The Painted Sky

by Alice Campion

  ‘Not our business,’ said Heath. I’ve got to be reasonable and grown-up, he told himself.

  Ben shook his head. Heath saw his contemptuous expression darken. ‘You know she’s going back in a couple of days?’ he said. ‘She’s gotta sign the papers tomorrow and then it’ll be over bar the shouting. Sayonara, Nina.’

  Not trusting his voice, Heath turned and set off towards the bore, walking fast into the heat from the killing sun. He never should have come.

  ‘Looks like you two need a cuppa,’ said Moira, as Shona and Possum came into the kitchen with an air of escape. ‘Heard Hilary going off.’

  ‘What’s her problem?’ said Shona, piling a scone with jam. ‘She acts like she ate a bull ant.’

  ‘Hungry ghost,’ Possum interjected. ‘In her head she’s still living in her dad’s humpy down by the creek.’ He slurped his tea.

  ‘People reckon she knows more than she lets on about what happened to Jim,’ said Moira. ‘There’s 30 people in the sitting room and 37 conspiracy theories.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard,’ said Shona. ‘But she asks for it, carrying on like the grieving widow. Jim couldn’t stand her. Thanks, love.’ They nodded at Moira and Moira watched them drift out into the shade of the verandah, where Matty and Deborah were talking to the McNallys. It had to be about horses. It always was with that mob.

  ‘There’s too many out there,’ said Lobby, appearing in the kitchen doorway. ‘Can I hang out with youse?’

  ‘’Course.’ Moira poured the last cup out of the pot and handed it to him. Lobby wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed but there was no harm in him. Very unlike his sister.

  ‘Thanks, Miss O’Sullivan, I mean, Mrs Inchboard. Yer savin’ me life.’ Lobby took a sausage roll and dabbed it in a bowl of tomato sauce. ‘This is so different from the last time I was here.’

  ‘Uh huh. When were you here last?’ Moira asked absently as she stacked plates in the sink. Crazy how hungry people were after a funeral, she thought. Except for Nina. She was struggling today, but it was lucky she’d had these few weeks to prepare herself. Not enough time given to grieving, Moira thought, especially not by whitefellas.

  ‘Yeah, well, I reckon it must have been when we came to fix the bore a year or more ago,’ Lobby said. ‘Real mess here then, and no-one around. Now it’s so lively, like a real home again.’

  Moira stopped and looked at him. ‘The bore on this property? Why? Did Russell ask you to give him a hand?’

  ‘Oh no, it was after … Hilary … um –’ Lobby choked, flakes of pastry shooting onto the floor. He thumped his chest and shook his head until the coughing and gasping subsided.

  ‘It was routine maintenance, that’s what it was. You ask Harrison. I mean …’ Lobby stopped, seeming aghast, as if he’d dug a hole for himself. ‘I just do what I get told, you know?’ he finished lamely.

  ‘’Course. You don’t say no to Hilary, do you?’ said Moira, carefully. Poor bugger.

  ‘You won’t tell her I said anything, will ya?’ he pleaded.

  Moira patted Lobby’s arm and put another sausage roll on his plate. ‘Silent as the grave, love,’ she said. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’

  Nina came around the corner of the verandah, and recoiled. Hilary was installed in one of the plantation chairs while Harrison paced the floorboards.

  Nina ducked into the laundry before they saw her. Something told her that their conversation could prove very interesting. She stood by the open louvres.

  ‘Hang on, you. I haven’t finished with you yet,’ commanded Hilary. ‘Face me like a man, if that’s not too hard for you,’ she challenged.

  ‘Hilary, I don’t think now’s a good time.’

  So, it seemed Harrison was going to be Hilary’s whipping boy today.

  A different male voice – a gravelly one – came from the breezeway on the other side of the laundry. ‘Mind you, Jim could be an A-grade arsehole when it suited him. He liked to take it out on poor old Russell. Loved being the top dog. You weren’t allowed to like Russell unless you liked Jim better.’

  ‘D’you mean that thing with Hilary?’ asked an unknown woman’s voice.

  ‘Well, yeah,’ said gravel voice. ‘He only took an interest in her to get one up on his brother.’ The woman tutted.

  Oh Dad, thought Nina, with a clutch at her heart. She tried desperately to listen to both conversations, but the muttering of the wind in the eaves made her task almost impossible.

  ‘Well, when is a good time, Harrison? When?’ Hilary’s voice was loud and slurred. ‘Jim loved me. You know he did. It would have been …’

  Nina strained to hear.

  ‘My dear,’ said Harrison, ‘you are, and have been, many things …’

  ‘Mmm. He flirted with everyone though, didn’t he?’ murmured the woman from the breezeway. ‘Never really amounted to much in the long term though. The goings-on up at that fountain at Durham when he was home – well! I heard there was nude cavorting and some sort of pagan dancing and …’

  ‘Too much booze and bloody weed,’ grunted the man.

  ‘Anyway,’ the woman went on, ‘I’m sure we all did things back then …’

  ‘You shut up!’ said Hilary. ‘You drove Jim away from me. The shoe’s on the other foot now after your little escapade. Who’s sorry now, eh? I think Barry Kemp might be interested in …’

  Barry Kemp? Wasn’t he the police sergeant from Wandalla?

  ‘Word is, he shared it around after he was married too,’ gravel voice continued. ‘Hard on his family.’

  ‘Not fit and proper? Isn’t that what they say when …’ Hilary’s final mumbled remarks finished with a harsh laugh. ‘Not to mention what happened one dark night not too long ago and not too far from here.’

  ‘Well, I heard there might have been a jealous lover involved,’ the woman in the breezeway said. ‘Actually, come out front. Don’t want the daughter to hear me.’ A chair scraped.

  Nina crept closer to the window and strained her ears over the buffeting and banging of the wind.

  ‘I think we both need to sit tight,’ said Harrison, an edge of threat in his voice. ‘This place will settle tomorrow and it’ll all be over.’

  ‘It had better be. Because there won’t be any other buyers. If she doesn’t come through by three pm tomorrow, I’m knocking 20 per cent off my next offer.’

  ‘Just leave her alone. Nina’s suffered enough because of you.’

  ‘Oh! Precious Nina,’ Hilary mocked. ‘Poor little princess. Everyone loves Neeeeena. Whoever the hell she is. You have to come from the right shock … the right stock …’

  ‘Lord have mercy,’ Harrison muttered.

  ‘There you are.’ Phillip’s voice. ‘G’day, Harrison. Deborah said you were tired, love. Let’s get going.’ He steered Hilary towards the verandah.

  ‘Wait on. I’ll just … my shoe …’

  ‘Got it. We’ll be off. Good to see you, Harrison.’ Phillip was upbeat, like someone dealing with a toddler. What was it about their relationship, Nina wondered, that made Hilary so biddable?

  It was a mystery, like so much else. Like what she’d overheard just now. Yes, it may have been just country gossip, but it rocked her all the same. Was Harrison the only jealous lover or was there someone else, and if so, who? And what the hell was all that about the police? And could Hilary have been referring to Jim’s disappearance when she mentioned something happening on ‘a dark night near here’? No, because she said it had happened ‘not long ago’.

  Whatever the case, Nina had heard enough. Her head ached. She walked outside into the hot wind, almost welcoming the dumb dry heat on her face. As she stepped over the tussocks, the skirt of her grey dress whipped against her knees. Durham House. She could be alone there, and try to think through everything she had heard.

  ‘Nina.’

  She turned, startled to see Heath. What was he doing here? They were in full view of the house. Anyone could see them.

  ‘You okay?’ he asked
quietly.

  She shook her head. ‘Heath,’ she said, pleadingly.

  Behind him, Hilary’s car turned and drove slowly towards the gate. He grimaced as if to show he knew he shouldn’t be there.

  ‘Fuck it,’ he said, with resolution. ‘I know it’s awkward, but … Your dad’s funeral … I wanted to make sure you’re okay.’

  Tears were so near she couldn’t speak. She turned and continued through the tussocks till she struck the path. At the gate to Durham House she felt him still behind her. She turned and looked back at the house. The windows reflected blindly in the sinking sun. Maybe no-one had seen them.

  She pushed open the gate and they went through together. She sat on a fallen block of masonry in the shade of the magnolia while he squatted on his heels in the dust a little way apart, keeping his distance. The magnolia creaked in the wind.

  ‘Good thing your … good your friends came up. Good to have some of your mob here,’ he said.

  Nina nodded.

  ‘You’ll be glad to get home,’ he said. ‘See your friends, go to the beach.’

  She exhaled and shook her head. There was a silence.

  ‘Do you remember the treehouse?’ he asked, indicating the magnolia.

  ‘Why … why does everything have to change?’ she choked out, feeling her losses rise up like vomit. She covered her face with her hands, unable to repress her sobs.

  ‘Oh no, no,’ he said. ‘There’ll be more good times. Ben … and Deb … You’ll always be welcome here.’

  ‘Will you please shut up,’ she said, her voice muffled.

  Heath sighed and stood, whipping his hat against his leg as he waited.

  After long minutes, her sobbing subsided. She’d lost everything. Even Heath, not that she’d ever really had him. He sat right next to her in this secluded place, but he might as well be in another country, the way things were. It was like she was cursed, doomed to suffer on and on hopelessly, for some purpose she couldn’t see.

  She stood up.

  ‘Well –’ The word died on her lips. There was nothing more she wanted to say to him. He settled his hat on his head with finality.

  ‘I’ll be thinking of you,’ he said.

  ‘Good luck with the wedding and … everything,’ she replied, fighting to keep her voice steady.

  He nodded, and gestured to the track, waiting for her.

  ‘I’ll wait a few minutes,’ he said. Their eyes locked. Would she ever see him again? Unlikely.

  ‘Thanks.’

  He nodded once more.

  Heath waited till she was out of sight and then went round the back to go inside. Ben buttonholed him on the verandah, his eyes bloodshot.

  ‘You’re crazy, Heath.’ Ben’s breath was yeasty with beer. ‘You can’t go on like this,’ he slurred. ‘You’re ruining your whole life. Your life, mate.’

  ‘You’re pissed,’ said Heath.

  ‘I might be pissed, but you’re stupid, and that’s the same when you wake up.’

  ‘What?’ asked Heath.

  ‘I’ll be sober, and you’ll still be engaged. You just don’t get it, do you? It’s all wrong, and you’re still going to do it, because of some loyalty bullshit. Because you think you owe people. It won’t work, Heath. Not one little teeny-tiny bit. Wake up for once in yer life.’ Ben lurched in his chair, seriously drunk.

  Deborah joined them, obviously ready to go. Matty hovered behind her.

  ‘Here she is, little Miss Perfect,’ sneered Ben. ‘Little Miss Make-the-World-A-Better-Place. On your high horse. On my high horse.’

  ‘Okay, that’s enough,’ said Heath. ‘Sorry, Deb, I’ll have to take him home.’

  ‘No worries, mate, I can give Debs a lift,’ said Matty.

  ‘But I want another drink,’ Ben shouted, trying to turn the chair around.

  ‘Lemme give you a hand,’ said Matty, taking the other side of the chair. After a vigorous struggle from Ben, they picked the chair up bodily between them and carried it to the ute, where they buckled him, still shouting, inside.

  Heath returned to the verandah to kiss Deborah goodbye. ‘Overexcited,’ he said sourly, raising his eyebrows. He wasn’t in the mood to be angry, even with his dickhead brother. Life’s so short. He was just glad it was over and nothing worse had happened.

  ‘See you.’ Heath waved.

  CHAPTER 18

  Later that night, Nina sat cross-legged on the couch in a puddle of moonlight, picking the petals from one of the home-grown bouquets that dotted the room.

  Her mind drifted to her life before Wandalla, life before her mother’s death. The nights of clubbing, happily exhausted, with no bigger troubles on her mind than where she would be getting together with the girls for brunch. In those days, she’d drifted like a dandelion seed on any breeze that came along. It was strange, she mused, how the big city suddenly seemed so small, while this place, with its handful of human beings, seemed like the whole world.

  She dropped the bouquet in her lap and leaned back. The compliments about the house had drifted over her head today, but now she took time to appreciate what she had accomplished. With a sharp tug, she remembered that the final settlement would take place tomorrow, god no – today – it was well past midnight. Selling to Hilary. She shook her head. Hilary, who would likely tear the lot down. Even that cornice that she’d spent an arm-aching morning restoring to its original condition.

  Her father had given up on this place, too. Who would he have been if he’d stayed? In the city he was always reaching for the next thing. Acting, modelling, doing caricatures down at the Rocks Markets during the lean times. From Wandalla, that life might have looked enviable, exciting, but in the end it was like gorging on fairy floss. Stuffing yourself full of life, but never tasting it.

  Julia had said that the highest form of happiness was peace. Back then Nina had thought peace was middle-aged and boring. Who wanted peace when you could be living life at 200 ks an hour? But for the first time she understood what Julia had meant. Peace was about being happy right here and right now.

  Olivia’s door creaked open and she padded into the sitting room, her tousled hair matching her Minnie Mouse pyjamas.

  ‘Party’s over, babe. Whattaya doin’?’ she mumbled.

  ‘Just thinking.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ said Olivia, plopping down beside her. ‘About your dad?’

  ‘Yeah. I still wonder whether Hilary had more to do with it than she’s saying.’

  ‘Whoa. You weren’t exaggerating with that one. She’s a trip. I expected to see her dragging the bodies of her enemies behind that red tank of hers.’

  ‘Plus,’ said Nina, ‘I overheard a really weird argument between Hilary and Harrison this afternoon. It didn’t make sense. I reckon I’d trust her about as far as I could throw her.’

  ‘Now there’s a tempting thought.’

  ‘And the police never found any gold nugget. I guess Dad was barking up the wrong tree. Again.’ She sighed. ‘God, I don’t want to end up like him.’

  ‘Don’t go caving by yourself, then.’

  ‘Not that,’ Nina laughed softly. ‘I mean, just drifting. Not building something with my life.’

  ‘That won’t happen to you. You’re so talented and you have the very best calibre of friends,’ Olivia smiled.

  ‘I love it here, despite everything. I feel like I’m meant to be here. I can’t explain it. I feel more like “me” here even though I know I stick out.’ Nina’s voice quivered.

  Olivia looked at her puzzled. ‘What is it? You’re not telling me something.’

  ‘I just wish I could stay.’

  ‘Is this about Heathie baby? Don’t tell me you’re in love with a guy called “Heath”! Oh Heathcliff! Run to me over the moors, my dearest …’

  Nina opened her mouth to reply and found, to her surprise, that her voice was choked by tears. Heath’s face in the garden, his eyes gentle.

  ‘Bloody hell. You are.’ Olivia was wide-eyed.

  ‘Well,
there’s no point anyway, he’s already –’ Nina wavered.

  ‘Ohmygod.’ Olivia scrambled to her knees on the couch and looked down at her.

  ‘Yes,’ Nina managed to choke out before bursting into sobs. A hard, physical pain that she had been carrying in her chest for weeks seemed to snap and splinter.

  ‘How long has this been going on?’ asked Olivia, her voice soft now.

  ‘I don’t know. Probably since we used to play Wendy and Peter Pan around the fountain at Durham House.’

  ‘Okay, this is it. We have to drive over to his place now and tell him.’ Olivia pulled Nina’s hand, but Nina shook her head and drew her friend back, the tears still falling silently down her face.

  ‘It’s not like in the movies, Liv. Sometimes the girl doesn’t get the guy.’

  Olivia looked at her, exasperated.

  ‘He’s happy,’ Nina said, with finality, wiping her face with her hands.

  ‘He fucking isn’t.’

  ‘He’s getting married to someone really nice. This has been their whole life. It’s not something you barge in on and wreck.’

  ‘What am I gonna do with you?’ cried Olivia.

  ‘It’s 40–15 inna second set,’ Theo’s voice mumbled from the spare bed out in the breezeway.

  Olivia clasped her hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle. ‘I forgot about him. How was he when you wouldn’t give him one tonight?’

  Nina laughed at the memory of Theo proposing drunkenly that they get together ‘for old times’ sake’. ‘Pretty okay, really. You know Theo, he’s moved on. One minute it’s sex, the next tennis.’

  Olivia smiled. ‘You need to tell him. Heath, I mean. How you feel.’

  ‘No point. I have to leave here. Don’t want to but I’m stuck. Have the great house but no water on it; found the perfect man but he’s not available. Just my luck.’

  ‘Er, hello. Since when do you just give up? Fight for it, Nina. You want Heathie baby? Go get him. Want to get that bitch Hilary’s mitts off The Springs? Then don’t let her have it.’