by Jane Abbott
Her father didn’t say anything more about Michael, probably assuming he didn’t need to. But her mum wasn’t so gullible, and her endless questions every afternoon – Who did you sit with? Who did you eat lunch with? Who did you walk home with? – drove Jenny nuts. It was as if the only way her mother would ever be satisfied was if she caught her out. But all the third degree made Jenny more determined. And having the chance to spend a whole afternoon with Michael away from school, to see where he and Gabe lived, to visit the farm and be where others weren’t, was too tempting. On Sunday afternoon, she headed out the door, weighed down by a towel and a load of unwanted Catholic guilt.
‘Going swimming,’ she told her mum. It didn’t feel like such a lie if she stuck to the truth.
Her mother didn’t look up from the book she was reading; Jenny’s visits to the pool were too frequent to raise suspicion. ‘Be back by six.’
Five hours, Jenny thought, hugging her towel. Five whole hours!
She’d texted Gabe to meet her behind the school, and he smiled as she climbed into the ute.
‘Remind me to buy you a dictionary. You’ll find truth under T,’ he said, without judgement. Her lies weren’t his problem.
On the drive out of town he pointed out this landmark or that property, but Jenny found it hard to concentrate because, staring through the windscreen, all she could see were her and Michael lying back against the windscreen as he’d kissed her under the stars.
The farm wasn’t at all as she’d imagined it. The house was nothing more than a cottage, sunk into the earth, sharing its roots with towering cypress pines. A few lean-tos and a large shed stood off one end of the drive, and further away loomed another, much bigger shed, its iron roof and sidings a little rusted and crooked. It looked a careless place, though not rundown, and had none of the grandeur of the McIntyre homestead. But she wasn’t disappointed. She thought it perfect, exactly as she’d imagined a farm would look. A dog barked as they pulled up and chickens scattered quickly on the drive before returning to their scratching and bobbing. Around the house the land fell away gently; acres and acres of sparse yellow grass, as bleached as the sun and dotted with the square bulk of black cows, while, overhead, magpies warbled their afternoon song to a percussion of crickets.
Caitlin sat in an old wicker chair under one of the pines, reading a book. Her long hair was stuffed up under a straw hat and she wore a simple white cotton dress, sleeveless and cool, her feet bare. Jenny had never seen her out of her school uniform before; she looked like a figure in an old painting, serene, beautiful and remote. She didn’t look up.
‘Home sweet home,’ Gabe murmured, but there was pride there too.
A screen door banged and a small round woman bustled up, wiping flour-dusted hands on an apron. Straight out of a storybook, merry and messy, her happy face crinkled in welcome.
‘Hi there. You’ll have to excuse me – no one told me we were having visitors.’ A quick frown at Gabe and she added, ‘I’m sorry, have I met you before? I really can’t keep up.’
Jenny reddened and Gabe laughed before nudging Barb. A gentle rebuke.
‘It’s okay,’ Michael said, from behind Jenny. ‘She’s here for me.’
Jenny knew she should be annoyed by this careless claim of ownership, but all she felt was a tingle of excitement. She didn’t mind that Michael thought of her as his.
‘Oh,’ said Barb, embarrassed now. ‘Well, that’s nice.’
Michael introduced them, but gave Barb no time to ask everything she clearly wanted to. Grabbing Jenny’s hand, he led her across to a dirt bike caked with dust and dried mud and handed over a huge helmet. ‘Put this on,’ he said.
It was snug, and when she struggled he helped her secure the strap. She noticed he didn’t wear one himself and she felt foolish standing there, top-heavy and too protected. He took her towel and draped it over his shoulders, then, straddling the bike, pushed back the stand and kicked the motor to life, opening up the throttle and letting it roar. Jenny watched with growing fear. Her father hated motorbikes and, hoping to put her off ever riding one, had told her dozens of stories about accident victims he’d attended as a hospital intern. But there was no way she could chicken out in front of the guys. Or Caitlin.
‘Hop on,’ Michael said, and she clambered up awkwardly behind him. The seat wasn’t long enough and she ended up on the higher tail guard, embarrassed when it dipped under her weight; only her toes touched the ground, and she worried the bike would tip. But he held the machine steady and lifted her leg to place her foot on a metal peg. She grabbed his shoulders. ‘Now the other one,’ he told her.
Hesitant, almost scared to lose contact with the earth, she did as he said, and Michael reached behind to haul her tight against his back, before pulling her hands down and pressing them flat to his stomach.
‘You coming?’ Michael called to Gabe, who was watching, but he waved them off and walked away to join Caitlin. Barb had already disappeared into the house. ‘Hang on tight,’ Michael said over his shoulder, and then they were off, leaving the drive and speeding across the grass, down the hill to a narrow run between two large paddocks.
Cows watched them race by and Jenny’s alarm soon vanished. There was only the wind, the open fields, Michael’s back and the play of muscles beneath her fingers as he shifted gears. He turned the bike and followed another track, off the neatly divided land, into sparse bush, and then they were through and back into open country. When he opened the throttle again and they raced away, she whooped with delight, which only deepened when he half turned his head and she saw his grin. At last he eased the bike into a gully and stopped.
‘Mind the exhaust pipe,’ he warned.
Releasing him reluctantly, Jenny clambered off as awkwardly as she’d got on. ‘Wow,’ she said, freeing herself from the helmet. ‘That was … Wow!’
He grinned again. Taking her hand, he led her down a worn path that snaked between granite boulders until they stood overlooking a deep waterhole ringed with gums and wattles and walled by rock. Tiny birds darted between trees. A windmill reared above them, blades turning in the breeze, and somewhere a kookaburra laughed. Across the water a steep hill shielded them from the world.
‘Oh, it’s so beautiful,’ she said, and felt her heart give to this wild land, close enough to civilisation yet so far removed.
‘Yeah,’ Michael agreed, then smiled. ‘And so private.’
He kicked off his boots and stripped away his T-shirt and jeans before diving into the water, his voice bouncing off the surrounding rocks as he called her in. Jenny undressed more slowly, peeling off layers, down to her bikini, self-conscious under his gaze. She didn’t dive in as he had, instead finding the shallows and slowly immersing herself in the water. She cried out when something brushed her leg, and Michael grabbed her, laughing.
‘That’s just Old George,’ he said, holding her to him. ‘Don’t worry, he won’t hurt you.’
Looking at his face, lean and dark and so close to hers, she felt the strength in his cold arms as they wrapped around her, and thought, No, but you might.
He didn’t kiss her, as she’d hoped, so she didn’t kiss him either. They divided their time between the hot sun and the cold water, playing, sometimes talking, before he took her back to the house, not following the track again but riding overland, through the paddocks, Michael showing her how to open and close the gates, waiting patiently when she fumbled with the tight chains. Cows lumbered towards them, hoping for hay, but the bike would race away before they neared, and she laughed at the animals’ slow stupidity. When Gabe drove her back to town, Michael came too; she sat between the two of them, happy, not wanting the day to end.
‘Same again next Sunday?’ Michael asked.
‘Yes,’ Jenny sighed, wishing every day was Sunday.
School was a rude awakening, with its lessons and bells and petty remarks, and though she still saw Michael, it wasn’t the same. But at the house it was worse because he wasn’t there a
t all, and she spent hours every night lying in her bed, reliving each moment, until Sunday came around again and she slipped back into the dream that was Michael and Gabe, the farm and the bike, the land and the waterhole.
This time Barb was prepared and gave them a backpack crammed with biscuits and fruit and cold drinks. Again, Jenny saw Caitlin in the distance, walking with one of the dogs, her long legs bare under white shorts, her skin pale despite the sun. Again, the hat hid her hair, keeping it off her neck. Again, she never looked in their direction.
Though the day was even hotter than the week before, Gabe left them alone too, and Jenny was both grateful and relieved. It was while she and Michael dried off on the rocks, snacking on Barb’s provisions, that she finally found the courage to mention the party and the bet and what she’d seen Michael do.
‘Is that why you don’t do your tricks any more?’ she asked. ‘Because of what happened?’
His reply was slow. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘Did you really mean it when you told Chris they were only tricks?’ A part of her was hoping he’d say yes so they could get past all the nonsense; a part of her willed him to deny it. Because she knew what she’d seen.
He picked up a pebble and weighed it in his palm. His hand was large and strong-fingered, browned by the sun and scarred all over. A hard-worked hand. He closed his fist around the little stone and Jenny held her breath, waiting for him to open it again and reveal something wonderful. She hoped wonderful. But he lifted his arm and tossed the pebble away, into the waterhole, where it sank beneath a faint ripple.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, again.
She sighed. ‘How did you do it, Michael? Because it wasn’t a trick. It really broke. And please don’t say you don’t know.’
She touched his arm, her fingers skimming his skin. He stared at the water. ‘I’m sorry, Jenny. I know you want answers, but I can’t, okay? I need to … I need time. Please give me some time.’
Reluctantly, she let it go. Had he understood it was more than just answers she’d been hoping he’d give? How long would she have to wait? On the ride back to the house, she didn’t wrap her arms around his waist but reached up and hugged his chest, holding him to her, wanting never to let go.
February rolled into March, but summer ignored the calendar and refused to yield to autumn. The days drifted into a haze, the heat building while everyone suffered. Dams dried to cracked, muddied puddles, and the grass shrivelled to grey stalks, crunching and breaking underfoot. But the spring-fed waterhole remained cool and full, their haven. For Jenny, it offered a reprieve from everything that had happened; for Michael, a brief respite from what was to come.
They weren’t always alone. Sometimes Gabe joined them, and his friend Matt, sometimes friends of Michael’s – Pete and Tom, Emma and Buzz. Jenny soon forgave Pete for the bet because he was so much fun, entertaining everyone with tales of the town’s underbelly, and she was happy to laugh with the others, relieved that the gossip wasn’t about her.
Caitlin never came to the waterhole, and Jenny was relieved about that too, not just for her sake but for Michael’s. At school, the tension between the two had increased. Caitlin started to catch the bus rather than ride in the ute with Michael; on the days Michael walked home, she gladly grabbed a lift from Gabe. Jenny couldn’t imagine how awful things must be at home, especially for Gabe, who loved them both.
One day Jenny and Michael sat together watching everyone else swim. Gabe had brought a girl Jenny didn’t know and his hands were doing things under the water to make her squeal; Jenny found the noise irritating. Pete was trying to catch Old George while Buzz and Emma were pressed together against the rock face. She saw them kiss and ached with longing. Sneaking a look at Michael, she could see he was watching too.
‘Come on,’ he said, suddenly. ‘I want to show you something.’
She followed him around the waterhole, and they climbed the steep rocky hill behind it. Trees reared from the slope, finding the vertical, and tussocks of grass and gorse spiked the rocks. Jenny was glad of her shoes; Michael walked barefoot, picking a path easily over the rough ground. When they reached the top, Jenny gasped.
The land fell away on the other side and the district spread out before them in a patchwork of gold and brown. A few farmhouses, nestled in groves of trees, splashed the yellowed landscape with green blotches, and fence lines carved up the acreage. Just beyond the next rise she could see the outskirts of Kincasey and, in front of it, the river gorge that wound its way through the wide valley. Alongside snaked the old railway line, long disused. Michael pointed out the property boundary.
‘I didn’t realise you were so close to town,’ Jenny said.
‘We are and we aren’t. It’s almost thirty minutes by car if you follow the road right around, but this way’s easy enough. Just no road.’
‘Tell me you don’t walk all this way home after school?’ She couldn’t help her pleasure, knowing he’d done that for her on those hot afternoons.
‘Well, I did the first time. Just about killed me too,’ he said with a quick grin. ‘But no. See that hay shed way down by the bend? I leave the bike there and walk on to school, then collect it after. Doesn’t take much longer than driving, so it’s no big deal.’
‘My hero,’ she murmured, punching his shoulder lightly. ‘Is that why you brought me up here? Hoping I’d feel sorry for you?’
There was a pause. ‘Gabe’s busy next Sunday, so he can’t pick you up. I thought maybe I could meet you somewhere and show you the way.’
‘Yes,’ she said, yearning for this unexpected chance at freedom, thrilled that he didn’t want to wait another week for Gabe to be available. She stretched up and kissed his cheek, the first since the party. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ he said, but he didn’t kiss her back.
The following weekend, Jenny skirted the town pool and found Michael waiting in the botanical gardens above the river. He held her hand as they wandered beside the thin stream of water.
‘It’s low now, but in winter, if we get some decent rain, it’ll be full again. A lot noisier too,’ Michael said. That day, with everything so quiet and lazy, it was hard for Jenny to imagine the river rushing high between the banks. They crossed at the footbridge and found the railway line, following its broken spine to Michael’s bike. The small shed was closed on three sides and stacked with hay, rich and warm with the scent of summer.
The ride to the waterhole was much shorter this time, but she didn’t mind because it gave them more time in the water. They were alone again, and they splashed and swam, sometimes apart, sometimes together. He’d strung an old hammock between two trees and he pushed her while she lay cocooned.
Afterwards, at the shed, he stowed her helmet in a bag and hung it on a hook ready for the next weekend.
‘Stops the rats and birds from nesting in it,’ he explained, laughing when she grimaced. ‘You ready to go?’
Jenny shook her head. ‘I’m never ready to leave here,’ she blurted, before she could stop herself.
Michael sighed and caught one of her hands, his grasp light but firm. And suddenly she did want to go because there was only so much rejection she could take. Michael might not have been ready, but she was, and it was getting harder to hide the hurt.
‘Sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘Look, you don’t need to come back with me. I know the way now. I’ll text you when I get home.’ When he looked at her, she sensed his reluctance. ‘What? It’s not like I can get lost.’
‘No, it’s not that,’ he said, tugging her towards him. ‘It’s just … I think I might be running out of time.’
Bending, he kissed her at last, cupping her face and holding her to his lips. Sliding her arms around his neck, she rose on her toes to meet him, barely feeling the hay scratch her skin when he backed her into it and made up for every second lost.
That week, Michael didn’t walk her home. Instead, Jenny would walk him to his bike, to the small shed
that had become their new sanctuary. He’d bring a blanket from the house and they’d spread it across the bales, lying on it together, sometimes just talking, other times not. And when the time came, he’d pull her to her feet, pick the straw out of her hair and send her on her way. He’d sit on the bike, by the fence, watching until she disappeared from sight, before riding home.
Jenny never felt nervous by herself; the walk to the gardens wasn’t a long one, and the afternoons were too warm to harbour any kind of fear. Though she often heard rustles in the undergrowth, it was easy to dismiss the noises. Besides, she made plenty herself, tramping loudly as Michael had instructed, to ward off snakes. Once, she’d stopped, delighted, and watched an echidna waddle fatly across the track. After her third sighting of a kangaroo, she’d shrugged and moved on. She was more country hick than city chick now, and was that really so bad?
‘I’ve been at the library,’ she’d tell her mother when she returned home later each day. ‘It’s air-conditioned.’
The second part was true, at least. Jenny was surprised by how naturally she lied and how easily she swallowed the guilt. It wasn’t exactly pleasant, but there wasn’t the bitter aftertaste she’d expected. And it saved a lot of time arguing.
‘So will I see you on Sunday?’ Michael asked against her neck, punctuating his words with small kisses. It was Friday afternoon and their time together was nearing its end. Jenny sighed, with pleasure and frustration, and felt him smile against her skin.
‘Why do we have to wait until Sunday?’ she asked. He lifted his head and she traced a finger down his chest. ‘I could meet you here tomorrow afternoon. I’ll tell my parents I’m staying at Kylie’s and we could …’ She stopped then, not wanting to say any more, in case he didn’t feel the same.
Michael stared at her, his eyes gleaming in the half-light and she grew more uncomfortable, wishing she hadn’t spoken at all.