Elsewhere in Success (15 page)

As if that's not enough, someone has noticed that once sharks are wiped out, plankton eaters will proliferate and eat all the plankton, which will put even more carbon into the atmosphere. Not that it will matter, because of nuclear proliferation.

Plus he's just been given another bloody speeding ticket. How many points is that? Sometimes he wishes he was an
animal without all the complications of living as a human. Sometimes he wishes he didn't know so much.

Louisa says she wouldn't mind being an orang-utan. Or a parrot. He'd like to be a pelican, but too many of them get caught up in fishing lines these days. Not that orang-utans are any better off.

He thinks of food shortages, people dying in cyclones, tsunamis and earthquakes, acts of heroism, corruption, cowardice and procrastination, the way governments prevaricate, the way people in high places keep behaving as if the laws of nature can be negotiated, the way good people try to help, while scammers scam, and fundamentalists see everything in black and white. There are songs on the radio that encourage every man to act for himself, as if he is more important than the rest of the species, as if reason never existed, as if mateship, the diggers and, yes, even chivalry towards women and plain good manners never existed. Old men are bashed in their homes by young men and even girls these days, wanting money that they haven't earned, for drugs they don't need. War medals are stolen. Grandmothers are raped.

Meanwhile he and Louisa keep getting older, less certain, shakier, weaker, like all the other old codgers. Their friends refuse to grow up. Carole puts the whole future of her friendship with Louisa – not to mention his with his old mate Gordon – on the line by having a fling to see if she can still get a man. And what about him, what he's done to Louisa? What if she finds out, what then? No, nothing happened. Not really. He feels sick, feverish. He tosses and turns.

On Australia Day Louisa is driving towards the freeway, heading out on her weekly visit to her mother's. Ahead, a red and white jet hangs motionless, suspended in blue sky. A jeep speeds past her, flying an Australian flag from its antenna, window down, radio blaring some sort of heavy metal music. It is still hot. A section of road in front of her glistens, a haze rising above it and distorting the traffic that has gone before.

Louisa wonders if she exists. She wonders if she is asleep. She doesn't know whether she wants to wake up or not. She has created the boundaries to her own world. She knows every nook and cranny. What would be waiting for her if she awoke?

She winds the window up to allow the air conditioner to work, to block out the outside and to lock herself in. She turns up the opera that she has recently placed in her multi-disc CD player. Madame Butterfly is singing ‘One Fine Day'. She feels her heart fill. Tears prickle her eyes but discipline themselves before they are substantial enough to fall, dry up, draw back. She examines her thoughts. There is nothing there but Madame Butterfly and the knowledge of things to come. There will be disappointment, the disillusion of love diminished to human proportions, rendered fragile; a clinging to the transcendent;
loss; finally harakiri. The opera seduces with music and sad stories. Suicide seduces because it seems romantic, feels like a final solution, provides instant gratification, promises an end to suffering. The promised ending hangs in eternity.

At the beach, Louisa lies on her back on a towel and pretends to sleep beneath her sunglasses as Harry bodysurfs the relentless waves. Louisa is running a commentary inside her head, talking to Lucy. She places the two of them at a kitchen table, as if they are two old friends chatting over coffee. Lucy has just been telling her something about her life – some indiscreet love affair. Then Lucy asks Louisa about the day it happened.

The trouble, Lucy, is this. When something terrible happens you don't believe it. Not because you haven't been warned, and not because you haven't seen it coming, but when you hear something as terrible as that, you don't believe it. You immediately decide to think that there must be some kind of mistake. So you hear the news but you dismiss it, as if someone is playing some sort of tasteless joke on you, but never mind: people are ignorant so you'll forgive them. They can't hurt you. Life will go on as usual. There is this sort of period where you float along as if nothing has changed and you feel a bit of anxiety as you're waiting for confirmation of that good news, and you'll all have a good laugh about it, or obviously not if someone else has suffered misfortune, of course not, but the odds are against it being you. Most people survive to maturity, to old age, don't they? It's what you expect. And you're kind of middle-class, and bad things happen to people who have been unfortunate, people who have had bad starts. They did, my kids: they had a difficult start in life, but I'd made it all right and somehow you don't think of yourself in that way. So it's always someone else who has the bad luck. You don't think this consciously, don't believe it when you use your reason, but it's down there somewhere in your view of the world. In my view of the world. So I dismissed it of course. People
get mixed up. They fail in their communications all the time. Things get mixed up. Messages and so on, people should be friends but they say the wrong thing and the next you know you are at odds with them. But when I heard the news I said, no, they've obviously made a mistake, but it's okay. People are only human. People make mistakes. They aren't saying it to hurt you deliberately, so there you go. It's all very silly really, isn't it?

But as it turns out it's shock that has stopped your thinking, as if you can change a truth just by not seeing it. You can't make things right with some sort of trick of the mind. When it hits you, it blows you out of the water and there you stay, lying on the jetty gasping for breath and suffering, hoping for rescue or death, but neither comes and nobody cares really. They don't even see you there.

So the question that I've been trying to solve but can't seem to, Lucy, is this – what can you do? What can you do?

Louisa feels ice against her body, then the sting of sand on her arm. Harry spreads his towel and lies beside her, his thigh cool and damp, resting next to hers.

‘This is the life,' he says.

When Rhianna calls it is about five pm on a Saturday. She has two spare tickets for a concert that night and wonders if Louisa and Harry are free. Louisa is, but Harry says he isn't. He needs a good two weeks' notice to psych up for an outing like that and, besides, he is very picky about where he goes. Louisa suggests Carole, who is still sufficiently impulsive to pick up an offer at the drop of a hat. Rhianna thinks it a good idea and Simon calls out to say that he likes being surrounded by women, when Rhianna checks with him, her hand off the mouthpiece. She says she'll ring back and let Louisa know the final count.

Half an hour later she calls back. Gordon is working and Carole is keen because she is missing the busy entertainment life she got used to when she was travelling. She is bringing a mystery guest and an extra ticket. They arrange to meet at Rhianna's and then go for a meal at the Old Shanghai because the show doesn't get started until about nine or nine-thirty. The support act is a local jazz band containing two members of the original line-up of Harry's band. When Louisa relates this to Harry he says he is half sorry he didn't say yes, but is hardly convincing.

‘You should come,' she says, but she knows he won't, because he is in his track pants with his slippers on, and is looking forward to a night in front of the television.

Rhianna and Simon live in a semi-detached in Fremantle. Louisa arrives early, well before Carole, who invariably manages to be late. Rhianna is ready, wearing a flowing outfit, mauve with sparkling features. She is tall and slight and her long hair is piled casually on top of her head. She possesses what Louisa thinks of as regal bearing, that intangible sense of inborn class, something that those of more humble beginnings, like Louisa, struggle to meet. Rhianna's mother is a retired doctor from southern India; her deceased father was an English public servant. Simon is peaches-and-cream English and the same height as his wife, but his once fair hair is now almost grey. He could pass for a member of the British royal family for his apparent goodwill, his awkwardness and his usually impeccable, but occasionally foot-in-the-mouth manners. He puts aside the book he has been reading when Louisa follows Rhianna into the house, and gets up to make tea for them all. He reminds himself of how Louisa takes it, milk and no sugar, and brings out a packet of biscuits. Louisa eats. Rhianna declines. These are old friends from the old days. Louisa feels as if she is slipping back in time, as if Meri might be hanging off the back of her chair wanting her attention, as if Tom could walk around the corner any minute.

‘It's a shame Harry couldn't make it,' Simon is saying to her. ‘It was short notice, but let him know I'd love to catch up. He's such a character – he makes me laugh. We could do dinner next week. What do you think? Saturday night? Pencil it in your diary and check with Harry.'

‘Yes. Wonderful,' she says. ‘I'll write it in ink.'

Carole arrives with someone. Louisa is momentarily taken aback. She becomes conscious of her own breathing. Carole introduces the man who could be Brad from the white van, but says that his name is Chas, some sort of corruption of
Charles, Louisa supposes. He looks to be in his late twenties or thereabouts. He has a small scar on his left temple and deep-set eyes. Carole has brought him along to introduce him. He will be staying in her house while she and Gordon are away in Scotland. She tells Rhianna and Louisa that she hopes they will keep an eye on him for her, and winks in an exaggerated fashion at Chas as she says this. She has her arm linked in his. They are obviously sleeping together. Chas takes it all in good humour.

‘What sort of work do you do?' Simon asks him. Rhianna looks slightly embarrassed. It's not the sort of question people usually ask these days.

‘I'm an actor,' he says, ‘but I do a bit of modelling on the side. It's more lucrative, and there's more regular work.' He's very sure of himself. The answer is well-rehearsed. He might have struggled with the question previously.

Louisa shakes hands with him and looks directly into his eyes, seeking a sign of recognition. It doesn't come.

‘So where did you two meet?' she asks Carole later.

‘I've taken up life drawing,' says Carole. ‘Wednesdays. I'm going to miss it when I'm away.'

‘I bet,' says Rhianna.

‘Was he modelling?' asks Louisa, ‘or one of the artists?'

‘What do you think?'

As Louisa gets to know more about Chas through the evening, as she is able to watch the way in which he carries his body and turns his head, she realises that he couldn't possibly be the van man at all. He is nothing like him. For one thing he's older than he looks – around forty, he tells them. Also, he smiles too much. And Carole is barking up the wrong tree because he's obviously not into her at all. He seems more interested in Simon. It has been a case of mistaken identity all round.

At the back of his mind Harry can't help feeling nervous about Louisa and Carole catching up. Carole won't deliberately say
anything, but she could let something slip. He'd deal with it. He's been on the other side of the fence, and he's had to deal with it.

He'd thought that he'd never put a high store on fidelity, but when he found the letter in the kitchen drawer, he wasn't able to take it in. Some guy had written to Yasamine. It was an old love letter, he supposed, from before they met. Undated. But the address on the envelope didn't add up. There was some problem connecting their current address and the contents of the letter in Harry's mind. It was their address. They had moved there after Bella was born.

Yasamine walked in and grabbed the letter off him, straight out of his hand.

‘What's this?' he said, but she didn't answer straight away.

Then she said, ‘You can't talk.'

‘Shit Yasamine,' he shouted. ‘What the fuck?'

‘What do you care?' she'd said and wrenched her arm free. He must have grabbed it. There was a red mark on her forearm. She saw him looking at it and her hand went to it, rubbing. ‘You're such a hypocrite.'

‘Fucking bitch,' he'd said, or words to that effect.

He left the house for the rest of the day, but that night he came back and fucked her stupid. She went for it too, told him she loved him, that she was sorry, asked for his forgiveness. He should have asked for hers. He knew what it felt like then, being cheated on. He knew what he'd done to her.

After that they didn't mention it again. The letter was gone next time he looked and he didn't find any others when he turned the house upside down.

‘No, Harry,' she said. ‘I said I'd give it a chance and I will. For Bella's sake, and ours.'

But he got complacent again and slipped into old habits. Other women. Drink. Late nights with the guys. He sabotaged himself really. He couldn't admit it at the time. She did well to stick it out as long as she did.

It was another two years before she bundled up Bella for the last time and walked out of his life for good. He told himself he didn't care. He was relieved in fact.

Two months later she was already shacked up with someone else. Was it the same bloke? Does it matter? That's what he thinks now. Somewhere along the line it stopped mattering.

‘Everything counts,' says Harry. ‘Every single thing you do.'

Louisa is about to elaborate on his behalf, but Harry talks over the top of her.

‘Whatever you do today causes what happens in the future,' he says. ‘Just imagine,' he says, ‘if you knew how to work it out, you'd be able to run your life exactly how you wanted.'

He's been drinking, of course. It always brings out the philosopher in him. He and Louisa are sitting in Simon and Rhianna's lounge room, Carole is ignoring him from the other corner of the room, and Gordon has just gone back into the kitchen to forage for more food.

‘What do you want that you don't have?' Louisa asks him.

‘Is there any of the red left?' says Harry pushing his glass forwards, but he has had enough and everyone ignores him. ‘Anyway, it's too late now,' says Harry.

‘Are you referring to anything in particular, or everything in general?' asks Simon grinning.

‘About what?' says Harry.

‘Do you have anything in mind? Can you give a specific example?' Simon says. Still grinning.

‘Can I give a specific sample?' says Harry. He starts to undo his fly. Louisa stops him.

‘It's his new job,' she says laughing, trying to bail him out. ‘He has no shame.'

‘Never did have.'

‘How's the new job going?' Simon again.

‘Not so new any more,' says Harry. ‘It's coming up to about four months now. Time I threw it in.'

‘I thought you were starting to like it,' says Louisa.

‘So you actually have to watch men pee?' says Simon.

‘Pee?' says Harry. ‘Yeah, I have to watch them piss in a jar, and make sure I stand back a bit to stop from getting sprayed. It's no different to standing at a urinal, except in this case you're supposed to look. It's not all I do. I don't particularly like it, Simon, but you know, you get used to it. There are probably worse things to do for a living. Can't think of anything offhand.'

‘It surprises me that you would do a job like that.'

‘Why? I've got nothing to hide.'

‘Yes, but that's interesting what you were saying about the future,' says Rhianna. ‘How could you actually do it? You'd have to know what you wanted. You almost need to try out your life first and then go back and do it all again properly.'

‘What was that?' Harry looks nonplussed, as if he has stumbled into the wrong conversation.

‘You know what you were saying earlier.'

‘You can't expect me to remember what I said two minutes ago at this stage of the evening,' says Harry.

‘I always think that we need to start with our children,' said Louisa.

‘Well that's hardly rocket science, is it, Louisa?' says Harry. ‘Where does that leave people like us? Any of us. Our generation stuffed up big-time didn't we?'

‘That sounds like rain,' says Carole.

Rhianna goes to the window, pulls the curtain to one side, and looks out.

‘Yes,' she says. ‘The weather's been strange lately hasn't it?
You'll need to be careful on the drive home. The road will be slippery.'

‘They'll need a coffee first,' says Simon. ‘I'll make it.'

‘Not for me. It'll keep me awake,' says Harry.

‘Anyway,' said Simon, ‘I don't know so much. I've been very impressed by some of the young ones I've come across lately. It's life, isn't it? Every generation must feel like they've failed in some way, but on the whole – if you look at even a few hundred years ago in Great Britain for example – people are becoming less tolerant of brutality.'

‘Notwithstanding all the massacres over the last hundred years, you mean?' says Rhianna.

‘Oh all right you, touché. Now, coffee?'

‘I'll be doing the driving,' said Louisa. ‘Thanks, Simon. I'd love one.'

‘Good,' says Harry. ‘That's settled then. Now where's the rest of that red?'

‘Just say whatever comes into your mind,' says Lucy.

Louisa has come to enjoy these sessions. They're like the kind of psychotherapy you see in the movies. She lies down on the couch and closes her eyes. There is something that has been going through her mind, and she wouldn't mind trying it out on Lucy.

She rattles on, working it out as she speaks.

‘I'm thinking about what happens between a man and a woman. The man somehow takes the woman over, like some sort of alien creature. I don't mean literally – it's just an expression. Anyway, when he leaves her, something of him remains. I mean something that ... that
changes
her somehow: her body, her soul, the person that she is.' Louisa opens her eyes and looks across at Lucy to see whether she agrees with, or even understands, what she is trying to say. Lucy is writing something down. She realises it doesn't matter what Lucy thinks, relaxes back, closes her eyes, and continues. ‘And it's
fine. It helps them to bond in most cases. But in some cases she is destroyed by him.'

‘Go on.'

‘I'm not sure what I'm trying to say exactly.'

‘Well, try. Sometimes it's good to think aloud.'

‘I don't know.'

Lucy hesitates fractionally. ‘Could you...' She sighs heavily. ‘Could you give me some sort of an instance then, Louisa?'

Louisa thinks hard, but it is not about the example. It is about whether she dare go on. Where will this lead her? Lucy seems unsympathetic: irritated with her, even. What does it matter? She continues.

‘I saw this documentary on the TV once, about a parasite that infects crickets and makes them behave in odd ways. See, normally a cricket will never go near water. But when they're infected with this parasite, this worm, it makes them seek out water, and then they jump in and drown, sacrificing themselves for the sake of the parasite. They filmed it, over and over again, infected crickets jumping into a swimming pool. There was footage of this worm crawling out from the cricket and into the water where it completes its lifecycle. Then when they studied the cricket's brain – they have one, believe or not – they found it had twice as many brain cells. See the worm had somehow converted the DNA or mimicked it or something. So the parasite actually changed the way the host thought.'

‘Interesting.'

‘I think this is what happened with Victor and me, because I've been trying to work out why I stayed when I could have gone, when I should have gone. And I'm thinking sex, and I have no evidence for this, but now I'm thinking that sex changes a woman somehow. You literally have this man – this man's DNA – entering your body and I'm wondering if it does something to you to make you see things from his point of view, even when your logic is saying, no, this is wrong, but you
are driven somehow to your own destruction. You go towards the danger instead of away from it, and the more sex you have, the more you go towards it, because he's becoming part of you, changing you into something else. And there's still this kind of faint echo of your true self struggling, seeing your children, his children, suffering, and yet because they're part of him too, they are approaching when they should be retreating, and when you try to do something about it they don't join with you necessarily. Do you see what I'm saying?'

‘So how is it that you finally were able to leave?' Has Lucy been listening to her? Louisa gives her the benefit of the doubt.

‘I don't know. I don't know. I guess he didn't have all the strength. I suppose there's something of the woman that enters the man too. Do you think that's possible? That he changes too?'

‘He might. What do you think?'

‘I don't know. It's different, but there came a time where he started to lose his power over me, the sick attraction. Sometimes when that happens men get frightened or angry – don't they? – and they do terrible, terrible things. They don't care about what happens to them; they just think, well if I can't have her, no one can. But not with Victor – I don't think my hold over him was that strong. Thank goodness. Because he'd been with other women all along. And I hated that too. Isn't that strange? It was a push–pull thing. I tried to believe it was love, but really it was some sort of parasite in my brain, confusing me. Driving me towards his environment even though it was toxic to me, you see, to me and the kids. It wasn't till I got away and my mind and body eventually cleared of him – and it took a while – it wasn't until then that I could see it and why I felt sick with shame, for what I'd done to myself, and to them.' She clears her throat, breaking her own spell. ‘But sometimes you just have to suck it up and get on with it, don't you?'

Lucy flushes. ‘You don't have to suck it up!'

‘What then?'

The therapist takes a moment to respond.

‘I mean ... it's good to reclaim your life, but if you're talking about sucking up shame, why should you? Why should you! No, Louisa. You did the best you could, the best anyone could, in the circumstances. If I get frustrated at times, it's just that I wish you could see that.'