The Woman Next Door

by Liz Byrski

  ‘No way,’ Mac says, slapping him on the shoulder as they walk down to the house. ‘You’ll stay here. Helen kick you out, did she?’

  Dennis stops in his tracks. ‘You haven’t heard then?’

  ‘Heard what?’ Mac leads the way into the house, opens the fridge and takes out a couple of beers.

  Dennis clears his throat. ‘I’ve left her.’

  Mac laughs. ‘Well obviously, I realise she’s not with you or she’d be first in the door, checking up on the standard of my housework!’ He gets a bottle opener from the kitchen drawer, flips the tops off the bottles and hands one to Dennis. ‘Here’s looking at you,’ he says, swigging from his beer. ‘Come and sit down. Have you had anything to eat, can I make you a sandwich?’

  Dennis shakes his head as he follows Mac across the room, and flops down on the sofa where Charlie immediately joins him. Dennis puts his beer on the coffee table and strokes Charlie’s head and the dog looks up adoringly. ‘He really is a wuss, isn’t he? I’m fine, thanks, I got a pie and a coffee in Mount Barker,’ he says.

  ‘He’s a cracker,’ Mac says, putting his feet up on the coffee table. ‘So come on, to what do I owe the . . .?’

  ‘Like I said, I’ve left her,’ Dennis cuts in. ‘Left Helen. I told her on Thursday. We’re selling that bloody awful place and splitting the proceeds. Didn’t Joyce tell you?’

  Mac takes his feet off the table and sits up straight. ‘No. Does Joyce know?’

  Dennis shrugs. ‘Not sure. Helen asked me not to say anything to anyone yet, but I thought she’d probably have gone running to Joyce, even if she didn’t tell anyone else. But maybe not. She’s on her way to Dubai right now.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Nothing really. I mean nothing new or different. I just got to the end of my tether. I never wanted that move, you know that. I hate the place, seems Helen hates it too. But something changed when we moved there, or maybe it was before that, and it was the reason we moved.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Dennis,’ Mac says. ‘I’d no idea. And she’s gone to Dubai for how long?’

  ‘I don’t know. I got home from the wheelchair workshop on Thursday and she’d organised this surprise,’ he takes a swig of his beer, ‘a trip to Dubai business class for our forty-second anniversary on Wednesday. And I looked at the tickets and knew I couldn’t do it. So I just told her I couldn’t live with her, and that we should sell the apartment.’

  Mac nods and leans forward, hands clasped, elbows on his knees. He thinks that Helen is not the only one who’s changed. Dennis himself looks different, sad certainly, and obviously cautious about how he, Mac, is taking the news, but also somehow lighter.

  ‘Helen’s never been the easiest person to get on with but soon after we got in there, she sort of turned on me. Everything that happened was my bloody fault. Even when there was that big storm and her car got damaged by the hail, that was my fault. Well, I said to her, I’m not bleedin’ god, y’know, Helen, I don’t control the fucking weather . . .’ He stops, looks down at his feet, then turns to stroke Charlie’s ears.

  Mac waits for him to go on.

  ‘And it just got worse from then on,’ Dennis says, ‘day by torturous day. Everything I do is wrong. A few months ago she threw a saucepan at me.’

  Mac’s jaw drops. ‘Really?’ And a memory of Dennis appearing at the door one morning to borrow some tools floods back. He was looking a bit sheepish and had a large plaster on his forehead. ‘Helen hit me with a frying pan,’ he’d said, laughing, when Mac asked him what had happened. But of course he hadn’t taken it seriously and Dennis clearly hadn’t intended that he would.

  ‘Look, mate,’ Dennis goes on, ‘I’m probably a boring old git, and Helen’s younger than me, but we’ve jogged along together pretty well over the years. But recently she seems dedicated to pulling me to pieces. And the thing is now, well, I just can’t be around her. Don’t want to be in the same room, not even in the same house with her. So when she came up with these tickets and the plan for our anniversary, I couldn’t go along with that. Know what I mean?’

  Mac nods slowly. ‘I do know. I’m sorry. I’d no idea, you should have said something before.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have been fair to her to do that.’

  ‘I suppose not. How did she take it?’

  Dennis shrugs. ‘She went very quiet, didn’t say anything at first, just stared at me. Then she just said – “Are you sure about that?” Yep, I said – nothing to discuss – and she just went and got a bottle of wine out of the fridge, poured two glasses, gave one to me and took the other off into the bedroom.’

  ‘She said nothing? That doesn’t sound like Helen.’

  ‘I know but there you go. Bit later we had a chat about selling the place and she said she was still going to see Damian and Ellie and that I should get going with putting the place on the market. So she’s gone off to Dubai and I was wondering, driving down here, if maybe it was a relief to her too. Maybe I did something she couldn’t bring herself to do.’

  They sit in silence for a moment. Mac studies the pattern on the rug at his feet. He feels an enormous sadness for Dennis and for Helen too. She has, he thinks, always been somewhat unpredictable and abrasive, but once he’d grown accustomed to that he’d become fond of her, admired her forthrightness, even when it wasn’t all that comfortable to be around. And he had always had a deep affection for Dennis. Their friendship as couples goes so far back and it had been a huge wrench when Helen and Dennis had moved away.

  ‘What will you do when the apartment’s sold?’

  ‘Not sure yet,’ Dennis says, shaking his head. ‘I wouldn’t mind moving nearer to the workshop. I’ve made friends there, it’s satisfying, knowing those little kids can get about in their chairs, and they wouldn’t have them without us. It’s kept me sane the last few years. The other blokes are all pretty good, and so are the women who come in to do the lunches and the morning tea. Everyone’s friendly, we have a laugh together. I feel so much better there than I do at home. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life being Helen’s punching bag.’

  ‘No, I understand that,’ Mac says. ‘And you think you’ll be all right on your own?’

  ‘I’ll be bloody marvellous. I can ask the other guys around whenever I want. Helen won’t have them in the house.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Lord knows, there’s nothing wrong with them and if there was she wouldn’t know, because she’s never met them.’ Dennis leans back on the sofa. ‘Sorry to land on you like this, mate, but I needed to talk to someone, and I didn’t want to take it all into the workshop with me. It’ll only be a couple of days, but as I said, I can find somewhere else to stay.’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Mac says, getting to his feet. ‘You’re staying here until you’re ready to go. You can help me with the fences, they need patching up.’ He walks over to Dennis’s side and puts a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m so very sorry, mate . . .’ he says again. But he sees that Dennis’s eyes are closed and it’s as though he tries to open them and can’t. Mac takes the beer bottle from his hand, puts it on the table and fetches the doona from the spare bedroom. Then he pushes Charlie gently off the sofa, lifts Dennis’s feet onto it and half lifts him by the shoulders so that he is lying down. He can tell by the weight of him that Dennis is so exhausted that he has suddenly let go and fallen instantly and soundly asleep. Mac puts the doona over him, and stands looking down at him for a moment. Dennis looks so old, so tired; his face seems to have crumbled, and Mac feels an awful sadness for him and for Helen. Who could imagine that people of their age would split up, the whole edifice of more than forty years suddenly dismantled? Is Dennis right? Had Helen also wanted this? And how will she cope with being alone? Mac sighs, pats Dennis’s shoulder again, then picks up his phone and goes quietly out of the door to call Joyce.

  Chapter Twelve

  Hel
en tucks her travel bag into the rack and settles into her window seat. Business class is such a luxury, she feels quite sorry for Dennis missing out on it; he’s always been such a stickler for travelling economy. She takes her mobile out of her bag for a final check before switching it off. Still no message from Joyce – maybe she should have called rather than texting earlier. She’d been up at four and at the airport while Dennis was still sound asleep in the spare room, and she’d texted Joyce just before the flight boarded. The last time they’d spoken was when Helen had called to tell her she’d booked the flights.

  ‘I’ve organised it all,’ she’d said. ‘We’re booked to travel on Sunday, I’m going to tell him this afternoon.’

  ‘Goodness, so soon?’ Joyce had said. ‘Only two clear days – you’d better get packing.’

  ‘I’m onto it,’ Helen had said. ‘I’ll text you when we’re on our way.’ She’d been impatient for Dennis to get home that afternoon, knowing how much he loved spending time with Damian and Ellie and the grandchildren. So she’d been surprised when he didn’t perk up immediately he saw the tickets. And then out it all came: he didn’t want to live with her, wanted to sell the place, live on his own. She’d been shocked at first, so shocked she was lost for words. Fired by years of resentment she took a breath to speak, then stopped suddenly, closing her eyes.

  ‘If you go to Dubai I won’t be going with you,’ Dennis said.

  And in the silence that followed Helen saw herself boarding the flight alone, she caught glimpses of herself there, and here at home – a single woman after all this time – and her heart began to race as all the responsibilities of a lifetime of marriage, everything that had weighed her down, suddenly lifted. Her head started to spin and she put both hands down on the worktop to steady herself.

  There had been a number of times in their marriage when Helen had considered leaving Dennis. The first time was five years into it when she found she was pregnant, it wasn’t planned and she’d realised that this was her moment of choice. She could try to end her pregnancy and then her marriage, but if she went ahead she would have to stay. Dennis was a good man, a good husband, and she was fond of him but the spark had gone out, and Helen felt their marriage was fizzling slowly like a damp squib. Police work, especially CID, was demanding and unpredictable and Dennis was devoted to it. Helen knew that the higher he rose in the force, the greater the toll it would take on him and thereby on her. Should she bring it all to an end there and then, or stay and give it another chance? A baby could make all the difference, she told herself, relight the spark, make them into a family. And so she had stayed.

  The spark didn’t return but Nick’s birth did bring her a deeper sense of connection to Dennis, and a greater level of satisfaction in their life together. Dennis proved to be a loving and attentive father and Helen realised that although she frequently felt bored and short-changed by marriage she was lucky compared to some. She wasn’t in love, but perhaps that’s how life was at this stage, and the alternatives seemed impossible. She sank into a dull but fairly pleasant routine that lasted until Damian arrived four years later. After that Helen forgot to think about whether or not she was happy, she was just too busy. Sometimes she felt that being the mother of two might be easier alone, especially when the boys were in their teens. She and Dennis had different ideas about raising boys and she rebelled against his, which often caused conflict between all four of them. But although she considered leaving she knew it was not really an option. What she wanted was a different life altogether, but she was trapped now.

  Things grew more complicated when Dennis’s mother died and his father needed regular help and that responsibility landed in Helen’s lap. Every week she cleaned his house, got his shopping, took him to appointments with the doctor and hospital, collected his medication, bought his clothes, trimmed his hair and toenails, and called in on him alternate days for more than five years. And as her father-in-law was laid to rest her own mother, widowed many years earlier and suffering from severe arthritis, also started to show the first signs of dementia. Before long she was living with them and Helen once again became a carer. What kept Helen going and reasonably sane all that time was the gate in the fence that led to Joyce and Mac’s place. Stepping through that gate, sitting in Joyce’s kitchen or out on the verandah with a cup of tea or a glass of wine, Helen felt restored to her own sense of herself. There she ceased, however briefly, to be the automaton she felt like at home. There she could turn the frustrations into funny or endearing anecdotes, laugh, curse and generally let off steam.

  As she struggled on through her fifties Helen was so sick of looking after other people that she could have started every day with a scream. Even as a child, she had helped her mother care for her two younger brothers. Once her mother had died and Nick and Damian had left home, Helen had felt her restlessness growing. She wondered what life would have been like now had one of her children been a girl. She loved her boys but sometimes she dreamed of going shopping with a daughter, sitting at a pavement café with her, laughing, sharing disparaging but loving jokes about husbands. But although she couldn’t really fault Ellie she never quite took to her either, and she would think longingly of Gemma and what she had hoped for. She was turning sixty and feeling she had nothing to show for it. She wanted something new, but felt incapable of finding it, and believed that she had left it all too late. All that caring was forgotten by everyone except her, something she’d seen happen with other women: the lives of carers gobbled up until sickness or old age brought it to an end. The carer was then apparently ‘free’, but free for what? Her emotional resources had been devoured by the needs of others. She was hungry for something now, but for what?

  The one thing she knew for sure was that she was sick of the house in Emerald Street, which was not only high maintenance, but freighted with the history of responsibilities. But without the gate that immediately took her into Joyce’s life she felt cut off, walking or driving back there had a distant, formal feel to it. Things were never the same again. Dennis might hate the apartment but he loved that wretched wheelchair workshop. He had made friends there and the time he spent away from the apartment steadily grew. She had time now, endless time, but how was she to spend it?

  As she’d stood there clutching the worktop last Thursday afternoon, reeling at Dennis’s words, Helen had felt a weight lift off her. She felt that she could be different, life could be different. And in that moment she felt herself straighten up, lift her head, stand tall.

  Helen drew in her breath. ‘So is that your final decision?’ she’d asked.

  And Dennis had turned to face her again. ‘It is,’ he said.

  Part of her had wanted to punish him for being the one to make it happen as easily as this, when it suited him. Something she had struggled with over so many years he had managed to do quite suddenly. But, pragmatic as ever, she simply grasped what he handed her. How would she manage alone? Well, if she didn’t find out now she never would.

  ‘Then I agree we work out how to do it all, sell this place, find new homes, divide things up,’ she said. ‘But nothing is going to stop me getting onto that plane on Sunday morning.’

  How extraordinary, Helen thinks, as the seatbelt light goes out and passengers shift their positions, lower the backs of their seats, and settle in for the long flight. All those years, decades, ended just like that.

  It had been a strange and whirlwind couple of days, packing, buying gifts for the children and grandchildren, seeing estate agents, and last night Dennis had surprised her by saying that he was going to leave this morning and drive down to see Mac. ‘I’m going early, but not as early as you’ll be leaving,’ he’d said.

  ‘Boys’ chat in the shed?’ she’d asked.

  ‘That’s it,’ he’d said. ‘Good old chinwag with me mate.’

  And Helen had noticed then that he looked really tired, quite drawn really. He is older than her, seventy-six last b
irthday, and for the very first time she wondered how much of a toll the last few years had taken on him, how much the hurt and the anger he had clearly felt had eaten away at him to the point that he had reached on Thursday. She felt a lump in her throat.

  ‘Maybe we’ll be better friends than partners,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry you feel I’ve been so hard on you.’

  And he had looked at her in astonishment, and she’d realised then that she couldn’t remember apologising to him for anything for years. Attack had come to define her because each time she had looked at him she had seen the cause of all her discontent, her sense of wasted time. He had epitomised the limitations of her life and that was all she had been able to see.

  So there it was, over! A marriage dissolved, just like that – or had it actually dissolved years ago?

  ‘Excuse me, madam,’ says a voice close to her, ‘would you like some breakfast?’

  Helen’s eyes fly open and she realises that she has been dozing since soon after take-off.

  ‘I’d love some,’ Helen says automatically, sitting up straight as the flight attendant flicks a white cloth onto her tray table. And as she sips an orange juice and waits for the food to arrive, she glances at her watch and realises that Dennis is well on his way to Albany by now. Before long he and Mac will be chewing the fat over a beer in the cottage. As for me, Helen thinks, I’m a single woman, more or less, and she looks around at the other passengers, wondering who they see when they look at her, or if they see her at all. The first day of the rest of my life, she thinks. It’s a throwaway line that she’s always despised for its triteness, but now seems a perfect fit. The rest of my life; she pauses, pushing back at the sudden wave of panic that threatens this new sense of herself. That could be quite a long time.

  Chapter Thirteen

  June

  It’s good to have Polly back but Stella wishes she could remember where she’s been. Normally she’d ask about this trip, wherever it was, she’d take an interest. She rummages in a drawer to hide her embarrassment. ‘You’ve been away for ages,’ she says.