The Grand Tour

by Olivia Wearne

  In the reshuffle that saw Bernard rolled out of bed, the sportscaster was now anchor, the weather guy did the sports, and the pretty young female who had done local features (badly) now did the weather (badly). A slightly less attractive, bespectacled young female (the station considered this moving with the times) had been brought in to do the local features.

  With a rasp of parting Velcro, Bernard pulled open the pocket hanging at mid-thigh. He glanced at his phone, thumbed the screen, his face sagging like the emptied pocket.

  ‘Looks dire,’ Mia observed.

  ‘It’s Angela.’

  ‘Angela who?’

  ‘My sister.’

  ‘Oh. What’s she whining about now?’

  ‘She’s sent me a picture of …’ He peered into his screen. ‘What is that? A caravan? She wants to know if I’m jealous. Why can’t we just be properly estranged like every other brother and sister? Like you and Hewhoshallnotbenamed.’

  Mia cringed at the mention of her sibling.

  Bernard grumbled, ‘How was I to know Patrick would go so quickly?’

  ‘Patrick?’

  ‘Her husband. Christ, Mia you manage to remember who all the celebrities are married to. I only get—got—two months’ holiday a year. We were in Tuscany. Even if we’d jumped on a plane as soon as we heard we wouldn’t have made it back in time for the funeral.’

  ‘Do you mean Provence? We’ve never been to Tuscany.’

  ‘Same thing.’

  ‘Not to the French. Or Italians.’

  ‘I meant distance.’ Bernard wagged his jaw, rattling the hinges. ‘Angela and I were never that close. Even before this. It’s been years—’ He couldn’t pinpoint the exact duration, and to say ‘a few’ sounded underwhelming. ‘Why does she have to torment me like this?’

  ‘Torment.’

  Bernard read the message again. ‘Onwards and out of the woods—is that even a saying?’

  Mia inclined her head curiously and he brought the phone to her face. ‘Maybe it’s a tiny hotel room?’ she said.

  ‘Why would she want me to be jealous? Why does she have to be so negative?’

  ‘You should send her an emoji. Smooth things over.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘An emoji. One of those little smiley face things.’

  ‘Is that an Aboriginal term?’

  ‘You’re kidding?’ Mia delighted in her one-upmanship. ‘They’re those little faces people send. In text messages. To show how you’re feeling.’

  ‘So it’s come to this?’ Bernard shook his head. ‘We’re past using words are we? Post-language.’

  ‘Words can be misinterpreted.’

  ‘Language has become obsolete. We’re reverting to hieroglyphics.’

  ‘Nothing says “I’m pleased” faster than a smiley face.’

  ‘I’m appalled.’

  ‘Give me your phone.’ Mia slid the implement from his palm. She began swiping the screen. ‘There should be an olive branch here somewhere.’ Still swiping. ‘How can there not be an olive branch? Maybe with a little dove or something?’ She paused, her finger hovering over the screen. ‘White flag?’

  ‘Surrender? What am I surrendering to?’ His words set Mia’s finger skimming again. ‘Why has no one ever sent me an emoji?’

  ‘You made that big song and dance about LOL.’

  ‘I hate LOL.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘It’s not like anyone ever actually laughs out loud. Once a year maybe. Why did it have to become part of the vernacular?’

  ‘Ah, here we are.’ Mia ceased scrolling and tapped on the screen instead.

  Bernard didn’t like the way she was smiling. ‘What did you just do?’

  She passed him the phone.

  ‘A peace sign! Did you just send this?’

  CHAPTER THREE

  Izzy set about doing the dishes. She filled the sink, squeezing in too much detergent so that a tide of froth expanded high above the water. Her mum had left the cabin after breakfast, leaving money for cigarettes under a dirty mug, coffee stains lining the cup’s interior like tan tidal markings. Izzy liked playing house and took care not to knock the crockery as she swished the suds about (she’d broken two tumblers last week and wasn’t to know it was the cheapness of the glass and not her negligence that had caused the cups to crack). She left the washed dishes stacked haphazardly on the draining board, spumy slugs of white foam sliding down the wet porcelain, and wiped her hands off on her pants before pocketing the banknotes: thirty dollars meant leftover change for lollies. She switched off the heater on her way out. Her mum would go right off should she come home and find its orange bars burning, dispensing its paltry heat to an empty cabin.

  Eight-year-old Izzy was permitted to walk to the shops because of an arrangement her mother had with Mr Klein at the newsagency. Her mum had led him to believe she was unwell and unable to make the trip herself. Subsequently, the newsagent kindly disregarded the small matter of the law and sold cigarettes to her daughter, explaining to his other customers that the little poppet’s mum was poorly. They in turn pictured the bedridden woman languishing with emphysema and patted Izzy on the head, telling her what a good girl she must be.

  Izzy loved these errands. For an hour or so she was able to sample the freedoms of adulthood. She lingered on the shopping strip, gazing into stores, past her unfortunate reflection: long hair the colour and texture of damp sand, her movements gawky as a puppet. She pretended to look purposeful as she wandered up and down the pavement. She was glad Mrs Bronson at the caravan park kiosk refused to sell cancer sticks—that’s what she told Izzy’s mum when they first arrived. Her mum made a fuss about it being a free country and people making their own choices. Mrs Bronson made a little fishy mouth with her lips, saying she wouldn’t be party to her residents killing themselves: ‘You’re free to buy anything you want at the shops in town. If you don’t like that, you’re free to leave.’

  Izzy expected they’d be leaving the caravan park, but her mother only stalked back to the cabin and slammed the door. It wasn’t like her mum to back down from a fight, normally she stood in a shop and whinged until she got her way, making Izzy’s ears burn. She sent Izzy out a little while later to ask the trailer trash if anyone had a cigarette she could borrow. Izzy was afraid people would think it was for her. When she told the strangers it was for her mum, they still said No Way, meaning they thought Izzy was both a smoker and a liar. Luckily, she found Trent working on his car. He laughed and said, ‘Sure, why not? It’s good to get in early.’ Izzy suspected he was making fun of her, but she took the two cigarettes and sprinted back to the cabin, relieved not to be returning empty-handed.

  Walking home from the shops, Izzy busily sucked on a Spearmint Chew. The trick was to avoid chewing, that way you stopped it sticking in your teeth. The sticky confection melted in her mouth, merging with her saliva to form a sugary syrup, which every now and then had to be slurped to the back of her throat. She dreaded returning to the cabin. She hated its cramped confinement, fake-wood walls and cupboards of crumbling chipboard, everything stiff and greasy from all the strangers who’d lived there before them, and that close, musty smell reminding her of fruit forgotten in the bottom of her schoolbag. She was terrified of the big brown spider that moved around the space, buckling itself into a corner, shouldering the wall like a detective, or spreading its hideous breadth across the ceiling. Terrified too of the heavy presence of her mum, always in a grump, picking at everything she did. Hopefully she’d had some grass today. When her mum had grass she was always a little bit calmer for a while.

  Izzy still didn’t understand why her mother had to give Trent money for grass. When she risked asking, her mother dipped her head like she always did when Izzy was wrong, as though the weight of her daughter’s stupidity was more than her neck could withstand. She sighed and said, ‘The grass Trent gives me is special. It has to be specially grown.’

  Izzy suspected Trent might be ripping her mother
off.

  In the cabin, Izzy peeled off her damp clothes. She wouldn’t mind the rain so much if it didn’t make you wet. Unable to find anything suitable among the dirty laundry piled up like sandbags holding back the tide, she took her pyjamas from her bed.

  She was still doing up the buttons when the door flew open with a thwack. Izzy looked up. Her mother covered the space in an urgent lunge to slap her across the face. Izzy stumbled backward, plopping down onto the bed with a bounce. Her mum was shouting, swearwords that Izzy wasn’t allowed to use. Izzy began to cry, not from the smack, hot and tingly, but the meanness of the name-calling. She wasn’t stupid or a brat, and it was horrible of her mum to keep saying so.

  Izzy wiped away her tears with a flannel sleeve and returned to buttoning up her pyjama top.

  ‘Where were you? You can’t just disappear like that.’

  Izzy mumbled she was sorry.

  ‘I was looking everywhere for you.’

  Izzy peeped out from under her wet lashes, trying to determine if this was true.

  ‘Then I thought, to hell with her, if she wants to disappear what do I care? Why should I waste my time and energy searching?’

  Izzy’s tears pooled again. She left them to roll down her cheeks as she tried to explain. ‘I went to the shops like the note said to. I didn’t think I was gone that long.’ She gave a great rattling sniff, wiping her nose on her sleeve, leaving a silvery snail’s trail across the Tinker Bell-patterned flannel.

  Her mother told her to stop blubbering. Izzy did her best to stifle her sobs. The cabin felt as though it were teetering on the edge of a cliff and anything she said or did might tip them over the edge. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, not really meaning it, only wanting this to be over.

  Her mum brought her head down to Izzy’s. ‘Are you?’ Her face, an inch away, was blurry.

  Izzy tried focusing on the swimming green orbs of her mother’s eyes (pistachio, she called them). ‘Yes.’

  Her mum swung away again. Izzy took a gulp of air, as though a mask had been removed.

  ‘Where are they then?’

  Izzy fetched the bag and handed over the pack, careful not to glance at the rotting feet or slimy lungs on the box. Her mum placed the pack affectionately on the cushion beside her, the horror facing down.

  ‘It’s stopped raining. You can go outside and play.’

  ‘I’m in my pyjamas.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  Izzy let the door slam behind her, jumping the three tin steps and landing on the dirt with a thud, thrusting her arms in the air like a euphoric Olympic gymnast.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  For the past year, Angela and Ruby had revelled in the pastime ‘going for a drive’ and the fabulous potential that might be tapped from this undertaking. They wedged themselves into Ruby’s Toyota Corolla and drove for hours to arrive at a patchy colonial township (a mesh of the quaint, the humble and the seedy) considered worth a visit for the handful of nineteenth-century buildings leftover from the goldmining days. The fleeting jaunts from Ballarat to outlying tourist attractions and back, all in the space of a day—like defenceless animals scurrying to and from their burrows—had proved surprisingly agreeable, and prompted the purchase of the motor home. ‘Going for a drive’ would become their raison d’être: Ruby and Angela would come to truly know Australia as they scoured their vast homeland.

  The Grand Tour by Winnebago was slow to eventuate. The money they saved in purchasing a lesser model went toward the refurbishment of their units, in particular the installation of floating floorboards, a feature that Angela was certain would halve her housework and lend her unit either country charm or minimal modern style, depending on whom she was trying to sway.

  It was the floorboards that led to the motor home’s maiden voyage. Rather than stay and watch their villa units being dismantled, the installer had advised seeking alternative accommodation for the duration—and spare him wasted hours in reassuring bonhomie. They settled on Adelaide, feeling the city was grand enough to merit the week-long absence, and they could be home in under a day in the event of an emergency—though what an emergency might entail was never broached.

  Having gone out of their way to enjoy the scenic drive, it occurred to Angela that she didn’t much care for the view. The Great Ocean Road’s jagged coastline only served to make her anxious. She clutched onto her armrest as they hugged the cliff, half-expecting the shelf of roadway to crumble into the sea. The Twelve Apostles were disappointing, nothing but a pile of rocks. When Ruby asked what she’d been expecting, Angela replied, ‘At the very least they might have looked a bit like apostles—a bit churchy. There aren’t even twelve of them.’

  They rerouted inland, where the native forests provided an otherworldly change of scenery. After ten minutes, the strobe effect of passing trees had Angela feeling nauseous. Beyond the forest lay acres of dry pasture, whose beige uniformity was sheer tedium. The only points of interest were the distant farmhouses. Angela got a crick in her neck from peering over her shoulder whenever a particularly fine Victorian or Federation homestead came into view. She wondered if she was suffering from a case of too high expectations.

  ‘Barney Banana,’ Angela observed, gazing at a faded poster featuring a chimp licking an ice cream. ‘Do they still make those?’

  The two women sat across from one another in the Heywood general store. The only other available option was a dubious fish and chip shop that appeared practically pornographic with its coloured bulbs flashing and vulgar music.

  ‘I once had an aunt who owned a monkey,’ Ruby mused. ‘She used to smack it when it was naughty. I half hoped she’d drop dead so that I could take care of it.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Ruby licked her forefinger to collect the specks of desiccated coconut leftover from her raspberry slice. ‘The monkey went first.’

  They were due to wander along the main street now that morning tea was done. The routine was starting to wear thin: promenading up and down the near-empty shopping strips of each town they stopped at, admiring historic landmarks, peering into galleries filled with amateurish watercolours and pottery (the misspent pastimes of local craftspeople), or poking about in kitschy gift shops, causing affable saleswomen to wilt when they left without buying.

  Ruby insisted they locate the Heywood information board. She thought they owed it to every inconsequential village to partake of the local amusements. Angela wondered if maybe there was a cinema? It would be bliss to lose herself in a movie, to stare at a screen featuring handsome actors rather than that unremitting stretch of black bitumen. She lifted her eyes to the menu behind Ruby’s head.

  ‘It’s just like that other place in that other town.’

  ‘What place?’ Ruby asked.

  ‘The café.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the other town.’

  ‘I’m going to need more information.’

  Angela huffed and raised a limp hand, waggling her fingers at the blackboard suspended above the counter.

  Ruby glanced at the board. The menu featured an Alice in Wonderland-themed backdrop intricately drawn in chalk. Each of the characters was experiencing some indecision about what to order. She recalled a similarly illustrated blackboard at another venue (Peter Pan considering Pie of the Day) and relayed the specifics to her fellow traveller together with the name of a previous township.

  Angela sucked in her cheeks to signal her admiration: Ruby’s power of recall was a source of amazement to one for whom even a PIN number proved elusive. Ruby, modestly insincere, insisted she was no David Copperfield, it was only a matter of taking the time to commit things to memory.

  ‘I could spare the time. What I can’t find is the will to bother,’ Angela retorted.

  Before embarking on a friendship, Angela had only ever known Ruby to nod to in the driveway, or discuss the weather with if they happened to overlap wheeling their bins out to the nature strip. She’d heard from Mary in number two t
hat her pensive neighbour worked at a school—Mary only ever bothered to digest half of what was told to her. Mary in turn informed Ruby that the lady in number seven was nursing a sick husband. ‘Mrs Fancy Pants,’ Mary said, as though by being well-presented, Angela had incurred her husband’s illness. Ruby later reflected that sharing a block of units with Mary was like having a Stasi official for a neighbour.

  Each morning Angela peeled open her Laura Ashley drapes and scrutinised Ruby as she locked her front door and strode to her Corolla. Angela thought her neighbour had the virtuous rollneck-and-polar-fleece look of a kindly music teacher. She took comfort from the consistency of the routine. So when four days went by with no sign of the predictable schoolmarm, Angela stood at her window, clutching a hydrangea-imprinted curtain in each fist, imagining something dire. Not dire enough, though, that she couldn’t spare half an hour to dress and make up her face.

  At ten minutes past nine, Ruby opened her door to find Angela perfectly coiffed and emanating expensive perfume that wafted around her like a cloud of gnats.

  ‘Everything okay?’ Angela asked. ‘Your car hasn’t moved from its spot all week.’

  Ruby was taken aback. ‘I’ve been ill,’ she snuffled. ‘Flu. Normally I’m immune to these things. It must have been a particularly stubborn strain. I’m used to being exposed to all sorts of contagions. My body’s built up a resistance over the years. Except for conjunctivitis. It only takes one child to come to me with gummy eyes and I’ll wake next morning with my eyelids plastered shut. There are drops you can use nowadays, it’s much easier to shake than in the past.’ She was babbling; it had been days since she’d spoken to anyone.