‘I know you don’t like me,’ said Rose; and her voice had entirely lost its friendliness. ‘I know you wish none of this had happened. But here I am, Jenny. I’m part of your dad’s life and I’m part of your life and we have to learn to live with each other.’
‘I don’t have to learn anything.’ My mother’s voice trembled.
Grandpa put a hand up, as if he was stopping traffic. ‘Jen, dear. Let’s not let this get out of hand.’
‘Oh,’ said my mother, with a kind of exaggerated precision I found horrible. ‘Out of hand? I think all of this got out of hand a long time ago.’
‘What might that be supposed to mean?’ asked Rose.
‘Please don’t play dumb,’ said my mother. ‘I know what you’ve been up to.’
I stole a glance at Grandpa and Rose and saw that shock had replaced anxiety on Grandpa’s face. I could tell that Rose was furious.
‘Oh, yes,’ my mother raged on. ‘I know exactly what you’ve been doing.’
‘Perhaps you’d explain that remark,’ said Rose, evenly.
‘You know what it means. You killed my mother.’
The words fell through the air, hard and black and heavy. There was a terrible pause.
‘Don’t deny it, please,’ said my mother. ‘I know you did it. Nicky heard you talking about it. He told me.’
‘No,’ I said, desperate. ‘No.’
‘Oh, Nicky,’ said Rose, and her voice was full of contempt. ‘How could you?’
‘I didn’t,’ I cried. Nobody was listening.
‘You don’t understand, Jen,’ said Grandpa. ‘You simply don’t understand.’
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I don’t.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Truly. This is a ridiculous accusation. You have no idea.’
‘I don’t want to have an idea,’ she snapped. ‘You’re my father. Please don’t make it all worse by pretending this can be forgotten, or hidden, or that we can all just go on as if it never happened. I’m appalled by you; I’m disgusted.’
He had been moving towards her, his hand outstretched. Now it fell to his side.
‘Jenny, dear. If it’s really true that Nicky told you this’—he glanced at me—‘then he dreadfully misunderstood something he heard.’
‘You killed her,’ shouted my mother. ‘Between you, you killed her. And don’t carry on about mercy killing or helping her or any such garbage. Didie was a Catholic. Didie didn’t believe in mercy killings. She believed in the sanctity of life; she believed in mortal sin. Didie would never, ever have wanted to die like this.’
‘Didie didn’t die like this,’ said Rose. ‘Didie died of ovarian cancer.’
‘You should think about what you are saying, Jen,’ said Grandpa. ‘This is enormously hurtful and insulting: this notion that I would behave—that Rose or I would behave—in the manner you are suggesting. I utterly repudiate it.’
‘Tell me one thing,’ said my mother, as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘Tell me if you started sleeping together while Didie was still alive.’
‘You bloody cow!’ cried Rose. Her face was contorted and bright pink. I looked at her and then away again.
My mother turned to Grandpa. ‘Well, Dad?’
He gazed at her. Now it was as if he were the one who was paralysed.
‘That’s my answer, then,’ said my mother.
Rose stepped forward and put her hand on Grandpa’s arm. ‘How dare you speak to us like this? How dare you come into our home, screaming at us and insulting us?’
‘I don’t have to stay and listen to this,’ said my mother. ‘Nicky, are you coming?’ She turned to Rose. ‘You seduced and entrapped him,’ she said. ‘For that alone, you should be absolutely ashamed of yourself. For the rest, I haven’t got words.’
‘From what I hear, your own behaviour isn’t exactly beyond reproach.’ Rose’s eyes were glittering.
‘What the hell do you mean by that?’
‘I understand you’re having a bit on the side.’
‘How dare you?’ My mother was shouting.
‘Oh, I can dare,’ said Rose, silkily. ‘After the way you’ve treated your father, believe me, there isn’t much I won’t dare.’
My mother grabbed my shoulder and started to shepherd me to the door.
‘Nicky,’ called Rose.
I turned.
She raised her hand and brought it down in a sweeping motion on the so-nearly completed jigsaw. She opened her palm and slid the entire thing to the floor, where it collapsed into rubble.
‘That’s what you get for betraying people,’ she said.
‘Bitch,’ yelled my mother. ‘You stupid bitch.’
She had her hand now in my back and hustled me out the door and to the footpath. There she turned on me. ‘How dare you gossip about me to Rose? How dare you?’
Her open hand slapped my face.
‘I didn’t,’ I sobbed. ‘I didn’t, I didn’t.’
‘Get in the car and shut up,’ she said. She had never in her life hit me. She had never spoken to me like that. I collapsed in the back seat and wept. When we reached home I ran up the stairs and hid in my bedroom. My father called out to me as I ran past: he was back from the qualifying final and I knew Hawthorn had won. But I had no interest in listening. I shoved a chair up against the door of my bedroom, in case anyone tried to break in. But nobody did.
I could hear my parents’ voices from downstairs. My mother was still shouting and before long my father’s voice too was raised and angry. I cried and cried. It was as if I had plummeted without warning into the worst possible nightmare, with no prospect of escape.
Time passed and gradually my tears ceased. It was very dark. I found that I was hungry, but it was impossible to go downstairs and ask about dinner. I lay on my bed and thought about the cruel line of Rose’s mouth, and the sweeping movement of her arm as she had wrecked the jigsaw, and how the picture had dissolved as the linked pieces had broken up on the floor. I heard her voice: That’s what you get for betraying people. I thought about the moment when my mother turned on me in such fury. My cheek still stung from her blow.
I hadn’t betrayed Grandpa and Rose—at least, not intentionally. And I hadn’t betrayed my mother at all. I had done nothing wrong, and I couldn’t understand why everything had become so dark and everybody appeared to hate me.
My parents had stopped shouting at each other, but I could still hear the low undercurrent of their voices, sharp and hostile.
I heard the back door close and my mother’s footsteps, very brisk, and the car starting up and being driven out, not slowly. There was silence for a while.
I couldn’t understand how with all that had happened I could still feel hungry, but I was. My head was aching, too, as it usually did when I cried in a prolonged way, and I knew I had to get some aspirin into me. Eventually I went to the bathroom and raided the bottle. As I headed back to my room, my father was coming up the stairs holding a plate with a large sandwich on it.
‘Nicky,’ he said, in a subdued voice. ‘How are you, old son?’
‘Okay,’ I said, eyeing the sandwich.
‘It’s cheese and vegemite,’ he said, apologetically. ‘I thought you might be hungry. Is cheese and vegemite okay?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s fine. Thank you.’
‘Do you want to have it up here or in the kitchen?’
I really wanted to be left alone in my room, but it seemed impolite to say so.
‘In the kitchen,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
He looked pleased and we went down the stairs.
‘Pippa will be home later,’ he said, as if he were announcing something especially calculated to cheer me up.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘One of the parents is driving her home, Mummy says.’
‘Yes.’
He waved a glass at me. ‘Would you like a drink? A Milo?’
‘Yes, please.’
He got the Milo tin and the milk out and started inexp
ertly mixing.
‘Did you listen to the footy today?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I said, trying to sound glad. I had asked Grandpa to check the score. The Hawks had defeated the Dogs by ninety-three points.
‘Ninety-three points!’ said my father. ‘Ninety-three points!’
‘Did the Doggies play badly?’ I asked. I was relieved that our conversation was straying back into familiar channels.
‘Pathetic. Totally pathetic. Not that you can take anything away from our men. Glorious stuff, Nicky.’ My father’s customary enthusiasm was returning and his voice was gaining confidence. ‘Glorious. You know something: Tuck wasn’t playing. Tuck’s injured. And you know what? They did not even miss him. Did not even miss him. Didn’t matter.’
‘Gosh.’
‘We almost didn’t miss Knights!’
‘Gosh.’
‘Precision! Fluidity! Power!’
‘Yes.’
I was beginning to find this oddly soothing.
‘A mighty team, Nicky! A mighty team!’
‘How did Lethal play?’
I could see the answer wasn’t simple.
‘Lethal is working his way back. Not his best game; not his worst. Two goals, four behinds. He’s getting there. Next week he’ll be right on top again.’
‘We’re playing Essendon, aren’t we?’
‘Too right. We’ll knock ’em over, Nicky. Not a worry in the world.’
‘How was Brereton?’
‘Oh! Dermie! Oh!’
I waited for my father to recover from his speechlessness.
‘Three goals, two behinds, but the stats don’t tell half the story. Dermie played a blinder. Absolute blinder.’
‘That’s good,’ I said.
I became aware that he was staring at me. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘That red mark. On your cheek.’
‘Mummy hit me,’ I said.
There was silence. I was surprised to see an expression on his face of anguish at least equal to that produced by a Hawks loss.
He clasped his hands together and shook his head. He looked down at the table. ‘That’s awful,’ he said. ‘That’s really awful. It must have hurt a lot.’
‘It did,’ I said.
‘But she didn’t mean it, Nicky.’
I considered this. ‘It looked as if she meant it.’
He leaned towards me. ‘Don’t worry about your mother, Nicky,’ he said, gently.
‘Okay,’ I said, helpless in the face of this conviction.
‘It’s like I told you and Pippa. She’s not quite herself at the moment.’
‘No.’
‘We just have to be patient. It will all come right. I promise you.’
‘I wondered—’ I said.
‘Yes?’
I had developed a theory about my mother, but I thought perhaps my father would jeer at it, and I didn’t want to endanger this new closeness between us.
‘It might sound a bit silly.’
‘Suppose you try,’ said my father, with his eerie new gentleness.
‘Well. The thing is, when Elaine was in love with Launcelot, she got a lady called Brysen to help her, and Brysen put an enchantment on Launcelot, and it meant Launcelot thought Elaine was Guinevere. And so Elaine got Launcelot to—well, to do things, and he didn’t realise she was Elaine. He thought she was Guinevere. And then Elaine had Galahad.’
My father was bewildered. ‘I’m not quite with you, Nicky,’ he said.
‘I thought,’ I said, finding this harder than I had anticipated. ‘I thought perhaps Mr Bloomberg had enchanted Mummy.’
My father looked terribly sad.
‘Something like that, Nicky,’ he said. ‘Yes, I think something like that has happened.’
‘But you need to remember,’ I said. ‘Launcelot did get unenchanted.’
He made a ghastly attempt to smile.
‘We’ll all hope for an unenchantment, then,’ he said. ‘Does your face still hurt, Nicky?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Well, yes. But only a bit, really.’
He put his hand to my cheek. ‘She didn’t mean it,’ he said. ‘Trust me, Nicky. She didn’t mean it.’
THE SEMI-FINALS
I couldn’t shake the gloomy knowledge that Grandpa and Rose believed me guilty of betraying them. It hung about me like a shaggy black cloud. I relived conversations, tried to recall words and phrases. I saw the jigsaw collapsing on the carpet at Grandpa’s house. I saw Rose sweeping it to the floor; I heard the frostiness of her voice. I told myself that it wasn’t her fault, that she was mistaken, that if I could only talk to her she would hug me again and everything would magically straighten out. I yearned for that hug: I thought of it constantly, of the sweet, clean smell of Rose and the sturdy feel of her and her beautiful hair spilling, gleaming and glamorous, over her pink-jumpered shoulders.
It was the week building up to the two semi-finals and my father was focusing with grim resolve on Saturday’s match, in which Hawthorn would play Essendon. The following day Footscray would play North Melbourne, which was obviously of lesser interest, except that the winner would play the loser of the previous day’s game in the preliminary final. Essendon had of course been playing with terrifying efficiency and the depth of my father’s delusion was indicated by his belief that they might be in any danger from the Hawks or any other team. As was always the case, he did not understand that the outcome was of no interest to anyone in the house except for himself: this single-mindedness was made more evident and even more bizarre than usual by the shock-waves rocking our small world.
And, before the weekend of the two semi-finals arrived, our lives were fractured further. It was early in the week, in the evening. I was heading downstairs after dinner to find a school book I had left somewhere. On the landing, I heard voices, and I stopped.
‘You’re impossible,’ my mother cried.
My father made an agonised grunting noise.
‘I can’t talk to you. You’re impossible. You’ve had your head in the sand for months, and I’ve tried to tell you, but it’s not my fault you won’t listen. It’s not my fault, do you hear me? I’ve tried and tried to tell you.’
He said something in a low voice.
‘No,’ she hissed. ‘No and no and no. Why should I stay?’
He said something else, and she gave a sharp bark.
‘Don’t make me laugh!’ she cried, her voice spiky with scorn. ‘The children indeed! When have you ever cared about the children?’
‘That’s the most unjust thing you’ve ever said to me.’
‘I’m the one who does everything for the children,’ she shrieked. ‘You make their lives a misery.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Yes, it is. It is! You force Nicky into that awful football stuff and he can’t stand it. And you’re not interested in Pippa. You don’t care.’
‘That is ridiculous.’
‘It’s true!’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ said my father. ‘Keep your voice down.’
‘Why?’ she screamed. ‘Are you worried about what people think? Frank, it doesn’t matter what people think. Haven’t you worked that out by now?’
‘Actually,’ said my father, ‘I’m worried about the children, not what anybody might or mightn’t think. I know you’re upset, Jenny, but do try to be a bit quieter.’
‘Oh, you know I’m upset? Well, I guess that’s an improvement. Do I have to shout and scream before you notice anything’s wrong?’
‘Shouting and screaming is completely unnecessary. Believe me.’
I heard a clinking noise as of the neck of a bottle glancing off a glass.
‘Well,’ said my mother, more quietly. ‘I’m sorry, Frank, but this is going nowhere.’
‘What? What is going nowhere? This conversation? Our lives? The planet?’
‘Our marriage.’
‘That’s an easy thing to say.’
; ‘It’s been going nowhere for years. Years and years.’
‘That is not true. You’re twisting things.’
‘I’m not twisting anything. We’re dead. We’ve been dead for years. There’s nothing left.’
‘You are trying to provoke me.’
‘God almighty!’ said my mother. ‘If only I knew how!’
‘I know that you will, one day, get over this infatuation of yours. I only wish it would happen sooner rather than later.’
‘It’s not an infatuation. You’re calling it that because it suits you, because you don’t understand, because you won’t face up to things.’
‘That’s what it is. Purely and simply. Infatuation.’
Her voice rose. ‘It isn’t.’
When my father spoke his voice was quieter, so that I had to strain to hear it, but more urgent too, with a note to it I’d never heard before.
‘Jen, what can I do? I’ve said this before: I’ll do anything. Tell me what I can do to make things right.’
‘It’s too late. I’m sorry, it’s just too late. I keep telling you. It’s over.’
‘It can’t be over. Think, Jen. Think of all the times we’ve had together; think of all we share. You can’t just say it’s over.’
‘Oh yes I can,’ said my mother, venomous and unwavering. ‘It’s over.’
He gave a deep sigh with a vast current inside it. ‘You’re honestly saying you’re going to walk out on the children?’
‘No,’ she said.
My father’s voice altered again—harder, flatter. ‘You are not taking my children away from me.’
‘You don’t care about them.’
‘That isn’t true and you know it. I repeat—there is no way in the world that you will take my children away.’
She made a strange exhaling sort of noise: it was angry and contemptuous and defeated, all at once.
‘For Christ’s sake, Jenny, I beg you. Let’s give it another go.’
‘It’s too late. How often do I have to tell you? I’m going.’
‘What do you plan to tell Pippa and Nicky? What will you tell them?’
‘I’ll tell them the truth,’ she shouted.
There was a noise of chair legs scraping the floor, and I pictured my father slouching at the table, brooding over a drink, his face dark and sombre.
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