The front door wide open, the afternoon light slanting in, a honey gold on the walls of that corridor, on the worn carpet and on the dark boards beneath.
It would have been a beautiful garden once. It still was, but overgrown and wild. What had once been a circular drive was now covered with grass. What had once been a well was choked with weeds. And I stood on that verandah and looked out past the cypress trees to where the hills shone, soft and warm under the cloudless sky.
A slight breeze lifted the first of Evie’s cardboard signs, black texta on white cardboard. It floated off the verandah and out across the grass, to where it finally rested underneath a twisted lemon tree. I followed the next one, walking barefoot through the garden, as each of her price tags drifted past me, picking them up as I went, 10c, 5c, 2c bundled together in my hand.
No one in sight.
And I looked back at the house, at the strange pile of items on the verandah, at Simon’s plate, his sketchbook, at Mitchell’s sandshoes, and at my own sandshoes leaning up against his.
In that quiet, the house could have been deserted again. It could have been empty, the way it was when we arrived, the way it would be when we left, and as I made my way back across the garden, one eye on the ground watching for snakes, I wondered where they had gone. Because I wanted to see him. Mitchell. I wanted to see him and I didn’t want to see him. I wanted to know that everything was all right, that there by the river he had loved me and I had loved him, and that it was beautiful. The way it was in stories. The way I was trying to believe that it had happened.
But they were nowhere in sight.
And as I stood there on the top step and looked back behind me one more time, I saw what I had somehow failed to see only a few moments earlier. The car had gone. The grass flattened, yellowing, in the place where it had been parked.
I called out to Vi as I slammed the door shut behind me.
She did not answer.
I could hear her radio as I pushed her door open.
Where are they? I asked.
She did not look up.
Where have they gone?
She was not listening.
With the volume up, with her cigarette in one hand and her gaze turned towards the page in front of her, she had not heard a word I’d said.
But I was insistent. Have they gone to the beach? my voice determined as I waited for an answer.
She did not know what I was talking about.
They’ve taken the car.
And she took off her glasses and put them down on the table next to her, looking at me for the first time.
Of course they haven’t, and as she folded her arms, I could see that she was exasperated, that she didn’t know what had got into me. She turned back to her work and was about to start typing, her fingers poised over the keys, but I stopped her. I took her by the hand and pulled her up after me, tiny without her heels, no taller than I was, and I made her follow me, back up that corridor and out onto the verandah to see. For herself.
It had gone.
And they had gone with it.
With Evie? she asked me.
I told her I didn’t know.
She was furious.
Those fucking idiots.
I turned to her in surprise.
Jesus, and she stamped her foot in anger. I don’t know what to do, the frustration marked on her face.
I looked out to where the road wound its way back towards the town. I looked at her. We wait, I suppose.
And that is what we did.
thirty-four
Simon wanted to buy flowers.
We were almost there. On the outskirts of the city where the houses sprawl one after the other, front yards still parched from the summer, cars parked out the front with ‘For Sale’ signs taped to their windows, garbage cans left out in the gutters from the collection that morning.
I thought we were running late.
Simon checked his watch. There was, he said, just enough time.
We stopped at a corner store, buckets of wilted daisies and roses lined up next to newspaper banners behind wire. I watched as Simon chose the ones he wanted, hesitating as he picked out one bunch and then another.
I think you’re meant to send them to the funeral home or something. Not take them with you.
Simon looked anxiously at the flowers in my lap. The paper in which they were wrapped was covered with faded pictures of balloons, pale reds, yellows and greens dancing across a dirty-blue background.
Maybe it’s okay, I tried to reassure him. But I didn’t really know.
The only funeral I had ever been to was Evie’s.
Simon turned the key in the ignition and pulled out slowly, the steering groaning as he tried to turn back to the road we had been on. I held onto the dashboard and closed my eyes. On my lap, the roses were squashed tight together so that the petals appeared closer, the buds younger than they really were. I could feel the thorns through the paper and I put them down on the floor.
There had been roses in Evie’s coffin. White ones. I opened the car window wide and stuck my head out, wanting to feel the freshness of the air, as I remembered peering into the casket, wanting to look, but not wanting to.
With the make-up thick on her face and her hair brushed back, she had seemed like a doll. China-pink cheeks. Rose-red lips. And as Vi had leant forward to kiss her, the shroud had slipped slightly and I had seen, for one moment, the white of her feet.
I should have cut her nails. Vi had asked me to, the night before the accident, and I hadn’t. She had squirmed out of my grasp in the bath and I had let her go, running up the hall towards Simon, naked and dripping wet. In the raw.
Evie was cremated.
Mitchell was going to be buried.
The cemetery stretched across block after block. It was a suburb in itself, with small paths dividing it up, crisscrossing the miles of flat neat land, each one named and marked on the map at the entrance.
Do you know where to go? I asked Simon.
He shook his head.
We sat in the car feeling foolish.
What do we do? I looked at him.
He told me he didn’t know.
With the engine idling, we watched as a procession of mourners followed a long, black hearse towards the southern end of the cemetery. Just as I was about to suggest that we go and ask, Simon turned the car in their direction and we moved into the end of the file.
The car park was only a couple of yards from the grave, and as we pulled up next to a dusty red Commodore, I could see that there was no way I was going to be able to stay hidden, sunk low in the passenger seat, until the service was over.
Are you coming? Simon tried to tuck his shirt into his too tight jeans. He brushed his hair back from his face.
This was not what I had wanted.
I could feel a tiny trickle of sweat sliding down my back. My mouth was dry, and my hands unsteady as I tried to undo my seat belt.
As I got out of the car, he offered me a cigarette. I took it and held it unlit between my thumb and forefinger.
They were standing under a gum tree. A small group of mourners, clustered around an open grave. No faces that I knew. No faces that knew us. And as I took my place next to Simon, behind the others, I could smell the freshness of the dirt, rich brown, darker than the dirt beneath my feet, pungent and sweet.
I do not remember what the priest said. With my eyes on the ground, his words floated over me, phrases drifting high into the flat grey of the sky; a strange, disjointed homily. A troubled life. Peace at last. Each time I tried to grasp a word, to cling onto the phrase to which it belonged, I would feel it slipping away, sliding like water between my fingers.
This was it.
This was what his life had come to.
This was what I was trying to grasp, my eyes fixed on the ground, but it was not him I was thinking of. It was Evie I kept seeing. Evie on the verandah at Candelo. Evie in that coffin.
I looked down at my hands
, one clasping the wrist of the other.
White knuckles.
And as the breeze lifted, a pile of leaves whirled at my feet, dust and grit flying high and falling in one brief moment. There was dirt in my eye and I rubbed at it furiously.
Kerry will now say a few words.
I looked up, my eye still red and sore, as the priest moved aside and a woman of about forty-five took his place. Small and thin with sandy blonde hair, dyed and teased back from a tight drawn face.
And I listened as she spoke, her voice wavering as she said that she knew he had been trouble, but she had still loved him and she was sorry, so sorry, that it had come to this. Oh, Jesus, and she blew her nose. He was my brother, the only family I had, and I will miss him.
The man in front of me shifted awkwardly, the single rose in his hand wilting, the petals brown at the tips. And as he stepped forward to throw the flower into the grave, I tried to catch Simon’s eye, because I did not want to stay here any longer. I did not want to be a part of this. This was not our mourning. This was not anything to do with us.
And I was alarmed at the bitterness still in me.
Because I didn’t want to hate Mitchell. Not again. Not in the way I had at first, when I had learnt of Evie’s death, when I had listened to Vi in disbelief; the accident. She was dead before I got there.
But it was not just Evie’s death that had made me hate him.
It was that, but it was also knowing what had happened between us. Knowing that closeness, that invasion, him right there, in me, only hours earlier. Knowing it and wanting to scratch it out, scrape him out.
And I had told Vi that I hoped he rotted in hell. That I hoped he would die too. Seeing the look in her eyes as I had said those words and knowing there was a part of her that felt that way too, that despite all she preached, she, too, had felt nothing but hate and anger.
And as I said those words, I had seen him, Simon, standing by the door to my room, watching us. Him and Vi looking at each other for just a moment, a moment before Vi opened her arms towards him. Too late. As her arms had opened, he had turned and walked away.
I had hated Mitchell.
And then I had made him fade. Forced him into a series of vague disconnected images, the whole erased.
As I caught Simon’s eye, I jerked my head in the direction of the car. I wanted to go now.
But Simon did not move. He stood, impassive, silent, staring straight ahead.
I turned, slowly, to look in the direction that he was looking, to follow his gaze across the small group of people, to where Kerry stood, there, on the other side of the grave.
In the quiet that followed the burial, they were all dispersing, walking back towards their cars, muttering low words to each other, some stopping to hug her, some kissing her on the cheek, one or two just standing awkwardly by her side.
I, too, turned to go, to walk away without him, when I saw her separate herself from the group that had gathered around her, when I saw her making her way towards us. In her hand, she still held a flower, a single white lily, pure and creamy, startling against the black of her dress.
Do I know you? She looked uncertain, staring at each of us in turn.
I was about to tell her that she didn’t, I was about to make up some story, when Simon began to speak, and as he spoke I found myself staring at him in disbelief.
He told her that she didn’t. Know him. Looking down at his feet, scuffing his toes in the dirt, scratching his arm nervously.
But you knew Mitchell?
Clearing his throat, coughing, his voice dry and cracked as he told her that he did. He came away with us.
And she continued to look at him, not knowing what he meant. Not knowing what it was that he was trying to say.
On a holiday.
And in the stillness of the morning, I could hear the cars starting, engines turning over, people leaving while we stood there, the three of us, only a few feet separating us from the remaining mourners waiting to say goodbye.
With our family. Years ago.
She did not take her eyes from his. She did not shift her gaze. And the slow crystallisation of awareness, of understanding, hardened.
I think I told Simon to go. I think I tried to pull him away. I do not remember. But I was dragging him, pulling him by the sleeve as she spat at our feet, as she hissed out her words, as she lunged for him, as she told him that he was a fucking low-down bastard, as she tried to hit him, restrained by someone, pulled back by another.
All I remember is my brother saying he was sorry. He was sorry. Over and over again.
And as I pulled him towards the car, as I made him get in the passenger seat, as I took the keys from him, I was shouting at him.
And he was crying.
thirty-five
I had no presentiment of disaster. I had no impending sense of trouble.
High in the branches of a peppercorn tree, I did what I had suggested we should do. I waited. With my back against the smooth limbs and my legs stretched out before me, I listened to the rush of the wind off the mountains, now blue in the distance, sighing over the paddocks, the grass gold and rippling in the late afternoon.
I was only fourteen years old.
I looked at my legs. They were thin like a child’s. I looked at my fingernails. They were bitten down to the flesh. I looked at the scratches on my arms and the grazes on my knees. I lifted my shorts carefully and looked at the bruise inside my thigh. Deep purple now.
I looked out to where the boulders seemed to roll down towards where I knew the creek bed was, and I continued rewriting the story until it was strong enough to be held up in one piece. I was in love with Mitchell and he was in love with me. And that was the way it was.
When I came back, Vi was sitting on the steps of the verandah, a sherry in one hand, a cigarette in the other.
There was still no sign of the car.
As I sat next to her, she put her glass down by her side.
It’s getting dark. She ran her fingers through my hair, picking out leaves, one by one.
In front of us, the shadows were lengthening, the bulk of the house slowly swallowing the lawn, and beyond, the mountains were purple with the last of the light.
I was thinking that maybe I should try and walk into the town, and she stubbed her cigarette out against the cement beneath her feet. How long do you think it would take?
I told her I didn’t know. Maybe an hour.
She tilted her head back and swallowed the remains of her drink. I liked it when it was like this. Just the two of us. Alone. Her not at her typewriter, but here with me. I didn’t want her to go.
She squeezed my hand in her own.
They’ll be back soon, I told her. And that was what I thought. That they would be back. Soon.
Maybe you’re right, and she got up slowly. Maybe I’ll wait a little longer.
She stood for a moment and looked out across the garden to where the road began. Glowing against the darkening sky, twisting away from us, cutting through the paddocks, until it dipped out of sight into a bend. And as she bent down to pick up her cigarette butt, her glasses slipped, landing on the step next to my foot.
I passed them to her. One lens had fallen out. The other was already taped onto the frame.
I guess I need some new ones now, she said.
And as she turned back towards the house, I heard her repeat my words. They’ll be back soon, she said, drumming her fingers on the side of her empty sherry glass. They’ll be back soon, talking more to herself than to me.
But they weren’t.
They were not back by the time the sunset had darkened, deep red over the orchard behind us.
They were not back by the time night had slipped in, lavender blackening to ink.
They were not back by the time I gave up on my post and came inside.
And Vi became anxious.
I remember.
I could hear her typing, and then I would hear her stop, listening for the s
ound of the engine, for the sound of the door slamming, for the sound of footsteps down the hall. Anxious enough to knock the ashtray clattering from her desk to the floor, when we finally did hear it. The sound we had been waiting for: the purr of the motor, the lights through the open door, the footsteps up onto the verandah.
And then we heard the knock.
And as they called out Vi’s name, she picked up her papers. She held them in her hands as she walked down that long corridor, while I watched her from the kitchen, the front door propped open with her foot as she talked to them.
The police.
There had been an accident.
Just out of Candelo.
Everything’s fine, Vi told me. But I knew she was lying. I just want you to wait here, and she had her cardigan, her handbag, and her papers, still there, tight in her hand, as she kissed me goodbye. I won’t be long. I promise.
And she was gone. The door slamming shut behind her. The sound of the car reversing. The silence.
There was just me. And I was waiting.
Not sure what to do with myself in the enormity of that empty house, wandering from room to room, finally sitting out on the verandah, smoking Vi’s cigarettes as I watched the night sky.
While somewhere, out on an empty road, the blue lights of the police car flashed, and Vi watched as they carried Evie’s body up from where the car had rolled, tumbling down towards the creek.
And that was all I really knew. Not much, but enough for me to believe the picture that was presented to me. To hold it as truth. Mitchell was drunk. The car rolled. And Evie was dead.
Each stark fact.
Vi holding me tight in her arms and Simon standing at the door to my room.
Me screaming at my brother as he turned and walked away.
Screaming as Vi tried to comfort me, a sour sweet smell, perfume and sweat mingling together as she held my arms close by my side and tried to calm me.
Shhh, she told me, over and over again.
I didn’t ask her what had happened to Mitchell.
The flashing lights of the police car, Mitchell bundled into the back.
And as Vi tried to soothe me, I heard the front door slam and Simon walked off into the night.
Candelo Page 16
