by Chris Else
‘Am I right?’ she insisted.
After a second or two, he nodded, not looking at her.
She stripped the covering from the band-aid and spread it over the graze.
‘Does it happen a lot?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘Bullying. Does it happen to other kids?’
‘A bit.’
‘And who does it? The older ones?’
‘Sometimes. Not always. There’s a bunch of kids.’
She unfolded the blanket, spread it over him, tucked it round his legs.
‘I think we should encourage these people to stop, don’t you?’
12.
THE HOUSE WAS IN the grand style: two storeys, each with a veranda sweeping away from the central tower of the entrance. The weatherboards were white with grey trim, not a garish, dazzling white but a smoothed-out tone, a touch of green in it. Tom stopped the ute in front of the wide grey steps, got out on to the gravel of the driveway, looked around. Sniffed the air. Cool air, the smell of rain. To his right, between the house and the road, was a patch of lawn dotted with azaleas and rhododendrons, tight pale leaf buds just visible on the bigger trees. And all above a grey sky, with the clouds moving in a brisk nor’wester. He thought of Martin Wraggles. Can’t seem to take the cold these days.
‘Over here.’ Laura Kerrington was standing in the driveway by the corner of the house. She wore a maroon anorak and jeans. Hands in her jacket pockets. He walked towards her but she turned away and headed off out of sight.
So he followed her, round the corner and down the side. Trees on his left, fruit trees in rows — apples and pears and plums, by the look of it — and two long wire-strand fences measured off with the stumps of grape vines. Behind the house, the drive ballooned into a turning circle before a row of garages, an extension to the building — maybe it had been a stable once. At the end of the row was a lean-to with a grey concrete step and a grey-painted door. She was there already, mounting the step, opening the door. He followed her inside.
A space, about two by four metres, and a smell. Blood and bone. On the back wall there were floor-to-ceiling shelves stacked with equipment and chemicals: fertiliser, Bordeaux mixture and Derris dust, a back-pack sprayer and a chainsaw on the bottom shelf. A roll of plastic weed-matting stood in one corner leaning against a cardboard tub of lime. Opposite the shelves, down the other long wall, was a bench with a row of windows above it. A view over the paddocks to the hills in the distance.
She had unzipped her jacket but her right hand was still in her pocket. Her left rested on a big sheet of paper, the only thing on the bench.
He stepped forward. ‘This is the plan then?’
‘Yes.’
It was not so much a plan as a drawing. A curving band — the bed of the stream — cut off the top right-hand corner. Below this was a shaded area labelled ‘Existing Garden’ in a spiky script. To the left, covering most of the paper, a sketch of curving paths and beds and two roundish shapes labelled ‘Mound 1’ and ‘Mound 2’. Cross-hatching of different textures indicated plants. At the bottom of the page a series of elevations: north-west to south-east, and north to south through each of the mounds. The planting notes were rudimentary: ferns, flowers, shrubs, trees.
‘This is the area, here,’ she said, pointing out of the window. ‘Directly in front of us.’
The ground sloped gently down to the stream about two hundred metres away. It was marked by a line of scrub and rushes, angling off to the north-west. Nothing in front of it but grass. Nothing beyond it but more grass, green that layered into the misted grey of the hills.
‘It bores me to death,’ she said. ‘I want something to look at.’
He examined the plan, trying to envisage what its implementation would mean. Two mounds. The one to the left was six metres high. The other, to the right, would be closer and smaller. Between and in front of them a kidney-shaped lawn and curving paths. A gazebo in the lee of the larger mound.
‘Who did this for you?’ he asked.
‘My architect. I asked him for some ideas. This is the one I like best.’ Her hand, on the bench beside the paper, had red nails. There were rings on three of the fingers, flashy rings with gold and diamonds.
‘This is a big project,’ he said.
‘Yes, I’m aware of that.’
‘You’re going to excavate to build the mounds?’
‘Yes, I believe so.’
‘Then you need to be careful. These elevations look a bit extreme to me.’ He tapped the plan. ‘The water table’s quite high here, so if you dig too deep out towards the stream you’re likely to create a bog, especially in winter. You wouldn’t want that too close.’
‘Couldn’t we plant it? Make a feature of it?’
‘Sure, if you have a liking for mosquitoes.’
‘Hmm.’ The hand lifted, disappeared back into the pocket.
‘But really,’ he said, ‘it looks fine. And you could always truck in some of the fill if you had to.’
‘I need someone to take care of this for me. Do you want the job?’
‘As project manager?’
‘Call it what you like.’
He looked at her. She met his eyes directly, neither frank nor dismissive. There was a stillness in her face like a mask, the nose finely carved, the lips at rest, a dark seam in the red wax. No hint. No offer. Strictly business.
‘Why me?’ he asked.
She blinked. Long lashes. Maybe the question disconcerted her.
‘Because you’re local, on the spot.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Because you seem to say what you think. And because what you say sounds sensible.’ The suggestion of a smile then. ‘And lastly, I suppose, because at forty-five dollars an hour you seem to be value for money.’
‘When do you want it done by?’
‘When can you do it by?’
‘Depends on the weather. Three months minimum.’
‘Two.’
‘It depends on the weather. And I have a business to run. I can’t do this full time.’
‘No, I appreciate that. Let’s say July the fifteenth.’ The same pale smile. ‘Depending on the weather.’
‘Do you want to draw up a contract?’
‘Do you?’
‘Do we trust each other?’
‘Ha!’ It was a laugh like a little gulp. A lift of her chin, showing her throat and the underside of her jaw. ‘This is a business arrangement,’ she said, eyes on his. ‘Why shouldn’t we trust each other?’
‘So how would we work it?’ he asked.
‘You tell me what you need, how much it’ll cost and when it’s going to happen. I’ll agree, or not, as the case may be, and I’ll pay the bills. You charge me for your time every month.’
‘Every fortnight.’
‘All right.’ Watching him still. ‘When can you start?’
‘As soon as I can find someone to do the excavations.’ He looked back out of the window. ‘It’s going to be a mess for a while.’
‘That’s why I don’t want it to take three months.’ A pause to reflect on the arrangement, to allow it the dignity of reconsideration. ‘So?’ she said. ‘Will you do it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’ She held out her hand and he took it, small, warm from her pocket. Smooth and dry.
Looking at him with her head on one side, an oddly girlish expression. ‘I think it’ll work out fine,’ she said.
Of course. Why not?
Say you’re a man and you have a daughter and she’s sixteen. Her hair’s done differently these days. It’s asymmetrical, short on the left to show the black-fuzzed skin, the bony skull behind her ear, long on the right so that it hangs in a thick screen over her forehead and halfway down her face. She’s dyed that bit blue, bright blue like an electric spark. When she goes out now, to the movies or to parties at her friends’, her face is pale, the health painted out of it, and her lips are darkly red. Wide, dark mouth that tries to keep its cool but can’t help ju
mping into grins or gasps or twists of disapproval. So you look at her, the way she’s changed, the way she moves now, skinny limbs becoming graceful, and you’re frightened, you’re appalled. You try to take comfort in all the things she still does, like her homework or going to the library on a Saturday afternoon, like turning to you with her eyes full of that puppy-dog appeal when she wants something, but none of it helps. Because she’s beautiful. Not in the way she’s always been, not merely because she is your child, the offspring of your being, focus of your love and care; she’s beautiful now in a different way. She’s beautiful now in a way that other people can see, that men can see, young men and old, and you know that because you can see it too, looking at her as a man might look. You can’t help seeing it and, therefore, you can’t avoid the implications. Because you can’t now treat her as you used to, even a few years ago, when you could grab her round the waist and throw her in the air and make her scream in protest and delight. And it’s not just her size or her new-found dignity or the fact that she menstruates and is technically a woman. No, there’s something else. An ambiguity, a confusion. It’s there in the sudden shift in her expression as she checks her impulse to fling her arms around your neck and hugs you more discreetly instead. It’s there in your doubt, in your fears for her safety, in your growing sense that she has a right to her freedom. And the world at large is loud in its condemnation of incest and child abuse, and all that stuff annoys you because it feels like an unjust accusation, a prurient insistence that you think about the unthinkable. Because the fact remains that here you are, hovering round her life like a hopeless lover, feeling inadequate and rejected and jealous of any male who looks at her. Because she’s beautiful and you can see it.
Not always, of course. She can be a pain in the arse sometimes. She can be wilful and stubborn, and she has a sharp tongue on her and enough intelligence to make it hurt when she decides to use it. She can see right through you. Why not? She’s known you long enough, all her life, and she’s grown enough in her independence to feel the first cold seep of disillusion. But the sarcasm and the sulking are ambiguous, too. They’re irritating and they’re tedious but you also feel relief in them because they show she’s still a child, protesting at her powerlessness, pushing at her boundaries. One day she’ll realise she doesn’t have to take any of this shit any more, that she can just walk out, if she wants to. And knowing that, seeing it could happen and, indeed, that in some sense it ought to happen, you begin to make a new adjustment. You begin to imagine what it might be like to have an adult daughter, to watch her from a distance, to see her move through the world with the intelligence and the serenity and the confidence she shows in her better moments, to take pride in her achievements, to see her happy and fulfilled in whatever endeavour she chooses to pursue. She’ll go to university. She’ll have a career. She’ll marry. Will she? Perhaps. Perhaps she’ll have a child. Your grandchild, strange to contemplate. Not something you’ve ever thought about before because you’ve never had a sense of dynasty or continuity, flesh to flesh, atom to atom. But if we truly are just creatures, just one of the many species on this planet, then that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Whether we like it or not. So you hold that thought. You hold it lightly, secretly. It’s not a hope, because it isn’t something you could say you wanted or, even less, needed. You still feel your justification should be here and now and not there and then in a future time that someone else (your daughter) has control over. And yet the thought helps you to make sense of it. Her interest in boys, their interest in her. She will need love. She deserves it. She’ll find someone. She’ll have a child. So what will her child be like?
Impulse is just an action that we cannot quite explain, although there may be good reasons for it, like the possibility of improving the business, of cutting costs by finding cheaper sources of supply, and bad reasons, too, like her golden hair and the warmth of her thigh next to yours as you sit on a sofa talking about her dahlias, or the two little hooks, her dimples, at the corner of her mouth. Whatever the case, driving back, down Cox’s Line, it might be very easy to turn off at the house with yellow brick walls. It might even be inevitable.
‘Tom. Hello.’
‘Hi.’
‘Come in. I’ll make some coffee.’
And doubtless, as she ushered you into the kitchen, you wouldn’t need to ask yourself what you were doing. There. Then. You could just be in a space that smelled of fruit and clean wiped surfaces. Cream paint and a brown-tiled floor. The skylight cast an angled shaft of brightness, big beam like a sloping stone. There was a rimu table and a set of chairs with raffia seats. So sit.
She was at the sink with the kettle. Her body slim and straight, a cream-coloured sweater, blue jeans, bare feet on the tiled floor.
‘It’s so strange,’ she said, glancing at him. ‘I was thinking about you.’
‘Oh?’
‘And then you are here.’ A little smile, but then immediately she turned to the coffee grinder, drowned out any chance of a reply. So he waited, watching.
‘I’ve been at the Kerringtons’,’ he told her, when the noise stopped.
‘What are you doing there?’
‘Landscaping.’
‘Ah. Laura has big plans, I think.’
‘Big plans.’
‘What would you like? An espresso?’
‘Please.’
She reached up to a cupboard to take down cups. The stretch of her arms, the curve of her breast under the sweater. She turned to the machine. A hiss of steam. Standing there, still, in the shaft of sunlight. Hair like an angel. Or the sleek, golden feathers of a bird.
She came towards him, a cup in each hand, placed them on the table, sat down. A bloom of rose on her cheekbones, faint dust of freckles over the bridge of her nose. A healthy, natural look. Like Astra. Not like the other one, Laura, with her mask. She smiled again. Is that why I’m here? he wondered. For a smile.
‘Thank you,’ he said, picking up the coffee.
‘So?’ A light tone. Watching him over her cup, her eyebrows raised. But if she had been thinking of him, she must have had a reason. Why couldn’t they use her reason? ‘How’s business?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘I’m getting bored. I need more to do.’
‘Oh? What?’
‘Expand maybe.’
‘You decide?’
He laughed. ‘No. I don’t decide. Not yet.’ Spreading his hands to offer up the alternatives. ‘All things are possible.’
‘Ah.’ A tension in her, eagerness held back. Was this her reason, then? A sniff of something interesting.
‘It’s complicated,’ he said. ‘Do I expand using wholesalers or do I get into growing myself? That’s the first question. If I’m not going to be a grower, then expansion is more risky because I have to do it on a smaller margin. If I start growing, then I have to do two things, not one.’
‘You need help, maybe.’
‘Maybe I do.’
‘Land.’
Yes.’
‘How much?’ she asked.
‘Not so much, perhaps. A quarter of a hectare would be plenty. I mean, just to focus on the low end, high turnover, that would be a help.’
‘Flowers?’
‘Pansies, violas, alyssum, viscaria. We can sell two hundred punnets of that sort of stuff in a weekend. Vegetables, too. Lettuce and so on.’
‘I have the land,’ she said simply. ‘I have a greenhouse also.’
‘Yes.’ He looked at her. She dropped her gaze, stared into the white cup tilted in her hand.
‘How do we do it?’ she asked.
‘I could lease off you.’
‘That’s no fun for me.’
‘What do you suggest then?’
‘We could be partners.’ She was moving the cup as if there were something small and alive in it that was trying to escape.
‘A company?’
‘Sure, a company.’
‘It’s possible.’
‘W
hy not?’ Glance at him, sharp blue eyes.
Because they both knew why not. An impediment. Did it matter? Ought it to matter? If it ought not, did they have a right to do what they wanted? Of course. They were rational beings. He would focus on the business and then he wouldn’t need to see Astra so much. He could resolve all that. He could end the relationship in a civilised manner, without fuss, without mess. He could go back to his real life. And maybe he would stop obsessing about Carla, too. So, it all made sense, didn’t it? Except that reason and focus meant an act of will, a determination to take charge of the future, when he didn’t want a future. If there was a future, there had to be a past and if there was a past then the future was worthless. Better to be here in the present, watching. Waiting. Ready to fight or run if they tried to hurt you again.
‘We could make it work,’ she said. ‘If we wished.’
13.
‘WHAT’S FOR DINNER?’ JOSIE asked, hovering at her mother’s right elbow, peering at the raw ingredients on the kitchen bench. She had an apple in her hand, half eaten.
‘Fish,’ Sylvia said.
‘When will Dad be home?’ James, on her left, looked up at her.
‘I don’t know. He might stay in town. He has another client.’
‘What client?’ Josie demanded.
‘He didn’t say. I think it’s a rape.’ Another tale of misery and brutality, no doubt. He would tell her about it, when he was ready. He might tell the kids about it too, probably over dinner when he sometimes liked to wind them up over his work, egging them on to argue the merits of a case while he fed them scraps of evidence and pointed out the defects in their legal logic. ‘You can watch him on the news, if you want,’ she said.
‘Nagh,’ James answered. ‘They never let you see anything. All the witnesses have their heads chopped off or their faces fuzzied out. If they show Dad at all, it’s just him asking a question, and they don’t even give the answer.’