Watercolours (28 page)

She wilted. After a deep breath she stood up. She walked over to him, reached out her hand and placed it on his chest. Dom looked up at her.

‘You
are
experienced,' she insisted. ‘Open your eyes! You felt it. You
feel
it.' She pressed her hand to his heart. ‘The question is why don't you trust it?'

He rubbed his knees and glanced away, unsure.

Her hand dropped. She picked up her bag and keys from the table. At the front door she turned, as though taking stock of him for the last time. He imagined how he must look to her in his sorry little flat with its scattering of kitsch furniture, its bachelor mess. Then her expression shifted. Instead of heading out the door she walked past him into the spare room. He heard her banging around in there. After a few seconds he got up to see what she was doing and had to jump out of the way as she charged past him with a painting in each hand.

He watched in silence as piece by piece she pulled out the artwork they had hidden away months ago and hung each picture back on its hook until they were all in place again: the ill-proportioned kangaroos, the wonky sundial, the crude cottage garden, the demented lorikeets, the grimy country landscapes, the blurry vases of unidentifiable flowers. Afterwards she stood trembling before him, her cheeks on fire, the vein at her throat a violet streak. ‘You don't know anything? Fine! Enjoy.' She left, slamming the door behind her. The reinstated pictures rattled in their frames a moment and then were still.

Slowly, Dom walked into the lounge area and stood there on his own. But he wasn't alone. The pictures were there, too, everywhere, unavoidable in their drab banality. Somehow they seemed even more awful than before, mysteriously bigger than the sum of their terrible parts. Immediately, he felt the old oppressiveness return. He couldn't stand it.

One by one he took them down again, stacking them back in the cupboard. Each absurdly self-important
JK
signed with a flourish in the bottom right-hand corner made him roll his eyes. He looked closely at the deformed kangaroo — really, it was more like a cross between a dog and a man. He shuddered.
Even though he knew his own efforts couldn't produce anything better, he'd sure as hell never bother to put his name to such dross, much less impose it on strangers. Whoever JK was …

Dom sank onto the lounge. He knew who it was. JK was his landlady. This was all Joy Kelley's work.

The realisation rang through him. If these were Joy Kelley's paintings then she had the perfect motive for discrediting Novi. She would have to be sick with jealousy.

Camille was right, something sinister was going on. For the first time since arriving in Morus, Dom sensed the presence of invisible threads connecting the people around him. Before, when he was on his own, he'd been oblivious. But now he was connected, too. He was a part of it, caught up like everyone else.

He grabbed his helmet and ran down the stairs. He needed to tell Camille, nothing seemed more important. Did she say she was going home or to her dad's? He tried to think.
Home
, that's what she'd said. Fumbling with the keys he unlocked his bike in the carport, mounted it and threw on his helmet. Then he pedalled hard into the dying afternoon.

His senses were wide awake. Suddenly he was alert to every fall of light, every luminous leaf and rich streak of earth. He took the track by the river, riding quickly along the watermark of silt. Drifts of matted vegetation had collected on the embankment and hung in ragged tassels from barbed-wire fences. At the paperbark grove all the pale trunks were wearing brown skirts of mud. On he rode through the flood's residue, observing patterns in the arrangement of washed-up debris. It made him think of Novi's maps. He pedalled harder.

At the reserve he veered right, taking a series of shortcuts across puddle-strewn spare blocks, through laneways and empty back
streets until he joined the main flow of traffic. In no time at all he had turned into the steep road that wound up through Camille's neighbourhood. He tackled the hill fiercely, hoping to beat her home, thinking he might have a shot at it at this rate. He pushed through to the summit of the hill and over the crest. Exhilaration swept through him on the descent. Now he was at her street; he could see her house. There was her car pulling into the driveway!

Down he sped, crouching over the handlebars, the wind rushing past his face. He took the corner at the bottom in a triumphant sweep, but his wheels struck a patch of loose gravel deposited by the flood and in one long movement he went over. Still clutching the bike, he skidded in the slurry, skin vanishing from his left thigh, his left elbow, his left hand and ankle until he came to rest in a mortified heap in the gutter, three doors down from Camille's house. She was out of her car now and turned at the sound of metal scraping on bitumen.

‘I'm okay!' he called as she sprinted towards him.

It took him a few minutes to register what had happened. Slowly, he heaved himself out from under the bike and sat up. He unclipped his helmet and let it clatter onto the road. Camille was beside him. Her hands hovered over his body, her eyes flitting anxiously from injury to injury. Dom felt woozy. He looked down and saw the long raw length of his thigh, the deep gashes on his elbow and hand. Beads of crimson were welling up through a coating of grey dirt. Each wound was embedded with tiny black stones.

Camille helped him to his feet, gently brushing grit from his clothes.

‘Joy Kelley is a green-eyed monster!' he blurted out. ‘You're right!'

Camille clearly had no idea what he was talking about. Her brow creased with concern and she stared hard into his eyes, searching for signs of shock. She tried to pick a lump of gravel from his shoulder but he caught her hand and held it.

‘Camille, I want to be with you. I don't know where we'll end up. I can't give you a guarantee. All I know is I don't like being without you.'

Her face went still. She looked at him and said nothing. It didn't matter. She had placed a soft hand on his cheek and was stroking it tenderly. Dom turned his head, pressed his lips into her palm and closed his eyes.

Only then did it begin to hurt.

I'm sitting in a room at school I never even knew was here. It's down the hall from the office, a sort of interview room with a table that's too big because half the room is already taken up by a rack of second-hand school tunics and shirts and a giant pile of faded blue school jumpers and shorts. There is a basin and a shower cubicle in the corner, although it doesn't look like anyone has ever used it. You would have to be pretty dirty to bother moving all those clothes out of the way.

The counsellor's name is Yvonne.

She's younger than I expected and sort of pretty, except she has the type of nostrils that are always flared. Her tone is careful. She is trying to be friendly and polite at the same time. The calm way she's speaking makes me feel like one of those cranky Shetland ponies in the paddock next to the Roper Centre, the ones you try really hard to get near because they are so little and cute but once you pat them they flutter their eyelashes and then bite you on the shirt. I am the Shetland pony and Yvonne is trying to be my friend, not sure yet if I'm the biting type. I wonder what she'd do if I went wild and jumped on the table and snorted and tossed all the old uniforms around the room. Suddenly it's something I feel I could do. But it won't help get my art supplies out of the cupboard so I just sit still.

It isn't easy. Yvonne is making me nervous because she's trying so hard not to make me nervous. Teachers don't normally try this hard with kids; we're used to being herded around and told what to do and smiled at vaguely, so when one corners you in a room and tries politely to pick all the bad stuff out of your brain it's pretty creepy.

My hands are tingling. I don't know what to do with them so I ask Yvonne if it's okay to draw while we talk. ‘Of course!' she says, as though she can't believe her luck. She wants proof, like any good investigator.

Mum shifts her bum in the seat next to mine. She's trying to be good but holding back isn't easy for her, especially when she's stressed — she doesn't know how to be anything but a cyclone or a tsunami. With a big effort she manages to remain in the background for once instead of gushing forward and filling the room and blasting Yvonne with intimate details like she usually does. As I pull an exercise book and pencil out of my bag my mother gives me a smile. Even after all that's happened she still loves to see me draw.

I'm glad she's here with me.

Yvonne asks me questions and writes down my answers with a pen that takes real ink. The ink she uses is blue: Boat Blue, Mediterranean Blue. Watching her upside-down writing, I wonder where I can get a pen like that and what colour ink I'd choose. My answers become sets of small, choppy waves across her pad and after a while I start to sweat because I get the feeling nothing I say is going to be right. I
know
I'm not normal — I'm a child with a silkworm name and a murdered grandfather. My dad spends all his time building a boat that doesn't float and my mum is an extreme weather zone. All my brothers are dead. Pretending
won't make any difference. Yvonne will write whatever she wants to on her pad and I can't stop her.

Blue waves fill up the page.

After she's talked to me for a while, Yvonne turns to my mother. She barely gets her first question out —
How have things been at home?
— when my mother starts leaking tears like a tap. She talks for a long time, about Nonno and her miscarriages and the winery and our money troubles and how she feels people in town are out to get her.

Yvonne listens. This time she doesn't take notes until the end. She finds a box of tissues and while Mum honks her way through a wad of them, Yvonne writes a name and number on the back of a card and hands it to her. ‘I think you'd benefit from talking to someone,' she says. ‘Sonia is local and highly recommended.' My mother nods and sniffs and dabs at her eyes. Yvonne turns her attention back to me.

‘May I see your drawing, Novi?'

I frown because although I've been working on the sketch all this time I'm not that happy with it. It doesn't look right. But I rip it out and hand it over anyway. ‘You can keep it,' I tell her.

Yvonne takes the drawing and her eyes widen in surprise when she sees what it is.
Goodness!
she says, and even though it isn't a true likeness she can't help smiling to see a picture of herself. It's not a bad portrait, I suppose, but it doesn't really look like her — I've drawn her nostrils like a normal person's. I meant to do that. I want her to like the picture. I want her to like me, too.

Yvonne stares at it for ages. When she looks up there's something new in her expression. ‘Well, thank you, Novi! I can see you're very talented.'

I'll never be an investigator, I know that now. I'd be hopeless because the truth is I'm terrible at being inconspicuous. Wishing I was normal won't get me anywhere. I can hope and pray until I pop an artery but it's never going to happen, this is just the way things are.

It's all right, though. I don't mind. I'm going to be an artist instead.

 

After the interview, my mother says I can have the rest of the afternoon off. ‘Let's spend some time together, just the two of us,' she says.

In town we park the ute on High Street and do a bit of shopping. At the bakery Mum lets me choose a cream bun without saying anything about mock cream or industrial-grade raspberry jam. While I eat my bun I look in the window of the trophy shop next door at all the gleaming gold statues and fancy pendulum clocks and pewter mugs. I notice they have some silver pens like Yvonne's. When I finish my bun I go inside to have a closer look and that's when I see it, a real ink pen made of glossy wood.

‘Polished walnut,' the man behind the counter says. ‘German nib, iridium tip for excellent flow. Real craftsmanship, that one.'

The pen has a black tip with three gold bands in the middle and a gold clip at the top. The wood has a dark swirling pattern and behind the darkness there is a red glow as though there's a fire deep inside.

‘How much is it?'

‘A hundred and fifty.'

I stare at the walnut pen. The man lets me hold it. It feels heavy and cool in my fingers. As I turn it over my chest aches with longing.

‘You should get it,' my mother says and I turn to her in surprise. She shrugs. ‘Why not? You can afford it.'

She opens her purse and hands her card to the man. ‘Pay me back later, okay?'

Before I can say anything the man behind the counter lays the pen in a silk-lined box and wraps the whole thing up. He shows me his range of ink cartridges. I choose purple. He drops them into a bag.

On our way back to the ute my mother says, ‘Shall we stop in at Riverside and have a cup of tea with Liz? She's been wanting to talk about your next exhibition.'

I clutch my parcel, wondering what it all means. ‘Is my rest over now?'

Mum flicks the indicator, looks over her shoulder and swings us into the High Street traffic. ‘I think you've rested enough, don't you?'

We drive through town with the windows down, not talking, happy. Autumn is finally here. I can feel it in the cool dry breeze that rushes in the window and flows around us. The colour of the light is changing, too. All the cloud has gone and now a pinky-orange washes over the buildings and the grass and trees, making everything blush. I plan to try to mix that colour as soon as I get home.

There is only one other car at Riverside when we pull in, a white Land Cruiser, and as we climb out and walk towards the gallery our steps start to lose their bounce. The new cheerful mood we've been sharing fades away. Both of us know who that car belongs to.

Before we make it to the path, Mr  Roper comes out of the gallery. He is carrying some large rectangles wrapped in
brown paper. When he sees us he gets such a surprise that his foot almost misses the top step, but he recovers at the last second. His shark eyes blink a few times, trying to decide on an expression.

‘Hi there!' he says. ‘I was just picking up our paintings.' He lifts the rectangles under his arms like a set of clumsy brown wings. He is smiling, but looks guilty.

‘Hello, Gerard,' my mother says stiffly.

Mr Roper saunters over. ‘What are you doing out of school, kiddo?'

He has a knack for making me feel like I've done something wrong. I feel my mother bristle next to me. As Mr Roper comes closer, her body starts whipping up ions like an electrical storm. He stops right in front of me, blotting out the sun. My mother draws herself up as tall as she can and looks him in the eye.

‘Novi had his assessment with the counsellor today.'

‘Oh?' Mr Roper's shark eyes flash. The curiosity is killing him. He tries to control himself and look concerned but I'm sure he's hoping they'll chuck me in the loony bin and throw away the key.

‘How did it go?'

Mum puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘Fine,' she says firmly. ‘Novi's fine. The counsellor said you're a very talented young man, didn't she, darling?'

I nod. Mr Roper's eyes narrow into mine. We are in the depths now, the open ocean, just the two of us. There's a thread of blood in the water. The monster fish have fled for their lives. But is it my blood or his?

‘Well,' Mr Roper says, ‘we all know that. Novi's a clever boy.' He keeps me there, his big shoulders looming. Then he says in a quiet voice, ‘Too clever to do anything silly. You'll just have to be
a bit more careful what you paint from now on, won't you, kiddo? You don't want to get into any more trouble.'

I swallow at the danger in his voice. My heart is pounding, but not from fear alone. The cicadas whiz about; they want to fly into his face. Holding Mr Roper's gaze, I manage to shrug like I couldn't care less.

‘Artists are supposed to cause trouble,' I say. ‘It's our job to stir things up.'

My mother squeezes my shoulder. Together we push past him and along the path. We walk up the steps to the gallery and just before we go inside, Mum turns back. She points to the paintings under Mr Roper's arms.

‘You should hold onto those, Gerard,' she calls. ‘They'll be worth millions one day!'

Mr Roper's mouth curls. Even from the car park I can feel his shark eyes locked onto me. But I'm too far away now to care.