Beauty?
He began to lean forward.
Surely he’s not going to . . .
His lips brushed hers, soft and full.
It felt as if she was falling through a cloud.
‘Mum?’
Lachie’s voice, right behind them. ‘What are you . . . ?’
Paula scrambled up like a guilty schoolgirl.
Lachie looked between her and Marcelo.
‘The drinks are ready.’
He turned on his heel and charged back towards the hotel at full speed.
‘Oh, no,’ Paula groaned. ‘He saw that.’
Marcelo nodded.
She hesitated, torn between her overwhelming desire to lie down in the sand with Marcelo, and her urge to run after Lachie.
‘I have to go,’ she said.
‘I know.’
She bolted after her son.
11
Lachie avoided Paula for the rest of the afternoon.
At first he stayed close to his grandfather, who was busy testing the dingo trap he’d been itching to use since they’d entered desert country. But when Marcelo offered to help Sid dig a pit for the trap a few kilometres from camp, Lachie declined to join them. Instead he helped his sister, who’d begun spring-cleaning the caravan.
Paula watched Catie remove the contents of the cupboards, passing items to Lachie for reorganisation. After almost a month on the road, the caravan and ute were in mild disorder—basic items were no longer in their designated places, which sometimes led to frustrating searches. Normally, Paula would have been the one leading the charge to tidy, but her standards had slipped.
After so many years, I’ve lost the will for order. But Caitlin clearly takes after me.
She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.
Paula lay on a wide, cushion-covered bench beneath the hotel’s veranda, waiting for a moment when she could corner Lachie alone. As she watched her children potter about the caravan, she reflected on how they’d adapted to their altered living conditions. Hamish was still in frequent contact with them, but they didn’t seem to be fretting about his absence, or the life they’d left behind in Melbourne. Probably because they knew they were going back, she thought. They barely discussed the Facebook incident now, and they’d managed to stick to her ‘Social Media Sunday’ rule. Overall, Paula was pleased to note, they both seemed to be enjoying themselves more than she’d expected they might.
Paula began to feel drowsy, until she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. Drifting into half-sleep, she could almost feel Marcelo’s soft lips brushing hers again.
The sound of her telephone woke her.
She hunted around, locating it beneath a newspaper.
‘Hi Jamie,’ she said, smiling.
‘Bedded the Brazilian yet?’
‘Well . . .’ Paula lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘I almost kissed him today.’
‘You didn’t.’ Jamie sounded genuinely shocked.
‘But we were sprung by Lachie.’
‘My God. I thought you were kidding about all of that.’
Her sister’s disapproval made Paula embarrassed.
‘Look, Jamie—’ Paula suddenly spotted Caitlin and Lachie now, sitting at a table on the hotel’s veranda, absorbed in their own activities. ‘The kids are here. I’ve got to go, sorry.’
‘Wait, Paula.’ Jamie’s voice was gentler. ‘I’m all for fun, but please be careful. I don’t want you to get hurt, or the kids. What’s it been, ten days since you met this guy?’
‘Eleven,’ Paula corrected. ‘Thanks, Jamie. I’ll call you back.’
She stood up from the bench, slipped her phone into her pocket and strolled towards the children. The sun was sinking in the west—how long had she been napping? With her cleaning complete, Caitlin now appeared to be penning yet another letter to Amy. Lachie was reading a sci-fi novel called Moondroids from Uranus, avoiding Paula’s gaze behind its schmaltzy cover: green aliens with spaghetti-like tentacles clambering over a derelict New York streetscape.
‘It’s almost sunset, kids,’ Paula said. ‘Maybe you should move to the caravan, Catie, or the mozzies will start biting. A letter to Amy?’
‘Yep.’ Catie stood up, stretched, and sauntered off.
‘Lachie,’ said Paula, turning in his direction, ‘can we talk now, please?’
‘Whatever.’
She fell in beside him. They began walking away from the camp site. The air was cooling quickly now, and the desert’s silence was punctuated by the squeaking and rustling of small nocturnal creatures. As they made their way through the low-lying scrub, Paula was certain she saw something slithering away in her peripheral vision, but by the time she’d turned her head, it was gone.
Despite the stilted silence with Lachie, Paula couldn’t help but feel exhilarated by the sunset. The russet earth beneath a darkening sky, the sun’s yellow arc dipping lower on the horizon.
‘Look at that, Lachie. The sunset looks just like the Aboriginal flag.’ She’d seen the black, yellow and red flag a thousand times before, on flagpoles and banners, but never brushed across the sky and the earth.
Lachie stopped walking and gazed out to the west.
‘Hey, yeah!’ he said, before quickly resuming a slightly bored expression.
‘Listen, Lachie.’ Paula reached for one of his hands, but he snatched it away. ‘Marcelo and I, we’re not . . .’ She paused, not knowing how to continue.
‘Look, I’m sorry, Lachie,’ she tried again. ‘It must have been very confusing to . . . see what you did today.’
He looked at her, incensed. ‘You kissed Marcelo.’
‘Kind of.’
She wasn’t sure how she’d classify it. Yes, their lips had touched. Yes, it had felt wonderful. But the whole thing was over before it had even begun, terminated by Lachie’s sudden arrival. And Marcelo had kissed her; she hadn’t really kissed back.
Had she?
Lachie was watching her, a slightly disgusted expression on his face.
‘It’s been really difficult for me lately, Lachie,’ she said. ‘What with Dad and everything.’
‘You didn’t have to kiss Marcelo.’
She tried to work out what was disturbing Lachie most. The fact he’d seen her kissing at all—she and Hamish rarely displayed affection in front of the children—or the fact it was a man other than his father?
‘Sometimes it happens, Lachie. Life’s more complicated when you’re an adult.’
‘Why?’ His eyes were shiny. ‘Why is it more complicated?’
It’s a reasonable question.
Years ago, she’d been sold the fairytale of lifelong romance. Girl meets boy, they fall in love, have children and grow old together. And up until a month or so ago, Paula had believed she was living that fantasy with Hamish—albeit with its challenges and monotonies. For better or for worse, she’d understood their life to be about simple choices between consenting adults; the mature acceptance of certain personal trade-offs for the preservation of the family unit. That was the arrangement she’d thought she’d shared with Hamish, at least, until he went and jeopardised everything—their relationship, their family, the life they’d created—by fooling around online with a teenage girl.
Paula sighed. ‘I don’t know why it gets more complicated when you grow up, Lachie. Things aren’t so black and white.’
Mere motherhood statements. Can’t I do better than that?
Lachie glared at her.
‘My life is complicated now,’ he said. ‘And it really sucks.’
She winced. My children are now actors in this complicated drama of Hamish’s making. A bolt of anger surged through her, the fury she’d suppressed since their departure from Melbourne. The names she sometimes called Hamish in her sleep, when rage ravaged her dreams.
Arsehole. Wanker. Philanderer. Cradle-snatcher.
But it wasn’t all Hamish, she had to admit.
She’d been an enabler in the whole sordid business,
by settling so thoroughly into domesticity. Permitting her roles as wife and mother to alter the woman Hamish had married. Erasing almost every part of her identity pre-children, until she was almost unrecognisable, even to herself.
She’d allowed that to happen. Encouraged it, in fact.
Lachie scuffed at the earth with the toe of his sneaker, avoiding her gaze. ‘When we get home, will we still live with Dad?’
The look on Lachie’s face instantly transported her back to his early childhood. The uncertainty, the vulnerability. All those days of kissing his bruises, comforting him in new company, carrying him past barking dogs and down treacherous stairs. He looked up at her now as he had a decade ago, trusting and hopeful and utterly fragile. As if she was queen of his universe, holding the key to his life and fate.
I cannot crush that trust, she thought.
‘I don’t know yet, Lachie. I have to talk to your dad first. I’ve been too angry to talk to him properly.’
It was an unpalatable truth. She couldn’t put off talking to Hamish forever. And as much as she didn’t feel like it, she owed him a chance to explain himself. It was only fair, a principle they’d attempted to instil in their children from the beginning.
‘Look, I’ll call Dad soon. And when we get back to Melbourne, I’ll sit down with him and talk about everything.’ She touched Lachie’s hand. ‘And whatever happens, it will be okay. I promise you.’
She saw a spark of hope in his eyes.
Suddenly he threw his arms around her neck.
She buried her nose in his hair; slightly greasy, but nevertheless him. The Lachie smell she loved.
‘And you won’t kiss Marcelo again until you’ve talked to Dad?’ He pulled away to look at her.
Was that a promise she really wanted to make?
‘Lachie, I’m not sure if that’s . . .’
His lips quivered. ‘You always tell us to fight fair. But you’re not being fair to Dad.’
Paula felt utterly conflicted.
She looked back at the caravan, where Caitlin was sitting at the table writing to Amy; their missives sometimes ran to twenty pages. Her father and Marcelo were outside having a beer now, presumably having finished digging their pit. The regular buzzing of the portable fly-zapper suspended near the caravan door was audible even at a distance.
‘You’re right, Lachie,’ she said finally. ‘I need to hear your father out.’
Before I go kissing another man.
‘Promise?’ he asked.
‘Promise.’
She nodded towards the caravan. ‘Let’s go. Your grandfather’s threatening to sing “Help Me Rhonda” at karaoke tonight. I think we need to talk him out of that.’
Lachie grinned at her.
As they walked back together, Lachie wound an arm through hers.
She’d done the right thing by the kids, she thought, as well as Hamish. Jamie would probably applaud her maturity too.
This is what adulthood is all about.
They arrived at the Norseman bar just after eight o’clock, through a parking lot now packed with two- and three-trailer road trains. Rhonda had suggested they come early, as seats filled quickly. Dozens of truckies planned a stopover in Norseman on karaoke night, apparently; it was the highlight of their monthly calendar.
A wall of smoke hit them behind the saloon doors. The national no-smoking protocols clearly hadn’t reached Norseman, or weren’t being enforced. The hotel pub was packed with beards, tattoos and testosterone.
Rhonda was holding court behind the bar, goading a queue of men. She waved at Paula with girlish excitement, pointing to a high round table in the corner with a handwritten sign perched on top: Reserved for caravan park guests only.
Paula waved back gratefully.
The table was positioned close to a makeshift stage, with five bar stools clustered around it. Paula waited until the children had sat down on either side of Marcelo, then said, ‘I’ll get some drinks.’
She picked her way through the crowd of truckies nursing stubbies, some chatting to clusters of local women wearing tight jeans, low-cut tops, high heels and bright lipstick. It crossed Paula’s mind that perhaps they were prostitutes trucked in for the evening.
‘Where has everyone come from?’ she asked Rhonda, when she reached the bar.
‘We’ve got no night-life in the desert, darl,’ said Rhonda. ‘So we take every chance we can get. Had a few couples meet here at karaoke, even had a wedding last year.’ She grinned with pride. ‘You never know, you might find someone here ya self, if you’re on the market.’ She filled three beer glasses with straw-coloured pilsener, and another two with soda water.
Rhonda leaned towards her. ‘Are you with the Brazilian? He’s attracting quite a lot of attention.’ She nodded at a group of local women, all long hair and hard faces, tittering in a corner.
Paula blushed. ‘No, I’m not with Marcelo.’
‘Ooh, Marcelo. Can’t wait to tell the girls he’s available.’
Paula lifted the tray of drinks from the bar and turned to make her way back to their table. Suddenly she heard a familiar voice from behind the microphone.
She froze.
Her father was sashaying across the stage, belting out the Beach Boys’ ‘California Girls’. He gesticulated at the crowd of mostly middle-aged males with beer guts, who’d presumably spent the better part of the day behind a steering wheel. Judging by the appreciative tenor of their whooping, her father was successfully conjuring the image of southern girls, northerners and mid-west farmers’ daughters.
As she nudged her way across the room, Paula watched her father in disbelief. He was crooning and swaying and revving up the audience, until most of them were singing along with him. When she reached their table, Caitlin and Lachie and Marcelo were standing too, cheering him on.
By the final chorus, Sid had removed his shirt in a mock striptease, and was rubbing it across his back as if towelling off after a shower. Or perhaps a surf, thought Paula, gawping at his theatrics. Two local women, giggling hysterically, clambered up onto the stage and began pawing at his chest.
They really don’t get out much, Paula thought.
Her father was enjoying the limelight and, red-faced with the effort of it all, stood whistling the final bars of the song.
‘Thank you very much,’ he said, as the crowd bellowed their appreciation. Then he lifted his fists like an Olympic gold medallist and bounced off the stage.
He high-fived Marcelo, then downed half a beer on the spot.
‘What was that, Dad?’ Paula laughed, half shocked, half delighted. Her father, the desert karaoke star.
‘I dunno,’ he replied, grinning. ‘But it was a helluva lot of fun.’
Someone began calling for an encore. A single clap quickly became a rhythmic beat, hands and voices demanding that he return to the stage.
Over the next twenty minutes, her father delivered a selection of tunes perfectly suited to his audience. Robert Palmer’s ‘Simply Irresistible’, Marvin Gaye’s ‘Sexual Healing’, a rousing version of Men at Work’s ‘Down Under’. Finally, sweating and smiling like a seasoned performer, he serenaded the audience with a rendition of Neil Diamond’s ‘Sweet Caroline’—accompanied by almost everyone in the bar. Paula had to admit that to hear all those truckies singing their hearts out to Neil Diamond had an incongruous charm.
‘Thank you very much, gentlemen and ladies.’ Her father waved at a gaggle of women nearby. ‘Now it’s time for the real pros to have a go.’
He bowed and stepped off the stage.
A skinny blonde took the microphone and began wiggling her hips to the opening bars of ‘Heart of Glass’.
‘Gramps!’ Caitlin looked at Sid with admiration as he joined the table. ‘Since when have you been a rock star?’
‘Oh, I’ve spent some time behind the microphone at the odd Rotary function over the years.’
‘Singing?’ Paula pulled a face. ‘I thought it was all badges and barbecues.’
>
‘Rotarians have fun too, you know.’
She laughed.
‘So, Pow-la, will you sing with me?’
Marcelo’s words made Paula flinch. ‘Ah, no,’ she mumbled. ‘I’ve got a terrible voice.’
‘Go on, love,’ her father urged. ‘What about “Islands in the Stream”?’
I’d need a bit more bust for Dolly Parton.
‘No, no,’ Marcelo said. ‘“I’ve Had the Time of My Life”.’
She smiled, remembering the year she’d first seen the classic film Dirty Dancing, when she was Caitlin’s age. She’d watched it six times over one summer before buying the soundtrack. Sitting in her bedroom, staring at a poster of Patrick Swayze, listening to the duet over and over again until her mother threw open the door and turfed her outside.
But Mum’s dead now, and so is Patrick Swayze. And I’m still waiting for the time of my life.
Paula glanced at Marcelo. From the gleam in his eyes, he had his own Dirty Dancing story. Probably most people did, the world over.
‘Come, Pow-la,’ he urged.
Lachie glared at her across the table.
‘No, thanks,’ she said.
‘Why don’t you get up there, Catie?’ suggested Sid, nudging his granddaughter.
Caitlin sat straight-backed on the stool. ‘No.’
‘Go on, love,’ he urged. ‘You’ll be great.’
‘I really don’t think so.’
Marcelo turned to her. ‘Why not?’
She didn’t reply.
The singer on the stage—a bearded man wearing a green cap pulled backwards over long hair—had just finished a loud but off-key version of ‘The Pub With No Beer’.
Marcelo nodded at Caitlin. ‘Now is our chance.’
He caught her by the wrist and pulled her onto the stage.
She stood away from him, looking wooden. Although Caitlin was slightly taller than Marcelo, they made a handsome couple. A stage light shone from behind, catching the edges of Caitlin’s hair, making her seem almost ethereal. Marcelo looked swarthy and toned, his white t-shirt stretched tight across his chest. A woman wolf-whistled; Marcelo ignored her as he clasped the microphone.
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