by Tim Winton
‘Well, good luck to yer.’ He smiled up into her face and she felt no malice. ‘Hubby studying?’
Rachel shook her head.
When she got back, she heard little squeals of glee. She climbed the step of the sagging, rented van. It was small. There was no way to keep it tidy.
Jerra looked up. He was still in bed. Sam straddled his chest, shrieking. An arc of drool fell on Jerra’s chest like a little silver lasso.
‘He’s teething again,’ Jerra said.
Rachel filled the kettle and lit the gas. ‘I applied. Sent it just now.’
Jerra sucked Sam’s fingers. ‘Uh-huh.’
Rachel licked her lips. ‘Could we live on a student’s allowance, you reckon? What is it, these days, less than the dole?’
‘Dunno.’
She watched him blow on the child’s wet fingers to make him giggle. He did it purposefully, without humour.
‘God knows,’ he said, ‘we barely survive on the dole.’
‘Maybe your mum and dad’d help us out.’
Jerra pushed Sam’s glistening hand away. He looked at her. ‘You know what I think about that.’
Rachel shrugged. He didn’t know that she’d had a cheque from his parents every month since the winter. She’d come to love the Nilsams. They were good people, not like her own parents at all. She couldn’t understand Jerra’s attitude towards them. She knew there’d been problems when he was younger, but it was so long ago. Jerra seemed to bear weights from the past as though they were treasures he had to take with him. It made no sense. She’d had to jettison more than he had to stay afloat: the lousy luggage of family memory, the self-hatred other men had seized upon and cultivated – even bearing Sam and having him torn out by force. She knew how good Jerra had been for her. He’d helped her to free herself, only she wondered if he’d ever want it for himself. And lately she’d come to suspect he enjoyed bearing it all, as though the past, as well as being his source of pain, might also be his only source of comfort. One day she’d drive it all out of him. One day.
‘Maybe I could play a few wine bars.’
She snorted. ‘Music.’ Even she was surprised at the level of contempt in her voice. Their eyes met. ‘No, I s’pose you’re right.’
Sam squirmed. They both watched him. Rachel felt them drinking up the sight of him.
‘Jerra?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I really want this. The studying, I mean. You know I never had a chance before. You always said I’d go back and do something one day. I’m ready now. I’ve had enough of this kind of living. It was good to come here. There was nowhere else to go. But I’m better now. And I’m tired of toilet seats warmed by other people’s bums, and I’m tired of standing in other people’s shower water when the drains ’re blocked. I had ten years of that when I was a kid. It’s time to go, Jerra.’
‘The mill. What if . . . ?’
His voice trailed off as she sat down. There was no anger in her. She spoke out of a weird, sensible calm.
‘I’ve followed you round a long time now, Jerra. The band, these other jobs. Now that Sam’s weaned and I’m well again . . . well, I reckon it’s time you followed me for a while.’
Jerra held Sam by the leg. She saw his thumb traverse firm, sweet skin. A lawn mower started up across the park.
Rachel tried to get eye contact again, but he was intent on Sam.
‘I mean, at least you know what you’re good at —’
‘Even if it is a total bloody dead-end.’
‘Well, at least you had a chance to find out. While you were cruising up and down the coast in a Kombi, I —’
‘All right. You’re right. Let’s not expose my piddling middle class self-pity.’
Suddenly, Sam seemed alarmed and reached for her. She smiled to reassure him. He put his hands slowly into his lap and looked at them in wonder. Rachel ran a hand across her belly again. She’d get out into the sun this summer and tan that skin till those marks were fine and silver as fishbones, yes, that’s what she’d do.
‘What’ll I do?’ Jerra asked. ‘If you study.’
‘Look after Sam.’
His eyes narrowed and she saw him let go of Sam. It was only a moment.
‘Me? I can’t.’
‘You what?’
‘I . . . mean I’m not —’
‘A woman?’ She got his eyes at last. He looked trapped.
‘No, that’s not what I —’
‘Hell, Jerra.’
He looked away.
She saw him look away.
‘Isn’t it good enough for you, looking after a baby? All that talk!’
He turned back. There was heat in his face. Rachel stood and laughed. And then for a moment she thought he might actually begin to cry.
‘Well, what then?’
‘Can’t you see? I’m scared, that’s all. That I won’t be able to do it properly.’
She pounced on him and drove her teeth into his shoulder. He yelped and Sam fell back onto the bed.
‘How do you think I felt? Eh?’
She lay across him and watched him lie there with his eyes darting. She felt she could burst with anger and tenderness at any moment. A neat moon of welts darkened on his skin.
II
As they walked out along the road to the beach on Christmas morning, Rachel wondered if it would ever happen, if there’d ever be a change for the better. The past two years seemed such a mess: the band folding, the pregancy they couldn’t decide to end, the lousy odd jobs, and the illness and frailty of the last, long winter. Jerra was stiff and hard with surviving; sometimes she didn’t know him at all. He seemed happy still to mark time, as though he wasn’t ready yet for another battle. But Rachel was bursting, ready to act.
Sam burbled and spat. They took turns wheeling him. The road was flanked by the estuary on one side and the bush on the other. It wasn’t hot enough for a swim, but even when it was cool these days they walked down to the river mouth to sit and watch the sea move and sigh and disguise itself in the glitter of sunlight; it gave shape to the day. Waiting, Rachel thought as she pushed; all this bloody waiting. But it didn’t feel so futile anymore, now that there was something real to wait for.
The estuary was full. It was the colour of strong tea. Near the mouth, the limestone faces of the cliffs looked hollow and wracked by morning shadows. The scent of river mud stood in the air.
Jerra took off his shirt. He was getting his tan back. She’d seen photos of him nearly black from the sun. The roasted darkness of him made him appear bigger than he was, and, narrowed in the sun, his eyes bore the shuttered shape of obsession. But those were old photos from his teens. Mrs Nilsam had shown her. Rachel knew they’d worry her if she looked at them long enough.
‘See that track?’ He pointed to a faint break in the vegetation on the bush side. ‘Forms a nice little cul-de-sac. Sean and I camped there once. God, what a time.’
‘Jerra.’
That look had come on his face, the look he got when the past had hold of him. She knew he kept the deepest, the most important things to himself, but there was no end of surface stuff – names and places and anecdotes of boyish adventures – that began to drive her mad.
‘The ranger never found us tucked away there. We used to sneak back up the road at night and pinch a hot shower from the caravan park —’
‘Don’t, Jerra.’ Not today. It’s Christmas. There’s things ahead.
‘What?’ He looked at her, annoyed.
‘That nostalgia stuff. Don’t.’
‘Why not, for God’s sake?’ His face hardened. He seemed ready to fight her on it this time.
‘Because —’
‘Because you weren’t there. I’m excluding you when I remember. I’m sorry.’ He slapped his arm and held up the crushed body of a march fly.
‘No, because it makes you pathetic. You do it like an old man who can’t handle the present.’
She gripped the handles of Sam’s pusher and s
trode out. He opened his mouth but she spoke first. ‘It makes me despise you.’
Labouring up the final hill in the windless hollow where cicadas belted out their unified note, she felt him lagging behind. He didn’t seem to have any resistance left. You can follow, she thought; you can bloody-well follow.
At the crest the salty breeze met Rachel full in the face, and at the sight of the sea, something rose in her.
‘I’m gonna cut my hair off,’ she said when Jerra came up alongside.
He looked at her, and then down at the sea which he seemed to behold with relief. That feeling in her, yes, it was triumph. She had pushed down walls to live, to give life. She had been where there was no dependence, only a battle of solitary forces. And she had survived. After twenty years of confirming her own ineptitude, Rachel found she was strong. Never before had she felt such strength. Sweat cooled on her. She touched the welts on Jerra’s shoulder. In her ocean of new feeling she knew she had to be the strong one.
‘Yeah,’ Jerra said, apprehending her again, ‘me too.’
III
The whole car stank of sweat and cooked upholstery. Sam grizzled and squirmed in his seat. On the passenger’s side, Jerra sat low with his head tilted back and the wind in his stubble. Rachel drove. They’d agreed on it. Everything they owned was stuffed into the old Holden; it was all of them driving back through the city, and neither heat nor traffic could stifle Rachel’s spirit. This was her return. Every movement, every driving action was laden with purpose.
‘Oh, Jesus.’ Jerra sat straight in his seat as though something had bitten him.
The river was flat. They passed the old brewery. It wasn’t far to Jerra’s parents’ place.
‘Don’t worry.’ She reached over to touch the bristled surface of his head. ‘It’s only for a couple of weeks. We’ll find a flat.’
‘No. It’s something else.’
Rachel drew in breath and held the wheel. ‘Don’t spoil this for me.’
‘Hey, listen —’
‘Something’s happening for me, Jerra. I’m getting somewhere. Don’t stuff it up.’ She saw him stay stiff upright in the corner of her eye.
Sam cried and struggled. They rolled through Jerra’s old neighbourhood, found the street in silence.
Pulling into the driveway, Rachel looked up at the big red house behind the silky oaks and saw Mrs Nilsam at the window. She wasn’t waving. She looked quickly at Jerra, and then she got out and galloped up to the shady porch where the old woman stood, swollen-eyed and shaky. Rachel hugged her fearfully and spoke into that big, tanned neck.
‘What’s happened? Is Mr Nilsam alright?’
‘Rachel. Oh, your hair – it’s lovely.’
Rachel stood back and looked into the old woman’s handsome face and then followed her down to the car where Jerra was unstrapping Sam. She felt herself go tight inside.
Jerra passed the child to his mother who touched him hungrily.
‘It’s Sean, isn’t it?’
‘In a car. Yesterday.’
‘Funny. Back up the road, I knew.’ He looked at Rachel with a sick smile and shrugged. ‘I knew.’
Rachel looked down at him and a chink of panic opened in her. She felt Mrs Nilsam take her hand and squeeze it. There was strength there.
From the house, a faint call.
‘That’s your father. He’s crook.’
Jerra looked up.
‘One day, Sam,’ the old woman said, holding the child up in the light, ‘you and your kind’ll have to carry yourselves.’
Sam looked at her and bared his teeth.
Holding
for Derek
HART SAT BACK and listened to them speaking quietly in front. The station wagon floated through the night streets towards the inner-city, and Hart felt warm and fed and happier than he had been. Jan sat low in the passenger’s seat. Clive drove. Clive was Hart’s best friend. He was ten years older than Hart, and he still seemed like odd company to keep. Clive was like a friendly alien. He managed several companies, had a passion for technology, and he owned more credit cards than seemed necessary. He belonged to the Liberal Party, and to compound Hart’s mystification, he was also a Protestant Christian. But for all that, Clive Genders was the most generous, compassionate man Hart had ever known, someone who wasn’t afraid to admit ignorance or weakness. His laugh was warm and settling; he had a penchant for the scatological; he was always more than the sum of the things he stood for. To a man like Hart who worked with social workers and psychologists, Clive Genders was worth holding onto.
Hart watched them from the back seat. He’d been thinking about tonight’s news footage from South Africa. A black mob. A woman in flames. A country staggering under its own oppressive laws. It was soothing to watch the two little Genders boys beside him on the back seat asleep in an embrace. He pulled the blanket gently around them and heard Clive guffaw.
‘Oh, tell ’em to shove it up their arse!’
‘Oh, Clive.’
‘I mean in a loving way, of course.’ He laughed. ‘Bloody bureaucrats.’
Tonight they’d drunk wine from ‘the private collection’, the Margaret River reds Clive kept in the grease-pit of the family garage. He was a man with good taste and no class.
‘Don’t be a twit, Clive.’ Jan’s dark face was greenish in the light of the old dash panel. Hart found her difficult; he never let on to Clive. She had a strangely downturned mouth which always made her seem disgruntled. Hart looked away, realizing he’d been observing her all evening. That mouth was so damned irritating, but, in a way, watchable.
‘Send ’em a telegram: GET STUFFED, RUDE LETTER FOLLOWING.’
Hart laughed.
‘Don’t encourage him,’ Jan said, softening a little, ‘he’s done it before.’
They reached Hart’s street and sailed in to the kerb. He slid across the seat to the door and squeezed Clive’s shoulder. He didn’t flinch like he used to. As he turned in his seat, Clive’s meaty face and receding hairline were illuminated in the light of the streetlamp. The boys called his baldness ‘Daddy’s growing forehead’.
‘See you Friday, eh?’
‘Care of the Magic Plastic,’ said Clive.
‘The teddy bears’ picnic,’ Jan said with that rich mouth of hers down at the corners. Her teeth were perfect.
‘Thanks for dinner, Jan.’
‘See you, Hart.’
‘See you, Bleeder.’
Hart got out into the cold. The engine ran in the still street.
‘Picnicks, Friday.’ Clive worked the clutch.
The car’s tail lights shrank away. Hart stood alone in the street with his breath hanging before him. The sky was clear. Dew glittered on the grass verge. Hart decided to walk. On nights like this, after fights especially, Andrea and he had always walked. She used to say it was cleansing. In his mind’s eye he saw the shadow between Jan’s lips. He needed a walk. The cold night scoured him.
A telephone ringing. He swam up, floated across to where it shook spastically on the wall. Took up the receiver. He heard a calm, authoritative voice. ‘I am obliged to tell you that your friend Janice Genders has died as a result of a miscarriage. Goodbye.’
Hart sat up, awake. A dream. He felt bad, sick. A dream. He got up and drank some water. People don’t die from miscarriages anymore, he thought. Besides, she’s not even pregnant; they don’t want any more kids. If I trusted any of the bastards I’d ask one of the psychs from work what it could mean. He’d never dreamt like that before. It scared him.
Before long he slept again, but in the morning, and for many mornings thereafter, he remembered that cold, administrative voice.
At work on Thursday, Hart admitted to the Unit a small boy whose eyes were like cinders. The boy looked at everything as though trying to will it away. Hart read his report and kept up a friendly, confident smile. The boy’s parents seemed fastidious and bossy and suspicious; they seemed ashamed to be in such an institution. They kissed the boy and
left without much reluctance. Walking down the corridor with that little boy, reading the awful case history as he went, Hart felt grateful that Andrea and he had never had children. Every day he saw these victims of carelessness and neglect and abuse. He and Andrea, he realized, in their clutching unhappiness, could have maimed children as easily as they’d maimed each other. He supposed it was something to be grateful for.
Clive strode into Picnicks burring the wad of credit cards in his fist. Hart was already at the table.
‘Put ’em away, you don’t fool me.’
‘Just to remind you of the company you keep,’ Clive said with a grin. ‘How’s the Bleeding Hart?’
‘Fair.’
‘Come on, old son. Fair? On Friday? What’s wrong, is the National Times late on the stands, or something? It’s Friday lunch. Picnicks!’
‘And the Protestant deity’s in his heaven.’
Clive’s eyebrows went up the way they did when he was hurt. Hart squirmed. There was an unspoken agreement they had about humourless jibes. He felt muddled.
Just then Nick brought menus and friendly talk to their table by the window. Cars rolled past down Oxford Street. With his old gesture of boyish expectancy, Clive lay both hands flat on the inky-green linen. His new beard suited him, balanced his face, hid the strain of work. Nick told them the day’s specials, joked with them as always, and Hart lightened a little at the sight of Clive’s eagerness. The business of being here at Picnicks with him, ordering food and drink, distracted him from a creeping panic.
‘It’s still the best place, you know,’ Hart said. He felt his face break in a grin. ‘Look at it all, the china, the menu, the winelist. There’s nothing like . . .’
Clive flounced his hands about. ‘The ambience . . . the sweet ambience.’ And they fell into laughter.
