A Few Days in the Country (6 page)

‘Where to now?' each asked as they stepped out into the dark warm night.

‘Like to go to a show?' Claire said, waving vaguely at the neon signs which flashed restlessly down the length of the street.

Annette's face was rueful. ‘Too broke, honey. How about catching a ferry across to Manly and back? You can give me a good lecture and tell me what dear Miss Frazer has been doing today.'

The little thrust at ‘dear Miss Frazer' aroused mixed feelings of envy, pity, and annoyance in Claire. Annette laughed at the expression on her face, so that several people passing by looked at them. Claire laughed too, catching Annette's arm and saying, ‘Come on, we can just catch this tram down to the Quay.'

‘Are my seams straight?' Annette cried anxiously.

Claire dropped a step or two behind her. ‘Fine! Now run for the stop.'

They parted at the station later that night on a wave of affection. All was harmony; all was agreed. Annette was going to give work another trial, and report to Claire the following night before going home to see Otto and the boys.

Claire, for her part, saw that Miss Frazer was a ‘bit of a menace' as Annette put it, and resolved to withstand her powerful charms. Their thoughts, as they were borne home in opposite directions, turned on one another and their respective tasks for the next day. What a blessing we each speak the same language, they thought. How lucky to get good advice from the right person at the right time.

Mr Baker didn't leave the office all morning, but kept Miss Frazer engaged discussing the new styles for the winter season. He was a fussy little man, by no means unaware of the incandescent sympathy and affection in Mrs Douglas Preston's eyes. He needed his share of the world's understanding as much as anyone, and counted himself lucky in having one of its natural sources in his employ.

After lunch, having unburdened his soul for several hours regarding the business, his family, and his feelings about them, Mr Baker was able to go out into the city, appreciated, vigorous, and refreshed.

Miss Frazer came into the factory when he left and sat down beside Claire, who looked up from the invoice book. The noise of the machines and the wireless made conversation as private as in a confessional chamber.

‘Hello, dear,' Miss Frazer sighed. ‘What a morning I've had. I thought he'd never go out.'

Claire cleared her throat sympathetically and returned to her book.

‘What's the matter, Claire? You don't seem like yourself.' Her voice had a slight edge.

This was an old scene, too, and had its own rigid pattern. Claire determined to break it for once and, she thought, for the last time.

‘I'm perfectly all right, Miss Frazer, thanks,' she said, flipping through the prices book.

There was no reply and Claire was mildly horrified by her own presumption in failing to respond to the proffered invitation. As she worked through her list of jobs her heart thumped apprehensively. What would happen next?

After ten minutes of extreme silence, Miss Frazer, not looking at her, said in stifled tones, ‘Come through to the office with me please, Claire.'

Picking up her bag she went from the room, her head high, her eyes on the floor.

Claire sighed and put down her pen. She looked around the factory for inspiration to help her through the crisis. One of the machinists, Eloise, caught her eye, her expression inscrutable. Claire looked away and went through to the office. Paddy would be at the bank again, she thought. Oh dear.

Miss Frazer sat facing the door, waiting for her with all the weapons of her powerful personality ready for use. And she was hurt: anyone could see it. Very hurt.

‘Now tell me truly, dear. What is the matter with you today?'

Claire's head swam in nightmarish fashion. ‘Really, Miss Frazer, nothing's wrong!' she said, trying to sound convincing, for as soon as the words formed, she doubted their fundamental truth. Wasn't life really hollow and pointless? How could life be all right if one was not happy, and who in the world was happy but Miss Frazer and her husband?

‘Did Annette upset you last night?' Miss Frazer asked, giving the impression that she would willingly ask every question in the universe if only she might be allowed to solve this problem and remedy its cause.

Claire was momentarily surprised back to reality. ‘Annette?' she repeated. ‘Oh, no!'

‘And yet,' said Miss Frazer, ‘your face is strained. There are circles under your eyes, Claire. And you haven't been very nice to me today, you know, though I'm trying to help you, dear.'

How kind she is, thought Claire, wanting to cry. How kind!

‘I know that, Miss Frazer,' she said. ‘Really, I do. But nothing's the matter.'

Her interlocutor bore the anticlimax gracefully. ‘Then if that's true, dear, I'm glad. Just remember that I'm here if you ever need me.' She was silent, watching Claire's averted head, then she smiled gently. ‘Look at me, Claire!'

Claire turned reluctantly, and Miss Frazer gazed at her tearful eyes with an involuntary expression of sheer curiosity.

Endeavouring to regain her self-possession, Claire said, ‘I'm seeing Annette tonight for a few minutes to hear if she's staying at her job.'

But Miss Frazer's interest had reached its maximum and was declining; her tone was brisk. ‘Are you, dear? I don't think that girl has a good effect on you. Now,' she added, ‘we'd better do some work before Mr B. comes back.' She turned to the phone and the session was over.

It was hot again, about ninety degrees. Claire felt exhausted. The noise in the factory intensified the heat. She wrote mechanically for the rest of the afternoon, the pen slipping now and then in her hand.

She waited at the Martinique from twenty to six until half-past. Annette was not coming. Claire went home feeling hungry and depressed. Too bad of Annette not to ring to say she couldn't make it, she thought indignantly at intervals until she went to bed.

On Friday, Claire woke with a sore throat and a temperature, and when her mother insisted on phoning the office she didn't feel well enough to protest.

Her room was quiet and she slept for an hour or so, then after having tablets and a hot drink she lay back on the pillows, her head turned to the window. She had a view of tall gum trees on some uncleared land, and down below the slope was the harbour shining in the sun.

The only sounds were the postman's whistle and an occasional car. Inside and outside her room all was quiet, all was warmth and light.

The noise of the telephone in the hall seemed a violation of the morning. Claire pulled a pillow over her exposed ear and continued to study the deep blue sky, but her contemplation was disturbed again.

‘It's Annette,' her mother said. ‘Will I bring the phone through for you, or will I tell her you'll ring tomorrow?'

‘Would you bring it in, please?' Claire asked, shivering a little as she sat up.

‘Hello, Annette?'

‘It isn't Annette,' the answer came. ‘It's her cousin Effie. Annette's here but she doesn't want to speak to you.'

Claire felt a quickening of her senses, a current of alarm. ‘Why not? Because of last night?' she asked.

Effie sounded excited. ‘Annette was very sorry about letting you down last night and she rang you at work this morning to say so…'

‘Well?' Claire's throat was dry.

‘Well,' Effie said emphatically, ‘she knows now that you've been discussing her with Miss Frazer. You haven't been saying anything good, either, because Miss Frazer gave her a great lecture this morning. Annette's very upset.'

‘Oh,' said Claire in an expressionless voice.

‘And I told her she shouldn't bother any more with a friend who treats her like that,' Effie said. ‘She quite agrees. She doesn't want to meet you ever again.'

‘I see,' Claire said flatly.

Effie, prepared for battle, was nonplussed by the enemy's surrender, but after hesitating she shouted, ‘Goodbye, then!' and hung up.

Don't think about the future. Don't be lonely or frightened or sorrowful, just yet. Look at the gum trees and the sky. Look at the pattern on the ceiling. Look at the flowers on the dressing table. Don't think about Annette.

The phone rang again.

‘Hello?'

‘Hello, dear,' Miss Frazer said. ‘I've been trying to get you for about ten minutes, but your line's been engaged. How are you feeling now?'

‘Not very well.'

‘Oh!' There was a pause. ‘I won't keep you long. I just wanted you to know that I've had a long talk with Annette. She told me about forgetting to keep her appointment with you last night and I was really annoyed with her. I told her that she didn't deserve a friend like you.' She stopped again. ‘Are you there, dear?'

‘Yes, Miss Frazer.'

Her voice grew higher and quicker. ‘And I took the opportunity of telling her that, since she was lucky enough to be living in this country, the least she could do was to become naturalised and take a job like everyone else. Don't you think I was right, Claire?'

Doubting yourself? Claire wondered. ‘I've just had a call from Annette,' she said.

The briefest hesitation. ‘Did she apologise to you, Claire?'

‘No.'

‘I see.' Miss Frazer's voice took on its special note of intimacy. ‘She really wasn't good enough for you, dear. I think she has been a bad influence on you.'

‘Do you, Miss Frazer?'

‘You're not crying, are you, Claire?'

‘No, Miss Frazer.' An odd smile tugged at Claire's mouth. ‘No, I'm not crying.'

‘I'm glad. I won't talk any more now, dear, but we'll have a long chat when you come in to work. I promise you, dear, you're better off without a friend like that.'

‘Perhaps you're right.' How easily she said it.

‘Then goodbye, darling,' Miss Frazer crooned on her most maternal note.

Claire's eyes were sombre.

‘I hope you're a lot better tomorrow.'

‘I expect I'll feel fine. Bye.'

Turning to the window Claire saw that the tall, spare gum trees had begun to wave their branches in the warm breeze. The sky was endlessly blue.

A kookaburra's laugh rang out. It lasted for a long time.

It's going to rain, she thought.

5

The North Sea

As soon as my divorce was finalised I went home to Scotland. The weekend after my arrival there, I decided to go away to the east coast for a few days. In a state of over-heightened sensibility, I felt there was something almost incestuous about breathing and eating in the same house as my parents at this particular time. I was embarrassed.

It wasn't that they reproached me. But, as far as I knew, it was the first divorce in our family on either side: a crack had appeared in the solid wall. Of course, I
would
be the one to start the demolition with a hammer and chisel, and a megaphone and my name in the paper.

Looking at my mother and father, I felt guilty. I'd started out so much luckier than either of them, and managed my life so much worse. Dad was a clerk in the civil service and, partly because of the regular transfers all over the British Isles from one small town to another, he and my mother had had a limited and isolated life together.

I was their only child, but it never seemed to me I brought them joy, the way children are supposed to. And, as I grew up, if anyone had asked me what kept them together I'd have said, ‘Worries.' They were always in a strange town looking for a house to live in, and it was always winter, so that like the orphans of the storm they had snow falling round their shoulders. When they found a small, usually semi-detached house, it was sometimes empty, sometimes fully furnished, and they either had to store crates of household equipment, or buy the essentials that had been previously provided. All this was perpetually worrying and, of course, the car was fragile when they got it.

Sometimes I was a worry, too, when I was ill, or examinations were due, or scholarships; but then, when the crisis passed, I was laid aside, as it were, with all the receipts for accounts paid.

I remember that several times a week in the summer they'd drive out to the country, which was never far away, and take note of the harvest. As they did this for years, up and down the country, they were in an excellent position to compare districts, yields and methods. If I was home from school I'd sit in the back seat listening: ‘John, did you notice that crop of—' ‘Yes, he's done well, considering, but do you remember that place in the Borders?' ‘You're right, that was better, but then think of the soil!' ‘I know, but even so…'

Greek! I'd shrug to myself.

From the stories they told, their meeting and courtship appeared even more than usual to have been a matter of accident. It never occurred to me that they cared much for each other, though I saw they enjoyed these country outings, and they were never bored. And the fact remains, they had been married for forty years, almost to the day, when I first heard someone say, ‘She's their divorced daughter from London, Dr Philippa Fraser.'

My father made one comment: ‘I don't know what people expect out of life.' This was unanswerable. My mother said, ‘Will the publicity hurt you, Pip?'

I pointed out that a divorce could hardly be quieter than ours. There were no blondes, no sensitive dark strangers of either sex, featured in the very unsensational press report. If I'd told them the truth—that the suicide, murder or insanity of one or both of us had been averted by a brief appearance in court—they wouldn't have believed me. (‘She always exaggerates!') No, what they hoped to hear was a conventional explanation, involving the customary third party.

After breakfast on Saturday morning, I was drying the dishes when my mother chose to tell me yet again that my father didn't know what people expected out of life. She glanced up in a challenging way, and I was goaded, sickly, into saying, ‘Then I'm lucky. When I was ten someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said, “Divorced.”'