The Restorer Page 7

  As he waited for them to be alone again, Roy’s hand crept out towards Maryanne’s, but he did not touch her. His fingers were bent, only the tips with their square, broad nails resting on the table. Dark hair grew in tufts between the knuckles, reappearing halfway to the wrist, exploding in dark whorls up his forearms, his skin tanned and smooth underneath.

  He was still talking and she looked up to meet the gold-brown flash of his eyes, his broad, smiling face, the teeth white against his olive skin. He was going to do the house up, he said—whenever he wasn’t at work. He’d lined up a job, too, a one-year contract with the same people that’d had him up there in the first place. And that was what he wanted: a year to get somewhere, to rebuild. It’d take a year to do up the house at most. If she was there with him, they could decide together what to do next. Maybe they’d keep the house or maybe they’d sell it, but either way, there was a good future in it. He couldn’t imagine that future without her, and the kids. Their kids. He waited for her to disagree, but she didn’t. His hand remained there, close to hers. And what about her then, he asked. What could she imagine?

  When Maryanne got home, her mother was in the kitchen, having a cup of tea with a friend. They’d been talking about her—you could tell by the silence that followed her arrival. Her mother stayed at the table, fingers laced around her cup, staring up at Maryanne through the steam that rose from the tea.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘I didn’t take notes.’ Maryanne went back out into the hall, slipped off her shoes and started up the stairs to her room.

  ‘Maryanne!’ Her mother had come to the foot of the stairs and was looking up at her. ‘Are you going back to him then?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Oh, I know. It’s in your eyes. I know what you’re like.’ Her mother spread her hands in the air. ‘I just don’t know why.’

  Her mother didn’t know why. That was a laugh. Her mother, the bloody Roman Catholic saviour. She was always there in the house, waiting, had saved her a few times, for sure, but she never let her forget it, and no matter how much Maryanne needed to be there, she could never go back without being plagued by the thought of what lay beneath her mother’s generosity—the guilty refusal to really talk, to acknowledge what Maryanne’s own father had been like.

  That night, Maryanne had searched through her room for several hours. The ring had slipped into a gap under the skirting near the foot of the bed, just a glint of it still visible, and only if you looked at it from exactly the right angle. She had to tease it out with a knife. When she slid the ring back on, it felt warm, as if it had just come off her skin.

  And from there, it was easy. Her mother didn’t want any explanations. She didn’t want to know where they were going, although she nodded in a bitter, satisfied manner when she heard that it was so far away. And who did that suit then? She did not expect an answer. Maryanne did not offer one.

  Her mother became distant after that, resigned. This was a relief to Maryanne. It made everything easier.

  On the day that Roy came to collect her and the children, her mother managed to avoid saying a word to him. But at the door, when Maryanne was about to leave, when Roy was already in the car, she said, ‘Sixteen years of this. It’s going to happen again. I think you know that.’

  Maryanne got in the car.

  ‘What did she say?’ Roy asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said.

  That was the first lie she’d told him since she’d left. She closed the door of the station wagon and felt the heat enfold her. The car seemed to be the one thing he’d hung on to from their old life, a relic from the seventies, from before they’d had Daniel, when there had only been Freya, and things had been less complicated between them. The windows were wound down, but it made no difference. Every surface radiated heat. Even the fabric of the seat was hot under her thighs. The vinyl dashboard, underneath the lighters and discarded cigarette packets and various bits and pieces, was faded and finely cracked. The engine coughed into life. It had some flaw even Roy couldn’t fix. It didn’t sound right, but the car never broke down. You could drive it off a cliff and it would keep going.

  Freya was the last to come out of the house, a bag over her shoulder and a strange look on her face. Her daughter didn’t understand yet, but she would. They were a family and they belonged together, and everything else would sort itself out. Freya got in and Roy pulled out from the kerb, the trailer behind them. Maryanne looked in the rear-view mirror at her children in the back seat. Daniel was looking back, waving in Nan’s direction. Freya was staring ahead. They drove for a while in silence. With one hand on the steering wheel, Roy rolled a cigarette and, as they crossed the Sydney Harbour Bridge, he put it in Maryanne’s mouth, his eyes never leaving the road. And it was in that moment, with that gesture he made—so ingrained, so part of their old routine—that her certainty vanished.

  How many weeks ago had that been now? Six. Just six. She stubbed her cigarette out against the brick wall. Six weeks. No time at all. The sky was starting to fade into evening. The hammering had stopped and she could hear the sea again, as if it were coming closer with each wave. Maryanne stared up at the window, watched the shadow of Roy’s movement thrown up against the ceiling.

  He’d certainly oversold the house. Or maybe she had just hoped for too much. Maybe it was true, that the house was solid under all the damage. All of this had happened for a reason. She had to believe that.

  Even if it was a mistake.

  She made herself look away. She wanted nothing more than to go to sleep, alone, to go upstairs and collapse on her mattress and not get up until it was day again, but there were things to do. Dinner, for a start. The children must be starving. She went back into the house.

  Freya was in the kitchen.

  ‘How long have you been standing there?’ Maryanne asked.

  Freya shrugged. ‘Not long. I just wanted to—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘See if you were okay.’

  ‘You want to help me finish making dinner?’

  While Maryanne cooked some lamb chops, Freya made the salad.

  ‘It’s the last day of summer today,’ Maryanne said.

  ‘And a leap year.’

  ‘Is that meant to be lucky or unlucky?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Freya said.

  ‘Where’d you go this afternoon?’

  Her daughter hesitated. ‘The beach.’

  Something in her tone made Maryanne glance at her. ‘Did you go with a boy?’

  Freya didn’t answer. She directed her attention at the carrot that she was chopping into ever finer pieces. Maryanne thought of her own mother, probably sitting alone in her house right now, husband long since dead, and only one daughter of her own to worry about and be there for and be loved by.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Maryanne said. ‘I didn’t mean to pry. It’s good to have a few secrets.’

  7

  Freya was drunk. She laughed as she stood in some stranger’s house, swaying on her feet, and her voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. She’d drunk more than she’d thought, white wine from a cask, not because she’d wanted to, really, but because she hadn’t been paying attention. But now, yes, now it was good, and she didn’t feel sorry, not for doing it, and not for telling Mum she’d be staying at a friend’s place and watching a movie.

  Ally had disappeared out the back with some boy, and Freya was alone in the crowded room. Lights glittered on the harbour through the windows. There were tangled limbs in every shadowy corner of the house. Someone was moaning and retching in the toilet. The Cure were blazing through the walls—‘Why Can’t I Be You?’

  Someone bumped her shoulder. She turned and it was Josh. He was wearing black acid-wash jeans and a blue tie-dye Led Zeppelin shirt.

  ‘Hey,’ he said.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Enjoying yourself?’

  ‘I guess,’ she said.

  He put his hand on her arm. ‘Are you o
kay?’

  Freya nodded. ‘I’m fine. I’ve just had too much to drink.’

  Then Ally was there beside her again, holding a beer bottle by the neck, a pale sheen on her face of too much foundation.

  ‘We have to go,’ Ally said without looking at Josh. ‘It’s eleven-thirty. Dad’ll be coming to pick us up. We don’t want him coming in the house, trust me.’

  Josh dropped his hand and stepped back, but he caught Freya’s eye. ‘You know where I live.’

  ‘Yeah, like anyone needs to know that,’ Ally said, as if noticing him for the first time.

  They walked out to the street.

  ‘So did you kiss that guy?’ Freya asked.

  ‘What?’ Ally looked at her blearily. ‘Oh, what’s his name out the back. Yeah. And then I threw up.’

  ‘You didn’t.’

  Ally grinned and gave a slow, deliberate nod. ‘Yep. Just a bit. I don’t think he noticed. I don’t care if he did. I don’t even like him. I think this is his beer.’

  They stood together on the kerb, waiting.

  ‘So what’s your problem with Josh?’ Freya said.

  Ally finished the bottle and hurled it into the bushes. ‘Just know trouble when I see it.’

  They sat in the back on the drive home to Ally’s house. The car was huge on the inside, and so clean it was like they were taking it for a test drive. It had power windows that slid up and down with the faintest whir, air conditioning, and a music system with a CD player that made the classical music Ally’s father was playing sound as if it were coming from every direction and nowhere all at once.

  ‘You girls have a good time?’ Ally’s father said as they left the east end of the city behind.

  ‘Yeah, Dad. Just drive.’

  He tipped a pretend hat at Ally. ‘I’d probably rather not know.’

  He had hair only around his ears, a shiny skull. He glanced at them every now and again in the rear-view mirror and talked like he was trying to impress them, like a man practising for when he might actually need it. As they drove up along the coast, the road began to climb. An escarpment rose on their left, huge houses staggered along its flank. They turned from the main street, went up another, and kept following the road until they came to the end, to one last house before the darkness and the sea down below.

  Ally led her inside and straight through the house. The rooms were large and clean but there wasn’t enough furniture, and all the colours in the house were cold blues and whites. When Freya stepped onto the balcony, she could see across nearly the whole city. She was beginning to know it now, could pick out the distant arch of the bridge that led across the water to Stockton and, closer in, the floodlit cathedral. On another hill she saw a single, thin, luminous white column.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘The obelisk,’ Ally told her.

  ‘But what is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s just the obelisk. That’s just what it’s called.’

  ‘Weird.’

  ‘I never thought about it before.’

  They fell silent. Down below, along one of the main streets, Freya could see the blue and red flash of a stationary police car.

  Freya said, ‘It’s a great view.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ally murmured with a faint smile. ‘You get over it after a while.’ She leaned against the balcony, stretched one arm towards the lights in the city. ‘My mum lives down there, near the beach. I’m so glad I’m not there now. She never lets me go out at night when I’m with her. Or she makes me come home really early. When I’m with Dad, he doesn’t care. He just wants to be the cool dad. It’s pathetic. Most of his girlfriends aren’t that much older than me. He never keeps them that long.’ She shook her head. ‘And Mum still comes over to iron his clothes.’

  They both stared out over the city, and Freya felt the buzz of the night beginning to dull inside her. Why can’t I be you? Who, though?

  ‘God, I can’t wait for this term to be over,’ Ally said. ‘It’s really dragging. I’m so over it. Ever been skiing?’

  ‘No,’ Freya said.

  ‘You should come up one year. We usually go at the end of August.’

  August. Freya wondered if they’d even be here then, her and Mum and Daniel.

  ‘Sure,’ she said.

  They went to bed but stayed awake a while longer, Ally talking on in a flat, slightly bored tone about the boy she’d kissed and whether she’d do it again, and about the girls in their group, that one bitch who got paralytic every party she went to, and just embarrassed herself, and another girl who wasn’t in their group but everyone knew how she’d let a boy touch her under her skirt while they were watching a documentary in geography. What a slut. She hadn’t even been drunk.

  Freya mainly just listened. She liked Ally, or at least didn’t dislike her, but nothing that Ally cared about really mattered much to her. Maybe that was exactly what she needed, to be around people who knew nothing about her. Ally kept talking, and she answered where she needed to. Longer and longer gaps opened up between what they said. Soon Ally was snoring.

  Freya began to doze. She was in the car, watching Nan’s face vanish behind the grey reflection of a window. Dad was leaning forward over the steering wheel, Mum beside him, and it was too late to get out, they were already driving, had already come too far. Then she was awake again, Ally still snoring in the bed beside hers. She needed to talk to someone, but there was no one. Such a surge of loneliness crashed down on her that she thought she would drown in it. Gusts of wind were blasting against the windows. The whole house seemed to be trembling, like it didn’t belong here, like it wasn’t going to last, like it was only a matter of time.

  The next morning, they walked along the strip of ocean that began at Merewether and went up to the rocks past Bar Beach. It was a perfect autumn day, a huge empty sky, just a light breeze, and the water as warm as the air. A group of boys from school were jumping off the rocks. They were the rich kids from Bar Beach and Merewether and the Junction—the ones who seemed to know exactly where they belonged and where they were going. As Freya and Ally walked past them, a tall boy with a flat-top stood waiting on the edge of the rocks until he was sure they were watching, then grinned and did a slow, perfect backflip, landing feet first in the deep, green water below with barely a splash.

  ‘Well then,’ Dad said. ‘What do you think?’

  They were upstairs, on the top floor, standing at the threshold of her bedroom. Her things were in the room—her mattress, her suitcase, a rack with her clothes. The wooden floor underneath was smooth and lacquered in a dark, gleaming hue. The gabled inside of the roof was hidden by clean, pale grey plasterboard.

  ‘Well?’ Dad said. ‘Do you like it?’

  Mum was watching her too.

  ‘Yeah,’ Freya said.

  Dad frowned. ‘Yeah? That’s it? Do you know how hard I’ve been slaving away up here to get this right for you? They’re all solid now, the floors, good as new. I’ll get around to putting carpet down eventually, but there’s still a lot to do before then—the skirting boards, new power points, paint. For now, though, this is pretty good. You’ve got your own room.’

  ‘It’s great,’ she said.

  ‘I love mine,’ Daniel said. ‘I love it.’

  Dad looked only at her, watchful, waiting. ‘Do I get a kiss or something?’

  Freya slung her arms around him and kissed his stubbled cheek. ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  ‘That’s better.’ He stepped to the window. ‘This is pretty hard to open. I’ll fix it later. But what a view, eh? You’ve definitely got the best one.’ He peered outside, then turned back to grin at Mum. ‘Maybe we should move up here and give Freya our room, eh?’

  Mum ignored him. ‘It’ll be nice when you can start bringing your friends over. You’ve made some friends now, haven’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ Freya said.

  Josh’s house stood on a narrow street of two-storey terraces that huddled together as if sheltering eac
h other from a storm. The balconies threw the footpath into shadow. Most of the windows were protected by cast-iron bars.

  She stood in front of the door—it was the only red one along the street. There was a doorknocker, one of those brass ones that looked like a lion. Freya lifted and dropped it. A breeze stirred around her, a sudden coolness in it that hadn’t been there before, a promise of winter with winter nowhere in sight.

  Footsteps stirred somewhere within the house and came towards her. The door opened, and a tall, thin man studied her from behind a pair of black-framed glasses.

  ‘Well then,’ he said. ‘And who are you?’

  ‘It’s for me, Dad,’ a voice called out.

  The man stepped back, directing her down the hall with a glance. There was music coming up through the floorboards.

  ‘Good luck,’ he said as she walked past him.

  ‘Down here,’ Josh called. He was standing at the bottom of a set of narrow wooden stairs.

  ‘I just thought I’d drop by,’ she said as she made her way down.

  He stepped back as she reached him, letting her past and into the room. He pointed at a window that was higher than either of them, at street level. ‘I knew you were coming. I saw your legs.’

  ‘I like the red front door,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘My mum did that.’

  The room was dimly lit. It took her eyes a moment to adjust. An unmade bed was in one corner, next to it a lava lamp. The walls were white-painted brick, but she couldn’t see much of them beneath all of the posters plastered alongside one another. Pink Floyd, Queen, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, the Cure, the Smiths, the Beatles. He had a small colour television on a table near his bed. Rage was on. The top forty. On the other side of the room, under the window, there was a desk, and next to it an old hi-fi system with two freestanding speakers clad in peeling wood veneer, and a box full of records. Two faded red armchairs on the other side of the room faced the speakers, a carved Chinese camphor chest between them.