The Woman Next Door

by Liz Byrski

  ‘Of course,’ Polly says, ‘if that’s what Stella wants.’

  Stella looks from one to the other, not quite sure what’s going on.

  ‘So we’re done for now? But when will we shoot the other scenes?’ she asks.

  Gareth looks surprised. ‘The other scenes?’

  ‘Yes, you know, when I’m a nurse. Goodness, I thought my memory was bad but yours is worse, Gareth, and you’re a lot younger than me.’

  Gareth opens his mouth but nothing comes out. Stella feels quite sorry for him – perhaps he’s having trouble coping; it has, after all, been very tiring.

  ‘Ah! Well I don’t think . . .’ Gareth begins.

  ‘We can talk about that later,’ Polly cuts in. ‘We should get a move on now, Stella, it’s been a long day, it’s getting late and Gareth still has more to do.’ She slips her hand under Stella’s arm.

  ‘Oh yes, of course,’ Stella says. ‘Well just let me know when you want me back for that, my time’s my own.’

  Gareth stands up and hugs her, then turns away slightly to face the cast and crew. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please,’ he calls in a faux authoritative tone. ‘Miss Stella Lamont is leaving the building!’

  There is applause, and someone calls for three cheers.

  ‘What’s all the fuss about?’ Stella whispers to Polly.

  ‘It’s a tribute, Stella,’ she says. ‘A tribute to you for your wonderful work on Cross Currents.’

  ‘But it’s not over yet,’ Stella says, ‘the nursing part . . .’

  ‘Just enjoy it,’ Polly says reassuringly, although Stella thinks she looks a bit awkward as she says it.

  ‘Really? Oh well, you know best. Good gracious, flowers! Trixie, thank you, darling.’

  ‘They’re from Gareth and all of us,’ Trixie says, ‘to say how we all loved working with you.’

  Stella is overwhelmed, it is reminiscent of the days of live theatre, and she shivers with delight at the memory of the smell of greasepaint, the view from the wings, the swish of the curtains, and the thrilling sight of the audience packing the red velvet seats. Inspired, she executes a perfect curtsey, and blows kisses with her free hand. She is still waving as Polly drapes her coat over her shoulders.

  ‘What about my make-up?’ Stella asks. ‘I like to get it off as soon as possible.’

  ‘Why not take it off at home?’ Polly says. ‘You should walk out of here looking like the star that you are.’

  ‘Yes, you’re quite right, I should.’ She turns to the cast and crew. ‘Got to go,’ she calls out, waving again. ‘See you soon.’

  Escorted by Gareth and Trixie they make their way outside onto the street where Stan, the driver, is sitting waiting in the car.

  Trixie, blushing, takes something out from behind her back and hands it to Stella. It’s a packet of Tim Tams tied with a silver bow.

  ‘These are from me,’ she says. ‘It was wonderful to meet you, my first job in television and I got to work with a famous star!’

  Stella feels the prick of tears, she has grown quite fond of Trixie at the last few shoots. ‘Trixie, how lovely of you; but we’ll be working together again soon, on the nursing scenes.’ She sees Trixie look questioningly at Polly, then back again.

  ‘Of course,’ Trixie says. ‘I’ll stock up on the Tim Tams nearer the time.’

  It all seems a bit confusing; the cheers, the flowers, everyone hugging or kissing her, the escort to the door – just like when someone’s leaving the series – but her energy is flagging now, it’s been a long day, and she’s glad when Polly helps her into the car and turns back to speak quietly to Gareth.

  ‘All done, Miss Lamont?’ Stan says, twisting round in his seat.

  ‘All done, Stan, but since when did you start calling me Miss Lamont?’

  ‘Ah well, special day today, isn’t it? End of an era.’

  ‘Yes indeed,’ Polly says, slipping into the back seat beside Stella. She seems to be glaring at Stan.

  ‘End of an era?’ Stella says, wracking her brains. ‘What era?’

  ‘I heard you were retir . . .’

  ‘End of an era, Stella,’ Polly interrupts, ‘is the name of the episode you’ve been working on. Can we get moving now please, Stan, Stella’s had a long day.’

  ‘End of an era,’ Stella says, twisting around to wave back at Gareth and Trixie as Stan pulls away up the street. ‘That’s a nice name for an episode, but it sounds a bit like the end of someone’s career really, doesn’t it? End of an era? Are you all right, Stan? The back of your neck has gone very red.’

  Stan clears his throat. ‘Must be my hot flushes, Stella,’ he says, smiling at her in the rear-view mirror. ‘So here we go, driving Miss Stella – how’s that for a title?’

  Stella rolls her eyes at him. ‘It’s Driving Miss Daisy,’ she says. ‘Try to keep up, Stan, or they’ll be putting you out to pasture.’

  Beside her Polly has leaned back and closed her eyes.

  ‘It was lovely of you to help me with my lines, and to come along with me this week,’ Stella says. ‘I do feel I’m back on track now and I’ll be all right whenever Gareth wants me back. Something I kept meaning to ask you though: why does everyone call him Bloody Gareth? Have I missed something?’

  *

  Polly pours herself a large glass of red wine and sits down at Stella’s kitchen table. Her relief that the work on Cross Currents has finished, and finished on a high for Stella, is matched by her sadness that her friend’s career is over and her future uncertain. She’s faced with the dilemma of whether to let Stella continue believing that there are still more scenes to film, or confront her with the reality that she will never work again. Isn’t it her right to be allowed to face the truth? After all, so much of what she does is perfectly okay. How is it possible to weigh that against these random lapses? But if the night walk into Fremantle that ended at the police station is anything to go by, the random lapses could be increasingly serious, dangerous even.

  Not too much reality, Alistair had suggested when she’d talked to him about it, and Polly understands why he said that, but it seems disrespectful not to try to set Stella straight about what’s happening. At any other time Polly knows she would be talking to Joyce right now but they’d spoken briefly yesterday morning when she’d been coming back from her early walk as Joyce was backing out of her drive. She’d thought Joyce looked wiped out.

  ‘I’m half dead, but loving it at the same time,’ Joyce had said. ‘Sounds ridiculous but it’s the truth. We’ll catch up when it’s over but I can’t think about anything else until then. Did I tell you Dennis has left Helen? He’s down in Albany with Mac, and she went off to Dubai to stay with Damian and Ellie, but she behaved so badly that Damian packed her off home early.’

  ‘Crikey,’ Polly had said. ‘So is she back here?’

  Joyce had shrugged. ‘Should be by now according to Mac. He and I are still on stand-off, by the way.’

  ‘Still on . . . I didn’t know there was a stand-off.’

  ‘Oh no, of course not. Well I hung up on him. He wasn’t taking me seriously.’

  ‘You hung up on Mac!’ Polly had said. ‘My god, the world has gone mad. Dennis and Helen split up, you and Mac . . .’

  ‘And you fall in love in Hong Kong!’ Joyce cut in. ‘Gotta go. I want to hear about Stella going rogue, and about Hong Kong and Leo, so when we do catch up it’ll need to be a long one.’

  It’s almost seven-thirty and she wonders whether or not Stella, who had gone for a rest when they got back from the studio, is still asleep. She walks through to the bedroom, taps on the door, and opens it slightly. ‘Stella,’ she says, softly, ‘Stella, are you awake?’ Crossing to the edge of the bed she can hear from Stella’s breathing that she is sound asleep. Not much likelihood of her waking up and wanting a full meal, Polly thinks. If she does wake
now all she’ll want is a cup of tea. Polly stands there in the silence studying her, trying to match this aged face, slack with sleep, to the woman she has known through the years.

  Back in the kitchen she covers the food, puts it in the fridge and picks up her glass but the prospect of the wine hitting her stomach makes her feel sick, and she tips it away down the sink. She wishes she could talk to someone, but Joyce is out of bounds, Mac is probably busy counselling Dennis, and Alistair has already told her what he thinks, which was exactly what Stella herself would have said. She could call Leo, but how would she talk to him about this? He doesn’t even know Stella, and his attention span for a conversation like the one she needs is likely to be pitifully short.

  Polly sighs. Stella, she knows, is exhausted from the filming. Maybe I’ll give it a couple of weeks and see how she goes now it’s over, she tells herself. If things don’t improve, or if they get worse, I’ll call straight away, make an appointment and get her there somehow. It’s a relief to have made a decision, even if it is just a decision to do nothing yet. She fills the kettle, makes tea and toast and settles down at the kitchen table, thumbing through the unopened copy of The West Australian. At nine o’clock Stella is still sleeping and Polly decides that it might be best if she stays the night again. She goes next door to her own house, picks up her toothbrush, nightdress and her book, and slips back through the side-gate to Stella’s. Once again she opens the bedroom door, walks over to the bed and stands beside her sleeping friend. It’s right to give her a bit more time, she thinks, two weeks, maybe even three, because once I make that call, once I take her to the doctor, everything will change. Stella’s life will have to change in ways that she’ll hate, ways that will break her spirit, and my own heart. And she walks out, across the passage into the spare room, and a few minutes later she is sitting up in bed, her book open in front of her. Her eyes slide wearily across sentences and paragraphs, but the words mean nothing, nothing registers and eventually she closes the book, lies down and turns off the light. In her head the same questions and answers churn back and forth – what to do, when to do it, act now, wait a few weeks . . . and slowly her eyes close and she feels the blissful calming moment that releases her into sleep.

  Chapter Seventeen

  At lunch time, while everyone is out in search of coffee, food, fresh air or all three, Joyce rolls up her coat, sets it down on the floor behind the rows of chairs, and lies down resting her head on it. She has somewhere between forty-five and fifty minutes before people start to drift back in for the afternoon session and if she doesn’t grab a few minutes’ sleep, she knows she won’t last the afternoon. Relief floods through her as she closes her eyes and feels the tension ebbing away, her mind stops struggling to hang on, her thoughts begin to drift. One more week to go and that feels like liberation, but at the same time she doesn’t want it to be over, the intensity of it, the small but regular satisfactions of learning something new and putting it into practice. But what will she do when it’s over? All she knows is that she will be different, that these last few weeks have changed her.

  ‘I wish I’d done it years ago,’ she’d told Ewan that morning, ‘but at the same time I’m so happy to be doing it now, when I really need it, when it really matters.’ She’d wanted to say that she has the feeling of her life opening up to all sorts of possibilities, that getting old no longer feels as though it will be a slow and steady process of diminishment and loss. But nice as Ewan is she fears sounding pathetic. She has studied the job advertisements on the noticeboard; there are opportunities for people who want to teach everywhere from Japan to Germany, the Middle East to Mexico. It seems that if you can get up and go then you’ll always find work teaching English somewhere, including here in Perth.

  ‘Would you do that?’ Jacqui had asked her this morning. ‘Would you just take off somewhere and give it a go?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Joyce had said. ‘My head’s too full of stuff to be able to work that out right now. But knowing that I can, that it’s a possibility – that’s what makes it exciting. I always thought I wanted to travel as I got older, not just for a holiday, but to stay somewhere for a few months at a time.’

  There is a slight noise by the door and Joyce tenses again, imagining one of her fellow students returning, spotting her flat out on the floor, asking if she’s okay or needs help. ‘Just leave me alone,’ she murmurs into the silence, ‘please just leave me alone.’ But there is no one there.

  She has made a determined effort to avoid distractions, and apart from a brief chat with Polly she has managed that. Mac had called her to let her know that Helen was back in Fremantle having fallen out with Damian. ‘So she’s back in the apartment, and apparently terrorising estate agents,’ he’d said. ‘Have you heard anything from her?’

  ‘Not a word since she sent me that text the day she left,’ Joyce had said.

  ‘Well Dennis reckons you should expect a visit,’ Mac said. ‘He doesn’t think she’ll last long bouncing around on her own, and he’s going to lie low here for a while.’

  ‘So how are you going?’ Joyce had asked.

  ‘Not too bad,’ he’d said, but she could hear the reservation in his voice. Mac was very fond of Dennis, but she was sure that by now, he would be itching to have the place to himself again. ‘He needed a break and he’s been helping me with the fences, and other things. We’ve done quite a bit of work.’

  His tone was a bit strained and Joyce realised he was still smarting over her hanging up on him. Perhaps he was waiting for her to apologise; if so he was in for a long wait. He’d treated what she was doing as something trivial, probably because he was unused to her having some other focus in her life. Well, he’d just have to get used to it, he’d always had other things going on, things that took him away for weekends, or fishing trips, and when he was working his attention was almost always elsewhere. Now she has other things too. Mac, she thinks, has taken a lot for granted and she has let him. Things will have to change when he comes back, and in the meantime, if there is to be an apology it will not come from her.

  Joyce shifts her position slightly; the floor is very hard, especially on her lower back. She thinks of Helen being turfed out of Damian and Ellie’s place and sent home, imagines her alone in the apartment calling agents, and harassing Dennis over the phone. Years ago she would have been worrying about Helen, calling her, offering help and consolation, but now, for the first time, she admits that it’s a long time since she really enjoyed Helen’s company. Helen had become obsessed with what she saw as the unfairness of her life and had constantly recycled angry, resentful monologues full of complaints, unanswerable questions, and calls for Joyce to support her. So despite Joyce’s shock and disappointment when Helen had announced that they were moving, it hadn’t taken her long to realise that it would, in some ways, free her from being Helen’s listening post. Since then Joyce has felt herself being sucked into the black hole of Helen’s anger or discontent. It had been the same when they had met up again at the Arts Centre. She’d hoped that by encouraging Helen back to their old spot on the verandah afterwards, they might recapture something of their past friendship, but it was the same old saga of complaints with none of the warmth and humour of the past. No more, she thinks now, and she knows that something in her has changed in the last few weeks. She feels different, so different that her response to Helen will be profoundly different too.

  It’s Jacqui who wakes her, eventually, with a beaker of coffee and a sandwich from the café, and as Joyce blinks and rubs her eyes she sees that there are four other people curled up on the floor nearby.

  ‘You’re a trendsetter,’ Jacqui says, giving her a hand to get to her feet. ‘Did you actually sleep?’

  ‘Blissfully,’ Joyce says, yawning. ‘I may just make it through the afternoon now. I’m a trendsetter and you’re a saint.’ And she settles back at her desk with ten minutes left to eat, drink and get her head back into ge
ar.

  Later, at home, she warms up some soup, and sits on a stool at the bench top to eat it, listening to the sound of heavy rain on the roof. Then, pushing aside her bowl and spoon, she flops down into the old armchair in the corner of the dining area of the kitchen, and puts her feet up on the sagging ottoman, to study. Since the course began the kitchen has become both living and study space. She eats her meals at the bench, and her laptop, books and papers are spread the length of the kitchen table. It’s warm in here, cosy, and the light is good. The chair is old, shabby and comfortable, the pile of the fabric on the arms worn thin with years of use. One day she’ll replace it with a rocking chair but she has no time for that now. No time for anything except this extremely complex book chapter on the interference factor of native languages for students learning English. It’s as she is struggling with a particularly complicated section that the front doorbell rings and her heart sinks. Knowing that any sort of conversation will destroy her concentration she ignores it. Ben and Vanessa are away, Stella or Polly would call out, or walk around to the back door. She turns the page and reads on, and hears the bell again. Joyce looks up, waiting for whoever it is to go away. There is a third ring and then the sound of a key turning in the front door. Joyce gets to her feet and walks out to the passage to discover Helen closing the front door behind her. Helen! She had completely forgotten about her.

  ‘There you are,’ Helen says, turning around, looking slightly affronted. ‘I knew you were in but I kept ringing and you didn’t answer. It’s pouring out there.’

  Joyce watches in amazement as Helen leans her umbrella in the corner and runs her hands through her hair. ‘I didn’t answer because I didn’t want to be disturbed,’ she says, her voice deliberately cold. ‘And I really resent your letting yourself in. I didn’t realise you still had a key. I’ll have it back please.’

  Helen is unconcerned. ‘We’ve always gone in and out of each other’s houses,’ she says. ‘Done it for years.’