Chapter 11. The Human Touch
1.
It is the thirteenth morning of Elliot’s van life. Nearly a week ago he collected Adelaide, and she has settled into the rhythm of his days. She is a small dog, van-sized, whose ginger and spice coat, snub nose, pricked-up ears floppy at the points belie her grandiose name. With her unconditional devotion, she is in every respect a perfect companion.
The dog-walkers in the park now talk to him. The conversation is strictly dog centred: name of pet, age, breed, temperament. Adelaide revels in the pack of canines. In the park where Elliot usually walks her most of the dogs are exercised on leads while their owners jog, but here the animals chase and sniff and wrestle together while the humans saunter along chatting about the weather and their pets.
The thirteenth day starts as usual: breakfast in the park, followed by a swim and shower at the local leisure centre. After his morning email to Zoe he decides to walk to Dight Falls – the marvel of inner Melbourne he called these rapids when Zoe first brought him here soon after they moved from New York. Dight Falls became their special Melbourne place, much as Riverside Park had been their special New York place. They celebrated their first two anniversaries of life in Australia with a picnic at the falls. Callum was tottering on newly discovered legs the first time, it was a perfect family day. On the second anniversary, Callum, with all the bravado of a two-year-old, made a beeline for the river rocks and nothing would deflect him, Zoe was too anxious to enjoy herself and he was too hung-over.
Since then he has visited the falls often, but always alone. It’s a place for introspection, a place where he has grappled with his marriage, his work and, in the early days of sobriety, his not drinking. If he was asked to choose a significant location in Melbourne, just one, it would be this patch of wild water not far from the city centre.
He hurries Addie along the path and soon he is standing on the grassy prominence overlooking the rapids. The foam smashes against the boulders, the sky is a smooth cornflower blue, a breeze rises from the water: how calm he feels among the boil and roar. On the far side, perched on a rock in the shallows, is a white-faced heron, and towering over the water are ancient steep cliffs, history compacted in their lovely layers of rock. On that very first visit, Zoe was pregnant with Callum; they stood where he is standing now, her arm about his waist, his arm draped across her shoulders, and he remembers thinking how fortunate he was, married to this woman, soon to be a father, about to begin an exciting new job. Ramsay was living in Europe at the time – not that he knew about Zoe and Ramsay then – and only booze cast a shadow over his otherwise perfect existence. He resolved that day to bring his drinking under control, once and for all.
They were happy in those early years, or at least he thought they were. Not that he controlled his drinking then; the resolution made as he stood above Dight Falls lasted the usual couple of days, then came the bargaining and soon there was no point in keeping count. He does, however, have a sense of happiness when he looks back at that time. But what if Zoe has never been happy with him? It’s a shocking thought, an unbearable thought, and as he stands above the falls, as he watches the heron fishing, the water churning, he forces it to the margins of his mind.
‘It’s so peaceful here.’
The voice, pitched beneath the water’s roar, startles him. A woman is standing by his side.
He glances briefly in her direction then back to the rapids. ‘Yes, very peaceful.’ And shifts ever so slightly to give himself more space.
Addie trots over and sniffs at the new person then returns to her rummaging in the delicious mud. The woman is tall, much the same height as Zoe, but where Zoe carries an air of fragility, this woman’s fullness, her bright loose-fitting dress, the mass of dark hair billowing over her shoulders give an impression of strength.
‘I come here often,’ she says, turning towards him.
He, too, turns and finds himself looking directly at her. He was intending to say something about the wonder of this place; instead he registers her face, the surprise and pleasure of it.
He takes another step to the side, this time to see her more clearly. ‘It’s the commotion here, nature’s turmoil,’ he says. ‘Works like meditation.’
She nods, the movement slow, resigned. ‘Yes, I know what you mean. Holds you in the present.’
Her skin and eyes are dark, her eyebrows are thick and black. He guesses she’s Indigenous, not just her features, but she speaks with that singsong inflection he’s come to associate with Aboriginal speech. She’s a good-looking woman with her broad, smooth face, and the full mouth that’s ever-so-slightly crooked. He expects she’s much the same age as he is.
Her name, she says, is Elizabeth.
‘Lizzie?’ he asks, thinking of his own Elizabeth Hardwick.
‘Beth,’ she replies.
She comments on his American accent and he gives her a potted biography. ‘And you?’ he asks.
‘Australian.’ She smiles wryly. ‘First Australian. Aboriginal. Koori.’
With such emphasis, Elliot is curious about her name.
She explains that her parents wanted her to have a solid English name. ‘My father was one of the first Aboriginal pastors.’ She is fiddling with her unruly hair. Suddenly she looks amused. ‘Things were so different in those days. Different language, different ideas as to what would bring about advancement for Indigenous Australians.’ And now she laughs. ‘Indigenous Australians! We were all blackfellas back then.’ And laughs some more. ‘So many girls in Australia around my age, in the entire Commonwealth come to that, were saddled with Margaret or Elizabeth after the princesses.’
The princesses? He realises she must be a good deal older than he first thought. It turns out she is past sixty.
She is shouting to be heard over the roaring water and, without any forethought, Elliot suggests they adjourn somewhere for coffee.
She checks her watch, then burrows in her bag for her phone. She needs to ring work, she says, to let them know she’ll be late. He’s about to apologise, withdraw his offer, when he realises she wouldn’t be changing her plans unless she wanted to spend more time with him.
He rounds up Addie and they make their way along the river path towards the Abbotsford Convent – decommissioned long ago and now used as an arts and community complex. What were formerly the nuns’ cells have been converted to studios and leased at reasonable rates to artists and writers. Elliot is familiar with the scheme because several years back, during a period when Ramsay seemed to be continually in Melbourne, he’d applied for one of the studios. The study at home had become too close to his wife and his university office attracted too much passing traffic; he just wanted to be alone with his woman of the moment – it was Jean Rhys – in a small monastic space where he could work and unwind. His application was unsuccessful, and not surprising, after all, he was far from being an impoverished writer or artist.
At first he was disappointed, but soon he realised that the appeal of the convent had little to do with his needing a quiet work-space; rather, what he wanted, what he actually craved, was respite from his usual life. He arranged to go away to an isolated cottage on Kangaroo Island, a week that replenished him far more than a year hanging out in a nun’s cell. The sound of the ocean was a constant comfort, the coast itself was a five-minute walk away. The cliffs were high and black, plateaued at the top and dropping sharply to the sea; rocky outcrops the size of small islands had broken off from the land mass and obstructed the incoming waves. The foam was thick, intricate, mesmerising. Such a fabulous changing sea: he spent hours with it every day as life in Melbourne went on without him.
That week on Kangaroo Island was rather like his van existence and perhaps not unlike the drinking binges of long ago. It seems he has always had a need to escape his life. And perhaps this woman, too, who appears padded out with something – solitude? loneliness? When he learns she is newly bereaved – her husband died just a few months earlier – the cladding makes sen
se.
Within twenty minutes they are in the convent grounds. In addition to the nuns’ cells there are offices and seminar rooms, workshops, performance spaces and a variety of eateries. Soon they are seated with coffee at an outdoor table of a bakery café with Addie stretched out in the shade of a nearby tree. They talk without restraint, two strangers who know that after this moment they’ll go their separate ways. They talk about dogs, convents, the environment, children, and soon he is telling her about his tattered marriage, his drinking, about Zoe and Ramsay; he tells her the whole sordid story. When finally he stops, his coffee is cold. He drinks the dregs and grimaces, not at the taste but his own bitter life.
‘Sorry for rambling on,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what possessed me.’
She brushes his apology aside. ‘How do you feel about your wife now? After all that’s happened?’
He’s about to say he still loves her, but something stops him, something makes him consider what he has always taken on faith. Is it love that he feels? Or habit? Or need? Or a combination of all three?
Beth breaks the lengthening silence with a more direct approach.
‘Do you stay with her out of guilt? All those years of your drinking?’
He’s quick to dismiss any suggestion of guilt. ‘Which is not to say Zoe doesn’t think I owe her.’ He hesitates, and then decides not to hold back. ‘I’ve always regarded guilt as a useless response.’
‘You’re clearly not Catholic. Nor Jewish for that matter.’
He shakes his head. ‘Just an ordinary Protestant atheist.’
She leans forward, smiling. ‘This might be an appropriate time to tell you I’m an ordinary Protestant minister.’
He should feel embarrassed but he doesn’t. ‘We’ve managed well enough so far, no reason we shouldn’t continue.’
She relaxes into her chair, smoothes her dress of many colours. ‘Okay then, back to guilt.’
‘Firstly, it comes too late, the damage has already been done. Secondly, while you’re feeling guilty you’re not doing much else. Guilt becomes an excuse for inaction.’
‘Paralysed by guilt, that sort of thing?’
‘Exactly. And for those with masochistic tendencies who like a bit of self-flagellation, it can be quite pleasant.’
She laughs. ‘You’ve clearly given this some thought.’
He nods, suggests more coffee, is halfway to standing when she stops him. ‘The coffee can wait. I’m not finished with guilt.’
Was she reprimanding him? And then deciding to take her words at face value, he sits down again.
‘I think you’re right about guilt, but only in some respects and for some people,’ she says. ‘For many, guilt’s the precursor to a better understanding. And from there it’s just a short step to action. People can change.’
‘But where was their moral gauge when they were committing the wrong?’
‘For drivers over the limit who cause accidents, their moral gauge is doused in alcohol,’ she said. ‘For bankers or business people who rip off their investors, their gauge has been rusted by greed. My point is that there are plenty of people who rob and deceive and maim and kill who show genuine remorse.’
‘But there are a whole lot more who don’t, so we’ve high recidivism for most crimes. You can’t tell me they’re all psychopaths and sociopaths.’
Her broad brow crinkles, she fiddles with her wedding ring. He worries he’s said too much, spoken too bluntly. But even as his anxiety stiffens he reminds himself that they’re tourists in each other’s life, strangers an hour ago and soon to be strangers again.
‘I’m perplexed,’ she says at last. ‘You perplex me. You’ve so little faith in the ability of people to change, yet you’ve been waiting your entire marriage for your wife to change.’
He meets her gaze, then turns away. He has no explanation.
The café is crowded – new mothers mostly, with babies and toddlers. The chatter is lively, he hears bursts of laughter, two of the women are breast-feeding. How happy he and Zoe were as new parents. He remembers so many occasions, he, Zoe and Callum, the three of them together on walks, picnics, the Sunday lunches with Zoe’s parents. He remembers how his son would toddle towards him and put his arms out, how the little body would fold about his own, arms around his neck, legs curled about his waist. He remembers how Callum would fall asleep in his arms, the warm trusting weight of his sleeping boy. And he remembers nothing of Hayley’s first years. There are photos of him holding her and photos of him playing with her, but what he remembers are the photos and not the events themselves.
As he observes the women at the café with their babies he feels an ache. It’s all too familiar.
Beth has been watching him. ‘So,’ she says. ‘What do you feel for your wife now?’
He meets her gaze. ‘I long for her.’
2.
Across town, at Zoe’s school, the Friday general arts session was drawing to a close. The guest today was Ramsay Blake, recruited by Zoe when the novelist who had been scheduled cancelled at short notice. Privately, Zoe had welcomed the inconvenience as an opportunity to get Ramsay out of the house and out of the doldrums. And she had been proven right. At the piano, playing for an audience, there was no indication of Ramsay’s loss, no sign of the panic she’d witnessed on several occasions since George’s death; Ramsay was, as always, at home and happy with his music. And now as the girls asked him questions, he was relaxed and charming the lot of them.
‘He’s so cute,’ she heard one girl say during the break. ‘Model status,’ said another. And she registered a rush of pleasure that Ramsay, her Ramsay, a man heading for fifty, was pin-up material for a bunch of teenage girls.
A girl in the front row, a violinist with abundant talent but meagre application, had her hand in the air. Zoe indicated she should go ahead.
‘How can you bear all the practising?’ she said.
Ramsay propped himself on the edge of a table, just a metre or so from the girl; a violin case was at her feet. He spoke loudly enough for everyone to hear but he leaned ever-so-slightly towards the girl, and his eyes – Zoe could see quite clearly from where she stood – his eyes held her.
‘I love to practise,’ he began. The girl grimaced as if to say: how could you? He cast his arms out wide in a happy, helpless gesture. ‘I like the memorising, I like the mastery, I like discovering nuances in the music. It always amazes me that even with a piece I’ve performed dozens of times, I’ll discover an interval or a pause, some small intricacy I’ve never noticed before.’ He shrugged. ‘I find that remarkable. And the muscularity of practice, I like that too – much more than jogging or swimming laps.’ He paused a moment, folded his arms across his chest. ‘And … I like the orderliness of practice. The hours of solitude, too, just me and my piano.’
‘Don’t you ever get bored?’ It was the same girl.
He nodded. ‘Sometimes, but that shouldn’t reflect either on the music or the dynamics of practising. Rather it means I’m tired or distracted. I take a break, go online, walk my dog, have a snack, and an hour later I’m ready to return to the piano.’
‘That wouldn’t work for me,’ the girl said.
He cocked his head to one side in a familiar gesture that made Zoe’s breath catch. ‘Do you love music?’ Ramsay asked the girl.
She nodded.
‘And do you marvel sometimes at the sound you can draw from that?’ He pointed to her violin.
Again she nodded.
‘Well I want as much marvelling as possible in this life.’ He now took in the whole group. ‘You know how it feels to look up on a clear night and take in the entire universe? Or see animals in their natural habitat? These things inspire wonder. And so for me does the sound I can make at the piano. Music’s wonderful. And I mean that literally. That I’ve been given the ability to play is more precious than life itself.’
‘Do you teach?’ a promising young pianist asked. And when he explained that his concert schedule
didn’t allow for regular pupils but he took master-classes and mentored young pianists, Zoe guessed that not only the girl who asked the question but all the aspiring musicians in the audience would be applying for future Ramsay Blake master-classes.
With only a couple of minutes remaining, Zoe walked to the front of the room and stood alongside Ramsay. She called for one last question.
‘How do you know Mrs Wood?’ someone asked.
Ramsay turned to Zoe and gave her shoulder a squeeze. ‘We lived next door as kids. We played music together.’
Zoe could see by the expressions on their fervent young faces that his answer appealed, certainly that touch to her shoulder would fuel plenty of gossip. But it was not the response Zoe wanted.
Mrs Wood, how do you know Ramsay Blake?
And her honest reply? I’ve always loved him.
Zoe shut the door behind her last pupil, sank into a chair and closed her eyes. She’d had so little sleep since George died and in all the rush she had not felt tired. But now she wanted only to sleep – blessed unconsciousness for a month or more in a leave of absence from a life grown too strenuous. The exhaustion had come on suddenly, today, yet nothing in essence had changed. She was still married to Elliot or rather he was still married to her, the children still lived at home and maintained at least a veneer of civility, and there was still Ramsay after a lifetime of Ramsay. But the disappointment with him this morning had scratched an old sore.
How do you know Mrs Wood? We played music together.
How do you know Ramsay Blake? I’ve always loved him.
The disjunction between their two answers would be reason enough to withdraw quietly with what little grace and dignity she had left. She knew this, had probably always known, but there was something in her that did not want to let go of Ramsay, something in her rather than something about him that stoked her devotion. And while Elliot’s daily emails reassured her he had not left her yet, the very fact of his disappearing without any explanation suggested he was at the end of his patience. As for her children, Callum oscillated between cyberspace and his music, picking up food and sleep on the way, and Hayley at sixteen was bristling for independence. Nothing had changed, yet everything had changed.
The Memory Trap Page 22