Vinka paces back and forth between the lounge and the courtyard, stopping first in one place and then another. She picks up a cigarette, lights it and as she inhales her stomach heaves; it’s hours since she ate anything, not since breakfast, in fact, and now it’s nearly six. In the kitchen she hacks a large slice from a dark rye loaf and takes it with a chunk of cheese and a shot of vodka out to her chair in the courtyard. Patrick will be here any minute now, she must try to stay calm, at least as calm as it is possible to feel under the circumstances. She’s still not sure that she is doing the right thing; she thinks it is probably right in many ways, but is it the ethical thing, the compassionate thing? She cannot, after all, predict the result – hurt, anger, embarrassment, shame; all sorts of things are possible. But she has made up her mind that it has to be done, and now her own inner dialogue is exhausting her. She will sit here with her bread, her cheese and her vodka and Patrick will be here before she is finished.
She checks her watch again and starts on the bread, chewing slowly in the hope that it will steady her mind. She makes herself look around at the plants in the courtyard, one at a time, letting her gaze rest on them, measuring their health and strength, using each one to calm her before moving on to the next. She loves this time of the evening before it’s dark, when the air is soft and still in the heat. It’s so quiet here and yet there are plenty of people nearby, and the city is just outside the gates – it is ideal, really. It is so much better than she had imagined. Beate would have liked it here, Vinka thinks; if Beate were alive they might have finished their days here, together.
She looks again at the time; he is late now, how much longer? And she swallows the last of the cheese and the remains of her drink, and carries the plate and glass in to the kitchen, just as Patrick appears at the screen door.
‘So what is it that is so serious?’ he says when they are sitting outside, with more vodka. ‘It all sounds very mysterious.’
Vinka’s heart pounds in her chest, her head spins and she has to close her eyes to stop the giddiness. ‘Are you okay?’ Patrick asks. ‘You look really pale. Can I get you some water? Do you need to lie down?’
She shakes her head. ‘No, no, I am all right,’ she says. ‘Just worried about what I have to tell you . . .’
‘You’re not ill, are you?’
She sees the concern, even fear, in his eyes and grips his hand. ‘I am not ill. Please, Patrick, I must tell you something. If Beate were here . . . but then if Beate were here this would not be my decision to make. It is not so easy, let me take my time, let me tell it all before you say anything.’
‘Sure,’ he says, obviously puzzled. ‘Take your time, I’m sure it can’t be anything really bad.’
Margot hasn’t told anyone about the phone call, and no one has enquired about the fate of her manuscript. But they are relieved, they have said in various ways, to have her back, for themselves, for the campaign, for each other. What they don’t know, what they haven’t yet seen, is that she is not quite ‘back’; part of her is somewhere else and she suspects that from now on that’s how it will always be.
‘I’d be delighted to represent you,’ the agent had said on the phone this morning. ‘It’s a terrific novel. In fact it’s hard to believe it’s your first.’
And so another period of waiting has begun, this time while the agent tries to persuade a publisher to read it. Writing, Margot realises, is not an occupation for the fainthearted. The waiting is agony, and always in the back of her mind is the knowledge that she may wait for months and then have to start waiting all over again.
‘Not long now,’ Alyssa says from the head of the table, forcing Margot’s attention back to the meeting. ‘Let’s do a quick round-up to see where everyone’s at.’ It’s her turn to chair the meeting and it’s clear from the energy she brings to the table that she’s already pumped with adrenaline.
Watching her Margot is reminded of Dot as a young woman; Alyssa loves to be the chair, she has the same compulsion to lead, the same fire in her belly. Dot still has it, Margot thinks, but she’s finally developed some sort of inner thermostat which allows her to run hot when necessary, but also to keep something in reserve. Without that the inner fire might by now have consumed her. Years ago Margot had doubted that Dot – the heavy smoker, the stress junkie, the compulsive sampler of any new and risky experience – would make it to sixty, but now, in her seventies, she looks as though she could go on forever, although it’s clear that Dot is not quite as convinced of that as she once was.
‘What are you wearing around your neck?’ Margot had asked when she’d arrived at the house a couple of days ago.
‘It’s an emergency call system,’ Dot had said, leading her through to the back verandah. ‘Sit down, have some iced tea. I’ve made this big jug of it.’
‘So when did you get the alarm thing?’
‘Last week. Laurence organised it. It’s temporary of course, just until I can get rid of the walking stick. It makes me feel like an accident waiting to happen.’
‘It’s very sensible. You should keep it. Laurence should’ve got one for himself at the same time,’ Margot said.
‘He’s convinced that being a bloke he’s never going to need one! Obviously men do not fall over in the house – or at least not in Laurence’s world.’
‘Well don’t tell him I told you this, but he told Lexie that he’s having a lot of trouble with his back since he did the pilgrimage. He’s a bit worried about it – not that he’ll say that to you or me of course. This is delicious iced tea, it tastes like Phyllida’s.’
‘It’s made to Phyllida’s recipe,’ Dot had said. ‘You know, putting it in the sun and so on. I don’t think I’ll ever drink the bottled stuff again, this is so much nicer.’
Margot is bewildered by this new friendship between Dot and Phyllida. She looks at them now, sitting side-by-side at the meeting as though they have been great mates all their lives, and she feels a shameful stab of jealousy, as though little bits of each of them which had been hers have now been stolen. Ridiculous, she thinks; not so long ago she was worrying because Phyllida had no friends, now she wants to keep her all to herself – or is it perhaps Dot who she wants to keep to herself?
Alyssa has finished her checklist of the preparations and Lexie leads them through the timetable and the route for the march. Everyone is here tonight, all except Patrick who, according to Lexie, has gone to see Vinka, who sounded on the phone as though she might have a cold or a virus.
‘You’ve all done a terrific job,’ she says. ‘It’s going to be amazing and it’ll take us to another level.’
‘How many do you think we’ll get?’ Alyssa asks. ‘Hundreds?’
‘Let’s hope so,’ Lexie says, holding up her crossed fingers.
‘Margot,’ Phyllida says as the meeting breaks up and Emma and Alyssa bring tea and scones from the kitchen. ‘Did you have time to read that book?’
‘The one about the two women – the wife and the lover of the man who died?’
Phyllida nods. ‘Did you find it interesting?’
Margot shrugs. ‘It was okay but I think I’m more interested in why you asked me to read it.’
‘I’m interested in that too,’ Phyllida says. ‘Dot and Em and I are going to the Boatshed book club tomorrow, they’re discussing it. Why don’t you come too?’
‘Well I –’
‘Do come, Margot,’ Dot cuts in. ‘Remember that book group when we read The Women’s Room?’
Margot nods. ‘I remember.’ And she looks across at Phyllida. ‘Okay,’ she says, ‘I’ll meet you at the Boatshed.’
Emma has stayed in the office for as long as she can. She has watched her colleagues leave to go home to their partners and children, to meet friends for a drink, or evening shopping, for a new date, or simply a quiet evening in front of the television. And she has hung on as long as she can, waiting for the moment when it will be safe for her to leave and make her way to the station. From the moment she woke this morning Emma recognised the signs and has known how her day will be and how it could end, and she has ricocheted back and forth between her old chaotic self and the person she is trying to become. As she has tracked back through her own history of compulsive attempts to make herself over by shopping for new looks, or fixing bits of her face or body, she has realised it always begins in the early morning. She wakes with a terrible sense of her own emptiness – a black hole of self-hatred that threatens to swallow her if she doesn’t do something to make herself feel better. As the day progresses it builds to an obsession that drives rational thought straight out of the window.
Christmas had been a turning point for Emma; surrounded by her family she felt suddenly besieged by pinprick insights into her own behaviour. Determined that she wouldn’t be crying in the bathroom next Christmas, she had made some enquiries, got some recommendations and on the first day back at work after the holidays had managed to get an appointment with a therapist, only half believing that it might be the answer. But things have started to change. Recognising and acknowledging the warning signs has helped, and several times she has controlled the old compulsions and managed herself through the day by starting out as the therapist suggested.
‘From what you’ve told me,’ Mara had said, ‘you’ve built up a good routine since you moved in with your aunt, so make it work for you. When you get those feelings that warn you that you might go off the rails it’s really important to stick to your routine. So – deep breathing before you get up, then everything slowly, thoughtfully, entirely in the present, thinking just about what you are doing in the moment. Don’t skip anything; let the routine keep you grounded.’
But for some reason this morning it began to fall apart. Was it something in the light coming through the bedroom window, that high white cloud combined with oppressive airless heat that she finds infinitely depressing, or perhaps the aftereffect of a dream that she can’t now recall? Whatever it was, the danger signals were all there and she had lain in bed for a while, grasping desperately at the routine: breathing deeply, reminding herself to stay cool, focusing on the feel of her body against the mattress, the safe and comforting surroundings of the room. She was almost on top of it then, suddenly, everything fell apart. She had thrown back the sheet and moved instantly into the day, her mind reeling and whizzing, and the whole framework slipped and crashed and she couldn’t get it back again. She skipped her morning run and went straight to the shower, ignoring the many tiny rituals that had been working so well: making herself feel the water on her body, the feel of the shampoo as she massaged it into her hair, the comfort of Phyllida’s huge white bath towel wrapped around her body. But today she dressed with the old edgy tension, the tightness in her chest and the same compulsion to be doing rather than just being that had always preceded disaster. She was revving so fast this morning that she was out of the house and on the train before Phyllida was up.
As the train rattled along its tracks towards the city, Emma did make a serious attempt to get herself back onto her own tracks. She forced herself to think about her sessions with Mara; she recalled the way she had begun by rambling on about everything, from being taunted in the playground to the sheer terror of being faced with the responsibility of the survival of a tiny human being. She remembered talking about the compulsion to spend whatever money she had – and a lot that she hadn’t – feeding her craving for something new to wear, to carry, to fix her face, her hair or her body, to make herself new, different, better, happy, whole. And she tried hard to focus on one particular session when, after resisting Mara’s questions about how these impulses, once fulfilled, made her feel, she had finally admitted to a sudden and brief rush of relief followed rapidly by an attack of guilt and self-hatred. And she forced herself to remember the crying, the really heavy duty crying that she did in those sessions from which she emerged with wrecked makeup, red eyes, blotchy face, damp strands of hair stuck to her forehead, and feeling as though she’d done three rounds in the ring with the Terminator.
She even thought, as the train pulled into a station and more passengers piled into the carriage, of getting out and going home. Perhaps Phyllida would help her, talk her down a bit and help her get through the rest of the day. After her first few therapy sessions Emma had avoided going straight home so that she wouldn’t have to face her aunt or anyone else looking how she felt. On one occasion however she thought that Phyllida was planning to meet Jean Dunne. But when Emma let herself into the kitchen through the back door Phyllida was sitting at the bench top reading a book and eating cheese on toast.
‘Good lord!’ she’d said, looking up from her book. ‘Whatever happened to you? You look as though you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards.’
And Emma had promptly burst into tears once again and told Phyllida about the therapist, and owned up to the fact that since the first few weeks she’d been using the money from Donald’s will to pay for it. To her surprise, rather than scoffing and telling her she ought to be able to sort herself out on her own, Phyllida had responded with a hug and told her she was proud of her.
So, there she was, apparently making progress, feeling different and hopeful, out of debt and with money in the bank, and yet this morning she was right back where she started – a prickling, twitching bundle of self-doubt and aching need. The only thing that had kept her on track during the day was the sheer pressure of dealing with the barrage of media calls relating to an overnight raid on Central Park by four men in a four-wheel drive who crashed through the glass doors and ransacked the various mobile phone outlets. Now, however, with the evening closing in, the pressure off and the shop windows alight with the promise of retail therapy, Emma is still in the grip of the beast. She is alone in dangerous territory, with no one to call to suggest getting a meal, or seeing a movie – Phyllida, Margot and Lexie are all at a meeting, and Laurence . . . well, despite the recent improvement in relations with her father she certainly isn’t going to turn up on his doorstep.
Emma turns out the light in her office, makes her way to the ground floor, steps out into the street and turns right in the direction of Bourke Street. The mall is alive with people hurrying and strolling, avoiding the trams or climbing onto them, heading home or into the department stores. In the narrow arcades leading through to Little Collins Street, women just like Emma are out shopping with their girlfriends, pointing to window displays, laughing, encouraging each other into the shops and emerging with carrier bags made of thick glossy paper and silk ribbon handles, handles that Emma’s hands itch to hold. The tantalising smell of leather draws her into a handbag shop but, with a huge effort of will, she backs out into the arcade and follows the scent of sandalwood to the shop that sells saris and silver jewellery. For a few moments she stands by the window drinking in the gorgeous colours of the silks and the sequins and then, in a move that she knows to be dangerous, she straightens up and steps swiftly next door to the lingerie shop, hesitating in the doorway where satin and lace in sexy designs and luscious colours promise to make a difference that will last, that will actually change how she feels.
Once inside it’s too late, she is in a different space now, a zone in which rational thought is suspended and there is nothing but that promise. She walks quickly between the racks, plucking out the answers to her problems on their small plastic hangers: bras in purple, red and black, matching lacy knickers, a satin teddy in shell pink trimmed with grey lace, and another in coffee satin trimmed with cream. There is no pain now, just relief, huge relief, she’ll only have these, it’s not like it was before, one little hiatus, that’s all it is, but it doesn’t mean anything, and she puts them down on the counter.
‘All these?’ the sales assistant says, drawing them towards her, and Emma nods.
The woman begins to key the prices into the register. It’s a slow task due to the curve and length of her gleaming, crimson-polished false nails.
‘Is that the lot?’ she asks eventually, and Emma nods again, reaches into her bag for her purse and takes out her credit card. It is in that moment, as she stands there at the counter, about to hand her card into the clutches of those deep red talons, that something freezes inside her. She stops and steps back slightly from the counter, folding her own fingers protectively around the plastic card.
‘Did you want to pay cash instead?’
Emma stares at her for a long moment and the woman exchanges a wary look with her colleague.
‘Is it cash or credit then?’ she asks again.
‘No,’ Emma says in a small voice. ‘I think . . . no . . . changed my mind . . .’ And she turns away from the counter and plunges out into the arcade, head spinning, looking around for the exit. She knows this place like the back of her hand and yet now she’s lost. All she wants is to get away, get out before she suffocates, and as people push past her, laughing and talking, she spins around looking for the way out, bumping into a low seat and then steadying herself against it. And then she sees him. Walking towards her, waving, his initial smile fading rapidly to a frown of concern, is Grant, dark suit, white shirt, blue and silver tie, briefcase in hand, cutting through the arcade as he does every night on his way from the office to the station.
‘Em . . . Em?’ he says, looking into her face and gripping her arm. ‘What’s wrong? Are you okay?’
Emma shakes her head. The place seems to be closing in on her, more and more people streaming in, the noise and the lights unbearable. ‘I must get out,’ she says, grasping the sleeve of his jacket. ‘Home, I must go home.’
‘Okay,’ Grant says cautiously, and he takes her hand and draws it through the crook of his arm. ‘Okay, home it is. But this way, this is the way to the station, or we can get a cab, just hang on to my arm.’ And he steers her gently back out of the arcade and through the darkening streets towards Flinders Street Station.
Dot drives home from the meeting in high spirits. Since her accident so much of the campaign has come together that she had lost sight of the scope of it, but the picture Lexie and Alyssa presented tonight has reignited her enthusiasm. And that fall, she thinks now, was perhaps a gift as well as a robbery. It has certainly robbed her of the torment of wanting to grab the reigns and show the young ones how it should be done; that has been driven out by concern about her ability to manage her own life. But it has also slowed her down, and perhaps that’s not a bad thing. Dot has often deliberately talked about herself as an ‘old woman’; she has wanted to acknowledge ageing, experience it fully, enjoy whatever it has to offer. But while she spoke of herself as an old woman she never really felt it or believed it. Despite the evidence of the calendar, the mirror and the creaking of her joints, within herself she felt suspended at a point of midlife, when the energy of youth fuses with the growing of wisdom. But that fall changed everything; now, after weeks of struggling with ideas of vulnerability and decline, she sees that she has been accustoming herself to fully experiencing what it means to be old and that this, in itself, is a gift worth exploring.
She drives into the garage, locks the door and walks through to the back of the house, just as there is a ring at the front door.
‘Can I come in?’ Patrick says.
‘No!’ Dot says. ‘You might have got that virus from Vinka and that’s not what I need just before I get my last chance to stand outside Parliament and stir a few passions.’
‘It’s not a virus,’ he says. ‘Vinka doesn’t have a virus and neither do I. We’re both . . .’ He pauses and takes a deep breath. ‘Well, it’s emotional not physical.’
‘And not contagious?’ Dot says with a smile. ‘Well then come on in, although I’m not the world’s best person when it comes to advice on emotional problems.’
‘I suppose it is contagious really,’ Patrick says, stepping into the hall and removing his sunglasses. ‘Contagious for you at any rate.’
He looks tired and anxious, exhausted, Dot thinks, probably due to the huge amount of work he has put into organising the rally.
‘I’ve never caught anyone’s emotional state before – perhaps I have a natural immunity. If you’ve come to see how the speech is going, it’s okay, I’m sure it’ll come –’
‘It’s nothing to do with that,’ he says.
There is something about his appearance and the tone of his voice that ignites a spark of anxiety in Dot.
‘Right,’ she says. ‘Tea? We drank a lot of it at the meeting, but I can make you some or would you prefer a drink?’
He shakes his head and drops into a chair, flopping back at first then, seeming to pull himself together, leaning forward, hands clasped between his knees. ‘I don’t know how to tell you this,’ he says. ‘It’s not like there is an easy way, so please just believe I’m doing the best I can, and with the best will in the world.’
‘Okay,’ she says cautiously, ‘I believe you.’
He hesitates and she waits in silence, her anxiety growing as she feels a sense of dread coming from him.
‘It was my birthday last month,’ he says.
‘I could have guessed you were an Aries,’ Dot says in an effort to ease the tension. ‘You have many fine –’
‘Don’t,’ he says, ‘please don’t.’
He seems almost paralysed by some sort of internal struggle and perhaps it is contagious because she feels herself being drawn into its grip.
‘March the twenty-sixth. Does that date mean anything to you?’
‘Why? Should it?’ she asks, with a horrible sense of foreboding.
‘Just tell me, please, does it mean anything?’
Dot looks at him long and hard and then she shrugs. ‘Well yes it does actually, but you needn’t bother asking me why because I’m not going to tell you.’
‘You don’t need to tell me.’
She turns back to him, gripping the arms of her chair.
Patrick reaches into his inside pocket, takes out a folded sheet of paper and holds it out to her with a shaking hand. Dot pulls back from it, blood pumping in her temples.
‘I don’t want it,’ she says.
‘No,’ Patrick says. ‘Of course you don’t, you don’t need to see it because you know what it says. It was left in Vinka’s care by my . . . my adoptive mother. I doubt this would have stood up in any sort of court,’ he says, unfolding the yellowing paper, turning it over in his hands. ‘After all, it’s an arrangement that was made outside the law, but I believe it’s genuine. It’s an agreement in which you waive all rights to your child, a son, born at eight in the morning of the twentysixth of March, nineteen sixty-six.’
Dot looks away, fixing her gaze on the window but seeing nothing. The silence in the room is almost unbearable and she can’t bring herself to look at him. What is she supposed to say? It is the secret that was never supposed to come out. She turns her head now, looking at him. How can she not have known this, how can she not have recognised her own child?
‘Do you remember the first time you came here?’ she asks; her voice breaks slightly and she pauses to clear her throat. ‘As we were talking then I had a feeling we’d met somewhere before, that I should remember you. You told me that your mother, Beate, used to show you my writing, kept clippings for you . . . do you remember telling me that?’
Patrick nods. ‘I do. And I told you I’d plagiarised something for an essay.’
‘Yes. Why? Why did Beate do that?’
‘I used to think it was because you were some sort of hero to her. Now I know, because I asked Vinka the same question. She did it because she thought I should have some sort of understanding of you, in case I ever learned the truth.’
Dot nods slowly, watching his face, anticipating the questions and knowing the painful answers she will have to give him. ‘She must have been a remarkable woman,’ she says. ‘And she was clearly a far better mother than I would ever have been.’
Silence again.
‘But you are my mother.’
Is it a statement or a question? Dot is not sure, but even through her fear and the longing that is now like a physical pain inside her, she knows that he actually needs to hear her say it. ‘Yes,’ she says, in a voice that sounds old and shaky and unlike her own. ‘Yes, Patrick. I am your mother.’
He sighs and closes his eyes briefly. ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘And my father?’
Dot looks down at her own hands, twisting in her lap. They are old hands, an old woman’s hands, the hands of a woman too old and alone to cope with the agony of this and what it may mean.
‘I can’t tell you that,’ she says, getting abruptly to her feet. ‘I never expected . . . truly I had no idea about you. I need you to go now. Give me some time please, later we can talk, after the rally – let me do this first.’
He shakes his head. ‘I can’t, you must know that I can’t,’ he says. ‘My mother . . . Beate . . . gave this adoption agreement to Aunty Win to look after for me. It was in a sealed envelope. Win knew what was in it and she kept it for me – unopened, so she never saw the name of the person who was with you at the time and who witnessed your signature. But when I opened it I saw it straightaway. The name of the witness is Laurence Attwood. You must tell me, Dot, is Laurence my father?’