The Far-Back Country

by Kate Lyons

  ‘Sorry. Maybe I’ve made a mistake. I’m after Ursula. Ursula McCullough? Does she live here?’

  Nothing. Blue eyes in a death’s head. That killer stare.

  He was about to turn, walk away, get back in his ute, drive back to the beach then out of town as fast as he could, when the woman nodded, stepped forward. Taking the present, she shuffled off into the gloom of the house.

  He had no choice but to follow, stumbling up a dark hallway with missing floorboards, skirting piles of paperbacks, more boxes, what looked like an amp for an electric guitar. Expecting Urs to appear at any moment, mop in hand. To explain that she was moving in, she was moving out. That she didn’t really live here, in this place like an old man’s boarding house, with its smell of mould, incense and cooped-up cat. But when he reached the little lounge room, he found only the woman who had to be Tilda, sitting perched on the arm of a chair, his present in her lap.

  He picked his way across a floor covered in dirty mugs, full ashtrays, sleeveless LPs. Sat down on a leather lounge that felt fat, soft, overripe. It was stifling in there. Dark too, the curtains were closed. Wallpaper trailed above the fireplace, the rest of the walls painted bright new pink. Wind chimes tinkled somewhere, a curtain puffed in a stray breeze, revealing a fish symbol pasted to the window. A statue of the Virgin Mary on the mantelpiece.

  When he finally worked up enough moisture in his mouth to speak, his voice sounded too loud in that little room. ‘Till. It’s good to see you, eh. Bit of a shock, I bet. Me rocking up after all this time.’

  She went back to staring at the box on her lap. Since the journey and the car crash and its meeting with Mick’s size nine boot, it bristled with torn reindeers and knotted clumps of sticky tape.

  ‘You were only a little tyke last time.’ Seven, going on eight, but she’d seemed younger. Throwing pig knuckles on the back verandah, chattering to dolls, stones, trees, drinking from an imaginary cup. ‘We had tea together. Remember?’ Bark tea, mud scones, blue dogs, hula hoops. On the back verandah at Twenty Bends, when he was barely nineteen. His one and only visit home since he’d left, five years before.

  ‘You brought me a present.’ A statement of fact, empty as her face. But she’d said something, and she was looking at him now at least.

  ‘Yeah. I did. That dog.’ Not a real dog, which she’d always wanted, but he’d seen how dogs got treated at Twenty Bends. A big blue toy dog with a sideways tongue and a goofy smile. He’d won it at the carnival where he was working, a travelling show which, by chance or fate, had settled for a two-week stint in a town a few hours from home. It had been a sudden whim, a summer homesickness, brought on by the smell of horse manure, saddle leather, swimming pool bush. Before he’d had time to think about it too much, he’d hitched a lift in the back of a truck. At a set of lights in town, a car full of teenagers had jeered at him, this boy tall as a man clutching a big blue dog. A stupid note, for Tilda, pinned to its front.

  He’d crouched in the scrub behind the backyard for over an hour, on the lookout for a telltale cloud of tractor smoke coming up the track toward the gate. Hoping to see Mam emerging from the laundry with a basket of washing, or Urs heading up the driveway, on her way back from work. But there’d been just the little girl on the verandah, a plump little girl in a too-small pink dress. And he’d been so relieved by the sight of her, by the sheer busy blonde round-cheeked aliveness of her, that he’d failed to be surprised that she wasn’t surprised to see him. Failed to be alarmed that she didn’t speak to him or look at him, just kept up that cheery gabble while trying to feed the dog leaves and sticks, smashing them into the furry slit of its mouth. No words at all in that high-pitched noise she’d been making through her gap-toothed mouth. He should have realised. Should have known it wasn’t normal, for a child of eight. Should have seen it might have something do with the scar on her forehead. Those missing teeth.

  When she’d jumped up, pointing toward the driveway, still making those squealing, word-shaped sounds, he’d been so jumpy, all he could think of was to run. He’d been halfway down the path and hidden behind the wood shed before he looked. Expecting to see a big man stalking up the driveway, an olive-skinned woman walking up the driveway, he saw no one. Nothing there.

  ‘Listen, Till. Is Urs coming home soon? I wanted to say gidday.’

  Tilda shook her head, idly ripping at the wrapping paper on the present. His mouth went dry again.

  ‘Oh. Right. Where is she then? Shopping or something?’ Stupid, stupid. Who goes shopping on Christmas Day?

  Tilda picked up a mug from the mess on the floor, started swigging something from it. Tipping up the opened box, she emptied the mess of plastic attachments into her lap. Sat staring at them, face blank. There was weird smell coming off her, he realised. Metallic, minty, mixed with something medicinal, like nail polish or aftershave.

  ‘She’s gone home.’

  ‘You said she lives here though. Didn’t you?’ She hadn’t. She’d just nodded. Could have meant anything. The sweat was running freely now, between his legs, into the depths of the sticky leather lounge.

  ‘No. Home home. I wasn’t allowed to go.’

  Did she mean Dad’s place, at Frederick Street? No one could think of that place as home. And the homestead was sold.

  ‘Are you sure, Till? Thing is, I just came from out there.’ But he’d lost her again. Her gaze had drifted past his shoulder, to the wall behind his head. A row of little paintings up there, soft hills, plump valleys, vague sweeps and blurs of colour, in dawn grey, cool blue. He longed to climb inside one of those paintings, find that plump blue valley, lie down in that river. Lose himself in a trawl of painted stars.

  ‘Till? Do you mean Twenty Bends?’

  There was the sound of a key in the front door. Before he could extricate himself from the womb of the lounge, heavy footsteps thumped down the hallway, and a man appeared in the lounge. A huge, blocky, musclebound bruiser in a baseball hat. Ray saw the pinprick eyes, the straining biceps covered in tattoos. He’d started calculating the distance from the man to Tilda, from the lounge he was sitting on to the doorway where the big bloke was standing, when a smaller, older man pushed in, his smile fading as soon as he spotted Ray.

  ‘Matilda? What’s going on? Are you OK?’ The little man put a hand on Tilda’s shoulder, which she promptly shook off. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Ray.’

  The man went pale. The big speed freak took a step forward, fists bunched, but when the smaller man shook his head, he fell back again.

  ‘He’s my brother. He bought me a present. But I don’t like it.’ Tilda swept the bits of plastic from her lap and they joined the mess on the floor. ‘Can he stay for lunch?’

  Ray stood up, put out his hand. Something about the little man seemed to demand it. The glasses, the prim moustache. The fussy little ponytail.

  ‘Gidday. Ray McCullough.’ The man just stood there. Didn’t introduce himself, made no move to take Ray’s hand. ‘Tilda’s brother.’ Before Ray, nonplussed, could put his arm down again, someone else emerged from the hallway, a vast young woman in a flowered dress. Squeezing roughly past the bikie and the bloke with the ponytail, she plonked herself on the floor, right next to Ray’s leg. Grabbing a remote, she turned on the TV. The bikie followed her, sitting hunched a few inches from the screen, staring and muttering, turning back to glare at Ray.

  The little man still hadn’t moved. He was just staring at Ray, red and yellow lights from a Christmas ad shining off his glasses, so Ray couldn’t see his eyes.

  He cleared his throat, tried again. ‘Look, sorry to barge in. Christmas Day and all. I’m here to see my sister. My other sister. Ursula. Tilly says she’s out.’ The little man seemed made of stone. Ray thought about sticking his hand out again, but just wiped it on his trousers. Longing for a taste of whatever Tilda was knocking back from her mug. Or even better, an ice-cold beer. ‘Sorry. Didn’t catch your name.’

  ‘That’s Harry. He lives here.’ Tilda too
k another swig from her mug, jerked her head at the bikie and the woman on the floor. ‘Those fat cunts don’t.’

  ‘Matilda. That’s enough.’ The ponytail man took hold of Tilda’s arm again, trying and failing to wrestle the mug off her. His fingers left pink marks on her too white, too thin skin.

  ‘He’s my brother so he can stay, can’t he? For lunch? You said it was orphans’ Christmas and he’s an orphan, sort of, because he’s alone, but you’re not and you’re not an orphan and I’m not either, even if Mam’s dead, because Dad’s still alive. And they aren’t either.’ She pointed accusingly at the bikie and the flowered woman. ‘So can he?’

  Ray felt dizzy. All that silence from her before and now all the words, fast and faster, in that strange hitching rhythm, too much like the speed freak for his liking, who was switching channels and talking angrily at the television, spit shining in his mutton-chop whiskers, while the fat woman hummed and rocked, plaiting her too-thin hair. Ray sat down again, and the woman’s flowered haunch overflowed onto the edge of his boot. He shifted away and the leather made a sucking sound. Wind chimes again, what sounded like a rooster, somewhere. Rivers of sweat on his legs, sticking him to the leather. The corner of the poster on the wall, a rainbow with a bluebird, peeled and flopped in the heat.

  ‘So can he? Stay?’

  ‘No, Tilda. Not today.’ Harry had managed to get the mug off her now, was sniffing at it, nose wrinkled. ‘Might be time for you to take a shower. Before we eat.’

  ‘Why not? You’ve got your stupid friends here. They’re not my friends. Or even orphans. Just really fucking fat.’ She aimed a kick at the flowery woman’s ankle, who, without looking up from her plaiting, shot out a foot in return, her big boot connecting with Tilda’s bare toe, making Tilda yelp. Then the speed freak was on his feet again, towering over everyone, swearing and spitting, and Ray was standing up too.

  ‘Stop it! Gerald. Calm down.’ For a little bloke, Harry had a loud voice. Tilda subsided, still kicking angrily at the mess on the floor. ‘Give me that.’ To Ray’s surprise, the bikie handed over the remote and Harry turned off the TV.

  ‘Take Dot outside. No, not that way. Out the front and down the side. You know the rules. See if you can find some eggs.’ Eggs. Ray’s head was swimming. Nothing made sense. But Gerald was stalking obediently back up the hallway, Dot trailing him like a large unfriendly dog.

  ‘Matilda. Go and check if lunch is done. Then set the table, so we can eat.’ And she did it, like she was a servant or something, disappearing in her somnambulist shuffle through a doorway leading to the back of the house.

  Harry closed the door, turned to face Ray. Drawing himself up to full height in his little leather moccasins, chest all puffed out. Ray felt suddenly very tired.

  ‘Now, listen here. I’m not sure who you are or what your game is, although I can hazard a guess.’ Hazard. Something too crisp and fussy about the way he talked. Like a teacher or a priest. ‘But you shouldn’t be here. Matilda should never have let you in.’

  ‘Yeah? Why’s that? Like Tilly said, I’m her brother. And Ursula’s. She lives here, right?’

  ‘There was nothing in the paper.’ Harry seemed to be talking to himself, fiddling nervously with his ponytail. ‘How on earth did you get this address?’

  Ray gave the man a good slow look, up and down. Old-man shorts, ironed to a crease. White T-shirt, No Mining in Kakadu in faded letters across the front. A protest button pinned above his breast. Plump little man breasts, budding out. Something girly about the T-shirt too. Too small, too tight around the arms.

  ‘First things first. Told you who I was. How about you do me the same favour?’

  ‘I beg your pardon? This is my house.’

  ‘I thought this was Ursula’s place.’

  ‘It is. I mean, I live here. This is my home.’

  ‘Oh, right. Thought you were the cleaner or something.’ Ray nudged his boot at a dirty plate on the floor. The man’s face turned a deeper shade of pink. Maybe this twerp with the pigtail was Ursula’s boyfriend or something. Wouldn’t have credited it but it was a long time since he’d seen her and, anyway, nothing here made sense. Fish stickers, prayer flags, grog-laced tea. The Virgin Mary up there on the mantelpiece, sorrowing away to herself in the dark.

  ‘This is a mistake.’ The man had braced himself against the door Tilda had gone through. Arms folded, legs apart. Socks with sandals, for pity’s sake.

  ‘I’d like you to leave, OK? Right now.’

  Ray took his time getting up. Letting the bloke see the full scope of him, the broad shoulders, the big seamed hands, ready by his side. Fists easy, legs easy. A boxer’s stance.

  ‘Look, if it’s money you’re after, it’s too late. The reward’s been withdrawn.’

  Bloke talked in riddles. Hard to get a handle on him. Just words and words and words, like Gerald, like Tilda, all piled up. Everything he said stuffed with some sideways smirking meaning, issuing from that pink mouth beneath that bum fuzz moustache.

  ‘Haven’t got a clue what you’re on about, mate. I don’t want money. I got money. I just came to see my sister. Simple as.’

  ‘Well, you can’t. She’s not here. She’s out.’

  ‘But she does live here. We’re getting somewhere.’ He moved forward a step, and Harry moved back. ‘Know when she’ll be home? Or how I can get in touch? A mobile number would do.’

  ‘You’ve got to be joking. I’m not giving you that.’

  Ray took another step forward, the bloke backed up, until he could go no further, squashed hard against the door. Sweat was breaking out on his hairline, the little drops tinged brown. He must dye it, that stupid ponytail.

  ‘I’m warning you, you’d better leave, right now, or I’m calling the police.’

  ‘Keep your wig on. I just want to see her, that’s all. Say gidday.’

  ‘Well, she doesn’t want to see you.’

  ‘And what the fuck would you know?’

  ‘More than you, apparently. This won’t work, OK? You’re too late. You’ve got it wrong.’

  Bloke had balls, Ray had to give him that. He wondered whether he would have to actually do it, or whether the threat would be enough. Thing was, he was a bit keen by now. That coiling feeling in his stomach, spreading out, covering his skin like quick hot veins. One fast clean uppercut across that little bum-crack chin. The thought leapt out before him, acquiring flesh and heft. In for a penny, and he’d had a shit of a day. A sin in thought, according to old Father O’Reilly, in his billowing skirts, with his football face and his big ruler with pictures of New Zealand on it, his cracked leather hands. A hundred times on a blackboard, in a stinking classroom, all lunchtime, but when the priest came back, he’d made a mistake. Two words not one. Indeed, in deed, in O’Reilly’s mocking lilt. The cane keeping time.

  ‘You’re not her brother. She’s not looking for her brother. She doesn’t have a brother. You’d know that, if you were Ray.’

  Whatever had been brewing here, in the springing fur of humidity this little man seemed to be incubating, growing it like ivy, skin to skin, broke, and Ray stepped forward. Stepped up. So close now, he could smell the bloke. Sweat, musty clothes, a patchouli stink. That little protest button which had looked at a distance to bear an emblem like a nest of worms revealed itself to be a photo. Tiny arms, wrinkled legs. An addled baby eye.

  Time to knock this shit on the head.

  Ray raised his arm and the man flinched, but Ray just plucked his pencil from behind his ear.

  ‘OK. Listen up. I reckon you’re a lying mongrel but anyway. Here’s what we’ll do. I’m gonna leave my number, and you’re gonna tell my sister to ring me when she gets back from wherever it is she’s gone.’

  Looking around for some paper, an old book or something, not finding any, just dusty records and dirty cups and crap all over the floor, he thought of arms, foreheads, the soft skin of Harry’s white, plump, female-looking wrists. Instead he walked over and wrote his phone num
ber on the half-stripped wall above the fireplace.

  ‘There. You tell Urs to give us a ring. Now I’m going to go and say goodbye to my other sister, then I’ll use your bog and then I’ll be out of your hair.’ He gave one last look at the dye-stained bald spot at the back of Harry’s head, then pushed past, through the door.

  Tilda was in the kitchen, standing at an old door which had been roughly rigged up as a bench. She was prodding with a fork at something black and wizened in a roasting tin. A smell of scalded nuts. Even hotter in here than in the rest of the house. Oven must have been on all day.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Lunch.’

  Letting the fork fall, Tilda picked up a bottle on the counter, shook out a tablet, swallowed it down with a gulp from her freshly filled mug. The bottle had her name on the label. That weird smell was sherry he realised, mixed with a chemical fug.

  ‘Yeah, but what exactly?’

  ‘Tofu loaf.’ She stabbed at it again. ‘It’s burnt.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ he told her, although when he took a knife to it, the inside was like charred soap. No wonder she was so thin.

  This was something he could do. While Tilda stood worrying the elbows of her jumper, he cut off the burnt crust of the thing, fried the inside up in some oil. Under the sink, he found potatoes, carrots, old and whiskery, but vegetables at least. He set Tilda to peeling them, while he put a pan of water on to boil. No time for roasting and he wasn’t turning the oven on again.

  Going in search of herbs or garlic, he found a tin of Gravox. In the fridge, a carton of cream. As he flipped the tofu in the pan, he saw Tilda was chopping vegetables without washing them or peeling them, big chunks of carrot top going straight into the pot. He said nothing. From outside, faint yelling, getting louder. Chickens squawking, what sounded like a car alarm. He put his head down, eyeing the cream, waiting for it to pip. The void between himself and Tilda strung precariously, their elbows meeting companionably as she chopped and he stirred.