‘This is just me grasping at the only thing I can see that will give us a chance. Otherwise I feel like we’ll just keep . . .’
‘Ned needs us together right now. He needs security, not separation. Let’s not make this worse than it already is. Let’s salvage one family from this mess, for God’s sake.’
She took a deep breath. ‘It’s the best I can do right now.’
His chest tightened. ‘Okay. Well, if that’s what you need then that’s what you need. I honestly don’t think it’s best for Ned, though.’
Rachel fed a stick into the fire. ‘You could get a place in town. Unless you’d stay at Bill’s?’
‘No. Not Bill’s.’
‘And of course you’ll spend time with Ned.’
Ned reached them, dragging the big branch. ‘This is going to be such a massive bonfire. They’ll see it from space.’ He squatted. ‘Have you got the jaffle stuff, Mum?’
She pulled a jaffle iron and paper-wrapped sandwiches from her backpack and passed them to Ned.
‘Will you stay with your dad in Brisbane?’ she asked Quinn.
Quinn nodded, then spoke loudly. ‘Ned, my dad really wants to meet you. He’ll come down and you can show him around.’
Ned looked up from where he was laying a buttered cheese sandwich into the jaffle iron. He turned his gaze to his mother. ‘I’m waiting for the coals.’
‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘Did you hear what Dad said about your grandfather?’
Ned frowned down at the jaffle. ‘Where is he?’
‘Brisbane. I can bring him down here. He really wants to meet you.’
Ned shrugged and poked at the fire with a stick. The stinging smoke drifted into Quinn’s eyes.
Chapter Fifty-one
Friday afternoon and he stood at the door, fumbling with his key ring. It had too many keys on it and most of them he couldn’t use anymore. Finally he found the right one.
Lucy the dog waited just inside the door, tail wagging. The living space smelled of dog and of the wet washing he’d hung in the small bathroom.
He dropped his bag and got a beer from the fridge and sank into the couch – his brand new couch – with Lucy at his feet. The view out the door was of patchy lawn and a rangy red hibiscus bush. Traffic hummed into Corimbi along nearby Main Arm Road and the birds chirping in the neighbour’s hedge were relentlessly cheery. He took a slug of cold beer and tried to stay there on the couch rather than rushing to turn the telly on, or do a load of washing, something, anything, to paper over the cavernous feeling in his chest. He’d got drunk his first few nights in the house, but even two bottles of wine hadn’t quietened his remorse and disbelief.
He picked up his mobile and dialled Marianna’s number, and pictured her fishing the phone from her bag and passing it to Adie.
‘Is that you, Daddy?’ Adie sounded hesitant.
‘Hello, sweetie. What are you up to?’ Shelly’s kids were laughing and squealing in the background.
‘Oh, nothing. Hide and seek.’
He phoned Adie and Ned every evening. Adie didn’t ever say much, but she would sometimes sing him a little song or tell him about Shelly’s flower garden.
He reached into his shirt pocket for the list of things he’d made to tell her: Lucy’s new collar, the sheets he’d bought for the bed she’d sleep on when she came to stay, the hot air balloon he’d seen that morning at dawn. He resisted the lament of sorry sorry sorry and after about five minutes she interrupted him. ‘I’ve got to go, Daddy,’ she said, and she hung up.
Adie and Marianna had been in Melbourne for a couple of weeks and in the one conversation he’d had with Marianna, she wouldn’t say how long she planned to stay away. He’d taken to sending Adie letters in a kind of code: little drawings of a man, a heart and a girl. A drawing of Lucy dog with puppies growing inside her.
He tried to reassure himself that the thread connecting him and Adie was strong enough to weather this. But the subdued quality of her voice always left him uneasy.
He dialled Rachel’s number and she answered after one ring. ‘Hi, Quinn.’
‘How’re you going?’
‘He’s cleaning the skink cage.’ She paused. ‘Sorry. He still doesn’t want to talk. I’ve asked him to, but . . .’ Not once had Ned come to the phone.
‘That’s okay. How are you?’
‘Oh.’ She sighed and he was afraid of what she’d say. ‘We’ve been going for walks. We walked over to Doughboy yesterday.’
‘That must have taken all day.’
‘Yeah. My calves are killing me.’ She took a breath. ‘I better go. Clarrie’s going to mind him this evening and I waited so I’d be here for your call.’
He wanted to ask where she was going but it was none of his business now. ‘You’ll tell him I called?’
‘Oh, he knows.’ Her voice was kind. ‘Bye, Quinn.’
Quinn had been out to see Ned twice, but the boy had run off into the bush. Quinn followed him, in case that was what Ned really wanted, but of course couldn’t find him. It was as if Ned had dissolved into the trees and dense understorey, like a wraith.
Quinn clipped on Lucy’s lead. Every evening they took the same route around the flat streets this side of the river. And the doors and windows of the same houses were always open, spilling sound into the warm night. He could see families sitting around their television or someone standing at a sink, washing up. People were living out their lives all around him and it was tempting to imagine that they were happy, that their lives were easy. He wondered how many of them lived with regret, wishing they might have done something differently?
Perhaps – as Marianna had said – there was a specific moment in time when he should have told her. He had tried to talk to his dad about it, and Evan had said, ‘There were hundreds if not thousands of moments you might have told her, Quinn. You let all of them slide by, not just one.’ He hated knowing that his father thought he’d done wrong, that he’d failed to muster the necessary moral courage. He wasn’t the good son or good husband or father anymore. And not even a very good doctor. When he sat with his patients, he had to work hard to bring his mind back to the job at hand instead of ruminating on all those moments when he might have sent things in a different direction, those thousands of moments that were gone now, irredeemable.
He could see now that as each chance to tell Marianna had passed, it had become harder to tell her. As if by doing nothing he was wearing some kind of groove, a rut of inaction, of denial; and the deeper the rut got, the harder it became to do anything else.
After he and Lucy returned from their walk, he made them dinner. Steak and salad. It took him about half an hour to cook, eat and clean up. Once he’d put the dishes away, the kitchen looked bare. He had three glasses, three plates, three bowls. Three of everything. For him and Adie and Ned. He could have taken things from home, from Brisbane, but there were no memories attached to white, made-in-China crockery and cutlery, cheap sheets and a generic blue couch. It was a dispiriting realisation that almost his entire life had been spent in spaces created by others. This new home was bland, verging on the desolate, which was perhaps a kind of penance.
•
He woke with an image of Ned in his mind: the boy slipping away into the bush, disappearing into dark undergrowth. His heart thumping, he swung out of bed and pulled on shorts and the first t-shirt that came to hand. He was scared that if he didn’t make contact with Ned soon he’d lose him, as if there were only a small window of time in which to rescue their relationship.
By eight o’clock he was driving out of town, between the lush sunlit paddocks and up into the hills. He drove faster and faster along the winding road, barely slowing for the creek crossings. It had been raining and the creek was up and over Fifth Crossing and water sprayed in a great arc either side of the car.
When he pulled up outside the cottage, he expected Rachel to appear on the verandah. He called out as he climbed the stairs, but there was no reply. Inside, dirty bow
ls sat on the sink; they’d had fruit and yoghurt for breakfast. Rachel’s teapot was still warm.
A noise came from outside and Quinn went out to the verandah. Ned stood on the lawn below, looking up at Quinn. The boy was barefoot and held a long bamboo stick in one hand. Quinn didn’t say anything, afraid of breaking the spell, and hurried down the steps. Ned watched his father approach with narrowed eyes then spun and sprinted into the bush, dropping the bamboo pole on the grass. The look in his eyes had not been playful; it had been frighteningly adult and distant.
Quinn headed up the path after Ned and glimpsed a flash of his red shirt in the bush off to the left. He called out, his voice shockingly loud in the quiet of the forest. ‘I’m not going to chase after you, Ned. I’m just going to sit here on the path.’ He sank to the cool earth and sat with his knees drawn up. He didn’t look in Ned’s direction, he just listened and let his heart return to something like normal. The few bird calls had lost their morning urgency and insects or lizards rustled in the undergrowth beside the path. The tree canopy filtered the sunlight; it was dim and close and he tried to imagine himself part of the bush rather than an imposter. After a while, maybe ten minutes, he heard a rustling off to one side. It could have been a wallaby, but he hoped it was Ned.
He started speaking. ‘For some reason we don’t remember the first few years of our life. So you won’t remember this, but I was the one who took you for your first walk in this bush. You were four days old and Mummy was sleeping and I wrapped you up in a blanket and we walked up this very path, right here, and your eyes were so wide, and you looked up at these trees as if you knew how much you’d love them. And I carried you all the way up to Mighty Rock – not that it was called Mighty Rock then ’cause you’re the one who named it for us – and you and I sat up there under a tree and after a while you fell asleep in my arms and I looked down at your beautiful face and everything felt right in the world. I carried you back down, through the forest, and at the house, in your little crib, you slept for hours, Ned. Your longest sleep yet. As if you’d just been waiting to meet the forest and then you could relax.’
Quinn paused to listen for Ned, or to let him speak, but there was nothing. Perhaps Quinn was talking to himself.
‘When you were newborn, you’d wake for a feed at about four in the morning. And Mummy would breastfeed you and she’d go back to sleep and I’d take you outside to look at the last stars before sunrise. And I’d tell you their names and we’d stay out there until you fell asleep again.’ Quinn knew that he was making more of his role than was true. He had only been there two or three nights a week. Rachel had to deal with those early morning wakings on her own most of the time. His heart sank to realise how habitual it had become, this pretending, this rewriting of the story.
‘I’m going to keep coming out every day, Ned. I’m on holidays now, too. And if you don’t want to see me that’s okay, but I’m going to come and I’ll be right here, sitting on the path.’ He didn’t know how Rachel would feel about that, but he could avoid her altogether if she wanted.
‘Do you want me to keep telling you stories now? You could throw a stick if you want me to keep going.’ There was nothing, just the small sounds of the bush around him. Maybe he’d lost his chance to win Ned back. Then a stick sailed through the air and landed on the path in front of him. Quinn grinned and had to stop himself spinning around. He told the story of Ned’s first falling star and the time they camped at Mighty Rock when Ned was three and the wind ripped their tent. A little laugh came from the bushes when he described the fly of the tent sailing through the air and over into the forest below.
He’d been talking for half an hour, his bum cold and sore, when Rachel appeared in the sunlit clearing below and came up the path. She stopped a few metres away. ‘I saw your car.’ She was wearing khaki work pants and a purple t-shirt he didn’t recognise.
‘I’m chatting to Ned.’
‘Oh?’ She looked around.
‘He’s in the bushes here somewhere.’
She hid a small smile. ‘Okay.’
‘But I need to get up now. Ned, I’ll come back tomorrow.’ He walked down the path without looking back. He and Rachel crossed the sunny lawn towards the vegetable garden, which looked as lush as he’d ever seen it. She must have been spending lots of time working in it.
He said, ‘How would you feel if I came out every day? Just to sit in the forest and talk to him.’
‘Was he really there? I couldn’t see him.’ Her boots were caked in fresh mud. Perhaps she’d been down at the waterhole.
‘Yeah. He was there.’
‘Good.’
‘Can I come out every day?’
‘Yes.’ She stopped walking as they passed the gate to the vegetable garden and shoved her hands into her pockets. ‘What a mess we made of this, Quinn.’
‘Yes.’ He swallowed. ‘I know you need time . . . a break right now, but I do want to be with you, Rachel. I will be completely here and with you if that’s what you want.’
She looked away, towards the forest, and he could tell by the way she breathed that she was teary.
He took a step towards her. ‘And it’s not because I can’t live alone. I can. But if we’re going to get over this – you, me and Ned – I think we need to be together. Not apart, not running away.’ He of all people understood running away instead of facing difficult feelings. ‘If we’re going to start afresh like you say, then let’s do things differently. Let’s do it together.’
‘Do things differently how?’ She turned back to him, her eyes wet.
‘Like you’ve said, by not holding anything back. By absolute honesty. Complete honesty.’ He was shocked to feel a flutter of fear at the idea of always telling her exactly what was going on for him. ‘Like me being honest about how afraid I am of ending up old and alone, having missed out on my kids because of how badly I’ve fucked things up and because I didn’t push to be in their lives.’ He took a shaky breath. ‘I want to be with you and I know it’s five years too late but I want to make a life for our little family.’ He hadn’t planned to say this now and it was coming out sounding a little too smooth, too pat.
She covered her eyes with a hand and took a deep breath. Then she nodded and stepped away, towards the house. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Quinn.’
He watched her disappear around the far side of the house and walked to his car.
•
The next day it was warm and drizzly and as soon as Quinn pulled up, Ned skipped down the verandah steps and into the bush, his yellow raincoat flapping. Quinn pulled up his own raincoat hood and walked through the misting rain to the path. He stood in the dim forest, rain pattering on the leaves around him. He found a log and pulled it onto the path and sat on it and started talking about how he used to bathe Ned as a baby, Ned’s small body resting on Quinn’s, a washer on his tummy to keep him warm and a candle flickering on the edge of the bath. As Quinn spoke, he heard a noise on the path behind him and knew that Ned was right there. At last. He kept going, trying to paint a picture of the magical first weeks of Ned’s life. After five minutes, he couldn’t help turning around; there was no one there, but Ned had left a small footprint in the mud.
•
On Christmas Eve he woke at seven, the day already hot. He had asked Rachel to come with Ned for Christmas lunch, but she said that they’d promised Clarrie they’d go to his house and she couldn’t let him down. Quinn’s dad was in Perth at Tom’s and Quinn could have flown over but the day would have been too full of fake cheer and people he didn’t know. Marianna had made it clear she didn’t want him in Melbourne for Christmas and he was afraid to push her. He could too easily imagine her cutting off communication and calling in the lawyers. So, tomorrow he’d be spending Christmas on his own. He’d bought a chicken to roast and a bottle of good wine.
For almost a week he’d been sitting on the forest path each day telling Ned stories and still Ned hadn’t shown himself. The last two days, Rachel had c
ome to sit near him and listen, her forehead resting on her bent knees. He’d hoped she’d ask him in for a cuppa, but both days she’d disappeared before he finished his story. Yesterday when he got to his car, though, he found a box of her fruit and vegetables on the bonnet and a small present carefully wrapped in red paper.
Quinn was telling Adie the same kinds of stories over the phone and she stayed on the line for fifteen or twenty minutes now. As he told his girl about her earliest days, he could hear her steady breath down the phone and his heart clenched to remember watching her sleep, her face soft on the pillow.
By nine o’clock it was more than thirty degrees and Quinn left Lucy in a shady corner of his small yard and walked along the baking footpath and over the bridge to the town pool. Rachel had asked him not to come out today. They were going to a big Christmas party further up the valley.
The pool was full of kids: ten-year-old boys dunking each other, teenage girls in bikinis diving in unison from the blocks and parents bobbing about in the shallow end, holding little ones. Quinn dropped his towel on the step of the grandstand where he and Rachel had sat together so many times, then stripped to his swimmers and crossed to the edge of the pool. A few lap swimmers stroked slowly up and down. It was the first time he’d seen the pool in daylight. Cracks in the floor of the pool had been painted over with something white and the tiles were a bit grimy. He looked up to the roof of the grandstand and saw dents at the edge of the tin, where Rachel and others had pushed it in as they leaped over into the water. Those nights he’d met Rachel here, the place had seemed magical and otherworldly. He wondered how he might have stepped back from the enchanted dreaminess of that time and thought more clearly about what he was doing. Where did that kind of moral clarity come from? Were some people just born with it and lived a life guided by a clear moral code, however uncomfortable it might feel? Perhaps, after all, his mother had been like that and his father had not.
His Other House Page 28