by Maris Morton
‘Mm. It’s not something I think about a lot. With Roy being a soldier, I suppose his risk of dying young was higher than most. But my father’s a soldier, too, and he’s survived unscathed.’
Clio glanced at her. ‘If you’ve looked at Ellen’s diaries you’ll know that four of her children died.’
‘Yes, I read that. It must have been devastating. But most families lost a baby or two in those days. Nowadays if we lose one we’re looking for someone to blame.’
A look of deep sadness settled on Clio’s features. ‘I lost one, too.’
‘Did you? I’m so sorry.’
‘It was a little girl. My firstborn. Ellen Allegra.’
‘That’s a lovely name. Ellen for her grandmother, and isn’t Allegra a musical word?’
‘Allegro means full of life. My Allegra had only a very little life. Six hours. They let me hold her, until they realised she had a problem. Then they snatched her away and hooked her up to life support and when I saw her again she … she’d … she was … she was quite cold.’ Clio’s face was grim. ‘She was a lovely baby; eight pounds ten ounces, with black curly hair just like my father’s. I was so proud of her. She looked big and strong, but they found out she had only one lung, and some part of her heart was missing. While she was being nourished by my blood, she was fine. But she was never going to be able to cope on her own.’
Clio passed her hand down the length of her robe-covered thigh. ‘They said it was because I had a virus during the first trimester. Paul blamed me, of course. It would have been worse if it had been a boy. I always wanted a little girl.’ She tightened her lips as if to stop them trembling. ‘So I had to get used to the idea of death fairly early. My mother, when I was sixteen. Then Allegra.’
Clio turned away to stare out through the bay window, her gaze unfocused. ‘I’m glad I’m not a sheep. The poor ewes will be lambing soon. They live only to die. To make money for us first, but that’s all it is. Birth, eating, being shorn, breeding, dying. But in the end that’s all it is for any of us, isn’t it.’
Mary didn’t know what to say. She stood to top up the teapot, poured two more cups and offered Clio a piece of cake. ‘In between, there are moments of joy, though,’ she said.
Clio absorbed this and gradually her expression lightened. She reached to take a piece of cake. ‘No, you’re right. I shouldn’t be so morbid. There are indeed odd moments of joy.’
ELLEN’S ROOM WAS LIKE a museum exhibit. A collection of ornaments defined its antique style: a brass candle snuffer in the shape of a frog; a pair of tall Japanese cloisonné vases containing moulting plumes of pampas grass; a brass jardiniere filled with ancient pot pourri. Between the armchairs grouped in front of the window was a circular pedestal table, probably mahogany, draped with fringed burgundy velvet. Despite Mary’s energetic cleaning, the room still wore a smell compounded of dust, mildew and camphor; the pot pourri had long ago lost its fragrance.
Now that she was sitting at the piano, Mary was reluctant to strike a note. Would Clio be able to hear her, through the brick wall that separated her room from this one? Her hands felt thick and clumsy, but she made herself place her right hand on the keys, thumb on middle C, ready to play the scale. The old ivory keys looked brittle, and she was almost afraid to press them with enough force to make a sound. Hell, the instrument probably wasn’t even in tune.
Patiently, Mary felt her way back to familiarity with the scales; the major keys, then the minor ones, pausing to remember where the sharps and flats came, trying it out and judging by the sound. Gradually, elation filled her. She’d forgotten how much she used to love the pattern of the notes. When she’d finished all the scales, she opened the music for ‘Für Elise’ and placed her hands into the starting position. All at once the fingers of her right hand began to play without any impetus from her, finishing the downward cadence, and then the left started its upward response: her hands — and brain — were remembering the piece that she’d played so often as a schoolgirl! But the moment she tried to think about what came next, her hands faltered. It didn’t matter: it was amazing that she’d remembered so much and she was excited that now, unexpectedly, she had this chance to rediscover her old friend music. The knowledge that she had no more than a modest talent for it didn’t diminish her pleasure in the least.
CLIO LAY IN THE DARKNESS listening to the wind. Interwoven with its growling and sighing was the ghostly sound of a piano. She struggled to make some kind of sense of it: the growling was coming from the never-ceasing pulse of vehicles on the Cahill Expressway that could always be sensed, in spite of the buffer of the Gardens, and the piano’s sounds were coming from one of the cell-like rooms set aside for practice. Whoever was playing wasn’t very good, not good enough you’d think to be studying here, and she felt immensely superior. She was waiting for her own lesson, and Tallis was late. Not to waste any precious lesson time, she’d taken out her instrument and tuned it. She began her own series of scales, drowning out the pianist and filling her head with the glorious music that pushed aside every other fact and detail of living until it was the only reality; the only real, true life.
Clio turned over and inadvertently put weight on a sore spot. She gasped; tears filled her closed eyes.
It was only a dream. The noise was the wind outside and, she remembered, Mary on Ellen’s piano. Her instrument had gone. Tallis had gone. The real, true music was over.
AFTER THE PIANO, Mary was too tired to bother with Ellen’s diary. As she lay in the dark she revisited the conversations she’d had with Clio during the day. She was feeling the beginning of empathy with the woman.
It was clear that Clio saw herself as trapped in an unhappy marriage. Although it was possible that she was planning to leave Downe when she’d recovered her health, she could have enough of a masochistic streak to stay here and suffer. There was no explaining people.
Mary let go of Clio and her problems and summoned memories of her own husband. Beautiful, vital, clever Roy, with the world at his feet. But from the album of happy memories, tonight — possibly under the influence of Clio’s sadness — her capricious mind selected an episode that carried no trace of bliss.
It was the expression on his face that had set the alarm bells ringing. His familiar look of happy confidence had, just for a moment, transmuted to arrogance. She’d never thought of Roy as arrogant, or no more so than any bright, ambitious army officer, and she’d seen plenty of them. No, it was when it had become clear from what he was saying that the look was arrogance that the shock had started to tighten her stomach, and all the vague unease that she’d been suppressing for — how long? A year, at least — had taken an unmistakable and horrifying shape.
The grin had been an actor’s grin, like a naughty boy’s, begging her indulgence, confident he’d get it.
She’d been waiting for him to give some explanation other than the patently transparent lie he’d offered as he’d come through the door. That there had been a misunderstanding, and he was sorry she’d been so upset. But she knew Roy wouldn’t apologise.
He was so beautiful, his skin like pale honey in the low light of the bedroom. When he was relaxed like that, the big muscles in his arms and shoulders and thighs were as soft to her touch as a cat, until, if she offered any encouragement at all, they’d turn to steel as they wrapped themselves around her and she’d slip once again into that limbo of pleasure that he’d taught her, so ardently, to reach. Lying beside him, aware of his heart beating steadily in his chest, no hint of a flutter, and the scent of him flavouring every atom of the air she was breathing, she could clearly detect the trace of an alien perfume.
His skin had the glow that was so familiar, the heat from recent lovemaking, fucking, sex. Not with her. She could smell it on him, the clean dampness of a recent shower, the wrong soap, when he never showered in the evening. The first powerful cramp twisted her gut then, and she told herself to relax, but while she was lying beside him that wasn’t going to be possible.
‘Why did you marry me, Roy?’
He took his hand away and frowned for an instant, then his face cleared. He thought this was a game. ‘Well, you’re not a bad-looking chick and you can cook.’ He paused as though giving the matter his deepest consideration. ‘I asked around and none of the other guys had had you.’ Mary was stunned into silence by this but Roy hadn’t finished. ‘And marrying General Pederick’s only daughter wasn’t a bad career move, was it.’
It was too much. Mary sat up and swung her arm and punched him in the face. The jolt stung her fist and jarred the bones in her arm, and it was a stupid thing to do because from that angle there was never going to be any force to the blow — it didn’t even make him bleed — but still, she felt marginally better for it.
Until he laughed and reached out and pulled her into his arms. ‘I’m glad you’ve got that out of your system,’ he murmured into her hair while she lay rigid. ‘Come on, honey, give us a kiss.’ But he had enough sense not to force matters, and in the end, by a combination of laughter and caresses, he managed to cajole her into a degree of complaisance — enough for her to stay in their bed for the remainder of that night. What choice did she have? Where else was she going to go, in the middle of the night?
Mary could clearly remember the huge effort it had taken, during the long days that followed, to pretend that nothing had changed. When he was out working, she’d agonised. He’d been due to fly off to Afghanistan a week later, and for that she’d been profoundly grateful. His absence would give her time to think.
Through all those days, there had been a black emptiness inside her. The faint suspicion she’d been living with had been one thing; the stark reality of knowing for a fact that he was having sex with other women was quite another. Was he taking the trouble to use a condom? She doubted it.
She couldn’t eat, and lost weight.
As the days had passed, she’d come to believe that the Roy she’d fallen in love with had never existed. Could she — did she even want to — come to terms with this new husband?
Had it been her fault? Something lacking in her? Her own parents’ marriage seemed so happy and fulfilling for both of them that this was the pattern she’d expected to follow in her own, without any striving greater than the exercise of loving goodwill.
She wasn’t a stupid woman. She was an excellent cook and household manager, well-read, could get along with most people and make friends easily. She was pleasant to look at. She was a happy person, finding pleasure in the million details of everyday life, and she should have been regarded as a good catch as a wife, even without her father being a general.
Trust had gone. She’d never again believe that Roy was where he said he was, doing what he said he was doing. Roy wasn’t interested in change or negotiation. What she had now was all she could ever expect from him. Sometimes she fantasised that he was injured and dependent on her, and although she recognised the pointlessness of it, the scenario offered a momentary comfort.
And while she’d still been struggling with the decision whether to leave him, or to stay married and try somehow to make the marriage work, a messenger had come with the news that Major Roy Lanyon, so vital, so beautiful, with the world at his feet, had been blown to bits by a bomb beside a road near some poverty-stricken Afghan village.
The Roy Lanyon she’d fallen in love with, and that other Roy, too, had gone from her life forever.
10
‘YOO-HOO, YOO-HOO.’
Mary was hanging out washing when she heard the call, rather like the warbling of some kind of pigeon. Janet was peering at her over the dividing fence, grasping the top of the pickets in her chubby hands.
Mary pegged out the last of Paul’s and Martin’s work shirts. In an instant they were seized by the wind, whizzing the rotary line around. Mary ducked in to retrieve the basket, then went over to the fence. ‘How are you, Janet?’
‘I’m well, thank you, Mary. And yourself ?’
‘Women’s work is never done, is it,’ Mary said agreeably, starting to edge away.
Janet got the message. ‘I thought … Cecil and I thought, if you’ve got an hour to spare this afternoon?’
‘Yes, I could probably manage that.’
‘We thought you might like to pop over and have a peek inside the house’ — she nodded at the stone house — ‘and Cecil’s collection of fossils?’
‘Fossils? How interesting,’ Mary lied.
Mary was starting to think of excuses when she remembered that Cec was the fount of all wisdom about the stud business and she was being offered the chance to interrogate him. ‘Of course, I’d love to see them,’ she told Janet, whose face, without its coating of powder, opened up in a freckled smile. In the cruel sunlight her teeth were yellowish. ‘What time shall I come?’
THE TOUR OF Janet’s house was soon over. Apart from the added-on fibro kitchen and bathroom, there were only four rooms, with a central passage. As Mary had expected, Janet kept everything immaculate: the jarrah floors and joinery glossy, the paint bright and new. She’d collected some old furniture; not fine antiques, but simple, solid farmhouse pieces.
There weren’t a great many of the fossils, and they were in fact interesting. Cec handled the pieces of rock as if they were fragile porcelain, each removed from its tissue wrapping and turned this way and that until the fossil could be seen in all its miraculous detail. While this was going on, Janet bustled around getting ready for the ceremony of afternoon tea.
‘These are all around forty million years old,’ Cec said. ‘This one’s just rushes, they’re common around here. Then there’s this one.’ He handed it to her. ‘See? It’s a little cone, some kind of araucaria. They don’t grow in these parts any more, but their descendants live in South America, and on the east coast and Norfolk Island. They say you can find fossils of ginkgo here, too.’
Mary enjoyed expertise in any form, and this was all new to her. ‘Really? I thought ginkgos came from China.’
‘The living ones were discovered there. But Australia was joined to India and China once. You’ve heard of Gondwana?’
Janet was setting out the tea things on the other end of the table. ‘You’re sure you wouldn’t rather have coffee? I’m afraid we can’t run to homemade cakes.’
‘That’s fine, Janet. I’m easy to please.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ Janet said.
While Cec was busy rewrapping the pieces of rock, Mary made an attempt to short-circuit Janet’s clumsy pleasantries. ‘I follow Epicurus,’ she explained, listening for the silence that was the usual response to this name-dropping. She had a small hope that Janet, being a teacher, would know whom she was talking about. ‘He said something like: Pleasure is the beginning and the goal of a happy life, and the root of every pleasure is the stomach. I think preparing good food is part of the pleasure as much as eating it, and it’s the one pleasure that you can absolutely rely on.’
‘You might have something there,’ Cec said.
‘If you’ve got the time,’ Janet said curtly.
Mary smiled at her; there was no point in arguing with the Janets of this world.
Cec put the lid on the fossil box. ‘Talking about pleasures, Mary, have you been to the reserve yet?’
‘No, I haven’t. I’m not sure how to get there.’
‘That’s a shame. Tell you what, when we’ve finished tea we can take a run down there.’ He looked at his wife. ‘That all right with you, Mother?’
Janet looked as if she might object but managed a smile. ‘Better take a jacket. It’s chilly out.’
Over the tea and sugary jubilee twist, Janet delicately brought up the matter of Clio’s health, but Mary had little to tell her. ‘She was terribly tired when she first came home but I think she’s a bit stronger now,’ she said. ‘She comes out of her room for a chat, during the w
eekends.’ This was a mistake, as she saw from the brightening of Janet’s eyes and the way she leant forward.
‘Only on the weekends? I wonder why that is? I understand she and Paul haven’t always got along.’ There was a huge question mark hanging over this and Mary tried to get out of the corner she’d got herself into.
‘I don’t think she’s really up to coping with anything … anything that’s at all stressful,’ she said, adopting Janet’s tone of respectful delicacy and hoping that this answer would satisfy her. It must have done, because Janet changed tack.
‘Of course, she blamed Paul for David’s accident,’ she said, clasping her plump, freckled hands on the table. Mary didn’t want to have to ask but she didn’t need to.
‘David was Martin’s little brother. They were about’ — she looked to Cec for confirmation — ‘oh, seven and nine? Something like that. David was the quiet one, big dark eyes like his mum … well, they both had … but a sweet way with him. Martin was always his daddy’s boy, and David was his mother’s favourite. David liked music, like Mrs Hazlitt, and Paul was always trying to make a man of him. Pretty pointless with a kiddie of that age but … Anyway, Paul insisted that David come out around the farm with him. Martin loved it, of course, you couldn’t keep him away from the animals or the machinery. In those days Paul was around more, that was before he started going up to Perth; that started after Martin went away to boarding school. Anyway, as I was saying, this day Paul had young David out with him on the back of the ute. Why he couldn’t ride in the cab with his father and brother I’ll never know, there would have been plenty of room, but there he was, perched on the back, hanging on for dear life.’
She looked at Cec again, and Mary wondered whether Janet had actually witnessed this.
‘Nobody knows why Paul was driving so badly that day. Hungover, maybe. He used to drink a little bit in those days. But he took off down the race as if the devil was after him, the little kiddie hanging on the back, and went round the bend like a bat out of hell. David lost his grip and flew off.’ She paused to give weight to the drama. ‘He was killed instantly, they said. Broke his neck when he hit the ground. Poor little mite.’ She looked down at her hands in sorrowful respect. ‘It’s no wonder, really, that she blamed Paul. It broke her heart. Things were never the same between them.’