Detained

by Ainslie Paton

  They’d been on the highway five minutes out from the Vessy block when Will explained how he and Pete owned all the land they could see. How he’d bought all the remaining families out. Gave them enough to make a new start. How everything they could see was Parker land.

  “Good land,” Bo had said.

  “Not when I lived here.”

  “But beautiful.”

  Was it? Will had never thought of his blockie land as beautiful. He’d gone to sleep in the tray of the ute that night, thinking about it. It’d been an obligation, then a debt to pay off, then nothing. He hadn’t thought about owning this land for years. He’d never wanted to come back to Tara and now he was about to make a cup of tea in his little kit house on Norman Vessy’s block, right where the old shipping container had sat and rusted.

  He didn’t feel at peace, but days of smacking steel, wood and colourbond together had tired him out and given him the gift of proper sleep, untainted by drugs or dreams.

  Tonight, Bo was going to teach him to cook pasta in case the freezer meals ran out while he was on his road trip, so he’d have something else in his repertoire other than eggs and beans and a slab of steak seared over a flame.

  Tomorrow, he’d be on his own, fractured memories and ghosts who wouldn’t stay dead for company. Tomorrow he was going down to that fucking creek bank and sit there all day if he had to. To remember, to summon up that night; the drunk, the angry boy, and the man who was ashamed to have built his wealth on lies. And finally put them all to rest.

  42. Jigsaw

  “Reviewing what you have learned and learning anew, you are fit to be a teacher.” — Confucius

  Darcy was hopelessly lost and her convertible was hopelessly silly, marking her out as a city chick even before she got recognised as the woman on the cover of TV Week.

  The man at the paper shop said five minutes down the highway she’d see a gate. She’d been driving for twenty and all she saw was trees and scrub. Even if she found the gate, there was no guarantee the man who’d built a kit house there was Will. But she’d promised Peter she’d look for him, and if that meant finding an invisible gate she’d do it.

  She U-turned and drove back the way she’d come at half the speed, squinting in the windshield glare at the heat haze on road ahead. She saw what passed as a driveway before she saw the gate. A strip of uneven grass flattened by tire tracks, like a runway to the never-never. The gate was wood, so sun bleached it blended into the surrounding grasses. She pulled up on the tarmac level with it. There could be anything or nothing the other side. It seemed an unlikely place for Will to want to hole up in a hand-built house.

  The more she’d thought about him coming home to Tara, the more it had seemed the right guess, until she braked on the edge of town and realised she could see clear though the other side of it. So far Tara was all about thoroughfares and dead ends. Peter was right, why would he come here?

  She got out of the car and unlatched the gate. Drove through, got out, went back and relatched the gate. A palaver designed to keep animals in, or maybe strangers like her out. There was every chance she’d meet a shotgun at the end of the drive and an unintelligible instruction phrased entirely in swear words; that was perfectly clear, and had to do with latching the gate on her way out.

  The only sound other than the burble of the car was the rhythmic vibration of cicadas punctuated by lazy birdsong. It should’ve been relaxing, the sun, the endless blue sky, the solitude. No photographer was going to find her here. No bystander was going to tweet about what she was wearing. But her neck was stiff from driving, and the milkshake she’d drunk in town was curdling in her gut, making yoghurt with her nervousness. If the mad bloke who’d built a kit house on the old blockies site was Will, what the hell was she going to say to him?

  She eased the car up the drive, praying for no potholes. This was four-wheel drive country, snake country, get lost and die of thirst if you weren’t careful country. Possibly even unknown serial killer country. She was freaking out.

  It was a relief to see the roof of the house appear; a steely blue colour, then the rest of it, a neat box with a wide wooden verandah on one side. The front door was wide open. There was no sign of life, not even another car.

  A man appeared from around the side of the house, a farmer type. He came towards her. Boots, torn denim, dirty shirt. He had his head down, and a battered Akubra hid his face. The owner, the builder, not limping, not Will. She got out of the car. She’d ask if she might use the bathroom and see if he knew of anyone fitting Will’s description.

  Then he lifted his head and she saw enough of his face for her lungs to stop functioning. He pulled a headphone plug from his ear and stopped a half-dozen paces in front of her.

  When he said her name she felt his voice all the way to her feet, a low sexy sound, an instruction, a commission, a plea.

  “What the hell are you doing here? How did you find me?” he said, soft, demanding.

  A dairy in the back of her throat, Darcy shoved her hands in the pockets of her shorts as if that might settle her stomach and anchor her to the spot. “I had help.”

  “Fucking Bo.”

  “No. You.”

  “Me! I never said—”

  “You said you were going home.”

  He grunted acknowledgement. She could only see his chin, the line of his jaw, not his eyes. She couldn’t measure his mood by his voice or the way he stood there, legs braced apart, shoulders squared, arms loose by his sides. He looked strong. He looked oddly like he belonged here. It reinforced just how much she didn’t.

  She blurted, “I wanted to see you,” before she chickened out entirely and got back in the car. “I thought you might need someone to talk to.”

  “Like a friend.”

  Her stomach clenched. She was desperate to touch him. “I could be. I’d like to be.”

  “You’re selling something.”

  He didn’t sound angry, but cautious, on guard. She dropped her eyes.

  “I’m not buying—but God it’s good to see you.”

  She brought her head up, felt her pulse leap. “That’s some hat.” It was several shades of worn, sweat stained with a hole in the crown from where it’d been repeatedly pinched to take on and off.

  “This is a great hat.”

  “You couldn’t afford a new one?”

  He grinned. “You don’t toss a good hat like this. You stick it in a storage locker you pay rent on for about fifteen years, because you know a hat like this doesn’t come around every day.”

  She wanted to touch him so badly, to see his eyes. But she didn’t trust herself, didn’t know if he’d want it. She closed the distance between them and put her hand up to skim the brim of the hat. “This hat is an old friend.”

  He ducked his head a little and she moved her hand to the crown, pinched the brim and lifted if off his head. There were those dark blue eyes and the shock of his straight nose. He was tanned and relaxed and young again, remade. What was she doing here? She’d only mess him up again. She took a step away.

  “Darcy.” A hand came up to push his hair back, tousle out the weight of the hat.

  “I’m sorry, Will. I shouldn’t have come. I’m bad news for you, we both know it.”

  He frowned, his lips flat-lined. He chased her with one stride, bringing a heatwave to her chest. He lifted his hand to her cheek, knuckles bent, scratchy, work roughened. “God help me, I love your kind of bad news.”

  If she tilted her head, he’d kiss her. If she tilted her head, her whole world would rotate off its axis and collide with his. Beings in other galaxies would feel the blast. She tilted her head.

  His lips touched, parted, his breath on her mouth, so gentle. He opened his hand, trailing it to the back of her neck, then pulled the band on her hair until it released, groaning his approval as it fell about her shoulders. She didn’t touch him. She couldn’t make this a worse lie.

  “How long are you here?” he said, lips against her neck.


  Hard to form words. “I’m only stopping by.”

  “Stay.” Not a request.

  “Here with you? No I...”

  He leaned in to kiss away the protest, then stopped short. The old Will would have read her mind, told her she wanted to stay—would stay. This reborn Will held his insistence.

  “A cup of tea then, before you’re on your way?”

  He turned abruptly towards the house, leaving her swaying unsteadily in the too thick heat. That’s what she’d come for after all, to see him, to sell him, and a cup of tea wasn’t unexpected. But she couldn’t help but crave the old Will, and regret what she’d done to him to change his ways.

  He was on the steps to the verandah watching her.

  “Darcy, I’m not going to bite you, enslave you or fall apart because you’re here.”

  She must have looked dubious because he followed up with, “Trust me,” then dropped his head and laughed as though that was the best joke he’d heard in a long time. She watched him, trying to decide how dangerous it was to go into the house with him. In the doorway he said, “If you’re not coming in, leave the hat,” and was swallowed up by the darkness.

  When her eyes adjusted, she could see she was in a living room with a small kitchen and wet area off it. Will was at the sink, filling a kettle. She tossed the hat onto a wooden dining table. Everything was out of the box new. The house was fully equipped, from the front door mat to ceiling fans. It had a swanky sound system but no television. There were two bedrooms off to the left. It was smaller than the Palace Suite but it suited this pared back version of Will.

  “Sit,” he said, over his shoulder. Then, “How do you take your tea?”

  It was a reminder they didn’t know each other well. Their time together had been all passion without thought of future, or drama without hope. Darcy sat watching Will make tea, shocked by this thought. Maybe she’d simply idealised him because he’d been so unexpected in every way. Maybe what she thought was love was just desire for the mystery of him, and what he could do to her body.

  If that was true, this was easier. This was a transaction and he’d understand it.

  He brought mugs, a carton of milk, the teapot. He pulled out the chair beside her and moved the teapot in a slow circle, helping the tea draw.

  “How are you really, Will?”

  “Better.”

  “What happened at the hotel?”

  “The infamous Will Parker had a crack-up.”

  She reached out and touched his hand. “Don’t,” she meant don’t make fun, don’t dodge, talk to me.

  He closed his eyes, breathed deep and scruffed his hair. “Okay, we’ll play it your way.”

  “I’m not here to play.”

  “You’re not?”

  The room was cool, so what she felt was a blush, which deepened when he said, “Neither am I.”

  She blinked at him. “Let’s start again.”

  “From the top?” He licked his lips; he meant from the kiss.

  “Will.”

  “You didn’t like the kiss?” He leant forward, within stroking distance, his eyes bright. Will’s eyes, like in Pudong, like over that weekend, not the veiled, suspicious, hurt and panicked eyes he’d had the rest of the time.

  If she’d only idealised him, then it was perfectly natural to want another kiss, to want to curl up in his arms, but that wasn’t allowed. “No.”

  “Then I didn’t do it well enough. A little out of practice.”

  He moved so quickly he’d slid his chair against hers and pulled her to him before she had time to protest. As if she’d meant to. This kiss started in a different place. It had no hesitancy. There was no misinterpreting this kiss as anything other than a prelude to something world-colliding and seriously delicious. But he stopped it too soon, sat back. “That better?”

  He hardly deserved an answer. “Much.”

  He pushed his chair back. “Where were we?” All business again.

  “You were going to tell me what happened?”

  “Right.” He took a breath. “My memory came back in pieces. Like a jigsaw. A bit of this, a bit of that. No particular order or sequence. Some of it was easy enough to make a whole memory from. Some of it was like knowing the next line of a song but singing the wrong words. And there were big blanks. I remembered Pete as a skinny kid with scabby knees but not that he was my brother. I had no idea why everyone around me but Pete was Chinese. That was a head spin all of its own. I couldn’t understand a word anyone was saying till they worked out I’d lost my Chinese language.

  “I remembered feeling pain, I remembered blood and fire, smoke and screaming, and I thought I’d lost something so important to me that it wasn’t worth living.”

  “Oh God, Will.”

  “The more I tried to fit the pieces together, the angrier I became. I couldn’t spit out more than two words in the right order. I couldn’t sleep unmedicated without nightmares. I couldn’t see straight. I couldn’t think clearly, and pretty much every part of me hurt.

  “But it got easier. I started healing. More pieces arrived. I could put them together. I used to record myself speaking in secret and play it back, utter garble. I refused to speak until I could make myself understood clearly and any language would’ve done.

  “The worst of it was how I felt inside. Still do some days. Like I’m a kettle about to boil. Like my blood is scalding me. I have trouble controlling it, it makes me,” he cleared his throat, and his eyes flicked away, “hit things. It took a while to work out what I was also feeling was sadness, for everything I’d lost.”

  Darcy reached for his hand, lying on the tabletop, he flipped it and they clasped, like they’d done across the interview table in Quingpu before everything turned to red. “Your body healed, you can relearn the languages. You even got Parker back in control. You worked a miracle on yourself. What have you lost you can’t get back?”

  A muscle in his jaw twitched. “You.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not real.”

  “Yet here you are.”

  How to explain it to him? She barely understood it herself. It was ‘how do you have your tea’ and ‘what do you want to do with your life?’ It was knowing he was more than The Departed, Miss Fredrick’s sexual favours and the parts in her car made by Parker, but not knowing what that was, without the drama and the intensity of what they’d shared.

  They’d had a holiday romance on steroids, turbocharged with fear and urgency, and it changed both their lives profoundly. But they were still strangers.

  “I’m one wild weekend and the bit part heroine in the movie script of your life. I’m the face that makes you remember dreadful things. I’m get in my car and drive for thirteen hours on a hunch based on a doodle, your tattoo and the word ‘home’. That’s not real, Will.”

  He leaned closer. “I’ll tell you what’s real to me. You are the memory that made me open my eyes, made me fight the pain. You were the screaming. You were the most important thing lost. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t realise the flesh and blood you sat by my bed till later, but once I knew it, I also knew I couldn’t bring you into my angry world. That meant I couldn’t afford to think about you or what happened.”

  Darcy’s throat was tight. She reached for her teacup; empty, he’d never poured. She was the screaming. She was the important thing lost.

  “When I saw you outside the hotel, when they started firing those questions at me, the wall between memories and the real world got a big hole whacked in it. I had trouble stepping through it. But what I said then I’ll say again. I’d go through hell and back to protect you, real or imaginary. And I love you enough to know I’m no good for you.”

  43. Ahoy

  “One joy dispels a hundred cares.” — Confucius

  Way to blow it, fuckwit. If he wasn’t intimidating her, he was frightening her by cracking up, or delivering confessionals, or both at once.

  Darcy was on her feet, halfway across the room. She said, “I ha
ve to tell you why I came.”

  Will stayed seated and waited for the axe to drop. He hadn’t forgotten how beautiful she was, but with her hair all wild, stalking about the room like a caged cat, he briefly considered getting nervous. But he was entirely too turned on to think rationally, and he couldn’t blame it on the head kicking.

  “You have to know why I came before you say anything else.”

  He picked up the teapot and poured. Maybe that might bring her back to the table. “You could drink your tea.”

  She waved a hand, annoyed with his distraction.

  “I came to ask you to do an interview with me.” She made a stop gesture as if she was sure he was going to interrupt. How could she not know he’d do anything for her? Ah yeah, that’s right, because he’d gone psycho, one minute denying she existed for him, the next issuing public declarations of love. There were galahs in the paddock smarter than he was on his good days about this woman.

  “At some point, you need to make yourself available for a profile. After everything that’s happened.” Again with the hand. She was tied in knots about this.

  “There is a strong appetite for information on you. You’ll get continual requests for interviews, and as soon as you decide to come out of hiding—”

  “Assuming I do.”

  She inclined her head in agreement. “Assuming you do, you’ll be door-stopped until you give something up.”

  “Ah-huh. Aileen says that too.”

  “Oh. Ah, I’m suggesting if you do an interview with me, it will go some way to closing the issue off.”

  “Not just reigniting it?”

  “Not if it’s done carefully. Not if we close the loops. I can help you do that.”

  He sat forward, elbows on knees. He wanted to go to her, but she clearly needed her space. “Okay.”

  She stopped pacing about. “Okay, what?”

  “Okay, when do you want to do it? Can I have time to prepare? I’m not ready to leave here yet.”

  “Will, you understand what I’m saying?”