by Liz Byrski
Richard pulls the pillow over his head to blot out the relentless ringing in his ears, but on it goes, penetrating his skull, until he realises that it’s the telephone and reaches for it. Someone is saying something about a seminar. Suddenly he sits bolt upright, staring in shock at the luminous green figures on the clock telling him it is a quarter to ten. Fifteen minutes before he’s on.
‘Yes, yes. I’ll be there,’ he mumbles. ‘Yes – it’s Power Point, it’ll only take a minute to set up.’ And, slamming down the phone, he leaps out of bed, kicks aside an empty bottle and staggers for the bathroom door. It turns out to be the locked connecting door to another room, and he spins around bumping into the wall trying to get his bearings. A shower, get dressed, grab his gear and find the conference room on the thirty-second floor.
His head is thumping and his mouth feels like it’s a sewer but, worse, his mood is leaden. Richard knows this side of himself all too well – the self-loathing, humourless, angry cynic, bent on self-sabotage – and he steps into the shower willing himself to wash it away. Ducking from the searing heat of the water, he slips, cracks his head on the stainless-steel frame of the shower screen, staggers and falls. Blood from a cut on his forehead runs down his face and swirls in pink rivulets over the white tiles as the scalding torrent of water pounds him. Swearing, he grasps at the taps and hauls himself to his feet, adjusting the flow to a gentle heat, and leans back against the wall. Deep breaths, he tells himself, the dizziness will pass, the water will stop the bleeding. Deep breaths. But as he steps out of the shower and stares at himself in the mirror, he can see that it is going to need some sort of dressing if he is not to deliver his presentation with blood running down his face. And he picks up the phone on the wall by the basin and summons help.
It is twenty past ten when he reaches the conference room, with a large surgical dressing plastered to his forehead, and his hands shaking, head thumping and stomach churning. Fortunately, there have been problems with the satellite link that was to transmit the introduction and opening remarks by the association’s president, who is at a different conference, in Japan. People are drinking coffee and discussing the irony of a digital technology breakdown delaying the start of a conference about the future of a profession so dependent on its reliability.
Richard, feeling for once that there might actually be a god, hands his flash drive over to one of the technical crew, who tells him they will start with his speech and the president’s message will be recorded and played before lunch.
Ian Stubbs, an old colleague from the BBC who now works for the ABC in Sydney, takes one look at him, raises an eyebrow and thrusts a cup of black coffee into his hand.
‘How’s the other bloke?’ he asks, eyeing the dressing.
‘We’re burying him this afternoon,’ Richard responds and gulps the coffee, hoping it will clear the fug in his brain and the pain in his head.
‘You going to be okay?’
He nods, and the dizziness returns so that he has to put a hand out to the white clothed table to steady himself.
‘Fine. I slipped in the shower. I’ll be fine.’
The system is fixed, the delegates settle into their seats, the organisers apologise for the delay and the chair introduces him.
The title of Richard’s keynote speech is projected onto the large screen and there is a mild round of welcoming applause as he walks to the lectern. Then, an expectant silence settles. He looks out across the roomful of people, most of them strangers, but a few well-known or at least familiar to him, and there, on the end of the third row, is Lily. He had completely forgotten he invited her and now her presence has the potential to destroy him.
She knows what an imposter he is. She will have taken one look at the telltale ashen grey of his skin, his bloodshot eyes and shaking hands, the hastily dressed head wound and known. How can he do this with her watching; she, who has witnessed so many other drink-induced failures? He glances at his notes, looks up at her again, clears his throat and hesitates.
‘Good morning,’ he begins in a tone, which, he hopes, exudes professionalism. In the corner of his eye as he looks around the room, he sees a movement. Lily is getting up, and now she walks quietly up the aisle to the back of the room.
‘Good morning,’ he says again, clearing his throat to get the croak out of his voice. ‘It’s a pleasure and a privilege to be here today, to stand in for my longtime friend and colleague Martin Gilbert . . .’
At the door, Lily stops and turns. She looks straight at him and then, without smiling, turns and gives him, as she has so often done before, the chance to save himself. She slips silently out and the door whispers to a close behind her.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The Algarve – March 2000
From her seat at a small café near the beach, Julia gazes contentedly out to where children are playing in the shallows and several people are swimming. A gentle breeze ruffles up small waves, and she can feel the sun and the proximity of the sparkling water working their magic on her. Tom was absolutely right; this is exactly what they both needed. She has just spent a very satisfactory hour browsing through the local shops, where she bought a purple leather handbag and a wrap in almost exactly the same purple but with an intricate design in shades of mustard with tiny flecks of charcoal grey and orange. She imagines describing it to Hilary. It’s almost a relief not to have to, because, while it’s absolutely gorgeous, it would sound hideous.
The blanket of grief that had almost suffocated Julia in the first couple of weeks after Hilary’s death has certainly lifted, but only now is she ready to sample warmth and pleasure again. It is okay, she thinks; the sadness of bereavement never disappears but one moves slowly to a place of peace.
The long months of caring for Hilary before she went into the hospice were exhausting. She had been a sweet-natured, undemanding invalid, but Julia remembers the days when she felt that every ounce of energy had been drained from her. Tom had been wonderful, of course, but it had taken its toll on him too.
‘It’s the hopelessness of it,’ Julia had told Richard, just before he flew home after the funeral. ‘Knowing that however hard you try, there is nothing you can do to stop that relentless wasting away. I hope I never have to do that again.’
Sitting here now, watching the sun on the water, Julia can feel her grief thawing; Tom’s idea of owning a place in the sun may be the right one. She even wonders if she wants to go back to working full-time. Tom is often right about things over which she has argued with him ferociously. Why does she argue like that? It’s almost as though she does it on principle. Is it like the way she talks about his procrastination? He does procrastinate but not always; in fact, quite often he acts swiftly and efficiently, but she never mentions that.
Julia sighs, thinking that things seem to be changing between them since Hilary’s death. They are gentler with each other; perhaps they have more left to give each other now that Hilary has gone. But then, Tom has always been gentle, thoughtful and generous with her and he makes her laugh. She, on the other hand, can be thoughtless, bossy and dismissive. Perhaps it is a throwback to the months when he pursued her after they had met again at Greenham Common. She had been offhand with him, imperious sometimes, making him work hard before finally agreeing to marry him. She had been determined he would see how different she was from the compliant, bored, rather ignorant girl he had known in Paris. She had challenged his views, although they were also her own, just to prove to him – and perhaps, most of all, to herself – that she now could. It wasn’t enough that he loved her sufficiently to come back; she wanted his respect and admiration as well.
‘But how could I love you if I didn’t respect and admire you?’ he’d asked.
‘Easily, you did before. There was nothing about the person I was in Paris that you could respect or admire,’ she’d responded. ‘I was lazy, bored and ignorant.’
‘You were simply on the brink,’ he told her. ‘I’m good at spotting potential.’
&n
bsp; She realises that she still challenges him, almost as though she wants him to keep noticing who she is, when he has always known that perfectly well. Is this some sort of construction she’s established for them; herself as capricious and bossy, bouncing off his steady, thoughtful reliability? Hilary, she realises, was part of this. Together they had established a dialogue about Tom and his lovable eccentricities. She wonders suddenly if her behaviour hurts him; whether he tolerates it because he loves her so much. She loves him beyond words, but her words are often dismissive. She had hated him once, but only briefly and only because hatred and anger were preferable to hurt and despair. Looking back, Julia decides she must change what is simply a way of behaving that is not very nice. She will show him she can be different.
On the table is her notebook, open at pages filled with her attempts to draft an email to Zoë. She can’t seem to get it right. She starts another version now, though, because she is determined. A death makes you think of the things you wish you’d done better or not done at all; the small adjustments you wish you could make to history.
‘I’m back,’ Tom says, dropping a folder of papers onto the table and pulling out a chair. ‘It’s surprising how the adventure of setting out to look at houses starts off fun and so quickly becomes tedious.’
‘Did you see anything nice?’
‘A couple that are worth looking at again,’ he says. ‘I’ve made an appointment for us to go back this afternoon at five. How was the shopping? Is there any money left for the house?’
She hands him the carrier bag with her purchases. ‘Have a look.’
He pulls out the handbag. ‘Lovely colour, and this scarf thing matches it beautifully. Very nice – is that all you bought?’
Julia leans across and kisses him on the cheek. ‘You are a very lovely man, Tomo. Most husbands would be moaning that I’d bought anything at all and demanding to know the price.’
‘Hmm,’ Tom says. ‘Well, Simon wouldn’t have, surely?’
‘Simon was a millionaire. You . . . we aren’t. I know about husbands; you don’t spend thirty years in the women’s movement without hearing an awful lot of stories about meanness and neglect. You, my darling, are a prince among men.’
He grins, signalling to the waiter. ‘I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve all this praise but, being a complete opportunist, I’m happy to accept it.’
‘I think I’ve taken you for granted,’ she says.
‘Used and abused me,’ he says with a laugh. ‘Yes, that’s me; poor old bugger, used and abused by women all my life.’ He points to the notebook. ‘Still farting around with that email?’
Julia nods. ‘Just can’t seem to get it right.’
‘Want some advice from the expert procrastinator? Stop thinking it inside out and upside down. Just go into the café right now, sit down at their computer, write something and send it. I’ll order some more coffee and you’ll have sent the email before it arrives.’
‘You think?’
‘I know.’
‘Okay,’ she says, ‘if you say so.’
And she gets straight up, picks up her notebook and heads into the café.
Tom shakes his head in surprise. Julia never fails to amaze him; she didn’t even argue with him, must be going soft. He opens the file and pulls out the paperwork for the two properties he wants her to see. This whole business is proving harder for him than he imagined, because it’s all about the future and, since Hilary’s death and his visit to Raheem, all he seems able to think about is death.
The irony of his present situation is not lost on him. For once in his life, he wants and needs to take swift and decisive action, but he has to delay it. He knows he should have told Julia that Raheem said he thought there might be a problem which they should have investigated sooner rather than later. Forty-eight hours in hospital, a bank of tests, and then they’d have to look at the options: surgery, radiation therapy or, probably, both. But it would have meant postponing the holiday Tom felt they both needed. Bugger it, he’d thought on the train journey home. It was hard enough getting her to agree, so we’re going and that’s that. When he had looked into Julia’s eyes that evening, he had known that the one thing she could not cope with now was more illness, particularly his. Had he held back for himself too? Put off the day of reckoning because he couldn’t cope either? She would raise merry hell if she found out, so he will have to make sure she doesn’t. He is, after all, going to take Raheem’s advice, just not as swiftly as recommended. That will give Julia a little more time to recover; meanwhile, he’d better start praying that it won’t take her too long.
On Wednesday morning, Zoë is getting ready for the art class; it’s her fourth week, and the class calls to her with the relentless seductiveness of a new and illicit lover. The first time she brushed water onto paper and began to blend colours, something sprang to life within her. As the colours filled the paper, as the borders appeared between land, sea and sky, she was gripped with a heady sense of the power of what she was doing; creating something beautiful and uniquely her own, and feeling that she could do so much more.
‘Wow! Zoë, you’re a natural,’ Theo had said as he wandered between the easels. ‘Are you sure you haven’t done this before?’
‘Never,’ she said, ‘but I’ll definitely be doing it again.’
That first weekend she bought an easel and some more paints, and, to everyone’s amazement, set them up at home in a corner of the verandah. Then she settled herself on a stool from the kitchen and began to work the colours, blending, experimenting with different brushes, drying off each section with a hairdryer, before starting on the next. Zoë has ignored her family’s surprise and mild amusement. She is compelled to paint, to discover what does and doesn’t work, what she can and can’t do. She forgets to do the washing, forgets to buy more milk, and when she finally remembers the washing, she forgets to hang it out. She is irritable on the days she has to go to work.
This morning she has a few minutes to spare before leaving for class and she decides to check her email, something she remembers to do about once a week. She can’t understand people who check their inbox obsessively. The computer is in Archie’s office, which is really the spare bedroom with a sofa bed for visitors, not that it gets used much. Gaby’s friends sleep in her room, and Rob sleeps with Rosie. Zoë had felt uneasy about this but, as Archie had pointed out when it became clear that Rob and Rosie’s relationship was serious, if they didn’t sleep together at home they’d just do so elsewhere. So why not be open and accepting about it?
‘What were you doing at nineteen, my love?’ he had asked her.
Zoë thought about losing her virginity to Richard on Beachy Head and how, after protecting herself from the awkward gropings of boys at home and in London, she had come to believe that sex was the indisputable indication of love. How could she have believed that, despite everything else Richard did, the bruises on her thighs were proof of love? But she does still believe that he loved her; in fact, there were times in that roller-coaster relationship, especially in the months before Dan’s birth, that it seemed he loved her quite a lot.
She logs on and immediately deletes the three offers to help her enlarge her penis, the profile of a Russian woman who wants to be her faithful, sexy bride, and an invitation to the opening of a new restaurant. There are three messages left, one of which seems to be from a stranger; she is about to delete it too when the phone rings. She takes a message for Archie, leaves her inbox open on the screen, grabs her bag of painting things and runs down to the car.
‘It sounds like what you’re experiencing is the discovery of your creativity,’ Theo says when she talks to him at the end of the class. ‘It is very exciting when you suddenly realise that you have this ability and you feel compelled to throw yourself into it.’
‘It feels like magic,’ she tells him. ‘I just want to paint all the time, I can’t leave it alone.’
‘Then don’t,’ he says. ‘Go with it, see where it
takes you.’
Cyclone Zoë, Theo called her and he got the other students to crowd around her easel so that he could explain to them how, instinctively, Zoë had leapt ahead and used techniques that he would be teaching them over the next two weeks.
She had always claimed that she didn’t have a creative bone in her body; her strength, she had told herself, was her practicality and her competence at running a home and looking after a family. Now, it seems, there is something else she can do and do it not at all badly, for a beginner. As she drives home, Zoë wonders what this might mean. Are there other things she could do if she tried? ‘It’s only an art class, after all,’ she says aloud as she pulls into the drive.
To her delight, Dan’s car is there. He’s been spending a lot of time at Justine’s place recently, doing some decorating, and so she’s had very little time alone with him. Until painting got hold of her, Zoë had been trying to decide how much of her feelings were the natural response of a mother whose son was moving away from her, and how much was something more sinister. She has managed to convince herself that this relationship won’t last. She has even – and she’s not proud of this – hoped that Dan would soon be deployed overseas again and that this would be the breaking point. And yet, she can see that Dan loves Justine. This weekend Justine is bringing Gwen to the house for dinner, and Zoë realises she is nervous about it. Who is this Gwen anyway? She has avoided finding out anything about Justine’s life, closed her ears to conversations and distracted herself with her painting, because it is easier for her not to know, but now she will have to. Is Gwen Justine’s stepmother? Is she Aboriginal too?
Dan has, he says, been sorting some of his gear and has just returned from the barracks, where the medical officer has signed him on for Monday.