Elsewhere in Success (7 page)

She is unnerved. Her heart begins to beat irregularly, threatening to stop, and alternately racing to the point of
bursting. Her forehead is damp, and the back of her neck is prickling. She shivers. He is looking, at the house, at the window. The engine is running. She wonders if he can see her. She edges further into the corner and, holding the lemon like a hand grenade, drops to the floor, crawls along the wall beneath the sill, and takes cover under the coffee table. Her eyes are fixed on the passage that leads to the front door. She can hear the engine, louder now, revving. What if he is aiming to drive straight through the front wall? She crawls out from the coffee table, across the floor to the far corner of the room. The front wall will slow him down. He won't get at her there in the corner, not if she makes herself small enough. Then what?

Now her thoughts are spinning, winding tighter and tighter to the only possible conclusion – Victor. He has paid this man to do his dirty work. He knows where she lives. He's got this man watching her, and he's employed him because of the man's resemblance to their son. It's a new kind of torture, something to keep her hanging, to get her back in his control.

She will not be intimidated! She is finding it hard to breathe. She curls herself into a ball, closing off every point of access. She seals herself in.

The rain has forced a new hole through the gutter just outside the bedroom window. Each time it rains, the water funnels down, causing a minor flood. Harry leaves a plastic bucket under the waterfall – a temporary fix until he can get someone in. He would try to do it himself, but he's getting stiffer, and he feels as if he's got enough on his plate with Louisa being the way she is.

Since the day he returned from the beach to find her huddled in the corner of the lounge room clutching a lemon, she seems to be functioning, just. She's been going through the motions, keeping her work going, but how, he doesn't know. Even to his untrained eye, she needs some serious time off to sort herself out. She's been to see Lucy since, and come back wearing a fixed smile, saying she's fine, when it's obvious that she's not.

‘We did more hypnotherapy,' she said. ‘I think she's trying to manipulate me. It's a kind of brainwashing. I know who's put her up to it. She thinks I don't, but I do. I won't let her do that again.'

‘She's just trying to help,' he said, but was rewarded with a darting look of suspicion, and after that Louisa clammed up.
She didn't speak to him again for days.

Harry has tried to get her to make an appointment with the doctor, but she won't go. She acts as if things are back to normal.

It's taking its toll on both of them. When she's not working, she's taking something strong, something that she's hiding from him. He can't sleep, and she sleeps every chance she gets. That is, until today.

Today she was up before him. When he ventured from the bedroom into the hallway, she was already on the way out.

He worries. She needs to settle down. He is at a loss. He wonders whether he should try the tough love approach – to treat her as normal, as though nothing happened, as though he didn't find her shaking and crouched on the floor with her arms covering her head. As though when he finally coaxed her into a standing position, she didn't slide furtively along the wall, peer for a full minute through the window into the empty street, and mumble that she knew what he was up to.

‘Who? Me?' he'd asked, but she hadn't answered, just pushed past him to check that the door was locked. She sat in a chair that she dragged into the corner at the side of the window, and rocked herself all night. That's how she was each time he got up to check on her. The hot chocolate he brought her sat cold and untouched on the table beside her in the morning. She went to bed then, and slept all day. He stayed home and watched over her, tried to get her to see someone, but she wouldn't budge – not, he suspects, until she could convince the world that she was all right. She had her pride. A part of her must have known that the way she was behaving wasn't quite right. Finally she relented. She'd gone to see Lucy then.

And after a week of him calling in to say she had the flu, she'd managed to pull herself together for work, for appearances, wearing a bright smile, calling out a little too loudly as she left the house – see you later, see you – and anyone who knew her
well could see that she was ragged around the edges, but she seemed to be managing for that short period of time. She'd come home, exhausted from the day's performance, and do nothing. She'd sit and stare, take whatever it was, go to bed, and sleep for hours longer than was healthy, twisting and turning, voicing enough of the horror of her fractured dreams to really concern him. Eventually she'd seen Lucy again, at his insistence.

‘Give her another chance,' he'd said.

This time she'd come back a little better. The days went by, and slowly, bit by bit, she'd begun to re-emerge. He wondered if she'd seen the doctor, if she'd started taking antidepressants. He did a quick search of the cluttered bathroom cabinet, but found nothing.

Finally, today, Harry notices another subtle change, as though she might be back to normal. She's almost cheery, not overly, her normal active self, and she's on her way out. He's still not sure. He'd like her home where he can keep an eye on her, but he doesn't want her to feel like he's mollycoddling her.

‘Why are you rushing off?' he says, briskly. ‘It's a nice day. We could get some washing on the line while it's fine. Look, there's a good stiff breeze out there. It'll dry in no time.' She switches from almost cheery to appropriately bristling.

‘In case you haven't noticed, I was up early. I already have a line full. I think you should start rushing around a bit more yourself.'

So he gives her the finger. Half in fun, half relieved. It looks like she's finally back.

‘Yes, very mature,' she says. ‘Fine. I will stay in for a bit. But only because I've just thought of something else I need to do.' She puts her keys and her bag down and disappears through the back room to the laundry, and beyond.

The back door slams and she comes back into the room carrying an armful of dry washing from the line. She is still feisty. She dumps it on the couch and starts to fold but then she
stops and looks at him until he is forced to look back.

‘I'm sorry,' she says. ‘You really do a lot. I shouldn't have said that.'

‘Said what?' says Harry.

‘Anyway,' she says, ‘I think you need to remember I do plenty too, you know. I do my fair share.'

‘I never said you didn't.' He grins. ‘You must be feeling better.'

‘I am better!'

‘Good. I can see that you are.'

She slumps onto the couch amidst the clean washing. ‘Why should you care?'

He sits beside her and puts his arm around her shoulders.

‘I care.'

She stiffens, shrugs him off, stands and starts on the washing.

‘Well don't just sit there,' she says. ‘Help me fold.'

He stands and they fold in silence. After a while he says, ‘What happened, Lou?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Talk to me.'

‘I'm so tired, Harry. I started losing control of things again. No matter how hard I think about it, I can't seem to work it out. I don't know what else to do. I'd rather not talk about it.' She stares at the tea towel in her hand. ‘How did this get in here?'

He shakes his head. She continues to stare at the rogue tea towel.

‘I let my imagination run away with me a bit, I guess,' she says. She seems unsure of what to do. When Harry moves to take the tea towel from her, she pulls it close to her chest. ‘I'm okay now. I just needed some space to sort it out, and I have.'

Harry finds the weeding ritual strangely satisfying. It gives him time and space to think, but sometimes it takes him to places he'd rather not be.

He knows that his memory is selective, but sees that it is like that for a reason. There's no use beating yourself up about what you didn't know, about what you did or didn't do, now that you're older and wiser. You learn what you can and move on.

He is kneeling on a patch of grass next to a blue letterbox. Another place. Another time. There's the sound of the young couple across the road arguing again. Her name is Suzanne, and his is Gary, or Greg, or something. Harry's smiled at her once or twice, but she's kept to herself. She's a sweet little thing. Gary or Greg has a problem with men smiling at her. He doesn't believe in smiling.

Suzanne is screaming and crying, and Gary or Greg is shouting. At one point he drags her out the front door by her hair to wash blood off her face at the outside tap. It's hard to know why he makes the private so public. He's overdone it on some sort of chemical concoction. He wants to humiliate her. He doesn't care. Or he wants someone to stop him.

Harry stands to make himself visible, puts his hands on his hips. ‘Hey!' he calls out. Suzanne keeps her head down, afraid to look, afraid to make things worse. The guy looks across, draws his index finger sharply across his throat, and drags her back inside. The door slams shut. Harry hesitates momentarily, and has just made up his mind to go over when Yasamine grabs him by the arm and tells him not to get involved. He hadn't noticed that she'd come outside and was standing behind him.

‘You're not thinking of going over there, are you?' she says.

‘Why not?'

‘You don't know what he'll do. You've got your daughter to think of. And me.' There is some panic in her voice.

‘She needs help,' he says. ‘We can't do nothing.'

‘It's none of our business, Harry.'

‘I'll call the police,' he says.

‘He'll know,' she says. ‘He'll know it was us that called.'

Harry calls the police. They take their time. He calls again. They're on their way. When they get there Suzanne apparently is able to answer the door, apparently says she's fine and asks them to go away. They do. Their hands are tied. Harry has done his duty and leaves it to the professionals, but he feels uneasy. Later he discovers that Gary or Greg has gone on beating Suzanne after the departure of the police, until she is dead. She's twenty-one. He's twenty-two. Now he has more things to think about than who called the police.

He gets a couple of years in the end. Another neighbour tells Harry they had kids who were staying with the grandparents.

That was years ago. Suzanne should be pushing middle age now, getting fat. Maybe Greg or Gary is still around, hasn't learned, is still a junkie, still beating women, his brain stalled at adolescence, living in denial. How else could you go on?

But that young girl, she didn't deserve it. And Harry realises with some misgiving he could have been more of a man. He could have taken that risk for the poor girl. He won't make that mistake again.

Harry's had enough of the weeding for one day. He washes, changes, and retreats into his office, a converted bedroom that lately has been giving way to the forces of entropy. Since Louisa's episode, she's stopped tidying his space and it has been transforming itself into a store room – hardly the image he should be promoting to the occasional client who insists on visiting. For some time now, he's been thinking he should market himself more aggressively. He needs to get back to where he started. He needs to do a good clean out and start the whole thing from the beginning again.

The business was conceived over drinks at Gordon and Carole's one night, not long after he and Louisa had moved in together. They were socialising quite a bit more then. She'd been introducing him to her assortment of friends. He couldn't return the favour since he'd lost touch with his own.

The whole thing was Gordon's idea really, drawing on what Harry had told him about his former career. Gordon seemed to know what he was talking about, and he had all the trappings of success around him, which added the feel of credibility. They were younger of course, still visualising a future. So Harry went for it.

He still uses the same spiel he worked out back then. When people ask him what he does, he tells them he operates a distance mentoring service for adventurous young musicians travelling to the sticks from the bigger centres, interstate, and, on occasions, overseas. Asia mostly. The idea is that they make their breakthrough here, become biggish fish in the West's nursery pools, so to speak, launch their careers. ‘From deserts the prophets come,' he quotes, although he struggles to remember where the quote came from, and what it actually means. It seems to persuade though. He provides young hopefuls with local knowledge – advice tailored to their circumstances – on reasonably priced accommodation, information on rehearsal rooms, introductions to venues for gigs, contacts with session musicians, and the latest on
recording studios. He charges them next to nothing, but he was always supposed to get a cut when they made the big time, take the pick of the bunch, take on their management. That was the plan.

In fact, the business started well. Louisa encouraged, and was right there with him. They agreed she'd keep the books. In the first six months they'd provided services to five groups and a couple of singer-songwriters. Some had grants, or a loan from a supportive relative. He even signed one group that had a bit of early success, and a couple of nice fat deposits went into his business account, before the promising musicians disappeared into obscurity.

Harry felt inspired, mixing with them and feeding off their youthful enthusiasm. He got back into the scene and began to think about picking up the sax again. He and Louisa started considering opportunities everywhere: for services where there were gaps, and for new markets – actors, artists, groups of all kinds. They made some grand plans, and even met with the bank to discuss taking out a loan. Luckily, they hadn't signed anything, because of what happened next with Tom.

Louisa dropped out and never really got back into it. And Harry might have looked okay, but he was damaged too. That's clear now, although instinctively, he played his hand close to the chest. He'd been too new, and guarded around the boy, to claim any sort of affiliation. He didn't know how long the relationship would last after all, and he hadn't been the boy's father. Afterwards he tried to keep up the impetus of the business, but it all felt too hard. It must have showed, because the calls dropped off.

Even so, there'd been enough of a start to create a thread that connected then and now. The business became whatever the demand required. They lived modestly on what he'd saved, and on Louisa's earnings, supplemented by the occasional bit of business. Periodically someone would ring and say they'd heard from a friend of a friend that he could help them out
with the organisational aspects of a prospective country tour. So he'd do that. He'd continued to build on his networks, picked up the odd contact in regional areas, kept up knowledge of some of the more obscure musical trends. He could still sound as if he had his finger on the pulse, so the calls dribbled in. Each time he thought of calling it a day, he'd get another small flurry of interest. It had been just enough to justify renewing the business name every three years, just enough to do his bit towards household expenses, and just enough to stop him from throwing in the towel.

When Harry wants to indicate he's at work, he keeps the door closed and the window open. There is a small knock on the door, barely audible. It's something she does when she's dropped in confidence – as if she's afraid to disturb him. She's giving him the option to pretend he hasn't heard.

‘Who's that a-tapping on my door,' he says. He rises from his chair and swings it open. She has tea for him, and a small saucer of biscuits.

‘To keep you going,' she says. ‘I'm bored.'

‘Why don't you go out?' He takes the tea and biscuits and sets them down by the keyboard.

‘Where?'

‘I don't know. You could go shopping.'

This seems to surprise her. She holds her hands palms upwards and produces a heavy sigh.

‘No, Harry.'

‘What did I say?' he says, feigning ignorance.

‘You're encouraging me to shop? Really?'

‘I suppose it makes you happy.'

‘What are you saying?'

‘Nothing. No ulterior motive. You should knock louder,' he tells her.

‘You're right. I might go out. I should go out.'

‘Catch up with friends.'

‘I'll think of something.'

She departs. Harry sucks on a biscuit and surfs the net.

Fifteen minutes later he hears her leave the house, hears the car drive off. He takes a long, deep breath, stands up, does a jog on the spot and shakes out his hands. It's hard work keeping up this supportive Mr Nice Guy thing. It's time she got better. He has a sudden, familiar feeling of restlessness, overcome by the urge to run away. He attempts to pin down the source, fails, slumps back into the chair, closes his eyes, and wonders about this particular self-destructive characteristic of his, and why it hasn't burnt out by now. He wonders about his ancestors, and whether Yasamine was right, that he has gypsy blood. She'd based the theory on nothing more than that, his tendency for impulsiveness, as far as he could ascertain. And the music.

Yasamine didn't seem to want to get involved in the world at all. ‘Why can't we all stay home together and watch TV like normal families?' she'd ask. She resented outside influences pushing in on their family, whether it was trouble with the neighbours, or the guys in the band.

Of course he wanted to escape. What young bloke wouldn't? She was forever going on at him about money and helping out with the housework, but the baby was always crying and he was exhausted. She was too, but he couldn't help that. He would have helped her if he could, but he couldn't. He was too young. She might have been younger, but women seemed more mature, more able to cope. It seemed born into them. He was just trying to survive, and he was always feeling angry. He constantly had to stop himself from blowing his top, from hitting out.

In his weaker moments he could imagine getting just like his father. Somewhere at the back of his mind was that worm of doubt. He wasn't sure what he might be capable of doing if he lost it completely, his discipline, his self-control. He couldn't bear the thought of what might be lurking inside him.
It wasn't what he wanted. It wasn't who he wanted to be.

The old man died more than fifteen years ago. Harry recalls the day he finally got up the courage to visit him in hospital. He was going to get some things off his chest. He was going to be heard. He was going to make the old man acknowledge what he'd done; hear him apologise for the damage. Harry might forgive him then. He might not. He'd see how it all played out.

When he saw the old man in his bed he didn't recognise him at first. He could have walked right past and never known if it hadn't been for the name on the wall. He'd looked so small. He was all swallowed up in the cold, stiff, white sheets. His blue eyes stared out at Harry without recognition, helpless and needy.

His liver was shot by then, and his organs were shutting down. That's a strange expression, shutting down, as if someone is doing the final walk-through of a vacated house and turning off the lights. The old man's brain was just another empty room. He would call out, but it was a reflex action. It didn't mean anything. It was disturbing.

Harry realised with some shock that he'd been cheated out of a final showdown. He couldn't talk to the old guy. His father hadn't come to any great realisation and now it was too late to make him. He just lay there in that big hospital bed, uncomprehending. He would never see his own part in how things had played out.

The old man was left to die in a four-bed room in that old public hospital. He was dying, everyone knew it, he seemed to be signalling for a drink, but he wasn't allowed a drink even then. One human being to another, it was cruel to watch. He was sixty-one, too young in some people's minds, but Harry thought, if anything, he'd been alive too long. It wasn't as if he was getting any better. It wasn't as if he had some blinding flash of insight in those final years, or months, or weeks. The damage had been done long ago – to himself and to them.
Harry decides it made him what he is. He had his father in him and that was that. He'd pushed it away from him when he was a kid, but discovered it was still there, just under the surface, right after Bella was born.