After She Left

by Penelope Hanley

  ‘Thanks for that distinction. Okay, my crisis – I can’t believe you are using the worst crisis of my life to flirt with a waiter!’

  ‘I wasn’t. I didn’t. He was just being concerned about you. That’s so sensitive of him.’

  ‘Oh, right!’ Keira scoffed. ‘You’re unbelievable. Wait till I tell Steve.’

  Nessie ignored this and looked at the back of the card again. ‘He doesn’t look like a Wayne.’ She spooned some soup into her mouth.

  ‘What does a Wayne look like? Can we get off the topic of your romantic complexities and back on to the worst crisis of my own complex life?’

  ‘Can’t you see that none of this is Maureen’s fault? You must make it up with her. Now eat your meal. My soup’s great.’ Nessie munched on some bread. ‘It’s always better to talk things over and stop stewing about things. You get things out of proportion that way.’

  Keira dropped her mouth open, about to protest.

  ‘Let me finish. You asked me what I think.’

  ‘No, I didn’t!’

  ‘Well, let me tell you. Look at it this way: from what you’ve said, your mum blamed Deirdre for raising her in a chaotic Bohemian way, and overreacted to that by being excessively conservative. Now you’re blaming Maureen for raising you in the way she did without telling you the real story of how you got to be here. But she couldn’t when you were too little to understand, and adolescence is a difficult time, she couldn’t do it then, so she postponed – ’

  ‘That’s easy for you to say.’ Keira half-heartedly chewed some schnitzel.

  ‘I know.’ Nessie sopped up some soup with a bit of bread. ‘But I’m trying to help. And no matter what ghastly thing has happened, it’s always good to talk things over. You must come home.’

  Keira finished her wine, tipping up the glass to get the last drop. With a grudging tone, she said, ‘Maybe you’re right.’

  ‘’Course I’m right. When do you think I should call him? Would tomorrow be too forward?’

  ‘Call who?’

  ‘Wayne, duh.’

  ‘Nessie – you’re incorrigible.’

  ‘Life must go on. No matter what crises might be ’appening avec mes amis – I will be a lot more use to zem if I’m ’appy. And I’m ’appy when I’m in lerve.’

  Keira sighed in exasperation. ‘Do you want the rest of the veggies?’ She pushed the china bowl towards Nessie, who piled the vegetables on her plate and started eating a lightly steamed bit of broccoli.

  Keira looked at her for a while. ‘So you have a duty to fall in love, entirely for altruistic reasons.’

  ‘Yup.’ Nessie grinned, then looked up, surprised to see the waiter at her elbow.

  Wayne put two brandies on the table. ‘On the ’ouse,’ he said, and walked away.

  Keira said, ‘Have you noticed how men are always plying you with alcohol?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Nessie assumed an exaggerated expression of baffled innocence. ‘And this alcohol is specifically for you,’ she said, and ignored Keira’s smirk. ‘To help you get through your tragedy.’

  Keira rolled her eyes in exasperation, but after shaking her head at Nessie’s mockery, she sipped some brandy.

  ‘Bottoms up,’ said Nessie, clinking her glass against Keira’s, ‘To happiness.’ But she pronounced it in a parody of a French accent so that it came out sounding, ‘To a penis.’ Keira threw her scrunched-up napkin at her.

  *

  When they arrived home, Nessie went straight to her room and closed the door, pointedly leaving Keira alone with her mother. Keira knew what she needed to say – an apology, an explanation of how hard it had been for her, and then she would get on to all the answers to the questions that had been buzzing in her head ever since the fateful afternoon when Maureen had told her the terrible, earth-shaking news.

  ‘Hi Mum.’

  Maureen was lying on the sofa, smoking and reading The Female Eunuch. ‘Hullo, darling.’

  ‘Where did you get hold of that?’

  ‘This? Nessie lent it to me.’

  Keira paused to take off her leather jacket. She hung it on the back of a chair and said, ‘Can I make a cup of tea?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What I meant was: would you like one?’

  ‘No thanks, darling. Your father made me one not long ago.’

  ‘My … my father?’

  ‘Jim visited again. I telephoned him. The thing is, I’ve decided to go back.’ Keira said nothing. ‘Shared history. It means everything.’

  ‘Oh,’ Keira said, nodding slowly. ‘Okay,’ she said, and went to the kitchen to absorb the information while she made a cup of chamomile tea for herself. Then she perched on the sofa arm, sipped it and watched Maureen who had returned her attention to The Female Eunuch. ‘Mum?’

  ‘Mmmmm …?’ Maureen’s eyes remained on her book.

  Keira sipped tea and waited. Finally Maureen looked up with an expression of artless surprise as if she had no idea of what Keira might be about to say, as if she had no idea of the tremendous fight they’d had the last time they’d seen each other.

  This would be hard to do. Keira didn’t know how to broach the topic. ‘I … I’m sorry, Mum,’ she said. ‘I said some awful things.’

  ‘That’s all right, darling. It was a shock and I should have told you before, but there never seemed to be a right time.’

  ‘No. Nessie and I just saw L’Enfant Sauvage …’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A François Truffaut film. It means The Wild Child, about a boy who was raised by wolves. It made me think … about … you know … things. Families and stuff.’

  ‘Perhaps Howard Dathcett was raised by wolves,’ said Maureen.

  They looked at each other for a shocked moment.

  A burst of laughter escaped out of Keira. Maureen gave a little hoot.

  ‘I can’t believe you said that!’ said Keira, shaking with nervous mirth.

  ‘I’m serious,’ said Maureen.

  But Keira was laughing. Maureen gave herself over to helpless giggles. The two women laughed and laughed, lost their breath and laughed over that, laughed until tears slid out of their eyes, laughed until they snorted, laughed so long and hard that Nessie heard the sound from behind her closed door, looked up from her book, and smiled.

  *

  Life seemed almost back to normal except for her bedroom’s new colour scheme.

  Keira had painted her bedroom in various shades of purple, mauve, violet and lavender. She painted her wooden bed purple too and bought some mauve cotton sheets and dyed the quilt cover lavender. In her spare time Keira had thrown herself into the redecorating, with the landlord paying for the paint, and the rest of the time she buried herself in her work. She was even getting used to life without Alan.

  One Friday night when Nessie and Wayne were out, and Steve was working, when the wind was whistling around the outside of the house, the telephone rang.

  ‘Hello?’ said Keira. When she heard his voice her hand gripped the receiver tightly. ‘Alan! Hi!’

  ‘Hi,’ said Alan. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m … fine, just fine.’

  ‘I’ve missed you and I wanted to hear your voice. What have you been doing?’

  ‘Oh, just working hard, that’s all really. What about you?’

  They spoke haltingly to each other for a few minutes.

  Their polite, non-committal conversation having limped to an end, Keira carefully rested the receiver back in its cradle and hit her fingers against her forehead with an exasperated smack. How could she have let this opportunity go? She said all the wrong things! She said nothing at all. He would think she was an idiot. He would think she couldn’t give a stuff about him. He would think … No, stop catastrophising – one of Nessie’s words. She wanted to give him the impression that she was doing just fine without him. So that was good. She hadn’t grovelled. She hadn’t lost control. And he had wanted to hear her voice! That had to be
good.

  *

  ‘That Chinese girl was out there again when I came in last night,’ said Steve. ‘Weird. Maybe she’s soliciting. But she doesn’t seem to get many clients.’

  ‘She’s not a prostitute,’ said Nessie. ‘They don’t carry handbags. Maybe she’s a bird watcher.’

  ‘Or a bird photographer,’ said Keira. ‘She’s always got a camera.’

  ‘Or an ASIO spy,’ said Nessie. ‘One of our neighbours is a subversive.’

  ‘Or us. We go on subversive marches. We could be categorised as enemies of the state,’ said Steve.

  It was Saturday evening the next day. Keira opened her portfolio to show Nessie and Steve the enlarged photographs of Deirdre’s paintings to go in her essay. Wayne had gone to work at The Boka as usual, so Nessie was glad to be distracted until his return.

  There was Twilight of the Bush, emanating its strange and enigmatic menace.

  Nessie peered at it. ‘That little girl is probably your mother,’ she said.

  She and Steve laughed at the irreverent depiction of Captain Cook. ‘Creepy,’ said Steve.

  ‘What’s this one called?’ asked Nessie.

  ‘Cubic Nude.’

  ‘It sounds nice when you rhyme the two words, a little two-word poem – nude as in viewed rather than lewd.’

  ‘Or rude,’ said Steve.

  ‘You’re rude!’ said Nessie, giving his arm a playful punch.

  ‘And cubic rhymes with pubic, which also goes well with nude,’ said Steve.

  Nessie punched his arm again. ‘They look great, Keira,’ she said. ‘I can’t wait to read your essay.’

  They moved into the kitchen to start cooking dinner. Keira told them Alan had phoned. ‘You know, all the time I’ve been wishing and hoping …’

  ‘Like the Dionne Warwick song,’ said Steve, breaking into a passionate rendition of ‘Wishin’ and Hopin’’.

  Keira ignored him. ‘When I thought about it today in the cold light of day – now it’s possible that I could actually see him and hear what he has to say.’

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Nessie, knife held still above the zucchini. ‘What’s he offering?’ She resumed chopping, with quick, decisive strokes that transformed the zucchini into a neat roll of fine white, green-edged discs.

  ‘He misses me.’

  ‘Does he want to have a talk?’ asked Nessie.

  ‘He doesn’t want to talk,’ said Steve. ‘He wants your bodeeeeeee!’

  Nessie made a dismissive gesture with her knife at Steve’s leer. ‘Is he still seeing her? That’s the important thing.’

  ‘He has to; she’s a colleague so they have a professional relationship, he said. But I got the distinct impression that I’m the one he wants to have a personal relationship with.’

  ‘Ambiguous,’ said Steve, ‘he could be having impersonal fucks with her.’

  Nessie turned to Keira and said, ‘Find out exactly what happened, whether she’s dumped him or what.’ Nessie scraped the zucchini slices and tomato chunks into the saucepan.

  ‘But it’s funny, I’m not sure if I want to see him. I thought I did yesterday but when I thought about it today …’

  ‘You get used to being free,’ said Steve. ‘It’s great – you can fuck around as much as you like!’

  Nessie tossed a zucchini end at him. It hit him on the shoulder.

  Keira ignored him and said, ‘I’ve got used to doing without him and now with my life so full I’ve hardly got time for a relationship.’

  ‘Cooking wine,’ said Steve, pouring white wine into three glasses. ‘Wine for the cooks.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Keira, clinking glasses with the other two. ‘I was going through the motions, doing what had to be done but wanting to be dead, and then dealing with my essay and my mad family and their shenanigans, and painting my walls purple …’

  ‘And the skirting boards and architraves and the light fixture!’ said Steve.

  ‘And the window frames and ceiling and furniture!’ said Nessie.

  ‘Don’t exaggerate. And it’s not all purple, it’s also lavender and mauve and violet.’ Keira ignored Nessie and Steve’s laughter. ‘And now, maybe going through the motions has turned into real life, and maybe I could be happy without him … I don’t know though. I didn’t feel like this last night.’

  ‘Keep your equilibrium,’ said Nessie. ‘Don’t risk seeing him again.’

  ‘Shit!’ said Steve. ‘No parmesan.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Keira, ‘I feel like a walk anyway.’

  She took some kitty money and walked up the hall and out the front door. As she began to push the chest-high cast-iron front gate open, she heard a car door slam to her right. Glancing over, her heart stopped for a couple of seconds before galloping into action again.

  There was Alan, his eyes locked on Keira’s. He walked up and, the gate between them, put his hands on either side of hers on the railing. Keira cursed the fact that she was in her old jeans and a nondescript jumper. She pushed her hair behind her ears.

  ‘I’m going to the shop,’ she said, drinking in his blue eyes, his neat ears, his soft curly light-fawn hair. He was wearing his caramel-coloured corduroy jacket.

  ‘Let me drive you.’

  The smell of his car – soap and leather, even though the seats were vinyl – stopped her heart again. It was not far to the corner shop but the drive lasted an ineffably long time as she sneaked looks at his handsome profile and vulnerable neck. They barely spoke until she had bought the cheese and hopped back in the car.

  ‘Are the others home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why don’t we drive to Cooper Park for a talk then?’

  Cooper Park was a serene, green wilderness of a place, seeming much further away than it actually was. Seeing him in her favourite place would make it impossible to think straight.

  ‘They’re waiting for the cheese,’ said Keira.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, looking at her with a small smile on his face as if thinking: whatever you want. He switched on the ignition and drove towards Woodstock Street but veered off to Woollahra Park, close by, and stopped the car. ‘Just for a minute.’ He turned towards her and rested his left elbow on the back of the seat.

  Keira could hear him breathing. His eyes looked intense. She couldn’t trust herself to remain composed and looked away from his face. Through the windscreen were winter trees, nearly bare of leaves. The closest was an immense chestnut. A smaller one grew beside it, with a small distance between them.

  He turned and looked at the trees too. Dozens of tiny birds were floating out of the larger tree like leaves falling sideways. They landed on the smaller tree, flitted a bit, then flew up to the bigger tree again. Alan and Keira watched as the birds did this repeatedly.

  ‘Silver-eyes,’ said Alan. ‘So pretty, so incomprehensible. Are they playing?’

  ‘Maybe they’re exercising.’

  This struck them as a huge joke. Then Alan stopped laughing, turned away from the flitting silver-eyes, and looked at her.

  ‘Keira,’ he said, ‘I’ve been thinking about you. I stopped myself from ringing before because I wanted to give you time. And myself too. I didn’t want to ruin things any further … The thing is, I miss you.’ He paused. ‘A lot.’

  He leant in closer to her and they looked intently into each other’s eyes. He put his hands up to either side of her face. Keira felt weak.

  Alan leant closer and the feeling of his lips against hers made her heart quake. As she inhaled the familiar, captivating smell of his lime aftershave she felt as insubstantial as a silver-eye, as if any minute now she could start flying and flitting. She smiled at the ridiculous image, repressing an urge to giggle with nervous happiness.

  Her arms slid around him and any hint of mirth evaporated as they kissed and he pulled the back of her head towards him with a gentle pressure of his palm. Keira always melted when he did this. Soon she was making little inchoate sounds of bliss.

 
Finally they drew apart, panting.

  ‘Let’s go to my place,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve got to deliver the cheese.’

  His laugh was sudden and loud. ‘Has anyone ever told you,’ he said, ‘that you have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility?’

  He turned away, switched on the ignition and drove to Woodstock Street. They got out of the car and stood close together on the footpath. Keira took his hand and they went inside. She ushered him through the reddish light into her bedroom. ‘Back in a tick,’ she said, and walked lightly down the hall, stood in the kitchen doorway and tossed the parmesan to Steve, who caught it with his right hand.

  Keira gestured in the direction of the hall with her thumb. ‘I ran into Alan. See you later,’ she said. ‘Much later.’

  Steve and Nessie stared at her, Nessie with her jaw practically hanging open, to which Keira pretended to be airily oblivious. She turned, smiling, and feeling as light as a silver-eye, floated up the hall, went into her room and closed the door.

  ‘Everything’s purple,’ he said.

  ‘Felt like a change,’ she said, going to him and holding him tightly. They kissed some more, blindly kicking off their shoes without stopping.

  They took each other’s clothes off and slid into the bed. He made love urgently, quickly, too quick for her. Usually he took his time, saying that she needed to be ‘savoured’. ‘Sorry,’ he said, but it didn’t take long for him to make her come with his fingers and she cried out and clung to him with the intensity of it.

  *

  The following morning they woke to warm sunshine and the little cheeps of wrens in the rosemary bush outside. Keira stretched her body against Alan’s and wound her arms around him, her fingers entwined in his silky hair. She felt weightless, boneless with warm relaxed bliss. Her stomach growled, comically loud. They laughed.

  ‘Mmmmmmmm,’ she said, ‘I need coffee and food.’

  ‘I suppose at some stage we’ll need to have a conversation too,’ he said.

  45

  DEIRDRE

  August 1973