At night, we watched television. We lifted our heads to survey any car that passed by. The frayed bitumen crackled under the slow-turning wheels, each car moving warily, as if it hadn’t meant to come this way at all.
The good dog, which by day kept to the lino, waited until the lights were out before taking up his usual position, stretched the full length of the sofa, like a tired man.
‘Do you remember swimming in the “200” paddock?’ she said to me. The question was so clear and unexpected that my hand jumped from the table in fright, as if a glass had spilled. ‘I never liked swimming there,’ she said.
I thought of the half-solid water, the prod of cold through my swimsuit, the membrane clay moving underfoot. I told her I felt the same.
‘I was afraid of snakes,’ I said. ‘I thought there might be a snake in the water.’ A barb of memory curved towards me like a tiny scythe. Childish. I was afraid of that, too.
She didn’t seem to hear me.
‘I always felt strange being there,’ she said, quietly. ‘But when you children were small it was nice for you to swim. And then the grandchildren, too, of course. They had so much in the city. That dam was all I could offer. I couldn’t take them to the better waterholes; they were too far into the bush. Too dangerous on my own with little ones.’
I was going to correct her. Remind her, once again. She’d been confusing my name with my mother’s for some time now. Quite regularly, she really seemed to believe that I was Cynthia. But she had not spoken of the farm for over a year, as if she’d forgotten it completely. So I didn’t offer my usual prompt of ‘I’m Geraldine, Grandma.’ Instead, feeling a vague sense of unease, I moved to the upholstered chair facing hers, and waited.
‘He poisoned them, you know,’ she said.
I did not dare make a sound. Did not dare slide a word in against the pinprick of light. She wasn’t looking at me, just speaking into the room, into the hot stillness.
‘Reg Courtney. Across at Witney Station. Oh, you never liked him, Cynthia. Even as a toddler you were afraid of him. You used to run under my skirt, eyes bulging, and say, “The big man is here.”’
I imagined my mother as a young child, watching their neighbour crossing the paddock on his enormous brown horse. She’d told me about him herself. A cruel man, she’d said. Treated his animals badly. Left the cattle too long without water.
My grandmother was staring at the wall, speaking as if she were reading words projected there on the flat beige.
‘There was a group of Aborigines on the land,’ she said. ‘About six, I think. We’d seen them quite a few times over the years. Oh, I got an awful fright the first time – over near Sampson’s Gully – saw them moving through the trees. I didn’t expect to see anyone at all in those parts. They didn’t bother us, though. Your father always felt it was best to leave them alone, let them get on with things in their own way. But he was unusual. There was a lot of hatred … dreadful. And when animals went missing or anything at all went wrong, well, it was easier to blame them. The farmers enjoyed it, I think. It banded them together … stopped them fighting each other.’
She didn’t turn her head. She watched the wall as if clues were forming there, letter by letter.
‘Reg Courtney came across late one afternoon,’ she said. ‘He didn’t get off his horse, just pulled up near us. Your father and I were near the front steps. We’d just got home from town. You’d run upstairs, Cynthia, as soon as you saw his horse coming. When he arrived, Reg was chuckling to himself … I wondered whether he’d been drinking. He told us that some of the Aborigines had come around to his place. I won’t repeat what he called them. Said they’d been hanging about near the holding yards – they’d taken to making damper and they wanted some flour. We just stood there, looking up at him. Wondering why he’d come. Wishing he’d go.’
My grandmother shifted in her seat. ‘He had a dirty, rolled cigarette burning in one hand. The flame was almost touching his skin. Everything was so still; all we could hear was the horse breathing and that awful man sniggering. I couldn’t take my eyes off the cigarette. Would he feel it, I wondered, when it touched his skin? Or would it burn straight through?’
She hunched her shoulders forward as if the air had suddenly cooled. ‘At last he told us what he was talking about. “I gave them some flour, alright,” he said, and he leaned right out of the saddle towards us. The leather creaked loudly, made a sound like a small animal. The long stalk of ash from his cigarette fell into the dust without losing its shape. I remember looking at the little tube of grey lying at your father’s feet.’
My grandmother let out a deep breath. ‘“Arsenic flour.” That’s what he said. Almost in a whisper. Slow, like he enjoyed saying it. Then he threw down the last of the cigarette, turned his horse without another word, and galloped away. Your father was so upset, Cynthia.’
Outside our window, a young girl on a rusty bike leaned against the mailbox and stared in at us with a pink, defiant face.
‘We tried to find them,’ my grandmother went on, turning her head towards the street, not noticing the girl. ‘Without saying a word about it, your father rode out early the next morning. He thought he might be able to get to them in time. Save them. He found nothing.’
My grandmother looked straight at me and frowned hard, momentarily surprised and irritated to discover that I was not her daughter. Her lips pressed in confusion. She smoothed the bodice of her dress with her hands, traced her bottom lip with a tentative finger as if checking that it was still there. She drew in a short, loud breath, like a single sob.
‘We never saw them again. We wanted to tell the police but we were afraid of the Courtneys. Ever since that row over the new fences. You know we found one of our yearlings afterwards, mutilated, lying dead near our front gate. They could have made life very hard for us.’
Even I knew about the Courtneys and their grudges. Old Reg was still alive, walking with two sticks and an unbowed grimace. Except for an exiled son, never mentioned again, the extended clan still lived at Witney Station, farming and fighting.
The wooden clock from the dining room, perched now on a narrow shelf like the carapace of a rare turtle, sounded the hour, booming against the thin walls. Not registering this, my grandmother resumed watching the flat space in front of her, as if its blankness gave her clarity, or comfort.
‘Once, at a sale yard,’ she went on, her voice steady, ‘Reg Courtney leaned across the fence and told your father that he’d left him a present on the land. At first we thought he meant that poor beast. Your father didn’t answer; wouldn’t speak a word to him.
‘“Nice and close,” Reg said. “Just to keep things friendly. Like neighbours.” He touched his hat then, and walked away.
‘Your father didn’t tell me for a long time. Only when he was sick himself. He wanted to say it before he died. He’d looked for the bones, I know he did. I looked for them, too. There were a few times, before he was really ill, when we were out checking the bores. We’d catch each other’s eye as we picked through the bush. We were always searching for them. But we’d never found anything. Could never prove anything. They were just gone.’
She sat for a long time. I didn’t think she would say any more but, with a lift of her chin, she went on.
‘One day, oh, many years later, not long before your poor father died, I was swimming at the “200”. The water was quite shallow after that very hot summer. I don’t think the level had ever been so low. I was out near the middle … waiting for one of you. Goodness, that water was so cold. For the first time that I could ever remember, my feet could touch the bottom at the centre. I was pushing off from the clay, which was always very soft and muddy. That’s what made the water so dark. I thought I felt something underfoot. Smooth and round. Bone. Not an animal – I’d know the crown of an animal. Then I knew what it was. At last I knew. The flash of it. It was like lightning str
iking the water. I suddenly remembered what Reg Courtney had said, all those years before. “Nice and close. Like neighbours.” I was sure then, where they were.’
Her voice was rising, words beginning to tumble.
‘I couldn’t get out fast enough but I had to get the children out. No – it was just one. One child. It was one of yours, Cynthia. It was, I think, it was … it was the oldest one.’
Her voice was curling into itself, following memory into its coiled depths. The name, my name, the memory of that day, was falling away. Sinking.
‘I was swimming back. It was unbearable. I felt as if I were being pulled under. I had to get out. I was telling the children to get out. Who was it? Oh, it was Michael. Yes. Just the one child. Yes, I think it was Michael with me.’
There was no Michael, save for an infant brother of her own, who’d died of diphtheria just after she was born. The door was closing.
‘What did you do, Grandma? After you felt the bones in the water?’
She turned to look at me, her head tilted in confusion. Her eyes scanned the room and drifted across the mean apron of concrete just beyond the front windows. At the edge of the road, the red dirt was crayon bright after the rain.
‘Just look at that soil,’ she said. ‘It’s uncanny, that colour. Oh, I know it’s good for the crops but … well, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.’
She crossed her arms. Sat back in the chair as if overcome with fatigue.
‘The water, Grandma?’
‘Water? What water?’ She looked straight at me for a long time, her eyes feeling their way around my face. She smiled. She was still quite beautiful, the proud way her head turned.
‘Oh, Geraldine. I haven’t made you any tea. You must have been waiting for ages. Did I nod off? Was it tea you wanted? Is that what you said?’
She was rising. Still strong-backed. Still a trace of the champion swimmer she had been. She lifted her big body from the chair. Just for a moment, she moved slightly to the left and right, as if not entirely sure where the kitchen lay. Then, with a small judder of recognition, she walked towards the back of the house with her rolling step.
‘You just stay there and I’ll do it,’ she called. She was calm now, her mind washed clear. In a lot of ways, she seemed happy. ‘You’ve been looking after me your whole visit, dear. Just relax. I’m sure I have coffee here somewhere.’
Cupboard doors were opening and shutting, opening and shutting.
‘Let me see. Yes, here’s some tea,’ she called. ‘You were talking about swimming. I was a very good swimmer at school. There’s a big silver cup on the sideboard. Do you see it? That’s mine. I’ll be with you in a moment, Geraldine. And don’t worry about that dog. He’s a good fellow. He never comes onto the carpet.’
All the Perfumes
Rachel runs the stopper across her wrist, feels the smooth glass on her skin, the wet slide of it. There’s a thrill of violets, a peppery trace of rose. An English scent. She imagines milky skies, soft rain, deep emerald hedgerows. She’d like to go there one day, she decides. One day. She watches the swipe of fragrance as it dries on her arm, waits for the embrace of flowers and spice. She never tires of this one. It makes her feel safe.
She looks out the window. A hazy Sydney evening, the bony husk of the Opera House still visible, far in the distance. Across the street, sheer-faced office buildings show no sign of life. The city is going home – silently, from this height. Lines of cars nose out of basements, push forward, disappear. Only the sound of the lifts exhaling in the shaft across the hall slips under her door. Tomorrow, she thinks, she might go outside.
It’s suddenly dark but she doesn’t bother with the lamp. She leans back in her chair, eyes closed. The fragrance wafts around her, delicate, intense. Rain. For some reason, today, this one reminds her of rain. Not here. At the farm, long ago, where it was precious.
When rain fell there, it was beautiful. Rachel would sit on the front steps and wait for the greenish tang of it to swirl towards her, drop its dusty posy of scent at her feet. Eucalyptus. Lemon myrtle. A hint of peppermint. Thin streamers of mist would catch, for a moment, in the top of the ghost gums, birds going crazy under the dripping leaves. Rain at last. But not enough. Never enough.
Rachel tries not to think of all the other days there. The way the ground set, stone-hard, underfoot. How everything drooped and faded, bleached to the horizon. Sometimes, in the distance, a dark cloud would scud by. She remembers standing on the verandah with her parents, silent as hunters, watching it track above the landscape. When the cloud disappeared from view, her father picked up his hat and left without a word.
Her mother grew roses. She planted them at the front of the house – a small, defiant circle of tended grass. Three preposterous bushes, struggling against oven-hot bricks. Rachel pictures her, carrying a basin from the kitchen. The silver arc of the water, flying. And the way it fell, solid as a hank of thick rope, the crack of it as it hit the ground. And the last of the cattle in the top paddock, staring.
Rachel shifts in her chair. She knows she shouldn’t let herself doze. That she must not think about the farm. But the hugging beauty of the scent carries her back there. Behind her flickering eyelids, she sees the grey-brown hills.
It was another dry storm. Late afternoon. Rachel was glad her father had gone to town. He would see the bank again, he’d told them. Stay with his brother while he was there. Back Wednesday.
There’d been lightning and a mauling wind, but only one brief shower, scurrying past. Everything was hot, pulsing out its aroma like a shout. Dust. Dead grass. The mineral bones of the land.
And there she is. Rachel running, her hair bobbing high, snatching leaves from the lemon myrtle, each one sheeny with a touch of damp. She’d check the dam, she told her mother. See if any of the rain had held. Her mother had looked back at her with a thin smile.
The dry grass whips Rachel’s legs as she races down the long paddock. There’s the spindly tangle of scrub, gravel as her shoes slide, the dam’s crusty tiles of earth snapping under her feet.
And a hat – out of place – her father’s hat, cartwheeled away, its empty crown tilted to the sky. She calls out for him, just once, before she lifts her head. She sees the red roof of the ute, tucked under the straggle of shrubs. And then, something hunched on the stones, a lifeless shape pooled in the last of the water, an arm flung wide. A blue-checked shirt she’d nuzzled a thousand times.
And the smell. The way it swarmed after her as she shrieked and stumbled, her mother on the verandah, on the stairs, racing towards her, her skirt flaring against that hopeless patch of green. How night fell, at last, on a sobbing house, the lemon myrtle leaves still crushed in the curve of her fist, their foggy citrus consoling her, leading her into sleep.
A door slams down the hall. Rachel’s startled awake, gulping air. She drops the stopper back into the bottle. It fits into place with a leaden clink. By tomorrow, she sees, it will be empty. She checks the others on the table, feels a wash of panic. All of the bottles have less than a quarter left. She trails her fingers across their tops like a caress, counting them. Twenty bottles. Only twenty left. Not enough, she thinks. Never enough.
And on the stairs, she’d swear it, that smell, rising.
Portal
Martin pushed the key into the lock but did not turn it. He did this every night when he got home. It was cold this evening, perhaps the first day he’d really felt it. Winter wasn’t far away. The street was unusually quiet; everyone had gone in.
He put his bag down on the small square of concrete that served as a porch, pressed his forehead against the front door. Not for the first time, he marvelled at how solid the wood felt. Oak, he’d decided, long ago. He felt certain that the door had ended up here by accident, attached to his house in some sort of renovation mix-up. Perhaps it was meant for one of those big places on the terrace, near the park. It w
as not meant for this street, this house.
Right from the day they’d moved in, Martin had thought the rest of his place looked a little flimsy. Insubstantial. If a hurricane came barrelling through – an unlikely prospect in Luton, he had to admit – he imagined that the whole house would break apart in flat chunks, the wind scooping up the pieces, sending them eddying skywards, down to the roundabout and away. Perhaps those shards of his life would head south, towards London. Martin imagined the wallpaper that Shelley insisted on pasting over every damn flat surface skimming over trucks and cars and endless rooftops. He pictured the bedroom paper with its weird tangle of silver and lilac knots flashing overhead, people looking up in awe at the flying walls and the atrocious taste. But the door, this door, would remain, standing firm in all its panelled, woody glory. Standing like a portal to another life.
He thought about the young woman at the drycleaners that morning.
‘Last name?’ she’d said, without looking up.
She knew that the splashy stains on the bottom of his trouser legs were vomit. The work Christmas party, held on a damp evening in early October because ‘we’re flat out all December, aren’t we team!’ Martin grimaced at the memory of everyone sitting at that long table at the back of the local pub, wearing the cheap nylon Christmas hats that someone in Accounts had saved from last year.
Other drinkers had pointed and smiled indulgently.
‘Like to get in early, you lot, don’t you!’ one old idiot had called as he passed, his bellowing laugh making everyone turn.
Martin had barely eaten a thing that night because, yet again, nobody had bothered to pre-order anything gluten-free. And that smartarse Dan saying, ‘Come on, Marts, you’ve been sitting on that glass long enough. Here we go, mate. This’ll do you good.’
The girl at the drycleaners had made pincers of her fingers and dropped his trousers into a red plastic bin. She had a tattoo on the inside of her finger. It read ‘Love’ in oddly old-fashioned script. It must have hurt, Martin thought.
This Taste for Silence Page 11