Last Day in the Dynamite Factory (17 page)

‘Vanishing point,' says Roberta. ‘Where parallel lines meet. Just an illusion, of course.'

Harnessed, side by side, but never touching.

He looks about him. The house is cantilevered over a steep gully with spectacular vistas north and east. Burnt orange, green and white furnishings convey a casual, colourful air in an otherwise uninspiring but practical, open-plan living area. ‘You've made this look nice,' he says.

‘Thanks.' She glances about her with a small frown. ‘Unfortunately, the house doesn't work for me. The block's too steep to garden and these ceramic tiles are hard on my foot. Worst of all – the light. Those overhangs keep it cool but dark. I can't paint, except out on the deck and that's tiled too, so I can't stand for long.'

‘Polio still gives you trouble?'

She nods. ‘I need a proper studio and a soft lino floor I can spill paint on.'

‘Still painting?'

‘Oh, yes.'

‘What happened to interior design?'

‘I do that too. Keeps the wolf from the door.'

The whine of a drill interrupts them. Something clatters to the floor and Roberta raises an eyebrow. ‘You wait a week for a tradesman to turn up and when he does he wrecks the place. I'd better check.'

Chris follows her to a bedroom, a dim room made cheerful with white, teal and cherry striped blinds and matching lampshades. Lolling on a chair in the corner is an old brown teddy bear and a smiling rag doll. But it's the painting above them that captures his attention – a woman lying on her stomach with her chin cupped in her hands, smiling. She has the same smile as the woman in his small painting at home.

‘What broke?' Roberta peers up at a workman propped on a ladder beside the window.

‘Nothing. I keep dropping me drill.' He holds a batten to the wall. Screws dangle from his mouth. He presses the drill to the wood.

Chris watches for a moment, then his eyes move to the bed: wide and inviting with a white cover and bright plump cushions. Another bed slides into his mind – an old double creaking thing with a scratched timber-rail bedhead, a sagging mattress and faded quilt … And on the floor beside it, abandoned clothes, shoes and a memory … as clear as …

‘Bugger.' The workman's drill bites into the batten which begins to spin.

‘Can I give you a hand?' Chris offers.

‘No, mate. I'm right, thanks.'

Chris turns his attention to a group of photos on a tallboy. One of Roberta, aged about five or six, her gaze intense even at that age. Another as he remembers her at school in Port Moresby. Long black hair swirling in the wind, she stands astride her bike. ‘Freedom wheels' she called them – her salvation from the limitations of polio.

A mobile phone on the tallboy begins to ring. As the tradie reaches for it he drops his drill again. He clamps the phone to his ear. ‘What? I can't help it; me mouth's full of screws. No, not at the Barker's. In a lady's bedroom. What? No, I can't. Thanks, love. No, not you; her. She's holding me drill.'

Chris and Roberta exchange sniggers. She hands over the drill and she and Chris retreat to the kitchen where she busies herself with bacon, tomatoes, eggs and toast.

‘Can I help?'

‘No, I'm fine thanks. Make yourself comfortable. This won't be long.'

Chris wanders over to her bookshelves. A large folder is lying on the top of a stack of books. He lifts the cover: Bertie's sketches. He takes it to a lounge chair, sits, and begins to flick through. The first dozen or so are of children. Girls – laughing, crying, doubtful, mutinous, happy.

‘Beautiful drawings,' he says.

‘Oh … where did you find that?'

‘On your shelves. Do you mind?'

She shrugs.

Some of the drawings are obviously years old and have yellowed but all are uniquely and lovingly rendered. Near the back of the folder, Chris turns a page and finds himself face to face with … himself. His heart knocks violently. A photo, frayed and faded, is glued to the bottom of a sketch. Him – aged eleven … or maybe twelve years old. He has no memory of it being taken but it was obviously at school – he can see the shelter shed in the background. His eyes stray from the photo to the sketch. Here, he's more like twenty-three. He gazes at it with sad wonder. Not a single picture taken of him in the last twenty-five years – no family snap or studio portrait – has come close to capturing what Bertie has in her simple sketch.

‘Bertie,' he says, his voice shaky.

She turns.

‘There's a photo of me here.'

‘Oh. I … that. Yes, I'd forgotten.'

‘And a sketch. When did you do it?'

‘Oh …' She reddens. ‘Gosh. Don't remember.'

Bullshit.

‘When did you do it?'

‘Well, London, I suppose.'

‘When?'

‘When …? Probably … one of those times you were playing with those bits of wood I gave you.' That too-bright smile again. ‘Shows so much concentration, don't you think?'

Concentration be buggered. Anguish more like it. As if she'd snuck back to the pub after she stood him up and peered through the windows to watch him wait. And wait. And lose hope. Week after week, common sense telling him she wouldn't come back but his heart insisting she would. It's all in the sketch: the slump of his shoulders and the almost prescient sadness in his eyes. Of all the pictures in the book, this is the most melancholy, yet it's the most tender and the most moving, as if his sorrow is hers too.

Or is he being a twit – seeing what he remembers instead of what's there?

‘Breakfast's up,' she says. ‘Come on, let's eat outside.'

He closes the folder and carries a tray of food out to the deck. She gathers up paint-splattered saucers, stacks them on the floor beside her easel and spreads a cloth on the table. ‘See what I mean?'

‘Why do you live here if it doesn't work?'

‘My husband's choice. Come on, tuck in while it's hot.'

‘You married Oliver?'

‘Yes, I married Ollie. But he died ten years ago.'

‘Oh.' Chris puts down his fork. ‘I'm sorry, Bertie. Really.'

‘Losing Ollie was … dreadful.' She smiles briefly at her plate. ‘I married again but it didn't work. Patrick was okay but it was a mistake for both of us. I was lonelier with him than I was on my own. We'd moved here from Sydney for a sea-change but he moved back after three years. No hard feelings. I liked it here, so I stayed.'

‘And now?'

‘Stuart.'

‘Husband number three?'

She smiles. ‘No. We just live together.'

Chris looks around.

‘He'll be out walking,' Bertie says, following his eyes, ‘before it gets too hot. He might be back before you go. I'd like you to meet him – he's a sweetie.'

Chris fixes a smile on his face.

She looks at him thoughtfully. ‘That's the first time you've smiled since we met.'

‘We
met
—' he says, ‘thirty-seven years ago, at school.'

‘I know,' she says softly.

That voice. That's the voice of the Bertie he remembers. Warm and rich, not brittle like it was at the headland.

‘And I did smile in the bedroom just now,' he says. ‘But before that, not since you stood me up in London.' He'd meant to make her smile but she fills her mouth with food and studies the view. ‘Why?'

Her eyes mist. ‘I've forgotten.'

‘No, you haven't.'

‘More coffee?'

‘No, thanks.' He mops the remains of his meal with toast, trying to think of something to say to get past her reserve. They used to be such good friends, so easy with each other, talking or not.

‘Do you have kids?' he asks.

She nods. ‘Lily – she's nearly twenty-three. My other daughter, Stephie, died when she was seven.'

Chris's heart stalls.

‘Leukaemia.'

‘God almighty. I … I'm
so
sorry.'

‘Yeah.' Her eyes drift. ‘But you know, I don't feel like she's
really
gone. Sometimes I feel her so close, and somehow we seem to go on communicating.'

‘Stefi,' Chris murmurs. ‘You named her after your friend at school?'

‘Sort of. My daughter was Stephanie, but yes, I had Stefi in mind.'

‘What happened to Stefi – do still you keep in touch?'

‘Oh, yes, and she's still my best friend, but she lives in Sydney so I don't see her as much as I'd like. But you. Tell me about your family, Chris. Do you have children?'

‘Two.'

‘Wife?'

‘I married Diane.'

Bertie makes an odd sound, as if she's been winded. She picks up her coffee and gulps it. ‘Of course … I should have guessed.'

‘Why should you?'

‘You were always … Diane's Christopher.'

‘What? No!'

‘Yes; at school.'

‘No, Bertie.' I was your Christopher in London, he wants to say, but she waves her hand and smiles crisply.

‘Anyway, how is Diane?'

‘Fine, she's … fine.'

‘And your children – how old are they?'

The conversation feels like a brakeless rush down a mountainside. ‘Archie's twenty. Phoebe's just turned twenty-four.'

‘And, they're – what – studying? Working?'

‘Phoebe's just finished her Masters in Architecture.'

‘Oh, really? How wonderful! A chip off the old block; you must be proud.' Bertie attacks a piece of toast with her knife. ‘I'm proud too. I'm soon to be a grandma.'

‘Blimey.'

‘Lily and John are having their baby in August.'

‘Heck,' says Chris. ‘Doesn't it make you feel old?'

‘No – I'm thrilled.'

He dabs his forehead with a paper serviette. ‘Congratulations. Diane hankers after grandkids too.'

‘You don't?'

‘I'm in no hurry. I have enough going on at the moment.'

‘Work?'

He nods. ‘My friend Judge and I have an architectural practice in Brisbane. You didn't meet Judge in London, did you?' He knows she didn't. It was only ever them. He still remembers the day they met; an icy cold morning that sent him hunting for hot coffee in a crowded bar. He slid into a booth and found himself staring into a pair of deep blue eyes – eyes he hadn't seen since he was twelve.

‘Shit,' he said. ‘It's you.'

‘Me, yes. Shit, no.'

Half an hour was over in a heartbeat. Bertie had blossomed into a fully realised version of the feisty, independent kid she'd been at school. Afterwards all he could remember of their conversation was that she worked in Cambridge with a firm of interior designers and lived with Oliver.

‘Next Friday?' he said, when they stood to go. She looked at him for a long moment and then nodded. As she walked to the door he saw she still wore a boot – the legacy of polio – but had lost the chip that used to go with it.

‘No,' says Bertie. ‘I never met Judge.'

Silence gathers.

‘Chris …'

He glances at his watch. ‘Yes. I'd better let you get on. Is your art class at a school?'

‘No, I teach adults. Special needs, retirees, rehab patients, prisoners, smart Noosa ladies. Today, it's parolees.'

‘Good grief. What do parolees paint?'

‘The walls of their cells. What do you think, Chris?'

‘Sorry.' He stacks the dishes. ‘Not thinking well. Thanks for breakfast, and for arranging such a beautiful sunrise.'

‘My dad and I used to watch sunrises together. Sunrises and the sea make me feel everything will be okay, even when it isn't.' She stands up and stretches. ‘Look at that ocean. Lucky you – all day to swim. Where's your favourite spot?'

‘I, ah, I don't swim.'

‘You –
what
?'

‘I never learned.'

‘Chris! All that time in Port Moresby when we were kids and you didn't swim? No wonder I never saw you at Ela Beach.'

He picks up the tray of dishes and carries it to the kitchen.

‘You're missing one of life's great joys,' she says.

‘More than one.'

She walks with him to the door and looks into his eyes with such tenderness his skin prickles. At school they were nearly the same height but she never grew to be as tall as he expected.

‘Where's your sparkle gone, Chris?'

‘What sparkle?'

‘You used to have sparkle. At school. In London. It's gone.'

The wind blows the newspaper every which way, driving him from the balcony. In the mirror on the living-room wall he catches sight of his reflection. She's right. Solemn. No sparkle. Bertie has, though, in spite of her tragedies. Twice married, widowed, divorced, living with another man. Two kids, one dead, the other with a baby on the way. A roller-coaster of a life compared with his and Diane's.

Theirs is a quiet life; a decent life. Not what he'd imagined, but …