It was closed and it’s never opened again.
Muriel fussed but I ignored her. She was no longer anything to do with me. I was the island ogre and she had to leave.
She didn’t, though. She clung on for another week and then another. And then I woke one morning and she was vomiting.
That one night and I’d made her pregnant.
The thought made me feel as if my head was exploding.
I had no choice. I opened the door and asked her to leave.
The words were blurring on the page. I grabbed Drifter and lifted her up onto my knee. Her big body flopped almost to the floor at the tail end but she reached up to my face and licked. Tears? I hugged her so hard. Somehow I kept going.
No one here knows the whole truth. Apart from Fraser. And Louise McLachlan. Our lady doctor.
I remember that last morning. Louise stormed in without knocking, yelling at me like you wouldn’t believe. Louise was little and calm but she wasn’t calm that day.
‘She’s leaving. Fraser’s put her on the boat. He says you kicked her out. He picked her up from the road outside here and took her home to his place. He says you’re crazy. He says you locked her out!’
‘It’s none of his business. Or yours.’ I was too far gone to say anything else, but Louise, who’d helped treat my burns, who’d cared for me with her husband, was no longer the compassionate doctor. She let me have it with both barrels— and I deserved it.
‘I know you’re ill,’ she yelled. ‘I know you can’t see past your scars but she’s your wife.You know she’s pregnant. I gave her the result yesterday. Is that what this is about? You don’t want the baby? What the hell have you done?’
It seemed Fraser had rung Louise.They’d both cared for her, but she’d been adamant.The supply boat was about to leave and she was leaving with it.
I’ve never, before or after, seen Louise so angry. ‘The baby’s yours. Isn’t it? She says it is.’
‘Of course it is.’ I wasn’t denying that.
‘Then why?’
‘It’s none of your business,’ I said again but there was no stopping her.
‘That business with the kids on the beach.’ She knew of that. Of course she did. It must be the joke of the whole island. I imagine the kids were even being treated as heroes.
‘Forget it.’ I remember thinking my voice seemed … dead.
‘You’re a fool. She loves you.’
‘She might have done once,’ I told her, but I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t think of what we once had. ‘She has her family,’ I managed. ‘Her parents are wealthy.They’ll help her take care of the child. She can go back to her old life.’
‘As if she can.’
But nothing she could say made a difference. The thing was done. ‘She’s made us promise we won’t tell,’ she said, suddenly cold. ‘Fraser and me.The whole island will think she’s deserted you. Is that what you want?’
‘I don’t care what the island thinks.’
She stormed out and slammed the door behind her.The next time I saw her she was polite, doctor treating patient. I couldn’t fault her care over the next fifty years. As the island’s sympathy veered back to me and away from the wife they thought had walked away from me, she’d purse her lips and say nothing. So did Fraser. Muriel had asked for silence and they honoured her wishes.
And that was it.
So there you have it, Jennifer.
I hope your grandmother gives this to you, but it’s her choice. After giving me the gift of silence for so long, I respect her right to keep silent forever. But I hope she won’t.
She deserves better.
17
breakline n. the point where the waves swell, curve and topple.
Sometimes your body simply says enough. Enough emotion. Enough of everything. I felt like I was simply shutting down. I sat at the kitchen table and hugged Drifter for a very long time.
Finally I put the letter into the bureau with the rest, carefully, in date order. I set my alarm to check Muriel through the night and somehow I slept.
At dawn I was still exhausted.
Jack was right where he always was at this time. He was riding a breaker as if he was part of the wave itself. I watched, letting the sight of him take me out of my thoughts of that letter. Of the memory of the blackness of the water. Of the gut-wrenching despair of thinking Muriel was dead.
I could feel it as if I were on the board with him. The power of the wave was driving his board down the line. I was learning the terms now, and I knew what he was doing. I watched him carving a brilliant cutback, curving under the lip, riding the rolling swell to the last, then, just as the wave folded in on itself, stilling momentarily in the whitewash before slipping seamlessly off the back.
I watched as he lay full-length on the board to start the long, loping paddle out beyond the break. I watched as he waited, at one with the board and the sea, seemingly with all the patience in the world until the next set came. Until the next rolling swell took him and carried him once more towards shore.
He caught another. And another. I watched on.
He was driven by shadows that were at least as deep as mine.
As deep as Muriel’s?
Don’t go there. The letter … It was too much to take in.
Surfing had been Muriel’s escape. Jack’s escape.
Finally I thought … Could it be mine?
I needed to block out the pain of this little house. I needed to cart one of Henry’s boards down to the beach and try again to stand up.
In your dreams, Jennifer Kelly. You’re a doctor. Not a surfer.
What had Jack said?
‘Dr Kelly. Obstetrician. Dairy farmer. All you need is to learn how to run the surf school and you’ll have found yourself a niche for life.’
I needed to keep away from surfing.
I needed to keep away from Jack.
I headed out to the kitchen like a scared rabbit scuttling for cover and made a mug of the island’s travesty-coffee. And tea for Muriel.
She was wide awake and spitting venom. She ignored my proffered cup of tea, and her voice was a mixture of fury and desolation. ‘Why did you bring me back?’
I shrugged, trying to depersonalise it. ‘I can’t speak for Fraser, but saving lives is what Jack and I trained to do.’ I offered the tea again and she grudgingly accepted.
‘Do you want me to phone Al?’ I tried. Very tentatively.
‘Al?’
‘Al Heinrigger?’ I said patiently. ‘The guy you’ve been sharing a yacht—and I presume a bed—with for the last two years? The cute little round guy.’
‘Why would I want you to phone Al?’
‘Because you love him?’
‘I don’t love Al.’ She sounded scornful.
This was getting personal. We didn’t do personal.
But maybe after last night … yes we do.
‘So you still love Henry?’
‘Maybe.’
Wow, that was a breakthrough. And it was time for more.
‘I read the letter.’
‘Stupid. I should have burned it. If I thought I’d live I’d never have left it for you. Forget it. Keep your nose out of what doesn’t concern you.’
‘I’m not going anywhere until we talk about it.’
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘Nor was it my business to haul you out of the sea. Deal with it.’
Enough of tiptoeing around the past. We were glaring at each other like two pacing bulls.
‘You’re a fool,’ Muriel threw at me at last.
‘So I’ve been told. Often. Tell me your side.’
She still glared but her eyes darted sideways as if looking for some escape. ‘Go away.’
‘No.’
I waited. The silence grew heavier. Dammit, I’ll sit here all morning if I must, I decided. This had to break.
And then, to my amazement, it did.
Her gaze changed. She closed her eyes and when s
he opened them she was looking straight at me, almost as if she was figuring where to aim. But also … It was as if she was staring straight at a past that horrified her.
‘Fifty years ago,’ she said. ‘He said he should have died in the crash.’
I needed a psych degree. I had no idea how to respond. ‘Because he was so injured?’ I tried.
She closed her eyes again at that, her pain clearly visible. ‘He got the Victoria Cross. That’s Australia’s highest military honour. For bravery. His plane was hit but he kept flying until all the crew had parachuted out. Finally he did, but he was burned.’
She paused. I thought she wouldn’t continue.
I stayed silent. All I could do was wait.
‘We were so happy before,’ she said at last, almost talking to herself. ‘We couldn’t believe we’d found each other. By then Henry was supposed to be training fighter pilots, not flying. He was supposed to be safe. One more stint in ’Nam, he said, and he’d be out of there. His family had a huge landholding in Australia. There was the island, too. He told me about it, how he planned to bring me here for a delayed honeymoon. Both our families had money. The future was ours. We’d travel between Australia and Manhattan. He’d teach me to fly. He’d teach me to surf! One more stint and our life would begin.’
Her voice trailed away and I thought she’d stop. When she started again, her voice was cold, hard and laced with pain.
‘Only of course they were down a pilot and Henry stepped in and that was that. Prisoner of war—that was better than dead but the waiting to hear … I nearly went mad. And when they finally got him out … The first time I saw him in hospital I walked straight past him. Then, in that first instant when I realised it was Henry, I was horrified. Sickened. And he saw it. I couldn’t hide it fast enough.’
‘The way he looked appalled you?’
‘Of course it did.’ She gave a choking sob. ‘But I wasn’t repelled. They’re two different things, horror and repugnance—but he couldn’t get it.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Neither did I,’ she said bitterly. ‘I didn’t understand the way he thought. I loved him so much, but he wouldn’t let me close. He hated how he was. But I didn’t, at least not like he thought.’
‘So what happened?’ I was scarcely taking air. It seemed the whole world was holding its breath. Waiting for the end to this too-drawn-out story.
‘We came back to this farm,’ she said, her voice flat now. ‘This was the most isolated of Henry’s family holdings. He’d come here as a young man and he’d loved it. Just loved it. But he said he didn’t need me. He told me to stay in the States, but of course I wouldn’t. But he never forgot that moment when I first saw him in hospital. He didn’t want me to come with him. When I insisted, he told me over and over to go home. To let him be.’
‘He didn’t want you?’
‘I’m sure he did, but he was still the hero. He was doing what he thought was the heroic thing. “Go back to your old life,” he’d say. “Find yourself someone who’s not ruined.” He couldn’t see that after that first awful moment I didn’t see the burns. I only saw him.’
‘Oh, Muriel …’
But she wasn’t listening to me. She was in a world of fifty years ago. ‘He drove everyone away,’ she whispered. ‘No one could get near him. Jack McLachlan’s grandparents were the doctors here then—they were lovely and they tried to help. They tried to care, but he wouldn’t let them. As for … physical needs … it was as if it disgusted him that he was still man enough to want me. He should be dead, he said, over and over. But then … one night … one night he broke all his own rules. One night …’
Somehow I had taken hold of her hand. She wasn’t pulling away. She was back there, remembering horror. Remembering pain.
‘So he cracked,’ she whispered. ‘For that one night. He told you about it in the letter. One amazing night but that was all, and then I had to tell him I was pregnant. I woke feeling ill. He found me retching in the sink and he guessed.’
I took Muriel’s other hand, holding both now, almost hugging her. It was a measure of Muriel’s distress that she didn’t seem to notice.
‘He just exploded.’ She hardly seemed to be talking to me. She was looking into the past. ‘He shouted that my parents were worth a fortune. He shouted, “They can look after a child. Go back to them. Tell everyone your husband’s dead like I should be.” Then he said: “No one deserves a father like me. You’re being sick now. Do you think I could live with a child who retches at the sight of me? Who can’t bring his friends home because his father’s deformed?” And then he threw me out. He threw my passport out after me and locked the door.’
‘Grandma!’ I was so appalled I could hardly speak. ‘Oh, Grandma …’
And suddenly I was thinking of the practicalities. A pregnant woman, nauseous, in her nightgown, locked out of her house. ‘What … what did you do?’ I whispered.
‘Fraser found me,’ she said, her voice suddenly acerbic. ‘I stood in the garden for what seemed hours. The grass was wet with dew. I remember looking at my surfboard, thinking of the impossibility of taking it with me. How stupid’s that? I remember standing on the wet grass at five in the morning, hugging my board. Just numb. The sun was coming up and the surf looked fantastic. I thought then of just … floating out to sea. But of course I didn’t. And then Fraser came. He was on his way to the harbour to take his boat out and he saw me from the road.’
‘Did he punch Henry’s lights out?’ I said, hopefully, but I don’t think she even heard.
‘Fraser … I thought he was going to smash the cottage door down he was so angry. But then … I think I sort of collapsed and he had to look after me. He took me home to his mother’s place— she was away, thank God. He fed me, dressed me … He must have come back here to get my things—to be honest I don’t remember and who knows what he said to Henry? I asked him to take me to the harbour so I could catch a boat home. I remember it was a supply boat day. How lucky was that? So in the end I almost went home respectable.’
And then, almost in an instant, the chink in her protective armour closed. She looked up at me and glared, as if daring me to deny what she said next. ‘So that’s the end of the story,’ she snapped. ‘Finished.’
She subsided under the sheet and I heard her sob.
But it couldn’t end there. Dumbfounded as I was, angry as I was, I knew that this moment was a mere hiccup in Muriel’s fifty-year determination to be someone who didn’t share feelings, ever. If I didn’t find out the whole story now, I probably never would.
So I found some tissues, pushed them under the covers, and waited some more.
The moment the sobs eased, I pushed.
‘But … my mother. Sonia?’
There was an angry sniff from beneath the sheet. ‘You want everything.’
‘You might as well,’ I said, attempting lightness. ‘It’s a morning for breaking rules.’
She pushed back her sheet, dropped the tissues, and shot me a glance that was half angry, half scared.
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘Try me.’
‘I hardly knew your mother.’
‘That’s what I don’t understand. Why didn’t you know your daughter?’
And she told me that, too.
‘You know my parents were rich.’ Her voice seemed lifeless now, dreary, as though reciting a story that had little to do with her. ‘Very rich. When Sonia was born I was … a little bit dead. I was also ill. It was a hard birth and I had infection after infection. I think I had what they now call post-natal depression. Or maybe it was all about what had happened with Henry. And of course my parents were horrified. I was their only child. They hadn’t wanted me to marry Henry. Sure, he was from a wealthy family but he was Australian; he wasn’t of our scene. After he was burned they thought he was horrible. They couldn’t understand why I was so upset that he’d set me free. When I kept grieving they seemed to give up on me, but when S
onia was born they had a second chance.’
‘They loved my mother?’
‘In the only way they knew how. They petted her and indulged her, and by the time I woke from my self-pity or mental illness or whatever it was, Sonia didn’t seem mine. She didn’t need me. She didn’t want me. So in the end I just gave up. I just felt … finished. I’d failed Henry and I’d failed Sonia, too.’
‘You didn’t try to break through?’
‘I didn’t know where to start,’ she said helplessly. ‘These days I’d have been able to call on a psychologist or something to help. But it was all too hard. Sonia didn’t want anything to do with me and I thought, I’m not any good at this. I’ve thought about it since. I should have stood up to my parents even then. I should have taken control. Even if she hated me while I did. But …’ She shook her head. ‘The doctors gave me little white pills that made it better. God knows how many of those things I took.’
‘But you made yourself a life.’ She’d never seemed depressed when I’d known her. Anything but.
‘Of course I did.’ Defiance emerged, a hint of the old Muriel. ‘I abandoned the pill bottle at last but I’d lost Sonia. I’d lost Henry, but I had to do something. So I took over where I’d left off when I’d met Henry. What else was I to do? I took lovers. I partied. I tried not to care.’
‘But you didn’t succeed?’ Once again I felt like I was treading on broken glass, every word seeming to hurt.
‘Of course I cared. Sonia looked like Henry and it hurt. The way she looked at me. “Go away,” she’d say, even when she was little more than a baby. It was impossible to get close. I wasn’t allowed. My parents were there, siding with her against me, telling me I had no idea how to bring up a child. She got herself into all sorts of messes but even then she wouldn’t let me help. When she was about twenty she threw at me that I’d never bothered introducing her to her father. It was the one thing my parents would never do for her. I told you the rest. She demanded money, and God help me, I paid for her to come here. I think … I think it was my last try. To link with Henry. To try and give him something. His daughter.’
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