Free A Woman of the Inner Sea by Thomas Keneally Page A

after midnight—that was before the phone line went down. I kept on calling
his
number. You know he’s a former protégé of mine. But I only get the barbarous answering machine and his voice. A wonder of communication? A wonder of punishment if you ask me.
    —Come on, said Kate, pouring his coffee. You’re allowed to sayyou hate the fucking things, Murray. You don’t have to be gentlemanly any more.
    —I
do
hate the fucking things. What good does that do me? Where is your telephone again?
    She had to lead him to it. She left him by it then, but he was back in the kitchen very soon, looking even more attenuated in the face, more hollowed out.
    —You got the answering machine again?
    —I’m going up there. As soon as I’m fit to drive.
    —Very well. I know you think you have to rush. But I don’t think rush makes any difference.
    Such a sage, when it comes to other people’s spoiled love.
    —I’m ashamed to say I know nothing’s going to work. But I have to test it out.
    He looked at the ceiling and his eyes overflowed.
    —My mother was many years younger than my father. She never treated him like this.
    —Different times. And a different sort of girl.
    Murray was talking about his stepfather, of course, a Sydney stockbroker who had fallen for the young
widow
from England and her Australian-born son.
    He decided to go and prepare himself for his futile journey.
    —Thank you, Mrs. Kozinski. I hope they fix my phone soon, and I won’t have to worry you.
    She regretted having to show him out. She knew that once he was gone, she would be alone with the rage of the surf and with Siobhan still deep in the meat of her tale of ballerinas, where an evil rival had entered.
    —But you can’t dance Giselle, Siobhan was saying in a malice-charged voice. Giselle is for me.
    Kate opened the door on the garden and the wall of sandstone rising to the road. There was a wanness to sandstone after rain. She didn’t want to rush him away.
    —I know it’s hard to talk to people frankly like this. I’m very pleased you feel you can.
    —Oh well. I remembered you’d seen me at my worst. When I was sheltering under that towel. That terrible day. How long ago was that?
    —Only the week before last.
    —Oh God.
    He began to contemplate the cedar planking of the footbridge.
    —You’re very sympathetic, Kate.
    —Will you let me know what becomes of it all? she asked in a voice of such forced casualness she was sure he could hear the device behind it.
    But without any irony he said he would. He was ready to go yet did not. He looked at her and there was a rictus of a smile. This was a very painful thing to see on such an honest face. You could imagine that face, fifteen to twenty years younger, rising out of the creams of a New South Wales Sheffield Shield team picture. People seeing it and saying a lovely boy, a tryer, pity he mightn’t make the test team because he’s just the sort of sporting ambassador we need. The face of a man who believed there were rules and that he had clearly played by them, and was now doubting his own wisdom.
    —Pardon me saying this, Kate, but I know you have problems of your own. I think it’s all a virus. I think it’s almost as if it’s a virus that wasn’t even there in my mother’s day.
    —It was there. People feel more entitled now, that’s all. You know, to have obsessions. To have malice. It’s a sense of latitude. It’s not a virus.
    —But I can’t imagine what lies on the other side of this sort of thing. A wife running away. There aren’t any precedents. Not in my experience.
    —There aren’t any precedents for any of us, Murray. We discover the precedents as we go.
    In a mode for departure, Murray still kept deciding to delay. He began to gesture toward the rubber bushes, the tea tree, the liana, the palms which cascaded down the slope from the road to the Kozinskis’ front garden, embowering the bridge with their fronds. He was attempting to work up a theorem out of