White Time

by Margo Lanagan

  ‘I have not Redressed a Balance.’ He looked up at us and shrugged. ‘I have created a worse Imbalance. I have committed an Interference.’

  ‘Can nothing be done?’ I said. ‘Can we not pop over to Leesah’s place and balance her Passion with his?’

  Motto shook his head vehemently. ‘We must touch nothing. Procedure says. We must go home and report, and let higher ones than us determine whether anything can be done.’

  ‘Thank gods,’ said Hat, rolling on the last spot fire. ‘Let’s go.’

  Motto caught and quenched my light-globe in the Sphere’s velvet. In the distance, Nawbair’s teeming head was bent over some work on the table.

  We hooked ourselves together and popped – and landed in a blaze of Love-light, with the ground crackling under us.

  ‘Fuck me over!’

  ‘It’s the Map!’ I cried. ‘I stickied it for our return, remember?’

  We all tried to roll different ways; Hat prevailed in the end.

  ‘Jove take me, look at that!’ said Snap.

  The mound of Love was enormous. It was still streaming towards Nawbair’s name, but I could only see that if I put up my hand to block out the white flare of Passion howling the other way.

  ‘Don’t unhook!’ I said. ‘We will all pop straight on.’

  ‘No.’ Motto unhooked himself. ‘I must bring this.’

  ‘But we must bring nothing!’ I cried. ‘We were expressly told—’

  ‘We must show the High Ones what we have done.’ And he stamped through the Love-mound, making a crease in the Map. Little squirts of Love-light came out as he folded the paper flat.

  ‘It’s a monster you’ve made,’ said Snap in fearful wonder.

  ‘You don’t need to tell me,’ gloomed Motto. He backed up to us with the bulky Map in his arms, and we helped hook him in.

  ‘One last pop, Hat, and then you can eat,’ I said.

  ‘Urgh,’ he said. ‘Don’t talk about it.’

  We closed our eyes and popped.

  It was almost dawn. Norbert Pendle, a thick wad of love letter tucked into his shirt, crouched in the shrubbery in front of Lisa Tully’s house. Which window was hers? He thought he’d go mad, not knowing. When he did find out, he’d climb up to it every night. He’d leave gifts on the sill – roses, letters, beautiful feathers; he’d save up his pocket money and buy her a ring. Or he’d climb in!, and just sit by her bed and watch her sleeping, watch her beautiful sleeping face.

  He laughed aloud. Beautiful? Until that dream last night, he hadn’t noticed her beauty, hadn’t ever cast her a second look. He hated his own stupidity; he growled and scratched savagely at the rash on his cheekbone as if to punish himself. But now he knew: Lisa Tully was beautiful, outside and in – strangely graceful, she was, deceptively quiet, quite inappropriately modest. The eczema blooming on the insides of her elbows showed there was passion trapped inside her, a high intelligence bursting to free itself. He, Norbert Pendle, would be the one to release it. He knew this more clearly than he’d ever known anything.

  Yesterday’s heat and pollution still lay across the suburbs, a blanket that couldn’t be kicked off. A milkfloat turned into Lisa’s street and laboured up the hill, its load giving off a chilled, glassy rattle. Two bushes away, a bird protested weakly against the coming of day. Norbert noticed nothing; he hugged his knees in a fever of Love, shivering and burning with it. He had never been so happy.

  WELCOME

  BLUE

  This guy Quaid, he seems OK. He hasn’t belted me yet, or done anything creepy. Last night he just said, ‘Early start tomorrow’, and this morning, ‘Up you get, Eleanor’. Which was good – it’s best when they’ve got something for you to do besides sit around wishing you weren’t here. That’s why kids like me go off the rails – from boredom more than anything else.

  The sky’s getting light now, but down here it’s still dark. Skinny gum trees rush out of the dark and then slide off sideways out of the Four-By utility’s headlights.

  Then there’s a gate across the road. ‘Get that, would you?’ Quaid says. I figure out the door-catch and hop out, nervous. I don’t know why – like, this’s such a big test? It means unlooping some chain and walking the gate wide open. It means waiting while he drives through, with the cold chewing on my face. It means walking the gate closed and re-hooking the chain. There, that wasn’t too much of a stretch, was it?

  Nothing’s said when I hop back in the cab. No ‘positive reinforcement’, no little silver bows. This isn’t a silver-bow-type guy. I don’t know what kind of guy he is, besides old.

  We bowl along. At least the road’s straighter now and I can stop having to hold down Mrs Quaid’s big, eggy breakfast. But it’s weird to be up so early. I didn’t sleep all that well – never do, first night somewhere new. Especially somewhere so neat, in a room on my own, a room full of girl things left over from their daughter – who’s got daughters herself now, and sons, two of each, Mrs Quaid told me. Not that I asked. I never ask. If they don’t ask about me, I don’t ask about them – that’s my policy.

  We come around a bend and the big main street of town is all lit up. There’s a banner hanging slack under every street lamp: WELCOME! WELCOME! on both sides of the road. I turn around to look out the back at their other sides – and they say WELCOME! WELCOME! too, left and right, all the way back down the street.

  ‘Huh! Nice of everybody,’ I joke. ‘The big welcome.’

  Quaid doesn’t say anything – he’s gunning it, squinting out past the lights.

  We fly past the Town Hall. Boy, is it tizzed up. WELCOME! it shouts, to no one. The pillars out front are all wound around with flowers; there are streamers and balloons and fancy painted wooden borders dressing up the windows. ‘Who’s coming, the Queen?’

  Quaid says nothing.

  Then I notice a lot of the houses are decorated, too. Some people have gone the whole hog and streamered up their front fences and verandas and that; others have just got a thing like a pale Christmas wreath on the gate or the front door. It’s hard to get a proper look at one as we whizz by, but they seem to be made of paper flowers, with a white ribbon across the middle, with gold writing on it.

  We go on out of town. Everything’s dark and normal for a while, just those white posts with the little reflectors flicking by, white to the left, red to the right. Then we pass a turn-off with a sign, SHOWGROUND, and I can see the showground off to the right, because the whole thing’s brighter than daylight from these humungous blazing floodlights.

  ‘What’s going on there?’ The place is crawling. The car park’s full and a nearby field is stuffed with cars, too. There are tents. There are a couple of grandstands full of people, and down on the empty oval people are crowding too, hundreds of them. ‘What is it, a circus?’

  Quaid snorts. ‘Could say that.’ He’s not even looking.

  ‘Funny time to hold it,’ I say suspiciously. ‘Before sunrise?’ He doesn’t move or answer.

  Well, great. I’m probably missing the only interesting thing to happen around here this decade. That’d be right.

  I start to be able to see things out the window: bitten-down fields, sheep that look like rocks, rocks that look like sheep, a pale little skinny lamb every now and again. Cold-looking dams, their banks worn bare by sheep hooves, sad-looking trees hanging over them, dark houses with empty carports beside. This’s so not my kind of place. I don’t know how to start thinking about how to act here.

  Quaid slows, and turns off the road. A gate. We sit there a moment before I realize I’m supposed to open it.

  It’s still cold. In a clump of trees some birds are making quiet squarkling noises.

  I hop back into the Four-By and we jounce across an empty field – another gate. Just past it there’s a metal shed with a wide veranda along the back, and behind the shed is Quaid’s crop.

  ‘Oh,’ I say as he gets out of the cab. ‘These were all through the town.’

  ‘No, they weren’t.’ He
slams the door.

  I get out and go around the cab. ‘Yeah, they were – on everyone’s doors, didn’t you see?’

  ‘Not these ones.’

  I follow him to the shed. ‘No, not these ones. This kind of flower, is what I meant.’

  He rolls up the shed door. Inside there’s a stack of boxes, long, flat and narrow. Beside them, brown packets – Quaid rips open the top one, pulls out a piece of purple tissue paper and lays it in a box. ‘Come and I’ll show you the drill.’ On the way out he takes down one of a few big hook-ended knives by the door. He puts the box down by the front row of crop, which is lit up by the Four-By’s lights.

  ‘You want about this much stem,’ he says. ‘Take orf about five at a time – ‘bout that thick, you want the blooms. Knife away from you, every time, see? Then, into the box – gently. Then another five – pack the flowers the other end … and that’s your box full. See them trolleys? You fill ’em up with the empty boxes, all open, all lined, and pull ’em along the rows with you.’

  It isn’t hard, just boring. The flowers look nice, though they don’t have a smell. Probably just as well, ’cause there’s a heck of a lot of them; it might be a bit much on a full stomach. But it doesn’t hurt, and I don’t stuff up, and Old Man Quaid leaves me alone, which is more than I can say for some bosses I’ve had. He comes by and checks a few boxes, and goes off again without swearing at me. He’s not one of those men who has to show he’s the boss all the time. He works unbelievably fast; I get faster than I was at the start, but nowhere near as fast as him. He doesn’t seem to be hurrying, but the rows empty behind him, the boxes stack up.

  As it gets lighter, some traffic comes by. There’s an old bus, crammed with people singing. A pale-purple flag flies out behind it, and mauve and white streamers are trailing out the windows. When the passengers see us they start whooping and calling out. Hands stick out the windows and wave. Quaid eases his back and watches them go by, but he doesn’t wave back, or smile, or anything. So neither do I.

  On we work. It’s so quiet. I can hear Quaid breathing half a field away; I can hear his knife slicing, shlook!, through the stalks, as if he was right next to me.

  Then a ute comes by, a Four-By like Quaid’s only newer, freshly resprayed. Resprayed pale purple, with groovy white transfers skedaddling up the side of the cab. It slows down. The white-shirted driver hooks his arm out the window and grins.

  ‘Hey, Quaid! Wanna lift inna town?’

  I look down the row. Quaid’s working away as if he didn’t hear a word.

  ‘Who’s ‘is girlfriend?’ says some idiot in the cab.

  ‘Hey, Quaid! Who’s ya girlfriend?’ The driver looks me up and down. I glare back, in between cutting two fives of flowers.

  There’s a burst of laughter from the ute. ‘Well, you’ll miss the biggest thing ever happened here, mate!’ the man shouts to Quaid, and they drive off.

  Almost straight away I hear another car in the distance. This one’s long and low and black. It slows down as it goes past, then stops, and backs up. The back windows are dark so you can’t see in.

  ‘Oh, far out,’ I mutter. But this driver sits looking straight ahead. He wears a black hat with a shiny peak to it, like some sort of army officer, and black leather gloves.

  ‘Girl? Excuse me, girl!’

  A woman’s getting out of the back. She’s wearing a straight, elegant dress, knee-length, mauve, and strappy mauve high-heel sandals. She totters across the road and makes a girly little hop across the ditch.

  ‘I was just wondering if I might have some of your flowers,’ she says. ‘Just what you have there would be marvellous.’

  She seems so sure of herself that I take a step towards her. Then I pause. ‘They’re not mine,’ I say. ‘You’ll have to ask the boss.’ Who’s cutting and packing with his back to us.

  ‘Oh, must I?’ I stare back at her and her face turns cranky. ‘Go on, then – fetch him over.’

  Quaid seems to be stubbornly not turning round to see me as I step through the rows of chopped stems. ‘Um … Mr Quaid?’ I say when I think he must be able to hear me. He doesn’t respond. Maybe he’s a bit deaf, being so old?

  I stand beside him feeling as if I’m talking to myself. ‘There’s a lady there … wants to know if she can have a five of flowers …’

  He shakes his head, just the tiniest shake.

  ‘No?’

  He goes on working. Six fives lie down in the boxes in the few seconds I wait.

  I take a deep breath. ‘OK.’ I turn and go back over the chopped rows.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say to the mauve lady. ‘He says no.’

  ‘But you’ve got millions here! You can spare five! Just – those ones in your hand will be gorgeous. Just pass them over!’

  ‘I have to do what he says. And he’ll see. They’re his flowers. I can’t—’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake – Mr Quaid!’ she cries, making me jump. ‘Could I have a word with you!’

  Quaid turns as if he’s only just realized she’s there. He takes his time coming over – all of a sudden he’s old-codgerish, pausing to hook out a weed and checking the ground in front of every footfall.

  ‘Mrs Allan,’ he says when he’s still a fair way off.

  ‘What a gorgeous crop you have this year!’ She’s pretty good with the smile; she looks really admiring.

  ‘Oh, it’ll pay for some bad years, I reckon.’ His voice sounds very soft and far away after hers.

  ‘I was wondering if you could spare me just the tiniest bunch for today’s celebrations – they’re so suitable for a welcoming!’

  Even from here, I can see that Quaid’s eyes look like little steel buttons.

  The silly cow gushes on, ‘Exactly the shade! And so fresh and lovely looking.’ Her voice shakes a little at the end.

  Quaid lets the sound hang there for about a minute. ‘Well, I’ve heard Henny Barbier’s grown quite a few for today’s purposes. And they’re not difficult to grow in a home garden. You should have your man Thrushton put in a few in a nice sunny place with a bit of rich soil, bit of compost …’

  ‘Oh, but – well, I would have, but I was in Milan when it was time to be doing that sort of thing, you see.’

  ‘There is the telephone, Mrs Allan, and the letter post, and these days – Mr Allan’s got a computer, hasn’t he? I hear these computers can talk to each other, across the world.’

  ‘Call it an oversight,’ she begs, clutching the barbed wire. Ooh, her fingernails are frosted mauve, and lo-ong. Perfect. Her lips are mauve, her stockings, her eye frost! She’s so coated, so finished off. She looks really weird standing next to the weathered fence post. ‘Just three little stalks, Mr Quaid. Surely that won’t impoverish you? Look, I can pay you! I’d be happy to pay you! How would that be?’ She makes to dart back over the ditch.

  Quaid’s flat voice stops her. ‘And the minute you do that, I’ll have a roadside stall on my hands, and this staff making change when she could be cutting.’

  Ooh. ‘This staff’ means me. My chin goes up. Yeah, so put that in your pipe, lady.

  ‘But I won’t tell a soul, I promise—’

  ‘It won’t make a difference; they’ll know these are Quaid’s blooms. People’ve been passing ’em for weeks. Now you take yourself and your flash car orf from here. I never wanted any of these blooms down there at today’s nonsense and I don’t want it now.’

  Her face darkens so that her mauvish make-up sits on it like maybe a dust, or some kind of thin fur. She turns back and clutches the spiky top of the fence post. ‘It may be nonsense to you, Mr Quaid, but it’s other people’s beliefs, their deepest, most heartfelt beliefs, that you’re dismissing so lightly.’

  ‘Well, they’re welcome to ’em, is all I can say, ma’am. Come on, Eleanor, let’s get on with it.’

  ‘You’re a very cold man, Mr Quaid.’ She’s going to cry! ‘When the gods come down to our little community today, I hope they spare you a glance, up here on your ow
n, worshipping your money, withholding your welcome. I hope their hearts are bigger than yours!’

  He’s not even really looking at her. ‘You get as old as me, Mrs Allan, you realize everyone’s heart’s pretty much the same size.’

  And he turns away and goes back down the field. I take a last glimpse of loony Mrs Allan, her face red, her shoulders hunched, and I put my handful of flowers in their box. I’m glad I’m me and not the guy in her car; I’m glad I’m not her staff.

  I cut and pack and trolley and stack boxes into cartons. The sun comes up over the hill; it brings the faint smell of sap out of the chopped stalks. The air’s so fresh, the sun’s so bright – there’s a breeze, though, so I never get hot, even though my whole body is moving, bending, steering the trolley. It’s OK, I realize. If I did this work all day every day, it might be OK for a while.

  There’s quite a lot of traffic at midmorning, car-loads and bus-loads heading into town. Some are all purple and white, others just ordinary. No one else stops and tries to buy flowers, although everyone seems to look very hard at them as they swish by.

  Towards noon, this cool little red and white aeroplane comes and lands in the empty field next to the crop, and collects all the boxes of flowers we’ve picked.

  ‘Where’s he taking them?’ I ask Quaid, watching the plane soar away again.

  ‘Airport in the city. Then Japan. Japan and California, mostly.’

  ‘Wow!’ I look at the crop with new eyes. ‘I never thought these would be for … for Japanese and Californian people.’

  ‘Makes a difference, does it?’ says Quaid mildly. ‘May as well have a break now, eh. Then we’ll get back to it.’

  I follow him to the veranda. The field seems really quiet after the plane. There are bird calls and insect shrills, but there are no engines, no people, no music – only a thick, felty silence underneath all the little noises.

  Quaid opens the esky. There’s bread and cheese, some kind of salami, big green pickles. There’s chilled fruit, and freezing-cold water to drink. I’m in heaven, sitting on an upturned milk crate eating that lunch, outside but in the shade, covered in cool sweat. I’ll get tired of it one day, maybe, but right now it’s all new and good.