by Fiona Capp
‘But you, Angela, you showed me what I really wanted. It wasn’t this house at all I was chasing, it was something I could never get back.’
Since then, he says, the house has been a burden that he no longer wishes to shoulder and it finally occurred to him that the solution was simple. ‘It goes on the market next month.’
Angela protests, as she did at the restaurant, against his insistence that it was her doing; that she opened his eyes to the futility of trying to buy back the past. He came to this decision himself, she doesn’t want to be responsible for it. In fact, she doesn’t want him to sell the house at all. She had blithely assumed that whenever she needed to escape the city she could visit him here. That as a friend he would allow her this liberty. Some nights when she can’t sleep, she pictures the sweep of the bay from the cliff top or lets her mind wander the house with its stately proportions, its soothing air of timeless ease.
She turns to him. ‘Do you really want my opinion?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘I think you’re being rash. You need to give this more thought.’
An untroubled smile glides across Morrow’s face. He leans to one side of his chair and picks up the newspaper he brought with him. Holds it out to her. ‘Have a look at this. There’s been another breakthrough in the treatment of spinal injury. Even better than the brain over body stuff we were talking about. Bizarre as it sounds, they transplanted nasal cells to a man’s spinal cord. And now he can walk.’
She skims the article and hands it back with a sigh. Another media beat-up. The man was a paraplegic, not a quad. And he’s not exactly walking freely. Every case of paralysis is different. It could take decades before it means anything for someone like her. As she told Richard the other night, there is no point holding out for something like this. Clinging to false hopes.
Richard gets up with surprising alacrity and squats beside Angela’s chair like an eager schoolboy with a scheme he is dying to share. ‘I spoke to Jeremy. He’s an old friend of the doctor in the UK, the man behind it, a very good friend. He says he will talk to him about operating on you. I’ll cover whatever it costs. Medical fees, travel, accommodation. And for Mai to go with you. I want to do this for you as a friend. I expect nothing back, nothing at all.’
Somewhere on the road behind them, Angela can hear the agitated wail of an ambulance. Down on the jetty with the Hawaiian bar, people in grass skirts and flowery shirts clutching glasses of wine and bottles of beer are piling into a flashy-looking motorboat. There is raucous laughter. An engine starts up and a man with a bright orange lei around his neck shouts, ‘We’re off!’
‘Is this why you want to sell the house?’
He stands up and drags the deckchair around so that they can sit face to face. He takes her hand. ‘I don’t need this house any more, I want to be free of it. I’d decided to sell before I knew anything about this breakthrough. If you could let me do this for you, Angela, it would make me so very, very happy. To see you walking! To know you’d recovered all those feelings, those sensations you thought you’d lost for good.’
He squeezes her shoulders, as if he can transmit his will and the power of movement through the strength of his grip. Angela stares at his fine, aquiline nose, the commanding force of it, and the neatness of his ears pinned close to his skull. The kind of face you see on marble busts.
He has gone and ambushed her with impossible hopes just when she had given them up. And he is so caught up in this grand plan of his, of coming to her rescue, that he has no idea what he’s really saying.
When she has managed to compose herself, she tells him she knows he means well, and that she doesn’t want him to think her ungrateful.
Richard doesn’t let her finish. ‘Why, Angela? This is not a pipe-dream. It can and will happen. I promise. I give you my word.’
‘But you can’t, Richard. With all the will in the world, you can’t make it happen, so why even try?’
He reaches for her hands and cradles them. ‘I told you. At the restaurant. And I meant what I said.’
‘That you love me?’
‘Yes.’
She glares at him. ‘Just as I am?’
Richard might not be one of her patients but his infatuation is the same. He has projected his fantasy on to her. He is in love with his idea of her. Once he discovers the reality, all that will change. The kind of man who could fall for her, who could truly accept her body and the rigid rituals governing her life, does not exist.
His face is blank for a moment, until he realises what she is getting at. ‘No, no. You’ve got it all wrong. I thought it was what you wanted. You are perfectly, utterly, beautiful to me just as you are.’
She does not believe him. He is fooling himself. The idealised woman that he loves must walk, must feel his touch on her skin, must be like any other woman. She will never be enough for him as she is. Any relationship between them would end in regret. Or in tears.
Angela suggests they go for a wander along the cliff top. The dusk is deepening and out on the bay she can see the outline of a square-rigged sailing ship strung with lights and not far from it, what looks like a barge.
A celebration, Richard explains. ‘The sixtieth of one of my colleagues.’
‘You’re not going?’
He gives a bitter little laugh. ‘Definitely not.’
There is activity on the jetties below them, more dressed-up people climbing into boats. And more boats out on the water, all of which seem to be heading for the sailing ship. It looks like quite a number of Richard’s neighbours are going to the party. Even the elderly couple from the helicopter are climbing into their lift at the top of the cliff.
‘You had a falling-out?’
‘In politics, your worst enemies are often on your own side. He wants my ministry. Been trying to undermine me for years. Now he’s poaching my staff.’
Angela is reminded of the conversation they had when they first met. How there was no one he could really trust. It strikes her that there is something deeply lonely about him. Whenever he speaks of his work, he sounds disillusioned and weary, as if he woke up one morning and found himself on the wrong side. Over the years, he told her recently, he had watched his party shifting around him, moving in small increments and sudden lurches in a direction that troubled him. It wasn’t the same party it had been when he joined. Somewhere along the line, it had been decided that self-interest and scaremongering were the solution to everything because fear and greed would always triumph over hope. Then he added, ‘But who am I to complain about that?’ It seemed to Angela that he was too hard on himself, that he’d lost all sense of what he’d achieved.
Richard turns away from the bay, as if the sight of it has begun to offend him.
‘So your mind is made up,’ Angela says. ‘You’re determined to sell?’
He stops and looks at her. ‘Not if you don’t think I should.’
‘I thought you wanted to be free of it.’
‘Not if you were with me. It would make all the difference in the world. Being here with you.’
Her gaze travels over the house, the garden, the view. There is something terrifying about this happiness he wants for her. This happiness he wants for himself. This happiness he wants for them both.
When they get back, Ned and Mai have arrived and are getting the barbecue ready. Ned waves as they approach across the lawn. He had insisted, when arrangements were made for this ‘last supper’, as he has come to think of it, that he would provide all the food. He couldn’t face another catered meal, another lavish display of Morrow’s hospitality. Especially now the final instalment is through. This is where they say their goodbyes.
Over dinner, they talk mainly about the sale of the house. Angela urges Morrow to hold off, to rethink his decision, and Morrow acquiesces in a way Ned finds alarming. He notes how Morrow keeps turning his attention to Angela and how, whenever he speaks, his eyes go to her and no one else. And there is something new in Angela’s manner tow
ards him – a tenderness in her smile. Ned watches them with growing agitation, bolting down his food, eager to get the meal over with and put an end to the whole miserable charade. And it’s not just Morrow’s feelings for Angela that bother him. It is obvious how fond Morrow has grown of him and the fondness isn’t a one-way street. It’s not something he’s let himself think about – how you can enjoy someone’s company even as you despise who they are and what they’ve done. As soon as he starts thinking about Morrow’s duplicity, he has to confront his own and that’s something he’d rather not do.
Ned excuses himself to go and pack up his things in the boatshed. Mai offers to help and they make their escape across the lawn. For a time, they work in silence, Ned stuffing his belongings into the case he has brought and Mai doing the cleaning up. The only sound the soft suck of the waves on the beach.
Ned thinks about Angela and Morrow. He asks Mai if she noticed anything different about them.
‘At least she wasn’t wearing pearls.’
‘You think I’m imagining it?’
Mai becomes suddenly serious. ‘You need to warn her.’
‘Warn her?’
‘That he’s corrupt. He took a bribe, for God’s sake. What if she falls for him? Don’t you think she should know?’
‘You want me to tell her?’
‘You might have to.’
‘Everything?’
‘I don’t know!’
‘Maybe nothing’s going on. Maybe it’s all in my head. He’s not Angela’s type at all.’
‘But what if they stay friends?’
‘Nothing much I can do about that.’
When Ned finishes packing, he looks around at his shed. He thinks of the contentment he felt here in the early days before Morrow arrived. The simplicity of his life, the foraging and fishing, the symphony sloshing under the jetty, the harsh music of the gulls, the rocky cove and the memories from his youth that go with it. He had started to feel he belonged here, that he had the right. How easily one fools oneself. Like the Japanese poet said, he was living in a phantom dwelling. If you are going to play at being a hermit in your shack by the water, you can’t go strong-arming people. And clinging to things – even to a shed like this one – is as bad as craving what you don’t have. It’s one of Angela’s mantras: You have to let go.
23.
When the first bouquet is delivered, Angela doesn’t want to accept it. She assumes it is from Matthew, that he is trying to buy her forgiveness the way he always did after one of his explosions. Flowers always make her think of him. During her time in hospital after the accident, she would give any flowers visitors brought her away to other patients. The cloying smell and clamouring colours only made her feel worse.
It is not until she reads the plain white card accompanying the bunch of red roses that Angela agrees to take it. She sends Richard a text with her thanks. A day later, more flowers are delivered and each day after that for a week until her flat looks like a florist and her patients start asking if someone has died.
She sends him another text: I’ve run out of vases. Enough! But the flowers keep coming, now in tasteful white plastic urns packed with saturated blocks of synthetic green foam. By the end of the second week, the lounge room is a riot of colour and heady fragrance that blasts her like a fanfare every morning when she gets up. To her surprise, they make her happy. She enjoys his attention, even if she must put an end to it. She agrees to allow him one visit so she can put him straight. Talking won’t cure him. The only cure is the facts of her body, of her life.
Richard arrives at the agreed hour, the first time he has been to her flat. He admires the garden, the cactus, the stylish curves of the art deco design. He laughs when he enters the lounge room where flowers fill every corner, delighted to be finally invited into her home. He can’t stop smiling as he looks at her face, a face he would be content to gaze upon for the rest of his life. He hardly notices Mai silently serving up the meal before taking herself off to dance in the dark.
They talk easily, as they always do, but Angela is edgy. She wants it over with. After dinner, she quietly announces that there is something she would like to show him. She asks him to come around to her side of the table.
Richard frowns, but does as she requests.
She asks him to roll up the right leg of her trousers. Strapped to her calf is a plastic urine bag with a tube that disappears up her leg.
‘My constant companion,’ she says.
He looks down at it and shrugs. ‘I assumed as much.’
‘If I get a cold, I can’t blow my nose. I can’t wash myself. I can’t turn over in bed. Every so often, my muscles go into spasm. Sometimes, my legs start jiggling. Sometimes, the spasm is so strong it can throw me right out of my chair. I have no body temperature control. I can’t shiver or sweat. Dire things can happen if I get an infection. I could have a stroke.’
Richard raises his eyebrows. ‘Have you finished?’
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘I know what you’re trying to do, Angela. But you might as well stop. None of it changes how I feel about you.’
‘But this is me.’
Richard casts his eyes around the room. What does he have to do to make her believe him? Aren’t these flowers enough? On the table is a vase of sweet-smelling freesias. He plucks a single stem from the bunch. She is wearing a loose-necked T-shirt that has slipped to one side, exposing one beautiful shoulder, firm as a peach. Holding her gaze, he brushes the flower lightly down her neck and across the hollow at its base.
Angela closes her eyes and inhales sharply. When she opens them, he is standing behind her lifting her hair. She feels his soft, wet lips on her nape, his breath hot in her ears, and suddenly all those exquisite sensations that once registered all over her body are now concentrated in this one small spot at the top of her spine where a kind of fission is taking place, spreading across her shoulders and scalp and cascading down her forehead and cheeks.
As his lips lightly brush her skin, she notes the fallen petals all over the room – on the mantelpiece, the table, the floor – carelessly scattered by blossoms that have given themselves up so completely, with glorious abandon, to the never to be repeated act of coming into flower, and in that moment, something tightly coiled inside her begins to unfurl.
All morning, the ferries from across the bay have been disgorging horse floats onto the pier from where they are towed up the hill and into the town, eventually joining the throng on the road outside the Anchorage that leads to the peninsula’s end.
Angela and Richard see them disembark as they take their breakfast on the veranda, and later, Angela wheels herself down the driveway to the road, just to watch them go by, bumper to bumper, like a carnival parade. It is quite a procession. Intermittently, a group of young people impatient with the crawling traffic will bail out of an Alfa Romeo or a Porsche and start walking along the road. They are almost uniformly dressed: the men in chinos or slim-fit pants rolled halfway up the calf, crisp white shirts, navy blazers and loafers; the women defying the cool spring breeze with their skimpy dresses, fake tans and high heels.
Angela can’t help feeling a little smug that she and Richard won’t have to battle this traffic jam. In less than half an hour, Ralph Stone’s cruiser will arrive at the jetty and take them to the spot where the polo is held. It still seems incredible to her that she is doing this. Only months ago, she would have thought it laughable, that she could be attracted to a man like Richard Morrow. That she could actually find it refreshing, bracing even, to be in the company of someone who challenges her views; someone outside her cosy circle of friends whose opinions she can anticipate before the words come out of their mouths. Someone tough-minded but tender who knows how the real world works.
She tells herself that going to the polo will be like going to one of Gatsby’s parties for the pure spectacle of glitter and excess. Ned would be horrified, especially about Stone’s boat. But to Angela, Stone is a fascinating case study,
the boy from the back blocks turned self-made tycoon. She’s keen to know what’s behind his bluff swagger, if it’s all just an act. In fact, the whole shebang will be one huge case study, a chance to examine at close range how serious money behaves.
For Richard, it’s just another ministerial obligation. Many of his constituents have holiday houses at this end of the peninsula and will expect to see him there. He told her he would’ve been happy to drive the short distance, but when Stone made the offer, Richard thought it would make life easier for her. Her chair could be wheeled straight off the boat and onto the jetty adjacent to the ground where the polo is held. If they want to leave early, Stone’s cruiser will ferry them back whenever it suits.
When Angela thinks about it, going to the polo is no more incredible than everything else that has unfolded over the past three months, as spring banished a winter that felt like it would never end. No one is more surprised than she that she could fall for Richard, or he for her. But now she has given herself up to it, she is drunk on the smallest things. Each day feels like a celebration. The only shadow has been cast by Ned and Mai. At first, she thought they were worried that when Richard was confronted with the hard facts of her life, he would back off and leave her crushed. But this hasn’t happened, and it must be apparent to them that his love is solid and that she is happier than she has been in years. Which makes their wariness a puzzle. Angela can only assume they are worried that it can’t last or that their distaste for his politics is simply too great. And yet not even this makes any sense because Ned and Richard have always got along so well, in the same way that Ned and Fraser did. Their differences never bothered him then, so why should they now?
A hand alights on her shoulder. Angela jumps and then puts her hand over his, as she turns her face to him.
