Last Bridge Before Home

by Lily Malone

  ‘Kali.’

  ‘That’s the martial arts you told me about?’

  ‘Yes.’ She burrowed over until she was lying on her hip and stomach, her arm across his chest.

  From the kitchen came the hum of a boiling kettle, and the gentle clunk as cupboards were carefully opened and closed.

  ‘Speak of the devil,’ she said.

  ‘I hope your mum can find something she likes. There should be cereal. I’m pretty sure there’s enough milk for tea or coffee and cornflakes if she wants them.’

  ‘She’s not much of one for cornflakes. Dad always liked a cooked breakfast.’

  ‘Maybe she was trying to cook him into a heart attack.’

  ‘Don’t joke about it. I thought about it. Bacon. Sausages. Butter. Eat up, Dad.’

  Bitterness and sadness and fire played across her face and he thought about the differences between yesterday’s Jaydah and today’s. This was the vulnerability she’d hidden from him all their lives, emotion tucked way down inside where nobody could see and nobody knew.

  ‘I don’t know how you stayed where you were for so long, JT,’ and he meant both on her father’s farm and buried so far inside her own skin. She could take her pick. ‘I don’t know how you didn’t jack up years ago and get out.’

  ‘I tried.’ Her voice stuck. ‘I tried the day you came to take me for a ride in your ute when you first got your licence. I told him I was old enough to have my own life. I shouted at him while he stood on the verandah making sure you drove away. I told him I wouldn’t take it anymore and I was out the door.’

  He already knew what happened that day, so he didn’t ask.

  She wasn’t finished. ‘He took his belt out of its loops—he’s got this real slow way of doing it—and he called Jaz to come outside, normal as you like, and then he whacked her round her legs hard as he could. He only did it that once. Once was enough.’

  ‘And he didn’t hit you?’

  ‘Not that time.’ She shook her head. ‘We’d made our deal and he kept to it right up till six weeks ago. The only times he hit me were when you came to Chalk Hill.’

  ‘How did he know I was there? I never saw him.’

  ‘He knew. He always knew. He must have read it in my face. Maybe I was late home too many nights. I don’t know. He knew.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. Every second I ever spent with you was worth it. I could handle it if he hit me. It’s when he threatened Mum or Jasmine that I couldn’t handle it. Jazzy loves the arsehole. She’d do anything for him. She busts her guts every morning to shift all those rocks and she does it just so he’ll play some games of Snap with her at lunchtime. Calling him an arsehole is being mean to all the arseholes out there, Brix. I hate him. I wish he was dead. If I hadn’t got out of there, I’d have killed him, or he’d have killed me. It was only a matter of time.’

  CHAPTER

  19

  His kitchen smelled like Sunday morning in Abe’s café.

  ‘Wow, Rosalie. Jaydah said you were an early riser and she said you must be getting breakfast, but I never thought she meant you were trying to feed an army!’ Brix said, greeting his new mother-in-law in his kitchen the morning after he’d married and made love to her daughter, and trying his hardest not to find it on the terrifying side of strange.

  There were four plates laid neatly on the table and cutlery shining beside the plates. A carafe that rarely held anything other than wine occupied the centre, filled with water, by a plate of already buttered toast.

  ‘Is Jaz awake, Mum?’ Jaydah asked, following Brix into the kitchen.

  ‘She is outside. See?’ Rosalie said, indicating through the kitchen window while her hands made a whir with a whisk Brix didn’t know he’d owned. Maybe Rosalie brought it with her.

  He looked out the window to where Jaydah’s twin—it still felt so weird to contemplate JT being a twin—sat under the fruit trees, moving pieces of something around the dry grass.

  ‘She’s playing farm,’ Jaydah said, and she grinned. ‘Did she sleep okay, Mum?’

  ‘She snores but it makes me happy, the sound. Will you please tell your sister her breakfast is here?’ Rosalie said, stirring a whisk through a saucepan.

  Sizzles and spits popped on a frying pan on the front hob of the stove while a second larger saucepan simmered white rice at the back. Brix took a look at both pots.

  ‘I didn’t think I had any bacon, Rosalie.’

  ‘This is ham.’ She paused as she pushed the thin slices across the frypan. ‘I hope it was okay to use? I should have asked.’ She put the utensil down in a hurry and the whisk slipped and rolled, marking the counter.

  Rosalie snatched at the mess and wiped it with her apron.

  There was a bustle at the back door and Jaydah and Jasmine entered the increasingly small space near the pantry.

  ‘I didn’t see any horses,’ Jasmine said, moving to the table. She hesitated before she selected a seat, circling the smallish table twice. She reached for a piece of toast, then the jar of strawberry jam, concentrating on getting jam on her knife.

  Brix backed out of the pantry with the box of cereal, almost colliding with Rosalie. Jaydah touched his arm and when he looked at her she glanced pointedly at the cereal packet, then at Rosalie and her whisk, and she shook her head.

  He put the cereal back on its shelf.

  ‘Where are the horses? Are there stables?’ Jaz asked.

  ‘Sometimes the neighbour’s horses come to the fence. We can go see,’ Brix answered.

  ‘What is its name?’

  ‘I don’t know, Jaz.’

  ‘How many are there?’

  ‘Two. I think.’

  ‘Only two?’

  ‘We can go see after breakfast, Jaz,’ Jaydah said.

  ‘I’ll need a walk to walk off breakfast,’ Brix said, watching Rosalie heap ham and eggs on his plate.

  Rosalie stopped scooping. ‘Is it too much? Tell me if it is too much.’

  ‘No, it’s fine!’ he hurried to reassure her because the poor lady looked like she suspected he might grab the frying pan and launch it at the sink. ‘It looks great.’

  Another slice of ham landed.

  She served Jasmine, and then spilled perfectly scrambled eggs onto the plate in front of JT, before she sat before her own bowl, which looked to Brix to contain white rice and nothing except maybe some of the drizzled fat and egg yolk from the frying pan.

  Jasmine kicked her feet beneath the table. ‘I hope it’s a brown one or a black one. I hope they have socks. They might be racehorses. Are they racehorses?’

  ‘I don’t know, Jaz. I don’t think so. I think they’re just normal ponies that people ride.’ God, he hoped they were actually there.

  Why isn’t anyone eating?

  A prod from Jaydah’s foot on his shin made him jolt. What now? Did they say Grace at breakfast on the Tully farm? He couldn’t imagine Keith doing that.

  She tipped her eyes at Rosalie who sat with her head bowed, as if looking for answers to that question in her bowl of rice, and then Jaydah shifted her eyes to meet his.

  Don’t tell me they’re waiting for me?

  ‘Um, thank you for breakfast, Rosalie,’ he said, and forked a spoonful of eggs into his mouth. ‘It looks great. It looks heaps better than I’d normally eat for brekky around here.’

  Rosalie picked up her fork and began eating, and so Brix’s bizarre honeymoon breakfast began.

  * * *

  ‘I hope the horses are in their paddock,’ he said, as he and Jaydah followed Jasmine across the gravel track that ran above the top of the cabernet vineyard before it met the shelterbelt treeline of native bush. Rosalie said she didn’t want to walk and had stayed at the house.

  ‘So do I,’ JT said.

  ‘I can see them,’ Jaz shouted, as they cleared the line of the hill and the valley spread below. ‘There are two. Two brown ones.’ She ran towards the fence, calling to the animals.

  Unlik
e Starburst, these two weren’t so fussed at seeing people. They kept their heads down eating hay that had been tossed out in the paddock and didn’t approach the fence even when Jaz picked some dry brown grass and waved it at them.

  ‘I think they might be too hungry to say hello today, Jaz,’ Jaydah said.

  ‘I want to see Starburst. I want to go home,’ Jaz said.

  ‘What about if I showed you our whale instead, Jaz?’ Brix asked.

  Jaz screwed up her nose. ‘You don’t have a whale. Whales are in the ocean. Whales would be migrated down to Antarctica, David Attenborough says.’

  ‘This place is called Whale Rock Wines. We have a whale. Come and have a look.’

  He led them back the way they’d come and when the lake and winery buildings came into view, showed them the whale-shaped namesake for Whale Rock Wines.

  Jaz ran down to the lake to get closer, scaring the white birds that dotted the lake-side grass.

  Jaydah’s shoulder rocked comfortably against his, her hand fit inside his as if it could curl there and stay forever, and the sun warmed both their backs as it warmed the world.

  CHAPTER

  20

  ‘Your mum doesn’t have to cook me breakfast every day, JT,’ Brix hissed beneath his breath, three days later, as he sat at the table beside Jaydah, contemplating another plate of heart-attack material. Keith Tully must be such a mean slippery bastard even cholesterol wouldn’t stick to his veins.

  ‘I’ll talk to her,’ she promised.

  ‘She doesn’t have to clean my house either. She’s not here to be the maid!’

  ‘I know. I’ll talk to her.’

  ‘Don’t make it seem like I’m not happy about it though.’

  ‘I won’t. Don’t worry.’ She shushed him as Rosalie came into the room, having called Jasmine inside to have her breakfast.

  The three women sat and waited for Brix to begin first, like they had on the other mornings. He felt like Caesar, or Hitler, or some desert sheik with a harem. He felt a bit like Keith Tully, which made him want to poke his eyes out.

  ‘Rosalie, please eat. You don’t need to wait for me.’

  Dutifully, Rosalie picked up her bowl of rice and began to eat. She finished first—it was a very small bowl—and waited for the others, taking plates and cutlery to the sink as they finished.

  ‘More coffee?’ Rosalie asked Brix.

  ‘No. I’m good thanks.’

  Then she took dishwashing gloves from beneath the sink and loaded the sink with dishes, even though Brix had a perfectly good dishwasher that wasn’t getting any use.

  He sliced through a piece of toast and bacon—Rosalie cooked it that perfect shade of crunch—and instead of enjoying his breakfast, he got more and more ticked off.

  ‘Rosalie?’ he said, bringing Jaz and Jaydah’s heads up, swift as horses.

  Rosalie snapped down on the hot water tap to stop its flow and jumped to face him. ‘Yes?’

  ‘You don’t need to cook me breakfast every morning, Rosalie. I mean, thank you for the last couple of days, but I can get my own breakfast. I can look after myself.’

  She twisted her fingers in her apron. ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘Please, there’s no need to be sorry. I’m not angry. I’m not upset. I just don’t want you waiting on me, okay? There’s no need to do that. I can show you the dishwasher too. You don’t have to start washing dishes the moment we finish a meal, okay?’

  ‘I’m doing it all wrong,’ Rosalie said, and her cheeks crumpled.

  ‘You’re not doing anything wrong, Mum,’ Jaydah said. ‘Don’t worry.’

  Beside him, Jasmine wrapped her arms across her stomach and rocked forward and back in the chair.

  ‘This house has never been cleaner, Rosalie,’ Brix said, wanting to explain. ‘I mean, everything’s spotless. It looks amazing. But you don’t need to clean my house. I mean, you’re welcome to and thank you, but I can clean up after myself.’

  ‘Okay. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You don’t need to be sorry.’ He waved his hand, and all three women watched it in such a wild-eyed way that he rubbed his palm on his jeans and left it there, as if he’d stuck it with glue.

  He took a deep breath and started again. ‘Jaydah tells me it’s years since you were in touch with your parents, Rosalie. Would you like to ring them?’

  ‘Ring them?’

  ‘On the phone. You can use the phone here.’

  ‘We aren’t allowed to use the phone. Daddy says we might break it,’ Jasmine said.

  ‘A phone is pretty hard to break,’ he said mildly.

  ‘We didn’t have a landline at the farmhouse,’ Jaydah said. ‘We only had my mobile and Dad’s mobile.’

  ‘We can easily buy Rosalie a new phone,’ Brix said.

  ‘Mum shouldn’t use the phone,’ Jaz said, shaking her head, rocking from her hips so that the chair creaked and the legs scraped the floor.

  ‘Do you still have the number, Mum?’ Jaydah said.

  Rosalie shook her head. ‘Your dad said it didn’t work. He showed me on his phone when I asked and I could hear the woman’s voice saying to me please to dial the number again.’ Rosalie batted her hand towards Jasmine. ‘Jazzy, please don’t worry. I won’t use the phone.’

  Jasmine stopped rocking.

  ‘He probably didn’t dial the country code properly,’ Brix said. ‘He might not have had international roaming.’

  ‘I don’t know about the roaming thing. I don’t know what this is. He tells me my parents changed the number,’ Rosalie said. ‘I think the news about Jasmine’s birth … he told me they lost face because she wasn’t born right. Your father says they changed the number because they didn’t want to remember they had a …’ her eyes skipped around the room and she whispered, ‘a granddaughter who was a retard.’

  Jaydah put her fork down and sat ramrod straight in her chair. ‘He said that to you?’

  ‘He says it all the time.’

  ‘We should be proud of Jaz, Mum. She’s a beautiful girl and a wonderful soul. Don’t listen to him. He’s a monster.’

  ‘Jasmine is not like you,’ Rosalie maintained.

  ‘No. She’s not like me. But she’s still special. She’s our family.’

  Brix put in, ‘Well, maybe you can write to them and ask for the number and explain you’ve moved from Chalk Hill? Send them a new address and give this phone number. At least then you’ll know you’ve done what you could. Would you want to visit your family in Manila again, Rosalie?’

  ‘Yes. Of course I would like that. But I am not allowed to fly there. I might never be allowed to leave if I go back. I might never be allowed into Australia again and I’d never see the girls. Keith says they can make me stay at the airport forever.’

  Jaydah stabbed at her toast so hard she broke a hole through the bread. ‘You’re a permanent resident with a permanent visa, Mum. Don’t listen to him! Of course you could visit home if you want to and come back.’

  Rosalie said solemnly to Brix, ‘I would like to try to contact them. I will take you up on your kind offer to write to them. Thank you.’

  ‘No problem at all. Please feel free. I want you to feel at home here,’ he said, and then he thought: in for a penny, in for a pound. ‘You can start writing that letter right after we finish your first driving lesson.’

  ‘Her what?’ said Jaydah, brown eyes going wide.

  ‘Pardon me?’ said Rosalie.

  ‘I’m going to teach you to drive. You need to learn so you can drive yourself when you want to go somewhere.’

  ‘Where would I go?’

  ‘You know, to the shops or something. To work if you want to …’

  ‘You want me to work?’ She took off her apron and hung it on a hook near the sink.

  ‘Mummy is lazy,’ Jaz said. ‘She’s lazy, my mummy.’

  ‘No, Rosalie. Not right now for the work, okay? This is still holidays. I mean later, when you feel settled here. You might want to work. How about we h
ave a driving lesson today?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Yes you can.’

  ‘I don’t know how. I don’t know anywhere. I don’t know the roads.’

  ‘We’ll just drive on the farm and I’ll show you. We’ll do lessons.’

  Jaydah snort-laughed beside him.

  ‘We can start in one of the paddocks where there’s nothing else around, nothing to run into, and see how you go.’

  ‘Go on, Mum. It’s a good idea,’ Jaydah encouraged.

  ‘Daddy always drives,’ Jasmine said. ‘Mummy is too stupid.’

  ‘Your mum isn’t stupid, she just hasn’t been taught how,’ Brix said, a little sharply, without really thinking about it. Jaz picked up her toast.

  ‘I’ll show you how to stack the dishwasher, Mum,’ Jaydah said, putting her hand on Brix’s shoulder. ‘I think learning to drive is a brilliant idea and we should do it.’

  ‘That’s settled,’ he added, grinning at his mother-in-law.

  ‘Okay,’ Rosalie said, looking like she might cry.

  * * *

  ‘For a start, Rosalie, this car is a manual. You have manual cars where you have to change gears.’ He tapped the gear stick. ‘This is the gears here. And you have automatic cars where you just put them in Drive or Park or Reverse or Neutral and the car changes the gears for you. Automatics are easier, but this car is a manual. If you learn in a manual, you can drive an automatic too, but if you learn in an automatic you can’t drive a manual.’

  Rosalie stood in the gap made by the vehicle’s open door, with Brix in the driver’s seat pointing out gear sticks and brake, clutch, accelerator, indicators, ignition and windscreen wipers.

  Jaydah and Jaz both stood watching his demonstration from the shade of the peppermint tree under which Brix had parked the Toyota.

  Then he swung his legs out and stood up. ‘Okay. Your turn. In you get.’

  Rosalie’s legs were far shorter than his own and he helped her adjust the seat and seatbelt, showed her the mirrors and adjusted those too. When he thought she was comfortable, he walked around to the passenger seat and hopped in, buckling his own seatbelt.

  ‘Okay. So when we start a manual car, we want to be in neutral, and to change gears we should depress the clutch, so can you do that?’