Watercolours (14 page)

She stopped at a sideboard to withdraw some wine glasses. Dom took a look at the photographs arranged on top. Nestled among
a glass milk bottle full of white feathers, a yellow teapot with an orange dragon motif and a small dish holding three dead Christmas beetles, shiny as gemstones, was a picture of a fascinatingly young and slim George and Mira on their wedding day, as well as several baby photos of Novi. In one photograph Novi was holding the hand of a tall man with a bushy moustache. Dom stared. It was the man from Novi's drawings, the man in the river.

‘My father, Umberto,' Mira said, seeing his interest.

In the shed earlier, perched on the stool, Dom hadn't been sure how he knew the man in Novi's drawings was dead, but he knew. His heart had kicked over at the sad face of the moustached man and the sinister presence of all those crows, their beady eyes fixed on the floating body below. He'd had to swallow more than once to relieve the sudden constriction in his throat and his eyes had let him down again, filling up with water. After the initial shock had passed he saw that the pictures were more sad than spooky. His heart had gone out to the boy, he was clearly grappling with feelings of loss and confusion. When George appeared at the door to call them up for dinner, Novi slid the last pictures under the pile on the workbench without a word. He looked at Dom and Dom understood: his parents had not seen these. Oblivious, George began showing Dom the clamped pieces of his boat, explaining what remained to be done with the hull and describing his design for the interior. All the while Dom had wondered what sort of parent this man was. Mira, too. What kind of home life produced a child like Novi?

Now, as he took the wine glasses from her hands and carried them out to the table on the back veranda, he felt a sense of foreboding, a dark curiosity as to what the evening had in store for him.

Outside the night was alive with insects. Cicadas chanted and beetles battered the windows. George set down platters of food and a cloud of mosquitoes rose to greet them. Novi flicked a cigarette lighter at some citronella candles in clay dishes; they sputtered and their tangy smoke rose to mingle with the cooling night air. George disappeared for a moment and returned with some long cotton pants and a pair of socks, insisting Dom put them on for extra protection. Then Mira arrived with the roast and they all took their seats.

The meal began noisily with the best pork crackling Dom had ever eaten. They crunched it up with eager fingers and shining lips. Mira piled little prisms of golden potatoes onto his plate, a scoop of fried fennel and onion cooked with vinegar, she explained, and some home-grown green vegetables glistening in seasoned olive oil. The meat itself, infused with garlic and crisp herbs, fell away under his knife. His stomach groaned in pleasure, welcoming the respite from bacon and egg rolls, fish-finger sandwiches and Mavis's punishing casseroles.

As the night went on Dom couldn't hide the response the rest of his body was having to the bike ride. Incrementally, his muscles were tightening as though hooked on a thousand tiny pulleys and he could tell it was going to be a painful and lumbering recovery. Mira noticed him wince a few times. She described some stretches she thought would help. ‘I taught yoga for a while, over at the caravan park, but I had to stop.'

Dom was surprised. She didn't look lithe enough to be the yoga type. ‘What happened?'

She pinched a clove of garlic out of its skin and popped it into her mouth. ‘I suffered from the most spectacular fanny farts.'

‘Mum!'
Novi glared at her in horror.

Dom choked on a piece of potato and George snorted with mirth.

‘What?' she demanded. ‘It's true! It's all right for you lot.'

Novi buried his face in his napkin and shook his head. Mira ignored him and continued. ‘Some of those poses just fill you with air, especially the ones on your back with your legs up.'

Dom struggled to take this information in the matter-of-fact way it was being given. He couldn't look at George because the man was leaking giggles like a punctured air mattress. His wife snapped a napkin at him crossly.

‘I tried to be Buddhist about it, you know, rise above it, accept it as natural and all that. But I simply wasn't enlightened enough.'

She sighed and took a sip of wine. There was a lull at the table. Dom exhaled quietly, relieved to have kept it together. Then she said, ‘You know you can't control a fanny fart like a normal one, don't you, Dom?'

‘
No!
' Novi groaned in despair.

Dom's eyebrows shot up. He shook his head.

‘Very little control,' she said with a grave nod. ‘In the end it was ridiculous! I was a ball of tension worrying whether I was sucking in air and when it would escape. I didn't care myself, but I didn't want to distract the pupils. It wasn't relaxing at all — terrible when you're the one
teaching
relaxation. I do yoga at home, of course, where farts of any kind are acceptable. Aren't they?'

She looked at Novi, who picked desperately at his dinner and refused to answer her. Mira placed a plump, olive-skinned elbow on the table and leaned in.

‘I don't believe in keeping anything
in
that needs to be
out,
' she said sweetly. ‘Everything out, I say, much healthier! But I'd
be happy to take you through the basics sometime if you'd like. Even the breathing is extremely beneficial. Free of charge, of course.'

George gave him an encouraging nod but Dom was certain he would never be able to do yoga in Mira's presence without picturing her fanny. She studied his expression for a moment as though guessing his thoughts. Then she clapped her hands together, threw her head back and laughed.

‘Well, you're going to need
something
after a lunatic bike ride like that!'

 

God, he was full. His stomach was so tight from the seconds and thirds Mira had pressed upon him it felt ready to burst. But when dessert arrived he found he still had some room. The strawberries were home-grown too, tiny but pungent and marinated, Mira told him, in a mixture of balsamic vinegar, sugar and fresh mint and served with a dollop of mascarpone cheese. The combination was such a revelation Dom felt in danger of passing out.

Dessert vanquished, he collapsed back in his chair with a groan. Novi recounted a story about when George had to be taken to hospital because Mira had fed him so much — a story Dom would have previously taken as exaggeration but now believed was completely possible. He watched the boy, smiling and scooping mascarpone out of his bowl with his finger, perfectly at ease. The anxiety that was apparent in him earlier seemed to have vanished. Still, Dom couldn't shake the memory of those pictures. The dead man and the crows lurked at the edges of his thoughts.

For a while they all sat in woozy digestion, nursing their rotund stomachs and gazing contentedly at the garden. In the
stillness the citronella flames stood tall and unwavering. The cicadas had fallen quiet and everything was peaceful. The lawn breathed. Crickets tinkled like tiny bells. Bats flew out of the dark trees to swoop drunkenly over the river and Dom listened to the flutter of their wings and their quiet sonar squeaks. A small grey cat appeared, stalking the perimeter of the garden, pouncing on rustling noises. Novi wandered over to flop down on the grass and twitched a twig for its entertainment. George took the empty bowls to the kitchen and returned with a slim bottle and four small glasses with a single ice cube in each.

‘Tried the local poison yet, Dom?'

‘Mulberry wine?'

‘God no!' Mira shuddered. ‘Stay away from that.'

Dom decided not to mention that he quite liked it. Instead he told them about his neighbours and their habit. Mira was horrified. ‘Jesus! You're not living up at Camelot with all those widows, are you? You'll never get laid hanging out with that lot!' She poked his leg with her bare foot, flashing scarlet toenails. ‘I bet they love you, though.'

Dom looked down with a bashful smile. They
did
love him. Kane was just a bit of fluff.

‘Amaro Cherubini,' George said, pouring a small amount of thick dark liquid into each glass and nodding towards his wife. ‘It's an old recipe from Mira's family. A digestif. Good for the blood, they say.'

Dom took a sip and frowned at the drink's complexity, sweet and herbal. He tried to identify the flavours but could only think of aniseed. He took another sip. Novi came to join them and Mira handed him one of the glasses.

‘Sip it slowly,' she instructed. ‘That's all for you.'

A breeze stirred. The candles guttered, flicking light across their faces. It was Mira's father, George told Dom, who'd established the local wine industry, and the whole operation had begun long ago with an experiment in silk.

‘It was around the time people were looking into grapes and olives and the like, alternatives to wheat and sheep. Some of the migrants from Europe had a silk tradition and there were plenty of others here who were keen to give it a go. At the time there was huge export potential. The silk industry in France and Italy was knocked for six from disease.' George threw up his arms. ‘Louis Pasteur, Dom!'

‘What about him?'

George sat forward. ‘The French government commissioned Pasteur in the 1860s to find a cure for their silkworms, that's how much the industry was hurting. Pasteur wasn't famous then — he'd never even laid eyes on a silkworm! But he went on to develop his system of quarantine by studying them. In the end, all he could do was contain the disease, he couldn't eradicate it. And the native European breeds were more or less wiped out.'

Dom took a sip of liqueur and frowned. He'd never heard any of this.

‘At one point,' George continued, ‘
entire
P&O liners stacked with nothing but silkworm eggs were travelling from Japan to Europe — gives you an idea of the demand, eh?'

Dom found it hard to imagine. ‘When was this?'

George leaped out of his chair, threw himself off the veranda with a grunt and disappeared like a torpedo across the dark lawn.

‘He's getting the box,' Novi explained.

‘I'll put the coffee on,' his mother sighed.

A few minutes later George emerged from the shed with a shabby archive box and plonked it triumphantly in Dom's lap. Dom lifted the lid and began picking through the documents and photographs inside.

George sat down, drained his glass and poured them more Amaro.

‘Around 1876, these ships from Japan were being insured for millions of pounds, the eggs were so valuable. I mean, the Japanese were making more money exporting silkworm eggs than Australia was from digging up gold. No wonder some far-sighted locals like Mira's granddad decided to try for a piece of the action.'

George shook his head and fell back in his chair, overwhelmed by the lost opportunity. Returning from the kitchen, Mira leaned over and rifled through the box on Dom's lap until she found the photograph she wanted.

‘My grandfather. One of the very first silk growers in Morus.' She handed the picture to Dom. In mottled sepia, a middle-aged man sat before a curious exhibit. Dom craned towards the candlelight to see better.

Mira's grandfather had obviously gone to a lot of trouble to prepare for the photo: he was dressed in a dapper-looking three-piece suit complete with tie, fob watch and white pocket handkerchief. His hair, oiled smooth and parted on the side, was lying close to his head like a cap, and his long moustache had been carefully shaped, too. The shot was taken outside; a polished wooden table with turned legs and matching chair had been brought out into the sunlight and the man was seated with one elbow on the table. Covering the table was a white cloth and on top was a big, burry-looking nest of what seemed to be miniature, elongated eggs.

‘Silk cocoons,' Mira said.

Dom peered closer. The man held one cocoon delicately between his finger and thumb while his deep-set eyes gazed directly down the lens of the camera. He was being captured for posterity and he was clearly proud of the fruits of his labour. Dom thought there was something odd about the shot, though. Despite his smart attire and careful grooming the man's dusty work boots were poking out from beneath his trouser cuffs — most likely the only shoes he had. The table's elegant legs rested on bare dirt and in the background a rough timber corner of a house was just visible. These contrasts Dom found interesting.

He saw there was something else at odds with the man, too, something beyond the stiffly placed hands and the selfconscious angle of his head, unaccustomed as he must have been to being photographed. It was his eyes — there was a light radiating from them, a glittering intensity. This man didn't belong to the world of splintered wood and bare dirt and a single pair of shoes. He'd set his sights on a much more splendid future. And the key to this future he held in his fingers: a cocoon, like a nugget of gold, plucked from the weary dust of poverty.

 

It's late and I'm tired. I know the cicadas won't keep me awake tonight. For once I am looking forward to going to sleep. My mother is tucking me into bed and, like every night, I ask for a story.

‘But if I'm gone too long, George will drag out the blueprints and Mr Best will be trapped.'

‘Is he going to ride home in the dark?'

She smooths the sheet over me. ‘One of us will drive him,' she says. ‘We'll put his bike in the back of the ute.'

I'm glad about this. ‘Can I have just one quick story?'

‘About Jack and his glory?'

I groan.

‘Shall I begin it? That's all that's in it!'

She'll give in. She always does.

‘A
real
story, please? Tell me about Pyramus and Thingy.'

‘Pyramus and
Thisbe
— you love the gory ones, don't you?'

She settles down next to me but I don't take up my sketchpad like I usually do. Tonight I just listen.