This Too Shall Pass (11 page)

While my parents had suffered from the break up too, the same strong reaction that rose in me that morning had never surfaced when I'd seen them. Maybe this was because our relationship would go on uninterrupted, or maybe since I'd been the one to ruin things, I thought that my parents would be less wracked by the worry of it. I could not understand why tears were rising in my eyes now. I felt as though I was going to throw up and had to stop to take three large lung-fulls of air to calm myself. An image of Faye's delicious butterscotch pudding came to mind, along with a memory of the taste, which didn't, of course, make things any easier.

How do you face people after you've rejected their child? I realised I was about to find out.

I knocked at the back door, my heart thumping.

‘Jen!' Geoff greeted me jovially. ‘He's just come out of the bath. Been helping me with the mushroom mulch. Didn't want to deposit him into your car smelling like manure.'

Geoff's large freckled features, his fit brown body, was as neat and bold and uncomplicated as always.

I was differential – contrite, in fact. ‘He will have loved that,' I managed to say, my voice a little shaky. ‘Such a good helper.'

‘He got the hang of using the shovel in a blink. Must be in the genes.'

‘You look very well,' I said then, trying to convey more – the enormous change that had occurred. Geoff didn't take up my offer to converse about difficulties, his face simply crinkling with his beaming smile.

Faye appeared. ‘Here's your little man.'

‘Hi Mum.' Marcus came towards me in new clothes – obviously bought by them – giving me a sideways hug.

‘How ‘bout a cuppa?'

I don't know if I'm more gutless than anyone else in the world but I felt as if I was going to break down, as if I had a seam loosely sewn down my front, held just by a single, fragile thread. Staying would have meant that thread fully unravelling, my insides bursting out with sobs of recrimination, and all onto these pristine, good living people who never felt down or negative – so it seemed – about anything, even the betrayal of their son. I couldn't sit down to tea, the thick stain of a sullied character was already building bit by bit on my face; it would have been unbearable.

‘I haven't organised myself very well.' I began sculpting an excuse. ‘Left no time. Meant to be meeting a friend and… I hope you don't mind.'

‘Oh, course not!'

These sunny people weren't going to protest. Poise and acceptance, politeness and forgiveness are sure ways to put worry and remorse back where it rightly sprang from. If they had been angry I could have been righteous, but I was going to have to take responsibility. It didn't even matter what they really thought or how they spoke of it in private, it only mattered that they treated me with the same respect they always had.

My eyes brimmed with tears as we hugged our usual goodbyes. I thanked them for having Marcus, my voice choking a little with the finality that we all knew, despite our ease, was inevitable. Life would not bring us together apart from these brief exchanges while Marcus grew up, and eventually even they would peter out. The changes in me that suddenly seemed stark and real in their company would only cause the gaps to grow. I had no reason to continue and it would be unfair to Dave to pursue a connection. Even for my sake, letting it go was the right thing to do. Life simply couldn't support the amount of time needed to nurture such a connection. Our relationship would dwindle in direct response to the need for it. We were the computation of circumstance and such computations are full of prescriptive and extraneous duties. They are wrong in the wrong time and place. It would be worse to force things.

Holding Marcus's hand, my whole body quivering, I walked carefully down the driveway to my car. They would be watching perhaps, or perhaps not. I certainly knew they wouldn't be so enlightened as to feel no sadness at what had happened. But I also knew they would wipe away blame – say to themselves, it will just have to be accepted. There's nothing more. Simply a sad, sad thing.

Before pulling away from the kerb I turned to make sure Marcus was strapped in. He smiled, two new teeth rearranging the balance of his features.

‘I love you,' I said.

‘I love you too, Mum.' He responded, surprise colouring his voice, his smile pressing even bigger as he detected my strained mood.

Starting the car, I wiped a tear and swallowed silently. The maelstrom of bolting traffic would require concentration. Life was going to drag me forward.

TWENTY-SIX

T
he leaflet slid from the top of my bundle, spearing with some velocity into Teresa (a tiny, no-nonsense woman who looked after the files) before falling to the floor. She bent down to get it.

‘Sorry.'

‘Not your fault,' she said, holding out the pamphlet. ‘Let's blame God.'

I nodded.

‘He's persistent.' (She was talking about Nigel Pathmanathan.)

I read from the glossy notice, ‘Are you looking for a purpose in life? God can guide you to it.'

Teresa laughed.

‘I've found those files,' she said, as I distractedly looked past the poster to my messages. ‘One of them is huge. Did Elliot explain what you need to do?'

‘Kind of.'

I was scrabbling back in my memory, trying to recall what he'd said exactly, after,
Can you see Teresa about responding to a freedom of information inquiry?

‘Have you got the request?' I asked her.

‘All three of them. Remember, there are three.'

I followed her, bundled up yet again with folders and paperwork, even more so than usual. Of late, I'd taken to driving and was never as compact getting out of the car as I was the tram, never as ready for the day.

This morning I was wondering what my diary might reveal. The FOI requests were apparently urgent; a tiny voice inside me cursed and there was the first twinge that comes in most jobs eventually: the feeling of drowning.

Still, outward appearances unchanged, I marched down the main hallway behind Teresa, doing a sharp right, past the managers' meeting room, Anton's office, Dr Albert Musgrove's office and both their secretaries, to where Teresa was situated.

‘Have you ever been asked to a God session, Teresa?' I said when I was in her room, the door closed.

‘First time I saw one of those things I told Nigel Pathmanathan I was Lutheran. He said it didn't matter. I said it mattered to me and he was to refrain from putting things in my pigeonhole. He said he was following his calling. I said I'd be following my calling right up to Anton's office if he did it again. He left me alone after that.'

‘Are you really Lutheran?'

‘Yes.' She sounded stern and was looking at me with indignation.

I nodded, feeling a little hollow.

‘Look through the entire file, make sure everyone but family members have their names blotted out. There might also be a few things, extraneous things, that can be thrown away.'

‘Don't they just get the whole thing?'

‘They do get the whole thing. But it needs tidying up and the names need to be covered.'

I flipped through the top file.

‘I'm not going to take anything out, really,' I said, smiling a little. ‘Some of this stuff dates back to 1959.'

‘You need to make sure there's nothing inflammatory in there.'

‘Teresa, it's
all
inflammatory. The people who've made the request feel inflamed, that's why they're asking for their records.'

‘For Christ's sake Monty, I'm sure you've understood what I just said. Do what you can. I haven't got time to mince words with you. Have a go. Bring it back, I'll have a look.'

I let her place the files in my arms, open the door for me and, metaphorically, give me a shove to walk the gauntlet past the bosses' doorways.

As I approached Anton's door I could see him bending forward over something on his desk. Rumours about him and his secretary were circulating and it felt like taking a risk to have even the smallest peek. There was certainly no need to go to Anton about the FOI request and my doubts about doctoring the files. He would have looked put out, irritated.
You've been given a job. Use your discretion…
or some such thing. I kept my eyes forward and walked straight to my room.

Digging for my diary, I found I had two appointments later in the morning so I settled myself at my desk to look over the files. The first one, the one from 1959, was a relic. The paper, as thin as tissue and just as transparent, had small squirreling writing and some of the script was written in lead pencil; it was difficult to read. I cursed, despite interest. It would take time to decipher the words.

These were the entries.

4 September 1959

Tilley attended a session (brought by her paternal grandmother) and referred by teaching staff at Williamstown Primary School where she attends grade one. At age seven years and three months, she is a small, underweight child, presenting with average intelligence. She appeared nervous, had difficulty answering questions, demonstrating a speech impediment: an extended stutter that prevented her from finishing sentences. Her wishes to see her mother were expressed in her drawings. Note also from the drawings, especially those of the house, she appears to suffer considerable fear of life at home. Her wishes to find her mother, whose whereabouts are unknown, and to have a pet, such as a dog or cat, indicate her sense of isolation and need to be nurtured. My concerns at this early stage are that the child is being abused by the paternal grandfather, which should be investigated, and that neither grandparent is capable, physically or emotionally (not robust enough) to raise the child or to support her through the next important developmental steps.

I searched for the drawings, but couldn't find them.

Second entry:

19 September 1959

Tilley presented as withdrawn and troubled today. It was difficult to engage her in a conversation and her eye contact remained very poor. She sat for most of the session in the corner of the room clutching a doll she'd brought with her. At some points, if I asked her about her mother, or a brother that the grandmother has reported to me this morning is still in the care of the mother, she began to rock back and forth, clearly agitated. I have asked both grandparents to attend a session on their own to ascertain their level of competency and understanding of the child's needs.

Request for a speech assessment to be done has been lodged.

Third entry:

26 September 1959

Grandparents failed to attend appointment today. Decision made in consultation with Dr Schneider, to inform the State Government Department of Child Services as to our concerns. Action carried out. Further follow up with the department to occur after their investigation.

It occurred to me that Dr Schneider was one such name that, according to my instructions, should be scrubbed out. But as my hand went up to do it, the white tape stretching a little in my grip, I couldn't work out the sense of it. Didn't it render the request ridiculous – didn't it contravene the purpose of past clients requesting the information in the first place?

I flipped to the other documents behind the notes. A referral from the school, stating the child's details, date of birth, parentage, height, weight, physical features, and presenting concerns. Despite the brevity in the report, the weightlessness of it, it felt like a twenty kilogram ball and chain. I went back and covered Schneider's name and that of the therapist: a Miss Julie Jacobson of the profession of occupational therapy. It was done. If I deleted anything else there would be nothing left. A clawing nauseousness rose in my throat, not only because of my suspicions that Tilley had been removed from her grandparents' care and there had never been any follow up, but because of the hard cold reality of a file, a hospital file that starkly describes pivotal details about people and their lives. Construing a file one way or the other is one thing, but the physicality of its existence doesn't change. It stands, often as the only evidence available for why something might have happened, something that may have been catastrophic for someone.

I sat back in my chair, eyeing a pile of my files that sat on the far right of my desk. I was, ridiculously, trying to remember if I had made any grand statements that might twist the fate of my clients, or that they may need to pore over or be outraged at on some future date. I was tempted to look through them as if they may have been requested for just that purpose but knew it would take hours of reading to satisfy myself and even then I wouldn't be certain of my innocence. It's not about me anyway, I berated myself, it's about all the Tilleys in the world.

I opened the next one, a fat file of a kid who'd been admitted onto the inpatient ward twice. This was going to take hours and the kid, who was twenty-four now, was requesting the file because he'd become an actor and wanted to investigate his stint at Marlowe Downs as research for a role. I breathed deeply and exhaled in a rush. The entries described a boy who was very difficult to manage: severe mood swings, concentration problems. Diagnosis: attention deficit disorder, of course. I closed the file. He wanted the story; I was going to give it to him. Time was ticking away. I reached for the next, hardened already; my aim was to be as expedient as I possibly could.

‘First I became a barnacle. Attached. Now I'm feeding the machine like an artery of oxygenated blood,' I said to James, him smoking, me pacing three or four repeated steps, back and forth in front of him.

‘The machine was made a long time ago,' he said. ‘It's perpetually out of date.'

I sat beside him.

‘Our response seems so impersonal. Almost defensive.' I looked across the lawn at the smooth grey tree trunks, their skin infant-like, softening the walls of the buildings.