Hope Farm

by Peggy Frew

  Ishtar moved round him with the broom, collecting mounds of rubbish and pushing them out the door. At one point he made a grab for her, but she sidestepped and went on sweeping.

  ‘Won’t take us long, will it?’ said Miller. ‘To get the place in order.’

  Ishtar said nothing. She took a cushion off the rickety little couch and swept underneath it.

  Miller rocked up onto his toes and back. Then he went out to where the ghost of the little house’s long-ago garden glimmered in rose briars and thickened fruit trees and a patch of weedy grass, bright against the background of silty bush. Round he paced, hands clasped behind his back, as if doing some kind of official inspection. Soon he moved out of sight, back along the track to where the car was parked, and after a few moments there were the sounds of the engine starting and him driving away.

  ‘Who’s going to live here?’ I said to Ishtar.

  She raised the broom and began knocking the cans off the mantelpiece. ‘Us.’

  ‘You and me?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And Miller?’

  She paused for a moment. Her skin looked strange, moist — I thought of damp clay with its muddy smell. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Just us.’

  ‘Why?’

  She shrugged and swept the cans into a rattling pile.

  ‘Is it because of Dawn?’ My ears were getting hot.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I had a teetering, dizzy feeling. I thought back to the kitchen the other morning, to the way she had told me to go or I’d miss the bus, but then hadn’t made me leave. There was some kind of rule there, I knew, to do with listening but pretending not to understand — and now I was breaking it. I swallowed. ‘Because she’s his wife?’

  Ishtar looked at me. ‘Yeah,’ she said, the word descending between us. Then she went back to sweeping.

  It was Dan who came to help, that first day. He brought lengths of scrap timber that he sawed to fit into the holes in the floor. He went off again and found a camping stove and spirit lamp at the op shop, and a card table and a couple of chairs, and rigged up shelving with bricks and planks. He stuck a broom up the chimney and shook down a hail of black dust and cinders. He brought milk crates and more timber to make beds for us, topped with mattresses also from the op shop. I heard Ishtar offer him money, but he said no. He brought a bucket for getting water from the creek and a shallow tin tub for us to wash in, standing up, like they had at Hope that time.

  At first I kept my distance, stepping round the edges of their busyness. This was much worse than Dan’s adoring eyes at dinnertime. Here he was rushing round like some pathetic servant while Ishtar barely spoke to either of us, but went on grimly working, her expression remote and closed. And why were they doing all this anyway? The place was a ruin. Why didn’t we just leave, Ishtar and me? Why did she always treat me like this, never protecting me from anything and then when I tried to enter her world, to ask about things like I just had, slamming down a shutter?

  I went to the creek for a while, following a trail that sloped through the bush. It came out near a big wattle, which was the place I’d met Ian that first time. But Ian himself didn’t appear, and eventually I got bored and went back.

  Dan was outside, cutting a plank of wood that he held in place with one knee on a tall stump. The panting of the saw echoed round the clearing. He had lit a fire to burn the rubbish and there were the fresh smells of smoke and sawdust. When he paused in his work, using his forearm to push the hair out of his face, and smiled at me, my resentment and my lonely disdain faltered.

  ‘Did you see your room?’

  ‘My room?’

  ‘Yeah. The little one. You should go and have a look. We’ve set up the bed.’

  I went in, past Ishtar, who was working at one of the walls of the main room with a scrubbing brush. There was hardly space in the second room for anything more than a single bed, but like Dan said, someone — him, I was sure — had set one up, and even made it with sheets that, although worn and musty-smelling and with garish patterns that didn’t match, were tucked neatly in. There was also an upended wooden crate for a little table, holding a candle in a saucer and a box of matches. There was still the smell of animal urine and, despite all the sweeping, a layer of dust and grit on the floor underfoot. But something turned over in my chest at the sight of that little room, at the care that had been taken. The rest of my ill will fell away, stiff and crumpled, and was replaced unexpectedly by tremulous, tentative excitement. I knelt on the bed and peered through the small window. Past the thorny branches of a runaway rose bush, the scrub made a dense wall. Hope — Dawn and Jindi, and Willow and Gav, and even Miller — seemed very far away.

  I went back outside and Dan handed me a spade. He indicated the pile of rubbish that lay outside the door. ‘Shove some of that load on the fire, will you?’

  We got it all done in that one day. I carried water from the creek till my arms hurt and both palms felt raw from the bucket handle. I shovelled up the swathes of rubbish that Ishtar had sent pouring from the doorway like vomit from a gaping mouth and fed them to the fire, black tissues of ash rising to kiss the backs of my hands. Ishtar swept and scrubbed and Dan sawed and hammered, and came and went in his truck.

  It was dark when we finished. Dan drove off one last time and returned with fish and chips, and we sat on the rickety chairs round the card table. The traces of possum were barely discernable under the smells of White Lily and the bunch of creamy ti-tree blossoms that Dan had stuck in a jar — and now the salty, hot smell of the food. The spirit lamp burred and threw out white glare; over near Ishtar’s bed, with its Indian quilt, the firelight was softer, reflecting pink and orange in the timber. Dan had gotten a rug from somewhere — it was worn and had holes at one end, but it covered most of the patched floor. Someone had arranged a folded tablecloth over the crass carvings on the mantelpiece. The place had the quality of a cubby, or a campsite — a kind of makeshift homeliness that seems heartbreaking now, but at the time worked a kind of magic on me.

  I was so tired and warm with the day’s unexpected happiness that I didn’t even notice Ishtar’s wilted posture and the weary, mechanical way she stuffed the food into her mouth — not until Dan cleared his throat.

  ‘You all right, Ishtar?’

  ‘Just tired.’ But she didn’t look up.

  My old irritation stirred at the sight of Dan’s soft, concerned face, and I took a last handful of chips and got up and went into my new room. Closing the door behind me, I sat on the edge of the bed in the almost-dark and ate the chips one by one, licking my fingers and wiping them on my jeans. Then I kicked off my boots and got into the bed with all my clothes on and lay listening to the sigh and murmur of the bush outside. I didn’t hear any further talk between Dan and Ishtar, and not long after there were the sounds of him leaving.

  I turned over and stretched out my legs luxuriously. My own bed, in my own room, in my own house. Heavy with fatigue, I fell easily into sleep.

  SUMMER

  When I go back to that time in my mind — Hope, and Miller and Dawn, and Dan and Ishtar, and Ian, and the series of collisions we were all sliding towards — that little hut glows at the centre of my recollections as some kind of gift, a fluked idyll, all the more beautiful for how fragile, how short-lived, how untenable it was.

  There was no logical reason for my feeling safe there. Miller was just down the road, and something bad was definitely going on with Ishtar, who became more and more withdrawn and uncommunicative. Yet during those first couple of weeks I experienced a sense of real happiness. I can only put it down to the actual place, which, after that incredible first day’s transformation, represented what I had always fantasised about: a house that was just mine and Ishtar’s, where we lived together, just the two of us. In a strange and completely unexpected way I had gotten what I’d always wanted — and
even though I knew it wouldn’t last, that was the comfort I held close as I fell asleep at night.

  I loved being alone in the hut. After school, with Ishtar still at work, I lit a fire even if it wasn’t cold, and swept the floor, straightened the meagre supply of crockery and the few jars and tins on the shelf. I put my school knapsack under the end of my bed and smoothed the blanket. Through the four small panes of wavery glass that made up the window in my room, the overgrown arm of the old rose bush presented fairy-tale orbs of rusty fruit. Even though I didn’t like tea much, I boiled the kettle on the camp stove and made a cup, and sat with it at the card table, or outside on the sagging bench by the front door, holding it under my chin to feel the steam. I did everything slowly, thoughtfully, with a sense of spaciousness, almost of languor — even when heading out into the morning chill with the trowel and the roll of toilet paper, or lugging bucketfuls of water from the creek.

  No more sneaking around, evading Jindi. No more overcrowded, noisy mealtimes, no more raucous late-night parties, no more tripping over other people’s things, no more crying baby. Each morning, I woke and lay listening to the tick and whisper of the bush, and felt untouchable, sheltered in its cushioned heart.

  Ishtar was sick. She didn’t seem to have a cold or anything, and still went off to work each day, walking out to the dirt road in the mornings to flag down Gav or whoever else was driving past from Hope. But when she wasn’t at work she mostly lay in bed. Sometimes she slept — often she was asleep even before it got dark — but other times she just lay there.

  I was the one who kept the place clean, who washed the dishes in the tub and lit the fire and the lamp. She did buy some groceries, but she didn’t cook — the two of us ate muesli and fried eggs, raw carrots and apples. Sometimes I would cook a pot of rice, which we ate just with salt and pepper. Ishtar chewed and swallowed in a joyless, methodical way, like someone taking medicine — even though, strangely, she seemed to be eating more than usual.

  Our interactions were reduced, if that was possible, to the most basic of practical exchanges. ‘We’re out of rice,’ she might say, not lifting her head from the pillow. ‘Go round to Hope and get some. Take those oranges and do a swap.’ Or at the sound of Dan’s truck, ‘I’m asleep,’ huddled with her face to the wall — and I would open the door and shake my head at Dan, who nodded and went away again.

  She didn’t invite Dan in at all after that first day. Same with Miller, who turned up at odd hours, his knock resounding with entitlement. Ishtar dealt with him; I saw only a slice of his solid torso and glowing hair as, murmuring, she pushed the cracked-open door closed again.

  ‘I’m sick.’ Her voice was final. ‘I need to rest.’

  Dulled, uneasy realisations threatened at the back of my mind, but lying on my new bed in the honeyed afternoon light, or sitting on the outside bench with my cup of tea, or moving soft-footed and quiet as a wallaby through the bush, I could ignore them.

  The hut, the bush, the creek; the soft eruptions of blossom that swayed, damp and fragrant, as I went out with the bucket in the pink mornings. The band of sweet, moist air that sat over the water’s surface, coating my hands and forearms as I plunged the bucket in. The push of my thighs as I stood, made a scoop with my palm, and drank. The taste, mineral and ancient, sent me down into the brown water, into that sinewy, tail-flicking world, layers of silt and ooze, secret openings in the flanks of rocks. The branches beckoned and up I went, cutting and banking, riding air. Or bracken passageways called, and my paws knew the powdery soil, my body telescoped and dived, my animal heart pattering.

  If I could, I would have melted into that world, leaving my old self slumped on the bank, unwieldy, slow, and human.

  I went to the doctor and made sure. Even though I knew any way it shook me up to be told it was true. All those years on the pill I always felt so safe but it can happen the doctor said, its just bad luck. You have a plan I kept saying to myself, this could be a disaster but realy its not its actually a way out. But I had that sickness and I couldnt think straight and the worst thing was it was just like last time. I tried to think about how to do it I had to get it right choose the right moment. I lay on my bed and tried but I just fell asleep straight after work, I fell asleep and didnt wake up till it was night and then when I did wake up, before I opened my eyes there was the sick feeling and my breasts all hard and sore and I kept hearing that old name Id almost forgotten and it was like I was back there again. I opened my eyes and there was the fire and the lamp hissing and Silver on the couch with her book all grown in to the stranger she was. I hadnt thought about any of it for so long it shouldve felt very far off but it didnt now it seemed very near just over my shoulder.

  I had hardly seen Ian since I’d caught him taking the photos of Dan. We did run into each other by the creek one time and I told him about the move, but he showed little interest, which would have surprised me had I been more tuned in. Dean Price was giving him a hard time at school, I’d noticed that — seen the two of them at the centre of a scrum in the courtyard near the library. A teacher intervened, breaking up the knot of bodies and sending Ian, taut with rumpled dignity, off in one direction and Dean Price and his gang in the other. In the bush I had caught sight of him flitting through the trees, but something in his bearing kept me from calling out or running after him. Besides, I knew where he would be headed. I let him go, and managed to put him, along with Ishtar and her strange behaviour, out of my mind as I lay on my bed in the calm of the empty hut.

  Then one morning I climbed the steps of the bus to find a new man in the driver’s seat. He had rounded shoulders and a beaky nose, and a pang of worry went off in me at the sight of his hands, which were not draped casually like the old driver’s but clamped stiffly either side of the wheel. When he pulled the lever to close the door it was with a desperate, grabbing motion, and even the way the vehicle accelerated under his control seemed nervy, irregular.

  It was hard to say what exactly gave the usual bus driver his authority. The same went for Mr Dickerson. There were no readily identifiable signs, but it was clearly there, an air of confidence, of clout — and it was just as obvious that this man did not have those qualities, and in fact exuded weakness like an odour.

  As we trundled uncertainly along the road it began: hoots and yells from the back seats, kids getting up and moving around — something the regular driver would not have allowed for a moment. Then a school bag went sliding down the aisle. The driver didn’t respond, but his posture seemed to grow more defensive.

  By the time the bus pulled into the school car park the noise from the back had reached zoo-like levels and, in the chaos of everyone getting off, Ian’s jumper was snatched and tossed overhead from thug to thug. The driver just sat, hands still on the wheel, gazing out the windscreen like someone who has unexpectedly survived the first round of an unwinnable fight.

  As I crossed the asphalt I saw Ian walking evenly, as if nothing at all had happened, to retrieve his jumper from where it had been stuffed into a rubbish bin. His words echoed in my head — When they find you, you just have to endure — and I was almost thrown off my own casual-seeming course by the strength of the strange, pity-laced admiration that filled me.

  The same driver was back again that afternoon, and Dean Price got on our bus instead of his own. Three stops before mine and Ian’s, he and his mob made a mass exit. Down the aisle they rumbled in a mute, grey herd, from which a hammy hand appeared, pulling Ian off his seat and along with the jumble of bodies.

  I saw his jumper pulled up close round his neck, the raw-looking fingers gripping it in a bundle, his grim face pressed sideways into the back of the boy in front, his feet groping at the floor, barely reaching. I glimpsed the waiting roadside, empty of adults, of protection, and Ian’s words flashed up in my mind like red-pen headings in an exercise book — avoidance, resilience, revenge — and, from nowhere, the thought gaped, of the b
lack mineshaft going down into deadly depths.

  They were off, and the driver was lunging for the lever again. I called, ‘Wait, please,’ in a voice that came out so puny I was surprised he heard — and then I was scrambling down the steps and the bus, with a shudder and a burst of warm fumes, was gone, the sound of the engine fading into a sudden, terrible, wind-blown hush.

  Four or five boys were standing in a bunch by the barbed-wire fence, their bags at their feet. Behind them a paddock bent its long grass to the wind. Dean Price, with Ian still in his grip, was nearer to the road. All of them — including Ian, a groove of disapproval between his eyebrows — were staring at me.

  Dean Price’s fat tongue lolled at his lips. ‘What’s she doin’ here?’

  I had never heard his speaking voice before. It was surprisingly high, and raspy. Some of the cronies shrugged.

  ‘She a friend of yours, Munro?’

  Ian didn’t respond. His eyes dropped from my face.

  Dean Price regarded me for a moment longer, then spat on the ground and turned back to Ian.

  ‘Now.’ He let go of Ian’s collar at last. ‘I hear you’ve got something interesting to show us, Munro, yer little ponce.’

  Ian kept his head down.

  ‘Newt reckons he caught you in the darkroom, saw what you’ve been up to, snapping away with your little camera. That right, Newt?’

  A ruddy boy with white-blond hair blown into a crest grinned.