The Slipping Place

by Joanna Baker

  ‘About the baby.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Really?’ Lesley waited for Veronica to remember something, then said, ‘I can’t believe I haven’t said anything, over all the years I’ve known you.’ Her tongue made a small movement behind her teeth. ‘Well, that just shows you. It’s hard to grow out of. The shame.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Roland didn’t tell you?’ Her face became blank. ‘I had a baby.

  When I was very young.’

  ‘A baby?’

  ‘A little girl. I lost her. Or rather, to be perfectly accurate, she was taken from me.’ Her voice was flat, each word pronounced carefully.

  ‘When?’

  ‘I was seventeen. I had a boyfriend. Well, that’s not really the way to describe it. It was just grotesque, teenage nonsense. He was ghastly. I was a very stupid little girl.’ Veronica guessed that these were someone else’s words. Lesley drew in a breath, as if she was absorbing the assessment. ‘And I fell. I fell pregnant. And you can imagine what Mum was like. She scarcely spoke to me for years.’

  ‘Lesley, you had a baby? I never knew.’

  ‘I was packed off to Cressy. I had an aunt there. Not even an aunt. And not a nun. A sort of … church person.’ She drew in a breath. ‘I had the baby in a hospital up there and she was adopted out. And then I went home.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea.’

  ‘No matter. It’s all history. All long ago. I don’t really think about it these days. Well, that’s not entirely true. It leaves an empty space, something like that.’ Her voice faded. Noticing that, she drew in a sharp breath. ‘But the point is, for a long time after that, always really, I was a sinner. Mum never got over it. She used to say that I was put on earth to punish her. I caused her a lot of pain.’

  ‘You were wonderful to your mother. You nursed her through that last illness.’ Lesley’s mother had had stomach cancer and died less than a year ago. She had stayed at home for as long as she could.

  ‘Oh, yes. That’s the irony, isn’t it? In the end she was in a lot of pain, my poor old mother, and not just because of me.’ She laughed. A terrible failed joke. ‘And I was able to help her. So I suppose I made up for my sins. Although I’m sure she didn’t see it that way.’

  ‘You did a wonderful job. Everyone said so.’

  ‘Well, it’s a consolation, isn’t it, that we do one small thing.’ Lesley pulled her shoulders back, lifted her bottom from the car and then leaned it back again. ‘Anyway, the point I was trying so clumsily to make is that, as far as I can tell, that’s why Roland thinks I have a chance of identifying with all these unfortunate women.’

  ‘Does he know about your baby?’

  ‘Paul found out – that was just an awful mistake – and of course he tells Roland these things.’

  She tapped at the drawings in Veronica’s hands. ‘So now Roland wants me to draw on my sad history. I suppose, in his way, he’s trying to reassure me. Treen and I were not really bad people, we were just misunderstood. We made mistakes. I’ll be writing about both of us.’

  Beyond the cottage, Veronica could see the northern reaches of the Coal Valley, flat empty country. Everything was cold and dry, a bleak day.

  Over the years, she had made many outings to this area, tour-ing the wineries, or going to Richmond for Devonshire tea. She and Alan had taken the kids there to look at the Gaol and the bridge. And she had come here as a child herself. Of that first time, all she could remember was the cold. And a sense she had had that Richmond was a tiny group of buildings, isolated in empty countryside – that the rest of the world was large and bright, and fast moving, and a long way away.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t know about your baby.’

  ‘It really doesn’t matter anymore.’

  Veronica held the drawings out.

  Lesley said, ‘I have the ones from the gallery window. You keep them. You’re much more likely to work out what they mean. I don’t know why he isn’t talking to you in the first place.’

  ‘Oh, yes. But let’s not forget, it’s good that he asks to see you. If you could just keep humouring him … working on the monologue … whatever it takes. Hopefully, eventually, he’ll tell you what he knows.’

  Veronica looked up. Beyond the field, across the valley, she could see low hills covered in a grass so dry and thin that it was almost grey. They had sparse, scrawny trees with broken branches. This was something else she remembered from childhood, the knowledge that these hills around Richmond are not pretty or calm or kind, they are ugly and somehow threatening. And then she had a familiar thought – that she was the only one who had noticed.

  Chapter 15

  ______

  Veronica had run out of options. Paul was in Deloraine and was not answering his phone. Roland had gone off with Treen’s father. No way of reaching him.

  She drove back to South Hobart but instead of going home turned left down Antill Street with a vague idea of getting down to the water, to think. Roland was about to be accused of murder, or something like it. Manslaughter, action endangering life – what did they call these things? And he was obviously in no state to help himself. Even if he did know who killed Treen, it was quite likely he would refuse to help the police, and that he would draw suspicion on himself. She needed to keep pushing at this. She needed to find out the truth, before he was questioned.

  She drove to Marieville Esplanade and parked, facing the scrap of grass and the yachts. Roland had said there were clues about Treen in his drawings and, nonsensical as that sounded, it was all she had to go on. She picked them up off the passenger seat.

  The third drawing was labelled ROSANNA. It showed a girl wading out into a rough sea, her wet clothes clinging to her, her arms lifted above the water, fingers tight with effort. A wave had splashed up over her chest.

  Lesley had said this was from The Moonstone. Maybe she should read the book again, or google it, find out who Rosanna was. But if the others were anything to go by, this picture would be nothing like the actual book.

  Beyond Rosanna, behind the jagged rocks of a distant point, the sky was dark with crosshatching. There were people on the shore riding horses, galloping towards a large house. They had turned to look at the girl but were not stopping.

  There was another poem Veronica half-remembered. Roland probably knew it. Something about a tragedy happening while other people were walking dully along.

  She moved the page and looked at the fourth drawing, with Roland’s bold lettering: JUSTINE. A young woman standing in a forest, with a child lying at her feet. The forest was sinister looking, with spiky trees whose branches curled menacingly downwards. On the left, the foreground was taken up by the large silhouette of a man: a hulking figure, short necked, menacing.

  Roland. With all these terrible events happening around him his response was to shut himself in rooms and draw pictures nobody could understand. Veronica wanted to shout his name in fury.

  The boy on the forest floor wore puffy trousers and a lace collar. His face was done in a few simple lines. He might have been asleep or he might have been dead. The young woman had a locket dangling on a chain. Behind everything, on a rolling horizon, a group of anonymous figures stood around a scaffold. There was a tiny noose, a small black eyelet, placed at the vanishing point and forming a focus for the picture.

  She was tired, weighed down by memories of the mountain. It was impossible to believe that that had been less than twenty-four hours ago. Since then she had hardly slept, had spent the morning rushing around getting nowhere. Now she had a growing sense that all that effort had taken her not closer to the truth but further away. The encounter with Vicky, that wide implacable face, had disturbed her for reasons she couldn’t identify. And the meeting with Lesley had drained her of any remaining energy. Now it was almost three. She needed to sit still and think, about Roland, about Treen – Treen alive and Treen dead. And about Belle. I know who drove her up there. A small blue car.

&n
bsp; But she didn’t want to sit alone. She backed out and drove to the casino, then walked along the edge of the marina to Merchant’s Café. It had been hours since breakfast. She ordered a panini, considered having a glass of wine, thought about it, ordered a bottle. When the food and wine came to her table she stared at it, then pulled out the drawings again.

  They were all photocopies. Did he intend to put them up in other places? How many copies had he made?

  The drawing on top was ‘Bertha’, of the girl falling from the bridge. Veronica found it chilling. Like ‘Molly’, it was in Roland’s Tenniel style. Bertha had the same delicate features as Tenniel’s Alice and there was that strangeness, that sense of distillation, of emotion observed in silence and from a distance, and an impression that there was more going on than appeared at first glance. For one thing, the girl didn’t look afraid, just vaguely interested, resigned to her fate, almost sleepy. Above her on the bridge, two men and a woman were talking. They were dressed in some exaggerated Victorian parody, the men in top hats, the women in bustles. One of the men had turned to watch the girl. His eyes were emotionless. He was holding one hand up, his fingers fastidiously spread, as if he was explaining something to her or maybe flicking her away.

  It was a horrible picture – the man’s blank face; the fine, careless hand. What did it mean? What did any of them mean? A girl freezing, a girl falling. Molly. Bertha. Silent. It was almost as if Roland was making a threat. At the very least he was drawing attention to himself. She had to stop him. If these drawings were seen by someone who knew him, if the police heard about them or saw them, that would make him look even more suspicious. Crazy, mentally unstable, disturbed. If there were any more of these up in public places, Veronica had to find them and get them down.

  How would she do that? Where would they be?

  She looked out the window at the smooth walkways of the marina, the moored boats, the new jetty for the boat to Peppermint Bay, and Zac’s, a sleek white building behind shade sails. This was Hobart striving to be international – all yachts and aluminium and plate glass and prize-winning pinot gris, with clean silver light, and wharves and jetties hiding the real coastline, and holding the whole thing up off the mud.

  She felt tight in the scalp. Her eyes were stinging and when she closed them they burned. She poured wine, drank it, refilled the glass, drank that. She pulled out the jar Belle had given her and rubbed some cream into her hands. What had Belle said this was? Patchouli? She swallowed more wine and thought about Belle, the puffy face, overfull of feeling. Not real emotion, a meaningless flow of shallow sentiment – calculation, uncertainty, fear, resentment, pleading.

  I know who drove her up there. An unstable girl, prepared to say anything that suited her, threatening to accuse Roland of killing Treen.

  She had said that either to repel Veronica from the shop or to distract her from asking questions, or to please Dane, or for all of these reasons. Had Dane killed Treen, then? It didn’t seem right. If Dane was going to hurt Treen, surely it would be immediate and violent.

  Or had Belle done it? Maybe it suited her to have Treen out of the way. There certainly hadn’t been any sign of genuine grief. Veronica remembered Belle’s possessive pride when Dane had held her. Now that Treen was gone, Belle had her man. And presumably it would have been easy enough for her to persuade Treen to take a lot of drugs. Or it may have been accidental, a wild escapade gone wrong, with Belle driving home again in a panic.

  Or was Veronica being unfair? She had no basis for such thoughts. It was just that the girl repelled her. The way Treen had. Veronica had behaved unpardonably then. Treen had asked her for help and she had been too busy, trying to find her son. She had been disgusted – by Treen’s skin, the dirt, the desperation. Roland wasn’t repelled. He had been trying to help her.

  But Paul said that was a mistake. Paul said Treen was a lost cause. Roland Roland Widdershins. You can’t save them all.

  Round in circles. She filled the glass again and drained it quickly, looking out at the white Antarctic light. She had an echo of what she had felt in Campania. The isolation. Hobart, on the far edge of the world, in danger of slipping off.

  Round and round. Girls guilty, girls as victims. Worthy, unworthy, evil, mistreated, unhappy. Drawings of girls dying, full of misery, but without precise meanings. Words written and then erased. The pictures were worse than useless, a distraction, an obfuscation.

  Nothing could be said for certain about Treen or Belle, at least not without talking to Roland about them, and Roland couldn’t be found. And even when he was found, he wouldn’t explain. Nothing would be certain even then.

  She tried to look at the next drawing but her eyes slid to the edge of the page, to the white margin. She leaned down and put the side of her head on the table. It was surprising how smooth the paper seemed, even from down here. The page had texture. She could feel it, as a kind of warmth, but she couldn’t see it. Even this close, the texture was invisible. She thought of her own painting. Earlier this week, only days ago, she had been trying to capture something. Later she had had a feeling that the mountain had taught her something. She should try painting that. But how would she paint the empty sky, the weight of rock, Treen’s body? How could you capture the important things – a life that was gone, a texture you couldn’t see, the thinness of the moment, the mist that wouldn’t hold you, the treachery of air? There was a voice she recognised. Paul. She sat up. He was at the counter, engaged in some kind of transaction. He spoke to the man there, grim faced, and came towards her.

  She said, ‘I thought you were in Deloraine.’

  ‘I lied.’

  Such a pale boy. In the waterside light she could see every whisker on his face, new lines at his eyes. He was tired. Worse than tired. He was looking as if he was about to burst into tears, as if at any minute he might just collapse into a sad heap.

  But she knew Paul. He could look like this all afternoon and still manage to get his own way. He said, ‘I’ve paid your bill. I need you to come with me.’

  Mum I need

  ‘Where is he, Paul?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘For God’s sake.’ Her stomach rolled, full of riesling and no food.

  She pushed herself straighter in the chair, folded the drawings and put them in her bag. ‘This isn’t a prank. That girl –’

  ‘Treen.’

  ‘Is dead.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Paul.’

  ‘I know.’

  His eyes could be so liquid. Dark, dark blobs of ink, floating, sliding around. He leaned on the table. He looked as if his bones were made of something soft. Little Paulie.

  She said, ‘Roland found her up there, you know. The body.’

  He sat in a chair. Not as if he’d meant to, as if his legs had given way. ‘Then he sent me up there.’

  ‘I know.’

  She leaned forward. The world spun. She propped her chin on a fist. ‘All right. He doesn’t want to see me. He doesn’t need me. I’m drinking a whole bottle of wine. You tell him when you see him. A whole bottle.’

  ‘He does need you.’

  ‘You understand the importance of this, don’t you? He’s involved in a death.’

  ‘It wasn’t him.’

  ‘What wasn’t him?’

  No answer.

  ‘What do you know about this?’

  No answer.

  ‘Paul.’

  Paul had the lid from the bottle in his hand. He screwed it on, wrapped the panini in its napkin and picked it up.

  She said, ‘I have to see him.’

  ‘You will see him. Soon. He’s … got something to arrange.’

  She felt a surge of rage, at the inarticulacy, the hopelessness of boys. But she could use the old lines too. ‘Look, I know you think you’re helping him, but you are not. He needs to tell me about this.’ Paul might have been fifteen again. ‘And if he won’t tell me then you need to.’

  He closed his eyes tightly,
squeezed them shut. She had never worked out what that was, when he did that.

  ‘I don’t blame you, Paul. Ever. You know that, don’t you? You are one of mine. I include you in that. You have my undying … support.’ Too weak. Bureaucratic. She laughed at the absurdity of words. Sounded hysterical. ‘He’s drawing again.’ Paul knew that. They had already talked about it. ‘He’s been putting up drawings on shop windows. Dying girls.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You lent him the Honda.’ He was looking at the table.

  ‘And I’ve just been talking to a young person who’s going to say she saw Treen leaving in a small blue car and that Roland was driving it.’

  ‘He wasn’t. She won’t say that.’

  ‘For God’s sake. I have –’

  ‘How drunk are you?’

  She looked at the bottle. The light from the window reflected on the green surface. She couldn’t see the level.

  ‘I actually can’t tell.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I might just be very …’

  ‘You haven’t left much.’

  ‘Afraid.’

  He stood up and pulled at her arm. The gesture was uncharacteristically rough, a kind of anxiety. ‘You have to come with me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s someone I need you to see.’

  ‘Paul! He’s going to be charged with murder.’

  ‘This is more important.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This is worse.’ He was looking at her now. He held her gaze, his eyes pools of shadow with blacker blots inside them. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘A girl has died. What could possibly be worse?’

  ‘This. This is the worst thing you’ve …’ He sounded dazed, as if he was remembering something. ‘And it’s something you already know. That’s the worst part.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Paul.’

  ‘Just come with me.’

  She was too tired to think. She had no way of imposing her will on him, no words to make him see reason.

  ‘I am drinking my way through a whole bottle of wine.’ He pulled her arm. ‘Bring it.’