Anchor Point

by Alice Robinson

  ‘Bloody swallows. Can tell by the nest, ’cause it’s made of cl …’ He coughed. ‘Made of mud.’ He put the pad of his thumb to his mouth, wiping.

  They climbed down, moved the ladder, and climbed back up to get a better look. Laura went first. She came face to face with the clay-cup nest. Close enough to catch the sharp animal musk, to notice soft brown feathers worked into the design, to observe how the structure was made up of tiny beakfuls of clay. Bruce stood with his chin at her shoulder. She braced herself against his chest.

  ‘Why is it a bugger, Dad? About the birds?’

  The chirps were louder now, and betrayed slight variations in pitch; there was more than one bird inside the nest.

  Laura thought, So birds have their own voices too.

  ‘Swallows come back,’ Bruce said.

  Her nails were white on the rung.

  ‘Year after year, they’ll just keep returning.’

  She wanted nothing more than that they might just remain talking, back against front.

  ‘Problem is,’ Bruce continued, ‘birds don’t come back if they smell people. It’s a safety thing, I guess. It wouldn’t have mattered, you see. Except for now we’ve gone and put our smell up here. Accident of course, but the mother bird will sense it. She might abandon the nest once she gets a whiff of us.’

  All of a sudden Laura’s knees turned to rubber. She had to hook her arm around the rung and hug it in. ‘I’m getting down,’ she said. ‘Dad, we’ve got to get down.’

  But Bruce’s body blocked the way. ‘No point worrying now, love,’ he said gently, touching her hair. ‘Damage done. If we leave these birds here, chances are the mother’ll desert them. ’Course,’ he went on more cheerfully, ‘swallows aren’t native. No point worrying ourselves too much, I suppose.’

  That night, Laura lay in the dark listening to the cheeps of four blind swallow chicks. Bruce had said to feed them breadcrumbs soaked in milk. But no matter how much soggy bread she dropped into their open mouths, it never seemed to be enough. They looked like tiny plucked chickens, their skin so thin and translucent she could just about make out the shape of their hearts through their chests. Laura had set up the straw-lined shoebox in which they now floundered, beaks upturned, gaping.

  Vik called across their darkened room, ‘You awake?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But, Lor, what was that song Mutti used to sing us?’ Vik hummed the first few lines.

  ‘Leave it, alright? You’re so annoying.’ Laura spoke thickly, breathing through her mouth. She put a hand to the corner of her pillow, squeezing. The birds called out.

  ‘Are you – are you crying?’ Vik said. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Shut up. I said leave it.’ Laura rolled away. The birds rustled in their box. Their eyes were still sealed closed. They had no way of knowing where they were; she hoped that they believed themselves to be at home. She tried for a moment to conjure her mother’s face, to see Kath standing in the room. But all she could see was the outline of a woman. The harder she tried, the darker became the shadows obscuring her mother’s face.

  Kath’s notes had kept coming, though Laura resisted the urge to read what her mother wrote too closely. Each Liebe felt like a poisonous little dart sent to hurt her. After she discovered that the envelopes contained cash, she had made sure to open them carefully, burning the rest of the evidence. Deja vu, like fatigue, overcame her every time she opened the door of the oven and thrust a letter in.

  Watching Kath’s handwriting go up, Laura understood how her life would unfold: caged by mail. She would receive Kath’s letters, would burn them. Nothing would ever change.

  But the notes had grown shorter, drying up. Six months in, they had already become one-liners. Kath made dutiful contact, but when she got no response, it seemed to suit. It suited Laura too, keeping her secret.

  As the notes shrivelled, the cash continued to arrive. It hurt Laura to count it, knowing how badly they needed each dollar. Bruce trusted her now to buy groceries and pay bills from the allowance he had once supplied to Kath, but money was tight. It wasn’t easy to spend extra without raising suspicion, not in a district mortgaged up the wazoo. When Vik needed a new winter coat, Laura pulled a woollen jumper from her own drawer, knowing full well that there was enough of Kath’s money saved to dress them both in shop-bought clothes. But then the tank started leaking, the toilet backed up, the tyres on the ute grew bald. Laura mutely observed the deepening lines in Bruce’s face. She racked her brains to think of a convincing story that would allow her to use what she’d saved. In the end she spent what Bruce gave her each week on the household, then siphoned off a little of Kath’s money to hand back as change.

  ‘Stuff’s on special this week,’ she would say, distressed by the knowledge that what she was contributing wasn’t nearly enough. She watched Bruce pocket the cash, shrugging off his thanks.

  ‘You’re good at this, love,’ he said fondly, once. ‘Saving us a packet.’

  Laura wondered idly where Kath got the funds. She’d never had money before. Had she? But Laura didn’t really care. Her anger, once localised, had spread. There wasn’t much she didn’t blame Kath for – the money, one more unjust thing. It was only when Vik and Bruce were sleeping that Laura worked the bundle of cash from its shoebox beneath her bed. She held it, heavy as a strap across her palm. Chilled by darkness, Laura allowed herself to experience the full measure of her sorrow.

  Finally, the money too stopped coming. Laura was unprepared for the surge of new grief that washed over her as the months went by without contact. Eventually the grief hardened into more anger, sharpening, and Laura was glad. Bills continued to arrive, shoes needed replacing, there was always something to buy for the farm. To watch Kath’s money diminishing, though she couldn’t freely spend what she wanted; she needed the anger to endure it.

  More months passed. The palms of Laura’s hands, like the surface of the land, were changing. Blisters rose like pearls of water, breaking, bleeding, running dry. Then the skin hardened – so much so that it started cracking as the weather grew cold. Blood and then pus marked the fissures in the tissue along the lifeline and along the one for love. The cracks took ages to heal, but she couldn’t very well not use her hands. Fixing the ute’s engine, covered in grease, head pounding through the fumes, she thought her skin might come right off.

  ‘If a lamb dies,’ Bruce said in winter, ‘and its mother has bonded with it, she will keep looking for it. She’ll just wander around and around and around, calling its name.’

  They were walking the back paddock, newly populated with sheep. Laura exhaled. It was dusk. She had made rabbit stew that morning, could just about taste the gravy, thick with onion and parsley. Their kitchen, fragrant with steam.

  Bruce was saying, ‘The sheep won’t always know her lamb is dead. Her teats don’t know either. They’ll just keep filling up with milk, fat as bagpipes. Lor?’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’ She sighed. ‘Listening.’

  He gave her a long stare. They walked. Laura could feel the cold coming up through the soles of her boots. Storm clouds were blooming. The air was alive with moisture.

  ‘On the other hand,’ Bruce went on, ‘if a sheep dies, her lamb is going to starve. Reckon it’s bad news, either way.’

  Laura felt a pain, like a stitch in her chest.

  Bruce touched her cheek, something between a stroke and a pinch. ‘You’ll be fine, love.’ He clapped her on the shoulder. ‘You’ll see.’

  Most of the sheep were up on the exposed hillside, grazing in groups. There were a few lone animals, standing grey and solitary against the green of the downhill slope. Bruce carried the rifle slung across his back. Laura could hear bullets clinking like marbles in the pocket of his coat.

  ‘Lambs should be born face and legs first,’ Bruce said. ‘See a tail coming out? You have to do something.’

  Laura understood it then. These dumb animals – hundreds and hundreds of them – with their too-soft bodies, their
heartbroken cries and blank little eyes, were relying on them, on her, for survival.

  It had been the plan all along, of course. They had worked so hard to bring them into being: all those trees felled; hours spent stretching wire. But now that the animals were there, alive and bleating, it seemed a rash thing to have done.

  ‘Listen to me,’ Bruce said. ‘You see a lamb in trouble, one leg coming out on its own, say, you can push it back in, rearrange it. Or you can try pulling that lamb out. But that’s risky.’ He worked his fingers under the collar of his coat. ‘Thing is, it’s better to save one than have them both, you know, die.’

  The first fat drops of rain fell as they crested the hill.

  ‘Uh oh. Here’s another problem,’ Bruce said. He turned to her. His eyes were full of rain. ‘Another thing to remember: a sheep’ll lie down to have her lamb. But that rain’s gonna soak into her wool, see. It’ll get heavy. So heavy she might not be able to get back up.’

  ‘Couldn’t we stand her up?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Bruce said carefully. ‘But usually, a sheep goes down, she stays down. Crows’ll peck out her eyes, and tongue.’

  Laura flinched.

  Bruce sighed. ‘While she’s still alive.’

  The sky was cobalt, and deepening. The gully ran between steep hills. Within it eucalypts still clung to the slope that rushed towards the creek. Ferns unfurled their lacy fingers in the gully; beneath them, the umbrellas of a thousand mushrooms grew in the rich, damp soil. ‘Shit,’ Bruce said. He bolted, sliding in mud.

  Laura tried to keep up, fell over. Her knees went into the wet earth. She pulled off her soaking gloves and shoved them in her pocket, fingers raw and pink. Bruce crouched down at water’s edge. Laura’s heart thundered, pounding up her throat. She skidded down the embankment. Rain fell, reverberating up from the ground through her feet.

  It was a sheep. Laura drew a claggy breath. Bruce knelt at one end of the animal, where there were too many legs.

  ‘Hold this.’ He pulled the rifle from his back. Laura took it in her arms.

  His hand went into the animal easily. He bared his teeth. Icy water gushed over banks. Laura felt the cold soaking through her coat. Her teeth knocked together. The sheep was now entirely motionless but for her breath, coming hard and fast, wheezing underneath all that wool.

  ‘There’s a torch in my pocket,’ Bruce said. ‘Shine it here.’

  Steam was rising from the place where the lamb’s head emerged. Lightning spat across the valley. A group of kangaroos thumped through the trees, grey apparitions in a fine mist. Bruce squinted against the wash of water on his face. At last, the lamb slipped out trailing a purple rope. Bruce wiped a hand across its nose. The sheep was still, head pressed into the sodden ground. Streams of water ran across her face. Without the body of the lamb inside, she looked hollowed out. In contrast, the lamb was very much alive. It struggled, bleating.

  Bruce said, ‘Hold him.’

  Laura tasted eucalypt in the rain that rolled into her mouth. She put the rifle and Maglite on the ground and took the warm body, slippery with blood and mustard mucus, heavier than she expected. The lamb let out a cry, a small declaration of its presence in the world.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Laura whispered.

  Bruce cut the purple cord with the knife he used on pumpkins. He removed his coat to wrap the lamb. Laura felt strangely incomplete without the animal in her arms. They trudged back up the hill, feeling their way to the top. How large a place looks when pitted against the small wedge of light from a torch.

  Soon Laura was carrying a second, smaller lamb, pressed against her chest. The body of its mother was also left where it lay.

  ‘Bury them tomorrow,’ Bruce said. ‘Get these babies home.’

  Laura’s lamb was wet, shivering. Between the legs of its dead mother had glistened something pink.

  ‘Her uterus. Happens sometimes,’ Bruce said.

  Laura couldn’t bear the cracks in his voice, the dripping rain, the awful mewing of the lamb. She didn’t know what Bruce meant by ‘uterus’, and was glad.

  They found a third lamb, alone and not long dead.

  Laura cried out, ‘Where’s his mother, Dad? Where’s his mum?’

  Ugliness ripped across Bruce’s face, but he pointed across the paddock to where a small flock were huddled. Sheep seemed so sweet with their satiny muzzles and soft white wool, but the cruelty of the ewe, obliviously grazing while her lamb lay dead, was too much.

  Laura shook. She did not drop her lamb as the ground rose up to catch her. It was too far to the house; her load was too heavy. Bruce stalked over. She looked into his face, blinking away rain. The membrane grown over the wound left by Kath was too thin. It would tear.

  ‘Get up, Lor.’ Bruce would have pulled her, except he couldn’t. Laura cowered against his yanking words. ‘Love, I know you’re tired. Wet and cold. I know you’re … sad.’ He adjusted the lamb in his arms. ‘But if we don’t get these lambs home, they’ll die too. That’s worse than anything you feel now.’ When she didn’t move, he started shouting, ‘For God’s sake, get up, will you?’

  Laura struggled to her feet. What else was there to do but put one foot in front of the other, to put more space between them and the dead mothers, the big, rain-soaked paddocks? Bruce carried the dead lamb draped around his neck; Laura shuddered at the way its head hung down against his shoulder, knocking there as he walked. By the time they reached the house her thighs were chafed raw, and her little lamb was quiet.

  Vik sat between Laura’s legs in the bath. They did not usually bathe together in this way – in the position of racing canoeists, front against back. But that night, as Laura had drawn Vik’s bath, teeth chattering, she’d felt some need for closeness. Vik seemed to be enjoying herself, happy in the corral made by Laura’s skinny legs. She allowed Laura to soap her spine, to wash the conditioner from her hair.

  ‘Why’d you bring the dead one?’

  Laura pushed Vik’s head forward, ran the comb through. ‘I dunno.’

  ‘You do.’

  Laura lay a cheek against Vik’s back. ‘You hungry?’

  ‘Lor!’

  Laura’s tears, dammed by nothing more than exhaustion, welled and rolled fresh. She shifted her sister’s hair over one shoulder so she could scrub between shoulderblades. ‘Well, we’ll skin him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dad said sheep will only feed their own babies.’ Laura paused to steady her voice. ‘If that baby dies they don’t have any lamb to feed, do they? But we’ve got two babies who have no mums. We’ll put the dead lamb’s skin on one of our lambs.’

  ‘But why?’ Vik whispered hoarsely.

  ‘’Cause then our lamb will smell like the dead lamb, and the dead lamb’s mother will think it’s her baby, and she’ll feed it.’

  Vik pushed the rubber ducky under. ‘But, it’s a lie!’

  Laura stood up, lifting Vik out. She pulled the plug, watching the bathwater spiral away, tinged pink. With what?

  ‘You’re bleeding,’ Vik said quietly, standing on the bathmat, shivering. Laura looked down blankly at the rivulet of blood painting her inner thigh.

  When she finally emerged from the bathroom wearing thick winter pyjamas, a wad of toilet paper pressed awkwardly between her legs, she found that a corner of the kitchen had been penned off. The lambs lay together, curled in straw. Vik crouched beside them, stroking their heads. Bruce sat drinking tea, Trading Post spread. He looked up as Laura came into the room, smiled.

  ‘Lots of trees down in the gully tonight,’ he said. ‘Should save us a bit of work.’ He rattled the paper, smoothing down the page. Laura couldn’t tell from his tone if Vik had blabbed or not. She understood what had happened to her, knew vaguely what it meant: something about babies. Her teacher had told the girls in class to ask their mothers – it happened to them too.

  Laura pulled out a chair and fell into it. Crossed her legs. She couldn’t have stopped the tears if she wanted to. They rolled do
wn silently. How exhausted she was. The lambs, the dishes, her father’s plans. Even the warmth of the room, the tender way Vik touched the velvet ear of the sleeping animal, made her heart feel as though it were breaking. Blood was soaking through the toilet paper, her clothes. More washing. She longed for someone to put their arms around her, to take the weight of her head.

  Bruce eyed her wet face, pushed the teapot towards her. ‘Fresh brewed, love,’ he said. They sat in silence for a moment before he jerked his chin at the storm. ‘We’ll get a bloody good bonfire out of this, if nothing else.’

  Part Two

  Bushfire was spreading south towards Kyree thanks to a man, a rabbit, an overfed ferret. The mean little animal, meant to force the rabbits out, ate them in the burrow and went to sleep instead. A fire was lit. It smoked the ferret out, alright.

  ‘No thought for conditions!’ Bruce lamented, scratching the newly grey hair at his nape. ‘What was the bloke thinking? The turkey.’

  It was dim outside, the sky silt-brown, thick with dust and smoke. Heat rose from the earth in waves.

  ‘We’ve gotta get ready,’ Bruce went on, eyeing them over the rim of his morning brew. Vik turned a page in her Year Twelve maths book, tucked back her waist-length hair. Geometry, she had told Laura primly, was a Greek word that meant earth measure.

  Bruce said, ‘Fire’s through Braymead.’

  Vik made a neat annotation in the margin of the text. A triangle made of sums. ‘I’m missing school – you’d better write me a note or something at least, Lor.’

  Laura snorted. ‘Whole bloody district’s on high alert, dickhead. Teachers won’t even be there today.’

  Vik straightened. She made a show of suppressing a weary sigh, rolling shoulders. ‘Don’t be crude.’

  ‘Girls!’ Bruce said. ‘Lay off, for Pete’s sake.’

  Laura pushed back from the table, rattling plates. She muttered, ‘Wanker,’ in Vik’s direction because it felt good, sometimes, to pretend that they were normal sisters. Truth was, Laura didn’t know what she was to Vik, could tell Vik didn’t know either. What with all the curfews she’d enforced, the meals she’d cooked, homework supervised, Laura sometimes felt decades older, another generation. Other times, when Vik said something particularly insightful – she was good at impersonations, did a great one of Bruce – Laura would find herself roaring with laughter on Vik’s bed, literally almost pissing her pants. A part of her would see the way they looked then, as though from a distance. Two young women, laughing themselves sick.