The Mothers

by Rod Jones

  ‘There’s something I want to ask,’ Anna said to Molly.

  Molly tensed, as though expecting bad news. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s just a little thing. But it’s something that’s been puzzling me these last few weeks.’

  ‘All right.’ Molly nodded encouragement.

  ‘The morning you and your husband arrived at the Haven to collect David, there was only one car parked outside. I remember it had yellow number plates, from New South Wales. Was that your car?’

  ‘New South Wales? No, that wasn’t ours. We had a little Renault at the time. The matron asked us to park in the lane at the back. She said it was normal procedure for the babies to be picked up out the back.’

  Anna nodded. So that’s what had happened.

  She waited for David to say something more, to give her a signal about what their relation in the future might be. But perhaps that was something he could not give her—something he could not give to anyone?

  Once upon a time, he had grown inside her belly. Now they were just ordinary people sitting in a room talking. In time, each of them would have to learn a new language. Anna would learn his language, and he would have to learn hers. For the moment, they could only converse as strangers.

  The children sat at the next table with their glasses of Coca-Cola. From time to time, David directed a remark to Eric, who listened carefully, as though he were being asked trick questions. Eric was looking for the fault in David that would justify the caution he had urged on Anna. She realised that, for Eric, the day the letter had arrived, it would have been as though Neil himself had suddenly walked through the door.

  ‘You used to be a teacher, David. Why did you stop?’ Anna asked.

  ‘I liked the kids, and I enjoyed being away from the city. I got the best results in the state for my Year 12 history class. It was the other teachers who were the problem. They sat around the staff room with their magazines and their knitting, gossiping about their colleagues. It was impossible to have an intelligent conversation with them. I spent recess and lunchtimes out in the yard with the kids. Well, three of those meddling mediocrities made a complaint about me for swearing. But what can you expect? In my experience, the majority of teachers are morons.’

  Anna was taken aback. Where on earth had this contemptuous tone come from? Temper flaring up out of nowhere. Such wildness seemed at odds with the sad, rather gentle man who had given the reading earlier.

  ‘David had to leave teaching when he punched the principal.’ Cathy smiled ruefully.

  Oh. Then he really was a wild man, both fierce and reserved. ‘Poor principal!’ Anna said. ‘What did he do to deserve that?’

  ‘He deserved it, all right,’ David said, but it was clear he wasn’t going to go into details.

  ‘So—you were sacked?’ Eric asked.

  ‘I suppose you could say that.’

  ‘He wasn’t suited to teaching,’ Molly said.

  ‘But you have your writing, at least,’ Anna said. She gave Cathy a sympathetic smile. Did his wife find him a difficult man to live with? she wondered.

  Anna had been expecting to encounter a man who took after her own nature—docile, dutiful, devoted to others. But meeting him tonight had thrown down a challenge to her. She did not share David’s ferocity. But what had happened to the spirited, adventurous girl who had fallen in love with Neil?

  The dreams for herself she’d had at sixteen! When she left school and got her job at Victorian Railways, she used to promise herself that she would save up the fare and take the boat to London, get a job overseas and see the world. On Sundays, she sometimes took the tram to watch the ocean liners leaving Station Pier. Now, she suddenly asked David, ‘What was it like, living in Greece?’

  David described how they’d found a house in a village for a year; the rent was ten dollars a week. They scratched together a few sticks of furniture. Their son had attended Greek school. Every morning, David had sat at a rickety wooden table and struggled with a borrowed typewriter that had a German keyboard. Molly had flown over and stayed with them for a month in the summer.

  Anna could tell that living on the island, writing his first novel, Molly’s visit, was already part of the family’s mythology. Anna would never be part of that. But she couldn’t stop herself from feeling, just then, as well as envy, a measure of pride in the things David had achieved.

  The mystery of his birth—he said that’s what he had gone to Greece to discover. ‘For me, it was the right place to write a novel. Something to do with having all that time, the natural beauty, the light. It makes you think about what’s important in your life. The things you really want to do with your time on earth.’

  ‘Why can’t you do all that in Australia?’ Eric asked.

  ‘It was just so depressing here at the end of the seventies. Gough gone and the country going backwards. Everyone was moving to Europe.’

  Since she’d received David’s letter, all the forgotten pain from Anna’s past had surged back—the part of herself she had had to forget. Now, it was as though the girl who had gone to sleep just to get through those experiences at the Haven—did she remain half-asleep all those years?—had suddenly opened her eyes.

  Yes, her life had been settled before that letter had arrived. But now she felt hungry for new experiences. That was David, she supposed. Yet in another way, it had nothing to do with David.

  She remembered the silent agitation of the tree in the Edinburgh Gardens, its leaves trembling, even in the absence of a breeze. Anna had thought she had seen God in that tree. What had He been trying to tell her, back then? To keep her baby? To give him up? Not to betray all her dreams?

  Anna was fifty-eight, a wife and mother, a stalwart of the community. She had built a solid life. But that wasn’t all of her. I’m not one person, Anna thought, none of us is. All the secret feelings I’ve kept inside—they are all the different people I am.

  Already she was planning her trip. She would go to the travel agent next morning. Eric would have something to say about that, of course. Eric would not want to go to Europe. But, with him or without him, she was going to travel.

  She was going to London! After all, stranger things had happened. She had been stuck in her life for too long. Ever since what had happened to her at the Haven, something had always held her back, kept her from taking risks, kept her locked into an exaggerated sense of her obligations to others. Now she was coming back to life, or at least coming to a different life. She felt she had the right to want things for herself again.

  The room had slowly emptied. The tables around them had been cleared. Near the door, the hostess hovered—a pale elegant woman in a black dress.

  Outside, on the footpath, they said goodbye. David promised further meetings, a lunch one Sunday at Cockatoo, when they would come and meet the rest of the family, Anna’s parents, her other children. Molly said she would like that.

  Anna watched them walk away.

  Well, that’s who we are, she thought. If I hadn’t had him, there wouldn’t be this complicated man with his nice wife and his beautiful children and his book. She would look out for his next novel in the shops. And anyway, they’d keep in touch, wouldn’t they?

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank Michael Heyward and Penny Hueston at Text Publishing for their faith in me and in the project. I’
d like to thank Penny in particular for her wise guidance and enthusiastic editorial work on the manuscript.

  I am grateful to Maria Jones for her careful reading and suggestions, and for all her support during the writing of this book.