by Liz Byrski
But this morning he’s got an important meeting, too important even to stop for his usual coffee. He has a meeting with a dog.
‘A dog?’ Joyce had said when he’d asked her on the phone whether she minded if he got one. ‘Of course I don’t mind.’
‘Even if you decided to move down here, you wouldn’t mind living with a dog?’
‘I love dogs,’ she’d said. ‘You know I do, it’s always been me who wanted one and you said it was too much trouble.’
‘I know,’ he’d said sheepishly. ‘Being down here alone is great but I think it would be nicer with a dog to talk to.’
‘A dog that doesn’t argue with you or remind you to put out the rubbish?’ she’d laughed. ‘Of course you should get a dog if that’s what you want, and you know what we agreed – we don’t have to ask each other’s permission to do what we want.’
‘I know, but a dog lasts more than a year,’ Mac had said. ‘So whatever we decide at the end of the year the dog will be a part of that.’
‘It’s okay, Mac, just do it,’ Joyce had said. ‘Why not get a rescue dog? There’s a lot of places on the Internet. And, by the way, I’m going for an interview next week, at the language school, for the same course as Ben did. Remember?’
Mac remembered; he remembered the month Ben was on the course, it is engraved on his memory: Ben, then twenty-two, confidently enrolling in the intensive one-month course, setting off enthusiastically, and returning each day utterly exhausted, saying his brain hurt and disappearing into his room to spend several more hours preparing for the following day. He remembers the start of the third week: Ben looking pale and drawn, tearful even as he staggered off to classes, and how he and Joyce had told each other that it was good that Ben was so committed but he did seem to be making a meal of it. They’d agreed that the pressure would toughen him up – he needed to be pushed. At the end of the course Ben had done well and they had celebrated by taking the whole family out for a special dinner.
‘That is the hardest thing I’ve ever done,’ Ben had said as they drank to his health. And later that night Joyce and Mac had shared their amusement that a fit young man could be so knocked over by the pressure of a four-week course.
‘Are you sure?’ Mac had said when Joyce told him about the interview. ‘Remember how Ben was? Can’t you do it over a longer period?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Joyce had said, irritably. ‘He was young, he wasn’t used to pressure. I’d rather do the intensive one, assuming I get in at all.’
‘He still says the course was the hardest thing he’s ever done,’ Mac reminded her. ‘And he’s forty-four now and apart from the teaching he did after that, he’s done a lot of other very difficult and challenging things. Remember when he . . .’
‘Mac, stop!’ Joyce had interrupted. ‘Ben remembers it that way and I am sure it was tough on him, but I’m a grown woman, a mother and a grandmother, and I’m used to hard work and long hours. I am perfectly capable of doing this.’
So he backed off. Okay, he thought, suit yourself, I was only trying to help. And he’d got straight onto the computer and started dog hunting. It was the eyes that were important, he thought, as he scrolled through the images of dogs needing homes. The look in the eyes was what mattered, that, and it had to be a sensible sized dog, nothing small or fine boned, a strong dog, a man’s dog, and he made a mental note not to describe it that way to Joyce.
There were lots of different sites, but not many dogs needing homes in this area. You could adopt one from another state or region and it could be flown to you, but Mac wanted to meet the dog face to face before deciding. He’d considered a German Shepherd called Gloria, but wasn’t too sure about the eyes, although that could have been the fault of the camera. He lingered over a Staffy but the eyes, he thought, looked slightly demented. And then, on another site, he’d spotted Charlie, a chocolate brown Labrador cross. Crossed with what?, Mac had wondered. Something pretty big, by the look of it, maybe too big? But when he enlarged the picture he could see the eyes and the eyes said ‘come and get me and I’ll love you forever’. So he’d emailed that night and the following morning a woman named Carol had called.
‘He’s adorable,’ she’d said, ‘he’s been quite well trained. I’ve been fostering him for a couple of weeks and no nasty surprises. I can bring him to you if you like, to see if the two of you get along.’
Back home now Mac has a quick shower and feels a sudden compulsion to tidy the house before Carol arrives. Joyce’s training, he thinks, she’d be proud of me. And he goes around the cottage gathering up an empty cup, a glass, his jacket, two pairs of shoes and some books and papers and odd tools that he has left scattered across the living room. As he is washing his breakfast things in the kitchen Mac hears the sound of a car and he crosses to the front windows where he sees a small, yellow, four-wheel drive turn in at the gate. A woman with untidy, greying hair piled on top of her head climbs out of the driver’s seat. There is something vaguely familiar about her, but also something that seems totally at odds with the familiarity. He dries his hands and goes to the door.
‘Carol?’ he says.
‘That’s me,’ she says, and her smile is familiar too. ‘Okay if I let Charlie out of the car?’
‘Sure thing,’ he says. ‘Thanks for bringing him over.’
‘My pleasure. We really want to find a home for him soon, he’s such a lovely dog. He might just ignore you at first and run straight into the house – is that okay?’
‘That’s fine; let him out. If he ends up staying here he’ll have the run of the house anyway.’
The dog leaps out of the back seat wagging his tail, sniffing the air. ‘He’s big, bigger than I expected,’ Mac says. ‘Hey, Charlie, come here.’
‘Does that matter?’ Carol asks. ‘The size, I mean. We think he has a touch of some other breed, not sure what, but something bigger than a Labrador.’
‘A horse maybe?’ Mac says, laughing. ‘But no, it doesn’t matter. He’s beautiful.’
Charlie sniffs around Mac’s ute, cocks a leg on one of the tyres and bounds over to him and he takes the dog’s head in his hands, fondling his ears. Charlie looks up at him, then pokes his head forward in an attempt to lick his face.
‘Crikey, that was quick,’ Carol says. ‘He’s taken an instant liking to you. I’ve not seen him do that before.’
Mac straightens up and Charlie bounds away from him and into the house. ‘Come inside and tell me more about him. Would you like a coffee?’ Close up now he has the same feeling of familiarity and disjunction that he’d had at the window.
‘I’d love one,’ she says. ‘I went for a swim and then didn’t have time for coffee.’
‘Do you swim at Middleton?’
She nods. ‘Most mornings.’
‘Me too.’
Inside the house Charlie is making a tour of the premises, sniffing chair legs, cupboard doors, Mac’s boots, and the sofa. ‘He’s not destructive and he won’t pee on your boots,’ Carol says. ‘You know it’s odd but I have this strange feeling that we’ve met before. Are you from around here?’
‘No. We’ve been living in Fremantle for years, my wife’s still there.’ He crosses the room to get the coffee from the pantry. ‘Strong okay?’
‘Strong is good,’ Carol says. ‘Anyway, about Charlie, he’s a bit of a one-person dog. Not very interested in other dogs, likes people, but if you and he get together he’ll follow you everywhere. If you decide you want a trial with him I can leave him with you for two weeks.’
Mac puts the coffee into the plunger, and walks around the bench top to where Charlie is checking out the sofa. ‘What d’you think, mate?’ he says, looking into the dog’s eyes again. ‘Want to give it a go?’ Charlie jumps onto the sofa, turns around a couple of times, rearranging the cushions, then lies down. ‘I guess that’s a yes,’ Mac says. ‘We’ll give it a go. Want
to show me the paperwork you’ll need if I keep him?’
Carol sits on a stool at the bench top and takes some forms from her bag. ‘Sure,’ she says, taking out her pen. ‘You said your name was Mac, is that . . .?’
‘Short for Mackenzie, Robert Mackenzie.’
She starts to write, then stops, looks across at him as he switches off the kettle. ‘Rob Mackenzie . . . I’ve got it. Chemistry, UWA, late sixties?’
He stares at her. ‘Yes, but I don’t remember . . .’
‘You were a couple of years ahead of me, Carol Fisher.’
Mac stares at her. ‘Carol Fisher, of course,’ he says at last, and for the first time in years, possibly in decades, he feels himself blush. ‘Yes, yes of course I remember.’ And indeed he does remember Carol Fisher: lithe and tough, all black leather and jeans, spikey hair and attitude. And yes, he can just see her in this interesting looking woman in her sixties in her mid-calf length cotton caftan and leather sandals. She is attractive still, but in a very different way, a few sizes larger, and with unruly hair that escapes in strands each time she moves her head. As if she can read his mind she reaches up now, pulls it out of the scrunched up thing that holds it, drags it back into position and anchors it again. He laughs. ‘Good lord, it must be forty years.’
‘More,’ she says, smiling. ‘What did you do with your PhD?’
‘Research chemist. And you?’
‘I only got as far as Honours and then dropped out,’ she says. ‘Fell in love, got pregnant and had to get married in a hurry – well, you can imagine the rest.’
He nods. ‘That’s a shame, you were doing well, weren’t you?’
‘I was, but once you drop out it’s hard to get back, especially in the sciences where the research moves on so fast. Anyway, I’ll get on with this paperwork while you make the coffee.’
They work through the forms, and Carol slips them into a folder with information on Charlie’s diet and habits. They face each other across the bench, recalling memories of their time at uni, eccentric staff, and fellow students. Eventually Carol gets up to leave and goes to the couch where Charlie has fallen asleep. He makes no attempt to move when she strokes him.
‘I’ve been abandoned,’ she says, as Mac walks her out to the car. ‘Still, it’s a good sign, I hope you enjoy him. Give me a call if you have any problems. If I don’t hear from you I’ll get back to you in a couple of weeks.’
‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘And thanks for bringing him over. Nice to see you after all this time.’
‘You too,’ she says, slipping into the driving seat. ‘Remember that night we went crabbing in Mandurah?’
‘I do,’ he says, awkward now. What is he supposed to say? It was, after all, just a one-night stand. ‘Probably best forgotten,’ he says, his face blazing with embarrassment.
She smiles. ‘Well I wouldn’t say that. But they were good times and . . .’ she pauses, ‘I was going to say it feels like a lifetime ago, but of course it is. Well I’d best get on.’ And she starts the engine and reverses back down the unmade drive to the gate.
Mac stands there watching her turn out of the drive and onto the road. Idiot, he thinks, why the fuck did I say that . . . best forgotten? Was she offended? Hopefully she took it as it was – a throwaway line delivered in a moment of embarrassment. The car disappears from sight and he wanders back to the house, and drops down beside Charlie on the sofa. ‘I always did have a winning way with women,’ he says grimly, rubbing the dog’s tummy. ‘Foot in mouth again – story of my life.’
*
The senior teacher’s office is stuffed with books and papers, and framed certificates bearing his name crowd the walls. Ewan Heathcote, nice, Joyce thinks, a name suitable for a romantic hero, and the rather rakish good looks to go with it.
‘Well this all looks fine, Mrs . . . er . . . Joyce,’ he says, shuffling through her application and evidence of her unfinished degree in English literature. ‘We do have a few places left on the intensive course starting the week after next. But are you sure you wouldn’t rather do the easier version? The intensive is – well, it is very intensive.’
Joyce studies his face; he is in his mid-forties and has, she thinks, a rather gentlemanly demeanour slightly at odds with his appearance.
‘You see,’ he continues, ‘the intensive course is really designed for people who are trying to gain the qualification in their annual leave from other jobs. From what you’ve told me you’re free to do it at a more measured pace.’
Joyce likes him, she likes the place, she likes the whole idea of intensive learning. She leans forward. ‘Mr Heathcote . . .’
‘Ewan, please,’ he says.
‘Well, Ewan, I want to be pushed, I want to be immersed in it. I think I’ll learn better that way,’ she says.
He smiles. ‘Well in that case we’ll be happy to have you. Provided of course that you pass the test.’
‘The test?’
‘The English and grammar test; it’s outlined in the leaflet I sent you. Very straightforward, I don’t think you’ll have any problems with it.’
A wave of nausea sweeps over her. How did she let that slip past her? ‘So when would I have to do that?’ She has always been useless at exams.
‘Well, now, preferably, today, or you can come back later . . .’
‘Now,’ she says, sounding more confident than she feels. ‘Best get it done now. How long will it take?’
‘Forty-five minutes,’ he says. ‘We just pop you in a quiet room on your own with the test paper, and someone will come and tell you when the time is up. If you finish earlier you can just give your paper to the receptionist on your way out and I’ll get back to you in the next couple of days.’
Joyce takes a deep breath. ‘Fine,’ she says. ‘Just one more thing. The people on the course, will they all be young? I mean – just out of university?’
‘We do have a lot of recent graduates,’ Ewan says, ‘but we also have a lot of older people. People from their forties to their seventies. I think you’ll find at least a few others about your age.’
A few minutes later Joyce settles herself at the desk in the little office, closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, opens them, puts on her glasses and starts to read the test paper. There are questions about the use of pronouns and adverbs, verb tenses, modifiers, conditionals, the appropriate uses of colons and semi-colons, Oxford commas, gerunds and everything else she’s forgotten, if she ever knew it. Then there are long paragraphs with no punctuation and others with incorrect punctuation, all of which have to be corrected. Finally there is a long list of words and phrases to which grammatical form must be ascribed. Joyce closes her eyes again and tries to force down another wave of nausea. Whatever made her think she could possibly teach English? She sits in silence in the cell-like room where the only sound is that of muffled footsteps moving back and forth along the carpeted corridor, wondering how she can escape without detection. Run away and never come back.
She pushes the paper away from her across the desk, and leans back in her chair and stares up at the clock on the wall, watching the minute hand jerk slowly forward. How hopeless I am, she tells herself, all those years at home, and in the same job on and off, and now I’m fit for nothing. ‘But I want this,’ she whispers into the silence. ‘I really want this. What will everyone say? Mac and Stella, and Polly, and Gemma, and what about Vanessa and Ben, especially Ben, he’d be ashamed of me. I have to do it. I have to try.’ And she grabs some tissues from her bag, wipes her eyes, puts her glasses back on and starts to read the test paper again.
Chapter Six
South Fremantle, May
There is a sort of magic in the silence, Polly thinks, as she checks her emails once again. No message so far this morning but it will come, Leo hasn’t missed a day yet, and against her own better judgement she waits for his messages, the certainty of their arrival const
antly distracting her from her work. She is torn between wanting to keep the silence, and actually wanting to hear his voice. Email is safe of course, and for two people who spend their lives working with words this is a very comfortable way of getting to know each other. They have both written about what had seemed, at first, an unspoken agreement, to communicate only in this way. They are getting to know each other in the safe and silent world of cyberspace.
‘It sounds a bit weird,’ Stella had said, when Polly told her about it. ‘A bit impersonal.’
‘Far from it,’ Polly said. ‘It feels quite intimate, sharing things about our lives, what we believe in, what we value, what makes us laugh and what drives us right up the wall. Books, music, politics, writing, all sorts of things.’ Only to herself will she admit that she really wants to hear his voice, that she tries to conjure it in her mind, the resonance, the hint of an almost unidentifiable accent.
‘Have you told him about Alistair?’
Polly nods. ‘I have and he told me about his sister, Judith. It’s really sad, she’s in her late fifties and has Multiple Sclerosis. They own a cottage in Cornwall which belonged to their parents, and she lives there with a carer. He goes down there a lot, it’s hard on him of course, but he’s totally committed to her, really makes sure she has everything she needs.’
Stella raises her eyebrows. ‘He told you that?’
‘Mmm. It was quite touching really. And it’s something else we share, although of course I don’t have to do anything for Al because he has Steve.’
Stella nods. ‘How sad, that poor woman. And you, Polly – you’re feeling there’s more, yet you seem to be holding everything off at a distance. I don’t understand how you can – it’d drive me crazy.’
‘That’s because you’re a very out there sort of person, Stella,’ Polly had said. ‘I’m an introvert. And there’s something else: I feel, and I suspect he does too, that we’re both enjoying this so much that neither of us wants to risk damaging it.’