Prochownik's Dream (32 page)

‘No.'

‘That's unbelievable. Have you been able to do any work?'

‘Yes, I'm working. Did you tell Robert?'

‘We've hardly talked about anything else these past few weeks.'

‘How is he?'

‘He wants to see you, but I told him we should wait.'

Toni said nothing. Did she mean wait until Teresa came home? Since the day of the fight, Robert and Marina had seemed strangely remote to him. There had even been moments when he had forgotten they had come back, and had imagined them to be living in Sydney still. ‘Yes, we might just give it a while,' he said. ‘I'm sorry, I'm feeling a bit detached.'

‘It's no wonder,' she said. ‘You'd hardly be feeling normal. We'll all catch up soon enough.' She hesitated. ‘Did Oriel get in touch?'

‘No.'

‘She wants to know what you've got for the show.'

‘Andy's handling all that.'

They hung up, finally, without finding much more to say to each other, a slight awkwardness persisting between them.

•

There was a picture of a hotel and a swimming pool in the top left-hand corner of the envelope. He sat on the stool beside Nada's little table and opened it. Folded in with the letter was a square of brown paper with a coloured drawing on it; the figure of a woman in a green diamond-shaped skirt, a teardrop on each rosy cheek, above the figure the simple caption,
Mum
.

As you can see, I took the Noumea package. It's beautiful here and I
feel strangely content in these surroundings. Nada is missing you, of
course. The worst thing is that she does not say anything, but keeps it
all inside. There's a circus school here at the hotel for the children and
she and Snoopy Dog are learning to be clowns. Thankfully she seems to
be enjoying it.

The temperature is around thirty to thirty-two every day and I'm
swimming two Ks each morning in the pool while N is at the clown
theatre. So I'm getting fit and I'm off the smokes again. I've lost four kilos.

This is my umpteenth attempt at a letter to you. I phoned once,
but didn't have the courage to leave a message. I couldn't think of what
to say when the machine came on.

I will always love you. And I know that you will always love me. I think we both know this. Our love is not as simple or as nice or as
straightforward and perfect as I thought it was, but it is still real and it
is still love.

I am coming home in time for the opening of the island show, but
I don't know whether I will feel able to go. I have spoken to Roy a few
times by phone. He has been incredibly supportive. I don't know if he
has spoken about this to you? He has told me you only have a hairline
fracture to your right arm, which is a relief. I'm glad I didn't seriously
hurt you. It's lucky it wasn't your left arm! When I was telling him
about our fight, Roy said something he learned in prison was that
murderers are ordinary people like us. After what happened, I believe
it. It is a funny thing, but he and I were able to have a good laugh about
it, and I think that's when I started getting a bit of perspective on the
realities of this and seeing that we have the rest of our lives to go yet.

Roy is going to do some debt collecting for me when I get back. If
he can get the big accounts to pay even a percentage of what's owed the
agency, I'll have some hope of getting into the clear.

There is no point in you writing to me here as I will be home before
your letter arrives. I will probably go straight to Mum and Dad's. I wanted to let you know that we are both well and will be back soon,
and I also wanted to say that I love you. I couldn't bear it if anything happened and I had not told you this. Nada did the picture of me last
night. I'm afraid I've had a few good cries. I think it's done me good.

P.S. Don't be angry with Roy. I made him promise not to tell you we'd
been talking. He's kept me in touch. It's been important.

Toni read through the letter again then folded it carefully and put it back in its envelope. It was raining heavily outside now, the studio cold, the sound of the rain hammering on the tin. He pinned Nada's drawing of the weeping woman next to her picture of himself above his dad's suit. Then he dragged the doona off the chaise and draped it over his shoulders. He was seeing Nada doing her clown training. Maintaining her dignity. Solemnly instructing Snoopy Dog. Keeping the world of her imagination safe from the real world.

They were coming back.

He realised, suddenly, that he was exhausted and could do no more. He stood looking at
The Other Family
. It occurred to him then that the picture was finished. Whatever finished meant. The
feeling
that it was finished. The
sense
that it was finished. Not that it was perfect, but that it was done with, which was not the same thing. Its story was over. The energy for it had been expended. Emptiness after the act of passion. Or perhaps it was something so different from what he had expected when he set out to paint Marina's portrait that he was not yet capable of really seeing it. There was a sense in which he was a stranger to this painting. Was there not, after all, a strange misalignment of truth and fiction in its story that might have been drawn from a place he scarcely knew? He reached and took the painting down from the easel and leaned it with its face to the plan press. He was careful with it. He cherished it. For it carried within its image the disconcerting authenticity of the unexpected and the unknown. As if another hand than his own had painted it.

He put out the light and lay on the chaise and pulled the doona up around his ears and closed his eyes. He was glad to be alone with the hammering of the rain on the roof and the howling of the sirens along High Street. He did not want to see the studio. He did not want to be reminded of the familiar shapes in the dark. He wanted to sleep, and while he slept he wanted time to pass. ‘They're coming home,' he murmured into the warmth of the doona.
I will always love you. And I know
that you will always love me. I think we both know this. Our love is not as
simple or as nice or as straightforward and perfect as I thought it was, but
it is still real and it is still love . . .
First he would paint a portrait of his father. He could see his father seated at the table in the kitchen, painting by the light of the single bulb, bending over his work in the night silence, his glasses on the end of his nose, the household objects of his meditation taking shape under his hand. But that would not be the picture. The picture would surprise him. He did not know what the portrait of his father would look like when it was finished. He knew for certain only that its title would be
Prochownik's Dream
.