Season of Shadow and Light

by Jenn J. McLeod

  Mati’s scrunched-up nose and sideways glance mirrored her father’s perpetual smirk, as did her bluntness. ‘You’ll say it’s nice, Mummy. You always say everything’s nice.’ She charged off, running straight into her father’s legs.

  ‘Whoa, watch where you’re going, gorgeous girl.’ Paige’s husband dashed into the kitchen, dancing around his daughter to avoid Vegemite fingerprints on his new Greg Norman golf pants.

  Dashing seemed to be something Robert did a lot of these days. Dashing was also the best way to describe her husband: tall, lean and fitter now than he was in his youth, with wild blond locks he insisted on cultivating, obviously in case cute surfer guy ever became au courant in the bush suburbs. His best features by far were his staggering blue eyes and dark lashes to die for—lashes Paige could picture to this day weighed down with an ocean of sun-dried salt water and glistening in the sun. Years before settling into corporate life, Robert had bummed around on Manly beach getting tanned and buff, surfboard dug into the sand, those impenetrable blond locks repelling water droplets, but not girls. At least Paige thought her husband’s eyes were blue. It had been a long time since she’d seen them.

  Twenty years they’d been married. Twenty years that had started with his declaration of forever love one New Year’s Eve and marriage six months later. Forty-five-year-old Robert Turner rarely hit the beach these days, but he was probably still impenetrable to water. He was impenetrable to just about everything else—including his wife.

  Paige loaded fresh beans into the in-built espresso machine—the two-thousand dollar one requiring little human intervention, no bean tamping skills, no milk texturing expertise. The over-sized monstrosity had been included with the kitchen renovations she didn’t agree they needed. The sound of coffee beans whizzing around the grinder transported her back to the episode with the sad man outside the Coffee Club at the mall. She wondered why she hadn’t found an opportunity to mention the incident to Robert while they routinely brushed their teeth at the his-and-hers bathroom sinks before climbing into bed each night. One night she’d tried, but by the time her husband had finished shaving—shaving at night meant he’d have that perfect, consistently sexy stubble the next day—Paige was already tucked in on her side and lost in the Lisa Heidke novel, Claudia’s Big Break, wishing she could have a big break away of her own. She’d waited until her husband settled against three fluffed-up, feather-filled pillows to read the business section from the morning paper—again—and without rolling over said, ‘Robert . . . ?’

  ‘Hmm? Sorry, hon, did you say something?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Paige mumbled into her pillow, marvelling at how much like a sulky six-year-old she suddenly sounded.

  Alice looked up from her Sudoku magazine. She started to say something about the roadside flood indicators and Paige pulled her thoughts back to concentrate on the car descending into a small gully with a long, narrow bridge at the bottom. The warped and wiggling boards challenged the Audi’s suspension, the resulting rumble a lot like thunder, startling a noise out of a sleepy Matilda in the back seat. Paige activated the wipers, and with several blasts of water from the jets managed to wash away the dusty film. Last night’s summer rainstorm had been fierce, whipping the bedroom windows and waking Paige in a lather of sweat at 2 am.

  Was it the thundering rain?

  More likely another nightmare, she thought.

  Feeling the familiar sensation of tears forming, Paige turned her face slightly, away from Alice’s scrutiny. Two years had not lessened the devastating loss of her second-born. Telling Robert about her thoughts and the recurring nightmares no longer helped. According to him, if Paige fell apart she wasn’t coping, and if she kept a tight lid on her emotions she wasn’t coping either; hence the brave face she mastered in company. It stood to reason, once sleep came, all that holding back would be let go, manifesting as thrashing and whimpering, enough to send Robert into the spare room on too many nights. In the mornings, weary and frustrated, her husband would only half listen as she tried to explain the cryptic images and crying babies that had crowded her head at night. As usual, anything not based on fact had little chance of grabbing her husband’s attention away from the day’s stock report.

  With a recent dream more confusing than normal, thanks to a cameo appearance by Mr I-Thought-You-Were-Someone-Else from the mall, she’d ambushed Robert at the breakfast table while waiting for the coffee machine to do its thing. A glance out the window and across the yard confirmed Matilda was already safely ensconced in her Nana Alice’s kitchen. The two of them waved back, their ritual to signal Mati’s safe arrival. Soon enough they’d start whipping up the fete fare and the thought of coconut snow floating down to rest on Alice’s spotless linoleum floor made Paige smile as she turned to face her husband.

  ‘Robert, I need to talk to you about something.’

  ‘What’s that, Paige?’ he asked with a flick of his wrist, his face peering around the edge of the newspaper to check the time on his watch.

  She was partway through explaining her interpretation of the dream, and hadn’t even got to Mall Man, when Robert interrupted.

  ‘So, you’re Australia’s own psychic medium extraordinaire, like the one off that American TV show you watch. A down under Alison Whatshername? I suppose that makes me the flaky, soppy guy who plays the husband, moping around trying to be useful. Next you’re going to tell me Mati’s levitating in her bed at night and seeing dead people. Wooooo, spookeee!’ Robert laughed at his own ridiculous sound effects. ‘Like I’ve said before, Paige, you watch too much television. You need an interest.’

  ‘I have a job.’

  The espresso machine beeped and gurgled.

  ‘You need something that gets you out of the house.’

  Paige couldn’t see his face behind the newspaper so she didn’t know if he was smiling or not. At least he’d heard her. As she removed the tiny espresso cup, the coffee machine beeped, whirred and then robotically spoke the word, ‘En-joy.’

  ‘I’m trying to talk to you about something that’s troubling me.’

  ‘If either of you start predicting the stock market, you will give me the heads up, won’t you?’

  ‘Sometimes, Robert, you can be a real . . .’

  ‘In fact,’ he continued as if having the conversation all on his own, ‘rather than sit around all day watching TV, if you wanted something to do you could—’

  ‘I don’t sit around all day, Robert. And stop telling me I watch too much TV.’

  ‘All I’m saying is Mati’s last newsletter had another call for tuckshop parents. You love food. Why not volunteer a couple of days? They’d be lucky to have someone with your food background.’

  ‘And feed salmonella sandwiches to the students with off chicken and rancid milk I can’t smell? I don’t believe you’re even making the suggestion. And you know what else?’ Paige drew a deep breath to prepare for her rant and delivered the espresso to the corner dining nook, slamming the coffee cup down hard enough to send a crema geyser into the air.

  ‘Watch it, Paige!’ Robert brushed his trousers, barely looking away from his paper, but shifting slightly in case any liquid dare spill over the table edge.

  ‘Newsflash, Robert, you can’t possibly be that Joe character on TV. Soppy or not, at least he knows how to be a husband. He understands his wife, and when he doesn’t he still tries to be supportive and open to the possibility that he doesn’t know everything there is to bloody know.’ Paige punched the centre of the newspaper so hard one edge tore away from his hand.

  ‘Come on, hon, you’re being ridiculous. I’m joking. Besides it’s make believe. They’re actors on TV.’

  ‘Then why does their marriage seem more real to me than ours? I wish I was Alison Dubois with a wonderful husband. Instead, I married a bloody newspaper.’ She stormed out of the kitchen and back up to bed, throwing herself down hard, surprised by her own hysterics.

  Probably hormones, she thought through tears. At least that’s
what Robert would mutter to himself as he picked up his briefcase from the downstairs office, draped his suit coat over one arm and clamped the car keys to the black BMW between his teeth to open the front door. Somewhere about that time he’d think to walk back and kiss his wife’s cheek—keys and all. Only today was Saturday, so instead of a briefcase, it would be a golf bag from the cupboard under the stairs.

  ‘Paige, honey, I’m sorry. Are you all right? I’ll come straight back after the game and we can talk. Okay? I love you.’ His voice travelled up the stairs, the last three words landing softly on her ears.

  She could get up, go downstairs, see her husband off. Rob tried. He worked eighty hours a week, missing out on spending quality time with his daughter. He provided for his family every way he knew how—except emotionally, when Paige needed him the most. But as the front door slammed shut she squeezed her eyes tight and willed sleep to take her away in the knowledge she’d have a couple of hours before needing to be at Alice’s for the promised taste-test.

  When sleep didn’t come, Paige reverted to her usual habit of counting sheep to a make-believe metronome, which routinely and bizarrely resulted in a Waltzing Matilda earworm—the bit about the jumbucks and the shade of a Coolabah tree.

  Then sleep. But not before making a decision.

  Getting away for a while with Mati, before she started the new school year, had been a good decision.

  A good decision at the time, Paige mused as she steered down another steep hillside to Mati’s complaints from the back seat that she was bored and her ears had popped. They’d left the hairpin bends and high altitude behind and after a final sweeping curve, bordered by a botanical wonderland, the car emerged from the heavily wooded, mountainous descent they’d been travelling for some time. Spreading out before them was a landscape of rolling green hills that in the golden glow of a setting sun were the colour of ripe limes. This was the change of scene she had been hoping for, although with no sign of drought, it was far from the type of countryside Paige had expected from her internet searches and she could only think . . .

  Well, that’s definitely weird!

  2

  Not only was the surrounding countryside green, the town they drove into looked nowhere near as big as the regional centre Paige recalled seeing online. Perhaps this was the very outskirts and the CBD, where she’d find Greener Pastures Realty, remained a few kilometres away. And what were a few more kilometres after the day’s epic drive?

  Paige mirrored the half-dozen utes and battered tray-tops, turning the Audi all-wheel-drive wagon into a diagonal parking space and craning her neck to inch the vehicle towards the informal kerb made from a line of large, irregular shaped rocks painted white. Only last week she’d witnessed her husband’s tsking and head shaking as he inspected fresh scrapes on the alloy wheels. She wondered what Robert would say about the transformation of the once shiny, steel-blue duco into a mud-splattered mess.

  Even with large tray-top trucks and utilities parked nose-to-kerb on both sides of the small-town street, the thoroughfare remained wide enough to accommodate the largest of cattle trucks, a B-double rumbling by as she nudged Alice in the passenger seat.

  ‘Are you getting out?’

  ‘That smell leaves little doubt we’re in the country,’ Alice grumbled, tucking the Sudoku magazine that had occupied her lap most of the trip into the bag by her feet. ‘I dare say this is one occasion, my dear, when you’ll be glad not to have that nose of yours in good working order.’

  ‘I’m glad to be out of the car,’ Paige said, deciding to blame the long drive for Alice’s uncharacteristic flippancy about her condition, which right now included the all-too-familiar tingling sensation touring the length of her left leg. The feeling unnerved Paige a little. Nerve twitches these days did. She told herself cramps were to be expected after hours in the driver’s seat and busied herself coercing a sleepy child from the backseat booster.

  ‘Bean! Bean!’ Matilda whined as her faithful companion—of the stuffed and stitched variety—fell out of the car and into the dirt, along with a shower of empty lolly wrappers. Bean, the toy horse first handed down to Paige from her mother, was now Matilda’s, and the girl’s desire to cling desperately to anything of her Grandmother Nancy’s, even though they’d never met, warmed Paige’s heart. Despite a back seat strewn with various toys—most of them courtesy of Santa—it was Bean that comforted Matilda when she slept. Why Nancy had called the animal Bean, Paige never knew. She could only guess the name came from her mother’s love of food, which Paige had inherited.

  With the child out of the car and everything else shoved back in the car, there was a flurry of parental preening. Paige tightened a white scrunchie around the sleep-bedraggled brown plait, while a little spit on a finger wiped the white line of dried drool from the corner of her daughter’s lolly-pink mouth.

  ‘That’s better. Come on sleepyhead.’

  The pub they’d parked in front of seemed the busiest place in town and the most likely source for information, Paige reckoned. Hardly living up to the quintessential country hotel, with none of the typical adornments—intricate iron lacework, wrap-around verandas and leadlight windows—the plain frontage to this local watering hole with its peeling paintwork and plastic furniture exuded no charm whatsoever. Nor did the little bit of town she could see from her place on the footpath.

  So much for the quaint country get-away!

  If Robert were here he’d remind his wife of her tendency to romanticise everything—her inspiration, imagination and expectations all courtesy of soppy midday movies.

  The only typical small-town feature seemed to be the old bushie sitting on a plastic chair outside the door to the pub. ‘G’day to ya!’ He waved a hand and leaned forward, out of the shadow of the corrugated iron awning. Hatless, the man’s thinning head of fuzz, tinted gold by the setting sun, resembled a kind of crown. As Paige moved closer she saw his face was big and round with slits for eyes and eyebrows arched as if constantly amazed. Smack-bang at the centre of his moon-shaped face sat a disproportionately big nose that if squeezed, she thought, might actually honk like a horn. ‘And hello to you, little one,’ he said.

  ‘Say hello to the nice man, Mati,’ Paige prompted.

  In contrast to his generous proportions, Matilda was small, a thyroid condition slowing her growth to make her appear younger than others her age and, most concerning to Paige, a recent victim of playground bullying. Why anyone would pick on Matilda, Paige failed to understand. Her daughter was adorable, with a longer version of her mother’s black-brown waves, plaited rather than ponytailed, and hazel eyes that changed from green to brown depending on the light. Right now, with those eyes dopey from sleep and a travel sickness pill, she clung to her mother’s legs, making the simple task of taking a few steps near impossible for Paige.

  ‘He’s got Mr Magoo eyes, Mummy.’ Matilda expressed aloud—too loudly—Paige’s own thoughts as the man leaned further into the sun, forcing the slits-for-eyes on either side of his bulbous, vein-marbled nose to squeeze so tight that his eyebrows resembled two looping inchworms stopped for a natter on his forehead.

  ‘What’s your name then, eh?’ The man tried again.

  ‘This is Matilda,’ Paige answered.

  ‘Well, well, well, whadayaknow? Whadayaknow?’ The weird way he laughed each word made him sound like a crazed kookaburra and sent Mati back into her mother’s legs with such force she nearly toppled Paige. ‘You’d be the prettiest little swagman’s bundle I ever did see. That’s what a matilda is, you know?’ Without waiting for an answer, he said, ‘The folks round here call me Banjo, so I’m thinkin’ that kinda makes us instant mates. Put it here, partner.’

  Matilda didn’t make the connection between ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and Banjo Paterson, so Paige ruffled her daughter’s fringe reassuringly before reaching out to shake the man’s extended hand. ‘I guess it does. Nice to meet you, Banjo. I’m Paige, Matilda’s mother, and this is . . .’ Paige faltered, silly
after near on thirty years. Maybe the old adage: ‘Small town, small minds’ stopped her.

  ‘I’m Nana Alice.’ By now, the woman who described herself as a good-looking Judi Dench had run a quick comb through her cropped mop of grey hair, reapplied her lippy, and paused on the top step. She looked slim and presentable in a pale blue shirt tucked into dress jeans—complete with ironing creases—and a tan leather belt pulled tight around a thick waist. ‘I’m also stiff, exhausted, hot and—’

  ‘She’s been a hot one today, all right. If you’re looking for somewhere cool, you can’t get any better than The Billabong.’

  ‘The what?’ Paige followed his finger to a sign high above the doorway to the main bar and read aloud: ‘Billabong Hotel. Licensee: Banbhan Jones O’Brien Egan?’

  ‘That’s me. Banbhan Jones O’Brien Egan at your service,’ he said, forcing what had been a faint Irish lilt into a pronounced accent. ‘Now you know why the locals call me Banjo.’

  ‘I see. Well, Banjo, I’m hoping you can help us. I’m looking for something—’

  ‘We’re all lookin’ for somethin’, girlie, but as I always say it’s what we do when we find it that’s most important.’ He winked and waited, making Paige wonder if she was supposed to say something in return. ‘So, you like most city folk who find themselves here?’ he asked.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You’ve come out all this way thinkin’ Coolabah Tree Gully and The Billabong means the Coolabah tree from Mr Paterson’s 1827 ditty must be somewhere round these parts.’

  That was far from the reason for their visit, but Paige’s curiosity made her ask. ‘I gather there is no tree?’

  ‘Oh, there’s trees. Only not that tree. And most folk are mighty disappointed when they find the real deal is about 1500 kilometres that-a-way.’ He thumbed north. ‘Winton.’