Milk Fever

by Lisa Reece-Lane

  Born in London, Lisa Reece-Lane moved to Australia with her family and studied music at the Victorian College of the Arts and later at Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam. She played with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and other orchestras here and overseas. She now lives in Melbourne with her son and, when she is not writing, teaches Pilates.

  milk fever

  Lisa Reece-Lane

  Published in Australia in 2010 by Pier 9, an imprint of Murdoch Books Pty Limited

  Murdoch Books Australia

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  Publisher: Colette Vella

  Project Editor: Kate Fitzgerald

  Editor: Christa Munns

  Designer: Natalie Winter

  Text copyright © 2010 by Lisa Reece-Lane

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Cover design copyright © Murdoch Books Pty Limited 2010

  Cover photography by Getty Images

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Every reasonable effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright materials in this book, but is some instances this has proven impossible. The author(s) and publisher will be glad to receive information leading to more complete acknowledgements in subsequent printings of the book and in the meantime extend their apologies for any omissions.

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Author: Reece-Lane, Lisa.

  Title: Milk fever [electronic resource] / Lisa Reece-Lane.

  ISBN: 9781742665597 (ebook: pdf)

  Subjects: Country life—Fiction.

  Married people—Fiction.

  Dairy farmers—Fiction.

  Dewey Number: A823.4

  For the misfits, who perhaps don’t realise how beautifully they fit.

  The price the Gods extract for this Gift of Song is that we become what we sing.

  —Pythagoras

  Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.

  —Leonard Cohen

  ‘The knower of the mystery of sound knows the mystery of the whole universe.’

  —Hazrat Inayat Khan

  Tom

  I buried my mother in the back paddock earlier this morning, before my dad was up, before the sun had appeared over the back of the milking sheds, with a stand of magpies watching. I chose that particular resting place because no one ever goes there, and I didn’t want her to be disturbed. The lopsided square of land is filled with rusting farm equipment, and thousands of bubble-holed rocks that push out of the earth like dinosaur eggs. It’s the closest thing we have to a cemetery, and the thought gives me some comfort. Shooter, our old cattle dog is buried nearby, so at least she’ll have company.

  My eggs taste funny this morning and I need plenty of tea to wash them down. I made them myself, on top of the Aga where they hissed and popped, the egg white flapping around in all the oil. And even though I showered them with salt, and plenty of pepper, they still don’t taste right. With practice, and perhaps with the aid of a recipe book, my cooking should improve. At least, I hope so, for Dad’s sake.

  I can hear him talking to someone in the bedroom. The cattle dog must’ve got in. Good job Mother’s not around to notice. She hates that dog being inside, although her two cats are allowed to go any where they fancy. Dad’s voice is slow, hypnotic almost, as if there’s a narrowing on the path from his brain to his mouth. On rare occasions, I get impatient with him to finish his sentence, knowing what he’s going to say next, but I always wait. Mother doesn’t bother though, and finishes for him.

  His gentle footsteps sound up the hallway, then he walks into the kitchen, smiling at me. I imagine he’ll be surprised to see that I’ve made my own breakfast, but he doesn’t notice, greeting me with a simple, ‘Morning, Tom.’

  He takes two cups down from the rack, spoons a sugar into each one. Then I watch him hold the big china teapot — his right hand trembling a little under the weight of water, his left hand holding up his drooping pyjamas.

  ‘Looks like it’s gonna be a hot one,’ he says, nodding towards the window. And then he notices the messy egg pan. He wrinkles his nose, but quickly checks himself, looking at me to see if I noticed. I did, but pretend to take more tea.

  Then, he makes his slow shuffle over to the fridge for the jug of milk. I think he’s getting slower. My heart fills up with love for him as he pours the milk, and stirs the tea, and sets the teaspoon on the draining board.

  His pyjamas bother me. They used to fit him; now they hang, floppy and defeated, the pattern almost washed away into memory. He was a much bigger man once. But Mother has slowly whittled him down.

  Dad holds two cups of tea, over-brewed, the colour of dam water, one in each hand. Because there’s no one else in the house, I think one of them is for me.

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’ I move my empty cup aside and I hold out my hand for the new one.

  But he leans forward, as if he’s got a secret to tell. ‘Your mother’s feeling a bit off-colour today.’

  What? I squeeze my fists together under the table. Did I hear right?

  Mother’s feeling a bit off-colour today.

  There is a deep stabbing pain in the side of my head, and I have to struggle with myself not to cry. I wanted her gone before my twenty-sixth birthday, which is only a week away.

  Under a twisted peppercorn tree, that is where my mother is resting, beneath its insect-filled branches. Night-coloured dirt covering her like a blanket, filling her nose and mouth, patted down by my very own hands. A jumbled heap of metal that was once a combine harvester serving as a headstone.

  Tea is not going to revive her.

  And then I hear the familiar scuff scuff of Mother’s slippers on the linoleum, echoing up the hallway; and she appears before me, looking tired.

  ‘You,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, me.’ She takes the cup of tea Dad is holding out to her. ‘Who were you expecting? The Queen?’

  She scrapes back a chair from the table and sits opposite me. Staring.

  I focus on my leg, unable to lift my eyes. Dad moves his feet but doesn’t join us at the table. My thighs still hurt from the cuts I found this morning.

  I buried her, I know I did. I remember. The earth was summer hard and resisted the spade; the hole was slow to come, gradually filling with moonlight and my sweat. Cicadas buzzed loudly, stopping when I hit the earth hard, and then starting up again seconds later. Mother lay stiff beside the hole, staring up through milky eyes at the waving branches.

  — Can you hear me, Tom?

  I incline my head slightly, without taking my gaze higher than her shoulders, and check her hands. I wonder if there is dirt under her fingernails. Her knuckles are prominent and bony, and look out of place on such long fingers. The backs of her hands are lined with veins as thick as worms. She is wearing nail polish, so it’s difficult to tell if she has clawed her way out of a hole this morning.

  Dad coughs and asks if Mother wants another cup of tea. She passes her cup over, without saying thank you, or please, and she continues to watch me
. I can feel her eyes burning a hole in the top of my skull, and I wonder if she can see the workings of my brain.

  Still I refuse to lift my head, pretending to be fascinated with my jeans, pretending that this woman is still buried beneath a peppercorn tree.

  I hear the scrape of her chair, and the cupboard door over the cooker opening and closing. She places three tablets on the table beside me and says, ‘Take them.’

  I excuse myself and run outside. The wind pushes me forward, but sadly it doesn’t have the strength to carry me elsewhere.

  The dam is high this year and full of leeches. I toss melon-sized rocks into the water and listen to the muted boom as they travel rapidly downwards, rushing to meet the rotting leaves and soft clay that lines the bottom. I throw the pills onto the water, aiming to skim them across the surface. The small white capsules are the only ones to float, but even they will descend as the outer coating dissolves. I saw a dead possum on the other side of the dam a week ago; surely proof my mother has been trying to poison me.

  What else but poison could cause this excruciating pain in my skull? Poison, and the dark energy of her intent, which flies from her mind like arrows every time she thinks my name.

  I push my aching head between my hands, squeezing my hair up into a crown. I’m making sounds that frighten the birds. They flap out of the gums in a large group. The pain fills the cracks and crevices of my mind, blurring my vision, clogging my thoughts. So I focus on the water. It is the only thing that doesn’t hurt my eyes. In the water all is invisible; you can’t see the leeches or the rocks, the branches or tablets, the duck’s feet, the tadpoles, the sunlight. All is brown, smooth and dark. As total as the night.

  Squatting on my heels, my arms spread wide for balance, the water calls me forward.

  Julia

  They’re crammed in the bed. Julia stares at the ceiling and tries to relax. She can hear Bryant breathing beside her and knows from the rhythm that he is pleased with himself. He laughs loudly and reads another passage from his proposed brochure.

  ‘Bryant Heath is a master. His yoga classes are invigorating and inspiring. I felt more alive after one session than ever before. I would recommend anyone to see him.’ He clears his throat when she doesn’t answer. ‘It sounds like someone’s doing a review on me.’

  ‘It’s wonderful.’ Her voice is too flat to sound genuine but she has already endured thousands of these false quotes during the long drive up here and, although she wants to support her husband’s new venture, for tonight, at least, she can’t muster any more enthusiasm.

  Heat pins her down like a weight and she pushes the sheet to the bottom of the bed with her feet. They’ve left behind the ducted heating, the evaporative cooling, the dishwasher, cafés that know what real coffee is, intelligent friends, a sunny, low-maintenance courtyard, for what? Half an acre of blackberries, a run-down house, musty-smelling supermarkets and severe water restrictions. They’ve moved to a town called Lovely. But it’s not. It’s a town in the middle of emptiness, abandoned by mountains and coast. The road travels gladly on to more picturesque towns, more exciting places, further ahead. There is a lake, true, but it is half-empty. A disused train station with its tracks coming to an end in an overgrown sheep paddock. One or two of the buildings in the town centre whisper of a gold rush past. But apart from that, Julia can see no enticement for motorists to pull off the highway and get out here. It is nothing at all like Bryant’s glowing description, which was perhaps softened by the memory of a fishing trip he took with his father a few years ago, not long before the old man died.

  The only precious thing she has now, which she insisted on bringing despite the agent wanting to include it on the list of chattels at the old house, is her Faema espresso machine— an old, two-group, deco-style, brass-trimmed masterpiece that needs to be plumbed in, and which she sometimes loves as much as her children.

  Dinner was inedible; she couldn’t work out how to control the temperature on the unfamiliar hotplates. Burnt chops, dry mashed potatoes and peas. Now it all sits like a clenched fist below her ribcage. Her stomach and hips are expanding while she lies there.

  ‘When I start healing people they will say their own stuff, of course, and then I can quote that.’ A little of Bryant’s enthusiasm is fading. ‘But, in the meantime, I thought this would work well.’

  Oscar and Amber are pressed between them. Oscar snores softly from a summer cold. Amber sleeps with her face wedged against the pillows, her hair a mass of tangles over her Barbie pyjamas. Neither of the kids wanted to sleep in their new bedrooms tonight. They were both too upset about the accident.

  A few kilometres out of town they had run over a dog. It had been standing on the side of the road, a cattle dog of some sort, sniffing grass. When Bryant reached for the road directory, he’d veered slightly onto the gravel and hit the poor thing head on. The dog jumped into the air, like a circus animal, its acrobatics accompanied by the kids’ screams. It landed on the road behind them, with one of its front legs unnaturally bent. Julia stayed in the station wagon, her body stiff, telling Oscar and Amber not to look, that the dog would be fine, doggies always recover, and she kept talking while Bryant pulled it off the bitumen and into the ditch.

  He got back in the car and wiped his hands down his trousers. ‘Well, at least it was quick.’

  The kids stared out of the back window as the car pulled off the gravel, crying, watching the stain on the road where the dog had been. Julia had felt like crying too.

  A hundred metres up the road, she had made Bryant stop the car and headed back towards the accident site, her impractical city shoes soon rattling with stones, covered in grey dust, determined to find the pet’s owner and let them know what had happened. But after a fruitless half hour or so, trudging along the narrow road and up and down three very long driveways, knocking on farmhouse doors, and one or two corrugated iron sheds, she encountered only empty yards, barking dogs or blank faces.

  Julia isn’t the suspicious type — she never consults tarot readers or psychics like half her friends, she doesn’t bother to throw a pinch of salt over her shoulder if she spills any, nor does she walk around ladders if it’s quicker to walk underneath one — but this accident has put a chill inside her and she can’t help feeling that it’s a bad omen for the move.

  Bryant leans across the kids and places his hand on Julia’s arm. ‘Tomorrow I thought we would get out a bit and meet some of the locals. We can hand out my brochures. How does that sound?’

  ‘I want to find a plumber first.’

  ‘They don’t work weekends out here, love. Anyway, we’ll decide in the morning. You know I was thinking of joining the Country Fire Authority. I saw a poster advertising for volunteers. It would be nice to do something to help the community and a fast way of making friends.’ He chuckles. ‘I quite fancy myself on the back of the fire truck with the sirens going, and I’d look pretty good in the uniform, don’t you think?’

  ‘You’ll look very handsome.’

  He pats her arm. ‘Get some sleep now. We’ve got a big day ahead of us.’

  All three of them snore. Different timbres and rhythms, filling the strange room like the warming up of an orchestra. She stares into the darkness and listens. Julia forgives the children their quiet snuffles and wheezes. But, with Bryant, his loud exhalations, the occasional pauses and sudden snorts make her irritable. She imagines thumping her elbow into his chest to stop him. God, everything annoys her now.

  When had that started?

  Before the move? After Amber was born?

  She remembers their wedding night. He had performed a striptease to one of his favourite Bob Marley tunes; played on a portable CD player he must have hidden away earlier. He had dropped his clothes on the floor as though they were veils and twirled his jocks around on his finger, before throwing them up in the air to land on the overhead fan. And then he had spent ages, naked, looking for something under the bed, in the bathroom, in the hotel drawers and cupboards. J
ulia had waited patiently on the bed in what she hoped was a seductive pose, shivering a little and feeling exposed in her thin-strapped negligee, the satin material tight over her pregnant stomach.

  ‘What are you looking for, darling?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he’d said, yet continued to search.

  She seemed to be disappearing from his awareness.

  ‘Rose petals,’ he’d said, eventually, and walked over to the bed. ‘I planned to sprinkle them on you.’ He smiled down at her. ‘Look at you lying there, like an angel. I must be the luckiest man alive.’ He climbed onto the bed and held her shivering body against his chest, rubbing his hands up and down her back until she was warm again.

  Their lovemaking had been tender, yet somehow remote after that. As if a part of Bryant was elsewhere, searching still. If she’d been asked, Julia would not have been able to say what it was exactly; her husband had spent a gentleman’s measure on foreplay, he’d held her in his arms afterwards and kissed her hair, and sighed in a way that conveyed contentment. But there was a gap. A little gap; not of the body, not of the mind, not the age gap between them, although that seems more noticeable now that Julia is in her mid-twenties and Bryant is almost forty. No, it was something else, harder to define.

  Everything is wonderful. Julia had repeated the words over and over silently in her mind, replaying all the happy moments of their wedding ceremony, the breathless, rushed romantic moments of their courtship, and she had congratulated herself on finding such a good man and pushed the doubt into the abyss of her subconscious.

  But now? Seven years on. Was doubt about to bob to the surface again like a rotten apple in water? No, she decides; she’s just tired and sad about moving. Everything will improve once they’ve settled in. Everything will feel better once the house is clean. Somehow they will survive the drastic drop in income. Country living is bound to be cheaper. And, now that Bryant has left his demanding sales job, he’ll have more time to play with the kids.

  The snoring eases and she can hear the drone of cicadas outside. Weariness descends. He’s a goodman, she tells herself; sensitive, clever, enlightened.

  Most women would envy her.