Now You See Me (22 page)

Judith adjusts her shirt collar and eases on her severe black jacket. She looks over her shoulder at Tess, who has pulled a pillow over her head.

‘Aren’t you teaching today?’

There’s a smothered groan from the bed. ‘Not until eleven. When are you going to stop rattling about?’

Judith smiles. She crosses the room and lifts off the pillow. She sits and runs her fingers through Tess’s soft pale hair. Tess pushes her face deeper into the mattress.

‘Rosa said she saw you at Gus Farrell’s sentencing. I wish you wouldn’t do this to yourself, my darling.’

Tess makes an exasperated sound and half sits up. ‘I wish you would let me sleep, but you won’t. Anyway, it’s no
t
doin
g
anything to myself. I like to see them punished, creeps like Farrell; it makes me feel good.’

Judith frowns and withdraws her caressing hand. ‘Tess, this is the third or fourth time in a year you’ve gone off to court to watch a trial or a sentencing without telling me, and I’ve found out about it accidentally. I’m worried about it. It feels like an obsession to me.’

Tess scowls at her. ‘I don’t have to ask your permission. Do I? The courts are public. Anyone’s allowed to go.’ She heaves herself away to the other side of the bed.

‘If you told me, I could come with you,’ Judith says softly, looking down at her hands. ‘Or, if not, we could meet for a coffee later.’

‘Leave me alone,’ Tess is almost shouting. ‘You’re not my keeper. I’m a grown woman; I can do what I like and go where I want. I’m sick of the way yo
u
watc
h
over me.’

‘Darling, don’t.’Judith reaches for Tess’s hand and begins stroking it. ‘Look, I’ve been thinking ... do you remember Fran? She used to be married to Mick Morgan. She was around vaguely when we were students.’

‘Yes, I know who Fran is. And I know she’s a shrink. And I know what you’re going to say next, so don’t bother.’ Tess is clutching the sheet now, her eyes wide with hostility.

Judith sighs and looks sideways at her watch. She’s due in court in half an hour. ‘All right. I’m sorry. But at least think about it, won’t you? You’re ... you know you haven’t been yourself lately. Not entirely.’ She leans over and puts a finger to Tess’s mouth. ‘No, don’t deny it, sweetheart. You know I wouldn’t hurt you in a million years, but you have to face it. For your own good.’ She stands and picks up her briefcase from the dresser.

Tess flops an arm over her eyes and laughs
.
‘Fo
r
m
y
ow
n
goo
d
. How did I know you were going to say that? You’re so predictable. I’m sick to death of it. Slotting in a deep and meaningful before work. You’ll be bringing champagne and roses home tonight, too, I suppose.’

Judith flushes. She had been thinking of something special this evening — it would probably have come down to flowers and wine. ‘I have to go,’ she says. ‘Will you be home tonight?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps. Where else is there to go?’

‘Where you usually go. One of your dyke dives.’

Tess lifts her arm away from her eyes to stare at her. ‘God, a flash of genuine anger for once. You’ll be hitting me next.’ She jerks her head at Judith’s reaction. ‘Oh, don’t look at me like that. It was a joke. Piss off. Go to work. Put someone behind bars.’ She holds out her arms and they kiss. Judith closes the bedroom door gently behind her.

*

Tess sits up in bed with her back pressed against the cold wall until she hears Judith’s car backing out of the driveway. Perhaps she should go to see Fran, or if not Fran, someone like her. Or perhaps she should just move out, today, before Judith gets home, leave a note on the kitchen table. She hugs her knees and brings them up under her chin
.
N
o
, she thinks, without passion
,I
nee
d
Judit
h.I
nee
d
thi
s
comfortabl
e
hous
e
an
d
he
r
endles
s
irksom
e
forgivenes
s.I
nee
d
th
e
structur
e
sh
e
provide
s.
He
r
unwaverin
g
loyalt
y
. But she needs other things as well, and it’s true that she has not been managing lately.

She gets out of bed and goes to the dresser. She fumbles under neatly folded clothes until she finds the small, creased package. She shakes a lumpy line of powder onto the back of her hand and sniffs hard, twice, then licks the rest up. She gazes at herself in the mirror, watching her eyes grow round, her pupils dilate. She finds herself beautiful like this; she can understand why most of her students are in love with her. Perhaps she will come home after her classes. Perhaps she will forgive Judith this time and make her evening memorable. Or perhaps she will go bar-hopping and pick up some exciting, dangerous drifter. Her reflected image widens its mouth into a delighted smile. ‘Who knows?’ she says to he
r
doppelgänge
r
. ‘Who knows?’

*

Rosa runs into Judith outside Court Three and they decide to go over the road for coffee.

‘We never see each other,’ Judith says when they are seated, outside on the street, because she still smokes. She lights a cigarette now and inhales the first mouthful deeply. ‘I mean, we bump into each other here. And there are the picnics, but I feel I’ve lost touch with everyone, really.’

‘Me too,’ Rosa says. ‘It’s partly being in a couple, I think. And working. You go home and you’re buggered and you have a couple of drinks and you forget there are people you’d like to talk to. Outside the home. You forget ther
e
i
s
a life outside.’

‘Well, you’ve got kids too,’ Judith says. ‘You’ve got some excuse. How’s Tom?’

‘Fine, as far as I know. He’s left me. He’s living with Carly.’

Their cups of coffee are put on the table and Rosa begins to stir sugar into hers.

‘You’re joking,’ Judith stubs out her half-smoked cigarette. She looks across the street to the decorative court building, once an emporium. Television cameras and reporters are grouped on the steps, waiting for the participants in some trial to emerge. She’s uneasily aware that she is still wearing her gown and hopes they don’t decide to include her as some background colour. She pushes her barrister’s wig off and puts it underneath the table, shaking out her perfectly cut hair so that it sways and falls back into its precise shape.

‘Did you know her well?’ Rosa asks. ‘Carly, I mean.’

‘At university? No, not really. I mostly hung out with Mick and the other law students. Carly was doing straight Arts, wasn’t she?’

‘And psychology,’ Rosa says. ‘Then she dropped out and did nursing. She was a psych nurse for a while, now she’s an administrator.’

‘I always thought she was a dyke,’ Judith says. ‘I remember coming on to her once at a party, but she wasn’t interested. I thought she and Tess had something going for a while.’ She grips her coffee mug tightly, remembering the insane nights of jealousy.

Rosa is surprised. ‘Tess? But Carly had boyfriends ... Didn’t she have a thing with Mick for a while? Isn’t that how we all met her?’

‘Yeah, I know. She ha
d
lot
s
of boyfriends. So did Tess, secretly. No-one we knew — mostly rough trade she picked up in bars. It took Tess a while to realise who she was
.
Wha
t
she was.’

‘And you were waiting,’ Rosa says, understanding. ‘Were you in love with her all that time?’

Judith wonders about it. ‘I suppose so. Since school, in fact. Did you know we were at school together, too?’

Rosa shakes her head. ‘I hardly knew anything about anyone. At first I was too busy doing dope and drinking and having a good time. Then I met Tom and my world narrowed to him.’ She smiles. ‘Not a very good feminist model.’ She puts her hand on Judith’s arm. ‘But go on. This is interesting. Fancy loving someone all that time.’

‘More lust than love, then,’ Judith says. ‘It was like that pop song — you know ... “I’ll be watching you”. Every move you make, etc. At school Tess was a star athlete. She was beautiful, the golden girl. No — the silver girl, really, I suppose, with her colouring. She arrived in the second-last year and swept the floor of all the previous idols. Unhealthy atmospheres, girls’ schools.’

‘Is she still painting?’ Rosa remembers a student exhibition and disturbing semi-surrealist monsters leering from ruined, smoking wrecks of buildings.

‘No. She teaches Art History.’ Judith is silent for a while, brooding. ‘At least, I don’t think she is. She keeps things from me. There are days on end when I don’t see her. For all I know, she’s got a studio somewhere and she’s the next Frida Kahlo.’

‘Tom kept secrets from me, too,’ Rosa says. She has a sudden passion to confide. ‘He came home late at night. Some nights he didn’t come home at all. He wasn’t in his room at university when he said he would be. He lied about when he had to give lectures or go to meetings. He’d be keyed up and tense for weeks and then overnight he’d be different, relaxed, as if there’d been some catharsis. He was impotent with me for the last year. He swore he didn’t have a lover, yet three months after we split up he’s back living with Carly.’

‘Tess goes to gay bars,’ Judith says. ‘She picks up young women, strangers, goes home with them. She fucks her students — wome
n
an
d
men. For two years she had another long-term lover. She spent half her week with her and half with me. I thought I’d go mad.’

‘But you’ve stuck it out,’ Rosa says. ‘I couldn’t, in the end. I told Tom to go.’

‘Twelve years,’Judith says. ‘And now I wonder if it’s been worth it. She lies to me. I see contempt in the way she looks at me.’

‘Why do you put up with it?’

Judith swills her coffee dregs and lights another cigarette. ‘She had a rotten childhood,’ she says, almost as if changing the subject. She goes on in staccato sentences. ‘Incest and abuse. When her parents died she was sent to live with an aunt. That’s how she came to my school. She was still traumatised then. What seemed to me like a delicious aloofness was just shock. People think she’s remote, cold, but she’s not. She’s withdrawn to survive. She went to a psychiatrist for years. After university she was on heroin for a while. She had affairs with unstable men, sadists. Everyone in her life betrayed her ...’

‘And you feel you have to make up for that? It’s a big thing to take on.’

‘Well, it’s similar with you and Tom, isn’t it? Didn’t he have the same sort of history?’

‘Tom?’ Rosa is staggered. ‘What do you mean? His parents died when he was quite young and he was brought up by relatives, I think, but ... what on earth do you mean?’ Judith is furious with herself. She has been less than honest. There had been a period after Tom went back to Rosa when Judith had seen Carly fairly frequently, before she started living with Tess. She had been half in love with Carly; ringing her, making appointments for coffee, to see films, go for a drive. Carly had been full of bitterness about Tom, scornful towards Rosa, deliberately indiscreet, scattering confidences like dry sour dust.

‘Oh, shit,’ Judith says. ‘It ... it must have been when you and Tom were separated. Everyone went through a sort of wild stage. Drugs and too much booze. They used to joke about it. Tom and Tess and Paddy. They called themselves the AOKs — do you remember that?’ She’s treading carefully around only half of the truth.

Rosa shakes her head. ‘No. What did it stand for?’

‘Abused Only Kids. They’d all been knocked around, had therapy, ended up with relatives or foster parents. Sometimes they called themselves the Survivors. It was ... I don’t know. A phase in their healing, I suppose. A sick joke they carried on with when they were stoned or drunk, jeering at the rest of us because we’d led such sheltered lives. Outdoing each other with stories of the things they’d endured. Not that Tom said all that much, when I think of it.’ She ashes her cigarette and laughs. ‘Mick used to get furious with them. He said they were wankers. He said in his family it wasn’t called abuse, it was just knowing you were alive.’

Rosa can hardly take it in. ‘Mick was an abused child, too?’

‘Well, he said he used to get beaten just about every day when he was a kid. His dad had some sort of war trauma, and his mother was a bible-basher. The others said he couldn’t be one of them because he had a sister, and they were each the only child.’ She looks at her watch. ‘It’s interesting how they all gravitated together, isn’t it? As if they recognised something in each other. Listen, Rosa, I have to go now. I’ve got to meet some cops about their evidence for a drug prosecution.’ She puts money on the table for their coffees, brushing aside Rosa’s attempt to pay for hers. She retrieves her wig from the pavement and dusts it off. ‘Come to dinner one night, will you? Let’s get to know each other properly at last.’