‘That is a vulgar woman.’ Patrick set his teacup in its saucer with a click. They were sitting at the wrought-iron table on the side verandah. Sunlight, falling in patterns through the iron lace, was touching the legs of the table now.
‘Dad…’ Treen frowned at her crossword: a page of the newspaper folded to the size of a novel. She had been working in the garden all morning. Leaving her boots at the kitchen door, she had brought their sandwiches out to the table in socked feet. Now, consciously relaxing, she lay in her low cane armchair and wriggled her toes. Her shins, beneath knee-length khaki shorts, were tracked with veins that opened on one shin into a bruise the colour of her navy socks, except more lustrous.
‘She says exclusive when she means expensive.’
‘Kit is friendly with the daughter.’
He turned to Kit. ‘What’s the girl like?’
‘Miranda? Really pretty.’
He shook his head, dissatisfied. ‘No bone structure.’
‘She’s very well presented,’ said Treen.
Patrick leant across the table to Kit. ‘Men can tell the difference.’
Treen sighed audibly. She shaded her eyes, gazed out at the garden. ‘It’s beach weather, really.’ Between the verandah’s shade and the dusty shade under the tea-tree, a bare patch of grass vibrated with heat.
Kit said: ‘I might go back this afternoon.’
‘There’s a bit of a rip,’ said Treen. ‘You shouldn’t go on your own really.’
‘I won’t swim. Only up to my knees.’
Patrick sat steeled up, sternly ignoring them. The garden, stopped and uncalm, was the stage setting of his mood. He said: ‘She came right into the house.’
Kit said: ‘I shouldn’t have given her the stuff.’
‘No. A different woman would have stopped at the door. Simply have stopped at the door,’ he repeated with a flourish of his hands.
‘Dad, more tea?’ Treen stacked the plates.
He lifted one hand to brush off her question. ‘Right into Audrey’s room.’
‘I’ll make a fresh pot.’
The screen door shut behind her with a hollow-sounding bang. The sound was still reverberating: he pitched his voice under it; he leant across the table. Still not looking at Kit, looking instead at her hand where it curled on the table, he said: ‘The Wood boy died. That Carol woman told Audrey. A car crash. Audrey was very upset. She knows the father.’
He straightened up. With his thumb and forefinger, he pinched the corners of his mouth. ‘Why they let them drive at that age,’ he said petulantly. His cheeks looked grey under his tan. All along his jawline, the little vertical wrinkles showed. ‘Treen didn’t want to upset us.’ He put his shoulders back, looked unseeingly out at the heat. ‘I shall go to the funeral.’ His shoulders showed beneath the linen shirt: a bone-thinness which made Kit think of material rasping on dry skin. ‘Audrey isn’t up to it.’
He raised his water glass and took a cautious sip, working the water in his mouth. Turning stiffly from the waist to face Kit, he inclined his head: a gesture so courtly, so fastidious, she wondered whether he had just bowed. ‘I’d appreciate it if you could stay with your grandmother tomorrow.’
She inclined her head; she found she had adopted his deliberate and impassive manner. Treen came out with the teapot—this time putting her foot out to keep the door from banging shut. They were two shadows there at the table beside Treen’s stubborn outsized flesh. Without taking his eyes from the garden Patrick said: ‘Kit tells me that she is willing to look after her grandmother.’
‘Dad, the medicine.’
‘Kevin tells me it will be perfectly safe to give Audrey a pill in the morning and then at night.’
‘When did you see him?’
‘I telephoned this morning.’ He turned back to Kit. ‘We’ll prepare a tray for you to take in to your grandmother for lunch.’
Kit spoke to Treen: ‘I’ll be alright.’
‘On your own?’
‘Her grandmother will be here,’ Patrick said.
‘But what will you do all day?’
‘Filing.’
‘It will be nice for Kit to have some time with her grandmother. Audrey lies down after lunch, of course, when there’s the house to explore.’
‘Well…’ Treen hovered over them.
Patrick passed his hand back and forth irritably over the top of his cup, refusing tea. Treen poured out her own tea and settled back in her chair. She took up the crossword. Kit saw that Treen had washed her hands of them both—had claimed for herself the heat-struck, fatalistic peace of the garden.
‘The house will be yours one day,’ Patrick said. ‘I should show you one or two things.’ He rolled his napkin and fed it into his napkin ring. Kit, who had not thought to take her own napkin from its ring, rubbed her fingers on a corner of the cloth. She glanced across at her aunt. Treen, who had found her spectacles when she went into the house, now held the crossword up to her face. She was counting letters; she fumbled for the biro she had dropped down the side of her chair.
Patrick put both hands on the table and levered himself up. He moved with a precision that made Kit think of elbows and knees. Probably his joints hurt always. Walking ahead of him, Kit found herself placing her feet with unnatural care.
The damp-smelling sudden dimness of the hall made them both rock back on their heels. For Kit the whole house now was built out from that place by the door. To pass it was to think of night: hours rigidly waiting with her eyes clenched shut because if she did not see the ghost she could tell herself, when day came, that it had not been there.
Her grandfather stepped with a sleepwalker’s familiarity between the drawing room’s small tables. Crochet antimacassars on the armchairs; tasselled Persian rugs the size of doormats: the room had a layered indoorness: it absorbed sound. Even the gold-framed landscapes opened no vistas out: the picture glass was thick with dust. Kit looked longingly at the windows. Between heavy curtains there was the veranda’s trim of iron lace. A frame outside a frame, it shrank the garden to a picture.
‘Now this is a nice piece.’ He lifted a polished box from the mantelpiece and set it before her on the desk. Its top was coated in fine blue-grey dust. ‘Early Australian writing box.’ He pulled his sleeve over his wrist and wiped the dust off. ‘The inlay’s shell, you know. Abalone. Your mother called it rainbow milk. I’ve always remembered that. Rainbow milk. Artistic, you see…She’s done very well.’
Kit sat very still. He never spoke much and was speaking now lightly, unbrokenly, with the same detachment, gazing at his hand on the box as if it were another possession. He was speaking, as he did in thought, to his things.
‘Yes, too successful for us, I’m afraid. A different aesthetic. Everything modern. Frightened of the past, I’d say. Always wanting new things. New clothes. New car. Even when she was overseas she kept calling us asking for money. Upset your grandmother quite a bit, that did.’
While he spoke he kept stroking the box with his thumb. ‘I never did much, I’m afraid. Not my parents’ fault. They encouraged. I just wasn’t cut out for it. Never enough character. No, what I liked was things. Even as a boy, you know, I collected. The others had stamps. Never saw the point of stamps: too ugly. Shells, I liked. Now I think,’ he went on, ‘I think Admiral Kelty was a collector. You get your interest in houses from him, I’d say. Take this box—’
He smiled tolerantly. ‘I mean a real one. Not for money.’ He opened the lid. ‘Here we are now: look!’ The top of the box held shallow compartments. He slid up a strut between two compartments. From the side, a strip of wood swung out from a brass latch. ‘A secret drawer!’ He grinned up at her, delighted.