by Joan London
The sky was a vast, white desert. It was a mild afternoon in late winter, but she wore sunglasses and a black polyester parka zipped up to the chin. She felt like a spy come to town.
She could have taken Jacob’s car, parked in Arlene’s carport, but she didn’t have the confidence for a long drive into unknown country. She hadn’t driven for years. Once she arrived, Jacob said, his neighbour Carlos would lend her a car – he had a yardful of cars – and she could build up her confidence. Normally he would have asked Carlos to meet her at the bus, but the poor guy had been incommunicado since his wife left.
Hence this invitation, much sooner and keener than if Jacob himself was in Warton. Some things hadn’t changed. Her brother never had been slow to ask if he needed something. She hadn’t seen him for twenty-seven years.
From Trench, veer left into Shotgun Avenue. She passed a small war memorial. You could see what had obsessed Warton’s founding fathers. It was like going back fifty years. So many things she hadn’t seen since childhood, garden gnomes, swan-shaped planters, lion griffins on gateposts. Beach umbrellas over hydrangeas, pink hibiscus, paperbark hanging baskets. How could Jacob do this to himself?
Or was her eye sharper now than his, her view more worldly?
Come on, she told herself. After all, she was going to meet a nephew she had never seen. Didn’t a gypsy on the beach in France last year tell her that a child was going to come into her life? (They always tell you what you want to hear, Tim had said.) It was a long time since she’d had a family to have Christmas with. She took a breath. The air was beautiful, soft and clean, smelling of honey and eucalypts and dung. Cars were parked under trees. Every second house seemed to have a yard of horses. Dogs barked as she rattled past. There were giant gums with ochre-streaked trunks and clumps of leaves like broccoli heads. What species were they? She knew nothing about Australian plants because of her urban childhood. Arlene had never taken her kids on so much as a picnic.
How long country roads were! A city block between houses. Everything so flat and bare. She was on the edge of town. The road went on and vanished into paddocks on the horizon. On one side was a scrubby enclosure which must be the old drive-in that Jacob had mentioned. Facing it was a stone settler’s cottage with a red corrugated-iron roof and a deep verandah. Jacob’s house. There was a stretch of weedy lawn out the front and one of those ancient emblematic palms that she associated with Australian army badges. Behind the house loomed two giant pine trees. Jacob wouldn’t have been able to resist the drive-in.
Where else in the world could you leave a house unlocked these days? The shadowy hallway ended in a large back room with a wall of windows, a kitchen at one side, a television, hi-fi and sagging couch at the other. Books, videos and newspapers were piled up on plank shelves around the couch. Pale sunlight streaked across the dusty slate floor. School notices, flyers, bills, sprouted from magnets on the fridge. This was where Jacob’s children had grown up. A house like an old shoe, so habitual that you no longer saw how down-at-heel it was.
How quiet it was. The silence of old stone rooms and trees in the wind. Out the back door was a line-up of wellingtons and rubber thongs and a huge pair of rotting sneakers. A breeze set off some wooden wind-chimes swaying from a rickety pergola. Jacob never had been a very convincing handyman. By the back shed an almond tree was breaking into early blossom. The yard was streaked with shadows from the pine trees.
She peered into rooms, which like those where famous people once lived (Rodmell, Garsington) appeared too small and crowded for the fabulous lives that had passed there. So this was Jacob’s great idealistic venture. All these years she’d thought of them as a sort of Holy Family, leading a radical spiritual life, a reproach to her frantic worldly pursuits.
Now she saw the ordinary muddle of people everywhere, bringing up children without a great deal of money. By the looks of it they’d built this back addition themselves. Off one side was a bedroom crammed with electronic equipment and a poster of Miles Davis. The boy’s room. She’d known houses like this in Bayswater, in Islington.
Rain started to patter on the iron roof. The fridge was empty apart from an open tin of dog food. She was reminded of the astounding domestic absent-mindedness of adolescent boys. The benches were greasy, and the floors were awash with dog hair. She parked her suitcase in the master bedroom, took off her coat and pushed up the sleeves of her black cashmere sweater.
A hooded figure passed by the kitchen window. An ancient bulldog was suddenly barking in the doorway, quivering with outrage, and a boy in a sodden brown windcheater nudged her gently inside, pulling the string of a Walkman from his ear. He looked like a young Franciscan in a cowl.
Kitty embraced him, and felt his thin strong arms courteously attempt to return the gesture, while his body stayed back, private, resistant. He smelt of the classroom, socks, bananas and one of those pungent deodorants adolescents use. He pulled his hood back and crouched down to the dog and she saw dark blonde curling hair like his father and the tilt of his mother’s eyes. She knew better than to say this to Magnus. His smile was pure, his skin was olive. After years of teaching adolescent boys she could guess that only a short while ago he would have been beautiful as an angel, but now was lump-necked, thick-nosed, croaky, a young bird. In a few years’ time he’d be beautiful again, but as a man.
He stood gangly, a little at a loss. ‘He’s not a big talker,’ Jacob had said on the phone. ‘In fact this year he just about gave up talking altogether.’
We’ll see about that, Kitty thought.
When she first came to teach in London she was given the lowliest, most refractory of classes. All boys. She found she liked it. Year after year she was form mistress to successive groups of inner-London boys, classified more or less officially as unteachable. She still received Christmas cards from some of them. Some had become teachers themselves. Even as she climbed the ranks, adolescent boys remained her speciality. She knew it had started years ago, a little fat girl’s infatuation with her brother and his friend.
The first thing to remember about boys was that they were always hungry. Food was an overture offered to savages. It smoothed negotiations, established trust. She’d bribed her way into classes with lavish rewards of Belgian chocolates, French pastries, pancake breakfasts at McDonald’s. A food angle kept a class happy. The smell or promise of food seemed to trigger associations of peace in some of her students, so that their true charm could emerge.
‘Want to come shopping, Magnus?’ There was a touch of wanness about him as the old dog pawed at his leg. The poor boy was clearly starving. ‘You can show me what you like to eat.’
‘I’ve got money,’ Magnus said, quick to uphold family honour. ‘They left me plenty. I meant to buy some stuff, I just kept running out of time.’
A nice boy, intelligent, sensitive, she could see at a glance. There was no company she enjoyed more. He probably hadn’t liked being alone as much as he thought. They would have a good time together.
‘Listen, I need to cook. I have to do a little cooking every day. It’s the greatest – no second greatest – pleasure in my life.’
‘What’s the first?’ Magnus was genuinely interested.
‘Don’t ask,’ said Kitty, putting her coat back on with a swagger.
That was the other thing about boys. Don’t be a goody-goody. Flirt a little. Be yourself.
Magnus took Kitty through the pine trees to pick up a car from Carlos. Large black cockatoos swooped and squawked overhead, hunting for pine nuts. The Garcias’ house was silent. Magnus knocked. After a while Carlos came to the door, a little dark Mediterranean man, unshaved and overweight. He nodded at Kitty when Magnus introduced her but didn’t try to smile. His eyes were bloodshot and he’d just put out a cigarette. Without a word he led them across the yard to the old yellow Moke. He wore thongs, a baggy pullover unravelling over workman’s pants. There was a stillness about him, as if to look anywhere but straight ahead would hurt. Kitty, veteran of heartbre
ak, didn’t try to make conversation but trod softly beside him.
Late that night, lying in the parental bed, she heard the horses whinny and she thought about the man lying in the dark next door. Over and over you cry out and there’s nobody there. You take a pill and sleep for exactly four hours. In the morning, ghost-faced, you have a shower and go to work. On the weekends you make sure to take yourself off on a programme of expensive cultural events. You feel obliged to remind yourself that this pain is nothing compared to that of most of the people in the news. You go through the motions and then after a few weeks of paralysis you realise one day that you’ve lost weight, and you go shopping for a size smaller jeans … Then you understand that the stiffness is going out of your body, you were able to smile at the assistant, you’re on the mend.
The phone rang in the kitchen and Magnus padded out to answer it from his bed. Who could be calling at this hour? She heard him talking quietly as he walked back to his room, and then his door closed.
10
Retrace
They were watching Lateline when the phone rang.
‘Magnus! Everything all right?’
‘Yep.’
‘How’s Kitty?’
‘Good.’ Surprisingly emphatic for Magnus.
‘Is she looking after you?’ Too late Toni remembered Magnus didn’t think he needed looking after.
‘Actually she’s a really great cook. She cooks international dishes. Tonight we had an Iranian soup.’
‘What’s that like?’
‘You make it with spinach and yoghurt.’
‘I didn’t think you ate spinach or yoghurt.’
‘It’s different, cooked like that.’
‘You’ll have to give me the recipe.’
They were silent for a moment.
‘Maya rang,’ Magnus said casually.
‘What! When?’
‘Bout a week ago. Then again last night.’ Suddenly at school today he knew he had to let them know.
‘How is she?’ Why didn’t you …? Pointless to ask.
‘OK.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘Nothing much. We’ve both been having dreams about Winnie lately.’
‘Listen, Magnus, did she say who she’s with or where she’s staying?’
‘No.’
‘If she rings again could you ask her, please?’
‘I don’t think she wants to tell me. She’s on a mobile, in a city. She only talks for a little while.’
‘How do you think she is?’
A pause. ‘Not happy.’
‘Could you let us know when she calls again, straight away? Doesn’t matter how late. We were about to go to the police.’
‘OK.’
‘Does she know we’re in Melbourne? Does she know we’re very worried?’
‘She knows.’ She wanted me to tell them, he thought.
Everyone is replaceable, Toni thought on the tram. If she died or disappeared, all the family would find substitutes. Less than a year after her mother died, Nig married a divorcee called Mavis Kearns, fifteen years younger than him, and retired to the Gold Coast. All creatures acted from self-interest. The last and greatest vanity was to think you were essential.
The sky was dour outside the window. Last night she’d hardly slept.
The tram was not the early one that Maya would have caught but it followed the same route. At this hour it was filled with schoolkids swinging on poles and gossiping. Maybe Maya would have been happier growing up here. When she left Warton she had no real friends.
Odd lonely people were taking their first ride for the day. An ageing man with black teeth and an airline bag sat opposite and tried to catch her eye. Did he sense she was now one of them, homeless, adrift on the streets?
But she was on a mission, resolved in the bleak dawn light, to retrace Maya’s route to the office, look for clues to her state of mind. She had to focus now, try to see this city through the eyes of an eighteen-year-old country girl. A young woman descended from the tram ahead of her and strode down Russell Street. She had wide shoulders and a free swinging walk, and she wore a red hooded jacket which reminded Toni of a red windcheater that Maya used to wear. She could almost think it was Maya, a city version, grown sophisticated and purposeful, head bowed listening to her Walkman. This girl had magenta streaks in her hair and that indefinable big-city chic.
As if she were leading her, the girl turned into the street that Toni was looking for, a little road of nineteenth-century offices and factories tucked in amongst the high-rises. Toni’s boots clipped along after her, a brisk, leggy countrywoman, out of place here. The girl turned up a laneway and disappeared.
A For Sale sign swung high from a window on the top floor of the narrow building which housed Global Imports. This panicked Toni for a moment, as if all evidence of Maya’s life in this little fairytale canyon might also disappear. The front door next to Mimi’s salon was open. She went in. Through the glass salon door she could see a pretty, black-haired beautician smiling as she spoke on the phone. From the dingy hallway Mimi’s world glowed, soft, female, maternal. That was why women came to these places, to be comforted.
The treads of the dusty stairs creaked as she made her way past Jonathan Fung Barristers, up to the top floor. Global Imports, handwritten in biro on a card, was slipped into an antique cardholder on the door. She knocked. The door was locked.
She walked out onto the fire escape and stood looking at the tunnels of pale sky between the blind glittering walls of the modern buildings, the rusting roofs and fire escapes of the old. There, one floor lower, in a warehouse across the laneway, was the girl with magenta hair, helping to move a screen. Large colourful canvases were leaning against the walls. The girl had removed her red coat and was wearing a lime-green shirt. For a moment Toni was filled with longing for Maya to be like that girl, laughing with workmates in a big bright space. Why did Maya always have to pursue the dark and solitary, the creaking stairs and narrow passageways, like this Dickensian building?
She went to the Ladies’ Restroom on Jonathan Fung’s floor. It reminded her of the toilets in Boans in the seventies where she used to rush for respite from Beryl. In the mirror she saw the shadows fall across her face. The heaviness like a stone inside her had dragged down the corners of her mouth.
The pretty receptionist in Mimi’s shook her head. ‘The office closed a couple of weeks ago after the guy’s wife died. He’s never even been back to pick up his mail.’ She indicated one of the letterboxes out in the hall, overflowing with flyers.
‘I’m looking for my daughter. She used to work here.’
‘The young girl with short hair?’ She frowned in sympathy. ‘I saw her on the day they closed. She left with him and another man. We didn’t know it was the last time.’
Toni thanked her and turned to leave. She turned back.
‘How old was he? The boss?’
‘Late forties. Fiftyish.’
‘What did his wife die of? Do you know?’
‘Cancer, I believe.’ She gave a sober nod as she spoke, woman to woman. With a small farewelling smile she answered the phone.
She isn’t just pretty, Toni thought, as she pulled the sheaf of flyers from the mailbox, she’s the Beauty around here. So where was the Beast? An envelope slipped out, addressed to Mr Maynard Flynn, Global Imports. She stuffed the flyers back and put the letter in her bag.
She opened it in the corner lunch-bar as she waited for her coffee. A bill for goods sent from a company in Thailand. No huge sums involved. At least she knew his name now.
A man whose wife had died. Some men couldn’t stand it. Like Nig. They rushed for consolation.
Yesterday she’d rung Karen. Maya loved her cousin Lincoln and sometimes stayed with Karen to give her a hand. She was much closer to Karen than Toni was.
‘Nuh, not a word,’ Karen said in the blunt way she had these days. As if she didn’t have much patience for fuss over trivial matters. As if nothing
more was ever going to upset her. ‘She promised to send us a postcard, but Linc and I are still waiting …’
‘That’s not like Maya.’
‘Ah, you know how it is at her age.’ Karen wouldn’t hear a word against Maya. ‘You fall in lurve and can’t think of anything else.’
If anyone was going to say history repeats itself to Toni, it would have been Karen. But she didn’t. Conventional life, its small disruptions, was far behind her now. When the kids were small, Toni was ashamed of their health and boisterousness if they visited Karen and Lincoln.
Bevan had left when Lincoln was two. He said that he was sorry, but he couldn’t take it. At that time the house was full of a team of round-the-clock volunteers which Karen had organised for one of Lincoln’s therapies. As soon as the divorce came through Bevan married his secretary. He proved to be tight with maintenance payments. Karen cared for Lincoln full time. She kept her hair cut very short and wore tracksuits. They lived in an old home unit and had few luxuries, but Karen said they were better off by themselves. ‘I’m not sorry,’ she said once. ‘Everything I know about life I’ve learnt from having Lincoln.’
‘Maybe she’s taking care of someone,’ Karen said before she hung up. ‘Got sucked in. She’s all heart, that girl.’
The coffee was good, the sunlight was pleasant in the window, there were newspapers to read, but Toni was unable to feel the ordinary contentment of things anymore.
This morning Jacob had stood at the kitchen sink drinking a glass of water. ‘Lovely!’ he said.
‘What’s lovely?’
‘Water, when you’re thirsty. Melbourne water’s really quite good.’
All his observations of this city were positive, while she thought of it as dark and hostile. But Jacob, she could see, was still alive to life’s joys. He was able to be distracted.
It wasn’t a death, after all. It wasn’t an abduction. Not even a missing person case, since Maya couldn’t quite give up Magnus. But now, as clearly as if she were watching through Mimi’s glass door, Toni saw Maya pass down the dingy hallway, her head bowed, following two men.
