by Liz Byrski
She had been determined that as soon as they had time alone she would tell Will that it was all over, and was careful not to do anything that he might take as encouragement. But Will had focused his attention on her in a way that rapidly became overbearing. He seemed to have no interest in anything or anyone else, and while Bonnie was clearly looking to him for reassurance and support, he had detached himself completely from that role.
‘For goodness sake, Will,’ Sylvia had said to him shortly after the guests started to arrive, ‘get out there and help Bonnie. She’s counting on you being there for her – your approval means Jeff’s approval.’
‘Huh?’ he’d said, looking as though he had no idea what she was talking about. ‘What d’you mean?’
Sylvia sighed, leading him away from the counter where Caro was helping a local journalist choose between two different pairs of turquoise earrings.
‘Look, this place is Bonnie’s way of doing what Jeff would have wanted her to do. Getting a life of her own, being strong, moving on. She wants to know he’d be proud of her. You’re his brother and as far as the Boatshed’s concerned, you’re a de facto Jeff – she needs you to be there for her.’
Will looked confused. ‘What am I supposed to do? Channel him?’ he’d asked irritably, attempting to stroke the side of Sylvia’s hand without anyone seeing.
Sylvia rolled her eyes and snatched her hand away in annoyance. ‘Just be there for her, Will, show her you’re behind her in this. Let her know what a terrific job she’s done.’
‘Okay,’ he’d said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘If you say so. What time d’you think we can get away?’
‘God knows. Late afternoon, early evening probably. Now please, just go and back Bonnie up.’
He’d strolled off into the restaurant, and Sylvia caught a glimpse of him with Bonnie and then, a few minutes later, talking with Jack Bannister, but he was soon back in the gallery, leaning against a display case, chatting idly as he watched her. And from then on he had been a constant oppressive presence in the gallery, making her awkwardly conscious of her every move.
‘Who is that?’ Caro had asked at one point, and when Sylvia explained she let out a low whistle. ‘Chick magnet!’ she said, and nudged Sylvia. ‘He can’t take his eyes off you, Sylvia.’
‘Rubbish,’ Sylvia had said, blushing deeply. ‘You’re imagining things, Caro,’ and she had hurried out to the storeroom to fetch some more gift wrapping.
When the guests had left and the staff debrief was done, they had gone back to the house and dissected the whole thing, celebrating the success of the launch, the excellent staff, and Bonnie’s brilliant organisation and planning. Sylvia’s irritation grew as Will mooched around casting impatient glances at her. In the end it was Hamish who had marshalled them in a toast to Bonnie’s vision and management, to Fran’s work that had given the restaurant such a solid trading base, and her own efforts in organising and stocking the gallery. But Sylvia felt it should have come from Will, and from the moment they left the house her anger at him, and at herself for allowing the relationship to get to this point, simply increased.
On the hotel terrace she could barely wait for the waiter to pour the wine so that she could say what she had to say. But as she started to speak, Will had stopped her, putting a finger to her lips to silence her in a gesture she found shockingly patronising. She could only imagine the shock that he must have seen on her face when he asked her to marry him.
‘No, Will!’ she’d said, drawing her hand away in dismay and folding her arms. ‘I’m sorry, but no. I don’t know what you’re thinking of. Anyway, I’m still married.’ Tactically it was a disastrous thing to say, for he read her reply to mean that it was only her current status that stood in the way of his dreams.
‘But you won’t be for much longer,’ he said. ‘Of course we can’t get married now, but we can be engaged, we can be entirely open about this. I know you want to tell Bonnie. She’ll be happy for us, I know she will.’
Sylvia’s head spun. ‘Will, you don’t understand. I don’t want to marry you, not now, not ever.’ She pushed away the hand that was once again reaching to take hers. ‘Look, we’ve had a wonderful time together, it was a gift, and of course I do care for you – ’
‘There you are, then,’ he said, smiling, ‘I knew it – ’
‘No! Listen to me, please,’ she said. ‘I care for you, Will, but I’m not in love with you. I won’t be engaged to you and I won’t marry you. Please try to understand.’ She saw the pain and confusion on his face and hated herself for hurting him. ‘Look, Will, this is beautiful, really, that you should ask me but … but that’s not how it is for me. I’m sorry, really, but I don’t have those feelings for you. Since that weekend in Queenscliff I knew I had to end it. I felt you didn’t understand what I was saying to you.’
‘You said you loved me,’ he said in a small voice edged with anger. ‘I asked you.’
‘I said I cared for you and loved you as a dear friend. I said it several times and each time you refused to hear that qualification. I told you then, and I’m telling you again, Will, I’m not in love with you, I don’t want to marry you. I’m sorry but we have to finish this now.’ He stared at her, saying nothing, just shaking his head. ‘I intended to tell you this evening, anyway,’ she continued, ‘as soon as we had time alone. I never dreamed … never dreamed that … Will, I’ll always treasure it, but it’s over now, it has to be, and we have to tell Bonnie. I don’t want her finding out sometime later, down the track.’
‘Fuck Bonnie!’ Will said, the pain on his face turning to anger. ‘This is nothing to do with her. This is about us, Sylvia, you and me.’
Sylvia reached out and put her hand over his. ‘No, Will, there isn’t an us, not anymore.’
He snatched his hand away, sending his glass crashing onto the brick paving. ‘What do you mean, not anymore? I love you, Sylvia, we’re right together … Hong Kong, Queenscliff, it can be like that all the time …’
‘It can’t, Will, that’s what I’m telling you. It’s over for me.’
‘Over for you? What about me? What’s supposed to happen to me?’ He was on his feet now, staring down at her.
A waiter with a dustpan and a damp cloth materialised to sweep up the broken glass and wipe the spilled wine from the table.
‘Should I bring you another bottle of wine, sir?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Will said, waving him away. ‘Go, just go away.’
Sylvia caught the waiter’s eye. ‘Could you bring some water, please?’ she asked, and the young man nodded and disappeared back into the bar.
Will leaned over her, his hands on the arms of her chair, peering close into her face. There was something threatening about his manner and Sylvia drew back.
‘Stop it,’ she said angrily. ‘Stop it, Will, you don’t intimidate me.’
‘Hah!’ he cried, straightening up again. ‘No, I can see that. It doesn’t even touch you, does it, the way I feel? What sort of woman are you, Sylvia?’
She was extremely angry now and she stood up, pushing past him to move out of reach. ‘I’m a very ordinary sort of woman really, Will,’ she said. ‘I’ve been married for over thirty years, and as you yourself pointed out I’ve spent far too much of my life doing what my husband and other people wanted me to do. You told me to do what I wanted, don’t let anyone hassle me, do something for myself. That was good advice and I took it. I did what I wanted to do; I had an affair with you. It was thrilling, exciting, wonderful in every way, and yes, I did think it was an adventure. The same sort of adventure you’ve been having with women all your life. I thought it was the same for both of us. But you changed the rules. I didn’t ask you to fall in love with me, but I accept that I should have made it clear to you by ending it when you told me that day on the phone. I’m sorry if you think I misled you, Will. But it really is over.’
A group of four people strolled out of the bar and settled at a table in a nearby corner. Sylvia walked over
to the low wall, leaning against a planter filled with pink and white geraniums. He came up behind her and gripped her arm; he was pleading now, the anger subsiding as suddenly as it had flared.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry, Syl, I shouldn’t have shouted. But this is wrong, it’s so wrong … I love you, don’t you see?’
‘Take me home, Will, please,’ she said quietly. ‘Take me home now, or if you prefer it I’ll call a cab.’
But it was another hour before she managed to get him to leave, and in the meantime he drank three double whiskies and his mood changed from pleading to anger and back to pleading again.
‘I think you’d better let me drive,’ she said as she finally coaxed him out into the car park.
‘I’m fine,’ he said, the anger returning.
‘You’ve been drinking all day,’ she said, ‘and you haven’t had anything to eat for hours.’ She reached out to take the keys of the rental car from him, but he twisted away from her.
‘Shut up and get in the car,’ he said.
Sylvia hesitated, and then, against her better judgment, slid into the front seat beside him. Will switched on the engine, reversed out of the car park and swung into the road,
‘You don’t have any lights on,’ she told him and she saw his knuckles tighten on the steering wheel before he flicked the switch. He took off at a ridiculous speed until she cautioned him to slow down and he responded by swinging into the forecourt of a disused building and stopping completely. And the second round of the battle began, flaring and subsiding time and time again until Sylvia finally persuaded him to take her home and they made the last stage of the journey in painful silence.
‘Now we can talk.’ Will said, swinging the car into the driveway with a shower of gravel that she was sure would have everyone looking out of the window.
‘No,’ she said immediately. ‘No, not tonight, I can’t take any more of this. Tomorrow if you want, but it won’t make any difference, Will, it’s over.’ And she opened the door and got out as he stopped the car, and ran up the steps, let herself into the cottage and slammed the door behind her. She leaned back against it in relief, until he hammered on it and she moved further away and into the lounge wondering whether, if she refused to let him in, he would barge into Irene’s living room and make a scene. But then the banging stopped and she heard the car door slam and the wheels spun once again across the gravel. Sneaking a look through the gap in the curtains she saw the tail lights at the gate and he roared out again into the street.
An ambulance, its siren still blaring, drew up at the hospital entrance and Sylvia straightened up, opening her eyes as an orderly and a couple of nurses raced to meet it with a trolley. Getting to her feet she wandered over to the drinks machine to get herself a bottle of water. It had been fairly quiet when she and Bonnie had arrived three hours earlier; they must have hit a lull in the emergency department. Linked only by their anxiety about what they might find, they had walked briskly from the car park in frosty silence. Bonnie’s hurt and resentment had emanated from her in waves as Sylvia explained the situation.
‘And you let him drive in that state?’ she’d said as they reached the reception desk. And Sylvia opened her mouth and shut it again, realising that to say that Will was an adult and responsible for his own behaviour would only make things worse.
Will, his face ashen, was breathing through an oxygen mask, and there was a deep cut on his forehead which had been cleaned but not yet stitched. His neck was in a brace, and what looked like small sandbags were packed down each side of him to keep him lying straight.
‘We’re worried about neck or spinal damage,’ the doctor told them. ‘We need to keep him immobilised until we can stabilise him and then get him up to x-ray.’
‘I couldn’t really see what he was doing,’ said the young police officer who had dived into the river to haul him out. He was a red haired man in his early twenties, sitting wrapped in a blanket drinking a cup of tea, waiting for his colleague to return to the hospital with some dry clothes. ‘We saw him up there on the wall on the side of the bridge, he seemed to be clambering around a bit, then he sort of tipped forward and fell in the water. Good thing we were down near the water or it would’ve been too late.’
Facing Bonnie across the bed, Sylvia was overwhelmed by exhaustion and sadness. Tears ran uncontrollably down her cheeks and she sank into a chair.
‘He tried to kill himself, Sylvia,’ Bonnie whispered when the doctor left the cubicle for a moment. ‘He tried to kill himself.’
Sylvia shook her head. ‘No,’ she managed to say, grabbing a handful of tissues from a box near the bed. ‘No. Not Will, I don’t believe he’d do that.’
‘Huh!’ said Bonnie, stroking Will’s arm. ‘You didn’t think he’d fall in love and look how wrong you were about that.’
Sylvia unscrewed the bottle of water and wandered to the doorway to get some fresh air. The ambulance was pulling away and the fierce burst of activity had subsided. She stood outside taking deep breaths. If she had acted sooner, if she and Will had come clean before this had happened, they would have shared the burden of Bonnie’s hurt. But now everything was changed. Sylvia tossed the empty water bottle in the bin and turned back into the hospital. At the far end of the corridor she saw the orderly wheeling Will on the trolley with Bonnie by his side, on their way back from the x-ray department.
‘No spinal damage,’ Bonnie told her curtly. ‘His blood pressure’s up, internal bruising and they think his head’s okay, but he’s not in the clear yet.’
A nurse pulled back the curtains to the cubicle, and she and the orderly transferred Will back to the bed. His eyes flickered open and settled on Sylvia, and for a second he seemed to lift his hand towards her and then, almost as quickly, he dropped it and turned his head away.
‘Will,’ she said. ‘Will, it’s okay, we’re here with you, Bonnie and I.’ She took his hand in hers. ‘Will, can you hear me?’
Across the bed, Bonnie seemed to draw herself up. ‘Leave him alone, Sylvia,’ she hissed. ‘Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage? Leave him alone.’
THIRTY-FIVE
‘I think you’re being unnecessarily hard on yourself, Sylvia,’ Fran said. ‘On reflection, yes, it would have been better if Bonnie had known about you and Will right from the start, but I don’t think you had any responsibility to tell her. It really wasn’t anyone else’s business.’
‘But in the interests of friendship, and in view of Bonnie’s generosity to me – ’ Sylvia began.
‘I know all that,’ Fran interrupted. ‘But at the same time, you weren’t sure where all this was going. You thought you were having a bit of a fling, and Will wanted you not to say anything. I understand that Bonnie might feel hurt, but frankly I think she’s way over the top.’
It was the Monday morning after the opening and they were sitting at an outside table eating Sean’s baked eggs with tomatoes and basil. The first weekend of trading had been comfortably busy and free of problems, and managing it without Bonnie had made Fran feel more confident. Since the morning of Will’s accident, Bonnie had made only two fleeting visits to the Boatshed, spending the rest of the time at the hospital, waiting for Will to regain consciousness. Sylvia, distressed by Bonnie’s hostility, had abandoned the vigil, calling in at the hospital two or three times a day but continuing to run the gallery with Caro’s help.
‘So what do you think he was doing up on the bridge?’ Fran asked, savouring the scent of her freshly baked roll as she broke it in half. ‘Was he suicidal when he left you?’
Sylvia shook her head. ‘No, he was angry and upset and he’d drunk far too much. But it was the anger that was predominant, that’s why I wouldn’t let him into the cottage, I simply couldn’t cope with it.’ She paused, putting down her fork. ‘I don’t think Will is the sort of person who’d try to kill himself. I did see another side of him that night, though, I saw that he was the sort of man who could get drunk and get into a fight, do
stupid, irrational, possibly violent things, but suicide? No, not Will. That’s not what Bonnie thinks, though.’
‘Bonnie’s not very rational at the moment,’ Fran said. ‘She’s leapt to this conclusion on circumstantial evidence, and I think this is as much about her losing Jeff as it is about Will and you. Just hang on, Sylvia, it can only get better.’
‘I certainly hope so. Being ostracised is very difficult. I feel like some sort of pariah and I don’t know whether I should be at the hospital or not. Bonnie just seems to have taken Will over completely.’
‘What does Irene think?’ Fran asked, seeing Hamish’s car draw into the Boatshed car park.
‘Much the same as you,’ Sylvia said, ‘although of course she’s very concerned about Bonnie.’
Fran watched as Irene and Hamish got out of the car and walked towards the restaurant. Their shared ease and affection were obvious and she was shocked that she felt a stab of envy.
‘Come and join us,’ she called, making space for them at the table.
‘We fancied a really good breakfast,’ Hamish said with a smile.
‘The baked eggs are spectacular,’ Sylvia said. ‘Sean has excelled himself.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ Irene said. ‘How are you this morning, dear? Any news from the hospital?’
Sylvia shook her head. ‘I called in earlier but there was no change. And it’s too difficult for me to be there with Bonnie feeling as she does.’
Irene nodded. ‘I know. We’ll call in ourselves later. Try not to let it get to you, Sylvia. The main thing is that Will comes through all right. Bonnie will sort herself out eventually.’
The door of the gallery swung open and Caro clattered noisily down the boardwalk, half running, holding Sylvia’s mobile phone in her hand.
‘Sylvia,’ she called. ‘Sylvia … you left your phone on the counter, I answered it. It’s Bonnie. Will’s conscious, he’s asking for you, you need to go to the hospital.’
David pushed the buggy along the coastal path enjoying the breeze on his face and the sound of the circling gulls overhead. He’d been sick since the night of the opening but, feeling better this afternoon, he’d offered to mind Rebekah while Caro covered for Sylvia at the gallery. He wondered what it would feel like to be pushing a buggy with his own child in it, having not just the pleasure but also the responsibility of fatherhood. There was a wooden bench ahead and he picked up his pace and made for it, sitting down and turning the buggy to face him as Rebekah blinked up at him.