The Pacific is implacably blue on this particular day, a wall of water at the end of the street. The taxi stops between tightly parked cars at the top of the hill and Anne Treweek steps out. She steadies herself and slams the door. Spray rises where the road slopes down. She breathes in the ozone mingled with fumes from the departing vehicle. The gate at number 20, wooden and painted green, scrapes as she tries to open it. It needs a shove. Only then she discovers a pulled thread in her red wool jersey. The spiky garden looks as if it might be to blame – agave, euphorbia and a frangipani looking like a clothes rack, bare in winter. The flaw won’t be new. How many times has Anne packed and unpacked this good dress over the years? Still, she’s irritated.
In zigzag steps the path descends through a huge, overhanging purple rhododendron to a lush garden of elephant’s ears and lipstick-coloured bromeliads. The space below is almost underground, like a cave, and moisture seeps through the concrete. Anne raps on the screen door.
‘Coming. Sorry,’ calls a muffled voice. There’s a shadow at the wire, a man’s figure against the deeper shadow within.
‘Hello,’ says David uncertainly, opening up. He can’t see Anne properly either.
‘I wasn’t sure if this was the place,’ she replies as he lets her in. ‘Nice to see you, David.’
He smiles and kisses her cheek. ‘I was out on the deck,’ he explains. ‘It’s good to see you, Anne.’
The rooms of the house are cluttered but with things in fixed places. Newspapers on a table in a shuffled pile. Anne is left standing while David pads off to make coffee. He’s used to pottering about his house in old jeans and a faded t-shirt on weekends and Anne feels overdressed – her good shoes, a pearl pendant, the red dress. But for her the visit is formal. She needs the best advice she can get from someone she can trust. For old times’ sake, or so she hopes. Someone who will do the job.
She calls out after a while, ‘How are you, David?’
She thinks he hasn’t heard until he reappears in the doorway with a cautious grin. ‘I’m fine, just fine,’ he says. ‘Are you still riding?’
In that moment she feels thoroughly scrutinised by her friend as he adjusts whatever previous assessment he had of her to factor in something else. Something worrisome that she cannot help displaying. Apart from how much she must have aged. Apart from grief.
Yes, they can talk horses. Riding is a passion for David, his mode of wellbeing. It provides a reliable basis for any shared understanding between them. She knows he will show her pictures of his mare and the newborn foal. But for now he simply continues, saying what he must. ‘I’m sorry about Jake.’
Anne turns away, not letting him see her eyes.
David has already offered condolences over the phone and in writing. He read about Jake in the press without knowing absolutely what it meant. It was the briefest report. He wondered whether Anne would be attractive as a widow. Why did he wonder that? Was it protective or predatory? He directs her to sit down. Her nervous energy has worn her to a state of exhaustion that leaves almost nothing – to judge by the heaviness with which she takes the seat. She looks hurt, hollowed out, broken. She’s noble, David knows that. It makes her beautiful. Not as he remembers her, though. Dear Anne, his friend Jake’s wonderful wife.
‘I miss him,’ Anne huffs, ‘and I’m angry.’
The coffee machine summons and David retreats. When he returns with the tray, he brings the photographs of the leggy new foal to cheer them both up.
The tearfulness in Anne’s eyes changes to a slight burn. ‘Adorable!’ she laughs. David laughs too. They’re like children together.
Beyond the deck a blue sky beckons through the treetop canopy that shields the house on all sides. There would be an unimpeded sea view from on top otherwise. This is a tree house that sits oddly at the bottom of a ladder rather than at the top. That’s David St George, she thinks, turning contours inside out.
He takes her on a tour of the garden below and shows her how profusely things grow. Back inside he points out his new art acquisitions. Past a certain point he does not explain and Anne knows not to ask. David’s singularity in middle age could be characterised with affection as hopeless eccentricity. His professional success, his total commitment to the law – these things are not included in the tour except by implication. Eligible bachelor? Today’s language is different, more therapeutic, and doesn’t ultimately help. If he’s a type, he’s a rare one, so his friends have decided, stopping there, this side of pathology. Any shadow of unsatisfied need in a well-managed life could be left to the man’s chosen privacy.
Anne wonders if David is lonely. ‘The house is lovely,’ she enthuses. ‘So quiet and hidden away.’
‘Except on Saturday nights. The trees block the noise from below on the road but it gets pretty riotous on weekends. When the hoons come,’ David smirks. ‘And then there’s next door. The television.’
‘You’re like the princess and the pea,’ Anne teases.
‘Right,’ he giggles. ‘But I’m making changes.’
The object that catches her eye of all his things is the textile that hangs on the living room wall. Its silk moves in response to their breathing as they stand close to it and talk. The swirling greens and blues are like veins of precious mineral – opal, sapphire, aquamarine.
‘It’s from Utopia,’ David says. ‘Work from an exchange between desert women and women from Indonesia who shared their traditional batik techniques.’
‘It’s gorgeous,’ Anne nods, exhaling more deeply. ‘They must have waterholes out there for those colours. It reminds me of the ikat weaving Jake brought back from Dili. We had it hanging in our place in DC.’
‘Do you think this is hanging in the right place here?’ David asks.
‘I love the way it moves. Ours is in Adelaide now. I’ll show it to you when you come to visit.’
There’s a pause as they both reflect on when that might be.
‘One good thing about textiles,’ Anne adds. ‘They’re light. They’re portable.’
They move to the dining table and David gestures to Anne to sit. He stays standing himself. He paces the room, picks up things, tidies them away. He stands behind her with his hands on her chair back. Then he changes tack and comes round to face her. ‘What happened to Jake?’
‘Are you going to help me?’ she asks. ‘I need your advice, David.’
‘I’ll do all I can. Of course. But it depends. You have to tell me everything that happened.’
‘There are things I don’t know,’ she begins. ‘But if there’s something due to me, I have to go after it. For Jake’s sake. It’s only fair. It’s the one bit of justice left in all of this.’
‘Maybe.’ David chuckles. ‘If only. There are so many idiots around.’
‘And some bad people.’
‘Fighting words.’ He frowns at how much she must have suffered.
‘Jake always did what they asked of him. Except once.’
‘The last time we saw each other was in the Adelaide Hills, at your place, when you had just got that pony – beautiful thing…’
‘Piper. That was her name. My sister got her for Nicole.’
‘That’s right.’ His eyes light up at the memory. ‘Your pied beauty. You had to leave the pony behind.’
Anne brushes her auburn hair back from her face and contemplates David with a new sort of candour. ‘You remember that?’
‘Glory be to God for dappled things…’ he quotes, smiling sympathetically. ‘For some reason I just happened to be there on that occasion. You told me the news that had just come through of Jake’s job in Washington.’
Anne stares ferociously. ‘Defence analyst. His secondment to the Australian Embassy. My sister took the pony on long-term loan,’ she elaborates, realising that David’s statements are questions. He’s a barrister after all. He’s doing his job. ‘Nicole has got her back now. She’s riding her again.’
‘That’s great. How old is Nicole?’
‘She’s thirteen.’ David has no children of his own and Anne is touched that he’s asked, that he’s trying. His dimples crease in tender satisfaction. Anne smiles too.
‘I was the one who found him,’ Anne begins, again. This is the point she can never get past. Jake’s body through the misty car window, slumped against the wheel, the hands seeming to clutch at his throat.
David nods. He is alert as he urges her on.
‘I knew Jake wasn’t in the bed. He often got up at dawn and left the house early, at five or six, to get in before the commuter traffic, to be there at the Embassy before the others so he could be the first to see what came in overnight, from the other posts around the world. The Ambassador was a family man and started his day with a proper breakfast at eight-thirty a.m. He was never early. So it wasn’t unusual for me to find the bed empty beside me. Except that Jake stayed up late the night before too. I know he did come to bed for a while. He kissed me goodnight which wasn’t always the case and gave me a tighter hug than usual. I was already asleep and I woke up a bit. It felt nice, with the dormant world at peace outside. I lay there with my eyes closed and felt him lying there beside me, awake, as I dozed off again.’
It’s painful for her to speak it aloud and for him to hear it spoken. ‘Go on,’ David says gently.
Experience teaches that every version is different. Every going over of the same events throws up something that does not quite align, is added or subtracted, and in that detail is the aperture, the opening to the God’s-eye-view, or as close as we can come.
Anne is calm enough. She appears to speak with the total transparency that is warranted with an old friend and that the degree of her distress requires. But perhaps there are cracks in her construction of things, her rational grip, an edge of emotional vulnerability that draws David in. When she reaches for his hand he feels the tension in her grip, as if she is drowning. And he feels caught, when his impulse is to get up and circle the room, or to go out to the deck into the dappled sunlight.
‘He wasn’t the same that night,’ Anne says. ‘He was heavy, and really wound up, and needing all his discipline to keep on course. Does that make sense?’
‘Jake was a very disciplined bloke.’
She lets go of David’s hand. She needs both her hands to flick her eyes clear of tears. ‘The morning can be so silent. The light is different. It’s pure. Maria didn’t come that day. She helped us in the house and normally she would have gone to the garage to get her cleaning things. But she wasn’t coming that day. Maybe Jake knew that. It was fortunate for her. I could see down to the driveway from upstairs. When I opened the curtains and looked out, I saw that the garage door was closed. There was no sound. I didn’t know that the car was still there. That he was inside. Sometimes he took the subway to work. Sometimes he walked all the way.’
Her eyes are fixed and declarative as she stares at David, delivering the story. She swallows. ‘I sound like I’m making an excuse for myself.’ She cannot let herself be pulled down at this point by the flood of feeling that her husband might have been saved. That she might have saved him.
‘In the silence I heard the hum. I’m sure I did. It was the kind of hum a washing machine or a dishwasher makes and it should have been a sign that Maria was at work but, like I said, there was no Maria that day. The hum wasn’t right. I ran downstairs. I opened the front door. I could hear the humming of the car in the garage. I grabbed my keys with the remote and pressed the button and the door opened. At first I didn’t know what it meant that the car was there with the engine running and that strange hose going in through the rear window. Then I saw Jake, like I said, and he was dead, by the time I got the door open and pulled him sideways and nearly fainted from the smell of the fumes myself and called Emergency.’
Now David rises to his feet, adopting his manner in court. It has been hard listening. Anne clenches her empty cup with both her hands. ‘Is there any more?’ she asks. ‘Coffee?’
‘You didn’t call the Embassy first up?’
‘I didn’t call them until it was all over. I spoke to the consular officer then.’
‘You didn’t speak to the Ambassador straightaway?’
‘No. I don’t think I wanted to. Not to him.’
‘Why?’ asks David, wanting to drill down into Anne’s intuition while the connection is there.
‘I suppose I thought they had done it.’
David raises his eyebrows in alarm. He fears the excess of grief – paranoia, blame, vindictiveness. ‘How do you mean?’
‘There was an open bottle of Chivas Regal on Jake’s desk. He drank whisky but Chivas wasn’t his usual choice. I found the box the Chivas came out of in the back of the car. It had been gift-wrapped in cellophane and red ribbon. There was a card. I can show you.’ She has it in her bag in a blank envelope. She passes it across to David.
He takes the card out – a plain rectangle with deckle edging – and reads it aloud. ‘Thank you for your service. Henry Hunt.’ Signed with a flourish but legible. Not personalised. David looks into Anne’s eyes. ‘Jake’s old mate.’
‘Will you help me, David? I want the truth to come out.’
David emits a long expiration as he escapes to the kitchen to work his fancy espresso machine for more coffee. The woman is drawing a long bow with regard to cause and effect and he feels for her.
‘I thought Jake was stronger,’ he says when he returns.
‘Jake was strong,’ Anne responds.