A young woman stood on my front doorstep. She was a mess. Her clothes looked tired and worn and so did she. First impressions matter and Miranda and I were away to a bad start. She wasn't selling cheap electricity or broadband. She didn't have the ID or the dress for it, and she had a child with her. There was a momentary awkwardness as we contemplated each other. I wasn't going to make it easy for her and hoped she would get the message and go.
"You don't know me," she said.
Well she wasn't wrong there. Why she should imagine that I might know her, or care, was beyond me. She was the sort of brattish young person I prefer not to know.
"No, I don't believe so." Please go. I have book to read, breakfast to eat, a radio programme to ignore and a game of computer cards to play.
I let the silence linger. Surely she couldn't take much more of this. She must get the message soon and drift back out of my life.
"Umm, I need to speak to you."
Across the road old Mrs Pettigrew was putting out her recycling bin. How could one old couple create so much rubbish?
"Umm sir?"
A car raced past. Damn these young fools and their agitation and noise.
This could take my whole morning. So I told her I had things to do and began to shut the door. She stepped into the doorway and blocked it with her shoulder. A justified outrage surged in me, but it merely left me drained and weary.
Oh the hell with her. I'd let her try to sell whatever she was selling. Probably wanting to send more cancer kids to Disneyland or some such nonsense. Letting her blather on about her tiny life and concerns would be less trouble than getting her to go. I turned my back on her and went back to my radio and toast. She and her child came too.
I hated having people inside. It made me notice the stains on the walls and the rotten patch in the carpet. I feel comfortable at home inside my shell but I know what other people see. I suppose that is why I don't generally have anyone in. And now I was made uncomfortable by a scruffy young saleswoman with an even more scruffy child in tow.
I watched in the mirror as she looked uncertainly around for somewhere to put herself. Eventually she sat down shyly on the edge of my most inhospitable looking chair. I began to enjoy myself. I wondered if I could get her to leave before she began her spiel.
"I met Matthew in Nepal," she began.
My world stopped turning. A slight haze formed. I blinked for a few moments until it cleared. I was not going to be required to send sick kids on holiday. I was going to be required to relive the past and that would be much worse.
"I have done what was needed for Matthew," I said, "and I have no further interest in him, or his friends." I added this last part with emphasis and was delighted to see that it struck home. Miranda stiffened and stood up.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have come. I thought you might be interested in ..." She didn't know what I might be interested in and I couldn't help her.
She was leaving. I almost let her go, but the devil, or perhaps some kinder spirit made me call after her, "Write your number on the pad by door."
She looked back uncertainly. The child bumped into her and hung on her legs. She looked about for the pad, not wanting to linger, but wanting to get something out of having come to disturb me.
As she wrote - to my surprise, confidently and clearly - that same malign spirit prompted me further into disaster. I asked, "Have you any money?"
She said, "No," and started towards the door.
I had won the battle and the war. I was rid or her. I had nothing left to lose. I would not be humiliated by a young beggar but I could humiliate her. I stopped her again and asked her name. I learned that she was Miranda Holding, gave her a cheque for a thousand dollars, ignored the tears and protestations and the gratitude and thankfully shut the door.
It should have ended there, and it nearly did. I took her piece of paper tore it off the pad and put it in the rubbish basket. I sat back down in the chair I bought from the op shop for $15 and finished my toast and game of cards, then I turned off the radio and went for a walk.
Our local shops are a hotch potch of uselessness. Once we had a hardware shop, a bank and post office and two supermarkets. Now we have several real estate agents some takeaway shops, coffee bars and one remaining supermarket that puts more effort into giving away children's kitsch than in supplying food. Outside one of the coffeebars I saw what I took to be Miranda. There was no need to speak to her again. We had finished any business we might have had, but I went to her and nudged her shoulder a little harder than was necessary to get her attention. I think I wanted to startle her. I succeeded in startling someone. A horrified young Asian woman, looking nothing like Miranda, jerked away from me and hurried off followed by my apologises. I walked on through streets lined with cars and the dross of modern living. I told myself I didn't care. And I told myself that the past was done with. But that didn't explain the need to accost strange women in the street. Nor did it explain the need I felt to hurry home to take the piece of Miranda's writing out of the waste basket. I forced myself to take my time. I stopped to admire Kevin's early flowers. They looked like a boring row of nondescript plants to me, but apparently they are something special to a gardener. Personally I prefer dandelions to roses because the former just grow and are reliable. I left a note under the windscreen of a car on the footpath expressing the hope that the owner would be transported by aliens to a planet where people don't need to walk on paths. Notices of that sort seem not to work but I live in hope.
When I got home I rewrote Miranda's number into my address book and threw away the piece of paper. Then I got it out of the waste bin for a second time and put it back beside the pad where she had written it.
Miranda hugged Chloe close and pressed her lips to the little
girl's neck. Chloe giggled contentedly. Hiding her face from Chloe,
Miranda wiped away a rogue tear. She said, "We have each other
and a thousand dollars. Who needs more?"
With the innocence
of her four years Chloe hugged Miranda closer. It had not gone well.
That was obvious even to a young child, but she trusted Miranda as
every child must trust their protector.
A voice from the kitchen
called. "Did you get rid of her?"
Miranda anxiously
picked Chloe up and swung her around and around to distract her from
the question.
"Mum! She is not going anywhere, I told you
that. But it wouldn't have worked anyway. He is a scruffy old
curmudgeon and he is not having my favourite little girl." This
last was said directly to Chloe who giggled obligingly.
"Well
you know she can't stay here," added her mother. "You'll
have to find someone to take her. As long as she is in the house you
will just seem like another sluttish single mother and I won't have
it. We have neighbours and our reputation to think of."
"Mum,
the neighbours are half wits and bores. They can mind their own
business." Miranda longed to add that the family reputation
depended on reliably being the same as this themselves. But she knew
her situation to be too precarious. She must hold her tongue,
especially in front of Chloe. She added, "I'll sort something
out soon. Chloe is a very special girl and everyone loves her. All
will be well." Miranda said all this with as much forced
happiness as possible. She would not allow her mother to make Chloe
feel unwanted. Chloe had had enough of that already in her short
life.
"I'll go back to see the housing people tomorrow. They
said I must follow up all possibilities and now I have. We will find
somewhere nice to live. I have some money now."
"Twenty
dollars is not some money," her mother said.
Miranda said
nothing of the thousand dollars. In truth it was both a fortune and a
pittance. It was the first real money she had had for years, but for
bringing up a child with no support from anyone else it was not very
helpful.
Her mother had not finished. "You may not like the
people around here who go out to work and have honest jobs and look
after themselves, but some of us respect that and don't need to go
around the world spending other people's money and getting
illegitimate children. If you know so much about coping with life
perhaps you could show us your successes young lady."
Miranda
could no longer hold back the tears. It had been a long disappointing
day and the sight of Chloe's eyes beginning to fill was just too
much.
I couldn't shake off the feeling of discomfit. The Miranda episode
and the strange woman at the shops who wasn't Miranda had intruded
too deeply into my world. I had handled both perfectly well. I had a
sent a silly young woman off with an overly generous gift for
whatever it was she thought she needed and I had accidentally
disturbed another silly young woman for no reason. For that I had
apologised and now I must forget the whole business.
I opened the
drawer of the ancient sideboard. It stuck as it always does, but by
rocking it up and down and pulling at the same time I got it far
enough out to be able to rummage in the bottom. Somewhere there I
still kept some bits of Matthew's life. A few letters asking for
money and the last note that I had not expected to look at again. And
a photograph. I got that out now. I felt a small pang, but only a
very small one. Time heals. I was healed. Once I had looked at this
picture with hope, then resentment, and finally with great shame.
Recently I just saw an attractive, exasperating young man full of joy
and innocence but without any depth at all. Such is the evolution of
human emotion.
The last conversation I had had with this picture
had been several years ago and was full of remorse and self loathing.
Now I was back to recriminations and resentment.
"Well, Mat,
what have you done now? Why would a young female friend of yours turn
up here for no reason, unannounced and scruffy and with a child? I
think we can both guess. Will you never leave me alone? I thought
death might finally silence you but no, no, now this," and I
hurled the picture down on the floor and left it there for five
minutes. An old man's pathetic defiance to a son he never understood
but always loved . And when I was calm again I put the picture back
in the draw and ate eggs and beans on toast for tea.
I won three
successive games of 'Loan Baron' that evening. The last even though
the 10 of hearts was trapped above the 9 of hearts. Tomorrow,
perhaps, I would ring Matthew's woman. There must be some way to get
her out of my life permanently and cheaply.