‘Bernice,’ I say, ‘is there somewhere private where we can talk?’
She knows then — I am sure of it. Initially her eyebrows rise, then I see her nipping at her bottom lip and turning away because a faint flush has bloomed in her cheeks.
‘You’d better come into the study,’ she says.
Of course, it’s absurd to call this room a study … A study is a place dedicated to creation: dreams unfurl, ideas form like drops of blood, spread and soak, are committed to paper or the ever-cluttered hard-drive. But this room is sedentary, a mausoleum of walls lined with unread books and teak furniture that is too polished to be comfortable. Despite its stylishness the desk, an oblong of soft green leather and brass trimmings, is as bare as a disused warehouse.
Bernice stands away from me near a heavily sashed window. As usual I feel as if I am diseased, an infection thrust unhappily into her antiseptic world.
‘Well?’ Her tone is brisk. ‘This should be private enough.’ And I am certain. I am certain that I am right and that she has known all along. She has known and willingly kept it from me — and I am on the verge of confronting her with her conspiracy.
Without prompting she says, ‘I’m guessing that this is about Amelia.’
I lean against the desk.
‘Yes.’ My voice sounds distant, forced. ‘Yes, it is.’
She sighs, surveys the room as though she has never looked at it before.
‘You know,’ she says, ‘there’s been a lot of disappointments in my life. No point in denying them now — I’m too old and frankly I can’t be bothered. But that business with Francesca, when I found out, it was my greatest disappointment. After Frank died, after I’d worked so hard to make things go the right way, it was wrong that anything else should happen. Wrong that it should intrude.’
A manipulation, I am thinking. A scheme, played out around me — to protect Kaz from me.
‘Hence your disapproval of our marriage.’
‘Well — yes. To be honest, I had hoped you’d somehow go away. You always seemed like you would, one day. It would’ve made things so much easier. We — the family — could’ve got back to some sort of normality.’
‘I loved her, Bernice. I was never going to leave.’
‘Yes,’ she sniffed. ‘I suppose I knew that, really. I just … I didn’t want to admit it.’
Silence; pause for reflection. Time to consider: shall I go softly-softly or play hard-ball?
Softly-softly always works better — if you can stand to do it.
‘Amelia, she’s a great person — fantastic.’
Bernice’s response is immediate.
‘Yes, she is. Which in a way vindicates our decision. You do realise that, don’t you? That it was our decision. And not taken lightly, I might add.’
‘What about Leo?’ The jigsaw is not yet complete.
She shrugs as the years fly past, bats fleeing an old dank cave.
‘Leo was a kind man, long-time friend of the family. My husband’s solicitor for years, completely involved in his career, never had the time or inclination to marry. He was happy enough to support our decision.’
‘Did you pay him?’
‘Certainly not. That is a monstrous suggestion.’
Time for hard-ball. I plunge in further.
‘So, why didn’t you ever tell me? Bernice, I’ve been part of this family for fifteen, nearly sixteen years now — despite your wishes. Surely I deserved to know!’
‘Yes’ she says, surprising me. ‘Yes, you probably did.’
‘Then why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because of Katherine’ She turns to me and I see a great weariness in her, an ageing that I have never seen before. ‘Think about that, Vince. How do you think Katherine would have reacted to the news that you — her beloved husband, the free spirit who tells great stories — you fathered her niece?’
It is between us now, immutable.
Amelia is my daughter.
Bernice moves closer to the window, stares out at a tight line of pink azaleas.
‘We did it for Katherine,’ she continues quietly. ‘Actually, in a way, for both of you — to keep you together. She loved you dearly! No matter what I thought, there was no mistaking her feelings and I knew I could never change those. Nor would I want to, not in my heart of hearts. See, I’m not quite the deranged, insensitive old bitch that you think me to be. I loved my daughter too, Vince — fiercely and without question. I loved her more than my own wasted life —’
She grips the curtain hard. A stifled sob escapes her; when she lifts her face to me I see wetness coating each bright rheumy eye.
‘You’re a parent,’ she says, more subdued but still brittle beneath. ‘You know how much we desire to protect our children, how over-riding that desire can become. That’s how I justified — continue to justify — our decision. I was protecting my daughter! And to my last moment on God’s earth, I will never regret that. I will grant you that I could have acted differently — but I will never regret what we did. Never.’
Conversations, Kaz told me once, have natural end-points. Someone speaks, or remains silent, and you know instinctively that it’s over. No more needs to be said. She also remarked: ‘You — Vincent Benjamin Daley — you need to learn to recognise these end-points.’ (It was after an office Christmas party where I’d made an abject fool of myself by telling a top-notch Government Auditor that God had played a cruel joke and swapped his brain for his sphincter). ‘You — Vincent Benjamin Daley — tend to go that one step too far. People find this off-putting, confronting, aggravating. Learn to recognise the end-points. Cut the dialogue, gather ye wits while ye may and move on with grace.’
Fair enough, but not this time.
‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ I tell Bernice.
‘What is?’
‘You and Frannie — the pair of you, scheming and colluding like a couple of bloody-minded old biddies. Did you ever wonder if Kaz actually needed protecting? Eh? You took it upon yourselves to hide the truth from her. Why? Was she so fragile? So in need of protection?’
‘Yes she was.’
‘Oh bullshit, Bernice! Bullshit! You … you toyed with her life! With both of our lives! You withheld the truth then congratulated yourselves that you’d done the right thing and it would never come out anyway. How naïve was that? How unfair?’
She looks at me then and there is a blankness in her eyes that is sadder than any expression of anger.
‘Did you ever tell her?’ she asks, strangely calm. ‘Did you? Did you tell Katherine that you’d been having sex with her sister behind her back?’
There is no need for me to answer.
‘Of course not,’ she whispers. ‘Because you loved her too. You loved her like us, and that meant more than truth itself.’
Back onto the shimmering highway, this time alone, join the centipede of resigned lunch-time traffic, pause at McDonald’s in Aspley for something called a Beach Burger Special — why does adding a slice of tinned pineapple to any take-away render it Beachy? — then up the highway, take the Caloundra turn-off, whiz along Nicklin Way courtesy of a succession of green lights, cruise the Sunshine Motorway until I near Peregian. It’s funny, I should feel different but I don’t. A little cleaner perhaps, like the bush after rain. Less complicated. Still pissed off that they could conspire like that but sort of glad beneath it all. Amelia, she’s a great person — fantastic.
* *
Frannie is alone in the kitchen, lighting a menthol cigarette.
‘I didn’t know you smoked.’ I drop my bag on the floor, open the fridge, pour a glass of iced water. ‘How does old Terry-towelling feel about that?’
‘Please don’t call him that stupid name.’ She sucks the cigarette in small staccato gasps that remind me of a woman in labour. ‘Anyway, he doesn’t know.’
‘Frannie! Another lie. What a complex life you lead.’
She ignores the jibe.
‘You might remember that Terr
ence has no sense of smell,’ she informs me regally. ‘As long as I clean my teeth regularly, he doesn’t need to know.’
‘So what would he do, Frannie? Withdraw all conjugal rights? Cut you out of the million-dollar inheritance?’
She stares at me balefully then smacks the cigarette butt into the sink.
‘He’s a good man,’ she says quickly, still mashing the butt. ‘Oh, he’s not unpredictable like the great Vincent Daley, not a story-teller, not funny or exciting — but he’s good to me, looks after me, looks after Amelia. It’s enough.’
‘Is it?’
She moves quickly and is suddenly hard up against me; hot red cheeks and flash-eyes, an overpowering stench of the same citrus perfume that she has always worn, the same citrus perfume that brings images I would rather forget creeping back into my mind.
‘Oh you’re odious, aren’t you? A nasty little self-centred tyke … always were.’ I can feel her sour breath punching into my face. ‘What do you want me to say, Vince? That Terrence is boring? Dull? A drudge? Will that do?’ Her voice lifts to a harsh crescendo. ‘Oh, and I suppose you’d like to know about our sex life too. That’s seems to be a primary interest of yours. What do I say to satisfy you, Vincent? That we have sex once a week, same time, same position, same miserable forgettable result! That I haven’t come in a decade? That you were better than him? There — are you happy with that? You were better! Does that make you happy? Does it? Does it!’
I return her glare, remain emotionless. Eventually she stops panting, musters her dignity, walks around me to a stool on the other side of the breakfast bar.
‘How did you find out?’ she asks quietly.
But I didn’t answer straightaway. I couldn’t, because I wasn’t exactly sure. Something had just clarified; the look of the girl in profile, the way she spoke — wavy, curious. Outside on that veranda last night was, for me, like waking up after years of impenetrable sleep. It was like finding a cracked blackened mirror, staring into it and seeing a reflection, familiar, knowable but not recognisably your own.
‘It all connected,’ I tell Francesca, not expecting her to understand, but she nods, takes another cigarette, lights it with her carved pewter lighter.
‘We didn’t have any option,’ she says. ‘Besides, I had always intended to tell you one day. Mum wouldn’t hear of it but I … I thought differently.’
‘Oh come on!’
‘Well, don’t believe me. That’s your choice, I suppose. You know, you could always try looking at events from my point of view for a change. You kid yourself that you’re a writer, supposedly well-versed in exploring other people’s emotions. Try mine for once.’
‘Do you have any?’
‘Can’t help yourself, can you? Nasty, flippant: it’s the easy solution for you.’
‘Okay, Frannie, okay. Let’s play it your way. Let me think about how you felt at the time. I would imagine … initially pretty pleased with yourself for putting one over your vivacious, intelligent little sister by carrying on with her boyfriend.’
‘You too!’ she sneers. ‘Don’t forget that, Vincent — you were part of it too.’
It is more convenient for me to ignore her outburst.
‘Then, when you found out you were pregnant? Horror, I suppose. Totally appalled; the wicked toad had given the Ice Queen an unwanted child. Evil lineage, moral disgrace. What to do, oh what to do?’
She leaves the stool then, walks away from me, glides her fingers along the edge of the dustless wooden blinds.
‘You really have no idea, do you?’ She turns and faces me once again. ‘I felt ashamed, you know that? Absolutely ashamed. Up until then it had all been a game — and yes, it was a chance to have something over Katherine because she was always the one. Jesus, wasn’t she the one! Effortless straight-A student, brilliant career written all over her, “potential” stamped indelibly on her life’s passport. And me? I had none of that. I was the older sister, nothing else. Passably attractive, fair conversationalist, ear-marked for an early marriage to an up-and-comer. But the pregnancy changed all that. My future was shot. The game had turned serious.’
‘It was always serious, Frannie.’
‘Whatever. I was pregnant to my sister’s boyfriend and that made me feel ashamed. I’ve carried that shame ever since. Don’t get me wrong: I love my daughter, always will. But the past can only temper so much, can’t it? Time is a filter but I don’t know anyone who can look objectively at what they’ve done and maintain an unsullied conscience.’
Somewhere in the distance, in another world, a clock strikes.
‘Does Amelia know?’ I ask her.
Slowly, she shakes her head.
‘God, no. The whole thing’s too difficult as it is. Besides, what purpose would be served by telling her? Honestly? Sometimes … sometimes I think that sleeping dogs need not just lie — they should be buried unmarked and left untouchable.’
We both hear it then, the enthusiastic clatter of footsteps coming down the hallway. Francesca closes in on me a last time.
‘One more thing,’ she breathes. ‘Despite it all, I loved her too, okay? And I miss her, God how I miss her! Grief for Katherine: it’s not exclusively yours. You need to remember that.’
Amelia throws open the door, surveys the scene.
‘What’s going on?’ she asks.
Francesca, as always, is quicker.
‘Uncle Vincent is going to stay the night,’ she says, returning to the smoothly cultivated tone that is exclusively hers. ‘Then I’ve agreed that you can go back to the farmhouse, with him and the children, tomorrow. Is that okay?’
The look of pleasure on my daughter’s face — an intense, child-like gratification — suggests that it is.
One
A long time ago — many flashes, many snapshots — Stu and I were sitting on a jetty. The three o’clock sun blasted our backs and the water was clear enough for us to see schools of javelin-thin garfish darting beneath our bare feet. The old cracked timber pylons wheezed and snarled. Teenagers lolled dangerously on a nearby beach. Minutes drifted alongside the smears of cirrus overhead. Throughout the afternoon an old lady wearing a dirty sweatsuit fished silently. I remember watching the old lady intently because the writerly part of me wanted to slip into the dark lonely labyrinth of her mind — maybe discover a litany of lost loves, the yawning schisms of too many unfulfilled friendships, time-bleached images of an earlier, less complicated life. But another, more pressing business beckoned.
‘Okay,’ I said to the traitorous sod on my left. ‘Let’s suppose you’re right. Let’s suppose that I am a good writer but a lousy story-teller. That’s the theory, isn’t it … you, you intellectual Philistine!’
‘Vince, don’t beat yourself up about this. It’s just a perception thing. Remember, I’m trying to help you —’
I held up both hands, flexed, tensed, cannoned his placatory drivel back into his BIG fat gob where it belonged.
‘That’s the theory. Now, let’s examine this a little closer. Let’s — scrutinise!’
‘Geez, Vince — geez I hate it when you get like this! Look, the facts are these. It’s hard work getting published. Bloody hard work. And it doesn’t matter a pinch of you-know-what how nice your work sounds. That lyric fluency … the music is an afterthought. Publishers want effective, connected stories — period.’
‘Nice? You think I write nicely? Nice? Wow, powerful adjective, BABY !’
He sighed, tossed a rusted nail out into the sluggish ocean. It landed too near the old lady’s line so she frosted him with a quick glance.
‘Klutz. You just re-emptied Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.’
He ignored that, interlocked his fingers and held them to his chest like a priest on the verge of an impassioned didacticism.
‘Come on, Vince, it’s all a matter of angle. A matter of approach. You need to get the process right.’
‘Ah, the process! What process?’
‘The way you write.’ He gr
imaced, rubbed at a nub of inflamed skin on his chin. ‘Your method. It’s too reversed. You write a line, write a paragraph, labour over it, make it sound fantastic, bleed your thesaurus dry.’
‘It’s in my head, you bastard. I have never used, will never use, a fucking thesaurus.’
He ignored me.
‘Line after line, sentence, paragraph, page, chapter, keep doing that same thing. Beautiful, rich, invigorating prose — and none of it connected. None of it.’
‘Ladies and gentlemen, take a peek at the world’s first and only illiterate literary agent!’
‘Stop carrying on. Look, all of the successful authors on my books —’
‘The world’s first zero-quantity survey.’
‘Shut up and listen, will you —’
‘Commissioned by the world’s leading etymological dullard.’
‘Shut up!’ This time he screeched loudly enough for the world to lurch a little from its axis. Gulls flapped elsewhere, The Teenagers desisted momentarily from The Grope. Further along, the old fisher-lady looked disapprovingly across, mimed a shush in our direction.
Stu held up his hands, breathed deeply, in-out in-out rise-and-fall, three or four times.
‘Okay,’ he mumbled. ‘Okay. Vince, all of my … consistently published authors agree on at least one major part of the process — that the story must come first. No serious writing until the story is at least semi-established. Gloss up the style later: refine it, polish it, gilt-edge it, wrap it in silver-foil, do what you like. But not at the expense of the story. That’s what publishers want to publish, and that’s what the market wants to read. Stories, Vince. Plain and simple.’
‘You don’t get it, do you? I’m a writer, not a story-teller. Besides, any buffoon can tell you that well-written prose is the foundation —’
‘For Chrissakes, who cares about well-written? Critics maybe? People who go to Book Club every Tuesday? English teachers — and other professional wannabes? Put them together and they constitute about point triple-o-five per cent of the book-reading population. Besides, if you’re talking award-winning literature, well … let’s be honest here, Vince. No one, repeat no one, who starts reading that sort of tripe ever actually finishes it.’
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