Trust (2 page)

Looking at him, laughing now at some joke of Joe’s, she saw that he’d got over the grumpiness of losing their match; his handsome face looked smooth, at ease. Pleased, Susanna smiled as she poured the last dribble of wine into his glass.

‘We’d better get going, eh, Suze?’ he said, tipping it down. ‘Time to break up the kids’ pot party!’ Everyone chuckled: it was well known that the Visser teenagers, Seb and Stella-Jean, were a credit to their proud father.

The previous Thursday, it had already been dark when they were driving home from their match, but now the clocks had gone forward to summer time. ‘Isn’t it lovely having this extra hour of daylight?’ she said to Gerry, behind the wheel. He didn’t comment. ‘Should I call the kids?’ she wondered aloud. ‘I could ask if they’ve —’

‘You know,’ said Gerry suddenly, ‘in all the years since we set up Visser Kanaley, there’s just one thing Marcus and I have never seen eye-to-eye on: entering competitions. Waste of time and money, he reckons. This Kansas City thing: he thought we had Buckley’s of winning. But I was right, and already the feedback’s been phenomenal. One international win raises your profile exponentially.’ He glanced at her. ‘Right, Suze?’

‘Right,’ she said, nodding as she gazed absently at the little pink-lit clouds daubed in rows on the pale evening sky. Cockleshell sky, her father used to call it. It occurred to her that clouds would make a good subject for her students.
Oh, I could paint some for the exhibition! Maybe I could do a whole show of cloudscapes?
She was clutching at straws, she knew. ‘Honey, why did you tell Joe and Wendy about the exhibition?’ she asked. ‘Remember I said I didn’t want to talk to people about it yet?’

‘Because that woman gets up my nose sometimes, that’s why. “What exactly does that
mean
?” ’ he said, putting on a sour face. ‘Princess Smartypants!’

‘I s’pose she can be a bit —’

‘And I can’t stand the way she looks down on you, Suze. You can tell.’

You can?
Susanna frowned, nibbling doubtfully at a rough finger-nail. ‘I don’t … I don’t think Wendy looks down on me …’ she said. ‘Although after she comes to my exhibition, she might. God, I feel so – I don’t know. I wish it wasn’t happening.’

‘Poor pidge,’ he said, using his pet name for her. ‘You worry too much. Listen, everybody’s impressed when they hear “solo exhibition”, but will they actually trek all the way to the outer ’burbs to see it? Not likely!’

‘I guess not.’

‘This show’s only happening so the university can tick that particular box on your performance activity blah blah, you’ve told me that. All you have to do is whip up a few tasteful nudes and bung ’em in some nice frames. Done! Who’s going to care?’

I care
, she thought, her stomach clenching with anxiety.
It has to be
good. Belinda had put herself on the line for this, securing the booking at Booradalla Art Gallery. Again Susanna’s mind started casting about for possible themes, something that might get her started. Not only for the exhibition: the article, too. She had to get something published, something major. Belinda had promised to help with magazine and journal contacts.
I’ve just got to write it first
. Problem was, she’d written nothing in fifteen years, since her monograph on Clarice Beckett, whose moodily atmospheric paintings of the Melbourne suburbs had been ignored for decades after her death in the 1930s. That monograph, surprisingly well received, had not only helped revive interest in Beckett’s work but had boosted Susanna up the career ladder, from high school teaching to the university. But times were very different now, and if she didn’t fulfil the current requirements, she’d be a prime target for redundancy in the inevitable next round of cuts. There’d been rumours —

‘Suze?’ Gerry tapped her arm. ‘Don’t you reckon that’s what you need?’

‘What?’ she asked, trying to look as though she’d been paying attention.

‘Some proper coaching, to improve your game. I’ll shout you a few lessons with a professional. Christmas present.’

Susanna opened her mouth, intending to say,
What a good idea. Thank you, darling
. But that wasn’t what came out. ‘Gerry, I can’t do the tennis any more. I’ve got too much on my plate. You’ll have to find a new doubles partner.’ She closed her mouth abruptly, shocked. ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ she added, bracing herself for his reproaches.

‘Hmm …’ he said thoughtfully. Daring a sideways glance, she saw that he wasn’t looking pissed off after all. ‘Well, if that’s what you want, Suze.’

‘Maybe next year, after my —’

‘You know, honey,’ he said genially, taking a hand from the steering wheel to pat her thigh. ‘I probably shouldn’t say this, but you haven’t really got the instincts to play tennis.’

She nodded slowly.

‘Not
good
tennis.’

‘I know, Gerry,’ she said shortly.

‘Hey,’ he protested, sounding wounded. ‘No need to get upset!’

‘I’m not upset,’ she said. He glanced at her suspiciously, and she gave him her most reassuring smile. ‘Really! Not at all.’

‘Okay then,’ he said, mollified, turning into their street.

In an inner-city suburb whose streets were shoulder-to-shoulder iron-laced Victorian terraces or bijou weatherboard Edwardians, their house was the anomaly: the seventies brown-brick eyesore. They’d bought it for a song fifteen years ago, their intention, of course, from the moment they’d moved in with toddler and new baby in tow, being to renovate and turn it into a modernist showpiece. In that time, while all their neighbours reblocked, replumbed, extended, put in new kitchens and bathrooms and second storeys tucked back from the heritage streetscape, Gerry had drawn up a score of plans. But somehow, their house remained just the same lumpish ugly duckling.

Gerry turned in at the gate and parked. Lights were on already inside the house. ‘Ah good, the kids are home,’ he said, and gave a warm sigh of satisfaction. He patted Susanna’s thigh again affectionately, and she softened.

You love every bit of this, don’t you?
she thought.
Your home, your kids. Me. Renovated or not.
She picked his hand up and gave the middle knuckle a quick kiss.
I’m a lucky woman.
They got out of the car, and began to unload the tennis gear.

TWO

Another weekend was slipping all too rapidly away, and once again Susanna had achieved nothing of substance. It hadn’t even been her turn to take Stella-Jean and her friend Tessa to the Sunday market, where the two girls had a thriving clothing stall; instead, she’d gone walking with her mother around the lake near the retirement village. How had that, even with all their talking, managed to take up half the day? And faffing around the house, followed by hours – hours! – in the supermarket, the other half.

She turned a corner and the couple of bottles that had escaped from one of the shopping bags (probably of the sparkling mineral water Gerry liked) clanked irritatingly against each other.
Almost home
. Parking as close to the front door as possible, she took just a couple of bags inside.

Susanna no longer really saw the interior of her home; familiarity had bred a kind of domestic blindness. When they’d first moved in, she’d painted every room with an unusually flat paint more often used on theatre sets, the intense, saturated colours – vermillion, indigo, deep plum – reflecting her excitement at owning their first family home. But the paint had proved a poor choice, fading badly, while its lack of sheen showed up every one of the many marks which had appeared over the years. Walls, furniture, decor: all awaited the swan-like transformation that Gerry insisted would one day occur.

The front door opened into a scruffy living room, and past that the open-plan kitchen, with its original orange tiles, and the dining area dominated by a large window looking into the backyard. Susanna dumped the shopping bags on the floor near the fridge and walked rapidly down the long hallway which barrelled off at an angle, passing half-closed doors to bedrooms and bathroom. The hallway terminated in a barn-like space known as the games room. Once, long ago, it had been Susanna’s studio, but even she could hardly remember that era.

She could hear the rapid-fire popping of a fast and furious ping-pong game. That would be Seb, ‘winding down’ with his doubles partner Clarence Chong from their Sunday tennis match. They’d had an extraordinary couple of years, playing now at the highest level for their age. A shoo-in, both Gerry and their tennis coach declared, to win the junior championship in a month’s time.
What a pity
, Susanna thought,
that they’re not likely to be playing in the adult competition next year after all.

‘Hi guys!’ she called. ‘Hi Stella-Jean!’ From her jealously guarded half of the room, her daughter lifted a hand momentarily, busily feeding fabric through a whirring sewing machine. A dividing line of thick red tape ran the length of the floor, right down the middle, in an attempt to alleviate bloody border disputes. On Seb’s side was a riotous jumble of everything to do with games and sports, including an open cabinet overflowing with trophies. On fifteen-year-old Stella-Jean’s, order and industry: neat shelves and stacked boxes of fabric and accessories, the sewing machine, a cutting table, and at the far end, a rack of finished clothes and other equipment for the market stall.

‘Hey, Ma!’ yelled Seb, spinning around to flash Susanna a winning smile that was uncannily like his father’s. His friend Clarence smiled and ducked his head in greeting while the ping-pong ball snapped from paddle to table to paddle in a ceaseless white blur.

‘How are we all?’ Susanna asked. ‘Any news about your uncle, Clarence?’

‘Not really. No change, Dad says,’ Clarence said, coolly whipping a tricky shot down the table with a flick of his wrist. ‘The doctors aren’t – you know. They don’t think he’s going to recover.’

‘Oh dear. I really am very sorry to hear that.’ A large ginger cat leapt from the arm of a sagging couch and sashayed over to Susanna, tail waving, to arch his back against her calf. ‘Yes, Tigger, hello to you too,’ Susanna murmured as she bent to stroke him.

‘When’s dinner, Ma? I’m
starving
.’

‘You’re always starving. There’s a car full of shopping that needs to be unpacked; the sooner that’s done, the sooner I can start cooking. Clarence, you’re welcome to stay for dinner, you know.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘but I’ve got to get home.’

‘Mum!’ said Stella-Jean crossly, tossing the fabric she’d been sewing into a waiting basket. ‘Seb’s been whacking me with ping-pong balls for, like,
hours
.’

‘That’s
crap
,’ cried Seb. ‘The occasional mis-serve!’

‘On purpose!’

Susanna kept her face a practised blank. ‘Come on, guys. There’s ice-cream melting in the car,’ she said, and turned away.

In the kitchen, chopping meat and vegetables, Susanna ignored her children as they contrived to collide with each other and wrangle at every turn while putting the shopping away. Pointless trying to stop their arguing: they’d been at it from the day her daughter was born, or at least from the day she could raise a chubby fist to whack her brother. To Susanna, who, far from fighting with her younger sister, had been ever the peacemaker between Angie and their mother Jean, it was a source of utter bafflement.

She turned from the stove and saw out of the corner of her eye that the kids were about to slink off back to their own pursuits.

‘Not so fast!’ Susanna said. ‘Feed Tigger, please, Seb, before you disappear.’ On cue, the ginger cat, standing over his bowl, miaowed commandingly. ‘And Stella-Jean, if you could set the table, thank you. Set places for Auntie Angie and Finn, too.’

‘We’re not going to wait for them before we eat, though, are we?’ asked Seb, looking anxious. ‘Angie’s
always
late.’

‘Depends if they come straight after church,’ Susanna said. ‘If they’re really late, we can start without them.’

‘Yeah, just don’t guts everything before they get here,’ sniped Stella-Jean, to which Seb responded by reaching out one astonishingly long arm and knocking the lime-green and turquoise crocheted cap off her head. She snarled at him and scooped it from the floor.

‘I haven’t seen you wearing that cap before, have I, sweetie?’ Susanna asked. Her head tilted to one side as she peered at it curiously. ‘Um … is it actually a tea-cosy?’

‘Correct!’ said Stella-Jean proudly, pulling loops of her soft brown hair out through the holes where spout and handle should be. ‘Cute, huh? This Filipino lady at the market makes them.’

‘It’s … eye-catching.’

‘It’s looney,’ said Seb.

‘G’day, troops,’ said Gerry, home from wherever he’d been. A client meeting? Marcus’s? Susanna couldn’t remember. ‘Mm, smells great,’ he said, lifting the lid on the pot of curry now bubbling on the stove. ‘When’s dinner? I’m starving.’

‘I think that’s Seb’s line, darling,’ she said, turning the gas down under the pot. ‘Half an hour, or when Angie and Finn get here, whichever’s sooner.’

‘Just time for me to catch the news, then,’ Gerry said, and sauntered off to the living room. The kids, she saw when she looked around, had vanished.

Forty minutes later, with a salad made but no sign of her sister, she called them all to the table. Gerry, a bottle of wine in one hand and glasses in the other, took his favourite seat facing the window. ‘Here you go, chef,’ he said, passing her a glass of wine. ‘Your mother is a terrific cook,’ he told the kids as the aromatic smell of basmati rice and the rich scents of curry filled the air. Susanna sent him an air kiss; she loved the fact that no matter how simple the meal, Gerry seldom failed to make an appreciative comment.

‘Excellent dinner, Mum,’ added Seb dutifully.

‘
Enak sekali
,’ put in Stella-Jean.
Very tasty
in Indonesian. Not only had she been studying Indonesian at school, but they’d holidayed in Bali almost every year of her life. Since she was five Stella-Jean had been declaring that she was going to live in Bali one day, and lately had taken to adding ‘and run a business there’. ‘Just finish school before you take over the world, okay?’ was her father’s usual rejoinder.