Salt Rain

by Sarah Armstrong

  chapter six

  The day of the funeral was a high blue-sky day like the morning Mae disappeared. A silent jet left a wisp of vapour in the cloudless sky. Allie walked beside Julia up the path to the small wooden church, past the bushes steaming in the sun. She wanted the clouds and rain to descend again and slowly wrap the trees and buildings in mist.

  She sat beside Julia in the front pew, in one of Mae’s old dresses, soft blue cotton with puffed sleeves. Her eyes blinked slowly and her blood moved like syrup in her veins. Sounds sagged through the air, the whispering and shuffling of feet, the walls creaking in the morning sun and the organist’s sheet music fluttering to the polished floor.

  Julia reached out to finger the fabric of Allie’s dress and whispered, ‘That was one of her favourites. I’m surprised she didn’t take it with her.’ She smoothed the cotton onto Allie’s thigh.

  Allie looked down at Julia’s hand, the thick knuckles and red dirt under the fingernails. Julia’s hand and her own leg. Solid, warm flesh, blood moving through their veins. She kept her eyes down, away from the coffin at the front of the church. In the blue of her dress she saw the ocean carrying the little Islander girl far out to sea, cradling her sleeping form.

  She turned to look for him again in the rows of faces. Of course she would recognise him, she had seen the pale outline of his body in the dark and heard his breath easing in and out. When she got home from his house that morning, she had sat up on her bed watching the sunrise, every brighter wash of light bringing the moment of the funeral closer.

  ‘Mae Curran was a daughter of this community and we hold our children dear.’ The minister was fat, sweat shining on his pale moon face. ‘It’s fitting that she should come home to rest in the bosom of her family and community.’

  From the corner of her eye she could see sun reflecting off the white lacquered coffin. Mae would hate the gold handles on the coffin, such shiny gold. Cheap and tacky, she would think. Allie remembered what Mae said about the trail of atoms that people left behind and imagined them leaking from the coffin, spreading up the red-carpeted aisle and through the double wooden doors. Her mouth suddenly flooded with saliva, and she felt nausea swell at the back of her throat and nose. She fixed her eyes on the minister’s hands, his white fingers resting like slugs on the lectern.

  ‘Let us carry her in our hearts and celebrate her life. Please rise for the hymn.’

  How her mother would hate the gold handles. Allie knew every single thing that Mae hated. Lukewarm tea, prickly woollen blankets and the way Tom left golden drops of piss on the toilet seat.

  She and Julia stood beside the minister at the bottom of the church steps as people filed past, sighing, murmuring. Old women in net hats, waving paper fans at their shiny faces, tight black suits stretched over farmers’ backs and plump women with wet-mouthed babies. Where was the First Love? Sweat trickled down her back, and a sudden breath of breeze made it a cool line on her skin.

  An old woman took Allie’s arms, squeezing them tightly with gnarled fingers. ‘My goodness, you’re a little Mae,’ she smiled. The woman’s perfume was too sweet and orange face powder had marked the collar of her dress. ‘It’s just lovely to see you again my dear, but so sad that you come home to us for this.’ She had tears in her eyes. ‘It breaks my heart to bury my Mae. A day of heartbreak for us both. The number of funerals I have been to at this church, I can’t count. Too many. Altogether too many.’ She let go of Allie’s arms. ‘It’s a terrible thing to lose your mother.’ She turned to Julia, ‘In case we don’t get a chance to talk at the hall later, I’d like to see Allie soon. This week. Please telephone Dan or myself to arrange it, dear.’

  As the old woman followed the line of people wandering down the path to the graveyard, Julia leaned over and whispered, ‘Your great-grandmother.’ Allie nodded, ‘Yes. I remember.’ And she watched the old woman pass through the gate and walk towards a pile of red dirt.

  Beside Allie, the minister kept wiping his palms and face with a big white handkerchief. He smiled then fished a second hanky from his back pocket and offered her the ironed square. She pressed it to her nose, it had the smell of tea towels and sheets from the linen closet at home.

  Julia touched her shoulder. ‘Allie? This is Saul.’

  He was right in front of her, smiling, his eyes crinkling just like Mae had said. But he was too short. Mae had reached her hand up and shown her how tall he was, way above Mae’s head, but this man was not much taller than Allie. And his skin was more tanned than she had imagined, stretched over high cheekbones.

  Julia stepped too close. ‘She’s been wanting to meet you, Saul. She’s been asking about you.’

  He squeezed her hand as he spoke, ‘I’m so sorry about your mother. Really sorry.’ She looked down at the dark hairs coiling on his forearm and on the back of his broad hand.

  Her voice was barely a whisper. ‘Didn’t you know we were waiting for you to come and find us?’ The hot air scoured her throat.

  ‘What?’ he bent towards her, his brow furrowed. ‘Say that again.’

  She could smell him, salty sweat and something else. His cheek was close to her, blue-black dots of whisker and the soft fleshy curl of his ear. This was what Mae had known, this warm touch of his hand. She knew she should say something else, that she should let go of his hand, his calluses hard against her palm.

  The minister leaned over. ‘Nice to see you, Saul.’

  She wanted him to lead her away from Julia and the minister, away from everyone waiting to bury her mother.

  He slipped his hand from hers and smiled.

  The dirt was too loud on the coffin. Allie watched Julia lean out over the grave to drop a handful onto the shiny white, her dress straining at the armpits. Red earth exploding on the white. Clay had smeared the lid where it bumped against the side of the grave on the way down and she could hear the wood of the coffin quietly creaking in the hot sun. A rustling came from the mound of dirt beside the grave. It wanted to return to the earth, to layer itself heavy on the coffin.

  The minister spoke again and his words were just noise rising with the shimmering heat and the scent of wet earth.

  Then it was over and the people started moving away, eager to leave the ugly gaping hole in the ground.

  Julia turned to her, brushing the red soil from her fingers. ‘There’s a tea over in the hall now. I’d better put in an appearance. Are you coming?’

  Allie shook her head.

  ‘You want to stay here on your own for a while?’

  She nodded.

  Julia hesitated then walked over the grass towards the yellow wooden hall sitting high on its brick piers, her long hair loose and shining in the bright sun.

  The man with the shovel was talking to a red-faced farmer in a suit and wide-brimmed felt hat. Every so often the man eyed the grave and shifted his feet. He couldn’t start filling it in if Allie was still there. She sat on a cool stone grave and looked down at her muddy shoes. She wanted to take them off and let the red mud ooze between her toes. As long as she was there, the dirt wouldn’t go into the grave.

  After her grandfather’s funeral, she and Mae had sat under a tree in that same graveyard while everyone had tea and scones in the hall. Mae had lain back on the grass and slept, and Allie waved the flies away from her until Julia came looking for them and drove them back to the farm.

  ‘Allie?’ It was Saul. He sat down beside her, and rested his arms on his knees. ‘How are you holding up? It’s tough going, I know.’

  She watched his fingers playing with a blade of grass. He had square-tipped fingers like hers.

  ‘My mum is buried in here too. Over there.’ He pointed to a shady corner of the graveyard. Suddenly he reached an arm around her and squeezed her shoulder. Her heart started to race, heat rising through her at the weight of his arm around her.

  ‘When I was at high school, I used to come in once or twice a week, just to sit under the trees, in the quiet.’ He paused. ‘Your mum used to
come with me.’

  ‘Just the two of you?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He dropped his arm. ‘The whole community ends up here. My dad’s already paid for his plot.’ He looked around and nodded towards the pile of dirt at Mae’s grave. ‘Your mum’s parents are just over there. And one of her uncles and her grandfather and at least one cousin that I know of.’

  ‘I know about the first kiss.’

  ‘The first kiss?’ he raised his eyebrows.

  She watched his lips forming the words and wanted to reach out to press against their soft cushion and make them yield that kiss. ‘You and my mum.’

  ‘Oh,’ he smiled. ‘She talked to you about that?’

  ‘Yeah. All the time.’

  ‘She did?’

  She nodded. She could see herself reflected in his black pupils.

  He smiled. ‘I remember that kiss. It was very innocent.’ He leaned back and rested his elbows on the grave. ‘Afterwards she led me up to one of her father’s cows and sprayed milk into my mouth.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘Whose grave are we on? Bertha Mason. The Masons aren’t here today, so it won’t matter.’

  ‘Why did you fall out of love with her?’

  ‘Is that what she told you? That I fell out of love with her?’

  ‘Isn’t that what happened?’

  He looked past her. ‘It’s not how I’d describe it.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Oooh, it was pretty complicated there at the end.’

  ‘Do you mean the balloon man?’

  He grimaced. ‘Yeah, I mean the balloon man. The hot-air balloon man.’

  She shook her head and waited for him to say something more.

  He stood up and smiled. ‘So, are you coming over to the hall?’

  She followed him across the grass, watching the muscles of his back move under the faded red shirt. At the gate, she turned back to check on the gravedigger where he stood leaning on his shovel. Beyond him, the sky above the mountains was relentlessly clear, all the clouds vanished into the hard blue.

  The hall was filling with people, talking, stirring sugar into their tea, reaching for sandwiches and slices of pound cake. Women in net hats stood behind trestle tables, pouring tea from big metal teapots and waving flies from the cake. They smiled at her, their eyes quickly sliding away.

  Allie’s great-grandmother was walking around with a big teapot, topping up teacups. ‘Don’t you want a cuppa, Allie my dear?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  The old woman put the teapot down on a table and lifted the lid. She shook her head. ‘They made it too strong.’ She pulled a bobby pin from her hair and adjusted her small hat. ‘It’s lovely you’re back in the valley, dear. We’re all so glad you’re back. You have lots of family here, you know.’ She waved her hand around the room at the people standing in small groups, talking, laughing, patting their mouths with paper serviettes.

  She fitted the lid back onto the teapot with a sigh, ‘Oh well, things don’t always turn out like you think. I’m going to have you down for lunch in the next couple of days and we can talk properly. Julia and I will arrange it. The ladies over there have cordial too, if you’d like it, dear.’ She walked away carrying the teapot before her.

  ‘Here you are, lassie. Take one of these.’ A man in a grey suit offered her sandwiches on a small white plate.

  She took a neat triangle of bread but held it tipped away from her so she wouldn’t see the glistening lumps of egg filling.

  ‘I’m sorry about your mum, love,’ the man said. He looked her up and down, his eyes pausing at her breasts for a moment. ‘Lucky you’ve got Julia, eh? She’s a good lady.’ He nodded and took a sip of his tea. ‘I was a friend of your grandfather’s. We set up the meat pool together. He knew lots about slaughtering, he grew up on a beef farm you know. He always promised to take me out west to show me his dad’s old farm, and to do some pig shooting but we never got there.’

  Julia appeared at her side, sweat staining her dress dark under the arms and at the tight creased waistband. ‘Hello.’ She leaned close to Allie, ‘Let me show you something. Excuse us Roy.’

  They walked to the open window at the far end of the hall, passing Saul where he leaned against the wall, under the portrait of the Queen. He held his teacup under his nose, inhaling the steam while he listened to the small talk of a woman with a baby on her hip. When Allie had mentioned the balloon man, he had smiled a funny twisted smile, as if he wasn’t sure what to say. Allie wanted to go over and interrupt his conversation and tell him that she had always known which stories Mae meant her to believe.

  Julia brushed the crumbs from her plate out the window. ‘So you met Saul at last.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What were you talking about over in the graveyard?’

  ‘Nothing. What do you want to show me?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Julia looked closely at her. ‘Have you eaten anything?’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘You know, if you go walking at night, take a torch for the snakes.’

  ‘What?’

  She looked directly at Allie, ‘Take a torch next time. They’re on the shelf near the back door. Snakes are out at night, you know. It’s not the best time to go wandering around the valley.’

  ‘She walked around at night.’

  ‘I know. She took a torch. Are you going to eat that sandwich?’

  Allie shrugged and passed it to her aunt, who tossed it out the open window onto the neatly mown grass, where it lay, its yellow guts exposed.

  Julia turned to her and smiled. ‘It’s all right. They expect me to do things like that.’

  Outside the hall, the whirring of cicadas was piercing. An old dog slunk under the wooden building and disappeared into the darkness. Allie followed him, sliding between the lattice into the dim forest of shadowy brick piers, footsteps loud above her, high-heeled shoes marching across the floorboards.

  She looked out between the piers to the bright white sunlight. On the other side of the road, two little girls in their swimmers were squealing, running back and forth through a sprinkler. Down at the motel by the beach, Mae had rubbed cream into Allie’s sunburnt skin before Allie lay back on the stiff sheets and listened to Mae and Tom argue on the verandah outside, her hot skin prickling.

  The dog came and sniffed her and turned in a circle before settling, panting, onto the cool earth. So Julia knew she had left the house last night. She didn’t care what Julia knew. She wished she had woken Saul, called his name through the window like Mae would have and pulled herself over the sill to lie down beside him.

  A group of people walked along the path beside her, just their legs showing. They crossed the lawn to the shade of the big camphor laurel tree. Through the lattice she could see that he was with them, smiling, lighting someone’s cigarette. She used to lie in her bed, imagining him coming for them. Even when she was little, she would listen to the cars on the street outside and the hollow sound of the train crossing the Harbour Bridge, and think of him going from house to house, tracking them down. One day there would be a knock and there he would be in the doorway.

  Petal squatted on the cement path and looked through the lattice. ‘Hi.’ She ducked underneath and crawled across the dirt, marking her white lace skirt. ‘Thank God it’s a bit cooler under here.’ She passed Allie a glass of red cordial and opened a silver cigarette case. ‘Julia’s up there, determined to piss them all off.’ The fragrant smoke from Petal’s clove cigarette merged with the smell of buttery sausage rolls and hot grass. ‘I tell her that she takes them for granted. If she really needed them, they’d be there for her, you know. She doesn’t give them a chance.’ She rested back on her elbows and blew smoke rings. ‘What are you looking at, darl?’

  ‘Him.’

  ‘Saul?’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  Petal smiled and shook her head. ‘Oh yeah. Imagine him at seventeen.’

  Silently, they watched him. He leaned against the tree, l
istening to the people around him, his hand stroking the bark on the tree trunk. Then he turned and seemed to be looking straight at them, a half-smile on his face.

  Petal whispered, ‘Don’t worry, he can’t see us through the lattice. It’s too dark under here.’

  Allie took a sip of the drink and the intense sweetness caught in her throat. She was suddenly desperate to remember the details of Mae’s face but couldn’t conjure even the shape of her mother’s nose or the way her dimples flashed when she smiled. Allie’s gorge rose and she felt she might just lean over and spew her bloodied insides onto the grey dirt. She shoved the glass back at Petal, spilling some of the drink onto the ground. Petal took the glass and drank it, then stubbed her cigarette out. ‘Julia wants to go. Are you ready?’

  chapter seven

  He woke before the alarm clock and lay in the dark, his mind still numb with sleep, for a moment not understanding the sound of his dog’s claws clicking on the wooden floor. He rolled over, tucking the sheet around him, and suddenly recalled the sight of Mae’s coffin slipping down into the grave. He couldn’t imagine her body contained within that white box, her strong limbs stilled. They used to run down the hill to the creek together, the blanket stretched between them and flapping like a great wing in the humid air. There was the sound of their feet on the spongy pasture and the rumble of a distant tractor and there was Mae, her hair streaming behind her as they flew down the hill.

  He got out of bed and pulled on his jeans and T-shirt in the dark. At the kitchen sink, he stood looking out at the faint line of light above the trees and ate a slice of his stepmother’s orange cake.

  It was years since he had thought of how Mae used to lie naked on the blanket for him, pale against the dark wool. She would let him put his lips to her soft breasts, to her moist neck, to the palm of her hand, to her stomach. He had sucked her skin into him, taken her soft flesh into his own. He had cupped that belly in his hands, kissed it, blessed it, unknowing.