Gemma frowned in distaste at her sister. ‘Who even says “pash” any more, Phoebe? You’re not fourteen.’
Phoebe considered her sister through half-closed eyes. ‘Do you think something really weird has gone on with us since you got pregnant?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Well, you’ve gone all resplect . . . respectabable . . . you know, boring, and I’m the one skolling wine and talking about pashing. Maybe your dark side had to vacate your body because of the baby, and it came into me.’
Charlie laughed, but Gemma rolled her eyes.
‘Well, good luck to Helen and Myles,’ said Charlie. ‘Whatever they’re getting up to.’
‘They won’t be getting up to anything,’ Gemma insisted. ‘You haven’t heard the way Helen talks, Charlie – she says she’s still married.’
‘What? Didn’t her husband get hit . . .’
Phoebe did a repeat performance of her mime of a bus hitting someone, again with accompanying repugnant sound effects.
Charlie watched her, grimacing. ‘That’s in really poor taste.’
‘Blame my evil twin,’ she said, cocking her head towards Gemma.
‘What do you mean, she says she’s still married?’ Charlie asked.
‘That’s how she talks about it,’ Gemma tried to explain. ‘He might be dead, but nothing happened to her, so she’s still his wife.’
Charlie was thoughtful. ‘She’s probably just trying to describe how she feels.’
Gemma shook her head. ‘She won’t even consider going on a date. A perfectly nice man she met through Noah’s preschool asked her out and she flatly refused.’
‘Maybe she’s just not ready,’ Charlie shrugged.
‘Problem is,’ said Gemma, ‘it’s only going to get harder. And in the meantime, her husband’s never going to age, get a gut or lose his hair, she’s never going to have another fight with him, he’s never going to piss her off for leaving the seat up, whatever. He’s going to be pretty stiff competition for any poor bloke who comes along.’
Phoebe was nodding. ‘Just like James Dean,’ she said profoundly.
‘What?’ Gemma frowned.
‘James Dean is forever young, forever cool,’ Phoebe explained. ‘But if he hadn’t died, for all we know he could have ended up like Marlon Brando – sad, fat and totally weird.’
Gemma was nodding. ‘Marilyn Monroe died, tragic but beautiful.’
‘Elizabeth Taylor lives,’ said Phoebe. ‘Sad, fat and weird.’
‘Princess Diana –’
‘No, stop there,’ said Charlie.
Phoebe and Gemma both looked at him.
‘Not Princess Diana,’ he said seriously. ‘She would have been beautiful no matter how long she lived.’
Gemma grinned. ‘Why Charlie, I didn’t realise you were a Diana-phile.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he said firmly. ‘It disrespects her memory.’
Phoebe made a snorting sound. ‘Please tell me you don’t have a collection of plates and tea towels at home.’
‘Anyway,’ said Gemma, getting back to the point. ‘Helen’s not over her husband, and if she’s wandering into the bushes with the MD and a bottle of wine, he would have every reason to expect . . . something to happen. She’s leading him on.’
‘You’re not suggesting she’s doing it on purpose?’ Charlie said dubiously.
‘Who knows?’ Gemma said. ‘I mean, ever since she tripped into Bailey’s, I’ve been shafted. After I did her a favour getting her the job in the first place.’
‘I thought she was the one doing you a favour?’ Charlie reminded her.
‘Whatever, she’s certainly manipulating it to her advantage now.’
‘Oh, come on, Gem, Helen’s not like that,’ said Phoebe. ‘She couldn’t manipulate her way out of a paper bag.’
‘So you say, but honestly, I’m beginning to worry I won’t get my job back after I have the baby,’ Gemma said. ‘Then what am I going to do?’
‘I don’t think you should worry about that,’ said Charlie. ‘I agree with Phoebe: Helen wouldn’t do that to you.’
‘But Myles would,’ she countered. ‘You didn’t hear the way he was going on about her before you got here, Charlie. He’s obviously smitten, and he feels sorry for her losing her husband. That’s a heady mix. When men start thinking with their dicks, everything else goes out the window.’ Gemma looked glum. ‘I thought there were supposed to be rules about not fraternising in the workplace?’
‘It’s not the fifties, Gem,’ said Phoebe. ‘These days if you don’t fraternise at work, where else are you going to do it?’ She stopped for a minute to focus on pouring wine into her glass. ‘Besides, if what you say is true and Helen’s not ready, nothing’s going to happen anyway.’
Helen and Myles walked at a leisurely pace through the narrow back streets down towards the water.
‘How do you know so much about the Wastelanders?’ Helen asked him. ‘Do Bailey’s handle the account or something?’
Myles shook his head. ‘I have nephews.’
‘Oh? How many?’
‘Five all up.’
‘Five?’ Helen exclaimed. ‘Any nieces?’
He smiled. ‘No, all boys. Runs in the family – I was one of three boys as well.’
‘Where do you come?’
‘I’m the youngest, then there’s Rupert, and Hugo’s the eldest.’
Helen considered him. ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying . . .’
Myles looked down at her. ‘Go ahead.’
‘They’re very fancy-pants names. Did you grow up with a silver spoon in your mouth, Mr Davenport?’
Myles laughed, shaking his head. ‘More like plastic. We grew up in St Kilda; it was a rough place back then, especially if you had a “fancy-pants” name. Poor old Rupe got it the worst. And he had such a temper, he used to fly off at anyone who so much as looked at him sideways.’
Helen veered Myles to the left, down a set of steps that ran between the houses.
‘My mother came from England,’ Myles went on. ‘I don’t think she had fully acclimatised to Australia when she had us. She didn’t realise that if she’d named us Mick, Bob and Pete we would have got off a lot easier.’
‘Was your father English as well?’
Myles shook his head. ‘They met when he was backpacking around Europe, fell madly in love, and my mother disgraced the family by running off to the colonies with a no-hoper, as far as they were concerned. They were very upper class: her father was an earl.’
‘Fancy-pants after all?’ Helen suggested.
‘They never had anything to do with us. They disowned my mother, cut her off completely. But that was okay with her; she told us she hated the whole class system and she was glad to get away from it. She certainly didn’t want her kids to have any part of it.’
They came to a tiny patch of green edging the harbour. It could barely be called a park, but the view was stunning, looking straight across the water to the city.
‘What a great little spot,’ said Myles.
‘My brother and I used to come down here when we were kids. The ferry wharf’s just a little further up,’ said Helen, pointing it out for Myles. ‘We’d go fishing, bring jam sandwiches and cordial in a flask . . .’
And they’d talk, Helen remembered, for hours on end. Tony was a great storyteller, and as they grew older he’d told her about all the places they were going to travel. He brought her down here for her first illicit taste of alcohol, and her first puff of a cigarette, both of which made her sick. They lay on the grass under the shade, poring over Lonely Planet guides, while he made his plans to travel through Asia, Europe and finally to London. Helen had only one year left at school and she was going to follow him, meet up wherever he’d made it to by then. She was already saving from her after-school job at the local supermarket.
‘There’s only the two of you?’ Myles was asking.
Helen nodded. ‘Tony, but he
lives in England now.’ She turned around. ‘Do you want to sit for a while?’
‘Sure.’
They walked over to a bench and sat down. Helen passed Myles the wineglasses, and he held them while she poured.
Myles held his glass up. ‘What shall we drink to?’
Helen thought about it. ‘Let’s drink to your mother. She sounds pretty great.’
‘She was,’ he agreed, clinking his glass with Helen’s.
‘What about your father?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘I never knew him – he took off after I was born. Turns out Mum’s family were right: he was a no-hoper. He drank too much, he couldn’t hold down a job, he just wasn’t up to the responsibility of a family. So my mother was left to bring us up on her own. No help, nothing from her family of course, and my father’s family were all interstate. Besides, they liked to pretend we didn’t exist so they didn’t have to feel any responsibility either.’
‘Bringing three boys up on her own, that couldn’t have been easy.’
‘No, but my mother was an amazing woman. She was incredibly resourceful, considering she’d had such a privileged upbringing. She took us to the library religiously, read to us until we were old enough to read ourselves, made sure we covered all the classics that they weren’t teaching us at school. She took us to art galleries, museums, anything we could get into for free. She loved festivals,’ he smiled, ‘concerts in the park, experimental theatre, weird performance art. She encouraged us to be open to everything.’
Myles paused, remembering. ‘In the school holidays she’d plan these excursions, pack us off with a picnic lunch to find an Aboriginal site on the outskirts of the city, or some other historical place that she’d researched.’ He stared wistfully out across the water. ‘She was insatiable. She had a wonderful mind that she never really got to use, at least not for a career of her own. She said we boys were her life’s work, her greatest achievement.’
Helen was watching him. She hadn’t failed to notice that he only referred to his mother in the past tense.
‘Listen to me,’ Myles said suddenly. ‘I’m making her sound like some kind of saint, and making myself sound like a bit of a nancy boy.’ He paused. ‘A fancy-pants nancy boy even.’
Helen gave him a faint smile. ‘What happened to her?’ she asked carefully.
Myles took a breath. ‘She died just after I was accepted into uni, once she knew I was all set with a scholarship. Hugo had already graduated, Rupe was up at the Conservatorium in Sydney. She collapsed the first time just as I finished my final school exams. Breast cancer. The doctors said it was so advanced they couldn’t do anything, and Mum didn’t want chemo to prolong her life; she knew that would only make her sicker for longer and we’d have to look after her. She must have been having symptoms for a long time, but she never complained, never stopped, and never did anything about it. She just wanted to see us through. She died eight weeks after she was diagnosed.’
‘She really was a saint,’ Helen said quietly.
Myles didn’t respond, only stared out at the water.
‘So was your mother’s illness the reason you went into medicine?’ Helen asked after a while.
He looked at her then. ‘And the reason I quit. After she died, I did one semester of the arts/law degree I was enrolled in, but I wasn’t committed any more. I decided I had to do something to help people. I think I had ideas of saving everyone else’s mother. But it was so hard, I couldn’t handle it,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You don’t cure many people in medicine, you just treat them, make them comfortable. I suppose you’d know that. Anyway, I think I had some kind of minor breakdown. I went to Tasmania to stay with Hugo for a while – he has a property down there – took some time out to decide what I wanted to do.’
‘And you came up with business management? That’s quite a leap.’
‘That was the point. I wanted to deal with problems that could be fixed. But it’s never that simple. There are always people involved, and they get affected by the decisions you make, sometimes for the worse. I’ve tried to avoid that, find solutions that work for everybody, but the responsibility feels overwhelming at times.’
Helen sipped her wine, thinking. No wonder he went around with the weight of the world on his shoulders.
‘Okay, that’s my quota,’ Myles said suddenly. ‘You let me talk too much, Helen. You really need to yawn occasionally so I know when I’m boring you.’
She smiled. ‘But you see, you weren’t boring me.’
‘Hmm,’ he said doubtfully. ‘So what about you? You said your brother’s in England. Are your parents around?’
Helen hesitated. ‘My father passed away, but my mother’s still alive: she’s in a nursing home, special care . . . she has Alzheimer’s.’
Myles shifted on the bench so he was turned towards her. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Helen. That must be hard.’
She shrugged. ‘It can be.’
‘Does your mother recognise you any more?’
Sometimes the truth hit Helen like a harsh blow. She swallowed. ‘No, not so much these days.’
‘That’d be the worst part, I imagine,’ he said gently. ‘Were you close?’
Helen had to think about how to answer that. ‘You know, mothers and daughters have particular issues,’ she began. ‘I was going through my teens while she was going through depression after my father died. Eventually she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, so I suppose we never got to work through some of those mother–daughter issues.’ Helen frowned, shaking her head. ‘Listen to me, babbling away, I don’t know what I’m saying.’
‘I think you’re trying to say that you didn’t get on so well with your mum,’ said Myles. ‘That’s not a crime, Helen.’
‘We’re just different, I guess,’ she shrugged. ‘We look alike, but that’s where the similarity ends. Mum was very . . . out there. She had to be the centre of attention all the time, needed constant affirmation that she was attractive and desirable. My dad obliged, till his demons got the better of him.’
‘What do you mean?’
Helen felt a faint twist in her heart. She wasn’t ready to tell Myles everything. ‘Oh, he kind of withdrew in the years before he died . . . Anyway, Mum was very close to my brother, but when he went away, and my dad was gone, she lost it completely.’
‘Alzheimer’s is an actual physiological disease, though, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, you’re right, it is. But just like your mother was able to hold on to see you through, I wonder if my mother didn’t let go once she felt she’d lost everything.’
‘She still had you.’
‘Mm, that wasn’t much comfort apparently.’
Life was full of perverse ironies, it occurred to Helen. It was almost cruel. There was Myles’s mother, so full of life, living for her sons, enjoying every last moment with them. Then there was her mother, her life stuck on pause while she pined for those who weren’t around any more. And David’s life had been snatched from him with no warning at all, and he’d had so little time with his son. What would have become of their relationship as Noah grew older? What if he’d made choices David didn’t approve of, as David had with his father? She wondered if he would have been any more flexible than Jim, really.
‘Tell me something positive,’ Helen said suddenly.
‘Pardon?’
‘It’s getting too depressing. Tell me something uplifting. Your brothers, are they happy? Well? Successful?’
He smiled. ‘Yes to all three. Hugo’s an artist, living a very idyllic life on his farm in Tasmania, with a wonderful partner and three terrific boys. And Rupe’s settled down now, after a rough start. He was hit hard by Mum’s death, went feral for a few years, dropped out of the Conservatorium, got into drugs –’
‘I want to hear positive,’ Helen reminded him.
Myles nodded. ‘I’m getting to it. He had a son during that time, and they’ve managed to reconnect in the last few years. He’s in a band that’s doing al
l right, they play alternative, blues . . . I don’t know what you call it, but they sound good. And he finally found a woman who can handle him. They had a little boy together last year.’
Helen held her glass up to Myles. ‘Here’s to your brothers.’
‘To all our brothers,’ said Myles, clinking her glass. ‘How long has it been since you’ve seen . . . was it Tony?’
She thought about it. ‘I think the last time would have been when Noah was born. It was a flying visit though. It’s difficult in his line of work, it can be very unpredictable.’
‘What does he do?’
‘He originally went over to break into theatre directing.’
‘Tough field.’
Helen nodded. ‘He stage manages mostly, though he’s been a director’s assistant on a few productions.’
‘And you never thought of going over to see him this whole time?’
‘Sure I did,’ she said. ‘I was supposed to follow him over after I left school.’
‘What happened?’
‘I couldn’t leave Mum,’ Helen said simply. She drained her glass and held up the bottle. It was empty. ‘I think that might be our cue to go back,’ she announced.
As they walked through the streets back to her place, Helen realised she was relieved Myles hadn’t raised the subject of Noah’s father again. She’d find it a lot harder to lie to him now, though she couldn’t help thinking it was a little odd as well, now that he’d actually met Noah. She supposed he’d got the hint the first time and he was respecting her privacy, and she did appreciate that. She liked the ease that had developed between them, she didn’t want Myles to start looking at her differently, with pity in his eyes.
‘Would you like to come in for coffee?’ she asked as they approached her house.
Myles shook his head. ‘Thanks, but I should really get going this time.’
‘Are you sure? Don’t you want to come in and call a taxi at least?’
He took his mobile phone out of his pocket. ‘No need. Besides, I’m sure I’ll grab one easily up on the main road.’ He stopped outside her gate and turned to face her. ‘I had a really good time tonight, Helen. Thanks for inviting me.’
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