Quiver

“That’s beside the point. Trouble was, by the time he got back Leonie was pregnant…”

“…but not by him, see.”

I was reeling now. I remembered staring into the bathroom mirror, my black eyes full of pain, my belly swollen under my white tunic. I didn’t want to know anything else. But the two old women were insistent, the truth must be told.

“Harry Whittle, that’s who the culprit was.”

“A bit of a lad, was Harry, a smooth talker. He always got the ladies in.”

“Poor Leonie. Not talking the lingo, she thought he was for real but when Alberto got home…”

“It was terrible!”

“You’re not wrong there, it was gossip for years afterward.”

I couldn’t hold back. “What happened?”

“Well, Alberto had only been back a day and…”

“She tried to get rid of the baby, you know, the ignorant way.”

“Alberto found her in the bathroom.”

“He came out of the house with her in his arms, screaming he was.”

“I remember the way her hair was hanging down. She had beautiful long black hair.”

“She bled to death, poor thing, never had a chance. Alberto grieved for months. See, he loved her. He would have had her. Child and all.”

“So he said, after the event. Men are like that, afterward.”

Leonie. I had dreamt through her eyes. My womb had become hers. I went back into the house clutching Mrs. Harris’s paprika, my stomach heaving.

Adrian was waiting for me, naked with just the bath towel wrapped around his waist. He held the dripping bath soap in his right hand. “What’s the meaning of this?” He held out the yellow cube. Long black pubic hairs were stuck to it.

“They’re not mine.”

“I can see that.”

“Adrian, I haven’t got a lover.”

“Then how did they get there?”

“I don’t know!” He swung back into the bathroom and slammed the door. The mirror in the lounge room rattled with the crash.

I gazed into the pot of stew, and shook in the paprika. It descended like red snow, settling onto the thick bubbling gravy. Leonie Mantilli must have been at least four months pregnant. A pain shot across the front of my womb, making me fall against the stove.

Adrian is silent over the meal. He picks through the casserole like he is picking over a corpse. I want to tell him about the Mantillis, I want to tell him about the first time I saw someone from the other side. But as I form sentences in my mind I falter. Adrian is a fact man, he can only deal with reality. He puts his fork down.

“It’s the same man who used my razor, isn’t it?”

“Adrian, I am not having an affair.”

“Was he over here when I went to Canberra? Is that your little arrangement?”

“Please believe me, I am not having an affair!”

“Then how do you explain the hair and the grease!?”