by Susan Duncan
She places Emily’s mementoes in the box and closes the lid. It will come with her to country Victoria as proof – of a sort – of her right to enquire. She prints out the passenger list. She doesn’t bother to pack a bag. If she is forced to overnight somewhere, she’ll wear the same clothes.
She undresses and climbs into bed. Her tiredness overcome by nervous excitement, she lies flat on her back, wired and wide-eyed. In the still of the night, she hears the rapid drumroll of her pulsing heart. No more loose ends. Alex will know his father. Closure. She wonders if he smokes or smoked, cigars. Wishes she’d kept the ash and the envelope.
Kate crosses the water in the silvery gloom of pre-dawn, a note for Ettie held in one hand as she steers the boat towards the café pontoon. Saturday night’s carnival lights – red, blue, yellow and green – are still blazing on the Island but Garrawi Park is abandoned. The party is over. The residents of Cutter Island will be nursing fierce hangovers well into the afternoon. They’ll straggle in to The Briny in search of vats of deep-fried food and caffeine hits strong enough to wake the dead. She feels a twinge of guilt but shrugs it off. As Emily, who’d mastered the art of buck-passing, used to say: ‘Guilt is a wasted emotion.’ She ties up at the pontoon and unlocks the back door, places her note fair and square on the counter where Ettie won’t miss it.
‘Hello? Who’s there?’ Ettie’s sleepy voice echoes from upstairs.
‘It’s Kate. Sorry. Thought you’d be staying with Marcus after the party.’
Ettie comes downstairs, rubbing her eyes, finding a smile: ‘You lovely girl. Here to get a super early start, are you? So I can sleep in.’
Kate blushes. ‘Not exactly, Ettie. Sorry. God, all I ever do is say sorry. The thing is, I think I’ve found Alex’s father. I’m off to the airport.’
Ettie sits on a step halfway down, dragging her nightie over her knees. ‘Another trip to London, is it?’
Kate catches the coolness in her tone, feels a wave of guilt and makes a silent vow this is the last time she’ll give in to what has become an obsession. ‘No, nothing quite so dramatic this time. Turns out he lives in Victoria. Plan to be there and back in one day. Figured Jenny is still on board and it’ll be a slow day anyway after last night’s big bash.’
‘Do whatever you have to do, Kate,’ Ettie says, resigned, using the railing to pull herself to her feet. ‘We’ll see you when we see you.’ She is gone without another word.
Jimmy’s television debut is watched by the entire, seriously hung-over but intensely contented Island population; who have plodded up the steepest part of the track lugging rugs and picnics to find a spot on the ground in front of old white sheets strung between two spotted gums. The television, which has been channelled through a video projector and sound system, courtesy of Big Phil and Rexie, is set up on the back of an old trailer with electric leads running fifty metres and through a window into the closest house. Considering the historic financial windfall of the black-tie fundraiser and the recent anonymous donation, nobody bothers to hand around a collection plate. By the time the art auction takes place, the war chest will be overflowing and capable of inflicting massive and completely legal damage (fully aware of how far you can push the libel laws without it being worth anyone taking action, Siobhan has shouldered responsibility for ticking off the copy before it goes to press).
As the sun drops behind hazy blue hills and a few clouds scud across the sky turning fiery red, the volume is raised as high as the most headache-afflicted viewer can tolerate. Jimmy’s freckly, smiley, guileless face fills the screen. His hair as iridescent as the clouds above. ‘Me mum,’ he begins, and the rest of the line is lost in the roar of laughter. Jimmy and his mum. It was ever thus.
The interview runs for twelve minutes. The camera follows his barefoot way as he scrambles along the honeycomb shore, the lollopy, grinning, black-and-white mutt at his heels. He shows them what it’s like to dive from the ferry wharf into the boiling water left in the wake of the Seagull. Still wet, he sprints to the top of the Island and shows them the glorious view right to the vast pale blueness of the Tasman Sea. He rides the back of a turtle that lobs in like a groupie looking for his five minutes of fame. Tells them about another turtle called Tilly and how fishing line in her gut nearly killed her but he and Sam, the bargeman, saved her. He points out a cormorant popping out of the water like a periscope. ‘Watch! There it goes!’ The bird dives. Emerges with a large wriggling fish in its beak.
He chucks sticks for Longfellow and tells them about a race for mutts that takes place on Christmas Eve, when the whole community gets together to say Merry Christmas. ‘But really, we’re checkin’ even the loners ’ave got a seat at a table somewhere.’ He shows them dewy spider webs glistening like crystal palaces. The perfect, tiny five petals of mauve flowers called Love Flowers, ‘Which kinda suits the park given so much of it goes on there. Heh, heh.’ He points out the furry foetal curl of tree-fern buds. Directs them to see how such tiny perfect swellings transform into ‘the world’s biggest umber-alla’. He plants his skinny backside on a mossy boulder and points a finger at the creek. ‘Ya never go thirsty on the Island. Creek never lets ya down.’ And he scoops pure water into the bowl of his hands and drinks thirstily, raising a wet face with such a radiant grin that the audience spontaneously grins right back.
At one point, he puts a finger to his lips: ‘Shhh. See there. Red-bellied black havin’ a snooze. Poor bugger’s tired out. If ya see a brown, get the hell outta there. They’ll go ya if they’re feelin’ cranky enough.’ Is it everyone’s imagination, or does the camera jerk a fraction at the news? Towards the end, the reporter lays out the plans for the resort against the flaky breast of the papier-mâché cockatoo in the Square.
‘So what do you think of this, Jimmy?’
The kid’s eyes almost pop: ‘Weren’t ya listenin’ to anything I said, then?’ In a world of spin-doctors and truth-benders, his shiny-eyed view of the physical world feels like a cool hand on a feverish brow. There’s not an Islander whose chest isn’t puffed with pride. The kid, after all, is one of theirs. Island conceived, born and bred. Love of landscape and community locked in his DNA. Jimmy, Sam thinks, is now officially grown up.
Chapter Twenty-five
A little after two o’clock, when the summer sun beats down relentlessly, burning farmland already crisped from drought, Kate pulls off a dirt track opposite the gateway to number 12 Cavendish Road. An impressive redbrick house shrouded with verandahs and grapevines stands at the end of a straight driveway lined with ancient peppercorn trees. A small herd of black cows, heavily pregnant, graze nearby on tufts of yellow grass. In a good season, it would look utterly bucolic. It makes her think of frocked-up ladies and gentlemen sipping gin and tonics at sunset while a string quartet saws lazily in the background. But puffs of dust kick up under shuffling hoofs. The vine is scorched brown, the lawn more dustbowl brown than garden-party green. A strong wind and Mr O’Reilly might find all his precious topsoil stripped and relocated on the rich black plains of the Western District, two hundred kilometres away, reinforcing Kate’s belief that what goes around comes around and she’s not referring to the dirt.
She takes a long swig from a bottle of water, restarts the car and rattles over a cattle grid into the shaded driveway. Nothing stirs. Not even a dog barks. She’d envisaged a thousand different scenarios but never considered the fact that Timothy Terence Martin O’Reilly might not be home. She gets out of the car and walks up to the door. Lifts a heavy brass knocker and pounds hard. The sound cuts through the silence like a gun going off. In the distance, a crow laments. Emily would call it a bad omen but, like Kate, she wouldn’t back off. Emily never understood the meaning of retreat. In most people, that’s a strength. In Emily it led to one exploding episode after another. Kate tries the door handle. To her surprise, it is unlocked.
‘Emily’s girl, aren’t you?’ Kate jumps. Spins around. Almost losing h
er balance. ‘Saw you through the window. Same eyes,’ he explains, without being asked. He is small-boned and lean, still handsome in the landed-gentry fashion of crisp checked shirts, faded blue jeans and elastic-sided boots. A leathery, white-haired version of Alex? When he holds his head a certain way, perhaps. Kate, caught wrong-footed, could swear his blue eyes are twinkling in the style of old men who realise they can afford to flirt outrageously with young women without fearing they’ll offend or be forced to follow through.
‘Good memory,’ Kate manages, thinly.
‘Not that good. She was here. Couple of years ago. Barely recognised her at first, not till the colour of her eyes clicked in. How is she?’
‘Dead.’
O’Reilly remains expressionless, takes in the whole picture of Kate, detail by detail, like he’s trying to get a handle on whether she’s feeling grief or relief. After a while, he beckons her to follow him inside the cool gloom of the house. ‘Just me here,’ he says. ‘And a few cows to remind me that I was once a farmer. I can rustle up a cup of tea and a biscuit. That do you?’
‘A politician, I thought. Not a farmer.’
‘A politician for a while. Nothing to be proud of. More like a descent into petty nonsense. Bad times and a bad bunch I thought back then, but nothing much has changed. You either play the game or quit. I quit.’
‘Before they dragged out the dirt on you?’ she asks, deliberately trying to shock. But he responds with a shrug, a slight raising of the corners of his mouth. ‘Emily said you were blunt. No, not blunt, judgmental was the word she used. Said you two didn’t get along.’
‘Doesn’t matter much now, does it?’
‘More than you think, probably.’
In the kitchen, shadowy with wear and filled with the lingering scent of lemons and soap, he fills an electric kettle and reaches for a commemorative tin of Arnott’s Anzac biscuits. He lifts a couple of mugs off hooks and slings in a teabag each, pours hot water. Points to a chair at a scrubbed pine table. ‘There’s no milk. Got sick of it going off before I could finish it. Dirt? In those days, parliamentary debates never got personal. Unspoken rule or we’d all be hanged by the electorate. You don’t find many saints in politics. What got Emily in the end?’
‘Heart attack. Quick, clean and efficient. A throwaway line the day before she died revealed the existence of a half-brother.’ She comes down heavily on the word, making sure he doesn’t miss it.
‘Ah,’ he says, drawing out the sound. He calmly bites into his biscuit. Chews noisily. Kate waits him out. She wonders if Alex will grow to look just like him, although there’s an indefinable remoteness in the son that she can’t find in the old man. Against all the odds, he seems kind. ‘Ah,’ is all he adds, after a good while.
‘I found him, if you’re interested.’
If she’d expected the old man to be surprised and even a little fearful, she was disappointed. ‘Ah,’ he says again. ‘So, Emily’s daughter, tell me about yourself.’
His question catches her off-guard. ‘Why me? Don’t you want to know what happened to the inconvenient kid you dumped?’
‘Alex?’
Kate’s head starts to spin. ‘But I thought –’
‘That I dumped Emily? Dumped the baby?’
‘You were married when you had an affair or a one-night fling or whatever it was with Emily. The boy ended up being adopted and raised on the other side of the world, for god’s sake. What else can I think?’
‘My dear, if I may call you that, how much do you really want to know?’
‘All of it!’
‘It’s not pretty. Not at all pretty.’
‘All of it,’ Kate says vehemently.
The old man is silent for so long Kate worries he’s fallen into a light doze. But his eyes are wide open, his gaze directed through the window to a grove of slumped, drought-stricken paperbarks. Unable to sit still, she pushes back her chair. Wood scraping on wood breaks the afternoon inertia. In the paddock, the cows shuffle towards the shade of the trees, moving through dry grass with a sound like rustling paper. Dead twigs snap underfoot occasionally. The low hum of insects filters into the kitchen.
‘I met Emily on a cruise ship,’ says O’Reilly, his voice so soft, Kate leans closer to hear. ‘To say she was incredibly beautiful is to do her an injustice. She was flawless.’ He takes a sip of tea but the cup is empty. Without a word, Kate refills the kettle. ‘Everyone on board was in love with her but for some reason, she chose me. Yes, I was married. Yes, I had children. I didn’t try to hide the facts. If anything, I tried to use them to make her see the futility of having anything to do with me. But she laughed and said she didn’t care. “Live for the moment,” she said. “Once we hit London, we’ll never see each other again. No harm done, what your wife doesn’t know will never hurt her.” I was flattered, of course. She could have chosen anyone but she wanted me. That laugh, like the warm rich notes of a cello, mocked and dared simultaneously. Cast a dangerous spell. I should have known better, of course. I can’t make any excuses. But imagine how it felt to have a glorious young woman offering you a wild holiday romance, no strings attached? Pure fantasy – at a time when my marriage had fallen into a black hole.’
Kate raises her eyebrows.
‘Yes, yes. Does a more threadbare justification for infidelity exist? But for what it’s worth, I’ll explain. My wife, whose religious devotion prevented her from practising birth control, didn’t want any more children. I was still a young man. Not even thirty years old. If I played by the rules of the church, I was looking at celibacy for the rest of my life. One fling, I told myself, and then I’ll follow the faith. Lunacy, of course.’ The shrill whistle of the kettle interrupts. ‘Something’s broken. You’ve got to turn it off manually. I like the sociable sound of a kettle on the boil so I’ve left it.’
There is a long silence while Kate finds a fresh teabag. She hands the mug to the old man. He sips noiselessly in quick increments, like he’s thirsty or dehydrated from the heat of the day. It takes him a long, long time to pick up his story. ‘For some reason, though, I held back. When I stepped away from the flirtatious orbit of Emily, I understood quite clearly that if I embarked on an affair, I would be betraying every standard I lived by and once I had failed in the first real test of my adulthood, what would be left of the man I thought I was? Once a Catholic, always a Catholic, I suppose.’
‘But nevertheless, you managed to put aside your conscience –’
‘Do you have any idea what it’s like to lose all reason? Any idea at all? Your whole world narrows down to one person. You spend every waking moment thinking about her, reliving the smallest nuances of a word or a gesture when you’re apart, holding them close like a blanket on a freezing night. You read greatness and glory into a condition that’s as old as time, telling yourself this is the love of a lifetime, that it would be pure madness to deny yourself. But it’s not love, is it? Not when it puts the welfare and happiness of others at risk. Forgive me if I use a dreadful line here, but love endures. Mad passion – which is essentially what I felt for Emily – is unsustainable. The ferocity of it also brings about the death of it. When it finally burns out, it’s like waking from a different reality. It’s only then that you realise you have been quite insane. Have you ever felt any of this, Kate?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘Never.’
‘Lucky you. About three weeks into the cruise, when our final destination was as many weeks away, the ship held its traditional fancy-dress ball. It was a crazy night of devils, gorillas, fairies, gnomes, wolves, milkmaids, Mickey Mouses and Cinderellas – god, every cartoon character you’d every heard of – prancing about without restraint, playing the fool. Anonymous and therefore blame free.
‘Emily stepped into a kaleidoscopic ballroom in a cloud of pure white chiffon with two silver sequined wings clipped to her shoulders. The room, raucous and uproarious, fell silent.
Here was an exquisite angel appearing in the midst of bacchanalia. In my demented love-struck state, I read it as a sign from well, if not God, then from the very least, heaven. She was allowed – ordained – to be mine if only for a single night. I stepped up to her with my arm held out and we danced all night.’
‘I’m curious. What were you dressed as?’
O’Reilly makes a choking noise and grimaces. ‘The devil, of course. From this end of my life, it’s hard to remember the relentless self-absorption of the young. How every tiny decision – including choosing a fancy-dress costume from the bowels of a cruise ship – had to have some personal significance to back it up.’
Kate says: ‘Emily probably read it as a sign, too, that you were ready to fall from grace. When I was a child, family life was ruled by omens as banal as the progress of a neighbour’s black cat from one side of the street to the other.’ Outside, the flat, colourless post-midday light is softening. Shadows are growing longer. ‘It was that night, wasn’t it? The beginning of your affair.’
