Free The Blind Eye by Georgia Blain Page A

of Port Tremaine to her. It was on the night they slept together, when they were out drinking, that Silas told her he had not always been a recluse. He had changed, he said, after that trip. In the haze of the alcohol, he thought for a moment that he had mentioned Port Tremaine to her previously.
    What trip?
she asked him, and he gave her only the barest details.
    What happened?
She grinned.
Did you fall in love?
    His response was similar to the one he had given Jake.
    Out there?
He laughed.
God, no
, and he butted out his cigarette with short sharp jabs, even though he had lit it only moments before.
    When he told me that he had been in love with Constance, I could sec that he was surprised by his ownwords, and that he was immediately aware of how ambiguous the truth of that statement was.
    For many of us, the mention of love brings with it a myriad of qualifications; we use the word and then we start trying to hedge it in, to shape it, to give it some kind of definition.
    This morning, walking with Larissa as the sun was burning the frost off the short grass that covers the plains, she told me that she and her partner had decided to marry. I was pleased for her. I know the difficulties they have had, and I know they have worked hard to resolve them.
    In the distance, a group of kangaroos watched us. Pausing in their grazing to assess whether we presented a threat, they sat up on their hind legs, all eyes on us as we made our way towards an outcrop of boulders on the highest point.
    She asked me if I was in a relationship, if I was in love with anyone.
    Not at the moment
, I told her.
    It has, in fact, been just over a year and a half since Victoria left. She is pregnant now, an issue that was a cause of considerable contention between us, and she is, I believe, happy.
    I have not met anyone since we separated. I have not even slept with anyone, and I shake my head as I realise this.
    Any reason?
Larissa asked and she glanced across at me, averting her eyes almost immediately.
    I smiled at her.
There isn’t one in particular that I can pin-point. It just doesn’t interest me much
.
    She apologised for asking.
I shouldn’t have. It’s only because we are here in this place. You know, not in the clinic
.
    I told her it was fine, that I didn’t mind at all.
    Look
. It was the kangaroos that I was indicating to her and I watched as they bounded away, arcs of white frost shimmering behind them with each enormous leap they made.
    It was only when they were gone that I realised her eyes had in fact remained on me, and in that brief moment before she turned away, I was surprised to see that her look was one of mild curiosity, almost sympathy, as though I was a being she could not fathom.

     
2
    Silas told me that it took him five minutes to convince Rudi to unlock the gate. One look at Constance had been enough for him to know he wanted to go in. She was, he said, more beautiful than he would have believed to be possible. Her hair was thick and dark and it fell, black and smooth, to her shoulder blades. Her skin, and he searched for the words, was like the palest petal, touched pink and stretched taut across the fingers. But it was her eyes that stilled him: they were violet, deep and pure, the colour of the dusk after a perfect summer day. Standing just outside that gate, his floundering heart wide open to it all, Silas wanted only to be on the other side, there with her.
    He had not, of course, heard of Rudi’s work; he had no knowledge of the recognition he had once achieved, albeit obscure. It was, therefore, simply a matter of luck that he chose to tell Rudi he was interested in writing an article about the garden, the lie he had stumbled upon working almost immediately.
    When he saw the old man’s grip on the gun loosenslightly, the blood return to his knuckles and the muscles in his arms relax, Silas pressed on, telling him he had heard of the community Rudi had set up, that he wanted to know more, that he would not