Xanthe
St Helier, May 2019
Xanthe places her empty coffee mug on the sill and watches motes of dust dancing on shafts of sunlight that slant through the open windows of her bedroom. It’s still early, and the only person in the street is a woman who is dragging a toddler by the hand. The child hangs back to pat an ugly brown mongrel trotting behind them, and when his mother tries to pull him away, he stamps and screams. Glancing around to make sure there’s no-one around, she smacks him hard enough for Xanthe to hear the thwack of her hand. He yells louder and she shouts, ‘Stop that or you’ll get another one.’ They disappear around the corner, the child still screaming and the mother still shouting. Xanthe comes away from the window but looks back one more time. No matter how deserted a street seems to be, she thinks, someone is always watching.
The mother and child make her think of Milly. She wonders how she will cope as a single mother raising a German soldier’s child in wartime. Then she laughs at herself. Hugh Jackson’s vivid entries make her forget that this took place so long ago.
Hoping to find the answer, she picks up his journal and rereads the page she has left open. Once again, his last statement makes the hairs stand up on the back of her neck.
If his hunch is right, Milly is Aoife’s daughter. Will he tell her, or remain silent? Having a secret like that gives you the power to transform or destroy someone’s life, but it can affect your own as well. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. She knows that from experience. Years ago, she had agonised for a long time whether to tell her best friend Angie that she had seen her fiancé groping another girl. In the end she decided that Angie would want to know, that she should know. That she deserved to know. Angie was furious. Not with her philandering fiancé, who denied it, but with Xanthe.
‘You’re making it up to stir up trouble between me and Damien because you’ve always been jealous of us!’ Angie almost spat the words at her. Their friendship never recovered. Perhaps honesty wasn’t always the best policy.
Xanthe sighs. She picks up Hugh’s journal again and flicks the pages, shocked to see that she has almost come to the end.
What will happen to his relationship with Aoife? How will he resolve the problem of his marriage? She is tempted to go straight to the end, as she often does when reading a detective story, but she curbs her curiosity. This true-life mystery should be unravelled page by page, just as he lived it. She owes him that much.
But her mind wanders. Liberation Day is not far off and only a few days of her holiday remain. Unable to concentrate, she closes the journal and goes to the window again. An old man in a blue windcheater is walking down the street pulling a shopping trolley behind him. It’s one of the neighbours who glances up, sees her, and gives her a cheery wave. She waves back and comes away from the window.
She will miss St Helier, but she is looking forward to returning home. She has finally come to a decision and the future is no longer a canvas painted black. What will Daniel think about her plan?
But as she discovers when they meet, Daniel has plans of his own. She is sitting in a tan velvet armchair by the Palladian windows of the Grand Hotel when she sees him coming, and from his rapid stride and eager expression she can tell he’s bursting with news. He is wearing a black Midnight Oil T-shirt and she smiles at this unexpected reminder of home. Life’s paths were unfathomable. She thinks back to the day they met at Edward de Courcy’s home, and how close they have become since then.
He gives her a perfunctory kiss, and his eyes don’t linger on her face as they usually do. As soon as he sits down, he leans forward, his eyes bright with excitement.
‘I’m going to Oxford.’
‘To give a lecture?’
‘To take up a post as history lecturer.’
‘Congratulations.’ It’s an effort to say it while she struggles with conflicting emotions. Happiness for him but disappointment for herself. This has come from left field, and she is in turmoil. It’s not what she expected – but what actually did she expect?
‘So I suppose you’ll be living there?’ As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she regrets not filtering the resentment.
‘Well, it might be rather difficult commuting between Melbourne and Oxford every day.’
He is being facetious of course, but she doesn’t smile. She can’t bear to think about the distance between them, which is already beginning to widen.
‘When are you going?’ she asks, trying to sound as if she doesn’t care. And why should she? After all, nothing has been promised. Perhaps she had assumed they had a future together because they’d talked of crossing bridges. But they hadn’t made a commitment. They were both free to do whatever they chose. So she shouldn’t feel so let down.
But she does. Pissed off, in fact. She had no idea that while she was fantasising about their future, he had applied for a job in England. He had never mentioned it. She had assumed they’d both return to Australia and continue seeing each other. Only an hour’s flight separated Sydney and Melbourne, far less time than it took to drive from one side of Sydney to the other. She had imagined how exciting it would be to fly to Melbourne, run into his arms and hear him whisper that he couldn’t wait to take her to bed.
But none of this would happen.
He leans towards her, but she turns away and looks out of the window to avoid his gaze.
‘I thought we might both go to Oxford, Xan,’ he says. ‘From what you’ve said, it doesn’t sound as if you want to go on working at the hospital.’
So his plans did include her after all, but she still feels resentful.
‘Well as it happens, I have plans too,’ she says with a trace of defiance. ‘I’m going back to Sydney. I plan to keep working in a teaching hospital, but I’ve figured out a way to help interns who are struggling to cope like I did. I’ve been thinking about what happened to me, and I know I’m not the only one who was almost crushed by the system, so maybe I can use my experience to help other interns.’
His eyes haven’t left her face since she started talking and, confident that she has his entire attention, she speaks more passionately. ‘I’m going to lobby the health department to set up a committee of inquiry to determine why so many interns have committed suicide, and what can be done to prevent it. Also, I want to create a dedicated space in teaching hospitals where interns can talk openly about their problems to counsellors without feeling like failures. Where they’re not denigrated or threatened with being deregistered because they can’t cope.’
‘So you’re going to become an activist!’
‘I’ve been thinking about it lately. If a counselling service like that had existed, maybe Sumi wouldn’t have killed herself. But she couldn’t bring herself to tell her superiors or her colleagues how depressed she was in case they thought she was incompetent. Didn’t even tell me. She thought she had to appear confident and in control all the time, but inside she was desperate. Like me.’
‘So you’ve found your fire,’ he says. ‘That’s terrific. That day we came across the guy injured on the road, I could tell you were cut out to be a doctor.’ With a smile he adds, ‘And not just on account of your name.’
She feels ambivalent about his reaction. Pleased that he supports her decision but upset that he doesn’t seem to mind what it implies for their relationship. The more she thinks about it, the more upset she is. It’s obvious he doesn’t love her. His feeling for her is shallow, superficial, opportunistic and probably based on sex.
‘It’s good that you can move on so easily,’ she says. She can’t keep the sarcasm out of her tone.
He looks surprised. ‘Are you talking about moving from Melbourne to Oxford?’
‘I’m talking about us,’ she snaps, and blinks rapidly but can’t stop the tears starting to form. ‘You don’t seem to mind that we’ll be living at opposite ends of the earth and will probably never see each other again.’
He seems taken aback by her vehemence. ‘Of course I mind.’ He reaches out and strokes her arm. ‘That’s why I was hoping you’d come to Oxford. I do want us to be together, but this is a fantastic opportunity for me and I have to take it. I don’t think we want to hold each other back, do you? I hoped you’d come to Oxford with me, but your solution sounds perfect for you so that’s what you have to do.’
As she bends forward to wipe her eyes, a strand of hair falls across her face. He reaches over, smooths it away from her forehead, and gently strokes her cheek.
She gives a mirthless laugh. ‘And here I was, wondering if we’d manage to get between Sydney and Melbourne.’
He is holding her hands in both of his. ‘It’s not the end of the world and it’s not forever. Anything can happen. You might come to the UK. I might hate Oxford. And who knows, I might be offered a position at the Sydney Law School.’
Xanthe sighs. ‘So many ifs.’
‘I know, but we have to keep moving forward. You wouldn’t want me to give up this opportunity, and I don’t want to stop you from pursuing yours. You once told me you’d come to Jersey because you were running away from a problem, but as it turns out, you were really running towards a solution. Well, you’ve found it, and it’s brilliant. I’m sad for me but happy for you.’
She shrugs. ‘I suppose that makes us both equally sad and happy.’ She takes a deep breath to give herself the courage to ask, ‘So when are you leaving?’
‘The day after Liberation Day.’
She swallows. ‘That’s less than a week away.’
She wasn’t going to say it, but then she did. ‘I can’t bear the thought of us parting. Of waking up without seeing you smiling at me, without you caressing me.’
‘I always knew you only wanted me for my body,’ he says, and suddenly they are both laughing, but when she looks up, she sees that his eyes are soft with love.
The waiter has been hovering around them for some time. ‘We have freshly baked blueberry muffins this morning,’ he suggests.
Xanthe asks for English breakfast tea, while Daniel orders a short black.
‘I’ll never forget the look on your face the day you took a sip of that flat white you ordered at the Royal Yacht Hotel,’ he chuckles. ‘I thought you were one of those entitled Sydney princesses we joke about in Melbourne.’
‘And I thought you were one of those dry academic types we avoid in Sydney,’ she retorts.
Daniel laughs. ‘I probably am. I could tell you didn’t like me.’
Xanthe stares into space, trying to retrace the mysterious steps that led from indifference to love. Was it destiny, or something more prosaic – the urgency of a deep-seated need to connect with someone in a strange place? The happiest interlude of her life is about to end, and suddenly she wants to curl up in a dark corner and weep.
Daniel gazes at her with concern. ‘Are you okay?’
She looks up, startled by his question. Of course she is okay. She is stronger than that. She doesn’t need to cling to a speeding train by her fingernails. Her own future is mapped out. The one she discovered while taking the path to avoid it.
She clears her throat. ‘You’re absolutely right,’ she murmurs in a hoarse voice. ‘We owe it to ourselves to make the most of the opportunities that come our way.’
They are walking towards the door when he stops, turns towards her and looks searchingly into her eyes.
‘I love you very much,’ he says.
She smiles up at him and they walk into the sunlight with their arms around each other.
Back home, sitting by the French windows that open onto the garden, she reflects on the bittersweetness of life, its lurches from dazzling heights to despairing depths.
Would she ever find a balance that might make some sense of it all and find a comfortable place for herself in the world?
A light breeze is swaying the oak branches, and she is mesmerised by the way each bough moves to its own rhythm. And yet each of those individual boughs contributes to the exquisite harmony of the whole, like a visual orchestra.
She doesn’t know how long she has sat there, entranced by the swaying of the trees, when the insistent ringing of her mobile rouses her from her reverie.
It’s her mother.
‘You’ve been away for such a long time and I wanted to check when you’re coming home,’ she says. Xanthe knows her well enough to recognise the reproach behind the innocent words. ‘Ollie has been updating us about your trip,’ she is saying, ‘but I wanted to hear your voice. What are you doing with yourself? Have you met some nice people?’
Xanthe hesitates. The previous day she would have told her about Daniel but now she doesn’t know how to answer.
Without waiting for her reply, her mother changes the subject. ‘By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask, did you find out anything about that relative of ours who came from Jersey?’
‘No, but I didn’t have much to go on, did I?’ Xanthe retorts. ‘I would have felt like an idiot asking if anyone knew anything about a woman called Nellie.’
There’s a brief silence. ‘Nellie? Who’s Nellie?’
Now it’s Xanthe’s turn to be perplexed. ‘You know, the woman you said was related to us.’
‘You’ve got the names mixed up,’ her mother is saying. ‘Her name wasn’t Nellie. It was Milly.’
Xanthe’s heart pauses mid-beat. ‘Are you sure?’
Her mother gives a short laugh. ‘Of course I’m sure. She was my father’s great-aunt or something like that. Now I think of it, he mentioned there was a scandal and she was ostracised by the family. You know what they were like in those days.’
‘What kind of scandal?’
‘Now you’re asking me to dredge up something from the dim distant past. My father’s been gone over twenty years now, and he never said much about her so all I remembered was her name. Hang on a minute while I rack my brains.’
Xanthe holds her breath.
‘Okay, I think she took up with a German during the war and had his child. Not the smartest thing to do in wartime. So when did you say you were coming home?’
Xanthe can hear her heart thumping in her ears. She can’t catch her breath. Her mother is saying something about Ollie’s new girlfriend, but she can’t concentrate. She promises to call back and hangs up.
She sits very still trying to make sense of what she has just heard. Was it possible that Milly, the girl whose tragic love story she has read about in Hugh’s memoir, is her distant relative?
She tries to quieten the chaos in her mind while she unravels the story. So the woman she wasn’t interested in tracing has been there in plain sight all along, in Hugh’s journal. She was Aoife’s daughter. Her mind does another somersault. So Aoife was also related to her. How was it that, without being aware of the connection, she has become so involved with their lives?
Forcing herself to focus, she retraces the steps that have led her to this improbable point. It began with a chance comment about a relative she had mistakenly thought of as Nellie. Even though she hadn’t been interested in tracing Nellie, it was her mother’s casual comment that had prompted her to take this journey.
If her mother hadn’t mentioned her, if she hadn’t travelled to Jersey and rented Hugh’s house, if she hadn’t found his diary, she would never have discovered this connection. If, if, if. So many chance events.
But was it really just a succession of random events and coincidences? Was it possible that something – something she didn’t know she knew – had propelled her on this journey? She wasn’t given to metaphysical speculation, and had always dismissed explanations that defied logic, but now, confronted with a situation she cannot explain in rational terms, she is forced to consider another possibility. Something beyond conscious thought. Something bigger.
Too excited to stay home, she jumps into her car, and as she drives she is gripping the steering wheel as if determined to hold on to something solid and real. She can almost feel the blood coursing through her body. Ten minutes later, she pulls up outside Daniel’s apartment, and runs up the stairs two at a time.
She is outside his door when she hears music that seems to make the walls vibrate. Despite her impatience to talk to him, she is glued to the spot, transfixed by the choral singing she hears. Finally she rouses herself and presses the buzzer.
He opens the door with a look of delighted surprise. ‘Wait, I’ll just turn this off,’ he says as she comes into the room.
‘No, leave it on,’ she says. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.’
‘It sounds triumphant,’ she says.
He nods and they sit side by side on the settee. ‘You’re right. It’s a triumph over Beethoven’s deafness. He was totally deaf when he composed it, and when he conducted it at its first public performance, they had to turn him around to face the audience because he couldn’t hear the applause.’ Then he adds, ‘I think it’s also a triumph over human limitations.’
‘I must have heard it before but I’ve never paid much attention,’ she says slowly.
He puts his arms around her and kisses her tenderly. ‘Sometimes it takes a long time to hear the music.’
The symphony ends and as she wipes away the tears, she recalls previous occasions when she has cried while they were together. There must be something about this man that creates a space for her to let go of her tightly held emotions.
He pulls her against him, and they sit in silence. He doesn’t ask why she has come to see him.
Then she tells him. About Milly and Aoife, and her connection to them.
‘Even while I’m telling you, I can’t believe it.’ she says. ‘I keep thinking I’ll wake up and discover I dreamed it all.
‘I feel stunned, confused and elated all at once. I suppose it will take time for me to process it all. But I can’t stop wondering how it all came about.’
He shakes his head. ‘It’s extraordinary,’ he says. He is looking at her in silence, and then says, ‘Maybe you’ll never know the answer.’
Suddenly she recalls the silent presence she sensed in the bedroom. She never discovered what caused it, or why she had experienced the same phenomenon as Hugh. In the end, she had given up trying to find a rational explanation for something that didn’t appear to have one.
‘You’re probably right. I can’t figure out why any of this happened and maybe I never will,’ she muses. ‘I don’t know if this sounds crazy, but I’m wondering if it has anything to do with Jung’s theory about the collective unconscious. I’m wondering if something I didn’t consciously know or understand pushed me to follow the path that led me to this point.
‘Because how come all those coincidences happened as soon as I got here? How come I got so involved with the lives of total strangers who lived here seventy years ago when I didn’t know I was connected to them? This isn’t just mysterious. It’s overwhelming.’ She turns to Daniel. ‘Am I making any sense?’
‘You’re still searching for an answer when maybe there isn’t one. Maybe that’s how the early astronomers felt when they came across stars and planets for the first time and realised they were part of something whose magnitude defied understanding.’
‘Well this definitely defies my understanding,’ she murmurs and nestles into him.
He holds her close. ‘You could always regard it as a gift from the universe.’
He looks into her eyes and she knows she has finally heard the music.