And there he was, Daniel filling her screen, leaning forward as if reaching for her, Daniel, and the first sight of him for more than a year. She drew back.
‘Nina,’ he said. ‘Nina.’
He had a way of saying her name, it was like no one else. Not simply his accent, but he seemed to sigh on the word. She had always heard love when he spoke her name, now she heard relief and anxiety, or perhaps she saw these in his face. His forehead, heavily creased, seemed enlarged by the screen; he was blinking in an exaggerated way and there was an odd twist to his mouth.
How greatly had he aged. Only fifteen months had passed, but his hair was now completely grey and the once-thick crop had acquired that old-man dusty appearance; the bushy brows had drooped and there were fatty pouches beneath the eyes. He was wearing a white sleeveless T-shirt they had bought together on a trip to Naxos. She had taken a photograph of him standing on a rock in an all-conquering pose, the sparkling Mediterranean behind, his limbs brown and muscular, a youthful-looking man radiating strength and energy. The same T-shirt now exposed a neck of sinews and channels with the Adam’s apple a vulnerable protrusion floating in a swirl of skin; there were crêpey folds in his upper arms (with the biceps so clearly outlined she was reminded of testicles), and his skin was the colour of suet. Time wields a strong arm after sixty, but it had been particularly pugnacious with Daniel.
He put his hand on the screen where her own face would be. It was his left hand and he was wearing his wedding ring.
In the small projection of herself on her own screen she saw her wry, unemotional expression. ‘You’ve disappeared behind your hand,’ she said.
His hand immediately sprang back. She saw him raise his eyebrows. ‘You’ve weathered this year better than I have.’
‘I’m fine,’ she replied quickly, resisting the loaded ‘now’. Her voice was strong, the rest of her was quivering.
‘Being home is obviously agreeing with you.’ And seeing her surprise, he added, ‘Shirley told me you were in Melbourne.’
Of course. And if not his mother any number of their friends would have told him where she was, friends who’d dropped him when he took up with Sally but would have opened their arms and homes to him now he was alone. How naive she had been to think he didn’t know her whereabouts, yet how essential it had been to believe it.
‘And how is everyone?’ he asked. ‘Zoe? Elliot? The children?’
Nina shook her head, saw the same wry expression spread across her face. ‘Far too complicated to explain, and besides, that’s not how I want to spend the first conversation we’ve had in –’ she paused, and when she again spoke it wasn’t sarcasm she heard in her voice, but there was a twist of something bitter, ‘– in quite some time.’
He looked worried, if she didn’t know him so well, she would say he looked scared.
‘So,’ she continued, ‘how long have you known I was in Australia?’
His face relaxed at her question, and he settled back in his chair, not a chair she recognised; in fact she recognised nothing in what looked to be very ordinary surrounds. Despite his light clothes, his skin was clammy – the place, like so many in London was clearly over-heated. And suddenly it hit her: this must be the flat he moved to with Sally. Nina didn’t need to see this, she didn’t want to see this, how vile of him to parade the life he had dumped her for. And just as quickly as the fury flared so she stifled it: in the scheme of things the flat was minor, and besides, she found it quite satisfying to see that his love nest was as appetising as a budget motel room. She asked again: ‘How long have you known I was in Australia?’
He shrugged, or perhaps slumped. ‘Soon after we began emailing.’
A silence weighed in between them. In days gone by she would have filled it, but he had called her, he wanted to speak with her. She sat back on the couch and took a sip of cider. She could feel her hand shaking but doubted he could see it.
‘What are you drinking?’ And when she told him, he said quietly, ‘Our summer drink.’
There was another long silence, hard for her to bear. At last he spoke. ‘I’ve been thinking about us, of our life together.’
‘How long is it since you and Sally separated?’ The question shot out without warning. At least her voice sounded neutral.
He sighed. ‘Do you really want to talk about that now?’
She shook her head. ‘No, just an answer to that one question.’
His eyes glanced away from the screen, just a brief skittering to the left, before he sat forward again his hands clasped in front of him. He was looking straight at her. ‘I moved out late October,’ he said, ‘four months ago. But it was over a good deal earlier. In fact, it never worked.’
‘It?’
‘A proper relationship.’
‘You were oozing hormones when last I saw you.’
‘Lust always has a use-by date.’ He pressed his lips in an I-should-have-known-better grimace. ‘A very short use-by date in this case.’
‘You’re showing your age.’ Again the words just slipped out.
He rested his chin on the palm of his hand, his eyes were lowered. ‘Maybe I am, but even if I were twenty years younger I still would have realised my mistake.’ He shook his head slowly, he appeared puzzled. Then he took a deep breath and looked straight at her. ‘I realised my mistake very quickly. Punishingly quickly.’
So why did you stay with her so long, Nina was thinking. And with his ‘punishingly quickly’, surely he wasn’t expecting sympathy from her? And she finds herself bristling; just a couple of sentences from him and it all floods back, those miserable months, his terrible betrayal, and all of it, he now tells her, was a mistake. She considers finishing the call, then reminded she can cut him off at any time, cut him out of her life too, she calms down.
‘You said you’ve been thinking about our life together,’ she says.
He leans forward again. ‘Yes, yes.’ And now he’s smiling and his whole face lifts into its familiar shape. ‘I’ve been trespassing on your field.’
‘Memory?’
He nods. ‘I’ve been reading your Margalit.’
‘The Ethics of Memory?’
She had searched everywhere for the book even though she suspected she must have left it at the cottage. In the end she bought a replacement copy.
‘You left it at the cottage,’ he now says. ‘You left quite a few interesting books there.’
‘And you didn’t think I might want them back?’
‘By the time I got to reading them I was rather hoping you might collect them yourself – with me.’
She keeps herself absolutely still: impossible to know how to respond to such a loaded statement. She sticks to the topic. ‘So, what do you think of Margalit?’
Again he perks up, again his old enthusiasm. ‘Margalit writes that “the search for knowledge is … an exercise in reminiscence”.’ He nods his agreement in a barely perceptible movement, and then he seems to fall on the screen. ‘Oh Nina, I want our life back. I want you back.’
In the silence that follows she hears lorikeets squawking in the trees and the squeal of brakes on Punt Road. The cars outside will be bumper to bumper, they always are during the working week. In winter she can understand people opting for the warmth of their cars but in summer, why not take public transport? So much better for the environment. And she bursts out laughing.
He looks surprised but very pleased. ‘I thought it’d take a good deal longer to get a laugh out of you.’
‘It’s not you,’ she says, and is about to tell him how at this highly charged moment she’s being a dedicated environmental warrior, when she hears it, unmistakable, the clatter of a tram, not outside her apartment, there are no trams on Punt Road, but coming from the computer, coming from Daniel’s flat. She takes in his impersonal surroundings, his summery clothes, there are no lights on in the room, it is not night.
‘Where are you, Daniel? Where are you right now?’
Daniel spoke to h
is mother, he spoke to mutual friends, he was encouraged to contact Nina, to try and persuade her to take him back. He was an old-fashioned lover, a face-to-face man. He reorganised his schedule, packed a suitcase and flew to Melbourne. He rented an apartment in the Docklands development, just a few minutes’ walk from the offices of C.G. and C.K. Holdings.
‘I could have bumped into you at any time,’ Nina says.
He has changed his skimpy T-shirt for a pale blue cotton top with collar and sleeves; while it’s an improvement on the computer-screen image, he’s still grey and worn. Bright and buoyant in her gossamer dress she feels the contrast. He offered to come to her apartment, but she wanted the safety restraints of the public domain. So here they are at a rooftop bar at the top end of the city, an old favourite of hers sandwiched between a theatre on one side with a Parisian-style grey mansard roof, and on the other, the stone wall of a Victorian apartment building. To the front is a panoramic view of the State Government buildings and gardens.
‘I can’t believe you’ve never brought me here before,’ Daniel says, gazing about him. ‘We could be in Paris or London,’ and as a tram rumbled past, ‘or Vienna.’ He smiles at her. ‘But I’m very pleased we’re here together in Melbourne.’
She decides not to comment. She’s not even sure what she’s doing. Indeed, in the time separating their Skype call and meeting him she must have changed her mind a dozen times. She’s nervous, she’s uncomfortably eager, and she’s on her guard.
‘Cider?’ he asks, a question far more meaningful than what she might like to drink.
She shakes her head, wary of sentiment, wary of special ‘us’ experiences. She orders a gin and tonic, he a Balvenie single malt. Balvenie was the first distillery they visited together, she chooses to ignore this.
It’s a beautiful evening, warm and tranquil, the sky tinged with pinks. All the other tables are occupied – a few couples, but mostly people meeting for a drink after work.
‘He’s not interested in her,’ Daniel says with a subtle nod in the direction of a buffed and stubbled guy of about thirty and an attractive woman draped all over him.
‘Gay?’ Nina suggests.
Daniel shakes his head. ‘Narcissistic. Would prefer to be at the gym flexing in front of a mirror.’
She smiles in spite of herself.
‘But one day – I’d give it no more than ten years – Hercules will have started to sag. Even to himself he’ll be a disappointment.’
‘I expect that Hercules and Achilles, Odysseus, Jason, all the strong and fearless men of ancient times never made it to forty. The ravages of war saved them from the ravages of ageing.’
‘Did you see that Achilles has been given a good scrub?’
‘Wellington’s Achilles at Hyde Park Corner?’
Daniel nods. ‘Isn’t he one of your favourite memorials?’
She grins. ‘He’s twenty feet tall, he’s cast from French cannon won at Waterloo, he’s starkers –’
‘Except for the fig leaf –’
‘– he’s got a ten-pack that makes the usual six-pack look like a plate of sausages, and he’s been blessed with a head of thick curls. A favourite?’ She’s laughing. ‘Of course he’s a favourite. He’s Hollywood circa 1820.’
‘And his message? What the statue of Achilles represents?’
‘These days no one remembers either Achilles or Wellington –’
‘Achilles entered popular culture with that film Troy. Remember? Brad Pitt played Achilles.’
‘Ridiculous piece of casting. It needed a twenty-first-century version of Charlton Heston.’
‘What about our Hercules over there?’ Daniel says, again nodding in the direction of the couple.
But before she can answer, both are caught by the drama playing in front of them. The woman is unpeeling herself from the man’s body; she looks furious.
Nina leans towards Daniel. ‘Feisty suits her far better than fawning.’
He nods. ‘It certainly does.’
Now the woman is standing, she’s towering over the man. The crowd suddenly hushes; everyone likes a show.
‘I think she’s going to pour her drink over him,’ Daniel says.
‘I expect he deserves it.’
Daniel turns to her, their faces are a few centimetres apart. ‘I expect he does.’
Nina pulls back and pins her attention on the couple. The woman is wearing an engagement ring, the man looks up at her smiling.
‘That’s quite a rock,’ Daniel says.
‘That’s quite a smug prick,’ Nina replies.
‘I think she’s about to wipe the smile from his face.’
The woman is tall, suited, stylish, and now she’s no longer draped over the man, she carries herself with confidence. She picks up a glass of water – ‘I’m not about to waste good wine on you,’ she says – and empties it over his head. Then she removes the diamond ring and drops it into a bowl of aioli, gathers her bag and turns to the staring crowd. ‘That was a near miss,’ she says, before striding to the exit. There’s a burst of applause and a shriek of wolf whistles. She turns and takes a bow.
‘Isn’t she marvellous?’ Nina speaks her thoughts aloud.
‘No more marvellous than you,’ Daniel says.
‘I should have done what she did.’
‘In a way you did – by keeping your cool.’ And then he adds, ‘I expect it was very different when I wasn’t around.’
‘It sure was.’ She tastes the bile and with it a torrent of sour words. She keeps her mouth shut.
‘I deserve everything you want to hurl at me – and I expect it’s far stronger than water.’
She’s not sure what she wants to do with him. But in spite of it all – the dumping, the desertion, the despair of that long year spent alone, despite the hurt he has caused and the anger she still feels, she knows that the life she prefers is with him. She can hear her sister say, Don’t take him back; she can hear her friends say, Don’t take him back; she can hear people tell her that if he can betray her once there’s every likelihood he’ll do it again. She knows all the arguments for telling him to get lost, but the facts are clear, and although the facts are drawn from the past, some things don’t change. She liked the person he was and she liked herself with him; she had never been bored with him; she was drawn to his values and beliefs, his energy and curiosity, and – this had come as such a surprise – she had felt so fortunate, special, in the way he loved her. As for her own feeling for him, it had an intensity and authenticity that had utterly eluded her in all the earlier disastrous relationships.
She has been staring past him. Now she meets his gaze and sees the question in his expression. She keeps her own face mute; there is no hurry. Daniel is going nowhere and neither is she.
Chapter 15. Awakenings
1.
Ramsay tied up the bag of rubbish and took it outside. He was wearing only pyjama shorts and his skin frizzled in the midday heat. Let it burn, let all of him burn. Trails of ants toiled up the sides of the rubbish bin, criss-crossing the lid before disappearing inside. Ants were supposed to be the most organised of insects so why, he wondered, didn’t they take the shortest route to the spoils? He lifted the lid, the stink grabbed his throat, the rubbish inside was black and seething; he threw the bag in and slammed the lid. Back in the house he searched for insect spray, racing from room to room, cupboard to cupboard, at last finding a can in a basket contraption on the door of the broom closet. Outside again to the bin where he sprayed and sprayed, he sprayed until the can was empty. And all the while he hated having to kill the ants, hated they were there in the first place, hated having to manage these chores, hated that George was gone.
He wandered back inside. He wished he could return to the model exhibition, lose himself in the miniature cities. But he’d need to shower and dress and order a taxi, and it was all too much for him. What he really wanted was to sit at the piano and practise the time away. He longed for his piano feeling, felt useless and e
mpty without it.
The house, too, was empty. Empty and suffocating at the same time. Of all the people in his life only George had properly understood him, and because no one knew how it had been, no one knew how he was suffering now. Zoe made his meals, she looked after the practicalities, she thought she was looking after him as George had done. But she didn’t know what he needed in the way George did; George knew what he needed before he knew himself. And Mrs Monday came as usual, and Mr Monday too; Mr Monday, who without a proper job was really Mr Any-day-of-the-week, maintained the house. But there were never any ants when George was running things. Nothing was the same.
When his father died, music saved him. When his mother died, music saved him. That awful time with Zoe in New York, music saved him. All those instances when people jostled for a piece of him, music saved him. And now it had cut him adrift. But George would want him to persevere, this had become his mantra, so after washing the insect spray from his hands he went to the piano.
He stared at the keyboard: he didn’t want to be here, yet he wanted to be nowhere else but here. He ran his fingers over the keys. His hands were cold despite the heat, his fingers were stiff. Actually it was worse: his fingers were foreign and his left hand felt weak. He tried Bach – Bach who except for that one time when all music failed him had never failed him – but he might have been playing scales for all the effect it had, so he swapped to Rachmaninov hoping the more dramatic music would awaken him. It didn’t. From Rachmaninov he tried Schubert impromptus – a mistake because soon he was crying over the keyboard, fool that he was. Focus on the moderns, he told himself. He wiped his eyes and plunged into Bartok’s first piano sonata. He played it fortissimo from start to finish, each syncopated note slammed into his body, he played the piece without wit or whimsy, four minutes of attack, four minutes of battle. He played to the end and returned to the beginning, his left hand picked up, yes, this was better. He blitzed the keys, louder and faster, to the beginning again, he punched the notes. He savaged the music, he was killing the Bartok, his throat was aching, he couldn’t stop crying. His hands were meat, his fingers were cracking, he’d been at the piano for less than an hour and he couldn’t bear a minute more.
The Memory Trap Page 27
