by Peter Barry
His comments about Hugh were made in an underhand, suggestive manner, never openly. His was the calm voice of reason, of compromise and negotiation. ‘Let’s be sensible and rational about this,’ he’d say in his most sensible and rational voice, or, ‘We need to talk about this calmly,’ said in the calmest of voices. He was good at stating his case. ‘You have to think of yourself and Tim. He’s our number one priority, darling – our grandson. Don’t worry yourself about your husband. He’ll be fine.’
His wife was enthusiastic in her endorsement of these views. ‘He’s so right, Kate, we must take care of Timmy.’ But the main reason she was being happy with her husband’s comments was because they lacked any hint of confrontation. She was fond of her son-in-law, and prayed the couple would get back together again – although ‘things are so different nowadays. There’s no commitment, not like in our day.’ There again she didn’t feel as passionately about Hugh’s cause as to be willing to take on her husband. So her support for her son-in-law was offered from well behind the front lines, her half-hearted gestures of encouragement proffered from a safe distance at the rear. She’d given up open confrontation with her husband many decades earlier, but this didn’t prevent her, early on in the separation, when her daughter and grandson first came to live with them, from tentatively suggesting to Kate that she might like to ask Hugh over for dinner. ‘He can stay the night with us. It must get lonely for him in that big house all by himself.’
Kate refused, not because she didn’t want to see her husband, but because she knew how ill at ease he could be with her parents, even after six years of knowing them. If they were going to attempt to patch up their differences, then it was more likely to be achieved on their own, away from her parents’ prying eyes and meddling good intentions.
Once or twice, around this time, her father did attack front on, perhaps expecting his adversary, his own daughter, to be too tired or too weakened by previous skirmishes to put up a struggle. This was how he’d won in the past. So he was surprised by the severity of her response.
‘Stay out of this, father. I’m married to Hugh. Tim is our son, not yours. And I will make the decisions to do with my marriage and my child.’
Her father, palms open and raised in abject surrender, stepped back, pain, intermingled with innocence on his face, as if to demonstrate how horrified he was that she could even think he had any desire to interfere. He protested. ‘I’m only saying … I was trying to help, darling … Nothing could have been further from my mind …’ But she wasn’t fooled. She knew him well enough to know he would bide his time.
The days passed with agonising slowness. Yet the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, and in every one of them she experienced another mood swing. Much of the time she was lonely and afraid, worried about the future and fearful of having to bring up Timmy alone. At other times, in the later months, the pain of separation grew less.
Just prior to Christmas, late one afternoon, Wilma answered the phone and started frantically raising her eyebrows at her daughter, silently mouthing words and pointing to the handset as if it was about to perform some impressive trick. From these manoeuvres Kate deduced that her husband must be on the other end of the line. After being compelled to listen to a few painful minutes of polite chitchat (‘Yes, the weather is wonderful right now, Hugh, but we do need some more rain – my roses!’), her mother handed over the phone. Kate didn’t bother with the polite chitchat. ‘Hello. Why are you calling?’
She watched her mother tiptoeing exaggeratedly towards the door, like a caricature of the mouse, Jerry, attempting to avoid being seen by the cat, Tom.
‘That’s a warm greeting.’
‘I’m sorry, Hugh, I’m tired. And Tim has gone to the zoo with his grandfather. Is there anything in particular …?’
She watched the door close behind her mother. She couldn’t remember what he said after that. He meandered across the surface of things, barely touching any subject, never alighting on anything for more than a second or two, never lingering long enough for her to think, Ah, so this is what he wants to talk about. Finally, grasping some half-formulated thought thrown up by her husband, which consisted of no more than a few words mumbled or muttered down the line (could he have been drinking?), she said, ‘I think it may have gone too far now.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
She shouldn’t have to explain her feelings to him. That was a problem in itself. ‘I think we may have gone too far to go back to where we were.’ She heard a barely stifled exclamation down the phone. ‘We’ve been apart for quite a time now, Hugh, and …’
She couldn’t bring herself to say the word, divorce. It was too final. And, it seemed, neither could he. ‘So, are you saying …? What exactly are you saying?’
Although she didn’t know what she wanted, she felt she wanted more than she’d been getting from her husband over the last few years. She struggled to think of the right words, any words. ‘I don’t feel our relationship has been fulfilling, Hugh.’ It didn’t sound right, in fact it sounded downright pompous. She rolled her eyes for her own benefit and looked across the room at the drinks cabinet. It was unfortunately out of reach.
‘You mean sex?’
‘No, I do not mean sex.’ Jesus! Did men ever think of anything else? He could be so exasperating. She added weakly, ‘You know what I mean.’
‘I wish I did.’
She explained how she felt they’d been leading separate lives despite the fact they were married. ‘It’s like now,’ she said, ‘we’re not exactly communicating, we’re almost at loggerheads. I don’t feel close to you.’
She wanted more out of marriage, but wasn’t sure what that more was, although it was mixed up in words like intimacy and commitment and security, intangible feelings that always floated just a little beyond her mental reach. Although it was her opinion that Hugh maybe couldn’t offer her these things, she never considered the possibility that maybe she couldn’t offer them to him either.
‘It’s not easy over the phone.’
A pang of guilt came from somewhere, quite suddenly, and she felt sorry enough to ask him if he wanted to come round for supper. ‘Even better, why not make it lunch at the weekend, then you can spend time with Tim.’
‘There’s no point if your parents are there.’
‘They’re fond of you, Hugh. I know you find that difficult to believe –’
‘I do. Anyway, it’s neither here nor there. They make it impossible for us to talk.’
‘I don’t know that I want to talk. I’ve spent years trying to get you to talk, and you never would.’
Her mother opened the door, peered inside, saw that Kate was still on the phone and withdrew, making strange Tai Chilike movements. She was obviously desperate to receive a debrief.
‘I get upset seeing Tim. I know it sounds weird, but I can’t bear to see him. It really knocks me sideways.’ She heard his voice catch. He added, ‘Why not come round here, then we can talk? But without Tim.’
He doesn’t hear me, she thought. He never listens. But she said, because she couldn’t think what else to say, ‘All right, I’ll come and see you.’ And regretted it before she’d even put the phone down.
A couple of days later she told her parents she had to go into the city. She couldn’t bear to tell them the truth, to have to go through lengthy justifications, yet the deception made her feel like a kid bunking off school. The only positive was that they were happy to be left alone to look after Tim.
When she parked outside the house, it felt as if she was visiting a friend, not going to her own home. She hesitated at the front door, wondering whether she should knock and wait like a stranger on her own doorstep, or walk straight in. She compromised, knocking tentatively before opening the door. ‘Hugh! Hi, it’s me.’ She heard a chair being pushed back in the kitchen. ‘I see you still haven’t got the doorbell fixed.’ She meant to sound lighthearted, but wasn’t certain it came across that way, so
she attempted to salvage the remark with a small laugh. ‘I brought in your mail. It was sticking out of the letterbox.’ He was striding across the hallway, at first she thought to peck her on the cheek, but it turned out to her momentary discomfort that he wished to envelop her in a bear hug. Her arms were pinioned. She felt she didn’t belong in such close proximity to a person she now felt so distant from. ‘It’s good to see you,’ he said somewhere on the side of her neck. She gave the embrace what she felt was a reasonable time, patted him once or twice on the back, then attempted to disentangle herself. He reluctantly released her. ‘You look well.’
She smiled, and said with slightly less enthusiasm, ‘You, too.’ They could have been friends who run into each other at the airport after many years apart.
‘Here’s your mail.’ She held it out.
He looked at it briefly. ‘Just bills – as usual. You know something, I suspect the only thing – and I mean the only thing – the utility companies perform efficiently is sending out their accounts. They arrive with unfailing regularity. But everything else, the delivering of some kind of service, is obviously beyond them.’
She smiled, not sure what to say. It was typical of him to be interested in such things.
‘Come in, come in,’ he said, closing the front door behind her and heading off to the sitting room.
Oh my god, this is painful, she thought. How can I be invited into my own home? This feels so wrong. This is so dreadful. She lowered herself cautiously into an armchair, stopping herself, just in time, from sitting on the sofa. She didn’t want him to sit next to her, not that close. It was all so uncomfortable. How could she feel so ill at ease sitting in an armchair and waiting for her husband to offer her a cup of tea or coffee? But what else could she do? Normally, she’d walk into the house, unpack the supermarket shopping, prepare lunch for Tim, put washing on, vacuum the carpet … None of which she could do now. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t possible to act normally.
Hugh was dancing around in the centre of the room, looking awkward, trying to behave as if everything was as it should be. He’s lost a bit of weight, she thought, and he can’t afford that. There’s never been any fat on him anyway.
‘Can I get you something? Or do you want to have lunch straight away? I have some salad and stuff.’
‘I’m not hungry, to be honest. A cup of tea would be fine.’
He put the kettle on. He busied himself in the kitchen. She watched him behind the breakfast bar. Apart from being a little thinner, he didn’t really look any different since she’d seen him more than six months ago. She glanced round the room. It was empty, showing few signs of anything personal. Certainly, now, there were no toys lying around. Most of them were in St. Ives.
‘I need to take one or two things with me when I leave.’
He looked up, surprised. ‘Sure.’
‘And some of my painting stuff. I really miss not painting –’
‘Have you given up your classes?’
‘No, I still go. But at my parents house … It’s not so easy.’
She felt he sounded disappointed to hear she was still attending art classes. Perhaps he was thinking of Warren. ‘It’s impossible to paint at their house. You know …’ But she couldn’t think of any reasons why she couldn’t paint at Woollahra, so she smiled instead. He wasn’t interested in her painting anyway. He might look like he was listening when she talked about it, frowning with concentration and making little ‘huh huh’ grunts of encouragement, but she always felt he couldn’t wait to change the subject. ‘You think it’s just a hobby, don’t you?’ she’d accused him once, but he had vehemently denied it. ‘My art means everything to me,’ she’d said a moment later, as if attempting to bolster her own beliefs as well as her argument. She didn’t think she was a genius, a budding Picasso or anything, but she felt she had talent. She scorned the pastel coloured, pretty scenic paintings that filled the average high-street art gallery. She was convinced she was better than them.
They sat opposite each other, across the coffee table, wondering what they could say to each other to break the silence. She wanted to go across to the French windows and look down at the beach again. She missed that. But she was afraid he would follow her, so she didn’t.
‘Well,’ he said, smacking his hands onto his knees, ‘how have you been?’
She cringed. Was it possible, she asked herself, that a couple could travel such a distance, from deep intimacy to a vague friendship, in so short a time? Weren’t such movements meant to be imperceptible, like ageing?
When they’d first been together, in those first few months, she remembered how they’d fall asleep, invariably after having made love, and lain like played-out puppies, their limbs so entwined it was impossible to tell which limb belonged to whom – except, perhaps, for his body being so pale and English and hers being so brown and Australian. There came, inevitably, the slow disentanglement, the casting off of one limb at a time, the gradual disengaging until, just before they split, they’d grown used to lying side by side in the bed, barely touching, quite separate and alone, doing passable imitations of monumental brasses of a medieval knight and his lady in a church aisle. She found – or perhaps simply told herself – that this was sad, like a parting of the ways or a small death. But was it inevitable? Was this the natural order of things? She didn’t know and, this was the worrying thing, wasn’t sure she even cared now. It was sad, certainly, but not so sad that she had any urge or need to try and regain the feelings they’d once shared. There had been a time when she could describe every occasion on which they made love. They were singular events. Even though so close together, they were quite independent of each other. Then they had become interchangeable, one love making session indistinct from the next. Finally she’d wake up in the morning and sometimes not even be able to remember if they’d made love the night before. Usually they hadn’t.
They spoke about Tim. That was a safe subject, and one neither of them would grow bored with. At one point she told him, ‘He misses you,’ and he said, ‘What can I do about that?’
She refused to let him blame her. ‘You could come over and see him to start with, Hugh. Take him out. He’d love that.’
‘It’s too upsetting.’
‘For him, or for you?’
He looked at her. ‘For both of us, but mainly for his sake. I don’t want to disrupt his life. I feel it’s kinder if I don’t see him at all, then he won’t know any better.’
She felt more exasperation than sympathy. Why were men like this; like blocks, impenetrable, unyielding, ungiving – emotional Neanderthals? Their feelings, their lives, their very essence were all enclosed by their work, by what they did outside of the home. That’s what so effectively kept them separate. If only her husband would say how he felt, reach out and talk to her, but she knew, from years of experience, that he wouldn’t do any such thing. He wouldn’t change now. If she worked on him, jollied him along, lay herself bare before him, then he might eventually say something meaningful, say something that would possibly set them on a path out of this emotional morass. But why should she? It was up to him now, it was his turn. She’d tried often enough already. If he’d wanted her back, there’d been plenty of opportunities over the past year for him to say more than, ‘I think you should come back. We should give it another go.’ And that’s exactly what he said now – again – with a degree of tight throated desperation as the clock moved a minute closer to midnight.
‘Why?’
‘Because of Tim.’
‘Nothing to do with me then?’
‘Of course it’s to do with you. That’s not what I meant.’
‘It’s what you said.’ And she told him that, although she loved Tim dearly, she wasn’t willing, for his sake, to spend the rest of her life with a man she didn’t love. It would be better for Tim if she was happy. ‘I don’t believe parents should stay together for the sake of their children.’ She said it was obvious they no longer loved each other. Then she
said, ‘I love you, but I’m no longer in love with you.’ It was a phrase she’d heard or read somewhere, and it had struck her as sounding meaningful, in a kind of postmodern way, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wasn’t quite sure what she meant, and hoped he wouldn’t ask her to explain. Fortunately, he didn’t. She said the truth was they no longer loved each other, without knowing if this was true. But he didn’t protest. She ended by saying that she was willing to face up to that, and it would be helpful if he did too. They should get on with their lives.
He sat, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor between his feet. He neither moved nor spoke. She stared at the top of his head. She wasn’t sure he’d heard a word she’d said. He certainly made no sign, no response. An eternity seemed to go by, and the words she’d spoken slowly drained from the room, leaving them both high and dry. Almost from exasperation, she took a deep breath and leapt into the silence. The gesture was either foolhardy or brave. Whichever it was, she found it difficult to say. ‘Hugh, I think we should get divorced.’
He didn’t move, didn’t even lift his head. For a moment, she wondered if he’d fallen asleep. Her final word, that word, like an explosion, echoed around the room. She wished she hadn’t come to see him, that she could have continued to avoid this.
‘Kate.’ She frowned, almost scared to hear him speak. His head was raised, but his elbows were still on his knees. ‘Are you seeing someone? Is that why you want a divorce?’
She was startled. ‘What makes you ask that?’ And she thought that answering a question with another question was a stupid response, especially when she had nothing to hide.
‘You are, aren’t you?’
She said with as much finality as she could muster, ‘No, I’m not.’
She wanted to ask him the same question, but didn’t. They retreated back into their own thoughts. Finally, he said, ‘I think it’s too early to talk about divorce. Anyway, it’s not what I want.’ He stared at her, as if expecting a reply, but she said nothing.
