by Liz Byrski
‘No going back,’ Julia had said, wiping her eyes.
That evening at the apartment, Julia had steeled herself to break the news that she wanted a divorce.
‘No!’ Simon cried. ‘No, Julia. Please . . . whatever I’ve done, I can put it right. I know I’m an arrogant prick, but I do love you and I can be different.’
But they had been through it all before, many times, albeit without the threat of her leaving, and she knew he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, change. Simon could not be different and she could no longer be what he wanted.
‘I can’t do this anymore, Simon,’ she had said. ‘I can’t keep on trying to be what you want me to be, and not only failing, but resenting having to try.’
‘I don’t think I’ve asked very much of you,’ he’d said then.
‘That’s the problem. You haven’t asked enough! You haven’t wanted me to try new things or take risks. You treat what I now believe in as though it’s a passing fancy, but it’s who I am. You wanted me to stay as I was when we got married – just happy to be an ornament . . .’
‘No!’ he’d protested. ‘It was never that. For god’s sake, you’re my wife, I love you. I want us to have a family.’
‘Can you understand that you’re not asking enough became too much for me? I know that sounds like a crazy contradiction, but it’s how it is. And the one thing you have asked me for is the one thing I can’t do. I know you want to have children and I’ve told you that I don’t, but you don’t listen. You say we should try and just see what happens, as though if I got pregnant, I’d find I was happy about it. Well, I know I won’t and I won’t even risk it . . .’
‘But we have been trying,’ Simon cut in.
She was silent for a moment. ‘You have, Simon, but I haven’t. I’ve been taking the pill.’
He turned sharply to look at her, his face desolate. ‘You what? How could you, Julia? How could you lie to me like that?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. You were so insistent that we should try, and I couldn’t face any more arguments about it. I’m sorry, Simon. I’m not proud of it but I didn’t know what else to do.’
‘What sort of woman doesn’t want children?’ he demanded. ‘What’s wrong with you, Julia? Real women want children, so what’s wrong with you?’
And that was when she had collected the suitcase she had packed that afternoon and left. It was the only really hurtful thing Simon had ever said to her. Sometime later he had apologised, but she hadn’t needed the apology; she knew how much she had hurt him.
A few days later, in her room in Hilary’s flat, Julia woke to find shock replaced with despair. Grief and guilt seeped into her bones like damp. She despised the self she had been; the prideful, shallow girl who had weighed up the pros and cons of her relationship, and arrived at all the wrong conclusions. Her parents’ aspirations for her and the hurt of Tom’s abandonment had certainly been factors, but in the end she had married Simon to have an easy life; for luxury and status, and to escape her parents in the most spectacular way she could.
Later that day, she had taken the Metro to Montmartre and made the steep climb to Sacre Coeur to stand where she had stood with Tom years earlier on the night he had asked her to marry him. Marriage had proved far more complex than she had ever imagined. It was a damp and chilly day. The sky was a solid misty grey that reflected her mood, and, as she stood looking out across the city, it began to rain, a rain that felt light but that quickly soaked her clothes and hair. She turned and opened the heavy wooden door.
Inside the cathedral, light drifted in through the high arched windows and candles flickered in the wrought-iron candelabras. From the choir stalls the voices of nuns practising their chorus rose in perfect harmony. Julia slipped a handful of francs into the box, picked a candle for Simon and lit it. Was it an apology, or a wish that he would find happiness? Both, perhaps. The second candle she lit for the wisdom and integrity to be true to herself in the future.
It was Hilary who had held Julia together in the months that followed, until she finally made up her mind to come back to England and start again. And it was Hilary who had worked so hard with her to build the business, and who, years later, held the fort at home and ran the language school during the long months in which Julia felt compelled to stay at Greenham Common.
And now, Julia thinks, walking on again, feeling the snowflakes melting on her face, their icy trickles inside her collar, now Hilary’s life is ending. And she really doesn’t know how she is going to cope with that.
It’s Tom who takes the call, just as he and Richard are about to go to The George for a midday pint. He writes a note telling Julia to join them at the pub if she comes in, props it up against the jug of Christmas roses on the kitchen table, and is following Richard out the door when the phone rings.
‘Shortly after your wife left, I’m afraid,’ the director of nursing tells him. ‘I’ve been trying to call Mrs Hammond on the mobile but it seems to be switched off. It was all very peaceful.’ Tom puts down the phone and sinks into a nearby chair. He has known Hilary for most of his life. After his marriage to Alison, embarrassment led him to drop out of touch for several years. And then, after that extraordinary day when he had, for once in his life, abandoned caution and driven out to the peace camp, in finding Julia, he’d also rediscovered Hilary.
‘Two for the price of one,’ he remembers her saying to him when he’d driven down to see her the following day. ‘A bargain.’
Tom rests his elbows on his knees and puts his head in his hands. Knowing it was coming doesn’t make it any easier. In recent years he has grown closer to Hilary than he is to anyone except Julia, and now she’s gone and he has to break the news to his wife. Tears run down Tom’s cheeks. He rubs them off and fumbles for his handkerchief as sobs choke him.
‘Get a move on, Tom,’ Richard shouts from the front step, ‘the beer’s getting warm.’
Tom gulps and tries to blow his nose. He is incapable of moving.
‘What the hell are you . . .’ Richard pauses in the doorway. ‘Oh Lord. Is it Hilary?’
Tom nods, tears coursing uncontrollably down his face. ‘Just after Julia left,’ he manages to say. ‘Very peaceful, they said.’
Richard sits on the arm of the chair and grips Tom’s shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry, Tom.’
Tom nods, speechless.
‘So, Jules doesn’t know yet? Any idea where she might be?’
Tom shrugs. She could be anywhere, he thinks; the beach, maybe just somewhere in town having a coffee. Suddenly he feels very old. Hilary, being so much younger than Eric, had always seemed young and she was only eight years older than he is. Tom’s usual sense of himself as being lodged somewhere between eighteen and thirty has evaporated. We can kid ourselves most of the time, he thinks, but at my age, every day is a bonus.
‘Should we go and look for her?’ Richard asks. He has collected a bottle of brandy from the kitchen, and pours some into a glass and hands it to Tom. ‘Here, drink this. It’ll do you good.’
Tom swallows the brandy and feels the glow. ‘I don’t think there’s any point in driving around. She could be anywhere,’ he says. ‘But we could walk up to The Copper Kettle, she likes the coffee there.’ He thinks he sounds in control now and that it’s amazing what you can achieve with a tone of voice. Tom knows he’s going to need that tone of voice a lot in the days ahead.
TWENTY-THREE
Cottesloe – New Year’s Day 2000
It’s almost midnight when Justine wakes. She lies very still in the darkness, listening to Dan’s breathing. All the time he was away, she had feared for his safety and worried that distance might change his feelings for her. On both counts she was, by turns, confident and despairing. A few times she had wondered if, once he was away from her, Dan would dwell on the difference in their ages and decide that it was too great. He’d told her that it didn’t matter, but she couldn’t avoid worrying that it might. But then there would be a letter or an email or, eve
n better, a phone call from him and the world would be restored to rights again. Then, a week ago, he had called to tell her he was on his way back to Perth. He hadn’t yet told his family, he said, because he wanted to spend a few days with her before he went home. She hadn’t even known he’d been injured until he arrived at the door on crutches. They’d had five blissful days together before he felt he should make an appearance at home on New Year’s Eve.
Needing to touch him now, but not wanting to wake him, Justine rests her cheek lightly against his shoulder and gently strokes Dan’s back, and then slips quietly out of bed. On the balcony, she lights the citronella candle and sits watching the dark surface of the ocean gleaming in the moonlight. They’d known each other only a couple of months before Dan had been posted to East Timor, and they had met in such an unlikely way that the whole thing had seemed surreal. Now, as she sits here in the mild evening air, it still has the feel of magic.
It had happened one Saturday, a day on which Justine usually worked at the nursery. A friend whom she’d met years earlier at the horticultural course was heading off to a job in New Zealand and had organised a farewell lunch in town, so Justine had taken the day off and decided to take the train rather than drive so she could have a couple of drinks. Arriving at the station just as the train drew in, she had leapt aboard as the doors were closing. She lurched thankfully into the carriage and promptly tripped over someone’s feet, almost ending up in his lap.
‘Whoa!’ he cried, catching her arm and steering her into the adjacent seat. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Fine, thanks,’ Justine said, looking up at him, embarrassed by her own awkwardness. ‘I’m so sorry; I hope I didn’t hurt you.’
‘On the contrary,’ he said. ‘For a moment there, I thought my luck had changed very much for the better. And, anyway, I’m the one who should apologise. I had my big feet sticking out.’
There had been a brief and lighthearted argument about who was responsible, and then an exchange about the dyed green hair of a fellow passenger. Ten minutes later, as the train pulled into Perth, they were arguing over whether Cottesloe beach was as good as Leighton, or even Fremantle’s South Beach.
‘Watch your step now!’ he’d said with a broad grin as they parted on the platform.
And Justine, laughing, strolled off through the arts precinct into Northbridge, replaying the encounter in her head. In a weird sort of way, it had felt as though they knew each other, and he was undeniably attractive; tall and well built, dark skinned but probably, she thought, like herself, of mixed race, part African or Caribbean, maybe.
A large lunch and a few glasses of wine later, back at the station, she moved close to the edge of the platform as her train pulled in.
‘Would you like a hand getting on?’ said a voice just behind her, and almost jumping out of her skin, she swung round to find him standing there. Perhaps it was the effect of the wine, or the huge pink teddy bear wrapped in cellophane that he was carrying under one arm, but in that moment something quite extraordinary happened.
‘I felt as though we were in another dimension,’ Dan had told her weeks later. ‘Almost as though I’d known you from another time, and all my life until then had been leading up to that moment.’
Justine doesn’t know how long they stood there, just looking at each other, but it was long enough for the train to pull out of the station.
‘I hope you weren’t in a hurry,’ she’d said.
He shook his head, and she saw him swallow hard; embarrassed, she thought, as she was now. He shifted the teddy to the other arm. ‘I have all the time in the world. And you . . .’
She shrugged. ‘Me too.’
‘Well then, maybe . . . I mean, could I buy you a drink?’
Justine, ever cautious and self-contained, hesitated, about to decline. But something undefinable in the way he was looking at her made her want to capture and hold onto the moment. She normally found it hard to trust strangers and yet she trusted him.
Together they walked out of the station and across Forest Place, weaving their way through the arcades, past shops that were closing and people heading out of town for the evening, down to the Barrack Street Jetty, and ran the last few steps to the South Perth ferry just as the attendant closed the gangway.
‘We can go to CoCo’s or one of those other places on the waterfront,’ Dan said, sitting the teddy on the seat.
Justine stared at the huge pink bear, a flush burning her face as she realised what it meant. A pink teddy – he was a father, a husband. The sudden bolt of disappointment pulled her up sharply. Don’t be stupid, she told herself, you’re going for a drink, that’s all. You met a nice guy on a train, and you’re having a drink, not interviewing a life partner.
‘Do you have a daughter?’ she asked as the ferry ploughed away from the jetty.
‘A daughter? No . . .’ he said, puzzled until he saw she was looking at the teddy. ‘Oh, that! No, I have a sister – two sisters, actually – and Gaby, the youngest, has a birthday next week. She reckons she’s had a deprived childhood because she never had one of these monstrosities. This is the largest I could find. I’m wondering how I’ll get it in the house without her seeing it. If I’d come by car I could have hidden it in the boot, but the car’s being serviced.’
‘I hardly ever get the train,’ Justine said. ‘I just didn’t want to drive home after lunch.’
‘We were obviously meant to meet today,’ Dan said with a smile. ‘Thank god for public transport.’
Later, much later, they had shared a taxi, which dropped Justine off first, in Cottesloe.
‘If you take this and hide it for me, Gaby won’t see it,’ Dan said, thrusting the teddy at her. ‘And I would have an excuse to borrow my mum’s car and drive over tomorrow to pick it up, which would mean I could take you for breakfast by the beach.’
How strange that something as simple as taking a train could change your life in an instant, Justine thinks now. And how strange that one microsecond in which a person’s expression changes and is rapidly corrected can strike fear in her heart. It has been a difficult day and she suspects there are more ahead.
Did Dan see what happened at his parents’ place? She thinks probably not, as he would have mentioned it; he’s not one to avoid difficult topics. She had been nervous about meeting his family for the first time, especially as he’d only told them about her the previous night, but Dan had convinced her that it would be fine.
‘They’re really excited about meeting you,’ he’d told her on the phone last night. ‘But they think I just got back today, and I’d rather it stayed that way.’
‘I’ll behave as though it’s the first time I’ve seen you in months,’ she’d said. And this morning she’d made a berry cheesecake and put on a lemon-yellow cotton dress that always gave her confidence, and set off clutching the cake and a bottle of champagne.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Gwen had said, just as she was about to leave. ‘They’ll love you; why wouldn’t they?’
‘You think?’
‘Of course. Look, no one would think twice about it if he were older than you.’
‘No, but he’s not, is he? And then there’s the rest of it . . .’
‘Now you’re just being silly,’ Gwen said. ‘Dan’s father was black; his family is hardly going to have problems with you.’
Justine watches the distant lights of a ship, moving very slowly along the horizon towards Fremantle. Why couldn’t it be easy, for once? She relives the moment when Dan’s face lit up as his mother came towards them, and then the look on Zoë’s face as he introduced them. She had faltered slightly, retrieved her smile and extended her hand. Justine has been on the sharp end of enough prejudice to know that for some people there is a world of difference between social acceptance and actually welcoming someone of another race into the family. And she suspected that there was a difference, too, between being an Indigenous Australian and being exotically half Jamaican. But everything Dan had told her ha
d encouraged her to believe that his mother was a generous, open-minded woman, who would welcome her; very different, he’d said, from his grandmother.
‘Jus?’ she hears Dan call.
‘I’m here,’ she says, coming in from the balcony and climbing back onto the bed beside him. ‘I was sitting out there watching the ocean.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Just after midnight. Are you hungry?’
‘A bit. It is quite a long time since lunch.’ He pulls her gently towards him and strokes her arm. ‘Did you sleep too?’
‘Yes, I only woke up about ten minutes ago. All that champagne and wild sex! Not bad for a man with a dodgy leg.’
‘Mmmmm! Tell me about it. No, don’t or I’ll start all over again, and I’d really like something to eat first.’
‘There’s heaps of stuff in the fridge.’
‘Hang on,’ he says. ‘Before we eat, I need to talk to you.’
‘Talk away, then.’
‘All the time I was away, I was thinking of one thing – of coming back to you. I love you so much that I can’t imagine now how it would be not having you in my life,’ he says, stroking her shoulder.
‘I love you too, Dan . . .’ she begins, but he stops her with a kiss.
‘I haven’t quite finished.’
‘Sorry, sir,’ she says laughing, ‘should’ve asked permission to speak.’
‘I’ll overlook your insubordination on this occasion because I have something to ask you.’
‘Ask away.’
‘Okay.’ He pauses and she feels him take a deep breath. ‘It’s about my job. You know that I can be sent somewhere on the spur of the moment, and won’t be able to tell you where, or for how long. I may not even have time to say goodbye.’
Justine swallows; she has thought of this long and often during his absence. ‘I know,’ she says. ‘You told me all that before. I just had a dose of it, anyway.’