Under the Influence

by Jacqueline Lunn

  ‘Okay, well I get another turn because Evie is a tad delicate and may be raiding Bill’s bathroom later for razor blades.’ The boys laughed. ‘I dare Sarah to kiss Rob. With tongue.’

  There were a few moments of hesitation and sips of the last of the sherry and they did. Eve put her knees up to her chest and watched on, digging her toes into the dirt, making lines. Every configuration of kissing was then hit upon. Rob and Meg, Tom and Sarah, Fraser and Rebecca, Rebecca and Tom. Pat waited impatiently and was rewarded with a kiss from Meg, and the circle of kissing continued. Rebecca dared Fraser to kiss Sarah, and he did, and then he turned to Rebecca and wiped his mouth like he had drunk poison. Kissing was the missing piece of the game and it had just been found. It took up the next ten minutes.

  Meg had found some gin, and she took a swig before passing it around. Eve declined when the gin was offered to her in a failed attempt to show Meg she was upset that she hadn’t left the game in protest with her twenty minutes ago.

  ‘I’ve got one,’ Fraser said, with Rebecca now nuzzled in his lap like a cat. ‘Rebecca kiss Meg. With tongue.’

  The boys chortled like old men in a gentleman’s club who were deliberately asking the waitress to lean over and clean up a spot on their table so they could look down her cleavage.

  ‘Fraser,’ – Rebecca hit him weakly with her hand – ‘we’re not lesos.’

  ‘It’s the dare. C’mon, Meg, or are you already taken?’ Fraser asked, throwing a stone at Eve, who had her head down, looking at her feet.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Rebecca said, standing up.

  ‘Meg, you going to pike?’

  ‘Don’t care,’ Meg said, standing up and walking to Rebecca.

  She leant towards her and kissed her. They opened their mouths, and Rebecca reached out and grabbed Meg’s hands, holding them and pulling her closer. Meg went to pull away and Rebecca grabbed the back of her head with one hand and kissed her hard. When they pulled apart, Rebecca leant in and licked Meg slowly around her lips.

  The boys were staring and speechless, and Eve and Sarah were the ones who noticed it was Rebecca who stopped holding hands first.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Out of the corner of her eye, Eve could see Meg still asleep, face down, in the bed across from her. She was breathing heavily, her back rising up and down rhythmically, like the sea. Eve was lucky. She had vomited last night before she went to bed and then had a glass of water, brushed her teeth and actually put pyjamas on. After her purge, she herded everyone into bed and was the one who said goodnight to Bill, explaining that the girls were tired and had fallen asleep. He wished her sweet dreams and wandered up the hallway to his bedroom, where she saw the bedside light go on, and she was lucid enough to breathe a sigh of relief.

  Meg lay in a singlet with one arm and one leg dangling off the side of the bed, her mouth open. A fly sometimes landed on her top lip and inspected the contents of her saliva, obviously finding it tasty.

  Fresh air and water. Eve opened the bedroom window as far as she could; it was jammed, and she pushed out hard. She padded from the kitchen with a glass of water, which she placed beside Meg’s bed. She looked in on Sarah and Rebecca’s room. They were still asleep, sheets twisted around their feet, arms splayed out above their heads, their hands trying to utilise the cool of the double-brick wall.

  I need to get everyone up and ready before Bill comes back for lunch. It was 11 am. Bill would be suspicious if they were all still asleep and the place smelt stale and used.

  ‘Meg, Meg,’ Eve said, gently shaking her back. Meg groaned and tried to swat Eve’s hand away. Eve kept at her. ‘Meg, Meg, you need to get up and have a shower, before your dad comes back.’

  Meg remained motionless, and then suddenly her entire body reared up like a startled horse and a combination of Scotch, sherry, Baileys, beer, gin and bile splattered across the wooden floor, hitting the edge of the throw rug.

  ‘Shit,’ Meg said, lying back down.

  Eve ran to the laundry, found a bucket and put it beside the bed. ‘It’s okay.’ Eve sat on the edge of the single bed and combed her fingers through Meg’s hair.

  ‘That’s nice. You always calm me down, Eve.’

  Meg tried to move and vomited again. ‘I’m going to stop vomiting. I’m listening to that piece in my head you played last week in assembly. The one you’ve been practising for months. What’s it called again?’

  Meg would often go down to the music room after school and open her textbooks on the navy carpet, lie on her stomach and do her homework as Eve sat on her chair with her cello between her legs, practising. Sometimes, Eve would stop to swear or lean into her music stand and squint at a note on the page, tapping the offending black ink with the tip of her bow, trying to make it be kind to her. Once or twice in a practice session, she would stamp her feet on the ground when she finally nailed a tricky bar. Sometimes, too, Meg would stop what she was doing – a pen in her mouth, her head tilted, completely still – say nothing and listen. Then she would go back to physics or biology or English, her hand scribbling words and numbers across the page, her ankles crossed in the air behind her. Eve worried she was playing too loudly for Meg.

  ‘No, Eve,’ Meg would answer on their walk back up to the dormitory before the dinner bell told them how their next hour was destined to be spent. ‘The music helps me get things right.’

  Eve shooed a noisy fly away from the wooden bedhead and pushed a clump of sticky hair away from Meg’s eyes.

  ‘“Air on the G String”? It’s a popular one.’

  ‘“Air on the G String”,’ Meg repeated, flat on her back. ‘God, it’s sad. Who wrote that piece?’ Meg knew by now not to ask ‘Who wrote that song?’.

  ‘Bach. You know he had twenty kids by two wives?’

  ‘Bach was a clever, busy man.’ Meg let her head fall back on the pillow. ‘It’s on repeat play in my head. It helps. It’s still sad, though. I don’t know why I like it so much.’

  ‘I think it’s graceful. It has grace and melancholy. It’s one of the ones that take you somewhere.’ Eve picked up the bucket and pulled a face. ‘Maybe try getting up again in ten.’

  Meg closed her eyes. Eve knew what Meg was doing and left her to it.

  When Eve returned fifteen minutes later, as soon as she entered the room she heard a hoarse voice from the corner. ‘I’m good.’

  Meg stood up and marched into the bathroom, with Eve trailing behind.

  ‘I’ll be right, Eve.’ She gripped the sink. ‘I just need a shower and some toast and I’ll be right.’

  Eve helped Meg out of her clothes and cleaned up the bedroom while Meg finished off her shower with cold water and a few dry retches. In another fifteen minutes, they were sitting at the kitchen table, nibbling on toast and drinking black tea, Meg’s hands shaking as she put the mug to her lips. It wasn’t the right moment for Eve to ask about last night.

  ‘That was rough,’ Meg said, wrapped in a towel, her knees up at the table.

  Sarah stumbled into the kitchen and propped herself up at the counter, putting two slices of bread in the toaster. Her long, grey T-shirt clung to her body but Sarah lacked the clarity to itemise her physical failings and try to cover them this morning. ‘I think the Baileys was a mistake.’

  ‘I think seeing Pat’s pimply bum was a mistake,’ Meg added.

  Knees up at the table, they crunched and sipped and gingerly worked out a schedule so they had a chance to appear human by the time Bill walked in for some fish fingers and salad for lunch. Their euphoria at getting away with it was beginning to work magic on their physical states.

  Eve listened out for any Rebecca movement coming from down the hall. She couldn’t hear footsteps or the toilet flushing or the creak of taps being turned on, so she participated in a conversation around the table about the evening’s happenings or supposed happenings, or what-if-they-did-it-again happenings. She attempted to manoeuvre the conversation around to Rebecca’s truth-or-dare questions, her trut
h-or-dare questions, why was it her again, why Rebecca had chosen her, but no one seemed capable of following a thread of conversation for more than a minute. It was as though it had never happened. Eve’s humiliation never happened. Under the table, Eve pulled her shorts away from her legs and let her fingers trace around the fine, puckered lines at the top of her thighs.

  ‘I’m just going to air our room and spray some perfume around. It stinks,’ Sarah said, departing the kitchen with half a piece of toast in her hand.

  ‘Can you wake up Rebecca?’ Meg asked. ‘She should clean up and have something to eat before Dad gets back.’

  ‘Speak of the devil,’ Rebecca said, both arms gripping the doorframe, her body leaning forwards to take a bow. ‘Morning, ladies.’

  Rebecca was showered and fresh. Her sweetness could be smelt from the kitchen table.

  ‘How come you’re so bright?’ Sarah asked, swallowing the end of her toast.

  ‘I took a leaf out of Eve’s book and did my throwing-up last night. Got it all out of my system. You may pretend otherwise, but you are such a smart cookie, Eve.’ Rebecca ruffled Eve’s hair like she was a four-year-old and then dropped two pieces of bread into the toaster.

  ‘So, what are we going to do today? It’s our last full day.’ Rebecca spun around from where she was buttering her toast on the kitchen counter and stabbed her knife in the air for emphasis. ‘Shall we knit? Bake cookies? Look at more sheep’s arseholes? Take a quick ride? Visit the boys? We could all ride there.’

  ‘It’s too far to the boys’ place. Just go for a ride,’ Meg said, before walking to the sink to rinse her plate.

  Riding with Rebecca today would be a frustrating exercise in stopping and starting, waiting and talking about nothing. On Saturday, they had taken a ride across the paddocks in the afternoon, and they seemed to spend the whole time pulling up and waiting under a gum tree for Rebecca and Sarah. The crab holes and long grass, the uneven earth, the sudden rocky terrain were a different game than dressage at Rebecca and Sarah’s Sunday-morning Forest Hills pony club. Eve thought they must be very skilled at plaiting a horse’s mane.

  ‘Why don’t we stay here, watch some videos and cook something special for Bill?’ Sarah suggested. ‘We could make a few meals to put in the freezer.’

  ‘Sarah, I don’t want to spend the day licking bowls like a dog,’ Rebecca said flatly. ‘Why don’t you stay here with Eve and cook up a storm, and Meg and I will go for a ride?’

  But Meg was more interested in tucking her faded blue towel around her chest than in the conversation, and Sarah was hurriedly putting the lid back on the strawberry jam.

  ‘If you’re desperate to do something, I’ll go with you,’ Eve said, although she had no idea why.

  ‘I’ll go too,’ Sarah followed.

  ‘Well, that’s good. There’s enough of you so I don’t have to go,’ said Meg. ‘I feel like crap. Anyway, I need to clean up around here, put some washing on and stuff for dad, fix up the chooks.’

  Rebecca smiled and raised her eyebrows towards Eve and Sarah.

  Feet moved quickly across the lino kitchen floor. The kitchen table was wiped clean, plates put in the dishwasher, bread in the bread bin. After a few body clashes in the doorway, everyone retreated down the shadows of the hallway to prepare to put on a show for Bill.

  When Bill had finished recounting the day he’d mixed up the wheat in the oats silo and caused the structure to bow and collapse, Rebecca was the only one still looking in his direction. She touched his dry, brown forearm and exclaimed she had no idea that wheat was heavier than oats. When Rebecca rested her hand there, Eve knocked her knife to the floor. Bill moved his arm gently away from Rebecca’s fingers. Eve looked at Meg, who was transfixed on the clock in the corner, wondering how much longer she had to stifle her burps.

  When Bill left to ‘check on a few things’, Rebecca led the goodbyes, standing up and following him into the laundry, beside the row of dirty shoes, her hand leaning on the tub. She asked him what the weather would be like this afternoon, her head tilted just like it was the night before with Fraser.

  ‘They always say the best way to predict the weather is to look outside. So I’ll say it’s going to be dry and hot. Maybe I’m a genius,’ he called as he put his hat on and left via the screen door.

  Meg put her boots on in the laundry. Her head was down, busy, thinking about the chooks and the chores and the rooster called El Diablo, which she hated.

  ‘Well, off you guys go,’ Meg said. ‘You don’t need me to hold your hand.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  A male voice with the soured quarter of an upper-class English accent was on the TV talking about Palestine and Israel. The blinds had been pulled in the lounge room, turning it into a cave hiding a collection of treasures. On the coffee table stood three wooden elephants from Bill and Meg’s holiday to Thailand. Next to them sat a tower of twelve silver coasters that Bill had won at the bowling club ten years ago. On the corner table, an ornate lamp, switched off, was flanked by a pile of books. Behind the ruby couch stood a collection of photographs in odd-shaped frames on a piano that hadn’t been opened for twenty years. One frame had red, drooping and decaying pompoms around a sepia picture of Meg’s mum as a teenager in a mini-dress. Another was gold and gilt edged, housing a long-dead relative holding an axe and sporting a well-kept moustache.

  Meg was asleep on the couch. Eve knelt beside her and tapped her on the shoulder. Sarah stood by the coffee table, her shins digging into its side. She was biting her bottom lip.

  ‘I should get up,’ Meg croaked, her face buried in the side of the couch. ‘How was the ride?’

  ‘Meg? Rebecca wouldn’t come back with us.’

  It took a while to register, and then Meg turned her head to where Eve sat on the floor next to her. ‘Where is she?’ Meg asked, her olive skin and long, brown hair running like treacle into the softness of the ruby couch.

  ‘She wouldn’t come back with us,’ Eve repeated.

  ‘She wanted to ride to the Williams’ property. She wouldn’t come back.’

  Meg sat upright, leaving all that ruby behind. ‘She’s an idiot. It’s too far. She’ll work it out. I’ll get Senator and let’s have a look.’

  ‘She’s on Senator.’

  ‘What?’ Meg searched the room, trying to comprehend. Dust danced around the light that framed the closed blinds. Eve stood in front of her, straight and tall, Sarah by the coffee table looking like she needed to go to the toilet. ‘Why didn’t she take Emma? She’s lazy, wants to eat all the time. She was happy on her last time. Why would she bloody take Senator?’

  Senator was temperamental, and that was being kind. He was the only horse in the world who preferred snakes to people. Meg had learnt early how to handle him, and even then she would only take him out if she was with her dad or riding in a group.

  ‘We better go,’ Meg said, heading for the back door.

  In single file, Sarah followed Eve and Eve followed Meg, Meg talking to herself, mumbling under her breath, kicking stones as she walked. Past the shed, halfway to the stables, Sarah stopped and said to their backs, ‘Maybe I should wait here.’

  Meg kept moving, and it was Eve who turned to face Sarah and tell her it was a good idea.

  When Meg and Eve set out, both straight-backed and tall in the saddle, into the glare and gold of the western sun, Meg spoke. ‘Don’t worry. She’ll be fine. She won’t be far.’

  For two hours, they rode in single file, searching for a dot that moved or a figure in the distance that looked like a horse and rider, sweeping the horizon, the foreground, staring into the glare. Eve didn’t mention that Rebecca had spent the whole walk to the stables talking about their next holiday, that maybe they should all go to Sarah’s beach house in June. As the sun began to fall and creep behind the odd tree and across the earth, Eve didn’t tell Meg that she saddled up Senator and handed Rebecca the reins as though she was handing her a book on the solar system. That Sarah watc
hed the handover, kissing Amber on the neck, as she did it. She didn’t tell Meg that, before they had even gone two kilometres, Rebecca said she wondered why it took Meg and Tom so long to get the alcohol and didn’t Meg turn into a lemon tart when she drank. Eve didn’t tell Meg that both she and Sarah nodded as they moved carefully through the scrub.

  When Meg turned to Eve and shook her head, looking distressed, dirt running down her cheeks, Eve didn’t say that Rebecca asked twice to swap Senator while they were riding. He had a mind of his own, Rebecca said. Eve yelled too, when Meg called Rebecca’s name, again and again into the gold. Eve didn’t tell Meg that when Rebecca asked where Fraser’s property was, her perfect, full lips forming perfect ‘o’s and ‘r’s and ‘p’s, when she finally stopped those lips moving, Eve dropped the reins onto Shadow’s neck, raised her right arm and pointed west. ‘Past that scrub. It’s not far. That way,’ Eve said.

  Under her black riding hat – Bill insisted they wear riding helmets, not soft hats – Sarah’s head tilted upwards and her eyes followed Eve’s fingers past the cunning landscape, past the simplicity that hid so much. Sarah patted Amber hard on her long, graceful neck and nodded too. ‘That way,’ Sarah repeated.

  That was all it took: a hand pointing west and the simplest of directions, and Rebecca was gone.

  Twenty minutes after Meg and Eve left, Bill arrived home, sweaty and dirt blown, startling Sarah in the kitchen, who was making herself some pasta with a rich tomato and garlic sauce. Standing in his army-green socks in the kitchen, his knees grubby with dirt, Sarah offered him a bowl of pasta.

  ‘You all alone? Where are the others?’

  ‘They’ve gone for a ride,’ she said, spooning the hot sauce carefully onto his pasta and putting the kettle on for a cup of tea later.