‘Go up to Carson’s,’ he repeated.
‘Yeah, thanks. I will.’
O
N AN
evening in late July, Tom had arrived at the Preserve to find Brendon angled over the stove. He resembled a hinged ruler, his long body forever obliged to fold itself into deficient spaces.
Nelly, on the couch with her feet tucked under her, was talking about Rory. ‘So now there’s this band. I mean it’s good he’s going back to music, he used to be a really good violinist, and these guys are great, he’ll get a lot out of playing with them. But that’s the end of painting, although he says it isn’t.’
‘No reason he can’t do both,’ said Brendon.
Nelly’s hair was fastened on top of her head, her eyes and mouth were painted. Her face, always pale, had been powdered rice-paper white. Her concubine look. Tom had known her long enough to understand it signalled defensiveness.
She said, ‘But he won’t. Not seriously. He won’t paint in a focused way because all his energy’ll be directed at this band. He always gives a hundred and ten per cent to whatever he’s just taken up.’
‘Well, that’s not a bad thing,’ said Brendon easily. He looked at Tom. ‘Coffee?’
‘Yeah, it’s not a bad thing if it lasts.’ Nelly twirled a vagrant strand of hair around her finger. ‘But there’s this burst of enthusiasm and then—’ She exhaled theatrically. ‘I don’t know, sometimes I wish he wasn’t coming into all that dough. It’s like he doesn’t have to make an effort, you know?’
Tom sipped Brendon’s heart-stopping brew and was stabbed with impatience. Nelly grimacing, her jaw tense, was almost plain. ‘Why do you let Rory get to you?’ he asked. He remembered the earlier exchange he had witnessed between the two; and in that instant knew what it mimicked. ‘You act like you’re his mother or something.’
Afterwards, he would remember their faces: aimed at him, oddly still.
Until, ‘I
am
his mother,’ said Nelly.
Nelly poured herself a glass of wine. Pushed up the sleeves of her jumper.
Brendon said, ‘I’ll leave you guys to it,’ and carried his cup into his studio. Moments later, a cello began to flow.
Tom felt the familiar jolt: he had misunderstood. The thought dropped open, and what lay underneath was the suspicion that he had been misled.
But he knew Nelly had been married. And then, with hindsight sharpening his vision, he could see the resemblance between mother and son: attenuated, but discernible all the same in the shallow-set eyes, the rather heavy moulding of the chin.
It was the kind of oversight to which Tom was prone. He lived in a country where he had no continuity with the dead; and being childless, no connection to the future. Most lives describe a line that runs behind and before. His drew the airless, perfect circle of autobiography. What he missed, in the world, was affiliation.
He felt immensely foolish.
Nelly was talking. He retained facts. Her husband
taking
off
—a phrase Tom would remember—when Rory was four. The turmoil; life going awry. ‘It was like the plates shook and fell off the wall.’ Her in-laws trying to get custody of the child.
She continued to speak of these things as if Tom should have had prior knowledge of them.
‘I used to spend more time at Carson’s place when Rory was still a kid.’ Nelly looked into her empty glass. ‘He’s been really good to us, Carson.’
It sounded stilted. Tom looked at her averted face and thought, You know I don’t like him.
He said, ‘I should have joined the dots.’
Nelly gestured—
Oh well
. ‘Rory’s not round here much when you are. I guess you never heard his surname.’
Tom said slowly, ‘Atwood. Rory Atwood. I’ve heard him on the phone.’
He saw that Nelly was, among other things, fearful.
She made a noise: half laugh, half groan. ‘Oh crikey. You really don’t know, do you?’
It was Tom who felt afraid, then, of what he was about to learn.
‘I used to be Nelly Atwood.’ The voice was gentle. ‘Nelly’s Nasties. Remember?’
P
OSNER’S HOUSE,
on a corner block, was high and broad, built of grim bluestone hand-chiselled by men in chains. A wrought-iron fence around the garden brought impaling to mind. Formal beds restrained by low box hedges contained the kind of roses whose icy perfection was impervious to common rain.
Tom had steeled himself for Posner, but a stocky brown man answered the door. He wore blue overalls with a logo on the pocket. Tom asked for Nelly; gave his name. There was the sound of vacuuming from a room off the hall.
‘Ah, Nelly.’ The cleaner smiled, stepped aside; pointed to the stairs.
An overalled woman looked up as Tom passed an open door but went on with her work.
The arched window on the half landing looked out on to a deep back garden. Bowery, treed; a stone birdbath on shaggy grass. Just then, as so often at the end of a rainy afternoon, the sun shone. The garden showed shadows and spotted light. flowers were everywhere, fat spillages of cream and pink, belled blue spikes, frothy lemon. Leaves and grasses moved, the scene shaking in light.
‘Hi.’ Nelly had her arms on the banister. Light was dangling in her black hair.
They stood awkwardly, not having, in all these months, evolved a satisfactory way of greeting each other.
Tom indicated the window at his back. ‘So glorious.’
Nelly was wrapped in a shawl he hadn’t seen before, swarthy red stamped with tiny cream and golden flowers. She said, ‘Going from the front to the back of this place is like one of those movies where the librarian takes off her glasses and starts to unbutton her blouse.’
‘That’s exactly right. That garden’s wanton.’
‘We could sit out there.’ Nelly peered at the landing window. ‘No, everything’ll be wet. Let’s just look at it from my room.’
He said, ‘How are you? Rory told me you were here, that you’ve been ill.’
‘The usual. A headache. Such a drag. I’m heaps better, thanks,’ said Nelly. ‘I should’ve gone to college today. But there’s all this.’ A gesture. ‘I’m getting soft.’
All this
was a long room, light-filled. The bed was high and wide; a disarray of square and oblong pillows, dull silk contrasting with smooth cotton. Tom took in a lacquered cabinet with intricate locks, a glowing rug, books with opulent jackets on shelves and tables. Things Posner could give her.
He conceived of it as a transaction between Nelly and the dealer: unvoiced and understood, with the gleaming presence of Rory at its core. His early sense of Posner’s relations with the boy had since wavered from certainty. Rory’s manner towards the former seemed unencumbered; wholly free of the lover’s charged style. Nevertheless, time and again, Tom had seen Posner’s gaze find and follow the boy. Need settled on Rory, and sucked.
A book, partly obscured by another, lay on Nelly’s bed:
Vanished Splendours
, and the fragment of a name, Balthasar Klos—. It was a name Tom recognised and didn’t recognise, a name on the edge of memory.
Nelly had crossed the room and was pushing up the sash. Beads of water edged sill and window.
‘And your book?’ she asked. ‘Did you get it finished? Was the house OK?’
Tom sat in a low, embroidered chair by the window and began to talk.
‘I’m coming with you,’ said Nelly.
She had placed the decanter and a glass beside him and prepared tea for herself, saying she was off the grog. Now she sat with fingers laced about a translucent grey bowl. ‘I’ll help you look for him. We’ll cover more ground than if you’re by yourself.’
But Tom had observed the indigo stains below her eyes; the tight, whitish lips.
‘Do you think you’re up to it?’
‘Sure.’ But her eyes travelled to the table by the bed, and he saw the pills there on a wicker tray.
‘Why don’t you see how you go over the next couple of days? It’s pretty bleak up there with all this rain.’
He expected her to protest, and when she didn’t, understood that he had been right not to take up her offer.
‘I’ll be back by Sunday,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to see my mother. And there’s a meeting I can’t get out of Monday morning. If he doesn’t turn up tomorrow, we could go back together next week.’
She was refilling her bowl, her head bent over the task. There was something unfamiliar about her presence; then Tom realised it was the clean smell of her hair. It had been washed in something herbal, faintly medicinal; rosemary, he thought.
Later he carried his glass and Nelly’s tea things into a recess off the landing that had been fitted up with a sink and cupboards. When he came back into the room, an object caught his eye. It was the small folder with elastic fastenings he had first glimpsed in Nelly’s bag all those months ago. Its blue and red marbled cardboard was furred, as if much handled.
She was still sitting by the window. The wind had risen and the room was cold. Tom lowered the sash. Two lorikeets, feathered purple and crimson and green, flew up from the muscled mauve arms of a eucalypt: a Fauve canvas come to life.
Nelly said, ‘You mustn’t be hard on yourself.’ She leaned forward. ‘You were doing the right thing, keeping him on a long lead.’
Tom allowed himself to place the back of his hand, very lightly, against her cheek.
He could find his own way out, he insisted, and left her settled in her chair. But he was still on the stairs, when he heard her call and turned to see her come out onto the upper landing. ‘Your book. Did you get it done?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hey!’ Nelly crowed with pleasure. ‘That’s great.’
Gazing down on him, hung with heavy ruby folds, she had the air of a tiny idol; one who might save him or do him great harm.
Downstairs, lamps had been switched on against the gathering evening. The glare of parquet was everywhere. A spotlighted alcove sheltered a pre-Colombian figure carved from stone. For a split second Tom saw the miniature double of the squat
brown man who had let him into the house.
Paintings filled the walls. But Tom would not allow himself to linger before Posner’s trophies.
Nevertheless, as he came to the open door of the room where the woman had been vacuuming, he halted. Gleaming wood and muted jewel tones repeated the message of wealth tempered by taste that the house had been designed to communicate. But what held Tom’s attention was the landscape on the far wall.
He had forgotten how small it was. With light steps he crossed the room until he stood in front of it; and felt again the force of something that could not be contained in rational dimensions.
A reedy voice at his back murmured, ‘
How with this rage shall
beauty hold a plea, / Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
’ The pale pillar of Posner was rising from the black scoop of a chair. For a large man, he moved as if oiled.
A dribble of dismay made its way down Tom’s spine. That he should be in this place, twitching in Posner’s snare. That he should have been discovered coveting what Posner possessed. That Posner, a gross, material creature, should have Shakespeare at his disposal.
‘Not at all,’ said Posner, although Tom had not apologised. He spread his hands. ‘It exerts such a pull. I feel it myself.’
He came up close to Tom. Who was conscious, unexpectedly, of Posner’s appeal; of the calm that would follow submission to that pearl-glazed mass. He could offer up the gift of himself, and Posner would keep him safe in his pocket. He would take him out now and then and polish him on his sleeve.
‘I mean, just look at it.’ Posner’s hand rested on Tom’s shoulder, urging him gently around. ‘I think, I
think
, what makes it extraordinary is the way it risks sentimentality. How it doesn’t shy away from sheer gorgeousness. The way she’s laid on that paint. And this.’ His finger hovered above a rectangle of gold and burnt orange. ‘The whole thing’s such a huge risk. And she confronts it and makes use of it. Subordinates it to a larger design, like this scrap of Chinese paper. It’s an exorcism, in a way. It looks something dangerous in the face and accepts it. Controls it. And you think, How absolutely fucking marvellous.’
His fingers tightened a little on Tom’s shoulder. ‘Would you like to touch it?’ His mouth approached Tom’s ear. ‘Touch it, if you like,’ breathed Posner.
After dinner, Tom assembled clothes, food, the equipment he had bought that afternoon. He checked his list again, aware that he was not entirely sober. He had begun drinking as soon as he had got home, and had kept it up more or less all evening.
He added a tube of Beroccas to his overnight bag.
It was his habit to try for private truthfulness. He paused in his preparations to acknowledge that what disturbed him most—more than his sense that Posner had anticipated the entire episode, more than his flustered, schoolboyish retreat— was the flicker of acquiescence Posner had drawn from him.
A
CHAMPAGNE-BRIGHT
afternoon in winter; the blank interval that July during which Tom had sworn off Nelly.
In a paddock by the river, where a post measured floods in imperial feet, he unclipped the dog’s lead. A giant metal man stood sentry over the place, one of a series of pylons striding beside the freeway. But there were also eucalypts and wattles deep in waving grasses, or leaning over the water. To leave the bike path for the leafy corridor that dipped into the paddock was like returning to a scene almost forgotten.
The dog vanished over a bank; reappeared eventually with damp paws. He never went out of his depth, but stood in the sluggish current even in the coldest weather, attentive to ducks. Sometimes a dog on the far side of the river made him bark.
Time passed. Shadows stretched over the beaten tin surface of the water. The sun was easing itself earthwards with the caution of an old, exhausted animal. In the yawning sky, which was still full of light, a dark path opened and lengthened. It was the city’s daily visitation from horror. The bats streamed up from the botanic gardens, following the river’s chill road to the orchards waiting in the east.
Tom walked back into the baroque ruins of a sunset, rose and gold curds whipped up in a Roman dream. It was a city that put on wonderful skies. He thought of a cloudscape in one of Nelly’s pictures: oyster-grey puffs blown over a yellow bed.
Up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour / Of silk-sack
clouds!
Then he remembered believing, as a very young child, that the sun and the clouds followed wherever he walked.