Inheritance (15 page)

But sitting over a pile of students’ books that afternoon, memories return to torment her. She rehearses again all the old questions. Why? Why did I give in to him? Was it pressure from her friends? They were all married or engaged. Perhaps she had felt this might be a last opportunity. And she really liked Stuart. He was fun; didn’t complain about his injury; was pleasant to her father. When her father produced a deposit on a house as a wedding gift, she was so touched she cried; Stuart put a gentle arm around her shoulder and thanked her father warmly. It was a lovely moment. Jeanie thought of it as the beginning of a wonderful life with both
Stuart and John. Stuart didn’t even want to wait until he was properly back on his feet; he married her on crutches, which her friends found sweet and touching. His shooting club, grinning and cheering, made an archway with their rifles. It was a happy day.

Ann’s pen flicks back and forth in her hand; the essay in front of her remains unmarked. Her eyes are fixed on the ticking clock on the wall but she views old scenes, a different time that has remained blessedly buried for many years.

Could she and Stuart ever have made a go of it? For a few months they did. They often set off to work together on Stuart’s new motorbike, went to the pictures, lazed on the beach in the weekends, made love. Stuart was a good, energetic lover. Inexperienced Jeanie loved it all. Especially the nights.

But then it seemed that the more Stuart recovered from his injury, the more difficult their relationship became. Jeanie invited John to their flat (Stuart didn’t want to buy a house just yet) a couple of times a week. Perhaps her father was lonely. He descended into one of his ‘quiet’ periods, speaking little, gazing at the carpet for minutes on end before answering a simple question. Jeanie was used to these times; would jolly him along, or ignore him. But Stuart became really irritated.

‘Why doesn’t he answer? I asked a civil question.’ Stuart would not accept that John was depressive. ‘He’s just doing it to annoy me. He doesn’t like me. Don’t invite him while he’s like this, Jeanie.’

But of course Jeanie had to. These were the very times when she was needed. Sometimes Stuart would stay at work if her father was invited. Or go to the pub.

Then the violence started. Jeanie was so shocked the first time he hit her, that she hit him straight back, as hard as she could, then ran out of the flat and over to her father’s place. Stuart had come home drunk, had criticised the meal, the state of the flat, her father; even Jeanie’s new hairdo. Nothing was right. When she answered back, he hit her.

Next day, he came into the ward and handed her a big bunch of flowers, gave her a lopsided smile, kissed her gently and left without another word. Of course she went back that night and cooked a special meal with candles and a bottle of wine. The love they made that night was wonderful.

Perhaps he’d been violent before, with other people? Jeanie never really found out. His mother never spoke about him as a boy; in fact she didn’t really seem to like him much.

‘Bless you, dear,’ she’d said at the wedding. ‘I won’t pretend it’s not a relief. The two of us in one house …’

A strange thing to say at a wedding.

Ann marks an essay; and then another. She wills the memories to retreat, but they have a stubborn life of their own. They have been waiting for a crack to appear and now they crowd into the opening. Remember me? Remember me! Ann gives up on the marking and heads outside again, with a bucket of feed for the donkeys. The old scenes follow her down the paddock, cruelly persistent. The fight at the law office.

‘I don’t need to remember all this,’ she says out loud. The donkeys nod gravely.

The fight at the law office came the day after Stuart had knocked Jeanie to the floor, bruising her badly.
While he cried and pleaded drunkenly, Jeanie had packed a bag and walked over to her father’s place. By now she knew what to expect. Sincere apologies next morning or afternoon; pleas for her to return; promises that it would never happen again; chocolates or flowers or both. She was sick of it all, angry with him, vowing that this time she wouldn’t go back; wouldn’t give in. By next day she was already wondering if it might all pass; that they were just getting used to each other. A baby would settle them. Jeannie had talked with Aunt Mary, John’s sister, who had suggested just that.

‘Wait for your first baby, dear. You’ll find that makes a difference to most men. They think they’re so tough, and then a son comes along and they turn overnight into little softies.’

Aunt Mary had no children of her own, but was fond of pronouncements, which Jeanie, lacking a mother to tell her otherwise, usually accepted as wise.

But this time it was worse – far, far worse. Jeanie came back from night shift to find Stuart at her father’s place, sitting in the living room in tears. Real tears rolling down.

‘I’ve made a mess of things, lost my job, lost my wife, what am I going to do?’

‘What is it?’ Jeanie had asked, too tired and sore to care, really.

‘He criticised my work. Told me the mistakes were stupid; that I was sloppy.’ Stuart had looked up at her, needy, stricken. ‘It simply wasn’t true, Jeanie. The fellow was covering up for his own faults. It wasn’t me at all. After last night I was – upset. You shouldn’t have walked out, Jeanie. I was upset. Then he pushed me and
I hit him back. Anyone would. Anyone.’

On and on he whined, while Jeanie dragged herself into the kitchen and made breakfast for them all. He followed her, stood in the doorway justifying himself desperately as if she was the accuser.

‘Okay, I broke his jaw, but he hit first. They didn’t need to fire me. Two hours they gave me to pack up and go. Is that right? Is that decent behaviour Jeanie? Two hours! I’m going to sue them. They can’t do that to me.’

And so on. John O’Dowd sat in the living room, silent, staring at the carpet. Jeanie, still bruised, dead tired, left the breakfast dishes in the sink, put the newspaper in her father’s unresponsive lap, and went to bed.

A couple of days later she learnt that her father had agreed that the deposit money for the house could be used to pay for a lawyer to defend Stuart. John O’Dowd would have been more careful if he had been in a fit state himself, but Stuart had possibly bullied him. Jeanie was too tired to take much notice. Her salary was not enough to keep them both; they moved in with her father. Jeanie was looking after the house, her father, a new, subdued Stuart, and working full time.

Ann scratches the rough hair at the base of a donkey’s ears. I should have divorced him then. Yes, that would have been the moment. Asked him to leave her father’s house. But divorce was not common in 1964, and, looking back, she has to admit that she was afraid of him; of what he might do to her or her father. There were good times still, when Stuart was full of energy, sure he would win the case, loving towards her.

‘When I’ve won,’ he would say, his blue eyes excited, his arms around her in their marriage bed which occupied
nearly all the floor space in John’s spare room, ‘we’ll move away somewhere, start a new life in a new town. You need to get away from your father, Jeanie. He relies on you too much.’

Jeanie would press herself into him, happy for this lull, but knew she could never leave her father. Looking after him was a habit – a loving duty – more important to her than her marriage.

Was that the root of the trouble? Stuart was insanely jealous. Perhaps without John, the marriage might have worked? But no; he was jealous of any relationship she had with anyone. And violent. At the hearing, it became obvious that Stuart had been the aggressor. The law partner had several very credible witnesses. Stuart was either lying or delusional – Jeanie thought the latter. He became flustered under questioning and lost his temper with everyone. Jeanie was deeply embarrassed. He lost the case and all their money.

John’s recovery from depression, and the summons from Gertrude Schroder, seemed to open a door into new possibilities; a way out of a mess; another chance for the marriage and a more positive life for John O’Dowd.

An impatient nudge from a soft grey nose brings her back to the task at hand. As she shakes oats into the donkeys’ trough, Ann finds herself desperately willing Stuart dead. She imagines a car crash at a distant icy bend, a random knifing on a dark night, cancer. Even poison. Surely he must have enemies up north? If Auckland is where he still lives. Ann used to keep track, but has not bothered for years. She had foolishly imagined the past buried, and accepted her present life as inviolate.

The fear is still there, twenty years later. An irrational,
visceral fear. His face at the door this morning, his figure standing below on the road, made her legs tremble. She could see them shake. How could that sad stranger manage to panic her? Why could Ann Hope, successful teacher and mother, not rise above that fear? This is something different from the rational and very real fear for her daughter. Her body still remembers the beatings; her body flinches to see him again.

She stands with one hand on the rough dusty coat of a munching donkey. But even the gentle beasts and the perfection of the bright morning can’t still her fear.

Does he know about Francesca?

Ann reads her daughter’s letter carefully; lays it on the polished wood of the table and walks out into the black night. Above, the sky is brilliant with stars, the soft luminescence of the Milky Way drifting diagonally from horizon to horizon. Sweet wood smoke from her chimney softens the sharp air. She looks over to the next rise, where the lights of Michael’s house glow behind drawn curtains. But Michael will be no help this time.

Ann shivers. The cold air has cleared her tired head, but the problem remains to be solved. She goes back inside and reads Francesa’s letter again. 

It beggars belief. After more than twenty peaceful,
unremarkable years, two people close to her old life have surfaced within a month of each other. Ann feels the good, sheer walls enclosing the life of Ann Hope crazing like the glass on a shattered windscreen. Any moment, she feels, they will fall in pieces, exposing her and Francesca to a past for which neither she nor her daughter is prepared.

Have I been a fool, she wonders? Not for the first time; but she can’t imagine that she would have acted otherwise. She pours herself a large glass of wine and sits by the fire drinking it. To hell with a clear head for classes in the morning. The tapestry she has planned to work on glows untouched on its frame. Memories and images storm the crumbling ramparts and pour over into the present – an uncontested army, rioting and looting as they advance.

Stuart has sent three letters which she has burnt unseen, but at least he hasn’t returned. Elena will arrive, though, and will not be turned away. Not Elena.

‘Damn you Elena!’ she says out loud. ’Damn, damn, damn you!’