Starlight Peninsula (6 page)

‘Well, he’s interested in you.’ Carina looked up at the windows of the stucco house. ‘Do you mind being here by yourself?’

‘It’s intense. I like it.’

‘Is there anyone living in that house?’

‘No, that’s the one that was raided.’

Carina ground her cigarette butt on the deck rail. ‘I thought so. But I saw someone upstairs.’

Eloise looked uneasily at the blank windows. It was a still night with a clear sky. Out by the dog park the trees were humped black shapes; beyond them the city lights sent up a white glow. The air smelled of smoke. Below the gardens the slow tide was creeping through the mangroves, over mud and roots and crab holes. She heard the harsh, chilling cry of a possum in the flax.

‘I had a dream about Andrew Newgate. The killer, as Mum would call him.’

She heard restraint in Carina’s reply. ‘It must have been interesting, meeting Newgate.’

‘He was very pleasant.’

‘Oh, well, good.’

‘So what are you saying, you agree with Mum he’s guilty?’

‘Well, I hardly ever agree with Mum, but …’

‘He seemed ordinary. Boring even.’ Eloise frowned.

Carina flicked her dead cigarette off the deck. ‘Well, trust your instincts. You’ve always been observant.’

Eloise looked at her in silence.

Carina put on her coat. ‘It’s late. I’d better get home.’

Eloise looked over at the stucco house. The night air seemed close, something electric in it. Sudden memory: a wooden staircase, warm rain outside, a view through a window of the garden, green underwater light. The door of the flat standing open, a footprint on the doormat, something spilled and trampled back over the threshold …

She helped carry the little girl to the car. The dog climbed into the front passenger seat, where he sat staring solemnly ahead.

Carina said, ‘You want me to lend you Silvio? He’s an excellent guard dog.’

‘No thanks. He’s sweet but he stinks.’

Eloise went from room to room, locking doors and windows, which made her uneasy. She drew down the sitting room blinds, but once she’d shut out the view she felt as if she were trapped in a large, silent white box. She listened to her own breathing, the loud clink of her glass on the coffee table. How could she keep watch if the blinds were lowered? She pulled them up and faced the black windows.

Out there, beyond the glass, the night had a glossy sheen.

At the computer, finishing off the wine and roaming through cyberspace, she searched aimlessly, not knowing what it was she wanted.

What is the question? What is the thing I look for and can’t find?

She tipped back her glass, but the wine wasn’t doing its job. She peered at the bottle. What was this toy drink? Some lite or diet brand brought over by Carina? Sober, alert to every sound, she drank, and felt no warmth.

Only something tipping her sideways, out into the night.

The possum sent out its eerie cry as it crashed around in the undergrowth, making the flax spears clatter. Smoky air mixed with the stench off the estuarine flats, and the stream banks were alive with clicks and splashes, the plop of a rat hitting the water, the running of the tide in the channel.

She hesitated at the edge of the dark. The keys were in her pocket. She’d pulled the back door closed, but not deadlocked it, and in her hurry she’d come out with no jacket, her shirt half-unbuttoned. She crossed the path, entered Nick’s garden and saw him standing in his lighted front room.

Eloise buttoned her shirt by feel in the dark. Combed her hair with her fingers. It was like being in the wings, about to step onto a lit stage to deliver lines that seemed unreal, unconvincing, and painfully important. Changed my mind. Brandy after all. Why not.

Nick was leaning on the glass ranch slider, his arms folded. He changed position, looked up at the ceiling, lifted his elbow and rolled his arm around in its socket. He gestured with his hand, looking into the room. It looked, oddly, as if he were speaking to someone.

Eloise stepped back into the shadows. Beyond the flax the moon had risen, and the estuary glittered. A cricket cheeped in the long grass.

Was she, after all, despite the fake wine, very drunk indeed? When she closed her eyes, the light off the water superimposed itself on her lids. Tiny sparks exploded and scattered outwards and she registered the suggestion or rumour of one of her migraine attacks.

The night and the dark were entering her mind. When she blinked, emerald sparks flew out of her eyes and up into the black sky, mingling with the stars. The warning of migraine made her feel as if she were some tiny creature, hunched down under a vast, threatening sky. She wanted to be touched, held.

But there was a man in the room with Nick.

He was wearing black. He was tall, with a hawkish face and thick
black hair. She saw his long wrists and bony fingers, the jacket sleeve riding up as he leaned against the glass. The back of his hand. She stared, light flowed around him as if his fingers were on fire. He was talking. Nick listened to the man, shook his head and made a quelling gesture, palm down. His manner was different, he was at ease; he looked handsome, alien and tough.

The visitor was so unexpected, she couldn’t think what to do next. Her eyes throbbed, a stab of pain. She saw a waterfall of light at the edge of her vision and a trickle of nausea made her mouth dry. In the grass the cricket relentlessly sang. She blundered back across the lawn and up the path. She would go to bed, sleep it off.

But her back door was standing open.

Ahead of her was the boxed air of the hallway, with its bright, forensic stillness; behind her the peninsula was alive. The wind rustled the flax spears, clouds crossed the moon, striping the grass and casting patches of blackness that could be shadows or the holes opening in her vision. Moonlight on the mangroves, on the tidal basin, a big patch of sky near the moon that was clear and full of stars. She faced the hallway again and the stars had lodged in her eyes, their silver glare obscuring something dark that moved beyond the brightness.

Had someone crossed the doorway at the end of the hall?

Her phone was lying on the small table inside. She listened, then ran into the hall, grabbing for the phone and sending it flying off the table. She scrabbled for it on the floor and seemed only to be chasing it with the clumsy tips of her fingers. There was a sound somewhere in the house, and she went still, crouched on the floor. Her fingers closed around the phone. She straightened up and walked to the door, pulling it closed it behind her. Then she was away up the path, not looking behind.

From the pub at the top of the peninsula, she rang her sister.

She lay in Carina’s spare room in a bed that smelled of dog, with a flannel over her eyes. Scattered on the table beside her was a collection of pills mined from Carina’s bathroom cupboard. At intervals she would moan, and reach blindly up, and shakily crack the seal on another foil tray. Pain made tiny, evil seams of light that pulsed in her brain. Pain was a network of lines in the darkness, as fine and bright as a spider’s web.

Dr Klaudia Dvorak’s office was the back room of an elegant old Herne Bay shop, its French doors open to the garden. A grey-haired woman gardener tended the flowerbeds on the lawn outside.

Eloise listened.

‘I have always had a special interest in violence,’ Klaudia was saying.

The Nazis, Eloise thought.

‘This started because of the war, the role of previous generations of my family in …’

Genocide, thought Eloise dreamily, watching the old woman cross the lawn, knocking earth out of a plant pot with a trowel. The tapping of the trowel against the clay pot, the drone of a car in the distance.

‘I was thinking more of my mother,’ Eloise said.

Klaudia smiled. ‘Ah. Your mother, yes. She worked in your father’s business, you said, now retired?’

Eloise leaned forward. ‘That’s right. My father is an architect. My mother was his assistant. She didn’t go to university actually, but she reads a lot. By war, I meant domestic warfare. All the aggression under the surface. Isn’t life hard enough without it? It’s all so …’

‘So …?’

‘It’s all so
unnecessary
.’

‘We humans are not famous for being rational,’ Klaudia said.

‘The things she comes out with, bearing in mind my husband’s just had an affair and left me: “The poor mayor, his life’s so stressful he needed to have an affair just to get through the day.” It implies men are justified in having affairs, which implies Sean’s affair was justified. Maybe I wasn’t giving Sean enough. It fits with her new line that she accepted our father’s affairs, because she was a “realist”, when the truth is she was furious about his affairs. She attacks and plays the submissive wife in one breath.’

‘Very subtle.’

‘What we’re all supposed to know about her is that she’s not subtle, she’s an open book. An honest Mancunian. She’s unable to tell a lie. She’s so simple and innocent, she just comes out with things, inadvertently. It’s always, Ooh, what did I do? Did I say something wrong? I’m an open book, me.’

‘Hmm. It’s called plausible deniability.’

‘She’s so “honest” she “can’t stop herself” telling my niece about my sister’s wild youth, even though my sister’s asked her not to. My sister’s paranoid her daughter will get into trouble, because she knows how damaging it was to her. And our mother, she wants to
regale
the kid with that stuff. She used to encourage Carina to rebel at school, too. It was always, Did the teachers really say that to you? That’s bad. They’re right fascists. And then she’d tell everyone how badly behaved Carina
was. Carina still gets our mother’s old friends coming up to her, saying, Is your daughter as difficult a girl as you were?’

Eloise pressed on, feeling how absurd it was to be talking like this about her mother —
at her age
.

‘The Sean situation. My mother seemed sympathetic at first, but she started to introduce a line about how I had to accept that men have affairs. She told me about men she knew who’d gone off with younger women and never come back. She talked about ageing, wear and tear, how time ruins us. She said my husband’s new girlfriend must “give off a strong charge”, whatever that means. I started to think it was a trip for her, that I was in the down position.’

Klaudia nodded, making notes.

‘I’m here because it’s all got too much. I told you about Arthur. He died. Then I married Sean, then he left, and just after that happened I had to confront the fact that my mother wasn’t supportive. The marriage was my safe haven and when it was gone I had no base, no defence.’

Eloise paused. Klaudia would now say,
Come now, this is paranoia, hysteria. Your mother cares for you deeply.

‘Sometimes I think she really dislikes me.’

She waited to be corrected.

‘Sure,’ Klaudia said briskly. ‘From what I’m hearing, we’re talking at least ambivalence.’

Eloise blinked. ‘Ambivalence?’

‘It’s family dynamics. Jealousy. Competitiveness. Perhaps she is narcissistic. Were you your father’s favourite child? Or perhaps your sister was?’

‘Ambivalence?’

‘Let’s call a spade a spade.’

‘So, I should go away feeling even worse than I felt when I came in? I thought this was supposed to make me feel better. Now you want to tell me I’m not imagining it, she really
does
dislike me?’

‘Possibly. But at the end of the day, it’s her shit not yours.’ Klaudia’s tone softened. ‘Somewhere deep down, she probably knows she messed up. So. I want you to learn to have empathy for the child you once were.’

‘Christ.’

‘I am German, so I am blunt. Excuse me. You tell me about walking all day. I think you have been walking away for a very long time.’

‘I met a man who told me I should confront things. We were a bit drunk at the time, or I was. I’m drinking rather a lot, by the way.’

Klaudia laid down her pen. ‘Okay, sure. We’ll come to that. But perhaps the walking is a metaphor for escape. You have reinvented yourself in order to escape bad things that have happened in the past. There was the mother who was clearly ambivalent. The partner who so sadly died. You reinvented yourself to escape these blows, and now, with this fresh situation, you feel the old terrors are jumping out at you all at once.’

‘Well, it’s been bleak …’

‘You need to look back and find some empathy for that unloved child …’

Eloise pinched the bridge of her nose with two fingers. ‘I’m starting  to feel like I need a drink.’

‘Ah yes. Drink. How many units a day, please, and what time do you start? In the morning?’

‘Never until the sun’s over the yardarm.’

Out there in the bright garden the old woman was using a hose, the water spooling out in beads of silver. A sudden gust flipped the leaves of the flax, making the spears shine. Eloise was surrounded by light and silence.

‘It’s a beautiful garden.’

‘Yes.’

‘Perhaps my mother doesn’t mean any harm. Perhaps she’s just a simple, honest person who blunders, tactlessly says the wrong thing.’

‘You say she’s interested in literature. She understands fiction — character, motivation, subtleties. If she understands these things, how can she be so simple?’

‘Maybe she’s like one of those mathemeticians who’s a genius at maths but simple and childlike in life.’

‘People can be childlike, sure. Childhood usually involves narcissism, lack of empathy and a sense of entitlement. And then the child grows out of it.’

Another silence.

‘Or not,’ Klaudia added.

Eloise shifted unhappily. ‘You said reinventing. When I married Sean I felt I’d become a different person and left the bad old self behind.’

‘It was not a bad old self, it was the same self. You don’t have to repress things, hide things. You can be more accepting of yourself. You can ask questions. Why did things happen the way they did? Sure, look back. Ask yourself, what do I know of those bad times? Be open. Are there things you don’t understand? Find out.’

Eloise started to speak, thought better of it.

‘Go on?’

She hesitated. But she could say anything in here, it was confidential. Why not? ‘Well, okay, I burned a whole lot of stuff on the weekend. It turned into a bit of a disaster. Long story. I may be prosecuted. Anyway, I was clearing out, and it made me think about the past. I remembered there are things belonging to Arthur that I took from his flat and never looked at. Stuff nobody knew I had.’

Klaudia tilted her head.

‘What kind of things, please?’

‘Notes, papers, photos. I don’t know whether I’d have burned them if …’

‘You didn’t burn them?’ Klaudia said softly.

‘No.’

‘You shouldn’t burn them. That would be a bad thing.’

‘Okay.’

‘What did you do with them?’

‘I … Well, I haven’t burned them.’

Klaudia smoothed her writing pad, gently smiled.

‘Now. You say things have got a bit too much. You’re drinking too much, you’re doing the continuous walking. Are you sleeping?’

‘Yes. Although I wake up often.’

‘You wake early, can’t sleep again? I would like to recommend some medication.’

‘I don’t like the idea of sleeping pills.’

‘There’s no need for concern. I’ll get you a prescription from our psychiatrist. This will be good for you. Give me one moment.’

She got up and went out, holding up her hand to forestall any argument.

Eloise listened. Footsteps on the street outside, low voices. There was a wisteria vine growing up the veranda pillar outside. She walked to the open door and picked a leaf from the vine, rolling it in her fingers. The gardener backed across the lawn pulling the hose. She tugged it over to the garden shed, disappeared into the dark doorway.

The footsteps came back along the hall. Klaudia said, ‘Here’s your prescription, something to help you sleep. Start tonight, you will feel much refreshed. After four days, you can build up to two pills. It’s fine to drink one glass of alcohol with them, no more. I think you need to come and see me regularly. There’s a lot we need to get to the bottom of.’

They went out together, along the hall with its antique mirror, past the closed doors, the other offices.

Eloise paused at the door. ‘Do you get tired of listening to people? Do you start to hate some of them?’

‘Tired? Never! I love to go on a journey with my patients. To explore lives, motivations, it is the source of great interest. You know, my tutor
in Germany once said to me, Don’t think of studying psychology until you’ve read the Russian novels!’

‘Well. Thanks. See you next time.’

Klaudia said, ‘I meant to say, those items you remembered you had, belonging to Arthur. They’re part of your past. Keep them. But there’s no hurry. Don’t look at them until you’re ready. Be kind to yourself. Take your time.’

The heat struck up off the asphalt and the car had turned into an oven. Eloise gripped the steering wheel — it was hot. She looked back at the old shop, its rooms full of secrets. These ‘items belonging to Arthur’ — actually, what were they? That day at Arthur’s flat, she’d arrived with the woman detective who followed her closely, making sure she took only clothes and some kitchen items that belonged to her. She remembered the air was still, musty, dead, Arthur’s presence sucked out of it, as if the place where they had lived happily had been inundated, and she had dived down and was peering from room to room in the blurry, silent space. She viewed light switches silvered with fingerprint powder, Arthur’s desk with a yellow arrow taped to items on it, a pair of surgical gloves on the kitchen bench, a man standing on the back deck talking on a cell phone; he was the woman detective’s taciturn partner, whose eyes followed Eloise as she passed the open door. In the silence she opened a drawer, took out clothes and put them in her gym bag. Why this anger?

When someone dies an unexplained death, the world enters every private space. Everything sacred is trampled on, everything you loved is covered in footprints, and the explanation you make of a life, all its subtle and delicate detail, is turned crass, ugly and inadequate. Sudden resentment at the presence of the woman detective turned, when the woman’s phone beeped and she stepped onto the back deck with her partner, into a determination to find something of Arthur’s and keep it
for herself. Her eyes fell on the cardboard file in a shelf under the desk, where Arthur kept his current projects. She put it in her bag just before the detectives came back into the room.

Arthur could be secretive. He guarded his writing; no one was allowed to read a piece of work until it was finished. He was a perfectionist. After he died, the police had questions. They asked, Did Arthur have enemies? Had he annoyed anyone? Once the woman detective asked Eloise, Had she ever wondered about any of Arthur’s male contacts? Was he bisexual or gay? Like many of the questions the detective asked, it gave Eloise the impression she had something specific in mind.

She asked them, Are you thinking of someone in particular? They hadn’t told her anything. Arthur was one hundred per cent heterosexual. So what had they meant?

The male detective had offered to carry the bag down the steps to the car. She zipped it up and handed it over with a show of carelessness, feeling trapped and furtive and cunning. She remembered passing the back door, Da Silva on her cell phone, twirling one golden strand of her wiry hair between her fingers, one corner of her mouth turned up in a sarky grin, and Eloise heard her pronounce a word, as though repeating the punchline of a joke: ‘Gynaecologist!’

Their eyes met and the detective lowered her voice and turned away. It was one of many fragmented memories, of random words, and questions and phrases overheard, odd details that she had stored in her mind but neither processed nor pursued. Arthur, with his usual daring and originality and boldness, had gone too far this time; he’d been caught in a forbidden and terrible place, and this pair of cops, with their tough faces and sharp eyes, knew that Eloise had crossed over, too; she was implicated, always would be, in Arthur’s transgression. It was a strange discovery: that calamity brought with it this burden of fear and shame.

Shame had made her fail Arthur. She should have paid attention to details, tried to find out what had happened. Shame had made her defiant. She took Arthur’s file back to her flat and hid it in the ceiling, frightened that the police would come looking for it. Later she’d given it to Carina. She imagined herself denying to those two dour, good-looking cops, Da Silva and — what was his name? O’Kelly? — that she had any idea how it had come into her possession. In all the years since, she had never looked at what the file contained.