Larry pushes the jug towards Cassie. She pours water and drinks, eyes closed with the pleasure of it. Graham watches the smooth swallowing motion in her throat.
‘What do you do?’ Mara says, suddenly jabbing her finger in Cassie’s direction. ‘He, he is a painter.’
Cassie wipes her mouth. ‘I teach part-time, adults. Gardening and stuff.’
‘She does all kinds of things,’ Graham says. ‘Mind if I light up now?’ He flicks his lighter and inhales the smoke. ‘She’s a great cook.’ He breathes out smoke. He feels suddenly good. Happy, lazy, half-pissed. In the mood for sex. ‘A great cook.’ Great in bed, he thinks.
‘A terrifically useful person.’ Larry says.
‘Sounds like an obituary!’
‘But true,’ Graham says, putting his hand on her leg and squeezing. ‘A very practical person.’
‘And practically pissed too. Shall I make some coffee?’ She stands up and staggers a bit, catches her hip on the corner of the table. ‘Ouch. Shouldn’t drink at lunchtime.’ She begins to stack the plates.
‘Leave it for now,’ Larry says. ‘Go and lie down. I’m sure you’d like a lie-down.’
‘Well,’ she grins and holds on to the table as if for balance. ‘Yes.’
Larry meets Graham’s eyes and smiles.
Nine
Graham follows Larry’s eyes following Cassie down the steps and round the side of the house.
‘I wonder what it’s like to be blonde,’ Mara says. An iridescent green fly crawls at the corner of her lips. ‘I wonder if you see colour differently through different-coloured eyes? I’ve always wondered.’
‘There is no way of telling,’ Larry says.
‘No.’
They sit for a moment, considering this. Flies drag their legs stickily over the plates, making Graham itch. Rubs his chin. Must shave. He should have got up when Cassie did. Feels stuck now. He rolls himself another fag.
‘Smoke?’ Larry says.
‘Sorry, want one?’
‘Got some nice grass –’
‘Yeah, sure.’ He conceals his surprise in a yawn. Cassie will want to sleep anyway. Maybe after a smoke Larry will mellow. He slaps away a fly. Doesn’t understand how they can be so indifferent to them – though it’s Mara they crawl on, not Larry. Impossible to imagine flies crawling on him. Mara eventually lifts her hand and flicks the fly off her lip and into the air where it buzzes dully and alights on Graham’s arm. He shakes it away, slapping the skin against the crawly sensation of its feet.
‘Won’t hurt you,’ Mara says, smiling at him. ‘Just a little fly.’
Larry pinches a line of dried grass on to a brown cigarette-paper. His tongue flickers like a lizard’s at the paper.
‘Neat?’ Graham says.
Larry nods and juts his head forward for a light. Graham flicks at it with his Zippo.
Will he ever get used to it, flies or any of it? He lolls back in his chair, stretches out his legs, looks around him. A couple of lamps and many candles and candle ends are balanced on the wide veranda rail. Rusty wire implements, meant for God knows what – one a trap maybe? – hang from nails.
Mara yawns. ‘Sleepy,’ she says. She stands up, steadying herself on the table, treading on the hem of her sheet so it tugs down to show the side of a breast.
‘Be with you shortly.’ Larry looks at his watch.
‘He’s wonderful to me.’ Mara puts a hot and heavy hand on Graham’s shoulder. ‘Where would I be?’ She fills a glass with water, gulps it greedily and fills it again, takes it with her down the steps, holding it with two hands like a child. The back of the sheet is damp where she’s been sitting, a butterfly print of buttocks and thighs. She goes inside the shed and closes the door.
‘Ta.’ Graham takes the skinny spliff, damp from Larry’s mouth. He closes his eyes and sucks in a lungful of sweet smoke. Immediately the floor beneath him seems to lurch. ‘Jesus,’ he says.
Larry throws his head back. ‘Nice, eh? There is some advantage in genetic modification!’
Graham squeezes his eyes shut. Can’t think. Half-cut, disorientated, jet-lagged, now this blast, which is not what he needs now. Shouldn’t smoke, doesn’t do his brains any good. Never has. Makes him act up. Makes him paranoid. Inside his eyelids lights fizzle like sparklers. He opens his eyes to see Larry smiling, cool as a bleeding cucumber.
‘Interesting. A sensitive constitution,’ he observes.
‘I’m fine.’ Graham takes another shallow puff, holding the smoke in his mouth for a moment before exhaling and handing it back to Larry.
‘Nothing to be ashamed of,’ Larry says.
Graham gets up to demonstrate his fineness, props himself against the veranda rail, his back to the view.
‘Do you have a particular sensitivity to drugs of any kind?’
Graham stares at him. ‘What? Why?’
‘Cassandra?’
‘Why?’
‘You and Cassandra – how are you, together –’ Larry hesitates, ‘physically?’
‘Fuck off,’ Graham says, on a whoosh of anger. He shuts his eyes a moment. Squeezes his hands into fists, takes a breath, gets himself under control. ‘Sorry.’
Larry shakes his head, and leans towards him. ‘Listen, my friend. If you and I are going to get on,’ he begins and stops, as if choked. Christ. He’s not going to cry? Graham turns his back, looks down at the stand of gum trees, tiny from here, sharp against the blue. A parrot hops on to the veranda rail, pink and grey, what seems to be a common type. It tilts its head and eyes him maliciously.
Larry clears his throat. ‘Galah,’ he says.
‘Sorry?’
‘Name of the bird.’
Yella heaves himself up, goes over to his water dish and laps. Sits down and scratches his ear, dust puffing from his fur. Cassie will be naked, maybe not asleep, maybe waiting for him in bed. And he thinks of Mara. Waiting for Larry? Hard to picture it. He grins at the picture that does flash into his mind, Larry’s spindly white legs between Mara’s monumental thighs.
‘What about you and Mara, physically?’
Larry looks back at him without expression.
‘None of my business?’ Graham suggests. A parrot screeches behind him, making him start. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘this wasn’t my idea, right? Let’s get it straight. I came to please Cassie. And I hope to get back into painting. OK?’
Larry’s face is bland. ‘Absolutely. And I too would prefer not to be here. I stay here only because of Mara.’ His expression seems fragile, a thin mask. Bravery? Bravado? Graham feels a spasm of pity. Little jumped-up control freak that he is, Larry is trapped. There must be, somewhere in there, an OK streak. You have to give him that.
He turns, feels as if the world is turning with him. Grasps the veranda rail to hold himself still. Larry offers the spliff but he shakes his head. Larry takes one more puff and grinds it out. ‘She takes some looking after,’ he says. ‘Some patience. Without the medication she’s –’ he opens his hands. ‘And even with it, it’s not always possible to keep her stable.’
‘Where do you get it?’ Graham says. ‘The “medication”.’ A smile worms through him; he imagines ridiculously, a giant bottle and spoon. ‘You don’t have the “flying doctor”.’
‘Mara’s condition is a bit beyond any “flying doctor”, I’m afraid.’ Larry stands up, starts stacking plates. ‘I’ll do these. This time, while you’re still acclimatising.’ He smiles. ‘By the way we are both looking forward immensely to seeing your work, seeing you begin to paint. What you make of –’ he gestures to the view.
Graham feels something twist in his guts. He is, it comes to him, afraid. He wants to be painting again, didn’t realise how much till this moment. How unsatisfied he’s been. Unsatisfied. That’s what’s been the matter. For years. It seems so simple. Why has it not come to him like that before?
‘You look done in,’ Larry says. ‘Why don’t you go and rest now, with Cassandra.’
‘Cassie. She hate
s Cassandra.’
Larry nods, sadly? And Graham feels bad again, obscurely guilty. ‘I’ll go and get some kip, then. If you’re sure.’
Graham goes down the steps, looks at the peeling blue door behind which Mara will be awaiting her ‘medication’. He almost trips over a hen, scrabbling something out of the ground, surely not a worm in this dryness. It helter-pelters away on its long stringy legs, squawking.
As he walks round the house, he sees the end of a ladder, sticking out from under the veranda. He bends down to look. Can see the frozen shape of the goanna – good fortune, eh? – under there along with Christ knows what else junk. He pulls out the ladder, a tall one, old grey wood, rusty rivets. There’s a trick he used to do. Way back when. The ladder sheds bits of web and crud and he drags it away from the veranda, stands it up, balances it, up against nothing. If he can do it, then it’ll all work out OK.
He holds the smooth, wide, textured sides and looks up at the narrowing perspective of the rungs as they recede, counts: twelve. He puts one foot on the bottom rung, then the other. The ladder holds. He goes up a rung, then another. Remembers the physical sensation of it. The ladder swaying, you have to oppose the sway, concentrate on the balance, adjusting all the time, a rung at a time, balance, balance, balance and fuck it all, he nearly does it! Gets up more than half the rungs and stands there swaying, high in the blazing afternoon.
As she’d sat, wine glass in hand, her eyes had suddenly gone unfocused, tiredness had crashed into her like a car. Jet lag maybe. She’d thought she’d got away lightly. She’d half staggered back, went in the dunny, shutting her nose to the smell, her ears to the deep booming of flies beneath her; splashed her face with water and then, at last, got into the shed, into their room, too warm but shadowy at least. Private. More homey now she’s brought in another chest and a couple of chairs, swapped the cowskin rug for the rag rug, and borrowed the patchwork quilt.
She’d peeled off her clothes, folded them over a chair and sunk down on to the soft old saggy bed to wait for Graham. Please don’t let him annoy Larry. What will they be talking about? But really she’s too tired and treacle-brained just now to care. Doesn’t feel right, naked and uncovered. That stupid feeling that someone can see. She pulls back the quilt and blanket, covers herself only with the thin pink sheet. Outside, the birds, a kind of budgerigar cheeping, maybe actual budgies and something else squawking. So much less sweet than English birds. How long till the foreign bird song starts to sound normal? The pillow is soft and she immediately begins to slide steeply and surely into sleep.
Sometime later and from some echoey cavern she hears Graham come in, hears the clink of his belt as it hits the floor, tips towards his weight as he gets into bed. She catches the sharp tang of coal tar soap and then he is kissing her, his face moist and bristly, breath hot with smoke and wine.
‘I climbed a ladder to the sky,’ he mumbles drunkenly into her ear.
‘What? Leave off.’ She tries to push him away.
‘Come on Cass –’ His hand goes to her breast and squeezes, travels down her belly and, though the advance is crude, his hand stirs her up. He makes a glow where he cups between her legs, like something radioactive. It’s time they got round to it, after all. She shifts her legs apart a little, kisses his smoky mouth. He touches her, one hot finger creeping into her folds, rocking back and forward, making her slippery, making her heart beat fast. She grabs his hips and pulls him against her. He pushes inside and she groans and gasps, it’s a surprise every time, how good it is, how he fills her till she feels her heart will burst. How good they are, the two of them. How she loves him, how whatever else she feels at other times, her body is in love with his. She digs her heels into his backside, arches up under him.
‘I love you,’ she says.
‘Me too.’
They do it very fast and hard. The kind of sex that leaves her wanting more, but now in this heat she’s happy to lie, sticky and pleasantly throbbing, listening to him fall asleep. She kisses him between his shoulder blades where a patch of black hair grows like a crop of silky grass. She’s never mentioned the hair to him, wonders if he knows it’s there. Hopes not. It’s like a secret between her and his body.
After only a moment, his breathing turns to snores. But she can’t sleep now. Randy, too hot, squashed. There’s no way they can avoid being squashed together on this dipping mattress. She always says ‘I love you’ first, and he always says, ‘me too’. The pedantic streak in her that she tries to suppress, squeaks its objection. He loves himself? That came from her dad, who always twiddled with any word you said. She’d hated it as a child and now she does it too. She turns over crossly. But why can’t he just say it first, for no reason. Maybe she should stop saying it and see how long before he notices – if he ever does.
She needs to pee again. But it puts you off, using that horrible dunny. Weird that there’s no bathroom in the house. Why haven’t they seen the rest of the house? They haven’t got past the kitchen. She tries to ignore, to deny, the full prickly feeling in her bladder but it’s no good. She heaves herself up and Graham rolls right into the middle, snuffling contentedly in his sleep.
She pulls on her dressing gown and sandals and goes outside. Facing the scrubby bush, small trees with leaves like tooled leather, she opens the dressing gown, holds it wide like wings, feeling the breeze on her body, quite delicious. If this place was near that gorge it would be perfect. A swim every day to keep them fit and clean and cool them down. She wonders how far to the nearest swimming pool. If they could only swim – even once a week.
No one around, no one to see. Some lovely parrots, pink and grey ones, squabble in the trees. The leaves make a silvery shushing, cool-sounding, almost like water. She walks a little way from the shed into the bushes and crouches down. The grass that looks so soft is like spines. She jumps up rubbing her bottom. Maybe that’s spinifex – good name for it if it is. Squatting again, feeling like a little girl indulging in an illicit pleasure, she watches the urine pooling between her feet, splashing her sandals, and sinking into the earth. A poor ant struggles up out of it waving a feeler. She goes to the sink, rubs between her legs with a soapy flannel. She rubs a bit harder than she needs to, the soap stinging the tender skin, feels her heart beginning to skip again, catches her breath – stops abruptly. What if someone could see? She pulls her dressing gown round her, hurries back inside to bed.
Ten
Graham bends over to study Cassie. Heavily asleep, hair sprayed over the pillow as if she’s fallen from a great height. One breast shows above the sheet, flattened by gravity, the nipple smooth, rosy. The same shade of rose as her lips. He puts the mug of tea down on the floor and sits gently on the edge of the bed, leans in close to her face. Her skin gleams, pale eyebrows damp, jaw loose, eyelids like frail veined petals. You can see her as a twelve-year-old, all the tension erased from her skin in that faraway sleepy place. When he kisses her, her eyes flip open and she looks at him without recognition, just for a startled second, before she frowns.
‘Hi,’ he says.
‘Been watching me?’
‘Brought you some tea.’
‘What’s the time?’
She hoists herself up to sitting, and her breasts, hair, everything, tumble into their everyday, wakeful order. She scrubs her eyes. ‘Couldn’t think where I was.’
He hands her the mug.
‘Ta. So, what were you and Larry talking about?’
‘We had a smoke.’
‘A smoke? Larry?’ She pulls a face. ‘Ouch, hot handles.’ She wraps an edge of the sheet round the handle. ‘Really?’
‘Grass. Yes.’
The frown lines between her eyebrows deepen as she gazes at her tea. She blows on the surface of it before she sips. ‘Get on OK with him?’
He shrugs.
‘Next time we’re in town I’ll buy some china ones,’ she says. Next time we’re in town? He looks at her. The feathery blonde tips of her lashes in the steam. Is she joking
?
She lifts her arm to loop her hair away from her neck. ‘Maybe he has it for Mara? The grass. For therapeutic purposes.’
‘Nah. She went to bed.’
‘I like these siestas. Where’s your tea?’
‘Going to drink it on the veranda. Shady. On the swing-seat.’
‘OK.’ She draws her legs up, rests the mug on the table of her knees. ‘Hey – all that about the rule!’ She sips tea through her smile.
He looks at her blankly.
‘“It is illegal to explain.” All that stuff. Do you think she’s putting it on?’
‘Not a bad idea,’ he says.
‘Hmmm. You’re not getting out of it that easily! We haven’t finished that talk – no, don’t look like that –’ she smiles. ‘I just want us to get straight, get everything straight then we’ll start again. Clean slate, sort of. If we’re seriously going to give it a go.’
‘OK,’ he says. ‘Fair enough. But later, eh?’ He gets up.
‘Wearing that sheet!’ she says. ‘Like some sort of toga!’
‘Yeah. Right. See you in a bit.’ The door bangs behind him as he leaves. Some of the little trees have things growing out of them, like big candles poking up. A weird type of flower. And wiry stretches of cobweb glinting between them. How do the spiders spin so far, from tree to tree? Assuming they are spiders and not some other Australian peculiarity he’s never heard of. His mouth feels like the bottom of a parrot’s cage only the parrots aren’t in cages, they are loose.
The front veranda steps are rotting and what was once the front door is blocked with all kinds of crap. He reaches for his tea and sits down on the swing-seat. It rocks back, creaking, rust flaking from the chains. He looks at the shearers’ shed through the bushes, twisted gums behind it, salt-water pump tower, a couple of red hens, a patch of that yellow stuff – what is it again? Looking this way, rather than from the back veranda, the scale is more familiar. And a couple of young gums with their white trunks – they could almost be silver birch. Maybe he could paint this? But what for?
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