Beneath the Wild Fig Tree, page 2
‘Just so you know, I have to leave for the airport in an hour,’ I said, and refilled her glass.
My comment went unacknowledged as she asked about my work.
‘You’re that kind of lawyer? I’d never have imagined.’
‘I’m beginning to question the choice. This year’s been tough.’ And randomly I mentioned the put-downs, a co-worker’s unwanted advances and then the aggravating issue of unequal pay.
‘Hah! Tough being the token woman. Yay for the patriarchy, driving us ever on towards the abyss. Anyway, Nicky, I’m sure you once told me that you wanted to be involved in environmental law or human rights, something like that?’
I deflected the conversation back to music, but soon the focus returned to me.
‘Please tell me you’re still writing?’
‘Why would I be?’
‘You were always writing, Nicky. In fact, you and Wheeler both. That study of his, in the lighthouse, remember? Honestly, your father was a big influence on my life, the whole music thing, you know.’ She was on a roll. She dazzled me with stories. Her world did, in fact, seem gourmet to my buffet.
I relaxed. Talking to Sally, that old friendship seemed to settle tenuously back into place. I hinted at my whirlwind romance with Arno and how, after much uncertainty on my part and encouragement on his, I’d decided to move in with him.
‘You’ve had huge trust issues to overcome.’
I straightened my back.
‘You’re afraid of betrayal, of being hurt. It’s that simple.’
She was smashing through boundaries, and I needed her gone.
She wanted to see a photo of Arno. Reluctantly I fetched the one I’d framed.
She held it thoughtfully. ‘Love the dimple. Italian? He has warm eyes.’
I reclaimed it. He was worth so much more than that brief comment.
‘Nicky,’ she said, and then after a small pause, ‘I’m sorry. I can see I’ve hurt your feelings.’ She reached her hand across the table.
‘Don’t be silly.’ I moved to refill her water.
For the next half hour I kept the conversation firmly in a musical domain. But she nibbled her lip as she piled up our plates and as I took them, she said, ‘Nearly forgot,’ and fetched the package from her bag. ‘Do you know what it is?’
‘No idea. Not sure I care.’ I dumped it on the counter and glanced at my watch. ‘I’ll need to leave for the airport in fifteen.’ My anxiety was mounting.
‘Ouch,’ she said. Then returned to reminiscing about our childhood. I allowed a silence to develop.
‘Freya sends her love, but she looked so tired. I’m worried about her. She’d absolutely love you to visit.’
I breathed in, slid my hands down my spine.
‘You know, there was a time when I envied the relationship you had with your mother.’
I tapped my fingers on the side of my chair.
‘It’s not irretrievable.’ She closed her eyes, her face so beautiful, as, briefly, she sang along with the music, reminding me of a night on the island when we’d all sat around a fire together, the Milky Way drifting down the night sky, the full moon and the Seven Sisters above us.
‘It was a long time ago and I know how much you suffered. I know I don’t have the right to presume, but you’ll always be important to me, Nicky, a sister really, although I understand if the feeling isn’t mutual.’
Time to get her big feet walking out that door. I looked at my watch and began getting ready to leave.
‘Let’s not lose touch again,’ she said, smothering me in a hug. ‘And I’ll let Freya know you send your love.’
I closed the door and leaned against it, breathing a mistaken sigh of relief. I didn’t know it at the time, but Sally bursting out of my past was the first indication that my tomorrows were about to smash into my yesterdays.
3
Gadigal and Bidjigal Country (Coogee, Sydney) 2000
L’Heure Exquise
Luck wasn’t on my side. I got mired in a traffic jam and panic had replaced anxiety as I rushed through the terminal unsuccessfully seeking Arno. Devastated, I returned to my darkened home and tried to ring him. Ten times my calls rang out.
Eventually he picked up. ‘So jetlagged, Nicky. I’m going to sleep in tomorrow.’
‘You sound exhausted,’ and my words tripped over each other as I explained my debacle of an evening.
The silence on the other end of the phone wasn’t promising, but he agreed to meet me at L’Heure Exquise, our favourite Coogee restaurant, for lunch. My shout, I decided, putting the receiver down slowly.
The arrangement gave me time the next morning to drive to McIver’s Ladies Pool. A moment to linger and look out to sea, a filigree of surf lacing Wedding Cake Island, and below me to the north, sun umbrellas up on the beach and the lure of the languorous surf had a couple of hopefuls sitting on their boards waiting for a break. Hot sun on my back, the merest tickle of a breeze against my skin, I descended the rock steps and soon I was into the first of twenty laps, close to the periwinkled rock edge, small waves occasionally breaking into the pool, the ocean stretching away beside me, north, east, and down south to embrace Tasmania.
At times my strokes felt energised by a sense of anticipation over what the day would bring, but Freya’s parcel was also on my mind. When I’d opened it, an old letter from a high school teacher had fallen out, commending me on my writing, expressing concern about my wellbeing and asking for a meeting. It accompanied a version of my island journal, redrafted several times during the lost years Sally had referred to. It had been meant to tame distressing memories and help develop a carapace for my protection. Sometimes I think it had the opposite effect.
Now, immersed in seawater, I found myself thinking about my parents, exhaling hard to push the past away. I’d slip into breaststroke and feel irritated with Sally – her fault, the past rushing in. Her fault I hadn’t made the airport. I hoped Arno would be over his jetlag and back to his usual amicable self by lunch time. I rolled into backstroke and thought about our first meeting, at a friend’s wedding, a year ago. Inviting him back to my flat had seemed the most natural thing in the world to do – and the most compelling. He’d stayed that night and then the next and so our life fell into a routine of nights at mine followed by a gap and then weekends at his.
We arrived at the restaurant at much the same time. I dashed through traffic, and into his arms.
‘I am so sorry about last night! I stuffed up big time.’
‘Old acquaintance over love of your life?’ He smiled at me quizzically.
‘Forgive me?’
His kiss was reassuring. He squeezed my hand as he ushered me through the door. Soon we were at a table and ordering. Perfect company, perfect food, perfect music, I was thinking as we chatted about his trip, and all the time I was waiting for the right moment to tell him that having missed him intensely, and with my lease up, I was finally ready to move in.
But when we got to dessert our conversation took an unexpected turn. He reached across the table for my hand.
‘Being in Italy, I had time to think. You and me, almost exactly twelve months now.’
My heart lurched at the gravity in his voice, the look in his eyes.
‘But still, after all this time, Nicky, you keep so much to yourself I don’t always feel the connection. I like that you’re so independent. I also wish sometimes you’d rely on me more.’
‘What do you mean, Arno?’
‘I never feel needed.’
‘But I do need you! And I wanted to tell you that I’ve decided—’
‘And family. I’m always talking about mine. You’re the opposite. Like I’ve said before, there is some problem here. This is something we’ve talked about, not so? It’s a fact; I bring more commitment, more effort to this relationship.’
‘But I love you, Arno. The whole time you were away – the whole time – I can’t tell you how much I missed you.’ I faltered, my voice unsteady.
The hiss of the espresso machine and the voices around us created a wall of sound enclosing the tension of our silence.
He reached into his pocket and put a small gift on the table. ‘I’ve been thinking about this with a most heavy heart.’ He took my hand and placed it on his chest while he went on talking, then moved our hands down so that they covered the gift.
‘Arno, wait! I’ve been thinking too! I wanted to tell you, I’m ready to move in, I understand what you’re saying, but I was planning to tell you, I’m not making this up, I’ve been so looking forward to seeing you, to telling you …’
He smiled at me with an awful kindness and stroked my hand. ‘There’s a lot between us that is good.’ He said ‘good’ carefully as though it was made of fragile stuff. ‘But no you at the airport? No you at my place?’ He shook his head. ‘I mean so little that you prioritise someone you’ve never mentioned?’
‘Honestly, I tried so hard to get there. You know I hate being late.’
He spread his hands. ‘Try seeing it from my point of view,’ and he gave me the dimpled smile that kills me every time. ‘I’ve made money fast; you know that by the time I’m forty, I want to be doing something more meaningful, I want to be in the right relationship, I want a big family, Nicky, like the one I come from. I want to be back in Italy.’
I stared out the window, my body rigid. A small headache started up in my right temple. Not for the first time, my heart felt like it was breaking.
He squeezed my hands, little furrows crinkling his forehead.
‘Nicky, wake up! You’re not really living.’ He gave my hands a small shake. ‘We need to get a clearer perspective on this, maybe you need some counselling?’ And he let my hands go.
I reached for my glass of water. Water in a glass is tame. It’s small in there, captured and vulnerable, as opposed to wild water – wilful, determined, accepting no boundaries. Looking up, I shrank him to a tiny dot, so far away his words blurred.
And then, ‘I met someone in Italy. Talking to this person clarified my thoughts.’
The world shifted on its axis.
I gazed at him. He gazed at me. That old familiar feeling of loss and betrayal overwhelmed me again. Time slowed. Sound faded. I stood up and slowly drank that glass of water. Then I reached for my bag, slung it over my shoulder, carefully smoothed down my dress.
‘It’s over,’ I said. And wobbling slightly on my heels, I strode out through that drift of music and voices.
Outside an elderly man was playing something poignant on a saxophone. Noticing me, he gave a small bow and segued into a Leonard Cohen number. The traffic had the sound of the river in it. The song he’d chosen was one of Wheeler’s favourites – something about a book, diamonds, and junk. I stood on the edge of the pavement, flooded by the moment.
‘Abscond, thoughts!’ I said out loud. A pedestrian raised an eyebrow and moved aside.
I focussed on numbing my feelings, on closing down longing, because here was the thing about Arno – he had too much charisma. Every time we went out I’d be hypervigilant. It left me feeling diminished. I’d been stupid to think this issue would fade away once we were living together. And as if I’d ever move to Italy.
Arno had been a big waste of time. ‘Hate you, hate you,’ I muttered, unlocking my car. Then I reached into my bag for a tissue, unable to stem my tears.
At home all I had was a half-finished bottle of wine. Not enough, unfortunately.
4
Gadigal Country (Paddington, Sydney) 2000
In the Bunker
I lay in bed, curtains drawn, not drunk enough for stupor. At some point the phone rang. It was Freya.
‘Have I got you at a bad time?’ she asked. ‘Nicky, are you all right?’ She started asking about work and then paused. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’
‘I’m slightly feverish, that’s all.’
She suggested chicken soup, wondered if Sally had given me the parcel, said she and Steve were thinking about a weekend away at Port Fairy, but that she, too, had not been feeling well.
Steve. The awful second husband. ‘Right,’ I said.
‘I wish you had someone to look after you.’
I listened to her struggle to keep up a one-sided conversation. Then came the dreaded invitation, as usual.
‘Will you think about visiting? You know, when you’re feeling better?’
Sensing from my silence that my position held, she began talking about her cellar needing spring-cleaning. She was teary and the topic was ridiculous.
I cut her off. The disappointment in her voice as she squeezed in her goodbye left me unmoved. My mother always managed to bring out the worst in me.
That night insomnia shattered my sleep into slivers of dark emotion, and as though he was standing at the bottom of my bed, I’d hear Arno talking without being able to decipher the words.
Waking early, I eyed that old journal suspiciously. Back in 1984, my teacher, Mrs Porter, had made me keep a journal while I was on the island, and Nan had later given me leather-bound notebooks she’d bought in Paris, where she’d grown up. During the time my world contracted to her house, she’d urged me to rewrite that island journal, teasing me that she was being for me what she had always wanted for herself: a patron, cultivating the talent she believed I had. She told me that writing weaves magic into memories. Her white hair, when she said this, was caught up in the light, and her blue eyes shone. She had the warmest smile. If you’d asked me what she was like, I would have said she was like a candle.
She brought out the worn map that once steered Wheeler, Freya, and me around the continent. She put the bird-girl sculpture she’d made me on my desk. Quietly, I added my banded pebble, to act as a paperweight.
‘Your touchstone,’ Nan said, her hands on my shoulders. She kissed my head. ‘Now find your heart, lay down your troubles and transform them.’
It was 1986. I was sixteen. I started redrafting my journal but it wasn’t the curative Nan thought it would be. I was riddled with vulnerabilities. The past wrapped itself around me and I couldn’t break free.
5
Gayamaygal Country (Reef Beach, Sydney) 2000
Mouheneenner Country (Hobart) 1984
Pink Fish and a Eucalypt Leaf
Nan’s presence felt palpable as I dragged myself out of bed that hot Sydney morning, made a strong coffee and hesitantly opened the journal. ‘Continental Drift,’ I read. ‘I was born beneath a wild fig tree one humid afternoon …’
Contractual clauses are my language now and with work hours like mine, I barely get time for reading. Yet books had saved me from those ‘lost years’ of drinking, drugs, and a wasted boyfriend. I often failed to make it to class, but in my last year of school I’d pulled off a last-minute pivot and my final marks stunned everyone.
I’d loved the memoirs of writers like Anne Frank, Anaïs Nin, and Vera Brittain. My teacher stressed narrative and dialogue, and these were the influences I’d used to craft my 1984 journal. I was fourteen and regarded as ahead of my peers in English at least, when those events took place that shaped me forever.
I was subdued when I returned to the office; the pain and shame of Arno’s betrayal was acute. The practice is a large one and it can seem impersonal, hostile even, when you’re one of a handful of women and the patriarchy rules with a heavy hand. I placed a large vase of flowers on my desk and held my head high, my disposition dispassionate. Max can be a tyrant. That week his temper jarred everyone, causing tension to ripple through the firm. When he wasn’t muttering about the large client we’d lost, he was uptight about missed deadlines and financially weak clients with large outstanding payments. During case acceptance meetings, desperate to expunge Arno from my mind, I drifted into childhood memories, present in body, my mind on the island.
The week was endless. No evenings with Arno. No calls, no email. I worked until nine, came home and fell into bed. I still had things at his place, but I didn’t feel ready to fetch them.
On the weekend I packed my daypack and, after a moment’s hesitation, picked up the journal. We’d been a family of scribes. Dad kept his ‘writer’s notebooks’ in a series of ledgers and even though he swore my scribbling came from him, Freya’s letters were a form of creative expression that went unacknowledged. She wrote regularly to her sister, Anneke, but as she had no fixed address, many letters were either never sent or came back ‘return to sender’. I’d once found a pile of them at the back of a cupboard and had nicked them, carrying them with me, unread, through various share houses. Now, putting my scruples aside, I plonked them in my daypack before walking out the door.
I headed for small, secluded, Reef Beach at Dobroyd Head, wandering down the bush path, dappled by eucalypt shade, the understory a peacefulness of grass trees, grevillea, and casuarina, listening to the thump of a wallaby, kookaburra laughter, and the small grunts of bush turkeys picking through the undergrowth.
My good luck – the beach was occupied by a heron on the southern reef, but no people. It was low tide. Small, translucent waves broke with a quiet swish. I spread my towel in the fig’s generous shade, then listened for a moment to the magpie perched above me. Banyan. Moreton Bay fig. Ficus macrophylla. Tree with many Indigenous names. The magpie flew off and I wandered down to the water’s edge, seeking the breeze with my cheek, the water’s temperature with my toe, paying respect to the communities of oysters, nerites and limpets inhabiting the pocked and patterned sandstone reefs. There were yachts moored off Forty Baskets beach and at Manly, where the ferry was about to berth. I could see Arno’s apartment block, perched above the water. I took a moment to feel the discomfort of its presence, but soon the beach’s serenity flowed through me. Behind me, bush. Before me, the tranquillity of North Harbour. In the kind shade of that generous tree, I reached for the journal and started reading about the hours Freya used to spend on campus when she was doing her PhD or away on field trips, and how much Wheeler had grumbled.
