Where We Begin

by Christie Nieman

  ‘My beautiful girl, eh?’ he said. ‘Yeah, we look after you, but you’re getting a bit old for all this, aren’t you?’

  ‘How far has she got to go?’

  ‘Not two months. She’s getting to the pointy end. She’s bred champions, this one. But maybe now she is a bit long in the tooth for all this baby-making, huh, old girl?’

  ‘She’s just beautiful, Hessel.’ I lifted my hand again and Polly pressed her head into my body this time, her ears flicking my arm. ‘You said she was sick?’

  ‘Yes, she’s turned a bit colicky, poor old thing.’ As if on cue Polly gave a whinny that sounded like a moan and went down onto her front knees, knocking me sideways. Hessel drew on the lead rope but the horse was too strong. In a moment she was on her back, legs in the air, kicking and rolling. ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa there!’ Hessel stood back and let the mare find her feet again. ‘Come on there, lady, you will do both yourself and your foal a mischief.’

  ‘Not to mention me,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve just taken her blanket off, so she is itchy, but she has pain too. I can see it here.’ He touched the mare’s brow gently with the palm of his hand, and she dipped her head into his touch. ‘The vet says colic and yes we can treat, but I worry. I am keeping a close eye. It is a dangerous thing, pregnancy.’

  The horse again leaned into me and pushed gently. I pressed my face against her muscular throat, closed my eyes and rested my arms around her neck and felt the sun warming both of us until Hessel said, ‘So Elizabeth wrote to you, huh?’

  I stepped back from the horse. The letter was still there in my coat pocket, inside the house. ‘Um, yes,’ I said.

  Hessel nodded. ‘Interesting.’ He stroked a gnarled hand down Polly’s side. ‘So you have come for holiday,’ he said. ‘But do you not have school?’

  ‘School holidays actually.’

  ‘But holidays – there is not much to do here, Anna. We are too boring for you. We are not as young as we were. We stay home. Elizabeth doesn’t drive anymore, she forgets too much – that is what happens when you get old: first you forget names, then you forget faces, and then you forget to put on pants, huh?’ He laughed at himself. ‘It is all a terrible business. But me, I am okay, so far.’ He laid his hand over his heart. ‘I joke, but I am still young here. But I am afraid I am too busy with my Polly to drive you around.’

  ‘Well, as I said, I don’t know if I’ll be staying. I might have to go –’

  ‘Your grandmother would very much like you to stay. You wouldn’t leave her so soon. It is wonderful you have come and you help your grandmother. You have cleaned some already – I see this. She gets tired now, she is old with no family to help her, and I feel concerned for her. She is a beautiful flower, but I see her wilt with fatigue.’

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Hessel laid his hand on Europa Pearl’s neck and said, ‘Come, come, my darling. We’ll brush you down and get your blanket on again, eh?’ He drew gently on the broodmare’s lead, and then turned back to me. ‘Anna? You would like to come?’

  I paused. I would. I would have very much liked to go and spend time with him grooming this weighty creature, stroking her ample body, looking into her eyes, marvelling at her. I moved my hand down her flank and across her abdomen, over the baby horse hiding in there.

  ‘No, thank you,’ I said, suddenly drawing my hand back to myself. ‘I think I really do need to go and do some study.’

  ‘Ah, if you think it is useful then I suppose you must,’ Hessel said, and he drew the broodmare away across the paddock and back towards the shed, smiling to himself as he went.

  17 January 1996

  That day

  After breakfast Cathy waited by the side of the road for Leonie and Danny to come by in the ute with Leonie’s cousins – Arch and Kaz and probably Gary – to pick her up. Then they’d swing by town to pick up Becky, and head out to the res.

  It was blistering hot already. The wind was picking up – it gathered up the dust and hurled it at Cathy. She shut her eyes but the grit still got in. God this place sucked. What a hole. In summer there was always wind – hot, coming in from the north, dropping a plague of flies right on top of them, carried across from the cow country further inland. Where there was cow shit, there were flies. Bloody farmers. Bloody country living.

  She moved to the corner of Bromley Cairn, to the shaded and sheltered side that faced the road. At least the ratty old lump of house was good for something – blocking the wind and the sun and the view of her from the house.

  She heard the slap of the screen door echoing across the gravel driveway. She peered around the corner of the bluestone wall and saw her dad heading out in a singlet top towards the stables where he had four horses newly pregnant. He was there every minute, fussing over them, watering them, grooming them. They all had their fingers crossed that none of the mares would slip their foals like last year – a horrible January heatwave, like now, and only two weeks apart they found two out of the four foetuses just lying in the dirt of the paddock. Hessel discovered the first one and made such a scene that when Cathy found the second one two weeks later – a translucent fleshy lump, all gelatinous and hairless and pink with flies all over it – she left it exactly where it was and took off to Becky’s for a couple of days. Let her dad find it himself. She wasn’t going to stick around to be the bearer of that bad news.

  She leaned back behind the wall into the shade again and peered down the road. Nothing. She wished they’d hurry up. It was unbearable sitting out there. She picked up a shard of stone and began chipping at the mortar between the bluestone blocks – anything to amuse herself. Her mum would have had a fit if she’d seen her, but Cathy didn’t care. She just couldn’t care about the old house, no matter how much her mum went on and on and on about it, the history and the name, trying to impress upon Cathy how important it was. How important they all were. ‘The place, and our name,’ Bette would say, ‘they mean something to the people around here.’ It all meant shit to Cathy. Bette was trying to get the house heritage-listed under its original estate name, ‘Bromley Cairn’, so Cathy had to hear, all the time, about how beautiful Bette thought that was and how the words together meant ‘Dweller in a meadow of stones’. ‘Isn’t that just right?’ Bette had said to Cathy, more than once. ‘Isn’t that perfect?’ And Cathy thought, but didn’t say, that the whole place was about as far from perfect as you could get.

  One more year and then she’d be gone: down in Melbourne, soaking up the fly-free city life. She knew exactly what she was going to do down there. First, she was going to get a job in a funky cafe – her job at the bakery counter had to count for something, right? – and then she’d take a year to figure out what the best course at uni was to get her in with the right crowd. So maybe, like, management, or commerce, or something, she didn’t know yet. But nothing with computers. She wouldn’t do chic geek. She was going to be an entrepreneur. She was going to have a great idea and make other people worry about all the details. She was going to be the boss. Of something. She was going to be one of those people who dressed sharp and went to work every day in the centre of the city, catching sleek trams that cut their way between glossy office towers.

  Cathy waved the flies away from her face and squinted down the empty road and finally, in the distance, she saw the gleam of sun on moving metal and glass. She dropped her shard of rock and stood in the burning sun and wind on the far side of the old house, well out of view of the stables and the house and right under the secret room where they all used to play when they were kids. On that side, totally hidden from the small house by the ruin of Bromley Cairn, the ute could stop while Cathy ran and leapt in the back with Leonie and Danny.

  ‘Nice leap,’ said Leonie, laughing at her. ‘You’ll have to join me on the athletics team.’

  Cathy opened her mouth wide in mock offence. ‘Bitch! Now, if you could just give me a minute to catch my flabby-arsed breath I’ll yell some other cusses at you.’

  Arch hit
the pedal and they grabbed at the sides of the ute. Leonie smiled. ‘Come on, you know you don’t really have a flabby arse, Cathy.’

  ‘Aw, thanks Leonie. That’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.’

  ‘And even if you did –’

  ‘Get down, you bloody idiots,’ said Danny and he grabbed at them both and pulled them into the middle of the tray, pushing their heads below the side of the ute. They laughed together at his paranoia, but stayed that way until they were all the way down the road and well out of sight.

  And that was how that day started. With heat and deceit and dreams of escape. Just like so many days that had gone before.

  12

  Two buses to the city passed by the front gate without me on them. My things were packed in my bag on the bedroom floor, but I lay on the bed again feeling numb and letting hour after hour of the afternoon seep away, until eventually, through the watery glass of the window, the light behind the clouds diminished until there was a kind of uniform tint to everything – grey forms of dark and less dark – and we were into evening. I heard Bette begin to fuss about outside the door, preparing dinner. And when she finally called me out to the table to eat it, it seemed so much easier just to go along with it all. I sat and shovelled in forkful after forkful of mash and cheap sausages and barely defrosted peas, hardly tasting it as I ate – which, thinking objectively, was probably a fortunate thing.

  At dinner Hessel was silent. A heavy sadness hung about him; no doubt he was worried about his horse. And because he didn’t speak, and I couldn’t speak, and Bette didn’t seem to like starting conversations, no-one spoke. My grandparents didn’t seem remotely surprised by this, or by my own silence. And when the meal was finished Bette said, ‘Anna, your grandfather usually watches the news programs after dinner. Perhaps you’d like to watch with him.’

  ‘It’s all rubbish,’ Hessel said as he nevertheless sat himself heavily in one of the chairs, pointed the remote at the television like a gun and pumped up the volume. I watched him, suddenly wondering who the hell he was, who Bette was, why the hell I was here, and then I said, ‘I think I might just go to bed.’

  The television blared through the crack in the bedroom door as I sat on the bed wrapped in Mum’s crocheted quilt.

  It seemed insane to me now. It seemed almost hilarious, actually, that this had been my plan. That this was where I had run to, where I had sent myself. Cathy’s room. Mum’s room, of all places.

  After what she had just done, proving to me that she really, really didn’t care about me . . . After that, to come here – I must have been out of my mind. I had been. I had been out of my mind.

  The wind lifted and dropped a piece of tin on the roof, sounding a loud bang, and I jumped and then saw against the darkening sky the back legs of a possum dangling down outside. The legs scrambled and then disappeared and I heard the same thump and scratch that had woken me that morning as it ran away across the roof. I crossed the room to reach over the desk and tug at the window, but it was stuck shut. Everything in the room leaned towards me, crept under my feet, scraped against my shoulders.

  I would have to stay one more night. One more night.

  I pressed my cheek against the glass of the window. Somewhere out there, beautiful, anonymous Melbourne beckoned. But I was already worrying about the cost. If I left the area I’d have to replace the package. And in Melbourne where would I stay? City prices were steep.

  Outside, the dark grey land met the dark grey sky. Something flickered at the edge of the pane and through the warped surface of the cheap glass the hulking shape of the old house slipped into view, shimmered into existence as if it wasn’t sure itself whether it did in fact exist. Its wobbliness and its blockishness made it seem both wavering and defiantly solid; as if the old house had just taken a big breath and was holding it in.

  I took my cheek from the glass, rubbed it with a warming palm, and picked up an object I found perched on the sill. It was heavy, with delicate little metal teeth and gears, very cold to the touch – the tiny inside mechanism of a music box. As I turned it over in my hand I noticed the handle was missing. I put it back on the sill.

  Pulling my pack across the floor towards the bed I inadvertently dragged a moth-eaten old sheet along with it and unearthed a fan heater that had been hidden beneath. I gave a little cry of joy and pulled it out and plugged it in. It whirred satisfyingly and pumped hot dry air onto my fingertips. I upturned a cardboard box then sat the heater on top and pointed it to where my feet would be in the bed. I rubbed my fingers together in the balmy stream. Money-munchers, Dad called those heaters. Planet-killers. Power-guzzlers to be avoided at all costs. It was probably not a kind thing to do to pensioners, I imagined, running a fan heater all night.

  But to hell with it. If I had to stay one more night, I’d be damned if I was going to freeze again.

  I slept. Thank heaven. Or rather, thank heater. Heater and tracksuit combo, actually – I had decided to wear the teal tracksuit Bette had brought me, and it turned out to be wonderfully warm. I slept late, woke up refreshed – amazingly – and found Bette in her usual position at the kitchen sink. Tea was already waiting for me in the pot, with a delicate little cup set alongside it, and the kettle hissing merrily on the stove.

  ‘Let me pour that,’ said Bette, and she slugged milk in first and then tea through the strainer and then a dash of boiling water. Steam curled up from the cup. I didn’t sniff at the milk this time. I took a sip. It was a perfect brew.

  ‘You’ll have to forgive your grandfather for not being here this morning,’ Bette said. ‘He’s already over at the stable. Polly seems a little better this morning, but she’s not out of the woods yet.’

  ‘Oh, I’m glad to hear it. About the better bit, not the woods.’

  ‘So he’ll be out there all morning. I hope we can still do coffee for you tomorrow morning . . .’

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘We do coffee properly on a Wednesday morning – tomorrow – you’ll see. It will be exciting to have you here.’

  Bette returned to her position at the sink under the open window. I tried to quell the uprising my stomach had started at the mere mention of the word ‘coffee’, and hid my guilty face at the mention of the word ‘tomorrow’ behind the teacup. Because I had decided. Somehow I would find reception today and I would book into the Best Western in town; it would be cheaper than staying in Melbourne and without having to replace the package, I could maybe, maybe, just afford it.

  Through the open window came the sound of a car pulling up. Bette, looking out, said, ‘Oh, Leonie’s here again.’

  The back door flew open and Hessel stormed inside and made a strange growling sound. ‘Wasn’t she here yesterday? Why does she have to be hanging around so much?’

  I stood and watched through the window as the white hatchback pulled up and Leonie stepped out of the driver’s seat. The passenger side door opened and a young man, longish with a disordered mass of dark brown hair, stepped out onto the gravel and turned towards us. He was longer than his mum, and fair, and he wore a black leather jacket and tight black jeans. I watched as he turned away, leaned casually against the car and flicked his hair – the floppy fringe that had fallen over his eyes. He didn’t do it in a glamorous model kind of way, but in a nervous kind of way, looking about him while he did it, like he was trying to decide the best place to be, trying to figure out where to put himself. Bette had grown very still beside me, watching him. She doesn’t like him, I thought.

  Bette said, ‘She’s got Basil with her.’

  ‘What?’ said Hessel, abruptly muscling his way to get a view out of the window. ‘Why would she do that?’

  It was so strange, everybody just standing completely still, looking at each other without moving. Not Bette, not Hessel, not the boy.

  So I said, ‘Leonie said yesterday she had to come back and she was going to bring her son to meet me. I thought that would be okay.’

  ‘Anna –’ He
ssel said, but then he said nothing else and sat down in the armchair. Bette smiled at me, a strange, complicated smile – unsure of itself. Leonie and her son were just standing around their car. I finished my tea and said, ‘Maybe they’re waiting for us to go and say hello.’ When neither Bette nor Hessel answered, I pulled on a jacket, slid my phone into my pocket, stepped out the back door and walked out across the gravel.

  Leonie was leaning with her elbows on the bonnet, talking to the young man. He had his back against the car door and was facing away from me, towards the old house, so I was actually quite close by the time they heard my rasping footsteps and looked up. Leonie turned quickly. ‘Anna!’ she said with a smile, and the young man wheeled around so fast he nearly fell over. He had long lashes, and he was wearing eye make-up, I saw now – dark lines around the underneath of his eyes. And he looked either younger or older than I’d first thought, seeing him through the window – he had a youthful expression, but the jawline of a grown man.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, holding his fringe back from his face so he could see me. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Hi.’ And then, ‘This is really –’

  Leonie cut him off. ‘Basil, remember.’

  He looked peeved and rebellious, like an angry toddler. ‘Seriously, Mum?’ he said. ‘We’re going to play the stupid game?’

  ‘I don’t want you messing about.’ Obviously there was some stand-off between them; their eyes were locked. Something was going over my head, and finally the young man shrugged. Leonie nodded silently at him and said, ‘Anna, this is my son, Basil.’

  I held out my hand for him to shake, and the way he stepped towards me to take it – a weird little wiggle as he walked – reminded me of an excited puppy trying not to wag his tail too much, so his body kind of wagged instead.

  ‘I’m going in to see Bette,’ said Leonie. ‘You kids coming?’