In The Company Of Strangers Part 21

'Hang on a minute,' Alice says.

Next door but one an elderly woman is making her way from her front door to her garage.

'Looking for Paula?' she calls.

'We are, yes,' Alice says, walking towards her. 'Have you seen her in the last couple of days?'

'Oh yes, she was there yesterday, about five o'clock. I saw her in the garden. Spoke to her.'

'Did she seem okay?'

'Oh well, you know Paula,' the woman says, 'up and down, up and down. She was having one of her grumpy days when you can barely get a word out of her. But she was there all right. Then she went out in the car in the evening. I was coming back from bridge about ten o'clock and I pa.s.sed her on the lane. Goodness knows where she was going at that time of night. She'll be back later, I expect, shall I give her a message for you?'

'Could you could tell her that Declan and Alice were looking for her?'

'Dylan and Alice . . .'

'Declan,' Alice says. 'Or perhaps just ask her to call Benson's Reach.'

'Ah, that's where she works,' the woman says. 'She told me she's the executive housekeeper now. Anyway, I'll tell her you were here.'

Alice thanks her and walks back to Declan. 'Did you hear that?'

He nods. 'So shall we go?'

'Might as well,' Alice agrees, 'no point waiting here, we could be waiting all day.' But as she hauls herself up into the four-wheel-drive she can't get rid of the feeling that something's wrong, very wrong. 'I don't like this,' she says as Declan starts the engine. 'She might be inside, sick or something.'

'But the car's not there, Alice,' Declan says, 'she's out somewhere. And anyway, we can't just break in.'

'No, no we can't,' she says. 'But do you think we should report her missing?'

'But she's not missing. The neighbour saw her yesterday evening. Look, Paula freaked out, she yelled and screamed and started throwing things and now she feels stupid and embarra.s.sed. That's hard for anyone but especially for Paula, who can't tolerate being in the wrong. I think she just needs a bit more time. She'll turn up before the end of the week, I bet you, and it'll all be someone else's fault.'

'But where would she be going at ten o'clock?'

'I don't know. Maybe she has a lover and went to his place for the night. She could have gone anywhere and that's really not our business.'

Alice nods. 'Okay,' she says, 'you're probably right. Let's go home.' But as Declan lets out the clutch and they make their way slowly towards the main road, she still has the feeling that something about this is far from right.

It's the police who find Paula. While Alice and Declan were knocking on her door her body was being winched up from the rocks at the foot of Wilyabrup Cliffs in a black body bag.

'She was spotted by a light plane flying low along the coast,' the police officer explains to Ruby late that afternoon when he arrives at Benson's Reach in an effort to find contact details for her next of kin.

'It would be my nan and granddad, I suppose,' Todd says, and gives him what he can remember of the address. 'But she didn't ever see them, not for years.'

'Will the cops go there or will they phone?' he asks Ruby once the officer has left.

'They'll go there and tell your grandparents personally,' Ruby says. 'They don't give people news like that over the phone.'

'I don't fancy their luck,' Todd says. 'They'll probably be drunk, they usually are.'

'Are you okay, Todd?' Ruby asks. 'I mean, Paula was part of your family.'

He shrugs. 'Not so's you'd notice.'

'And what about your mum?'

'Like I told the police, she's in Kuta but I don't know where.'

Ruby looks at him anxiously, searching for signs of distress. 'There must be ways of finding her if you need to talk to her.'

'The police said they'd find her.'

'But if you want to speak to her, if you're upset, I mean, we could try to speed it up.'

Todd pauses. 'Paula didn't give a rat's a.r.s.e about me,' he says, blus.h.i.+ng. 'Sorry, Ruby . . . but she didn't. In all my life she never said one nice thing to me, and she said horrible things about me and Mum and she tried to get me in trouble with Catherine and with Declan. I'm sorry if she jumped off that cliff because she was unhappy, but I'm not sorry that she won't be around anymore. Shall I go and tell Declan?'

Ruby watches as he goes off down the path heading for the field where Declan is chatting to the men who have finally turned up to dismantle the stage. Todd is, she thinks, far more affected by the news than he's prepared to admit. His face betrayed profound anger and hurt, less perhaps about Paula but an older, deeper hurt. Perhaps, even in their mutual hostility, there was something solid for him about her presence. His mother and grandparents have abandoned him; perhaps even as she persecuted him Paula was one fixed point of connection to his family.

As Todd reaches the group on the hill Ruby watches as Declan turns to listen to him, then draws him away from the group to sit, side by side, on some upturned packing cases. Todd, talking fast, gesticulating, stops abruptly and buries his face in his hands. Declan slips an arm around his shoulders and Todd leans in to him. He has picked the right person, Ruby thinks. Declan, robbed of his mother by death and his father by grief and depression, will instinctively respond to the complications of Todd's feelings. 'You did a grand thing with those two, Cat,' she murmurs. 'I hope you know that.'

She glances up to Jackson's cottage, sees him there on the balcony, talking with one of his musicians. Resisting the temptation to turn away she holds her ground, keeps looking at him until he stops speaking and meets her eyes across the distance, and then finally turns slowly back to his conversation, leaving her feeling rejected once again.

The news travels through Benson's Reach like a flash fire. Everyone has something to say, something conditional. 'She was a pain in the neck but she had a good heart.' 'She really got on my nerves but she meant well.' 'She was so annoying and bossy but she'd have done anything for you.'

'It's my fault,' Alice says that evening as they gather around the kitchen table. 'I should have followed my instinct and gone up there yesterday.'

'It's not your fault, Alice,' Declan says. 'You would have gone but I made you wait until today. If it's anyone's fault it's mine.'

'But I should have talked to her weeks ago,' Alice says. 'I knew something wasn't right. I should've tried to connect with her.'

'I feel terrible,' Fleur says. 'I was a real b.i.t.c.h to her. She p.i.s.sed me off so much, always nosing into things, no respect for any sort of niceties. But now I think she just wanted attention. That's all she wanted, really attention.'

'I should have talked to her more right from the start,' Declan says, 'should have tried to involve her. But she just kept getting my back up.'

'I do feel a bit responsible,' Lesley says. 'I did use her when I was . . . when I was upset, and then she thought I had her job.'

Ruby, battling her own conscience, watches and listens. 'I didn't see it coming,' she says, 'but now I know that all the signs were there. What did I do, switch off my brain or something?'

'And I should have let her sing for me,' Jackson says, 'but you know none of this would have stopped it happening if not now, then some other time.'

They sit on in silence, each one, Ruby thinks, crushed by the vision that Paula's death has given them of themselves as less caring, less insightful, more selfish than they had believed themselves to be.

'You may be right that none of us could have stopped this happening, Jackson,' she says crisply, 'but I guess we all know we could have done a whole lot better.'

Todd pushes his chair back from the table and gets up. 'Paula could have done better,' he says. 'Catherine said it to her all the time. I heard her "Paula, you have to take responsibility for your own behaviour. You have to stay on the medication." So now she's done it, taken responsibility. Her choice.' And he walks out of the kitchen, down the pa.s.sage and they hear his bedroom door close behind him.

Declan shakes his head. 'Sometimes that boy just blows me away,' he says. 'Sixteen going on forty,' and he gets up to follow him.

esley is stricken with guilt. Relentlessly she tracks back over her involvement with Paula, the way she pumped her for information about Declan, the pressure she put on her to get his mobile number. She recalls how frequently she invited her into the cottage, drank tea with her and listened to Paula's tales of life at Benson's Reach and, once she was back home in Perth, Paula's efforts to help her find somewhere to stay. Most of all she thinks of Paula's persistent calls on the night before the festival the calls she had deliberately ignored. Lesley is chilled by the memory of her own irritation at the growing number of messages and texts and how easy it had been to dismiss them simply because Paula was someone she no longer needed. It revives memories of the uncomfortable occasions when her mother has accused her of selfishness, of an inability or was it an unwillingness? to put herself in someone else's shoes.

'You've been too fortunate, Lesley. It's all about you. You don't have a social conscience. I don't understand it, we didn't bring you up that way.'

Lesley has rolled her eyes, ignored Dolly or made light of it, but now she can't get the words out of her head. What was it like for Paula driving that night to Wilyabrup? Just what was she feeling as she left the car and walked to the cliff edge? Had she really believed that she was to be put in charge of the shop? Could a life really hang on something so fragile? There must, she knows, be a much bigger picture, and she is clear that it was not her fault, but she is painfully aware of the role she may have played in the final days of Paula's life. Once again she is faced with an image of herself as irresponsible, as a person so fixed on her own track that she can mow others down as she follows it. It leaves her feeling shallow, selfish and ill at ease with herself.

Back in her rented house she opens her laptop and reads Gordon's message again. The weekend after next, he says, he will be here, in Margaret River. She wonders what it has cost him to do that, to detach from what he is working on and come here to talk to her. Has it all gone too far? Is he coming to tell her that he wants a divorce?

They have asked her to stay on at Benson's Reach, to manage the shop and, with Fleur, to develop the lavender business online. Their business plan is impressive. Ruby has surprised her, she is something of a dark horse. She clearly has plenty of money and is willing to invest it in the business. She doesn't talk about it herself, but Alice has filled Lesley in on Ruby's background, the Foundation in England, her DBE, her reputation. It all compounds Lesley's sense of her own self-centredness.

'I want to lead a good life,' she had said to Gordon years ago, 'a valuable life,' and she has in some ways her children are proof of that, surely? Just the same, she has rigidly done what she wants with little thought about what other dimensions a good life might entail.

'I hope we can sort things out in ways that suit us both,' Gordon has said in his email, but that has always been his way: negotiation, compromise, listening and working through situations. It was those qualities that had condemned him to life in meetings and boardrooms, behind a desk, and in protracted negotiations, when he would have preferred to be out in the field and the lab, earning less but enjoying it more. She wonders why that seems so clear now, and at what point she actually lost sight of it.

As she struggles to remember when the malaise began she recognises that it was quite some time before Gordon retired. She had filled her time with distractions then too, but at the heart of it was an emptiness that had been hollowed out when the children began to drift off into lives of their own. She remembers the frantic search for things to occupy her all of them pleasant and some useful, but all essentially unsatisfying. In her attempts to fill the empty s.p.a.ce she had succeeded only in papering over it. What she wanted then and now wants more than ever is a way of being that will fill that gap. Can she find that here? Have the past few months, and now this dramatic and shocking development, taught her anything about what matters to her and how she really wants to live? She has nearly two weeks to think about that. Lesley clicks on a new email and starts to type. 'That's good,' she writes, 'ring me when you land in Perth, and let me know when you'll be here.' And then she sits for a long time wondering how to sign off a message to the man she has lived with and loved for more than thirty-five years.

Something inside Ruby has been extinguished something that enables her to feel. Her energy has evaporated, her imagination is blighted, empathy is impossible and the effort required to do simple things, even to hold a conversation, is more demanding than she can bear. Lying flat on her back staring up at her bedroom ceiling on the morning following the news of Paula's suicide, she wonders whether it is going to be possible to get herself out of bed, let alone showered and dressed. The events of the previous day have left her leaden and exhausted. She is not even clear how she pa.s.sed the time after her conversation with Jackson. She remembers only moving zombie-like through the kitchen and back here to her bedroom. Perhaps she slept, perhaps she just lay here, and then later, she got up and went through to the office and sat behind the desk, trying to concentrate on small things until she saw the police car making its way slowly up the drive, and a fresh faced young constable appeared in the office doorway and everything changed.

At last she drags herself out of bed and stands under the shower. As the water cascades over her she has a brief moment of optimism perhaps, after all, it is not over. Perhaps after a good night's sleep Jackson will feel different, he will stay on a couple of days, a week perhaps, and somehow they will find their way to each other. But her mood doesn't last and by the time she steps out of the shower she is angry. Angry at herself for falling, at this age, into the oldest trap in the world. Angry at Jackson for feeding her fantasy but lacking the fort.i.tude to risk where it might take him. And when she has dried herself and dressed, and has twisted her hair into its new clip, she studies herself in the mirror and thinks that she looks ten years older than she looked yesterday a worn out, easily forgettable old woman, with no resources left to draw on.

The morning is about as bad as it can be in the circ.u.mstances, beginning with a number of telephone calls from radio stations and then the arrival of a reporter and camera operator from a commercial television news program. Paula's parents have called every channel they could think of, muttering darkly about workplace bullying and hara.s.sment, threatening legal action and demanding an inquest. Catherine's solicitor is summoned and consulted, and as they sit with him in the kitchen Ruby watches through the window as Jackson and his crew load their equipment and their suitcases into the van and prepare to leave.

The farewells take forever: hands are shaken, backs are patted, there are hugs and kisses, jokes and promises.

'Ruby,' he says, hugging her. 'I'm sorry. I really did . . . do . . . mean it. But . . .'

She pulls away from him. 'I know you're just an itinerant musician too old to change.' And she turns and walks away, back into the house and down the pa.s.sage to her room while the others stand outside waving as The Crowbars' van disappears down the track and out onto the road.

t seems as though everyone is waiting for enough time to pa.s.s to allow them to feel normal again. Not liking Paula, finding her difficult, frequently obnoxious, tolerating her in order to avoid confrontation, or simply feeling neutral, seems to make no difference to the level of dismay that people feel, nor the overbearing sadness that haunts Benson's Reach. Another week pa.s.ses and winter has taken hold, and Alice still carries Jacinta's dog-eared letter everywhere with her. One more week, she thinks, and that will be the right time to make the phone call. And so another week pa.s.ses and Alice reads the letter again. It would be okay to ask Declan to make the call now, but something stops her. Fear, perhaps she has so much riding on this that waiting and keeping silent seem preferable to the risk of greater hostility. She puts the letter back in her pocket.

Still shocked, and still castigating herself for what she sees as her failures in relation to Paula, she also realises that she is probably the only person to have gained strength from this. She had arrived here in a blur of misery, confusion and hopelessness, and with no sense of a future. Now there is a future, and what she makes of it is down to her. Paula, Alice believes, ricocheted between utter hopelessness and a brittle, fluctuating vision of a rescue that would lift her out of present reality into what she believed she truly deserved. But those visions were built on s.h.i.+fting sands and sent her always spiralling backwards into despair.

Like Ruby, Alice knows she should have seen the signs earlier. She could have reached out to Paula, talked to her, encouraged her to get help. At the very least she might have been someone for Paula to talk to. But it's easy to see this after the event, easy to talk about what one might have done, to wonder how much effort and commitment it had taken for Catherine to manage Paula for so long. Easy too to question why, knowing that she was dying, Catherine had not left any information which might have alerted them to Paula's fragile state rather than simply reacting to the difficulties of her personality. For Alice it adds up to a recognition of her own good fortune: she has survived the worst time of her life, and since the day that Declan had told her to get on the next bus to Margaret River she has been rebuilding from the ground up. There is no one simple solution, just a hard slog and slow progress. Today she is about to take another trip off the premises, this time with Ruby, who, caught short by the change in the weather, needs to buy a warm jacket, a sweater and some thick socks.

'I'd forgotten how cold it can get,' she'd said. 'When I've thought of this place it's always been as it is in the summer, brilliant suns.h.i.+ne and day after day of clear blue skies.'

'Ruby,' Alice says later, when they have finished shopping and are about to get back into the car, 'could we make a detour and go to the beach?'

'Redgate,' Ruby says, with obvious enthusiasm, starting the engine, 'it's just beautiful. Todd took me there some time ago. It's his favourite beach and now I think it's mine.'

They drive out of town to the coast and Ruby parks the car and pulls on the new jacket, turning up the collar. Together they walk the well-trodden path to the beach where the wind is cold and strong, whipping their hair back from their faces, making their eyes water. They stuff their hands in their pockets and press on through the soft sand towards the rocks that form a ragged boundary separating this stretch of sand from the next, and stop, searching the jagged surfaces for a place to sit.

'How are you, Ruby?' Alice asks when they have caught their breath.

'Crushed,' Ruby says quickly, surprising Alice by the speed and frankness of her reply. 'Crushed and confused. I think I've grown too accustomed to success, in all sorts of ways, large and small, in recent years.'

Alice turns to her. 'What do you mean?'

'I've had a dream run. The Foundation has gone from strength to strength, I have brilliant staff who run it and involve me when they need to. I have a home I love, a few good friends, a house full of books that I now have time to read. I have good health. Every application I've made for funds has sailed through and every person I pursued for sponsors.h.i.+p or to take on some sort of role for us turned to gold. But I'd become complacent. Then I came here imagining awkwardness, perhaps a difficult business partner, resentful staff lord knows what. And of course I was fearful of confrontations with the past. But we all got on well. It was busy and challenging but we were winning. I was on cruise control. And then there was Jackson, and to my amazement I fell in love, or at least I thought that was what had happened.'

'I thought you had too,' Alice said.

Ruby nods. 'It was so sudden, so intense, and briefly it seemed that Jackson felt the same way too.'

She stops suddenly and studies her feet as she kicks at some sand.

'So what happened?' Alice asks, wondering if this is too intrusive. Ruby is a very private person and Alice suspects that telling the story of her past has, while freeing her, also left her feeling uncomfortably exposed.

Ruby shakes her head. 'Who knows? He backed off, that's all. The moment we met, Alice, I felt I'd been struck by lightning. We barely exchanged a few words before Declan turned up and took over, but it was intense and Jackson admitted he'd felt it too. He told me that early in the morning after Todd's birthday dinner. We were both exhausted and short of sleep. I'd unburdened myself to you a few hours earlier. Jackson had been pacing back and forth, flagellating himself for blowing open my past. And we had this glorious little interlude that seemed like the start of something so . . . so precious . . .' her voice trails off and Alice waits for her. 'And then I had to go, and he went off to Bunbury and when he came back he'd changed. The walls had gone up, he said he couldn't cope. You can imagine it, probably too old, too hopeless, can't change. That was it. I could see myself sitting there, listening to him, to all that stuff, and I knew it was hopeless, and I was so hurt and then I was angry, really angry with him and with myself. How could I have made such a fool of myself? And then well, then there was poor Paula . . .' She shoves her hands further into her pockets. 'I failed miserably there. The number of times I felt I should sit down and talk things through with her . . . but I just ignored it. I should have made the effort to get to know her better. I was angry about her wanting to get into Catherine's room all the time so when we found that bag of dope I was sure she was responsible. Now I think she probably knew what Catherine had been doing and she just wanted to get rid of the stuff to protect her. For decades my life has been about supporting women in difficult circ.u.mstances listening to them, finding solutions. But I let Paula fall into a hole. Maybe I even gave her a little push.'

'But, Ruby, this wasn't your fault.'

'No, but I'm shocked by my negligence.'

'And Jackson, have you heard any more from him since he got back home?'

Ruby shakes her head. 'Not a word. And I won't. Look, we're two old people who had a chance and we blew it . . . well, he blew it. I don't think he's a bad person but I guess he was just knocked sideways by what it all might mean. We're very different people, we live on opposite sides of the world. How would we have managed a relations.h.i.+p anyway? I suppose it all looked too hard. Maybe that was all that he could see, or perhaps he felt too vulnerable to even explore it. I haven't really forgiven him for not being prepared to give it a go. After all, at our age we don't have all that much to lose.' Ruby sits still, slumped for a moment, and then takes a deep breath and straightens up. 'You're a great listener, Alice,' she says, putting her hand on Alice's and squeezing it. 'I really appreciate it. And what about you? How are you going?'

Alice hesitates. To speak of the strength she has gained seems callous in the circ.u.mstances and yet she suspects that Ruby will understand, and so she takes the chance.

'I'm glad,' Ruby says. 'I don't think recognising it makes you callous. It takes wisdom and insight to find strength in something like this. Sadly Paula lacked both those qualities or she might have been able to save herself. So what's ahead for you, do you think?'

The question takes Alice by surprise. She has thought about it so much she almost expects everyone else to know. 'Well I hope to stay here doing what I'm doing for as long as possible,' she says. 'Of course it all depends what you and Declan decide. I think the future for Benson's could be exciting, and I'd love to be part of that. But if it's not possible I think what I've done in the cafe here will be enough to get me similar work somewhere else.' She wants to ask Ruby what she's planning but, unlike Declan, she is an employee. Despite the fact that they are speaking as friends this seems to Alice to be a boundary she shouldn't cross.

Ruby nods. 'You've done a terrific job, Alice, any employer would be lucky to have you. If I stay in the business I'd certainly want you to stay on. I can't imagine the place without you.'

'I've been incredibly lucky Ruby Declan asking me to come here, both of you involving me the way you have, and giving me the s.p.a.ce to sort myself out. You've both made a sort of investment in me, I suppose, and because of that I feel I have an investment in Benson's Reach. It feels like home. And I think Declan and I . . .' she hesitates, 'we trust each other. I think if I left . . .'

'He would obviously be devastated.'

'Yes.'

'But you have to decide what you want for yourself, Alice. I know you feel Declan rescued you when you needed it most, but you shouldn't feel that you have to spend your life rescuing him. In fact I don't know about you but I think Declan's grown enormously in the last few months. I don't think he's going to fall into a hole anytime soon, and anyway, if he does it's not your responsibility.'

Todd is in his room browsing for information on sound engineering courses when the phone rings, and he gets up from the table and goes to the kitchen to answer it.

'Todd darlin'? Is that you?'

Todd's heart lurches in shock at the sound of his mother's voice, and what rushes immediately through his head is that he hopes beyond hope that she's not coming home.

'Mum?'

'Happy birthday, baby.'

'Thanks.' He wishes she wouldn't call him 'baby', although that's what she calls most people. 'But it was three weeks ago.'

'I know,' she says. 'I'm so bad with dates, but I was thinking of you, hon. Sixteen, eh! Independent now!'

'That's me,' Todd says, remembering with sudden relief that he really is free to live a separate life. 'Where are you, Mum? Are you okay?'