Tim Winton - Eyrie

She never said.

Maybe you never listened.

They came into her street and Keely looked through the treetops to the broad reach of the river glittering in the afternoon sun. He wished there could be a settled interval, just an hour or so when he could let himself believe he knew what was what. Nothing was solid anymore, nothing felt safe or ordinary.

So you regret all that? he asked. Everything you and Nev did?

No, she said. I just wish I hadn’t been so romantic about it, so vain. I wish we’d known more, that we’d done a better job.

A horn sounded behind them. Gemma’s car rattled by and turned up into the drive.

Remember, she’s changed, too, Tom. Like I said, she’s not her mother. And neither am I.

On the way into central Perth, piloting the Volvo around the river’s edge beneath the bluffs and the park, he wondered if Doris had given him the ticket simply to get him out of the house. To have some time alone with Gemma. Take stock. Perhaps even take charge. He still felt awkward leaving Kai with her on only the boy’s second night in a strange house. It seemed flaky. But Gemma had no objection and Kai seemed indifferent. Maybe it was just Doris bunging on the charm and rattling the Scrabble box. All the way down Stirling Highway and into Mounts Bay Road he’d worn himself ragged with second-guessing, until his head felt like a tinful of bees. Why couldn’t he just take his mother’s offer as a gift? Why make so much trouble for himself? Some things were what they appeared to be.

*

At the concert hall he slunk down the aisles feeling underdressed and pitifully unaccompanied. Took his seat beside an elegant old couple. Peered at the program. Anything he’d learnt about classical music was picked up second-hand in Doris’s slipstream. Delius, Elgar, Britten. The Brits, for God’s sake. God’s little joke on their prickly republicanism.

He caught the older woman beside him glancing surreptitiously. Felt himself wither. Rescued by the dimming lights and the soloist striding onto the stage to warm applause.

Keely’s pulse quickened. A stab of apprehension. He was the same at any live performance, suddenly anxious for the players. So stupid; these people were professional musicians. But the way his throat narrowed they could have all been kids at a school recital. His kids.

And before he knew it, before he could get his thoughts under control, the concerto was up and running. From the soloist’s first brazen thrust he was captivated by her impish confidence. Such a naff instrument, really, the oboe, but she went at the thing like a jazzer. You could feel the ripple of indignation roll across the hall. Maybe it was the woman’s bebop stance, the way she appeared to goad the rest of the orchestra. Keely sweated on the sense of resistance in the room, the squirms and clucks. All this wild fingering, he felt it could come apart at any moment, yet he was swept up in it, fraught and amazed by the soloist’s reckless brio as she began, sally by wheeling sally, to win first the stage, then the auditorium and finally the piece itself, looking all the while like someone glorying in the peril she’d exposed herself to, beating the odds with a smile in her eyes and a hip cocked against all comers. She was nailing it. Surfing it. Riding the storm into the aisles, past their greying heads and through the bars and braces of their ribs, skating home on the glory of having dared and won. Bravo, he thought, fucking brava , whatever. He was filled, overcome. And like an idiot he began to weep, silently at first and then in tiny, shaming huffs that were drowned, thank God, by the roaring ovation. The air felt too thin. Keely could not applaud; it was too much. He held his knees as if his legs might fly off, sobbing like a village fool until the silver-haired woman alongside him, a dame of some provenance if posture counted for anything, placed a neatly folded tissue in his lap as if he were an ancient bridge partner whose little weaknesses were old news.

There’s the Elgar yet, she said.

I’ll never make it, said Keely.

Come on, she said. No guts, no glory.

Doris was still up. Her hair was out and her bifocals shone as she closed the biography and stood. He dropped the keys in the bowl on the bench. It was too warm in the kitchen. Something about his mother having gotten to her feet seemed off.

So? she said with only a thin smile.

Unbelievable, he murmured. I’m wired. I’ll never get to sleep. Kai alright? What is it?

Gemma had a call, said Doris. Before work.

He stood there with that falling sensation.

Something unpleasant. A kind of threat, I think. She wouldn’t say.

Shit.

She took the call outside, said Doris. We were having a nice evening. Up until then.

Was Kai in bed?

No.

She didn’t say who it was, what they said?

No, but whatever it was, it wasn’t nice. She was upset. And then Kai was agitated.

And she still went to work?

That was what she said she was doing.

I’ll call her.

Her number’s there beside the fruitbowl if you don’t already have it.

Keely snatched the cordless phone from the bench and thumbed in the digits. A recorded message.

She never turns it off at night, he said. In case Kai needs her.

But he’s here with us. And she won’t need any more calls like the one she’s had.

Can’t she screen them?

You’ve never had calls like that.

I’ve been threatened, believe me.

Don’t be ridiculous.

Okay, I’m just saying. I don’t know what I’m saying. But, hell. I think I’ll go down and check on her, he said, grabbing up the Volvo’s keys again. You mind?

Would it matter?

What’s that? he said abstractedly.

Tom, she’s at work. How will you check on her? They won’t let you into the supermarket.

I don’t really know. I just need to make sure.

What you need is to think clearly. She needs to go to the police.

She won’t go, he said. No cops, no refuge.

Just sit down for a moment.

I can’t, he said.

Stay, she said. Go to bed. Please.

Mum, I can’t, he said, pulling the door to. I just can’t.

*

Traffic into Fremantle was light. In the distance the Jurassic container cranes of the port loomed like some sort of lurid arena spectacle. Keely had no idea what he was doing. This aimless driving about. But anything would feel better than lying awake half the night at Doris’s.

He crossed Stirling Bridge. Turned away from the harbour and headed inland a little on Canning. Bitsy clumps of retail. Traffic lights. Car yards. The Cleo.

Pulled into the empty parking lot in front of the shopping complex on the hill. Sat idling a moment beside the concrete bunker where Gemma worked. No sign of her car. No vehicles anywhere except those flashing by out on the four-lane. And then it occurred to him. Basement entry. He eased up to the end of the building, angled onto the ramp and crept down the steep decline. But halfway down he came upon a boom gate and was forced to reverse out. Parked the Volvo on the street and walked back down.

The underground carpark was well lit and so much warmer than the night above. Foetid, even. Over by the lifts, slotted in behind a Subaru and a couple of unloved Corollas, was the blue Hyundai.

He pushed the call button for the lift and waited but the doors didn’t open. He tried again and a crackly voice spoke from the pipework overhead.

Sir, if you’re not an employee, you’ll have to leave.

Keely looked up, saw the sinister dome of the CCTV camera.

Sir? said the voice. We can escort you out if you’re lost.

Keely grinned like an imbecile, showed the camera his palms and left.