Fin unlocked a deadbolt and top lock; the door had two utility handles. A large broken sign was nailed in her entry hall, oxidised Cyrillic letters. That’s cool, said Darcy.
From a demolition.
The apartment was stuffy, the smell of burnt oil and vegetables. He plonked down his pack and duffel. An ancient Bakelite radio played softly on an end table beside a worn velvet couch draped in a swirled blue sheet. He hoped he wasn’t sleeping there.
You can’t turn down the central heating, said Fin. She didn’t switch on the lights.
Through the window a woman stood in a kitchen in the building opposite, not ten metres away. She didn’t look up as Fin forced the window slightly open. I call her Svetlana, said Fin.
Why aren’t there curtains? asked Darcy.
They get taken down.
By whom?
It’s hard to know.
He followed her into a bedroom without windows. A poster from the 1980 Olympics, five rings like halos above an image of Brezhnev. He looks like Gargie, said Darcy, except for the eyebrows. Fin didn’t answer. She never acknowledged his grandmother as her own, but it wasn’t just that. She was preoccupied. She closed the bedroom door behind them, then turned on the bedside lamp.
Above the bed hung long black peasant dresses on wooden hangers, empty cigarette boxes pinned on their fronts among white-painted quotes from Tolstoy. I thought you were painting smokestacks, said Darcy.
Fin unwound her scarf, watched him with eyes that almost seemed blue in the light. I thought you might help me with that.
Whatever you like, he said hopefully. I came to be with you. He lay his gloves on the end of the bed as if claiming a place. It would be cool to make art here, he said. He foresaw the shapes of chemical factories and power stations, grain elevators thrusting into the skies.
Fin’s pillows were stained; she must have dyed her hair and slept with it wet. Blood on the pillows, he said. Nice. A T-shirt lay on the covers—the logo read Keep Holland Beautifuclass="underline" Get Tattooed. He wondered how it was she’d been to Holland.
Show me your tattoo, he said; he imagined a rose engraved on her ankle or a red star on her shoulderblade. But she wasn’t in a playful mood.
It was a gift, she said.
He wasn’t sure if she meant the trip, the tattoo or the T-shirt. She pointed at his waist, extending a brown ungloved fingernail. I have to return your girdle, she whispered. It belongs to a friend. She hadn’t taken off her coat or hat.
Darcy felt a stab of suspicion. It was my belated birthday present, he said. You have to return it now?
She nodded, her finger pressed to her lips with such intensity it unnerved him. She wasn’t fooling. He unbuckled the money belt, fishing his bundle of roubles from the front. Coins left from Prague, his ANZ Visa card and international driver’s licence. He dangled the plain leather belt by the strap and for a moment it hung in the air between them. Maybe there was a sleeve sewn in the back of it, he couldn’t tell; maybe he’d been her pack mule after all. She grabbed it and hitched it under her coat as if she was used to attaching the fastener. Stay here, she said. She grabbed her scarf and gloves and left, bolting the front door behind her.
Mount Eliza
Autumn 1972
When Darcy’s mother appeared in the Vauxhall at the end of the drive, Darcy dropped the knapsack. His father stood by the girl, motionless, as if in a painting, while Darcy’s mother stared, putting pieces together. She saw what she saw and then she was shouting. Darcy dropped the girl’s bag and hid where he always hid, inside his dead grandmother’s little blue car, a bubble-shaped Austin of England parked behind the shed.
He heard the Vauxhall door slam, the kitchen flywire, the fridge opening, the flywire again. She’d have her Gilbey’s and tonic in her hand. She’d sit in her folding beach chair around the side where the incinerator smoked against the chestnut tree, and drink. And her mind would be working so hard you could almost see it in the veins that reddened her forehead.
Darcy could still see the girl, she was down in the gravel now, wouldn’t budge, even as Darcy’s father tried to drag her up to the house. In the end his father just left her there and walked up alone. He didn’t look at Darcy in the Austin, just veered off to Darcy’s mother and her drink.
Darcy leaned back in the seat, a moment of silence. He imagined them there, beside the burning leftovers, his father mumbling admissions, and then she was yelling again. Darcy furiously practised the gears, his legs straining to reach the pedals, doubling the clutch like his father did on the Humphries Road hill. Another round of shouts and he closed his eyes tight, the way he did to avoid the sound of her battle fatigue. That’s what she called it.
When he opened his eyes, the girl was standing at the passenger door, watching. She held the knapsack to her chest, her face set. They heard glass breaking, and she turned towards the sound. In the sharpness of her profile and her hooded eyes, Darcy saw both his mother and his aunt, but mostly he saw himself. And then he realised she was waiting for him to open the door and he wondered if that’s what she was used to.
She got in warily, sat on the vinyl seat and rummaged around in her knapsack as if making sure everything was still there. Darcy looked out across the drive. The sun was now shimmering through the flowering gums, setting down molten somewhere over Davies Bay. What’s it like where you come from? he asked. He’d tried to picture it from photos in the National Geographic; the presidents carved into rocks, the bridges extending over the bays.
She looked at him askance. The sunsets are better, she said. Her accent was different from his, like from television. She touched the knob on the glove compartment.
That’s private, said Darcy. He hid things in there: the Risen Jesus pamphlet and the Book of Mormon from the missionary, Jesus in the Americas, his grandmother’s travelling clock. So’s my bag, said the girl.
He didn’t dare look at her, played with the worn leather cover on the gear stick. I just wanted to know who you were, he said. Satisfied?
Darcy tried to catch reverse but he could never quite get it up and over. You’re my sister, he said.
Kind of, she said.
I never heard of you. He played with the plastic dinosaur that dangled from the key chain. You’ll have to sleep inside, he said. On the foldaway. He figured he’d spend the night out here in the back seat, under the picnic blanket. He might need to sleep in the car forever; his mother was screeching like a parrot.
I’m not staying, said the girl, looking down the drive. She just dropped me off for a visit. But Darcy could see how the girl braced her eyes and cheeks to hold back tears. Then Darcy’s father appeared with his sheepish face and a drink.
Is he your father? asked the girl.
Darcy nodded as if it was obvious. Who do you think he is? When his father got to the car they were silent. His father’s mid-section through the passenger window, his penal colony Darcy’s mother called it, the cause of all the problems.
The girl opened the door and took the glass suspiciously, gulped it down then let the glass drop on the bricks so it shattered. She knew about accidentally on purpose as if she’d learned from Darcy’s mother.
Darcy’s father said nothing, knelt down and picked up the shards of glass, feeling on the ground to find them. He stood with the splinters of glass cupped in his hands. Naughty, he said, heading back towards the incinerator.