And so it was arranged. Donna took care of the details. Thursday week; a three-hour session for preparatory sketches should do it. He’d be comfortable enough if propped on pillows, and he would doze if the morphine got to him.
Tilda maintains she never liked Donna. Right from the start she had a bad feeling about her. You wouldn’t have thought so listening to that phone call. ‘Donna,’ she said. ‘I can’t thank you enough for letting me have your husband’s precious time.’ She hung up and smiled, ‘What a woman, this Donna. Such dignity and graciousness. Such strength given the situation.’
I remembered the day at the Barleyhusk silos. I imagined I wouldn’t look twice at Donna now. Women in the country go fat from having children. I imagined her no further. Not yet.
Never liked Donna. Bullshit, Tilda! You came home from the portrait session like you were smitten; like you felt a little bit lesbian towards her. The prettiness of the woman; her hospitable, intelligent nature; so loyal to her husband, and caring. Never liked Donna. You didn’t spend much time telling me about painting Cameron Wilkins. It was Donna, Donna, Donna. You had made a new friend, and if the cyst had taught you anything it was that you hadn’t valued friendship enough. You had locked yourself up inside this old building and it had driven you lazy and loopy. When Cameron died, three weeks after posing, it was you who insisted we attend the funeral. I said, ‘We didn’t know him enough to go to his funeral.’
It was you who said, ‘We need to be more social.’
Never liked Donna. You’re rewriting history. You liked her so much you forgot to think about me. That I might like her too; I might get smitten. I might end up wanting her more than I want you.
Chapter 63
There were two lunches—one at our place, one at Donna’s.
Ours was Tilda’s idea, to do with Cameron’s portraits and the Archibald. Three months after the funeral a series of six oils had been completed. Tilda wanted Donna’s opinion about which was the best of them. The best would be the prize entry. Donna could choose a gift for herself from the others. It was a nervy Sunday lunch: would the widow be in tears? Would she look at Cameron’s image and collapse on us? Her daughter, too, would she get spooked seeing her father in frame? Having no child ourselves we predicted a grief tantrum.
Death doesn’t register with kids. While mummy did her choosing I took the wee girl to the park and she was thrilled to ride the plastic horse, hold on for dear life on the swings. She wept at having to dismount and hurry home with me. I didn’t want to be at the park being counterweight on plastic horses. I wanted to get back and pretend not to be watching Donna. At Cameron’s funeral (which involved no church, just a burial) I had kept my distance, felt an impostor. I didn’t get a good view of her. Her head was bowed; relatives shrouded her in hugging. She still had that Spanish look from the day at the silos, in the hair sense, the black shawl sense. Her hair blew forward as she tossed a handful of dirt in the grave. The rest of her was hunched around a handkerchief. She wore sunglasses. Her blue dress was too long down her legs to see anything more than ankles.
But in our small living room eating dips on sticks of celery she was all bare arms and pants cut off at the knees. I focussed there—on her knees. Or rather, stared into spaces either side of her knees, taking little glimpses and keeping her on the edge of my vision. Tilda’s tape-measure eyes couldn’t complain about knee spaces: I wasn’t looking at a face or cleft of bosom, though I wanted to. Donna’s knees were like most knees—a dry-skin knob putting a blemish in her tan skin. But most faces were not like hers. I don’t just mean the U-chin and dimple. I mean her brown eyes. Our culture values blue eyes as if blue eyes are purest—miniature replicas of sky. But brown eyes can have earth-dark gleams to them. Donna’s eyes were this way. It was a pity not to peer into them.
I am not an open smiler. I smile self-consciously, lips askew or pursed. Donna’s smile put all her big white teeth on show; not as an act, performing smiling like cheese for cameras, but as a pleased-to-see-you friendliness. Unless, of course, I had been fooled and she had perfected smiling for vanity’s sake. That’s what Tilda would say. Anyway, it was a pity not to look.
I listened instead. Donna was explaining how she was doing fine. Fine in the tears sense, in the dropping-your-bundle sense and needing a good cry. A month ago the crying stopped and in its place came money worry, and does she stay in Watercook or move somewhere urban for Ruth’s schooling? If it wasn’t for Ruth she would go somewhere like Darwin. A complete change, a new life, exotic and tropical. Ruth required stability, not exotic and tropical.
‘I’ve even felt like cutting off all my hair,’ she said. ‘Shave it off to symbolise grief, but also for saying there’s a new me starting.’
Cut off her hair? I jerked up my head at such a notion. I took an admiring look at it, the dark mesh of curling; then stared off before Tilda saw.
The lunch ended with an agreement to a do a lunch again, next time at Donna’s place. She had been thinking of a modest party in a few months. A daytime soiree with local people she knew—neighbours and parents from Ruth’s playmate group. Nothing wild or late-nightish. Would we come?
‘Delighted,’ said Tilda. ‘Who knows, we might be celebrating an Archibald!’ She kissed Donna on the cheek. Ruth too. I shook hands and said nice to see you again.
They were walking up the backyard, across oleander leaf shade, when Ruth’s hairclip, a fake-glass tiara adornment, snagged on a low branch and dropped from her head, broken. Donna knelt to retrieve it, pausing in a crouch to comment how it was just a cheap old thing. I did not stare off from the band of white flesh that appeared because of her crouching—almost all of her lower back. It was so smooth and transparent you could see a faint few veins where her T-shirt rode up. And the top of her pants, the shadow and crease of her bottom.
No sooner had we waved Donna’s car goodbye than Tilda said, ‘You seemed very quiet. What do you think of Donna? I got the impression you don’t like her, staring into space like you were bored. I hope she didn’t think you were rude.’
I shrugged that I had no opinion of her either way.
‘She’s very attractive.’
‘Is she?’ I shrugged again. ‘I suppose she is. I wasn’t paying much attention.’ If Tilda was fishing I was matching her with yawning nonchalance.
‘Don’t you think it’s a bit early for her to be stopping crying?’
‘What?’
‘If it was me who died I’d want you to cry over me longer than three months. You would, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Promise?’
‘Of course.’
She hugged my arm as we walked towards the back door. ‘I like Donna well enough, I just think she’s, you know, a bit cold. A bit hard and cold.’
‘Same here.’
Tilda squeezed my arm as if relieved we were of a similar mind. She said if I died she would never stop crying over it.
Chapter 64
The Donna lunch was barbecue-style, the cooktop sizzling like tap water running. A dozen people were arced around it, squinting at rissole smoke and decrying the lack of government research into declining wild bee populations. All the money pouring into genetically modified produce—it was a scandal. Mankind was going to make nature unnatural. These were alternative-lifestyle types who farmed alpacas or goats and lived in mudbrick houses built with their own amateur hands.