We All Fall Down (33 page)

Despite living as frugally as possible, he was astonished by the number of bills that continued to pour into his letterbox. People might be slow to pay him for work he did, yet everyone was very fast at demanding money off him: for gas and electricity, home phone and mobile, house rates and water rates, and of course the omnipresent, hugely looming mortgage payments every month. Every man and his dog demanded money off him, and they all demanded it
now
.

Less than a year after paying off two credit cards and a bank overdraft by refinancing his mortgage, he was once again overdrawn and his credit card (now only one) was also creeping up towards its limits. It had been a long time since he paid off his credit card in full every month: now he only paid the minimum amount. Once he missed a payment altogether and was slammed with both interest and a thirty-five dollar non-payment fee. When he phoned up and complained (taking almost half an hour to get through to a complete stranger who greeted him enthusiastically with – ‘Hi, Hugh! How's your day been?'), he was told there was nothing that could be done about it: it was an automatic computer charge and couldn't be reversed. Such conversations, and the feeling of helplessness they engendered, only added fuel to his hatred for banks.

He felt there really wasn't an option. He had to sell the house.

They'd bought the house at the height of the property boom, when property prices were increasing at around twenty per cent a year. It was now 2007, and from what he'd heard the market had already dropped by twenty-five per cent or more from its peak. If they sold now, it would be for tens of thousands of dollars less than they'd paid for the place. Hugh was philosophical about such thoughts. Like so much else in the modern world, he felt he had no say in the matter, no power to influence the outcome. They, the people above him, above everyone, somewhere up there – those in charge – had decided that this was the way it was going to be, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

14

At first, her feelings towards him changed almost imperceptibly, but as the weeks went past, the descent from positive to negative became increasingly measurable. Although she had been the instigator of the separation, she was furious with Hugh for living apart from them, for not being there when they needed him. She missed him to start with, at times almost ached for him, then, perversely, after a few months more, she came to miss him not quite as much. From very briefly revelling in her independence, she began to hate him for leaving her alone to look after Tim. It was hard work on your own. Finally, almost unconsciously, she started to live a life in which he had no part, or if he did have a part, it was very much on the periphery, a distant figure on the horizon. From thinking, when she saw or did something interesting during the day, or when Tim progressed another step along the path of childhood, she changed, unwittingly, from,
I must tell Hugh about this
to,
I must tell mum and dad about this
. It was slow and subtle, as these things always are; a lulling and a drifting, like a boat in the middle of a lake on a calm day.

When she called him, their conversations were often awkward. Yet he never seemed to have a problem talking to their son. The four year old would clutch the phone to his ear and say nothing, nothing at all. He'd sit with a beatific, wide-eyed smile on his face as if, simply by listening to his father, he'd been transported to some earthly, childish paradise.

‘What were you saying to him for goodness sake?' she asked when she eventually managed to wrest the phone from her son's jammy grip.

‘I was telling him about Dante. How I take him for walks on the beach, and he hunts amongst the sand dunes and grass looking for Tim.'

‘That's sweet.' After a short pause, ‘And how is Dante?'

She found it hard to believe that she felt compelled to fall back on discussing the welfare of a dog, but knew that whenever they talked about themselves the conversation became different, more stilted.

‘How are you doing?'

‘I'm good,' he'd reply. ‘And you?'

‘We're fine. Any luck on the job front?'

‘Seeing a few people. Trying to keep positive.'

And so it would go. Nothing meaningful was said, or nothing that was going to carry them through their difficult times to a place of safety and reconciliation. After such phone calls she felt resentful.
Why doesn't he make more of an effort? He's obviously withholding information about his life in order to punish me
. And from there it was a short step to believing it was up to him to phone her –
if
he was willing to put himself out to win her back. Of course, if he didn't want to talk, that was fine too. She was happy to talk, in fact wanted to talk, but it was up to him to make the effort. She couldn't be expected to do everything. She wanted him to fight for her, for their marriage, not just stand around – as he was doing – and let things happen. He also had to sort himself out – whatever that might mean – and then she might agree to them getting back together and making another go of it. Really, it was quite simple.

There were times when she thought of calling him, but didn't. And she didn't know why. Once she did feel the need to talk and did call him. It was late in the evening, and he wasn't there.
That's strange
, she thought,
it's after ten. He should be there
. Even though they weren't living together, she was annoyed he wasn't home. She would never have admitted this to herself, but she could only cope with living apart from Hugh if she knew that he was still there for her, if he was, figuratively speaking, just around the corner and still available. She needed that security. What was he doing? It could be something to do with looking for work, of course, but it only took her a second or two for the possibility that he'd found a woman to become uppermost in her mind. Was he out with someone right now, still having dinner? Or maybe they were already back at her place? A picture of her naked husband, thrusting on top of a giggling, writhing, taut twenty year old, briefly flashed before her. Could she have been replaced already?

From there it was a small step to beginning to despise him for not seeing Tim. How could he bear to let his own son drop out of his life so completely? He had played such an important part in their son's life during his first few years, getting up for him in the middle of the night, changing his nappy, feeding him, taking him for walks – sometimes even runs, in his stroller – and reading him stories at night. She worried about Hugh's absence and the effect it would have on Tim. On these occasions, she blamed herself as much as she blamed her husband. In the early days of their separation her son continually asked, ‘Where's daddy?' especially in the mornings and in the evenings. She told him that he was at home or at work and that they'd see him soon. This she honestly believed. But her answers didn't satisfy the small boy for long. ‘Where's daddy?' he asked with increasing insistence. She came to dread hearing those two words.

‘How can he not see his own son?' she asked her mother. ‘How can he punish Tim like this? Because that's what he's doing, he's punishing his own son.'

‘Men are like that, darling. They're different to us. Women could never do such a thing.'

‘Tim's really upset, I'm convinced of it. He doesn't say much, but I know.'

‘Why don't you phone Hugh then?'

‘I don't think it's up to me, mother. It's up to him. He has to choose if he wants to see Timmy.' But it went round and round in her head.
He says he doesn't want to upset Tim by seeing him, so he doesn't see him, and so Tim gets upset. That sounds like rubbish to me. It's surely better that our son keeps in touch with his father, and gets a little upset when they say goodbye, than that they never see each other? That's common sense, surely?

Shortly after she moved to Woollahra, her father started to attempt to make decisions for her, major as well as minor ones. He again tried to run her life, just as he'd done prior to her marriage. But she was a mature woman now, thirty years old, married and with a child, and she was determined not to let this happen. She resisted him, fought actively against him, and clung to her hard-earned independence. The advantage was that by now she knew all his ploys, so it was difficult for him to get under her guard. Oh yes, this time around she was well prepared to beat him at his own game, to withstand the onslaught of the control freak patriarch.

‘He means well, darling,' her mother said, trying to mollify their daughter. With lowered voice, even though her husband was out of the house, she agreed that her daughter shouldn't let him make all the decisions in her life, that she was right to hang on to some vestige of independence, if only imaginary, despite the fact that she, her mother, had capitulated totally and irrevocably some thirty-five years earlier. When Kate's father returned home from whatever important matter he had been dealing with, it was as if such conversations had never taken place. Her father would say something, often critical, sometimes derogatory about Hugh, and her mother, positioned at his side, would nod her head as eagerly as a stuffed dog on the back window ledge of a passing car.

Kate protested. She pointed out that her husband had many fine qualities. ‘He's a wonderful father, you know, and he absolutely dotes on Tim.' She said this as if the fact might have escaped her parents, then added, echoing her mother, ‘He does mean well.' Her father, at the head of the table, even though it was a round one, masticated his food thoughtfully, possibly weighing up the evidence but more likely the flavours of whatever it was he was eating, before finally replying, ‘I'm sure he does.' This was said, Kate couldn't help but notice, in a voice that lacked any semblance of conviction, as if he was still in court listening to the prosecution put its case and was determined (interpreting his reaction in the most favourable light) to remain unswayed by their arguments.

Her father was a past master of suggestion, of avoiding the direct assault and working his way round the oratorical flanks to attack from the side or rear. Subtlety and innuendo were his weapons of choice, although whether these linguistic manoeuvres were carried out consciously or unconsciously was difficult to ascertain. It was possible he didn't know himself.

His comments about Hugh were made in an underhand, suggestive manner, never openly. His was the calm voice of reason, of compromise and negotiation. ‘Let's be sensible and rational about this,' he'd say in his most sensible and rational voice, or, ‘We need to talk about this calmly,' said in the calmest of voices. He was good at stating his case. ‘You have to think of yourself and Tim. He's our number one priority, darling – our grandson. Don't worry yourself about your husband. He'll be fine.'

His wife was enthusiastic in her endorsement of these views. ‘He's so right, Kate, we must take care of Timmy.' But the main reason she was being happy with her husband's comments was because they lacked any hint of confrontation. She was fond of her son-in-law, and prayed the couple would get back together again – although ‘things are so different nowadays. There's no commitment, not like in our day.' There again she didn't feel as passionately about Hugh's cause as to be willing to take on her husband. So her support for her son-in-law was offered from well behind the front lines, her half-hearted gestures of encouragement proffered from a safe distance at the rear. She'd given up open confrontation with her husband many decades earlier, but this didn't prevent her, early on in the separation, when her daughter and grandson first came to live with them, from tentatively suggesting to Kate that she might like to ask Hugh over for dinner. ‘He can stay the night with us. It must get lonely for him in that big house all by himself.'

Kate refused, not because she didn't want to see her husband, but because she knew how ill at ease he could be with her parents, even after six years of knowing them. If they were going to attempt to patch up their differences, then it was more likely to be achieved on their own, away from her parents' prying eyes and meddling good intentions.

Once or twice, around this time, her father did attack front on, perhaps expecting his adversary, his own daughter, to be too tired or too weakened by previous skirmishes to put up a struggle. This was how he'd won in the past. So he was surprised by the severity of her response.

‘Stay out of this, father. I'm married to Hugh. Tim is our son, not yours. And I will make the decisions to do with my marriage and my child.'

Her father, palms open and raised in abject surrender, stepped back, pain, intermingled with innocence on his face, as if to demonstrate how horrified he was that she could even think he had any desire to interfere. He protested. ‘I'm only saying … I was trying to help, darling … Nothing could have been further from my mind …' But she wasn't fooled. She knew him well enough to know he would bide his time.

The days passed with agonising slowness. Yet the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, and in every one of them she experienced another mood swing. Much of the time she was lonely and afraid, worried about the future and fearful of having to bring up Timmy alone. At other times, in the later months, the pain of separation grew less.

Just prior to Christmas, late one afternoon, Wilma answered the phone and started frantically raising her eyebrows at her daughter, silently mouthing words and pointing to the handset as if it was about to perform some impressive trick. From these manoeuvres Kate deduced that her husband must be on the other end of the line. After being compelled to listen to a few painful minutes of polite chitchat (‘Yes, the weather is wonderful right now, Hugh, but we do need some more rain – my roses!'), her mother handed over the phone. Kate didn't bother with the polite chitchat. ‘Hello. Why are you calling?'