by Nicole Trope
Heather nods. If not for Sal’s presence, I suspect she would follow me to the bathroom to hear more about the life she imagines I have led. Heather spends all her spare change on women’s magazines, and I can see that while her hands are busy working she lets her mind run riot imagining a different life. They cannot get at your dreams in prison—clichéd but true.
‘I assume everything I’ll need is kept under the sink?’ I ask, and Heather points to the kitchen and nods again.
Heather used to drown out the more unsavoury parts of her life with alcohol. ‘The usual bullshit,’ she told me. ‘Husband gone, no money, out-of-control kids, not the life I had imagined for myself.’ Now that I know her better I can see that Heather wouldn’t have been out of place living next door to me. In fact, at one stage there was someone much like her living next door to us. Someone whose life did not turn out the way she expected it to.
I think about her, Ellie, a lot these days, especially since Simon . . . After Ellie’s husband left her and the kids I could have done more for her, helped her out more, instead of pretending to myself that she was coping I should have seen what was really going on instead of comforting myself that I was doing enough to help by babysitting when it suited me. I should have gone over to her house.
When Heather confessed her drinking problem I felt nothing but empathy. There was a time when I would have judged her, but that time is long gone. Profoundly shocking events in life can change a person. I understand that now. Before everything started with Simon I was content with one glass of wine every now and again, but as the months wore on and the press became more vicious I found myself turning to alcohol more and more. We both did. Two glasses of wine allow you to see a news article as a temporary thing. You explain it away and convince yourself that someone else will be the subject of the nation’s opprobrium soon enough. Three glasses and four allow you to project yourself past what is happening in your life, and then you are tipped over the edge into sleep and nothing matters for a while.
He drank whisky alone in his study and I drank wine and watched bad television. The rosy glow that alcohol produces changed the direction of my thinking. I would go from believing that the police were about to arrive at our front door to drag Simon away to believing that the whole thing was a storm in a teacup, an overreaction by silly women who had misinterpreted Simon’s friendliness. A few glasses on and I would grow bitter about being imprisoned in my house, and angry at the press who were attacking Simon and our family for no earthly reason. That would be followed by a thick, dreamless sleep that I woke from dry-mouthed and regretful. It didn’t happen every night, but it happened enough for me to understand that I was only a step or two from the spiral downwards.
I’m sure there are people who can compartmentalise their problems and deal with them in a logical fashion, but during that time I found it difficult to think of anything but the accusations against Simon. Whatever I did and wherever I went I would be turning over the words of one woman or another. Five months after that first article in which his behaviour was just a footnote, I had a collection of phrases that I ran through over and over again. Phrases that brought to mind images that I didn’t want to see.
He shoved his hand down my blouse.
He pushed against me and pinned me to a wall.
He whispered that I smelled like a summer peach and then he kissed me.
His fingers went inside me and it hurt so much.
I begged him to stop. Begged him.
‘Preposterous,’ said Simon every time. ‘As if I would do something like that, as if I would say something like that.’
‘No, of course not,’ I would agree, and then I would bite down on the direct question: But did you do this, Simon—maybe not in those words, not in that way, but did you do it?
We had never spent as much time apart as we did in those last few months before he died. We were fond of the same television programs—or at least I was happy enough to watch what he wanted in order to enjoy his company. It had been our nightly ritual since the girls left home to take a small fruit plate and some good dark chocolate along with our cups of tea into the television room. There we would spend an hour or two chatting about what we were watching, about the girls, about our friends. We were such easy companions by then. We had so many years of memories to call upon. We never ran out of things to say. But when a new story began to appear every day about the things he was accused of, we became uneasy in each other’s company. I think we were afraid to be in the same room for too long. He, because he was afraid I might ask him uncomfortable questions, and me, because I was afraid that if I asked those questions I would be given answers I didn’t want to hear.
‘How could she not know?’ is a question asked of every woman betrayed by a man. ‘How could she not know he was sleeping with other women, or gambling away all their money, or running a business that was going bankrupt, or cheating the tax office, or gay, or that he had a whole other family?’ How could she not know, indeed?
The allegations didn’t just mystify and disgust me, they were also a blow to my ego. Despite my curtailed education I had always considered myself to be relatively smart. I read voraciously. I kept up with the news and the world outside my home. I was capable enough, when I felt comfortable, of conversing on a wide range of topics. The idea that I had been so blind was difficult to accept. So I drank and ate away confronting thoughts about my lack of insight, and I waited for it all to blow over. It didn’t, of course. My pants grew tight and my eyes acquired a red rim and the truth was eventually impossible to ignore, and so here I am.
I lost the weight soon enough with a court case hanging over my head, but I didn’t really give up my three or four glasses of wine a night until I came here. I feel better for it, but certainly no happier. Wine-coloured glasses are much more pleasant than reality.
‘The drink just makes life a bit better,’ Heather told me when she explained why she was here. I didn’t ask her for her story. I knew not to do that, but it came up over dinner. We were eating lasagne that I had made, and Sal said, ‘I would kill for a glass of red.’ I smiled at her, both of us sharing, I’m sure, the vision of an Italian restaurant, lit by candles throwing a warm glow on a rich, deep glass of red wine. Heather didn’t respond; she was shovelling her food in quickly. Everyone eats quickly here. Our budgets are small and so food is not plentiful. Deprived of liberty and choice, people revert to a defensive, animal way of eating.
‘I’ll never drink again,’ she said when she paused for breath.
‘You only have a few months left,’ I said. ‘I’m sure you’ll enjoy that first drink when you get home.’
Sal caught my eye and shook her head.
‘No,’ said Heather. ‘Alcohol put me in here. I can’t let that happen again.’
‘Oh,’ I said, and then because I know not to push I just went back to my meal.
‘I had a car accident,’ said Heather. ‘I was drunk and I hit another car and there was a child in the back. I deserved to be punished. I did. I won’t drink again.’
I had no idea what to say to that. I would have liked to ask if the child died and how old he or she was, but I could see the discussion was over.
Heather longs for the glossy life of a celebrity, but I’m sure she looks at me and wonders at the apparent perfection on the magazine pages. Celebrities and the wives of celebrities should certainly not end up cleaning toilets in prison. Strange how often they do.
I don’t mind, really. I like to tire myself out. But when your hands are busy your mind is free, and there are days when that’s not a good thing.
The last year and a half of my life has been the stuff of bad television.
It began, predictably enough, with wonderful news. Simon came back from lunch with his agent jubilant and triumphant. Lunch with his agent was a monthly occurrence, although they did little more than speak of Simon’s glory days when he was the most famous man on television. Henry wasn’t really working anymore but he enjoyed
catching up with his only remaining client. They went to the same restaurant each time, and the maître d’ had always reserved their favourite table and greeted them by name. They both ordered the steak with a side of potatoes au gratin; they split a salad and a bottle of red wine and whatever dessert was the special of the day. Simon would not sleep that night because his digestion was no longer what it used to be, but I didn’t grumble at him about it. I knew that as he got older and the spotlight on him grew dimmer he clung to these lunches and discussions of the old days.
Usually he returned from the lunches a little drunk and with snippets of gossip about the industry he was no longer a part of, but his last lunch with Henry was different.
‘My dear, I’ve had the most glorious news,’ he said, and I obediently put down my book to focus on him entirely. ‘I’m going to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Apparently I was an integral part of Australian television history, and I’m to be acknowledged at the awards ceremony in September. They want me to make a speech.’
‘Oh, Simon,’ I said, ‘that’s delightful news! We must call the girls.’
‘You’ll need a new dress, and Henry said there may be interviews with magazines when the news gets out.’
He was the happiest he’d been for years. Simon was a performer. He revelled in being the centre of attention. Even when we were just out together he would behave as though a camera was focused on him. Once he had achieved a certain level of fame, I often had to chastise myself for thinking that his grand gestures of love were little more than performances for which he required my applause. He liked to hide gifts of jewellery in desserts and surprise me with tickets to Italy in the middle of dinner with friends. On my fortieth birthday, he bought forty roses and set them up in small vases leading all the way into our favourite restaurant, which he had hired out for the night. All our friends and family were waiting, and somehow the press had also managed to get wind of my surprise. In the pictures of our life that appear in magazines I am usually caught from the side or the back, always looking at or holding onto Simon. He doesn’t look at me, he looks at the camera.
If I questioned his behaviour I always felt mean-spirited, and I was then especially effusive in my thanks.
‘Did you have the most wonderful birthday, darling girl?’ he asked me after the night in the restaurant. I had enjoyed the night, but secretly I would have preferred a small dinner with a few close friends and no flashing cameras.
‘Oh, Simon, it was magnificent. You’re so clever to have kept it so quiet.’
‘You will be the envy of your friends, my dear. Look how much you are loved and adored.’
‘I’m already the envy of my friends,’ I said, knowing that it was what he wanted to hear.
The afternoon he learned that he was to be inducted into the Hall of Fame I watched him pace up and down the living room, talking and laughing about his lunch with Henry, and I saw glimpses of the young man he had once been.
It felt very glamorous to me at sixteen to find myself married to an actor; I had little idea of how scarce money would be. I was really still a child and had never had to think beyond making my pocket money stretch to cover a couple of shopping trips with Lulu. I’d never even had a real job. After we were married I left school, to the horror of my teachers and principal, who would gladly have allowed me to finish my studies if I agreed to keep my marital status a secret. Simon wouldn’t hear of it. ‘You’re a married woman, Rose. You don’t need to be at school pretending to be a child any longer.’ I got a position at a supermarket, working at the checkout, and between the two of us we managed to pay the rent and keep ourselves fed, but then I discovered I was pregnant with Portia.
I was terrified. The first time we’d had sex had been shocking enough, but giving birth was almost beyond my comprehension. I was a child when I married him, and a child on our wedding night. I thought I was ready, but I can remember lying in bed after he had fallen asleep and thinking, I’m never doing that again. It was nothing like I had imagined, and there was no pleasure involved in the actual act. Lying there afterwards, I longed for my mother and my bed at home where my rag doll still lay on my pillow. I cried quietly, terrified that he would wake up and make me do it again.
Of course we did have sex again and of course it got better. Simon loved my body. He was always talking about how small and perfect I was. ‘These breasts are just a cupful,’ he said. ‘The perfect cupful.’
What was he seeing when he looked at me? I think about that now. And if I was so perfect, why was I not enough for him? And would another woman have been better at being his wife, at keeping him from his transgressions?
He never wanted to discuss previous girlfriends. ‘That is my past, darling girl, and you are my future and the rest of my life,’ he said when I asked him. In all our years together I only met one of his ex-girlfriends, and she was much older than me—older than Simon, in fact.
‘How is Lilly faring?’ Simon asked the woman, Sarah I think her name was. It was at a Christmas party for the television studio. The woman was a makeup artist who had started out as an actor and changed direction.
‘She’s well, Simon, thank you. She has decided to stay in Europe. She loves it there, although I miss her. It was so generous of you to help her out with a ticket. Especially since you hadn’t seen her for so long.’ Sarah’s tone was flat, distinctly ungrateful, I thought.
‘It was nothing, Sarah, nothing at all.’
‘Who’s Lilly?’ I asked as we made our way to the bar.
‘She’s Sarah’s daughter. She was only about twelve when I met her, but she contacted me about a year ago. She needed money for a ticket to Europe. I gave her some, it wasn’t much.’
‘Why would she have contacted you?’ I said. ‘You have no relationship with her at all.’
‘There will always be people from my past who want to get something from me. Last week someone I went to school with called me and asked me to invest in his drycleaning business. Can you imagine? I haven’t seen the man for nearly thirty years but that didn’t stop him. I’m sure we didn’t even get on when we attended school together. When I knew Lilly I was a struggling actor, but now I’m rich and famous. She and I were good friends. It was a small gesture to an old friend, that’s all.’
Red flags are not as easy to see as people might think. Red flags can only be spotted when you are looking for them. I thought it was terribly kind of Simon to give the young woman money. I thought it was sad that people thought they could use him for his money. I didn’t think anything else.
Simon was not pleased when he learned I was pregnant. I had been hoping that he would find a way to make me feel better, but he was horrified. I’ve often wondered whether Portia felt his resentment for her in the womb and that’s why they’ve always been at loggerheads.
‘It’s not my fault,’ I wailed when Simon yelled at me for ‘ruining his career’. ‘Maybe that thing broke,’ I said referring to the condom, which was our only method of contraception—and one that Simon didn’t always use. Simon smiled at me, ‘Oh Rose, you’re such a child,’ which made me even more upset. He seemed to be laughing at me for being young, but it may be that he was pleased with the obvious evidence of my naiveté.
‘Now, Rose, darling girl, stop these tears,’ he said. ‘This is a setback, but we will survive. I know there will be an extra mouth to feed and it will be difficult, but we will manage. I can get some extra shifts at the restaurant, and perhaps you can still work for a few more months.’
‘Of course I will, Simon,’ I said.
He kissed my forehead. ‘There, see, it will be fine. All will be well. The only thing I ask is that you do not expect me to give up my dream. Please say you do not expect that. Especially now that I have Henry as an agent. He feels that at any moment now my big break will arrive.’
‘I would never ask you to give up your dream,’ I said. I had never really had dreams of my own. Being a teacher was an idea I absorbed from my parents. The only th
ing I had ever really wanted in my life was Simon.
‘Of course you wouldn’t, you’re my darling girl and you know that when I’m famous we’ll both be so happy. Now, you won’t gain too much weight, will you? I can’t abide women who let themselves go and turn into cows with bulbous breasts and fat stomachs.’
I worked right up until the week before Portia was born. By then I was exhausted. My stomach was a huge alien thing sticking out of the front of my body. Simon had stopped coming near me as soon as my stomach started to grow. ‘I don’t want to hurt the baby,’ he said, and I had no one to ask about that. I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking my doctor the question, and there were no women around I was close enough to to ask for advice. I wanted my mother every day but couldn’t think of how to approach her. I also didn’t want her to know how hard my life was. I was still young enough not to want to hear ‘I told you so’. And Simon grew angry if I mentioned my parents, so I knew it was best to keep quiet. ‘You have no idea how much it hurts me that they will not accept me, Rose,’ he said if I brought them up. ‘It pains me to think how much they hate me. How can you love people who hate me so much?’
After Portia was born, Simon worked every night at the restaurant and every day with one or another amateur theatre group. We were both so tired all the time that we only ever thought about sleep. Simon hated my engorged breasts and flabby stomach. He didn’t say so, but every now and then I would catch him looking at me as I fed Portia and I would see the revulsion on his face. I tried to eat less so that I would lose weight quicker, but I was always so tired that I could not function without food. It broke my heart to see the way he looked at me, and even now when I remember it I am hurt anew, although there is some anger there as well. When Rosalind was pregnant with Sam I would watch Jack rub his hands over her belly, stroking and touching, trying to feel a foot or an elbow. His eyes followed her wherever she went, as though her mere existence as a pregnant woman was a miracle. It wasn’t the same with Lottie, because he was so busy running after Sam, but he was never upset by her burgeoning body the way Simon was with mine. When I was pregnant with Portia I assumed all husbands behaved the way Simon did.
