Out of Time

by Steve Hawke

  She’d tried to cancel the trip when it was confirmed that Claire was moving back in with them, but Claire would have none of it. Joe tried to say the right things, but clearly had his heart set on going, so she didn’t try too hard. And it has become apparent that Claire is managing the day-to-day stuff well enough. There is the on-site crèche for the days she is working. It is just a matter of keeping on top of the practicalities.

  It is the uncertainty and the emotional roller-coaster that is making Claire’s life hell. Last weekend she expressed milk on the Friday and Saturday and prepared bottles, and on Miriam’s first birthday dropped both children around to Geoffrey and Esme. She was a mess all day, and tearfully grateful of the offer to drive her over for the pick-up.

  A birthday cake and presents with both parents in attendance had been pre-arranged. Anne and Joe whiled away the time in a nearby park, with a lowering sun turning to near darkness, waiting for the call from Claire to come and collect them. When it came, the iciness of the handover was scary. Driving home, Claire sat in the back seat between her youngsters unable to speak. At one point James cried out that she was hurting him, so hard was she squeezing his hand.

  Geoffrey isn’t giving an inch, she told them later. ‘The stuff he said!’ She should not assume that she would be welcome back, even if she did come to her senses. Nor should she assume that he will let her have custody of the children. ‘He even started talking about “being concerned about their circumstances”, and “whether their safety could be guaranteed in the company of a dementia sufferer”.’

  Anne looked across at Joe, expecting anger, but seeing instead a wounded man. He looked back at her, and she saw in his expression the bitter acceptance on his part that Geoffrey was only saying out loud what she and Claire put into practice every day.

  But Claire was venting, oblivious to the impact of her words. ‘It was almost like he was parroting someone else’s lines. His father’s maybe? I couldn’t look at him most of the time. I was watching Esme, flinching at all this stuff he was saying, thinking “I’m not going to let myself become like you”. She’s completely under her husband’s thumb, the poor woman.

  ‘Geoffrey’s a bully, that’s the truth of it. I just held on to one thing. That I am not going to give up this job. I said if he’ll accept that, everything else we can talk about.’

  There is nothing Anne would rather see than her daughter free and clear, but she is scared of the way things are shaping. And in the meantime there is Eric to add to her frazzlement. At least she can be sure he will be enthusiastic about her article, good old Eric. She looks again at the proofs, the sylph.

  As has become the norm with Eric, they don’t have the complete story; he’s not one for revelatory emails or phone calls. But she can’t wait to get the details. And to meet Ruvini!

  He resigned from IV when the Manica project was completed, and had flown directly to Sri Lanka. He’s been there for the last two months. He re-proposed to Ruvini. He’ll be here next week, and she’ll be joining him. That’s about all they know.

  He still swaps emails with Joe, but since he’s known about the dementia, he rings her if anything needs sorting. There is something in his voice when he asks after Joe. It sounds like fear to her; he doesn’t know how to deal with it.

  His most recent call had come before Claire’s return was locked in. Of course he could come to stay, she said.

  ‘And Ruvini?’ he asked.

  ‘Really?’ Her heart surged. ‘Of course she’s welcome. Why are you asking as if I might say no?’

  Why do you think, she reminds herself now.

  But the mythical Ruvini won’t be flying in from Colombo until a week after Eric arrives back, and two days after they head to Broome.

  One way or another, next week is going to be mad, she suspects. It might be good too, but if Joe gets moody it might make life hell for them all. She’s worried about how he’s going to cope with the full house. Too much colour and movement doesn’t seem to be good for him these days, unless it’s coming from James.

  When Claire moved in, Anne offered to get in touch with Eric, and see if he could find somewhere else to stay. He would understand, she said. But Claire and Joe ganged up on her with a chorus of no-ways. They’re going to have to hand over the spare room, which these days is really Joe’s room. He snores less now, unless he’s had a few. But he’s far more fidgety and restless. And that bloody jaw jerk. He even does it in his dreams now. The thump of his head on the pillow desolates her. She’s planning to put a foam mattress on the floor on her side of the bed; she can always retreat to that.

  She shuts the computer down for the night, taps the pages of the proof straight, and sits them front and centre and square on her desk with a smile, and heads downstairs.

  OPEN CURTAIN

  Joe has left the curtain open, and she glances through the window as she reaches for the door. Something makes her pause, and watch. He is sitting in Eric’s chair, playing one of his phantom games. He tables a card, moves a peg, shifts the sinkers across to the other side of the table.

  He drinks a slug of whisky, straight from the bottle.

  Odd.

  He puts the bottle into a backpack. She has a flash of pure, intense panic. It’s the backpack. The bag.

  Oh no! What’s he doing!?

  But he zips it closed. Pushes himself up out of the chair. Hangs the backpack on its peg beside the saws.

  She feels a surge of relief, release, that leaves her drained.

  He looks around the shed aimlessly for a few moments, then ambles back to the crib game, sitting in his own chair, and looks at his cards.

  The shiver that seizes her isn’t from the chill in the air. It’s a memory of the first time she saw the bag. Not the awful test run. The aftermath.

  ‘I’m angry too,’ he had said to her. ‘We deserve our bloody dotage. I want to go back to the Kimberley with you. I want you to admire my enormous barra when I finally catch the fucker. I want to be there when you come back to camp all agush after you see your bloody Gouldian finch.’

  You’re not the only one that’s angry, Joseph Warton, you bloody drongo. We do deserve better than this.

  And then she remembers what followed. The pressing hips, his hardening cock. And suddenly she is aching for him. She opens the door, feeling at her crotch, the juices starting to flow. He looks up in surprise.

  ‘Nearly finished darling. Be up in a minute.’

  He is engrossed in the counting of the cards. Eric’s, then his, then the crib. Calling the points, moving the pegs. He seems oblivious to her kneading of his shoulders. She thinks about trying something more direct, but her moment is gone. She ruffles his hair.

  ‘Don’t forget to lock up.’

  ‘Course not.’

  The stairs feel like Everest tonight, as she climbs back towards her lonely bed. Halfway up, the thought pops into her head.

  Has he already crossed that bloody line he talks about?

  And that is the moment the idea first occurs to her.

  Next morning, after singing out her goodbyes, Anne slips into the shed, feeling like a trespasser, and checks the backpack. The pills, the bag, the book—all there. The whisky bottle is almost empty.

  You wouldn’t fuck it up would you Joe? You couldn’t. Please.

  An uneasy feeling shadows her thoughts throughout the drive to work.

  NECK RUBS

  Leonard Cohen is playing. Joe reaches for the pouch with the notepad. Leonard should be on the list. No particular song; it’s more the overall vibe he gives that fits. Then he remembers that he has lost the pouch.

  ‘What would you do Lenny?’

  ‘What was that?’

  Claire’s question surprises him. He’d had half an ear out for her, but the wrong half it seems.

  ‘Just thinking.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘Melancholy bugger Mr Cohen, isn’t he. You should be asleep. Big day tomorrow. The kids wake you?’

  ‘No,
I was doing another read-through of the presentation.’

  ‘There’s such a thing as overkill, my girl. It’s not my territory, I know, but what you showed me looks pretty bloody good. You’re a smart cookie.’

  ‘Bit of a stale one though, Dad. I feel so out of touch with it all. It’s my first big test tomorrow, and I’ve got to make a good impression. I keep on thinking I’ve got to be perfect. Like I’m obliged to after all that’s happened.’

  ‘You’ll be a star. I have no doubt.’

  ‘Oh for a loving father.’

  The edge in her voice has him on alert. Claire has been tight-lipped since collecting James on Sunday. He and Anne have been on eggshells around her, sensing the tension, and guessing that it has at least as much to do with Geoffrey as with work. But she veers away from that train of thought.

  ‘It feels so strange sitting at my old desk. Like I’m doing homework.’ She rolls her head on her shoulders and feels at a sore spot. ‘Not to mention uncomfortable.’

  ‘Neck rub?’ he offers.

  ‘Ooh yeah.’

  He indicates the floor in front of his recliner. She sits there, leaning back against his knees, and lets him get to work.

  ‘Mmmm, that’s good Dad.’

  Cohen comes to an end, and they both smile into the silence. Neither of them notices Anne, who halts in the doorway and stands watching. There is a thread of jealousy—she can’t remember the last time she got a massage from Joe—but also a deep pleasure in watching the pair of them like this.

  ‘I should check you for nits,’ he says, half seriously. He always loved working his fingers through her hair.

  She laughs quietly. ‘I haven’t relaxed like this for … for …’

  ‘Enjoy the moment.’

  ‘I am, I am.’ She rolls her head again. Sighs. ‘I can’t stop the brain racing though.’

  ‘Try.’

  ‘It’s all gone too far now, hasn’t it. What’s it going to be like for the kids? Shuffling between two houses. Adjusting. Keeping secrets. That’s what finishes up happening you know, I’ve seen it. Poor little buggers forced to become diplomats, negotiating the stormy seas of their parents’ wars. How can I do this to them?’

  He has no answer, and can only reach for platitudes. ‘Kids adapt. Better than you ever expect.’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  They both sense Anne entering and sitting, but continue on. She speaks slightly louder to include her mother. ‘Thank God I never had to.’

  He bends down to kiss the top of her head, then resumes the massage. After a minute or two she speaks again. ‘Geoffrey’s going to play hardball, I can sense it. He hasn’t said as much, but from the way he talks, I’m sure he’s lawyered up.’

  ‘He’s the one that told you to get out.’

  ‘It wasn’t exactly like that, Dad. And it’s sure as hell not what he’ll tell the court, if it goes that way.’

  ‘It’s the twenty-first century, Claire. A man can’t tell his wife she’s not allowed to apply for a job.’

  In his indignation he has sat straight and stopped the massaging.

  ‘Neck rubs, neck rubs,’ she demands.

  He resumes, but the rhythm has gone, and he is fretting. ‘I just wish there was more I could do.’

  She twists to look up at him. ‘You’ve taken me in. And that’s enough. It’s my battle Dad, you fight your own.’

  He kisses her hair and turns her gently round. This time he concentrates, gets his thumbs working properly on those muscles at the base of her neck and above her shoulderblades.

  He lets out a little laugh.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I could turn into a suicide bomber. Take him out with me.’

  Even as he speaks the words, he is regretting them. But they are out.

  She springs to her feet, and whirls around to face him. ‘You–’ Her mouth snaps shut. Opens again. ‘He’s their father, for pity’s sake!’ And then she is gone.

  He looks at Anne despairingly. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ He holds two fingers and cocked thumb to his temple—the pistol sign. ‘No fucking self-censor button in there any more, is there Captain.’

  Anne hugs him briefly, then whispers, ‘I’m going up to see if Claire’s ok.’

  DRIFTING

  By the time Joe gets up, the others are almost ready to leave. The manner of Claire’s morning greeting is enough for him to be reminded of last night, and to realise that she has forgiven but not forgotten. Anne is businesslike, telling him she has rung in sick and is taking Claire into work today. ‘She’s a bit fragile this morning,’ she whispers to him when Claire is out of the room.

  He is left alone, overwhelmed by remorse for last night’s slip-up, desperately hoping that he hasn’t stuffed up Claire’s big day. He potters through breakfast with the newspaper, another check of his rod and lines and lures, decides on a second coffee to go with sudoku. As he stirs in the sugar he finds himself saying, ‘It’s not a fucking line is it you drongo. It never was.’

  He puts the newspaper aside, shifts the verandah chair into the sun, and tries to think. Joe the architect has begun to feel like a distant memory. Joe the adamant, of firm opinions, was a different man. It all feels fuzzy now. But he can recall that declaration, about a line not to be crossed. It was just a matter of determining where it lay, he’d proclaimed.

  It’s a zone, not a line. A murky fucking zone, laced with booby traps and mazes.

  An image floats into his head of a battlefield, of fog swirling through a barren, crater-pocked no-man’s-land between the trench lines. He has left himself behind in the trench with his comrades, and stepped into the fog.

  A head jerk, and he is back in the morning sun, coffee untouched.

  I’m drifting, not thinking.

  But thinking will take him to a place he doesn’t want to go. Logic has become the enemy of life. Of the instinct to bury his nose in Miriam’s hair, to drink in that baby girl smell and croon to her. Of the beauty that is Bullfrog Hole. They’ll be back there soon.

  WRONG BEDS

  Joe wakes early, it is only just lightening around the edges of the curtain. That’s what throws him off kilter. Wrong curtain. He’s in Anne’s room. And she’s not here. He creeps out, opening the door as quietly as he can, with the intention of climbing into his own bed and seeing if he can get back to sleep. Everything might be back to normal if he wakes up there.

  Hand on the doorknob of his room. That’s not right either. He always leaves his door open when he’s gone into Anne’s for a goodnight cuddle.

  He remembers!

  Remembers waking in Anne’s room in the dark earlier tonight. Her asleep beside him. Creeping out, as he did just now. Feeling his way. Three steps down the corridor to his room. Opening the door. Thinking it was odd to find it closed. Climbing into his own bed. Flurries, grunts, shock and surprise back and forth. Fear in the dark. Then the realisation: Eric. Anne appearing in the doorway, shooshing them. Urgent whispers. ‘You two. Don’t wake Claire. The kids.’

  He withdraws his hand from the doorknob.

  Damn near doubled up on the fuck-up.

  He heads downstairs as quietly as he can. The paper is there in the driveway. He puts a coffee on and settles down to the sudoku; he doesn’t want to think about last night, or try to work out where Anne is.

  This morning’s puzzle is rated ‘diabolical’. He used to like those ones. He’s made a sort of a start when Anne emerges down the stairs, dressing-gowned and yawning.

  ‘Wha–?’ He is trying to compute.

  ‘Wha– what?’

  ‘I thought you must’ve gone for an early walk. Where’d you sleep?’

  ‘The foam mattress on the floor, my side of the bed. Remember?’

  ‘I don’t recall.’

  She arches a shoulder, grimacing. ‘I’m getting a bit old for sleeping on the floor.’

  She smiles to herself. ‘Mind you, if it’s a floor of sand and stars above, that’s a different matter, hey Joe?’
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  She shimmies at him, and sings the words. ‘Bullfrog Ho-oole!’

  ‘Devil woman.’

  That gets a proper laugh.

  ‘Eric’ll sleep in I reckon. Jet lag.’

  He gets the subtext this time. ‘I do recall.’

  ‘It was pretty bloody hilarious in its own weird way, finding the two of you tangled up like that.’

  He makes a growly face at her that turns into a smile of admission.

  She comes to stand behind him. Arms over his shoulders, for a nuzzle, a hug, a whisper. ‘I think Eric’s a bit freaked out. Be as kind to him as you can.’

  REUNION(S)

  Joe has lost himself in the sudoku again, and is making slow progress. There is a moment of startlement, half a jerk, when Eric emerges out the back, arms wide, exclaiming ‘Joe!’ Eric notices the movement. But Joe is quickly back with it, and notices the flicker across Eric’s face.

  Joe feels a surge of joy at the appearance of his friend. They embrace fiercely, until Eric holds him at arm’s length to ask, ‘How are you?’ He doesn’t know how to answer, eventually coming up with, ‘You know. Ok I suppose.’

  ‘I know you’ve been missing me Joe, but I wasn’t expecting you to climb into bed with me mate.’

  ‘Don’t remind me.’

  ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘Claire’s at work, and Anne’s out shopping for the big trip. What time did you get in?’

  ‘Cleared customs about one a.m. I think. Well bugger me, here we are, the old firm. I’m just going to put the kettle on.’

  By the time Eric re-emerges Joe has come up with a line in their bantering tradition. ‘Now are you sure you don’t want to put this Ruvini off for a couple of weeks and come up to Bullfrog Hole with us?’

  ‘You know how to tempt a man, but no.’