Where Have You Been? (19 page)

‘I guess we do have more than we need,' he says thoughtfully, ‘but they say you can never have enough money. For long-term security.' Then in answer to her question: ‘I guess we'll pay off our mortgage. Maybe we'll take a trip overseas. Or buy a four-wheel-drive and head into the centre for a month or two. I wouldn't mind a dinky little Bose stereo, or a bigger television. Maybe we'll use some for private schools when the kids get to high school – it depends on whether they get into the selectives. I guess there'll be enough left over to invest. Maybe enough to get some sort of decent return...' Ed pauses, is momentarily ashamed of his obvious acquisitiveness. When there were people starving. ‘What about you?'

Ed is breaking his own rules now, has never even summoned the nerve to question his own parents' financial situation. He's certainly aware of how much he and Derek paid their father for additional shares in the business, but
as to the rest he's in the dark. He supposes his father has a substantial super fund – hopes so anyway. But with Carly the question hardly seems out of place or intimate. And anyway – she asked him first.

‘Oh, I don't know. What I'd really like is what you have, a big old house like this. But I won't have enough for that will I?'

‘No,' he is stung by the wistfulness of her voice, ‘No, not quite.'

‘Maybe a smaller place then. A terrace in the city? Maybe I'll go back to Melbourne. A place somewhere. It'll be better than anything I've had, anyway. And it'll be mine.' She pauses for a moment. ‘It's not the stuff, you know. It's not the stuff you can buy with money – the house, the car, the furniture – that's nothing. I guess it's the life that I'd like. A life like yours and Susan's. The whole thing. But it's not going to happen, is it? I've missed out on all that, haven't I?'

‘Oh no,' he says, ‘don't say that.' Her resignation is suddenly unbearable. Unthinkable. Ed rushes to reassure her. ‘Anything could happen, Carly. You never know what's waiting for you in this life.'

She breaks into a grin. ‘Never say die, eh?'

Ed blushes. ‘I know it sounds corny, but it's true. Anything could happen.'

‘Sweet Ed. Susan's a lucky girl. Such a sweet man.' Her smile is gentle, warm, all for him. He feels himself fiercely hot, and for one glorious moment, lost.

Carly watches her with the children. Just the everyday interactions, nothing out of the ordinary – the constant round of nagging and nurturing. Says: ‘You're good at this, aren't you?'

‘At what?' Susan is busily cutting a row of paper dolls for Stella, who is jigging up and down, barely able to contain her impatience.

Carly waves her hand around vaguely. ‘Oh, you know. All this mother stuff.'

‘Oh. That. It's like breathing. Nothing to it.' She passes the concertinaed figures to her daughter, who opens them out slowly, her eyes wide, awed by the unexpected magic.

‘Maybe. Guess I just haven't seen it in a long while. Brings things back.'

Susan tries hard to sound casual. ‘Reminds you of Mum, I guess?'

‘Of Mum? Our mother?' Carly snorts, rolls her eyes. ‘You never give up, do you Suse?'

Some questions she can answer honestly.

Did you ever think about us after you left? Did you wonder about us? Did you miss us? Did you ever regret leaving?

Never. No regrets. No guilt.

End of conversation.

It's been a long time since Susan came surfing with him. In the beginning, the first few years (was it years, perhaps it was only months, or weeks?) he had taken Susan with him, had tried hard to share his passion with her. Initially, in that first flush of love, she'd wanted to learn, wanted to understand what it was that Ed found so pleasurable – had perhaps even been slightly jealous (Ed's surfing frequently
meant early rising, long absences, less time spent together, depending on tides). At first she'd been as eager to learn as Ed was to teach. (Living so close to the ocean – and you've never surfed!) But it hadn't taken Ed long to realise that the wonder of this experience, like so many personal experiences, just couldn't be so easily transmitted, that Susan (and there was no blame attached here, indeed he could only be flattered) was only doing it for him, that she had no – and would never have – real insight into what it meant. What it was. That to Susy it was at best a source of discomfort and boredom, a chore.

She told him she just couldn't see the point: all that effort, all that sitting, waiting, either frying or freezing, just to ride for one terrifying moment on the back of a wave before crashing ignominiously, and sometimes painfully, only to start again. She'd learnt enough – could discuss tides and wave formations, had understood enough surfing jargon to make intelligent comments, informed enquiries.

Ed would never admit it, but in a way he's relieved when Susan's (professed) interest wanes, is happy to leave their shared experience of the beach to the odd weekend swim, family picnics. The beach is his own space, as he sees it, the only space that is his alone, unshared, where he is under no pressure save that applied by nature. It seems only other surfers (mostly blokes) really understand the inherent solitude of the experience – even when they're out there together, sharing the wait, the wave, they're essentially alone.

Ed's love of surfing is almost the only thing in his life that he does not try to analyse. Oh, he buys the occasional surf magazine (just for the photographs, he tells a bemused Susan), and he and Derek discuss technique, exchange the odd story of great waves with surfing mates; but as to what surfing means to him – this he has never attempted to delve into too deeply. Sometimes when he's out the back waiting
for a wave,
the
wave, and he is overwhelmed by it all – the sky, the surf, the breeze, his body tingling with an aliveness and anticipation that he feels nowhere else – he imagines that this feeling, of wanting to be part of something rather than insisting, always, on separateness, on control, is what religious types mean by spirituality. That perhaps spirituality requires the sort of merging into a kind of nothingness, the relinquishing of consciousness, the absolute surrender to sensation that he experiences when he's surfing. Ed doesn't ponder this seriously, however, takes it no further. He is afraid that if he tries too hard to understand what the surf means to him, it will evaporate, disappear like his adolescent faith in God.

But now with Carly, it's completely different. He's surprised she's never surfed before – she's a natural, takes to it, like – well, like a duck to water. It seems that in only a few hours – he takes her out on a Wednesday afternoon, and then on the following Thursday, and now, on the Saturday evening – she's up and moving through the water like a pro. Or at least she's surfing competently. He's impressed and tells her so.

‘Oh,' she shrugs, ‘I guess I've always been good at water sports. Always thought I'd like to surf, but never really had the opportunity. Not much surf where I grew up.'

‘You mean once you'd left home?'

‘Yeah, well, I mean obviously I could've surfed when I was a kid – I guess we didn't take advantage of it back then. Girls, I mean.'

‘No. I guess girls didn't really surf much back then. Different now.'

Ed's surprised by just how much he enjoys surfing with his new sister-in-law. Somehow, Carly's naturally attuned to the unspoken ‘rules': she doesn't make conversation, doesn't expect compliments, reassurance. After a while her proximity
feels as necessary as the ocean itself. He begins to avoid surfing in her absence – he looks forward to the sight of her black clad figure straddling her board beside him, silent, confident, cool, the wind whipping back her hair. The look of intense concentration when she's paddling in anticipation, the slight triumphant smile when she's up, the bark of laughter, flick of wet hair when she emerges, the rueful humour when she's dumped. For the first time in all his years of surfing, Ed's mind is on other things.

There are confidences from Carly, too. And Ed – who instinctively understands her reticence, knowing how reluctant she is to bother him and Susan with the sordid details of her past – is pleased and proud that she trusts him so. He's circumspect, the soul of discretion. He knows that Carly is particularly unwilling to have Susan disturbed, so though it pains him greatly (when has he ever kept anything from his wife?) he doesn't pass on any details. He's certain that she only needs time – that eventually, as she gets to know Susan better, the sisterly confidences will come. Right now though, it's not a warm and sympathetic ear that Carly needs but a detached, objective listener. It's not the guilt-tinged, complicit, too-responsive sympathy that Susan would offer, but the sort of cool-headed, disinterested compassion Ed knows he can provide.

He has thought himself a man of the world. He studies the paper, watches the news, reads magazine articles. He has a fair knowledge of the harsher side of life; of that other world where events do not run smoothly, where nothing is easy, where life is cheap, where the forces are darker, the consequences harsher. Though his own existence is in some sense cocooned from all this, he has friends and acquaintances – social workers, nurses, doctors, even several police officers – whose stories of a world, worlds, where love and kindness
don't exist have occasionally made him reflect on his own good fortune, the immense privileges afforded him and most of his friends and family – perhaps at the expense of not-so-lucky others.

‘There's something I should tell you,' she says one night, when they're alone together. ‘Living here and you – you both being so kind. Something you should know. About me.'

Carly's muted the television, turned to him out of the blue. Ed's been going through the company's accounts, he looks up at her, blinking, surprised. He clears his throat, makes his voice as warm and reassuring as he can: ‘Whatever it is, it doesn't matter. It's not my business. Please don't think you have to...'

Her expression checks him.

‘You should know,' she says, ‘you have children, you may want to ... to protect them.'

Ah, God. He imagines HIV, hepatitis.

‘Oh, it's not a disease.' As always she guesses the direction his mind has taken. ‘I'm clear of all that – though I hardly know how. I don't deserve to be.'

‘Oh, don't say that, Carly. Nobody...'

‘Wait. Let me tell you first.'

He is silent. Waits.

‘I guess you know that there's a certain scenario, when a young girl leaves home at such an impressionable age, certain things usually happen. Not just these days, either, it was just as bad – maybe even worse, because it was so hidden, so secret – back then.'

Ed knows. He reads the papers, watches television. He gives a slight, encouraging nod.

‘Well. I guess you could say I did everything.'

‘Everything?'

‘Oh you know, drugs, crime, prostitution ... the whole bit.' She says it so lightly, and Ed tries to take it just as easily,
but he is nevertheless shocked, can think of nothing, nothing at all to say. It seems, however, that Carly does not expect him to say anything. She goes on: ‘And prison, Ed. I've spent a few years of my life inside.'

‘Why?' Ed's voice is strangled, comes out a whisper, ‘What – did you do?'

For the first time she appears to struggle. ‘Look,' she says finally, ‘I'd rather not – there're some things – some things I'd rather not talk about. I just wanted you to know. And to tell you that I'm clean now, completely. That I haven't touched junk for years.' Her smile is crooked, wry. ‘But look – if you'd rather I left – hey, it's cool, we're still friends, I'd understand. Just say.'

‘Oh, God,' Ed gushes, desperate to make his support clear, he hates to think he's given her the wrong impression. ‘Look – I'm honoured – I'm really honoured that you've confided in me. It wouldn't have mattered, you know. You needn't have told me and don't worry, it won't go any further. Not even...' he gulps, ‘not even Susan. I don't – don't care about your past. I know I'm speaking for both of us – Susan and I – when I say that we really love having you here. Having you in our life – part of our family. That we'd love it if you'd stay – as long as you want.' At this point he extemporises, goes beyond anything he's discussed with Susan, goes out on a limb: ‘We'd love you to stay longer, even after the house business is all sorted out.'

Carly is transparently, nakedly grateful. And relieved. ‘You're such a good bloke, Ed. You really are.' She reaches over, kisses him gently on the lips. Briefly. Casually. ‘I can't imagine what I did to deserve a brother-in-law like you. Susan's one lucky girl.'

She's settled back down at her end of the lounge, is aiming the remote, has transferred her attention to the screen, almost before he's had time to react, time to respond. Ed sits
upright, his hands gripping one another, his heart pounding. Sisterly affection, he tells himself. Nothing more. He runs his tongue over his lips. Tastes musk, tobacco, pepper. Just sisterly affection.

Quite often she lets them fill in the blanks. She finds that sometimes it's easier, much easier, to let people believe what they want to believe.

It's rare that her sister asks Susan anything about her life – she's generally strangely distant – completely uninterested. She's never asked any questions, for instance, about the photo gallery that lines their hallway. Susan has taken pictures down, has pointed out this person, that event.
Here, look Carly, it's Stella, when she was first born; our wedding photo – see how Mrs M has muscled me out of the way, how she's next to Ed in every single shot; here's Mum's school photo – do you remember this? – she was cute wasn't she? Pity we didn't take after her;
but regardless of the content of the photograph, Carly's interest is never more than that of a polite stranger – not that of an aunt, a sister, a daughter. She never starts any conversation with a personal enquiry. So Susan is struck by her sister's sudden interest in her marriage.