St. Dymphna's School for Poison Girls / Pale Street. Read online

  Tobias considered the children. An ache nudged at his insides, something tender and sweet washed up against his temples. Behind him, air shifted and shaped itself. It puffed past him towards the twins—ruffled their hair and skimmed their empty cups. Startled, Tobias looked over his shoulder. Sophie pursed her lips at Lily. You see? When Tobias turned back to the girls, a white-haired woman wearing a lace-collared dress and a ruby brooch at her throat was standing between them. She bent, looked into their frightened faces and made a cooing, comforting sound.

  ‘Shame on you, Tobias,’ she said.

  Tobias considered the sheen of the woman’s skin. Breath thickened in his throat. Sophie and Lily gazed up at Agnes, their eyes wide.

  ‘Would it hurt to give the poppets a little something?’ Her teeth, when she smiled, were like pearls.

  Forgetting himself, driven by habit, ignoring his prickling skin and the hairs raised in fright on his arms, Tobias responded as he had always done. ‘Don’t you interfere, Agnes! You’ve always been a bossy boots!’ Then, just as he had always done, he capitulated. He backed into the house, found his wallet, chinked coins into the palm of his trembling hand and stood contemplating the gold and silver. After a long moment he pushed the money back into his wallet, pulled out a fifty-dollar note, folded it in half, in half again, pushed the wallet into his shirt pocket and hurried to the door. He dropped the note into Lily’s cup.

  Wide-eyed, she watched it fall. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Tobias glared at Agnes. ‘There you are, then. That’s the last of your meddling. It’s time you left my property once and for all. Go on, get off, all three of you, off you go!’

  Agnes placed one hand behind each of the girls’ shoulder blades, shuffled them towards the front gate. She pulled back the latch. There was a loud squeak. When they stepped onto the grass outside, they stopped, looked back at the front door Tobias had closed behind him. Inside, he was pressing his forehead to the wood, aghast at the grief which had come from nowhere and now washed over him in waves of pain so monstrous he felt he would drown in the agony of it.

  Outside, the lines of the house sat sharp and clean against the afternoon’s pure, blue sky. Agnes’ eyes glistened.

  ‘Goodbye, Toby,’ she whispered.

  On the other side of the street, the postman had pulled his scooter to a stop, pushed a wad of envelopes into the mailbox of number fifty-five, looked up just in time to see the gate to number fifty-four swing open, pause, close. He blinked, then swore. Damn this crazy street. He’d ask to be reassigned. Just as all the posties who’d made the run before him had done.

  Sophie watched the mailbags bounce as the scooter powered away. She looked up at Agnes and made a contrite face.

  ‘These things happen, poppet,’ Agnes said.

  Lily slipped her smooth, little girl’s hand into Agnes’ gnarled one, curled her fingers over the veins standing high below the old woman’s knuckles.

  Sophie followed suit. ‘Come with us,’ she said.

  Together, the twins coaxed Agnes across the street, up the gravelled drive of number fifty-five.

  The girls pulled Agnes inside. Sophie pressed the button to the garage doors; they slid closed.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Lily, as Agnes hesitated, then followed them to the studio where she contemplated the room’s vaulted ceiling, the wooden table covered with daisy-printed plastic, paint tubes and palettes, notepads and sketchpads and blotters. Everywhere, collections of brushes—some tall and thin, others short and fat—stood in tins. There was an easel, and a series of stacked, roll-out drawers—shallow and wide for storing pictures on big paper—along one wall. Panelled windows ran ceiling-high, filling the space with views of the gardens outside. A ribbon-back chair stood in front of the glass, its back to the light. Stools waited.

  Sophie took Lily’s mug from her, tipped Tobias’ money onto the table. She left the room—there was the sound of footsteps on bathroom tiles, of running water, of filled cups being placed, one by one, on the benchtop by the sink.

  Lily pulled a fat, hardcover Harry Potter from the shelves their mother stocked with picture books and stories about magic, opened it, unfolded the note, and spread it flat inside the cover. Dame Edith Cowan gazed up at her from its fine drawn artwork.

  ‘Look at it,’ she said as Sophie returned, set the mugs on the table. ‘I never thought he’d give us that much money. Is it all right to have it?’

  ‘Not to worry. Tobias has plenty,’ Agnes said. She considered the girls, ‘You’re very young to be collecting.’

  The girls turned to her.

  ‘Mummy needs to make Daddy see,’ said Lily.

  ‘Shush, Lilsie,’ said Sophie. She looked at Agnes. ‘We’d like to paint your picture. Would that be all right?’ She pointed to the chair at the window. Agnes considered its Chippendale styling, the mahogany wood. Her parents once had a set just like it. Fancy that, she thought.

  ‘Please?’ said Lily.

  Agnes approached the seat. It was upholstered in crimson velvet, just as she remembered it. She settled herself. Perhaps this impression would win attention.

  The girls looked at each other. ‘Do you want to paint this time?’ Sophie said.

  Lily considered Agnes, the way the light filtered through her hair. ‘Yes,’ she said. She sat at the table, spread fresh paper, set to work as Sophie watched.

  When Ella entered the room soon after, Sophie hugged herself expectantly. Lily squeezed a dollop of red from the tube in her hand onto the neck of the naive portrait she had started. She added smaller dollops below the ears. She shaped the globs with a stiff-bristled brush; they cast little shadows. The swirls she made in the thick white paint captured the sweep of Agnes’ hair. Light whispered around the head and shoulders of the figure on the paper, filtered through the red stone of her drop earrings.

  ‘It’s not finished, Mummy, but come look,’ said Lily.

  Ella approached the table, considered the contours and colours. Like a muffled conversation heard through a wall that crisps at the opening of a door, the daubed paint sectioned and sorted itself. The beginnings of a woman’s likeness looked up at her from the paper. There was the suggestion of hair pinned in an up-do, a hint of bemused blue eyes.

  ‘It’s the lady from across the road,’ said Sophie.

  ‘From number fifty-four,’ said Lily.

  ‘She died,’ said Sophie.

  ‘And a cranky man lives there by himself,’ said Lily.

  Agnes’ lips made a shape that was part-smile, part-grimace. She sighed. Ohhhhh. A wisp of sound.

  Ella looked up. Searched. She peered at Agnes’ chair. The sun tilted through the window and the chair’s back cast shadow-stripes across its empty seat.

  Disconcerted, Agnes folded her hands in her lap, sat perfectly still, and inspected the fine-boned, slender woman with the shadows under her eyes, the blonde hair falling past her shoulders.

  ‘Such clever girls, my darlings.’ Ella turned away from the chair to look into the girls’ faces and marvelled, as she always did, at their delicate duplication.

  Lily stood, patted the stool she had vacated. ‘Sit down, Mummy, we’ve got another present for you.’

  The girls went to the bookshelf. Sophie pulled the lid from a small basket, withdrew a lumpy bundle wrapped in a white handkerchief and thrust it at Lily.

  ‘I want to carry the book,’ Lily said.

  ‘We’ll both carry it,’ Sophie said. She pushed the bundle into her dress pocket—the fabric bunched and pulled—then reached for Harry Potter. Clutching the book’s corners, the girls manoeuvred it across the room.

  ‘For you, Mum,’ they said.

  ‘Well…’ said Ella, wondering what to make of the volume they placed in her lap. Lily climbed onto the stool beside her, crossed her legs like a yogi, gazed at the bespectacled boy on the cover.

  Sophie pressed her cheek to Ella’s shoulder. ‘It’s to do with what’s inside,’ she said.

  Ella opened Ha
rry.

  Lily jiggled with excitement. ‘It’s for you because we’ve done the whole street now.’

  Ella pulled out the fifty-dollar note.

  ‘There’s more,’ Sophie said.

  Ella grasped the book’s covers, upturned and shook it. Money fluttered from between the pages. With a flourish, Sophie produced the bundle from her pocket. Ella unwrapped a collection of gold and silver coins.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ she whispered.

  ‘We collected with cups like surf lifesavers do,’ Lily said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tsk,’ Sophie chided Lily. ‘It’s all right, Mummy. We needed a reason to visit people.’

  ‘Just the pale people,’ Lily said.

  ‘The ones like us,’ Sophie said.

  ‘We painted them all then let them go,’ Lily pointed at the roll-out drawers by the wall.

  ‘… so you can show Daddy…’

  ‘… and he’ll know we’re true.’

  Ella’s eyes filled.

  ‘You can tell him, Mummy,’ Lily said.

  ‘Later,’ Sophie said.

  ‘When he gets home from working.’

  Into the evening, Ella watched. Sophie corrected and cajoled as Lily squeezed colour onto the canvas, stroked it into place, referenced the shining space on the chair by the window over and over again until it seemed to Ella that when she looked from the space on the page to the space on the chair, there was a shape there—indistinct but a shape all the same—its edges hazy and smudged. She rubbed her eyes tiredly. Like looking into a mirror covered with Vaseline, she thought, as the figure of an old woman emerged on the paper. Lily patterned the dress the woman was wearing with pink and coffee-coloured speckles and gave it delicate, pointed sleeves which fell like handkerchiefs from her shoulders.

  Then, Ella heard the garage doors hum. There was the clatter of car keys dropped onto a kitchen bench, the sound of cupboard doors being opened.

  ‘Ell?’ Ben called. ‘I’m home. Are you working?’

  The girls nodded at her. Go on. Ella’s head ached; the studio’s walls stretched. She stood and moved to the door where she pressed the handle, pulled the door open, glanced back at the room’s quiet emptiness. She stepped into the hallway and went to the kitchen where Ben was pouring red wine into delicate glasses.

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  He turned. ‘There you are.’ He put his palm to her cheek, traced the shadow under her eye with the ball of his thumb, tucked her hair gently behind her ear. ‘How are you feeling?’

  She reached for him; his hand was warm. ‘Can I show you something?’ She pulled him to the studio door. Inside, they stood before Agnes’ portrait. Lily, Sophie, and Agnes stood together, watching them from the corner of the room. When Ben looked up and through them and didn’t say anything, Ella stepped in front of him, gazed into his confused face. She took his hand, pulled him past the table to the chest of roll-out drawers. He glanced down at the fat china mug filled with muddied paint water. Lily. In the mug beside it, the water was clear. Sophie. He tensed. Ella pulled open the top drawer.

  Ben steeled himself, preparing for more portraits of twin girls in pink cotton sundresses. The images had nearly driven him mad. He had begged her to stop, do something else, then moved them to this confection of a house when it had come onto the market for a song six months ago. Ella had claimed the study and re-established her studio. Resumed her painting. He had been afraid to ask. Now, he watched as Ella produced picture after picture of pale people from the roll-out drawers. One by one, Ella removed the sheets, set them carefully on a chair. Ben studied the faces looking back at him. A bald man. A young man. A baby. More.

  Ben slipped an arm around Ella’s shoulders. Relieved, he turned and held her. ‘They’re good, Ell. You’ve been busy.’

  ‘It wasn’t me. It was the children,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, Ell.’

  She braced herself, breathed deeply. ‘The girls painted them,’ she said.

  ‘We don’t have any girls,’ he said. The lines of the room softened and smudged. It seemed to Ben that suddenly, the easel, the upturned Harry Potter book on the stool and the shelves were neither there, nor quite here. His shoulders slumped. ‘Not anymore. Please, Ella. Let them go.’

  Ella gathered up Agnes’s portrait from the table. Pressing the upper corners between her fingers she held it in front of her. Agnes’s face looked out from the paper, Ella’s looked over it. She approached Ben, stopped at arm’s length before him, raised the paper to her chin.

  ‘Take this across the road. Show it to the old man at number fifty-four.’ There was a glimmer, a shifting in the room. ‘You’ll see.’

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