‘Yes, darling?’ she says to Janet, although her hand keeps moving on the page.
‘I need help with Dad.’
Now Daphne stops. She has left all the care of Hector to Janet these past few days. It isn’t fair, but she hasn’t been capable of anything else, and in Janet’s eyes she has seen understanding.
‘All right,’ she says, standing up slowly, feeling stiff because she’s been sitting for too long.
She descends the stairs to find Hector on the couch in the sitting room. Almost as if he’s been there since Adelaide’s visit. Trapped in that day.
‘Time for dinner, Dad,’ Janet says, patting him on the arm.
His vague eyes lift to hers. ‘Oh,’ he says.
Janet nods to Daphne, who goes to his other side and takes his arm.
‘We’ll help you up,’ Daphne says, and she and Janet tug on his arms as he pushes down on his feet to stand.
‘You’re a good girl, Daphne,’ he says, then kisses her cheek.
He hasn’t kissed any part of her for a long while and it makes her want to punch him. Because she suspects that he knows exactly what he’s saying: that she, his wife, is a good girl for not making a fuss. That Daphne being a good girl was what let him and Adelaide get away with the affair back then because they knew she wouldn’t make a fuss if she found out.
What a curse, to be a good girl. A curse for herself, mainly.
As she helps Hector to the dinner table, however, she knows the curse hasn’t lifted, and likely won’t ever be, because the incantation for that is beyond her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Another year has begun and Margot is trying to feel positive about it. She has some money now, and she thinks it’s enough to last them for at least a few months. Although not forever, obviously, so the matter of finding a job is still pressing on her. As is the fact that she doesn’t have any skills for any kind of job. Which means she has to think about finding something she can do without experience or skills. At her age. She’s not a school-leaver whom everyone would excuse for having nothing behind them – in fact, they’d probably welcome it. A school-leaver is malleable. A woman in her mid-thirties is not.
‘Do you have any ideas?’ she asked Lavinia the other day as they sat looking at the water.
A currawong was hopping around in the tree in front of their verandah and Margot wanted to keep watching it rather than having to think about something like a job. Birds were so much more interesting.
‘I guess you couldn’t be a nanny,’ Lavinia said, and it sounded like she was being serious. Which Margot found funny.
‘No. I don’t really like children,’ she said.
‘Oh.’ Lavinia blinked. ‘Has this always been the case?’
‘Yes. Even when Iwasa child.’
Lavinia nodded slowly. ‘Gardener, perhaps?’
This too was amusing, as the garden at the house was unkempt.
‘No,’ Lavinia said before Margot could respond. ‘I can’t say you’ve ever been keen to put your hands in the dirt.’
Margot shrugged.
‘What do you like to do?’
Margot pondered this. ‘Read,’ she said.
She was a regular visitor to Mosman Library, up the hill. As books were heavy to carry when on foot, she only borrowed two at a time, or three if Lavinia also wanted something to read. However, there was no job that involved simply reading – Margot had already thought about that. Reading was a leisure activity.
Reading is what Margot’s doing on the verandah this sultry summer afternoon with the humidity rising and no break of it in sight. She’s rereading Ruth Park’sSwords and Crowns and Rings, a favourite. The librarian recommended some new books to her but she’d wanted a Ruth Park the way she used to want her favourite doll when she was a child.
The telephone rings and she hears Lavinia answering it, then her aunt calls her name.