The Visconti House (3 page)

Laura’s suspicions were correct; two other boys at school did have bruises. Leon went about his work as though nothing had happened. He hardly seemed aware of his discolored face or the bandage across his forehead. He did not look at Laura, nor she at him. Everyone was talking about the fight, of course. At recess Laura stood around with Kylie, Janie, and Maddy and was reluctantly drawn into their conversation.

“They say he went crazy. It was George and Pete from 9D — that group. They were just teasing. They tried to get a look at the book he was reading, and he went mental.” Kylie’s eyes grew large as she spoke. “He started shouting at them and throwing punches. Really crazy stuff. As if it matters, anyway. It was just a book; it wasn’t even new.”

Laura dug the ground with the tip of her shoe, not looking at them.

“He lives near you, doesn’t he?” said Janie,
turning to her. “You’d better be careful. He might come prowling at night. I bet he steals things, like his dad. He probably stole that old book.”

Laura shifted her feet and glanced around, hoping Leon wasn’t nearby. Fortunately, he was nowhere in sight.

“Laura will be all right.” Maddy giggled. “She’ll be protected by her ghosts.”

“I don’t have any ghosts,” protested Laura.

The others laughed. “Everyone knows your house is haunted,” said Kylie. “It must be so weird living there.” She raised her arms, pretending to lunge at Laura and making a silly “Ooooh” sound. Maddy and Janie cowered in mock terror.

Laura managed a tiny smile, but inside she felt completely dispirited. Why did everyone always make fun of her house? It was just a house. A beautiful, old house. She looked at the girls, wondering if they could ever comprehend that.

“So what’s it like, living in a mansion?” asked Maddy.

Laura heard the bell ring and breathed a sigh of relief. “We should go,” she said. “You know how annoyed Mr. Parker gets if we’re late.” She began hurrying toward the locker room, not looking at
Maddy. Laura never talked about her parents or her home, and she never asked anyone to visit. She always pretended that her mother could cook and was strict about bedtimes and worried about mud on the floor — just like other mothers. She pretended that her father was interested in soccer and got cross if she didn’t do her homework — just like other fathers. She never mentioned the huge blocks of stone that arrived from the quarry and were heaved through the French windows into the ballroom or the reams of paper that lay in dusty piles around her father’s study.

Laura pretended a lot of things. But she couldn’t pretend about her house. Everyone knew it was different. It was not a weatherboard cottage or a neat brick veneer; it was a grand, old, crumbling Italianate villa, surrounded by a tangle of dying fruit trees and overgrown roses, rising in faded splendor above the town. It was the sort of house that people like Kylie and Maddy and Janie would never understand.

As she trailed into math class, she noticed that Mr. Parker was carrying a pile of printed sheets. “A surprise test,” he announced. “To see if anyone has been listening to what I say every day.”

There was an immediate uproar, but Mr. Parker remained unmoved. “This is a state competition, but
I want you to use it as a way of working out what you know. I don’t expect you to find it easy, so don’t panic if there are some questions you can’t do.”

The test was long and hard, and most people were still writing when the bell rang at the end of class. Even Laura found it difficult. At one point she looked across the room and saw that Leon had stopped writing altogether. She felt a stab of pity, guessing that he probably didn’t have a clue what to do.

The following day, when Mr. Parker asked Leon to stay after class, she was sure he must have done really badly. Apparently, everyone else thought so, too, as they sniggered and whispered to one another. Leon said nothing, but the next math class he was not there and Laura supposed he must be doing remedial work. She wondered if it would help, hoping vaguely that it would.

Over the next week, Laura often saw Leon ahead of her, walking quickly as though, like her, he was trying to escape. If he was not too far ahead, he would half nod to her as he turned in to Mrs. Murphy’s garden. Laura would half nod back, but she tried to pace her steps so that he would have gone in before she arrived.

“So do you ever speak to Leon Murphy?” asked
Kylie one morning as they stood at their lockers, taking out their books.

“Of course not.” Laura glanced at her. Why would Kylie suppose that?

Kylie shoved her bag into her locker and slammed the door before it could fall out. She turned to Laura. “What do you think he does at old Mrs. Murphy’s?”

Laura shook her head. “I don’t know. Why are you so interested?”

“I’m not. I just think it’s strange that he’s there, that’s all. I mean, why did he come to stay with his grandmother? Why isn’t he with his mother, wherever she is? What is he doing here?” Kylie tossed back her hair and contemplated Laura. “You must see him around. You go past his house every day. You must see something.”

Laura felt her face redden. “I don’t see anything,” she replied, hugging her books to her chest. “Anyway, I’m not thinking about Leon Murphy when I’m walking home.”

“What
are
you thinking about, then?” Kylie was watching her curiously.

Dragons,
thought Laura, but said, “Nothing. Nothing much.” Laura was thinking about dragons because of the book she was writing and illustrating. It
was about different dragon species. Every afternoon, as soon as she had finished her homework (and sometimes before), she would curl up in her corner of the studio and work on it. The dragons were so real to her that some evenings she thought she could almost see them flying though the dusk with their beautiful fragile wings and their funny fiery snouts. This was not something that she was going to talk about with Kylie, however. Like her house and her family, Laura never mentioned her writing to anyone at school.

“You’re strange, Laura Horton.” Kylie shrugged and started moving toward the door. “If I was walking past Leon’s house every day, I’d be trying to find out everything I could about him. Maybe I should be a detective when I leave school. I bet I’d be good at it.” She caught sight of Maddy in the distance. “See you,” she called, and dashed off, leaving Laura alone in the corridor.

Laura slammed her locker shut. If only there were other kids at school like her. Just one would be enough. Someone she could talk to. Someone who would catch sight of her and call out and want to be with her.

She sighed. As if that was going to happen. There
was no one like her. As everyone kept telling her, she was strange.

The Friday before the long weekend, the whole school squashed into the auditorium for an unexpected assembly. From where she sat, Laura could see Leon lounging in his seat. She tried to imagine how he was going to spend the next three days. Would he go back to his parents, wherever they were? To his father, whose books he defended so passionately? To his mother? Or would he be staying with Mrs. Murphy? The thought of being shut up in that little white house by the train tracks made Laura shudder.

A hush fell as the principal rose and looked out across the student body. “I have an exciting announcement to make,” he began. Everyone stopped fidgeting in their seats and waited. “We have the results of a competition the Year Eight students participated in a few weeks ago.”

Laura stiffened. She had forgotten about that. She hoped she was not going to be called out again.

“We have an outstanding achievement,” Mr. Jameson continued. “One of our students has won one of the top prizes.”

Laura relaxed. It couldn’t be her. She was good at math but not that good, and she knew she had made mistakes. Her mind whirled, trying to think who it could be.

“Leon Murphy,” said the principal.

A gasp rippled through the hall, and Laura did a complete double take. Leon Murphy wasn’t struggling after all. He was bright. Really bright!

She watched as he got slowly to his feet and began walking toward the stage. He did not look particularly pleased. In fact, he did not look pleased at all. His expression, as he stood glowering at the assembled school, reminded Laura of a caged wildcat.

As soon as they were dismissed, Leon shouldered his way through the crowd and headed for the exit. By the time Laura had collected her bag and was leaving the school grounds, he was a tiny figure disappearing down the hill ahead of her.

For three whole days, life was wonderful for Laura. She woke early on Saturday morning, thinking about her dragons, and wrote for hours before anyone else stirred. When her parents eventually got up, she had fifty-seven different species and had documented their characteristics and habits in minute detail. There was the huge green sea dragon with burnt-orange wings and long, sharp claws, and the tiny rose-pink morning dragon, which appeared at dawn. There was the scaly old charcoal dragon whose eyes glowed in the dark and whose broad, pulsating nostrils let out great bursts of flame, and the delicate moon dragon, which was visible only in moonlight. She was entranced by them all.

Then at lunchtime, Harry arrived in a flurry of excitement and enthusiasm.

“Good day to you all. And what a wonderful day it is!” he exclaimed, jumping out of the car and throwing
his arms wide, as though embracing the whole world. “Love is in the air.”

He then embraced a woman, who had jumped out the other side and was standing, laughing, beside the rosebushes. She suddenly burst into an aria.

“This is Isabella. She’s an opera singer,” Harry explained airily, starting to unload boxes of food. “She hasn’t been discovered yet, but she’s very good.”

Laura smiled at her shyly and took the rope of garlic Harry was handing to her.

“I’ve come to cook,” Harry continued. “I can’t sculpt at the moment — I’ve lost the urge — so I may as well cook. Obviously, that’s where my creative energy is channeled right now. I am channeling life.”

Harry waved a bunch of parsley under Laura’s nose, and she started to giggle. “Can I help you cook?” she asked, taking the parsley.

“You certainly may. We’ll start right away. I hope you haven’t eaten.”

“Of course we haven’t.” Laura ran over to the door and held it open for Harry and her father to carry in the boxes. She wondered where they were going to store all the provisions.

As soon as Harry saw the table, he swept the newspapers off it onto the floor and began laying out
the ingredients for lunch. Laura hastily picked up the papers, then washed her hands and waited for instructions. By the time her parents and Isabella came back into the kitchen after a tour of the house, Laura was rolling out pastry and Harry was dicing onions. His hands flew across the chopping board.

“Look. The table has become a still life,” declared Laura’s mother, pulling up a chair. “I’m going to draw those vegetables.” She reached for a pencil and paper and started sketching.

“What are you cooking?” called Laura’s father from the pantry. He was searching for a new bag of coffee beans.

“A vegetable tart. And tonight I will cook my Saturday specialty.” Harry brandished his knife in the air. “It only tastes good on Saturdays. It’s a ragout from an old Hungarian recipe.”

“We should set up a table in the empty room beside the studio,” suggested Isabella, waving her dark red fingernails in an expansive gesture toward the hall, setting her bangles jangling. “It can be the dining room. You have all this glorious space here and you’re hardly using it. We should fill it. We should fill it with life!” She burst into song again, something high and trilling about spring and rebirth.

Laura’s father laughed. “We’ll leave that to you and Laura.”

“And we’ll make it wonderful, won’t we, Laura?” said Isabella, her eyes alight. “Harry, you can cook a special feast on Sunday. We’ll have the room ready by then.” She beckoned to Laura. “Let’s see what we can find.”

Laura looked questioningly at Harry, and he nodded. “The pastry is finished. Off you go.”

She leaped up. “I know where there are some curtains.”

“Show me.” Isabella took Laura’s hand and danced her out of the kitchen.

As Laura led the way down the hall to the small room they used for storage, her heart soared. It was lovely to feel that they were not alone in the world, to be surrounded once again by like-minded people.

When Isabella saw the curtains, she was captivated. “These are velvet,” she said. “Real old velvet. Look at the color and the texture. Wherever did you find them?”

“They were in the attic.” Laura glowed with pride at her discovery. “I found them in a box.”

“Was there anything else in the attic that we could use?”

“Come and see.” Laura raced Isabella up the wide staircase and across the landing to the narrow stairs that led to the attic. They had to bend to go through the low door. A little light was filtering in through the cobwebs over the skylight, but the corners were dark and full of mystery. The whole space smelled of dust and dry timber, and the floor creaked as they walked across it.

“Look at this,” cried Isabella, pulling out a chair with an elaborately carved back and a broken seat. “And there’s another one over there. We should be able to fix them. They’ll look grand in the dining room.”