by Liz Byrski
‘I’ve sent out for some sandwiches and fruit,’ Jack said, putting down the phone. ‘I’d love to take you to lunch, Bonnie, but I have to hang on here. I wasn’t able to cancel everything. One of our authors is on his way here from Wollongong. So we’ll have a sandwich, and I’ll see him and then we can pop out to Manly.’
Bonnie’s disappointment was such that when the sandwiches arrived she couldn’t eat a thing.
So here they were, inspecting the property, and she could see Jack checking his watch. Why had she imagined it would be like going to Jeff’s office? Why had she assumed that it would be like the times she turned up there, greeted by the charming concierge in his gold-trimmed uniform, whisked in by the discreet, softly spoken Frau Trautmann, who had worked for him for years, and then later escorted out by Jeff to some small, delightful restaurant? Perhaps she hadn’t made the right decision, after all. She began to feel a little light-headed and nauseous.
‘Now, Lenore’s delighted for you to stay with her,’ Jack said as he drove out of Manly. ‘So I’ll drop you off there. She’s out of town but she’ll be back tonight. I’ve got a good bit to get through this afternoon, so I’ll give you a key. It’s handy for the city, or anywhere else you want to go. If you’re free tonight, perhaps I could take you to dinner?’
Bonnie hadn’t factored Lenore into this visit. She’d assumed Jack would put her up, assumed that once she arrived he’d look after her, just as Jeff would have done, getting her from place to place, organising things for her. Well, of course he had done just that, but it was all so different.
‘Make yourself comfortable,’ Jack said when he’d shown her around Lenore’s house. ‘Help yourself to tea and coffee, food … whatever.’ He glanced at his watch again. ‘I must get back to work. It’s twenty past three – is seven-thirty all right for dinner? I’ll pick you up.’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Thanks, Jack, I’ll be ready.’ And with a terrible sinking feeling she watched him drive away.
‘She’s in Sydney,’ Sylvia said under her breath so that the two women examining scarves in the gallery couldn’t overhear her. ‘Lenore called while you were at the meeting.’
‘Sydney? Why Sydney, what’s she gone there for? Oh, don’t tell me – Jack Bannister?’
‘Yes. Bonnie just turned up, rang Jack from the airport. Very odd.’
‘Odd – you’re not kidding!’ Fran said. ‘Oh, I hope she’s not going to make a fool of herself.’
‘Well, apparently he’s got a monstrous sort of day, but he took her off somewhere to look at a property, and then dropped her at Lenore’s place. She’s up in Newcastle, back later tonight, and Bonnie’s staying there. She asked Jack if she could stay with him.’
‘You don’t mean she propositioned him?’
‘No, nothing like that. Just sort of assumed he’d look after her. It seems he thought she was sounding pretty strange on the phone and he rang Lenore and arranged for her to stay there.’
‘Smart man. Did Lenore say how Bonnie is?’
Sylvia shrugged and shook her head. ‘She just said that Jack said Bonnie was very strange, like she was on drugs – animated one minute, but then seeming not really with it.’
‘You told her about the baby crisis?’
‘I did. She’ll talk to her tonight and call us in the morning.’
Fran waited as Sylvia gift-wrapped the women’s scarves and took their money. ‘She is so much going to wish she hadn’t done this. I was so cross with her this morning, and now I can only think about how fragile she is.’
‘I know,’ Sylvia said. ‘Thank goodness Lenore will be back tonight. Let’s just hope Bonnie doesn’t make a complete fool of herself in the meantime.’
*
Bonnie peered at herself in the mirror and thought she looked a bit odd, wobbly. Perhaps the mirror was slightly distorted – probably a cheap mirror. She was glad she’d worn the Chanel suit, it was more than a year since it had had an airing, but her hair didn’t really go with it. Until now she had liked her very short, spiky cut, it seemed to fit with her life in Melbourne, with the woman she had become, the woman who had started the Boatshed. But tonight she hated it, she wanted her old hair back again, the shiny, blunt, mahogany bob that Jeff had loved, as he loved this suit.
Sighing, she rinsed her hands at the basin and waved them in front of the irritating hot air dryer and then made her way back into the restaurant, wondering if she’d had too much to drink. Her legs felt a bit funny. It was only nine-thirty but she felt quite light-headed and a little dizzy.
When Jack had left her at Lenore’s that afternoon, the depression had closed in and she wandered restlessly around the empty house pushing away the urge to scream or smash something. Eventually she ran upstairs to the room where Jack had put her bag, took some of her pills and threw herself on the bed. Wiping out the rest of the afternoon with sleep seemed the only way to cope, and setting the alarm to wake her at six-thirty, she lay back waiting for merciful oblivion. When she woke three hours later she felt decidedly groggy, but a shower helped, as did a couple of large gins at the bar with Jack, and some excellent wine. The food looked delicious but she could barely touch it. She made her way cautiously back to the table, just as the waiter arrived with their coffee and two large brandies.
‘So what did you think of the Manly property?’ Jack asked, swirling the brandy in his glass.
Bonnie took a sip of hers and thrilled to its fire as she swallowed it. ‘I liked it. I think it would work,’ she said.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Have you sounded Fran out?’
‘Only in terms of a future possibility, nothing specific.’ She didn’t want to start talking business. They’d talked books and movies earlier, and she’d told him a bit about life in Switzerland. Tonight she’d wanted something different and it had felt good, like dinners in Zurich with Jeff.
Jack nodded. ‘Of course, but we shouldn’t leave it too long or we may lose the chance of a lease. When you get back, perhaps you can talk to her in more specific terms. She doesn’t need to be hugely involved, of course, but she does need to be on board, and we need to discuss some sort of partnership arrangement. I’ll get – ’
‘Sure, Jack,’ Bonnie interrupted. ‘But let’s not talk about it tonight. There are so many nicer things to discuss. I’ve been telling you all about my life, time for you to tell me about yours. You never talk about yourself, and that makes me feel you must have all sorts of secrets.’ She reached across the table and put her hand on top of his. She thought he looked a little shaken. He wasn’t a man who constantly talked about himself and expected women to sit by in admiring silence; he was like Jeff in that way too, interested, inclusive. She squeezed his hand gently just before he eased it away and folded his napkin.
‘Not really,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Just pretty ordinary – the army, work, marriage, divorce. Pretty average for a bloke my age, I think. Maybe we should be making a move, Bonnie. I’ll get the bill.’
She waved her hand to stop him. ‘It’s early yet,’ she said. ‘Let’s have another brandy and you can tell me about the army.’ The table seemed to move slightly and as her elbow slipped off the edge, she knocked her cup, splashing coffee onto the tablecloth.
‘Are you sure you want another drink?’ Jack asked.
‘Absolutely sure,’ she smiled. ‘The night is young.’
‘Hmm,’ he said, nodding to the waiter. ‘The night may be but I’m not. If you’d like it, perhaps just one more, and then we must get going. I’ve got an early meeting in the morning.’
FORTY-THREE
Fran sat in the moonlit courtyard at the back of the house in a towelling dressing gown, her feet on the lower rung of the table, drinking a cup of tea and staring at an old shoebox full of letters. She was exhausted, but too wide awake to sleep.
‘You’d better see if you want these, Fran,’ Sylvia had said earlier that evening. They were at Lila’s unit, sorting and packing her possessions with Caro and Jodie. ‘They’
re airmail letters.’
‘Not more, surely,’ Fran said. ‘I’m beginning to wonder if Mum ever threw anything away.’
‘Well, these seem to be from you,’ Sylvia said, handing her the box.
They were her letters home from England in the sixties, her own voice speaking across the decades, the voice of the person she used to be.
‘Oh, can I read them, please, Mum,’ Caro had begged.
‘Okay,’ Fran had agreed, ‘but not yet. I want to read them first.’
She had brought them home intending to look at them another time, but the pull of the past was irresistible and in surrendering to the temptation to read just one she had been unable to stop. It was a relief to find that she didn’t dislike the young Fran, but it was surprising to feel as though she was listening to a stranger; the enthusiasm and naïveté left her feeling exposed, naked almost.
She could remember writing them, could picture herself at the table by the window in the shared house near Paddington Station, or in the café where she stopped for a bacon sandwich on her way to the job in the record shop in Edgware Road. She could even see herself sitting on a seat in Kensington Gardens near the Peter Pan statue, an airmail pad on her knee, her backpack on the grass beside her, filling in a free half-hour with a letter to Lila. The connection with home had been vital and she had hung on to her mother’s letters, which arrived regularly once a week making her feel safe enough, loved enough, to stay away. If only she had kept Lila’s letters to her, how she would have loved to read them now.
‘I’m dying to know what you sound like,’ Caro had said. ‘Did you tell Gran everything – I mean, boyfriends, wild parties, getting drunk, drugs, everything?’
‘Not everything,’ Fran had said with a laugh. ‘Probably a bit about boyfriends, a few parties, definitely not about getting drunk, and certainly nothing about smoking the occasional joint.’
What had she sounded like? Excited, a bit scared, high on possibilities, thrilled by London and everything it symbolised, a present packed with action, a future throbbing with opportunity. What had she done with all that? Had she wasted the enthusiasm, the experience, the opportunities? Frittered them away? There was so much she wished she’d done or done better, but the greatest satisfaction of her life – her children – made it impossible to wish certain things undone. She was fifty-six, a mother, a grandmother, and now a reasonably successful businesswoman, although the latter title still sat uneasily with her. The truth was that right now she wouldn’t change anything.
In England, aged twenty, she had fallen in love with Daniel, a law student from Jamaica, and tonight she had been reminded how, in letters home, she told Lila quite a bit about him except for the fact that he was Jamaican. Thirty-six years on, she knew that the censorship was unnecessary. Lila was the most open-minded, least judgmental person Fran had ever known. She would have welcomed Daniel, irrespective of colour or ethnicity. So what would she feel if she was here now, if she knew about Lenore?
Fran had never imagined that she would be attracted to another woman, let alone make love with one. Her closest friends were women, some of them in same-sex relationships, but she had never felt this sort of chemistry before. Even in her mounting desire she had felt strange and a little uneasy exploring another woman’s body, so familiar and, at the same time, so thrillingly different. But for the first time in her life she had felt she was making love rather than just having sex, and the moment she abandoned herself to the bliss of it, let go of the feeling that she must satisfy and be satisfied, she knew she was tasting an intimacy that had, until now, eluded her. Even with Tony, sex had seemed more about lust structured into ritual than an intimate expression of love and sexuality. She wondered now if she had always been a lesbian without knowing it, or was she just one of a growing number of women who had found same-sex love and sexual pleasure after half a lifetime of heterosexual relationships?
‘You know what they say about lesbians and how it all happens so quickly?’ Lenore had whispered that first night. ‘Meet in the morning, move in together in the afternoon, get married that night.’
‘Do you think it’s true?’ Fran asked, thinking her question sounded terribly childish.
‘Not always, but it’s not uncommon.’
‘Well, if I could keep you here forever, I would,’ she said. But she had sensed that Lenore was holding back, cautious still, anxious to protect her, or perhaps to protect herself.
‘In a few days’ time,’ Lenore had said the next morning, catching hold of Fran’s arm as she got out of bed, ‘if this doesn’t feel right, promise you’ll tell me the truth – you won’t just run and hide?’ And in the weeks since they parted, Lenore’s anxiety seemed to have grown. ‘I know what I want, Fran,’ Lenore had said to her at the airport. ‘And I don’t want to sound patronising but this is new for you.’
‘You think I’m just experimenting,’ Fran had said. ‘I promise you I’m not. I mean, surely the first time you sleep with anyone you’re attracted to it’s something of an experiment.’
Lenore put a hand on her cheek. ‘But it’s more than that and you need to be sure not just for yourself but for me too. I loved you from that first day when you frightened the life out of me, and I’d trained myself to accept that we could only be friends. Now I’m scared that in a week or two you’ll get cold feet, wake one morning in a panic and turn away from me. It’s happened before and I’m not in the habit of seducing straight women.’
‘It was me who came to your bed,’ Fran said, biting her lip to hold back the tears.
‘I know, but even so you need to take time. I’m still scared that this is a reaction to loss and loneliness.’ Lenore paused and turned away briefly. ‘I’m sorry, Fran, I must sound like the most awful fascist,’ she said, and for the first time Fran saw tears in her eyes. ‘But I’d reached a time of my life where I’d sworn off relationships for fear of getting hurt again. I’m sixty-two, and I thought I was done with love and all its terrifying emotional peaks and troughs. I don’t want to get dropped when your children or your friends disapprove, or you discover you’re embarrassed to be seen with me in public. I’ve been through all that, Fran; I don’t want to do it again. Take time. I’m a coward, I know, but I won’t come back until I’m sure it’s safe.’
Fran sighed and put down her empty cup. Every day since then they had talked on the phone, every day the emails hummed through cyberspace, her own loving and emotional, Lenore’s more cautious. She thought of Lenore tonight, coping with Bonnie, and wondered what was happening in the little house in Surry Hills. Whatever would Bonnie say when she found out about this? What would Lila have said? Fran stretched her arms above her head, looking up at the fragments of moonlit sky showing through the vines that spread across the lattice.
‘Well, why not, Fran? Who you love is your own business and no one else’s.’ She could almost hear her mother’s voice. ‘You have to be true to yourself or life’s not worth anything.’
‘Thanks, Mum,’ Fran whispered into the darkness, ‘that’s what I thought you’d say.’
Bonnie slipped into the back seat of the taxi and slid across to make room for Jack.
‘This was such a lovely evening,’ she said, resting her hand on his thigh, her head dropping onto his shoulder as the cab pulled away. ‘It feels like, well … like old times, like I used to be.’
‘I’m glad you enjoyed it, Bonnie,’ Jack said, lifting her hand off his leg and, as it started to stray back, taking it firmly in his and holding it. ‘You must be very tired.’
The cab seemed to sway a lot but it felt good, as though she was on her favourite train ride, the one that meandered up a steep single track, through pastures filled with wildflowers and grazing cattle, and the higher wooded slopes to the snow-capped peaks of the mountains. It was a journey from warm spring sunshine to blinding whiteness, where you could stand surrounded by snow without a jacket, breathing the sharp, pure air at the summit.
‘Dear Jack,’ she said, lifti
ng her head to kiss the line of his jaw. ‘You didn’t tell me about your life, but you can do that when we get home.’ Her head spun a little as she rested it back on his shoulder.
Jack cleared his throat and kept looking straight ahead. Lenore’s house was still in darkness when they drew up outside.
‘Hang on for me, will you?’ Jack said to the driver. ‘I’ll just be a couple of minutes, and I’ll get you to run me back to Elizabeth Bay.’ And he helped Bonnie out of the car and attempted to steer her up the front path. ‘I’ll see you in, Bonnie,’ he said. ‘Lenore will be back soon.’
‘You aren’t going, are you, Jack?’ she said, plaintive suddenly. ‘I’ll make coffee, we can talk some more. I want to hear all about you.’
‘It’s late, Bonnie,’ he said, guiding her up the path, his arm around her waist to steady her. ‘I’ve got an early start.’ He slipped the key in the door and snapped on the light in the hall. Immediately, Bonnie reached behind him and snapped it off again, laughing.
‘No, no, too much light, it’s much more fun in the dark. Always leave the light off, more intimate, you see.’ And she turned towards him, slipped her arms around his neck, drew his head down towards her and kissed him. He was stiff and unresponsive at first, so she moved closer, pressing herself against him, sliding her fingers into his hair. As his arms closed around her, Bonnie felt she was melting back into a familiar and blissful cushion of safety. Blood surged through her veins as Jack responded to her kiss, holding her closer now, his mouth controlling hers, his erection hardening against her belly. She was lost in the sheer relief and joy of feeling needed and wanted. She pulled at his shirt buttons and slid her hand onto his bare chest but at the touch of her fingers, Jack pulled away suddenly, grasping her wrists and holding her at a distance, breathing deeply to regain his composure.
‘Bonnie,’ he said, ‘Bonnie, this is not a good idea …’ He stepped back slightly and she could see him outlined in the doorway against the light from the street. ‘You’re upset, Bonnie, and you’ve had a lot to drink. I don’t think …’
