Even my parents were concerned. Or at least, my father was concerned. They discussed it over Sunday breakfast one morning, when Jamie had failed to return home at all the previous night. My father hadn’t been awoken by his car coming up the drive in the middle of the night, and had dashed out first thing in the morning, worried his alertness was failing him. But Jamie’s car wasn’t in the spare garage. My father came back inside and sat himself down heavily at the table. ‘That boy is up to mischief,’ he announced.
‘Hasn’t he come home? I hope he’s alright and hasn’t rolled his car,’ said my mother.
My father grunted.
‘Well you’re always complaining about him drinking and driving, and now when he acts sensibly and stays down the plain instead of trying to drive home drunk, you make a fuss,’ said my mother.
‘Yes, but where’s he staying? That’s the point. Everyone’s going to know about it. His car will be parked outside her flat, which I’m told is on the main road. That’s where he’ll be, with his car parked outside, plain as day, for everyone to see.’
‘Well, people should be driving to church on a Sunday shouldn’t they, instead of past Belinda Pepper’s flat on the other side of town.’
There were no more excursions to the river with Jamie for me. As soon as he’d finished work on Saturday morning, he’d gobble down some lunch, dash into the shower, then into his car, and be off to Glenora to see Belinda. Usually, he’d come home late Sunday night. My weekends were desolate without him and there was nothing that could distract me from the fact that I’d lost him.
Sometimes I thought of biking down to the gaol. Once I even got halfway there, before turning round and coming home again. Somehow it would’ve seemed like a betrayal of Jamie. I harboured the conviction that I could win Jamie away from Belinda, if my dedication to the goal was strong and pure enough. Mucking around with Roy would spoil all that. It made me unworthy of Jamie. My theory was that I needed to be saintly and virtuous – the attributes that were wanting in Belinda. I also needed to be patient. It was taking a long time for Jamie to recognise my superiority over Belinda, but I was sure that ultimately he would. That was how it always worked out in books and on television.
I suffered on those Mondays when Jamie happily chattered about what a wonderful weekend he’d had with Belinda. I didn’t want to hear it. I tried withdrawing from him, ignoring him. I wanted him to be concerned and gently ask me what was wrong. I wanted him to miss our old companionship, to miss me. But it was impossible to be cold with Jamie for long. His mood was always so buoyant, his company so beguiling, that he could always tease me out of my attempts at isolating him. I couldn’t resist him.
I felt so lonely and confused. I spent my weekends redoing chores that I’d done with Jamie earlier in the week, reliving the memory. It was a huge relief to look up from the ditch I was transforming into a canal one Sunday afternoon and find Lou standing off from me, watching. She didn’t say hello. Instead she marched up to me so officiously I worried she was going to punch me in the face. Instead, she apologised. I was astounded. Then I got suspicious. It was completely out of character for her to admit fault. There had to be an ulterior motive. It didn’t take long for her to reveal herself. She didn’t even wait for me to reciprocate with an apology for what I’d said. As soon as her quick, terse sentence was uttered, she insisted that we go and investigate Jamie’s hut. Immediately.
I shook my head. ‘We’re banned from there. You know that.’
It wasn’t my mother’s warnings that restrained me but my desire to keep Jamie to myself. There was no putting Lou off. ‘You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I’ll go look myself,’ she said, setting off towards the hut.
I wasn’t having her poking round over there by herself. I hurried after her. ‘We should only look through the window,’ I said.
‘Okay,’ said Lou, in a voice that betrayed she wasn’t really listening.
‘I’ve been over there heaps of times before anyway,’ I boasted. ‘Jamie asks me over there all the time. In the evenings.’
Lou was impressed. Though the truth was that since he’d met Belinda, no invitations had been forthcoming.
‘What do you do?’ asked Lou.
‘Oh, watch television. He drinks beer and smokes and I have a wee sip and a puff,’ I said.
That wasn’t strictly true either.
‘Does he have any Playboys?’
‘I’ve never seen any.’
‘S’pose he doesn’t need them, going out with Belinda Pepper.’
I didn’t answer. I didn’t like to think about what Lou was insinuating. We came to the hut and Lou eagerly peered through the window. ‘He’s got a guitar,’ she noted approvingly. ‘And cowboy boots. What’s that?’
‘Where?’
‘A photo, stuck up on the mirror. Who is it?’
There was a photo stuck to the mirror that hadn’t been there the last time I’d been invited over. ‘I’m going to take a look,’ said Lou.
‘Lou,’ I protested.
‘Look, I don’t think they’ve got clothes on in that photo. All I can see is skin.’
I squinted. She seemed to be right. Lou yanked the door open and I tried to push past her to get to the photo first. She tripped me up and coolly walked past me, grovelling on the ground, to examine the photo. I clambered to my feet and jostled her to the side so that I could see myself. She was too entranced to push back.
It was a photo of Jamie and Belinda. They weren’t naked. They were in their bathing suits. Jamie in the same black rugby shorts he’d worn the day we’d gone swimming. Belinda was wearing a chocolate-coloured bikini with yellow polka dots. It must’ve been taken by the Red River down on the plain somewhere, one of the swimming holes close to Glenora. You could make out a bit of the river and a willow tree in the background. They were sitting on his Torana. Jamie had his arm around Belinda and she was squeezed up against him, looking up at his face and laughing in a protesting way. Jamie was staring at the camera, smiling confidently. Belinda had one hand on his chest in a gesture of possession.
There were huge emotions swilling around in me, threatening to erupt. I didn’t know whether I wanted to steal that photo or rip it up. Quickly, I walked outside and took some deep breaths. I didn’t want to cry but I felt as though I might. There had to be some spilling of feeling at such a visible display of betrayal. By the time Lou ambled outside, carefully closing the door behind herself, I had regained my composure. ‘Well, well,’ said Lou in her best Aunt Evelyn voice.
‘He used to take me swimming,’ I said quickly.
‘Really?’
‘Yep.’
We wandered back over to the house. ‘I’d like a bikini like Belinda’s.’
I was aghast at this traitorous act. ‘You don’t want to look like her,’ I snapped.
Lou shrugged. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘Jamie likes the way she looks.’
There was no answer to that.
But her remark bothered me. It wasn’t like Lou to express a desire to wear feminine clothes. She was usually trying to deny every trace of femininity she possessed. She folded her arms all the time to hide the beginnings of her breasts. Now she wanted to reveal them to the world by wearing bikinis. It was highly suspicious behaviour.
The next day, Lou attached herself to me after school and informed me she’d come home and do my chores. ‘The way it used to be,’ she said, with a smile that somehow didn’t seem meant for me.
I couldn’t protest. We had made up due to her overture of friendship. To have tried to put her off would have been a slap in the face of her initiative. But I wanted to. I wanted to tell her she wasn’t needed any more. But the words she used – the way it used to be – held so much significance, spoke so succinctly of our shared history. I choked back my ignoble doubts and managed an uncertain smile of acquiescence.
I knew as soon as she greeted Jamie that I had made a grave mistake. From that moment onward, she took over
. It was agony to watch the two of them together. But to allow Lou to have him all to herself would have been far worse. So I watched and suffered as she dazzled him. She was at her most audacious, her most daring. She was borne up by the thrill of victory, for she was winning Jamie away from me with every day that passed.
The two of them got along famously. Jamie was so impressed by Lou. She was a girl and yet was as tough and as willing to work hard as any boy. Lou was showing off. It was so blatant it made me cringe. But Jamie grinned and lapped it all up.
In particular she seemed to be trying to highlight the differences between the two of us and show herself in a more favourable light. Lou could skin a rabbit with a few deft flashes of her pocket knife. I refused to even touch the stiff furry corpse. Lou could whistle to the dogs, guiding them this way and that, rounding up the sheep. I couldn’t even whistle. I had to yell at the dogs instead, though they never followed my instructions the way they were supposed to. Lou was faster and more efficient at anything we were doing, whether it was digging a ditch or hammering in staples on a fence. Lou always finished first and then made a point of having to come and help me finish off. Lou. Lou. Lou. She was ubiquitous. Always there. Always encroaching. Denying me the one thing I craved more than anything. For it to be just Jamie and me, theway it used to be.
Jamie started making remarks like, ‘Your cousin is really something,’ or ‘Lou’s a real asset to have about’. Sometimes he even made little jokes about the difference between the two of us, jokes that I didn’t find funny and that I certainly didn’t want Lou to hear. I began to feel disgruntled with him. Sometimes I refused to help with the chores at all. I’d stay at home, longing to see a flicker of disappointment or concern on his face that I wasn’t coming. But it was in vain. All his handsome face ever did was crinkle into a grin. I’d be left behind to moon about aimlessly, wishing I had gone with them and willing Jamie to miss me.
It was equally frustrating when I did accompany them. I couldn’t compete with Lou so I didn’t even bother to try. I’d flop down on the grass and watch the two of them working and when Jamie tried to kid me into helping, I’d snap, ‘Let Wonderwoman do it’. After a while I realised that I was doing exactly what Lou wanted me to. This strange smug little smile would come over her face whenever I acted temperamentally. I realised Jamie was gaining a worse opinion of me, and rather than missing me when I didn’t go along with them, Lou was probably bad-mouthing me or at least emphasising her own superiority.
My one consolation was that Lou always went home to her own house for dinner. The evenings were the opportunity for Jamie and I to spend alone together. I waited and waited for an invitation to his hut. My appetite began to suffer. I felt so wrenched up through dinner, waiting for him to speak. But no invitation ever came.
As soon as dinner was over, Jamie would always ask if he could use the phone. I longed to scream ‘No, no you can’t’. He spoke to Belinda every night. Usually phone conversations were overheard by everyone because the phone hung on the kitchen wall by the front door. But Jamie overcame that problem. He would dial Belinda’s number and then walk through the door with the handpiece clutched to his ear, closing it after himself. We couldn’t hear a word, though Babe and I, and maybe even my parents, would’ve loved to eavesdrop. I’d sit there at the dinner table and watch him through the glass door, willing them to have a fight over the phone. They never did. A different expression would steal over Jamie’s face when he talked to Belinda on the phone. That big grin faded into something more tender and hesitant. After a while, Jamie got wise to the fact that I was watching him and he started to turn his back on the glass door. As soon as his conversation was finished, he’d open the door, replace the phone and call out a quick goodnight to everyone. There was never a chance to speak to him. He wouldn’t even let me catch his eye.
Finally, I couldn’t bear it any longer. One night, after he’d finished on the phone, I ran out to him, before he had a chance to close the door and disappear. ‘Do you feel like a game of cards tonight?’ I asked hopefully.
We’d played a few hands of poker together during those evenings when he first arrived. ‘Not tonight,’ muttered Jamie, looking at his boots.
‘Maybe tomorrow then,’ I said.
‘Tomorrow? Urn, no, l can’t tomorrow either.’
I waited for Jamie to elaborate. Finally, he looked up at me and began to stutter out an excuse. ‘Lately … I’ve … been going rabbit shooting after dinner.’
Jamie knew I hated any kind of shooting. I couldn’t bear the sound of the gun going off or the suspense of waiting for that to happen. ‘Okay,’ I said and turned away.
I wandered back into the kitchen and sat by the window, watching for Jamie. If I couldn’t be with him, I could at least watch him. He walked away from the house, but surprisingly, he didn’t head over to his hut to get his gun. He walked in the opposite direction altogether, over to the woolshed. I watched him disappear from view, through the trees, and still I sat there, entranced, trying to work out what he could possibly be doing. We hadn’t done any work over there in days. There was no reason for him to go there.
The next morning, at breakfast, I asked him how many rabbits he’d gotten. Jamie looked a bit startled for a minute. ‘Oh, three or four,’ he said.
I didn’t believe him. ‘Why don’t you teach me how you skin them after breakfast?’ I said. ‘I’m sick of Lou showing me up.’
It was the last skill I wanted to acquire, but I was pretty certain there were no rabbits to be skinned. Sure enough there was a long silence before Jamie answered. ‘I’ve already done ’em. Did ’em before breakfast.’
That was an absolute lie. Jamie never got out of bed before he had to. He’d told me a hundred times how much he loved sleeping in and what an agony it was to drag himself out of bed when he was called for breakfast. There was no way he’d have gotten out of bed early just to skin a few old rabbits that would only get tossed to the dogs.
I watched Jamie, his head bowed over his cereal plate, avoiding looking at me. I was intrigued by his lies. What could be the reason behind them? He had to be protecting some kind of secret and I was determined to find out exactly what that secret was.
3
Chapter 3
That December, drought gripped the Serpentine county. Grampy claimed it was the fiercest summer he could remember. There had been no rain since the beginning of November. The lucerne wilted in the paddocks that had been shut up for hay. Reluctantly, the farmers cut it early before it shrivelled up altogether. Some paddocks were completely bare of grass, stripped back by the stock to nothing but dust. The sheep lost condition, their bones beginning to protrude through their close-cropped wool. Water in the Serpentine was as precious as the gold so many had clamoured for a century before.
The seriousness of the drought was reinforced when Mervyn Hammer, head of the local volunteer fire brigade, came and addressed us at school, stressing how important it was to conserve water and the need for care when burning any household rubbish. ‘Those hills are parched, beggin’ for water. Creates a high fire risk,’ he said grimly.
He kept repeating that phrase ‘a high fire risk’, his eyes circling the room, staring into the faces of us all.
We echoed Mervyn’s solemn warnings round the dinner table that night and offered to forsake having baths till it rained. Everyone laughed, except Jamie. Usually, he was the merriest one at the table but that night he was withdrawn. As soon as dessert was over with, he excused himself and walked straight out the door. It was the first time he had neglected to ring Belinda since their romance began. ‘Perhaps it’s all over,’ my father said, echoing my own silent hopes.
I felt triumphant. Had Jamie finally realised Belinda’s inadequacy? I wandered over to the window thoughtfully, wondering if I dared follow him over to his hut, uninvited, to offer my condolences. I looked out the window. I expected Jamie to be strolling soulfully away, perhaps looking back, hopeful someone was watching and wondering
about the pain of his misguided love for Belinda. But he was doing nothing of the kind. He was walking very purposefully indeed. When he reached his hut, he flung the door open and plunged inside without bothering to close it. A few moments later, he reappeared in the doorway. In his hand he held the bucket my mother left over there for when she cleaned the place.
I stepped back behind the curtain. Ever since that night when I first realised Jamie was hiding something, I had spied on him from the kitchen window. He always went over to the woolshed. Unexpectedly, Jamie gave a quick, intent stare towards the house. It felt as if he was looking straight at me. Even though I was hidden behind the curtain, I lost my nerve and dropped down below the window. When I dared to look again, Jamie had disappeared. I couldn’t concentrate on the television that night. I kept puzzling over what he could possibly need a bucket for.
The next day, over Saturday lunch, my mother mentioned that she’d been thinking about Mervyn Hammer’s warnings. ‘I’ve had an inspiration,’ she said. ‘These are desperate times and I’m going to do something for the district.’
She paused for effect. No one liked to ask what she had in mind. ‘I’m going to divine for water,’ she announced.
My father groaned and went into the lounge to watch the sport on television. Jamie slipped out of the room saying he was off to Glenora. But Lou, Babe and I were fascinated. ‘Everyone has the ability to water divine,’ my mother told us. ‘It’s instinct. Animal instinct. Like the way a dog sniffs the ground before it lies down. A dog will never lie over water.’
She had Lou cut her a forked branch off the willow tree, and began stalking across the front lawn, her hands stretched out in front of her, clutching the stick. We watched sceptically from the balcony, but even from up there, we could tell when the stick began to dip in her hands.
‘It’s here, it’s here,’ she shouted triumphantly. ‘It’s very strong. I can barely hold it.’
50 Ways of Saying Fabulous Book 2 Anniversary Edition Page 4