She made her way along the street and paused for a moment next to the Druitts’ letterbox, looking up the short concrete path to the sprawling pale-brick house. It seemed an abode of particular blandness to Pam. One side of it was dominated by a long concrete porch and two sets of large windows, bisected by a cream-painted wooden front door; the other side featured two huge roller doors. She’d never been inside and didn’t know the layout, but she assumed that the living room lay to one side and the master bedroom to the other. Long net curtains obscured the interior from view, so which side was which she had no idea. She tried to imagine them, the family, inside, most probably in the kitchen, tight around the table, eating breakfast, drinking coffee or tea (she imagined they were coffee people, but you never could tell). It crossed her mind that Maxine might still be in bed, that she might not have left it since she’d had the news. But Ray would be up, she was sure of that. Only dire illness would see him confined to his room.
She smoothed her jacket, pulling it down around her hips, and inhaled deeply, trying to quell the insistent pounding of her heart in her chest. There was an eerie quietness around her; the house, the neighbourhood, felt like an architectural model, devoid of life. The sun, hidden behind the misty cloud cover, offered only a filtered, soft light. She walked up the concrete path, stepped onto the front porch and tentatively knocked at the door. For a moment there was no sign of a response, and she knocked again, a little louder. It took a few seconds before she heard the soft thud of footsteps from the interior and the door opened a crack. Pam saw the shock of bleached blond hair and anticipated a dishevelled Maxine, but instead it was Reggie whose face appeared around the edge of the door, skin pale and blotchy, eyes strangely vulnerable without their usual make-up. Pam had forgotten that Reggie lived next door; she wondered which house. They both seemed too large, too costly for a single mother and her son.
Reggie gave an audible gasp when she saw Pam. There was an odd mixture of surprise and dismay on her face, as though Pam was the last person that Reggie expected to see (which was probably the case) and the last person she wanted to see (equally true). But she seemed to regain her composure quickly enough, as though she’d secretly anticipated seeing her at some time or another, and leaned forward, her face set, her voice a low hiss. ‘You can’t be here. You really can’t.’
‘I had to come, Reggie. I have to tell them how—’
‘Who’s there?’ Maxine’s voice, brittle and wary, rang out from somewhere inside the house.
Reggie looked quickly over her shoulder. ‘Go,’ she murmured. ‘Just fuck off now.’
‘I just—’
Somewhere behind Reggie there were the sounds of activity. An approaching thumping stride, almost at a run. A male voice, loud but indistinct. Reggie turned her head and attempted to push the door closed but a meaty hand materialised out of nowhere and yanked it back. Ray, mountain-like in a rough workman’s check shirt and khaki pants, stared out at her, his face reddened and unshaven, a faint trace of sweat as though he’d been doing something strenuous. Just as Reggie had been moments before, Ray too seemed momentarily stunned. He stared down at Pam, his eyes fixing on hers then flickering across her body, noting the flowers in her hand, the rising and falling of her chest, taking everything in, assessing the situation.
‘Ray,’ she said, her mouth so dry she could hardly speak.
‘No, no,’ muttered Reggie. It was unclear if she was talking to Pam or the universe in general.
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Ray. His voice wavered oddly, its depth temporarily lost. It seemed as if he was slowing down somehow, concentrating his energy. ‘What the hell are you doing here? And with those fucking flowers.’ She’d never heard Ray swear before. He was one of those old-fashioned men (even though he was neither old, nor old-fashioned in general) who made a point of not swearing because his propriety allowed him some kind of moral superiority. ‘You think those flowers are going to do anything for us?’ he went on.
‘I only wanted to say—’
‘Yeah, I bet you did. Well, too fucking late to say anything, isn’t it? You might have tried a few words to your son a long time ago. Set him up on the right path to being a decent human being. But no, not you. Not you. No checks on you and your family. I knew right from the first time I met you that you were a piece of work. What a fucking hoity-toity bitch, a princess of the highest order. I said that to Max, she knew exactly what I meant. Sneers at us behind our backs, she said. Thinks she’s better than us. Yeah, so much better that she doesn’t even need rules.’
‘What?’ Pam felt stunned. It was hard to follow what he was saying. Hard not to be mesmerised by his gestures as he moved forward and over the threshold of the doorway, his eyes shining and his hand up, an index finger jabbing towards her. She took two quick steps back and wobbled as her foot went off the edge of the porch and twisted sideways. She thought she was going to tumble, but her toes found ground and her hand grabbed at one of the porch posts. A sharp pain shafted up her leg, but her attention was so drawn by Ray that she was transfixed, barely registering her own body. Ray, as if sensing blood, moved towards her again. They seemed to be engaged in some kind of predatory waltz: him pressing forward, she sliding back, away from him. Now he was on the front porch, she one step down on the path looking up at him.
‘Your son. What he did to my boy. Even before …’ He faltered for a moment. ‘You know what? Troy changed when he was with him. I told him he should watch out, that your son would do no good by him, but he said that he knew better, had a right to choose his own friends. Well, that friend,’ he spat the word out, ‘got him doing things he would never have done. Drinking. Disrespecting his family. Not bothering with his schoolwork, falling further and further behind. You allowed all that. You tutored your son in selfishness, gave him a licence to do what the fuck he pleased. Never held him accountable. And you’re going to do the same again, aren’t you? You want him to get away with murder. A little gesture to the grieving family and you’re away again. No price to pay. A few flowers and all is forgiven and forgotten. You’ll probably run for bloody mayor next year. Keep it in the family. I hear your father was a corrupt old shit too.’
Suddenly Maxine appeared in the doorway. As though carried on the wind, she flew past Reggie and across the porch. She was wearing a pink fluffy dressing-gown and her hair stuck out from her head in wild tufts that reminded Pam in equal parts of Phyllis Diller and a screeching alien hatchling. Pam took another painful step back, thinking Maxine was going to launch herself at her, and in all likelihood she would have, but Ray turned and scooped her in his arms as she tried to get by. She collapsed then, running out of puff, sobbing harshly into Ray’s chest while he stared back at Pam as if to say ‘look what you did’.
‘You truly are the scum of the earth. You know that? Did you think you could come and manipulate us with your fucking fake sympathy? Torture us?’ Ray put on a singsong voice. ‘My son’s alive and yours is dead.’ Then quiet, controlled. ‘I have never known such cruelty, such arrogance. You are unbelievable.’
Thinking about those five minutes later, Pam asked herself over and over why she didn’t bolt right away. All she could recall was a sense of being frozen, as though under a spell, unable to move. There was a power to it all, and a theatricality, that was completely riveting, that overrode her fear. Ray might have been practising, waiting for her to come, for the way he delivered his lines. It seemed to her that death demanded a stripping back, an honesty, but this was the opposite. This was a frightening elaboration. She had never seen anything like it.
‘I only wanted to say how sorry—’
‘Sorry!’ Maxine looked up from Ray’s arm. ‘My baby is dead! My beautiful son. He’s never coming back! Sorry won’t do a thing. You can be as sorry as you like but I will never forgive Scott and I will never forgive your family.’
Reggie came then and put an arm around her sister, pulling her away from Ray. ‘Come inside,’ she said, giving Pam a sharp loo
k. ‘She’ll be gone soon.’ Maxine was hunched over sobbing, her energy spent. She staggered a little, leaning back into Reggie as they turned.
Ray, now alone on the stage that was their front porch, pulled himself straighter, towering over her. Under his gaze Pam felt tiny, utterly diminished, like Alice after imbibing the Drink Me potion. Lost in a foreign world with no sense of where she was going or what would happen. ‘I don’t want you or any of your family here ever again. Do you understand that? Don’t come within cooee of any of us. If you see us in the street, piss off. If I see you, well, god knows what I might do. I am not the man I was. I will never be that man again. Once I tolerated you and your family, gave you the benefit of the doubt. But no longer. Because of you I have lost my son. I have no respect for you and any of yours.’
‘I am sorry, Ray,’ she said, not sure why she was continuing to speak. ‘You have to know that we are hurting too. We will miss him too. It’s …’
Ray shook his head and a strange animal sound escaped from his lips. His jaw jutted forward and he suddenly appeared far older than his thirty-eight years. ‘Take those fucking flowers and go,’ he said before turning and following Maxine and Reggie inside, leaving Pam standing alone on the front lawn.
Pam looked down at the flowers. Her knuckles where she clutched them were white and her hands numb. She wanted to throw them down on the grass, but she baulked at leaving them behind. They were hers, brought as an offering of condolence, but it would feel like some kind of defilement now to leave them on their territory. She desperately wanted to give the Druitts sympathy; that’s why she had come, after all. But sympathy was the last thing she was feeling. Anger. Loathing. Hatred. These emotions all seemed more natural right now. She’d absorbed everything they’d cast at her and her only choice was to radiate it all back out towards them. She limped to the car feeling like she’d gone several bruising rounds with Mike Tyson. It was only twenty past nine, but it could have been midnight, the day already interminable.
Driving down the street she imagined the neighbours peering out from behind their curtains, perhaps with a little sympathy for her, but nonetheless thinking she deserved what she got, the stupid cow. The village-idiot glee of seeing her belittled, shunned. (She passed an instant of thanks that it was her left foot that she’d injured. She imagined the ignominy of having to hobble to a phone box and call for help because she couldn’t press the accelerator pedal.) She drove, eyes stinging, stomach churning, until she found somewhere unobserved to stop, which turned out to be near the river, the small park next to the bridge, secluded from the road by a scrappy row of trees. As soon as she turned off the ignition she knew she couldn’t get out of the car, even foot withstanding. The steering wheel loomed in her vision and she fell across it, starting first to cry, then to wail. Huge gut-wrenching howls, cries of pain and anger. Then she drew back and let fly with her fists, setting off the horn in small intermittent beeps, punching until her knuckles bled. When the last vestiges of energy were spent she threw open the car door, leaned out and vomited onto the gravel. As she straightened up again she caught sight of the camellias on the front seat beside her and hurled them out on top of the mucky mess. She sat numb then for a few moments, staring out at the rushing waters in front of her and wondering how the hell she came to be here. What on earth had she been thinking?
‘Mick, Mick,’ she murmured, a tear slithering down her cheek, wanting just to be held and be told everything would be all right.
When she got home Simon was at the table eating breakfast, his fair hair rough and spiky from sleep, his arm crooked defensively around his bowl, as if someone was about to snatch it from him.
‘Did you sleep okay?’ she asked from the doorway, her voice light, keeping her distance, not wanting him to see her state, smell her breath, notice her limp.
‘Yeah.’ He squinted at her behind his glasses, unease on his face. ‘Are you all right? Where’ve you been?’
‘Just had to pop out for a bit. Where’s your father? His car’s gone.’
Simon was frowning. ‘He went to work.’
She felt a surge of annoyance. ‘What? Why?’
‘I don’t know. I think he had a few things to fix up. He said he’d be back soon. He won’t be gone all day.’
‘Thank god for that. And Loren?’
‘Still asleep, I think.’
In the bathroom Pam hardly recognised the face that looked back at her from the mirror. Ashen, drawn. This was what she would look like when she got old. Flesh pulled across bones like a saggy canvas tent. She thought of her mother’s face when she was ill, going through chemo. There were days when she’d looked in her eighties, not her fifties. When she was young Pam had thought that deprivation seemed to sharpen features, make them more luminous. The opposite when you aged. Lack of sleep, the slightest illness soon reminded you of what was in store. Still, that was mortality and, like it or not, she had the privilege (or pain) of being able to face hers. It was what it was.
She washed her face and inspected her knuckles, swabbed them with Dettol and put two bandaids on the abrasions before brushing her teeth and running a comb through her hair. When she was done she walked across the hallway and opened Loren’s door. The deep, even breathing told her that her daughter was still asleep and she wondered what time she had got off the night before. She had offered Loren a sleeping pill but she’d refused to take it, saying she didn’t want to be drugged, that she hadn’t liked feeling that way at the hospital and that she needed to be aware. Pam wondered why on earth she would want to be aware. Aware of what exactly? She felt the complete opposite herself. She wanted her awareness limited. If she could she would make herself numb around the clock, not just at bedtime. Awareness was hard.
Back in the kitchen, Simon was rinsing his breakfast dishes.
‘You’re a wonder,’ said Pam flatly, patting his shoulder.
He wiped his bowl with a tea towel. ‘Did you go to the Druitts’?’ More of a statement in search of confirmation than a question.
‘How did you know?’
‘I heard you talking to Dad earlier. I heard him saying “don’t go” and I thought, yeah, don’t go.’ Simon didn’t really know the Druitts well, but he had had one memorable encounter with them. Once when he was home for the holidays a couple of years before, he’d picked Scott and Troy up from Troy’s place to give them a lift to a party. When he’d knocked on the door he’d been given what Mick would call the third degree. Simon wasn’t Scott. He was responsible, intense, focused, conservative. (His metal-rimmed glasses and striped polo shirt would have told any half-observant viewer that.) But what they did have in common was that they were both easygoing creatures, slow to offend. Simon came home that evening and told them that Ray had interrogated him at the door. ‘“Who are you?” “What do you do?” “Let me see your driver’s licence.” He treated me so harshly and, after it was all done, he just walked away like I didn’t exist.’
‘What?’ Mick had said, adding insult to injury. ‘You showed him your driver’s licence? Should have told him to bugger off.’
Simon had looked doubly rueful. What was an eighteen-year-old to do in the face of an always challenging Ray Druitt? Surely his father should know that.
‘I went,’ said Pam, ‘because I needed to say that we were sorry. To give our condolences. It felt right. You know, it was the right thing to do.’
‘Oh.’ He digested her statement. ‘What did they say?’
‘Say? Well, they … they are in a bad way. It’s the worst possible thing you can face as a parent.’
‘Yeah. It must be pretty awful for them.’ He put the tea towel in the cupboard under the sink. ‘You know, when Dad rang me, I had a weird thought, just when he started to speak, that it was Scott. I kept thinking afterwards that it could have been him. What if it had been him? I still can’t quite get it out of my mind.’
Pam gave her head a small affirmative shake. She too had had that thought, more than once, but it had been
drowned out by the sorrow she felt at losing Troy, at the concern she had for Scott and Loren. Stark reality had eclipsed the merely possible. Thinking otherwise seemed little more than self-indulgent, but still its shadow loomed and even the hint of such loss filled her with a heavy dread.
‘Dad said Scott might come out tomorrow.’
‘Really? Where did he get that information?’
Simon shrugged.
‘Only a few days more, I’m sure. It’ll be good to have him home.’ To have him close, she thought.
Outside the sun had broken out between the clouds and a patch of light hit the back decking.
‘So what do you need me to do while I’m here?’ asked Simon.
‘Do? You don’t have to do anything.’
‘I feel I should make myself useful.’
She laughed. It was so Simon to think of being useful. She’d never hear the other two say such a thing. ‘How long will you be here?’
‘I guess I’ll stay till after the funeral. I told work I might be away for the whole week. I wasn’t sure when it would be.’ Simon had a job with an accounting firm over the mid-year break. They’d offered him a permanent place when he finished his degree. Only a few months away now, which seemed rather incredible to Pam.
‘We won’t be going to the funeral.’
‘What? Why not?’
Pam stared at him for a moment as though she should be able to convey the reason by telepathy. ‘The Druitts don’t want us there.’
‘God. They said that?’
Life Before Page 17
