His Other House

by Sarah Armstrong

  Quinn’s eyes filled with tears and he was glad for the darkness. ‘And I’d do anything for him. I’d give my life for his.’

  ‘So, do it. Give your boy the truth.’

  ‘You know what that means.’

  ‘I know what you think it means, but I’m not convinced it means Marianna would find out.’

  ‘Maybe not straight away.’

  ‘And I just cannot believe she’d keep Adie from you. I mean . . . really?’ Rachel rolled over, her back to him. ‘I want you to put Ned first for a change.’ Her voice was cool. ‘You know we’ll be spending Christmas with Bill if you aren’t here.’

  ‘What’s that? A threat? Come on . . .’ He reached for her.

  She shrugged his hand off. ‘Surely you don’t want us to spend it on our own? Christmas Day?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ll be spending it with Marianna and Adie.’

  He reached for her again, for some reassurance that they were still in this together. She didn’t respond for a few moments, then turned and found his face with her hands and kissed him hard. She swung onto him and they fucked silently. He gripped her hips but he was detached, more aware of the trees outside than of his body. She came quickly with a sharp exhalation but Quinn was a long way off coming. He cast around for an image and he thought of fucking her against Bill’s bathroom wall, the sensation of entering her for the first time. Then he thought of her and Bill fucking, as he knew they had, and he came straight away. She rolled away and they lay in silence.

  •

  The wind had picked up and he’d been lying there for an hour or more, drifting to sleep then waking to a movement from Rachel or a twig falling onto the roof. He didn’t like the sensation of dipping in and out of sleep like this. He remembered sleeping on the bottom of one of the big outrigger canoes off the island while Tebano and his son fished. Quinn had been about eight and the motion of the boat both woke him and sent him back to sleep. He’d wanted to sit up and fish with them but he couldn’t keep his eyes open and it was as if his limbs were paralysed. He worried that Tebano and his son were laughing at him, but whenever he woke they were just gazing at the sea, talking quietly in Gilbertese. It took him a few years to see that Tebano’s visit to the house to invite him fishing had nothing to do with Quinn.

  Ned called out in his sleep, a string of babble. Quinn slipped out of bed and turned on the hall light. Ned’s arms were flung over his head and his face was the smooth, clean slate of sleep. A small spot of blood marked his pillowcase and his top lip was swollen and bruised. Quinn kneeled by the bed and knew that Rachel was wrong. This boy, sleeping in his bed, his breath steady and calm, was not being poisoned by anything.

  He shifted Ned over and curled up beside him. If they told Ned, then Ned would tell someone, a friend or a teacher, and soon the gossip would travel up the highway. How long would it take? Days? Weeks? A few months? And then he would lose his daughter and his daughter would lose him. Nothing was surer.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Adie pressed her ear against the bedroom wall, her face intent. ‘I can hear them. You listen, Mumma.’ She tapped a finger on the boards.

  Marianna got on her knees and put an ear to the cool timber, Adie’s face just centimetres away. From inside the wall cavity came a scrabbling and a faint squeak. Marianna imagined small, blind mice babies curled against their mother in a smelly nest.

  Adie’s face opened into a smile. ‘Did you hear them?’ She sat back on her heels. ‘Daddy says we might go in and get them out.’

  ‘He didn’t say that, did he?’ But Marianna thought it was quite possible that Quinn had promised to cut a hole in the wall.

  Adie adjusted her pyjama top. ‘Mmm. He did.’ She smiled. ‘They hear us talk, you know. But they’re scared of us. We’re like Tyrannosaurus Rexes to them.’ She pressed an ear to the wall again.

  Marianna pretended to be listening to the mice but she was taking in Adie’s face, the fleck in her green eyes and her mouth that could look compact and almost pursed one minute then smiling-wide and sensual the next. For a moment Marianna saw the woman’s face that was to come.

  Adie squinted at her. ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘You. Your lovely face. They’re still squeaking away, aren’t they?’

  Adie nodded, smiling.

  In the early days, looking at Adie was like looking at herself in the mirror because her baby daughter’s face seemed so known to her. She wondered if other women were also fooled into thinking the baby was part of them. When Adie was just a few weeks old, Marianna had tried to explain it to Quinn and he had looked amused.

  ‘I know she’s a different person,’ Marianna had said. ‘It’s just a feeling.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s an evolutionary thing?’ he said. ‘So you will protect the baby.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  To Marianna it was as if the very intensity of her longing had incarnated this flesh and blood from her own. She wouldn’t have told anyone, but part of her had truly felt Adie to be her possession. Then as her daughter grew she saw that Adie had a whole unknowable life separate from Marianna’s: her thoughts, whatever she did when she was alone, the whispered conversations she had with herself.

  There was a clunk from the verandah. Adie pulled her ear from the wall with an expectant look. ‘Is that Daddy?’

  ‘No. Two more nights ’til he’s home. It’s probably Lucy Dog.’

  Marianna was sick of asking Quinn to finish up working in Corimbi. She knew he would look back and regret missing these precious early years with Adie.

  ‘Time for bed, Missy,’ said Marianna. ‘The mice need to sleep too.’

  ‘But I don’t think they sleep much. I hear them running around in the night.’ Adie’s short hair tufted over her ears after her last effort at cutting her own hair. Marianna had given up taking her to the hairdresser to have it tidied up.

  ‘I bet they run around. Into bed, sweetheart.’

  She pulled the sheet up to Adie’s chin and tucked it tightly under the mattress. Adie closed her eyes and turned onto her side, a thumb in her mouth. Marianna sat on the side of the bed and stroked her daughter’s shoulder. When Adie was bathed and warm, in clean pyjamas and clean sheets, sheltered in their solid, watertight house, Marianna’s heart brimmed with satisfaction. Before she’d had Adie, she had judged people who said that they loved their children most when they were asleep. Now she knew what they meant and wondered if it was because a sleeping child – with all agency and will evaporated – was like the parents’ possession again.

  ‘Good night, darling. Sleep tight.’ She kissed Adie’s forehead and walked up the hall to the kitchen. Another scraping noise came from outside and the verandah sensor light clicked on.

  She opened the front door quietly. The garden was lit up, the big frangipani leaves moving in the breeze. Her heart leaped when she saw a man standing at the bottom of the stairs, then she saw it was Quinn’s dad. ‘Evan!’

  He smiled up at her. ‘Oh. Hi, Marianna.’ He lifted his hands apologetically. ‘I was just dropping off a letter for Adie. I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

  ‘A letter?’

  He started back up the stairs, smiling sheepishly. ‘We have a drop box. We leave messages for each other.’ He pointed to a small wooden box that Marianna had never noticed on the other side of a verandah post. It was painted white with a slot in the side.

  He reached the top of the stairs. ‘I made it for her. It’s meant to be a secret from you and Quinn, although I think Quinn has spotted it.’

  Marianna smiled. ‘Did you walk all this way?’

  He nodded. ‘I wanted her to have it for tomorrow because it’s Spy Day or something at prep. I can show you if you want, but it’s written in secret code. Pictures and a few agreed-upon words.’

  ‘Why don’t you come in?’ A gust of wind set leaves and branches rustling around them.

  ‘It’s okay. I’m sure you’re busy.’

  ‘Come and ha
ve a drink. Have some dinner with me.’ He’d never turned up at night like this before and she wondered if something was wrong. She didn’t like the idea of him walking an hour back to his apartment by the river. The dog padded around the corner and came to sit by Marianna’s side, tail wagging.

  He hesitated. ‘Okay, thank you. I will.’

  He wiped his leather sandals carefully on the doormat and Marianna resisted telling him not to worry. She walked behind him down the hall and closed Adie’s door.

  In the kitchen she pulled vegetables from the fridge and started slicing onion for a stir-fry. ‘Why don’t you pour us both a drink?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, yes. So what can I get you, madam?’ He clasped his hands together.

  ‘A glass of that white in the fridge door, please. We also have beer, gin . . .’

  ‘I’ll have the wine.’

  She watched him carefully pouring the wine and wondered if that was how Quinn would look as an old man: wiry, craggy-faced with a shock of white hair. Quinn had told her that his dad was a stern Island Manager, respected but not liked by most of his workers. Perhaps that stern quality had died with the job or was just well hidden now. All she saw was a slightly reserved old man who came to visit them most weekends for a meal, always bringing a bottle of wine and flowers.

  He passed her a glass. ‘Cheers!’ she said. ‘Maybe you could push Adie’s stuff up that end and grab us a couple of place mats?’

  He methodically stacked Adie’s drawings and books on one side of the kitchen table.

  Marianna poured oil into the wok and turned back to him. ‘Evan, I hope this is not too forward, but . . . do you get lonely in your unit?’

  He smiled, a box of coloured pencils in his hand. ‘Is that why you think I came over tonight?’

  ‘I hate to think of you being lonely.’

  ‘It’s all relative, don’t you think?’ He put the box on the table and pressed on the lid until it clicked. ‘I’ve been lonelier living in a household of people.’

  ‘Really?’

  He nodded. ‘Like when Bess first took up with Tebano. When you’ve known that kind of loneliness anything else pales, really.’

  ‘Tebano?’ She took the wok off the heat before the oil started smoking.

  He pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘You know, her lover. On the island.’

  ‘Oh.’ She flushed. She had no idea what he was talking about.

  He watched her for a moment, fiddling with the stem of his wineglass. ‘I figured he would have told you. But maybe he just wanted to forget about it.’

  She shook her head. ‘He didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Anyway, I brought that note over not because I’m lonely . . . or at least I’m not lonelier than usual. I knew Adie would go and check the box first thing.’ He smiled and pointed to the chopping board of sliced vegetables. ‘Can I help with any of that?’

  ‘You could grab the fish sauce from the fridge.’ She turned back to the wok. ‘Top shelf on the right.’ Quinn had talked about the island a bit when they first met and told her of swimming in the ocean and the eerie spires left after mining, but she was certain he’d never mentioned his mother having an affair.

  Evan put the bottle of sauce on the bench. ‘Would you normally make a stir fry just for yourself?’

  ‘Well, usually I eat with Adie but she ate dinner too early for me today.’ The onions sizzled as they hit the oil. ‘Why don’t you stay tonight and then Adie can see you in the morning? She’d love that.’

  He regarded her, a slight smile on his face, then nodded. ‘Thank you. I’d like to see her.’

  ‘Good.’ She pushed vegies around the wok with her metal spatula. ‘I’ll have a top-up on my wine, if you don’t mind.’

  Later, she lay in bed wishing she’d asked Evan more about Tebano, but she’d felt embarrassed that Quinn hadn’t told her. Could he have been ashamed? Or was it like Evan said: not something he wanted to revisit? The wind blew something across the verandah and banged it against the house. She climbed out of bed and on the verandah retrieved Adie’s plastic chair and wedged it behind the cane table. Light glowed from behind the curtain of the spare room and she imagined Evan sitting up in bed wearing Quinn’s green t-shirt and reading Adie’s book about dragons. How impossible it would have been to have an easy, companionable meal like that with her own father. She hadn’t seen her father for six years now, although she sometimes heard him in the background when her mother phoned. Her mum still came over for lunch every Friday after tennis and at three o’clock they walked together down the hill to collect Adie from school. Occasionally Gail took Adie back to her house, so Adie had met her grandfather, but she never spoke about him and was always much more excited at the idea of seeing Evan.

  Marianna knew that her mother longed for a rapprochement but at least she’d stopped trying to make it happen. Marianna didn’t miss her father at all, she just wished she’d had a different father. But a different father would have begot a different daughter. In some way she must be her father’s daughter, mustn’t she? She carried his DNA after all.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  When Quinn opened the surgery door, Carol was balancing on a chair and stringing silver tinsel over the reception desk. On the floor a cardboard box spewed decorations: plastic Santas and baubles that Quinn had watched her put up every November and pull down in January for the last five years.

  She climbed down in a cloud of too-sweet perfume. ‘What do you know?’ she said. ‘Jim’s springing for a real Christmas tree this year.’ She stood back and looked at her work, then lowered her voice. ‘Must’ve had a win on the horses.’

  The doorbell tinkled behind them. The first patient. Carol raised her thin eyebrows at Quinn then looked over his shoulder. Her voice turned syrupy. ‘Good morning, Ellen. Take a seat, hon.’

  In the kitchenette, Quinn put his lunchbox of stringy chicken in the fridge beside yesterday’s container of Marianna’s curry. Carol had sticky-taped a sprig of plastic holly over the microwave and Quinn thought of Ned’s red and green paper chain draped over the doorway at home. He imagined his son’s small fingers cutting the paper and gluing the ends together. There was something about the sight of Ned’s fingers – so small, so fine, so determinedly mastering adult tasks – that made his heart ache.

  That morning he had woken Ned early, just on sunrise, and they’d followed the path down to the creek and rock-hopped their way up to Ninth Crossing. As usual, Ned had led the way, glancing back at his father with a grin, his bare feet gripping the smooth boulders. They’d hardly spoken, the babbling creek and birds’ morning chorus a companionable wash of noise around them. Quinn had thought about what Rachel said – that Ned would do anything for Quinn – and it stopped him still for a moment. Standing on a cool, grey rock, he’d felt a creeping dread. Ned looked small and vulnerable, clambering up a huge boulder ahead, and Quinn hurried after him.

  The possibility of losing his children flitted always at the edge of his thoughts. He had been completely ill-prepared for the engulfing, terrifying love he felt for them. He knew every father felt some version of this, this feeling without edges, but his relationship with them felt even more tenuous after last night.

  From the moment of Adie’s birth, Quinn had feared losing her. He had always known, of course, that one day it would all come out and he’d simply been buying as much time as he could with her. Creating memories for her, memories of living with her father, of being part of a family. He knew Marianna would be capable of cutting him off or making it hard for him to see Adie. He had watched her maintain her rage at her father despite her mother’s efforts to stage a reconciliation.

  His phone rang in his pocket as he closed the fridge door. It was Marianna. ‘Hi,’ he said. She almost never called him at work.

  ‘Hi. Um, I wanted to let you know that your dad turned up here last night.’ She spoke quietly.

  ‘Really? Is he all right?’

  ‘He says so. But I wonder if he’s lonely.
’

  ‘Yeah.’ He thought of his dad sitting up in the shiny apartment Quinn had found when his dad had decided to move to Brisbane, saying he couldn’t cope with another Sydney winter. Quinn knew he should see more of him. ‘I’ll call him at lunchtime.’

  ‘Well, he’s still here. He stayed last night. They’re doing Morse code things in the living room.’

  ‘Girl spy and Grandpa spy?’ Quinn smiled.

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Thank you for taking care of him.’

  ‘Oh well. Adie loves him being here. I gave her the day off prep. She insists that it’s National Spy Day today . . . but I think she made that up . . .’ She trailed off. ‘I better let you go.’

  ‘Give my love to Dad and Adie.’

  ‘Bye.’

  Whenever Quinn’s dad visited, he’d spend hours playing with Adie, drawing up plans for a new storey on the treehouse or digging a mud pit in the backyard. Rachel was right, it was madness that Ned hadn’t met his grandfather.

  The front door of the surgery tinkled again and someone coughed a hacking cough in the waiting room. Quinn pulled the holly from over the microwave and threw it in the bin.

  •

  Ellen Clark wouldn’t look at him. He’d seen her three times now and usually she had a no-nonsense, direct manner, a style he imagined she’d developed over years of staring down nosy strangers fascinated and repelled by her son.

  Today she had come alone. He spread her test results over his desk. ‘So, there’s nothing showing up as the cause of your fatigue, Ellen.’ He looked up. ‘Basically I’ve ruled out everything I can test for.’

  She nodded, looking out the window. He hadn’t noticed before what a regal profile she had.

  ‘How are you feeling today?’

  She turned to him and shook her head. ‘Just the same. I can barely put one foot in front of the other.’

  Quinn liked this woman. He liked how she was with her son: kind and warm and matter-of-fact. He had seen her in the supermarket once and stopped to watch as she explained everything to Noel in that strong, clear voice. She told her son why she bought one brand of pasta instead of another and what she was planning for dinner. Once he saw her do a little jig near the dairy section, swinging her elbows from side to side and hopping up and down, part of some story she was telling. She had told Quinn that Noel – who was twenty-five now – understood a lot of what she said, even though the Brisbane doctors she’d seen apparently didn’t think he understood much at all.