by Liz Byrski
‘I’ve felt that so many times,’ Zoë says, ‘but, you know, I’m not sure it would be any better if we knew the details. The reality is that Dan may just be out of contact for the simplest practical reasons or for the worst of reasons. All we can do is wait and hope.’
Justine nods. ‘I’m letting him down. I thought I was strong enough.’
‘You are, Justine,’ Zoë says, and moves over to sit beside her on the sofa. ‘You are strong enough. So strong that at first I was scared of you and wanted you to go away. Now I couldn’t want a stronger, finer woman for my son or mother for my grandson. But being strong doesn’t stop you hurting, or being driven insane by the silence. You are more than strong enough, and stronger still now that you can face the fear and share it.’
Justine thinks she may never stop crying; every time she feels it ending, it begins again. Zoë sits beside her, an arm around her shoulders, not speaking, rocking her gently. Eventually, when the crying does stop, Zoë reaches into her bag and takes out an envelope.
‘Look at this,’ she says, ‘it’s a good omen, I’m sure.’
Justine studies the faded photograph of a group of strangers standing on some steps. ‘What is it . . . a wedding?’
Zoë nods. ‘It’s my wedding to Richard, but it’s more than that – much more. Dry your eyes properly, so you can see. There, standing just behind me, it’s Harry. After all these years, Dan can see what his father looked like.’
‘He’s exactly like him,’ Justine says, peering into the picture. ‘It’s uncanny.’
‘I know. I always told Dan that but I don’t think he really believed me. But you can see it; the eyes, the smile, even the way he’s standing.’
‘He’s beautiful,’ Justine says, smiling at her.
‘Yes. Harry didn’t even know he had a son and now he has a grandson. He died when he was younger than Dan is now. And, you know, Justine, when I saw this photograph today, for the first time in more than thirty years, it seemed like an omen, a good one. I can’t believe that Dan won’t be back to see it. And, meanwhile, we can do this together, the waiting, the believing. That’s all we have to do, you and I, just wait and believe.’
When Archie gets home on Sunday afternoon, Zoë has gone to an exhibition with friends from her art class and Justine is in the kitchen icing her legendary coffee and walnut cake. The smell greets him as he pops his head around the door.
‘To die for,’ he says, sniffing loudly and she looks around.
‘Hi, Arch; you can have some while it’s still warm. How was the team-building thing?’
‘Full of American pop psychology and embarrassing aphorisms,’ he says. ‘Nauseating. Are you okay? Zo told me about Friday.’
She looks awkward. ‘I’m fine now, but I fell apart and Zoë put me back together. If it’s okay with you, Harry and I are staying until Gwen gets back.’
Archie puts his briefcase on a chair and hugs her. ‘Of course it’s okay,’ he says. ‘This is where you should be. Falling apart can be a good thing. Too much being brave wears you down. I’ll just go and change.’ And, undoing his shirt, he pads wearily to the bedroom. He can’t remember when he last felt so low on energy and his blood pressure is up. The doctor, whom he finally agreed to see after much nagging from Zoë, has told him he is suffering from stress and exhaustion, and needs to take a proper holiday.
‘I made you some tea,’ Justine says as he wanders back into the kitchen. ‘You don’t look too good.’
‘Just tired,’ he says. ‘What are these?’ He shuffles through the photographs on the table. ‘Stone the crows – is this Zoë’s wedding to Richard?’
Justine puts a mug of tea and an extremely large slice of cake in front of him, and joins him at the table. ‘Yes. Julia gave them to Gaby, and Gaby sent them on. Look, that’s Harry.’
‘So it is,’ Archie says quietly, studying the pictures. ‘It could be Dan standing there, couldn’t it? I’ve never seen a father and son look so alike.’ He takes a sip of his tea. ‘So, Dan will see his father at last; he’ll be over the moon.’ He spreads out the pictures, looking now not at Harry but at Zoë and Richard. Imagination does strange things, Archie thinks; he has always imagined Richard as the villain of the piece, larger, powerful – menacing, even. What he sees now is a young bloke, not yet thirty, in an ill-fitting suit, with shoulder-length hair, looking absolutely bloody terrified. Archie stares at the photograph, trying to see around and beyond this fraction of a second into the man himself, the person Richard was.
‘He’s scared,’ he says softly, ‘floundering.’
Justine puts her hand on his shoulder and leans against him. ‘They both are; look at Zoë, she looks about twelve.’
Archie sighs. ‘She does indeed, and they both look as though they’d rather be anywhere else than there.’ He picks up the picture of the cake cutting and holds it closer. Even here the facial expressions and body language speak of two fearful, unhappy people caught in a painful trap. ‘Bloody hell,’ he says, looking at Justine. ‘I never thought of Richard like that, I had him down as some sort of monstrous playboy.’
Justine laughs. ‘I suppose you’d still like to catch him unawares and king-hit him?’
‘Too right,’ Archie says and it surprises him that he says it with a laugh. ‘As far as I’m concerned, he remains the unforgiven.’
‘That’s so unlike you, Arch. And, anyway, it’s not for you to forgive.’
He turns to look at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, it’s for Zoë to forgive Richard, and vice versa. It’s nothing to do with you.’
Archie feels himself bristling but is stuck for a response.
She pushes the cake closer to him. ‘Eat it while it’s warm,’ she says. ‘You love Zoë to bits, and you’ve been a wonderful father to Dan, but that doesn’t give you ownership of what happened before you came on the scene. That’s Zoë’s; hers and Richard’s.’
Archie looks at her for a long moment, and then takes a sip of his tea. ‘I still want to king-hit him.’
Justine rolls her eyes and grins. ‘Whatever. That feeling is yours, but forgiveness is Zoë’s, and she’s done that, hasn’t she?’
‘Has she?’
‘Oh, I think so. I mean, when she came back from her holiday it was obvious she’d sorted something out, something big. And, anyway, she said something the other night –’
‘What did she say?’ Archie cuts in, his voice breaking with urgency.
Justine pulls back a little and looks at him.
‘She hasn’t told me anything about what happened between them,’ he goes on. ‘Nothing more than she told us all when she got back.’
‘No,’ Justine says, ‘because she thinks you don’t want to know, don’t want her to talk about it.’
He’s silent for a moment. ‘I only want her to tell me what I want to hear. I’m frightened of hearing anything that . . .’ he stops, unable to go on.
‘There’s nothing you wouldn’t want to hear, Arch. Just ask her.’
‘Too big a risk.’
‘The risk you’re taking is not asking and letting yourself believe that the “monster” of your imaginings still has some sort of hold on Zoë.’
‘Zoë’s been dragging this stuff around with her ever since I’ve known her,’ Archie says irritably, ‘you can’t say it didn’t have a hold on her.’
‘But it’s not Richard who had that hold,’ Justine says. ‘He was . . . well, a symbol, I suppose. The ball and chain Zoë’s been wearing isn’t some unrequited longing for Richard; not even any great curiosity about him, I don’t think. She didn’t even want to see him but she did, and she saw Julia, and that resolved it. She’d done what you’re doing, really. Created them into monsters in her imagination, but they were young too. The three of them – four, if you count Harry – they all made mistakes, which had really awful consequences. Zoë’s ball and chain has been her own shame. But it’s over now, so why are you still stuck with it?’
Archi
e rests his chin on the palm of his hand, using his fingers to cover his lips, which are trembling. ‘I thought . . .’ he begins and then shakes his head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He gives her a shaky smile and puts his arm around her shoulders. ‘Thanks.’
‘Eat your cake,’ she says, ‘or I’ll be insulted. And Zoë said to tell you that when she gets back, which will actually be any time now, she wants an answer about the holiday. And “too busy” is not an option.’
Richard is watchful and just a little resentful. He’s fond of Brad McCarthy, whose father he worked with for a while in the seventies, and thinks he can see in Brad something of himself when young. Not that they are physically alike, no; it’s the passion, the muscular mind, the feverish ambition and the streak of bloody-mindedness. But at the moment, he’s mildly less fond of Brad than he has been. He and Gaby have been going out together since January, since the day Richard took her with him to a post-production party and within the first half hour, she was dancing with Brad. They’ve been joined at the hip ever since. Richard knows it shouldn’t bother him; Brad is a young man who most fathers would welcome, and it’s not even as though he’s Gaby’s father. It is his own feelings about the past that are bugging him, as each time he sees them together he sees himself and Zoë. But Gaby, while she looks very much like her mother, knows what she wants and she is driven by the same fierce intelligence and passion that drives Brad. Anyone else would say they are made for each other, but Richard can’t quite make himself say that. He first has to cut through a skein of longing that he is still not ready to sever.
‘It’s not your business, Rich,’ Julia says, as they sit in a Greek restaurant in Hampstead, having earlier caught up with Gaby and Brad in a wine bar. ‘You’re just a friend and her employer; don’t overstep the boundaries. Brad’s great, they’re in love. Be happy for them.’
‘Yes, butt out,’ says Tom. ‘Not that you have butted in yet, but I can see you’re itching to. Though goodness knows why; if Gaby were my daughter, I’d be delighted if she came home with someone like Brad.’
‘I am delighted,’ Richard says grudgingly. ‘Sort of. Most of me is delighted, but there’s just a bit that isn’t. Each time I look at them, I see Zoë and me. I want to warn them of the pitfalls, manage the whole thing.’
‘Christ almighty!’ Julia says. ‘You are so up yourself. Manage it and stuff it up for them in the process. They are not remotely like you and Zoë, except that Gaby looks a lot like her mother. You may find this hard to believe but not everything in the world revolves around you, Richard.’
‘She’s right,’ Tom says. ‘Not subtle, but right. Put your own emotional house in order and don’t start messing around in theirs.’
‘Okay, okay,’ Richard says, throwing up his hands. ‘Lay off me. I’ll be out of the way soon, anyway. All the partners in the Indonesian project have signed on the dotted line, so I’ll be off to Jakarta next month. That should keep me out of trouble.’
But even the prospect of this new documentary is not enough to distract Richard from his turbulent emotions. And, to make it worse, he has let the nursing home know that he’ll be down there the following day to see his father. It’s not a prospect he relishes.
When he sets out it’s a cool showery morning. The traffic moving south from London is particularly slow; there seem to be endless roadworks and temporary traffic lights. Drumming his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel, he wonders why he is even bothering. Ralph, he thinks, has no idea who he is on these occasional visits on which Richard wheels him around the garden and tries to involve him in conversation. Even so, he doesn’t feel he can stop going; something urges him to try to achieve a breakthrough, to get his father to communicate with him.
He arrives feeling even more grumpy than usual, the drive having taken almost twice as long as it should. He sits for a while in the car park, taking several swigs from his flask and trying to get himself in a better frame of mind.
‘He’s the same with me,’ Julia has told him many times. ‘No sign of recognition, not a flicker. Don’t take it so personally.’
Ralph is in his wheelchair in the television room, parked in front of some midday quiz show. He is wearing a tweed jacket and a shirt that Julia bought for him recently in Marks & Spencer. He seems to have shrunk; the jacket droops over his shoulders and the shirt is loose around the collar. He is hunched, as though he has sunk further into his chair, as though his head is too heavy for his neck.
‘Hello, Dad,’ Richard says, putting his hand on his father’s arm. ‘Thought I’d pop in and see you. Sorry I haven’t been for a while. Pretty busy; well, you know what it’s like. You were always busy, weren’t you?’ He starts to unpack the carrier bag he’s brought with him. ‘I thought we’d better stock up on some of your favourites,’ he says, with the superficial cheeriness that characterises most of his attempts to connect with Ralph. ‘Licorice Allsorts, barley sugar, wine gums.’
There is no answer, but Ralph turns his head slightly and watches as Richard takes the packets out of the carrier bag and puts them in the canvas bag that hangs on the side of the wheel-chair. Who would have believed that some bags of sweets would end up replacing gin and tonic as his father’s chief joy in life? The difference between the man he was and what he has become is depressingly hard to believe. If he were going to change, why couldn’t he have become warm and loving? Richard wonders.
‘Fancy a bit of air?’ he asks, releasing the brake on the chair. ‘It’s stopped raining, so I thought we might take a turn around the garden; the roses look lovely.’ There is some relief in pushing the chair; the very act of moving around, seeing different views from different angles is, he feels, good for both of them. Others have taken advantage of the dry spell too and are wheeling their elderly relatives between the flower beds, or strolling slowly alongside the zimmer frames. Many are having real two-way, even three-way, conversations. What would it be like now if Ralph could or would talk to him? What would they say to each other? Richard parks the chair facing the pond and sits on a bench, feeling the damp of the boards seep through his jeans.
‘So, what do you think, Dad?’ he asks, leaning forward. ‘What would you like to talk about?’
Silence. Ralph looks out, as he always does, straight ahead. Only now he has to look up a bit from under his bushy eyebrows because his head is drooping.
‘Saw Julia and Tom last week. They’re off to Portugal next month,’ Richard says.
The sun slips out between a gap in the clouds. In the sudden brilliance of the light, Richard looks into his father’s face and, for a fraction of a second, thinks there is recognition.
‘Dad?’ he says. ‘It’s me, Richard. Do you remember?’ But the moment has passed. He leans back against the seat and crosses his legs. ‘Well, we never did talk much, did we, and when we did, we argued.’ He knows he’s making himself irritable by taking this line; he also knows that his resentment at his father’s silence is totally illogical but he can’t help it. ‘When we were little, you talked at us, and when we were grown up, you couldn’t tolerate us having opinions of our own. I’ve often wondered what your life was really like. What it was like to be you, to be married to Mum? Did you ever have fun? An affair, perhaps? I suppose you loved us, but everything had to be on your terms, didn’t it? If it wasn’t, you were stuffed.’
There is a long pause.
‘Stuffed,’ Ralph says, suddenly and loudly, and Richard nearly jumps out of his skin.
‘Shit,’ he says. ‘Yes, stuffed. You were stuffed then, weren’t you, when things didn’t go your way?’
Very slowly, Ralph turns to him, and Richard waits like Moses waiting for the handing down of the Ten Commandments.
‘Stuffed,’ Ralph says again.
Richard, excited now, leans forward. ‘Yes, you were stuffed when you lost control, weren’t you? Do you remember that?’
There is a long pause. ‘I was stuffed, Richard . . . I think she’s dead.’
Richard’s hear
t does a double somersault. ‘Mum, yes; she is, I’m afraid, a long time ago now.’
‘Diana,’ Ralph says, lifting a trembling hand and rubbing it across his eyes. ‘Princess Diana, dead.’ As he lowers his hand, Richard grasps it.
‘Look at me, Dad,’ he says urgently, ‘look at me. It’s Richard, do you know me? You said my name. Diana’s dead. She was beautiful, wasn’t she, did you like her? Did you love her?’
He peers into his father’s face, willing him back, but Ralph has gone, retreated once more into his solitary world, to the place where he has been living for years, perhaps, Richard now wonders, with the dead princess as his companion. Richard sinks his face in his hands, pondering the futility of these regular but essentially insubstantial efforts to connect with his father, efforts that were as unsuccessful in the past as they are today. Then, standing up, he turns the chair.
‘Right then, Dad, back we go. Let’s see if we can find you some lunch,’ he says, defaulting once more to his persona of cheerful visiting son. He starts to push Ralph around the pond and back to the house, wondering as he does so who will come and talk to him, who will push his chair when the time comes.
FORTY-FIVE
Perth – October 2002
Getting her mother from the hospital car park to the geriatric assessment reception area reminds Zoë of taking a wilful child shopping on Christmas Eve. Not only is Eileen not particularly steady on her feet these days, she refuses to have her arm held or her hand taken, and constantly barrels off at speed in any direction except for the one they should be taking. But eventually they reach the reception desk with ten minutes to spare, thanks to Zoë’s forward planning. She dreads this assessment, demanded by the director of services at the retirement village.
‘I’m sorry to have to insist,’ the director had explained, ‘but your mother has now had two falls and twice locked herself inside her unit. Then there was the day that the cleaner went in and found the gas still on and the burnt-out saucepan. We do have to consider whether she can continue in independent living or whether we need to move her to the next level of care.’