‘I guess so.’
Anna was frowning. For Christ’s sake, what did she want from him? She lit a cigarette, sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. ‘Saverio, I think you should forgive him.’
Sin, confession, absolution. These children of communists and feminists and true believers were just as moralistic as the old believers.
‘Anna, I’m sorry, but you’re a child. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.’
He had humiliated her. He could see that she was holding back tears and felt immediate regret. Again, she so reminded him of Adelaide. She was young, she had yet to learn how to hide her emotions from the world. He knew he should apologise but he was enjoying the relief of being harsh and uncompromising. There was a thrill to punishment, he had learned that raising his own children; the thrill of deflating them, confronting them with their own limitations, ignorance, powerlessness, foolishness, inadequacy. What did she know about him and Leo? She should just keep her fucking mouth shut.
Don’t cry, please don’t cry.
She wasn’t crying. She was looking out to sea.
‘Four years ago, for my seventeenth birthday, I came to stay here with Rowan, who was my boyfriend. I thought Rowan was going to be the love of my life. He was two years older, he played guitar in a band, he was at university, his mother was a feminist academic and his father was an actor. I thought he was so cool and so handsome and so wonderful and that I was going to be in love with him forever. I wanted Row to meet Leo and I wanted Leo to meet Row. I thought they were both the most fabulous men in the world and I wanted them to know each other.’
Her voice was detached, she stumbled a little over her words, but she sounded confident and deliberate. He was aware that a large part of it was a pose, that there was something theatrical in her delivery. She kept her eyes out to the horizon of sea and sky, but he knew that she was fully conscious of his stare.
‘Rowan took to Leo immediately. He loved how funny he was and he loved all the gossip. We stayed up all that first night smoking ice while Leo told him the Germaine Greer story and the Sasha Soldatow story and the Jim Sharman story and who fucked who and who blasted heroin and who really should have taken the credit for what, and of course Row was like a grateful child, just lapping it all up.’
Anna took a big breath. ‘Do you want to hear all this?’
She was hesitating for effect. She would be crushed if he said no. He wanted to say no, that there was nothing that he could hear about Leo that would make his own heart feel any lighter.
‘We all fall asleep at dawn, all in the big bed, and I wake a few hours later and decide to take a walk in the forest. It’s a beautiful day and I’m still feeling fantastic because of the drugs and I walk all the way to town to the bakery and pick up some croissants and rolls and I walk all the way back to Leo’s. I get there and Leo is cooking in the kitchen and Rowan is playing his guitar on the porch and when I come up the steps and I’m smiling he looks at me and bursts into tears. He just keeps saying, “We had sex, Anna, we fucked, Anna, I’m so sorry.” I drop the bag of croissants and rolls and look up at the door where Leo is standing, a stupid apron on, a fork in one hand, and he just says, “Rowan wanted to tell you, I didn’t. But he’s still young and foolish. I told him you didn’t have to know.” Then he goes back into the kitchen and continues making us breakfast.’
Saverio couldn’t believe that the bowerbirds continued their whispering song in the trees above, that the drumroll of the waves echoed off the coast below. He could barely control his voice as he asked, ‘What did you do?’
‘I cried and I asked them both how they could do it to me and Row was crying as well and he kept saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and I ran after Leo and said, “Are you going to apologise, are you going to say you’re sorry?” and he just said, “Anna, you know I am an anarchist and a libertarian. You don’t possess Rowan and he doesn’t possess you. There is nothing I have to apologise for.” ’
There was a burst of laughter. Mel and the two men had crashed through the door into the beer garden, cigarettes in their mouths. Mel called out to them as they sat around a table but Saverio did not register the names of the men as they were introduced. He heard Mel whisper loudly to the man in the singlet, ‘That’s Leo’s brother.’
‘What did you say to him?’
Anna turned back to him, her face now unsmiling. ‘I hit him. I hit him so hard, I wanted to break him.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He kicked me out. He said he couldn’t abide violence, that he had grown up in a violent house and he would not have it in a house of his own. He kicked me out, and Row and I drove back to Sydney, both of us crying all the way.’ Anna shrugged her shoulders. ‘Man, it was a miracle we weren’t killed.’
Saverio stumbled out of his chair, across the lawn, bashed through the door, almost ran into the toilets. He wanted to put his fist through the mirror, kick down a cubicle door. If someone said the wrong word, offered the wrong look, made a move to stop him, he would gladly bring them down. He would gladly break their necks. But once again the toilets were empty. He breathed in deeply. Thankfully the toilets were empty.
•
‘Do you think she’ll be okay?’
He had been silent when he returned to the beer garden, had said nothing as they walked to the car, had been quiet for most of the drive. Anna, too, had said little.
As they’d been about to leave the pub, Mel had rushed after them, taken Anna’s arm and tried to lead her onto the dance floor.
‘I can’t, we have to go.’
‘Come on, just one dance, I love this song.’
The pub had begun to fill. The music was steak-and-three-veg Australian rock-and-roll, ‘Cheap Wine’ by Cold Chisel.
Anna pulled away from Mel. ‘I can’t dance to this.’
Mel, pouting, flung herself onto the dance floor. She danced on her own, claiming all of the small space, throwing herself into ugly jerks and spasms, singing along to the lyrics at the top of her lungs.
Uncertain, Anna looked around the pub, at the tables of men laughing at the dancing woman. ‘Maybe we should stay a little while longer?’
Saverio ignored her and walked outside. She could stay if she wanted. Mel was obviously going to be a messy drunk and he did not want the responsibility of looking after her. Anna would learn that life lesson soon enough. But Anna was running after him. Without a word they got into the car.
‘She won’t be okay. We should have stayed.’
He grunted again.
Anna crossed her arms. ‘Why are you so angry?’
Maybe he should drive the car off the road, end it all in screeching tyres, smoke and fire and melting metal.
‘Aren’t you going to say a thing?’
His reply was to switch on the radio.
She turned it off immediately. ‘If I have forgiven him, so can you.’
The petulant spoilt child. This broke his silence.
‘You have not forgiven him. How could you forgive him?’
‘I have. I really have.’ Her tone was urgent, pleading. But he didn’t believe her. His brother did not deserve forgiveness.
‘What you told me just confirms that he was indeed an animal.’
‘That’s not true.’ She was fumbling for the right words. ‘He was just, you know. . uncompromising. .’
‘For fuck’s sake, Anna, he was a cunt. I’m glad he’s dead.’