Listen (24 page)

‘Of course!’ He looked at her enquiringly, noting for the ten thousandth time how her clear brown eyes were magnified by her thick glasses, so that they seemed to extend beyond the boundaries of her face. He liked that effect, he felt it reflected the openness and generosity of his wife’s personality. ‘How did he sound? Do you think he’s all right?’

‘Oh yes. He sounded fine.’ She patted his thigh reassuringly and stood up. ‘Just thought it’d be nice to see him.’

Robert’s fingers stopped their movement, he let his hands relax.
Yes, that’s it, just relax.
Everything was fine and he was managing perfectly well. There was no need for him to see his doctor, certainly no need for Vesna to know that his little habits had not abated, had become if anything a tad more demanding.
I just need to relax. Settle into the job, that’s all. Everything’s all right.

Meredith’s old blue Corona was parked in the street outside Alex’s house.

‘Oh, that’s nice, Merry’s here!’ said Robert. ‘Did you organise this, darling?’

Vesna shook her head and shrugged her lack of prior knowledge. She was smiling, knowing how much pleasure it gave her husband when they got together with his younger sister,
all my girls
, as he would be bound to say at some point. As they opened the gate into the front garden Robert glanced at the carport and stopped suddenly, dismayed.

‘Oh dear – Dad’s car. I must follow up with his GP on what’s happening with his driver’s licence. It’s been months now, hasn’t it?’

But Vesna’s attention was on the figures standing in the living room looking out at them through the picture window, waving. She waved back enthusiastically.

‘Look, girls, there’s Grandpa and Auntie Meredith! Wave!’

In the flurry of greetings Vesna surmised that Alex had completely forgotten the arrangement they had made by phone. He was embarrassed, but smoothing over that little awkwardness was made all the easier by Meredith’s happy presence.

‘Hello, you gorgeous, gorgeous things!’ Meredith said, kissing her young nieces. ‘Phew! Daddy was determined to clean every window in the place! We’ve been at it like demons for
hours
.’

‘Must be years since I last gave ’em a clean!’ said Alex jovially. He put his arm around Meredith’s shoulders and gave her a little hug. ‘What would I do without this little girl, eh?’

‘Lost without me, you’d be!’ she chirped, rising onto her tiptoes to give him a kiss on the cheek.

‘Good for you, Merry!’ said Robert. ‘The windows look terrific, like a TV ad for – something. Window cleaner!’

‘Mummy made an apple tea cake, and I helped her!’ announced Alexa.

‘I helped with the sandwiches! Have you still got those chookies, Grandpa?’ asked Bianca, taking her grandfather’s hand and hauling him toward the back door.

‘No, sweetheart, I don’t, I’m afraid bad old Mr Fox saw to that. But I’m thinking of getting some more soon. Why don’t you girls come and look at the chook house with me and we’ll see how we can make it stronger?’

‘I’ll put these things in the kitchen and get the kettle on,’ said Vesna. Meredith and Robert were suddenly the only two in the living room. The stillness seemed to ring. Meredith slumped onto the couch like a dropped doll.

‘
Oof
. I’m absolutely knackered. And I’ve got to go to work in a few hours.’

‘Huge job. It’s so good you could make the time to give him a hand,’ said Robert. ‘Gee, he’s keeping the place up well though, isn’t he? Better than before, almost.’

‘Almost,’ agreed Meredith, patting the seat beside her. ‘Sit down a minnie, Bobbit.’

He sat. ‘Actually, I was just thinking about something as I came in,’ he said, and his fingertips started touching each other in their quick silent rhythm. ‘Dad’s car. They said he shouldn’t be driving, and I’ve just realised I haven’t followed up on that.’

‘It’s okay, he hardly drives at all these days,’ his sister said, and laid her hand gently on one of his. ‘You still do that, don’t you?’

‘Only sometimes,’ Robert said, sliding his hands under his thighs so that he was almost sitting on them. ‘Not much.’

‘Deborah still goes on about it. Why the hell does it bug her so much?’

‘I don’t know. I guess because it bothered Mum.’

‘Did it? I didn’t know that.’ Meredith thrust her legs out straight in front of her. ‘Or maybe because she’s just such a bossy cow,’ she suggested, lips thin.

‘That’s interesting: did you know that “Bossy” was a common name for a house cow in the old days? As in, “Bossy cow bonnie, let down your milk, And I will give you a gown of silk”.’

‘What’s that, an old nursery rhyme?’ asked Meredith. She was resting her head on the back of the couch, smiling at him. She loved having Robert teach her things.

‘Yes. It’s in a little book of rhymes I used to read to the girls.’

‘It’s sweet. I’ll think of it every time I see Deborah now!’ she said mischievously. They both laughed, sniggered really.

‘Oh, don’t be too hard on her, sisterling,’ said Robert. ‘She’s got a lot on her plate. She can’t help it.’

‘She
could
help it!’ burst out Meredith, pouting now. ‘She could
change, couldn’t she?’

‘Could she, Merry? I don’t know. We’ve all got things we
could
change, and
should
change, but can we? Any of us?’

‘Maybe not. I don’t know,’ said Meredith gloomily, and sighed. They were quiet for a moment or two, and then she started in a singsong voice, ‘We
could
have…We
should
have…We
might
have…’

‘But we didn’t!’
they chorused together, and laughed.

‘Come on,’ said Robert, using Meredith’s knee to lever himself to his feet. ‘Let’s have a nice cup of tea, shall we?’

‘Gosh you sound like Daddy sometimes,’ said Meredith, following him. ‘A nice cup of tea. It’s the answer to everything.’

CHAPTER 17

Once he and Silver returned to Melbourne in the new year, James had been determined to really try to find his mother’s letters. Yet the days and then the weeks passed by and still he’d made no attempt. He wasn’t even sure how to go about it. He could ask Alex about them directly, but what if his father denied they’d ever existed? How could he then persist in looking for them? Better to search first. But since (judging by what he’d seen on his first attempt) everything in his father’s house was in such disarray, where should he begin? He was unreasonably nervous. The whole thing felt horribly like prying to him,
snooping
, and James was not by nature a snoop.

Finally he visited, to find that all the mess and muddle was gone. Alex told him proudly that Meredith had done a grand job of spring-cleaning. Meredith happened to be there when he dropped in; she looked rather uncomfortable at Alex’s praise but quickly showed James, still feigning interest in their family tree, precisely where she’d stored all the records and correspondence.

‘It’s all there, I haven’t thrown anything out,’ she assured him a little defensively as he carried the big plastic storage box into the living
room and put it on the table. ‘Not a thing! It’s all just been sorted and rearranged.’

Meredith, James realised as he looked, really had done a terrific job. There was everything from shipboard journals from an emigrating great-great-grandfather, to title deeds for houses long since sold, to Alex’s university graduation certificate, to their own school reports. On that first visit James spent hours looking, getting stalled again and again as he came across some fascinating piece of memorabilia, and he’d still barely gone through the first box of three that his sister had indicated. He would have to come back.

A few more weeks went by before he came again. This time his father volunteered to help, sitting in a chair beside him at the dining table, a second plastic box unlidded before them. Almost the first thing James laid his hand to was an envelope from a law firm in North Melbourne. ‘Campbell, Auchterlonie and Bridge, Barristers and Solicitors,’ he read aloud.

Alex leaned forward. ‘I remember them,’ he said. He took the envelope from James and opened it. There was a typewritten letter and then the document: the final divorce decree ending his marriage to Rosemarie Anne, nee Bartlett.

‘Wow,’ said James, awestruck. ‘The actual divorce papers.’ He craned to look at the document in his father’s hands. Familiar only with modern no-fault divorce, he noted with a shock that there were grounds sworn.
Adultery.
Rose’s adultery.

Alex was staring at the sheets of paper, shuffling back and forth between the decree, the bland covering letter, the envelope they’d been in. He shook his head. ‘Terrible steps,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ James agreed quietly. ‘It must have been a very hard thing.’

‘Why do people
do
things like that?’ Alex asked. His voice sounded both perplexed and fierce. James shook his head, not knowing what to say, and having no way of knowing that Alex was referring to the actual office of Campbell, Auchterlonie and Bridge.

Oh, Alex could see it now! On his final visit there, he had thought
for a moment he must have taken a wrong turn, or walked perhaps a block too far. Then he realised that he was in the right place after all, but the building itself had changed. It was still
there
, yes, but the Victorian facade had completely disappeared! The pair of long sash windows, their handsome timber trims painted and repainted a score of times over the hundred years since the place had been built – gone. The mellow, meticulously laid brickwork had vanished, too, except for a couple of narrow strips. All replaced by an enormous plate-glass window, framed in bright aluminium. Behind it, shielding the people in the office from the gaze of passers-by, hung floor-length venetian blinds, off-white with little bright specks on them that caught the light.

Alex had literally flinched. This sort of thing was happening everywhere, but it grieved him sorely. The replacement of real craftsmanship with things that looked like they’d been knocked together by monkeys, not a shred of skill or aesthetic sensibility. He moved at last, reluctantly, towards the front door. But it, too, with its ornate wood panels, its brass knocker and name-plate, was gone. And to even reach the bland glass sheet that had replaced it he had to navigate two steps, dreadful steps, both much too narrow and the lower one far taller than the one above. Alex had been an engineer all his working life, helping to design and build new structures, and he was proud of what he did, but this stuff was just… rubbish.

‘It was just
rubbish
, son,’ he said to James now, angrily. ‘Absolutely criminal!’

‘Oh, Dad,’ James said, feeling overwhelmed. His father had never spoken of the divorce before, let alone of his feelings about it. ‘I’m sorry!’

Alex seemed to recover himself somewhat. ‘Not your fault, boy,’ he said. ‘No one had any sense back then, that’s the thing.’ He patted James’s forearm. ‘Well, I might make a spot of lunch, what d’you say?’

‘Sure, Dad. Sure. Do you want a hand?’

Alex shook his head, levered himself up from the chair. For the first time James saw his father as he now was: old, his long frame stiff and bony, his expression a little lost. His heart clenched, thinking of that unpleasant diagnosis. Then his father grinned and gave James’s shoulder a couple of hearty pats. ‘Don’t take it to heart now. Life goes on!’

James nodded hard, but he was too choked up to say anything.

His father didn’t come back to look through any more of the papers after lunch. James was quite glad of that: it had made the whole thing even more difficult than he’d anticipated. Easier to look by himself. He got through that box, and the third and final one Meredith had indicated. There were many things of interest, but no letters from Rose. Not a single one. He went outside to where his father was sitting in the shade, leafing through last weekend’s paper.

‘Still here?’ Alex said brightly. ‘Like to stay for tea?’

‘Nah, I should get home. Thanks. But, Dad, there was something I wanted to ask you…’

His father raised his eyebrows enquiringly, and James screwed his courage to the sticking place.

‘You know after Mum left, when we were kids…’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, I was wondering… I thought she might’ve written us some letters. Do you know where they’d be?’

Alex shook his head. ‘Meredith’s sorted all that out.’

‘I know, I’ve looked, but I can’t find them. This would’ve been quite a while ago, Dad. Letters from Mum, from England.’

‘Oh,’ his father said. ‘Letters from your mother… ’ He looked thoughtful, and James felt a sudden little leap of hope, but then he shook his head. ‘No, I don’t know about that. You’d have to ask Deborah. She took care of things when you were kids. She was the oldest, you know.’

‘Yes, Dad, I know.’

And so, finally, having searched everywhere he could think of and
having found nothing, James decided that he couldn’t put it off any longer. It was time to tell Deborah that he had found their mother. Naturally she must be the first of his siblings to know, he didn’t question that for a moment.

CHAPTER 18

When James rang inviting her down to the beach house at Sorrento for the Labour Day long weekend, Deborah’s first impulse was to brush his invitation aside.
Too busy, always too busy.
But this time she bit the words back.

‘You know, Jaf,’ she said instead, slowly, ‘that just might be do-able. I’m looking at the diary and there’s nothing horrific the week after. And it could be just the thing we… hmm. When do you need to know by?’

‘Oh, no great rush. Next week, say? Ollie’s invited, too, naturally. Any of her little pals, if she wants to bring someone.’

‘Olivia doesn’t have “little pals”, I can assure you, and there’s some school camp thing then, too. But thanks, James, you’re a honey. I’ll confirm in a day or so.’

She put it to Angus that evening, over dinner. She had booked a table at a nearby restaurant, somewhere they used to go fairly often, and then rang him at work to surprise him with the news. ‘We’re having a date tonight, with each other!’ It was too long since she’d done this sort of thing, made the effort to get home in time to dress
up a bit, to go out not to some political function – just to have a date with her husband.