Trust (46 page)

‘So cute. Just over here, Suzita, the place that’s all lit up.’ Susanna pulled over and Vinnie collected her things from the back seat, including a long tube wrapped in gold paper.

‘Have a great party,’ Susanna called, admiring Vinnie’s dramatic appearance as she sauntered off: her floppy red pants and a piece of green fabric from somewhere exotic tossed insouciantly around her shoulders, her black hair lifting in the cold breeze.

‘Count on that!’ Vinnie called back, turning around to wave goodbye with her gold tube. It caught the party lights with a flash of brilliance.
The Pirate Queen
, Susanna thought, imagining her friend leaping between the decks of two sailing ships, brandishing her cutlass above her head, urging her trusty band onward with wild yells and her gap-toothed grin.
That’s how I’ll paint her
.
A fantasy portrait, the essence of our Vinnie
. For the remainder of the drive to the Visser Kanaley office, just a few minutes, Susanna’s mind battened down the vivid image. It would be a big painting, almost life-size. A full-length portrait, bursting with Vinnie’s
joie de vivre
.

This could be part of your next exhibition
, a voice whispered in her head as she pulled up.
Portraits, of a different kind.
She felt goosebumps rise all up and down her arms.

Hold that thought
, she told herself as she slipped the pompom flats into her bag and changed into the high heels, teetering momentarily on the kerb. Tricky things, heels, when you’re not used to them. She put one hand on the roof of the car to steady herself, then clomped off cautiously down the footpath.

Dinner, just the two of them, at the recently anointed most fashionable restaurant in town. Susanna recognised an olive branch when she was offered one. Gerry had been the image of genial bonhomie at her exhibition opening, but had slumped afterward into brittle moodiness. Once, she would have done everything to jolly him out of it; now, she just let him be. But when he told her he’d made a booking at Circumflex, she’d been happily surprised. Under her slinky dress, she was wearing the Italian lingerie he’d bought her. Who knew what the night might bring?

The very first thing she saw once she’d heaved open Visser Kanaley’s big metal front door was the article, clipped from the arts pages of that morning’s national paper and pinned up smack in the middle of the vestibule noticeboard. She was a little surprised. Gerry hadn’t rung her to comment; she didn’t even know for sure, till then, that he’d read it. The interview, done on the phone, had been good: intelligent questions, which she felt she’d answered well. The paper had also sent a photographer to Studio Lulu, a guy with two impressive cameras who’d taken what seemed like hundreds of shots over two fastidious hours. She’d assumed they would be good, too, but on opening the paper this morning, she’d been chagrined to see that the photo they’d chosen was – well, terrible. Disappointing, but Susanna recognised that she had only herself to blame. The
Arts Week
people had given her full TV make-up, but left to her own devices for the newspaper shot, she hadn’t bothered with more than her usual smear of lipstick.
And at my age, the camera is just not that forgiving.

Ah, well.
Susanna walked past the noticeboard, placing each foot carefully, wondering how on earth other women managed to walk gracefully in high heels. Marcus was waving to her from the fishbowl office at the far end of the huge space, and Gerry was standing there too, watching her advance. She tried to saunter, but without notable success.

‘Susanna, my precious,
precious
girl,’ said Marcus, putting down his empty beer and kissing her on both cheeks. ‘Tell me, how does it feel to be a famous
artiste
?’

‘Oh, I daresay I’ll get used to it, eventually,’ Susanna said with a giggle. She quite liked it when Marcus gushed.

‘Oh, yes. Yes, yes,
yes
! And the opening was
fab
ulous. Red stickers, did I not see
many
red stickers?’

‘Some, as you know’ she allowed, smiling. ‘And a big thank you to you and John. I was so touched that you bought one of my little paintings.’

‘But of
course
we did.’

‘Cleansing ale, Suze?’ asked Gerry over his shoulder, wrenching a stubbie of Coopers from its cardboard carry-pack. ‘We were just having an end-of-week catch-up.’

‘But now we’re done,’ said Marcus quickly. ‘All catched up.’

Susanna waved the beer aside. ‘No, thanks, not for me. I’ll save it for the restaurant.’ A quick scan of the empties suggested that this would be Gerry’s third beer; she rather wished he’d waited to clink fizzing champagne flutes with her.

‘Oh, the restaurant!’ said Marcus, tapping her forearm. ‘You’ve never been to Circumflex? You’ll
love
it, believe me. And do
not
forget to have the lemon madeleines at the end – they are sublime. Proust would have wept.’

‘I’ll be sure and leave room,’ Susanna promised, as a flash of intuition whispered that it was Marcus who was responsible for this occasion. He was the one who’d told Gerry he must take her somewhere special, who’d suggested the restaurant and even, possibly, made the booking. That’s why he was hamming it up so much.

‘I must go, before John starts calling me in a frenzy. Here’s to your glamorous night.’ Marcus kissed her again on both cheeks. ‘Susanna, you look
gor
geous. You must wear heels, always!’

‘Gorgeous,’ Gerry murmured, and chuckled briefly.

‘Bye-bye, Marcus,’ said Susanna. ‘Thank you!’ They twinkled their fingers at each other as he left.

‘You saw the clipping on the noticeboard?’ Gerry asked her the minute they were alone.

‘I did,’ she said. ‘Thanks for putting it up. I’ve already read it though.’ He must know she would’ve read it. She looked at her watch. ‘We should go soon.’

‘Plenty of time. Oh, boy,’ he said, taking another swig of his beer, ‘as soon as we saw that photo we said, Susanna’s gonna hate that.’

‘The interview came out well,’ she said, prickled.

‘Not bad, but that photo. What a shocker!’ Gerry shook his head. ‘And in the national newspaper, too.’

‘Lucky I looked good on national television, then, isn’t it?’ she returned tartly. ‘Anyway, I’m not up for Miss Australia. At least, I didn’t
think
I was.’

‘Hey,’ he said, opening his hands wide. ‘No need to get upset about it. Just a shame, ’cause everyone looks at the pictures, they never read the text.’

‘Gerry, could you not keep going on about that photo, please?’

‘
Huh?
There was a photo. I mentioned it. One little photo – are you really that vain?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Actually, I’m not vain. I think it’s
you
who’d be pissed off if you had a photo like that in the paper.’ They stared at each other challengingly. ‘How about we go and have dinner?’ she said. ‘I’ve been looking forward to it, you know.’

‘Yeah, okay,’ he agreed sulkily, taking one more swallow of beer and leaving the bottle on the table.

Susanna drove. They were both quiet, but once they got to the restaurant and had the attention of the staff, the glances of other patrons all curious to see who else had the taste and money to dine at Circumflex, Gerry’s mood picked up. She asked him about his latest projects, in detail, feeding their conversation.

Not long after their main course arrived, Gerry asked her if the purchasers of her mother’s unit had settled yet. Susanna’s heart sank.
Oh no. Not now. But – I have to tell him.
She took a breath and screwed her courage to the sticking place. ‘They have, yes,’ she said. ‘About a week ago, actually.’

He looked more puzzled than angry. ‘You didn’t tell me?’

She shook her head.

‘So, why isn’t the money in our account?’

‘Because – I’ve opened a new account.’
This is terrible. I should have talked to him about this before, of course I should
. But she hadn’t. She’d been too … scared. ‘I thought I’d – because I – I haven’t, ah, decided what to do with it.’ She swallowed. ‘The money.’

Gerry’s face had gone very still. ‘We’ve already decided what we’re doing with it,’ he said. ‘We’re extending the house, doing the renovations. Like we’ve always planned.’

‘I don’t want to extend the house,’ she said. ‘We don’t need to, Gerry.’

‘Is that so?’ he asked in a low voice.

‘Yes. The kids are growing up, they’ll be wanting to move out on their own soon. Things are changing. I have my own studio now.’

‘Things are changing, are they? What things, Susanna? Precisely?’

‘My work,’ Susanna said steadily, forcing her guilty feelings aside. They locked eyes. ‘I want to paint, and use some of Mum’s money to help me do that. It’s my inheritance,’ she finished defensively. She wished she’d done this differently, but it was too late now.

Gerry broke their gaze abruptly and didn’t look at her for a good couple of minutes. He ate his meal with steely determination and then rested his cutlery deliberately on his plate. ‘Get real, Susanna. You’ve had a lucky break with one show at a council gallery, and on the strength of that you think you can be a full-time artist?’

‘Not full-time, I didn’t say that.’ Her heart was hammering. ‘I’ll keep working part-time at the college. But I
am
going to paint. I think that’s what Mum would’ve wanted me to do with that money.’

‘What complete and utter bullshit!’ he exploded. At nearby tables, heads turned curiously. ‘Your mother would have wanted you to treat that money as
ours
, and spend it on your family.’

She stared at her half-eaten meal, amazed that she had somehow managed to get this far through it, though she couldn’t remember tasting a thing. ‘No, I don’t think that’s true. I believe my mother wanted me to —’ she swallowed hard ‘— to do what I’m going to do. Paint. Draw.’

Gerry’s face was so hard with anger, he no longer looked handsome. ‘I don’t know what’s happened to you,’ he snarled, and pushed his plate away. ‘You’ve turned into someone I don’t know – some unreasonable, selfish bitch.’ He pushed his chair back dramatically from the table and stood up. ‘Call me when you’ve come to your senses.’

Susanna was still holding her cutlery. ‘If you walk out of here now, Gerry,’ she said quietly, ‘I really don’t know how we’ll be able to put things back together.’

‘Well, that’s your problem, isn’t it?’ he said, and walked out.

It was like one part of her was watching another, or, rather, New Susanna, who was seated and still, was watching in her head a movie of what Old Susanna would have done. Old Susanna would never have let things come to such a pass, and if they had, she would have blamed herself for having so provoked her husband. Old Susanna, walked out on like this in a fancy restaurant, would have run after him, rent by guilt and humiliation, apologising, abject.

New Susanna did not.

Though her face was flaming, she calmly asked the waiter – who had not, bless him, hovered, but was there the moment she looked around for him – to clear both plates, and Gerry’s place entirely. She asked him to bring her some tea, and also, if he would be so kind, some sheets of blank paper.

Once she’d finished the first sketch, she wrote
The Pirate Queen
in an unfurling banner at the top, and put that sheet aside.

On to the next. Stella-Jean: a multi-armed industrious goddess, with each hand busy making something different and clever and charming. And all around her, flowers, thick with bees collecting all the pollen. Golden pollen, powdering their little stripey legs.

A feeling rose deep inside Susanna, like a creature stirring, stretching: a quiet sensation, but thrillingly expansive.

Angie, as a pilgrim, a beautiful pilgrim with her cloak and her staff, setting out on the path. Susanna scrawled a note beside the drawing:
research pilgrim symbols/myths
. And on that path you can see rocks ahead, and a bridge, and a soft valley, and in the distance, mountains … Her road leads on further than the eye can see.

She remembered what Marcus had said about the lemon madeleines, and looked around again for the waiter. It was the first time she’d looked up since she started to draw. The madeleines were indeed delicious.

Her mother: whatever else was in Jean Greenfield’s portrait, the background would be a page of shorthand, like giant faint calligraphy. Those few people who were able to read it would know that these were words of deep self-examination, and of forgiveness.

Seb: the sun would be in there. The red-gold sun of his lover’s hair, the shining sun of his own sweet nature and delight.

And Gerry? Her – husband? Susanna smiled. A peacock, perhaps? Or one of his own works in progress: an interstice, awaiting connection.

Susanna paid the considerable bill with her own credit card. At some stage, she had kicked her high heels off under the table; now she took the ballet flats with their dear little silly bunny-tail pompoms from her bag, and slipped them on.

Alone, holding her new drawings in one hand, Susanna walked a course that just last year would have seemed impossible. A few diners watched her go; she smiled at them. Once, there had been a chasm facing her, and the person she might be on the other side of it was unimaginable. She had stepped from the brink, she was treading the ether; she was almost there. She could not quite see what awaited her, but it beckoned her on.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It’s a privilege to acknowledge the unflagging support I have had from my agent, Fiona Inglis, and from the entire publishing team at Penguin, especially my esteemed editor Belinda Byrne, to whom Tigger owes his tinsel and I owe so much more.

In the US, I have had the backing and friendship of my agent Faye Bender, and editor Denise Roy at Plume.

Over the course of writing this novel, many knowledgeable people kindly answered my questions on subjects ranging from religious faith to shoulder dislocation. The fact that I subsequently played fast and loose with what they told me, subverting it for fictive purposes, is no reflection on the accuracy of their information. My grateful thanks to, among others: Michael Atkinson and Chris Kiral, Allie Buckner, Stuart Crichton, Marina Findlay, Ross Kennedy, Michio McMullen, Max Moon, Felix Pels, Susan Purdy, and the lively girls I met at Church by the Bridge.