The Infinite Air by Fiona Kidman

was knotting a scarf around his neck, grabbing his hat, as he pushed the woman away from the door and closed it behind them. Jean heard them talking on the pathway outside, then the gate clicked shut, as all three of them made their way down the street. This time, Fred wasn’t away long. When he came back he sank wearily onto the tattered green chair that had seen so many homes since Nellie had bought it, elegant and new, in Rotorua.
    ‘Nell, Nell,’ he said.
    ‘Nell, nothing. You didn’t tell me there was a child.’
    ‘I don’t know whether it’s mine.’
    ‘Oh, don’t you just. Well, it
looks
like yours.’
    ‘I don’t know. Believe me. I didn’t know.’
    ‘I
saw
you with her. On one of your walks. I might have known you’d slept with her. You fornicated with her, Fred. We can agree on that, can’t we? We left Rotorua because of the women. There was the patient who spread her legs for you when you’d finished filling her teeth, in the dental chair. And now there’s this one. I’m sorry, I get them mixed up, there are so many. It’s a disease, Fred, that’s what you have, an illness that means you can’t keep your trousers buttoned up. Whoops, another one who’s willing.’
    Fred raised a hand to strike her. ‘Stop it, stop your wicked, dirty mouth.’
    Jean put her hands over her ears and began to scream.
    ‘Nellie, listen, I had no idea the woman had a child. I have no idea whose it is.’
    ‘Oh no.’ Nellie lifted a wicker chair over her head, and smashed it on the floor so that one of the legs broke. ‘And how many have you left behind in France, Fred? Eh? Tell me that.’
    Fred put his hands over his face, tears leaking between his fingers. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, his voice broken.
    ‘Well, you can get out. You can leave, Fred.’
    He appeared to pull himself together. Jean had crouched down in a corner of the room. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’m off. You’re mad, Ellen. Has anyone ever told you that?’
    Nellie picked up a dirty dish from the table, where they had been eating not half an hour before, flinging it at him so that it hit the wall above his head and shattered, gravy trickling down. This was followed immediately by the cruet set, the pepper pot breaking a window, splinters of glass flying into the room. Jean put her arms around her head.
    Fred was standing, gripping his wife’s wrist. ‘For the child’s sake, stop. For Jeannie, our little Mit. Don’t do it any more.’
    Nell let her hands go limp. ‘Just go, Fred.’
    ‘So that’s it, Ellen? You want a divorce.’
    Nellie looked at him in astonishment, stopped in her tracks for the moment. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Fred. Of course I don’t want a divorce. I just want you to go away.’
    Before the night was over, Fred was packing a suitcase. First his trousers, folded neatly on the bottom, then the white coats he wore to his practice, his belts and ties and cufflinks, and lastly his shirts. Jean had crawled along the floor, as if standing up might invite some further wrath from her mother. Now she threw herself at the suitcase, dragging out his shirts. ‘Don’t go. Dad, please don’t leave us.’
    He knelt down beside her and touched her cheek with the back of his hand. ‘I have to,’ he said. ‘It’s my fault. Don’t be sad. I’ll see you very soon. I’ll see you often.’
    ‘You can take your sons with you,’ Nellie said. ‘I don’t want them back here.’ Harold wasn’t living with them, so she really meant John.
    ‘Don’t blame them for this,’ Fred said. ‘They haven’t done anything.’
    ‘I looked after them in the war. The war you didn’t need to go to. I had to deal with those big boys on my own and all the trouble they caused. It’s your turn now, Fred.’ While he was packing, she went to John’s room and began filling another suitcase with his clothes.
    John arrived home shortly after this, and seemed to take in what was happening at a glance, as if it were not