For Rye Gavin Gardiner (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📖

field, an invisible imperfection imposed upon perfection. She gropes for the living room door, oak and heavy as a bank vault.

…Give us this day our daily bread…

Having turned its handle as quietly as a cat burglar, she prepares to pull.

Change in will.

She swallows.

Strength of service.

What if it creaks? What if it cracks? What if it pops? What if it bashes the wall and wakes Father and…

She swings the stupid thing open.

The light’s on.

Her heart hurls up her throat as she’s filled with the impending horror of being discovered. Too late to run, too late to hide. The soldier navigated the minefield beautifully, but met her end by accidently shooting herself once home free.

‘Rennie?’

‘Mother?’

She squints through the low light and sees the woman perched, pouring over some funny looking machine. The vicar’s wife quickly adjusts her posture so she’s sitting neatly. Every iota of her being is arranged to perfection as assiduously as the house, her clothing impeccable and not a hair out of place. As for that smile, that sweet, rehearsed smile, it never falters. She motions her daughter over. The girl carefully closes the door and tiptoes to the chair in which her mother sits, pregnant belly like a beach ball in her lap.

‘Are you trying to wake your father, Rennie?’

She locks her gaze onto her mother’s flawless hair and then the woman’s tired eyes, trying her best to ignore the bruises. ‘No, Mother. I’m thirsty. Wanted some water from the kitchen.’ She looks at the machine. ‘What’s that?’

‘This is a typewriter,’ she says. ‘I write stories with it. Your father doesn’t like them much, so let’s keep this between us, okay?’

‘Can I have a shot?’

The woman pauses. ‘You can type one line. No more.’

The girl’s fingers poise above the keys, then cautiously begin tapping.

CHANGE IN WILL STREN

Her mother stops her, then gently moves her hands from the keyboard. They stare silently at the keys, the grandfather clock by the door ticking away in the silence, always ticking.

‘I’m glad we got this time together, Rennie,’ she says. ‘Your father went to the doctor about his shaking hands. It seems he has nothing to worry about for now, but things will get worse in years to come.’ She runs her fingers through the girl’s soft black hair. ‘He might need our help in the future, when his condition worsens.’

The girl can resist no longer. She looks at the bruises. ‘Like he helps us now, Mother?’

The fingers stop. The smile wavers. ‘My love, these are just bruises. He would never hurt us, not really.’

The girl looks down, fiddling with her pyjama sleeves. ‘They don’t hurt?’

The woman turns her swollen eyelids to the oil painting hanging above the fireplace. Waves lash up like flames at wailing faces. ‘You know what that painting is, Rennie?’

‘Yes, Mother. It’s the Great Flood. I learnt all about it in Sunday school.’

She nods. ‘That’s right, dear. And you know why God sent the flood?’

The girl flips her Sunday school switch. ‘Yeah. Then the Lord saw that the…uh…wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every in–intent? of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was…uh…’

‘Rennie, no,’ she interrupts. ‘That isn’t knowing.’ The girl looks at her. ‘Your grandmother loved art, you know.’

‘Your mother or Father’s mother?’

‘You know your father doesn’t speak about his family.’ She looks back at the faces screaming skyward. ‘My mother. You never knew her, but she was a clever woman. She told me inside every painting there’s a thousand more; that, like everything in life, there’s lots of ways to see the same thing. That’s what makes art such fun, you see?’

The girl’s eyebrows arch in pained confusion.

‘Listen, Rennie, between you and me, it’s a pretty scary painting, isn’t it?’ A smile surfaces on the girl’s face. ‘Not to me, because I see one of the other thousand paintings inside it. Your father wouldn’t like me saying, but I believe the story of the flood was teaching us something less…scary. I believe in God, but whether “the waters prevailed on the Earth one hundred and fifty days”, I can’t say. Some would call me blasphemous, most would call me naïve, but I believe the Bible’s teaching us something different. Maybe the flood’s meant to show us not how to reshape the world with destruction…’ She takes her daughter’s hand. ‘…but with love.’

The girl’s eyes widen.

‘Rennie, precious Rennie, I believe love can reshape a thousand more worlds than some silly flood ever could. A thousand worlds, just like those thousand paintings.’

Her mother’s arms feel strong around her, her eyes shining with a courage that hypnotises the girl. The bruises seem to dissolve before her.

‘Love, Rennie. Like a flood. That’s what gives us real strength. Maybe we all have a little flood in us.’

The girl stares, transfixed.

‘So you see, my darling, they’re just bruises. He’ll never hurt us, not really. Because he can’t.’

She pauses, then pulls the girl closer before continuing.

‘He wasn’t always like this, not when we first married, and he won’t be like this forever. He’s just like the painting: scary, but the good bits are still in there. Rennie, promise you’ll be there for him if anything happens to me. When you grow up you’ll leave this town, have your own family, your own life, but he still might need you one day.’

Her mother squeezes her hand. Always at the right times she squeezes her hand.

‘The flood, Rennie,’ she says. ‘Remember the flood, remember the love. Promise you’ll be there for him if anything happens to me.’

‘Yes, Mother,’ the girl says. ‘I promise.’

6

She stopped cutting and listened again. The chattering was distant, but unmistakably there.

The clean-up operation had rid the blast site of the shrapnel sprayed from the