by Joanna Baker
‘Roland?’ At the sound of his name Veronica experienced the usual complex set of reactions: a softening, an alertness, an urge to laugh, impotent rage. Roland.
‘He drew a lot of book characters, didn’t he. Remember that phase? Well, somehow Paul has one of this Merle woman. He presented it to me as if it was some enormous treasure.’ Lesley gave a pained smile. ‘He’s being ridiculously intense about the whole project. It’s almost as if it had some other significance. Although they’re probably right. The monologue could be crucial to the opening. Set the right tone of … seriousness.’
‘They?’
‘Still, we’d do anything for our boys, wouldn’t we? And Paul likes to think of me doing creative things. He thinks it will enrich my life. Make me more … worthy, or something. More creative. More like you.’
‘Oh, that’s not –’
‘No matter. That’s just the way it is. But I hope you’re still able at least to come and give me some pointers.’
Lesley bent down, picked up some of the paint tubes and put them carefully in the box, then straightened again. Her hair stayed in its perfect curves. Without looking at Veronica she said lightly, ‘And you don’t know where Paul is? Roland hasn’t said anything? I mean, it’s as we used to say – whatever they’re in, they’re in it together. These dreadful boys.’
These dreadful boys. Lesley had used that phrase on another occasion, years ago, when Paul and Roland had been caught with a bottle of bourbon, roaring Gordon’s Range Rover around a paddock in Coningham. She had been present through all the boys’ – what was it she called them? – scrapes: the broken bones, the speeding fines, the joints on the Domain, the failed exams, the wild girls. That poor distraught girl, rejected by both of them. What had her name been? And yes, Veronica did remember the Slipping Place – that strange, disturbing piece of behaviour, both of them with blood running down the sides of their faces, eyebrows bruised in exactly the same place. Neither of the mothers had known what to make of that day.
So yes, those dreadful boys. Veronica’s friendship with Lesley was based on a long history of shared difficulties.
Lesley said, ‘Roland hasn’t said anything about a child, has he?’ ‘A child?’
‘One who was hurt?’
‘What?’
‘Never mind. I just thought he might have been here, that’s all.’ ‘Roland’s still in Kandina.’
‘Oh, yes. I know. I mean on the phone.’ Lesley’s eyelids lifted and fell. ‘Oh, don’t pay any attention to me. All this nonsense.’ There was a dimple that appeared high on her left cheek, right up near the circles under her eyes. It meant the smile was forced against something else: sadness, or anxiety.
‘What exactly did Paul say that worried you?’
‘He didn’t. I don’t know. He says things to goad me, and then, if I ask questions, he won’t explain. It’s a game he plays. I should refuse to participate.’
Veronica pushed up and manoeuvred onto her knees. It looked as if an invitation was going to be unavoidable. ‘Come to the house. I’ve got some … Just give me a minute.’ She knelt forwards and started picking up the paints. Water soaked her knees.
Lesley came around in front of her and stood looking down. There were damp stains on the edges of her Italian shoes but she must not have noticed. ‘No, look, I should just get on. I’m an idiot even to be here.’
And now, as she always did, Veronica found herself pitying Lesley, the silly fernickety vanity, the vulnerability that lay beneath. ‘Paul will turn up. I’m sure he’s just as keen to get the jewellery displayed properly as you are. Just give me two seconds …’ She gathered up the last of the brushes and started trying to arrange it all so that the field box could be forced shut. The tunic was heavy and cold all down her back. ‘And you’re perfectly right to come and ask me. It’s quite possible that Roland’s managing to lead Paul astray, even from two thousand miles away. I haven’t managed to speak to him for ages, as a matter of fact.’ She tried to laugh at this. ‘I rang his lodge and got the usual thing – one of those dear little Tweety Pies – all caring and no information. But let’s try again. Maybe his mobile won’t be flat for once.’
She clicked the clasp into place and reached for the easel. ‘We can muddle through together. That’s all we’ve ever managed, isn’t it?’ She folded the easel and stood up. ‘We can …’
But Lesley was already up at the driveway, walking quickly away. Without looking back she turned and disappeared behind the abelias. Veronica watched her shadow flickering across the spaces between branches, trying to remember details of the conversation, wondering why she was left with the feeling that at some point, for some reason, Lesley had lied.
Chapter 2
______
As she got to the top of her front steps, Veronica bashed the easel into scaffolding, jarring her hand. Just getting in and out of her house had become a kind of farce. Worse than that, she knew it didn’t make any sense keeping this huge family home, let alone renovating it. It wasn’t as if the kids were coming back.
Just inside the door, she stepped over Ridley. The feet of the easel dragged his feathery retriever tail across the floor. He didn’t move.
The front hall was chaos. The downstairs rooms – the spare bedroom, the study and the dining room – had all been prepared for painting, their furniture stacked out here. She edged past the sideboard and the Scottish carver chair, and then got the easel hooked on a box. This was Alan’s precious sporting equipment. He had asked her to bring it out so that he could take it when he found a new place. She yanked the easel and kicked the box, felt the prick of tears, stopped, told herself to calm down.
It wasn’t even Alan that was worrying her. It was Lesley, talking about Roland. Just the mention of his name was enough. Roland was her fourth and youngest child, her vulnerable one. She described him that way to her friends – there’s always one, isn’t there, and Roland is mine. The one who’s never safe.
She hadn’t heard from him for weeks. Something would have to be done.
It seemed a waste of time trying to manoeuvre her things all the way to the back room, so she opened the dining room door. Lots of space here, just a floor covered in tarpaulin and the big table shrouded in drop sheets. She put the easel against a wall and the box on the floor and then, on the way out, stopped and looked back. The windows, tall and curtainless, showed grey-white sky and filled the room with an icy radiance. For a moment she felt there was something she should remember. For some reason she thought of Helene Weeding’s works at Handmark: the layers of paint, the glimmering patterns, the luminosity. Earlier, before Lesley had interrupted her thoughts, she had had an idea about painting the sky, she had been beginning to realise something about how it could be done …
But it was gone. She went out and shut the door quietly.
The kitchen-family room was the only place she felt at home now, the only place she felt at home in her own home. Most of the far end was crammed with stuff from the other rooms – furniture, boxes of crockery, cushions in plastic bags, the Haughton Forrest painting in bubble wrap – but just past the kitchen table she had made a space for her desk and laptop, and set up Tom’s little telly and an armchair. There also was an armchair for Alan. She had put it there weeks ago, before he told her he wasn’t coming back. Not that he had ever watched TV with her, even when he was at home.
She didn’t want to think about Alan. It was time to find Roland. It would probably be fruitless, but she wouldn’t be able to think about painting until she had at least tried. Roland swamped her.
For some reason, she kept thinking of the Slipping Place. That was the day the mothers had first realised the extent to which Paul would copy what Roland did. They’d had a picnic on the mountain, along the Organ Pipes Track, on a big flat rock up among the tumbled dolerite. Lesley had let the children have two Custard Cream biscuits each, which delighted them. And it might have been that, the tiny lift in sugar levels, that contributed to what happened next
.
Scattered among the grey boulders were dead trees, knocked down decades ago, silver and smooth. One of the trunks was lying at a steep angle and Roland managed to climb onto the high end. He started sliding down it, but when he was halfway he slipped sideways and fell. He landed badly, hit his head on a rock and returned to the picnic with blood smeared across his forehead. Then, while the two mothers were fussing over that, Paul went to do exactly the same thing. He slid on the tree and he, too, fell on rocks, emerging with a cut almost exactly the same as Roland’s: a bleeding forehead, blood running into an eye. The mothers had laughed, but nervously, at their two boys, standing in front of them with matching injuries. They’d named the place on the way home. Later, Tom had written a story about it for school, at which point the name had acquired capital letters. The Slipping Place.
She needed to know Roland was all right. All she could do was try ringing him again and then work her way through everyone who might know where he was. She wriggled out of the wet tunic, picked up a jumper from the armchair and went to hang the tunic in the laundry. As she came back, she heard a movement – a quiet knock and a brush of fabric – somewhere in the house. She listened for a moment but there was nothing. She had imagined it.
In the kitchen she pulled her phone out of a pocket. But when she looked at the screen it was lit up. Missed Call. Georgie. She must have put it on silent at some stage. She swiped the panel and raised it to her ear. As she did that she heard the brushing sound again. When Georgie answered, she said, ‘Georgie? Are you here?’
‘What?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ Veronica went to the hallway, listened.
‘Hello.’
‘Yes, hello. Sweetheart. Sorry.’ She was sounding muddled. ‘I heard something. I think it was just the tarpaulin. Tino left it bunched up.’ In the dining room she had moved the tarpaulin with her foot and now it must be moving back. That room had a life of its own.
Georgie said, ‘I didn’t ring to talk.’
‘No, I understand.’ Monday morning. Georgie didn’t usually have time to ring from work. ‘How can I help?’ Veronica began tidy-ing the kitchen table. It was crowded with stuff – drawings and notes, placemats, fabric for sewing Boomerang Bags, cavolo nero on a board.
Georgie had said something.
‘Pardon? What was that?’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Oh, yes. Sorry. What did you say?’
Georgie wasn’t offended. She was used to her mother being distracted. She was about to charge on, into whatever she had rung about, when she realised what Veronica had said.
‘Isn’t he there?’
Under a biscuit tin Veronica found one of her mother’s old wild-flower notebooks, open. ‘Who?’
‘The builder.’
‘No.’ Veronica turned a page in the notebook: Tasmanian laurel, leatherwood. She thought about tensile forces, the padded structure of things. When she should be listening to her daughter. It was as her mother used to say, she was away with the pixies.
Georgie said, ‘It’s been two weeks.’
‘Three, I think.’ Veronica’s mother had been organised and observant. She drew with precision: pepperberry, sassafras, fagus …
‘Mum.’ That word as only Georgie could say it. Short, impatient. And patronising.
‘He’ll come.’
‘When’s Dad getting back?’ Alan was cycling in South Australia. That’s all Georgie knew.
‘They’re doing another loop. McLaren Vale. The mixed dozens have started arriving.’ Alan had sent her a text. He was going to take another week, move into the new flat next Saturday. But Georgie was too busy to hear this now.
‘How can he take so much time off all of a sudden?’
You pretended you didn’t love him, Veronica thought. That was how you survived it.
Georgie said, ‘Anyway, I have to be quick. The biochemists arrive today.’
And not remembering. Forgetting how it used to be. Rewrite it. That was the trick. You told yourself you never loved him.
‘And first there’s a man coming to fix the microphone.’ Georgie was an event organiser … manager … an event manager. And now the thought of the broken microphone sidetracked her. She began a work story, full of grievances and intrigue. ‘There’s so much stress here. People get in these little huddles. I always have the sense there’s something I’m missing.’
‘Oh, I think that’s just a feeling we get …’ The sky, the spaces between things.
‘So, Mum.’ Georgie said that abruptly, as if Veronica needed to be interrupted. ‘I have to tell you about Roland.’
Roland.
Georgie said, ‘He’s in Hobart.’
‘No, he isn’t.’
Roland hadn’t lived in Hobart since he was eighteen. After school he had travelled the world for two years, staying anywhere, drinking, smoking God knows what, searching for his true self. In the end he had found it, hiding with all the other true selves, on a beach in Byron Bay. At present he was managing a backpackers’ lodge, nearby in Kandina.
‘You know what Roland said about Hobart.’
‘Mum. Allie Muir saw him last night. In Elizabeth Street.’
‘Doolally Allie.’
‘Well, exactly, but she seems more together these days, or maybe not, but anyway just let me tell you. Allie saw Roland.’
Roland had told her he was never coming home.
‘Mum. Are you all right?’
Stop mooning about, Veronica. Stay with us in the real world.
‘Yes, of course. I heard. Doolally Allie thinks she saw Roland.
Obviously it was a mistake.’ But Lesley had been asking. What had she said? Something about a child?
‘Allie sounded quite sure. And recognising people is pretty basic, isn’t it? It’s a primal thing. And it was in the middle of the North Hobart shops, where it’s narrow with those stupid little rounda-bouts, so the traffic was virtually stopped.’
‘I don’t –’
‘It’s quite possible he’s come here and not told us. It’s not as if he ever plans anything.’
Roland was their creative one, the one her friends euphemistically – sardonically – referred to as a free spirit. Veronica had been relieved when he had found a job, even if it was in Kandina. She had even been pleased when he started the psychology course, trying to overlook the fact that it was through some half-baked – and possibly fraudulent – internet college.
‘She saw him coming out of a pub. And there was a man standing in the doorway of the pub with his arms crossed, so she thinks he was actually getting kicked out. And he was having some kind of argument with some awful old …’ Georgie searched for the correct term, ‘you know, like a homeless person. Why would he come to Hobart and not tell us?’
‘He wouldn’t.’
‘Mum. Allie was sure. And it’s worse than that. He had a bruise on his face. A big bruise, right across one cheekbone.’
Veronica felt a lurch at that – a dragging down feeling, the deep pull of maternal fear. But that was a purely biological response. She mustn’t let Georgie know.
‘Oh, well. It’ll be one of his escapades, won’t it? There’ll be a girl lurking somewhere, and a big bag of hooch.’ That was the old word, wasn’t it? Something like that. He called it something else now.
‘We need to find out about this. He’ll be mixed up in something stupid. It’ll be like that last time when the guy took the overdose.’
Roland. It used to be a family joke. The youngest child, the afterthought.
Georgie said, ‘I mean, he’s smoked so much dope, whether you want to admit it or not. And you know it makes them a bit psychotic. I’m starting to wonder if he’s heading for some kind of breakdown.’
Suddenly Veronica was full of weakness, heat. The simple effort of breathing was making her throat ache. ‘Oh, Roland’s all right.’ But he had never been all right. Veronica could see him the day he was born, the heavy lolling head, his gaze unfocused, full
of deep concern, as if he was already seeing how much there was that needed to be mended.
‘I think someone should find out, that’s all. I’ve tried ringing and Facebooking. I’ve tried Toby and Hillo and Yaz.’
‘Have you rung Paul?’
‘Paul lies.’
‘Oh … no …’
Lesley had known. There was something going on. But Georgie mustn’t get caught up in this. She had a career to worry about. ‘All right. Listen. Look, my lovely girl. Don’t you worry about Roland. I’ll find him.’ Veronica’s eyes fell on her mother’s sketch. She picked up a pencil. ‘Which pub was it?’
‘The Beaufort. Mum, don’t go there.’
She should write the name down. A piece of paper. She began pushing things around on the table. ‘Well, I’ll have to, won’t I, if he’s not answering his phone. The Beaufort.’
‘Mum, they won’t get you. They won’t tell you anything.’
‘Well, at least I will have tried.’
‘Text me.’
‘I’ve got vegie tagine. Come –’
‘I have to go. The microphone man’s here.’
‘Microphone Man.’
Veronica used the Hollywood voice. That was something they had always done. Superhero names. Georgie laughed politely, attention already elsewhere.
Veronica was heading straight for the car, but on the way out she stopped. There was a piece of paper placed carefully in the middle of the doorstep, held down by a stone.
So someone had been here, not in the house, but walking around the garden. The stone was the one from the lawn: large, white, smooth. It was sitting on a piece of computer paper covered in text: a printout from the Theatre Royal website, advertising the Branwen String Quartet. On the other side was a page from ABC News, a headline in bold: ‘Barn grave baby had bruises, fractures’.
She saw other words: skull, lacerated liver. There was a photograph of a man: long greasy hair, one heavily tattooed arm raised to hide his face.
