Down in the City (21 page)

‘Yes. They had to be in town early.'

‘I haven't seen much of them lately, have you?' Laura looked at her curiously through a cloud of smoke.

‘No.'

The waitress brought their order. After she left they were silent, looking at the formidable dish of lobster mayonnaise, doubting one another.

Grinding her cigarette out, Laura leaned forward again. In a low voice she said, ‘I can trust you, can't I, Rae? You won't repeat it if I tell you something in confidence?'

Uneasily Rachel shook her head. Jealous curiosity and a resolution to defend Laura's integrity from herself combined to make her face unreadable.

Laura looked at her sharply. ‘You're sure?'

Rachel shook her head again. Her face was young and blank. She began to eat.

‘Well,' Laura said, a trifle let down, ‘the other day I was at Cassie Roberts'—you know Cass, don't you?—and guess what I found out? Who do you think I saw? It'll floor you, I can tell you. I nearly had a stroke!' She raised her eyebrows, lowered her voice, ‘Stan Peterson and his girl friend. Same block of flats. She lives next to Cass. There's a piece of news to open your eyes. Not that it's really surprising, I suppose; he's a pretty low type. But what do you think of it?'

Rachel's gaze rested on her for an instant. She chewed stolidly at a piece of lobster. Chewing the last mouthful seemed suddenly to have become a great effort, requiring much patience, time. ‘I don't know. It's awful,' she said at length, without expression.

Really, Laura thought, she's very unsophisticated. Perhaps I shouldn't have told her. She ate for a few moments without speaking, then she said, ‘You didn't know anything about it?'

They exchanged a glance.

‘No. Well. I've been wondering what I should do about it. It's had me worried all week. You know, we're about the only women friends Esther has apart from that stepmother and sister-in-law that she doesn't see very often. I don't know if it wouldn't be better to come from me now, than from someone else when it's too late to do anything about it. You can't carry on like that without the whole world finding out. He's a fool.'

A slight tense frown appeared on Rachel's forehead as her mind moved reluctantly to face what she already knew.

‘You mean…you're going to tell her?'

Laura looked at her carefully, seemed struck by what she saw, and put down her knife and fork. She rested her arms on the table more, it might have been thought, for moral, than physical support.

‘Yes, I think I am. Rae, why don't you try to be a bit kinder? Why do you always sit in judgement? This is a real problem—I can't dodge it. I have to do what I think is right. I don't want to hurt anyone. Has it occurred to you that I might as easily be right as you?'

Rachel went cold, could not lift her eyes, could not move.

‘Sometimes I wonder what you really do think of me. You've got very high standards for me, haven't you? And you're afraid I can't come up to them.'

After another silence Laura moved her hands, picked up her knife and fork. She looked at her plate without attention. When eventually Rachel flashed a look at her, she had about her an air so withdrawn and vulnerable, so undoubtedly genuine, that Rachel's youthful arrogance crashed in panic.

Desolately she pushed some food about on her plate. She brought out at last, ‘No, I only meant
I
wouldn't like to tell Esther.'

‘You don't have to explain to me. I know exactly what you thought.'

After a suffocating pause, Rachel said again, head lowered, ‘I only meant
I
wouldn't like to tell her.'

Laura took a deep breath. Glancing at the crowded room she frowned and said, with an assumption of briskness, ‘No, that would hardly do. You're just a young girl. You can't know how it feels to a woman to know that her man has gone to someone else. It isn't a job that anyone can look forward to—even me.'

She stopped, put aside with her last words the pretence of indifference. ‘Look up. Look at me, Rae. That's right. This has given you a shock. You're not used to the idea of these things happening, are you? But that's not the thing, is it? You think I'll enjoy telling Esther. That's what's wrong with you, isn't it?'

‘No!' Glassily Rachel looked at her. ‘Oh, no, I don't. That wasn't what…I didn't mean…'

‘No?' said Laura lightly. She was silent for a time, then she added, ‘I hope not, Rae…Perhaps, now,
I've
been unkind. You made me angry, though.'

Neither seeming to know after this whether she was the forgiven or the forgiver, both leaned back rather meekly from the table while the waitress clashed dishes over them and stared at herself in the mirrored walls.

When they were alone again Laura said, ‘The truth is, I really believe Esther's better to know. I'm afraid she cares for him, poor girl. I know what it'll mean. I know how I'd feel if it were Bill. I couldn't go on.'

‘Then mightn't it be better to leave it? I mean—it might not have been what you thought. Or it mightn't last. She might be just a friend—the woman you saw.'

The mask of gravity held, broke, and Laura smiled. ‘Do you really think I wouldn't know the difference? Do you?'

Rachel dropped her eyes, despising herself—for with Esther's problem to be thought of it was no time to enjoy herself—but feeling altogether vanquished by the news, Laura's decision, the maternal warmth of her face and voice. She could not not smile.

‘Ah, darling,' Laura laughed a little. ‘If you'd seen the blonde hair and the bust, you wouldn't have doubted either.'

Trying to find her independence, Rachel thought that blonde hair, even dyed, was no crime. And as for busts, after all…

Drawn away by some thought, Laura was silent. She had no intention of telling Rachel that she and Bill had actually quarrelled about this—quarrelled for the first since she couldn't remember when. Not badly. Like her, he had been sorry for Esther. Now he agreed that she should be told, but days had passed and Laura had done nothing. Very soon, though, she would have to speak.

Rachel opened her mouth to ask about Anabel. She felt helpless to persuade Laura to change her mind; doubted the rightness of her own instinct. It might be a kind of cowardice on her part. She concluded that she would achieve not less, perhaps more, by allowing the Petersons to be forgotten. But Laura smiled at her.

‘Cheer up! Eat up that ice-cream and let's get out of here, like a good girl. And don't look so guilty. This is all very sad for Esther, but it's not
our
fault.'

Getting busy with her spoon, Rachel cheered up. ‘Where's Anabel today? Auntie Barbie's? I never get a chance to see her any more and she
had
to be sleepy the other night…'

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The sun was going down when Marion Prescott lifted the sprinkler and carried it to a dry patch of grass. Esther stood by the garden tap and turned it on again when her stepmother had moved out of the way. Trailing back across the lawn she returned to the seat under the jacaranda tree where she had been sitting in the sun all afternoon. Marion joined her, noticing again with concern the extreme thinness of Esther's face and arms, her shadowed eyes. She thought she had never seemed less approachable.

Aloud she said: ‘David and Clem should be home soon, and Hector and Angela promised not to be late.'

Esther half-turned her head to show that she had heard. ‘It's so quiet here after town,' she said at last. ‘I miss the garden.' Raising her arm she pointed to an old gum tree, miraculously spared when the site was cleared for building years before. ‘I used to have a swing on that tree when I was small.'

‘I know. When Phillip and I came to visit your father—oh, how many years ago, twenty-five?—we often saw you there on Sunday afternoons. Do you remember him at all?'

‘Your brother Phillip? Yes. He was nice. He used to tell me stories.'

‘He liked children.'

A family of small birds hopped and fluttered across the lawn until they came within range of the light spray of water thrown by the sprinkler. Esther followed their progress, watched them splash and play and startle one another and fly away a minute or so later.

‘We—Stan and I—had thought of a house with a garden,' she said, leaning forward to pick up a twig.

‘I know, Esther.'

‘David told you?'

‘Do you mind?'

‘No.' Her voice was expressionless. She peeled the rough bark from the stick with restless fingers.

The last rays of the sun lit her face, exposing the tightness of the skin on her cheekbones, the hollowed planes; lit the garden with a strange, pink radiance so that the full-blown roses waving in the evening breeze shone in momentary glory like planets amongst the other flowers.

Noticing the colour in the sky, Esther said mechanically, ‘Another hot day tomorrow.' She dropped the clean, creamy twig to the ground and turned suddenly to Marion. ‘I wish I hadn't come today. Oh, I wanted to see you, Marion, but I can't wait. I can't see them all. I'll have to go. You'll make excuses for me, won't you? There's nothing I could say to them. Please.' She half-started from the seat, in a fever to be gone, but Marion, alarmed by the panic in her eyes, restrained her with a touch of her hand.

‘Of course,' she said calmly, ‘you must go if you want to. They'll be disappointed, but that won't do them any harm. I'm selfish—I've seen you, so I can say that. But perhaps we all tried to hurry this meeting too much. It's our fault.' She looked round the garden, at a loss. The light was fading quickly. ‘They're all so fond of you.'

‘Fond?'

‘They are afraid of losing you altogether,' Marion said.

‘Are they? I wonder why. I suppose because they feel they should be. It's more likely that they feel I'm an embarrassment. But they're kind, aren't they? They're nice. I don't know.'

Marion was silent.

Esther said, ‘I'll go now—by the back lane.'

She stood up and Marion walked with her round the side of the house to the small lattice gate. Esther could smell the wet grass and the sun-dried hedge whose leaves she had idly plucked and pleated years before.

‘I'm sorry to go like this, Marion. Please forgive me. It isn't that I'm trying to hide anything from them; they know more about our affairs than I do myself I've no doubt—men are so thorough. But there's nothing to say now. No point…'

‘In a few weeks it may seem different to you,' Marion said, affecting to believe what she did not.

‘I don't think so. You must see how it is,' she said in a flat, exhausted voice.

In the brief twilight of luminous blue both women found it easier to speak than during the brilliant afternoon, and Marion asked, ‘May I come to see you soon?'

‘Yes, of course, any afternoon.' The response was swift and polite, but a moment later she touched her stepmother's hand and said, ‘I'd really like you to.' Then, again speaking rapidly, as if hastening away from her own thoughts, she said, ‘What exactly did David tell you, Marion?'

Marion stirred. ‘Why make yourself more unhappy, Esther? It would be better to leave it. I'd rather.'

‘I suppose you're right,' she said, gazing unseeing at the ground. ‘I wish David's principles had not been so high. Stan never hurts anyone but himself with all his business dealings. He's never been in trouble. He's never robbed anyone. He just isn't David, that's all. He hasn't had time for principles.'

‘David meant well, I know. He was thinking of you.'

Opening the gate, Esther walked slowly into the lane. ‘It isn't really enough, is it? Meaning well. Don't let them discuss—anything tonight, will you?'

They embraced and she was gone, past the high fences and the overhanging trees, the solid mansions' leafy gardens and lighted windows.

When Marion Prescott said that Esther had not waited to see them, Hector went immediately to the telephone, but there was no reply from her number.

‘She won't be there yet,' David said. ‘I think I'll drive over and catch her before she goes in. I'll bring her back.'

Clem and Marion both said, ‘No!' And Clem went on, ‘I don't think so, David. We should leave her alone. It's what she wants and it's probably the best thing we can do for her. We should accept it. Give her a few more weeks.'

Hector could see that Angela was annoyed: they had cancelled another dinner engagement to come this evening, but his feeling of dismay sprang from a deeper cause than his wife's surface annoyance. She was a pretty woman who thought herself beautiful. Several times she had been on the short list of the year's best-dressed women: apart from that she was very similar to most of her friends. Hector knew that since the day he had confided to her the substance of David's interview with Peterson, Angela had set about a reconstruction of her opinion of his sister. A certain unadmitted respect turned to pity, this gave way to disdain, and that again to irritation; lastly came rancour, and fear that she and Hector might be involved in some way in a scandal.

Hector lit a cigarette and looked across at her as she sat twirling the thin stem of her glass between her fingers, shooting him glances of exasperation and reproach. He sighed imperceptibly.

Clem was Marion's ally this evening as on other occasions. Feeling her appeal he roused himself to draw his brothers into general conversation. When the talk turned to politics even Angela dropped her sulky pose. She had a second cousin who was a Liberal MP and, she said, rather a sweet thing. He would make a handsome Prime Minister.

Marion, relieved to see that David no longer slumped in his chair, listened and interposed a comment now and then.

The men, discussing war, looked up, startled, and then smiled slowly when she said, ‘So stimulating—war. You don't think that there's a moral value in pacificism—taken to its furthest extremes—that might have an equally strong effect?'