What the Light Hides (3 page)

‘No,' I say, when she pulls me on top of her. ‘Not yet.'

‘I want you to,' she says, but gasps in pain when I enter her.

‘I can't,' I say and feel my whole body shake.

‘I want you to,' she says again, but turns her head when I try to kiss her.

And in a mixture of anger and desire I push into her and keep pushing until I collapse on top of her. She gets out from underneath me, picks up the towel from the floor and leaves the room. And then I hear the shower go again.

I am overcome with self-loathing. Outside the moon has lost its yellow glow and has turned the colour of bone. The worst thing has just happened.

I don't know how long I lie there, but some time later I hear the front door slam. Vera has gone back to the studio.

I want to run after her. I want us to find what we seem to have lost: the language that used to be between us, the ordinary weaving into the extraordinary so tightly that there was no distinction. But I've got no idea how to get it back and right now I almost doubt it ever existed. I don't know who we are any longer, I don't know who we are without Ben.

They say he got up one morning and travelled to the Gap, to those mighty harbour cliffs. They say he jumped and that a witness spoke to him just moments before. They say it happened on a summer's day, at a time when everything is blooming and bursting and so full of promise that it breaks the heart right open.

I can't imagine it; I can't imagine him hitting the hard surface of the ocean or, worse, the rocks beneath the cliffs. But I see him in my dreams: Ben in freefall. Sometimes I see him going down head first, sometimes feet first. I see him in midair, shirt fluttering, hair tossed by the wind. And I look into his blue eyes and in that moment, and of this I am sure, he is begging me to find him.

I get tomatoes and an eggplant from the fridge. And then I go back for some of the preserved lemon that I know Vera likes. I feel as if I have been in an accident, a car crash or a random shooting. My hands look pale in the kitchen light as I cut into the eggplant. Some of the purple bleeds into the flesh.

I walk outside to see if the parsley has survived the frost. The light from Vera's studio glows warmly between the trees at the bottom of the garden and I remember how it used to be; how I would take a break from work and walk across the lawn to see her.

She would take me by the hand and show me her work, and I would inhale the sharp smell of welded metal.

‘I used copper for this one,' she would say. ‘Feel how smooth it is.'

And I would pull up her skirt and realise with joy that she wasn't wearing underwear and that she was wet to my touch.

She would continue, ‘I am about to engrave it.'

I would touch her, hearing her breathing quicken.

She would whisper, ‘You smell of oil.'

And I would say, ‘I'm finishing the table.'

She would reply, ‘Your arms,' and moan as she let me enter her against the workbench.

I would slow down, and she would touch the outline of my tattoo: a diver in old-fashioned diving gear, done in an alcohol-fuelled madness the day I walked out of uni. ‘You have nice arms,' she would say.

And I would respond. We repeated lines said many times before and each time it was exquisite, each time it was as if it had never been said.

I take a last look at Vera's studio before I walk back inside the kitchen carrying a limp bunch of parsley. And it is only when the rice is ready and the table set that I walk through the dark garden and knock on her door.

She turns in her chair as I walk in. Her reading glasses sit low on her nose and she is holding a metal file in her hand. But her workbench is empty and I can see that she has been crying.

‘Vera,' I begin.

She takes off her glasses. ‘Don't,' she says and rubs her eyes. ‘Please don't say anything.'

I wait outside as she turns off the lights. Through the glass door I glimpse the shelves behind her, full of tools and random objects. On a corner sits a troll doll with a flame of pink hair. It's been there for years. She bought it for Ben when he turned five, but he never took to it. I understand why, it's terribly ugly, but for some inexplicable reason Vera decided to keep it. When it comes to her creative work there is no telling what might inspire her.

She joins me on the steps and together we walk across the lawn, a dark sea of grass cold against our pants legs.

The tall pines in Rob's garden sway soundlessly and the village smells of frost and dead leaves.

‘Vera,' I say into the darkness as we walk.

‘You've decided to go,' she says. ‘I know.'

I reach out to squeeze her hand, but she won't let me.

I wake in the night and find the space next to me empty. The house is quiet. I get out of bed and find her in the dark living room with the TV on mute. On the screen young men cleave through aquamarine water; swimming caps and elongated bodies.

It's the same every night.

She recorded the video for a project. It was just before Ben went missing and I have never asked her why she is still watching it.

‘Vera,' I say. ‘Come to bed.'

And without saying anything she gets up and follows me down the hallway through our old squeaking house. She gets into bed and turns away from me. Not a word is spoken and I fall into a dreamless sleep.

Vera and I don't talk about my upcoming departure over the next couple of days. She disappears into her studio every morning and I work hard on finishing the table, worrying about whether Vera will be okay when I go.

She has always been fiercely independent. Before we met she hitchhiked around South-East Asia for more than a year. On another trip she travelled part of the Silk Road on the back of a camel. There is a photo of her as a nineteen-year-old sitting on the hood of a Land Rover in khaki shorts, a white T-shirt and heavy walking boots, with a string of turquoise stones around her neck. She looks so completely at ease in the desert landscape. She has still got that strength, I know it's there. But now there is a fragility too. I see it in her eyes; she is barely making it through each day.

I continue to sand. Some of the sanding can be done by machine, but most of it needs doing by hand. It takes hours. Slowly, very slowly, the dense grain of the mulberry comes out. The tabletop is thin, so thin that it looks like it's floating.

I apply oil. I prefer Danish oil, but it tends to stain the darker woods, so I use Osmo instead. I lather it into the timber and then let it sit for a couple of minutes before wiping it off. After that I apply the oil again. I do this three times before finishing off with a coat of oil wax.

I stand back and study the table. The grain of the mulberry is beautiful and complex. It was the right decision not to add an inlay.

The table is picked up the evening before I leave. The buyer, a soft-spoken tall man, arrives just before dusk in a rented van. He stands in my workshop with an attitude of reverence. ‘I have always wanted to work with wood,' he says.

He explores the grounds while I cover the table in bubble wrap, and I can hear him and Vera chatting in the garden. Their voices drift and fall, and then suddenly, as if by a miracle, Vera laughs. The sound startles me.

‘You are a lucky man,' the buyer says as he comes back into the workshop. ‘Your wife is full of charm and you have wild apples in your garden.'

When we load the table onto the truck I almost ask him to stay for dinner—just so I can hear Vera laugh again.

I walk back to the workshop after he's gone. The smell of oil and sawdust hangs in the air, but the place feels empty. Ginger is asleep on her mat in the corner and I bend down to give her a pat. She opens her eyes and stretches, and then falls back asleep.

I need to decide what timber to bring to the city in the morning. I know there is a workshop connected to the rented house, but I haven't given any thought to what I might be working on while I'm there. I get the box with my inlay pieces and then go through my shelves of timber. I choose oak and some darker pieces of rosewood and on impulse I walk to the back and drag out the log of spotted gum that has been drying in the corner for years.

The gum had died on our neighbour Rob's property. Ben was living in the city then, but came up with Neil one Saturday to help cut it down. They arrived full of bravado and spent an entire day in Rob's backyard cutting the tree into firewood. I was busy in the workshop, but stopped to have lunch with them. They were laughing and bantering, sweaty in jeans and T-shirts. At that stage Ben had already shut me out, and I was jealous of Neil then, jealous of the easy chatter and the rapport between them. The boy I knew—the boy I taught to ride a bike, joked with, put to bed at night—had without any explanation turned prickly and sullen towards me.

They left that night after dinner. Crammed into Neil's red mini they beeped the horn repeatedly as they went down the driveway. I didn't stay to see them turn the corner.

Vera joined me in the kitchen a moment later. She leaned against the kitchen bench and waited.

‘How come they get on so bloody well all of a sudden?' I said, putting a stack of plates into the cupboard. ‘Ben used to think Neil was a pretentious know-it-all.'

‘Ben will come back to you.' said Vera. ‘And it's good that he's got Neil.'

‘But there's no reason for him to shut me out,' I said and closed the cupboard door. ‘Did you hear him ask me when exactly I stopped caring for the underprivileged? What does that even mean?'

Vera took my hand and said, ‘It's teenage rebellion, darling. It's just come a little late. He never went through that phase, you know.'

I knew Vera was probably right, but I couldn't handle it. I wanted him back. I wanted him to fling his arms around me, rather than giving me a limp handshake as if he were some boarding-school kid and I his estranged dad.

Night has fallen, stars have come out and it's freezing as I load the timber onto the ute. I add the portable bandsaw and most of my handheld tools, and then I cover it all with a tarp and strap it down.

Ginger emerges from the workshop and makes a beeline for me in that slow stiff walk of hers. She rubs against my leg as I look up into the night sky.
Ben
, I think.
If you came home I would gladly have you think I'm an old fool. I would gladly take the rejection just to have you back
.

Vera gets up before me on the morning I am set to leave. The weather has changed. The sky is grey and heavy with a rain. I hear her digging in the garden as I get up. The shovel hits the hard ground again and again, and by the time she comes back in I have made coffee and set the table.

She washes her hands at the sink, then sits down across from me, reaching for a piece of toast.

I push the butter closer to her. ‘What are you doing?' I ask.

‘What do you mean?'

‘In the garden?'

‘I'm digging a hole for the rose that I planted down near the studio. I'm going to move it up to the others.' She looks at me, the expression in her grey eyes unreadable.

Before I can ask why she is gardening in the middle of winter she says, ‘Tell me again why you're going.'

‘Vera,' I say and put my cup down. ‘I'm not going to look for Ben, I just don't know what else to do. What happened the other night, it's…'

She looks down at her toast and sadness fills the room. Her flannel shirt is open over a worn black T-shirt. The beauty spot that I have kissed a thousand times sits just above the neckline.

Outside the wind pulls at the long grass, the sky is concrete.

‘Come and visit,' I offer, and then feel embarrassed at how it sounds. No invitations have ever been necessary between us. I reach for her, but she stands up and opens the pantry door.

She pulls out a jar of marmalade. It's been there for at least five years and neither of us has ever been tempted to open it.

‘You need to terminate Ben's lease,' she says and sits back down.

We've kept the place for Vera's niece, who is eighteen and lanky and dreams of city living the same way someone dreams of marrying a rock star. She's asked us to hold the flat until she gets a deposit together.

‘We can afford to give her a bit more time,' I say and watch Vera spread marmalade on her toast.

‘She's not going to move, David. It's been five months.'

‘Okay, if you're sure. What do you want me to keep from his place?' I ask.

‘Nothing.'

‘There must be something you want?'

‘Give it all to Vinnies.'

Her kiss is brief and hardly felt when we say goodbye. I watch her walk across the lawn to her studio, and I am left to feed Ginger before I leave.

Sydney has two faces. The sparkling coastline with its sandstone cliffs and whitewashed houses where millionaires and surfer-boys with salt-crusted eyelashes view the city as a backdrop to their existence. And the inner city with its poverty, decay, homeless people and wild, restless life. I prefer the latter.

The traffic slows down when I reach Parramatta Road. I pass car-yard sales, boarded-up restaurants and wedding-dress shops that look like they belong to another decade. There is no one on the footpaths; everything is deserted. The buildings are sodden and the clouds hang heavy over the grey skyline.

The house has seen better days. Its yellow facade is peeling and the side gate is loose on its hinges and gives a loud squeak as I open it. Neil once described Newtown as having so much charm that no one notices it is falling apart. There is some truth to that. In fact the whole terrace-lined street is dilapidated, but every front yard is bursting with flowers and bushes and the street is lined with paperbark trees.

I knock on the back door as instructed. A pair of old runners has been left near the steps. There is a hula hoop in the long grass and a child-size plastic table near the fence where jasmine descends from the neighbour's backyard like a waterfall.