Watercolours

by Adrienne Ferreira

  Bert Cherubini had a quiet dignity about him and had come to Gerard’s mind straightaway. His wine business was promising but precariously poised; his Amaro was making ground and stood on the cusp of international export — a miracle considering the property had teetered on the brink of collapse for so long. Grapes and berries, like all thin-skinned fruit, needed plenty of chemicals to prevent them spoiling, and Mira, recently married, was struggling with her market-garden business and would soon be in desperate need of effective protection from pests. Most importantly, Bert had first-hand experience of the terrible legacy left by the old poisons, the arsenic and lead formulas of his father’s generation. Gerard had heard Bert’s accounts of watching his father’s toenails blacken and drop off from working barefoot in orchards treated with arsenic pentoxide, how he’d seen him laid up in bed with nausea for a week after hand-spraying the groves. Bert had also overheard the horrified whispers of his sisters as they spoke about the wife of the fruit farmer next door who had succumbed to some sort of terrible, private surgery after years of perching on fruit boxes in the packing shed. Bert was a farmer who’d welcomed the agricultural chemical revolution in the sixties, a passionate supporter of the safe new organochlorines and organophosphates; they’d never done him any harm, he insisted, when the rumblings started about their safety. Gerard had known he’d be perfect for the job.

  Wiping grease from his fingers on a serviette, Gerard headed back to the bar and ordered another schooner. Alcohol was required if he was going to surrender to nostalgia and properly turn his mind to Bert. He still felt sad about the way it had ended. He nursed self-pity, too, at the loss of the friendship. Bert had been more than just a business associate, he was a friend for whom Gerard had made sacrifices. Like that time Bert had turned up on his doorstep with the news of Mira’s last miscarriage. Gerard was sad to hear of it; Mira and George had been trying for years for a baby and he knew that disappointments like those took their toll on a couple. He felt for them, for his friend. It was obvious how upset Bert was; his suntanned face was etched in wretchedness, his moustache trembling with emotion. Gerard wanted to help somehow. But he wasn’t expecting what Bert said next.

  We can’t keep selling it.

  Gerard had been stunned. He pictured the warehouse, two-thirds of the stock gone already. Moving it had been easier than they had dreamed, despite the bad publicity the stuff had received before the ban. It was just so bloody effective. The new formulas were not nearly as powerful and needed to be administered more frequently: every season, twice a season, instead of once or twice a year. In the last twelve months they’d been able to increase the price of the remaining black drums yet again. A bidding war had erupted. One turf company, threatened with annihilation by army worm, had just offered double the highest bid to date.

  Gerard had been torn. He had tried to placate Bert by sharing his own experience. ‘Look, Eleanor had a miscarriage when we were first married. It was dreadful, but so many stories came out of the woodwork from her friends. We were surprised at how normal it actually is. And of course you want to search for reasons …’

  Bert had only stared at him with contempt. ‘Three miscarriages aren’t normal, Gerard, not at her age.’ He told him he’d found a report on organochlorines, about how they stayed in the soil longer than anyone had predicted; how they broke down into dangerous new toxins no-one had tested for and made their way through the food chain, absorbed by the body in fat reserves and then slowly released into the blood over time. ‘Drift from the aerial spraying can be trapped in the Morus basin for a week before the right wind comes in off the sea to blow it away. A week! We can’t ignore something like that! We’d be mad to call it a coincidence. I won’t let Mira be exposed to it anymore.’

  Gerard hadn’t known how to respond. What he didn’t say was: But you knew! You were the one who supplied it to her and all your mates. You raised her on a farm, put her to work out there with the fruit from when she was a kid! You’ve benefited nicely from this deal and now all of a sudden you turn high and mighty and decide to point the finger? He thought instead about the range of factors that could lead to a miscarriage and how it was impossible to know exactly why it happened. Bert couldn’t know whether Mira’s mother had a history, he was barely in contact with Dominica anymore. And what about all those varnishes and paints George had worked with over the years, had he considered the effects these might have had? Life was hazardous! It was the price they all paid for modernity.

  These points had run in a startled pack around Gerard’s head but he hadn’t uttered any of them. Arguing would have been hurtful to Bert and he cared too much for him. Although he was taken aback by the audacity of Bert’s demand, at the same time he couldn’t help admiring him. Bert was never one to deny his feelings, he always expressed them fearlessly and it was something Gerard was grateful for, especially when all the other men around him behaved as passionately as clams. Stanley, for one, was terrified of expressing emotion; he was so practised at keeping a lid on things, it was twisted. Perhaps it was the Italian in him but Bert was an exception. And now he’d come to Gerard in distress, arriving on his doorstep with his heart on his sleeve, entreating him to consider his daughter and do what was right. What choice did Gerard have? He was an honourable man, after all. He told his friend not to worry. He’d take care of it.

  There was a brilliant flash of lightning across the greens, followed by a terrifying crack. Gerard jumped along with everyone in the club. A second later the lights went out. He looked around. One by one the fridges behind the bar flickered and switched off. Christ, he thought, I’d better get back. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting there brooding but he’d managed three schooners and now as he stood up he discovered he was slightly drunk. The rain came pelting down. Gerard had to run out into the middle of it to reach the Land Cruiser and was drenched through. At least the sensation freshened him up a bit.

  He started the engine, blasted the fan and flicked the windscreen wipers to high. In one quick manoeuvre he turned the car around and headed down the main street out of Banio. He wasn’t thinking of the past anymore. The rain was coming down in buckets and strong gusts of wind were belting the car. Every ounce of Gerard’s attention was on the road as he drove quickly back to Morus in the storm.

  Chapter 19

  Eleanor’s old green Jag glided slowly through the rain like a dreadnought: heavy, solid and indestructible. Encased within it, Eleanor was safe and dry. No gust of wind was going to blow her away, no cloudburst. Whatever storms of heartache and rage had swept through her over the years, the Jag had been strong enough to deliver her through all of them.

  For two days now, Serpentine Road had been cut but she wasn’t bothered about Sinclair’s being out of reach. It happened from time to time and actually it was a relief after the previous week’s mayhem to stay away from the place. Their manager was more than competent. The only concern was if the Centre ended up under water, but that was in the lap of the gods now. There wasn’t any point worrying too much about it.

  In the seat beside her, Joy Kelley, her neighbour, smoothed her auburn hair and smoothed it again. She was selfconscious about it; it was thinning with age and she couldn’t stand to have a strand out of place. Eleanor felt for her; getting old wasn’t fun, nobody liked it, but she wished Joy would stop fussing. They were in a rainstorm, for heaven’s sake.

  ‘God, this weather!’ Joy cried. ‘It’s just so inconvenient. I’ve had to cancel all my appointments …’ She patted at her hair again and took a look at her part in the mirror. ‘I was supposed to be having my colour done today. Ugh. I can’t stand this grey, it’s just not me.’ She flicked the visor back. ‘And Stanley’s been under my feet, lounging around and leaving things all over the kitchen. Would it kill him to stack the dishwasher? God help me if he ever retires. I told him that the guttering on the patio needed replacing and now there’s water pooling up near the back door. It’ll be his fault if we end up having to replace the carpet.�
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  Eleanor would have preferred to have made the trip alone but Joy had invited herself along. When she’d phoned an hour ago, bored and looking for company, Eleanor hadn’t wanted to lie about where she was going. Joy had jumped at the chance to come, she’d never been to the Lepidos’ house and wasn’t one to miss the opportunity for a stickybeak.

  But Eleanor wasn’t going to let her spoil the afternoon. The anticipation of seeing Novi’s pictures far outweighed Joy’s negativity. At the exhibition, Mira had said there were more of Umberto, and Eleanor had been longing to see them ever since. The one she’d already bought would hang in the gallery until the exhibition was over and she looked forward to collecting it with a bittersweet excitement, even though she wasn’t sure yet what she was going to do with it. She could hardly bear to think about what Umberto might have gone through in his final moments, but he seemed to be at peace in that picture. Somehow it helped.

  Being with Mira helped, too. She was always willing to reminisce about her father, have a laugh at old stories about him and shed a tear or two. With Mira, Eleanor found she could talk about Umberto more freely than with anyone, and having Novi there stopped Eleanor’s feelings from unravelling too much. That was important because her grief was still dangerously potent, it wouldn’t dissipate, perhaps because she’d been forced to mourn Umberto in isolation, unable to share the depth of her loss with anyone. It made sense when she thought about it. Alone, she had suffered the punishment of her cowardice, of failing to be brave enough to be with the man she loved while he was warm and pulsing with life; the man who adored her with his caressing, moth-wing gaze.

  The road was a mess of leaves and small branches. The Jag ground over them. Oblivious to Eleanor’s thoughts, Joy had segued into the latest instalment in her ongoing battle with humankind, an indignant story in which someone or other had injured her in some way. As usual, Eleanor wondered about the other side of it, suspecting that the offending party had probably been misinterpreted, or had unknowingly threatened Joy’s sense of righteousness, or had merely resisted being bossed around by her and was now banished forever to the realms of Rude and Selfish. Joy was an old friend, the only reason Eleanor put up with her these days. They had so little in common now, and yet they shared so much history their lives would always be intertwined. Eleanor could slip into a rhythm with Joy naturally enough, she’d had decades of practice, but she never truly opened up to her anymore. In the right mood, Joy could be witty and open to a bit of mischief, but ultimately Eleanor didn’t trust her.

  Maybe it was because Joy had always disapproved of Umberto. Long before Eleanor’s epiphany in the Museum, Joy had complained about his blunt manner and ridiculed the way he gesticulated when he spoke. She insisted he must have been somehow deficient for driving away a wife and recklessly proud for presuming he could raise a daughter on his own. Nevertheless, she’d invited him to her dinner parties to please Stanley, his fellow Rotarian, and, Eleanor suspected, as a kind of perverse entertainment for herself. Trapping him behind a dish of something pale and quivering, Joy would quiz him with poorly feigned concern: how on earth was he coping on his own with Mira? Did she miss her mother terribly? Was she running wild yet? Although this line of questioning always made Eleanor squirm, it gave her the opportunity to see how well Umberto deflected these assaults. He gave short replies, punctuated with mirthless little smiles, and always met Joy’s gaze so unflinchingly that eventually she would withdraw, insisting, as a parting shot, that he was very brave, before scuttling off to the kitchen for the chocolate mousse and Irish coffee. Eleanor remembered dreading these dinners, appalled by her friend’s behaviour and in awe, if a little afraid, of Umberto’s honesty. While they all struggled through the onslaught of fashionable Women’s Weekly inspired courses, Eleanor stole glances at Umberto to see how he was coping; mostly he succeeded in appearing unruffled, though sometimes his moustache would give him away with a small but irrepressible twitch of revulsion. Although of the belief that moustaches were generally off-putting, Eleanor had found Umberto’s expressive and rather dashing, even then.

  As Joy continued to harrumph away beside her in the car, Eleanor let her thoughts drift. She remembered their final day together, the last time she had seen Umberto. It had been weather like this, torrential. Again the residents of Serpentine Road had been cut off from town, isolated up in the hills. She’d managed to slip away early in the downpour despite the risk and by late morning had been sitting in Umberto’s bed sipping grappa, damp from rain and love-making and contemplating what would happen if she never returned home. It was a thrilling idea. She couldn’t go on with Gerard, it wasn’t fair to him. But the thought of leaving terrified her. What if she simply stayed here among the rumpled sheets, riding out the storm until the dawn of a new life?

  Umberto had been troubled that morning. He’d been worried about Novi. Mira had told him the doctor was concerned about Novi’s lack of growth and had booked him in for tests. ‘It’s my fault,’ Umberto had muttered, staring at the ceiling. Eleanor propped herself up on her elbow and was startled to see tears in his eyes. ‘Darling!’ she said, ‘it’s okay.’

  ‘No it isn’t!’ he insisted, and Eleanor had felt a little frightened of his anger. ‘Something is wrong. Every time I see him near the river I feel sick in the guts!’

  She didn’t understand. There was more, but Umberto was having difficulty explaining. She made them coffee and took it back to bed. For a while they listened without speaking to the rain pelting the windows. Eventually he told her what he’d done, years ago, for Gerard.

  In astonished silence, Eleanor let the news wash over her. She struggled to make sense of it, what it meant, how profoundly it altered things. When she looked back to Umberto she saw his face was full of shame. Tears were rolling down his cheeks. She tried to soothe him. ‘It’s not your fault. You put a stop to it.’ And she held him until he was calm.

  But she didn’t stay. There was a lot to absorb and she needed time on her own to fully comprehend it. Driving home, her head was swimming. She was in shock. The Jag’s windscreen wipers began to scrape and squeak — the rain had stopped briefly and she hadn’t even noticed. Absently, she switched them off. She didn’t blame Umberto. Not once had she experienced the sort of financial pressure he’d suffered his entire life. And she loved him. Forgiveness came easily.

  But she couldn’t forgive Gerard. Right under her nose he had put Sinclair’s reputation on the line, her family name, and for what? Pocket money. She was outraged. Her anger grew until it was a vast and shapeless mass squeezing her inside and out. She intended to confront him, she just wasn’t sure how. Thinking of the best way would take some time.

  When she didn’t hear from Umberto for a couple of days she assumed he was giving her space. Then they pulled his body out of the river and the shock of his death superseded everything. For a long time, Eleanor found herself at the bottom of an abyss where nothing mattered anymore. Umberto was dead. If she’d stayed with him that day, he might still be alive.

  She withdrew. She chose to remain silent, surviving by patching her old married life over her sorrow. But this decision had its consequences. Her relationship with Gerard became a superficial thing, like her friendship with Joy, functioning merely out of habit. She knew Gerard felt it, was hurt by it, but she didn’t care. A light had gone out inside her. She was changed irreparably. And she had only herself to blame for it.

  Joy Kelley stepped lightly down the corridor towards the Lepidos’ bathroom, sensing treasure nearby. It was simply a matter of knowing where to dig.

  The afternoon had been an ordeal and it was a relief to know it would soon be over. She had just given Eleanor the let’s go look and excused herself to freshen up. She’d need to make this quick, then. There wasn’t much time.

  The fact that she was never caught made Joy the very best kind of snoop. Stanley was convinced she had a sixth sense — how else could she know so many private details about other people’s lives, people she
barely knew? She encouraged this idea because she liked the mystique it evoked; also, it was helpful in masking the truth — her snooping was as practised as it was compulsive and that’s why she was so well informed. Over the years she’d refined the craft, careful not to take any unnecessary risks. She knew it took a minimum of eight seconds, for example, for her husband to put down the telephone receiver and exit his study, so he’d never discovered her ear pressed against the door. She’d learned to commit to memory the exact arrangement of a drawer, a pile of papers, the folds of a letter. She had trained herself to replace even the smallest of items accurately, heart pounding, ears roaring in the concentrated silence.

  It had been Eleanor’s idea to pop over and congratulate Mira on Novi’s exhibition and to see how they were getting on since the flood had cut them all off. Initially Joy had recoiled at the thought — that rundown, mould-infested old shack was the last place she felt like visiting in this weather! But she had to admit she was a little curious to see the Lepidos’ home. She could only imagine the state of the house. It would be fun to have a peek. And so, as a dedicated Rotary Ann, she’d agreed to accompany Eleanor in her show of support.

  She navigated the dim passage to the bathroom more to sneak one final look at the place than for any need of the facilities. Poking her head into each of the cluttered rooms along the way, she observed their messy contents, the racks of drying laundry, and shook her head. It was all so shabby and out of date. The lounge suite looked as though it had been picked up at the tip, with its outmoded heavy frame, faded velvet covering and sagging upholstery. Scattered over the old floorboards was a collection of rugs so threadbare they were sure to fall apart if they caught so much as a glimpse of a washing machine; they needed tossing out, along with everything else.