Bloodlines

by Nicole Sinclair

  Nicole Sinclair’s short fiction and non-fiction has appeared in the Review of Australian Fiction, Westerly, indigo Journal and Award Winning Australian Writing, and also forms part of the artworks along Busselton Jetty. Her short stories have won the Katharine Susannah Prichard Short Fiction Award and the Down South Writers Competition. Bloodlines is her first novel and was shortlisted for the 2014 TAG Hungerford Award. Nicole has lived and worked in Papua New Guinea and now lives in the south-west of Western Australia with her husband and two (very young) daughters.

  Bloodlines

  Nicole Sinclair

  First published in Australia in 2017

  by Margaret River Press

  PO Box 47

  Witchcliffe WA 6286

  www.margaretriverpress.com

  email: info@margaretriverpress.com

  Copyright © Nicole Sinclair 2016

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry data is available from the National Library of Australia

  ISBN 978-0-9943168-7-5

  Cover and text design by Anne-Marie Reeves

  Edited by Susan Midalia

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  Published by Margaret River Press

  For my parents,

  Robyn and Royston Sinclair

  You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

  William Blake

  I

  ‘The way I see it you stay out here till you’re seventy and miserable, and I’m ninety-five and deaf and you have to pile mushed vegies in my gob and wipe my arse all day. Or you go some place else for a bit.’ Clem strikes a match and lights the gas stove. He puts the kettle on top.

  Beth, red-eyed and raw-cheeked, looks at him. ‘Where, Dad? Where can I go? With what money?’

  ‘Love, I’ll pay. I don’t care. I just think you’ve got to go. I’ll deal with the rest.’

  He looks at her, sunken in the chair, a young girl again. God, he thinks, she looks like Rose.

  She stares right at him. ‘It’s running, Clem,’ she says. ‘And I’m not running.’

  ‘It’s not running, it’s smart. It’s giving you time. And Sam ...’ He sees her wince and then, quietly: ‘It gives Sam some space too. And time. God, the bloke must be shattered.’

  She stiffens.

  Maybe she’ll cry, he thinks. He could reach for her then, sit by her, draw her onto his lap, this broken girl of his, and cradle her like he did when she was a child.

  ‘I’ll get the soup on,’ she says, and stands, gets Eva’s big orange pot from the fridge, brushing past him to the stove.

  ‘Maybe ...’ He stops, starts again. ‘Maybe going away for a bit is the right thing to do. By Sam.’

  She bangs the pot on the stove, rips the lid off, walks past him and slams it in the sink. She opens a drawer, rummages for the soup ladle.

  ‘So.’ She spits the word. ‘You don’t want me here, hey?’

  ‘Love.’

  She bristles, stares into the pot.

  ‘Bethy,’ he says, his chest tight. ‘You’re all I’ve got. You and your Nan and this place. And something, some little tic that won’t go away, just tells me it’s best you clear off for a bit. Just till things settle, that’s all.’

  ‘Can’t I stay out here?’ she says. ‘I was thinking I could just come home.’

  He eyes her, knows as well as she does that she can’t. That it’s too close. Perth is too close. Hell, Australia feels too close.

  ‘Eva and I’ve been talking.’ She glares at him and he waves his hands, trying to placate her. ‘I want you to think about it, just think, that’s all, Bethy.’ He pauses. ‘Val will be glad to have you.’

  He’s stunned by the coldness in her eyes and realises too late the words are wrong.

  ‘Val would love to have you go there I mean,’ he says quickly. ‘Help with the kids. There’s a place to stay near her—your own house.’

  Silence.

  ‘PNG,’ Clem says. ‘You’d find it ... interesting, wouldn’t you?’

  Nothing.

  He feels a line of sweat along his forehead. ‘Love, this is just the ticket—just what you need: get away for a bit. On your own.’

  He’s standing close to her now.

  ‘Righto Clem,’ she says, turning sharply to get the bowls. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘It’s the best of a bad lot, I reckon,’ he says, and carries the pot to the table.

  Beth lies soldier-straight in her childhood bed, looking at the dresser she painted when she was thirteen: sky blue, with dark blue handles. Like the sea, Clem said when he first saw it. There’s a jewellery box that opens to a dancing ballerina, Holy Communion medals and a vase of dried everlastings from the home paddock. At the back in white frames are three photographs: Eva and Tom’s wedding day; Beth’s christening; a shot of the three of them: Clem in the middle, one arm round Rose’s waist, his other along Beth’s shoulders. They’re standing in front of Eva’s bougainvillea, and its vibrant pink tendrils seem to leech the colour from the faces in the photo. On the wardrobe opposite Beth’s bed are stuffed toys from the Royal Show, Eva’s crocheted blankets, and books piled high to the ceiling. Tonight, she feels a stranger in this room she knows so well, a shrine to Clem’s little girl, now so lost to both of them.

  It is cold but she still lies straight, almost enjoying the feel of the hard, hurtful, cold sheets, resisting the urge to curl up, childlike.

  But then she thinks about Clem’s advice. He never tells her what to do, which makes her think that going to PNG might have its merits. She sees herself walking along beaches under palm trees, wearing long skirts and flowing shirts, imagines herself swimming underwater a long way from home. She could just lose herself to work, do long hours. Read. Play guitar. She wouldn’t have to talk to anyone about what happened. Val wouldn’t ask too many questions—Clem says she’s a private woman. The money’s there, she thinks. She should just go.

  She hears Red out the back: a low guttural growl.

  She switches off the light.

  Again, the dog rumbles. She thinks she can hear a fox calling in the distance.

  She turns on her side, finally lets herself bring her knees to her chest under the weight of the quilt. She wills her mind to blankness, shuts out the day, and the long days before that, keeps a gate firmly shut on the road that leads to Sam, and, surprisingly, finds sleep easily for the first time all week.

  Clem is reading an old Sunday Times at the kitchen table when he hears Beth walking behind him.

  ‘All right, Dad,’ she says. ‘I’m in.’

  He’s been awake since five, fed the dog and chooks, cleaned the birdcage and watered the vegies.

  ‘Afternoon, love,’ he says, not looking up.

  She looks at the clock. 7am.

  ‘Ha ha,’ she says. ‘So funny, and so early in the morning too.’

  A smile splits his face. He’s missed her.

  She fills the kettle with water, places it on the stove. ‘Want one?’ she asks.

  ‘Breathin’, aren’t I?’

  And she groans and lights the hob.

  Clem looks through the window above the sink to the blue hills behind town and hears Rose’s voice, distant and slow; sees the three of them, father, mother and daughter, all those years ago lying outside under the clothesline, with bath towels, Rose’s dresses and his shirts flapping above them. Your eyes are like the hills over there, my Bethy, Rose had cooe
d, tickling Beth. Smoky blue. And beautiful.

  He clears his throat and searches out the Farm Weekly. Beth drops bread into the toaster. When it’s done, she slathers on butter and Eva’s strawberry jam. The kettle boils and she makes the tea. Clem watches her from the corner of his eye. From behind, she looks a little like Rose: slim-hipped, and long dark curls spilling down. But she’s taller than Rose, and has wider shoulders.

  Man’s shoulders, Beth used to say in her twenties. Thanks for those Dad, just what every woman wants.

  And he’d laugh, but the words had dug into him. Another thing he didn’t get quite right.

  Finally she sits down. ‘So,’ she says, looking at him, ‘did you hear me?’

  ‘I heard you, love,’ he says. ‘So you’ll go.’ His voice catches. ‘I think it’s for the best.’ He places his hand, rough and dry, on hers. He looks, really looks, at this daughter before him. He wants to tell her it will all work out, that Sam will recover, that people will forget. That she will be all right. But her hand feels tiny and cold and there’s a hardness in the air. He pulls his hand away, turns the page of the Weekly and sips his tea.

  Beth cuts her toast into four small triangles, wipes the blade on the saucer’s rim and sits, both hands in her lap now, staring at the four pieces of red.

  Beth returns to the terrace house in Fremantle. She folds clothes into cardboard boxes and tapes them tightly shut, ready to store in the shed at the farm. Numbed and quick, she grabs books and trinkets, small paintings and vases. She leaves Sam the kitchen things, their bed, the TV, their towels. Her hand hovers over the CDs and some old vinyl records they bought on a trip to Melbourne. She leaves him their music and puts her key under the doormat.

  Five boxes, some paintings wrapped in a sheet, and two plants in blue pots are not much to show for four years. But it’s more than enough. Part of her could leave everything. She wants to walk away with nothing, as if this might make up for what she’s done. She drives away, determined not to look at the houses lining the street; a sorry guard of honour, their silent familiarity taunting her. She doesn’t look in the rear-view mirror at the house they shared, or the green sea behind it. She drives inland as the sun sinks further and the streets thin until there are rolling paddocks, homesteads and miles of fences carving up the land.

  *

  Eva visits each day and fusses around as Beth reads in her room or picks away at Rose’s old piano. Singular sad notes that crash angrily into sonatas she learnt at school. Beth hates playing the piano, so it feels the right thing to do. She stays in bed till Clem leaves in the mornings, pretending to sleep when he gently opens the door to see if she is awake. She always has her eyes closed.

  On her last night, they go to Eva’s house for dinner. Clem drives the ute and Beth stares hard at the glove box, binder twine holding it together, bulging against the old yellowing envelopes, bits of straw, dirty hankies he’s jammed inside. He babbles on about the fencing contract he’ll start soon and the neighbour’s dog that took a bait last week and how, even though they’d cut off the tips of its ears and made it eat sand, it had died.

  ‘With all that bleeding,’ he says, ‘the jolly thing still carked it.’ And then, almost whispering as he shakes his head: ‘So much blood. You can’t imagine it.’

  But she can. For weeks she’s felt the blood trickling out of her; some imaginary stream that’s kept draining her until she feels old and worn and useless.

  Eva cooks roast lamb and steamed pudding.

  ‘You won’t get this up there, Bethy,’ she says, carving the crisp-skinned leg. ‘Val says it’s fish and rice most days and, on the others, it’s rice and fish.’

  Clem lets out a low chuckle.

  ‘And other people too,’ Eva says, laughing. ‘You watch out, girl. They’ll put you in a pot.’

  ‘Nah, she’s too skinny now,’ says Clem. ‘Not good tucker. You’ll be all right, love—they’ll leave you alone for sure!’

  But later, after she barely touches the roast, he leans over as Eva takes ice cream from the back freezer, and says, ‘You eat up, Bethy. You come back to me bigger, okay?’

  *

  Eva clutches Beth hard as they stand by the ute. Some way off, a mopoke calls: a slow rip through the fabric of the too-still night, and Eva releases her.

  ‘Give my love to Val, okay? Tell her I’ll write soon.’ She clings to Beth again, and Beth can feel Eva’s big, loose breasts under the man’s T-shirt.

  Beth wants to be on that island now. Away.

  ‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘For dinner. For everything.’ She twists a little, and Eva drops her arms.

  ‘Beth,’ Eva says slowly. ‘We love you, you know that, don’t you? We never stop loving you, Clem and I.’

  She knows she owes Eva something, some morsel of affection that will make this easier, that might come close to what she feels for her. But all she can do is smile weakly before she turns, opens the door and sits in the ute. Clem starts the engine, a slow stuttering.

  Beth turns to her nan, this woman—still tall and strong at seventy-five—her silver hair in two long plaits, shimmering in the moonlight, her face fleshy and her grey eyes looking at her with so much love it hurts.

  ‘Thanks, Nan,’ Beth whispers, her voice husky. ‘Bye.’

  And she turns to look through the windscreen where a single headlight illuminates the dirt driveway and Clem drives them home, tooting the horn, right hand stuck out the window, waving. And even though it’s dark and she doesn’t look back, Beth knows that Eva stands there for a long time, one arm raised, waving slow, sad strokes through the cool night air.

  *

  They leave early the next morning. Beth’s backpack and guitar are on the back of the ute where Red stands guard, barking at every passing car till they reach the fringe of the city. She exhausts herself within the first few minutes, and lies down. Clem, sucking on peppermints, listens to the cricket, and Beth listens to her heart beating faster and faster the closer they get to the airport.

  Clem stands too close to her when she checks her luggage in, bumps into her when they walk upstairs to Departures, keeps trying to interest her in any story he can think of, as though he needs these small, constant reminders she’s still there. When the last boarding call comes, Beth turns to Clem and he looks older, spent somehow, someone else’s father, not the Clem she knows. Her eyes, itchy and prickling with tears, look over his shoulder to the departure gate. She wants so desperately to be held, to let the sorry weight of the past few months finally, finally, be shared with someone else. She closes her eyes, grips her toes inside her boots, clenches her fists. And at last, she looks at him.

  ‘Dad,’ she whimpers. ‘They’re calling me.’

  ‘I know, love. You go.’ And he hands her the small backpack and suddenly he is around her: those big, strong working arms are pulling her in and she inhales sweat and Old Spice and peppermint, and she closes her eyes, rests her head on his shoulder, and feels herself give a little; a surrender of a tired little boat on the great wave engulfing them both.

  A few moments later she untangles herself, her voice throaty and rushed. ‘I love you, Dad,’ she says, so quickly he might miss it. ‘I’m sorry for what’s happened. I’d make it better but I can’t. I’ll call when I get there.’

  And then she’s stalking away to some arse-end-of-the-earth island, and she doesn’t once look back.

  Clem is stuck there, a wreck of a man, big tears rolling down his sun-gnarled face, feeling sick to his guts. Eyes closed, he stands for long minutes, still feeling the press of her head against his shoulder. And when he finally opens his eyes he’s shocked to find she’s gone, and he slowly turns and heads outside, into the hot morning sun.

  Val busies herself in the kitchen. She wipes down the laminated bench tops, the gas stove, sweeps the floor for the second time that morning. She keeps checking the clock above the fridge. One hour and Beth will arrive. She can’t believe there’s been no delay in Moresby. She smirks, when does that
happen?

  ‘Beginner’s luck,’ she says aloud, taking scissors from the top kitchen drawer and heading outside.

  Val picks pink and white hibiscus, though she knows they won’t last the night. She collects some of the delicate white orchids with a dusting of orange down their centre, and snips off two banana leaves. She walks back inside and is impressed by what she sees: she’s scrubbed the kitchen within an inch of its life and it looks decent enough, even though the mildew will be back by the end of the week and the house will feel stained and old. She’ll get used to it, she thinks. She’s glad she asked Moses to paint the bedroom, even if you can still see the bubbled lumps from decadesold dirt underneath the blue enamel. She fills a jam jar with water and arranges the flowers in it, placing them in the centre of the kitchen table near the window.

  She hasn’t seen Beth or her cousin Clem for over twenty-five years, and even then it was brief—she’d flown to Western Australia for Rose’s funeral, and then on to Cairns to see her parents. Outside the church, she’d felt herself waver when she looked over at Clem, shaven and smart in his navy suit and shiny shoes, his big shearer’s hands swollen and fidgeting. He’d made jokes, thanked people for coming and shared stories about Rose before the service began; then he was still, the back of his head never moving, as he sat upright in the front pew, little Beth in the crook of his arm. His shoulders had shuddered when Eva, stoic and steady, delivered the eulogy and Val had wished she was closer then, so she could offer her handkerchief, something. And he’d cried uncontrollably—big, loud hurts—when they carried Rose, so much promise, so full of life, past him down the aisle, and again when she finally went into the ground. Val had never heard a big crowd so quiet. And all the while, Clem had kept his daughter close, his thick arm around her tiny shoulders, marooned together. A small hard cluster of grief.

  Again Val looks at the clock. She’ll have to drive to the airport soon. She wonders what she will say to this girl, this woman now, and suddenly feels the weight of responsibility. What can she offer? What wisdom? She looks up at the crucifix above the stove—Jesus stapled to bamboo—and closes her eyes, immediately relieved that someone here knows her burden.