Gotland Read online

  Epigraph

  ‘If graffiti changed anything – it would be illegal.’

  — Graffiti in London attributed to Banksy, reworking Emma Goldman’s anarchist slogan, ‘If voting changed anything …’

  ‘Because erotic life rearranges the world it is political.

  Every form of erotic life makes a world. Our monogamies, our infidelities, our promiscuity go on in a world of other people, and cannot help but make a difference to the ways they organise their lives. Every infidelity creates the need for an election; every separation divides the party.’

  — Adam Phillips, Monogamy

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  1. Melbourne

  2. Gotland

  3. Melbourne

  4. Gotland

  5. Melbourne

  6. Gotland

  7. Melbourne

  8. Gotland

  9. Melbourne

  10. Gotland

  11. Melbourne

  12. Gotland

  13. Melbourne

  14. Gotland

  15. Melbourne

  16. Gotland

  17. Canberra

  18. Gotland

  19. Melbourne

  20. Gotland

  21. Melbourne

  22. Canberra

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Praise

  Copyright

  1

  MELBOURNE

  July 2010

  When you know you have invisible cracks inside you, it makes you alert to the hidden fissures in others. Everyone has fault lines but most people, I suspect, go through life only dimly aware of them. Perhaps you only face up to their existence when it becomes a daily struggle to hold yourself together. When the cracks open into gaping crevices.

  There are always one or two fragile children in a school room of twenty. During my final year of teaching, I had a prep class with the usual mix of personalities and quirks. Most of them had found friends by mid-year, except for a boy called Ashley who refused to speak to anyone, including me. I knew he could speak because his mother said he talked to her at home, but only if his father wasn’t around. To say that he refused to speak probably isn’t fair. I don’t think it was a conscious act of rebellion on his part. Something had happened and his mind had taken this course of action. I spent a lot of time wondering how to draw Ashley out and maybe even trick him into talking. Elective mutes. Isn’t that what they’re called? Strange term, really. As if they have a choice in the matter. The older I get the more I am convinced that none of us is half as free as we like to think.

  One day I heard a Beatles song on the radio called ‘There’s a Place’ and I thought of Ashley and realised I had known all along what to do. I think of Ashley now because the day I played this song to my class was, coincidentally, the day my old life began to unravel. I have the drawing Ashley did pinned up on the wall behind my desk, and whenever I look at it, I remember what happened and how, like most bad news, it came out of nowhere and how, afterwards, nothing was the same.

  It was just an ordinary school day. During lunchtime, I recall watching a group of grade-six boys ambling past my classroom window, heads hooded and hands in pockets. When the bell rang, most of the children began running across the asphalt. The younger ones always ran to class. The instant the bell sounded, they dropped everything and dashed as though their lives depended on it. I loved the way they did that, the urgency of it. Kate had been the same. As soon as she spotted me at the end of the day, she would charge into my arms, not caring what anyone thought.

  The older kids were different, though. They’d rather be late than look uncool and run. One of the boys stooped, plucked a blue lemonade can from a flowerbed and placed it upright on the asphalt. The others crowded around as he raised his right heel and brought it down with a satisfying crunch. Nothing remained but a neat silver medallion of aluminium. Then the second bell rang and the boys sauntered off, leaving the crushed can where it lay.

  My pupils were lined up outside the door, holding hands. I waited for the jostling and chatter to die down. At my signal, they half marched, half tumbled in and found their seats. After lunch, they were often tired and would go into a kind of dream state. A year ago, they would have taken a nap. Some of them still needed to. If they asked me, I let them lie down on the cushions. It wasn’t a good time for maths or spelling, but the dreaminess helped when they were doing other activities. Like the one I had in mind.

  When they were settled at their tables and as quiet as four- or five-year-olds can ever be, I said, ‘I’m going to play you a song. You might have heard it before. Listen to the words.’

  I smiled at their upturned faces. Then an alphabet poster on the back wall caught my eye. One corner had curled over. Some of the mobiles hanging from the ceiling were tangled, others had become tattered-looking. It was time to brighten up the room. I wanted to pin up some pictures I had found of unusual places – a castle perched high on a mountainside, an artist’s impression of Lilliput, a Persian hanging garden. Places that might be mysterious or secret. Some imaginary, some real. But first, I wanted to see what the children would come up with themselves.

  I pressed the button on the CD player. There was a burst of bright harmonica chords in quick succession. This was repeated and then, with a suddenness that always took me by surprise, those freshly minted voices broke in, singing about places in the mind we can go to when we feel low or need to escape.

  The song grabbed the children immediately. Some of them started singing along, some swayed with the music; others sat perfectly still, as if mesmerised. When the song was finished, the children pleaded to hear it again. I asked them why they liked it and whether they had special places of their own. Places that made them feel happy. Places they liked to hide. Places that they went to when they felt sad. Places connected with a friend or a grandparent or a holiday or a story or an adventure.

  ‘I want you to do a drawing of your special place. When you’re finished, you can come out the front with your picture and tell us about it.’

  Above all, I wanted the children to realise that these places could be visited at will, regardless of whether they actually existed or had changed utterly. I didn’t want them to be hamstrung, as I was, by the conviction that certain places were out of reach.

  I handed out butcher’s paper and pastels, and settled at my desk. Soon the children were bent over in concentration, busy giving colour and shape to whatever was in their heads. It never ceased to fascinate me, what went on in the minds of children. Even though many of them were writing words now, their drawings always said more. And those who had a flair for drawing, as Kate had always had, could speak with an eloquence way beyond their years. Almost as if they were possessed.

  I thought back to when Kate was four and we went to Japan for a family holiday. After a violent burst of turbulence early in the flight, she’d taken refuge in the cartoon-like directions on the emergency instruction card. And when we got to the hotel, she’d spent two frantic hours holed up in our room, filling her large sketchpad with drawings of bright orange and black oxygen masks. All that fear and bewilderment had been channelled into furious scribbles. It had calmed her in a way that nothing else could.

  Even now, Kate did her best art work when she was heartsick or unhappy. I was thinking about this, worrying what it might mean, when a tap on the classroom door made me jump. Lesley, the PE teacher, stuck her head in.

  ‘Sorry to disturb. Nikos asked me to get you. Your husband’s on the phone. Urgent.’

  I nodded and forced myself to walk calmly, knowing the children’s eyes would be on me. David never called the school.

  The office was in a red-brick
building on the far side of the asphalt basketball courts. In an alcove just before the main entrance, a time capsule was set in the wall, marked by an engraved plaque. As if to seal things in stone conferred a kind of immortality. It made me think of a tomb. When I reached the threshold, the front glass doors slid open automatically and closed behind me.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nikos hovering in the doorway of his office. He was always asking after David, and would make a beeline for him at staff or school functions. Nikos liked people with influence. He once told David, ‘You and I are in the same business. Principals have to be politicians now.’

  The staffroom was empty. My throat tightened as I sat and picked up the phone. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Sorry, Esther. I had to let you know, before word got out. Gerald collapsed in his office this morning.’ There was a sickening pause. Gerald was David’s oldest friend, the leader of the party and the only one of his colleagues whom I trusted and loved. ‘He’s gone.’

  I closed my fist on the telephone cord. A void had formed in the universe. I could feel it sucking us all in. ‘Oh God. Where’s Fay?’

  ‘At the hospital. She wanted me to tell her it wasn’t true.’ David’s voice was breaking up.

  ‘I’ll fly up tonight.’

  David hesitated. ‘It’s chaos here. Perhaps you should wait.’

  I knew exactly what that meant. The sharks were circling. ‘It’s happening already, isn’t it?’

  ‘This really isn’t the time.’

  ‘No, it’s not the time!’

  A choked sound came from the receiver. ‘Esther. It’s me you’re talking to, remember?’

  Neither of us spoke for what seemed like ages. I could hear David’s ragged breathing, and cursed the distance between us.

  ‘Will you come?’ he said finally.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I put down the phone and stood up so quickly I thought I might faint. I managed to nod to Muriel as I passed the office but when I saw Nikos coming at me from the other end of the hallway, I wanted to run.

  He frowned. ‘Something wrong?’

  I edged towards the front doors. He could wait for the six o’clock news. I was damned if I would turn Gerald’s death into staff-room gossip.

  ‘A friend has died. I have to go.’ I turned and fled down the steps, almost slipping on the smooth stone worn concave from more than a century of feet. I would ring Nikos from the airport. By that time, he would know and I wouldn’t be forced to explain.

  As I headed back across the asphalt, it felt like hours since I’d left my class. I thought of the project the children were working on and wondered distractedly what they had done. Then the bell rang. Three urgent, siren-like blasts that gave me permission to run.

  I could tell Kate was home from the open gate. I called out as I hung my coat in the hallway and then gently pushed at her bedroom door. The doona was still scrunched at the bottom of the bed; a pair of knickers, a T-shirt and some socks were scattered on the carpet. The grey backpack Kate used as a school bag was thrown in one corner, a folder full of papers spilling from the open zip. The usual mess.

  I called again from the lounge room. The kitchen, too, was empty. When I opened the back door I found Kate lying on the grass, staring at the sky. The day had started overcast but at some point it had turned bright and sunny. She appeared to be lost in thought, then I realised she was staring at the shot tower that loomed, like a great church spire, over the whole suburb.

  She rolled onto her belly and shifted her gaze. Her eyes were red and her mascara smudged.

  I dropped to my haunches beside her. ‘Dad rang you?’

  Kate quickly brushed her eyes with the back of her hand, got to her knees and reached out for me. We clutched each other awkwardly.

  I stared at the bench by the garden wall where Gerald and Fay had sat two weeks ago, Gerald wearing my blue and white striped chef’s apron. I could see him waving the barbecue tongs as he speculated on when the prime minister would call the election. And Fay fussing over a splodge of tomato sauce on his new linen slacks. Kate and Abbie had been on the hammock slung between the lemon tree and the house, talking to Max, who was standing nearby. Gerald and Fay’s twins had been great friends with Kate since childhood.

  ‘I’ll have to call Abbie and Max,’ Kate said. ‘But I don’t know what to say. If Dad dropped dead, I wouldn’t want to talk to anyone.’

  ‘They mightn’t want to talk. But you still have to try. It matters more than you think.’ I didn’t mention the surge of relief I’d felt when Fay’s line was engaged.

  ‘I could text, I suppose,’ Kate said, and then, seeing my face, quickly added, ‘I don’t mean it, Mum.’

  Her eyes strayed to the shot tower again. The bottom third of it was covered with ivy. Dense green, red-brick shaft, acid-blue sky. I liked the way nature was reclaiming it, turning it into something from a fairytale, like Rapunzel’s keep.

  ‘What about the funeral?’ she whispered.

  I told her I expected it would take a week or so to organise. A state funeral was a big deal. I dreaded it.

  I had three hours until my flight, enough time for a walk. In the years since David disappeared into the vortex of Canberra, my evening walk had become as important as food and sleep. I paced stiffly across our small patch of lawn, feeling as if my joints had fused.

  Kate jumped up and brushed down her jeans. ‘I’m coming too.’

  As I zipped up my jacket, I resisted the temptation to remark on her bare arms. We headed down the sideway to the street. The suburb had more concrete per square inch than any other in the city and fewer trees, but the spareness of the vegetation made it all the more precious. In a month or so, the scented flowers would bloom, the earliest hint that spring was on the way. First the wattle, then a native tree whose sticky seedpods clung to your shoes and found their way into the house. Its tiny pale yellow flowers were nothing to look at but the first whiff of them always woke me up, as if I’d been in hibernation and hadn’t known.

  A few weeks later, the jasmine blossom would be tumbling over the side and back fences. The air would soften, lose its edge. In time, I would find myself walking through cordial-sweet clouds from the port wine magnolia. Kate used to call it the bubble-gum bush. It, too, was nothing to look at – a straggly shrub with small, bud-like flowers of faded crimson on the outside and claret-coloured within. You couldn’t bury your nose in the flowers and drink them in as you could with a gardenia or a rose. The scent was never quite where you expected it, always hovering some distance from the bush and strongest in the evening, when the day’s heat rose from the bitumen.

  Kate asked which way I wanted to go.

  ‘You decide.’

  She pointed to the bluestone laneway at the end of our street. The laneways ran through the suburb like Venetian canals. Once they’d been the haunt of the nightman; now they were the haunt of graffiti artists, the odd drug user and cats.

  I never thought I would miss those crooked, bumpy laneways. There’s nothing like them in Canberra where everything is dauntingly spacious and geometric. All roundabouts and wide boulevards and carefully planned pockets of bush in the middle of suburbia.

  Kate’s route took us in the direction of the shot tower, past great abandoned warehouses and metalworks factories, relics of an earlier industrial age that would soon be turned into apartments. I knew all the graffiti: the colourful tags and indecipherable, scrawled signatures, a Mr Magoo-like cartoon head and some stencilled cockroaches bursting out of a birthday cake. My favourite on this route was a paste-up of a hand sticking out of a hole in a wall holding a bunch of flowers, as if offering them to passers-by. I had liked it long before I discovered it was one of Kate’s. The paper was beginning to peel now.

  ‘Will you fix it?’ I asked.

  ‘You don’t do that, Mum. It’s not supposed to last.’

  It was the smell of paste and the fine clouds of paint on Kate’s T-s
hirts, hoodies and jeans that had first told me what she was up to. She swore that she and her friends were careful, that they never went roaming late at night. They only did small stuff – simple two-colour stencils and paste-ups that could be done in a jiffy. The time-consuming part was the preparation – the stencils and paper designs, and finding the best location.

  Kate had pleaded with me not to tell David. We both knew what he would say. He was a politician, he had no choice. She was breaking the law. Regardless of what he really thought, to say anything else was asking for trouble. But when parliament was sitting, he could be away in Canberra for weeks on end. Kate and I had had to find our own ways of getting by. Of negotiating the daily tensions over clothes, homework, parties and boys. And now this.

  I knew a refusal would be useless, only make her more determined, even reckless. So we came to an agreement. Never on her own, never late at night, never on dangerous sites. I was banking on the novelty wearing off. In the meantime, I kept my eye out for Kate’s work whenever I walked.

  We arrived at the barbed-wire-topped, red-brick wall surrounding the shot tower. The lower part of the wall was a pastiche of scrawled tags, wildstyle lettering, stencilled Chinese junks floating through the air and a freehand image of a lime-green alien emerging from a jumbo jet. Then something I hadn’t seen before grabbed my attention. A child dangling by one foot from the barbed wire. A painted figure on a wall but the horror on the child’s face was real. Underneath, the artist had written ‘No Refuge’.

  ‘I want to show you something,’ Kate said.

  We turned the corner into a dead-end laneway. One section of the wall was rendered with concrete. On this smooth surface a giant rectangle had been sprayed blood red. Stencilled on it was a life-sized girl in bathers diving from a height and swooping towards us, as if bursting out of the wall. Her feet flipped back, her head up, arms outstretched with feathers growing from her fingertips. Around her tumbled maple-shaped autumn leaves. It was an image of complete abandon, of utter joy. And in such an unexpected place.