by Kate Lyons
On the way into town, Ray didn’t trust himself to do anything but steer. He drove so fast, the ute fishtailed from verge to verge, the dog nearly strangling on its rope. Mick, after all that shrugging and sulking, had developed verbal diarrhoea. Yarning away like some old-timer on a verandah while laying out a game of patience on the glove-box lid.
Everything had kicked off with a bout of hooky, apparently. A few days off school. Then he’d been caught driving his father’s truck on the road at the age of twelve. Had to, it was an emergency. His mum was sick. Not his fault. At thirteen, he’d stolen a car. Not his idea. Wrong crowd. Easily led. The excuses made by his deluded mother flowed like oil off his tongue. Got chucked from school, more truancy, a bit of dope, some money missing from another kid’s bag. Wasn’t him, never did it, teachers had it in. Then the police started hassling his mum. She was really sick by then, and his dad was off work. Bad back. His dad a drinker. Started hitting his mum. Hit Mick too, that time he nicked the car, before his dad left and he got sent to Sam’s, last chance. Nearly broke his arm.
Mick stuck his elbow into Ray’s line of sight. A tiny crescent there. Probably a burnt-off wart. The kid waited, looking hopeful. Expecting sympathy, admiration. Ray just knocked his arm away. Kept his eyes on the road, his hands on the wheel. Gripping so tight, he later found indentations in his palms.
Twenty k from town, crossing yet another dry creek on the red grooved ghost of yet another bridge, he spotted a scrap of faded rag fluttering above a pile of white stones. Right where he wouldn’t have been if he hadn’t met Mick, in exactly the opposite direction to the spot marked on Charlie’s map.
Throwing the ute toward the ditch, Mick yelping as he banged his head on the roof, Ray slammed out, fetched his funnel and shovel from the tray. Hiking over, he dug until metal hit metal. An old jerry can, so rusted and battered it looked like it had been through World War Two. When he shook it, a flurry of dust and the faintest splash.
It was almost all fumes. But he decanted what there was and, with a few rough coughs, got the engine going again. The kid finally had the sense to shut up, except for the odd startled appeal.
‘Ray? Something wrong?’
But Ray was lost to everything now except the hum of his tyres, the spool of the road, the judder of the grids.
On the final stretch, he really put his foot down. One twenty, one forty, the ute shaking so much he could hear rivets working their way out of his door. But no matter how much he floored it, still he felt like a tiny ant crawling over a vast red picnic blanket, pulled tight by hands unseen. As he got closer to town, he checked the mirror for cops. Would have welcomed it. Something to rage at instead of this boy. All this time, while Ray had been rescuing him from drunk truckies and thirst and heat stroke, while he’d been wiping up his spew and serving him biscuits and taking him here and there like a fucking butler, that thing had been in his pocket. And he’d never said a word.
He stopped at the first motel he saw, a set of fibro boxes on the outskirts of town. Mick had gone to sleep. Ray half-walked, half-dragged him across the car park to their room, dumped him in the double bed. He’d take the single. He’d move it to the other side of the room. He’d drag it out to the car park if he had to. Anything to be alone.
Standing in the motel phone box, coins hot in his palm, he stared at the coaster, little numbers dancing like eye motes in the glare. Could be anything, race numbers, birthdays, the magic digits from ten years’ worth of losing Lotto entries. Charlie had his wires crossed. Charlie in his cups. Yet Mick reckoned he’d started on all this before he’d even touched a beer. Then again, Ray only had Mick’s word for that. Charlie might have gone off the deep end with cheap port before he even got to the pub.
Get it straight. No harm in that. He tried to remember the number of Charlie’s boarding house and failed. There was a phone book but it was local and it was a Yellow Pages and of course some joker had ripped half the pages out.
He’d put a coin in and dialled directories before remembering you didn’t need a coin for that. Too late, bloody thing wouldn’t give it back. As he hit the coin return, a mechanical voice asked for a name and his mind went blank. He realised he didn’t know Charlie’s last name and even if he did the old man wouldn’t be listed. No phone of his own, no fixed address. The dosshouse was attached to some church or other but he must have got the saint’s name wrong, because the voice said no such listing. No point in any case. No one ever answered the phone in the hallway there. Wasn’t that sort of place.
He could try the pub, see if Barb knew anything. But then he checked his watch and saw it was after five o clock. They’d be well into happy hour by now. He imagined the phone ringing in Pete’s office, everyone in bar or bistro, the sound stifled by the tinny carnival of the pokies and the footy on TV. And even if Barb did hear it ring, it would probably be too much trouble to haul herself off a stool.
The voice was insistent now, repeating its electronic question. He found himself asking for J. and A. McCullough, Twenty Bends Road. That was how they were always listed, on official bills. No idea whether they were still there of course. They could have sold up and moved to town, to a retirement village, for all he knew. Although he couldn’t see it, Mam and Dad drinking sherry on a balcony, doing the crossword, taking sunset hobbles by a fake lake. And anyway, if they were still there, at home, he didn’t need to ask for the number, did he? It was engraved on his brain.
How many times over the last thirty-odd years had he stood in a phone box just like this, on some servo forecourt, on the sun-blasted main street of some one-horse, one-silo town, coin in hand, receiver raised yet unable to dial? An old fear, this one, deeply grooved. And if he did manage to push the buttons, each digit clicking over like a step toward a cliff, how many times had he hung up at the first ring, afraid of hearing that voice on the end of the line? Leaving him with the hollow roar of his own blood, against a silence dense as antimatter. Fragile as the bones of a young skull.
No listing for that address. His hand was shaking. He cupped the receiver between ear and shoulder, lit a cigarette.
Could ask for U. McCullough. But where? She wouldn’t still be in town. She’d wanted to get far away from sheep and tractors as soon as she could. Probably to the city, like she’d always wanted, or maybe even to Europe. She could be driving one of those little white sports cars like the ones in those old movies she used to like, scarf round her hair, cat’s eye sunglasses, the whole thing in Saturday afternoon black and white. Or the nuns might have got to her, their patient seeds of guilt and shame taking root in the hot air of somewhere wretched and far-flung. Africa. That’s where the starving children on the side of the Project Compassion box were from. Those stylish skirts of his sister’s could be covered in stray bits of leper for all he knew.
He’d waited so long, the plastic voice had given up. Disconnected. Coin wouldn’t come back, no matter how many times he hit return. The old anger thundered through, pure as oxygen, a sheer relief. He bashed the receiver on the shelf, once, twice, three times, until the handset cracked and he saw the old biddy at reception staring at him above the rabbit ears of her little TV.
He burred the wheel of the lighter round and round, letting it burn his finger. Bring him back to himself, such as he was.
With his last coin, he dialled the homestead. Freda might know. She might have seen Charlie in town, might have talked to Barb at the pub. The thought of Freda calmed him somehow. Solid, square, reliable Freda with her seamed face and strange buried passions, her boiled-looking hands. She had her own secrets, Freda, deep as old splinters. Freda would know what to do.
He listened to the phone ring, echoing along the dark tongue and groove hallway, the walls lined with pictures of Sam’s heavy-whiskered forebears, the sideboards heaving with their elaborate silverware and pewter, all the squattocracy heritage Sam was fast squandering through bad management, bad stock, overgrazing, get-rich-quick schemes. All the stuff Freda had inherited and which she ha
d to shoulder, polish and tend. Drowning, like Ray, under the useless weight of the past.
He let the phone ring five, seven, nine times, long enough for her to stop hanging washing or weeding the garden. To stand up, hand to back, cursing her lazy children and the distance to the phone. He imagined the screen door slapping, its lonely echo as she ambled blue-veined up the hall. At just the moment she might conceivably answer, he hung up. Couldn’t have told you why.
After the glare of the phone box, the street felt almost cool. He stood in the car park, blood humming. Couldn’t go back to the room, not yet. Didn’t trust himself inside those four walls, not with this blackness grinding itself to red. Like so many times before, he fell into the rhythm of doing things just to keep a grip.
Fetching the kero can and the funnel from the ute, he untied the dog, looped the rope around its neck, let it drag him up the street. He’d never bothered with a collar for it. Wasn’t even really his dog, he’d just rescued it from an unwanted litter Sam was going to sell or drown. For now though, he’d pretend. Be an ordinary man taking his dog for a walk.
Stopping at the servo, he filled the jerry can with petrol. At the newsagent he bought a phone charger. At the chemist, some salts for Mick, some Panadol for himself. When the lass behind the counter asked him how he was, he kept his eyes fixed on the glucose lollies. Old habits, rising fast, whorling deep. At times like these he was unrecognisable, even to himself.
The supermarket next, just as they were about to close. Bread, butter, dog food, Vegemite. He had tea and coffee in the ute and there was a kettle in the room. No toaster, but there was a gas BBQ out near the pool. Fucked if he was going to pay for a continental breakfast. What was continental about stale cornflakes and cold toast?
He’d passed the pub twice now. Third time the charm. Before he could think too much about it, he ducked inside, dog and all. The man behind the counter started to arc up until he saw the look on Ray’s face. Lucky he couldn’t carry any more than a sixpack, what with the petrol can and the groceries and the dog lunging at every municipal tree. He considered stepping on its paw, teaching it some manners. Shouldn’t have bought the beer. Even the thought of it, the cold chink chink against his thigh, was loosening action from consequence, the tide in his blood swelling fast. The street ahead with its last-minute shoppers and languid cars and pointless chats between men in hats, everything pulsed in a sea of red.
While the boy slept through dinner and the sun set in a fever of pink and orange, he drank his beer by the pool. It was empty except for a puddle of red water at one end. The dog writhed between his legs, gulping its Pal. Wasn’t supposed to have it there of course. Signs all over the place. No pets, no smoking, no running, no diving, no eating, no glass bottles. Can’t do this and mustn’t do that. He was waiting, just waiting, for that old boiler with the curlers to come out and have a go. He needed a target, something better than the deflated plastic sea monster he was lobbing his empties at. He was afraid of hurting the boy.
He stayed out there most of the night, even though he had change in his pocket now and his phone was charged and Freda would be in the house for sure, folding clothes or helping with homework while she cooked dinner, some burnt offering which Sam would refuse to eat. Awful cook Freda, everything either muddy with Gravox or riddled with uncooked flour. All that meat Sam kept killing, day after day, just so she could grill or boil or bake it to within an inch of its former life.
He turned his back on the phone box, that little oasis of light. Fixed himself out toward the highway, where brightly lit semis were travelling, out to places he might have been. Then he turned his back on that as well, lay down on a banana lounge, shutting his eyes against the unblinking yellow gaze of the dog. Kept drinking, until all the beer was gone and he was on to the brandy in his first aid kit. He drank until the stars wheeled toward their last trajectories, his blood cooling and hardening in the watery light of dawn.
When he finally went inside, he found the boy sleeping peacefully, sprawled across the double bed. Ray collapsed on the single. When the dog stopped clawing his chest, it at least went to sleep.
CHAPTER EIGHT
They walked through three carriages before Tilda found the right seats. Something about windows and easterly directions. More of Harry’s feng shui nonsense, no doubt. Ursula bit her tongue, kept on plodding. It was important Tilda stayed calm, at least until the train pulled out.
Once Tilda had chosen two seats bearing no relation to their tickets, when she’d settled herself into a nest of coats and sandwiches, had popped her can of Coke and opened her copy of New Idea, Ursula told her she was going to the toilet. Wouldn’t be long.
‘But you can’t, not when the train’s stopped. That’s the rule.’
‘There’s a ladies on the platform. Plenty of time.’ Five minutes by the station clock. Fortunately Tilda wasn’t really paying attention, was already deep in knitting patterns and pudding recipes, as if in vital research for some other life she still planned to have.
‘Have you got your ticket? The man might come while I’m gone.’
She had to wait then while Tilda rummaged through her carry bags, unearthing ancient shopping catalogues, more sandwiches, a pile of scarves, two blackened bananas. A vast bra which Ursula blushed to see thrown on the back of the seat.
‘You wanted to carry it, remember? Look in your coat.’
When the ticket was found and then stuffed back into one of Tilda’s many pockets, never to be seen again, Ursula hurried as fast she could toward the sliding doors. But as she got there, Tilda yelled out, startling the old lady across the aisle.
‘Urs! Get some more chippies. Not those skinny ones. The normal sort.’
Ursula had tried to explain that there’d be plenty of food on the train. That there’d be a little cafe or a little buffet or someone with a little trolley. For such a big woman, Tilda was a fan of little things. With as much enthusiasm as she could muster, Ursula had promised lunch in some dining car she wasn’t sure existed, at a little table with a little red lantern on it, watching for emu while they ate the much longed for fish and chips. But the thought of being caught without food or drink had filled Tilda with such nervous aggression that Ursula had bought enough plastic-covered sandwiches and tubs of coleslaw to last them across the Nullarbor, let alone the eight hours to Sydney and the cafe near the taxi stand.
As she hurried out the station exit and down the street, she told herself it would be all right. Tilda had her ticket, if she could ever find it again. There was fifty dollars in her wallet and Ursula had pinned the wallet to the lining of Tilda’s coat. They’d make her get off this train at Central because it terminated. It was the time in between she worried about. All those lonely, weedy platforms they’d passed on the way in, marking tiny dusty towns with long and melodious names. What if Tilda took a liking to one of them, decided to get off? Found herself stranded in the middle of nowhere as the sun went down?
And there was always the rightful owner of Tilda’s seat. There might be a scene. Worse still was what might happen when the sandwiches ran out. She saw Tilda leaning across, helping herself to the old lady’s lunch. Tilda stealing wine dregs from the buffet car. Tilda running through carriages, awash with alcohol and chemical tears. Tilda taking all her clothes off, forcing the train doors open. Tumbling, vast, pink and victorious, into chilly country air.
And even if she did manage to last all the way to Sydney, would she be able to navigate all those tunnels and escalators leading from the country platform to where the buses came in? If she got lost, Ursula was banking on another kiosk. Tilda couldn’t walk past a shop without wanting to buy something. She’d go looking for her wallet and find inside it, next to the fifty dollars, the note Ursula had left her, detailing directions to the bus stop, numbers of buses, the location of payphones in case of emergencies, Harry’s mobile number, the pot plant hiding spot of the spare house key, contact numbers for two cab companies in case of a transport strike. Also, a lette
r addressed to Harry explaining, however disingenuously, what Ursula intended to do. Tilda would open it. She could never resist a letter not addressed to her.
If all else failed, Ursula comforted herself with Tilda’s habit of talking to complete strangers on public transport. If she somehow lost both her ticket and her wallet, surely someone would help, as soon as they realised who they were dealing with, this middle-aged woman with flecks of ham sandwich between her teeth. As long as the person wasn’t bad or mad themselves. As long as Tilda didn’t start going on about God on the radio, didn’t get out Dad’s old transistor, start trying to tune him in. As long as there were no men on the train who fitted in with God’s increasingly vicious predictions and the pill Ursula had given her this morning lasted all the way home.
By the time she’d figured out the remote locking on the rental car, shattering the quiet of the country street with a series of squawks and alarms, she’d convinced herself it was the only thing she could have done. She wouldn’t have been able to cope with Tilda, not on top of everything else. And Tilda would never have understood.
By the time they’d woken up this morning, Tilda had had her own version of events. Didn’t matter that it was the exact opposite of what she’d believed the night before. As far as she was concerned, Ray was dead, and might as well have been already buried, with no flowers and little ceremony, in this stark red ground. All she could talk about at breakfast was getting back to the city in time to see some BBC drama she’d been watching on TV. And then she’d been so excited by the renting of the shiny little Toyota that she’d forgotten why they were driving to the hospital in the first place. Hadn’t even asked Ursula what she’d seen behind those green rubber doors.
