by Fiona Capp
He said he could just tell. ‘You know it matters.’
‘Unfortunately most people don’t,’ I said, more vehemently than I’d intended. Whenever I went to political functions and people found out what I did, I would see their eyes glaze over. They’d say all the right things – important job, needs more money – but half of them were ex-teachers who reckoned they’d moved on, and up.
For the first time in years I thought of a young academic I’d met when I was doing my teaching rounds. He had come to talk to the teachers at the school about the latest pedagogical theories. During recess, he sat in the staff room with me and my supervising teacher, Glenda, a woman of twenty-five years’ teaching experience whose unassuming air belied her talents in the classroom. Her gift was to make each child feel she understood them. Like the Pied Piper, she knew how to hold their attention and how to take them with her. Not that she was some kind of demagogue brainwashing her charges. There was always a sea of hands waving urgently, such was her ability to get her pupils asking questions and giving their views.
The young academic was sounding off about the research he’d done for his PhD. This was back at a time when it wasn’t so common to hold a doctorate. It was obvious he saw Glenda as a relic of the old school and it showed in his ‘of course it’s all different now’ voice. I can’t remember how it came up, but at some point in the conversation Glenda mentioned her time at Cambridge, where she’d done her MA, and how she’d been offered a job there which, after a lot of thought, she decided to turn down. The young academic’s eyes boggled as she spoke. Why on earth had she turned it down? Glenda looked at him with a steeliness I hadn’t seen before and said that she considered teaching children more important than teaching adults. Primary school, as he would know, was where the foundations were laid. You couldn’t build any kind of structure if those foundations weren’t rock solid. The sad thing about most academics, she added with a sly smile, was that they knew how to lecture but not how to teach. It took all my self-control not to cheer. From then on, when I thought of the kind of teacher I wanted to be, I thought of Glenda.
It was too hard to explain all this to Sven. Instead, I told him of a picture book I read to my students about a bunyip that is confused as to its identity. Every time it meets another animal, it asks, ‘What am I? What am I?’ I never had that problem. As far back as I could remember, teaching was all I’d ever wanted to do. If someone asked me what I was, I knew the answer. So what would the answer be if David won? The obvious answer would be the prime minister’s wife. I would be there to support him and there was nothing wrong with a supporting role. Someone had to do it. I’d support him because I believed in him. But the price was giving up my work. And that price was high. Once I’d left, there’d be no going back.
When I told an old friend I would miss teaching, she couldn’t hide her impatience. What I needed, she said, was to get out in the real world. I could have slapped her. What was more real than twenty kids looking up at you? And since when had Canberra been the real world?
Sven was staring at me strangely, making me wonder how long I’d been lost in my thoughts. I smiled at him vaguely and gazed around at the mostly empty tables on the terrace and the rundown gardens. Even the sea looked tarnished.
‘There are other things in life besides teaching,’ he said, with a kind of wince, as if he was saying what he felt he should rather than what he believed. He started talking about Princess Eugenie, what a remarkable woman she’d been. How she’d built an orphanage for boys near here, and one for girls, and a school and a hospital for children. It was obvious that he had brought me here for a reason. As to why he should feel the need to offer the princess up as an example I had no idea. What was it to him? It never occurred to me that he was guarding himself against feelings that alarmed him because of his past. There was a moment when I thought he was trying to tell me something with his eyes, even as his mouth said something to the contrary.
Clouds were amassing along the horizon; there was the smell of rain in the air. I could see where the conversation was heading. ‘Look, Sven,’ I broke in, ‘don’t imagine I haven’t thought about it. All the “useful” things I could do. The charities, the good works –’
‘– the princess made art, too. I think she understood that art can take you to other places. It can be your ticket to freedom. And she used the money from it to pay for her orphans.’
‘But was she happy in her gilded cage?’
‘Was it a cage? She never married and that meant she had legal independence. I think she was the first woman in Sweden to have it.’
‘She was royalty.’
‘I would say she used her circumstances as best she could,’ he said carefully.
‘Is this advice?’
Sven cast his eyes around, as if contemplating whether it was worth the risk. ‘Most of us have less say over what happens in our lives than we imagine. When we are young, we think we’re heading somewhere and that one day we will arrive there. But where? What exactly is this destination? Then we get to middle age and realise that this place we had our eyes fixed on doesn’t exist. It was a mirage. A projection, perhaps. That things have turned out differently than we expected, and that most things are out of our hands. All we can really control is our attitude, how we make sense of events. How we choose to respond.’
Why was he bothering? Everyone over fifty knew this. I stood up and said I was going for a walk. But before I could move, he had grabbed my wrist. ‘Esther, please. Stay.’
I looked down at his large weathered hand. His fingers were thick and callused, like blunt instruments. I thought of David and how, in the early days, I only had to look at his fingers to feel a thrill go through me. They were so quick and agile, like him, and they transmitted his aliveness with their touch.
With exquisite timing, a sullen young waitress finally appeared to take our order. Sven let go of my wrist. When the waitress was gone, he said, ‘I’m sorry. Please try to understand. What I’m saying is as much for myself as for you.’
I reluctantly sat down. All his veiled references were getting on my nerves. Something had clearly happened in the past, something he wished he could change. He was trying to tell me he understood my predicament, but I didn’t see how he could. He had lived on his own terms, doing what he loved. How would he feel if he was forced to give up his art?
When the coffee arrived, I threw it down in one gulp and got up and headed for a steep gravel path that ran through a thicket of silver birches on the side of the cliff. It came out at a pebbly beach that was almost as grey as the sea. Little surges of water sucked lethargically at the shore. I could imagine that in summer the whole place would have a certain wistful charm but right now it felt so melancholy as to be almost unbearable. A moan welled up from my chest and I wondered whether David had moments like this when he questioned whether it was all worth it, or yearned for the way things used to be.
The night before, when he was talking about sculpting, Sven said that each time the chisel strikes stone, the force that goes in must come out. A sculptor working on a human figure might be chipping away at the legs but if he exerts the wrong kind of pressure, that energy can travel up through the body and sever the neck. I knew exactly how it could happen. How the pressure builds up. How unwelcome demands chip away your resolve, your sense that you have the right to live as you choose. Like that day in Canberra when the number crunchers had so politely twisted my arm and I had let them. Duty. How I hated that word. The invisible weight of it. No one spelled it out, but the meaning was clear. If I wanted my husband to succeed, if I wanted a better future for my child, if I cared about a fairer society, I would do as they asked.
I was so tired of this emotional tango: love and fury locked together in such a fierce embrace. How silly to imagine I could leave it behind.
13
MELBOURNE
August 2010
On reflection it would have been better if I hadn’t gone. I knew the media would be in
attendance, and that Jasper would be hovering, and that David and I wouldn’t get any time to ourselves. But the university was a place with special memories and to be there, together, after all these years would be like a reunion with our younger selves. A way of revisiting who we’d been when we met. A reminder of how we used to feel.
I parked in the same old car park and walked through the courtyards of one of the colleges and past the refectory where students were sitting at long tables having their lunch as if nothing had changed in thirty-five years. Beyond the college were the moat and the lawn and the ring of lecture theatres surrounding the Agora, the heart of the campus. The boldness of it all suddenly struck me in a way it never had before. A medieval moat surrounding an ancient Greek square, all in a native bush setting. No cloisters. No dreaming spires. Which was the very reason people like David and me had been drawn here.
I stopped on the footbridge that crossed the moat and stared down at the tangled reeds and the ducks and the sluggish brown water. I could never cross here without thinking of the night David and I went rowing. Somehow he had got hold of a tiny boat, like one half of a walnut shell. Although the moat wasn’t made for watercraft, we managed to row the whole way around it: in and out of the reeds, disturbing the sleeping ducks, past the colleges and the amphitheatre, the administration wings and the departmental buildings, past the wildlife reserve and the sports centre. Everything lit up by the moon. I remembered how we had to drop our heads when we went under some of the bridges and how I kept waiting for someone to come out of the darkness, like a guard from inside a castle, to tell us to clear off.
David was finishing his Masters, I my Diploma of Education, and we’d been together for almost three years. When we were about halfway around, David stopped rowing, drew up the oars and let the boat drift. I asked him what he was doing. He smiled enigmatically and said that it was as good a spot as any.
‘For what?’
He reached into his pack and brought out a bottle of spumante and two plastic wine glasses, then released the cork into the darkness. We sat opposite each other, our knees touching, and listened to the two-note chant of the frogs. We sat like this for some time, drinking and taking in the mood of the place.
Eventually David said, ‘So, Est, what do you reckon?’
‘What do I reckon?’
‘Yeah.’
‘About what in particular?’
‘About us.’
‘We’re happy.’
‘And what else?’
I grinned at his awkwardness, enjoying it. I knew what he was building up to, but it still surprised me what a romantic he was. ‘I thought marriage was a bourgeois institution?’
‘Not the way we’ll do it,’ David said, leaning across to kiss me. He stood up and with uncharacteristic solemnity added, ‘I want you to have absolute freedom. As long as you always come back to me.’
He looked down at me, swaying with the boat. I grabbed his hand and guided him back to his seat. He might be a bit tipsy but I knew he meant it. In his mind, this freedom was the greatest gift he could give me. In principle, I felt the same way, even if, at this stage in our relationship, neither of us had any need of it. Our hunger for each other was enough. But what was the point of marriage if we couldn’t trust the other to be honest? Honest about our desires, and honest if we acted upon them. Trust would be our rock.
There had been times since when we had both flirted with the possibility, occasions when we might easily have taken that extra step. I’d always assumed that if one of us did, it would be David. All the time he spent away in Canberra, meeting new people, trailing that whiff – like a heady aftershave – of power-in-the-making. And yet, for over thirty-five years, neither of us had taken advantage of this strange gift, and this was the wonder of it. The knowledge of the freedom we had given the other had been enough.
Now, looking back, I can’t help wondering why he needed us to marry, even though we were happy as we were. Living in sin and loving it, we used to say. Whether his proposal – unconventional though it might have been – was the first sign of all the political accommodations that were to come.
I found a vacant table in the Agora outside one of the cafés – all of which had changed since my time. I gazed around at the shops and the concrete mezzanine level that enclosed the square, registering what had gone and what was new. It was at least ten years since my last visit. I drank my tea and studied the passing students and was struck by how impossibly young they all seemed.
The nearby tower clock chimed four times. David was late. I rummaged in my bag for my mobile phone. He hadn’t been home for almost three weeks and had promised we would have some time together before the lecture.
‘Hey, Est. Just like old times, eh?’
I almost dropped the phone. My eyes travelled up his body. He was wearing jeans, a black poloneck and a corduroy jacket I hadn’t seen for years.
‘Well?’ he said eagerly.
All I could do was smile. It was as if he’d come back to me after a long absence. His old self, the self I had fallen in love with, the self I so badly missed.
David sat down opposite me and grinned boyishly.
‘So,’ I said finally, ‘Jasper didn’t object?’
‘He did. But an alumni address isn’t exactly the Press Club, is it?’ He gazed around the Agora. ‘I’d forgotten how much I like this place.’
‘I was just remembering that night on the moat.’
‘One of the great nights.’
‘You never told me how you got hold of that rowboat.’
‘Duncan wangled it somehow. He was always a great fixer.’
‘Is he still teaching here?’
‘Yes. Which might be a problem.’
‘Why?’
He shrugged. ‘I changed, he didn’t.’
‘You used to be good friends.’
David rubbed his cheek. ‘Jasper’s got himself in a panic about it.’
‘He’s afraid Duncan thinks you sold out?’
‘He’ll probably be at the lecture.’
‘But you’ve already decided to talk about those days. Get it out there so that no one can say you’ve got something to hide.’
‘Jasper thinks things might get messy. Heckling. Awkward questions.’
David looked across the Agora. I followed his eyes. Jasper was approaching from the other side of the square, weaving his way through the crowd of students in his baggy grey suit. The wind had swept his hair into a fluffy crest making him appear even more agitated than normal.
‘We were going to have some time alone,’ I said wistfully.
‘I wanted to, Est, but Jasper was adamant. We have to get Duncan sorted. He thought that you might help.’
‘Me?’
‘Could you look out for Duncan and sit with him during the lecture? If you’re with him, I don’t think he’ll be any trouble.’
‘But it’s not like you’ve had a falling-out. Don’t you think Jasper is overreacting?’
‘You tell him.’
We watched as Jasper placed a tray of drinks on the table. He reached out a slender hand to me.
‘Hello, Esther. Good to see you. Sorry to gatecrash like this. David might have told you I have a favour to ask.’
‘To be honest, Jasper, I don’t see what the big deal is.’
‘You’re probably right. But we can’t leave anything to chance. Not today with all the media about. Some of them have been digging things up. PM-in-waiting was an anarchist. You know what the muck-rakers are like. Wouldn’t hurt to chat to Duncan, just in case?’
There would be more of this, I could see it coming. Smoothing things over behind the scenes. That was fine, I could do that. I was best at one-on-one. I liked to think I might have some sway with Duncan; we had always got along well. For all his edge, there was something melancholy about him, as if he had a heavy secret and was torn between confiding and holding it in. At least, that was how he was with me. Around David he was different, more combativ
e. Theirs had been a strange friendship, affectionate but wary, neither of them able to let down their guard. I knew what was worrying David. It was Duncan’s love of a stoush, his tendency to goad and prod until he got a reaction – all in the name of political honesty. Problem was, he sometimes didn’t know when to stop. Or at least, that was how he used to be. We hadn’t seen him for years.
When we arrived at the glass-fronted auditorium, we were met by the vice-chancellor, a tall, silver-haired man with a grave expression, who escorted us backstage. While the men made small talk, I stood in the wings, surveying the audience. The people trickling in were a mixed bunch – students, staff, ordinary members of the public and the inevitable media contingent hovering around the front, as if the whole thing was being staged for their benefit.
It seemed like Duncan wasn’t coming. Then, a few minutes before the lecture was due to start, I saw his bear-like frame loom in one of the doorways at the rear of the auditorium. I waited until he had found a seat in the very back row before making my way around to the entrance through which he had come. I glanced around, as if flustered, as if running late, my eyes coming to rest on Duncan, who had already spotted me.
His smile was still the same. ‘Esther!’
‘Duncan! Can I sit with you?’
‘Shouldn’t you be down the front?’
‘I’d rather be here.’ And I meant it. I settled into my seat. ‘It’s been ages.’
He inclined his head towards me. ‘Much too long. How are you coping with all the bullshit? I hope that man of yours isn’t letting this go to his head. Hard to believe, really, when I think back.’
There was a hush as the vice-chancellor, in a purple and black robe, began his introduction. I didn’t pay much attention to what he was saying. The qualifications, the honours, the books published, the years in politics. All the usual stuff that revealed almost nothing about the man I knew. So why had my heart-rate skyrocketed? Why was I holding my breath? I wasn’t anxious about Duncan. Or about whether the speech would be a success. David was a polished performer, almost too smooth at times. Besides, the audience would be on his side. What I hadn’t considered – hadn’t dared think about – was my part in the story he was about to tell. This wasn’t one of his normal political speeches, all policy and statistics. Entangled in anything he might say about student politics was our story, how we met and fell in love. And it was the aim of this speech to distance himself from those days; to show that he had grown up, moved on.