‘This is ridiculous. All over a bicycle?’
Mama stood up. ‘I’m wasting my breath. Look, I love my daughter and I’ve fought to keep this family together but I can’t go on without your support.’
‘All right.’ Dad drew a long breath and let it fall away. ‘All right. You have my support over the art. But the bike is her lifeline. She’s getting it back and that’s that.’
Chapter Twenty
Mama had emptied me out, top to toe. For all the pain she’d caused me I almost wanted her gone, but the thought of her leaving us and going back to Canada was unbearable.
My bike was returned. I could ride, I could go to Helen’s, but the price of painting had skyrocketed.
Five days ago I’d shot a man. I might have killed him. Life was precious. Fragile. Full of choices. Choices that would take you down this road or that road. Decisions that would determine what kind of person you became. I had to choose between Mama and art, both of which meant more to me than anything else in the world. How could I? How could I not choose my mother? How could I not choose to paint? How long would I last? A week, a month, six months? With or without tools my mind would make pictures and my heart would hold a brush. Seven years ago Mama had put a shell to my ear at Ocean Grove. She’d urged me to fight, told me I could do anything as well as the next person – better. She’d taught me never to give up. And I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t give up Mama and I wouldn’t give up art, and if I had to lie and cheat to keep them both, I would. Whatever it took.
Helen wasn’t there when I stuck my head through the bead curtain but the room smelled of oil and paper and a painting lay damp on her desk. The detail marked it as Helen’s but it wasn’t like anything I’d seen her do before. It showed a young woman sitting at the edge of a pond trailing a twig in the water. About her, the purple arms of trees wound through dark thickets and a trail of pink briar roses dropped their reflections into the water. Leaves, veined and serrated, lay on the pond’s surface and a red lily pad with yellow pistils glinted in a shaft of light. The girl looked like a 1920s flapper, with dark hair cropped below her ears. All you could see of her face was a dusky cheek and black eyelashes. Her knees were pulled up beneath a sheer violet gown and under it her . . .
‘It’s not finished.’ Helen stood in the doorway.
‘It’s stunning,’ I said. ‘Is it . . . ?’
‘Yes, it’s you.’
My face grew hot. She’d made me look beautiful. ‘I brought you some money.’ I fished in my pocket.
Helen moved into the room. ‘I seem to remember this happening once before, a long time ago.’
‘I got my bike back, too.’
She smiled. ‘That’s wonderful. How are you, Lindsay? I understand you’ve been bailing up criminals.’
‘Who told you?’
‘It’s all over town. There were at least a dozen witnesses, despite the official version.’
I put my bag on the desk and pulled out a sketch – Dave sprawled on the landing, mouth open, his eyes round and wild.
She shivered. ‘It must have been terrifying.’
‘I can’t get his mouth right. I’ve tried to make it look like he’s in pain but it just looks stupid.’
Her mouth twitched. ‘He looks constipated.’
I snorted. ‘So, how do I make him look in pain?’
‘Put the ends of his mouth up, not down. Put the middle of his top lip down. Lindsay, listen to me: you weren’t supposed to come back.’
‘Well, I’m here.’
I’d already sketched an outline of Josie and Husband chewing betel nut and spitting magenta streams into the dirt. I couldn’t wait to get started on the painting.
‘I told you last time not to come back.’
‘Yes, and I haven’t been back for six weeks.’
‘You’re here now.’
‘Yes. I’ve got my bike back, I couldn’t come before.’
‘Are you deliberately misunderstanding me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why do you keep stirring the pot? Why are you so determined? You know the risks.’
Yes.
I knew the risks.
Chapter Twenty-one
Dad put down his coffee mug and yawned. Tired after a long flight from Brisbane, he was nevertheless keen to get to the office. Two more contracts had been lost to lower bids but at least now he knew who was behind it.
‘I’ll come with you,’ I said, ‘and go to Stefi’s rehearsal.’
‘Come up to the office when you’re through,’ said Dad. ‘I’ll bring you both home.’
I walked up to the Arts Hall where rehearsals were being held for this year’s pantomime, Cinderella. Stefi had the lead role. Dressed in rags, she spun and surged across the stage, as limber as a stick of liquorice. In a spectacular leap she rose into the air, her arms flung wide, hair a ginger halo around her head and for a moment I was up there with her, suspended, weightless. Then she descended on cat-soft feet and crept across the stage.
Later, as we walked up to Dad’s office, we noticed an open window in Mr Breuer’s room. ‘My father must be at work, too,’ Stefi said.
The fans in Dad’s rooms were going flat out and his bag was on the chair but he wasn’t at his desk. ‘He must be with your father,’ I said. ‘Let’s tell him we’re here.’
In Mr Breuer’s reception area we could hear muffled voices and followed them down the hall. Stefi nudged open the office door. For a moment, we just stood. Mr Breuer was bent over his desk, bare arse pumping. Beneath him, with her dress hitched around her waist, was Dad’s secretary, Faith Parker. Stefi turned and fled down the hall. I hurried after her and found her slumped in a chair in Dad’s office. I sat beside her and took her hand. ‘I’m so sorry, Stefi.’
She pulled her hand back. ‘Doesn’t matter. At least it’s not me.’
‘You?’ An unspeakable image rose up of Mr Breuer doing to Stefi what he was doing to Faith Parker. ‘Stefi . . . don’t tell me . . .’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Stefi?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘You have to, Stefi. Look at me; I’m your friend. Please . . . Did he . . . ?’
‘No. Not me. I’m too pale . . . too scrawny for him. But he threatened to, if I ever told anyone.’
‘Told what?’
‘He does it all the time, Lindsay. Mostly with black people but . . . anybody. Even boys. Some of them are so young . . . only a few years older than me. In my bed, in my sheets, when Mum’s out . . .’ Stefi began to pick viciously at her fingernails. ‘Sometimes they cried. One girl . . . she was probably only about fifteen, she left blood on the sheets. My father told me to wash them. When I wouldn’t, he said if I didn’t, it’d be my blood on them as well.’
‘Ah, here you are!’
Stefi and I both jumped at the sound of Dad’s voice. He stood looking at us for a moment, his eyes flicking back and forth between us. ‘What’s wrong?’
I couldn’t think of what to say.
Stefi shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
Dad squatted on the floor in front of us. ‘Come on, what gives? Something’s up. Tell me.’
I looked at Stefi. She stared out the window.
‘We saw something,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Stefi’s scared of her father, Dad.’
‘Why?’
‘We saw him, and Miss Parker . . . in his office.’
‘What, little mate?’
‘Having sex.’
Dad rocked back on his heels. ‘Faith? Konrad? Together? Oh . . .’ He stood up. ‘Right. Now I get it.’
‘Please don’t tell my father,’ Stefi begged.
‘I won’t tell him.’ Dad put his hand on her shoulder. ‘I’ll say I saw them myself. It won’t happen again, Stefi. I’ll make sure of it.’
When he was in Brisbane, Dad had discovered that his lost contracts had been let to a firm called Monte Holdings, whose registered office was Konrad Bre
uer’s. It seemed Faith Parker had been feeding Mr Breuer information on Dad’s bids.
That night Dad poured himself and Mama a beer. He raised his glass. ‘Have Faith,’ he said. ‘That’s what my ma used to say and that’s exactly what that bastard did!’
‘Don’t make jokes,’ said Mama. ‘Think of poor Stefi and Magda.’ But she couldn’t smother her smile.
The next morning Dad went to Faith Parker’s house with her bits and pieces from the office and sacked her.
At school on Monday, Stefi told me the rest. Faith phoned Mr Breuer at home on Sunday morning, demanding a job. He refused. So she turned up on the Breuers’ doorstep and told Stefi’s mother about their affair. Mrs Breuer ordered her off the property and told Mr Breuer to keep his mistress out of their lives. He’d laughed. ‘Mistress?’ he said. ‘Faith Parker’s not my mistress. She means nothing to me. None of them do.’
‘What do you mean “none of them do”?’ said Mrs Breuer. ‘How many are there?’
Mr Breuer jerked his thumb towards Stefi. ‘I can’t remember. Ask her. She’s good with numbers.’
Stefi’s mother turned to her. ‘What do you know about this?’
Stefi was too ashamed to answer.
‘Come on, girl,’ her father said. ‘Speak up. Show us that bright young mind of yours. You must remember; you knew about every one of them.’
‘South pinis,’ Stefi’s voice was hollow.
South. Pinis. Too sad to think about. But it had to be. Mrs Breuer had kicked her husband out of the house and threatened to tell all of Moresby what he was like if he didn’t go. ‘Except for Stefi,’ she told Mama, ‘I’d have killed him.’
Stefi was an echo, an empty tin. Years of silent witness, lying in soiled sheets, fear and hiding had drained her. All those years I’d known her and never guessed. So much for seeing things others couldn’t; I hadn’t even seen my best friend’s misery.
I found her huddled in the grass one day, behind the toilet block, crying. I sank down beside her and put my arm around her shoulders.
She shrugged me off. ‘Don’t be nice to me. You don’t understand.’
‘Then help me to understand, Stefi.’
She looked up, her face damp and haunted. ‘I should have done something. All those years, all those people, all those kids. I should have said something.’
‘How could you when he threatened you with the same horrible thing?’
‘I should have told.’
‘Some things can’t be told, Stefi.’
She grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled so hard I could hear it tearing from her skull. I put my hands over hers, forcing her to let go. ‘Stop it!’
‘You stop it! Stop seeing Helen Valier. You’ll lose your mother one of these days, Lindsay, over art. It’s not worth it. You’ll see. Sooner or later you’ll get found out and once it’s happened it’ll be too late. I know what I’m talking about.’
Sooner or later, maybe, but not today.
Today was Wednesday.
That afternoon at Helen’s I began a small painting that would fit between the pages of a book. A picture that I hoped would make Stefi feel better about herself.
Helen – unusually – hovered over me, as I worked.
‘What’s wrong?’ I said.
‘Nothing. I’m just admiring how far you’ve come. Remember when you turned up on my doorstep demanding to be shown how to draw Stefi dancing? Now, you’re doing it. It’s going to be a lovely picture.’
How far I’d come. How far she’d brought me, more like it – she and Tempe. Tempe had been right about Helen’s warm and generous heart. When I thought of the paintings I’d done of her years back – Vegemite, sardines, dirt – and how awful they were, how wrong, I cringed. But I hadn’t known her then, not this Helen. Much harder to paint, this Helen. I nudged viridian and Payne’s grey into the corner of the picture to form shadows.
‘I hope so,’ I said. ‘Stefi’s special.’
Stefi was packing. Sorting through drawers, making stacks for Sydney and piles of things she’d outgrown. I sat on her bed watching each piece go to its assigned place, wondering how long it would be before I sat with her again in some place far from Moresby. The year after next, probably, at St Catherine’s school. I checked my watch. Five fifteen: nearly time to go. Mama had given me a long leash to be with my friend before she left but I had a mountain of homework to get through and with exams only a few weeks away I had to be seen to be working hard. Stefi scratched around in the bottom of a drawer, tossing out pencil stubs, string, worn ribbons, old photos. She dropped an entire packet on the floor and kicked it with her foot.
‘I don’t want any of him.’
I picked up the photos and began to look through them, chucking out any with Mr Breuer. Stefi’s pictures looked carelessly snapped but they were interesting. Some were downright funny. One was a picture of a white kid chasing a black chook and a black kid chasing a white chook, and the next photo was . . . Dad and Helen, the photo I’d seen years before. Helen was standing in front of a frangipani tree with her hand outstretched and Dad was leaning towards her with a look that thickened my throat. Helen’s face was as open and eager as a child’s. And the way she looked at my father . . . if only Mama had looked at Dad like that, how different things might have been. Mama had it in her; I’d seen it the day, years before, when I’d gone into her bedroom and found her milking the photo of her dead lover with her eyes.
‘I want this photo,’ I said.
‘To do what with it?’ said Stefi. ‘Show your mother? Give it to me.’
‘No, I’m keeping it.’
‘You’re crazy.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘Too right I don’t.’
I didn’t really understand either. But I wanted that photo. Like prodding a sore tooth, it was painful but compulsive. ‘You’re a good photographer, Stefi,’ I said, changing the subject. ‘Almost as good as you are a dancer.’
She dropped a Craven A tin stuffed with rubber bands clattering to the floor. ‘I’m not a dancer any more.’
‘Of course you are.’
‘I’m not. I’m through dancing. I’m not doing Cinderella.’
I stared at her. ‘Why not?’
‘I can’t.’
‘What do you mean, you can’t?’
‘People will look at me and know. They’ll see my father.’
‘They will not! People will see you, Stefi. You’re not your father.’
‘I feel dirty.’
‘You’re not dirty. You haven’t done anything wrong. You’re beautiful.’
‘Don’t, Lindsay. Don’t.’
‘It’s true. You are beautiful, especially when you dance.’ I opened my satchel. ‘I’ve got something for you. I was keeping it for your going-away present but you can have it now.’ I took out a textbook and carefully peeled back the flyleaf to remove my little picture. Over and over I’d relived Stefi’s moment in the air, the moment when I’d been there with her, airborne. My picture showed her arms like butterfly wings, her body supported by ghostly hands. Stefi’s dancing angel. My Helen. Someone who knows who we really are inside, who knows what we can do and helps us do it.
Stefi stared at the painting, her pale eyes huge. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘You are beautiful, Stefi, and you mustn’t give up dancing. Not for anyone. Ever.’
Rain splashed on the wooden verandah, the first drops of the Wet. I sat at the desk in my bedroom, the new desk Mama had bought so I could study ‘properly’, and looked out at the pine trees along the driveway. I pulled out the photo of Dad and Helen. And I began to draw.
The biggest hurdle had been deciding where I could paint the picture. I couldn’t do it at the bookshop because I wanted it to be a surprise. I couldn’t do it at school because the paper I wanted to use was too big for my desk. That left home. Stefi would say I was raving mad but I’d thought about it carefully, planning to do just a little each day after school and leaving p
lenty of time for the paint to dry before Mama got home. I would store the picture under my mattress. Now that I made my own bed even Josie wouldn’t see it. I’d paint at my desk facing the driveway so if Mama turned up I’d have time to empty the paint jar and put the picture behind the radiogram where its warmth would dry the paint. Not even Josie looked there; it was full of cobwebs.
In a week the painting was finished. But it didn’t quite satisfy me. I’d painted Helen as she appeared in the photo, wearing a halter-necked dress and with her hand outstretched. It looked like Helen, but not the Helen I knew: the artist, the teacher, the friend. I started another. This time I put Helen in her paint-splashed apron, still with her hand outstretched but now holding a paintbrush. Her eyes were wide and totally focused on her work. There was a hint of caricature about the picture, enough to stop it looking soppy, and this time I felt I’d got it right.
But would Helen like it?
Stefi danced the role of Cinderella to packed houses. I went to all seven performances, trying to stock up for the years ahead. I’d be able to see her on holidays in Sydney and eventually when I went to boarding school, but Stefi wouldn’t be boarding now and it was a long time between trips South.
She wasn’t the only friend leaving. Chris’s father had decided not to renew his auditing contract with the Department of Works and the family was going South pinis.
I saw him, once, before he left. He was in Steamies, sitting on a stool trying on shoes, so engrossed in the struggle to cram his foot into a sandshoe he didn’t see me. I watched him for a while, mesmerised, then I went over to say hello.
‘Will you be needing those where you’re going?’ I asked.
He looked up and his face broke into a smile. ‘Brisbane? Probably. But I need them now.’ He wriggled his toes where they poked through the canvas of his old shoe and I laughed. He stood up, wincing in the new sandshoe, and put out a hand to steady himself. I caught it in mine, felt its grip and willed him to leave it there. But as soon as he had his balance, he let go. Then I felt him touch my hair; it was longer now and feathery around my ears. As his fingers grazed my cheek I scarcely dared breathe. I looked up, expecting to meet his eyes but he wasn’t looking at me; he was staring at my boot, his blue eyes reflective.
The Beloved Page 22