After She Left Read online

  ‘It is mainly fruit juice,’ said Howard, catching the attention of a waiter and ordering another. Howard turned. ‘Ah, here he is – Jake, my man, how are things?’

  On his return from naval service Howard had wasted no time reconnecting with his old mates and expanding his pre-war business interests, keeping busy, having productive meetings with influential men in his own line of work and with suggestible members of the police force. He kept expanding his territory and had become, in the underground parlance of the time, a ‘man to be respected’.

  ‘Things are going smoothly,’ said Jake, appraising Maureen.

  ‘This is Maureen,’ said Howard. ‘Maureen, this is Jake Phipps.’

  Jake Phipps’ large jaw and expression that was both stern and triumphant reminded her of Mussolini.

  Howard and Jake talked in low tones about business in terms that were incomprehensible and tedious to Maureen. The orchestra was playing Benny Goodman’s ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’ and she could hardly keep her feet still. When a young sandy-haired man approached their table, glanced inquiringly at Howard for approval and asked Maureen for a dance, she leapt up. The energetic, upbeat music made it impossible not to move her body to those infectiously magical sounds, and they danced on and on until some other men politely cut in and she danced some more, to Gershwin’s ‘Lady Be Good’ and Glenn Miller’s ‘Stardust’.

  While Howard kept talking to the Mussolini look-alike, she kept dancing, her cheeks flushed with oxygen, her eyes bright with excitement.

  With the hindsight of the next morning, she saw herself dancing with some forgotten men, laughing at long-forgotten jokes, waltzing and whirling the night away until she was in Howard’s arms again, wanting the night never to end.

  Howard’s blue eyes glinted in the chandelier lights as they waltzed round and round and round to the orchestra playing Shostakovich, Maureen’s feet hardly touching the polished parquet floor.

  Round and round they danced until she was flying. She was light-headed with euphoria, being whirled in shadowed light with twinkling highlights, colours hot and cool, hazy daubs of texture and sound. Her magic feet transformed her body into a weightless form of grace and joy.

  *

  By the time Howard and Maureen left the Roosevelt Club, Maureen’s feet had not been touching the ground for some time. What a marvellous world and she was a part of it. What fun to dress up and meet new people, to dance and drink liquor and laugh. She wished they could drive into the dark night forever.

  Hang on, she thought.

  ‘Isn’t Clovelly the other way?’ It was hard to pronounce the words. She hoped she didn’t sound as drunk as she felt.

  ‘I thought we’d have a nightcap,’ Howard said mildly. ‘The view’s magnificent under the light of a full moon.’

  Maureen hadn’t been to the house since she was little. It was the hangman’s cottage, on Ben Buckler Point, the furthest point of the Bondi headland. She had thought it was creepy, to buy the house of Sydney’s last hangman, stunning view or not.

  The house had been renovated just before the war and, as they drove up to it, she couldn’t detect any trace of the macabre. It sat implacably on the edge of the headland, white and squat, silent and mysterious under the stars.

  Howard pocketed the car key and walked around to open her door. Maureen hopped out and walked with Howard up the path towards the house. She stumbled and giggled.

  ‘High heels and loose gravel don’t mix,’ said Howard, and scooped her in his arms.

  Maureen giggled again, giddy with the surprise of being horizontal, seeing the bright sweep of twinkling stars in the indigo sky and feeling the balmy sea breeze like silk on her bare arms and shoulders.

  He opened the door and placed her down. Switching on the hall light, he put his hand on her back to guide her forward. At the front room he switched on a table lamp in the shape of a young nude girl with her arms aloft, holding a sphere of milk glass, which spread its mellow golden light into the room.

  Howard took off his jacket and hung it on the back of one of the chairs, then took her chiffon wrap from her shoulders, draped it over his jacket, and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Maureen went to the vast window and looked at the full moon reflected in the black Pacific. She could hear the low murmur of the ocean. A flock of seagulls wheeled past the house, a chorus of them calling.

  She jumped.

  ‘Oh – Howard – you scared me!’

  ‘Who did you think it was? Here – drink this.’

  She shook her head. ‘Champagne? I don’t know if that’s a good idea,’ she said. ‘It must be late. I ought to be getting home.’

  ‘Not so late that we can’t get to know each other a bit better,’ he said, clinking her glass with his with a low thud. ‘The bubbles muffle the sound of the crystal,’ he said. ‘To you, you beautiful thing.’ He sipped from his glass and put it on the table and took her glass, putting it beside his. Stepping closer, he stroked her cheek with the back of his manicured hand.

  She breathed deeply, her heart pounding. ‘Um,’ she said, ‘Oh, Howard, I’m not sure – ’ then his mouth stopped any more of her faltering words.

  He closed a slender but strong hand around her bare upper arm. Her hesitancy had turned into reluctance, which was building up into a wave of panic. His grip tightened and his other arm glided around her waist, quiet as a snake. Stepping close he pulled her body towards his and held her tightly.

  She broke her mouth free and gasped for breath. ‘Howard, please, you’re scaring me. I want to go home now.’

  He ignored her and it seemed as if her fear was making his mad insistence worse. She stared, alarmed, into his eyes. They looked black and intense, as if the pale blue irises had become all pupil.

  He was effortlessly strong, not even moving when she put all her might into struggling.

  He picked her up as if she were a doll, walked into another room and lay her on the bed.

  Where had her avuncular protector and mentor gone? It was as if his personality had been taken over by an evil spirit. The nuns’ talk of the Devil taking over someone came into her head like a bolt of lightning and her body was electrified with panic.

  He tried to kiss her feverishly. She struggled against him, turning her head, while his weight held her down and his hands were all over her body like an octopus.

  She squirmed and screamed. He put a hand over her mouth and ripped at her suspender belt until it snapped, grabbed her underpants and pulled them down.

  *

  At Beach Lane the next morning Maureen woke to the paperboy’s whistle. She made her way to the bathroom and lit the gas for another shower. She scrubbed her skin with the nailbrush until it was red.

  She could not believe it had happened.

  She would carry on as if it hadn’t.

  It had not occurred to her that someone could change his character. Of course he might have been like that all along, and she had been too stupid to see it. Or was it she who had done something wrong? Had she been leading him on? Had she worn immodest clothes? Had she enjoyed his attention? The nuns at Saint Vincent’s would say yes to these questions. If she went to confession, what sin would she confess? Impurity. But against her will.

  The nuns had warned her and the other girls about kissing boys because it could easily lead to a boy getting to ‘the point of no return’. It was the girls’ responsibility to make sure this did not happen. But she had not connected the warnings of the nuns to someone like Howard. They were about boys her own age, like Evan and Pete next door and the fifth year boys at Marist Brothers’ end-of-term dances.

  It simply had not occurred to her that the nuns’ warning could be relevant to someone like him, an old family friend. It didn’t make sense. Howard was old.

  It was good that her mother was away.

  Maureen took her ruined underwear and white taffeta dress with red piping into the backyard and put them into the incinerator, struck the Redhead match against the side of
the little box and threw it in. But the contents refused to catch fire.

  In the kitchen she fossicked out an old Tribune and the Milo tin of old bits of charcoal soaked in kerosene. She tore the newspaper apart, crumpled some pages and tossed them and half the can of charcoal into the incinerator. When she threw a lit match in there this time it caught immediately and became a satisfyingly loud conflagration. She had to step back from the intense heat. It was a grim pleasure to watch the charcoal-coloured smoke that rose from the incinerator, diminishing as it rose higher and higher, finally disappearing into the clear blue sky.

  Maureen’s twice-weekly watercolour class was on in the afternoon at the Workers’ Education Association in a small studio in Campbell Parade, Bondi. Her teacher, Miss Dorothy White, was able to spot and foster potential and had a maternal manner that was gentle and generous. Maureen longed to be in her reassuring presence once again. But when she alighted from the tram she was compelled to look across the beach to the headland and the hangman’s house where on a big bed in the pale blue bedroom her girlhood lay bleeding.

  3

  KEIRA

  August 1972

  ‘But I thought you were doing surrealist photography for your honours thesis next year!’ said Maureen, transferring her gaze from the bus window to her daughter.

  The bus rounded a corner and Maureen held onto the back of the seat in front to avoid being pitched against Keira’s side.

  ‘I was, but now it’s evolved,’ said Keira.

  ‘But why? You should stick to your original plan.’

  Keira had been keeping her change of topic a secret from her mother because of Maureen’s strange hostility towards the idea. Keira had been waiting for a good time to tell her. She decided then and there on the bus that she could put it off no longer.

  ‘I want to do a topic that means more to me, something I can identify with. Surrealist photography was dominated by men. I started researching your mother’s surrealism. My supervisor Heide thinks it’s a fascinating topic.’

  Maureen shifted in her seat after they went over a bump in the road. ‘Has this bus got any suspension?’ she said. ‘Look, I’ve told you, Keira – Deirdre’s works were all destroyed in a fire at Pettifer’s Gallery over twenty years ago.’

  Keira’s jaw dropped open slightly as she looked at Maureen. ‘What? All of them? You never told me that!’

  ‘I’m sure I mentioned it at some stage but when you were younger things went in one ear and out the other.’

  It did ring a vague bell to Keira. ‘God,’ she said. ‘How did she keep going?’

  ‘Well, she went overseas soon after and made a new start over there.’

  ‘She went to be with her man, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes. They move around so much they’re practically of no fixed address – like your brother Rowan!’

  Keira laughed. ‘Well, at least he’s got a fixed address now!’

  ‘Long Bay Correctional Centre? That is nothing to be laughing about.’

  ‘Come on, Mum, you’ve got to laugh – the black sheep gene has gone from Deirdre to Rowan without affecting the generation in between.’ Then she said, ‘I can’t imagine being an only child. Were you lonely?’

  ‘No. I had school friends and boarding school friends when I was at Saint Vincent’s.’

  ‘I’m glad you and Dad thoughtfully gave me all these brothers,’ said Keira, looking past Maureen’s head to check where they were. Still a little way to go.

  ‘Hey, Mum – what happened after the fire? Did the gallery close?’

  ‘I think so, maybe when Geoffrey’s wife Tamsin died.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘About ten years ago.’

  ‘Heide said I should interview Deirdre’s contemporaries. Is Geoffrey Pettifer still around?’

  ‘Keira,’ said Maureen, a note of exasperation in her tone, ‘he’s probably dead by now too.’

  ‘Well, the fire probably didn’t destroy all her works.’

  ‘It was a retrospective.’

  ‘Oh.’ Keira paused. ‘Still, she must have sold some works to people who didn’t lend them to the gallery for the retrospective – people who were away or didn’t hear about it.’

  ‘Keira, it will be difficult enough to get information for a simple brief biography, but the obvious necessity for a photographic essay is photographs. With so few paintings in existence …’

  ‘There are some – people bought some at the time that weren’t in that exhibition.’

  ‘I know, but they’ll still be hard to track down. So you’re better off sticking to your original topic.’

  Keira looked ahead in silence. Her mother’s tone was irritatingly smug, as if she were glad it was going to be too hard.

  Why was she so hostile to any mention of her own mother? Maureen seemed determined to be of no use to her about this and it only made Keira more determined to pursue it.

  There must be other people who could help. She just had to find them.

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ said Maureen, whipping out a hand mirror from her bag and applying lipstick. ‘Got your things?’

  *

  ‘From the first,’ Rowan said to them during their short visit, ‘Australia has licked the arse of the Mother Country and since the end of the Second World War we’ve done it with America as well.’

  Keira, sitting on a hard chair opposite him, agreed. Maureen shifted on her chair and said, ‘Rowan, we know your opinions about this.’

  ‘That’s why you’re here!’ said Keira, above the noise of other families scraping their chairs and talking.

  ‘I just want to know how you are,’ said Maureen. ‘Do they give you enough to eat? Are they still treating you all right?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mum – I’m okay.’

  They sat there looking at him across the small scratched wooden table, ignoring the suspicious stares of the omnipresent guards. It was always a relief to see Rowan and to know that no harm had come to him, but Keira could feel their mother willing him to give her more reassurance.

  Perhaps Rowan felt the pressure too because his face softened, his brown eyes looked deeply into Maureen’s eyes and he said, ‘I get exercise once a day. I have some mates. And the food’s not like yours but I’m surviving on it. Did I tell you I get to spend some time in the library every day?’

  ‘You’re not just making all this up to make me feel better, are you?’ said Maureen.

  Rowan laughed and looked at Keira then back at Maureen. ‘Mu-uum! We had shepherd’s pie and peas for tea last night. I’m reading George Orwell and Yevtushenko. Believe me – there’s no need for you to worry!’

  ‘What’s the worst thing?’ said Keira. She sensed her mother stiffening beside her. Rowan was looking at her with amusement. She’d put her foot in it again and she added, ‘Probably the food, eh?’

  Rowan looked thoughtful. Then he said, ‘No, I wouldn’t say it is. It’s the dirt. Everything you touch is kind of greasy.’

  *

  That afternoon, Keira walked from the bus stop towards the single-storey terrace house she rented in Woodstock Street, Bondi Junction, her brain preoccupied with their visit to Rowan.

  Once inside, Keira threw her shoulder bag on her bed and walked through the hall. Past the kitchen and the laundry was the small backyard. Her housemates were sitting around the cast iron table, talking and laughing, their feet ankle-deep in un-mown grass. On the Hill’s Hoist a row of her and Nessie’s Bond’s Hip-Nippers moved in the breeze, the orange-, lime- and lemon-coloured undies bright fluttering scraps against the pale sky.

  ‘Oh, here you are – I thought you were out.’

  ‘We’re just having coffee. There’s some left in the percolator.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Keira, going into the kitchen to heat up some milk for her cafe au lait. She buttered some bread, sawed off several chunks of cheddar, went out and put the food in the middle of the little round table.

  ‘Ah, breakfast,’ said Steve. S
teve’s flabby-faced affability suggested to Keira a moral flabbiness and this impression was reinforced today by his un-brushed brown hair and un-shaved jaw. He was in his customary weekend attire of board shorts and a faded checked flannelette shirt. At twenty-eight, and studying medicine, although he was older than she and Nessie by a couple of years, he acted like the least mature.

  ‘Have you just got up?!’ said Keira. ‘It’s the middle of the afternoon!’

  ‘Hard night last night,’ he said. ‘I partied after work and got home at an ungodly hour, even by my standards.’

  ‘How’s your work been?’ Keira asked Nessie.

  ‘Not so good – the Doberman bit the stuntman. He wasn’t very happy. I had to drive him to the doctor’s for a tetanus shot.’

  ‘Just the usual VIP care for the dogs of Homicide, then?’

  ‘How about you?’

  ‘Just the usual,’ she said, then paused for effect, ‘… except the gorgeous guy with the dark blond hair and bedroom eyes came in again.’

  ‘Did he?’ said Nessie. ‘That sounds promising.’

  ‘Just because a bloke comes into the cafe you work in doesn’t mean he wants to get you into bed,’ said Steve.

  ‘He introduced himself,’ said Nessie. ‘He’s clearly interested.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Keira. ‘It looks as if he’s interested. It doesn’t mean I leap into bed with anyone who asks.’

  ‘Hey Keira,’ Steve said, changing the topic, ‘I saw your pile of notes on the kitchen table. You’ve done a lot already.’ He shoved a piece of cheese in his mouth.

  ‘Not nearly enough. I need to start finding and interviewing people who knew her.’

  ‘Looks like you’ll have enough to make a book, not just an honours thesis.’

  Yes,’ said Nessie, running with this idea, ‘do a book. You could call it In Search of Deirdre Wild.’

  ‘Or Wild About Deirdre,’ said Steve.

  ‘Or The Wild One – oh, no, that’s been taken by Marlon Brando in that motorbike movie. Well, what about A Wild Woman?’ Nessie spread out the fingers of both hands in excitement.