Trust (23 page)

‘What?’ said Angie. Seeing her sister’s startled expression, she quickly turned to look out into the narrow street herself. Nothing untoward. ‘What, Susu?’ she asked again, puzzled.

‘Oh – nothing. I just thought I saw someone I know,’ Susanna said. She felt shaken; it was as though she’d been sent a reminder that she must keep her word to her daughter, and say what she had come here to say. ‘Angie: there’s something I have to talk to you about.’

Speaking as though they were her own concerns, she raised Stella-Jean’s observations about Finn: that he seemed nervy, on edge. Angie brushed them off. ‘
Frightened
,’ Susanna insisted then, and, pretending she had witnessed it herself, she described Finn flinching in fear when a hand had been raised to him in a mock blow.

As though a cloth had been wiped over her face, Angie’s smile disappeared. ‘What are you saying? That I’ve been hitting Finn?’

‘Not
you
, Angie! Not you! But, possibly … Gabriel? You know, it’s not uncommon, sadly, that a mother’s new partner —’

Angie’s cheeks flamed. She drew a quivering breath in through her nostrils and drew herself up. Susanna quailed, recognising the telltale signs of Angie’s temper, and knowing too late that she had said completely, utterly, the wrong thing. ‘What do you mean, “new partner”?’ Angie snapped, her empty coffee cup rattling on its saucer as she pushed it away. ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about. You don’t know a
thing
!’

‘Angie, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean —’

‘Gabriel has done nothing but good, for Finn and for me and for
every
body. He cares about me and Finn more than anyone in my own family does. Including
you
, apparently!’ Angie was trembling, literally, with emotion.

‘No one cares about you more than I do, Angie,’ said Susanna in a low, heartfelt voice. ‘You know I’ve always —’

‘You’ve always been Mum’s favourite, that’s what you always!’ Angie flung at her, and Susanna, stung, drew back. ‘Always the
good
one! How dare you accuse Gabriel of doing anything bad? Or wrong? The discipline he’s given Finn is in the
Bible
. It says in the Bible that smacking a child when he misbehaves is the
right thing to do
.’

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ said Susanna, unaccustomed anger rising in her own voice, ‘but if that’s true then the Bible is a very sick book. Let me ask you, have you ever
really
looked at all those images of Christ on the cross? Really thought about what they’re depicting?’

Angie stared at her, confused. ‘They’re — He —
You
don’t care, that Christ suffered and died for
us
. Our sins. God gave his only begotten son for our salvation.’

‘It’s child sacrifice, Angie; has that ever occurred to you?’ asked Susanna hotly. ‘It’s sick! A father having his own son tortured and killed?
That’s
sin!’

Angie looked at her, her face working with disbelief, rage, disgust. ‘So that’s what you really think. Now I know.’ She brushed her hair back fiercely from her flushed face. ‘You and that disgusting husband of yours. You want to see sin, Susanna? Take a look at what your precious Gerry’s up to!’

‘I didn’t —’ Susanna stopped, beginning already to regret that she had spoken her mind so harshly. ‘Look, I know Gerry behaved badly on Christmas Day, and I’m sorry about it. But that doesn’t —’

Angie swatted that aside. ‘This isn’t about Christmas Day. It’s about the girl I saw him with in Sydney. A week
before
Christmas.’

‘What … girl?’

‘I don’t know who she was,’ said Angie with a tight relish, ‘but I can tell you that he couldn’t keep his hands off her in the hotel lobby. I can tell you how he was fondling her backside. How he was taking her up to his room – I saw him get the key, Susanna, I watched them get in the lift – at midnight.’

Susanna started shaking her head, and kept shaking it. How had she and Angie got to this awful place? ‘No. No,’ she said decisively. ‘You’ve made a mistake.’

‘Oh, I wish I
had
made a mistake, but I haven’t. Gerry and that woman – she was tall, she had long, red hair – were hell-bent on
sin.
’ Angie spoke fiercely, pronouncing the phrase with a preacher’s precision.

Susanna recoiled. ‘This is ridiculous! Gerry wanted me to come up to Sydney with him that weekend. He was
disappointed
when I couldn’t. Now, why would he have wanted me to come with him if he was meeting some – some floozy?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know whether this was arranged beforehand or if she was somebody he’d just picked up. But I know what I —’

Picked up!
Susanna’s hand flew up, palm out:
Stop!
‘You don’t —’ she began, but she was so upset she had to stop, swallow hard, and try again. ‘You don’t know what you saw! Or
claim
you saw. My husband put his hand on some woman’s back – maybe – and now you sit here and —’ She could hardly go on.
Why is she saying this stuff? Why?
‘What are you trying to do, Angie? Do you want to destroy my marriage, is that it? Do you hate Gerry that much?’

‘I don’t hate anyone!’ Angie cried. ‘I just want you to know the
truth
!’

Susanna leaned toward her. ‘Bull – fucking – shit,’ she said, each word as precise and conclusive as a card slapped down on the table.
I have to get away, before I —
She stood up, fumbling in her bag, pulling out her purse, tossing down a five-dollar note. Angie reached out her hand, urgently wanting her to stay, to sit down again, but Susanna jerked her arm away. ‘
Don’t
,’ she said, and knocked into another table, and a chair, in her hurry to get out.

Oblivious to the crowds, to everything but her own shock and anger, Susanna walked through a city that might as well have been a ghost town, for all she noticed. She had no idea how she found her way back to her car, and when she got there she had to sit for some time before she trusted herself to drive
. I am not going to let her upset me. I am going to Studio Lulu, and I am going to draw, and I am going to behave as though this meeting never happened.

Carefully, Susanna put the car in reverse, backed up, joined the stream of traffic. She saw her hands, trembling like leaves on the steering wheel, but they looked distant, as though they were someone else’s.
We have a good marriage. We have good sex. My husband loves me
. A traffic light turned red, and as she waited in the column of cars she made herself take deep, calming breaths.
I would know if there was any problem.

TWENTY

Jean lay her pencil down beside the notebook. An ordinary, lined, spiral-bound notebook, no different to the thousands she had filled with shorthand in her forty-five years as a secretary. But this one was not filled with sentences dictated to her by men: these words were her own.

She had finished a letter which was, quite probably, the most important thing she’d ever written in her life. A letter which just six months ago, she’d simply not had the words for.
Oh, I had the vocabulary, all right
, Jean reflected.
It was the heart’s capacity I lacked
. Flipping back through the notebook’s early pages, reading the loops and dashes of her neat, confident shorthand as fluently as ordinary written English, she could see with humbling clarity just how far she’d come
.
Such changes, both in tone and content, since she’d started taking Leonard’s measured thoughts about forgiveness and reconciliation seriously. What she’d first written, she saw now, was little more than self-justification of her stance toward Angie. Not forgiveness: blame. Just another chorus of that tired old song:
You did this, and you did that
, banging the drum of accusation, even though she’d thought she was exploring a new way forward.

There it was, the very moment:
When you came back from overseas that first time, it was your father who welcomed you home, not me.
Below those words, a blank. Jean remembered clearly the shock of seeing the implications of what she’d just written, how she’d almost stopped there, not gone on. But then:
I never once went to the airport to see you off or welcome you home, did I?
Another blank, longer, and then, all by itself, the sentence:
I never welcomed you.

Jean sat in her peaceful living room, late on this hot summer afternoon, recalling that revelatory moment and allowing herself a quiet sense of … achievement.
That was where I began to make progress
, she thought. In the months since writing those words – and especially since the row on Christmas Day – she’d gone from accusation and justification, to admission, and from there to honest confession. Finally, to apology.
I’m sorry
. Writing those two little words, the hardest thing she’d ever done.

Oddly, a matter of national importance had stiffened her personal resolve. For years the country had been wrangling internally on whether an apology should be made to the generations of indigenous Australians whose lives had been harmed, even destroyed, by government policies. One prime minister had begun the process of atonement, the next had steadfastly, scornfully, refused to carry it on. How Jean had despised that small-spirited, self-righteous man – and how chastened she had been when she recognised that her own uncompromising attitude toward Angie was not very different. Now, a new prime minister had made the apology, and brought some measure of healing with the gesture.
Perhaps that will happen for us too, in our own family
, she thought. She hoped.

A separate letter, to Susanna, would follow, but nothing would be as difficult again as writing this first one. Now, Jean knew, she must steel herself for the next challenge: overcoming her habits of privacy, of discretion, and, yes, of pride, and giving this letter to — oh, that was a daunting picture: giving it to Angie. Mightn’t her daughter’s first response be unwelcoming, angry, rejecting?
Yes
, Jean told herself,
and Angie is entitled to be all that.

She would show it to Leonard first. Or read it aloud to him, more precisely, since he couldn’t read shorthand. Dear Leonard, so considered and wise; he would offer her support and wise advice.
If not for Leonard, I would never have been able to come this far.
He was curious, she knew, about what she had been working on, especially these past few days they’d spent together in the guesthouse at Marysville, in the cool of the hills. Jean hadn’t told him though; just smiled enigmatically.
Wait.

Jean lifted her gaze, looking around uneasily. While she’d been preoccupied with her notebook, dimness had crept in to the room. She blinked several times, and rose, walking a little stiffly (she’d been sitting down for too long) to the back door. The long summer day was drawing to a close. Magpies and ravens were calling to each other from the tall trees around the village. Stepping into her courtyard, Jean raised her face toward the sky, where a pearly sheen was beginning to soften the uncompromising blue. Lately, she’d found evening’s approach unsettling.
These darn cataracts;
in diminishing light, they affected not only her vision, but her sense of wellbeing. Perhaps she should have that operation sooner, rather than later? Susanna would be upset that she hadn’t been told. But Susie was so busy; Jean didn’t want to worry her.
Or perhaps that’s pride, too. I just don’t want to be seen as old and vulnerable.

She wished for Leonard’s rational, comforting presence.
I’d like to read him the letter tonight.
Peering at her large-faced wristwatch, she saw that it was now a little after seven. Leonard was at his chess club meeting this evening, till eight.
I’ll go over to his unit and leave a note; ask him if he’d like to come and have a little supper with me.
He would like that, she knew he would.
Perhaps he’ll stay the night
. How nice it was to have a man with whom to share her life again. An intimate companion. Indeed, even in her marriage, much as she and Neville loved each other, his illness had meant she’d not felt able to …
lean
on him, the way she could with Leonard. Neville’s illness – and their cold war over Angie.
I punished him, too
,
poor Neville. Why am I only seeing these things now?

Jean went inside again and wrote the note she would leave for Leonard. In the bathroom, she quickly brushed her hair and put on a little lipstick, barely glancing in the mirror as she did so. She knew perfectly well what she looked like, which was no better or worse than might be expected. Jean felt sorry for those of her female contemporaries who grieved for their lost good looks – or, sadly, tried to pretend they still had them. Such a treacherous gift, beauty. Angie, she suspected, would find it hard, when her looks finally went. Catching herself mid-thought, she did raise her eyes to the mirror.
Stop!
she told the old woman there.
Stop judging her!

Standing on her porch, just about to close the front door behind her, Jean heard the phone ring. She hesitated, tempted to let it go – the answering machine was on – but then stepped inside again.

‘Hello?’

‘Oh, Mum! Thank heavens you’re there!’

‘Hello, Susie. Is everything all right?’

‘I’m in a bit of a pickle actually, Mum. I’ve just realised I’m supposed to be picking up Seb at the tennis centre in fifteen minutes and – I – I’m on the other side of town, in a drawing class. I don’t know how this happened, I just completely forgot.’ Susanna sounded ragged and upset; quite unlike her. ‘Even if I left this instant, I wouldn’t —’

‘Now, now, no need to panic,’ Jean said lightly, reassuringly. ‘I’m very pleased you’ve found a drawing class. And you mustn’t leave; your work’s important.’

‘But you see, I’ve just realised there’s a text message from Stella-Jean, she’s there too. With Finn! I tried to call them but I can’t seem to get
through
.’