His Other House

by Sarah Armstrong

  ‘And nothing else has changed since I saw you last?’ he asked. ‘Weight? Appetite? Any dizziness? Any pains . . . or shifts in mood?’

  The word that came to mind when Quinn looked at her was clean. Clean and uncluttered. He could imagine her as a young woman, pink-cheeked, riding horses on her parents’ farm out west.

  She shook her head. ‘No. Nothing new.’

  He’d heard from Rachel that Noel’s brain damage was the result of Jim Stanton’s failure to diagnose meningococcal meningitis when Noel was a week old. She’d said that Jim had admitted his mistake and apologised, but Ellen had never forgiven him.

  Quinn said, ‘Caring for Noel must be exhausting.’

  She nodded and he could imagine her thinking, I didn’t have to pay you to find that out, doctor.

  Jim’s voice boomed as he walked past the door. ‘Just down the end of the hall. That’s right.’

  Quinn said, ‘You’ve done a tremendous job looking after Noel for twenty-five years. Anyone would feel the weight of that. It would be extraordinary for someone not to feel fatigued.’

  Silent tears fell onto Ellen Clark’s lap, dark splotches on her jeans. Quinn fought the urge to get up and put a hand on her shoulder. He sat quietly and let her cry. She looked out the window, tears rolling unchecked down her face.

  He said, ‘We need to get you some more support. Perhaps some respite . . .’

  She shook her head. ‘No. Not respite. He can’t bear it.’

  ‘You’ll be no good to him if you end up in hospital, Ellen.’

  She walked to the window and looked out at the garden, her face showing utter, unselfconscious sadness. Quinn knew he had never felt such sadness as that. The random nature of bad luck – being hit by it or finding yourself brushing up against others’ mistakes – meant there was nothing you could do to avoid it. All the knowledge, all the fear, all the safeguards made no difference.

  ‘I’m going to suggest your GP get some crisis support in for you.’ Should he just let her talk and cry? He wondered if she ever cried with anyone. He wouldn’t look at his watch, but he knew he must be close to an hour behind. ‘I’m going to call and make you an appointment with your GP now.’ He dialled the number on the referral letterhead.

  Ellen Clark turned to face him, the sun shining behind her, so all he could see was her shape: broad shoulders and a halo of frizzy pale hair. ‘Do you have children, doctor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How many?’

  He paused. Normally he said one. ‘A girl and a boy.’

  ‘Are they healthy?’ She was very still.

  His heart lurched. Why had he told her he had two children? He had the fearful image of leakage between his two lives; a trickle over a dam wall. ‘Yes. They’re healthy,’ he said.

  ‘You’re lucky. You and your wife.’

  ‘I know.’

  He heard a voice squeaking in the handset. The GP. He brought it to his ear. ‘Oh, hello. It’s Quinn Davidson here . . .’

  •

  From the window in the hallway he watched Ellen Clark climb into her white four-wheel drive. She glanced up and he wondered if she could see him looking out at her. He’d sensed something in her when she left, disappointment in him or something left unsaid.

  He picked up the next file waiting for him on the reception desk and waited while the old man levered himself from the chair with a shaky grin. As the man shuffled beside him down the long corridor, Quinn imagined the procession of sick people who’d walked into this sprawling timber building over the years; thousands of them, their ill health swarming away in them: bacteria, viruses, mutating cells, failing organs.

  People liked to think that sickness was aberrant. But it was everywhere, quiet and pervasive. It was there as people walked down the street, picked up kids from school, and stood in line at the supermarket. When you saw so many people die early or end up with chronic disease, it was easiest to accept it as normal.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The waterhole was always shockingly cold. The water trickled down from the hills, through the leaf litter and red soil, and felt as though it never reached more than seventeen or eighteen degrees, even at the height of summer.

  Rachel dived in and surfaced on the far side, beside the pontoon where the water was deepest. She trod water, her body adjusting to the chill, and watched Ned on the small rocky beach, slowly peeling off his t-shirt, absorbed in some aspect of undressing.

  When she’d woken that morning she’d been alone in bed, the sheet tangled around her. She’d got up, expecting to find Quinn on the verandah drinking coffee. Instead there was a long spiral orange peel discarded on the kitchen table and a note in Ned’s big letters: CReeK WITH DADDY xx.

  She had stood on the verandah in the morning sun, looking down towards the creek, feeling much less righteous than she had the night before. Now she just wanted the precise combination of words to persuade Quinn that they must tell Ned straight away.

  Quinn and Ned had appeared from the bush below the house just before 7.30 am, after she’d eaten porridge and fed the chooks and struggled through a few more pages proofreading the book about lighthouses. She’d heard them hooting well before they emerged from the trees, brandishing sticks and covered in grass seeds. Quinn had to rush to work and had given her a fleeting kiss goodbye and a smile that looked more like a grimace.

  At the waterhole, Ned dropped his t-shirt to the ground and launched into the water. He dogpaddled towards her, grinning, his shoulder-length hair hanging in wet strands. My boy, she thought. My boy. He was a point of overwhelming vitality and vibrancy in that landscape, as if everything around him – the boulders and the river and the forest rising to the distant ridge – became dim and muted before the boy splashing his way across to her.

  ‘I think she’s here,’ he said as he drew close and pulled himself up onto the timber platform of the small pontoon.

  ‘She might be hiding.’

  ‘How long can a platypus hold her breath for?’ asked Ned.

  ‘Quite a long time. And she has a burrow, so she can go in there for a breather if there are people swimming around.’

  ‘Oh.’ He stood up on the pontoon, legs wide, and looked around the big waterhole. ‘Just wait. There will be some bubbles.’

  When she was pregnant with Ned, she had thought about the transition babies make from breathing amniotic fluid to breathing air, such a miraculous and mythic moment. And she had thought, of course, of Scotty, who made the transition back the other way. She liked to think that at the very last moment, when he inhaled river water, his lungs had called on the blissful memory of amniotic fluid flowing in and out.

  Ned sighed, ‘No platypus today.’

  ‘Not today.’

  Ned slipped back into the water and his arm brushed against hers, the briefest silky touch. He used to hold tight to her back as she swam up and down the waterhole and she missed his small warm body slippery on hers.

  He swam over to the fallen tree and clambered up onto the tree trunk which rose out of the water and rested on the high bank. He climbed up the log, using knots as footholds, and poked at the rock wall on the far side of the waterhole.

  ‘Are there platypuses in heaven?’

  ‘I think so. Yes, platypuses would definitely go to heaven.’

  ‘With Aunty Shaney and Grandma.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  He jumped off the log with a splash and paddled further down the rock wall, into the deep shade where he tucked something into a small niche he’d dug out of the wall. He called, ‘Want to know what I’m hiding?’

  ‘I do.’ She knew he’d already stashed a silver trinket she’d given him, as well as plastic figurines and wooden beads.

  ‘Poo,’ he beamed. ‘Quoll poo wrapped in cling wrap.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I had it in my hand while I was swimming. Clarrie gave it to me. He thinks I’ll see one very soon. He’s going to take me out at night looking.’


  ‘Can I come?’

  Ned looked away and fiddled with the niche. She guessed it was inevitable that Ned would move away from her and towards men. He was thrilled whenever she left him with Clarrie to go to a yoga class in town or out for drinks with Kate.

  She wondered if it was something boys did or if the girl, too, would move away from Marianna. The girl. She’d learned years ago to stop asking Quinn about his life with Adie and Marianna. She didn’t need to think of him in their oh-so-lovely Queenslander on the hill, eating Marianna’s gourmet meals, playing with Adie. Sleeping side by side. Making love.

  She watched Ned pulling at a fern growing in the rock wall and worried that telling him the truth would king hit him with that same feeling of being left out. But that was the truth of Ned’s life, wasn’t it? This misshapen life that Rachel had brought him into. She only wished that he’d known right from the start. She could see now that she’d lost her backbone after her mother died, as if her mother’s existence had somehow steeled her to face the world. How would things be now if she’d followed her impulse to tell Marianna that one time they’d met?

  Ned swam back to her, his lips and cheeks pale.

  ‘Come on. Time to head home,’ she said. Neither of them ever mentioned the cold. ‘Why don’t you swim freestyle back?’

  Ned thrashed his way to the rocky shore, arms grabbing at the water, feet splashing droplets high into the air.

  Rachel stood him on a sunny rock and towelled him dry while he stared dreamily into the bush. ‘Aunty Shaney would see Grandma up there,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, I reckon they would have found each other by now.’

  The knot in Rachel’s stomach tightened. After Shaney’s funeral the day before, Rachel and Beryl had been standing in the shade of Beryl’s backyard fig tree, watching the kids play cricket. Inside, her family was drinking beer and wine and eating food that the neighbours had dropped over. Ned had barrelled into the cricket game, jumping up and down and calling in his little-boy voice, ‘I can fast bowl. Let me fast bowl.’ His lanky, older second cousin, Angus, had smiled and tossed Ned the ball.

  Rachel saw Ned the way she imagined Beryl did: skinny, his fine brown hair down over his shoulders, scratches over his tanned arms. He had the look of an animal: lithe and alert. After bowling, Ned stood beside Andy, another of his second cousins, and Andy had leaned close to say something to him. They had their backs to the women but Rachel glimpsed a look of confusion on Ned’s face, so she walked towards them.

  ‘But what’s his name?’ she heard the older boy ask, his voice friendly and warm, his hand on Ned’s shoulder.

  Ned was bouncing on the spot, his eye on the girl readying to bowl. ‘Quinn,’ he said and moved himself out from under Andy’s hand.

  ‘But he doesn’t live with you all the time, does he?’ Andy said. ‘Where is he the rest of the time?’

  Rachel said, ‘Hey! Andy!’

  Beryl marched past her and grabbed Andy’s arm. She pointed her finger. ‘Go and help your mum with the drinks.’ Beryl reached out and clipped Andy’s ear as he walked by her.

  He ducked and turned back. ‘I’m not a little kid. You can’t hit me anymore, Grandma.’ He glared at her then sauntered over to the house.

  Ned watched the boy go, his face still. Rachel kneeled by him. ‘Are you okay?’

  He’d nodded and run away to try and catch the ball, and Rachel had returned to the fig tree. Beryl, her face red, had said, ‘Are you going to let him find out from a teenage boy? Because that’s what’s going to happen, love.’

  Rachel finished drying Ned and pulled the t-shirt over his head. ‘I can do it,’ he said and pushed her hands away. ‘Is it a preschool day?’

  ‘Not today. Not ’til Monday.’

  They walked together up the hill, Rachel carrying their towels and Ned swiping the grass with his stick. She waited while he squatted and examined something on the dirt path. The sun warmed her back and steam rose from the dense vegetation around them. She looked at his bare feet and his small damp head bent low and felt the terrible weight of everything that she and Quinn were withholding from him.

  Ned passed her a handful of feathery grass stems. He moved one stem back and forth so its fluffy head nodded. She crouched beside him. ‘Will you feed the chickens when we get back?’ she said. ‘I bet they’d like some of that grass.’

  He touched her arm, his fingers so light she barely felt them. ‘Did the baby chickens see when we cut their daddy’s head off?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Are you worried they’d be upset?’

  He nodded.

  She wanted to hold him but knew he’d squirm away. She felt a kind of shame for how badly she longed for him to hug her like he used to.

  ‘I don’t think he was their daddy,’ she said. ‘He was still a teenager. Too young to be a daddy. Maybe he was their cousin.’ She had absolutely no idea when roosters became fertile. Probably as soon as they could crow – the evolutionary imperative hard at work – and that rooster had crowed very bloody well.

  Ned looked down at the little bouquet of grass in his fist. He opened his hand and let the grass fall to the ground. ‘Is my daddy home tonight?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He nodded. ‘Good.’ He stood and sprinted away from her, up the narrow path, shouting, ‘I’m hungry!’

  She worked hard to make sure she didn’t mark time around Quinn’s comings and goings. But Ned did. Through all their daily routines, their meals and games and swims and walks, there was always the sense of him waiting for Quinn.

  She strode after him and the cottage came into view. It was like a child’s drawing: a front door flanked by two windows, a triangular roof and brick chimney. The roof over her and Ned’s heads. She crossed the lawn to the chook house where Ned shooed a chicken from the doorway and disappeared inside. Quinn would be shocked to know that she’d thought of phoning Marianna more than a few times. Their number was listed under M. Davidson. How strange it was that Marianna had such an influence on Rachel’s life but wouldn’t look twice at Rachel if she passed her in the street.

  Ned kneeled in front of a nesting box, an egg in each hand, frowning. ‘She won’t let me get the eggs again.’

  ‘She’s broody, isn’t she? But we don’t want any more chickies at the moment.’ Rachel reached under the chook, who flapped past in an indignant flurry of feathers.

  ‘Two more.’ Rachel passed the eggs to Ned.

  He held one to his cheek. ‘So warm.’

  Regret was something Rachel was intimate with. Especially regret about something irreversible. But her failure to tell Ned the truth was something she could redeem; she could simply tell her boy the facts. She didn’t need to wait – she wouldn’t wait – for Quinn’s permission.

  She followed Ned out the door of the chook house and across the lawn, her boy carefully cradling the four creamy-brown eggs.

  •

  Rachel would like to blame hormones. She would like to blame her desperation to have a father for her child. But she had known what she was doing. For a few deluded months she had even felt like the chosen one, because she was the one who knew what Marianna did not.

  She had realised she was pregnant at her mother’s funeral. Sitting in the front pew, waiting for the service to start, trying not to think of her mother’s body in the coffin just metres away, saliva had flooded her mouth. It was an impersonal kind of nausea, like nothing she’d felt before. She’d stood and hurried down the carpeted aisle, ignoring the faces swivelling to watch her, catching sight of Quinn in a back row and hoping she’d make it to the lawn out the front before she vomited. She’d kneeled on the warm grass, that blessed warm grass, just as her stomach heaved and clear liquid shot out of her mouth and nose. As she bent over and retched, she knew, without doubt, that she was pregnant.

  Shaney had come to kneel beside her, big knees in tan pantyhose sinking into the grass, her hand on Rachel’s back. Then Quinn appeared. None of them said anything. Inside, the organ lau
nched into a hymn. Rachel took the folded tissue Shaney offered her and thought that surely Shaney and Quinn could tell, but they seemed to assume it was grief spilling out of her in the most visceral way.

  Later that evening, after the wake, she had walked up Quinn’s side path and found him sitting on the back steps, shirt off and beer in hand.

  He stood and reached out his arms. ‘Come here. How are you?’

  She pressed her face to his familiar warm chest and just nodded. How could she explain that the image of her mother’s body in the coffin, with the earth pressing down on it, had somehow, in some crazy way, merged with the idea of the tiny baby, deep and unreachable inside her own body?

  He stroked her back. ‘How was it at Beryl’s?’

  She shrugged and started crying and he held her tightly. She had ached to be with him in the days after her mother died, but he had been in Brisbane.

  ‘I need a drink of water,’ she said when her crying subsided.

  ‘I’ll get it. Sit down.’ He turned to go inside.

  ‘Wait,’ she said. The moment stretched: his expectant face, her body thrumming. ‘I’m having a baby. I just did a test.’

  His face was still for a moment then his features dropped. His eyes closed and he tipped his head back.

  She sank onto the step. Above her, his face was in his hands. He hadn’t told Marianna yet, that was clear. What a fool she was to think that this baby, this miraculous baby, was confirmation of their decision to be together.

  He sat beside her and his voice was quiet. ‘Oh, darling.’ She waited for him to say more and the silence was heavy. He took a breath. ‘Marianna is pregnant too.’