Page 107

March 9th

Finally, you step into your painting shed with me. It doesn’t look that different from when we were here ten years ago. Your old paintings are still on the walls, swirls of reds and yellows and browns, your impressionistic visions of this land, even though the vivid colours have faded. There are bits of vegetation and sand—your art materials—all over the floor. To add to the artistic chaos of the scene, one of the windows in the corner has been smashed, dead leaves and debris strewn underneath it.

‘It looks better now,’ you say, as you inspect the corner. ‘Better than the shit I made here.’

I run my eyes over a part of the wall where you’d stuck millions of grains of sand. ‘I told Mum about your art,’ I say.

‘Your mum, the big-shot art dealer?’

‘I told her how you gave the desert a voice.’

You snort. ‘Can’t imagine my stuff would do too well in her gallery.’

‘But it would,’ I say. ‘It’s the same, really. The artists whose work she hangs are trying to get to the truth of something too.’

Scarcely glancing at what is left of your art, you’re already digging about near the stash of old paint, not listening. You leapout with what looks like a piece of string, hold it up and wave it at me triumphantly.

‘This should do it!’ you shout as you rush out to the car.

I stay standing in the shed, remembering how strange it once felt, how the walls glowed when the sun hit them at just the right angle. The paint you made from the dirt, the heat pouring through the windows, and your hot hands on my shoulders—I felt as if I was in the centre of the earth, or at least at the centre of your painting. Your swirls seemed to stretch out from inside me. I wonder if you painted the walls of your cell like that, to feel as if you were still in the desert. I saw a documentary in which prisoners created their favourite landscapes on the walls around them—that act of creation made them happier.

I find you back rummaging in the car’s engine. You look up, frowning in concentration.

‘Did you paint this place in prison?’ I ask, thinking how easily you must have won the art prize.

‘Nah. Never painted the land there.’

‘What then?’

‘Portraits!’ You shrug. ‘I painted the crims. Ugly fuckers, most of them.’ You look out towards the horizon, chewing on your lip. ‘But they’re good to paint. All those wrinkles, tatts, lots of stuff to draw. Sadness hangs about on a face, I reckon. Far more interesting.’

‘Kind of beautiful too?’

You look at me for a moment, puzzled. ‘Nuts,’ you say softly. ‘A murderer, beautiful?’

You return to the car.

I realise you’ve stopped talking about going back to Perth, and I’ve stopped talking about London too. We’re both stalling.Am I wrong in thinking it’s you dragging your heels as much as me?

In the late afternoon, we walk to the Separates again, the sun turning everything peach, infusing us with light. A small flock of cockatiels zip past us.

‘How many nights have we been here?’ you say.

‘I don’t know. When are you meant to check in at the station?’

‘I don’t know.’

Like the sand, time is shifting, sliding away from us, revealing a different landscape.

I lie awake in the dark, listening to you squirming next to me as you try to get comfortable. Far away there’s the rumble of what could be thunder. We go still and listen.

‘What are your drugs like?’ I ask, once the rumbling stops. ‘The ones you had with you?’

You sigh, and I assume you’re not going to answer.

‘They help me let go,’ you say, eventually. ‘Forget what’s real.’

‘Freedom.’