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Authors: Larissa Behrendt

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BOOK: Legacy
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PART II

15

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

I am lying on my bed pondering how so much has gone wrong in such a short space of time. My bag's already packed even though my plane does not leave until late in the afternoon.

It all began three days ago when the phone rang at 6 am. I panicked and my first thought was that I had forgotten a call with Professor Young until I realised the next had been scheduled for just over two weeks away.

Mum had reached the phone before I even got out of bed. ‘It's for you, sweetheart,' she said as she came to my bedroom door with the handset.

‘Hello?'

‘Hi, Simone. It's Glenda Barnes, Professor Young's secretary.'

‘Hi. Do I have a meeting with the Professor?' I asked, confused.

‘No. I have bad news. The worst, I'm afraid. I'm ringing to let you know that Professor Young passed away two nights ago.'

‘Oh God.'

‘Yes. It's awful. Just awful. And such chaos. I only just realised that you wouldn't have heard. It's been on the local news here. It was so unexpected and he was so well known. So popular.'

‘I don't believe it.'

‘I know. Such a shock. There's a family service on Friday but the faculty is having a memorial service in the church in the University Yard in two weeks. Thought you might like to be back for that.'

‘Yes. Yes, I would. I was coming back soon anyway but I'll definitely be there.' And suddenly I realised that I would never see Professor Young again. ‘I just can't believe it. Was it a car accident or a heart attack?'

The secretary hesitated, then she whispered, ‘We're not supposed to tell but, well, if you can keep it quiet, he killed himself. Shot himself in the head. Can you believe it?'

‘No. No, I can't.'

When I got off the phone Mum was waiting with a cup of tea. She could tell it was bad news. She has her own kind of telepathy.

‘Oh Mum,' I stepped into the comfort of her arms. ‘Professor Young is dead.'

She didn't speak or fuss too much, just waited patiently until I was ready to talk.

‘I just feel numb. I guess it hasn't sunk in yet.'

‘Grief is like that. You won't feel it deepest until you least expect it. And then something little will trigger everything locked up inside you.'

She comforted me until I stepped out of her embrace.

‘What does this mean for your studies?' she asked.

‘I'm not sure. I haven't thought about it. I'll need to find a new supervisor I guess,' I replied glumly.

Who could be to me all the things that Professor Young was? Who else would understand me and my work the way that he could? I put my head into my hands. My mother hugged me again. ‘There, there.'

‘What's going on?' my father asked, coming into the room, sensing the mood. He looked at me, then at my mother, then back at me. I could feel his rising fear about what we might be saying. I savoured his discomfort until my mother put him out of his misery.

‘Simone's supervisor has passed away.'

‘That's a tough break, Princess,' he said sincerely.

I nodded.

‘What does it mean for your studies?'

‘God, Dad. You are so fucking insensitive.'

He looked stunned as I stormed off to my bedroom. I slammed the door. I don't know why I reacted this way, why his asking the same question that Mum did elicited such a different reaction. I knew he had been genuine with his sympathy so why did it make me so angry?

I decided to ring Jamie. I really wanted to talk with him, to tell him the terrible news, but his phone was off. Not surprising. Sydney time is three hours ahead of Perth's. He would have been asleep.

While I was lying on my bed, thinking about Professor Young, my thoughts drifted back to my father. Despite my current grief, the resentment I was feeling towards him wouldn't soften. It was a frustration I couldn't articulate. It was more than his womanising that was making me instinctively push him away.

I tried Jamie again but there was no response. So I called Tanya. She was heading off to work but we agreed to meet at her place that evening.

‘What a year we are both having,' Tanya sighed.

We were sitting on her balcony, watching the sun creep slowly behind the horizon.

‘I know. But I think you win. I wasn't left for a barmaid who is barely the legal drinking age. Mind you, finding my father kissing someone would have to rate high on any list of “worsts”.'

‘He wasn't kissing her.'

‘No. He was giving her a free breast examination.' I turned to look at her. ‘Why do you always defend him?'

‘Why do you always attack him?'

‘Um … because he is the kind of person who feels up the young women who work for him?'

‘But he's more than that.'

‘Yeah. You're right. He is more than that. He's a man who betrays the wife who sits at home innocently supporting him so that everyone else foolishly thinks that he is some great man when, clearly, he isn't.'

‘No one's perfect, Simone. Look at all he has achieved.'

‘Other men achieve great things without such personal flaws. Take Professor Young. He never slept with his students or had affairs. He was a man with integrity and wrote some of the most influential books on the intersection between law and equality. At least he could be reflective about the world. About relationships. About how human beings treat other human beings.'

And in the lull of my heated conversation with Tanya my thoughts ran to my discussion with Professor Young about
Remains of the Day
and the tragedy of choosing a life of servitude over a life with family. I felt again that familiar deep stab when I realised he really was gone and began to comprehend what I had truly lost.

‘You always do this. You idolise men. Put them on a pedestal.'

‘I do not.' I'm taken aback.

‘You do. Except for your father. And your feelings for Jamie are the worst. He leaves you rather than supports you to go overseas. He moves to the other side of the country. He tells you not to call because he says it's too hard when really he means he hasn't got the guts to tell you that it's actually over. And you not only hang on to him, you treat him as though he's a saint.'

‘You don't know what you're talking about,' I snarled. ‘You always see the worst in people. The way Terry treated you has made you bitter. Jamie and I are different to that and you know it. And you know why we couldn't stay together.'

‘No. I know
he
told you why you couldn't stay together. But I also know that you loved him - you still love him - and you didn't want to break up. You going to study overseas should not be a deal breaker if he really cared for you. He used it as an excuse. You just can't face the fact that he doesn't love you anymore but didn't have the guts to tell you the flat-out truth. And because of that he has strung you along. You pine for him all the time. How convenient for him!'

The white heat of anger surged inside me. I was too furious to speak, too bewildered by all Tanya had said to answer her.

I snatched up my car keys and headed for the door.

16

My bags are packed - including a copy of
Billy Budd,
Professor Young's favourite book.

All morning I have been moping around, turning my fight with Tanya over and over in my mind. It's three days since our tiff, the longest we have gone with no contact when we are in the same city. It's true that I still love Jamie, that I idolise him. But I also believe his decision to end the relationship had been selfless. Tanya was right that it was not what I wanted but it wasn't true that he had used it as an excuse. Yes, he had told me not to call him because it would make it easier on both of us but I could see the sense of that, even if I didn't like it.

I want to tell him that I miss him. I want to say: ‘I remember how soft your bottom lip is when I kiss you. I remember how smooth the skin on your spine is against the tip of my finger and I remember the smell of your neck, like heat and sawdust.'

I called him several times yesterday to tell him that I was going back to the States but he didn't pick up his phone and I didn't leave a message.

Mum yells out that the mail has arrived and that there is something for me. I shuffle out to the lounge room and look at the package she has left on the table. The first thing I recognise is Professor Young's distinctive, determined handwriting. I pick it up and look more closely at it. Pressed on top of all the stamps is a postmark dated the day after he died. And the stamps show that the parcel was not sent from his office or it would have been franked.

‘What is it, sweetheart?' my mother asks.

‘I think it's from Professor Young …'

Mum and I stare at the package in my hands. Slowly I open it. It is a leather-bound book. As I pull it from its packaging a note falls to the floor. Mum picks it up and hands it to me. In Professor Young's hand it reads:

… a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.

‘That's beautiful. What do you think it means?' she asks.

‘It's from Albert Camus's
The Plague.
It was the first book I discussed with him when I became his PhD student.'

The book is old and the pages are worn. The leather is soft with wear. The writing, in faded blue ink, is Professor Young's. I flick through the pages, all written by him.

‘It's poetry,' I say.

‘What an extraordinary thing.'

‘Yes. Yes, it is. But why would he send it to me? And look at this. It is postmarked the day after he died. And it's addressed in his own hand so he must have sent it off himself.'

‘If he wrote all of these poems himself, this really is a precious gift.'

‘It's more than that, Mum. I didn't tell you before but, well, he killed himself.'

‘Oh, my,' she gasps.

We both look again at the note.

Once I have read the book from cover to cover, I begin again. But this time I savour each poem, taking time to reflect on every one. Although each poem is a singular gem, together they tell a story of a smouldering, dark love and a crushing, cruel betrayal. I cannot help but weep at the deep, poignant emotion. This facet of Professor Young, the life he injected into each phrase, word, syllable, letter, is a revelation. I feel misery about losing this John Young that I never knew, just as I am grieving for the one I did.

Mum is in the kitchen at the table working on her teaching materials. I think of how often I have sat in this kitchen and talked to Dad, excluding Mum. Why had I so often sought his advice and so rarely hers?

It is almost time to head to the airport but I feel the need to ask her advice now.

‘I have a problem and I don't know what to do.'

She stops writing and looks up at me.

‘It's this,' I say as I place the book on the table. ‘I am flattered that Professor Young sent it to me and all but it's such a personal gift. There are some very … personal emotions in here. And it is quite old. He must have kept it for many years.'

‘He must have wanted you to have it.'

‘But so close to his … you know … he couldn't have been thinking clearly. And it seems like such an extravagant gift too. Surely his family would want it. There's something unsettling about having it.'

‘Of course it feels strange, given the circumstances. Is there anyone in his family you could ask about it?'

‘Not really. I've never met his wife or his daughter. And maybe they will be upset that something so precious was sent to me instead of given to them.'

‘Well, if you feel that strongly about it you can only ask. If they are upset, just remember that they are angry about
his
decision not
at
you.'

‘You know, his ex-wife is on the faculty. Maybe I could go and see her.'

I wrap the book carefully into an old scarf and gently tuck it into my hand luggage, alongside the copy of
Billy Budd.

I make one last call before I leave.

Jamie doesn't answer the phone. I leave a message telling him that I am flying back to Boston. Just as I am taking my bags to the door he calls back.

‘Hey, you're heading back.'

My heart still leaps at the sound of his voice. ‘Yes. My supervisor has passed away.'

‘Bummer.'

‘Yeah. Bummer. I've been calling you the last two days …'

‘I know.'

‘So why didn't you call me back?' The ghost of my argument with Tanya is making me provoke him.

‘You know, I've been busy.'

‘We had an agreement that I'd only call if it was something urgent.'

‘Okay. I'm sorry. You ring so often when it's not an emergency that I just didn't assume that it was.'

‘Do you mind that I call?'

‘Well, it wasn't the deal.'

‘Yeah, about that. I don't like the deal. I never did. In fact, I think it was your idea, not mine.'

‘But you agreed to it.'

‘I know. And I'm not sure I should have.'

‘Don't do this, Simone. And besides, you're leaving.'

‘I noticed you only rang me back when I finally left a message saying that I'm going away again. But I'll be back. And with my supervisor dead now, maybe I'll come back for good.'

There is a silence long enough for me to reflect again on the horror that Professor Young is gone and that I have mentioned it callously, using his death as a way of challenging Jamie.

Finally Jamie replies. ‘Don't come back for me, Simone.'

‘What do you mean?' I demand.

‘You shouldn't factor me into your decisions.'

And suddenly I hear it - what Tanya was saying but I didn't want to hear, what I refused to see.

BOOK: Legacy
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