There was a sudden bang at the door and she jumped, her heart racing. He liked sneaking up on her, she thought. Of course it was Clive—there was no one else—but she had no idea, really, who or what this man was. Mad. Dangerous. Vindictive. Violent. And then, apparently, quite calm, exhibiting what you would think of as normal behaviour. He pushed the door open. She looked at him, and he glanced away. She knew he wanted to ask her something, or tell her something, that made him feel awkward. She waited.
‘Would you like to come and sit by the fire?’ he asked. ‘When you’re warm, you could come back here and get your tea or—if you like—you could eat down there.’
She needed to move, to get outside. Anything other than stay trapped in the van. ‘Okay,’ she said.
With him walking behind her, she shuffled down the slope to the outdoor kitchen. She could feel his breath on her neck, and the bulk of his body. He had a distinctive smell, which she did not like. They sat down on folding chairs close to the large log that would burn all night. There was silence and she wasn’t going to break it. Clive, she was sure, had some purpose in mind, something he wanted to say, or do. He started to tell her about the time he came back to the town, having been away for years.
‘I got out of the car and stood by the front fence. Weeds were growing in the garden beds and there were brown patches in the lawn. Maybe the next-door neighbours were looking out of their windows, wondering who this man was, standing at the gate of Mrs Fitzpatrick’s house. Would they recognise me, twenty years later? I knew from my sister that they were still there, the same neighbours either side.
‘After I left, I’d speak to my mother on the phone sometimes. Then she changed, didn’t want to talk much, then stopped altogether. I remember I walked down the street towards the corner. The houses looked smarter than before. They’d been painted, their gardens were tidy, neat buffalo lawns. When I reached the corner, I remember I felt hot, my shirt stuck to my back. Old Mrs O’Brien’s house. There used to be fruit trees and a grapevine in the backyard, and a large Collie dog. She loved that dog. She had died a long time ago, Mrs O’Brien, only two years after Mr O’Brien. He didn’t ever say much, just sat there and smiled.’
Clive stopped talking and stared into the fire, then raised his eyes to the stars. ‘Are you warm enough? Do you want more wood on the fire?’
‘The wind is cold,’ she said.
‘Pull your chair closer.’ And then he stood up and went to the woodpile. He pulled out the trunk of a grasstree and pushed it into the coals. In a minute, flames took hold and crackled into the night. ‘I like the smell,’ he said.
He started again on his story. ‘Anyway, I went back because my mother had died, finally, and my sister, Roslyn, was packing up the house. I hadn’t seen her for years and we got talking about the past. She told me things I didn’t know, even though she was younger than me—well, still is. About the O’Briens and my father. She said they didn’t like him, but I didn’t ask her why. I thought Mrs O’Brien died of a heart attack, but she didn’t; she was hit by a four-wheel drive on a crosswalk, coming home from the cemetery, when she’d been to visit her husband’s grave. He was the one who died of a heart attack. I really liked Mrs O’Brien, when I was a kid. And Roslyn told me about fights between Mum and Dad, and that he’d had affairs with other women. My mum was very religious; we went to church every Sunday and I knew all the hymns. In the end she told my dad to leave, and thought it best if I went with him. Being a boy of a certain age. That’s what Roslyn told me. A boy of a certain age. I always thought he went because he got a promotion in the city—and that it was supposed to be temporary. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Roslyn said she couldn’t believe I didn’t know. Then she told me about discovering Mum’s diaries. She said I should read them, but I said I’d rather not. And she asked me why I wouldn’t—was there something I was frightened of? I’d had enough by then, so I left, even though I was going to help her with the packing up.’
He looked down at the ground; she noticed his fingers were laced tightly together. His words had come in a rush, like a dam burst.
‘Why are you telling me all this?’
Clive looked away and then turned his head towards her, but Greta wasn’t sure what he was looking at, or even if he could see her.
Then he stood up and walked away.
She wondered why he wasn’t wearing his gloves, and why he couldn’t remember things that had happened.
Then he spoke to her from close by, behind her chair. She did not know he was there. ‘The next time I came back, I met Maia.’
Forty-four
Prue rang her aunt Jean, still living in Sydney in the same apartment that she’d shared with her. Jean’s first move had been to enrol her at the primary school around the corner. On the first day, she walked Prue to school and said it was such a short distance that she should walk home by herself. All day she worried about getting lost. What would happen if she couldn’t find her way home? There were memories of stairs, and doorways, places where bad things could happen. Running along corridors in case someone was chasing her. The man who gave her lollies. And, later, at the secondary school run by the nuns. To get there, she had to catch a bus, or sometimes a train, even though it was further to walk. She liked some of the boys who caught the train and went to a private school nearby. After one term, Jean decided she would be better off boarding. ‘You’ll be with people your own age.’
‘Yes,’ Prue said. ‘They’re the ones I see every day now. I don’t need to board.’
The truth was Jean wanted her out of the way. She was a mysterious woman, Aunt Jean. Now her time with Jean, going to school, belonged to someone else, someone she knew only slightly. She remembered that back then the nuns still taught elocution, emphasised correct speech. One day she knocked on Mother Superior’s door.
‘Who is it?’
‘It’s me, Mother.’
‘What did you say? Come in.’ The voice was raised. ‘What’s your name?’ she demanded.
‘Prue, Mother.’
‘Ah, Prudence. When I ask, “Who is it?” you reply, “It is I, Mother.” Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Mother.’
From then on she joined the chorus of ‘Hit his eye, Mother’ and kept a straight face.
Jean, she now realised, was a scrupulously fair woman, selectively generous, but unable or unwilling to show any affection. And her talk was strictly impersonal. She would ask Prue about her schoolwork, but that was it. No mention of friends, feelings, ambitions, not even about the books she was reading. Now, when Prue thought about her adult self, she could see Jean. Tinny was the first person she’d met who could make her smile, laugh, dance on the beach, because he ignored her awkwardness. Or didn’t see it. He told her she was beautiful, which she slowly began to believe, and that he loved her. He didn’t try to turn her into anything, but she changed anyway.
When she rang her aunt, she wanted to know about her father. What did Jean know? Why had he never returned? Why had he made next to no contact, apart from stiff notes in Christmas and birthday cards for a few years, and then not even that?
‘I didn’t know your father. I didn’t like him very much. He called in once, not long before he decided to go back to London.’
‘Why? What did he say?’
She could hear Jean moving something, maybe a book, then the sound of a glass being put down on a hard surface.
‘He said something that surprised me. He said he’d married the wrong sister. He’d married the pretty one, rather than the sensible one. No wonder I didn’t like the man.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Almost. Why do you want to know about him now? When you were living with me you showed no interest— wouldn’t even respond to his cards, or answer the phone.’
‘I don’t think that’s so odd, or puzzling. Not wanting anything to do with him. Now? I’m really trying to find out about me, rather than him.’
‘The last thing I heard was a b
rief note to say that he’d got married again. That was about ten years ago. I hope he’s learned something.’ Jean paused and then said, ‘If you’re trying to find out about yourself, why not think about your mother?’
‘I do think about her. A lot. I suppose I think I know what there is to know about her … Is there something you wish to tell me, something I should know?’
‘I’ve never understood how she came to drown that day. That’s all.’
‘No. No. Nor have I.’
And so the conversation ended. Who was she? Prudence-Peaches-Browne-not-Thompson? A girl whose father and mother both deserted her. The daughter of a woman who, in all probability, killed herself, who chose to stop breathing in air. Someone not worth hanging around for. Except for Tinny. Then she was the one who didn’t hang around. Not even for her children. Study and travel and America, and now she had stopped still. Inside, the echo of a drum. And she couldn’t blame Alex if he wanted to leave.
Forty-five
Greta woke to the sound of squabbling parrots, twenty-eights. An argumentative lot, she thought, unlike magpies or kookaburras, which didn’t seem to take much notice of each other. The bunk bed in the caravan was too short and too narrow and her neck felt stiff. One day blurred into another, and now she was no longer so fearful of Clive. In the last couple of days she’d noticed a change in him. He seemed to have forgotten how she came to be here. His chaining and unchaining, locking and unlocking was carried out like a familiar, everyday task. Like cleaning your teeth. Although she couldn’t always discern why he would choose, at times, to loosely cuff her hands and not at others. He didn’t seem awkward, or angry. And she was beginning to fit in with his pattern. She would hold out her hands. Nod towards the bathroom. Call out to him in the trees. Like a game. She told him more about herself. She heard yet again the story of Maia, and Harry. And the story of his first wife. The years of feeling dead inside. The teasing. And then his neck would tighten and the words become hard to speak. So she spoke to him. Although not part of a conscious plan, her talk was personal, confiding. Later she thought of it as an instinctive survival strategy. She was a person. He needed to see that.
‘I wanted to know what it was like to be inside someone else’s skin. I think now, how presumptuous. And I fell in love, with a young man. In some ways no more than a boy, but he had experienced far more. He knew the earth, and I envied him. I wanted to be him. Someone who was real, not just a character in a book.’
Clive had looked at her. ‘A blackfella, eh? You and me, we share something. Marvyn—was that his name? Steve told me about him.’ He reached over and touched the side of her face. She drew back, blinking, watching him. She knew she had to be careful.
‘Your schoolfriend, wasn’t he? Steve. Look, he knows nothing about me, Clive. If he told you anything about Marvyn, he’d be repeating some town gossip he has picked up.’
‘But he died, didn’t he? Same as me. Maia. Another thing. People leave you behind, people you love.’
He’d looked into her eyes, and she was troubled. She started to think that what Clive wanted, in his confusion, was someone to talk to, and that it was possible he saw her as someone special. Later, she thought about friendships, the special friends, of Oliver, and Hetty, of love that was not conditional on the giving and taking of goods, ritual betrothals signalled by pigs or cows, or holidays in Europe, cars and houses, even children. What people did to, and for, each other in order to remain together. But was it true that she was, nevertheless, still a trader? Is that what she did with her intimate friends? In varying degrees she’d received their knowledge, experience, wisdom. Their love. But what was on the other side of the ledger? She did not know what she’d given in return. Love, certainly, but was that enough? And what did it mean, anyway? Sometimes she hoped she’d been the person who allowed another to shine in the darkness—a hidden sun to their moon. And then she dismissed the thought as a fanciful conceit. What nonsense, when you considered the blackness she had elicited from Clive. What had she unknowingly traded with him?
Shut off from the world, Greta had plenty of time to reflect and—curiously, she thought—the emotional space to enter into those memories and experiences that most troubled her. Following the death of Marvyn, she’d become more fearful of what she could do to others, especially men. She could no longer say, I did not know, I didn’t mean . Was that what she said, all those years ago, when that other man, her university lecturer, had so changed her life? Professor Markus Wolf. There—she could give him a name. Or, even then, had she done the changing? Was she the agent and he no more than an accident?
Now she was more conscious, more self-aware—and wary. Even around Tinny and his boys, who posed no threat, and whose company she enjoyed, she was circumspect. But what did such consciousness really say about her? That she was someone who could not love properly, who took what she could use, opportunistically, from others. And then left. Was she always the first to do the leaving? In this wretchedness, she wondered, had she brought Clive into being? Was there a neediness in her that she communicated to others, who themselves may well be damaged, and also in need?
Now she stood staring out of the caravan window. She put the kettle on to boil. She missed her coffee percolator. She could throw boiling water over his face. Outside, there were patches of sunshine, and drizzle. There was a thin, lone cloud somewhere, which she couldn’t see.
That afternoon he turned up and said it was time she went for a walk. She needed the exercise and so did he. He freed her legs, but not her hands. What was this about? Did he plan to kill her in some remote part of his block? Hide her body in a grave he’d already prepared? No one would come looking for her. She tried to remain calm as they made their way up the hill, through the trees, away from the caravan, with him walking behind and telling her which way to go. When they reached a granite outcrop, there was a lone tree growing in a crevice. He pointed out the eagle’s nest, large and straggly, added to year after year. ‘It’s in a good position for them,’ he said. ‘They can see all the way to the coast, glide on the thermals, pick out their prey, raise their chicks safely. They mate for life, you know.’
‘They’re survivors,’ she said.
Then they followed a dry creek line that led inland before curving away down a valley. She could glimpse the ocean in the distance before they plunged down the hillside, Clive telling her not to walk too fast or she would trip over. She thought of running off into the trees, kicking him, but she knew she could not move as quickly, or nimbly, without the use of her arms. And she knew the violence he was capable of.
In the early evening they returned to the camp site. He chained her feet, but freed her hands so she could help light the fire and prepare a meal. He’d bought some of the food she preferred to eat, and so it was to be stir-fried vegetables and rice, again. She thought of grabbing a burning stick from the fire and thrusting it into his face. He would have more scars. She could burn his eyes out so he would never see again.
Once more he started talking about the accident—how hard he’d tried, but could do nothing. Not soon enough. ‘When there’s burning, you don’t know what’s going to happen next. You think everything, the car, will explode but you have to try. You do, don’t you? You know that. You can’t just stand there, watching. Or move away. But I don’t remember very well what happened. I know they were out of the car, and in the end there was an ambulance. You hear of people doing really brave things, of everything slowing down when there’s an accident, so it sort of gives you time to do things that otherwise you couldn’t. But for me it didn’t slow down, so I had no time. Do you know what I mean?’
And she’d nodded.
Later, she’d noticed Clive putting on his gloves for the first time since she’d been there. She would have to find some way out of her prison, no matter how desperate or risky.
Forty-six
The day after Prue’s fifth birthday, Rose had to get out. It was cold, with a blustery wind from the west. She’d ask
Mrs Frawley to look after Prue, just for a little while. She didn’t want to be distracted by the child.
It was a Sunday, but when she arrived at the beach it was empty. It suited her mood; she hoped the wildness of the ocean and the wind would blow away whatever was clouding her thoughts. She needed to be clear. She began walking with exaggerated strides along the edge of the water, swinging her arms too hard for comfort. She breathed deeply. After a time, it felt normal. Her body warmed up and she loosened the scarf around her neck. First there had been the phone call from Dick. He’d made no mention of his daughter’s birthday, but it was only when he said that he wanted a divorce that she discovered there were feelings that she’d denied herself. She’d kept busy, doing what you have to do, but not thinking. Now he was making definitive the vagueness that surrounded him whenever she thought about her marriage, the situation she was in. She felt distressed, and surprised. She’d known he would not be coming back, so why now these feelings of hurt, betrayal, fear? It made no sense to her.
Then, the following night, Anthony. Perhaps it could be explained by saying she was vulnerable, but she’d known from the start that she was attracted to him. She could see the fineness of him, his muscled body, his ever-present smile.
She felt such relief at the touch of his hands. She did not kiss him on the mouth. They had not spoken a word. And then the feeling of emptiness, in him, she thought. He’s not really here. And the night after, he’d turned up again at her door. She did not want to let him in, but didn’t know what else to do. No, she said when he put his arms around her, touched her bottom and breasts. No, it’s me—I don’t want to. Not tonight. She meant any night. In an instant the lazy smile had disappeared and she felt the hardness of him. She could see he was trying to control himself. The grip on her wrist tightened. She cried out and he left the house, slamming the front door. She sat down, shaking. On her wrist a red band.
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