by JH Fletcher
They went eventually, leaving the usual mess. John Grove and his wife offered to help her clean up. It was kindly meant but Ruth wanted to be by herself and shooed them off. ‘You’ve been so kind. But I’ll manage. Don’t worry about it.’
She walked around the empty garden. There were cigarette butts stamped into the grass, a broken glass or two, a discarded sandwich. Never mind. She would sort it all out in the morning.
The clouds had lifted from the Ranges. She looked up at the fretted shapes of trees along the crest. Up there they were too far away to see clearly but nearer the detail stood out. The tall white trunks thrusting skywards, the clouds of leaves, the shadows beneath them. Ruth remembered Dorrie’s lost child, the frenzied and unavailing search for him. What a terrible thing, she thought. Never to have known what happened. To go through your whole life wondering whether your son was alive or dead. To survive even that. The break-up with Lukas Smart. The mindless insults when she had fought her way to Uni. The prolonged agony of the Stansridge strike and the hail of bullets that had ended it. A Labor government turning on its own people in 1949, using soldiers against the workers. From first to last, a fight. Neither disappointment nor tragedy, betrayal nor loss had defeated her. Only age, at the end. As for all people.
Even there, perhaps not. What Ruth had said to that reporter had been true. ‘She’ll be alive as long as they live.’ The young woman, running naked with her lover through these hills, hunting for her lost child, fighting, always fighting. A woman of beliefs and the courage to stand up for them. She is not dead, Ruth thought. She lives as her son Jamie lives and Lukas Smart in his paintings, in Dorrie’s memory and so in mine. Alive forever, as long as we do not allow ourselves to forget. This is the eternal life of which the preachers speak, the memory of those who are gone but who remain. In our remembrance. In our love.
Dorrie, who taught me the meaning of strength. Lukas, who never knew me, who was dead before I was born but who unknowingly taught me the glory and fulfilment of art. The little boy Jamie, running with the joy of living in him. Whose joy lives still, whatever happened to him. The dead miners of Stansridge and their stoical, courageous women, alive and defiant yet. Humanity. Dear God, let me put it into words. In my own act of worship and praise.
She went into the house. It was dark now. She drew the curtains, lit the oil lamps that remained as a memorial to Dorrie’s dislike, not of electricity but of the hard harsh glare of electric light.
In the soft glow of the lamps one memory remained above all others. Not of Dorrie but of Ruth herself, in the brief moments before coming into the house a minute ago. Of the trees watching her. Of their voices calling silently to her. Of her own voice summoning and replying to them. Of the door to the trees, open again at last.
Later that evening something drew her to the window. She pulled back the curtain, stared out at the darkness. At the trees whose presence she felt gathered about the house.
She found herself remembering once again what had happened in these Ranges over sixty years earlier.
Always until then she had seen Jamie’s disappearance through Dorrie’s eyes. The mother’s tragedy, the screams and frenzy choked by the enigmatic bush. The horror penitence pleas anger terror disbelief. Despair beating vainly against a silence ultimate and overwhelming, impervious to her screams. Always through Dorrie’s eyes. Now, surrounded by the trees that had once again opened themselves to her, she had a different perspective. Of the child, trusting and adventurous, pushing through the woven twilight of leaf and twig, exploring further and still further into the waiting shadows. The discovery of a world open to his wonder. The avenues of roots, the pillars of tree trunks, soaring. Dusty trails of ants, twining wires of bracken. The umber scales of lichen, the grains of leaf mould and rot, the orange mouths of fungi. Ruth watched him now, moving on and on in wonder, moving always deeper from shadow into shadow. Until at last she lost him.
She stared at the invisible trees that, alone among living things, knew what had happened. Silent in the darkness, the trees stared back. They had forgotten.
TWENTY-SIX
Roberta was born, a big, healthy baby with good lungs and an imperious manner, from the first far more demanding than Boyd.
Ruth held her in her arms, thought, This is Richard’s child. Whatever agreement I may have made with Dougie, this is Richard’s child. The knowledge gave her strength and hope. Anxiety, too; she did not see how Dougie could treat Roberta right, knowing what he knew.
Yet he did, surprising her. He gave the child all the care and love that anyone could have wished. If he had doubts, he kept them to himself.
Ruth wrote to Richard again, telling him she was staying where she was.
He wrote back, protesting. Roberta was his child. Ruth was his love. He would give up neither of them.
It was agony, appalling. She wept but remained resolved. You must, she told him. It is the only way.
The formation of Hudson and Thorne’s Australian arm took much longer than expected — something to do with Bank of England permission — and Roberta was three before things were finalised at last. It was a day that Ruth had dreaded and longed for, a day for exultation and trepidation. Richard was arriving in Australia at last. Not on a visit; to stay. No need to mark the calendar; in her mind the date stood out as though ringed in red.
He would be in Sydney, a thousand miles away, but he would be here, in the country, instead of on the far side of the world. She did not know whether she could bear it.
I must, she told herself. I have made my agreement. I must stick to it.
For years, somehow, she did so.
The telephone became a presence. She was conscious of it as never before. It scared her, drew her. He never rang but one day might. Each day she waited. The possibility followed her into her workroom, stood between her and the page, separated her from her vision. Even when she had grown used to the idea that he would not ring she remained tormented by his presence. A thousand miles away but there. On the same land mass as herself.
She could walk to him, if she wished.
Eventually, despite all her efforts, it became too much.
‘I can’t write,’ she told Dougie snappily, as though it were his fault. ‘I don’t know what’s got into me.’
Longing and frustrated desire had got into her. She felt she was drowning; the knowledge that she could satisfy neither the longing nor the desire dragged her down. When she could bear it no longer she said, ‘I must have a break. Let’s go away. Just for a few days. To the sea.’
They left the children with friends; went to Victor Harbor, an old whaling port south of Adelaide that had become a resort town.
In the nights in the weatherboard hotel she lay with closed eyes, waiting for him to come to her. As, after a few days, he did. It was the first time for months. She lay still, utterly detached, her mind as remote as the cold and pitiless stars. She tried to think of Richard, had heard of women able to pretend, found she could not. She had never been any good at fooling herself.
Dougie said nothing. Surely he must have sensed her distance yet in the morning was cheerful, suggesting breakfast.
‘I thought I’d go for a stroll first,’ she said. ‘There’s something I’ve got to work out.’
She went into the early morning streets. The town was still, the buildings closed, the very air silent.
She thought, This is destroying me. And my work. That responsibility transcended all else. For the first time, stepping slowly through the silent streets, she realised how her art had become more important to her than anything else. The thought made her uneasy. It seemed the epitome of selfishness. She despised herself for it but was, it seemed, helpless.
‘I am as I am,’ she told the shiny, watchful windows, the smug buildings.
The perennial excuse of every thief. Because you are a thief, she told herself. You take love, other people’s lives, and give back nothing. If only I could compromise, she thought. I have done badly by the wor
ld. By Dougie, whose only wish was to love me, to have me love him. By my children, my lover, even by myself. I seem incapable of living my life with the generosity that I would wish to show those dear to me. It was a sadness.
She went back.
‘Sorted it out?’ Dougie asked over bacon and eggs.
‘Working on it,’ she said.
‘We came away so you could have a break,’ Dougie pointed out. ‘You seem more distracted than ever.’
She barely heard him.
At breakfast the next day Dougie said, ‘You’ve made up your mind, haven’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Choking on the word, on all the wounding words she feared might now flow. She dreaded them so much. This was too mundane a place. To dispose of their lives over toast and jam…. The idea was like a wound.
‘So have I,’ he said.
Her eyes questioned him.
His face was expressionless. ‘I thought, if I agreed to bring up Roberta like my own, things might still come right between us. I wanted it so much.’ His rueful smile drove a blade into Ruth’s heart. Impulsively she took his hand in hers. ‘But wanting something isn’t enough, is it?’
She was unable to speak. The number of times she had wished she could have loved him as he wanted. As, increasingly, she had come to believe he deserved. He had promised never to put her down in public; he never had. Nothing had been agreed about how he should behave in private. He might have made her life a living hell but had not. Never by word or gesture had he referred to Roberta’s parentage. It was as though he had forgotten all about it; there were times when she had come close to forgetting it herself. Richard, even her feelings for him, had become unreal. Her life, the systematic balancing of work and family, had left no room for Richard.
Then Richard had come to Australia and everything had changed. There had been a ceremonial opening of the new company’s offices. Richard’s name had been mentioned. Dougie must have read about it, as she had. She had not gone to Sydney but in her mind had been there, with Richard. At the opening. In his life. Always. He had not contacted her but his presence in the continent had worn away at both of them until now she and Dougie had reached the point where neither was able to go on any longer.
‘I’ve not seen him,’ she said.
His eyes regarded her; she could not tell what he was thinking now the fact of Richard was once again in the open between them. ‘Perhaps he’s married.’
‘No.’
‘How do you know? If you haven’t been in touch with him?’
‘I just would.’ Her psyche would have been aware. The connection between Richard and herself was too strong for something like that to have happened without her being aware of it.
‘I got to thank you,’ Dougie said.
‘For what?’ She had done nothing that deserved thanks.
‘For giving it a go.’
She feared she would cry. ‘I didn’t make a very good job of it.’
‘You did your best.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘You do what you like. I’m shoving off.’
Where? To do what? What about the children? Do you want a divorce? The questions beat in her head. She could ask none of them. She was ashamed that she had brought him to this. ‘Perhaps Richard won’t want me.’
Anger scalded his cheeks. ‘I’m not doing it for Richard. Not for you, either. What do you think I am?’
She did not understand. ‘Then why?’
‘Because I’ve discovered I don’t care any more.’
It was something she would never have imagined; that Dougie, who had spent so many years in futile pursuit of her, should no longer care. She stared at him, not knowing what to say.
‘Did you think I’d go on forever? Never anything to show for it?’ His resentment punished them both. He opened his fingers, shoving her hand away like the wreckage of their shared years. ‘I never pretended to be arty like you but that’s no reason to despise me.’
Ruth was shocked. ‘I never despised you.’
He disregarded her protest. ‘I thought, if I went on loving you, you’d come to love me, too, but you wouldn’t let me in. There’s a part of you that lets no one in. I’m not going to chuck my life away for someone who doesn’t care if I’m there or not. I was going to tell you a couple of weeks ago, then you said let’s have a holiday so I thought I’d give it another go. Maybe this time. I remember thinking that.’ He grinned savagely, hating both himself and her. ‘Then, two nights ago, when we made love … Made love,’ he burst out, ‘that’s a laugh. You weren’t there even for that. Like a block of wood. Then I knew it was hopeless. And you know something? I found whatever feelings I’d had for you were gone. I was free at last. And I was glad.’
The years of bitterness, welling like pus. Ruth stared blindly at the tablecloth cluttered with the remains of their breakfast. Thought, I have failed.
‘I am sorry.’ Her whisper, so faint, seemed to reach him as nothing else had. Her hand still lay where he had discarded it amid the breakfast cups and plates, the crumbs of toast. Now through a haze of tears she felt him take hold of it again.
‘No one’s to blame. We’re different sorts of people. We should never have got married at all.’ He laughed savagely. ‘Chalk it up to the war, eh? Along with everything else.’
It was appalling. Fifteen years’ marriage to be dismissed in such a way, in such a place. Yet Dougie was right. They were different sorts of people; their incompatibility had destroyed them.
The irony was that now, for the first time, Ruth felt a flicker of understanding for him. If he had shown himself to me before, she thought, I might have come to love him, after all.
Too late.
‘What about the children?’
He smiled at her. Brightly. ‘I’ll be wandering about a bit. No life for a kid.’
She knew how much he cared for them but perhaps he was right in this, too. ‘They’ll miss you. Roberta, especially.’
His mouth twisted. It might have been a grin but was closer to tears than laughter. ‘Funny, isn’t it? I went out of my way to give her a fair go. Now I reckon she cares for me more than my own. Spunky little madam.’
Their fingers tightened; they were clinging to each other. A world ending. Dear God I never wanted this, Ruth thought. Yet knew that in truth she had, had done far more than Dougie to bring it about. She had not reckoned on the pain. A cool part of her mind was saying, It’ll all be for the best, you’ll be free, no more distractions. Yet her eyes were brimming, lips trembling, she felt that something irreplaceable in her life had been destroyed.
‘Where will you go?’
‘Who knows? A lot of country out there. I reckon it’s time I saw a bit more of it.’ Suddenly he was on his feet, smiling down at her. ‘Come and walk with me,’ he said. ‘Last time. Help us to remember that life goes on.’
She stared at him. Her unshed tears dazzled her. She saw him as she had seen him first, the red hair, the cocky, cheery grin. At the very end she had found again the larrikin she had known in Malaya, before the war and life’s wounds had changed him. If I had known how to love him, she thought, perhaps he would never have changed. Perhaps I am to blame.
She returned his smile. ‘I should like to walk with you, Mr Armstrong.’
With the abandonment of love and life together, it seemed friendship had returned.
Richard, at last.
‘You came, then. I didn’t dare hope in case you changed your mind.’ Again. She was grateful he did not say it.
Their smiles dazzled them. They clung close, lips and eyes seeking, bodies seeking. Outside the window of Richard’s office Sydney’s traffic roared.
‘The children are in the car,’ Ruth said.
‘You should have brought them in with you.’ He laughed, tiptoe with excitement. ‘You realise I’ve never seen my own daughter?’
‘She doesn’t know who you are.’
Richard sobered. ‘Do you want to tell her or shall I?’
<
br /> ‘I don’t think we should tell her at all for the moment.’
‘But that way she’ll go on believing Dougie’s her father,’ he protested. ‘She’ll think he’s abandoned her. Wouldn’t it be better if we told her the truth?’
‘Let her get to know you a little, first.’
Another life, another lie constructed on the ruins of the first. It was bad, it might well cause trouble later, but for the present Ruth could see no choice.
Hope, she thought. That is all we have. And, this time, God willing, love.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The house was a wonder and delight.
Ruth said, ‘You’ve been living here all by yourself? I don’t believe it. You’ve had a floozie stashed away here all the time.’
It was a house for floozies or at least for lovers. You got to it down a side lane on the northern side of the harbour, a lane bordered by high brick walls beyond which could be seen only the occasional glimpse of tiled roofs. Behind them the traffic flowed noisily along the main road but here all was peaceful and, after you’d parked the car in the garage which opened out of the lane and walked through the door into the garden beyond, it was like being transported straight into the country, a world of peace and beauty and astonishing solitude.
The house itself was large, white-painted, a double-storeyed block with single extensions, not grand enough to be called wings, jutting out on either side.
‘Like ears,’ Ruth said.
All the windows faced the harbour. In the centre of the main section of the house a wooden door with a fanlight above it opened onto a brick terrace running the length of the building. From the terrace a flight of steps flanked by stone balustrades led to an expanse of lawn with a large redbud tree growing in the middle of it. Below the terrace were flower beds and on either side of the lawn the walls separating the house from its neighbours were concealed behind borders of shrubs. The lawn ended in a retaining wall of massive timbers that at low tide separated it from a strip of beach — sand and pebbles, the occasional shell — on which a small child might ferret without danger. When the tide came in the beach vanished and the wavelets sloshed satisfyingly against the piles of the small wooden jetty sticking out into the water. Beyond the lawn, the jetty and beach, everywhere was water. Sydney Harbour, vast and beautiful, from this point astonishingly private, lay before them with the Bridge away to the right, the Heads tucked behind a series of promontories to the left. In front of them, too far away for any traffic noise to reach them, the city sprawled. Now, in mid-afternoon, the sun shone on the roofs and windows of the clustered buildings but at night the skyline would be a blaze of fairy lights, red and gold and green.
