The China Garden

by Kristina Olsson

  But the worst thing was the sound. It filled his head, tightened the skin on his arms and chest. It was the sound of anger. Of teachers who lost their patience when he couldn’t manage sums, of boys at school when the ball shot past him and into goal. It was the kind of sound that seemed to go with Abby’s father, though he didn’t know why. It was bigger and harder than everything else, even the sea. As he thought this he glanced towards the beach. The wind was a westerly, he knew that, because it was blowing the waves backwards. That’s what it looked like. The surface of the water was a series of feverish ridges and creases. Even the sea spray looked confused, hanging briefly above the waves that managed to break. The air was thin and mottled.

  He looked away again up the esplanade, then quickly checked for cars and hurried across the road towards the shops, heading for home. He wanted to be out of this noise, to be inside, tucked between four walls. Where the sound couldn’t get inside him, where he could make everything still. This wind was, he thought, the opposite of music. It hollowed him out, dried him up. He wanted to be at home, in his room, listening to Emmy Lou.

  The thought made him pick up his pace. He walked fast past the newsagent and the pub and was nearly at the corner when an old man reeled out of a doorway and collided with him. Kieran knew immediately the man was very drunk. His eyes were half-closed and watery and the sharp, sour smell of alcohol enveloped his whole body. He reached for Kieran with slow, ineffective hands, pawing his shoulder to steady himself. S ... s ... sorry, he slurred, youngster. Kieran froze, looked quickly around. The wind threatened to knock both of them off their feet and sweep them towards the road.

  The prickly feeling spread from Kieran’s head to his face. He felt his body tense and harden, though the man hung helpless and limp at his shoulder, one hand clutching Kieran’s upper arm. Perhaps it was the smell. Perhaps it was the pressure of the fingers on his bicep, squeezing, releasing, squeezing again. He didn’t know. But he wanted badly to shrug off the man and his fingers and his smell and get away, get out of town, go home.

  Kieran looked around again: there was no one close enough to appeal to, no one to help. The old man was quiet now apart from his rattly breaths. Had he gone to sleep? Kieran took a deep breath himself. Manoeuvred the arm the man was attached to around the collapsing body, and slowly began to move him – a kind of drag, a kind of dance – towards a bench under the closed window of the hotel. There was still – unbelievably – no one else close by, so he eased the man, mumbling, down onto the bench. The dishevelled head flopped back and the eyes opened briefly, water leaking from their corners. Then closed again. Kieran backed slowly away. He brushed himself off as if the smell was physical and could be wiped away. He walked with his head down, and when he reached his gate he bent to breathe in the lavender plant beside the path, his skin still jumpy, his palms damp.

  In the late morning Laura went walking on the headland. She hadn’t been up there in years, but she knew the path as if, as a child, she’d left a breadcrumb trail for her adult self. The wind had come up, whipping salt spray through the air, but still she could almost see herself walking ahead, barefoot, hair stringy, skin browned. The same banksias leaned along the path, reminding her now of olives on Greek slopes.

  She went straight to the stand of paperbarks for shelter. Beneath them, breathing their odd, burnt-dinner smell, she thought about the baby boy Angela had named Paul, who would now be a man with a name and a history and an identity bestowed by others. She wondered about eyes, hair, cheekbones, skin: all the things they might share.

  Heat pooled beneath the trees. It was not yet midday, but already they were swallowing their own shadows. Her skin prickled in the heat, and she looked up and out towards the horizon, thinking: So many things are missing. The sky, the wind-ruffled sea, none of it gave anything away. Everything looked the same as it always did, despite Angela, despite Paul, all the rips and tears in her certainties.

  She picked her way back down the sandy track and walked through town to buy cheese. As she stepped up to the doors of the delicatessen she almost collided with Cress, who was peering down into her shopping bag as she left the shop. They looked at each other for a moment. I thought they’d given me the wrong tea, Cress said. But no, it’s Lady Grey all right. She beamed.

  Laura put her hand lightly on Cress’s arm. I’ve got this painting for Kieran, she said. Aware of the unspoken fact of Kieran’s visit. Did Cress know? Laura watched her hesitate momentarily before she spoke. Yes, she said. The painting. They realised then they were blocking the doorway and as they shuffled to the side Cress said Yes again and began to walk away. Laura watched her as she stopped and turned and added: Perhaps tea one morning. I’ll tell him. Took several more steps. Stopped again. What about tomorrow, she said. Eleven. And then went on her way.

  The smell of alcohol. There in the room with Angela, like an intruder. One night out of all the nights he’d visited. He never thought about it, forgot it as soon as it happened, but the smell always brought it back to him and he remembered every moment, or almost. Back home, he sat staring at the blank television screen, as if the memory was being played out there.

  It was summer. That Christmassy air, and the night noisy with insects and heat. He’d slipped down between the trees and in through the side door, the way he always did. Looked for her face, the way he always did. This was his habit: whether she looked up from her canvas and met his eye was not the point. The point was that she was there, that he was there and everything, every particle in the air, was in its usual place. That night, nothing was.

  She wasn’t at her easel. She was propped at the far end of the bench, and even from that distance he could see she was swaying, her body tipping over and then correcting. He stood there. Without looking around she said, Come on, and waved a hand towards an empty stool beside her. Come on, she said again, we’re celebrating. Then she smiled – it was strange, crooked – and unscrewed the lid from a bottle. Patted the stool again.

  Up close he could see she was not really smiling at all. Her face reminded him of the dolls they sometimes assembled at Enterprise Packaging – her lips were stretched over her teeth but the rest of her face was still. She scooped ice into two glasses with her paint-flecked hands. Now she was tipping the bottle, and liquid the colour of flames was toppling into the glasses. He sat down and tilted his head slightly towards her face, the way his mother did when she wanted him to talk. But Angela kept staring at some pages of writing in front of her, a lot of scribble he couldn’t see properly. That’s when he smelled the smell. For a split second he thought it might be some new kind of cleaner, or something that had spilled out of one of the bottles lined up on the bench. Then he was reminded of Cress’s kisses at Christmas, the sweet smell of her after a glass of sherry with lunch. But it wasn’t quite like that either. Cress at Christmas was a warm, happy smell, for one thing. This was kind of sour, and sad.

  Angela’s lips were tightly pursed, as if she was trying not to speak. He followed her gaze to the pages. Maybe she wanted him to read them. Maybe that’s why she’d gone quiet. He leaned close enough to see there were some interesting-looking words there. He read from the top:

  Notes for an exhibition

  The black cockatoos scream home. Through my dreams and

  into someone else’s. Or maybe they ripped a hole in the sky and

  plummeted through – how would I know?

  through to the kind of place I am in, shapeless, dark.

  The midwife says

  You make your bed, you lie on it

  Even as the cockatoos scream

  and every muscle pushed down to get this baby born.

  And in the end he slips easily from me

  he hurts me with his easy separateness

  so sudden, so complete.

  I close my eyes.

  When I
open them it’s morning. There is a smell, not unpleasant, hovering

  above me. Beside me, within me. That’s what makes me cry out, this smell

  It brings her to me. So you’re awake, she says.

  Somewhere between my cry and her words, hard knowledge has bitten.

  A piece of my flesh has been torn off.

  That is what I smell. My body contracts.

  Where is my son? My body, my poor empty body knows the answer already.

  He is not here.

  He read them again; again they made no sense to him. But his eyes returned covetously to plummeted, to hovering. To the phrase hard knowledge has bitten.

  A toast, Angela said suddenly, raising a glass, staring right through it, perhaps, to absent friends and loved ones. She stopped. The smile abruptly disappeared. To my son, she went on, and he thought he heard her voice break, but she sniffed, took a breath, kept right on talking to the glass, wherever he is. Happy – She stopped again. Birthday.

  Happy birthday. Kieran heard the words go round in his head and his lips parted in recognition and relief. My son. Happy Birthday. These were words he understood. A toast, yes. He knew now. He picked up his glass like Angela, like his mother and father did on his birthday, like Cress did at Christmas. He was still unsure about the smell but his belly wasn’t flipping around anymore. Mum sings to me – he began, but there was Angela saying again: Wherever you are, and tipping the drink into her mouth. Then she put the glass down and aimed the bottle at it once more. She was squinting. His confusion returned. It didn’t feel much like a Happy Birthday to him.

  Was a drinker once, she said then, tipping the glass in her hand so the liquid spun inside it. Kieran watched light flashing off the gold. The word flame came back into his head. Couldn’t wait for the night. All day I’d think, s’okay, nearly there. Afternoons were bloody long, can tell you that. Nearly killed me. She made a noise like a grunt. It took him a minute to realise it was a snorting kind of laugh.

  Got Laura to bed and nearly ran down here, she was saying. Her sentences were like a dribbly line, looping, not steady. Just me and the paints and the music and the wine. Sweet moselle, buckets of it.

  Kieran wanted to say something, to use some words that would change the feeling in the room. He wished he had his notebook with him. There would be a word in there for this moment, he knew. And he could write moselle in it, and plummeted. He could ask her how to spell – The music on loud, she went on. Puccini, loud. She raised her glass, jabbing the air. Orange liquid splashed onto the bench. Puccini! She took a swig, lowered the glass, looked down as if it was a mystery.

  He was still clutching his untouched drink. He wanted badly to move, rather than talk, felt a strong urge to walk over and pick up the brushes she’d left near her easel and clean them. She’d be sorry, he knew, if they hardened even a bit. He looked quickly over at the boards she used as palettes. Amid the mash of colour there were two paint tubes without lids. It wasn’t like Angela to be careless like that. He felt responsible somehow, that fixing it was his job. He turned to her, opened his mouth to speak.

  I was stupid, stupid. Angela was still looking down at the lick of moisture in her glass. Her voice was softer. But Kieran was starting to feel afraid that he couldn’t do anything, not even the tidying, not even the brushes. Worse than that, he’d begun to feel the kind of sick feeling he’d often felt at school when everyone else got the sums right. The numbers would just stare down at him from the board like bad language. My teacher called me stupid once, he offered. He bent his head forward, trying to catch her eye.

  But he could see she wasn’t listening. Her eyes were closed and she was nodding forward. He touched her hand, and she snapped her head up. Stared at him for several seconds, then braced herself against the bench and slowly stood. He watched as she shuffled in a crooked line to the sofa at the end of the room and subsided onto it, tucking herself into a ball.

  The floors of the kitchen and parlour were filling up with packing boxes and the house had begun to feel different. A more negotiated space, Laura thought, than an imposed one. She didn’t fool herself that it might feel like hers, now or some time later. But the air felt lighter, the layers of anger thinner. When she walked through the rooms she could smell oranges, garlic, and the jasmine of her own soap, her own skin.

  Fergus rang as she was filling a box with the last of the old magazines and newspapers from the parlour. I’ve just found Sylvie’s letters, he said, I’ll drop them in on my way through. Half an hour later, she looked up to the window from her packing and saw him striding from the van, a book in one hand and an envelope in the other. When she went to the door to meet him he bent to kiss her and put the book in her hand. A Girl’s Guide to Surfing. Laura laughed out loud and he frowned. I want to see you practising, he said.

  He put the envelope on the small wooden table that had stood near the door for as long as she could remember. Sylvie’s letters, he said, but he was distracted, looking down at the wood. And some other bits – adoption stuff from a conference, that kind of thing. He ran his hand along the tabletop, stooped to look at the legs. This is old.

  Laura shrugged. It was one of those pieces that had always been there and went unnoticed. I think, she said, squinting, that this was one of the first things my parents owned. Their first dinner table.

  It was narrow, and barely a metre long, discoloured with age and clumsy attempts to polish it. The top was pitted with scratches and gouges and the marks of hot dishes. They’re probably your first attempts to eat right-handed, Fergus said, indicating two deep ridges at one end. But Laura was seeing the table for what it was, for the first time. She traced her fingers over the marks. It’s an artefact, she smiled.

  So she didn’t argue when he said he’d like to restore it, and helped him carry it to the van. Now you’ll have to stay, he said as he turned the ignition, until I bring it back.

  Kieran got up and leaned towards the television and pressed the on button. An advertisement for a mobile phone came up, its jingle crashing into the quiet, and he searched frantically for the remote to silence it. He sat down again, his hands gripping the arms of the chair, watching, but remembering the way Angela had looked that night collapsed there on her sofa. After a while – he had no idea how long – he’d crept over to her. Angela was asleep, her body folded over on itself. It made him think of the day Cress had come in from the garden with green-ant bites on her feet, the way she sat curved over them, tucked up, making herself smaller. That’s how Angela had looked.

  But different too. When he bent down he could see her body wasn’t still, could see the tiny momentary movements, like the ripples of still water when a stone is thrown into its centre. But it was something else, not as gentle as ripples. For a moment his heart jammed. Angela was very sad. A hard stone of sadness. It was hurting her whole body.

  He wasn’t sure how long he crouched there, his arms on his knees. Outside, the night ticked and whispered, but in there, down near the floor, the ordinariness of the room around him was like a weight. It felt like a person, impatient, quietly tapping a foot. Every now and then he pulled his eyes away from Angela and looked around the walls, the blank faces of the windows, the canvas with the beginnings of colour. Paw marks, he thought, looking back at Angela, the uncombed hair, messy like a child’s after sleep.

  He watched her for several minutes more, then stood. Turned towards the easel, towards the bench with its litter of rags and flowers and crumbs, and got to work, his hands practised and quiet, listening to Angela’s breathing and the night. He wasn’t sure what she’d been talking about, but as he worked and watched her he remembered the words she’d begun with, the words he did understand, and when he finished tidying and turned off the light he said them into the darkness, sing-song and softly, as if to a sleeping child: Happy Birthday, he said – the sound of his voice in
the quiet made him smile – wherever you are. The door clicked its approval as it closed.

  Now he toyed with the remote, watching the clock tick towards ‘Whiz Kids’. For the first time since that night he thought about the other thing she’d said: My son wherever you are. And he remembered as well the story she’d told about the baby born too soon, born dead, the images of dolls and paddymelons, and wondered if she’d been talking about that. No. It wasn’t that. He knew this suddenly and absolutely, just as he understood, in the moment before his attention switched back to the screen, that everything – her painting, her sadness – was not about something that was there but about something that was missing.

  Before bed, Laura opened the envelope Fergus had left her and tipped the contents onto the parlour floor. Inside was another, smaller envelope, a newsletter of some kind, and a report labelled Picking Up the Pieces, 4th annual conference on adoption.

  She flipped through the report: addresses, research findings, speeches. And towards the back, pieces written by ‘relinquishing mothers’ – she’d never heard the term before. Was that what Angela was, a relinquishing mother? The term seemed too hard, too concrete. Yes she had relinquished a baby, yes she had adopted a baby out. To her tired head the verbs seemed kinder than the adjective.

  It was past midnight. Laura glanced quickly at the newsletter headed ‘Origins’ and then tucked everything back into the envelope and left it on the chair. In the side room she looked at her bed – had she and Fergus made love here just forty-eight hours ago? – sheets askew, covers thrown back and untidy. It looked suddenly forlorn in its singleness. Before she could take that notion any further she quickly undressed and switched off the light. She went to sleep with the sounds of night ticking through the house.

  Saturday

  Laura folded down the back seats and manoeuvred the canvas into the car. Then she made two calls before she changed into a skirt and T-shirt to go to Cress and Kieran’s. The government departments, of course, were unattended, but Michael Peters in his gallery at Noosa answered straight away. They spoke briefly; he was unaware that Angela had died. They arranged to speak again.