The Stranding

by Karen Viggers

  ‘I’m not much of a church person,’ Lex said.

  ‘That doesn’t have to matter. We’d make you very welcome.’

  Lex shuffled his feet, trying to think of a good excuse.

  ‘The church is good at caring for people,’ Helen said. ‘You seem sad.’

  Lex stepped back. His eyes were fixed on her pale hands, still clutching the biscuits. He remembered how cold they’d been when he first met her.

  ‘Helen.’

  The imperious voice came from an adjacent table. Lex turned and saw an old woman with a hook nose glaring at them.

  ‘There are other people over here who need to be served,’ the old lady said.

  Helen glanced at her, then back at Lex.

  ‘That’s Mrs Jensen,’ she said quietly. ‘She runs our stall.’

  Lex handed her some money.

  ‘Helen!’ Mrs Jensen again.

  ‘Thanks,’ Lex said, taking the bag of biscuits.

  ‘But your change . . .’

  ‘Keep it.’

  It was a good opportunity to escape. Helen’s eyes made him uncomfortable. He didn’t like the feel of them crawling beneath his skin.

  She called after him, but he didn’t stop. He saw her come out from behind the stall, weaving through the crowd towards him. It’d be best if he just disappeared. Swiftly, he dodged across a few rows of stalls, then slid behind a vegetable stand and a few tents and stopped by a stall crammed with bright beach paintings—starfish, shells, beach sheds, boats, fish. They were racked up on stands and easels and offered protection from view of the market crowd. He’d be safe here for a while. Then he could slip back through the stalls and go home, where Helen Beck couldn’t hassle him about coming to church.

  Trying to appear like a genuine browser, he looked more closely at the paintings. They were fun. He liked the loud colours, the boldness, the intense blues and yellows and reds. A few times he peered out of the stall to check for Helen Beck, then hid himself again in the small protected gallery created by the paintings. Behind the trestle, the stallholder was watching him closely. She was brown-eyed and brown-haired, with a purple tie-dyed scarf twisted over her head. Her face was round and dimpled, and there was a hint of a smile about her mouth.

  ‘I like your stuff,’ Lex said, buying time.

  ‘People seem to like it in their beach houses,’ she said. ‘But it’s bread and butter. Not what you’d call real art.’

  ‘I like it,’ Lex said. ‘The colours are great.’

  The girl shrugged. ‘It keeps me off welfare.’

  ‘Is it that bad making a living around here?’

  ‘It’s not very lucrative being an artist.’

  ‘You could move to the city. You’d make a fortune in Sydney.’

  The girl smiled. ‘Why would I want to move to the city when I can live here?’

  She was observing him with interest. He could see it in her eyes—gently assessing without being intrusive. It was nice to talk to someone.

  ‘How often do you do these markets?’ he asked, wondering if he might see her again.

  ‘Every couple of weeks. Sometimes I take a stall at some other markets further south, on the off week, when there’s nothing doing in Merrigan.’

  Lex glanced over her paintings again, not sure what to say next. He liked her brown eyes, the warmth about her. There was something appealing about her lack of ambition. He was accustomed to a world where everyone was striving to be something else, to make more money, to accumulate things. Her attitude was different. Simpler.

  He flashed a look down the walkway of stalls. And there was Helen Beck. She had seen him and was headed his way. She probably wanted to issue him with another invitation to church. God forbid. Lex didn’t want to face it. He tried to squeeze between the girl’s table and an easel.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘Do you mind? I need to get through.’

  ‘What?’ She looked alarmed, trying to hold the table steady.

  ‘I need to get through,’ Lex said.

  Glancing behind, he saw that Helen was almost upon them. He pressed past the trestle, catching his foot on the easel and bringing it down. Paintings tumbled everywhere. He should have stopped to help pick them up. But he lurched through the stall, past the girl’s orange Kombi parked at the back of the stand, and slipped into the next row.

  Immediately he was angry at himself. What an overreaction! What was this paranoia he had about Helen Beck? Was he really so scared of her that he had to create a disaster trying to escape? Embarrassed, he wandered up the row of stalls and threaded his way back around to where he could see Helen and the girl talking. They had already picked up the paintings and placed them in a couple of piles on the table. Lex noticed that the two women were standing some distance apart. It was obvious they weren’t completely comfortable with each other. Being local didn’t necessarily mean they were friends. He watched them inspect a broken frame together. The girl shook her head and waved Helen’s outstretched hand away. Helen must have offered to fix it for her. That ought to be his job, given that he’d caused all the damage.

  Lex waited until Helen had left then slunk back to the girl’s stall. He saw her start when he appeared again and she frowned at him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘You could have stopped to help.’

  ‘Yes. I’m really sorry.’

  She was fiddling with the broken frame, trying to shove the corners back into position around the painting.

  ‘I could fix that for you,’ he offered.

  ‘No, it’s okay. I make the frames myself.’

  ‘I can pay for it. I don’t mind.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll fix it up at home.’ She gave a small smile. ‘That was some desperate escape effort,’ she said. ‘Do you have a problem with Helen Beck?’

  Lex shifted uncomfortably and said nothing.

  ‘She gives me the creeps too,’ the girl said.

  ‘I should introduce myself,’ he said. ‘My name’s Lex.’

  The girl laid the pieces of broken frame aside and was about to introduce herself too when someone else came into the stall and started browsing, a middle-aged woman who asked Lex to move aside so she could see the paintings better.

  ‘I’d better go,’ Lex said. ‘Are you sure you won’t sell me the painting?’

  ‘I’ll fix it first. You can pick it up next time.’

  ‘Here’s fifty dollars.’ Lex put the note on the table.

  ‘That’s too much.’

  ‘Call it a damage payment. I’ve caused you enough trouble today.’

  She smiled slightly and turned away as the woman asked to see the other paintings, the ones that had fallen off the easel.

  Lex turned and walked away. It was the most alive he had felt in weeks.

  Five

  After the markets, Callista usually went up to Jordi’s for a quiet smoke. There was something therapeutic about going bush after the clutter of town and the market crowds. Jordi’s place was barely a step above camping, but his hut was dry and he had a warm swag, so it was vaguely liveable even in winter. In spring, he moved outdoors and, instead of cooking over the fire within the old stone chimney that sucked up all the heat in winter, he shifted to a campfire. He had a good camp oven their parents had given him, and a sturdy iron tripod, which he set over the fire to hang the billy on. There was nothing better than tea brewed in Jordi’s blackened billy. He had it down to a fine art, knowing exactly when to fling in the handful of tea and remove the billy from the coals.

  Callista parked the Kombi just short of the camp and clambered out to the sweet smell of slowly burning wood. A thread of smoke lingered over the camp. Jordi was nowhere to be seen. His clapped-out rusty Landcruiser was just visible further up the hill where the track wound into the higher forest. He might be up there collecting wood. Callista sat down on a sawn log stump away from the drift of the smoke and watched the coals. A lyrebird clacked and chortled across the slope in the tree fe
rn gully. It was higher and wetter here than Callista’s coastal gully, so Jordi had birds that she rarely heard. No wonder he liked it up here. It was all bush except for the patch where the hut stood.

  Callista waited a while watching the smoke waft among the eucalypt trunks and up into the crowns, then she gave a loud whistle and flung a coo-ee upslope. There was a sharp whistle in reply. Jordi must be on his way down. Eventually she heard him sniff and spit, and he appeared from behind the hut, his usual raggy, tatty self.

  ‘Hey there.’

  He sat down beside her on a log.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she asked.

  He looked gaunt. She wondered if he’d been eating properly.

  ‘Looking for bower birds. Heard some calling up there this morning.’

  When they were kids, the two of them used to search the bush for bowers, crawling on hands and knees through the scrub, following the distinctive calls of the birds until they stumbled across the tiny courtship stage of woven twigs decorated with anything blue the birds could find: bottle tops, drink straws, rosella feathers.

  ‘They’ll be fancying up their bower soon,’ Jordi was saying. He had already hooked the billy off the fire and tossed in the tea leaves. ‘I reckon they’ll probably use the old one from last year.’

  He poured her a tea in a battered tin mug and they sat quiet for a while. That had been a lot of talk for them. Talk was for town. Up here, they usually just sat together, drinking tea and watching the fire.

  Eventually Jordi stood up to fetch his guitar from the hut. Music was always better than talk. It was a comfortable way of just being together, not needing to say anything. He sat down again and picked out a few notes. Callista leaned forward towards the fire and listened, elbows on knees. She loved hearing him play. He came alive, lost his prickliness and that sour look, the disillusionment that alienated him.

  Maybe half an hour passed, maybe longer. He stopped playing.

  ‘I met an interesting man today,’ she said. ‘And I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.’

  He looked at her, played a few notes quietly.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, it does. I hardly ever meet anyone. I should’ve asked him out.’

  ‘Was he from ’round here?’ Jordi asked.

  ‘Doubt it. There’s no one interesting around here. Probably on his way through.’

  ‘City slicker?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You don’t need a city slicker.’ His smile was sudden and wry. ‘Anyway, you’ve got me.’

  ‘God help me.’

  They laughed.

  ‘What’d he look like?’

  Callista was surprised he’d asked. ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘Just wondering.’

  ‘Do you think you might have seen him?’

  ‘Dunno, do I . . . if you don’t tell me.’

  ‘He was a big guy. Broad shoulders. Smooth face. Walks like a cat.’

  Jordi laughed. ‘How does a cat walk?’

  ‘I don’t know. Smooth, but stealthy, like they’re on guard, like they’re watching out for something.’

  ‘There’s been a big guy coming to the servo.’ Jordi stood up and tossed another log on the fire, poked at it with a stick. ‘Drives a silver Volvo. Station wagon. Nobody knows anything about him. But he’s been a couple of times now. Quiet guy. Hardly says a thing.’

  ‘It might be someone just staying down here.’

  ‘Maybe staying at the Point.’

  Callista was annoyed at Jordi for getting her hopes up. ‘You don’t have enough to think about,’ she said. ‘What are the chances it’d be the guy Beryl sold the house to?’

  ‘Pretty good, I reckon. He was wearing cams the other day. Looked to me like he’d been shopping at Beryl’s. Why would you do that unless you were living ’round here?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Shop at Beryl’s. She sells nothing but rubbish.’

  ‘Since when did you care about clothes?’

  ‘Was he wearing cams today? At the market?’

  ‘He was, actually. I watched him for a while. He was hiding in my stall. Hiding from Helen Beck.’

  ‘I’d hide from her too.’ Jordi flashed a quick grin. ‘Maybe he’s not such an idiot after all.’

  ‘He knocked over half my stall trying to escape from her.’

  Jordi laughed. ‘I like him already.’

  Callista sat quiet for a moment, staring into the fire.

  ‘I liked him,’ she said. ‘I want to see him again . . . What if it is him? The guy you’ve seen at the servo?’

  Jordi’s beard spread with his smile. ‘Then you’ve gotta think about how to play it. He’ll show again. But you have to take it slow. You can’t drag a big fish in on a small line. You have to wear him down, so he swims right in to you without knowing.’

  Callista looked at him. ‘For once that might be good advice.’

  Jordi smiled again. ‘Just think of the death adder. You need patience for an ambush.’

  Callista drove down the mountain, dipping and winding in the shadows of the forest. Down low the vegetation was different again—greener with a thick understorey, and tall eucalypts strung with streamers of bark. The driveway to her parents’ house was marked by a cut-off wine barrel full of yellow and purple pansies. She stopped to open the gate and collect the mail.

  The driveway was long, and ran through a gully and along a creek before swinging uphill to where the house was nestled in an unexpected splurge of lawn. Her father insisted the green grass was his bushfire insurance. But with the bush hulking right down to the chook pen just behind the house, Callista wondered why he bothered. The house was made of rough wood and corrugated iron, and in a fire it’d go up like a pile of twigs.

  She clambered out of the Kombi and slammed the door. There were no cars around, but somebody must be home because all the windows were hooked open. She walked through the cool shadows of the house, tossing the mail onto the table as she passed through the kitchen. Her mother, Cynthia, was out the back digging in the vegie garden, her face shaded beneath a wide straw hat. The slow way she straightened, with her hand propped in the small of her back, reminded Callista that her mother was getting older. These days she couldn’t help noticing the deepening creases in her mother’s face and the loose skin beginning to fold around her neck.

  ‘Callie, I didn’t hear you come in.’

  ‘Are you serious, Mum? The Kombi isn’t exactly a stealth machine.’

  Cynthia dug her shovel into the dirt and stepped stiffly over the clods of earth. ‘I’m turning this patch over and mulching it ready for autumn,’ she said, waving an arm over the lumpy brown soil. ‘We had tomato worm in this section last year, so I’m letting it lie fallow for a season. But the weeds just keep popping up.’

  ‘Just spray them,’ Callista said.

  ‘Poisons! Didn’t we teach you anything?’ She slung a kind arm around Callista’s neck and hugged her. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m good. Being industrious. You’d like that. I’m doing lots of painting.’

  Cynthia raised her eyebrows. ‘You’re inspired?’

  ‘Just market stuff. But I’ll be able to pay you back soon.’

  ‘No hurry. Let’s get a cup of tea.’

  They sat on the back deck, looking up beyond the chook pen into the forest. The chooks were out pecking and scraping in the garden with their scaly oversize feet. Cynthia poured the tea. It annoyed Callista that she didn’t use a strainer, but the tea always tasted fine once you sieved out the bits between your teeth. Her parents had been using this teapot for as long as she could remember.

  Callista knew well her parents’ beginnings—history was an important thing in their family. It was how you learned not to make the mistakes of the past, and how to walk a better path. Her parents had been big on that: finding ways to erase the wrongdoings of previous generations. Sometimes it was as if they were taking the troubles of the entire wor
ld on their shoulders.

  Her father had grown up at the Point, going to school in Merrigan and learning in the traditional country way. He went on to study accounting by correspondence so he could have the career his father never had. But there weren’t many opportunities locally. He left in his early twenties and moved to a commune just out of Melbourne—turned vegetarian, grew his hair, tended vegetables, did odd jobs on the commune. He liked the cooperative way, working with people towards greater causes, a less intrusive way of living. It was a relief for him to be among people that challenged the old ways, people with new ways of thinking—conservation, living lightly, equality for all.

  He met Cynthia in Tasmania, at a demonstration against the flooding of Lake Pedder, and they bonded over a campfire, united by passion and common thinking. When they got married, they did it in the bush, with a small group of friends from the commune, no family. Cynthia was already pregnant with Callista. By then, they’d become convinced the only way to make a difference was at home in your own community. So, after a year, they came to Merrigan and bought a cheap block of land. Cleared country was worth something, but no one wanted bush. They bought the place on the mountain for a song—which was lucky, because that was all they had. Then they got on having their family, living what they believed, touching the earth lightly.

  Cynthia passed a mug of tea to Callista. ‘How’s Jordi?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s going okay.’

  ‘Do you think so? I often wonder if he’s anorexic, he’s so thin.’

  ‘He’s just wiry,’ Callista said. But Cynthia’s crumpled brow worried her. Perhaps Jordi was too thin.

  ‘He’s had such a hard time,’ Cynthia said. She sagged sadly in her chair. ‘I’ve never found it easy to talk to him. It’s hard for a mother sometimes, sitting on the outside watching your kids suffer, but not knowing how to find a way in.’

  She sat silent for a long time, staring into the bush. Then she turned to Callista.

  ‘He’d talk to you,’ she said. ‘He trusts you.’