The Heart of the Matter

by Lindsay Armstrong

  'Only that you're very lucky! Do you ever spare a thought for all us countless spinsters eating our hearts out for the likes of Robert Randall and David Marchmont?' Evonne adopted a look of such mourn-fulness, Clarissa had to smile.

  'I couldn't even begin to imagine you as a poor spinster, Evonne,' she said. 'And talking of male animals, I happened to notice that the one sitting next to you at dinner wasn't a bad example either, and what's more, to put it simply, couldn't take his eyes off you. Whereas I,' she went on, 'had Brunnhilde next but one to me and a strange little man on the other side who gave me the third degree about wide shearing combs! Who is he, by the way? He said his name was Roger something

  'Oh God, did he?' Evonne stopped and looked at Clarissa urgently. 'You mean he really

  'He really did. Why? What's wrong?'

  'He's the special correspondent of the Canberra Times'. You could end up in print tomorrow, Clarry!'

  'But that's not fair! I had no idea who he was!'

  'What did you say?' asked Evonne.

  'Exactly what I thought. ..'

  'Clarry? Evonne?' Rob had strolled up to them and

  was standing looking down at them with a curious smile. 'You look like two naughty little girls caught robbing the sweet shop! What is it?'

  Evonne told him. 'Relax, girls,' he said with a broadening smile. 'He's spoken to me and asked my permission to mention in his column that Bernard Kingston's daughter is not only beautiful but intelligent and amusing.'

  'Well,' laughed Evonne, 'I think this calls for a celebration—a drink, in other words! Because you're made now, Clarry, I would say. Wouldn't you?' she appealed to Rob.

  But Rob only raised his eyebrows quizzically.

  The rest of the evening passed amazingly quickly and with no more alarms or serious nerves for Clarissa. She danced with a variety of people and got to meet David and Lineesa Marchmont. In fact they were to form one of her most lasting impressions of the party. She was introduced to them separately and liked them both, but it was what she saw later in the evening that made such an impact on her, although she didn't realize it at the time.

  They had been apart for some time, the March-monts, talking to different people, with different groups, dancing with others. Then Lineesa came back to David's side and although he was deep in conversation, Clarissa, who was standing nearby, got he strongest impression that he knew his wife was there before she said anything, and before he'd seen her. Because he moved his hand and she slid hers into it, and only then did he turn. They looked into each other's eyes for a few moments, so deeply that Clarissa suddenly found herself covered in gooseflesh.

  Then David Marchmont excused himself quietly

  and led his wife on to the dance floor and took her into his arms, and it was the most intensely private coming together of two people in the middle of a crowd Clarissa had ever witnessed, in the sense that, for them, it seemed as if there was no crowd, just the two of them ...

  She turned away abruptly, wondering that she should be feeling a little odd, as if she was trying to understand some hidden truth or meaning or answer a question she hadn't heard asked.

  She wasn't allowed to dwell on it for long yet, but at the end of the night when she and Rob and Evonne were back at the hotel, instead of being high on a triumphant evening, she found herself suddenly feeling exhausted and deflated.

  'I think... I think I'll go to bed,' she said as Evonne was making coffee for them. 'I don't think I'll bother with coffee, thank you. I...' She stopped and bit her lip as something else hit her. The suite had two bedrooms, one of which Evonne was occupying. The other did have twin beds, but it was years since she and Rob had shared a bedroom. Tonight there was no alternative, obviously, but the thought of it was suddenly monumental.

  Did Rob guess what she was thinking? she wondered later. Because he had come across the lounge to her then and put his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her lightly on the forehead. And said, 'You were terrific Clarry. Thank you.'

  'I didn't do much,' she had whispered.

  'Yes, you did. Look, why don't you get ready for bed? I'll look in in a while. Would you mind very much if I commandeered Evonne for a short time now? I've got a briefcase full of notes she might be able to help me put into some sort of useful order.'

  'No! I mean no, I don't mind, but aren't you both tired too?'

  'I might sleep easier if I know it's done. Evonne?' He turned to her.

  'I don't mind,' said Evonne. 'I usually need to unwind before I can go to bed anyway. And if it's ammunition you have in your briefcase, to help avert this strike, I'd like to.'

  'All right,' Clarissa said slowly. 'Goodnight, Evonne. Thank you—for everything,' she added huskily but warmly.

  And Evonne had done something quite uncharacteristic. She had come across the room and hugged Clarissa. 'It was a pleasure.'

  When Rob looked in, Clarissa pretended she was asleep. In fact she wasn't far off it, so the pretense wasn't difficult. Why she should have pretended was not quite clear to her drowsy mind, but when she heard Rob walk quietly out of the room, she also heard Evonne ask, 'All right?' and his reply, 'Yes. Asleep.' Then the door closed and she heard no more. But on top of a brilliant but bewildering day came the painful thought that they might have been talking about a child suffering from over tiredness and reaction. She thought dimly that that was why she was pretending to be asleep—they were at least partly right. She could think no more, she was too confused, too tired, too... She fell asleep.

  She woke just before dawn and lay for a while watching the outlines in the room beginning to define. The curtains on one window weren't quite closed, and anyway, her eyes were adjusting to the darkness. She could make out, gradually, Rob's outline on the other

  bed. He was lying on his side, facing away from her, breathing deeply and evenly, with one arm under the pillow, by the look of it.

  And as the wintry dawn light seeped in, Clarissa shivered. Not because she was cold but because she felt intensely lonely all of a sudden as she remembered that Rob mostly slept on his side.

  And she lay there thinking about it and trying not to but finding her thoughts, her imagination, too powerful to resist...

  She remembered how she had often slept curled up beside him, curved into his body, protected by his shoulder looming over her, his hand—the one not under the pillow—resting on her hip or that arm slid beneath her breasts. It had been what she'd liked best, she thought with a piercing sense of clarity. To be held loosely like that in peace and serenity. To be freed of the weighty obligations of sex which she hadn't thought she was much good at, but to be gathered and held in affection and warmth had moved her and succored her. To wake up and to feel his warm skin against hers and the width of his shoulders behind her narrow ones, the longer length of his legs, to plait her fingers through his—she'd loved that.

  Then the thought crossed her mind that she could get up and slip into his bed, and she trembled and felt her cheeks grow warm and her heart start to beat faster, so fast the she felt as if she was suffocating and as if that awfully familiar sense of confusion and fear was claiming her.

  She did get up, very quietly, but slipped into the bathroom to have a shower.

  Rob hadn't moved when she came out, and on an impulse she slid on a pair of jeans and a thick sweater, then left the suite as silently as a wraith. Evonne's bedroom door was closed and there was no sound from within.

  She came out into George Street and started to walk aimlessly. There was very little traffic but quite a few pedestrians in the dark city canyons, and as she approached Circular Quay, she encountered more and more and realized they were early workers coming up from the underground stations and off the ferries that crisscrossed Sydney Harbor. They were mostly silent, cold-looking people, intent on getting from A to B and out of the chilliness of the early morning where by rights, the best place to be was bed. Clarissa couldn't blame them and paused to think how lucky she was.

  But she kept on walking
past the dingy ferry terminals and up the side of the Quay towards the Opera House. Once up on the terraces there, the world took on a slightly better look. The sun was finally up, the waters of the harbour, blue reflecting a clear sky, the Harbour Bridge impressive, and the Rocks area on the opposite side of Circular Quay clothed in a a pinkish light that was quite becoming.

  Clarissa stood and leant on a railing fence and breathed deeply, and movements beside her nearly made her die of fright because she'd thought she was alone on Bennelong Point beside the sails of the Opera House.

  '... Rob’ Oh, you gave me a fright!' she said breathlessly, staring at the tall figure of her husband, clad as she was in jeans and a blue sweater with his dark hair ruffled and a blue shadow on his jaw. 'Were you ... did I wake you? But you didn't have to follow me. I mean I'm all right. I just felt like going for a walk.'

  He smiled faintly. 'Chase you would be correct. You set a mighty pace when you go for a walk, Mrs.

  Randall. I thought I'd lost you a couple of times!'

  'Those dark streets gave me the willies,' she told him. 'But it's rather nice up here, isn't it? Oh, Rob, you seemed to be sleeping so peacefully, and you must have been tired. I'm sorry!' she added contritely.

  'No need to be,' he assured her. i would have been up soon, and anyway a brisk walk is a good way of getting going—to be doing it with you is a bonus.'

  'You should have cooeeed,’ she said slowly.

  He looked at her. 'You seemed to be lost in thought, Clarry. But it is nice up here, you're right.' He leant his elbows on the railing beside her and they both gazed out over the water.

  Clarissa sniffed the air appreciatively. 'I feel as if I haven't seen the sea for years and years,' she said. 'In fact I can't remember the last time I did see it! It must have been...' She stopped abruptly.

  'On our honeymoon.'

  She glanced at him, but he was staring straight ahead.

  'I didn't really forget,' she said uncertainly. 'I mean...' She bit her lip.

  'Do you know what I think?' Rob said slowly. 'I think you tend to blank out the painful bits.'

  'I suppose so,' she whispered. 'Although I do think of ... they weren't all painful.'

  He said nothing. Then presently he straightened and turned his back on the view, leaning back slightly with his arms folded. 'Clarry, are you ever going to forgive me and try to understand?'

  She tensed and was glad they weren't facing each other. 'I have—and I do,' she said with an effort.

  'Look at me and tell me that,' he said quietly. Rob...’

  'Anyway, you've never let me explain, so I don't see

  how you can understand, Clarry.'

  'Oh, Rob,' she said tremulously, and turned towards him, forgetting she hadn't wanted to look at him, 'some things speak for themselves! Once I found out it was as if I'd been blind and could suddenly see everything so clearly! Like the way you looked at her sometimes and the way she'd looked at you. The times when you were tense and I couldn't understand why. I... I felt it too, that time you came to Sydney for Ian's birthday. I knew that she and my father were more and more bitterly ... at odds. Then, at my eighteenth birthday party, I thought she'd invited you for my sake, but of course she hadn't. And I thought you were disturbed because I... because I hadn't changed ...' She stopped painfully. 'But I know now,' she went on after a moment, 'that I probably didn't rate a second thought, not with either of you.'

  'That's not true, Clarry.'

  Clarissa looked away and tears shimmered in her blue-grey eyes. 'But not in the same way as you thought of her, Rob. Even if you ... hated it, I think she must have attracted you. Do you still think of her?'

  'Unfortunately I have a constant, living reminder of her,' he said drily.

  'Me?'

  Rob smiled bleakly. 'Who else?'

  'But I'm not like her.'

  'No, I didn't mean that. Shall we go back?'

  Clarissa watched the Manly Ferry plough through the water below before answering. Then she didn't. She said instead, uncertainly, 'We seem to be discussing this a lot these days, don't we?'

  'I don't think I've mentioned it for weeks.'

  She shivered suddenly, sensing his withdrawal, and thought how remote he looked, standing tall and

  straight beside her now. He'd looked like that at Ian's funeral, she remembered, shut in, inaccessible—but it was more now, as if he was impatient to be gone. Yet only minutes ago he'd said something to breach the mile-wide gap that was between them despite the fact they could live together and love a child.

  Or perhaps he's been saying it in other ways and I haven't been hearing it, she thought. But do I understand it any better now I have heard? Will I ever? And now he's retreating ... Out of impatience at last? Who could blame him?

  'Rob,' she began urgently, but couldn't go on.

  He waited for a moment or two, and then turned away.

  Clarissa hesitated before turning herself, then did so in a rush, saying his name again on an almost panic-stricken note. 'I ... it.. . I'm sorry, but I just.. .'

  She stopped helplessly, unable to make any sense of what she was trying to say, hopelessly unsure of the chaotic emotions that possessed her—love of a kind, gratitude, but also, or still, that deep sense of hurt, of inferiority and the curious spirit of defiance that was its twin. But then again, panic...

  Which gained the upper hand and made her say confusedly, 'Don't go away from me like that. I mean ... oh, thank God!'

  But those words were muffled in Rob's shoulder as he pulled her into his arms. 'Clarry, it's all right,' he said into her hair. 'I'm not going anywhere.'

  'I don't mean that. I don't understand why you don't, though. Why you put up with me when I can't even be a wife!'

  Rob said nothing until she had calmed down and was able to look up at him at last, her eyes wide and fearful and questioning. 'One day you might,' he told her. 'Don't worry about it in the meantime. Now, shall

  we go back to Evonne before she starts to wonder if we've absconded?'

  That evening, back at Mirrabilla, Clarissa sat in the drawing room on her own after everyone else had gone to bed. Rob was still in Sydney, and to do this— sit up by herself—she'd had to adopt a line of strategy, which struck her as fairly ridiculous. She had had to pretend she was extremely tired, because Mrs. Jacobs and Evonne had made it unsubtly clear that they would not consider going to bed before she did.

  She had regarded them fondly and exasperatedly, and thought of telling them she was perfectly capable of staying up on her own, not to mention perfectly fit and able to take one late night in her stride. She'd known, however, within a moment of the thought, that she'd be knocking her head up against a brick wall, so she had yawned and hidden her laughter when they had both yawned. And she'd taken the time, waiting in her bedroom, to ponder the fact that Mrs. Jacobs and Evonne had become unlikely allies.

  She waited for half an hour, then crept out of her bedroom into the drawing-room.

  Mostly, when there was only family home, they didn't use the drawing-room but a smaller room they called the den, which boasted a television set and a comfortable, rather old, leather suite.

  But Mrs. Jacobs had lit the drawing-room fire tonight and shepherded Evonne and Clarissa in there after dinner as if it was a festive occasion, and Evonne wasn't perfectly used to the den. Mrs. Jacobs' estimation of festive occasions was a mysterious law known only unto herself. Rob and Clarissa adhered to it gravely.

  The fire was still glowing warmly as Clarissa

  wandered into the shadowed, high-ceilinged room and glanced upwards out of habit. But the new ceiling was something of a disappointment, at least to someone who had known the old so well. The moldings weren't nearly as intricate and the pattern easy to capture, whereas before you thought you'd got its last flourish, only to find more.

  She sat down in a wing-backed silk-covered chair and remembered how the builder who had renovated the homestead had suggested installing central heating. And how
Rob had said it was up to her. And how she had said no, it was bad enough to have to change the ceiling.

  She laid her cheek on the-silk wing of the chair and thought of all the Kingston’s who had known this old house, and how curious it was that she should be the last of them to bear the name—and not even do that any longer.

  And with one of those odd twists of one's thought processes which leave you wondering and backtracking to find how this thought led on from the last, she saw her mother in her mind's eye. Not as she had last seen her, but in her heyday when she had been so brilliant and vibrant and lovely ... Of course the thought had been there since she had talked to Rob that morning.

  An evil woman? Clarissa thought suddenly, catching her breath. No. Selfish perhaps, unthinking ... caught in an unsuitable marriage just as much as Dad ... Do I honestly believe any more that Rob was head over heels in love with her?

  She moved restlessly and stared into the fire. And do I believe that he married me as a form of revenge against her? Rob? No ... I think she got that wrong, whatever else did happen between them. Perhaps she

  got it all wrong and so have I ever since. Only there had to be some reason from him to kiss her like that. But is it so important now? Whatever it was, maybe it's dead now. For him. I wonder if he's been trying to tell me that ...

  She sighed suddenly and was caught totally unaware by a feeling of regret that things had had to end this way between her and her mother. A feeling of...

  She stood up and paced around silently for a time, trying to make sense of her feelings. Did she actually miss her mother? No, not that so much, but it all seemed a terrible waste, didn't it? she pondered. Three people alienated from each other in one way or another when, at least from her and Narelle's point of view, their losses should have drawn them closer together.

  Clarissa sighed again eventually and went to bed.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  For the next month life assumed a pattern that was relatively peaceful. Clarissa came and went from Mirrabilla for the series of functions that were held to mark the three-quarter centenary of Randall's, and acquitted herself well, she thought. The strikes had been averted, although narrowly, and Rob had mentioned that the spectre of them still stalked him, so she gathered that the problems hadn't been entirely resolved. And she sometimes worried about the look of strain she saw in his eyes.