chapter sixty-six
Another rainy morning. Another talk to a group of elderly people. Clementine’s eyes felt hot and dry as she drove into the car park of the community hall where the Hills District Retirees Association held their monthly meeting. She’d been up most of the night with the word ‘separate’ going round and round in her head, until finally she’d sat up, found a notepad and a pen and wrote in it: I’m worried that my marriage is over. Because wasn’t there some research that suggested the act of writing down your worries reduced stress? In fact, it was shocking to see it written down so baldly like that. It hadn’t helped her stress levels at all. She had torn out the sheet of paper and ripped it up into tiny pieces.
When Vid, Tiffany and Dakota had left last night after their unexpected visit, Clementine had felt almost cheerful. There had been a definite sense of relief: the slip-sliding feeling of release after a fearfully anticipated event had finally taken place. The idea of seeing Vid and Tiffany had been so much more traumatic than the reality. All their qualities had become exaggerated in her memories of that night when in fact they were just ordinary, friendly people. Tiffany wasn’t quite as sexy as Clementine remembered. Vid wasn’t quite as charismatic. They didn’t have special hypnotic sexual powers. And poor little Dakota was just a kid who had been carrying around a terrible burden of guilt that had not been hers to bear.
But it was immediately clear that Sam didn’t feel the same way. As soon as they’d left, he’d turned on his heel and gone straight into the kitchen to pack the dishwasher. He’d refused to talk about anything except the ongoing administration of their lives: he was taking Holly for her taekwondo class before school, she would transfer some money onto the credit card, they didn’t need to worry about dinner tomorrow night because they were going to Clementine’s parents’ house. Then off they’d gone to their separate beds. It had occurred to her during the long night that she and Sam already were separated. People could legally separate and live under the same roof. That’s exactly what they were doing.
It was a relief when her alarm had gone off and she could give up trying to sleep. She’d got up and done her audition practice, and then she’d had an early morning lesson with thirteen-year-old Logan, who she had been teaching for the past two years and who didn’t want to be there but smiled so politely at her as if he did. Logan’s music teacher had told his mother that he had talent, and that ‘it would be a crime not to foster it’. Logan was technically proficient but his heart was with the electric guitar. That was his passion. As Logan had played that morning, dutifully following every one of Clementine’s instructions, she’d found herself wondering if that was how she sounded to Ainsley when she practised her audition pieces. What was that awful word she’d used? Robotic. Should she tell poor little Logan he sounded robotic? But what would be the point? She bet he didn’t sound robotic on his electric guitar.
Now it was only eleven thirty and she felt like she’d been up for hours.
Because she had in fact been up for hours, she reminded herself as she put up her umbrella to walk through the crowded car park.
‘Where’s your violin, dear?’ asked the head of the Hills District Retirees Association when Clementine introduced herself.
‘My violin?’ said Clementine. ‘I’m actually a cellist but, um –’
‘Your cello then,’ said the woman with a little roll of her eyes to indicate Clementine’s unnecessary attention to petty detail: a cello was just a big violin, after all! ‘Where’s your cello, dear?’
‘But I’m not playing the cello,’ said Clementine uneasily. ‘I’m a guest speaker. I’m doing a talk.’
She had a moment of sudden terror. She was doing a talk, wasn’t she? This wasn’t a gig? Of course it wasn’t. She was doing a talk.
‘Oh, are you?’ said the woman disappointedly. She studied the piece of paper in her hand. ‘It says here you’re a cellist. We thought you’d be playing for us.’
She looked at Clementine expectantly, as if a solution might present itself. Clementine lifted her hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m doing a talk. It’s called “One Ordinary Day”.’
For God’s sake.
She felt exhausted. Was there really any point to all this? Was she actually helping or was she just doing it to make herself feel better, to pay her penance, her dues, to even things up on the universal scale of right and wrong?
The community talks had all come about because she’d been trying to redeem herself in her mother’s eyes. A few days after they’d brought Ruby home from hospital, Clementine had been having a cup of tea with her mother and she’d said (she could still hear the reedy, self-conscious tone with which she’d spoken) that she felt she should do something to raise awareness of how easily an accident like this could happen and make sure no one else made the same mistake she had made. She felt she should ‘tell her story’.
She’d meant she should write one of those touching ‘please share’ Facebook posts that would go viral. (She probably would never have got around to doing even that.)
But her mother had been thrilled. ‘What a wonderful idea!’ Clementine could do talks to community groups, mothers’ groups, associations – they were always looking for guest speakers. She could ‘partner’ with a first aid course provider like St John Ambulance, hand out leaflets at the end, maybe offering a discount on a course. Pam would set it all up. She had all the contacts. She had a wide circle of friends who belonged to caring community groups across Sydney. They were always desperate for guest speakers. She’d be like Clementine’s ‘agent’. ‘This could save lives, Clementine,’ Pam had said, with that familiar evangelical look in her eyes. Oh God, Clementine had thought. But it was too late. As her father would say, ‘The Pam train has left the station. Nothing can stop it now.’
She did feel it was the right thing to do. It was just that it was hard to fit the talks into an already crammed life, especially when she was driving all over Sydney to do them in between gigs and teaching and school pick-ups and audition practice.
And then there was the fact that she had to relive the worst, most shameful day of her life.
‘This is a story that begins with a barbeque,’ she said today to the members of the Hills District Retirees Association, who were eating lamb with gravy and roast potatoes and peas for lunch as she spoke. ‘An ordinary neighbourhood barbeque in an ordinary backyard.’
You need to make it a story, her mother had told her. A story has power.
‘We can’t hear you!’ called out someone from the back of the room. ‘Can you hear her? I can’t hear a word she’s saying.’
Clementine leaned in closer to the microphone.
She heard someone at the table nearest the lectern say, ‘I thought we had a violinist coming today.’
Beads of sweat ran all the way down her back.
She kept talking. She told her story as cutlery scraped against plates. She gave them facts and figures. A child can be submerged in ten seconds, lose consciousness in two minutes and sustain permanent brain damage in four to six minutes. Nine out of ten children who have died in the water were being watched by adults. A child can drown in as little as five centimetres of water. She talked about the importance of first aid training and how thirty thousand Australians died of cardiac arrest every year because there was no one around with the basic CPR knowledge to save their lives. She talked about the wonderful work that CareFlight did and how they were always grateful for donations.
When she’d finished, the president of the association gave her a box of chocolates and asked her fellow members to join her in a round of applause for their very interesting guest speaker today. Very informative, and thank goodness her daughter was all recovered and maybe next time Clementine could come and play her cello for them!
Afterwards, as she was heading for the door, her dress damp against her back, a man approached her, wiping his mouth with his napkin. She steeled herself. Sometimes people couldn’t resist coming up afterwards to tell her off, to inform her that she should never have taken her eyes off her toddler.
But as soon as she saw the man’s face she knew he wasn’t one of those. He was the other sort. He had the relaxed authority of someone who had once been the boss, but the bruised eyes of someone who had suffered a devastating loss. It was a look around the eyes like fruit that has gone soft and is close to rotting.
He had a story he needed to share. It was her job to listen. This was her real penance.
He would probably cry. The women didn’t cry. Elderly women were as tough as nails but it seemed that men got softer as they aged; their emotions caught them off guard, as if some protective barrier had been worn away by time.
She braced herself.
‘My grandson would have been thirty-two this weekend,’ he said.
‘Ah,’ said Clementine.
She waited for the story. There was always a chain of events that had to be explained: if this hadn’t happened, if this had happened. In this case it had all started with a broken phone. His daughter’s downstairs phone was broken, so she ran upstairs to answer it, and at that moment the next-door neighbour knocked on the front door and got talking to his son-in-law, and in the meantime the little fella got outside. He dragged a chair over to the pool gate. There was a tennis ball floating in the pool. He was trying to get to the ball. He liked playing cricket. Was pretty good at it too. He was a little pocket rocket. Couldn’t sit still. You wouldn’t have thought he’d be big enough to drag that chair but he did it. Determined.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Clementine.
‘Well, I just wanted to tell you that you are doing a good thing,’ said the man. He hadn’t cried, thank God. ‘Raising awareness. It’s a good thing. Makes people think twice. Families don’t get over it when something like this happens. My daughter’s marriage broke up. My wife was never the same again. She was the one on the phone, you see. Never forgave herself for ringing at that time. Not her fault, of course, or the neighbour’s fault, just bad luck, bad timing, but there you go. Accidents happen. Anyhow. You did a good job today, pet. Spoke very well.’
‘Thank you,’ said Clementine.
‘You sure you don’t want to stay and join us for dessert? They do a very tasty pavlova here.’
‘That’s nice of you,’ said Clementine. ‘But I have to go.’
‘No worries, off you go, I’m sure you’re busy,’ said the man. He patted her on the arm.
She headed towards the door, released.
‘Tom,’ he said suddenly.
She turned back, steeled herself. Here it came.
His eyes filled with tears. Overflowed. ‘The little fella’s name. In case you wondered. His name was Tom.’
All the way home she cried: for the little fella, for the grandmother who’d made the phone call, for the grandfather who’d shared his story, and for the parents, because their marriage hadn’t survived, and because it seemed like Clementine’s marriage wasn’t going to survive either.