Trust (15 page)

‘How come it got turned into a stupid games room? An art studio’s a much better idea.’

‘I agree,’ said Angie. ‘Your mother’s art is
wonderful.
You should’ve kept using that room, Susu.’

‘Oh, but – the kids were getting bigger … They needed … It just …’ Susanna shrugged helplessly. How to explain how selfish it had seemed, having that whole huge room to herself, especially when she’d been finding less and less time for her art? A whole family’s needs for time, space, attention, to balance against her own increasingly spasmodic and unsatisfactory creative efforts. ‘Then I started teaching full-time, at the college …’

‘Well, you’re not going to chuck ’em out this time,’ said Stella-Jean firmly.

‘I won’t, don’t worry. Thank you, Ange,’ Susanna said, giving her sister a kiss on the cheek. ‘I’m so glad you rescued these, way back when.’

Angie glowed. ‘And then finding them again, when I was cleaning out my house for Gabriel.’ This, and so many other marvellous things –
all because of Gabriel
, she thought, her heart swelling with the love she longed to tell of, to sing, to shout from the rooftops
.
But this beautiful thing, this love that was growing between them was a secret treasure, still so new and precious it couldn’t be spoken of – not yet. Not even to each other. But anyone, surely, who saw them singing together with the Faith Rise Band would see, would know, that
something
special was happening. If Susanna saw, she’d know at once what a wonderful man Gabriel was, how he’d transformed Angie’s whole
life
.

Ask her
, urged an inner voice,
ask her now!
‘Susanna —’ she said, and stopped, clasped her hands in ardent supplication, then went on in a rush: ‘Please, come to Faith Rise with us this Christmas!’

Susanna felt a lurch in the pit of her stomach, as though she’d missed a step on a familiar staircase. ‘Faith Rise?’ she stalled. ‘This Christmas?’

‘Yes! It’s going to be so special this year, with Gabriel’s music. If you come on Christmas Eve you could see me singing with the Faith Rise Band. Please! It would mean
so
much to me.’

‘Oh, Ange. Another time, I will. But right now I’m just too busy.’
Oh, don’t be a coward
, Susanna thought.
Tell her.
‘And darling, after that other time I went, I realised I’m really
not
a churchy sort of person.’

For most of her life, Susanna had barely given religion a thought, taking the atheism she’d grown up with for granted. But when Angie first got involved with Faith Rise she’d gone there with her – once. As well as being appalled by the inanity and conservatism of the pastor’s sermon, she’d been baffled by the constant references to sin, and astonished at the young congregation’s joy and gratitude at being miraculously rescued from it.
What sin
? she wanted to ask them. We all have our faults, we all do our best; why this big melodrama about
sin
? And in any case, even when you’ve hurt other people – ‘sinned’ against them – how could believing in one particular version of god make amends? No, the very thought of sitting through all that again made Susanna feel quite itchy.

‘But you
are
,’ said Angie with conviction. ‘You went to all those churches when you were in Europe. You loved them, you told me you loved them.’

‘I loved the
art
,’ Susanna said. ‘I loved all the statues, and the frescoes and paintings. And the beautiful woodwork and the – the
bells
, I love the way they ring the bells there, in Europe,’ she ended, a little desperately, holding her hands up and swinging them to and fro.

‘Susu, I’m not trying to convert you, I’m not asking you to accept Jesus as your saviour,’ Angie said, and then gave a little nervous giggle. ‘Not yet, anyway. I just want you to share the joy!’

‘I’ll go,’ said Stella-Jean.

The sisters’ faces both swung toward her, mouths agape. ‘
You
will?’ said her mother, and ‘You
will
?’ said her aunt, at the same moment. Finn was staring at her too, but said nothing.

‘Christmas Eve? Yeah, I’ll go.’

Angie clapped her hands. ‘That’s
wonderful
, Stella!’

Finn dropped his face as quickly as he’d raised it, hunching over the paper again and colouring over the same spot so hard his texta tore a hole in the paper. ‘
Psst
,’ Stella-Jean hissed, wanting to give him a reassuring wink, but he wouldn’t look at her.

‘And then,’ said Susanna, inspired, ‘perhaps your friend Gabriel might like to join us here for lunch on Christmas Day.’

Now Stella-Jean looked up, aghast, but before she could protest Angie shook her head. ‘That’s so sweet of you, but Pastor Tim and Helen have invited him to share Christmas Day with them, after the early service. Otherwise I’m sure he’d love to. But I’m
so
looking forward to you meeting him properly and
really
getting to know him. Once you do … oh, you’ll see!’

‘Yes, lovely,’ Susanna smiled, hoping that this awkward and unexpected discussion had been safely got through. She held her right hand to her ear in the telephone gesture. ‘I’ll just find out where Mum is,’ she said, and walked quickly into the living room.

‘Ooh, and I need a bathroom break,’ said Angie. She hesitated, then made a little rush toward Stella-Jean and hugged her tightly. ‘You are the
dearest
girl,’ she said. ‘God
bless
you!’ and left the room almost skipping.

Finn was drawing again: a grid of purple squares – his room, repeated – and in each one a thick black L ending in a fat round blob.
That’s Robo-Boy’s arm. And every time Gabriel comes in and says, ‘Say you’re sorry, Finn,’ and, ‘Kneel down, Finn, pray to be good,’ then Robo-Boy will jump out from under the bed and he’ll
roar
so loud and he’ll smash Gabriel to bits with his big strong fist.

‘Finnster.’ Stella-Jean leaned closer to her cousin, who hunched away from her. ‘Hey, Finn. I’m only going to Faith Rise on Christmas Eve so I can check him out. Okay? Not because I wanna hear him sing. It’s like I’m an undercover cop checking out the bad guy. You get what I mean?’

After a few long seconds he looked up, very serious. ‘You know he
is
the bad guy?’ he whispered.

‘I know.’

Finn nodded. ‘Okay, Stella.’

Angie came back into the room with freshly combed hair framing her bright, eager face in soft waves. Susanna’s expression, however, was clouded. ‘Mum’s been at the doctor’s,’ she said. ‘She says it’s nothing important, just took longer than she thought. She’s on her way now.’

‘Oh, fine then,’ said Angie gaily. ‘Susanna, I was just remembering the Christmas when you gave me Silver. That was the most
wonderful
Christmas present I ever had!’

‘Silver?’ Susanna asked as she collected scales and measuring cups and mixing bowls from cupboards and drawers. ‘What silver?’

‘Silver the pony! Remember?’

Stella-Jean dropped her crayon loudly on the table, gobsmacked. ‘Mum gave you a
pony
?’ Even Finn stopped drawing to hear about this.

Angie laughed. ‘Not a
real
pony, Stella! It was a beautiful little silver horse your mum won at the Royal Show. I loved that little horse so much.’

‘You did,’ Susanna smiled. She remembered now the shiny little nickel statuette she’d won on some sideshow. ‘You adored it.’ Night after night, Angie had come in to her room and stroked the pony’s die-cast mane, talked to it, kissed it good night. Susanna had been fond of it too, but her younger sister’s devotion had been impossible to resist. ‘I can still remember your face when you unwrapped it.’

‘I couldn’t believe you’d
given
it to me. You were always so good to me, Susu. A saint!’

‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ Susanna scoffed gently, touched.

‘Have you still got that horsie, Mum?’ asked Finn. He’d begun filling a new sheet with groups of three joined circles: purple, pink, orange; purple, pink, orange. Him, Mum and Stella-Jean; him, Mum and Stella-Jean. That’s how they’d be after Gabriel was gone. Around each group he drew a yellow sun, shining brightly.

Angie shook her head softly. ‘No, I don’t know where Silver is now. Maybe off having adventures with some other little girl. Or boy.’

‘Hi-ho, Silver!’ said Susanna, and they both giggled. ‘Okay, come on, Ange. Time to get on with the Christmas baking.’

Consulting from time to time the recipes propped on the bench beside each cluster of ingredients, the two sisters started weighing and measuring. ‘This is a great tradition,’ Angie enthused as she tipped currants from a cup into a larger bowl. ‘You’ll have to join in, Stella darling, so you can carry it on.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Stella-Jean, who didn’t actually care for Christmas cake, and found shortbread very disappointing. ‘Me and Finn will just do the pudding stir and make our wish. That’s all the tradition we need.’

Jean arrived a few minutes later, apologising for her tardiness, and pecking cheeks, as surprised as Susanna had been when Finn, nudged by his mother, said, ‘Hello, Jeejee.’ She brushed off Susanna’s query about the visit to the doctor, while simultaneously admiring the kids’ growing stack of coloured wrapping paper and taking the apron that was kept just for her from a drawer. ‘Well, well,’ she said, tying it at the back of her neat waist as she advanced on the bench. ‘I see you two girls have been managing things perfectly well without me.’

‘Ah, but
we
still have to check the recipes, Mum,’ said Susanna. ‘You know them off by heart.’

‘Oh dear!’ Jean exclaimed. ‘We’re not letting
Angie
measure the ingredients, are we? Remember the year you thought all the spices were a
table
spoon of each instead of a teaspoon?’ She chuckled. ‘We had to throw the whole pudding out and start again!’

Instantly, Angie’s face changed. ‘That was your writing,’ she said angrily. ‘It
looked
like tablespoon.
Every
body thought it looked like tablespoon.’

‘That wasn’t
my
writing, dear, it was your great-grandma Evans’ writing,’ said Jean, all trace of humour evaporated. ‘And three generations of women had made that recipe, year after year, without making that mistake.’

Susanna and Stella-Jean exchanged a speedy glance, Stella-Jean rolling her eyes up under the lids and miming a sideways topple.

‘I don’t know why you bother with this Christmas paraphernalia anyway,’ said Angie. ‘Puddings and presents! It’s so hypocritical, when you don’t even believe in God, let alone that it’s the birthday of our saviour.’

Susanna made a noise somewhere between a groan and a whimper, but they both ignored her. ‘It was a pagan celebration long before the Christians hijacked it, Angie,’ said Jean crisply. Her face had become crisper too, somehow, the soft, lined skin lifted by her vigorous application of reason, as if argument was a kind of Botox. ‘Solstice feasting goes back a lot further than two thousand years, you know.’

‘Yeah, but the
winter
solstice, Jeejee,’ said Stella-Jean. Argument had never fazed her, either. ‘It’s only because it was the British who colonised Australia that we do the pudding and everything, in the middle of summer.’

‘But none of that
matters
,’ said Angie passionately.

Jean turned toward her, a supercilious comment poised on her lips, and saw that Angie’s face, so merry when she’d arrived, so
pretty
, was now furious and sulky and miserable again: an expression with which Jean was all too familiar.
I did that to her
, she realised, one hand flying momentarily to her mouth.
Exactly what I had promised myself not to do
.
Am I so lacking not just in kindness, but in self-control?

‘Of course,’ she said, gathering herself, with a shudder. ‘Of course. And Angie, to tell the truth, I found Grandma Evans’ writing hard to follow sometimes, too. It’s our being here, making these old recipes together,
that’s
what matters.’

Angie narrowed her eyes suspiciously. ‘Hmph.’ She picked up the measuring cup full of sugar she’d set aside when the argument began. ‘I wish I’d grown up in a
Christian
family,’ she muttered petulantly, as she tipped a stream of white crystals into the mixing bowl.

Susanna looked from one to the other with a wary smile. ‘Is everybody okay now?’ she asked. ‘Can we just make the pudding?’

THIRTEEN

‘Suze! Hey, Suze!’ Gerry swept like a gale in the front door, through the living room, and on to the far end of the kitchen where Susanna sat at the table, head down to a writing pad and surrounded by books and magazines.

‘Hi, darling,’ she said, still scribbling as hard as she could go. Gerry stood across from her on the other side of the table, waiting; by the time she looked up, he was standing with fists theatrically balled on his hip bones, and a pouchy mouth. ‘Sorry,’ she said at once. ‘I just had to get that bit down before I lost it. How was your meeting?’

‘The meeting,’ he said, pulling a chair out from the table and spinning it around to sit, legs akimbo, facing its back, ‘was … in a word …’ She smiled in anticipation, knowing that if he was drawing it out like this, the news must be good. ‘… fucking fantastic!’

‘Hooray!’ Susanna clapped, grinning, aware that Visser Kanaley urgently needed some new work to come in. She was vague on numbers, but knew that some clients had put jobs on hold, and others had cancelled outright. At a dinner just last week Marcus, on the second bottle of wine, had confided to her that he was worried – ‘worried sick’, he’d said, and even Gerry had not rebutted him with his usual confidence. And this morning, ahead of the meeting with a Sydney developer, she’d thought her husband seemed uncharacteristically tense.

‘So, tell me!’ she said, pushing her pad and books aside to show he had her full attention.

‘You’re going to love this, Suze,’ he said. ‘It’s all because of that design I whipped up for the High Plains visitors’ centre. They haven’t even announced the short list yet but this developer’s wife is on the board and she’s
rapt
. A total convert to the Visser vision, and she’s got hubby on side too. The guy’s got three private hospitals in Sydney he wants to extend and upgrade, ASAP, preferably without taking them out of action. Like he says, one thing people
haven’t
stopped doing is getting sick.’ Gerry gave a hoot of triumphant laughter. ‘If we can nail this, there’s a ton of work in the offing. We’re home and hosed.’