Nicholas watched his mother. Katharine Close sat in a chair beside the bed Laine was lying in, watching the younger woman breathe. Laine’s jaw twitched, and a light frown danced on her forehead. The scratch mark on her face was healing fast. Katharine held the back of her hand to Laine’s forehead and cheeks, and nodded to herself.
‘It’s an improvement,’ she said and looked up at her son indicating that they should leave Laine to sleep in peace a while.
They walked softly down the hall towards the kitchen.
‘I rang your sister,’ Katharine said. ‘Nelson’s ill.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Nothing serious. She wanted you to know that she’s “keeping it up”. That you’d understand. Do you know what that means?’
Katharine went to the sink and filled the kettle.
‘Yes,’ replied Nicholas, and waited for his mother to ask him to elucidate. She silently fetched the teapot and leaves, and he realised the question wasn’t coming.
He went to the fridge and grabbed the milk. They both sat. Katharine poured the tea. It smelled strong and good.
‘She still wants me to move down there. And she said you were thinking of going?’ Katharine asked lightly. She looked at Nicholas over the rim of her cup.
Nicholas stirred sugar into his tea. ‘No.’
They sipped in silence a while.
‘So much rain,’ said Katharine. ‘Too much.’
Nicholas wondered how he looked. When was the last time he’d eaten? Or shaved? He must look like the wild-eyed derelict that every mother fears her daughter might bed or her son might become. He watched his mother. She bore dark circles under her eyes, and her skin seemed so thin he could almost see the worried skull beneath. She folded her hands together on the table and returned his gaze. He knew this pose of old: he remembered it as the same patient expression she’d worn when she’d caught him masturbating in his bedroom when he was thirteen. ‘Do it in the shower,’ she’d said. ‘I have enough washing to deal with.’
He shifted and waited for the lecture to start.
‘Your father,’ began Katharine, frowning and uncomfortable, ‘thought that Mrs Quill was an evil woman.’
Nicholas was so surprised, it took him a few seconds to realise that he was holding his breath.
Katharine kept her eyes on him.
‘Don told me not to go to her with our mendings,’ she said. ‘I used to do them all myself — God knows we didn’t have a brass razoo spare to pay a dressmaker.’ She shrugged and pulled her cardigan tighter around her shoulders, and smiled fondly. ‘He was such a fool like that, your father. Had he said nothing, I’d have done nothing. But it made me so angry, Don supposing he could tell me what to do and where to go and who was fit to mend my babies’ clothes and who wasn’t. So, I started taking bits and bobs there. To Quill.’
Nicholas felt suddenly very small. The house around them seemed thin and unsubstantial. A frail shell of wood. Vulnerable.
‘When was this?’ he asked.
Katharine topped up her tea; steam rose from the amber stream, making her face look dreamier and younger.
‘Oh, you were maybe. . three? Suzette hadn’t turned one. Your father drank perhaps a beer a week after mowing the lawn.’ She smiled sadly at Nicholas. ‘And he hated rum.’
Nicholas remembered shadowy images of his long-limbed father lurching down the hallway followed closely by a sickly sweet smell of sweat and alcohol. Rum had been all his father drank.
‘That changed.’
‘Yes.’ She stared into space, remembering something. Nicholas was quiet, unwilling to disrupt this strangely unfolding conversation. Finally, Katharine roused herself and sipped from her cup.
‘Don was not a practical man. A lovely, funny man, yes. That’s why I married him. But infuriating. Implacable. You look more and more like him. How much did I tell you?’
Nicholas cocked his head. ‘About what?’
‘About your father’s death.’
‘Enough to stop me asking any more.’
Katharine licked her lips. Nodded.
‘He took a job at Biloela and went away for a few weeks. Do you remember that?’
Nicholas shook his head.
‘Well, I wasn’t too happy about him going and leaving me with you two,’ continued Katharine. ‘Maybe it was spite, maybe it was because a bit of extra money was coming into the house, but I began taking the odd garment to Mrs Quill.’
Nicholas watched his mother. Her hands burrowed into one another nervously.
‘Anyway, he came back all jolly and full of yarns. I’d been tending a toddler and a baby, and was exhausted. Full of spit and fury. I told him all the things I’d done without him, how good we were without him. I told him how I’d taken torn pants and shirts without buttons to Mrs Quill — I don’t even know how that came up. But it did. And he suddenly-’
She looked at him. He saw her lower lip was trembling.
‘He looked like you look now. Pale and haunted.’
Nicholas blinked. He hadn’t heard this much about his father. . well, ever. And never without a bitten-back curse word thrown in.
‘And?’ he asked.
‘And he went to see her.’
Katharine held his gaze for a long moment, then looked down at the tea cosy.
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied, picking up the teaspoon and wiping it on the tablecloth. ‘I really don’t. He came back. His face was red, angry red. He went to his garage and started hammering at something.’ She shrugged.
‘But. .?’ urged Nicholas quietly, knowing what came next.
Katharine sighed. ‘But. He started drinking. Maybe a week or so later, he brought home a bottle of Bundaberg. Yes. I asked him to move out, oh, six weeks later.’
Nicholas remembered the few times he’d seen his father after he’d left their home — iceberg moments: cold, sharp tips with enormous unhappiness hidden below. Banging on the door at eleven at night. Meeting him and Suzette after school. Each time thinner, until it seemed impossible there was man left to waste.
‘And then the crash,’ he said quietly.
‘And then the crash.’
He could see her eyes were welling with tears. The tea was cooling and there was no more steam to fog away her wrinkles. She’d passed middle age and was becoming elderly. Smaller. His insides felt hollow and cold; if he could plunge into his mind and retrieve his thoughts, they’d come away frozen and hard. Quill had killed his father. He was sure of it.
‘Did you ever connect the two?’ he asked. ‘Dad’s visit to Quill and his drinking?’
‘Of course not,’ Katharine snapped. She clattered the spoon back on her saucer, then swiftly straightened it as if that might erase the recent noise.
‘Did you wonder why he went to her?’
She looked at him. And as she did, he saw something flick behind her eyes.
Christ, he thought. She’s terrified.
‘I didn’t have to. He told me. He said he was going to warn that witch off his children.’
Nicholas opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
Water tinked in the downpipe outside; a lonely, cavernous sound.
‘She stayed there, Mrs Quill, in her shop for another fifteen years or more. Then I thought she moved to Ballina. Mrs Ferguson thought her sister won the Casket and bought her a house in Hobart.’ Katharine shook her head and shifted in her chair. ‘Then a large lady opened some sort of Celtic shop, selling — oh — tartan cloth, Scottish gifts, tea towels, tinned haggis and trinkets from Edinburgh. Did you ever see her? Family crests. I don’t know how she turned a dollar, but she was there till a couple of years ago. Then a pool shop. And now this new young lady with her health food.’ She sneered out the last two words.
Nicholas stared at his tea. It was brown and inscrutable as river water. Dark.
‘And still,’ whispered Katharine. Nicholas wondered if she was reading his thoughts, until she said, ‘Still this business goes on.’
She looked at him. Her eyes were hard. ‘It’s her again, isn’t it? Down there now?’
He felt a shiver of panic race down his spine to his bowels.
‘Don’t you go down there, Mum,’ he said.
‘Nor should you,’ she replied quietly. ‘I think you should pack your things and hurry down to your sister. Or farther, if you can.’
She seemed to realise her eyes were wet. She plucked a tissue from her sleeve and dried them. She stood and took her teacup to the sink.
‘I’m sorry I never said too many good things about your father. But no woman likes to come second to a bottle.’
Nicholas watched her put her cup on the drainer. She smoothed the front of her cardigan.
‘I’ll check our guest and then be off to bed,’ she said.
As she passed Nicholas, her hand drifted over his shoulder and squeezed it, then left as lightly as a startled swallow taking flight.