But he knew Nelly had been married. And then, with hindsight sharpening his vision, he could see the resemblance be tween mother and son: attenuated, but discernible all the same in the shallow-set eyes, the rather heavy moulding of the chin.
It was the kind of oversight to which Tom was prone. He lived in a country where he had no continuity with the dead; and being childless, no connection to the future. Most lives describe a line that runs behind and before. His drew the airless, perfect circle of autobiography. What he missed, in the world, was affi liation.
He felt immensely foolish.
Nelly was talking. He retained facts. Her husband taking off-a phrase Tom would remember-when Rory was four. The turmoil; life going awry. ‘It was like the plates shook and fell off the wall.’ Her in-laws trying to get custody of the child.
She continued to speak of these things as if Tom should have had prior knowledge of them.
‘I used to spend more time at Carson ’s place when Rory was still a kid.’ Nelly looked into her empty glass. ‘He’s been really good to us, Carson.’
It sounded stilted. Tom looked at her averted face and thought, You know I don’t like him.
He said, ‘I should have joined the dots.’
Nelly gestured-Oh well. ‘Rory’s not round here much when you are. I guess you never heard his surname.’
Tom said slowly, ‘Atwood. Rory Atwood. I’ve heard him on the phone.’
He saw that Nelly was, among other things, fearful.
She made a noise: half laugh, half groan. ‘Oh crikey. You really don’t know, do you?’
It was Tom who felt afraid, then, of what he was about to learn.
‘I used to be Nelly Atwood.’ The voice was gentle. ‘Nelly’s Nasties. Remember?’
Posner’s house, on a corner block, was high and broad, built of grim bluestone hand-chiselled by men in chains. A wrought-iron fence around the garden brought impaling to mind. Formal beds restrained by low box hedges contained the kind of roses whose icy perfection was impervious to common rain.
Tom had steeled himself for Posner, but a stocky brown man answered the door. He wore blue overalls with a logo on the pocket. Tom asked for Nelly; gave his name. There was the sound of vacuuming from a room off the hall.
‘Ah, Nelly.’ The cleaner smiled, stepped aside; pointed to the stairs.
An overalled woman looked up as Tom passed an open door but went on with her work.
The arched window on the half landing looked out on to a deep back garden. Bowery, treed; a stone birdbath on shaggy grass. Just then, as so often at the end of a rainy afternoon, the sun shone. The garden showed shadows and spotted light. Flowers were everywhere, fat spillages of cream and pink, belled blue spikes, frothy lemon. Leaves and grasses moved, the scene shaking in light.
‘Hi.’ Nelly had her arms on the banister. Light was dangling in her black hair.
They stood awkwardly, not having, in all these months, evolved a satisfactory way of greeting each other.
Tom indicated the window at his back. ‘So glorious.’
Nelly was wrapped in a shawl he hadn’t seen before, swarthy red stamped with tiny cream and golden flowers. She said, ‘Going from the front to the back of this place is like one of those movies where the librarian takes off her glasses and starts to unbutton her blouse.’
‘That’s exactly right. That garden’s wanton.’
‘We could sit out there.’ Nelly peered at the landing window. ‘No, everything’ll be wet. Let’s just look at it from my room.’
He said, ‘How are you? Rory told me you were here, that you’ve been ill.’
‘The usual. A headache. Such a drag. I’m heaps better, thanks,’ said Nelly.‘I should’ve gone to college today. But there’s all this.’ A gesture. ‘I’m getting soft.’
All this was a long room, light-filled. The bed was high and wide; a disarray of square and oblong pillows, dull silk contrasting with smooth cotton. Tom took in a lacquered cabinet with intricate locks, a glowing rug, books with opulent jackets on shelves and tables. Things Posner could give her.
He conceived of it as a transaction between Nelly and the dealer: unvoiced and understood, with the gleaming presence of Rory at its core. His early sense of Posner’s relations with the boy had since wavered from certainty. Rory’s manner towards the former seemed unencumbered; wholly free of the lover’s charged style. Nevertheless, time and again, Tom had seen Posner’s gaze find and follow the boy. Need settled on Rory, and sucked.
A book, partly obscured by another, lay on Nelly’s bed: Vanished Splendours, and the fragment of a name, Balthasar Klos-. It was a name Tom recognised and didn’t recognise, a name on the edge of memory.
Nelly had crossed the room and was pushing up the sash. Beads of water edged sill and window.
‘And your book?’ she asked. ‘Did you get it fi nished? Was the house OK?’
Tom sat in a low, embroidered chair by the window and began to talk.
‘I’m coming with you,’ said Nelly.
She had placed the decanter and a glass beside him and prepared tea for herself, saying she was off the grog. Now she sat with fingers laced about a translucent grey bowl. ‘I’ll help you look for him. We’ll cover more ground than if you’re by yourself.’
But Tom had observed the indigo stains below her eyes; the tight, whitish lips.
‘Do you think you’re up to it?’
‘Sure.’ But her eyes travelled to the table by the bed, and he saw the pills there on a wicker tray.
‘Why don’t you see how you go over the next couple of days? It’s pretty bleak up there with all this rain.’
He expected her to protest, and when she didn’t, understood that he had been right not to take up her offer.
‘I’ll be back by Sunday,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to see my mother.
And there’s a meeting I can’t get out of Monday morning. If he doesn’t turn up tomorrow, we could go back together next week.’
She was refilling her bowl, her head bent over the task. There was something unfamiliar about her presence; then Tom realised it was the clean smell of her hair. It had been washed in something herbal, faintly medicinal; rosemary, he thought.
Later he carried his glass and Nelly’s tea things into a recess off the landing that had been fitted up with a sink and cupboards. When he came back into the room, an object caught his eye. It was the small folder with elastic fastenings he had first glimpsed in Nelly’s bag all those months ago. Its blue and red marbled cardboard was furred, as if much handled.
She was still sitting by the window. The wind had risen and the room was cold. Tom lowered the sash. Two lorikeets, feathered purple and crimson and green, flew up from the muscled mauve arms of a eucalypt: a Fauve canvas come to life.
Nelly said, ‘You mustn’t be hard on yourself.’ She leaned forward. ‘You were doing the right thing, keeping him on a long lead.’
Tom allowed himself to place the back of his hand, very lightly, against her cheek.
He could find his own way out, he insisted, and left her settled in her chair. But he was still on the stairs, when he heard her call and turned to see her come out onto the upper landing. ‘Your book. Did you get it done?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hey!’ Nelly crowed with pleasure. ‘That’s great.’
Gazing down on him, hung with heavy ruby folds, she had the air of a tiny idol; one who might save him or do him great harm.
Downstairs, lamps had been switched on against the gathering evening. The glare of parquet was everywhere. A spotlighted alcove sheltered a pre-Colombian figure carved from stone. For a split second Tom saw the miniature double of the squat brown man who had let him into the house.
Paintings filled the walls. But Tom would not allow himself to linger before Posner’s trophies.
Nevertheless, as he came to the open door of the room where the woman had been vacuuming, he halted. Gleaming wood and muted jewel tones repeated the message of wealth tempered by taste that the house had been designed to communicate. But what held Tom’s attention was the landscape on the far wall.