The Science of Appearances

by Jacinta Halloran

  Clarissa’s telephone number, written on a serviette from the club, sits in her top drawer, a talisman of some kind. Dear Clarissa’s going to help her. They put you to sleep, Clarissa said, and before you know it you’re having tea and biscuits. Sure, it’s a bit uncomfortable afterwards, but in a few days you’re back to your old self, good as new.

  Mrs Carroll had laughed. ‘Why, Mary, you’re going to squeeze him to death.’ It was only that he smelled like honeysuckle.

  On the evening before the morning she’s due to telephone Clarissa, she begins to bleed. Nothing dramatic, no searing pain or swoon; instead, such an ordinary, everyday trickle that she cries with what she takes to be an ordinary relief.

  ~

  On the homeward tram Dom opens his lecture notes and rests them on his knees. Why study genetics? Kingsley had asked today. A rhetorical question, perhaps, in Kingsley’s mind. As it was he’d gone straight on: We’re on the brink of great discoveries in the field of plant genetics, discoveries that have the potential to increase food production to levels never before envisaged. But why should he, Dominic Quinn, take it on? He gazes out the window, formulating his answer. Because he wants to be part of something bounteous and good. To go out into the world with something to offer. To make amends.

  He closes his notebook and lets his mind drift. A memory surfaces: the visit to his grandparents’ farm as a kid, one Christmas holiday. A house of uneven planes, with gaps in the weatherboards through which the warm wind blew. His father was up on the roof hammering tin, or out in the paddocks with the farmhand, repairing fences. He and Mary wandered down the dry creek bed and conjured ghosts in the old stables, seated in the buggy, taking turns to lash the worn leather reins.

  His grandfather was long since dead and his grandmother almost gone with him — or so it seemed during those long, dusty days. She sometimes appeared for dinner, wrapped in a black crocheted shawl. She had his father’s brown eyes, and his father’s aversion to chatter. ‘Be quiet, Mary, and finish what’s on your plate,’ their mother would say, and he and Mary would pinch one another under the table, hoping the other would squeal or cry — something, anything, to break the spell of their grandmother’s indifference. Her skin was brown, too, and wrinkled as a walnut, although Dom never saw her venture out in the sun. Mary once battled an overgrown privet to peep through her bedroom window, and saw her lying on the bed. She was fully clothed, shoes as well. ‘She wasn’t sleeping, Dom. Just staring at the ceiling,’ Mary said, the dust from the windowsill streaked across her forehead, her eyes bright with discovery. Their grandmother kissed them both on the tops of their heads when it was time to leave. ‘Be good,’ she said, as if that was everything.

  Absence within presence, absence so vast that the solidity of presence is white-anted to little more than dust. He knows nothing of his father’s childhood. He knows nothing of his father at the age he, Dom, is now. Every minute of his own life — all sights and sounds and meaning — pulses through his brain, teaching and shaping him, but his father’s youth is lost to all memory. It’s as if it never was. Why didn’t he take the trouble to find out, while his father was alive? He looks out the window onto Sydney Road, where, in the gathering dusk, shopkeepers are carrying armfuls of wares from the footpath into darkened interiors. He didn’t ask his father because something told him not to reawaken the dead. That’s all in the past, his father often said. Wrong, wrong, wrong. His parents’ past was his present, his future. We carry our parents and grandparents with us always, he thinks, just as they carried theirs. Their blessings and failings are ours, to guard against, to make of what we will: any student of genetics knows that.

  As he steps down from the tram, another memory rises, so swiftly and clearly that for a minute he stands transfixed. The day of his father’s death, that cold, clear June morning. He’d been buttering toast in the kitchen when his father called out to him from the front room. ‘Dominic? Is that you?’ Dom entered the front room to find it cold, the fire not yet started, and his father in his chair, a blanket across his knees.

  ‘Why haven’t you lit the fire?’ Dom asked.

  ‘No kindling,’ his father replied, as if this was some sort of absolute state.

  ‘I’ll get it.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it now,’ said his father. ‘What I’d really like is the paper.’

  He’d waited, expecting his father to rise from his chair. It was something to be counted on, Francis Quinn’s Saturday-morning stroll to Aitken’s corner store. But his father remained seated. ‘Would you get it for me, Dominic? I think I’ll stay put today.’ There was a pile of coins on the side table by the chair. His father extended his hand, slowly, it seems now — though he might be remembering wrongly. But what he’s sure of is this: as his father’s hand reached out it trembled, and his father’s fingers closed upon a shilling only to open again in what seemed, now he thinks of it, a gesture of abandonment, as if money no longer mattered. The shilling rolled cheerfully along the floor until he, Dom, halted it with his boot. ‘Keep the change, Dom,’ his father said. ‘Buy something for yourself.’

  Only once before has Dom thought he’d seen Robbie — Bob — Cameron crossing the campus, the tails of his white coat flapping with each stride. Turned out it was someone else. But today they come face to face in the Union. ‘Quinn!’ Robbie booms. He’s broader, thicker, than Dom remembers, though that boyish cleft in his chin remains. ‘The old man told me you were here, digging up potatoes or something.’

  ‘Potatoes, no,’ Dom says, squaring his shoulders, unsure of his smile. ‘I’ve moved on to turnips.’

  Robbie’s laugh is deep and theatrical, the laugh of the grammarian. Dom’s heard it often enough before on campus. Those college blokes, with their striped woollen scarves. ‘Good man,’ Robbie says.

  ‘How’s medicine?’ Dom asks. He doesn’t really care to know the answer, yet he finds himself wanting to draw Robbie into conversation. Homesickness, perhaps, and nostalgia: the flimsy hope that, if they keep talking long enough, they might fall back into their old, careless friendship of primary school.

  ‘A shitload of work, but it’s all right. A means to an end, you know.’ Robbie checks his watch. ‘Got to go. Histology prac at two.’

  ‘Wait,’ Dom says quickly. ‘Mary. You haven’t seen her, have you? Here in Melbourne?’

  ‘What? Christ, no,’ Robbie says. ‘Why would you think I had?’

  ‘Just asking. No stone left unturned, you know?’ Six years at school together, after all. You’d think he’d have the decency to ask. ‘She’s still missing. It’s been over two years.’

  ‘Bloody awful that she hasn’t made contact.’ Robbie’s all doe-eyed now. ‘Still, she’s probably all right.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘No reason.’ Robbie’s quick to reply. Too bloody quick. ‘She was always pretty independent, wasn’t she? She’ll have landed on her feet, I reckon.’ He slides his hands into his coat pockets. ‘But Christ, what would I know? I’m just trying to buck you up, I suppose. Trying to help.’

  ‘Help?’ Dom laughs. The inanity of this bloke. Something niggles, rises to recognition: the look on Mary’s face whenever Robbie’s name was mentioned. ‘She always liked you,’ he blurts, before he loses his nerve. ‘You know that?’

  Cameron shrugs, a wide-eyed innocent. ‘News to me,’ he says.

  ‘It’s a wonder she didn’t come looking for you.’

  Robbie puts a hand to his hair. ‘Wouldn’t know her if I bloody fell over her.’

  Dom watches Cameron’s receding white coat, remembering a green English countryside in Robbie’s bedroom, the purr of the locomotive as it circled the track, all those tunnels and bridges and hills the two of them had built side by side. ‘Wipe your feet, there’s a boy,’ Mrs Cameron would say to him at the front door. He scowls now to think of all those hand-painted goods vans; another one, fresh out of its
box, every time he went over. Too many, in the end, for the engine to pull. Was he envious? Damn right he was, for too many years. Now he has his chance to even the balance sheet. No need for train sets. No need for envy now.

  Homeostasis

  14

  Tom chokes on his third cup of tea. ‘Bloody hell, Mares,’ he says, between coughs. ‘They’ve been looking for you.’ He puts his finger to a copy of The Argus spread open on the table. ‘First of March: this paper’s months old. I pulled it willy-nilly from the pile in the shed. About to clean the windows with it, and look what I’ve found.’ He passes the paper across the table to Mary. ‘Have a look right there.’

  Eager to know the whereabouts of Mary Elizabeth Quinn …

  Mary’s hands fly to her face. Dominic’s name, right there in black and white. Dom, in Melbourne!

  And more than that: there’s an address in Coburg. Rose Street. She pictures great lolloping blooms at every fence, a pink arbour at his front door. ‘Coburg! That’s not so far, is it?’ She stands abruptly, making plans. ‘I’ll go today. I can see him today! If he’s not there I’ll wait until he comes home.’ She sweeps breakfast things onto the tray, clattering plates and cups in a jumbled, teetering pile. ‘Two whole years, Tom. What a surprise he’ll get.’ She leans down and kisses him on the cheek. ‘How clever of you to find it. I’d never have thought to look.’

  ‘Hang on, Mares. Let’s think about this.’

  ‘Think? What’s to think about?’

  ‘What if it’s a trap? What if your mum’s behind it? She’ll be planning to drag you back to Kyneton, you know. Back to your old dreary life.’

  ‘Dom wouldn’t let her do that.’

  ‘You sure about that? From what you’ve said it sounds like he and your mum are pretty damn thick.’

  Mary sits again at the table. Would Dom think the best thing for her was to be back in Kyneton, cleaning other people’s houses? She’d give a resounding no to that!

  But would he judge her St Kilda life to be wrong? He was always more proper than she. She never told him why she left, yet if she had, would he have understood? She’s surprised that she doesn’t know the answers to these questions. When they were young, they’d read each other’s minds, easy as anything. Hers was his and his was hers, with just a little tweak here or there to account for their differences — the boy–girl thing, of course, and those quirks of personality absent in the other: her fear of dogs, Dom’s red-faced shyness around girls. But these years of separation have led her thoughts on a path all their own. His too, she supposes. If only she could see him, she’d know. And he’s in Melbourne, just across the river. He’s looking for her.

  Tom leans across and pats her hand. ‘Don’t get upset. It’s just the shock, that’s all. But don’t rush off without thinking it through. A few extra days aren’t going to matter.’ When she doesn’t answer, he pulls away. ‘I’m thinking of you, Mares.’

  ‘I know.’ Tom cares about her terribly, but his caring is too tightly laced. I can think for myself, she wants to tell him. Oh, but she can’t brush him off, not while she lives under his roof.

  Later, in her room, she puts her thoughts in order. Tom’s right: she needs to move slowly.

  ‘You’ll never guess,’ she says to Robbie, as soon as she sees him on Friday. ‘Dom’s in Melbourne.’ She shows him the advertisement clipped from the paper. ‘I never thought of myself as missing. I’ve been too busy to think like that. I suppose it’s the ones left behind who do the missing.’

  Robbie, his head bent to the scrap of newsprint, remembers the French lessons of his schooldays, with Monsieur Delavigne in his black suit and dapper shoes: ‘Manquer does not mean “to miss”; this is a common misconception. Manquer is “to be missing”. So, for I miss you, we say in French, Tu me manques. You are missed by me.’ Mary talks on — something about a Rose Street — and flits about the room while Robbie considers his options. ‘I’ve seen him,’ he says at last.

  Mary stands still. ‘You’ve seen Dom?’

  ‘Hang on, don’t get like that. I only ran into him yesterday.’ Robbie stands and paces the room. A pretty harmless lie, all things considered. What difference does it make exactly when they met? ‘I was going to tell you, naturally, but you beat me to it. He’s at the university, studying botany. God knows why.’

  Botany. The long-ago stories of Captain Cook and the Endeavour, just as Mr Welsh told them: the ferny lushness of Botany Bay, and the flowers of the New World, in the thick, yellowed pages of Mr Welsh’s old book. She can picture the everlasting daisies, more exotic on the page than in everybody’s gardens, and the giant hairy banksia, their seedpods like shuttered eyes. ‘Like Joseph Banks?’ she asks.

  ‘Joseph Banks?’ Robbie snorts. ‘They’ve probably made advances in the last one hundred and eighty years, even in bloody botany.’

  She’s glad Dom’s studying plants. It suits him, she thinks. All that digging and planting he did in the backyard at Beauchamp Street with never a complaint: it pleases her to know how much he must have enjoyed it. She likes to think that he got away from that sad little job at the post office — Robbie had told her about it, months ago — and escaped their mother, too. ‘Did you tell him about us?’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘He wouldn’t mind, you know. You and he were friends.’

  ‘Listen, Mary, you can’t tell him. We could get into a lot of trouble. I know Tom and his olds turn a blind eye, but they’re hardly your average law-abiding citizens. Most people don’t approve of you-know-what before marriage. Your mother, for one — I’m damned sure of that. She’d call the cops on me if she knew.’

  Mary frowns. Why do people keep bringing up her mother? ‘So Dom doesn’t know that you’ve seen me?’ It hardly seems right.

  ‘No. And I’d like to keep it that way.’ Robbie beckons her to him and takes hold of her hands. ‘I’ve kept quiet about your whereabouts for two years. You owe me. You’re a missing person, an underage runaway. How’s it going to look if people find out? Jesus, I could be kicked out of medicine.’ He lets go of her. ‘Fuck. I didn’t think this through.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I won’t tell Dom, I promise.’

  Robbie looks sceptical. ‘Are you any good at keeping secrets?’

  She leaves him and goes to her porthole window. The regal pattern of the presbytery carpet is imprinted somewhere deep, so that if she closed her eyes even now it would come to her, as it often does when she’s tired. With the swirl of the carpet comes the dizzy, spinning sense of things not being right at all. She thinks of Sam, too, and his damask sheets — more beautiful than Mrs Cameron’s — and is newly sad for Robbie. He knows nothing about her. She looks out at the water until her sadness fades, then turns back to him. ‘Yes, I can keep a secret.’

  Robbie seems mollified. ‘You can still see Dom. You can even tell him where you live. Just don’t ever mention me. But we’ll have to be careful from now on. I won’t be coming over here if Dom’s hanging about night and day.’

  ‘Don’t say that! We’ll be as careful as you want.’ She draws him to sit with her on the bed, where she nestles under his arm. How many times have they sat just so? She knows the contour of his every muscle. She could calibrate the spring of his ribs, the exact weight and warmth of his arm around her. ‘It’ll all work out. I’ll make sure it does.’

  If she was going to turn detective she’d need some hard facts — time and place, for starters. ‘Tuesday, around one,’ Robbie had told her. ‘He was near the cafeteria, in the middle of the campus.’ The following Tuesday Mary takes the midday train from St Kilda station. At Flinders Street she takes the Brunswick tram, just as Tom’s told her to. At the university she steps down from the tram into a boulevard of elms. The air’s different here: no salt, no breeze. Instead, the stillness is laden with something solemn and purposeful. The campus is quiet, turned in on itself, away from the distract
ions of the city. She steps from the street onto a raised, neat lawn and wanders between buildings signposted School of Chemistry and School of Agriculture. Her heart lifts: it won’t be hard to find him after all. She’ll find the School of Botany and wait for him to appear. She can wait all day if she has to.

  The university is such a pretty, cloistered place. She strolls under sandstone arches, her heels clacking nicely on paving stones, past fairytale gabled houses like those she’s seen in pictures from England. It reminds her of Robbie’s school; not just the lushness of the lawn but also the rich silence, the sanctuary. Gardens sprout from the corner of every building — bright, bold gardens, textured and layered with strange plants she’s never seen before. Perhaps Dom is studying these? And then there is the sweetest little leaning tower in the middle of a lawn, and around it a garden of herbs, and, bordering the lawn, a red-brick building with a sign: School of Botany.

  There’s a bench inside the tower, where she sits and waits. The sun comes out, and in the sheltered garden the proprietary hum of bees sets her eyelids drooping. Students loll about on the lawn, arms outstretched, faces tilted towards the sun. They open lunchboxes and unwrap greased paper, uncovering thick sandwiches and slabs of cake. Her stomach growls. A bell sounds, and soon after a crowd bursts through the glass door of the red-brick building and spills out onto the lawn. She stands, hesitates, moves out of view. When she sees him, she’ll know what to do.

  During every nightmare of her childhood she’d been besieged by a sickly sense of premonition, so that the horror of the event was somehow experienced prior, and the event itself — the fall from a building or the attack by the Hennessys’ dog — was an awful anticlimax, witnessed rather than lived. Yet always the thought, I knew this was going to happen. Why, then, couldn’t she have done something to prevent it? Why couldn’t she have moved away from the window in time, or climbed a tree before the dog bared its teeth? And now, when she sees Dom in the crowd on the lawn, looking taller and older and not as she remembers him, she’s struck with the same nightmarish paralysis. Her dear, loyal, impossibly good brother: what makes him so good is what holds her there now, in the shadow of the tower, imprisoned by things that happened long ago, all the way back to the day they were born — he first, she second and the wrong way around.