Izzy woke in the night. She’d dreamt the wolf was at the window. It was staring in at her, grandmother’s bonnet perched absurdly on its ears. She pulled her sleeping bag up over her head, not wanting to be seen. It was stuffy in her nylon sack. She lowered the edge enough to poke her nose through. She’d forgotten to close the curtains and wondered if her mum had done it when she came home. She couldn’t bear not knowing. She opened an eye to black glass, a smear of moonlight. Izzy ducked back down inside her bag with a whimper. It was unbearable. She was no longer concerned about the wolf—that was just a childish make-believe story. Now it was a robber staring in, one of the bad men you saw drawings of on the news, horrible, mean-faced sketches with ratty hair and scary eyes. She was going to have to close the curtains. But then the man might spot her. He might break the window and do horrible things to her, like the things strangers did if you got into their car. Her body tensed in terror, her heart knocking to get out as though it didn’t like the situation either. Unable to stand it any longer, Izzy reached out an arm to wake her mother. She felt around on the mattress above her, searching for a sign of flesh. She stretched further, reaching to the far corner of the bed. She raised herself onto her elbows.
The bed was empty. Izzy tingled with panic. Where was her mum? She should have been home by now. A shadow dipped across the oily window. Izzy scrambled to push herself out of her sleeping bag. She sprang across the room and shut the curtains before diving back into the safety of her sack. Should she go and knock on Mrs Bronson’s door, ask her to call the police? Some of the men staying at the park had tattoos. Would she bump into them on her way to Mrs Bronson’s house?
She heard a sound outside and froze, straining to make out the noise—a thump on the step. The door opened. Izzy wanted to scream but couldn’t risk being discovered. A beast shuffled across the floor. It walked into a kitchen chair and grunted. The bathroom light came on. Izzy saw her mother wrapped in a tartan blanket. Relief flowed in, extinguishing her fear.
‘Where have you been?’ she whispered urgently.
Her mum squinted into the darkened room. ‘Izzy? Why are you up?’
Izzy wriggled to her feet and hopped toward her, clutching at her sleeping bag to keep it from falling down. ‘You left me alone.’
Her mother looked ashen in the light of the naked bulb. Her eyes lingered on her daughter, pupils wide and shiny as black olives, befuddled faculties taking a minute to draw Izzy into focus. She began to chuckle.
‘Don’t laugh,’ Izzy barked.
‘Oops.’ Her mum’s knees dipped as she rocked with giggles, eventually finding the breath to say, ‘You’re a caterpillar.’
‘Stop laughing.’
‘Izzy, you’ve become a caterpillar.’
Izzy took a few hops closer and her mother whooped with hilarity. Izzy slapped at the red and green blanket. ‘You’re terrible! Terrible …’
‘You’re the one hitting me.’ Carol shed her tartan pelt.
Izzy watched her mum stumble toward the toilet. ‘Can I sleep in your bed?’
‘So long as you lie still.’
Izzy crawled onto the bed and beneath the covers, making sure to press up against the wall where her mum would eventually push her. She shut her eyes, feeling immensely relieved that she was no longer alone. She waited for her mother to join her. She wouldn’t be able to relax until she was by her side.
After a few minutes, Izzy wriggled up onto her elbow. What was keeping her?
‘Mum? Are you okay?’ The panicky feeling was coming back. She threw off the covers and tried to see into the bathroom. ‘Mum?’ Izzy climbed down and headed for the light. Her mum had fallen asleep on the toilet with her head resting on the edge of the basin.
Izzy had the good sense to know not to startle her. She gently slid a hand beneath her mother’s cheek and pushed her upright. Her mum opened her eyes. She seemed pleased with herself, like she meant to fall asleep on the loo.
‘I’m sorry, Iz. Did you need to have a wee?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
On Sundays, Bernard lunched at The Grocery. (The no-frills name, which the owners explained was a throwback to the venue’s corner-shop origins, seemed frankly banal to Bernard.) This, the high point of his week, entailed a macchiato and a toasted sandwich along with the Sunday edition—most of which hadn’t occurred that Sunday or even Saturday, but equated to a token round-up of the week’s events with some editorial sounding off and lifestyle propaganda tossed in for fattening. He capped off the hour with a second coffee and the crossword, one of a series of puzzles and word games he would routinely attempt and ultimately fail before nightfall.
He rubbed away an error, making sure to erase all traces so no one could consider him an idiot for assuming that a breeze was a gentle wind; everyone knew (everyone who did crosswords) that it should be a ‘zephyr’—obviously. Particularly when two down was a striped quadruped. He felt his prior fame left him vulnerable to public mockery. He imagined crazed autograph hunters rifling through his bins and selling his old papers to the press.
As he was contemplating a six-letter alternative for intrigue, he spotted Mia’s pale face pass the window before she entered. He was surprised. Mia had an aversion to The Grocery’s young owners, Steve and Lisa. ‘Peace and Love,’ she’d labelled them. She presumed anyone who was remotely cheerful or polite to be play-acting. Any salesperson offering assistance was asked to kindly stop stalking her. As for Steve and Lisa, Mia refused to believe anyone could be so passionate about sultanas—ever. She preferred the grubby interiors of the town’s more miserable cafés and the equally gloomy drones who served there. Mia practically glowed in these establishments, lending a radiant aura of wealth and vigour to the downtrodden working and lurking there. But Lisa upstaged Mia with her gracious vitality, as did the milky young mothers who congregated at the café’s salvaged tables, needing to escape their lovely homes. Rather than attempt to compete, Mia shunned the place altogether. ‘What do I want with all that healthy environmental rubbish? I can get week-old leftovers down the road at half the price, no wastage whatsoever. And I don’t get a migraine from all that natural light—and smiling.’
Mia looked at Bernard for a second as she entered before returning her gaze to a shelf of assorted honeys.
Lucas proved less evasive. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’ He scraped out a chair and dropped into it. ‘Hope you pulled up all right. We put it away, didn’t we? You should have seen how many empties there were. I was smashed. I’m definitely out of practice.’
‘I was unaware it was an event you had to train for.’ Bernard looked for Mia, who’d sidestepped to jams in her efforts to ignore him. ‘Will you stay for a coffee?’
‘I could probably do with a long black.’ Lucas grinned like a wolfhound.
‘Mia?’
‘We were only stopping by for provisions. You know I hate it here.’ She spoke loudly enough for Steve, stocking the fridge nearby, to hear.
‘All this “buy local” extortion. The customer certainly isn’t being spared the cost of shipping and transport.’
Bernard chortled as though she’d been speaking in jest and signalled to Steve for another coffee. Mia stepped into the light to examine a tin of tapenade.
‘Did you hear Lucas and I are related?’ Bernard asked.
Mia sneered at the tiny print on the tiny purple tin. ‘Just barely—I’m closer with my dentist than you two.’ Mia had somehow discovered, while her mouth was full of implements, that her dentist was a second cousin, once removed. She replaced the tin to the wrong shelf. ‘I suppose I’ll just have to potter around here then,’ she said, her voice a peevish semitone higher than usual.
‘You see much of Angela?’ Bernard asked his step-nephew.
‘Nope. You?’
‘She sends me the odd message now and then.’
Mia, listening through a row of brown paper bags of orecchiette, added, ‘We move in different circles.’
‘I couldn’t make it to your
dad’s funeral. I’m sorry about that.’
Lucas swatted away the apology.
‘We were overseas,’ muttered a jar of olives.
‘She sent me a reply, by the way,’ Bernard raised his voice to penetrate the wall of produce. ‘A question mark. So your eloquent emoji wasn’t so self-explanatory after all.’ To Lucas he clarified, ‘Angela—we’re currently feuding by text message.’ To Mia: ‘How should I respond?’
‘The white flag.’
Lucas, attentive to the approach of his coffee, said mildly, ‘Why don’t you just call her?’
Bernard disregarded the good counsel. He held his phone at arm’s length for Lucas to see. ‘She sent me a photo as well. It’s her and a friend, on a road trip apparently.’
‘Very Thelma and Louise.’
Mia, having crept up behind to view the screen, startled them both. ‘Let’s hope they don’t run off a cliff.’
Out on the street, Mia rose on sandalled tiptoe to proffer Bernard a silky cheek, purely for show. Bernard felt the contours of her cheekbone beneath his lips. Mia was covered in prominent bumps, ridges and nodules, as though her skin was unable to contain the complexity of her framework. He wanted to take that charming face in his hand and squeeze her jaw hard between his fingers. Having thus captured her attention, he’d bore into her languorous eyes until she saw reason. Her self-indulgent hiatus from their life together must end now. She had caused him enough pain. If she wasn’t careful, he might learn to live without her whims and moods and criticisms. He was coming to appreciate his solitary regimen. He might start relishing his bachelordom—if only he could stop pining for her like a dog that’s lost its master.
That evening, Bernard thought he’d make a start on the novel. He opened to the first page and began reading. He stopped at page two and turned the book over to examine the cover: a sketchy caricature of an emaciated man on a bedraggled horse. The hero had a crazed look about him; were it not for the Southern Cross scrawled in the background, he might be mistaken for Don Quixote. He fanned through the pages till he reached the end.
—What can I do for you, Bernard?
—I just thought of My Brilliant Career, was that on the list?
—I don’t know.
—Can you check for me?
—If it was, it wasn’t assigned to you. What’s wrong with Voss?
—I’m just reading it now. There’s a bit of a problem.
—What’s that?
—The chapters are too long. How am I supposed to know when to stop?
—It’s up to you. Use your discretion.
—It makes it very awkward.
—They gave you instructions.
—Yeah. Do you still have a copy?
—I passed them straight to you. Was there anything else?
—Not really, I’ll let you know if I think of any other options.
—Bernard, this is your option.
He returned to the novel and read a paragraph twice without realising.
The following Saturday, Bernard was to be one of three judges at a children’s singing contest, the drawcard event at the annual Autumn Harvest Festival. His anodyne reputation, coupled with his affordability, meant he was a regular feature at anything promoting itself with the words ‘family’ or ‘fun’ in the title. The whiff of celebrity still clung to him and, when in public, dowdy women and mothball-smelling gents—the hard-luck locals—grasped his hand or patted his shoulder and offered hearty words of encouragement as though losing his anchor job were terminal.
A freshly permed doyen ushered Bernard the length of the auditorium to a trestle table at the front where two other judges sat, no doubt equally bewildered at how far their careers had fallen. After he’d been seated, the woman placed a hand on his shoulder and rested her weight there for a moment.
‘Would you like a cuppa while you wait, Bernard?’
‘No, thanks.’ He tilted back his head to read the label pinned to the woman’s cardigan. ‘Jan.’
Jan squeezed her talons into his shoulder, one of her rings nipping painfully. Bernard was unsure if it was censure or affection she was bestowing.
‘Go on. I’ll get one of the girls to bring it out for you. You’ve got to build up your stamina for the judging, it’s a big decision you’ve got ahead of you.’
‘I intend taking it very seriously.’
‘My little granddaughter’s in it this year.’
‘Is she? I don’t know if I should be seen talking to you then.’
‘Don’t be silly. No, she won’t win it. She wears glasses, the poor pet.’
‘Does that affect her singing?’
‘No, but it doesn’t help, does it? Anyway, I’ll have one of the ladies bring you a tea.’
‘Coffee, please.’
Jan pushed off from Bernard’s shoulder. He turned to address the unremarkable female face on his left. ‘Behold the chain of command.’
They swivelled in their seats to look back across the room. Jan was dispatching orders to a pair of elderly women standing behind a waist-high counter; the aluminium roller door, which kept the kitchen safe from coffee urn- and biscuit-stealing thieves, hovered above their stiff curls.
‘There’ll be a bikkie in it for me.’ Bernard clasped his hands on the table in front of him and rolled his thumbs. ‘So what crime did you commit to end up here?’
‘I run a dance academy—for kids.’
‘Right. So you’re actually qualified for this assignment.’
‘I don’t know about that.’
Bernard leant past the woman to the vaguely familiar male face on her left. ‘What about you?’
‘I’m in radio. I do the breakfast show on Force FM.’
‘Music, also relevant—looks like I’m the odd man out.’
Jan slid a tray before him: china teapot, milk and sugar to the side, two chocolate biscuits resting on a saucer. ‘We’re about to begin,’ she announced in her best stage whisper.
The female judge snorted, waiting for Jan to move off. ‘Clear favouritism.’ She gestured at the paltry digestive sitting on her saucer.
‘I wouldn’t take it personally,’ Bernard said. ‘She’s only trying to buy my vote.’
The proceedings began. Bernard did his untrained best to perform Man Giving Undivided Attention. He’d already decided his points would go to the least precocious contestant, but he was having trouble finding a suitable candidate. Most of all he tried to avert his gaze from the mothers standing in the wings, singing in unison with their offspring, pulling garish faces intended to mirror the song’s emotional subtext. In the front rows behind him, a line of fathers sat with their phones held aloft, recording, while giving the impression that the auditorium was a mobile black spot. Bernard covertly checked his watch; the competitors were taking far longer than their allocated two minutes to perform their tribute to the demise of popular music. He turned to his female colleague, intending to mutter derisively, and was taken by her nose, long and fine and tapered like a fin. By the look of her profile, she appeared to be bestowing the event some serious contemplation.
When a petite Vietnamese girl in white tulle stepped up to the microphone, Bernard awarded her the maximum number of points and recapped his pen.
His girl came in second to a fearsomely camp ten-year-old crooner.
After the prizes were awarded, Bernard strode through the showgrounds on his way to the car park, leaving a line of bewildered locals in his wake, ignoring the curious faces unable to place him and avoiding the bloated self-satisfaction of those who twigged, nudging their companions: ‘Did you see? That was Bernard Barkley, the guy from the news.’ He weaved through the drifters vacantly examining other people’s junk, past the queues lining up for hot chips and bags of sugar-crusted donuts, and the swollen-ankled mothers and mothers-of-mothers sitting at plastic outdoor settings drinking from polystyrene cups. He slipped past the deserted Amusement Alley, tin trailers manned by the owner’s scowling children. People were no longer lure
d by the promise of cheap nylon animals.
Passing by the produce stalls, he spied a figure walking stiffly toward him, perhaps due to the tightness of his jeans.
‘Good day, fellow civilian, pleased to see you out among the local peasantry.’ Jim rarely greeted anyone in a manner that didn’t feel like it was taken from a B-grade movie script.
‘I have my reasons. What are you doing here?’
‘Interacting with the riffraff, moving among my inferiors.’ Jim dipped his head at two teenage girls.
‘Is Mia with you?’
He flapped a hand above his head. ‘Back thataways. Now, if you’ll kindly excuse me—’ he sniffed the sky, ‘—I’m on the hunt for meat and must therefore dispense with these organic peddlers.’
Bernard spotted Mia sitting alone at a stall. Her enigmatic face, veiled in red silk, peered over the pots of grassy herbs and crates of freshly plucked produce still swathed in dirt. She gave the appearance of a fortune-teller that was moonlighting as a greengrocer.
‘Any specials today, madam?’
She glanced at him as though they’d been in the middle of an argument and she’d paused to gather her thoughts. ‘You’re done sitting in judgement?’
Bernard assumed she was referring to the contest and not her current station. ‘All over for another year. Dreams have been quashed, hearts have been broken.’
‘You’ve had a good morning then. I wish I could say the same. Stewart and Mark have abandoned me. They went for chai and never came back.’
‘What’s with the headdress?”
‘This?’ She fingered the scarf. ‘The curls are being unruly.’
Bernard knew well enough not to engage in a conversation concerning Mia’s hair. He focused on the table between them. Dotted about the greenery were cellophane bags tied with curled ribbon. ‘The boys are branching out.’ He inspected a handwritten label. ‘Fennel and wattleseed Anzacs—sounds a bit awful.’
‘Dreadful.’ Mia rifled through the assortment of bags. ‘I thinks there’s some normal one’s here somewhere, something with nuts …’ She picked up another bag. ‘Pumpkin, date and cumin—good god.’
The Grand Tour Page 5
