Opportunity (11 page)

'Bite the lolly in half,' I said.

'I closed the front door after you. And cleared the table.
You must think people are your servants.'

'I don't!'

She held out the sweet, censorious. I took it.

'You probably don't want to be selfish all your life . . .'

I ate the lolly.

Her mouth dropped open. 'Well! I've never met such a self-absorbed
little person in my life. Don't you know that people
are making an effort on your behalf
all the time
? The
sacrifices
people make? Is that how you repay them?'

'You're copying,' I said, the sweet lodged, bulging, in one
cheek.

'I am not!'

'That's grown-ups' words.'

'So what if they are?' she said, furious.

'What shall we do now?' I was cheerful.

Juliet sulked. Then she said, 'We'll go to the river.'

'Let's get some food first.'

She put her hands on her hips. 'Honestly. Do you ever stop
thinking about eating? You're going to eat us out of house and
home!'

We went to the empty house. Rummaging amid the
crammed contents of the fridge, Juliet extracted a plate of
meat delicately furred with blue mould, a rubber carrot, a
quivering bowl of an unidentifiable jelly-like substance. A
tureen of treacly brown snot had a spoon sticking out of it, its
cracked handle strapped with a Band-Aid. We settled for
apples, though their skins were wrinkled, and two stiff slices
of bread.

Behind the dead truck there was a gap in the hedge. We
climbed through, and a path wound away through the tall
grass. In some places the grass was as high as our chests. It
would have been nice to lie down in it and look up at the sky.
But I wanted to see the river.

When we got to it I was surprised — I'd imagined something
you could jump across in places, but it was a broad, swift
stretch of brown water, and the trees on the far side were a
long way away.

We sat on a log and ate our supplies.

Juliet said, 'Gotta go.'

'Where?' I said dreamily. I could have fallen asleep in the
hot sun.

'Toilet,' Juliet said. She cleared her throat in a tough way
and spat.

I sat up. 'Shall we go back?'

'I'll go behind a bush. Leaves are as good as toilet paper in
the out-of-doors.' She gazed at the sky, prim.

A long pause. Juliet behind the bush. The river moving
over its stones. The birds twittering. A sudden flurry of the
foliage, branches snapping, the bush violently thrust to one
side as if she'd overbalanced wrestling with her leaves. A
snigger began rising in me, a wave of weakness, hot,
quivering.

She emerged, red-faced. 'What?' she demanded. Her glare
of puzzlement and annoyance — her incomprehension, her
grimness — finished me off, and I shook with exquisite mirth,
helpless, my eyes full of hot tears. She stalked off, muttering.

I lay in the grass, watching the clouds move across the sky. I
heard her shout. Along the bank was a little beach made of
mud and stones, and a dinghy pulled up. Juliet was untying it.

'Give me a hand, you gibbering idiot,' she said.

We got the knots undone and turned the boat over. The
oars were underneath.

'Let's go for a row,' she said.

I looked at the water. 'I don't know,' I said.

'What are you worried about?'

I didn't want to. But I was sorry I'd laughed so much and I
didn't want her to go on being angry. She steadied the boat
while I got in, then she pushed off and took hold of the oars.

As soon as we were free of the bank we started to be swept
downstream. Juliet put her feet against the seat and pulled
hard on the oars. We were close to the bank at first, floating
over weeds and stones and submerged logs. The river had
seemed to move slowly; now we were on it I understood how
powerful it was. Sticks and branches floated quickly by; there
were waves, eddies, sudden whorls in the surface. The bank
was getting further away. Juliet was fighting the current. I felt
the tug of her rowing, then the stronger force of the river
pulling the boat where it wanted us to go, towards the middle
of itself.

'Where does the river end?' I asked.

'At the sea.'

The river curved around and flowed faster. We were a long
way out now, and as it changed direction a strong wind hit us.
Waves blew over the sides and slopped on our legs. I gasped
when the cold water hit me. The river had widened out. We
were being swept into the middle of an estuary.

The current was going in all directions. First we were pulled
one way, then another. The boat tossed and spray broke over
us. We could see the sea ahead. The wind was so strong now
we were drenched every time we hit a wave.

Juliet shouted, 'Viola! The tide's going out. It's pulling us.
You'll have to help me!'

I got alongside her on the seat and took one of the oars. I
began to snivel. My mouth was full of water. The wind whipped
our faces, blew water into our mouths. It tasted salty. At the
first strokes my shoulders hurt and I stopped pulling.

Juliet slapped my arm. 'Row!' she shouted. 'You miserable,
whining kid — row or I'll kill you.'

I rowed and cried, Juliet yelling in my ear. A wave broke
right over us; we shouted with the shock of it. I wondered
what would happen when we met the sea. There were surf
waves at the beach where the river churned out into it. The
sky was hot, dark, grey, with metallic curtains of rain sweeping
across it.

Something changed — the wind. It started blowing in our
faces. We rowed hard, and for the first time it felt as if our
strokes were moving the boat. I sobbed and rowed, closing
my eyes tight. The waves were wetting us with every stroke
and water was pooling in the bottom of the boat. I wanted to
be sick. A wave lifted and slapped us down, and Juliet fell off
the seat. Her elbow was scratched and bloody. She kept
turning and looking behind, and yelling at me to keep going.
If I stopped she shouted in my ear. I felt the water get calmer,
then the boat hitting the bottom. Juliet leapt out and pulled
me onto the mudflat. I crouched down.

The wind blew stinging sand onto our legs and faces. There
was nothing to tie the boat to. I looked at the wide brown
sweep of water rushing to meet the sea.

Juliet put a stone on top of the boat rope.

'The tide will wash it away,' I said.

'You want to pull it all the way back?' For the first time she
was close to tears.

I shook my head. I didn't know how far we'd come, but it
had to be a long way.

'Whose boat is it?'

'Stephen's,' she snapped. She wiped her face angrily.

We crossed the mudflat and started along the riverbank.
We walked and walked. I began to blubber again. Juliet said,
'You'd better not tell. If you tell them we went on the river I'll
murder you.' She said I was 'selfish'. If I hadn't panicked we
would have been fine. If I told any adults I would be dead.

I cried so much I felt light and washed out. I trudged behind
her, my eyes fixed on her wet shirt. I thought we must have
missed the path; at one point I insisted I must lie down but
Juliet lashed me on with words. When I slowed she dragged
me. We got back to the path in the end.

We walked through the long grass to the gap in the hedge.
Juliet signalled to me to be quiet. She poked her head through,
making sure we wouldn't be seen. We stumbled down to the
car.

She turned on the stereo. I got changed, and my clothes
seemed small and fussy, all pleats and buttons and zips. Juliet
climbed out and draped my wet things on the bonnet.

I wound down the window. She'd hung my underpants on
the radio aerial.

'I'm
still
having to do everything for you,' she said.

'It's raining,' I pointed out, dully.

She stood out in the rain and gave me a spiel about gratitude.
About how you have to appreciate what people do for you.
How people are making an effort for you all the time. I
remember thinking that adults must have said those things to
her a lot. I looked over at the house. A solitary hen pecked
near the front door. There was no one around.

She took out the toys we'd bought. 'Tomorrow we'll go to
the shop and buy two more, shall we?'

We lay listening to the radio, the doors closed to keep out
the rain. It was hot and fuggy. I dozed. Later we went up to the
house.

Derryn opened the front door, the baby on her hip. 'Want
some dinner?' she said.

'What are we having?' Juliet asked in an innocent voice.

'Oh . . . lamb? Yeah.' Derryn drifted into the kitchen.

'Remember,' Juliet said, 'if you tell I'll kill you.' She gave me
a shove.

I had trouble eating dinner because I was thinking about
the sheep losing their lambs when they gave birth, and how
their afterbirth got left all over the field. Juliet fixed me with
intent, warning stares.

After that, Derryn and Stephen disappeared and we took the
torch and went down to the car. Too tired to watch Stephen smoking in the
bath, we lay listening to the possums. Tomorrow, Juliet said, we could swim
in the surf. And after that, she told me, as I was drifting away into dreams
of the powerful, whirling river, she had something
really scary
to
show me in the barn.

***

That was more than ten years ago. I remember the scene just
before we left. Stephen didn't use the dinghy much — he did
his fishing on a big sea-going boat — but he'd gone down to
the river and found it gone. I remember him arguing with
Derryn. He was trying to get her to care about it. He said, 'I
can't
buy another one. We haven't got any money.' He stressed
the word 'money' sarcastically — probably it was a concept
she refused or was unable to understand. I remember when
he called us in and asked if we knew anything about it. Juliet
said, 'What boat?' and pinched me so hard that I had a purple
bruise afterwards. I remember how I repeated, grinning
woodenly, 'What boat?' and the way Stephen turned away
with a final, disgusted shrug, giving up on us all.

I never went back there. I'm a student now. I've got myself
a temporary job setting up computer programs in a big
medical practice. And last week Juliet turned up to see the
gynaecologist I work for, Dr Lampton. I hadn't seen her in a
long time; she lives in a small country town down south. She'd
been given a referral to see a city specialist.

I sat down next to her in the waiting room. She was the
same tough old Juliet — short hair, no makeup, dressed in
shapeless, mannish clothes. She was wary at first, embarrassed
perhaps by the fact of her appointment, as if she feared I might
have access to her file. 'I hate doctors,' she said dismissively,
looking away. But she told me about Stephen and Derryn,
who had split up — Derryn had wanted to stay in the country,
but he couldn't stand it any more. I wanted to say I'd never
told anyone about how we'd lost his boat, but in the end I
didn't mention it. She looked sideways at my dress and my
painted nails with her old scornful eye.

When her name was called she flinched, then gave me a
quick nod, raising her chin with a scoffing look, like a boy
dismissing a feeble girl. She always acted tougher than I was,
but I'm not so sure. There are different ways of being tough.
She doesn't know what I'm like, not really.

Anyway, there was no need to mention the boat, because
she knew I'd never told. I'm not a snitch, after all.

I've never got anyone into trouble in my life.

I was standing outside the house looking in. I could see my
girlfriend, Lee, walking from the sitting room to the kitchen
and back again. She was talking on the phone. I slapped my
palm against the glass. She looked at me and walked out of the
room. It was a warm, rainy night. I sat down on a deckchair
and looked at the garden, spiky palm trees and bushes covered
with sticky, heavily scented flowers. A car droned by on the
road. I put my head in my hands. I rubbed my hand over the
bald spot that was starting on my scalp. I had the idea I might
take the dog for a run until things calmed down, but I was
wearing jeans and the wrong shoes.

I sat for another ten minutes. The front door opened and
Lee came out wearing a jacket and carrying a bag. She had her
keys in her hand.

I thought she was going to shut the door. I got up and ran
for it. She jumped back, as if I was going to attack her. She was
all melodrama. I got hold of the door. She looked at me, her
face pale and pinched. Her eyes were red.

'You're a bastard,' she said.

I shrugged. I felt better hanging on to the door.

'I'm going,' Lee said.

I looked at her. Her hair was straggly. Her coat was open
and one of her shirt buttons was done up wrong.

'Give me your key,' I said.

Her eyes filled with tears. 'You
are
a bastard.'

I just kept hanging on to the door. I realised how angry it
had made me, being locked out of my own house. The house
I leased, anyway. It was my name on the rent papers. She stood
there pretending to arrange something in her bag. She was
tiny and slim, with a runner's frame. She looked about twelve
years old. I thought, one minute you've locked me out and
you're screaming down the phone about me to God knows
who, now you're giving me that face. As if I'm the cruellest
man in the world.

She dropped her purse and stamped her foot. Her shoulders
shook. This was the moment, she was signalling, that I should
take her in my arms and pull her gently inside and tell her I
couldn't live without her. And then, my face covered with her
tears, we would make love. Etcetera. This was the way it had
always worked.

I said, 'Well. What are you waiting for?'

She let out a little wail. She looked like she was going to run
back into the house.

'Off you go, then,' I said. It was like a dream. I held out my
hand. 'Give me the key.'

Her last look at me was so full of pain that it pulled some
strange chord in my head. She wrenched the house key off the
ring, threw it at me and ran down the drive to her little
Daihatsu. I watched her drive away. I went inside. I put the
key on my own keyring. I sat down. The dog, my old black
Lab, heaved himself up beside me, groaned, and put his snout
on my knee, commiserating.

I was thinking about that last wounded look of Lee's; the
way it had struck me, like a sound in my head. I wondered
about it. I supposed I'd had a feeling of cruelty. Why would I
be cruel to little Lee? We'd had angry scenes before, and it had
always ended happily enough. Usually I'd been insensitive or
not listened, or not praised her hair or her clothes. But this
time I didn't take her in my arms and say sorry. It had to do
with what she'd said to me.

I'd been watching TV. She was making a lot of noise in the
background. She came over, turned off the set and pointed
her finger at me. She said, 'When are you going to get a proper
job?'

Perhaps I heard it then first, the strange note. There was
Lee, her hands on her hips, her hair fluffy around her face, her
lower lip trembling. I decided to be reasonable. But when I
started talking she shouted, 'You don't even own your own
house!'

She said this, she shouted at me, after all the time I'd spent
explaining to her about cashflow, about creditors, about
money men and the hoops you had to jump through to deal
with them. After I'd confided in her all year, told her my
dreams, my vision for the future. We were going to make
money, I'd told her — a lot of it. It just takes time. It takes
faith. And then, after I'd bared my soul to her, she came out
with something as dull-minded as 'When are you going to get
a proper job?' I might as well have been talking to the wall.

She worked as a fitness instructor at a gym. She had clients
and she talked about their 'physical issues', like she was a
doctor. She pretended to know stuff about 'sports physiology'.
It was all nonsense. She made enough money to pay her way,
but she had no ideas beyond that. She wasn't a creative person.
But I'd really believed she respected the entrepreneur in me.

I could have forgiven her. After all, it was her helplessness
that made me fall for her, gave me the feeling she needed
shielding from the world. But when she turned off the TV.
When she stuck her finger in my face. Demanding answers.
And then she made an even bigger mistake. I went outside to
cool off, and she locked me out of my house.

When she was on the phone she let me hear her say, 'What
if we had a baby? How could he provide for that?'

I suppose she had a plan. I know how these things work.
No doubt she wanted to get pregnant, and had decided to
throw her weight around, to get us both in shape for it. She
was getting on for thirty. But the thought made something
close over in me. My daughters were twelve and ten. They
meant the world to me. I got on well with my ex-wives, Adele
and Lynn. Lee didn't understand it: that part of my life was
sacred to me. It was sealed. I saw my girls regularly and paid
for them and was a good father. But sad things had happened
and things had changed and we'd moved on, Adele and Lynn
and the girls and I. I was sorry it hadn't worked out, but that
was life. And now I was free to follow my dreams.

I knew Lee would be back. There would be endless dramas.
But she'd gone too far. She would try all sorts of tricks, but I
was ready. I was ready.

I was forty, and exceptionally fit. I jogged, swam, worked
out. In my teens and twenties I'd had a successful sporting
career. It was good while it lasted but sport is never going to
carry you far beyond thirty, and for the past ten years I'd been
doing what I'm good at: finding a business opportunity and
taking it to its full potential. I'd had successes. You have to
think laterally. My business partner, Russell, and I made
money in textiles. We had a time in the hairdressing industry.
Russell had a thing for franchises. We bought and sold
property. That year I'd got my eye fixed on property development.
With Russell's flair and my creative thinking we could
go a long way. We were excited. Russell was a visionary — he
saw angles others wouldn't notice. He was the kind of guy
who's working on a plan every waking minute. I was feeling
good; I was energised. There was only one problem, and it was
in the financial sphere. We'd got into a bit of difficulty the year
before, to do with a retail business and some creative loans.

Our lawyers, Ridge Sligo, were a great bunch of guys. Jon
Sligo, a personal friend of mine, had done a piece of financial
magic with a shelf company for us, and now, through no fault
of his own, was getting bother about it from the Serious Fraud
Office. It was a load of nonsense. There was nothing illegal.
The way business gets stifled by this sort of thing is a scandal.
We had confidence in the outcome, but we were stalled. It was
frustrating. We couldn't move forward, yet we needed to move
to make money. We were like sharks, Russell and I. Stop
moving and we die.

I'd told Lee we were in a holding pattern, and how in
business you have to take risks, and while the rewards can be
great, it's often the creative people who get it in the neck when
things go wrong. In the meantime, although Lee didn't know
it, I'd borrowed money from my first ex-wife, Adele, who'd
been unfortunately widowed after marrying her second
husband, and who was well off. Adele was easy-going, and she
understood about taking the long view. She hadn't aged very
well, but I almost felt like re-marrying her when she gave me
that money. After all the bad times and petty fights we'd had,
she believed in me. She had faith in my vision. Contrast that
with Lee.

Adele was a big, frowsy woman. She took no interest in her
appearance any more. Her favourite thing these days was to
lie in bed, eating and reading. She had a degree in education
and she'd been in teaching most of her life. She had a brain,
and I respected her for it. She thought I was flashy and she
teased me about my taste for 'bimbos and fast cars', but she
knew I was as smart as she was. I'd had too many chances
early on to bother with university, that was all.

Adele and I traded books a lot. Lee used to complain when
I came home with a book Adele had lent me and read it all
weekend. I told Lee she should nourish her mind. She said
indignantly, 'I've got a book.' She showed it to me. It was called
One Hundred Ways to Improve Your Breathing
. I told Adele
about it and we laughed. Lee's book. Dear oh dear.

Adele liked fiction. I preferred books about science and
history. I had a craze for cosmology, and even though most of
it was hard to understand I got a kick out of trying to explain
things like M-theory to Adele and the girls. One day I went
around while they were eating lunch. 'Guess what?' I said.
'The universe we live in is not the only one.'

'Really?' said the girls.

'Get this,' I said. 'The universe is a membrane. The Big Bang
was caused by the collision of the membrane of our universe
and a parallel universe.'

They listened.

'The very beginning of the Big Bang is called the singularity.
Before membrane theory, physicists couldn't calculate back to
the moment of the singularity. Now that they've realised there
are parallel universes, they can.'

'The singularity,' my daughter said. She liked the mysterious
sound of it.

'Also, gravity is weak — this is the latest theory — gravity is
weak because it's leaking from our universe to a parallel one.'

'Gravity isn't weak,' Adele said.

'Yes it is. Think about it. You can beat it just by picking up
a cup.'

Adele and the girls picked up their cups and put them
down. They looked at me.

I told them, 'There could be infinite universes, each with
their own laws of physics.'

Adele made a face.

'Girls, how many dimensions do you think there are?'

'Three?'

'No. Eleven!'

I enjoyed these talks we had, and when I went home to Lee
and her chatter I used to feel bored and flat. But one night,
when I'd been reading about quantum gravity, I had a terrible
dream: there was a stuffed toy, a reindeer. I looked at it and it
multiplied into infinite repetitions of the same toy, stretching
as far as I could see. A voice droned, 'There are an infinite
number of universes. And therefore you do not exist. You do
not exist. You do not exist . . .'

I think it was a reaction to the abstract ideas I'd been
amusing myself with. The subconscious part of my mind was
appalled. I sat up, sweating. I woke Lee and tried to explain.
She started doing breathing exercises, right there in the bed
while I was talking to her.

It was for the best that she'd gone. Let her find some young
guy she could have kids with. Better that I didn't spoil her
chances of that.

Now I was in a rut. I wanted to be out in the world,
launching myself into a new venture, but Russell and I went
on being stalled. The Serious Fraud Office swooped in and
seized some computers from Ridge Sligo. Those bureaucratic
bastards had it in for Jon Sligo and his partner Rick Sheet, just
because they were innovative and successful. We had nothing
to hide, but all we could do was wait. I thought about selling
my car, but the idea was depressing. I missed having Lee in
bed. One evening I picked up a woman and had quite a good
one-night stand. I had a short fling with my second ex-wife,
Lynn, but it was a pretty desultory affair. You can't go back.
Lee came around and we had some scenes. She found a
hairclip of Lynn's by the side of the bed. She moved her stuff
out. I felt directionless. One thing about Terry Carstone: I
don't like waiting. I was looking round for something,
anything, to get my teeth into.

One day I went up to court with Rick Sheet to watch their
barrister argue about the Ridge Sligo computers. There was a
dispute about what the SFO could get their hands on. I was
sitting in the back with Rick and Russell and I had a feeling.
This was good. There was order, there was drama, there was a
bit of controlled aggression. There was a lot of complicated
legal argument that I didn't understand. I borrowed a pen and
paper and took notes. I went home afterwards and read them,
and then I called Rick and talked to him. I had ideas I wanted
him to run by the barrister. Rick talked about 'precedent' and
'relevance', and I knew he was telling me I didn't know
anything. But the next week when we went up the barrister
came out with one of the points I'd told Rick to tell him to
make. That made me feel good. I started to take more interest,
to pay attention to every word. I put my books on cosmology
aside, and started dipping into a textbook on evidence I'd
borrowed from Rick.

I was spending a bit of time at Adele's, and she and the girls
seemed happy to have me. I'd drop in when I'd been walking
the dog — the girls loved my old black Lab, even though he
was on his last legs. Let's face it, Adele wasn't likely to have any
men other than me about. She hadn't had a haircut for months,
and she'd grown a bit of a moustache. It was summer and she
wore shapeless, sleeveless dresses. But I liked her calm cheerful
smile, the way she swung around the house with her graceful
walk. She didn't spend all her time putting muck on her face
and complaining about being 'bloated' or 'having a fat day' or
'cutting out carbohydrates'. Obviously you wouldn't want to
go out with her, but she was a good woman, and I used to feel
happy in her sitting room with the bookshelves and the pot
plants, and the nice garden outside, and Adele in the kitchen
making some high-fat dish and chatting away to the girls.