Read Hello from the Gillespies Online
Authors: Monica McInerney
Hello from the Gillespies (4 page)
It now took Angela longer to find the right words.
Which brings this letter to me.
I think something is wrong with me. Something serious. Not just with my marriage, with my children, with these headaches I keep having. It feels deeper than that. Not just physical. I feel so out of place these days. Overwhelmed. Not myself any more.
I seem to be yearning for something all the time. For everything to be different. To be a different person in some way. To go back and start again, somehow make things better, make the right choices.
Draw up a list, Joan advised me recently when I was trying to explain how I felt. Put what you really want down in black and white and see what is actually achievable. A wish list, she called it. I’ll try it here now.
1. I wish Nick would start talking to me again, properly, like he used to. I wish he would tell me that I am imagining things, that he isn’t having an affair, that he does still want to be married to me. That he still loves me. I wish I could turn back time to when we had a good marriage, a beautiful marriage. Because we did. We really did. But I am so sad and so scared that he doesn’t want to be with me any more.
2. I wish the children were all happy and healthy and independent (Ig aside, I’m happy for him to stay at home for a few more years). I wish I could feel I’d done the best job possible raising them. I always expected that when I got to my age, when I’d been married for this long and had grown children (half-grown, in Ig’s case), I would have everything sorted; I would be calm and wise and content. Instead, I feel like I have nothing under control, that I haven’t been a proper mother, let alone a proper wife, that everything going wrong with my family is somehow all my fault.
3. I wish I had ignored my mother-in-law’s advice. I wish I’d insisted that Nick involve me more in the business side of the station. I couldn’t have stopped the drought or the drop in wool prices, but perhaps if I’d insisted he talk to me about it, we would have come up with a different solution than this mining lease.
I don’t even know how much debt we’re in – Nick won’t ever tell me – but surely it can’t have been so bad that we couldn’t have worked through it, together?
4. I wish I was more artistic. I wish I could create a piece of pottery, even one piece, that I could be really proud of. It’s taken me by surprise how much it matters to me. I only took that pottery course in Port Augusta to fill in the gaps between my station-stay guests. I was feeling so lonely out here, with Nick so distant, Ig at school and the girls living their own lives. But I loved it from the very first lesson. It felt so good to work with the clay, to learn how to make practical things like vases, and to be encouraged to try small sculptures too. And it felt like a sign, an omen of some sort, when I heard that the college was selling off their old kiln for next to nothing and I was able to set up my own tiny studio here on the station. I’ve spent hours out there since. I’ve made dozens of pieces, taking my inspiration from the landscape and wildlife around me. I’m still a bit shy about them. (The first few looked more like collapsed cakes than pieces of art.) But I took my teacher’s advice (‘Aim high,’ he said) and contacted some ceramic galleries in Adelaide about possible representation. I haven’t heard back from any of them yet. I wish I would.
5. Most of all, right now, this minute, I wish my headaches would go away. Actually, not just my headaches. Sometimes I wish everything and everyone would go away. Just for a little while. Not permanently. Please don’t misunderstand me. I love my husband. My children. My life here on the station, here in Australia. I really do. But I just think if I could press a pause button for a while, have some time to myself, a little peace, a lot of quiet, time to reflect, I would be a much better mother, a much better wife, a much better person. I think I urgently need a little bit of time off from worrying about everything, from being me, all day, every day, months and years on end. Is that too much to ask? Is that selfish of me?
She paused. But not for long.
Have any of you seen that film
Sliding Doors
? Where the woman lives two parallel lives, all hinging on her missing her train or not? Ever since things have become so bad between Nick and me, I’ve turned into that woman. I can’t stop thinking about how my life might have been. If somewhere along the line, I took a wrong turn, if I should have taken a different path. I keep wondering what might have happened if I hadn’t been working in that bar in Sydney that night, more than thirty years ago. Would everything be better now, for everyone?
Because if I hadn’t been in that pub that night, I wouldn’t be on Errigal now, would I? I wouldn’t have met and married Nick. I wouldn’t have my four children. I wouldn’t be living here on an outback sheep station. I feel so guilty even thinking it, but I can’t stop asking myself the question, ‘What if?’ I would have done as I’d planned, stayed in Australia for another month, then gone back home. Back to my childhood sweetheart, Will. We were lovers, proper boyfriend and girlfriend, for more than two years, until he decided he needed to travel, explore the world and the world’s architecture, before he settled into university. I decided to go backpacking too. But we had an unspoken understanding. When he came back, and when I came back from my own travels, we would meet and we would see how we felt about each other.
I can’t stop thinking about that lately. I might have gone home to London after my few months in Australia, met Will again, decided I loved him and married him. And then what?
I can tell you. I’ve pictured it all. I’d have supported Will as he studied to become an architect. I’d have pursued my own love of art, really been serious about my own creativity. We’d have had one child. Just the one. A daughter called Lexie. A lovely, bright, stable child. A sweet-natured, polite child. We’d have stayed in London, in the house in Islington that Will inherited from his parents. We’d have saved all our money for full-scale renovations. Will would have done all the plans, of course, and turned it into a special family house. We’d even have had a big rambling garden with an oak tree, in the centre of London. An oak tree with a special tree house in it, designed especially by Will for Lexie.
We’d have been so happy. Will would have become a sought-after award-winning architect. Lexie would have excelled in school and at university, and gone on to set up her own community theatre group outside of London. In Bristol, perhaps. I’d have become an artist of some kind, quietly successful, my work in constant demand.
Angela came to a sudden halt.
Writing about her London fantasy life was one step too far. Because these thoughts were more than a harmless fantasy now. They’d become her lifeline. Over the past difficult year, as things had grown so tense between her and Nick, the refuge of this alternative fantasy life had kept her afloat. It had been somewhere for her mind to dwell when anxiety threatened to overwhelm her. Somewhere restful to go. Soothing . . . Her own personal meditation.
She’d learned to switch over to it at a moment’s notice. She wasn’t really on an outback sheep station, trying to cope with all these worries about her husband and children, was she? Her real life was in London, where her real husband, Will the architect, was at home waiting for her, a glass of wine ready to be poured, perhaps even dinner cooking in the oven. No, even better – she and Will had a housekeeper! Of course they did. A housekeeper five days a week, because she and Will were so busy with their creative lives. But they cooked for themselves on weekends, or more often than not, dined out. They had plenty of money. And every three or four weekends their daughter Lexie would come home to visit, because even though she was in her late twenties and had an exciting, fulfilled life in Bristol, she loved nothing more than coming home as often as she could and spending time with her beloved parents —
‘
Ig, stop that! Get down from there!’
Lindy’s voice snapped Angela out of her reverie. What was happening to her tonight? She’d never taken this long to write her Christmas letter. Or written as much.
She began to read it back. Not even halfway through, she stopped, shocked. She couldn’t possibly send out even a word of this. Anyone who read it would think that she’d gone mad. That her children were unhinged. That she and Nick were on the verge of divorce. That everything she’d been writing about Gillespie family life for the past thirty-three years was a lie. And it wasn’t, was it?
Was it?
Of course it wasn’t. They were just a normal family going through some normal ups and downs, weren’t they? Going through a tricky patch? Yes. All she had to do now was delete every word of this, this
rant
, and instead write one of her normal cheery end-of-year letters. And then send it off, tonight, on December first, as always.
She was just about to press the delete key and start again when a scream filled the room.
‘Mum!
MUM! Quick! MUM!’
Angela was on her feet before she knew it.
‘Mum! MUM! MUM! Quick!’
She ran as fast as she could, up the hall, into the kitchen.
Her first thought was that there’d been a murder. There was blood everywhere. In the middle of it, sitting on the floor, looking up at her, was Ig. It was his blood. Beside him stood Lindy. She was the one screaming. On the floor, in the blood, was something else. Could it be a finger? Part of a finger? It was a
finger
. The top of Ig’s finger. She stared at it, at Ig, at Lindy. Ig blinked. He didn’t speak but he blinked as he looked at her.
There was a buzzing in her head. The headache and something else. A voice telling her what to do.
Stay calm.
Lindy was babbling. ‘He was standing up on the table. With the carving knife. Cutting his hair. I told him not to, Mum. I told him. And he went to jump down, and he slipped and he landed right on the blade and Mum, look, oh God, look! It’s
revolting
.’ With that, Lindy vomited onto the floor.
‘Nick!’ Angela barely recognised her own voice, shouting.
He appeared at the door. ‘What’s —’ She saw him take it all in at a glance, heard him swear.
‘Help me.’ She made her voice sound calm. It was an effort. ‘Get the car. Please. We need to get him to the hospital. Quickly.’
Nick left immediately. Beside the door, Lindy retched again.
Angela ignored her, ignored the blood, the vomit.
Stay calm.
She fell onto her knees beside Ig, a tea towel in her hand. She took his bleeding hand in hers and firmly pressed the cloth against the wound. ‘It’s okay, kiddo. Don’t worry. Hold your arm up. Can you do that for me?’
He was still staring at her, white-faced. He didn’t look at his hand. All he did was look at her and nod, then slowly raise his hand.
She spoke quickly, issuing directions to Lindy. ‘Get the first-aid kit, Lindy, as fast as you can. Pass me the sterile water. The bandages.’
Stay calm.
‘Good girl. Now, quick, ice from the fridge. Freezer bags. Kitchen towel.’
Lindy did as she was told.
Angela got to work. She doused Ig’s finger in the sterile water, trying to ignore the blood, the sight of the bone.
Stay calm. Stay calm
. She pressed a wad of cotton on the end, then wrapped a bandage tightly around his whole hand, putting as much pressure on his finger as possible, keeping his hand raised above his heart, trying to stop the blood flow. She picked up the piece of his finger from the bloody pool on the floor, wrapped it in a kitchen towel, put it into one of the freezer bags and then into another bag with the ice. She might have been watching herself from a distance. How did she know to do all of this? How had she known that she shouldn’t put ice directly against the finger, for fear of frost damage? From a TV program? A long-ago first-aid class? No matter how, she did.
Lindy, sobbing, was watching from the other side of the kitchen. ‘Mum, will he be all right?’
‘Of course he will,’ she said, too loudly, too brightly. ‘Won’t you, Ig? Dad’s just gone to get the car and then we’ll take you into the hospital and everything will be fine, won’t it?’
Ig nodded. Still no words, but a nod was something, wasn’t it?
Nick appeared again, holding the car keys. ‘The car’s outside. I’ll drive.’
‘No!’ It was Ig, talking at last. ‘I want Mum to drive. I want her to take me.’
‘Ig —’ Nick said.
‘I want Mum.’ Ig was crying now. More than crying. Wailing. The shock had passed, now he was frightened, and in pain. With Lindy crying too, the room was suddenly full of noise.
‘I’ll go,’ Angela said to Nick. ‘We could be there overnight, longer even. You stay here with Lindy. All the party gear is being delivered tomorrow. Someone needs to be here for that.’
She couldn’t believe she was thinking so clearly, remembering party deliveries at a time like this. She turned back to Ig, doing her best to soothe him, stroking his hair, his face, telling him over and again it was going to be all right, he was going to be fine. He was so pale. His blood was so red. There was so much of it. It would take at least forty minutes to get to the Hawker hospital . . .
Stay calm.
‘Keep your hand up high for me, Ig,’ she said over his cries, finding an even brighter voice from somewhere. ‘Pretend you’re reaching up for something. That’s it, good boy. Ready for a bit of a drive?’
He stood up, swaying slightly, wailing now that it hurt, it hurt, it hurt. More orders to Lindy. Painkillers, a glass of water, quickly. After he’d taken them, gulping them down, tears still coursing down his cheeks, Angela put her arm around him, steadying him, holding him tight against her. It was a warm night but he was now shivering.
‘Lindy, get a rug please, quickly. Nick, can you call the hospital? Tell them we’re on the way?’
Lindy managed to step past the pool of blood before she started to retch again. She put her hand to her mouth and ran out the door.
As Nick finished speaking on the phone, Lindy appeared again, rug in hand. Angela took it, wrapped it around Ig.
They moved quickly then. Nick carried Ig out to the car, placed him in the passenger seat, fastened the seatbelt around him, opening the window so Ig could lean his elbow on it, keeping his injured hand high in the air. It took Angela only seconds to put on her own seatbelt, start the car, wind down the window.
‘I’ll ring as soon as I can,’ she called to her husband and daughter.
Nick and Lindy watched as the car moved out of sight, away from the homestead, onto the long straight dirt road.
Four hours later, alone in the kitchen, Nick hung up the phone after talking to Angela.
Ig was going to be fine. Everything was under control. The drive to Hawker had gone quickly, she told him. She and Ig had sung Christmas carols all the way, a good distraction. There’d been a group waiting for them at the hospital, alerted by Nick’s call, including the doctor on duty, an intern from Adelaide doing her bush experience. According to Angela, the doctor had taken one look at Ig’s blood-soaked bandage and the contents of the freezer bag, paled, and then immediately called for an ambulance to take Angela and Ig to the bigger hospital in Port Augusta, another hour away. Angela was calling from there now. Ig had already had emergency surgery to reattach his finger. There hadn’t been serious blood loss, despite how it looked from the mess in the kitchen. He might lose some movement, but the doctors were optimistic. The ice, the pressure bandage, it had all helped. She’d just come from his room. He was sleeping peacefully. The only thing wrong was that in the hurry to get Ig to the hospital, she’d left her mobile phone behind. She’d use payphones while she was in the hospital, and the UHF radio in the car once they were on their way home.
‘And you? Are you okay?’ Nick had asked.
‘I’m fine.’ She’d sounded so calm. Almost too calm.
There was a long silence before she spoke again.
‘I’d better go. I’ll call again tomorrow as soon as I can.’
It wasn’t until he’d returned the phone to the cradle that Nick realised he hadn’t asked her where she would be staying. In Ig’s hospital ward? A nearby motel? He went to call her back, but stopped. She didn’t have her mobile. If she was still in the ward, the nurses wouldn’t appreciate a ringing phone this late at night.
‘I’m fine,’ she’d said. But how could she be? He should have said more to her. Asked her a dozen more questions:
Are you sure you’re okay? Do you want me to drive over to you? I can be there in a few hours. Lindy can look after the delivery tomorrow. You need me there. I need to be there with you.
But the moment had passed, as it always seemed to between them these days.
It was his fault, he knew that. There was so much he wanted to say to her, but he never seemed able to find the words. Not just tonight. It had been that way for months now.
‘Have you told Angela yet?’ his doctor had asked during his last session. ‘She needs to know. You need to tell her.’
‘I don’t want to worry her.’
‘She’s your wife, Nick. She’s probably already worried.’
But how could he even begin to tell her? It was hard enough facing himself in the mirror each day, knowing how much he’d let her down, let his whole family down. He couldn’t bear to see more disappointment in her eyes. He’d seen how shocked she was when he told her about the mining deal. He’d heard the worry in her voice. That night had confirmed it for him. It was better for her, for the kids too, if he kept the rest to himself. If he tried to keep himself busy with his family research. If he stayed out of their way. Angela’s way, especially.
He went down the hall and checked on Lindy again. She was fast asleep. He’d sent her to her room, as if she were a child again, as soon as Angela and Ig had driven off. He’d assured her everything was going to be okay with Ig, that he was happy to do all the cleaning up. It had taken him more than an hour. There had been blood everywhere.
It was now nearly midnight. He should go to bed. But he knew he wouldn’t sleep. He hadn’t slept properly for months. He turned on the TV but there was nothing he wanted to watch. He checked the time, making the calculation. It was the middle of the day in Ireland. A good time to email Carol. Emailing Carol would take his mind off things. It always did.
As he walked into the office, the computer was displaying an Irish-themed screensaver, a photo of an historic castle. There was a large map of Ireland on the wall. The whole family shared the computer and the office, but these days he spent the most time in here.
He pressed a computer key. The castle disappeared and a document appeared on screen. He frowned. Had he forgotten to save this earlier? Then he saw the border of Christmas trees and realised. Angela must have been in here doing her Christmas letter when Ig had his accident. Nick was about to close it and save it in drafts when he saw the time. Four minutes to midnight, 1 December. The date she always sent her Christmas letter.
At last. Here was something positive he could do for Angela. He knew how much these letters meant to her, even if he had long ago stopped reading them. He had never really understood why she felt the need to share their family news with so many people. In the days when he had still read the letters, he’d often found it hard to recognise their lives in them.
Three minutes to midnight. He hoped their temperamental satellite internet connection would hold steady. He opened her email address book and saw a group titled ‘Christmas Letter Recipients’. He wasn’t surprised. He’d never known anyone as organised as Angela.
It didn’t take him long to set up the email and insert the names. After everything that had happened over the past year, even a small gesture for her like this one felt momentous. Important. He wouldn’t tell her he’d done it, either. It would be a surprise when she and Ig came home again.
One minute to midnight. He knew Angela often called Ig in to the office to press the send button for her, getting him to call out ‘Hello from the Gillespies!’ as the email went. He hoped it wouldn’t matter if that tradition wasn’t followed tonight.
Right on the stroke of midnight, he pressed send. As he leaned back in the chair, Angela’s Christmas letter left their computer and flew out into the world.