by Susan Duncan
Last, there was a sealed envelope with nothing written on the face to indicate who it was meant for – if anyone. I fetched a knife from the kitchen and slit it open. And there he was, appearing like magic in the form of a birth certificate. Alexander Conway. Born September 12, 1961. Place: Ninga Private Hospital, Victoria. Mother: Emily Conway. Aged nineteen. There is a blank space where the father’s name should have been.
Emily had a child born out of wedlock in an era when abortion was illegal and an illegitimate pregnancy, if it became public knowledge, was enough to ruin a young woman’s life. Contraception was the sole precinct of married women. Her son was born in a quiet country hospital, run by a strict religious order. It’s almost certain she never laid eyes on him. As we now know, in those days illegitimate babies were snatched away from mothers who were mostly children themselves and placed in the eager arms of childless couples chosen for their economic and emotional stability. It was a system that both succeeded (young woman goes off free to get on with her life) and failed (young woman spends a lifetime searching for her lost baby). Another era; a different concept of philanthropy. Either way, Emily’s entire existence was based on keeping up acceptable appearances and ignoring the messy facts. You had to be tough to live a lie forever. And somewhere in that knowledge, I find the first grains of respect for a woman who did the best she could with what she had.
To be truthful, when I found my brother on the other side of the world, where it was a white winter instead of a golden summer, there was no flash of recognition, no residual genetic impulse that made him stand out in the traditional village teashop in the heart of rural Britain where we’d agreed to meet. Our physical and intellectual similarities were a gradual discovery, each one a small shock, no stronger than the slight electric charge you feel from touching metal on a hot, dry day. A frisson, if you like, of recognition of small things. Blue eyes. One dimple. Unusually small hands. Uncannily similar gestures – rubbing our noses when we’re thinking, raising one eyebrow in a question – and a shared preference for very good tea made properly with loose leaves. Small connections but, in their context, also huge.
The search for my brother was like completing a complex puzzle but then my mother, I am beginning to understand, was a complex woman. As a child, I judged her through a child’s eyes. Now I am older and know more about the demons that go hand in hand with a reckless moment, I wish she were alive so I could recant my disapprovals and we might work towards understanding and compassion. Is that also a childish impulse made from the safety of impossibility? I will never know. What I do understand is that I have a sibling; and now we have found each other, we will not lose touch.
Emily, I hope, might have been happy about that.
Sam closes the magazine. The story doesn’t entirely ring true to him. It’s the tone, he thinks, and the way Kate is shouldering the responsibility for events over which she had no control. Maybe she’s generously spinning the facts so her half-brother is spared the knowledge that his birth mother was an egocentric, selfish woman without a soft edge anywhere. Nice move. Bloody nice. If he’s making the right assumption.
In a slow sideways shuffle, the community decides to forgive Kate for leaving Ettie in the lurch. She was on a great mission to find a family member, they tell each other, and who could blame her for that? Each and every one of them probably would have done the same. Holding grudges anyway, as they are well aware, takes too much energy when there is such magic in everyday moments. But strangers wander in and out of the café to steal curious, sideways looks at Kate. One or two shyly confess their own strained mother–daughter relationships and vow her story has convinced them to try harder in future. Then a woman with mad eyes and dried spittle in the corners of her mouth marches straight up and accuses Kate of being a judgmental little bitch who should be hung by her ankles from a high beam. Kate flees to Ettie’s penthouse to hide. She calls Sam, distraught: ‘I feel like I’ve been stripped naked in public.’
‘Well, what did you expect?’ he asks. ‘You virtually gave strangers a written invitation to walk through your front door without knocking.’ He waits for a sharp comeback, her reflex response to criticism. And it’s her silence that cuts through his defences.
He says, ‘If I promise not to offer to bring a sauso roll, as universally acclaimed and magnificent as they are, would you like me to stop by Oyster Bay for a quick drink tonight?’
‘What time?’ she asks.
As Sam makes his way up the steps to her home, he reminds himself to keep his emotional distance. Commitment, kids and a soft-shoe shuffle into a contented old age that comes from the joy of knowing you’ve together raised a couple of decent children who love you almost as much as you love them, seems to terrify her. And given her current form, he’d be a fool if he trusted her to hang around long enough to understand the rich, complex but ultimately rewarding layers of family. He knocks lightly and walks in. He’ll hold her hand for a minute or two until she settles, then he’ll take an official position so they can both move on.
She’s sitting on her sofa. He stands in front of her in what he senses is one of the least noble moments of his life. He takes his time, searching for the right words. She stares up at him with a clear blue gaze softened by the residual hurt and shock of the lunatic woman with the flying spittle and he nearly caves in.
‘You and me,’ he says.
‘Hmm?’
‘We’d be better off as friends.’ He winces. Wants to snatch back the blunt delivery and begin again, more softly and gently this time.
Kate turns away from him and heads for the kitchen and the fridge. She hands him a beer, pours herself a glass of wine.
‘Suits me,’ she says, at last.
Chapter Twenty-four
The day of the black-tie fundraiser is pure bedlam. The smell of lamb cooking with garlic, rosemary, oregano and thyme fills the Square like an old-time Sunday roast. Upstairs in Ettie’s penthouse, the Misses Skettle are blind-baking tart pastry shells to load up with a (successfully set) brandy-laced custard. ‘Brandy lifts the spirit, dear.’ A massive bowl of deep red strawberries is macerating in more brandy and a sprinkling of sugar. ‘Brandy brings out the flavour of the berries, dear.’
The Three Js, carrying lists, mobile phones and wearing severe expressions to discourage any would-be anarchists tempted to insist they know a better way, are flat-out on Ettie’s deck peeling green prawns to be stir-fried in vegetable oil and spicy tamarind chutney broken down with a little water. The prawns, not quite completely defrosted, are painfully cold but no one bothers whinging. There’s work to be done.
Eighteen Styrofoam containers are stacked two deep and three high to be filled with provisions and shipped across to Garrawi Park, where the boys from the Regal Tinny Yacht Club, including the Three Js’ handy husbands, are using their sailing skills to rig a marquee of white canvas from the soaring limbs of the now famous cheese tree. A precaution only. The weather is tipped to be hot with a light sea breeze to take the steam out of the humidity. ‘Another sign we’re on the winning team, dears, if you’re the type that has more faith in omens than god.’ More wisdom from the Misses Skettle.
Despite the hefty price tag per head, in the end it was decided to make it a BYO event. ‘No point in seeing the profits pizzled into the creek, is there?’ the elder Miss Skettle argued.
Ettie let out a little squeak. ‘You mean piddled, don’t you?’
‘No dear, pizzled. It has infinitely more and much further-reaching connotations.’
Ettie and the Three Js turned away to hide their laughter. ‘Well,’ Ettie said, ‘I’m OK with that.’
Jenny nodded. ‘Me too. Might as well get everyone to bring their own glasses as well. Less washing up.’
Marcus, unable to ditch his businessman past, is nevertheless anxious that guests should feel they are getting value for money. He offers to create a range of hot and cold savou
ries that will ‘tickle taste buds and set a mood of glorious extravaganza. We are, after all, dressed up to our head tops. Is it not so?’
The event is sold out. The fighting fund is looking deadly serious. The community is ramping up to fight tough but clean. The law according to Sam. ‘Let’s not lower our standards, dears, or we’re no better than them.’ The word according to the Misses Skettle.
The first newspaper advertisement opposing the development will appear on Monday morning (for maximum follow-up impact after Jimmy’s television debut) with front-page exposure at an inside-page rate. Kate, ‘Bless her!’ (the Misses Skettle again), led the committee through the mind-boggling fog of figures relating to buying media space and hard-bargained her way to a deal that opened everyone’s eyes to the elasticity of ad rates in a post-GFC market. Not to mention the fragile grip of newspaper circulations in the wake of internet news and social media.
‘If I fall under a bus tomorrow, promise me you will never, ever accept the first quote from an ad man no matter how many beers he buys you or how persistently sparkly his assurance that the inside gutter on page twelve is a top spot. Promise?’ Kate eyeballed every face in the room. The committee, feeling like fresh bait in a pool of circling sharks, nodded seriously, each member silently vowing to keep Kate away from all buses in future. She was definitely earning her way back into favour. Even Jenny was starting to show signs of softening.
‘It’s a hard cruel world out there if you’re a babe in the woods,’ Myrtle Skettle suddenly announced. She was up there with Sam when it came to clichés.
Siobhan asked Kate if she’d like to write the copy for the ad. Kate declined.
Downstairs in the café, the daily specials have been ditched to make room for the slow-cooked lamb and punters are offered strictly a choice of big breakfasts, burgers, fish and chips or sandwiches. ‘No exceptions!’ Ettie insists, when regulars feign disappointment, despair even. ‘If you’re feeling deprived, a generous slice of something sweet and creamy such as my triple chocolate cheesecake might help,’ she adds, with the hint of wheedle in her tone. Flirting shamelessly.
The recent spell of sunny weather toned down by a constant fanning from a refreshing nor’easterly and the campaign to save Garrawi has boosted the café’s earnings to mega levels and Ettie is flying high. ‘A virus was all that ailed me and now I am well again,’ she tells herself convincingly. Nothing to do with the surreptitious dabbing of the Misses Skettles’ sweet-potato salve on the inside of her upper thighs and a daily dose of evening primrose oil. Nothing at all.
She goes to the front door and puts up a sign announcing the early closure of The Briny Café due to commitments to the community and the fight to save Garrawi from developers. Even tourists resist quibbling and get their orders in before the four pm deadline.
Without the large hauling facilities of the Mary Kay at their disposal, the committee calls on Glenn, the removalist, to pitch up at The Briny with his barge for the export of the massive amount of mouth-watering fare to the Island. He arrives, stone cold sober, on the dot of four thirty and begins lifting the lids on the Styrofoam boxes to check out the contents. The Misses Skettle watch from a distance, ready to pounce if he tries to rip a little tender moist flesh from the shoulders of lamb that, they agree among themselves, have been cooked to velvety perfection. They’d been doubters at the start, fearing food poisoning from meat coaxed to doneness over seven hours in an oven temperature of just 80 degrees Celsius (add an hour to rest before carving). ‘We’re not too old to admit were wrong,’ Violet told Ettie. ‘But we probably won’t be using the method ourselves. At our age, we could be dead by the time dinner is ready!’ And they’d gone off, giggling, to hitch a ride home on Glenn’s increasingly holey barge where there was nothing to hold on to except each other in the event of a passing rogue wave. Fearless and feisty to the end. In their wise old eyes, there was no other way.
Garrawi Park is a festival of coloured lights, red-checked tablecloths and wings of white canvas stretching to a purple sky. The evening star, the first to claim its heavenly rights, shines down like a silver spotlight on women swishing about in sequined gowns and men (well, some men) in crisp white dinner shirts and black bow ties. Even the normally irrepressible Island kids have been stunned into acceptably benign behaviour by the sight of their parents dressed up like movie stars. It is, everyone agrees, a stellar occasion.
The chef arrives with platters of sashimi created from what he believes is the best fishing expedition of his life. ‘The gods are smiling on us, no?’ He beams, handing around little tubs of dipping sauces with the pearly white flesh of kingfish and flathead.
Fast Freddy, who has taken the night off so he can step into Sam’s traditional role of picking up and safely delivering home the two Misses Skettle, arrives with one proud woman on each arm. Freddy is resplendent in a peacock-green suit and a deep blue shirt teamed with a yellow bowtie. The old ladies are a vision in voluminous folds of pink taffeta, pink silk roses in their hair – which is sprayed pink for the occasion. Jenny insists they raise their skirts so she can check they are wearing matching shoes. ‘Of course you are,’ she says, laughing. And in an odd way, the Misses Skettles’ religious devotion to their beloved hue gives a wondrous sense that despite their community being in the crosshairs of violent and vicious predators, the centre of decency and decorum is somehow holding firm.
There is, however, a moment’s shocked silence when a smoothly coiffed Jimmy steps into the party wearing black from head to toe. Then he asks Ettie to help him turn on his flashing bowtie and the relief felt is universal.
When dinner is over, Big Phil and Rexie drag out their guitars. Big Phil’s flame embroidered cowboys boots are polished to mirror brightness and his red polka-dot bandana is pulled low on his forehead to soak up the sweat. Rexie wears a Mambo shirt with flying saucers, dogs and satellites. The two men riff the chords until their fingertips bleed. The Island rocks.
‘Kings never lived better than this,’ Sam says to Ettie, swinging her in a circle to a tune made famous by Lyle Lovett. Or was it Willie Nelson? Right now, he doesn’t give a damn. He notices Kate slink off. Squishes a twinge of regret tinged with yearning. Life is complicated enough.
While the Island parties in the name of a good cause, Kate sits at home alone. The contents of Emily’s grey tin box are laid out in military order on the kitchen table. She’s exhausted from the lingering effects of jetlag, the fundraiser preparations and running a café that’s somehow somersaulted from bust to boom against all odds. One way or another, though, she is aware that nothing lasts forever and is suddenly overwhelmed by a terrible sense of the likely reality twenty years into the future. Ettie will be seventy-five years old and long retired from the café. She will be fifty-five – Ettie’s age now – and, like Ettie, probably menopausal. The business will be sold and either thriving or struggling under the control of others. The end game is the same for everyone. In the final analysis, there’s nothing but a handful of dust to show we were here.
She’d had the same conversation with Sam one day. He failed to follow her meaning, looked at her as though she was talking in tongues. ‘I don’t want to get all lyrical on you, sweetheart,’ he said, ‘but look around.’ Then he’d laughed because he could see she still didn’t get it. ‘Well, dust turns into compost. Compost grows plants. You never know, we might both come back as a magnificent cauliflower one day with a double cheese sauce, browned under the grill.’ She’d smiled to show she appreciated the effort he was making but to her horror, found herself thinking of him as a spear-carrying, animal-skin-clad Neanderthal with a vocabulary of six grunts at varying pitches.
To her, Sam oozed so much ill-conceived optimism he was a danger to himself and everyone else, jumping in blind without thinking through the consequences. She comes to the conclusion that he and Jimmy aren’t so different, really. They think small acts of kindness made a difference in the long run. But b
eyond the invisible line of the Island safety zone, out where dog-eat-dog is often a daily mantra, they’d be quickly devoured. Or is she being deliberately cruel? She’s been the one to sound the death knell on relationships in the past. She’s in new territory and she isn’t sure it feels too great.
The time on her watch says midnight. She throws a last quick look at Emily’s pathetic little trove and moves towards the bedroom. The way they talked about good hearts in Cook’s Basin, you’d be forgiven for thinking that’s all that counted. Out in the rancorous maw of real life brave hearts were the first to be skewered. She glances over her shoulder. Slowly walks back. She fingers the menu from the cruise ship. The invitation to dinner at Parliament House towards the end of 1962. She is struck by a series of quick connections like sparks going off one after another. She hits her computer. Flails through squillions of cyber channels, searching. Eventually, she calls up the passenger list for the Oriana on an early 1962 cruise from Sydney to Southampton. Then she cross-references the names with federal members of parliament for the same year. It takes a while. She almost gives up. But bingo, there he is. She’s not a betting woman but she’d lay odds of a hundred to one if Jake the Bookie was mad enough to take her on, that Timothy Terence Martin O’Reilly, a first-class passenger, is the father of her half-brother, Alexander Conway.
There’s no photograph to compare eyes, noses, the shape of a chin. She checks his biographical details. Retired. Not dead. Her hands are clammy. She clicks the mouse on the White Pages, and finds him listed in a small country town in Victoria. She flops back. Then books an early-morning flight to Melbourne. She returns to the official biography site. Married in 1955, two children, born in 1956 and 1957. So he was married when he had a fling with Emily. With a name like O’Reilly, he was probably a card-carrying Roman Catholic. Divorce would have meant the end of his career. End of his community standing. Far tidier to ship the baby off to foreign climes and get on with being a fine upstanding member of the establishment: church on Sunday, a sufficiently weighty tithe slipped into the offering plate as it passed under the wrinkled noses of his freshly scrubbed, legitimised children and hallelujah! Absolution of all mortal sins in a jiffy. Poor Emily. Poor, poor stupid Emily. Kate tries to imagine being in the same situation but struggles. Her generation has the luxury, if that’s the word, of legalised abortion. No loose ends. Havoc denied. On with the show, situation normal.
