by Alex Miller
He said, ‘I’ve got a map of the West End engraved in my head.’
‘Well there you are, you see,’ she said, as if this decided the question of his identity. ‘Only a real Londoner has that.’
He walked along Marylebone Road till he got to Edgware Road, then turned down towards Marble Arch. The London streets were intensely familiar from his days with his father visiting galleries and bookshops and later with his friend Ernie watching Cinerama and walking in the parks, dreaming their dreams of adventures and lying in the sun smoking where no one would see them. While he walked along the old streets the situation with Lena was playing itself over and over in Robert’s head. He felt as if he’d been flung out of his orbit by her and couldn’t think straight.
He reached the corner of Oxford Street and Park Lane and saw the offices of the Japanese Trade Commission. The receptionist, who was not Japanese, said, ‘Mr Haida is expecting you, Mr Crofts.’ She smiled and waved away as unnecessary the slip of paper the woman at the appointments board had given him, wafting towards him with her gesture a delicate hint of her expensive perfume.
A tall, elegantly suited Japanese man came out of an office and introduced himself. He shook Robert’s hand and said he was very pleased to see him. He spoke English with an American accent. Meeting Robert seemed to make him happy. Robert was glad he was wearing the dark grey three-piece suit. They sat in Mr Haida’s office on leather couches. A beautiful young woman, who was also not Japanese, brought in tea and biscuits, and Mr Haida and Robert chatted. Mr Haida said he was delighted the university had sent an Australian and he was interested to hear about Robert’s experiences in Far North Queensland. The conversation was casual, and there was no particularly Japanese direction to it until Mr Haida said, ‘Have you ever been to Japan, Robert?’ Robert said he hadn’t. Mr Haida said, ‘They’d like you to visit Japan.’ And that was it. Had this meeting really been a job interview? Mr Haida said he looked forward to seeing Robert on Monday, when he would introduce him to Mr Sugiura. He went with Robert to the outer office and shook his hand and smiled.
Robert walked up the ramp with the crowd of commuters at Chislehurst station and an old memory replaced his aching preoccupation with Lena. As he turned left at the top of the ramp and walked along the quiet suburban streets he found himself thinking about his father. When his father came home from the war he was convalescent for several months at Orpington Hospital with hundreds of other wounded soldiers. Robert’s mother used to take Robert and his sister from Grove Park to Orpington every week to see their father. The Orpington train always stopped at Chislehurst. His father in his blue hospital uniform, grinning and hopping on crutches towards them across a wide expanse of green lawn, was vivid in his mind. His father had looked well and happy, a wounded hero returned. Nurses in vivid white stood back watching him and smiling. Everyone admired his father and Robert felt distant from him and wondered sadly if he and his father would ever again be close friends.
31
Don was in the hall downstairs when Robert came in the front door. He was looking startled and a bit confused. Robert said, ‘Is everything all right, Don?’
Don set down his green watering can and stood close to Robert and put a hand on his shoulder. His demeanour was almost furtive. ‘Look here, old chap…’ he said. He glanced around awkwardly, as if he was afraid of being overheard. ‘Two men came to see your wife earlier.’ He paused and they looked at each other. Robert noticed how large his eyes were, deep brown, his eyebrows a little gingery like his moustache. Don drew a breath and squeezed Robert’s shoulder with his strong fingers. ‘When they left, one of them was carrying a bundle of towelling.’ There was a question in his eyes as he leaned closer to Robert and whispered, ‘There was blood on the towel.’
Robert stepped away from him.
‘Do you think she’s all right?’ Don said. ‘I’ve been waiting for you. I thought it better not to call the police.’
Robert ran up the stairs three at a time and let himself into the flat. Lena was lying in bed with the blanket pulled up. Her fingers were gripping the edge of the blanket. Her forehead was beaded with sweat. She turned her head towards him. ‘It’s gone,’ she said. Her weak voice was muffled by the blanket. ‘I’ve had an abortion.’ She began to cry.
He sat on the edge of the bed and held her against him. She was crying, not frantically, not sobbing wildly, just crying quietly. He thought of the two men carrying the bloodied towels out to their car and driving away. How had she got in touch with them? When did she make the sudden arrangement? How did she pay them? A storm of questions in his head. He didn’t ask.
The following morning she surprised him by getting up early and making them both a cup of tea. They sat across from each other at the table in the kitchen. She seemed to be completely recovered. ‘I’m all right. Don’t make a fuss. I’m really all right. I’m going to eat properly again. I want us to make a clean new beginning.’
He was seeing the child sinking slowly into the dark depths of the sea. Gone forever. A lost soul. How could that be the start of a clean new beginning?
She got up and began making toast at the bench.
He said, ‘I need you to tell me about the abortion. How did you arrange it? Did you phone someone? Did you go out? How did you pay for it?’
He waited, watching her fiddling with the toaster. ‘You have to say something,’ he said. ‘You can’t just say nothing.’
She turned around and looked at him. ‘Can it wait a bit? Please?’
He saw the pained look in her eyes. Was this for her a defeat of her womanhood? Was she afraid now of what she had done, how it might haunt her?
‘Tell me about the job,’ she said. ‘I want to hear about it. Let’s try and be a bit normal. We’ll talk about the other thing another time. I can’t talk about all that now.’ She brought over a plate of buttered toast and set it on the table. ‘We’ll go shopping and I’ll get some decent marmalade for you.’ She pulled out her chair and sat down and poured another cup of tea. She sat munching a piece of the warm buttered toast. ‘So, you had an interview? What were they like, the people?’
He looked at her for a long moment without saying anything. ‘I need to know just one thing,’ he said. ‘Do you still have feelings for the man who gave you the child?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, of course not!’ she said with irritation. ‘I never had feelings for him. Feelings! God! Please don’t make me talk about it!’
They sat in silence. The heating pipes groaned and pinged and the excited dog was barking out in the garden again.
She said, ‘Do you want to come shopping with me this morning? I need to buy some new clothes. I’ve got nothing decent to wear.’
He ate a piece of toast and drank a second cup of tea. ‘I can’t force you to tell me anything if it’s too painful for you. But I feel as if I’m in a kind of vacuum if you don’t tell me anything. I can’t pin down any details. If you won’t tell me anything, I’ll imagine the worst. That’s all. I’m here, you know. It’s me. I’m still me.’
‘I know it can’t be easy for you,’ she said. ‘But can we just give it a bit of time? I’ll tell you everything you want to know when I feel stronger. When I’m in charge of myself again. Right now I feel as if I’ll break in half and fall in a heap if I have to deal with any more.’
He lit a cigarette. ‘At least we’re talking. It’s something. It’s better than the blank silence.’
‘We can’t become us again just like that. At once. We have to find our way a step at a time.’
‘You sound like the professional social worker talking now.’ It wasn’t easy for him to trust what she said. ‘What are we going to tell Martin and Birte? We can’t tell them nothing. I have to write to them. You should too. They’re worried about you.’
‘Just for now,’ she said, ‘can you tell me about how you went looking for a job? Then we can go shopping together like ordinary people. I desperately need a bit of normality.’ She put her h
and on his. ‘What did they say to you at the Japanese Trade Commission? Where was it? Are you going to have your own office?’
‘It overlooks Park Lane. There’s a view of the park. The guy who interviewed me was very handsome. A tall Japanese. He told me he went to McGill University in Montreal for five years and has been out of Japan for so long that he probably won’t any longer be quite Japanese enough when he goes back. He twigged that I was an imposter. He seemed to like me for it. I think he’s probably an imposter himself. Someone who’s become disconnected from his past.’
‘He sounds interesting.’
‘Yes. We got on. I liked him. It was all incredibly casual. If we hadn’t liked each other, he would have politely shown me the door.’
‘What will you be doing?’
‘He didn’t say. I think they just want a young non-Japanese in a smart suit somewhere about the office. The way they have beautiful blonde English girls for reception and as secretaries. Part of the show.’
On Monday after work, he bought a bottle of brown ale at the off-licence outside the Chislehurst station. When he walked into the kitchen there was a large stoneware jug on the kitchen table, an arrangement of hothouse daisies and green leaves. Lena had lamb chops under the grill and was mashing potatoes in a yellow bowl. She was wearing a grey woollen roll-neck jumper and new jeans. She’d had her hair cut and styled and was wearing makeup. She was not her old self, but was a woman in whom her old self had taken up residence. Perhaps, if she were truly sane and she put on weight again, she would become entirely her old self. When he came through the door she looked up at him, her expression hopeful, expectant and a little worried. He said, ‘You look terrific.’ He went over to her and kissed her. She said, ‘So do you.’
She didn’t look terrific, but at least there was no sign of the disorder of her mind that had overwhelmed her since he’d found her in Perugia. He set the beer on the table and went into the bedroom and changed out of his suit and tie. Perhaps the dramatic change—the liberation of her demented spirit, which seemed to have been triggered by her mother’s unexpected death—perhaps this change was going to go on forming in her. As he pulled on his jeans he realised this was the first time he’d had such a thought. The idea that she wasn’t going to revert to the young woman she had been, the one he fell in love with, but was going on to become this other woman. Would they resume their sex life? The question was in the very front of his mind. It was difficult to imagine them making love again. He couldn’t quite see it. But perhaps they’d manage it. They’d have to. He wasn’t going to be celibate.
He went out to the kitchen and took two tumblers down from the cupboard and opened the beer and poured two glasses. He held one out to her. ‘Dad’s favourite beer.’
She took it from him. They clinked their glasses. ‘What shall we say?’ she said.
‘To us!’
‘To us,’ she echoed.
They drank and looked into each other’s eyes. Just possibly, it occurred to him, the bond between them—which was something not to be understood but to be felt—had been mysteriously strengthened. In a way he felt that. He lit a cigarette. ‘I didn’t want to marry you. But I did want you to be my lover and my friend.’
She didn’t say anything to this but smiled and set her beer on the table and cut another small slice of butter and put it in with the mashed potatoes. ‘Pepper!’ she said and frowned and looked around. ‘I don’t think we’ve got any.’
He looked through the cupboards. There wasn’t any pepper.
She dished up and they sat down to their meal. She had one chop on her plate and a small spoonful of mashed potato.
He enjoyed the meal and the beer. They’d taken some kind of step forward. There had been two liberating deaths for her: her mother’s and her child’s. He had been absent from both. Her double refusal of motherhood. Both deaths, in their way—in the way that is not locked to rationality and to facts and histories but is locked within our souls and is known only by our intuition—part of the price she was being called on to pay for the realisation of her particular secret, her liberty. Her cry, I am fucking free, ringing on and on; more prophecy than fact. He pushed his plate away, the three chop bones forming a Y on the plate. He lit a cigarette and refilled his glass with beer. ‘You’re turning into a good cook.’
She said, ‘Nonsense! Anyone can grill a couple of chops.’ She collected the plates and the cutlery and carried them over to the sink.
He said, ‘Come and sit down. I’ll do that later.’
She set the things on the sink and turned around. ‘I want to meet your parents.’
Without thinking he said, ‘I’ve decided not to tell them we’re here. I’ve realised I need to get home to Melbourne and make a start on my writing. I’ve wasted enough time. The job was a mistake.’ He didn’t want his parents to meet her. It was complicated. There were too many old issues. He thought he’d left those issues behind for good when he left England. But here, back in England, he knew those old issues would soon come alive again and insist on being dealt with. Issues with his father in particular. A thoughtless word would be enough to rouse them to new life. He was afraid of what might happen if his two worlds were to meet, if the equation were to be completed, so that one side might measure him against the other side, so that he might himself be required to measure his new reality against his old discarded self. Once upon a time, when he was barely sixteen years old, he’d had a vision, a beautiful clear dream, an idea that had carried him around the world. The idea had faltered and had seemed to fail entirely. Now at last a new horizon, as empty as the first, had begun to entice him: the possibility of becoming a writer of the kind of novels that Martin would admire. He wanted to get on with it. He wanted to make a beginning. He had decided not to go back to the university to complete his honours degree. He now knew his way among books and was confident he could find the reading that would sustain him. And he had Martin’s friendship. He said, ‘We’re going home.’
‘Not before we visit your parents,’ she said.
‘We’re not going to visit my parents,’ he said and lit a cigarette.
She reached for his cigarettes, shook one halfway out of the packet, then changed her mind and pushed it back in and shoved the packet away from her. ‘Now it’s you who’s being irrational,’ she said calmly. ‘You knew my mother. You knew my life at home. You know all about me. Now I want to know about you. It’s important to me. I want to see you with your parents in your old home. Then I’ll know who you are. Are you like your father or are you like your mother? Or will I see something of you in both of them? I must meet them. You have to trust me to decide for myself. I’m here in England with you now. We’ll probably never be here together ever again. Now is the time.’ She watched him, waiting, a mixture of determination and anxiety in her eyes.
He smoked his cigarette and stared at the oilcloth on the table. Someone had burned a small round hole in it. He rubbed the burn hole with his finger and looked up at her. ‘It’s a funny thing,’ he said.
‘What is?’
‘When you left Red Bluff and I was there on my own I missed the sound of the piano. I went into the sitting room a couple of times and struck the keys. But that only made it worse. Every now and then I heard you playing a familiar piece.’
She said, ‘We have to meet your parents. That’s all there is to it. I’m not going home till we do.’
He watched her get up and go over to the sink and begin washing up their dishes. ‘You’re like your mother in some ways.’
She turned and regarded him levelly for some time. ‘You see? That’s what I mean. Whether you like it or not, I’m going to meet your parents. You’ll just have to accept it. I can’t imagine why you’re being so weird about it.’
He didn’t feel like having a head-on collision with her just then, so he let it lie for the time being.
That night she cuddled up close to him. He lay beside her feeling uneasy and unsure. Then she put her hand on him for
the first time since she’d left Red Bluff to go to Italy.
Neither of them said anything after they’d made love. There had been such an acute tension, almost a feeling of embarrassment or bashfulness about it, that they didn’t know what to say. So they said nothing, but lay side by side holding hands in the dark. And eventually they went to sleep.
In the morning he took her in a cup of tea before leaving for the office. He went into the office every morning for the rest of the week and read the newspapers and had lunch with Mr Haida and caught the train home in the evenings. On Friday when he got home Lena was sitting at the kitchen table writing in her notebook. She had arranged a bunch of hothouse flowers in a vase by the window and was wearing makeup. Beside her on the table was a letter. She didn’t close the notebook when he came in, as she usually did, but looked up and said brightly, ‘How was your day?’
He put the bottle of beer on the table. ‘I told Haida I wanted to be a writer and wouldn’t be staying long,’ he said. ‘So who’s the letter from?’
She said cheerfully, ‘Your mother.’
‘My mother doesn’t know we’re here.’ He picked up the letter and slid the single sheet of paper out of the envelope.
My dear Lena,
What a lovely surprise to hear that you and Robert are in England. And so near to us! Robert didn’t say he was planning on coming over. It’s just like him to surprise us. I used to call him my difficult one! We can’t wait to meet you. I do hope you can come either for lunch or afternoon tea next Saturday, if you’re not too busy. Please don’t feel you need to change your plans for us. We don’t have the phone on unfortunately.
He put his mother’s note back in the envelope and placed the envelope on the table and looked at Lena. She gave him a sweetly innocent smile.
He said, ‘I guess you win.’
‘It isn’t a competition,’ she said.