The Tower Mill (23 page)

SUSAN

2002

Was there ever
a more fraught role to play than the partner of the father of the bride – and in a foreign country, too, amid a language that could deliver the stiletto’s thrust with such charm? No doubt, the Parisians had a title for what I was, a variation of
La Bitch
, most likely. Torment would be lingering, as well, because we’d arrived well ahead of the wedding so Robert could be part of the excitement, and he adored Sabine, in any case.

Fortunately, the solution proved both acceptable and very welcome.

‘
Je vais rendre visite
à
mon fils,
à
Londres pendant quelques jours
,’ I announced after one night’s penance among the aunts. ‘
C’est possible qu’il y ait un mariage bient
ô
t
,’ I couldn’t help adding.

Tom was waiting for me at Kennington tube station. My God, look at him, I wanted to shout at everyone within earshot. He was no taller, but the self-assurance made him seem so, a man to pick out among others – or was that a mother’s bias? I embraced the feeling and welcomed his long arms around me, hugged him, clung to him as much as our coats would allow. It was early April, but the sun was gone for the day and there was a bite in the air.

The business of the moment was Hilary, however, and I pulled away quickly to smile at the young woman who watched us with an anxious smile. Despite the darkness, she stood out in a red coat and beret, so much more lively than my mania for black.

She offered kisses and the right words: ‘So good to meet you, nothing like I expected.’ She was almost trembling as she delivered her lines.

I had my own stock phrases ready, as well, and delivered them on cue at the dinner table after Hilary had pulled out all stops with a culinary welcome.

‘Fabulous,’ I declared. ‘How did you do the peppers?’ They’d been stuffed with mushrooms and some herb I couldn’t identify.

‘Aren’t they great?’ gushed Hilary. ‘And so easy. The secret is to cook them slowly.’

I nodded politely at this advice and wondered whether a comment about the fish would be overdoing things. Hilary, however, wasn’t finished with the entree.

‘You won’t find the recipe in any cookbook, either. It’s a traditional peasant dish from Slovakia. A woman at work wrote it all down for me,’ she said, and before I could stop her, she’d run to the kitchen to fetch it. ‘I’ll write you out a copy, if you like.’

The name of the mystery herb would have been enough.

I glanced towards Tom, who had seen my embarrassment, but he treated the whole thing as an excuse to chuckle at both of us. If Hilary had seen this exchange, she might have pulled back a bit, but no, she continued to monopolise the chatter, and the wine bottle, until ten o’clock, then dumbfounded me further by saying, ‘Oh, you two must have so much to catch up on,’ and promptly waved her way off to bed.

In the morning, she looked pale. Hung-over, I decided, until an alternative shook me. Oh Christ, she’s not pregnant, is she?

‘Did you pick up the drycleaning?’ Tom called while he was getting dressed.

‘Damn, I forgot again,’ came the sheepish reply.

Tom made a further comment, which I couldn’t make out, but the tone hinted at exasperation.

I was being unfair, I decided. Shouldn’t have been listening in to their domestic back and forth like this. I withdrew to my room, closing the door after me until a knock called me to breakfast. Hilary was half dressed for work and half for a return to bed, a decision Tom was having no luck helping her to resolve. Eventually, she opted for work and went off towards the tube station, utterly cured by a bowl of cereal, it seemed.

Was she enough for Tom? I didn’t want him to sell himself short.

Oh, shut up, Susan, and enjoy the reunion. Tom had taken the day off.

‘Hilary is worried she made a fool of herself last night,’ he confided over a mid-morning coffee. ‘It’s only nerves. Your reputation alone is enough to intimidate, Mother Susan,’ he teased. ‘Heavyweight journalist, confidante of kingmakers. She tried too hard to impress you. Things will be better tonight.’

And, at first, they were. ‘We thought we’d take you out for dinner,’ Tom announced. ‘An Indian place. Used to be John Major’s favourite restaurant when he was prime minister.’

‘Is that recommendation or condemnation?’ I asked, with a roll of my eyes.

‘Depends on your politics,’ said Hilary. ‘Doesn’t seem to be bipartisan, because we’ve never seen Tony Blair in the booth next door. At least you won’t have to share your
vindaloo
with the secret service.’ She was smiling confidently as she said this, which I put down to a pep talk from Tom.

The Kennington Tandoori wasn’t far. ‘You two know the menu. Order for me,’ I commanded. This was going to be fun. ‘Where’s that waiter? What’ll you have to drink?’

I downed the first beer as though I was back in Bindamilla and teased Tom that he couldn’t keep pace with me, which he trumped by finishing his in a single gulp and ordering two more.

Hilary sipped at a Diet Coke. Shit, she might be pregnant after all; I hadn’t had the gall to ask Tom during our day together. For a moment I was chilled by visions of airheaded granddaughters.

The food came, and over
aloo paratha
and prawn
balti
Hilary’s twenty-nine years slowly yielded to my journalist’s probing. She was a Brisbane girl, Dad with one of the banks, Mum a pharmacist, two sisters, no brothers; she wished they’d come for a visit, just as I was here now.

‘You miss them?’

‘Of course.’

‘Why don’t you go see
them
instead?’

This provoked a glance towards Tom, I noticed, but we were soon on to other things. Questioner became the questionee and I quite enjoyed the interrogation. No, I wasn’t giving up writing, just moving to a more leisurely focus. My first feature, a sad piece about Alzheimer’s, had appeared in the weekend supplement only last week.

Later, as we waited for coffee, Tom asked, ‘How long did you actually live in London?’

I sat back to count the time, since he sounded serious and a vague figure wouldn’t do. ‘Let’s see. Left in . . . ’83. Two years in Washington, which puts me in London about this time in ’85. I went back to watch Fitzgerald light the bonfire under Joh and that was . . . Must have been here close to three years.’

‘You didn’t have any problems with your passport? Work permits, that sort of thing?’ he asked, once again with more seriousness than the question warranted.

‘It’s not an issue for a foreign correspondent,’ I explained.

He accepted this with a wince around his eyes and asked no more, but the topic, and his disappointment at my reply, were out there now.

‘Why? Are the immigration people hassling you?’

‘No,’ Hilary answered for him.

I was more aware, this time, of the look between them and the sharpness of her reply. Tom plunged ahead, however.

‘No hassles yet, but only as long as I stay with the Crown Prosecutor. They’ve convinced Immigration that I’m doing work no local can do, which isn’t quite true but it’s the way the system works.’

‘Then why the question about passports?’

‘Because I’m hoping to stay longer, maybe move to the bar. Hilary has an English grandfather so she can stay as long as—’

‘So do you,’ I said, enjoying the way I’d silenced him so abruptly.

Tom looked flummoxed. ‘Grandad Kinnane? He was born in the backblocks of Queensland, wasn’t he? Are you telling me all that hardship in the good old Aussie bush was bullshit?’

‘Everyone has two grandfathers,’ I said, making him work it out for himself.

‘You mean Dad’s father is English? I never noticed any accent.’

‘If you mean Rob Riley, then of course you didn’t. I’m talking about your
real
grandfather.’

Even as the words were leaving my mouth, I scrambled to retrieve them. My eyes flew to Hilary, then quickly lost their panic when there was no sign of confusion.

‘Don’t worry. Hilary knows the story,’ said Tom. But he was eager for the rest of
my
story. ‘You mean Terry’s father, the Stoddards?’

‘They were from Yorkshire, one of the hard mining towns. You never knew your grandmother, thanks to bloody Mike, so you never heard her accent. In fact, you’ve got more than English grandparents. Terry was born here, before they emigrated.’

‘Are you serious? I never thought about it, just assumed . . . Jesus, I can get more than extended residence, I can have a British passport.’

I was thrilled to be the one to give him the news, and, swept along with his enthusiasm, I added, ‘All you have to do is get your birth certificate changed. Shouldn’t be hard for a lawyer. I’ll sign a statement. Whatever you need.’

Hilary remained quiet, although there was more going on behind her solemn face than even a journalist’s antennae could pick out. The coffee came and was merely sipped at while our bill was prepared, then it was out into the April night. The rain seemed all the colder by the sudden contrast with the warmth of the restaurant, and we hadn’t thought to bring an umbrella. Heads down, we hurried into the squall.

‘I don’t know what you want to live here for, Tom,’ said Hilary, while we waited to cross a busy road. ‘You’ve got to be born to this kind of weather. Never get used to it. I’d go home tomorrow if it was up to me.’

I’d felt the same when caught on rain-swept corners twenty years ago, but it was Hilary’s final words that lingered in my ears. There was something I’d missed about the passport business.

TOM

On that long flight from Heathrow in 2003, I carried two passports, one with the diplomatic blue of Australia, the other, British red. That red passport had caused me no end of trouble in the eighteen months beforehand, not through all the red tape, but in the arguments it stirred in Kennington. I don’t think Dad was half as hurt by the whole thing as Hilary.

I shouldn’t forget Mum among the wounded, either. She phoned me at six one morning to explain exactly what she thought of the statutory declaration I’d asked Dad to sign, while Hilary stood close by in her dressing gown, arms folded and face as cold as the dawn outside. God knows, I deserved her frowns, but I wanted that passport and I didn’t see how it could threaten our relationship. There was no doubting what we felt for one another. We were comfortable together; our friends actually used that word about us, to our faces, no less. When your social circle were all between twenty-five and thirty-five, that was the way your life went; people partnered up, tied the knot, got on with it. There had been times Hilary and I hadn’t bothered to explain that we
weren’t
married, when the assumption was so naturally made.

As far as she was concerned that passport was the enemy, and she started in with guerilla tactics against it. On one of our regular visits to the Kennington Tandoori, she pointed out, with heavy sarcasm, ‘They have Indian restaurants in Australia, you know. Good ones. It’s not all
rogan josh
and chicken
tikka masala
.’

Only the week before, she’d read aloud from the
Guardian
about Australian chefs matching it with the world’s best, and the pick of the crop was some new place off Adelaide Street.

‘See that, Tom?’ she insisted, shoving the paper under my nose. ‘In Brisbane!’

Another time, while we were walking and a chill breeze chased her hands inside her pockets, she’d told me, ‘I want to have kids one day, Tom, and I don’t want to walk them to school in the dark and the freezing rain. England’s been fun, but it’s not for the long term, not for Australians like you and me.’

‘I’m only half Australian,’ I’d said stupidly.

‘Bullshit! You didn’t even know where your father was born until Susan told you. Besides, it’s Queensland you’ve got the problem with.’

She walked on beside me for half a block, shoring up her courage. ‘It’s time you got over it, Tommy,’ she said, a catchphrase I was rapidly coming the loathe. ‘This whole business with your father, it’s a tragedy, an injustice, it burns a hole right through you, I know, but you can’t hold an entire people to account. That’s what’s at the bottom of all this, isn’t it? You can’t go home because you feel let down by the whole bloody state.’

‘No, that’s not it. I don’t give a damn about Queensland.’

This only seemed to exasperate her: ‘Then why do you go on about the place so much?’ she said, pulling her hands free and thrusting them wide.

Did I? When I later caught Queensland on my lips a few times, I had to concede she was right.

And then, with no more warning than it takes to quit a job and book an airline ticket, Hilary went home to Brisbane. That was late in May, 2003, less than three months before I was to make the same journey, with Dad at my elbow the whole way.

THIRTEEN

SUSAN

August, 2003

‘
Mike, it’s Sue
,’
I said, gently, into the phone. ‘I hope I didn’t wake you.’

‘It’s fine. You know me, up with the sun,’ he replied. ‘Even with daylight saving it’s light before five over here right now.’

‘Daylight saving,’ I repeated, without quite meaning to. Did it still carry the same resonance for him that it did for me?

‘I have some sad news,’ I said.

‘Oh?’

‘Terry died this afternoon.’

‘Died!’

‘The nursing home phoned me an hour ago. A chest infection turned into pneumonia and they didn’t catch it in time.’

‘The old man’s friend,’ said Mike.

‘He wasn’t old. Same age as us.’

‘True, true. I’m sorry, Sue. How are you feeling?’

‘A little numb. Isn’t that what they say? It’s not like when Joyce died, or Dad. We knew it was coming for them, and we’d said our goodbyes. Poor Terry, there was nothing to say, was there?’

He made no reply to this, as though he’d retired to his own corner of memory, just as I had.

‘Do you want me to ring Tom?’ he asked.

‘I’ve already done it. Maybe you could go down to London, if you’re free. He should have someone with him, someone who knew Terry, I mean. He wants to come back for the funeral.’

‘So do I.’

‘No, Mike. There’s no need to come all that way. I tried to talk him out of it.’

‘Of course he wants to be there, to see things out after all these years. Me too. I finish here tomorrow, anyway. We’ll come home together.’

I was suddenly jealous of his place at Tom’s side, enough to say as much when Robert came in from work.

‘You’re not still competing with Mike, are you?’

‘Competing? What do you mean?’

‘For Tom,’ he said bluntly.

‘No, of course not.’

Over dinner, though, I didn’t have much to say and before long Robert was glancing tentatively at me, in that way that he has, and which I love him for.

‘We were a family once, you know – Mike, Tom and me. If things had been different, we might still be.’

He took my hand in a faux gesture that had me smiling even before he’d said a word. ‘I would be a poorer soul if fate had turned that way.’

The sentiment was put on, and his voice was a parody of Maurice Chevalier, but it masked a truth I was glad to keep safe.

Whatever the unlived possibilities, the three of us would stand together at Terry’s funeral, a family of sorts again. I was glad of that, too. How would we arrange ourselves? Would it be me in the middle, the men on either side, or would Tom take the centre? It didn’t matter. What mattered more was that something lift from all three of us once it was done.

To that end, I flew to Brisbane the next morning. By then, Terry had been taken to the funeral home, where I was allowed to see him at rest. With nothing left of the man I’d once loved, my eyes stayed dry, something the attendant was too polite to notice. Would I cry at the service, when Terry was present in the bones of our son’s face, in his bearing, and even the timbre of his voice?

‘I wish I’d known him,’ Tom had said, yet again, when I’d called him with the news; but you didn’t have to know someone to be so like him that it stung the soul of those who could see it, hear it, remember.

After the chill of the mortuary, I was shown into a sombre office where the director was both solicitous and business-like while we settled questions about the coffin, how he was to be dressed, the service.

‘That’s everything, Ms Kinnane,’ he said, after what seemed far too short a time.

‘You mean that’s it?’

He shrugged apologetically. ‘It doesn’t take long when there’s no religious service involved. When will you decide on the day?’

‘I’ll call as soon as I get word from my son.’

‘You have my number.’ He nodded at the card stapled to the receipt I was clutching. Even a funeral could be paid for with a credit card, it seemed. ‘Can I get you a taxi?’

By lunchtime, I was twiddling my thumbs at the Park Royal, while they scrambled to get a room ready for me so early in the day. When my mobile phone trilled, I pounced on it, expecting Tom with news of his flight.

‘Susan, this is Hilary. Tom’s Hilary.’

‘Oh, yes. What a surprise!’ And instantly I jumped ahead, thinking Tom must have been in the air already and she was ringing from London with the flight number. But Hilary wasn’t delivering a message from Tom, and she wasn’t on the other side of the globe, either.

‘I’m back in Brisbane these days,’ she said, without embellishment, and only a journalist’s discipline kept me from blurting, Oh!

‘I’m sorry to hear about Tom’s father. I’ll be at the funeral, of course. But, Susan, I’m ringing because . . .’ I heard a breath being expelled. ‘Look, could we meet? I’d like to talk to you before Tom gets here.’

She’d caught me on the hop and before I could ask why, we’d agreed to meet after she finished work. When there was still no room ready for me at the hotel, I said to the girl at reception, ‘Don’t rush. I’ll go visit my sister,’ and spent the afternoon speculating with Diane about lovers’ tiffs and, not for the first time, pregnancy.

‘Hello, again,’ Hilary called through a forced smile, when she found me waiting in the lobby soon after five.

I nodded towards the bar. ‘Will we sit in there?’

‘I’d prefer we walked in the gardens, if that’s okay.’

She meant the Botanical Gardens across the road, and already she was backing away towards the door onto Alice Street, which at this hour on a Friday was lousy with traffic. While we waited at the lights I contemplated going back for a jacket, but the little green figure called us forward before I could make up my mind. Hurrying into step beside Hilary I thought of another winter’s night I’d ventured out without enough care for my clothes.

Hilary, on the other hand, was wearing the red coat I’d first seen at Kennington tube station, an observation I kept to myself. This really was a night for staying shtum, I decided, when, fifty metres beyond the gates, we passed the bench where Mike Riley had asked me to marry him.

‘How long have you been back in Brisbane?’ I asked.

‘Two months now. My visa ran out in June.’ Then, after a strategic pause, she added, ‘That’s not the reason I came home, though.’

She stared into my face as she spoke, a harder gaze than I thought her capable of, and one that dared me to suggest my own reasons for her return. In case I settled on the wrong one, she spelled it out: ‘I came back here to force Tom’s hand.’ With this said, she snapped her eyes forward and surged on beside me in crisp, determined strides.

Was this the same girl I’d met in London? To Hilary, I said, with matching frankness, ‘You’re worried I’ve told Tom not to marry you? Is that it?’

This brought her to a halt and the naked surprise tangled in her features showed she hadn’t even considered it.

‘I don’t believe you’d do something like that.’ Then a grim smile crept across her lips. ‘I did make a mess of those days in London, didn’t I? I couldn’t really blame you if you
did
say something to him.’ The smile was gone, though, when she answered my question more directly. ‘No, I’m not looking for a second chance to earn your respect, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘So why
are
we here, and why so keen to see me without Tom?’

Hilary had been uncomfortable since her opening hello and now the preliminaries were done with, I half-expected her to make a run for it. She certainly stared with longing towards the gate into Edward Street.

‘We may as well sit down,’ she said, backtracking to a bench behind us.

When I joined her, leaving a healthy space that seemed required, she fixed her eyes at some point just beyond my shoulder. ‘It’s because Tom can’t come home. It’s not that he likes London so much, or the work he’s doing there. He’s got this thing about coming back.’

She paused to see what I made of this and found my face blank, no doubt, because this was the first I’d heard of it. Her shoulders wilted a little at finding me so mystified, but she’d made a start now and seemed determined to get the rest of it out.

‘I thought it was because of what happened to his father, the bashing, the way people got so taken in by old Joh. Seems crazy, I know, when he doesn’t even remember that time himself.’

‘It’s not so crazy, not when you know the whole story,’ I said. ‘Maybe you need to understand what an important thing it is in his life.’

‘You think I should cave in, then,’ she snapped, almost before I’d finished. ‘Go back to London. If I love him so much, I should want to be with him wherever.’ And she flung her hands about at random to mock me. ‘No, Susan, I don’t buy that. Tom talks about Brisbane with too much fondness for it to be so simple. I thought for a while that it was pride, donkey-stubborn pride that wouldn’t let him come back here. I mean, Brisbane’s not the most exciting town, in the scheme of things. But that’s not it. At heart, he knows he’s part of the place. It’s like some wires have been coupled up all wrong inside him. It makes him talk about Queensland with contempt, yet the next minute he’s missing everything about it.’

Where was she getting this from? I’d never sensed any crossed wires.

‘You don’t get what I’m talking about, do you?’ she said, more a sigh of regret than an accusation. ‘We could talk all night and you still won’t get it. It’s you, Susan. Tom can’t come home because of
you
.’

Well, nothing if not blunt. Where had the girl from London disappeared to? I surprised myself by feeling little anger, but angry or not, it was time to return fire. ‘You mean I’ve set him against this place with my stories about the Tower Mill? Tom thinks he’ll betray his parents if he lives here. Is that it? Well, Hilary, to borrow your own words, I don’t buy it. So much has changed and Tom knows it. The way Hanson imploded so quickly was proof of that. He’s said as much over the years. No, the politics here is—’

I’d been going to say ‘more mature’, but my final words never made it into the night air.

‘There it is, you see.
Politics
,’ she interjected. ‘In a way, I agree with you. Tom’s past all that. He’s heard so much about the politics of it all it’s a wonder there’s room in his head for anything else. But that was never what he wanted from you, Susan. He wanted to know what was in here,’ and she struck her chest so hard I heard the echo in her lungs. ‘He’s been trying to get that from you for so long.’

‘Tom hasn’t said this to you, has he? Not in so many words?’ I demanded.

‘No, not the way I’m saying it, but I know him. There’s a part of him he won’t let me into, won’t even let me touch.’

Hilary was fighting the first tears, and to hide them she avoided my eyes. Not a great one for arguing: she expected others to appreciate her sincerity, even if she couldn’t make them agree. She wasn’t about to cede the field, though, I discovered.

‘Forget the politics, Susan. Tom can’t come home because you won’t let him.’

This left me utterly bewildered. I could only shake my head, close to laughter at how absurd she was becoming. ‘What makes you think I won’t let him?’

Perhaps she was aware of her own silliness, too, because she went quiet while her eyes searched my face in the fading light. What did she expect to find? Whatever she’d hoped for didn’t appear, it seemed, and with her own eyes closed in what looked like defeat, she said, ‘It’s true, Susan. It took me a long time to see it, but I’m certain of it now. That’s why I asked to see you, alone. Tom’s stranded over there, like some stateless refugee and not even I can make him come home.’

I was right about her defeat, then. ‘I take it he hasn’t succumbed to your brinkmanship.’

It was a savage thing to say, as I’d meant it to be, and I expected real fury in return.

‘Blackmail,’ she said. ‘You may as well call it by the proper name. Makes me look desperate, doesn’t it? I hate doing it this way, and you’re right, it hasn’t worked. It shows what an influence you are in his life, though. You must see that.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake. Tom’s thirty-one years old. I can’t tell him where to live.’

‘You don’t have to, when everything you’ve done has pushed him further and further away from you.’

The claim was so patently wrong I could only ask in wonder, ‘When have I
ever
pushed Tom away? Even when Mike and I split, it wasn’t like that. There was no pushing away.’

‘In Paris, there was,’ she said instantly. ‘You were crying in front of some cathedral. He wanted to comfort you, and instead you pushed him off like some groper in the street and walked away.’

‘He shouldn’t have taken it that way,’ I murmured, letting my thoughts become words. Before I could steady myself, they had prompted more from Hilary.

‘He wanted to live with you in Sydney, too, but you wouldn’t let him. He thought he’d have a chance to get back some of the years he’d missed, but you weren’t going to let him get that close.’

Live with me! Did she mean back in . . . when was it? But Tom had changed his mind about coming. Before I could say so, she came out with something even more outrageous.

‘Then you sent him off to England.’

This was too much! ‘I didn’t
send
him. He wanted to go. He asked for my help, for Christ’s sake! He’s got things mixed up – both of you have. Everything round the wrong way.’

‘Looks the right way round to me,’ Hilary said calmly. ‘It’s what it looks like to Tom that matters, anyway. Then you came up with that passport idea. Why didn’t you just say you didn’t want him to come back at all?’ There was a willingness to hurt in her voice now, an anger in search of retribution, not for herself, but for Tom. ‘So many times you’ve drawn him in close, then shut him out,’ she blundered on. ‘Why do you do it? Do you hate him because of what he reminds you of?’

‘Of course not,’ I snapped, angry enough to walk away. But behind the girl’s desperation lay a need for my son that I recognised. I had been in love with his father once, just as strongly. ‘Tom’s my son and I’ve always loved him, no matter what you might think.’