The World Beneath

by Cate Kennedy

  ‘We’ll be camping,’ Rich said firmly, taking a look inside.

  ‘Lovely tent platforms, you should grab a good one so you can wake up to the view of Barn Bluff in the morning,’ said Russell. ‘But you should leave your food and perishables in the hut, really, if you don’t want a visit from some nocturnal wildlife.’

  ‘Really?’ Rich, crouched on the verandah, was unpacking stuff out of his bag. Crackers. Cheese. Sophie felt saliva flow into her mouth.

  ‘Possums, wallabies, Tassie devils sometimes. Friend of ours got his tent ripped by some persistent little wombat one night when he was doing the track. Tore the fly to ribbons. They’re pretty good at working out how to get inside.’

  ‘Right, we will. Thanks for the tip.’

  ‘And have you got a headlamp?’ Russell went on. ‘There’s no moon tonight.’

  She could tell from Rich’s silence that he didn’t.

  ‘You can borrow mine,’ offered Libby. ‘You forget how dark it gets out there.’

  Rich nodded. ‘OK, thanks. That’s very nice of you.’ His voice was short, but he smiled at Sophie; a weary, hollow-eyed smile. ‘Let’s go and bags ourselves a spot. Then dinner and into bed for you, I reckon.’

  ‘I’m alright.’

  ‘Well, I’m not. I’m totally buggered. I’m just using you as an excuse.’ He laughed but she saw his guard drop as he turned away, the tiredness like a curtain as he mustered the energy to pick up his pack again and drag it to the camping sites. That walk again, defensive, as if the ground was hot and strewn with burrs. The smile that promised he’d cook dinner, and see her safely into bed, the weary, vigilant responsibility she saw briefly in his features. A parent’s face, thought Sophie, noticing it with a pleasure that felt strangely embarrassing. Ready to look after her.

  She unrolled her tent on one of the wooden platforms, singing along to ‘Velvet Sepulchre’ as she did. It was great, seeing the landscape around her in counterpoint with music she knew so well. It made her hear Dogland in a whole new way.

  ‘Hey.’

  She could faintly hear Rich talking to her, and took out her earphones. ‘What did you say, sorry?’

  ‘Do your guy ropes reach all the way to the hooks?’ He was tugging at his tent-fly, trying to stretch it more tightly towards the spot where you were supposed to attach it.

  ‘I’ve got extra rope in my bag,’ she offered.

  ‘Have you? Great. I’ll sort it out later, then. No wonder everyone in there was already making dinner — I’m starving, aren’t you?’

  She ducked her head into the tent, pushed her sleeping bag and roll inside.

  ‘Not really,’ she answered.

  ‘Bloody hell. You’ve just walked nearly eleven kilometres, you should be chewing off your own leg. Let’s go and cook dinner. I reckon it’s time for some serious carb loading.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Rice or pasta?’

  She paused. ‘Pasta.’ She could have pasta instead of the two-minute noodles. That would still be OK.

  ‘Carbonara which tastes nothing like carbonara?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Her tent was ready, and she slipped her earphones back on. Icarus lies weeping, and I shun those wings, the singer whispered. Icarus lies weeping for all those childhood things.

  She unzipped a pocket of her pack, and took out her plate, her knife and fork, her cup. The ziplock bag of chocolate malt Sustagen. An orange-flavoured isotonic energy gel bar. She followed Rich up to the hut.

  Ten

  What animal was it? Sandy wondered. She sat cross-legged in the morning Circle of Welcome, trying to meditate using the candle flame, as instructed, to focus her thoughts entirely on the single unifying fire of life, but in her peripheral vision was the drum she wanted, placed outside the gift shop.

  The piece of skin stretched over the drum was black and white and hairy. Probably a goat. It was important to know — she didn’t want to find herself back at home with a drum made out of some endangered species, and have to bear the brunt of the shocked judgemental silences of better-informed friends.

  And where was the drum made? Out of what timbers, and by whom? Indentured labourers? It was a full-time job, keeping yourself from accidentally being an oppressor. She had a beautiful set of enamel bracelets she couldn’t wear now since someone had informed her earnestly at a party that everyone was boycotting those bracelets because they were made by child slaves in northern India. Everyone. Like they’d had a meeting without her.

  And that woman last week, who’d stopped in front of her stall and complimented her on her earrings, and then, when Sandy thanked her, had frowned. ‘Oh — you made them yourself ? I thought you might have imported them from somewhere. India, maybe. Pakistan.’ She’d gestured vaguely. Glossy expensive manicure, Sandy noticed. Probably cost enough to keep a third world village in clean water.

  ‘Well, I get some of my beads from India. They’re imported glass ones. And I get some from Africa too. But I make all the jewellery myself.’

  ‘So it’s not an aid project, or anything?’

  ‘No.’ The woman’s mouth had made a disappointed little smile. As if Sandy had let her down, for crying out loud. An aid project? They were coming up all the time now, these women, flipping through her stuff with one hand as they talked on their mobiles like they owned the place. The kind who didn’t want a necklace, they wanted a story. They demanded something exotic they could buy along with it, something they could recount as they gave it to someone, a little way they could claim ownership. Bracelets handmade by refugee children in Azerbaijan. Earrings made from glass bottles picked up by a women’s collective off the UN rubbish tip in the Philippines.

  This kind didn’t buy things, they sourced them. Like shopping demanded some kind of special expertise, or a qualification, like shopping was your job.

  Sandy had felt a teary, defensive tightness in her throat. Ridiculous. That woman couldn’t care less about her. And she’d just walked away then anyway, off to slight someone else. What was wrong with people, that they couldn’t just buy something they liked, and leave it at that?

  At home, in the top of her wardrobe, she had a boxful of wire, feather and bead trinkets she’d made a year or two back. They were called dreamcatchers. She’d seen them around for a long time in crystal and aromatherapy shops, often with a little tag explaining they were a traditional Native American craft. That was good; Native American was always good. You put them in your window and they caught your dreams, or stopped bad dreams getting in, or attracted good energy to you, that kind of thing.

  She hadn’t thought she’d be treading on anyone’s toes to make some for the stall, but someone on the very first morning she’d had them on display had seen fit to give her a lecture about cultural appropriation. She’d been mortified.

  ‘What about your batik shirt?’ she’d called as the woman walked away. ‘What about your Indian bag?’

  Well, not called, exactly. But she’d said it, whether the woman heard her or not. The whole thing had left a bad taste in her mouth, an awful anxiety she was offending someone she didn’t even know. She was secretly relieved to see a pile of them one day outside the $2 shop; cellophane-wrapped dreamcatchers made in Malaysia and heavily discounted for a saturated market. Anybody could feel ironically scandalised by that sort of cultural thievery.

  You couldn’t predict these things, anyway. Look at chai soy latte. She wished she’d gotten in on the first wave of that.

  Or the gemstone stall that often ended up next to hers. Gemstones really appealed to people. Gail was a great saleswoman too; you had to give her that. Very intuitive.

  ‘That’s a black obsidian massage stick,’ she would tell someone. Or, tuning in somehow to their specific needs, it seemed, she’d pick up a similar stone off the velvet cloth and say ‘This is a Reiki healing wand.’

  Sandy would watch the customer, weighing the stone carefully in their palm, nodding slowly and gravely, as if they were being given dire
ctions about taking some medication.

  ‘What about this one?’ they would say.

  ‘That’s a tiger’s-eye palm worry stone,’ Gail would answer serenely; or ‘that’s a smoky quartz healing generator.’

  Sandy herself had bought one of those. You held it in your hand and used its energy to enhance your business creativity and boost your endurance to facilitate the completion of worldly activities. Idly, she wondered if she could claim hers on tax. But when was the last time she’d put in a tax return? No idea.

  Anyway.

  The candle.

  Christ on a bike, he felt like he’d been on the rack all night. Rich had spent some uncomfortable nights in his time — in airports, across benches, on living-room floors — but despite being dog-tired the night before, it was as if he’d physically absorbed some of the unrelenting essence of what he’d lain on. Now it felt as though his own body was constructed from wooden boards covered with the thinnest layer of cushioning foam. He tried to walk off his stiffness. On feet that felt like they’d been wrung in a vice. Tenderfoot — that was him. Thank God today was only three hours. A mere seven-point-seven kilometres of track under Barn Bluff then across the open exposed ridge, all the way along the dotted line on the map in the hut that made it all look so benign. At least the weather was holding out. And at least walking warmed up the chill that had seeped into him overnight too, despite his superior loft sleeping bag.

  He’d talked to everyone last night, made the effort to get to know them, conscious of Sophie watching him and taking her cues from him. They were a mixed bag alright. Not exactly what he’d expected. Mind you, that guy Russell was already starting to get up his nose. Gaiters — you mean you haven’t brought gaiters? Well, heavens, take my spare pair and what you need, Rich, is a micro towel — haven’t you come across these? Oh, they’re magic, mate; here, use this one, I can share Libby’s. Doing everything but slapping him heartily on the shoulder, jumping out of his skin with glee that he had something Rich didn’t that he could brag about. Knew everything. Been everywhere. Like a bloody scout master.

  Wondering how many days of rain the park got a year? Russell was your man. Two hundred and seventy-five, since you’re asking. Unsure whether you needed to boil the water out of the hut tank? Here, have a few of these water-purifying tablets, so you don’t need to waste your stove fuel. Mildly interested in knowing what bird it was you’d seen that afternoon? Why, let’s take a look in Russell’s handy pocket field guide.

  Rich kept a teeth-gritted smile fixed on his face as they sat and ate gluey cheese noodles, then tried to remember the rules for 500 when Russell and Libby asked if they felt like a few hands of cards. Sophie picked it up like she was born to it. Sitting there shyly calling trumps in a hut in the middle of the Tasmanian wilderness, her half-finished plate of pasta congealing on the end of the table.

  ‘She’s a great girl,’ Libby had said to him when Sophie had taken the headlamp, giggling, and gone out to brave the composting toilet. ‘She’s a real credit to you.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He’d paused, then thought: it’s going to come out sooner or later. ‘But I can’t take credit for her. I’ve only just really met her, actually. Her mum and I aren’t together. Haven’t been for a long while now.’

  He felt her keen eye. An uncomfortable moment.

  ‘Well,’ she said smoothly, ‘she seems very well adjusted.’ A kind thing to say about a girl with a ring through her eyebrow and a silver skull pendant.

  ‘Hey,’ Russell had said, breaking the ensuing silence, ‘do your guy ropes reach the platform hooks, Rich? Because you should take this — perfect thing to extend them.’ Giving him a neatly rolled length of white builder’s line tied with four strong elastic bands. ‘And you can use those elastic bands to extend the length of the elastic on your tent-fly too.’

  Well, Rich wanted to say, you’ve certainly earned all your badges tonight.

  ‘Great for clotheslines too,’ Russell added, a juggernaut of handy hints.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, smoothly gracious. ‘I appreciate it.’

  Now he was trudging along in Russell’s gaiters, which it pained him to admit did keep his socks and boot tops a bit dryer, still feeling like he’d spent the night on an ironing board, or strung up in a few lengths of Russell’s white twine. Nearly at Lake Windermere, which would mean they were almost there. He’d decided against the side-trip to the other lake. Three extra kilometres he didn’t need — he was already starting to ration his energy and time for the photo opportunities — and let’s face it you’ve seen one cold lake fringed by pencil pines, you’ve seen them all.

  He didn’t take his boots off when they stopped for a breather at the lake. A few other people who’d been walking ahead of them had, and they were lounging and splashing their bare feet in the freezing cold water. He longed to join them, but knew that it would just make it worse trying to put his boots back on again, easing his feet down through that hard leather curve. When he stood up to start walking again, bracing himself mentally for more pain, he felt his right sock pull away with a little tear from the flesh of his heel, skin he’d never before realised was so unbearably tender and sensitive. That meant a blister that had broken, and the sock had dried to his foot. Only a little further to go now until the hut, he urged himself.

  He began to walk, gingerly, but as briskly as he could. That feeling of ripping away, like a bandaid, the same little sharp gulp of pain.

  He remembered his mother trying to pull a bandaid off his foot once, when he’d overdone it in a basketball game at school. She’d winced and made little pained noises as she picked away ineffectually at the strip, then finally jumped up and ran him a bath, saying he could soak it off instead. He recalled his father grunting with derision as he made his way obediently into the bathroom.

  Rich pushed one foot in front of the other, his jaw set. He hadn’t a single recollection of his father administering any sort of first aid to him or his sister, not a dab of disinfectant, not a bandage, nothing. He couldn’t even remember him putting a hand to his forehead to feel if he had a temperature. No, that was the province of their woefully ill-equipped mother, who would have taken them to the doctors for a bee sting if she could. Every cough was asthma, every admission of tiredness was glandular fever.

  He remembered drawn-out, tedious days in bed during primary school, long after the novelty of missing school had worn off, and his mother rousing him from his book, as if preparing some great treat for him, and sitting him down to watch a daytime soap opera with her. He saw enough episodes through the years to basically follow the storyline, and make a sort of sense of his mother’s worrying running commentary. That’s one of his clearest memories of her; pressing the pillowcases and tea towels on the ironing board as she talked back at the telly. Telling Julie she was mad to leave Doug, and telling Mickey whose the baby really was, despite what that scheming Jacinta said.

  He remembered her disappearing into the kitchen mid-afternoon one day as he lay on the couch covered with a quilt, feeling drowsy with sleep and boredom, and reappearing with two glasses of dry sherry. One for each of them. He’d been eleven at the time, and taken in by her complicit smile. It didn’t seem a long distance between that day and coming home from school to find her on the floor of the pantry, out cold, her head down under the shelf where she stored all the jars. Jars she kept for jam, she said, but he couldn’t recall her ever making any. The kitchen smelled of the dinner in the crockpot, a slow cooker which had the effect of tenderising everything down to generic mushy casseroles that would fall to pieces off your fork. You didn’t see those around much anymore, but his mother had professed to loving hers when she’d got it for Mother’s Day.

  He’d dropped his school bag and said her name a few times, practising getting his voice steady, then stood for as long as it took to convert his shocked incredulity into something approaching manageable. Something that allowed him, finally, to stop saying her name, to make himself a glass of chocolate m
ilk, in fact, and go into the living room and change channels on the television till he found the shows he always watched. Scooby Doo. Then The Brady Bunch.

  On the dining-room table the washing had been all folded and pressed into four neat piles, one for each of them — all they had to do was put it in their drawers. His sister was at her jazz ballet class, so there was no one else home — only him, and his unconscious mother lying there with laddered pantyhose and no shoes, quietly breathing in the other room. He made the chocolate milk last a long time, because he was hungry, he realised as Gilligan’s Island started, but there was no way he was going back there into the kitchen until she woke up and pulled herself together. He’d liked the new hardness in his voice as he said that to himself. Useless, he mouthed sneeringly at the screen. Sitting there, he tried on his father’s habitual barely concealed derision, and to his surprise found it fitted like a glove, like a garment that had been lying there waiting for him for a long time.

  He took off his hat and scratched his scalp as he walked, pushed the heels of his hands momentarily against his eyes. The wind was making them sting. No point dragging all that stuff up now. That was just growing up, it was what you went through. Nothing more tedious than middle-class dysfunction.

  The hut was just up ahead. He’d give the tents a miss tonight and find himself a quiet bunk in the corner, lay some of his clothes flat under his sleeping mat, maybe. See if he’d left an odd valium by chance in his travelling first-aid kit, because a decent night’s sleep was all he needed; otherwise he was fine. He’d wad up the cotton handkerchief he had in one of the side pockets of his pack, and wrap his ankle in that. Cushion that small blister. That’s all it was, really. New boots, and a blister that was starting to burn like a bastard. You couldn’t buy a great pair of boots without having to break them in, after all. If you couldn’t tough that out, then forget it. Give up. They moulded themselves to you and you moulded yourself to them, and then they’d last you a lifetime.