We All Fall Down

by Peter Barry

  He went to the beach, and ran up and down it on the soft sand.

  An hour later, when he arrived home, Tim was in bed, but still awake. Hugh read him a short story. After showering, he went to his study. Dante followed him, and lay on the floor in the middle of the room with his eyes closed, not asleep, but content to have everyone home again. Every now and again he would open his eyes and glance sideways at Hugh to make sure he was still there. He was, sitting at his laptop, supposedly working on the final draft of the presentation, but in reality only pretending to do so in order not to have to sit with his wife. Then the dog would give a small sigh and close his eyes, pleased that everything once again appeared to be right with the world.

  He heard her come into the room. She stood behind him for a few seconds, not saying anything. She bent down and kissed him on the top of his head. He closed his eyes. He was aware of her straightening up.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘You know … Getting at you.’ A moment later, she added, ‘Why don’t you come downstairs? Leave your work. You’ve done enough.’

  ‘I shouldn’t.’ He kept his voice neutral and his eyes shut. He didn’t want to be won over that easily.

  She bent down again, her lips barely brushing the top of his head. ‘I want us to spend some time together.’

  He grimaced. Now he opened his eyes. She then said, almost whispered, in light breaths against his scalp, ‘We haven’t made love for a while.’

  ‘We did. When we were talking about going camping.’

  ‘That was the first time in ages.’

  It’s supposed to be the husband who complains about not getting enough sex, he thought.

  She placed her hands on his shoulders, and he became aware of how rigid he was, how unyielding his posture was beneath her fingers. ‘What do you want to talk about?’

  She lifted her mouth from his head, but didn’t move her hands from his shoulders – not yet, although he could almost feel her considering such a move. Her voice, when she spoke, was no longer a whisper, no longer seductive. ‘Nothing in particular. We don’t have to talk about something, Hugh. We can just talk, you know.’

  He didn’t answer. The silence lengthened. He knew this conversation could go either way now. It was not just up to her, it was up to him.

  ‘I love you, Hugh Drysdale, and I want to make love with you. I need to make love with you. That’s part of the deal.’

  She moved round beside him. He remained staring at the computer screen. ‘Look at me.’

  ‘You’re not taking the pill, remember?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake! Don’t bring that up again.’

  ‘Well …’ He shrugged.

  ‘All right, we won’t make love. But we have to talk.’

  He sighed. He pushed himself to his feet. He had the air of a man about to be executed.

  She had her hands on her hips. ‘It’s not healthy, this. You know it’s not.’

  He wanted to move away from her, but she was crowding him. ‘It’s been a very stressful few weeks, that’s all.’ He squeezed past her. ‘Work … everything. You know.’

  She sat down in his chair. She sagged with resignation. She glanced at the words on the screen. ‘Your work is never going to change. That’s what you don’t seem to understand.’

  The silence dragged. He stood in the middle of the room, as if trying to decide whether to leave or stay. Kate mussed up her hair with both hands. She could have been trying to clear her head. It was a gesture he’d once found endearing, but now found annoying.

  ‘I’m going to have a drink.’ It was an excuse to leave the room. ‘Can I get you one?’

  ‘No. I also happen to think we’re drinking too much – both of us.’

  He ignored the comment and went along the landing and down the stairs to the kitchen. He heard her follow him. She went into the sitting room and stood by the French windows, looking down towards the beach.

  He noticed that she’d tidied up the room. The newspapers he’d left on the coffee table, and the dirty mug he’d meant to put away before going into the office that morning, were now gone. That’s how she was. A room to her was like a painting, there to be painstakingly worked on.

  ‘You could make me a hot chocolate.’ Her request sounded to him like a criticism of alcohol.

  He put his whisky down on the breakfast bar, and searched for a saucepan.

  She could almost have been addressing herself when she spoke again, sounding preoccupied, almost disengaged. ‘You’re always going to be stressed in that job. You’re unwilling to face up to that. It’s never going to change, you know.’

  ‘Where does this come from?’

  She turned round. ‘You’re stressed, therefore you cut me out of your life. You don’t talk, you don’t make love. That’s how it happens.’ As if explaining to a child.

  He snorted. ‘Is this how your friend Jodie describes it to you?’

  ‘This has nothing to do with her.’

  He didn’t believe her. ‘It’s only now, because of the presentation, discussing things with the Germans, trying to get the new creative director up to speed. This is exceptional.’

  ‘It’s always like this, Hugh. Don’t kid yourself. You’re no different to how you always are.’

  ‘It’s worse at the moment. Russell’s being an unbelievable pain.’

  ‘Well, that’s definitely not new. What’s he doing?’ She turned away to look out of the windows again. It appeared as if she wasn’t interested in hearing his reply.

  ‘Interfering. He was phoning us all weekend. He demanded to speak to me every morning and afternoon. It was like he was checking up on me.’

  ‘From his weekend place?’

  ‘No, he’s up at Lindeman Island.’

  ‘Nice.’ He saw her shake her head. ‘God, I hate that man. He’s so self-important.’

  He put her hot chocolate on the table by the French windows, then cleared the cushions from one end of the sofa and sat down. ‘He’s not able to delegate, that’s his problem. He has to be involved in everything.’

  She remained with her back to the room. ‘You’re not suited to that job. You’ll never be suited to it. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that.’

  He felt hemmed in when she spoke like this. Just as there was no escape from the prison of his work, she exacerbated the problem by imprisoning him at home with words. She used the same remorseless logic, driving bars deep into the ground around him, making him want to run from the room, to escape to silence.

  ‘You’re not an advertising person, Hugh. I’m sorry, but it’s true. You haven’t got that hard edge they all seem to have.’

  ‘I’m doing well –’

  She swung round from the window, hands held up, fingers clawed with frustration facing towards her face. ‘You’re doing brilliantly, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right job for you. Can’t you understand that?’

  He took a sip of whisky and rested his glass on the arm of the sofa. She picked up her hot chocolate and sat down on one of the dining room chairs. She nestled the mug in her hands. In the distance, very faintly, he could hear the waves breaking on the beach, an unending, peaceful susurration. They could have been alone in the world. And it struck him that this is what he’d worked for, to escape the noise of the city, of other people, the perpetual aural intrusions. When they’d lived in Crows Nest, he’d been sick of the sound of cars, buses and trucks, of the raised voices of drunks emerging from the hotel on the corner late at night, and the crashing and whining of the garbage trucks collecting from the restaurants and shops in the early hours of the morning.

  ‘You’ll do well in any job.’ She leant forward in her chair, earnest, persuasive. ‘You’re talented. You’re clever. You’re a good manager.’

  ‘I am a good manager,’ he said as if he’d only just made the discovery. ‘You know what Paul Skirrow said to me the other day?’

  ‘Who?’

  �
�Paul Skirrow. He’s a Board director. I’ve mentioned him to you before. He said that Bauer was the best handled piece of business in the agency.’

  ‘It doesn’t surprise me, so why does it surprise you?’

  ‘“You’ve got everything so buttoned down” was how he put it. “The account runs like clockwork.” And he’s right, it does. There are never any dramas or crises with Bauer, or any of my accounts, not unless Russell or Murray become involved.’

  ‘You’re right to be proud, but it doesn’t mean you have to put up with that crap every day, from all those other people who can’t manage their way out of a cardboard box.’

  She leant back in her chair. Their conversation had reached a juncture. Logically, remorselessly they’d arrived at, not a destination, but at a place along the route. Now they could choose to stop, in limbo, and go no further, or they could choose to continue. It was as if they were on a conversational hike, taking a breather, looking at the view, glancing at their watches, wondering if they should continue, or turn around and go back. Unexpectedly, Hugh chose to go forward, probably without giving the matter much thought, simply because, unexpectedly, his wife was willing to play the part of an audience, and because there were things that were always in his head, ideas he was happy to relieve himself of whenever the right opportunity might arise.

  ‘I think you live in cloud cuckoo land, Kate. You don’t seem to appreciate that I need to stay in that job to pay for this.’ He waved a hand vaguely around the room, a gesture intended to include the entire house as well as the acre of garden. ‘It’s irrelevant if I love or hate the job, I can’t leave.’

  Perhaps with reluctance, perhaps because she felt she didn’t have a choice, his wife now also chose to continue along their conversational route. ‘You should be working for yourself, that’s all I’m saying. You shouldn’t have to answer to other people, to idiots. You could make as much money doing something else.’

  ‘You’re wrong there. Where else could I make the money I’m making now?’ He sometimes wondered if she simply didn’t hear him, or if she went out of her way not to hear him. It was hard to tell.

  ‘You’d be really happy being your own boss. I know you would. Remember when you had the idea of buying a post office?’

  ‘That was supposed to be a long time down the track, after we’d made enough money to get out of the system.’

  ‘So why not now?’

  ‘You’re not being serious? You were so rude about the idea at the time, or have you forgotten? You described it as the backbone of some rural community, populated by straw chewing simpletons or something. And I’d probably agree with you now. We certainly couldn’t make a decent living doing that.’ He chuckled at the utter foolishness of the idea.

  ‘We’d get by.’ Her rejoinder was half-hearted.

  ‘No, we wouldn’t. Remember what Fiona said when I told her we’d once thought of running a rural post office? That it’s the modern day equivalent of that Tolstoyan vision of becoming an innocent peasant – a silly I think she said it was called. Good name that: silly. And appropriate.’

  ‘You’d be better suited to that kind of life.’

  ‘Maybe, but you wouldn’t. You’re dreaming, Kate! If I took your VISA card off you, you’d have withdrawal symptoms. You couldn’t survive.’

  ‘That’s so unfair. I spend less money on myself than you do.’

  ‘You need a car, your paints, canvasses … I don’t know what else. You need money. I’m not blaming you for that, it’s simply how you are. You’ve always had it.’

  She looked up, startled, possibly insulted, and said, ‘You need money more than me. You’re the one who buys clothes –’

  ‘I can’t go to work dressed in rags, you know that.’

  ‘And there’s the DIY equipment, the eating out –’

  He interrupted. ‘On expenses.’

  ‘The gym membership … I don’t know, but I do know that most of the money I spend goes on Tim. That’s it.’

  He stood up. ‘We’ve just taken on a new house. I can’t change jobs now; there are too many people out there without work at the moment. We can’t move for at least seven years. That’s what people say: seven years – minimum. That’s how long it takes to build up some equity in a place. We have a large mortgage to pay off in case you’d forgotten. The truth is, we’re mortgaged up to the hilt.’ He couldn’t spell it out any clearer than that.

  ‘You promised me we’d stay here three years, max. You promised.’

  ‘I said we’d discuss the matter after three years. To move now would be financial suicide. And I don’t know how many times I have to say this, but we’d be much better off if you worked. We wouldn’t be in this mess.’

  ‘We’re not going there again. Not now.’

  He was aware, without really ever putting the thought into words, that things had deteriorated between them since the move to Stanwell Park. They’d been such good friends before, sharing their dreams, talking and – at least so far as he was concerned – being happy. Now it had all gone wrong, and he wasn’t sure why. There was this gulf between them now, and the long weekend apart had only made it worse. Was she still punishing him for moving out of the city?

  She sipped her hot chocolate. She stared at him, her eyes quite cold. It went through his mind that she wasn’t going to extend the invitation to make love again. He was relieved, although at the same time a little sad.

  ‘That was your decision to buy this house. Don’t forget that.’

  ‘As you said, let’s not go there.’

  ‘I didn’t want to move from Crows Nest, Hugh. Remember?’

  ‘How can I forget? But you did agree to move, OK?’

  ‘I was forced to.’

  ‘No one forced you, Kate. Your parents even believed it was a good idea. They could see the sense of it. Maybe you’ve forgotten that?’

  ‘I agreed to move because of you. You were desperate to move here. You wouldn’t let it rest. For you, it was an escape.’

  ‘It was a step up on the property ladder.’

  ‘And I only agreed to move if it was for two or three years.’

  ‘We’d be crazy to sell now. It’s too soon.’

  ‘I don’t care. You promised.’

  Kate had wanted to move from Crows Nest – if her husband absolutely insisted on moving – closer to the city, to Paddington maybe, near her parents. How she expected them to be able to afford that he’d never been able to fathom.

  ‘I moved here for you. That’s the only reason I agreed to come and live in this house. I thought it would help you get some perspective on your life. I told myself that if you could live in the home you’ve always dreamt of, the one you’d never had as a child, then maybe you’d start to see things differently, in a more balanced way. But it hasn’t worked.’

  That much was true: this was the house of his dreams, even if it did not exactly replicate what he had envisaged as he lay in bed in England many years ago. The roof in their Stanwell Park home was multi-layered, and there was one small attic window. It had a large verandah, unlike his dream home. The interior of the house was not a maze of corridors and stairs, of nooks and crannies, nor was there any semblance of a half landing, but the rooms they now inhabited were not too formally laid out, and there were plenty of doors, including French windows, and one or two corridors, short and situated around the kitchen, laundry and back door. There was a sweeping lawn, even if the grass was coarser than the English grass he’d always had in his mind’s eye, and there was a large white gum at the end of the garden, although that didn’t come close to matching the magnificent oak with low spreading branches and a child’s swing he’d dreamt of in the past. The hedgerow was a mature, high yew, which he actually preferred to the boring boxwood of England, but there was no pond at the end of the garden, nor was there even a small stream – no brook bubbling along the fringes of the lawn. Despite its shortcomings, this was the closest he would ever get to his dream home in this young country, u
nless, perhaps, he was to spend several million dollars and move to Vaucluse.

  ‘My life’s fine, just as it is. It would be nice to have some support, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s such a lie. You do have my support, you just can’t see it.’ She leant forward, turning her head towards him, so earnest it unsettled him. She was tense, her forearms on her knees, her hands clasped together as if she was about to beg something off him. ‘I love you, Mr. Drysdale, but I hate what you’re doing to us. I hate the way you’re allowing your work to ruin your life – our lives.’ She waited for him to say something. She stared at him, but he had no idea what he was expected to say. What he thought she wanted him to say, he couldn’t say, so he remained silent. In fact he looked away. A minute or two later, she stood up. He almost made a move to stop her, to hold her, but couldn’t find the energy to stir. He felt it would have been interpreted as an admission of weakness. It was one of those moments, however, that might have set them back on the right path, and yet he did not, or could not move. So the moment passed, as such moments always do.

  ‘I never wanted to live out here in the sticks. It’s not my fault we have a large mortgage. I hate this house.’ She said it with such passion, he was shocked. Even from across the room he could see she was trembling. ‘I hate it! Spending a few days on the North Shore has made me realise what we’re missing.’

  ‘You don’t hate it, Kate. Even if you did, you will come to love it one day. I’m sure you will. You just have to give it a chance.’ He wanted to placate her, to calm her down. It was all right for him to be angry, but not her. That he found difficult to cope with.

  ‘I have given it a chance. I’ve given it almost two years of chance.’

  ‘That’s not long enough …’

  ‘We live in this huge house and –’ She hesitated, momentarily lost for words, closing her eyes to concentrate, then shouting, ‘And do what? Keep up appearances? We don’t have any money. We don’t have a life. We’re stuck in the middle of nowhere, doing nothing. My friends all do things, Hugh. They go to the theatre, to the cinema, to restaurants, to – I don’t know. They live! We don’t have lives. We barely exist. And it’s not enough. I want to live, too!’