She drank the wine, danced a sedate barn dance and wished the night would never end. Happiness was fleeting. Pray that Sean wouldn’t find it so.
Just after midnight they said their goodbyes and started for home.
Rory drove through the open farm gate. “So far so good.”
“Even Bert had a good time,” she reflected. “I thought he’d never come round.”
“You can’t blame him, Tess. He worries about Cathie leaving home.”
“It’ll work out. You’ll see.”
“Just so long as Sean keeps his job.”
Idle talk, the car purring through the friendly late-night air. They’d agreed. Major decisions, personal choices and future plans were to be postponed until after Sean and Cathie had moved into their rented town unit.
Well after one a. m., she undressed, climbed into the double bed and heard Rory close the door to his separate room, formerly Sean’s room. The day had been very special, the evening a revelation. There’d been no hint of an undercurrent, not even a mild ripple. If there had been, she’d not felt it. Because all the dissenters and doubters had excluded themselves? Or because the people she’d shared the day and the night with, anxious or not, had exclusively been people of rare goodwill?
Time to think. Permission to think! Sleep was not possible. Fran had been terrific. Todd and the twins had taken time off for the entire week. Like the groomsman cousin, a few other long distance stalwarts had come at some personal cost.
The Mothers’ Club – a beautiful gesture. Once they’d understood, they’d never let her down. John Lane – he’d been a back seat spectator in the church, an elder sharing his beer with the farmers in the barn. Rory’s lover – she may have been there; she’d never know. Was Rory’s affair over? Tomorrow, soon, they’d have their longoverdue discussion.
The Mothers – the lovingly wrapped parcels in the basket had contained linen, china, cutlery, even a small cheque and the newspaper. She’d forgotten the newspaper.
She switched on the light, dressed in gown and slippers, collected the car keys and made for the garage.
“Tess!” Rory called from his room. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing! I just remembered the paper.”
“What paper?”
“The one Jill gave us.”
“Leave it. It’s late!”
“I can’t sleep anyway.” Retrieving the paper, she prepared to read it in the kitchen.
He joined her. “Do you have to do this now? It can’t be that important.”
“You didn’t have to get out of bed.”
“I might as well. I can’t sleep either.”
Leaving the unopened paper on the table, she plugged in the kettle. “I need a hot drink. What about you?”
“Good idea.” He unfolded the paper.
She set out mugs, took a carton of milk from the fridge and idly noted the rustle of turning pages. “Have you found anything?”
“Not a thing. Well – unless she thinks you want to know the footy scores.”
The boiling kettle switched itself off. “Tea? Or cocoa?”
Another rustle of paper and no answer.
“Tea? Or cocoa?” She turned to the table. “Tea or…?”
“Read it, Tess.” Shaking, Rory hammered the open pages. “Read it!”
A photograph of Harriet Cooper’s solemn face accompanied a bold headline. ‘MOTHER CONDEMNS STATE SERVICE.’
“Sweet Jesus!” Rory’s fists hammered. “I wanted Sean to go! God help me!”
She took the paper from him. The article, with additional pictures, filled half a page. Bernie Cooper, the paper reported, was a victim of serious assault. He’d been beaten by his fellow inmates in the institution he’d been placed in after leaving special school. It continued: ‘Mrs Cooper claims her son was viciously attacked by unsupervised inmates while staff members were at morning tea. It is expected that Bernard Cooper, should he recover, will be permanently incapacitated.’
“God help me, Tess. It could have been Sean.”
“Poor Harriet.” She refolded the paper, covered Harriet’s face.
“It could have been Sean.” He was distraught. “It could have been Sean!”
“It couldn’t! Don’t say that! It didn’t happen at the school.”
“It could have! You know that!”
She did know that. If it hadn’t been for the superb supervision of Rita and John, something very like it could even have happened here, as she’d witnessed. But she consoled, “You mustn’t think like that.”
“I’d have done it. I’d have let him go. I wanted him to go.”
“Rory, don’t. Please – it’s a chance in a thousand.”
“How do we know that? You hear stories. You’re always hearing stories. I didn’t believe them. They had to be exaggerated. I thought he should go.”
“Don’t!” she begged. “It wasn’t Sean. We didn’t send him away.”
“I’d have sent him, Tess. I wanted to send him. I wanted to send him away. I always wanted to send him away.”
They went to bed in the double bed. She held him. They held each other. So much guilt…
In the morning the local regional newspapers headlined the most recent report. Bernie Cooper would live – a quadriplegic. Overnight, his father had suffered a stroke. His mother had already reluctantly abandoned plans to prove her case and, at some future date, to sue the government for criminal neglect. Though she did not resile from condemnation, her energies would thenceforth be devoted to nursing son and husband, both to live at home with her. She would be applying for regular financial assistance through formal channels.
Bernie Cooper’s fate was news. For weeks, newsletter columns were crammed with outrage at the staff, the system, the state, the national shame. Temporarily dormant arguments were again aired. Segregation, integration; training, education; abortion, non-abortion;institutions, residential units, home care, etcetera etcetera – were the subject of headlines and editorial essays. They would last only until Bernie’s story began to bore, when a more titillating sensation would inevitably replace him.
Meanwhile Bernie’s newsworthiness sprang from the drama of terrible violence and from wildly disputed accusations of possible criminal intent. Murder had not been ruled out, manslaughter suggested, at the very least criminal neglect. The story fed on outrage at yet another bureaucratic cover-up and the ongoing drama of Joe Cooper’s plight. He could still die, as could his son. The story’s life span could prove to be unusually prolonged. None of it would help Harriet.
She telephoned the Cooper home. The answering machine registered thanks, reported no change in either son or husband, apologised for the impersonal message and bleeped off. Enquiries revealed that even the Mothers’ Club could not reach Harriet Cooper.
Rory’s shock was justified. It could very well have been Sean. It very nearly had been Sean.
Chapter Nineteen
“Think about it.” Rory was standing, suitcase in hand, by the second-hand station wagon. “I’ll be waiting, Tess. However long it takes.”
“I’ll let you know.”
The wagon surged into the roadway, spun its wheels in thick summer dust and bumped erratically towards the highway. Abruptly following the past traumatic months, the transition to totally tranquil days had been discomposing and threatening. Time had run out. Finally, there were no distractions to deflect necessary decisions or to impede necessary actions.
The first essential action, amicably agreed on, was obvious. A break from each other was imperative. Their marriage vows had locked them together, their roles defined and absolute. Father – breadwinner, mother – nurturer. The last child had flown the nest, with him their single mutual interest. Except the church. The vows had been pledged for better or worse, for rich or poorer, until death. But time had also run out for vows. New norms applied. Time out could be the first step on a new road. Or the last step on the old road?
Pending further discussion, he would live in
the flat above the store, she in the isolated house in the bush. The second action had been equally amicable. He bought the second-hand station wagon, she gained the trusty Holden. The third would follow the same strictly logical pattern; neither finance nor practicality would permit maintenance of two households for an extended period.
She sat on the front step. Through the shimmering morning haze, the mountains were still, remote, impersonal, unsympathetic. Timeless, they rejected humanity. And Europe’s imposition and packaged religion and the ruthless march of science; and good and evil. She could sit here forever, leave or stay, act or rot and not a grain of dust or blade of grass would care. She could sit here forever and not a drop of rain or wisp of wind would know it had touched her.
Where once there had been solace, was now despair. Inside the home that had been haven and refuge and comfort and heartbreak and solitude and loneliness, there was neither husband nor children. Not even cat or dog. She had no task that must be done, none. Time to think. To cry, to laugh, to mourn, rejoice? This journey was over. Whatever she was to do, it could not be here. She couldn’t go back into the house, she couldn’t move. She never wanted to move again, ever.
“Think about it,” Rory had urged.
Think about selling the house. Think about trying to repair their marriage. Consider living in town, close to Sean and Cathie. Why? She wasn’t needed. Sean was resourceful and capable and sure and high on common sense. His self-awareness was healthy, his recognition of when and how to find help when he needed it, sound.
Was this the source of her despair? Was Sean’s self-sufficiency, so hard-won, so costly, so wildly unanticipated, the reason she was unable to move? Did she at some inadmissible level believe he should still be here, leaning on her, needing her?
What if he’d had cerebral palsy? What if he’d been blind, or deaf or severely disabled? Had she, at heart, expected she would always be needed? Had she always been convinced he was incapable of learning independence? Had she compulsively used Sean’s handicap to fulfil her own life, to compensate for what Rory had robbed her of? Had she built a life worth living on Sean’s dependence!
Could this be why this morning, compelled to confront an absolutely unanticipated vacuum, she was absolutely devastated? All the battles, all the storms, the isolation, the patience, the successes and failures and frustrations, all – none – had prepared her for this terrible moment here on the empty front verandah.
Yet other women fought the battle, nurtured ailing children, taught children to safely fly the nest, lost their husbands, lived with unhappiness, survived heartache and broken promises and shattered dreams. It’s what women did. Women in the books she read, in the films she watched, in the social clubs and sports clubs and charitable services and travelling in crowded tourist buses to places they were too old to enjoy with men they were too old to enjoy.
The haze was thinning, the sun filtering through, melting the overnight dew. A lone magpie perched on the front gate, lifted its head and carolled a welcome to the sun. When it flew away, she turned her back on the mountains, went inside, turned on the radio and filled the house with noise – music, talkbacks, ads. News – she changed channels. She washed dishes, swept floors, vacuumed carpets, made beds. In Sean’s room, where Rory had slept last night, his final night, she stripped the bed and carted the linen to the laundry.
From the open doorway, she surveyed the back yard. Empty. No sign, none, not a single tiny indication that her children had ever been here, played here, laughed here, suffered here. No remnant of Beth’s hatred of the isolation, or of Sean’s trauma; the splintered timbers had long ago been replaced. Only the faintest imagined echo of Sean’s incessant nursery rhymes and Beth’s incessant complaint, ‘make him stop’.
Beth – too soon, the birds would fly and she’d experience this same despair. Or would she? Would James’s love see her through? Beth was one of the lucky ones. Love. She’d told John Lane he must wait until Sean was settled. Sean was settled. John had waited. She couldn’t live here alone.
There’d long been an offer on the house, too low to accept – until today. The farmer across the paddocks aimed to expand and Rory no longer cared enough to bargain. She went to the phone, dialled the estate agent, left a message, packed her clothes, checked cupboards and drawers, carried the cases to the car and walked one last time through the house.
Above Sean’s bed hung the silver cross, so intrinsic she’d not even seen it. She reached up, lifted it from its hook, placed it on the velvet cushion in the box waiting in the bedside drawer, put it in her handbag.
Locking the front door, she crossed the verandah and for the last time descended the steep front steps. Directly above, the noon sun watched. No sound, not of bird, woodsman, cattle, transport. No sound, the mystic midday hush of the quiescent bush.
She threw the cases in the boot and slammed it shut. Startled birds fluttered from the wattles, a lizard skittled through the long grass. She opened the car door. From the empty house the insistent peal of the telephone.
No going back.
She turned on the motor, drove through the open gate, closed it, drove on. In the rear vision mirror, the mountains would not be denied. How could she leave them? Refuge and prison. Shelter. Confessional.
Bordering the rutted track summer-heavy branches, sly tentacles hampering progress. She slowed. A timber lorry loomed from behind. She pulled to one side, wound up the windows against the dust. The driver leaned from his cabin, inspected her, ensured she was not in trouble, tooted and lumbered onwards.
She waited for his dust to settle, wound down the window, drove on to the main highway, through town and into Bell Street. Number eleven, blinds drawn and hushed, was suddenly formidable.
What was she doing! Spontaneous decisions were no longer necessary. She had all her life to decide. There was no pressure to do anything, unless she chose it. There was nothing, imagined or real, to which she must immediately react.
She had choices. Not one, but as many as she could think of. Why was she rushing? There should be no time limit. Yet she was already imposing one. So the first choice was here. She could knock on John Lane’s comforting front door and lean on him for an hour, a day or longer. Or she could keep driving and work it out without help from anyone.
She drove on. Where to? Choose.
Pulling in at the friendly service station, she filled up with petrol, checked the oil, left a message for Rory with Valda and phoned John. He understood, but suggested it might be wise if they didn’t keep in touch. Who could blame him? She didn’t want to. He’d been a timely friend but, in truth, nothing more. The one-night stand in Sydney had revealed that truth.
Leaving Heatherfield behind, she inserted a stirring Rachmaninoff tape into the player and drove out onto the Melbourne-bound highway. Driving a long distance alone was novel, a luxury to be prolonged. Listening uninterrupted, though not novel, was novel today because there was no fear of unexpected interruption, a luxury to be deeply appreciated. She stopped when she chose to stop – at wayside cafes, at scenic lookouts, at nowhere in particular to bathe without distraction in the music. There was no one she had to see, nothing she had to do, no timetable to follow.
By late afternoon, the mountains were far behind, the rural villages more frequent. Should she stop at a motel? Or drive on? Decisions. Choices. No one to consider except herself. No one to have to please, placate, cosset. The sun was setting when she pulled into a motel car park. Locking the car, she crossed to the office, reported she was uncertain about booking in and asked about dinner in the restaurant. She was too early, but the coffee shop was open if she wanted a snack. She could book in at her leisure.
The coffee shop overlooked a paved courtyard ringed by closed motel room doors and an occasional angle-parked car. No people. Arid and anonymous, silent and secretive. Staying here was not an option. She ordered coffee and sandwiches, rested for half an hour, returned to the highway and drove on. But doubtfully. The city was not home and ne
ver would be. She’d thought she’d been acting sensibly. She’d once again acted without planning ahead. Not good enough.
On the outskirts, she pulled into a parking bay overlooking the distant lights of the city central. She hadn’t even planned where she’d sleep. Not good enough. She’d convinced herself she was totally free. Not true. She’d told herself she was bound by only the common limitations of age, health and finance. Not true.
By the light of a street lamp, she unzipped her handbag, took out the velvet-lined box and extracted the silver cross. She’d long ago bargained for and undertaken an additional limit. She’d made a promise. If God would let her son live, she’d be good. Within the meaning of the church good? Or good to the spirit of the church? Or good according to her innermost self? Father Pat could maybe define, but he wasn’t here.
Though God had taken His time, she’d been given Sean and he had lived. She’d promised obedience, conformity and duty. Now, when the exhilaration of freedom was within her grasp, she must honour the promise. Why had it taken so long to acknowledge that vow? Because Sean was not the first son? Not good enough.
The streetlight glimmered on the tiny silver cross, its indentation sharp on her soft flesh. No choice. No freedom, except the freedom to dishonour the vow. No choice, except the choice of how to honour the vow. Superstition. Lunacy. Times have changed. The church no longer deserved or even asked for blind obedience. Her son lived and she could give loyalty. Because that was what she’d pledged to do. If nothing more, at least loyalty. And honour. Honour to herself, her conscience.
The high-ceilinged reception room was small, its tiled floor scattered with hand-woven rugs, its walls hung with cheap icons. Opposite its long and narrow stained glass windows hung the plastic cross, peculiarly at odds with the antique room and the heavy odour of polishing wax.
Whatever sounds there were in the huge convent, none penetrated the thick walls or the heavy door. The building was old, two decades older than when she’d first seen it, yet seeming no older now than then.
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