A Woman of Courage (6 page)

‘Sunday week. Our regular arts programme.'

‘I see from the internet that you are also a writer,' he said.

So he too had done his homework. She laughed. ‘Having a couple of newspaper columns hardly makes me a writer.'

‘Words convey emotions and ideas. It is they who make a writer. I have read some of your work,' he said. ‘I would say your columns qualify you admirably as a writer.'

Sara had never expected praise from this man. She shook her head, as close to tongue-tied as made no difference.

‘What are your plans?' he said.

From anyone else she might have resented the question but Emil could ask what he liked. ‘Carry on as I am, I suppose.'

‘Will that teach you much about life? About the human heart?'

‘As much as I need to know.'

‘There is no limit to what we need to know,' he said.

She would not look at him. She was on a slippery slope and knew it but even with her face lowered she could feel the weight of his eyes, against which she briefly fought a losing battle.

You are not a romantic teen, she told herself furiously. She feared she was losing control of the situation. She needed to put an end to it but could think of nothing to say. I am my own woman, she said in her heart. I do nothing I do not wish to do. I will not look at him. To look at him would be dangerous.

Yet even as she thought it her eyes rose. She looked into his. She saw that they were black, with untold depths. Into which she felt herself falling.

Nothing I do not wish to do, she repeated to herself. But that was the point.

‘I have the feeling there were other questions you wished to ask,' he said.

She avoided a direct answer. ‘Time is always a problem,' she said.

‘All the more important that we should waste as little of it as we can. Which is why I too have a question to ask you.'

Her heart thumped.

‘Do you have any leave owing to you?'

‘I shall have. Once we've finished recording the present series.'

‘When is that?'

‘Soon.'

‘I would like to think you could spare a couple of weeks, in that case.'

‘To do what?'

‘I have a house on Hideaway Island in the far north of Queensland. At night I lie in bed and listen to the waves breaking below the window.'

Sara thought the beating of her heart might suffocate her.

‘When you're free, come north and I'll show you. There are eagles. If we're lucky we may even see an osprey. And you'll have time to ask the questions you didn't ask in the interview.'

Nothing I do not wish to do, she told herself for the third time. It was madness even to think of going on holiday with a man of his reputation. A guest on her show. But also the greatest of living writers.

‘No commitments,' he said, and smiled.

That was nonsense. Go and she
would
be committed.

‘I am stifling here,' he said. ‘The air is used up. Don't you feel it?'

She had not noticed but now felt it strongly.

‘Let us walk,' he said.

She was startled. ‘Aren't you supposed to be going to a reception?'

‘They won't miss me.'

He was saying he didn't care if they did. She envied such freedom.

‘Ideas lose their power indoors,' he told her. ‘I think we could both do with fresh air.'

He stood and waited until she stood too.

Come north with me
, he had said.
If we're lucky we may even see an osprey.

I have a good job, she thought. Well paid and responsible. It has taken me four years to get where I am. It would be madness to risk losing that. He said come for two weeks but if I go north who can say when I shall come back?

Yet when he turned away she went with him. They walked out of the interview room and down the escalator to the lobby. Beyond the glass doors the traffic was racing along Macquarie Street.

They went into the street. After the warmth of the Cavendish the evening air was like ice, but she could see that Emil was not a man to give ground to the weather. He squared his shoulders and walked into the bitter wind blowing down the bustling street and she went with him. They passed St Stephens Church. Lights were burning in the parliament building. A belch of diesel as a truck roared past; a taxi blew its horn; there was a hint of sleet in the bitter wind.

‘It is warm on my island,' Emil said. ‘Very peaceful. At this time of year it is heaven. Most of the time I wear only shorts.'

She was shivering, her dress doing little to keep out the cold. A trickle of icy water ran between her breasts. She was filled with longing for the warmth and peace of the tropics.

It was impossible, of course. She had a career. There was a man on the edge of her life. She did not care as he did, but he was kind, gentle…

‘We have to snatch life's offerings,' Emil said. ‘If we do not, they do not come back.'

He was saying there were no second chances.

He looked at her, face expressionless. ‘What about it?' he said. ‘Will you come?'

Such a temptation. Such an impossibility. Say yes and she would be his prisoner, yet she could not bring herself to reject him in words. This man; this wonderful man.

‘Phone me in the morning,' she said. ‘I'll tell you.'

That night she stood in front of her bedroom mirror and stared at her reflection. A slender face that would harden as it grew older.
Little hatchet face
, her mother had called her. She thought: I am twenty-six, tough, capable, self-confident. There are no glass ceilings for people like me. So why am I swooning over a man old enough to be my father? A man with a track record like Emil Broussard's? He may be a wonderful writer but you live with the man, not his books. Am I so conceited that I imagine I can handle him when so many others have tried and failed? Am I stupid enough even to
think
of chucking up a stellar career and going away with him, like the heroine in a soap opera? I am not that woman. I am not. Yet her own face looked mockingly at her. The image smiled.

She closed her eyes but it was no use. The truth hammered in the darkness. She thought: I am lost.

She had told him to phone her in the morning but instead she phoned him. ‘OK,' she said.

So easy: yet it wasn't easy at all. Now she had made up her mind she was excited by the prospect of spending time with this man – but as a true partner, nothing less. She wanted to have him anchor himself inside her, mind and body. She wanted to own him, to have him own her, to be one being. Was it possible to want that and still be herself? She was not inexperienced in the arts of love but had never known a man like this, feelings like this. Emil was worldly-wise and over twice her age. It would be madness to do it but if she did not she knew she would regret it always.

Sara remembered when she was a child a Chinese acquaintance of her mother telling her about
chi
, or
feng shui
, meaning harmony.

‘There is Chinese saying,' Mr Chow had said. ‘Chi rides the wind.' He also explained to her the importance of the wind. ‘In Chinese game of mah-jong, player who draws east wind begins game. Therefore east wind, green dragon, signifies hope and adventure. South wind, red phoenix: danger. West is where sun sets, therefore wind blowing from west, white tiger, means emptiness and death. North wind, dark turtle. Turtle brings opportunity and great rewards. Great perils too.' He laughed. ‘North wind gambler's wind,' he said.

Sara took her courage in her hands. She went north, into the land of the dark turtle.

5

The night of her arrival she stood with Emil on the deck of his house and watched the sea. The stars burned in a million points of silver fire while he quoted Yeats to her.

The man's voice rang out above the sound of the tranquil-turning waves. The woman listened, watching the silvery glints of starshine on the water. Emotion drenched her throat in unshed tears, then they both turned and went indoors together. Into the finding place.

Sara remembered how emotion had overwhelmed her. It took her a while to understand that what she was feeling was not love of the place or even of the man but of the world and all those things, known and unknown, that lay out there beyond the world.

Looking back now, she saw their first night together had been the high point of their relationship. Other episodes, descending thick and fast, had destroyed the fulfilment and the joy, had in time destroyed everything.

Emil was away, in Sydney somewhere, and Sara had been swimming. Towel in hand, she came back to the house, walked into the living room and was startled to find herself face to face with a man she had never seen before.

She stared at him. ‘Can I help you?'

The intruder was somewhere in his late twenties. He was tall, with formidable shoulders, a tight mouth and hard face. His pale eyes had nobody at home behind them and his skin was so white it might have been bleached.

‘It's Broussard I want.'

‘Mr Broussard is in Sydney.'

‘So you say.'

‘I say it because it's true. What do you want, anyway?'

‘He'll know what I want.'

Sara did not like the look of this man at all. She was very conscious of herself standing there, as close to naked as made small difference. If he wanted to make trouble she'd have a hard job stopping him. Inside she was terrified but remembered what someone had told her once.

They must never see you're afraid.

She stared resolutely into the pale eyes. ‘You'll have to come back another time.'

The blond man smiled and it was not a nice smile. ‘Feisty little cow, I'll say that for you.'

He strolled towards her, taking his time. While Sara stood, terrified yet determined to show nothing.

His smile deepened. His eyes stroked every inch of her body. ‘Any time you feel like a change of scenery, give me a bell. In the meantime you give Broussard a message. He wants to gamble, he pays his debts, OK? Tell him Mr Albertsen wants his money.' He nodded significantly. ‘Polite reminder, that's all this is. If I got to come back, things could get ugly. Know what I mean?'

He reached out suddenly and caressed her cheek. Sara hadn't been expecting it and flinched. He smiled, turned away and went out and across the deck. She heard his whistle as he ran down the steps: a jaunty sound clearly audible above the rumble of the sea. Sara's cheek burned where he had touched it. She felt as though every bone had been drawn from her body. She collapsed onto the settee. It was five minutes before she found the strength to stand. Tottering like an old woman, she went into the bedroom and locked the door behind her. She had known before she joined him that Emil was a gambler but had never bargained on anything like this.

When Emil came back she told him what had happened and how frightened she had been.

‘You are too easily scared,' he said.

At that moment she could have killed him.

She tried her hand at a few short stories, was unhappy with them and wanted to throw them out, but Emil said he wanted to read them.

He did so one evening while she sat on the edge of her seat, watching him as he turned the pages. Eventually, without a word, he crossed the room and tossed them in the bin. Then he went back to his chair and poured himself another drink.

Hurt and angry, Sara said nothing, waiting for comments that it became clear he did not intend to make. Finally, also without a word, she got up in her turn, walked to the bin and retrieved her manuscripts. She carried them into the bedroom and put them away in the drawer of the desk she used for her writing. Then she went back into the living room. She sat down. She stared defiantly but said nothing.

‘They are very bad,' Emil said. ‘I cannot believe how bad.'

Sara said nothing.

‘They are an embarrassment. Clearly you have no talent whatsoever.'

He went on and on. She neither moved nor spoke.

‘You have nothing to say?'

‘Nothing.' She stared him down.

‘Butchery of the English language offends me,' he said. ‘I suppose I should not expect you to understand that.'

She got up.

‘Where are you going?'

‘To bed.'

It was a gradual process, his telling her he had meetings with publishers and agents that took him away two or three times a month, but before long he was going away for a week at a time. One night, after he'd phoned to say he would be on the last ferry, midnight came without any sign of him. He will surely phone, she told herself, but he did not. It was a hot night, the house was full of echoes and Sara couldn't sleep. She imagined the taxi crashing on the way to Shute Harbour, Emil in hospital, Emil dead…

Long after the last ferry had docked, too exhausted to care any longer, she stretched out on the settee and went to sleep.

At six-thirty, the dawn sky luminescent beyond the palm trees, she was woken by the sound of someone coming up the steps from the grass. She stood, steeling herself to face disaster, then recognised Emil's footsteps. Relief brought tears but also fury that he should have left her to stew all night without a word.

She opened her mouth to let fly at him but he beat her to it.

‘What are you doing, up at this hour?'

She had never seen him in such a rage.

‘Checking up on me, are you? Well, you don't own me. I shall come and go as I please!'

This before Sara had said a thing.

Emil paused for breath. Now was Sara's chance. The only way to beat a bully was to stand up to him but she was too tired to bother. She wanted sleep, not a fight. Without a word she turned on her heel, went into the bedroom and closed the door. Even the thought that he might come after her was unimportant. Lack of sleep and Emil's anger had turned the bright morning grey.

It was mid-afternoon when she woke. The house was silent; she didn't know if he was there or not and for the moment didn't care. She put on linen shorts and a loose top and walked on the beach. She thought about the previous night and wondered what Emil had been doing and with whom. She wondered where the two of them were going. Such an inspired artist. Such an impossible man. Without mutual respect they had nothing yet the relationship was still precious to her, despite everything. She would not give it up without a fight. Maybe, she told herself, things would improve.