What the Light Hides Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  The Vanishing Act

  SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2012 COMMONWEALTH BOOK PRIZE

  ‘A perfectly poised, fable-like tale of loss, written with delightful whimsy, deep empathy and a beguiling sense of innocence. This book is a gem.’ Graeme Base

  ‘A beautiful, moving fable. The Vanishing Act is one of the best books I have read in a long time.’ Eva Hornung

  ‘This book is a precious thing. I want to keep it in a painted box with a raven feather and sea-polished stones, taking it out when I feel the need to visit Minou on her island again. The best stories change you. I am not the same after The Vanishing Act.’

  Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus

  ‘Mette Jakobsen’s first novel is a gossamer web, a work of fragile beauty…a delightfully rendered portrayal of innocence coping with loss, of someone who has found a great deal to explore in a tiny space.’ Age

  ‘Jakobsen’s European sensibility is apparent…[her] prose is stylish and she works with some fine imagery.’ Australian

  ‘This book is a sharp, elegantly written fable about loss, loneliness and taking comfort in what you have. The characters are redolent of some of Hemingway or Steinbeck’s best. The Vanishing Act, surely one of the more adventurous Australian novels of the year, is a pleasure.’ Sunday Mail Brisbane

  ‘A stunning new voice for fans of literary fiction.’

  Books+Publishing

  ‘Jakobsen’s debut novel is a delectable delight, a fetching fable that is both heartbreaking in its poignancy and breathtaking in its delicacy.’ Booklist

  Mette Jakobsen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, and now lives in Newtown, Sydney. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and a BA in philosophy. In 2004 she graduated from NIDA’s Playwrights Studio and several of her plays have been broadcast on ABC Radio National. Her novels are The Vanishing Act, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize in 2012, and What the Light Hides.

  textpublishing.com.au

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

  22 William Street

  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  © Mette Jakobsen 2016

  The moral right of Mette Jakobsen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

  First published in Australia by The Text Publishing Company, 2016

  Book and cover design by Imogen Stubbs

  Cover photograph by Whitney Ott / Offset

  Typesetting by J&M Typesetting

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Creator: Jakobsen, Mette, 1964–.

  Title: What the light hides / by Mette Jakobsen.

  ISBN: 9781922079299 (paperback)

  ISBN: 9781921921438 (ebook)

  Subjects: Parental grief—Fiction.

  Bereavement—Fiction.

  Man–woman relationships—Fiction.

  Dewey Number: A823.4

  For Kirsten

  Night still floats in the morning light. A thick and watery presence of shades and depth, of dreams and slow heartbeats. Outside our bedroom window I can see the hazy shapes of the hedges, the wild rosebushes, the long grass and the oak. I am guessing there is frost on the grass. It’s winter in Mount Wilson.

  Vera is asleep next to me, her arm flung above her head, her breath deep and steady. For a moment I pretend that nothing has changed, that when she wakes she will look at me the way she did before. I pull on a jumper and walk down the chilly corridor to the kitchen. I don’t turn on the light before filling the kettle. I don’t mind the grey darkness; I know the house inside out. We have lived here for more than twenty years. Vera and I. And Ben.

  I sit at the kitchen table and look out onto the garden while I wait for the water to boil.

  I loved her name straight away. Vera. It’s old-fashioned, but it suits her. The first time I saw her was at a dinner party hosted in a warehouse in the inner city. I noticed her instantly. She had long hair then too and she was beautiful, but it was her dress that caught my eye. It was turquoise and shimmering, cut deep in front, and it seemed a bit too big for her. It looked like something pulled out of the dress-up box; a bit too loud and a bit too vintage for the black-clad crowd. But it wasn’t just the dress that made me watch her throughout dinner. It was the way she observed her surroundings: the people, the food, the bare grey walls. She observed it all openly, curiously, as if she wasn’t quite part of the scene. Halfway through the first course Vera caught my eye across the table. She lifted her glass in a toast and drank without breaking eye contact.

  The person next to me told me that the warehouse had been an old flour mill and he had looked admiringly at the bare walls through black-rimmed glasses. I found the space pretentious and cold. If it hadn’t been for the lamps—floating orbs of opaque glass—it would have been an entirely miserable place. There were fifteen of them hanging at different heights and the light was so exquisite that for a moment I considered abandoning my work with wood for glass.

  I am rarely shy, but that night after dinner I felt an overwhelming shyness seeing Vera walk towards me. Chet Baker was playing ‘Almost Blue’ on the stereo. The lamps were dimmed and the tables moved up against the wall to make space for what the host called ‘intimate little gatherings’. Waiters were weaving between guests with champagne and I was standing by myself at the coffee table.

  ‘You like to be alone,’ she said as she reached me. Her voice was warm.

  A waiter stopped to offer her a glass of champagne and she regarded it with the same inquiring look she had everything else that evening. Her hair fell to her waist, her dress sparkled and I thought she was extraordinarily beautiful.

  I toasted her glass lightly with my coffee cup. ‘And you like to watch,’ I said, realising it sounded wrong, but not knowing how else to put it.

  They could have been lines out of a surrealist play. They would have sat comfortably in the dialogue of Waiting for Godot, which I saw once without understanding a word of it.

  We kept talking, but I don’t remember what we said. It was stray lines, fragments that didn’t mean anything. All I remember is that I couldn’t take my eyes off her and when she put her hand in mine in a way that was neither casual nor intentionally seductive I embarrassed myself by getting an erection so violent that it threatened to make me pass out.

  We went back to my place and barely made it through the door. I broke the rusted zipper on her dress in the hallway and found out in the process that the soft material smelled of mothballs. We ended up on the floor next to my work boots and a spare bike wheel. I came almost immediately and she moments after, guiding my hand. I had never experienced anyone receiving me with such abandon and complete confidence. Afterwards my body felt raw, but not spent. I was hungry for her in a way I hadn’t felt before and every time I had her after that the hunger grew. I tasted those long fingers, the curve of her waist, the inside of her, and it was never enough.

  The kettle boils and I can hear Vera in the shower, but I don’t get up just yet. It’s almost light outside. As I predicted there is frost on the grass. It will disappear when the sun comes out, but the cold will remain throughout the day.

  Ours is one of the oldest houses in Mount Wilson. It dates back to the beginning of the twentieth century, when early settlers escaped the hot Sydney summers in favour of a cool temperate climate. The European tree
s planted then stand tall in the rich volcanic soil among lilli pilli, sassafras, coachwood and ferns.

  People come up from the city for the weekend. They cruise past beautiful gardens and sandstone fences. Sometimes they get out of the car on wobbly city legs and stretch as if they have endured days of driving. Our garden falls short. It sits behind a peeling wooden fence with flowers that neither Vera nor I know the names of and grass that is permanently too long. Even Vera’s rose garden is so wild that it could be the setting of a fairytale. The stalks crawl up fences and wind along the ground with thorns thick and sharp. Our neighbour Rob says every chance he gets: ‘Every town needs an artist.’ But by the tone of his voice it’s clear he believes that our street suffers because of it.

  Something moves at the back of the garden. I lean closer to the window. It’s a lyrebird. For a moment its curly tail feathers stand in relief against the wall of Vera’s studio. Then it’s gone, back into the bush.

  I get up when I hear Vera leave the bathroom. I make coffee while listening to the news on the radio, I do all the same things I did five months ago.

  Before it happened.

  It was summer then and just like today I got up first. Vera appeared after her shower with bare feet and wet hair, wearing her faded blue kimono. She popped bread in the toaster, carried cheese and butter to the table, and I brushed her waist as we passed each other in our familiar routine. We had spent that early morning making love and I felt hot and weak in the knees and thought to myself, You lucky, lucky bugger. She caught me looking at her and laughed in that soft way of hers. I laughed too and considered taking her right back to bed.

  ‘No,’ she said as I reached for her, ‘don’t even think about it, darling. I’m going to the studio.’ She looked out the window and spotted Earl, the postman, at the end of the driveway. ‘Pour me a coffee instead.’

  I saw her sidestepping the sharp stones on our driveway and Earl handing her a bunch of letters. I poured coffee thinking about the work I needed to complete that day. I was working on what I called my ghost table. It was made from the lightest shade of grey maple. The customer lived in an architecturally designed glass house right on Pebble Beach on the south coast and I knew the table would fit the white driftwood and the grey pebbles perfectly.

  When Vera came back inside she looked different.

  ‘What?’ I put my cup down. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘There’s a letter for Ben.’

  It happened from time to time that letters arrived for him at our address, even though he’d lived and studied in the city for almost four years.

  ‘What’s the letter?’ I asked.

  ‘A dental reminder.’

  ‘So?’ I said.

  She stared at the envelope, then back up at me. ‘I haven’t been able to get hold of him all week.’

  I handed her a cup of coffee, reminding myself to bring an extra set of sheets to the workshop. The timber had bruised slightly the day before and I had to take extra care. ‘It’s the first week back at uni, he’s probably busy,’ I said.

  ‘David,’ she reached for her phone, ‘I have the strangest feeling.’

  ‘He was fine at your exhibition,’ I said. I felt a sting from the memory. ‘He was so fine, in fact, he managed to ignore me all night.’

  Vera touched my cheek and managed a half-smile as she dialled his number. The sun caught her bare feet and the edge of the kimono. I heard the muted sound of Ben’s voice on the answering machine and then the beep.

  ‘Ben, darling,’ Vera said. ‘I’m worried about you. Please call as soon as you get this, call me this morning.’ She hung up and looked at me. ‘He’s all right, isn’t he?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course he is,’ I said.

  It’s five months since that morning and everything has changed. Time doesn’t heal. Sometimes I feel so awful I just want to die and on other days I am filled with a wild, furious hope that things are not what they seem, that somehow the coroner made a mistake.

  This morning Vera appears in the kitchen ready for work in boots, jeans and a jumper. Her hair is in a ponytail and a scarf is wrapped around her neck.

  She walks over to the window. ‘Frost,’ she says.

  I want to tell her that I am thinking of going away for a while, but instead I say, ‘There was a lyrebird in the garden before.’

  She doesn’t ask where I had seen it or what it looked like.

  Our days are filled with silence; we barely talk and when we do we mostly argue. We haven’t made love for a long time. Not since before the funeral.

  Later I watch Vera walk across the lawn. Light appears in her studio, soft in the grey morning. I don’t know what she does all day. She hasn’t worked on anything since Ben disappeared.

  I stay in the kitchen a little longer and by the time I walk around the house to the converted garage the frost has disappeared. I rub Ginger the cat’s scruffy head and make sure that she has food and water. Then I put ruler and pencil in my back pocket and get to work.

  The smell of timber and glue mingles with the insistent eucalyptus scent from the bush. The garage is freezing and my breath hangs in the air, but I won’t feel the cold once I start working.

  I have done my best work here. If I dreamed of anything before meeting Vera it was a house like ours: the rustic charm, the light, the sheer freedom of having work and living space all in one. Whenever I’ve been away and drive back through Bells Line, the last stretch of barren mountain before reaching the village, I feel that I am coming home in the truest sense of the word.

  The work set out for me this morning is simple. I am finishing off a four-seater table in mulberry. The tabletop needs paring down and its corners more shape before I apply oil. I start working the medium plane while feeling the wood with my other hand. The work is always tactile. I can trust my hands, but I can’t always trust my sight.

  The order came through my agent, who is constantly pleading with me to hire an assistant. But I don’t want to delegate. Each step in making a piece of furniture is important and part of a whole, even the dull bits, even the sanding.

  I’ve never regretted dropping out of uni to do woodwork. On my worst days in the workshop I am more content than I ever was in lecture halls and with my head buried in books.

  I took to it quickly. The tools and the steps involved made sense to me. I went to Japan and spent three months sitting on the floor of a carpentry workshop in Tokyo, where I learned the intricate process of joinery. I almost did my knees in, but it was worth it. By the time I returned to Australia I’d let go of using glue and nails and had a strong vision for my future work. Later I fell in love with inlays. Not the traditional ones—neat arrangements of flowers and leaves—but bold designs of squares and triangles.

  I shift planes, go one smaller and try not to think of Ben. I slow down, continually feeling the wood as I go along. Carpentry is not a wrestle with substance, at least not the way Vera works with metal. Wood can’t be conquered; it requires patience and persistence.

  I try to let the work guide my thoughts, but it’s getting increasingly difficult these days. I am reminded of Ben everywhere I look. This morning the bleak sun falls through the open garage door and I remember him, sitting on the floor in a ray of sun: three years old, playing with wooden blocks. And memory skips in painful staccato. The two of us on a blanket sharing lunch, teaspoons and glasses glinting in the light. Then him, napping on the old lounge in the corner. It was an ordinary morning. A perfectly ordinary morning.

  In my memory he is as present as he has always been, and it makes no sense to me that he is dead.

  ‘You have to accept that he is gone,’ Vera said last time we argued.

  ‘I do. I do accept it,’ I replied.

  But Vera knows. She knows that deep down I’m still waiting for him to walk back into our lives with the same carefree attitude he has always had.

  The wood shifts under my hands and I stop planing and reach for the sandpaper.

  I stay
in the workshop all day. Late afternoon I walk back to the house. The feeble winter sun never makes it past the thick walls and the house is cold and dark. I turn the lights on in the kitchen and make a sandwich with cheese and lettuce. I add extra butter, even though I should probably watch my weight, and I eat standing in the living room at a loss for what to do next. The evenings are the worst. Some nights we go to bed early just to avoid the silence, but more often than not we end up lying awake next to each other, listening to the croaky hoots of the frogmouth owl that lives in Rob’s tall pines.

  I take another bite of my sandwich and look around the room. A beautiful but worn Persian rug covers the floor. A comfortable lounge sits next to the fireplace and above the lounge hangs the painting that we bought in Moscow on our honeymoon. We both love it. It’s dramatic and dreamy at the same time, depicting a tower in mid-fall. Parts float in a pale blue sky: a door, a window, a staircase and something that looks like a broom. Vera says it reminds her of the tower of Babel.

  I never understood that story.

  ‘Why did God come down and destroy something that seems like a valiant effort?’ I asked one night, lying next to Vera in bed. ‘All they wanted was unity.’

  ‘God had something better in mind for the people,’ said Vera, hand on my chest. ‘A new project.’

  I kissed her shoulder. ‘To be dispersed? Living far from each other and not being able to speak the same language?’

  ‘I like to think that in being forced to reach out to each other we might understand something about love that we otherwise may not have known,’ said Vera.

  Vera grew up in a Presbyterian home. Her father died when she was five. A couple of years later her mother married Bob, the pastor of a small church.

  I like Vera’s mother. I like her quiet humour and her kindness, and I like the way she treasures the table of white walnut that I made for her. But most of all I like that she was a good mother to Vera and still is.

  Outside the wind pulls at the bare branches and the sky is grey. I finish the last bit of my sandwich and then I see Vera leave the studio. Our home phone rings as I watch her disappear into the garden shed.