Reunion (40 page)

He admitted none of this to Jack. He just wanted to go home – yes, home – to see Linda, talk with her, eat meals with her, sleep with her. And the boys, he wanted his boys too.

‘I'm leaving, Jack. I'm sorry about how Harry is behaving. Remember, I loved Ava too. But I've my own future to think about.'

Jack glanced at the mess of half-filled boxes, the clothes, the books, the pots and pans littering the house and was about to offer to help, but pulled back: it was Connie's mess, all of it was Connie's mess.

Helen was even less helpful. She was either travelling the US from one high-powered meeting to another and assiduously not answering her cell phone, or working so hard she slept on a fold-up bed in the laboratory. This was an established habit of hers. ‘All scientists do it,' she said. ‘Experiments don't conform to circadian rhythms and you have to keep an eye on things.'

‘She just can't bear the separation anxiety,' Luke said.

Helen dashed off a single line in response to Jack's many and detailed emails:
Don't have time to deal with this over email. I'll call you
. She didn't call and she didn't answer his calls. In the end Jack borrowed Luke's phone and on his first attempt
Helen answered. As soon as she ascertained that Luke was safe and well, she made short work of Jack's concerns.

‘What Harry does as Ava's executor is not your business, it's not any of our business.' And when Jack reminded her she was talking about her oldest friend, she cut him off, ‘Things change, Jack. Perhaps not for you, but for the rest of us things change. Yes, I was Ava's best friend, but Harry's her husband. Any decisions about her work are his.'

‘Ava was not just a wife. She had a huge public presence –'

Helen interrupted. ‘Harry will come to his senses. There's too much in it for him.' She promised to give the situation more thought and ring back in a few days.

Jack waited a week before calling her again. Helen made it quite clear she did not want to be involved. ‘I've my own work, Jack. The sort of work that affects millions and millions of people. It's work I struggle with. It's serious work.' She paused, Jack thought he heard her sigh. ‘It's only fiction, Jack,' she said. ‘Ava's work is only fiction – none of it is true.'

Jack turned to Ava's publisher. ‘Bryant was an attractive ready-made package,' Victor said. ‘But our hands are tied without Harry's permission.'

Only Minnie shared his concerns.

‘Don't you have a draft of her last unfinished novel?' she asked over dinner one evening.

Jack nodded.

‘And you've read all her novels?'

‘Several times, both in draft and published form.'

‘Seems you're better placed than most to pull Ava's last novel into shape,' Minnie said. ‘Perhaps in a few months time when Harry's calmed down, if he were confronted with the finished product he'd change his mind.'

Over the next six months Jack laboured over Ava's final work. He persevered out of loyalty to her and an ingrained sense of justice, for it was clear almost from the beginning he was not the man for the job. Finally he sought help from the English department of their old university only to be told that while there were plenty of scholars available, including a Bryant expert within the department, monographs simply couldn't be justified in today's academic climate.

‘In the time it takes to write one book,' an Australian literature expert told him, ‘you could have written a dozen papers and earned far more in the way of publishing credits.'

Jack pointed out this was not a monograph, rather a unique chance to study and edit the last work of a major novelist, and was told that editing was even more of a fool's enterprise than monographs.

He contacted the Literature Council but unless he was a publisher or the author of the work he could not apply for an editing grant. He was about to put the novel aside until he had sufficient funds to pay for the editing himself when Harry emailed requesting a meeting with him. They had not spoken since Jack's NOGA fellowship ended and with nothing left in common except Ava, at last Jack had reason to hope.

Harry named a fashionable Japanese restaurant more notable for its flair than its food, but with the possibility of Ava's work back on the agenda Jack was not about to argue. The restaurant was empty at six o'clock but gearing up for a busy Friday night. Jack settled at a table and was about to order a glass of wine when Harry arrived.

Harry appeared to have discarded most of what was previously Harry. He wore a black three-quarter-length coat with the
sleeves turned back to reveal an exquisite, pale green satin lining. His shirt was white with hidden buttons and a small mandarin collar, the slacks were black and smooth, the shoes were slip-ons. The moustache had disappeared as had the clammy stippled skin. Chemical peel? Cosmetics? Plastic surgery? Jack supposed anything was possible given the radical turn of his transformation.

Jack stood up to greet him. ‘You look great.'

‘Never felt better.'

Harry chose the wine and as the waiter poured, Jack asked about NOGA. The Harry of old had liked nothing better than to talk about himself and in this he had not changed. He began with the fellowship program; not only had he rescued it, it was proving to be the rich repository of information and connections he had always foreseen. Among the current fellows were an economist, a coal and gas expert and a Sinologist. ‘A solid, untemperamental lot,' Harry said.

NOGA had surpassed all his hopes. ‘We're a think-tank, a lobby group, an information hub for research. We're linked into business and government agencies internationally. Where there's influence, you can be sure we're connected.' Harry looked so satisfied. ‘Not too many major decisions happen in this country without our involvement.'

Harry had moved out of the house next door to Minnie months ago. ‘I've bought an apartment. St Kilda Road. Twelfth floor. Magnificent views.'

Harry's new apartment sounded like the NOGA offices with its ‘swathes of space', floor-to-ceiling glass and minimalist furnishings. Ava and Harry had always preferred bolt holes – cubby-houses for grown-ups was the way Ava described their serial rentals. And the houses they chose were always old; Ava
said she and Harry liked to be surrounded by other people's history.

Ava had been dead less than a year, but time enough for her husband to reinvent himself. And the woman to complete the picture was exactly as Jack would have expected, if it had occurred to him there would be a woman. He and Harry were settling into their second glass when she joined them. Her name was Victoria. She was short and slender and like Harry she was dressed in slacks and a three-quarter-length black coat. Nothing about her bore any resemblance to Ava.

Harry and Victoria sat on one side of the table and Jack on the other. A waiter distributed menus and Harry suggested they leave the ordering to Victoria. Without consulting the menu she reeled off half a dozen dishes. With the meal organised she moved closer to Harry and put her hand on top of his. Jack watched with fascination as Harry twisted his hand so it was now palm to palm with hers, and then neatly flipped the hands over so his was on top.

At last Harry was ready for business.

‘As you can see, Jack, I've moved on. But there remains the matter of the Bryant literary estate.'

‘You mean Ava's work.'

Harry shrugged. ‘Call it what you like. As her executor I'm inundated with inquiries and I simply don't have time to deal with them.' There was a movement alongside him and he added, ‘Nor do I have the inclination. But if people want to use her work, or if there are to be films of the novels, or new editions –' Jack sat forward. ‘
If
,' Harry continued, ‘there are to be new Bryant projects, as literary executor I'll always need to have some involvement but I want it to be minimal.' He saw Jack was about to interrupt and held up his hand. ‘I'll be
reasonable about any proposals, but the less I have to do with her work the better.

‘And here's where you come in, Jack. I need someone to handle the day-to-day requests and inquiries as well as monitor the various projects that receive the go-ahead. I need someone who will manage her affairs and keep them away from me.' He paused, there was a superior smile playing across his face. ‘Now's your chance, Jack. You can have her at last.'

‘You want me to do the work of an executor?'

Harry nodded. ‘Of course you'll be paid and we can negotiate that. Just keep me informed – email will be fine. You'll have free rein except that I'll retain right of veto, and of course I'll remain the only signatory.'

He looked so satisfied. His new lady looked so satisfied. If it were not so important to gather as much information as possible Jack would have left immediately. Instead he sat through the entrée of sashimi – his stomach churning, the raw fish impossible – and picked his way through the main course.

‘What about the royalties from her work?' Jack asked, once the food was cleared away.

‘They'll continue to come to me as Ava wanted.'

Ava had wanted a lot more than that, Jack was thinking, including Harry's happiness – Harry and Victoria planned to marry in the new year – but not at the expense of her own memory. As for the royalties, of course Harry would want them. Ava's death had sparked new interest in her work. Most of the novels had gone into new printings under the terms of existing contracts. Harry had made a packet out of Ava's work in the time since she had died, and he stood to make a good deal more in the years to come.

Jack did not stay for coffee. He said he would consider Harry's proposal and contact him in a few days.

 

Friday-night revellers fill the streets. The lights of the restaurants flash and flicker. Jack hurries down to the tram stop, and then on a whim turns in the other direction towards the university district. A few blocks further on and the footpaths are crowded with students. How familiar they look with their shaggy hair and tight jeans. All these young people in a paradise that once belonged to him. Him, Connie, Ava and Helen.

Everything, it seems, comes full circle.

The day he met Ava the future opened up as an endless brilliance. They travelled together through the days and years; even when oceans separated them Jack would reach out convinced it was Ava he touched. He will never understand what happened to Harry who truly had Ava in reach. There wasn't someone else. Ava was sick, she was dying. An affair was no more likely than the break-up of her marriage.

He makes his way along the footpath, past outdoor tables packed with laughing drinking youths; so much noise and bustle that Harry's presence soon loosens and fades. He strolls into Readings bookstore. It is crowded here too, but there's the hush of books and people reading, and in the background a recording of a woman singing in a worn and weary alto. Jack walks the length of the shop to the philosophy section. He finds several copies of Connie's most recent book and two of his signature
God and the Webmaster
. Across in history and ideas there are two copies of his own
The Reinvention of Islam
, to be joined soon, he hopes, by his new book of essays. And last to
fiction, and an entire shelf of Ava's novels, a shelf of Ava Bryant. The books and the author have merged – and not mere semantic convention. For when he reads her novels, he finds percolating through them her beliefs and ideas, her pleasures and peccadillos, her yearnings and losses – all, of course, couched in fiction. But then Ava always said there was no better vehicle for the truth.

He stands back to allow two young women access to the Ava Bryants.

‘Start with her first novel,' the taller woman says, taking
Rock Father
from the shelf. ‘It's one of my favourites.'

Her friend flips through. ‘I wonder who these people are,' she says, pointing to the dedication to Jack, Helen and Conrad.

The Ava Bryant devotee doesn't know. ‘But I envy them, whoever they are.'

Jack leaves the women with Ava's books and soon after he exits the bookshop. He walks to the corner where he turns and makes his way towards the university. The footpaths are less crowded here; students are strolling arm in arm, three and four across, heading down to the main action. They don't move aside for him, and twice he is forced to step off the pavement into the gutter.

He, Ava, Helen and Connie used to talk as if they would change the world. Perhaps all young people do. They felt bound by the wonder of having found one another, and the wonder of what was possible – not just singly but together. Not surprising that during the period they were reunited back in Melbourne the friendships had felt so strange.

Helen is changing the world but not in the way she planned. And if she has any moral qualms about her work, she is now keeping them to herself. Occasionally she mentions Möller,
and Jack will hear in her voice the excitement and, yes, the wonder of working with him. She does, however, talk frequently about Ava. Jack will be eating his breakfast, or working, or preparing for bed and the phone will ring and it will be Helen in Boston or Washington or Atlanta or Dallas, Helen with a few minutes to spare and a sudden memory of Ava. And she will regale Jack with the trip to Sydney and her first taste of mango, or the breakfasts with the night workers after she and Ava had been studying all night, phone call after phone call filled with her rich store of exploits. As for those difficult months prior to Ava's death when Ava figured so low in her priorities, Helen appears to have buried them.

Helen will be in Melbourne within the month, a quick visit to see Luke. She says she wants a ceremony for Ava, what she calls ‘a remembrance'. She doesn't yet know what form it will take but she promises to work out the details before she arrives. ‘Just you, me and Luke – and the Ava we know.'