Hope Farm

by Peggy Frew

  He had already started to withdraw while Mum was sick, and then after she died he got much worse. Later though, once the dementia had taken hold and he lost his words, he went through a phase of obviously trying to communicate something to me. He would get terribly upset, and I would go through the list of possible causes and obviously one of them was you, and he did seem to have a strong response to that.

  I thought I should let you know what is happening in case you would like to see him. He still does have the very rare moment of apparent clarity, but I have to be honest and say he is not likely to recognise you. You might want to see him for your own reasons, though.

  I am home with him now, so you can write to this address, and the phone number’s still the same.

  Love,

  Linda

  15th December 1983

  Dear Ishtah,

  I hope you are well, and, as always, that you get this letter.

  I don’t have any news, really. I just wanted to give you my new address and phone number, as I’ve moved again. I’m in Sydney now, doing research in immunology. I find it interesting work.

  I am still on my own. It’s been over three years now. I heard that Jamie is married and has a baby. It’s actually been quite difficult for me to recover from that break-up, even though I knew it was for the best. I don’t find it easy to trust and commit to a relationship. I know I’m not old yet but I can’t help but feel there won’t be anyone else for me. Actually, I think I’ve given up. I don’t mind really. I have my work. I suppose I’ve become one of those strange women who’s lived alone for too long.

  Christmas is a bit of a hard time, though. I do tend to feel the loneliness then.

  I wonder where you are, and what you’re doing.

  Love, and many fond thoughts,

  Your sister, Linda

  I read the letters over three times each. Then I sat for long minutes with them in front of me. I had a groggy, dazzled feeling, as if I’d come out of a dark cinema into daylight, and in my mind swam illuminated figures, human — with human movements and features — but elusive, their faces indistinct. Of course these people had existed; Ishtar didn’t spring from nowhere, and there had always been those flimsy, empty-sounding names on her birth certificate. But now an extra dimension had been added, and for the first time it properly hit me: somewhere — in Toowoomba West, that dot on the map — they had been in the world, living and breathing, at the same time as me. And now were gone, dead.

  The figures moved across the screen of my mind, unreachable, their smudged faces averted. I looked at the letters again, the name at the bottom of the uppermost one: Linda. Linda. She was still there, in Sydney — or had been, two years ago. Ishtar had a sister. But the sister didn’t know anything about us, or even where we were. She didn’t even know how to spell Ishtar’s name.

  I put the letters back in their envelopes and replaced the rubber band. I eased them in under the lining. Then I stuck the pin carefully in and closed the case and put it away.

  Ishtar was there when I returned from school the next day. She was in bed, facing the wall. If my coming in woke her she showed no sign of it. I crept out again, and down to the creek.

  When I returned at dusk there was food on the table — rice and some raw vegetable sticks — and she got up and served a plate for me.

  ‘Did they look after you all right over at Hope?’

  I didn’t answer.

  She wasn’t listening anyway. She went out, for the toilet, and then got into bed again.

  I finished my food and went into my room.

  At first I just assumed she was recovering physically. I could only guess how long this might take. But a week passed and, while she went straight back to work, in most other ways she was no different from how she’d been before her trip to Melbourne. In fact, she was worse. She hardly ate anything. Sometimes she would prepare food for me, but not often. The moist look had gone from her skin — now it had a puffy, dry appearance, and for the first time I noticed lines at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth.

  She kept the door bolted, and if anyone knocked she didn’t respond, unless it was me — I had to call out to her. Dan came, twice, tapped and waited awhile, then left. Miller didn’t come.

  ‘When are we leaving?’ I asked one morning, when she was up, sitting dully at the table.

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘Where will we go?’

  But she didn’t answer, and when I came back from school she was in the bed again.

  Every night I thought tomorrow I will do it get packed and go. I had the money, Id cashed the check and it came through like Dawn promised so it was all there in my bag. Whenever I wanted I could just take Silver to Melbourne, get the tickets and go. But then when I woke up I had no energy. I hadnt expected that. I thought Id just get it over with and it would be a big relief and Id feel good again ready to get on with things. I kept thinking about one time when I was a kid we went to Brisbane for the day and drove past this group of people demonstrating out side a church. There werent that many of them and they werent chanting or any thing just standing there, a woman turned and shook her sign at us, it had a picture of a baby on it Abortion is Murder, it said. I kept seeing that sign I kept hearing my mothers voice saying What have you done? One night I dreamt I was following my father as he pushed the lawnmower. Help me help me I dont know what to do I shouted but the mower was so loud and he wouldnt turn around.

  Everywhere there was a feeling of change, of approaching endings. Suddenly the days were warm, and sometimes even hot. From the bus window I saw Christmas decorations in the streets of Tarrina, and signs for end-of-year events: a visit from the Lion’s Club Santa Claus, a family bush dance, a carol service. The school year was almost over. Final tests were taken, projects were handed back, pleas came over the loudspeakers for lost property to be claimed. Teachers, even Mr Dickerson, became distracted and more lenient. Classrooms buzzed with whispers. Windows were opened and breezes ruffled papers. At lunchtime the noise was extra frantic — it rang in the brick courtyards and swooped and eddied in the air above the oval.

  The evening of the last day of term I recognised the sound of Val’s car, and there was a rap at the door of the hut.

  I opened it. Ishtar was in bed as usual, apparently asleep.

  Right on the doorstep was Jindi, standing very straight, her hands clasped. Val stood a few steps behind her.

  ‘Good evening!’ said Jindi in a rehearsed kind of way.

  ‘Shh.’ I stepped out, shooing her away from the door and closing it behind me.

  ‘Sorry.’ Jindi began to speak in a very loud whisper, almost louder than her regular talking voice. ‘Good evening,’ she repeated. ‘I have come to invite you to a party. To celebrate the summer …’ She faltered for a moment, frowning, then brightened again, drew herself up, arranged her lips, and enunciated with care: ‘solt-a-sis.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  Jindi frowned again, and then steadied herself. ‘It’s going to be on … on … um. Not tonight …’

  ‘Tomorrow night,’ said Val. ‘And it’s the summer solstice.’

  Jindi dropped her ceremonial stance and began to wriggle on the spot. ‘Can you come, Silver?’ she burst out in her normal voice. ‘We’re going to make decorations, and dress up in costumes, and Val says there’ll be a chocolate cake.’

  Val began to walk towards her car, but called as she went: ‘Silver?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Tell your mum she’s invited, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Jindi was advancing on me, writhing. ‘Will you come? Silver? Will you dress up? What will you wear? I’m going to be a summer flower fairy. Val says she’ll make me a crown of flowers, and I’m going to wear my flower dress, and —’

  ‘Come on, Jindi,�
� called Val. ‘Time to go.’

  I didn’t tell Ishtar. Something was building in me, slowly expanding, and it was to do with the letters, with Linda. I felt it when I crouched by the creek with the bucket the next morning, and when I lay on my bed trying to read. It was the first day of the holidays, but there was no feeling of calm, of space. Outside, the bush swirled with bright, uneasy winds, and I lay staring at the knots in the timber wall and feeling the thing swell, like a bloat in my belly.

  I went out again, along the creek and across the road, to climb the hill and look down on Hope. Miller was there, a distant figure, horizontal on his pallet in the open-sided shed; I saw an arm lift and move through the air, a slow stirring action, before lowering again to curve over the tawny blur that was his head. I thought of the film I’d seen at school about lions in Africa that showed a group of them lying in the grass, the casual drape of their bodies, the lazy shifting of their great paws.

  Over at the house, someone came out of the mud-brick building and paused in the clearing near the kitchen steps. Dawn. I recognised her brittle frame, the pin legs braced as she adjusted something in her hands — a plate it looked like, with a cup balanced on top — before moving on, into the main house.

  So they were still there. I made the magic shape and squinted my eyes. Go away.

  Dan’s green bike was propped against a tree near the hut when I got back. As I approached I saw him jiggling the handle and pushing with his shoulder at the door.

  ‘Has she put a lock on this?’ he said when he noticed me.

  ‘Yeah.’

  He stepped back. ‘How is she?’

  ‘She’s okay.’

  ‘Is she sick?’ He spoke in a hushed voice, and beckoned me away from the hut. We went across the clearing and he sat down on a stump. ‘I’m worried that —’

  ‘It’s not to do with the abortion.’

  His face changed. ‘I didn’t know if you —’

  ‘I’m not stupid.’

  His lips twisted in a smile, but his eyes were sad. ‘I know you’re not.’

  I glanced at the closed door. ‘She just goes like this sometimes.’

  ‘Silver.’ He looked down at his hands. ‘I’m leaving tomorrow.’

  ‘What?’ A shaken, seasick feeling came over me.

  ‘My time here’s over.’

  ‘But …’ Tears rushed into my eyes; the ground seemed to tilt. None of it mattered — Dan and Ishtar in the bath, his pathetic devotion to her, my embarrassment at following him around like a fool all that time — all I could think about was those nights while she was away, his quiet presence in the hut, falling asleep in my bed knowing he was out there by the fire. I looked over at the bike and tried to steady myself. I would never see him again, never catch his white smile, never perch on the crossbar in the tearing wind and feel his arms either side of me and his solid warmth at my back, the vibration of his laugh between my shoulder blades.

  I wiped the tears quickly away. ‘But what about Ishtar, and what you said, about moving to Melbourne — or all of us going overseas?’

  He smiled another sad smile. ‘Did you like the sound of that?’

  I nodded, sniffling furtively.

  ‘Yeah, me too. But Ishtar’s not …’ He sighed. ‘She’s not ready for —’

  ‘She’s so mean.’ To my horror, I began to sob like a little kid. ‘All she ever thinks of is herself. I hate her.’

  Dan reached for me, but I twisted away and stood with my back to him. I was appalled at how childish I was being, but I couldn’t seem to stop. ‘And now you’re leaving me here with her, and she won’t get out of bed; she’s never been this bad before and I don’t know what’s going to happen.’

  He got up and tried to put his arms around me, but I pulled away again.

  ‘Silver,’ he said. ‘I think Ishtar just needs a break. She’s had a rough time. She kind of got scammed by Miller, you know, and —’

  ‘Yeah right, of course you take her side, everyone always cares about her, wants her to be happy.’

  ‘I didn’t mean —’

  ‘Leave me alone! Go away!’

  I couldn’t hold the crying back now it had gotten going, and I still wouldn’t let him comfort me, so we stood there like two strangers waiting under the same shelter for a storm to pass. When at last I had managed to pull myself together, he spoke again.

  ‘I didn’t mean that I don’t care about you, Silver. I do. I really care about you. I think you’re a great kid.’ He reached out again, this time to hold my hand, and I let him.

  ‘Take me with you, then.’ It just came out, like the crying, and even as I said it I knew how stupid it was. Of course I couldn’t go with him; for a start it wasn’t legal — he wasn’t my parent, or guardian. But for a moment a ridiculous, babyish hope fluttered in my stomach.

  He sighed, and the hope dissolved, and even before he spoke I was slipping my hand out of his.

  ‘I wish I could,’ he said. ‘But you know I can’t.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ My voice was stiff. I felt my face flush, and put my head down to hide it. What an idiot I was. He didn’t want me for myself — it was Ishtar he really wanted; I was just an extra he wouldn’t mind having along.

  ‘Silver.’ He drew an envelope from his pocket and held it out.

  I took it. It was small, but packed solid. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s the money I’ve been saving. It’s for both of you. There’s enough for two tickets, plus a bit extra.’

  ‘Tickets?’

  He nodded. ‘Plane tickets. To Europe. Or India. Or wherever.’

  This shook me part-way out of my miserable embarrassment. I stared. ‘But it’s yours. It’s your money you’ve been saving. To go to America. To play in bands.’

  He took out his tobacco pouch. ‘It’s all right. I can still go.’

  ‘But how?’

  Slowly, he lit a cigarette. Then he said. ‘You might not understand this … and it’s a bit embarrassing.’

  I waited.

  ‘I didn’t need to save any money.’ He blew smoke upwards. ‘I have a bank account with enough in it for a round-the-world ticket. I’ve had it for a year — it was a present from my parents for my twenty-first. But I didn’t want to use it. I wanted to pay my own way.’ He glanced at me and grinned. ‘Yeah. Stupid, right? But, you see, I’d never had to work for anything. My life had always been so easy.’ His eyes drifted. He sat in silence for a moment, then shook his head. ‘I wanted to take a stand, I s’pose — the kind of stand only a spoilt private-school boy is privileged enough to take.’

  I gripped the envelope with both hands; the paper was growing damp. None of this seemed real — it was too much. There was the taste of metal in my mouth and a faint whirring in my ears.

  ‘Silver?’ Dan was leaning towards me. ‘You okay?’

  I nodded.

  ‘So you take that money, all right? And you tell Ishtar what I just told you.’

  I nodded again.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll come and say goodbye before I go. And …’ His voice softened, and I didn’t have to look at him to know he had what I’d come to think of as his Ishtar face on. ‘There’s a party tonight, at Hope. Will you tell Ishtar? Maybe she’d like to come down, if she’s feeling better.’

  ‘Okay.’ I started dazedly towards the hut, gripping the envelope, but stopped and turned back to him. ‘Dan?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ I indicated the envelope. ‘When she’s so mean to you? When she doesn’t love you back?’

  He took a while to answer. ‘There’s love there,’ he said at last, hesitating. ‘There’s love between us. Maybe it’s not equal, maybe there’s more on one side than the other, but that’s not the point. The point is,
if you love somebody and you can help them, then you do it, don’t you?’

  I watched him bump away down the track, the white rims of the tyres flashing as he entered the gloom of the overhanging trees.

  Before going inside I sat for a while on the bench outside the hut. The day was hot already. My upper half was shaded, but the sun on my legs was strong and sweat began to pop at my armpits and under my nose. I still had the dizzy feeling, and there were black, quivery spots at the edges of my vision.

  I looked down at the envelope in my lap. We would go now, surely — there was no reason for Ishtar to stay. This money would be the boost she needed, the trigger, swinging her into action. We would go overseas: I saw myself, pulled along in her wake through crowded markets, waiting while she laughed with some new man, putting myself to bed in dingy hostel rooms, trying not to wonder what I would do if she wasn’t there when I woke in the morning. No school, no friends, always moving on.

  I blinked into the bright clearing. The shadows between the tree trunks opposite trembled.

  Ishtar took the envelope and opened it while I delivered Dan’s message. She didn’t look up or say anything, even when the money fell out on the sheet in a little gust of fragrant air. Despite my numbness, a thrill went through my gut; it was more money than I’d ever seen.

  ‘He said it’s enough for tickets for both of us.’

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t count the notes, just gathered them with shaking fingers, stuffed them back into the envelope, and put it under her pillow. Then she lay down again and turned away from me.

  ‘Ishtar?’

  She lay still.

  ‘What’s going to happen?’

  No answer.

  ‘Where will we go? Which country?’

  I waited but she didn’t respond. I felt like a balloon, my head expanded and echoing, my feet barely touching the floor. I took an apple from the bag Dan had left for us on the bench out the front last week. From the entrance to my bedroom I looked back at the motionless length of her body under the sheet. The shut-in air seemed to hang over her, stained like the walls.