Rocking Horse Hill

by Cathryn Hein

  He tapped the book he’d chosen against the fist of his curled left hand, the habit of hiding his fingers ingrained even from people who knew him. The hiding was normal, the nervous tapping something else. An annoying something else.

  ‘Filling in, are you?’

  ‘No, this is where I work now.’

  He scanned the shelves. ‘Nice hobby.’

  She crossed her arms and shifted her weight to one hip, the gesture both defiant and protective. ‘It’s not a hobby; it’s my livelihood.’

  Josh tapped the book again, the sound reverberating in the tense quiet. Her livelihood? What happened to living the life of landed gentry, like her mother?

  Throwing him a look he couldn’t interpret she stepped towards the shelves and spoke briskly. ‘This is the new winter range. Beautiful covers. I take it you’re after a notebook? For yourself or someone else?’

  ‘It’s for Mum.’

  She stilled, her mouth softening. ‘I heard about her illness. I’m sorry.’

  He nodded. Though they came from vastly different backgrounds, Em had always liked his mum. He’d often discovered them chatting in the kitchen. The sight always left him feeling warm and hopeful, as if maybe they could fit each other’s worlds. Time, though, had proved otherwise.

  ‘She wants to keep a journal. For Karen and Sal’s kids. Just in case. . .’ He looked towards the street. He hated that ‘just in case’ thought. Just in case couldn’t happen. Not to his mum.

  A hand curled around his forearm. He looked down at Em’s long fingers, with their blunt unpolished nails, and then at her, drawn to the sympathy in her eyes.

  ‘She’ll be all right.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He cleared his throat and held up the notebook. ‘I’ll take a couple of these.’

  She smiled and shook her head. ‘You want something more special than that for your mum.’ Em searched for a moment, before plucking a glossy red-and-blue patterned notebook, then a green and yellow one from the shelves. She pointed to each in turn. ‘Ruby and sapphire, emerald and citrine.’

  Josh looked closer. The covers weren’t patterned as he’d thought, but covered in photo image after photo image of faceted gemstones. Big, small, at angles. As she waved them they glinted, as though the jewels were real. His mum would love them.

  ‘They’re good. Thanks.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Would you like me to gift-wrap them? It’s no trouble.’ She paused before adding, ‘No charge.’

  That simple additional phrase set his jaw. ‘They’re fine as is.’

  ‘Of course.’ But to his irritation she took a length of wrapping paper the colour of weak tea and printed with rows of antique-looking type, and folded it around the centre of the books, like a wide belt. A dark-blue ribbon of paper raffia, the same colour as the shop’s signage, followed. The knot arranged to her satisfaction, she handed him the package, shaking her head as he reached for his wallet. ‘A gift.’

  ‘I don’t need your charity, Em.’

  ‘It’s not charity, nor am I doing this for you. It’s for your mum.’ She waggled the package. ‘Take it.’

  He hesitated then snatched the notebooks. He shouldn’t give a rat’s arse how she saw him, but he did. Still.

  ‘Thanks.’ He nodded, in a rush to get out of the shop, to escape these dumb feelings. ‘I’ll see you.’

  He was almost at the door when she said his name. She stood near the counter, one hand curled on the top, the other awkwardly on her hip. He’d never known her to be awkward. Emily Wallace-Jones was all poise and elegance. Any lack of confidence or nerves she hid with Wallace aloofness and tight words. But the quiet, uncertain way she said his name held none of that. He faced her, waiting. The hand on her hip fell.

  ‘Karen told me about your divorce. I’m sorry.’

  He considered for a moment, wondering why she’d brought it up. ‘Why should you be sorry? Sometimes stuff just doesn’t work out.’ He could tell that she’d caught his meaning. The ‘like us’ lingering unsaid.

  ‘I heard you were going out with Trent Maloney. He’s a good bloke.’ And not the person he would have imagined for Em. Then again, she’d once shown herself partial to another bloke from the wrong side of town. Why not a butcher to go with the cabinetmaker?

  ‘We’re no longer together.’

  ‘Right.’

  She stepped away from the counter, stopping halfway across the shop floor, near a bin of rubbers and pencil sharpeners in garish fruit shapes and colours. She picked up a strawberry-shaped rubber and bent it back and forth. ‘Can I say something?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘I also wanted to say I’m sorry. About what happened with us, I mean.’

  ‘It was a long time ago, Em.’

  ‘It was. But I still want you to know that I wish I hadn’t done what I did. I’ve never had the chance to say it before.’

  He looked back at the street, at the people hurrying from shop to shop, catching up on chores they’d let slide for drier days. Diagonally across from the shop, where Hubbard Lane joined McArthur Street, stood the limestone and pink dolomite Australian Arms Hotel, its iron-laced wraparound verandah protecting a pair of shivering smokers in the new outdoor area. It used to be a cosy pub, great for counter meals and a yarn with mates. He’d been away too long to know what it was like now but change never came fast in Levenham.

  He looked back at Em, assessing her for a moment, assessing his own curiosity. A few minutes ago he thought he had her worked out; now he wasn’t so sure.

  ‘How about a drink tonight?’ He nodded towards the pub. ‘Across the road.’

  ‘I can’t, I’m sorry.’

  He should have expected that. The skin of his cheeks itching, he placed his hand on the door handle, the stubs of his other fingers tight around the notebook parcel.

  A step sounded behind him. ‘But I’m free Wednesday night. How does six-ish sound?’

  He took a careful breath before answering. ‘Fine.’

  ‘Great. I’ll see you there.’

  He nodded again and left, heart thumping, and with a stupid hopeful churn in his guts.

  ‘They’re beautiful,’ said Michelle Sinclair, smiling at her son. ‘Just what I wanted.’ She eyed his face, suspicious and knowing at the same time. ‘Did you choose them yourself?’

  Josh resisted the urge to lie. ‘Emily did.’

  ‘Em? You saw her? How is she?’

  ‘Good by the look of her.’ He dragged over a chair and sat down. It felt strange talking beside his mother’s daybed like this, as though she was a patient in a hospital. His sisters were used to it but he still flinched at the weirdness. Everything about this horrible illness made him flinch. His mother, the best of people, didn’t deserve the ravage of cancer. She didn’t deserve the shit chemo did to her either. At least now, thanks to the local hospital’s expanded oncology services, she could rest at home with friends and family, surrounded by love instead of isolated in impersonal accommodation in Adelaide.

  ‘Such a beautiful girl. Strange how she’s never married.’ His mother stroked the notebook covers. ‘Still pining for you, perhaps.’

  ‘Somehow, I don’t think so.’

  The catheter port, now permanently inserted above her left breast, an inch below her collarbone for ease of drug adminis­tration, shifted under her T-shirt as she reached out to him. ‘I don’t care what you say. She loved you.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s why she dumped me for that wanker Stephen Jacobs. So,’ he said, keen to get off the topic, ‘has Dad said anything to you?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Do you think it would help if I showed him the projections again?’

  ‘Leave it a bit. You know what he’s like. Your father’s a cautious man.’ She smiled gently. ‘He has a lot on his plate right now.’

  Josh looked at his hands. ‘I couldn’t have chosen worse timing.’

  ‘No. It gives him something to think about besides me.’ She returned her gaze to the garden, her longi
ng palpable.

  The house and garden were her passions. Theirs was an old-fashioned working-class family. Josh’s mum had settled into the traditional role of housewife the day she married. They always had home-cooked meals, mostly made from home-grown or local produce shared between neighbours and friends. Chocolate crackles, honey joys, cakes and slices when they got home from school. Simple crumbles or fruit set in jelly for desserts. Homemade tomato sauce on sausage rolls to rival the best any bakery could make. She volunteered in the canteen, helped with cake stalls, supplied water and oranges during football and netball. Drove Josh and his sisters to sports events as far away as Adelaide, and once even as far as Whyalla. When their nan was still alive, his mum ran story time at the old people’s home, reading local history and memoirs, enjoying the reminiscences as much as her audience.

  She was a farmer’s daughter who’d married a townie and created a warm and loving home and a family to be proud of. Watching his mum in this back room, an extension his father had built as a present to the woman he loved, her face wrinkled and pale with illness, made Josh’s guts clench with the unfairness of life.

  He wanted to stay. He wanted to get the hell out too.

  ‘So, what needs to be done?’ he said, referring to the garden.

  Plenty by the look of it. Pruning for starters, definitely weeding. Stakes in the veggie garden needed to be removed and stored. The broccoli needed harvesting and, from the ragged appearance of the leaves, a good spray. The peas needed training. The rhubarb patch was thick with stalks. Perhaps he could cut some, ask Sal how to make a crumble, serve it as a surprise.

  She turned back to him. ‘Nothing that can’t wait. You have your own work.’

  Unable to help it, he glanced to the left, towards the garage, where his father’s well-equipped home workshop was located.

  ‘Go on.’ She nudged him. ‘I want to write in my notebooks, anyway. And I can’t do that with you moping about like your father.’ When he didn’t move, she put on her best mum’s voice. ‘Workshop. Now.’

  He grinned and kissed her cheek, then pointed to the phone. ‘Call if you need anything.’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘I mean it.’

  ‘All right.’ She swatted him away, trying to sound annoyed, but there was no disguising the love in her voice. ‘You’re as bad as Tommy.’

  Josh left her. He walked down the drive towards the green Colorbond garage, breathing in the crisp air. No one mentioned it, not even to each other, but a subtle, disturbing scent clung to his mum that no shower gel or deodorant or perfume seemed to cover. It wasn’t bad so much as wrong. In Adelaide, when he’d visited after her breast surgery, he’d assumed it was the hospital’s odour, but it had followed her home, to Levenham. It drifted through the back room, her bedroom, through the kitchen and lounge. He’d sensed it in Karen’s and his dad’s car, too, and each time he did, dread seemed to hollow his insides.

  The chemo had to work. It just had to.

  He slid the garage door right across to let in light and air. The building hadn’t seen a car in years. Josh wasn’t certain it ever had. Benches took up much of the available space. Some cleared for working, others with machinery bolted on top. Quality saws – table, circular, band and mitre – that his dad had collected over a lifetime, each saved for. Planers and routers, sanders and clamps, more than a home workshop could ever need. All perfectly maintained, poised for work, silent and waiting.

  The walls were lined with shelves. Plastic jars with screws, nails and other woodworking paraphernalia aligned in orderly rows. At the rear of the shed, fixed against the wall, was the broad timber workbench that Josh had helped his dad make, that he’d once, foolishly, tried to complete on his own, determined to show his dad his competency in techniques he was far from mastering. The sight of it always made his hand curl. Already an eerie itch was developing in fingers that no longer existed.

  He ran his good hand over the sanded surface of the almost-finished kitchen trolley. The timber came from his client’s Adelaide Hills property; from a magnificent red gum sacrificed to make way for a vineyard. Josh suspected laws were flouted during the tree’s removal, but that hadn’t stopped his client. Fines could be paid, lawyers brought in to mitigate punishment. What did a landscape’s heritage matter? The tree was doomed to be kitchen furniture for a multi-millionaire. All Josh could do was achieve some sort of justice by using his craftsmanship to transform that natural history into something admirable.

  He’d taken the commission even though it felt like a desecration. If he wanted his business to grow, he couldn’t afford to be sentimental. Romanticism was for the rich, not working-class blokes like him, trying to make a buck.

  Which made him wonder again what the hell he was doing meeting Em for a drink.

  Curiosity, that’s all. And surprise. How long had it been? He was thirty-two now, which made her thirty. She was seventeen when they’d fallen in love – correction – he’d fallen in love. Thirteen years ago, a lifetime. And she’d never married.

  He shook his head and wrapped a wad of super-fine sandpaper around a block. Like that made a difference.

  But it did.

  She was waiting when he arrived at the Arms, in the quieter back bar, seated at a tucked-away corner table to the left of the old granite fireplace. She sat very formally, straight-backed, legs together and slightly edged to one side, hands clasped in her lap. Almost an anomaly in this relaxed space.

  He glanced at his watch and saw he was early by a good ten minutes.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, curling his heavy coat over the back of the chair opposite. The rain had stayed away, but the wind was as bitter as it could get this time of year, howling across the flat land from the sea. The pub, like most places around the district, was well insulated and snug, the fire burning hard. A good place for a warming drink.

  She looked up and smiled. ‘Hi.’

  Quiet ticked. He curled his damaged hand against the draped coat collar. ‘What can I get you? White wine? Red wine?’

  ‘Actually, I’d really appreciate a Guinness.’

  ‘Midi?’

  ‘A pint, if that’s okay.’

  He headed to the bar. Guinness, and a pint, too. Interesting. Not the drink he would have picked for her. Then he wouldn’t have picked her going out with Trent Maloney, either. Or working in a shop. Or accepting his invitation for a drink. Yet here she was.

  He didn’t know the barmaid. She was young, with a nose ring, eyebrow bolt and a tattoo around her upper arm, but she knew how to pour a Guinness the proper way. He hadn’t even realised there was a proper way until his honeymoon, when he and Bianca had laughed and shagged themselves to contented exhaustion around the UK and Ireland.

  As he waited for the stout, he glanced around. Em had pulled out her phone, holding it below the line of the table, her movements suggesting she was tapping out a message. He looked away. She was probably sending updates to her mates. Jasmine, most likely, or Teagan, assuming she hadn’t ditched them for someone better too.

  He carried the Guinness back to the table and sat down, then immediately rose again to fetch coasters. To his relief, on his return, the phone was gone.

  ‘Thanks.’ She held up the glass. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Sláinte,’ he replied, making sure to use the proper Gaelic pronunciation.

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘You’ve been?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’m jealous.’ She looked away. ‘I’ve never had the chance to travel.’

  ‘You want to?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her brow furrowed, and he realised from the tiny wrinkles across her forehead that, like him, she was aging. Aging extremely well, but still aging. ‘But then I think of the hill and all the animals. Mum and Gran and Digby.’

  ‘How is Dig?’

  ‘Foolish.’ At his look she smiled. ‘He’s in love.’

  ‘No need to explain further, then.’

  ‘No. I spotted Karen walking past the shop t
he other day. Pregnancy suits her.’

  ‘Yeah, she looks amazing. Sal keeps teasing her it won’t last. Reckons that in a year Karen’ll look as fagged out as she does.’

  ‘I can imagine Sal saying that. She always loved to stir.’

  They lapsed into silence. Cooking smells began to float in from the bistro, the scent of freshly fried chips and grilling steaks. New patrons began to move into the back bar, enjoying a drink in the cosy warmth before dinner.

  Josh sorted through comments, anything to reignite the conversation.

  Em ran a long finger up and down the condensation-soaked side of her glass. She looked up. ‘I meant what I said about us. I made a mistake.’

  ‘I could have told you that.’ He took a mouthful of Guinness. ‘But it was ages ago. Why even bring it up?’

  She took her time answering, the hold of her gaze strong. ‘Because it bothers me. It did then, believe it or not, and it does now. What I did was wrong.’

  ‘And now you’ve said you’re sorry.’ He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. But it did. He felt justified somehow. She’d been wrong. Good. And now she had to live with the guilt. Served her right for treating the man who’d loved her like a piece of worthless shit.

  Her mouth parted then closed again. She stared beyond him to the pub with her chin raised slightly and her expression unreadable. He waited for her to say more, but as the quiet ticked by he realised that his bitterness had killed their fragile conversation and now they were stuck. Another minute passed. The stout remained high in their glasses.

  Suddenly she touched her temple, frowning as she pressed her fingertips in hard. ‘This was a dumb idea, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Seems like it.’

  She pushed her chair back and rose, nodding towards the glass. ‘Thanks, and I apologise for the waste. Please give your parents my regards. I hope Michelle beats the cancer. She’s a wonderful woman.’

  Josh watched her leave, admiring the swing of her hips, the confidence in her stride, the way she seemed different to the other patrons. Classier, somehow. Sexy.