by Sasha Wasley
‘Of course not! Although he might be stressed out about the problems at his mum’s project site . . .’ she started, but Finn was laughing so hard by now that she rethought it and realised she was being too generous this time.
Her cheeks warmed but she couldn’t resent Finn’s smile. Good Lord, she loved those eyes, shining with dappled colours that mesmerised her. He squeezed her close and Free snuggled into him, their legs crisscrossed on the coffee table.
‘It’s amazing, the way the universe works,’ she said. ‘I mean, maybe your family brought you to live in Australia purely so we could meet. Otherwise, we might not have found each other.’ He chuckled and Free poked him. ‘I mean it. How else did this happen? Us?’
‘I pulled you over for littering the road with willy-shaped drinking straws, as I recall.’
Free sank into helpless giggles. ‘I’m so glad you didn’t judge me on that moment.’
‘I did judge you. I decided you were funny, beautiful and trusting, and I instantly wanted to know you better.’
She fixed her eyes on his. ‘It’s just amazing how you’re living here, in the unit attached to mine in Mount Clair. Sharing my cat.’
‘My cat,’ he said, but the adoration was plain in his eyes, trained on her face.
Her heart felt so full she would have confessed she was in love with him, but Free’s voice failed her. Instead, she rested her head on his shoulder and waited until she could speak.
‘Finn, will you sing me a song?’
He made a surprised noise. ‘What?’
‘Sing for me. A ballad or a pub song. ‘Dirty Old Town’. Or any of your songs.’
Finn tensed beneath her. ‘What . . .’ He paused. ‘What do you mean my songs?’
‘I can hear you when you sing.’
‘Oh no,’ he groaned.
‘No, I love it! I heard you the very first day I moved in. Were you in the school choir or something? You know so many songs.’
‘My family sings a lot,’ he said. ‘Whenever we get together. I guess it’s an Irish thing.’
‘I don’t recognise most of the songs but I feel like I do, you know? Even before I actually knew you, I knew you – because of your singing.’ He didn’t speak for so long that she eventually looked up at him again, a little apprehensive. ‘Finn? Will you sing to me?’
There was another long silence, but at last Finn shifted slightly and cleared his throat. When he started, his voice was tight and unnatural, and Free’s heart sank a little. But just a couple of lines in to the song he sounded like Finn again, deep and mellow, singing her a traditional ballad in that warm Irish tone.
Free settled herself against him and sighed with deep, peaceful happiness, all her stress momentarily forgotten.
At work the next day, Free wanted to explain yesterday’s conversation to Max, but the science teacher appeared to be avoiding her. At lunch, he even sat away from their regular table. Being Tuesday, it was one of Aidan’s days off, so Free could only assume she was the reason Max had chosen to sit across the staffroom. He probably didn’t want to associate with the dodgy, profit-skimming fraud Aidan had made Free out to be.
Even Jay was strangely distant. The head of art was nodding her curly head, deep in conversation with the health teacher – all but ignoring Free. Was Jay aware of what was being said? Did she suspect Free of pushing for the new ceramics materials so she could profit? Maybe Jay had forgotten that Free never took a commission on the Born and Bred supplies. Free tried to shake off Aidan’s accusation, holding her head high. She knew she’d done the right thing, even if other people doubted her integrity.
The after-school session with her class rescued her day from being too miserable. Her students were still buzzing with motivation from Free’s speech about quality and quantity, and settled in to their work with enthusiasm.
‘Hey, Miss Patz,’ Cameron said, pausing in shading his design. ‘Are you going to the next Herne River dam protest?’
‘Probably,’ she said. ‘Have they set a date?’
‘There’s one in a couple of weeks. They’re talking about getting some music and big names out there.’
‘Yeah,’ said Jorja. ‘Sacred Days and some didjeridu players, and a dance group. I’m going.’
‘Wow, that sounds amazing,’ said Free. ‘I’ll definitely go to that. It sounds really positive.’
Cameron looked a little put-out. ‘That’s what I reckon. Except Mum says I can’t go.’
‘Why not?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘She reckons there’s been mischief at the protests and I might get mixed up in it. I wouldn’t, though. It’s just her thing about me not getting into trouble, y’know. Not going to jail.’
‘Oh, of course.’ Free watched him with sympathy. His mother shouldn’t tar Cameron with the same brush as his brothers. He was a good kid. ‘What a shame.’
‘I’m sick of the government fu—’ Cameron stopped himself. ‘Stuffing up the country. Oh, look, there’s not enough water because we used it all and oh, look, we messed up the climate so the seasons are screwy – hey, I know, let’s make a dam to irrigate, then we can farm the shit out of the region and stuff it up even more.’ He held his hand up and gave himself a goofy imaginary high five.
Free burst out laughing. ‘Nailed it. My sister and her husband, they’re transforming their cattle stations to sustainable farming. It’s awesome, all the stuff they’re doing out there. They’re training the cows to eat native weeds so they don’t have to order in as much stockfeed, they’re resting pastures to prevent erosion, things like that. And not using pesticides or antibiotics, so the river can get healthy again.’
‘That’s so cool,’ said Petra. ‘I wish my family would do that. It’s only the younger generation that cares about the environment.’
‘Hey,’ Free protested. ‘I care. My sisters care. I’ve been on board with saving the Herne River since day one.’
‘Pfft. You count as one of us,’ Petra informed her.
‘Some younger people care but they don’t always do something about it, for whatever reason,’ Tia said in her soft voice.
‘You’ve got to act, if you care,’ Free said.
‘Hey, can’t you sneak out to the protest, Cam?’ Jorja asked him.
He considered it. ‘Maybe.’
‘You shouldn’t,’ Tia said, her tone low. ‘Your mum will kill you.’
‘He should be allowed to go to the protest if he thinks the dam is wrong,’ Jorja said.
Free silently agreed with Jorja but she thought she’d better not encourage Cameron to break his mother’s rules.
‘What if someone sees you there and tells your mum?’ Tia said.
Cameron turned to Free. ‘You wouldn’t do that, would you, Miss Patz? If you saw me at the protest?’
Free pretended innocence. ‘Saw who?’
Cameron grinned and Jorja giggled with Petra. Tia bent over her work but Free could see a little crease on the girl’s forehead.
Too bad. Free wasn’t about to take it back. She could and would stay true to her values, no matter what Aidan Hamilton or anybody else said.
Friday felt so much brighter than the earlier part of the week. Free arrived at the school in a good mood, and even the sight of Aidan’s pale, serious face and sharp nose couldn’t bring her down. Every single one of her students had responded to her exhortation and completed at least one tile design. Midway through her lesson, Free realised what this meant. Tears came to her eyes.
‘You guys.’ She didn’t even try to hide her emotion. ‘You guys. You are freaking amazing. We’re ready!’
‘Have you got hay fever, Miss?’ Cameron asked, frowning at her.
‘No! I’m just super proud!’
Her reaction set the kids giggling, with several of the girls jumping out of their seats to come forward and hug her. Even some of the boys had the sensitivity to look worried. Tia was too shy to come forward but she smiled at Free from the edge of the class.
Free r
ubbed her tears away. ‘I cannot wait to create these tiles next week. Monday, we’ll work with clay all day. Your pottery skills are epic, and I don’t think we’ll have any major problems. And if we do, if anyone really has a disaster, we can do catch-up work after school or whatever, okay? No panicking allowed. This is a panic-free zone.’
The students departed on a high and Free headed for the staffroom. Max sat with her and Jay again this lunchtime. In fact, Max was being totally cool – not at all suspicious or doubtful. Jay asked Free to do an art order for yet another friend. Could she have been reading into things too much on Tuesday? Maybe they hadn’t taken Aidan’s slurs to heart after all.
She didn’t speak to Aidan, but since he was sitting at the same table, Free couldn’t help but overhear his conversation. Talk turned to the machinery vandalism at the dam construction site and Free tuned in, curious.
‘They’ve rebuilt the fence a few times,’ said Kent, the hyena sports teacher. ‘It’s getting higher every week, I think! But they’re still getting in.’
‘What about the security cameras?’ Max asked. ‘Haven’t they caught anything?’
The sports teacher shook his head. ‘The protesters wear masks and hoodies pulled down low, wait until the security guards are on another part of the site, then jump the fence and smash whatever they can. It’s cost Buildplex tens of thousands already.’
‘Tricky,’ said Jay. ‘I can understand their passion, but they’ve gone too far.’
Aidan sat listening in disgusted silence. Free was saddened by the protester tale, and was also trying not to stare too enviously at Aidan’s spinach and ricotta filo triangles. Oh my God. Was that a pine nut pesto? She glanced at her own lunch – peanut butter Cruskits again – and repressed a sigh.
Jay’s eyes were on Aidan’s food too. ‘I think I might start going to Marcel’s for my lunches,’ she said.
‘It does look good,’ said Free.
Aidan shrugged and took a bite.
‘You’re anti-dam, aren’t you, Free?’ Kent asked her. ‘What do you reckon about the vandalism?’
‘I’m really bummed that protesters are breaking machinery at Aidan’s mum’s dam,’ she said. ‘They should be sticking to peaceful ways to protest. Always.’
Aidan assumed an expression of cool disdain. ‘It’s not my mum’s dam. It’s the region’s dam. My family simply happens to be a shareholder in the construction company.’
‘Oh!’ Free was genuinely surprised. ‘I thought your mum owned the Buildplex company.’
The other teachers at the table looked on with interest. Jay’s face had gone slightly pink and she appeared to be holding in her mirth. Aidan gave Free a look of undisguised loathing.
‘It’s not quite that simple. Hamilton Holdings is a major shareholder. Amanda sits on the board. It’s not like my mother is down at the construction site in a hard hat every morning.’
His comment elicited a bray of amusement from Kent and an uneasy smile from Max. Weird, how he’d called his own mother by her first name. Free opened her mouth to admit she didn’t understand much about how shareholdings worked when Aidan glanced her way and picked up one of his filo triangles.
‘Here.’ He flicked it into a spin so it slid across the table towards her. ‘I don’t want you to starve. It’s got to be better than what you’ve got there.’
Free froze. The action was so derogatory, so impeccably contemptuous, that even Max sat with his mouth hanging open in shock. Aidan might have been tossing a scrap to a dog. Every last vestige of Free’s sympathy for the guy fell away in an instant. She straightened her shoulders and stopped the filo triangle from spinning, and then slid it delicately back across the table.
‘No, thanks. I’m happy with what I’ve got.’
He shrugged again but there was a malicious pleasure in his face. He picked up the triangle and dropped it into his lunch box before tossing a banana peel on top. Face burning and too angry to look at him, Free dropped her eyes to her own food and kept them there while Aidan chatted to Kent about their next cycling meet.
Free varnished the Talbot Gorge painting and gave it to Finn that weekend. She felt awkward as she handed it over. She would never get used to that uncomfortable sensation that she was imposing on the person to whom she gave a painting. She didn’t like creating an expectation that someone display her art. But Finn wasted no time. He immediately removed the photo of his family from a wall hook in the lounge room and replaced it with the painted canvas.
You can’t do that,’ Free protested. ‘That’s your family.’
He shot her a cynical look. ‘What are they going to do, come over and see it, and get offended? They’re in another country, Free.’
‘But you had that picture on your wall, pride of place. And now you’ve just ditched it for the painting.’
‘I haven’t ditched it.’ Finn balanced the photo frame on the television cabinet. ‘I’ve just demoted it.’
‘But —’
Finn grabbed her around the waist and dipped his head to look into her eyes. ‘I bloody love this painting. That photo was only on the hook because I had nothing better to put there. Now I do.’
He said it in a way that meant no arguments, and Free gave up. It did look pretty good up there, as it happened. The colours created a contrast in his lounge room, whereas the photo, nice though it was, had a bland frame and neutral tones. Somehow, Finn made her feel good about giving him this artwork – as though she had done him a favour, rather than the other way around.
At school that week, Free was proud to see her students achieve breathtakingly good results with their ceramics work. They had consolidated their skills to an impressive level, and they all produced high-quality clay tiles that Free felt confident would survive the drying and bisquing processes. As soon as the square slabs of clay of their final tiles were partially dry, they worked on the relief, adding dimension and texture to the tile faces. Jorja was working on a sugar-cane-inspired design, Ethan was creating a tall ship and Cameron was working on three different tiles representing the Herne River, using traditional Jamadji styles. He said he would choose his favourite at the end and give the others to his nanna. Tia’s oyster shell with semi-formed pearl looked phenomenal, and Petra, whose family was also in cattle farming, was sculpting the big, soft, close-up eye of a cow.
The Year Tens in Aidan’s class hadn’t had such good results. His kids were younger, she reminded herself – and maybe she was biased towards her own students. But when she examined the Year Tens’ tiles, drying on metal racks in the wet area, she sighed. They lacked something intangible – creativity, or perhaps passion? The technical skill wasn’t there, either. Some of the tiles looked downright amateurish, and one or two might not even survive firing. What the hell had Aidan been teaching them? His students had complained about the number of theory slide shows he put them through, and she’d heard his voice droning away in there more than once. It was very possible that Aidan had spent too much time on theory and not enough on practice.
Free had offered to make the remaining tiles required for the wall, which were to be plain squares in solid colours. She stayed after work on Friday to make a start, and had produced fifteen uniform tiles before she was ready to go home. Inga helped Free place the gyprock boards of tiles on a bench and covered them in plastic for the night. Free would have to come back on Saturday afternoon to transfer them to the metal racks. She washed up and headed for her car, waving to the cleaners as she departed.
At home, Finn came out of his house before she’d even rolled down the garage door. He was grinning, his eyes alight.
‘Hello,’ she called. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Donald and I have been busy,’ he said, rubbing Max’s ears where the cat was balanced on the porch railing. ‘We’ve made you a surprise.’
Green curry, she thought hopefully. ‘Can I have the surprise now?’
‘You sure can.’ He came down his steps and met her on her porch.
‘What are you doing?’
‘It’s in your place.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘You cooked at my place?’
Finn chuckled. ‘It’s not dinner, although I can probably stretch to that as well. Come on.’ He nodded at the door. ‘Open up.’
She unlocked it and put her bag on the table, turning to Finn expectantly. He took her hand and pulled her down the hall towards the studio. The door was closed, which was not how she’d left it. She never shut the door. Finn put his hand on the doorknob and turned to check her face.
‘You ready?’
She gave him a blank stare in reply. He swung open the door.
It was like stepping into a different room. Free’s mouth fell open as she gazed around herself. The lino mat was still on the floor but there was a big open space in the middle of the room where before the card table had stood, covered in debris. Long tables now sat against two walls, with chairs and stools pushed up underneath them – like a classroom. Two small desk easels were arranged on the tables – her own, and another one she hadn’t seen before. Against the third wall, freestanding brackets were arranged in a row of three, all of them holding shallow tubs tipped at a convenient angle for fossicking.
She approached and peered into the tubs one by one. Her acrylics were in one, oils in another, miscellaneous paint pots in the third. Then there were clay tools and chemicals; brushes and sponges; palettes and pencils; rags and newspaper; her assortment of sketchpads; pastels, chalk and crayons – all meticulously organised. In a daze, she turned and saw the last wall, the one with the doorway. Her big easel was set up there alongside her set of roller drawers, on top of which was clipped a work light with a magnifier. It was bent at its elbow, pointing towards the canvas on her easel – her work-in-progress of horsehair on barbed wire. And hanging on the wall was a timber board covered with screws and nails, some of which had brushes or tools hanging on them. It even had a little shelf at the bottom, where her jars of turpentine rested in holes cut in the wood.
‘Where did you get all this stuff?’ Free’s mouth had gone dry.