Candelo (23 page)

Vi is fierce in her condemnation of Bernard's betrayal of her, and of us.

Never rely on your father for anything
, she used to warn us.
I have certainly learnt not to
.

I have never asked my father why he left. I have always just accepted the version of events that we came to understand from Vi. My father was and is a man who constantly runs off with new women. He is a man of little moral fibre. He is a man who betrays. This is how Vi describes him and this is the filter through which I see him. But it does not mean I do not love him. It does not mean there is no other side.

I am heading up the path on my way out to meet a friend for breakfast and thinking about how Vi would define my betrayal, if I ever told her about it, when I walk straight into a removalist.

He asks me if I am Louise and I tell him I am not. She lives in the upstairs flat at the bottom of the stairs.

Are they moving?
I ask.

He tells me they are. In a couple of weeks. He is coming to give a quote.
Hell of a job
, he says, and he shakes his head as he looks back up to the street and then down to where the stairs are now almost completely overgrown.

Where to?
I ask him.

Interstate
, he says.
Company job. Transfer
.

Louise's work, no doubt. The organisation she works for is a national one.

I watch him make his way down the path, and I wonder what it will be like to live here without them and without Marco, without all the betrayals that linked us together, and all the justifications we invented to prop them up.

It is hard to imagine.

And I am surprised that the relief I feel at their departure is tempered by a sadness.

An unexpected emptiness, that I cannot quite explain.

Simon saw what we had done as a betrayal. But it was, perhaps, Mitchell who had hurt him the most. It was Mitchell to whom he had turned for an explanation, Mitchell who was left to do the talking, while I made my way slowly down the long corridor to the bathroom.

We must be careful with water
, Vi had warned us when we arrived.
Quick showers
, knowing how Simon and I liked to stand under for hours.

The bath was old, the enamel chipped and stained.

The steam rose, cloudy and sweet with Vi's salts, half the container. Leaves stuck to my stomach, a smear of mud down my thigh, and the beginning of a bruise inside my leg. Mauve,
yellow; I traced its outline with the tip of my finger.

And as I lowered myself into the water, I closed my eyes, wanting to block out everything but the sense of being submerged, safe, alone.

In the heat of the afternoon, Evie set up shop. Games, fruit, biscuits, cups and saucers, carried out one by one and displayed along the verandah wall; the prices that Simon had drawn up for her, 5c, 2c, 10c, propped up next to each item.

The clatter of her feet down the hall. Calling out my name:
Ursula, Ursula, come to my shop. Come and buy something
.

Sinking myself further into the water, trying not to hear.

There at Vi's door.

My mother looking up from her typewriter and telling Evie she would come out soon. Very soon.

And in the dim of that bathroom, the steam slowly dissipated until I could see the sharp outlines of my knees, my hands, and, not liking what I saw, I turned on the hot, again and again. Letting it run until the water flowed over the edge of the tub, carrying the soap with it, spilling onto the floor, seeping out under the door, until Vi was there, demanding to know what on earth I was doing.

Nothing
, I said, not looking at her.

You're wrinkled like a prune
.

And the plumbing groaned as she turned the tap off, and groaned again as I turned it straight back on.

For God's sake
, and she plunged her hand in, pulling out the plug before I could stop her.
What is wrong with you?

I told her I didn't feel well.

She told me not to be so silly.

I shivered as I sat in the now empty tub and she passed me a towel.
Get some clothes on and go and dry your hair in the sun
.

I heard the door slam shut behind her. I heard the silence. And then I heard the sound of her typewriter.

It was the quiet outside that made me go out there.

The front door wide open, the afternoon light slanting in, a honey gold on the walls of that corridor, on the worn carpet and on the dark boards beneath.

It would have been a beautiful garden once. It still was, but overgrown and wild. What had once been a circular drive was now covered with grass. What had once been a well was choked with weeds. And I stood on that verandah and looked out past the cypress trees to where the hills shone, soft and warm under the cloudless sky.

A slight breeze lifted the first of Evie's cardboard signs, black texta on white cardboard. It floated off the verandah and out across the grass, to where it finally rested underneath a twisted lemon tree. I followed the next one, walking barefoot through the garden, as each of her price tags drifted past me, picking them up as I went, 10c, 5c, 2c bundled together in my hand.

No one in sight.

And I looked back at the house, at the strange pile of items on the verandah, at Simon's plate, his sketchbook, at Mitchell's sandshoes, and at my own sandshoes leaning up against his.

In that quiet, the house could have been deserted again. It could have been empty, the way it was when we arrived, the way it would be when we left, and as I made my way back across the garden, one eye on the ground watching for snakes,
I wondered where they had gone. Because I wanted to see him. Mitchell. I wanted to see him and I didn't want to see him. I wanted to know that everything was all right, that there by the river he had loved me and I had loved him, and that it was beautiful. The way it was in stories. The way I was trying to believe that it had happened.

But they were nowhere in sight.

And as I stood there on the top step and looked back behind me one more time, I saw what I had somehow failed to see only a few moments earlier. The car had gone. The grass flattened, yellowing, in the place where it had been parked.

I called out to Vi as I slammed the door shut behind me.

She did not answer.

I could hear her radio as I pushed her door open.

Where are they?
I asked.

She did not look up.

Where have they gone?

She was not listening.

With the volume up, with her cigarette in one hand and her gaze turned towards the page in front of her, she had not heard a word I'd said.

But I was insistent.
Have they gone to the beach?
my voice determined as I waited for an answer.

She did not know what I was talking about.

They've taken the car
.

And she took off her glasses and put them down on the table next to her, looking at me for the first time.

Of course they haven't
, and as she folded her arms, I could see that she was exasperated, that she didn't know what had
got into me
. She turned back to her work and was about to start typing, her fingers poised over the keys, but I stopped her. I took her by the hand and pulled her up after me, tiny without her heels, no taller than I was, and I made her follow me, back up that corridor and out onto the verandah to see. For herself.

It had gone.

And they had gone with it.

With Evie?
she asked me.

I told her I didn't know.

She was furious.

Those fucking idiots
.

I turned to her in surprise.

Jesus
, and she stamped her foot in anger.
I don't know what to do
, the frustration marked on her face.

I looked out to where the road wound its way back towards the town. I looked at her.
We wait, I suppose
.

And that is what we did.

Simon wanted to buy flowers.

We were almost there. On the outskirts of the city where the houses sprawl one after the other, front yards still parched from the summer, cars parked out the front with ‘For Sale' signs taped to their windows, garbage cans left out in the gutters from the collection that morning.

I thought we were running late.

Simon checked his watch. There was, he said, just enough time.

We stopped at a corner store, buckets of wilted daisies and roses lined up next to newspaper banners behind wire. I watched as Simon chose the ones he wanted, hesitating as he picked out one bunch and then another.

I think you're meant to send them to the funeral home or something. Not take them with you
.

Simon looked anxiously at the flowers in my lap. The paper in which they were wrapped was covered with faded pictures
of balloons, pale reds, yellows and greens dancing across a dirty-blue background.

Maybe it's okay
, I tried to reassure him. But I didn't really know.

The only funeral I had ever been to was Evie's.

Simon turned the key in the ignition and pulled out slowly, the steering groaning as he tried to turn back to the road we had been on. I held onto the dashboard and closed my eyes. On my lap, the roses were squashed tight together so that the petals appeared closer, the buds younger than they really were. I could feel the thorns through the paper and I put them down on the floor.

There had been roses in Evie's coffin. White ones. I opened the car window wide and stuck my head out, wanting to feel the freshness of the air, as I remembered peering into the casket, wanting to look, but not wanting to.

With the make-up thick on her face and her hair brushed back, she had seemed like a doll. China-pink cheeks. Rose-red lips. And as Vi had leant forward to kiss her, the shroud had slipped slightly and I had seen, for one moment, the white of her feet.

I should have cut her nails. Vi had asked me to, the night before the accident, and I hadn't. She had squirmed out of my grasp in the bath and I had let her go, running up the hall towards Simon, naked and dripping wet.
In the raw
.

Evie was cremated.

Mitchell was going to be buried.

The cemetery stretched across block after block. It was a suburb in itself, with small paths dividing it up, crisscrossing
the miles of flat neat land, each one named and marked on the map at the entrance.

Do you know where to go?
I asked Simon.

He shook his head.

We sat in the car feeling foolish.

What do we do?
I looked at him.

He told me he didn't know.

With the engine idling, we watched as a procession of mourners followed a long, black hearse towards the southern end of the cemetery. Just as I was about to suggest that we go and ask, Simon turned the car in their direction and we moved into the end of the file.

The car park was only a couple of yards from the grave, and as we pulled up next to a dusty red Commodore, I could see that there was no way I was going to be able to stay hidden, sunk low in the passenger seat, until the service was over.

Are you coming?
Simon tried to tuck his shirt into his too tight jeans. He brushed his hair back from his face.

This was not what I had wanted.

I could feel a tiny trickle of sweat sliding down my back. My mouth was dry, and my hands unsteady as I tried to undo my seat belt.

As I got out of the car, he offered me a cigarette. I took it and held it unlit between my thumb and forefinger.

They were standing under a gum tree. A small group of mourners, clustered around an open grave. No faces that I knew. No faces that knew us. And as I took my place next to Simon, behind the others, I could smell the freshness of the dirt, rich brown, darker than the dirt beneath my feet, pungent and sweet.

I do not remember what the priest said. With my eyes on the ground, his words floated over me, phrases drifting high into the flat grey of the sky; a strange, disjointed homily.
A troubled life. Peace at last
. Each time I tried to grasp a word, to cling onto the phrase to which it belonged, I would feel it slipping away, sliding like water between my fingers.

This was it.

This was what his life had come to.

This was what I was trying to grasp, my eyes fixed on the ground, but it was not him I was thinking of. It was Evie I kept seeing. Evie on the verandah at Candelo. Evie in that coffin.

I looked down at my hands, one clasping the wrist of the other.

White knuckles.

And as the breeze lifted, a pile of leaves whirled at my feet, dust and grit flying high and falling in one brief moment. There was dirt in my eye and I rubbed at it furiously.

Kerry will now say a few words
.

I looked up, my eye still red and sore, as the priest moved aside and a woman of about forty-five took his place. Small and thin with sandy blonde hair, dyed and teased back from a tight drawn face.

And I listened as she spoke, her voice wavering as she said that she knew he had been trouble, but she had still loved him and she was sorry, so sorry, that it had come to this.
Oh, Jesus
, and she blew her nose.
He was my brother, the only family I had, and I will miss him
.