by Anne Buist
It was then that she heard the throb of the V8 coming down the lane beside Eliza’s gallery.
‘Worried, are you?’ asked Eliza.
52
I was a young man faced with unreasonable circumstances.
It is hardly surprising that I behaved with less dignity and care than I would today. I was trying to examine and make sense of my life; hadn’t that been the purpose of seeing Victoria?
One of the first topics we discussed was Eliza. Though Antonije had handled the situation I felt a degree of involvement such that it was hard to distance myself entirely.
I say ‘discussed’ but of course psychoanalysis, even more than its half-sister psychodynamic psychotherapy, is more a soliloquy with an occasional one-liner from the analyst to show they haven’t gone to sleep. To be fair, Victoria at least gave me her interpretations when I requested, as well as at the end of the session whether I asked or not. They improved as she got to know me. Or, as I later understood, as her supervisor got to know me. This was disturbing in retrospect. Victoria was young and relatively inexperienced. Her supervisor was older and male, with thirty years of practice.
What did they make of my heartless treatment of Eliza? Victoria didn’t have all the pieces because I hadn’t been foolish enough to trust her that much, and I did of course balance the facts of our splitting up and her pregnancy with Eliza’s own behaviour, and what I had come to realise. The reasons why I had chosen to terminate the relationship.
She was a slut.
Victoria reacted to that: I could see the word on my lips left a bad taste on hers. ‘Can I clarify? Didn’t you tell me last session she was a virgin?’
‘I meant slut in that she sought to sell herself, not that she had.’ Though she did, of course.
Victoria looked confused. ‘She wanted you to pay her?’ Victoria really wasn’t very smart.
‘She wanted it all. Marriage, kids. But most of all she wanted Mount Malosevic.’
‘Did she tell you that?’
I laughed. ‘Not directly. But yes, she said it.’
Unluckily for Eliza, women talk to me. I can be persuasive if I have to be but in this case, with her girlfriend, I merely had to buy her a drink.
53
‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ said Eliza abruptly.
The engine died and Natalie could see through the kitchen window as he got out of the silver Commodore, running his hand through a longer version of Frank’s wavy hair. She was reminded of the Worm; a little taller and heavier. A good deal bigger than her. She felt her stomach tighten and she set her jaw defiantly.
‘What’s she doing here?’ Jasper was talking to his mother but his eyes were on Natalie. He was taking up most of the doorway, a slab of beer tucked under one arm.
‘Let me handle this.’ Eliza looked pale. Worried, but about what? What he might do to Natalie? He was smirking at her. All Frank’s arrogance without the charm. Or rather, charm not turned on for her now. Her stomach tightened further; she could feel her heart pounding as she repressed the anxieties that still lingered from the Worm’s attack in the past, and the increasing possibility that she was at risk again. The link with the girl at Mount Malosevic gave Jasper the means to kill Reeva and Alison—he could easily be there visiting at any time. She hadn’t until now thought it a real possibility that Jasper had been responsible for any more than the warnings. Now she was concerned she was looking at someone a good deal more calculating than an adolescent angry at his dad for not owning up to his paternal responsibility.
Natalie remained seated. Standing over her gave him the psychological advantage—but only if she let it. In any case she was going to be dwarfed by Jasper whatever she did. Let him think she was scared if he liked. That would give her an element of surprise; her only potential way out if things got ugly.
‘Jasper.’ There was an edge to Eliza’s voice. Jasper shot her a look Natalie couldn’t interpret.
‘I was telling your mother,’ said Natalie, ‘that it would be a good idea to dissuade you from more stunts with Molotov cocktails.’
‘Yeah? Am I meant to know what you’re talking about?’ He closed the door behind him, the soft click more ominous than if he had slammed it. He stood between her and it.
‘Does Frank know about it?’
Jasper’s eyes widened. She took that as a no. Yet there was something there she had touched on. Pleasure at having harmed someone he thought his father might care about? Pleasure that he was taking action while his father was a wimpy academic?
‘Seems to me,’ said Jasper, putting the slab down on the table, ‘you’re messing in stuff that is none of your business.’ ‘That was the message the fire bomb and tyre-slashing were meant to deliver? And let’s not forget the attempt to run me off the road.’
He was standing closer to her now, close enough for her to make out the rash of acne on his cheek and a skull hanging from his earring. Eliza was stony faced: Natalie wouldn’t rely on her to come to the rescue.
‘I think you know jack-shit.’
‘I think you should go.’ Eliza moved to the door.
‘I haven’t finished.’ Natalie didn’t move.
‘Tough.’
Natalie ignored Jasper and spoke to Eliza. ‘When we talked last time you mentioned Antonije’s alleged war heroism. What was that about?’
Eliza stared at her, confused. She looked quickly at Jasper who seemed uninterested in the conversational turn.
‘I think he had a more comfortable war than some,’ said Eliza. ‘Ask Frank about his grandmother.’ Lyuba, who had died young. ‘And have a close look some time at the family’s favourite photo of Antonije and his wife.’
Eliza shot another glance at her son. Was she worried his patience was running out? Or something else?
Natalie stood up slowly and picked up her bike helmet. She met Jasper’s eyes and held the look for a moment before stepping around him. He immediately stepped into her path. ‘Say please.’
Twenty-year-old bully, she thought. Insecure and dangerous—trying to prove himself.
‘Please get out of my way. Dickhead.’
She knew she shouldn’t have taunted him but at the moment anger was her only weapon against her fears. The threat of harm from him was less, in her mind, than the danger of giving into her anxiety. Eliza stepped forward and grabbed his arm. As he shook it off Natalie stepped around them both and walked out.
‘Don’t come back, bitch!’ he yelled after her before the door slammed.
___________________
‘I’m sorry, Frank.’ Natalie had just told him that she wasn’t going to continue with the PhD. Or at least not with him. This, as far as she was concerned, was the last meeting at Wye River. Frank looked like he was still trying to make sense of her new—to him—look. The previous night she’d experimented with blue streaks in her hair.
‘Is there anything I can do to change your mind?’
Natalie shook her head. ‘I don’t really think I’m cut out for it. I’m missing my patients and the forensic work. And I’m just not a country girl at heart.’
‘When are you heading back?’
‘In a couple of weeks.’
Frank filled his wine glass; Natalie was sticking to water.
‘Can I at least get you to accept an invitation to Mount Malosevic before you leave? You didn’t see it under the best of circumstances. We’re having an event there Saturday week. You’d be welcome to stay.’
Natalie tried to picture Damian’s expression if he knew she would probably accept. Better not to tell him.
‘I’ll miss talking to you,’ he added, large eyes staring luminously at her.
‘You should see a therapist, Frank. There’s a lot of grief to deal with.’
‘I have my family. Maybe later.’
‘I was reading about your grandfather. He sounds larger than life.’
‘Antonije? Yes, an amazing man.’
‘A war hero too. I gather he rescued your grandmother
?’
‘Yes, he was amongst the partisans that liberated Stara
Gradiska. She was one of the few survivors.’
‘Was she badly affected by the experience?’
‘I never met her,’ said Frank. ‘She died when Vesna was young.’
‘Because the camp affected her health?’
‘Yes.’ Frank looked at her directly.
‘What happened to her?’
‘She killed herself. Vesna found her hanging.’
So Antonije hadn’t saved her in the end, just as Natalie hadn’t saved Georgia. Natalie saw the sadness in his eyes and automatically her hand went out to his. ‘Oh Frank. So much sadness and loss.’
Frank’s fingers crept between hers, a subtle rebuttal of comfort and assertion of status. Natalie stifled her impulse to pull back.
‘It must have made it hard for you, growing up.’ Her voice didn’t sound as light as she had hoped.
‘It was, until we came back to Australia,’ said Frank. ‘In England my father was in denial about any problems with her. Vesna, that is. I was one of those parentified children who, in true British style, hid my emotions.’
‘Do you still do that now?’ She searched his face for signs of softness and they were there in the tiny lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth, the longing in his eyes. He would have been an appealing child.
‘Don’t we all?’ There was something else in his eyes; Damian’s voice in her head reminded her not to trust him.
‘They tend to come out somewhere, Frank, you know that. Anxiety, trouble sleeping.’
‘Sleep?’ He looked at her. ‘I’m so exhausted I sleep like…I sleep deeply.’
But hadn’t Vesna said something about sleep problems? Or was that as a child? She could see he was being cautious.
She changed tack. ‘I saw Eliza yesterday.’
‘Do you like her art?’
His comeback was faster than she had anticipated.
‘Jasper was there too.’
Frank, still smiling, pulled his hand from hers and poured some more wine.
‘I had my tyres slashed, and the house fire-bombed. I rather think he did it.’
This got his attention. ‘What? Are you sure?’
‘That my tyres were slashed and I was fire-bombed, yes. That it was Jasper?’ She shrugged. ‘I’d put money on it.’ She watched him. He was reacting as though he had known nothing about it. If he really hadn’t then would he make the next leap as well? Only if he was innocent.
‘But why on earth would he?’
‘I don’t know Frank. Do you?’
Frank shook his head. He looked weary. ‘He was seeing Senka, who works for us.’
‘Any chance he thinks he’s in the running for an inheritance?’
Frank smiled, but without warmth. ‘I see you also think he looks like me.’
Yes, but she also had the preliminary DNA. Now she knew how good a liar Frank was. She felt her heartbeat accelerate.
‘I take it you’re in no rush to adopt him?’
Frank looked suddenly irritated. But he wasn’t looking at her. She turned, to see that Jasper had just entered the bar.
54
‘Is he following you?’ I kept my irritation in check.
‘Possibly.’ Natalie looked so tightly coiled that her grip on her glass was likely to end in bloodshed. ‘Or is it you he’s keeping an eye on?’
This was becoming irksome. I had avoided the lengths to which my grandfather had gone, but now it seemed I might be forced to follow in his footsteps in more ways than one. Ostensibly Eliza had returned to Lorne because her mother died, but her mother had been gone for two years before Eliza showed up. It was Antonije’s death that she had been waiting for. The old man had kept an iron grip on us all and his family continued to feel the influence. For others it might need some reinforcement.
Natalie and I watched the boy take a stool at the bar, then swing around on his seat, one elbow on the bar, and toast us with a beer. Natalie could have been Reeva all over again. I wasn’t sure what I was more bored by; the predictability of women or the macho posturing of my would-be son. That was until Natalie leaned into me. Her hand went over mine and she smiled.
‘He’s trying to play games isn’t he?’ Her lips now were only millimetres from my ear. I could smell her, a hint of some herbal shampoo and a female scent I had been missing. ‘Do you feel like playing too?’
I met her eyes. Rather than accusing, they were playful. I could feel the tension in her arm as my hand went around her but there was a steeliness to her that made my heart sing. As I kissed her I wondered if perhaps, finally, I had met an equal.
55
‘I have a hypothetical for you,’ said Natalie.
Declan waited. She suspected he knew what was coming.
‘Let’s say you hear something about a patient. From a therapist you’re supervising, or in a peer review group you attend. And let’s say you were able to identify him whether or not names were used, because the patient was a psychiatrist himself.’
Declan was sitting very still, face immobile. She wanted to yell, Help me here! Wanted to believe she was special enough to him that boundaries could be crossed: had to be crossed, otherwise she might be in danger.
‘And then,’ Natalie continued, ‘your teenage daughter starts to see that psychiatrist as a patient. You’ve no proof, and the rules of confidentiality mean…but you know there is a chance that he’ll seduce her.’ Their eyes met; she fancied his were filled with regret. ‘Do you suggest your daughter sees someone else?’
In the silence there was a clicking of the clock on the mantelpiece. A car drove past, too quickly for a suburban street.
‘In your hypothetical,’ said Declan slowly, ‘my daughter is a minor, and as a patient, also vulnerable.’
‘And I’m not?’ A rare occasion when she wanted someone to see her that way.
‘You’re a psychiatrist, Natalie. Bipolar disorder is something you live with; it doesn’t make you a victim.’
‘But was Frank?’ she asked. ‘And if he was Antonije’s victim, what does that make him now?’
And who kissed who in the pub?
Frank had given her the name of two psychiatrists he had ‘dated’. Why? Because he couldn’t resist being a smartarse? She’d thought it was to draw attention to the fact that he knew about her problems with Jay Wadhwa, through mentioning Gillian, another academic. But if so, he wouldn’t have needed to mention Victoria Moore. She had to be older than him. Frank would know he was safe because Victoria would never tell her if he had been her patient, any more than Declan was going to tell her if he supervised Victoria.
But that wasn’t the question she was going to ask.
‘Dr King? Victoria Moore returning your call.’
‘Thanks. This is kind of awkward.’
‘Yes?’ The pleasant tone became cautious.
‘And I don’t usually do checks on my boyfriends,’ Natalie continued, ‘but honestly, my psychiatry radar is making me paranoid. Maybe too many bad internet dates.’
‘I can’t tell you…’
‘Not about patients,’ Natalie pressed on at full steam, ‘Mine are generally incarcerated and I’m not about to go there. No, it’s about your previous boyfriend and our colleague. Frank Moreton. Anything I should know about him?’
The gasp was faint but she’d been listening for it. ‘I didn’t…’ Victoria stopped herself. ‘He’s bad news,’ she said quickly. ‘Don’t ring again.’ She had hung up before Natalie could respond.
She had three days before the Mount Malosevic Music on the Mount open day, planned for the first weekend of spring. With no commitments in town or in Geelong, Natalie focused her attention on the emails and browser details she had forwarded to herself from Reeva and Alison’s computer. She started with two fresh sheets of paper; Reeva headed one, Alison the other. She wanted proof—or at least something stronger than suspicions—about what had happened to them. The coroner’s
court had left it open but she was certain in her own mind that suicide hadn’t been part of the mix. And if Jasper was involved, how involved—and who was he working with?
Reeva. Reported to be psychotic, and constantly on the internet according to Frank. Yet her emails right up to the week before she died were businesslike and matter-of-fact. Natalie had seen it before: the psychosis delineated, cut off from the rest of the sufferer’s life, making them appear normal in every way—except in their separate delusional world. Was this the case with Reeva? Perhaps because she had been accessing her account from home, she’d used this account for some of her final business dealings. A polite refusal to talk at a conference: I’ll be on maternity leave, the words chilling in light of what happened next. A journal asking for an article review, which she had done. An exchange with Wei about ethics.
Only one email that Natalie couldn’t explain straight away. It looked like an academic tiff: I’m sorry but I thought you should know. Scott Beamish from Manchester University. There was another earlier one from him, in which Wei was mentioned. She nearly let it pass but then did a quick search on Beamish, assuming he was a medical researcher. He wasn’t: department of history. What had he thought Reeva should know? Was Wei the connection between them? Not expecting anything, she sent off an email to Beamish, copying Wei.
Next Reeva’s browser. Or rather Reeva’s and Alison’s, depending on dates accessed. Nothing about genetics. Nothing about psychosis or neurodegenerative diseases. But there was one overlap with Alison: the Bethlehem. Had Reeva also wanted to deliver there? It was in Caulfield, an inner suburb of Melbourne, as Oliver had said. Natalie quickly checked out its website. Oliver had also been right that it was palliative care. No obstetrics. Natalie went back to the browser history list she had made and stared. She had spelt Bethlehem differently. Not Bethlehem but Bethlem. The Bethlem Royal Infirmary. A psychiatric hospital in London. Why on earth had both women been searching this?