Michelle Kretser - The Lost Dog

‘It was mostly dark. And just to get to the beach and away.’

She spoke hurriedly; Tom realised she was impatient for him to continue. He rearranged blue pleats, the better to observe her.

‘Jimmy Morgan thought the woman he saw was carrying a bag.’ Nelly said, ‘Felix could’ve had other stuff in there, clothes that fi tted him.’

‘It sounds-I don’t know, incredible. Not to mention risky.’

‘He didn’t have a lot of time to plan it. And he was good at risks.’

While she was speaking the flame in the red glass dipped and died, and a great wing of shadow reared against the wall.

In the blind dark Nelly said, ‘It would explain why he’s never been found.’

She said, ‘He might have gone on doing it. Cross-dressing, I mean.’

Tom was conscious of her body’s heat, of her quick blood under his fingers. At the same time, she seemed mechanical in a way he hadn’t noticed the previous night; a pulse jumping at a stroked wrist suggested not so much life as animation. He had created this staccato but it was not susceptible to rule.

Afterwards, it would occur to him that her narrative too might have soared beyond control. Replaying the scene, listening yet again to the increasing urgency of Nelly’s whisper, he would ask himself whether her tale was only a by-product of bodily imperative, a device for ensuring his interest and her consummation.

Even at the time, as his sight adjusted itself to the dark, he was aware of her possession by an antique demon. He watched her gaze turn glassy and inward, and thought, She’ll say anything now.

When she spoke, it was Tom who shivered. ‘A child would be more frightened of a man.’

It was his mobile that woke him the second time. He traced it to

the kitchen table; answered it standing naked in radiant light.

‘It’s joy.’

It chimed, for a moment, like magic; like a message from the universe. ‘Yes!’ he cried. Thinking, Such joy!

‘I gave out your flyers to our drivers.’

‘Oh- Joy .’

She said, ‘Sorry I haven’t got any news’; and Tom recalled, vividly, her grave, well-mannered air. ‘I was just hoping he might’ve turned up? So I thought I’d give you a call.’

He was still smiling when he carried the dish of oats into the laundry. The dog’s tail beat in his basket. He lifted his head to quiver his nostrils about the man’s hand.

Tom said, ‘What went on out there, eh? What a story you could tell.’ The animal’s coat was dry under his fi ngers, leached of its natural oils.

Having bolted his food, the dog scratched at the back door. Tom left it open. Sunlight and the scent of mock orange blossom from the bush by the gulley trap poured into the laundry. It was a perfect day.

In the shower, there was the bliss of massaging shampoo into his scalp. The sun slipped under a cloud and the frosted shower screen turned into a miniature alpine landscape under a dull sky. Then the sun came out again and touched the small glass peaks with gold.

He was thinking about what Nelly had said; picturing Felix Atwood assuming femininity with a dress. It was possible, of course. But above all it was fantastic. In the bright light of day, it was the extravagance of Nelly’s conjecture that prevailed. Tom, turning his face up to steamy water, thought, She can’t really believe that stuff! And following the path that was opening before him, he found he had arrived at the theatrical.

The recent cabaret in his bedroom, with its drapery and candle

light, now struck him as supremely contrived.

But why?

It took shape all at once, as infused with design as a fl ower. From the press of motives that might have inspired Nelly, one sprang vigorously forth. Tom made himself consider it, the better to thrust it from him; but that only strengthened its hold. It carried the conviction of a thing half known and dreaded, and seen for the fi rst time.

He stepped out onto the bath mat and into a cube of vaporous light: a man strung with breaking beads of water. Posner’s visit came back to him in a new guise, his hints masking a confession Tom had not allowed himself to unveil. He remembered the dealer’s eyes, levelled at him like a gun. Posner knew what had happened to Atwood; Tom was sure of it. There had been something else in the room when Posner had called on him that night, something invisible and potent. Something Tom hadn’t wished to hear and so willed Posner to leave unsaid. A tiny noise burst from him-if only he hadn’t missed it!

At once the whole edifice collapsed like a pricked bubble. It was air and absurdity. It was contested at every turn by his sense of the woman in his bed; by all that was intangible in her makeup, and yet resisted, as if densely material, being modelled into a repulsive form.

And still doubt twisted in Tom’s mind; flashed like a fi sh. Almost, almost he let it go. But the world chose that moment to break in on his hesitations. A laboured breathing close at hand had been growing steadily louder. Now the exhaust fan screamed, shuddered a long moment, and died. Tom fl icked the switch but failed to bring about a resurrection.

The death rattle of that fan: it would turn up in dreams for the rest of his life.

The air in the bathroom was dense with misty wreaths. Tom went to the window and tilted it open. When he turned around, it was to the likeness of an incurably benign face. The next instant the haze thinned and Arthur was gone-if he had ever been present; dispersed like steam, before his son had confronted him, a sweetly ineffectual ghost.

Afterwards, Tom would ask himself if it had not in fact been a form of counsel: the silent advocacy of kindness that asked nothing in return. But at the time, in that scented room, he was seized by a live impatience. What he required was resolution, not the ambiguity of visions.

The mutiny of the fan played its part in what followed. As things do, needling us with the fickleness of our inventions, provoking displays of mastery.

The draft from the window was feathering Tom’s damp skin. He drew his towel close.

In his bedroom he raised the blind by fractions, so that light

crawled across the fl oor.

She didn’t stir.

He bent over her.

Nelly’s eyes flipped open, and what they held was alarm. Then she smiled, and said, ‘Hi.’

He was thinking, I can’t start-

She said, ‘What’s wrong?’

He sat on the bed.

‘ What ?’

‘Just-oh, you know, that stuff about Felix, what you said before, it’s sort of hard to credit.’

She half sat up. There was a small, faintly shiny smear where something had dried near her mouth.

She went on looking at Tom, who said in a rush,‘If that was you Morgan saw on the beach, if you were there, you have to say. Whatever it was, whatever happened. I’d understand. But I need to know.’

The bedspread had long since returned to the fl oor. After a moment, Nelly pushed back the sheet under which she lay, one leg folded at the knee. For a long minute she displayed herself to him. Her throat was fibrous, her breasts lolled. There were creases on her thighs, a silver filament of scar tissue below her navel, a roll of flesh at her waist. She was one of Balthus’s flagrant little models grown into imperfection. She was a timeless, female arrangement of ovals and planes, of triangles and moulded curves.

What Tom desired was a different clarity. Nevertheless, the luminous sight of her, falling across the question in his mind, somewhat altered it. He heard himself saying, ‘Swear it. Please. Swear by Rory that you had nothing to do with helping his father that night.’

Like most triteness, it was fed by genuine emotion. So he was unprepared for what came next.