She traces the coast in her mind — she could travel past the Apostles and the Shipwreck Coast, head into South Australia and follow the peninsulas, skirting around the gulfs. Lose herself in one of the flailing seaside towns, discover the Australia she’d read about in Tim Winton novels: get a job farming oysters or abalone and live out her days in some deserted shack as a miserable misfit, gossiped about by the locals.
She could kick up north towards the centre, camp on the dry bed of Lake Eyre. She’d been there once before with her campervan; cycling on her mountain bike, she had struck out across the shattered salt pan of the lake’s surface until it seemed the world had no edges at all. The sky seemed to melt into the horizon, or perhaps the ground tugged the clouds down. When the sun set, deep bands of colour would swell in the distance, rose pinks bumping into a burnt orange that would leach into pale blue. It was the sort of place that demanded nothing of a person.
Later, Eve lies on her back in the tent, eyes wide open. The rain has begun in earnest now, the tent fly anxiously flapping, the zip sliders tinkling against one another. Mina would have liked it here, in this tent. She had an unusual love for storms; Tom had convinced her that a storm meant all of the fairies and imaginary creatures were having a party, and that something wonderful must have happened to make them celebrate.
•
Like a birthday?
As far as Mina was concerned there was nothing in the world as exciting as her third birthday, which had involved party hats, colourful popcorn, and eleven children dressed in fairy wings. It had been about this time last year that Mina had pushed a chair up against the window during a thunderstorm, almost shaking with excitement as she crowded up against the glass, trying to catch sight of the fairies.
They skate across the glass so quickly that humans can’t see them, said Tom. But see the trails they leave behind?
He traced the passage of the raindrops running down the pane. A rumble of thunder crashed above them, and Mina’s body tensed, unsure.
Don’t be scared — that’s the sound of all the giants stamping their feet, said Tom. They’re so excited about the party that they’re jumping up and down.
Eve watched as he demonstrated, lifting his knees high and dropping his feet to the floor. Mina squirmed off the chair and joined him, jumping two feet together, her brown hair bobbing up and down, working loose from her butterfly clips.
And if you’re extra lucky, sometimes you’ll see lightning from the party because the fairies set off fireworks that light up the whole sky!
He lifted Mina back onto the chair, standing behind her and leaning his hands against the sill.
And after the party it rains and rains and rains so that everything gets washed away, and the next day, nobody can see any of the fairy or giant footprints in the garden.
The next morning, Mina was at their bed, poking Tom.
Dad, Dad! We have to go in the garden and look for footprints.
Which is exactly what they did. All three of them — gumboots on, raincoats over pyjamas, stomping across the grass and tramping up and down the muddy paths of the vegie garden in the early-morning light.
There’s one! Mina bolted for the deck, her yellow gumboots squelching across the lawn. See! She pointed at the fuchsia bush, its flowers in full bloom: the bright popping colours, the stalks and petals bursting from the pod. Planetary nebulas, thought Eve, and brushed the description away.
It looks like a fairy!
Mina was right: the flowers hung from the bush in bunches, the inner blooms their skirts, the outer petals their wings and the stamen like slender legs in pink tights. The wonder on Mina’s face was indescribable.
I think I almost saw one, said Mina later, mud still streaking her face and wrapped in her hooded duck towel in front of the heater. A real one.
Saw one what? asked Eve.
A fairy. I almost sawed it, but it had to hide, so I didn’t.
Do you think at the next storm you might see it again? asked Eve, not knowing that this one would be the last.
•
Hello? Are you in there?
It’s Len. He shouts across the sound of the downpour, and Eve tenses, holds still.
Eve? Hello? Are you okay? It’s very wet out here. And the wind … look, it’s getting pretty gusty. I’m a bit worried about some of the trees, and branches falling.
I’m fine, she calls out, wishing him away.
Look, do you want to come inside? We’ve got the heater going, it’s nice and dry. His voice sounds very close; he is crouching at the door. She can see the light from his torch illuminating the base of the tent.
I’m fine, thank you.
Both listen to the wind moan like a cartoon ghost. It’s all make-believe.
Really, I think you should … you’d be more comfortable.
I don’t want to be comfortable!
Sitting in the dark in her sleeping bag, holding onto her knees, rocking forwards and back in little bursts.
Okay, okay.
She hears the shuffle of his raincoat, traces the arc of his torch as he stands up.
I’m sorry, she says. She has to make her voice high to be heard above the rain. I don’t mean to be rude. I just … I’m perfectly fine here, that’s all.
Well, don’t come whinging to me when you get swept down the river.
She makes an attempt at laughter that she knows he won’t hear. When he’s gone, Eve listens for him to come back; almost wishes that he would. Turns to the side and lowers herself onto the sleeping mat. Water seeps into the end of the sleeping bag; she curls up, without noticing the tears soaking into the pillow. She is so used to them appearing there.
5
LOTTE
DECEMBER 2009
Lotte missed the first exit and considered just staying on the highway, letting it take her where it would. She wasn’t sure she was ready to see her father yet. One highway would always become another soon enough, the yellow-and-red Shell service stations alternating with the green BP ones. McDonald’s. KFC.
She took the second exit from the bypass, the one that led directly into Ballarat, cutting straight through the suburbs to the town centre. Exhausted, she struggled to focus on anything other than the road. The interruption of traffic lights and intersections registered slowly after the smooth continuity of the highway, and, seeing red, Lotte only belatedly realised she was required to act, slamming on the brakes. The sun had set; lights had been switched on in houses that sat well back from the streets. Curtains had not yet been drawn; no one was willing to close away the last of Boxing Day just yet. She was driving too fast to see inside in any detail — the flash of a bookcase, the dancing colour of a television screen. Cars were parked in driveways and on verges; every house she passed seemed occupied, but surely this could not be the case? There must be empty houses, ones that the visitors had come from.
Her father’s house was dark, the slam of her car door intrusive. Like most in the street it was a Federation bungalow, the front room presenting with a shallow bay window, the door stepping back beneath a porch. Redbrick walls were offset by creamy white trim, the door and the wrought-iron house number were painted teal: her mother’s work. As a child, Lotte had used the front wall of the verandah as a barricade, flinging water bombs at the footpath where friends whizzed gleefully back and forth on their bicycles. A short driveway led to the added-on garage, which was fitted with a downsized gable to both match the house and attempt to disguise its utilitarian ugliness. Inside, the house was dark and cool in summer, warm and cosy in winter, though in the front bedrooms the lamps had to be switched on even during the middle of the day, because the small windows did not let in enough light.
When the doorbell failed to work, Lotte knocked loudly, imagining her dad down the back somewhere, dinner on his lap in front of the television. Maybe he had adopted one of those stable tables. Or a
tray with spindly legs, one that could be folded away next to the armchair. She should have bought him one as a gift, but that might embarrass him into thinking he should have a gift for her in return. She tried the doorbell again, pushing harder, and this time it worked. The deep pealing of the bell was so familiar that she found herself inside and outside all at once, and she raised her arm to reach for the door, to answer its call and see who was on the other side.
No footsteps. Someone must have taken pity on him, alone over Christmas, and invited him to dinner. She felt a flush of warmth for the kind people who would do such a thing, though she was sure they’d regret their decision: her father was not exactly a conversationalist. He had always been happy to go along with whatever other people suggested, a trait Lotte once thought was easy-going, and later decided was a sign of weakness. He never seemed to want anything.
Lotte backed her car out of the driveway and into the street. She had forgotten about the existence of the town’s huge lake until she came upon it, houses forming an immense circle around the shallow body. The last time she had been back, a year after her mother’s death, the lake was completely dried up, lake weed rotting in stinking piles in the sun, grass seeds lodging themselves in the fermenting marshy wetlands. When grass grew across the lake bed, it was shockingly green in the midst of the drought. The lake bed then had seemed like a lazy miracle, an oasis thumbing its nose at the dry. But within weeks the grass was drooping, leached of its colour, and the red-billed swans had to be coaxed from their nests amongst the reeds and taken, hissing and spitting, to a sanctuary.
That last visit with her father had felt like it went on forever, and, following an afternoon of long silences, Lotte suggested they walk the perimeter of the shrunken lake. The boathouses were rickety on too-high stilts, their ramps now only able to launch craft to lawn, not water. The park benches appeared lost, with no vista to offer. When they’d reached the marker for the rowing events of the 1956 Olympics, they struck out onto the lake bed, taking tentative steps even though they could see the cracked earth beneath their feet, solid as any other. Other walkers were doing the same, looking back at the shore in wonder, perhaps uneasy that the water might suddenly find its way back. A man walked by, swooping a metal detector ahead of him, headphones clamped to his ears and a supermarket bag tucked into his belt clanking with found objects. Her father told her a story — truth or myth — that a Hungarian Olympian had been so excited to win his race that he was swinging his gold medal around and it flew off the end of his finger, sailing into the lake, never to be recovered.
She would need to look for a hotel, and her best chance was the centre of town. Lotte pulled the Alfa into a U-turn, not wanting to do a full lap of the lake, and headed back the way she had come. Streetlights dropped orange nets to the road, marking out circles of asphalt, and making the night seem darker. She had almost passed by when she noticed an unfamiliar car parked in the drive of her father’s house, and a strip of light beneath the blind in the front room: he was home. Lotte parked, and hurried up the path to the door. Just as she was about to ring the bell, she heard laughter: a shriek of it, the kind that bursts out of someone when they’re taken by surprise, when they’re grabbed from behind and wrestled into a friendly embrace, the laughter muffled into quiet, a mouth covered in kisses. He wasn’t alone. Without a second thought, Lotte backed away from the door, high-stepping across the lawn so she didn’t loudly stumble, and back up the street, where she unlocked the Alfa and slipped in behind the wheel. She shifted the car into gear, pulling out quickly and taking off too fast.
The next morning he didn’t answer the doorbell, but this time Lotte turned the handle and gave the door a push. The car from the driveway was gone.
Hello?
Her footsteps rang out; the carpet had been taken up, the floorboards polished.
Dad?
The doors of the rooms on either side of the hallway were closed, the house dark, but when Lotte walked through to the open living space at the back of the house, morning light flooded the kitchen. A coffee plunger lay upside down in the draining rack. Two mugs. Flowers lolled in a vase on the kitchen table; crumpled wrapping paper poked out from beneath some paperback books on the coffee table. The room looked different — a new lounge suite, a new television. But all the artwork, all the knick-knacks crowding the surfaces, were the same as they’d been for as long as Lotte could remember.
He was in the backyard, leaning over a garden bed that took up much of the lawn. He must have put the vegie patch in since she was here last, but, banked up with railway sleepers, and with tomato plants trailing to the grass, it looked like it had been there forever. At the sound of the sliding door opening, he unbent his frame and turned towards her, and she saw with astonishment that he had gone completely grey. His hair was clipped close to his head and, without the sandy, wispy lengths that used to drift across it, his forehead appeared higher, his face more open. His silver-framed glasses had been replaced with fashionable black-rimmed ones. He was thinner than he used to be, his shoulders no longer office-rounded, and he came toward her in such a purposeful manner that she couldn’t even place such a stride with her memories of his reluctant amble. The effect of it all was that he looked young. Younger than Lotte ever remembered him being. He didn’t look like her father.
Dad.
Lotte.
He wrapped her in an easy hug, her face pressed against the cotton of his T-shirt, warm from the morning’s sun. Pulling away (too soon — she always pulled away from a hug too soon) she saw up close that his face was more lined than before, that he had aged. His newly silver hair, though, made his blue eyes brighter than she recalled.
You look good.
The words came out so promptly they sounded insincere, and she wanted to start again, to let him know she really meant it. She felt a sudden, deep affection for her father in this moment, before they became familiar to each other once again, and she wished that she could slow time down, luxuriate in the optimism lent by possibility.
Thanks, he said. This is a nice surprise. No Vin?
He looked over her shoulder towards the house.
He’s spending Christmas with his family.
And you thought you should see yours?
His tone was teasing. When she didn’t say anything, he went on.
You didn’t tell me you were coming, did you?
You know I didn’t. The words were sharp, out of her mouth like sprinters from the starting blocks. I never had to check with Mum before I came. I thought you’d be pleased.
He flinched, looked away.
I am. I just meant, had you told me you were coming? I thought I might have missed a message or email or something. You’re lucky you caught me at home.
Where else would you be?
Lotte looked around the yard; apart from the vegie garden, everything in the backyard was much the same as it had always been. It was difficult to imagine her father ever leaving this place, ever being anywhere else. A polestar, she thought, amused by her own sentimentality.
I’m off to the coast tomorrow.
How long for?
About a week. Until New Year’s.
She let the pause stretch out between them, waiting for the invitation. Some beach time wouldn’t go astray, and it would mean they could stare out at the ocean, rather than across the table at each other.
Well, I’m glad you’re here, he said. Shall we have a coffee?
Sure.
Her father looked at the garden as they turned toward the house, his longing obvious; her arrival an unwelcome disruption to his day.
Back inside the house, Lotte was simultaneously bombarded with the familiarity of her childhood home, and disturbed by the changes her father had made. Where before recipe books had been squashed in the shelf above the microwave, slipping beneath one another, their spines contorted, there now stood canisters for flour, sugar, cof
fee, and tea, their contents signified by bold letters. Where earrings, rings, and bracelets had once gathered in front of photo frames, on the arms of chairs and on windowsills, there were only sweeps of bare surface. Lotte knew, without opening them, that the drawers were no longer stuffed and hiccupping on their rails, that the pantry would only have one of everything, and each item finished before another was purchased, let alone opened. The new modular couch was decorated with a throw rug folded over one arm. Had her father actually gone out and bought that? But so many other things were the same: the watercolour paintings her mother had done at the adult-education college were still clustered on the wall; the long-necked cats, blue roses climbing up their china necks, still preened by the television. Helen’s mark was still apparent; it still felt like home.
So what have you been up to? What did you do for Christmas? I take it you flew down this morning? He lined up the questions as he set down a coffee on the table in front of her, knowing she would only answer the ones she cared to.
I drove, she said. I got here late last night; too late to disturb you. I thought I’d better come and see you before I head off. I’m going to Chile in a couple of weeks; I’ll be away twelve months.
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