by Tracy Farr
Iris makes tea, and eats shortbread from a tin. Kristin eats almonds and goji berries from a plastic tub. The baby rests on Kristin, snugged into her, cocooned in the baby sling that always hangs over Kristin’s shoulders, whether it contains the baby or not. Paul squats to feed wood into the stove in the corner of the room. He worries the wood and glowing coals with the poker, adjusts the flue, then straightens and stands behind Kristin with his hands on her shoulders. Iris gestures to the teapot.
‘Mmm, nah. Trying to decide between more wine, or straight to bed.’ He leans in, puts his arms around Kristin, kisses her neck. Kristin smile-grimaces at him, nudges his head aside with her head.
‘You’re hopeless. I’m going to put her down. I may be some time. Night, Iris.’ She kisses Paul as she stands up.
‘Night.’
Paul pours red wine into his glass, sits down across the table from Iris. He holds the bottle up at her, questions with his mouth and eyes. She shakes her head, lifts her mug of tea.
‘Cheers.’
He clinks her mug with his glass, lifts the bottle to the light.
‘All the more for me then. Cheers.’
He puts the bottle down on the table in front of him, settles back in his chair, and lifts the glass to his lips.
It’s the first time Iris has spent alone with Paul since his baby’s birth. They settle easily – of course they do – into talk: about the baby (How tired they are, Paul and Kristin! And how beautiful she is, the baby. They find different words to say these two things, over and over, recombining them in ways that are not new, coming back to the simplest forms, so familiar to new parents: so tired; so beautiful.); about Kurt (How proud they are of him! How well he’s doing! How beautiful he is, their baby boy. Twenty-one!); about Luce (How hard they are, those teenage years! How well she’s doing, all things considered.). It’s safe, this talk of kids – the shared children of their mob, their extended family, their woolly connections.
And as they talk, they lift their voices, incrementally, to make themselves heard over rain that gets steadily heavier, hammering harder and ever harder on the old tin roof.
Unstitch the stars
When Paul has finished the bottle, and gone to bed – brushing the top of her head with a kiss as he goes – Iris brings a cloth bag from her room and spreads its contents on the kitchen table. There is a rectangle of soft wool, the size of a baby’s cot, cut from an old blanket, washed clean and white, and smelling of eucalyptus. There is a metal tin with a hinged lid and, in the tin, loops and small skeins of embroidery yarn, in all the colours imaginable. In the tin with the yarn are needles aligned in parallel on a scrap of stiff wool felt, and a pair of silver scissors, their eye ring sculpted in the shape of a swan. There are pins, a needle-threader, a silver thimble.
Iris spreads the blanket on the table, runs her hand across the lifted terrain to flatten it. There is only a single patch of stitching in one corner, small flowers – or perhaps she meant them to be stars; it’s hard to tell, or remember, now. Iris has started then unpicked the stitching twice already, not happy with it. She’s been unable to decide what to stitch onto this blanket, her gift for the baby.
She’ d been planning to stitch the baby’s name, or at least its initial letter, but she’s almost given up on that idea. Poor little baby, still without a name. They’re all so used to it that it’s stopped being funny, or frustrating, or even remarkable. She’s just the baby. Marti was funny about it last week – typically blunt – when she and Iris met for coffee.
‘I’m gonna start calling her Rumpelstiltskin if they don’t name her soon.’
Iris traces a large letter R – all serifs and curlicues – with her finger in the centre of the blanket. She shakes her head, wipes her hand over the wool surface, erasing the invisible trace.
Start again.
Iris picks up the blanket, and her silver swan scissors, and carefully unstitches the stars. When she’s done, the blanket is bare again: a blank, white page, ready to fill.
Shipshape and watertight
Before she goes to bed, Iris walks a circuit in the dark, locking doors, checking windows, tugging curtains firmly closed, checking the rooms of the cold, old house. It seems impossible that the roof could keep such heavy rain from coming in on them all. She imagines rain seeping or leaking in, through cracks, through gaps, tracing the spaces between windows and walls, eaves and timber; she imagines weatherboards that are no longer weatherproof. She imagines the integrity of the house compromised, the roof collapsing, great sheets of iron crashing in, and down, all of it failing and falling under the weight of so much water.
But as she moves through the rooms, she finds none of this. No seeping, no damp. There are no leaks. The water is all outside the house. Inside the house, everything remains dry. Everything holds.
Everything’s watertight.
All is shipshape.
She stands in the dark of the big, cold room, her hand pressed against the heavy glass of the door that runs the length of one long wall. Rain sheets against the door, renders the glass as dark liquid, though she feels it solid under her hand. She takes her hand away from the glass and touches it to her face, feels it cold but dry against her skin. She pulls the curtains together, overlaps the fabric to close them firmly against the night and the cold and the rain.
The rain gets heavier, and heavier still, but they’re all safe inside the shipshape, watertight house, now, drummed to sleep by the noise of rain on the roof, battering against their dreams.
Saturday
Dreaming in light and dark
Luce wakes while it’s still dark, to a sound she can’t understand. It’s the voice of a strange bird, or an angry cat, but not quite either of these. She lies on her back, staring towards the sound of rain hammering on the roof. She hears doors open and close, footsteps in the hallway, soft voices. The bird-cat sound gets louder, and comes into focus: it’s the baby, crying. Voices murmur through the walls. The baby’s cry goes away. Luce rolls onto her side and pulls the quilt up over her head, tucking in tight with the sound of herself.
Kurt sleeps in his clothes, and dreams of a page in a notebook, ink-washed deep black, split in the centre by a wedge of page-white light, that wedge of light with a figure in shadow at its centre, the figure itself casting a shadow upon another figure, something he can’t quite see, or touch, or draw. He floats above the page, pencil in his hand. He dreams in light and dark.
Iris wakes early, and pulls on a jumper and a woolly hat while she’s still in bed. She steps out of bed and straight into ugg boots. She walks through the dark house to the kitchen. She crouches by the stove, opens its door, pokes the ashes and embers, blows to raise a lick of flame, catches it with paper and kindling. She fills the kettle with water, switches it on. She stands at the sink, looks out the window at rain waterfalling from gutters. She checks the fire, feeds it with wood, adjusts the flue, latches the door closed. She makes a pot of tea, and takes it back to bed.
When Kurt wakes, it’s not quite light outside; it’s the dark light of not-yet-day, clouded with rain. He smells coffee, and the dark acid ash of burnt toast. He picks up his glasses from the table next to the bed, puts them on, pushes his finger against the bridge of them, sliding them up his nose. He can hear voices from the kitchen: Paul, Kristin. He sits on the side of the bed, steps into shoes, leaves the laces loose. He runs his hand through his hair, pushes the bridge of his glasses again, puts his hands in his pockets as he stands.
Luce is the last to wake and wander to the kitchen. They’re all sitting there, around the table, nursing mugs, putting off the moment when they’ll leave the warmth of the fire. Luce stands with her legs backing onto the stove, feels the heat work through the fabric of her pyjama pants, feels it hot on the backs of her knees. She stays there until it shifts from good-hot to too-hot, then she pours herself tea from the pot, puts toast in the toaster. She pulls a chair up to the table, sits between Kurt and Kristin. The baby is on Kristin, in the fabr
ic sling. Luce lifts the toast to her mouth, takes a bite. The baby watches her, blows a wet bubble from its slobbery mouth. It’s sort of disgusting. It lifts its hand to its face, spreads the spit, then reaches its hand towards Luce, grabs at her toast. Luce shivers, and leans away.
The cat and the snake
Iris is washing the breakfast dishes when the cat kills the snake. First she hears a scrape, a sound from outside, like a voice, but not a voice, more like paper rasping. The window in front of her, over the sink, looks out over the back verandah that stretches right along the back of the house, sheltering it from the rain. Iris sees a dark shape move, outside, on the cement paving. She sees the moving shape again, but her brain has trouble making sense of it: it seems to be a cat, a thin grey kitten, leaping across the frame of the window like an Olympic gymnast with a ribbon. As she watches, her brain interpolates, interprets: the cat is the gymnast, and its ribbon is a snake.
The cat rears up, makes itself big. Iris sees it from the side, in profile. Then it’s down out of sight again. She moves her face closer to the window, angles her head to see. The cat hunches over the slim ribbon of snake, the cat’s back a curve, its hackles up. As she watches, the cat swipes its paws and scoops, and the snake curves through the air, patterning a C (for cat), then an S for itself – describing itself – falling a metre distant from the cat, which turns its back determinedly, lifts its paw, licks it, then smoothes its snout, its eye. It passes its paw over its ear, as if to brush back a lock of hair shifted out of place. Debonair is the word she thinks of. The cat glances snakewards. The snake lies still. Iris opens the back door, watching for movement, but the snake remains still, misshapen, a comma written on the red cement. The cat looks up at her, trills, then keeps grooming.
Iris takes the shovel that hangs on the rack on the wall (next to broom, hedge clippers, outside torch, tomahawk, pruning saw), shuffles closer to the snake, raises the shovel – holding it vertical, both hands clenched together, like a mediaeval knight with a sword – and brings it down to halve the snake. The pieces separate. She shivers, involuntarily; the pieces of snake remain still. Iris pushes the pieces of snake with the blade of the shovel. The cat lies on the cement, head contorting to lick its shoulders, under cover of the verandah, out of reach of the rain.
From where she stands, in the doorway to the old washhouse – not really inside or outside – Luce watches the cat with the snake. She sides with the snake – the beautiful slidey slip of it, the no-ears glide of it, the slink of it. Poor snake, thrown airwards by claws, the yowl of cat, its hunting ways, its cruel teasing fling of the done-nothing snake (just slithering along minding its own business). Cat flings snake again and snake flies, shimmers in the rain-grey light. Cat turns away and licks its arse, then pounces again. Then cat freezes like a statue, and snake freezes too, no wriggle, no shimmy left in snake. Cat sits back on licked arse and starts to lick face, lick paw, smooth paw over face, smirking at snake. Then door creaks and bangs its shut noise, and cat jumps a moment, then keeps licking. Snake doesn’t jump. Snake’s lost its jump, not that it ever had any. And Iris is standing there, and she has a shovel in her hand, and no no NO she lifts it and drops it onto snake, delivers the final, mortal blow.
Luce feels the sick rising in her, up her snakey gizzards, up her snake-thin throat pipe innards, tastes it in the back of her mouth, like acid vegemite. She imagines it viscous, dark grey-green streaked bile-yellow.
Iris stands over the snake, the murder weapon (aka gardening implement) still in her hands. The cat is weaving between her legs, rubbing its oily scent head smell onto Iris, who probably can’t even tell the cat is marking her. She probably mistakes it for love. Luce watches Iris poke the shovel at the snake. The cat lies on the cement now, contorting, licking its arse again. Iris turns, walks away, back inside (creak, bang, shut). Luce waits, then walks, past the cat lying on the cement (blood-red cement for a killer cat), to where the snake lies. Cat lifts its head as she passes, blinks its eyes at her, that long smirking blink that cats do.
‘Murderer.’
The cat closes its eyes at her.
Luce stands now where Iris had stood, and she looks down – as Iris had – on the snake. Snake no longer forms a snaking curve. Snake is uncurled, in two pieces, blunted, like disgusting sausages, connected by the thinnest cord of twisted skin. The snake is unmade. The snake-unmaking break is clean, clear, precise. There’s no ooze, no snakeblood. She doesn’t know what colour snakeblood is, or should be. The snake’s skin is the colour of old metal, or beautiful hair. She pushes it with her finger, rolls the tail-end sausage over, exposes a paler belly, golden, sand-coloured. She runs her finger up its length, feels the texture of its scales, like cold, carved lumps.
Creak, bang, and shadows above her. It will be Paul, and Iris. She turns, looks over her shoulder. No: it’s Kristin and Kurt with Iris. Kristin has the baby tied across her belly, in that fabric thing, the baby holster. Luce can just hear the baby snuffling. It snores like a drunk old man, the baby, makes a noise bigger than the size of it. Kristin is patting its back, sort of patting-rubbing, as if she has a sore (snoring) belly. Luce reaches out again to the snake parts, runs her finger down the snake’s broken belly, and shivers.
‘Luce! Don’t –’
Iris stops herself. Don’t what? The snake’s in halves, it’s dead, what’s the harm? (Mites, or lice, she thinks; or is that birds?)
Luce sighs, strokes the piece of snake again, rocks back on her haunches, stands up, slopes over to lean against the wall of the shed.
‘You killed it.’
‘The cat had it. I thought –’
‘Stupid fucking cat.’
‘Lulu –’
‘Don’t call me that. You shouldn’a killed it.’
‘It was dead already, or half dead. The cat –’
‘Fuck the cat.’
Kurt nudges the snake’s head with the toe of his shoe. ‘She’s right, Luce. Bite marks. Puncture wounds. The cat killed it. The shovel put it out of its misery.’
‘Fucking cat should be locked up. They should be banned.’
The cat lifts its head from the cement, eyes Luce, blinks its hypnotic blink at her.
‘Fuck off!’
Luce pushes past them all, in through the kitchen door. Creak, bang. The baby cries out, sharp and short.
‘It’s probably protected. Endangered. If anyone even cares.’ Luce’s voice fades away to her room, slams shut behind her door.
The baby cries out again, then snuffles to settle.
‘We should bury it,’ Kristin says, patting the baby’s back.
‘Nah. I’ve got it.’ Kurt picks the shovel up from where Iris left it resting against the back wall of the kitchen. He scrapes the shovel under the pieces of snake, screeching metal on cement. The baby cries a whiny, increasing cry as Kurt flings the pieces into the long grass by the fence.
Kurt leans the shovel against the wall. The cat lies on the cement, still licking itself, awkwardly reaching under its own neck, and around to its shoulders. Kurt crouches beside the cat.
‘Y’okay, puss?’ He reaches out to touch it, but the cat lashes at him. It rears back, hisses, then takes off towards the long grass by the fence, near where the snake pieces landed. The wet grass shimmies as the cat moves through it, then it stops; all is still. The cat has disappeared, into the garden, into the rain.
Kurt pulls back his sleeve. There is one long, deep scratch, a line of blood looped around his wrist.
Behind him, Iris picks up the shovel, hangs it on the row of hooks in the alcove between the back wall of the kitchen and the washhouse.
The baby wakes up properly now, ramps up from a whinge to a wail. Kristin does laps from the washhouse door to the back door to the shed and back to the washhouse, then repeat. She pats the baby, rubs it, murmurs to it, and eventually the crying hiccups to a choked-off sob, then back to snoring snuffles. Still, Kristin walks, does her laps and pats and rubs and murmurs, as if she’s forgotten ho
w to stop.
‘I’m going to make tea.’ Iris is watching Kristin circle with the baby. ‘Kristin?’
‘Mnh?’
‘Tea?’
Kristin stops by the washhouse door. She shakes her head – breaks the baby-taming spell – and smiles at Iris.
‘Tea, yeah, tea’s good. Peppermint.’
‘I’ll make it,’ Kurt says.
‘Ordinary for me, love. Thanks. And Kurt?’
‘Yeah?’
‘See if Luce is okay, will you?’
‘Yeah.’
He goes inside, fills the kettle, flicks its switch.
‘Luce?’ He tries it quietly to start, then louder as he walks down the hallway, ‘Luce?’
He pokes his head into the big room, but she’s not there. Her bedroom door is closed. He can hear music playing, but quietly.
‘Luce. Y’okay? Luce?’ He knocks gently on the door, then louder when there’s no response. ‘Luce?’
He knocks, tries the door handle, opens the door a crack.
‘Lulu?’
She is sitting on the bed, legs crossed in front of her, laptop open on her knees, earbuds plugged into the laptop, but not in her ears. They rest on her thighs, pumping tinny music – a tiny, rhythmic thumping – into the room.
‘Lu? You alright?’
There are tears on her cheek. She doesn’t wipe them away. A tear drops, as he watches, from the very tip of her chin. It falls onto her leg.
‘Yeah.’ She sniffs.
‘You want tea?’
‘No, I don’t want fucking tea.’
‘Okay, okay.’ He starts to close the door, but doesn’t. ‘The cat –’
Luce turns to him, glares. ‘What.’
It’s not a question, the way she says it.
