His Other House

by Sarah Armstrong

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hey.’ His voice was shaky and he reached for her hand.

  She wrenched her hand away. She couldn’t look at him. ‘When did you find out? How pregnant is she?’ She fixed her eyes on the blue hills.

  ‘About six or seven weeks.’

  ‘And when were you going to tell me?’

  ‘I found out on Tuesday evening. The day your mum died.’

  ‘So you haven’t told her about us?’

  ‘No.’ He took hold of her hand and she didn’t pull away, only because she couldn’t bear to go next door, to the empty house that still smelled like her mother. ‘And you’re not going to tell her now.’

  ‘I can’t. Not right now.’ He put his hands either side of her face. ‘Come here.’

  She turned away from his hands. ‘And when were you going to tell me?’

  ‘If you knew her and what she’d been through . . .’

  ‘So, you’ll what . . . ? Wait until she has the baby? And then tell her? That’s worse.’

  ‘If she has the baby,’ he said. ‘She’s had four miscarriages.’

  She looked out to the hills and imagined living at the cottage alone with her baby. Her mother dead. ‘I think you need to decide what you really want. Who you want.’

  He took her face in his hands again. ‘Come here.’ His warm, familiar hands held her cheeks and he kissed her with a tenderness she had come to count on. ‘It’s an amazing thought that you’re carrying our baby.’ His eyes were soft. ‘It’s wonderful.’

  ‘Yes.’ She remembered the family celebration when her mother announced her pregnancy with the baby who would be Scotty. Her father had gone to buy apple cider and the three of them had stood in the kitchen and toasted the baby with the best wineglasses. And now Rachel was the only one left. She needed to lie down, to close her eyes, to go to sleep.

  He put his hand on her belly. ‘Are you still going to go up the valley, to the farm?’

  She nodded and put her hand over his. ‘I know what I am going to do, Quinn. But what are you going to do?’

  ‘I’ll tell her, Rachel. I just don’t know when is the right time,’ he said, his voice strained. ‘Have you eaten? Did you eat lunch?’

  She shook her head and let herself be led into the house.

  Chapter Thirty

  Quinn eased the Subaru through the deep rut that always threatened to scrape the guts out of his car. Every year or so the driveway became impassable and they had to leave their cars at the bottom until the grader came out from town. It was as if they had an unspoken agreement not to let the house become too easily accessible.

  He liked the feeling of being one step removed from town and other people’s lives, the feeling that they could live exactly how they wanted. If he could manage it, he left work early on the afternoons he was in Corimbi and as soon as he got home the three of them would set off for a walk through the bush; they got muddy and swam naked in the creek and kept Ned up too late playing made-up board games. Quinn liked himself more when he was at Rachel’s; as if he were more like what he thought of as his real, uncomplicated self, the self he remembered being when he was about nine.

  As Quinn pulled up, Ned appeared on the verandah, at the top of the stairs. He waved his arms about, semaphoring Hello to Quinn before launching himself into the air, limbs wheeling. He landed heavily on the grass and grinned over at his father.

  Quinn turned off the ignition and undid the seatbelt so he could semaphore back, his hands bumping the roof and windscreen.

  Ned threw a stick in Quinn’s direction and then scampered up the stairs and around the corner of the verandah.

  Quinn sat for a moment, the engine ticking in the quiet. Only when he was lying in Rachel’s bed after she was asleep could he see his life from the outside. Sometimes he saw a man who had done his best with an impossible situation and given both women and both kids his love and support. In dark moments, he saw a man who had created a nightmare because of his own cowardice, a man who thrashed about, rudderless, wounding everyone around him.

  He heaved himself out of the car and met Ned hurrying down the stairs, a tomahawk in his right hand.

  ‘I’m the kindling man,’ Ned said. ‘Mummy taught me how.’

  ‘But you only do it with her or me watching, don’t you? Your fingers are very precious.’

  Ned slipped his free hand into Quinn’s. ‘Can we go now?’ His small fingers felt dusty and dry.

  ‘Let me put my bag inside and say hello to Mummy before she goes out.’ He wanted to tell her that she was right, that they should tell Ned about Marianna and Adie.

  ‘Daddy, if I touched the eel in our waterhole would I get an electric shock?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Put that tomahawk down, would you? I don’t think we have those electric eels in Australia. I think our eel would just feel slimy.’

  ‘Oh.’ Ned rested the tomahawk against the wall and ran through the door. Rachel was at the kitchen table, writing, and didn’t look up as Quinn entered the room. Ned poured himself a glass of water at the sink.

  Quinn rested his hand on Ned’s head. ‘Why don’t you put your boots on and we’ll go.’

  ‘Mummy doesn’t make me wear boots in the bush.’

  ‘But you’re going for a walk with me.’

  He drank from the glass and looked up at his father, wide-eyed. ‘But Mummy says I don’t have to.’

  Rachel spoke without looking up. ‘Put your boots on, Ned.’ She sounded tired.

  Ned sighed and spun around. Quinn watched him stomp out the door and around the verandah to the other side of the house.

  He turned back and Rachel was gazing at him, unsmiling. He was struck by how rosy her face looked. Like he remembered her looking in pregnancy. She couldn’t be pregnant, could she?

  He put his bag on a chair. ‘Hi.’

  She closed the book and offered him a half-smile.

  ‘What are you writing?’ Quinn asked.

  ‘Oh nothing, really.’ She pushed the book away. ‘How was your day?’ Her face was shining. Was it always like that and he hadn’t noticed or had something changed?

  ‘We need to talk, don’t we?’ he said.

  She nodded and gave another weak smile. He saw the effort it took her and that troubled him more than anything. He stepped around behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. Her hair was damp and she smelled like the lemon myrtle soap that she boiled up a few times a year.

  ‘Beryl knows,’ she said. ‘She knows everything. Shaney knew and Kate knows . . .’ She ran through a list of names, her tone even. It sounded like she was going to keep naming people.

  He dropped his hands and stepped back. Fuck! Why hadn’t she told him this before? How many people knew?

  She turned in her chair. ‘And the sky hasn’t fallen in. It hasn’t got back to your wife. I’m sure plenty of people around here have put two and two together.’

  ‘Daddy?’ Ned stood in the kitchen doorway. ‘The sun will set soon. It will be dark. Please.’

  Quinn said, ‘You haven’t got your boots on yet. Go on. And a shirt. We can take torches.’

  ‘Great!’ Ned ran down the hall to his room.

  ‘When did you tell Beryl and Shaney?’ He tried to keep his voice low so Ned wouldn’t hear. ‘I can’t believe you did that without telling me.’

  There was a crash from the bedroom. They both looked down the hall. ‘I’m okay!’ Ned called.

  Rachel said, ‘They’ve known since I was first pregnant.’

  Another crash. Rachel got up and took Quinn’s face in her hands. He smelled her breath, clean and herby. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘It’s not me telling you what you have to do. You don’t have to do anything. I’m just telling you how I am willing to live. Or how I’m not willing to live.’ She whispered, her face close to his, ‘And I’m not willing to keep lying to my son.’ She dropped her hands from his face. ‘I want to tell him together. And soon.’

  ‘Okay.’ He took a breath.
‘Yes. You’re right. Let’s tell him . . .’

  Tears filled her eyes. ‘You’ve changed your tune.’

  ‘Well . . . you’re right, he needs to know.’ He went to stand in Ned’s doorway. What would he do when Ned wanted to meet his grandfather? He felt sick.

  Ned was wrestling his leather boots on and seemed to be avoiding Quinn’s eyes. Did he hear any of it? Quinn had hated overhearing his parents arguing.

  ‘Hey, matey,’ he said. ‘Have you got your torch?’

  Ned nodded and crawled on his hands and knees to his wardrobe. Rachel walked into the room, past Quinn, and bent to Ned. ‘Bye, darling. I’ll come in and check on you when I get home from Kate’s.’

  Ned lifted his face for a kiss then pulled on the t-shirt he’d fished from a drawer.

  Rachel hesitated by the door. ‘Is it okay if I take your car? Pru rang to say she was driving behind me yesterday and my brake lights are both out.’

  He nodded. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She reached out and grazed Quinn’s arm with her hand. ‘I’ll see you later tonight.’

  He watched her disappear down the hall, her gangly, awkward walk. He knew he was a hypocrite to be angry that she’d lied to him. Was Marianna the only one who hadn’t been lying?

  ‘I’m ready, Daddy.’ Ned presented himself to Quinn, adjusting the band of his head torch. ‘You’ve still got your work shoes on!’

  •

  The trees grew close together and their canopy blocked the last of the twilight. Quinn followed Ned up the steep, narrow path, their two head torches illuminating the silvery trunks of the ghost gums. How comforting Quinn found the trees. These were the ones spared the loggers’ saws a hundred years ago, simply because this small corner of the mountain was too steep and hard to access, surrounded on all sides by rocky creeks and clefts.

  Ned stopped to shine his torch into a tree directly overhead. A pair of red eyes glinted.

  ‘Nup. Only a possum,’ he said to his father. ‘I can see its tail.’ The boy kept climbing. Quinn thought of Rachel and the slightly detached way she had spoken to him. He stopped. Fear lurched in his gut. Shit. Maybe it was Ned and Rachel he was at risk of losing.

  Ned had stopped again and motioned for Quinn to be quiet. Quinn crouched beside him and rested his hand on Ned’s lean, sweaty back and peered into the dark bush.

  ‘There’s a snake in there,’ whispered Ned.

  ‘How can you tell?’ Quinn stood up.

  ‘I can hear it.’

  ‘I can’t.’ All Quinn could hear was the last of the birdsong for the day.

  Ned nodded, his face half-lit by Quinn’s torch. ‘He can’t hear us but he can feel our heat.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Quinn.

  ‘Mummy told me.’

  Rachel would have arrived at Kate’s birthday party by now, where Kate knew and God knows who else. Even Clarrie knew. Perhaps the news had reached Brisbane already. His heart quickened. He had always known that it was inevitable, this unravelling. He had simply wanted as many years as possible with Adie before everything fell apart.

  Ned bent to pick up something from the path then threw it into the bush. ‘Clarrie gave me a bit of quoll poo. Scientists call a bit of animal poo a cat, did you know?’ He laughed.

  ‘Is he sure it’s quoll poo?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ned knew this country the same way that Quinn used to know the island. Quinn and Tom would dump their bikes by the road and range off into the scrubby bush, looking for war relics left behind by the Japanese. They always ended up at the abandoned, mined-out sections, where the phosphate had been gouged out, leaving great spires of coral four times Quinn’s height. He’d once asked his father how much island was left below the mined-out section and his father had said, ‘Probably not all that much.’ Quinn used to lie in bed imagining the mining and relentless waves eating away at the island until it caved in and broke apart and everything sank into the depths: the houses and loader and crusher and the club and the tennis courts. It would have been so easy for his father to reassure Quinn that the island had a solid foundation.

  ‘Clarrie has a book of cat photos.’

  ‘I think it might be scat, Noodle, not cat. How often do you see Clarrie?’

  ‘It’s definitely called cat, Daddy.’

  ‘Do you see him every day?’ Quinn asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Was Ned being evasive? ‘Sometimes.’

  Quinn hadn’t particularly warmed to Clarrie. The old guy liked to tell people that he was so self-sufficient that he hadn’t left the valley in ten years. He never mentioned that other people, like Rachel, picked up things for him in town: bags of nails, sugar and matches. Clarrie had also told Quinn about five times that he hadn’t been to a doctor since he’d gone AWOL from the navy forty years ago.

  Ned called out to his father, ‘No. This way, Daddy!’ Quinn had missed the path up the rocks. Quinn climbed the last fifty metres of rocky incline to where Ned stood, hands on hips, looking over the valley below. Quinn used to think Rachel was reckless letting Ned go off by himself to fossick in the snaky bush but every time he and Ned went out into the forest, Quinn saw a boy full of confidence and curiosity. If Ned took a risk, it was always carefully calculated. Rachel had once told Quinn that she’d made a decision to see the bush and its animals as benevolent guardians of her boy, and that she suspected that the greatest risk to Ned came from her and Quinn.

  Quinn and Ned crossed the great rock platform they called ‘Mighty Rock’. It was the size and shape of an Olympic swimming pool and lay just under the ridge of the hill.

  They sat on the warm sun-heated rock beside the remnants of the campfire they’d built a couple of weeks before, and Ned shuffled back between Quinn’s legs and leaned against him. Ned relaxed into him in a way that Adie never did. She would soften into Quinn and then a minute later she’d shift away, even in her sleep. Ned was hot and sweaty and smelled like he needed a bath. Quinn pulled him close. The bush settled around them, the birds quietening and a few nocturnal creatures beginning to move about. An owl flapped by and disappeared into the bushy darkness. Quinn sensed the forested valleys and ridges stretching for miles. Above them the sky was sprayed with stars.

  ‘The Saucepan.’ Ned traced his finger through the air. It was the first constellation Quinn’s mother had taught him. Ned asked, ‘Why doesn’t Mummy know the stars?’

  ‘I guess her mum or dad didn’t teach her.’ Quinn found the lines of Pegasus and Andromeda. He stroked Ned’s hair. ‘I want to tell you something important, Neddy.’

  Ned pointed. ‘Is that Taurus?’

  ‘Listen, sweetheart . . . You and me and Mummy, we’re a family, aren’t we?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well. Daddy has another family. In Brisbane.’

  Ned went very still in Quinn’s lap. He wriggled around to look at Quinn, his finger still pointing, as if he were tracing a constellation in the air beside Quinn’s shoulder. Quinn couldn’t see into Ned’s eyes and he regretted having this conversation in the dark. He imagined Ned as a man, thinking back to this moment on Mighty Rock. Perhaps it would be the emotion he’d remember rather than the particular words. Quinn had to keep going, and he softened his voice as if that might possibly soften the meaning. ‘I have a little girl called Adie. She’s the same age as you.’

  Quinn waited for Ned to say something; a nearby shrub rustling in the breeze seemed incredibly loud. Ned wriggled so his back was to Quinn again. ‘You have a little girl?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Brisbane. I see her on the nights I’m away from here.’

  ‘There’s Orion,’ said Ned, looking up.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Adie.’ Crickets starting rasping around them.

  ‘Are you her daddy too?’

  ‘Yes.’ He rested his hand on the side of Ned’s head. What was the boy feeling? Quinn’s own heart was p
ounding. When he’d started this conversation it had felt like the right thing; this whole situation was of Quinn’s making and telling Ned seemed like his responsibility, and this seemed like the right place, somewhere they had spent so much time together. Now he wished he’d held back and waited until Rachel was there too.

  Ned sat forward so his back was no longer touching Quinn’s chest. ‘How many stars in Orion?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Quinn wrapped his arms around Ned’s small body. In the slight quiver beneath his hands, he felt the magnitude of what he had just said. Quinn leaned his face close to Ned’s ear. ‘You know nothing changes my love for you. I love you all the way to Orion and back.’

  Ned nodded. ‘Okay. I’m hungry.’ He stood up.

  As they walked the last steep stretch down through the forest, towards the lit-up house, Ned asked, ‘When’s Mummy home?’

  ‘After you go to sleep.’

  When they reached the flat section of track, Ned raced away and Quinn called out, ‘Slow down, matey.’ Quinn hurried after him then stumbled and fell onto the damp ground. Ned came back and stood by him in the dark. Quinn scrambled up and put his hand on Ned’s fine-boned shoulder. ‘Do you wish your mum were here?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Ned crossed the lawn and climbed the stairs. He sat heavily on the verandah to unlace his boots.

  Quinn shucked off his boots and kneeled beside his son. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about them before now.’

  Ned stood up. ‘What’s for dinner?’ He took off his head torch.

  ‘How about an omelette?’

  Ned shook his head. ‘No. Mummy and I had eggs at lunchtime.’ He opened the screen door. ‘How old is she?’ he said, without looking back at Quinn.

  ‘Same age as you. Five.’

  •

  Later, Quinn ran a bath and reached out to help Ned in, but the boy climbed in on his own. Quinn turned the taps off and passed Ned his purple washer. Ned’s face had a pale, blank quality that turned Quinn’s stomach. Then Ned sat up, his eyes wide. ‘I left my penknife up at Mighty Rock.’ He stood up, bathwater streaming down his legs. ‘We’ve got to go and get it!’

  Quinn took hold of his upper arms as Ned tried to step out of the bath. ‘Not now. It’s too late. We’ll go in the morning. It’ll still be there.’