‘Winton?’
‘Middle of Queensland. Place where Banjo penned his poem.’
‘I see, well, lucky that’s not why we’re in town.’ This was quickly turning very, very weird.
‘We’re supposed to be in Saddleton,’ Alice piped up, sounding unusually abrupt.
‘Saddleton, eh?’ Banjo shook his head and an odd, startling whistle sounded from between gapped teeth. ‘Not even close. Why don’t you all take a pew? You look thirsty.’
Thirsty? Yes, Paige was that, but a glance at Alice’s expression reminded her they’d consumed two litres of water between them since their last pit stop. She also thought Alice’s complexion had switched rather suddenly from rosy to white.
‘Are you feeling okay, Alice?’ she asked, to which Alice responded with a vague nod.
‘You might be wantin’ to use the facilities. Help yourselves.’ Banjo indicated the end of a cracked concrete path where Paige could make out a dark timber door with a picture and roughly handwritten words in white paint: ‘HIS/HERS/EITHER (BUT NOT TOGETHER).’
‘Thanks. We will.’
‘Go on, git!’ Banjo growled at a mangy dog, nudging the overweight beast whose big body partly blocked the pathway to the loo. The only thing to move was its tail—three lazy but heavy thumps. ‘I said git, Cobber.’ Banjo’s thonged foot, toenails black with dirt, nudged the dog into action, if you could call the lazy waddle action.
Poor old boy, Paige thought, watching the dog surrender his spot in the late afternoon shade—sagging hips, back legs bent and barely holding his weight as he shuffled towards a green plastic bucket filled to the brim with water, a hind leg dragging the toes of one paw over the concrete.
‘See, Mummy? He’s got a bed leg, too.’
‘So he has.’ Paige smiled. Matilda’s ‘bed leg’ comment was a loving reference to the way Paige would struggle to get her dodgy left leg working each morning. ‘Let’s wait over there for Nana Alice.’
Alice and her weak bladder had reached the toilet first; not hard with a shy Matilda stuck to Paige like a barnacle. Jiggling on the spot, willing Alice to hurry, Paige tipped her head to one side for the instant it took to recognise that the silhouetted couple sketched under the lettering on the toilet door were in a rather ribald position. She did a double take in case she was mistaken. Hadn’t she been useless at those annoying inkblot tests inflicted on her during the initial phase of her rehab? Okay, so the therapy sessions weren’t exactly inkblot tests, but whatever picture or problem the therapist presented, Paige would always say something provocative towards the end of the session to shock, desperate for a reaction from the serious young girl who, truth be told, was literally driving her crazier with so-called brain exercises. Each session was to help Paige develop a new ‘skill’; most were skills she’d never, ever use again, such as writing words back-to-front and upside down, or writing with her left hand, then her natural right. The pretty young therapist even had Paige hold up words while looking in a mirror. Never mind that Paige’s face at the time was not mirror-friendly. That issue was a challenge for yet another therapist. By the end of every brain workout Paige was certain the young woman had thought her obsessed by sex.
‘Sweetheart, you have to get off Mum, please.’ Paige imagined hearing the popping sound as she plucked Matilda from her leg. ‘Be brave.’
Brave like your mummy who ran away from her life and needed to take a grownup along . . .
Despite Paige’s initial reluctance, she was glad Alice had insisted on accompanying them. The woman had been there for all the important events: puberty, graduation, marriage, childbirth, as well as in sickness and in health when it should have been Robert. Aunty Alice, as she’d initially called her, had been Paige’s ‘other mother’ even before Nancy died. Paige had figured out early on in life—although she couldn’t exactly remember when—why there had never been any men around the house. Following Nancy’s death, when Paige was barely into double digits, a heartbroken Alice had, without question, taken over the mothering role fulltime. While not ignorant of her mother’s sexuality, witnessing the extent of Alice’s grief let Paige understand the special bond the two women had shared. Switching from ‘Aunty Alice’ to ‘Mum’, even though the word always sat a little heavy in Paige’s heart, meant fewer questions and curious stares from the neighbourhood kids. She’d become plain Alice sometime after Paige’s twenty-first birthday, while to Matilda she was always Nana Alice and that made Paige happy for them both.
A quiet woman, Alice Foster had a way about her. Robert called it interfering. Paige preferred to think of it as control by stealth, not minding too much. Alice had stayed all those years ago when she could have left to live her own life. Rather than abandoning Paige wherever people dumped unwanted orphans, she’d taken on the role of single mother for a child she hadn’t carried or nurtured through those first, formative years. They’d already shared the grief of watching someone they loved fade before their eyes. Years later, during the early stages of Paige’s recovery phase, Alice’s being on hand twenty-four-seven had further cemented their bond, and to a point where Robert might well have complained. Rather than making a fuss though, he simply spent more time at work: going in earlier, coming home later. Most weekends he’d escape to the golf course.
On the surface, Alice and Paige rarely disagreed, but that was mostly due to Paige’s compliance and peacekeeping efforts. Still, it didn’t stop the situation at home resembling a festering pimple sometimes, the kind best left alone to avoid lifelong scars.
‘I don’t want to know,’ was one of Alice’s favourite sayings, until last December when Paige announced her road trip plans. Suddenly Alice had been all ears and bursting with opinions.
‘Ridiculous, Paige!’ she’d scoffed. ‘You’re in no fit state to traipse off to some distant dust bowl, much less drag your young daughter along. You’re supposed to be recovering.’
‘I’m recovered,’ Paige insisted. ‘Didn’t you see the report? Two years and this is as good as it gets. So a change of scene and some fresh country air will do me the world of good. Robert thinks I should get out more; he said as much not too long ago. I think a road trip is perfect.’ Paige meant it too, buoyed by the idea of her and Matilda travelling the wide open spaces of country New South Wales, windows down, wind tangling their hair as they laughed and sang happy road trip songs and—
‘No, Paige.’
‘No?’ The order whacked Paige to attention, the tiny trace of teenage rebellion she thought she’d outgrown twenty years ago jerking her body stiff. ‘I’m sorry, Alice, there is no No. I’ve made up my mind. I’m getting away for a while and this place looks perfect. How many reasons do you need?’
Was the attempted abduction of a boy outside Mati’s school by a bearded man in a decommissioned Mr Whippy van not enough reason to whip her daughter away from this city? It hadn’t been the first incident either. Now the school had every parent’s mobile number so text messages could warn of security breaches, or send reminders to discuss stranger danger with their kids. It seemed every second day the nightly news was reporting a child stolen or missing. Not even Sydney’s sleepiest suburbs were safe. No wonder Paige’s nightmares about losing a child had resurfaced. Trading the city for a country lifestyle, even if only for a couple of weeks, would be two weeks Paige would not have to worry about keeping tabs on her daughter’s whereabouts, or worrying about her being five minutes late home from her friend’s house down the street.
‘Paige, those sort of things don’t happen in Berowra.’
‘Maybe you’re right. Nothing does happen around here. Maybe that’s why I’m so restless I could scream.’ Especially now she knew there was no returning to the profession she loved. It was official; Going Gourmet Magazine didn’t want Paige back.
‘In time,’ they’d said, at first, sympathetically.
‘Too much stress,’ they’d moved onto arguing.
‘Stay home for a bit,’ they’d encouraged emphatically, with a
final, ‘Take it easy, Paige. See how it goes. Things are bound to work themselves out and you’ll be back to normal in no time.’
Oh, they’d worked themselves out all right, but despite intensive therapy—physical, occupational, psychological—she remained far from fine or normal, in her opinion. Life was reduced to the occasional school tuckshop we-are-desperate roster, yoga classes and a part-time blogging job telling the masses how many ways to use canned beans, salt-laden tomatoes and plastic cheese. If not for her personal Home-Baked Blog—a whimsical waste of time that would be better named the Half-Baked Blog as at last count she had a mere fifty-five followers—she’d go crazy for sure.
Let’s not forget your latest flight of fancy and time-waster, Paige. How hanging out at the mall can add a little spark to a life as plain as a Pyrex plate.
Not that she’d mentioned Mall Man to the family in the end, just like she hadn’t mentioned her husband’s infidelity to Alice. She and Robert had enough issues already without Alice hearing that twelve months ago, with his wife sick at home, Robert had slept with Rudolph the night before Christmas. At least that was the image that sprang to Paige’s mind every time she thought about the woman she now knew as Meeschell.
She’d found out about the affair in the usual way—the someone-told-someone-who-told-someone-else-who-then-told-anyone-who’d-listen grapevine at Robert’s work, although it required a year for the news to reach Meghan, the closest to Paige of the company directors’ wives’ club. With Meghan the least chatty in the small circle, Paige could only imagine what the other wives might have been saying for the last twelve months.
‘I’m so, so sorry, Paige,’ Meghan had gushed down the line before Paige had the telephone to her ear. ‘I only just found out on Facebook. Facebook! Someone reminiscing about last year’s party. I could’ve killed that husband of mine for not telling me twelve months ago when it happened. So yesterday I threatened him I’d go shopping with his AMEX card if he didn’t tell me everything. Myer’s sale does look fabulous,’ she clarified—rather strangely, Paige thought, given the circumstances. ‘I insisted he sack the little cretin responsible for the appalling post and tell me absolutely everything.’
That everything was promptly conveyed to Paige in a way that seemed more to do with Meghan needing to purge herself—a duty to be performed, or wives’ club etiquette in which Meghan had been unlucky enough to draw the short straw. For whatever reason, it hadn’t occurred to Paige to confront her husband that day, preferring her head-in-the-sand strategy, in the hope it would all go away and the new year would be a new start.
If only.
Far from going away, the incident she’d tried to ignore had found a forever place in cyberspace, shared on Facebook by someone Paige didn’t even know—aka the Little Cretin.
‘It’s old news, Paige,’ Robert had explained when finally confronted.
‘Old news?’
‘What I mean is . . . There was no affair. It was only once, and a year ago,’ he added, as if the passing of time should somehow reduce the impact.
‘It was the night before Christmas, Robert. That’s Christmas Eve.’
‘And I was drunk. Please, Paige, you have to believe me.’
Paige closed her eyes but only saw her husband and a woman tagged in a Facebook photo, along with the Little Cretin’s comment:
Christmas is a-cum’in. Will Robert be getting another fat!
Paige recognised the background to the photo. The retired ferry-turned-function centre at Darling Harbour was the regular venue for every Walsh, Dowling & Strom bash. She’d never missed an event in all the time Robert had worked with the company, except a year ago when she hadn’t been well enough. Strange that her initial thought, as she regarded the Facebook photo Meghan had told her about, had been how disrespectful it was of the woman to recycle a charity Red Nose Day nose in such a frivolous and inappropriate fashion. Teamed with a faux fur-trimmed mini skirt, Santa-red bustier and fishnet stockings, the combo all looked particularly trashy on the bottle blonde. Obviously, Robert didn’t share his wife’s opinion, because according to Meghan, on the night before Christmas, when nothing was stirring, not even a mouse, Robert had banged Rudolph in the back seat of his company BMW before getting a room for himself because, apparently, he couldn’t drive home.
And so it was, as one difficult year ended, another had begun with a caught-out husband, a confession, and some major begging for forgiveness—and, she expected, the Walsh, Dowling & Strom’s Facebooking Little Cretin losing his job.
By mid-January, the Turners’ lives had somehow been shaped back into some semblance of normality, all neat and respectable and only slightly skew-whiff, as if Rudolph had been nothing more than Christmas make-believe. But something had happened that Christmas over a year ago, according to the little cretin’s recent Facebook post piece. It had happened to Paige while she recuperated. Learning only last month about her husband’s betrayal shattered the last piece of self-confidence she might have had—life stripped of everything she loved, everything she was good at, everything she trusted.
Thank heavens for Alice—her rock—for assuming control, for comforting and supporting, even though she didn’t know details. Why Paige hadn’t shared the Meeschell incident with her she wasn’t sure. Alice was the one person in her life Paige could trust, the one who had protected Paige and plucked her back from the brink two years ago. After a while, the news of Robert’s infidelity somehow seemed a relief, as if finding out about Meeschell had been the permission Paige needed, the excuse to take time out from her marriage.
That protective impulse had Alice insisting she accompany Paige on her road trip, no matter how many ways Paige found to object. Normally a woman of few words, Alice’s final comment on the subject—perhaps more how she’d delivered it—had won out in the end.
‘If you can’t be talked out of this folly I’ll be coming with you. I can share the driving at least. It’s a long way to go on your own.’
‘Now you’re the one being silly.’ Paige softened. ‘I’m a big girl. I’ll be fine. And taking a holiday is hardly folly.’
Robert had put up little resistance, the perks clear: two weeks’ parole from a frosty wife and a break from making endless apologies. If Paige didn’t get away from him for a while she felt certain she’d go crazy. She and Robert would talk once Mati was settled into her new school year. By then, after some time away, Paige hoped to be thinking more clearly, feeling stronger and more forgiving.
Two weeks in the country. Enough time for whatever it was making Paige feel so empty and inadequate to miraculously fix itself.
Hmm, maybe not, she thought, perusing this tiny town with its empty streets, smattering of shops and a publican who, according to Matilda, was a real-life Mr Magoo.
Maybe her daughter watched too much television.
Wiping Mati’s hands with a tissue, Paige rejoined Alice and Banjo on the veranda, where they were discussing the state of the roads.
‘Feeling better?’ Banjo asked Paige. ‘Good to help out the weary traveller. Most folk buy a drink next.’
‘Oh, yes, yes, of course, a drink would be great.’ She hoped the sarcasm wasn’t obvious. After using several hundred metres of the thinnest toilet paper on the planet she could only imagine how watered-down the drinks might be in this establishment.
‘Good-o. Can always do with the business round ’ere.’ He winked and pushed a glass with a straw across a white plastic table, the surface punctured with brown cigarette burns. ‘Here ya go. Got the little-un a pink lemonade on the house. Hope a dash of grenadine is okay?’
‘A little won’t do any harm,’ Alice said. ‘Paige and I might have a lemon squash.’
‘Thank you, Mr . . . Banjo.’ Paige pinched back a smile as the big-bellied man hoisted her daughter onto a chair before shuffling into the bar.
Paige was tiring fast. Nine hours in a car with a six year old equalled eight too many. She wasn’t sure she could have handled another ‘Are
we there yet?’
‘Spending some money here is the least we can do,’ she said to Alice once the publican was gone. ‘How any establishment survives in such a tiny town, I don’t know.’ Mati slurped her drink through the straw, tiny legs swinging back and forth, and Alice huffed, staring down the near-deserted street, clearly miffed. ‘There must be more people somewhere. More than this one street, don’t you think?’
‘Hmm,’ was Alice’s only reply.
As small town tradition generally dictated, the pub occupied a prime position in the main street—a corner—although The Billabong’s exterior was far from the romantic, quintessential Australian pub epitomised on postcards and in tourist brochures, and not at all what Paige was used to seeing on the TV. On the opposite corner sat a general store-cum-petrol station-cum-newsagency, with postal boxes fitted into a wall. Each black box—more than two dozen—was numbered, some decorated with identifying embellishments or ribbons hanging lifeless, there being not a breath of wind. Further down the street was a food joint, easily identifiable by chunky wooden tables and bench seats under a pitted bull nose awning. A couple of teenage boys on skateboards stopped to toss stones at the Streets ice cream banners. Jacaranda trees lined both sides of the street and Paige imagined their purple crowns at the height of spring, and the mauve-coloured carpet that would later form on the ground. The scattering of other shops would take all of ten minutes to check out, so the travelling trio had time to rest, have a drink, maybe even eat something, not that food excited Paige these days. For her travel companions, though, she’d managed to pack an entire supermarket before leaving the city: bottled water, sandwiches, snack bars, fruit, Minties, jelly beans, and Aspirin. The plan being . . .
What plan, Paige?
There was no plan—or wouldn’t have been if not for Alice taking charge. Paige had done a little Googling to find accommodation, but it was Alice who’d checked driving times and routes, et cetera, while Paige pretended not to be fixated with her mother’s connection to the town of Saddleton, as evidenced in the one photo she and Mati had found.
Season of Shadow and Light Page 3