'Our money,' she said again. 'There's yours . . . and then there's mine!' She produced a bigger note. 'Look how much we've got altogether.'
I wiped my eyes. 'That's a real lot,' I said. Outside a beam of sunlight shone down through the trees, full of insects and dust. An involuntary sigh rose in my chest. My spirits lifted. I'd never had so much money before.
'There's a shop near here.' Juliet waved the money. 'Now we've got to hide it while we have breakfast.'
She decided to hide it in the engine. She opened the bonnet. With manly grunts, wiping the sweat from her brow with the inside of her forearm, she wedged the money down behind some pipe or tube. She straightened up, nodding humourlessly, her hands black with grease.
We trailed up to the house and put some toast on for ourselves. Derryn had been staring out the window; now she turned and peered, as though attempting to gauge just what we were actually doing there. 'Do you want breakfast?' she asked, with a pale, wondering little laugh.
I swallowed. I was already eating toast. 'Do you mean there's something else?' I said.
'Something else?'
'I've got some toast,' I said desperately.
'You've gone really red, Viola,' Juliet said.
'Oh, yeah . . .' Derryn said. She stirred her fingers through the baby's hair. There was a dreamy silence. A cow mooed outside. I was still hungry. There were a couple of spotty bananas on the bench. When no one was looking I took one and put it down the back of my pants.
Derryn said, 'Come into my room, girls.'
We followed her into a bedroom with Indian material hung around the walls and an unmade bed. Clothes and books were scattered on the floor.
'Sit down,' Derryn said.
We sat. The banana broke apart in my trousers. I could smell it.
'Look at these pictures,' Derryn said. 'We went to India.' There were photos of Stephen, one of Derryn on a bed with her eyes closed, looking dead, the skin of her face stretched and waxy, faintly yellow. I feigned interest, desperately aware of the smashed fruit welling up out of my waistband.
'Do you want this?' Derryn asked. She was holding a piece of bright-coloured cloth. 'You'd look nice in it, Viola. With your blonde hair.'
The baby tottered past the bed with no pants on. Outside the dog barked and jumped on its chain. The baby peed on the floor.
Juliet elbowed me. We got up.
'Thank you,' I said.
Derryn looked at me. 'Oh, yeah,' she said.
Back at the car, I secretly scooped bits of banana out of my underpants and ate them; also secretly, I tried to clean my trousers with a leaf. We got the money out of the engine and set off to the shop.
The sun came out. The flax and the cabbage trees were tossing in the strong wind and the bright light struck off the leaves. Juliet walked on the gravel road in her bare feet. We cut through the paddocks and Juliet walked in the cowpats, her feet turning green.
The shop was cool and dark and musty. In the gloomy back was a shelf with toys. We bought two plastic soldiers with parachutes attached to them, and a bag of sweets. Outside we inspected the plastic men. I liked them very much. We walked back, eating lollies.
On the way back there was a tin barn and, behind it, a paddock. We sat on the fence, and I noticed there was something strange about the grass. Juliet got down to have a look. There were lots of piles of something horrible and bloody and meaty dotted about the paddock.
'It's afterbirth,' Juliet said. 'It comes out of sheep when they've had lambs.' She picked some of it up with a stick. I shrank away.
'That'll come out of you, if you have babies,' she said.
'Where are the sheep?' I asked.
'In another paddock.'
'Where are the lambs?'
'Cooked. That's what we had last night. Dead lamb!' Juliet threw a piece of afterbirth up in the air.
'Give me another lolly,' I begged.
'There's only one left.'
'Can I have it?'
Juliet said cunningly, 'It's greedy to ask for the last one.'
I looked at her.
'I tidied up the car this morning,' she said. 'You were off somewhere being lazy. And I washed your plate for you.'
'Bite the lolly in half,' I said.
'I closed the front door after you. And cleared the table. You must think people are your servants.'
'I don't!'
She held out the sweet, censorious. I took it.
'You probably don't want to be selfish all your life . . .'
I ate the lolly.
Her mouth dropped open. 'Well! I've never met such a self-absorbed little person in my life. Don't you know that people are making an effort on your behalf all the time? The sacrifices people make? Is that how you repay them?'
'You're copying,' I said, the sweet lodged, bulging, in one cheek.
'I am not!'
'That's grown-ups' words.'
'So what if they are?' she said, furious.
'What shall we do now?' I was cheerful.
Juliet sulked. Then she said, 'We'll go to the river.'
'Let's get some food first.'
She put her hands on her hips. 'Honestly. Do you ever stop thinking about eating? You're going to eat us out of house and home!'
We went to the empty house. Rummaging amid the crammed contents of the fridge, Juliet extracted a plate of meat delicately furred with blue mould, a rubber carrot, a quivering bowl of an unidentifiable jelly-like substance. A tureen of treacly brown snot had a spoon sticking out of it, its cracked handle strapped with a Band-Aid. We settled for apples, though their skins were wrinkled, and two stiff slices of bread.
Behind the dead truck there was a gap in the hedge. We climbed through, and a path wound away through the tall grass. In some places the grass was as high as our chests. It would have been nice to lie down in it and look up at the sky. But I wanted to see the river.
When we got to it I was surprised — I'd imagined something you could jump across in places, but it was a broad, swift stretch of brown water, and the trees on the far side were a long way away.
We sat on a log and ate our supplies.
Juliet said, 'Gotta go.'
'Where?' I said dreamily. I could have fallen asleep in the hot sun.
'Toilet,' Juliet said. She cleared her throat in a tough way and spat.
I sat up. 'Shall we go back?'
'I'll go behind a bush. Leaves are as good as toilet paper in the out-of-doors.' She gazed at the sky, prim.
A long pause. Juliet behind the bush. The river moving over its stones. The birds twittering. A sudden flurry of the foliage, branches snapping, the bush violently thrust to one side as if she'd overbalanced wrestling with her leaves. A snigger began rising in me, a wave of weakness, hot, quivering.
She emerged, red-faced. 'What?' she demanded. Her glare of puzzlement and annoyance — her incomprehension, her grimness — finished me off, and I shook with exquisite mirth, helpless, my eyes full of hot tears. She stalked off, muttering.
I lay in the grass, watching the clouds move across the sky. I heard her shout. Along the bank was a little beach made of mud and stones, and a dinghy pulled up. Juliet was untying it.
'Give me a hand, you gibbering idiot,' she said.
We got the knots undone and turned the boat over. The oars were underneath.
'Let's go for a row,' she said.
I looked at the water. 'I don't know,' I said.
'What are you worried about?'
I didn't want to. But I was sorry I'd laughed so much and I didn't want her to go on being angry. She steadied the boat while I got in, then she pushed off and took hold of the oars.
As soon as we were free of the bank we started to be swept downstream. Juliet put her feet against the seat and pulled hard on the oars. We were close to the bank at first, floating over weeds and stones and submerged logs. The river had seemed to move slowly; now we were on it I understood how powerful it was. Sticks and branches floated quickly by; there were w
aves, eddies, sudden whorls in the surface. The bank was getting further away. Juliet was fighting the current. I felt the tug of her rowing, then the stronger force of the river pulling the boat where it wanted us to go, towards the middle of itself.
'Where does the river end?' I asked.
'At the sea.'
The river curved around and flowed faster. We were a long way out now, and as it changed direction a strong wind hit us. Waves blew over the sides and slopped on our legs. I gasped when the cold water hit me. The river had widened out. We were being swept into the middle of an estuary.
The current was going in all directions. First we were pulled one way, then another. The boat tossed and spray broke over us. We could see the sea ahead. The wind was so strong now we were drenched every time we hit a wave.
Juliet shouted, 'Viola! The tide's going out. It's pulling us. You'll have to help me!'
I got alongside her on the seat and took one of the oars. I began to snivel. My mouth was full of water. The wind whipped our faces, blew water into our mouths. It tasted salty. At the first strokes my shoulders hurt and I stopped pulling.
Juliet slapped my arm. 'Row!' she shouted. 'You miserable, whining kid — row or I'll kill you.'
I rowed and cried, Juliet yelling in my ear. A wave broke right over us; we shouted with the shock of it. I wondered what would happen when we met the sea. There were surf waves at the beach where the river churned out into it. The sky was hot, dark, grey, with metallic curtains of rain sweeping across it.
Something changed — the wind. It started blowing in our faces. We rowed hard, and for the first time it felt as if our strokes were moving the boat. I sobbed and rowed, closing my eyes tight. The waves were wetting us with every stroke and water was pooling in the bottom of the boat. I wanted to be sick. A wave lifted and slapped us down, and Juliet fell off the seat. Her elbow was scratched and bloody. She kept turning and looking behind, and yelling at me to keep going. If I stopped she shouted in my ear. I felt the water get calmer, then the boat hitting the bottom. Juliet leapt out and pulled me onto the mudflat. I crouched down.
The wind blew stinging sand onto our legs and faces. There was nothing to tie the boat to. I looked at the wide brown sweep of water rushing to meet the sea.
Juliet put a stone on top of the boat rope.
'The tide will wash it away,' I said.
'You want to pull it all the way back?' For the first time she was close to tears.
I shook my head. I didn't know how far we'd come, but it had to be a long way.
'Whose boat is it?'
'Stephen's,' she snapped. She wiped her face angrily.
We crossed the mudflat and started along the riverbank. We walked and walked. I began to blubber again. Juliet said, 'You'd better not tell. If you tell them we went on the river I'll murder you.' She said I was 'selfish'. If I hadn't panicked we would have been fine. If I told any adults I would be dead.
I cried so much I felt light and washed out. I trudged behind her, my eyes fixed on her wet shirt. I thought we must have missed the path; at one point I insisted I must lie down but Juliet lashed me on with words. When I slowed she dragged me. We got back to the path in the end.
We walked through the long grass to the gap in the hedge. Juliet signalled to me to be quiet. She poked her head through, making sure we wouldn't be seen. We stumbled down to the car.
She turned on the stereo. I got changed, and my clothes seemed small and fussy, all pleats and buttons and zips. Juliet climbed out and draped my wet things on the bonnet.
I wound down the window. She'd hung my underpants on the radio aerial.
'I'm still having to do everything for you,' she said.
'It's raining,' I pointed out, dully.
She stood out in the rain and gave me a spiel about gratitude. About how you have to appreciate what people do for you. How people are making an effort for you all the time. I remember thinking that adults must have said those things to her a lot. I looked over at the house. A solitary hen pecked near the front door. There was no one around.
She took out the toys we'd bought. 'Tomorrow we'll go to the shop and buy two more, shall we?'
We lay listening to the radio, the doors closed to keep out the rain. It was hot and fuggy. I dozed. Later we went up to the house.
Derryn opened the front door, the baby on her hip. 'Want some dinner?' she said.
'What are we having?' Juliet asked in an innocent voice.
'Oh . . . lamb? Yeah.' Derryn drifted into the kitchen.
'Remember,' Juliet said, 'if you tell I'll kill you.' She gave me a shove.
I had trouble eating dinner because I was thinking about the sheep losing their lambs when they gave birth, and how their afterbirth got left all over the field. Juliet fixed me with intent, warning stares.
After that, Derryn and Stephen disappeared and we took the torch and went down to the car. Too tired to watch Stephen smoking in the bath, we lay listening to the possums. Tomorrow, Juliet said, we could swim in the surf. And after that, she told me, as I was drifting away into dreams of the powerful, whirling river, she had something really scary to show me in the barn.
***
That was more than ten years ago. I remember the scene just before we left. Stephen didn't use the dinghy much — he did his fishing on a big sea-going boat — but he'd gone down to the river and found it gone. I remember him arguing with Derryn. He was trying to get her to care about it. He said, 'I can't buy another one. We haven't got any money.' He stressed the word 'money' sarcastically — probably it was a concept she refused or was unable to understand. I remember when he called us in and asked if we knew anything about it. Juliet said, 'What boat?' and pinched me so hard that I had a purple bruise afterwards. I remember how I repeated, grinning woodenly, 'What boat?' and the way Stephen turned away with a final, disgusted shrug, giving up on us all.
I never went back there. I'm a student now. I've got myself a temporary job setting up computer programs in a big medical practice. And last week Juliet turned up to see the gynaecologist I work for, Dr Lampton. I hadn't seen her in a long time; she lives in a small country town down south. She'd been given a referral to see a city specialist.
I sat down next to her in the waiting room. She was the same tough old Juliet — short hair, no makeup, dressed in shapeless, mannish clothes. She was wary at first, embarrassed perhaps by the fact of her appointment, as if she feared I might have access to her file. 'I hate doctors,' she said dismissively, looking away. But she told me about Stephen and Derryn, who had split up — Derryn had wanted to stay in the country, but he couldn't stand it any more. I wanted to say I'd never told anyone about how we'd lost his boat, but in the end I didn't mention it. She looked sideways at my dress and my painted nails with her old scornful eye.
When her name was called she flinched, then gave me a quick nod, raising her chin with a scoffing look, like a boy dismissing a feeble girl. She always acted tougher than I was, but I'm not so sure. There are different ways of being tough. She doesn't know what I'm like, not really.
Anyway, there was no need to mention the boat, because she knew I'd never told. I'm not a snitch, after all.
I've never got anyone into trouble in my life.
parallel universe
I was standing outside the house looking in. I could see my girlfriend, Lee, walking from the sitting room to the kitchen and back again. She was talking on the phone. I slapped my palm against the glass. She looked at me and walked out of the room. It was a warm, rainy night. I sat down on a deckchair and looked at the garden, spiky palm trees and bushes covered with sticky, heavily scented flowers. A car droned by on the road. I put my head in my hands. I rubbed my hand over the bald spot that was starting on my scalp. I had the idea I might take the dog for a run until things calmed down, but I was wearing jeans and the wrong shoes.
I sat for another ten minutes. The front door opened and Lee came out wearing a jacket and carrying a bag. She had her keys in her han
d.
I thought she was going to shut the door. I got up and ran for it. She jumped back, as if I was going to attack her. She was all melodrama. I got hold of the door. She looked at me, her face pale and pinched. Her eyes were red.
'You're a bastard,' she said.
I shrugged. I felt better hanging on to the door.
'I'm going,' Lee said.
I looked at her. Her hair was straggly. Her coat was open and one of her shirt buttons was done up wrong.
'Give me your key,' I said.
Her eyes filled with tears. 'You are a bastard.'
I just kept hanging on to the door. I realised how angry it had made me, being locked out of my own house. The house I leased, anyway. It was my name on the rent papers. She stood there pretending to arrange something in her bag. She was tiny and slim, with a runner's frame. She looked about twelve years old. I thought, one minute you've locked me out and you're screaming down the phone about me to God knows who, now you're giving me that face. As if I'm the cruellest man in the world.
She dropped her purse and stamped her foot. Her shoulders shook. This was the moment, she was signalling, that I should take her in my arms and pull her gently inside and tell her I couldn't live without her. And then, my face covered with her tears, we would make love. Etcetera. This was the way it had always worked.
I said, 'Well. What are you waiting for?'
She let out a little wail. She looked like she was going to run back into the house.
'Off you go, then,' I said. It was like a dream. I held out my hand. 'Give me the key.'
Her last look at me was so full of pain that it pulled some strange chord in my head. She wrenched the house key off the ring, threw it at me and ran down the drive to her little Daihatsu. I watched her drive away. I went inside. I put the key on my own keyring. I sat down. The dog, my old black Lab, heaved himself up beside me, groaned, and put his snout on my knee, commiserating.
I was thinking about that last wounded look of Lee's; the way it had struck me, like a sound in my head. I wondered about it. I supposed I'd had a feeling of cruelty. Why would I be cruel to little Lee? We'd had angry scenes before, and it had always ended happily enough. Usually I'd been insensitive or not listened, or not praised her hair or her clothes. But this time I didn't take her in my arms and say sorry. It had to do with what she'd said to me.
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