A Charm of Powerful Trouble Read online

  Emma had long had a memory of arriving in a big house in the dead of night. It must have been her father's arms then, that had cradled her in the walk down a long hallway, and up the stairs to bed.

  Em peeled a freckled pear and cut it into slices, offering a piece to Emma. It was cold and delicious; the juice ran down Emma's arm and she wiped it away. Em ate the pear elegantly, slicing pieces from it until all that was left was a moist, square core. ‘I hope you'll find enough to do,’ said Em. ‘There's Flora, of course, who lives practically next door. She'll be company for you.’ Her voice was high and strange, an old lady's voice.

  ‘I'm sure I'll find enough to do,’ Emma told her, smiling down at the table. She heard her own voice, smug and fat with youth. ‘I've brought some books, and my drawing things. Anyway, I enjoy a bit of solitude.’ She pursed her lips and heard how dreadfully, falsely, grown-up she sounded.

  ‘Your mother said you were interested in drawing. What do you like to draw?’ Without waiting for an answer she added, ‘You look awfully thin, dear, I think I'll make some toast.’ Em got up and stoked the embers of the wood fire into life and cut two thick slices of bread from a white loaf.

  ‘Oh, I draw anything,’ Emma told her. ‘People, mostly. I'd like to draw you,’ she said recklessly, and Em laughed, delighted. ‘I'm no oil painting,’ she said.

  The toast was deliciously charred. Emma ate it and smiled at Em, who smiled back. Emma observed frankly her aunt's fine, long face and blue eyes. Her white hair was piled untidily on top of her head. They sat there eating toast and smiling and emanating goodwill for some time.

  In the afternoon Em went to have what she called ‘a bit of a lie-down'. She didn't close the bedroom door and Emma, prowling past on her way through the house, glimpsed her lying neatly and sparely on her bed like a package.

  Emma had the house to herself.

  She went to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator to see if there was anything interesting to eat (there wasn't), and drank a glass of water at the sink, tipping the warmish liquid down her throat with her hand on the tap, her head tilted back and eyes closed. Out in the hallway again she paused, saw a door that was slightly ajar, pushed it right open and stepped inside.

  The room was shadowy. It was like being underneath the sea. Heavy red velvet curtains shut out the afternoon sunlight. Only a slit shone between them, but it was intense light from a world that promised solidity. Emma moved the curtains apart a little to let that world in.

  Two stiff old armchairs with a design of brown leaves flattened their shoulders to the wall. Between them was a long dark sideboard, gloomy and malevolent-looking. A patterned carpet, so thin it appeared to have grown embedded into the floorboards, filled the centre of the room. The only pretty thing was a glass-fronted cabinet full of china.

  Emma closed her eyes and took a breath. She moved without thinking to the curtains and buried her face in them to see if they smelled of redness; she expected them to be luscious, like a ripe plum, but all she got for her trouble was a nose full of dust and mould.

  She slid open a drawer of the sideboard and saw a tumble of old letters and photographs. She didn't leaf through them, though she was tempted to. She quickly eased the drawer shut again and it made a sound that caused her to hold her breath.

  On top of the sideboard was a collection of framed photographs, their glass frosted with dust. Emma saw a photograph they had a copy of at home, of her father when he was small, standing sturdily under a tree in short pants and a jacket. His long socks were in the process of working their way down his legs. Emma had often gazed secretly at this picture of him, talung it out from the collection of photos her mother kept in a biscuit tin. She longed to know more about him, but her mother had hardly ever spoken of him to Beth and Emma.

  He'd been a botanist, lost when he went out alone (as he often did) on a plant-hunting expedition in the Blue Mountains. He was never found; it was as if he simply stepped into the wilderness and it swallowed him up without a trace. Emma's mother kept a photograph of him in his bushwalking gear - khaki shorts and shirt and sturdy walking boots - on the mantelpiece.

  Dressed like that he had walked out of their lives.

  Emma tore herself away from the photograph of her father and picked up another one. It was a picture of a little girl of about eight with a woman who must be her mother. Emma rubbed her hand across the glass. The dust that coated its surface smeared, so she put her tongue to the glass and licked it. It was cool and thick-tasting. Emma wiped the dust from her tongue and licked again.

  They wore clothes from another century, but the child looked as real and as childlike as any child today. Emma knew at once that it was Em. She had a beautiful long face and dreamy eyes. She leaned her head against her mother's breast, and their relation to each other was so tender and private and loving that Emma replaced the picture and tiptoed from the room.

  Life with Em in that great old house turned out to be quite unlike Emma's life with her mother and Beth. Home was a very cosy, ordinary, suburban, female nest. Emma's days were filled with the tedium of school and the predictability of watching television at night while her mother knitted, tired after her day in the office. Without a man to feed they often didn't bother with a proper meal, ate macaroni cheese from trays on their laps in front of the television, and afterwards Emma and Beth argued about whose turn it was to wash up. It was secure and safe and dull. Even though she hadn't yet even been able to articulate the desire to herself, it was a life Emma longed to escape from. Here at Em's she was beginning to see she could be someone else. There was time to dream and wander about alone.

  One day she woke early, and went barefoot down the chequered hallway in the wake of Em's cat, a slender half-grown kitten with cloudy dark fur. She watched as it wound its questing way out to the dew-damp grass. The house stood, proud and ramshackle in its small square of fenced garden. Cows grazed outside the fence; inside was a garden full of unidentifiable trees, of roses and lettuces, red geraniums and tomatoes, all grown tumbled together in innocent profusion.

  Emma put Patrick White and Karl Marx back into her suitcase. She took her sketch pad and went to draw the huge clumps of bamboo that grew near the creek. She tried to capture the smell of the silt and rotting vegetation, drawing the strangeness that she felt.

  Flora turned up for the first time since Emma's arrival just as Emma had begun to make a sketch of Em, who was sitting upright and calm, looking out at the garden with her cat on her lap.

  ‘I hope we're not disturbing you,’ said Flora, ‘but Stella's been pestering me to visit ever since you got here.’

  Stella looked with interest at what Emma was doing and said, ‘I want to draw, too.’ Stella was a slender, eager child, long-limbed and swift; she didn't walk, she darted.

  Emma tore a page from her pad and gave it to her with a couple of pencils. Flora went to make tea, and afterwards, while she and Em sat there drinking it, Emma glanced furtively at Flora and indulged the desire she'd had on that first day to draw her legs. She used a few brisk strokes, practising the curve of the calf again and again. She intended one day to draw all of Flora, who had a heavy mass of blonde hair like a thick curtain that covered her behind when she stood up, and a dreamy, voluptuous face.

  ‘What are you drawing? Show me!’ demanded Stella, craning her neck to see what Emma had done.

  ‘Legs,’ said Emma. She smiled to herself.

  ‘Whose?’ demanded Stella. ‘Whose legs? And, anyway, they aren't part of anyone, they're just legs.’

  Emma went to visit Flora. Em directed her to the house, which was just across the paddock - spitting distance, Em said. As Emma appeared in the yard, a wave of half-grown chickens rushed towards her in a happy, welcoming throng. Everywhere she looked there were chooks. They nested in an open shed near the house, some were locked in pens, and others wandered about the yard and the verandah. There were chook droppings everywhere, and the damp yard stank in the humid, festering morning after rain. The cho
oks were Flora's livelihood. She sold some for meat, and she sold the eggs.

  Inside the house there were containers of eggs everywhere, and the smell of chicken blood was pervasive. Stella sat at the kitchen table chewing on a raw carrot. She put it down and Emma could see her little teeth marks clearly, as though a rat had gnawed at it. Then Stella picked up a raw cob of corn and chewed at that, too, keeping her eyes on Emma all the while. She put the cob of corn down, stuck her tongue out at Emma, and ran outside.

  Emma stood and rolled an egg around in the palms of her hands. She put it to her nose; it had an animal, earthy smell. ‘You can scrape the shit off them for me if you like!’ said Flora, coming through the kitchen with a basket of washing. She wore work boots and shorts today, her hair pulled off her face in a glossy ponytail. Emma had only ever seen her when she went out, dressed neatly in a miniskirt, her hair flowing down her back.

  Flora's place had the feeling that life was being lived there in exactly the way that she chose. Emma was shocked that she left packets of tampons lying around on the mantelpiece for any casual visitor to see. Later, she simply didn't see the chook droppings on the chairs on the verandah, or the squalor of the house. She saw, though, that an appearance of order could be made out of chaos with the judicious use of an iron before you went out, or a damp washer on a child's face.

  Emma loved Flora's clothes. As well as miniskirts and suede boots that came right up to her knees, she had a collection of old clothes that she slipped on from time to time to amuse herself, like a child dressing up. Emma particularly loved an old rose-red shawl with black hibiscus flowers embroidered on it, which Flora flung over her shoulders at the slightest hint of chill in the evening air, giving herself a sultry backwards glance in the mirror. She had a lush black velvet coat that came almost to the floor, and it was so dense and lustrous it was like the pelt of an animal. Flora mourned the fact that the climate was too hot to wear this coat often, but she pulled it on occasionally, and in this coat she appeared to Emma as momentarily dangerous. Flora's clothes were like other skins. In them, she became another person.

  One morning, late, Emma arrived to find Flora still in bed, and a young man, bare-chested, wandering around the kitchen making coffee. He brought a cup into the bedroom for Flora. ‘Would you like some coffee?’ he asked Emma, inclining his head towards her as he bent over the bed.

  ‘No thank you,’ she said promptly, though she was almost speechless at his proximity She was perched on the end of the bed, where Flora had motioned for her to sit. Flora had pulled the sheet up to her neck but Emma could see she was naked underneath. Flora smiled at Emma's confusion and sipped her coffee.

  ‘Emma, this is Frank. Frank, Emma.’

  Frank nodded at her and smiled. He had dark skin, and eyes that flashed when he looked at you, and glossy black hair to his shoulders. His chest was firm and muscled, glistening as if burnished. He could have been Greek, or Italian, Emma thought, though he had no accent. She had no experience of people from other places.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, after a few sips of coffee, ‘I'd better get going.’ He squeezed Flora on the thigh through the bedclothes and left the room. Emma could hear him laughing with Stella as he made his way out of the house; his laughter was long and loud and without restraint, punctuated by Stella's high-pitched giggles.

  When the house was quiet again, it seemed to echo with his absence. Flora reached down and plucked a red silk kimono from the floor. Emma tactfully averted her head while she put it on, though she knew Flora wouldn't have minded if she hadn't.

  She had brought her drawing things, and she sketched Flora lounging on her bed smoking a cigarette. She took a lot of care with the detail of the embroidered flowers on the front of the kimono, but was too shy to include the curve of Flora's breast which was just visible at the opening in the front, a curve that she knew she'd find even more challenging than that of her legs.

  Emma's deep natural reserve struggled against curiosity and the thrill of an encounter with a handsome young man without his shirt in a woman's bedroom. She said, as casually as she could, ‘Are you in love with him?’

  Flora hugged her knees to her chest and laughed. ‘Love?’ she said, and kept laughing as if it was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I'm not in love, though I love some things about him.’

  Emma was ashamed of the way her voice had cracked when she'd asked. She kept her eyes on her page, glancing up at Flora from time to time as she worked. The room was silent, but for the sound of Emma's crayon moving swiftly across the paper.

  Though she hadn't admitted it to herself, Emma was intoxicated by Frank, by his gleaming muscled back and narrow hips, his smile, and especially his laugh; the way he looked at women as if he could consider eating them up. The indefinable but unmistakable smell of sex.

  Queen of Swords

  SO THERE were Stella and Paris, intruding on our summer holidays, filling up the house and taking our mother's attention and wandering endlessly in the garden. I was amazed how two people could fill so much space and be everywhere at once.

  Late in the afternoon, with the light seeping through the trees and into the darkened living room, Paris caught me looking at her. She turned her head slowly on her slender neck and then looked away again.

  I escaped to Lizzie's room. ‘When are they going to go home?’ I asked her, even though they'd only just arrived.

  Lizzie shrugged. She took very little notice of the visitors, and avoided them by going off to the shed where she could practise the guitar in peace, putting the amp up until there was a satisfying amount of feedback.

  Paris found plenty to interest her on that long summer holiday she spent with us. She took Chloe into the hills where they wandered on narrow paths made by cattle. They found a dead steer, black with flies. Chloe told me about it. ‘Paris poked it with a stick - poked it in the bum where all the maggots were.’

  They found a rotten wallaby carcass that had been gnawed by wild dogs. Paris managed to detach the head, and took it back to the kitchen where, unobserved by anyone but Chloe (hands over her mouth to suppress the giggles), she boiled it up to clean the meat from the bone. The stench brought everyone to the kitchen, exclaiming loudly. Paris told Emma she wanted to have a clean wallaby skull to take home with her, but Emma took the pot a long way from the house and tipped it out. ‘I think we'll let the ants do the rest,’ she told Paris.

  Paris, with her cool, appraising eyes, noted a pleasing side effect of what she'd done: Emma was annoyed with her.

  Later, when she and Chloe were helping Lizzie with the dishes, Paris deliberately dropped a dinner plate on the floor while Lizzie was bent over the sink. Lizzie turned immediately at the crash, her plait swingng behind her. ‘Stand back!’ she ordered, her arms held out to the sides to ward people away. Everything Lizzie did was done with solemn intent, and every shard of crockery and sliver of glaze was swept dutifully into the dustpan.

  With Lizzie back at the sink again, Paris took another plate and held it in the air. She motioned to Chloe to do the same, and the plates crashed to the floor at the same time.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Paris. ‘It was an accident.’

  Lizzie began scornfully to sweep up the pieces of broken plate. ‘It has to be done properly,’ she said, when Paris insincerely offered to help. ‘I don't care,’ said Paris under her breath, but Chloe felt Lizzie's silent wrath acutely.

  ‘We'd better behave ourselves,’ whispered Chloe.

  ‘Not me!’ said Paris.

  Chloe giggled, and they ran to their room, where Chloe collapsed onto the bed hugging herself with delight. She'd found that it was much more interesting to be bad than to be good.

  One day Claudio and Stella talked in the dining room for hours after lunch was over. Claudio had stayed behind to sort out some papers. My mother had disappeared to her studio and I thought Stella had gone into the garden for a cigarette. But she had come back and sat down next to him, not right beside him, but with
a dining chair between them like a barricade.

  Claudio leaned forward across the chair. He talked, holding Stella to him with his eyes. I didn't even try to make out what he was saymg. But I watched him.

  He bunched his fingers together as he made a point, then opened them again and waved his hand around in a loose arc; he said something that made her laugh; he laughed too, and closed his eyes with a look of bliss.They simultaneously grasped the back of the chair, their hands only centimetres apart.

  I walked past and saw my father cast his eyes to the ceiling, a look of intoxication on his face, before he launched into another story.

  I crept to Lizzie's room, hoping for an ally, and solace.

  ‘I don't like the way she looks at Claudio.’ I whispered it, not because anyone could overhear, but because it was something I'd not even thought properly before, let alone said out loud.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Stella.’

  ‘They're flirting with each other,’ she said, her mouth turned downwards with disgust.

  Flirting.

  I knew instinctively the meaning of this new word.

  ‘Mum hates it.’ Lizzie's face was impassive. She had taken to calling our mother ‘Mum’ instead of ‘Emma'. Lizzie picked up her guitar and started to strum it, listening to its resonances with one ear inclined towards it.

  I prowled through the dining area one more time. Claudio and Stella were sitting upright now, their elbows on the table. The dining chair stood between them.

  It pleases Paris to see the snake. It is thin, black with a red belly, and pours itself down a crevice in a rock wall when she surprises it sunning itself on a path.

  Paris watches it disappear. ‘Like quicksilver', she whispers. Paris has never seen quicksilver, and isn't even sure what it is, but she is a reading child and the phrase comes immediately to her mind. Seconds later the snake reappears, making its way lightly across the top of the ferns that sprout from the gaps in the rocks. Its tongue flicks in and out. Paris and the snake watch each other with bright eyes.