Candelo (14 page)

He still wouldn't look at me.

Do you ever think about him much? Mitchell?
and he said his name hesitantly, wanting to say it out loud, but unsure, still scared of the effect it would have.

I told him I did.
Quite a bit. Lately
.

My coffee was cold. Weak and milky. I pushed it away.

You can't feel bad about it all
, I said, wanting to reassure him.
It was just one of those things
, and I was staring at the ceiling, remembering, imagining, seeing it again: the road, the night, Mitchell.

It was the police who decided what happened
, I told him.
Not us. You can't feel guilty
.

I hadn't been there, but I could see it as though I had.

There was a ring of Coke on the table, circling the base of his glass. Black and sticky. Ants. This is what happens when it rains. Thousands of them.

We don't have to go
, I said and I wanted him to listen to me. I wanted him to hear me.
You know that, don't you? In fact, it would be better if we didn't. They won't want to see us. There's no reason for us to be there
, and I was leaning forward again, trying to make him look at me.

He did.

You're still coming?

I sat back. There was no point.

Yes
, I promised.

And he looked relieved.
I just don't want to be alone
, and he scratched the back of his hand nervously.
It's just
, and he shook his head as he looked away, not wanting to go on.

It's just what?
I asked.

He took the last bite of his sandwich and moved his chair back.

Nothing
, and he heaved himself up.
I've got to go
.

And knowing that any attempt to make him talk was useless, I told him I'd walk with him.

When I remember Simon at Candelo, I see him sitting on the verandah with Evie. It is early morning and they are side by side, hip to hip, on the top step. In the sunlight, Simon's hair is blond and his skin is the colour of gold. They each have a bowl of cereal balanced on their lap, soggy with milk, and a glass of juice on the step below them. When Simon takes a spoonful, Evie takes a spoonful, when Simon reaches for his glass, Evie reaches for her glass, when Simon shades his eyes from the sun, Evie shades hers as well, copying each of his movements faithfully.

She reads him jokes from her book, halting over each difficult word.

Why did the tomato blush?

Simon looks suitably perplexed.

Because he saw the salad dressing
, and Evie slaps her thigh and laughs uproariously although I am sure she would have had no idea what it meant.

After the fifth joke, I would have told her to shut up.

But Simon doesn't.

He listens until she has had enough.

I see him as he finally gets up and stretches, tall and slim in the clear morning light. Stretching each limb with a grace and lack of self-consciousness that I now find hard to imagine.

Evie does the same.

Simon takes three steps down towards the garden and Evie follows. But when he steps out into the long thick grass, she stops.

It is the snake.

She does not want to go beyond the safety of those stairs. She does not want to move.

Wait
, she calls after him and he does.

He turns back towards her. He holds his arms out but she does not follow, although I can see that she wants to, more than anything.

It takes him a few moments before he realises what she is frightened of, and he comes back through the grass, shouting loudly, stomping a flattened path, dark and sparkling with dew.

This is what you do
, he tells her and he picks her up so that she is perched high on his shoulders.
You make a lot of noise and you make a path
.

She screams wildly in unison with his shouts, waving her arms in the air as they make their way from one end of the garden to the other.

But when he puts her back down, safe on the stairs, it is clear that she is still worried.

What about tomorrow?
she asks.
And the next day?

He sits next to her. And I hear him as he promises they will do it again. Each morning. They will do it together.

Promise?
she asks.

Promise
, he says.

I didn't really expect Vi to agree. I didn't expect Simon to come out of the house, the keys glinting in the sun, as he held them up high for us to see.

But he did.

I was sitting on the verandah wall, side by side with Mitchell, learning the art of the perfect smoke ring, practising while we waited for Simon. With his mouth like a fish, Mitchell let each ring form, floating off, invisible in the glare of the day, before passing the cigarette over to me. And with my head arched back, and all my concentration focused on showing him that when it came to smoke rings, I was no fool, I did not hear Simon until he was there, right behind me, the keys held high in one hand.

Got 'em
, he told us, and then, seeing me, he looked confused.

I put the cigarette out, hastily stubbing it against the bricks, the tip ground down to grey ash.

You don't smoke
, he said.

She's learning
, and with his head thrown back and one leg stretched out in front of him, Mitchell imitated me, mercilessly.

I punched him, hard, on the arm.

And he grinned at me.

So, are we going?
Simon asked, ignoring us both.

You bet
, and Mitchell leapt down onto the grass below, seizing the keys from Simon's hand.

I did not think that Simon would leave me behind. It was not what I would have expected from him, but when I came
out with my swimmers in one hand and saw them both laughing, secret jokes on the verandah, I knew they didn't want me with them.

We won't be long
, Simon promised and I could see he felt guilty. I could see he was torn, but Mitchell was already starting the engine, and with one foot in, one foot out, Simon was telling me that next time I could go with them; that they wanted to surf, I would be bored, they'd be back in an hour or so, the car door finally slamming shut on his words.

I watched as Mitchell backed away from the house and then, hitting the dirt road, stalled. He turned the ignition again, revving the engine.
Warming it up
, he shouted back to me, his words carrying to where I stood. I could not see him but I could imagine his wink, as, with one last rev, he eventually drove off, disappearing down the dip in the road.

And sitting on that verandah, I felt bored and alone.

Go for a walk
, Vi said when I told her I had nothing to do.
Take Evie with you
. My mother always found boredom incomprehensible. It is a luxury that she used to say she longed for, although I doubt whether she ever meant it.

I was sitting on the edge of her bed watching her type. Her ashtray was full and the floor was already covered with papers and books.

Can't you come?
I asked her.

She butted out another cigarette and finished her sentence, her thin fingers rapid on the keys. Carriage return. Pause.

And she looked up at me, unsure as to what I had said.

I repeated my question.

She was staring into the distance, thinking of her next
paragraph, working it out, her brow furrowed in concentration.

Half an hour
, she told me and she began typing again, furiously, not looking up as I sighed, heavily. Not looking up as I closed the door to her room with what I hoped was a pointed slam.

I knew what half an hour meant. Two hours. Maybe three.

Evie was asleep. Curled up at the bottom of a cupboard, surrounded by old games – Chinese checkers, ludo, cards, faded cardboard that had curled and browned at the edges scattered around her. I did not wake her. I hadn't really wanted her company anyway.

And walking out along the dirt road, I wondered how much of this holiday I would have to spend alone.

It was hot. Hot and still, and beneath my feet the gravel crunched with each step, stones flicking up behind me and hitting the backs of my legs. If I paused for even a moment, the flies were thick. Black and ugly, swarming across my arms and in my eyes.

When I left the road, I didn't really know where I was heading. I just walked towards the line of willows in the distance, a ribbon of dusty green against the faded hills that swelled behind them. I cut through a paddock, lifting up the barbed-wire fence with one hand while I swung my legs through the gap. The ground was uneven and dry, pocked with crusty cow pats. From a distance these paddocks looked like velvet, but close the grass was like straw, sharp against my ankles.

I hadn't expected to end up at the creek. I had just walked with my head down, carefully watching each step, so that I heard it before I saw it. The water trickling over rocks and
the gentle brush of the sagging willow branches across the surface of the stream that wound its way through the sandy banks on either side.

The water was shallow. From where I stood I could see the bottom, smooth pebbles dappled with light.

I looked around quickly before taking my shorts and T-shirt off and stepping slowly out to the middle, the deepest point reaching my waist.

Lying back with my head against one of the rocks, I let the water wash over me. Above, the sky was brilliant blue, spliced into diamonds by the drooping branches of the trees. And as I stared up, high up, I found that I was thinking of Mitchell. With the warmth of the sun on the tops of my legs and the cool water rushing underneath me, I could see him, sitting next to me on the verandah wall, his thigh resting against mine. Dark-brown eyes staring out from the shaggy fringe of blond hair. Square-tipped fingers and the flick of his cigarette out across the verandah. Smooth tanned skin, the straight flat line of his stomach.

And slowly I let myself sink down, deep down, my hair cool and wet down my back.

Coming up for air.

Before sinking down again.

Down to where it was cool and quiet.

And I imagined.

All of it.

With the slow swoop of the branches overhead.

Backwards and forwards.

Skimming the surface of the creek.

There was a time, before Evie was born, when I was obsessed with quantifying Vi's love for us.

Who do you love best?
I would ask her, over and over again.

When she would tell me that she loved us equally, I would become all the more insistent.

But you must love one of us more
, I would say, determined to push her towards the answer that I feared, determined to make her say that it was Simon, Simon who was loved best, Simon who was the favourite.

Sitting under her desk, I used to take out the photo albums and look back over a past that had little meaning for me, despite the fact that it was my past. Faded black and white prints of Vi and Bernard on their wedding day, Vi awkward in a white hat with feathers, gloves and a tiny handbag. Bernard with his arm around her, smiling with the full force of his charm into the camera. Their first house together, picnics on the headland, Vi lying back on a rug, Bernard feeding her strawberries. I would turn the pages rapidly, the
tissue thin and dry between my fingers, until I came to the ones I wanted.

The baby photos.

Pages and pages of Simon.

Two of me.

See
, I would tell her, crawling out from where I had been sitting, tugging at her hand so that she would be forced to stop typing.

She would look down momentarily, uncertain as to what it was that I was showing her, and then turn back to what she was doing. But it wouldn't stop me. I would count them out for her: twenty-eight pictures of Simon, five of me.

When she finally realised that I wasn't going to let it go, she would sit me down and tell me about first and second children, her voice patient and well modulated. A voice she might have learnt from a family therapy book.
It's not that we loved you less
, she would explain.
But when you were born, Simon was only two and we just didn't have the time
.