa puts her finger to her lips to warn the dog not to bark and thus destroy the illusion of an office-based phone call for the person on the other end of the line. He has started the new job but he continues to maintain the trickle of work from the business. He has a foot in both camps.

  He laughs. Now he sounds as if he’s making a social call. His voice sounds as relaxed and comfortable as a politician settling in for another term, although she can’t make out the words. She is about t
o go through the back door when she sees that there is a bobtail goanna guarding the threshold. She uses the alternative exit and moves around the side to get a better look. Its head turns slowly towards her. It extends its blue tongue in warning and hisses. Louisa feels doubly blessed today.

  At five-forty pm the phone rings and an upbeat and friendly man named Nicholas has some fantastic news. He is able to offer her a wonderful vacation package in exchange for her mortal soul.

  ‘What did you say?’

  But he continues with his spiel as if she hasn’t spoken. She hears only every second or third word because the phone is tethered next to the radio, and Harry has the sound turned up so that he can listen to ‘Strike up the Band’ above the barking, as he waters the garden and washes away the day’s grime from Buddha. Louisa thanks Nicholas for his kind offer but says that she must decline. Nicholas points out that life can’t be all work and no play. Louisa wonders how he knows so much about her and why he is using her first name. Nicholas sounds surprised when Louisa also uses his first name. After an exchange of banter he wishes her well, counts his gains, cuts his losses and exits the line before she is forced to hang up on him. A holiday would be nice, but she will not be pressured into it.

  Louisa goes to the front door and looks out through the flywire. The man in the van with the mobile phone is back, parked under the tree in front of the house. This time he looks up and catches her staring at him. She lifts her hand in greeting. He gives her half a wave, half a smile, and drives off.

  ‘You’re nobody,’ she tells herself. ‘Just some guy.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  After the high comes the low. Louisa is sitting on the lounge room floor in the corner with the light out. She is hunched over a cushion that she holds against her midriff. She hasn’t bothered to dress or brush her hair. Harry is out.

  The past has been waiting for her to drop her guard. It bursts in from the wings, plants itself centre stage, and prepares to play its part. She is powerless to do anything but watch as the drama plays itself out, yet again.

  Meredith is colouring in at the kiddies’ table. This is the idea that remains, that she is protected in a small sectioned-off place in the corner of the room. Tommy seems to be wailing, but the sound is elusive. It might be coming from Louisa herself. It could be a series of different events. Meredith is in one time zone and Louisa and Tom are caught in another with Victor. Someone is grabbing onto Victor’s arm. A hand catches Tom and sweeps him through the air. He falls onto the couch and stays crumpled there, but he is processing and learning. Victor doesn’t seem to notice, or else it’s how he wants it.

  She struggles but can’t remember Meri at all, as if she has been put aside and forgotten. Louisa can’t remember where she has left her. She feels a familiar sense of rising panic. The chair by the children’s table is lying on the floor, the pencils scattered, one rolling towards the edge of the table. Meredith has disappeared.

  Victor has been drinking all day and Louisa hears him saying once again that he will put them out of their misery. Uncharacteristically she retaliates, saying if he were a better person, that would put them out of their misery. If he would just fuck off and leave them all alone, that would put them out of their misery. Victor gives her a demonstration of what he is talking about, but stops short of killing her. He’s giving her every chance to improve herself. He’s teaching her.

  Did you tell me to fuck off? He keeps saying it to the rhythm of his punches. It has become his mantra. Did you just tell me to fuck off? Did you say fuck off? Did you just tell me to fuck off? She’s somewhere outside of this, watching as the scene plays out. This thing in a pile on the floor, this heap of old rags, is neither animal nor human. It deserves what it gets. He’s doing it a kind of homage. He explains patiently as he continues his discipline: You’re nothing, nothing without me, my darling little girl. Less than nothing. You told me to fuck off. He is speaking almost kindly, confusing her. This is for your own good. You’re nothing without me. A woman is lying on the floor with dark fluid pooling around her. She is not right somehow. She is some sort of disease and he is the valiant doctor bringing her under control at his own cost.

  The children are – where? Somewhere. Someone has taken them in hand temporarily and is looking after them. Later she tells herself the lie that they’ve survived to grow beyond Victor’s influence. But she knows in the back of her mind that something has been left behind: a germ that proliferates in Tom’s mind when he reaches puberty and destroys him. Victor gets off, apparently unscathed and unchanged. These things must be remembered. Louisa feels the gravity of her role as oral historian, telling Lucy, and Harry when he will listen, not having to talk about it to Carole because she doesn’t need to be told; she was there. Were the children with Carole that day?

  In hospital Louisa emerges from oblivion into fluorescent light. She remembers feeling bitterly disappointed. Now she knows that her continued existence has been needed at the most basic level because she will hold the past in her body as proof of things that shouldn’t be ignored. Perhaps this is the meaning of her suffering. At some stage the police appear to interview her at her bedside and she makes up a story to satisfy them. When she gets home, people who used to be quite friendly avoid her, even when she speaks directly to them. At school the children lose friends.

  Despite his promises, Victor has failed to put her out of her misery. He manages that feat with another woman, just over a decade later. Louisa follows the story in the papers. A woman has been found dead in his home. An autopsy is done, and there is an inquiry into the death. Victor might be charged following a coronial inquiry. She worries that they will call her as a witness to establish a pattern of domestic violence, but she needn’t worry. Everyone and everything seems to have colluded. There is an open finding. The inquiry is wrapped up and Victor moves interstate, to Sydney.

  The papers make a small meal of it at the time, a brief sensation, a member of the establishment caught up in something like that. Then the story becomes more sympathetic. It turns out that the woman has something of a history. The story sells until more important things take precedence. There are wars, and people cheating on social security, or turning down perfectly good jobs. Something about breast implants.

  Louisa has gone back into her shell. Harry tries to keep upbeat but it’s hard with her like this.

  ‘Don’t go getting paranoid on me again,’ he jokes.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Really?’ he says.

  ‘Oh Harry! It’s just memories. I can’t keep pushing them away forever. It’s probably not even healthy to forget everything. You don’t mean to tell me you never think of the past? Really?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ he says. He resists telling her about how he tries to keep himself more upbeat. A short silence. Louisa fills the space he leaves for her.

  ‘Anyway, I suppose it’s time I did some work. The house doesn’t clean itself.’

  Harry puts the kettle on, and as he waits for it to boil, becomes aware that he is thinking about Bella. He wonders how often this happens without him even realising.

  They both need to go out. Today. Right now. They need to touch base with some normal people. The neighbours are normal people.

  He decides to reverse an earlier decision and take up an invitation for a get-together extended by Brian, to play darts and drink beer in his sizeable shed. They’ve been over once or twice before, not long after that first Christmas they were here. It was well fitted out then, but recently Harry was given the grand tour after ducking across the road to borrow a pump. These days Brian has an impressive array of trophies and pennants for his wins at darts tournaments, all displayed above a workbench that runs along the entire length of the shed.

  The shed is equipped with every tool imaginable, plus a generously proportioned flat-screen TV mounted above the bench on the wall – Harry imagines it to be perpetually set on the sports channel. Brian has collected an impressive rang
e of comfortable chairs, a sofa bed, a bar fridge, and a deluxe dartboard that forms the focal point of the set-up opposite the security-controlled roller door. And there’s still room for foldout tables for the food.

  Harry tries to keep his plan casual, low-key.

  ‘You should come over later,’ he tells Louisa. ‘The women are bringing plates around six-thirty or seven.’

  ‘Just the women?’

  ‘I’m happy to throw something together,’ he says. She ignores this.

  ‘What are they bringing?’ It’s the sort of thing that always seems to make her panic.

  He reassures. ‘Nothing much. Just a plate of something. Chips and dips.’

  ‘Oh Harry,’ she says, ‘It’ll be more than chips and dips. I don’t know. I’ve got something on.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Something.’

  ‘Anyway, I won’t stay long,’ he says. ‘Just long enough to humiliate myself with my lack of darting and drinking prowess.’

  ‘I don’t mind. Stay as long as you want.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘You don’t have to decide now. See how you feel. I’m sure it’ll be fine either way.’

  ‘I’m impressed,’ she says, avoiding the point. ‘You’re really fitting in around here lately aren’t you? I still feel a bit strange.’

  ‘I always thought you felt a bit strange,’ he says, catching her in his arms, and tickling her. She wriggles out.

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  She’s still smiling, humouring him, being kind in spite of her low mood. Sometimes he wishes she wouldn’t do that. Sometimes he wishes she’d be a bit more honest about what she feels about him, not verbose, just straight down the line. She could drop the act once in a while. She could say, ‘Harry, talk me into it.’

  ‘You should come,’ he says. ‘It’ll be nice. It would be nice to have you there.’