The Wrong Door (3 page)

Gwennie and Pete shared a large custom-built room at the back of the house. Pete had designed it especially, knocking down an internal wall to create their perfect space. He had a desk at one end with a deep workbench where he could spread out huge sheets of paper. To the left of his work area were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and to the right a four-drawer filing cabinet. Using his swivel chair to roll across the carpet, he could reach everything he might need.

At a right angle to his desk was the faded floral couch where Gwennie liked to sit and write letters to her friends and family back home in Sussex, to mark students’ papers or to read a book while Pete worked on the design of some fabulous new building. Her position gave her a view through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows along the side of the house and the tranquil half-finished Balinese garden. A terracotta bird bath was hanging from a tree branch where only she could see it. She put out food every morning to encourage the birds and her efforts had been rewarded. Each day half-a-dozen would drop by for a bit of a feed and their morning bath, splashing about and preening themselves. She and Pete had spent many companionable hours in that room, working on their various projects.

This morning she didn’t go to her part of the room, heading instead for Pete’s desk. A folder from the funeral parlour lay on top where she had left it.
She rifled through, ignoring the death notice and official paperwork. The account had been due a week ago, which was when she had stumbled across what she was now looking for. The condolence book. It was white and bound in leather. People who had come to the service had signed it – a memento of the occasion. Of all the incongruities of the day it struck Gwennie as the most laughable. She had one similar from her wedding. Perhaps she could use them as bookends. How suitable as she shelved her life with Pete. Who comes up with these little touches, she wondered.

She opened the book, holding the edges carefully with her fingertips, as if it might hurt her. The opening page had Pete’s name, date of birth and date of death. She turned it over quickly. The next six pages had rows and rows of handwritten names.

She read through them all, noting on a pad any she didn’t recognise. There were just four:

Everybody else was either a workmate or university friend or old client.

Gwennie turned to Pete’s briefcase, sitting on top of the filing cabinet. It felt so strange to be opening it. She had seen inside it countless times. Packed it for him. Tucked in little notes or photos to surprise him. But now, surrounded by the
silence of the empty house, it felt strange, as if she was prying somehow. On Pete, for God’s sake! She told herself to stop being so foolish. Imagine what Pete would say.

In his briefcase was Darvill and Rossetti’s internal office directory. She checked off the names. Julie McCracken, head of accounts, extension 62. Linda Hewitt, contract division, extension 49. Gwennie put a line through them on her pad. Terri Pryor and Clare Dalton didn’t appear to be listed.

Gwennie remembered a sympathetic lady from the wake, in her sixties with bright red hair, scarlet lipstick and soft green eyes, who had taken her gently by the elbow just when she had started to feel trapped. This woman seemed to sense precisely at what moment Gwennie was being overwhelmed and had asked if she would mind a ‘quiet word’, expertly extracting her from the group of tongue-tied but well-meaning mourners. The ‘quiet word’ had turned out to be: ‘Would you like a moment to yourself?’

As soon as she asked, Gwennie realised that that was exactly what she wanted. The woman had led her to a bathroom further down the corridor that no-one else was using. ‘Take your time,’ she said. It was just what Gwennie needed. She stood for a few minutes sagging against the door then splashed cold water on her face, smoothed back her hair, massaged her temples and took a few deep breaths.

When she ventured back outside the woman was waiting. She had introduced herself but
Gwennie had paid little attention and could not now remember anything of their conversation, only that she referred to Pete as ‘young Peter’. Gwennie had never heard anyone call him Peter and, as for young, well, he was forty-three. It had sounded odd and yet the way the woman had said it seemed so warm and affectionate that Gwennie had found herself smiling, for the first time all day. She had relaxed with this woman at once. But she hadn’t spoken to her again. The woman had just appeared when she was needed and then quietly melted away, saving Gwennie from any more of the gruelling small talk she found so exhausting.

She remembered receiving a note of condolence from someone who had also referred to ‘young Peter’. Gwennie sorted through the pile, scanning them for the reference. So many letters. So many words of kindness and sympathy for her in her grief and some from people she had never met. She was surprised and touched.

There it was. Crisp, snowy white stationery with flowers etched around the border. A lovely note, full of praise for Peter’s kindness and generosity. The two, she was sure, were a perfect fit. Gwennie looked for the signature. Terri Pryor, it said with an ostentatious flourish.

That left just one name unaccounted for. Clare Dalton.

Gwennie scanned every other letter and card. There must have been forty in all. None bore the signature Clare Dalton.

Okay, Ms Clare Dalton, she thought, you come to my husband’s funeral, you don’t bother to speak to me, or attend the wake. Who the hell are you?

Everything seemed quiet upstairs. Clare was alert for any sound that might indicate Marla was awake. She ate her toast staring through the kitchen window at the empty, broken bird cage hanging from a roof beam on the verandah. The door was missing and the bamboo bars were covered in cobwebs. The sight of Kiki’s cage brought home to Clare the sad reality of Mr Sanjay’s death. Well, at least he wouldn’t laugh about her silly old budgie any more, she thought.

Clare had been just fourteen and hiding at the bottom of the garden during one of Marla’s rages when she had heard someone chuckling softly on the other side of the fence. She was at her little spot behind the poplar tree, where she couldn’t be seen from the kitchen window. At first she had frozen, embarrassed in case whoever it was had caught her crying. She didn’t think she was
visible to anyone but her sobbing had been rather loud.

Suddenly, a man’s round brown face, the most sun-tanned she had ever seen, popped up beside her. He had deep brown eyes, the colour of walnuts, which darted about, constantly moving, taking in everything. He never seemed to look at Clare directly, but she was aware when she looked away that his eyes were on her. Then when she looked back they would dart off someplace else. He seemed to be chuckling to himself, like he had just been told the funniest joke.

This particular day the source of his laughter was Kiki. Clare had been so absorbed in her own problems, she hadn’t noticed her little bird hop out onto the window sill of the bathroom upstairs. She had just been building up to a good rhythm of sobs, letting out all her misery and heartache, when the neighbour’s head appeared. Clare sucked in her breath and sat very still hoping that if she just ignored him he would go away and let her have her private space back.

Instead he spoke. ‘I think he wants to fly away.’ He pointed past her to Kiki, bouncing up and down on the window sill, clearly agitated.

‘He can’t. He hasn’t got a tail feather,’ said Clare.

The face chuckled again. ‘Then I think he misses you. He bounces up and down like that whenever you come down to the back of the garden.’

This was news to Clare. She hadn’t realised Kiki went onto the window sill at all. As far as she was
aware he was scared of heights. In spite of herself she was intrigued. ‘Really?’

The crinkled face nodded.

They watched together as Kiki ran the length of the sill and back again, flapping his feathers and squawking. It looked so comical Clare couldn’t help but laugh along with the stranger.

‘Why can’t he fly?’ he asked.

‘He lost his tail feather when my sister rolled a chair back over him. It completely traumatised him. We thought he was going to die. He sat huddled in his cage for days, not coming out and not saying much, which wasn’t like him at all. We were really worried. But then he came good, although he’s always been a bit more subdued since then. He doesn’t fly now. I have to put him in his cage at night and get him out in the morning. But at least he’s alive.’

The man was fascinated. ‘He sounds like an interesting friend.’

‘Oh, he is,’ said Clare. ‘He walks around the house, up the stairs. It takes him ages, getting himself up each step. Mum used to complain about the droppings so she has started making little diapers for him. But he wriggles and pecks until he gets them off and then he leaves them in peculiar places around the house. It drives Mum nuts. He’s not allowed in the lounge room or the dining room.’ Clare shrugged. ‘That’s okay. He just hangs out with me.’ Normally shy with strangers, Clare had found herself telling this curious man all about her pet bird. He had encouraged her to talk, which was
a new experience for Clare. In her home she didn’t often feel as if anyone was interested in what she had to say. ‘He’s a boy. They have more personality than girl budgies,’ she told him proudly. ‘He sits on my shoulder when I ride my bike, digging his claws into my jacket to stay on. He loves the wind in his face. I guess that’s because he can’t fly so well any more and he misses it.’

Once she started she couldn’t stop. She prattled on about Kiki for what seemed like ages and all the time Mr Sanjay listened attentively, as if what she had to say was the most interesting thing he had ever heard. Clare told him how Kiki puffed out his chest when he got excited and then shrank when he got scared. He could flatten his feathers in an instant. She told him how Kiki liked to play on her father’s train set in her bedroom. ‘He loves it. He sits on the train roof then jumps over the tunnel when the train goes under it. The train set used to be my dad’s but he’s dead now. And Kiki loves to talk. He practises in the watering can, chatting away to himself.’

‘I’ll keep my ears open for that,’ said her neighbour, chuckling again.

Clare decided she liked this strange man with the funny way of speaking. ‘Are you from Queensland?’ she asked.

The stranger’s eyes stopped darting around for a moment and looked at her curiously. ‘No. Why do you ask?’

‘Because you are so brown and have lines on your face. Like Susan Lee’s mother. Her family goes to Noosa for a month every year.’

This seemed to amuse Mr Sanjay, almost as much as Kiki, and he started to chuckle again.

Clare smiled at the memory. That had been nine years ago. Mr Sanjay had become her friend and ally. When things inside the Dalton household became too much to bear Clare would race down to that little spot behind the poplar tree to hide. More often than not she would find Mr Sanjay there, pottering about in his studio with his paints and books, ready for a chat. It took Clare years to realise that his presence in his shed just when the tensions exploded in her house was possibly more than mere coincidence. Most of their neighbours would have heard the goings on at number 44. It was typical of his kindness.

Mr Sanjay, in his Indian way, would never ask directly why she was upset. Instead he would pour her a glass of chai – sweet Indian milk tea – in a beautiful antique glass. His wife would make it in a large thermos and he would carry it down to his shed. If Clare was lucky there also would be an English oatmeal biscuit. And then they would talk, about anything and everything.

Mr Sanjay had retired with his wife to Sydney from New Delhi, where he had been manager of the very grand Hotel Imperial. He had two sons in Australia – one a doctor at a Sydney hospital, the other an IT expert who worked on the computers at Sydney University – and a married daughter who lived in America.

Mr Sanjay presented Clare with another way of seeing the world. He talked to her of great Indian
thinkers and poets, of Ghandi-ji and Krishnamurti and Rabindranath Tagore. He had a way of seeing things that was completely foreign to what she learned from her family and at school.

Their relationship, for all its warmth and affection, was also oddly formal. It was none of his business, and indeed would have embarrassed him, to know the details of what went on inside Clare’s home. And she knew little of his life day to day.

Over the years, as she grew from an adolescent into a young woman, their relationship changed. Initially he intrigued her and made her laugh, then he challenged her, and finally he became her mentor. At other times he annoyed her and sometimes she would not see him for weeks. Then she would find herself feeling a bit lonely or bored or bothered by something and she would wander down to her little spot. Invariably he would be over the fence working away in his shed. Sometimes she would climb over and they would play chess or backgammon, sitting on little carved stools in his garden. But mostly they would talk. She learned more from him than all her teachers and lecturers at school and university.

Her mother and sister did not understand the relationship. At first they were suspicious about what Clare could have in common with this foreign old man, and her mother Peg forbade Clare from speaking to him. She had her reasons, she said, not bothering to explain. But it was one of the rare instances that Clare had dared to defy her mother.

Clare’s sister Marla had stood up for her saying, ‘Oh, leave them alone. Who cares? I’m sure he’s just a harmless old man.’

Clare had steeled herself for another argument between Peg and Marla but Peg seemed preoccupied that week with a demanding dressmaking client and had just let it be. While the two other women never understood the odd friendship that developed over the back fence, finally they came to accept it.

In all those years Clare met Mr Sanjay’s wife only a handful of times. She was a neat woman with a grey bun who always wore a sari in an amazingly vivid colour. It seemed to Clare that she lived in the shadows of her husband’s life, spending her time locked away inside the main house, and Mr Sanjay seldom spoke about her. And yet when she died, he was devastated. Clare found him in his shed one day and knew instantly that something dreadful had happened. His eyes, normally so mischievous and full of laughter, stared blankly ahead. It was as if all the joy had gone from him.

Mrs Sanjay had died unexpectedly from a heart attack and Mr Sanjay planned to take her ashes and spread them on the Narmada, the holiest river in India. Holier even than the Ganges, he said in a low flat monotone. The day he told her that turned out to be the last time she saw him. A few days later there was a hearse in the Sanjays’ driveway and Clare realised, with a slow, dawning pain, that it must be for him. She stared at it from the lounge room window for a long time, tears pouring down her cheeks.

Eventually she summoned the courage to walk over and knock on the Sanjays’ door. A well-dressed Indian man answered. Clare explained she lived next door and knew Mr Sanjay. The good-looking young man turned out to be Mr Sanjay’s son. He said his father had suffered a massive stroke – sudden and instantly fatal. There was some relief in that, he said. He wouldn’t have to live on incapacitated in any way. Clare nodded, too dumbstruck to say anything further.

The son explained that his sister was flying in from America late that night and family and friends would be saying prayers at home the following morning. Then they would accompany the body to the Northern Suburbs Crematorium for the service at 10 am. Before she had the chance to ask any more questions, another Indian man, younger and dressed in jeans, called to him from inside the house, ‘Shree, Shree.’ The son excused himself with a polite smile. They had many calls to make, he said.

Clare walked back home feeling leaden and grey. She supposed it would be up to Shree now to take the ashes of both his parents home to India and scatter them on the Narmada River. How terribly sad for him to lose both parents in such a short space of time, she thought. Clare saw Shree again at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium, when finally she found the right chapel. The service was nearly over but she managed to slip in the back, unnoticed.

Clare approached Shree after the service wanting to express how much his father had meant to
her. It all seemed to come out rather clumsily and Clare’s speech trailed off. The truth was she didn’t know how to explain their friendship. And she was completely intimidated by the composed, formal young man in front of her, dressed in a dark blue suit, surrounded by young Indian men all looking very grave. There was no sign of the sister, or any other women for that matter and Clare felt a little conspicuous in her bright red. But Mr Sanjay had loved colour. He said it was a national trait. All Indians love colour. And red, he said, made him especially happy. And so she had borrowed the dress from Marla’s wardrobe without her knowledge and there she was, surrounded by men in dark suits all staring at her.

Clare felt gauche and tongue-tied. After mumbling a few platitudes she decided she would write a letter of condolence and hurriedly left. Still, she was glad she had made the effort. She knew Mr Sanjay, wherever he was, would have appreciated it.

Lost in reflection, Clare felt rather than heard the movement above her head. She shook away the sad memories, loaded the tray with weak black tea and two pieces of unbuttered toast and took it very quietly upstairs. She tapped softly but there was no response. Preparing herself for whatever she might find, she opened the door. The room was in almost total darkness. Feeling her way with her foot, Clare kicked the door shut behind her then stood for a moment, letting her eyes become accustomed to the lack of light.

The room was stale and musty, with the sharp tang of sweat mingling with the sweet smell of the mints that Marla always chewed. Clare worked her way across the floor, avoiding large piles of clothes and debris, hoping she didn’t step in anything unspeakable. There was a large unmoving mound on the bed that she assumed was her sister. Juggling the tray in one hand, Clare cleared a space on the bedside table and set it down. She pulled up the blinds, just a little, and sat on the edge of the bed.

‘Marla?’ she said softly.

There was no reply.

She put her hand out and touched the mound. It grunted, then, after a few seconds, started to move.

‘I’ve brought you tea and toast.’

The sheet was pushed back violently and the top half of a face appeared, eyes squeezed tightly shut.

‘Where is she?’ asked Marla, her voice a hoarse, dry whisper.

‘In bed still. She’s got a client coming for a fitting in an hour so she will be up soon.’

Marla groaned.

Clare got up to leave the room. At the threshold she turned.

‘It’s Wednesday,’ she said, then walked out, closing the door softly behind her.