The Hypnotist’s Love Story, Page 23

  A second later she remembered the true, peculiar nature of their relationship, and for some reason her nervous system had reacted as though she was embarrassed and her cheeks had flooded with color. Her throat dried up and her eyes flew to Patrick and Jack, who were still obliviously discussing crunchy nut cornflakes. Saskia shook her head, almost imperceptibly, as if to say, Don't tell them, and glided silently past.

  "Are you all right?" Patrick had looked around, just as Saskia turned her trolley at the end of the aisle.

  "Feeling a bit dizzy," she'd said. (Pregnancy was so handy in that way.)

  She'd felt obscurely guilty about that ever since. It felt like she and Saskia were somehow in cahoots to deceive Patrick. But there had been no point mentioning it to Patrick. Ever since Noosa, his hatred of Saskia seemed to have reached a new, more intense level. Ellen was frightened sometimes by the look in his eyes when he spoke about her. The night she'd thrown her grandmother's plate against the wall, he'd come home with another lot of boxes to stack in the hallway (and flowers to apologize for slamming out of the house earlier) and he'd said, "She was at the house tonight. Psycho bitch."

  Why had Saskia shaken her head at Ellen? There had definitely been something conspiratorial about it. But didn't she normally like Patrick to know she was there? Wasn't that the point? And if not, what was the point? Did she really think that Patrick would eventually take her back? When and how would this all end? Saskia was a puzzle Ellen couldn't stop trying to solve.

  Now Patrick leaned into the back of the car and pulled out the bunch of gerberas. He held them in front of him with both hands clasped around the stems, like a nervous beau about to walk up to his girlfriend's door. He gave Ellen a strange half smile.

  "So," he said.

  Jack scuffed his foot against the grass and made a pow-pow sound through his lips like a machine gun.

  "Jack," said Patrick.

  "What?"

  "Stop it."

  "Stop what?"

  "Come on. Let's go."

  Jack ran ahead. Ellen walked alongside Patrick, looking at the names on gravestones, and wondered if it would be inappropriate to mention that she felt sick. She longed for the little pile of dry Vita-Weat biscuits she'd carefully wrapped in plastic for this morning's journey and then left on the kitchen counter.

  She was exactly eleven weeks pregnant today and it seemed that the nausea, which up until now had just been like a mildly unpleasant background noise, had suddenly intensified. She'd vomited this morning. She never vomited. She didn't even like the word. It was horrendously uncomfortable and undignified, kneeling on the bathroom floor, bent over the toilet bowl. She'd wanted to cry for her mother, which was absurd, because her mother hadn't been much use when Ellen was unwell as a child. Anne would always try to comfort Ellen by telling her about the much sicker children she'd treated that day.

  Apparently Colleen hadn't been sick for a single moment when she was pregnant with Jack. She'd played tennis every week right up until she was eight months pregnant!

  She wasn't imagining it. Patrick was definitely talking more about Colleen since their engagement. In fact, she'd started keeping a tally in her head, and there had been at least one reference to Colleen every single day for the last week. She'd learned that Colleen had put headphones over her pregnant stomach and played classical music to the baby every night (Ellen had wanted to do the same thing for her baby, but she'd gone off the idea now); Colleen had craved salt and vinegar chips throughout her pregnancy; Colleen had actually lost weight in the first few months of her pregnancy, which had worried Patrick; Colleen hadn't suffered any mood swings; Colleen had a completely natural childbirth, and so on and so forth.

  If Colleen had been an ordinary living ex-wife or ex-girlfriend, Ellen could have banned all further mentions of her, but as she was dead, and as it was perfectly understandable that having another child would be bringing back memories for Patrick of Jack's birth, and as Colleen was Jack's mother and he loved hearing stories about when his mother was pregnant with him, Ellen felt she not only had to listen politely, but she even had to encourage further revelations about the seemingly perfect Colleen by asking Patrick interested questions with a bright, loving, empathetic expression on her face.

  Frankly, it was driving her bananas.

  She loved Jack, and she loved the thought of him being a big brother to her baby, but she couldn't help imagining what it would have been like if Patrick had been a first-time father-to-be, if it could have been just the two of them, excited and apprehensive together.

  Also, the nausea didn't help. She'd known that the nausea could be bad; she just didn't think it would actually matter, not as much as it did, or at all really. Even though her rational mind knew that it wouldn't last forever, this awful, seedy, off-color feeling seemed to taint everything. When she thought of holding her baby, all she could think was, How could I possibly look after a baby, feeling like this?

  "She's up in the far corner over here," said Patrick.

  Jack ran ahead. Patrick stopped and touched Ellen's shoulder.

  "You OK, darling?" he said, and his eyes met hers. He did this sometimes, when she least expected it. He would stop what he was doing, and really look at her, properly, his green eyes studying her with such intensity, it was like he was waiting for her to impart a crucial message.

  It melted her heart every time.

  "I'm fine," she said. She didn't want him worrying about her nausea right now, hurrying her back to the car or whatever.

  "You sure? Are you too cold?"

  "I'm fine."

  "Well, it's just up here."

  They kept walking, past grave after grave, life after life. Ellen had occasionally walked through graveyards before, but she'd actually never been to visit a grave of someone she knew. Both her grandparents had been cremated and had their ashes scattered in the ocean from their favorite cliff-top walk. Of course she'd grieved for them, but it had been gentle, accepting grief: simple sadness for herself and the loss of their company. Not the sort of raw grief you'd feel for someone who died before their time. She'd managed to reach thirty-five years old without ever experiencing a shocking death.

  She saw fresh flowers in front of one headstone and wondered if it had been the one visited by the couple she'd seen leaving.

  She paused to read the inscription. It was the grave of a boy called Liam who was born in 1970 and died in 1980. She glanced back to the car park and saw the couple's car pulling away, the woman's profile only just visible through the car window.

  She kept walking behind Jack and Patrick. Her stomach began to churn. Her mouth filled with saliva. At that moment, nothing mattered, not Patrick's loveliness, not even that poor woman's grief. All that mattered was this sickness, this awful, awful sickness.

  Finally, they stopped in front of a shiny gray headstone with an oval-shaped picture frame built into the top. The frame contained a black-and-white photo of Colleen caught looking away from the photographer, smiling at someone (Patrick?), her hair blown by some long-ago breeze, love in her eyes.

  For the first time Ellen came slam up against the reality of Colleen's death. This beautiful young girl shouldn't be dead! She should be in the car with her husband and son, driving up the mountains to see her parents, pregnant with her second child.

  Or better still, she should be Patrick's living ex-wife, not quite as pretty anymore, making unreasonable demands about child support and access visits. That way Ellen could stay in the picture (and after all, she would have excelled at dealing with an ordinary shrewish ex-wife--she'd be so tranquil and accepting, Patrick would have found her all the more attractive!), The carved inscription read:

  Colleen Scott

  1970-2002

  Beloved wife of Patrick, mother to Jack and daughter to Millie and Frank

  Life is not forever. Love is.

  Right.

  "That's my mum at my first birthday party," said Jack to Ellen, putting his finger on the photo. "She's l
ooking at me opening a present from Grandma. The present was a dinosaur jigsaw. I've still got that jigsaw."

  "It's a lovely photo," said Ellen.

  "And by the way, in case you're wondering, the dinosaur is a tyrannosaurus," said Jack. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans and considered. "It's a pretty easy jigsaw. It's got, like, maybe five pieces or something. I can do it in maybe three seconds. Or even one second."

  "We, ah, we sort of talk to her," said Patrick, without looking at Ellen. "A bit silly--"

  "Of course it's not," said Ellen. She felt terribly, terribly sick. It would not do to throw up over Colleen's grave. She looked around. If worse came to worst, she would quickly scoot over to Bill Taylor's grave. He was "of tender heart and generous spirit," so perhaps he wouldn't mind.

  Patrick knelt down in front of Colleen's headstone. He leaned forward and kissed the photo.

  Oh my goodness me.

  Jack knelt down beside his father and casually, without any self-consciousness at all, did the same thing. "Hi, Mum."

  What was the etiquette here? Should Ellen kneel down too and also kiss the photo? No, surely not. She'd never even met Colleen. That would be entirely inappropriate. A handshake would be better. Perhaps the alternative would be to give the headstone a polite little pat? "Lovely to meet you." Ellen imagined herself telling this story to Julia, who would be shrieking, her hand covering her eyes, the horror, the horror!

  Patrick placed the flowers down in front of the headstone with a rustle of cellophane. He cleared his throat. Ellen breathed in and out through her nostrils.

  "Well, it's us again, Colleen. We're just on our way up to have lunch with your mum and dad. Your mum is making that chicken risotto again."

  As Patrick spoke, his voice became more natural.

  "Remember how offended she was when you told her it was too bland? Now it's got so much garlic you can smell it as soon as you walk in the front door. It's such a beautiful day. We wish you were-- Oh, and guess what? Jack's team won at soccer yesterday. Their first game!"

  Ellen squirmed. He'd been going to say: We wish you were here with us. But then he'd remembered his pregnant fiancee.

  "We smashed those guys," said Jack comfortably.

  "They did," said Patrick. "And Jack played so well. You would have been so proud."

  "You were watching, right?" said Jack. "From in heaven. You probably have this, like, giant grandstand where everyone goes to watch all their different relatives back on Earth playing sports, and you get whatever food and drink you want, and if you've got more than one relative watching at the same time, you've got this screen that sort of splits in two, and you can, like, switch back and forth--"

  "OK, mate," interrupted Patrick. "Anyway, Colleen, we've got other big news too, haven't we, Jack?"

  Jack looked blank. Patrick tilted his head at Ellen and said, "The baby!"

  "Oh yeah," said Jack. "Maybe Mum knows already if it's a boy or a girl! She probably knows, right? Like maybe she saw it coming off the assembly line in heaven, like in a factory, and it's like a baby factory, and Mum was there, and she's, like, hey, that's Ellen's new baby, you're going to be Jack's little brother! Or, you're going to be Jack's--"

  "Right," said Patrick. "So, this is Ellen."

  He looked up at Ellen, reached for her hand and took it in his.

  Should I kneel down? I should kneel. But what if I'm sick? No, I should definitely kneel.

  She knelt down. There would be grass stains on her cream pants. But it seemed the right thing to have done because Patrick's face suddenly filled with some complex emotion, and Jack slung an affectionate arm around Ellen's shoulders, something he'd never done before.

  "Ellen and I are getting married and I know you'd be happy, Colleen, because I always remember that day, when you told me I had to find someone lovely." Patrick's voice broke, and he squeezed Ellen's hand painfully hard. "And I said I wouldn't. But I have. And she is lovely. She's so lovely. And she's made us very happy."

  "Yeah." Jack banged his chin gently against Ellen's shoulder.

  "Oh, you guys," said Ellen, because she didn't know what else to say. She could smell cold damp earth and Patrick's aftershave and Jack's peanut buttery breath. Patrick's hand was warm around hers, and for a moment the waves of nausea receded and Ellen was filled with glorious relief.

  No, this was not an excruciating story to laugh over with Julia. Its very awkwardness and awfulness made it somehow essentially human. It was one of those rare, poignant, pure moments that encapsulated everything that was wonderful and tragic about life.

  Today was the fourth Sunday of the month. That means Patrick had lunch with Colleen's parents.

  It never changed. We arranged our holidays around it.

  I only went once, after we'd been together for a few months. It wasn't a success. It was too soon. I shouldn't have agreed to go, but Patrick seemed anxious to take me. He insisted, in fact. He seemed to be in a hurry, like this was something that needed to be done, to be ticked off some checklist. I got the impression he thought it would somehow be good for his in-laws. I remember my mother telling me that it was a mistake. "Oh, Saskia, you mustn't go--that would be too cruel," she said. But like an idiot I thought that Patrick knew best.

  And of course Mum was right. It was terrible for Frank and Millie, to see me with Patrick, to see their grandson running to me. They were still raw with grief. You could sense it as soon as you walked in the house, as though tears had a scent that pervaded the air. They both had the identical shocked expressions of people who had just a moment before been punched in the faces There were photos of her everywhere. It was like a museum with one subject: Colleen. Colleen as a baby. Colleen on her first day of school. Colleen and Patrick. Colleen and Jack. I couldn't let my eyes rest anywhere. Although strangely, I remember not feeling any envy when I saw the photos of Colleen and Patrick together; I was utterly, idiotically confident of his love. It was the photos of Colleen and Jack that made me feel unsettled: the evidence that I wasn't really Jack's mother.

  After that, I always let Patrick and Jack go up to the mountains without me, and I always spent that Sunday catching up on housework, or seeing a friend, or in the time before I got my leg problem, doing some exercise. I quite enjoyed the break, having the house nice and quiet to myself. It seems completely foreign to me now, the idea of enjoying time on my own, when these days I have my whole life to myself, and time outside of work is a gigantic expanse of empty space, an endless desert I fill by watching Patrick.

  Was I really that busy, happy girl? That girl who raced down the aisles of the shopping center after work, who prepared nutritious meals for a toddler and gourmet meals for his father, who went to parties and barbecues and movies, who had sex on Sunday mornings, who was just another regular member of the human race.

  That Saskia really does seem like someone else, someone I knew well, someone I quite liked--but not actually me.

  I've never bothered following Patrick up the mountains on the fourth Sunday. I know where he's going. I know the flowers he'll take and the florist where he picks them up. I know how he'll stop at the graveyard where Colleen is buried. The day I went, he wanted me to come along to see Colleen's grave. I refused. I thought it was a completely bizarre idea. I said, "If I died I wouldn't want you bringing your new girlfriend to dance on my grave." He said, "I'm not suggesting you dance on it." But anyway, Jack had fallen asleep in his car seat, so I said we shouldn't wake him and I'd stay in the car with him.

  I thought it was about time he took Ellen up the mountains with him. Now they've moved in together, and they're getting married and all that. Now he's in a proper relationship; now Jack has a proper stepmother.

  I watched them from my car as they all came out of Ellen's house, looking like a proper little family. Jack wasn't dressed warmly enough for the mountains in the middle of winter. He was only wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt. I thought about calling out to Ellen, "Get Jack a jacket!" but I didn't. I've always
tried not to confuse or upset Jack.

  Ellen didn't see me, but Patrick did. He actually held my eyes for a few seconds, and then he sniffed and shrugged and put his sunglasses on like a gangster at a funeral catching sight of the police presence.

  It was strange when I saw them at the supermarket the other day. I wasn't actually following them. I just happened to be there. It was a coincidence. Sort of. I was in their area because I'd driven by their house on my way home from work, but then I'd decided to pick up a few groceries. I wasn't even thinking about Patrick and Ellen, which is a rare treat. I was looking for oats. I'd had a sudden craving for Anzac biscuits. I haven't baked biscuits in years. Not since I was with Patrick. He and Jack loved it when I made biscuits. Of course, when I got home from the supermarket with the ingredients I couldn't be bothered to make them. What would be the point? Ellen was the one who should have been making biscuits, not me.

  Ellen saw me and then quickly looked away, almost like she was embarrassed or guilty, as if she was the stalker, not me.

  That's what Patrick calls me. A stalker. I got such a shock the first time he said it. How could I be a stalker? I wasn't some deranged stranger. We'd lived together. We'd tried to have a baby together. The only reason I follow him is because I want to see him, to talk to him, to try and understand.

  But perhaps, technically, that's what I've become. A stalker.

  Never thought I'd be forty-three years old and alone. Never thought I'd be childless. Never thought I'd be a stalker.

  I shook my head at Ellen because I didn't want to upset Jack if Patrick started acting like I was a potential murderer. I try to be invisible when they're together. It's my own personal code of stalker ethics.

  I didn't see any point in following them all the way up to the mountains today. I don't like those winding roads, and also I didn't want Patrick speeding with Jack in the car. So I got as far as the freeway, just to confirm that's where they were going, and then I took the next exit.

  "Have fun!" I called to the back of their car as it disappeared into the distance. And then the whole of Sunday lay in front of me, like a malicious joke. As I drove home, I imagined them talking in the car. So much to chat about and plan. The wedding. The baby. What they'll all have for dinner tonight. I wonder if Ellen prepares Jack's school lunch for him. Has she slipped into the Mummy role as easily and enthusiastically as I did? I can still remember the lunch I made for Jack's first day of school. Ham and cheese sandwich on whole-meal bread. A peach. He loved peaches. Little box of sultanas. Carton of apple juice. A buttered slice of his favorite banana loaf. I planned it so meticulously. Talked about it with Mum. "Did he eat everything?" she rang up to ask that night. "Everything except the sultanas," I told her. Patrick had no idea what Jack had in his lunch box. Food doesn't really interest him.