Anchor Point

by Alice Robinson

  Laura admitted that she couldn’t go on at the farm.

  ‘Can we sell?’ Vik said. ‘After all that’s happened?’

  There was sweat on her brow. It had grown warm in the room, as though the heat from the flames – out in the gilded suburbs beyond the bounds of the city – was reaching them on air.

  Laura said, ‘We’ll work it out. But listen, Vik. About Kath. Katja, I mean. She wants …’

  Vik straightened, showing her full, regal height. She took Laura’s shoulder, efficient and grim-faced. ‘Don’t worry about that. Thinks she can come sniffing around!’ Vik snorted; her face was stony with resolve. ‘After everything. Like she deserves it!’

  Laura couldn’t help it. Sobs rose and broke without warning, a monsoon. Vik looked startled and jumped back, but Laura couldn’t explain through her tears. It was just that this was the first time she had really felt that her sister was on her side. The first time Katja wasn’t there in some ghostly way, impossible to compete with, holding them apart.

  Vik’s home phone snapped the moment. It rang, one short, sharp peal.

  ‘Strange,’ she said. ‘Must have been cut off – they’ll call back.’

  But even as Laura was responding, Vik was rushing to the wall, jabbing at the temperature control. Laura sat forward. Something was happening; she could not grip on to what it was. The way Vik looked at her. The same as when, after a long day’s search, Bruce had come back inside the house, alone.

  ‘What is it?’ Laura said. She rose up stiffly from the couch.

  ‘Fire must’ve cut through the phone lines,’ Vik said. ‘Power too. Can you feel how hot it is in here?’

  They went back into the lounge to stand agitatedly at the windows, staring out. Vik touched the glass with back of hand. She winced. Laura copied; the glass was faintly warm. She could feel the heat of Vik’s skin, the beat of her fear. Three helicopters in formation flew north towards the flames.

  ‘Whole city’s out,’ Vik said. ‘See? But don’t worry – buildings like these have their own generators. It’ll soon crank up, I expect.’

  Laura looked where Vik pointed. She saw what she hadn’t seen before. In office buildings, no lights were lit behind glinting glass. Chaotic roads were jammed to a halt. Traffic lights gone blind. A white ambulance, small as a pearl, raced towards a smash. Threaded on a string of stationary cars, it ground to a halt at the first cross of streets. Some people were edging their cars out into intersections, only to turn into the next long queue.

  Laura could see what they could not – that it was hopeless. She traced road into road until the pattern of cars blurred with distance and the haze of smoke. The city, fallen into uncanny stillness. Jammed by the failure of its own clockwork. Without electricity, Laura saw that it had stopped being a city at all. It had become a vast, hot stretch of concrete.

  The apartment was warming up. Without power, no water could be pumped up to them, or down. They had no fresh air, for none of the grand windows opened. It was forty degrees outside, maybe more. Without conditioned air, the tower, a glass tube, would quickly equalise. But there was nowhere else to go.

  Laura couldn’t quite read the look on her sister’s face. There was some internal conflict taking place. Vik inhaled deeply, squaring shoulders. Her eyes strayed to Laura’s scrawled notes, scattered by the couch. Laura wanted to tell Vik something then. It was a snake in the grass and she was behind it, snatching the tail as it whipped and disappeared. She needed a moment to focus the thought, to dig it out of the dark burrow it had coiled up in. But Vik was shaking herself, grinning artificially. Whatever struggle had gone on, the manager in Vik had won.

  ‘C’mon,’ she said, bustling. ‘I’ll make tea. Think there’s still water in the kettle.’

  Laura was swept along by her sister’s vigour, ushered enthusiastically back to the couch. Installed on a wad of cream cushions, Laura was urged by Vik to rest. Laura watched her sister zag around the kitchen, a lightning bolt, all energy with little domestic application, which was her way. Of course no water could be boiled, so they had the tea lukewarm. Vik worked as if it were any other day, clattering cups, spilling sugar, humming under her breath. She kept her back to the windows, fixed on the task. Whatever happened next, Laura felt that Vik would survive it. She lay back against the pristine couch, feeling bone-tired, the way she had felt after gruelling days of clearing work. Vik fixed the drinks as Laura had trained her: pouring water, measuring leaves. The farm might be lost, but there was something Laura had done well.

  Vik knows how to make a good cup of tea, Laura thought. Because of me.

  The city had darkened and was mired in smoke. Laura’s tongue felt swollen, gluey with thirst. She sat up slowly. The sun, muffled by haze, was being snuffed out. Usually a landscape of merrily twinkling lights, Melbourne was plunged into deep and layered gloom.

  Disoriented, it took Laura a moment to work out where she was. She felt the building shift. Wind outside, blasting past. She remembered the fire. It took another moment to feel the reason for her journey to the city: that she was giving up the farm. Laura thought about lying back and closing her eyes again – and would have, but for the nagging, parched condition of her mouth.

  She stared instead at the fire, even more eerie against a darkening evening sky. It was impossible to gauge its full scope. Parts flared up, sank back, flickering. The entire horizon still licked and spat. Laura tried to do the calculations. When bushfire appeared as a mere iridescent line at fifty-odd kilometres, what was it really, right up close? A word came like an insult: inferno. The wind was the inferno inhaling, sucking oxygen – a firestorm.

  She had seen enough domestic fire to know that this was something else. Smoke billowed, curling up, expanding. The sky in a premature sunset made of flame. She thought of the Kyree ranges, sun sinking low behind the hills, those crimson evenings. ‘Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight,’ Bruce used to say. Above Melbourne’s darkened suburbs, both sky and land were of the same coal hue. One might have been dark water, reflecting the other back.

  Vik came in from the hall. She said, ‘You awake, Lor?’

  How many times had Laura heard that voice in dead of night?

  Vik said that she had got through to Michael on the mobile. He and Cait were fine. Since some roads were jammed and others around the apartment cordoned off, they had gone to the big cricket ground where the council had set up tents and generators and were passing out cold drinks. They were being told the power would come back on soon.

  ‘Funny,’ Vik said. ‘To be a refugee, so close to home.’ Despite her brave smile she was pale, and had been crying. Laura touched Vik’s knee. A quick warm look passed between them. Vik handed Laura the tepid tea and she knocked it back gratefully – there was no other drink.

  ‘I order groceries online,’ Vik admitted. ‘Delivery was due today.’ Laura was touched by her sister’s unnecessary shame. ‘It’ll be really dark soon. I couldn’t find candles.’

  Vik opened her laptop for the weak electronic glow it gave off. How beautiful she looked, Laura thought, oiled in sweat and shadow. Vik stared out at the view. Looking down at the city was like looking into a crevasse. Scattered headlights moved cautiously along roads tunnelled by dark. Laura caught the red-blue flash of a fire-truck siren, far away down below.

  They were aligned together against the dark. Laura was overcome with feeling for the woman beside her. The love she felt was muscular.

  ‘I was thinking about Dad teaching me to swim,’ she said suddenly. Taking a handful of her sister’s hair, she bunched it like a rope. Though she wanted – had only ever wanted – to take care of Vik, to spare her heartache and sorrow, there seemed so little she could do to bring lasting comfort. They leaned together. Laura said, ‘The way he would let go, but I wouldn’t know. I’d get so mad when I realised he was behind me in the dam, and I’d been going on my own.’

  Vik smiled sadly, shrugging a little. ‘Was you, taught me.’

  Watching the f
lames, the distant flashing lights of emergency services racing up roads, Laura wondered if it was possible that, raging through suburbs, the fire was closing in on them.

  ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘do you want to do the plans?’

  Vik picked at the fabric of her pants, creased with heat. She nodded. ‘I’d rather me.’

  Though it was really too dim to draw, she went and got a notebook and set about sketching their valley, barely looking at the lines.

  ‘You don’t have to start now,’ Laura said.

  But Vik made a face that mirrored what Laura felt. They had gone through a door that could not be reopened. Laura thought of Joseph, to whom she had promised access to their land. She had phoned him up to explain her new intentions, had heard his voice break down the line. An aching sound. So close to the sound she imagined for Bruce’s heart, had he lived to see what she had planned. He would turn in his grave, the hill around which might eventually – in line with Vik’s clever design – be made into a neat little park on a new estate.

  Joseph had asked for time, a chance to get the money together to buy the land himself. Laura granted it. She couldn’t tell him about her illness, that without it she might have just given him the lot. But there were Vik and Cait to think of; it belonged to them too. There was her medical care. And there was the niggling question she dared not speak: What would he do with the place?

  Laura and Vik sat side-by-side, watching the brilliant orange banner burn across the land. The visible ferocity of the burning made Laura’s heart pound; the fluorescent haze magnified and distorted against the artificial dimming of the city without lights. Even as she watched, something exploded at the front. A fireball burst above waves of flame; flares shot into the sky. The final marker of a family home, gas bottle at back door.

  Laura worked on rubbing Vik’s shoulders. She focused her attention on the circular movement of her hand hard against Vik’s clammy back, just to prevent herself from bolting like an animal, though the fire was still a way off, and there was nowhere she could run. She saw that for all their conversations, for all the hard work they had done to make something of their lives and of the farm, for all their efforts to be honest with each other, they were no more in control of their fates now than anyone down there on the ground was in control of the fire. It would burn. Despite the fire engines and evacuation plans, the careful clearing of dead brush, domestic sprinklers on roofs and all that television coverage, it would burn. What remained of the land beyond the city in the morning would be what it was. Either ashes, or alive. It was outside them. Or maybe, Laura thought, they were outside it. Either way, it was simply bigger than they were.

  Laura took Vik’s hand. They had done their best together, hadn’t they?

  Down below, the darkened city stretched in all directions, amorphous without lights. The fire breathed embers into the sky. It was hard to believe that when it was over, there would be anything left to save. Laura saw a jumbo jet circling Tullamarine, unable to land. Its lights, like shooting stars. Though it would soon be fully dark, she could just make out twin plumes trailing behind the plane.

  As she watched, the contrails evaporated. Gone wherever smoke goes, when it can no longer be recognised by the naked eye.

  Acknowledgements

  Writing this book has been the defining experience of my recent life, and it is with sincere appreciation that I acknowledge the precious support I have been afforded along the way. I very much doubt that I would have possessed the gumption to pursue this project without the lifelong support and encouragement of my mother Geri, who has always believed in the power of ideas. Although the characters and events I have described herein are fictional, my father Paul’s lived demonstration of how one might love and care for a piece of land has constituted an unparalleled inspiration, as has his generous imparting of Robinson family lore. I gratefully thank my other parents as well: Dominie, who has cheered me on with kindness and compassion, and Rob, whose patient counsel has always spurred me along the paths I most wanted to take. Thanks given to Dave, Jan, Tig and Amanda for tirelessly listening to and encouraging me throughout. I know that I could not be a writer at this time without these eight excellent grandparents. My gratitude and respect also to Nathan Croft, and to Steph Tout for her love and photographic talent.

  Anchor Point began as a PhD in Creative Writing at Victoria University. I am indebted to the generous wisdom, insight and advocacy of my three wonderful supervisors: Professor Michele Grossman, Emeritus Professor John McLaren and Dr Fiona Capp. I would also like to thank Professor Helen Borland, as well as Dr Enza Gandolfo for the enduring support provided by herself and the wonderful members of the Postgraduate Creative Writing Group. As the recipient of a Victoria University Postgraduate Scholarship, I thank the university for its generosity. The financial breathing space the scholarship afforded allowed me to find my way into being the writer I had long hoped I might become.

  I am humbled in my gratitude to the exceptional team at Affirm Press, including Martin Hughes, my champion, and Rebecca Starford, Aviva Tuffield, Ruby Ashby-Orr and Kate Goldsworthy. Thanks to each of you for your labour and for believing in my work.

  I value the ongoing support of my creative endeavours given by the Creative Arts Department at Melbourne Polytechnic (formerly NMIT), and thank Julian Smith, among the many, many friends, colleagues, students and readers I have not the space to name individually here, but who read chapters, answered my questions, made suggestions, made cups of tea, arranged writing retreats, offered feedback, gave advice, listened. They say it takes a village to raise a child, so too this novel.

  Most fundamentally, I acknowledge the unwavering, stoic support I was gifted by my husband, Dan: partner, reader, cheer squad and anchor. I know I could not have dredged up the necessary stamina without his patience, wisdom and love behind me. Dan, you are magnificent.

  I feel a deep sense of foreboding regarding the impacts, present and potential, of human actions on so many ecosystems, plants, animals and other living things in Australia. That the landscapes and natural beauty I have so adored and been inspired by may not endure, due to climate change, is a loss too great to articulate. My glorious little children, Etta Francesca and Arturo Otis, will live in the future we are creating now. As an expression of my belief in their abilities, my hope for the lives they will create despite the odds, and my love, I dedicate this work to them.

  ‘Gritty , Poetic and moving’

  FLONA CAPP

  When her mother disappears into the bush, ten-year-old Laura makes an impulsive decision that will haunt her for decades. Despite her anger and grief, she sets about running the house, taking care of her younger sister, and helping her father clear their wild acreage to carve out a farm.

  But gradually they realise that while they may own the land, they cannot tame it – nor can they escape their past.

  Anchor Point is an eloquent and arresting Australian novel no reader will easily forget.