Escaping

by Henrietta Taylor

  When I first met Latin Ray, he drove a very smart Alfa Romeo sports car, which he promptly sold the moment severe drink-driving penalties came into force. He now travelled mainly by public transport, and occasionally by taxi.

  So, enduring the twists and turns of the Bilgola bends, fighting bus sickness for almost an hour from his home in the northern harbour suburb of Seaforth, at last he arrived on my doorstep. Finally we were to meet, nearly a decade after we’d split up. I hadn’t seen him since the brief encounter when I was pregnant with Mimi. I could barely contain myself.

  He turned up looking grey and bilious. As he walked through the door, the journey and the previous evening’s excesses caught up with him and he was violently ill down the hallway.

  Mimi was beside herself with glee. ‘Yes, Mummy always says to hurl on the tiles. She hates it if you’re sick in the car or on the carpet.’

  And so, just like that, the Latin Lover came waltzing into our lives. Mimi would announce his arrival when he was in the garden being violently ill in the bushes, which was infinitely better than on the tiles in the hallway. He would cuddle up with the children in front of the television and explain to them the intricacies of the plots of Bugs Bunny cartoons while I baked lamb or chicken in the kitchen.

  At this stage I wanted no more than a physical relationship. The wonderful sex with the Latin Lover made me deliriously happy, though I wasn’t ready yet for any steamy encounters in my former marital bedroom. The spin-dry button on the washing machine hurt my back and carpet burns on my knees were unbecoming at my age, but I’d just have to put up with them.

  I’d been determined never to come under Ray’s spell again, yet I could soon feel myself sliding down the slippery slope towards love and devotion. I sensed that an overwhelming craving to be wanted and desired was colouring my thoughts, but I really didn’t know what I wanted. One moment I could envisage a life with Latin Ray, and the next, I wanted him to disappear in a puff of smoke and leave me alone with my children. Didn’t I need to sort myself out before I could enter into a relationship with anyone?

  Technically, the job as my companion and long-term lover was available, but I had small children to consider now. I couldn’t let them be hurt by my poor judgment of lovers, and apart from Norman I had a long track record of incredibly bad choices. I knew Latin Ray could never replace Norman as the children’s father, but it was a question of whether or not things would be different the second time around.

  There were just too many grey areas in the Latin Lover’s life, and they filled me with unease. In all the conversations during the long dark nights after Norman’s death, Ray and I had never talked in any great depth about what had happened to his career and what was going on in his own life. I knew he’d taken extremely early retirement, but he’d never told me whether he jumped or was pushed.

  ‘I am really not prepared to explain my former life to you in graphic detail,’ he would say to me, ‘and why nowadays I prefer to eat al fresco with you and the children rather than al desco at that ghastly office with piles of files, heartburn and constant stress. All I can say is that I am so happy now that I’m no longer tied hand and foot to my desk. I am no longer a workaholic, but probably a good candidate as an alcoholic, so can I have a beer and some dinner before I catch the bus?’

  But there were bigger things to worry about than my dysfunctional relationship with Latin Ray: the legal quagmire from the wills had to be cleared up in the forthcoming months. All I could do was wait to find out when we would be locked in battle in the Supreme Court so some pious old judge could decide on the validity of Norman’s will, and therefore on my financial future. My parents continued to maintain that it would be better to mediate the dispute around a table and out of court. I didn’t think I would be able to control myself, and didn’t want to be laying someone out with a Glaswegian kiss — the Taylor family solicitor being the prime candidate. Maybe he and I should do it the old-fashioned way: bring our pistols along at dawn.

  In due course, a date was set: we would be going to court in November. It couldn’t come around soon enough for me, and I was sure Norman’s sister felt much the same way.

  I spent hours replying in longhand to questions posed by my legal team — and was beginning to rue the fact that I had never learnt the rudiments of computers, as my mother had often suggested. But at least I had given my lawyers as much data as possible, and now the ball was in their court.

  My case was that, in my non-medical view, Norman had changed dramatically during the last year of his life. He had gone from a loving and devoted husband and father to a man whose life was slipping away from him, and this had had a profound impact on him psychologically. Swigging on morphine had affected his ability to make rational decisions about our family’s future.

  Norman’s sister would be presenting the argument that after his last hospitalisation he had chosen to live the remainder of his days with her for a reason — read that as our marriage had ended and he no longer loved me. She’d had daily contact with him for the last weeks of his life and believed he had been lucid and able to make clear and concise decisions.

  It had been pointed out to me by my friends the Legal Sages that a divorce might have been better for me financially, but as I had loved Norman until the day he died — and still did — the idea had been impossible to entertain. The awful question still hovered above me: would my sister-in-law remain in control of our finances until Harry reached the age of thirty, with me standing by as an impotent onlooker?

  By the time November arrived I was ready. Well, almost. Just over a week before the hearing scheduled for the 18th, Mr Dimock, my solicitor, rang to tell me that a briefing had been arranged with the barrister to whom I would be paying an arm and a leg so he could represent my case in court. Getting to a nine o’clock meeting in town from Bilgola would test me to the limit, but as it was highly probable that I would be required in court at that hour some ten days later, it would give me a good idea of how I would cope or not with juggling children, traffic and anything else that might be thrown in my path. How on earth did working mothers do it? The thought of staying in a city hotel the night before had crossed my mind. But surely I would be able to get up, get dressed, organise the children with food, clothes and childcare for the day, and then drive the forty-five kilometres to the city in heavy traffic; that alone could take ninety minutes.

  I made a mental note of things to prepare:

  1. Clean, ironed black suit (highly adult and in-control)

  2. White shirt (small food stain — wear suit jacket at all times)

  3. Grandmother’s ebony and gold brooch (very grown-up)

  4. Black pantyhose (new — no holes)

  5. A packet of mints (for fresh breath)

  6. Clean the oven (uncontrollable urge).

  On the day of my appointment my parents were unavailable as baby-sitters, since they had a prior engagement themselves. I needed their help, but I guessed that this was yet another test to see if I could stand on my own two feet. Luckily, the woman in charge of Harry’s kindergarten said that she would have both children at her house from seven o’clock in the morning, and later on drop Mimi off at school with her own child. To save a little more time in the morning, I decided it would be best if both children slept in their clothes and their socks — obviously without their shoes. I gave them an early dinner and then breakfast before they went to bed. That would save a huge amount of time in the morning. Mimi and Harry were such easygoing children that the strange things I did never particularly concerned them.

  Fortunately, the next morning went off without any hiccups. The traffic into the city was manageable and all the traffic lights seemed to be in a permanent state of green. All systems go.

  Running on autopilot, I went to the same car park that Norman and I had used every time we went to the city. When I arrived, most levels had already started to fill up with workers, but across the parking bays, I saw the familiar four-wheel drive owned by my sister-
in-law. Obviously she and her husband were on the same mission: the sharpening of swords at their barrister’s chambers. I fought back the urge to let down their tyres or break off the little emblem on the bonnet of the car and patted myself on the shoulder for my mature approach. But seeing a car nearby with a parking fine tucked neatly under the windscreen wipers, I grabbed it and placed it deftly under theirs. At least that would give them a few moments of disquiet.

  I arrived at Mr Dimock’s rooms on time and in control. Walking across town with him to the barrister’s chambers, it hit me that within ten days, for better or worse, some sort of decision would have been made. The barrister was very eloquent and charming; I hoped he would have no hesitation about going straight for the jugular and a quick kill. After all, I was paying him to win. Mr Dimock could see my concern and leant over and whispered in my ear: ‘He looks like a nice person but he has the reputation for being terrifying in court. Be thankful he is on our side.’

  Finally our day in court, 18 November 1996, arrived. The night before the Big Day, I bundled both the children into my bed, again in their day clothes. They were starting to think it was quite normal to eat breakfast at night-time and sleep in your daytime clothes.

  The weather had been very erratic that day: one minute there were heat-wave conditions and the next we were back into the heavy woollies. Both children were sneezing and wheezing by the time they went to bed. Mimi thrashed her little body against mine all night, until with one last silent heave she sprayed vomit all over us both. Almost nothing escaped.

  I scooped Harry up and put him onto the floor, curled up in a portion of the clean blankets, and took Mimi off to the shower. Her little ribcage was heaving with the effort of trying to breathe, but the steam from the shower eased the crisis a little.

  My little girl was pale and clammy. We knew the signs too well: if her asthma didn’t improve she would need to get to the hospital by morning. Already, by the age of five, she had spent far too many nights in that hospital hooked up to the nebuliser with nurses checking on her oxygen levels. The hospital didn’t scare her. It was just going to be a question of how to juggle everyone in the air so we’d all land in the correct places in the morning.

  While Mimi sat sucking on her nebuliser, I changed the bed linen and threw the soiled sheets into the washing machine. The whole house reeked of vomit. Returning from the laundry, I saw that her head had rolled over onto one side. My little angel had fallen into a peaceful sleep and was no longer sucking air in distressfully.

  I picked Harry up off the floor and put him into the clean sheets. Bad move! Never wake sleeping dogs or children. He’d been happy on the floor. Within seconds he was crying hysterically and beating me with his little fists.

  I wanted to lie down and cry. Most of all, I wanted to sleep! I cuddled him and started to pat him on the back, gently singing tunes from his crib days. He sat up in bed, and out shot the cornflakes and milk from the breakfast of the previous night. That was when I lost the plot.

  The next half-hour was spent cleaning up more vomit and washing more reeking sheets. After that, Mimi’s asthma attack worried me far too much to allow me to drift off into any sort of sleep. It was better to maintain a vigil beside my two little babies. Jack, still an early riser after all these years, was to ring me at 5 am to check that I was up and about, as he didn’t trust my alarm clock. The seriousness of Mimi’s asthma attack was diminishing, but I needed her to be monitored in a hospital to check that she didn’t have pneumonia or bronchitis.

  We had to leave by 6.30. Mimi’s school uniform had been washed and dried during the night, but there was little chance of her going to school that day. She would have to go to the kindergarten with Harry; Jack had been seconded to take her directly from there to the hospital.

  Her little overnight bag had been meticulously packed and her health records and insurance card stuck in the side pocket; it was waiting at the front door along with Harry’s kindergarten bag and my briefcase. All systems go. Almost. The odour from Harry’s pants was unmistakeable. A quick change and then off to the kindergarten. Jack had already left home and would miss me by minutes. Mimi would be in the hospital before I even crossed the Harbour Bridge to go into the city.

  This time the traffic was horrendous and parking was impossible. I needed to go to the solicitor’s office and then walk to court with him. Sheilagh would meet me there. I hoped my sister-in-law was experiencing the same stress levels as I was, but I had my doubts.

  Going into the elevator on the way to Mr Dimock’s office, I spied a wonderful ladder winding its way up my pantyhose. There would be no time to find a shop and buy new ones; I’d just have to take them off in the ladies’ loo in the office. The lift stopped on a lower level and emptied. I worked out that I had enough time to pull off my tights and slip my shoes back on before we arrived at the next floor. Inopportunely, my knickers and pantyhose rolled off together and were around my ankles as the door opened onto the foyer.

  Such an auspicious start to the day!

  Thirty minutes later, I had given my instructions to Mr Dimock. I would accept basically anything to resolve the case, so I could leave immediately and get back to the hospital to see Mimi. It seemed ridiculous that we had come so far and now I couldn’t even allow myself the time to weigh up what I was agreeing to.

  In the end, we settled out of court, as my parents had hoped. We’d been installed in the austere and bleak courtroom when the judge asked if we would like to take a moment to consider our positions. This, I gathered, was legal talk for ‘I’d like to knock together the heads of everyone concerned to try and make them see some sense for themselves.’

  Norman’s sister and her legal team were put into one conference room and my team into another one down the hall. The barristers rushed between the rooms trying to nut out something that would be agreeable to both sides. Time was of the essence, as Mr Dimock said our judge took anyone who prevaricated to task. We could either decide for ourselves, thus saving a lot of time and money, or he would do it for us, in which case it was guaranteed that one side would lose heavily.

  When the negotiations ended, nobody was particularly satisfied with the result. There was no resounding victory on either side. In essence, I won my own financial freedom, with total control over my husband’s assets and the money he had earned. I would no longer have to think about getting by on a small stipend. On the other hand, my sister-in-law would be in charge of the children’s inheritance from their grandfather for the next twenty-five years.

  It was time to turn the page. There was no more to be said about it — ever. Except at night, when nobody was there to listen.

  On the very day we settled, I made a big decision about our family’s future. Mimi came home from hospital to the news that I was thinking about selling our little beachside home. It was full of so many painful memories. Now that I had a certain amount of financial security, I wanted to go back to the suburb where I’d spent my childhood. Back to where I felt safe and happiness abounded. Back to leafy Mosman.

  But first I had to get my finances in order. As 1997 dawned, I made appointments with accountants and financial advisers, all of whom gave me the creeps and spent most of the time telling me they were the only one who could manage my financial affairs. In your dreams, pal. Mr Friendly at the local bank almost slid off his chair in excitement, salivating over pie graphs of his recent investments. In the end I found a broker I decided I could trust, Liz Karbowiak, who advised me to sell the huge amounts of BHP stock I had inherited from Norman and spread my portfolio so I could afford the house of my dreams. She recommended a total revamp of the existing portfolio and gave me reams of information to digest. She could advise, but the bottom line was that the decision always would rest with me, and an informed decision had more chance of being a correct decision.

  I realised the task of selling our house in Bilgola wasn’t going to be easy. I had simply no idea where to begin or what was required when selling a house. How on ea
rth did you find out whether one agency was better than another? Sheilagh came up with the solution immediately. Ask lots of questions. Don’t be afraid to admit ignorance. Eventually I found out which agency could provide the best service for me, how much I would be paying in taxes and how much in commission. I even started reading the financial section of the paper for the first time in my life — admittedly after the fashion section and the hot gossip, and not forgetting my favourite, the travel section (a balanced outlook on life should always be maintained).

  The move to Mosman was going to be more than a geographical one. I would be wrenching the children from their friends and everything that was familiar to them, but I believed that in the long term it was the best thing for all of us.

  During the whole of my marriage to Norman we’d had very few heated arguments, but the biggest was over private schooling, which I was resolutely against; I believed firmly in public education. But Norman had specifically earmarked some money for the children’s education, so now I felt I owed it to him to send them to private schools as he had wished. It was very difficult to argue with a dead man. With Harry starting school in 1998, it made sense for the decision to be made now. Mosman would give me more flexibility with private schools: there was an embarrassment of choices in the area, whereas the Northern Beaches had a very limited supply. Of course, in Mosman there would be the added bonus of having my parents nearby.

  The downside was that Mosman real estate prices were white-hot. I had grown up in this ugly little suburb back in the sixties and seventies, when it had been highly unfashionable, with few attractions bar Taronga Park Zoo, proximity to the city, and a large selection of impoverished Catholic schools. But everything in life is cyclical, and so it was that in the eighties the white-collar invasion turned to Mosman: men who worked in the big end of town wanted a wife with big shoulder pads and big blonde hair, a shiny new Mercedes and a house with a big Sydney view close to the city. The renaissance of Mosman had arrived. The private schools on the North Shore swelled to maximum capacity with the influx of offspring from the loins of these very polished overachievers. The cream was floating to the top; the little boys marched along in their straw boaters and the girls in their smart serge tunics amid the taunts of the public school children: ‘Yeah, in your face, ya private school drongos! Shit floats to the top too, ya know!’