We are now on very shaky ground. I will not revisit those early days when she nearly took Ross away from his responsibilities at Maryhill. Her, with her piercings and tarty, cheap clothes. How inappropriate she was, and sometimes still is. Suddenly this familiarity is distasteful and I’m irritated with her. I look out the window and see the faint outlines of trees; they will be wattles, pines, eucalypts. I’ve seen she-oaks around here, too.
‘If Ross were here, he might admit to a regret,’ Stella says. ‘He’d just accepted an offer to join Cathay’s pilot program. We were in Phuket on a holiday when I told him I was pregnant with Isobel. I said I wanted to raise our kids in the country, and if he became a pilot, we’d be apart all the time. Neither of us wanted that. I love it here. Ross now seems content.’
And so. Stella is claiming credit as Maryhill’s saviour. It might be right that she does. I’m trying to consider this when she informs me she and Ross had a son.
I press the lever and sit up.
‘That’s another thing I regret, that our baby boy didn’t live.’
‘A boy?’ I say. ‘What are you telling me?’
‘He is our third baby. Harry.’ Stella sits up, too. ‘We never found out why, but he was born early, at twenty-one weeks.’
Quiet envelopes us. Harry is the name on her breast, the lost baby. I still can’t fathom the notion of tattooing your body. Mark is indelibly written on my heart; I don’t need his name on my skin to help me remember.
‘I’m sorry you lost a baby,’ I say.
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘We’ve both lost sons.’
I will not compare our grief and think it’s unfortunate she’s made the connection.
‘Perhaps we should try for some sleep,’ I say.
I lie back on my reclined seat. It’s cold now and I hug into myself. It’s as if the inner core of me is on fire and the outside is freezing, and I consider these might be the early symptoms of a chill and in a few short days I might be dead, like Dot was. I notice this thought. The idea of dying disheartens me. There are things I’m looking forward to. Isobel’s piano exam is in three months, and I like listening to how she works, one by one, through the movements, perfecting and getting faster. And Jemima wants me to bird spot in the garden with her and reference them on the ‘ap’ on her iPad. I will enjoy that. And I’m intrigued to see Stella’s play properly performed – the household has been in an uproar because of it ever since I moved in, so it will be interesting to see how it goes.
And there’s the possibility of seeing Chester again – although I am chastened by our last meeting when he came to dinner. He spoke unkindly to me, but I’m loath to dwell on it; the implications are devastating when I think that Chester doesn’t cherish our past like I do. It has raised several questions about what our years together meant to him. But there. After all this time, I can still picture his delighted gaze on me in that cosy narrow bed in the nook behind his work shed. Yes, he loved me then, but doesn’t now. I’m old and no longer worthy of his attentions. It seems we can’t even be friends, and that’s a disappointment to me. But, then, we never were friends, not in the traditional sense of two people who share confidences and experiences in the normal course of daily living. We were intermittent lovers. Laura was his friend.
As best I can, I shuffle onto my side and close my eyes. There’s a weight on my chest, and I pay attention to it. Yes, that’s it: Ross had a son. I bring the image of a baby before me; strangely, it’s Mark’s newborn face that I see as my little unknown grandson, Harry. I frown at the dreadful misfortune of his death because he would’ve been Maryhill’s next heir.
Chapter 33
Stella
I try to see things how Ross will. At seven I phoned him to say we were on our way home. At about seven-forty-five he’d have been expecting us. He’ll think we’ve had an accident: anything from a flat tyre, to hitting a kangaroo, to a fallen tree blocking our way. But I’ve not called to explain a problem and there’s a strong mobile signal all the way along Black Wattle Road to the freeway. At first he’ll be alert, waiting to hear me speed down the drive. After an hour or so he’ll lift his head from whatever he’s doing and pay attention. That’s when he’ll start to worry. He’ll try my mobile and hear a message saying my phone is switched off or I’m out of range – you’d think that would be a hint. Yet it would never occur to him that I’d take the high-road short cut. The couple of times I’ve recently come home this way, it didn’t cross my mind to mention it; I don’t even know the name of the track we’re on – it’s just a dirt line cut through the pine plantation.
He might phone Felicity or Holly to see if he’s missing out on a spur-of-the-moment party. At some point he’ll decide to go for a drive, but he won’t want to leave the girls on their own. So he’ll probably call Eddie and tell him what’s going on. He and Dianne will take the girls; they’ll say that won’t be a problem.
Then Ross will travel our regular route down along Black Wattle Road. He’ll drive slowly, expecting to see us stranded around every corner. And when he arrives at the freeway and there’s no sign of us, he’ll be confused. That’s when things will ramp up. He’ll think we’ve run off the road somewhere along that winding stretch with the sheer drop that goes all the way down to the flats where the golden poplars line Little Clemet Creek. Even though he’s told me never to swerve to avoid hitting an animal, he’ll be working through the scenarios and coming up with only one answer.
He’ll call the police. Perhaps triple-O, or direct to the station in Benalla. They’ll tell him there are no reported incidents on the freeway. So he’ll drive back along that familiar road looking for tyre marks that leave the bitumen, and by the time he reaches Maryhill Road he’ll phone Eddie again. They’ll discuss the mystery.
Margie softly moans in her sleep as she searches for a way to get comfortable in the curved, narrow seat. It’s the right thing, staying in the car when it’s dark and wet. The heels on my boots aren’t suited for distance, but when it’s light I’ll go looking for a mobile signal.
I’m wired and can’t sleep. I want Ross. For my own sake, and because I hate it that he’ll be so worried. If it were the other way around, by now I’d be in a panic, thinking the worst. It happens. Death comes without warning.
Last year, Nadine Richards from the farm opposite the walnut orchard ran off the road on the way to Violet Town. She was found dead at the base of a manna gum. She’d kept to herself and I hadn’t known her all that well, but I’d admired her – growing commercial garlic and pressing her own Leccino olives to sell oil at the local farmers’ markets. Mauve, her four-year-old daughter, is now living somewhere in Melbourne with her father, and I still worry about that little girl, what’s become of her. I’m getting carried away now, thinking of all the local tragedies. Those weekenders that let their two kids ride a quad bike and next thing one is dead in a dumb, avoidable rollover. That mare at Grey Willow Stud that kicked their property manager’s two-year-old son in the head. Stop.
If it wouldn’t wake Margie, I’d put music on: the radio, or 19, an old Adele CD I have in the glovebox. Anything to clear my mind and distract myself. What a bloody idiot I am, letting that dickhead driver in the Kenworth intimidate me into coming this way at night and in the rain.
I start doing this strange thing, sending mental messages to Ross to let him know we’re okay. I wonder what he’s thinking, feeling. Maybe the SES are out by now. Half the goddamn tableland will be; word spreads fast. Spotlights on the back of utes will be turned downwards, searching deep into the treed gullies for our bronze Prado. Because I’m impulsive, I’ve created an emergency.
My phone tells me it’s 2.06. It’s cold and I’m done with hugging myself for warmth and subduing that internal urge to shiver.
Margie must be cold too, but thankfully she’s still lulled in sleep. It surprises me she’s not anxious about our situation, that somehow she’s relinquished all the worry and problem-solving to me. That’s a good thing.
I press for the engine to start – it responds as it should, yet I feel surprised and relieved. I put the heater back on. And it’s about now I’m getting angry with Ross for not having found us. You’d think, weighing up all the options, this track would be considered, that he would’ve asked someone to check it out. My mind starts playing tricks. And I see Ross sound asleep in bed, slumped on his side, oblivious that I’m not spooned into his back. He might’ve gone to bed before we got home; after all, he’d been up since six to check on the pregnant heifers.
I drift to sleep, but my senses are acute – the feeling of sounds, or dreams – and I’m still cold. I blink awake at the irrational notion it’s not safe to be stationary and have the motor running for so long, that if Ross were here he’d tell me I shouldn’t be doing it. You’d think the rising panic in me is because a hose is coming in from the exhaust through the window.
I turn the motor off. Then, soundlessly, I open my door, take a few steps away and piss onto the wet ground. Back in the driver’s seat, I pull the door shut. Margie sleeps.
Someone will knock on my window and I’ll jolt awake with the shock. I close my eyes and wait for it to happen.
At 5.11 it’s still dark, perhaps with the first aperture shift in the light. I stare through the side window looking for movement, but the terrain is the same small scope I’ve been staring into during the night: a skein of blackberries, scrubby wattles and unknown shrubs that fill the space to the heavy planked bridge. The creek will be running, but I can’t hear it from inside the car.
Margie stirs and opens her eyes. She takes me in, sitting across from her, then folds back into herself and returns to sleep. This worries me. She didn’t take her evening slow-release tablet to correct her arrhythmia, it’s cold and she’s wearing damp clothes. I reach across and feel her forehead. She doesn’t stir at my touch and I wonder if there’s something I need to pay attention to. She’s clammy, not hot or cold, but that damp in-between feeling. I study her carefully: her hunched body in the passenger seat, the slow rise of her chest, the quiver under her eyelids. I think about waking her to check how she’s feeling. I’m unsure what to do.
I leave her be and stare into the outside gloom, watching the slow dawn. I expect to see wildlife, but nothing passes my line of vision. It’s irrational, but I keep checking to see if a phone signal has kicked in. I tell myself these things can be intermittent; some weird tower radio waves that I don’t understand might flicker on and somehow reach me.
At 5.59 I put the local FM news on, half-expecting to hear we’re the lead story. Margie blinks awake and sits confused, arms tightly gripped around her chest.
‘How’re you feeling?’ I ask.
‘Why haven’t we been found yet?’
‘Don’t know. But how are you?’
‘Fine.’ She sniffs and turns, still trying to find a comfortable position in the reclined seat. So Margie is herself and I’m relieved.
The newsreader tells me a television celebrity I’ve never heard of has died from complications relating to dementia. A weather event in the west of the state has saturated wheat crops. The local council elections have attracted more would-be councillors than ever before.
And so. We sit. Dawn breaks in lighter shades of grey until it’s possible to tell a red box eucalypt from a black wattle. Still there’s no wildlife – perhaps we are being watched from secret hideouts.
Margie tells me she’s desperate to pee again, but it’s a fraught exercise and I can’t think how to sort this out. She can’t crouch into position and I know she won’t let me help her.
She leaves the car and moves towards the back. I open my door and stand away so I can’t see her, but I’m close if she falls. ‘Should I hold your arm, Margie?’
No answer, but a great deal of deep sighing and little steps as if she’s trying to find the right way to go about it. I hear the gush. And wait.
‘It’d be much easier to be a man,’ she calls, shuffling back to the car.
She’s wet again. And it’s this that makes me decide I can’t wait any longer and need to get going to locate a mobile signal or find someone. Should I go ahead? Or backtrack? Ahead could be twelve or so kilometres. Not so bad, and I could make the whole distance in under three hours if it wasn’t for these useless, but gorgeous, high-heeled boots. It’s more than thirty kilometres back to the freeway. I can’t decide which way to go because I don’t know where the closest signal is.
‘You can wear my shoes,’ Margie says. ‘What size are you?’
‘Eight.’
‘No good. I’m a seven.’
I tell Margie I’m going ahead, further into the pine forest. ‘It’s Monday morning. Maybe there are loggers working who’ve come in from the other side.’
There’s a moment of waiting, a hesitation, and Margie reaches across and clumsily grasps my hand and gives it a little shake. Her skin is dry, leathery. With her ancient brown eyes, she holds my gaze while nodding her head. This is her way of communicating because she’s unable to say what she feels.
But it’s easy for me. ‘Love you, Margie. If I don’t see anyone in an hour, I’ll turn around and come back. So you’ll see me in a couple of hours.’
‘I’m not sure you should leave the car,’ she says.
‘Me either.’
‘Then stay.’
‘I can’t keep sitting here. Bloody Ross, where is he? Sometimes he uses this track. Why hasn’t he thought to come here?’
‘Someone will come.’
‘But when? We’ve got no food or water.’
‘There’s the creek,’ she says.
‘Cows shit in there. I’ll just go and take a look ahead. It’ll be okay.’
My ankle boots are Italian, two-toned tan and black, and cost the price of a fully grown steer in a high-value market. Last year Ross bought them for my combined birthday and Christmas present, a luxury gift that makes me very spoilt. It was either them or getting every flywire screen in the house replaced, involving bespoke workmanship and lots of detailed painting. The decision was easy. I said we’d buy a can of flyspray, then we went shopping on Collins Street. My boots are crafted to be adored and to make the wearer feel very classy – not for long-distance walking. The heels are about the height and thickness of a lipstick case, not too narrow, but slender enough to depress centimetres into this wet, rough, bark-covered earth.
I step through the branches of the fallen peppermint gum and stride on. Rivulets run along the track from rain hitting dry, hard ground. Above is a choir of unseen birds. The creek gushes with new water. I walk fast for maybe two kilometres. The track is now a road, wide and strong enough to carry logging trucks. No one is working up here. I keep going, the stubby wasteland of harvested pines is on both sides. I feel the isolation, the deep quiet. I don’t like it. Another few hundred metres and I stop.
I’ve always had this niggling disappointment with my beloved boots – the slight rub on my left toe that is so easily ignored when I’m standing still, taking short walks to the car, striding thirty or so steps from a front door to a seat at a dining table. There’s a raw blister on my little toe and I know I won’t make any distance, especially if I have to turn back.
I’m uncertain what to do. I sit on a flat granite stone so perfectly moulded to my bum it could be a bar stool. No signal on my phone, the bloody useless thing. I’d like a drink of water and here I am stuck in this remote nowhere: stillness, silence, the absence of birdsong. I feel and see the beauty of this remote place and elevation – perhaps eight hundred metres above sea level – yet I feel afraid, vulnerable. I’m so unbelievably dumb to have put myself here. I should’ve walked back towards the freeway.
I stand up and turn back towards Margie.
Beside me in the wet dirt is the twin-hoof imprint of a sambar deer. It’s unmistakable, not a kangaroo or anything else. I keep walking; we’re both headed in the same direction.
‘Stella.’
A man’s voice. Fast and urgent. Then he’
s jogging towards me from the direction of the car. Blue fleece, jeans, the giveaway cap he always wears, even in bitter winter and now so early in the morning. It’s Eddie. I’m stupid. His approach is confirmation of my bad decision. He’s found the car and had to come all this way to find me.
I hurry to him.
I’m held.
‘Jesus,’ he gasps. I feel the rise of his chest as he takes fast, full breaths. But he’s grinning, laughing to himself.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
He shakes his head, bends down to keep taking in air.
‘You made a grown man cry,’ he says.
I whisper my husband’s name.
‘Poor bastard,’ he says. ‘He’s going to be one happy boy now.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Out looking. Let’s go.’
We walk and I don’t care that my left little toe is being mangled with each step. I hear how the police were short on crews and suggested that maybe I’d decided to nick off somewhere else rather than go home and I’d probably turn up this morning. The SES couldn’t be mobilised until the police said so. By 10 pm Ross had everyone he knew out searching.
‘The girls?’
‘Our place. Dianne’s got them.’
I tell him what happened, the truck, blurting out my several excuses, confessing to being reckless.
He pats my shoulder. ‘It’s all good now. Bit of excitement never hurt anybody.’
Eddie’s black 4WD is backed onto the bridge. He’s already pulled the Prado out of the ditch and has it facing in the right direction – back the way we came, towards the freeway. Margie is still sitting in the passenger seat, and as I get closer I see she’s asleep again, an open bottle of water loosely grasped in her hand.
I take my boots off. Nothing to do except get in the car and drive home. Eddie is already in his driver’s seat; I’ve said I’ll follow him and phone Ross as soon as there’s a signal.
Stella and Margie Page 25