Where We Begin

by Christie Nieman

  ‘Well, my mum changed her mind, apparently. Without consulting yours. Just a few weeks ago. Just before Hessel turned up. She said she went to visit him and he was just hitting his own head, over and over, blaming himself for mucking around and falling from the cairn and wrecking his brain and costing everyone so much money and trouble, and she just couldn’t take it anymore. So she told him the truth. But he flipped out, couldn’t handle it, thought she was lying, yelled at her until the nurses asked her to leave. And then when Danny was being difficult and refusing to speak to her again I guess they called Hessel. And then Danny must have said something that made Hessel think he’d better get him away from other people. But I didn’t know any of that. I just saw Dad happy. And I saw old Hess being charming and making Dad happy. I’m a fucking idiot.’

  ‘You’re not, Basil.’

  ‘And I didn’t know, Anna. I didn’t know he’d do that, Dad, to Hessel.’ Basil was blinking hard. ‘I didn’t know he was capable of that. And now he’ll go to jail. I fucked up, Anna. I really fucked up.’

  ‘He might not, Basil. He’s not well. It’s assault, yes, but it was provoked –’

  ‘Hessel’s in intensive care. My dad put him in intensive care. Hessel is a frail old gentleman and Danny is a strong and troubled young man. What if Hessel dies, Anna?’ I hadn’t thought of that. I was so unfamiliar with death that it seemed beyond the realms of possibility. ‘If he dies they will lock Danny up in a high-security prison with a bunch of hardened fucking murderers and they will throw away the key.’

  Basil rocked forwards and put his head in his hands. Was that true? Could that happen? It couldn’t. It shouldn’t. It wasn’t right. And anyone would know that if they had seen what I’d seen. If they had seen Hessel . . .

  But Basil hadn’t seen it. He couldn’t know what I knew, in the way that I knew it – bone deep. And while I envied Basil what he’d been spared, that misfortune of mine suddenly felt like a gift I could give him. Something I could give Danny. What I had witnessed – there was something in it, some proof, some good that could be done.

  I crouched in front of Basil and made him look at me.

  ‘Basil,’ I said. ‘Danny saved my mum’s life.’ He stared at me dumbly. ‘Hessel was trying to kill her, Basil. And I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t.’ My eyes stung at the memory and my voice faltered, but I kept going. ‘Danny saved her life. If he hadn’t been there – and if you hadn’t helped him be there – well, my mum would be dead. She would be. Really dead.’ Basil shook his head. ‘No. You didn’t see it, Basil. But I did. Danny did what had to be done. He did what I would have done if I’d had the strength. What I was trying to do. And I will say that to anyone who will listen. Police, judge, jury, whoever needs to hear it. My mother couldn’t be a proper witness for Danny before, but I saw it all today. And Basil, my uncle, your dad, is a fucking hero.’

  Basil was watching me, looking into my eyes, not looking away, like he was holding on to something.

  From further back inside the station we heard the sound of doors opening and closing. ‘We’re Danny’s family now, Basil. You and me. And we’re not going to fail him, okay? You and me – we’re not going to fail him.’ I squeezed his hand. Basil reached out and took my other hand. He gripped it. ‘Okay,’ he said.

  Leonie came down the hall and stood by the clerk’s desk. We went and stood next to her. ‘They’re just moving him,’ she said.

  Basil and I stood and looked down the hall with her. At the end of the corridor there was more opening and closing of doors, and then three people appeared. Two dark suits, and a man in jeans and a T-shirt being ushered along in the middle.

  ‘Danny?’ I said loudly, and everybody stopped and turned to look at me standing there with Leonie and Basil at the other end of the hallway. The man stopped walking and looked up with striking green eyes. He looked like Basil. So much like Basil. And like my mother, too. This man who had saved my mother’s life. Who had saved me.

  He held my eyes. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  And then they led him away.

  35

  In a room set up more like a lounge room than an interview room, I gave my statement to the police; I told them about everything I’d seen, about everything that had happened in that kitchen. Leonie sat there with me while Basil waited outside, and her quiet presence helped me say what I had to say. In the car I was silent, all talked out. Leonie caught my gaze in the rear-view mirror. ‘Just in case you are, Anna, I don’t want you to judge your mum too hard for staying away. Don’t be too disappointed in her. She always tried to do what was best for Danny – for me and Danny.’

  She was so good, Leonie. How could she be so good, in the face of everything? Whether it was Mum’s fault or not, Leonie had pretty much been left to deal with all the emotional fallout alone. Leonie had kept an eye on Bette, and hadn’t banned her from seeing Basil, she had taken control when it was needed back at the house. She had looked out for Danny, and tonight even, she had stayed with him, escorted him through all that police business, despite her own bad history with the police, despite how that must have felt for her. She had done so much for my family: for Bette, for Danny, for Cathy, for me.

  ‘You’re so strong, Leonie,’ I said. ‘The way you’ve picked everyone up. The way you’ve coped with all of this.’

  Leonie just quietly shook her head. Her lips went tight. I thought perhaps I’d moved her, that perhaps no-one had ever told her that. I was surprised when the silence drew on and I looked closer at her face and realised I’d made her angry.

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought –’

  ‘Coped?’ said Leonie, incredulously. It burst out of her. ‘You think I’ve coped? You think when I dropped out of uni I was coping? When I had to kick out my weird and erratic partner who I loved to become a single mother, you think I was coping? You think when I was fifteen and some violent Euro-bastard ruined my life and I spent the next three years throwing rocks through his windows, smashing up fucking Bromley Cairn and dodging the law, I was coping? You think I’ve coped with your family fucking ruining my life? Thank me if you like, honey, but please, please, don’t go accusing me of coping.’

  I looked out the window. Leonie had snapped at me but I didn’t feel like crying this time. I listened. And then I thanked her. I thanked her for picking me up out of the gully. For helping my family when she was well within her rights to just walk away.

  Leonie turned her face to the side window. ‘You’re welcome,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’

  As we drove through town, heading for Leonie and Basil’s house, the phone in my hand buzzed with a number I didn’t recognise. I answered it before I realised that it would be Mum, calling from the hospital bedside phone.

  She still sounded croaky, but she leapt in straight away.

  ‘Are you okay honey? I just really need to know that you’re okay.’

  ‘I’m okay. I’m with Leonie and Basil. You should get some sleep, Mum. Let them look after you there and I’ll see you in the morning.’

  ‘Don’t take the pill, honey.’ She seemed to be struggling with her breath, though whether it was from the injury or from emotion, I couldn’t tell.

  ‘Um, I’m not really asking for people’s opinions –’

  ‘No, I just mean not yet, not tonight. Wait till you’re safe at home with me.’ Being safe at home with my mother was not a concept I was familiar with. ‘We’ll drive back home tomorrow and I’ll do everything to make sure it’s good, okay? I’ll look after you, I’ll be there for you. And if I’m not, if I let you down, then, well then, you can just do what you have to do and I’ll know I deserve it. I want us to do it together. I want you to be able to trust me.’

  I thought about Geraldine not-medically speaking to me about taking the pill alone. And about second chances. Third chances. ‘Okay, Mum,’ I said. ‘I’m going to try trusting you. I’ll wait.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘I’m pinky-swearing with myself as we speak.’

&
nbsp; Leonie and Basil watched as I crooked the phone in my shoulder and linked my two little fingers in front of my face.

  ‘It’s true, Cathy,’ Leonie said loudly from the front seat. ‘She’s doing it.’

  ‘We’re witnesses,’ hollered Basil.

  I hung up the phone and I thought about Mum then. About her working away at her business, that business that took all of her time, that she was so focused on and that I resented the hell out of. And while all the time I had been thinking that she was just obsessed with success and earning money, she had been sending a chunk of her profits to a nursing home to get them to look after her brother. Doing all of that and never saying a word about it. Working herself insane so she didn’t have to think, didn’t have to remember. And then when she stopped working, tamping it all down with alcohol. I thought of her, this night, in the kitchen of the little house, turning and telling Hessel not to fucking touch her daughter, that she was going to report him for what he did to Danny, telling him she was going to tell the truth finally. Facing up to it all. I felt a small warm glow of pride growing. I had seen how afraid she was. That had taken some serious guts.

  And then I wondered at myself, at what I could possibly be thinking when I said to Leonie, ‘Hey, I don’t suppose – would it be alright if you dropped me back out at Bromley? I actually think I’d really like to stay there.’

  ‘In that stinky little house? Ambos and police have made a mess of it. Not sure you’re allowed in there yet.’

  ‘No, in Bromley. The old house. If it’s my last night here, I kind of want to be in the old place – say a bit of a goodbye. No-one’s said we shouldn’t go in there.’

  Leonie frowned. ‘I can drop you there, but . . . really? Are you sure? Seems bloody creepy. And we have actual heating at our house, you know.’

  I laughed, but I grew surer. ‘Yes. It’ll give me a chance to pack up my stuff properly. Say goodbye to the place. I got strangely attached.’

  ‘Can I stay with you?’ asked Basil. ‘We could have a camp out!’ He actually looked excited at the prospect. ‘We can make a fire pit outside. Toast marshmallows. Talk.’

  ‘Marshmallows? Really?’

  But relief and happiness also flooded through me at Basil’s suggestion. It would be creepy by myself. And I was going to miss Basil, so I said, ‘Of course you can,’ and Leonie just rolled her eyes and shrugged and said, ‘You two are not quite right.’

  After stopping off briefly at Leonie and Basil’s for camping mats and sleeping bags, some cup-a-soup and a loaf of bread, Leonie dropped us off at Bromley Cairn and drove away up the road. And then in the old house, in my study room, we set up the fan heater and our beds and then Basil said, ‘Do you reckon that fireplace still works?’

  I got my phone and shone the torch up the chimney. ‘It seems fine,’ I said.

  ‘It’d be so stupid to light it,’ said Basil. ‘Dangerous, even.’ And then he stood up and rubbed his hands together. ‘Let’s do it anyway.’

  And I grinned and giggled and we ran back and forth from the woodshed making a decent pile.

  Basil was skilled at lighting fires, it turned out. Soon it was roaring and throwing off adequate heat for us to be comfortable.

  ‘You’re such a thug,’ I said.

  ‘You’re so white,’ said Basil. The revelation of Danny’s heroics had changed Basil’s mood. He seemed proud. ‘You’ll have to meet Danny properly,’ he said. ‘He’s a really nice guy, he’d really like you I reckon, and you’d like him.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Oh yeah. He’s like me, totally charming, so yes, of course you’ll like him.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘You really think you’re something special, don’t you?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Basil picked up a stick and poked at the fire. ‘So . . . what do you think you’re going to do? About . . .?’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. The ultrasound Geraldine did . . . it was pretty amazing.’

  ‘You know what else I think would be pretty amazing?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You as a doctor. I can really see it. It’s really right for you.’

  I lay on my front on my camping mat and looked into the fire. Basil lay next to me on his, and then he sat up and looked sideways at me, just like Nassim had that first time in English.

  ‘Anna. I think you should tell Nassim,’ he said.

  I looked at him. ‘Tell him . . .?’

  ‘About the pregnancy.’

  I shook my head. ‘Nope. I can’t. And even if . . . No, it’s already too late. We broke up.’

  ‘Does that feel right to you? To be broken up?’

  ‘It doesn’t really matter what I feel like. It’s what’s happened. It’s what had to happen.’

  ‘That’s bullshit, Anna. You’re kind of taking the easy way out.’

  I looked at him, confused. ‘That’s the easy way?’

  ‘Yeah. It really kind of is. And look, even if you’ve decided that breaking up is what has to happen, you should still tell him about the pregnancy. Not because he has any special right to know, but because secrets are bullshit.’ I looked at him and he was nodding seriously. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You know it. I know it. If anyone on this earth knows it it’s you and me. Secrets are bullshit.’

  And it was so clear. He was right. He was so right. Secrets were bullshit. That’s all they were. Bullshit unnecessary complications that made big fucking messes. They were just a way of turning a problem into a different, wider, more complicated one.

  I was nodding to myself. It was a revelation. ‘Secrets are bullshit,’ I said out loud, like Basil had just handed me the meaning of life. I had kept how I’d felt about Mum’s drinking a secret, for years and years and years, from her and everyone else, and where had that got me? Bullshit. Mum had swallowed the biggest secret of all, and had to keep it in there with work and alcohol, nearly destroying herself and everyone around her. Bullshit. I had run away, broken up with Nassim without telling him, treated him so badly, just to avoid telling the truth: that I was pregnant and worried that our relationship was going to cost me admission into medicine. Bullshit.

  ‘That’s what I think, anyway. You should totally tell him,’ said Basil.

  ‘Maybe I should. Maybe that would be okay.’

  ‘And he was involved. Let him have some of the stress of it too.’

  I nodded slowly. Basil was right. He was so right.

  ‘You should do it now,’ he said.

  ‘What? Like, right now?’

  ‘A secret is a secret until it isn’t,’ he said.

  I shook my head, but Basil nodded at me and nodded at me until finally I said, ‘Well, you know I totally would, but, oh well, no reception.’

  ‘There’s reception upstairs.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Upstairs. Reception.’

  ‘You’re fucking kidding me, right?’

  ‘No. It’s not great. But it’s pretty good. Good enough.’

  ‘All this fucking time – reception? And you fucking knew?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t want you to go upstairs, for reasons of my own, obviously, so I wasn’t about to tell you, was I?’ Basil gave me a cheeky getting-away-with-it smile.

  ‘You little shit!’ The urge to clock him rose up and then passed and I rolled my eyes at him instead. ‘You know you really are a smart-arse.’

  Basil ducked his head and smiled. It was good to see him smiling. ‘Come on, I’ll show you,’ he said.

  I picked up my phone. Was I really going to do this? Could I do this?

  We sat the lamp on the entrance floor and shone it up the stairs, which held just fine as we climbed. At the top of the stairs Basil said, ‘This way,’ and we passed through the top room to the secret room entrance window. Basil put his hands on the sash.

  ‘It won’t open,’ I said. ‘I already tried.’

  ‘You mean, you tried when Dad was still in there and had it locked?’

  I l
aughed at myself. ‘Oh yeah, I guess that’s what I mean.’ And then the strangeness of that hit me, that my uncle had been sitting there quietly behind that window.

  Basil hauled the window up easily, reached an arm around inside and flicked a switch, and a standing lamp threw yellow light around the room. He climbed through the window and I leaned in after him. A good quality mattress lay on the floor, with clean sheets and a plump pillow. The floor was swept clean and the opposite window looked as if it had been washed to capture the view. A bar fridge was plugged in and humming. I climbed in through the window and opened the fridge. It was full of fresh green and orange and red vegetables, a bag of apples. Some milk, within date. All the groceries Basil had bought. Basil came over, got out an apple, crunched away on it. ‘Apple?’ he said, with his mouth full.

  ‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘This is amazing. You did an amazing job.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Basil crunched. ‘I know.’

  On the floor next to the bed was a small pile of paperbacks. The covers were bent and faded and in the seventies and eighties style geometric designs seen mostly in second-hand bookstores. Jamaica Inn, Jane Eyre, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. One book had its cover flipped open. I toed the book shut to reveal a dark cover with a lighter portrait of an emerging face, a beautiful image of a thin-faced man and the title The Picture of Dorian Gray. It was strongly reminiscent of the Dutch paintings in Hessel’s sitting room.

  I looked at the cover for a moment, the young man’s pale face emerging from the dark and staring solemnly at me. I knew a bit of the story, that this was a picture of a person arrested in time.

  I opened my phone and sure enough, two solid bars, enough for a call. I shook my head at Basil.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘It’s even better out here.’ Basil opened the window onto a jutting bit of roof provided by the level below and stepped out into the moonlight.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, holding out a hand. ‘It’s not as narrow as it looks – it’s perfectly safe if you stick by the wall.’