Brothers & Sisters - Charlotte Wood [103]
‘Rowan took to Leo immediately. He loved how funny he was and he loved all the gossip. We stayed up all that first night smoking ice while Leo told him the Germaine Greer story and the Sasha Soldatow story and the Jim Sharman story and who fucked whom and who blasted heroin with whom and who really should have taken the credit for what and of course Row was like a grateful child, just lapping it all up.’
Anna took a big breath. ‘Do you want to hear all this?’
She was hesitating for effect. She would be crushed if he said no. He wanted to say no, that there was nothing that he could hear about Leo that would make his own heart feel any lighter.
‘We all fall asleep at dawn, all in the big bed and I wake a few hours later and decide to take a walk in the forest. It’s a beautiful day and I’m still feeling fantastic because of the drugs and I walk all the way to town to the bakery and pick up some croissants and rolls and I walk all the way back to Leo’s. I get there and Leo is cooking in the kitchen and Rowan is playing his guitar on the porch and when I come up the steps and I’m smiling he looks at me and bursts into tears. He just keeps saying, We had sex, Anna, we fucked, Anna, I’m so sorry. I drop the bag of croissants and rolls and look up at the door where Leo is standing, a stupid apron on, a fork in one hand, and he just says, “Rowan wanted to tell you—he’s still young and foolish. I told him you didn’t have to know.” Then he goes back into the kitchen and continues making us breakfast.’
Saverio couldn’t believe how the bowerbirds continued their whispering song in the trees above, how the drumroll of the waves echoed off the coast below. He could barely control his voice as he asked: ‘What did you do?’
‘I cried and I asked them both how they could do it to me and Row was crying as well and he kept saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and I ran after Leo and said, “Are you going to apologise, are you going to say you’re sorry?” and he just said, “Anna, you know I am an anarchist and a libertarian. You don’t possess Rowan and he doesn’t possess you. There is nothing I have to apologise for.”’
There was a burst of laughter. Mel and the two men had crashed through the door, into the beer garden, cigarettes in their mouths. Mel called out to them as they sat around a table but Saverio did not register the names of the men as they were introduced. He heard Mel whisper loudly to the man in the singlet, ‘That’s Leo’s brother.’
‘What did you say to him?’
Anna turned back to him, her face now unsmiling. ‘I hit him. I hit him so hard I wanted to break him.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He kicked me out. He said he couldn’t abide violence, that he had grown up in a violent house and he would not have it in a house of his own. He kicked me out and Row and I drove all the way back to Sydney, both of us crying all the way.’ Anna shrugged her shoulders. ‘Man, it was a miracle we weren’t killed.’
Saverio stumbled out of his chair, across the lawn, bashed through the door, almost ran into the toilets. He wanted to put his fist through the mirror, kick down a cubicle door. If someone said the wrong word, offered the wrong look, made a move to stop him, he would gladly bring them down. He would gladly break their necks. But once again the toilets were empty. He breathed in deeply. Thankfully the toilets were empty.
‘Do you think she’ll be okay?’
He had been silent when he returned to the beer garden, had said nothing as they walked to the car, had been quiet for most of the drive. Anna, too, had said little.
As they’d been about to leave the pub Mel had rushed after them, taken Anna’s arm and had tried to lead her onto the dance floor.
‘I can’t, we have to go.’
‘Come on, just one dance, I love this song.’
The pub had