The Woman Next Door

by Liz Byrski

  ‘Never,’ he says now, ‘not for one moment. I don’t know why I ever thought I enjoyed it, why I even thought it mattered. I suppose I needed to feel I mattered, to be recognised and occasionally deferred to.’

  ‘Only occasionally?’ she says, nudging him with her elbow.

  ‘Well, fair enough, it does go to one’s head a bit. Being treated as an expert, having a profile . . .’ He lifts his hands out of the water, enclosing the word in quotes with his fingers. ‘It’s addictive. You have to keep at it, keep building and feeding it for fear of being overlooked. And then one day you open an envelope from the STD clinic and your heart stops beating, your throat closes off, your head spins . . .’ Alistair inhales deeply, looks down into the water. ‘Oh well . . . you remember how it was . . . bits of me fell away, and I ran away, we ran away. There are still only half a dozen people from that life who know we’re here, who call or visit from time to time. Now I wonder why I wasted so much time thinking I was so important.’

  ‘You are important,’ she says, ‘to me, to Steve, to your friends here, to those people from that life. You were just a different sort of important then.’

  ‘An important, arrogant bastard,’ he laughs. ‘I thought that being in demand – publicly and professionally – was what life was all about. Anyway, Poll, what about you? Ever since you got here I’ve felt you were on the edge of telling us something but then deciding not to.’

  ‘I’m acclimatising.’

  ‘Bullshit. You’re procrastinating. C’mon, spit it out.’

  Polly sighs. ‘Oh well, it’s just that . . . well I was wondering whether, in your important days, you ever came across someone called Leo Croft?’

  Alistair closes his eyes, tilts his face up to the sun. ‘Croft,’ he says, ‘Leo Croft, it sounds familiar . . . should I know him, what does he do?’

  ‘Well I thought you might know him because of the time you spent in London. He used to work for the BBC, first as a political reporter and then he hosted a current affairs program called . . . er . . . Roundup . . .’

  ‘Hah, yes, I know who you mean. I think he left the BBC and worked at Channel Four for a while. He was . . . probably still is . . . quite busy on the speaking circuit . . .’ he pauses, ‘I think he might have reinvented himself as a sort of minor celebrity atheist.’

  Polly nods. ‘That’s him.’

  ‘Okay, well I’ve seen him in action on television, years ago of course, and I’ve read some of his stuff in the past, but not since he became a supposed expert on the non-existence of the Almighty.’

  ‘Supposed?’

  He laughs. ‘Well it’s all supposed really, isn’t it? We smart bastards suppose ourselves to be experts, we write something controversial on a topic, publish, make the right noises to the right people, they suppose we’re right, or at least interestingly and entertainingly wrong, and hey presto everyone else believes we know what we’re talking about. That’s how it works. Yes, I know who you mean.’

  ‘So d’you think he’s okay?’

  ‘Okay in what sense?’ he asks, turning towards her. ‘I mean, as far as I can remember his stuff was pretty good, and he can probably do the show pony thing quite well. Is that what . . .?’ He stops, peering into her face. ‘Oh I seeeee. You’ve met him, haven’t you, in London?’

  ‘Edinburgh, just briefly.’

  ‘Brief encounter?’

  ‘Not in the way you mean it. We met by chance, talked, had lunch, that sort of thing.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Well . . . I did like him. And I like him more now I’ve had time to think about it.’

  ‘And since Edinburgh?’

  ‘We’ve been emailing . . .’ Polly hesitates. ‘It’s sort of changing, the email conversations, I mean, they’re becoming . . .’

  ‘Pornographic?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Al. I need you to help me with this.’

  ‘Sorry, darling. What are they becoming, these emails?’

  ‘Um . . . affectionate, almost intimate, not sexually, intellectually, which is, of course, quite sexy if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I do know what you mean. And you think I can help you with this?’

  ‘Well you’ve never held back about my other relationships.’

  ‘So it is a relationship.’

  ‘No . . . I . . . no . . .’

  ‘But you think it could be?’

  She sighs. ‘Possibly. I suppose that’s it. I suppose I think it could be.’

  Alistair swishes his arm through the water, shifts his position. ‘Well I don’t know anything bad about him, not much about him at all. I suppose you’ve gone through the checklist of risk factors from your previous disastrous involvements: already married, drinks too much, drugs – recreational and medicinal – hates his mother, hates his father, pulls the wings off flies . . .’

  ‘Of course, and I couldn’t see any sign of any of that, except perhaps he . . . well . . . the mother thing, no love lost there, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Well one risk factor is probably okay. He’ll have an ego the size of the British Museum, of course. Worse even than mine because his profile is, in a small way, international. We should go inside and Google him.’

  ‘I already have.’

  ‘Of course you have, but I haven’t, and I’m much better at that than you.’

  *

  It’s several hours later, while they are sitting around the table after dinner, that Alistair, reaching down into the canvas bag attached to the side of his wheelchair, pulls out his iPad.

  ‘Okay, let’s check out the godless Mr Croft.’

  Steve looks across the table at Polly. ‘Are you sure you want him to do this, Polly?’ he asks. ‘You know what a bastard he can be.’

  ‘It’s for her own good,’ Alistair says, playfully. ‘I’m sort of responsible for her, after all . . .’

  Polly splutters with laughter and looks at Steve, who rolls his eyes. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ he says.

  Alistair handles the iPad cautiously, standing it upright in its case which opens up into a keyboard, with a slot stand for the screen. Polly watches, uncomfortable at the time it takes him to get it ready, the difficulty he has in getting his fingers to work on the keyboard. She reaches out to him. ‘Here, let me . . .’

  ‘I am perfectly able to use an iPad, thank you, Polly,’ he says, looking hard at her, putting a shaking hand firmly on top of hers and pushing it away from the keyboard.

  She exchanges a glance with Steve, who smiles reassuringly. She has known him for years, since before he and Alistair met, when he and Polly had been working on the set of a crime series. Steve was a psychologist who specialised in profiling and had been brought in as an advisor. Alistair had turned up to meet Polly for lunch one day; Steve and a couple of others had tagged along and now here they are all these years later, two old men still together.

  ‘How strange it is that we’re so old,’ she says suddenly. ‘It’s as though it’s snuck up on us.’

  ‘We’re only sixty-seven, Poll,’ Steve says, ‘and you’re what – sixty-three now? It’s not really old these days.’

  ‘No, but think of our parents at this age. We thought they were old then. It doesn’t seem possible that we’re now the over-sixties. Isn’t it odd that inside yourself you know you’re the same person but suddenly you see yourself in a mirror or reflected in a shop window and think – who is that old person that looks a bit like me?’

  Alistair looks up at her over the top of his glasses. ‘Are you saying you’re too old for something in particular, Polly?’ he asks. ‘Like a relationship, or even a brief encounter?’

  ‘No I . . . oh I don’t know what I’m saying. Haven’t you found him yet?’

  ‘I have indeed found him, Croft, Leonard George, born Johannesburg, South Africa 1947, joined BBC ra
dio as a news reporter in 1969 blah, blah, blah.’ He pushes the iPad towards Steve, who draws it towards him, studies the screen for a moment then looks up at her, smiling, raising his eyebrows.

  ‘Mmm, Polly – silver fox! Now how old do you really feel?’

  ‘Oh stop it, you two. I wish I’d never told you.’

  ‘Is there more you want to tell us?’ Alistair says, teasingly. ‘More about what happened in Edinburgh?’

  ‘Nothing happened in Edinburgh. Nothing like what you’re thinking anyway. It was just a chance meeting that turned into a really interesting . . . well, an interesting connection.’

  ‘And since Edinburgh?’ Steve persists. ‘The emails? These days whole relationships begin online without the people having even met.’

  Polly looks away, then down at her hands resting on the table, clasps them, unclasps them. ‘I don’t know what’s happening, but whatever it is he started it. I only got friendly with him because of how we met – you know, I told you about the soldier. I liked the way he treated that young man, he was the only person that stopped thinking of himself to help a stranger.’

  ‘The only one except you.’

  ‘Well yes. And then I had lunch with him and found we had things in common . . .’ she hesitates, ‘and we laughed a lot. When we said goodbye at the airport I wished I’d taken another day or two to stay in London like he’d suggested. It was a pleasant interlude but now it seems to be changing, becoming more than that.’

  ‘So what’s wrong with that?’ Steve asks.

  ‘Well at our age . . .’ she stops, unsure where she is going.

  ‘At our age what?’

  She hesitates again, shrugs. ‘Oh I don’t know, I don’t know what to think. Shouldn’t we be past . . . well past . . .?’

  ‘Past what?’ Alistair demands. ‘Past love, or romance, or sex? Heaven forbid, Polly, you’re both still alive, aren’t you?’

  Silence again.

  ‘He said something like that, that first night,’ she says. ‘When you’re past that you might as well be dead, I think it was.’

  ‘Quite right,’ Alistair says. ‘D’you want to know what I think, ’cos I’m going to tell you anyway. I think you feel you can’t bear to put yourself into the whole relationship thing again, risk getting hurt again, and I can understand that. Your entire approach to this man is constantly discoloured by the past and what you see as your own errors of judgement. But what you need to think about is who he actually is, and most importantly, how he made you feel when you were with him.’

  She stares at him for what seems ages, trying to name it, holding her breath as she tries to pin down how she had felt, sitting across the table from Leo, throwing a snowball at him in the park, when he put his hand to her cheek at the airport.

  She opens her mouth to speak, starts, then stops, then begins again. ‘When I was with him,’ she says, ‘he made me feel that he could see me, the real me, not the surface and not what he might want to see, but the person I really am. That’s how he made me feel.’

  Chapter Four

  North Fremantle, Western Australia, Early April

  It’s eleven in the morning and Helen is still in her dressing gown, standing in the kitchen, pouring herself a glass of wine, when the doorbell rings. At first she thinks she won’t bother answering it, it’s probably the Mormons again, or that awful woman with the beauty products catalogue. But then she remembers that the handbag she’d ordered online at the end of last week is due to be delivered round about now; it cost an arm and a leg and is coming by courier. She takes a sip of her wine and hurries through to the front door remembering, just in time, to put her glass down on the hall table.

  ‘Helen!’ Stella says when she opens the door. ‘I was just passing . . . but are you okay? You’re not sick, are you?’

  Helen tightens the sash of her dressing gown. ‘Stella, what a lovely surprise. No of course I’m not sick, just . . . didn’t sleep very well and so I went back to bed after Dennis left. Just got up again.’

  It’s clear that this does not convince Stella. She hesitates in the doorway looking puzzled. ‘Well look, I won’t disturb you then,’ she says, ‘if you’re sure you’re okay. I was just driving past and I thought I’d drop off these books that you lent me ages ago. But I can see . . .’

  ‘Why don’t you come in,’ Helen says, desperate to sound normal. ‘I’ll make some coffee.’ The last thing she wants is coffee and chat but although Stella has been losing it a bit recently she is still a wily old bird, and you can’t be sure things will slip past her, so Helen needs to look as natural and relaxed as possible. ‘Come on through and I’ll put the kettle on.’ And she opens the door wider and leads the way, hoping to get the wine bottle off the worktop before Stella makes it through to the kitchen.

  ‘Shall I leave the books out here?’ Stella calls after her. ‘I’m sorry I’ve had them so long, I’ve been driving around with them in the car for ages, meaning to return them.’

  ‘Lovely, thanks, on the table would be good . . .’ Helen calls back, whisking the wine bottle into the fridge just as she realises that Stella is putting the books down alongside her wineglass. Ah well, not much she can do about it now. With any luck Stella will think the glass is left over from the previous evening.

  ‘I do love your view,’ Stella says, walking through to the kitchen at last, ‘it always takes my breath away when I come in here.’

  There is something artificial about her tone, Helen thinks. She’s trying to make conversation; they were never close, and now Stella sounds forced and awkward.

  ‘So,’ Stella continues, ‘you really are okay?’

  ‘Oh, you mean the dressing gown,’ Helen says, taking a jar of instant coffee from the cupboard. ‘Of course I’m fine, just – well as I said, I went back to bed for a while and haven’t got around to having a shower yet.’

  ‘And Dennis?’

  ‘He’s fine; off to his Men’s Shed thing – you know, all the old blokes get together and play sheds. They’re making wheelchairs for kids in Africa now, I think. Something like that.’

  Stella nods. ‘I heard something about that on the radio. It’s a great idea, they seem to be getting the chairs to children who really need them.’

  ‘I suppose so. He’s off there almost every day, goes about eight-thirty and comes back about two. And what about you, Stella, how was Albany?’

  Stella perches on a stool at the bench top. ‘Oh, pretty tiring, and sometimes tedious, but a lot of fun as well.’

  ‘I don’t know how you stand it,’ Helen says. ‘All that waiting around, and doing things over and over again. I’d go raving mad.’

  ‘It’s not all like that. Sometimes it moves along quite fast, and we always have a lot of laughs. They’re a nice crowd.’

  ‘Do you really have to keep doing it?’ Helen says, getting two mugs from the cupboard. ‘At your age I’d have thought you’d want to give it up.’

  There is a silence and Helen, sensing this was a misstep, pours the boiling water into the mugs, and stirs them furiously.

  ‘Well, Helen,’ Stella says, slowly, ‘at my age I think I’m lucky to still be doing it, to still be invited to do it. And it’s not as though I have superannuation or much in the way of savings. Acting has always been financially hazardous unless one makes it to the big time, so I’m glad of the extra money to pay the bills. Sometimes it does all seem a bit much but I’d rather that than being stuck at home doing nothing all day.’

  Helen feels herself flush, feels the heat creeping up her neck to her face. ‘Oh well, yes, well of course. I’d certainly be lost without . . .’ Without what? What can she say? The doorbell saves her. ‘Goodness I’m popular this morning! Sorry, Stella, I’ll just get that.’

  It is the courier with her handbag, and Helen takes her time signing his delivery sheet, keeping up a pleasant banter with him as s
he does so.

  ‘Online shopping,’ she says, returning to the living room. ‘Don’t you just love it?’

  ‘I do buy books online,’ Stella says, ‘but not really anything else.’

  Helen knows she has misfired again. Of course Stella would not be buying bags or jewellery or designer gear or anything else online, she has only ever been interested in ferreting through op shops for some imagined bargain that she can convert into something weird and inappropriate. And she has always been close to the line where money was concerned, hanging out to know that her pay had been deposited in the bank.

  ‘I suppose I might have enjoyed it when I was younger,’ Stella continues, and Helen realises that she is trying; she’s making an effort to ease the way for both of them. She must try harder herself.

  ‘So how’s everyone?’ Helen asks brightly. ‘Polly back yet?’

  ‘Couple of days,’ Stella says. ‘I’ll be so glad to have her back. I hear Damian and Ellie were home recently. That must have been lovely for you.’

  Helen grasps this lifeline. ‘It was,’ she says, ‘it was so good to have them here . . .’ and she launches into a description of their visit, how well they both were, how much the children had grown, what a wonderful time they’d all spent together, and how she and Dennis are thinking of going over to Dubai in the middle of the year. She talks so much she almost exhausts herself, and then stops abruptly, leaving that awkward silence once again.

  ‘Well that’s lovely,’ Stella says, ‘you’ll enjoy that. I was expecting to see you at Mac’s little farewell.’

  ‘Ah yes. So sorry to have missed that.’ Helen feels the flush rising again. ‘Just didn’t feel too good that day, I thought I might have a bug and didn’t want to pass it on to anyone else.’ She wonders how long this can possibly go on, how long she and Stella can keep pretending that things are like they used to be. And of course things were never really easy between the two of them. Helen has always thought Stella eccentric, has always been slightly ill at ease in her presence. Both Stella and Polly, while always pleasant company, were never important to her in the way that Joyce was. They had existed for her as amiable neighbours, adjuncts to that really important friendship. She has never needed either of them because there was always Joyce and Mac and the whole rowdy, unmanageable, chaotic mix of their various children and, later, Joyce and Mac’s grandchildren; always there, always in and out. But now . . .