by Fiona Capp
We let ourselves in Sven’s front door. Ros stuck her head into the kitchen where Sven was standing by the stove, stirring something, and said she was just showing me around. She led me into his studio which was full of heavy-looking machinery for cutting and polishing stone, and implements for chiselling and carving, and large blocks of limestone, sandstone and granite. Everything – the benches, the machines, the floor – was covered in a fine film of what looked like talc. There were sketches or plans for sculptures pinned to a cork board on one wall but no sign of any finished work. We did a quick tour of upstairs – the living room with a large open fire, Sven’s bedroom and a small study – then returned to the kitchen for dinner.
As he placed a bowl of soup in front of her, Sven put his hand on Ros’s shoulder and it was only then that she dropped the bubbly performance. The effect of this small gesture was dramatic. Her whole body seemed to soften, to let go.
Ros gave his hand a quick squeeze in reply. They seemed so at ease with each other that I couldn’t help wondering how different Ros’s life might have been if she’d given Sven a chance all those years ago. But Ros was a woman with firm ideas about what she wanted. There had been no chemistry, she once told me, and she wouldn’t settle for a relationship without it.
‘Well,’ Ros gazed at us across the table, blinking rapidly, ‘here we are.’
We smiled back and intoned, Here we are, as if saying grace.
The fish broth was light and buttery with a fresh fennel edge. For a while there was just the sound of slurping and the crunch of ryebread crackers.
When we had finished, Sven said, ‘You both must be tired.’
‘Wrecked is the word,’ Ros said, pushing away her empty bowl. ‘Sorry about this, Sven, but I’ve got to crash.’
I had planned to be the one to disappear after dinner and leave Ros and Sven to catch up. But now Ros had beaten me to it.
Sven didn’t waste time. As soon as Ros had gone he asked, ‘How is she?’
‘She gets tired easily since the chemo. But she reckons she’s out of the woods now. And she’s different somehow.’ He waited for me to go on. It was awkward talking about Ros like this, and yet good to confide in someone who cared about her. ‘She’s, you know, talking more.’
‘Oh? Good.’
I wasn’t sure what to make of Sven. He was warm and playful in conversation and he’d made me feel very welcome. And yet there was something detached about him. Not guarded like Ros. It was more as if he was happiest sitting back and watching and letting people reveal themselves. I could understand that. I was the same. I flattered myself that Ros thought of him as a brother because he reminded her of me.
As I took a sip of wine, I could feel him studying me. There seemed to be something he was trying to work out. I lowered the glass and met his gaze.
‘Sorry to stare,’ he said. ‘I was just contemplating the similarities and the differences. Your smiles, for instance. Ros is very parsimonious – I think that’s the right word – with hers. And she doesn’t show her teeth. Whereas you, you smile a lot.’
A smile sprang to my face. I remembered how Ros would never smile for photographs when we were young. Or if she did, it would be close-lipped and ironical. I’d never had trouble smiling for the camera – not until recently, anyway. Smiling was so much easier than talking. You didn’t need to say a word.
Sven smiled back at me, a rueful, almost sad smile that seemed full of emotion yet wary of showing it.
I was puzzled by what I was feeling. I looked away, embarrassed. It must be the jet lag, I thought. My head was spacey from all those hours in the clouds but I still needed to stretch my legs. Ros had mentioned there were several of Sven’s sculptures in the town. I asked him where I might find them.
He pulled a face and said it would be too hard to explain because I didn’t know my way around. He took our bowls to the sink. ‘Forget about my work. Let me show you the wall.’
There was a gateway not far from his house. Next to it was a small stone house, with trained red roses climbing over the roof, built into the wall itself. The peeling blue shutters on the windows looked like they hadn’t been opened in years.
‘I have a friend who lives in a house like that. Not a good place to be when the town’s being sacked. Although these days, we invite the invaders in the front door.’
We walked through the portal. The width of walls was greater than the span of my outstretched arms.
He pointed to one of the blocks of stone. ‘Look, you can see bits of shell and coral if you search hard. It’s the local limestone.’ He scratched it with his forefinger and smudged the white dust across his fingertips. ‘Hard to believe, isn’t it? All of this was once alive.’
A wall that had once been alive. It was the kind of thing you’d find in a fairytale and yet it was true. The natural and supernatural all of a piece. I was beginning to see why Ros loved this place, why it had cast such a spell on her. And how this magic was inseparable from Sven.
I scratched at the stone, thinking it would be amazing if the emotions, as well as the material remains, of living things could be laid down or preserved in this way. If you could drill down and strike a period of mourning or a period of rage or a period of wild Dionysian abandon. Lack of sleep had set my mind wandering in unexpected ways.
Sven asked what I was thinking.
Feeling a bit silly, I told him. ‘It’s fanciful, I know.’
He gave me a penetrating look and that rueful smile. ‘I like the way your mind works.’
‘Do you? Sometimes it scares me. My mind, that is.’ As soon as I’d spoken, I regretted it. He was being light-hearted; I should’ve responded in kind. Instead, I’d gone serious on him. ‘I’m sorry, Sven, I’m really tired. I should get to bed.’
We walked together back to the hotel. To my surprise, he bent down and kissed my forehead. ‘Goodnight, Esther.’
I think we both sensed, then, that something was going on, even if we didn’t know what it was. Something that had nothing to do with brotherly or sisterly love.
The light was out when I got back to our hotel room. I felt my way to my bed and started to undress in the dark.
‘You can turn on the light if you want,’ Ros said in a croaky voice.
‘I thought you were asleep.’
‘I was. Those damn church bells woke me up.’ She switched on her bedside lamp. ‘Read if you want. I don’t mind.’
That made me smile. When we were kids and still shared a bedroom, I often had to read with a torch under the covers if Ros wanted to sleep. I slipped into bed, careful not to look at her because I knew she wouldn’t be wearing her wig. I told myself I didn’t want to embarrass her but it was really my own fear that stopped me.
‘You can turn out the light,’ I said, staring at the ceiling.
‘As you like.’ She reached for the lamp.
In the sudden, blinding darkness I was back in our childhood bedroom with our mother whispering goodnight. The moment she switched off the light, the whole world would vanish. Our bodies, everything – gone. One night, when I was about four years old, I plucked up the courage to ask Rosalind what happened to us when the lights went out. Where did our bodies go? She snorted and told me to close my eyes and count to ten. When I opened them, I could see my hands again, shadowy but there. Ros always had the answers back then.
These days what I really wanted was to reverse the process. Count to ten and make myself disappear. No one knew me when David was just another member of the shadow cabinet. But since he’d been made leader of the opposition, everything had changed. With the election looming, everyone was curious about who we were. Of course I’d seen it happen to other politicians and their spouses who were suddenly catapulted into the spotlight, but I’d never imagined it would happen to me. It didn’t seem to matter if I was at the cinema, shopping or on my evening walk. Nowhere was safe. Someone would recognise me and want to talk. Most were kind, if nosy. But you never knew when someone might bail you
up. Whenever I saw photographs of myself in the papers, standing at David’s side, I saw a woman shrinking into herself, willing herself to vanish.
I could hear Ros shifting around in bed.
‘I suppose you and Sven talked about me,’ she said suddenly.
I couldn’t pick her tone. Was she annoyed that we had, or did she just want confirmation? ‘Of course we did. He wanted to know how you are.’
‘And?’
‘I said you were out of the woods.’
‘Good.’
She seemed pleased. I thought it was because she didn’t want him feeling sorry for her. She was like Mum in that way. Stoical. Hated to be pitied.
‘I’ve been thinking about Mum lately,’ I ventured. I was only now realising how much I took her for granted. Dad had a certain mystique because he went out into the world to work and because he was often withdrawn. But Mum was always around, always accessible, always doing the things mothers were supposed to do. Cooking the meals, cleaning up, doing the shopping. All the mundane stuff that Ros and I were determined never to be shouldered with.
‘About what exactly?’
‘You know how she was always so … so uncomplaining. I’ve been wondering how she did it, how she managed to stay on top of things and be cheery no matter what was going on. What do you think she did with her anger? She never showed it and there must have been times when she was boiling over. Dad wasn’t the easiest person to live with.’
‘Ha! Slight understatement.’ Ros went silent for a moment. ‘Do you remember those dreams she had?’
‘What dreams?’
‘They were pretty dark. Kind of like Greek tragedies. Awful, bloody things happening to all of us. I’ve forgotten the details. All I remember is that I was amazed. Shocked, really. I had no idea. I guess that’s where it went, the anger and those other feelings she kept to herself. They came out in her dreams.’
‘She never told me about them. I bet she was afraid they’d upset me.’
‘Who knows? Anyway, how are you coping?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Oh come on, Est. I thought we were going to get real.’
She was right. I took a deep breath and told her about the panic attack at the supermarket.
‘Have you told David?’
‘That I’m running away from his constituents?’
We both burst out laughing.
‘Has it happened again?’ she said, suddenly serious.
‘A couple of times. Not as bad. I feel so stupid. So incredibly pathetic and stupid. I’m terrified I’ll fuck up. He should have married you, Ros. You’d be brilliant.’
‘We’d have murdered each other by now.’
‘You’re too alike, I guess. Funny, isn’t it? Some women go for men like their fathers. I went for a man who reminded me of my sister.’
‘You can be such an idiot, Est.’
I hadn’t slept so deeply in years. For an endless second when I woke, I was completely thrown. My eyes roved the strange room until I saw Ros’s empty, unmade bed.
When I opened the shutters, the bright morning rushed in. And with it came the giddiness of pure relief. So far away. So far, far away. Almost as far as you could get. Fine skeins of cloud stretched across the sky. Sunlight flashed in the cathedral windows. A ship slid across the horizon. People were walking around in T-shirts and light dresses. Back home, winter had bled into spring and it was perpetually cold and windy. And yet here, so close to the Arctic, the island might have been under a bell jar or in a sunny equatorial bubble that had drifted north with its coral foundations.
Ros had left a note. She was having breakfast with Sven and I could join them when I was ready. I decided they needed time alone, so headed for the town square to have my breakfast there. As I passed people in the street, they smiled and said God Dag and I found myself smiling back. No one knew me. No one cared. We were just strangers nodding to each other, exchanging greetings for the sheer neighbourliness of it. And because the weather was so glorious. This was how it used to feel, before going out became an ordeal. Before anxiety clammed me up. Before diffidence became a fault, taken for snootiness or disdain. David reckoned I’d get used to it. But I didn’t have his ability to shrug things off or his love of being the centre of attention. Just thinking about it was making me queasy.
At that moment, the narrow, cobbled street opened out into a paved square. On the far side I could see a ruined church, its remaining walls the colour of bleached bone. Opposite the church were cafés with chrome tables and chairs out the front on wooden platforms to compensate for the slope. It would be good to sit down, unnoticed, and observe the world go by. I’d always preferred watching to being watched. As a girl I would climb the lillypilly tree in our front garden and watch people go past in the street. Occasionally, they would pause right under the tree and I’d peer down through the branches, thrilled no one knew I was there. Once or twice I gave in to temptation and dropped lillypilly fruits on their heads and they looked up and saw me there. But when my cover was blown all the fun went out of it. It was better to remain unseen.
I took a seat outside one of the cafés. I did most of my watching and listening in the classroom. The best times were when the children were so engrossed in whatever they were doing that they didn’t realise they were being observed. More than anything, I loved overhearing their conversations when they were working in groups, trying to figure something out, or when they were playing pretend: ‘Let’s say that this happens …’
There was a game Ros and I used to play when we were kids. What would you do if you were the Queen? It was one of my favourites because I got to imagine myself as Queen, whereas when we played dress-ups, it was always Ros who wore the crown. Like most memories of childhood, only scraps remained. I couldn’t recall what my sister said she’d do – perhaps because Ros always acted as if she were the Queen on a daily basis. I announced that I would build a castle because there were no castles in Australia and you couldn’t be a queen without one. What I didn’t let on was that I would make Ros my lady-in-waiting. To have Ros wait on me! That would be something.
When Ros grew out of the game, I would play on my own until it started to feel too lonely. Not just because Ros wasn’t playing, but the idea itself, of being Queen. Of always having to be on your best behaviour. Of being apart from everyone else. And then the awful thought dawned on me one day that there might be a king and that he would have the final say.
7
MELBOURNE
July 2010
I stood on the back deck, looking out over the garden. I think I was still in shock. The whole business of David being made leader of the opposition was just starting to hit me: what it could mean for the rest of our lives and what I would have to leave behind.
I thought about all those barbecues and summer dinners with family and friends, all those alcohol-fuelled arguments about politics and children and travel and whether certain pinpricks of light in the evening sky were planets or stars. When it was just David and me, we talked about things inconsequential to anyone else. Like whether the townhouses going up next door would block our morning sun or which garden bed we should bury our beloved old cat in. Strange how so much of your life can be spent on one small patch of earth.
I thought about all the work I’d put into the garden and how even in the hottest, driest summers, the climbing roses kept blooming and the daisies kept smiling out of the rockery and the peaches kept swelling and weighing down the branches. In a kind of homage to my grandparents, I’d planted pencil pines – normal pines were much too large – along the back fence and kept a small garden bed for annuals like snapdragons and chrysanthemums. I was proud of the way the vines and creepers had covered the trellising on the side fences, giving the whole place an overgrown, secluded air. But no fence could be high enough now.
The telephone rang, followed by the blur of a message. Yet another. There were over fifty on my mobile phone and at least thirty on the answering machine. I could
n’t face them right now. All those congratulations on David’s appointment to the party leadership. It was tempting to take the day off but I knew I’d only mull. Better to be in the classroom with all its distractions and demands.
A wattle bird squawked and exploded from the bare branches of the peach tree. I watched it swoop over the pencil pines and into the distance and steeled myself for the day.
At the school gates, an unusually large crowd of children was hanging over the fence, as if waiting for a visiting dignitary. All heads turned my way as I swung into the car park. I am used to this kind of thing now but back then it never occurred to me that they could be waiting for me. There was only one space left and it was under the wattle tree, where no one wanted to park because the blossoms fell all over the windscreen and clogged up the wipers.
Even before I opened the door the children were surging around the car, shouting that they had seen me on TV. I thought of the flashing lights and the television cameras at the press conference and the unreality of it all. Behind the eager crowd of children, groups of smiling parents milled, reaching out their hands to shake mine and to pass on their congratulations. Then Nikos came striding through, ordering the children to give me some space.
I hugged my folder and books to my chest, touching the heads of the younger ones, as I always did, and the shoulders of the older students, and nodding to the parents. I heard myself saying that yes, it was very thrilling, and tried not to look too stunned. In this part of the city, allegiances fell squarely with the opposition and the prospect of a new leader who could get the party into government after years in the wilderness was something everyone was keen to celebrate. They were excited. I would have been, too, if I were them. The problem was that I was me, and the shoes the prince had slipped on my feet didn’t really fit. They were way too big. And they were stilettos. Surely it was only a matter of time before I tripped and fell.
I stood to one side of the assembly hall, along with the other teachers, and watched Nikos at the podium, beaming and holding up his hand for quiet.