In Certain Circles (24 page)

Perhaps in the eye of God, or whoever first spoke of sowing and reaping, there was a weird sort of justice in it. Although, try as she would, she could not entirely think so: it was more like bad management than justice. All those people attached to the wrong people. In Paris, the balance went against Joseph. Now she knew what it felt like. Lessons, lessons. Except that in one respect he had been luckier—in being left with his work. When all else failed, there was the task. No wonder labour was so highly regarded!

‘Anyway,' she said, suddenly brisk. ‘We ought to disappear, darling Russell. I've got an appointment with Ken Simmons about the Bureau. He's negotiating with the other solicitor.'

Catching the waiter's eye, Russell felt for his wallet. ‘Ignore everything I've said. When you remember how helpful I've been to everyone lately—I'm not in the strongest position to give advice. Stephen might be ill. I'd never notice.'

Zoe smiled, then stopped smiling so that she could apply her lipstick. ‘Ill! He's well and strong, I'm glad to say.' She watched the waiter whip away the plate and the notes Russell had placed on it. ‘Everything's all right. I've just discovered that nothing is what it seems. And there's no remedy for a discovery like that. Except to digest it. And a delicious lunch like this,' she added, as they rose from the padded leather banquette.

‘I wasn't tactful,' Russell said.

Zoe smiled. ‘I didn't tell many lies, either. The difference it makes! No wonder people get ill! You could develop rabies by suppressing what is and knowingly substituting what is not.'

‘If we always act knowingly.'

They looked at each other with profound affection on the deserted, curved, carpeted stairway leading up to the street.

‘Oh, you too can deceive yourself in three easy lessons,' Zoe said carelessly.

The postman's whistle approached and withdrew tantalisingly up and down the steep suburban hills above the harbour. It danced into a cul-de-sac and was lost, silent for minutes, while a retired elderly gentleman provided a shady seat in the garden and a glass of lemonade. Guileless middle-aged widows sympathised with the Christmas burden slung over the postman's shoulder and offered cups of tea. Tough young matrons grabbed the mail from his hands without thanks, regarding politeness, charm, as something like capital, to be hoarded against a run on the banks. What looks like meanness is sometimes a lack of self-confidence, although quite often it is actually meanness.

Zoe waited. It was Lily's birthday, the day of her first dinner party since her ‘retirement'. ‘By popular demand,' she said, ‘further personal appearances. And Russell's taking the afternoon off.'

Zoe had promised to help. Within hours of their decision to sell, the work of the Bureau had been taken over, and every day since then, during Stephen's absence in Melbourne and Canberra, she had loafed, enjoyed herself, swimming daily in the pool that had replaced her father's tennis court, meeting friends for lunch, visiting others for dinner, taking fruit and novels to another in hospital.

While she was in the presence of these diverse friends with whom she had shared moments of comprehension that were a kind of love, Zoe felt alive. The irreplaceable nature of each person touched her. Alone at home, in Stephen's world, though Stephen was absent, he overcame her. Her heart beat in trepidation. She sat motionless for hours. She wept bitterly. But sometimes she succeeded in holding that life at bay. Then, like a research worker she tracked hope from reference to reference and the path led straight to people. Those she cared about had qualities in common. With an access of joy, Zoe thought: there will always be people like this!

Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And like someone in a fable, she marvelled at the landscape and its inhabitants and felt she had fallen among angels. Since she and Stephen had resolved to speak on his return, gifts had been mysteriously lavished on her—optimism, lightness of heart, something like grace.

In this new buoyant mood, she went up the path to wait for the postman before walking along the beach to Lily's place. A bunch of keys jingled in her hand: she had locked the house. A helicopter racketed by overhead.

‘They've all remembered you today!' the postman announced, arriving at the gate. A fair, open-faced young man, he handed Zoe two parcels and a bundle of letters and cards. They both smiled.

‘Lighten your load,' Zoe said.

‘Don't remind me of it!' He sagged at the knees, gave a wave, and made for the next house, sorting envelopes as he went.

Skimming back to the sealed-up house, muttering ‘dimwit' at herself for having locked it, Zoe glanced at the parcels, left them on the hall table, and sifted through the cards and letters. One from Anna. Faintly surprised, she took this and others whose handwriting made her eyes widen with pleasure into the sitting room. There, she opened Anna's letter and read—at first swiftly, then with increasing slowness. Spreading from some place above and behind her ears, ice sheathed her scalp. Leaving doors flung open, she ran down through the garden, down the narrow tree-hung track to the beach, and ran and stumbled and ran along the beach to Russell.

Home from work, making himself useful, he had just replaced the globe in the lamp at the gate when he saw Zoe coming up the short hill. He waved and watched her for a few seconds, then went to meet her at the lower gate. She stared at him.

‘What's happened?…Get your breath. You must have run all the way.' He touched her fingers.

She stared into his eyes, and saw that he knew nothing. There was only concern for her. His letter had not arrived yet. She took one of his hands in her left hand, and pressed it feverishly, as though he were very ill, and she distracted to know how to save him. Russell looked round the quiet street, deep in trees, then drew Zoe inside the garden and closed the big gates. She pushed the crumpled pages of her letter against his chest and turned away. ‘It's Anna.'

Dear Zoe and Stephen,

There's no way of breaking it gently. I expect to be dead by the time you read this. Suicide is easy. All you have to do is not be found too soon. Russell and I have loved each other for a long time. I don't want to be alive without him any more. There has been too much unhappiness. I'm tired. It was never feasible for us to be happy at the expense of Lily and the girls. Everything must be at our expense, and everything has been.

The first thing I noticed about Russell was that he often felt another person's situation more profoundly than the person himself. As if he could see more. He could do this for everyone but me. I was too close. I'd seen so many miserable people handing out blows that I didn't want to be like them. I was too vain ever to put myself on their side. No one could say our intentions weren't good, self-sacrificing, and perhaps, in the end, wicked. Not to be together is worse than death. To be perpetually on the side of understanding and sacrifice is not only hard beyond bearing, but against some law of survival. Sometimes even we might have had the greater claim. It's ironic that this responsibility and thought for other which is usually regarded as ‘good' should lead to death. Because this sort of death is not good. Therefore, good is bad. Or is it love that's bad? Or is it the denial of mutual love that leads to death, or death-in-life?

When you live alone, you have years of hours when you can lie on your bed and think. And when I was alone, waiting for him to arrive or to ring, I thought about him, trying to solve it in my mind. Then when I woke one day and understood that years had gone by in this way, I decided to make a change. You found out by accident, Zo, and I didn't care. I had some idea that I would ruin myself, do anything to kill the feeling. Anyone was welcome to help in the process.

The funny thing is, the worst part has been the surprise. In a way, I'm dying of surprise. It would never have occurred to me that it could end like this. I have written to Russell. Once or twice I tried to tell you something, but didn't. I love you both.

Anna

Russell held the solid double gates.

Shivering, Zoe glanced at his back, and sat down on a rock a few yards away, her collar pushed up to cover her cold neck, frozen hands pressed over her ears. The sun blazed down darkly, without heat.

Russell was pounding past her in the direction of the house, shouting to her to follow. She saw the soles of his shoes as she ran after him.

He was tearing at the telephone directory when she reached him.

‘What? What?' she cried, and they looked at each other with blank eyes.

‘That doctor she's staying with. What's her number? There's still time.'

‘Enquiries. You'll have to ring the exchange.'

Russell rang enquiries. Zoe pushed a pad and pen towards him across the table. He rang the house of the woman doctor Anna had been visiting. A housekeeper told him that the doctor was at the local hospital. She gave him the number. Mrs Clermont had left for Sydney in her car early in the morning. He rang the hospital and waited.

‘Oh, Zo, you're here!' Lily emerged from the kitchen and came down the hall. ‘We're out of soda water. I forgot to order it. How do you like my hair? I went to that new man up the street. He can cut.' She turned to the big oval looking-glass. ‘But he
prances
too much, and goes in for that badinage they learn from television comperes. So wearing!' Suddenly, as though a cold wind had encircled her, she glanced attentively at Zoe. ‘Who's Russell ringing?'

Russell was introducing himself to the doctor, finally traced in some far corner of the hospital, as Anna Clermont's brother-in-law.

‘That's stretching it,' Lily muttered.

Zoe was listening to him, watching him, watching Lily, as though her heart were a metronome. Talking, he saw the two women and with an oddly decisive gesture thrust the letter at Zoe, indicating that she should give it to his wife.

‘What on earth's going on? You look frightful! I didn't notice…What's the agitation?' Lily stared at Zoe, then at the letter in her hand. In a lower voice she asked, ‘What's wrong with Anna?'

‘Come in here.' Feeling doomed, a spreader of doom, without choice, Zoe led the way to the sitting room. ‘He wants you to see this.' They stood facing each other on one of the beautiful worn rugs, surrounded by the chairs, sofas, small tables that had been her mother's pride.

‘But Lily—' she hesitated. ‘It's worse than anything you're expecting.
Not
anything about the girls. But expect something bad.'

In silence, the letter passed from her hand to Lily's. With a wondering look, in slow motion, unable to move her eyes from Zoe who knew, Lily sank in to one of the big armchairs.

A sort of superhuman alertness and clarity of mind descended on Zoe, as though she had received a message advising that even yet, if everyone acted with extreme composure and made no least mistake, even yet, death might be averted. She poured a large brandy and put the glass in Lily's free hand. ‘Drink that.'

At the door to the hall, she heard Russell say, ‘Thank you again. I'll let you know.'

He turned to her, thinking but not seeing.

‘What?' Like someone at a great distance, she tried to attract his attention by raising an arm.

‘She left this morning. Drove off in the car. In good spirits, according to this woman. If she came home, she should be at her flat.' He dived at the telephone, dialling Anna's number. In her apartment the bell rang, and rang, and rang, emptily.

‘Go there! Go and see!' Zoe said. ‘I'd come too, but there's Lily, and in case there's news. But ring us as soon as you get there.'

Their eyes exchanged messages. Russell felt for his car keys. They both heard, at the distant gate, the postman's whistle.

‘The letter,' he said, and made for the front door. Then he remembered and went past Zoe into the sitting room. He and Lily stared at each other. ‘I'm going to look for her. I'm going to her flat. Zo's staying here.'