Jeanie counted her cash. She had enough for the tuition, just. Taking the crash four-week course would hopefully allow her to eke out what remained but she would have to get a job right away when she finished.
On the Wednesday, Jeanie, clad in jeans and shirt and carrying a small backpack she bought at the supermarket, arrived at her first class. A student again. Beth Rhodes, student. At forty-seven years of age. A surge of happiness. Dangerous. She suppressed it. That nightmare. Tempting fate.
When she arrived home on the bus, as arranged, Fred greeted her with a glass of cold wine.
‘I want to hear every little detail,’ he said. They were in their living room. Their fresh-smelling and flea-free living room. The two couches faced each other across the coffee table. A large modern painting dominated the wall space beside them sending the brown and green wallpaper into the background. Quite an expensive painting for them, done by a student at the Art School. Fred’s treat.
‘We’re a small group. I still haven’t finished the enrolment process. The transcript hasn’t arrived yet, but everyone assures me it will be straight forward.’
Fred was less interested in the administrative details as in her experiences as a mature student. ‘Who else is in your class? What did you learn?’
Jeanie spent the next half hour happily gossiping about her fellow students. She then started on what they had learned. ‘Are you sure you want to hear all this?’
‘Absolutely,’ Fred said emphatically. ‘Us house husbands live through our working partners, you know.’
Jeanie laughed. ‘You would make a good house husband, if that’s a curry I can smell.’
‘One curry coming up,’ he said. ‘Seriously, I am interested in what you’re doing. Truly. It’s been years since I’ve been around someone so enthusiastic about something. And years since I’ve been interested in anything but my own morbid thoughts.’
Jeanie looked at him. He was serious. ‘Have you been depressed?’
‘I guess so. Getting into hospital with my pneumonia was the most interesting thing that happened to me in the three years since Luella became sick. I told you about Luella?’
Jeanie nodded. ‘Your second wife. Who died young.’
Fred nodded. ‘So there I was, very sick. In hospital. And I could feel myself responding to people. Funny that. My body breaking down jolted my mind into living again. And as I recovered, my mother couldn’t take it. She liked me depressed. Liked me down and not arguing.’
Jeanie shook her head at the thought. ‘Okay, if you’re sure you want to hear. Here goes.’ She took him through the various theoretical and practical lessons they covered. He asked intelligent questions and argued with some of it. Over their drinks and later over their curry. Eating at their own slightly wobbly table in the dining part of their living room.
‘What did you do all day without me being here?’ Jeanie asked.
‘Joined the library. Did the shopping. Looked up businesses for sale. Had my nap. Made the curry. Poured the wine when I saw you coming up the street. Opened the door for you.’
‘No exercise?’
‘Oops.’
‘Let’s go for a walk. Or a swim?’
‘Walk,’ Fred said. ‘We need to explore our new neighbourhood.’ Another surge of happiness. Quickly suppressed.
When she awoke from the nightmare again later that night, she was more than ever convinced it was punishment. She did not deserve to be happy. She was a murderer. A murderer. And Pete was coming back to punish her.
There was a little sharp questioning when the transcript came through in her previous name, resulting in the clerical worker taking the problem to her boss leaving an anxious Jeanie at the counter. She sweated for a long twenty minutes before she found out it had been accepted, given she signed various bits of paper as both Barbara Jean Browne and Melinda Elizabeth Rhodes. Jeanie checked; she was registered as Beth Rhodes. It seemed okay.
But such a risk. She went over and over the implications of what she had just done. The university knew both names. Maybe even her old uni did too. Very, very risky. And she really didn’t know if it would be worth it. She stopped as she was leaving the administrative offices. There was a bench in a large round rotunda where she gratefully collapsed. She had to stop because she had felt something she had not felt in years. Was it really true? Did she actually feel, just for a moment, hope? So much of what she had done since that fateful day had been done without hope, just some core push within herself that wouldn’t give up. This decision, on the other hand, was taken with hope. Giving up the vigilance, the awful risk-assessing she deemed necessary, the anxiety was another gigantic step towards becoming the carefree Jeanie she once had been. She stood on shaky legs. It felt like a beginning.
Fred had paid for her tuition with his credit card. She just needed to keep changing her Australian money into New Zealand cash, and passing it onto him. Wonderful Fred.
That evening, Fred was reading the paper and Jeanie went for a little walk down the street. She was determined to get rid of that irrational fear of the blank windows. She made herself stare at them. They stared back. She reversed her steps when she realized it was getting dark. Now the windows had lights behind them and were not so sinister. She re-entered their little flat with a light step. Just an overactive imagination.
Over that first week she found her course of study stimulating, even enjoying the bus ride to and from the city. Her sacrosanct reading time. Otherwise every moment of her day was taken up with either attending classes or doing homework. She knew she was probably overdoing it, but she didn’t have the luxury of re-taking the exams. This was a one-shot deal.
Meanwhile Fred was in deep discussions with their landlady about the new garden he wanted to develop. They eventually came to an agreement he could spend a certain amount, but anything above that required consultation, with the probability he would have to contribute to the costs himself. But it was a project dear to his heart. And one he could become immersed in. He would be out of doors and all the exercise would contribute to his increasing fitness.
Jeanie came home one day to find three large rocks gracing the middle of the front garden. The beginning of his grand plan. He had sheets and sheets of transparent paper that changed day by day as his plans modified.
‘Still nothing?’ Jeanie asked over breakfast as Fred folded the paper and put it to one side. He, as always, had been looking over businesses for sale.
‘Vending machines? That was a possible, but it took only five minutes to see the guy was asking top dollar. I could ring him, I suppose.’
‘You don’t sound keen.’
‘The good thing is it would give an income with minimal effort. Keeping the machines full, emptying the coins and servicing the machines. Probably one or two days a week. Giving me time for my Grand Design.’ The garden. ‘The bad things are the return is not that great and it’s boring in the extreme. Not even people-contact. Besides it would require a bank loan.’
Jeanie shook her head, reflecting his lack of enthusiasm more than the practical details. ‘Not for you.’ She stood up with her breakfast things and deposited them in the kitchen. ‘I still get guilty not doing my own dishes.’
‘Loading a dishwasher is hardly doing the dishes. Go on, or you’ll miss your bus.’
As Jeanie climbed onto the bus, a man came panting up behind her. She noticed he was wearing a hat and had a beard. She couldn’t help thinking a hat hides the top of the head, a beard the lower. She didn’t want to stare, but she stole several quick glances to see if the beard was fake. She couldn’t tell.
On the third week of their course, the students were given a list of available jobs. It was an extensive list yet not one job was in the Auckland area, other than positions in schools where they were looking for people with teachers certificates. Jeanie glumly stared at the list on the bus ride home. Not only none suitable in Auckland, but very few in New Zealand or Australia at all. Lots in Japan, Korea, China, Thailand and other exotic places in the world.
‘I think I jumped into this thing too quickly,’ she said to Fred over dinner, still stunned by the bad news. ‘How utterly stupid of me not to check there were jobs teaching adults in Auckland.’ They were eating a lamb stew, aromatic with the herbs Fred had added.
‘Don’t beat up on yourself, Jeanie. Who knows what will happen? There might be more opportunities opening up in a few weeks.’
‘I can always go cleaning,’ she said, buttering a thick slice of grainy bread. Fred’s diet forbade him the butter, but he was dipping his slice in the stew gravy on his plate.
‘You can do better than that,’ Fred said. ‘You have a degree; you are intelligent and presentable. I’ll start watching the situation vacant ads for you, if you want.’
Jeanie nodded. Cross that bridge. She had homework to do as soon as she finished dinner. She was as enthusiastic as ever about teaching ESL. She just needed that first opportunity.
Finances were very tight after paying for the ridiculously expensive tuition. She was doubly glad Beth Rhodes was a “real” Kiwi. A card-carrying Kiwi, or her fees would have been beyond what she could afford. She changed the last of her Australian money into Kiwi dollars near the university. It left her feeling vulnerable. No job to fall into. No more secreted bank notes. And no prospects. But she couldn’t let herself get obsessed with money. Fred said he was there, and although she had no intention of sponging off him, it was a safety net.
She was thinking of Beau often these days. Not for any particular reason, just memories popping up when she should be studying. What he looked like as a new-born (like a caricature of a little old man); how beautiful he looked at six months. And a year. And two. Living up to his name. Beautiful boy. Beau. Sturdy, big curious eyes and somehow always very masculine. Where was he now? What was he doing? Did he ever think of her?
Jeanie found herself thinking of other aspects of her life as Jeanette, not just Beau. Such a big house. Necessitating housework every day. Cleaning. When you got right down to it, that’s what she’d been all her life. A cleaner. Why are people sniffy about being a cleaner? Many upper-middle-class women like Jeanette cleaned their own homes. It was only those who worked who had outside help. Maybe she could get a private client or two after the course finished? She was, after all, expert in cleaning silver and delicate ornaments people from more humble environments may not be. She had a flash of what she had left behind. How Jeanette would have laughed at the mean little flat where she was living now. Yet, she loved getting home; loved hearing about Fred’s trials and tribulations in the garden; even loved her little bedroom. Cosy. But she wished she could get rid of the feeling of disquiet. She had seen the man in the hat and beard several times now and she was acutely aware of when he was on the bus, once changing seats so she could be behind him and keep him in sight. He stayed on the bus longer than she did each time. Once, at the uni caff, she saw a man with a similar beard, no hat, and she was almost sure it was the same one.
The last week of the course was busy. They had exams on the following week and the lecturers were determined they should all pass. Jeanie was mostly worried about the viva. Exams she could do, but performing while others were watching was scary in the extreme.
A bad version of the nightmare came the night before her viva. Another twist to the tale. This time Pete woke up when she had the bat held over her head, just before crashing it onto his skull. He laughed and reached up for the bat. Just tucked it into the tumbled bedclothes and turned over and went to sleep, head down on the stairs. She was angry. So very angry in the dream. He had won. Stopped her with a smile. The dream woke her up but left her with residual anger. She deliberately diverted her thoughts to pleasant walks she had with Fred or swimming along the beach. Every visualization a scene or activity from New Zealand. As if Australia had been expunged from memory. She probably slept a little eventually, because her radio alarm woke her from a disturbed dream. Looking for something and not finding it. She wearily got up and dressed in the clothes she had laid out the night before. She used a little of Mindi’s makeup to hide the ravages of the night, in hopes she would appear better than the way she felt.
Fred took one look at her and said, ‘I’m driving you in. Treating you to a coffee once we get there, and accompanying you to the exam room. Now you just sit and visualize nice relaxing things and I’ll call you when breakfast is on the table. A good breakfast too.’
Jeanie sat on the couch and closed her eyes. It was almost as if she were there – the smells of paddock and horses, the munching of the animals and she was walking towards the nearest one. The bay with the big brown eyes. She breathed the fresh air deeply. And slowly her spirits lifted. Something had happened and it was a good something.
‘Time to eat,’ Fred said gently. ‘Did you fall asleep?’
‘I don’t think so. But I had a strong visualization of being out in the country somewhere. Lovely day. Peaceful. It’s refreshed me.’ She stretched as she got up to go to the table. He had produced crispy bacon and sunny-side up eggs, with brown toast and marmalade.
Fred had waited. Jeanie came out smiling.
‘I was assigned an elderly Chinese woman. She had about half a dozen lessons under her belt, and was enthusiastic. I really forgot about those watchers behind the one-way mirror.’
‘You passed?’
‘With flying colours!’ She grinned at him. ‘Let’s go have that coffee now, please.’