In Certain Circles (21 page)

She had the impression that they would soon disappear, these otherworldly images, and then she would be left in a foreign country. Forty. Physically, she felt no different from the way she'd felt at twenty; her general aspect was far from ravaged. But an idea, or an illusion, or her very self, had been lost or killed. And she could not shake off the conviction that what was gone was the very best she had been able to offer to the world.

Consciously, she brushed some hair from her cheek, and stared at the mute painting above the desk. Dogs barked in the distance. The encircling screens receded. Going to the open windows, she saw the kitten washing himself fastidiously on the bright green grass. Sometimes it seemed that nothing much had happened. There was only a vague distress, the dreamlike sensation of having mislaid something vital. Some messenger from life stood before her with a telegram reading:
you have lost
your life
or
sadness unto death
. It seemed dramatic, and half-touched her, this eternal telegram. Yet really, apart from the sensation of irretrievable loss, there was nothing wrong at all.

Tom Hamilton arrived just after lunch to tell Zoe his news—the large legacy finally free of entanglements, and Tom a relatively rich man, about to ask Anna to marry him. This piece of luck, in the area of greatest importance to him, had given Tom colossal confidence. It was clear that he felt himself and his new money to be quite irresistible. He had assumed that what was of prime importance to him necessarily mattered most to everyone else. And Zoe saw that this was what baffled us so in our dealings with each other, so rarely knowing what the springs of life were for another person.

‘Come and sit down, Tom. What would you like? A drink? Coffee?'

‘Nothing thanks, Zo. I'm on my way to Manly. But you're on my side, aren't you? You've all wanted to see Anna settled for a long time.'

‘Heavens, Tom…I wish you well.' She swallowed. ‘I wish you both well. But as for seeing Anna settled—I don't know that any of us ever thought of it like that.'

‘Oh!' Tom looked dashed and felt nervously for his cigarettes. ‘I thought you'd be pleased.'

‘Well, I am pleased about your legacy, but as for Anna—my pleasure's not strictly relevant.' This was distinctly awkward. Why had Anna allowed him to feel this amount of assurance? Why had he naïvely confided in everyone before even writing to her?

‘You've always been encouraging,' he accused her.

‘I like you,' she cried. ‘I'm not
dis
couraging now. I'm just older. A few years ago I knew what was best for everyone, now I don't. Everything's more mysterious, not less so. That's all.' As for the encouragement that misled people, this was a family failing she and Russell shared.

‘Oh, I see.' Tom thawed and grinned with relief, a lean, brown man in early middle age, black patent hair, very expensive, well-chosen clothes. Zoe wondered almost enviously if Anna placed enough value on his good nature, if she knew how it ought to be valued.

‘You're worried in case she refuses.'

Zoe said evasively, ‘Whatever happens will be best in the long run. She'll be back for Lily's birthday dinner.'

‘What sort of philosophy is that?' Tom rounded his eyes, and she smiled. ‘A good question!'

At dawn the cicadas started up like an alarm clock and woke the birds seconds later. They began raggedly like young amateurs, practising, and then they were in full voice. Stephen and Zoe lay listening.

They went along the beach and swam in Russell's pool before anyone was awake. The sun rose swiftly and built a shifting honeycomb of light on the green floor of the pool. The early morning had a glassy fragility, and Zoe felt the link between herself and Stephen to have that same extreme fragility and transparency; a breath could shatter it. Stephen churned through the water. She shivered and pulled on her towelling coat, prudently absent from past and future.

At breakfast, Stephen ran a forefinger down the back of her left hand, unwilling as she was to disturb by so much as a word the tender concord in which they rested now, forgiven and forgiving. Of course, this mood was vulnerable, too, if memories were not held rigid. To remember that this luminous mutual silent companionship had come and gone countless times was to prepare for its absence.

Stephen switched the wireless on. They half-listened to the news. Like everyone else, they heard too much bad news about the world every day. This was the usual thing: wars, the number killed in recent actions, a bank robbery, a ship sinking in the Atlantic, a cyclone in the north, disarmament talks breaking down, cancer research, death of a well-known public servant.

‘Tim Coleman. A heart attack!'

‘You'll have to tell your father,' Stephen said. The dead man had been Mr Howard's friend.

Twenty years earlier, Coleman was the defendant in a sensational political case, and found not guilty. But there were terrible betrayals.

‘I met him in the street last month,' she said. ‘He looked very white. We went straight into the middle of the case, as if it was still going on.'

‘He thought of nothing else.'

‘And everyone was indulgent and patronising.' For years she had heard the talk: ‘Poor old Coleman. He's very bitter. Of course, he was badly treated.'

He seemed to be plotting to alter the past, like a ghost. There was a real injustice done him, and the whole city argued and speculated. He was the man of the moment. But afterwards no one wanted to stand with him on the hillside looking back. Every morsel had been chewed from that old story. Passers-by were relieved to patronise him because their own disasters were of the less public sort, cherished secrets, like hit-and-run accidents no one knew about.

‘Was he married?' Stephen asked.

‘No. And the people he
did
count on weren't to be counted on.'

Ah-ah. Unwise. Too close for comfort. They gave each other a cagey, warning look and busied themselves buttering toast.

‘Let's not listen to any more of that.' Zoe nodded at the wireless and Stephen silenced it gladly. The world weighed on him.

As Russell was caught up by the crisis at work, Stephen was leaving for Melbourne this morning in his place. There had been a road accident. One of the boys at the press had been charged with negligent driving. Stephen had implied that the whole business was Russell's fault, but Zoe had asked no questions and turned her eyes away from the curious glee in his.

After breakfast, she drove him out to the airport. ‘I'll keep my fingers crossed till you land,' she said, as she used to say.

‘In the hope that I'll crash?' He glanced up from his wallet with a smile.

Zoe looked at his cheeks, his thin nose, at the line between his brows, the odd smile in his eyes. He looked prosperous, and very clean, and relentless, and he smelled very faintly of cleanliness and after-shave lotion.

He went on, ‘I may have to come back from Canberra by train. By the time I get up there the pilots will be on strike.'

‘Yes, I saw that.'

‘You're not nervous staying alone in the house, are you? Because plenty of people would come and keep you company, if you are.'

Zoe smiled at this, with irony and affection. True, there had been robberies in the area. But what could anyone walking in out of the night do to harm her? No stranger had ever harmed her. It was incredible to realise how far she now was out of harm's way.

‘I've said something funny.'

‘Pretty. When you come back, I think we should talk to each other.' Because it was unpremeditated, such an alarming and final statement, Zoe could scarcely see. The road ahead, the buildings, Stephen at her side, were visible in flashes as though lights were being turned on and off.

‘What about?'

But they were arriving at Mascot. Zoe looked for a parking meter and found a vacant one. She said nothing more, but when the car was parked and they sat silent, Stephen said, ‘If you must.'

Next morning she woke alone in the big bed. The telephone was ringing.

Lily's new laboured voice spoke to her. ‘Russell wanted me to ring you early before you started to walk over. He said you're still partly convalescent, so I should make the effort to visit you for a change.'

‘Rush over. That's lovely,' she said, instantly abandoning sleep.

No Mrs Trent coming to clean today. No Stephen coming home. Zoe made coffee and took it to her desk to do some work before Lily arrived, only pausing on the way to examine the view. Before she had finished half a page, Lily arrived.

‘I didn't hear you for the typewriter.' Zoe jumped up to welcome her. This was the first time Lily had left the house since the girls' departure, an event. She allowed herself to be led by the hand to the sofa.

Sitting half-turned away from her desk, Zoe watched her with hidden wariness. But Lily had altered again since her telephone call this morning. She accepted a cup of coffee, and rustled the morning newspaper lying next to her, inclined to discuss current affairs. Zoe was amazed. Nothing but tragedy and broken-hearted mothers for weeks, now Lily was saying, ‘Did you read that piece about knowledge being injected into rats?'

‘Alarming.'

‘You mean, if you work for twenty years to learn something, you resent another person—'

‘—or rat—'

‘—learning the same thing overnight.'

‘Who's going to be God? Who's going to choose what's injected? What happens to original thought?'

‘You're against progress.'

‘I'm against human automata. What happens if you bypass human nature? Where are you going in such a hurry with your instant knowledge?'

‘You're so intense and emotional and personal,' Lily said.

Zoe paused to reject several replies. It was years since she had felt free to trample on people's feelings, to lash out with spirited attacks.

‘Because I think it matters,' she said. ‘Lily. You're at a concert. A violinist. The sound is flawless. You know he's been given a pill or a needle and handed a violin for the first time in his life. He has no feeling for the music. He's a freak. How do you feel about the performance?'

Lily reflected. ‘What's he playing?'

Zoe laughed. ‘I'm wasting my time.'

Suddenly casting off her recognisable self, Lily said—black misery in the tone, blood-curdling self-pity in the eyes: ‘We had a letter from the girls yesterday. Set for life. Happy as larks.'

‘Try to be glad about it for your own sake, if not for theirs.' She wanted to evaporate. The idea of being pulverised yet again by Lily's obsession made her feel persecuted.

Giving her a glance of purest hatred, Lily turned ostentatiously to stare at the well-known view, which filled the room like a rather too-literal painting of itself.

Left to her own devices, Zoe contemplated the work spread out on her desk.

‘If they had an ounce of family feeling they'd never have gone away.' Despite her obvious desire to snub her unsympathetic sister-in-law, Lily had to speak. ‘I could have followed my own career, and had a vastly different life. They don't think of that. With their scholarships and what they inherited from my father they can do anything they want.' Her sandalled feet, her bare tanned legs, were disposed at awkward angles.