Keira frowned. ‘Mum,’ she said, ‘Deirdre wouldn’t tell me why she left, not really, or why you two were fighting. She said I should ask you.’
Maureen said nothing. She picked at a bit of cuticle beside an otherwise perfectly manicured nail.
‘I need to know, Mum.’ Then Keira’s voice changed to a light-hearted teasing tone: ‘I’m a grown-up now, remember? You can tell me anything, I won’t be shocked.’
‘Listen, Keira, I need those cigarettes now.’ Maureen stretched out her arm, shiny pink nails fluttering as her fingers gestured.
‘You could have wine instead.’
‘I’ll have that too.’
Keira laughed, and brought over the bottle and two glasses. She started pouring.
‘What I’m going to tell you …’ Maureen waited until the glass was in her hand. ‘Cheers,’ she said, gulping half the wine straight away. ‘What you need to know is … I’d always blamed Deirdre’s contacts with bohemian and criminal circles for exposing me to … what happened. Deirdre and I talked about it all today, and … and I need to clear the air with you.’ She coughed. ‘Clear the air – God help us!’
Keira brought over the cigarettes, lighter and ashtray. She sipped her wine and stared at her mother.
‘When Howard Dathcett returned from the war,’ said Maureen, ‘he started paying some attention to me, just like an old family friend would. I didn’t know him all that well because mostly I was away at boarding school. He’d had a good war. He’d made money on the black market and now he was making more money. He had business interests with Jake Phipps, who was a big-wig in the Razor Gang. I was so young. The trouble with a convent boarding school is that you end up being as unworldly as the nuns, protected in a cocoon of safety and security, and I thought he was being a family friend, an avuncular person in my life.
‘Howard managed to spend some time with me alone. He can be charming. He took me to the races and to nightclubs. Deirdre didn’t notice; she’d always left me to my own devices. She and Olivia spent a lot of time in the studio up the back. Olivia often slept at our place and had no idea what Howard was doing.
‘Howard made me feel special. It’s impossible to underestimate my naivety, remember. I trusted Howard as a family friend who wanted to introduce me to wider horizons than I’d been exposed to before. He was protective and witty and I even thought that in this new world of race horses and yachts and parties I’d meet someone my own age.
‘I was working in the Martin Place Post Office.’ Maureen drank the rest of her wine and held out the glass for more. Keira poured more wine.
‘One night after going to the nightclub we went to his place – the hangman’s cottage – and we had more champagne there. I was drunk. I think he put on a record and we danced to it. For the first time he … How can I put this? He approached me in a way that was not as a family friend … and when he became more insistent I resisted but … the blunt fact is that he seduced me.’ Maureen put her half-full glass on the floor, a look of misery shadowing her pale face. She put her fingertips to her mouth and then looked out the window.
Keira’s jaw fell open in shock. ‘Gosh – I just read this article by Germaine Greer, in Playboy of all things, called “Seduction is a four-letter word.” You should read it. It’s still here somewhere.’
Maureen continued. ‘He drove me home. I couldn’t believe it had happened. I woke up the next morning and pretended it hadn’t. I avoided him. Two weeks later I met Jim at work. He was a clerk but when we met it was the most banal thing: he was in the tea room fixing the blocked sink.’ Maureen smiled at the memory. ‘We got talking and something sparked between us. We started going out. I wanted that happy, innocent time to last forever.’
She paused. ‘Then one Saturday morning I was in the kitchen making toast when Howard came to the side door, which we never locked. He just barged in and demanded to know why I’d been avoiding him. I was fighting him off.
‘Deirdre was in the studio. Olivia was walking up the path towards the studio when she glanced in the window. She rushed in.’
Keira gasped. She sloshed more wine into her mother’s glass and drank some herself.
Maureen continued. ‘Olivia looked at us. And suddenly she grabbed the scissors off the side-table, flew towards him and stabbed him in the neck with one of the blades.
‘Blood spurted out and Howard punched Olivia. He was yelling and swearing. He pulled the blade out and threw it on the floor.
‘Olivia should have been awarded a medal. But she became unhinged again and disappeared.’ Maureen puffed on her cigarette as if she were breathing in some desperately needed oxygen.
‘Some days later, Lillian found her living on the streets with tramps and Bea Miles, you know, the well-bred girl who became a Shakespeare-quoting bag lady? Lillian telephoned Mrs Kettlewell who came and took her to the asylum.’
‘Oh my God, Mum! That’s horrendous!’ said Keira. ‘It’s unbelievable. And it was his fault Olivia was in the asylum.’
‘Yes. He was the one who should have been locked up.’ Maureen stubbed out her cigarette.
‘What happened to him?’
‘Howard lost a lot of blood and he nearly died. Alfred Foote told me that.’
‘Did you go to the police?’
‘With what charge? Anyway, Howard had friends in the police force. He had friends in high places everywhere. The thing is, I was worried sick. It had just happened that one time and my period hadn’t come.’
Keira was looking horrified.
‘I had to confess to Deirdre. We discussed adoption. My whole life was shattered! You’ve no idea what it was like then, the stigma. But when I told Jim, he made it whole again. Even though we’d known each other hardly any time at all he insisted he wanted to marry me.’
She saw Keira’s intensely questioning expression, and said gently, ‘And he took you on, he loved you as his own, and he never said another word about it. Few men would have done that.’
Keira was speechless for some moments, staring at her mother. Then she said, ‘What? Is this some kind of sick joke? You’ve been lying to me all this time about my father?’
‘It was a sin of omission.’
‘Don’t weasel out of your deliberate deception with that mealy-mouthed Catholic excuse! You were lying to me every day of my life!’
‘I didn’t want to.’
‘You didn’t have to! You could have told me any day during the last twenty-seven years!’
‘Keira, I was protecting you. You know, I had thought about adoption but as time went on I couldn’t bear the thought, and when I actually saw you, there was no way Jim or I could be parted from you.’ Maureen leant forward, her dark eyes intense. ‘When Jim picked you up, you clung to his little finger, and he fell in love with you.’
‘I am not who I thought I was! I’ve been walking around thinking one thing and it’s totally wrong! I had no idea –’
‘Keira, please, you’re justifiably upset but can you see things from someone else’s point of view for one minute? I know it’s a shock and I know I did wrong in not telling you sooner but I protected you because I love you. You have been raised with love and security and safety.’
‘I have been raised on a lie!’
‘You will never know how many times I thought about telling you but there never seemed to be a good time.’
‘I might never have found out.’
Maureen drained her glass and lit another cigarette.
‘My father was someone in the Razor Gang. My father killed people. I have his genes. Oh, fuck – my father was a psychopath!’
‘He was not. And no one knows if he ever killed anyone. He’d got on to the wrong path in life, influenced by bad company. As for your genes, you have half mine, plus one hundred per cent good breeding. You’re walking proof of nurture being more important than nature.’
‘Oh, keep your sociology to yourself!’
Keira went to her room and slammed the door. Maureen
mashed her cigarette out in the saucer and heaved a deep sigh. Keira would be okay with it – it would just take some time.
44
KEIRA
August 1973
Keira glimpsed the pain darkening her mother’s face but ignored it. Desperate to be alone, she stomped up the hall to her room, closed the door and flung herself onto her bed, feeling fed to the overflowing brim with futile words. She fumed with outrage at the way her mother always wormed her way out of things with her slippery, rationalising words. Words were tumbling across the picture of her life like Deirdre’s collages, with words spilling across the frame, words whirling out of people’s mouths, words in torrents rushing along the bottom of a stream, words curling up into the sky and evaporating into cumulonimbus clouds.
Words, words, words. Wounding words unhinging her life from its moorings. Words of love and words of deceit. Words written across the pages of her existence, when all the time there was another script on those same pages, written in invisible ink.
Keira’s pillow was soaked with tears, the smell of her mother’s Tea Roses on it drowned at last. Maureen had stopped calling to her from down the hall. She was probably chain-smoking now and polishing off the wine. It was lucky no one else was home. Now the sun was illuminating the message on the pages of her life written in invisible ink and all was clear.
Except that nothing was clear. Keira’s thoughts tumbled this way and that. If only she lived alone. Not with two other people, plus her brother and her mother! She groaned. What would she do?
She must finish her photographic essay. Which meant seeing Deirdre and Olivia again. Had Olivia kept in contact with Howard? Who but her father knew? She caught herself and thought: Jim – Jim is not my father! She had to remind herself after a lifetime’s deception by her mother, who was always so concerned with everyone being honest. The hypocrite! ‘It’s means and ends,’ she heard Maureen say. And Jimmy saying, ‘Isn’t that what the Nazis said?’
Even in the state she was in, Keira could see that she was being simplistic. She tried to focus. First things first. That was one of her father’s – one of Jim’s – phrases. She must think logically. Who else knew? She blew her nose and threw the damp tissue on the floor. It landed on the straw-grass matting amidst the others there: limp little balls of futility.
The bed squeaked as Keira heaved her exhausted body upright. She went to grab another out of the box on the night-table. Empty! She groaned and sniffed, mopping her damp eyes on her wool sleeve.
Her brain was a riot of chaotic images and memories. Rowan, Michael, Jimmy and Sean were her half-brothers. Her dad was her stepdad. How strict he had always been with her. Probably worried that given half a chance she would turn to a life of crime like her father. Her real father.
Of course, Jim had been very strict with the boys too, but Keira would not think about that right now. She sank into her soft bed again and lay her head on the damp pillow.
Suddenly the familiar feeling of Alan’s embrace flooded her whole being and she felt her heart contracting and pounding. With her ear pressed against the pillow she could hear the rhythmic beat of it, ba-boomp, ba-boomp, ba-boomp … Keira groaned and began crying again. Where was Alan when she needed him? Why couldn’t she run to his house and live there and never have to see her deceiving parents again? How would she face Jim? She couldn’t bear him to know that she knew.
After lying there for another few minutes, Keira pushed herself upright and stood. She kicked tissues out of the way and walked to the wood-framed mirror: pale skin except for redness around the eyes, her light blue eyes like no one else’s in the family. All the boys had Jim’s brown eyes except for Sean, who had his mother’s big hazel eyes.
She stared into the mirror. ‘Creepy eyes,’ her brother Michael used to say, laughing; ‘Psychic eyes,’ Rowan would tease. The blue was unusually pale, with a grey ring around the iris that lent them a peculiar intensity. ‘Julie Christie eyes,’ Alan called them.
Howard Dathcett’s eyes. Where was he? Was he even alive? Would Olivia know where he was? The thought of having to ask all these questions! But she needed to know the truth. How could she even broach the subject? And who knew?
With Maureen marrying in such haste, maybe no one else knew. Everyone would have assumed … But something niggled at the back of her brain. She felt tired thinking about it all, her brain was a crammed, jangling riot of questions and suspicions and profound anxiety. The universe was upside-down. Her past was different and her whole life had changed.
If only Maureen had told her before. Keira would have to ask her more questions. But she didn’t want to even see her again right now. And maybe not for a long time.
Thump! Thump! Thump! Keira jumped with fright. Someone knocking on the front door, shockingly loud. Who? She stared into the mirror, stock-still and eyes wide. Perhaps it was Alan! She grabbed the brush and ran it through her hair, and took her Yardley’s Pot ’o Gloss out of the top drawer and slicked some on her lips.
Knock-knock-knock-knock! She jumped. Whoever was standing on that ‘Welcome’ mat meant business.
Keira composed her face into a blank expression, walked out her bedroom doorway and the few steps up the hall and opened the brass latch with a click. She held the door ajar and blinked in the bright sunlight that flooded in.
‘Dad!’
Jim leant forward and kissed her cheek. He was smoothly shaven and smelled as if he had just had a shower. Sunlight soap. He was not in his overalls but in his good Sunday clothes.
‘What are you doing here?’ she said.
He paused. Keira waited. He said, ‘I’ve come to see your mother.’
‘Now?!’
Another long pause. ‘It seemed as good a time as any,’ he drawled.
‘I … I … was just going out.’
‘Are you all right? Your eyes are red,’ he said, peering at her.
‘I’m fine! Absolutely fine!’
‘I could give you a lift if you want to wait a bit.’
‘Thanks, Dad, but I …’ Keira could have screamed. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know where to go. She only knew that she did not want to hang around with Maureen at the moment. Then she had an idea. ‘Actually, that’d be great! Come on in.’
She led him down the hall to the living room. Maureen was reclining on the couch, a wet hankie balled up in one hand and an empty wine glass in the other. As Jim went towards Maureen, mother and daughter exchanged glances, and behind him Keira shook her head wildly, miming a ‘No!’ and putting her forefinger to her lips and then waving her outstretched hands back and forth horizontally to emphasise the point.
Keira saw the recognition in Maureen’s eyes and went into the kitchen to make a pot of tea, straining her ears to eavesdrop on her parents’ stilted conversation. She got cups and saucers out of the cupboard. As the kettle boiled, she heard Jim say: ‘A Yank soldier I knew used to say, “Tough times never last, but tough people do.” I reckon I’m a tough bloke and if I ride this thing out long enough …’
‘How do you mean, long enough?’
‘I mean for as long as it takes for you to make up your mind what to do.’
‘You mean long enough for me to come to my senses?’
‘I’m not saying that.’ There was a silence. Keira put the tea things on the pine tray. Jim continued at last: ‘I’m saying that it’s up to you. And I’ll wait. I’m just waiting … because … because I need you to come back.’
Keira couldn’t hear what Maureen said, if anything. Then she heard murmurs, indistinct no matter how much she strained her ears, and by the time she brought in the tea tray they were talking about Sean.
Keira put the things on the coffee table. No one seemed very interested in drinking tea. Maureen went through the motions. The small talk with which Keira tried to oil Maureen’s wheels of civilisation limped along in a stilted manner. Neither Keira nor Maureen mentioned Deirdre. That might have led to Jim suspecting that Keira now knew the truth.
‘Your housemates are not here?’ asked Jim.
‘No.’ This bald reply sounded rude so she added, ‘Not yet.’
Eventually Jim said he should be getting back because Sean would have returned from his friend’s house soon.
‘Could you drop me off at Sylvia’s on the way please, Dad?’
It had slipped out before she thought about it. She would have to learn not to say ‘Dad’; she would have to get used to Jim’s new status; she would have to develop a new dynamic – but a dynamic was between two people and had to be developed by them both. Keira nearly groaned at the sudden complexities that had avalanched into her formerly straightforward existence. She felt a renewed sense of blame towards her mother.
‘I’m getting rid of that cat,’ she explained, leaving Maureen to tell Jim about the cat, while she went out the back.
Keira rounded up Butch with the promise of Meaty Bites, shaking the box to lure him close. But even with Jim’s help it was still an effort to cram the cat into the box she’d found in the laundry and to close the four flaps. As soon as Butch realised what was happening, he yowled in outrage and tried to escape. He pushed a clawed paw through the gap in the middle where the flaps intersected.
‘Cat piss is like plutonium,’ said Jim. ‘A half-life of at least two thousand years – put a few towels under the box, Keira – ones you don’t want to use again. I don’t want to have to sell the car.’
‘Okay, okay.’ Keira went into the laundry again. Then she walked up the hall to her room and shoved a change of clothes into her cream canvas duffle bag. It gave Jim and Maureen an opportunity to say goodbye in private. Keira walked back into the room and picked up the box.
Jim leapt up and took it from her. ‘Let me,’ he said, holding it out from his body in case of contamination.
Keira went up the hall, and yelled ‘Bye,’ to Maureen in a cheerful fashion so Jim would get the impression that everything was fine between them. All the way to the ute, Butch wriggled and squirmed inside the box, making it move this way and that, while maintaining a continual wail of indignation.
After She Left Page 27
