by Jennie Jones
‘She is, Tom. She talks to me more now than she has in the last six months. And that’s because of you.’
He pulled a hand from beneath her and tweaked the tip of her nose. ‘No, I’m just the middle-man. She’ll come good, whether I’m around or not.’ Although whether or not she’d come good before Tom found himself in a position where he had to leave, he didn’t know.
The gentle warmth in Adele’s smile produced an ache in his chest. Yeah—somewhere around the heart region. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been a bit distracted these last few days. I didn’t want to be around you while I was in a bad mood.’ He returned her smile. ‘Then I got around to remembering that I missed doing this with you.’ He squeezed her, making her laugh as though he’d tickled her. ‘Ali is doing better. Isn’t she?’ he asked. It wasn’t so much a question as a plea.
‘Much better. She talks to Imelda now, while they’re doing their pottery thing. She has occasionally talked to Cath too, and apparently she’s shown some interest in one of the other girls in her class.’
‘That’s great.’ He bent and kissed her, this time with his mouth open, as though tasting her more would lessen the guilt about leaving her, or send it flying from his mind as her body opened up beneath him. ‘God, you’re lovely.’
He ought to get out of Adele’s life sooner rather than later. It wasn’t fair to ask her to share a bed when he wasn’t staying. Sure, he’d visit Dulili now and again—probably more than he had in the last ten years, because he wanted to make sure Imelda was okay. He’d keep an eye on Adele too. In fact, he’d ask Imelda to keep an eye on Adele for him, and if Adele needed anything—money, help, whatever—he’d be good for it. Until she met someone. Then some other guy would look after her and fight for her. But although he ought to go now, he couldn’t just up and leave. He couldn’t leave her in the lurch.
‘Thank you for everything, Tom,’ she said in her quiet, contemplative voice.
‘Stop that,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to thank me for anything.’ Mainly because he might not be around to see everything he’d got involved with through to the end. Like Ali, like Adele, like his grandmother. ‘We’ve got nearly two hours until school’s out. How about I let you make love to me all over again?’
She chuckled, but when Tom stretched out beside her to run his hands down her body, he saw something swirl in her eyes. A mist of desire and longing. She looked at him softly, her face filled with wishes, before she closed her eyes. He didn’t know too much about this subject, but unless he was mistaken—and he hoped he was—it looked an awful lot like love.
***
There were plenty of things Tom needed to finalise and he needed to do that before other things went too far. Unless he’d already messed up. Which was likely. Love? No—he didn’t know a lot about it, and he shouldn’t start pondering the pros and cons now, when he was getting ready to leave town at any time.
He had nearly an hour before he picked Ali up from school, and after another, much softer, more emotional and meaningful tangle with Adele, he’d made an excuse about needing to see Imelda. He hoped Adele hadn’t recognised the return of his reserve. Stupid jokes had got him out of delicate situations more times than he could remember, but he didn’t want to be stupid with Adele. She deserved more. She thought him honest, and from hereon he was going to be just that with her. And with himself. You’re not in love, mate. There, that was telling himself. But she might be falling for you. Which was both thrilling and a nightmare all at once.
He pushed through Imelda’s gate and walked up to the front door. He paused, taking a deep breath, then opened the door, lifting it above the step. ‘Imelda!’
‘Don’t shout, I’m just in here.’
He walked towards the living room and through the doorway. She started, losing the look of detachment she’d had on her face when he walked in. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean?’ What the hell? How could she tell something had happened as soon as he walked in the door? He swiped a hand over his face, partly from frustration that she knew him so well and he could never work out how, but mostly in order to clear whatever it was she’d seen on his face. ‘Sorry to do this to you now,’ he said. ‘But I need to have the conversation.’
‘It starts long before Katrina had you.’
Jesus, she just stepped in without a pause, knowing what he wanted. He shook his head and gave in to it. She was his grandmother, they probably had many similar traits. He always knew when something was bothering her—although she’d hidden her history far too well.
‘Can we go into the kitchen?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want to do this in a soft, cosy environment.’
‘Suits me.’
Tom let her walk out before him, then followed her.
He dragged a chair from the table, and sat, but doubted he’d be able to stay still for long. At least in the kitchen, he could ease his nerves by getting up and pacing. Or making her a cup of coffee or something. ‘How’s the washing machine?’
‘Working.’ She sat opposite him. ‘Your grandfather was a good-looking man and I was attracted to that, and to his strength. I was engaged quickly and married even faster. It’s what he wanted.’
Tom inhaled but gave her what she obviously needed. Acknowledgement that she wanted to say whatever she was going to say the way she wanted to, and if it was fast, then Tom would have to accept it. ‘I’m sorry I hated him,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose that was easy for you.’
‘Didn’t blame you. I hated him too.’
‘So why stay with him?’
She laughed, and he thought it might have been from genuine amusement. ‘We had a fast courtship. There was no honeymoon, not back then, and it only took me a week after we married to understand that what I’d perceived as strength was no more than a cover-up for a desire to intimidate and control. He was a bully and it was too late. I’d made my bed.’
He supposed she had. Back then, and in a small rural community, divorce would be frowned on. ‘You came from a good family,’ he said. ‘Did they know?’
‘My father guessed. He tried to talk me into continuing with my art, but he didn’t know how much intimidation I was putting up with, and I didn’t want to hurt him so I shut up.’
‘What art?’ Tom asked. ‘Tell me about that.’ Somehow, her art was tied up in who she was now, and perhaps who Katrina had been.
‘I was good, Tom. Very good and you know I don’t blow my own trumpet.’
‘Never,’ he agreed.
‘Art had been inside me since I was younger than Ali Devereux. I’d always painted, making my own colours from crushed leaves and berries, even. Until my father recognised the gift I’d been given, and worked extra shifts as a farmhand in order to buy me paper and paint.’
Tom sighed. ‘We’ve never had much, our family. Have we?’ Owning the street had generated an income for his great-grandfather, and for Imelda and Samuel Wade in the early years, but it had never been profitable. Not in this small place. And they’d had no return from it for decades.
‘What we had we worked for, and what we had we were grateful to get.’
‘Until me.’ It was Tom’s turn to laugh. ‘I was never content with enough.’
‘Don’t blame yourself for that. Times changed. Last thing I wanted was for you to feel tied here.’
‘You never made me feel that way.’ Not that he’d realised it was an issue for her, until now.
‘And now you’re heading off again,’ she said.
Tom straightened. ‘How do you know that?’
‘By the look of fear on your face.’
He swiped at his face. He’d been doing that a lot lately. But it never rubbed away the concerns inside him. ‘I don’t have anything to be frightened of. I’ve lost a lot, but I’ll make it again.’
‘Will you? Everything, Tom?’
‘Everything.’
‘Everything isn’t what you think it is, Tom.’
‘Let’s get back to the conve
rsation.’ He checked his watch. Time enough before he picked up Ali. ‘What happened to my mother?’
Imelda drummed her fingernails on the Formica table. ‘She lost her way, and unfortunately, she didn’t find anyone willing to help her through the struggle. Not even me, for which I’m sorrier than I can ever say.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She left home when she was fifteen. Hooked up with a group of youths in Orange. Bad kids, not that I can rightly say that Katrina wasn’t either, not by then. But in her childhood she was bubbly, and always into mischief. Like you.’
‘And?’
‘Samuel wore her down. I did my best to keep them apart, same as I did with you and him, but I didn’t give it enough spit and grit with my daughter. I should have done more, tried harder, maybe even fought him, but it’s difficult to explain to you how mean a man he was.’
‘You don’t need to explain, I remember.’ A whack around the head for leaving his toy cars lying around. A rough word because he was in his grandfather’s way.
‘When Katrina came home, pregnant, she told me straight away. At least she always knew that she could come to me, even if I couldn’t make it better. We kept quiet for nearly a month, until it became obvious.’
‘What did he do?’
‘I’d never seen him so riled. It was as though something had split inside him, tearing at the small seam of decency that held the bad man and the possibility of a good man together.’
‘He was born no good.’
‘Maybe. But he took his temper out on my daughter, and I never forgave him.’
Tom swallowed. He wanted to let Imelda talk and go over her own trials but all that was in the back of his mind was the fire.
‘She left again,’ Imelda continued. ‘She had you in Orange, I visited you both. I gave her what money I could and she rented some dump with a few of her so-called friends. That’s where the drug dependency came in. She’d been clean before you and while she was pregnant, but perhaps she needed something to take her away from being unloved.’
‘But she wasn’t. You loved her.’
‘But I couldn’t help her more than with monetary contributions. She had to help herself, and she wasn’t able to.’
‘How old was I when she came home again?’
‘Nearly four.’
‘Had she at least managed to care for me in those first years?’
‘Oh yes, I made sure of it. I’d go stay with her for weeks at a time, disregarding Samuel’s agony over the fact that the townspeople knew about his daughter and her problems. She had good times. Good weeks. But shortly after I’d leave, she’d fall back to her dependency.’
‘She had to have been miserable by this time,’ Tom said. ‘She had to have been suffering depression or something.’
‘She was. She turned up one night, with you, and Samuel nearly killed her.’ Imelda held up her hand. ‘Not physically, he knew if he overstepped that mark, that I’d go for him and make sure he was put in prison. But verbally. By shunning her and making it so hard.’
Tom was sweating now. He rolled his shoulder. ‘This is not pleasant to hear.’
‘But you need to know.’
‘Yes, I do. You gave her your family home?’
‘How’d you know that?’
‘Adele found an old newspaper wrapped around one of your vases in Rose Douglas’s box. It was about the fire that I never knew about. The one that stated there was supposition Katrina had started the fire and left me in the house.’ He’d said it. Out loud.
Imelda stood, her chair scraping on the tiles. ‘Let’s get this clear, Tom. I’m telling you the truth—this is not supposition, this is not what anybody knows—this is the truth. And regardless of her problems, I won’t have you thinking the worst of your mother. I won’t have it.’
Tom placed his hands on the table, lifting himself slowly to stand. He stepped behind the chair, and pushed it to the table. They stared at each other, neither willing to back down, until Tom saw love in her eyes. Buried beneath pain, but there in bucket loads. He’d just never seen it before.
‘Did she do it?’ he asked.
Imelda inhaled and let her breath out slowly. ‘Yes, and no. She didn’t know she’d set the fire. I was there. Samuel had gone to the house to have it out with her and tell her to leave—he still had set values that what was mine was his—but he was wrong. That house was left to me by my father.’ She took a quick breath. ‘I followed him, willing to club him over the head if things got out of hand. I stayed out of sight though. Katrina was in the outbuilding attached to the house. She was cooking dinner. On the barbeque—you liked sausages and baked potatoes. The stove in the house didn’t work, so she always used the barbeque. The shed had four walls and a roof, and there would have been no fire danger except that Samuel distracted her. They fought.’
Tom didn’t want to interrupt and his mind was focused on the scene. The first time he’d ever pictured a scene with his mother in it.
‘You were in your bedroom. I heard her tell Samuel. They were on the verandah steps. He told her to get out and take her boy with her. She said that you were happy here, and that she wanted you to start school here. He just cut her off every time she spoke up about what she wanted.’
‘Do you think she was happy here?’
‘I think she knew she had a chance.’
The scene in Tom’s head changed. He saw his mother; it was no doubt a rose-tinted picture, but he saw her scared and vulnerable. He saw her hurting, and maybe she would have come good. ‘What happened then?’
‘Raised voices. Mostly his. He got a little too close to her for my liking, so I came out from behind the barn, with a hammer in my hand. I would have gone for him, if he’d touched her. But she flew inside. A moment later, she ran out of the house, pushing him away. He fell off the steps. I stepped back into the shadows when I saw Katrina get into her car and drive off. I thought she might have been heading to me, in town, but I had to get you out of the house before I left.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He got into his truck and followed her. That’s when I noticed the outbuilding. It was on fire. Half the outer wall was streaming with thick smoke, and nothing more than two seconds later, the wall was ablaze along with the roof.’
‘So you went inside to get me.’
Imelda nodded. ‘We walked back to town, and I put you to bed.’
‘You didn’t call the SES?’
‘I didn’t care about the house, Tom. I’d been brought up in it, and I’d had a good, happy childhood. But Samuel took all the good thoughts away from me. I didn’t care about losing the house. I cared about getting you to safety.’
‘Who raised the alarm?’
‘Rob Wynther. His property adjoined mine back then, before he had to sell some of his land.’
‘Weren’t you worried that Samuel would come straight back to the house in Thompson Street?’
‘He knew not to test me. Not in that house.’
The look of steel that swept into her eyes caught Tom off-guard. She’d always protected him from his grandfather, he knew that—although it had never been acknowledged between them—but he suddenly saw a different Imelda. One who’d loved and lost. One who’d been tied to a life of pining for what wasn’t and making do with what was.
‘And then she died.’
Imelda blinked but nothing else in her expression changed. ‘She didn’t come back to town. I couldn’t find her, and I tried because I knew that whatever was happening in her mind, that you’d be there, somewhere in her distraught thoughts. I can only hope that she knew I’d take you and care for you.’
‘How did she die?’
‘The police found her in some house they’d raided. Comatose. She didn’t wake up.’
Tom inhaled and leaned forwards, bracing his weight on the chair-back, his mouth drawn and his eyes narrowed. He now had two pictures in his head about his mother. One that told him there’d been a chance for her, and the ot
her that told him it hadn’t worked for her. ‘And the house?’ he asked at last. ‘Why did we move out of the middle house after he died?’
‘Didn’t want the memories.’
‘So why wait a whole year to move us?’
‘I couldn’t wait to get out of that house—but I had to bide my time, so that no-one thought too much about it.’
Tom looked around her kitchen. ‘Why move to this house? It isn’t the best one. Adele’s house is larger. It has a better floor plan.’
‘I wanted to be by the high street, Tom. I wanted to be able to look out of my window and see life and energy pass by.’
He understood, after everything he’d just learned. ‘And will you go back to your art? I presume your publisher friend comes from your young days?’
She nodded. ‘We went through school together. Courted for a while, too. But his family had money, and he went to art school. I stayed put, and then Samuel started courting me.’
And that was bloody that. That’s all she’d had, a short taste of where her skills and her love might have taken her. Then her dreams were crushed. ‘You have to do this, Imelda. You have to take up your art again.’
‘I’m getting around to it.’
‘Why not just plunge in?’ he asked. He wanted her to have something to hold. Something that was wonderful to her.
‘Because I’m not sure of my way.’
‘So you’re, like, taking baby steps?’
She huffed a laugh. ‘At the ripe age of seventy-four.’
‘Nothing wrong with that, Imelda. It’s brave, and nothing less.’
‘Might be foolhardy too, but I’m doing it—with baby steps.’
Tom studied her for a while, until he saw that his keenness to see her back in the world she’d loved as a girl had created an embarrassed flush on her paper-thin cheeks. But there’d never been a better time and he might not get the chance again. He released the chair-back and straightened. ‘Imelda, this is going to shock the shit out of you.’
She gave him the Imelda Eye.