He gestures towards the back door. ‘Hop into the woodpile, Robin,’ he orders. ‘See if you can finish the lot.’ He’s wearing his balaclava to keep the cold off his ears and bald patch and I can only see his eyes and mouth. He looks like he’s off to hold up a bank. Behind the workshop is a pile of snow-gum logs. Two tonnes of them.
‘Can I do it tomorrow, Dad? I’ve got a lot of homework this weekend.’
‘Homework! Writing more of your nonsense more like it. You don’t want me to chop it, do you? Not with this bad back.’
There’s no point arguing so I head for the woodpile. I don’t get paid for chopping wood, which is part of my ‘chores’. I get ten dollars an hour for helping in the workshop on holidays and weekends.
‘The minimum wage is fifteen dollars an hour,’ I said to him once.
‘It’s related to intelligence,’ was his reply.
I face the pile of snow-covered logs stacked between the workshop and our lodge. Snow gum is the worst sort of wood to chop. I have to whack the big logs three or four times with the axe before they’ll split. Even with gloves on, my hands freeze up and the wood is so hard that the axe bounces off sending great judders of pain up my arms. But the real reason I hate doing it is because of what happens inside my head – it’s the champagne corks exploding. I can’t chop wood without setting them off. I hate them, I hate them, I hate them. Unpredictable images that pop into my mind. I can feel them stirring in my brain. It’s the axe that causes them.
I haven’t got very far before I have to throw the axe down onto the snow and begin to cart the wood to the back porch to take my mind off things.
After a hard day working for the old man I go up to my room and shut the door. Although our house is shabby and untidy it does have a sort of safe, warm, rustic feel because of the wooden floors and walls and high cathedral ceilings. And my room’s the cosiest of all. I have a computer on a table in the corner and bookshelves on three walls. The shelves are all bulging because every time I go down the mountain to Bright Dale I spend my money on secondhand books and I’ve got heaps of them – mostly fiction. My favourites at the moment are Huckleberry Finn and The Road, which is a story about a boy and his father who tries to save him from predators when there’s no food left in the world.
My room is where I write stories on long winter nights. It’s a way of getting away from the old man. When I’m lost in writing a story I forget all about him. I just let my imagination go. Ideas suddenly jump into my head and I type them up. I haven’t a clue where they come from – they’re just stories.
In one corner there’s an old dressing-table with two drawers below and a mirror above. I pull the bottom drawer right out revealing a space underneath which is my secret hiding place for things I don’t want Dad to know about. There’s a photo of Charlie that I cut out of the school magazine. If she knew I had it she’d probably take it from me and say, ‘Robin, we’re just friends’, and I’d die of embarrassment and shame and even worse I would know for sure there could never be anything between us. I can’t work her out – she seems to enjoy talking with me, but then she might just be being polite. I touch the place where she brushed me with her lips. It was the kiss of a feather floating on the breeze. I smile at the thought of it. I would give everything I have for one proper kiss from her. I start to imagine what it would be like but the thought is rudely removed by another one: if I don’t come up with five hundred dollars, I’m history as far as she’s concerned.
In the hiding place there’s also a hairbrush and a ring that once belonged to my mother. The ring is white gold with a clasp shaped like a hand, holding a tiny diamond. The hairbrush is an antique, made of blue glass with black bristles which still have two or three strands of Mum’s long red hair entwined in them. I found the ring and the brush a couple of years ago when I was emptying the rubbish and I’m pretty sure the old man had thrown them out in a temper. He won’t talk about Mum or where she is and he freaks out if I mention her name. There are no photos of her but I do have a picture of what she looked like in my mind. This can’t be a real memory because I was only a baby when she left but I somehow know that my imaginings are true. I take the ring out of its hiding spot and place it on my pillow. The ring and the hairbrush are my most treasured possessions. I’ll never part with either of them, especially the ring because it reminds me of a mother’s eternal love which can never be tarnished. I wish I knew where she was. I can’t remember ever having been held close by a woman but I can imagine what it might be like. Mum’s touch would be softer than a marshmallow.
Kerbang. The door flies open and Dad follows it in like a hurricane. He never knocks on my door even though I’ve asked him to a million times.
‘Have you taken my …’ His voice trails off and his eyes fix on the ring. He strides across the room, snatches it up and rushes to the window.
‘No,’ I yell.
He shoves up the window letting a wall of cold air rush in and throws the ring out into the night. I don’t even see it go. The ring vanishes like a coin swallowed by the ocean.
‘I don’t want her memory in this house,’ he says angrily. ‘You know that.’
‘I don’t have any memories of her,’ I say.
I rush down the stairs, his hoarse laugh echoing behind me. I pull on my snow gear, snatch up a torch from the kitchen and plunge into the whiteness of the black night. The snow is crusty and brittle like the icing on an old cake. I stand and think about the best way to search, knowing that if I stomp around I might crush the ring into the bed of mud under the snow and then I’ll never find it. A flash of brilliance hits me. I run to the workshop, take Dad’s metal detector from its place on the wall and start searching the ground, sweeping the snow systematically in rows.
Beep. My heart leaps as I drop to my knees and dig at the spot with my glove. A brass button. Bugger. An hour passes and then another. By this time I’ve collected a fifty-cent piece, the tip of a ski pole, four nails and one baked-beans can. I’m shivering badly but nothing will stop me searching until I find my mother’s ring. The house lights all die as Dad goes to bed. He thinks I’ll never find the ring but he hasn’t taken into account the metal detector, which we both know I’m not allowed to touch. I traverse the yard for hours, swishing the detector from side to side without a break. In all I’ve accumulated about twenty useless metal items. Some of them have been buried in the frozen earth for years and I’ve had to chip them out with a screwdriver and hammer. In the end I fall helplessly onto the ground shaking with cold and anger. I can’t live without her ring. I can’t live without her hairbrush. They’re all I have until I find her. And something tells me that one day they’ll lead me to her – then they won’t matter anymore.
I’ll have to come back in the morning when there’s daylight. Sagging with frustration and sorrow I drag myself up to my room and take off my wet clothes. As I do so, I glimpse a twinkle of light on my pillow. It’s the ring! My head swirls as I try to make sense of it, and then it dawns on me: Dad only pretended to throw the ring out of the window.
Corks pop inside my head as if fired from a shotgun.
Smoke from the ski-lodge chimneys curls into the night air and turns the moon blood red. The ranger’s home where Charlie lives is a huge wooden cabin spreading out through the trees. Snow lies thickly on the roof and icicles hang from the eaves. The cabin is surrounded by a scattering of huts and cages and animal enclosures, all clothed in white. As I glide between them on my skis I see two large eyes blink from inside a black aviary. A powerful owl.
Charlie’s father keeps injured wildlife in these enclosures and nurses them back to health. They all have names: Maggie, a koala that was burnt in a bushfire; Josephine, a wallaby that was found still alive in its dead mother’s pouch; and Squawk, a parrot with a broken wing. There’s also a poor old wombat called Alf, who was hit by a car – Charlie invited me round to see him once. As I near the homestead I see that Alf’s cage is empty.
Charlie meets me at the
front door. She looks even more lovely in her soft jumper and jeans but her eyes are moist.
‘Charlie, what’s up?’ I say. ‘What’s happened?’
She forces a smile. ‘Nothing. It’s fine. I’m fine. Come on in.’
‘Are you all right?’ I ask as I bend down to take off my skis.
She changes the subject. ‘You look good in that leather jacket,’ she says. ‘But aren’t you cold?’
I am a bit cold and I should have worn full snow gear but I wanted to look my best. I have a balaclava tucked in my pocket in case the weather turns bad on the way home.
‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘I’m okay.’
I hand over my jacket and lean my skis against the wall. We go inside into the warm and I’m introduced to Charlie’s parents: Russell, who has a close-cut beard, wild hair and a friendly smile; and Louise, who is the calm and unruffable type. She wears no make-up and a little bit of grey is starting to show in her dark hair. Charlie’s grandpa, Fred, has a face that’s wrinkled like a dried-out chamois leather, with two eyes that could easily belong to a cheeky ten-year-old peering out from the creases.
It feels weird when I sit down with a proper family at a table set out with napkins and matching cutlery. Weird but nice. The fire’s burning happily. Outside snowflakes flit briefly past the window and vanish into the darkness like dancers leaving a stage. The scene reminds me of something out of an English Christmas card except there are no fir trees and it’s a long time until Christmas in Australia. Russell is dishing up roasted vegetables and Louise pours drinks.
‘Moose will be here soon,’ says Grandpa.
‘That’ll be lovely,’ says Louise with a tinge of irony.
Charlie laughs. ‘No more stories, Grandpa. We’ve heard them all ten times before.’
‘I hear you’ve been very generous in regard to the Somalis,’ says Louise. ‘Is your dad okay with that?’
‘I work for my money,’ I say, ‘so what I do with it is up to me.’ Louise doesn’t look convinced but she lets it go.
‘Everyone’s so excited,’ says Charlie. ‘I’ve already phoned Melbourne and told the support group the news. The kids have never seen snow before.’ She throws me a warm smile.
I groan inwardly – I’ll never get five hundred dollars – it might as well be a billion. I open my mouth to mumble something but at this very moment Moose comes in. His face is nearly as wrinkled as Grandpa’s and he’s bald and only seems to have about three teeth. He grabs my hand.
‘Moose,’ he says.
‘Robin,’ I say.
‘You’re late,’ says Grandpa.
‘Bulldust,’ says Moose. ‘You’re early.’
‘I live here, mate.’
They eye each other off with wicked smiles. Charlie laughs.
‘Go for it, everyone,’ says Russell. I pick up my knife and fork uncertainly. I’m a bit nervous because I want to create a good impression and I’m still not quite sure how to behave sitting around a table like this and I don’t want to look like an idiot in front of Charlie. But everyone else is hopping straight into it, so I do the same. It’s a fantastic feast with steak and sausages and roasted pumpkin and carrots.
I feel as if I should contribute to the conversation. ‘Where’s Alf?’ I say. ‘Did you let him go?’
The mood in the room plunges. It’s as if I’ve opened a fridge door and cold air has spilled across the table. No one speaks, then finally:
‘Dad killed him,’ says Charlie.
I gasp.
‘Charlie!’ exclaims Louise.
‘That’s not fair,’ says Russell. ‘I had to put him down, Robin.’
‘What happened?’ I ask. I’m shocked.
‘He was suffering terribly. I had to end his misery.’
‘How?’ I say foolishly. Of course I know how.
‘A simple injection. He slowly fell asleep. Didn’t feel a thing.’
‘You could’ve tried,’ says Charlie, barely containing her distress. ‘I know you’ve had to do it many times, Dad, but Alf was part of the family. You could have waited a bit longer.’
‘But at what cost, Charlie? Poor Alf was in agony. Sometimes you don’t have a choice in these things.’
‘Alf is the one who didn’t have a choice,’ says Charlie. Her lips are quivering.
‘If it was me,’ says Grandpa, ‘I would choose the needle.’
‘That’s right,’ says Moose seriously. ‘In the war there was this bloke who had his legs …’
He stops. Louise is glaring at him. Her head inclines towards me as if to indicate that I’m too sensitive to hear a graphic description of someone getting their legs blown off. If only she knew what graphic images I’ve already had to cope with.
‘When my time comes,’ says Grandpa, ‘I give you permission to put me down. I’ve signed a paper.’
‘Did Alf sign a paper?’ says Charlie. ‘No one asked what he thought.’
‘Animals don’t think,’ says Russell. ‘You know that.’
‘How do you know?’
‘They don’t have choices. You have control over your mind and your actions. But if an animal is hungry, it eats when it sees food. It has no choice. It doesn’t think about it.’
‘Do we have control over our thoughts?’ I ask. ‘Things just pop into your head from nowhere, don’t they?’
‘That’s my point,’ says Russell. ‘As humans we can choose.’
‘If it’s what we do that counts,’ says Charlie, ‘then Dad’s responsible for killing Alf.’
‘I took a decision for the sake of a poor dumb creature,’ says Russell. ‘You would do it yourself.’
‘No I wouldn’t,’ says Charlie.
Charlie and Russell both stare down at their plates. The only sound is of cutlery on crockery, and a bit of chomping from Moose. Eventually Louise breaks the silence.
‘What do you think, Robin?’
‘Dad says I think too much,’ I say, neatly sidestepping her question.
‘I don’t think enough sometimes,’ says Charlie. ‘I’m sorry, Dad. I know you loved Alf too, and it was the only thing to do and you tried your best to save him. I know it sometimes has to be done but I can never get used to it.’
‘I didn’t just do it on impulse,’ says Russell. ‘I thought about it long and hard. But I’m sorry too. I should have given you more warning.’
They smile at each other and Russell reaches across the table and Charlie does the same and they clasp hands with tears in their eyes.
There’s a sort of embarrassed but pleased silence around the table. Grandpa speaks again.
‘In the war …’
‘No!’ shrieks Louise. ‘Not this again, Dad.’
‘In the war,’ he says, ignoring her and winking at me, ‘you couldn’t get steak like this. I remember a time when all I had to eat was five small raisins.’
Moose grabs the lifebelt that Grandpa has thrown us. ‘But not as small as his nuts,’ he yelps.
Everyone laughs and from then on the evening flies by. I hardly seem to have settled in when it’s time to go home. I thank Russell and Louise for the delicious meal, say goodbye to Grandpa and Moose and step outside into the cold night with Charlie. She’s so beautiful that I can hardly breathe as I put on my skis.
The moon has sprinkled the snow with a million diamonds. The air is clear and crisp and I can feel the cold snapping at my ears. I take my balaclava out of my jacket pocket and pull it over my face.
‘Well, that was a great night,’ I say quickly because even though I don’t want to leave Charlie, I have to get away before she has a chance to ask me about the money. ‘Thanks so much …’ I start to say.
Charlie holds one finger up to her lips. She closes her eyes and turns her face up to mine. She wants me to kiss her! I rip off my balaclava and as I do I see that it’s Dad’s. I must have grabbed his by mistake. There’s a rim of his dried white spit on the edge of the mouth hole.
Charlie’s standing there with her face tilted up and
her eyes closed, gently smiling and waiting. But a picture is forming in the depths. It’s going to erupt like a cork out of a bottle. It’s going to ruin the moment. Hell.
I have to run. It’s the only way to stop it. The sickening image builds up in my head like a shaken bottle of champagne.
I dig my stocks into the snow and push off, my skis biting into the powder as I swoosh down the slope leaving Charlie there kissing the bloody moon.
I lost my chance.
And the cork popped anyway.
The Habit
There were four basic rules in the monastery.
No monk may enter The Door of His Desire
No monk may drink alcohol
No monk may make love to a woman
No monk may pray for himself
Brother Gordon had trouble with Rule Number Two. He had been a monk for twenty-five years but he still wanted a bottle of champagne more than any other pleasure. He dreamed of champagne. He thought of champagne night and day. He was tortured by images of bottles of champagne. He longed for a drink.
Brother Theo had trouble with Rule Number Three. He had been a monk for ten years but he still longed for a woman more than any other pleasure.
Every evening Brother Theo lay on his hard wooden bed and dreamed of naked women. He thought of bare breasts night and day. When he conjured up a naked woman in his mind all other thoughts disappeared. If only he could have the real thing all his troubles would be over.
Every evening Brother Gordon lay on his hard wooden bed and dreamed of champagne. He fought with the images of champagne that filled his mind but he couldn’t get rid of them. He was in agony. The more he thought about not thinking about champagne the more the pictures formed in his head. One night, he could stand it no longer: he knelt by his bed and broke Rule Number Four.
‘Oh, God,’ he cried out. ‘Please deliver me from this torture. Give me a drink of grog.’
The Nest Page 2