by Liz Byrski
Focus on being alive, she told herself, you’re a survivor. But she still felt suffocated by fear, and by grief for the sense of security that she had taken for granted and which was now gone, probably forever. Salty tears ran down her face, and she flicked them away with her good hand and licked them off her lips. The counsellor had given her a booklet about the effects of being shot and she’d read about the tearing of muscle and tissue, the release of stress hormones and the visceral memory of penetration by a bullet. Heather remembered that in her mother’s struggle to gain control of her cancer, Dorothy had attempted visualisation, the channelling of creative energy towards healing. She had imagined white cells as white knights laying intruders to waste, and pictured her tumour breaking up into fragments and being expelled by natural bodily functions. At the time, Heather had thought it fanciful; twenty years on and with her own body in trauma, she grasped at it. Focusing the dual forces of creativity and energy on visualising her own recovery now seemed entirely logical and potentially powerful.
Closing her eyes she tried to visualise her body healing itself, the chaotic battle of the hormones, the struggle of the red and white blood cells, the toil of microscopic fibres engaged in the process of repair. But she couldn’t sustain it, haunted as she was by fear. What if she weren’t concentrating hard enough? What if her body gave up? What if the sniper tried again? Terror reared like great waves of water threatening to dash a lone swimmer on the rocks.
‘Herbal tea,’ Barbara called, and Heather forced her eyes open and tried to rearrange her face. ‘George sent this,’ Barbara said, walking back up the garden with a handful of lemon balm twigs. ‘He says it’s very healthy and soothing . . . you’ve gone grey in the face, Heather, are you all right?’
Heather forced a weak smile. ‘Crying again,’ she said ruefully.
Barbara paused at the top of the verandah steps and rested a hand on Heather’s good shoulder. ‘It’s better than storing it up. You cry, and I’ll make this into tea and come and sit with you.’
Heather closed her eyes and wondered if healthy, soothing tea could possibly make any difference or whether it was just someone who loved you making it that mattered. She thought it was the latter. Each day in hospital the cards and letters from strangers had bathed her in goodwill. Now, on reflection, she could see that they represented not a personal connection, but a universal horror at something so entirely removed from most people’s experience. The cards and letters were not about her, they were about outrage at the act itself, about a communal sense of shock and anger. The number of people who really cared was small, so small that it shocked her. It must surely say something about her, about the sort of person she had become.
Sometimes when Jill looked at Adam, she was so overwhelmed by tenderness that it seemed to melt her insides. At other times, like right now, she only needed to see him sitting there, reaching out blindly from behind the newspaper for his coffee mug, to be consumed by anger and resentment. That this was totally unfair and irrational didn’t make it any easier to bear. Having someone else on whom to project blame was a partial relief, and she could hardly blame Toby or Daisy. Jill wiped the breadboard and slammed it down with a satisfyingly loud thud; the newspaper didn’t twitch.
‘Why can you bang stuff in the kitchen but I get yelled at for slamming doors?’ Toby asked in the bored, adults-are-so-stupid tone that he’d adopted since his twelfth birthday.
‘Toby, go right now and find your boots or you’ll be late for footy practice,’ Jill said, with what felt like remarkable self-control. ‘And, Daisy, if you want to come shopping with me, you’d better wash the yoghurt off your face. You really are the messiest eater in the entire world.’
‘Not the entire world, Mum,’ Daisy said, scrubbing her face with her sleeve. ‘I mean, you can’t actually know that, because Miss Rahjeen comes from India and she says there are hundreds of millions of people there and in China, so how can you –’
‘What about the doors, then?’ Toby cut in.
Adam lowered the paper. ‘Not now, Tobes. Get your gear and I’ll run you down to the oval.’
Toby made a muttering exit, slamming the kitchen door behind him.
‘He slammed the door –’ Daisy began.
‘Mum told you to go and wash your face, Daisy, so go and do it,’ Adam said. ‘Properly. And hang the towel on the rail, not the floor.’
‘Daaad, you can’t hang something on the floor –’
‘Just go!’ He got up from the table, went over to where Jill stood at the sink and slipped his arms around her waist.
‘Stay calm, you know what they say – all will be well and all manner of things will be well,’ he whispered against her ear.
‘You know that it was a nun who wrote that, not a mother?’ Jill said, turning to him and burying her face in his neck, comforted by his familiar smell and the way their bodies fitted together. ‘When will all be well? Sorry I’m such a grump. I know you’re worried about Heather, but the kids are getting on my nerves this morning, this week . . . this life! I’m too old for all this.’
He kissed her lightly. ‘We both are,’ he said. ‘Only eight more years and we’re off the hook.’
Jill sighed, stepping back, seeking more comfort in the familiarity of his lean face and the steady eyes that seemed to grow more blue as his hair turned grey. ‘You reckon? Kirsty’s older than that and shows no sign of leaving.’
‘But at least she can eat breakfast without splattering everyone with yoghurt,’ he said, wiping some of Daisy’s off his shirtsleeve with the dish cloth. ‘We make it too comfortable. Let’s try cruelty, and maybe they’ll report us to the authorities.’
‘Who gets taken into protective custody, us or them?’
‘Us, hopefully, a nice rest home somewhere with comfy chairs, kindly staff, crocheted knee rugs . . . ’
‘And a Bach prelude playing in the background, I suppose?’
‘Exactly. Look, let’s see if Kirsty’ll babysit tonight and we’ll go out for dinner.’
Jill pulled a face. ‘Who wants to babysit her half-siblings on a Saturday night?’
Adam grinned. ‘Possibly an impecunious university student whose evening only begins around the time we’re ready to go to bed. I’ll ask her later, when she surfaces; bribe her, if necessary.’ He picked up his jacket and headed for the door. ‘Have fun shopping, darling. Toby . . . ’ he called from the doorway, ‘get a wriggle on. I’ll meet you at the car.’
Occasionally, in moments of pure frustration, Jill gave credence to the idea that it might have been easier if Adam weren’t so thoroughly nice, then she could legitimately rage against his insensitivity. As it was, each time she fired her frustration at him it ricocheted back, repelled by his essential goodness. This morning, though, she was duly appreciative of the fact that she didn’t have to face the oval and the battery of footy mums with their bright eyes and bouncy ponytails. It exhausted her just to look at them marshalling kids into teams, jogging to warm up the little ones, and cutting oranges into quarters for half-time, while a motley collection of dads with clipboards stood around chatting about the real footy on the television. How could she ever have thought that it would be okay to be fifty-five with a ten-year-old and a twelve-year-old? Why hadn’t she realised that when her women friends were enjoying the freedom of empty nests, she would still be washing footy strip and discussing Barbie’s possible new career in the finance sector?
‘I’m old too,’ Adam had said the previous evening, ‘older than you.’
‘Only four years. Besides, it’s different for you. Older men are cool; sexy, even.’
‘Sexy?’ he’d said, yawning widely. ‘What’s that?’
How could she ever have thought that a late second marriage and having a baby at forty-three made any sense? But they had wanted a family together and at the time lots of women seemed to be getting pregnant in their forties. So, along came Toby, planned and welcome, and then, two years later, Daisy: unplanned, anticipated with ca
ution and then universally adored. And they’d never imagined that Adam’s daughter, Kirsty, would eventually choose to live with them. Adam’s first wife, Yvette, had drifted into an affair with her boss and left to live with him in Glebe, taking Kirsty with her. But a few years later, when Yvette was married and her partner was offered a job in Perth, Kirsty refused to go. Jill loved Kirsty dearly but it was another person in the house, another mouth to feed . . .
Jill sighed. Where were all those older mothers now, twelve, thirteen years later? In psychiatric hospitals? Dead? They certainly weren’t outside the Hadley Road Primary School when Jill dropped Daisy off, or Woodstone High, where Toby had just started, or at footy practice. Had they just been figments of her imagination?
‘You could give up work for a while,’ Adam had said recently. ‘Take a few years off. Go back when Daisy’s sixteen, it’ll be easier then.’
‘And I’ll be over sixty and unemployable,’ she said. But it was more complicated than that. Right now, having a professional, grown-up other life was the only thing that was keeping Jill sane.
Heather hadn’t helped, of course, not that she could be blamed for getting shot, but once again she was the centre of everyone’s attention and, not for the first time, Jill was niggled by the fact that her single, successful sister-in-law was everybody’s priority. Jealousy was an ugly emotion, almost as ugly as the Schadenfreude that she hadn’t completely managed to shake off. She knew it was despicable to feel like this, just as it was despicable to envy the fact that Heather probably earned almost as much as she and Adam put together and only had herself to spend it on. But the real bottom line of Jill’s resentment was Heather’s freedom; freedom at a time of life when Jill felt so acutely in need of it, but was so firmly shackled by love and responsibility.
‘You should leave,’ Charlene said. ‘It’s dangerous. You might get killed because of her.’
‘It’s not dangerous,’ Shaun said, pouring her a glass of wine. ‘Statistically I’m more likely to be killed or injured driving to work than I am to get shot.’
‘Statistics! A week ago you were next to her and she was shot. It could’ve been you.’
‘Sure, but it wasn’t. Not many people are shot in Australia, and how often do you hear of politicians being shot here? Name one.’
‘Well, there was that bloke in Cabramatta, they said on A Current Affair.’
Shaun sighed. ‘Yes, okay, John Newman was shot. And everyone was horrified and shocked and that was not just because it was so awful but because it was so unusual. But no electorate officer ever got shot in the course of their work. It’s not as though it rates anywhere on the list of high-risk occupations.’
Charlene sniffed and took the glass from him.
‘Look,’ Shaun went on, ‘I like Heather, I like my job and there’s no way I’m going to leave, so don’t even go there.’ He took his glass and sat down on the couch, kicking off his shoes.
This was a conversation he really didn’t need. It had been a dreadful week and he was exhausted. On top of the shock and the sheer terror of that night, Heather unconscious and bleeding, what seemed like an endless wait for the ambulance, and the chaos at the hospital, managing the rest of the crisis had been a nightmare. It was especially hard as all the time he was struggling to silence the niggling inner voice that kept reminding him that it could so easily have been him. Another step, a slight move in the wrong direction, and he would have been the one who ended up wounded or dead. After the mental effort he’d made to cast the experience as escape and survival for himself rather than obsessing about what might have been, he did not want to have to do that for Charlene too.
Maybe he should have agreed to see the trauma counsellor but he’d been juggling far too many balls to make time for that. Now, at last, the party had drafted in a retired electorate officer to help out and he felt he could relax a little. With Heather now safely out of the way in Morpeth, this was the first day he’d felt things might begin to return to normal. He leaned back and put his feet up on the ottoman that Charlene had bought two weeks earlier in Freedom.
‘Besides,’ he said, ‘I don’t think anyone does want to shoot Heather.’
Charlene straightened up from the oven and turned to stare at him. ‘Of course they do, they did shoot her!’
‘Yes, but I don’t think someone was actually trying to shoot her.’
‘Who, then? You? You just said it wasn’t dangerous.’
Shaun shook his head. Sometimes Charlene was really hard work, especially when she’d had a few glasses of wine. Conversations like this fuelled his anxiety about their living together. Her incremental colonisation of his territory was a persistent stress factor that made him short-tempered and resentful. ‘I think it was an accident, or a mistake,’ he said. ‘She was just unlucky. I don’t think it was about Heather, either personally or politically. That’s all. Instinctively it doesn’t work for me.’
‘Instinct,’ Charlene scoffed. ‘The last time you trusted your instinct you lost fifty bucks on the Melbourne Cup. Instinct!’
Shaun watched her stirring something in a saucepan, while also checking out her own fuzzy reflection in the stainless-steel trim of the range hood. He was a strong believer in instinct, especially his own, and usually it served him well. His political instincts were particularly good. Years earlier, while he was still at uni, he’d got an internship in Heather’s office, and when he graduated she’d offered him a job. He’d been with her ever since.
‘Are you thinking of a political career?’ she’d asked him. ‘State? Federal?’
‘Not sure right now,’ he’d replied. ‘I know I want to work in politics but probably behind the scenes.’
‘Where the real power lies,’ she’d said with a smile. And he’d felt they understood each other perfectly.
Shaun was both smart and ambitious and he’d had other offers, but he liked working for Heather; it was good to feel valued and competent. And if she got a ministry after the next election he’d be first in line as chief-of-staff. He was young still, there was plenty of time. His father liked him having this job too – he was always keen to chew over the state of public transport, fuel prices in the bush, or states’ rights. His mother, on the other hand, couldn’t have given a toss and sometimes Charlene reminded him of her, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing; although maybe it was better than reminding him of her own mother.
Shaun sipped his wine, closed his eyes and listened to the sulky silence punctuated by the clatter of cutlery. Since moving in, Charlene had conducted an insidious campaign of domestication: new bed linen, even His and Hers towels had suddenly appeared in the bathroom, and hurried meals or takeaway eaten on the sofa had been more or less banished in favour of proper meals at the table. Shaun felt he’d been ambushed. What had begun as a lighthearted, no-strings arrangement had turned into an extended audition for the position of wife. There were constant references to settling down, friends getting engaged or married, people at work thinking she must be engaged to him because they were living together.
Realisation had crept up on him slowly; after all, until they met, Charlene had spent most of her time in nightclubs psyched up on speed or eccies and then sleeping it off. While Shaun felt some satisfaction in having steered her away from drugs, and from the particularly unpleasant boyfriend who dealt them, domesticity and her unsubtle hints about the future were starting to bug him. He hoped they weren’t in for another engagement conversation tonight because he just wasn’t in the mood. He needed another drink, food, some really crap television and then bed.
‘It’s ready,’ Charlene said. ‘Thai chicken curry, your favourite. You can’t say I don’t look after you. Did I tell you that Tina at work picked up her engagement ring today? It’s mega gorgeous, a one-carat diamond in a rose gold setting. Can you pour me another glass of wine, please?’
‘You’re not worried about leaving her on her own, then?’ George asked. He was chopping vegetables for soup and nodded towards a st
ool.
Barbara hoisted herself onto it, shaking her head. ‘She’s not alone. Shaun from the office is there. He drove up this morning with a stack of work and they’re ploughing through it on the back verandah.’
‘So how is she?’
‘Not good, but through the worst, I think. The last few days have been pretty awful, and the nights are worse. But it had to come and it’s better than having her sitting there with a frozen smile on her face behaving as though nothing’s happened.’
‘Maybe I’ll pop in later and see her?’
‘Do, she’d like that. Come for dinner?’
George peered at her over the top of his glasses. ‘Okay, but only if I can bring this soup. You look done in.’
‘I’m starting to feel that way,’ Barbara admitted. ‘I think I was running on adrenaline for a while, now I’m stuffed. Getting old.’
‘Tell me about it,’ George said. He straightened up from the chopping board. ‘Cup of tea?’
Barbara nodded, watching him move slowly around the kitchen. His former city life and the things that went with it had, like her own, been abandoned in favour of the peace and quiet of the Valley. This morning he had clearly been gardening; the knees of his old jeans were stained with damp earth, and a few fragments of twig were caught in his grey hair.
‘Damn,’ he said, putting down the kettle at the sound of the phone. ‘Could you do the tea while I get that?’
Barbara filled the kettle and walked out onto the deck, enjoying the silence. Her cherished solitude had been in short supply over the last few weeks. Heather was counting on going back to work soon, and while Barbara worried that it might be too early, she also welcomed the prospect of getting her life back.
Moving out of the city had not been simply about where to live, but how. There had been a time when she had thought she would die in harness if she got the chance, and as she had passed her sixty-fourth and then her sixty-fifth birthdays with no one mentioning retirement, she enjoyed the sense of having beaten the system. But a few months later she lost an old school friend, a fit, energetic woman who died suddenly from a heart attack. Barbara took a few days off to go to the funeral in Adelaide and realised that, for the first time ever, she wasn’t keen to get back to work. In fact, as she walked into the office the following Monday, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that she didn’t want to be there.
