Drift Page 13

  Phoenix leaned back into the tree, which seemed perfectly shaped for him to rest comfortably against, almost as if the tree was holding him, enclosing him. Home, he thought. A place to call home.

  He had another flash, a long-ago memory, of searing heat and billowing smoke, of darkness. Suddenly, the tree seemed confining. It pushed against him, knobbly and hard, digging into his skin as if it didn’t want him there. ‘This isn’t your place,’ it seemed to be saying. ‘This isn’t your place. You don’t belong here. You know you can’t stay.’

  For a moment, he wished things could be different. But he understood that in order for him to be here now, to be living this perfect summer, the things that happened back then – that happened to Jasper, well, not yet but soon – had to happen. And thinking about his life, well, he had no real reason to change it, except to spare Jasper some momentary pain. And what kind of a life would a painless life be? What kind of a boy would Jasper grow into without pain? Besides, without pain there would be no Liv. There would be no Phoenix. He liked his life. He liked it the way it was. He wanted to live.

  Phoenix stood up, scuffed his toe in the dirt. He rehung the sheet carefully, smoothing it out. He squatted down and rearranged the dishes neatly along one low, flattish branch. As he walked away he glanced back at the scene. It was like visiting someone who wasn’t home, going to stay in an aunt’s house when the aunt was away, using her cups and saucers and trying to leave it neater than when you arrived.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. Branches rubbed against his face as he turned. He found his way back to the trail and this time he headed out of the bush, back toward the road, down the hill to the city.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ‘You’re going out?’ Lou said again, leaning against the bathroom wall watching Undine smear on a pale pink lipstick.

  ‘It’s Trout,’ Undine said apologetically.

  Reflected in the mirror, Lou’s face was lost and tender, like Jasper’s. Undine turned to look at her, and it must have been a trick of the light. Lou’s face was normal, smooth and calm. Typical unruffled Lou.

  ‘Okay,’ Lou said. ‘Don’t be late.’ It was such a reassuringly familiar, stock maternal phrase, complete with implicit warnings about strangers and the dark and the moral questionability of girls who are late, that Undine saw it as a kind of permission to go.

  ‘I won’t,’ Undine assured her. ‘I just want to see him.’

  Lou nodded. Undine turned back to the mirror and for a moment she saw that fleeting lost, lonely look on Lou’s face again.

  ‘I don’t have to go,’ Undine offered belatedly. ‘I can stay if you want.’

  But Lou had pushed herself away from the wall and walked out of the cool, tiled room and either didn’t hear Undine’s words or didn’t bother to reply.

  Undine looked back in the mirror and saw that same lost, tender face, but this time it was her own.

  ‘You look nice,’ Reina said. Trout was wearing light cord pants and a tight-fitting dark brown t-shirt.

  ‘Thanks. So do you.’

  Reina looked down at her shimmery, clingy silver dress. ‘This is my dragonskin dress,’ she said.

  Reina was the most elegant person Trout knew, especially looking at her now in a long, slinky dress with her thick, dark hair coiled up at the nape of her neck, carrying a pair of brown leather slip-on shoes in one hand. Reina’s shoulders were broad and her arms were strong, but the overall effect was still somehow dainty. A stray dark curl dangled heavily at her shoulder and Trout felt, as he often did when he encountered Reina’s hair, a strong compulsion to play with it, to curl his finger up in its coils, to stretch it out straight and watch it bounce back. But he kept his hands to himself.

  ‘You’d make a great dragon,’ Trout said. ‘I mean that in the nicest possible way. You should take it as a compliment.’

  ‘Oh, I do. Thank you. So are you nervous?’

  ‘A bit.’ Trout grinned. ‘Now you mention it, a lot. Thanks very much.’

  ‘It all looks fantastic, promise.’ Reina had been in the café that afternoon, hanging the photographs for Trout while he was at work. ‘It’ll be great. Who’s coming?’

  Trout thought about it. ‘Dan. Mum and Dad. Richard and Lucy, assuming she isn’t having a baby. Grunt’s coming late. Craig said he might come. Or he didn’t say he wouldn’t come. Your parents?’

  Reina nodded.

  ‘A few of the other guys from the building site. Nick and some of his uni mates.’ Trout ran over it in his head. He’d forgotten someone. Of course – his stomach twisted nervously. ‘Oh. And Undine.’

  Reina nodded tightly.

  Trout appreciated that Reina seemed to be protective of him as far as Undine was concerned. But he found he also wanted Reina and Undine to like each other, despite his own conflicting feelings about Undine. He wondered, glancing sideways at Reina, if they would. Did they have anything in common? Reina was so … of her body. Physical. With her yoga and dancing and being in the band. She seemed to occupy space one hundred percent. Whereas Undine was very in-her-head. Even when she was in a room or by his side on the bus or … or lying on a beach, head thrown back, she seemed to be only partially present, as if she wasn’t completely committed to the world. Even before the magic she had been like this, kind of drifting through life, part girl, part flotsam. As if she was a green, weathered bottle, something beautiful, with human traces, that the sea had changed and then thrown back.

  ‘Hey, wake up,’ Reina’s voice interrupted his reverie. ‘We’re here. You were about to walk straight past.’

  ‘Are we late?’

  ‘Early,’ she said confidently, even though she didn’t wear a watch.

  Trout and Reina glanced at each other. They hesitated under the pendulous silver moon. ‘You’ll be fine,’ she said. He smiled nervously. Then together they pushed the door open and went in.

  It was after seven when Undine arrived. The café was busy for a Monday night in Hobart. All the tables were occupied, though it didn’t seem the kind of place where one had to be assigned a table, as several people were standing up with drinks in their hands, chatting or walking around looking at the walls … no, at the art on the walls. She felt overwhelmed by the familiar faces: Richard and his girlfriend Lucy, who was astonishingly pregnant, Trout’s other brother Dan, who was not Undine’s biggest fan, Trout’s parents, and there, in the corner, was Trout. But she felt equally overwhelmed by the unfamiliar faces. Who were all these people? Especially, who was the sinewy girl next to Trout? She was all muscle and slinkiness and vintage silver dress. She was almost as tall as Trout, tanned brown as a pickled walnut, with piles of curly dark hair.

  Undine glanced down at her denim skirt and her modest cap-sleeved v-neck top with its faded rose motif. She had felt feminine and understated at home but now, compared to the silver dress girl, she felt underdressed and plain and small. She could feel people looking at her, openly curious, when she entered. She put her head down and walked to the back corner towards Trout and the girl in the shimmering dress.

  Trout was engaged in conversation with a woman with very short black hair and large dark eyes. She had a lacy shawl draped around her, despite the fact that it was a million degrees outside. She would have been a good ten years or more older than Lou, but she had a young look about her. Her eyes were bright and lively, as if she were playing a terrific game.

  Trout acknowledged Undine arriving with his eyes and an apologetic hand gesture, but didn’t extract himself from the conversation. The girl studied her, openly curious. Undine met her eyes and gave her a quick, nervous smile. To her relief the girl smiled back – for a moment Undine had thought she might not – then turned to Trout, joining in the conversation.

  ‘Oh, Trout, they’re so expressive,’ the older woman was saying. ‘I really enjoy the way you play with ideas about aesthetic value and functionality. It reminds me of the Japanese philosophies about imperfection and beauty. Apparently ageing becomes one.’ She gave a high
, musical laugh. ‘As does eccentricity.’

  ‘Mum wants to buy one, don’t you, Mum?’ said the silver dress girl.

  ‘You don’t have to do that,’ Trout said. ‘I’ll give you one.’

  The girl hit Trout’s arm. ‘You will not!’

  ‘I wouldn’t allow it anyway, Reina dear,’ the woman reassured the girl. ‘Come on, I’ll show you which one I want. The colours are perfect for the morning room.’

  The girl – Reina – fished in her handbag and pulled something out. ‘Red dots,’ she said to Trout. ‘To show which ones have sold.’

  ‘You thought of everything,’ Trout said.

  ‘Well, if it was left up to you, you’d give them all away.’

  It was as if Undine wasn’t even there. Except for the fact that behind her she could feel everybody looking, hear snatches of muttered conversation – people who knew she was back filling in the details for those who didn’t, she supposed. Then Trout was standing beside her. Everyone else in the room disappeared.

  ‘Undine, I’m glad you’re here.’ Their eyes met. His softened looking at hers, then the moment passed. ‘I’ll be right back, I promise,’ Trout said. He touched her arm and to Undine’s shock she felt a little electric thrill shoot up it. Then he was gone, on the other side of the room with the girl and her mother.

  So Trout had taken the photographs? Undine trailed an eye around the walls. He really was like a stranger. Watching him now on the other side of the room, he seemed to have transformed physically too. His back was broader, his arms were stronger – he even stood taller. When his eyes met hers, she blushed and looked away. What was happening to her? Was she falling in love … with Trout? And in the meantime, what had happened to him? Had he fallen out of love with her? And in love with Reina? She couldn’t tell if they were together. As in together.

  When Trout had invited Undine along tonight, she’d thought it was going to be just the two of them. Not them and his mother and a hundred of his new best friends and their mothers. Trying to conceal her visible aloneness, Undine picked up an exhibition guide from the small pile at the end of the long table and began studying it. She walked over to the nearest photograph and immersed herself in the catalogue, playing at being a mere spectator.

  ‘Do you like them?’ It was Reina’s mother, standing at her shoulder. Undine glanced around. Trout was talking to his parents. He shrugged apologetically to Undine across the room but Undine was beginning to suspect him of actively avoiding her.

  ‘Yes. I do,’ Undine said shyly. ‘Though I don’t really know anything about art.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think people need to know about art to appreciate art. Though it is useful to cultivate a vocabulary with which to talk about art.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Undine replied, uncertainly.

  The woman studied her, openly curious, then held out her right hand to shake Undine’s. ‘We haven’t met, have we? I’m Matilde. Reina’s mother.’

  ‘I’m Undine.’

  ‘Undine. That’s an unusual name. Is it Latin?’

  ‘Yes. My mother chose it. My father wanted to call me Miranda, from The Tempest.’

  Matilde laughed. ‘O brave new world. Miranda was kind of wet. I like Undine much better.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Undine, and she smiled.

  ‘And how do you know Trout?’

  ‘We’re friends. We live – used to live – next door to each other.’

  ‘So, do you have a favourite?’ Matilde asked, gesturing around the walls with her catalogue.

  ‘That one.’ Undine pointed to the photograph she’d been studying – a muted picture of the shadow of a green bottle, the light shining through so that the reflection on the off-white wall looked like green filmy water.

  Matilde contemplated it. She seemed to approve of Undine’s choice. ‘Yes. A little naive perhaps, but he has a nice eye, a nice sense of light. What do you like about it?’

  ‘It’s pretty,’ Undine answered lamely. Matilde looked at her waiting for Undine to elaborate. ‘It’s … melancholy.’

  Matilde kept looking at her. It was very unnerving. Undine had once had a history teacher like that. He used steady, scrutinous silence as a way of making his students reveal the depths of their knowledge. Or lack thereof. Undine looked at the picture again. ‘It’s temporary, yet the photograph has kind of fixed it, made it stay. It’s not real. It’s there and it’s not there. It’s like … the essence of the bottle. Like Trout’s captured its … um, what’s the word? Its ethereal qualities.’

  ‘Very good. Very nice. See, you do know about art.’

  Undine felt absurdly proud of herself.

  ‘Mum.’

  ‘Oh Reina, darling. I’ve just been chatting to Undine here.’

  ‘Really?’ The look Reina gave Undine was not unkind, but Undine felt uncomfortable. It was serious, scrutinous, as though Reina were examining something microscopic on a slide. It didn’t help that Reina was almost a head taller than Undine. ‘Mum’s not making you talk about art, is she?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Undine said quickly. ‘It’s interesting.’ She didn’t add that she was relieved that anyone was talking to her about anything.

  ‘You want to watch out,’ Reina said. ‘She’s got a look in her eye. She wants to paint you.’

  ‘Hush!’ Matilde said, though she wasn’t really cross. ‘You’ll scare her away.’

  ‘Paint me?’ For a second Undine thought Reina meant paint on her, as in cover her body with paint, like she was a canvas.

  ‘Mum’s a painter, a very good one. She’s always on the lookout for new models. You should do it. I can see why she wants you.’

  Undine wasn’t sure what to make of this. Coming from long, lean Reina, with her dark skin and eyes, it could almost have been meant as an insult. Reina was model material, not Undine. But there was no malice in Reina’s voice, and Matilde gave Undine a card and told her to think about it.

  Then Reina and Matilde entered into their own shorthand mother–daughter conversation with references to people and places Undine didn’t know, a conversation Undine wasn’t meant to follow. She drifted over to look at the next photograph and then the next until she was alone again, but this time she looked at them differently. She didn’t feel so lonely anymore, as she thought up new words to describe to herself the things she saw in each photograph. She realised it was not just art she was seeing. It was Trout’s art and the thought made her feel less lonely as though a part of Trout at least was looking back at her from the café’s walls.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ‘Well, hello there.’

  Undine turned around at the sound of the warm, reverberating, Montmorency voice. But it wasn’t Trout, it was Richard. She blinked, disconcerted both by Richard, and by her heightened awareness of Trout.

  ‘Fancy meeting you here.’ Richard’s voice was light and joky, perhaps a shade flirtatious, but in Undine’s experience Richard only had one mode and he didn’t usually mean anything by it.

  ‘Fancy that,’ said Undine as normally as she could. She turned back to the photograph on the wall. She didn’t want Trout to see her talking to Richard and get the wrong idea about them.

  ‘I think,’ said Richard, ‘that picture has been looked at by you as much as it can bear. All of them have. I’m here to rescue you.’

  ‘Who says I want to be rescued?’ And Undine didn’t particularly. She was interested in the photographs, partly because she was, as Matilde had put it, ‘cultivating a vocabulary with which to talk about art’ but also because Trout had taken them and it was fascinating glimpsing an interior, hidden aspect of him. Things that were beautiful and broken didn’t seem very Trout to her, he’d always liked things to be clean, scientific, precise, orderly, even. And then there’d been chaos, last year, after the magic, when Trout had been plagued by darkness and depression. Somehow the photos seemed to translate his experience, to bring these two Trouts together into a new boy – maybe a man – and Undine wanted to
know him.

  ‘Come on,’ Richard said. ‘The least you can do is pretend to need rescuing. I’ve got my white horse and everything.’

  ‘Is Trout still busy?’ Undine glanced around.

  ‘It’s his night,’ said Richard. ‘People who don’t even know him are buying his photographs.’

  Undine had noticed that red dots had been proliferating around the walls.

  ‘Where’s Lucy?’ she asked Richard. She felt trapped by his gaze, the way rabbits prop, startled, in front of car headlights. Though she couldn’t help but feel a warm tingling due to his proximity. It wasn’t exactly longing, or even attraction. It was a memory, she supposed, of their past intimacy, a memory of skin – his skin against her skin, his sweet breath, the taste of his mouth – and it was addling her.

  Richard seemed to feel it too. He glanced around vaguely. ‘She’s here somewhere. She’s kind of hard to miss.’

  ‘Congratulations about that,’ Undine offered weakly.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘When’s she due?’

  ‘Last week.’

  ‘Oh. Poor thing.’ She meant Lucy was a poor thing, but suddenly wondered if Richard thought she was referring to him. ‘But how exciting,’ she added, mustering enthusiasm.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ Richard offered. ‘There’s still free wine at the table. Girl’s never alone with a drink in her hand, isn’t that what they say?’

  ‘They do?’ Undine glanced around. She was beginning to think she might need rescuing from Richard. But she didn’t want to be rude. She followed him over to the long table.

  Richard was pouring the wine when he made a point of stopping and putting his hand over the top of her glass. ‘You’re not still underage, are you?’ he joked.