The Tower Mill

by James Moloney

  ‘And all that extra daylight fades the curtains, too, doesn’t it?’ said Rhonda.

  Ah, that old chestnut. Someone was sure to bring it up. I laughed with the rest, even Mike.

  ‘But it’s true, what I said about the heat,’ he lunged on, his serious tone out of kilter. ‘The best part of the day in Queensland is the morning, when it’s cool. Personally, I like it being light nice and early, lets me take Tom out in the stroller and get things done before it’s too hot.’

  They stared at him, perplexed; they were all young, single, they stayed in bed as long as they could in the mornings, just as Mike and I had done once, ourselves. They didn’t give a damn when the sun came up.

  ‘Sounds like you’re worried about the curtains,’ said Rhonda.

  There was no laughter this time. We’d done that joke. She seemed to realise and, holding Mike’s eye deliberately, came up with a fresh dig. ‘They should change Brisbane’s name to Johannesburg after he bunged on a State of Emergency for those footballers. You know they’re putting a new sign up at the border, don’t you?’ She raised her arms with fingers splayed wide to mimic a lavish billboard: ‘Now entering Queensland. Turn your clocks back an hour and your mind back a hundred years.’

  It was so bloody true, I thought, and I couldn’t help smiling with the rest, all except Mike. What was he upset about? Having a go at Queensland? Oh, come on, Mike. It’s just a bit of ribbing, I wanted to say, and to be honest, the place deserves it. They could be such yokels. Even in Brisbane they went on like bushies, and the place was all the more backward because of it.

  Mike would work his way out of his funk now, I thought. The jibe about the Springboks was an easy opening. Shit, none of this lot had been chased into a park by riot police in the fight against apartheid. All he had to do was say as much and he’d take the smirk off their faces.

  I waited for him to bring Rhonda down a peg or two with the story, but he didn’t. It was the petty stuff about Queensland that was getting his goat and, at that moment, I felt the gulf between us like the slash of a knife.

  ‘Look, you don’t understand what you’re making fun of here,’ he said, using his teacher’s voice, the one he used on dolts who needed things laid out in simple lines. ‘I spent two years in the bush. Daylight saving makes things harder for farmers.’

  ‘Upsets the cows,’ said Rhonda. ‘They get to vote in Queensland, don’t they? It’s the only way Bjelke-Petersen can get elected.’

  ‘Donkey vote,’ said another voice.

  ‘They’re all donkeys up there.’

  Everyone laughed.

  ‘At least try to understand,’ said Mike, louder now as he became more annoyed. ‘When I was teaching out west, some of my kids rode a bus for an hour each day just to attend school. With daylight saving, they’d be waiting at the roadside in the dark. Why should they do that just so uni students in the city can go for a swim after lectures?’

  He’d made it personal now, drawn a clear line of demarcation, him and them.

  Rhonda didn’t bother with him, but spoke directly to me. ‘I didn’t realise you were married to one of Bjelke-Petersen’s mob.’

  ‘Me?’ cried Mike, appalled.

  But they weren’t interested in his indignation, they weren’t interested in how ridiculous Rhonda’s last statement was. He might as well have been wearing a t-shirt with stupid emblazoned across the chest and an arrow pointing to his face, and he had no one to blame but himself.

  Other conversations had faltered. Every eye in the room was on him, while beside him I just couldn’t stand it any more.

  ‘What are you defending Queensland for?’

  ‘Because there’s nothing wrong with the place.’

  ‘There is, Mike. It’s full of fucking Queenslanders.’

  TOM

  Not long before I graduated from uni, Dad’s sister, Jane, split with her husband. She came round one evening to announce the separation to Mum and Dad and, to my surprise, she asked me to stay while she explained herself. At almost twenty-three, I was old enough to be part of such things, apparently, and I came to mark that day as the first time I was truly seen as an adult by others.

  There was nothing salacious behind the decision in any case. She just needed us to understand that they hadn’t been happy for years and it was better this way. It was hardly news, when even I had guessed as much.

  What it did do, however, was get Dad talking. The following day, he said, out of the blue, ‘Poor Jane. At least with Sue and me the agony didn’t linger for years. S’pose there were cracks right from the start and it just needed a final deluge to breech the wall.’

  I don’t remember where Mum was during this conversation but since there was just the two of us, I pushed for more: ‘She told me about a party in Surry Hills.’

  ‘Oh Christ, that party. All I wanted after that was to load up the car with my little family and go sit on a beach somewhere. Would have been a great way to end my country service and you would have gone brown as a berry.’

  ‘My mother had other ideas.’

  ‘As I discovered straight after that party, yes. “Why don’t we stay in Sydney over the weekend and start out on Monday?” she said, and when I pointed out that the grubby hotel wasn’t good for you, she already had an answer. There was a spare room in Surry Hills.’

  There was no bitterness in this telling, more a sigh for what he hadn’t been able to avoid.

  ‘What could I say? Seemed petty to argue over a couple of days, but once we had our bags inside, Susan settled on the sofa with a leg folded beneath her and a mug of coffee she’d made for herself and I thought, Shit, she’s moving in. And if that wasn’t enough to piss me off, her lecturer came around.’

  ‘Do you remember her name?’ I asked, curious to know how deeply the incident had taken root.

  ‘Nicolson,’ he answered, without hesitation. ‘I’d tangled with her at the party and here she was again looking over from the sofa like a crocodile ready to munch me up anytime she chose. No doubt she could have. God knows, I’m not a hater, Tom, but I despised that woman with an intensity that scared me. I deliberately put you down on the floor, knowing you’d run to your mummy, just to wipe the reptilian smile off her face. Susan is mine, I want to shout. We’re going back to Brisbane and you can find some other marriage to fuck with.

  ‘The lecturer stayed for lunch, all those women around the table and me at the end, like a sore thumb. Then, while Susan was feeding you, she says, “What do you think about moving down here to live?”

  ‘Guess I got a bit short with her about that, which helped to enhance my status as resident ogre. All a bit different from the way it’s been for Jane. She was Eliot’s whimper. Sue and I were the bang.’

  SUSAN

  January, 1976

  I’d hoped Mike would pick up on the Sydney idea just from the way I talked about the place.

  He didn’t seem to, though: ‘Living down here in Sydney, Suze. The answer’s no, all right?’ he said in the room we’d borrowed in Surry Hills.

  He’d managed to cajole Tom into an afternoon nap while I helped with the lunch dishes, and to avoid waking him now that I’d joined them we were sitting on the floor with our backs against the wall.

  ‘If we do make the move, it can’t be until next year,’ he said in a whisper. ‘I’m not even certain I’d want to live down here at all, anyway. I feel out of place.’

  ‘Why? Because you made a fool of yourself last night. Daylight saving, for shit’s sake. What did you want to argue over that for?’

  I didn’t know how angry I still was over that whole debacle until the words were out there, more a hiss than a whisper.

  He grimaced and nodded at the bed as a warning to keep my voice down, but his reply wasn’t exactly a model of restraint.

  ‘I didn�
�t want to argue about it. I don’t give a damn about daylight saving. I just couldn’t stand the way they were bagging everyone north of the border, like we’re all one bunch of hillbillies, and as for that Rhonda and her bloody smirk . . . All right, I made a mess of it, but I could have done with a bit of wifely support, you know.’

  ‘What, you expect me to agree with you because I’ve got a ring on my finger?’

  ‘Wouldn’t have hurt,’ he said, and then seemed to regret it.

  I’d made it clear often enough that I wouldn’t play the loyal wife out of some kind of duty, and to be fair I didn’t expect the loyal husband from him.

  He let out a long, weary breath through his nostrils. ‘It’s not just the party, anyway. I’m tired of Sydney already. Maybe I’ll feel different tomorrow, when we head north.’

  Tomorrow! I didn’t want to go back to Brisbane so soon. The girl who rented the room wasn’t due back until uni started. I’d already talked about it with Linda and now my eagerness was somehow escaping into words: ‘There’s plenty of time, yet. We don’t need to leave tomorrow, and I’m serious about making the move, Mike. It’s not like going overseas at all. You’ll get a job, no trouble.’

  ‘I’ve got a job, a good one that I want to keep. We’re staying in Brisbane.’

  I could feel the vice cranking in on both sides. ‘So you’ve decided. The man of the house has spoken. No discussion.’

  ‘Whenever we discuss things I end up losing. I’m sick of it,’ said Mike, in just the tone to challenge me but without enough conviction to warn me off.

  ‘I haven’t even started yet,’ I shot back at him.

  Our voices were rising. We’d wake Tom and, of course, the girls were only a thin wall away.

  He didn’t seem to care: ‘Fair’s fair. I let you have your semester in Brisbane. I didn’t spit the dummy when you switched to arts without even telling me. Better than that, I’ve encouraged you, I let you have this fortnight in Sydney, even though my own parents think I was nuts to say yes. When is it going to be my turn?’

  In his mind the question was purely rhetorical. It was there in his face to see. He really believed it was all about turns and the things he’d let me do, like a child indulged by an exasperated daddy.

  ‘Bullshit! I’ve given up much more than you, Mike, and you got what you wanted, anyway, right from the start. Don’t try to blackmail me now with this crap about wifey knuckling down so her beloved can get on with his career. Our marriage is different. I don’t owe you anything.’

  ‘More than me! What have you given up? Let’s have a tally, if you’re so keen. Listen, Sue, I’ve earned that posting to Kenmore.’

  The patience was gone from his voice entirely now. There was an anger in him I hadn’t seen, so much so I might have been sitting beside a different man, a man who’d lived inside my husband for three years and never let me know he was there.

  And, as quickly as this other man had appeared, he was gone again behind the cheery Mike I was used to.

  ‘It’s going to be a great year, I can feel it, Sue,’ he said, almost brightly. ‘We’re going to get out of Mum and Dad’s place, maybe buy a house once you see what sense it makes. It will mean our lives can finally get started, instead of just being on hold.’

  Was it then or had I known for weeks, even months, or from the beginning, that the Mike Riley I knew was as frightening to me as the stubborn steel I’d glimpsed a moment before.

  ‘No, Mike. If we do those things, it will put my life on hold, just when I feel I’m ready to take off. This time in Sydney is what I’ve needed, this is where I want to be,’ I said, throwing my arms about to mean the entire city. ‘I feel alive for the first time since uq, for the first time since Terry and the Tower Mill.’

  But our voices had finally woken Tom and I had to rock him on the edge of the bed to stop his crying.

  At the same time, I admitted it to myself: this was serious, and Mike’s leopard pacing around the too-small room showed that he knew, too. I wasn’t going back to Brisbane to live. That part of my life, of our lives, was over and he just had to see it.

  He agreed to stay another day, but that was it. He had to be in Brisbane on Friday for a meeting with his new principal and his heart was set on the beaches as we made our way up the coast. Weren’t there enough beaches in Sydney?

  On Monday morning, he unfolded the stroller from the boot of the Holden and pointed Tom ahead of him on a long walk, leaving me to Linda’s sympathies.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘We’re going through a bad patch, that’s all. You shouldn’t have to hear it, I know.’

  Mike’s absence gave me a chance to ring the university about my course, but he was back before I’d finished on the phone. ‘So I’ll definitely get credit for what I’ve already done in Queensland?’ I was asking as he walked in. It was all rather obvious.

  He let Tom roam the house and went into our room to wait for me. Oh God, here we go, I thought.

  ‘We haven’t agreed on anything,’ he told me, before I’d even closed the door.

  ‘I was just finding out where I’d stand.’

  ‘No you weren’t, Susan. You’re making plans as though we’ve already decided to move down here. I’m getting tired of this whole thing. I want to leave Sydney, today, this afternoon. If we don’t start now, we’ll hardly have any time for a holiday on the way.’

  ‘I don’t care about the holiday.’

  I came to the edge of the bed where he was propped up on all the pillows, but didn’t slide over beside him, even when he made room for me. Didn’t sit on the edge, either. Stayed on my feet. The distance, the height above him gave me an advantage.

  ‘Mike, I’m not going back to Brisbane. As far as I’m concerned, I never want to go back, ever. It’s a bloody police state up there, if you get in the way of the government you have to watch your back . . . and your head, too, especially in the dark when there’s no one to see.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The Tower Mill, the way the police came after us.’

  He stared at me as though he still hadn’t made the connection. And why should he? That had all been years ago, and he had no idea what I knew. So he plunged on with what he did know.

  ‘You want us to leave Brisbane because you don’t like the politics? That’s just plain ridiculous. It’s not Russia. I don’t understand what you’re so angry about, why you’re so desperate to get out of Queensland. If we do move down here, you’ll just have to wait a year or two.’

  He’d been going to say more, but stopped, suddenly frustrated with what he’d said. His face hardened, as it had so briefly yesterday. I didn’t like what I saw.

  ‘Forget what I just said, Susan. We’re not moving down here, not now, not in two years’ time.’

  I backed away from the bed and threw my arms wide, this time in supplication to a God I didn’t believe in. ‘Haven’t you been listening to me, Mike? Haven’t you heard me say how I feel alive for the first time in so long?’

  ‘Why don’t you say it, Susan. You feel alive for the first time since we got married, that’s what you mean, and it’s happened because you escaped from me again, like you did last year.’

  He’d said it too openly to believe it. It was a taunt meant to draw me back to my senses, make me admit that I had more invested in him than my new Sydney friends.

  I wouldn’t let him get away with it. ‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘I should never have married you. Rhonda said as much.’

  ‘What business is it of hers? Sounds like you’ve spent more time discussing our marriage with other people than you have with me. And it seems you were all too happy to tell them Tom is not my son.’

  ‘It’s nothing less than the truth.’

  Mike was off the bed now. I backed away, to make space for him in the tiny room, b
ut he was a big man, a full head taller than me.

  ‘Tom is my son!’ he shouted. ‘I don’t care about the biology of it all. He’s every bit as much mine as he’s yours and I won’t put up with anyone saying otherwise, especially not you.’

  ‘Tom wouldn’t be yours if it wasn’t for the fucking police that night at the Tower Mill,’ I reminded him. ‘And I wouldn’t be, either.’

  He’d frightened me with his sudden movement, but now that he was on his feet I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. He was angry, though, in a way I’d never seen him, and ready to do damage.

  ‘If it hadn’t been for the police charge, Tom wouldn’t have been born at all,’ he said.

  ‘Too damned right,’ I screamed at him. ‘He wasn’t supposed to be born, he wasn’t supposed to be at all. If Terry had stayed his old self, he wouldn’t have been, and I wouldn’t have married you.’

  Mike reeled backwards and sank onto the bed, elbows on his knees, head down.

  I couldn’t help myself now. I advanced on him, close enough to anoint his bowed head. ‘I don’t want to play families with you any more, Mike. If I didn’t have a baby, I certainly wouldn’t have a husband. Then I’d move where I damn well like, instead of having you like a ball and chain round my ankle. I hate Brisbane, can’t stand it, can’t stand Queensland, the way they cheer that mumbling thug while he sneaks around snipping away at their freedom. I’m not going back. Do you understand me? Do you get it now? I don’t want anything from you, no money, nothing, but I have to get out.’

  ‘How will you take care of Tom?’ he sobbed into his hands.

  Even through his tears, he came up with the practical questions. It only made me want to scream all the more.

  ‘I don’t care,’ I shouted. ‘Maybe it’s not too late to have him adopted. I need some air, Mike. I can’t breathe with you two around.’

  He wouldn’t look up; he hadn’t moved since he’d slumped onto the bed. What more was there to say, in any case? I left the room with barely a thought for what I was doing, and, in a faraway voice I didn’t quite recognise as my own, asked Linda to look after Tom.