‘Hessel’s in there,’ I warned.
But Leonie just laughed. ‘Poor Hessel.’
At that point Hessel came out of the back door, looked at us all standing there, and then strode off towards the stable.
‘Or not,’ I said. I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and gestured vaguely towards the paddock. ‘I’ve actually got to go and find some reception, so . . .’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Basil and strode off ahead of me towards the fence.
Leonie watched him go, shrugged her shoulders at me and started across the yard towards the house while Basil stood near the fence waiting for me. I hesitated, and then walked towards him. When he saw me coming he jumped and kicked his heels together out to one side and then jumped and kicked them together on the other side.
‘That’s called a bell-kick, did you know?’ he said. ‘Not many people do.’
‘No, I didn’t know.’
He leapt over the fence using only his hands on the wooden post as he swung his legs with his knees together up and over the wire.
‘What’s that called then?’ I asked.
‘That’s a Basil original.’ He took off again, bell-kicking side-to-side across the paddock while I negotiated the wobbly fence wires, ending up too high and too wobbly, glad he was preoccupied while I indelicately dropped to the other side.
The ground was furrowed with hard clogs of dirt in among the new green. Walking was difficult, I nearly lost my footing, but Basil was gambolling up ahead like a spring lamb. ‘You’ll sprain your ankle,’ I called out to him.
‘It’s called a bell-kick because you’re supposed to look like a bell while you do it,’ he called back. ‘Side to side. Swinging and dinging. Like this. Bing bong bing bong. Do I look like a bell?’
‘How old are you?’ I asked, and just as I said it he landed heavily on one foot and went down like a sack. I hurried over to where he was already sitting up and brushing the dirt from his hair. ‘You okay?’
‘Totes.’
‘Okay, really,’ I said, ‘how old are you?’
‘Why?’ he said, looking up at me. ‘My youthful exuberance too much for you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh alright, I’ll tone it down. Be mature. Act all of my fifteen years.’
‘Fifteen? You seem heaps younger.’
‘Oh great. Thanks. I’ll take that as a compliment. And you’re seventeen.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Oh, I know things. Help us up?’
He held out his hand and I took it and pulled him to standing. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘a male of fifteen years old should be able to get from sitting to standing without using their hands at all, let alone someone else’s. It’s an accurate predictor of life expectancy.’
‘Yeah, but then you’d be left standing there with nothing to do.’ He brushed the dirt from the back of his jeans.
‘So what was all that about, between you and your mum?’
‘What?’
‘The “remember” stuff.’
‘That? Bullshit, that’s what. Nothing for you to worry about, though. Hey, so.’ He slapped me on the arm and gestured towards the little house. ‘Have you seen the Dutch Room yet?’
‘The Dutch Room?’
‘Behind the double doors of Dutchness?’
‘Ah, no?’
‘Oh man, it’s completely wild. You should sneak in and have a look.’
‘Why? What is it?’
‘No way. I’m not going to ruin it for you. You just wait. The lair of His Royal Dutchness. So, hang on, really? He hasn’t “had you in for coffee” yet?’
‘No, though Bette just said something about tomorrow, but I don’t know if –’
‘Oh yes, of course. Wednesday isn’t until tomorrow.’
‘Hey, how do you know about all this, anyway?’ I said.
‘Well, today’s Tuesday, so that makes tomorrow –’
‘No, how do you know about Wednesday coffee?’
‘Oh, I just know everything. Me and my mum, we’re friends of the family,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ I said suspiciously. ‘Leonie said that. Hessel doesn’t seem to think so.’
Basil paused for a moment and looked back at me with his head to the side. ‘My mum and your mum went to the same school, that’s all. Hey look,’ he said, and he did another bell-kick.
‘You have a lot of energy,’ I said when he’d landed safely.
‘So why do you need reception?’ he asked. ‘You got a boyfriend?’
‘Oh, um. Yes. Back in Sydney.’
‘He must be missing you – distance and the heart and all that. Must think you don’t love him if you chose to come out here to spend your holidays with me instead of hanging out with him.’
I tried not to hesitate, but in the gap where I was at a loss for the next thing to say, Basil turned to me, sharply.
‘He doesn’t know something,’ he said. ‘You don’t love him anymore! That’s it, you’re breaking up with him, and he doesn’t know. You’re about to dump him over the phone. Oh that’s low.’
I tried, hopelessly, ‘No, there’s nothing, we just –’
‘Why? Is he mean?’
‘No, he’s –’ I had to remind myself that he was joking. ‘I can’t –’
‘You love someone else. But Anna, we’ve only just met!’ Jokes.
‘No, I just need some damn reception so I can sort some things out!’
‘Oh, that’s alright,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to tell me your trouble-in-paradise secrets if I can withhold mine.’
‘Oh god!’ I said, exasperated and relieved. ‘Sounds like a deal!’
‘So let’s go find some magic reception so we can dump your boyfriend.’
13
My parents had only found out about Nassim last week. And even then it wasn’t my idea. Last week, saying goodbye as usual on the corner of the street, far away from my house and its looking windows, Nassim had said, ‘Anna, I don’t want to keep skulking. I don’t get it and it’s making me feel a bit shit.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, it kind of makes me feel like you’re ashamed or something.’
‘I’m not!’ I said. ‘Of course I’m not. Why would I be?’
‘Well, what then?’
He didn’t get it. And how could he? How could he know that early on I had learned to protect the things I most cared about from the unpredictable weather of my mother? I had told him about my mother, but I hadn’t told him anything about that. Not anything. I wasn’t lying to him, exactly – I had vowed not to do that. It was more that I just kept hoping, against the evidence of my own eyes, my own history, that there was nothing to tell.
But family was important to Nassim. He had taken a risk weeks earlier, introducing me to his family. He had taken me to his family’s bakery restaurant, famous among artists and writers and students in the inner southwestern suburbs. And it was so great: the smells; the innumerable members of Nassim’s family in the kitchen and in the restaurant; the coffee, dark and sweet; uni students at other tables, shabby-looking, looking like visitors, casting sideways glances my way as I sat with the family. And his family had welcomed me, but Nassim told me later that that had never actually been a guaranteed thing. His heart was in his throat, he said, because he was never quite sure where his parents were going to come down on these things; some of his aunts and uncles, their brothers and sisters, had banned his cousins from having relationships with Aussies.
‘What about next week?’ I said. It was all going so well. I was happy just as we were. I struggled to think about what to do.
‘No, Anna, this is stupid. Your mum is home now, we should just go there together.’ We stood on the corner. He was waiting for me to respond. I wanted desperately to say ‘no way’, but when I thought about explaining why, my tongue went dry. ‘All my family know you now,’ he went on. ‘I love that they get to see us together. I want the same with your family.’
It h
adn’t been difficult keeping him a secret. My dad being away for so long meant I’d only had to omit telling him on our phone calls, and with Mum always out so late working, all I’d had to do was sneak Nass into the house when I knew she wasn’t going to be around – ample opportunity – and never let him stay. And I kind of loved the secrecy around that. I loved it later, after he’d gone – I loved sitting in our bland kitchen remembering the sexiness of his naked body in my bed upstairs, and never saying a word about it.
But Nass had taken a risk for us and my reluctance to do the same was making him feel like shit. He was right: it wasn’t fair. I calculated the risks. It was still early in the day. Mum would probably be okay right now, maybe even for a couple of hours. Maybe this was even one of those times where she would be okay for a whole day, or even days, or weeks, or even months. Sometimes the unpredictability made my head spin.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Okay. But be warned.’
‘Warned of what?’
We began walking towards the house. Nassim slung his arm over my shoulder. I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t.
‘Oh, just that my family isn’t like your family,’ I said.
‘I know that,’ he said. He thought he knew what I was talking about. He thought I felt my own background was bitsy and dull and boringly Australian compared to his. Which was true – I did. And I’d told him that. Comparing my dad’s pathetic attempts to keep our German heritage alive with his weekly Bauernbrot and Spätzle and how crappy that seemed compared to being tucked into a booth with Nassim’s aunt and cousins and mother and little sister Nadia, watching his father, busy in the kitchen with a pillow of soft white dough.
So I went with it. ‘Yeah, we’re just the full culturally bereft Euro-Anglo-Australian mutt.’
Nassim put his arm around my waist and pulled me close. ‘Don’t be a dope,’ he said. ‘You don’t think Leb culture is made up of every little influence it has had since the dawn of time? Nothing wrong with loving your mutt.’ He planted a kiss on me as we reached the gate and I noticed there was still mail in the mailbox. What did that mean? Was Mum not home? Or had she got home super early? How long had she been home? That was important.
It was just a mailbox. It meant nothing, probably nothing.
Nassim saw my discomfort. ‘Don’t stress,’ he said. ‘I’m good at parents.’
‘I wish Dad was around,’ I said. ‘You two could talk cooking.’
‘Nah, it’s good this way. Better for me – divide and conquer.’
I took the mail from the mailbox and slid my key into the lock. The door swung inwards. Inside, the kitchen was empty and the house had an abandoned feel.
‘Mum?’ I called up the stairs. There was no response. The ticking of the clock seemed loud.
Nintendo, however, was home. Nintendo already loved Nassim. Every time we had been here alone Nintendo had spent endless moments winding himself around and around Nassim’s legs, pushing his furry forehead under Nassim’s gentle fingertips.
Nintendo jumped up on the bench and headbutted Nassim in the face and Nassim brought his arms up to pat him. ‘You might have been stressing about nothing,’ he said, which was a bit rich, considering that I would have been quite happy to keep him away from my mother for the rest of my life.
‘Might have to be another time,’ I said, actually blushing with relief.
‘Oh well, that’s a shame,’ Nassim said. ‘But it does open up other possibilities.’ And he left the cat alone and took my arm, leaned me back against the kitchen counter and pressed his soft lips against mine. The tingle went through me. Our bodies drew close, pressing together through clothing. My breathing deepened. I fumbled at his jeans.
Just then came the sound of an upstairs door opening and Mum appeared at the top of the stairs.
‘Mum! You’re here,’ I said, springing away from Nassim and feigning getting something from the fridge.
Mum had obviously seen. A smirk played around the edges of her mouth as she came into the kitchen.
‘Oh, hello,’ she said and held out her hand. ‘I’m Cathy. Are you a friend of Anna’s?’
Nassim took her hand and shook it. ‘Yes, Mrs Krau–’
‘Oh please, call me Cathy. And you are . . .?’
‘Nassim.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Nassim. You’re not trying for medicine too, I hope?’ She had that air she sometimes put on of just-having-thought-of-something, her snappy delivery like she was grabbing ideas out of the air around her, like she was one of those fast-talking broads in those old movies.
‘Me? No.’
‘Sensible,’ said Cathy. ‘You putting the kettle on, Anna?’ So that was going to be my role here. Supporting actress. Cathy asked, ‘So, “Nassim”. Where does that name hail from?’
I filled the kettle in the sink while Nassim sat on a stool on the other side of the bench and my mother sat opposite him.
‘Marrickville,’ he said with a deadpan face, and Cathy laughed. ‘But my parents are from Beirut, which is, I assume, what you’re really asking?’ And then his cheeky smile, ‘And where are you from, Cathy?’ and Mum laughed again.
Nassim was right. He was good at parents. Perhaps I could relax.
‘Me?’ said Cathy. ‘Whitebread Aussie. Country Victoria.’
‘You have Dutch heritage too, Mum,’ I said, still keen to mine our own family background for anything remotely interesting.
‘Well, obviously,’ said Nassim, ‘with Anna’s hair and eyes – clearly some serious Scandi heritage there.’
‘BeNeLux, actually,’ said Mum in a way that was both confusing and brusque, like the punchline to a joke designed to go over your head. ‘But yes, my father was some nobody who came over from Holland. My mother, however, is from the old Anglo-Aussie landed gentry. They had a big sheep run down there. I am Australian royalty, don’t you know. A princess of sheep poo and dust,’ Mum said sparkily. She was in full flight, her whole professional powerhouse persona. She went to the cupboard and took down a bottle of red wine and a large wine glass. ‘This is a good one,’ she said. ‘Some lovely blackberry notes.’ And she poured herself a proud glass. ‘You staying for dinner, Nassim? I could order us up some Thai, or something from that new Afghan place?’
Mum hated Afghan food. For a moment I wondered if she knew Beirut was in Lebanon, not Afghanistan.
‘No thank you, Cathy,’ said Nassim. ‘My mother will be making dinner already. She likes a bit more warning if I’m planning to miss it.’
‘She sounds like a dream mother,’ Mum said airily. ‘I never could quite manage that.’
‘Hey Mum, there’s mail,’ I said, delivering tea to all three of us and the pile of envelopes to her. ‘I wish you’d check it as you come in, it’s not that hard.’
‘Alright, alright, no need to be snooty about it.’ Mum left her tea to get cold and refilled her wine glass as she leafed through the envelopes. Was she just starting? Had she had some upstairs? Difficult to know when I hadn’t been home to take notice, to tally the drinks up as they went in. Impossible to be ready. Right now she had an edge I couldn’t quite get a read on.
‘Heard from Dad?’ I said. Sometimes mentioning him was enough to ground her a bit.
Nassim chimed in. ‘Oh yes, Anna said Joe was in Germany for a while. I was very sorry to hear your father-in-law is unwell.’
‘Well, we were going to head over too these school holidays, weren’t we, Anna?’ Mum said. ‘But then I suddenly had to present at this big Integrated Technologies Conference in New Zealand – Blockchain and alpha-testing and – well, it’s all palaver you don’t need to know about. And Anna, well, Anna is just study study study. Like if she doesn’t become a doctor she might turn into a pumpkin or something.’
Nassim laughed unexpectedly, tea shooting up the back of his nose. He spluttered and then laughed a bit more.
‘Oh, you think that’s funny, do you?’ I asked him. ‘Well, excuse me Mum if I don’t want to just be geek-cool and amass capital
– I know that’s what matters to you –’
‘Oh Anna, don’t be so –’
‘– but I want to actually do something.’
Cathy let out a large theatrical sigh. ‘As you can see, Nassim, Anna is not especially generous in her assessments of her own poor mother.’
Refill number three. A little slug of wine had bounced out of the glass and made a ring on the bench around the bottom. Nassim didn’t seemed to have noticed. Neither did Cathy, who was opening bills and laying them on the table, performing the task for Nassim, externalising her inner monologue. ‘Bill, bill, bill, oh look, I could have already won fifty thousand dollars . . .’ One of the letters had a handwritten front, not the usual cellophane-pane or bulk printing of bills and info-dumps. Mum wasn’t really looking as she started opening it, she was still so engaged in her Cathy-show, returning to declaiming about me and my studying. ‘Yes, study is really number one with Anna, Nassim. You’ll need to stay out of her way there if you don’t want to get burned. I mean, if she can’t even come on a Kiwi holiday with her poor old mum, and can’t even get on a plane to go and see her poor dying Opa –’
Mum had frozen, looking down at the open letter in her hand.
‘Oh I know it,’ said Nassim, reaching out and taking my hand and smiling at me. ‘She’s quite the swot. But I can assure you, Cathy, that . . .’
But he petered out. Mum wasn’t looking at him, or at me. She was just looking at the letter in her hand. From what I could see, it didn’t seem very long, just a few lines. But it held her as if it were a string of code she had to decipher to save her life.
Eventually she looked up and at me, and then at Nassim sitting there holding my hand. Her eyes tried to focus in a way that I instantly recognised. She was beyond three glasses, for sure. Well beyond.
Her gaze fell on our fingers there, locked together in a weave of light and shade and light and shade.
And then the world turned on its head.
14
When we reached the cairn, Basil said, ‘You weren’t thinking of climbing that thing, were you?’
‘Well,’ I said, and looked around. ‘I really do need to get some reception, and the only thing higher here is the old building, and I don’t know about going in there and trying to get up to that second floor.’
Where We Begin Page 8
