Reunion (7 page)

But the work had been marvellous. In the six years before meeting Fleur there had been two novels; then came the extraordinary rush of four novels in seven years. ‘I'm your muse,' Fleur said after the first of the four was finished. ‘You're my muse,' Ava said again and again during the writing of the next three. And so Fleur had been; how else to interpret the drone of the past two years? Ava had turned in desperation to the two novels written before she met Fleur, searching for evidence that she could write without her. And while she had read the novels with both pleasure and relief – if she could do it then, she could do it again – it was only now, after last night's reunion, that she knew she actually would.

For the first time since the end of the relationship she felt no need to steer clear of her Fleur tokens, no need to cover the page in her diary when Harry came into the room, no need to visit surreptitiously the file of Fleur's old emails. No need to avoid the huge store of inflammable memories and keepsakes, no need to lie.

And yet secrets formed the fabric of a life like hers. Not simply the failed childhood shoved into a crate and welded
shut, not simply Fleur, a parallel marriage if ever there was one, but a cache of secrets added to throughout her forty-five years, hidden in memory, in diaries, in a bale of documents. Secrets enrich a life, she truly believed this, and without them life becomes a thin bedraggled affair. But secrets require unwavering vigilance, to be loyal to them can be exhausting.

She wondered how many of her secrets had leaked out. Who, for example, other than the players themselves knew about her month with Jack or her affair with Connie? As for Fleur, Jack knew, and of course Harry, who believed that as long as Ava remained with him she was choosing him above Fleur. And while she would never leave Harry, sometimes you choose but are not chosen in return.

Old secrets gradually lose their radioactivity, acquiring instead a certain nostalgia. Secrets left behind after your life has moved forward become safe. Fleur, so recently full of hard heat, was finally cooling.

As for the often squalid side to secrets, Ava had never regarded hers in this way. What both Stephen and Fleur had given her was valuable, and so much of what you value is never put on show. As she walked the grounds of her old university, this place that filled a special part of her past, it occurred to her that memories can become secrets too, sometimes so deeply buried that barely a whisper remains. But at the most unexpected of times they emerge, lovely and lively, returning you to times no longer lost.

The wind had dropped and as she left the arts building and made her way to the library she felt the first spatter of rain. And what, she wondered, might she not know about her old friends? Helen's ambitions, for example, and this predicament of hers with science, her longest love. And Jack's achievements, surely
there were more than he had revealed to her. And Connie, how did he square his moral philosopher's stance with three marriages, a swathe of children and numerous lovers? Only Harry was in the clear, Harry who slept with his bedroom door ajar, who worked always with the door to his office open, her Harry had no secrets.

1.

It was the evening after the reunion and in a building by the river, in a huge white space with soaring ceilings and a colossal wall of glass, Harry Guerin was working through his final check-list. He had selected this venue for the NOGA cocktail party confident that the three to four hundred people required to fill the area would make the effort to attend. A few guests had already arrived and were idling self-consciously in the no-man's-land of a room before a party. Harry glanced at his watch, not yet six, and certainly too soon to worry his hopes might have muddied his expectations. He rustled up a waiter to give the early arrivals a drink, then slipped into the kitchen for last-minute instructions to the catering staff. Back in the bar area, he inspected the waiters; he insisted one fellow restrain his dreadlocks and another remove a line of eyebrow studs, and, to quell the murmurings, promised a ten per cent cash bonus for the lot of them. Money, he had learned long ago, was a reliable pacifier.

He was about to do a final check with the sound and light people when he saw Helen arrive. She might well be in line for
a Nobel, but it didn't take much nous to realise that if improving the lot of the starving multitudes was a widespread priority, the starving would not amount to multitudes. Unlike Helen he was a realist, and his job would be a great deal easier if she were too.

He shoved his list in his pocket and followed her out to the terrace where she had already lit up. Too busy to be anything but blunt, he told her this was not the time for a crisis of conscience; she knew exactly where her expertise lay, and so, for that matter, did NOGA.

‘Many people have invested in you and your science,' he said. ‘You owe it to them, yourself as well, to be sensible.'

The smile she had raised to greet him slid from her face, but before she could find an answer he had turned and headed back inside. And while he would have preferred a more diplomatic approach, given the pressures on him tonight, pussy-footing around the issue was not an option, nor, he suspected, would it produce results.

A few more people had wandered in but not nearly enough for reassurance. Assuming a confidence he did not feel, he marched across the room to the adjacent auditorium where the formal proceedings would take place. In this area was seating for three hundred and ninety, and should his estimates be wrong, too many spaces here would condemn him far more strenuously than a thinnish crowd chatting over drinks and savouries next door. He paused inside the auditorium, took a few deep breaths, then gathered himself up and marched down the aisle to the stage. He mounted the steps two at a time, gazed at the rows of empty seats, just a moment's hesitation before returning to business. Here the main work of the evening would occur: his own welcome, followed by
Sir Richard Treat's speech and Conrad's keynote address. He waylaid the lighting technician to discuss the stage lighting, he cornered the sound technician and was assured yet again that the body microphones were highly effective, he checked the podium height and the reading light, and with everything in place he returned to the main reception area.

Just ten minutes had passed but now the room was crowded. Conversation surged, hands waved, mouths worked hard around words, while waiters glided through the throng dispensing drinks and hors d'oeuvres. Harry's anxieties vanished as he stood in the doorway savouring the scene. He would present the Network's mission statement and strategy plan; Jack, Conrad and Helen, the inaugural NOGA fellows would be on show; there was Conrad's speech – whatever Harry might think of his appalling morals, Conrad was an excellent speaker; and among the guests were some of the more beneficent members of the community. If the evening went well, and as he surveyed the crowd he was now convinced it would, NOGA would net millions of dollars and incalculable prestige.

Harry helped himself to a drink from a passing waiter and walked into the throng. He made his way towards Lady Stiller, whom, he noticed, like so many wealthy women did not carry a handbag.

2.

Jack dawdled along the path by the river. Night had already fallen but the area was well lit; in fact, all of the city was lit up these days. The temperature had plummeted and his hands
ached with cold, but he was in no hurry: a large cocktail party, much less one in which he was on display, was simply not his scene. He checked his watch and continued on his way.

Renovated to the far more respectable ‘precinct', this area on the north side of the river had been the domain of derelicts when he was a student, a rat-infested corridor of the city reeking of menace and bad reputation. The contemporary upgrade was now busy with suited pedestrians wearing trainers, and home-bound joggers with their work life crammed into backpacks. There was a vigour and prosperity about both the people and the area, and a youthfulness too, which by the very fact he noticed it made him uncomfortable: he had not realised he had reached that stage of maturation when youth is viewed as other, as not yourself.

He wandered a little further, stopped and checked the time again. The cocktail party venue was perched at the top of the slope; it was glowing hugely against the night sky, and the terrace out the front was already thick with smokers. He lingered a moment longer, then left the path and made his way slowly up the hill.

There was a jostle of people at the entrance to the building. He stood aside allowing others to pass ahead of him, amused that his reluctance to go in might be misconstrued as politeness. While he was waiting, a commotion started up at the door, someone struggling against the new arrivals, a woman wanting to leave and making no bones about it. Hats were dislodged, a bag fell to the ground, and amid a chorus of aggrieved protests Helen emerged from the crowd.

She was furious.

Jack caught her by the arm. ‘Where are you going?'

‘As far from that insufferable shit as possible.'

‘Harry?'

‘Of course Harry. Who else but Harry?'

She dragged Jack away from the entrance, pulled out a cigarette and lit up. ‘I made an effort for Ava's sake. We all did. I won't say I became a Harry convert, but he was growing on me. But this NOGA business, this power, has made him a monster.' Small puffs of smoke accompanied each word. ‘He thinks he can tell me what work I should do. He actually threatened me.'

Jack asked her to explain.

‘Not here, not now,' she said. ‘I have to leave before I do something I'll regret.' She rummaged in her bag for her hat. ‘I'll ring you,' she said, pulling on a green cloche. And with her scarf flapping in one hand and the cigarette glowing in the other, she bolted down the steps and into the night.

 

Inside the venue Jack's body temperature soared to tropical discomfort. He helped himself to a glass of wine and made his way through the crush to a small raised area at the far end of the room. There he cooled off while his gaze traversed the crowd. There was no sign of Ava, but he could see Connie and was about to join him, when Connie slipped from the party into the adjacent auditorium.

Jack remained on his perch at the edge of the throng. He took in the array of hairstyles, the shaved domes, the mobile mouths, groups of people in twos and threes and fours. He noticed Harry weaving through the crowd, working the room. The Harry Guerin he knew was an entirely different creature from this host of the party, this expansive and attentive man laughing with this guest, talking closely with that, a slap to a finely clad back and kisses to the cheeks of elegant women.
Whatever had transpired with Helen just a short time ago had left no detectable impression on him.

Power, it's in a class of its own, Jack found himself thinking. The beautiful know they're beautiful, the successful know they're successful, but people with power tend to exercise it as their right, without reflection, as if power confers its own moral authority. NOGA was not a big player even by Australian standards, but within the context of this party Jack could see that Harry was powerful – even more powerful than the position he occupied, more powerful than NOGA itself. How human power inflates itself. And not for the first time he wondered what he and Connie and Helen had got themselves into. So much information flowed into NOGA. How was it being used? How might it be used? And who would have access to it? He had raised these concerns with Harry, but Harry had an answer for every question, an explanation for every doubt. That in itself was troubling.

Jack slipped back into the crush. He stopped to allow a passing waiter to fill his glass, then went in search of Ava. While he sifted through the crowd, he told himself that now was neither the time nor place for doubts about NOGA; he, Helen and Connie had signed up as the inaugural NOGA fellows and they were integral to tonight's show. Harry had nominated Connie to speak on their behalf, and Jack and Helen had agreed, not simply because Connie had a new book to promote and a TV series in the offing, but of the three, Connie seemed a better fit among Harry's guests, his ‘knights of industry' and ‘people who make things happen'. Although as a NOGA fellow, Jack assumed that he, too, must be one of those ‘people who make things happen', but more in the way of primary producer, he decided, than the value-added people
who made up this party. He stifled a smile. He had known for a good long time that it was easier to parody Harry than envy him, although as he caught a glimpse of the homunculus bobbing through the crowd, a blur of glistening head and a permanent smile beneath the ridiculous moustache, Jack was forced to concede that no amount of parody or ridicule would alter their situations.

The air was heavy with perfume and food and too many people speaking at once; Jack moved through the pack to the wall of glass with its view to the riverside promenade. The stream of home-bound workers had been replaced by groups of sauntering youths. Some of the boys sported bare arms, yet it must be only seven or eight degrees out there. Tough and cool was their message, but the fact Jack was thinking cold and stupid just made him feel old again. So much made him feel old these days.

He swapped his empty glass for a full one – his third, he reminded himself – and helped himself to a savoury from one of the mobile waiters. The food fell apart before it reached his mouth. He hated finger food and he hated standing around pretending to have a good time. The evening had hardly begun, he was hungry, he was drinking too quickly and there was no escape.

He made his way across the room to the entrance and the book display he had noticed there. With his gaze hard ahead and sheltering his glass from the crush, he made it through the worst and into the lighter air of the foyer. And there she was, Ava, standing in front of the bookstand, oblivious to all around her. Ava, with his own
The Reinvention of Islam
in her hands, the new edition with the buy-me cover and Connie's read-me preface.

It is an extraordinary experience to chance on someone reading one of your books. It has the same sort of adrenalin-charged impact as when you come face to face with a long-lost friend. But to see your book in the hands of your beloved, she might be touching you, touching your bare skin. Jack felt the blood flushing through him, and inside his own shuddering self he was joined to her. It was a perfect stilled moment, then she looked up and saw him.

There was a single month long ago when they were lovers, four glorious weeks when Jack knew perfection. As Ava beckoned to him, it was as if she were calling him to her side just as she had for that one perfect month when they were eighteen. And then the present muscled in.

‘I've been reading you,' she said, holding up his book. ‘You really were very good.'

Such are the inadvertent condemnations of the past tense.

There were a few hundred people only metres away but it felt to Jack as if he and Ava were alone. He stood close to her, close enough to feel proprietorial while she spoke about the reunion last night, the four of them together again and, gesturing towards the display, their books and achievements. As she talked, Jack was seized by the play of words and emotions across her face. Beauty shocks, beauty surprises, it is uncommon, exceptional. For him, beauty was, and would forever be, Ava Bryant.

He had loved her first. And he knew she had loved him too. Why then had she chosen Harry? And why Fleur rather than him? Although the very fact of Fleur had always given him hope: if Ava could admit a lover there was still a chance for him. But as the affair dragged on year after year, seven long years with a husband and what seemed like a permanent lover,
Jack's own chances grew very thin indeed. Fleur, who had inspired him with hope, eventually added to his failure.

 

It was Jack who had introduced Fleur to Ava, just as years earlier he had introduced Harry to her. He had often wondered if others would have recognised such self-defeating acts before it was too late. He only wanted to help, to be useful to her.

He had accrued several months of study leave and Ava had persuaded him to spend it in Oxford, his first visit back since gaining his doctorate. He had arrived to find her stranded in the holding pen between novels, and immediately took it upon himself to provide her with the stimulation to free up her imagination and start working again. One outing he planned was to a public lecture given by Fleur Macleish, a specialist in Indian antiquities. Three months later, with the affair in full heat, Jack had returned to Australia determined to keep half a world between him and Ava Bryant.

Through her letters he had kept abreast of the affair's numerous flare-ups and its equally numerous burn-outs. Whenever Ava wrote about Fleur, Jack could feel the compulsion that joined her to this woman. It was a type of love he recognised – explosive, unrestrained, addictive, irresistible, and totally unlike her love for Harry, which was useful like an electric kettle is useful, and ordinary. Yet as the affair with Fleur continued, it was impossible not to feel sorry for Harry; the poor man must have been mad with pain.

Throughout the seven years of their affair, Ava and Fleur loved in cycles. It was all fire and fury for a time, a wild burn that consumed work, thought, body, health, each other – like Icarus flying towards the sun, Ava once wrote to Jack, and
nothing to equal it. Two or three months were as long as they could tolerate, then they would break away and Ava would lodge Fleur somewhere safe while she returned to the rest of her life. Such a relief to settle, Ava would write in her letters to Jack. And her work would flow.