Anchor Point

by Alice Robinson

  ‘Didn’t hear you arrive,’ she said to break the silence.

  Her hands were pinched together. Luc’s jeans were low-slung. The seam of his stomach-muscle, the twin pricks of his hipbones, stood out beneath the fabric of his shirt. He inclined his head towards the bike leaning against the wall. ‘Rode out from the station.’

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘say what you have to say.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  She saw now. He would use his gentlemanly restraint, the guise of empathy, to make her suffer. ‘Dunno where to start,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Be good to know what you’re planning, for starters. Since I’m meant to be, you know, your partner.’ Luc spat the word, revealing his hurt. Laura wanted to take him in her arms, but he glowered.

  They were away. Laura cried, raw-eyed. The argument went ’round and ’round. There were only so many lines.

  ‘It’s taken me a while to figure things out!’ she lied.

  ‘So that’s it?’ he snapped. ‘Between us?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  But she was lying again. How could it work? Luc’s world was in Sydney; she was Bruce’s nurse. Laura felt the life they had made together turn to powder beneath the pestle of her duty to Bruce. To the farm.

  Luc had turned away. He stared out at land brutalised by Laura’s own hand.

  She grappled with his arm. ‘Luc … ’

  He shook her off. ‘You’ve fucked the businesses too, then,’ he said. ‘All our plans.’

  Laura felt skinned. She lowered her face into her hands. But a tiny part of her felt it like cold water: relief. ‘All our plans?’

  Over months, making Bruce’s meals, hearing Luc’s patience wane, Laura had tried to work out what was going on, why she was leaving Sydney – she couldn’t yet admit that she might be leaving Luc. She wanted him. More than anything, she wanted to be his. But there was so much in Kyree to make up for. She caught a flash of her mother, those velvet skirts. Though Laura did all she could to avoid thinking of it, the search and the memorial service were clear in her mind. She had already lived through months of her father’s loneliness. She knew her limits.

  Even so, she felt drawn and quartered by these men, their ideas for her, their needs. Her own ineffectuality – decades of obedience, doing what she was told and doing it well – was so painful to the touch that she could hardly even finger the edges of it. It was easier to feel herself hard done by, worn out. Torn.

  In the early hours of the morning, her argument with Luc shifted gear. Something had cracked, not broken. They were exhausted. Nothing more, or new, could be said. They crawled together into Laura’s bed. She pressed her cheek against Luc’s chest.

  ‘I’ll come here, then,’ Luc said, tiredly. ‘Summer holidays are coming up. I’ll stay.’

  Laura knew how much it cost Luc to think of putting his life on hold. Lying in the dark, she felt a frisson of hope. She allowed herself to consider that things would change this time. The problems they’d had in the past, differences of opinion between Bruce and Luc, could be avoided, couldn’t they? Under these exceptional circumstances?

  How much do I have to sacrifice? she asked herself, pulling Luc’s arm over her like a shield. Can’t I have something for myself? But as he slept, loosening his grip on her, Laura sensed how inadequate her flimsy, unconvincing entitlement was, how little it could protect her from herself.

  Luc moved his books down from Sydney and settled in. But almost immediately it began to trouble her, the way he leaned across the table, talking at her, outlining his plans. It was as though they were already alone and the farm was his. Luc helped Laura bathe and dress Bruce. She couldn’t fault him there. But his attitude unsettled her: the gusto with which he spoke about ‘fixing’ Bruce’s ‘mistakes’. She was not surprised to find that Luc slept late, and rarely ventured outside.

  He got on the phone to his mother and ordered bags of seed for Laura to plant. He phoned a friend who worked at Landcare to ask about the gully, about irrigation, about birds. The notes he made spanned pages. Elaborate plans were sent down from Sydney, showing the structure of biodynamic farms. They would get solar panels, Luc said, and insulate the roof. Part of Laura was grateful; she could not have managed such in-depth research herself, on top of everything. But her deja vu was crippling. Unnerving little flashes, confusing when in time she was.

  Peripheral, never consulted, Bruce might have been a ghost. Laura remembered the barely concealed scorn on his face at Luc’s first introduction. As Luc waxed lyrical on wind turbines and mulch, she saw it flicker again across her father’s face. A flame flaring, fluttering, dying out.

  On the rare occasions that Luc did come outside to help her, Laura had to walk off to the shed to stop herself from lecturing – Luc’s word – on the way simple tasks should be done. Other times, she fumbled the axe on purpose. She held her tongue, when she remembered, as they walked across the hills; on seeing birds and fledgling plants she recognised, she pretended not to. It was hard work keeping quiet. The observations she made on wind and weather came naturally as breath.

  All that ‘good training’ from Bruce had given her the hands of an outdoor worker, the same as his. But Luc, she knew, was a city man. Her connection to the place, which Luc could never have, allowed it. Laura felt the ache it caused, Luc’s frustration.

  She still held out hope that they might survive together, that the farm would grow the way they’d planned. Sometimes she stopped to watch Luc when he ventured out, shirtless, into the veggie garden. His skin quickly turned molasses; he did not seem to burn. She imagined again the children they would have together. In summer, they would go swimming in the dam.

  Laura set Bruce to digging furrows in the new vegetable garden, which was many times the size of the old one, and laid out according to Luc’s plans. Bruce had been up for hours, and Laura with him; their porridge cooked and eaten, bowls washed, chooks fed. Lunch loomed, another item to complete. Bruce had wanted to chop wood; the dead pines still needed to be cut and stacked, but Laura worried about him managing a blade. No matter what the job, it was hard for him to focus. He would start well enough, but there would come a point at which, as Laura worked alongside, she could see that the purpose of the task eluded him. His work would slow, then stop. He would stare at the tool he held as if it might animate and articulate its use.

  Occasionally he got scared. Laura left him for a moment sweeping the shed, and came back to find him howling, certain he was imprisoned and would not be released. At other times, he worked not on the task she assigned him but one completed long ago.

  As they dug holes for Luc’s saplings, sent down from Sydney in damp hessian sacks, Bruce tried uprooting those already planted, condemned to relive the clearing work he’d done. Despite the difficulties he faced on certain days, there were others, the majority, when doing jobs seemed to prop Bruce up. Even when he couldn’t make sense of why and what he was digging for, the act of working the blade into the earth still offered some respite.

  Summer came to a close, but the heat endured. As Luc prepared for the coming semester, he withdrew into Laura’s room, his study, where he sat for hours in the current of warm air turned by the fan. His interest in the farm was waning. She had encouraged it, she knew, but the fact of it still ached. The radiance of his attention was weakening, leaving her cold. Years ago, she might have been devastated.

  When their paths did cross in the evenings, Laura tried to engage with the things he was reading, to seem interested, but she was so exhausted by the time the light dimmed and she came indoors that it was hard to think of questions, her mind numbed with dirt and manure. Then there was the dinner still to make. There was Bruce.

  This is what dying feels like, Laura thought. Slowly letting go.

  Sitting across the table from Luc while he picked at his food, she could see the way his eyes strayed to the half-read book he had placed on the bench. Starving, body aching, Laura shovelled her dinner in. The table marked a seemin
gly insurmountable distance between them.

  It was a different story at night. Though they went to sleep with their backs to each other, Laura woke with her hands on Luc. Their skins, molten. She knew she was trying to grasp something that was already gone. The way they came together across the damp sheets, pressing desperately, brought tears. Still she tried, gripping Luc’s arms, his back, wanting every part of him. His mouth was hard and wet on hers. Words they couldn’t say passed silently. Laura thought of insects mating, only to die.

  One night, when Donald was keeping Bruce company, cups of tea steaming on the verandah balustrade, Laura knew she could not put off the conversation with Luc any longer. One way or another, they had to decide what they were doing. How they would go on. She left the dishes on the rack and came into her bedroom, drying her hands on her shirt.

  Luc took a moment to swivel from the desk. Laura tried to suppress her irritation.

  She said, ‘Can we talk?’

  Though he smiled, Laura saw how hard Luc’s hands gripped his knees. He crossed the room and sat beside her. Laura couldn’t meet his eye.

  ‘I don’t want us to say it,’ he said, taking her hand.

  ‘We have to,’ she said.

  Luc shifted apart from her then. Her hand lay between them. He stared moodily out the window. Laura explained again that she couldn’t leave Bruce. She wanted to stay on the farm and Luc wanted to live in Sydney.

  Locations could be managed, he argued. They both sensed that there was more to it. They had spent hours together, millions, it seemed.

  But Laura could never tell him the one thing about her life that he most needed to know.

  ‘What went wrong?’ Luc said, pacing. ‘What happened?’

  Laura said she didn’t know. ‘It’s me.’ She was vehement. ‘I’m fucked.’

  Luc rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t give me that bullshit,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said simply, and she was.

  There wasn’t even a fight. Now that they were at the end of things, what had annoyed her vanished. Overcome with tenderness, Laura took Luc’s face in her hands. It was, bewilderingly, over. She started crying and didn’t think that she could stop. She had lost so much: her mother, her childhood, now Luc. Coming back to the farm was like coming back to the start. She didn’t know if she was sentencing herself to relive all that sorrow, or if she was redeeming herself.

  Later, she would say, ‘We just grew apart.’

  In the morning, Laura walked over to the clothesline, basket of wet washing on her hip. It was not quite noon, the sky paling towards silver as the sun climbed high. Laura pegged each item with maternal care. The washing smelled wet-fresh. To breathe it in made her feel, for a moment, that all was still right in the world. The line, the pegs, the heat, the scent: these were the components of a good, quiet domesticity, the worth of which could not be broadcast or conveyed, but was for her to enjoy alone in that small flicker of time between the moment she leaned down to take a bright white pillow slip from the basket and the moment she pegged it out.

  The screen door slammed. Luc came out shirtless, clutching a mug. He would leave that afternoon. ‘Morning,’ he said. ‘You’re working hard.’

  Then he was behind her. Laura started. A T-shirt flopped into the dirt. She swore, annoyed, and said, ‘What’s wrong?’

  Luc padded barefoot across to the big gum. He shook his head. His eyes were wide and glassy, as though he was in love. ‘Do you know what this is?’ he said, then muttered to himself, ‘I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to notice.’

  Laura tossed her head impatiently. ‘A tree?’

  ‘It’s a canoe tree. Maybe that’s not the right name. But, look.’ He traced the big misshapen scar, darker than the rest.

  Recalling Joseph’s story from that first meeting long ago, Laura shivered. She had the unsettling thought that history was a scratched record. She didn’t like being made to think of her friend. Why had they stopped speaking to each other? It was hard now to recall. Laura felt his absence then, the way the tree must have felt the missing piece of bark.

  Luc was still talking, explaining in the same zealous way he had once touted veganism that the trees were rare. He said that Indigenous people peeled back the bark to fashion their canoes. She could have told him Joseph’s version, explained what her friend had said. Luc would enjoy the confirmation. But she shrugged instead. She remembered the way Joseph had looked at her. Had Luc ever gazed at her like that?

  ‘Where on earth would anyone canoe ’round here?’ Laura snapped.

  Sweat dampened the waistband of her shorts. Luc’s words were flies, buzzing. She felt an urgent need, like a burning bladder, to be alone.

  ‘Didn’t you say something about a lake?’ Luc said. ‘A dam?’

  ‘It’s dry.’

  Laura shied from Luc’s smile. It drooped. He turned to her quizzically, hurt. Laura took perverse pleasure in the look on his face.

  ‘Well, it still means some tribe lived here,’ he said quietly.

  She had muddied his joy and she knew it. How easy it would be to reach out and take his hand. Her fingers interlaced. ‘But,’ she said, frowning, ‘here?’

  Luc stalked off to get his camera. Laura touched the place on the trunk where someone had once cut away the bark. It gave her goosebumps: a hand where her hand now was. What had become of the boat they built? The tree had only survived the fires because it was right up close to the house. What else had burned up?

  Part Four

  It took the whole day to dig Bruce’s grave. Each shovel of dirt hurt. Laura sobbed through pouring sweat. The gravediggers hired by Vik stood uselessly in the narrow shadow of their machine. Vik could contract whoever she liked. It was her money. But after a few sharp words, Laura ignored the men. Shrugging, they dared not interfere. Laura didn’t care what they thought of her. She knew in her heart that it was a job for family. It could not be done by strangers.

  ‘Long as we get paid,’ the man in charge called out.

  Laura spat dusty phlegm, digging the shovel in. ‘You’ll get what’s owing,’ she said.

  Flies landed on the corners of her mouth, her eyes. She worked down into the ground. Hard powder, there was no moisture in it. The earth grew cooler. Strata of soil showed time, passing. Laura found it incredibly sad, how thin history was: whole millennia tamped down into lines. And it made her angry, how hard it still was to dig through. Some layers were darker than others, almost black. Some were coloured ochre, or clay. One was ash.

  At midday, Michael came up the hill from the house with sandwiches and sunscreen, a can of cold lemonade. Standing on the lip of the hole, he gave the idle diggers a two-fingered salute, which they ignored. His hair was cockatoo feather, completely white. Laura couldn’t remember it losing colour, but she felt she had hardly seen Vik and Michael over the last few years, what with caring for the place, and for Bruce. Even when they came to visit she rarely paused for breath, so that when they left she felt they might as well not have come at all.

  The last decade had been the most difficult period of her life, Laura judged. Worse even than the period after Kath disappeared in terms of heartbreak and work – and that was saying something. Though it rained off and on, drought receding for several years, the climate had long stopped being something she understood. Proper wet weather seemed a thing of the past. Both Bruce and the farm had suffered a creeping, steady decline – or so it seemed to Laura, who felt flayed by each new element that turned to dust and crumbled. She had tried everything she knew to stop the slide: she worked hard about the place, tended her father, as though she held the power to repair them both with sweat.

  ‘There’s nothing more you can do, Lor,’ Vik had said on the phone. ‘The weather – everyone’s suffering. You’ve done what you can to replant and that, but there’s a human limit.’

  Laura could revegetate, could irrigate, could ship water in. But she could not make it rain. And she could not stop the march of time, Bruc
e’s ageing or his disease, though she’d tried. With every bath and meal, she’d tried. And now her father was dead.

  Laura stood at the bottom of his grave and looked up at the rectangle of splitting light. One day Michael had been a young man, the next not. Bruce had deteriorated a little each day, until he was gone.

  She took the lemonade. Raw palms wept against the icy can. The heat was brutal. Michael pulled his ridiculous plastic visor low over his eyes, offering help. Laura said again that she was fine. She would dig the grave herself, end of story.

  ‘Forgot to say,’ Michael said. ‘Luc phoned. He got your message. He’s coming. Will be here in time for tomorrow.’

  Laura leaned heavily on the shovel. Michael hesitated. He looked as if he had more to say, but couldn’t find the words. They had all followed Luc’s political career; it was hard not to. Constantly getting in trouble for saying the wrong thing – for saying what he believed, Luc protested – he was often on TV: talk shows, panels, Q&A. Though he had a ways to go, a few rungs left to climb, the same compelling zeal that had once captivated Laura ensured he got more air than most. The camera loved him. The public were divided. Laura found it hard to watch.

  She tossed the crushed can up; Michael threw himself in its path as though diving for a catch. He brandished the can triumphantly, turning on the spot, accepting imaginary applause. Laura smiled weakly, seeing how happy it made him.

  ‘At least put some sunscreen on,’ Michael said.

  She groaned, but did what he asked. How kind he was. Vik was lucky.

  ‘Get rid of them, would you?’ she said, jerking a chin at the men. ‘They need paying.’

  Michael would have hell to pay from Vik, Laura guessed, when she heard what they had done, sending the gravediggers home. But there was a faint smile on Michael’s face as he took his wallet out. So, Laura thought. He takes some small pleasure from defying Vik too.