What the Light Hides (2 page)

This morning Vera appears in the kitchen ready for work in boots, jeans and a jumper. Her hair is in a ponytail and a scarf is wrapped around her neck.

She walks over to the window. ‘Frost,' she says.

I want to tell her that I am thinking of going away for a while, but instead I say, ‘There was a lyrebird in the garden before.'

She doesn't ask where I had seen it or what it looked like.

Our days are filled with silence; we barely talk and when we do we mostly argue. We haven't made love for a long time. Not since before the funeral.

Later I watch Vera walk across the lawn. Light appears in her studio, soft in the grey morning. I don't know what she does all day. She hasn't worked on anything since Ben disappeared.

I stay in the kitchen a little longer and by the time I walk around the house to the converted garage the frost has disappeared. I rub Ginger the cat's scruffy head and make sure that she has food and water. Then I put ruler and pencil in my back pocket and get to work.

The smell of timber and glue mingles with the insistent eucalyptus scent from the bush. The garage is freezing and my breath hangs in the air, but I won't feel the cold once I start working.

I have done my best work here. If I dreamed of anything before meeting Vera it was a house like ours: the rustic charm, the light, the sheer freedom of having work and living space all in one. Whenever I've been away and drive back through Bells Line, the last stretch of barren mountain before reaching the village, I feel that I am coming home in the truest sense of the word.

The work set out for me this morning is simple. I am finishing off a four-seater table in mulberry. The tabletop needs paring down and its corners more shape before I apply oil. I start working the medium plane while feeling the wood with my other hand. The work is always tactile. I can trust my hands, but I can't always trust my sight.

The order came through my agent, who is constantly pleading with me to hire an assistant. But I don't want to delegate. Each step in making a piece of furniture is important and part of a whole, even the dull bits, even the sanding.

I've never regretted dropping out of uni to do woodwork. On my worst days in the workshop I am more content than I ever was in lecture halls and with my head buried in books.

I took to it quickly. The tools and the steps involved made sense to me. I went to Japan and spent three months sitting on the floor of a carpentry workshop in Tokyo, where I learned the intricate process of joinery. I almost did my knees in, but it was worth it. By the time I returned to Australia I'd let go of using glue and nails and had a strong vision for my future work. Later I fell in love with inlays. Not the traditional ones—neat arrangements of flowers and leaves—but bold designs of squares and triangles.

I shift planes, go one smaller and try not to think of Ben. I slow down, continually feeling the wood as I go along. Carpentry is not a wrestle with substance, at least not the way Vera works with metal. Wood can't be conquered; it requires patience and persistence.

I try to let the work guide my thoughts, but it's getting increasingly difficult these days. I am reminded of Ben everywhere I look. This morning the bleak sun falls through the open garage door and I remember him, sitting on the floor in a ray of sun: three years old, playing with wooden blocks. And memory skips in painful staccato. The two of us on a blanket sharing lunch, teaspoons and glasses glinting in the light. Then him, napping on the old lounge in the corner. It was an ordinary morning. A perfectly ordinary morning.

In my memory he is as present as he has always been, and it makes no sense to me that he is dead.

‘You have to accept that he is gone,' Vera said last time we argued.

‘I do. I do accept it,' I replied.

But Vera knows. She knows that deep down I'm still waiting for him to walk back into our lives with the same carefree attitude he has always had.

The wood shifts under my hands and I stop planing and reach for the sandpaper.

I stay in the workshop all day. Late afternoon I walk back to the house. The feeble winter sun never makes it past the thick walls and the house is cold and dark. I turn the lights on in the kitchen and make a sandwich with cheese and lettuce. I add extra butter, even though I should probably watch my weight, and I eat standing in the living room at a loss for what to do next. The evenings are the worst. Some nights we go to bed early just to avoid the silence, but more often than not we end up lying awake next to each other, listening to the croaky hoots of the frogmouth owl that lives in Rob's tall pines.

I take another bite of my sandwich and look around the room. A beautiful but worn Persian rug covers the floor. A comfortable lounge sits next to the fireplace and above the lounge hangs the painting that we bought in Moscow on our honeymoon. We both love it. It's dramatic and dreamy at the same time, depicting a tower in mid-fall. Parts float in a pale blue sky: a door, a window, a staircase and something that looks like a broom. Vera says it reminds her of the tower of Babel.

I never understood that story.

‘Why did God come down and destroy something that seems like a valiant effort?' I asked one night, lying next to Vera in bed. ‘All they wanted was unity.'

‘God had something better in mind for the people,' said Vera, hand on my chest. ‘A new project.'

I kissed her shoulder. ‘To be dispersed? Living far from each other and not being able to speak the same language?'

‘I like to think that in being forced to reach out to each other we might understand something about love that we otherwise may not have known,' said Vera.

Vera grew up in a Presbyterian home. Her father died when she was five. A couple of years later her mother married Bob, the pastor of a small church.

I like Vera's mother. I like her quiet humour and her kindness, and I like the way she treasures the table of white walnut that I made for her. But most of all I like that she was a good mother to Vera and still is.

Outside the wind pulls at the bare branches and the sky is grey. I finish the last bit of my sandwich and then I see Vera leave the studio. Our home phone rings as I watch her disappear into the garden shed.

‘Yes,' I say, as I answer the phone.

‘Mate, you didn't ring.' It's Neil on the other end. My brother's voice is distinct and gravelly—street smart and educated at the same time—and always somehow evocative of his freckles and now-greying red hair.

‘I haven't spoken to her yet,' I say and watch Vera emerge from the shed with gloves and a pair of shears. She begins to cut the branches of a rosebush and I wonder if it's the right season for it.

‘Are you sure this is what you want?' Neil says.

‘Is the place vacant or not?' I ask, pulling at the phone cord so I can arrange the kindling in the fireplace as we talk.

‘I've already told you it is.'

‘Then I'll get back to you later.' I hang up without waiting for him to reply.

The front door slams and Vera appears in the doorway. She is white with cold.

‘I was thinking of going for a walk,' she says. ‘Do you want to come?'

‘Where to?' I ask.

‘Down the ravine.'

I consider it. ‘It will be dark soon.'

‘If we go now it should be fine. It's a clear day.'

We walk down the path, Vera in front. It's the gums that preside over this place. They tower over us. White gums, spotted gums, red gums.

We walk slowly, carefully, watching each step. Everything is dry and cold. And it's getting darker. I regret walking down this late.

Vera picks up some kindling and places it against a tree the way she always does for us to pick up on the way back. Then we continue, further and further down until she stops abruptly in front of me. My heart starts pounding, sure she has come across a snake—but instead it's two kangaroos standing on the path, heads turned towards us, grey coats and fine faces. We watch without saying a word until they disappear into the thicket.

Had it been before Ben disappeared Vera would have looked back at me and said, ‘Extraordinary, aren't they?' And she would have taken my hand as we continued further down. But today we walk separately.

Ten minutes later we are almost at the bottom and I follow her across the creek, stepping on the stones we have placed in the stream. And then we are at the waterhole.

The place is like a secret garden of ferns, water and rocks, enclosed by sandstone walls. We come here almost every night during summer. On hot days the waterhole is cool, its muddy water like silk, and when temperatures are at their highest we float on its silvery surface until our skin is wrinkly and pink. Today the waterhole is black and cold. A few weeks ago it had a thin crust of ice, like glass. We had seen the water move beneath it, slow yet animated, as if it held a secret life.

‘Neil rang.' My words seem like intruders in the quiet landscape.

‘Yes?' she says.

A large lizard sits on a protruding rock on the opposite bank. It looks otherworldly in the fading light.

‘His faculty rents out a house to artists and visiting scholars,' I say. ‘They have a cancellation.' I feel my heart thump against my throat as I continue, ‘I'm considering renting it.'

Now I have said it. Now I can't take it back.

She turns and looks me. ‘What do you mean?'

I want to tell her that I am a drowning man, that I can't bear it, I can't bear any of it. But all I manage to say is, ‘We can't keep doing this.'

‘For how long?'

‘It's available for half a year,' I say.

Vera looks out onto the waterhole, and the place is getting colder and darker by the minute. A cockatoo calls out above us, the sound distinct and unnerving.

‘Are you leaving me?' She keeps her gaze on the dark water.

‘No,' I say and want to take it all back. How could I possibly think it's a good idea to be away from her?

Then she looks as if something had just dawned on her. ‘Where is this place?'

I hesitate.

‘Where?' she insists.

‘In Newtown,' I say, then add, ‘I'm not going to look for him.'

She doesn't answer.

I look at her beautiful profile and the long hair that falls down her back. Her brown jumper is old and worn. Everything about her is familiar. Everything about her is light years away.

She picks up a small rock and throws it hard into the water. It hits the surface with a thud. Deep ripples form.

The lizard on the bank opposite disappears into a crevice in the rock wall. Vera keeps her gaze on the water.

‘Please don't go,' she says.

I reach out and touch her arm. ‘Let's head back.'

Her eyes fill.

‘Vera, it's getting dark.'

She shrugs away from me and begins to undress.

‘What are you doing?' I ask.

She places her jumper on the rock next to her, then her shirt.

‘Vera, this is crazy. Don't go in the water.'

She kicks off her boots and gets out of her pants and briefs.

‘There was frost this morning,' I say and reach for her again. But she walks out onto the rock and dives into the dark water without a word.

The surface settles and is blank like a mirror. I wait, hearing my own breath in the quiet. Another moment goes by. She is not coming up, and I scramble to the edge about to jump in when she appears way out, gasping for air.

I watch her climb up onto the rocks, and then she stands in front of me. Her hair clings to her body and there are streaks of mud between her breasts.

‘He is dead, David.' She speaks slowly, her voice like rust. ‘He jumped from the Gap. He either died hitting his head going down or he drowned. Either way he is dead.'

She bends down to put her shoes on.

‘You need to get dressed,' I say, and pull off my jumper. ‘Use it to dry yourself.'

But she doesn't listen. Instead she bundles up her clothes and walks ahead without waiting for me.

‘Vera,' I call out after her.

She keeps walking. Her back and legs are as white as the ghost gums surrounding her. I can hear her crying in that odd coughing way I have become numb to.

I cross the creek as quickly as I can and catch up with her.

‘Vera,' I say. ‘Please put your clothes on, people could come.'

She turns abruptly and I almost slip, but she doesn't reach out to steady me.

‘People?' She spits it out.

I don't know why I said it. I don't care what anyone thinks, of course I don't. But she is gone up the dark path before I can say a word, and soon she is out of sight.

I pick up the kindling, and make it out of the bush, almost expecting to see an overturned truck or some other accident caused by Vera's naked appearance. But there is no one around. The air smells of snow and smoke from the pot bellies fired up around the village, and the sky is streaked with ink and blazing red. I wonder if Vera noticed it as she crossed the road and walked down our driveway.

I put the kindling in our woodshed and walk across the courtyard to the house. The door is locked and I can hear the shower going. I sit down on the doorstep and wait. Minutes turn to half an hour, night falls and the moon appears, yellow and full.

When I hear the shower turned off I get up and knock hard on the door. Vera appears with a towel around her and for a moment we stand awkwardly in the narrow hallway between coats, gumboots and fishing rods. Then she takes me by the hand and leads me to our bedroom.

She lets the towel drop to the floor and the sight of her makes me ache. We don't speak, not a word as I fumble to get out of my pants. But before the funeral, even during the time when Ben was missing, there were words, always words, between us. Not necessarily coherent talk, but always a murmuring, a fluidity between daily life and lovemaking. Now there is silence and it's all moving too fast.