Minerva's Owl Read online

  Chapter 2.

  “Justice... is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed.”

  Epicurus

  It was close to dusk and the aroma of neighbourhood cooking filled the air when Marta softly closed the timber door of her house and took off down the driveway with Toby holding tight to her arm. If you had been watching them from a short distance away, like Bob Slugsby surely was, it may have looked, in that light, like the pair were gliding, as if on wheels. The eye can so easily trick the brain.

  At a brisk pace, mother and son began to walk, as lights were turned on in houses, blinds came down and the sound of “The News” and “Neighbours” percolated out through windows and thin front doors. People settled down for the night; dogs kept watch, barking occasionally, as if doing the job of the town crier “It’s 6 o clock and all is well.”

  A gaggle of teenagers suddenly poured out of the throat of a tall double story house, cutting in front of Marta and Toby, chattering with glee about a movie they were going to see. Further along, inside another house, a large family could be seen through the rectangular front window, sitting around with dinner on their laps, mesmerised by the TV. Marta and Toby stood watching them, watching other people, on a screen.

  They roamed onwards, stepping past the looming gothic shadow of a church. Marta didn’t have much time for religion. She had been dutifully sent to Sunday school by her parents and she had enjoyed many of the stories, but it had come as rather a shock to her, when she found out that perfectly sensible adults around her, believed such happenings to be true. Marta was amazed. Her mind worked differently.

  She had asked if The Ark had an engine and if it had dropped off the koalas and emus at Australia and then journeyed on to Africa to deliver the elephants and tigers: she was told to be quiet. When she asked what the tigers and other carnivores did for food on the ark, she was sent from the room. And, when she asked about all the sea creatures that couldn’t get on the ark and had no worries about the effects of water anyway, she was sent home with the clear understanding not to return. When she had told her grandmother about this later, her grandmother had laughed and said “Of course we don’t believe in the literal Noah’s Arc story; it’s symbolic.” But when Marta had asked her grandmother how you would know which parts believe in or not”, her grandmother suddenly had nothing to say.

  Years later, during high school, Marta had attended a church youth group one night after being handed a welcoming looking flyer in the main street. She had envied the close sense of community these people seemed to share, but she just couldn’t get into the act of waving her hands about with closed eyes and chanting “Jesus.” She felt like an imposter. How can you make yourself believe?

  At night, it is like a different world from the daylight hours. Trees seem to have a stronger presence, animals come back to life and resume rule over their domains and sweet aromas are released to perfume the enigmatic air. And, sometimes, it seems, that the humans who are out and about in these hours of darkness, also, may easily loose the thin veneer of civilisation; liable to regress back to the tooth and claw of their superstitious, unknowing past. And for that reason, as the darkness gathered, mother and son slipped by through shadows; hopefully, under the radar of any predators lurking about.

  Toby and Marta found themselves in the “well-healed” part of town. That part of town where there are imposing double fronted doors, triple garages and perfectly manicured lawns. It was quiet here, there was not much to see, as houses were set well back from the road and protected with high-tech electronic gates. Then, it came upon her, like a hot breath at the back of her neck, that she and Toby didn’t belong here with their charity shop clothes and home-made haircuts; so to rid herself of the creeping feeling Marta decided to take a short cut through a little known pathway, down a rocky incline that led back not far from the main street and shops.

  They were probably half way along, tripping and sliding down the rocky track, lit by the light of a suddenly visible gibbous moon which sailed reassuringly above them, when Marta heard a single hair-raising shriek coming from close by. She stopped, looked about and saw that the back part of a house could be seen through the shrubs beside the path. And in that house, there was a brazenly lit room, where a man was systematically hitting a tiny cowering woman. Marta recognised that man from his picture which often featured in the newspaper – he was the local Lord Mayor.

  Without a second thought, Marta extracted her old mobile phone from the deep pocket of her cardigan. There was a long unused twenty dollar credit on it, for emergencies, so she rang the police - giving her own name.

  The police had told Marta to continue on her way home and so she did. As she walked, she began to shake with apprehension and with the horror of what she had seen. She could not understand how anyone could lift their hand against another person. If you knew and understood what pain was yourself, didn’t you want to spare others from this appalling feeling? She shook her head; it was too hard to know the minds of others. After all, she had read that psychopaths, who according to the experts were pretty much everywhere, really didn’t have the capacity to care about the feelings of others and this lack of empathy gave them a competitive edge: like a wolf amongst sheep.

  The moon seemed to follow mother and son on their way home, like some sort of regal, alien chaperone. As they reached the front gate, Marta and Toby stopped and Marta pointed to the moon “far away” she said as Toby stood impassively. She stood a moment longer, thinking about the moon and the stars from which we are made and the quickening, expanding universe in which we were but a speck. Such thoughts both befuddled and inflated her brain. She felt small and insignificant and yet pretty sure, that it was up to us, we humans to make the most of our short lives, to enhance well-being for all, to work toward fairness and equality and to strive harder to develop societies based on tolerance, appreciation of the individual and grounded on knowledge, reason and experience. And, thought Marta, as a night bird flew across the moon crooning mournfully, we should remember, that we are part of the natural world, a world that cradles us and in which we are the only animals who have memories of our past and thoughts of our future. And in this way, we are so greatly responsible.

  The following morning, Marta had that stretched apart feeling that comes from not having had much sleep. She felt like a tightly strung instrument, whose strings were liable to break with a bit of extra pressure. This was not unusual for her, as Toby often, hardly slept at all. Although, these days he was much better than he had been when he was younger, when he could jump for hours, or even all night, on his bed and never tire. He used to run too in those days and she had lived in a perpetual state of anxious fear and vigilance. A few times, he had escaped, by climbing out of the window and another time, he had scaled the side fence. On the first occasion, he had been found at the train station, just watching the trains. It could have been worse. The second time, he was discovered with his head in Gawp’s fridge eating left over cold pizza. Gawp’s fascination with Marta took root then, when she had made him a home-made pizza as a replacement.

  Marta sometimes wondered if she could have cut short Gawp’s pursuit of her, if she had just made another choice that day, like giving Gawp store bought instead. Of course, if Marta had continued thinking along this rocky path, pretty soon she would have been wondering about how things could have turned out if it hadn’t rained that month, but the next, or even, not at all. She would not have met Jack and there would be no Toby.

  No parent ever really knows what child they will get. We have no control over which genes will be randomly selected. We don’t even get to pick our own genes. Certainly, we have great influence afterwards, but all of us wait with surprise and wonderment to meet our child after they fall out of the womb, to find out who they are and greet them.

  When Toby was at the community centre the next day, Marta made her way to the local police station to see if she was required to give a statement or something, as she was not sur
e how the system worked. The gruff constable however, was not forthcoming with any information, merely answering laconically that “investigations were underway”. She pressed further, asking where abused women could go. He told her of a house a few streets away, which took women in who were escaping domestic violence.

  “What about battered men? Marta asked, where do they go?” She was met with a stony stare.

  On a whim, she went to that house and somehow, she stumbled through the door and offered herself as a volunteer. The manager of the centre actually welcomed Marta with relief, but said that the work was of the “most basic kind”; cleaning, cooking and such chores. And so, she began straight away, working steadily in the laundry and then the kitchen for a two solid hours.

  On her way home, Marta was waiting to cross the road, when she noticed that inside the white Mercedes stopped at the lights, was the women who was being battered the night before. She was wearing a leopard skin dress and her eyes were covered by enormous sunglasses which sported a prominent designer logo. Marta couldn’t very well wrench open the door of that gilded cage, to find out how the women was, but she felt that she should have. The lights changed the car sped off.

  As usual, Gawp was loitering about when Marta entered her gate.

  “Lookin a bit lonely today luv. Need a bit of company” asked Gawp in his slithery unctuous voice.

  “I am perfectly fine Bob” Marta replied. And, instead of trembling and wincing like she usually did, Marta had slipped into a businesslike, no nonsense mode. She had also pulled herself up straight and lanced Gawp with her eyes. Somehow, as simply as that, the power dynamic shuffled about and Marta felt like a competent headmistress addressing a wayward pupil.

  “Must go, things to do” and she swept off as regally as Queen Boudica herself.

  In this state of swelling empowerment, Marta switched on the computer and sent Angela a friend request on Facebook. And then, almost immediately, she began to be diminished by doubt, truncated by uncertainty and pruned back by apprehension. For those of you who are secure and assured of your place in the world and protected by the polish of your social skills, Marta’s existential angst may strike you as childish, irrational and even ridiculous. But such thoughts are easy for those sitting pretty in the soft palm of approbation. It is a different matter if you happen to be on the outside looking in.

  Nineteen years ago, Jack Aaron and Marta Doyle, had both caught the same bus together five days of the week. She, was trying her luck as a student at the university and he was working there as a white shirted bank clerk at the university campus branch of the local building society. They had never really noticed each other, personally, merely registering a fellow unremarkable commuter. This had changed though, on this one particular day, when leaden rains and wieldy, wicked winds had arrived one Friday afternoon in April and knocked out power lines and flooded roads; Marta had almost begun to anticipate the arrival of an arc laden with animals.

  The delirious weather, however, drove many students and workers to take refuge in a substantial looking lecture hall, waiting for the everyday conventional routines and schedules to come right. It was after a particularly berserk squall of demented wind and crazed rain that Jack had addressed Marta, expressing with intense feeling how annoying it was to have ones habits and routines meddled with.

  “I agree. I so much agree” replied Marta with fellow feeling. And after that, they began to talk of books they had read, films they had watched and how they had both had an addiction to the video game Ultima Underworld. Jack also loved “The Catcher in the Rye”, but not for the same reasons as Marta. Jack admired Holden because Holden had realised, that he was "the most terrific liar you ever saw".

  “We are all liars. We all act differently to suit different situations.” Jack had stated with animation and energy. “Most of us just don’t realise the real truth of it the way Holden does.” This was not how Marta saw it at all, but she pushed the small ornery voice in her head aside and saw what she wanted to see.

  The couple began to date after this, which mostly consisted of them going to Marta’s house to play Ultima Underworld, or occasionally, they would watch a movie at Jack’s house when his parents were away. It was on one such movie night, a night which also featured driving rain and clashing winds and a bus that failed arrive, that led to Marta becoming pregnant with Toby.

  It had been a kind of shock when it happened. Marta had felt like she wasn’t really there at all at the time. She felt like she was floating outside her own body somewhere looking on at the strange transaction. Later, when she thought about it, Marta decided that Jack had wanted to prove something to himself, because after that first and only time, he had never bothered her again. Of course, there was the little problem of the pregnancy which became apparent some months later.