The Tiger in the Tiger Pit (21 page)

When he could trust himself to talk, he murmured: “Their first grandchild. They have a right. You can't extinguish people like that.”

“I can when I have to.”

“It's not that I want to exclude you,” Jason told Ruth.

They leaned against an oak, their eyes on treetops and the Fifth Avenue skyline, their bodies splayed on the grass like two hands of a clock. “It's just that our family dynamics are sufficiently complicated as is. Father would consider you fair game, which would make me brutal with him and there'd be mayhem all round.”

“It's perfectly all right. I'm glad to have met Emily and Tory though. After all these years. I partly envy all of you for that bonding, but I can feel the suck of it like a maelstrom. I'd be afraid of being smashed.”

“Much the way we feel. Ruth …?” He took her hand. “I watched you with Tory Thursday evening when you brought her back from your downtown spree. For a moment I saw her as I like to remember her — young and glowing. I wanted to say thank you.”

“It was lunch in the restaurant that seemed to do it. First I planned to take her to the Met but she panicked and wouldn't go in …”

“We were lost there once as children. Mother forgot about us and went off to the Cloisters. Tory was terrified.”

“She calmed down when we left. And then in the restaurant … it was quite moving … she became very dignified, almost regal … as though she'd just rediscovered herself in a role that she once knew well. I felt glad that even moments of healing are possible. And I thought of you with your patients and felt so …
grateful
that you do what you do.”

He reached out and touched her cheek with his fingers.

“You are … quite …” — he could not seem to find a word — “exceptional, Ruth.”

She leaned toward him and put her head on his shoulder so that he would not see her cry.

This is sufficient, she thought. Just this.

As he stroked her hair he saw Stephen's face, and Jessica's. It is not impossible, he decided, for seriously flawed people to do good. But praise made him uneasy.

“I'm such a bastard, Ruth. You deserve better.” Then, kissing her lightly on the forehead: “Well, have to get in shape for the upcoming bout with Father. Better run another circuit or two.”

“The sun is different there, Aunt Tory. When I grow up I'm going to go back and I'll take you with me if you like.
You
could live at Kurrajong. Thats Dave's sheep station.”

“You want to go away already. Everyone goes away.”

“But if I did, I'd come back. If you let people go, they'll come back eventually, that's what Dave says. You could trap them and keep them, but if you keep a butterfly in a glass case, it's no good to you. You don't see the light on It's wings.”

“They keep me in a glass case.”

“When I grow up I'll take you to Kurrajong and you'll be free.”

“You're going away.”

“I would always come back because you're my aunt and I love you.” Under crab apple boughs Jason overtook Emily. Companionably they slowed to a walk.

“How does this feel,” he asked, “after ten years out of the country?”

“Three years. You're forgetting my New York concert.”

“Wilful thinking. Father's heart attack! What a chaotic night!”

“Doesn't augur well for family reunions. I keep saying to myself: I must have been mad to come for this.”

“He's had time to adjust by now. You
were
rather tactless … I mean, five years old! You could have given him years to become accustomed at a distance. To tell you the truth” — he turned and put his hands on her shoulders — “I was incredibly hurt myself that you'd never told me. As a matter of fact, in London last year I paced my hotel room for a day before I called you. Partly because I was still so wounded. And partly because I was afraid you'd shatter my necessary image of you. I'd rather not have seen you and preserved it whole. I steer by perfect moments: I remember Tory when she was sixteen. I remember you at a Juilliard recital when you were twenty, a pre-Raphaelite virgin with a violin.”

“Oh Jason, you construct your own myths.”

“I do,” he conceded, releasing her shoulders and walking on. “But they're rooted in reality. As it happened, I needn't have worried. You're as virginal as ever. And Adam … Adam is like the world's beginning.”

“Virginal! Honestly, Jason.”

“But I still don't understand. I'm still hurt that you never told me. Why didn't you?”

“I don't know. I always meant to, sometime. Too much to explain that I couldn't bear to talk about, I suppose.”

“But I wouldn't have demanded explanations. Surely you knew that?”

“Anyway, what have you ever told me about what went wrong with Nina? I saw the statue last night, it was the first thing I noticed …”

“It's another of my compass points. I remember Nina giving me the carving.”

“And what have you ever told me about Ruth? She may be right. We're just random atoms bouncing against each other. We orbit around the family nucleus because there's no choice.”

“That's rubbish. I feel — I have always felt — literally
attached
to you and Tory.”

“Exactly. There's no escape. But otherwise …?”

“I meant, when you bleed, I bleed. It s not a question of lack of choice, it's a matter of…” But he did not want to say the word
love.
Instead he asked: “Remember how we did everything together when I came back from school?”

“I remember your outrageous dares. Climb on to the gazebo roof! Jump! Crawl in the broom closet with the spiders! You always liked to control. Though you also protected me at school. I admit I did adore you for fighting Ernie Cromwell.”

“Who?”

“Surely you remember Ernie? He dragged off my shoes and stuffed them with snow. You fought him and got awfully battered.”

“If I fought someone on your behalf, I would undoubtedly have beaten him.”

“Don't you remember it?”

“No. But I do remember you jumped off the gazebo because I said to, and sprained your ankle. I rushed to tell Father it was all my fault. I couldn't wait to be whipped because I couldn't stand not to be hurting more than you were. Father obliged, of course.”

“We're very big on atonement, aren't we?”

“Do you remember I showed you the red whipping marks? My proof of concern.”

“Vaguely. I certainly remember spraining my ankle. I'll take your word that you atoned.”

“Are you atoning for something now?”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Why did you leave Australia so suddenly? And so obviously to Adam's distress?”

“Any move is upsetting to children. I was offered London and Europe and I would have been crazy to turn it down. Every Australian musician and artist would say the same thing.”

“And Dave wouldn't go with you?”

“I didn't ask him.”

“Why not?”

“I'm not on your couch, Jason.”

“Adam talks about him constantly. He was obviously important. To you too?”

“Yes.”

“Do you miss him?”

“Why don't you sleep with Ruth?”

“I do. We just can't spend the whole night in the same bed. Restless sleepers. My nightmares frighten her and her fears trigger my nightmares. It's a domino virus, neurotic panics zipping back and forth like ping-pong balls. You're avoiding my question.”

“You don't seem very good for each other. Do you still have other women?”

“From time to time.”

“It doesn't make much sense. Why do you stay together?”

“Look, let's not pretend that any one in our family is normal — though that's a most imprecise word, professionally speaking, there being as many norms as there are contexts. I'm absolutely rotten for Ruth, or for anyone, but she stays by choice. Our relationship is adequately functional. She is gentler and more patient with Tory than either of us.”

“It wasn't Ruth I was criticising.”

Jason reached out and broke off a sprig of mock orange blossoms, creamy and heavily fragrant. He handed it to her.

“I've come to believe in the supreme importance of redemptive actions. Ruth makes them often.Believe it or not, I am occasionally capable of them toward her. And I also believe in redemptive people. This isn't without scholarly and philosophical support, and it's certainly based on years of clinical observation. Adam, for instance; you just have to watch him with Tory. He's what I would call a redemptive person. As you are for me. I'm not one — though I'm capable of the occasional halting redemptive act. And I thought that perhaps, from the way Adam dreams aloud, Dave might be one for you.”

“Jason, don't … I can't …”

“He still matters.”

“Yes.”

“I knew it. So It's some form of self-punishment.”

“No. Far cruder and more selfish. Ever since I finally got away from home, I've put survival first. And I felt as though Dave was busy reshackling me to the family It had to do with Tory's letters. They came once, sometimes twice a week, for five years.”

“I know.” He sighed wearily. “That started when I was in boarding school.”

“I couldn't read them, I couldn't destroy them. I kept them in boxes. After a while I couldn't stand to see the mail at all so Dave always handled it. He read them actually. He would've written to her if I'd let him. He kept suggesting we bring her out to Australia and I began to fear I'd come home one day and find her in the living room.”

She hunched her shoulders and spread her hands in a gesture of despair.

“I did write to her, Jason, a postcard or a note every month, but she never acknowledged it.”

“I know. She still doesn't believe I wrote from school.”

“Anyway, the sense of claustrophobia got worse. And then a visiting conductor wrote back and invited me to London and it seemed an irresistible escape. Not to mention the career advantages. Dave suggested half-year rotation, which I could probably have worked out.”

“But here comes the twist,”Jason interjected sardonically. “You had to punish yourself for fleeing from Tory's letters.”

“You're dead wrong. The trouble is, Dave was part of the claustrophobia. And then something happened, a silly thing in a way, but spooky. There was a party at Kurrajong (that's Dave's sheep station) and I was standing looking out the window across the veranda into the desert. Someone had a Polaroid and took a picture and gave it to me.”

She shivered.

“The most disturbing sense of
déjà vu.
I thought it was Mother. I looked exactly like Mother as I remember her one night staring out of the French windows at the gazebo. She'd been playing Beethoven and stopped suddenly in the middle of it. I must have been sixteen or seventeen and I remember watching her from the garden and promising myself: I will never be caged like that.”

“You're so wrong about Mother …”

“I stared at that photograph and felt swamped with panic. I cabled London the next day and said I was coming permanently.”

“And Dave made no attempt to follow?”

“I was afraid he would and I'd never forgive myself. To give up his life when I knew I could never be reliable … I left earlier than planned, without warning, and then wrote and told him I was having an affair with the conductor.”

“Don't tell me this. I shoulder the brutality for all of us. You mustn't do it. I can't tolerate it.”

She shredded the mock orange blossoms with her fingers. “There's nothing redemptive about me, Jason. But”— on a note of harsh irony — “I've stayed free and sane and I make beautiful music. I punish myself by staying absolutely celibate and by a gruelling practice and performance schedule. A savage beast in sheep's clothing.”

“I
am myself indifferent honest,”
Jason said sadly,
“but yet I could accuse me of such things
…” He grimaced. “Always hated Father's pompous way of dragging Shakespeare into everything. The point is, Emily, considering our family … you do give the world exquisite music, you've given us Adam, you've done all the atoning required of you. You mustn't punish Adam and Dave.”

“I can't help it, Jason. The sense of being closed in becomes physical, it affects my breathing. It's happening to me now, the closer I get to Father. I must have been crazy to agree to this.”

“I was determined you'd come. Mother and I planned to give you no time to back out.”

“Thanks.”

“It was after I met Adam in London. And Mother felt the same when she went, that we had to bring Adam and Father together. Maybe it's just intense wishing, but I have the most extraordinary sense that something remarkable will happen.”

Emily stared at him. His eyes had the hungry fervour of a pilgrim's.

“Before Father dies,” he said, “I would like to be able to love him.”

The constriction in Emily's chest felt much worse.

XIX Adam

We've been driving north on Route 7 all the way from New York and now we're in the mountains. The Berkshires, Uncle Jason says, and almost at Grandpa's and Grandmas. It's quite different from home but very beautiful. It really is. You would think so too, Dave, except you'd be watching Mummy all the time. She looks the way she does when she's playing in a concert or when she's riding with us at Kurrajong. You used to say: “She's got bushfires in her eyes.”

I wish I was riding with you now Sometimes at night I pretend I'm up on Clancy's back and I can feel the saddle between my legs and your arms around me and Clancy's mane blowing in my face.

Mummy keeps saying: “Oh Jason, I'd forgotten how lovely …”

It is lovely. It smells different from the bush at home but it is a good smell. Most of the trees I know from England: oaks and chestnuts; the elms are lacy like gum trees but they have a disease and there are hardly any left. There are other parts which are just pine forest and that is nicest. I would love to walk there because it makes me think of rainforest in the Blue Mountains. I don't really know why — it's quite different — but it has a magic smell like that and the same green shadowy look like a cave.

I'm going to have to keep talking to you, Dave, because I'm scared. Remember when you took me camping back at Kurrajong on my fifth birthday? We were lying in our sleeping bags and the sun was coming up between two ghost gums and a snake came slithering between us, a deadly one. You whispered: “Don't move, mate!” and we didn't breathe for the longest time. Over and over in my mind I practiced the snake bite things you taught me: the tourniquet, the two cuts with the razorblade, the sucking and spitting. It seemed like hours and hours before the snake disappeared. That was the most frightened I've ever been, and the second-most was when we got on the plane to go to England and you weren't there, and this is the third-most.

Aunt Tory is in the back seat with me and she is holding my hand. You would think she was watching a snake licking its tongue in and out. Mummy and Uncle Jason are sitting in front and sometimes they talk very fast and remember stuff and giggle a lot the way Snelby and I do at school. Other times you can tell they are waiting for a snake to slither away.

I know this can't be because of Grandma. I told you she came to London for my birthday and she smells of English lavender and other soft things and when she plays the piano I want to cry because I remember Mummy playing her violin and you and me sitting on the veranda and listening and watching the bush or the ocean. Grandma is also a Blue Wanderer. She is very beautiful and she flies away from behind her eyes like Mummy does.

So it's Grandpa everyone is afraid of, and so am I.

I have got a room that was Mummy's when she was little. It has pine floors and a bed with posts and casement windows. You would love this house, Dave, you really would. It has a circular driveway and verandas and French windows just like our house on the sheep station and there's a little building like a birdcage in the garden and I can see the moon on it now. It is covered in honeysuckle which I have never seen before, but which smells nearly as good as frangipani.

When we arrived Grandma came out to the car and hugged us all, me first, and I could smell the lavender and also her snake-fear. They didn't exactly push me but they sort of made me go in first, like Snelby and Dickinson did one time outside the headmaster's office. I didn't want to let go of Aunt Tory's hand but she was shaking so much that it made me feel worse. I knew I was going to get caned.

That time at school I just said your name to myself and I thought: Well, it will be
interesting
to be caned. All the most interesting boys in storybooks get caned. Snelby's father got caned lots, and he's in Parliament now. It will only hurt for a few minutes and afterwards Snelby and Dickinson will like me better and maybe they won't tease me about my accent. And I held my head high and walked in. It hurt much worse than I thought and for longer, but they did stop teasing me afterwards.

And that's what I did this time. I whispered to myself: Dave, stay with me; and I pulled back my shoulders the way headmasters like and I walked through the door.

But he wasn't like a headmaster at all. He was just a little old man in an armchair and not the least bit frightening. So I went up to him and put my arms around his neck and kissed him and said: “Hello Grandpa, I'm Adam.”

I don't know why I felt like crying but I did, and so did he. I sat on his knee and hugged him and we both cried. He kept saying my name softly as though it was one he'd never heard before.

And then he said: “So you've come home to America.''

And I told him that I was a citizen of the world really, that America wasn't exactly home because I was conceived in Montreal and born in Australia and was being educated in England.

I said: “I do love the Berkshires though, and I love your house, especially that birdcage thing in the garden.''

Then his laughing and crying got all mixed up and so did mine.