‘I suppose so,’ Aida replied softly, but her voice was drowned out by the rain.
*
Later that night, as she lay in bed listening to the rain pound down upon the roof, Aida checked her phone. There was a message from her mother. Back to the doctors. More tests. Have you heard anything? Sending you love. Her stomach tightened at this, her chest, her muscles, everything retracting with cautious resistance. Everything was okay. Of course it was. It had to be. Because she was here and not there, and if something happened she couldn’t be there, so it had to be okay. Her heart started beating out a new rhythm, one of panic and dread, and she squeezed her eyes shut to disrupt it. Three things, she thought, but nothing came. She raised herself from bed, pulled a cardigan over her pyjamas, then padded softly out of her room. The air was cool and sharp as she stepped onto the porch, mist rising from the thundering rain and settling across her exposed skin.
Three things different:
The colour of money
The tooth jinn, obviously
The spaces between people
Three things the same:
The smell of rain
The colour of night
The stories. The ones that people tell, that follow you for always.
She stared out, the world constricted under the pressure and closeness of the rain clouds. And she imagined them, all those stories, breaking out from the well inside her and pouring liberated into the night.
7
Nell
High-Profile Law Firm to Trial Free Justice For All
Media Release
For immediate release
9 May 2016
High-profile law firm Williams & Williams will trial a pro bono legal venture allowing community legal centres access to the firm’s experienced legal team. A pilot case will be the first of what is expected to be a successful and productive partnership between one of the country’s top-tier law firms and the state’s network of community legal centres. Managing Partner Arthur Williams AO said the firm was delighted to be able to make its lawyers available in a time when community legal centres are overwhelmed and often unable to respond to demand.
‘By its very nature, the strength of the legal system lies in the ability of every member of society to access it equally and without discrimination or disadvantage, whether that be based on income, geography or other barriers,’ Mr Williams said.
In its trial period the program will focus on supporting community legal centres to manage the increased caseload of family violence victims with a view to broadening its scope in the future should this prove successful. Associate Benjamin Arnolds said that with more than one woman a week dying at the hands of her current or former partner, family violence was a scourge on the nation.
‘The shocking fact is that in Australia women are most likely to experience physical and sexual violence in their home at the hands of a male current or ex-partner. Williams & Williams has a role to play in helping victims to live free from violence,’ Mr Arnolds said. ‘Everyone deserves their day in court and Williams & Williams are here to make sure that fantasy becomes a reality.’
The program will be opt-in for interested Williams & Williams lawyers whose participation in the program will be in addition to regular caseloads. The initiative will commence with a pilot case to test the feasibility and sustainability of the program.
ENDS
All media enquiries are directed to the Communications team at Williams & Williams.
Nell scrolled back to the top of the media release and read through it again. They’d kept most of what she’d drafted, including the bit about equal access to the law, and she was happy they’d attributed this part to Mr Williams instead of DB. DB had got some good lines too, despite the earful she’d copped after he found out she’d gone straight to Mr Williams, but Nell didn’t care. She was excited. This was exciting. This was real lawyering. She put her mobile on the table and looked around the busy restaurant. Seymour was making his way back from the bathroom where he had gone to wash the sleep from his eyes, having stumbled out of bed moments before they’d had to leave, as he did every year. It was, after all, a day of traditions.
Every Mothers’ Day they met at the same Southbank restaurant at the same brunch-friendly hour for invariably the same meal every year. This altered occasionally depending on whatever food intolerance was currently in vogue for Seymour, but for the most part it was a day long steeped in tradition. They wrangled over the complimentary bread, complained about the funky river smell and each took turns bemoaning the fact they’d not brought sunglasses, every single year. Wait staff came and went, but the Swanseas remained, with the subtle irony that none of the family were particularly enamoured of the restaurant. But no one could quite remember when – or why – the tradition had started, and thus did not have the confidence to break with it.
In keeping with tradition, today their mother was fashionably late, sending her tardy apology through a series of hastily typed text messages that the siblings combined to decipher. The messages were equal parts jovial and shouty due to their mother’s comfort in interrobangs. Unimpressed with lacklustre book sales, she had taken to agreeing to every media request that came her way in a frenzied effort to improve figures, and it seemed that a last-minute interview had held her up today. Out of Focus was not the game changer she had hoped it would be, and their mother – who had based her whole research career on looking for women where history had ignored them – now found herself being left out of writers’ festival line-ups or, increasingly, replaced by higher-profile academics, often, invariably, Prudence.
‘Mimosa?’ Seymour suggested, and they sat in comfortable familial silence as they awaited their mother’s eventual arrival. Olivia Newton-John was singing her hopeless devotions through the sound system.
‘Mother would not approve of this song,’ Seymour said with mock severity.
‘Mother would not approve of that entire movie,’ Nell agreed. ‘The Rise and Victory of the Male Gaze as Told Through Sandy’s Black Leather Doo-Wop Onesie: A Thesis in Twenty Parts with Appendices.’
The gentle mockery of their mother was another family tradition that caused them equal parts merriment and self-reproach. Hers was an endearing, earnest feminism that exhausted others with its fervour and left them all feeling lacking. This made her easy to taunt, though deep down both siblings would, if demanded, admit to being proud of her, even though she sometimes ruined perfectly good architecture and historical monuments by insisting they represented phalli. Seymour rooted around in his satchel, a deviant grin on his face.
‘Look!’
He stuck his hand into the small gift bag he’d retrieved and pulled out a credit card-sized rectangle of paper. Nell peered at it. It was purple and green with their mother’s name and the simple credential Feminist underneath.
‘Card-carrying feminist,’ Seymour announced proudly. ‘Did it in Publisher. It’s laminated and everything. I made us all one.’
He handed them over. Nell took hers. She had forgotten yet again to get their mother a gift, another Swansea tradition.
‘Yours says Baby Feminist because you are just starting out. Mine says Male Feminist for reasons that should be apparent.’
Their mother arrived around the same time their meals did and, as predicted, she crowed for a full minute on receiving Seymour’s gift.
‘Oh, you wonderful children!’ she beamed, stretching to accommodate them both in a hug. ‘Apologies for being late. I was on my way then I had this phone call from a radio show wanting to grab a quick interview. Couldn’t say no, could I, what with it being Mother’s Day and all that commercial rot? They’re niche. Internet radio. Is that a podcast?’
She reached for her wineglass.
‘Anyway, how are you all? How’s Patrick?’
Seymour ignored the question, instead launching into a description of
the new exhibition he was curating.
‘There’s this artist called Vince – Vince Pemblebrook, like a Dickens character, which is probably why he just goes by Vince like Madonna or a Brazilian soccer player – and anyway, he does this thing where he takes Australian history and folklore and reimagines it in a modern multicultural context. Poems and paintings and stories and things. Wog on a Tuckerbox? You may have seen that piece. It won a bunch of awards but caused all this controversy because what doesn’t these days? Anyway, so his thing is “reimagining the dominant discourse and narratives of Forgetful Australia”, which is what he calls the past because it seems to forget that there was anyone but straight white men wandering about the place. And we’ve finally got him doing a show, only he got very into the idea of all the gallery staff contributing their own pieces too because of some kind of artistic socialism or creative redistribution thing he is going through. So it’s meant to be reclaiming our own stories through reimagining the stories of others.’
Nell nodded, waiting patiently until it was her turn to speak.
‘You’ll be recontextualising gender, I imagine?’ their mother asked, causing Seymour to guffaw at the very suggestion that he might not.
‘Obviously! Currently the working title is Australians All Let Us ReVoice. Either that or The Mystery of History: Australia as it Wasn’t. What do you think?’
Their mother tilted her head to one side, fingers steepled.
‘Casually oppressive. I love it.’
Nell looked from one to the other. This had long been a habit of theirs, falling into a secret humanities code whose expansive and flourishing language Nell’s law degree had not equipped her for.
‘Casually oppressive?’ Nell scoffed. ‘What’s that even supposed to mean?’
Seymour sighed. ‘You’d know it if you experienced it, Nell.’
He and their mother exchanged a bemused look, causing Nell’s cheeks to flash an irritated mauve. Sometimes the two of them spiralled down a path that suggested possession of a higher knowledge Nell would never obtain from the pithy confines of legalese.
‘Anyway,’ Seymour continued. ‘This is really important. It has the potential to be my legacy show. My seminal controversy. My The Field at the NGV, if you will. One of our staff members has an uncle who owns a souvlaki store somewhere in the outer suburbs and we may get him to cater – you know, the whole Wog on the Tuckerbox thing – but I’m not sure if that’s edgy or naff . . . or racist?’
He fell into the silent perpetual quandary of the small-L liberal.
‘Well, I’ve some news too,’ Nell announced, raising her mimosa ceremoniously as if preparing to toast the future happiness and wellbeing of a recently married couple.
Her mother and Seymour looked over expectantly, only to be interrupted by the buzz of a mobile skittering into the water carafe. Their mother glanced at the screen.
‘It’s one of the regional stations. They must have heard the other interview. Sorry, kids.’
She gave them a powerless shrug, her elation clear, then answered the call. As she chatted, Nell and Seymour continued to eat in exaggerated silence, great pantomimic delicacy required so as not to scrape cutlery on porcelain.
‘Why, speaking of that, you’ll never guess what my children gave me just today,’ their mother laughed into the phone. ‘My son Seymour – he runs a gallery with his life partner Patrick – just this morning he gave me a little card with Feminist on it, so now I’m officially a card-carrying fe – yes, feminist! . . . I know! . . . Isn’t it just!?’
Nell exchanged a bemused look with her brother. In any public discussion Nell’s law degree and Seymour’s sexuality were not far from hand. They both knew this display of liberalism brought their mother great and unabating joy. Indeed, among her circle of progressive left-wing academics, their mother felt Seymour’s homosexuality practically a personal achievement and she was campaigning hard for marriage equality. Prudence, for instance, would kill to have a feminist, artist or queer activist in the family, but had to instead contend with an accountant and a Latin tutor, neither of whom were particularly engaged in politics of either the personal or political. ‘I mean, Latin!’ their mother was wont to crow at poor Prudence’s expense after a few glasses of pinot. ‘Keep waiting on that time machine so you can actually use it!’ And she would laugh, heartily, like the villain in an action movie just before they are thwarted by the hero. Presently, she had adopted a serious tone, her voice creeping tentatively through the mobile.
‘Of course, it hasn’t always been easy. It’s been a hard slog . . . That’s right, a single mother for most of that time . . . Oh yes, tremendously difficult, but it’s the passion that drives the work.’
Seymour locked eyes with Nell.
‘You just manage,’ he mouthed, brow stern.
‘You just manage,’ their mother continued. ‘As women so often have throughout history. Which brings me back to the book, because there’s been this idea of women as representing the archetypal mother – of building the nation – though of course, its sovereignty was never ceded – but this idea of building the nation through birthing its citizens, while not really being in and of themselves a part of it . . . Well obviously, but women have done a damn lot more than open our legs for the nation . . . I know this is live . . .’
Eventually the interview finished. As she ended the call, their mother seized her wineglass, looking around expectantly.
‘I told them about the card, kids! They loved it. Great material.’
Her face fell suddenly.
‘Bugger. I forgot to mention the biography class.’
Seymour looked confused.
‘What biography class?’
‘The one I’m teaching,’ their mother replied. ‘A women’s biography class. Everyone is doing them these days. Writing courses, I mean, not women’s biography. But that’s why I’m doing the class. It starts this Friday.’
The siblings exchanged a look. Their mother was one of those academics who got by teaching a minimum of subjects due to her otherwise prolific output and lack of natural disposition to instruction.
‘And you’re the one running it?’
‘Obviously I’m the one running it, Nelly. It’s not a skill I need any further work in, is it? Anyway, enough about me. What were we talking about?’
‘I said I had news,’ Nell reminded her, and told them about the pro bono scheme. ‘It was my idea. Well, kind of. And I’m working on the first case. DB and I. Our initial focus will be on family violence. Isn’t that great, Mum? Representing family violence victims.’
Their mother gazed into her wineglass, collecting the contents in a careful centrifuge. Seymour, too, was silent.
‘What?’ Nell asked.
Their mother didn’t say anything, reversing the direction of her wine.
‘What?’ Nell demanded.
‘Nothing,’ their mother replied. ‘Nothing, that sounds wonderful, Nelly. It’s nothing . . . Just . . . “represent”.’
She looked like she’d tasted something bitter and clove-like. ‘Represent. Such a vile word. So . . . loaded.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Nell said. ‘That’s what lawyers do. We represent people.’
‘Well, it’s semantics, isn’t it, really?’ their mother continued, eyes focused on her pinot gris. ‘People should represent themselves, really, but that’s neither here nor there, I guess.’
Nell exhaled patiently. She was embarrassed she hadn’t thought of this.
‘Forget I said anything,’ their mother said, hands raised as if caught up in a bank robbery. ‘Far be it from me to rain on your parade, only . . .’
It was an infuriating pause with no intention of remaining final.
‘Only what? You’re mid-downpour anyway, so only what?’
The wineglass stopped suddenly, liquid surging over the ri
m.
‘Well, for a start, don’t call them victims. These women – and overwhelmingly they will be women – are more than just victims. They’re survivors, for one thing, and people for another. And the law, it has this habit of reducing them to nothing more than a testimony, or some poor vulnerable creature in need of saving with no consideration of their complexity and humanity. I mean, what has the legal system done for them in the past? What does it do for them now? Demand evidence that is impossible to produce? Ask them to prove themselves? Make them tick a little checklist for how a victim should look and behave and act? “It’s just a domestic.” “A bit of a misunderstanding.” “Two to tango,” and all that nonsense.’
‘That was the past, Mum. Things are different now. You should be happy about this. This is a chance to really do some good.’
Their mother gave her a look as if she – their mother – was wearied by a personal sagacity garnered from far too much living, and that her daughter would one day understand all this, but not yet.
‘The past is a hard thing to leave behind, my darling. It doesn’t like to be forgotten. And “good” isn’t the easiest thing to do, either.’
Seymour caught Nell’s glare and rapped his knuckle on the table, pulling attention.
‘Moving on,’ he announced, glass aloft. ‘Happy Mother’s Day!’
Nell sucked her teeth, avoiding their eyes.
‘Happy Mother’s Day,’ she muttered, brushing her glass against the others with the enthusiasm of an inmate.
‘Anyway, enough of that,’ their mother said, flicking the topic away with one hand. ‘Before I forget, I brought you both some bookmarks. For the book. I had them made up. Publicity and the like, see?’
She pulled a wad of vibrant bookmarks from her bag, halved them, and held a bundle out to Nell and Seymour. Nell glanced at the bookmark on top, its letters crisp and bold.
‘I’m still not completely wedded to that font, but anyway. Go put them places,’ their mother instructed, hands thrown forward like she was instigating a drag race.
‘What kind of places?’ Seymour asked.
The Book of Ordinary People Page 9