Chapter Sixteen
‘Addy, would you mind moving that red handbag from that shelf and putting that cowrie-shell thing on the stand?’
Adelaide glances up from her crouched position, arranging shoes, to see Daphne balanced on a footstool, reaching for a hat stand.
‘What are you doing?’ she says, straightening as quickly as her back allows. Years of playing an instrument one-sided have left her with some imbalances that time is only exacerbating, and her back keeps letting her know about them. ‘You’re going to fall.’
‘Not if you help me get this stuff done.’
There’s a slightly tetchy tone to Daphne’s voice. Adelaide can guess why: she’s been distracted lately, not quite up to speed in the shop, and Daphne’s had to tell her things a few times. It would be annoying. But she’s not doing it on purpose.
The letter about Desmond has occupied her mind during most of her waking hours.
Because seeing him would not just be about seeing him.
That would be too neat, and she’s too old to believe you can do something giant like meet the son you gave up at birth and not have it affect everything else.
There’s no way for that encounter to remain contained – it’s a secret too big to conceal.
When he was tucked up inside her, all she had to do was keep herself away from others.
But now he’s real – he has his own life, his own connections.
She can’t hide a grown man, and she can’t ask him to hide himself.
‘The bag, Adelaide,’ Daphne says.
‘Sorry,’ Adelaide says, finally moving it.
Daphne steps off the footstool and puts her hands on her hips. ‘What in the world is going on? You’re all over the shop. Literally.’
‘Nothing,’ Adelaide says, more tersely than she means to.
Daphne sniffs. ‘That’s the sort of answer my Noel used to give me when he was a teenager. Not the sort I expect from my elderly friend.’
‘I’m not elderly,’ Adelaide snaps.
‘Well, I am.’ Daphne raises her eyebrows. ‘So that means you are.’
Adelaide’s own eyebrows go up, then her face relaxes into a sort of smile. ‘Sorry,’ she says.
‘I should think so. What’s the problem?’
If only there were just the one problem. The prospect of seeing her son brings with it so many that they need their own categories.
‘Don’t say “nothing”,’ Daphne adds quickly.
‘It’s not nothing,’ Adelaide concedes. ‘But it’s not anything I can tell you.’
They stare at each other and, oh, how Adelaide wishes she could tell her friend what’s really going on.
Except that would involve revealing that she kept a fundamental truth from Daphne all those years ago, and explaining why.
And the explanation … Adelaide doesn’t know if she’d survive it.
After constructing such a fierce carapace and tending to it for decades, making sure it remained intact, that it could not be pierced, she can’t rip it away now without the gravest of consequences.
Which is part of the reason why she’s in such a state about the letter.
It’s not a matter of whether or not she wants to meet her son.
She does. What mother wouldn’t? No, the bigger question, the one troubling her so much, is what happens after that.
And who it affects, because it won’t just be her. It can’t be. This secret is not simple.
She wishes she had someone to talk to about it but she’s never had that person, and wouldn’t know how to find them now.
Being older makes her feel less capable of managing it alone, though, and she doesn’t know how long she can sustain this confusion – this mixture of longing and grief that she probably couldn’t explain to anyone else anyway.
The shop door opens and a man comes in. They don’t get many men in here, so it’s a novelty at least. This one is around sixty, Adelaide thinks, neatly dressed, with a cravat, which one doesn’t see often.
Daphne gives her a look and Adelaide realises it’s up to her to serve the man.
‘Hello,’ she says, walking up to him. ‘Please let me know if you’re looking for something specific, otherwise we’ll leave you to it.’
Some boutiques you go into and they’re all over you, but they don’t push in this shop. Not that it’s a boutique any more, but Daphne’s had the same policy regardless and she’s impressed it upon Adelaide and the other volunteers.
‘I am,’ the man says, although he looks confused.
‘You are?’
‘Something specific. Yes.’ He glances around. ‘My wife. She had a bracelet …’ He encircles his left wrist with his right hand.
Adelaide waits for him to finish the story.
‘We were robbed,’ he goes on.
‘Oh!’ Adelaide and Daphne exclaim at the same time.
‘I thought maybe the bracelet would turn up,’ the man says. ‘I’ve tried so many places in this area.’
Adelaide wants to tell him that a thief isn’t likely to donate jewellery to a charity shop when they could sell it instead, but he looks upset so she doesn’t.
He’s frowning at her now, stepping closer, and she wonders if she managed to upset him anyway.
‘Are you …’ he starts, then shakes his head. ‘No. You couldn’t be.’
Adelaide exchanges glances with Daphne, who raises her eyebrows.
The man frowns again. ‘No, you are. You’re Adelaide Drysdale! I knew it was you. I was second row at the Philharmonic a few years ago, right in front of you. You were wonderful!’
He looks chuffed, while Adelaide is taken aback.
This used to happen to her sometimes in smaller cities with a population that loved classical music and had a culture of going to the symphony – but it hasn’t since she returned to Sydney.
Her home town may have the most glorious opera house in the world, and there are plenty of people who go to cultural events, who play instruments and read and do all sorts of things, but she still thinks it’s a backwater compared to the far older cities of Europe.
So she’s never even considered that someone in Sydney would recognise her. Yet here he is.
‘Thank you,’ she says as graciously as she can, not wanting to sound full of herself – that most Australian of sins.
‘Are you …’ The man looks around the shop. ‘Working here? Surely you’re not retired?’
‘I am,’ she says. ‘I still play, but for my own amusement.’
‘Well! What a shame. I would have loved to see you perform in the Concert Hall, perhaps.’
The Sydney Opera House Concert Hall is one venue Adelaide has never played.
She had the opportunity years ago – an invitation from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra to join them – and she refused.
The momentum of her career would have shifted in a way she couldn’t control if she left the northern hemisphere and there would have been no easy way, she feared, to re-enter the orchestral world she had taken years to establish herself in.
Not that she told anyone about the offer.
She knew that Louis, Daphne, others, would encourage her to come home.
But at the time she’d still wanted to be far from her past and the decisions she had made then.
‘Thank you.’ It’s all she can think of to say.
He smiles kindly. ‘My wife will wish she’d been here with me, to meet you. Even if I can’t find her bracelet.’
He glances into the display case at the counter. It’s so sparse that it doesn’t take him long to assess the contents, and the expression on his face tells Adelaide that he hasn’t found the bracelet, as she expected.
‘Perhaps you could write a description of it,’ Daphne says, ‘just in case we see it.’
She fetches her notepad and a pen and hands them to him.
Once finished, he offers them back to her. ‘Thank you,’ he says, then he extends his hand to Adelaide, who takes it.
‘And thank you too,’ he says. ‘You made me proud to be Australian. Seeing you there, so accomplished, so far from home …’ He shakes her hand a couple of times, then lets it go. ‘What a brilliant career you have had.’
Adelaide smiles, feeling emotional in a way that surprises her, and he turns to leave.
‘How lovely,’ Daphne murmurs as he goes out the door. She gives Adelaide’s arm a squeeze. ‘I’m so proud of you too. And I hadn’t realised you were such a celebrity!’
Adelaide laughs. ‘Only to a select group.’
Daphne sighs. ‘And to think I never saw you play in any of those orchestras.’
They look at each other, and Adelaide feels the consequences of their years apart.
The high points of each other’s lives, the sadnesses too, all unshared, the stories unknown.
Daphne’s children, whom she didn’t see growing up.
Her own child, who was the reason for this enormous chasm in the connection with her oldest friend.
The lie at the heart of her whole life. Bigger, more destructive than she can ever admit to, and especially not to Daphne.
‘Perhaps you’ll play for me one day,’ Daphne says, looking as proud as she says she is.
‘Perhaps,’ Adelaide responds, then turns away. She can feel her heart actually aching in her chest, and a sense of the past cracking open in front of her, pulling her future into it.