The Drifter

by Anthea Hodgson

  ‘Cate! I dare you to come for a swim!’ It was late afternoon, almost evening, and the beach was nearly deserted.

  ‘Oh, come on, Bridge – we’re wearing maxi dresses!’

  Brigit was already running towards the water, her champagne glass planted in the sand.

  ‘COME ON!’ she yelled, and fell forwards into the next wave with a flop, laughing and shrieking.

  Cate was laughing and wincing at the same time, but she knew she was committed now. Her glass joined Brigit’s and she made the same mad dash across the burnt shore onto the firm cold edge of the water, then three huge strides and she was in before she had time to chicken out.

  ‘ARRGGHHH! BRIGIT!’ She came up laughing. It was horrible but wonderful. Her hair was full of sand, and her silk dress was completely see-through and stuck to her body. The next wave came and dumped her, and she could hear Brigit shouting.

  ‘Cate! Cate! It’s so cold. Sooo cold!’ The wave spread across the sand, and she found Brigit and hugged her, giggling over the rumble of the waves and the shriek of disapproving gulls.

  Eventually the two cold girls straggled back up the beach to their champagne and fell back on the sand, which stuck to their dresses and their hair.

  ‘Okay, make a toast.’ Brigit pushed herself upright, her strappy dress dropping casually from her shoulder, her glass aloft, catching the late-afternoon rays of light, bending them in the glass and lighting up the champagne.

  Cate smiled at her. ‘What shall we drink to?’

  Brigit shrugged. ‘I dunno – life? Shall we drink to life?’

  ‘How about something else, like your new job?’

  ‘How about the sun?’ suggested Brigit, her glass sparkling, and her lightly tanned skin smooth and clear against the white sand.

  ‘Why? Because it’s too hot and it never goes away?’

  ‘Because it’s four-point-six billion years old, and in about a hundred and thirty million years it’s going to become a red giant and engulf the earth.’

  ‘Are you showing off now? Or making stuff up?’

  ‘Showing off, and loving science.’

  Cate shrugged, and they raised their glasses as the sun dipped its tired hot bottom in the cool ocean.

  ‘To the sun!’ they said.

  ‘May you never go away, but shine forever on my friend Cate – making her more and more hideous and wrinkly with every passing year until she dies, hopefully not of exposure, but peacefully in her bed.’

  ‘Thanks, Bridge.’

  ‘And whose dying words will be, “Here I come, Brigit, only tell God the good stuff.”’

  They clinked glasses.

  ‘So you’re going first?’

  ‘Oh yeah, babe. I’m thinking probably at a senior-citizens swingers’ party with my toy boy. But I’ll be maybe eighty-eight, so he’ll be a really hot sixty-five.’

  ‘Nice.’

  The sun fell slowly away, promising to return the next day, just for them, and a dad kicked a beach ball to a small girl at the edge of the sea.

  CHAPTER 16

  The Friday-afternoon cake stall was held to catch the families who came into town to complete their weekly shop. It was a social highlight in a calendar that Cate imagined was somewhat devoid of social highlights. The committee ladies had set up a trestle table along the front of the co-op, decorated it with a hot-pink tablecloth, and had erected a poster promoting motor neurone disease research. Cate pulled in across the road and unloaded her tins of scones. She really hoped this wouldn’t get embarrassing. She thought they were okay, but everyone knew Luise Hofmann’s sponge and Libby Heffernan’s chocolate brownies were going to be the big-ticket items. Man, she hoped she shifted a scone or two before Margaret sold out of whatever she’d buttered.

  She could see a group of well-dressed women laughing and working efficiently to set up the stall. She recognised most of them from the committee meeting, and one or two recognised her as well, calling out cheerful greetings as she crossed the road to join them. Sarah was there already, pinning up some colourful love hearts her students had painted, and Audrey was delivering jam drops and knitted teddy bears. They looked lovely. It was like Marie Claire was doing a retro photoshoot of women on the land. There was something so wholesome and comforting about it, she wished for a moment that Henry was there to see it, too.

  ‘Oh my goodness! What a great effort, Cate!’ Audrey enthused as she placed down the scones in groups of six. ‘They’ll go a treat!’

  ‘I hope so, Mrs Higgins-Devine. Baking’s not really my thing.’

  Audrey picked up a tray. ‘Nonsense. They look delicious. Deirdre, I’ll take these!’ she declared, slapping her money on the trestle with great ceremony.

  Deirdre looked closely at the product. ‘Scones, eh?’ she asked, squinting.

  Cate cringed.

  She picked them up as if mentally weighing them. ‘Quite good.’

  She got Audrey her change and moved on to observe Libby wrangle a bowl of toffees that had attracted the ‘under ten dollar’ market. She looked the business in her blue T-shirt and neat bob. Libby was used to organising things in Windstorm. Her laugh was quick and sharp, and her business acumen was legendary.

  ‘Now, now!’ she barked. ‘If you touch it, you bought it – and if you touch it after your finger has been up your nose, you bought the whole bowl!’

  There were shrieks of outrage, and a few snotty hands rubbed on jeans.

  The ladies’ bowls team from Pingelly was in town for the day, playing a few ends by the lake with the Windstorm team. They arrived for a cup of tea at the co-op, and to take baked goods home for the weekend. It soon looked as if the stall would sell out within the next half-hour. A quick cake stall was a good cake stall.

  Kiwi Dave came along to buy a few cupcakes, scooping them up casually in his large hands and dropping cash in the ice-cream container they were using as a till. Cate wouldn’t have picked him as the cupcakes type, but he also gave Sarah a big hug, and she wouldn’t have picked him for the Sarah type, either.

  He saw her standing there. ‘Hey, Cate,’ he greeted her. ‘You sure your boyfriend isn’t a frickin’ hit man?’

  Cate kept her smile on. ‘Why do you say that?’ she asked super casually, straightening one of the cakes.

  ‘Because we went shooting last week and the bastard didn’t miss. Handled the guns well. Really well.’ Dave looked impressed, and not just by the chocolate frosting that was oozing out of his mouth. ‘He was like the frickin’ Terminator. Seemed to have a good time, though. I think he may have smiled once or twice, but it was dark.’

  Cate nodded. ‘Well, I don’t know, Dave, but I think he may have been a hobby shooter at some point.’ Why was she making stuff up?

  Dave nodded slowly. ‘Yeah, kept hitting small animals in the head, or the heart. Nice and clean. He must frickin’ love his hobby.’

  Cate sighed inwardly. Just when she was trying to convince herself he wasn’t a bit strange. She should take the hint and move him along.

  A few of the local women were keen to chat to Cate; they hadn’t spoken to her much at her first meeting, and they wanted to place her in the family tree, and to hear how she was doing.

  ‘How’s Ida coping, Cate?’ asked Libby, nursing a cup of tea she had brought out from the co-op, and scooping up napkins from the pavement.

  ‘She’s okay. Very frail, but very focused on getting back to the farm,’ Cate said. ‘We speak every couple of days, and I often think even the effort of speaking to me wears her out.’

  Libby nodded.

  ‘She’ll want to come home,’ Margaret said.

  ‘Yeah, she does, but at the moment they’re considering surgery. She needs a bypass.’

  ‘Same thing happened to Mel Russell,’ Deirdre said knowingly. ‘She went away with a dicky heart and came back in a box. They kept her there in Perth, and poked and prodded her until there was nothing left of her but stress and worry. Then they told her she had to have heart surgery – a
nd I think she felt obliged to do as she was told. Total disaster. Awful, painful recovery, rehab, all that. But she never came good. Died in the hospital four months later.’

  Great.

  ‘Well, I hope Aunty Ida is better soon.’

  ‘She’s eighty-four. How much better do they expect her to get?’ snapped Deirdre.

  ‘Mmm.’ There was a murmur of agreement.

  Deirdre sipped at her tea. Too strong, always too strong. ‘You’ll see, they’ll keep her there, and there she’ll stay,’ she proclaimed. ‘They’ll make her have an operation and she’ll never come home again.’ Deirdre nodded, pleased to have made her point, her face lined with determination and outrage. There was more assent.

  ‘But,’ began Sarah, ‘if there is something they can do, we should be happy if they can do it. Ida may have some good years left, and treatment could give her a chance.’

  ‘Yes, well, Glenda says she’s never felt better since the pacemaker.’

  There were general nods.

  Man, it was like the human genome project. There was nothing these people didn’t know about each other, going back to the ark.

  Cate shook her head as a cup of tea came her way, and glanced longingly down the road to the pub.

  ‘How much for the scones?’ asked a small voice. They turned to see a child there with no shoes and shoulder-length hair. His T-shirt looked like he’d spent the afternoon hunting wolverines.

  ‘How many would you like?’ asked Margaret.

  ‘All of them.’ He held up a twenty. ‘And whatever else I can get with this.’

  ‘Lucky you! Okay, let’s say the rest of the scones, a couple of choc­olate brownies and some toffees for later? That’s spent the lot – okay?’ Margaret started packing the goods into a large spare ice-cream container. The boy looked very satisfied, and his smaller sister hung about the postbox, glancing over and jiggling with delight.

  ‘Thanks!’ they both yelled, and trotted off down the street with their loot. The women looked bemused.

  ‘Who were those kids?’ asked Libby. ‘I’ve never seen them before.’

  ‘I think they might be that new family that moved in a couple of weeks ago. I think their dad works for the Barkers?’

  More nods. More than likely.

  They were nearly sold out; they packed up the table and took a few cupcakes into the co-op to see if they could sell them later and donate the profits. Kath was always happy to help a charity.

  ‘Okay, let’s go celebrate raising some money,’ Cate said.

  Sarah looked at her as she was loading the tablecloth in the back of her car. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  ‘Let’s have a quick wine at the pub. On me.’ She gestured to include the older girls as well. ‘Come on, girls. I’m buying. Just a cheeky wine before we pick up our groceries.’

  ‘Bit early in the day to be drinking,’ Deirdre grumbled.

  Cate smiled and started walking with Sarah.

  ‘Well, the offer’s there if you’d like to join us in the Ladies’ Lounge,’ she said. There was a gentle murmur behind them and when she turned back she was surprised to see they had been joined by all the girls, who were chatting happily among themselves.

  The Ladies’ Lounge had seen better days, but they didn’t serve tea and it wasn’t on fire, so Cate decided it would absolutely do. She went to the bar to wait for service, which wasn’t forthcoming, then rang the bell, which was in the shape of a sheep. Michelle, the barmaid from her previous outing, was serving behind the bar

  ‘G’day, Cate,’ she said. ‘How’d you pull up the other morning?’

  Cate smiled. The cake-stall girls were chatting, but you could bet Jesus was listening, and he’d fill them in later. ‘A little slow,’ she admitted.

  ‘Who was that guy with you?’ she asked. ‘Henry? What’s his story?’ Michelle gave her an assessing look, and it didn’t appear as if she liked what she saw.

  ‘Uh, he’s just working for us at the moment. He wasn’t with me.’

  ‘What’s he like? He looked like he was looking after you – you know, because you were so drunk.’

  ‘Oh, uh, he’s, uh, nice and I wasn’t . . .’ Moving on. ‘Anyway – I was wondering if I could have a look at the wine list?’ she asked hopefully. On a number of levels.

  ‘Yep,’ Michelle grunted. She leaned back so she could see the beer-fridge contents. ‘Cab sav and chardy.’

  Hmm, decisions, decisions. ‘A bottle of cab sav and one of the chardy. Thanks, Michelle.’

  Michelle fixed her with a look. Fancy. She reached around without moving her feet at all, grabbed two ten-dollar bottles of wine and plonked them on the bar.

  ‘Sixty bucks.’

  ‘Wow, did all the wine go somewhere, and these are the last two bottles on earth?’

  ‘Nope.’

  Maybe Michelle didn’t like her. She couldn’t think why; Greg Norman thought she was all right. Cate wished he worked behind the bar. She placed cash in Michelle’s waiting hand, and watched as it was tossed into the till with the satisfaction of a great upseller. Michelle turned away to go back to the main bar.

  ‘Uh, Michelle?’

  She looked back over her shoulder.

  ‘I’ll need wineglasses and one lemon, lime and bitters, please.’ She dropped five more dollars on the bar and joined her committee.

  ‘Here’s to Ida – we hope she’s feeling better soon.’

  ‘And home where she belongs,’ added Deirdre stoutly, brandishing her lemon, lime and bitters. They all nodded in agreement.

  ‘We had Albert’s fiftieth in here,’ said Mrs Higgins-Devine, looking around. ‘Do you remember, Deirdre?’

  Deirdre nodded. ‘It was a lovely night. The food was marvellous.’

  There were a few nods.

  ‘And Mark Straker had his twenty-first in here a few years ago,’ added Margaret.

  ‘How did Luise go at the Cox wedding?’ asked Sarah. ‘I haven’t heard all the details yet.’

  The conversation ranged on around the whereabouts and goings-on of a few hundred people, most of whom Cate knew only briefly. She recognised a few names. No wonder these people weren’t on Facebook; they didn’t need it. She leaned in to speak quietly to Mrs Higgins-Devine, who moved closer to make sure she could hear her properly.

  ‘Audrey, I was wondering if you could do me a favour.’

  ‘Of course, Cate. What can I do for you?’

  Cate hesitated, now she was going to look sort of silly, but it was better than being caught out in a lie by Henry. ‘I was wondering if you could teach me to knit?’

  Audrey looked amazed. ‘You want to knit?’

  ‘Yes, super quick if possible.’

  ‘Are you good at handicrafts, as a rule?’

  ‘Um, give me an example?’

  ‘Crocheting? Macramé?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Dressmaking?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Needlework?’

  ‘Needlework? Absolutely not.’

  ‘Well, of course I’m happy to teach you,’ she said, ‘but it might take a little longer than you expect.’

  ‘Is it that hard?’

  ‘Basic knitting isn’t that hard, so we’ll find a project that suits your skill level.’

  ‘Umm, it has to be a jumper.’ Cate took another sip of her wine, her heart sinking.

  ‘How do you feel about having your work unravelled?’

  ‘I’ll put up with it, if you can help me knit something that won’t be embarrassing.’

  Audrey clinked her glass to Cate’s. ‘Lucky for you, I like to teach.’ She smiled. ‘We’ll start as soon as you like.’

  ‘Wow, thank you.’ Maybe she was even kind of looking forward to it.

  She replenished their glasses, and settled in for a chat about stuff she didn’t know, and found it strangely relaxing; no one wanted to ask her what she was going to do next, and no one was going to mention Brigit’s name. Once or twice she glanced up
as she spoke, catching movement from the corner of her eye, but there was no one there. She wondered if Greg Norman was about somewhere, or if he was down at the golf course again.

  In the main bar a group of locals had gathered to have a beer and a chat. They were ordering hot chips and sausage rolls, and keeping an eye on the footy on TV, which was covering the matches from the week before. Greg Norman was sleeping next to a scruffy guy nursing a beer. The man was looking deep into a beer mat, his tangled hair pushed back as if he was impatient with it. He was listening for her voice – the girl in the next room, waiting until it came and warmed him, so he would know she was okay.

  Cate laughed out loud in the lounge. And he left his beer and went outside to find the Red Dragon waiting for him behind the pub. There was a scone on the front seat from the scruffy kid, and he bit into it with a pleasure that was almost perverse.

  CHAPTER 17

  It was late in the afternoon when Cate got home. She had actually enjoyed the drinks with the girls; strangely she hadn’t even minded that half of them were older than her mother. She invited Sarah and Dave over for dinner the following week, picked up a few groceries, and took home Ida’s mail. Her scones had sold, and she was saved the ignominy of bringing them back home. She tripped over a bunch of flowers on the way inside.

  ‘Damn it!’ she muttered in the gloomy hallway, and leaned through the front door to turn on the verandah light. They were lovely, a carefully chosen bunch of roses and lilies. A huge bright-purple ribbon tied them together, and they came with a card.

  Sorry I haven’t called you – I’ve been busy on the farm. Love to catch up with you for dinner this week. I’ll call you. Very best regards, Alex.

  Okay. Nice guy. It had been a while since a man had sent her flowers. She took them carefully inside and found them a vase from Ida’s sideboard. Then she made a coffee and sat looking at the flowers for a while. She remembered Alex; she had liked him. It would be good to date a nice man with a stable background.