He arranged to meet Stewart the following afternoon at the Nag’s Head in Glebe, the pub they used to drink at when they were students. If he had someone he could call a best friend, a friend who had travelled with him for life, Stewart was it, though they saw each other rarely now. When they were still at school, Stewart had lived on the other side of Parramatta Road in Petersham and for many years they had spent the afternoons together, until Andrew discovered photography and it changed the way he related to the people around him. He always made a point of seeing Stewart when he was back in Sydney, even when he had very little time. Their lives had run at parallels and seeing Stewart each time he returned had become a way of measuring himself.
He walked in through the front bar, hearing the familiar sound of glasses shuddering together as the barman lifted a tray of schooners onto a stack, and took a seat at a small table near the beer garden. On the wall above the table was a picture of an English hunting scene, men in red coats riding horses with beagles trailing at their heels. Ahead of them, foxes ran with their heads turned back towards their pursuers, gaunt flashes of red, the whites of their eyes holding an awareness of their fate.
Stewart arrived wearing a business shirt with the top button undone; a tie dangled from the left pocket of his pants. Since he’d graduated from university, Stewart looked to be permanently straining; the muscles around his neck were thick, giving him a top-heavy appearance, and he walked with his head down, as though peering over a ledge. Over the years his hair had turned slowly and prematurely grey. Stewart lifted his satchel over his shoulder and they hugged awkwardly, patting each other forcefully on the back.
‘I wasn’t expecting you to come home so soon,’ Stewart said, when he came back to their table with two beers.
‘How was the wedding?’ he asked without meeting Stewart’s gaze. Stewart had been married six months ago and Andrew had not flown back for the wedding. Instead he’d sent an email apologising. Break a leg, he’d written, as though the whole thing were a performance for Stewart’s family and friends.
‘Oh, great, man. It was just a big party. You know, an expensive party,’ Stewart said, and laughed. ‘It would have been great if you could have made it.’
Andrew had explained at the time that he was too busy preparing for his upcoming exhibition, but the truth was he didn’t want to risk bumping into Kirsten, not after he’d left Sydney without any explanation. He couldn’t bear facing the accusation in her eyes.
‘And how’s . . . your wife?’ He couldn’t believe it; as the sentence left his mouth, he couldn’t recall her name, although he’d known her since they were in their twenties.
There was a part of him, some pocket deep inside, that envied people like Stewart—people who had fallen in love young and who’d given up other things in their lives in order to remain that way.
‘Louise is great. You know, we’ve been together forever, so nothing really changed for us, but we did buy a house in Stanmore.’
This was what happened to people like Stewart and Louise: their lives followed a certain pattern and it never deviated from the path other people expected them to take. There was a feeling that often took hold of him when Stewart and he were together now, that their lives had veered too far apart and what they were doing with these dinners and drinks was trying to restore something they’d already lost.
‘Good for you. Property is expensive here. It’s much cheaper in Berlin. I’m thinking of selling my apartment in Darlinghurst so we can buy something there.’
‘Really?’ Stewart’s eyes were alight at the mention of Berlin. ‘I loved Berlin, when we visited. You don’t find the language a barrier?’
‘Oh no, not really. I know enough to get by.’ He knew the names of things, but he had never learnt how to fit those words together into sentences and the truth was that being around Dom made him lazy about learning. When he was alone, he moved through the city, pointing to what he wanted in shops and speaking in nouns and he didn’t mind not understanding the things being said around him. It afforded him a quietness in which he could be alone with his thoughts.
‘Do you think you’d ever come back here to live?’ Stewart asked, his voice scooting higher suddenly, wanting some sort of reassurance from him.
‘I don’t know. There are a lot more opportunities for me to exhibit over there. Europe is a much bigger market. Also my work sells better there.’ He watched the disappointment trickle through Stewart’s expression.
‘Well, I guess it would be difficult with Dom, wouldn’t it?’
He nodded an agreement and stroked the sweating glass with his finger.
Stewart looked down and then back up again and there was a looseness to his expression, the face of a person who has information they are not quite sure how to share.
‘Have you heard any more about Kirsten since you came back?’ Stewart said softly, looking into his beer. There was a single line of bubbles floating to the surface.
‘No, I haven’t heard anything,’ he said. Weary now, in the fug of his jet lag, he was no longer sure that he actually wanted to hear more. He felt himself recoiling in anticipation of the details.
Stewart leant forward, bent over his beer, as though the words he spoke were very heavy and had dragged him there. ‘They’ve stopped the search. For the body. I heard after I sent the email to you.’ He looked to be on the verge of tears. ‘Louise found out from Kirsten’s mother that there’ll be a service for her. Tomorrow, actually.’
‘The body?’
Stewart nodded. ‘Your mum didn’t hear anything about it? It was reported on the news a few weeks back, as a suspected drowning in Lake George.’
‘Drowning?’ he said distantly. ‘My mum doesn’t watch much television anymore.’ And he hadn’t told her, reverting to the familiar instinct he’d always had to protect his mother from the things that might upset her. ‘Kirsten drowned?’ He could hardly fit his mouth around the word.
Stewart nodded sadly. ‘They think so. Louise is going to the service. And I will if I can. It’s just there’s something on at work. I’m not sure if I can get out of it.’ He gestured vaguely, as if trying to offer Andrew more of an explanation with the movement of his hands.
‘Had you seen her recently? Did Louise and Kirsten keep in touch?’ He’d always wondered if Stewart knew what went on between Andrew and Kirsten for all those years after they’d officially broken up. He’d never spoken about it—mostly he felt embarrassed by it.
Stewart licked his lips. ‘Louise tried, I think. She always made the effort. We invited her to our wedding. She RSVP’d but never showed up. I think Louise had plans for dinner with her a few months ago, but Kirsten pulled out on the day. Louise feels bad that she didn’t try harder, but I don’t know; you can’t force someone to see you.’
Andrew stood to go to the toilet and a space seemed to have opened at his feet, like a rupture in the earth’s crust. Around him, this old place was the same as it had always been, but his world had now changed. A part of it that had once meant something to him, a slice of his own personal history, was missing.
•
When he thought about Kirsten, what he thought of most were her silences. She was a woman who was always on the verge of speaking, of looking away then back towards him with the sense that there was something important she had to say. Her silences were intoxicating; they held the promise that one day he might know what they were hiding. But she had always kept her secrets to herself.
He continued to think about her in the years since he moved to Berlin. Sometimes he went through phases where he thought about her every day. He had loved her, but it was the sort of love that was like falling. It was young love, the love you can only ever have when you are still finding yourself. At the time he sometimes thought, This is it. He’d tried to make himself believe those words, but the sensation lasted only a short time. He’d loved her as best he could in that clumsy, incomplete way people do when they are too young to surrender themselves to another person. But she needed more from him than he was able to give. He wanted her, but he didn’t want her problems.
They separated and lived apart. But he still saw her, sometimes regularly and other times not for months. Occasionally he thought he still loved her, but there was something very intense about Kirsten, and her need for him. He was never exactly sure what it was about her that kept reeling him back in.
•
Later, when he came home from the pub, the house was still and his mother was already asleep. As a shift worker, she had always taken her sleep when she could and he had learnt to be quiet and alone from a young age. He turned on his laptop and sat it on his lap, the spool of the hard drive whirring against his knees. He searched for news articles about Kirsten, hoping for definite answers, but her disappearance was described in ambiguous and inconclusive terms. There were photos of Lake George, its surface mirrored, like a puddle of mercury that had settled on grass. The silvery stretch of water reflected the world the wrong way up. The abandoned car left beside the lake, cordoned off by yellow tape. All these articles about her—was this what she wanted, for the world to pay attention to her? Maybe, after years of silence, this had been her final scream.
There was an interview with a man who had been picnicking by the lake with his family and had seen Kirsten sitting in the car. He had glimpsed her walking out through the vaporous haze towards the lake. At the time of the interview, they were still searching for the body. He read article after article, but none of them told a coherent story.
He turned off the computer and as it slowed and wheezed itself to sleep, he thought about what it would be like to disappear. To leave the past behind, to walk away from it and all the ways in which it tarnished you and held you back. All you would have then was a future. He had felt this way when he left for Berlin: that he was stepping into his future and, as he did so, the door to his past would close permanently behind him.
•
That night he spoke to Dom.
‘How are the kids? Are you sick of them yet?’
‘Of course I’m not. They’re wonderful. They try so hard, but I worry some of them try too hard. They want to grow up to be dancers, every one of them. And all I want to do is to tell them how difficult it is, about the injuries and the hours and hours of practice, but of course I can’t spoil their dreams. That would be too cruel. I have to let them learn for themselves.’
Dom always felt this sadness for the children she taught, as though she saw in them the girl she had once been, young and supple and too full of optimism.
‘How is your mother?’ she asked, and he could tell that she was lying on her back because her voice was caught in her throat.
‘Good, I think. She’s glad to see me,’ he said. ‘But I haven’t actually told her about Kirsten yet.’
‘You haven’t told her?’
‘I guess I just don’t want to upset her. My mother can be a bit sensitive sometimes.’
Dom laughed. ‘God, she probably thinks we’re fighting or something.’ She paused. ‘Say hello to her from me.’
He said he would, although Dom and his mother had never met. He hadn’t told Dom the whole truth about Kirsten either; for him it was somehow easier to be silent.