He put the figures on the desk in front of me and circled the total in red before telling me that the wages had been too high.
You’re going to have to do something about this, he said.
When I tried to explain that I had had approval, he would not listen.
We all have our budgets, Elise, and as managers it is our job to keep within them. I’m afraid I’ll have to bring this up at the next financial meeting.
It was Jocelyn who interrupted him, her voice louder than mine had been when I had tried, and it was Jocelyn who told him he should take a minute to hear what I had to say.
Pompous prick, she said when he walked off without apologising.
When I told her that I did not mind, she became angry.
You should mind, she said with a vehemence that startled me. You shouldn’t let people walk over you.
I knew she was right, but I did not know any other way.
Staying with Marissa and Robert in the country, I felt ashamed of how quiet I was. I would listen to Martin speak for me and I would want to stop him but I would not know how.
I remember eating lunch when we came back from the slate-mining village. Sitting under the shade of an apricot tree and throwing the eggplant Marissa had made under my chair in the hope the dog would eat it.
When she had asked me if I liked aubergine, the purple skin glistening with oil, I had been about to refuse, but Martin had spoken for me.
We love it, he said, and as I watched him scoop mouthfuls up with his bread, the oil shining on his chin, I did not know how I was going to finish mine. Most of it ended up on the ground and that was where it stayed. The dog was not interested. I saw this as soon as I pulled out my chair.
The others saw it too.
You should have told me you didn’t like it, Marissa said. I wouldn’t have been offended.
I felt like a fool, my face blushing scarlet under the harsh midday sun.
This is the way it is with Martin and me. I am asked a question and he answers for me. I start to speak and he speaks for me.
You should assert yourself, Jocelyn says to me. And not only on that occasion with Martin, but at other times, whenever I am hesitant, whenever I fail to stand up for myself. I know, she says, I learnt the hard way.
And often, after telling me this, she will bring in her Face the Fear book and lend it to me. I always return it to her unread.
I know she is right. I also know her words are not limited to my behaviour with Martin. They apply generally. They apply to Dorothy.
There was no exhilaration after my defiance, but later, sitting in the room that had once been the room I shared with Frances and then my room, I saw the piles of scrapbooks in the corner and I felt a renewed faith in what I had done. I could not have read the newspapers to her; I could not have done it.
But this is not to say that I did not have my doubts, I would have said to Jocelyn if I could have talked to her about what had happened. There is no real harm in it and she needed help.
It was just that I could not do it.
But I do not talk to Jocelyn about what has happened. I do not talk to anyone.
I bring Dorothy her food and she does not speak.
I clear her plate and she does not speak.
I wish her goodnight and close the door to her room. Still she does not speak.
The next morning it is as I expected. I am greeted with silence.
You are pushing me, I whisper to myself in the bathroom mirror, watching my mouth forming the words, tasting them on the tip of my tongue. Pushing me, pushing me, pushing me.
I open the curtains in her room, open them wide, letting the light spill in, particles of dust dancing across the carpet, across the veneer of her dressing-table, in front of the mirror and in front of the photograph of Franco.
I can see the fury on my mother’s face as she squints in the unaccustomed brightness of daylight.
I am going to work, I tell her and she does not answer. I take her breakfast tray and notice she has eaten everything. I straighten her bed covers and ask her if she would like me to brush her hair.
She does not say a word.
In the corridor, I lean against the wall, close my eyes and breathe deeply. I do not have the stomach for this.
You should pack and move while he is away, Jocelyn said to me yesterday when I told her about Martin.
It is easy for her to say this. She does not know the place to which I would have to return.
He is not good for you, she said. I saw him with his wife and I have seen him with you. He likes to keep people repressed. To make himself feel better.
I wanted to tell her she was wrong. He is good for me, I wanted to say. I wanted to tell her about the afternoon he had held me at the end of the jetty. I wanted to tell her that he has seen things and knows things about me no one else knows. And he is still with me, I wanted to say.
And I wanted to say that I could not go back. Not to this place.
But I did not say a word.
I will help you, she promised. Just tell me when.
I open my eyes to the dimness of this corridor, to the yellowing paint and to the faded print of an English garden, dull behind dirty glass.
She expects me to have a courage I do not have.
Outside, the morning is clear and clean. The next-door neighbour scrubs her flyscreen door with a toothbrush and in the house beyond that, a man mows his lawn. I am late, but I do not move. At the top of the back steps I look out past the Hills Hoist and the back fence to the houses on the other side of the road. I can almost see as far as John Mills’s. Almost but not quite.
I remember standing on the hilltop at Marissa’s, Martin once again speaking for me. Poor Elise grew up with a pebbled back yard. I don’t think she had seen a flower until she moved in with me.
I remember his words and my cheeks sting.
It is then that I make up my mind.
I am sorry, I tell David, the General Manager, on the telephone. I need a few days off.
I explain that Dorothy is ill, that there is no one to care for her, and as I lie, I can hear her, coughing in her room, coughing loudly to let me know she is listening to every word I am saying.
I will be back next week, I promise him.
He tells me to take as long as I need. We’ll manage, he reassures me.
I open the door to Dorothy’s room and the brightness startles me. I tell her I am going out.
Her coughing has stopped. She is, once again, silent.
Do you need anything? I ask her, knowing there is no point. She will not answer.
I close the door behind me and leave her lying flat on her back staring up at the ceiling.
31
It was you who gave me the inspiration, I tell him. Indirectly, I add.
John Mills is sitting on the back steps when I come home and he watches, with surprise, as the taxi driver and I bring in bags of soil, compost and straw, a load of plants, and the sparkling new rake I selected.
When I moved into Martin’s mother’s house and told him I wanted to plant vegetables, he was surprised. I really don’t want to dig up the lawn, he said, or any of the beds, and he looked out the back window at the buffalo grass and the row of crimson roses, bruised and wilted in the heat. Besides, he added, this is low maintenance.
I did not argue. It was not my house. But it did not stop me wanting.
I was thinking about your mosaic, I tell John, as he helps me drag the bags to the back steps. I was thinking about you covering the garden with china, and I wished that I could cover this. I point to the pebbles, all of them, colourless at our feet. And then I remembered.
He wipes the sheen of sweat from his forehead and takes his glasses off, resting them next to his sketchbook. He has been drawing. The pages flap in the breeze, covering this morning’s picture.
I remembered the seaweed. And all the newspaper, I tell him.
I remembered Marissa explaining how she had built up her garden. Standin
g in the clear heat of that summer day and listening to her speak.
A layer of seaweed, a layer of newspaper, and then straw and earth, I say to John.
I point to the back fence, rusty and twisted, and to the northern side of the yard. You can lay it straight on top of the pebbles, I tell him, remembering how amazed I had been when she had told me. She had pointed to the rocky outcrops of quartz that surrounded us, pink and cream, like the cliffs on the beach. The soil is stony here, she had told me, and rather than dig it all up, I decided to try this.
To grow something on top of stone had seemed inconceivable to me.
It still does.
John Mills looks at the lettuces and herbs I have bought and, at our feet, the packets of seeds, promising poppies, sunflowers and foxgloves, bright and colourful, spread out on the cracked concrete.
And sweet corn, I tell him.
Why not? he says and, picking up the packet, he reads the instructions on the back.
I tell him my plan.
The seaweed is first. I will collect it from the beach and wash it down to get rid of the salt. I point to the stack of newspapers in the sunroom.
More than enough, he says.
The straw and the compost are in the bags at our feet.
And I’ll border the beds with the pebbles, I tell him, still surprised at how possible it all is.
Have you told Dorothy? he asks me, and I look at the ground.
I tell him I want it to be a surprise.
Later, at the beach, we walk along together, dragging our bags of seaweed behind us.
John Mills tells me about his wife.
I loved her, he says. We were lucky.
I do not remember her well. She worked in the surgery with him and I met her once. The time I went to him with measles. But the memory is vague.
He retired soon after she died.
I had been disillusioned for a long time, he says. It all felt so useless. Most of the time people just wanted to talk. I always felt I could do more without all the trappings, all the pretence, of the surgery but I couldn’t bring myself to let them go.
She was the catalyst. She didn’t want to try anything; chemotherapy, radiotherapy. She said she wanted to die in peace.
And that was so hard for me to accept.
I steal a glance at him.
I fought her and I wish I hadn’t.
He pauses for a moment, and I wait for him to continue. It was something I had to come to terms with, he says, and he looks out across the calm blue of the sea. The mosaic is my peace offering; that and my daily rounds, and he turns to me. That is all they are, he says, a way of finding peace.
At home, we lay the seaweed out on the pebbles, flat beneath the warmth of the winter sun.
He sprays it down with the hose. One side at a time. I turn it over. It is slimy to the touch.
I’m not so sure about this part of the process, he says.
Neither am I, I admit, as I run my hands along the knots of weed to check whether we have washed away most of the salt.
We are hungry and he makes lunch. He takes a sandwich in to Dorothy and brings one out for me.
I’ll stay out here, I tell him, assuming that he will, as always, go and eat with her.
I sit by myself and look out across the yard, the thick clumps of weed drying in the sun.
When I told Martin about Marissa’s garden, he had not understood why I was so excited.
It’s just a garden, he had said to me.
When I told him about John Mills’s mosaic, he also did not understand.
Fifteen years, he said. How can anything take that long? and he shook his head in disbelief.
We are different, Martin and I. Very different. In my moments of honesty, I can see that the differences are fundamental and there is little likelihood of this changing.
After lunch, I begin work on the borders. With the largest pebbles, I mark the shape of the beds, building higher with the smaller stones. I am finished by the time John comes out and we stand together and look at the progress I have made.
Not bad, he says, not bad at all.
We lay the seaweed, piece by piece, tangled green, yellow and black, across the remaining pebbles that line the base of the beds.
The newspaper is next, and I am momentarily daunted by the size of the piles in the sunroom. I start with the stack closest to the door; the paper is not so old, not so yellowed as the bundles in the corners, and I carry armfuls down the back steps to John, who lays them across the layers of seaweed.
It is like shedding skin, I think to myself, but I do not say it out loud because I know that my analogy is not a clear one. It is just a sense.
The sun has moved to the front of the house, and the evening chill is upon us. The nights still come early and I know we will not be able to finish before dark. I drag the bags of straw and compost to each of the beds and empty them, wanting to at least see the earth covering the pebbles before I stop for the day.
John helps me. He rakes the straw, and then the soil, until the covering is even, and finally we rest.
I remember the first flower I grew, he says to me. We are standing at the gate, looking at the work we have done and the red of the sky over the rooftops. It was a sunflower. I watched it open up. Half the petals unfolded, the other half stayed tightly closed against the centre. Hiding half its face. He smiles. I was intrigued. I had never seen this slow unfolding before.
As he speaks, I can imagine.
I will see you tomorrow, he says, and I watch him head down the street until I cannot see him any more. He has left me, alone with Dorothy and her silence.
I walk up the back steps and I am tired. The house is in darkness, so I do not see that I have left the photo out. Not straight away. Not until I have checked on Dorothy and come back into the kitchen to make her dinner.
I switch on the light and it is there. In the middle of the table. Next to the breadboard where he made our sandwiches. Where I left it last night, forgetting to hide it as I normally would. Leaving it out. For anyone to see.
He could not have missed it.
And I hold it with the tips of my fingers and feel uneasy.
He must have seen it and yet he did not say a word.
32
Was she like you? Martin asked me on the night I first told him about Frances.
I was silent.
In the darkness I could not see his face. I could not see his eyes, his nose or his mouth, and I could not answer him.
No, she was not like me. But they were not the words I spoke.
Not so different, I said, shifting uneasily in the small space next to him, wanting to see his face but knowing that when I did it would be the face of a stranger, and closing my eyes because ultimately to see nothing had seemed easier.
No, she was not so different.
Not as different as he had seemed in the darkness of that room.
And that night when Martin made love to me, I kept my face turned from his and, with my eyes closed, I tried to remember another time. I tried to remember kissing the Polish boy outside the Chinese Palace restaurant with the seagulls circling overhead.
But it was no use.
The branches of the olive tree scratched against the window and I could not escape where I was.
Sometimes I wonder whether he, too, closed his eyes and pretended he was with someone else. He kissed me, but was he kissing his wife, or perhaps his first girlfriend?
I do not know. We never talked about those things.
Why did she leave you? I asked him once, looking at the photograph of her in his mother’s lounge room.
He scratched his arm (this is what he does when he is ill at ease) and told me he did not want to talk about it.
Besides, he said, she did not leave me. We both decided, and he scratched his arm again. It was mutual.
But I knew he was lying.
Jocelyn has told me that they fought all the time. She has also told me that she ran off with some
one else.
And soon after, he met me.
Someone who would listen. Someone who would not run away.
Martin believes there are certain subjects that should not be discussed.
These things should be private, he says, referring to Jocelyn’s talk of old lovers, men she has slept with and men she has wanted to sleep with.
He tells me he is glad I am not like her, spilling intimate details to whomever will listen.
He is right. I am not like her. But then, apart from the Polish boy, there has never been anyone but Martin.
How would she like it, he says, if they all talked about her in the way she talks about them?
She probably wouldn’t mind, I say, but so softly he does not hear me.
I’m sure she would hate it, he says. I know I would, and I certainly wouldn’t subject someone I have loved to the public scrutiny she indulges in.
I wonder whether I will become a topic Martin refuses to discuss. I wonder whether my photo will be left out, along with the photo of his wife, side by side, for the next one to look at. I wonder whether she will ask him about me and whether he will scratch his arm nervously and tell her he does not want to talk about it. Or perhaps she will banish both of us, the wife and me, to some box in a cupboard, not needing evidence of the past to reaffirm the present.
I do not know.
There may not even be a photograph.
I may simply cease to exist. I will pack my box and my clothes and, neither mentioned nor displayed, I will disappear.
I will help you, Jocelyn said to me. Just tell me when.
I know I have not moved from his house. I know I have not done what he has asked.
But there was a time when Martin told me he would never leave me. Years ago, when he thought I was someone else. Encircling me in his arms at the end of the jetty, I could not explain why I could not walk out there as he had wanted, and he had told me it was all right.
I will look after you. Always.
I will look after you. Always.
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