One day he came to a decision as he was leaving the Preserve

with her. On an unlit landing, he grasped her arm: ‘Nelly.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

The dark, confined space seemed to concentrate her odour. A succession of scenes, purely pornographic, was unreeling in Tom’s mind.

She disengaged herself, and continued down the stairs.

He swore that was the end of it. He lay on his bed compiling an inventory of the ways she repelled him; his cunning fl esh working all the while at its own satisfaction.

Over the days that followed, what remained was his need for her. And beyond Nelly, for the world she had created. He missed the drift of people in and out of the Preserve, improvised meals and conversations, the jokiness. The sense of being caught up in a wide spate of imaginative work.

Small scenes haunted him. Nelly and Osman bent over the sink with dripping raspberry icypoles. Someone’s kid in stripy leggings riding a Razor scooter up and down the passage. He left a café without ordering, because a shelf behind the counter held a pink plastic sugar canister with a grey lid, identical to one in the Preserve. Lifting a glass from a sink of soapy water, he noticed the rainbow membrane of detergent stretched across it. His first thought was, Nelly would like that. Then he remembered. Her footsteps retreated through him down a cold stair.

To the raw ache of solitude he applied his usual balm of work: marking essays, reading, typing words onto a screen late into the night. The dog would leave his basket to settle on a rug in the study; first turning around thrice, an apprentice sorcerer. Later he would go out into the yard.When he returned, his fur carried the mineral scent of earth into the room.

Tom went to the cinema; out to dinner with colleagues. Then, at the end of a blunt winter’s day, in the act of transferring a packet of buckwheat noodles from a shelf to a supermarket cart, he froze. Pride, which had seemed insurmountable, lay in ruins: toppled, like that, and the view a sparkling clarity. What counted was that Nelly was not indifferent to him. He might learn from the discipline she imposed. An obstacle might be a gift, deferral conceived of as a slow striptease.

There was also the novelty of the situation. Tom was a product of his times: what he knew of preludes was swift and unambiguous. Among other things, his curiosity was pricked.

There was no point going back to the country on Thursday night, Tom decided. He would sleep more soundly in his own bed; would rise early and drive up to the hills.

So he went looking for Nelly at the Preserve. But found only Rory, who told him that Nelly had not been well, and was staying at Posner’s. ‘One of her headaches.’

It had happened before. Tom told himself again that what mattered was Nelly having somewhere to go, someone to look after her. Once again the formula failed to counter his jealousy.

He became aware that Rory was studying him; covertly, the narrow eyes rapid and darting. Tom could not remember having been alone with him before. Silence lay between them, awkward as a beginning, heightened by the weather slapping at the panes.

Tom said, ‘Could you tell Nelly I need to hang on to her keys? I’ve got to go back to the bush for a few days.’

The boy nodded.

‘I’ll be off then.’

Rory said, ‘You OK? You look a bit shabby.’ Having blurted it out, he glanced away.

Tom thought, I forget how young he is. What he had diagnosed as sullenness, he now saw as the caution of someone who was trying to find a way of being in the world.

He told Rory about the dog.

‘That’s awful.’ The boy tugged at the hair under his lip, fingered the zip on his jumper. He was in the habit of touching himself, as if to make sure he was still there. ‘You should go up to Carson ’s,’ he said.

‘But Nelly-’

‘She’s OK. Out of bed. I saw her at lunch.’ Rory pulled the zip down a little way, then did it up again. Tom understood that the boy was looking for something to offer him.

Rory said, ‘You should tell her what’s happened.’ His sympathies were engaged by Tom’s predicament, but what had just entered his mind was the table mat his mother used to place under his bowl when he was very young: a sunny circle stamped with bright blue butterfl ies.

‘Go up to Carson ’s,’ he repeated.

‘Yeah, thanks. I will.’

On an evening in late July, Tom had arrived at the Preserve to find Brendon angled over the stove. He resembled a hinged ruler, his long body forever obliged to fold itself into defi cient spaces.

Nelly, on the couch with her feet tucked under her, was talking about Rory. ‘So now there’s this band. I mean it’s good he’s going back to music, he used to be a really good violinist, and these guys are great, he’ll get a lot out of playing with them. But that’s the end of painting, although he says it isn’t.’

‘No reason he can’t do both,’ said Brendon.

Nelly’s hair was fastened on top of her head, her eyes and mouth were painted. Her face, always pale, had been powdered rice-paper white. Her concubine look. Tom had known her long enough to understand it signalled defensiveness.

She said, ‘But he won’t. Not seriously. He won’t paint in a focused way because all his energy’ll be directed at this band. He always gives a hundred and ten per cent to whatever he’s just taken up.’

‘Well, that’s not a bad thing,’ said Brendon easily. He looked at Tom. ‘Coffee?’

‘Yeah, it’s not a bad thing if it lasts.’ Nelly twirled a vagrant strand of hair around her finger. ‘But there’s this burst of enthusiasm and then-’ She exhaled theatrically.‘I don’t know, sometimes I wish he wasn’t coming into all that dough. It’s like he doesn’t have to make an effort, you know?’

Tom sipped Brendon’s heart-stopping brew and was stabbed with impatience. Nelly grimacing, her jaw tense, was almost plain. ‘Why do you let Rory get to you?’ he asked. He remembered the earlier exchange he had witnessed between the two; and in that instant knew what it mimicked. ‘You act like you’re his mother or something.’

Afterwards, he would remember their faces: aimed at him, oddly still.

Until, ‘I am his mother,’ said Nelly.

Nelly poured herself a glass of wine. Pushed up the sleeves of her jumper.

Brendon said, ‘I’ll leave you guys to it,’ and carried his cup into his studio. Moments later, a cello began to fl ow.

Tom felt the familiar jolt: he had misunderstood. The thought dropped open, and what lay underneath was the suspicion that he had been misled.

But he knew Nelly had been married. And then, with hindsight sharpening his vision, he could see the resemblance be tween mother and son: attenuated, but discernible all the same in the shallow-set eyes, the rather heavy moulding of the chin.

It was the kind of oversight to which Tom was prone. He lived in a country where he had no continuity with the dead; and being childless, no connection to the future. Most lives describe a line that runs behind and before. His drew the airless, perfect circle of autobiography. What he missed, in the world, was affi liation.

He felt immensely foolish.

Nelly was talking. He retained facts. Her husband taking off-a phrase Tom would remember-when Rory was four. The turmoil; life going awry. ‘It was like the plates shook and fell off the wall.’ Her in-laws trying to get custody of the child.

She continued to speak of these things as if Tom should have had prior knowledge of them.

‘I used to spend more time at Carson ’s place when Rory was still a kid.’ Nelly looked into her empty glass. ‘He’s been really good to us, Carson.’

It sounded stilted. Tom looked at her averted face and thought, You know I don’t like him.

He said, ‘I should have joined the dots.’

Nelly gestured-Oh well. ‘Rory’s not round here much when you are. I guess you never heard his surname.’