Elsewhere in Success

by Iris Lavell

  ‘Yeah, well that’s hardly new. Anyway you wouldn’t want to take that to its logical conclusion.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she says, but he just shakes his head. Today he can’t even be bothered taking his own conclusions to their logical conclusions.

  Louisa knows that Harry has had another unsuccessful year of buying tickets in raffles with the aim of winning a decent car. She leaves Deepak Chopra and asks Harry about whether he has planned his New Year’s resolutions yet, but his eyes glaze over. He stares into space for a prolonged period before advising her that the calendar is arbitrary and that it is his birthday, and not the New Year, that is the time for admitting another year has passed.

  Christmas has come and gone, and with it the traditional exchange of goods and services. She bought him a nice watch that he picked out, and he responded with a pretty stone-look birdbath. The gifts were exchanged prior to Christmas because Harry needed the watch for his new job and he needed Louisa’s help to get the birdbath out of the boot and placed in a strategic position for birdwatching. They have placed it among the impinging greenery beneath the giant flowerless yellow rosebush that has grown too tall for Louisa to prune, and have sat for extended periods on the garden swing waiting in vain for the birds to come, but although Harry has put out seed and freshened up the water, not a soul has visited. A couple of weeks have gone by since they placed it there, and there has been nothing. A neighbour across the road has a birdbath which is never vacant. Harry and Louisa have discussed the various possible reasons for their birdlessness. The failure of the birdbath has reinforced Harry’s belief that his entire life is destined to be nothing but a series of disappointments.

  When darkness comes, the leftover Christmas lights decorate the barren space of the waiting bath, reflecting off stagnant water. Harry and Louisa have made the best of it, showing it off to those who visited around the Christmas season, have used it as a conversation piece, and sold the possibility of tender moments, rather than experienced the moments themselves.

  By day the weather has been hot and the bath has dried out. Harry has filled it again and put out more birdseed. Louisa has attended from time to time, standing on the bottom garden step so that she is just a couple of heads higher than the pedestal.

  On the day before New Year she has barely positioned herself there when a yellow and black striped wasp falls into the water in front of her. It floats there, hardly moving, its tail slowly bending backwards and forwards, twice, and then nothing. Another buzzing by her ear: a second wasp flies close to her face, hovers, peels off and disappears. It looks as if this one has killed the other.

  Louisa takes a dead gum leaf from the ground and scoops the body from the water, taking care not to wet it any more than she can help. The wasp lies motionless in its leaf coffin. Louisa places it gently on the ground and moves back inside to watch for a while from the window, but there are still no birds.

  Then, on New Year’s Day, when she has just about given up, Louisa rises early and is shown something beautiful. She beckons Harry and he stumbles out just in time to see a kingfisher guarding the stone-edged pond with its mate watching on from the branches of the overhanging yellow rose. The kingfisher turns its head and looks with interest at the two of them. Harry stands quite still, just ahead of Louisa, who is looking at Harry. The dog is stretched out on the lawn, oblivious.

  Harry stands there for a long time, saying nothing. Then he turns to Louisa and smiles. He moves to her side, puts his arm around her shoulders, and kisses her gently on the top of her head.

  ‘Seeing that,’ he says, ‘gives me hope for the future.’

  It’s later in the day and they are having a quiet drink or two on the garden swing under the back patio. The dog sleeps at their feet.

  ‘What about your New Year’s resolutions?’ she asks him after the second wine kicks in. ‘Have you got any?’

  He says, ‘I told you.’

  ‘Oh yes. It’s not your birthday is it?’

  She takes another swig. It is barely midday, but New Year’s Day and nobody is working. She is saving her headache for tomorrow.

  He says, ‘What about you?’

  ‘Mine is to look after myself. Simple.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ He is relaxed too. He speaks freely. ‘Yasamine used to make New Year’s resolutions. She never kept them.’

  Louisa takes up the cue.

  ‘You don’t talk about her, Harry. You should. We should know more about each other so we can be closer. I’d like that.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He takes a moment, looking at her, which is unusual. ‘Your hair looks nice today,’ he says.

  ‘Truth or truth?’ she says. ‘You know, it’s a kids’ game.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You pick one. You ask me to tell you the truth or I ask you to tell me. The truth.’

  ‘Never heard of it. I thought it was supposed to be something else. Dare or something.’

  ‘I didn’t want to give you a choice. It’s my way of saying I’d like to have a conversation. I thought you might not be daring enough to listen.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean? I listen.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay then, I want to tell you something. I dare you not to walk out in the middle of it.’

  ‘As if,’ he says, smirking, but he looks trapped. He pours himself another drink. ‘Go on then.’

  ‘Okay. How do I start? I was a nurse, you know,’ she says.

  ‘I know that. Is that it?’

  ‘Not a proper nurse, a nurse’s aide they used to call us, when I first started work after school. They trained us in the hospitals, on the floor, and with brief blocks of time for intensive study in between. I left school early, at fifteen, just because I could. The deal was I got a job where I could continue my education in a way, so that seemed to fit the bill. Actually we didn’t get all that much help to start with. We were thrown in the deep end. As soon as you put a uniform on, people expected so much of you, as if you were magically transformed from a kid into someone competent and worldly. Well I wasn’t. I was only fifteen and I felt all at sea, scared really I suppose, and I was naive. Of course I was bloody naive. Some men have a bit of a thing about nurses, I suppose because they see people at their most human – naked, ill, not sanitised, you know – and men see that as some sort of sexual thing. Or it could be just the uniform. Old men were forever grabbing at you when you got close to the bed, propositioning you. Some were surprisingly strong. We’d have to clean up shit and blood and wash people. Cope with their suffering and the smell of all that. We’d even have to cause suffering in order to help people heal sometimes. I’ve sometimes thought about that – that it was better to suffer myself than to have to see someone else suffer. I’m kidding myself. It was always about not giving in to that desire to strike back. Some people are shits. Sometimes I would identify so strongly with a person that I would actually feel pain as they were describing it, or expressing it. I think I’m stronger than some people. But then I wonder if I’m not. I feel pain, I’m very sensitive to pain. I don’t like it at all. So I’m not a masochist or anything, I’m not saying that. It’s just that I’d hate to be the cause of someone else’s suffering and if I can save them from that, I will, even at my own expense, because I can take it, you see.’

  Harry doesn’t speak or react, so she ploughs on. It doesn’t matter. He could be asleep, but she feels she wants to talk.

  ‘Victor had a bit of thing about nurses, because he had seen the truth about human beings as well, having seen people killed in the war, and killed people. He did, as I later found out: he killed people – young families. What would that do to a person, to have to do that? Can a soldier say no, I’m not doing that, and offer himself instead? And we have to remember, they’re only young too. What sort of pressure are they under to do what they’re told, and what does all that training trigger in them? You should know, Harry, from your basic training, even if you didn’t end u
p going. I suppose it all depends on what he sees there in front of him. There’s so much confusion. He killed children, Harry.’

  ‘That’s war.’ He is listening.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Collateral damage.’

  ‘That’s a horrible euphemism. I don’t believe in that crap, but he couldn’t tell. Anyway, what did I know? They could have been Vietcong. The Vietcong were very small, weren’t they, since they were able to fit into those underground tunnels and everything. There was a lot of confusion in the heat of the moment. Still they were people, that’s the point really, isn’t it? Our troops were in their country.’

  ‘The South wanted us there. We were trying to help.’

  ‘But children. It’s horrible.’ Louisa allows herself to see it clearly for the first time. She is overcome with horror, nausea.

  ‘So what he did is that he brought the war home with him. He brought it into the family that we would have, that karma. It was like that was what he had become. I’m not saying it happens to everyone, but with Victor ... that’s what it was. That might explain it. What I can’t understand is what we’d done to deserve it. My children didn’t do anything to deserve it. Anyway, the truth he saw was that physical truth, that we’re all just meat when it comes down to it. If that’s what you think then it would be easy wouldn’t it? To kill? If instead of seeing something as precious as life, all you’re seeing is meat. But that’s such a cop-out isn’t it? And such a terrifying thought. Maybe it’s a mindset surgeons have to get into, or how could they cope? Once I was allowed to look in on an operation, and this nurse was assisting, and she had to stay with someone who was in the middle of brain surgery with the top of her head off, while everybody else went off to have morning tea. Or afternoon tea. It was such a long operation and they needed a break so that they could keep concentrating, I suppose. Then the anaesthetist had to duck out to the toilet. He told her to keep an eye on the patient, keep the blood pressure cuff pumped up to a certain point, and then this nurse had to duck out herself, so she asked me to hold the fort for a minute. See that was the uniform again, wasn’t it? Thinking I was more competent than I really was. I knew something by then; not much. I might have been sixteen. The patient started to stir while they were out, with her brain open and exposed like that. Nowadays I think they do some brain surgery with the patient awake anyway. Still that’s not the point. But it makes you wonder about what we are, when you can see a person’s insides. It’s obscene, but fascinating at the same time.’

  She glances at Harry. He’s not looking at her, but attentive just the same.

  ‘She was okay. Nothing bad happened. Not that you hear what happens to them once they leave the recovery room.’

  ‘Is that what you wanted to talk about?’

  ‘No, something else. I’m getting to it.’

  ‘Yes, okay.’

  ‘The first time he picked me up from my parents’ place, our first date, and I was still only fifteen then, just before my sixteenth birthday. He was about ten years older, twenty-five, and so much older because of having seen active service, so I was a bit overawed. We were meeting some of his friends, colleagues I suppose you’d call them, for a meal and I was dressed up to the nines and feeling a bit inadequate because they were all professional people, mostly lawyers with their private-school girlfriends who were mostly at uni, and what I was doing didn’t fall into that category of course: quite a bit below. Plus young men in those days were so cynical and patronising towards women. Anyway it was a very expensive restaurant and everyone was talking about this and that, but I was having trouble holding my own so I was becoming more and more withdrawn, and I couldn’t tell what Victor was thinking because he wasn’t giving much away, but he was drinking more than the others. So every time he looked away, I’d take a swig out of his glass to sort of slow him down because he was driving me home. I was drinking my own as well – technically I shouldn’t have been drinking at all, but I looked older all dressed up – and after a while he said, and he seemed to be in good humour, they all liked him – he said, I’d better get this chicken home to bed, and everyone seemed to laugh at that, the men anyway, but I think I got some sort of feeling of disapproval from the women. So instead of going straight home, he said we’d go somewhere and park so that I could sober up because I wouldn’t want my parents to see me in that state, which seemed reasonable because Dad would have been ropeable, and I was thinking that he was a decent sort of bloke but I was thinking I probably wouldn’t see him again – just put it down to experience. Because I felt out of my depth really.’

  ‘I can see where this is heading.’

  ‘Of course you can.’

  Harry sinks his head into his hands and pushes his hair back. ‘Okay,’ he says. She has dared him to stay, so he stays.

  ‘Anyway of course now I know that he knew exactly what he was doing, but I’d been brought up to think it was all about women leading men on and men not being able to control themselves, so it was up to the woman to not let them get into that situation in the first place. Plus there was this thing that women said no when they really meant yes, but they were just being coy, cock-teasers, which was the worst thing to be. And women were somehow more mature than men, which is probably true in some cases.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘We drove straight to this place in the bush – he must have known exactly where he was going because we didn’t drive around at all. I was feeling weird and I might have fallen asleep for a minute, but the next thing I knew he was on top of me and there was this searing pain, I was frightened and I think I was saying no, please stop, it hurts, you’re hurting me. I was thinking it. My voice was trapped in my throat. But he wouldn’t stop and I was trying to push against his chest to get him off, but he was too strong. I hadn’t had sex before, I was a virgin, and I didn’t know what to expect, if this was normal or not for the first time.’

  ‘Oh, Lou...’

  ‘Anyway, Harry, he wouldn’t stop so I started kicking out at his car and I had high heels on and that made him stop all right because he was scared I was going to damage his car, so he said, ‘Shit Louisa, there’s no need for that,’ and he stopped and was quite nasty and told me to straighten myself up because I looked like a slut, and then he drove me home after that. He more or less pushed me out of the car and said he’d pick me up the next day at about eight o’clock. The next evening.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I went inside. I had a long shower. A long, long shower to wash him off me and out of me, and I felt so, so ashamed and humiliated. And the next day he came and he picked me up as if nothing had happened, and I went. I went, and he took me there again, to the same place, and this time I just gave in. And so it seemed that the logical thing after that was to get married. I heard you could get married at sixteen with your parents’ permission, and they could see where it was heading so they didn’t hesitate, and anyway well my parents seemed so happy and proud about their daughter going up in the world and everything. And in a funny kind of way I did for a while there.’

  She can’t look at him but senses his discomfort.

  ‘I know it was wrong to go on with it. It felt like I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I was very young,’ she says. ‘It wouldn’t happen again. Shit, I’d run a mile these days. I can’t believe I was so naive. What are you thinking?’

  Harry stands up and stretches his back. ‘I need to take the dog for a walk,’ he says.

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘I don’t know what you want from me, Louisa,’ he says. ‘You can’t change the past. I mean it’s not as if I can do anything about it, any more than you can. Life sucks sometimes. It really does. How old were you? Sixteen?’ He rubs the back of his head. ‘All right, I hate it that the bastard did that to you, but what can I do about it now? Do you want me to go after him? I would have if you were my daughter, but now, well now there’s just too much water under the bridge, isn’t there? You didn’t do anything wrong, just...’
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br />   ‘Just what?’

  ‘Just that the messages were all mixed up back then? Free love, and all that. Besides, he knew exactly what he was doing. You probably didn’t. I don’t know what else to say. Life isn’t fair.’

  ‘No, I suppose not. People can make it fair though, can’t they Harry?’

  ‘Maybe. I’m going for a walk. Why don’t you come with me?

  Louisa considers this for a moment. Sometimes movement is just about putting one foot in front of the other.

  ‘Okay,’ she ventures.

  He reaches out to offer a hug, but she ignores the gesture and he drops his arms. ‘I want to say something, Louisa. I just don’t know what you want.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, turning away to seek out her walking shoes. ‘That’s all right. Don’t worry. It’s an old story. I just thought you should know.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  They have been pretending the conversation never took place. Harry puts it down to the wine talking. But he vaguely understands that she expected more from him. He arrives home with flowers, which he presents to her rather self-consciously.

  ‘Your favourite colours. Purple and yellow.’

  ‘What’s the occasion? You haven’t been having an affair have you?’ she says, but her tone clearly implies that she doesn’t entertain the idea. He feels vaguely insulted and wonders how she’d react if he told her about Carole. He is tempted but it wouldn’t be doing anybody any favours to dump on her just to test a reaction, though it would clear his conscience at least. She probably wouldn’t care anyway, and it wouldn’t matter if she didn’t. They’d have a laugh about it.

  She is staring at the flowers in his hand, but is miles away. He is on the verge of telling her to wake up when Buster rushes to the door barking. When he checks at the door, no one is there. The dog is losing his faculties, hearing things and chasing ghosts. When Harry turns back, Louisa is putting the flowers in a vase, moving efficiently.