Bad Behaviour

by Liz Byrski

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘How was it?

  ‘Horrible. But better than not knowing you, not loving you.’

  ‘Really? So, will you marry me, then?’

  Her throat goes dry. ‘Marry you? Is that really what you want?’

  ‘Obviously. That’s why I asked you.’

  She props herself on her elbow to see him better. He is looking straight at her, smiling, but she can see a sliver of fear that she might reject him. She looks deep into his eyes. ‘I’m twelve years older than you.’

  ‘So, what’s your point?’

  ‘Some people would think it matters.’

  ‘Well, I’m not one of them.’

  ‘Your family?’

  ‘It won’t bother them,’ he says.

  She pauses, her skin prickling with excitement, and leans forward to kiss him lightly on the lips. ‘Then, yes,’ she says. ‘Of course I’ll marry you; yes, yes, yes!’

  His arms are around her now, and he lets out a great whoop of delight as they roll across the bed laughing, kissing, and suddenly he is inside her again.

  ‘There’s one thing, though,’ Justine says, as they finally get up and pull their clothes on to go to the kitchen in search of food. ‘There’s stuff I need to tell you.’ And, as she says it, she wishes she hadn’t. There is so much to explain, not just what happened with Zoë, but about the past. He knows only that she went from the convent to the farm, and that when Gwen sold the property, they came to Cottesloe to live with Gwen’s mother. She will have to tell him the rest and soon, but not tonight; she needs a little more time. And that, she thinks, is perhaps what Zoë needs too.

  ‘Then tell me,’ he says. ‘But not tonight, because it sounds serious and there’s nothing you can tell me that will change the fact that you are the love of my life, and you have promised to marry me. You know the SAS motto – who dares wins. I’ve dared and I’ve won.’

  ‘I think she’s cool,’ Rosie says, collecting the dirty glasses. ‘And Dan’s besotted with her.’

  Archie stands with a bag full of rubbish in his hand. ‘Yep, our Dan’s a goner this time, that’s pretty obvious. I liked her too, very much. Gabs?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Gaby says, picking up a stray VB can from the deck. ‘She’s really nice. Mum, you like Justine too, don’t you? Well, you already knew her from the nursery.’

  Zoë, standing in the kitchen clutching the soiled tablecloths, pretends not to hear and hurries to the laundry, where she stuffs them in the washing machine and slams the lid closed. Her face burns as she recalls attempting to mask her shock. Why did Dan spring Justine on them like this? Was it some sort of test? Well, if it was, she has failed it miserably and she’s not ashamed of that. Except, of course, that she is or she wouldn’t be hiding in the laundry. She tries not to give in to tears. Justine is probably a very nice woman, but she’s not the right woman for Dan. Anyway, it may not last; previous girlfriends have run a mile from his job. Justine will probably be the same: unable to tolerate the secrecy, the absences, the demands of the army.

  ‘Where are you, Zo?’ Archie calls from the kitchen. ‘I’m making tea.’

  Zoë takes a deep breath and walks out of the laundry. ‘Here,’ she says. ‘I was putting the tablecloths in the washer.’

  ‘You want tea?’

  ‘Desperately!’

  ‘Good. The girls and I were talking about Justine.’

  Zoë’s jaw tightens.

  ‘We’ve given her the stamp of approval.’

  ‘Yep,’ Gaby says, coming in from the deck to put the unused paper napkins away in the cupboard. ‘I really like her. She comes from the Pilbara.’

  ‘D’you think she’s one of those children who were taken away?’ Rosie asks, leaning on the door jamb. ‘She’s not a full-blooded Aboriginal, is she?’

  Archie shakes his head. ‘No. I guess she might be – she’s the right sort of age. What d’you think, Zo?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Do you think she’s one of the kids who were taken from their families?’

  ‘Stolen generation,’ Rosie says. ‘I might ask her next time.’

  ‘She’s really pretty,’ Gaby says. ‘And she’s got those cool thongs, the gold ones with all the sparkly bits, like I want.’

  ‘She’s a lot older than Dan,’ Zoë says.

  ‘She’s certainly older than I expected,’ Archie agrees.

  ‘She’s forty-three,’ Rosie says. ‘But she looks much younger.’

  ‘Forty-three!’ Zoë gasps. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘She told me,’ Rosie says. ‘I asked her.’

  ‘Twelve years.’ Zoë looks at Archie. ‘That’s a lot. Don’t you think it’s a lot?’

  He shrugs, handing round the mugs of tea. ‘It’s quite a bit but it doesn’t really matter, does it? I mean, we wouldn’t even be talking about it if it was the other way round.’

  ‘We might!’

  ‘I doubt it.’ He sips his tea and pauses. ‘I’m nine years older than you and we never discussed that. Something wrong, love?’

  Zoë shakes her head. ‘Not really.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she hesitates. ‘Well, I’m a bit hurt, I suppose. They left so early. He’s just gone off with her for the night and it’s only twenty-four hours since he got home.’

  Archie throws back his head and laughs, then tips his chair forward and strokes her hair. ‘He’s in love, Zo, they’re in love, and they haven’t seen each other for months. What d’you expect?’

  ‘I think he could have stayed here, for tonight at least. We’re his family, after all.’ And, as she says it, Zoë can hear something horribly familiar in her voice. She sounds just like her mother.

  Archie doesn’t wait up. Zoë’s annoying him. She’s doing that thing when she won’t say what’s really upsetting her. Her mouth goes all tight and, although you get the feeling she wants you to beg her to tell you what’s wrong, her body language says to leave her alone. So he has. He believes that you treat people with respect and get the same in return, but tonight he’s tired of Zoë’s menopausal moods, of the effort of trying to empathise, to watch what he says in case she takes it the wrong way. It’s been a good day, but now Zoë’s being a pain in the arse and Archie can’t be bothered.

  Dan, he thinks, what a bloody brilliant bloke he’s turned out to be. That serious, bright little boy – often too bright for his own good. Now look at him. Survives the toughest the army has to offer and comes out with flying colours. Archie stares up at the bedroom ceiling and locks his arms behind his head, thinking of how scared he was of Dan way back when.

  ‘I’ve never had anything to do with kids,’ he remembers saying to Zoë. ‘I don’t really know what to do with them.’

  ‘Just be yourself,’ she’d said. ‘You’re already his hero.’

  But it’s not so easy when they’re not your own; when you haven’t been around them from the start and you don’t know what the boundaries are. What if I don’t agree with the way she wants to raise him? Am I supposed to do the disciplining or should I leave that to her? Will I love him as much when I have my own kids? But Dan has become Archie’s son, and now he’s a man, he’s a friend as well and he’s got this lovely woman.

  It’s going to be a good year, Archie tells himself now. But he knows it has to start right. He remembers a time when Rosie was about thirteen and she’d been in trouble for something that had made him bawl her out and she had ended up in tears. Later, feeling guilty that he’d been too hard on her, he’d gone up to her room and found her sitting on her bed, reading. When she looked up there was a crushed look in her eyes that nearly broke him.

  ‘I’m really sorry, Dad,’ she’d said. And he’d hoped she wasn’t going to cry again because he might find himself doing the same thing.

  ‘It’s okay, love,’ he’d said, sitting down on the end of the bed. ‘All over now. You were in the wrong but I overreacte
d. I’m sorry.’ And she’d dropped her book and flung her arms around his neck.

  ‘I love you so much,’ she’d said. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  They’d talked for a while and when he stood to leave he picked up the book from the floor.

  ‘Little Women,’ he’d said, looking at the cover. ‘That’s an old one. Good, is it?’

  ‘It’s brilliant,’ Rosie said, and she began to flick through the pages. ‘And do you know what it says? That you should never let the sun go down on your anger. I like that, don’t you? I mean, suppose you’d gone to bed angry with me and died, or something, or I’d died.’

  The thought was so terrible that it took Archie’s breath away. ‘It would have been really awful,’ he said, with some difficulty. ‘Really, really awful, sweetheart. I’ll remember that, always; I promise.’ And he’d kissed her again, and left the room feeling so emotional that he’d had to take the dog out for a walk to get himself back together again.

  As he recalls this now he sighs wearily, gets out of bed and pads through to the kitchen, where Zoë is, for some reason, sorting through the contents of the fridge. He goes up behind her and puts his arms around her waist; she stiffens, straightens and then relaxes against him.

  ‘I thought you were asleep,’ she says, tipping her head back onto his shoulder.

  Archie kisses her neck, just below her ear. ‘I missed you,’ he says. ‘Stop sulking and come to bed.’

  ‘I’m not sulking.’

  ‘Then stop whatever it is you’re doing and come to bed.’

  She turns and puts her arms around him, her face against his shoulder. ‘Say it again,’ she says.

  ‘Say what again?’

  ‘That thing you said when everyone was here, the New Year toast thing.’

  ‘Ah,’ Archie says, trying to recall his exact words. ‘Er . . . new century, New Year, a time to break new ground . . .’ He hesitates. ‘Break new ground, strive to be better and love each other more than ever. Was that it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘that sounds right.’

  ‘Then, come on, lovely one,’ he says, kissing the top of her head. ‘Come to bed and we’ll love each other more than ever. That’ll be hard, of course, because I love you so much already, even when you’ve got the grumps.’

  Zoë looks up. ‘Don’t push your luck,’ she says. And she kisses the line of his jaw, closes the fridge door and lets him lead her into their bedroom.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Rye – Mid-January 2000

  It’s a glorious winter’s day; the ground gleams with frost, but the snow has gone and the sun shines from an almost cloudless sky. It pours through the stained-glass windows, casting jewel-bright rays across the glowing timber of the coffin with its simple display of white lilies and green ivy.

  ‘In the midst of life, we are in death,’ says the vicar.

  Tom shifts uncomfortably in the pew, Julia sighs and Richard pats the flask in his pocket.

  Julia wants it to be over. She wants to be alone, or, at least, alone with Tom. They had to wait two weeks until Hilary’s brother and sister-in-law could get a flight from Johannesburg, and her niece could come from Saskatchewan before having the funeral. Julia has never seen these people in the more than thirty years she has known and lived with Hilary. They have simply been names on Christmas cards or email addresses.

  ‘Probably wondering about the will,’ Tom had said this morning.

  ‘Huh!’ said Julia. ‘They can wonder on.’

  ‘Will they get anything?’ Richard had asked, while warming croissants he’d bought for their breakfast.

  ‘There’s nothing to get,’ Tom said. ‘Only her personal things, clothes, books, ornaments. You know. There’s a bit of jewellery but nothing valuable.’

  ‘The thing is,’ Julia said to Richard, dunking a croissant in her coffee, ‘she and Eric didn’t actually have much. The flat in Paris belonged to the church. Anglican vicars earn very little and Eric was always giving money away to good causes. When she and I came back together from Paris, she had practically nothing. That’s why she started giving the French lessons. Then, when we opened the school, she had a salary, and in the end she just had her pension. Tom and I helped her out with money from time to time.’ She paused, sighing. ‘She did so much for us, just by . . .’ she stopped, thinking she was going to cry again.

  ‘By simply being herself,’ Tom finished for her.

  ‘Yes,’ Julia said, swallowing hard. ‘Just by being herself.’

  The congregation launches into Hilary’s favourite hymn.

  ‘He who would valiant be ’gainst all disaster . . .’

  Julia and Tom sing it as Hilary always sang it, changing the male pronoun to female. Tom’s voice is as strong as ever, with perfect pitch. It is one of the things that always reminds her of Tom’s finest qualities, the reasons she loves him so much still, after all this time.

  ‘No foes shall stay her might; though she with giants fight,

  She will make good her right to be a pilgrim.’

  Tom reaches for Julia’s hand and they stand together, tears running down their faces and splashing onto the order of service. She notices there is also a tear in Richard’s eye, and she wonders if he has been drinking this morning. Across the aisle, Hilary’s relatives stand dry-eyed, opening and closing their mouths but not really singing. Julia finds it difficult to think of these cold, disinterested people as having anything to do with funny, intense, passionate Hilary, who would be laughing her socks off if she knew they had travelled hundreds of miles at great expense, to check out her will. Family, Julia thinks, Hilary was much more a part of our family than she was of theirs. You don’t need blood to make a family. Julia is far more devastated by the loss of her dearest friend than she was by the loss of her mother, years earlier. She thinks of friends from school, of people whom she sees from time to time and is still fond of, Simon among them, and closer, more recent, friends.

  She pauses briefly, remembering a fitting room, a white velvet wedding dress, and Zoë smoothing down the fabric and asking her how often she and Simon had sex. Where is she now? Zoë and her baby, who must by now be a man, probably with kids of his own?

  ‘I think your loyalty to Richard was totally understandable,’ Hilary had said, not so long ago, when Julia had raised again the subject they had discussed many times. ‘It’s easy to look back with the wisdom of hindsight and say you should have done this or that. But it’s done; we can only learn from these things and strive to do better.’

  ‘Have you ever heard anything about Zoë?’ Julia asks Richard much later, when they are washing up after the wake.

  ‘Not really,’ Richard says. ‘Not since I met that woman years ago, the one she used to share the house with, who said she’d gone back to Perth.’ He pauses.

  ‘What?’ Julia asks. ‘You’re stalling.’

  ‘Well,’ he says. ‘I did actually look for her on that website; you know, the one where you can find your old friends.’

  ‘Friends Reunited?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But don’t you have to trace people through their school?’

  He shakes his head. ‘No. Well, yes, you do, but these days you can also do it through their workplace. So, I looked to see if she’d registered on the BBC list.’

  Julia turned to him. ‘Was she there?’

  ‘No. But a girl she worked with on The Dales was.’

  ‘The Dales,’ Julia says. ‘My god, I’d forgotten that. So?’

  ‘I emailed her, Jackie something or other, asked her if she knew what happened to Zoë. She sent me her email address.’

  Julia swings away from the sink, soapy water flying from her arms across the quarry tiles. ‘When was this?’

  He shrugs. ‘Oh, I dunno; a year, eighteen months ago.’

  ‘You never told me.’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d be interested.’

  ‘Did you email her?’

  Richard shakes his head.

&
nbsp; ‘Why not?’

  ‘What could I say? It sounds a little crass, don’t you think? Hi, Zoë, it’s me; your ex who abandoned you at the worst time of your life. What are you doing these days?’

  ‘Well, why did you bother to get her address in the first place?’

  Richard sighs and puts down the tea towel. ‘I was thinking of getting in touch but when I actually could, it didn’t seem such a good idea. What would be the point?’

  Julia stares at him. ‘Do you think about her much?’

  He shrugs. ‘From time to time. Usually when I’m in my what-a-fuck-up-you’ve-made-of-your-life-you-tosser mood.’

  ‘Can I have the address?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I might want to email her.’

  ‘Email who?’ Tom asks, coming into the kitchen with a tray of dirty coffee cups and saucers.

  They ignore him.

  ‘If you want, I suppose. But why?’

  Julia dries her hands on the tea towel. ‘Because she was nice, really nice, and brave, and because you and I – and Dad of course – shafted her.’

  ‘Whom did you shaft?’ Tom asks, unloading the tray onto the draining board.

  ‘Zoë. Richard’s ex.’

  ‘I don’t know that shafted is –’ Richard begins.

  ‘Ah,’ Tom interrupts, ‘all that. The unfinished business.’

  They look at him and then at each other.

  ‘Yes, well . . .’ Julia says. ‘Richard, leave the glasses, and go and get me the address, please. Put it up here on the message board.’

  ‘But what will you say?’

  ‘I don’t know. Hello, Zoë, I’ve been thinking of you and I . . . I thought . . . I wondered if . . . Oh lord, I don’t know. I don’t even know if I’ll do it but I want the address in case I decide to. Do it now, please, before you forget.’

  ‘And the perpetrators return to the scene of the crime,’ Tom says, rolling his eyes.

  ‘Shut up, Tom,’ Julia says. ‘It’s your turn to wash now.’

  The beach at dawn is paradise: the sea, silky calm; pale, flat sand washed by ripples lace-edged with foam; the endless blue of the sky fading to a paler haze on the horizon. Gwen swims laps as though she’s in a pool, her arms cleaving the water with surprising strength, feet alternating briskly and trailing ruffles of water in her wake. She always starts like this, at least when the water is calm. In winter, of course, when it’s still dark at six o’clock, and the waves rear up and sling seaweed and bits of driftwood around, you often can’t swim at all. You just flounder, treading water, pitting yourself against the current, hoping you emerge in almost the same place as you went in. Gwen knows that Justine worries about her swimming in the winter, and, most of all, doesn’t approve of her swimming in the dark. But it’s not as though she’s alone; there are always others around, even on the worst days. Gwen has for more than a decade been one of the Polar Bears, the intrepid group of swimmers who take to the water at dawn all year round, irrespective of the weather. As she often reminds Justine, she may be seventy-four but there are several Polar Bears who are older than she is.