Keepers of the House

by JH Fletcher

He smiled cynically; for the first time she sensed his anger. ‘Fell the hardwood and replace it with pine.’

  ‘Timber is a resource. Like it or not —’

  ‘No!’ Violently. ‘That’s what all you people say. All trees are not the same. A pine plantation is sterile; indigenous forests sustain life. You’re cutting them faster than they can regenerate. When they’re gone —’

  Anna had heard the arguments so often. ‘I am sick of being told I’m an ecological vandal —’

  ‘Don’t behave like one, then.’

  ‘We don’t make a move without getting impact studies —’

  ‘Not what I’ve heard.’

  ‘It’s true.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I have a meeting. I’ll have to break this off.’

  His face closed. ‘I suppose I should thank you for seeing me at all.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ She didn’t want them to part like this. ‘Why don’t we have dinner later in the week? We’ll have more time to talk then.’

  They went to the Rocks, a restaurant she knew. As they ate, they talked of all that had happened in their lives. Anna’s time in Africa, the prison term Ben had served once, how over the years both of them had become increasingly involved in the preoccupations that had shaped their lives.

  ‘Business and conservation,’ Anna said. ‘We’d be unstoppable if only we’d learn to work together.’

  ‘Is that talk? Or do you really care?’

  She stared at him. ‘Of course I care.’

  ‘Then use your influence to get Gippsland out of woodchipping. That would be a start.’

  She shook her head ruefully. ‘No one has that sort of influence. Believe me.’

  Ben scowled. ‘Someone had better have it soon, or it’ll be too late.’

  She hadn’t invited him to dinner to be told how she was failing the universe. ‘You talk as though people don’t count, that the only things that matter are trees.’

  ‘It’s because people matter that trees matter, as well. You can’t have one without the other.’

  Still too serious, she thought. He has never learned to smile. A pity; if he could get people to laugh, he could change the world.

  ‘You have to make people feel good about the things you want. Keep telling them how guilty they are, they won’t do anything.’

  ‘They are guilty.’

  ‘Makes no sense to tell them so.’

  She made herself merry, laughing at his sombre expression. ‘You should be pleased, seeing me again after so long.’

  It worked. Eventually he smiled, too, light coming to a face that had known too much darkness.

  After dinner they walked past the open-air restaurants, their canvas canopies spread like sails against the darkness. Still she laughed, determined to be happy.

  They stood at the end of the jetty, hearing the water slopping against the piles and looking across the water to the lights necklacing the northern shore.

  ‘The earth would be such a great place,’ Ben said, ‘if only people would leave it alone.’

  He sounded pained by the immensity of the gulf between what might be and what was.

  Anna was moved to comfort him. She put her arm around him, holding him tight.

  ‘You told me once I should build a power base in business or politics,’ he said. ‘I never learned to do that. When I want something, I go for it straight.’

  He spoke apologetically, as though his lack of subtlety had failed a vision they had shared. Anna remembered it differently; they had shared nothing but a fleeting and perverse attraction. I slept with him, she thought, but in retrospect remembered it as no more than an act of kindness, like patting a small boy on the head.

  Neither of us was old, exactly, yet even then he made me feel more like his mother than his lover.

  ‘You should help us,’ Ben said.

  ‘You told me once that if I got my feet in the trough I’d never take them out,’ she reminded him, arm still about him.

  ‘You saying I was wrong?’ But laughed without malice.

  ‘The jury is still out,’ she said.

  They parted. She had intended going back to her office but now she changed her mind. Instead she walked to the terminal and took a ferry across the harbour.

  The breeze lifting her hair, she watched the darkness, the occasional blink of foam. The hull vibrated beneath her feet and the lights of the city receded steadily behind her. She thought about the evening, Ben’s solemnity and how she had tried to make him laugh. We don’t laugh enough, she thought. Life is such a sober business. What happened to fun?

  She had a feeling of life slipping past her. I want to stretch out and grab it before it’s too late. I want to live. Solemnity or not, she envied Ben. He had something he believed worthy of sacrifice. He had even been to jail. The cock-eyed way she was thinking tonight made that seem a gesture of extraordinary value. What have I got, she asked herself, to compare with that?

  She shook her head irritably, suspecting self-pity. If you don’t like what you’ve made of your life, why don’t you do something about it?

  Like what? Resign my directorships? Chain myself to trees? Stop shaving my legs?

  You handle failure badly, she thought, that’s your trouble. When Canberra fell apart, you hated yourself for weeks. Now you’ve broken with Mostyn and you’re blaming yourself all over again. Post-marital depression doesn’t suit you. Your husband’s a shit. You’re well rid of him.

  The ferry reached the terminus; she went ashore and began to walk the mile that separated her from the house. Her shoes were not meant for hiking yet she strode along vigorously, as though by punishing her body she could dispel the desolation that threatened her.

  Do something. Like what? Start an affair? With Ben? The idea was not as preposterous as it would have seemed twenty-four hours ago. She was dubious, all the same.

  Do you really want another man in your life? Why should you assume he’s interested, anyway? The only reason he came to see you was because he wanted something.

  Stop Woodchipping; the slogan was like a banner draped across her brain. It was impossible. Thousands of jobs depended on it. Switch off the economy and everyone would be out of work. What good would that do?

  Trouble with you, she mocked herself, you admire idealism even when you don’t agree with its objective. You don’t need a man; you need a cause. Although a sincere man with a cause, someone who thought more of others than himself, would be nice. Would certainly be a change.

  She reached the house, went through the side gate into the garden, strolled pensively.

  Her life was coming full circle. In the last month she had caught up with Mark, who three days ago had left on a return visit to South Africa, and now Ben. She had seen neither of them for years; each, in his different way, had been good for her. She had loved Mark; it was safe, now, to admit that to herself. She had enjoyed being with him again, finding that the old resentments had died at last. It would not be impossible to start over with Mark, she thought, if that was what they wanted.

  With Ben there had never been so much, but he was a stronger man now, a committed man. Given the right degree of provocation, she thought, perhaps even a formidable man.

  A cause he believed in …

  Perhaps she really did need a cause, she thought. Something to make her life worthwhile. You’re forty-one, she told herself, exasperated. A bit early to be quite so menopausal.

  He had unsettled her nonetheless. When, two days later, he phoned to ask her out, she agreed.

  It was not a light-hearted evening; Ben brought his obsessions, and his intensity, with him. To the point where Anna began to wonder whether he had asked her out simply to recruit her to the conservation movement.

  ‘Years ago you told me I needed big business to help in my quest to save the earth.’

  As before, she tried to tease him into a more relaxed frame of mind.

  ‘Quest? How melodramatic!’ Sadly, he seemed unable to respond.

  ‘
I make no apologies for what is no more than the truth. Exploitation is ruining the Murray River. Within ten or twenty years the South Australian wheat industry could be wiped out, yet nobody does anything about it. If we don’t change our ways, we’re facing disaster.’

  He stared at her accusingly, as though it were her fault, but there was a limit to how much intensity Anna could take. She tried to change the subject, but Ben would have none of it.

  ‘You’re like the rest of the business community. Young people understand, but business and politicians don’t want to know. Talk about the economy and they listen, but mention conservation and they couldn’t care less. Yet conservation is economics, the management of resources. Without a healthy earth, we won’t have any resources to manage.’

  Anna thought she could not take much more of it yet liked him, despite all, for himself and the strength of his convictions. She did something she had told herself she would never do: invited him back to the house where, for half the night, they sat side by side on the settee, and watched the televised images of athletes swimming like otters.

  From time to time she poured drinks; Ben’s enthusiasm for conservation did not extend to alcohol, thank God, but as for sport … He battled to show enthusiasm for something in which he had no interest but Anna was without mercy. She wanted to see it; he would just have to put up with it. She told herself it would do him good.

  He is too fanatical, she thought. Yet defence of the environment was such a worthwhile cause. She felt guilty that she could not match his intensity; had already convinced herself, with only a little encouragement from Ben, that he was a much finer person than she was.

  Perhaps it was her sense of inadequacy and guilt that conditioned her response when he took leave of her in the small hours. He stood outside the front door, invited her to go away with him the following weekend, and she said yes.

  The door was barely shut before she was asking herself, very seriously, whether she had taken leave of her senses. It was one thing to respect Ben for his sense of vocation, understandable that his dedication, however trying it might sometimes be, should have awoken in her such a sense of inadequacy. It was something else entirely to have let him talk her into a weekend that was presumably intended to end in bed.

  She went back into the living room. She stared at the familiar, comfortable furniture, the pools of light cast by the lamps. My sanctuary, she thought. A place of refuge that I have deliberately permitted to be violated by a man whom I like and respect, but most certainly do not love.

  She could not go away with him. A bit late in the day to be changing her mind, but there it was. Cancelling wouldn’t be easy; he had asked, she had accepted, they had both known exactly what they were talking about. How, without causing enormous offence, would she be able to get out of it now?

  ‘You are a fool,’ she told herself crossly.

  Which didn’t help. Somehow a way would have to be found. The alternative was out of the question.

  She found the Glenfiddich and gave herself the biggest drink she had ever poured in her life. Gulped it down. Good malt whisky. What a waste. For the moment, she didn’t care. She had a second drink, only marginally smaller than the first. The whisky, coming on top of everything else she had drunk during the evening, hit her like an axe.

  Go on, make a real job of it, she told herself. Start by being sorry for yourself, then hit the booze. What comes next? Suicide?

  Doing a real hatchet job on myself. A self-inflicted hatchet job on Hatchet Harcourt’s wife. Good evening, sir or madam. Allow me to introduce. Hatchet’s on the rampage, lawyers getting fat, please put a dollar in the old woman’s hat.

  You’ll be drunk, directly. You’re drunk now.

  She did not care about that, either; for the moment, it seemed quite a good idea. She leant back, closed her eyes. The darkness spun and went out.

  She woke with a dry mouth and sore head. She struggled out of the chair, fetched a glass of water and tipped it down with a couple of disprins.

  She stared at her reflection. Lady Macbeth after a night on the town. Let’s get to bed.

  She went back into the lounge to turn the lights out and saw the post where Mrs Casey had left it on the side table. She picked up the handful of letters, remembering the one that had been waiting to ambush her the day Mostyn had walked out.

  No danger of that, this time. All their sharing and achievements, hurts and disagreements, had come down to the ultimate aridity, a succession of communications between solicitors. She looked around at the empty house. They had shared this, too, once.

  She glanced through the letters mechanically, saw a stamp she didn’t recognise. She paused, squinting at it under the light. An antelope of some kind, with scimitar-like horns.

  South Africa.

  A last-minute meeting had come up, unexpectedly. Anna phoned Ben and arranged to meet him at the Blue Mountains hotel that he had picked for their weekend.

  In the end she had done nothing about cancelling, had told herself it was not cowardice, or at least not cowardice alone. Perhaps, if she let the arrangement go ahead, she would find once they were together that things would work out, after all.

  It had to be the most forlorn of hopes and, within minutes of her arrival, facing Ben in the room he had taken, she knew it was not going to happen. Which left only one possible course of action.

  After she had told him, there was an appalling silence. Ben stared at her, incredulous, white-lipped.

  She waited. She was never normally lacking in courage, but was so completely to blame for the situation, for the humiliation that she had brought so unwittingly upon him, that now she was frightened out of her wits. Far worse, she was ashamed, wretched. She stood, submissively, awaiting his fury. The unbearable silence drew out and, with every second, Anna felt herself die a little.

  Eventually Ben spoke, his voice controlled but as cold as the Antarctic. ‘Let me get this straight. You agreed to come away for the weekend and now you’re saying you’ve changed your mind?’

  He made no attempt to conceal outrage. As for Anna … It was strange to discover that she was still capable of tears.

  ‘I’m beginning to think you don’t know what you want.’

  Her hands reached, clutching. ‘I like you very much. Admire you, too. In your own way, you’re the strongest man I know …’

  No word of love.

  ‘You just don’t want to go to bed with me.’

  She wilted. ‘Let’s go to bed, then. Let’s hold each other.’

  Ben stared. ‘Hold you?’

  ‘If we do, maybe I’ll feel different.’

  Perhaps she hoped that physical contact would overcome doubt. It wasn’t that simple.

  ‘And afterwards?’

  A lopsided smile, closer to tears than laughter. ‘We’ll find out, won’t we?’

  Ben was having none of it. ‘Sounds too much like masturbation for me.’

  Her face went white. ‘I’ve blown it, haven’t I?’

  Mercy eluded him. ‘I reckon.’

  In the circumstances it was a good thing they’d driven there separately. They shared a painfully silent meal, a night spiky with resentment. Both lay awake, taking enormous care not to touch. Eventually, thank God, it was over. First thing the next morning, Ben was out of there. To the very last they were polite. It was terrible.

  Anna sat alone in the hotel’s beamed dining room. A waitress brought her food. She ate, having not the slightest idea what it was. She drank coffee, felt tranquillity trickle back. She had hurt Ben and grieved for it; had probably lost his friendship and grieved for that, too. Yet could not deny relief. At the last minute, scruples and the letter that Mark had sent from South Africa had saved her. It would never have worked for either of them.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Shadows of the past filled Anna’s mind. Mark, Anneliese, her cousin Pieter Wolmarans, whom she had not seen since she had visited South Africa fifteen years before. Most of all, perhaps, the farm Oude
kraal itself, with its great house.

  She flew South African Airways from Sydney to Johannesburg. The first class cabin attendant was black; something that she suspected would not have happened in the old days. She wondered what other changes she would find in the country that, after so long and so unexpectedly, had drawn her back.

  For the hundredth time, she took Mark’s letter from her bag and read it. Cry from a Dark Continent had become official reading at the University of the Western Cape, outside Cape Town, and he had been invited there to give an address. She had not expected to hear from him but was pleased to have done so. Was considerably less pleased by what he had to say:

  I paid a visit to Oudekraal. Your cousin was very defensive, almost hostile. I think something has happened to upset him. In fact that is understating it; he gave the impression of being at his wits’ end with worry, but what it was all about I don’t know. I mentioned your name, but it didn’t help. Quite the opposite, in fact. He couldn’t wait to chuck me out.

  She found it incredible that a person’s roots could have such power. She had visited the country only once, fifteen years before. While there she had known happiness and sorrow, trauma and excitement, fear and a crippling sense of loss. She had seen the pristine gable of Oudekraal white as sugar against the grey-green bulk of the mountain, in imagination had driven in her great-grandmother’s buggy along the dusty, vine-bordered lanes of long ago. All that, yet none of it had anything to do with her real life. Or so she had thought.

  She had always told herself that one day she would return but had made no plans, had never dreamt that nostalgia would seize control of her in such a way. Revisiting her roots: a far-fetched explanation, if she had ever heard one. Yet what other reason could there be?

  She had read Mark’s letter, alarm bells had rung. She had tried, unsuccessfully, to telephone her cousin; when that hadn’t worked, she had cancelled all her appointments and taken the first flight she could get.

  She was known in every boardroom in Sydney for the coolness and objectivity of her judgements, yet that was what she had done. It was ludicrous.