We came to a disused concrete pipe that had a mossy trail meandering through its centre and a lean-to on one side made from rotten timber planks. Juliette crawled into the pipe and sat on the damp curve of its base with her legs pressed up against the wall. She beckoned me inside and I positioned my body next to hers. It was, according to Juliette, the place where camp kids hung out while their parents got blitzed and played cards, and also where she’d made out with Bradley Catchlove. I thought I’d misheard her.
‘Were you building something?’ I asked.
There were enough construction materials around for my question to have some traction, but Juliette rolled her eyes dourly and then closed them. She crossed her arms around her waist, grabbed her hips and lashed her tongue around in her mouth. When the demonstration was over, Juliette looked at me wistfully and said that Bradley’s family had been coming to the campsite ever since she could remember and the two of them were childhood sweethearts. They’d had some good times, but they’d decided to be ‘just friends’. Juliette said it was a difficult stage for both of them because Bradley really loved her. I thought that was a strange thing for a girl my age to say. I couldn’t have cared less about boys. I thought they were grotty.
• • •
We trudged through brackish creeks rimmed by coastal grasses where tadpoles skittered and crickets fell silent with our footfalls. Juliette told me that the other kids staying at the campsite had already checked me out. Apparently I’d been under some sort of high-level surveillance. They must have been experts in their field because I hadn’t even noticed them. They thought I was pretty but not stunning. She said it was probably because of the holes – she called them holes, not dimples – in my cheeks. The holes, she informed me matter-of-factly, meant that I could never be a model. This didn’t really worry me because I had ambitious dreams of being a horse groomer. I pictured myself braiding thick chestnut manes and operating a cash register. The holes in my face weren’t the only problem, however. The Gateway regulars didn’t like my clothes either, which they agreed made me look stuck-up. I was well dressed back then, even when camping. Mum had packed my bag with an assortment of colour-coordinated skirts and dresses, whereas Juliette was dressed in khaki shorts and a bottle-green shirt as though she were going into combat. As the campground kids suggested, I was pretty too; I’ve got the photos to prove it, sitting on our Dodge in a pinafore dress with my legs dangling over the bonnet and our campsite in the background. My hair was pale, the colour of a ribbon gum when it sheds its bark, and it fell wispily down past my shoulders. My body had started to open out like it was reaching for the light. I was probably a bit cosseted, but I don’t think I had the self-belief to be conceited. I was an agreeable sort of a kid and a bit worried about my dad’s exhaustion and spending four weeks in the middle of nowhere without someone my age to talk to. Juliette’s hold over me was almost a foregone conclusion.
• • •
When I think of Juliette I see red, and I don’t just mean that in an idiomatic sense. Juliette had a particular look, a look I’d now call regrettable. She was splattered from head to toe with freckles, like one of those spray paintings where you blow paint through a straw. She had them everywhere except her palms and the soles of her feet. Even her lips were freckled. Her nose flared when she was angry or when she was plotting to do me harm – which, I soon discovered, was most of the time. Back then I didn’t ever connect her poker-hot anger to her appearance. On a balmy afternoon during parent-enforced quiet time, we were in Juliette’s tent, drawing, and I observed her doing a self-portrait. She did it by dissecting the page into squares, holding up a small hand mirror, and tracing what was reflected back to her. She was a good artist. It took her a while to get it right, but she was spot on in her final representation. When she’d finished, the grooves on the page were still there from the lines she’d erased that rippled successively outwards until she was satisfied with the true curvature of her nostrils. She’d perfected her freckles by drawing hundreds of dots within the outline of her face and then smudging them with her licked fingertip. She emphasised her cheekbones with cross-hatching until they took on their true chiselled appearance. It was a black-and-white portrait, but if she’d coloured it, her eyes would have been a nondescript muddy colour and her hair, dead straight and russet-red.
‘It’s good,’ I said. ‘It looks just like you.’ She looked daggers at me and then shoved it under her army-issue bedding.
• • •
I wonder if Juliette has turned to fat like I have. If she ended up with a successful job, high up some corporate ladder, or if she married a man who had the nerve, after thirty bland years, to die, like my husband did. I married him because he asked me to, and that wasn’t such a bad thing really. He was kind and I knew he’d do me no harm, but if it’s possible to be a martyr of monotony I would have been long gone. I can say that now. I can admit that when he talked about his plants and his appetite day in, day out, my mind roamed. ‘Love, did you see the new flowers on the tibouchina?’ he’d say. ‘Yes, dear, you showed me yesterday.’ ‘Love, if we’re going to the bowlo, we should go today, it’s the roast special,’ he’d say. ‘That’d be nice.’ He always called me love, but it was a comfortable and not a passionate love. Perhaps I sound brutal, but it’s the truth. You can tell the truth when you’re old and fat. You can say things unapologetically when you’ve spent a lifetime saying sorry. Sorry for bumping into you at the shop’s entrance because you tried to get in before I could get out. Sorry that the cake I baked for the local fete was soggy in the middle and crunchy on the edges. I wasn’t sorry then and I’m certainly not sorry now, but until quite recently I’ve peppered my encounters with the word sorry, like some well-mannered strain of Tourette’s.
I’ve tried to seek out Juliette. It’s not so hard to find people these days. It’s one of the things they’ve taught us here at the Sanctuary to keep what’s left of our brains intact. Not that there’s much wrong with my mind. Believe it or not, I’m in here for the company. That probably sounds sad, but before you judge, you should compare it to the local shopping centre with its looping Muzak and its spruikers flogging Nicer-Dicers. I’ve done all the touristy things: the whale-watch tours, the local arts-and-crafts centres and the organic markets, but the crowds always make me feel more alone. It’s not like that in here, though; some days I feel, maybe for the first time in my life, that I belong. I’ve made a couple of friends and they greet me by name. That’s nice, you know. They don’t just say Good morning, they say Good morning, Deidre.
Searching for Juliette has become a bit of an obsession. At the Sanctuary, there’s plenty of time to socialise, but also lots of time to think. I can’t find any trace of her though, even on the World Wide Web. The only possibilities I’ve dredged up are a deceased Patron of the Arts from Dubbo with the wrong middle initial and a diminutive actress with fair skin and blue eyes. Definitely not Juliette, even with all the bodgying-up some women get when they go into the performing arts. She could be married, of course, in which case there’s not much hope of me ever tracking her down, but when I imagine her she is single. She is living in an apartment, probably in the city, and she has a Burmese cat and a vintage glassware collection. Her freckles have faded with age and she’s big-boned, but she can carry it off because her clothes are nicely tailored. She wears black – pleated pants and turtlenecks – which look good with her hair. There’s a rose-gold fob chain around her neck. Sometimes she looks out at the traffic gridlocked below her unit and she regrets what she did to me.
• • •
My grand idea was to apply what Kat, the Sanctuary’s activities officer, once described as my natural creative flair, to pen a story to Juliette about that summer at The Gateway. Kat was open to the idea, which she would be because there are only three people, including me, in our afternoon writing class. Ned is a depressed haiku poet and the other woman, Ramona, is writing about her prolonged existential crisis. Kat’s big on life writing, but
even she’s getting a bit over Ramona’s journey towards self-actualisation.
‘Yes, Deidre,’ Kat said. ‘A childhood vignette; now, that would be interesting.’
Kat is an all-rounder. She takes us for floral design Wednesday mornings, yoga on Tuesdays and creative writing on Fridays. She’s a self-published author. Her book is propped up on a recipe stand on her desk, for validation I think. We can purchase it for twenty dollars (signed) but there’s already a copy in the Sanctuary’s makeshift library; I had a flick through it and, quite frankly, I think paranormal romance has a limited market. It certainly goes against her ‘write what you know’ mantra. Kat’s pleasant enough, though. I was quite chuffed that she was keen on my idea, but it appears Juliette no longer exists. It makes me wonder if what happened that summer was real or just something I’ve imagined. It still seems so real to me.
My doctor has said that this is often the case. ‘Past memories become much more lucid than the day-to-day stuff, Deidre,’ he said just last week. I smiled at that, and thought that perhaps it was less to do with my ‘condition’ and more to do with all the prescribed medications I’m taking. I was against the tablets at first. Doctor Bunt asked me if I had a problem with pills and I said that I wasn’t entirely averse to them but I’d prefer it if I didn’t end up as one of the Sanctuary’s dribblers. I told him I’d seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest more than once. ‘Oh Deidre, you’re a character,’ he said. Anyway, he put me on a trial and there’s been no turning back. I’m a lot calmer. A lot more sociable. Comfortable in my own skin, as they say. I don’t think the pills have improved my short-term memory at all; heck, no-one could be alert with what I’m on. To tell you the truth, I’m surprised I’m upright. But all in all I’d have to say that I’m a better version of who I was. Sometimes I wonder what trajectory my life would have taken if those in the know had cottoned on a bit sooner.
• • •
The Juliette I remember, the childhood one, looked nothing like her mum Nancy, and I think that could have been part of the problem. My own mother had womanly curves, so I knew what I was in for, but I think it’s unfortunate when a girl has a petite mum and a hulking father and ends up with the figure of the latter. In Juliette’s case, I’d say her biological father was a commanding redhead with a prominent nose. Nancy, on the other hand, had butterscotch skin, dainty ballerina legs and a lovely musky smell. She was a great storyteller and was sociable too. It wasn’t long before our parents took turns coming to each other’s campsites. Juliette and I would spy on them from our tents. They’d sit around the card table and play poker and gin rummy. More often than not, Nancy would win. She’d fan out her cards in one hand and alternate between great gulps of her shandy and drags of her cigarette. Mum would discreetly wave her hand in front of her face or rest it against her nose to block the smell, but she didn’t ever complain. Sometimes, if the wind changed direction, the smoke from Nancy’s cigarette would drift back to us on the breeze.
Nancy was ‘in the family way’ as she put it, which did little to detract from her beauty. She wore her pregnancy well, her rotund belly sitting pertly under a variety of smocks with sailor collars or bold stripes. It was an era before pregnancy was incompatible with alcoholic drinks and cigarettes. She told my mum during one of their card nights that she smoked to keep the weight down. Even as a thirteen-year-old I found that a bit of a stretch. She was having twins. It was her second marriage, rare in those days unless your husband died or absconded. Her new husband, Bill, would pat her tidy belly proudly, which I thought was sweet, but in hindsight I don’t think he was proud of her, I think he was proud of his virility. Nancy’s bump was indisputable evidence. The fact he’d created twins made him twice the man. He’d already named the babies Mitch and Victor. Now and then he’d put his face next to Nancy’s middle and say, ‘How’s my little Mitch going in there?’ When I was young, people didn’t find out the sex of their babies before they were born, so I thought it was strange that he’d decided they were boys, and I doubted very much Mitch could hear him. I wondered if it was all just wishful thinking on Bill’s part. My mum was horrified that Bill had dragged his poor wife out on a camping trip when she was expecting. At night she debriefed about it with Dad in a low conspiratorial tone. Back then pregnancy was like an illness, but Nancy was always cheery as long as she had a pillow behind her back and a drink in her hand.
• • •
I was happy to have found a friend, but it didn’t take me long to realise that Juliette hadn’t really warmed to me. She was agreeable to my company, demanded it even, but only if I did what I was told. From the start, she was the cagey initiator and I was the willing-to-please underling. She showed me how to roll cigarettes using dried leaves and strips of newspaper. We practised smoking, wrists slackly tilted like Nancy’s, in the cement grotto previously reserved for snogging Bradley. She tried to pierce my ears with a needle out of Nancy’s sewing kit when her parents were down for their afternoon nap. She must have had some streak of benevolence in her because she put the needle in the billy water first to sterilise it, but the procedure was unsuccessful. My piercing scream woke Bill and he crawled from his tent in his pyjama bottoms to check on us. ‘She thinks she saw a brown snake,’ Juliette said, as quick as a flash. Bill skulked around with a pair of tongs and a marshmallow skewer, his taut arms ready to strike, while I held my throbbing ear.
On some level I knew our friendship was doomed, but I persevered for Nancy’s benefit and out of fear of the alternative. I could tell that Nancy liked having me around. Propped up in her camping chair, she crocheted blue booties for her babies and matching green swimming costumes, one for Juliette and the other for me. Decked out in our swimwear, we would sprawl on our towels, flick ants off our legs, and fry. My skin would go brown and Juliette’s freckles would multiply exponentially. Her flawed solution was to douse her body with more oil. ‘If they join up, I’ll be bronzed all over,’ she’d say. Nancy would tell Juliette that she had a complexion ill-suited to the Australian climate and more in keeping with the free-range lifestyle enjoyed by her absent English father.
I don’t know about free-range, but we always had free rein at the campsite. My overcautious Mum took on a whole new persona. It was acceptable for us to wander around the site’s perimeter like aimless cattle, to stay up late and sleep in each other’s tents. Bill was given great deference in matters of health and safety, and he would rub our legs with bracken fern to remedy green-ant bites and swab our sunburn with eucalyptus oil which stung to all buggery. Mum and Nancy spent a lot of time reading and dozing or gossiping over cups of tea. In the afternoons they’d spread a plaid blanket on the ground and Mum would help Nancy lower herself onto a pile of pillows. They’d hitch their dresses up and gaze at the sky pointing out floating castles that morphed into men and mermaids. It was strange to see my mum lazing around with her knees up, but everything was on display at The Gateway. You could see the shadows of men getting dressed in their tents, mothers in their dressing gowns in public, food stores arranged on improvised tables instead of hidden in cupboards, undies dangling from rudimentary washing lines.
The only thing not on show that summer was Bill. He’d come back on dusk smelling fishy or yeasty. Bill had a knack for dragging lobsters out of rock pools, so most mornings he’d set out in his boy-leg swimming costume with a basket and gardening gloves. When he was at the campsite, he’d fix things that weren’t broken, scuff around shirtless, or crouch wide-legged in front of the smouldering fire and stir up the coals. My dad kept up his stick-whittling routine. He stopped shaving and took himself off to the tent a lot. Bill was more active. In the evenings, if he was in a good mood, he’d make us line up and he’d flex his muscles and put on a bit of a show. Bill had calves like mangoes, bulging eyes and a jutting jaw. When he flexed his arms, his cheeks puffed out and he looked like a bullfrog. He was very proud of his physique and brute strength. He’d get Juliette to straddle his bicep and he’d lift her up into the air. He�
��d ask Nancy to get on too but she’d tell him to wait until after she’d had the babies. ‘You then, Deidre,’ he’d say, and Mum would look on, smiling amenably. It seems implausible now that he could balance both of us on one arm, but that is what he did. I remember it being physically awkward. I’d grip his arm between my legs like a vice so I didn’t fall off. Juliette would grapple his neck with her pale freckled limbs. It was the only time, apart from when I slept in her tent, that I ever saw the two of them close. At bedtime he’d give us both bum bites. Back then I thought it was funny. I have no idea if my parents knew that it was happening. He’d pull up our nighties and growl and bite us on our bums. Not hard enough to draw blood, but he’d leave a mark. Once he’d gone, Juliette and I would check out the teeth marks by the light of the lantern to see who had the deepest indentations.
Those were the good times that summer, but if Bill was around and in a bad mood, which was his more regular disposition, he’d tell Juliette that she should be more attuned to her mother’s delicate state and then he’d give us job lists. Camping trips, Bill seemed to believe, were designed for parents to enjoy forced relaxation while their children endured forced labour. His authoritarian demeanour had been honed in the army before they kicked him out for reasons Juliette didn’t elaborate on. She, and therefore we, had to sweep the sand out of the tents, scrub the cooking pots, fold up the washing and take bags of rubbish to the campsite bins. The time Juliette let the lobster pot soak instead of cleaning it, Bill wrenched her up by her ankles and let her hang, swaying her back and forth across the swampy-smelling broth. He held her there for a long time while I looked on. She was sort of laughing and crying at the same time and her howls echoed tinnily in the void until he plunged her head right in.
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