Coming Rain

by Stephen Daisley

  ‘Well we didn’t. Did we?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No.’

  Another far-off lightning strike, a bright upside-down tree, white roots in paradise and branches coming into the earth.

  ‘Come on, we better get back,’ Lew said. He kicked sand and gravel over the fire and held his hand towards Painter, who was holding the bottle to his mouth. One hand back on the ground, bracing himself, gulping the last of the spirit.

  Lew pulled him up and helped him to stand and when he let go he staggered and dropped the empty bottle, stepped back on it and almost fell. It didn’t break. Lew heard the squealing sound of glass on sand.

  ‘Don’t leave the bottle,’ Painter said.

  ‘What?’ Lew picked up the empty brandy bottle and followed Painter who was weaving ahead of him. Plaiting his legs as he walked. He began to sing I Am the Bread of Life. ‘And I will raise you up this day.’ His words had become so slurred that Lew could barely understand him.

  ‘Jesus old man,’ Lew said and put an arm around his shoulder to stop him from falling. ‘What are you singing?’

  ‘Don’t say Jesus like that,’ Painter slurred. He stumbled forward and raised his arms as he fell.

  CHAPTER 38

  Clara rose naked from the bath and reached for a towel. She stood still and thought, I will not think of him. The steam rising as she dried herself. I will not. He has to go and I wish he would. I will be fine. I wish he would because that would solve everything really.

  All sounds somehow louder in the white-tiled and still bathroom of the old homestead. The kerosene lamp burning on a mirror stand. Dark wood and brass latches. She could see the lamp and the reflection of the lamp and the circle of light on the wall of the bathroom.

  Clara stepped out of the bath, wrapped a towel around her waist and walked into the adjoining bedroom. Wet footprints on the wooden floor. Immediately his bare feet and hands came back to her…I keep thinking about him, the smiling shearer… Lewis.

  She began to dress. White underwear. And she sat on the bed to put white socks and tennis shoes on her feet. Pulling the laces tight. How would I know to kiss him anyway?

  She pressed her mouth into the hollow of her elbow and tasted the bathwater. Skin and fine white hair under her tongue. To feel his mouth on my mouth, what is it to kiss like this? Shook her head. Finished lacing the tennis shoes. Feet on the floor with a bump.

  Remembered the mare Pearl being covered. The power of that surrender. I will be someone else again after that. You are just a shearer on my land, I am better than you. That stallion Blue Boy mounting Pearl. His great mottled prick and his crazed desire. The violence of their need for each other. Pearl had been ready for two days, running with her tail high and flexing wet labia. They call it horsing, her father said. Pearl, the girl, is horsing, look at her winking at us. She is ready to be covered.

  After a moment of them watching, he said excuse me I should not have said that. She had laughed at his eagerness to explain what they were seeing. Daddy was usually silent about such matters, leaving it to mother.

  An arched clumsy thrusting of his great cock and her simultaneous need and hatred of him on her. Ears laid back and nostrils flaring as he bit hard, her neck, and rutted at her. She, for a moment, allowed this dominance and of her need of him inside her. For her too, it was pressing, to be like this.

  I am not a horse.

  The shape of her knuckles in the white cotton. I want to hear his thank you Clara. To place food before him and he nod, not looking at me. His mouth as he said beautiful. Such large fingers. Her eyes closed and she began to hear her father’s gramophone. He would be drinking brandy again and soon fall asleep. The music would eventually stop. That scratching sound would go for a while until the winding mechanism ran down. Violetta in Verdi’s heart. My mother believed these stories were real. She would ask my forgiveness for getting cancer and dying. Apologising for her death, my mother, saying sorry darling girl. I am.

  Clara dressed, pulling on a white skirt and pale blouse. Sat on the bed, waited while her heart slowed and she could smell again the hot kerosene of the lamp. The smell also of her mother’s perfume. White gardenias.

  Crossed to the mirror and looked at her reflection for a while.

  She stood and walked out of her room. Closed the door and tiptoed down the stairs and along the east passage. A light under the kitchen door and the sound of Jimmy still working, cleaning the kitchen. The smell of bread baking. Vinegar and sandstone soap on the floor. Jimmy, yelling in Chinese at an American jazz song coming from the wireless. Perhaps he was singing.

  She closed the back door and felt the cool of the night around her, crossed her arms and walked, head lowered, towards the shearers quarters. Why am I doing this? I cannot not do this.

  Clara passed the stables and heard the soft, breathing nicker of Pearl. Her lazy feet across the ground and she crossed to her. Tom was in the next yard and he too lifted his nose and smelled her. Pawed the ground and walked the rail, the clicking of his shoes in the stony gravel. She saw him in the light from the moon and it touched his back moving forever. Beloved horses. The dogs stirred and she heard the suppressed yowps of King and Sky; chains rattled. Whines and yips of anticipation. Imagined Dee’s silence, her knowing eyes.

  ‘Is that you Miss Clara?’ Jimmy’s faraway voice calling from the back veranda of the house. ‘Down there?’ Jimmy was outside, standing holding a hurricane lamp high.

  ‘It’s me Jimmy.’ She called back to him. ‘Just checking my little pregnant mare here. Been a dingo about.’

  ‘The dogs,’ Jimmy said. ‘The dogs will tell us if that dingo comes too near the house isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes Jimmy.’ She knew, he knew.

  ‘All right then Miss Clara. You okey dokey?

  ‘Yes thank you Jimmy.’

  ‘Ah.’

  She watched as he raised a hand. Turned, head down, and re-entered the house. Repeated himself. ‘Ah.’

  Wondered if Jimmy was waiting for her to return. Her father was sleeping but Jimmy missed nothing. She kissed Pearl and breathed her in. The wash of the horse in her nose. The soft muzzle, velvet top lip fluttering over her face. A sister’s kiss and I have no sister.

  Tom was still walking in the yard. White tail swaying.

  The shearers quarters were about a quarter of a mile from the house. She would follow the line of old white gums so as not to be seen. Fence posts ran along behind the gums. Squat and as thick as a man’s body, leaning left and right. Sagging and broken barbed wire around them.

  The night was silent with a storm somewhere. Iron in it. The taste of blood the same, iron in it. If you have ever bitten your tongue or sucked a cut, it will rain, her grandmother said. It was the superstitious old north-country beliefs, these things which informed her. Like not cutting your hair or fingernails on a Sunday or Friday. A field of potatoes failed due to having it, the other, while bleeding. When you put your shirt or blouse on inside out it must stay that way for an hour at least. It must have wanted to be angry with you, that which you put on your own very self, who would think such a thing? Onions falling from a string, a stillborn child.

  When she reached the signpost: Woolshed and Shearers Quarters, she turned to her right and followed the curving gravel track towards the long bulk of the shearing shed. The qua
rters were just on from that. Enormous ghost gums spread against the stars. Her eyes had almost become adjusted to the night.

  CHAPTER 39

  The dingo came to the young dog sitting below the crest of the valley of his memory. He was sitting and trying to be who he had been, howling for the absence of his pack. His nose told him of their dead and rotting bodies. The clan, splayed and wired onto roadside fences. There was no mistake, the shooting. They had been gutted, their intestines spilled out in rotting heaps. Their bodies chained together and pulled behind the blue car. Laying a wide scent of destruction and havoc. The hunting clan of the valley wiped out. Soon even what remained of them would be gone. He lifted his face to the early morning sky and cough-howled. Sat as if thinking and then lay down. Put his front paws out and placed his chin on his paws.

  She sat behind him and waited. When he had finished whining he came and lay next to her. Something of the pup had gone and he was a more serious dog.

  She, without expression, stood and turned from him. Began to trot towards a dry creek to the north.

  After a while he followed.

  A young ewe in the rocks at the southern edge of the clan’s old hunting grounds. She was having trouble giving birth and the front feet and face of the lamb were hanging from her fly-encrusted vulva. She had instinctively sought solitude to give birth in this late and difficult time and had left the rest of the flock in the main valley. The dingoes discovered her and immediately attacked.

  The dingo bitch bit onto the face of the premature foetus and tore it from the young ewe. The young red dog had simply collided with the sheep and tumbled her onto her side. She was struggling to get up, legs in the air. The dingos circled and snarled as the blue-faced lamb lay in a slimy mess and they continued to squabble.

  Crows had appeared and were already approaching the scattered kill.

  CHAPTER 40

  Lew heard a light tapping on his window. He sat up and listened. Lit a bedside candle.

  Painter was snoring loudly in the room across the breezeway. The tapping came again. It was the sound of a small stone being rapped against the windowpane in his room.

  Clara was standing there, her hand at the glass. He pushed the curtain to one side and raised the window easily on its pulley. Stopped midway and he heard the gentle bump of the iron weights in the sash.

  ‘Lewis,’ she said and turned her head to one side to look through the half-opened window.

  He lifted the double panes to their full height. A slight squealing noise and again, the low soft gong as weight and counterweight touched. The night wind blew in. It was cool and smelled of a storm. Still cloudless, the moon was waning towards the half. He could see her face, the shadows and short hair.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  She took his hand and he heard her place her foot against the iron cladding of the building. Felt the strength of her arm as she lifted herself up on his outstretched hand. One foot over the edge of the sill and in a moment she was inside. She was wearing a pale skirt and it had ridden up as she climbed into the room. Just for a second, he saw the full lengths of her muscular horsewoman’s legs, white underwear between. She stood, and jumped slightly as she pushed her skirt down. Standing there close together, they had again touched. ‘Clara. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Lewis, I…’ She stopped. ‘God, you have bad breath. Have you been drinking?’

  His mouth was open and he stepped back. Closed his mouth. Laughed at her honesty.

  ‘Oh. Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll go and rinse my mouth. Brush my teeth.’ He had lowered his head so as to not speak directly at her.

  She sat demurely on the bed, smoothing her skirt beneath her bottom.

  Lew was searching through his canvas bag on the floor. Found his toothbrush and a tin of Alligator tooth powder. Painter was still snoring as he padded down the boards to the washhouse. He brushed his teeth and returned to the bedroom as quickly as he could.

  Clara was sitting straight backed on his bed. ‘Painter is very loud isn’t he?’

  He nodded. ‘The grog. Been a while since he had a drink. Your dad gave us a bottle of brandy. Y’know, to celebrate the cut out.’

  He lit another candle, took the light and placed it on the floor in front of her. Unrolled a kapok mattress and sat on the bed opposite. The flame between them moved as he moved. He bent forward and interlaced his fingers, cleared his throat.

  Clara was looking at him in the candlelight. She squared her shoulders, hands held in her lap. For a moment, they didn’t know what to say to each other.

  ‘I came to ask you something,’ she said.

  Lew nodded.

  ‘Today what you said.’ She plucked at the cotton of her dress on her knees. Smiled, opened her mouth, looked at him. ‘If you meant it and if you would stay on after the shearing. For the wheat?’

  ‘Stay on for the wheat?’

  ‘Yes, you said I was beautiful. And didn’t know what to say after that. It was,’ she frowned, searching for the right word, ‘tender.’ Yes. ‘And how you felt, trusting even. It was brave.’ She reached out and took his hand. Her hand holding his, this bold movement. ‘Shearer’s hands,’ she said. Their fingers slid together, intermeshing. It seemed the most natural of things to do when holding hands.

  ‘There is wool growing between my fingers,’ he said. ‘Like an animal.’

  ‘Where?’ She laughed and turned his hand over in hers and pulled the fingers apart. Peering at them. ‘Where?’

  ‘No,’ he said, laughing. ‘I am teasing you.’

  She pushed his hand away. ‘Stop it.’

  ‘I will stay on for the wheat,’ he said. ‘And I meant what I said.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’m pleased. Thank you.’ She frowned, still holding his hand, began to examine his palm, touching the callused dome at the base of each finger. Squeezed his fingers and shook her head at him. Her fingers closed around his middle finger. ‘But first,’ she said, ‘you have to go and see Dad. Ask his permission to see me. Take me out.’ Folded shut his hand.

  ‘At the homestead?’ Lew asked.

  ‘Of course. It is the right thing to do. His blessing, Lewis. It’s important. And I can take you to Daybreak Springs for a picnic and a swim. Dad will appreciate it I am sure.’ She leaned across and kissed him on the mouth. Again her boldness. The dash of a good horsewoman. A good woman with dogs. That intuition that cannot be taught. And then she was rising up while still kissing him.

  She broke off and stood. ‘I promise. Now, I have to go.’

  In a moment she had turned away from him, climbed out the window and disappeared.

  The window was still open and he stepped forward to close it. Could not close it, and then he did.

  Lew heard rain on the corrugated-iron roof. He looked to where Clara would have gone. Walked outside and stood in front of the quarters. The smell of a thunderstorm coming in from the night. Occasional wet drops began blowing in, spattering on the veranda boards and across his bare feet. The rain clouds lifting and rolling across the face of the moon. Slate to black, scudding clouds building upon themselves and the night down towards the ground in the rising wind. The first real rain came next. Fine and then thickening to something steady.

  He walked out into the yard, his bare feet in the wet dust. Reache
d out and cupped his hand to allow the rain to fall into it. This is something, and he thought again of Maureen O’Reilly, how when he came inside her it was like a thousand wild birds flew out of his arsehole and she arched her back, said something he hadn’t heard before. His semen on the black oil floor. Her hand cupped above her knee. Saying, young men have so much. It’s all over me, in me.

  Sudden lightning flashes and the smashing crack soon after. There was no time to count, he turned and hurried back towards the shelter of the quarters. The wind came in flurries and the rain became heavy as he made his way along the breezeway. Painter’s door opened and Lew saw a lamp burning.

  ‘Raining son? A storm coming.’ Painter stood at the door.

  ‘Yeah mate.’

  ‘Did I hear voices before? Someone here?’

  ‘No mate you dreaming,’ Lew said.

  ‘I could have sworn,’ Painter looked towards the sound of the thunder. ‘Must have been the bloody brandy. You smell that?’

  The rain. Lew laughed. ‘Smells good.’

  ‘Good as gold son.’

  ‘Night mate,’ Lew said and stepped back to his room.

  ‘Night.’

  ‘Tomorrow’s Sunday.’

  ‘Day off. Sleep in,’ Painter said from behind his closed door. ‘My head feels like a football at the end of a grand final.’

  CHAPTER 41

  Threads of the rainstorm hung in the air the next morning and a double rainbow formed to the west. The brilliant arcs began to widen and fade and after a few minutes both of them had gone.

  Lew had risen early, showered and dressed. He watched the rainbows from the kitchen window and drank tea. Ate toast and Jimmy’s cumquat jam for breakfast and looked at his watch three times before he left.