by Fiona Capp
I could only nod. I knew how hard it was for her to say this. I could never have been so gracious. Whenever I’m feeling that my life is no longer my own, I think of this moment. How Ros rose above it all.
I desperately wanted to say sorry. Sorry for everything. Sorry that her hopes had been dashed. But she would never have forgiven me for telling her that she had any hopes.
‘Only if you promise you’ll think about coming home.’
She sank down onto the bed. ‘I’ll think about it.’
In the remaining minutes we achieved a kind of truce. We agreed that I would go and stay with her in London after my week on the island, as originally planned. I put my arm around her and thought about how we had known each other all our lives and yet hardly knew each other at all, and how just when we had found neutral territory on which we could begin to talk, a place where we could be free of the baggage of childhood, talk had become impossible and we were parting again.
When Sven arrived, the three of us walked down to the harbour. There were fairy lights strung around the main square and across the front of the ruined church and the whole town had a festive air that was painfully at odds with the way we were feeling. I still couldn’t believe Ros was leaving: we’d only just arrived.
My sister had always been terse when it came to goodbyes. She gave us both a quick hug and then marched up the gangplank.
By the time Sven and I had reached the top of the hill, the ferry was pulling out of the harbour and moving soundlessly into the darkness until it slipped over the edge of the world, like a longship heading for the afterlife.
9
MELBOURNE
July 2010
Nowhere, it seemed, was safe. In the staffroom, everyone was always talking politics and even at home I could be ambushed. There was the paper, the radio, the TV. I hardly ever watched the box any more. It was safer to stick to DVDs, old favourites like Get Smart or documentaries with David Attenborough whispering sweet nothings about the wonders of nature. Whenever an island appeared, I would think of Ros’s proposal, of sailing away – if only temporarily – from what felt like a gathering storm. The idea of it grew more appealing by the day.
After work I’d throw myself on the couch, happy to watch whatever was in the DVD player. It didn’t really matter what it was. I hadn’t slept well for weeks and there was every chance I’d doze off. One afternoon, I was trying to find the AV setting when something popped up on the television, a split-second glimpse before the DVD started. I quickly switched back to the TV and surfed around until I found the channel. For an instant, I could’ve sworn I was staring at a doppelganger, someone who looked like David but wasn’t. He was being interviewed by a journalist in some television studio where they were sitting opposite each other in comfortable-looking leather armchairs. David had his legs crossed and his hands folded in his lap. Occasionally he would smile or thoughtfully touch his finger to the dimple on his chin. At this particular moment, it was the only familiar thing about him.
He spoke carefully while the journalist sat waiting like a cat with a mouse, ready to pounce. This slow, deliberate manner was something new and strange to me. I supposed some people might see it as gravitas, but I knew it had more to do with the crushing weight of Gerald’s death and the terror of failing him.
Politicans, my father used to say, are like writers. Suckers for punishment. They build dream houses out of words and invite the public in, expecting everyone to feel at home; expecting them to be enchanted, awed, grateful. But why should they be? All those charming words are so much smoke and mirrors, a threadbare cloak for the naked emperors conjuring them up, desperate to be admired and loved. My father had his reasons for being bitter. Even so, there is something about the analogy that strikes me as valid. After all these years of observing politics from close range, of watching David walk that high wire, I still struggled to understand why he or anyone else put themselves through it. Even more baffling was how they thrived on the unrelenting attention, the kind of attention that could turn on you at any moment.
David had made his mark in politics as someone who spoke his mind, who didn’t hide behind carefully crafted phrases, who called a spade a spade. As a university lecturer he’d been a brilliant communicator and in student politics there’d been no one to match him. I thought of him in the Agora with the megaphone at his mouth, addressing a crowd as casually as if he were talking with friends. Smiling, cajoling, arguing, stirring. Pleading with them to think, to care, to get off their bums. To make a difference. Above all, he had been fearless.
I pressed the mute button so that I wouldn’t have to hear any more. But even without the sound, he looked horribly wrong. Where on earth had he got that suit? I was so absorbed in the screen that I didn’t notice Kate had come home until she was standing right beside me. She gave me such a fright I almost dropped the remote control in my hurry to switch it off.
She looked at the television and back at me. ‘You didn’t even have the sound up.’
‘Oh?’
‘You had a strange look on your face. What were you watching?’
‘Nothing. Just surfing.’
‘It was Dad, wasn’t it?’ She tossed her jacket over the arm of the couch and plonked herself down next to me.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Just a hunch.’
A mynah bird began its mechanical chirp from the lemon tree outside the window. I pulled Kate’s head to my shoulder. ‘I know it sounds silly, darling, but he was wearing a new suit and it threw me. This navy-blue pinstriped thing with a waistcoat. Like some English Tory.’
Kate tried not to smile. ‘But you know Dad. He’s never had much idea about clothes.’
‘That’s why he should’ve asked me.’
When I first met David, he wore faded jeans and dark-coloured polonecks. When he became an academic, he graduated to casual shirts and corduroy pants. He had started wearing suits with great reluctance and only because he had to in parliament. Being lean and well-proportioned, he wore them better than most men and seemed at ease in them now. But I still missed the man who would never have dreamt of wearing cufflinks. Just thinking about it gave me a surge of longing for the sight of his bare, muscular arms.
‘I bet it was Jasper,’ I said.
‘You can’t blame Jasper, Mum. It’s his job to give advice. Perhaps Dad’s old suits were getting tatty.’
I tried to remember the last time David had bought a new suit. I would have to ask Renato; he kept a record of all the suits he made and was particularly proud to see his handiwork on David. I hoped he wouldn’t see him in this pinstriped thing.
There’d probably be photos of him wearing it in the papers tomorrow. Every morning I was woken by the idling delivery van and the double thunk of the two morning papers hitting the front porch. I’d leave them on the kitchen table in their plastic wrapper and they would still be there when I got home, waiting for me like unwanted gifts. In the past, I’d made an effort to keep up. But there was too much of this stuff called ‘news’, most of it not worth bothering with. The things journalists wrote about him were often wrong or nasty or stupid. One moment they loved him, the next they were going for the throat. And sometimes it felt as if they were taking him from me, turning him into a stranger. What’s that law of diminishing returns? I have no idea about economics but the more I read about him in the papers, or saw him on television, the less I felt I knew him. Whenever he came home, he was not quite the same as before. And not quite the same the next time. I wondered if one day I would look at him and ask, ‘Who are you?’
‘I know what you need, Mum. A banana smoothie,’ Kate said as she leapt over the back of the couch.
I watched her carefully chopping the banana and adding other ingredients, stopping every now and then to push stray curls behind her ears. Kate hated her curls, the voluptuousness of them. Ros had been the same at her age. She used to iron her hair flat with the clothes iron. No special tongs back then. Earlier in the ye
ar when Kate was going through a particularly rough patch, she had taken to her hair with scissors and emerged from the bathroom with gelled, thumb-length spikes. It was only just starting to look nice again.
Kate poured the smoothie into two glasses and handed one to me. ‘People at school keep saying to me, “Wow, your dad could be prime minister. That’s so cool.”’
My heart stuttered. ‘And what do you say?’
‘I dunno. It’s like he’s on another planet half the time. I mean, it’s been like that for years but it’s worse now. Not worse, just weirder.’
I kept my head bent as I sipped the smoothie. I didn’t want to burden Kate with my feelings. She had enough to worry about. I asked her if she’d finished the English essay she had to do for the final assessment.
‘Yup, but I’ve got another one. What do you know about Sylvia Plath? Apart from the oven.’
I had written a paper on her poetry once, or maybe it was that novel of hers. I told her I could dig it out.
Kate waved to me as she disappeared into her bedroom crying, ‘Out of the ash/ I rise with my red hair/ And I eat men like air!’
I was in the bath waiting for David to get home, wallowing in the melting sensation that comes over you when you first get in. The shame was that it didn’t last. You had to keep adding more hot until you started to feel like the proverbial frog in boiling water: cooked alive because you missed the moment when you should’ve jumped out. But how to pick that moment? It was one of life’s big questions. Knowing when to stay and when to bail.
The front door slammed and I heard Kate rush down the hallway.
‘Happy birthday, Dad!’
‘Hell, I forgot. So it is! How are you, darling?’
‘How does it feel to be fifty-six?’
‘Haven’t had time to think about it.’
When I came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel David was standing in the kitchen with his briefcase at his feet as if he’d just stepped out of the Tardis. All sleek and businesslike. We hugged and he seemed to tower over me.
‘Nice outfit,’ he said.
‘Wish I could say the same about yours.’
‘Mum hates your suit, Dad. She thinks you look like a Tory.’ Kate grinned at her father, then at me and back again. ‘It’s not that bad.’
‘Jasper thought I should try a classical look.’
‘I knew it.’
David let his hand linger on my shoulder and gave me a pleading look.
‘Hang on, Dad,’ Kate said, rushing over to the kitchen table. She presented him with a large flat rectangular object wrapped in brown paper. ‘For you.’
He took the present in both hands, sized it up and began carefully removing the paper.
‘Just rip it!’
When the paper was off, David held the painting at arm’s length. I had already seen it. It was of our house done in the style of Howard Arkley – all luminous with spray paint – except that our house was an Edwardian, double-fronted weatherboard rather than a suburban brick veneer.
He let his eyes rove over the picture. ‘This is amazing, Katie.’
‘I thought you might want something to hang in your new office.’
David put the painting down and reached his arms around Kate and they swung from side to side in a little dance. It reminded me of the times when Kate was little and we would put The Beatles or The Stones on and they would dance together, with Kate standing on his feet. They hadn’t danced with each other for years.
When they’d had enough, David studied the painting again. ‘It couldn’t be better, darling. Everything’s just right – the pickets missing from the front fence, the creeper on the veranda posts, the nameplate. I’ll put it opposite my desk so that every time I look up, I’ll see home. And I’ll think of my lovely girl.’
He ran his fingers lightly over the surface of the canvas. ‘I didn’t know you were so good with a spray can. Quite a professional.’
Alarm flashed across Kate’s face. Refusing to meet my eye, she grabbed her father’s hand and pulled him towards the fridge. ‘Have you seen the cake I made? If you reckon the painting is good, wait until you see this!’
I was reaching into the wardrobe when I heard David close the bedroom door behind him. I took my favourite black dress from its hanger and cast a wary eye over his suit. ‘You’re going to change, aren’t you?’
He yanked at his tie as he dropped to the bed. There were grey crescents under his eyes and his cheeks had a hollowed-out look. ‘Okay, you hate the suit. I get the message.’
I sat down next to him and put my hand on his knee. Once, he would have turned and kissed me and remarked on my new bra but he hadn’t noticed it. I knew better than to ask him what was on his mind. Swathes of his life were foreign to me now. I’d speak to him on the phone when he was in Canberra or elsewhere, and he would tell me bits and pieces of what was happening. But more often than not, he didn’t want to go into it. Reckoned he’d fill me in when he got home. And when he got home, there was so little time.
I told him I had booked Gilda’s for eight-thirty.
‘Couldn’t we just have takeaway?’
‘Fine by me, it’s just that –’
‘– yeah, I know, Gilda’s expecting us.’
Since David had been made leader of the party, Gilda had been asking when we were coming to celebrate. We’d been regulars at her restaurant for almost as long as we’d been together and had marked all our big occasions there.
‘She’s got something special from the cellar.’
David let out a low groan. ‘I’m so fucking tired, Est. Bone tired. Ever since Gerald died, it’s as if I’ve been shot from a cannon and I’m still falling through the air, waiting to hit the ground.’
I stood between his legs and pulled his head to my chest. ‘Who says you have to hit the ground?’
David lifted his head. ‘If it weren’t for you I would have. You know that, don’t you, Est? Even when you’re not around, you keep me going.’
Friends at university had been surprised when David and I got together; they supposed it was an attraction of opposites. He loved to talk and argue, I kept to myself. None of this mattered to us. We knew what was going on, almost straight away. During our first meeting, when he was sparring with Duncan, he suddenly turned to me and asked what I thought. At first I was annoyed with him for putting me on the spot. But then he’d smiled and it was obvious he couldn’t help himself. It wasn’t my opinion he was after; he wanted to know what I thought of him. He seemed to assume I knew my own mind – which was news to me.
‘Promise me you’ll never forget, especially when things get tough,’ David was saying now, his voice drained. ‘Because things are going to really hot up. And it’s not going to be much fun for you. But we’ll get through it, won’t we?’
I smiled hopefully. It was all I could do. Hope. Then he kissed me so hard it hurt. When we pulled away from each other, his eyes fell to my breasts.
‘New bra?’
‘You noticed.’
‘There’s this lag, Est. I’m sorry. My body gets home before my brain.’ He patted himself, as if checking, then grinned. ‘I seem to be all here now.’
I chose my favourite hooped earrings and studied my reflection. It was getting harder and harder looking in the mirror. I thought of Snow White and how the mirror finally told the wicked queen truths she didn’t want to hear. David reckoned I hadn’t changed, that I was still the girl he met that day in the Agora. I knew what he meant, that he still saw the girl in me, and I felt the same about him. As for getting through what lay ahead, of course we would. We would because there was no alternative. No alternative I could bear to contemplate.
It wasn’t until I turned around that I realised David hadn’t moved. He was still sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the wall.
‘I keep thinking I’ll ask his advice,’ he murmured, almost talking to himself. ‘Ask Gerald who I should trust and who to watch out for, or the best tactics for som
ething or other. Then I remember. But I still can’t believe it. There’s this big bloody hole in the party and I’m supposed to fill it.’
‘Let’s go to Gilda’s another night.’
‘I’ll disappoint her.’
‘She’ll vote for you anyway.’
He struggled to get his shoes off. ‘Feel like I’ve got to please everyone.’
‘Believe that and you will go mad.’ We locked eyes for a moment, then I added firmly, ‘We’re staying home and having an early night.’
David managed to raise a faint smile before throwing himself back on the bed and closing his eyes.
Even before we had sampled Kate’s mud cake, he was nodding off at the table. I dragged him off to bed but by the time we got there, he remembered some briefing papers he had to look over for a meeting first thing in the morning. Always ‘first thing in the morning’. I sat next to him reading a thriller, knowing it wouldn’t take long. In ten minutes his head was jerking forward.
He was asleep as soon as the light went out. I lay beside him in the semi-darkness, listening to his slow, deep breaths. For a while I stared at the outline of his pinstriped suit hanging on the back of the door. A car started up out in the street followed by the muffled thump of music as the car drove away. David twitched and groaned and was quiet again. I could feel his body sinking into the mattress.
There had been a time when we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Even in the early days of Canberra, the periods of separation were good because we knew when he came home, everything would be electric. We were rediscovering each other, revisiting those early days when the most ordinary exchange was charged. Slowly, though, the novelty of being apart wore off. I’d get irritated by habits he picked up, like having the radio and the TV news on at the same time. Sometimes I’d be talking to him and he would look at me blankly, his mind miles away. It got harder to adjust. One minute the house was mine and everything was running smoothly. The next, it was as if the place had been invaded by an alien force. After a while, it felt easier when he wasn’t there.