The Good Parents (21 page)

Cecile shrugged again. Maya must have reasons for her silence.

The air was warm and smelt of almond and lavender oil mingled with the scents released from their bodies. Toni couldn’t quite
bring herself to leave.

‘Do your parents miss you?’ she asked Cecile.

‘How can you miss a child who always held herself apart? I never let them near me. I think they were relieved when I left.’
Cecile lay back on the bed and spoke to the ceiling. ‘Don’t get me wrong, they’re not bad people. Though not as good as they
think. They bought me with their money because they wanted to
do
something. They had three kids of their own and they thought it would be good for their education. They had a name all ready
for the cute little Asian girl – Kiki – but I wouldn’t answer to it. The nuns at the orphanage had told me I was named after
Saint Cecile. The family didn’t understand that I was already a fully conscious person, with memories and affections. I didn’t
want to be carried around by their kids like a doll, I was used to being independent. I don’t hate them, not at all. I just
couldn’t go on pretending that everything was OK. People have to be what they are meant to be.’

Just as the cold in the courtyard defeated him and he was
entering the house, Jacob remembered another homecoming. He smacked his forehead, looked at his watch and hobbled fast to
the phone.

T
he first thing Kitty saw when she stepped off the bus into Cannon Street was the window display in Take Five Fashion, two
life-sized models, male and female, outfitted in pyjamas and dressing gowns, bent into sitting positions on a couch, in front
of an ancient TV. On the coffee table at their knees were two mugs and a plate of varnished Anzac biscuits which resembled
a pile of turds.
New winter sleepware! Don’t be late!
was handwritten on a yellowed sign over the window. Kitty stood with her suitcase in front of this cosy still-life for some
minutes. It could have been an installation in a gallery. She couldn’t believe it was for real.

The street seemed deserted. There was a row of turn-of-the-century pubs and shops, run-down but picturesque. Everything modern
was banal and ugly. Warton Homeware, Billabong
Crafts, Ezi Plus, Warton Meats, Melissa Hair. She bought herself a bottle of water from The Lucky Tearooms, a great dark barn-like
place smelling of hot fat.

Kitty was not in a good mood. The bus trip had been spoiled by piped talk-back radio, and then just as the landscape became
interesting, a video started up, an American high-school comedy which, as there were no headphones, you had no choice but
to hear. Since she’d been gone, this country had become colonised. In Arlene and Joe’s home-unit the TV blared non-stop, mostly
American shows. That was a blast, to come home to
Lakeside
, pre-grown palms, an artificial lake, retirees buzzing around in shopping buggies. She shared the spare room with Arlene’s
sewing-machine, which seemed somehow symbolic.

Up Cannon, left into Trench
, she read, her own scrawl on Arlene’s telephone pad. A twelve-minute walk, Jacob said. Her suitcase rumbled over the gravel
footpaths. A small black pull-along. Over the years she’d become an expert packer. She’d learnt by now how little you really
need.

Where was everyone? The emptiness after years in crowded streets was almost frightening.

The sky was a vast, white desert. It was a mild afternoon in late winter, but she wore sunglasses and a black polyester parka
zipped up to the chin. She felt like a spy come to town.

She could have taken Jacob’s car, parked in Arlene’s carport, but she didn’t have the confidence for a long drive into unknown
country. She hadn’t driven for years. Once she arrived, Jacob said, his neighbour Carlos would lend her a car – he had a yardful
of cars – and she could build up her confidence. Normally he would have asked Carlos to meet her at the bus, but the poor
guy had been incommunicado since his wife left.

Hence this invitation, much sooner and keener than if Jacob himself was in Warton. Some things hadn’t changed. Her brother
never had been slow to ask if he needed something. She hadn’t seen him for twenty-seven years.

From Trench, veer left into Shotgun Avenue
. She passed a small war memorial. You could see what had obsessed Warton’s founding fathers. It was like going back fifty
years. So many things she hadn’t seen since childhood, garden gnomes, swan-shaped planters, lion griffins on gateposts. Beach
umbrellas over hydrangeas, pink hibiscus, paperbark hanging baskets. How could Jacob do this to himself?

Or was her eye sharper now than his, her view more worldly?

Come on, she told herself. After all, she was going to meet a nephew she had never seen. Didn’t a gypsy on the beach in France
last year tell her that a child was going to come into her life? (They always tell you what you want to hear, Tim had said.)
It was a long time since she’d had a family to have Christmas with. She took a breath. The air was beautiful, soft and clean,
smelling of honey and eucalypts and dung. Cars were parked under trees. Every second house seemed to have a yard of horses.
Dogs barked as she rattled past. There were giant gums with ochre-streaked trunks and clumps of leaves like broccoli heads.
What species were they? She knew nothing about Australian plants because of her urban childhood. Arlene had never taken her
kids on so much as a picnic.

How long country roads were! A city block between houses. Everything so flat and bare. She was on the edge of town. The road
went on and vanished into paddocks on the horizon. On one side was a scrubby enclosure which must be the old drive-in that
Jacob had mentioned. Facing it was a stone settler’s cottage with a red corrugated-iron roof and a deep verandah.
Jacob’s house. There was a stretch of weedy lawn out the front and one of those ancient emblematic palms that she associated
with Australian army badges. Behind the house loomed two giant pine trees. Jacob wouldn’t have been able to resist the drive-in.

Where else in the world could you leave a house unlocked these days? The shadowy hallway ended in a large back room with a
wall of windows, a kitchen at one side, a television, hi-fi and sagging couch at the other. Books, videos and newspapers were
piled up on plank shelves around the couch. Pale sunlight streaked across the dusty slate floor. School notices, flyers, bills,
sprouted from magnets on the fridge. This was where Jacob’s children had grown up. A house like an old shoe, so habitual that
you no longer saw how down-at-heel it was.

How quiet it was. The silence of old stone rooms and trees in the wind. Out the back door was a line-up of wellingtons and
rubber thongs and a huge pair of rotting sneakers. A breeze set off some wooden wind-chimes swaying from a rickety pergola.
Jacob never had been a very convincing handyman. By the back shed an almond tree was breaking into early blossom. The yard
was streaked with shadows from the pine trees.

She peered into rooms, which like those where famous people once lived (Rodmell, Garsington) appeared too small and crowded
for the fabulous lives that had passed there. So this was Jacob’s great idealistic venture. All these years she’d thought
of them as a sort of Holy Family, leading a radical spiritual life, a reproach to her frantic worldly pursuits.

Now she saw the ordinary muddle of people everywhere, bringing up children without a great deal of money. By the looks of
it they’d built this back addition themselves. Off one
side was a bedroom crammed with electronic equipment and a poster of Miles Davis. The boy’s room. She’d known houses like
this in Bayswater, in Islington.

Rain started to patter on the iron roof. The fridge was empty apart from an open tin of dog food. She was reminded of the
astounding domestic absent-mindedness of adolescent boys. The benches were greasy, and the floors were awash with dog hair.
She parked her suitcase in the master bedroom, took off her coat and pushed up the sleeves of her black cashmere sweater.

A hooded figure passed by the kitchen window. An ancient bulldog was suddenly barking in the doorway, quivering with outrage,
and a boy in a sodden brown windcheater nudged her gently inside, pulling the string of a Walkman from his ear. He looked
like a young Franciscan in a cowl.

Kitty embraced him, and felt his thin strong arms courteously attempt to return the gesture, while his body stayed back, private,
resistant. He smelt of the classroom, socks, bananas and one of those pungent deodorants adolescents use. He pulled his hood
back and crouched down to the dog and she saw dark blonde curling hair like his father and the tilt of his mother’s eyes.
She knew better than to say this to Magnus. His smile was pure, his skin was olive. After years of teaching adolescent boys
she could guess that only a short while ago he would have been beautiful as an angel, but now was lump-necked, thick-nosed,
croaky, a young bird. In a few years’ time he’d be beautiful again, but as a man.

He stood gangly, a little at a loss. ‘He’s not a big talker,’ Jacob had said on the phone. ‘In fact this year he just about
gave up talking altogether.’

We’ll see about that, Kitty thought.

When she first came to teach in London she was given the lowliest, most refractory of classes. All boys. She found she liked
it. Year after year she was form mistress to successive groups of inner-London boys, classified more or less officially as
unteachable. She still received Christmas cards from some of them. Some had become teachers themselves. Even as she climbed
the ranks, adolescent boys remained her speciality. She knew it had started years ago, a little fat girl’s infatuation with
her brother and his friend.

The first thing to remember about boys was that they were always hungry. Food was an overture offered to savages. It smoothed
negotiations, established trust. She’d bribed her way into classes with lavish rewards of Belgian chocolates, French pastries,
pancake breakfasts at McDonald’s. A food angle kept a class happy. The smell or promise of food seemed to trigger associations
of peace in some of her students, so that their true charm could emerge.

‘Want to come shopping, Magnus?’ There was a touch of wanness about him as the old dog pawed at his leg. The poor boy was
clearly starving. ‘You can show me what you like to eat.’

‘I’ve got money,’ Magnus said, quick to uphold family honour. ‘They left me plenty. I meant to buy some stuff, I just kept
running out of time.’

A nice boy, intelligent, sensitive, she could see at a glance. There was no company she enjoyed more. He probably hadn’t liked
being alone as much as he thought. They would have a good time together.

‘Listen, I need to cook. I have to do a little cooking every day. It’s the greatest – no second greatest – pleasure in my
life.’

‘What’s the first?’ Magnus was genuinely interested.

‘Don’t ask,’ said Kitty, putting her coat back on with a swagger.

That was the other thing about boys. Don’t be a goody-goody. Flirt a little. Be yourself.

Magnus took Kitty through the pine trees to pick up a car from Carlos. Large black cockatoos swooped and squawked overhead,
hunting for pine nuts. The Garcias’ house was silent. Magnus knocked. After a while Carlos came to the door, a little dark
Mediterranean man, unshaved and overweight. He nodded at Kitty when Magnus introduced her but didn’t try to smile. His eyes
were bloodshot and he’d just put out a cigarette. Without a word he led them across the yard to the old yellow Moke. He wore
thongs, a baggy pullover unravelling over workman’s pants. There was a stillness about him, as if to look anywhere but straight
ahead would hurt. Kitty, veteran of heartbreak, didn’t try to make conversation but trod softly beside him.

Late that night, lying in the parental bed, she heard the horses whinny and she thought about the man lying in the dark next
door. Over and over you cry out and there’s nobody there. You take a pill and sleep for exactly four hours. In the morning,
ghost-faced, you have a shower and go to work. On the weekends you make sure to take yourself off on a programme of expensive
cultural events. You feel obliged to remind yourself that this pain is nothing compared to that of most of the people in the
news. You go through the motions and then after a few weeks of paralysis you realise one day that you’ve lost weight, and
you go shopping for a size smaller jeans … Then you understand that the stiffness is going out of your body, you were able
to smile at the assistant, you’re on the mend.

The phone rang in the kitchen and Magnus padded out to
answer it from his bed. Who could be calling at this hour? She heard him talking quietly as he walked back to his room, and
then his door closed.

T
hey were watching
Lateline
when the phone rang.

‘Magnus! Everything all right?’

‘Yep.’

‘How’s Kitty?’

‘Good.’ Surprisingly emphatic for Magnus.

‘Is she looking after you?’ Too late Toni remembered Magnus didn’t think he needed looking after.

‘Actually she’s a really great cook. She cooks international dishes. Tonight we had an Iranian soup.’

‘What’s that like?’

‘You make it with spinach and yoghurt.’

‘I didn’t think you ate spinach or yoghurt.’

‘It’s different, cooked like that.’

‘You’ll have to give me the recipe.’

They were silent for a moment.

‘Maya rang,’ Magnus said casually.

‘
What!
When?’

‘Bout a week ago. Then again last night.’ Suddenly at school today he knew he had to let them know.

‘How is she?’
Why didn’t you …?
Pointless to ask.

‘OK.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘Nothing much. We’ve both been having dreams about Winnie lately.’

‘Listen, Magnus, did she say who she’s with or where she’s staying?’

‘No.’

‘If she rings again could you ask her,
please
?’