by Fiona Capp
Angie, Angie, are you there? I can see your light on. Can you please, please see me, just for a moment?
She looks at Richard, her face suddenly drawn. ‘I’d better go and talk to him.’
He gets to his feet. ‘I don’t think you should, Angela. I can take care of it.’
She wheels herself to the door. She could have helped Matthew the last time they met, helped them both. But she blew it. Made things worse. ‘I’d rather you didn’t. I won’t be long.’
At first Angela can’t see him. Then he moves out of the shadows of the bushes and stands beneath the garden light. It hurts to look at him. He’s so wasted he looks like he’s wearing the clothes of a larger man. The night is warm but he’s shivering, hugging his body with his arms. He makes her think of a scarecrow that’s been out in the weather for too long.
Matthew shoots a glance at the lounge-room window. The lights are out now and the blind has been raised. Angela can just make out Richard’s dark figure behind the glass.
‘You’ve got a guest. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. Why are you here?’
‘Do you love him?’
Angela says nothing.
‘What’s the difference between him and me? If only you’d loved me, Ange. We could have been happy. Everything would’ve been all right.’
‘Are you back at the boarding house?’
‘It’s a shit-hole. The park was better. Except for the rain.’
‘I’ll be there tomorrow morning. We’ll find you somewhere else. Things will get better. Can you trust me?’
She tries not to think of the handsome young man she married, so full of confidence that life would go on rewarding him with trophies and congratulatory smiles.
He turns away without a word.
28.
The taxi driver helps her out of the car and into her chair. She asks him if he can wait. She doesn’t like taking taxis on her own but Imelda, who was on morning shift, had to finish early because her daughter was sick. From the outside, the red-brick bungalow looks like an ordinary family home, if a bit rundown. A large crack runs up the brickwork like a staircase from the ground to the roof. The lawn is half dead and in need of a mow. Through an open side gate, she can see the extension out the back. She wonders if she should inquire at the front door, but there are steps to the porch and no ramp. It’s easier to head straight out the back.
What would have been the yard is consumed by a series of rooms with doors facing a concrete parking area, like a sad parody of a drive-in motel. One of the doors is open. She peers in at a room not much bigger than a prison cell. She had hoped her fears were misplaced. But it’s disturbingly close to what she had imagined, only bleaker. A concrete floor with a piece of ugly brown carpet in a strip by the bed. A chest of drawers under a window that looks out to a grey paling fence. A fluorescent tube shedding its merciless light. Around the exposed brick wall, a foaming crust of rising damp. The only personal touch is a photograph of waves breaking on an empty beach, which has been torn from a glossy magazine and sticky-taped to the wall.
She follows the smell of bacon and eggs down the path to what appears to be a communal kitchen. A man wearing nothing but stained pale blue tracksuit pants is standing over a portable hot plate, staring intently at a greasy frypan as if gazing into a crystal ball. He is so absorbed in his task that he doesn’t notice Angela’s arrival until she clears her throat.
When he looks up, she wonders if he was a boxer in another life. His nose has been flattened more than once and his two top front teeth are gone.
‘I’m looking for Matthew. Can you tell me which room is his?’
His eyes narrow as he studies her. ‘You’re the ex-wife, aren’t you?’
Angela nods warily, her eyes skimming the dirty dishes piled on the sink, the shelves with an assortment of foodstuffs – cereal boxes, tins of instant coffee, jars of jam. The ancient-looking fridge.
‘Well then,’ he says, ‘you oughta know.’
‘Know what?’
‘The cops came first thing this morning and took him off to the loony bin. Said he was a danger to himself and everyone else. Who sent them if it weren’t you?’
Her first thought is that something must have happened on his way home last night. She hadn’t smelt alcohol on him, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been drinking. Perhaps he’d harassed people in the street or walked blindly into on-coming traffic.
She thinks back over his brief visit, her conversation with him in the garden. An image surfaces of Richard’s figure at the dark window and a cold, cold feeling floods through her. To escape the thought, she spins her chair around and speeds away down the concrete path to the waiting taxi. She can’t believe he would do it. Not without talking to her. How could she even think it? She must have it all wrong.
The streets, the houses, fly by outside the car window. She can still smell the public toilet reek of the place beneath the frying bacon and eggs. No wonder Matthew wanted to get out. If only she had gone there sooner. She can see the cops in their crisp, clean uniforms standing in his doorway, telling him to get up. Batons on one hip, guns on the other. And Matthew’s creased, sleepy face trying to figure out what the hell’s going on. He will think that she is behind it, that she promised to help and then betrayed him. Got him committed to get him out of her hair.
Angela rests her forehead on the glass and closes her eyes. Richard will be in parliament most of the day, but he will return her call if she says it’s urgent.
At home, she doesn’t know what to do with herself. She has no patients today, nothing to distract her. She can’t call Ned. He hates Matthew and wouldn’t care. And anyway, she doesn’t want him knowing her suspicions about Richard. When she calls the police to find out what actually happened, she keeps being transferred and put on hold until she can’t stand it any more and gives up.
She moves from room to room, unable to keep still. In the bedroom, Richard’s shirts hang on the back of the door. She stares at the bed, thinking about the early hours of the morning when she woke with his lips on hers. Her mobile phone starts to ring.
As soon as she hears his deep, soothing voice, it is all she can do to not break down. She apologises for disturbing him, and tells him where she has been, what she discovered.
‘I need to know you had nothing to do with it.’
There is a terrible pause.
‘It was you?’
She can hear a door being closed. ‘Listen, Angela,’ he says, ‘something had to be done about him. For your safety. He’s already thrown you down a flight of stairs. And threatened to suffocate you with a pillow, for God’s sake! Every week, women are killed by men like him. I couldn’t stand by and risk him hurting you. The man’s clearly unstable. He needs proper medical help. And that’s what I’ve arranged. It’s best for everyone. You understand that, don’t you?’
No, Angela thinks, she doesn’t understand. Her voice is barely a whisper. ‘He didn’t throw me; I was trying to get away from him.’ She doesn’t know this but she has to defend him. If she doesn’t, who will? ‘And last night, he was perfectly rational. All he needs is somewhere decent to live.’
It’s impossible to talk now, Richard says. He’s going to call Ned and get him to come around and keep her company until he gets back.
‘I don’t need Ned. Mai is coming.’
‘That’s good. Try to stay calm. Please remember I did it for you, darling. Remember that.’
‘But what gave you the right? You didn’t even speak to me about it. You just went ahead.’
Someone in the background is hurrying him up. ‘I have to go, Angela. I’m sorry.’ She can tell he’s relieved by the interruption. ‘I’ll call back at the next break. Trust me, will you? It was a hard decision but it had to be made.’
Angela can’t answer him. All she can do is hang up.
They have been having a lazy sleep-in after Ned’s late shift, and he is still in bed when Richard calls. Mai is in the shower. Just
to be sure, Ned closes the bedroom door. He stands by the window, looking out over the beer garden.
‘What do you want?’ It’s almost a growl.
Richard tells him what has happened, how distressed Angela is. He wants Ned to call her straight away and impress on her that Richard did the right thing. ‘Angela’s been happy, very happy. We want it to stay that way. That ex-husband of hers is a nutter; who knows what he might do? Tell her he’ll get all the care he needs, that he’s better off. She feels guilty, so she needs to know it was necessary. It couldn’t be helped.’
Ned’s had it with Morrow’s orders, with being railroaded. Who does he think he is, playing God like this? It’s creepy and fucked. And yet on this one, Ned can’t argue with him. He’s only too glad to see Matthew put away.
‘Call her. Now,’ Richard says and hangs up.
Ned punches in Angela’s number. He goes into automatic pilot, tells her that Richard just called him about Matthew. That it’s for the best, that it was the right thing to do. That it’s not her fault.
He can’t tell what Angela’s thinking, her voice is so flat.
‘Are you okay, Ange?’
There is silence. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Things happen around me and no one tells me. Why is that, Ned?’
He says Mai will be there soon and chucks his phone down on the bed. He turns to see Mai standing in the doorway, wrapped in a towel.
‘Fuck! I thought you were in the shower.’
‘I was.’
Ned glares at her. Why is she staring at him as if he’s got a disease?
‘Since when do you do Morrow’s bidding?’
She’s never sounded so pitiless. Like a canary shrilling in a coal mine. He can almost hear the distant rumble coming their way. She’s figured it out. What’s the point of pretending? He can’t do it any more.
‘This has gone way too far,’ she says. ‘Way too far.’
29.
She had the feeling on the way home in the taxi but it’s stronger now. A sensation of pressure building, of jitteriness, of something not right. Her legs have started to shake. There’s sweat on her upper lip. She will have to get Mai to check her over, make sure the catheter’s not blocked. Or there might be an infection. All she can do is take a painkiller and wait.
Angela slips into a twitchy doze, the lightest of sleeps. In a dream, Richard has abandoned parliament and come home to tell her that her fears are unfounded. Matthew is still in his hell-hole, all’s right with the world. But following behind him are men in white nursing scrubs, carrying a stretcher. Richard is standing by, stately as ever, watching them wrestle her out of her chair and strap her down on the stretcher. She tries to cry out. Her eyes implore him. He pats her shoulder. It’s for the best.
She wakes, slumped in her chair. No one is holding her down. She is blissfully alone, unmolested, free. She sits up properly, takes a deep breath, brushes off the last cobwebs of the nightmare. She checks her phone. Mai will be here any minute. The doze – despite the dream – seems to have helped. She’s feeling a bit better, although clammy. She goes to the kitchen and takes a long, much-needed drink.
She can hear Mai letting herself in. She wonders if Ned has told her about Matthew. One look at Mai’s face as she comes through the door tells Angela that she knows.
Mai drops her bag on the floor and smiles bleakly. All the way here on the tram she has been grappling with what she must say. If it were a normal day, they would sit and have a chat over a cup of tea. But small talk is out of the question. If she doesn’t begin straight away she never will. Someone has to tell Angela. Mai only wishes it didn’t have to be her. There had been a logic to it once, a good reason – it seemed at the time – not to burden Angela with the facts. She had suffered enough. But the longer their silence went on, the more toxic it grew. Look at what it had done to Ned. Made him Morrow’s pawn.
She clasps her hands to stop them trembling. ‘There are things you need to know, Angela.’ Then it all comes spilling out. Ned giving Fraser their savings to invest; the crash and Fraser’s disappearance; Ned squatting in the boatshed after being evicted and overhearing the deal between Morrow and Stone; Mai and Ned drawing up the letter and the money being paid; Morrow finding out and blackmailing Ned. How unbearably twisted it all sounds. This is what happens when the truth is left untold. It becomes a cankerous debt that can never be repaid, a void that sucks the value out of everything, warping reality until nothing is what it seems.
Angela’s face is impassive. The longer her silence goes on, the more distraught Mai becomes. She kneels in front of her, sobbing. ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. We were trying to protect you but we got in too deep.’ She puts her wet cheek on Angela’s lap, gripping her legs.
Finally Angela speaks in a faraway voice. ‘I don’t feel well.’
Mai looks up. ‘In what way?’
‘It started before you came. I need you to check my catheter. Something’s wrong.’
Mai knows the drill, what to look out for. Irritation or infection which can send the nervous system into overdrive. She takes Angela’s pulse. Her heart rate is dropping.
Suddenly her eyes bulge wide, as if she has seen something truly horrific, a dark and terrible truth. She pitches forward out of her chair and collapses to the floor, gasping for breath. Then the gasping stops.
Oh God, no. No. No. Mai rolls her onto her back, puts her ear to her chest. Her heart is still beating, but her chest isn’t moving; there’s no breath. She crouches beside Angela’s unconscious body, tilts up her chin, pinches her nose. She never dreamed she would have to do this. It was something you had to learn and practise on a doll. But a rubbery doll is not a human being, not a woman you know and love.
She takes a deep breath, puts her lips to Angela’s and blows into Angela’s lungs, then turns her head to listen and watch. A voice not her own has taken over, the voice of the meditation teacher, telling her to stay calm, to focus on the sensation of the breath as it moves like a mist through the body, its passage in and out of the lungs. The breath is everything, it is all there is. Focus on the breath, the voice says. Nothing but the breath.
Mai breathes, listens, breathes. Angela’s hair has fallen around her head as if she’s floating in a pool.
Angela wakes in hospital. Ned’s face hovers above her, then Mai’s. She tries to speak to them. Strange sounds issue from her mouth but none of them are words. She tries to lift her arms. Nothing happens. She closes her eyes. Everything is a lie.
The next time she opens her eyes, Richard is with her, sitting at her side, holding her hand. His eyes are red-rimmed.
‘Angela.’
She looks up at him. Her lips are so dry they’re stuck to her teeth. She moistens them with her tongue, draws them back, moves them around until she is confident they’re in her control. She holds his gaze. She wants to say ‘Why?’ but only slurry comes out. She tries again and it’s the same. She sounds demented. Utterly gaga. How can she tell him she’s not? She tries to make her eyes speak, opens them wide, blinks wildly. Rolls her head from side to side.
Richard tries to read her face: her roving eyeballs, her twitches and blinks. But this is a terrifying new language and he doesn’t know the rules. She must be asking what’s happened. He tells her what the doctors say, that she’s had a stroke. He doesn’t know anything else, how bad it is or the odds of recovery. Right now, they’re all in the dark.
Angela’s eyes fall shut.
The fine veins in her eyelids pulse faintly. Her skin has a waxy transparency that makes him feel he’s looking straight through to the skull beneath. He longs to hold her, to rock her, to comfort her. He can’t imagine how terrified she must feel. He buries his face in her chest, presses himself close. Beneath the hard shell of her sternum, he can hear the solemn tom-tom of her heart. He is afraid to lift his head, afraid of what might happen if he stops willing it to beat. He rushed out of parliament when he heard and came straight here, determined to defend hims
elf against anything Ned and Mai might have said. But when he saw her lying on the bed, looking so small and alone, the light gone from her eyes, shame burned the words from his tongue.
The days pass in a barrage of tests and scans and doctors appearing at her side to peer into her eyes. They haven’t told her, but she can tell from their expressions, their body language, that the news is bad. The nurse announces that they want her to eat. She ratchets the bed up and brings Angela baby food, tries scooping it into her mouth. Angela turns her head away like a recalcitrant child, yellow mush dripping off her chin. This is what lies ahead of her. The life of a drooling head. Like that woman in the play who is buried up to her neck in dirt.
The nurse asks Richard to try his hand at feeding Angela, but she resists him even more strenuously. Every look she gives him cuts to the quick, feels like a judgement, a gesture of disgust at the guile and the grasping of his life. When she left him a year ago, he thought he’d discovered the meaning of remorse. But that was just a taste of it, a small brush with his own private hell. It was only the start. Over the past few weeks, even darker depths have been dredged. Wave after unstoppable wave, with a dark energy all of their own, bringing to the surface so much wreckage, stirring up so many wrongs conveniently forgotten, excused or denied. His indifference to the pain he’s inflicted – on his ex-wife, on his daughter, on his friends, even his enemies – in his single-minded pursuit of his needs. He is to blame for what has happened. Mai was only the messenger. Ned was the loving fool. But he, Richard, was the one who failed her – with his machinations, his determination to bend the world to his will. His belief that he had the right. Above all, he has failed her by failing to know himself. What he thought he was, and what he now sees, is so appallingly at odds, he wonders she can bear the sight of him or that she ever loved him at all.
With a cool washer, he dabs the sweat from her forehead, smooths her hair back with his hand and presses his lips to hers.
