In Certain Circles Read Online Free

You’d only be collared and bored.’ She said carefully, ‘Your company means more to me than it does to anyone else,’ then added for form’s sake, ‘Except Lily, I suppose.’
    â€˜ Yes . Which I’d have said sooner, had that been humanly possible.’
    They smiled.
    â€˜But pack us some lovely grub, Zo, and we needn’t come back.’
    So they lay on the beach. Since his return from the camp, after obligatory sessions with the doctors, Russell had eaten and exercised with a kind of purposeful dedication that no one could comment on. Zoe looked at her brother. He was slim, athletic, of medium height. At this early age, his brown hair was greying. He had his mother’s pleasantly irregular features—high cheekbones, a slightly aquiline nose, and a large mouth with very white even teeth. His legs were scarred, and the scars on his back were visible as he stretched out on the sand in black swimming shorts. ‘Ulcers,’ he had said, once and for all. Zoe had learned to see these marks not only without appearing to, but really, without thinking or feeling.
    She served out cold chicken and salad. ‘But how did you meet the Quayles?’ she demanded. ‘Anna’s nice, but he’s so—weird.’
    â€˜No. What did he say to you?’ Russell considered his plate with interest.
    â€˜It wasn’t what he said …He asked if I’d done relativity.’
    Russell opened his eyes at her, and she had to laugh, and scrutinise them as she often did. His eyes were luminous, a brilliant blue.
    â€˜Relativity! That could be his idea of small talk. Meeting just happened.’
    Going by train to a suburb an hour out of town, visiting the wife of a friend who had died in the camp, he travelled in a carriage with someone who later turned out to be Stephen Quayle. A mysterious halt between stations prolonged itself to the point where his companion was forced to look up from his book. Russell was seen twisting his neck to read the title, because no line of print offering itself in that vacuum could go unread.
    â€˜Relativity?’ Zoe bit without appetite at her chicken.
    â€˜That’s not the only thing he’s interested in. This was Catholicism, existentialism.’
    â€˜Is he one?’
    â€˜Not Stephen.’
    Parting finally at the station, they had met again for dinner in town at night, and adjourned to Stephen’s room near the city to continue the talk.
    About to object, ‘But you have so many friends. Why pick up this salesman for conversation?’ Zoe stopped. None of this was true. Too many of his friends were dead. She should try to be pleased at this sign that he was willing to start again, she told herself.
    â€˜Has he been away?’
    â€˜He wasn’t passed. Eyes.’
    The two men had met three times before the Quayles visited Russell at home and met his family. Anna had been brought along because it happened to be a Saturday when Stephen was due to take her out: she still lived with the uncle and aunt who were her legal guardians, and Stephen saw her once a fortnight.
    Their father had come to Australia from England to negotiate a contract and to establish a new branch for the engineering company that employed him. He met a girl—Stephanie Boyd—at a dinner party in Sydney and married her a month later. When Stephen was seven or eight, and Anna a few months old, their parents were killed in a level-crossing accident.
    â€˜Their car hit by a train? They must have been so young,’ Zoe argued in dismay, looking at Russell, wanting him to change his story.
    He raised his shoulders and lowered them. He leaned across to the basket and threw some chicken bones into an empty container.
    â€˜Were the children in the car?’
    â€˜I think so. I don’t know. I didn’t ask for a diagram. You don’t ask people to go into detail, Zo.’
    She peeled a banana and ate a bite slowly. ‘Were