by Maris Morton
In spite of the gloomy afternoon, the room shimmered. The wide french doors were veiled with sheer off-white curtains that caught and diffused the daylight. The walls were white, too, covered with a glossy damask-textured paper. Brushed sheepskin rugs lay like pale islands on the wine-dark ocean of the floor. The only other colours were a deep armchair upholstered with sapphire velvet, and a crocheted rug lying across the foot of the bed that encompassed all the colours of the world outside.
Mary found the bag in the little bathroom that had been built into a corner of the room, stealing space, she guessed, from the adjoining room as well. As compact as the bathroom in a caravan, this room was all white, too, even to the tiles on the floor.
Finding that bathroom answered two of Mary’s questions: why she’d seen no sign that a woman used the bathroom she was sharing with Paul and Martin; and how Mrs Hazlitt had managed to get by for that first day back without even a drink of water.
But the room posed other questions: that Clio had set herself up so carefully in this attractive room, leaving her husband in solitary squalor in what had plainly been the conjugal bedroom, implied a permanent rift. What could have caused it? And, if things were so bad that a break had been inevitable, why did she stay? Why not leave and get on with her life somewhere else?
5
AFTER CHECKING THAT CLIO WAS SLEEPING, Mary collected her parka from the hook outside the back door and went for a walk. It was very cold outside, although there’d been no rain. She set off briskly, shoes crunching on the gritty ground, past the stone house, glancing to see if there was any sign of life there, but there wasn’t. Janet would hardly be back from school yet, even if she’d left the minute the bell rang. Her husband, Cec the studmaster, could be anywhere, attending to the sheep or the bookwork. She wondered if they used a computer for their stud records. They probably did.
The stone house had fibro additions at the back, and a neat single garage to one side. If that was where she kept her car, Janet wasn’t at home. There was a rotary clothesline and the skeleton of that huge tree, which in summer would cast its shade over the building. Across what looked like the farm’s main thoroughfare was the fibro house that must be the Graysons’. There was no activity there, either. On the far side of that was a leafy vegetable garden with a few bare fruit trees, surrounded by a picket fence.
Further along, on the same side as the stone house, was a series of sheds, their corrugated-iron cladding showing a range of shininess that indicated that they’d been built at different times. Near them towered a giant gum tree. Hanging from a high branch was a block and tackle, and with the ground underneath the tree black and bare except for the odd tuft of greasy wool, Mary speculated that this was the killing tree. A cloud of hovering flies supported this conclusion, and she held her breath as she walked past.
She heard the rattle of a chain, the thread of a high-pitched whine: dogs. Of course a sheep farm would have dogs! Hidden under a cluster of peppercorn trees was a little colony of rusty half-rainwater tanks, each guarded by a dog on a chain just short enough to prevent it from tearing out the throat of its neighbour. A brown kelpie with blond eyebrows rolled over at Mary’s feet, tongue lolling, its tail sweeping half-circles in the grey dirt. Mary squatted on her haunches and offered her hand. ‘Hello, dog. What’s your name?’
‘Don’t touch that bloody dog!’
Mary’s heart thumped and she looked up. The voice was coming from the green gloom under the trees.
‘Mustn’t pet working dogs.’ The voice was less fierce now, and Mary straightened and stepped away from the dog. It rolled over onto its feet, shaking the dust from its coat and following her as far as its chain allowed before flopping to the ground again, still watching her with yellow eyes.
‘I give you a fright?’ The words held the ghost of a chuckle; it was a man’s voice, not young.
The feathery fronds of the peppercorns were blowing about, the lowest ones inscribing intricate patterns on the sandy ground. It was like being inside a great green tent, tugging at its guy ropes and swaying in response to the wind. Tucked under the shelter of the trees was a seat, cobbled together from bush timber. On it was a little old man, just as gnarled and weather-beaten as the seat, watching her with wicked leprechaun eyes.
‘Who might you be, then?’ he said.
‘I could ask you the same.’
The old man held her gaze while he waited for her to answer.
She conceded the point. ‘I’m Mary.’
‘Thought so.’ He grinned with satisfaction and nodded his head. ‘Young Gayleen said. Helping out.’ He cocked his grizzled head in the direction of the homestead.
‘Gayleen didn’t tell me who you were.’ Mary had never enjoyed guessing games.
He cackled, his eyes almost vanishing in a nest of wrinkles. ‘Me? I’m Angus. Been here since before old Ellen passed on.’
‘Really!’
He wriggled along to the end of the seat. ‘Come on, room for a little one. Park your bum.’
Mary lowered herself, careful to keep a space between them. Through the fabric of her jeans she could feel the warm place on the wood where Angus had been sitting. It was a strangely intimate experience.
Angus extracted a tobacco tin from the pocket of his shirt and started the business of rolling a cigarette. His face was brown as a walnut but marked with a network of broken veins; nutcracker jaw, white whiskers that matched the sparse bristly hair on his head. He was wearing a checked work shirt over a faded navy singlet and ancient gaberdine trousers, with scuffed elastic-sided leather boots. The folds of thick work socks were oozing over the tops of the boots, flecked with fragments of hay. He had a smell of tobacco and sheep and old sweat so strong that it was easy to imagine a cloud of it hanging over him. Mary found herself trying not to breathe any more of it than she could help.
‘Been having a bit of a squiz round the place, have you?’ he said. When the cigarette was rolled to his satisfaction, he passed a wet tongue along the gummed edge of the paper and sealed the joint with his thumbs.
‘Yes.’
‘What’ve you seen, then?’ He balanced the cigarette on his lower lip, fumbled in his shirt pocket for a box of matches, and brought a flame to the end of the twisted paper. It flared for an instant, before he drew the smoke deep into his lungs and then let it trickle out of his nose; the stubble on his upper lip was stained yellow.
‘You must know what I’ve seen. You live here.’
That stopped him. He grunted. ‘Thought you were meant to be working in the house.’
‘I’ll be doing some gardening, too.’ She wondered why she was explaining herself to this man who must surely rank low on the Downe pecking order. ‘I want to learn about this place and how it works.’
‘What the bloody hell for?’
It was a fair question, but Mary was ready for it. ‘I’m blessed with insatiable curiosity, like the elephant’s child.’
He had nothing to say to that — he’d probably never heard of the elephant’s child — dragging instead on the cigarette, making it wither with a perceptible crackling sound.
‘She letting you loose in the garden, is she? Must be bloody crook to let anyone loose in her precious garden! Might at least’ve asked me. I know where things are. I top-dressed the sparrer grass while she was away — nobody asked me but I knew it was the right time. Like sparrer grass, do you?’
Sparrer grass: asparagus. ‘Love it. Especially fresh out of the garden.’
‘Ellen planted it. Should be up soon, better keep your eyes peeled.’
‘Excellent. Now, if you’ll pardon the question, what do you do here?’
He looked at her as if he couldn’t believe such ignorance. ‘Sheep. I’m the sheep man. Used to be called the shepherd in the old days.’
‘Ah. So where do you live?’
‘Here, of course!’ He gestured somewhere beyond the curtain of foliage. ‘Used to be Ben’s. When he passed on, I came and took over — his quarters,
well as his job. Been here ever since. Get me dinner at Gloria’s. Get into town now and then, play up.’ He grinned at her, wrinkling his eyes, and just for a second his look was one of speculation.
Mary felt a twinge of uneasiness, but it passed.
‘Just been in, matter of fact.’ He winked to let her know what a good time he’d had and took a last deep drag on the cigarette before crushing it into the dirt with the heel of his boot. ‘Better get back to it.’ He stood up, no taller than Mary, his legs shorter than hers and bandy. ‘See you round. Any time you fancy bit of a wongie, just knock three times and ask for Angus.’ He pantomimed knocking on the empty air and ambled away, swishing through the green foliage to vanish from sight.
CLIO LAY IN THE DARK, wide awake. She could clearly remember when, in the dimness of the hospital ward, she’d be on the verge of drifting off: that lovely moment when the pain lost its grip and her mind let go, conscious — if only just — of that moment of falling, of blurring, of disengagement, and they’d come rattling around to take her temp or offer a sleeping pill, and she’d have to surface again to deal with them, trying not to let the irritation drag her back to the pain of complete wakefulness.
Tonight, she realised with surprise, she wasn’t feeling hazy or in pain. Right now, unlikely as it seemed, she was feeling more alive than she’d felt for months.
She mused on the day just past. Except for her excursion out to the kitchen, it had been like every other day since she’d come home. After her chat with Mary, she’d drifted into a deep sleep. She was at home, in her own bed, with the house to herself, except for Mary, out in Ben’s old sleepout. There was no routine to give structure to her days; she could do whatever she liked. She lay there, savouring the freedom. The bed was comfortable, and she could still taste the delicious meal Mary had cooked for her; those prawns had been wonderful — she’d never have thought of wrapping them in bacon like that.
Mary was the first new person she’d met properly for — how long? — years. Her stay in Perth had been full of a confusing procession of strangers, but they were all involved in one way or another with her treatment, connecting with her only in the most basic physical way.
Mary Lanyon seemed kind. A small woman, she moved deftly at her work, her face intent, her dark hair shining under the overhead lights. She was a good listener and seemed to take an intelligent interest in what went on around her. She was an excellent cook, and time would tell what kind of a gardener she was.
Clio eased herself up in the bed. Music was what she wanted. When Paul and Martin were here, she was always aware of the sounds they made moving around the house: their footsteps, voices, and the inane gabble of the television. Tonight the house was silent and still, the cold air settling around it like a blanket as the night deepened, but her bed was warm. Her need for music was sudden and compelling.
She switched on the bedside light and folded back the duvet. Her nightgown had ridden up around her thighs, and she stared with distaste at her legs, the grey-blue veins showing through the dry skin like a river system on an alien planet. Her muscles, which used to be so firm and shapely, had withered away, leaving the skin slack and flaky. Where her calves pressed against the edge of the mattress the skin creased into dry folds — an old woman’s legs. She tugged the gown down to hide them, slipped her feet into her boots and went over to the shelves. There was a CD player there and dozens of discs. She picked a handful at random and took them with the player back to bed.
When had she last done this? So many worries and bad experiences had filled her life these last months, distracting her from the enjoyment of what had once been her deepest pleasure.
She lay back and considered the kind of music that would suit her mood. It was such a long time since she’d played any of her discs that it would be like listening to them for the first time. Mozart? So much joy in the music; then, when you least expected it, a phrase of such tenderness that it brought tears to your eyes. She remembered the tears that had nearly overtaken her this afternoon. Mary wouldn’t have noticed, she’d covered up well. If she cried here, it wouldn’t matter. It might even use up a ration of those tears that she knew were waiting in some hidden but endless store, and keep her dry-eyed tomorrow. She’d had about enough of being brave.
Among the discs were some of the string quartets, and she found the one that included Number 15 in D minor. She inserted it into the player, eased the headphones into position, turned the light off and settled to concentrate on the sounds, once so familiar, of violins, cello and viola, interweaving their distinctive voices.
The moment she heard the downward cadence of the Allegro, the entirety of the piece came back into her memory with perfect clarity. She closed her eyes.
A remembered conversation, a ghost from the distant past, crept into her awareness.
It was Tallis, of course, asking one of his rhetorical questions. ‘Can any of you explain how a mere sequence of tones, the aural sensations generated by changing vibrations in strings of different lengths, can evoke emotion so strongly?’
Of course there was no answer. Nobody had ever managed to explain that mystery, but until they’d got to know Tallis they’d kept trying to come up with something, however puerile. And reaping his scorn, until they’d learnt at last to accept the magic and embrace it.
Through the headphones the quality of this CD was so clear that you could get an inkling of what it was like to sit there among your fellow musicians, two violins on one side, cello on the other, each aware of the others but locked into a greater awareness of the notes they were playing, striving to reproduce a pattern of sounds created by a young genius in the eighteenth century. It wouldn’t be the same as he’d imagined it — modern instruments produced different sounds, and styles of playing changed with the whims of fashion — but that didn’t matter.
The Andante now. Tender and thoughtful, but always robust. Then the Minuet, declamatory, without losing the formality you expected from such a stately dance. In the middle of that was the Trio, up and down against the backing of plucked strings, almost like a country dance. Then the Allegro ma non troppo that ended the piece.
She waited for the viola’s starring part, its darker sound giving added authority to the theme already stated by the violins; and, at last, that change of key to D major that was almost shocking and brought the quartet to an end.
The CD made its little trill to let her know that the music was over. Clio touched her face and realised that her cheeks were wet. But these weren’t tears of sadness. They were the happy tears that came when one met a dear friend from the past, and discovered that the friendship was still alive and just as precious as it had always been.
6
WHEN MARY WENT OUTSIDE EARLY ON SATURDAY to fetch oranges for Clio’s morning drink, she found a lacy covering of ice on the golden fruit. With Clio still asleep and no breakfast to prepare for Martin and his father, she had time to savour the morning. The sounds and smells of sheep were permeating the still, cold air. As the sun cleared the horizon, little puffs of steam rose from each bush and tree, with bigger clouds of vapour curling above the rainwater tanks and the roofs of the buildings. Among the branches of the orchard trees tiny spider webs, jewelled with ice, hung like fairy tinsel, and silken threads of gossamer drifted through the warming air like mysterious visitors from another world.
The sun was still low, and the shadows lay in complicated stripes along the ground; the tops of the trees and roofs were gilded with light. With the sun warming her left cheek, Mary headed towards the ragged line of pine trees. The grass was vivid blue-green in the shadows, golden-green in the bands of light, and heavy with melting ice. Her cheeks stung with cold, and around her face the plume of her breath streamed like a ragged cloud, but she walked briskly and was soon sweating inside her jacket.
With the first wash of the southerly wind in her face, Mary shivered. Through the pine trees the grey line of clouds lying along the horizon was already creeping over the sky, bringing
with it the drizzle that would keep her inside for the rest of the day.
Clio was eating two meals a day now, both of them tiny, and today would be a good time to do some forward planning. Next week she’d get an order of groceries from the Co-op. She could ask about the routine at afternoon tea tomorrow. But first she’d finish the audit of the freezers. If there were any beef or poultry bones in there, she could make some good hearty soup stock.
Going through the freezers took most of the day, with a long break for a meal, and shorter ones while she thawed out her aching fingers. When Mary took her tea in, Clio was sitting up in bed propped on her pillows with headphones on, listening to music, and seemed perfectly contented, accepting the tray Mary offered with no more than a faint smile. If Clio wasn’t ready for another chat, that was fine.
Mary settled to eat her own meal in the kitchen, the soft crackle of the fire as a counterpoint to the relentless dripping of rain from the roof into the underground tank outside the bay window. When she finished eating, she went back to Ellen’s room to look for the diaries Clio had mentioned. They’d be something to read.
She found them stacked on the bottom shelf of the bookcase built in beside the fireplace: a series of ordinary exercise books, most of them with black imitation-leather covers. They were in no particular order, and Mary took the first to come to hand. The rest of the bookshelves offered little to interest her: a set of Dickens, Walter Scott, an old Encyclopaedia Britannica; all of them dusty.
Ellen’s handwriting was clear, and each page was headed with the date. By chance, the volume Mary had picked up told of the voyage to Australia. There was a list of the goods Ellen and Edgar had brought with them: animals, farm machinery, seeds and plants, and their furniture and personal effects. And they’d brought Ben, too; an orphan boy of fourteen, as labourer and shepherd. Was that the same Ben that Angus had mentioned?