‘Does that mean I’m real and not real too?’
‘In a way. You’ll have to think about the agreed meanings for Rock Thompson, boy and symbol.’
Rock had wanted to ask him another question, but then Mr Roche put his books under his arm and started to leave. ‘Keep asking questions, Rock.’ And, for a moment, he pressed the boy’s shoulder.
On his way home Rock thought about people who could explain things that he found puzzling. Tinny wasn’t one of them, but he thought Greta was. He’d hardly spoken to her, but she made him feel comfortable, as if she knew what she was doing, as if she would know the answers to questions if he could think of the right words to ask her things.
With Skel it was different. They didn’t talk to each other about anything; they didn’t really need to. Rock thought there was understanding between the two of them; it was a feeling sort of thing, rather than thinking. If anyone asked him, including Tinny, what Skel felt or thought about something that seemed important, like Peaches leaving them, he would shrug his shoulders. He and Skel didn’t have words between them, so he couldn’t speak for him, not in words.
When he neared the shed, he could hear Tinny muttering in the background.
‘No sooner do I have the place clean and tidy and kapow! Like magic, a tsunami of boys’ clothes, strange belongings, sweeps down from who knows where and we struggle to survive, to breathe. But we get there, we do. We’re tough, aren’t we?’ The door banged behind him. Tinny held his son by his shoulders. ‘Rock of ages, we’ve been there before; we’ll get there again; we won’t be defeated.’
Rock said nothing. He saw his father glance up at the empty hook screwed into a metal beam that supported the roof. Here we go again, he thought. He raised his eyes to his brother, who had followed him inside.
Tinny began again. ‘Ah, skeleton, where are you? Where are you now hanging? Where is my past? How can I survive without you? Speak to me, O skeleton.’ He went down on one knee. ‘Peaches, that was a mean act, below the belt, under the hook, beyond the pale. Pale, pale, appalled I was. Hey, Rock, what do you think? A good thing we’ve got the real skeleton, flesh and blood, not just old white bones that clank in the wind? Hey? Good old Skel. Even if you don’t say much.’
‘That’s because you talk too much, Dad. No one else has a chance.’
‘Oh. Well. I’ll take a vow of silence, then. I’ll join a contemplative order. I’ll pray for you and maybe God will put food on your table, tidy up your clothes, make your scruffy beds, kiss you goodnight. Wipe your bums. What do you reckon, Rock? A good idea?’
He jostled his son. ‘Let’s head to the coast. Enough of the domestics.’
Four
Three weeks earlier Skel and Rock had climbed aboard the bus heading for the city. They hadn’t done this before and so they spent their time looking out the window, or at the other passengers. Most had their eyes closed and their ears plugged, listening to their iPods. Rock wondered whether that’s what he and Skel would do if they made lots of trips to the city. Or maybe they would read the books that for now stayed inside the small packs they’d taken onto the bus, along with their drinks and some sweets that Tinny had given them. Their clothes were in an old suitcase that was stashed in a storage area at the side of the bus, which you could only get at from the outside.
‘What do you think she’ll be like?’ said Rock.
Skel shrugged. ‘Don’t know.’
‘I wonder what her house is like, and what will we do there?’
Skel looked at him and touched his arm like an older and wiser brother. Rock thought it meant everything would be okay. The mother he remembered was the one in the photograph, one who he didn’t think about very often. It had come as a surprise when Tinny asked whether they would like to visit her. She’d sent him a letter, which he didn’t open straightaway. Not for a week. ‘She’s been away,’ he said, ‘in America. And now she’s back here, she’s a psychologist, so she should be able to sort you two out.’
‘Why does she want to see us? What if we don’t want to go?’ Rock said.
‘I dunno,’ said Tinny. ‘She’s your mother—maybe she’s just discovered that. And anyway, the timing suits me because I was planning a fishing trip up north and wasn’t sure what to do with you two. You should go. It’s right to get to know her, and to get out of here for a while. Both of you’ll end up typical country kids who don’t know nothin’ about the big world, or—as the local elite would have it—you won’t know your arse from your elbow.’
Skel had made one of his rare comments: ‘A bit like you, eh, Dad?’
‘That’s right. A bit like me, so that’s something you want to avoid.’
The bus took a long time to get there, much longer than Rock remembered when they had driven to the city by car. They didn’t talk much, and after a while Skel read his book. There were lots of stops and all sorts of people getting on and off. There was one woman and her daughter, both very fat, who seemed to have trouble getting up the steps. The mother bumped into him and didn’t say she was sorry as she walked past because all the seats at the front of the bus were taken. At the next stop three boys got off who had been talking and laughing the whole time at the back of the bus and everyone could hear them. Now they pushed each other as they walked down the aisle; one of them was red in the face. The driver stared at the boys but didn’t say anything.
When they arrived in the city, she was at the terminus waiting for them. She looked older than the photograph and her hair was different—shorter, and not quite the same colour. They walked, stiff-legged, off the bus, with a tight feeling in their chests.
Their mother stood there looking at them. She did not move. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘let me give you a hug. Such big boys.’
She had tears in her eyes and didn’t seem to be able to speak. And nor could they and did not know what to call her. They stayed for a week in her apartment; the days and nights disappeared in a blur. At first it seemed to Rock that they didn’t know what to say to each other, and so they kept busy doing things. They went to the pictures, and out to a restaurant on three nights. She also took them to the art gallery and the museum. Rock thought she was nice and Skel looked at her a lot, even when she wasn’t talking.
On their last night, they sat around the table after eating fish and chips. ‘You need to learn something about your mother,’ she said. ‘You’re old enough.’ And she told them about her time with Tinny, and how, soon after Rock was born, a year after Skel, she realised she couldn’t stay there any longer, living in a tin shed with no one she could talk to about the things that mattered. She needed something more than babies and shopping and talking about the weather, what direction the wind was blowing from, what the swell was like, whether they’d go to the pub to listen to a band. She’d wanted to escape the suburbs she’d grown up in, but what had she got herself into? She wanted to avoid becoming her mother. She didn’t want to be Auntie Jean.
‘Who’s she?’ asked Skel.
‘I’ll tell you some time. That’s another story.’
‘Why did it take you so long to find out you didn’t want to stay, didn’t want us?’ said Rock.
‘I know it took a long time to finally leave. Six hard years, but I did want you, very much. I wanted to take you with me but Tinny wouldn’t hear of it, and he’s good with kids, you know that. Anyway, it wouldn’t have been fair to him. He wouldn’t change—he couldn’t change—and I needed to. Once I realised that, I couldn’t let it go. At times I felt I was going a bit mad and couldn’t trust myself.’
‘Why do you want to see us now?’ Rock persisted.
‘I’ve been away for five years, studying in America. I sent letters and cards, but I don’t think Tinny gave them to you, did he?’
‘No,’ said Skel.
‘Maybe he didn’t see the point,’ said Rock. ‘Why do you want to see us now?’
‘I’ve missed you. A lot. It wasn’t easy doing what I did. I think you would have been a lot worse off, a
ll of you, if I’d stayed. I know mothers are not supposed, ever, to leave their children. But some people don’t grow up fast enough, and things happen before they should and you still have that growing up to do, you can’t avoid it.’
Rock wasn’t sure what he thought about her, but he liked watching her eyes and mouth when she talked. Like at the restaurant when her friend Alex came along. She smiled a lot and put her hand on his arm. He called her Prue.
Later, Rock asked, ‘Why does he call you that? Isn’t Peaches your name?’
She’d laughed. ‘God, no. It’s what your father insisted my name should be because Prue was such a stuffy name, and prudent was something I was definitely not—in his eyes. Tinny said it was what you did when you moved to the country, eat peaches. Some silly song, I think. But you can call me whatever you like. I didn’t mind being called Peaches; it was cute, and friendly. Prue is a bit cold—and distant, I suppose.’
They still didn’t know what to call her, so she wasn’t Mum or Peaches or Prue. ‘She’s no name,’ Skel told Rock. ‘That’s alright.’
When they were leaving to catch the bus back down south, Rock asked her what would happen now—would they see her again?
‘Do you want to?’ she said.
He thought for a while and then said, ‘Yes,’ and Skel nodded.
On their way home they read their books and said very little. When Rock thought of his mother, he needed to stare out the window and block out his feelings. He didn’t know why he was so close to tears, and he thought Skel felt the same way, but didn’t know for certain.
When they arrived at their shed Tinny wasn’t home. They didn’t know where he was—probably delayed up north. They weren’t bothered. They knew how to look after themselves. That afternoon they wandered through the bush and stood in the trees watching their neighbour as she moved alone inside her shed. They could see glimpses of her through the open doorway and the louvred windows. Once she came outside to empty the teapot. They weren’t worried, knowing that if they didn’t move it was unlikely she would see them. They stayed until it started to get dark, and watched the woman inside light her lamp. They hadn’t discussed visiting their neighbour; they had drifted there, as if by accident, but they knew it wasn’t. They left without speaking to her.
The next day Tinny arrived home. He had some nice fillets of fish in his esky. His mate’s car had broken down. ‘A good thing it was only one night, otherwise these would be ruined,’ he said as he unpacked them into the fridge. ‘Baldchin groper, the best. How was your mum?’
‘Good … she was good,’ said Rock.
Five
Greta stood in the empty gallery at the edge of town, moving slowly from one painting to the next, staring until the lines blurred and she didn’t have a clue what it was she was looking at. She thought if she looked hard enough, she might begin to understand a little more of the mystery of this land and its people. Find some insight into what it was she was trying to write about. The myriad of dots, paths both meandering and straight, the carefully placed circles. Figures startled and startling. The stories behind the stories—that’s what she wanted to know. There was so much confidence in these paintings, so much control, a certainty that was so far removed from how she thought about herself and this place—vast, disturbing and elusive. She wondered how it was that you could feel the hot earth and the sharp rocks on the soles of your feet and simultaneously, it seemed, view the ground below through the eyes of an eagle soaring, a dot in the sky. How could it be the distant past disappearing into rock and water and story and now, the present, brought into being through the steady movement of a brush or a stick or a sliver of grass dipped in ochre? A totality of being and belonging where all hierarchies are conflated into one dimension, where human figures are not subordinate to the landscape, where the sacred is not another world, a purely symbolic realm? All this and yet still compelled to walk awkwardly on the margins, eyes cast down. She wanted to explore that gap. And here she was, so privileged and just holding together, bits and pieces that didn’t seem to fit, however she looked at it. And alone. Who or what could she call on in an emergency? How could she fix herself? Binda twine threaded through the bars on the back of a ute. That was all she could see.
Someone was standing just behind her, a man. She hadn’t seen him walk into the gallery, or heard any footsteps on the tiled floor. She glanced to her side. Bare feet. She felt her heart beat and did not dare to turn around. This was too foolish. Eventually he moved away and she saw the looseness of his body, relaxed, but somehow perfectly articulated.
He was sitting on the bench outside, under a tree. He glanced at her, then looked away. As she walked along the path beside the bench, he looked at her again.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hi.’
‘I’m Greta.’
He paused, as if uncertain what to say. Then, ‘Did you like the paintings?’
‘Yes, I know that much. But I don’t know what else. I don’t think I know how to look at them.’
‘That’s right,’ he said, and gestured towards the bench. ‘I’m Marvyn.’
And they shook hands.
She felt clumsy as she slid between the table and the seat which was fixed to it. Her face felt hot and she was annoyed with herself. For a moment they just looked at each other. She thought he had a beautiful face and eyes that went on forever.
‘I know some—most—of the artists. A couple live near town. If you wanted to, I could introduce you. That way you would learn more. But slowly, and you have to go at the right time.’
The next day they drove along a dirt track. ‘It’s about twenty kays,’ he said. They were expected, but she didn’t know how he’d made contact because there was no telephone. ‘No signal out there,’ he’d said. Nor did she know why he was helping her. It had happened without words: there was some understanding, as if they were part of a story already written. She felt excited, and fearful—once again she was feeling too intensely, too quickly. And yet she thought Marvyn felt the same way, even though she was only guessing. She looked at him, her eyes shining.
Six
At the other end of the bay a man hastened, clumsily, down the slope from his house towards the river. Every evening before dark he walked along the water’s edge, fast enough to feel his breath being pulled into his lungs. Tonight he was late. The light would be gone before the rasp in his throat began—at the point where the track petered out just before it reached a small dam constructed years ago on one of the creeks that fed into the river.
Clive was instantly into the rhythm of his walk. There was no movement in the trees and the air retained some of the day’s warmth. The path along the river was a dirt track with occasional patches of gravel and a few rough steps carved into the steeper sections. Where the water was deep it was dark and mottled on the surface, like the glass in his bathroom window. As he moved further upriver the water became shallower; today it was a pale, frothy brown from all the recent rain. In a still pool he saw two ducks paddling aimlessly. Years ago a large tree had fallen into the river; for a time it was used as a bridge until one end rotted away. Now it stopped, pointlessly, halfway across.
Walk, breathe, don’t lose the rhythm. At the granite outcrop, Clive closed his eyes tightly. The familiar thoughts churned through his mind. He would never escape.
He’d got them out of the car. It was a tree and a rock that did for them, before the flames. His poor little head. But breathing, both of them. And he in a daze, the tree alight, a burning branch had fallen on him. No one came for a very long time. But they could have. His best friend, Steve, had told him that it was that woman’s fault—she’d driven by but hadn’t stopped. A foreigner who couldn’t be bothered. That’s what he’d been told. Again, he clenched his fists. Closing his eyes would not do any good. He didn’t want to think about that. He’d been mad at the time. It could have been far worse.
Late-afternoon sun filtered through the trees; there was a hush, almost holy, that n
othing should disturb. And nothing did disturb this precious peace, apart from the gurgle of the river nearby and the distant bark of a dog. Clive held on to the moment, trying to keep his body loose, relaxed. Walk faster, take deep breaths, don’t lose the rhythm. He kept his head down, mumbling instructions to himself. ‘Good evening,’ said two young women, almost in unison. He was past them before it occurred to him to reply; he glanced back and thought he saw one of them raise her shoulders, as if in despair, he thought, at the rudeness or indifference of some people. He wasn’t indifferent—that was the trouble. Walk faster, take deep breaths, don’t lose the rhythm.
In the end it made no difference. When he reached the big marri tree at the bend in the river his fists were clenched, his jaw set tight; in the instant he realised what his body had done, out of his control, the memory began. The screech of brakes, the pause, the scream he could never be sure was real, the crunch. Silence. Then smoke and flames. He tried to stop the pictures, force into his mind the photograph on his mantelpiece. The beautiful dark skin and eyes; the boy perfect in every way. The marri tree by the side of the road oozing its sap, its lifeblood, now covered in theirs. He stood by the bulbous trunk of this other tree; the river, busy with movement, carried leaves and twigs along towards the ocean. He ran his finger over the smooth, hard lump of resin protruding from the bark, and further down, along the red line of the wet sap. He wiped his sticky finger on his jacket and moved on.
It was one of those stories you don’t ever expect to happen in real life. The last school dance before they left the town to get jobs, go to university, backpack around the world. Or not to leave the town. He left, and she didn’t. On that night she was the most beautiful girl in the hall. He didn’t know who she’d come with—she seemed to be by herself. The other boys looked at her, wary, and he had very nearly made a complete fool of himself. He had bowed before her; ‘Would you care to have this dance?’ For a moment her eyes had that hard, angry look. He had not meant to poke fun at her; it was his own embarrassment he was covering up. He meant the joke to be against himself. Then she’d smiled, that beautiful mouth and such white teeth. ‘Delighted,’ she’d said. He had come by himself, too shy to ask anyone, and so had she. For the rest of the night they didn’t dance with anyone else, and talked, and talked. At the end of the Christmas holidays he left for the city—part-time job, part-time university. He couldn’t afford to be a full-time student. After a year the job became full-time. It was twenty years before he came back, and she was still there. She’d been married, divorced, and run her own business; she went to church every Sunday. This time when they started talking, they did not stop. Within the year they were married. And then she was pregnant. Clive, Maia, Harry. They were a family, a late family. They loved each other more than either of them thought possible.
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