‘It’s also a little rich to criticise me for being cagey if you’re going to persist in being cagey yourself.’
‘Touché.’ He shook his head with a smile. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘You said it was an amicable break, that you just drifted apart?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But then you said you don’t have any contact with her any more. Why is that?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t have any reason to. We’re on opposite sides of the world, we don’t have anything to do with each other.’
Jo thought about it. ‘Do you keep in touch with anyone else you knew overseas?’
‘Sure, I was a correspondent for a long time, I made a lot of friends over the years in different places. I try to keep up with them.’
‘But not Sarah, even though you had a lengthy relationship and it ended amicably?’
Joe looked at her sideways. ‘Okay,’ he admitted. ‘It probably didn’t end all that amicably, but that wasn’t my fault. We’d been drifting apart for a while –’
‘So you keep saying.’
‘Because it’s the truth. We hadn’t spent much time together for months. I really had the feeling that we both knew it had to end but we were waiting for the other one to actually pull the plug. So when the first Australian troops started to withdraw, and my dad was getting worse, I told her it was time for me to go home. She started to freak out, saying where did that leave her, what if she didn’t want to live in Australia, had I even considered that? I told her I had, and that I didn’t think she’d want to come, and then she really blew up.’
‘And you weren’t expecting that reaction?’
‘No way, I was completely thrown. She acted like we were perfectly happy and had planned our whole future together, and I was some kind of bastard dumping her out of the blue.’
It seemed a bit odd to Jo that they could have been so out of kilter. Bannister sounded genuine, but what if he was just as myopic as the next bloke, only able to see things from his own narrow perspective, and completely clueless about what his partner may or may not have expected?
‘Why do you think she acted that way?’ Jo asked.
‘It was all about having a baby in the end. She said I’d led her on to believe that we’d settle down and have kids together. She said I was a typical commitment-phobe, and she’d wasted the best years of her life on me, by which she meant her childbearing years.’
‘And you had no idea this was what she was feeling?’
Joe looked at her. ‘You keep asking the same question in different ways,’ he said. ‘You’re on her side, aren’t you?’
‘I don’t even know her,’ Jo protested. ‘It just sounds like an extreme reaction if you’d never even talked about those things.’
‘We had talked, pretty vaguely though, there were never any set plans.’ He sighed. ‘You know, guys get a raw deal in this debate. I would like to have kids, I do want to “settle down”, whatever that means. But in the end, I didn’t want to with Sarah. Does that make me a bad person? Does it mean I can’t commit? No, I just couldn’t commit to her in the end. I didn’t love her, or love her enough. Surely you can relate to that?’
Jo blinked. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You have a very brief marriage behind you,’ he said. ‘I assume you wish it hadn’t happened, that you hadn’t jumped into it so quickly?’
‘I guess.’ She stared out at the ocean, hugging her arms to herself. ‘That breeze is starting to pick up.’
‘You’re being cagey again.’
She didn’t look at him. ‘And you’re being snoopy again.’
He laughed. ‘You are the biggest snoop I know, Jo Liddell. You’ve been angling to find out about Sarah since I first mentioned her, and now you’ve got the whole story. So why won’t you tell me about your ex?’
She shrugged. ‘There’s nothing to tell. It’s just so far in the past, I don’t even think about him any more.’ They had come to the rocky outcrop at the end of the sweep of beach, and Jo picked her way briskly across to where the waves were breaking. Truth was, she didn’t like to talk about Richard because that involved thinking about Richard, and she didn’t like to think about Richard.
She stood at the edge of the rock platform, gazing out at the ocean, the waves tossing up a fine spray from time to time. Bannister came to stand beside her. ‘Okay, I get the hint, I’ll drop it.’ He paused, before adding, ‘I just can’t help wondering what he did to you.’
Jo looked up abruptly. ‘Who says he did anything?’
‘Angie said you were wounded –’
‘Angie thinks life is a soapie.’
Joe shook his head. ‘Well, that’s it, I’m beat,’ he said, raising his hands in defeat. ‘You wouldn’t want to interview you, you know.’
‘That’s right, I wouldn’t want to interview me, because it would be incredibly boring.’
He regarded her thoughtfully. ‘Your mother used to tell you your father left because you didn’t behave, and then she would leave you for days at a time to look after your sister when you were only a child yourself. But you survived and eventually graduated from university with first-class honours, and you worked hard and got yourself a position on a metropolitan newspaper, and eventually your own column. But still you always think the worst is going to happen. You only go out with married men so you won’t get hurt, supposedly. You put this wall up around yourself so no one can get close, yet you’ll sit waiting in a car for hours outside a friend’s house just in case he needs you.’ He paused. ‘You’re anything but boring, Jo Liddell.’
Jo’s chest tightened, then her throat. And if she wasn’t mistaken, tears would come next. She turned abruptly and walked back towards the beach, swiftly negotiating the rocks. She could hear Bannister calling her above the roar of the waves.
‘Jo, wait.’ He caught up with her, blocking her path. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘I’m not upset,’ she said, but she couldn’t look at him.
‘Are you angry with me?’ he asked.
She shook her head. It seemed she’d managed to contain the tears, so she lifted her head to look at him. ‘Just, no one’s ever held a mirror up to me like that before.’
‘Well, you should be proud of what you see.’
He met her gaze openly, he wasn’t having a dig. She sighed, dropping down onto the sand to sit cross-legged. Joe lowered himself tentatively to sit beside her at a right angle. They sat there in silence for a while, maybe five minutes, maybe longer. He glanced at her from time to time, but she remained staring out to sea, lost in thought.
‘I met Richard when I was working in a hotel when I first started uni,’ she said eventually.
‘Richard?’
‘My ex-husband.’
‘Jo, you don’t have to tell me any of this –’
‘Oh, so now you don’t want to know?’ she said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Just let me go on before I change my mind,’ she said. ‘Richard was the hotel manager and I was waitressing and working the bar part-time. I was only nineteen, he was thirty-eight.’
Joe let out a low whistle. ‘A little father fixation there?’
‘You hardly have to be Freud to work that out,’ Jo said wryly. ‘I think I even realised it at the time; after all, I’d been waiting for my father to rescue me all my life. Richard seemed so worldly and confident and strong, and I’d come from so much chaos, I appreciated having someone to lean on, to rely on . . . to make the decisions. I was supporting Belle, we were sharing this tiny flat; she was straight out of school, doing a secretarial course, I was at uni. Charlene had hooked up with a bloke she said was the “one”, for probably the one hundredth time, and she kicked us out, told us we were old enough to fend for ourselves.’
Joe just shook his head.
‘Anyway Richard invited Belle to live with us when we got married, but she didn’t want to impose; so he paid her rent so she could stay in the same place. I moved int
o his duplex, but he encouraged me to pick out new furniture, whatever I needed to feel at home.’
‘He sounds pretty decent.’
‘Doesn’t he though?’ said Jo, shaking her head. ‘I should have picked the signs, I should have been more wary.’
‘You were only nineteen.’
‘Old enough to realise I was too young and not jumped into marrying him so quickly,’ she sighed. ‘The first thing I remember that unsettled me was one time when I had my hair dyed. I’d always kept it fairly short, but he encouraged me to grow it a little, just to my shoulders. He made such a fuss about how much he loved my hair, I figured it was a small sacrifice on my part. But I was bored with blonde and decided to get it dyed a kind of auburn colour.’ She paused, looking off at nothing. ‘When I came home, he freaked, I’d never seen him so angry. He said he’d married a blonde and if I wanted to stay married to him, I had to stay blonde. He insisted I go back to the hairdressers the next day, it’s a wonder my hair didn’t fall out altogether from all the chemicals. The hairdresser didn’t want to do it, but I insisted. I realised I was scared to go home if I wasn’t blonde, I was scared.’ She crossed her arms in front of herself.
‘That was just the start of it. He made me give up my job, because no wife of his was going to work in a bar. I didn’t mind, it wasn’t my career and it meant I could focus on my study. But then he decided he didn’t so much like me studying either. I wasn’t around during the day when he was more likely to be home, he worked most nights. So I enrolled in night classes, but then he decided he wanted me available to hostess functions, or to come in and have dinner with him, whenever he clicked his fingers basically. I started to get tired of it, to question him sometimes. We started fighting more, I saw an aggressive streak in him that I’d never really noticed before. And finally one day he hit me.’
Joe looked across at her, like he hadn’t heard right. ‘What did you say?’
‘He hit me,’ she repeated plainly, ‘so hard I fell over. And then he walked out. He didn’t even wait to see if I was all right. He just walked out.’
‘Were you all right?’
‘More or less,’ she shrugged. ‘I packed up what I could and went to Belle’s. Richard arrived on the doorstep the next day. At first he did this whole “I’m sorry, I’ll never do it again” spiel, and when that didn’t work he got angry. That’s when I knew. I’d watched my mother, my whole life, letting men push her around . . .’
Jo paused, taking a deep tremulous breath. ‘She’d have them back, again and again. But nothing would ever change, until it’d get so bad we’d be forced to move town. So that’s the only way I knew how to deal with it. I told Belle we had to pack up and leave that very night. I knew Richard would make her life hell if I left her behind; besides, he was partially supporting her. She wasn’t keen to leave everything, but she knew the drill. And she trusted me. So we came down to Sydney, we didn’t even tell Mum where we were till I was sure he’d given up. We both found work; I couldn’t go back to uni full-time, though I did a couple of semesters by correspondence over the next few years. Then Belle met Darren, and eventually they moved in together, so that gave me the freedom to go up to Bathurst to finish my degree, finally. We never looked back, but I never trusted myself with men again.’
‘Why?’ said Joe. ‘It wasn’t your fault. And you had the sense to get out.’
‘But I chose him in the first place,’ said Jo, ‘and that spooked me. I’ve read all about abused women who are drawn to violent men, victims of incest who end up with paedophiles, children of alcoholics who marry alcoholics. It’s like some kind of self-destructive genetic programming. I didn’t trust myself to be able to choose someone who wouldn’t hurt me. I didn’t trust my instincts. I still don’t.’
‘Except with married men?’
Jo glanced at him. ‘It’s not that calculated, Joe,’ she said. ‘I don’t hunt out guys with wedding rings, you know. In fact I didn’t go out with anyone for a long time, so long I was like a nun. But you know what they say, a girl has needs.’ She smiled faintly. ‘There was this guy at the first paper I went to, down in the Riverina. He was nothing like Richard, the polar opposite in fact. He was sweet and very easygoing. Things developed slowly between us, till one day he broke it to me he was married. At first I freaked out and refused to see him any more. He gave me all the usual lines – he and his wife had grown apart, he was staying for the sake of the kids, one day he would leave her . . . and that’s when I realised I didn’t want him to. I didn’t want ownership of his life, and I certainly didn’t want to give him ownership over mine. So after a while we picked up again, and then six months later I got a better job offer in a bigger town, and though he was sad to see me leave, he knew he had no say in it. I liked that, having that independence, that kind of autonomy. I realised that I didn’t have to put up with being told what to do ever again, at least not in my personal life.’
Joe was listening. ‘But I don’t get what makes a married man a safer option?’ he asked. ‘Surely they’re just as likely to be abusive or aggressive?’
‘Yeah, I guess,’ said Jo. ‘But the married men I’ve been with – and just to get the record straight, there was one other since the Riverina and before Lachlan, and that was only for a few months,’ she added. ‘Anyway, they’ve been easier, I guess, less demanding. They don’t try to control my life because they’re trying to keep cover themselves. And it’s easier to break it off and walk away.’
She glanced at Bannister. He was staring out at the ocean, a pursed expression on his face. ‘You’re judging me again, aren’t you?’ said Jo.
‘No,’ he shook his head, turning to look at her. ‘I was just thinking,’ he said carefully, ‘how do you know you can’t get all that with someone who’s not married?’
Jo dropped her eyes. ‘I told you, I don’t trust my instincts.’
‘Maybe your instincts aren’t as bad as you think,’ he suggested.
‘Oh, they are,’ she assured him. ‘When I left Richard, I shoved everything I owned into a few bags, I didn’t have time to sort through it. When we were settled down here, I finally got to go through all my stuff, and I came across love letters we’d written early in the relationship, Valentine cards, that kind of thing. I was so embarrassed at how gullible and stupid I’d been. I had no perspective whatsoever, I was a hopeless, giddy, lovesick fool.’
‘You were nineteen and you were in love,’ said Joe. ‘You’re too hard on yourself.’
She shook her head, remembering. ‘I sat there that night and ripped the lot to shreds and threw them away.’
‘You shouldn’t have done that.’
‘Why not?’ Jo asked, looking at him.
‘You should never get rid of old love letters,’ he said. ‘They’re part of who you are. Even your mistakes are part of who you are.’
‘Is that how you feel about Sarah?’
‘I don’t have any ill will towards her. Besides, she’s got enough for the both of us.’
They smiled at each other then. They sat in a comfortable silence, watching tiny children playing on the shoreline, running in as the waves withdrew, and squealing and running away as they rushed forward again. The slightly bigger kids ventured a little further, where the water lapped against their thighs or higher as the swell came in. Then there were the sulphur-crested surfers out the back, straddling their boards, their feet dangling in the dark water. Jo wondered how they could sit there so relaxed, only looking for the next wave, not worried about what might be lurking just under the surface.
She rarely ever revisited her life with Richard, even Angie had learned that it was off limits. But today she had talked about it, and she was still standing. Maybe picking at scabs was not advisable, but exposing a wound to fresh air occasionally might just be healing.
‘I guess we should think about heading back,’ said Joe after a while. ‘The ferries run every half an hour, but they’ll be packed on a Sunday afternoon.’
The fe
rry they boarded was certainly packed, but they managed to squeeze onto a seat outside, facing the water. As they approached the Heads, Jo could feel that the swell had come up considerably since that morning and she immediately tensed up.
‘I hate this part,’ she muttered, closing her eyes and clutching her arms around herself.
‘What? Going past the Heads?’ Joe asked, watching her. ‘It’s only the ocean swell, Jo. Nothing’s going to happen, you’re perfectly safe.’
‘You don’t know that. If the swell got big enough, surely it could tip a ferry over.’
He shook his head. ‘There’s never been a recorded incident of a ferry capsizing because of the swell coming through the Heads.’
Jo opened her eyes and peered at him. ‘Is that true?’
‘Look it up for yourself.’
Just then the ferry lurched as it hit a particularly large set, and Jo gasped, closing her eyes again.
‘Here.’ He took her hand and tucked her arm securely under his. ‘If it goes down, we’ll go together.’
‘How does that make it any better?’
‘Well, at least you won’t be alone,’ he said. ‘And besides, I’m a strong swimmer.’
Jo opened her eyes, staring at him as he gazed out to sea. The ferry ploughed through the set, then on past South Head and into calmer waters. She felt his grip on her hand relax, and she took that as a signal to disengage herself. But he gave her a wistful smile as she did.
‘I’m going to break it off with Lachlan,’ Jo said suddenly.
‘Pardon?’
‘I’m going to break it off with Lachlan,’ she repeated. ‘I decided before he left. I just wanted to wait till he got back from Iraq.’
Joe nodded faintly, taking it in. ‘Why are you telling me?’
‘Because,’ she hesitated, ‘I guess I wanted to put it on the record.’
They looked at each other for a long moment. Jo held his gaze, she didn’t waver.
‘Thanks for letting me know,’ he said finally.
She nodded, looking back out over the water. They were sitting very close, she could feel where his body came into contact with hers. She could feel the sun on her face. And she felt content.
Crossing Paths Page 29
