by Alex Miller
They came out of the water and walked back along the sandbar into the shade of the gum tree. They got dressed and he rolled two cigarettes and handed her one. They sat on the sand and smoked and looked out at the water and the trees along the far bank. An azure kingfisher dived from an overhanging wattle tree, its metallic plumage flashing in the sunlight. She pointed, saying excitedly, ‘Look! Look! A kingfisher.’
They watched the bird fishing. In the distance, somewhere up the river, a cow bellowed for her calf.
They sat side by side in the silence, the fragrant smoke of their cigarettes lingering in the warm summer air. The kingfisher had moved away and found a new spot to fish from further along the far bank.
Ann said, ‘You love this place.’ She was silent again, then she said, ‘You have to sell it and get out.’ She turned and looked at him. ‘You can’t risk being stuck down here alone for another winter.’
He said, ‘It’s not that simple. Lena would hate to lose the farm.’
‘Let her live here then. We can’t have everything. And it is that simple if you decide it is.’
61
Walking home later, the sky was purple and green over the hills to the west behind them. A lurid glow through the timber. He knew the lower valley was an enchanted place and, like all enchanted places, was possessed of melancholy and death and loss and the sadness of lives past and forgotten. If he’d been capable of it, he would have confessed to her just then that the lower valley had no future, only its past. But she knew it already. The sun dipped behind the hills as they were walking up to the house. He carried an armful of wood into the kitchen and set it down by the stove. He was about to feed the dogs when Ann said, ‘Let me do that. I need to do something. It will make me feel as if I belong here.’
He stood looking at her, the pieces of meat and bone in his hands. ‘You can belong here if you want to belong here,’ he said.
‘You know that’s not true,’ she said. ‘People like us can never belong in a place like this. But there’s nothing to stop you coming to Paris with me.’
He handed her the two pieces of meat. ‘Which is which?’ she said.
‘This one’s for Toby. The other’s for Tip. So why aren’t they the same? Well, I’m not sure. It’s just the way they prefer it. Give Tip hers by the tank and take Toby’s over to the grid. They like to be private while they’re eating.’
‘What are you laughing at?’
‘I had an image of you being a hillbilly woman down here feeding your dogs.’
‘I could do it if I had to,’ she said, and turned away and went out to feed the dogs.
He had the fire going in the stove when she came back into the kitchen. She said, ‘I was standing out there looking up at the hill. I was so moved by the sad beauty that hangs over this place. Like all these places, it’s haunted. It doesn’t really have a present. Not in any human sense. Perhaps that’s what it was we understood about it when we were kids. The evenings coming down and only yourself and the dogs. The idea of it scares me.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘There have been plenty of times when I nearly didn’t keep going. But someone had to stick around to feed the dogs.’
She said, ‘You and Lena arrived here at the end of days for this place, really, didn’t you? I don’t mean the history; I mean the old way of life and its values that must have hung on here for a long time after things had moved on further up the valley. It’s what Uncle Bob used to talk about. Twenty years ago, when we came down to pick peaches, the community in this part of the valley would have still been fully alive, old-fashioned even then, but active. The locals would have still been having their dances in your barn. Now there’s just the shell of something that no longer exists. And soon even that shell will be gone. It’s beautiful, heartbreakingly beautiful. But it’s ghosts. The sadness is part of its beauty. The sadness would overwhelm me.’
He said, ‘Are you okay with vegetable soup for dinner? It’s mostly pumpkin.’
‘That would be lovely.’
‘You could pour a couple of glasses of that red wine if you like. You sound like my old mate Frankie. Frankie would have said what you just said about this place, only he would have said it in fewer words. Ghosts were one of his favourite topics.’
She poured the wine and handed him a glass. ‘Lena was right to leave. Her treasured piano sitting out there on your back verandah gathering dust and going out of tune says it all. It’s the sadness of its beauty that holds you to this place. I suppose that’s the kind of man you are, isn’t it? You love the idea of the melancholy and the solitary life. But you can’t really do it, can you? You can’t make it work.’ She reached and clinked her glass against his. ‘Promise me you’ll sell up and get out of here.’
He took a swig of the wine and set his glass on the table and he picked up the pumpkin he’d left sitting there. ‘I grew it this year,’ he said. ‘One of the few vegetables I did grow. Isn’t it beautiful?’
She gave him a long, serious look. She wasn’t interested in the beauty of the pumpkin.
He hacked it into quarters with his Chinese cleaver from Nomchong’s store. Its innards were a rich dark gold. ‘Ripe! Look at that!’
Ann was sitting by the hearth looking at the ashes. Something wasn’t quite right between them now and needed correcting. He said, ‘I’ll leave. You’re right. If I stayed I’d probably shoot the dogs sooner or later and hang myself from a beam in the barn.’
They were finishing their soup when the storm broke over the house. The tin rattling and the chill air rushing through the cracks, flinging the door open with a bang. He jumped up and slammed the door. He lit the fire in the hearth and they sat close up to it while the sticks caught, drinking the wine and smoking, listening to the violent crashing and thumping, the roaring of the wind in the timber, the rattling of hail on the roof.
The storm passed as suddenly as it had arrived and there was just the dripping of water from the guttering and the gurgling of the overflow from the tank. He asked her about her interest in French literature. She said she was writing a study of the French novelist Marguerite Yourcenar, and then she fell silent.
‘Tell me more,’ he said. ‘Who’s Marguerite Yourcenar? Should I read her books?’
She sounded grumpy when she said, ‘I don’t particularly want to talk about French literature.’ She sighed and got up and went out and looked into the night, then came back inside and sat by the hearth again. She looked at him a couple of times, as if she was waiting for him to say something.
She set her glass on the hob and stood up. ‘I’m going to clean my teeth.’ She went to the bedroom and fetched her toilet bag and went outside. He heard her talking to the dogs. When she came in she stood looking at him. He said, ‘Is everything okay?’
She laughed and shook her head. ‘Oh, everything is very okay. I’m going to bed. All right?’ She didn’t wait for a reply from him and she didn’t say goodnight but just went down the passage and into the bedroom.
He waited a few minutes then got up and followed her down the passage. Her lamp was on and she’d left her door open. He stepped into his study and took his shirt off. He set the camp bed down beside the desk then stood up. There was a moment of intense silence. He felt it a fraction of a second before she called out, ‘For God’s sake, Robert, you’re not going to sleep in that room on your own again, are you?’ She sounded as if she would weep with frustration.
He stood still for three of the longest seconds of his life, then he went across the passage and into the bedroom. She was lying on her back in his bed, the sheet covering her nakedness. She sat up, the soft lamplight across her shoulders, glinting in her hair, her breasts modelled in the meeting of light and shade.
‘Are you coming to bed with me or not?’
He was trembling. He sat on the side of the bed and pulled his boots off. She ran her hand down over his back. He stood up and took his pants off and she moved across and he got into the bed beside her. They held each other c
lose, his heart battering wildly at his ribs, their naked bodies pressed to each other, their breath coming in gasps, her Jeanne Moreau lips against his. She reached down and guided him into her and she sobbed and cried out.
He stayed deep inside her, their lips searching for each other, their hands caressing and exploring each other’s bodies.
He rolled away from her and lay on his back. He reached over and took hold of her hand. They lay side by side in the silence recovering. He laughed. ‘I’m saved! I can’t believe you came to me.’
She propped herself up on her elbow and kissed him on the lips. She caressed his cheek and said softly, ‘Why didn’t you race me off that night when we lay under the stars together?’
‘You made a coward of me.’ He ran his fingers gently across her lips. ‘Your lips.’
She said, ‘I wanted you to take my hand and run away with me.’ She lay down close beside him again and they gazed into each other’s eyes. She said, ‘You and I here together. I’ve dreamed it a hundred times.’ She smiled. ‘I’m glad you’re such an idiot with women.’
‘There’s nothing I can do about it.’
‘I don’t want you to ever do anything about it.’ She put her hand down between his thighs. ‘You’re beautiful. You’re my lover.’
He gasped and closed his eyes. Slowly they began to make love again.
When he woke she was lying against him, her breathing even. She was fast asleep. For the first time in years the warm body of a naked woman lying beside him in his bed instead of the bony chill of Lena’s wasted limbs. She stirred and opened her eyes. ‘I was dreaming I was weightless,’ she whispered. ‘I could move in any direction by thinking about it, without any physical effort. I woke in the dark earlier and saw you sleeping beside me. I pressed my hand to the cleft in the muscles of your back. I kept my hand pressed against you so that I would know you really were lying next to me. And then I dreamed of the perfect state of lightness. I wanted to tell you something. But you were sleeping so silently and so deeply that I didn’t dare disturb you. I had a terrible thought that we must both die one day and be alone again.’
He kissed her. ‘I’m never going to die. I promise. Neither are you. Not for a hundred years at least.’
She gazed into his eyes. ‘Come to Paris with me. You’ll write freely about the Australian outback there. The outback will seem distant and romantic to you again. Paris will give you your freedom. I’ll introduce you to lots of good people. You’ll learn French. The life of the city will make you realise how real the world can be. I mean it.’
‘I’ll come if I can be your lover.’
‘You can be my lover.’
They held each other close, whispering their dreams and fears.
The warning cries of the plovers woke him. The grey light of dawn through the verandah louvres. They had slept with their arms around each other, their legs entangled, her belly against his, her breath warm and sweet in his face. He looked at her sleeping there close beside him and whispered her name. ‘Ann! You are here with me.’ Again he brushed her perfect lips lightly with his fingers.
62
Two days later he drove her to the Canberra airport. She was catching a flight to Sydney, where she would connect later in the day with her flight to Paris and her new life. They held each other in a long farewell embrace. She said, ‘I’ll write as soon as I get there.’
‘Have you got somewhere to live?’
‘They’ve given me a room in the student building.’ She smiled. ‘No male visitors allowed.’
The final boarding call was coming over the PA. ‘You’d better go,’ he said.
They kissed one last time and she walked away, out through the door onto the tarmac. At the plane’s steps she turned and waved. He stood at the window and waved back. He watched her go up the steps and disappear.
He took the road to Braidwood and pulled up at Dom Alvanos’s Royal Cafe and went into the Australian Estates office next door. The woman on the counter told him Jim was out inspecting a property. ‘He’ll give you a call later, Robert. It’s not urgent, is it?’
When Jim Forbes called, Robert was in the kitchen at home eating his dinner. The place felt still and quiet without Ann there. Toby sat in the doorway listening while they talked. Jim said, ‘There’s a demand in Sydney and Canberra for bush blocks. I’ll put ads in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times. You should sell the twenty-seven titles of your place separately.’
Robert felt sad to think that it would no longer be a farm but would be a jumble of weekend blocks for city people. He was himself destroying the last vestiges of the old ways in the lower valley.
Jim was enthusiastic. He said, ‘We should be able to get thirty-day contracts. The market for small picturesque blocks is hot.’
Robert put a call through to Lena. When she picked up he said straight out, ‘I’ve decided to sell the farm.’ He waited, but she said nothing. ‘I have to get out. I’m going to Paris. I hope you’re not going to make a fuss.’
She said calmly, ‘Why Paris?’
‘You remember Phil’s wife, Ann? She’s living there. She visited me for a few days.’
‘And?’
‘Yes, and. All that.’
‘Are you going to live with her?’
‘No.’
Lena was silent a while. He waited. She said, ‘I’m not going to make a fuss. But you know I hate the thought of selling, of never being able to go back to Araluen. And I hate the thought of you living so far away, with someone else. How long are you going for?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You sound different. You don’t sound like you.’
‘I can’t stay here on my own. Jim Forbes said it’s a perfect time to sell. He’s going to put the ad in as the first-ever release of hobby farms in the beautiful Araluen Valley.’
‘Hobby farms. How dreadful. It will change everything.’
‘Everything has already changed. It’s not like it was when we came here.’
‘Do you really have to do this?’
‘I’m doing it. It’s my way out.’
‘I didn’t know you were feeling so negative about being there.’
‘You’ve been busy.’
‘Did you ever hear back from the publisher?’
‘They turned it down.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s okay. I’m over it. Do you want to have Toby down there with you?’
‘Of course I’ll have Toby here. You’ll sell the cows and calves. What will you do with the horses? And Tip? It sounds so awful.’
‘Jim says breeders are at a premium. We’ve had great seasons and everyone’s restocking. I’ll let the horses run back up the river on Ray’s place. Give them their freedom too.’
‘And who will do the mail run?’
‘Someone else. Not me.’
There was a long silence. She said, ‘Are you in love with Ann? Tell me you’re not.’
He hesitated.
‘You are in love with her, aren’t you? You bastard! God, I hate you.’
He didn’t say anything.
She said, ‘I remember her. I thought she was cold. A distant, aloof sort of woman. I can imagine her being an academic. Those big glasses of hers. I didn’t particularly like her.’
He still said nothing.
‘So you really are leaving me. I didn’t think you would do this. I thought you understood us. What we have.’
‘You left me,’ he said. ‘Twice. So, yes, I suppose I am leaving now. I need a new life. I love this place. It’s harder for me to leave than it was for you.’
She cut in. ‘Let’s not start an argument. When do you imagine all this is going to happen?’
‘Jim will put the ad in next week and we’ll take it from there.’
‘It makes me feel as if you’ve left already. I’ll come up for a last visit. The whole idea of hobby farms. Those people from Canberra swimming in our swimming hole. Doesn’t it make you sad?’
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‘According to Jim you’re going to make a huge profit on what you paid for this place.’
‘It’s not me. It’s us. We’ll share it, half and half. Mum would have wanted that.’
‘That’s very generous.’
‘It’s not generous. It’s fair. I love you. I’ll always love you. You’ll always be my cowboy. You’re the only man who has meant something real to me and I want you to be happy. I want you to find the right place for yourself and to get your books published. And make no mistake, I also hate you for falling in love with Ann.’
‘I didn’t say I was in love with her.’
‘You didn’t have to.’
Was he in love with Ann? Did it matter whether it was love or not? ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I’ll always love you.’
‘Fuck you, I know you will. You’re a bastard, Robert Crofts!’
He smiled.
She said, ‘After I left I thought of you on the farm every night and I felt comforted and secure and I told myself, If this doesn’t work out I can always go home.’
‘This place will always be special to us both.’
‘It meant everything to me that you were there. Let’s not lie to each other about us, about who we are and who we’ve become. It’s always been us together, hasn’t it? Even when we’ve been apart. I couldn’t bear it if I thought you were going to Paris to this woman and were denying our reality. Tell me you’re not doing that.’