by Liz Byrski
About Family Secrets
When patriarch Gerald Hawkins passes away in his Tasmanian home, after ten years of serious illness, his family experience a wave of grief and, admittedly, a surge of relief. Gerald’s dominating personality has loomed large over his wife, Connie, and their children, Andrew and Kerry, for most of their lives.
Connie, whose own dreams were dispensed with upon marriage, is now determined to renew her friendship with Gerald’s estranged sister. She travels to France where she finds Flora struggling to make peace with the past and searching for a place to call home. Meanwhile Andrew’s marriage is crumbling, and Kerry is trapped in stasis by unfinished business with her father.
As the family adjusts to life after Gerald, they could not be more splintered. But there are surprises in store and secrets to unravel. Once the loss has been absorbed, is it possible that they could all find a way to start afresh with forgiveness, understanding and possibility? Or is Gerald’s legacy too heavy a burden to overcome?
Contents
Cover
About Family Secrets
Dedication
Family Tree
Epitaph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Acknowledgements
About Liz Byrski
Also by Liz Byrski
Copyright page
For my family, with love
HAWKINS, Gerald Arthur
Passed peacefully at his home in Hobart on 25 January 2012, aged 73.
Beloved husband of Connie, father of Andrew and Kerry, grandfather of Brooke, Ryan and Mia,
father-in-law of Linda and Chris.
Peace at last after a long and painful journey.
So many happy memories.
We will miss you terribly, but you will live forever in our hearts.
HAWKINS, Gerald Arthur
25/01/12
In loving memory of my brother Gerald, who always tried to do his best.
Love and deepest sympathy to Connie and family, my thoughts are with you.
Flora.
One
Sandy Bay, Tasmania, early February 2012
It begins exactly as Gerald had predicted it would, but much sooner than either of them had anticipated. It begins a few days after the funeral, on the morning of the day they plan to scatter his ashes. Connie, back from her usual early-morning walk, opens the side gate and lets Scooter off his lead. The dog pricks his ears at the sound of voices and darts around the side of the house towards them. Connie pauses to listen; the children are up – Andrew and Kerry, and their respective spouses, Linda and Chris. There is laughter, the chink of crockery, the softer voices of her grandchildren and the thud of a ball against the wall. She hesitates, feeling she should join them but, wanting a little more time to herself, takes a deep breath and slips in through the laundry door and up the stairs.
When she’d called she’d feared that they might not make it in time, that despite what she said about urgency, Gerald had been dying for so long they might think there was time to spare. But they had come at once – Andrew, Linda and Brooke on the first available flight from Melbourne, and Kerry, Chris and the kids driving down from Launceston that same afternoon. They were all there with him at the end and since then they’ve been on their best behaviour; the minor spats and jealousies, the scuffles for supremacy that flare at other times, have been stilled by grief and replaced with meaningful hugs, bursts of crying and conversations scattered with tender reminiscence. Gerald would have been proud of them.
Peeling off her shorts and t-shirt Connie perches uncomfortably on the edge of the bath, remembering conversations she and Gerald had had about the children, their fine qualities and their frequently inexplicable and irritating habits. Then she steps into the shower, turns on the taps and lets the hot water stream over her as though it might wash away more than just the sweat raised on the steep climb back to the house.
Back in the seventies they had chosen the Sandy Bay house for its location, perched high in the hills with unbroken views across the water – Hobart to one side, open water to the other, and the reassuring bulk of Mount Nelson in the background. Andrew had just started school; Kerry was a robust, fractious toddler. The big, two-storey house, white-painted and with curves instead of corners, had been built in the early fifties. The rooms were flooded with daylight from windows that captured every vista, and there were more cupboards than Connie had thought she could ever fill. And up a narrow staircase from the second floor there was a sixth bedroom with its own tiny bathroom. She’d thought it impressive.
‘It looks like it’s meant to belong to important people,’ she’d said, awed by the style and size.
‘It will if we buy it,’ Gerald had said.
And Connie had known then that he wanted it. Important. Gerald was determined to make a name for himself, to stand out from the crowd. That was why he had wanted to come back to Tasmania, where he believed he could become a big fish in a fairly small pool, and do it quickly. The competition in London was fierce, but here his old family connections gave him a head start. Gerald’s parents had moved back home to Hobart from England a few years earlier when his father retired from the Australian diplomatic service. His more than twenty years at the London embassy meant they were financially comfortable and when Gerald had written that he and Connie were thinking of joining them, his father had stumped up a very generous deposit for a house, in a glorious location.
‘You might as well have the money now, when you need it,’ he’d said. ‘No point waiting ’til we’re dead.’
But for Connie, it wasn’t ever about status – she loved the house for itself. It was in many ways an oddity at the time, an impressive, elegant oddity. And she loves it more now because she has made it her own, and among the mix of homes that have sprouted up nearby it seems like a slightly worn but grand old lady; solid, safe, a little run down but still stylish.
Connie wraps herself in a towel and wanders into the bedroom, pausing by the open window to look out across the river glittering in the sharp morning sunlight. The mild air is heavy with the scent of the old roses she planted in her first spring here. Out on the lawn Brooke, elder stateswoman of the grandchildren by six years, is lying in the hammock reading, while her cousins Ryan and Mia argue over a ball. From the paved terrace beneath her window, the raised voices of her two adult children and their spouses drift upwards and Connie, who can hear but not see them, realises they’re talking about her. She leans further over the windowsill to eavesdrop. And so it begins.
‘She’ll need to move of course, she can’t stay here on her own.’
‘Yes, a smaller place, easier to manage.’
‘Has she said that? Have you asked her?’
&n
bsp; ‘No. Not yet … obviously not.’
‘She should move nearer to us,’ Kerry says. ‘She could see more of the kids – in fact she could have them in the holidays and after school.’
‘That’s typical, Kerry,’ Andrew says irritably. ‘Near you! Has it occurred to you that Mum might not fancy Launceston? She loves Melbourne, she’d be better off nearer to us. She could get a little unit in Fitzroy or Carlton.’
‘Your ma loves it here,’ Chris, Connie’s son-in-law, cuts in. ‘She loves this house. Don’t you think she might like to be left alone to do her own thing?’
‘It’s not practical. It’s never been a practical house,’ Kerry says, her voice rising an octave. ‘And anyway, she hasn’t really got a thing. We should talk to her, while we’re all still here.’
‘But do you even know what arrangements Gerald made about the house?’ Chris asks.
‘The house is in Mum’s name,’ Andrew says. ‘Dad told me that years ago.’
‘So Connie could sell it and get one of those places that are going up just near us,’ Linda says. ‘You know, Andrew, those townhouses on the corner. Downsizing at Connie’s age makes a lot of sense for her and, well …’ she hesitates, awkwardly, ‘well, for all of us, I mean financially …’
Connie hears Kerry give a snort of derision, the one that she seems to save for her sister-in-law. ‘I hardly think a townhouse is the answer,’ she mutters.
‘Nothing wrong with a townhouse,’ Andrew says. ‘We live in one in case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘Oh give me a break! Stairs, Andrew, stairs! Mum’s only a few years off seventy, she shouldn’t be moving to anywhere with stairs.’
‘She’s used to the stairs here,’ Chris points out, ‘and that back-breaking walk up the hill. This is her home and, anyway, she might have plans of her own.’
‘It’s just not practical for her to stay here,’ Kerry snaps back at him. ‘And she won’t have plans, she doesn’t do plans, we’ll have to do them for her. And how come Dad told you about the house, Andrew? Why did he tell you and not me?’
‘I don’t know, Kerry, he just did. It’s not like he made a thing of it, just mentioned it and said he’d done it for tax reasons.’
Connie steps back from the window. So much for peace and goodwill, she thinks, things are back to normal already – Andrew and Kerry, both so strong-minded and opinionated, and Linda too, although her opinions are always identical to Andrew’s. Connie runs her hands through her wet hair and plugs in the dryer. Chris is different though, far more reasonable. Why, she wonders, switching on the hair dryer and drowning out their voices, is her son-in-law the only one who thinks she has a mind of her own?
She has known for years that this time would come but, now that it is here, it feels quite sudden. Three, maybe four years, the consultant had said when he’d delivered his diagnosis of motor neurone disease, but that was nine – almost ten – years ago. He hadn’t counted on Gerald’s legendary tenacity, which, in the last couple of years, had begun to feel more like sheer bloody-mindedness in a man who could do nothing, signal nothing, say nothing, not even blink his eyes in recognition. And so it’s over at last, but Connie has been focused on Gerald for so long that, although there is an element of liberation, she really has very little idea how to use it. What is she supposed to do now? There is just one thing she’s sure of, sure that she will do as soon as she can. And she finishes drying her hair, pulls on her clothes and hurries downstairs to email Flora about it before she starts on breakfast.
*
‘I think it all went very nicely,’ Andrew says as they sit down for lunch later that day after scattering the ashes at Gerald’s favourite spot on Mount Nelson. He strips the gold foil from a bottle of Moët. ‘And isn’t it typical of Dad to want us to celebrate his life rather than mourn, even down to the champagne?’
‘Absolutely typical, he was always so thoughtful,’ Kerry says, her eyes brimming with tears again. ‘You were so lucky, Mum.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I said you were so lucky to have married Dad, he was so thoughtful.’
Connie, in whose opinion thoughtfulness had not been particularly high on Gerald’s list of good qualities, wondered why they thought Gerald had decreed the nature of this event when he hadn’t been able to communicate anything to anyone for years.
‘That’s one interpretation,’ Chris murmurs, and Kerry flashes him a warning look.
She’s edgy this morning, Connie thinks, even more so than she has been through the years of watching her father deteriorate. Kerry had idolised Gerald, constantly craved his attention, but too often saw it turned elsewhere: on his work, on her brother, then on his grandchildren, and finally, on nothing at all. So much effort for so little reward.
Andrew fills the last of the adults’ glasses and then pours cordial into two champagne flutes. ‘Come on, kids,’ he calls, ‘come and drink a toast to Granddad.’
The ‘littlies’, as Connie thinks of them, though with Ryan nine and Mia six they aren’t really that little anymore, race towards the promise of something they are not normally allowed, and Brooke sighs, closes Hunger Games and saunters slowly over to join them.
‘Right then,’ Andrew says, ‘on your feet everyone.’
And they push back their chairs and raise their glasses.
‘To Dad,’ he says. ‘The best father in the world. A magnificent life – you’ll always be with us. To Dad!’
And they chorus his words, drink the toast and then fall into awkward silence.
‘Is there cake?’ Mia asks. ‘Did Granddad want us to have cake too?’
‘I’m sure he’d want that, darling,’ Connie says, drawing Mia towards her. ‘There’s a passionfruit cake, but we’ll have lunch first. Come and sit here with me.’ And Mia clambers onto a chair and unfolds a paper napkin.
Connie leans back, watching her children talking together, passing food, clinking glasses, and wishes that she could freeze the moment. Andrew, so much like his father, tall and rangy, the same grey-green eyes and the clear golden skin that both he and Kerry had inherited and which she, with her pale English complexion prone to blushes, has always envied. He leans over to talk to Ryan, heaps some ham onto his nephew’s plate and gives his shoulder an encouraging squeeze. She watches as Chris tops up Linda’s glass, then turns to Kerry, holding the bottle out, gesturing her to hand him her glass. He is such a blessing, Connie thinks, a warm and loving man who thinks the world of Kerry and his children. Kerry pushes her glass towards him; her expression is tense, her manner stroppy – it seems to be her default setting since the early stages of Gerald’s illness, and it’s worsened as time has dragged on. But Connie, exhausted by the task of keeping Gerald alive and as comfortable as possible, has lacked the physical and emotional energy to try to talk to her about it. Kerry has inherited Gerald’s stubbornness, that’s for sure.
Here they all are, her family, unobscured now by the blurring lens of Gerald’s condition. For more than half of Brooke’s life, most of Ryan’s and all of Mia’s, Connie knows she has been a semi-detached grandparent; too exhausted and distracted to participate in their lives in the way she had wanted. Lost years that can never be recaptured. Connie feels a lump in her throat as reality bites. And it’s not just about the grandchildren; Gerald’s illness has driven over all of them like a bulldozer, leaving them crushed and resentful, the family ties fraying and disconnected. Love has been numbed in the face of so many other painful emotions, it has slipped too often between the cracks of time and distance, and the wanting, all of them wanting so much from each other, but unable to give or receive. Time to rebuild all that, she thinks, but I can only start on it once I’ve rebuilt myself. That’s why she needs to be with Flora, the only person still living who can take her back to her youth, to the time before Gerald moved into her life and made it his own. Flora, who can remember who she was and who she might have become.
*
It’s an hour or so later, when they’ve fi
nished lunch on the terrace, that Connie emerges from the kitchen with the coffee pot, that the conversation takes the turn she’s been dreading.
‘We’ve been thinking about you, Mum,’ Kerry says. ‘About your situation. Now that Dad’s … well … now he’s no longer with us, you’ll need to think about what comes next.’
Connie opens her mouth to speak but Kerry cuts across her.
‘We’ve had a family conference and we all agree …’
‘Er, excuse me,’ Chris interrupts. ‘A family conference?’
‘Yes, to decide what’s best for Mum.’
‘Do you mean that brief conversation this morning?’
‘Well, yes, but there was a conference after that.’
‘And who was at this family conference? Not me, for a start,’ Chris continues.
‘Me neither,’ Brooke chips in.
Kerry’s expression is all irritation, she sighs and rolls her eyes. ‘Of course you weren’t there, Brooke, it’s none of your business.’
‘Well, I am part of the family, Auntie Kerry,’ Brooke says. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘Brooke, cut it out,’ Andrew says. ‘This is serious.’
‘What about you, Connie?’ Chris asks, turning to her. ‘Were you at this family meeting?’
‘Well, no …’
‘So it was just you, Kerry, and Andrew presumably? When you hopped in the car this morning and said you were going to Battery Point for a coffee.’
Andrew nods.
‘And you, Linda? Were you there?’
Linda shakes her head. ‘Um … not exactly. I wanted to look in the antique shop so they dropped me off, but Andrew told me what he thinks and I agree entirely.’
