In The Company Of Strangers Part 20

Fleur gives him a wobbly smile, and he thinks she looks upset and wonders if it's his fault.

'It was good though, wasn't it,' she says, and she seems to be trying to get herself together. 'I mean, a good festival and good for Benson's.'

'Absolutely,' Ruby says. 'The feedback's been terrific, and it got us a lot of publicity. We're back on the radar again, which is why we need to talk to you.'

'We're having to rethink things,' Declan says, 'and we want to run a couple of ideas past you.'

'You mean you want to talk about work?' Fleur asks.

Declan smiles. 'Er . . . yes, that's why we asked you to pop in, what it means is-'

'Look,' Fleur cuts in, 'I'm sorry but I thought this was about something else.'

'We understand,' Declan begins again. 'We know you were committed to leaving but we're hoping-'

'No!' Fleur says, and Declan sees that her hands are shaking. 'No, you don't want to talk to me about this before I tell you . . .' She rubs her hands over her face then inhales deeply.

'I thought you knew, thought you'd worked it out, but you obviously haven't so I need to tell you. It was me. I got the marijuana for Catherine. She was in pain, and she asked.'

'You?' Ruby gasps, staring at her.

Declan seems to have been struck dumb.

'Me, yes. It wasn't like I was dealing, I didn't make a profit or anything, but she couldn't organise it herself. And Todd says you're worried that it was being sold to staff or guests, well it wasn't. Never, I promise you. I would never do that. It was just a favour to Catherine, that's all. Please believe me, I would never have sold it.'

There is absolute silence in the kitchen. Ruby takes a deep breath and puffs out her cheeks. 'Well, you're the last person I would have thought of, Fleur. What made Catherine ask you? How did she know you'd be able to get it?'

'Because we'd often talked about people using it for pain. I'd told her that a friend of mine with MS uses it. So when things got very bad she wanted to try it and asked me if I could get some. I started off making her some cookies but she didn't like that, she started smoking instead.'

'And did it help?' Declan asks.

Fleur nods. 'Quite a bit, apparently. She smoked every day. But it stuffed her concentration, which is why she couldn't cope with reading, so she got Todd reading to her.'

Ruby and Declan exchange a glance across the table and Ruby looks away as Declan struggles to contain the urge to laugh out loud.

'So you're the source,' he says. 'No evil dealer fleecing old ladies and ripping off the staff and the guests, just Fleur on the mercy run.'

She shrugs, studying her shaking hands which are clasped on the table. 'If you want to put it like that. So, anyway, I'm really sorry. I should've told you straight away when you got here but . . . I don't know . . . I was upset and . . . and if you feel you have to go to the police-'

'The police?' Declan cuts in. 'Of course we're not going to the police,' and he hesitates and looks across at Ruby. 'We're not, are we, Ruby?'

'Of course not,' Ruby says. 'No, we're . . . I'm just glad you told us. It means we can stop worrying and put the whole thing to rest.'

'But you'll want me to go?'

'Go where?' Ruby says.

'To leave.'

'But you wanted to leave-'

'I did. When Catherine died I thought I didn't want to be here anymore, thought I needed a change. And of course it is different, it's actually better, but . . .'

'So are you interested in staying?' Declan asks.

'Could I?'

'That's why we asked you to come and talk to us,' he says. 'We're trying to reorganise the staffing of the shop and the lavender products, the whole thing. We were hoping we could persuade you to stay on.'

Fleur looks from one to the other. 'But what about . . . well, the other thing?'

'The gra.s.s? Well, it's sorted now, isn't it? We can destroy it. It seems to have acquired a fine coating of soot. Catherine's storage solution left something to be desired. Just, obviously, keep this to yourself.' He thinks he sounds competent, even authoritative, which is a very strange sensation. 'Don't bring drugs onto the property in future, please. And just one more thing before we get onto this work plan do you have any idea where Paula might have got to?'

t's an odd sort of week, Alice thinks, preparations for the festival have been going on for so long and now the whole thing is over everyone's spirits seem flat, besides which they're all exhausted. At Ruby's insistence Alice has retained the casual staff at the cafe until the end of the week to give herself a break, and although she certainly needs it she too feels strange and purposeless now the festival is over. It doesn't help any of them that Benson's looks uncharacteristically messy. The stage has not yet been dismantled; last week it looked like an invitation to a party but now its presence seems bleak and ghostly. The temporary fencing and the trestles that were used for the hot dog stall are dismantled and stacked ready for collection, and there is still a lot of litter in the field: cans, stubbies, forgotten thongs, even a couple of abandoned Eskys.

From where she is leaning on the balcony rail of her cottage, Alice sees Ruby walk out of the kitchen with Jackson. She's holding the door for him and he is carrying a tray with a coffee pot and mugs. She watches as they settle at the table and Ruby pours the coffee. They seem serious, she thinks, almost oblivious to anything but each other. And they look as though they belong together. Ruby has changed in the last couple of days and Alice is pretty sure it's not only due to the relief of having broken her silence about the past.

On the other side of the property Todd is mustering his troops. Bundy and Johno have been summoned to help with the clean-up and had turned up earlier for a free breakfast at the cafe. Now Todd is handing out gardening gloves and black plastic sacks and delivering instructions about collecting and sorting the rubbish. Alice feels a huge rush of affection. She remembers sitting here in her first few days at Benson's, watching him wandering among the raspberry canes, wondering who he was and where he fitted in to the regime at Benson's. Now he's at the heart of the place and yet she suspects he has no idea how central he has become. He seems to have a grip on so much of what happens here, and an enthusiasm for it that is far beyond what could be expected of a sixteen-year-old. Yesterday, before he left for Bunbury, Fleur had taken him into town to open a bank account and deposit some money that Catherine had left him. His pride in being what he described as 'a man with a substantial bank account' had almost brought tears to Alice's eyes. It seems that no one here at Benson's is immune to the Todd effect well, no one except Paula.

Paula! Alice's stomach churns when she thinks of her. It's Tuesday morning and they haven't seen or heard anything of her since the gla.s.s-smas.h.i.+ng debacle on Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Apart from the disruption of having to engage temporary cleaners, no one seems particularly concerned about Paula's absence, but Alice keeps thinking of Fleur's comments. Catherine had been good at managing her, she'd said, and Paula had been on some sort of medication. It all compounds her feeling that Paula's brash manner and her apparent insensitivity to the usual boundaries between people might be a sign of something more troubling.

'Have you tried calling her?' she had asked Declan yesterday.

'I have, and so has Ruby,' he'd said, 'and we both left messages.'

'You might have scared her off.'

He'd shaken his head. 'We agreed to keep it friendly but firm. You know hope you're okay but we need to hear from you, please get in touch.'

'But we can't just leave it at that, surely?' Alice had said. 'She might be sick or something.'

Declan had shrugged. 'Both Todd and Fleur say she's gone to ground like this before and always come back with . . . well, not exactly with her tail between her legs but back to being the same old Paula.'

'I still don't like it,' Alice had said. 'I think we should do something. Where does she live?'

'Um . . . I think Todd said it was Wilyabrup.'

'Where's that?'

'Up the coast towards Yallingup.'

'Someone should go and see her, check that she's okay.'

Declan screwed up his face. 'Not me, I hope.'

'I'll go with you.'

He'd turned to her then, looking into her face. 'I thought you were staying within the grounds of the Benson prison farm, for fear of recognition.'

'I am, I was,' Alice had said, blus.h.i.+ng, 'but it could be time to start taking risks.'

'Okay,' Declan had said, 'fair enough. Let's leave it another day and if we haven't heard from Paula by tomorrow morning you and I will take a ride up there.'

And this morning there is still no word from Paula and she's still not answering her phone.

Ruby isn't sure what's happening. She has been longing for this opportunity to spend time alone with Jackson, to pick up the conversation that they should have had the previous morning in his cottage. Unburdening herself of the past has energised her, left her open to possibilities. Yesterday afternoon she had thrown open the door of what had been Catherine's room and stacked the remaining boxes in a cupboard in the pa.s.sage. Then she took the journals, the nightdresses and rosaries and other mementoes, into her own room and put them in the bottom drawer of the dressing table. There was a weary sort of pleasure in the realisation that the ghosts had been laid and the room that had housed them had been returned to its rightful use.

This moment ought to feel good; Alice and Declan are going out, Todd is clearing litter with his friends, Benson's is quiet and at last there is time to spare. But somehow it doesn't feel good as they sit here at right angles to each other on the sunlit deck. It's more than the awkwardness of the previous morning; the air seems charged with tension and it's coming from Jackson.

Ruby feels the b.u.t.terflies of anxiety fluttering in her diaphragm and tries to slow her breathing to calm herself. Ignore it, she tells herself, push through it; carry on as though everything is fine.

Jackson sips his coffee and looks out towards the slope where the stage still stands deserted.

'So how was Bunbury?' Ruby asks, realising that she hasn't managed to keep the anxiety out of her voice.

He nods. 'Swell, nice little place and a great audience. Todd seemed to have a pretty good time.'

Silence again awful, barren silence.

She grips the arms of her chair. 'We need to talk about what happened,' she says, and as she speaks he looks away again, to the stage, the cottages, the cafe, everywhere but at her. 'What I said yesterday morning, what you said . . .'

He turns to her now, leans forward, looks her briefly in the eye and then away again. 'I can't do this, Ruby,' he says. 'I can't get into this.'

Ruby feels a leaden weight in her stomach. 'What do you mean? You said . . .'

He sighs, turning back to her. 'I'm so sorry. I said what I felt, that when we met I felt I had known you all my life but had only just found you. It was real, it was what I felt.'

The blood pounds in her head and her knuckles whiten. 'It was what you felt are you saying you no longer feel that?'

Jackson shakes his head. 'It was what I felt then, it's what I still feel now, but at the same time I don't have what it takes. Whatever is supposed to happen next, the next step, I can't take it. I'm not made for relations.h.i.+ps, Ruby. Every one I ever had I stuffed up one way or another. I'm a loner and now I'm too old to change.'

Ruby stares at him in disbelief, then looks away. She folds her arms across her chest and rapidly unfolds them. 'Look,' she says, 'it was all so sudden. We have these feelings but we've had no chance to talk . . .' Her voice fades away because everything about him this morning tells her that it's hopeless. The relaxed, easygoing Jackson with his fluid movements and ready laughter has gone, replaced by someone else, someone rigid and cut off from feelings, someone hiding behind a wall. Ruby knows enough about people to realise that whatever she says now will be a sort of pleading, embarra.s.sing and debasing. And while part of her wants to fight, her pride holds her back. A voice in her head tells her that this is worth fighting for but another tells her that holding herself together is more important. She feels she is falling apart from within but she's determined not to let him see that. But then . . .

'It's never too late to change, Jackson,' she says, and it clatters, like the cliche it is, into the s.p.a.ce between them.

'For you maybe, but it is for me.'

'Perhaps you don't want to change,' she says, suddenly angry and ready now for a fight. 'Perhaps you're too selfish or too lazy.'

But he won't fight. Instead he just nods. 'Perhaps both,' he says.

Ruby is shocked by her own impotence. She is used to winning, and it's so long since she's had this hopeless sense of something so precious slipping away from her. How many times has she pulled back from the brink of involvement for fear of facing the abyss of loss? But this is different, now she has no choice. She wants what she glimpsed with Jackson more than she can bear, and yet it's too late, already gone. He has removed himself from the equation.

'Some risks are worth taking,' she says. 'Stay a little longer, give us time to see what might happen . . .' But she knows it's lost, over before it started. Tomorrow he will be gone, leaving her nothing to salvage from it but the shame of grasping at love and having it moved out of reach.

'Shall we go now, Alice?' Declan calls, waving to her from outside the office.

And she gives him a thumbs-up, fetches her bag and sungla.s.ses from the cottage and pauses to draw a deep breath.

'It's like longing to leave home but being afraid to cross the street,' the Outcare officer had told her just before she was released, 'but the feeling will pa.s.s.' It had been so much harder than she expected during those first few days of freedom, and now the fear overtakes her again. 'But it is different this time,' she tells herself, 'Declan will be with me, and anyway I'm different,' and she closes the cottage door and runs down to where Declan is waiting in the car.

'Aren't we going the wrong way?' she asks as he takes a right turn out of the drive.

'We're going into town first,' he says, 'just a little practice run. You go into a shop, on your own while I wait outside, you buy a newspaper and come out and then we walk together to a coffee shop, sit down and order some coffee and chat in a relaxed manner. As though it's something we do all the time.'

Alice, her insides churning, turns to look at him. 'We were going to visit Paula.'

'We still are,' he says, briefly taking his eyes off the road to look at her, 'as soon as we've finished the coffee. If you have the courage to go looking for Paula something which, I have to say, I am only able to do because you're with me then you certainly have the courage to have a cup of coffee with me. We're old friends, remember, there hasn't been much time for that recently.'

'Sometimes you really surprise me, Declan,' Alice says, smiling. 'You sell yourself short. You claim incompetence but you're actually a really good manager. You take good decisions and you're thoughtful, but you're not a pushover.'

Declan gives a short laugh. 'It must be the sisterhood effect,' he says, 'the combination of you and Ruby. It's challenging but fortifying, like that breakfast cereal that builds iron men.'

Alice bursts into laughter and then finds quite suddenly that the laughter turns to a couple of sobs.

's.h.i.+t,' Declan says, slowing down, about to pull off the road. 'What have I said?'

'Nothing,' Alice says, laughing again now, 'it's just that I'm so scared of what we're about to do the newspaper, the cafe, not the Paula bit. But I suppose as I'm in the company of iron man there's really nothing to worry about.'

'Absolutely nothing at all,' he says, pulling back onto the road. 'In half an hour it will all be over and you'll be wondering what you were worried about.'

And he was right, except that it took longer, more than twice as long in fact. Not longer to stop worrying, which happened quite quickly, just longer to luxuriate in the difference, to sit there on the cafe terrace watching people go by. To wander back down the hill to the bookshop and browse the shelves, even longer to go into the eco shop and buy a gorgeous purple wool jacket that Declan a.s.sured her she would need as the days grew cooler.

'There's no stopping you now, is there?' he says as they leave the shop. 'You're already into retail therapy. May I escort you back to your car, madam?'

'It feels good,' she says, taking his proffered arm. 'Really good. Thank you.'

'It's an extraordinary pleasure,' he says, drawing her hand further into the curve of his arm and keeping hold of it. 'We will do it often from now on, along with other daring things, like going out for a meal, or to the cinema, or for a walk on the beach. For now, though, we'll just go and see if I can work the iron man charm on Paula.'

It takes them a while to find Paula's place, losing themselves along unmade roads and then backtracking, but at last they discover the unmarked road and reach a cl.u.s.ter of small weatherboard cottages dating back several decades.

'It has to be that one,' Declan says, pointing to a bright pink gate which leads up a short path of broken pavers to the white cottage with a badly painted pink door and pink window frames. 'It has Paula written all over it. Number three there, you see, I was right.' He pulls up outside the gate and switches off the engine. 'Come on then, iron woman,' he says, 'let's do it.'

'She's not there,' Alice says as they reach the gate, and for some reason the place makes her feel uneasy. 'It's all shut up.'

'Of course it's shut up, it's a chilly day.'

Alice shakes her head. 'There's something wrong, I know there is.'

Declan runs up the three steps to the front door and knocks a couple of times. The black iron door knocker shaped like a dragon is loud in the stillness. He steps back, waiting for a response.

'She's not there, I know she's not,' Alice says.

'Give her time,' Declan says, 'she might be out the back, or in the bathroom.' He knocks again. 'Okay, she's not there,' he says, and he walks back down onto the path, jumps over a flowerbed and peers through the window of the small garage. 'No car either. I'll look round the back,' and he strides off down the drive and opens the gate at the end.

Alice knows it's a waste of time. Paula isn't there, she feels that so strongly that it hardly seems worth checking out the back of the house, but she follows Declan through into the yard and waits while he knocks at the back door. Nothing.

'I suppose that's it then,' Declan says as they stroll back to the front of the house. 'Not much else we can do. I guess she'll turn up when it suits her.'