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.
She drove up to the wooden house almost hidden by garden at the top of the hill, thinking of Kieran in the darkness outside her kitchen, the utter stillness, her conviction, as she’d crept towards him, that his presence was benign. Now she swung open a wooden gate and as she walked down a path flanked by a yard and clothes hoist on one side and a flourishing garden on the other, she saw she was in his garden. Vines rioted over the back fence – pumpkin, choko – and she passed spinach, tomatoes, lettuces, capsicum all in rows, and trellises for peas and beans, neatly tied. Despite the profusion there was order, even precision. Three clumps of parsley, three of spiky rosemary, a spreading oregano. They seemed to make one big variegated pattern. She thought: He must like that.
Cress greeted her at the door. They smiled, each in their skirts – presenting, Laura thought, polite versions of themselves. Though Cress always looked proper, neat, her hair combed and fastened behind her ears and everything carefully ironed. Laura glanced down at her own skirt. She hadn’t ironed anything in years.
I’m afraid, Cress said, motioning her into a sitting room with a couch and an armchair on old-fashioned, patterned brown carpet and a television in the corner, that Kieran isn’t here. I’m sure I told him you were coming. But that’s Kieran. Tea?
She disappeared through a doorway and Laura heard the sounds of water running and the chink of crockery. Then Cress’s head appeared around the door: Orange Pekoe, Darjeeling, China? I think I’ve got Ceylon. Laura shrugged. China, she said, and Cress flashed an approving smile. Laura sat on the couch, taking in the room, the television prominent but bookshelves too, ornaments. Cress’s voice floated out to her. He could just turn up, though. That’s what he does.
Kieran stood behind the bus shelter across from Abby’s house. He was trying to remember how long it had been since he’d seen her. It seemed like weeks. He knew it wasn’t, but he hadn’t been able to shake off the notion that she was ill, and that made it seem longer. He wished he could just march in there and make her some sweet milky tea and some toast. He wished he could sit with her, tell her jokes, make sure she was feeling all right.
The house looked all closed up and secretive today. More so than usual, he thought, though he didn’t know why. It made him fidgety; he wanted more than anything to get up close to it, to put his ear to one of the walls or windows and listen. Once, crouched under a tree in her neighbour’s dark yard, he’d heard her father shouting, calling Abby names. He hadn’t recognised the words, but he didn’t have to. It was his voice. Hard and ugly like the sound of metal scraping. He’d itched to run in there, to tell him to stop, but knew, even then, that he might just make it worse. The look of the man, his tensed body: it could hurt something or someone badly.
Now he moved quickly across the road, his head down. Listened hard for any noise, any sign at all. Nothing. Just the whirr of a vacuum-cleaner from the house next door and a dog barking. Kieran breathed out. Perhaps, today, he could just relax.
I used to be a Sunday School teacher. Cress poured more tea into the bone china cups. Precious cups, her mother’s, all looping roses and gilt that was still unworn. She hadn’t felt moved to use them in years. But today, even as she’d waited for Laura, secretly happy that Kieran wasn’t there, she knew they were just right for the occasion.
When she’d come back with tea and buttered slices of date loaf, she’d found Laura looking at the big family Bible that still sat alongside Dickens, Austen and Joyce on the recently dusted bookshelves, the postcard of the angel and the children tucked inside it. All those little faces, turned up to you. She offered Laura milk. I can’t tell you how good I felt. She paused, was tempted, oddly, to spoon sugar into her tea, as her mother would have done. Her mother stirring, stirring, eyes on the ceiling, the wall. Then it was all gone, all of it. It was no one thing. But after my mother died I realised I felt no comfort from above. I couldn’t feel her, she was just gone. You don’t realise, she said, how much of your life is held up, scaffolded by your faith. It’s not just a matter of losing the word ‘God’ from your vocabulary. You lose yourself. That person – she raised her cup to her lips – just turns to salt. She sipped tea and leaned back in the chair, feeling lightness in her limbs, her fingers.
Laura sat holding a plate with a half-eaten piece of date loaf. She seemed, Cress thought, unsure how to answer. Then Laura put the plate down. I was never allowed to go to Sunday School, she said. I hated Angela for that, when I was small. I wanted to do what everyone else did. She picked up the plate again. I wanted a mother like everyone else’s.
Cress gazed at the younger woman looking back at her, wondering if there was a challenge in her voice. But then Laura spoke again. She held the plate up like an offering and said: Now I’d do anything to be able to talk to her, to tell her I understand.
Kieran wandered towards St Barnabas, wondering if Cress might be there. He tried to remember what she’d asked him to do today. There was something niggling at him; he fished around in his head but it was stubborn and wouldn’t come. Still, if she’d wanted him to do something it was likely to be at St Barnabas.
It was Saturday, and the shop was busy. There were people in each aisle and several at the counter. He looked over and waved at Iris and she gave him a grimacing smile as she answered a question from one customer and wrapped the other’s goods. He went to the back of the shop to look for Cress. On the way down aisle four, he paused to look at the shelves of tools – pliers, hammers, small saws, boxes of nails. The usual stuff, except for a pair of binoculars, put here, perhaps, because they didn’t belong anywhere else. Kieran picked them up and turned them over. They were in good condition, the lenses clear and unscratched. Forgetting Cress and her errand, he took them to the plate-glass front window to try them out.
He was about to lift them to his eyes to scan the esplanade when something in the near distance caught his eye: long wispy blonde hair, baggy pants, a certain walk. Abby. Had to be. He glued the binoculars to his face and tried to find her again – there she was, moving slowly along the esplanade, her hair lifting and dropping. She was coming this way.
Do you know young Abby? Kieran dropped the binoculars to his side. Iris was standing so close to him he nearly hit her with them. He looked at her blankly.
Poor wee thing. I’m glad to see she’s put some weight on. She a friend of yours?
Kieran was mute. He felt exposed, with the binoculars in his hands. He nodded, hoping that would help. They both watched as Abby reached the corner then turned and walked towards the beach.
I suppose everyone’s a friend of yours, Kieran, Iris said, and then her smile evaporated. But don’t let her father know. Doesn’t like her having friends. Not even at church.
Kieran kept his eyes on Abby. His heart beat hard in his chest. But, he thought, Abby does have friends. He was her friend, and there was that boy at the beach. And she’d told him, at least once, that she had a friend she visited, someone he didn’t know. Was that why her father shouted at her? He watched as her slight figure became smaller and smaller in the distance. Why? he said, turning to Iris. Why doesn’t he like it?
But Iris was bending to move a box of old bottles away from the window. He stared down at her perfect, blue-white curls. Don’t know, love, she said, hefting the box to one hip and turning away. Perhaps, she said over her shoulder, he thinks she’ll run away, like her mother did.
Kieran followed Iris back up the glass aisle, wanting to know more, to ask more: When did her mother run away? Where to? Why did he bruise Abby’s arms? But a customer got to Iris first, so he went back to the tools, replaced the binoculars and hurried from the shop. He ran across the busy road, barely checking for cars, and down onto the sand of Convent Beach. He looked up and down, and over to the headland path. He clenched his fists. Why hadn’t he brought the binoculars with him? Abby was nowhere to be seen.
When I was young I thought motherhood came with a badge, Laura said. A badge of unhappiness. They had drained the teapot and their cups. Kieran’s absence and their waiting had created a vacuum they both felt compelled to fill. As if, Laura thought, all the absences in their lives had been enough. I used to wonder if there was a secret about motherhood that I’d also know one day. If I’d get that look, that badge, when I was a mother.
Cress leaned forward. All mothers suffer, she said. Laura looked at her. Gauging. That’s what my mother said. Another piece of Cress’s puzzle fell into place.
Suddenly the old woman looked up, bird-like, at a grandmother clock on the sideboard near the door. She shrugged. Kieran is – she paused – unpredictable. You might wait an hour or you might wait all day.
Laura brushed crumbs from her lap and stood. Aware she was being dismissed. Angela was working towards an exhibition at Noosa next month, she said. She watched as Cress put plates beneath saucers and brushed at crumbs. I was just thinking. It would be good if Kieran’s painting was there. She began to move towards the door.