UNACCUSTOMED TO silence, Erica had woken early. She brushed her hair, looked at herself and went down to the kitchen. Lindsey wasn’t there. Roger Antill was spreading butter and apricot jam on a slab of burnt white toast. Next to his plate, like a small warm animal that followed him everywhere, was his khaki hat.
After smiling she said, ‘Is Lindsey not up yet?’
‘She should be by now.’
‘I’ve been feeling quite spoilt. Lindsey’s been serving me breakfast in bed.’
‘That’d be right.’
Before realising he was acknowledging his sister’s kindness, Erica said firmly, ‘I think she’s a kind woman.’
To consider this, Roger Antill looked out the window. It allowed Erica to see again his straight combed hair and now, below his ear, the early morning razor snick.
‘Kindness…’ he was saying. ‘That’s a thought I’ve never had before. She’s my sister, I hardly think about her. We’re both of us part of the furniture. We’ve been in the house the two of us here I don’t know how many years.’
Wasn’t it Lindsey who had said her brother kept his thoughts to himself ? There was nothing stopping him.
‘I’m racking my brains trying to think of someone I’d call kind. Would you call yourself a kind person?’
Erica shook her head. Definitions of goodness, truth, kindness – and their opposites – were best considered in philosophical terms, at arm’s length. With resignation she saw how others took an interest in people more than in austere principles which over the centuries had been erected around people. There was this rush towards the subjective, which had – part of the attraction – no firm basis. If Sophie were at the table she would have tilted this attempt at conversation towards her methods, the psychoanalytical. By asking question after question she would reach him. She would then surround him.
As she got up to make tea, Erica spoke over her shoulder, ‘It bucketed down last night. You went out in it?’ Erica poured his tea. ‘Milk?’
Facing this man with a reputation for wordlessness, Erica found herself talking more than usual. He was sitting there in his faded blue work-shirt sipping the tea the colour of wood stain she’d made for him. He had his hand wrapped around the fine china cup the way he would hold a beer glass.
‘This morning,’ she announced, ‘I fully intend to start.’
At the very thought, Roger Antill, who’d barely glanced in her direction, blew out his cheeks.
‘I’m very much looking forward to going through your brother’s papers,’ she said.
For a while he remained nodding. Then he closed his eyes. ‘I’ve got a better idea.’
He’d give her a conducted tour over the place, the bulging paddocks, the eucalypts at mid-distance, the dams, the old yards, the flocks of sheep – the works. They’d bounce around in his dented ute, the two dogs keeping balance on the back.
‘Should we wait for Sophie?’
‘Let’s go.’ Already he had his hat on. ‘I’m not going to bite you.’