Anna stopped in her tracks, felt bile rise in her throat. The ring. She clutched the side of her hair and pulled. The ring. She saw Clint wearing it on his little finger and waving at the top of the cliff. Fucking hell! She thought. Why the fuck didn’t she get it off him? Behind her, Louise breathed hot, ‘that ring,’ the lawyer said. ‘We have to go back and get it, we can go down the mountain and find the body there, we have to do it, you know we have to do it.
Nicole was staring at them. ‘We’re stuffed,’ she said, voice rising. ‘The ring, it had my name on it, someone finds it and we’re done for. We have to get it Anna.’
Anna rested her hand on the branch of a snowgum and breathed; one, two, three. She thought of Clint falling and the Australian bush covering the body like Caesar covering his face. It was hidden, it was a secret they shared with the landscape. She looked at the other women.
‘We can’t go back there. It’s impossible, think about what it would take. Think about it. It will be ok. It will be ok. Just keep calm and keep quiet. Now move.’
The women walked on. All the things the Clints take from us that we can’t get back, Anna thought, running her hands over the top of a soft grey shrub. All the things they wear us down with, the things they hurt us with. The confidence to walk in dark streets, to dance on our own in clubs, to jog when unfit, to fight back, to wear what we want, to say no. All the things they take and have taken.
Louise was walking behind Nicole, babbling. ‘Maybe it will work out ok. Maybe it will be fine, we can all go home and forget this ever happened and think about it, you’ll be able to start again now Nicole.’
Nicole rubbed at her hand. ‘Are you trying to make me feel better or you?’ she said.
‘You can study, look after Tyler, work and meet someone good. It’s all there for you now.’
‘Maybe.’
‘It is.’
‘I dunno.’
‘You can do it Nicole,’ Louise said, urgency in her tone. ‘Take it all bloody back. Take back everything that you’ve missed out on. Isn’t that right Anna?’
Anna hesitated, wanting to add something but wasn’t sure what. She made a ponytail with her hair. Took it out again. ‘Keep walking,’ she said. ‘We need to move.’
Louise looked at her for a long moment. ‘So much for the sisterhood,’ she said.
Nicole tore gum leaves from a tree and looked at the ground. ‘Just get walking,’ Anna felt the eyes of the women on her as she turned away.
On the way back, Anna will bury Clint’s wallet deep in a wombat hole. She’ll burn its contents the first chance she can. Back at Baynton’s Hut, Nicole will find a drink bottle under one of the beds in the hut and it will provide no solace. Anna will document the lost backpack in the hut logbook. En route to Patterson’s hut, they’ll meet a group of deer shooters, four men from the Department of Environment. The men will warn them about a strange young man, running back and forth along the mountain path and they’ll offer the use of their satellite phone. At the homelier hut, Louise will sleep fitfully and won’t talk for the rest of the trip. Anna won’t sleep at all. She’ll think about the ring. The ring, the ring. She’ll try to console herself by picturing the bush and the near impenetrable scrub. She’ll hold her stomach and think of her newborn baby and she’ll wish herself back at the farm of her childhood. She’ll try to cry and fail. She’ll find that she doesn’t cry at all. At the end of the walk, they’ll be picked up by Women’s Health and they won’t wave goodbye. They won’t hear from each other again.
Until a year and a half later.
~~~
When they turn off the TV and before her husband leaves to go and do his civic duty, she’ll lean in to him and feel the warmth of his neck. She tells him everything, always has. She may be the best in rescue service for their local SES, but her husband is not far behind. He knows the area well and he’ll be first on the scene, lowered down on a winch. He’ll have time to himself there, at the bottom of the cliff. He’ll need to take photos of the body, the position of the fall. He’ll need to check for any personal belongings. She leans in to him and tells him what last thing she needs from the bottom of the Precipice.
THE RENOVATION
In the months after Ruby was raped and almost murdered, she moved back down south and rented a weatherboard on the outskirts of a large country town. The house was smallish by today’s standards, and in poor condition. A combination of vicious storms and uncaring renters had given its exterior a battered appearance and the once vivid red guttering had turned a rusty brown. Inside, the house had deteriorated to such an extent that it was impossible to know what look the owners had been aiming for. The dark hallway, poky kitchen and grimy windows lent the house an uncertain character and left prospective buyers feeling daunted by the massive task required to fix it. The house was listed on the real estate window as a ‘Pre-Loved Home Ripe For Some T.L.C.’
All this was of no consequence to Ruby. She cared only that it was far enough away from anyone she knew to visit regularly and cheap enough for her to remain there safely till her savings dwindled away. She arrived in September at the end of a winter, common of late, where there had been little rain but constant biting cold; the type that gnaws deep into your bones. Ruby took to wearing socks on her hands and stockings around her neck for protection against the brutal winds that knocked her about every time she went to fetch wood. Often, the terror from the early days came back. She would be reaching into the wood stack, feeling about for a good stick when suddenly an all-consuming blackness would be forced upon her, rendering her unable to move. If someone knocked on the door she would tense like a roo in a spotlight, unsure of where the blow might come. More often than not, the visitor turned out to be her father, checking up to see how she was. His visits were perfunctory: Going to the shops. Got to get some pipes for the new laundry. Need anything? Righto then, I’ll be off.
In a way, Ruby was glad no one asked her about her ordeal. It was bad enough going over it in her mind every couple of minutes – but to have to spell it all out for her father and brothers! She felt ashamed just to think about it, as though they had seen her in a playboy magazine.
At first, she hardly ventured out of the house instead choosing to lie on the lounge and watch television till the sad advertisements for acne relief heralded the weak oncoming of day. She found an old dressing gown in her bag and wrapped herself in it, tying the rope tight about her waist. She ate toast when she thought it might be time for a meal and drank lukewarm water with a recycled tea bag in it. Occasionally the phone would ring; mostly her mother, wanting to know how she was getting on. Their conversations were brief and practical. Had she got a job? No. Had she seen her brother’s new extension? No. Wasn’t it cold? Yes. And how about all that rain!? Yes. Goodbye. Goodbye.
No one in the family was entirely clear on what had happened to her in the mining town of Western Australia. Her elderly parents suspected she’d been badly heartbroken, a younger sister harboured suspicion. Only her brother Justin knew the basics and they never discussed it, not once. When he came to pick her up from the mining town, he said, ‘you right?’ and she nodded. Then he stood next to her watching a moving truck pull out of the driveway. He just stood there and by the steady warmth of his arm on hers, she felt comforted. No counsellor could do the same.
After a few weeks, Ruby ventured out onto the back porch. This was the first time she noticed the garden which led to the paddocks beyond. Overshadowed by a dark vine, the yard looked as though it had not once, ever, seen the fullness of day. Strange patterns of light made way through spindly branches, creating weird patterns on the dank soil. The sharp smell of rotting fruit suggested that the clump of trees near the back fence was an orchard. The growing fascinated her, for years she’d been used to hot red dirt. She stood face to the fly wire door trying to make sense of the sunbeams and thinking of things that grew beneath the earth, a hidden world. After a while, she began to take a chair out onto the porch and sit there for hou
rs.
One day, a man appeared. Ruby’s breath suspended as if she was on the edge of an enormous cavern and she flapped her hands, reaching out for some improbable saviour.
‘Gidday, love,’ the man said. ‘I’m Joe. Here to prune your garden, been visiting the kids so haven’t got around to the formalities yet.’ He walked up the steps and shook her hand. Fear faded, filthy dishwater down a drain. Joe set to work amongst the trees. From her vantage point on the porch she could just make him out amongst the branches of an apple tree, the sunlight marking out his silhouette against the blue sky. Every now and then he would break out into song, one of those old tunes from the early 80s. He only stayed an hour or two and when he left it was like she was the only person left on earth.
The next day he returned with a chainsaw.
‘Gonna get rid of that bloody great bougainvillea,’ he said. ‘Nothing can grow with that blocking out the sun. See how it’s nearly killed the camellia here?’
Ruby saw that he was right. The plant had wound itself tight around the branches of a young camellia and had transferred from there to the fence, creating a wall of darkness.
Joe revved up the engine, ‘Let there be light!’ he yelled and began hacking at the vine like a crusader. The sudden blaze of sunshine was blinding. She looked around for the first time to see all that the garden had to offer. Freesias, grevilleas, ranunculus, pansies and a massive daisy. A white hydrangea nodded from the corner of the fence. Geraldton Wax bloomed pink in the day.
‘This is my mother’s house,’ Joe said. ‘I grew up here. Mum’s too old to look after it now, so I come and check up on it. We loved this place, though it’s gone through hell and back with some of the ferals that have rented here.’ He wagged his finger at her, ‘You, young lady, now you’re the best tenant we’ve ever had.’
She allowed half a smile.
‘It’s a crime how those hoons let it go. With a bit of T.L.C this place could be great. I’m planning on doing it up soon – that is, if you’ll allow it.’
She did. And most afternoons from then on Joe would arrive with his tools and a packed lunch from his wife Joy. She began to help him and discovered that she enjoyed the hard work. They gutted the sinks and polished the floorboards. She painted the door a deep red and admired its newfound boldness.
Joy took her driving in the farm paddocks where the lambs pranced around their mothers. Ruby told the older woman that the whole thing looked like a scene from some old English novel, Tess of the D’Urbervilles or something. Joy gave a laugh. ‘I wish,’ she said. ‘It’s hard work, I’ll tell you that. Not for the faint-hearted and the country doesn’t ride on the back of any sheep now. Rides full pelt away from it more like.’ But still, Joy’s eyes grew fond when she spoke about the farm: the paddocks, the crops, the seasonal creek bed. Joy told her too, about the middens they found on the far east of the property and the people who came to advise on how best to protect and understand them. On another day, Joy showed her the koala sanctuary they’d built on the farm – a thick line of gum trees designed as a safe pathway for the endangered animals to traverse the paddocks, find mates and reach bushland at the far end of the property. It made Ruby dizzy, all these plans, all this life.
The days became too hot to wear a dressing gown all day, so she dug amongst her bags and found some jeans and a loose-fitting shirt. In the mirror Ruby saw a girl she thought she recognised from years ago. She sweated her way through the Spring and one late afternoon found herself pouring over job advertisements in the Saturday papers.
Ruby picked up the classifieds and walked out to the newly sanded porch. Light was fading over the lemon tree. Dusk was beautiful here and tonight it presented her with a gentle show of yellow and pink. She took a deep breath and turned her face to the evening sky. A gust of warm wind blew across her face. She closed her eyes and imagined its journey; sweeping high over the dividing range and riding the roaring forties over the Great Australian Bight. The wind could well have blown in from the Pilbara, down to the Gibson desert and through the mines and towns of Western Australia. It would travel by sea and land to send dust on her newly painted walls and bench tops. Small particles of it would worm itself into the wood polish and roughen the smooth jarrah floors.
She would always be renovating. Pieces of Tom Price would drive at her, force deep into her skin and hurt – and yet, on this evening, Ruby was unafraid.
THE WANDERER
I’m sitting in the Kafka Oh Kafka café in Prague listening to someone named Wolf talk about the meaning of life. Wolf is nearing 50, but he dresses like a backpacker and has the look of someone who’s been to one too many full moon parties. He is probably attractive, if you like cool lizard types and a goatee. His sandals, Wolf tells us in a slow drawl, are vegan – sourced from a Buddhist temple in Bhutan where he’d spent three months praying and working in cotton fields with locals who claimed him as one of their own. He confesses to wearing pants made from buff-tanned red deer leather, but that’s only because he killed the animal himself and then ate it after giving thanks to its ancestors. He’d been living in the wild for three months by then and was growing weak for lack of nutrients. The small audience nods, transfixed. Wolf tells us that one day he when he was travelling through Bolivia, he became violently ill after eating a root given to him by local tribesman. In the hallucinations which followed, he saw himself as a wandering vessel of sacred knowledge, which is why he now spends most of his time teaching people from all over the world about the extreme health benefits of travelling free and living life in the simplest of ways. Members of the audience shake their heads in wonder and a small man beside me begins an uncertain clap before fading off. Wolf says that nowadays he does not eat at all, preferring to derive sustenance from good energy fields and the occasional sliver of arrowroot. There is a collective gasp of admiration and in slow motion the woman beside me places the cake she was about to bite into back onto her plate. Wolf drinks modestly from a glass of spring water before taking a few moments to mouth what is possibly a prayer for H2O.
I snort into my cappuccino and try to catch Rob’s eye, but he won’t look at me. Instead, he stares at Wolf as if he’d like to take up eternal wandering himself, give up victuals and join the pack. Rob is easily led, he’d tell you so himself. We only came to this café because three good looking Swedes in Krakow told us it was the best place to hang out in Prague. Out the corner of my eye I can see people passing around a form to subscribe to Wolf’s online teachings.
I look out the window and sigh into my Kafka Oh Kafka cup. Prague is stunning. Like Paris, Vienna, Amsterdam, Berlin and Bruges it oozes that rich history of triumph and tragedy which Europe does so well. In Paris, I saw a young Japanese girl weeping at the Eiffel tower, overcome with the loveliness of the evening scene. Documented by endless selfies, her dewy gaze would provoke the right amount of envy and lust among her followers, making them hate and want her in equal measures. Surely, I said to Rob, selfies are an imminent sign of a civilisation in decline. But Rob is kinder than me. He just thinks that people who take them are vain cockheads. He’s right about that, but so am I.
Prague delivers that obsessive kind of emotion to some. The place is really something, what with the cobbled streets, the old clocks and the bridges. The walk across the gothic Charles Bridge was meant to be one of the highlights, but it was hard to focus on the fact that it was built in the 13th Century when people kept shoving selfie sticks into my face. Besides, when you come from a country with the oldest living civilisation on earth, the 13th Century seems fairly recent. Snort. Call me when something really old comes up.
Europe is beautiful, yes. It feels as if someone has wheeled out a new set for us at each turn. But I’m tired. And sick of places like this café, with overpriced coffee and pretentious staff, the crowds and dickheads like Wolf who won’t stop talking.
‘Where do you stay the rest of the time?’ I raise my voice for the first time and the small group in the café turn around to me in su
rprise. Wolf pauses and looks in my direction, his eyes squinting slightly as he does. He needs glasses, I think.
‘What do you mean?’ He asks, his German accent strong in the hushed tones of the café and Moby playing on the background.
‘When you’re not teaching people about the benefits of wandering and travelling all over the world – where do you stay? You said you do that most of the time.’
Wolf, it turns out, stays with his mother in Dusseldorf, in a bungalow out the back of her house. She’s a school teacher for the disabled and he often volunteers at her work. Wolf tells us this part of his story in a louder, faster voice than before, but his voice wavers and I end up feeling mean. In volunteering for the less fortunate, Wolf has lost cred with this crowd of hipsters. They’d prefer him hunting bison in his spare time or fighting with the Kurds.
On our way home, Rob tells me off for asking the question. Rob’s a friend from my home town, back in Australia and he knows me well.
‘What’s wrong with you anyway?’ he says.
What’s wrong with me? I think.
‘I dunno,’ I say.
‘It’s like you’ve got to knock everything. I mean, can’t you appreciate where we are?’
We pass the old Jewish cemetery.
‘Yep, I appreciate it, this place is really something.’
‘Look around you Kate, when are you ever going to get something like this at home?’ He points to a woman juggling before a crowd. She’s impressive in her tight gold outfit. A lot of people have put money in her busking hat. I agree with him, we would never get that in Pura Pura West.
‘We should go out!’ Rob’s trying to boost my mood. ‘Really celebrate our trip, maybe go and eat at that Restaurant Anders was talking about, you know – the one where the waiters only speak Latin?’
‘It costs about 80 Euro for a meal there.’
Rob backs down fast. ‘Or, we go to that kebab shop down the road from our hostel then, have a few beers, what do you reckon?’
Rural Dreams Page 11