Ricochet

by Robyn Neilson

‘Hi,’ I offer my hand to him too, but he seems unsure what to do with it. For a split-second I imagined him kissing it, Scarlet-Pimpernel-style. I was having trouble with a name that sounded like a geometric configuration.

  ‘I beg your pardon, how should I pronounce your name? …. Oh ok sorry, a silent ‘p’…. happy to meet you Loup’.

  Rob helps us along.

  ‘Lou was explaining to me that his name is actually Jean-Loup, and that in French, Loup means wolf…kind of appropriate, hey?’

  ‘Er, I guess so…’

  ‘No question Frey… this dude is the bees knees, he’s ridden one and a half times around Australia, he’s been fucking everywhere… kipping in all sorts of far out places, carrying all his own kit…. No support! I’d be knackered if I’d done that!’

  The wolf smiled an embarrassed smile. And when he did, his whiter-than-white teeth lit up the room. And his eyebrows made a funny twitch above his inkwell eyes. I caught a sudden glimpse of kindness deep in that well.

  ‘Eh Rob, vat you talking about? You done much more than dat’ retorts Loup, shaking his head.

  My ear my eye my brain my heart my vulva, all on high alert after the wolves voice and uncertain accent.

  And so it went for a few minutes; the young bucks air their wares, showing off despite themselves.

  ‘Here, have some chocolate’, Rob finally offers, and I resist pouncing on it. I am so ravenous I could eat all of their food on the table. What Rob describes is extraordinary.

  He is actually running around the world, running on average two marathons per day, aiming for a Guinness world record. Having run a few conventional forty-two-kilometre marathons myself, I find this super-human and incomprehensible.

  ‘Tell us about your ride’ Rob says. He is a humble man, despite his achievements. His sole-less, shredded runners look more worn out than he.

  I recount some of my tales, but am ashamed before the superior calibre of my comrades. Loup offers to look at my bike brakes, the pads having rubbed thin, and I notice a frown and wince when he sees the condition of my chain and gears.

  ‘Ah, this will need some cleaning and lube, and look the cables here; they must be tighten. Would you like me fix this?’

  ‘Ah if you don’t mind…that would be awesome’.

  And so effortlessly, Loup overturned my bike, my heart and my life.

  But it is the putting of everything back up the right way again which takes all our effort. It has turned out that maps are not enough. There are no maps that show you how to get from free-wheeling… miles from nowhere in a treeless plain in what was once thought an imaginary land: Terra Australis Incognita….to a claustrophobic hut, marooned between a rifle-range and a gypsy camp in the land of Provençe France….in a marriage that has sometimes seemed determined to match that claustrophobia.

  It is the gift of the back roads that saves us. That gives us the faith to say blithely, as we did that second day after we first met, having done nothing more exciting than go shopping for new shorts for me,

  ‘See you next time, à bientôt’.

  Loup wanted me to choose the flimsy white cotton ones… ‘You need the air to flow through, Freya, no more padding; that makes it worse’… so reluctantly, I got rid of my padded riding shorts, but gleefully chucked away my maxi-sanitary pads and toddler-size disposable nappies. When we said good-bye at the blistering edge of Ceduna on that 42-degree day, I was heading west into the wind, and Loup was heading east; we had exchanged nothing but smiles and furtive glances. Not even a hug. But he had my phone number.

  All along the road, I held close a grain of hope, a tantalizing idea. That grain then became mislaid in the vast white sand dunes of Eucla. And when I returned, triumphant, to my overgrown grassy home four weeks later, Loup rang and then reappeared on his bike as if carried by magic.

  Australia: November 1998 until December 2008.

  “Love is not love

  Which alters when it alteration finds”

  William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116

  “Love is…going back to something very old knit in the brain as we were growing. Hopeless. Scorching. Ordinary.”

  Louise Erdrich, ‘The Antelope Wife’.

  The ten intervening years defy eloquent retelling. And much is best left unsaid. A chaotic decade: indicated by reductive headings, or through memories as undisciplined, as the years were themselves. Like the place names on maps enticing us toward ‘Cape Adieu’ or ‘Mount Disappointment’, Loup and I were ready to risk déception. Not in the English version of romantic betrayal, although that of course was part of the hazard, but in the French meaning of disillusion or a grand disappointment. We would be lured by anything that, like the scatter of gleaming caravans clutching a crescent of white sand beside the sea of Esperance, could conjure up hope, or daring.

  On the map of France, the villages of ‘Joyeuse’ and ‘Tristesse’ are separated by 401 kilometres. They follow roughly the Chemin de Compsostelle. In the end, it had been deceptively easy to journey from joy to sadness; and blindingly obvious that Loup was the only one who could bring me back. Or so I believed. Believed badly, like my obstinate belief in divinity. And like a repentant prodigal, I put Loup up on that pedestal of deity.

  He liked to say, ‘Just call me Jesus.’

  And I did not resist.

  Some events can be described in detail along that ten-year path of believing. They have no more importance than other things, apart from the fact that I remember them well. And they remember me, reminding me of how lucky I am. They fall under three headings.

  Tilia x vulgaris, Wild Lime .

  Today is already yesterday. Seventeen years of yesterdays collide with the present. I crave for my grown-up daughters. Ironically, it is the first-town-on-the-map daughter who now inhabits that same distant place. As if the distance between Europe and Australia was not enough, we must now inhabit far-flung states.

  I picture her twelve-week old baby; struggle to comprehend that he is vivid, imbued with exquisite design, about the size of a lime. His heart has now learned to beat. His fingers and toes have now learned to uncurl and reach out. His eyes have moved to claim their spellbinding dominance in his noble head. His bladder has learned to pee. But then without warning, he stops performing. Just stops. The exquisite design ruptured.

  Now, inside my grown-up daughter, lies a dead son. Curled up, still attached. Like a dead leaf folded in on itself, still clinging to the tree.

  Just as years before inside me, lay a former dead baby. Just as, inside every tenth woman waits a baby, waiting to die, waiting to be expelled. I invoke these reckonings to ease the pain of my daughter, to make her grief seem commonplace. Shared stories, to quell the memory of my loss with Loup, which refuses erasure. Some women are lucky, as I was, and their body chases the old new life out. Purging as quickly as possible. Some women suffer the cruellest injustice, carrying that un-beating heart until it is safe to push it out and bury it in its miniature coffin, plant a rose garden or a lime tree. And weep for a new baby.

  ‘Yes, Freya, the size of a small lime.’ Is what she said, Dr Dunmead, years ago in that insignificant Gippsland town, when I lay in her meagre room out the back of the Kindergarten, her scheduled day in the week having finally arrived. I prayed for someone to contradict what she then announced, but they did not.

  ‘That is probably what you saw in the toilet’, said my no-nonsense herself childless Doctor, when I described the mucus-membrane shrouded lump floating there: the culmination of two days of searing contractions. Nothing like the magnificent bloody euphoric pain of pushing a new life out into the world. Expelling a foetus is just a wretched wrench.

  Dr Dunmead pressed and probed, just as she had twelve weeks ago when I first noticed a change. But this time her hands detected no fluttering; told me nothing I wanted to hear. ‘We will do another blood test Freya, just to be sure, but I believe you have miscarried. It may be for the best.’

  If another person used that phrase, I would bite thei
r head off. Of course, several times those words were repeated to me until I was shamed into acceptance. Not daring to bite. Of course, everyone must have known that Loup and I would be terrible parents. Of course, they knew.

  It was for the best.

  Winart Street, Larraboo, May 1999.

  This is when and how the wild lime starts. Lime in name only. Because of course it is foolish to believe the Tilia x Vulgaris will bear fruit. But it will bear a bough of heart-shaped leaves whose tea, it is said will comfort you.

  The girls and Loup have been helping me reverse the blackberry invasion and its violation of our front fence and garden. A Mother’s Day present. For me, there is no greater pleasure than us all working outside together. I had resisted spray, hence the passers-by and we could avail ourselves of the purple berries all summer long. But now the hedge is marauding across the footpath, attacking the legs of school children. The four of us go into battle, and come out covered in blood, the traces of thorns in serrations up and down our arms, staining our faces.

  My daughters retreat to their tree house, clambering high, hurling themselves on their rope swing off the giant old oak. Their fearlessness, when I look up and see how far off the ground they are, provokes an involuntary flutter in my belly. Loup and I work until dark, burning off mountains of thorns. The autumn air carries a twilight chill. But I am loath to go inside the house, sensing a mystery gathering inside my body. I lie on the cool grass with sweet exhaustion. Feeling that this fatigue is new, I slip my hands under my overalls, and note the roundness of my belly, which is also new. My breasts are tender and swollen. My period is late, but that is not unusual. Being a distance runner, my menstrual cycle is all over the place. Never regular. Mother’s Day, could it be?

  The unexpected pregnancy settled in, and grew upon me as an unsought delight. This baby was the gift I thought I would never again be given, having tampered with my previously unsought conceptions. Confounded by Loup’s silence I wondered: was my happiness an outrage? He retreated. Occasionally a joyful smile would break apart his resistance; his heart and mind in silent battle.

  Once, we argued over something minor, which escalated into something major. Loup slammed the door and left in the dark and did not come back. At three months, my belly pushed out beyond my jeans, bursting buttons. I boasted a rare cleavage. I was blissful, but solitary in my sea of endorphins. For his own reasons, which were born of wounds he would not communicate, Loup was in denial to the point of indifference. As is his method, he locked me out.

  My eyes dried up after two days of sobbing, and a sombre Loup returned to my side. In a tender show of solidarity, he came with me to share our baby news with my mother. She chose her words with care: ‘I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes when your Father finds out.’ Nevertheless I clung to the notion she was privately pleased. The conservative cloth from which my parents were cut could not openly condone a child born to their divorced, unmarried, and as they saw it, unhinged daughter having an inconveniently protracted fling with a Frenchman. My little sister and my best friend alone congratulated me. I could not yet tell my daughters. I was afraid they might feel abandoned. I could hardly expect their young hearts to suddenly adopt my joy. They would want to protect their father, despite our five-year separation.

  Two nights later the cramps started. I was on the phone to a friend to wish her Happy Birthday when the pain crippled me mid-sentence. Like nothing I have ever experienced. A long stifled howl… choking on a mouthful of hot sand.

  A few mornings later, lying in bed with both my bedroom door and the front door wide open, the unseasonal winter sun is warm. A small consolation but gladly appreciated. Loup comes inside to join me under the covers; his old gentle self. He is sad for me, perhaps also for himself, confused and out of his depth. Softly he caresses me, buried down below.

  From outside I hear ‘Hello, Frey?’ in a familiar accent, and my Polish friend and neighbour walks in the front door, straight into my bedroom. Without hesitation, Zena starts.

  ‘How are you today? You’ve got a bit more colour in your face…. What did Dr Dunmead say? Is it confirmed?’

  ‘Afraid so… think I saw it in the toilet’.

  ‘Oh I’m really sorry mate… really sorry,’ says she who could never have her own children, and suffered a marriage breakdown because of it. Another betrayal. I couldn’t rightly go on and on about my little mishap to Zena.

  ‘But Frey, don’t you think it’s all for the best? Anyway, Loup didn’t seem the fathering type…he’s still a boy himself! I reckon your body got pregnant because you were desperate to hold onto Loup…you know Frey, sorry to be so blunt, but you’re more serious than he is… I don’t get the feeling he’s going to commit… or to stay… And do you really want to bring up another child at 41 on your own? Hell, the risks and cases I’ve seen! And what about your girls? How will they take it? By the way, where is Loup? I thought I heard him chopping wood before I came across…’

  Loup lay dead still under the fluffed up doona, next to my tired vagina and my vacant uterus and I pulled the sheets up over my mouth, stifling a weary grin.

  ‘Well Zena, I can see your point of view…like most things, you’re probably right. But you’re wrong about Loup. He just needs more time. Anyway, he’s gone under the side of the house to fix some wiring. Do you need him for something?’

  ‘Nah, just wondering, that’s all.’

  I can feel Loup’s breath hot against my thigh. Might he suffocate?

  ‘Well my dear, sorry to be blunt in return, but I’m pretty tired, I might try and get some rest now…. if I’m feeling up to it, want to go for a walk up cemetery hill tomorrow arvo?’

  ‘Sounds good. But don’t push it…I’ve got strong painkillers if you need.’

  ‘I’m ok ta. See you tomorrow Zena’

  My candid childless nurse friend and I share a hard-won empathy. We have been through some mess together, including her fronting up to my former husband’s house and offering her services as both his new mate and new mother to our daughters, seeing as my own mothering was now questionable.

  ‘Putain, can I come up now?’

  Loup whispers from below, his beetroot-face emerging, sheepish. We burst into laughter.

  ‘Christ your friend’s got l’audace…doesn’t she ever keep her opinions to herself? I thought she’d never leave!

  Loup’s Big Adventure, The Stuart Highway.

  The loss of our baby lime did not deter Loup from his most audacious adventure, of which there had been many and from which, despite myself, I did not detain him.

  Loup had resolved to roller-blade from Melbourne to Adelaide and then to Darwin. ‘Straight up the guts.’ With no support, apart from what he could carry in a 35-litre backpack. It would take him two and a half months. As a way of sharing something good together and overcoming my grief, we planned for me to join him for a week on my bike. ‘Freya the Camel’, we joked as I pedalled from Adelaide to Port Augusta where Loup awaited me with a quiet reprimand, because it was midnight when I rode in. And then I cheerfully ferried small luxuries, stuffing my panniers with more food and water than he was accustomed. My eyes ears nostrils womb: all wide open to what this new space outside of me could replace inside of me.

  All the way to Coober Pedy.

  By our third afternoon, what this new space wrought inside me was quaking fear. We are caught in an electrical storm of such expanse, as I have never seen before. The gunmetal sky scours the earth, and nothing, nothing at all, stands in between the lightning and us. It is as if we are doomed to stand dumbfounded, watching the instrument of our own death approaching. Loup yells against the yowl of the wind,

  ‘Freya, just lie face down on the ground, that is all you can do. Nothing bad will happen, but remember, I love you!’

  ‘You only say that when something bad is about to happen!

  Jesus, Loup?’

  He was already flat to the dirt. I leapt from my bike, kicking its metal frame away, dropped down wet
ochre jammed under my nails, crotch chest cheek into the clay. Then something invisible yanked the steel curtain away and I raised my eyes to see the lightning lurching on to find other victims.

  ‘Come here you’, Loup propped me up and hugged me tightly, ‘you look like you’ve been face painting!’

  ‘There must be someone looking out for us Loup…’

  Although this was to be a challenge we enjoyed together, I did not ride with Loup as our pace was vastly different. The day after the storm, we experienced a fierce tail wind. Loup took off. He, like an Olympic ice skater, sweeps the highway with stupendous elegant strokes, whilst I first ride the 26-kilometre detour to Woomera. To do the shopping. Before leaving, Loup had insisted on inflating my tyres with the Roadhouse air pump, whereas I was unsure my tyres could handle the pressure.

  Three hours later, I am loaded up with all our supplies and as the heat swells everything, an almighty explosion rips through my tube and tyre.

  Merci beaucoup, Loup.

  Sitting in the gravel in the sun’s un-dignifying glare, I discover my puncture kit is old, the glue is dried up, and the rubber patches have lost their elasticity. I resort to stuffing my tube with socks, and wrapping both tube and tyre with the only panacea I have: plaster medical tape.

  Rollbbliprollbbliprollbrrrumpbrrrummp stop

  Goes my tyre, as I try to pedal as if it were normal and round. But it is like trying to force a straight splint through a curve; the brake pads rubbing through the plaster every hour.

  Fucking tedious does not even begin to describe my ride that day.

  Loup meanwhile has been effortlessly swept 112 kilometres by the wind, and now lounges at the next Roadhouse with his sore feet propped up, beer in hand. He is listening with amusement as the truckies discuss the poor blonde on the side of the road on their CB radios. Apparently the driver beside him on the veranda is keeping Loup well informed of my progress. It is dark when I clumsily roll-blimp into the gravel car park. Even in the dark my hostility precedes me. Loup’s response is to cajole me into rocking our van for the night off its bearings, and try his best to repair my tube and tyre.