‘I don’t care whose fault it was no-one told ‘
‘No, Joseph, you misunderstand me. It was my fault your brother died.’
Joseph didn’t move.
‘I want to tell you the whole story. And I know Kate wants you to hear it from me too. Do you want to hear it? Now?’
Joseph nodded mutely. He didn’t trust himself to speak. At first Lewis spoke directly to him. Then, as he kept talking, his gaze shifted out the window. ‘It happened when we were living in Scotland. Outside a small village. You were only tiny, eight months, less perhaps. Your mother had taken you into the village, I can’t remember why - to visit the doctor, perhaps.’ ‘I was at home working, minding Alexander. He was nearly three. I’d planned to wait until your mother and you got home before I gave him his bath, then I thought no, I’ll surprise her, have him bathed and ready, the dinner on. ‘Alexander loved baths, he would sing away to himself, play, splash water all around. The bathroom was always soaked when he’d finished. It was this day too. He’d splashed so much the towel I’d had ready for him was soaked. So I said, “Hold on there Allie,” I liked to call him Allie, not Alexander, “hold on there and I’ll get you a dry one, then we’ll get you out and drying by the fire by the time your mum and your little brother get home.” So I was out of the bathroom for a minute, not even that.’ Lewis didn’t speak again for some time. ‘When I came back in he had slipped somehow. He was face down in the water. I tried to resuscitate him but I didn’t know how. We lived out in the country, Joseph. We didn’t even have a phone. Your mother had the car. I ran with Allie to the farm down the
road but no-one was there. And it was too late anyway. I knew he was dead.’
He took a sharp breath. ‘Your mother came back with you then, just as I was running along the road with Allie in my arms. She knew immediately what had happened. We got in, she drove, but it was too late. He had gone.’
Joseph didn’t look up at Lewis. He kept his eyes firmly on the photograph. His brother Allie. In his mind he played an image of the scene his father had just described. ‘Why didn’t Kate ever tell me this?’ he said at last.
‘You were just a baby when it happened, a tiny baby. We knew you wouldn’t remember Allie. Your mother was devastated. We both were. She blamed me and so she should. It was my fault. I’ve been over and over it a thousand times, a million times, in my head. If I hadn’t gone out at that moment to get the towel. If I hadn’t left him alone. If I’d come back more quickly …
‘And your mother blamed herself too. If she hadn’t taken you into town, if the car had been there, if we’d been able to get to the doctor’s more quickly. If, if, if. We fought about it, all the time. If I hadn’t been an artist, if I hadn’t insisted we live out in the wilds, if I had had a proper job, this wouldn’t have happened. If we weren’t crying, we were fighting.’
‘So you and Kate split up when you moved to London?’
‘No, we tried to get through it. To stay together. We tried for nearly eighteen months, but she couldn’t trust me with you, Joseph. She was so scared to let you out of her sight. To let me hold you, even. It got worse the closer you got to Allie’s age when he died. She wouldn’t let me near you. In case I did the same thing again. In case I killed you as well.’ Joseph reacted to that. ‘Lewis, it was an accident.’ ‘Killed. Accident. Just words, Joseph, and they mean the same thing in the end. A dead child. It’s taken more than thirty years to accept that awful, hard fact. For your mother and for me. There was nothing like counselling back then. Not that it would have done us any good, I don’t think. We were too raw with anger and guilt, we wouldn’t have let anyone near us. We had to be apart, we were just feeding each other’s misery. Too many things shattered that day and we knew we would never be able to put them back together. Not in the same way. So you and your mother stayed in London, and I started travelling.’ Hundreds of memories of his childhood started flashing through Joseph’s mind. His mother crying, not able to talk about his father. Not able to answer questions about him. Joseph had invented a father in his head, he realised. A good-for-nothing artist. He’d invented all the reasons he and Kate had split up. Fights. Arguments over money, perhaps? Over ways of life? Everything but this. He had never imagined this.
‘Why didn’t Kate tell me?’ he asked again.
‘Where would she start? What would have been the right age to tell you? Five, six years old? Just as she was starting to mend? Telling you would have opened it all up again, ripped open the wound. We’ve been writing about this in our letters to one another lately. And talking about it on the phone. She deeply regrets it now, not telling you. We both regret a lot now. That’s why it was so important to her that you came to see me, and why she wanted you to hear it from me.’
‘But why didn’t she tell me herself? After you’d spoken about it?’
‘Because I asked her not to, Joseph. Yes, in my heart I know it was an accident. A terrible accident. But it was still my fault, no matter which way I look at it, no matter how many years go past. Your brother died because of me. Your mother knew she’d painted a false picture of me to you - that I abandoned you both, started a new life out here in Australia, wanted nothing to do with you. That was the only way she could cope, I think. Then when she and I made contact again and we talked about it, she felt she couldn’t add one more terrible thing to that story. We both decided you had to hear it from me.’
Joseph felt he needed to check every detail. ‘How long have you and Kate been in touch again?’
‘Nearly twelve months. Apart from the photos
of you each year, of course. They always arrived as regular as clockwork, with just that brief note about you, nothing more. Nothing about her. Until last year. She enclosed a letter telling me about her cancer. I took it as a signal she was ready to talk to me again. So I wrote to her, and she wrote back. You know the rest, I think.’
‘Why didn’t you ever come looking for us, Lewis?’ Looking for me, he didn’t say aloud.
‘When I said that your mother couldn’t trust me with you as a baby, I didn’t tell you the whole story. I didn’t trust myself with you either. Anytime I held you, I kept thinking I would drop you, hurt you in some way. I tried to bath you once but I just couldn’t do it. I had you in my arms, the bath full of water, and it all came back to me. Every detail of the day Allie died. Kate heard me cry, she’d been just outside, trying to trust me with you. But she couldn’t either. She came into the bathroom, took you away from me, did it herself. That was the last time I tried to bath you. But I lost confidence with every part of looking after you. I couldn’t feed you, in case you choked. Couldn’t play games with you, in case I hurt you.
‘I realised I couldn’t be a parent again. No child can grow up with an adult watching their every step, terrified to let them climb anything, do anything. Kate and I stopped fighting, stopped blaming each other for long enough to realise that we were starting
to damage your life. We’d lost one son and now we were ruining a second son’s life.
‘So I left. Kate didn’t try to stop me. We knew that’s what had to happen. After our divorce came though, I travelled for a while, then I ended up in Western Australia. I met a woman, we married. She wanted children but I couldn’t do it. It was always a source of disagreement between us, I know that. She and I finally separated and I moved here. But all that while Kate and I kept in touch, through those photos of you.’
There was silence for a long moment. Then Joseph spoke, his voice quiet. ‘What was he like, Lewis? What was Allie like?’
‘Allie?’ Lewis gave a slow smile. ‘He was great fun. He liked doing things. Being busy. He was always wanting to take things apart, and trying to put them together again - his toys, things around the house, whatever he could get his hands on. And he liked to laugh. Really laugh. I’d never have expected a child that young to have a sense of humour, but Allie did. He -‘ And then his father started to cry.
Before he thought too much about it, Joseph went over to him. Then, awkwardly, slowly, he put his arm around his shoulders.
It was some time before Lewis could speak again, and when he did he changed the subject completely.
‘Tell me about your work, Joseph. About your designs.’ Slowly, and initially with difficulty, Joseph talked about his years at university, his first designs, setting up his own company, the exciting early days. Then, prompted by his father’s questioning, he spoke about what his work had now become. A mass of meetings and schedules. Markets and deadlines. A world away from his imagination. Lewis nodded and was silent again. Then he said, ‘The imagination is everything, isn’t it? I have to have the entire image of my finished work in my head, even before I’ve picked up a pencil or a tool. I can spend weeks, months even, imagining each piece, thinking about every detail, every knot and turn of the wood, every join. The finish, the look and the feel of it. It’s all made up here,’ he tapped his forehead, ‘finished to perfection before I’ve even chosen the piece of wood.’ What Lewis said was strangely familiar to Joseph. It was how he had felt when he thought about the jewellery he imagined for Niamh. Complete in his head before he had so much as touched some silver or gold. He watched as his father stood up again, went back to the table and once again started slowly, rhythmically oiling the wood. He thought how far this world of design was from his own in London. Here it was his father and a piece of wood - nature
becoming art. What was his own design life now? Production schedules, meetings with manufacturers, chasing clients. A long way from his hands and mind coming together to produce something really beautiful, like his father was doing now, right in front of him. Joseph had a sudden flash again of the jewellery he had imagined. And another flash of Niamh wearing it.
‘Can you make a living, Lewis? Working like this?’
‘I get by. Some years I get by very well indeed. Other years are leaner. But oddly enough, the more we move into technology, the more people long for hand-crafted objects in their homes.’ He gave a sudden grin. ‘Like my tables, fortunately. I have the occasional exhibition, just ship one or two pieces up to Sydney expos or to a gallery, and I usually get enough orders to keep me going for the next year or so. Anyway, I have to keep it small. Each one takes me weeks, sometimes months, as it is. So yes, it’s a struggle at times.’
Joseph realised again the craft involved in each table. The time his father spent on them. The meticulous work involved in making each piece of wood fit so perfectly. The eye for beauty. These weren’t just pieces of furniture, they were works of art.
‘I could help you, Lewis.’
Lewis was puzzled. ‘Help me with my work?’
‘Help you sell your tables. Overseas. In London.
I know people, magazine editors, gallery owners, manufacturers even …’ He trailed off.
‘I know you do.’ Lewis glanced across at the photographs, then back at Joseph. ‘But no, thank you. I’m fine.’
Joseph was glad his help had been turned down. He wasn’t sure why.
He decided to leave soon after. He wanted to get away, think everything over. He wanted to get back to Niamh too.
They walked back to his car together. At the end of the driveway, Lewis turned to Joseph. ‘Will you come back again? Come to dinner tonight perhaps? You’re welcome to stay too. I have plenty of room.’
‘I have a friend with me …’
Lewis smiled. ‘Your friend is very welcome too.’
‘Thanks, Lewis.’ Then he remembered something. ‘About my friend, it’s a bit complicated, but she doesn’t actually know about my company. Or the conference. She thinks I’m a backpacker on a working holiday.’
Lewis nodded. ‘I see. And does she know your name or is that a secret too?’
Joseph smiled. ‘She does know my name, yes. She calls me Joe, actually. Not Joseph.’
‘Your mother wouldn’t like that. I remember when we named you, she insisted you were to be Joseph, not Joe. If she wanted you to be a Joe, she would have called you Joe, she used to say.’
Joseph was strangely moved by the thought of Lewis and Kate discussing his name.
‘And does your friend have a name?’
‘She does. It’s Niamh, it’s an Irish name. She’s from the west of Ireland. Galway. She’s an artist too, a sculptor. And a singer.’ Joseph realised he was sounding like Greg from Four Quarters. Worse, even.
‘She sounds very interesting. I’ll see you both later then? Around seven?’
‘That sounds good.’
‘Thank you, Joseph.’ His father didn’t hug him. He just placed his hand firmly on his son’s shoulder and pressed, as if he was leaving an imprint of his hand.
Eva walked slowly along the Riesling Trail, breathing in the smell of the eucalypt trees lining both sides. The only sounds were the occasional birdcall and the faintest murmur of traffic in the distance. She’d been walking for a long time. It was probably time to head back. She turned and had walked just a short way when she saw a figure in the distance coming toward her.
It was Joe. She stopped and waited until he met up with her.
‘Hello, Niamh.’
‘Hello.’ She searched his face for a clue to how it had gone.
‘Can we keep walking?’ he asked. ‘Just for a while?’
It was some time before he started to talk. ‘He lives in a beautiful place,’ he said. Slowly, choosing his words carefully, he described the house, his father, his work shed, his tables. Eva didn’t ask many questions, just walked alongside listening to him. But she could feel there was more than he was telling her. They had just passed through a shady part of the trail when he stopped walking. He turned to her and she could see pain and hurt and something else in his face. ‘Joe? Is everything all right?’ She moved forward and took him into her arms without speaking. She held him close for a long while, just feeling the beat of his heart against hers. She stroked his face, held her palm flat against his back. He didn’t speak, but she felt as though something very deep, very big was settling inside him. Some time later he pulled away from her and kissed her forehead gently. They started walking again. They were nearly back at Lorikeet Hill when he told her about Lewis’ invitation to go back for dinner and to stay the night. ‘You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. I can drive you back to Adelaide now, take you and Rex to the airport if you’d rather.’ She didn’t want to leave him. ‘I’d like to stay. If you’re sure I wouldn’t be in the way.’ The look in his eyes touched her deeply. ‘No, Niamh. You wouldn’t be in the way at all.’