The Younger Wife, page 25
‘Congratulations,’ Tully said to Dad in the sacristy. Heather was already signing the register. It was a small room and the boys were all but bouncing off the walls.
‘Thanks, sweetie,’ Dad said. He seemed pleased but also a little distracted by all the commotion. ‘Can you –’
‘I’ll deal with the boys,’ Tully said, but unfortunately it was easier said than done. She looked to Rachel for help, but her sister was trying – and failing – to prise the candlestick from Mum’s grip. Each time Rachel reached for it, Mum swung it this way and that, as if it were a game. The boys thought this was wonderful and tried to join in, ducking and weaving around her. Tully wondered if Dad was finally rethinking his ‘family is everything’ stance. Locky took a flying leap, his elbow narrowly missing his grandfather’s groin.
‘Tully,’ Dad said, the first hints of impatience starting to show.
She nodded, although in the back of her mind she was thinking, You’re the one who wanted them here.
Rachel reached for the candlestick again, but this time Mum lifted it high in the air.
Dad sighed audibly. It was getting quite raucous now and the celebrant was looking nervous as she bent to sign her portion of the register. Miles stayed by Mum’s side, leaping uselessly at the candlestick, while Locky strategically climbed onto a chair and jumped. Mum, perhaps anticipating another grab at her treasure, jerked it away – straight towards Locky’s head. Tully let out a squeal. Fortunately, Dad managed to get there first.
For a moment it was calm. Tully exhaled with relief. Locky, unaware of his near miss, rolled around on the floor with his brother. Dad held out the candlestick to Rachel, and that’s when Tully noticed Rachel had an odd look on her face.
Tully looked at Dad. He stood behind Mum, holding the candlestick in one hand and restraining her with the other. But there was something not quite right about it. It was the way a guard would detain an escaped prisoner, or a policeman would seize a dangerous criminal – not the way a man would hold his confused, middle-aged ex-wife. His arm was wrapped around her neck, pulling her up so her chin rested on his elbow. In wrestling, it would have been called a chokehold.
Horror spread through Tully. Dad was rigid with the effort of holding Mum, even though she was not even trying to pull away from him. And his face – it looked almost as if he were . . . enjoying it.
‘Dad,’ Tully started, but she didn’t have a chance to finish the sentence because Rachel chose that moment to seize the candlestick and lift it high above Dad’s head.
61
RACHEL
The grotesque thud of the candlestick connecting with Dad’s head was unlike anything Rachel had ever heard. But even worse was the feeling of his skull crumpling. He hadn’t blocked, he hadn’t braced; his body went limp the moment Rachel released the candlestick. Mum, free of his grasp, walked away from him with incongruent casualness. Perhaps it resembled the way she’d wanted to walk away from him for years.
Rachel had known, the moment Dad grabbed her. The way he held her – it wasn’t the way someone should hold another human being; certainly not someone they loved. It was what she’d been waiting for: confirmation that’d she’d been right about him all along.
The celebrant, who’d been signing the register, jerked upright and, seeing Dad lying in a pool of blood, let out a cry. ‘What happened?’
No one replied, even as she dropped to her knees at Dad’s side and tried in vain to find a pulse. There was something hypnotic about the way the blood seeped into the fabric of her white pantsuit.
Outside in the chapel, the harp played softly and the sound of people making small talk hung in the air. Locky and Miles lay giggling on the floor, unaware of the catastrophe that had unfolded metres away.
Tully and Heather appeared entirely frozen. Perhaps they were having the same realisation as Rachel had had. So it’s true. You are the reason we are like this. Tully with her neuroses. Rachel’s self-destructiveness. Heather’s shaking hands. Mum’s dementia. Dad had made them believe that they were crazy to question him, but he had finally revealed his true colours.
Mum sat on the floor now, a few paces away, her hands over her face.
The boys paused in their wrestling when they saw the blood.
‘Does Grandpa need a bandaid?’ Miles asked.
That snapped everyone into action. The celebrant stood and ran out of the room. The harp stalled.
‘Is there a doctor in the house?’ she called.
62
TULLY
There was a doctor in the house. In fact, there were several. They hurried into the sacristy, removing hats and suit jackets. A man got there first, but he moved aside when an older female arrived.
She kneeled beside him. ‘Has someone called an ambulance?’ she asked calmly.
‘I’m on the phone to them now,’ Sonny said.
Tully hadn’t realised he was standing beside her until that very moment. Holding the phone to his ear with one hand, with the other he ushered the boys away and into the care of a couple of wedding guests whom Tully didn’t recognise.
‘I need something to stop the bleeding,’ the woman said, as several more doctors arrived and Tully, Rachel and Heather were all pushed back, out of the way. Heather was bone-white and shaking. Rachel was still. Unnaturally so.
‘What happened?’ Sonny asked, his phone still pressed to his ear. ‘Who saw it?’
He looked at Tully. Tully had seen it, of course. She’d seen Rachel bring that candlestick down on Dad’s head with what looked – and sounded – like incredible force. But she also saw what Dad had done to Mum a moment before that. And she had a feeling that, if Rachel hadn’t done it, she would have.
Another doctor pushed past, carrying what looked like a woman’s shawl, presumably to help stanch the bleeding. The movement jolted Tully from her frozen state and she stepped forward.
‘Mum hit him,’ she said in a loud, clear voice. ‘With the candlestick. It was an accident. She . . . she was playing a game with the boys.’
She didn’t glance at Rachel, despite feeling her sister’s gaze on her. She didn’t look at Heather either, too afraid of what she might see.
Sonny nodded and spoke into the phone.
‘No,’ Rachel said. ‘Sonny, it was –’
But her voice was lost in the din, and Sonny was entirely focused on Tully.
‘Where did she hit him?’ he asked. ‘What part of the head did she connect with?’
‘This part,’ Tully said, pointing to the back of the skull.
‘Sonny,’ Rachel tried again. ‘It was –’
‘– horrible,’ Heather said. ‘But let’s not get into it now. We need to give them space to work on your dad.’
Sonny turned and headed back into the throng to report the information to the doctors, as Mum came and stood with her daughters and Heather. Through the window, Tully could see the guests filing out of the chapel through a side door. She heard the siren of the approaching ambulance. She heard the doctors working on Dad. The commentary between them was short and clipped. She heard one of them say, ‘He’s not breathing. Can anyone get a pulse?’
Tully listened hard.
There was no response.
63
HEATHER
The hospital was buzzing. Two uniformed police stood at the end of the hallway, waiting to take them all to the station to give statements. Heather sat on the floor with her back against the wall, the hem of her wedding dress grey with dust and grime and blood. Her wedding shoes lay beside her. Three people had offered Heather a seat, but she’d shaken her head without even looking up. She couldn’t move – it was taking all of her energy to merely exist. Was this what shock was like? In theory, she should have been in shock before – when her mother died or when her father was convicted of her murder – but neither of those experiences felt anything like this. That was a thin, reedy feeling, an empty quiet that preceded a storm. This was all-consuming pain – a loud, raging inferno that threatened to burn her to the ground.
She, Tully, Rachel and Pam had followed the ambulance to the hospital, with Sonny driving. Sonny had planned to drop Pam back to the nursing home on the way, but one of Stephen’s colleagues had called Rachel and told them to come to the hospital right away. Now they were in the hallway in their wedding clothes, waiting. For what? Heather wondered. She’d seen Stephen. She knew the news wasn’t going to be good. The question was . . . did she even want it to be?
It was a strange feeling, finally having her answer. All those months she’d doubted herself. All that counselling. The visit to her father! All to convince herself, and everyone else, that she was crazy. How had she fallen for it? The moment she saw Stephen holding Pam, she knew. They all knew. And yet, if Rachel hadn’t brought the candlestick down on his head, she felt certain Stephen would have talked her out of what she knew. For that reason, she wouldn’t let anything happen to Rachel. It could have been her who did this to Stephen. Perhaps it should have been.
‘Heather,’ Tully said.
Heather managed to lift her head. Rachel and Tully had been joined by two doctors. One of them, she noticed, had blood on the paper booties that covered his shoes.
‘Can you stand up?’ Tully asked.
Heather shook her head.
‘Let me help you,’ Sonny said, and he pulled her to her feet.
‘You’re Stephen’s wife?’ one of the doctors asked.
‘Yes,’ Heather said, wondering if that was true. They’d exchanged their vows and signed the papers, so she supposed it was.
‘I’m sorry to tell you,’ he started.
Even before he finished the sentence, everyone was crying. Everyone except Pam, who tugged on the doctor’s arm and asked: ‘Can we go back to the picnic now?’
It was meant to be their wedding night, Heather thought, as she stepped out of her dirty wedding dress and laid it over a chair some hours later. Stephen had booked a hotel room in the city for them tonight. They’d sent their overnight bags there this morning. Heather imagined the bags sitting in the unoccupied room. Stephen’s toiletries, his clean underpants and folded T-shirts and jeans. They’d been planning to stay in the city for two nights. Stephen hadn’t been able to take any time off work, so they were going to have their honeymoon later in the year. On a yacht in the Whitsundays, if you don’t mind.
Heather was too tired to shower or even wash off her make-up, so she just found one of Stephen’s tracksuits in the wardrobe and pulled it on with a pair of his socks. She’d expected to wear something quite different tonight. She imagined Stephen’s face, seeing her appear in his tracksuit. He’d almost certainly smile. Her favourite of his smiles: the one that was a little perplexed, but very fond. A paternal smile, she realised. Perhaps she did have father issues after all?
She lay on the bed and, finding that even climbing under the blankets was too much of an effort, pulled the throw rug over her. It was amazing, the effect a father had on a person. A father was the benchmark that told you what to expect. What to accept. And, perhaps most importantly, what to believe about yourself. Her father had taught her to expect nothing and to accept less. And he’d taught her to believe that she was nothing. Maybe she’d come to Stephen thinking that he could overturn this belief for her?
If so, he had – ironically – succeeded.
AFTER THE WEDDING
FIONA ARTHUR
‘I have news,’ a man at the next table down from me says. He rises from his chair and glances around, commanding the attention of the guests who’ve come from the wedding.
I shuffle forward. I’ve been standing at a cocktail table, nursing the shandy I ordered an hour ago, waiting for this moment. I’ve thought to leave several times, but the idea of going home without knowing what happened is simply unfathomable. I’ve managed to avoid the lion’s share of the small talk by looking distraught. Once you’re a woman of a certain age, people tend to treat you as if you’re fragile. The other guests have smiled kindly at me in passing, but no one has drawn me into conversation, which is fine by me.
‘What is it?’ someone at the back asks.
‘It’s Stephen,’ the man says. ‘He didn’t make it.’
A wave of emotion sweeps the room. Not tears. Not dramatics. A deep, heavier type of emotion. Men lower their eyes. Women sit back in their chairs. People glance from one to the other as they absorb the news, sighing deeply. I survey my own feelings but find myself padded by a thick layer of shock.
After a few moments, the chatter starts.
‘It’s awful,’ someone says.
‘Tragic. And on his wedding day!’
‘Do we know what happened yet?’
‘Just that it was an accident. His family are all with him at the hospital.’
Everyone nods at this. This is good news. Surrounded by family fits the narrative everyone wants for this situation. At least, it fits much better than the possibility that one of the family members caused the harm.
A group of people return from the bar holding bottles of red wine. Pinot, apparently. Stephen’s favourite. The waiters follow with wineglasses and everyone is instructed to fill their glass. When all our glasses are full, a man about Stephen’s age stands.
‘I’d like to raise a toast to Stephen,’ he says solemnly. ‘A good man, who lived a great life.’
‘To Stephen,’ the crowd repeats, nodding respectfully.
‘To Stephen,’ I say quietly. ‘May he rot in hell.’
64
TULLY
Mum didn’t come to the funeral. Under the circumstances, it didn’t feel like the greatest idea. Dad would probably have been disappointed about that. Tully had to say, there was a bit of a thrill in being able to disappoint him from beyond the grave, after what he’d done.
She and Rachel and Heather occupied the front pew of the church. People gave them a wide berth – offering just a polite smile or brief condolences – which was fine by Tully, but also a little disconcerting. It took her a little while to realise that in fact there were only a few faces she recognised in the crowd. Mary and Michael, Elsa and David. Most of the others were colleagues or old uni friends of Stephen – people Tully might have met once or twice but whose names she would struggle to conjure up. How often had she taken pride in how wonderfully civilised her family was, how they knew the right way to behave, the right way to do things? It turned out they were so civilised they didn’t have a huge number of good friends.
It was a funny thing, attending the funeral of a man everyone thought was a hero. Several people volunteered to speak when Rachel, Heather and Tully said they were too traumatised. All were good, competent speakers. They put on a good show. Which was appropriate since, as it turned out, putting on a good show was all Dad really cared about.
Heather was clearly uncomfortable in her role of grieving widow. Several times when people approached to offer their condolences she said, ‘Well, we really weren’t married all that long.’ Once she even said: ‘Offer them to Pam, she was his real wife.’ Her odd comments were attributed to grief and shock or, later, at the wake, alcohol.
There was plenty of that; they’d made sure of it. It was the one thing they’d all agreed on when they’d met to organise the wake. It was at Dad and Heather’s house, and there were plenty of capable people, like Mary and Elsa and a swarm of Mum’s friends who’d offered to order the canapés, the flowers, even clean the house for the occasion. They’d taken the ladies up on all their offers, but Tully, Heather and Rachel insisted on purchasing the alcohol themselves. It had been a surreal experience, the three of them wandering around the bottle shop, each with a shopping cart, tossing bottles of booze in without thought or hesitation. Every now and again one of them looked at their cart, and then the other two, and decided they didn’t have enough and went back for more.
Eventually, when the wake was over and the guests had departed, Tully sat in the living room with Rachel and Heather and the gigantean pile of booze and they had to concede that they might have gone a little over the top.
‘We can return it,’ Tully suggested.
‘We’ll get through it,’ Heather replied.
She opened a bottle of red and filled up their glasses. Tully’s was still half full of white, but she just shrugged and drank it anyway.
‘A toast,’ Heather said, raising her glass. She sounded different, her accent a little broader, her words less carefully enunciated than usual. Probably the alcohol. ‘To shitty fathers.’
Tully looked at her. ‘Your dad was shitty too?’
She swallowed a large mouthful of wine. ‘Still is.’
‘But I thought he died?’ Tully tried to recall the circumstances of his supposed death. ‘In a . . . a car accident?’
‘I just said he died because it sounded less shameful than saying he was in jail,’ Heather said. ‘But there’s no point in lying now, is there?’ She smiled, one of those heartbreakingly sad smiles. ‘He killed my mum. That’s why he’s in there.’
Tully sat up. For the first time all day, she put her drink down. ‘Wow. Heather, I’m so sorry.’
Heather waved this away. ‘He was always abusive. For as long as I could remember, I was afraid of him. He could be nice, sure, but I never knew when he would turn violent.’
‘That’s awful,’ Rachel said, also sitting forward.
‘Were you afraid of Stephen when you were growing up?’ Heather asked.
‘Not at all,’ Tully said. ‘That’s the strangest part. How could we not have known?’
‘I suppose some people are masters at keeping it hidden,’ Rachel said.
‘It’s a trait of Dad’s that we inherited, Tul.’
