In The Company Of Strangers Part 3

Only one door remains and it's locked: Catherine's room. Alice slips the key into the lock, wondering why there is no lounge or sitting room. But when she opens it she can see that this large room, with its pale fabrics and rugs in rich, earthy colours on the polished wood floor, was once the lounge. Bookcases line one wall from floor to ceiling and magazines, newspapers and an open handbag lie abandoned on the sofa. Opposite, below the windows that look out to the lavender beds, a long wooden table is cluttered with cosmetics, an open box of costume jewellery, a hairbrush and dryer, a laptop, papers, books, magazines, a small television and DVD player and a vase of long-dead roses surrounded by their fallen petals. Almost obscuring the beautiful stone fire-place is the carved jarrah headboard of an unmade, king size bed scattered with cast-off clothes, and a night table stacked with packets of tablets, discarded tissues, several dirty mugs and gla.s.ses and a half-eaten packet of digestive biscuits.

Alice pauses in the doorway surveying the shockingly intimate story of the last weeks of Catherine's life. The room reeks of neglect, illness and the desperation that must have led her to confine herself here with the things she loved and needed most. The half-open doors of the wardrobe reveal clothes and shoes once organised with precision, but it appears that at some point Catherine had stopped putting things away. Alice senses the shadow of a fading and diminished woman, too sick and exhausted to hang this skirt, this blouse, to pick up these shoes, no longer caring enough to put the beads and earrings into their box, nor roll this scarf and slip it into the drawer alongside the others. Clothes have been dropped on the floor and pushed into a pile in the corner, shoes edged under the bed, underwear tossed close to the linen basket. And the effort of clearing away the old papers, the unwashed cups, the dead flowers, must have been too great. How long, Alice wonders, had Catherine struggled to keep order before giving up? Had she hoped to die here too, planned for it, only to be thwarted by a collapse that meant that her last days were lived out in a hospital bed? The room has a stale, gra.s.sy smell but Alice resists the impulse to fling open the windows and let in the fresh air. Suddenly even to step inside seems like an intrusion. Gently she moves back, closes the door, locks it and slips the beads back around her neck and stands again in the pa.s.sage gripped by the sadness that seems to have leaked out into the rest of the house.

A different room will have to be prepared for Ruby, she thinks. The main bedroom has its own bathroom so that's probably the best bet. She opens the linen press and collects some towels, puzzling as she does so over the picture of loneliness she'd witnessed behind Catherine's locked door. Declan had spoken of his aunt as a warm and generous person and she had lived here for decades; surely there must have been neighbours, local people in the town, friends and of course there were staff, so why was she so obviously alone in her time of greatest need? Had no one seen what was happening? Was there no one she could trust with a glimpse of her vulnerability? Was there no one who cared?

The main bedroom is cool and peaceful, the bed already made, a couple of watercolour landscapes on the walls and a Victorian lavender-patterned porcelain jug on the dresser. Declan had told her that Catherine found Paula difficult to manage and he too seems ill at ease with her, but it's obvious why Catherine kept her on. With the exception of Catherine's lair everything is spotless, and while the kitchen is untidy it's clear it is clean and things that are lying around are undoubtedly Declan's. Paula does an outstanding job; in the cupboard from where she'd taken the towels the linen is immaculately pressed and a muslin bag of dried lavender lies between each set. So why was Paula not allowed in to clean Catherine's room? Alice opens the bedroom windows and the white curtains flutter to life on a warm, lavender-scented breeze. She has a fleeting sense of the days when a very different life was lived here, a pa.s.sionate life rich with love and laughter, and she wonders how and when it acquired its silent air of despair. She is curious now, more curious than ever about those days, that life, where it went, how it ended and why, because something tells her that this aridity goes back years, decades even, and that the desolation of Catherine's room speaks volumes about her life as well as her death.

Alice looks around the bedroom with satisfaction thinking she'll cut some of the roses in the back garden and put them in the jug on the dresser to make it more welcoming. She closes the door and heads back towards the kitchen, pausing once more outside the locked room. She had recognised something in there, something not only sad but personally disconcerting. It was the desperate and failing effort to retain control and create a sense of safety. She herself had done it in prison, done everything possible to make her s.p.a.ce into a haven, a place where she had some measure of control. There had to be some way to compensate for the loss of love and of family, the lack of purpose. There were limits in prison; you could be locked in, but only by others and you couldn't lock those others out, and how often she had longed to do so. Catherine had, apparently, managed to do that, keeping her decline and her despair confined, struggling alone not just with pain and sickness, but with the turbulent emotions of a lifetime that would have crowded in on her.

Alice turns away from the door with a shiver, heads to the kitchen and sits down at the table, resting her head in her hands. Infected with Catherine's sadness, her own fear of the future returns, the earlier tender ray of hope extinguished now. Catherine was seventy when she died, a woman with a beautiful place to live, a thriving business and, apparently, plenty of money, and yet she had in the end been entirely alone with no one to blur the edges of her fear or sadness with some comfort. If this could happen to her what then, Alice wonders, lies in her own future? In three months' time she will be fifty-nine. In ten years' time, what then? Fear surges through her blood making her heart pound, and she does what she has done for more years than she can remember, she gets to her feet and looks frantically around her for something to do, something to distract her, anything to stop the reality of being there, alone with herself in the stillness.

still don't understand,' Gordon says, lifting Lesley's bag into the back of the car. 'It's the sort of thing we said we'd do together when I retired take off for a few days when we felt like it. Go down south, do some wineries, galleries, walks. And now you're doing it and you won't let me come with you.'

'Oh do stop moaning,' Lesley says, aware as she does so that he is not actually moaning, he is attempting to understand something that she can't fully understand herself. What can she say? That's she's taking some sort of test of independence? That she actually can't bear to be around him right now? It's not even as though she really wants to go. She doubts it will do anything to solve the real problem, which is Gordon himself in retirement. 'I'm just going away on my own for a few days.'

'For two weeks actually,' Gordon says, and she can hear he's getting tetchy now, irritated, hurt probably, and understandably confused; as confused as she is. Years ago they could have talked about what was happening but the channels of communication have been shut down.

'You'll be fine,' she says, 'I've left you plenty of meals in the freezer.'

Gordon slams down the lid of the boot and turns to her. 'Of course I'll be fine,' he says, and his tone is angry now. 'I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself. But this is about us. There's more to our marriage than frozen meals, or at least there used to be, but now I'm beginning to wonder.'

Lesley puts her trainers into the back of the car, and straightens up. 'I don't know what you're making such a fuss about. Women do this all the time, get away on their own for a while.'

'You don't.'

'Well I am now.' She turns away and opens the driver's door. 'And it's really not long.'

Gordon grasps the car door to stop her from getting in. 'Why did I do this then?' he asks. 'Why did I retire? I could have stayed on, you know, five years, more probably.'

Lesley tries to push his hand off the door but he's immovable. 'I don't know, why did you?'

Gordon runs his hands through his thinning hair in exasperation. 'I did it for you, for us, for all the things we talked about for years, for our marriage, our future. Doesn't that mean anything to you?'

Lesley opens her mouth to speak, pauses and then looks straight at him. 'I don't know, Gordon,' she says. 'I really don't know anymore.' And as his hand drops away from the door she slips into the driver's seat. She closes the door, starts the engine and accelerates out to the road, leaving him standing there in the middle of the drive, aware that she has wrought terrible damage, but somehow no longer able to care.

Lesley's immediate reaction to Benson's Reach is disappointment; the place has lost its edge that's for sure. There is no one in the office and the rather dowdy woman who opens the door to the house seems to know little or nothing about the place.

'I spoke to Mr Benson on the phone,' Lesley explains, 'just a few days ago.'

'I'm sorry, I'm new here and I'm afraid I don't know anything about the business end of things,' the woman says. 'I'm Alice, by the way, and I'm so sorry about this. Let's go over to the office Declan will be back soon, but meanwhile I can probably find the reservation and then I can take you to your cottage.'

She retrieves a reservations book from the monstrous pile of paperwork on the desk and seems relieved to find details of the booking. 'Declan has a note that you'd be arriving after two o'clock,' she says. 'Not that it matters your being early, I mean but it does account for why he's not here.'

There is some messing about with a booking form, and eventually the woman says it's best to leave the paperwork until Declan gets back. She opens a gla.s.s cabinet filled with keys hanging on hooks, selects one, and gestures to Lesley to follow her out of the office.

The cottage is just as Lesley remembered, light and pleasantly cool, the rammed-earth walls a soft shade of terracotta, the furniture simple but good quality, beds made up with white linen and on each one white towels, folded to make a nest for a sprig of lavender and two foil-wrapped lavender chocolates.

'Did Declan explain that the cafe is closed?' Alice asks, opening the fridge. 'Fresh bread and croissants will be delivered early each morning.' And she goes on to point out milk, cereals and fruit. 'I know Declan will be up to see you as soon as he gets back,' she says, edging towards the door. 'He can fill you in on anything else.'

'When exactly did Mrs Benson die?' Lesley asks.

'Last month, although I believe she was very sick for a quite a long time prior to that.'

'I'm sorry. I only stayed here once before,' Lesley says, trying to make up for her irritability in the office. 'But I liked her very much.'

Once alone she drags her suitcase into the bedroom, throws herself on the bed and lies there gazing up at the sloping timber beams of the low ceiling. Several times during the three hour drive down here she had been on the point of turning back, trying to unpick the damage before it was too late. She really hadn't set out to hurt Gordon, but of course she has, probably very badly, but she can't go back because she wouldn't know what to say. This morning, after months of irritation and resentment, something weird had happened. As she packed her bag for the trip south she felt confusion, exhaustion and the longing to be gone. Her sharp tone and harsh words were self-defence rather than attack, and then Gordon had asked that question, 'Doesn't that mean anything to you?' and in that instant she realised that she no longer knew the answer, she no longer knew what she felt or what she wanted. The only thing that was clear to her then was that this was the reason she had to go, in order to work it out, to find the answer to a question she had never expected to be asked.

But being here makes no difference, it simply opens her up to the distraction of more practical and comparatively trivial questions. What is she going to do with herself now that she's here? Last time they had visited wineries well, she won't be doing that alone, although there are some nice little galleries nearby. They'd gone to the beach, but she's really not much of a beach person, especially when it's hot; walking in winter is when she likes it best. They'd gone out for dinner every night, and she won't be doing that lots of women do, of course, and seem not to mind, but Lesley cringes at the thought of eating dinner alone in a restaurant, being stared at and whispered about by couples and families. She'll put stuff in the fridge and heat food in the microwave. And while Margaret River certainly has some very nice shops it won't take long to check them out. But what about the rest of the time?

The oppressive silence of the cottage wraps itself around her. She can't go home, and she can't call the kids because they'll ask all sorts of questions, and so for that matter will her mother. For the next two weeks she is stuck with herself, in this little cottage in a place where, in spite of its many charms, there is absolutely nothing she wants to do.

Todd loves the taste of raspberries more than anything else he's ever tasted. Just thinking about that taste makes his mouth water. It's late in the season, though, and as he wanders slowly between the canes searching for the last of the fruit, he's pretty sure he's going to be out of luck.

'You can eat as many as you want,' Catherine had said to him the first time she'd brought him here and asked him if he'd like to help with the picking. 'And I'll pay you five dollars an hour.'

'It won't seem right to eat them if you're paying me,' he'd said, surprising himself as he did so; usually he'd grab whatever he could get, but he'd liked her. Weird she was, old and maybe a bit crazy. It was only later that he came to realise that she was the sanest person he'd ever met.

'I doubt that even you could devour all my profits, Todd,' she'd said with a laugh, 'tuck in, eat what you want.' So he had, and the funny thing was that he discovered there was a certain amount that you could eat that was enough, and then you were happy to stop. It was cool, once you knew you could have as much as you wanted, you didn't need to pig out. He liked that.

But this year the raspberries have been neglected. A couple of months ago the reticulation for this part of the land packed up. He'd told Catherine about it and so had Fleur, but it was one of those things that just didn't get fixed. Todd kicks at the dusty ground wondering whether the plants will ever recover from a summer without water. Eventually he finds a couple of poor specimens, shrunken and dried up, but they are raspberries and he stuffs them in his mouth. They're a disappointment, dry little lumps, and he spits them out, sits down on the ground between the canes, extracts one of the two cigarettes he has in his pocket, and lights it. He's not supposed to smoke out here, fire risk, and he'd never have dreamed of doing it when Catherine was around. But she's not anymore, she's gone, and Todd can't work out what's happening up at the house, and what it all might mean for him. The sun scorches the back of his neck and he turns his baseball cap around so that the peak protects it, and draws slowly on the cigarette, watching the blue smoke curl up and away above the tops of the canes. He wonders why he's smoking because he doesn't really like it much and just does it to look grown up but what's the point when there's no one around to see?

n.o.body's told him what he's supposed to do now. 'Oh that's good,' Mr Benson had said when Todd had mentioned that Catherine paid him to do some jobs around the place. 'Very handy to have someone like you around,' and he'd run off inside the office to answer the phone. But he hasn't said anything about Todd's pay. Perhaps he thinks Todd does all the sweeping and the pruning, washing out the workroom and sorting the rubbish and all the other stuff for free. He might have if it was for Catherine. He'd have done anything for her, but she always paid him on time, and she'd given him some money just before she died. The last time he went up to see her at the hospital, before Mr Benson even turned up, she'd given him an envelope.

'Did you open that bank account like I told you?' she'd asked, and when Todd said he hadn't she'd said, 'Well, do it today. There's some cash in here. You should pay it straight into the account. It's to help you get organised, get a proper job, and don't tell anyone, especially don't tell your mum it's not for her to blow on dope or flagons of wine. Just keep it for yourself.'

The envelope contained fifty one hundred dollar notes. He'd never seen so much money and it made him nervous. He'd never been into the bank although his mum had often sent him to the ATM with her card when she wanted some cash. But somehow he couldn't imagine walking into the bank with five thousand dollars in cash. They'd think he'd nicked it, for sure. So he'd kept it with him at the caravan for a few days and then he'd taken it to Fleur and she'd promised to look after it for him at home.

'The cash is to help you get on your feet,' Catherine had said. 'And Declan will pay you as usual. You'll be sixteen in a few months and you can't be doing odd jobs all your life. You're far too bright for that.'

He hadn't spent any of it yet, but he might have to if Mr Benson doesn't pay him soon. Catherine had paid him cash every week, but Mr Benson doesn't seem to notice him and hasn't asked him to do any of the other hundred and one things Catherine might have asked him to do. So he'd just kept doing stuff that needed doing, and this morning he'd gone up to the office and a woman called Alice was there, and she couldn't help him, so now he's killing time, waiting until Mr Benson comes back.

Todd feels helpless, something he never felt when Catherine was there. She'd made him feel safe. Now he doesn't know what's happening, what he should be doing, what's expected of him, but he knows he has to be strong and watch out for himself. Catherine would have stood up for him against anyone his mother, the police, Paula, who obviously hates him, anyone. But now she's gone. For more than three years she'd listened to him, talked to him, bucked him up, looked out for him and bawled him out when he f.u.c.ked up.

'Oi!' she'd yelled at him across the pub car park that first night when she'd found him trying to break into her car. 'Get your hands off my car.' And she'd grabbed him by the neck of his hoodie and pushed him up against the nearside door. 'Bit young to be nicking cars, aren't you? Bet you can't even drive.'

He was insulted. 'I did it before,' he'd said. 'Took a Honda and drove it down the beach.'

'And got picked up in the process, I'll bet,' Catherine had said. 'Did they charge you?'

He'd shrugged. 'They just give me a warning.'

She'd slackened her grip then. 'So why're you doing it again?'

'Dunno,' he'd said, attempting to duck away but timing it badly.

She'd grabbed him again and shaken him slightly. 'Maybe you want to spend the night in a cell at the police station.'

Todd said nothing, just shook his head. She was a big woman, tall and broad, and he'd realised then that he'd bitten off more than he could chew.

'So why?' she'd said. 'Just for kicks, is it?'

He shrugged. 'S'pose so . . .'

'Get in the car,' she'd said, dragging him round to the pa.s.senger side. 'It's all right, I'm not going to take you to the police. I'm going to take you home and have a chat with your dad.'

'Haven't got one,' he'd said.

'Well presumably you've got a mum, I'll talk to her instead.'

He hadn't known what to say then because the chances of his mum being sober enough to talk to were pretty remote. And it didn't take Catherine long to work that out once they got to the caravan. His mum was totally out of it that night, like always, and she was more interested in watching 'America's Next Top Model' than listening to anything Catherine had to say. 'Yeah, yeah, whatever,' she'd said, without moving or taking her eyes off the screen. She could even pour another drink without taking her eyes off the TV.

'Looks like this is between you and me then, kid,' Catherine had said. She really was pretty old, and very bossy. 'So, here's the deal. D'you know Benson's Reach? Okay, tomorrow after school you come up to see me there and we'll sort this out. Can you do that?'

He'd nodded, kicking at a bit of gravel at the foot of the caravan steps.

'Straight from school then, and you'd better turn up because if you don't I'll be down at the police station reporting you for trying to break into my car. Got it?'

Todd had nodded again, still not looking up.

She'd gripped his shoulder then. 'I said have you got it,' she repeated, looking closely into his face.

'I got it,' he'd said.

'Good.' She let him go. 'Straight after school, remember, Benson's Reach, ask for Catherine.'

And that was how it began, every day after school and often at weekends he went there, loading, unloading, digging, carrying, cleaning gutters, anything. Sometimes she'd just sit with him on the verandah and talk. She'd helped him with his homework, taught him about books and made him read stuff; sometimes she even made him read the newspaper. A couple of months before the end she'd organised to have a great big bed brought in from where it was stored and set up in the sitting room and then he'd gone with her into town to buy a TV and DVD player and he'd managed to set them up for her.

'I'll be like a hermit,' she'd said, and he hadn't a clue what she was talking about. Hermits lived in caves or tumbledown shacks, not great big houses with loads of rooms. 'I'll be living in one room,' she'd said, 'just one room with everything I need. Cosy, less work, less tiring.'

She'd got quite a bit thinner by then but she hadn't lost her sense of humour and she hadn't stopped talking to him about things she thought he should know: politics, climate change, and what would happen if all the grandmothers in the world stopped caring for their grandchildren and their aged parents free of charge. And she'd got him to read to her; it was good for both of them, she'd said.

'Get a decent job,' she told him late last year when he left school. 'You promised you'd stay on at school but you haven't, so for goodness sake start looking for a job. I'll help you.'

She was pretty sick by then, and looked terrible; most of her hair was falling out and she wore a scarf tied around her head, and her hands shook. In December he'd got a job in the supermarket, loading and unloading the trucks, collecting trolleys, washing floors, all that stuff. Three days a week and half a day on Sat.u.r.days.

'You're better than that, Todd,' she'd said when he told her. 'You could've got a better job, full time, more money. You're a good worker.'

But of course if he did that he wouldn't be able to help out at Benson's, and there was no way he was going to leave her in the lurch when she was so sick, but now she's left him.

Todd leans forward, peering between the raspberry canes to the office, and sees that Mr Benson's car is back. Might as well get up there now and catch him before someone else does. He grinds his cigarette end into the earth, stands up, unzips his fly, pees on the b.u.t.t to make sure it's out, and heads towards the office.

Declan looks gloomily at the sheaf of papers the woman at the council has given him to complete, then adds them to the pile on the desk. The first thing he has to do is go up and see Mrs Craddock, who arrived about an hour ago. Alice hadn't liked her 'p.r.i.c.kly', she'd said and she'd encouraged him to go up and have a chat with her.

And maybe you could walk me through the process for checking guests in and out, so that I'll know what to do next time,' she'd said.

Declan thinks he'll go and see his new guest first and is about to turn his back on the mess of the desk when he spots Todd heading in his direction from the berry beds. Alice had told him that Todd was looking for him earlier, so he thinks maybe he'll have a quick word with him first. He needs to know exactly who Todd is and what the arrangements are for the work and, presumably, for paying him because he doesn't show up anywhere on the payroll.

'You should get rid of that boy,' Paula had said to him the other day. 'He's trouble. I warned Catherine but she wouldn't listen.'

'What sort of trouble?' Declan had asked.

'Just trouble,' she'd said, and she'd walked off with an armful of linen destined for the cottages. 'Don't say I didn't warn you.'

Declan watches as Todd weaves his way between the loganberries and along the path that leads around the lavender. He seems a nice lad, quiet, works well, but he can't remember Catherine saying anything about him. Declan steps outside the office and calls out to him. 'Hey, Todd, can you come and have a chat with me?'

Todd gives him a thumbs-up and quickens his pace, as if he'd been waiting for the invitation. But as Declan slips into his chair behind the desk there is a clatter of footsteps along the verandah from the opposite direction and Fleur appears in the doorway.

'Got a minute?'

'Well, I . . .' Declan hesitates, feeling his usual sense of inadequacy when confronted with Fleur.

'Good,' she says, moving quickly to the chair opposite him. 'It won't take long.'

He shrugs, 'Okay. Ruby's arriving this afternoon and I know she'll want to meet you.'

The thing is,' Fleur says, 'I've just come to give in my notice.'

She might as well have punched him hard in the middle of the chest. 's.h.i.t,' he says, 'you're not serious, are you? We'll be stuffed without you no one else knows how the products are made. What can I-'

Todd's head appears around the door. 'Ah! Sorry,' he says, 'I thought you said to come up to the office.'

'I did,' Declan says, getting up and walking over to him. 'Sorry, mate, can you give me a few minutes, this is urgent.'

'I'll start on cleaning the gutters then, shall I?' Todd asks.

'Thanks, I'll catch you later,' Declan says, giving him what he hopes is a friendly rather than manic smile, and he closes the office door and sinks back into his chair. 'What would persuade you to stay, Fleur?' he asks, trying not to sound desperate. 'I mean, we could talk about money, and I was hoping you might take on managing the gift shop as well. Not working in there I mean, just a managerial overseeing role.'

Fleur shakes her head. 'I don't think so,' she says, looking away from him out through the window and swallowing hard. 'I think it's time to go. For me this place was really about Catherine and now she's gone . . .'

'But do you have to decide now? I'm sure you and I would get on, and when Catherine's friend arrives you and she . . .' His voice fades away under her unflinching gaze.

'I'll stay till you've had a chance to settle in,' Fleur says. 'A couple of months maybe, but in the meantime perhaps you could be on the lookout for someone to replace me.'

Outside the office Todd curses silently. He can hear every word and the prospect of Fleur leaving is a blow. After Catherine she is his favourite of all the people at Benson's. He often sits in the workroom watching or helping her to mix the oils and the lavender and the other stuff, and decanting it into the purple bottles or the little white pots with the purple labels. Fleur is the only person who knows how to have a laugh around this place, and she's got no time for Paula; won't even let her in to clean the workroom.

'Too b.l.o.o.d.y nosy by half,' she'd said. 'I'd rather clean it myself. Not that I've got any secrets in here, just don't want her snooping around.'

And Catherine had agreed and told Todd she'd pay him extra to clean up in there once a week.

Fleur is like Catherine, a total control freak, but she always does the right thing by people. There's no way she'll leave until they find someone else she wouldn't leave anyone in the lurch. Todd knows they'll never find anyone like her, and now he's about to lose another friend and the last person he trusts. Straightening up he heads away from the office with a sigh, remembering as he does so the time he'd told Catherine how she was a control freak but always did the right thing.

'You've got to be kidding,' she'd said, laughing. 'I've done a lot of horrible things that I'm not at all proud of, let down and hurt people I really cared about.'

'Yeah?' he'd said. 'Well I don't know about that but you're just, like, kind kind to me, you treat me the same as Fleur or any of the others.' He'd wanted to say that he was talking about respect but he would've felt like a d.i.c.khead saying it. That's what it was though, respect. People adults, teachers, and the like always talked about respect, about how everyone should have respect for everyone else, but in Todd's experience many of them didn't have any respect at all for him, or for people like him.

'What're you doing hanging around here?' Paula says, appearing around the corner of the house carrying an empty bucket and a bottle of Windex. 'She's not here to look after you now, you know. Nothing for you to do here now, you should just clear off.'

'I'm going for the ladder,' Todd says. 'Got to clean the gutters.'