Once in the car, Butch became quiet. They drove in silence, Keira holding tightly to the box, which rested on the folded towels on her knees. When they arrived, Jim parked out the front, then helped Keira with the box. Butch began protesting again. Jim stood at the front door with the heaving, noisy box while Keira rang the doorbell.
She looked into Jim’s brown eyes and waited, hoping the trip hadn’t been futile. They could hear flocks of starlings chirping above them. At last there were footsteps coming up the hall.
But it was not Sylvia who opened the door.
‘Steve!’ said Keira. ‘I thought you were staying at Mel’s.’
‘She won’t have me.’
‘Oh. Um, you remember my fath … Jim Bolt. Dad, remember Steve Kelly, one of my housemates. Sylvia’s brother?’
When the men shook hands there was a mighty lurch of the box, and Steve said, ‘Are you right there? Let me take that. Come in.’
They followed Steve into the living room, its bright white walls decorated with Greek Island travel posters. Sylvia was lying on a blue leather couch. She looked up from her Cleo magazine, tossed it aside with a musical jangle of her gold bangles, and said, ‘Hi.’
She stood, looking elegant even in track pants, which were white and a size too small and paired with a clingy little cream cardigan. Keira introduced Jim. Sylvia stretched a languid arm out and shook his hand, then took her heavy-lidded gaze from Jim and transferred her stare to the cardboard box, from which came a furious and insistent yowling.
Keira picked up the box and thrust it into Sylvia’s pale hands. Butch’s malevolent grey head pushed up through the centre of the flaps.
‘We’ve looked after him long enough, Sylvia,’ said Keira.
‘I appreciate you doing it, but I’m still with –’
‘That’s your problem, not mine.’
Jim looked shocked. Keira said into the stunned silence, ‘Butch is responsible for spraining my mother’s ankle. We’re not even supposed to have pets. And it has been ages.’
Sylvia looked as disgruntled as Butch. She put the box down, knelt on the white shag pile carpet and opened it. Out sprang Butch, with a snarl. He walked towards Steve.
‘Have you forgotten your mother, Butchy?’ said Sylvia. She went and picked him up. Butch allowed himself to be cuddled but the disdainful expression distorting his face made his feelings clear. His charcoal grey fur was standing up in angry-looking points against Sylvia’s creamy cashmere chest and he managed to convey the fact that he was deliberately withholding his purring from her.
‘Well, we’ll have to find something to do with you, my darling.’ Sylvia rubbed her nose in his fur. He stared at her resentfully, clearly affronted by an intimacy she had not, in his eyes, earned.
‘Drink anyone?’ said Steve. ‘Wine, Scotch, cup of tea? Keira, could you help me, please?’ He looked meaningfully at her. ‘Jim, please sit down. What are you drinking?’
‘Nothing for me, thanks. I have to be off soon.’
‘Right.’
‘You can get me a white wine,’ said Sylvia.
Steve led the way to the large kitchen, which had a green slate floor. Shiny white tiles gleamed around the sink and bench areas. The walls were painted glossy mandarin. When they were out of earshot he said, ‘So how’s Maureen?’
‘Improving every day. The swelling’s gone.’
Steve filled the kettle and turned on the gas. He kept looking at Keira.
‘Oh,’ she said, realising he meant more than the ankle. ‘Look, she’s fine. Just fine.’
‘I should have rung. I feel so bad. It’s practically medical negligence.’
‘She’s doing well, don’t worry.’
‘I should go back and face the music.’
‘There won’t be any music to face. Listen, Steve – I – could you do me a favour? Could I stay here tonight? Mum and I had a fight. Nothing serious. I just need some time on my own.’
‘Sure. There’s a spare room. Syl won’t mind, and she owes you anyway. Although it won’t get you away from Butch!’ Steve laughed.
Keira rolled her eyes up and sighed in resignation. But she felt buoyed as a wave of relief washed over her, a gentle aqua wave that lifted her up and gently set her down on the soft sands of a calmer place. She could stay here.
Steve poured three glasses of Chablis and put the bottle back in the fridge. ‘Your father will have tea, right?’ He turned off the kettle.
‘No, he has to be home for Sean soon.’
‘Right.’
They took the drinks out. Keira put her glass on the coffee table and walked Jim to the front door. He kissed her cheek.
‘Come round and visit any time, won’t you, Keira? Sean misses his mother and it would do him good to see more of you. P’raps he could talk to you about things, and you could help him with his homework. If you wouldn’t mind.’
This was the longest speech Keira could remember Jim making. She said, ‘’Course I’ll come. Would tomorrow be good?’
Jim’s face lit up into a smile. Until this moment, Keira had not realised how unhappy he looked. He must have hoped Maureen would come home with him that evening. She couldn’t imagine how it would feel breaking up after twenty-seven years.
Keira squeezed Jim’s hand. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then,’ she said, and watched as Jim walked to the car, switched on the ignition and drove off. He tooted his horn briefly. Keira waved, keeping her eye on the old ute until it disappeared round the corner.
Inside, it was warm after the chilly night air. Keira sipped her drink while Steve showed her the spare room. Sylvia offered to get some takeaway food for dinner, but Steve was going to call round and check Maureen’s ankle and Keira wasn’t hungry. Steve said he would let Maureen and Nessie know that Keira would not be coming home for a bit.
Keira, feeling positively jubilant as Sylvia opened a can of sardines for Butch, headed for the bathroom. She would have an early night and do some thinking.
The shower was a gloriously hot waterfall cascading over her head, shoulders and down her back. Lifting up her face to receive the fiercely falling stream of water on her eyelids and cheeks, Keira felt peace flooding into her body and relaxing her bones. She thought of nothing but the steamy water. Each drop seemed to rinse her cares down the drain. She pinched some of Sylvia’s shampoo in its lime bottle: apple scented, with conditioner to match.
The new smell refreshed her tired brain, like a television advertisement showing some product suddenly transforming a girl’s entire life, putting a beatific smile on her peachy-perfect face and making everything around her shine and sparkle as she stretched out elegant arms and twirled amidst a picture-perfect apple orchard, her hair bouncing and gleaming in the sunlight in slow motion. Keira let the water fall over her, rinsing the shampoo away. As she applied conditioner, the intense apple scent was reinforced and the fragrance filled her lungs, she felt a song in her heart and a relaxed rhythm in her whole body.
When she emerged from the apple orchard into the steamy, white-tiled bathroom, her clean wet feet sinking into the soft blue bathmat, Keira turbaned her wet hair in a thick white towel and cleaned her teeth. She felt cleansed and revived, she felt reborn.
In the spare room, dressed in her Bonds knickers and a T-shirt, she carefully combed her clean, wet hair. It felt good to be in a new environment. It felt good to close the door and sit on the firm single bed. More Greek Island posters in here: a whitewashed chapel against bright blue sky and a white cat walking on the white railing of a blue-and-white house. Pleasant distractions.
However her brain was filling again with unanswered questions. Building up behind her wall of outraged fury at Maureen was a thirst for the truth. How could she know what to make of this new picture if she didn’t have all the facts? The questions repeatedly jostled in her brain, bobbing about like corks in a choppy ocean. Who else knew? Was Howard Dathcett still alive? Did Howard himself know? How could she ever broach the topic with Jim? Would she let
her brothers know? What would she say when she next saw Maureen?
If only there were someone neutral to talk to, someone not related to her. She would not go to Deirdre. How much did Olivia know? Locked away in an asylum after witnessing what had happened, how much did she remember? Keira needed to find out more before she saw her father again – Jim. She kept forgetting! How strange that she had toyed with the idea of changing her name from Bolt. No wonder her mother had been upset!
Keira switched the light off and climbed into bed. Wet hair or not, she needed to lie down.
She wanted to slide into the clean white sheets and think of nothing, to just blank out. The weird night of the kiss flashed into her mind again, Maureen’s urgent hands, the lacquered ovals of her shiny pink fingernails stark and shocking, clutching Steve’s blue shirted back. She tried to make the image vanish. How could her mother have a romantic life? How could she be a sexual creature? How could she become someone totally different, just like that?
At the back of her mind Keira recognised the absurdity of her thinking, and also recognised that it wasn’t thinking, it was the way she felt. There was no reasoning with that at the moment. The Greek Island posters floated into her head. How blissful it would be to go there on holiday with Alan, lost in the limitless blue sky, warmed by the sun and thinking of nothing except Alan’s hand in hers, Alan’s arms around her, Alan’s kisses … She almost started crying at this impossible yearning but sleep overwhelmed her whole being.
*
‘When’s Mum coming home?’ asked Sean, as they ate their dinner the next night. Sean was stirring his peas around the plate with his knife. Jim and Keira looked at him in silence for a moment, then at each other and then back at Sean.
‘Her ankle’s not better yet,’ said Keira.
‘When will it be better?’
Jim looked bleak. Lady emitted a sorrowful whine. Keira scratched behind the dog’s ear and told Sean it would be soon. Jim frowned at her with the unmistakable message: Don’t get his hopes up!
Before dinner they had helped Sean with his homework, Jim with his maths and Keira with English. Keira would stay there that night and agreed to come every week. Maureen had been telephoning Sean every day. The house looked messy but it was clean. Jim said he alternated between chops, mashed spuds and frozen peas; and snags, boiled spuds and frozen beans. They were eating the latter.
After finishing the main course, Keira served the apple pie she had brought: the only way to get fruit into Sean.
Jim tasted it and said, ‘This is good. Did you make it, Keir?’
‘No, but it is homemade.’
‘Did your mother make it?’
Keira looked at him and saw naked hope blazing in his dark eyes. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I got it at a patisserie. So someone made it.’
‘Irish logic,’ said Jim.
That night Keira slept in her old bed and helped get Sean to school in the morning so that Jim could get an early start on the day’s jobs. She put a piece of the apple pie in beside Sean’s cheese-and-tomato sandwiches. This was what mothers did. This was in the category Keira thought of as domestic drudgery. This was what Maureen had done for umpteen years for five children. Nessie’s words echoed in Keira’s head: ‘Don’t you think your mother has a right to a happy life?’
*
After art school the next day, Keira met Nessie at the Academy Twin cinema just down the road from East Sydney Tech. They were seeing a Truffaut film, L’Enfant Sauvage.
‘Wild Child,’ Nessie translated when they had bought their tickets. ‘Like you!’
‘What do you mean?’
Nessie looked curiously at Keira as they went up the carpeted cinema stairs. ‘It’s one of your family names. Are you okay? You look strange.’
‘Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.’
‘Okay,’ said Nessie, sounding unconvinced. They walked to a middlish row and settled into the comfortable seats. The lights began dimming.
Afterwards, they walked further down Oxford Street to The Boka for dinner, talking about the film, based on a true nineteenth-century case about a ‘wild child’ found in the woods, a boy evidently raised by wolves. Nessie walked along, telling Keira about her parents.
‘I know I criticise them, ’specially my mum, but I suppose she’s been doing the best she can. It can’t have been easy giving up her career in interior design to devote her time to us. She always complains about Orange being parochial and how everyone gossips about everything – not that she should throw rocks at that particular glass house.’
They arrived at the restaurant and sat down at a small round table near the window.
‘We complain about our parents,’ said Nessie, ‘but really they did a pretty good job of raising us. Imagine being raised by wolves. All the psychological counselling you’d need: “My mother never talked to me; she only howled at me!”’ She laughed. ‘Maureen seems … really preoccupied, Keir.’ Keira looked away. Nessie continued. ‘You two must have had a fight?’
‘No.’
Nessie maintained a level gaze at Keira, who looked shifty-eyed. The waiter came over to take their orders, forcing Keira to look away from the window and at the menu.
‘Would you like to ’ave more time?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Keira. ‘No, actually, could I have a Vienna schnitzel, please? And a glass of house white, thanks.’
‘I’ll have a house red and the borscht, please,’ said Nessie. The handsome waiter in his romantic puffy white shirt took their menus and Nessie followed him with her eyes until he disappeared through the double swing doors of the kitchen. Nessie wrenched her gaze back to the table, turned to face Keira and said, ‘So, if you and Maureen haven’t had a fight, why are you avoiding her?’
‘I’m not,’ said Keira. She looked down at the tablecloth. Her chin wobbled and tears brimmed in her eyes. The tears slid down her cheeks and she wiped them away with her hand.
‘Oh, Keir. What’s the matter?’ said Nessie, reaching across the table to grab Keira’s other hand and squeezing it. Keira’s hand was limp as if she didn’t have the physical strength to respond. ‘Oh, sweetie, what’s happened?’
Keira shook her head repeatedly. ‘Can’t tell you.’
‘That’s okay, I understand. Sh-hh-hh-hh. You’ll make it up with her, I’m sure. Just a matter of time.’
‘It’s not.’ Keira blew her nose noisily on her paper napkin. ‘We won’t.’
‘Of course you will. My mum and I are always having little fights.’
‘This is big!’ Keira wept. The waiter brought over their wines and discreetly disappeared.
‘How big?’ Nessie raised her glass and automatically said, ‘Cheers.’ She sipped from her glass.
‘You can’t imagine!’ Keira gulped some white wine.
‘Well, you’ll have to tell me now.’
‘I can’t.’
Nessie shoved Keira’s arm. ‘Go on!’
‘I haven’t told anyone but I’ll go mad if I don’t talk about it to someone soon!’
‘And I’ll go mad if you don’t tell me now. What?’
‘Mum told me … look, she’s been lying to me all my life!’ Keira wiped her wet eyes with her hand again and scrabbled in her bag for a hankie without finding one. Nessie handed her a tissue. Finally Keira sniffed, looked into Nessie’s eyes and said: ‘My father is not my real father.’
Nessie said nothing for a few moments. ‘Wow. That is pretty big.’ Nessie sipped her wine. ‘So, do you know who …?’
‘Yes, in theory. But I haven’t met him. Now I don’t want to say any more, I just wanted someone else to know.’ Keira gulped half her wine.
‘Okay. And you and Maureen had a fight about this?’
‘Of course about this! I told you – it’s big! I’ve been lied to all these years.’
‘But if you look at it from your mum’s point of view …’
‘That’s just what she said …’ Keira spat the words out. ‘Whose side are you on?’
>
‘It’s not about that. Look back to the past and see what she must have gone through. Not that it makes it any easier for you, now, but you keep saying it’s big, it’s huge – imagine how huge it was for her – in those days it was a fate worse than death to get pregnant out of wedlock, which I imagine is what happened.’
‘I know.’ Keira said, sniffing. ‘I know.’
‘So, you ought to come home and make it up with her.’
Keira began weeping with abandon. She grabbed Nessie’s big red paper napkin off the table and sobbed into it, completely incapable of speech.
‘Oh, Keir, I’m sorry. Of course, it’s all been too much for you. So much change all at once: losing Alan and finding Deirdre, your mum leaving your dad – and now this! No wonder you’re upset – you must feel shell-shocked.’
Keira nodded. She cried some more into the napkin.
Nessie jumped. The waiter had appeared at her elbow. He put their plates on the table along with a basket of bread.
‘Thanks,’ said Nessie.
‘Is everything okay?’ asked the waiter, his accent making it sound like: ‘Eees everyseeng okay?’
Nessie said, ‘Sure. We’re fine.’
‘Anyseeng I can do,’ said the waiter, ‘just ask.’ He put new paper napkins on the table. Keira glanced up to see Nessie looking into his eyes. He put a Boka business card on the table and scribbled on the back of it. ‘My number. You can call me. Any time. Eeef you need any ’elp.’
Nessie nodded, a smile on her lips and her eyes gazing up at him. ‘Okay,’ she said, and followed his retreating back with widened eyes until he disappeared through the swinging double doors of the kitchen.
‘I can’t believe that!’ said Keira.
‘Me neither,’ said Nessie dreamily, still looking in his direction. ‘What a sensitive guy!’
Keira groaned with indignation. ‘Not that! I can’t believe that you’re using my tragedy to get it on with that waiter! When you can tear yourself away from his limpid-pool eyes, I’m still here, remember, disintegrating with misery!’ Keira grabbed the new napkin, whipped it open and trumpeted her nose into it.
Nessie gave Keira her full attention again. ‘I am not getting it on with him! Anyway, you’re not having a tragedy, that’s when someone dies an untimely death. You’re having a crisis.’
After She Left Page 28