His Other House

by Sarah Armstrong

  Ned wailed. ‘Noooo.’ He tried to twist his arms out of Quinn’s grasp. ‘We’ve got to go and get it now. Let me go!’

  ‘I know you want to get it. But I’m not going to let you go up there now. It’s too dark and too late.’

  ‘Let me go. I’ll go. I don’t need you to come. I go up there on my own all the time.’ He slumped into the bath.

  Quinn stroked Ned’s back. It had been the wrong thing to tell Ned without Rachel there. ‘Would you like to do stargazing after your bath?’

  Ned shook his head, eyes downcast.

  ‘Okay, let’s wash your hair, Noodle,’ said Quinn and reached for a bar of Rachel’s soap.

  Ned shook his head and said, so quietly that Quinn could barely hear him, ‘No soap. It kills my hair.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ Quinn lathered the soap in his hands.

  ‘Clarrie.’

  ‘Mummy’s soap is very gentle. It won’t hurt your hair.’

  Ned looked down into the bathwater and whispered, ‘I don’t want to kill my hair.’ He was weeping.

  ‘Okay. We don’t have to use soap if you don’t want.’ Quinn rinsed his hands and used a small plastic cup to pour water through Ned’s hair. As he tended to his boy in the shallow bath, stained a rusty colour by minerals in the water, despondency pressed down on him. Ned’s upset was only a small part of the whole fucking mess; there was Rachel and Adie and there was Marianna. And his father. For a moment, kneeling there beside the bath, Quinn’s chest tightened so he couldn’t breathe. There was no way out of this. All he could do for now were the small things. Get Ned out of the bath. Dry him. Dress him in his pyjamas.

  •

  Quinn spread a blanket over the damp grass out the front and the two of them lay down. Ned tipped his head back to the night sky. ‘Do you do this with the girl?’

  ‘No. This is just for you and me.’ Quinn stroked Ned’s damp hair and the boy relaxed and tucked himself closer to his father. A car droned up a hill in the distance. Quinn wanted Ned asleep in bed before Rachel got home.

  ‘Is that Scorpius?’ asked Ned, and lifted his arm.

  ‘You mean just over the top of the mountain? I think so.’ He pressed his lips to Ned’s damp head. Ned let his arm drop and soon Quinn felt his small body twitch into sleep.

  Quinn’s mother used to guide his hand around the constellations. They’d lie side by side on woven mats out on the lawn and she would tell him the English and the Gilbertese names for the constellations. Even at the time he had supposed that it was Tebano who’d taught her the local myths about the stars.

  When Quinn was seventeen and getting ready to go to university, he’d met Jackie Shaw at the clubhouse one day. They sat in the shade and drank lemonade and she told him that his mother and Tebano had been seen kissing down by the beach. Jackie laughingly told him that kissing in public like that had apparently crossed some island line. When Quinn got home, Tebano’s wife, who worked as a maid in one of the other Australian family’s houses, was talking to Quinn’s mother on the verandah.

  When his mother came inside, she’d seen how angry Quinn was and had come to talk to him. ‘It’s not your business, Quinn,’ she ended up saying. ‘You don’t have to worry about it.’

  ‘Everyone saw you. You flaunt it in front of us.’

  ‘This is between your father and me.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, it’s not. You should have seen how people looked at me up at the club just now. I can’t forgive you.’

  ‘Darling.’ She had drawn herself up. ‘I’m sorry it’s hard for you but it’s not your place to forgive me or otherwise.’

  He had gone silent and wouldn’t talk to her. She wasn’t put off though and helped him pack for university. She knitted him a beanie for the winter. ‘I’m sure you’ll be riding a bike around like your brother,’ she said. His last evening on Ocean Island he’d stood at his bedroom window and watched her where she sat out in the garden. Night fell and he couldn’t see her anymore, just the tiny glowing dot of her cigarette. Geckoes scurried around his dark bedroom and he could hear music drifting down from the club. Out on the water, lights bobbed. Some of the islander workers and perhaps a few Banabans were out in their canoes, using torches and nets to catch the flying fish. Quinn watched the lights and wondered if his mother was waiting for him to join her. If she’d asked him, he might have gone to sit beside her, and out there, where they had spent so many hours together, they might have floundered their way back together. But she just sat out there in the dark, smoking cigarette after cigarette, and eventually Quinn had gone to bed.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Rachel could guess what was coming.

  ‘What’s it like knowing that he’s with her . . . when he’s not with you?’ Kelli leaned forward and picked an olive from the bowl on the coffee table.

  Rachel said, ‘You want to hear what it’s like to know that he’s fucking her too?’

  Kelli widened her eyes and laughed. ‘Well . . . I guess.’ She looked towards the kitchen where the others were decorating Kate’s birthday cake. Rachel suspected they’d also be talking about her and Quinn. And probably judging Quinn, and judging Rachel for being the kind of woman who would steal a husband. A wife’s worst nightmare.

  ‘Well, when he’s with me, he’s not with her.’ The fact that Quinn was still making love to Marianna was something Rachel mostly managed to put out of mind, like some weird form of amnesia. Or denial.

  When she’d arrived at Kate’s, she’d walked up the cement path and stopped to listen to the women laughing inside the ugly brick house. The argument with Quinn was still buzzing through her. She was relieved he was willing to tell Ned, but angry that she hadn’t insisted on it sooner, and not just for Ned’s sake. Why had she been so gutless?

  She’d walked up Kate’s steps and thought, No more lying. She had spent the last five years strategically avoiding talking about Quinn. When she’d met other mothers at baby swim class or at the park, she’d just avoided mentioning a partner, and she was surprised how infrequently people asked. People were caught up in their own lives.

  Almost as soon as she walked into Kate’s party, a woman she hadn’t met before asked her if she had a family, so she’d mentioned Ned and named Quinn. This woman smiled and asked if he was the doctor in town, then asked if Rachel lived in Brisbane. She clearly knew he was married. So Rachel told her. No more lying. She imagined the news spreading around town in the weeks to come and she hated knowing she’d be the subject of gossip again. Thank God for the hills. Thank God for steady, unshakeable Clarrie.

  ‘So . . .’ Kelli smiled. She seemed to think that Rachel was enjoying this conversation. ‘Do you think he’s a different person with her than he is with you?’

  ‘Oh.’ Rachel sighed. She didn’t really mind Kelli. She was a bit of an airhead but she had always been friendly enough when they ran into each other at Kate’s. And for a while they’d done kids’ circus classes together; Kelli’s daughter was a few months older than Ned. Rachel drained her champagne glass and said, ‘Is he a different person? I doubt it, but how would I know?’ She turned to Kate, who dropped onto the couch beside her. ‘How’s the birthday girl?’

  ‘Great. More champagne?’ Kate topped up Rachel’s glass while the other four women streamed in from the kitchen bearing a cake fizzing with sparklers. After they sang Happy Birthday, Rachel felt Kelli’s eyes land on her again.

  ‘So, Rachel . . . I gather it’s not common knowledge, then?’ She took a plate of cake from Kate. ‘I mean . . . she . . . doesn’t know.’

  ‘No. She doesn’t.’ Rachel turned to Kate, who was licking cream from her fingers, and made a silent plea for Kate to change the conversation.

  ‘What’s the secret ingredient, Izzy? Cinnamon?’ Kate asked and passed Rachel a plate of cake.

  Rachel knew it was wrong that these women now knew and Marianna didn’t. Who were these women, anyway? Apart from Kate, they were no one special to Rachel.

  She
had met Marianna once, just after exchanging contracts with the new owners of her mum’s house. Quinn had warned her that Marianna was coming and Rachel had watched from her mother’s sunroom as she pulled up in her black Peugeot. Marianna had been magnificently pregnant, a few weeks further along than Rachel but much bigger. And she was much more beautiful than Rachel had imagined, with thick dark hair and an old-fashioned, oval face. She was far more beautiful than Rachel.

  Marianna had bent awkwardly to find the secret key that Rachel also used and then she phoned Quinn at work to tell him that she’d arrived. Rachel tried not to listen but Marianna’s voice through the open window was loud, and her warm, jokey tone froze Rachel where she kneeled folding her mother’s towels into cardboard boxes. She wanted them to have a dour, serious relationship.

  Later, after packing the last of her mother’s blankets, Rachel had gone out to the line to bring in the baby’s clothes. She unpegged the tiny jumpsuits and bunny rugs and beanies that Shaney and Kate had given her. It was quiet in the house next door and there was a delicious smell of something cooking.

  Rachel was balancing the washing basket on her hip and heading indoors when a woman’s voice came over the fence, ‘Carrying things becomes so incredibly awkward, doesn’t it?’

  There she was, standing by the fence, smiling, a glass of orange juice in one hand, the other hand on her belly. Her features were so even and so satisfyingly placed that Rachel imagined her face would fit perfectly into one of those triangles that some male mathematician had decided defined beauty.

  Rachel had shrugged. ‘I find washing up the hardest. Trying to reach the sink.’

  ‘Oh, yes. How long have you got to go?’

  ‘About eight weeks.’

  ‘I’m six weeks off.’

  I know, Rachel thought.

  Marianna had looked down at the glass in her hand. ‘The closer I get to my due date, the more I think how extraordinary it is to grow another human inside my body, then I remember how damned ordinary and commonplace it is.’

  ‘That’s exactly how my mother described it.’

  ‘Really? I think I stole it from Quinn. You must know Quinn. He’s in there somewhere, just got home from work.’ She ducked her head as if to try and spot him.

  Please don’t call him, thought Rachel. She wondered if he was watching them through a window.

  ‘Maybe Quinn got it from my mother.’ Rachel said his name a little too loudly. But she wanted to claim him in some small way. ‘She was his patient.’

  ‘Well, she was right.’ Marianna had such a warm smile.

  ‘She was pretty wise.’

  ‘She’s not alive?’

  ‘No. She died just after I got pregnant.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Rachel shifted the washing basket on her hip. She didn’t want to talk to Marianna about her mother. ‘Do you know if your baby is a boy or girl?’ she asked. She already knew that Marianna had told the ultra sonographer not to tell them.

  ‘No. You?’

  ‘We’re having a boy. We’re thinking of calling him Ned.’ We. She thought. We. That’s me and your husband, by the way. She hated the antagonism rising in her. Marianna was not her enemy.

  Marianna drained her glass of orange juice. ‘Some women say they can’t wait for it to end, that it feels like their body has been taken over, but I love it.’ She shook the last drops of juice out onto the grass.

  ‘Yes.’ Rachel hadn’t told anyone she was afraid that after the baby was born she would feel hollowed out, or worse, that she would feel the way she used to, her body merely utilitarian and functional. And here was Marianna, feeling the same way. She reached for Marianna’s arm. She would say, There’s something you need to know. It’s not fair that I know and you don’t.

  But Marianna took Rachel’s hand and shook it. ‘I’m Marianna. Nice to meet you.’ Her fingers were warm.

  ‘Rachel.’ She had held on to Marianna’s hand a fraction too long and the other woman took her hand back and went inside.

  •

  Kate dug her fork into the cake. ‘Oh, come on. Have none of you had it off with a married man?’

  ‘Sure, sure,’ said Kelli. ‘At uni. It’s just . . .’ She flapped her hand and said, ‘Don’t worry. Cake’s great, Izzy!’ And in the brief smile that Kelli threw her, Rachel saw pity.

  Even as Rachel opened her mouth, she knew she was a bit pissy from the champagne and shouldn’t say anything. ‘Do you think I’ve had it hard? That I’ve only had half a man?’

  Kelli shook her head, her mouth full. ‘No.’

  Jane – Kate’s friend from the soccer club – said, ‘Oh God, I couldn’t bear it.’

  ‘What if it was the only way you could be with the man you loved?’ asked Rachel.

  Jane lifted her chin. ‘I wouldn’t love someone who was so duplicitous.’ She looked like the type who would have done debating at school. She’d have been the pretty, blonde team captain who smiled coolly while she annihilated the other speaker’s argument.

  ‘So your husband never lies, Jane?’ said Rachel.

  ‘There are lies and there are lies.’ Jane’s voice was flat and she leaned back in her seat. ‘Little lies and big lies.’

  The mood in the room had changed; Rachel felt Kate stiffen beside her and she knew she should just smile and stuff some more cake into her mouth. But she said, ‘How are you so sure your husband doesn’t tell you any big lies? I’d wager that Quinn’s wife would say that he’s never told her a big lie. What makes you so certain you’re different from her?’

  Jane looked away.

  Rachel knew she’d gone too far. The room was silent, the only sound a squawking from the DVD that Kate’s kids were watching in the TV room. Then someone asked Jane about her daughter’s broken arm and Rachel leaned back into the couch, her cheeks hot. She didn’t look at Kate.

  Later, she washed the dishes while Izzy dried. Izzy took a champagne glass from her and said, in her quiet voice, ‘I don’t pity you at all. To be honest, I think it would work quite well for me having a half-time husband.’

  Izzy had married her boyfriend from school. Rachel couldn’t remember his name but knew he’d become a plumber. Izzy set the glass carefully on the bench. ‘But I did pity you after your brother died.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Was that all Rachel would ever be to these people, the girl whose brother drowned, and now, the deluded mistress?

  Izzy nodded, still not looking at Rachel. ‘Your parents should never have told people that you were meant to be looking after him. I wanted to say something to you at the time.’

  ‘I was meant to be looking after him. I told people,’ she said in a way that she hoped would end the conversation. She turned the hot tap on hard and let the force of the water fill the sink with suds.

  Izzy had been a swimmer too, a strong-shouldered butterflyer who ate two packets of salt and vinegar chips after every training session.

  ‘But would you ask your twelve-year-old to supervise a seven-year-old while they’re swimming in the river? That river?’ Izzy jabbed her finger at the window. ‘I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Oh . . . maybe I would.’ She had replayed thousands of times her mother saying to her, ‘You keep an eye on your brother, won’t you, Rachel.’ It hadn’t been a question. Her mother had been standing by the car, wearing her white halter-neck dress and straw hat. In her hands was the tray of little ham and cheese quiches she’d made for the church picnic. Rachel had replayed the moment so many times that she wondered if the memory had morphed, like a game of Chinese Whispers. She wondered if her mother had sensed something the moment that Scotty’s heart stopped. As she offered around her tray of quiches and chatted about the weather, had her womb clutched for its boy?

  Rachel pulled the plug from the sink and turned to Izzy. ‘He was eight. Not seven.’ If something happened to Ned, Rachel knew it as a simple fact that she would die. She understood, now, why her mother had retreated to her room, and wondered why she hadn’t
stayed there forever. Rachel’s wet hands dripped onto the floor. ‘How old are your kids?’

  ‘Shane’s thirteen, the twins are eleven and Amy’s nine.’

  Rachel thought of Izzy’s four children safe at home in bed. ‘Hang on to that husband of yours. If you love him. You don’t really want a half-time one, believe me.’

  •

  Rachel turned the car down Stuart Street towards Shaney’s place then remembered that Shaney was dead. She pulled over just as rain started drifting in the headlights. After Ned was born, Shaney came out once or twice a week with a tuna mornay and any baby clothes she’d picked up on the days she volunteered at Vinnies. Shaney would sit on the deck cradling him, singing wordless lullabies while Rachel had a shower or napped on the daybed. And at least once a week Rachel would go into town to Shaney’s and leave Ned there while she did the shopping and swam at the pool. She’d told Quinn that Shaney accepted without question their agreed explanation that Karl was Ned’s father. Karl the remiss, absent father. Poor maligned Karl. She occasionally wondered where Karl was now and whether he’d had children.

  She made a U-turn and headed across town and parked outside Bill’s place. The couple who had bought her mother’s house had planted a dense sub-tropical garden. Rachel could barely see the front door and was glad it looked so different. How she wished her mother could have met Ned. Shaney had tried to convince Rachel to move into her spare room but Rachel knew that the hills were the right place for her and Ned. Out there, she moved at nature’s pace, following the simple daily rhythms of her baby while the sun slowly moved overhead and the trees soughed. It was an antidote to years of flying around the country, running on adrenalin, running away from what had happened to Scotty.

  Bill’s lights were on. He was back from overseas for a month. Rachel knocked on his front door as voices drifted around from his backyard.

  Bill flung open the door. ‘Rachel! Come in!’ He wore a white cotton shirt with a red wine stain over the left breast.