The Darkening

Suzette nodded — wise decision. She mixed the other ingredients in with the poplar paste. She had woken from her short sleep exhausted and furious with Nicholas, who still hadn’t called. Did he give a rat’s about his nephew? She’d decided to turn her bright indignation into action, and started this healing mix. Now, how was it applied? She seemed to think it was pasted over the heart and bandaged. Or was it on the temples?

‘Pass me that book, sweetie?’ She nodded at her kitchen dresser, its shelves loaded with books on herbs, spells and charms; a book on healing herbs was open on the dresser top.

Quincy skipped over, delivered the book, and skipped back to the shelves. She’d never shown the slightest interest in her mother’s hobby, but today she was perusing the spines with interest.

‘Want me to put on Dora the Explorer?’ asked Suzette.

Quincy pursed her lips and shook her head. She reached up and pulled out an old book. Suzette watched from the corner of one eye as Quincy opened it. She was a good reader for her age, but this book would be full of words she wouldn’t know; it was one of Suzette’s father’s aged volumes: Herbs of Old Europe. It wasn’t surprising that it attracted Quincy’s eye: its fading cover was dotted with stars and mystic symbols, a fantastical image that belied the utilitarian descriptions inside. It was so dull, in fact, that Suzette had never got more than a quarter way through it.

‘Can we have a Pan?’ asked Quincy.

‘I beg your pardon, hon?’

Quincy turned and said, ‘I don’t want an elephant. But can we have a Pan?’

Suzette could see she was holding a scrap of paper in her hand. ‘Show me?’

Quincy brought the scrap over and handed it up to her mother. Suzette wiped her hand on her apron and took it.

It was half of a page torn from a book that looked like it had gone out of print eighty years ago. In the centre of the page was an etching of a satyr under a night sky, rubbing his hands and capering beside nymphs in a water pond. Suzette blinked — he sported a raging erection. Beneath the picture, most of the caption had been torn away, leaving only ‘Pan: Greek god, son of Hermes. .’

‘Can we get one?’ asked Quincy again.

Suzette didn’t answer. In a small patch of yellowing page between the etching and the torn edge were drawn in ballpoint pen: ‘???’ She had no way of knowing, but she was sure the handwriting was her father’s.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said softly.

She folded the paper away and slipped it into her apron pocket. Pan? It must mean nothing, surely; just something that caught his eye and he kept it. But the etching felt so oddly discomfiting. Why did he keep it?

And why did he leave it for us?

‘Why not?’ asked Quincy. ‘They look funny. He’s got no pants!’

‘I don’t think you’d want one, honey biscuit.’ She put on a bright smile. ‘Come on. Let’s put this on your brother.’

24

Tristram Hamilton Boye! Come in here this minute!’

Laine’s eyes flew open.

‘Where is your brother?’ shrieked Mrs Boye. She was in the kitchen, and slammed down a saucepan lid like a cymbal. ‘Your father will be home shortly and the carport has not been swept!’

Laine rolled slowly out of bed. The double ensemble was one of the few new things in the house — a concession to physical comfort she’d been intractable about when the prospect of moving in with Gavin’s mother moved from possible to probable some six months after Mr Boye succumbed to cancer. But now, even the new bed felt tainted. It was an inner-sprung monument to lies, a Petri dish of mendacity she had shared with her faithless husband, and shared now with creeping dreams that flew from light but left harsh scratches and diseased, black feathers. Laine promised herself that, as soon as she could, she would rid herself of this house, this bed, her clothes, her jewellery — everything but the flesh she lived in. She would scrub herself clean and flee to start a new life whose first and only commandment would be: Never let thyself be lied to again.

She sat on the edge of the bed, wondering how much of yesterday — strange yesterday — she had dreamt. The almost ridiculously neat young minister Pritam Anand. The haunted, angry, oddly attractive Nicholas Close. The dead bird. The photographs. A shadowed haberdashery where an ageless woman once kept shop and watched and spun plans. .

And where now a pretty young woman sold health food, she reminded herself.

My dead husband was one of her customers.

That was exactly the kind of coincidence she’d poured scorn on last night. She pulled back her hair and went to face the crazed force that was her mother-in-law.

She tended to Mrs Boye, gently steering her away from unfocused rage to eat, to bathe, to sit while Laine picked up the telephone and sifted through the bones of a diminishing list of potential live-in carers. Two encouraging interviews were set for the afternoon, and Laine felt satisfied enough to shower, dress, and step into the misty drizzle and walk towards Myrtle Street. It was stupid, it was childish, but she needed to see for herself this young woman from whom Gavin — Gavin, of all people, for fuck’s sake — had started buying health food.

The fine rain was cold and held the world closely in a gauzy veil. She tried to avoid the puddles on the footpaths, but her shoes soon squelched and her feet turned icy. A pair of crows huddled on the branches of a tall gum let out a half-hearted protest at her passing. The birds brought back the memory of the miserable dead thing Nicholas Close had placed on the young reverend’s coffee table, its limp wings flopping around that bizarre fist of a head.

Laine had been very proud of herself last night. Nicholas Close had talked about ghosts and magic, and woven a bit of a spell himself. He’d sounded so convincing, so logical, so sad, that she’d found herself wanting to believe him. But testing prods at his argument had made him angry, and long years with Gavin had taught her that angry, defensive people shared the lousy habit of being wrong.

Ahead, she heard water dripping a monotonous tattoo in some downpipe and the jut-jaw awning of the shop appeared out of the misty drizzle. Closer, she could see the wire frames outside holding the banners for women’s magazines and newspapers. One headline read: ‘Health Minister Under Fire’. This was the real world. What room was there for magic when Syrian rockets and Israeli smart bombs could snuff a hundred lives in a moment? An overflowing council bin, a nearby car with a flat tyre, dog shit on the nature strip, a ludicrously yellow chip packet that seemed to leap out in the water gloom. Even the shopfront was frank and wonted: Plough amp; Vine Health Foods written in a hokey rustic font and flanking a logo of a rustic hand plough and a rustic trellis that combined to give an effect that was, let’s face it, rustically ham-fisted and artless. A less magical facade was hard to imagine.

For two long minutes, Laine stood in the drizzle and debated turning around and sloshing home. But the prospect of returning to the twilit house where Mrs Boye shouted at ghosts was a strong disincentive. So, she stepped under the awning to the door of the health food store and went inside.

The shop was pleasantly warm, and smelled delicious. Warm pools of light fell on jars of bush honey, open sacks of coffee beans, tantalisingly spiced joss sticks, wooden boxes of fragrant tea leaves. Every step brought an appetising new aroma, a tempting and sapid morsel.

Why haven’t I been here before? Laine asked herself. This is lovely!

‘Are you looking for something in particular?’

She turned to the voice.

Two downlights over the counter flicked on. A slender young woman stepped out from the back room and flipped a switch on the side of the electric till; it beeped and its zeros lit green.

So this is her, thought Laine. The young woman was pretty, but naturally so. She carried herself more like a country girl, pleased with her looks but they didn’t factor on her top ten issues of the day.