Chapter Seven

Polly Paterson hadn’t slept a whole night through in sixteen years.

That might have been something the fortune teller could have mentioned – sixteen years of sleep deprivation. Surely, the witch could have seen that coming. Solid, practical advice, instead of all that bohemian nonsense about her passion, her ruin and her salvation.

The insomnia had everything to do with the piano and gunfire, though. Polly couldn’t fault the witch there.

It had been memories, at first, after the Incident. Screaming nightmares. The certain knowledge that if she closed her eyes, she’d be back there. Back with the piano and the smell of blood. Straw-blonde hair down the sights of a rifle.

Her worry, her grief, her broken heart and her guilt mixed around in that as well. She had barely any time to get over any of it – nine months to be precise – before the baby who Polly hadn’t yet learned how to love kept her awake too. Her endless crying understood the anguish she’d been born into. The kid griped like she resented it. Later still, a reckless combination of vodka and party drugs fucked up Polly’s system completely, and then it was coming home again – and by that time, no amount of mindfulness, hippy whalesong or melatonin was ever going to help.

Polly just accepted it and used the quiet times in the small hours to watch her daughter sleeping, or to read, or just to catch up on the things that needed to be done to run the Jerinja Retreat.

These days, in an effort to make her peace with a creeping middle age she still wasn’t sure about, she was also rather partial to a midday siesta. In the heat of an Australian summer, a siesta wasn’t exactly a stupid idea. Polly slept when she could and everyone was used to it.

And sometimes, of course, like now, dreams of Ksenia Tokarycz kept her from sleeping too.

She was reading on the swing chair on the balcony under a mozzie net at three in the morning when Ksenia Tokarycz strolled through the moonlight and up the front steps of her house with her hands in her pockets and a sheepish look on her face.

“I saw your light,” she said. When Polly simply gaped, she dug her hands deeper into her pockets and lifted her shoulders to her ears. “I got stuck. Your— ah— Justin gave me a room.”

“Causeway?” Polly managed.

“And a tree down near Willoughby’s.”

“Sorry. I must have been asleep. I missed you— I mean I—”

She missed her so much.

Toks waved her apology away. She did it elegantly and easily. It was a casual gesture – second nature – but it was controlled and imbued with the complete confidence that it would be obeyed. Polly’s eyes got stuck to her hand, to her fingers, and to the perfect order they made in the air. What astonished her was the way it shut her up instantly. It stole her breath. Her eyes widened and she waited, patient and quiet, for her next cue. What the hell? Did Toks treat everyone like they were musicians in her private orchestra?

Polly snapped her mouth shut.

“Your Justin was very nice about it. And Jerinja is— what? A hotel now?”

“A retreat,” murmured Polly.

A rather nasty smirk flattened Toks’ lips. “A retreat from what?” she asked. The hand made another eloquent gesture – this one at Polly – at all of her, as if she was the one retreating, cowering. One eyebrow climbed Toks’ forehead. “Life?”

Polly stared.

That had soured quickly.

They watched each other from either side of the mozzie net. Polly was cross-legged on the cushions, her legs tucked under her and warm in loose cotton pants and the enormous baggy t-shirt she usually slept in. Toks stood in the shadows, one side of her face in darkness.

“Shit,” said Toks, suddenly. “Sorry.” She rubbed one palm across her mouth and swayed for a moment. She was about to leave again.

Polly tumbled out of the swing chair and got tangled in the mozzie net.

“Don’t go!”

Toks was already at the top of the stairs, the moonlight playing on her hair.

“Stay! Have a cuppa with me. I mean, would you like to? I know it’s late, but tea might be nice. I think there are bikkies. We could talk. Or not! We don’t even have to talk. Toks?” Polly was acutely aware of how desperate she sounded. She’d spent sixteen years trying to convince herself that Toks didn’t want her, then the woman swaggered up her front steps like she’d never gone and suddenly Polly’s self esteem was a gauche, babbling mess. “Why don’t we just have tea?” she finished, lamely.

Toks paused, her hands back in her pockets, indecision in her shoulders. She cut a proud silhouette in the dim glow of the verandah light, as trim as ever, lean but curvy in all the right places. Polly wanted to step up behind her, rest her cheek on a shoulder blade, slip her arms around her waist and pull her close. That had been a valid method of persuasion, before. No matter how stubborn Toks was being, Polly could melt her with just a touch. Her body ached with the memory of doing exactly that a hundred times. Her mind reeled with the knowledge that she had no right to do it now.

Toks plainly wouldn’t want her to.

“I’ll put the jug on,” Polly whispered, hopefully.

Toks surrendered. “Thanks.”

Polly brought two cups of tea and a packet of Arnott’s Ginger Nuts.

Toks was leaning on the balcony, her arms folded on the wooden railing. She looked out into the night, the lights of Crookhaven clustered at the coast, a few clouds scudding across a moon-grey sky. Every now and then a gentle breeze hummed through the wires of the piano away in the darkness. A murmur of A minor at the edge of Polly’s mind. She was more interested in getting Toks into the swing chair.

“What is that noise?” Toks asked.

Polly was glad for the shadows that hid her face. She handed Toks a mug of tea.

“Chamomile and honey,” she said. “Should help you sleep.”

“Doesn’t work for you.”

Polly shrugged.

“I’m more jetlagged than I expected to be,” Toks admitted. “I haven’t flown this far east in a long time.”

“Sixteen years,” Polly said, unable to stop herself.

Toks looked at her. “Longer.” Her lips pressed into that awful line again.

So they were both still bitter, then.

There was a moment, then Toks slapped suddenly at her arm.

“Gah! Mozzies. I haven’t missed those.”

Polly pointed to the wide swing chair and, after a moment of completely predictable stubbornness, Toks sat on it and Polly pulled the mosquito net closed again.

“No mozzies in Berlin?” she asked, mildly, because I was broken and frightened and stuck in hospital for six weeks and you never even called wasn’t the best way to rebuild bridges. Especially on foundations that were obviously still shaky.

“I spend most of my time in Vienna, actually,” Toks said, her mug at her lips, her breath on it idly. “When I’m not in Severin or Hamburg, that is. I do three or four seasons in Berlin each year, and the Waldbühne in the summer, of course, but mostly Vienna. Well—” she pulled a face “—I’m rarely in any place longer than two weeks, to tell the truth. There could be mosquitos. I simply wouldn’t know.”

It was a neat little humble-brag – just enough boredom in her tone to be genuine and easy-going, and more than enough business in the details to intimidate the hell out of Polly and her down home herbal tea.

But Toks had forgotten something. Polly had known her since she was a scabby-knee’d kid crying in the school toilets. Toks was tired.

“Well, you’ll be in Sydney for a bit now. That will be nice, won’t it?”

There was a snort.

“Four weeks. It will be a record – if I survive it. Sydney doesn’t have the audience to hold my attention for too long. I’ll be back in Europe for a month before I’m down this way again. I’ve too many projects on the other side of the world to hang around here.”

That stung, but Polly had become used to being hurt by what Toks did – or didn’t do – long ago.

Polly sipped her tea and said nothing. What was there to say?

In the silence, Toks seemed to hear herself. Just like before, she blew out a sharp sigh and put her hand to her mouth. Impatient, but now Polly could tell she was angry at herself, not at Polly.

“Sorry,” Toks said again.

Twice in ten minutes. What was going on?

Toks didn’t sound the way she used to.

Once, Polly had thought she could live on the sound of Toks’ voice. The cheeky whispers in her ear during assembly at primary school that made them both bend double and giggle. The patient encouragement when Polly struggled with a piece on the piano and, later, the cello. The soft murmurs of solace after Polly had argued with her mother yet again.

And that pure, raw tone Toks’ voice took when they’d finally found each other’s bodies in a new way, in the best way. That tone was just for her – reverence and promise. It filled her. It had been all Polly had ever wanted.

Toks sounded European now – a weird blend of accents. The Korovinjan was strongest. Toks had always been good at imitating Draga whenever she was in a mood, the Korovinjan accent mixed with the broad Australian Strine most new arrivals of Draga’s generation tended to pick up. But there was a German feel to Toks’ voice now, even a hint of New York City English, though Polly was sure Toks had hardly been in the States long enough to have picked that up.

It was one more barrier between them.

One more way that she didn’t know Toks anymore, even though her heart knew she was just there on the swing chair, next to her. Polly’s heart knew it so well it was beating double time.

“And what about you?”

The unexpected question shook Polly back to the present and its soft, unpretentious cadence was so close to the loving tone Polly remembered that it jolted her whole body and spilt her tea.

“Shit,” she said and watched Toks retreat even as Polly pulled wet cloth off her thighs and hissed at the heat. “Sorry. Clumsy. It’s okay.” She handed Toks the packet of biscuits in an effort to get it out of the small puddle of tea that pooled on the cushions.

Toks tore it open.

“I used to love these,” she said. She pulled one out and dunked it in her tea, as any self-respecting Australian should.

Polly snorted. “No you didn’t. You used to bash them on the table and bitch about them. Every time.” She dunked her own, holding it under for precisely the requisite number of seconds before transferring the softened gingery mess to her mouth.

“I was making a point.”

“Being?”

“That the New South Wales Arnotts ginger nut biscuit is a ridiculous thing and a hazard to one”s dental health.”

“You made a dent in the table!” Polly said.

Toks chuckled. “Better than breaking my teeth! And I worked at that dent,” she said, no small amount of pride in her voice, “every afternoon after school, for how many years?”

“All of them,” Polly said, primly. “The dent is still there, you know.”

Toks’ sudden grin was huge. “It is? Ha! You’ll have to show me—”

She broke off.

They blinked at each other.

Polly’s heart was racing again. Her lips fell open. Toks’ eyes fell on them and stuck there, then her hand reached out. Polly froze.

And Toks did too.

She pulled her hand back and made a gentle pointing gesture.

“You have a crumb,” she murmured. “On your cheek.” Then she ducked her head and suspended the rest of her ginger nut in her tea. “They’re good, though. They’re Jerinja in a biscuit,” she marvelled, blind to the panic coursing through Polly’s body. “All my childhood memories in one rock-hard cookie. All my happiest memories are from here at Jerinja. Can’t get these in Vienna. Or Severin. Or Berlin.”

And with perfect timing, like the maestro she was, she gave that three merciless seconds to completely destroy all the careful, necessary, protective walls Polly had spent sixteen years building around her heart and then she hammered it in.

“Didn’t even know I missed them.”

Polly wasn’t sure who she’d inherited her patience from.

It certainly wasn’t her mother.

Kathleen and Robbie Paterson were good-hearted, kind people. They cared about the land and they cared about social justice. They valued education, imagination and creativity. They shared their home and their wisdom with a crowd of devoted followers.

They called their way of life ‘holistic neo-peasantry’ and they taught their blend of frugal hedonism and do-it-yourself pragmatics to the group that gathered at their firepit each evening. Polly was twelve when she realised her mother loved being the centre of attention slightly more than she loved almost everything else.

That was okay. Polly was still cared for and loved, but she learned how to make allowances for her mother. She learned how to accept that her own interests – piano, cello and classical music, of all things, written by dead, white men for a spoiled elite – were never going to be fully supported by Kathleen, not if they didn’t in some way put Kathleen in the limelight.

And, of course, that was good practice for later, when Polly came home from Europe on a military flight covered in scars and the harsh glare of the media spotlight.

Holistic neo-peasantry had nothing in its toolkit for compound fractures and sustained psychological trauma.

Polly had always needed her patience for Toks too.

Their friendship had been instant, but it had come with a huge dose of competitiveness.

Polly could jump highest on the trampoline, but Toks could do backwards somersaults. Polly could ride Milica down the steep slope of the gorge to the waterholes, but Toks couldn”t ride bareback to save herself. Toks could play any piece of music her mother put in front of her on the piano and left hand leaps were her actual superpower, but Polly found a connection with stringed instruments that Toks never mastered. When Polly discovered that the cello sang to her as easily as the piano came to Toks, Toks insisted on a violin. She scraped at that thing with a single-mindedness that Polly laughed at. Cruelly.

“Stick to piano, Toks. You suck at this.”

Toks was just as mean at piano eisteddfods.

“It wasn’t bad, Pearlie. I mean, you played nicely, but was it supposed to be syncopated, or is that a problem with finger independence?”

Polly would thump her, bounce her on the trampoline, push her in the pool or whack her with a pillow and the glorious way Toks laughed and tickled her ‘til she squealed was the best part of all.

Toks mastered the violin eventually, of course, as she did most things.

Toks had determination where Polly merely had stoicism.

Polly was a wicked shot with a rifle. She remembered her father teaching her how to use the thing – his arm over her shoulder and the zen of taking aim, his big, soft hands over hers, gently easing onto the trigger. Toks was scrappier. She favoured a far less nuanced approach.

“If you hit that target, it was only a matter of numbers,” Polly grumbled, but Toks crowed anyway.

It was a different matter when they were old enough to take the rifle up to the back paddocks on their own.

”Foxes and rabbits,” Robbie Paterson told them, ”or beer bottles. Nothing else. Are we clear?”

”Clear as, Mr P,” Toks declared, taking the Browning Long Rifle from him with that cocky, beguiling confidence everyone fell for – even Polly. ”Don”t worry about a thing.”

It was Toks who shot their first rabbit – the first living creature either of them had hit – and she was so fucking full of herself then too. Or she was, until they realised she”d only hit it in the leg. It was Polly who had to shoot it dead.

Toks declared herself utterly disinterested in shooting after that. Polly understood. She ribbed her for it, gently, then smiled when Toks challenged her to swim across the dam three times underwater.

Toks never realised how transparent she was.

Patience filled Polly like the feathers of an eiderdown. Warm and soft and safe.

Constant, reliable and true too, and Polly enjoyed feeling that way. Toks taught her how to trust, how to really believe that no matter how much they squabbled, no matter how infuriatingly cocky Toks could be when she strutted around showing off and being brilliant in front of their friends, no matter how naturally flirty and funny she was with every other human being in the whole damned world, that Toks loved her – and always would.

Toks proved it, with every glance – even the ones loaded with tease. She promised it with every touch. And it was right there in her face, when Polly caught her gaping at her, after they’d ridden to the top of the escarpment on a weekend home from music college just to watch the storms roll majestically up the coast. After Polly brought the closing bars of Brahms’ first cello sonata to a wild and passionate close and blinked to realise Toks had played the entire third movement on the piano without taking her eyes from her.

After Toks crawled back up her body in their squeaky bed in their crummy shared room in their rundown terrace in Paddington and breathed a desperate need all over her as she kissed every part of Polly she could.

Patience and trust gave her the strength she needed to get through that first year when Toks went to Berlin without her. Patience to accept that Toks’ ambition and drive was a critical part of her and that Polly could never match it, and never wanted to. Trust to warm her heart as she curled around her phone in the empty bed in Paddington and texted like a woman possessed. Ilove you took twenty-four keystrokes in those days but Toks wrote it every morning and every night as they counted the minutes until Polly’s train would pull into Berlin Hauptbahnhof and they’d be together again.

Years later, as she dragged Toks’ Steinway behind her tractor, across the paddocks, right through the south fence and to the base of the giant Blackbutt near the dam, she contemplated how neglect could wear an eiderdown flat, the weight of disregard crushing the feathers and stealing their comfort.

And she took to poetic bullshit like that with an axe and piled it up with the mahogany from the Steinway and burnt it all.

Patience and acceptance weren’t quite the same things.

One was much harder than the other.

“The retreat keeps me busy,” Polly said.

Toks made a puzzled humming noise. She’d already forgotten she’d asked. Polly wasn’t going to let her off the hook so easily. If polite conversation was all they were doing right now then Polly was going to hold her to it.

It was better than nothing.

“And both the farms, of course. And I work and, well, I make sure there’s always someone here. My daughter homeschools and I’m always checking in on Draga.”

Toks’ head snapped up.

“On Mum? You never called her that.”

“I’m forty, Toks. She’s been a friend and a support I couldn’t have done without—”

“Mum? My mum?”

Patience and tolerance had their differences too. Polly sucked in a steadying breath.

“Yes. Your mum. I’m hardly going to call her Mrs T forever.”

Toks huffed into her tea.

“It sounds very … domestic,” she said.

“And that sounds like an insult.”

They were silent again. There were just two of them in the world – two stupid, stubborn people in a tiny pool of light on the edge of a cliff, the literal and the metaphorical crickets chirping in the darkness between them. Polly wanted to kick them both over the edge.

“It was,” Toks murmured. “And it was unfair. I’m sorry.”

Who was this woman?

She stood up and twitched the net open.

“Thank you for the tea, Pearl. And the room,” she said. “It was … good to see you.”

A hum of sound swirled up from the piano in the tree and just like that Polly realised she didn’t want her to go.

“I was rude too, Toks. I’m sorry too. This isn’t exactly easy” —she gestured at the both of them, at the sixteen years of childish peevishness between them— “but it’s been so long and I’ve—”

“I missed you.”

There was so much hurt in that. It was the twisting, tortured wires of a piano as Polly made them howl and cry. It was a stone, a weight, like gravel in Toks’ voice, like lead in her heart. And it was all Polly’s fault.

Not quite all.

“I missed you,” she said, just as accusing.

Toks’ green eyes weighed on her for another painfully extended moment and then Toks turned away to the balustrade again. She folded her arms on the top rail and hung her head. Her summer-blonde hair fell across her face and Polly could see the tension in her shoulders.

But she didn’t go.

Polly joined her at the railing and felt the warmth of her body at her side.

“Do you have to go back to Sydney tomorrow?” Polly asked, softly.

“Sumi has my schedule.”

“Sumi?”

“My bitch of an assistant,” Toks replied. “She’s irritating and annoyingly efficient and frequently correct when I am not, but she’s not that bad.”

Shame made Polly blush – and then Toks changed everything. She leant quickly sideways and nudged Polly with her shoulder. The earth lurched around on its axis and flung Polly at the sun. It rose like a giant blossom in her gut, unfurling in her chest, gathering in the back of her throat and spilling petals from her lips.

“Sorry.” Polly grinned.

They’d never said the word so often.

“A week of meetings with the board and the executives starting Monday, but no rehearsals until next week,” Toks said. “The orchestra has a short break too before we all start together next week. I only managed to squeeze in a few rehearsals last week to get to know them.”

“Meetings. Bah. What is the internet for?” said Polly. “You could stay here for a bit. In whatever cabin Justin has put you in if you don’t want to go back to 613. You could stay in the spare room here in the big house, if you want to.” She was babbling again, practically begging, but this time she knew she had her. “Stay as long as you like and travel up and back. Richard does.”

Toks nudged her shoulder again.

“And who is Richard?”

Oh, that gloriously pompous tone. Polly loved it. She nudged her back. Who the fuck did she think Richard was?

“You’ve already met him. He had plenty to say about your take on the Mahler One.”

Toks shot an eyebrow and turned to face Polly, her hip on the railing now, confidence coursing through her pose, a delighted smirk playing around her lips.

“Did he now? And who—”

“You’ll see him at breakfast. If you’re staying.”

“I have four new contemporary pieces I need to study. Perhaps the peace and quiet here will be good.”

Got her.

“I thought I’d come down to 613 to use my Steinway,” she added. “It’s why I’m here in the first place. Do you have any idea where it is?”

It was Polly’s turn to smirk, but she bent it into a proper smile as fast as she could and shrugged obliquely. Toks narrowed her eyes.

“I’ll need a piano, if I’m going to stay.” She paused. “You do have a piano, don’t you?”

Polly nearly laughed. The back of her hand reached out entirely of its own accord and brushed the back of her knuckles on Toks’ upper arm.

They both looked at it.

Every single hope and every single regret tingled on the backs of Polly”s fingers. She could feel Toks’ warmth through the cotton of her shirt.

“Of course I have a piano, Toks,” she said, and her exasperation was just like old times, her patience for Toks’ bluster and smugness almost reborn. Then she stifled it. “I haven’t changed that much.”

The playful mood died away again but Toks gave a tiny nod of her head.

“Then I’ll stay,” she said and she walked backward along the verandah to the top of the stairs, smiling cautiously as she went. “Thank you, Polly Paterson. And I’ll try to sleep again now. Perhaps your tea will help.” She cocked her head suddenly. “What is that noise?”

“Good night, Toks,” Polly said, and the woman swaggered away into the darkness.