It was the trees, they agreed, that gave the place its aura: setting it off from the polluted streets, suggesting an enchanted domain. At the same time, the pines were ambiguous presences, their green-black wings suggesting menace as well as protection.
Tom said the scene reminded him of a woodcut in an old book of children’s tales. It was like something remembered from a dream, said Nelly. ‘Something marvellous and strange you can almost see under the skin of reality.’
Tom described a tiny pair of opera glasses, imagined by Raymond Roussel, to be worn as a pendant. The writer had envisioned each lens, two millimetres in diameter, to contain a photograph on glass: Cairo bazaars on one and a bank of the Nile at Luxor on the other.
Nelly yearned for this virtual object; as Tom had known she would.
One day she produced a calico bag from her pocket, unfastened the drawstring at its neck and tipped its contents into her hand. When she opened her fingers, her palm was full of eyes. They had belonged to her grandmother, who had inherited them from her great-grandfather, who as a small boy in London had been apprenticed to a manufacturer of dolls. It was the child’s task to separate the black and brown eyes from the grey and blue ones, and then to sort each group again, in precise gradations of hue.
Nelly moved her fingers. Blue eyes shuddered in her palm. Kingfi sher, cornflower, steel. Smoke crushed with violets. Tom looked at them, and they looked back. It was impossible not to avert his gaze.
They spoke of the past, discovering each other. Tom learned that Nelly was an only child. Her mother had died when she was fifteen, her father was into serial marriage. There had been a goldfish called Fluffy.
It was not much to go on. He knew that Nelly had once been married, but little beyond that bare fact. A stray remark of Posner’s confirmed that the union had been short-lived. Tom longed to know more, of course. But he wouldn’t question Posner; and Nelly had a trick, to which he did not immediately tumble, of deflecting questions about herself with enquiries of her own. She drew from him stories of childhood, women, sorrows, travel, his preferences in matters trivial and weighty. What’s the fi rst thing you remember? Would you rather live in the mountains or by the sea? What’s something you regret not doing? Describe a perfect city. Tell me something you’ve never told anyone else.
It was the kind of talk that takes place in bed. Except that Nelly, despite the intensity of her attention, withheld all bodily intimacy. She never touched Tom. Her hand didn’t accidentally brush his; an occurrence that, in any case, is never accidental, and requires collusion. It occurred to Tom that even her enthusiasm for their walks might be a device for avoiding closeness. There was the Wordsworth precedent: William and Dorothy out striding the dales for fear of what might take place between them in the confines of Dove Cottage.
One day he came to a decision as he was leaving the Preserve
with her. On an unlit landing, he grasped her arm: ‘Nelly.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
The dark, confined space seemed to concentrate her odour. A succession of scenes, purely pornographic, was unreeling in Tom’s mind.
She disengaged herself, and continued down the stairs.
He swore that was the end of it. He lay on his bed compiling an inventory of the ways she repelled him; his cunning fl esh working all the while at its own satisfaction.
Over the days that followed, what remained was his need for her. And beyond Nelly, for the world she had created. He missed the drift of people in and out of the Preserve, improvised meals and conversations, the jokiness. The sense of being caught up in a wide spate of imaginative work.
Small scenes haunted him. Nelly and Osman bent over the sink with dripping raspberry icypoles. Someone’s kid in stripy leggings riding a Razor scooter up and down the passage. He left a café without ordering, because a shelf behind the counter held a pink plastic sugar canister with a grey lid, identical to one in the Preserve. Lifting a glass from a sink of soapy water, he noticed the rainbow membrane of detergent stretched across it. His first thought was, Nelly would like that. Then he remembered. Her footsteps retreated through him down a cold stair.
To the raw ache of solitude he applied his usual balm of work: marking essays, reading, typing words onto a screen late into the night. The dog would leave his basket to settle on a rug in the study; first turning around thrice, an apprentice sorcerer. Later he would go out into the yard.When he returned, his fur carried the mineral scent of earth into the room.
Tom went to the cinema; out to dinner with colleagues. Then, at the end of a blunt winter’s day, in the act of transferring a packet of buckwheat noodles from a shelf to a supermarket cart, he froze. Pride, which had seemed insurmountable, lay in ruins: toppled, like that, and the view a sparkling clarity. What counted was that Nelly was not indifferent to him. He might learn from the discipline she imposed. An obstacle might be a gift, deferral conceived of as a slow striptease.
There was also the novelty of the situation. Tom was a product of his times: what he knew of preludes was swift and unambiguous. Among other things, his curiosity was pricked.
There was no point going back to the country on Thursday night, Tom decided. He would sleep more soundly in his own bed; would rise early and drive up to the hills.
So he went looking for Nelly at the Preserve. But found only Rory, who told him that Nelly had not been well, and was staying at Posner’s. ‘One of her headaches.’
It had happened before. Tom told himself again that what mattered was Nelly having somewhere to go, someone to look after her. Once again the formula failed to counter his jealousy.
He became aware that Rory was studying him; covertly, the narrow eyes rapid and darting. Tom could not remember having been alone with him before. Silence lay between them, awkward as a beginning, heightened by the weather slapping at the panes.
Tom said, ‘Could you tell Nelly I need to hang on to her keys? I’ve got to go back to the bush for a few days.’
The boy nodded.
‘I’ll be off then.’
Rory said, ‘You OK? You look a bit shabby.’ Having blurted it out, he glanced away.
Tom thought, I forget how young he is. What he had diagnosed as sullenness, he now saw as the caution of someone who was trying to find a way of being in the world.
He told Rory about the dog.
‘That’s awful.’ The boy tugged at the hair under his lip, fingered the zip on his jumper. He was in the habit of touching himself, as if to make sure he was still there. ‘You should go up to Carson ’s,’ he said.
‘But Nelly-’
‘She’s OK. Out of bed. I saw her at lunch.’ Rory pulled the zip down a little way, then did it up again. Tom understood that the boy was looking for something to offer him.
Rory said, ‘You should tell her what’s happened.’ His sympathies were engaged by Tom’s predicament, but what had just entered his mind was the table mat his mother used to place under his bowl when he was very young: a sunny circle stamped with bright blue butterfl ies.
‘Go up to Carson ’s,’ he repeated.
‘Yeah, thanks. I will.’
On an evening in late July, Tom had arrived at the Preserve to find Brendon angled over the stove. He resembled a hinged ruler, his long body forever obliged to fold itself into defi cient spaces.
Nelly, on the couch with her feet tucked under her, was talking about Rory. ‘So now there’s this band. I mean it’s good he’s going back to music, he used to be a really good violinist, and these guys are great, he’ll get a lot out of playing with them. But that’s the end of painting, although he says it isn’t.’
‘No reason he can’t do both,’ said Brendon.
Nelly’s hair was fastened on top of her head, her eyes and mouth were painted. Her face, always pale, had been powdered rice-paper white. Her concubine look. Tom had known her long enough to understand it signalled defensiveness.
She said, ‘But he won’t. Not seriously. He won’t pain
t in a focused way because all his energy’ll be directed at this band. He always gives a hundred and ten per cent to whatever he’s just taken up.’
‘Well, that’s not a bad thing,’ said Brendon easily. He looked at Tom. ‘Coffee?’
‘Yeah, it’s not a bad thing if it lasts.’ Nelly twirled a vagrant strand of hair around her finger. ‘But there’s this burst of enthusiasm and then-’ She exhaled theatrically.‘I don’t know, sometimes I wish he wasn’t coming into all that dough. It’s like he doesn’t have to make an effort, you know?’
Tom sipped Brendon’s heart-stopping brew and was stabbed with impatience. Nelly grimacing, her jaw tense, was almost plain. ‘Why do you let Rory get to you?’ he asked. He remembered the earlier exchange he had witnessed between the two; and in that instant knew what it mimicked. ‘You act like you’re his mother or something.’
Afterwards, he would remember their faces: aimed at him, oddly still.
Until, ‘I am his mother,’ said Nelly.
Nelly poured herself a glass of wine. Pushed up the sleeves of her jumper.
Brendon said, ‘I’ll leave you guys to it,’ and carried his cup into his studio. Moments later, a cello began to fl ow.
Tom felt the familiar jolt: he had misunderstood. The thought dropped open, and what lay underneath was the suspicion that he had been misled.
But he knew Nelly had been married. And then, with hindsight sharpening his vision, he could see the resemblance be tween mother and son: attenuated, but discernible all the same in the shallow-set eyes, the rather heavy moulding of the chin.
It was the kind of oversight to which Tom was prone. He lived in a country where he had no continuity with the dead; and being childless, no connection to the future. Most lives describe a line that runs behind and before. His drew the airless, perfect circle of autobiography. What he missed, in the world, was affi liation.
He felt immensely foolish.
Nelly was talking. He retained facts. Her husband taking off-a phrase Tom would remember-when Rory was four. The turmoil; life going awry. ‘It was like the plates shook and fell off the wall.’ Her in-laws trying to get custody of the child.
She continued to speak of these things as if Tom should have had prior knowledge of them.
‘I used to spend more time at Carson ’s place when Rory was still a kid.’ Nelly looked into her empty glass. ‘He’s been really good to us, Carson.’
It sounded stilted. Tom looked at her averted face and thought, You know I don’t like him.
He said, ‘I should have joined the dots.’
Nelly gestured-Oh well. ‘Rory’s not round here much when you are. I guess you never heard his surname.’
Tom said slowly, ‘Atwood. Rory Atwood. I’ve heard him on the phone.’
He saw that Nelly was, among other things, fearful.
She made a noise: half laugh, half groan. ‘Oh crikey. You really don’t know, do you?’
It was Tom who felt afraid, then, of what he was about to learn.
‘I used to be Nelly Atwood.’ The voice was gentle. ‘Nelly’s Nasties. Remember?’
Posner’s house, on a corner block, was high and broad, built of grim bluestone hand-chiselled by men in chains. A wrought-iron fence around the garden brought impaling to mind. Formal beds restrained by low box hedges contained the kind of roses whose icy perfection was impervious to common rain.
Tom had steeled himself for Posner, but a stocky brown man answered the door. He wore blue overalls with a logo on the pocket. Tom asked for Nelly; gave his name. There was the sound of vacuuming from a room off the hall.
‘Ah, Nelly.’ The cleaner smiled, stepped aside; pointed to the stairs.
An overalled woman looked up as Tom passed an open door but went on with her work.
The arched window on the half landing looked out on to a deep back garden. Bowery, treed; a stone birdbath on shaggy grass. Just then, as so often at the end of a rainy afternoon, the sun shone. The garden showed shadows and spotted light. Flowers were everywhere, fat spillages of cream and pink, belled blue spikes, frothy lemon. Leaves and grasses moved, the scene shaking in light.
‘Hi.’ Nelly had her arms on the banister. Light was dangling in her black hair.
They stood awkwardly, not having, in all these months, evolved a satisfactory way of greeting each other.
Tom indicated the window at his back. ‘So glorious.’
Nelly was wrapped in a shawl he hadn’t seen before, swarthy red stamped with tiny cream and golden flowers. She said, ‘Going from the front to the back of this place is like one of those movies where the librarian takes off her glasses and starts to unbutton her blouse.’
‘That’s exactly right. That garden’s wanton.’
‘We could sit out there.’ Nelly peered at the landing window. ‘No, everything’ll be wet. Let’s just look at it from my room.’
He said, ‘How are you? Rory told me you were here, that you’ve been ill.’
‘The usual. A headache. Such a drag. I’m heaps better, thanks,’ said Nelly.‘I should’ve gone to college today. But there’s all this.’ A gesture. ‘I’m getting soft.’
All this was a long room, light-filled. The bed was high and wide; a disarray of square and oblong pillows, dull silk contrasting with smooth cotton. Tom took in a lacquered cabinet with intricate locks, a glowing rug, books with opulent jackets on shelves and tables. Things Posner could give her.
He conceived of it as a transaction between Nelly and the dealer: unvoiced and understood, with the gleaming presence of Rory at its core. His early sense of Posner’s relations with the boy had since wavered from certainty. Rory’s manner towards the former seemed unencumbered; wholly free of the lover’s charged style. Nevertheless, time and again, Tom had seen Posner’s gaze find and follow the boy. Need settled on Rory, and sucked.
A book, partly obscured by another, lay on Nelly’s bed: Vanished Splendours, and the fragment of a name, Balthasar Klos-. It was a name Tom recognised and didn’t recognise, a name on the edge of memory.
Nelly had crossed the room and was pushing up the sash. Beads of water edged sill and window.
‘And your book?’ she asked. ‘Did you get it fi nished? Was the house OK?’
Tom sat in a low, embroidered chair by the window and began to talk.
‘I’m coming with you,’ said Nelly.
She had placed the decanter and a glass beside him and prepared tea for herself, saying she was off the grog. Now she sat with fingers laced about a translucent grey bowl. ‘I’ll help you look for him. We’ll cover more ground than if you’re by yourself.’
But Tom had observed the indigo stains below her eyes; the tight, whitish lips.
‘Do you think you’re up to it?’
‘Sure.’ But her eyes travelled to the table by the bed, and he saw the pills there on a wicker tray.
‘Why don’t you see how you go over the next couple of days? It’s pretty bleak up there with all this rain.’
He expected her to protest, and when she didn’t, understood that he had been right not to take up her offer.
‘I’ll be back by Sunday,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to see my mother.
And there’s a meeting I can’t get out of Monday morning. If he doesn’t turn up tomorrow, we could go back together next week.’
She was refilling her bowl, her head bent over the task. There was something unfamiliar about her presence; then Tom realised it was the clean smell of her hair. It had been washed in something herbal, faintly medicinal; rosemary, he thought.
Later he carried his glass and Nelly’s tea things into a recess off the landing that had been fitted up with a sink and cupboards. When he came back into the room, an object caught his eye. It was the small folder with elastic fastenings he had first glimpsed in Nelly’s bag all those months ago. Its blue and red marbled cardboard was furred, as if much handled.
She was still sitting by the window. The wind had risen and the room was cold. Tom lowered the sash.
Two lorikeets, feathered purple and crimson and green, flew up from the muscled mauve arms of a eucalypt: a Fauve canvas come to life.
Nelly said, ‘You mustn’t be hard on yourself.’ She leaned forward. ‘You were doing the right thing, keeping him on a long lead.’
Tom allowed himself to place the back of his hand, very lightly, against her cheek.
He could find his own way out, he insisted, and left her settled in her chair. But he was still on the stairs, when he heard her call and turned to see her come out onto the upper landing. ‘Your book. Did you get it done?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hey!’ Nelly crowed with pleasure. ‘That’s great.’
Gazing down on him, hung with heavy ruby folds, she had the air of a tiny idol; one who might save him or do him great harm.
Downstairs, lamps had been switched on against the gathering evening. The glare of parquet was everywhere. A spotlighted alcove sheltered a pre-Colombian figure carved from stone. For a split second Tom saw the miniature double of the squat brown man who had let him into the house.
Paintings filled the walls. But Tom would not allow himself to linger before Posner’s trophies.
Nevertheless, as he came to the open door of the room where the woman had been vacuuming, he halted. Gleaming wood and muted jewel tones repeated the message of wealth tempered by taste that the house had been designed to communicate. But what held Tom’s attention was the landscape on the far wall.
He had forgotten how small it was. With light steps he crossed the room until he stood in front of it; and felt again the force of something that could not be contained in rational dimensions.
A reedy voice at his back murmured,‘How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, / Whose action is no stronger than a fl ower?’
The pale pillar of Posner was rising from the black scoop of a chair. For a large man, he moved as if oiled.
A dribble of dismay made its way down Tom’s spine. That he should be in this place, twitching in Posner’s snare. That he should have been discovered coveting what Posner possessed. That Posner, a gross, material creature, should have Shakespeare at his disposal.
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