His Brand of Beautiful

by Lily Malone

  “Okay.”

  Heat rippled through his gut. “Okay what? Third base?”

  She huffed the way women did when they thought they’d proved a point. “I mean okay ask your question.”

  I had a question? Then he remembered. “Why do you call your parents by their first names?”

  “When Richard first met Saffah she was doing some fairly risqué stuff: abstract nudes, dark fantasy—gargoyles and griffins—it was all fairly out-there. Most critics thought Saffah was gay.

  “Saffah thought people would judge her work differently if they knew she was married and a mother. I didn’t call her ‘mother’ anyway and when Michael was old enough to talk, he called her Saffah like I did, and she never discouraged it. By the time we were old enough to know the difference we decided it wasn’t right to call Richard, dad; if we weren’t calling Saffah mum; so we called them Saffah and Richard.”

  “She didn’t want to be called Mum, but she didn’t mind using a married name?”

  Christina wagged her finger at him. “You don’t know Saffah. My stepmother’s principles are elastic. She was born Saffron Norman. She thought that lacked wow-factor etched in the bottom of a bowl so she signed her name Saffah. When Richard came along the chance for a potter to call herself Saffah Clay was too good to miss. I’d say it’s half the reason she married him.”

  “Yeah? What about old-fashioned love?”

  “That sounded cynical didn’t it? Sorry.” She wiped a hand on her riding pants and it came up grey. “I guess she loves him. Saffah doesn’t take any shit. She does what she wants and Richard usually follows her lead. He’s happiest that way.”

  It crossed his mind Christina was more like her stepmother than she knew. “What happened to your real mother?”

  It was like he’d thrown ice down the back of her shirt.

  “Forget it,” he said, hand skimming the air as if he could wipe the question away.

  “It’s none of my business.”

  “It’s okay. Isabelle Morris is a taboo subject in the Clay household. I don’t talk about her much.”

  He had to strain to hear her over the sound of the horses’ hooves plugging craters in the sand. Christina glanced to the scrub on her right, as if the cassias and emu bush might hold an answer.

  Lily Malone

  “I haven’t seen my mother since I was four. I have a photo from their wedding in 1971. I found it in a box of old Girls’ Annuals, years and years later when I helped Richard and Saffah move into the big house. I kept it. He’ll never miss it, he doesn’t like being reminded. I take it out sometimes and try to work out what she was thinking. She was happy in the photo.”

  “Why is it such a big deal? Plenty of marriages don’t work out.”

  Her fingers twisted in a section of Sunshine’s mane. “My mother joined a cult.”

  “Yeah?”

  Bond’s ears flicked back. Charlie Brown shook his head as if he too struggled to believe it.

  “It’s true. Richard won’t talk about it. When I was old enough and he couldn’t stop me, I went to see my mother’s sister, my Aunt Jen. My father cut contact with the Morrises after Isabelle left. He expected they’d help him find her or at least help him talk her into coming back but they said it was her decision and they wouldn’t interfere.

  “Richard said it proved they were all just a bunch of dope-smoking hippies. He thinks anyone who does yoga owns a bong.” She chuckled. It sounded more like a cough.

  “Aunt Jen said Isabelle suffered post-natal depression after I was born, that she’d been depressed before I was even conceived. They thought having a baby would solve their problems.”

  “Like that ever works,” he said.

  Something crossed Christina’s jaw, then vanished. He put it down to a shadow thrown by her helmet.

  “Anyone I’ve ever met who knew Isabelle tells me she was a free spirit. Except Richard. He says she was loopy. I think marriage—” her face screwed up on the word like she’d licked a lemon “—weighed my mother down. Aunt Jen said Isabelle couldn’t handle being responsible for my father’s happiness. Till death and all that. It was too much pressure for her.”

  A freshening breeze fanned hair about her cheek and she pushed it back behind the strap and straightened the helmet.

  “I only have two memories of my mother. One good and one bad.” She stopped then and looked at him as if to check whether he wanted to hear them or not. He nodded.

  “I was riding my bike in our front garden on this beautiful blue-sky day in the middle of May. Isabelle came out of the house. She was wearing the red jumper we bought her for Mother’s Day just the Sunday before—Richard and I made her blueberry pancakes in bed and we spent the afternoon shell-collecting on Maslin Beach. That’s the good memory.

  Mother’s Day on the beach.”

  “So, Isabelle got in the car. Whenever she went anywhere in the car I wanted to come but she told me I had to be a big girl and ride up to the winery and tell Daddy: Mummy had to go to McLaren Vale to buy milk.

  “I thought I was so grown-up riding up to the winery all on my own. I practiced what I had to say all the way as I pedalled so I’d get it right.” She smiled sadly. “I got it word-perfect too. Then they made me say it over and over again, word for word. First Richard.

  Then I had to do it for the police. And they wanted to know what she was wearing and what she had with her and how many bags I saw her pack. You should have seen the look in her eyes when she rolled down the car window to speak to me. It was like she’d already gone.

  Like I wasn’t even there. That’s the bad memory.”

  He was quiet for a while, listening to the sounds of the bush, thinking of what she’d told him and marrying it with what he knew.

  “What did your mother do before she met your father?”

  “She ran a menswear formal suit-hire shop in Regency Arcade and did alterations and repairs— all top-end stuff. Aunt Jen said she was a brilliant seamstress. Her dream was to work in a Paris fashion house one day but she put that on hold when she got married and then they had me.”

  “Do you know where she is now?”

  “Last we heard, on the Gold Coast, but that’s years ago. Richard said it would have been better if she died. He said it felt like he had to divorce a ghost the way they made him jump through hoops when he wanted to marry Saffah.”

  “I’m amazed he went there again.”

  “Saffah had her mind made up. He didn’t have a chance.”

  “And all this is why you don’t like weddings?”

  “Some of it. Shit. I don’t know. Marriage changes people, especially women. They give up on things.”

  “You said Saffah doesn’t take any shit.”

  Christina swatted at a fly that got caught on the wrong side of her sunglasses.

  “Saffah is Saffah. She’s one out of the box. I don’t like funerals either for what it’s worth, or christenings. Any big family occasion makes me think about Isabelle. Why she left. Whether she’s happy. Whether she thinks about me.” She glanced off into the bush and when she turned back, he could see the indent where her teeth had bitten her lip.

  Understanding came in a rush. “You blame yourself.”

  She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “They were happy till I came along.”

  “You said they’d been having trouble before you were even born. You were four years old, Christina. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “If I was a mother, there’s nothing on this earth that could make me leave my child.

  How could my mother leave me?”

  He didn’t have any answer that didn’t sound like a cliché and he wasn’t going to give her that. “I guess it ain’t Freud riding this horse.”

  “Bugger. I’ve always fancied Freud.”

  They both laughed.

  The track ahead narrowed where one of the big river gums had been struck by lightning and a portion of broken bough crashed to the sand. The trunk above it stood raw and splintered. Chri
stina’s horse skirted the fallen branch on the near side, crowding close to Bond’s shoulder.

  Christina’s knee brushed his jeans. For three or four paces her thigh was right there, its curve a perfect fit for his palm and it felt like the most natural thing in the world to lower his hand.

  Her lips clamped softly shut. Sunshine’s ears twitched backwards, listening. The mare jogged forward and Tate’s arm dropped. Christina jounced away down the trail, ponytail swinging between her shoulder blades.

  ****

  Lily Malone

  Tate stood in the stirrups, his shadow lengthened by the setting sun, staring hard ahead and to his left. “Those are the start of the dunes that run into the Simpson Desert. We’re getting close.”

  Sunshine’s ears flicked back. Christina apologised to the mare yet again and gave her a pat. Thinking about journey’s end made her think about the night ahead, and anytime she let her thoughts wander in that direction she couldn’t help squeezing the saddle between her thighs.

  Excitement. Trepidation. Both feelings warred. If Lacy knew what she was plotting tonight, she’d tell Christina she needed her head read.

  “There,” Tate pointed.

  Sunshine pranced again, tossed her head.

  Sorry, girl. “Where?” She squinted, trying to follow his hand. Then she saw it, a glint of iron against the sand and next to it, the brown hint of a network of yards and ramps.

  “And there’s the road,” Tate pointed.

  “Road?”

  “Binara has good roads all through it. We move most of the cattle across the property by road. It’s less stress on the environment. More efficient.”

  “Then why didn’t we just ride on the road? Heck, why didn’t we just drive out here with Charlie and Rocket in a horse-float?”

  His teeth flashed white against the trail dirt on his face. “Some research trip that would have been. Our scenic route was much more revealing.”

  She harrumphed at him. He grinned back, unabashed.

  It took a long time for the hut to get closer and as it did, her heart sank. “That’s it?”

  “What did you expect? Log fires? A porch?”

  “One stiff breeze and that’ll blow to Kansas.”

  “I never said it was the Taj Mahal.”

  Christina held her tongue.

  The only sign of cattle were long-dried white streaks of manure near two circular water troughs, both bone-dry. Tracks littered the sand: kangaroos, rabbits. Lizards, not snakes. A Stonehenge-style arrangement of rocks circled a pile of ash a short distance from the hut’s rusted-silver front and as they passed it, blackened bottle-tops winked from the charcoal pyre.

  “Why aren’t there any cattle here, Tate?”

  “There’s better grazing for them on other parts of the station. More to the west and the south, where the floodwaters stayed longest. The cattle stay nearer the river. And near where Shasta might put the salt-licks out.”

  “Salt licks?”

  “Minerals and trace elements in a salt that the cattle lick. There’s a lot of natural feed after all the rain we’ve had but it doesn’t always have all the nutrients the herd needs to gain the weight you’d want.”

  Christina slid her feet from the stirrups, unlatched her helmet and looked around.

  “What’s that black thing on the roof?”

  “That’s the solar shower.” Tate landed lightly in the sand.

  When her riding boots touched the ground, pain gnawed across the small of her back.

  “I just need to walk for a bit,” she called to him through clenched teeth, tying Sunshine to the rail and leaving her helmet on a post. She pressed her palms into her flanks and tried to stretch out the stiffness.

  From ground level the hut seemed bigger, even more unwieldy. Sand piled against the cladding like rust-coloured snow. The stockyard alongside was sturdier. Inside it, two heavy-duty black plastic drums had been cut in half and upended as basic water and feed troughs.

  She found a lean-to welded to the back of the hut, part open on one side and she peered in. A short length of black hose hung through a purpose-made gap in the roof. When her eyes adjusted she could see it finished in a small rosette. On a shelf, slivers of soap were mushed into a single larger piece, all cracked and dry, leached of colour and cemented with God-knew how many pubes. The idea of it anywhere near her skin made it crawl.

  She kept going through the heavy sand, slogging around the hut until she made it to the front. Tate spilled orange water from a steel pipe into the half-drums. A solar-powered pump chugged.

  Christina edged toward the hut door. It wasn’t locked and it creaked outward on hinges stiff enough to hold it ajar. Air gushed out like she’d opened an oven. It smelled like a bachelor’s pantry: onions, flour, firelighters. A panel of clear plastic roofing let in a shaft of light and showed a sprinkle of sand dusting a grey cement floor. To the left, a circular stain of something reddish-black and long dry marred the rough surface.

  A gas bottle coupled to a two-burner cooktop stood on a shelf that clambered across the rear wall before it scrambled left. Old ice-cream containers overflowed with boxes of matches and batteries, firelighters, pens, notepads, a torch. Bigger plastic tubs, stacked three-high, held sunscreen, dishwashing liquid, insect killer, scourers and a scrubbing brush.

  No soap. Didn’t stockmen ever wash?

  Non-perishable food staples adorned the left-hand shelf. A handful of onions withered to papery husks. There were pots and pans—blackened and bent out of shape—a camp oven, a solitary saucepan lid with a hole where the handle should have been; a wooden spoon, potato masher and set of tongs jammed in the gap between the shelf and the cladding.

  The right-hand wall held stuff to fix a fence or patch a hole. Shovels. Pliers. A block splitter. A first-aid kit swung from the inside of the door as she closed it behind her.

  “Seen enough?” Tate called.

  “I am woman. Watch me snoop.” She crossed the sand towards Sunshine and unhitched the mare’s girth.

  “Is this what you were looking for?” He held up three mauve-coloured miniature bottles and a pretty packet of soap, an innocent expression on his face. “Bree said you’d appreciate these.”

  Shampoo. Conditioner. Moisturiser. Soap. “That woman’s blood’s worth bottling.”

  ****

  Later, Christina sat on Stonehenge in a soft cloud of lavender scent with the afternoon sun and the fire to toast her bare legs and the bubble of rabbit stew simmering in the camp oven. Tate killed the bunnies, she cooked them.

  A pair of smaller birds—she didn’t know what type—dive-bombed something big and black, probably a crow. It fled to the branches of a runty tree and qua-arked discontent.

  Lily Malone

  She dropped her chin to her knee, hugged her shins and rocked, staring into the fire.

  Letting herself dream.

  A baby with Tate.

  Mama Christina.

  She pictured ten perfect chubby fingers and toes. A thatch of sweet hair on a newborn head. The special baby smell she’d read about on every pregnancy blog.

  The distant sound of approaching engines made her stand up so fast, she almost knocked her seat from the circle.

  Two bike riders approached the hut from the scrub, coming in on an angle almost perpendicular to the road. When they met the road, they picked up speed.

  It was Tate’s turn in the shower, and she wished he’d hurry up. It was more than a little unnerving facing two helmeted strangers in the middle of nowhere.

  Then the riders braked, shut down the bikes, took off their helmets, and Christina felt the stiff set to her shoulders relax. The first thing they did was flash her huge surprised grins.

  The senior of the two, ginger-haired with a blast of freckles across his nose, hooked his leg over the back of the bike, puffed his chest out, and stood tall in khaki shirt and jeans as he introduced himself as Corky. He indicated his mate with a thumb. “This is Douglas.”

  “J
ust Doug,” the younger man said, getting off his bike and smiling in a way that showed every tooth. “Hope we didn’t give youse dem heart attack. Youse jumped up like a snake bitcha.”

  He was at least three-part Aboriginal, if not full-blood. She didn’t know enough to be sure. Taller than Corky, he was wiry with a broad flat nose and arms so straight and thin they could have toasted marshmallows.

  “I’m Christina. I rode out with Tate Newell. We’ve brought you fresh horses. They’re in the yards over there.” She indicated the four animals who’d returned their heads to the chaff bins once the noise of the motorbikes had died out.

  “Ain’t seen Tate in dem bloody long time,” Doug said. The words rushed in unfamiliar rhythms and Christina had to lean forward to hear. But she was certain she heard him pat the seat of his bike and say: “We don’t need no horses. We got these.”

  Both men started rolling their bikes toward the stockyards and she followed them.

  Tate’s taking more time in the damn shower than I did. She was sure he could clear up all this confusion quick smart.

  “I thought you were checking fences and you needed fresh horses,” she said.

  Corky looked at her as if she was the school slow-learner. “We been checking the fence, sure. But we do that with bikes. We do most things with bikes. We only use the horses when we pen the steers to go off farm. Like when they go to market. It doesn’t stress

  ’em out so much before they get loaded on the trucks.”

  Tate Newell had some explaining to do. She was going to find that piece of her mind Corky obviously thought she was missing, and boy, was she going to give it to him.

  The bra, knickers and jodhpurs Christina had washed that afternoon hung pale from the improvised stockyard clothesline. Corky’s eyes flicked to her underwear like he thought it might sit up and dance.

  She made a mental note to shift her stuff.

  Christina rubbed her bare arms, cooling quickly away from the fire. “How long have you guys worked at Binara?”

  “Three years this comin’ Christmas,” Corky answered, speaking for his mate with another flick of his thumb: “Doug here just on two ’n a half.”