Listen (19 page)

‘Except for eight million Booradalla reunioneers,’ said Deborah, shuddering elaborately. ‘Sorry, darling, we’re issuing a major policy statement that week. I can’t possibly get away, it’s just too big. But you and Olivia could go, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, Ol?’

Olivia looked up from mixing some kind of potion to add to her rabbits’ feed. ‘Sorry. That’s the weekend of Laurence’s birthday party.’

‘Oh. How old is he?’

‘Dad, really! Your own nephew! He’s sixteen.’

‘He’s
my
nephew, actually,’ said Deborah. ‘And this is the first I’ve heard about you going to a sixteen-year-old’s birthday party. Since when?’

‘Since forever. Since he’s my cousin,’ said Olivia evenly.

‘But there’s going to be, you know, drinking! Probably some kids drinking
too much
.’

‘But
I
won’t be drinking. And, Mum. It’s at Auntie Meredith’s house,’ said Olivia, fixing her mother with her level gaze. ‘I’ve been watching
adults
drink too much there for as long as I can remember, and that hasn’t exactly been a tempting sight.’

Olivia went back to mixing the rabbit feed. Deborah and Angus exchanged what they privately called their ‘Olivia has spoken’ look, a resigned face accompanied by a little shrug of helplessness.

‘Looks like I’m going on my own then,’ said Angus.

‘Sorry, darling,’ said Deborah.

‘Sorry, Dad,’ said Olivia.

But neither of them had sounded particularly regretful.

March 2004

This is terrific
! Angus thought, looking around the teeming schoolyard on the Saturday morning. It had been a good drive up the day before, at his own pace, singing loudly to the songs
he
liked on the car stereo. The weather was just as he’d foretold, a lovely warm day, blue sky, occasional light breeze. And this: everyone who had ever lived in Lake Booradalla and was still alive, it seemed, was there. Excitement and laughter rose all around him as he collected his name tag –
Angus Hume 1959
, the year he’d started in Bubs’ Grade, as they called it then – from one of the tables set up near the entrance. The current lot of Lake Booradalla Primary students were proudly acting as guides and helpers, even the plump-cheeked littlies. There was a good turnout of old-timers who’d started eighty years before in a two-room school in what had then been a tiny fishing village.

Both the town and the school had grown considerably: tourism and the coastal property boom had done great things for the local economy. The scrubby grounds that had surrounded the school were taken up with playing fields, portable classrooms, and a new assembly hall that doubled as the gym. The old building he thought of as
my school
had been thoroughly remodelled,
and not a bad job either. Carpet in the classrooms! Bugger me!
He walked around, too excited to stop yet and look at the displays, greeting and being greeted, hearing ex-students of all ages declaring ‘In my day…’ and then laughing at themselves.

‘Hey! Highway!’ boomed a big male voice, and Angus turned to
see a bulky bloke with a huge grin bearing down on him, instantly recognisable as his old best mate, David Tindall.

‘Tin Man!’ he yelled back, and they were hugging and gripping each others’ shoulders. ‘Bloody hell! This is fantastic!’ Both laughing incredulously.

‘How the hell are ya?’ asked Tindall, and they were away, yacking and chiacking as they walked around, people calling out to them heartily, smiling to see them together again. How long had it been since they’d caught up? Have to be twenty-five years, twenty-six maybe! When Angus, fresh out of law school, had driven up the coast road from Melbourne to Sydney and dropped in on the then newly married Dave Tindall, working for a plumber in Eden. And Dave’s sister Marion had been there, too, just finished high school. They’d all gone to a party, but Dave and his wife Yvonne had gone home early, and Marion had been in a mood to keep partying.
Gus’ll look after me
, she’d assured her brother. It was a memory he’d kept tucked away for years: how pissed they’d got, how they’d slipped away together, and just exactly how well he’d looked after her.
Don’t tell my brother, for god’s sake
, she’d said afterwards. Christ, that was the last thing he was about to do! Dave would’ve knocked him into the middle of next week. He’d never told anyone, not even Deborah. But he hadn’t forgotten either. No.

These days, Dave was telling him cheerfully, Tindall’s Plumbing was the biggest and busiest in Eden. His older boy was about to get his plumber’s ticket and become a partner in the business, too. ‘Then it’ll be Tindall and Son,’ he said proudly. ‘Yvonne does the books. Runs the whole show really. Terrific manager, she is,’ he added, tearing into an enormous sausage sandwich dripping with fried onion rings, fresh from the hotplate.

‘Boy, this is good!’ Angus said, mouth full. ‘I told my daughter she’d be missing out.’

‘Hey, there’s my sister! Marion!’ Dave yelled. A tall woman with thick auburn hair turned, smiling, and started towards them. ‘Look who I’ve found! Bloody Highway!’

‘Gosh!’ she said, holding out her hand to Angus, her brother’s beefy arm around her. ‘Hello, Gus. Remember me?’

‘Marion. Yeah, of course.’ Angus wiped his hand on his trousers and shook hers. He remembered her, but did he actually recognise her? Yes… no…The cute but ignorable kid sister of his schooldays; the lanky eager teenager of that night in Eden; and this mature, graceful woman.
Yes.
‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine, thanks. Isn’t this wonderful? I’m so glad I came now.’

‘Me too.’ Angus was trying to figure out her face. It was worn, careworn he thought, as though she’d been through a lot. A softness to her, but not weak-soft. Kind.
Not often you see a really kind face these days.
‘Where did you have to travel from?’

‘Oh, just up from Melbourne. Not like Perth or anything. Some people
have
come from Perth, you know. And I got a lift, so I didn’t even have to drive.’

‘I could have given you a lift.’

‘Could you? You’re living in Melbourne too then, Gus?’

‘Yeah. I am.’ No one had called him Gus in a million years. His own family had called him Angus, the teachers had called him that or his surname, and with the other boys it was either Humesy or Highway. It had been mainly Marion, in fact, who’d called him Gus. He liked her saying it; it seemed warm and informal. And suddenly, strangely, as he looked at her the noise of all those people swirling around them seemed to recede, became a background murmur like little gentle waves on a beach. He looked at her and he looked. One part of Angus’s mind told him that according to the everyday rules of social engagement, it was time for him to look away, resume his banter with Dave or finish his sanger. But he couldn’t seem to shift his gaze from Marion’s face.

She was a tall woman, almost the same height as him, and she was looking straight back at him, meeting his eyes with an easy smile. He took in her high forehead framed by the thick waves of coppery hair, the pale fragile skin of the redhead, the observant expression in her
widely spaced eyes – grey? green? – and the generous mouth. The white teeth just visible between her lightly parted lips.
I just want to keep looking at her. What is this? This is weird.

Sunday evening, and he was facing her across a candle-lit table in an over-nautically decorated restaurant, the Yacking Yabbie. It was the first time they had actually been alone together, and Angus knew he was talking too much. He’d just finished a story about Olivia’s beloved fancy rabbit Hector, who had won first prize in his section at the Royal Melbourne Show the year Ollie was eight (despite kicking the judge so hard he’d yelled), and the photo of them in the newspaper, Olivia grimly scowling and Hector
like a small deranged flokati rug
gripped firmly in her arms. He drew the shape of the rabbit’s enormous floppy ears in the air around his own head and made a cartoon cute face, and Marion laughed. The laugh seemed genuine but Angus was still appalled by his own nervous showing off. Just then, to his relief, the cheerful waitress brought the entrees to their table and topped up their wine glasses.

‘Enjoy your meal,’ the girl chirped as she headed off to greet some new customers. Angus took a healthy slug from his wine glass.

‘I’m sorry. I’ve been gabbling.’

‘Not at all.’

‘I have. When what I’d really like is to hear
you
talk.’

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Sure. But first I need to pay some attention to these scallops.’

Her smile was a little lopsided; her bottom lip dipped down a bit more on one side than the other. It made Angus smile, too, to see it; he remembered her brothers teasing her about it and wanted to remind her, but then thought he’d better not. Maybe she minded. He looked down at his plate.

‘Gosh, I’m really hungry!’ he said with surprise. ‘These prawns look fantastic!’

‘You met Lou, who gave me the lift up? She pointed this place out to me on the way. She said it’s the best place for seafood on the whole coast.’

While they ate they talked about going prawning in the inlets of the lake as kids, and favourite restaurants in Melbourne, and Angus felt himself settling down. Actually Marion’s presence was very steadying, it had just been the process of getting away from Lake Booradalla – working up the courage to offer her a lift back to Melbourne, feeling jumpy after she’d accepted in case someone else asked to come as well or Marion suggested someone else come with them: that’s what had thrown him. That, and the effort of stopping himself from contemplating what all this meant.

Between the first and second courses they talked about some of the old schoolmates they’d just seen at the reunion: the predictable paths some had followed, the surprising turns others’ lives had taken. And that led to discussion, during the main course (snapper, barramundi), of their respective careers, Angus’s in law and Marion as a counsellor, a family therapist.

‘So,’ he said once the dinner plates had been cleared away. ‘We’ve talked about families in general and a bit about my family in particular. But I still don’t know anything much about you, whether you have a family, even whether you have kids, or a partner.’ Actually this was not quite true. He had asked Dave the day before, casually he hoped, if Marion was married. ‘Used to be,’ Dave replied, looking a bit tight around the mouth. ‘Not any more. Bastard did the dirty on her good and proper.’ He didn’t seem to want to say more and Angus had let it go at that.

‘Well, you certainly know my first family. Those enormous brothers of mine and their tribes.’

‘Yes, but – what about you?’ He drew a deeper breath and looked at her directly. ‘Dave told me you
used to be
married. He didn’t sound too happy about… whatever happened.’

‘Ah. Well. They liked to think they could look after me, my big
brothers. Most people do, after all. They want to protect the ones they love from pain and from harm.’ She stopped for a moment and looked down at the white tablecloth. Angus noticed that her hair glowed copper in the candlelight. What would it feel like, if he were to lean forward and touch? She gave a little rueful shrug and glanced up. ‘But it’s just not possible. Things happen in life that no one can protect you from.’

‘Yes. I’m sure that’s true. I wish it weren’t; especially as a parent, I wish it weren’t. But, Marion, can I ask: what were the things that happened to you? That made Dave look so grim.’

‘Well, it
is
a bit grim, some of it. Maybe it’s better not to put a dampener on the evening.’

Angus was about to accede, to go back to light and cheerful chat, but some part of him said,
No. Talk to her; really talk.

‘I would like to know. If you can tell me.’

She looked at him, not smiling, for a long moment.

‘Okay.’ She nodded several times, gathering herself. ‘I married a guy I met at uni, Kim. We were both studying psychology. I know Dave writes him off now, completely, my whole family does, but he wasn’t a terrible person. We just had a run of… bad luck, which was more than he could deal with.

‘When we’d been married for three years, I got pregnant. It was twins, identical twin boys. But there were complications during the delivery and the second one was stillborn. Joshua. That’s what we named him. That was hard. But the other baby was fine. Till he was fifteen months old, and then he developed leukaemia. He was just over two when he died. Benjamin. Ben.’

‘Oh god,’ Angus breathed. He wanted very much to cover her pale, freckled hand, lying on the tablecloth, with his, but he stopped himself. ‘I don’t know how I’d…’ He shook his head.

‘But wait,’ said Marion with an ironic raised finger, ‘there’s more! About a year after that, we decided we were ready to have another child. I got pregnant again quite quickly, I was still not much over
thirty, but it was an ectopic pregnancy. Have you heard of that?’

‘Ah…’ Angus shook his head uncertainly.

‘Sorry. Not really a dinner table topic.’ Angus made a noise and gestures that said,
No, please, go ahead
. ‘It’s when the egg is fertilised outside the uterus, usually in one of the fallopian tubes. In my case, the left fallopian tube. In the old days an ectopic pregnancy would almost invariably kill the woman outright once it got to a certain stage. These days, if you get to a decent hospital in time and they figure out what’s going on – as happened with me, luckily – you survive. But it took me a long time to recover. I was a very sick girl.’

Angus sat very still, gazing at her. He held himself away from the thought of this woman in pain, in agony, in danger of her life. She started talking again, speaking clearly but quite fast.

‘And while I was recovering, Kim left. Everyone – certainly all my brothers – are convinced he was having an affair, because he took up almost immediately with the woman he later married. But really, he wasn’t seeing her before we broke up. I know that. He just… couldn’t bear to be around me. There had been too much pain. Too much loss.’