Authors: Lynette McClenaghan
‘Do you? I can’t say you look familiar.’
‘Why are you here? How do you find yourself in the bowels of this place?’
‘I teach nursing at the tertiary institute a few blocks away from here and came in with the group of students that just left.’
He narrows his eyes then opens them, giving a wide-eyed look and the impression he is curious and determined to recall where he encountered Christine. Unable to pin down time and place he says, ‘You’re a nurse and of course we’ve crossed paths in one of the hospitals I’ve worked at.’
She doesn’t speak for some seconds before a nervous giggle escapes. ‘I guess you’re right – we must have crossed paths in some hospital.’
With little time to spare, she is intent to gloss over the pleasantries and cuts in. ‘I overheard one of the white coats in that room.’ She points, ready to strike with her questions. ‘I know it’s against hospital protocol to divulge information about a patient, or at least a cadaver.’
Jeremy’s eyes widen. ‘And…’
She turns then points and directs her question at the row of rooms. ‘Is the patient in Room Two Roland Adams?’
‘Is he a relative of yours?’
‘No – if it is him he’s someone I knew in another life.’
‘You know I’m bound by hospital protocol to not reveal matters of confidentiality.’
She’s a pretty girl and I will bend this rule – just this once – to stay in her company.
‘Do you know anything about this one?’
‘You know I shouldn’t be telling you anything.’
Christine nods, accepting the matter is closed.
Jeremy surprises her when he looks down at the floor and in a hushed tone enquires, ‘Tell me one thing you know about the stiff and I’ll tell you what you want to know.’
She opens her mouth ready to speak, closes it, hesitates before revealing that she was in a relationship with a Roland Adams and knows he is violent.
With disarming frankness he confirms her suspicion. He tells her if she has time to wait around to go to the hospital cafeteria, have a coffee and come back in thirty minutes, ‘The white coats will be gone by then. I’ll show you the body.’
She leaves the hospital assured that Roland is one demon from the past she no longer needs to fear.
Weeks later Christine is assigned to visit a student on work placement at her old hospital. Following this duty she returns to the Emergency Ward to meet with former colleagues and catch up with hospital news. Jessica and Annie are rostered on. Jessica appears from the staffroom offering apologies that she’s just returned from a break and cannot chat. ‘Just a minute, I’ll let Annie know you’re in, I think she’s on a break.’
Moments later, Annie appears, her face radiates energy. ‘It’s great to see you again – stranger.’ Her eyes pop then with a rush of words she gasps, ‘Brace yourself, I’ve got news.’
‘What revelation, exciting tale or juicy gossip do you have today?’
‘All of the above.’ Then she drops her voice, ‘We can’t talk here.’
Christine is overcome with curiosity. She anticipates it is a bombshell and one that is somehow connected to her. As they retreat to the cafeteria she starts to sweat.
Annie turns to Christine. ‘You’ve coloured to a brighter shade of pink. Does this place give you the horrors?’
‘No – but I’m afraid what you’re about to tell me might.’
‘Relax – chill out – I’ll get you some water from the fountain.’
Seated at a table in a quiet corner and without prefacing her tale with polite conversation, Annie hits Christine with, ‘Richard was admitted to Emergency, the victim of assault. He’s still here.’
‘How did that happen? He’s not violent; at least it’s not his style to provoke an argument or fight. Is it a domestic?’
‘He won’t say. It isn’t the first time he’s been here.’
‘Have the police been involved?’
‘They have taken a statement. He won’t press charges. Last time he was here he asked if you were rostered on and could he see you. I told him you didn’t work here anymore.’
Annie tells Christine that Richard is in a general ward recovering and is likely to remain there over the next few days. As she knows her way around the hospital she easily locates him. He shares a room with another patient; both men appear well into their fifties, neither man resembles Richard. She assumes this is the wrong floor and wrong room. She turns to leave and the voice closest to her calls her back. Annie’s news doesn’t prepare her for the figure she sees propped up in the bed. His once fine features and slim torso are puffy and bloated indicating alcohol and drug abuse. His full crop of silver hair has thinned. His once lively eyes appear small and dull.
She moves closer and notes there is a gash on the left side of his face that runs between the temple and eye and travels to the edge of the jawline. It is the larger of the two; the other diagonally crosses his head from above the back of the right ear to the front of the left ear. Much of his head has been shaved to treat and stitch this wound. Richard’s jaw drops as if he has already exhausted his capacity to speak. His head and gaze fall. When he looks away his gown slips down revealing the edge of another cut.
She looks directly at him. ‘I understand you asked for me.’
‘I didn’t expect you to come.’
She still struggles to comprehend that this is the Richard who left her. ‘How do you find yourself in this state?’
Before he divulges all that has happened he asks her to pour him a glass of water and suggests that she might want to arrange a hot drink for herself. She shakes her head indicting no, pulls up the spare chair close to the bed and draws the curtain.
After the divorce and settlement were finalised Richard married Heaven without delay. Christine didn’t learn this from him. She bumped into Melinda at the high street adjoining the suburb she lived in with Richard. Melinda is the wife of Richard’s friend Murray who he met at university when studying engineering.
Melinda asked how she was then smiled and nodded with interest at the appropriate points as Christine filled her in. ‘I’m glad. You know – you’re better off without Richard.’ She then revealed only what Christine suspected she thought was appropriate for her to know, avoiding details of Richard’s new romance. It was the absences in what she said that confirmed her disapproval of him.
Richard explained that once the ink dried on the marriage certificate he resolved to never return to his days of running wild, likening this change to a reverse mid-life crisis. He wanted Heaven to have a child but she opposed the idea from the outset. When she discovered she was almost halfway through a pregnancy, she wanted to terminate. He pleaded with her to have the child; reluctantly she had their daughter Wednesday, who is four. She warned him that there would be a price to pay, her excuse to dictate terms in the marriage. Wednesday became largely Richard’s responsibility and was to in no way to impose on Heaven’s life.
‘This first time she physically attacked me followed a heated argument after midnight. She returned home and in her usual style refused to tell me where she’d been. Earlier she left a message on the answering machine from her work. She had been drinking and announced this by crashing her way into the house waking up Wednesday. Tired and frightened by Heaven’s shouting she cried loud enough to match her mother. Heaven stomped to bed leaving me to attend to our daughter who was three at the time. When Wednesday finally dozed off to sleep I returned, surprised to find Heaven in the bed we shared less and less often.
‘Late that night when I was half asleep she stabbed me between the shoulder blades with a pair of nail scissors. I hissed at her not wanting to wake Wednesday again:
Are you trying to kill me?
She responded without emotion:
If I wanted to kill you I would have used a larger pair of scissors and plunged them deeper.
This time I demanded:
What were you thinking?
Under the lamplight I saw blood running down my back, spilling onto and smearing the sheets. She narrowed her eyes. This time her voice was loaded with hostility:
You’ll keep, for the moment
. She said this no doubt because I was too useful to her.’
Christine’s voice grew cold. ‘Why didn’t you throw her out of your life like you did to me? Why didn’t you stop funding her lifestyle? This would have been the best weapon against her.’
His face flushes, he sighs before continuing. ‘She doesn’t need to rely on my wealth, she has her own legacy.’
It dawns on Christine he has for the first time admitted, or at least not denied, that he is very wealthy. A fact he managed to disguise throughout their entire marriage. She hadn’t been able to guess at the extent of his wealth until Thornton unearthed figures from a handful of well-hidden accounts. She hadn’t expected the windfall she gained from the settlement. Thornton was ambivalent about his discovery, claiming he knew there was more and that he was curious, half tempted, to dig deeper. He admitted that to act on these suspicions would ultimately be against his better judgment, and would cost his client more in legal fees and anxiety.
Richard demanded the return of the entire collection of jewellery he had given Christine despite some pieces being of modest value. She suspected this was his last attempt to control her. He was possibly surprised by the rarity and value of some pieces. Maybe he wanted to claw these back to bestow on Heaven. In any case, she obliged, thankful to be rid of them. More favourable news followed. The house they shared although modest compared to others in the neighbourhood was worth an amount she didn’t imagine and almost equal to the entire sum of all other assets Thornton discovered. The court ordered Richard to pay Christine close to the house’s value. Despite this he bought out her share. Eventually his mother’s house and share of the trust funds would pass to him.
At settlement, Thornton was still astounded by Christine’s naivety and how Richard managed to keep her ignorant. It just took him longer than anticipated to uncover the facts. Richard revealed more than it was wise for him to when he offered to buy Christine a property outright, even a modest one. It was obvious to Thornton he was throwing his client a handful of crumbs. He was certain beyond doubt this offer was risible, confident that Richard was offering her a fraction of what she was entitled to. At their last meeting Thornton revealed that once he had checked out the house he was certain that Christine had shackled herself to a man who was a descendent of old
money. He said, ‘The son of a man shrewd enough to invest the final share of his wealthy dynasty wisely.’
This didn’t entirely strike Christine as a new revelation. She remembers how Thornton grilled her about Richard’s family. At this point of time he wanted to affirm Richard’s deceased sister’s full name, dates of her birth and death and where she was buried. He pressed for information about other dead relatives, about Richard’s parents, where they lived and his father’s line of work. Answers to these questions spiralled into enquires about late grandparents, their occupations, whether she knew of legacies left to his parents. He wanted names of aunts, uncles and cousins who had passed away. Christine could only provide a rough sketch and general family history.
She imaged Richard’s sister as a small ashen-faced figure clutching a bank passbook who had returned unseen amongst the living. Did this diminutive apparition drag herself from the grave to defend the family’s fortune from falling into the clutches of an outsider? Were they separated by an arm’s length away and the child’s hostile gaze? Other times she wondered whether she saw the child apparition from the corner of her eye before it vanished or whether Sylvia inserted herself into her dreams. The child’s likeness to framed photographs that hung on the wall or sat on the mantelpiece convinced Christine that Sylvia at the very least, had visited her.
Christine knew little about Richard’s family and was more familiar with dead relatives. His mother talked about Sylvia as if she still existed pulling out albums as if she were bringing the child back to life. His father accused her of being morbid, described this behaviour as one step from pulling the girl from the earth and refusing to allow her to rest. It didn’t disturb Christine that her former mother-in-law was unable to release the dead girl. When Julian and Diana left home it became quiet and empty. She had longed for the company of a sibling closer to her own age. The Sylvia that lived in her mind was about the age she was when she was left alone in a house made larger by the absence of older siblings. It didn’t strike her as odd or perverse that she imagined Sylvia as a friend
she would have liked. She wasn’t unlike the earthbound and visiting beings from other realms that Christine encountered.
Richard’s paternal great grandfather was a wool merchant along with his brother and partner. In the previous century they established a thriving business that was built into an empire. Capital used to buy property, sheep and pay for labour came from lucrative diggings from the gold fields and have since largely dissipated. It was no accident that Richard’s father studied to be an accountant, later becoming a partner at a city firm of chartered accountants. His brothers were also beneficiaries of private school and university education; their sisters brought up to find favourable marriage partners. Although born into wealth and privilege, education and prudence necessitated survival and the capacity to prosper in a rapidly changing world.
Richard’s father was a cautious man and adapted well to the new paradigm where those born to the landed gentry could no longer rely on inherited wealth alone. His education, the serious and pragmatic mind of an accountant served him well to make his own way in life and prosper. A number of his brothers spent their lives on alcohol, gambling and poor ill-thought investments, expecting to build empires. When the last of the empire was liquidated and divided, Banks senior used his share to largely fund Richard and his sister’s educations. Thornton assumed a large sum of money was socked away somewhere, it was simply a matter of turning over the right stone to find it.
Christine knew less of her former mother-in-law’s background. Most of her family were dispersed in the United Kingdom. She was brought up in middle-class Melbourne, finishing her education in one of the private business colleges and training to become a private secretary. She was too posh to work in the typing pool alongside working-class girls with a bit of spirit and ambition to work their way into a better life. She had an older brother who had died young leaving a wife with no children. One of her grandmothers, Christine doesn’t know which, was Indian and from one of the upper castes, marrying into the middle-classes during British colonisation of India. The late brother’s estate would have automatically have passed on to the wife.