Michelle Kretser - The Lost Dog

The dog was with them that night, clicking along the pavement. From feathery plots of wild fennel by the railway line, he emerged odorous with aniseed. He cocked his leg at every opportunity, writing his chronicles in urine. He was drawn by unmown grass and the pellety excrement of possums. Ramshackle paperbarks detained him for minutes with their aromatic folds. He was attuned to an invisible world; to the redolent leavings of bodies that had once populated these spaces.

Nelly said, ‘This is going to sound a little crazy.’

‘Yeah?’

‘About five years ago I was on this tram, and I felt someone watching me.’ It was delivered in Nelly’s usual sporadic style: talk as faulty machinery. ‘You know that feeling between your shoulderblades?’

On the opposite side of the unlit street a block of fl ats rose over a pillared car park. Something pale was astir in its darkness. Tom looked away.

‘The tram was packed, and I couldn’t see anyone I knew, and everyone was just doing that staring into space thing. But I was sure Felix was there.’ Nelly said, ‘I knew he was watching me. It went on for a couple of blocks and then it was gone.’

A little later: ‘Another time it happened in the supermarket. He was there, but he wasn’t.’

Tom glanced across at the car park again, and saw only parked cars.

He summoned reason to the scene. ‘Wouldn’t Felix have tried to get in touch with Rory if he’d come back?’

A cold breeze had arisen. The dog was straining forward on his leash. Nelly drew a length of knitted wool from her pocket, folded it, placed it about her throat, passed the ends through the loop. It was the first time Tom had noticed this way of tying a scarf, although it was much in evidence that year.

He spent Sunday evening in blessed solitude, putting together his shortlist for the lectureship. At the last minute he added the DPhil, with a question mark against her name. Afterwards he downed two whiskies, fast.

When the doorbell rang he was sure it was Nelly. He went swiftly to the door and opened it to Posner.

‘There you are.’ Posner spoke with a trace of impatience, as if Tom had been slow to answer a summons. ‘Bloody awful weather.’

He thrust a crumpled black wing at Tom and glided past. There was an odour of damp cloth from the umbrella; nothing else. Posner had no smell.

In the living room he said, ‘You’re in the phone book,’ as if it were a breach of taste. Then, without a glance at his surroundings, ‘Quaint little place.’

Tom heard shoddy and cramped.

The flat was heated by electric radiators but Posner crossed to the fireplace and stood with his back to the empty hearth. It conjured country weekends; the sense of well-being that comes from killing small animals. Yet Tom realised that his visitor wasn’t altogether at ease. It was the hint of disdain; assured, Posner had set himself to charm.

The umbrella was a wounded thing dripping between them. Tom said, ‘Whisky?’ and left the room before Posner could reply. When he returned, Posner had shifted to the sofa. He had taken off his leather jacket and sat with one leg cocked, ankle resting on the opposite knee.

In Posner’s hand the tumbler looked child-size, the tilting liquid calculated and mean. His moon gaze drifted about until he aimed it at the ceiling.

Tom was thinking of rooms so casually perfect they might have been assembled for the camera; of paintings lining a hall, of polished wood in which a lamp might be reborn as a star. Other images intervened in these remembered frames. Iris’s kitchen cupboards, covered with yellow-fl owered contact paper, hovered above Posner’s mirrored mantelpiece. The vinyl concertina door that separated her living area from her bedroom now barred the access to his stairs.

Absurd to blame Posner for the contrast. But the net of Tom’s feelings for his mother was not woven with reason. Even as his eye fell on the jacket slung beside Posner, what took shape in his thoughts was Iris’s double-handled vinyl bag. It was an object her son could not see without pain.

He sat down, and the pale circle turned to him. A black-clad arm unfolded itself along the sofa, confident as a cat. ‘A word seemed in order,’ said Posner.

He might have been addressing an underperforming minion across a desk.

In the silence that followed, some echo of his tone must have communicated itself to the dealer. His manner altered. He uncocked his leg, and ran a hand over his silver scalp.‘You’re a literary man, of course.’

A minute earlier, it would have had the ring of accusation. But Posner had hung out his imitation of a smile. ‘You must know the story of Virginia Woolf ’s marriage?’

Tom swirled whisky around his glass.

‘Her family had no illusions about the severity of her illness. They had witnessed the clawing, the howling, every grubby detail of it. But when Leonard wanted to marry her, the Stephens made light of what he was taking on. The merest sketch. Well, he was a godsend, naturally. Most of all to Vanessa, who’d have been stuck with nursing a madwoman if her sister hadn’t married.’ Posner paused. ‘You know the story?’ he asked again.

‘The merest sketch.’

‘You can’t help thinking they’d never have had the nerve if they’d been dealing with one of their own. Instead of a Jew-boy from Putney.’

There crept over Tom the sensation, marvel tinged with awe, that attends the sight of a great painting. It accompanied the realisation that Posner might still pass for a handsome man.

‘Of course only a Jew-boy from Putney would have stuck it all those years.’ Posner said, ‘One of my grandmothers was a Jewess. It makes me sensible to the deception.’

His gaze was very intent. But it was apparent to them both that Tom couldn’t tell what was wanted of him.

‘These headaches of Nelly’s.’ There was a light, feline tread to Posner’s words.‘They leave her so very…drained. She doesn’t always recollect the intensity of an episode, you see.’

Minutes passed.

At last Tom said, ‘Does she know you go around suggesting she’s mad?’

‘Dear boy! Such vehemence! I would speak,’ said Posner,‘of heightened colours. I would speak of broadened effects.’ He patted the sofa beside him. When this failed to draw a response, he pulled his jacket across his lap and ran his fingers over the soft black skin.

‘There is such pressure on artists to be contemporary. A loathsome notion, frankly risible. But there it is. Painting, landscape, figuration… In certain not uninfl uential quarters these choices are condemned as inherently old hat.’ Posner sighed. ‘I wonder if you have any idea of the depths of Nelly’s self-doubt. Her fear that her work lacks legitimacy. The intolerable strain . Nelly is a dear, dear friend,’ insisted that thin voice. ‘So marvellous. So moving as well.’

‘Don’t forget mad.’

And still Tom could not be sure that he had understood what Posner had come there to say. He had the impression, fleeting but forceful, of something waiting close at hand, something that might yet twitch loose and tear up the room.

‘Tom, such wilful misconstruction…’ But Posner broke off, shaking his large head. He studied the ceiling and said, ‘I knew this would be a painful conversation. I put if off for as long as I could. But I’ve known Nelly a long time. Now and then there comes… someone entirely charming.’ He was folding back the tip of the jacket collar, and folding it back again. ‘Someone who overcomes Nelly’s resolution to avoid excitement. And then-’ Posner let the leather spring free under his fi ngers.

‘There are so many aspects to Nelly.’ A white hand lifted, fluttered. ‘There’s a painting by Cézanne: Les Grandes Baigneuses . In the old days I’d go to Philadelphia just to look at it. It’s always reminded me of Nelly. Something about the way the figures melt into and out of each other, so that your perception of them keeps shifting. But out of that flurry of muffl ing and displacement, what emerges is singularity. Oh, it’s brilliant, utterly brilliant,’ said Posner severely, as if the point were in dispute. ‘Also unsettling. And sad.’