Trip of a Lifetime

by Liz Byrski

  Heather sat in the darkness, her eyes closed, trying to work out what had happened to her, why the light inside her had been extinguished, why, suddenly, even walking from the dining room to the garden seemed a huge effort. And why, after all the time alone when she had longed for Ellis’s presence, she now felt weak and lost and longed to be alone.

  ‘Here we are,’ Ellis said, putting the tray on the table. ‘I’ll have to put the light on so you can see what I have to show you.’

  Heather blinked in the sudden brightness, and felt a sharp twinge of pain in her shoulder as she straightened up and looked at the papers he was spreading across the table.

  ‘First of all, though,’ Ellis said, settling down opposite her, ‘I guess we should talk about a timetable.’

  ‘A timetable?’ she said, wondering if she sounded obtuse but feeling simply confused.

  ‘Yes.’ He drew a year planner from his files and placed it between them. ‘By now you must have decided when to close the office. Another month, perhaps; or maybe you feel you need to go on until Easter?’

  ‘Close the office?’ she said. ‘What do you mean, close the office at Easter? It has to stay open until the election,’ and she stabbed her finger onto the planner. ‘This would be the earliest.’

  Ellis looked up in shock. ‘But I thought . . .’ he began, and as he opened his mouth he realised that although he understood very well the complexities of resigning from a parliamentary seat, he’d completely ignored them.

  ‘I announced that I wouldn’t be recontesting the seat,’ Heather said. ‘Until then I’m still the elected representative, and until then the office stays open.’

  Ellis hesitated. ‘Maybe you . . .’

  ‘I told you before, Ellis, I talked to you about it on Boxing Day. I explained that the only way I could go earlier would be by creating a by-election, and there is no way I could do that with the state election only a few months away.’ She paused. ‘I’ve told you all this, and it was on the news and in the papers. Didn’t you listen to anything I said?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘of course I did. You did tell me and, anyway, I know the situation. It’s my fault entirely, I got carried away by my enthusiasm to be with you. Setting my own agenda. I’m so sorry, Heather.’ His shoulders drooped and he waited for Heather to apologise to him. She always apologised whether or not it was her fault. There was something reassuring about it, especially when it wasn’t her fault. But there was no apology this time – in fact, she didn’t actually say anything and Ellis was left to wallow in his own embarrassment.

  ‘So, what did you want to show me?’ Heather asked briskly, leaning forward to pick up the plunger and pour the coffee.

  Ellis revived. ‘Ah yes, the plans . . . well, a little delayed now, of course, only myself to blame for that.’

  Heather pushed a cup across the table to him and waited.

  ‘Ah, here it is,’ he said. ‘Now, I’m going to show you two things, this is the first.’ He unrolled the drawing, showing the new floor plan of the house and two elevations.

  ‘You’re extending?’ Heather said, pulling her glasses from where they hung tucked into the top of her shirt. ‘It’s going to look lovely. What’s this extra room for?’

  ‘For you,’ Ellis said proudly. ‘It’s a study for you, and here, this one is a second bathroom, for you too. It’s fine right now for me but with both of us living there, we’ll need more space.’

  ‘Living there?’ Heather looked up sharply. ‘Who said anything about living there?’

  Ellis was determined to regain ground but his patience was being sorely tested. ‘Well, we have to live somewhere and what better place than Byron? You loved the house.’

  ‘It’s a beautiful house,’ Heather said, ‘but I never said I wanted to live there. In fact, I never said anything about living with you, Ellis. I have my own house, my own life here.’

  ‘But you’ll sell this place,’ Ellis replied. ‘We don’t need two houses and once you finish working, there’s nothing to keep you here.’

  Heather felt as though she had been gripped by a terrible disease; her throat was dry, her face burning. ‘What do you mean, nothing to keep me?’ she demanded. ‘I love this house, this town, this part of the coast. Of course we’ll have more time together but I never said anything about moving. There are things I’m planning to do here, lots of things. I want to spend time with Barbara, help the women’s refuge find new premises, pin down some funding for the language classes, catch up with friends, heaps of stuff.’

  Ellis understood it now; this was the natural panic of someone giving up an important and demanding job.

  ‘Look, darling,’ he said, ‘I know the prospect of no longer being the honourable member is pretty scary, I felt it myself when the prospect of no longer being learned counsel was hovering, but we have each other and we have this.’ He unrolled the second sheet. ‘See this down here,’ he said, showing her the outline of a new building located in a far corner of his block of land, ‘this is the office, our office. We can run the business from here, heaps of space, air-conditioned, and although it’s lower down the escarpment it still captures the view through the trees.’

  ‘Run what business?’

  ‘That’s my second surprise,’ Ellis said, reaching across in front of her for the revised business plan Luke had given him earlier that day. ‘Head to Heart,’ he said proudly, putting it in front of her so that she could see their two photographs side by side on the front page, their names as joint proprietors underneath. ‘I’m making you an equal partner. It’s my gift to you, Heather. You can run it, do the correspondence and the bookings; oh, and the accounts too. I know you have a real feel for it . . .’

  The disease had Heather by the throat now. Her head was spinning and the inner void that had flummoxed her earlier had become a cauldron of rage. It seethed and churned within her and she rose to her feet, pushing back her chair, stepping away from the table, facing the garden in an effort to get control of herself.

  ‘Now, of course you may feel you want to get into the coaching side too,’ Ellis went on, moved to see that she was now overcome with emotion at his generosity, ‘no reason why you wouldn’t be able to do that once I’ve got you up to speed. And we’ll talk to Luke about branding, how we can package you and me together.’

  Heather’s fever burned bright, melting the ice that encased decades of hurt and resentment, ripping through suppressed emotions and reigniting the spirit so effectively extinguished by Danny’s bullet. Dizzy with shock and anger, she turned to face Ellis with the issue that her anxiety about and avoidance of Head to Heart had silenced until now.

  ‘Tell me, Ellis,’ she said, with a look on her face that he’d never seen before, ‘I know you’ve been busy since we met, and you’ve been working on the book, but I don’t really know anything about what you did before then, the clients you worked with, who they were, how you were able to help them.’

  Ellis straightened the papers on the table. ‘Well, as you said yourself, I haven’t had time since we met to see any clients. There’s been stuff to prepare for Luke, I’ve been looking after you, going back and forth between home and Sydney and here – it’s hardly conducive to maintaining a practice.’

  ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘But previous clients, the case histories Luke asked you for as part of the marketing strategy – have you given them to him yet? Have you contacted the former clients and got permission to use their stories?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Ellis said, seemingly engrossed in searching for something amongst the paperwork.

  ‘And that’s because?’

  ‘Well,’ he said expansively, taking his time, tipping backwards in his chair and locking his fingers behind his head, ‘it’s not quite as easy as it sounds –’

  ‘No, I’m sure it’s not, because you’ve never really worked with anyone at all, have you? You’ve never actually life-coached anyone. All you’ve done is take some dodgy four-week course in California, an
d now you think you’re qualified to tell other people how to live.’

  Ellis rocked forward so hard in his chair he almost fell on his face across the table. ‘Now, look here –’

  ‘No,’ Heather said, moving back to the table, planting her hands on it and staring him full in the face, ‘no, Ellis, you look here. This Head to Heart stuff is a con, a very expensive con designed to rip off people who have inflated opinions of their own importance and more money than is good for them. Just what do you have to offer? What is it that’s different about you now from the person you were at the bar, or the person who abandoned me all those years ago? You talk about achieving selfhood, but you can’t define what you mean. You go on about building an inner life, but your inner life is a fantasy. Just as I was your fantasy. No wonder you found the reality so difficult to cope with.’

  ‘Really . . .’ Ellis began struggling to his feet, his face a fiery red.

  ‘Yes, really,’ Heather went on with the same fluency and passion that had won her debates in parliament. ‘You’re a sham, Ellis, and the worst thing about it is that I don’t think you even realise it. I fell for this because I fell for you, for your grand romantic gesture in coming back and claiming to rescue me from the effects of the shooting. I fell for you because of the past and because I was lonely and frightened, so I deluded myself into thinking that you loved me and, worse still, that I loved you. I fell for you so completely that I even forgave you for the past. I forgave you without question when I should have rubbed your nose in it until you begged for mercy. But you pressed all my buttons and I responded like one of Pavlov’s dogs.’

  ‘But I love you, Heather,’ Ellis said now, moving towards her. ‘You know I do, I love you, I want you to live with me, marry me –’

  ‘Don’t come near me,’ she said, holding up a hand. She felt like Medusa, snakes hissing and flailing around her head. ‘You don’t know what love is, Ellis, and maybe I don’t either or I would have recognised earlier that this is not it. You love only yourself, and you use everyone else to feed your fantasies. I may be confused about love, Ellis, but I believe you are incapable of it.’

  Ellis took a couple of staggering steps backwards. ‘You surely can’t believe that I came to find you just to take advantage of you?’

  Heather shrugged. ‘Maybe you did, or perhaps you are so self-deluding that you convinced yourself that you had other motives. Either way, I let myself be drawn into your madness and colluded with it to an extent that I now find breathtaking. But whichever it was it’s over now, totally and completely over. Pack up your architect’s drawings and your business plans, and that ridiculous box of underwear. Go back to your treetop house. And if the reality of no longer being an eminent person is too much for you, find yourself a fantasy that doesn’t mess with other people’s heads. I don’t ever want to see or hear from you again.’

  It was well after midnight and Adam still couldn’t get to sleep. He lay on his side trying not to disturb Jill but he was itching to move. His legs were restless, his brain buzzing in that pointless, unfocused way that threatens hours of sleeplessness ahead. Perhaps it would be best to get up, go downstairs, make some tea and see if there were some mind-numbing, sleep-inducing rubbish on television. In nine minutes it would be half past one; if he were still awake then, he would get up. Tonight he had played his final concert as a permanent member of the orchestra. There had been drinks afterwards, and his colleagues had presented him with a large and beautiful hardback book on the history of the cello, and there had been the standard gold watch as the formal gift for early retirement.

  ‘The first time we get you in to play as a casual, you have to give it back,’ the general manager had joked as he handed it over. ‘It may be easiest if I just hang on to it.’

  And, amid the laughter, Adam felt the joy of nostalgia; by releasing himself from the orchestra he could now relish the good times, the artistic and social satisfactions that had been swamped by his former discontent. Jill and Diane had come to the concert and the presentation, and when they’d got home they’d opened more champagne. Too much emotion, too much talk and too much champagne . . . he probably wouldn’t get any sleep. One twenty-seven; if he were still awake in three minutes, he’d get up. When the phone rang at quarter to two he was soundly asleep. Fumbling for the receiver, heart pounding with shock, he dragged himself up in the bed, expecting disaster. Beside him, Jill was hauling herself into a sitting position.

  ‘Sorry,’ said a shaky voice at the end of the line. ‘So sorry to wake you . . .’

  ‘Heather?’ Adam asked. ‘Are you okay? Has something happened?’

  ‘Yes and no,’ she said. ‘I am okay, but then I suppose I’m not or I wouldn’t be ringing at this time of night.’

  ‘What is it?’ Adam said, half turning the receiver from his ear so that Jill could hear.

  ‘It’s over,’ Heather said. ‘I’ve ended it with Ellis. He’s gone. I tore him to shreds, and myself too. But it’s over, Adam, it’s all over, and he won’t be back.’

  Adam felt his heart and his gut begin to stabilise. ‘Would you like me to drive up there now?’

  There was a pause at the other end of the line. ‘No,’ Heather said, ‘thank you, it’s lovely of you to offer, far more than I deserve, but no. I just needed to tell someone, to make it real, confirm it to someone else, and for obvious reasons that person had to be you.’

  ‘I see,’ Adam said, aware that the sadness in her voice was underlined with a strength he hadn’t heard for a very long time. ‘And you’re sure this is the right decision?’

  ‘Absolutely sure. I’m so sorry, I accused you of not letting go of the past, when all the time I hadn’t let go of it myself. I’d buried all that anger and hurt and pretended it didn’t matter, so that when Ellis came back I was able to fool myself into believing it. I was so sceptical about all the stuff he said about how romantic it was, but all the time I’d really fallen in love with just that – the idea of having him back, the romance of a second chance. It was his fantasy, him and me together, and I couldn’t wait to join in.’

  ‘It’s understandable,’ Adam said. ‘You would never have taken him back if it hadn’t been for the shooting, what it did to you.’

  Heather gave a dry laugh. ‘Well, that’s my excuse too,’ she said, ‘and I’m going to stick to it. Anyway,’ she went on, ‘I’m sorry to wake you, and Jill too, tell her I’m sorry, for this and for behaving like a lunatic for the past few months.’

  ‘Stop apologising, Heather,’ Adam said. ‘What matters is that it’s over, and you’re okay. We’ll be there with you in the morning, we’ll go and have lunch somewhere and talk it all through.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘that would be lovely. And, Adam? Thanks for . . . for loving me enough to never pretend that it was all okay.’

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘You’re awake, then?’ Barbara said, peering across at Heather as she stretched and rubbed her eyes. ‘Did you sleep well?’

  ‘Not bad,’ Heather said, looking at her watch. ‘Not long now.’ She took a drink from her bottle of water and looked back at Barbara. ‘Excited?’

  ‘Very,’ Barbara said. ‘I still don’t really understand how you managed to organise this.’

  ‘Shaun agreeing to stay on for an extra month, Rosa not complaining about it, and Diane being an incredibly efficient electorate officer.’

  ‘But the party!’

  Heather shrugged. ‘I’d already sacrificed my reputation and goodwill as far as most of my colleagues were concerned, so there wasn’t anything to lose. And taking a month off now is not too bad. I couldn’t have done it any closer to the election. Does it matter to you very much that you’re not doing the teaching?’

  Barbara shook her head. ‘No. I’m going to volunteer to teach classes for migrant women when we get back.’ She let down the tray on the back of the seat in front of her. ‘They’re bringing lunch,’ she said. ‘It’ll probably be rubbery chicken but I’m going to eat it any
way. Helps pass the time.’

  Heather let down her own table. ‘Me too. Why don’t you put your bag on the spare seat? You’ve been clutching it to your chest since take-off.’ She reached out to take the bag but Barbara twisted away from her.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I need to hold it.’

  ‘Whatever for? I’ve never known you be fussy about a bag. Anyone would think you’d brought all your valuables with you.’

  ‘Well,’ Barbara said, lowering her voice, ‘I have, actually. Not valuables in the way you mean, but valuable to me.’ She glanced around and unzipped the leather handbag. ‘It’s George,’ she said, drawing out a battered tobacco tin. ‘I’ve got him in here.’

  ‘What?’ Heather exclaimed. ‘What do you mean, George . . . ?’

  ‘Shush!’ Barbara said, looking around nervously. ‘If you want to transport human remains you have to fill out all sorts of forms and get permission from the next of kin. Well, that’s for bodies, I’m not sure about ashes, but I didn’t ask.’

  ‘You mean you’ve got George’s ashes in a tobacco tin?’

  ‘Yes, it’s his favourite tin. Golden Virginia. He liked the pattern and the colours, green and gold.’

  ‘But I thought you collected the ashes and gave them to his family?’

  ‘I did,’ Barbara said, blushing, ‘most of them. But I liberated a bit of George for myself, and for him too. I opened the container and took some out, and then I resealed it and gave it to his son.’ Heather’s mouth had dropped open. ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Barbara hissed, ‘I only took a little. They’re going to bury the ashes in the grave with his wife and I know he wouldn’t want that. She’d wanted to be buried but George could never stand the thought of being underground himself. That’s why he chose cremation; he thought scattering the ashes was a way to free the spirit.’