Читать книгу An Eye For An Eye - Arthur Klepfisz - Страница 11

CHAPTER SIX

Before they married, Andrew had very little contact with Karen’s family – not that it troubled him, as he barely noticed its absence. Only later did he become gradually aware that Karen preferred it that way, and the more he came to know her family the more apparent it became.

Not long after they married, Karen gradually began to describe the environment she had grown up in. She told him how her father, Tony Duncan, ran a small law practice in the downmarket, outer suburb of Broadmeadows, where many of his clients were hard working migrants who valued his assistance and demonstrated their appreciation with gifts of home grown vegetables, lemons and olives.

He enjoyed the feeling of helping people unable to help themselves, but Karen became increasingly aware that constantly niggling away at her father was his failure to achieve a lifelong dream of going to the Bar and building a practice as a high-flying barrister. She came to believe that what troubled him most was the knowledge that he had never found the courage to test himself, and try out for that goal. He had always come up with reasons for deferring his attempt, but when honest with himself, he couldn't avoid facing the harsh reality that underlying those reasons was his fear of failure. He came to believe that his marriage and family life had failed and fought against the feeling of career failure as well.

Of his four children, he regarded Karen, his youngest, as the one most likely capable of realising the ambitions that he had originally had for himself; some people are crushed by adversity, while others grow vigorously, as if making humus of the crumbling decay around them. Karen felt she had always flourished in defiance of her environment and knew her father dreamt that one day she would join his legal practice, make something of herself and give meaning to his own life efforts. She told Andrew that at first she felt weighed down by her father’s expectations of her. She knew, for he had repeatedly told her, that he foresaw her being the shining light of the family, rising above her sibs.

At first she dreaded letting him down, feeling failure was not an option open to her. In time, she was able to redefine what success and failure meant to her personally. She recalled how at school she was mocked and called “goody two shoes” by the other children who were irritated by how excessively virtuous she appeared to be. Only in adult years did she come to understand that their reactions arose from a belief that she saw herself being better than them. She felt that the do-gooder description was partly out of envy, but not totally unwarranted, as she herself had probably believed back then that if one was very good, rewards would automatically follow – a variation of the Cinderella story.

She came to appreciate the inherent dangers of this philosophy, and how it could be turned inside out—namely, if something bad happened to a person, that it must have been because they had been bad in some way. She despised this approach of blaming the victim for whatever catastrophe befell them—whether a woman being raped had brought it on herself or Holocaust victims contributed to the disasters that they suffered.

As she matured, Karen became aware that she valued being good as the moral thing to do, rather than seeking a reward for it. She felt one had a choice of being good or bad and she had chosen to be good. Somewhat rigidly, she did not allow for shades of grey in between.

Karen described to Andrew how initially Tony searched for explanations of why his life had been derailed and not progressed in the manner he had hoped for. He would joke that it must have been an aberrant gene on his wife's side of the family casting a spell over his life, and it annoyed his wife and others who sensed that contained in the joke was a grain of belief.

Tony refused to ever consider that he might have contributed to his own failure, for that was how he perceived his achievements in life. He certainly attributed some blame to his wife for the problems the children had over the years, as well as for his own lack of work success. The fact that his wife, Violet, had been adopted made it impossible to test his theory about her introducing aberrant genes into the family, unless they commenced with her.

Andrew learnt that Tony’s parents had migrated from Georgia, a Caucasian province of the Russian Empire since 1801, enjoying only four years of complete autonomy after the Russian Revolution in 1917, before it was occupied in 1921 and absorbed into the Soviet Union. Tony’s parents struggled to extract a living from the small parcel of land they farmed and escaped in the early 1920s, migrating to Australia, hoping to rise above the dull, excruciating battle that had been their existence in the past, but leaving the remainder of their family behind.

In Australia they had two children – a daughter, and after a five year interval, Tony. He was essentially an only child as his sister died from congenital heart problems before he was born. His parents adapted their name to their new home, hoping in time to merge with the local community and altered their name from Dumbadze to Duncan. Tony was eternally grateful for this adjustment as he imagined what the other schoolkids would have done with the original name – starting with labelling him “Dumbo” and who knew what else. His parents told him that in Georgia he would have been Tamar Dumbadze, but they realised that Tony Duncan was a more sensible title for this new environment.

Andrew learnt how Tony’s parents encouraged him to study, wanting him to enter the professions and enjoy a life different to their own life, which although financially more rewarding than their farming in Georgia, demanded they perform long hours of factory work. They were proud that he won a place at university where he studied towards a law degree. In the days before Commonwealth Scholarships, almost all students had to pay full fees for tuition; Tony knew that his parents could not afford to pay for his education and throughout the four years of his course he worked as a part-time labourer for builders and brickies.

After graduating, he gained professional experience in a number of city and suburban legal practices before purchasing a rundown practice in Broadmeadows, an area on the verge of rapid growth that he hoped would generate a steady flow of conveyance work, to underpin his earnings. The firm carried the solidly Anglo-Celtic name of O’Hearn, Billings & Ramsay, and although none of the original partners was still associated with the office, Tony had kept the name because he felt it had a solid British sound to it, which bestowed an element of prestige on the firm.

Tony had acquired the practice for a token sum of money, purchasing what was euphemistically referred to as “goodwill”. The modest practice kept Tony and his family in a comfortable, middleclass lifestyle in Camberwell, where the children attended nearby public primary and high schools.

By the time Karen had completed her six years in public primary school, Tony had identified her as his hope for the future and enrolled her in the highly thought of Methodist Ladies College in Hawthorn, for her secondary school years. That decision generated long-lasting tensions in the family, as none of Karen’s three older siblings had been offered such an opportunity; thereafter they resented Karen for having opportunities denied to them, and felt some bitterness toward their father.

Karen described to Andrew in more recent times that she had remained fond of her father and responded positively to his belief in her. She performed well academically without achieving great heights and subsequently went to Melbourne University where she studied for a law degree. Again, she performed above the average but not at the top of her class, so leading law firms did not seek her out or try to entice her for her year of Articles.

Tony had been keen for her to join him in his practice, but she decided wisely that she should go to another office for at least one year and it surprised Tony that she was prepared to act against his wishes, but he suppressed his irritation, knowing there was little he could do to persuade her.

Karen did not have unrealistic expectations of her year of Articles but nevertheless found that she hated the work she was called on to do, as it was mainly hackwork of filing and communicating messages, with minimal tuition offered to her. Initially, she found herself working 65 to 70 hours a week with little prospect of promotion in the foreseeable future, and resented making what she saw as indecent amounts of money for the senior partners of the city law firm employing her.

After three years of experience, Karen felt ready to join her father in his law practice in Broadmeadows, where he was a sole practitioner employing two part-time secretaries and one paralegal. Karen described how she commenced work in her father's law firm in early 1970.

On her second day, having been given her own key, she arrived early before the others and examined the office closely without her father present. The practice was housed on the first floor, with three rooms above a busy coffee shop in the main shopping strip. The second floor, above the Law office, housed many tenants over the years, but for the past twelve months had been occupied by an import–export business, though no one seemed to know just what they were importing or exporting. As she mounted the stairs, Karen gazed sadly at the mild decay and disorganisation of the space that represented her father’s Law offices. A musty smell pervaded the stairway and wafted through the nearby rooms, where the windows were stained with bird droppings. The windowsills were caked with dust and rain spots, initially drawing attention away from the flaking paintwork on the ceilings and walls. With some mounting concern, she wondered if her father was gradually decaying like the building around him. She decided to arrange for the windows to be cleaned as soon as possible, and started preparing a mental checklist of things to be done. To this list she added magazines for the waiting room, as none of the tattered magazines there was less than two years old.

She wondered how her father could generate enthusiasm for his work in these surroundings and then asked herself why her father had tolerated these surroundings for so long. She chose not to ask him the very same question, knowing the pain it was likely to cause him.

When Tony commenced practice in Broadmeadows he needed only three rooms – an office for himself, a small conference room and a waiting area for his clients. Later, a space for the secretary had been partitioned off from his room and Karen’s new office was carved from the waiting area. Apart from her father and herself, the practice had two part time secretaries and a paralegal, the latter doing a lot of her work from home. If the paralegal came in to work in the office, she was placed in the conference room. The contrast staggered Karen, as she felt Tony was always neat and tidy at home and meticulous about his appearance and surroundings.

Karen had arrived at 8.30 a.m., expecting to be joined by her father and then his secretary close to 9.30 a.m. when the office opened for business.

Before her father arrived, Karen had looked around his office. It was a small room which looked out onto a dingy alleyway. There was little furniture, not that there would have been room for more. He had a small, insignificant desk with two paper filing trays on it. There were no decorations or flowers and she noted the absence of family photographs of his wife and children. His degrees hung on the wall behind his chair and were mounted behind glass which appeared dirty and discoloured, and the printed paper of the degree certificates was markedly yellow. She supposed it was due to ageing, but could not recall ever seeing other people’s degrees turning yellow like this as her own degree was now hanging on the wall also, its freshness in stark contrast to that of her father’s. The only other item in the room was a small wall clock, which was surprisingly functional in spite of the glass covering it being cracked. It was strategically placed so her father could see it from where he sat, as the fee structure was time based.

She wondered how people in Broadmeadows could afford legal fees, but decided it depended on how desperate they felt. A lot of her father's legal work involved conveyance, wills and minor criminal charges heard in the local magistrate's court. Her father had done well in his legal studies, but this had not translated into the markedly successful career that he always felt he deserved.

In recent times his income had been eroded as cheaper methods of conveyance became available to clients. Karen felt that respect for lawyers was diminishing, which probably troubled her father, and she believed that the media was a significant contributor to this state of affairs.

Karen confided to Andrew how she wondered whether she really knew her father, as this decay scene was so different to his neat image at home, not that he spent a lot of time at home these days. She pondered where he went when he wasn’t at work or home, but he appeared to have his own life outside of the family. She was uncertain when she first noticed this, but had only met one of his friends, assuming there were more than one.

Nick had gone through Law school with Tony, completed the course, and after a few years dropped out of Law, now running a successful business importing children’s toys. He had been born into an establishment family and to Karen he appeared to be a dull but sunny person, even when intoxicated, which she had observed on one occasion when he came for dinner to her family home about a year prior. She’d noticed that her father generally didn’t bring friends home.

Karen was puzzled why her father had allowed her to see the state of his office environment, as he had always been a proud man. She wondered if he had stopped caring, and possibly was numbed by seeing it daily, to the point where it ceased to exist for him.

Knowing that it would be a difficult task persuading her father to make major improvements to the office, she began with a complete review of the regular office cleaning and maintenance and only gradually rearranged the decor. She was pleased to see the immediate improvement in her father’s attitude and she felt confident that as long as she remained active in the practice, it would not sink further and might even grow.

Though fond of her father, Karen described that she was occasionally troubled by his behaviour. Soon after commencing work in her father’s Law firm, she noted on occasion one of the paralegals, Jodie, relating to Tony in a flirtatious manner.

Jodie was a buxom young woman of 30, who had divorced her husband two years ago and did not have any children. The clothing she wore to work appeared skimpy to Karen, and she was puzzled that her father allowed it. Jodie often wore a skirt well above the knees, and a tight, cut away blouse which left little to the imagination when she bent over Tony’s desk to deposit paperwork. She was about 5'2" in height and wore stiletto heels, and as she tottered on these, her movements were accentuated by a prominent wiggle of her ample bottom.

Karen felt ill at ease with her father’s reaction, as Tony appeared pleased to see Jodie in spite of what Karen considered to be the vulgarity of her presentation. Karen sensed her parent’s marriage was a loveless one, but to see her father acting like a gauche schoolboy, who blushed whenever Jodie familiarly placed her multi-ringed hand on his shoulder, with her ample bosom not far from his face, distressed Karen.

She didn’t believe her father was having an affair with Jodie, but it would not have surprised her to learn that he was having sex with someone other than his wife. She would not allow herself to ever condone such behaviour, but was aware that if she was honest with herself, she could understand how his barren marriage could lead him to stray. However, she strongly believed that the proper thing to do would be to leave a marriage before starting another relationship.

Karen had been in her father’s practice for almost eighteen months when she represented a young man charged with assault. It was a serious matter, heard in the local magistrates’ court; the offender was only twenty-three and had knocked another man unconscious in a local pub. Dr Andrew Wright testified for the defendant who had been his patient for a number of years.

When the court adjourned for lunch, Karen and Andrew Wright went together to the nearby Manny’s Wine Bar for a quick meal and a chat. When they entered, there were no members of staff to be seen, but they could hear the noise of clattering plates in an area beyond a pair of swinging doors through which a gaunt young man soon emerged. He had a shaven head with two rings in each ear, and Karen wondered why so many waiters looked like this young guy nowadays – as she confided to Andrew, she had always associated food with plumpness.

With neither greeting nor eye contact, the waiter recited a litany of specials for the day before thrusting two menus in their general direction. Karen smiled when Andrew quoted a Marx Brothers’ oneliner: ‘If they’re so special, why weren’t they printed on the menu?’ – a comment the waiter ignored. They both ordered spaghetti marinara and a cappuccino, explaining to the nearly mute waiter their need to be out of there in 30 minutes. The waiter disappeared wordlessly and they were pleasantly surprised to have the food arrive promptly. As a bonus, the meal was tasty and they finished it within the half-hour; they each paid their share and Andrew left what Karen considered an excessive tip. When Karen commented, he agreed with her that too often people lacked the courage to tip according to the quality of the service. In fact, he remarked, it was really self-imposed blackmail along the lines of. ‘If I pay you all this money, then maybe you'll agree to do your job and make my outing pleasant.’

She wondered if he was trying to impress her.

Karen was attracted to this young psychiatrist who so readily displayed warmth and humour towards her. She and her girlfriends had often discussed what they were looking for in a man and she still wasn't sure, but knew that humour was an important part of the total picture, and this man had an open face which featured laughter lines. She also felt that Andrew seemed interested in her as a person even though they had only just met. In addition, he appeared highly competent in his work, as far as she could tell.

He was no hunk, she thought, but then reminded herself that she wasn’t looking for one. Rather, he had pleasant features and though showing early loss of hair, he was not attempting to disguise it with the barcode look of brushing the existing hair over the bald areas.

During their short lunch, Karen had relaxed to the point where she confided that she was basically shy and had joined Toastmasters and consulted a psychologist for a few sessions, to learn how to be more assertive. With an embarrassed laugh, she told Andrew that the psychologist had asked her what animal she felt symbolised her personality and without further thought she had promptly replied, ‘A hedgehog … because they are a vulnerable, shy animal with prickles on the outside.’ When she turned the question to Andrew, he deflected the query, saying they needed to return to court; but as they strolled back, Karen was delighted to hear him reopening the discussion.

‘A squirrel,’ he said, with a slight change of shade in his cheeks. To her quizzical look, he explained that he saw himself as someone who made quick decisions, sometimes impulsive, and he believed he appeared non-threatening and could be playful, but added that he probably was more a mix of two animals – a squirrel and an owl, the latter appearing thoughtful and self-contained. Almost as an afterthought, he reflected to Karen that the two animals were widely disparate and their characteristics contradicted each other.

‘So, what would you call such an animal and what would it look like?’ Karen giggled with a deadpan face, Andrew answered her question. ‘A Squowl, that’s what you’d call it. There aren’t many around these days, but they’re a foot high, with bushy tails and big, round luminous yellow eyes. They’re mute and have four legs, two big and two little. Can’t say I’ve seen one as yet – they are very rare.’

The day ended with Karen’s client being cleared of the assault charge due to the evidence presented by Dr Wright describing the taunting and provocation his patient had endured before the attack. The court referred him to the care of his psychiatrist, with the magistrate's advice that he avoid going to pubs in the future.

Karen knew that she would like to see more of this young psychiatrist, but wasn't sure how to go about it. She had friends who were seeking the perfect man to marry, which she felt could only be a fruitless exercise; she didn't believe there was only one partner for each person, but rather there were probably many potentially suitable partners, provided each of them brought goodwill and a willingness to compromise into the partnership, and she felt Andrew was definitely suitable. She quickly converted this thought into a fervent hope that he would prove suitable.

As they left the court, she quietly asked Andrew if she could see him again. His mind raced as he answered, ‘Yes’, not yet able to fully interpret the rush of emotions and thoughts that invaded his body.

Walking back towards her office, Karen noticed a svelte young woman on the far side of the busy street, her arms flung around the neck of her beau. The woman perched on her toes as if in some personal and intimate ballet, her body straining upwards and her blonde shoulder length hair caressing her lover’s face. Karen smiled, hoping that it proved to be a mirror image of the happiness that would follow in her own life.

Just ten months later she and Andrew were married – Karen believed that she had found a lifelong partner. She continued working with her father until Jed was born in 1973. At the time, she felt no regrets at all about stopping work, as motherhood was time-consuming and fulfilling; the regrets came later when the boys began to separate from their mother, as part of becoming more independent, and she had the time to reflect on her life, and wondered if she should have continued with her career.

Every fortnight, Karen, Andrew and their children would set off to visit Karen's parents. Over the years it had become far more an obligation than a pleasure, so they had discussed the possibility of winding back the visits, to say, once a month, but they got no further than discussing the possibility.

Andrew enjoyed talking to Karen's father Tony. He was a warm man who enjoyed laughter. In stark contrast, Karen’s mother, Violet, appeared to regard laughter as undignified and only suitable for the lower classes. She was inextricably trapped in the straightjacket of how she perceived her social standing – a prisoner with no wish to escape. Andrew felt her name Violet was incongruous, as she appeared to him to be completely and wilfully colourless. Tony and Violet had probably never been compatible and Tony maintained a totally separate life, socialising with his own circle of friends leaving Violet to pursue her own lack of interests.

Karen herself confided in Andrew that Violet seemed to live life by the sayings of a desk calendar, and added that Violet’s most original thoughts were the ones she had read the day before, when turning to the date on her calendar; Karen then felt uncomfortable at how harsh this sounded. Over the years, Andrew had been able to silently observe Violet and had noted that Violet was not only prone to clichés but had used them to underpin her rules for life, even when it was clear that she didn’t fully understand the sayings.

She certainly showed little or no interest in other people's thoughts or feelings – the moment another speaker drew breath to continue their story, Violet would jump in and kidnap the proceedings for herself. Whatever issue the other person was discussing, Violet would trump it and bring the discussion back to her own account, where she would describe the most boring and trivial incidents in minute detail, squeezing every last millilitre of air from her lungs until her voice died and she was forced to draw another breath. Andrew raised his eyes and gave silent praise to the God he didn't believe in that Karen was more like her father.

Karen was the youngest of Tony and Violet’s four children; her two brothers and one sister all seemed so different to her in both nature and appearance that she had long wondered if they really had the same parents. Even after so many years, she had to admit that she still harboured some lingering doubts.

Karen’s eldest brother Ralph was six years older than her and had worked as a postman, but was now retired on medical grounds.

He suffered from a severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, which presented in his work as a difficulty in letting go of the mail when trying to deliver it to the various households. He was too ashamed to discuss it with Karen, but his wife Connie had confided that by the end of Ralph's working life his postal round was taking three hours longer than the required time, because he would insert a letter into the letterbox and feeling unable to let go of it, he would withdraw the letter and then repeat the process over and over again. This made his round painfully slow and distressed him greatly.