Well-behaved Women

by Emily Paull

THE THINGS WE RESCUED

  In the end, there was nothing but smoke.

  Thick black smoke that followed them like a stray cat around the house, clinging to their clothes. It smelled of misery and heartbreak and destruction.

  It was strange, the things they decided to save, the items they packed into the back of Rob’s Hilux to take with them. Not just the family photographs, but the laptops, and chargers for their mobile phones. A book Hilary had borrowed from one of the other teachers in the English department. Meanwhile, her wedding dress would burn on its hanger.

  Hilary’s whole body was a rock. It was like someone had sucked the emotion out of her through a straw. How long would it take for the town to burn down? Days. Hours. Perhaps the flames would reach their property only minutes after they sped out of the driveway. Later, she wouldn’t remember leaving, but she would remember the heat, the sweat, the overwhelming exhaustion.

  She sat down in Rob’s threadbare recliner with a garbage bag full of shirts and underwear in one hand. Rob ran back in through the front door, screaming at her. ‘Hilary! What are you doing? We haveta go!’ She could see him saying it. His lips were chapping from the volatile air, cooking right there on his face as she watched. Her eyes were so tired, so sore from the smoke. He grabbed her by the arm, pinching her skin where it was a little looser than she’d have liked. Hilary tried to snatch her arm back. Then, Rob scooped her up, garbage bag and all, and carried her out to the car. Over his shoulder, she saw the first angry flames licking at the houses down the street.

  There was nothing they could do but leave.

  Next door, Mr Templeton was using his garden hose to soak his house from roof to foundation. Contrasted against the roiling black cloud that was heading their way, he and his hose were tiny. It was like pissing on an inferno. He was wearing the same knitted brown vest that he always wore, but underneath there were rings of sweat on his white-collared shirt.

  Outside the house, Hilary’s head started to clear. It dawned on her what she’d almost done. They all had to go, right away.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Hilary cried at Mr Templeton, as Rob got into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Hilary closed her door. Her face was cold and damp for a moment as the air conditioning blasted to life. Rob reached over to turn it off before ashes could blow into the car. Mr Templeton hadn’t heard her. It was almost too late. Rob was backing out of the driveway.

  Hilary knocked on her window just as Mrs Templeton emerged from the house, wheeling a battered pink suitcase down the steps. Her husband dropped the hose to help. He looked up at Hilary and Rob, and waved to them just as Rob accelerated.

  ‘They’d better hurry,’ said Rob.

  He tuned the radio to ABC Local and put the volume up.

  The announcer was updating the number of properties that had been lost.

  ‘God,’ Rob muttered. He reached over to put his hand on Hilary’s knee.

  She was staring straight ahead, out the windshield, her mind racing. What would have happened if Rob hadn’t been there? She would have burned to death. Perhaps the swimming pool was the only thing left on their entire block. She wondered if its plastic sides would melt.

  Hilary shook her head, desperate to regain her focus. ‘Where do we go, Rob?’ she asked.

  He squeezed her knee. ‘Pinjarra. There’s a rec centre. When we get there, they’ll tell us what to do.’

  She thought his voice was shaking, but perhaps it was just the rattle of the car as they hit a stretch of bumpy road. ‘Yes. They’ll tell us.’

  They’d made it to the town, but it was empty, a ghost town in the shadow of a rising wall of smoke. The shops had all shut, most of the merchandise gone from the windows. At the service station, Brandon and Leanne Lorrimar were handing out bottles of water from a slab on the back of their ute. Their son, James, loaded shopping bags into the back seat. They were almost ready to go. Rob wound his window down and took a bottle for himself and one for Hilary.

  Brandon leaned in to the cab. ‘You’re the last, I think. Seen everyone else. We’re going in a minute.’

  Hilary’s heart jolted. ‘The Templetons are still coming. They weren’t far behind us,’ she said, her throat sore from breathing in the smoky air.

  By the back of the ute, Leanne raised her hand to her eyes and squinted down the road.

  Maybe Mr Templeton had refused to go. Maybe their car hadn’t started. The Templetons were in their eighties. She and Rob should have stayed, waited for them. Hilary twisted further around in her seat.

  ‘We should go back, Rob,’ she said.

  He hesitated and peered into the rear-view mirror. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Look, here they come.’

  Leanne was pointing at a cloud of dust that was barrelling towards them down the main road. As the car pulled into the service station, Hilary heard the high-pitched bark of Mrs Templeton’s Jack Russell.

  Rob laughed and handed Hilary one of the water bottles.

  She opened it and gulped a greedy set of mouthfuls.

  ‘Better take a few,’ said Brandon, handing Rob another two bottles. He clapped Rob on the arm. ‘Take care. We’ll see you soon.’

  Rob nodded. ‘You too.’

  He wound up the window and pulled back out onto the road. The sky was darker now. The smoke was blocking the sun. Everything smelled like the day after a barbecue.

  Rob flicked his headlights on. It was just after 10 am.

  The buildings grew further and further apart.

  ‘I drive this road every day,’ muttered Hilary, pressing her forehead against the window.

  They were approaching the school where she taught. Behind them, the Templetons and the Lorrimars were driving in convoy. They bumped their way past the teachers’ car park, where the old orange and white school bus sat empty in the first bay. Hilary’s classroom was one of the closest to the road. Its window was plastered with students’ paintings.

  On the radio, a man’s voice was speaking. ‘I repeat, it is imperative that you leave now. There is a threat to lives and homes.’ Rob turned the radio over to something with music. A pop starlet sang about washing a no-good two-timer out of her hair. He curled his lip and turned the radio off completely.

  ‘Be brave, Hilly,’ he said. ‘Take a deep breath. Have some more water.’

  She nodded and leaned her head back against the window, forcing herself to keep looking out.

  There was a dark figure sitting on the bench at the only bus stop out of town. If the person hadn’t moved right then, Hilary might not even have seen her. A supermarket trolley was next to her, full to overflowing with bags of stuff she’d been collecting from around town for as long as Hilary could remember. A few weeks ago, she’d come begging at the school canteen after lunch was over, asking if there were any leftover sausage rolls. One of the sports teachers had escorted her off the school grounds. They couldn’t have her near the kids, a vagrant like that. What would the parents have said? Hilary— and everyone else in town—had forgotten about her after that.

  ‘Pull over!’ she called out.

  Rob hit the brakes hard enough to jerk them both forward. He guided the Hilux onto the shoulder of the road. The Templetons zoomed past them, honking their horn in goodbye.

  ‘We forgot about her,’ Hilary said, pointing.

  Rob leaned across to see who she meant. ‘Shit,’ he said, under his breath.

  He pulled on the handbrake, and Hilary jumped out of the car. The air outside was hot and thick. She ran back along the road towards the bus stop, waving her arms and yelling, ‘Hey! Hey!’ Her mouth tasted dirty.

  As Hilary approached, the woman lifted her head. Her hair seemed to be weighing her down. The edges of her eyes were rheumy and running. She rubbed at one with a crooked finger.

  ‘Where’s everybody going?’ the woman asked.

  Hilary looked back at the rising plume of smoke over the town, and her heart failed for a moment or two. ‘There’s a bush fire. We’re evacuating.’


  The vagrant nodded and settled back against the graffiti-covered wall of the shelter. Hilary wondered how she could have failed to notice the fire until now.

  ‘You better get goin’ then,’ was all the woman said. ‘Come with us,’ Hilary said, pointing to the Hilux. ‘Come on, get in the car.’

  She glanced back at Rob and was horrified to see the car’s black exterior sprinkled with ash. The Lorrimars had pulled over next to Rob. James was honking the horn. He yelled something Hilary couldn’t hear just before their ute took off again. Hilary watched their tail lights getting smaller and smaller.

  The homeless woman flicked her gaze over Rob and the car, her eyes wary. She reached for the handle on her trolley, throttling it like the clutch on a motorbike.

  ‘I dunno …’

  Hilary’s heart was thudding, like she’d just run in a cross-country meet. ‘You’ll die if you stay. You’ll burn to death.’

  ‘That man your husband?’

  Hilary nodded.

  ‘He a good man?’

  ‘Yes. He is. There’s nothing to be frightened of.’ Hilary wondered if there was anything she could say to earn this woman’s trust. What had happened to her that the idea of being burned by the bush fire was less frightening than the idea of getting into a car with a strange man?

  The homeless woman scratched at a scab on her nose and looked back at the smoke plume. Hilary could feel sweat seeping through the back of her shirt.

  ‘I’d choke on all that smoke before the flames got me,’ the woman said, almost to herself.

  ‘Please, come with us,’ Hilary pleaded, her legs already poised to run back to the car. She would never forgive herself if she didn’t save this woman, she just knew it.

  The woman looked at Rob again, but she stood and walked towards the car. The back of her shirt was ripped open, exposing sunburnt patches of skin. She wasn’t wearing a bra. There were stains on her jeans that looked like blood. She left her trolley where it was.

  ‘Don’t you want your things?’ Hilary asked.

  The woman shrugged. ‘No-one else wanted them. That’s how come they gave them to me.’

  Hilary helped the vagrant into the back seat, pushing her bag of clothes over to one side where it blocked part of the rear window. The woman managed to click her seatbelt into place after a few tries. Settled, she sat with her arms drawn tight across her belly, her eyes on her lap.

  Up close, it was hard to tell how old the homeless woman was. Before that day, Hilary would have said she was an old woman, but now she was not so sure. Sun damage and dirt had obscured the usual markers of time. They could have been the same age.

  Hilary looked at Rob as she climbed back in to the passenger’s seat. The expression on his face was one of discomfort, but he kept quiet, his eyes fixed forward and his hands gripping the wheel. When Hilary was safely buckled in, Rob took off, pushing the motor until they had once again caught up with the Lorrimars. No-one spoke.

  Not long after, they passed through the first police roadblock. The flashing lights, blue and red, were the first sign of civilisation they had seen in more than a kilometre. The police officer waved them around the cones and onto a route that had been deemed safe. From the other direction, the red rectangle of a fire engine rumbled onto the road they had just vacated, sirens screaming. Behind the wheel, the faces of the firefighters were tense.

  Hilary looked at her husband and then at the haggard face in the back seat.

  Rob leaned into the footwell to retrieve one of the bottles of water. Without taking his eyes off the road, he handed it to the woman.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s yours?’ she replied. Her dark eyes darted back and forth between Hilary and Rob.

  ‘Rob Taylor. This is my wife, Hilary.’ The woman nodded, opening the water bottle and slurping at it with dainty precision. ‘You can call me Sadie.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Sadie,’ said Rob. ‘Do you have any family? Anyone we can help you find when we get to Pinjarra?’

  Sadie shook her weathered head and thrust the water bottle back at Hilary. She’d barely taken a mouthful.

  ‘You keep it,’ Hilary said. ‘Finish it. Save it. You must be thirsty.’

  ‘A person can get used to being thirsty,’ Sadie said.

  Hilary wondered how Sadie could be so calm. She’d been less than an hour away from being overtaken by the bush fire. Hilary tried to force down the overwhelming notion that she’d just saved this woman’s life.

  ‘You homeless, Sadie?’ interrupted Rob.

  The carelessness in his voice made Hilary cringe. She glared at her husband, before stealing a glance at their guest, wondering if she’d be angry, or upset. Instead, Sadie snorted at the observation.

  ‘Yeah, but now I reckon so’s everyone else.’

  There was a kind of elfish glee in Sadie’s voice as she predicted this. Hilary bit down on her fist as a wave of grief poured over her. Sadie was right. And even if they were lucky—even if the fire was put out before their house was completely destroyed, the town would never be the same again.

  She looked at her husband. Rob said nothing, but he shifted upwards in his seat, slowing the car as they approached a queue of vehicles trying to get into a petrol station to fill up.

  ‘Poor buggers,’ Rob muttered.

  Hilary saw the Templetons’ car peel off into the queue, and she waved her hand. This time, Mrs Templeton saw her, and the two women managed to share an unhappy smile.

  They’d been driving an hour, when they heard that the flames had reached the centre of town. Reports kept coming of the buildings that had been lost. The high school was gone—Hilary’s classroom, gone. The Town Hall had burned too, though the front piece, the historical archway, could still be seen from the Channel Seven helicopter. There were no houses left. The shells of cars sat like elephant bones in a singed black desert.

  Hilary looked at Rob and was surprised to see a tear tracing its way down the ridge of his nose. She squared her shoulders and reached for his hand.

  She turned to Sadie in the back. ‘Pass me that Tupperware container, will you?’ she asked. It was full of cold sausages, leftovers from the night before. She peeled the lid off with a pop and picked out one of the fat, greasy things with her fingers. ‘We’ll be better equipped to deal with this when we’re fed.’

  She offered the sausage to Rob, and he took a half-hearted bite, all the while keeping his hands on the wheel and eyes on the road. Sadie was tentative when offered the tub, but she took a sausage for each hand and said, ‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’

  Sadie ate so quickly that Hilary gave her two more.

  Hilary nibbled at a sausage of her own, wondering when the woman had last eaten.

  At the evacuation centre, cars were double- and triple-parked across the lawn. Volunteers in bright orange vests directed the Hilux into a spot. A few doors down, James Lorrimar was helping his mother unload the slabs of water they had left, while Brandon handed out water bottles to families with little kids, some of whom were bright and sun creamed, fresh from the pool when the call to evacuate had gone out. Brandon crouched down to talk to the kids, complimenting their hats and rashies. There were far too many kids to just be from their town. Nearby, their parents wore exhausted smiles.

  Sadie climbed out of the back seat and dusted her greasy fingers on her trousers. Rob was searching through the back of the car for something.

  ‘Well,’ said Sadie, ‘thank you for the lift, Mr and Mrs Taylor, but I best be going.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Hilary. ‘You have to check in. They need to check that everyone got out okay.’

  She pointed to a line of people heading into the rec centre through a fire exit, where a volunteer with a clipboard was rifling through pages as fast as she could.

  Sadie laughed. ‘You think my name is gonna be on that list? You think anybody is looking for me?’ She laughed again, harder, and the crinkles at the corners of her eyes seemed
to take over her whole face.

  Hilary opened the passenger side door and took out a sleeping bag that she’d snatched out of the hall cupboard as they were readying themselves to flee.

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Take this so that I can at least know you’ve got somewhere soft to put your head tonight.’

  ‘Thanks, Mrs Taylor, that’s nice of you.’

  Hilary felt herself blushing. It was a stupid gift, a sleeping bag, and not even a fresh one. She wished she could hand Sadie something useful, like money. All she had was her bank card. They didn’t even have any other food in the car.

  Rob found what he was searching for, and he came around the car to join them, putting one hand on Hilary’s shoulder. It was one of his shirts, one of the nice ones.

  He held it out to Sadie. ‘I don’t know if it will fit. But here, it’s better than the one you have.’

  Sadie frowned at the shirt for a moment. She watched Rob carefully, her body tense, as though she were getting ready to run.

  Rob handed the shirt to Hilary, and he took a step back.

  ‘Better is a matter of opinion, but I’ll take your shirt,’ Sadie said, her eyes fixed on Rob, even as Hilary was handing her the bundle.

  ‘Is there anything else you need?’ Hilary asked, uncertain how to offer things like bras and tampons. There was a fragile pride to this woman, a sense of the survivor.

  Sadie tucked the shirt inside the sleeping bag and hitched it under her arm.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But thanks for the lift.’

  Hilary watched her walk down the footpath for a long time. It wasn’t until Sadie had disappeared from her line of sight that Hilary realised she was crying.

  PRETENDING

  T homas’s stepdaughter stood at the edge of the pool, her bare toes curled around the concrete lip, water streaming out of her hair. Her fingers twitched lightly at her side. He watched as she stared at her rippling reflection, afraid to speak in case he startled her. But he had to say something. It was getting late. They’d been swimming for hours.

  ‘Marnie?’ he called, pulling himself out of the water. The sun heated his skin again almost immediately.