by Steven Lang
Later, of course, there were more recognisable people. Her daughters, Sandrine and Emily, chatting to her the way girls do who are told to be bright and cheerful for Mummy because she can hear you and it makes her better to know that you are there, which it did, but she was sad that they were made to try so hard when outside the sun was shining and the wind was scattering the light in the leaves of the eucalypts that lined the edge of the river, tall white-barked, silver-barked trees whose leaves, too, were silver on the underside, turned by the wind to brush the sky. David, too, hanging in there, for some reason burdened by guilt, as if her incapacity to hear what he was saying was in some way his fault and not the fault of the damn machines that surrounded him where he was working, the sorry bleating of the loaders and the trucks, burying themselves in the landscape. Jean-Baptiste, too, and her nan, she who’d been her mother after Yvette died, Nan there with her, but not her real mother, not her birth mother, who had it turned out already gone past, apparently, gone on and away, a fact which, when she discovered it, made her weep, tears streaming down her cheeks, soaking the bed in which she lay, fixed, grieving for her loss, not one tear of which made the slightest bit of difference, couldn’t bring her back but then that wasn’t what they were for, anyway, it was just good to cry about it, Yvette holding her hand while she told that part of the story because you need a sister in a situation like that, a sister is the best remedy.
Lindl next to the bed. The doctors must have told her that she should talk as well, that it was possible Eugenie could hear. Lindl telling her about her own daughter, Elianor, gone off to live in Melbourne to study at the university and the fears she had for her which had become co-mingled with the fear she had uncovered cleaning out her mother’s house in the form of the letters to and from her grandfather begging his family to leave Europe, which they had ignored, and the horror of what had happened; a story no longer reduced to statistics but become her family, and this had, she said, in turn, got mixed up with her grief for her mother and set her off, turned her into a generator, a lightning rod, a lighthouse of fear, beaming it out to the world. She’d been frightened for Marcus, that she would lose him, she even told Eugenie about it, she thought that he had chosen the wrong time to go out into the world to be a spokesperson for what was good and right. She’d been so glad when Eugenie had taken over because it meant her Marcus was going to be safe but all the time it was her, Eugenie, who she should have been looking out for and she blamed herself and Eugenie woke up and said to her, Get over it, if she wanted to talk about history there was no doubt worse to come, and if she was going to be claiming blame then she needed to get in line, and that it was silly anyway because it was the best thing that had ever happened to her, the steel bar had cracked open her life and let out all the bits of it that she’d been burying, that she’d forgotten where she’d put, and now they were all together, partying with each other and she was fine with that, but, if she wouldn’t mind telling her, Lindl that is, telling Eugenie, where was Nick?
A lot of this, it seems, nobody else heard, and there was no point, really, in trying to figure out which was which. It didn’t matter. To argue that Sandrine had not been in the room with her, speaking French, would have been to remove a central part from the puzzle, not just ruining it, but destroying it permanently and thus, in some way, also, the larger thing, whatever that was. The psyche had been scattered to the four corners and her job had been to reassemble it in a way that might allow her, whoever she was, to re-enter the world. And if she insisted that some of the discussions she’d had with David had taken place in a donger in the north-west of Western Australia, perched on the edge of a vast spiralling hole in the ground, carved out of the earth by self-driving haulpaks (she had seen the red dust lying thick on the windowsill, the fake timber panelling on the walls, heard the hum of the air-conditioning) that was okay. It was all right, too, that he had told her, standing in that strange transportable box in his hi-viz shirt, what he’d omitted to mention before, that he’d met another woman in Port Hedland and had been living another life with her for some months. She wasn’t cross at all. It was just the way of things, that’s what it was; the way all things are part of the way. What she did come to realise, later, when the words started to come back, when the numbers began adding up to more numbers and not to things, was that the moments when she had felt calm, when she had been most at peace with the great scramble of her mind, had been when the doctor had been sitting next to her bed, in those small hours when the room was dark, lit only by the curious glow of the machinery monitoring her progress, when this man had given his attention to her as if his life depended upon it. These were the moments when the healing began.
Acknowledgements
Any book that has taken this long in gestation has had input from many sources. In particular, though, I’d like to express my gratitude to Madonna Duffy, my publisher, for her continued belief in the value of my work, and to both my editors, Julia Stiles and Jacqueline Blanchard; also to my early readers, in particular Mark Newman; as well as to those from whom I sought technical information, Dr Les Hall and Sue Hadfield. Finally I could not have contemplated such a project without the constant love, support and patience of my wife, Chris Francis.
More fiction from UQP
AN ACCIDENTAL TERRORIST
Steven Lang
Winner of the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Best Emerging Author
Winner of the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for a First Novel
When Kelvin returns to his home town on the southern coast of New South Wales he finds himself drawn to a community that lives back in the hills. He meets Jessica, a would-be writer who has escaped the city, and her enigmatic neighbour, Carl. Both are pursuing new lives inspired by the extraordinary landscape around them.
As his relationship with Jessica intensifies, Kelvin is caught up by some of the more radical elements in the community. No one, however, is quite who they seem, and Kelvin makes a decision that will have devastating consequences for all of them. Deep in the southern forests, the story builds to a dramatic climax.
An Accidental Terrorist is thrilling to the final page. It’s a compelling account of the everyday struggles of a man trying to come to terms with the decisions he’s made and the life he’s built.
‘Lang structures his story well, the tension and conflict building to a dramatic climax. An impressive debut.’
Sydney Morning Herald
‘… hypnotically written and engaging’
Australian Bookseller & Publisher
More fiction from UQP
A LOVING, FAITHFUL ANIMAL
Josephine Rowe
It is New Year’s Eve, 1990, and Ru’s father, Jack, has disappeared in the wake of a savage incident. A Vietnam War veteran, he has long been an erratic presence at home, where Ru’s allegiances are divided amongst those she loves. Her sister, Lani, seeks to escape the claustrophobia of small-town life, while their mother, Evelyn, takes refuge in a more vibrant past. And then there’s Les, Jack’s inscrutable brother, whose loyalties are also torn.
A Loving, Faithful Animal is an incandescent portrait of one family searching for what may yet be redeemable from the ruins of war. Tender, brutal, and heart-stopping in its beauty, this is a hypnotic novel by one of Australia’s brightest talents.
‘Utterly compelling … This is a striking and highly original novel for readers of Australian literary fiction.’
Books+Publishing
‘A Loving, Faithful Animal is a novel of startling imagery and power. A beautiful and, at times, shocking exploration of the fault lines that run through families and of the far-reaching – and occasionally devastating – consequences of decisions made by those who govern us.’
Chris Womersley, author of Bereft and Cairo
‘A remarkable work of fiction. Deft, lyrical and deeply moving.’
Wayne Macauley, author of Demons and The Cook
First published 2017 by University of Queensland Press
PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia
uqp.com.au
[email protected]
© Steven Lang 2017
This book is copyright. Except for private study, research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover design by Christa Moffit
Cover photograph by Yuliya Shora/Shutterstock.com
Author photograph by Chris Francis
Typeset in Adobe Garamond 12/16 pt by Post Pre-press Group, Brisbane
The author wishes to express his gratitude to the Australia Council for their generous support during the writing of Hinterland.
The University of Queensland Press is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
National Library of Australia cataloguing-in-publication data is available at http://catalogue.nla.gov.au
ISBN 978 0 7022 5965 4 (pbk)
ISBN 978 0 7022 5916 6 (pdf)
ISBN 978 0 7022 5917 3 (ePub)
ISBN 978 0 7022 5918 0 (Kindle)