He turned his eyes to hers and she saw incomprehension there.
‘Daphne,’ he said, then smiled.
‘You had an affair with Adelaide,’ she stated flatly.
She was saying it for her own benefit, not because she thought he would respond – but it had to be said out loud so it felt real. Once it was real she could deal with it. Or try to.
Hector giggled and she was disgusted by the sound.
‘Adelaide,’ he said, smiling to himself. ‘My love.’
Daphne felt ill. As if she could regurgitate not just the biscuits she’d eaten and the tea she’d drunk but all the decades of love she believed Hector had given her. He had cared for her. Loved their children, kept them safe. Made her feel protected. It had all been a charade.
There was also the knowledge that there was a child. Daphne was now sure that this was the reason Adelaide had disappeared overseas. Or did she go overseas? Maybe she’d stayed in Australia for a while? The rave notices for Adelaide’s musicianship first came in her forties, which meant she could have been in Australia before that, raising the child.
Had this child – this son – been in Adelaide’s life the whole time? InHector’slife?
Were there others? After Adelaide, did Hector find other women to target with his misplaced affections?
So many questions, so many layers of complication. Daphne couldn’t bear to think of them.
Instead she turned to her daughter and they stared at each other, and Daphne was suddenly and deeply grateful that they had the sort of relationship that didn’t always require words. She could see in Janet’s eyes how devastated she was, and how worried for Daphne.
They hugged while Hector giggled again, and Daphne whispered into Janet’s ear, ‘I’m all right.’
She wasn’t, but it was what a mother needed to say to her daughter at a time like this. No matter how old your children were, they wanted your steady reassurance.
‘I’m not,’ came the reply, and Daphne hugged her tighter, feeling Janet’s slight frame juddering with sobs.
Daphne kissed her cheek and looked into her eyes once more. ‘We will manage this,’ she promised. ‘I just need time to think.’
She’d come up here then, to the top floor, to look at the view. The unchanging view. And every day since, she has stared out of this window, holding herself steady by gazing at North Head. At the harbour she has seen all her life. At Dobroyd Head in Balgowlah, covered in trees. Staring at this view, she can believe it is 1952. Or 1976. Or any other year but this one.
Except the view has changed, she knows. Houses have been built and knocked down. Trees planted and grown. The harbour is, itself, changeable, not just from day to day but minute to minute. The Manly ferry comes and goes. Boats are at sail. So if she’s relying on this view to reassure her that the world can be steady, she has to reconsider. Or embrace the idea of the change. Which is not the same thing as accepting the betrayal of two people she has loved. But it will help her understand thatshe has been more exposed to change than she realises, and she has survived.
With a sigh, she turns away from the window. For someone whose life has been quite safe and stolid, she is now in freefall. At seventy-one years of age.
The straightforward course would be to ‘forgive and forget’, as people say. Forgive Hector and Adelaide; forget about their affair; keep life as it was.
It’s the path of least resistance, and very appealing because it would cause the least disruption. Except ultimately it would kill her. She would have to push down all her hurt, her anger, her sadness at what has been revealed and it would take root somewhere, sprouting dark shoots that would overwhelm her eventually.
No, she needs to live – in the world, in this house, in her family.
One day soon, she and Janet and Noel will have a proper conversation about the revelation, because it would be odd not to, but before then Daphne needs to have her own reckoning.
These past few days, that has involved drawing. When she felt, so strongly, that she needed to guard against the darkness taking root in her, she picked up her pencils and paper.
What came out of her in the first drawing made no sense, but she felt the urgency of it. Then threw it away.
Next came trees – spiky and hard. She kept those.
Then flowers. Some prettier than others.
Today she is drawing what she has always loved to: clothes. Ideas are flowing out of her onto the page. Ideas that she’s stuffed down for years, she realises. Clothes that were in fashion in the 1940s and fifties, sixties, seventies. Designs that have miraculously emerged from some compartment in her brain.
There is no reason to all of this – to why the revelation of a grand betrayal should unleash this torrent of creativity – but she is grateful for it. Time passes quickly, and she doesn’t think about anything but the clothes.
‘Mum?’ she hears at one point. She looks up and sees the light outside has softened. Late afternoon is arriving.