Night Street by Kristel Thornell Page B

she said. ‘Silver hair is dignified.’
    â€˜Yes, on a man.’ Louise smiled. ‘I agree. Quite seductive.’
    â€˜And on a woman, too, I find.’
    Louise raised her eyebrows. ‘That Carruthers from down the street—what do you think of him?’ she asked brightly. ‘He’s pretty enough. One could do worse.’
    Clarice hesitated. ‘He’s a boy.’
    â€˜A boy? So ? That reminds me, Ron got bitten by a snake last night,’ she tripped on, and Clarice felt herself melting into shadow behind the glare of her sister’s talk, eclipsed. ‘He came racing in from the yard on his toddler legs, crying, but Ted knew just what to do. He always knows. Somehow he calmed the little chap down and got him in the bathroom to wash the bite. He cut incisions through the puncture marks! Cut! Can you believe it? He only dared confess this later when the doctor had reassured me and I’d had a sherry.’ She winked. ‘I do like a drop. It relaxes me. I said, “You took a razor to the baby?” It was outrageously funny. We get on famously with the doc. After Ted did the cutting, he sucked out some of the blood and venom. The doc was so impressed. He said, “If everyone was like you, I’d be out of business.” Ted really does have the coolest head I’ve ever seen.’
    The tenacity with which Louise sang Ted’s praises made Clarice think something was amiss, especially as the man hardly seemed to deserve it; he did not quite look at you when you were speaking, giving the unpleasant impression of being somehow underhanded or suspicious yet also fundamentally uninterested. Was Louise afraid her husband would leave her?
    Steam was shooting up from the kettle. Louise did not notice—her demeanour was too regal. Clarice went through the motions, scalding the pot, spooning in plump spoonfuls of tea; she loved the earthy sweet fragrance.
    â€˜I didn’t know what was going on. I was in our room. Ted had sent me off because I was wailing.’ Louise had apparently doubled back on her story. ‘I’m a protective mother to a fault, but I can’t help it, can I? It’s the instinct.’ Clarice poured in the water and fitted the cosy. ‘Ted took control of the whole situation. The little one was lying down getting tickled by the time the doc arrived. I was putting cold water on my face.’
    Louise lifted a hand to her forehead, re-enacting. Clarice’s own hands shook as she shaped the bran dough into circles; watching those fallible hands, she did not regret their actions in Arthur’s van. What was he doing at this moment? She saw his lively, curious eyes—that open attention that separated him from the Teds of the world. She might tell her sister about him one day and give her a shock, but she did not feel like it now. The story of the snakebite, with its shifting chronology, was eternal.
    â€˜Ted went out and killed the snake to show the doc when he arrived. So they’d know which anti-venin. I haven’t a clue how he found it—it was almost dark. Ron was tickled pink with his ligature.’
    Clarice remembered, with exquisite clarity, an earlier moment from the night before: waiting for the first reel to start, her effervescent orange drink, a volcano-shaped mountain through a painted window, the organist arranging his coattails as the red velvet curtain was finally lifting; waiting.

15
    She had been working at a view of the Yarra, and afterwards came by Meldrum’s studio to get his opinion on it. She told herself that this was her intention in going there; however, she soon understood it had been different. These visits were always convivial, slightly formal, a way of showing him thanks and respect, and maybe also her maturity—the risks she was taking. Rather than a failure or a half-failure, she usually brought him a partial tentative success, something she was not quite sure of, in