Starting from Scratch

by Penelope Janu

  ‘I won’t let my father take it away.’ I yank the toggle again. The zip glides swiftly, over Matts’s abdomen and chest.

  What am I doing? My hands still. They drop to my sides.

  When he dips his head, his hair touches mine. He fastens the second and third buttons of my coat. Our eyes meet. His gaze slips to my mouth.

  There’s a rustling from the pond, a flapping of wings. I take a jerky step back and run my hands down my buttons, as if I have to check that they’re properly done up.

  ‘You’re not my brother any more.’

  His jaw clenches. ‘I never was.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I warned you, Sapphire. I told you to call him.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have made a difference. He wants to use me. He said I’m young and beautiful and …’

  I hear voices behind me. The grey-haired man and woman from the pub walk hand in hand towards us.

  The woman smiles. ‘It’s chilly tonight.’

  After the couple is out of sight, Matts walks to the edge of the pond, bends his knees and takes hold of a reed, rubbing it between his fingers.

  ‘You are beautiful, Sapphire. Even more beautiful than your mother.’

  ‘I don’t think—’ My breaths are wispy and white. ‘Her looks didn’t help her, did they? Not in the end.’

  He straightens and, without touching me but so close I could swear that he was, he runs a finger under my eye. He follows the line of my cheekbone. When his thumb hovers over my lip, a million nerve endings sparkle and fizz.

  ‘Do you ever wear make-up?’ he asks.

  ‘Why—’ I shake my head. ‘Rarely.’

  ‘Do you wear blue?’

  ‘I like other colours.’

  ‘Colours that don’t draw attention to your eyes.’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘I think you’re afraid to be beautiful.’

  ‘I am not!’

  ‘You’re also afraid of me.’

  I press my lips together. I bunch my hands and put them in my pockets. ‘You remind me of things I don’t want to think about. You remind me of my past.’

  ‘Our past, Sapphire,’ he says. ‘Yours and mine.’

  ‘It got messed up in other things.’

  ‘So now it means nothing?’

  ‘I’ve put it behind me.’

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘Sapphie!’ Pa Hargreaves calls out. ‘Is that you, love?’

  I step back. ‘I have to go.’

  Matts nods abruptly. ‘I’ll see you at the end of the month.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Check your emails.’ He shoves his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. ‘I’ll be at your committee meeting.’

  ‘What? Why?’ I shake my head. ‘I don’t want you there. I don’t want to see you.’

  He takes two steps before turning and facing me again. His eyes are hard. His jaw is tight.

  ‘Why not?’ he says softly. ‘When you say we have no past?’

  CHAPTER

  9

  Sitting on the stool at my kitchen bench with Tumbleweed curled up on my lap, I open my laptop. The email Matts referred to isn’t from him—it’s to him.

  Dr Laaksonen,

  I refer to recent telephone discussions and correspondence regarding our respective governments’ interest in the work of the Ramsar Secretariat.

  Horseshoe Hill would be an excellent starting point for your research. The town is situated on the banks of the Macquarie River, a few hours by road from the Macquarie Marshes, and has not only recognised challenges posed by a changing environment, but has acknowledged the need to balance town and agricultural agendas with environmental rehabilitation and enhancement.

  As the state government representative on the Horseshoe Hill Environment Committee, I am confident I speak for the rest of the committee in confirming our interest in your project. The committee meets formally twice a year (and informally every month or so). Sapphie Brown, a local schoolteacher, is the chair, and she is copied in on this email. The next meeting (happily a formal one!) will take place at the Horseshoe Hill Community Centre at seven o’clock on 20 August.

  Kind regards,

  Douglas Chambers, MP

  Every one of the hundred reasons I could list for uninviting Matts would be personal. He told me from the start that he was here for work. The committee’s public profile is important and Matts’s interest in what we do would help to promote that.

  It’s only one meeting.

  The kindling in the fireplace has dwindled to ash, but the small log is still burning brightly. I pick up the tongs and lift another log onto the grate. When Tumbleweed, sitting like a sphinx, extends his claws, hooks them into the rug and inches closer, I hurriedly shut the fireplace door. ‘You’re close enough, puss. You wouldn’t want to get singed.’

  Steam fills the tiny bathroom within moments of turning on the water. I lather up the sponge and rub around my neck, then gently press the sponge against my breast. My left side isn’t painful, but the skin under my arm and across my ribcage and breast is sensitive.

  You’re afraid to be beautiful.

  ‘You might have a point, Matts,’ I mutter, lifting the sponge and allowing the water to cascade down my side and rinse the soap from my skin.

  Alabaster, bleach, translucent, chalk.

  Angry, magenta, vermillion, burnt.

  My skin is ridged and mottled, but the doctor said I’d been lucky. ‘The burns, once healed, shouldn’t hamper your physical activity.’

  Matts said I was beautiful.

  I have my mother’s hair. My eyes are distinctively dark blue. I have a nicely shaped mouth. When I was at university and wanted to get my innocence over with, I had no trouble finding men to have sex with. They didn’t care, or didn’t notice, that I wouldn’t take off my top. And I only went out with them once or twice anyway.

  If I ever meet someone I want to spend more than a night with, they’ll understand. Countless people have suffered much worse.

  On my final visit to the hospital, the surgeon said that plastic surgery would neaten up the scarring. And if things had been different, I might have pursued that. But Mum was unwell. Gran had been moved out of respite care and into the nursing home. My father was trying to micromanage my life from London. I was a shitty teenage runaway, angry at the world.

  And soon enough, I’d moved to Horseshoe. I liked Ma and Pa Hargreaves. I’d found the farmhouse. I slowly made friends. I was healthy and fit. The scarring didn’t seem to matter so much.

  As I towel myself dry, my reflection stares back. I love my job at the school. I live in a community where people value and care for me. I don’t need anything else to make me happy.

  Matts and I shared a childhood and adolescence.

  I suspect he broke my heart.

  Now it’s over.

  Tumbleweed is curled up in front of the fire but the logs won’t last much longer. I rub under his chin and tuck the throw around him.

  At lunchtime on Friday, I leave the staffroom and call the council from my classroom. As soon as I tell Michael, the property officer I’ve dealt with for years, that I want to renew my option, he groans into the phone.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sapphie.’

  ‘I would have paid more.’

  ‘I didn’t know about it until the deal had been done,’ he says. ‘The buyer went straight to the CEO. He offered a higher price that couldn’t reasonably be refused.’

  ‘What about the youth program?’

  ‘It’s a twelve-month option, but even if it’s exercised straight away, no access to the farmhouse is allowed for six months, by which time the program will have moved to the new centre.’

  ‘My horses?’

  ‘They’ve got six months too.’

  I end the call and email my father.

  Robert,

  It appears that Mum knew about the deposit box, but we still don’t know that she did anything illegal. I don’t think she would stea
l information, or sell something that didn’t belong to her. I don’t think she’d risk losing me, or getting you and Inge into trouble.

  You’re forcing me to do what you want because you have the farmhouse. I know you have a year to exercise the option, but I want this to be over with before that. If you promise that, within six months, you’ll tell the council you’re not going ahead, I’ll let you handle the media and pretend we’re in this together. You also have to stick strictly to the facts if you’re questioned about Mum. The drugs, the rehab, none of that is relevant.

  Sapphie

  Five minutes before the bell that sounds the end of lunch, my phone rings.

  ‘Sapphire.’

  ‘Robert.’

  ‘In general terms, I agree to your proposal.’

  ‘But you don’t want to put anything in writing. That’s why you called.’

  ‘Sapphire! I agree to six months, as you requested. If this can’t be contained by then, I’m unlikely to have a career worth saving.’

  ‘What about Mum?’

  ‘I’ll do what I can to keep Kate out of it. With one proviso.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘You’re to pretend that everything is just as it was. No one else wants the farmhouse and when you’re ready, you’ll negotiate with the council to buy it. My name is not to come up. If the matter is raised, we claim that I am holding the property on your behalf, that I wish to be of assistance.’

  ‘You want me to lie?’

  He huffs. ‘People believe that you’ll buy the farmhouse. Don’t disabuse them of the notion.’

  ‘I can keep my mouth shut.’

  ‘When will you come to Canberra?’

  ‘Before the next school holidays. Early October? It’ll just be photos, right?’

  ‘I’ll select a location we can visit as a family.’

  ‘Matts said he didn’t know that you were taking out the option.’

  ‘He didn’t. And it might please you to know that I wasn’t in his good books. Mind you, neither were you.’

  You say we have no past.

  CHAPTER

  10

  On Saturday morning, over two weeks since I spoke with my father, I scramble down the slope to the creek and jump from rock to rock to reach the other side. By the time the farmhouse appears, the clouds have thinned and the sun is warm on my back. I push my hat lower and stretch out my fingers, cosy in gloves, before closing the gate and securing the chain. The late winter grass has shades of sage and cornsilk, with occasional patches of shamrock. I kick at a spiky thistle with my boot, loosening the soil and plucking it out of the ground. When I reach the orchard, I throw the weed into a bin.

  The possums and cockatoos have eaten most of the oranges, but I pick the ripest, still tinged with green, to eat with my sandwich at lunchtime. The horses look up as I pass, and Lollopy nickers. Prima is in her usual place under the grey gum and the others are gathered at the gate.

  ‘Won’t be long,’ I call out.

  Within an hour, the farmhouse will be bustling, but for now I’m the only one here. I stand on my toes as I take Gran’s keyring out of my pocket and jiggle the key back and forth in the lock. When I open the door, the sun shoots in behind me. A daddy-long-legs spider has stayed overnight. Swinging from a thread, he hovers above a crate of riding hats and boots.

  I unfasten the window latch in the room where I make my flowers. Pushing both hands firmly against the window frame, I jiggle to loosen the sash. When I pull the bottom pane upwards, the window opens wide. Banksia roses and vines of honeysuckle and jasmine climb up the verandah posts and creep towards the house. Three old azalea bushes, white, apricot and crimson, are almost as tall as the gutters. At this time of year the buds come out. Soon the azaleas will be irresistibly pretty, but for the rest of the year they don’t look much at all. I’ve thought about digging them up and replacing them with native plants, but something has always pulled me back. Dorothy, Catherine and Lucille Andrews were sisters, and two of them were teachers. They bought the farmhouse when they came from England to work at the school, and planted shrubs and trees that reminded them of home.

  ‘I won’t let you down,’ I promise the sisters.

  I prepare the ponies first, grooming Lollopy and Freckle and checking their feet. As I lead him to the yard, Lollopy shoves his nose against my back and pushes. I laugh as I spring forward. ‘Breakfast won’t be long.’

  In his younger years, Freckle’s coat was speckled grey. Now, besides darker markings around his flanks, he’s faded almost to white. He’s older than Lollopy and, at fourteen hands, quite a lot taller, but he stands back respectfully when I bring biscuits of hay from the shed.

  ‘You’re both fully booked today, so you’d better eat up.’

  On Saturdays, the ponies do a morning and afternoon shift of equine therapy, mostly with younger children like Barney’s brother Archie. Corey, the psychologist who runs the program, also treats older children, teenagers who’ve been in trouble, many of whom have spent time in juvenile detention. The council agreed to fund the specialists, but Corey needed horses and a venue. I’d already been given permission to use the farmhouse as a temporary youth centre, so it wasn’t difficult to extend its use to equine activities.

  By nine o’clock, Mary and Amy are threading ribbons through Lollopy’s mane and Freckle’s tail, Sonnet is saddled and tied to a railing and Strider is in the small fenced yard being groomed by volunteers. By the time I carry an armful of hay to Prima, she’s the only horse left in the paddock.

  ‘Don’t look so concerned. No one can get to you here.’

  I don’t manage to get a hold of her halter until I’ve followed her around the grey gum three times. I clip on a lead rope and run a hand over her back.

  ‘I won’t hurt you. When are you going to trust me on that?’

  Prima skitters when Joel, a sixteen-year-old local, climbs over the gate. When I lift a hand to wave, he looks away, pulling his hood over his head before leaning against a post. Prima still has one eye on Joel and one on her hay as I unclip the lead rope.

  ‘See you tonight, girl.’

  Joel looks like he doesn’t want me to think that he’s waiting for me, even though he undoubtedly is. He’s tall but very thin, with straight brown hair that hangs into his eyes.

  ‘Your appointment with Corey is at ten, right? You’re early today.’

  ‘Corey’s a waste of time,’ he mutters. ‘I only said I’d come to get out of juvie.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have taken you on if he didn’t think he could help.’

  ‘Leading horses around bores the shit out of me. I’m not even allowed to ride.’

  ‘You’ve only been here a few times.’ I tip back my hat. ‘Maybe the program will grow on you?’

  ‘I did graffiti at the station and nicked a couple of cars. What’s any of that got to do with anger management?’

  I pretend an interest in the gate fittings. ‘The horses sense feelings—anxiety, fear and anger—from the way we move and speak. They also tap into our responses when things go wrong. Interacting with the horses helps develop emotional awareness.’

  ‘You sound like Corey.’

  ‘I’m learning from him too.’

  ‘Sonnet!’ Archie shouts out. ‘Sonnet! Hey! Sonnet!’

  Archie runs up and down the fence line. Sonnet is toey, but stands relatively still after a handler walks him away from the fence. Barney chases Archie, who’s still shouting, and cuts him off, grabbing his arm and swinging him around.

  ‘Shut up, Arch! You’re scaring him.’

  ‘It’s okay, Barney,’ Corey says, ‘leave this to me.’ He holds out his hand. ‘Come over here, Archie. Let’s have a chat before we go to Sonnet.’

  I turn back to Joel. ‘See what I mean? Archie will learn that when he expresses feelings like excitement and impatience in a certain way, it will have an impact on the horses. It’ll give him an idea of how others might react.’

  ‘Archie should shut up, li
ke Barney said.’

  ‘When he understands that behaving as he did will spook Sonnet, that both of them could get hurt and Sonnet might avoid him in the future, he’s more likely to modify his behaviour.’

  ‘Why can’t he learn that stuff at school?’

  ‘Horses sense feelings, like I said.’ I put my boot on the bottom rung of the railing and stretch out my calf muscle. ‘They don’t take things too personally like other children might, or hold grudges. Usually they give second chances.’

  ‘I already know about horses.’

  ‘Your grandfather was a trainer, wasn’t he?’

  ‘He took me to the stables and to the tracks. We went to the races all the time.’

  Joel’s grandfather died a couple of years ago, leaving his dad to care for him on his own. But his father has a gambling problem, and Joel spent most of the previous year in and out of foster care.

  ‘Is that why you’re interested in Prima? Because she was a racehorse?’

  ‘Granddad trained a mare like her. His favourite horse he reckoned.’

  ‘She’s been mistreated, but I’m not sure how. She won’t let men anywhere near her.’

  ‘She’s scared of you, too.’

  ‘If I wasn’t handfeeding her, I’m not sure I could catch her at all.’

  He puts a foot on the gate rung where mine was before. ‘Reckon I could help out,’ he mutters.

  ‘You’ve been watching out for her, haven’t you?’

  ‘Might’ve.’

  ‘You have a program with Corey already.’

  ‘That’s only an hour.’

  ‘Getting accustomed to having you around will be stressful for Prima. I wouldn’t put her through that without the possibility of a positive long-term experience.’

  ‘You want me to hang around, is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘To commit. Yes.’

  ‘Gramps taught me how to be patient.’

  ‘Would you be able to come early every Saturday? Will you do what I tell you to do? Do you get a lift to the farmhouse?’

  ‘Or the minibus. Corey sorts that out.’

  ‘You don’t think it’d be too boring for you, sitting in a paddock for hours on end? It might take weeks before you can handle her. Assuming we get to that point.’