Angelina’s position was less certain. Yes, she loved me; yes, she hoped it would work out—but she couldn’t promise. She never said it as clearly as that, and I never asked her to. I didn’t want to push her into defending her not-completely-abandoned marriage. Better to let it fade than try to argue it down.
My last day at work coincided with the Christmas parties for both our department and the studio where Angelina studied acting. Partners were not invited to either event, but Tina made an exception.
‘It’s your farewell. We’d have done something separate, but it’s like having a birthday at Christmas. You have to double up. But we decided you should invite Angelina. If you’re still seeing her.’
I explained that Angelina had another commitment, but she turned up at the function room venue at 10.30 p.m. with everyone three sheets to the wind. She had barely walked in when our project manager, an older guy named Pete, got behind the piano and announced that I would be farewelled in a manner befitting my extracurricular interests.
He launched into a parody of Tom Waits’ ‘Mr. Siegel’. I saw it coming—‘Mr. Seagull’—but by the end of it I had tears running down my face: of laughter, of sadness that I was leaving and of something else. I had no idea Pete could play, let alone that he was at least as good as I was—and a better singer. He had been there that first night at the bar celebrating our colleague’s new baby and had let me have my moment. If he had taken the piano stool himself, Angelina would not have been holding my hand now.
Pete put the point beyond doubt by following up with a spare and beautiful version of ‘Walk Away Renée’, while Angelina squeezed my hand harder and harder, and we both looked straight ahead.
‘You two are so cute together.’ Tina had appeared on cue. ‘I was going to ask you guys what you’re going to do when Adam goes away, but it’s obvious, isn’t it?’
Was it obvious to Angelina what was going to happen? All that was obvious to me was that I didn’t want to go.
The following Sunday was Christmas Eve. Angelina met me at my flat and we took a tram to the Myer Music Bowl for Carols by Candlelight, a Melbourne tradition. At 7 p.m. there was already a big crowd on the lawns in the natural amphitheatre behind the fixed seating.
We shuffled around until a group with the full picnic paraphernalia laid out on a rug recognised Angelina and made room. She pulled a parcel from her bag.
‘Don’t lose our spot. Here’s something to keep you occupied.’
There is a famous Bob Dylan song in which the narrator’s lover hands him a book of poetry and he sees his own feelings reflected on the page. The gift-wrapped anthology that Angelina gave me was bookmarked at a sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore,
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double…
Her hand on my shoulder in the Victoria Parade bar, that first night, counting the beat.
…What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes, the tears of two.
I read it over and over while I waited for her and, as in the Dylan song, the words rang true. His lyrics did not include a summer evening and a crowded hill and a Sonnet from the Portuguese, but they would now be as much a part of it for me as if he had sung ‘Henceforth in Thy Shadow’ instead of ‘Tangled Up in Blue’.
I assumed Angelina had headed for the ladies, but she did not come back. It would be easy to lose someone in that sea of rugs. I sat while the celebrities and the choir and the whole audience sang in unison the songs of my childhood Christmases when my mum and dad were together in a place where the snow really did lay round about, deep and crisp and even. I sang, too. And then I couldn’t. I wasn’t sobbing, just a bit moved, but enough to get in the way of singing.
There was a family sitting on the rug next to me, and the father lit a candle and gave it to his daughter, who must have been six or seven. She was already holding her own candle, and she passed the newly lit one to me. It was a moment from a movie: close-up on the little girl’s face; big close-up of tear rolling down the guy’s cheek; cut to the father, smiling that he’s managed to avoid the embarrassment of confronting the choked-up guy but has still done his bit in spreading the goodwill. Mid-shot of the guy waving his candle. Shot from the stage of the crowd all waving candles together. We are surely entitled to one cinematic moment in our lives.
I wondered where Angelina was. I wanted to share this with her.
Cut to the stage.
‘The next song is by the late John Lennon,’ said the compere. ‘And some very special friends are going to sing it for us.’
The cast of Mornington Police walked on. And instead of the expected ‘Merry Christmas (War is Over)’, they sang ‘Imagine’. With the choir behind them and Angelina in front, carrying everyone else.
Unlike most of the audience, I was a performer. I wasn’t just watching her; I was in her head, knowing how she would feel with the entire audience singing and waving candles in the night. To be the very heart, the pulse, of a city of three million for four minutes, doing it all with the noise your breath makes as it runs over your vocal chords.
In that moment I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Angelina, have kids like the little girl who gave me the candle, grow old together. I would do whatever it took to make that happen.
I blew out the candle and put it in my pocket. I still have it. I should have held on to the thought as tightly.
That night, for the first time, Angelina stayed over. On Christmas morning we slept in, had coffee for breakfast and exchanged presents. I gave her a locket that opened to reveal a photo of the two of us at the piano. Shanksy had taken it with high-speed film to avoid alerting Angelina with the flash. It was grainy but caught the moment.
I had bought the locket in an antique shop on Gertrude Street, and the proprietor, an older woman, spent a good hour helping me choose it while teasing out my story. After I had paid, she offered the final judgment on the piece—and on my relationship.
‘If you expect her to wait for you, you’ll have to offer to marry her.’
I took the locket, but not her advice, which I knew, with the wisdom of a twenty-six-year-old, belonged to another era.
Angelina put the locket around her neck and left it on. Later, I saw that she had removed her wedding and engagement rings.
Her present to me was a cassette recording of the previous night’s performance.
‘It’s a bootleg,’ she said. ‘The soundboard guy would lose his job over it.’
She had written on it, Imagine: just imagine. Merry Christmas and all my love, always, forever, Angelina 25/12/89.
Then she did the thing that I would come to realise, beyond all she had said and done before, meant that she wanted to make a future with me after all. She invited me to her parents’ home for Christmas dinner.
12
Angelina was nervous about introducing me to her family, and for once I felt older than her, not least because her younger sister and brother were also living at home.
Apparently, Richard had been an admired member of the clan. Angelina had told her parents nothing substantial about me and didn’t want me to be smartarse or sarcastic or make jokes about being a real architect. Or about politics. Stay right away from politics. Best not to make jokes at all. But otherwise I should just relax and be myself. As long as I didn’t…
And so it went on the drive to Kew, where I had
dropped her off after our date at the Mock Tudor.
I knew her family history, as Angelina knew mine. No skeletons of note, beyond the younger sister, Jacinta, being ‘troubled’, which in the Brown family could mean not studying law.
Angelina’s father, Tony, met us at the car, and I warmed to him immediately. He was a big, bluff, balding guy, not at all what my mind had conjured up from Angelina’s description. A Family Court judge, but very much the antipodean version, in tailored shorts and white knee socks.
‘We saw you on the box last night,’ he said to Angelina. ‘Those singing lessons weren’t such a waste after all, eh? Your mother and I have been getting calls all morning.’
Mother was a different story. Tall, thin, a passing resemblance to Princess Margaret and introduced by Tony as ‘Angelina’s mother’. She did not invite me to call her anything else.
Nor did she waste time getting to the point. ‘How’s Richard?’
‘He’s gone to Sydney, to see his parents,’ Angelina said.
‘You told me you were staying with him. Where have you been?’
Mrs Brown’s glance at me suggested she had jumped to the right conclusion.
‘I told you I was staying at the house. To water the plants and feed the cat.’
‘You should have gone with him.’
‘Mum? We’re not together.’
‘People should be able to put aside their differences at Christmas. I honestly can’t—’
‘Mum. Remember? Carols by Candlelight.’
‘Did you really have to be there? There must have been twenty of you. I’m sure if you’d told them you needed to be with your husband…’
We had ten minutes or so more of Richard—his family, his bar exams, his need for a supportive wife—before Mrs Brown returned to Carols by Candlelight.
‘Did you have to sing that awful song? So many beautiful Christmas carols and they have to sing pop music, I don’t know why—’
‘I think it’s one of Richard’s favourites,’ I said, deadpan.
Angelina’s expression said ‘careful’, but Mrs Brown turned her attention to the turkey with a parting, ‘You need to put a cardigan on over that frock.’
Dinner itself was a strange experience, and not just because of the roast turkey and plum pudding at the height of summer. My presence threw an extra factor into the family mix. I was officially the visitor from England, the traveller separated from his family. The absence of Angelina’s recently-ex-husband and the lack of any credible reason for her to know me undermined that innocent explanation. Grandma, Mrs Brown’s mother, didn’t bother trying to make sense of it and called me Richard.
There was no beer or wine. I am not much of a lunchtime drinker, but this was one occasion where a pint would have been welcome. Jacinta, whom I recalled was an apprentice hairdresser, poured me a glass of lemonade and passed it down the table. I sipped it and was rewarded with the unmistakable warmth of alcohol.
Angelina’s older sister, Meredith, ‘worked in policy’ and was occupied with a baby. She had her mother’s looks and already something of her personality. Her husband was a dork of the first order, right down to the heavy-framed glasses and surreptitious glances at Angelina, who had not put on a cardigan. His surname, White, tied neatly to his profession as a dentist, so much so that I cannot recall his first name.
The brother, Edwin, between Angelina and Jacinta in age, had deferred legal studies to pursue his cricketing ambitions. He seemed uninterested in discussing anything else, so I suppose he deserved credit for focus. He made a few jokes about the English team, but fewer than my workmates had. Allan Border’s Australians had recently given England a drubbing at home, after being the underdogs. Possibly Edwin was just being tactful. If he was, he had not got it from his mother.
‘Do you have brothers and sisters?’ she asked me.
‘No, I think I put my parents off the idea.’
‘That’s a shame. Children without brothers and sisters turn out so selfish.’
‘Mum!’ said Angelina.
‘Moom? My godfather, you’re picking up that accent. It’s sounding like Coronation Street.’ She turned back to me. ‘But you don’t need four, either. We’re not Catholic. Two would have been plenty, but Tony wanted a boy, and then Jacinta was an accident. Before you know it, you’ve got four.’
She surveyed the table. The accident, who had been popping up and down from the table to her mother’s undisguised irritation, walked behind me and performed a sleight of hand to replace my empty glass with a full one. I liked her a lot.
Mrs Brown had not finished. ‘Four children. One more and we’d have needed a van. We could have used one on the night—’
‘Mum! No. Everyone’s heard the story.’ This was Jacinta.
‘I’m sure they haven’t. Alan certainly hasn’t.’
‘Adam,’ said Angelina.
‘I haven’t heard it,’ said the dentist.
I was happy to hear the story, especially if Angelina was a part of it. I did not expect Mrs Brown would hold back on the details out of respect to anyone’s sensitivities.
‘Meredith was doing her moot—’
‘Mock court,’ said Tony, presumably for the benefit of visitors unfamiliar with longstanding English tradition but also clarifying that Meredith had studied law. In case there had been any doubt.
‘We know what a moot is, dear. On the same night as Edwin’s speech night. And Angelina was in the school play at MLC.’
‘My school. Methodist Ladies’ College,’ said Angelina. ‘I was the understudy for the lead. It was the one night I was down to do it myself.’
Mrs Brown laughed. ‘I always forget that bit and Angelina always reminds me. Anyway…’
I lost track of who needed to be where and when, but essentially Tony and Mrs Brown had divided the duties. They had left thirteen-year-old Jacinta at home, not alone as it transpired because she had invited a few friends around—for drinks. There followed a farce of phone calls from concerned parents, detours and an outbreak of alcohol-induced vomiting in the car. Angelina found her own way to the school play, and somehow her parents managed to catch the critical moments of the moot and the speech night. All good, then.
Dr White saved me from asking.
‘What about the play?’
‘Oh, I should have mentioned that. That worked out, too. It was on all week, and we went the following night.’
‘But Angelina wasn’t in it?’
‘Oh yes, she was, just not in the lead role. We saw the proper lead, and she was just marvellous, wasn’t she, Tony? Only a fourth-former, just a little girl, but couldn’t she act? If we’d gone on the other night we wouldn’t have seen her.’
I was watching Tony, and Tony was watching Angelina. He knew exactly what was going on but didn’t say anything.
As Angelina helped clear the table, Jacinta, who had disappeared during the telling of the saga, gave me a tour of the backyard, with its cricket stumps painted on the side of the garage and stash of cannabis in the bike shed.
‘Your mum and dad don’t drink?’ I said.
‘It’s Grandma. She’s a Methodist. Mum drinks a bit. Dad drinks a lot.’
That made sense.
She passed me the joint. ‘What’s the deal with you and Angie?’
I took a considered toke. ‘We’re good friends.’
‘She’s high maintenance,’ said Jacinta. ‘I mean, she shouldn’t have married Richard, he’s a dick, but did she tell you she won’t cook or wash the dishes? And now she’s cheating on him, right?’
‘They’ve split up.’
‘Having time out while Angie grows up, according to Mum. Don’t get me wrong: she’s my sister. My favourite sister. In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s not the sort of family where you want to be a black sheep. If you come back and get together with Angie, you have to let me stay any time I want.’
She took a final long drag on the joint and stubbed it out on the brickwork. ‘Don’t worry—
I’m on your side.’
We went back into the house and unwrapped presents. A flannel nightie for Angelina and a parcel to take to Richard.
Then Mrs Brown started on politics. The public had seen through Mr Hawke’s socialist nonsense and the next election would sweep a new wave of young Liberals—which, in British terms, meant conservatives—into office. Had Richard thought of standing? The mention of Richard must have reminded her of me.
‘What do you think of our prime minister, Alan?’
Angelina corrected her for the third time. ‘Adam, Mum.’
I gave her the answer I would give a taxi driver: ‘I’ve only been here six months, so I don’t know enough to comment on local politics.’
‘Good policy,’ said Tony.
Tony was a judge, a man of some experience in family dynamics, his own in particular. He had given me precious counsel that amounted to Do not engage with Angelina’s mother on this subject. I could blame the alcohol and the joint for ignoring it, but they merely lowered my inhibitions. It wasn’t the politics: Angelina’s mother was no more forthright than my own, and she was entitled to her opinion. The problem was her constantly putting Angelina down.
Mrs Brown gave me the opening, as she had been doing all day. ‘I’ll say one thing for you English, you know what’s good for you. I don’t think anyone can say Mrs Thatcher hasn’t been good for England.’
‘Certainly not me da’,’ I said, and Angelina flashed me a look. I ignored it. ‘Bein’ dead ’n’ all.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘But when ’e were alive, ’e hated ’er. Stands to reason. With ’im being a miner.’
‘Your father was a coal miner?’
‘Aye. Down pit.’
‘Well, with respect to your late father, I’m sure he was an honest worker, and I don’t blame him personally, but the unions—Arthur Scargill, am I right? The man’s a communist.’
‘Aye. So were me da’. Then ’e got the black spot on ’is lung.’
The story was spinning out of control, for the simple reason that I didn’t have an ending—or even a point—in mind when I started. My father had died from lung cancer, but cigarettes had been the culprit, not coal dust. I did my best to join the dots.