It was a genuine ‘insert-your-name-here’ moment. It struck Annie that what she needed was a sea change. Of course, she’d thought of it before, but never made any real plans. What was stopping her? She could live by the ocean—not in the flat dry country where there was no future, nor the sharp-edged city that had no past she cared to remember. Neither of them suited her. She could find a small property here. Grow herbs, fruit trees, vegetables. She’d always taken care of the kitchen garden at home on the farm. She would have a chicken run, grow a few fat lambs and maybe find a part-time job at the local real estate agency. She’d have a blue cattle dog pup and a horse, walk on the beach, camp out in the bush and maybe, just maybe, she could find a man to share it all with. And if she did, perhaps there would still be time for children. If that’s what she wanted.
Annie ground out the cigarette under the toe of her boot. Giving them up would be easy when she lived by the ocean. She finally understood why she’d come along on this trip and why she’d drawn the Death card in that tarot reading. Annie had taken it literally at the time and had been keeping one eye out for broken bridges and steep cliffs. Now she saw it could also have been about the beginning of a new life. She could spring the trap and be free.
By the time the others returned from their solitary walks—Nina first, then Meredith—the bottle of wine was almost empty. When they were both sitting at the table, two sullen lumps of self-absorption, with really shitty windblown hair, Annie happily noted, she opened another bottle, poured three glasses and set them on the table. ‘Right. Who’s going first?’
Meredith surveyed the table setting and registered, in a nanosecond, that Annie had done quite well—although her napkin folding left a lot to be desired. ‘I just want to know what Nina thinks she’s achieving with all this ceaseless activity,’ she said stiffly as she began methodically refolding her square of sky-blue cotton.
Across from her, Nina looked down at her rumpled lap and immediately catapulted headlong into a regretful explanation: ‘I’m sorry. I know I’m being hopeless, but I haven’t been able to ring home and . . .’
‘It’s two days, Nina,’ Annie began. ‘You’re barely two days from home. What do you think could possibly have happened to Brad and the boys in that time?’
‘Hah! Obviously you don’t have kids,’ Nina said carelessly. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Annie. I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m used to it.’ Annie shrugged off her condolences. Comments like that wouldn’t worry her from now on, because she had a plan for a whole new life. ‘But it’s not like your kids are babies.’
‘I know. It’s just that I’ve never been away from them this long since they were born—apart from that time I had my veins done—and I’ve been trying to get them on the phone. I know we all promised but . . . anyway, there’s no answer.’ Even as she said it, Nina could hear her sons telling her she was ‘Duh . . . retarded! We’re not going to die while you’re away, Mum!’
‘In fifteen years? Never?’ Meredith was incredulous. ‘You mean you and Brad have never had a holiday—even a weekend away—just the two of you?’
‘Brad always had football on the weekends . . .’
‘What about the summer?’ Annie wasn’t about to accept Nina’s pat excuse. ‘He doesn’t manage a cricket team as well?’
‘We went away camping quite a bit. We even went to Fiji once. But the boys always came with us, so . . .’
‘Forget all that,’ Meredith spoke up. ‘It’s the constant nagging. Bossing us around. It has to stop.’
Nina had heard it all before. Brad was always telling her she was a nag. She grimaced into her glass. ‘Actually, it’d make a good k.d. lang song. Constant nagging . . .’ she sang.
Annie leaned over the table into Nina’s face. ‘Very funny! But you should hear yourself! You’re driving us fu—sorry . . . nuts.’ Uh-oh! She saw that tears were imminent.
‘I know,’ Nina snuffled. ‘But if I’m not there for them . . .’
Meredith wasn’t about to let a few tears put her off. ‘What, exactly, could happen that Brad couldn’t take care of?’
They just didn’t get it, thought Nina. Everything could happen. Marko and Anton could be trapped in a horrible bus smash on the way to Canberra, and she wouldn’t be there to drag them from the tangled metal. Jordy could take some party drug and fall into a coma, and she wouldn’t be there at his bedside playing him his Red Hot Chili Peppers CD, even though all the medical staff said he was beyond hearing it. She wouldn’t be the first thing he saw when his eyelids fluttered and opened. The dog could get out and be run over, and she wouldn’t be there to scrape its flattened carcass from the road and bury it before the boys came home from football training. Brad could be in bed right now, undoing a lacy black balconette bra embroidered with rosebuds . . . Stop! She didn’t dare bring any of this up.
‘Nothing,’ she said finally. ‘But they’re so useless without me, and I just want to make sure—’
‘Enough!’ Meredith held her palm up to Nina’s face. ‘Ring the boys when they get home from school, if you really must. Tell them you love them and then, for God’s sake, just let them be.’
‘And try to enjoy the trip,’ Annie pleaded. ‘You’re the one who was desperate to come. If you haven’t been by yourself in fifteen years, try to remember what you were like before you got married and had kids.’
Nina reached for a table napkin and blew her nose. ‘What was I like? Tell me, I’ve forgotten,’ she implored, looking up at them with big possum eyes.
Annie smiled and sipped at her wine. ‘You? Hah! You were as sexy as hell.’
‘I was a lot thinner then.’
‘No you weren’t!’ said Meredith. ‘Not much. You were the blonde, voluptuous one with the cleavage all the boys wanted to take home.’
‘Why didn’t someone tell me?’
Annie had to laugh at Nina’s naivety. ‘Because, duh, there were seven of us, remember? It was a fight to the death for the couple of sunken-chested SNAGs who were brave enough to chat up a femmo gospel choir.’
‘And you’re forgetting,’ Meredith narrowed her eyes, ‘Corinne had already screwed all the cute ones.’
Annie and Nina pelted Meredith with table napkins and cushions, and harmony was restored. Not quite note-perfect, but then, they were still in rehearsal.
Soon enough they were back on the road and looking for the turn-off to the Mimosa Rocks National Park. Meredith had been studying the names of the local lakes and inlets on the road map—Wallagoot, Wapengo, Wallaga, Wagonga. The lyrical Aboriginal names sang to her like a lullaby. She was rocked back to the far-off days of her childhood and the tradition of the Sunday Drive.
When Meredith was a girl, it seemed every family in her street in Camberwell took to the road for a Sunday Drive. The ritual had been imported to Australia from Mother England in the 1950s, and the idea probably made sense over there. The average English family car usually had more windows, and was warmer, than the family home in Manchester or Leeds. Over there, it would have been a relief to get in the cosy car. In England there was also the concept of a ‘destination’, and something to see along the way. Within an hour the family would be at the seaside, touring a castle or pottering around a village’s Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe. They would make it back home in time for tea. In Australia you could travel all day, to nowhere in particular, and see nothing but flat, blasted country, shearing sheds, sheep and more sheep.
‘I hated those damned drives,’ said Meredith. She had her bare feet up on the dashboard again and was polishing off a packet of wine gums. ‘Every Sunday morning after church, Edith would pack egg-and-lettuce or ham sandwiches, Kia-Ora 50/50 cordial, a great slab of madeira cake and a tartan thermos of tea into her wicker basket, and tuck it under her feet up front. Bernie would be running the FC sedan in the driveway, to warm up the motor. Kevin, Terry and I would fight over who got the window seats. Then we’d head out down Burwood Road, spot on eleven.’
&nbs
p; Nina was scouring the roadside for the national parks sign and chuckling at the image of the Skidmores in their FC. In the old days, when they were travelling with Sanctified Soul, Meredith had often talked about her parents—Bernard Skidmore, the upstanding suburban dentist, and his faithful sidekick Edith—but Nina had never heard this particular tale before. Annie, still refusing to abandon her spot between the front seats, was enjoying Meredith’s rave. In fact, she couldn’t recall her ever being so expansive about her childhood.
‘There were two options,’ Meredith continued. ‘A drive to a plant nursery in the hills—which wasn’t too bad, because there was Devonshire tea to scoff on the way home—or Bernie would say, “Let’s just see where we end up.” And, truly, he would just drive till the petrol gauge read half-full and he would stop, and we’d have lunch. Do you know, it didn’t matter where the hell we were—at a gravel truck lay-by, on a median strip with cars roaring by, in a roadside quarry. We would sit and eat our soggy sandwiches and drink warm cordial, while being attacked by blowflies, eaten by mosquitoes or poisoned by exhaust fumes. It was beyond!’
The idea of Meredith sitting on a pile of gravel by the roadside, eating a flyblown ham sanger, was, indeed, beyond belief.
Meredith popped the last wine gum in her mouth and bit down. She wasn’t being quite as truthful as she might have been. She’d edited out that particular afternoon when she had kicked the back of her father’s front seat and he had swung his hand back, slapped the side of her head and sworn furiously at her. He’d skidded the FC sedan to a stop in the gravel at the side of the road, got out, wrenched open the back door and dragged her from the back seat by the collar of her beaded green cardigan.
‘You can bloody well walk home from here, Miss!’ Meredith remembered her father’s face up close to hers, snarling with anger.
‘Sorry, Daddy. Sorry. I didn’t mean it. It was an accident.’
Then he had driven off, up around the curve of the hill. Kevin and Terry hadn’t dared to turn around to look at her. She remembered running up the asphalt road after the car, crying and wiping her runny nose on her sleeve, not believing they could have left her, terrified at finding herself alone in the bush. She also remembered her relief when she saw the familiar shape of the FC tail-lights up ahead. She had stood in the middle of the road, not able to go a step backwards or forwards, and wet her underpants.
‘Filthy, filthy, disgusting girl!’ her father scolded as he pushed Meredith into the back seat.
‘Ee-ew, stinky Meredith!’ Kevin and Terry had held their noses and complained as she wiggled her toes in her sodden white knee-high socks. Meredith had never forgotten that long, damp drive back to Camberwell, but what was the point in telling that particular part of the anecdote? It would only spoil a good story.
‘When we got home, Bernie would get out of the car and say: “Wasn’t that a fascinating day, children?” We’d probably driven two hundred miles. If we’d been in Europe, we would have driven through France, Spain and Portugal, and seen something worth seeing!’
The van rounded a bend and there at last was the sign to Mimosa Rocks National Park. A grey blur bounded across the road in front of the van.
‘Look, a kangaroo!’ shouted Nina.
‘I can see it.’ Meredith pointed. ‘I can see it.’ She was starting to think that, on this particular drive, she was seeing a whole lot of things she’d never seen before.
After a short walk from the Mimosa Rocks campsite through the banksia trees, the wild beauty of Gillard’s Beach unfolded like a pop-up picture in a child’s book of fairytales. The pulsing surf had given birth to a luminous pearly moon suspended in endless twilight. Meredith couldn’t quite locate the shade of the sky on her personal paint chart. It was a curious mix of velvet cape, admiralty and prelude. She gave up and named it ‘beautiful’.
For Annie—sitting beside her on the dune and joining the peaceful communion—the years of viewing the sunset over vast, flat inland plains had in no way prepared her for the dynamic restlessness of the darkening sea. She was astonished every time she saw it. She was intrigued by the notion that she might be able to watch it every evening for the rest of her life.
Nina slammed the flywire door on the RoadMaster and flicked on the fluoro over the cook top. She paced the galley from bed to bed and scanned the iridescent screen of her mobile phone. When it finally showed she had coverage, she dialled.
‘Jordan?’
‘Hi, Mum.’
‘Darling! I’ve missed you so much. How are you?’
‘Good.’
‘How was school today?’
‘Gay.’
‘Did you hand in your assignment?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Where are Anton and Marko?’
‘Upstairs having a shower. They have to get up early tomorrow, if you haven’t forgotten.’
‘Have they packed everything?’
Silence.
‘Have they?’
‘Nah. They’re goin’ to the nation’s capital in the nude.’
‘Don’t be a smart alec, Jordan, it doesn’t suit you. Is someone there with you? I can hear voices.’
‘It’s the TV . . . oh, and a home invader in a balaclava who says if I don’t get off the phone he’s gunna waste me with a semi-automatic.’
Silence.
‘Is your father there?’
‘Nuh. He went out.’
‘YOU MEAN YOU ARE AT HOME BY YOURSELVES? WHERE DID HE GO?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Jordan James Brown, this is your mother speaking. I will find your father and he will be back home soon. There’s no need to be thinking about home invasions. Stay calm. Do you understand?’
‘Not really.’
‘What don’t you understand, darling?’
‘How you reckon you can still nag us from over the phone.’
Silence.
‘What time did your father go out? Did he tell you why?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Did he say when he’d be back?’
‘Nuh.’
‘You just hold tight, Jordy.’
‘Whatever.’
‘I’ll call back. I love you.’
Nina leaned against the cupboards as she felt her knees give way. Her face was instantaneously hot and her scalp was tingling with perspiration. She stabbed at the phone with rubbery fingers. Brad’s number rang and rang, and was finally picked up. She heard a brief muffled greeting, and the phone went dead. She gasped—a short intake of breath so intense that surely the walls of the van would crumple and implode. Before she could exhale, she was dialling again.
‘The mobile phone you are ringing is either out of range or switched off.’
‘Oh my God. Oh my . . .’ Nina dialled Jordan’s number.
‘Jordy, it’s Mum.’
‘Who?’
‘THIS ISN’T FUNNY, JORDAN! Have you got Grandma Brown’s phone number? And Baba Kostiuk’s?’
‘Why? What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. Everything’s fine. But if you need them, you know they are always there and . . .’
Nina could hear the line breaking up. Jordan’s voice washed in and out on a gravelly tide.
‘Mum? Mu—’
‘Jordy? Jordy?’
The phone line spluttered, expired and that was the end of it. For the next half-hour Nina stood outside in the wind—under the banksia tree to the south, knee-deep in bracken to the north, east and west—holding the phone high and low. All was silent. There was no reception. She was six hundred kilometres from home—supposedly beyond all care and responsibility—but now reduced to a simple and terrifying helplessness.
She managed to at least get the van’s lights and hot water going. Maybe she would be doing all these things without Brad from now on . . . now that he’d abandoned his family. When Meredith and Annie returned from the beach, they found her curled in a ball on the bed, bawling like a baby.
‘So Brad’s gone out—’ Annie tried to ma
ke sense of it one more time—‘and left the boys in the house by themselves?’
Nina snivelled and nodded her head.
‘And you don’t know how long for?’
Nina snorted into a tissue and shook her head.
Meredith slumped back into a seat with relief. ‘So he’s gone down the road to pick up a pizza for three grown boys who are apparently watching television and having a shower, and that’s enough to reduce you to a blubbering basket case?’
‘I can’t get through.’ Nina threw her mobile phone on the floor. ‘Piece of shit!’ She was immediately down on her knees, scrabbling under the table for the battery that had come loose.
Annie took her by the arm and hauled her to her feet. ‘Look at yourself, Nina! This is . . . what can we say that hasn’t already been said? They—will—be—fine.’
An hour later—after Nina had been more or less tranquillised with a plate of grilled chicken, a rocket-and-parmesan salad and two glasses of red—Meredith tackled her again. ‘This isn’t just about Brad and the boys, Nina. It’s about you. Your constant fussing . . .’
‘I do it all the time. I can hear all the crap coming out of my mouth, and I hate myself. I’m sorry.’ And with that the tears sluiced down the spillway of her pink cheeks again.
Meredith shoved more tissues into Nina’s outstretched hand. ‘Now, don’t carry on like this,’ she said crisply. ‘Being a nag’s hardly the worst crime on earth.’
‘What about being a fat, middle-aged pain-in-the-arse who can barely hold a conversation because she’s been in front of her kitchen sink for fifteen years?’ Nina’s bosom heaved under her faded T-shirt.
Meredith looked at Annie with wide blue eyes. She didn’t have a clue how to handle this abysmal level of self-hatred.
‘Come on now, honey,’ Annie crooned, ‘we’ve come this far together and we’re going all the way. What’s this about? And I’m not just talking about ringing Brad or the kids to say goodnight. What’s it really about?’
Nina kept her head down and honked loudly into her tissue, startling Meredith, who almost fell off her seat. ‘I think Brad wants to leave me . . .’ Nina whispered.
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