by Wendy James
‘We can’t.’ His voice is low, slightly muffled. ‘How could we afford it?’
‘Oh, Ed. Don’t be so stupid. It’s easy.’ Most of Susan’s school friends have moved out of home by now, so she knows how it’s done. ‘We’ll both get some sort of student allowance. I can get more part-time work. You’ve still got your work at your dad’s factory – it’s not like he’ll care. We’ll be able to rent a little flat somewhere. We can get other people in if it gets too dear. I’ve only got another year of study, anyway. Come on, Ed – it’d be fantastic.’
‘It’d be too hard. We couldn’t. Not live together.’
‘Oh Ed.’ He doesn’t say what is bothering him, but Susan knows without being told that it is his mother. She wouldn’t approve. (‘Living In Sin? No one in the Middleton family has ever...’)
‘But we could get married.’ He turns towards her now, grinning widely, wildly. ‘Let’s get married, Susy.’
‘Married?’ Susan is not yet twenty. Twenty-year-olds live together; share dingy flats with other cohabiting students. Marriage is something you do when you grow up. Marriage is something else entirely. ‘Married?’
Ed shuffles about in the cabin until he is kneeling, one leg tucked awkwardly behind him. He takes Susan’s hand, takes both hands, clasps them between his two, ‘Will you do me the honour,’ he says, raising her hands to his lips. ‘Susan my love, my darling, my life,’ he brushes the backs of her hands gently with his lips, then turns them over, kisses her wrists, ‘will you do me the honour of becoming my wife? Go on. Say you will.’
And he looks so sweetly ridiculous, bare naked, his rangy body all hunched over in that small space, his face as crumpled and tender with sleep as a baby’s.
How can she refuse?
‘You’re not what Ed needs,’ his mother hisses the words, though she smiles politely for the camera. ‘You’re not the right kind of girl for my son,’ she elaborates, making sure the message sinks in. ‘And you’ll never last.’
‘Could you ladies stand a little closer,’ the photographer calls. ‘So your shoulders are just touching. Great. Now, how about a smile from the bride. This isn’t your funeral, honey. That’s better. Perfect. Perfect.’
It takes Susan a moment to recover from the flash and dazzle, and by then it’s too late for any response – she’s standing with her arm around Ed’s waist, smiling triumphantly for the camera.
***
The solicitor’s secretary phones. It is late afternoon, a month after the notice was first placed. ‘Mr Hamilton’s very busy, Mrs Middleton,’ she says briskly, ‘or he’d have rung you himself. He wants me to tee up an appointment with you. If you could come in as soon as possible?’
‘There’s been a response, hasn’t there?’ Susan tries hard to keep her voice level, detached.
‘I really don’t know anything about it, Mrs Middleton. How about ten tomorrow?’
She sounds so breezy, so offhand, so indifferent.
Doesn’t she know what this means?
‘I asked her what her mother’s full name was, her mother’s maiden name, her – your mother’s date of birth. Her own full name, date of birth, place of birth, former residences. And,’ here he sorts through papers, aligns them briskly on his desk, ‘she knew all the answers. She hesitated a little when I asked her your mother’s birthday, but the date she finally gave was quite correct.’
Susan is sitting in Howard Hamilton’s office. It is only ten in the morning and the room is air-conditioned, but even so she is hot; the heat prickles her scalp, her legs stick moistly to the leather seat, she is conscious of the gradually spreading damp patches beneath her arms. It has been a struggle to get here, to get the children off to school on time, to drive through manic peak-hour traffic and find a park. She’s had to hurry, in uncomfortably high heels, along the busy Chatswood streets. She’s had no time to catch her breath while waiting. She arrived just on the hour, was ushered in still panting from the rush and is sitting now, trying to make sense, react sensibly.
‘And the DNA?’
‘Well, as I warned you, the test is not conclusive, but it seems it can’t rule out the possibility that this woman is your sister. In my opinion, it’s not likely that she’d have agreed to undergo a test at all if there was really any question.’
‘What about looks? Does she look like Karen?’
‘Well, from the little I had to go on, I would say that the woman I met yesterday is physically consistent with your sister. She’s fair-haired, fair-skinned, blue-eyed. Regular features. She’s thinner. Older. But that’s only to be expected.’
‘So do you think it’s her? Do you think you’ve got enough to go on? If the DNA’s inconclusive? And these facts? Surely anyone could know these ... these things.’
‘Birth dates, Susan? Addresses? There’s hardly been time for her to launch a full-scale investigation. The notices only went in a month ago. And anyway, how else could she know – who would she ask?’
‘But you say she’s got no documents, no identification. No proof.’
‘Susan. Your sister ran away from home twenty years ago. It’s not unusual for people who don’t want to be discovered to get rid of anything that might connect them to their old lives. It’s not – and it certainly wasn’t back then – before photo IDs and hundred point identification checks – as hard as you might think to become another person.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘I think that at this point, Susan, we should be taking this woman’s claim very seriously.’
‘Oh?’ Her resistance is as confounding to Susan as it is to the solicitor. She wants it to be Karen, wants it desperately, but somehow (what if it turns out to be a joke? a hoax?) she just can’t grasp it, is finding it impossible to give in – to trust that what he is saying is true. That it could possibly be the truth.
‘But it’s not really a matter of what I think, is it?’ he says. ‘Because from here on in it’s in your hands, not mine.’ Mr Hamilton splays out his fingers as if to illustrate the point. ‘It has to be your call, Susan.’ He leans back in his chair, waits.
She capitulates. ‘Okay.’ Reluctantly. ‘What’s next then?
What do we do?’
‘What do you do?’
‘What should I do, then? Should I meet her? Should I meet her now? Or should I wait?’ She tries hard to tamp down the panic, the terror.
‘Look, I have to say, given the facts, I’m confident that this woman is your sister. So, what are you waiting for? You must be desperate to see her again. Why not meet up with her now? That is, if she’s willing to make contact. What I’d suggest is that you organise a meeting somewhere. For lunch, or for afternoon tea. Meet somewhere neutral. A cafe, a restaurant, a park. But not at home. Not this first meeting, anyway.’
‘What about my husband? I guess this affects him too. Should I take Ed?’
‘Oh.’ Mr Hamilton looks a little put out by her question. ‘Ed?’ He rubs his hand over his jaw, considering. Hamilton is a short man, barely taller than Susan, but strong looking, wiry. His eyes are heavy-lidded, deep-set, his lips full, firm, his cheeks, despite his relative youth – he’s not much past forty, Susan would guess – already heavily etched. His pale skin has a greenish tinge. Thick dark hair coats his wrists, the backs of his hands and fingers, curls above his collar. Already, even though it’s still morning (surely a lawyer would shave before work?), there is a slight raspiness, the beginnings of a dark shadow under his chin. She wonders if, despite his name, he might be Mediterranean. Greek, Spanish. He has the characteristic dourness, anyway.
‘No,’ he says finally. ‘No, I don’t think that’d be a good idea. Meet her alone.’ He smiles then, and somehow it’s an unlikely smile in that sculpted facial landscape, loose and slightly snaggle-toothed. He looks younger, less predictable. Less lawyerly. ‘I know it’s harder to do these things by y
ourself, but really,’ he says, scraping his hand across his chin again, ‘you’re the only one who’ll know for sure. Aren’t you?’
On the way home Susan drives slowly past her mother’s old house, turns at the end of the street and drives back, parks on the other side of the road. She sits and watches, though there’s nothing to see.
The house has been rented out for ten years, the money used to pay for her mother’s hospitalisation. In all those ten years Susan hasn’t been inside once. Until his death, her father had managed everything to do with the property, and for the past five years it’s all – from the signing of leases to the organising of repairs – been left in the hands of real estate agents and solicitors.
It is a red brick and tile house in a street of other, almost identical, red brick and tile homes; its only claim to singularity being an extraordinarily large block of land – almost twice the size of most of the neighbouring homes. The acme of late fifties respectability. Solid, suburban, dull. Built for ease of maintenance rather than beauty or comfort. Secure against the corrosive ocean breeze, against the summer sun, against the whims of exterior paint fashions. Nothing about it has changed (what is there to change? How could you change it?) The walls are orangey red, the roof a darker shade. Oh, maybe the charcoal paint on the porch railings and window frames is a recent alteration (wasn’t it a sickly pastel green once?). The guttering – the same charcoal colour – could be new, Susan supposes. And the front garden – though it barely warrants the term garden: a couple of frangipani trees, some ragged hibiscus, the innocuous dusty leaves of the deadly oleander – maybe the plants have grown a little, but they haven’t been added to or cultivated in any way. The lawn is overgrown, full of weeds, and a jaunty For Sale sign is nailed up beside the mailbox.
Susan sits in the car outside the house for an hour, watching, waiting. She is trying to discover something – anything – that will give her some kind of clue to the life she once lived here, the life she once shared with both her parents, with Karen. There are half memories; she can see herself jumping down the front steps, swinging on the small square iron gate, collecting the deliciously fragrant frangipani flowers, balancing carefully along the low brick fence. The way the sun falls across the porch leaving one half in shade gives her an odd sort of pang. Inexplicable. Inexpressible. She winds down the car window and breathes in the familiar breeze as if the substance of her childhood might be contained within its particles. There’s nothing solid here, nothing consequential. Nothing as fully formed and complete as a real memory would be. Just impressions. And they’re solitary impressions – the games children play to occupy themselves when they’re alone. She can recall nothing.
She starts the car, drives past the house one more time, slows down. A curtain twitches in the front window. A pale face peers out, sees her watching, disappears. A child’s face. There are no clues here. She drives home.
She calls Ed from home. ‘So,’ he asks, ‘is it her? What does the solicitor say?’ His voice is calm, careful, they have not spoken since the night before.
‘The solicitor doesn’t know for certain,’ Susan tells him, ‘but he thinks it could be her. She’s got nothing that proves it – no documents or anything. And she’s changed her name – Carly something or other, he said. But she says she’s Karen.’
‘What do you mean she says she’s Karen? Anybody could turn up and...’
‘Hold on, Ed.’ Susan’s voice is remarkably even. ‘She says she’s Karen and he says she seems to have a ... a surface knowledge at least about the family.’
‘Oh?’
‘You know – names, important dates, that sort of thing. She knows all that. And Mr Hamilton, Howard, says there’s a certain resemblance. Going by the photograph I gave him, anyway.’
‘Oh.’
‘And anyway, Ed, there’d be no real reason for an impostor to turn up – you know Howard worded the notice so there was no mention of any inheritance. She doesn’t even know about the money yet.’
‘Well, she mightn’t know, but it’d be easy enough to guess, wouldn’t it. Why else...’
She switches the phone to her other ear. Takes her time.
‘Hello...? Susy? Are you there?’
‘Sorry.’
‘I just asked what happens next. What did he say? The solicitor. How do we find out for sure if it’s her?’
‘I meet her.’
‘Shit.’ she can hear his indrawn breath, can imagine his sudden realisation.
‘Listen Suse, don’t you think it might be best if we got an independent solicitor? I’ve got nothing against this bloke, but he’s not ours. I know that Derek knows someone good, and I’ve a few clients who’d be happy to take it on. Maybe we could set up a meeting between the solicitor and this Carly woman and me. Keep you right out of it.’
‘Ed,’ Susan’s voice is firm, her back straight. ‘I’m meeting her. Alone. She’s my sister.’
Her sister.
Ed
Ed watches the five o’clock news with his parents. There’s an old clip of Ronald Reagan, standing behind a podium somewhere, answering questions easily, smiling his affable smile. ‘Thank Christ he’s gone,’ Ed comments at the end of the report. ‘Jesus. Just imagine – the fate of the free world was in that halfwit’s hands. A bloody movie star. Says something about America, doesn’t it?’
‘Says what, exactly, son?’ His father doesn’t take his eyes from the screen, doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘All that education, and you’ve still got no bloody idea.’ Ed opens his mouth, but closes it again. His father’s a good man, and an intelligent man, but not terribly sophisticated when it comes to politics. He’s not exactly right wing, but he’s certainly no leftie. There’s no point in arguing. Susan looks up from the card game she’s playing with Stella and Mitchell and catches his eye, smiles sympathetically.
His mother gets to her feet. ‘Well,’ she says with a little sigh, ‘I’d best start serving out. The meal won’t put itself on the table, will it?’ There’s no answer to this, they all know better. ‘I’ll be needing you shortly, Ed,’ his mother murmurs as she makes her way to the kitchen, ‘for the carving.’
Ed always enjoys this fortnightly meal with his mother and father. He feels guilty that he doesn’t have more time to spend with his parents, despite living nearby. He does speak to them on the phone during the week, and occasionally calls in for Saturday brunch after his morning surf with Derek, but worries that this isn’t really enough, that they would like to see more of him and the kids, that the fortnightly visit smacks of tokenism, of a duty discharged. His parents never complain – of course – and they seem to be keeping themselves reasonably busy in their retirement (overseas holidays, veterans golf tournaments, visits to shows, casinos, clubs...), but he’s convinced (despite Susan’s rolled-eyed assurances to the contrary) that these excursions are just time-fillers, diversions from their empty nest. He worries too that his father’s professed lack of interest in the current running of the company – though he’s still a shareholder, he hasn’t called in more than half a dozen times in the last year, and no longer asks about the bank balance – is just a smokescreen for a profound, and perhaps repressed, grieving. Ed feels guilty about feeling guilty, too (guilt being such an unproductive emotion, and surely only appropriate when there’s a conscious dereliction of duty). And it isn’t a duty anyway (is it?) when he so thoroughly enjoys the time spent eating and talking; the inevitable game of cards. Susan might sigh with relief when they’re safely home again, the fractious, overindulged children tucked up and asleep, but not Ed. Never Ed.
The carving of the leg, however, is one ritual that Ed doesn’t particularly enjoy. His mother frequently takes this opportunity to have what she terms a good heart-to-heart with her son: which usually means a not-so-subtle nag session or the laying of a few carefully concealed barbs. Tonight his mother pauses in her serving and looks gravely at Ed
.
‘You’re getting a little podgy, Edward,’ she says. ‘You should go without gravy and potatoes tonight, and not serve yourself so much meat. You don’t want to end up looking like your Uncle Frank now, do you?’ She puts her arm around his waist and squeezes him affectionately – making it impossible for him to take offence.
Ed says nothing, waits, intuiting that the underlying purpose of tonight’s chat hasn’t yet been revealed. He’s almost certain that she’s not really interested in his few excess kilos. Ed has been steadily gaining weight over the last twelve months – he’s had to go up a trouser size, and his shirt collars are getting a little too tight – but this is the first time his mother has made any mention of it.
‘Is there something wrong, darling? Is something bothering you?’ She has resumed her serving, has asked her question in a manner that Ed, from long experience, knows is cunningly deceptive in its casualness. ‘It’s not like you, Eddy, to let yourself go like this.’ She goes on, ‘You seem – well frankly you seem a little down, darling. Depressed. Depression’s a terrible strain on the waistline.’
Ed murmurs something noncommittal, keeps carving. Then: ‘God knows you’ve got good reason, darling. All those changes you’ve been making at the factory – all that work! – and that horrible mortgage and now there’s this upset of Susan’s to deal with – this will of her mother’s. I suppose that’s what’s worrying you?’ She asks her questions with such earnest motherly concern, that if he did not know her better it would be possible to misconstrue her motivation, to mistake it for the real thing.
