David Francis - Stray Dog Winter

Be careful here, Darcy, she said.

And Darcy wished he hadn’t shared about the wedding. Was the money belt for him? he asked.

No, she said. It was for you. She picked up the newspaper and headed to her room.

Darcy snatched the yellow flowers from the soup can, to hurl them after her, but she turned. That’s what your mother would do, she said.

She’d throw the can as well, said Darcy. And then the toaster. They sniffed a laugh almost simultaneously then stopped.

She had a stroke, said Darcy.

The flower stems dripped water onto the floor. Fin said nothing.

It was only minor, he said. She just lay on her chaise pretending she was okay, her cigarette shaking, then she had a day in hospital. He thought how he’d visited her just once after that—to return her car. He’d told her he was going to Sydney.

Summer 1975

Darcy was baking a cake in the kitchen, whipping cream by hand, while his father poured a bottle of Remy Martin down the sink. The school says she’s disappeared, his father said. He never mentioned Fin by name when Darcy’s mother was in earshot, but she was sitting at the dining-room table and Darcy could tell his father wanted her to hear.

With some New Australian boy. Older. Apparently he took her off to Queensland. Did you know about this?

Darcy stood at the fridge with a bowl of cream in his hands, sinking. She hadn’t said goodbye; he’d barely seen her since the day at the beach. Darcy moved to lean against the bench, told his father he knew nothing. But he’d seen Jostler just a week ago, the Monaro stopping on the corner of Mountain Road, offering a ride down the hill. Jostler, who’d come from the Somerville pub.

Darcy began whipping cream furiously. Yes, he knew Jostler. Darcy still remembered the holes in the knees of his jeans. He’d fantasised about being alone with him and some tinnies up at the old quarry on Two Bays Road. And now Jostler had taken her away.

His mother stood silent in the doorway as his father drained sherry from the stem of a tulip-shaped bottle. Apparently his last name is Garabed or something, he said. The police are searching for them.

Darcy mouthed the name: Garabed. I wish they’d taken me, he mumbled, but his father pretended not to hear, his mother glaring at the loss of liquid. A mix of envy and rage unbuckled inside Darcy, images of the endless beach at Surfers Paradise swirling white before him, Fin’s head on Jostler’s thigh in white sand as the clouds ran silent above, shadows on that phosphorous ocean. Fin knew first-hand about being abandoned, had left Darcy knowing how he’d feel. Jostler made her promise, he thought.

Darcy’s mother drew on her smoke. She came, she went, she said sarcastically, and look at us.

Darcy threw the bowl of cream across the room. Most of it landed on the stove, dolloping down into the electric elements, some like semen on the walls.

Tut, tut, said his mother. Now we’ll have to clean that up.

His father had an emptied bottle of her Gilbey’s in his hand. He didn’t look at the mess. Maybe we should go on a trip, he said.

Not to Queensland, said his mother.

Darcy hated her dismissal of every idea with a word or a wave of a cigarette. He felt a sudden desire to run from them, catch the bus to Surfers Paradise, or just walk out into the darkness, search the roads for the missionaries. He’d been right—Fin was the lucky one.

Darcy waited on the street, standing alone in Aurelio’s coat under a black elm whose roots had fissured the pavement. Fin appeared beside him in her fur hat and headscarf, her lips pursed anxiously. Darcy liked how she didn’t want him to go. She knew whose coat he had on now.

Fitfully she pushed at the fingers of her gloves. You shouldn’t have told him where you live, she said.

He already knew, said Darcy.

Icy air funnelled alongside the stucco apartment block, stung his face as he stared at a car navigating the corner, the same rusty Lada from yesterday. At least let me see what he looks like, said Fin, in case you disappear.

Darcy didn’t mind her protective and jealous, but her paranoia unnerved him. I can take care of myself, he said.

This isn’t Dandenong, she reminded him curtly, and it made him feel more wary, his trust in the hands of strangers. The Lada double-parked.

His mother knows Castro, said Darcy.

Fin cast Darcy a sidelong glance from behind her scarf. That’s a comfort, she said.

Aurelio rolled down the fogged-up window and there he was in wrap-around reflective sunglasses. Is there a chance of sun? Fin said. But Aurelio seemed larger than the life that surrounded him, a turtleneck sweater and overnight stubble, he could have easily been in an Aston Martin, departing for the Alps.

Uninvited, Fin approached him. Dobry utra , she said. Aurelio removed his glasses and Darcy watched her embark on her charming Australian-but-fluent-in-Russian thing. Darcy got in the passenger side, the heater belching stale air, but Aurelio didn’t greet him. He would forgive him, but he wondered if he could trust him. Darcy looked at his profile, waiting, noticed the ends of his hair poking from below his hat, that the space between his eyebrows looked shaven. Darcy’s father said never to trust a man whose eyebrows met—but who could trust Darcy’s father?

Fin’s gloved hands gesticulated through Aurelio’s window, her smooth unintelligible smoker’s voice. Spasiba , she said, thank you, and Aurelio wound up the window, sat his sunglasses up between the brim of his hat and his harvest eyes.

He turned to Darcy, at last. We ready?

Gently Darcy took the sunglasses from Aurelio’s forehead, put them on himself. They made the snow turn green, that light moss green of Fin’s pupils. Sure, he said. He resolved to stay optimistic. Fin’s arms gripped her shoulders, hugging herself in the cold, and he waved as they drove. Glancing back in the side mirror, he made out her slightly raised arm. Standing in the cold of the newly green street she looked puzzled, but he wouldn’t be sucked into her suspicions; he had nothing to hide. Everything was green, he’d pretend it was beautiful. Why was she thanking you? asked Darcy.

She is worrying, said Aurelio. You are not with your passport. Darcy turned to regard him, the smudges now olive under his big dark eyes. Try to keep light, like yesterday, he thought; don’t get complicated. And yet there was nothing playful about Aurelio now, steering with a military confidence, his hands solid in his driving gloves, as they turned from the street into the sparse midmorning traffic.

Her Russian is surprising, he said, your friend.

Darcy surmised that gleaning information was probably part of this deal, but he refused to let the quid pro quo disappoint him. Fin had already put her spanner in the works, and he was niggled again by the memory of the money belt against him like a strip of swollen skin.

She studied Russian at university, said Darcy. He stared out as they crossed the lime ice river and passed the back of the Kremlin, the stone gates to Alexandrovsky Gardens. Too cold out there for birds except the occasional all-weather pigeon. He could pretend they were parrots through these lenses.

Did you meet her there, at the university? asked Aurelio.

Darcy nodded. Partially true. This, he knew, was exactly what Fin had feared, this conversation. Keep it light, Darcy Bright, keep it light .

Were you lovers? Aurelio asked.

Would you care? Darcy made an effort to smile.

Maybe.

Darcy’d have to guard his heart as well as his mouth, he knew this. Aurelio was different today, inquisitive in a less intimate way, but Darcy tried to ignore it. He’d say nothing of the money belt and nothing of Jostler who was now Jobik. He glimpsed a corner of the monolithic Rossiya Hotel and thought of yesterday’s wedding down in its shadow, Aurelio and his friend Sofia; their eye contact mixed a subtle duty and flirtation. Was Sofia your lover? asked Darcy.