The Woman Next Door

by Liz Byrski

  ‘There’ll be no need for that,’ he says quickly. ‘My brother lives in Texas, we have very little in common and I haven’t seen him for years. Judith is happy down there in Cornwall and Rosemary, who looks after her, is an old school friend who was widowed in her forties, and is happy to be a live-in carer.’

  Polly nods. ‘Sounds like a good arrangement, but I still want to get to know them.’

  Leo says nothing. They sit in comfortable silence for a while, drinking their tea, watching the parrots doing their housekeeping.

  ‘The thing about Stella,’ Leo says eventually, ‘is that she somehow reminds me of my mother.’

  ‘Oh for god’s sake,’ Polly says, ‘I’m not getting into this. I’ll put some clothes on and we can go for a walk,’ and she gets to her feet, tips the remains of her tea onto the flower bed and walks back into the house to get dressed.

  *

  Every morning Joyce wakes up feeling normal and within seconds a grey blanket of sadness settles on her, shutting out the light, leaving her struggling to escape its suffocating effect. She knows that she is now the only one who has been unable to move on from the horror of Helen’s death. The moment when she walked into the apartment that Sunday afternoon and saw Dennis, his head in his hands, a young policewoman at his side, and Helen’s body being lifted onto a stretcher, still grips her in its legacy of grief and guilt. Until recently Dennis too was trapped, but a month ago he had decided it was time for him to move out from their spare room where he had been living since Helen’s death. Mac has, to some extent, Joyce thinks, dealt with it best of the three of them, but of course while he was fond of Helen he was never really close to her.

  Joyce is paralysed by all the things she could or should have done: if only I’d known, if only I’d thought about the headaches, urged her to see a doctor, if only I’d made more effort, hadn’t turned her out that last night, if only . . . if only . . . Dennis had his ‘if onlys’ too and each has tried to comfort the other, but in the end they were both stuck with the horror of what happened, not just that Helen had suddenly and tragically died, but the way it happened, and the feeling that they should have seen it coming. A brain tumour, something that had been affecting her for some time, and the questions were devastating. Did she mention headaches, perhaps increasing in intensity and frequency? Yes. Do you know if she vomited from time to time? Yes, she mentioned it but put it down to the fact that she needed to cut down on her drinking. Any behavioural changes? Yes: the increased drinking, more volatile, quicker to anger and the anger more fierce, illogical and sometimes, according to Dennis, way out of control, less ability to compromise or see another side of an argument, more controlling. Energy? Well, she was always energetic but recently seemed a bit manic. And then the question they asked themselves – why didn’t we spot it? Why didn’t we do something about it?

  But over and above all of this there was the way it happened, the chaos of her last minutes or hours written across the walls in the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom, the passage and the lounge, in blood and vomit. It seemed, from the plastic bag of soiled clothes in the laundry, that Helen had already had an attack of vomiting and possibly a fall, and cleaned up. That she had had a shower, then made herself a cup of tea and gone to lie down wearing just her kimono. But something – the pain in her head, or nausea – had got her out of bed again. Was she dizzy or desperate or both? She had staggered from room to room, vomiting, had fallen once at least, hit her head on the corner of the glass coffee table and drawn blood. Then it appeared that she tried to get back to the bathroom, crashing into furniture and walls leaving traces of vomit, bloody hand prints, and at some point the sash of her kimono had unravelled and dropped away. At the bathroom door she had stopped, bloodied hand prints were on both door jambs, and there she had finally collapsed, face down on the white floor tiles. How long all this had taken was not clear but a neighbour had seen her park her car and take the elevator up to the top floor at midday on Saturday, and she had been dead for approximately eight hours when Dennis let himself into the apartment on Sunday, dropped his keys on the hall table, and knew instantly that something was terribly wrong.

  It is the horror of those last hours that Joyce can’t lay to rest. Did Helen know what was happening? Was she frightened? Was she in terrible pain? Why didn’t she try to call for help?

  Joyce and Mac had taken Dennis home with them and Nick had emerged from the bat cave and flown home to Perth, also staying with Joyce and Mac. Damian, Ellie and the children had arrived from Dubai and stayed with Ellie’s family in Cottesloe. No one wanted to go near the apartment and Mac had organised professional cleaners. Finally Joyce, Mac, Damian and Nick went together, packed Dennis’s clothes and the few other things he wanted. He couldn’t bring himself to set foot in the apartment again. They also packed Helen’s things, deciding to store them for a while until Dennis could decide what he wanted done with them. The apartment sold quickly, to a couple who had just returned from living overseas and were happy to buy it furnished. Dennis had signed the contract within days.

  Now Dennis has found a temporary home. A friend from the wheelchair workshop was looking for a house and dog sitter for a few months and Dennis had volunteered. It’s a comfortable little house with a small garden, only ten minutes’ walk from the workshop.

  ‘You’ve put up with me long enough,’ he’d said to Mac and Joyce the afternoon he’d told them he’d found a place to stay. ‘I have to get a life and find a place of my own. I don’t know how I’d have got through this without you.’

  And he and Joyce had clung on to each other shaking with silent sobs. ‘We’re here for you always, Dennis,’ she told him.

  ‘Always, mate,’ Mac had nodded in agreement. ‘You come back whenever you need it.’

  But Joyce knows that he won’t be back, at least not to stay. Moving out was, for Dennis, a step towards moving on. What’s not clear to Joyce, though, is how she too can step out from beneath the torpor of her own grief and guilt, and find a way forward.

  As she sits quietly in her rocking chair with the newspaper on this sunny morning in October, watching the way the light falls in a shaft of rainbow-tinged light through the window, Joyce thinks wearily about the way things have changed since she and Mac sat here in the kitchen, making their plan for the year. Helen has gone and Dennis’s life has been turned upside down. Stella ricochets between her old stable, rational self and the increasingly obvious signs of dementia. Polly is in this relationship with Leo.

  ‘What did you think of him?’ Joyce had asked Mac after they’d met him earlier this week.

  Mac had shrugged. ‘Not sure,’ he’d said. ‘Bit opinionated, isn’t he?’

  ‘He is,’ Joyce had said. ‘I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt on that though – I thought he might be feeling a bit insecure, you know, early days with Polly and then having to cope with us and Stella.’

  ‘Mmm, maybe,’ Mac had said. ‘I can’t say I took to him though. But Polly looks happy enough and that’s what matters.’

  Joyce gets to her feet with a sigh of despair. It’s not simply these big changes, she thinks, but she can’t get past that unfinished conversation that was interrupted by Dennis’s phone call. What happened next, and then in the days and weeks that followed, had consigned everything else to insignificance. Even so it remains unresolved. On the one hand it seems to Joyce like pure male stupidity; she understands that it is perfectly okay for Mac to have a friendship with this woman. But she feels displaced by it, and wounded by his secrecy. It’s up to him to make an effort to put things right. But his head seems buried in the sand, as though he thinks that if he ignores it it will eventually go away. And this is just one more thing to struggle with every day, one more thing on top of the burden of guilt Joyce feels for failing her oldest friend.

  Out in the back yard Mac is cutting back the bougainvillea, which is surprisingly early this year. She wat
ches as he grasps the recalcitrant branches, clips them with the secateurs and tosses the straggly prunings into the wheelbarrow. He has been back to Albany once for a few days since Helen’s death, and she knows he’s longing to get back there, to reinstate their plan, or at least live it out for a little longer. But he won’t go, he can’t let himself go until this is sorted out between them, and he won’t go until she manages to throw off some of the burden of grief and guilt.

  Mac grasps the handles of the wheelbarrow, backs it out of the corner and wheels it to the bulging garden bag at the back of the garage. Stray purple blossoms float up in the wind and scatter themselves in random patterns across the paving. Joyce sighs, it would be easier just to settle it, she could do it in a moment, let go, snap the tension and toss it away. But that’s what she always does, and she always ends up resentful about it. This time is different, she is different. This time he has to make the first move because he created the problem, and she will wait for him to fix it however long it takes. Her mobile rings and she turns away from the window to answer it.

  ‘Joyce, hello, it’s Ewan, Ewan Heathcote, how are you?’

  ‘Oh Ewan!’ Joyce says, struggling to focus on something and someone who slipped through the cracks of her mind weeks ago. ‘Sorry – I was totally elsewhere. I’m okay, and you?’

  ‘Good,’ he says. ‘I was wondering if I’d be able to get hold of you, thought you might have headed off somewhere exotic by now.’

  Joyce takes a deep breath. ‘Er . . . no, not . . . well not yet,’ she says, feeling foolish, fumbling, totally disconnected from the woman who collected her certificate and sat in a pub talking about going to China or Japan. ‘It’s been a bit difficult . . . since the course, I mean. A dear friend died, it’s been upsetting for all of us.’

  ‘Oh . . .’ Ewan pauses. ‘Look, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t be bothering you . . .’

  ‘It’s all right, I’m over it now,’ she lies, trying to inject some energy into her voice. ‘You’re not bothering me, it’s lovely to hear from you.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure . . .’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘I was calling to see if you might be able to help us out for a few weeks.’

  ‘Help you out?’

  ‘Yes, do you remember Sandi, one of our teachers? Well she’s had an accident, fell off her bike, broke her leg and a wrist, cut her head, so she’s a bit of a mess, poor thing. And we’ve got another teacher on maternity leave and our usual fill-in teacher is covering that, so I’m looking for someone to do some teaching for us for the next few weeks. I thought you might be interested and available to help us out . . .’

  Joyce stands there looking out into the back yard, from which Mac has now disappeared. A sudden breeze toys with the bougainvillea blossoms sending them dancing into the air, allowing some to settle on the surface of the pool, the movement making her blink.

  ‘What do you mean by help you out?’

  ‘We need someone to teach the two level one classes every day for at least the next four weeks,’ he says.

  ‘And you’re asking me to do that? To work for you, to teach your fee-paying students . . .?’

  ‘That’s right, nine ’til eleven and one ’til three. Of course we’ll pay you the standard rate and we pay a small bonus for someone stepping in at the last minute.’

  Joyce feels like choking, her stomach churns, the world of the language school seems so alien and distant, she feels she has lived several lives since then. ‘Oh I don’t know, Ewan, I don’t think I . . .’

  ‘I’m asking you because you were obviously such a good teacher. We keep a list, you see, and when we need some temporary help we call our graduates. You’re top of our list because you did so outstandingly well.’

  He stops and the silence tells her she should say something, but what?

  ‘We need someone who can start the day after tomorrow. I’m not desperate, I do have a list of other possible people, but I came to you first because we all really want you.’

  Joyce opens her mouth but nothing comes out, then, ‘I’m not sure I could . . . I mean, teaching in your school . . .’

  ‘Take it,’ says a voice behind her, and she turns to see Mac standing in the kitchen doorway. ‘If he’s offering you some work you should take it,’ he says. ‘Take it, Joyce, please take it, set yourself free.’

  Chapter Twenty-one

  ‘I need a bigger screwdriver, Stella,’ Mac says, descending two steps on the ladder and holding a small screwdriver out to her. ‘Could you see if you can find one in my toolbox, please? A Phillips, d’you know what that looks like?’

  Stella rolls her eyes and bends down to rummage in the toolbox. ‘I’m eighty Mac,’ she says. ‘Of course I know a Phillips screwdriver when I see one.’ And she picks up two that are larger than the one he handed her, and holds them up to him.

  ‘Of course you do, sorry,’ he says, smothering a smile and taking them. ‘Ah, one of these will do,’ and he goes back up the two steps of the ladder to finish fitting her new extractor fan.

  ‘So how was Joyce’s first day at work?’ Stella asks.

  ‘Good. She was a bit jittery in the morning, but came back really confident. What a bit of luck that came up. I was wondering if she was ever going to emerge from all that guilt about Helen.’

  ‘Joyce had nothing to feel guilty about,’ Stella says, ‘but I guess we all felt it to some extent, felt we had let Helen down, or should have made more of an effort for her.’

  ‘Mmm, well from what the doctor said this had been brewing a long time, and no one could have known,’ Mac says. ‘And of course Helen was never the easiest person to get on with, especially in the last few years – well, more than a few really.’

  ‘And how’s Dennis?’ Stella asks.

  Mac pauses, carefully locating the last screw and tightening it. ‘All done,’ he says, handing the tools down to Stella. ‘Dennis is doing all right, enjoying the house and dog sitting, and looking for a place of his own. He’s sold the four-wheel drive. He was going to keep Helen’s Mazda but he’s changed his mind, too many reminders. So he’s looking around for a decent second-hand car – just something small for himself.’

  ‘Coffee?’ Stella asks, and Mac glances at his watch.

  ‘Please, that’d be good, then I’ll be off.’ He packs up his tools, closes the box, and sits down at the kitchen table, watching as Stella spoons coffee into the plunger and gets out the milk.

  ‘What did you think of Leo?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m trying not to make any judgements yet,’ she says. ‘What about you?’

  Mac shakes his head. ‘Well I didn’t take to him much. Did you notice how he never really looks you in the eye?’

  ‘I did,’ Stella says. ‘I found that quite unnerving – the way he just looks past you. Odd, isn’t it?’

  ‘Odd and rather off-putting,’ Mac says. ‘That and the way he talks about himself.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Stella pulls out her tin of Tim Tams, opens it and puts it on the table. ‘Help yourself, Mac. I do worry about Polly; she seems very taken with him. I just hope she doesn’t end up getting hurt.’

  Mac helps himself to a biscuit. ‘Yes, she has been through the mill with relationships. Anyway, how are you, Stella?’

  She smiles. ‘Pretty good. I did the right thing retiring again, the last week on Cross Currents is all a bit of a blur . . .’ she pauses. ‘Mac, do you think Dennis would be interested in buying my car?’

  ‘Your car?’ The thought of Stella without wheels comes as a shock.

  ‘Yes, I think it’s time for me to stop driving.’

  ‘But if you’re feeling better . . .’

  ‘Well I do feel better,’ she says, carrying the coffee pot and cups to the table. ‘And that’s the problem, because I don’t think I have a very good sense of what I can and can’t do anymo
re.’ She sits down opposite him. ‘I haven’t told anyone else this but last week I went to the Fremantle cemetery.’

  Mac nodded. ‘You lost your way to the cemetery?’

  ‘Oh no, it seems I found my way there.’

  ‘Okay, why the cemetery?’

  ‘I have no idea. And I’ve no memory of driving there but I found myself wandering around among the graves. I didn’t know why I was there, or even where I was. I mean, I could have been in a cemetery anywhere.’

  Mac takes a deep breath, remembering the first time his father disappeared one afternoon and no one had any idea where he was until they got a call from the manager of a restaurant in North Perth, where he’d ordered and eaten a meal and then refused to pay the bill. When Mac had driven up to collect him his dad had no memory of how he had got there and wondered what all the fuss was about. Now he has a sinking feeling in his stomach, just like he’d had that day, a feeling that everything will be sliding steadily downhill from now on. He musters an encouraging tone that is at odds with all his instincts. ‘But you did get home?’

  ‘I did. I asked for help in the reception area, and a very pleasant young woman told me where I was and offered to call me a taxi. I think she must have thought I was left over from some funeral earlier in the day. So I came home in the taxi feeling very relieved, and the next morning I went out to the garage to drive into town and the car wasn’t there.’

  Stella pauses, and Mac can see that she is struggling with the telling.

  ‘It was in the cemetery car park?’ he asks.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You worked that out though?’

  There is a long pause. ‘No, no I didn’t. I didn’t even know that I’d been at the cemetery. I thought the car had been stolen and I rang the police and spoke to a very nice constable whose name was Tony. He said he knew me, that I had been at that station one night not long ago, having a cup of tea with him and the sergeant, and he hoped I was well. And when I told him about the car and gave him the number, he said he’d not long had a call from the cemetery reporting that a car with that registration was found there that morning in a no parking area and they believed it had been left there the day before. He was just about to check his computer to trace the owner.’