The Landing

by Susan Johnson

  Darling! Christ, he probably didn’t have reception! Where were his car keys? Could he run back to the car and drive to wherever he had to drive to until his phone starting pinging with all those messages dropped from the sky? He rushed outside, still heading towards light bulbs, like a moth. Away from the veranda, just near the quarantined smokers, he saw that he had a couple of bars of reception on his phone. Was Sarah’s message the one he had been waiting for? He dialled.

  ‘Johnny?’ she said.

  And it all came out; how she had made the most appalling, grievous mistake; that she knew he would probably never forgive her, that he would probably never want to speak to her again. She loved him! She knew he was living with someone and when she heard, she knew without doubt that everything she had been feeling for months and months, the sadness that would not be loosed from her, the grief about everything she had left behind, everything she loved about Jonathan but had been too stupid to know, came flooding back. She loved him! Of course she knew it would be too much for him to take in right now, she knew that she had ruined his life and her own—to say nothing of the girls—but could he possibly, ever, ever forgive her? She did not love Cath; it had been a terrible failed experiment. She’d thought living with Cath would be different to living with a man—to living with him—that Cath would speak about her feelings, telegraph every mood, that they would live as if best friends, telepathically. It wasn’t like that! Cath was jealous and controlling and she, Sarah, was miserable, miserable. Cath wasn’t kind, like him; she wasn’t sweet and full of tenderness like Jonathan, and Sarah knew she had made a mistake—she’d known for months—but she was too appalled, too proud, to admit how big a mistake it was until she heard about Jonathan and oh, God, what had she done? She was crying—Sarah, crying!—and then the phone went dead and he was crying too, which was how Penny found him, on her way to bum an illicit cigarette from the quarantined smokers.

  ‘Jonathan!’ she said, alarmed. She had not seen a man cry since Scarlett was a baby, rushed to hospital with a suspected fractured skull after falling off the change table under PP’s watch. ‘Are you all right?’

  She had not noticed him holding his phone. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she said, turning to go. To her great surprise, he caught her by the wrist.

  ‘It’s okay, Penny,’ he said. ‘Please stay.’

  He held her fast; with her free hand she patted him, awkwardly, in the same way she had patted a weeping Chiffany Taylor. How did you comfort a crying man?

  ‘I need a cigarette,’ he said.

  ‘Hang on. I was just going to bum one.’ She quickly moved off, exchanging two cigarettes for a dollar from two drunks. She handed one to Jonathan.

  ‘When did you give up?’ she asked.

  ‘Twenty years ago,’ he said. ‘Sorry about this. I should man up.’ He did not look embarrassed; he looked like a man in shock.

  ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘It’s my wife. She wants to come back.’

  ‘What?’ She must have looked astonished.

  He laughed, slightly hysterically. ‘If it’s a shock to you, you can imagine what it feels like to me.’

  Penny took a deep drag, drawing poison into her lungs. ‘I thought she’d decided she was gay?’

  ‘It turns out she’s not.’ He was trembling; he had to sit down. His long legs folded beneath him on the grass.

  Penny sat down too. ‘Do you still love her?’

  He shrugged. ‘Of course. I’m a mug. But what difference does that make? Maybe that’s the wrong question.’

  ‘She loves you, doesn’t she? That’s all that matters. Take her back.’

  He finished his cigarette. ‘How? This has been terrible for me, terrible. From the moment she left I’ve been wretched. I’ve tried so hard to live without her.’

  She turned her head up to the sky, implacable, fixed—for how long?—far from human stupidity. ‘Oh, what a mess,’ she said. She turned to look at Jonathan, a man full of love, and all of it Sarah’s. Her heart felt strangely light, unburdened, as if it knew what it wanted. ‘What are you going to do?’

  He looked down at the grass, filled with suffering; everything within him had moved, altered; he no longer knew what to think or what to feel. How he had longed for her! How he had wished for such a moment! He loved Sarah—he still loved her and only her—but whether it was a compromised love he could not tell. Suddenly, he was conscious of everything: his legs beneath him, the dying cigarette in his hand, Sarah with her crooked mouth holding a phone somewhere in Brisbane. He looked up.

  ‘What about you? What are you going to do?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Love. Life.’

  She smiled. ‘You know, I don’t think love’s my problem. I thought it was love, but I’m beginning to see it’s something else.’

  ‘What else is there besides love?’

  Now it was her turn to laugh. ‘Aren’t I supposed to say that? You’re the man and I’m the woman, remember!’

  He laughed too.

  ‘Good. You’re laughing,’ Penny said.

  ‘It’s better than tossing myself into the lake,’ he said. Did he feel a nudge of hope? Did he feel the beginnings of joy? He could not tell. Then he saw Anna, in the shadows, watching them, drawing conclusions. As soon as he saw her, he waved and stood up, but she was already rushing away.

  At some point, Giselle noticed that the babies in their double stroller were unattended. Where was the mother? Why, she would wheel them all by herself triumphantly home! She would tuck them up in their beds, like a real mother, sing them off to sleep, show them the blue fairy egg nestled in her skirt pocket, wrapped in cotton wool. She had taken it out when she started dancing, placing it carefully on the chair, but it was back in her pocket now, keeping warm, safe.

  Look at Giselle wheeling the double stroller down off the veranda, all by herself, her thin arms stuck straight out, her head down, nobody stopping her. She looked at the ground as she pushed, down the grass and out onto the road, pushing into the wind blowing down upon them, a giant’s breath. The babies were so heavy! They were a weight, like great boulders, pushed over bitumen, over the crackle and rise of black bubbles in the uneven surface of the road. The wind was in her ears so she couldn’t tell the difference between the cries of the babies and the cry of the wind.

  Look at her, pushing the two babies, all by herself! If she looked down on herself from above—visionary, dangerous, headed for the lake—she might have seen a girl with a blue fairy egg in her pocket, dead flowers in her hair, a ring of browning frangipani flowers, a crown. A moment is all it takes to pass from this world to the next, for a blue egg to crack open to reveal a fairy. A whole life might turn on a misjudged moment, a jump from a bridge might go this way or that, a parachute falling to earth might land on the wrong side of the river in Pierrefitte-sur-Sauldre in the Loire, a pretty tributary of le Cher, a place for picnics, not dying.

  When she rounded the corner, the wind changed direction; now it was behind her, pushing her on; now it was taking control of both her and the stroller, taking her elsewhere, the wind, like life itself, random, unguessed. She was almost at the lake, at the little landing by the side of the road, the waves dashing and leaping. She couldn’t hold on! The thin bones that were her arms trying and failing, the wheels in the water before she could control it, into the soggy slime of the bottom of the lake, sinking. She was trying so hard; she couldn’t push backwards, she couldn’t push forward or straight, she couldn’t see the babies’ faces or hear their cries or hear anything except the wind pummelling her ears, her eyes, her face, pushing, pushing, and the stroller fell over, sideways, and the babies went in, into the waters of death. She did not see the mother running down the road, her whole life being decided by nothing more than chance, by nothing more than old busybody Sylv making a superhuman effort to raise her bulk from her chair to walk slowly through the pub to find Scarlett to tell her what she had seen, going as far as walking all the
way down the road to the streetlight where Scarlett was standing beneath it, fighting with Paul; Sylv, obese, puffing, heroic. Scarlett, running faster than she had ever run in her life, her breath gone, reaching the waters just in time, wrenching the stroller upright, lifting her babies’ mouths free of the flood, into the freeing gulp of pulsing, breathing life.

  FORTY-FOUR

  House of life

  Jonathan did not yet trust himself enough, or Sarah, to make his way to a decision. Anna was gone, back to London, to mind the house of an old friend unexpectedly posted to Geneva for a year. Gordie paid one lot of school fees and Jonathan paid the next; an unknown young man called Gaspar was now the beneficiary of school fees paid by a man in Australia he would never meet. Anna was gone; a hardy sort of migratory bird, used to storms and hot deserts, and he felt sure she would find another spot to roost.

  His daughters—both of them!—were badgering him to take Sarah back. How often does anyone get a second chance in life? It was their dream come true, it was his dream come true, a Hollywood ending. Yet, somehow, Jonathan was still wandering around the back lots, anguished, gathering his courage. He had been so hurt, so wounded, he did not know if he had it in him to forgive her. Did he want love’s vastness back, with all its capacity for damage? One day he will decide, and his human moment—misjudged or correct—will join all the other moments in the fabric of existence, everything that did not happen, and everything that did. He will never know who Celia and Glen Quinn ran into at Lake Como, adding one more thing to the list of infinite things about the infinite world he will never understand, or know.

  And Scarlett—no longer pregnant—will fit into her wedding dress when she marries Paul—with his fresh vasectomy scar—before flying off to Dubai, to travel in a four-wheel-drive convoy with her husband and their two babies into the desert, into the northern tip of the great continent of Africa, into the domesticated new world, where the names of shops on every high street of every first world city are interchangeable—Starbucks, Bang & Olufsen, Hermès. Homeless, at last!

  And Giselle will grow up to finish high school, because of an exceptional teacher called Mr Leung, who noticed her. And she will eventually go on to become a schoolteacher herself, diverting the course of human lives as her own life had been caught, diverted.

  And Penny will pick up her paintbrush in an ecstasy of release—painting the children who have vanished with their parents into the vastness of elsewhere. Here, with her mother in the next room—and possibly, just possibly—living in a new flat under the house, she will try to make whatever she is making, imperfectly and full of mistakes. She will take long-service leave; not certain what she is going to do with what remains of her life, but certain she is making something manifest, exploiting to the best of her abilities—or the worst!—her raw materials. She is herself, no-one finer. She might travel, or she might not; her project might come to something, or it might not, but, suddenly, she will be free of caring. She will see how far she can take a line for a walk.

  But Penny will never be prepared for her mother and Gordie announcing one bright summer morning that they are getting married.

  ‘Mum!’ she will cry.

  The light is fading, the waters rising, the scales waiting, mystically balanced between suffering and the radiance of love. For a dazzling instant, Marie and Gordie and Penny are alive in light’s brightness. Ring the bells, raise the glass, for—right now—Marie is laughing, holding Gordie’s hand, filled with nothing but the light of life and the astonishing words, We’re getting married. I’m afraid we’re in love.

  Acknowledgements

  Although a novel is written alone in a room, many unseen hands hold up a writer. For their warm-handed support I thank Emma Felton, Sandra Hogan, Barbara Johnson and, most especially, Jeff Humphreys, who not only offered practical and immediate support but also the most necessary kind of psychological support that allows a writer to keep going. It’s been a joy getting to know Ross and Lyle Humphreys, both passionate, lifelong readers. My grateful appreciation to all those whose own work allowed me to construct a work of fiction accurate in its details—or at least as true as I could make it—especially Bede King of Tobin King Lateef, for his excellent legal advice on land fronting water; photographer Trevor Newman and his wonderful site about historical Brisbane (www.yourbrisbanepastandpresent.com) and for his childhood memories of Brisbane, and Dr Douglas Wilkie from the University of Melbourne, for his research into the French in Australia. I am very grateful to my employers at the Courier-Mail for allowing me the time off, especially Chris Dore, Peter Gleeson and Kylie Lang. I am lucky to have two fine fiction writers at Qweekend magazine as colleagues: Matthew Condon and Frances Whiting, and to Matt in particular I owe a great deal—I wouldn’t have a job in journalism without him. As ever, my publishers—one of the last independent publishers in Australia and one of the finest—have been stalwarts, in particular Annette Barlow. Editor Ali Lavau’s suggestions were exceptionally fine, as were Christa Munns’. My new agents Benython Oldfield and Sharon Gallant of Zeitgeist Media are wonders (as agents as well as readers). My most heartfelt thanks to the Australia Council for giving me the great gift of time.