The Turning Tide (27 page)

He shook his head in despair. ‘Sorry. Sorry. No idea what’s wrong with me. I hate this.’

‘Maybe you should see a doctor.’

He shook his head slowly. ‘Come on, Mike. How could I tell a doc the truth about my life? How could he possibly understand? Sometimes …’ He hesitated. ‘Sometimes I wonder how you could. Didn’t Johnny and I appal you?’

‘Well, I was pretty amazed at first, couldn’t see the fun in it at all. But after a while I knew it was honest, whatever it was. And I liked you both, you were such crazy bastards.’ I shook my head. ‘Now, the lieutenant’s bad breath, that was appalling. But not you, old mate. Not Johnny.’

Alan put his hand over his eyes. His voice ragged, he said, ‘Thanks, Mike. I don’t feel like myself anymore.
I don’t know who I am. When I was with Johnny I knew. But not anymore.’

As Alan’s attentions became cooler I saw Marion becoming more insecure, desperate for the love he’d once offered so freely. They never fought openly but parties were tense, with barbed comments laughed off as jokes. The baby, Terry, cried a lot. Susie was wary and disobedient.

I worried for them all but believed they’d come through it. Once Alan found more satisfying work, once Marion’s whirlwind career stabilised, once the kids were older and less demanding, they’d find peace and comfort in each other again. Wouldn’t they?

After some months they seemed to reach a point of reconciliation and I started to believe they’d survived the marital bumpy patch. Then one cold winter evening in mid-1956 I went to a dinner party at their place for someone who was visiting from Sydney. He arrived a little late but Marion greeted him with her usual zest and introduced him around the table.

‘This is Jan Dudek – that’s Yaaan, everyone – a doctor from Sydney. He’s friends with James and Elsa, here for a week’s holiday, and I promised we’d show him how Melbourne’s all nice and cosy in the winter. Welcome, darling.’

We raised our glasses in greeting and Marion sat him between me and a rather attractive woman I’d been hoping to talk to. Over the main course we chatted and I discovered he ran a medical practice in Balmain – he had to explain to me where the suburb was – and within minutes I was completely fascinated.

His parents were Polish, he told me, and they’d come to Australia when he was young. He was slim, mid-thirties, brown hair, pleasant face, high cheekbones. He was utterly ordinary apart from his intense blue eyes, focused upon me calmly and with complete attention as we spoke.

His voice was deep, with the faintest trace of accent, his words hesitant but precise. He was clearly listening, considering, thinking with great care. We discovered a mutual love of jazz and were happily dissecting the latest Charles Mingus album when Marion clapped her hands and pointed.

‘You, you and you, move two places to the left before I serve dessert, so you’ve all got a chance to enjoy the latest slander. Come on, darlings.’

Jan grinned, charming and impish. ‘I think our hostess leaves nothing to chance.’

He nodded and moved away. Over dessert I was able to make the acquaintance of the rather attractive lady and quite forgot about Jan, now deep in conversation with Alan.

After work next day, Alan said, ‘Come for a drink? Maybe a bite as well. A couple of the boys are going, that Jan fella from last night, too. Marion’s a bit worn out so she’s staying home.’

We sat in an upstairs room at one of the excellent Italian restaurants in Lygon Street. The red wine flowed, the pasta was delicious, the noise of other happy diners surrounded us. Two other blokes I liked from work were there and the conversation was scurrilous and funny.

Jan fitted in easily, his humour wry, his observations sharp, and Alan was as happy as I’d seen him, drunk or sober, for a year. It was a great evening and we didn’t stumble onto the footpath until the restaurant closed.

The boys from work wandered merrily down the road to catch a bus, ignoring the rain flitting down past the streetlights. Jan and Alan and I stood under the awning, leaning on each other’s shoulders, discussing the statistical probabilities of rain cessation versus taxi arrival. It was stupidly hilarious – we were drunk after all – but I felt as if I were in the presence of a great joy, my heart open with hope.

I wandered into the rain, barely feeling it on my raised hands, and yelled that it was stopping and we didn’t have to wait for a five-sigma event after all. Jan and Alan laughed, turning towards each other.

I suddenly felt absurdly disoriented. Where was I? When was it? With silent clarity I was in another era, long ago, and I recognised the look on Alan’s face. And on Jan’s in return.

Chapter 25

I can’t believe the prices in the real estate agent’s window. The wind is whistling down Lygon Street – spring is technically here, but not really – and I put my cold hands in the pockets of my coat, thinking they couldn’t seriously expect people to pay that kind of money.

‘Buying or selling?’ says a familiar voice. Lena’s rugged up with a red woolly scarf and looks a lot warmer than me.

‘Both. But I think I’m on the wrong planet. There seems to be an extra zero on the end of those numbers.’

‘When did you last buy a house?’ she says.

‘Nineteen fifty-seven.’

‘That might explain it.’

‘But ten times greater? I’ll never afford it.’

‘Are you selling your nice old house?’

I nod.

‘What are you buying?’

‘Something smaller, more modern.’

She laughs. ‘You can afford it.’

‘I’ll only have half the proceeds. The rest’s going to my stepchildren.’

‘Well, you might have to compromise a bit,’ she says, ‘but old houses like yours are top of the market now, everyone wants them. You could still get something like, oh, that.’

I peer at the agent’s display. ‘A bit ugly.’

‘Look closer. See the big windows? Light, lots of it. You can easily get rid of the flocked wallpaper.’

‘Is that what it is? I thought it was mould. And that yellow carpet –’

‘Rip it up. Polish the floorboards. Paint the walls something pale, hang some nice curtains and you’re set.’

‘How come you know all this?’ I ask.

‘I spent a couple of months helping Suyin buy the house for her and Dad in Foster. He was away most of the time and she was busy with the baby, so I read magazines, talked to agents.’

I look at her with interest. ‘You understand the jargon, then?’

‘For buying a house, more or less. Not for selling one. But I’d quite like to find out how that side of it goes.’ She looks at me hopefully. ‘Let’s go in and see what they say.’

I open the door and a bell jangles. A tubby young salesman in a suit emerges from an office, smiling like a crocodile.

I tell him I have a four-bedroom Edwardian house I want to sell. Seemingly moments after mentioning the name of
the street it’s on, Lena and I are seated in great comfort being plied, obsequiously, with brochures.

‘Business is a bit quiet at the moment, I take it,’ she says.

‘The spring surge is just around the corner,’ says the agent, with a tiny hint of desperation. ‘A property like this would do very well. We could expect something like –’

The amount of money he mentions seems so obscenely large I can only stare.

‘Granddad’s been out of the market for a while, so that’s probably a bit of a shock,’ says Lena kindly. ‘He’s also looking to buy something smaller. What do you have on your books at the moment?’

The agent bustles away to get more literature and I say, ‘
Granddad?
’

‘I don’t want him to think you’re an old perve,’ she says, ‘hanging round with a young girl.’

‘I thought it was you’d attached yourself limpet-like to me, not vice versa.’

‘Details. Shh. He’s back.’

She takes out a notebook and jots down the agent’s stream of unfamiliar terms – section 32s, covenants, easements, titles, zonings – and I look at pictures of places they have for sale. She’s right, I think, mentally replacing walls and floor coverings; you could make them look quite reasonable.

Lena closes her notebook and says, ‘Thank you, we’ll take a copy of your standard sales contract and talk to our solicitor.’

I arrange for the young man to come and see the house and exit with an armload of brochures.

‘Well,’ she says, as we pass the cafe next door, ‘you definitely owe me a coffee this time. And the cakes are pretty good here too.’

‘The bastard can’t do this to me, to us,’ cried Marion, more in despair than rage. She strode from the window, dark with reflections, to the table, bright under the pendant light. She picked up her empty glass and filled it and drank again.

‘Marion, slow down,’ I said. ‘Getting blotto won’t help.’

‘Did you know? I bet you did. I bet you helped them. Men always stick together, even bloody queers. Especially bloody queers. And bloody queers who were in the army together, they’re the worst of the bloody lot.’

I had to stop myself laughing. ‘Marion, I didn’t know. Honestly. They didn’t tell me they were going. It’s as much a surprise to me as you.’

Perhaps not, I thought. I’d realised something was happening with Alan, but I couldn’t have imagined he’d simply leave with Jan for Sydney, a mere week after meeting him. He’d left a note for Marion – she’d shown me, waving it, outraged – and it lay on the table now, crumpled and stained with wine.

Marion, I’m desperately sorry, I can’t stay any longer. I’ve taken a few of my things, you can throw the rest away. It’s not that I don’t love you – I truly do. But I know who I am again with Jan. It’s overwhelming, I have to be with him. I’ll continue supporting the children. Give my love to them and say I’ll see them often, that I’ll never, never stop loving them. But I must go. Alan.

‘Rotten, stupid idiot.
I know who I am again with Jan?
What the hell is he talking about? Can’t they just have homo sex and get it out of their systems?’

‘Marion, it’s not that simple. He can feel deeply for a man, it’s not just the sex.’

She looked at me, her nostrils flaring in rage. ‘Did he fuck you too? Is that why you’re so forgiving?’

I shook my head. ‘We’re just friends. But he told me he’d explained all about Johnny to you. Didn’t you understand how much he’d meant to him?’

She sat down, her head in her hands. ‘He said it was in the past, said he wasn’t attracted to men anymore, said he loved me …’ Her voice broke and she sobbed.

‘He did, I know he did, Marion.’

She took a long breath. ‘But I didn’t stand a chance, did I? Up against glamorous lost love, warriors in arms – fantasies, bloody male fantasies. Cranky wife, demanding kids: how could we possibly compete with that?’

‘Domestic life sounds pretty good to me,’ I said. ‘But perhaps it wasn’t right for Alan.’

She groaned in pain and frustration. ‘That bastard.’ Then she gasped. ‘Oh Jesus, what will I do? How will we survive? How can I work, pay the rent, look after the kids? I’ve got hardly any money and he’s thrown in his job to run off to Sydney with his … his …
boyfriend
. Oh Jesus.’

‘I’ll help you, however I can,’ I said.

She looked at me, furious. ‘Did he set you up to comfort me after he’d gone, to soothe the poor lonely wife? To slip into my bed like I’m one of your floozies?’

‘It’s a bit unfair to accuse me of screwing Alan then get cross because I’ve slept with the occasional woman,’ I said.
‘But no. I wasn’t set up to do anything. I just offered to help. I thought you and I were friends at least.’

She put her head on her arms and wept.

Marion was a brave woman. A day later she was back at work, busy and generous as ever. Her household continued to function despite the aching absence at its core.

Her mother, who’d never much liked Alan in the first place, recovered from her illness and started to mind the children again. Marion carried on, her zest apparently unflagging, but I could see the sorrow in her eyes.

She asked me for advice about the business. Her accountant was careless and Marion’s financial problems were mounting. I was able to recommend a man who started to put her accounts into a healthier state. Slowly her money worries eased.

She held a small dinner party two months after Alan had left her. It was quieter than in the past. Some friends had simply dropped her once she was no longer part of a marriage. I noticed she drank less than usual and gently teased her about it when helping tidy up afterwards.

‘I have to be so careful, Mike,’ she said. ‘Feels like a tightrope sometimes. I’ve discovered the hard way I can’t drink like I used to.’ She shrugged. ‘I have to be with the kids more, I have to be, God help me, both father and mother. It’s bloody, bloody hard.’

She struggled through a cold winter and rainy spring. She went out with a chap for a while but he informed her – after they’d slept together – he had no intention of being roped into rearing another man’s brats. She told me this
on the first sunny day of the summer, her voice shaking, as we sat beside the pool drinking tea, watching the children splash each other, screaming.

‘And you wouldn’t believe the creeps coming around now,’ she said bitterly. ‘Husbands of my oldest friends who drop by with bottles of vodka, hoping to sweet-talk me into bed behind their wives’ backs. The utter shits.’

I was sometimes temped to put my arm around her when she needed comfort, but I didn’t want her to think I was a creep too. In any case, I had my own life – a nice girlfriend named Fran, interesting work and my comfortable bachelor flat.

There was nothing much I could do but sit and listen when she wanted to talk. On the more practical side I was able to assist her with organising a couple of exhibitions, cutting mats, fitting pictures in frames, lifting, mounting and adjusting them on the walls.

‘Who usually helps you do this?’ I said. ‘It’s bloody hard.’

‘No one. Only me.’

You stupid, selfish bastard, Alan, I thought, surprised. Swamped in your own misery, you didn’t have time for your wife when she was doing something so important for all of you. Not a good show, fella.

Alan visited Melbourne briefly. He took the kids out for the day to a circus and they came home almost hysterical with overload. Alan wasn’t much better, pale and tense.