Candelo (20 page)

To the mountains?

And I would have assumed that my repetition of her words would have indicated my hesitation about this idea. But she did not seem to notice.

She told me she would organise everything.
Of course
.

I asked her if Simon had agreed to come and she admitted she had not yet put the plan to him. But she was sure he would be there.
It's not like he ever has any arrangements
, she said.

I know I have no choice but to agree. If I don't, I will have to hear the disappointment in her voice. I will have to wear the guilt. But I am also aware that there is an unspoken agenda behind Mari's plan.

Mari has always wanted to move out of the city. She wants dogs, a big garden, and sometimes I get the sneaking suspicion she wants my mother all to herself. She has fantasised about living in the mountains for years, but knowing it would be impossible to manoeuvre Vi into doing something she does not want, she has never really taken any serious steps towards proposing the move.

But things are different now.

Vi is ill and Mari has had to take charge.

And I am anxious that she will try to open up the topic, clearing the way to bring me on side so that I can help influence Vi when she puts the proposal to her.

But she doesn't.

She asks me if I have spoken to Simon recently and I tell her that I haven't.

You know he's been taking time off work?

I didn't and I am surprised. Simon never takes holidays. As far as I know, he has never even taken a sick day.

She says he has had three days off in the last week.
He just walks. I don't know where. But he leaves in the morning, doesn't take his car, and doesn't get home until the early evening
.

Is he all light?
There is anxiety in my voice.

I don't think so
, she says.

And there is a moment's silence between us before she speaks again. I can tell she is apprehensive, but being the person she is, she wants to tackle the problem, she doesn't want to stay silent any longer.

Did anything happen?
she asks me.
At the funeral?

I have not shut my front door properly and I can hear Mouse coming down the stairs. His footsteps on the path. Slow and heavy. I look down before he passes. But I am too late. He catches my eye and waves, thinking, as he seems to think these days, that there is now some friendship between us.

No
, I tell her.

She knows I am lying and she sighs in exasperation.

Ursula
, she says.
This is ridiculous. You have no reason not to trust me. If something has happened, and it seems like it has, you should tell me. It's better if we tackle it together, rather than wait for it to burst out and distress your mother. For Christ's sake. I could be a help
.

I do not know what to say.

In the face of her directness, I am left speechless.

I am sorry
, I tell her.
It's not that I don't trust you
.

Well, that's certainly the way it seems
.

I can't tell you
, I say.

And I can't. Worse, the reasons are so complicated that I cannot even attempt to explain them. But I do know that one of the causes of my silence is the fact that I do not want her to have to share my knowledge. I do not want her to have to live with Vi and not know whether Vi knows what I have recently learnt, and, if so, what that means. Or whether she should tell her.

She sighs again in frustration.

Think about it
, she says.
If you change your mind, I am ready to listen
.

I know
, I tell her and I hope she can detect the fact that I am trying from the tone of my voice.

So
, she says.
You will come on Sunday?

And I promise her I will.

Vi always told me that it would be a shame to lose my virginity too young. She told me she disagreed with people who believed there was no significance attached to the occasion.

It's not that I ascribe to any form of puritanical morality
, she would say.
But nor do I believe that sex should be taken lightly
.

She would tell me that I should be certain. I should be sure that it was what I wanted. I should be able to trust without fear.

I was sixteen when she gave me those talks. No doubt the timing was influenced by her work of the moment. She was sitting on a government committee into the rights of the child. They were examining, among other issues, the age of consent.

I would be on my way out and she would suddenly call me back. She would shift her papers to one side, light a cigarette and tell me to sit down. She would lean forward and reach for my hands. I would find it impossible to meet the intensity of her gaze. She would tell me that I shouldn't be afraid of talking to her; if I was confused or unsure, talking could help.

I would look at her as though I didn't understand. Although
I did. Perfectly. And I would tell her I was just going out. With friends. Girlfriends.

I just wanted you to know
, she would say,
that I'm here
.

Sure
, and I would shrug my shoulders, without meeting her gaze.

The talk would be over and she would tell me to have a good time, never knowing that she was too late. Two years too late.

But she was not the only one to whom I lied.

I didn't tell my friends either.

I pretended to be like them, face to face with a hurdle that was soon to be surmounted. And, at sixteen and a half, when I had sex with Matthew Cale in his parents' bedroom, I marked that occasion as the first. He was as inexperienced as I pretended to be, and I doubt whether he ever knew the truth of the matter. I am sure that none of my friends did. They had no reason to suspect.

But that was not how I lost my virginity. When it happened, I was not drunk. I was not at a party, slipping away into another room, pretending to be unaware of the knowing looks that shot backwards and forwards as we closed the door behind us. Confronted with his mother's pear-shaped bed, we fell down on the satin bedspread, fumbling with each other's clothes.

Do you want to?
Matthew had whispered into my ear.

Sure
, I had said, seeing no reason not to, particularly in light of the fact that it was, after all, nothing new.

And, not wanting to remember Mitchell, I came to think of that drunken fumble as the first. Until I found that I had forgotten what had happened two years earlier. And when I
did remember, when it darted, bent low and quick, into my consciousness, I would flinch, pushing it aside as rapidly as it had appeared.

I did not tell Simon what happened by the creek.

Just as I remember walking back from the rocks with Anton and seeing them, Marco and Louise, watching us as we climbed up the cliff path, both of us acting as though nothing had happened, I remember seeing Simon on the verandah, watching us as Mitchell and I came towards him.

We had crossed the paddock without a word, shading our eyes from the glare of the sun, brushing at the flies with the backs of our hands, until we reached the barbed-wire fence.

I could feel the sweat trickling down my back, and my T-shirt clinging to my skin, clammy and warm, as Mitchell lifted the fence to let me through.

I did not look at him and he did not look at me.

You okay?
he asked and it was all he said. The only words spoken in what seemed to be a journey of interminable silence punctuated only by the sound of the gravel beneath our feet, loud in the stillness that surrounded us.

He was on one side of the road and I was on the other. I ached between my thighs, but I did not want to look down, I did not want to see my legs moving as they had always moved, so I looked out, across the sweep of the paddocks gently rising, smooth and dusky, towards the hills.

He lit another cigarette and I heard the strike of the flint. As he tossed the match across the road, we glanced at each other, for just a moment.

The sharpness of his face beneath the high blue sky.

And we walked on in silence.

I do not know whether Mitchell was aware that Simon had sketched him, or whether Simon had tried to capture his profile in secret, furtively, stealing glances as Mitchell slept. The straight line of his nose, the wide mouth, the curve of his cheek, hair like straw hanging into his eyes. All of this.

I had held the drawing in my hands and Simon had snatched it from me.

And when I had looked at my brother's face I had seen shame, and embarrassment.

As we walked back, I, too, felt shame and embarrassment, but for different reasons. I did not want to look at Mitchell. I did not want to see, there, next to me, his face. A face that I, too, had stolen glances at, a face that I had conjured up before I went to sleep, painting in each feature, slowly, carefully.

A face that was now too familiar.

When I look back on that day now, I still feel shame as I remember. Shame that is confused with his death, but shame nonetheless.

The white gate was ahead of us. Hanging from its one hinge, lopsided in the thick grass. The dark cypress trees, the old well, and beyond them the red roof of the house, those colours like beacons in the distance as we made our way slowly along the last stretch of that road, without a word.

Later, when Vi would try to tell me that it would be a pity to lose my virginity too young, I would, for a brief instant, remember that walk. The heat, the stillness and the silence. The vastness around us. The dryness in my mouth, the taste
of having been sick. She would speak and I would want to tell her she was too late. But I would keep my silence.

When I tried to lift the gate, when I tried to pull it up from where it scraped through the grass, cutting ruts into the green, I found I had no strength.

It was Mitchell who had to let us in. It was Mitchell who led the way, across the garden to where Simon waited for us on the verandah steps.

And I followed, head down, three steps behind, to where he sat, there on the top step, knees drawn up near his chest, watching us.

Watching us and saying nothing.

Simon has dark eyes. Dark like mine. Dark like Vi's. Dark like Evie's. But different.

The eyes of an innocent
, Mari has said and not in affection, but usually in annoyance as Simon sits unaware of her frustration with his stillness, confused by her sudden bursts of anger when he has, once again, failed to
pull his weight
.

Where have you been?

It was Mitchell who told him.

We'd been to the creek. Had a swim. The ordinariness of his words hanging in the stillness.

A fly buzzed near my mouth and I brushed it away.

An ant crawled, slowly, up my shin.

You should have told me
, and Simon scratched the side of his arm, awkward, uncertain as to what had happened, unsure as to where he stood.

I tried to look at him. Evie's joke book was open, dog-eared by his side, a glass of water sweating in the heat, a plate
with the remains of a sandwich, all of this, and him.

I looked
. His words were hesitant.
Everywhere
.

And standing out there with the sun beating down on my head, on my shoulders, with that taste in my mouth, and with the ache in my legs, I tried to say I was sorry but I was surprised to find that I had no words. An open mouth and not a thing to say.

So it was Mitchell who apologised. It was Mitchell who told him we had meant to come back earlier. It was Mitchell who said that time had just got away. Slipped away.
You know how it is
.

Reckon
, I said, finally finding a word, any word, a word that was not my word.

Anyway, we're back
, Mitchell said.

We are
, I repeated.

And I bent down to do up my shoelace, to try to find a way of sliding away from the hurt in my brother's eyes, but my fingers didn't seem to work.

I needed to get inside.

I needed to be alone.

I remember.

I let Mitchell keep talking as I pushed my way past Simon, wanting to get into the house, wanting to get into the cool, wanting to be by myself, just for a little while.

And I didn't say anything to him.

I didn't even look at him.

The door swung shut behind me and I left them, Simon and Mitchell, out there on the verandah.