In The Company Of Strangers Part 15

'Look, I've been really stupid but you were pretty stupid too,' she says, 'sneaking off at dawn, fetching my car and leaving it outside so you wouldn't have to face me, and then ignoring my calls. Let's just get this painful bit over and done with, then we can start behaving normally again.'

Over and done with is just what he wants. 'Okay,' he says, 'but I really do have a lot on tomorrow. Could you come down to the cafe at, say, eight o'clock?'

'I'll see you then,' she says.

And she hangs up, leaving him standing there in the darkness feeling as though the conversation is not quite finished. He pockets his phone with a sigh as a light goes out behind him and he turns to see Alice locking the back door of the cafe.

'There you are,' she says, strolling over to him. 'How were the hamburgers?'

'To die for. Todd says he could have eaten four more.'

'Only four? Everything go okay today?'

'Pretty good,' he says, 'no major dramas, and Jackson Crow and his merry men arrived about an hour ago so everyone's here now. Cup of tea or are you too tired?'

'I'm tired but also too wide awake to go to bed so, yes, tea would be good. Strange, isn't it,' she says as they walk towards the house, 'all those tents, the cars, all those people just moving in and setting up camp and waiting you can actually feel them waiting.'

They let themselves in through the back door and Declan fills the kettle.

'No Ruby?' Alice asks.

'She's gone to bed,' he says. 'Her first meeting with Jackson Crow seemed to be something of a shock, and of course it's been a very long day. Look, Alice,' he crosses to the table and sits down to face her, 'there's something I need to tell you. It's about that business with the computer search. It's . . . well, it's just as we suspected it was Paula, it must have been.'

Alice nods. 'I was pretty sure it had to be but how do you know?'

'Todd,' Declan says, 'he knows you were in prison. He overheard Paula on the phone when she was talking to Lesley.' He sees her face, white in the bright fluorescent light of the kitchen. 'Now, I know this is a shock, but you really don't need to worry about Todd. I talked to him, he hasn't told anyone and he won't, I trust him, he thinks the world of you-'

'I'm not worried about Todd,' Alice cuts in, 'and I'll talk to him myself. But Lesley, and Paula . . .'

'I'll talk to Lesley when I see her tomorrow.'

'She was really friendly tonight, she came to see me to apologise.'

'Apologise for what?'

'Oh, of course, you didn't know. Well, when you were up in Perth she wanted to know where you were and was asking for your number and she was really rude when I wouldn't give it to her. But tonight she just said she was sorry, she'd been in a bit of a crisis and knew she'd behaved badly.'

Declan leaned back in his chair. 'And that was all?'

Alice nods. 'Yes well, we talked about other things, the festival, whether it might rain . . . She seemed different, I think she meant it.'

He nods. 'She's a nice woman having a really difficult time, and I made it more difficult.' He's about to elaborate but stops himself just in time. 'I think it will be fine with Lesley, honestly. It's Paula I'm concerned about, not just her talking to people but the fact that she went into the office and logged onto the computer. I'm going to set a pa.s.sword tomorrow and only you and Ruby and I will have it, but we're also going to have to do something about this, we can't just ignore it.'

Alice sighs. 'I suppose we can't, but Paula will never admit it. And, really, there's not much we can do about it.'

Declan gets up to make the tea. 'I think there is. If we by which I mean if Ruby carpets her she might just take offence and leave. She thinks I'm a w.a.n.ker but she's a bit scared of Ruby.'

'If she does leave she'll tell everyone, all the staff, everyone.' Alice pauses. 'And there's another thing. Paula's one of the most irritating people I've ever met but she's really good at her job, and sometimes I think it's all she's got. Sometimes I think the brashness that we find so abrasive is just a cover. She's quite fragile, really.'

Declan carries the teapot and mugs to the table and fetches the milk from the fridge. 'You're being very generous. I think you'd be well within your rights to ask us to sack her.'

Alice shakes her head. 'When Ruby found out about me she could've asked or told you that I had to go, but she didn't. I don't like Paula, and I'm furious that she's done this, but I sort of think it's more about the power of having the information than about malice.'

'Frankly, to me she is just a pain in the a.r.s.e and I'd be glad to see the back of her,' Declan says.

'Declan, you and I know all about stuffing things up, we've both been experts at that. Maybe what Paula needs is someone to take an interest in her.'

He shrugs. 'Maybe, but there's something else too. I found out tonight that Paula is Todd's aunt, his mother's sister. Apparently Catherine knew this although she didn't tell me. But then I didn't get here in time for her to tell me half the things I needed to know. It seems there was some big bust-up years ago and they've never spoken to each other since.'

'How odd,' Alice says, 'I wonder what that's all about. Not that it makes any difference to this situation. I do think we need to know a bit more about her, but it might be best to wait until after the festival. We'll all have more than enough to cope with over the next few days.' She sips her tea and, putting her hand into her pocket, brings out a folded piece of paper. 'Look at this,' she says, handing it to him, 'it came a while ago.'

'What is it?' he asks.

'Just read it.'

Declan unfolds the letter, reads the curt message once and then a second time and looks up at her. 'She put her phone number,' he says. 'She actually gave you her number.'

Alice nods and he sees that there are tears in her eyes.

'You haven't used it, have you? You haven't called her?'

'No,' she says, 'of course not.'

'Good.' He nods slowly and reads it again. 'It's a test, isn't it? I think it's a test.'

'That's what I thought a test. And if I pa.s.s it . . . well, who knows . . . ?'

'You'll pa.s.s it,' Declan says. 'You'll pa.s.s it, I know you will. You're not alone now, I can help. You can pa.s.s all her tests, one at a time. Alice, I know how much you want your family back, but promise me one thing don't sacrifice yourself in the process. You've come so far in the past few months, nothing is worth sacrificing that for.'

t's after midnight and Ruby is wide awake, sitting up in bed surrounded by Catherine's journals. She's trying to find a specific entry from some time during their first year at Benson's Hotel but before Harry had arrived back from London. The faster she flicks through the pages the more agitated she becomes. There are long entries for almost every day: stuff about their work, what Mrs Benson said to the chef, what the chef said about Mrs Benson once she'd left the kitchen. And there are earlier reminiscences that Catherine has woven into her journal often for no apparent reason. Ruby stops at one which she'd almost forgotten. It was that moment on the dock when they had just set foot in Australia, when she was seven and Catherine eight, just a year between them.

'We'll pretend we're the same age,' Catherine had whispered as they were lined up on the dock in Fremantle. 'Then we won't be separated. Say you're eight. Don't forget when they ask you, Ruby, say you're eight years old.'

Ruby wonders now how Catherine had known to do this. She'd been right, though. Quite soon after that the girls had been separated from the boys, and then the man in charge began asking each one how old they were. Catherine had given Ruby a nudge and she had promptly announced her age as eight and the two of them had been moved in with the other eight-year-olds. She was always such a knowing child, and so authoritative, at least that was what Ruby used to think. Later she changed from authoritative to controlling, but back then it was different. Changing her age had meant that they were together in the convent and that they were able to leave the convent together. It was pure luck that Mrs Benson had approached the nuns about finding two girls for the hotel.

'You'll be cleaning the rooms, changing linen and so on, and there'll be work in the kitchen and the restaurant too. You'll get all your meals, and you'll share a room. One day off a week, no mixing with the guests,' she'd said, looking them up and down with an obviously critical eye. But then she'd smiled and Ruby can still remember that smile, not just how it looked but the sudden intense joy of a smile from someone in authority.

'So what do you think?'

They were in Mother Superior's office at the time and they hardly knew what to think. She was actually asking them if they wanted the job, as if they had some sort of choice, as if their opinions were worth something. They had no choice, of course, the alternative would have meant being separated. In the years since then Ruby has often thought of this as one of her 'what if?' moments: what if someone else had arrived at the convent instead of Mrs Benson? What if they'd been separated then? What if their lives had gone in totally different directions? But there they were, Mother Superior glaring at them, willing them to go, Freda Benson waiting for an answer. All they had to do was to say yes to freedom.

But what Ruby's looking for now in the journals is something she had forgotten but which had returned to her the moment she looked up and saw Jackson Crow a conversation and then an entry in the journal from the night of Catherine's first date. They had been at the hotel for some time by then because at first Mrs Benson was very strict about what they could and couldn't do and dates were not on the agenda. She was kind but firm and although the work was hard it was nothing like as hard as the convent. The nuns had treated them with dislike and disgust but Mrs Benson seemed to like them, and she hadn't forgotten how it felt to be young.

'I feel I'm responsible for you,' she'd said. 'You're not only young, you're very naive. I don't think they taught you much at all in the convent so someone has to look out for you.' She had taken that responsibility very seriously, behaving at first more like a guardian than an employer. On this particular night Catherine, who had been told to be home by ten-thirty, had sc.r.a.ped in with about thirty seconds to spare, and Ruby was sitting bolt upright in bed, breathless for details.

'So, how was it? Did he try to kiss you? You have to tell me everything, absolutely everything.'

Catherine had pulled off her clothes and climbed into bed. 'He was so boring,' she said. 'Don't you think that's the worst sin a man could commit, Ruby, being boring?' And Ruby, in her ignorance, had agreed. Now she knows that there are far greater possible sins, although being boring still rates fairly highly.

Catherine groaned. 'I swear he told me his whole life story, and then everything about his football team, and probably every other team in the whole world. He never stopped talking and he didn't even try to kiss me in the cinema, just held my hand. You really can't tell, can you?' she went on. 'I mean, how would you know if you'd met the right man? We know nothing about this, Ruby, we just don't have a clue. I bet other girls know much more than we do.'

And she was right. Even a few months of Freda Benson's guidance hadn't prepared them for the shark infested waters of the dating game. Men hadn't figured much in the life of the convent, apart from the two local priests, but they were remote, almost G.o.dlike figures around whom the nuns, normally hatchet faced, vicious tongued and p.r.o.ne to physical violence bordering on torture, turned into fawning, simpering creatures hungry for a word or nod of approval. Other men came and went: the maintenance man, a local builder, delivery men, the man who serviced the nuns' ancient car, but they too were creatures apart alien beings with whom the girls were not even supposed to exchange a greeting. There was no television, no magazines, not even newspapers, and although there were books the ones the girls were allowed to read were not the stuff of romance, nor did they contain even the elements of human biology. It was only in their final year that the subject of boys somehow became the topic of whispered conversations and speculation, all of which was firmly rooted in ignorance.

Once freed from the convent, however, their knowledge increased exponentially. In that little attic bedroom at the hotel they dived into Mrs Benson's copies of New Idea and Australian Women's Weekly, and lay with the lights out far into the night, listening to Harry's LPs on his old record player that Mrs Benson had loaned them in his absence. On days when there were few guests and the hotel lounge was empty, they discovered the wonders of black and white television, or escaped to the cinema on their afternoons off. But it was when they joined the library that they really started to learn about life, love and the opposite s.e.x as they worked their way through the novels on a list Mrs Benson had drawn up for them.

'So how will we know?' Catherine had asked again. 'How will we know when we meet the right man?'

'We'll know,' Ruby had said, and even now she can remember the conviction with which she had said it. 'I'll know, I'm sure I will. It's like that song, you know in the movie, in South Pacific.' She had struggled for the words then. 'About some magical evening when you see a stranger across a room, and you know that he's the one. It'll be like electricity, like being struck by lightning.'

Catherine had rolled her eyes. 'You mean "Some Enchanted Evening", when you went all dopey about Rossano Brazzi? But he's so old. Oh well, I'll write it down anyway, you never know when we might need it.'

'You can't, a journal is to write down what you're doing, what happens to you, not stuff about men we haven't met yet.'

'Now you're being boring, Rube. Like I said before, when we're old we'll want to read this. We'll want to see what we thought and how we felt how we feel right now. And we'll be able to see if we ended up with the right man.'

'And what if we haven't?'

'Well, that'll be just too bad, won't it?' Catherine said, sighing with exasperation. 'But at least we'll know.'

Not that knowing after the event is a lot of use, Ruby thinks now, finally finding the page she was searching for. She reads it through twice, leans back against her pillows and closes her eyes, remembering Rossano Brazzi's face, his voice. In that moment in the cinema, she had felt herself softening and opening, felt her senses spring overwhelmingly into life in a way that was as thrilling as it was unnerving.

'You are totally ridiculous,' Ruby tells herself now, opening her eyes, sitting up straighter. 'You were a teenager then and now you're sixty-nine pull yourself together.' But somehow she can't. Somehow from the moment she looked up and saw Jackson Crow standing in front of her she might as well have been back in that dark little cinema, the music soaring in the background, naive, impressionable, totally disarmed but utterly certain. She has b.u.t.terflies in her stomach now, her heart races, slows and races again, and until she got off them her legs had been trembling. Could he tell the effect he had on her? Was it written all over her face? Could Declan see it when he came into the office?

Her restless imagination is now unbearable and Ruby throws off the bedclothes, gets up again and begins to pace the room as though the exercise might burn off the heat of her body. 'Ridiculous,' she says again. 'You are a ridiculous old woman, overcome with . . . well what? l.u.s.t? Desire?' But alongside her dismay is the conviction that something powerful had happened and not just to her as though a connection had sparked and crackled into life. She had gasped for breath at the power of it, and through the conversation that followed, through the pleasantries, through the condolences about the loss of Catherine, and the process of checking Jackson and his band into their cottages, it continued to burn.

And what is she supposed to do with this? Ruby is a realist or so she has always believed. Scorched by the disaster of her first marriage she had been cautious when she met Owen. She had taken time to trust him and then to risk loving him. There had been no lightning bolt at Glas...o...b..ry, no swooning, no aching, just a sense of something special and safe, something to nurture and tease into life; together they had grown into love. But that was decades ago. Love and desire is everywhere on screens, on billboards, in magazines, advertis.e.m.e.nts and song lyrics but all its images, its enactments, its literature and music are about youth, young love, first love. Even mature lovers are beautiful, firm, and either surgically or photographically enhanced. It is all about beautiful bodies and fierce s.e.xual pa.s.sion, not about old people gripped with desire and bodies soft, slack and wrinkled with age. It is about a particular sort of look, a look Ruby knows she never had even when young. She had always been uncomfortably aware of how little she resembled the images of female beauty all around her.

'I should've been around in Rubens' day,' she had once said to Owen. 'I'd have been a hit with him. He had an eye for generous proportions like mine, for dimples and pale skin.'

'Well you may have come along too late for Rubens,' Owen had said, wrapping his arms around her, 'but fortunately you are here now, and you're a big hit with me.'

Ruby drags her nightdress over her head and stands naked in front of the long mirror, staring at her reflection. Her blood is racing through her veins with the heat and power of youth, but what she sees is the body of an old woman. What was she expecting? That the lightning bolt would have made her young again, lifted and firmed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, flattened her stomach, dissolved several rolls of fat, smoothed and tightened her skin and bleached the age spots? She looks away, pained, then back again, remembering the other times she has studied her body in a mirror trying to imagine how a man might see her. In her twenties, at thirty and forty, and terrifyingly at fifty, even then she had gazed at herself in fascination, at the curve of a shoulder, the soft pale flesh of her inner thighs, the outline of a breast. She has looked at herself through the decades and always, despite her misgivings, seen herself as a lover. She has seen swells and curves, smooth lines, tenderness, a willingness to melt into another's flesh. She has imagined how she would look lying beneath a man, considered her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as they might appear when she was above him, how they might feel against his face.

A lover, always a lover. Was this how other women experienced themselves, the way they measured themselves as women in the silence of their rooms with just a mirror for company? 'In the end,' she thinks, 'we are all the same, old women, fat or thin, loved or unloved, past the bloom, decaying fruit ready to drop from the branch.' How long has it been since she made love to a man? Ten no, more like fifteen years, so long it seems unreal, unrelated to her and who she now is.

Had she thought then that it would be the last time? Why would you? You don't ever think that it might be the last time you will make love, the last time you will feel the stroke of a hand on your thigh, the brush of lips on your breast, the weight and warmth of another body. Slowly, Ruby picks up her nightdress from the bedroom floor, pulls it back over her head and, crawling slowly into bed, puts out the light and lies there in the darkness, struggling with the reality that part of her is suddenly young again, hungry, yearning, ready to take risks, flushed with desire. Twisting and turning she drags a pillow to her chest, rolling onto her side to hug it, and as she eventually begins to relax and sink towards sleep she is still waiting: waiting and wondering whether, not so far away in his cottage, Jackson Crow feels this restless, longing, waiting energy and, if he does, whether he or she will have the imagination and the courage to do anything about it. I'm too old for this, Ruby thinks, too cynical, too sensible. But of course she's not, in her heart she knows that one is never too old for this, never too old to be yearning in the darkness for the word or the touch of a stranger who has glimpsed your soul.

'And . . . that's it, really,' Lesley says, her eyes fixed on the paper napkin that she has folded into a long strip and is now weaving nervously between her fingers. 'I guess you have Billy Fury to thank for bringing me back to my senses.' And she gives a nervous laugh and looks up at him again.

'"Halfway to Paradise", we used to sing that at school,' Declan says, but he doesn't add that it had been the boarding school version that one of the boys had learned from his father. The whole conversation has been awkward and embarra.s.sing and he's hugely relieved it's over. The woman he had talked to that first day seems to have returned, and he likes her much better than the one with whom he had dinner, and who has haunted his conscience in the last few weeks.

'So back to square one, or at least back to where we were before we-'

'Yes,' he cuts in, 'before that. And what about your husband?'

Lesley inhales deeply. 'I don't know, really I don't. I thought it was all his fault, that he was trying to take over my life. But now I'm not so sure. We had so many plans, you see, we always talked about the things we'd do when the kids had left home and he'd retired. I think now that perhaps he was just trying to make that happen. The trouble is that he wants that but I've changed, I don't want it anymore.'

'So what do you want?'

She shrugs. 'I'm not sure but what I do know is that I want something that I can feel pa.s.sionate about, something that gives me a sense of purpose, makes me feel useful again, but I haven't found it and I don't know where to start looking.'

'Mmm. Well maybe Gordon actually wants something different too,' Declan says, and he sees the shock register in her face.

'You mean another woman?'

'No, of course not. I mean like the thing he's doing up north. Maybe he was just trying to do what he thought you wanted all those plans but perhaps he's really moved on from those too. Have you talked to him about it?'

Lesley looks at him, not speaking, just staring hard for a moment. 'You mean . . . no . . . actually no, of course I didn't ask him.'

'So maybe you should,' Declan says. 'I mean, maybe you both just need to talk about it.' He leans back slightly in his chair as Alice brings their breakfasts to the table.

'I take it yours is the full English?' she says.

''Fraid so,' Declan says, grinning up at her. 'Heart attack on a plate for me.'

'And scrambled eggs for you, Lesley. Coffee will be along in a minute. Sorry for the delay, we had a problem with the machine but it's okay now.' And she puts Lesley's breakfast in front of her and heads back towards the kitchen.

Declan looks down at his plate. They eat in silence, Declan devouring his eggs and a sausage in a few mouthfuls. His discomfort is not only about the earlier conversation with Lesley. He's not sure why it seemed okay last night to walk in here with Todd and wait while Alice prepared their burgers, and yet it feels all wrong to be sitting here with Lesley this morning while Alice cooks their breakfast. He pushes his bacon around the plate, needing to deal with something else before he can give it his attention. 'Look, I need to tell you about Alice, although I think Paula may already have . . . ?'

'Ah yes, Paula, she did mention something . . . well, she actually said that Alice had been in prison.'

Declan clears his throat. His face burns with anxiety, his knife and fork are trembling in his hands. He had thought that he would have to tell Ruby about Alice, but in the event it had all been dealt with in his absence. He'd certainly never given any thought to the fact that he might have to explain to someone else. And it's suddenly so important that he gets the right response, that Lesley doesn't say anything judgmental or negative. But what if she does? He can hardly get up and walk out. He'll just have to set her straight, but that might be . . .

'Were you going to tell me something?' Lesley asks.

He clears his throat again. 'Well, it's like this . . .' he begins, and falters.

Lesley swallows a mouthful of scrambled egg threaded through with smoked salmon. 'It's okay, Declan,' she says. 'I do know what happened. Paula didn't tell me the details, but yesterday when I had that near-miss on the way here I was thinking about it and I remembered Alice's case. It was her granddaughter who was killed, wasn't it? I thought that could have been me, driving, not thinking. It happens in a split second. I was lucky it was just a stray dog, not myself or, worse still, someone else, especially a child. It's terrible for Alice. I don't know how you ever get over something like that.'

Declan nods. Is it really going to be as easy as this? He wants to leap up and tell Alice, wants to race into the kitchen and hug her. He wants to tell her that it's another sign, another hurdle out of the way, first Ruby, now Lesley. 'You see,' he wants to say, 'you can have a normal life, you don't always have to be looking over your shoulder.' But instead he returns to his toast and the remaining bacon crispy, just as he likes it.

'Ah, there you are, Declan,' Ruby says, appearing suddenly alongside him. 'Good morning, Lesley. Sorry to interrupt but I need to talk to Declan about Plan B,' and she slips into a chair and leans forward, elbows on the table.

'Do we have a Plan B for something?' Declan says around a mouthful of bacon, and he feels the anxiety building in the pit of his stomach.

'Unfortunately not, and that's the problem. We should have had a Plan B for staffing this weekend. Kim rang. She's got another job in town and she's starting today. She's known for two weeks but didn't know how to give in her notice. She was so nervous I hadn't the heart to insist she work another two weeks.'

's.h.i.t!' Declan says, pushing his plate aside. 'So we've no one to run the shop?'

'No. I just told Alice.'

Alice comes out from behind the counter and joins them at the table. 'Do you think Todd could manage it?' she asks.

Declan shakes his head. 'Todd's the runner for the musicians and he'll never forgive me if I take him away from that. It just wouldn't be fair and, anyway, someone's got to do that job.'

Alice looks nervously across to the counter where several people are now waiting to place their orders. 'Well who? Because it can't be anyone from here, we were flat out yesterday and it's building up again right now.'

Declan rubs his hands over his face. 'I suppose we could ask Paula.'