The Darkening (32 page)

Her lips moved again.

The fire rose.

Outside, a chill wind grew, as if to carry across the dark, sighing treetops, along the empty streets and into the slumbering suburb something urgent and baleful.

18

I
nstead of being welcomingly warm, the sunlight felt harsh and brittle. Nicholas squinted against it as he watched Suzette speak on her telephone. He was exhausted. Even thinking about the simple choice - whether to stand and close the greasy curtains, or sit here squinting - was debilitating; the distance across the room could have been a thousand kilometres. Just too far.

Suzette finished her call and looked at her brother. There were bags the colour of soot under her eyes. She’d aged ten years in a night.

‘Nelson has a fever,’ she said.

They had talked about this possibility for a half-hour over tea this morning. She’d risen from her deep, unnatural sleep and her hand went to her raw patch of scalp. Nicholas had argued that she must have lost the clump of hair scrambling away from Garnock. She disagreed, and stated plainly that the dog - and she said the word ‘dog’ the way most people said ‘cancer’ - had wrenched it out right after it surprised her with the bite.

‘It wasn’t sent to hurt me,’ she explained with a smile. ‘It was sent for my hair. She’s going to hex me.’

And not a minute after she’d said those words, her mobile phone rang. Bryan was calling with news that their son was suddenly ill.

Nicholas and Suzette sat silent for a while.

‘Bryan’s taking him to the twenty-four-hour clinic in Glebe,’ said Suzette, finally. She licked her lips. There was more she wanted to say, but wouldn’t.

‘You have to go home,’ said Nicholas.

For a long while she stared at her hands, saying nothing.

‘How sick is Nelson?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is she . . .’ Nicholas hesitated, but there was no easy way to phrase it. ‘Is she trying to kill him?’

Suzette thought about this, then shook her head. ‘I don’t think that’s her plan,’ she said, and looked up at Nicholas. ‘She’s dividing us.’

He nodded.

‘But you can look after him? Nelson?’

‘If it came out of the blue, maybe not. But since I know this sickness is . . . an attack . . . yes. I think so.’ She couldn’t meet his eyes. ‘But I have to be there.’

‘I know.’

‘She’s afraid of us,’ she said.

Nicholas snorted. ‘She has no need to be.’

He produced the telephone book and hunted for the airline’s listing.

‘We know more about her than anyone else in a century and a half,’ said Suzette, turning one hand over. The puncture marks were healing remarkably fast and already looked days old. She touched them uneasily.

Nicholas imagined little Nelson a thousand kilometres away, face slick with sweat and turning fitfully as he dreamed of Christ-knew-what. Nothing pleasant, he was sure of that.

‘She’s halved us in one easy move, Suze. If you think she’s afraid, you’re an idiot. She’s just playing.’ He slid the open phone book towards her.

Suzette stared at it a moment, then picked up her phone.

Nicholas shut the cab door. His sister wound down the window.

‘Show me,’ she said.

He unzipped the front of his hoodie, revealing the burnished brown of wood beads. Suzette nodded approvingly. She looked into his eyes.

‘I don’t know, Nicky.’

He drove his hands into his pockets. ‘I’ll keep you posted.’

‘Okay.’

She spoke to the driver and the cab pulled away into the bright street and soon became a winking spot of yellow too bright to watch.

Katharine nodded while Suzette rushed around the house collecting her suitcase, her make-up bag, her toiletries bag, her spare shoes. Outside, the cab horn tooted again. Katharine had swallowed not a word of the tripe Suzette had dished up about her and Nicholas having a few too many Jägermeisters last night and forgetting to tell Katharine she was crashing there at the flat.

I may be getting long in the tooth
, she thought,
but I can still tell the difference between panic and hangover
. The way Suzette was rushing around like a dervish, the only drug in her veins was adrenaline. All that rang true was that Nelson had come down with something.

‘Okay. That’s everything,’ said Suzette, pulling her hair back behind her ear.

‘Great,’ said Katharine. It was ridiculous. Nicholas was like his father - strange and handsome and flighty - but Suzette was supposed to be like
her
. Grounded. Sensible. Why were those two still keeping secrets like children? Why had Suzette flown out of the house like a bolt from a crossbow yesterday as soon as talk turned again to Mrs Quill? She was tempted to march to the porch, throw the cabbie twenty bucks and dismiss him, sit her daughter down and demand an explanation.

And do you think she’d tell you? Would you tell her? Have you told her everything?

No. No. And no.

The cab horn beeped again, longer and more insistent. Suzette wheeled her suitcase out of the room and kissed Katharine on the cheek.

‘Gotta go.’

Katharine nodded.

It seemed to take just a moment, and then an engine rumbled, an arm waved, and the house was quiet again.

Katharine went to the kitchen and filled the kettle.

You brought this on yourself.

She sat, determined not to think as she waited for the water to boil.

For the last three-quarters of an hour, the young man had shuttled between his dirty brick-veneer house and a lopsided back shed.

Nicholas was standing behind an unkempt stand of lasiandra a few doors up from and opposite the Myrtle Street shops. He stood with his hands in his pockets, shifting from foot to foot as the sun crept low to the horizon and the lengthening shadows grew cold. He was turning and stamping his feet for warmth when he noticed movement in the backyard of the house behind him. At first, he gave no mind to the portly young bloke, but within minutes could hardly take his eyes off him. The lad would stride purposefully from the house with a small cardboard box of who-knew-what, across the unmown and weedy back lawn to a small old shed. A few minutes later, he’d emerge again, cross to the house, then return carrying some plastic bottles and rags. Then he’d wait in the shed about ten minutes, before returning empty-handed to the house and emerging with . . . a small cardboard box.

Nicholas let himself in the front gate and walked around the small house to the backyard. The young man was again carrying his bottles of cleaning liquids across the yard.

‘Hey,’ said Nicholas.

The boy didn’t break stride, but his eyes slid over to Nicholas.

‘Stop,’ said Nicholas. He could hear how quiet his voice was. ‘You can stop.’

But the young man didn’t stop. Nicholas could see the eyes in his round face were puffy and red.

He told himself to turn around and go back to his hiding spot on the footpath. Yet he found his feet carrying him to the open door of the garden shed.

Inside was a folding card table on which the boy had placed his bottles. Nicholas watched him pour bleach, ant poison and - he found himself with the insane urge to laugh - Listerine into a jug. Spread out on the table was a short letter on floral notepaper, the soft, swirling handwriting of a woman. There were no hearts, circles or crosses at the bottom.

‘Please don’t,’ said Nicholas.

The boy lifted the jug, locked his eyes on Nicholas, and drank deeply.

Of course he can’t stop. He’ll never stop.

The boy gagged silently, but kept swallowing.

‘Are you in there?’ asked Nicholas.

The boy’s face started turning bright scarlet. His eyes closed tight with pain.

Nicholas left and hurried back to the street.

What had happened to the joy in that boy’s life? Or in Dylan Thomas’s life? Or Cate’s life? Were the happy moments of their lives evaporated, boiled instantly away until all that was left was the moment of their death? What happened to the laughter? What happened to the years of contented sighs, when Cate fell asleep curled in his arms, knowing she was wanted and loved? Did it last anywhere, in some other universe, in some distant heaven? Or only now in his own memory? How much of her was trapped in that tiny bathroom in Ealing, or underground in Newham Cemetery, or in his own miserable heart?

No answers.

He stepped back behind the lasiandra, which suddenly whispered as a cold breeze hurried up the darkening street. Afternoon was turning to dusk.

Across and down the road, the Myrtle Street shops were quiet. A car parked. A man entered the convenience store and emerged shortly after with two stuffed bags of groceries. The light in the computer repair shop went out. Two minutes later, a lanky man stepped out and locked the front door. He leaned and sidestepped to peer into Plough & Vine Health Foods, gave a short wave, then trotted around to the side street where his Nissan was parked. He drove away.

Nicholas checked his watch. It was 5.34.

The lights inside the health food store went out.

He took a small step back, lowering himself a little behind the tangled shrubs.

A moment later, the door of Plough & Vine Health Foods opened and a tall, slender young woman stepped out. Rowena. She reached into her handbag for keys, dropped them, knelt to pick them up and locked the door. Nicholas watched her test the door was secure, then she checked her watch and hurried out from under the awning of the shops, away from his hiding spot. He watched her draw her long, knitted coat about herself as she strode away. He waited until she was far enough away that he would be just a shadowed stranger in the distance before stepping out from behind the lasiandra to follow.

Sedgely had her shop here. Quill had her shop here. But did that automatically cast any tenant of the shop under suspicion? Of course not. Ahead, Rowena’s coltish long legs took her across Myrtle Street and up to the corner of Madeglass, where she turned left. She was moving fast, so Nicholas picked up his pace.

Old Bretherton. Old Sedgely. Old Quill. The old woman walking in the woods with Garnock. Were they the same person? He’d come to think so. But was there any connection between them and the vital young woman hurrying ahead of him? Was there any similarity between the friendly, clumsy woman who sold wheat germ and organic liquorice with a lovely smile and the sinister, bent thing that had watched with glittering eyes from her nest between hanging dresses? He couldn’t see it.

At the end of Madeglass Street was a busier road that led under the railway line. At the corner, a small huddle of people waited at a bus shelter. Relief seemed to soften Rowena’s tall form, and she slowed her pace as she moved to the end of the queue.

Nicholas slowed and stopped behind a power pole fifty metres away. He leaned against the hard wood and the faint tang of creosote rose through the chill air. The sun was gone now, and the first sparkles of stars were appearing in the purple sky. He watched Rowena. She was chatting with the middle-aged woman in the queue ahead of her. Both women laughed. Rowena’s teeth were white in the gloom. The headlights of a bus appeared in the railway underpass, its windows glowing warm yellow. A moment later it let out an elephantine sigh and stopped to take on passengers. Rowena got on board. Nicholas watched her pick her way down the aisle to a seat halfway back. The bus rumbled and soon was gone.