The Landing

by Susan Johnson

  Jonathan thought he might give a little dinner party; Will and his wife, Lucy, maybe Jerry and Eleni. His heart quailed at the thought of telling his daughters; they were not yet prepared to relinquish the dream of the family, as he was not yet prepared to relinquish their mother.

  Anna insisted on doing all the cooking, so that he was relegated to being a sort of barman. She offered rillettes and small delicious bowls of bouillabaisse to begin, a perfectly judged, moist blanquette de veau, four cheeses, and for dessert a magnificent clafoutis, made with fresh plums.

  ‘Where on earth did you get plums?’ asked Lucy. ‘I didn’t even think they were in season.’

  ‘I have my sources,’ she said, smiling. ‘But this is Queensland! It’s summer all year! It’s only spring and already it feels hotter than London in a heatwave.’

  ‘Yes, well, that probably says more about the fickleness of London weather than Queensland spring,’ said Will. ‘We Queenslanders are proud of our winter cardigans.’

  Did she fit in? Did he fit into her life, with its wild wanderings, its mysticism, its unloosed quality, fluid as water? How did you even begin to fit two adult lives together so that they happily resembled a whole? He tried to picture Anna’s unknown son, far off on the other side of the earth, alone, in a room. What kind of mother was she? What kind of son was this half-French adolescent called Gaspar, in a room in England, his mother living with a man he did not know?

  In the days following the dinner party, the report cards came back. A tick from Lucy: ‘Luce reckons she’s wonderful,’ said Will. ‘Good-looking, an accomplished cook—and bloody exotic.’ And a sort of half-tick from Will himself: ‘Yeah, she’s all that, but what does she actually do? I mean, apart from cooking up a storm? What does she live on?’ As for Jerry and Eleni, they loved her straight away because Anna cooked like a dream, because she folded eggs and flour and care into a pie, because love was just another food of the body, entering the mouth, the nose, the eyes and the heart.

  He might have guessed word would spread, that Lucy would tell a friend about Jonathan’s new live-in partner, that Jerry and Eleni—those gossipy Greeks!—could keep nothing to themselves. Jerry was already going around telling everyone about his almost certain victory over DERM and that small, ridiculous minister in his platform shoes; how he, Jerry, had discovered that the original boundary to Jonathan’s property was now underwater. The lake was rising! Or perhaps the earth was slowly sinking, as all life must, all living things, all bodies, even bodies filled with pies and love. Climate change, was it? In one hundred years the water of the lake had fought its way to land, spilling onto the earth in a cunning creep of native rights. Was The Landing drowning? The earth itself? All those drowned children, buried in the graveyard, all that love, was everything destined for the flood?

  FORTY-ONE

  Peace and love

  Penny was back to Tupperware containers of last night’s leftovers for lunch, to girls wearing too much make-up being bitchy on Facebook to other girls wearing too much make-up. She knew this because Chiffany Taylor—possibly a mutilation of ‘Tiffany’ and possibly the worst name Penny had ever heard—came to her in tears after class, accusing Kaylene Knight of bullying her. Penny knew enough about Department of Education bullying protocols to know it was one for the headmaster, so she led a weeping Chiffany to his office.

  Every night she came home to a casserole or a stew, something tasty Marie had prepared. She had to admit it was pleasant not having to cook, when her feet were tired, her voice exhausted from shouting—or from the effort of trying not to shout—worn out from looking into the vacant eyes of adolescents, which was like looking into the eyes of goats. Did any of them care about fashioning life into some semblance of order, of trying to shape whatever small gifts they had into something worthwhile? She could cry with frustration, or else fall too enthusiastically upon a student who showed the slightest promise or interest. There was one boy in his final year of school whom she secretly adored: Thomas Bellini, known as ‘Merlin’ for his fascination with the dark arts of the occult and for painting impenetrable, gloomy pictures of deceased maidens. He had talent, spark, and read everything she gave him; his hopes were pinned on getting into her old art college, which was now part of Griffith University. She wanted him to succeed where she had failed, while at the same time a begrudging part of her heart wanted it to be as impossible for him as it had been for her.

  Penny and Marie had come no closer to resolving the question of where Marie would live permanently. The subject of the downstairs conversion into a granny flat swiftly became a no-go zone, since Penny made it clear whenever the subject was raised that she was deaf to it, at least for now. Might Penny have the upper hand at last? Might the power dynamic that had been the mainstay of Penny’s life be changing? Perhaps—could it be?—Marie finally understood that she needed Penny more than Penny needed her? For Marie was all peace and love, getting stronger and stronger, her physical health improving by the day. Soon, the lump and the spider bite were forgotten and she discarded her walking frame altogether, taking long, refreshing walks around the lake. She was growing younger instead of older! She was like some weird species of super being, rising at dawn to eat fresh babies. Her mother was a freak, no doubt about it, but she was also a freak living in the spare bedroom of her house.

  Gordie joined Marie on her walks around the lake, so Penny was spared that particular pleasure. Indeed, Gordie was such a regular visitor that he represented the first crack in the wall she had built around the idea of her mother living with her permanently; Gordie offered a reprieve. ‘Is your mother home?’ he asked, to which she started answering, ‘Where else would she be?’ Marie found Gordie charming, excellent company, and was reassured to know that he owned not only his own house at The Landing but two rental properties as well. With his financial stability assured, Marie could relax, knowing he was not after her money. What was money worth, anyway, at the end of life? They agreed they had done everything they wanted to do, seen everything they wanted to see.

  ‘Although I wouldn’t mind going back to Paris once more,’ said Marie.

  ‘Oh, Paris,’ said Gordie. ‘It’s more like a mythical place than an actual place, don’t you think?’

  ‘Bien sûr,’ said Marie.

  Penny often came home from work to find them having a glass of pastis on the front veranda, conversing in French. Gordie’s accent was execrable, worse than hers.

  Meanwhile, Penny continued to work on her secret project in Scarlett’s old bedroom. The light was good, as if it bounced shining all the way up from the lake, trembling and rippling. She was drawing Scarlett’s babies, sketching them as they rolled on the grass, nipping each other like puppies, a tangle of limbs. Hippy’s small white milk teeth were evenly placed in his head, and proving to be excellent new weapons. In the bright room she was making something of the drawings. She did not know what.

  FORTY-TWO

  Intimacy

  Amanda rang him in a panic, having heard he was living with someone. ‘Is it true, Dad? Is it true?’

  He panicked too—he was unprepared—and rushed to gather his thoughts. ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Does it matter? Are you? Are you living with someone?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘Sort of . . .’

  She hung up. She hung up! His grown daughter acting like a child, as if he had done something wrong. He was practically divorced; it was her mother she should be hanging up on, her mother who had fled the scene, leaving a trail of unimaginable destruction. Divorce was not nothing! It was a wound, a hit to the core of not one life but two—more when there were children—an attack on one’s very existence. Amanda was heartbroken, he was heartbroken; everybody’s lives were capsized. He could not ring her back, not yet; first, he had to work out what he wanted to say. He truly did not know if he was living with Anna or if she was a sort of vacationing guest who would soon be on her way. And did he even want it to be permanent?

  He knew h
e needed to talk to Anna. It was Friday, they were going up to The Landing again for the weekend; the days were growing wet, hot, the waters of the lake warming. He wanted to clear his head, to see Anna again in situ, as it were, with her father. He wanted to see how Marie was getting along, and Penny, those women of indomitable spirit, problematic, full of interest.

  All the way up the highway, Anna kept a hand on Jonathan’s leg. They had fallen into intimacy quickly, easily, possibly because both were so used to being part of a couple. It seemed to him that being part of a pair was the natural order of things and having a woman beside him felt right. He knew, of course, that he did not want just any passing woman.

  ‘A penny for your thoughts,’ she said, squeezing his thigh.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked, in the manner of Sarah, in the manner of women down through the ages. ‘What lies behind that lovely face?’

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ he said, in the manner of men. He could not get the right words out of his mouth. How could he possibly ask her—without sounding rude—how long she was staying, or what her intentions were?

  ‘I got a letter from Gaspard’s school today,’ she said.

  ‘Oh yes? What did it say? I hope he hasn’t been expelled.’ As soon as he said this, he realised he did not know the first thing about her son; he could be a drug-dealer for all he knew.

  ‘No, no, he’s a brilliant student, as well as being a very good boy. It’s the fees. They haven’t been paid.’

  ‘His school fees?’

  ‘They’re ridiculous! His father refuses to pay them. He says I’m the one who should pay them because I’m the one who wants him to live in England, going to that stupid school. Jean-Christophe thinks Gaspard should be educated in Paris.’

  He kept his eyes on the road. ‘Who’s been paying them then?’

  ‘Charles. But now he’s given all his money away they’ve fallen into arrears. What am I going to do?’ She removed her hand from his leg; when he glanced across, her shoulders were shaking.

  ‘Come on, darling,’ he said, conscious that it was the first time he had called her ‘darling’. ‘We’ll work something out. Can’t Gordie stump up a few bob?’

  She began to cry noisily now, sobbing. ‘My son is in England, about to get chucked out of school, and I’ve got no money and nowhere to live!’

  Should he pull over? They were in the middle of nowhere, cars zooming by at a hundred and ten kilometres an hour. He slowed, taking her wet hand in his. ‘It’s all right. You can stay with me for as long as you like.’

  ‘As long as I like? That’s not exactly a wholehearted invitation!’

  What was he meant to say? Surely she did not expect him to rescue her by getting down on one knee to propose? He kept driving; he did not want to stop and get drowned in tears and obligations. Sarah never cried—not even at the end. He was unused to female hysteria, or possibly he had blocked out the sound of it. Amanda cried, the family drama queen, a heart-wrenching sound that pierced him to the heart.

  ‘Oh, what a mess,’ Anna said through her sobs. ‘What am I doing? Why did I even come to Australia?’

  He didn’t respond.

  After a while, her sobs grew quieter. ‘I don’t understand you,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t understand myself.’

  She laughed, possibly a little too forcefully. ‘Oh, Jonathan,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we ever ask ourselves the right questions?’

  FORTY-THREE

  Breath

  Jonathan and Anna walked into Friday night at the Orpheus like a bridal couple entering their reception. Everyone looked up and if no-one clapped it was a miracle, or a mistake. They were shining, marked out by a good fortune which curled Sylv’s lip. Phil saw it too, both of them hidden from the noisy throng, sitting under a dirty marquee pitched well away from the pub, with a sign reading Quarantined! Beware, Smokers! Rosanna saw it, and PP and Cheryl, who looked away. Even Giselle saw it, and rudely pointed them out to her drunk mother, who appeared to have also swallowed a few pills. Penny saw it, sitting at a table with Gordie and Marie, who were swapping pleasant reminiscences about Scotland. Penny had a tiger prawn in her mouth and slime all over her fingers.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ said Gordie, standing up.

  ‘Hello, Pa,’ she said, kissing him on each cheek.

  They had a honeymoon glow, causing Penny to avert her eyes. ‘Jonathan,’ she said, as he leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, the same way he greeted her mother.

  ‘Penny isn’t it?’ said Anna. ‘I’m hopeless with names. Sorry.’

  ‘Not that hopeless,’ she said, smiling, lifting her cheek. ‘Yes, it’s Penny.’ Anna was maybe ten years younger than she was—perhaps more—her skin not yet loose on her bones. Penny noted the graceful sway of her limbs, the twist of hair down her back, not yet grey, not yet telegraphing her exact position along the life span continuum of a perishable woman. Penny dyed her hair, though she could not have said why. She was filled with a prickly feeling, for Anna’s ageless hair, for her loosened limbs, for her unconscious display of that happy unlocked feeling in the chest that followed sensual pleasure.

  ‘Have you eaten?’ asked Gordie, pouring them each a glass of wine from his bottle. ‘The rump is excellent.’

  Penny dangled her fingers in the finger bowl, then squeezed hard on a tiny useless scrap of floating lemon. ‘I’m going to wash my hands,’ she said. ‘Only get the prawns if you’re both having them. Prawn juice is not conducive to romance.’ She intended this remark to sound amusing, but it came out sounding bitter. She hurried to the bathroom.

  Two teenage boys came in, wearing head-to-toe black, walking far ahead of their parents, who did not have anything to do with them and their black uniqueness, nothing whatsoever. Scarlett knew what they were thinking, following them in, their woollen beanies pulled low over their foreheads, their legs trying to outwalk their parents and everything lifeless. She was being loved by her lover, Paul, who was pushing the double stroller into the Orpheus with one hand, the other slung around her pretty neck. The babies could sleep in their double stroller tonight, visitors at the feast, their place at the table assured. The new one in her belly, a sightless fish, might never see air. The babies already born could use their eyes to watch lovers dancing, or married couples fighting or else sitting silently together, nothing left to say. That would never be her and Paul! Scarlett saw her mother, her grandma, a whole pile of people, and grabbed Paul’s hand, pulling him over. The whole cast, assembled!

  The Orpheus was built of hoop pine and cedar, from the days when the forests were plentiful, when the lake knew its place and the waters of the earth were not yet in revolt. It had great verandas running around three sides, fixed with long wooden tables filled by the residents and visitors of The Landing, seeking relief from the rackety cover band playing inside the big central room that was once a concert hall, with its cedar windows and doors, its high, pressed-metal ceilings, the room where the dead once sat, alive, listening to passing sopranos. Now, there were no poems being recited but two electric guitars, lead and bass, and a passable rendition of The Pretenders’ ‘I’ll Stand By You’, the song that happened to be playing everywhere that first delirious year Penny was in love with Pete, the two of them dancing to Chrissie Hynde’s tremulous vibrato in the first flat they ever lived in together, in Brisbane’s Spring Hill. Look at Penny dancing now, skewered by memory, knowing Pete was somewhere in the room, listening too. The citizens of The Landing, gathered together, drunk to the music: the stoned hippies, the fitness freaks, the ramshackle young, dancing in the air spilling in through the open windows, alive to coming summer, which suddenly rushed in. There had to be dancing; there had to be limbs and hair flung about and a small feral child, Giselle, on the dance floor, spinning wildly.

  At some point, Marie asked Gordie to walk her home. ‘Your wish is my command,’ he said, offering his arm. They walked slowly down the path—where was everyone? Dancing probably, only
Anna and Jonathan left, canoodling down the end of the table. Out into the night they walked, the moon round and full, the sky swept of clouds, bright with stars. Wind frilled the air, picking up speed, beneath it the sound of throbbing music, voices and, as they drew further away, bats, possums squabbling in trees, far-off cars. Marie and Gordie, walking home, walking forward, amid the immensity of the world, its numberless blades of grass, its swirling air.

  At some point, Paul started flirting with Anna. Scarlett could see it, the way he was smiling at Anna, in the exact same way he smiled at her! She was stupefied, filled with a cold, hard dread; if her eyes could not believe what she was seeing, her heart did, and it died in her chest. If she hadn’t jumped up and fled, running down the road so that she and Paul—who ran after her—were not fighting under a streetlight far from the pub, it might never have happened.

  At some point, Anna was left alone at the table. First Scarlett ran off, then Paul. And why was Jonathan taking so long? She went to look for him.

  Jonathan saw that by some fateful bounce of a signal in space a text message from Sarah had been delivered to his mobile. Sarah! Her warm living fingers typing onto a phone screen—in Brisbane?—travelling up through the air, breaking the earth’s atmosphere and ricocheting off into heaven, falling down upon him sitting at the Orpheus Hotel on a Friday night at The Landing. He was in the bathroom taking a leak when the text arrived; he rushed outside, not stopping to wash his hands. Would it still be there when he got outside? Or would it be swallowed by heaven or God or whatever swallowed such things, those virtual words, invisible, floating in space. He was rushing, half mad, trying to find somewhere quiet, in the light, so he could read it. He found himself in the pool room, noisy with the knock of cues hitting snooker balls; cheering. He stood leaning against a wall, holding the phone up close, squinting, blind with fear. Please call, darling, it read, I need to talk to you urgently. Much love, S X