Watercolours

by Adrienne Ferreira

  Dom was touched by his thoughtfulness. ‘Sure.’

  They sat in silence while Dom finished his glass of water and Novi picked splinters from the edge of the step. Then he turned his attention to a large scab on one of his knobbly brown knees. The scab had dried into a concave disc and the surrounding skin was a ridge of puckered pink.

  ‘Omelette stage,’ Dom noted.

  Novi giggled. Dom watched him work his fingernail slowly under the disc of dark dried blood, picking with determination until he prised the whole thing off. Underneath was a triumph of raw skin and plasma. They exchanged a smile.

  The sun had sunk behind the range now, leaving a trail of pink and purple clouds. Shadows were moving into the garden and a couple of stern-looking kookaburras had landed on a low branch nearby. Cooking sounds drifted from inside: an oven being wrenched open, the scrape of a tray on a metal rack, the sizzle of roasting meat. A warm aroma of herbs and garlic hit them and Dom was relieved to feel the stirrings of hunger. He turned to Novi.

  ‘I’m sorry about what happened with your timeline, mate. I know I let you down. It had every right to be up on the wall with the others. Some things just make people feel uncomfortable, that’s all.’

  ‘I know.’ Novi looked into the garden.

  ‘People like to get their knickers in a knot, but the school has to try and keep everyone happy.’ Dom exhaled. He looked at Novi with a smile. ‘It was a really good timeline.’

  Novi continued to stare ahead and said nothing.

  ‘Well! Let’s see that bike of yours, eh?’

  They got to their feet and Dom attempted a few awkward steps. His seized-up thighs sent him hobbling. The kookaburras eyed him but didn’t bother retreating from such a pitiful figure. Novi led him slowly over the lawn and down through the garden past the boat. Ranged in front of a small grove of fruit trees and a long vegetable patch was a wooden building half hidden in creeper. Novi pushed open the door. Dom ducked under tendrils of purple flowers to follow him inside.

  It was a magnificent shed. A row of grubby windows gave light to a large open area where clamped timber shapes rested on sawhorses like a series of curious sculptures. Slowly Dom walked under strings of drying chillies and garlic towards a wall pockmarked and pegged with every imaginable kind of tool. A long workbench was strewn with ancient tobacco tins full of grimy nuts and bolts, nails and screws, fishhooks and sinkers, and drill bits. There were drawers spilling sandpaper and string; empty cardboard tubes that had once held bottles of whisky were now stuffed with dowels of varying lengths. When he saw some slender paintbrushes upended in a jar he felt a shiver up his spine.

  This was where genius began.

  Novi flicked on an overhead bulb and Dom watched as he reefed aside a lawnmower to get at a rusty little bicycle with chipped gold paint and a torn seat. Taking great care he turned the bike upside down and demonstrated to Dom the smooth whizzing of its well-oiled chain and the swift operation of its pedal brakes. ‘It’s a Repco,’ he explained proudly. Dom stared at the skinny little kid and his shambles of a bike and thought his heart would break.

  With more light he could see just how cluttered the place was. Slung in the rafters were pieces of timber, plasterboard and corrugated iron, layers that created a muffling effect on their voices and drew the atmosphere in close. Over in the corner a tan vinyl armchair oozing foam, a patchwork rug thrown over it, sat hunched like an elderly relative. There were cupboards of gardening tools, golfing trophies draped with beads, a pile of blue gym mats, a hanging basket full of snorkels, seed pods and feathered party masks. One wall was stacked high with crates full of dark green bottles. Dom moved closer to inspect the labels and was astonished to see it was all mulberry wine, even more than the ladies at Camelot could ever hope to get through.

  For a long time he just stood there, breathing the scent of sawdust and grease, dust and varnish, two-stroke and grass sap while vague memories of his father and grandfather stirred within him, memories of school holidays spent absorbed in earnest, fruitless occupation. This was childhood he was breathing: boyhood, fatherhood. He longed to move into the place and set up camp, bed down on that pile of gym mats and submit to the comfort of a thousand humble, useful objects.

  He noticed a drawing lying on the end of the workbench and his nostalgia scuttled away. This was the real treasure. He pointed. ‘Is that yours?’

  Novi nodded.

  ‘Can I have a look?’

  Novi didn’t answer, just stood completely still beside his bike, his hand on his chest. It was a strange gesture, as though he were searching for a heartbeat. Suddenly Dom realised that he might be refused. He could see he’d blown it, and deep down he knew he deserved it. Why the hell would the kid trust him?

  After the longest moment, the boy nodded.

  Dom approached the workbench. He took up the sketch and tumbled into it. There he was among the different smooth and shaggy tree trunks by the river, peering up into the canopy full of cartwheeling cockatoos, gazing down to the sandy soil beneath his feet where spiky grass hid lizards and coiled snakes. The river was a twist of pink, purple and grey and full of parrots. Parrots in the river? He peered closer. No, they were flying overhead — a reflection — and yet their outstretched wings gave the impression they were swimming. The perspective shifted and Dom felt he was looking across the landscape, into it and upwards all at once.

  He heard a creak behind him and looked around to find Novi dragging out more pictures from a cupboard, his thin arms struggling under their weight. Dom helped him bring them over to the bench and settled down on a stool, determined to see each one.

  It was the Lewis, page after page. It cut through valleys and curved around plantations, twisted through paddocks and plots. In one scene it divided a haphazard township of crazy construction, in another it swallowed camp sites and picnic tables, fences and shops as heavy rain drove in sideways like a giant sheet of corrugated iron. Each scene was composed so that every bird and shrub and person was clearly defined and in view. It was as though Novi had x-ray eyes and could see through ordinary barriers to reveal what lived and breathed beneath them. The pictures defied any real perspective or scale, but the jostling viewpoints drew Dom in, threw him around and left him faintly dizzy. He felt pleased to be able to distinguish some of the elements of Novi’s style. He wished Camille was with him.

  When Dom got to the end of the pile he sat up tall and stretched. His lower back had set into a hard coil from perching so long at the bench. His shoulders and biceps felt as heavy as sandbags. Outside, night was creeping in. He turned and looked for Novi, and found him sitting cross-legged in the patchwork armchair, watching. Dom eased himself off the stool, hobbled over and crouched next to him.

  ‘Your art is fantastic, Novi. You’re talented — Miss Morrison thinks so, too, and she’s offered to take you for private art lessons once a week after school. How would you like that?’

  The boy’s eyes flashed for an instant. Then his expression closed down. ‘We can’t afford it,’ he said.

  ‘She won’t be charging anything. It’ll be part of a talented art program we’re putting together for you. To really lift the lid on this stuff you’re doing.’

  Novi frowned. He still seemed hesitant. Dom was puzzled.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to get your hands on some proper materials? Paints and canvases and whatever else you want?’

  Novi looked torn. ‘Yes, but … what if I get into trouble?’

  Of course! Dom gave him a reassuring smile. ‘These will be special art lessons, just for you. You won’t get into trouble, I promise. Not if you agree to concentrate on your schoolwork in class when I need you to and do your homework and your jobs around the house. That’s your end of the bargain. What do you say?’

  Novi sat very still. He seemed shrunken in the oversized armchair, a fragile, fairytale creature. Dom searched for a way to put him at ease. ‘Look, Novi, you’re an artist. Your mum and dad … we all want to help you manage your time
a bit better, that’s all. Give you some space so you can be free to really express yourself.’

  Dom glanced over at the drawings on the bench. He wondered how such a staggering output was produced by this slip of a kid; where on earth did it all come from? He gripped his thighs and stood up. ‘I want to see where you can go with this, mate. I want you to show me what you’re really capable of.’

  The boy simply blinked at him, his hand pressed to his chest.

  Mr Best is smiling at me. It’s a real smile, in his eyes. The colour has come back to his cheeks and sweat has dried his hair into tufts. There’s only a faint smell of sick.

  All the cicadas are moving their wings in me. I’m scared, but they’re not. They’re buzzing. They like Mr Best. His idea of art lessons has made them swarm, ready to burst out of me all at once. Maybe soon they’ll have their chance.

  That’s when I decide to show him.

  I walk over to the cupboard with the rakes and mattocks in it and pull open the bottom drawer. Nobody opens it anymore except me and I have to yank hard with both hands. Here, underneath a stack of old storybooks, is where I keep my other drawings, the ones I don’t show anyone.

  My murder pictures.

  I pick one out and bring it over to the bench. Mr Best takes it from me like it’s precious. He looks at it long and hard and doesn’t say anything. I watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down a few times.

  It’s the scene of the crime. I know the river was mad and raging that day from all the rain. I’ve studied the clues on my walks in that sort of weather, searching the dirty water for objects the river has taken: sticks and rubbish and animals. I have put the koel in a few places up high, imagining where it could have been that day and what it might have seen. It must have seen something. All murderers leave clues.

  Mr Best puts the picture down and looks at me. ‘Are there more?’ he asks.

  I nod.

  ‘Bring them out,’ he says quietly, putting a hand on my shoulder. ‘All of them.’

  And so I do.

  In the kitchen, Novi held out a plate of little balls: fresh figs stuffed with ricotta and wrapped in prosciutto, he said. Dom chose one tentatively, he’d never had a fig before. He took a small bite, but it wasn’t the sort of thing to be bitten, he had to throw it into his mouth whole and chew it up in one creamy, seedy, sweet and salty mouthful. It was unbelievably good. He took another one straightaway and had to work hard to resist wolfing down the whole plate.

  George opened the wine and Mira pulled the roast from the oven. While the meat was resting and Dom, ignorant of most cooking procedures beyond reheating, was grappling silently with the concept, she gave him a quick tour of the house. Each room was painted a different colour and crammed so full of odd furniture, teetering piles of books, art and bric-a-brac it looked as though there had been a huge explosion and miraculously everything had landed in almost its proper place. Mira’s bare feet padded the floorboards, navigating the labyrinth with ease, explaining where George had knocked out walls to improve the light, showing furniture he had salvaged and restored and frames he had made for Novi’s pictures, which were numerous and hanging everywhere. Following behind, Dom was mesmerised by the swishing of her buttocks and decided that this woman and her house had the same look about them: abundant, chaotic and welcoming.

  She stopped at a sideboard to withdraw some wine glasses. Dom took a look at the photographs arranged on top. Nestled among a glass milk bottle full of white feathers, a yellow teapot with an orange dragon motif and a small dish holding three dead Christmas beetles, shiny as gemstones, was a picture of a fascinatingly young and slim George and Mira on their wedding day, as well as several baby photos of Novi. In one photograph Novi was holding the hand of a tall man with a bushy moustache. Dom stared. It was the man from Novi’s drawings, the man in the river.

  ‘My father, Umberto,’ Mira said, seeing his interest.

  In the shed earlier, perched on the stool, Dom hadn’t been sure how he knew the man in Novi’s drawings was dead, but he knew. His heart had kicked over at the sad face of the moustached man and the sinister presence of all those crows, their beady eyes fixed on the floating body below. He’d had to swallow more than once to relieve the sudden constriction in his throat and his eyes had let him down again, filling up with water. After the initial shock had passed he saw that the pictures were more sad than spooky. His heart had gone out to the boy, he was clearly grappling with feelings of loss and confusion. When George appeared at the door to call them up for dinner, Novi slid the last pictures under the pile on the workbench without a word. He looked at Dom and Dom understood: his parents had not seen these. Oblivious, George began showing Dom the clamped pieces of his boat, explaining what remained to be done with the hull and describing his design for the interior. All the while Dom had wondered what sort of parent this man was. Mira, too. What kind of home life produced a child like Novi?

  Now, as he took the wine glasses from her hands and carried them out to the table on the back veranda, he felt a sense of foreboding, a dark curiosity as to what the evening had in store for him.

  Outside the night was alive with insects. Cicadas chanted and beetles battered the windows. George set down platters of food and a cloud of mosquitoes rose to greet them. Novi flicked a cigarette lighter at some citronella candles in clay dishes; they sputtered and their tangy smoke rose to mingle with the cooling night air. George disappeared for a moment and returned with some long cotton pants and a pair of socks, insisting Dom put them on for extra protection. Then Mira arrived with the roast and they all took their seats.

  The meal began noisily with the best pork crackling Dom had ever eaten. They crunched it up with eager fingers and shining lips. Mira piled little prisms of golden potatoes onto his plate, a scoop of fried fennel and onion cooked with vinegar, she explained, and some home-grown green vegetables glistening in seasoned olive oil. The meat itself, infused with garlic and crisp herbs, fell away under his knife. His stomach groaned in pleasure, welcoming the respite from bacon and egg rolls, fish-finger sandwiches and Mavis’s punishing casseroles.

  As the night went on Dom couldn’t hide the response the rest of his body was having to the bike ride. Incrementally, his muscles were tightening as though hooked on a thousand tiny pulleys and he could tell it was going to be a painful and lumbering recovery. Mira noticed him wince a few times. She described some stretches she thought would help. ‘I taught yoga for a while, over at the caravan park, but I had to stop.’

  Dom was surprised. She didn’t look lithe enough to be the yoga type. ‘What happened?’

  She pinched a clove of garlic out of its skin and popped it into her mouth. ‘I suffered from the most spectacular fanny farts.’

  ‘Mum!’ Novi glared at her in horror.

  Dom choked on a piece of potato and George snorted with mirth.

  ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘It’s true! It’s all right for you lot.’

  Novi buried his face in his napkin and shook his head. Mira ignored him and continued. ‘Some of those poses just fill you with air, especially the ones on your back with your legs up.’

  Dom struggled to take this information in the matter-of-fact way it was being given. He couldn’t look at George because the man was leaking giggles like a punctured air mattress. His wife snapped a napkin at him crossly.

  ‘I tried to be Buddhist about it, you know, rise above it, accept it as natural and all that. But I simply wasn’t enlightened enough.’

  She sighed and took a sip of wine. There was a lull at the table. Dom exhaled quietly, relieved to have kept it together. Then she said, ‘You know you can’t control a fanny fart like a normal one, don’t you, Dom?’

  ‘No!’ Novi groaned in despair.

  Dom’s eyebrows shot up. He shook his head.

  ‘Very little control,’ she said with a grave nod. ‘In the end it was ridiculous! I was a ball of tension worrying whether I was sucking in air and when it would escape. I didn’t care mysel
f, but I didn’t want to distract the pupils. It wasn’t relaxing at all — terrible when you’re the one teaching relaxation. I do yoga at home, of course, where farts of any kind are acceptable. Aren’t they?’

  She looked at Novi, who picked desperately at his dinner and refused to answer her. Mira placed a plump, olive-skinned elbow on the table and leaned in.

  ‘I don’t believe in keeping anything in that needs to be out,’ she said sweetly. ‘Everything out, I say, much healthier! But I’d be happy to take you through the basics sometime if you’d like. Even the breathing is extremely beneficial. Free of charge, of course.’

  George gave him an encouraging nod but Dom was certain he would never be able to do yoga in Mira’s presence without picturing her fanny. She studied his expression for a moment as though guessing his thoughts. Then she clapped her hands together, threw her head back and laughed.

  ‘Well, you’re going to need something after a lunatic bike ride like that!’

  God, he was full. His stomach was so tight from the seconds and thirds Mira had pressed upon him it felt ready to burst. But when dessert arrived he found he still had some room. The strawberries were home-grown too, tiny but pungent and marinated, Mira told him, in a mixture of balsamic vinegar, sugar and fresh mint and served with a dollop of mascarpone cheese. The combination was such a revelation Dom felt in danger of passing out.

  Dessert vanquished, he collapsed back in his chair with a groan. Novi recounted a story about when George had to be taken to hospital because Mira had fed him so much — a story Dom would have previously taken as exaggeration but now believed was completely possible. He watched the boy, smiling and scooping mascarpone out of his bowl with his finger, perfectly at ease. The anxiety that was apparent in him earlier seemed to have vanished. Still, Dom couldn’t shake the memory of those pictures. The dead man and the crows lurked at the edges of his thoughts.

  For a while they all sat in woozy digestion, nursing their rotund stomachs and gazing contentedly at the garden. In the stillness the citronella flames stood tall and unwavering. The cicadas had fallen quiet and everything was peaceful. The lawn breathed. Crickets tinkled like tiny bells. Bats flew out of the dark trees to swoop drunkenly over the river and Dom listened to the flutter of their wings and their quiet sonar squeaks. A small grey cat appeared, stalking the perimeter of the garden, pouncing on rustling noises. Novi wandered over to flop down on the grass and twitched a twig for its entertainment. George took the empty bowls to the kitchen and returned with a slim bottle and four small glasses with a single ice cube in each.