The Turning Tide (31 page)

‘What happened to the O’Briens?’ I ask. ‘I’m ashamed to admit I lost touch in the later years, though Mum always used to exchange Christmas cards with them.’

‘They went into a nursing home, I think. Long gone now.’

‘I guess it comes to all of us eventually,’ I say. ‘But given the war, even getting to be this ancient is something of a bonus.’

She smiles ruefully. ‘It seems such a short time ago we were all so young. And now we’re not.’

‘You still brush up pretty well. I’m afraid the years haven’t been quite so kind to me.’

‘No. There was a moment when I first saw you when I could see a young Mike and an older one, but suddenly it was just you, the same as ever.’

‘I felt that too, with you. Strange, isn’t it? But then I suppose it’s inside we’ve really changed. Utterly in some respects.’

She nods. ‘Yes. I can see that.’

There’s a silence.

I say, ‘I was about to boil the kettle, would you like a cuppa? I’ve got scones and jam and cream on offer as well.’ ‘Thank you. Here, I’ll give you a hand.’

We sit in the garden in the fresh air, shaded by an apple tree, looking over the soft green fields curving down to the water, little white clouds floating above the blue Prom peaks.

As I’m pouring the tea Helen says, ‘Ian told me what happened when you met up with Frank, the evening of Lena’s party.’

‘After I heard what he did to Ian as a lad, he’s lucky he got to walk away,’ I say lightly.

She’s silent for a moment, then says, ‘He used to hurt me too. But I didn’t realise he was doing the same to Ian. As soon as I did, I left him.’

‘I’m sorry. I would have hurt him a lot more if I’d known he’d lain a finger on you.’

She looks at me. ‘Mike, I thought I was doing the right thing, giving Ian a father. But I realise now, stepfathers aren’t necessarily good fathers.’

I raise an eyebrow. ‘I was stepfather to Marion’s kids for twenty-two years and gave them my all. Never raised a hand to them, treated them as my own. I did my best.’

She nods. ‘I said, not necessarily, Mike. You were always going to be a good father, it was obvious from how much you loved your own family. Are your parents still around?’

‘No. Gone, oh, going on twelve years ago now.’

‘You still miss them.’

‘Horribly.’

We sit in silence for a time, cutting open the scones, spreading jam and cream, and eating them with murmurs of pleasure.

Helen has a sip of tea and says, ‘Marion was your second wife, I take it?’

‘Yes. The first was my old friend from Broome, Betty. We married in Japan, but she died.’

‘I remember you telling me about Betty before you went away to war. Your mother kept Sally O’Brien up to date with your news. I wasn’t surprised to hear you’d gone to Japan. It was obvious how much you loved her in the old days.’

‘Oh? Well, there are different kinds of love. With Betty it was a very easy, gentle marriage.’

‘And Marion?’

I say wryly, ‘Harder. Much harder.’ I look at Helen. ‘What about you? Did you remarry after Frank?’

‘God, no. After two dreadful marriages – Johnny, Frank – I wasn’t going to risk another. I knew my judgement regarding men wasn’t the best.’

‘You must have had some lonely times.’

‘Yes. And you?’

‘In the later years of our marriage,’ I say. ‘Marion and I tried, but things had … well, we’d grown apart.’ I laugh mirthlessly. ‘I found out only a few months ago she’d been having an affair. If she hadn’t died so suddenly she was going to leave me anyway.’

‘Oh, Mike.’ Helen touches my hand lightly. ‘I’m sorry.’

I pick up my tea.

‘It’s all right, Helen. You see, I’m done. I’m finished,’ I say. ‘I’ve spent a lifetime offering my love and no one’s wanted it apart from Betty, and death stole her away from me. Yet – it’s almost amusing – after this final blow I don’t feel a thing for any woman now. It’s wonderful. Liberating. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to be this way at last.’

Helen is staring at me. She drains her cup and says, ‘Thank you for the tea, Mike. I hope you’ll find some peace of mind here, it’s a lovely place.’

She stands and leaves. I spread some jam and cream on half a scone and eat it, my mind calm, and gaze at the green fields and indigo mountains.

That evening I’m reading a new Dorothy Dunnett and working my way through a bottle of red, ABC radio on in the background. Perfect.

Again there’s a knock on the door and again it’s Helen. A cool breeze has come up so she’s in jeans and boots and a light coat. Her fair hair is loose on her shoulders.

She says, ‘I’ve been thinking over what you said. There’s something I want to tell you.’

‘Look, I’m sorry, Helen, I wasn’t very nice today, a bit cranky. You don’t have to tell me anything, it’s fine. Really.’

‘No,’ she says firmly and walks past me into the small lounge room. I turn the radio down and pour her a glass of red.

‘Okay, have a seat,’ I say. I hand her the glass. ‘Here. It’s good stuff.’

I sit on the lounge and she sits across from me on an armchair, her long legs crossed. She sips the wine. ‘Thanks, that’s nice.’

She considers me, her head a little to one side, rather like Lena. ‘Mike,’ she says, ‘you said today you’d spent a lifetime offering your love and it was never wanted by anyone. That’s not true.’

‘Helen, it was only self-pity talking. Don’t worry about it.’

‘No. Please listen. Remember how innocent we once were? My mother was so religious I knew nothing, really, about men and women. Then Johnny courted me and we made such a handsome couple. I simply assumed we were meant for each other.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘So did everyone else.’

‘But I wanted Johnny like I wanted a pretty toy. I thought that was love!’ She laughs sadly. ‘He was so elusive. I dreamed if we married he’d be mine and I wouldn’t have to yearn anymore.’

She takes a sip of wine. ‘So we got engaged. Then I met you. You made me laugh and protected me and confided in me. I had no name for what I felt for you. I didn’t know what it was, except I knew I wasn’t supposed to feel it.’

‘What you felt for me?’ I scoff. ‘We were friends, that’s all. Once, just once, I came in handy for scratching an itch, then I was tossed aside as fast as possible.’

She shakes her head. ‘Mike, that night, it didn’t happen because I was sad about Johnny. I wanted you. I pretended to myself I didn’t, the same way I pretended I didn’t plan it. But I did. I wanted you.’

I’m stunned.

‘But it
terrified
me. I’d never felt that way, acted that way before. I’d never known pleasure like that before. I was an animal, I could hear my mother saying. With contempt.’

She looks at me. ‘So I thought I’d done something horribly wrong. I had to run away from it, back to my life with Johnny. And suddenly I was pregnant to him, so there wasn’t even a choice left.’

‘You could have told me,’ I say, ‘just a little, what you really felt.’

‘I could see you were in love with Betty. And you were always teasing me, calling me “gorgeous girl”, “sweetheart”. I knew I was only a friend. Nothing more.’

I take a drink and sigh, exhausted. ‘Oh, Jesus, Helen. I meant every word. I used to love you, long ago, like an utter fool.’

‘But I didn’t know, Mike!’ she says, distressed. ‘You were so good at hiding your feelings.’

‘Too damned good,’ I say bitterly. ‘Anyway, you married Johnny and there was nothing I could do. And the next few years, well, feelings didn’t seem very relevant.’ I’m suddenly curious. ‘But why didn’t you say something when I came back after Johnny was gone?’

She shrugs helplessly. ‘I felt so angry, so humiliated, when you told me the truth. That Johnny never loved me, he’d loved someone else. That it was
you
who’d kept it a secret from me. It seemed like betrayal on top of betrayal. I hated you. I couldn’t trust you then.’

‘I just didn’t know how to explain,’ I say regretfully. ‘I was so young. I’m sorry, Helen.’

‘I finally realised how unfair I’d been but it was too late. I couldn’t even apologise. You’d gone to Japan and married
Betty and I knew I’d never see you again. So I fell into that dreadful marriage with Frank. And the years after that, raising Ian by myself, took all my strength.’

She drains her glass and puts it down. ‘Anyway. That’s the past. But I had to tell you, it’s not true your love was never wanted. I would have wanted it if I’d understood you. If I’d understood myself. If I’d given you a chance and hadn’t made such a stupid bloody mess of everything.’

I feel deep sorrow for both of us. ‘Helen, I don’t know what to say. Thank you for telling me.’

‘I realise it doesn’t change anything.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘It doesn’t.’ I take a deep breath. ‘I’ve been through too much. Not only us, many things. The war, losing Betty, losing Marion. Something’s closed down in me. I feel utterly cold. I don’t –
can’t
– care anymore. The best I can offer is a sort of friendship.’

She nods, her eyes regretful. ‘Yes. That’s what I felt at Lena’s party. Don’t worry, I have no illusions. But I wanted to tell you the truth. I didn’t know the name of what I felt for you so long ago, but I know now it was love.’

She stands and goes to the door. ‘Goodnight, Mike. I’m glad we could clear that up at last.’

I walk over and kiss her lightly on the cheek. ‘Thank you.’

I close the door after her then sit down and pick up my book again.

Chapter 29

I haven’t heard much from Alan lately, then I get a letter. It’s an invitation to a house-warming at his new place in Sydney in the Easter holidays. I’m intrigued by the rest of it:

I ran into some blokes from the 4th Independents a few weeks ago. I haven’t paid much attention to what the association’s been up to, but a small group visited Timor about ten years ago, raising funds for the locals. I had a vague idea about it all from the newsletter but they told me some pretty hair-raising things about what’s happened there since the 1975 sellout. Anyway, they’re dying to catch up with you again, so it should be a good party.

On the plane to Sydney I lean my head against the window and watch the clouds and think about 1975. I’d been struggling with periods of depression, focused on a research project and worrying about the latest departmental reshuffle.

I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to East Timor. I knew it had pottered along since the war under the Portuguese, but then they’d had a revolution and their colonies were suddenly an embarrassment. When was that? 1974? Yeah, that’d be right. Then in ’75 the Timorese declared independence. But the Yanks, booted out of Vietnam, had decided that their new best friends were the Indonesians; and their new best friends wanted East Timor.

The poor locals were labelled the latest communist threat, and in late ’75 the Indonesians invaded, armed to the teeth with American hardware. They massacred the Timorese with startling creativity, in quantities that made the Japanese seem almost benign.

I groan quietly to myself. And our spineless, stupid, Yank-arse-licking government said it was all for the best. They wanted Timorese oil and fancied our neighbourhood bullies had the right market-driven attitudes, unlike the dirt-poor Timorese who might use it for, oh, communistic facilities like schools and roads and hospitals.

I feel gut-sick. That’s why I don’t think too much about present-day Timor, it makes me so angry. And, I realise suddenly, guilty too. Guilty at our own long-ago enticing of the Japanese to that neutral land, guilty at the devastation our ignorance had triggered and, most of all, guilty at the fate of the brave Timorese who’d saved our skins in those hopeless days and been repaid with a kick in the teeth.

Alan picks me up from the airport. He’s looking much better than last time I saw him. I tell him so as we’re driving along, and he chuckles.

‘As it happens I’ve met someone. Elise. She lives in the same street.’

‘She? Jesus, Flynn,’ I say, ‘you are breathtakingly versatile.’

‘Life goes on, Broome. Fifteen months since I lost Jan. I mourn him every single day, but life goes on.’

‘Yeah. So what’s your new place like?’

‘Top floor of an old house in East Balmain. You can see the harbour from the verandah and walk down the hill to catch the ferry into the city. It’s good. But what about you? Did you find another place?’

‘Not in the city,’ I say. ‘I’m just renting now. But I bought an old farmhouse near Foster. You remember the O’Briens I used to stay with back then?’

‘Yeah, vaguely. A farmhouse? Hope you’re not going all country kitsch on me, lad.’

I laugh a little. ‘The views are nice. The house is basic but comfortable. It’s peaceful.’

He glances at me. ‘You need to spend more time there, then. You’re looking a bit wound up.’

‘Am I?’

He nods and I murmur about it having been a hard semester. I don’t think I convince him but we’re there now and he’s parking the car in a tree-lined street.

His place is stunningly modern, but it’s still got the old timber floors and high ceilings and decorative plaster. There are two bedrooms at the rear of the flat and a vast kitchen and living room at the front, with a nice old iron-lace verandah and a small table and chairs.

Alan makes coffee with a fancy machine, the sort you’d see in a cafe. I tease him about it, but the coffee’s fantastic. We sit on the little veranda drinking cup after cup and eating European biscuits baked by Alan’s new girlfriend. Just as I’m picturing a Fräulein with yellow plaits, Elise arrives.

She’s slim, with silver hair, dark eyes, elegant clothes. In her early sixties I think, my age, her face a little severe. Then she smiles and she’s simply gorgeous. She only stays briefly for introductions then has to leave for an appointment.

I toast Alan with my coffee cup. ‘I never cease to be amazed at the quality of women misled by your film-star looks, mate. Congratulations.’

He chuckles. ‘I’m really hoping this one works out. She’s nice, Broome, and she’s bi, too. We understand each other.’ ‘Bisexual?’ I throw my hands up in mock horror. ‘No more, too mind-boggling. But best of luck to you both.’

He says, grinning, ‘What about you, spending so much time in Foster – seeing anything of Helen?’