The Tower Mill (15 page)

EIGHT

TOM

I
was told
as much as I ever dared ask about the breakup and the arguments that Mike and Susan had in Sydney. Their separate accounts matched remarkably; it was in the nuances that the difference appeared. Neither knows what the other did once Susan left the house in Surry Hills and, in fact, I became a conduit between them, as much as either wanted to know, many years later.

Dad had always thought Susan went to see a lecturer named Rhonda Nicolson. He was wrong, though. For his part, he waited until noon, but with no sign of Susan, and the other women in the house skewering him with foul looks whenever he came out of the bedroom, he packed up and went back to the dingy hotel, taking me with him.

‘Was that when I broke the cow?’ I asked, when we spoke about it years later.

I remember Dad sniffed, then smiled. ‘It’s funny, the things you can’t seem to lose, no matter how much you’d like to.’

We were talking about a porcelain cow that the Sydney publican’s wife had given me to play with when Dad ran out of games to keep me occupied. It was black with white polka dots, not quite a Friesian, even if I always thought of it as one. I broke off one of the horns and Dad insisted on paying for it. That Friesian was still in the house somewhere, offering a crude metaphor – the fragility of porcelain, a marriage that broke as easily, although not at a child’s hands. I’ve never carried that guilt.

I’ve pictured Dad and me in that hotel room many times. He was surely dreading another confrontation with Susan because neither of them could back down. He confided to me once that if he’d heard Susan go on about feeling alive there in Sydney one more time he’d have slapped her. I was shocked. Mike Riley lashing out? It told me how hurt he must have been and how fed up with Susan closing him out. You can’t take back a comment like Susan’s, not when it meant she’d felt half-dead in all the years they’d spent together.

But then, was I being too harsh on my mother? It took a certain courage to come out with something so honest, and much as it hurt Dad, it released him, as well, it let him admit how he’d been slowly dying throughout that second year in Bindamilla. In Sydney, in that sad hotel room, while I played farmer on the floor, he made himself imagine a life without my mother. I guess he never thought he could bear it until then, but now that she’d forced him to it, there was a kind of freedom. He
could
live without her, he
could
start a different life.

‘The problem was, that life wouldn’t include you,’ he told me, laughing at the tears these words drew from him. ‘Sucker for sentiment,’ he said, scolding himself. ‘Death for a poet, of course, but I cried in that hotel room, Tom, and I’m not ashamed to say it, cried for a marriage that was crumbling around my ears and cried for me without you.’

‘You were still in love with Susan, Dad. That doesn’t stop overnight,’ I replied, surprising myself, but I already carried a scar from a girl who’d dumped me before I saw it coming. And I’d been no more than a love-struck boyfriend.

It was after this that he got to the heart of what happened, of how I ended up in Brisbane rather than Sydney. He sat back in his old cane chair that creaked whenever he moved, a sound he enjoyed.

‘Waiting for Susan,’ he chuckled. ‘Beckett understood how it felt, anticipating the death of what you know, whether it’s worth keeping alive or not. I waited until Wednesday morning when the publican wanted to know if I was taking the room for another night. “No, I’m going home to Brisbane,” I called through the door and was relieved to hear myself say it. I packed everything into the car again, strapped you in the back seat and went round to the house expecting to give you up. It could well have been the last time I saw you. I mean, what legal rights did I have?’

‘What did Susan do?’ I asked, trying to hide how much his answer meant to me.

‘Nothing. She hadn’t come home the night before. The girls in the house thought she’d gone to have it out with me. So there I was with a car loaded up for the drive to Brisbane and you already in the harness, staring at me while I sat at the wheel with my hand on the ignition key. I turned round in the seat and said, “What do
you
want to do, Tommy?” ’

‘What did I say?’

‘You didn’t say anything, of course. I turned back to look through the windscreen, furious with myself. Why was I asking a three-year-old what to do? I didn’t need anyone’s permission, I just had to ask what
I
wanted for a change. That settled it. I turned the key and drove you home to Brisbane. Bloody scorching it was, too, and we didn’t stop at a single beach.’

SUSAN

January, 1976

I
hurried away
into the streets of Surry Hills without a care for where the pavement took me. In Paddington I stood at an intersection, paralysed by choice, until an old man spoke to me. I thought he wanted directions, at first; when I realised what he
was
asking, I swore in his face and ran across the road against the lights.

I was crying violently by then; a fizzing beaker, a witch’s brew. The dirty old man was lucky I hadn’t turned him into a toad. If there was such a thing as magic I would learn its arts, not for turning toads, but to fold back the mechanics of time to the instant the police had charged outside the Tower Mill. I would break Mike Riley’s grip on the jumper, lunge forward against the tide until I found Terry, then run down the hill with him instead, frightened and furious, until we emerged, chests heaving and light-headed with relief, into the streets of a different future.

The nuns had taught me white magic – prayer, they called it – and if it had proved any more effective than witchcraft I would have used it then. I walked on, instead, my mind full of the letter left behind in my handbag. A map of sorts, it showed Queensland, its coastline encoded in the scrawl of an anonymous hand. I couldn’t go back within those boundaries. He was there,
both
hes, Dolan and Terry Stoddard. I couldn’t go back to the house where I thought I’d found refuge, either, because another pair of hes guarded the way.

I needed some air, I’d yelled at Mike, but now I had it, the sky overwhelmed me.

I got lost, which delayed my return, and by then the Holden was blessedly missing from the street outside the house.

‘He’s gone back to where you were before,’ Linda called from the front step when she saw me loitering. Inside, she was worried about the further news she had to impart. ‘He took your little boy. I hope that’s okay.’

‘Oh . . . yes,’ I murmured, accepting the coffee from Linda’s hand, and her arm around my shoulder.

‘It sounded rough. He’s a pig.’

‘No, he’s been good to me, better than I’ve been to him.’

‘You’re blaming yourself, like women always do.’

‘I’m not to blame, either,’ I said with a sigh. But I knew the cause was north of the border, an explanation Linda would never understand.

Another flatmate, Annemarie, joined us. Feminine support. The pair of them became hotly indignant on my behalf, but their dogmatic prescriptions were utter bullshit. What did they know about men and marriage, what did they know of the letter I carried with me everywhere and how it burned me up?

They saw the heat in my eyes and began fishing for what I wanted to hear. They weren’t what I needed and when it all became too much I retreated to the bedroom and lay face to the wall.

The phone rang, making me jump. Not Mike, please. I didn’t know what to say to him. But there was no tap at the door. When it rang again, I thought, Oh God, he’ll want to patch things up, he’ll say he’s sorry, that he wants to talk.

Then Linda called through the house, ‘Annemarie, it’s for you.’

After a late meal, I told myself to phone the hotel. There was a phone box on the corner, away from intrusive ears, but the twilight had gone and I used the darkness as an excuse not to go.

In the morning I left the house without speaking to the others and spent the day wandering the city, sat through a movie, and afterwards rang Diane, reversing the charges.

‘You have to give it another go, Sue. Marriage is a precious thing.’

Had I expected anything different?

‘Come home to Brisbane, at least. It’ll look different up here,’ was her final advice. How wrong she was.

I stood outside the phone box thinking of the letter. How could one piece of paper cause a revulsion so powerful I had to move far away from all it represented? Did it even exist? No one else had seen the letter, except John Obermayer, and he was in Melbourne. I thought about calling him. Did I show you a letter, anonymous, handwritten? If I had to ask, was I going crazy?

I needed to show it to someone else, though, to hear myself explain what it meant. Not Linda, and certainly not Annemarie. With the letter retrieved from the house, I found my way to the address of another classmate from the summer school, given freely in the first bloom of friendship. When the bell went unanswered, I waited in the street until the shops were closed and the offices sent their workers home.

‘Sue, what are you doing here?’

Not the welcome I was hoping for. ‘I’m sorry to turn up on your doorstep like this, Janet. I need a favour.’

Janet hadn’t come to the party in Surry Hills. Not her scene. She was older than the others and maybe that was why I liked her.

‘Come in. What can I do for you?’ she said, once she was over the surprise.

We talked, me through tears, Janet through cigarette smoke, al-though mostly she listened, and only when I was spent did she offer any response. I passed the letter into her hand – it was real after all – and with it came the story.

‘I can’t bear to live among people who applaud what happened, who think the jackboot gives protection to their narrow little lives, where thugs like Dolan dare me to go after justice for Terry because he knows he’s above the law.’

‘Then don’t, but there’s plenty of it about, here as much as anywhere,’ Janet said bluntly.

‘It’s not the same. I feel a difference on the streets down here.’

Later, I said, ‘If I go back there, I’ll be saying all right, you win, Mike, let’s have more babies, and I’ll be a mother in the suburbs and my children will be all I am.’

‘Would it be any different if he came down here, like you asked him to? He’d still want children of his own.’

‘Maybe I don’t want him to change his mind.’

It was late when the talking was done. ‘Sleep here,’ said Janet.

I was exhausted and slept well into Wednesday morning, waking to find a note that insisted I take my time.

I did, and, alone in the kitchen of Janet’s flat, made a decision.

‘He came this morning,’ said Linda, when I returned to Surry Hills. ‘We didn’t know how long you’d be so he went off again. Didn’t say what time he’d come back.’

I was ready now. I waited, but when the call came many hours later, there was a twist.

‘I’m in Grafton,’ he said. ‘I’ve got Tom with me. We’re going home to Brisbane.’

It was the last thing I’d expected and what it meant was suddenly subsumed beneath more practical issues. ‘Is Tom all right? It must be hot in the car. Make sure you give him lots to drink.’

‘I’m doing that, and I don’t need any lectures from you about how to take care of him. It wasn’t good for him in Sydney, either. He’s better off at home’

‘Bastard. Go home to fucking Brisbane, then,’ I said. ‘This is the end, you know that, don’t you? It’s over.’

I hung up in a fury. He’d taken Tom with him to force me back to Brisbane, where he’d persuade me to try again. This wasn’t how it was meant to go.

I waited until Friday before ringing and instead got his mother, Helen, who told me, curtly, that Mike was at his new school, meeting the principal. He rang back just after five.

‘Are you in a phone box?’ I asked.

‘No. Mum and Dad have made themselves scarce.’

I looked up to find that Linda and Annemarie had done the same.

A boxing match came to mind: before the rough stuff began, the seconds left the ring. When I told him what I’d decided, would he beg or abuse, would he blackmail, tell me how Tom missed me, and turn the screw from there?

‘How’s Tom?’ I asked.

‘The drive took a lot out of him, but he’s fine today, running around the backyard right now, chasing the cat.’

I could see it, my son as relentless as a Hollywood Frankenstein and the wily old cat one step ahead.

‘He’s asked for you,’ said Mike.

I stiffened. There was no follow-up, though, and I wondered if it was true. How long would we dance around the ring like this?

Then he caught me without warning. ‘Are you coming home to Brisbane?’

Not when, but was I, as though he’d dropped his guard on pur-pose.

Stuff it then. ‘No, Mike, I’ve made up my mind. I live in Sydney now.’

Nothing came down the line at me, or to me. The silence was agony until I understood he was waiting for my question in return.

‘Have you changed your mind, Mike? Will you come down here, like I asked?’ No mention of our marriage, of our future together, but that’s what I was asking.

‘No,’ he said, after the briefest hesitation.

He’d made up his mind, just as I had.

Our last phone call had been sulphurous, ending with my angry cry: ‘It’s over, you know that.’ Right now I knew it was true, more certainly than when I’d yelled those words into the phone.

‘I think we should separate,’ said Mike. ‘We already have, really,’ he added, with a little laugh that held no malice. ‘What you said on Monday was true, our marriage was a mistake. You’ve said it before, not just in Sydney this week, lots of times, in different words maybe, but the message was the same. I’m sorry I forced you into it.’

‘You didn’t force me, Mike.’

My throat was tightening with a sentiment I hadn’t expected to feel. ‘But it
was
a mistake, wasn’t it? I’m sorry, too.’

It would have been cruel to tell him that I did feel love, when the sentence must finish with ‘but not enough’. A relief swam through my blood stream, loosening muscles.

‘Have you got enough money?’ he asked.

Oh God, were we going to talk about that now? ‘I took out twenty dollars yesterday.’

‘You’ll need more than that. Use whatever’s in our account. I’ve got enough to last until I get paid, and then I’ll set up a separate account for myself. We’ll talk about it again then, okay?’

‘All right. Yeah, I suppose . . . thank you.’

The money talk was over and I had no idea what to say next.

‘How did you go at the new school?’

‘Better than I’d hoped. I have good classes – no Seniors, but a Grade Eleven English and another for history. Best of all, no French.’

I laughed. We laughed together! He’d hated teaching French in Bindy.

There were other questions, more talking, as though now that we’d shaken hands in the centre of the ring, we could dance ourselves out with pleasantries. I might have been talking to a friend I caught up with every week or two.

Then the phone was back in its cradle and Linda’s head appeared around the door with a ‘safe to come out now?’ look on her face.

Could a marriage end so easily? Should it?

Linda handed me a glass of iced water and I walked out to the front step in search of a breeze. It was five-thirty, yet even on this shaded side of the house the heat was still a bastard. Legs bared, top uncoupled from my skirt, I longed for the day to cool down, but it would be hours yet before the Sydney sun relented. Maybe Mike was right about daylight saving after all.

On Saturday, I woke to a new life and was immediately suspicious of it. By Sunday, less so. I talked to Linda and she again offered the empty bedroom until its regular occupant returned. Where would I live then? How would I support myself and a three-year-old when the balance in my passbook reached zero? These were simply problems to solve and I wouldn’t let myself be weighed down by them.

A bigger worry was the telephone that both beckoned and repulsed me from its perch beside the sofa. I’d been married to Mike for three years, shared a bed with him, shared a life, and knew to steel myself for when his need grew too strong.

He rang on Monday, Australia Day.

‘How’s Tom?’ I asked immediately.

He launched into a summary, like a conscientious babysitter.

‘What have you said to him?’

‘Nothing yet.’

‘And your parents?’

‘You’re not their favourite person right now.’

I pictured Helen Riley’s stern visage and behind it a kind of glee that the marriage was over.

How long would I stay there in Surry Hills, he asked. More talk of money. There was no begging, no heat. I had a question of my own: ‘Why aren’t you angry with me?’

‘I am. I just don’t want to get into a shouting match. I’m angry because I’ve missed something, I’m sure of it. I can’t understand why you’re so hot on living down there, in Sydney, when it’s all one bloody country.’

I had to tell him.

‘Mike, when we got back to Bindy, this time last year, there was . . .’

I knew if I said another word, if I explained about the letter, about Terry and Barry Dolan, I’d be drawn towards him again, or Mike would come to Sydney after all, convinced our marriage could be revived. It took the breath from my lungs when I realised I didn’t want that.

‘What?’ he asked, when I went so suddenly dry.

‘Nothing.’ I said. ‘Nothing that can make any difference now.’

My son was six hundred miles away and with Mike so busy at his new school, while I was pretty much twiddling my thumbs, it was up to me. I booked a ticket on the train, planning to head north on Friday night, sitting up to save money, then come south again on Sunday, in a sleeper. Tom would think it was a great adventure.

On Friday, though, I delayed packing, and knew I was doing it. The room in Surry Hills seemed so small, and what if there were drugs in the house, not just for parties, either? The girls were fine, but what about their friends? At four o’clock I still hadn’t packed for a six-thirty departure. At five, I rang to cancel.

‘I can appreciate you’re not really in a position to fetch him yet,’ said Mike, when I tried to explain. ‘I’ve found a babysitter so Mum doesn’t have to look after him and things are working out well. Why don’t I keep Tom until you’re settled somewhere more appropriate?’

I agreed, too readily and, in a panic, rang Janet’s doorbell a second time.

‘Brave girl,’ she said, over a Friday night glass of wine. It was from a cardboard cask the size of a shoe box, which meant there was plenty to get us both drunk.

Janet began to expand on the whole matter. ‘If my mother had her time over, she’d do the same. Never said so, raised four kids and never complained, but it was there in her face all the time. Wife and mother in the suburbs was all there was, back in her day.’