Mix Tape

by Jane Sanderson

  ‘Rob’ll be there by now, netting the vines,’ he said. ‘You like Rob.’

  ‘I know I like Rob.’

  A pause, then: ‘Apart from anything else,’ Michael said, ‘I’m thinking of Gil and Alma. These past few weeks must’ve been a slog. It must’ve been hell, even with all the help. Fires up there’ve been terrible. You know what Gil’s like; he’s seen too many to ever relax …’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ali said, ‘I know.’ Gil Henderson, the big boss, the main man, and Alma, his wife, queen of the homestead; together they ran Lismore Station as if it were their own. Gil had been hired as a lowly jackeroo by James McCormack back in 1962; Alma had come in ’68, to help clean the house. They were in the weft and the weave of the McCormack world.

  ‘So,’ Michael said. ‘I think we need to go.’

  Need to go. There it was, the subtle change of emphasis, from inclination to obligation. Ah, what the hell, thought Ali. They could all go to Lismore Creek, why not? Michael was probably right: Stella might well come back to them there, and Thea needed a change of scene too. She was moping about the place like she was under house arrest.

  ‘Fine,’ Ali said. ‘Give me a few days here. I need to square things up with the publishers, see to a few things.’

  Michael was pleased. He reached out and brought her closer, his arm across her shoulders, and Ali knew that if she’d resisted the Lismore plan he wouldn’t have done this; but she had learned the habit of compliance. She closed her eyes and retreated into her own mind, switching realities from this life in Adelaide to her other life, where Daniel was always waiting, thinking about her thinking about him. She knew he did, knew he never really stopped, because neither did she; she was in touch with his presence, and he with hers.

  She considered the utterly beautiful song he’d sent, and how unexpected tears had coursed down her face as she listened. Then she thought about the track she’d sent back, Bowie’s version of ‘Wild Is The Wind’, with all its emotion and intent and conviction, and she imagined herself lying beside Dan as he listened to it.

  She looked at her watch. In Scotland, it would be half past nine in the morning. She thought about Edinburgh, and wondered why life had taken him there. She knew he had Katelin, and together they had Alex, because it was all there to be seen on the web, and it had triggered curious feelings of regret and uncertainty, but also of a kind of relief that he was living a good life. She would never have searched for him on the internet before the first song came: never. He would have remained in 1979, just as all of her Sheffield life had, shadowy and distant, the clocks stopped, a vault of memories sealed against the passing of time. But here Daniel was now, front and centre in her private mind, and because of him, inevitably, other ghosts were moving towards the light too, other memories of her youth, among them her brother, whose remembered smile caused her to bow her head in shame that for far too long she’d – stubbornly, stoically, selfishly – turned her face away from her past, believing it to be the cure.

  Michael was talking about work, staff issues, an incompetent registrar. She half listened to him, and to the cockatoos bickering their way towards bedtime, to the sprinkler hiss on the parched summer lawn, to the thrum and chirrup of grasshoppers in the shrubs. This was certainly a kind of heaven, but she wondered now if in fact she’d always belonged elsewhere? Another life, that other world, where January meant not sultry heat but rain and sleet, and the Attercliffe bus throwing arcs of icy brown water at unwary pedestrians, and her mother, who always plunged into a hating mood after Christmas, doing anything, anything, for another drink. In Sheffield, in 1979, heaven had been Daniel’s bedroom, Daniel’s music, and the urgent, consuming heat of his body alongside her own. But her sanctuary then, her place of complete safety, had been the cloistered quiet of Bill Lawrence’s pigeon loft, where he’d one day placed a quivering bird into her careful, cupped hands and the anxious little heartbeat in its breast had made Alison feel – just for that short while – invincible.

  Cass said it was time she was invited to Lismore Creek, and since Michael would never ask her, she thought Ali should. Ali spluttered with laughter and spilled some of her wine.

  ‘What!’ Cass said. ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘You.’ Ali wiped the table ineffectually with a beer mat. ‘You, proposing a visit to the land of Hoofs and Horns. You can’t get a skinny latte at Lismore, you know.’

  ‘Hey, I was a girl guide, y’know, I can rough it, and I still think it’s a scandal you haven’t taken me,’ Cass said.

  ‘Well, I hardly ever go myself. And, well …’ She hesitated, thinking about it.

  ‘And, well, it’s Michael’s, not yours?’

  ‘Kind of, yeah.’ It was true, and a little awkward, somehow. Lismore Creek was part and parcel of the family legend, a proud outward sign of their history and status, and Ali never felt more like a Connor and less like a McCormack than when she was there. To take Cass up to Lismore, without Michael, at her own invitation? Well, it seemed unlikely.

  They were in a bar on Pirie Street. Grungy, crowded, loud. She and Cass hung out here on occasional Fridays – late, live-music nights, where genius and mediocrity rubbed shoulders on an upstairs stage. Tahnee Jackson was on tonight, half past ten, and Ali had come only for her. She was the Aboriginal girl who, twelve or so years ago, had brought them to their feet in a pub in Port Adelaide, and whenever she’d played in the city since, Ali had tried to be there. Tahnee was twenty-eight now; her voice had matured into something even richer, fuller, more knowing. Her gigs had the feel of confessionals, as if there was nothing she wouldn’t share, and when Ali heard her she thought of Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone, Carole King. But also, Tahnee was entirely herself: unique, a Northern Territory troubadour, singing to a devoted following of strangers, of her life, her thoughts and the desert land in which she’d grown up. Ali had already talked to a guy at Arts South Australia, a development officer for young indigenous musicians, and they were meeting on Monday, before the McCormack household left for Burra. Cass asked would they still be friends when Ali was a music mogul, with a smoked-glass office and Kanye on speed dial?

  They were sharing a bottle of white, biding their time in the bar, waiting for the music to start upstairs, gossiping and larking about. Ali felt light-hearted, almost giddy. The proposed trip to Lismore Creek had gone down well with the girls, and it was so good to see Stella smile. As for herself, she was going to try to do some writing when they got there, she said; or rather, think about doing some writing, in the hope that writing would follow. The fact was, Tell the Story, Sing the Song didn’t really lend itself to a sequel, and she felt dragooned by what Cass called her ‘people’ in Sydney – agent, editor, publicist – who always wanted to talk timescales and titles.

  ‘Don’t sweat it,’ Cass said, ‘you can call the shots now you’ve hit payola. Or do a Harper Lee and write nothing else, ever.’

  ‘No, I will write another book.’

  ‘So what’ll it be?’

  ‘Dunno. A love story, maybe.’

  Cass raised her eyebrows.

  Ali grinned. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘Who doesn’t love a love story?’ She pushed her glass forwards for a refill. ‘This is a very fine Riesling,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Cass said, ‘especially considering the state of the bar we’re in.’ She tolerated these dingy, cramped venues that Ali dragged her to, but would always favour space and light and exclusivity, a rooftop cocktail bar or some new restaurant with a waiting list for tables.

  Ali held up her glass and they clinked. ‘Here’s mud in yer eye,’ she said; then she sighed contentedly, and looked around at all the other people milling about in the bar, all the strangers who’d chosen to do as she and Cass had done, and come and listen to Tahnee Jackson tonight, and she felt a great warmth towards everyone; whoever they all were, she belonged among them, these disciples of live music.

  ‘Y’know,’ she said, ‘it might be the wine talking, but I have a really good feeling about th
e future.’

  Cass scrutinised her for a moment and then said, ‘I can tell you do.’

  Ali laughed. ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Yeah, you look different. Why do you look different?’

  ‘Different how?’

  ‘You look really happy.’

  She drew back and looked at Cass, askance. ‘Well, that’s because I am, by and large.’

  ‘Happier, I mean. Brighter, lighter. You’ve been a bit of a misery guts.’

  ‘Well, there’s been Stella and—’

  ‘No, before that, way before. You were flat, but now you’ve got your bounce back.’

  Ali picked up the bottle for something to do, and topped up their glasses. Cass stared.

  ‘What’re you looking at?’ Ali said.

  ‘You have a kind of … a kind of glow.’

  ‘Well, it’s hot in here.’

  ‘A loved-up glow.’

  Ali was startled now, and felt a kind of thudding anxiety that her body, her face, might so easily give away the secrets of her heart and mind.

  ‘And you said you might write a love story.’

  ‘So what if I do?’ Ali said. ‘I’m a novelist; I make stuff up.’

  ‘Hey,’ Cass said. ‘Are you having an affair?’

  Ali managed an incredulous laugh, but she couldn’t help the blush that bloomed in her cheeks and on her throat. ‘No, Cass,’ she said. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have an affair and not tell me, would you?’

  ‘I’m not having an affair.’

  ‘Oh, c’mon, spill. We tell each other everything, remember? You’ve got all the dirt on me, every crumb.’

  Ali managed to hold her friend’s gaze, and it crossed her mind to tell her: tell her that it wasn’t an affair, but it was certainly something, something absorbing and enveloping, between her and Dan Lawrence. But she didn’t. She kept him hidden, kept their connection to herself; it was too precious to expose to scrutiny, even here, with Cass, her best friend, who might be able to read her mind, Ali couldn’t be sure.

  ‘You can’t kid a kidder,’ Cass said. ‘I’ve been where you’re at now. What’s going down? Who is he?’

  Ali was resolute. ‘Absolutely nothing,’ she said. ‘Absolutely no one.’

  ‘Right, well, you tell me when you’re ready.’ Cass had searching eyes, but still Ali said nothing, only looked at her watch.

  ‘Nearly ten past,’ Ali said. ‘Come on, let’s go upstairs.’

  When Ali first went to Lismore Creek, it was for Rob’s eighteenth birthday party, a black-tie affair thrown in fine style by Margaret, along the time-honoured lines of the Bachelor and Spinster Balls of her own youth. It was March, two years after Michael had brought Ali back to Adelaide. Prior to that, the only farm she’d ever visited had belonged to the uncle of a primary school friend. It had clung to the ragged fringes of Rotherham, a drab patchwork of fields, its limits marked by tumbledown drystone walls and thin hedgerows. But at Lismore Creek she saw a world without end, and all of it belonged to the McCormacks.

  Michael drove her up from Adelaide to the Clare Valley, and when he said, ‘Here we are,’ and turned off the road on to a white stone track, she assumed they’d arrived. But he continued, on and on, then onwards still, through an undulating landscape rendered in greens, gold and brown: pastures, coppices and vines unfolding around them with infinite grace. Finally, they reached the house, standing stately and gravely beautiful, flanked by mighty oaks, Alma waving from the shade of the porch, a jug of cold lemonade, a plate of cucumber and dill sandwiches, and Gil appearing from the stable block, clapping his hands at the sight of Michael, and taking Ali by the waist to waltz her through the dust of the yard.

  She’d been spellbound by this free pass to an apparently enchanted land, where the McCormacks had shifted within their privileged ranks to make room for Ali, a lost girl without a pedigree or much of a past. Rob’s party had been a blast, the shearing shed mellow with fairy lights, decked out with bunting and flowers. There was a band, then a DJ, and the Country Women’s Association did the catering, with Margaret in command. Ali and Michael drank and danced and skylarked, then finally retired to a swag by the creek and made love under the benign eye of the Southern Cross. In the morning, they all played cricket in their crushed and crumpled finery, and ate pancakes and bacon. And then Ali – who had never ridden a horse, was terrified of them, truth be told – sat on the wooden steps of a small pavilion and watched her husband play polo, deft and fearless, golden in the sunlight, born to this life, like a prince, the heir to his father’s kingdom.

  Now, of course, Michael was king. Never mind that he had little to do with the merinos – it was Rory, the middle brother, who was always there for shearing, always at the sales. And Rob, the youngest, managed the vines, lived up here from January through to harvest, netting, checking, watering, singing to the little bunches of Shiraz and Riesling grapes. But no, never mind all that. When Michael arrived at the homestead with Ali, Thea and Stella, Alma cried with happiness and Gil’s walnut face cracked into a wide, warm smile, and he held open his arms for the girls, who ran at him like puppies. They were old people now, Alma and Gil, but sprightly and lean, full of old-fashioned vim and vigour. They believed they’d led a blessed life, and the absence of children of their own only made them cherish the McCormacks more. Neither of them saw any neglect in Michael’s long absences from Lismore; after all, he was a doctor, a kiddies’ doctor, no less. Pride and joy flowed from them to him, but it always had, so he didn’t really notice it now.

  The next morning Ali slept late. When she came downstairs, Michael was gone, making a dutiful tour of the estate with Thea in the old ute. Alma was cleaning out drawers and cupboards, piling linens and crockery and cutlery on the kitchen table, her traditional hot-weather chore. They chatted about the heat, and how washing on the line dried cardboard-stiff before the next wash was out of the machine. Then Ali wandered outside with a coffee to the porch and saw Gil and Stella hosing the wooden sheds, drenching them against the possibility of destruction. He didn’t like the wind coming at them off the desert, and east of Burra there was a fire raging that had already burned through close to a thousand hectares and wasn’t yet anything like under control. Most of the Lismore hands were out there today, helping beat it back. Stella, in an old T-shirt, shorts and wellies, waved at Ali and came over to her to tell her one of Gil’s stories, about a gum tree that had once burst into flames three months after being struck by lightning, its roots like dormant kindling, quietly burning deep underground until a south-westerly – just like today’s, just the same – had fanned the buried flames and destroyed twelve thousand hectares of farmland and every dwelling in its path.

  ‘Fire,’ Stella said. She was damp, and filthy, her hair not brushed, untied. She looked beautiful. ‘It’s awesome, really.’

  ‘Like the ocean,’ Ali said. ‘Makes you feel small.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Stella said, and looked back at Gil, protecting his domain. ‘Small, but not completely helpless.’

  ‘No, not completely helpless, not with Gil on our side. Does he really think the fire’s going to reach us?’

  ‘Nah, don’t think so,’ Stella said. ‘It’s just he’s a worrywart.’ She sat down, close to Ali. ‘I’m glad we came here.’

  ‘Then I’m glad too.’

  They sat in silence for a minute or two, then Stella said, ‘Mum, there are some people in Adelaide I never want to see again.’

  ‘Oh, sweetheart.’ Ali stroked Stella’s hair, waiting for more. There was never any point pressing this girl for information. She alone decided what she was prepared to divulge.

  ‘And I don’t think I want to go to drama school.’

  ‘Then don’t, darling.’

  Stella looked at her. ‘Is it that simple?’

  Ali smiled and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Sure is,’ she said.

  16

  SHEFFIELD,

  28 JULY 1979

  Alison didn’t
show up that Saturday afternoon, on the day of the Manchester gig. Daniel quartered the bus station, pacing about, checking his watch, checking the timetables. Dooley, John and Steve waited in the van on double yellow lines, and Steve drummed his fingers on the steering wheel while the engine of the Transit ticked over. He waited longer than he should’ve done, longer than he would’ve done for anyone else, and when he finally roared off without her, they were cutting it fine and he was fuming, and gutted. Daniel, feeling obscurely responsible, was first pissed off, then agitated, then anxious, trapped by obligation to stay with the band when all he wanted was to jump off the moving van to go and find her. But he still didn’t know exactly where she lived, and he was ashamed of this now, although she was fierce in her refusal to take him home, and it’d been weeks now – months even – since he’d pressed her on the subject. She came to his own house in Nether Edge with such dependable reliability that he’d stopped even wondering about her home, and where it might be in the warren of Attercliffe terraces. So while the white van screamed over Woodhead Pass, Daniel was quiet with concern, and the other three thought only of their set, and all of them had a strong sense that something good had gone bad before it really had a chance to get started.

  Peter needed help, Alison could see that, but she didn’t know what to do. He’d stopped his terrible, jagged crying, but now a dense silence had replaced the sobbing, and his face was stony and withdrawn. If he looked at her at all, it was only glancingly, as if he kept forgetting she was there, then, seeing her again, remembered she was irrelevant. ‘Peter,’ she kept saying. ‘Please, please, Peter,’ tugging at his arm, pulling his sleeve, trying to find her brother behind that mask and bring him back, but her own voice sounded wheedling and pleading to her ear, so she stopped, and tried to think instead.