On Brunswick Ground Read Free Page A

exposed. Mitali dusts her thighs.
    â€˜It’s over for Olga.’
    I feel Ian stiffen.
    â€˜When?’
    She tosses her head.
    â€˜A month ago.’
    The atmosphere alters as if someone had lashed a whip. Ian slowly puts the slice of mango he was holding back down on the plate.
    â€˜You didn’t tell me – for a whole month?’
    She frowns, staring at her hands as if they were strange objects on her knees.
    â€˜No.’
    Mitali stares at us furiously. You’d think that month had rebelled against her, that she had a hand-to-hand fight with every day of it.
    â€˜She was already dead, wasn’t she? Hooked up on that machine.’
    She coughs. The image of Mitali coughing blood flits through my mind. Ian leans back against the weatherboards, holding her gaze. His eyes are so grave that I wonder why they are discussing this in my presence. Whoever this friend was, why did she wait so long to tell him? Suddenly I wonder if she didn’t invite me in on purpose – to keep herself at a distance from it, and bring herself to at last admit it.
    â€˜Mitali, so all this time while we were looking after Billie …’
    Ian’s words just stay there. She almost snarls at him.
    â€˜I needed to be with Billie. Billie’s alive . I could do something, couldn’t I?’
    It all makes sense. Jill Meagher is haunting her, not because she worked for ABC Radio, or because she was young, beautiful and Irish, but because Mitali’s unwept tears have spilled into the stranger’s death.
    When I leave them, they both walk me to the gate. The sepia evening light is already a memory of itself. A grey cat is walking in a side street along the parked cars. I see him nearly every night. His Confucian dignity is impervious to the floating disquiet. I’m at a respectful distance on the other footpath, looking at him. He surveys me with a certain tender cool. The dead recede from my mind. I am hungry now and decide to do something about it.
    I’m coming back from the supermarket, still in my muddy boots. There’s a smell of baby skin and stormy weather in the air. Then, as rain, wrapped in cloud, moves above us without falling, the footpath suddenly reeks of orchids and wine from some stone cellar. It’s about seven in the evening and even though it’s spring, it feels like winter. A few steps ahead, I recognise Sarah, the owner of the bar where I met Bernice. It’s quite dark and we could easily pretend we haven’t noticed each other. Is a bird rustling in the melaleuca? Or is there a twitch in the darkness? We both look round at the same time. Her coat flaps open like a sail, revealing a low-cut black dress and a flash of cleavage. Her hand, clasping her collar around her throat, is a tough, working hand. Yet out of that toughness, through the sleek, black curtain of her hair, through the green slits of her eyes and the panther-like shift in her shoulders, her beauty imposes itself – eerie, and Brontë-esque.
    I know her family is mostly of Irish origin, but something of the bush has settled on her. I’ve seen the giant pieces she sculpts. The white gallery they sit in is bursting at the seams with their pent-up energy. They stand gawky as cranes with thick spines, leaning, propped against air, holding invisible weights with soft rounded shoulders and a tired, spent strength. They vibrate with the spirit of this place that calls her, just as it calls the name of every street, the cry of every bird, to its secret identity.
    She touches my arm when I say:
    â€˜Hello, Sarah.’
    She can’t remember my name but makes a wild guess, which ends in a kind of noise.
    â€˜How are you?’ we both add in a symmetrical echo that stymies us.
    Her hands run through her hair. I can see she’s tired. Then, out of the blue, she asks:
    â€˜You wouldn’t feel like a pub dinner, would you? I know it’s last minute …’
    I lift my bags