by Liz Byrski
‘Maybe I will, or maybe I’ll be the one who’s left behind. Either way, there’s nothing we can do about it.’
‘But it is more likely –’
‘Stop,’ he says, holding up his hand, and Julia thinks it makes him look like a traffic cop. ‘I don’t want to spend my remaining years thinking about dying. Whichever way it goes, the best thing for the one who’s left standing will be to have a full life of wonderful memories to look back on.’
Julia swallows hard and looks at him. ‘Yes. But I can’t imagine how I’d cope without you.’
‘You would,’ Tom says abruptly. ‘You are the most competent, self-sufficient woman I’ve ever met. You have plenty of friends, a list of things you want to do, and you are also ruthless and bloody-minded when it comes to getting things done.’
‘I remember, years ago, having a conversation like this with Hilary,’ Julia says. ‘Eric was sick and she was panicking about losing him. She kept berating herself for feeling she’d be so incompetent without him.’
‘Well, there you are,’ Tom says. ‘She wasn’t in the least incompetent. I know she missed him bitterly but that’s something else entirely. We have everything to look forward to, and I don’t want you to spoil it with this silliness.’
Julia is close to tears. Since the night Tom had been raced away by ambulance in acute pain, she’s been haunted by the fragility of life. Death was so entirely shocking. She had spent more than a year watching Hilary die; watching as she methodically went through her business and personal affairs, said her goodbyes, moved towards a physical and spiritual place of being ready to go. Devastating as it was, it had accustomed Julia to the idea that dying was about having plenty of time to put one’s house in order. Tom’s dramatic collapse had smashed all that. Some time after Zoë had gone home and Tom was back in circulation, she had come across an old book that she’d remembered Hilary talking about, one that spoke of death being just another stage of life, for which one should prepare. She reminds Tom of that now.
‘I know the book you mean,’ Tom says. ‘It’s a Buddhist book. I remember her reading it and talking about it, and I’m sure it doesn’t say you prepare by hooking death onto everything like a codicil. It’s about preparing for death by living a beautiful life in every way and accepting that death is a part of it. It must say something like that, because Buddhists don’t anticipate, they accept; they are in the present, living each day, each moment, to the full and as well as they can. Something like that.’
Julia gets up and wanders closer to the parapet. ‘Do you suppose Ferdinand and Queen Maria had heaps of children?’
‘No idea – why?’
‘They built something so beautiful and wild and quirky, it’s hard to believe they didn’t plan to pass it on. Do you think that this time of life is easier, less scary and complicated, if you have children?’
He sighs. ‘I very much doubt it. Not if the experiences of some of our friends are anything to go by. Look at Zoë, for a start.’ Tom puts his arms around her. ‘It seems to me that what matters is making the most of the time we’ve got, whether it’s three months, three years or thirty years.’ He kisses her. ‘I love you, Jules, and I dread being left behind too.’
‘I’ve never really thought about the fact that I could die first,’ she says.
‘Think about it now,’ he says with a grin, ‘because right now, your chances of getting chucked off a parapet for irritating behaviour are pretty high. Come on, let’s have a look around the palace and then we’ll make an appointment to sign the contract for the flat.’
Richard is delighted with his room; it’s more like a cottage, really. Gaby had done a great job picking this place for him, but that, of course, was before the day he doesn’t even want to think about. The roof is thatched with palm leaves, the rammed earth walls are a slightly deeper shade than the pale terracotta floor tiles; it’s traditional design and construction but equipped with every possible convenience. He particularly likes the bathroom; it has a shower in its own small fernery, in which you stand behind a glass screen on a bed of smooth pebbles with fronds of tree ferns brushing against you, and the roof open to the sky.
He wonders if it might be easier to live a better life in a place like this – to find peace, perhaps. Without the relentless pressure of work and the fast-paced clamorous life of a big city, would it be possible to change? To dissolve that dark side of himself, the predatory side that emerges after a few drinks? But he’d go raving mad here after a while. He knows now that he can only live in London or New York, anywhere else would bore him sick after the first month, if he even lasted that long. But, in the meantime, he’s determined to enjoy everything that Bali has to offer.
When Bea had announced that she wouldn’t be joining him because she’d taken a six-month fellowship with a university in Dubai, Richard’s resentment had provided him with a timely insight into his lifetime dilemma regarding relationships. He wanted to be with feisty, intelligent women who had lives of their own, but resented it when they wanted to live those lives. Part of him yearned for someone to be waiting for him at home, totally focused on him and pandering to him in traditionally female ways.
‘And you mean you only just worked this out?’ Julia had said when he told her. They were talking on the phone; Julia had called just before he’d left Jakarta to tell him she and Tom had bought an apartment in Estoril. ‘I could’ve told you that years ago.’
‘I wish you had,’ he’d said. ‘It might have saved me and some very nice women a lot of heartache. Have you heard anything from Zoë recently?’ he asked cautiously.
‘Not for a few weeks. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ he said too quickly. ‘Nothing. I just wondered.’
‘How’s the doco shaping up?’
‘Pretty good. We’re all having the week off and then we’ll meet up again back here to tie up the loose ends. Meanwhile, I’m going to be a wastrel on a glorious tropical island.’
‘Is it glorious?’
‘I’ll tell you when I get there.’ He paused. ‘So, everyone’s okay then? No news? Are Gaby and Brad okay?’
‘You’d know more about that than I would.’
‘What do you mean?’ he asked, knowing he sounded defensive.
‘Well, Gaby works for you, you must be in touch with her quite often.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I see what you mean. Yes, she seems okay.’
‘Okay, good. Tom sends his love. You have fun in Bali and try to stay out of trouble.’
He’d laughed awkwardly then and said he didn’t think there was any risk of trouble in Bali for a jaundiced old fart like him.
From the window of his cottage, Richard can see down the curving pathway to the pool, luminous turquoise and lit, at this time of the evening, with tiny pinpoints of submerged light. And beyond the boundaries of the hotel complex, there is the glittering expanse of the sea. It is a vision of paradise, and it’s only when you head out in the opposite direction that you come face to face with noisy groups of drunken yobs on holiday and packed streets crammed with shops for tourists. But Richard is used to the noise and clatter of the city; he is not fazed by boisterous youths who can’t hold their drink or being jostled on crowded pavements. He knows it’s easy to hide in places like this, to forget your crimes and misdemeanours; here, tonight, he can be anyone he chooses, free of all the old baggage, and of other people’s expectations and judgments. He’s single, with time to spare, money in his pocket, and an overwhelming urge to kick up his heels.
He pulls on a clean pair of cotton trousers and a white linen shirt, and combs his hair in front of the mirror.
‘I have actually seen you look worse,’ he tells his reflection, ‘many times, in fact. What you need, my friend, is dinner, a few drinks, and a taste of the night life.’ And he lets himself out of the room.
The warm evening air is heavy with the scent of frangipani, and in the distance he can hear a gamelan band and the splashing of people taking a late swim. In
the terrace restaurant, candle flames flicker, their reflections glancing off glass and silver. Richard settles at a table, savouring the prospect of relaxation, sea and sun. He thinks that tonight he’ll kick things off in a club; maybe some poor deluded woman will take pity and dance with him. Perhaps, he thinks, the way for him is – has always been – being a single person with total control of what he does and with whom he does it, a life free of the need to take other people’s emotional needs or practical desires into consideration. Tom, he suspects, would say that this is what he has always done anyway. He hadn’t pulled any punches in the pub at New Year.
‘Time to stop kidding yourself, Rich,’ he’d said. ‘You like the good life, you’re obsessed with your work, and you’re hopeless at compromise. Maybe this is the time to get to grips with enjoying life alone rather than making these serial forays into relationships that simply end up making both you and someone else bloody miserable.’
‘So that’s it, then?’ Richard had said gloomily. ‘Lone Ranger?’
‘Many men of your age would be happy with a good job, enough money and no commitments.’
‘But you’re not one of them.’
‘Of course not. But I hope that if I were like you, single and in my sixties, I’d be trying to make the most of what that offered, and not pining after something I’d proved not to be particularly good at. You know how it goes – someone else’s grass always looks greener, but green may not be your colour.’
Richard had frequently revisited this conversation in the intervening months, and most of all since the disastrous incident with Gaby.
That day he’d slept through the alarm; it was almost ten-thirty when he woke with a monumental hangover that he’d acquired at a reunion of some of the old Panorama crowd. He’d have given his right arm to stay in bed, but there was stuff he needed to look over and sign before he flew out that evening. He got up, had a shower, two slices of toast and two double whiskies to get him going, and staggered into the office around lunchtime.
‘You look terrible,’ Gaby said when he arrived. ‘Have you got a virus or something?’
‘Yep,’ he said, managing a wry smile, ‘it’s a particularly nasty case of hangoveris horribilis.’
And a few minutes later she came into his office with a plunger of coffee and a glass of some horrible fizzy, orange-coloured stuff that was supposed to be good for hangovers.
‘You are a star, Gaby,’ Richard said. ‘I’ll have the coffee but you can forget that fizzy stuff, or I’ll throw up. Why is it so quiet in here today?’
‘Mike and Grif are checking the new studios, Sheila’s got some gastro thing, and your archive request came through, so Ed’s gone over to the Television Centre to sort it out.’
‘And Monica?’
‘You gave her a day off for her grandfather’s funeral.’
‘So I did,’ Richard said, pouring a couple of measures of whisky into his coffee. ‘It’s just you and me holding the fort then, Gabs?’
‘From the look of you, I think it’s just me,’ she said. She pointed to a file on his desk. ‘You need to sign off on those new contracts before you go away. Can you do it now, before you forget?’ She went out of his office, closing the door behind her.
Richard dropped into his chair, swung his feet onto the desk and picked up his mug, watching Gaby through the glass of the partition wall. This morning she looked more like Zoë than ever; her gestures, the way she moved, the way she sat, as she was doing now, the telephone tucked between her ear and her shoulder. Richard leaned back; the brief blast of fresh air on the way in and the first mug of coffee were working. The solid dark mass that had been hovering behind his eyes and reaching back to squeeze the base of his skull was relaxing its grip, and he could actually move his face quite effectively now. He opened the file and started to read through the contracts Gaby had left for him, took a couple of calls and made a couple himself, and returned to the contracts. When he was halfway through the last one, he glanced up; Gaby was slipping papers into files and sliding the files back into the cabinet.
Richard breathed in deeply and rested his chin on his hand while watching her. Gaby was wearing a close-fitting black sweater and a short denim skirt, with opaque black tights. From this angle, she was less like Zoë. She was curvy – something Zoë had never been – and, as she twisted around to pick up the phone, there was a promising swell of generous, youthful breasts and of firmly rounded buttocks.
Richard poured himself a second mug of coffee and tipped the remains of his flask into it. Gaby closed the middle drawer and bent to open the bottom one. Richard watched her through half-closed eyes. He felt almost human again; a bit too human, judging from the size of his erection. He imagined himself lifting her skirt, pulling down the tights, feeling those juicy buttocks in his hands, sliding his fingers into the moist warmth between her legs.
Gaby straightened up, closed the drawer, walked towards his office and opened the door. ‘Have you signed them yet?’ she asked.
Richard hesitated, looking at her, his body caught in a frantic tussle with his head. He swallowed hard. ‘Just wondering about this last one,’ he said. ‘Come and have a look at this section on page four.’
She walked to his desk and, seeing that he still had the page facing him, stepped around to stand beside him. ‘Which section?’ she asked, moving closer, bending forward to read the small typeface.
Richard could feel the warmth radiating from her body, smell her crisp perfume. As she pored over the document, her breath brushed the back of his hand. In that moment, he knew that she’d seen him watching her, that every move she had made had been for him. And now she was close beside him.
‘Do you mean the part on recording rights or the one on print publications?’ she asked.
‘Er . . . both,’ Richard said, distracted. His mouth was dry, he heard his blood pumping in his ears, his body was throbbing with something unstoppable. Without looking up from the file, he placed his hand on her bottom and stroked it down between her black-clad thighs.
‘Get off, Richard!’ Gaby cried, leaping back from him as if she’d been burned. ‘What d’you think you’re doing?’
‘Gaby,’ he said standing up and attempting to pull her towards him. ‘Come on, you know I . . .’
‘Stop it! Let go of me,’ she said, thumping him so hard in the chest he almost lost his balance. ‘You’re disgusting and you’re still drunk. Just because I work for you, doesn’t mean you can maul me like some dirty old pervert.’
‘Come on, Gaby,’ Richard said. ‘You know you were . . .’
‘I was what?’
In that moment he knew he’d made an appalling mistake; he’d convinced himself that something was happening between them when all the time it had been happening in his imagination. Humiliation swept over him, filling him with a rage.
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know, Gaby,’ he yelled, desperate now to shift the responsibility away from himself. ‘Standing out there by the filing cabinet. Oh, I could see you and you wanted me to see you, didn’t you . . .’ He stopped, suddenly disarmed by the way she was standing there, arms folded and glaring at him with a mixture of anger and disgust.
‘Let’s get one thing clear, Richard,’ she said slowly. ‘I was doing my job and you know it. You were once married to my mother, but I am not her, and she would not appreciate this any more than I do. I’m Zoë’s daughter and I work for you. That’s it! Got it?’
A red mist swirled before Richard’s eyes and he swept the piles of papers, books and magazines, the stacked files and their contents, onto the floor.
‘Fuck you, Gaby,’ he said. ‘You work for me – okay, work. Clean that lot up. Got it?’ And with that, he grabbed his coat, slammed out of the office and headed blindly for the nearest pub.
He sat in the saloon bar of the Rose and Crown for some time nursing his anger, letting it swirl through him, grasping at it time and again, knowing that if he let it go, he would be left only with humiliation. Eve
ntually, though, exhaustion overcame him; closing his eyes, he let go with a shuddering sigh and sank his head in his shaking hands.
In a few moments of madness he had destroyed something infinitely precious – Gaby’s trust and her friendship. And, once again, he had betrayed Zoë. For what? A fleeting, gross and arrogant fantasy. The shame was excruciating, as was the fear of what Gaby might do. Would she tell Zoë or Archie? Julia, even, or maybe Brad? One thing was for sure, if she confided in Gloria, they’d all know. He must make himself go back and talk to her. Apologise, and, if necessary, beg her to not tell anyone and give him a chance to redeem himself. The one thing he wanted to do was to run in the opposite direction but he knew he had to go back and now.
It had just turned three o’clock when he got to the office, and the door was locked. He let himself in and walked around, wondering where Gaby was. She must have set the alarm when she left, because suddenly the brain-splitting siren reared through the silence and he had to rush back to the door, punch in the code and ring the security company and tell them what had happened. There was still no sign of Gaby and when he finally went into his office, he saw that his desk had been returned to order; far better order than it had been in for weeks. All the paperwork he needed for the trip was set out in neatly labelled files, alongside the file of documents for signature.
Gloomily, he sat down, signed everything, and then attempted to write an apology. Writing was what he did; what some people had even gone so far as to say he had a genius for. He could make words rub up against each other in ways that made readers, or listeners, stop and think. But now the words scattered and chaffed, slipped and tripped, evading his efforts to say what he really felt. There were many discarded attempts before he finally had something that came somewhere near to the apology he wanted to make. He slipped the letter into an envelope, wrote Gaby’s name on it and put it with the signature file on her desk.
Then, putting the paperwork he needed in his briefcase he went home. Seven miserable hours later, he buckled his seatbelt and listened as the aircraft engines roared to full power, and he was on his way to Jakarta.