Family Secrets

by Liz Byrski

  The accusation had paralysed Flora. She had loved Connie from their first days at school, loved her as a sister, long before she had come to understand the nature of her own sexuality. Had Gerald really believed that, or had he simply said it to hurt her? Too late now to know that, and speculation can only drive her mad.

  The door to the bathroom opens behind her.

  ‘So how do I look?’ Connie asks.

  And Flora inhales deeply and turns around.

  ‘Oh – are you okay?’ Connie says. ‘You look like you’ve been crying.’

  Flora shakes her head. ‘I’m fine. My eyes are just a bit tired.’ And she stands back, tilts her head to one side, and studies her friend closely. Connie is wearing a perfectly fitting, deep blue taffeta dress, black patent shoes with heels that make Flora wince, and a string of pearls. Her hair, so neat, unlike Flora’s untameable springy curls, is in its usual bob just below her ears but blow dried rather more carefully than usual.

  ‘You look amazing!’ she says. ‘Honestly, Con, really lovely. That dress could have been made for you.’

  Connie smiles in obvious relief. ‘Thank goodness. As soon as I saw it I thought it was perfect, I didn’t even try anything else. Then, later, I thought that was ridiculous, and maybe I’d made a horrible mistake.’

  Flora shakes her head. ‘I reckon you could have tried the entire stock and not come up with anything better. I must take a photo,’ and she gets her phone and takes several quick pictures. ‘You should send a couple of these to Brooke, I bet she’d love to see them.’

  ‘No,’ Connie says. ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course, why not? And you’ll knock Phillip’s socks off.’

  Connie grimaces. ‘That’s not what I was aiming for.’

  ‘I know that, but it’ll be a pleasant side effect, won’t it?’

  She grins. ‘It will. But this is for me – you know, another step …’

  ‘I know,’ Flora says. ‘What time are you meeting him?’

  ‘Six o’clock in the hotel foyer.’

  ‘Then you should get a move on. And remember to come home before you turn into a pumpkin.’

  Connie laughs, takes a final quick glance at the mirror, picks up her bag with one hand, and with the other holds out an envelope that was tucked underneath it. ‘I’m off. If you have time before you go to the cinema would you read this?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Just read it, and we can talk about it later.’

  Flora shrugs, and drops it on the table. ‘Okay, Cinderella, off you go to the ball. And have a wonderful time.’

  Connie executes a small curtsey, but as she walks out closing the door behind her, Flora’s spirits suddenly flag. Alone again, the horrible reminder returns: her time away is running out and she is no nearer to a plan for her future.

  She sighs, picks up the kettle, fills it in the bathroom, and as she drops a tea bag into a cup and stands there waiting for the kettle to boil, she puts on her glasses, sits down at the table, and opens Connie’s envelope. There are several folded pages and, to her surprise, she sees that it’s a copy of Gerald’s will. The first feeling she has is that she shouldn’t be reading this, it’s private, between Gerald and Connie and their family, but of course she is part of their family too, and she can actually play that part now. Even so it still seems odd. There’s all the usual stuff – bequests to each of the children and a trust fund for the grandchildren, and she’s surprised that there appears to be so much money. Gerald had made a strong start in the public service, and then as a Member of Parliament – both well-paid jobs, but this much? Perhaps it was the directorships that followed when he lost his seat. But of course, how could she have forgotten! Gerald inherited everything from their parents – everything that should have been shared.

  The house had apparently been signed over to Connie some years ago, and she gets the private pension and the parliamentary superannuation and various other investments. And there, right at the end, ‘a sum equivalent to 500,000 British pounds to my sister Flora Hawkins, in fond remembrance and in some small acknowledgement of the proceeds of our parents’ estate from which she was excluded.’

  Flora stares at the words in disbelief, reads them several times in case she has misunderstood, but no, it’s as it appeared the first time, and alongside that sentence Connie has pencilled an asterisk with PTO beneath it. Flora turns to the back of the sheet to find Connie has written a note dated this morning:

  Dearest Flora,

  When I left Hobart the solicitor was finalising the paperwork and the payment of the bequest should be made within the next four weeks. Forgive me for not telling you this straight away, it was Gerald’s instruction and as his executor I had to respect that. I’ll explain when we talk.

  Love, Cx

  Flora stares at the words, and then reads the whole will again. Then she puts the pages down on the table, takes off her glasses, and stares into the darkness beyond the window.

  *

  It’s unusual for Phillip to feel awkward about going out with a woman but that’s just how he’d felt as he walked into the hotel and looked around the foyer for Connie. Awkward because he wasn’t sure whether they were just two old friends going to the opera together, or whether it was a date, and he was even more uneasy about what Connie might think. After all, they aren’t old friends, all they know of each other they know through Gerald and the information they’d exchanged a few nights earlier. But years ago Phillip had fancied Connie madly. Gerald had introduced them one night in a pub in Soho and because, at the time, Gerald was having a very full-on thing with Bea, Phillip had assumed that Connie was just a friend. As the evening wore on and everyone got increasingly drunk Phillip had geared himself up to make a move on Connie, but just as he’d shifted closer to her Gerald had moved between them and warned him off. Typical Gerald of course, even in his religious phase he was always juggling women.

  Phillip is always able to get his hands on theatre or opera tickets at short notice, and the prospect of going to the opera with someone as passionate about it as he is delighted him, and Connie had jumped at the chance to go with him to Nabucco. Years ago he wouldn’t have given a thought to the importance of getting it right, but Lorna, and a couple of other women with whom he’d had relationships since his divorce, have taught him things that he wishes he’d known when he was younger, and the importance of getting the tone of an occasion right is one of them. He thought that old friends was probably what Connie had in mind, and that was what he was aiming for. But it had come as a shock to him that when she emerged from the lift looking as though she’d stepped off the cover of a posh magazine for mature women, all his male instincts revived.

  As he sat next to her in the front row of the dress circle, he could feel the warmth of her arm against his. She seemed, in fact, to radiate warmth and pleasure, and the occasional discreet rustle of her taffeta dress along with the scent of a vaguely familiar perfume went straight to his head as well as his loins. He knew that he needed to be very careful, because what he also felt was that, despite the interesting discovery that he still had loins, what he most wanted was friendship. He didn’t want to confuse things. In his seventies there is so much more than just sex to enjoy, and most of it is less emotionally risky and complicated.

  Now, in the interval, as he carries drinks to a table in the bar, he recalls his state of mind that day on the river. Young people, he thinks, simply don’t have a clue about what really matters, about the many wonderful and indefinable ways that people can become and remain connected.

  ‘Thank you, Phillip,’ Connie says, taking the wine glass from him. ‘And thank you for all of this, it’s wonderful, everything: the production, the cast, the orchestra and most of all being here in this place, which was so much a part of my dreams. And being with someone who’s enjoying it as much as I am. My friends and family would generally rather watch the footy, or even synchronised swimming, than spend a night at the opera.’

  He laugh
s. ‘Not Flora, surely?’

  ‘Well, no, but it would be her least favourite of the arts. When we were young she tried very hard to enjoy it for my sake.’

  ‘We must be similar,’ he said. ‘Whenever I come here – and that’s quite often – I look at the audience and wonder where they come from, because in my quite large group of friends and acquaintances I can never find anyone to come with me.’

  ‘Philistines,’ she says laughing, and they clink their glasses.

  ‘Why did you give it up, Connie?’

  She takes a slow sip of champagne and savours it. ‘To marry Gerald, of course.’

  He shakes his head. ‘Well, you must have loved him very much.’

  She smiles, looking down into her drink. ‘This is a contentious subject. I don’t think Flora has forgiven me for choosing Gerald over the opera, even though it let her off the hook in terms of having to sit through it. At the time I wasn’t really in love with him. He’d always been like a brother to me, and I was very fond of him.’

  ‘So why on earth … ?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  Phillip leans towards her, putting his glass down on the table. ‘Really? That’s very sad. So you do regret it?’

  ‘I think so, yes. I think – well, I know – I had considerable talent and plenty of stamina. But I let Gerald persuade me otherwise and I wonder now if perhaps I wanted to believe him because back then I didn’t really believe in myself. I mean, I certainly longed for the career but I was also quite terrified of it. At some level I must have wanted what Gerald was offering more.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Well, that he would look after me always, that we would have a comfortable life, beautiful children, financial security – all that kind of thing. I was only young. My mother had recently died, my father – well, you don’t want to hear all that. Gerald loved me and he did all the right things, and I grew to love him too. And while he certainly wasn’t perfect he did do all that he said he’d do.’

  ‘So you don’t resent him for it, then?’

  She laughs. ‘I never said I was a saint, Phillip. That’s partly why I’m here in England now. I often resented the fact that Gerald got to tick off all the items on his career agenda and I ticked off none of mine. But I have two wonderful children, three grandchildren, a lovely house and, of course, a level of financial security that a lot of people would kill for. So I shouldn’t complain – it’s just that I see now that I could have had both career and marriage. It’s not so unusual now, but back then most of us abandoned our careers to marry. The women’s movement was starting but it by-passed many of us. You must remember how it was.’

  ‘Of course,’ he says, ‘of course I remember. Strangely, last night I was watching The Red Shoes – Moira Shearer, Marius Goring – the dancer who must choose between love and the ballet. You know it?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Well, that was made much earlier of course, in the late forties, and I was thinking that although things had changed by the sixties when we were young, it was still a very difficult choice for women. Having it all was only very occasionally a reality.’

  ‘Exactly, and I did rather better than Moira Shearer’s character, who danced to her death under a train, don’t you think?’

  He smiles. ‘You don’t seem bitter.’

  ‘Not bitter, but angry sometimes, and I’ll admit to disappointment. That’s something I haven’t overcome.’

  ‘So when did you last sing – I suppose you still do?’

  Connie shakes her head. ‘No, and I can’t really remember the last time. When we first moved to Australia the opportunities were limited. There were the children, and we were busy and later, when Gerald was elected to Parliament, it got busier. I used to help out in his electorate office. We did get to the opera and concerts quite often, but since he got sick … well, it’s a long time now. Which is why tonight is so special.’

  ‘I see,’ Phillip says, nodding, looking down into his glass, ‘but it seems like such a big sacrifice. I think that anyone who has a passion for their art pays a heavy price if they sacrifice it for marriage, or anything else. I wonder if it doesn’t leave a scar – I mean, to any artist isn’t the fulfilment of the gift, the realisation of the talent, what matters most? If that is frustrated …’ he hesitates, searching his memory for something he’d once read, ‘… I can’t get the exact words, but it’s a quote, something about if an artist is frustrated in pursuing their talent it … he or she gets twisted out of shape.’ He is about to go on but looking up he sees the shock on Connie’s face. He reaches out to take her hand. ‘I’m sorry, Connie, please don’t be offended. It’s just something I read – a book – Vita Sackville West, I think, but I can’t remember the title.’

  She has flushed and now bites her lip. ‘Yes, I see,’ she says. ‘I understand what you’re saying.’

  ‘It was stupid of me, but it seemed so relevant. A woman who had longed to be an artist had abandoned her dreams to marry and years later she meets a man who knew her in the past, and he asks her why …’ his voice trails away and Connie stays silent. ‘And then … and then he says that to her and … well, then she’s just as hurt and offended by it as you are. I’m so sorry.’ He flushes now, furious with himself.

  Connie looks at him long and hard. ‘I can see that you’re right,’ she says eventually. ‘It sounds dramatic but I rather think it is actually right. There is a sort of distortion.’

  ‘Right perhaps, but tactless on my part,’ he says, getting to his feet as the bell rings for the second time. ‘We should go back.’ He’s anxious, now, that he has ruined the evening.

  ‘Maybe,’ she says, ‘but food for thought.’ And she smiles and gets up. ‘Maybe I should read that book.’ And as they walk back to their seats she slips her arm through his. ‘It’s all right, Phillip,’ she says. ‘Really it is.’

  And he places his opposite hand on hers and thinks that perhaps, despite his poor choice of words, or indeed because of them, they seem to have shared something quite important and intimate; something he will remember for a very long time.

  *

  ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,’ Flora says. ‘All that time in Port d’Esprit and then here and you never said a word. Frankly, Connie – it seems quite manipulative. All those conversations about what I wanted to do, when all the time you knew that money was an issue and so it was crucial to what I might decide.’

  They have walked to the café in Russell Square for breakfast and Connie is struggling to understand Flora’s reaction to Gerald’s will, which is so different from what she had expected. She tears off a small piece of croissant and dunks it into her coffee, a habit she’d reverted to in Port d’Esprit where Suzanne still served café crème in the old-fashioned French bowls which she’d loved as a girl. She puts the piece of coffee-soaked croissant into her mouth letting the soft milky flakes dissolve on her tongue.

  ‘Look,’ she says, ‘like I said, Gerald left instructions about how a whole lot of things should be done, and one of them was that I should see you in person and tell you about the bequest at a time when I felt you would be open to accepting it.’

  Flora throws her hands in the air. ‘So Gerald’s still calling the shots! Aren’t you capable of reading a situation for yourself, working out what is the right thing to do, or is everything always to be exactly as Gerald wanted?’

  While her voice is fierce with anger her expression is hurt, bereft almost, Connie thinks.

  ‘And he told you to come and see me? I thought you came because of us, our friendship. I thought you came because it was important to you. Gerald drove a wedge between us that strangled our friendship and now, even though he’s dead, he’s still directing the movie.’

  ‘Flora, stop!’ Connie says. ‘That’s not fair; you know I wanted to come. Seeing you again was always the most important thing to me. Gerald knew that, he knew it when he got the will drawn up. It was a few years ago, before he lost his speech. H
e’d decided to make a very simple will that left everything to me to divide up as I wanted. I told him I thought that his family would appreciate something more personal, which reflected his own wishes rather than mine. So he talked to the solicitor and came up with this will. Over time he’d begun to feel he should have shared the proceeds of your parents’ estate with you, even though they wrote you out of it at the time. He wanted to make amends for that but he thought you might … well, what he actually said was, “She might get on her high horse and refuse it”. He knew I’d visit you the first chance I got, so he thought this was the best chance of your accepting it. What more can I say? I would have come here, bequest or not, surely you know that?’

  Flora is silent; she sits across the table from Connie looking everywhere except into her eyes. She fiddles irritably; moves a knife a little to one side, her coffee cup slightly in the opposite direction, crumples a paper napkin then uncrumples and smooths it out again. Tension starts to build in Connie’s stomach. Should she have done this differently? She can’t even remember the last time there was tension between her and Flora, and this reaction is so uncharacteristic.

  ‘It feels wrong,’ Flora says, her eyes filled with hurt and confusion. ‘I feel wrong. I ought to be over the moon and I’m not. This may seem unreasonable, Connie, but it makes me uncomfortable that you and Gerald discussed this – as though you were planning how he could get me to gratefully accept his bequest as though that would constitute forgiveness … it just doesn’t feel good.’

  Connie flushes in discomfort, torn between thinking that this does sound reasonable and also that, in view of the circumstances, it’s entirely unreasonable. She says nothing, waiting for Flora to go on.

  ‘You asked me to imagine what I would do if money wasn’t an object, when all the time you knew that it needn’t be an object. I said I’d visit you in Hobart, get to know my family – and I meant it, really meant it. Now it feels like you were setting me up, as though if I go there I’m saying what happened is okay, forgiven, passing absolution on him. Perhaps you think I’m being ridiculous …’