Where We Begin

by Christie Nieman

  Basil turned and considered the old building. Something about it must have convinced him pretty quickly, because he turned straight back and said, ‘Okay, cairn it is. Let’s go.’

  If there was any magic reception at the top of this rubble heap, I hadn’t been banking on an audience for whatever escape plan I might want to put in place or interaction with Nassim that might follow.

  ‘Maybe you have something better to do, Basil,’ I said, suggestively.

  ‘Nup!’ he said cheerfully. But thankfully, as we began negotiating the loose and slipping boulders, he quickly added, ‘Christ on a stick, you’re not worth dying for!’ and sat back against a boulder only a couple of layers from the bottom while I pushed on, pressing and stepping and testing my way up to the top, taking advantage of Basil’s instinct for self-preservation while ignoring my own.

  But then just before I reached the top I sat back, panting. Gasping, actually. My body didn’t usually do this, gasp for air at the merest exertion. I wondered if this was that same siphoning off of resources that made my hands and feet feel cold. It felt good, though, sitting there with the rough stone beneath my fingertips, my body warm inside the jacket, the wind getting playful, flipping the hood off my head and turning the sweat on my brow cool. I gathered whatever resources I had and wobbled up onto the last of the rocks, thinking of the monumental effort it must have taken for those settler workers to have created this mound, and the danger they courted doing it – I shuddered to think of the injuries they might have sustained in a time of minimal medical science. Finally I sat down on top of the cairn and pulled out my phone. No bars. No fucking bars. All for nothing. I dropped my hand back into my lap, still holding the phone, and looked at the two houses facing off against each other.

  The big house looked almost cut out and pasted on, but Bette and Hessel’s little house seemed embedded in the landscape, as at home as a land-formed thing, like a rock or a hill. The tin on the roof was rusted a natural ruddy brown, the cheap fibro was peeling and mottled like the bark of the three straggly gum trees that stood lonesome around it, and its thin walls visibly wobbled when the wind blew. It stood half-hidden in a tangle of weeds and shrubs and, with the yard fence framing it, it seemed like a chaotic picture of something wild painted onto the smooth canvas of the featureless paddocks around it. It was well settled into its place there and was clearly not the ‘temporary stopgap’ Hessel had claimed it was.

  Beyond the two houses the main road perfectly bisected the landscape. Just a ten-minute drive down that road – according to the map on my phone – was the town with the post office where my magical package would be arriving in a few days’ time. The road disappeared in the distance, a diminishing reality, a vanishing point in the distant blue-brown hills. It was straight, the road, dead straight: everything here was straight, the fences, the roads, even the dirt side roads. It made sense – why meander when the flat land meant you could make a road go straight from a to b – but I found the lack of curves unsettling. I’d never associated ‘the countryside’ with all these straight lines.

  Suddenly the phone in my hand pinged. It pinged a few times, rapidly, one ping crowding in on the next. Two bars. And lots of messages, hovering messages that had finally found a way to land. A number of missed calls, all from Nassim. Hang-up messages. And two texts.

  The first text read Tried to call a couple of times. Obvs.

  All the second one said was, Swing? with love hearts following.

  I let the phone drop again. That was a thing that Nassim and I did. We swung. Not in the seedy seventies key-party kind of way, but in the kindergarten way. There was a playground at the end of my street – he’d send me a message and we’d meet there and swing and talk and then fumble together on the grass for a bit before I’d walk home to more study. I never knew when he was going to ask – it could be late at night, or in the warm afternoon; he said he was mixing it up for me, keeping my thinking ability fresh and adaptable. I wasn’t sure if he’d read that one somewhere too, or if he just said it because it suited his purposes. He’d sent this one last night, according to the time stamp.

  The wind whooshed about the plain with nothing to trouble it, and nothing for it to trouble except the three sad trees and the clouds it sent racing across the bright blue sky above me, clearing them suddenly, like a broom sweeping them out of the way. The sun beamed, enlivening the green grass on the plateau beneath. And suddenly it was a beautiful day. The blue above, the green below . . . it was like a picture from a storybook.

  And out of nowhere I felt sadness welling up. From nowhere, or everywhere. It seemed to come at me from all around: from the sorry little house, the shortened grass, the ragged stones, the sky itself, from the old derelict mansion across the way. The clouds swept back in and the two windows that remained there in their sockets were like two wonky, sightless eyes, reflecting the shifting low clouds. I watched them passing across the upstairs window, and I caught movement there. A crow. Just a crow, reflected.

  The crow was flying towards me, and as it passed over me, it cocked its head, as if it was strange to see a human so high up in the flat landscape.

  Wah, said the crow, as if telling me to hurry up and sort my shit out. Wah.

  Basil arrived, teetering on the rocks, sending a smaller boulder tumbling. ‘Holy shitting hell,’ he said. ‘We’re going to die.’

  ‘Oh come on, it’s not that bad.’

  ‘Oh yeah!’ he said, and stood up and did star jumps.

  ‘Stop that!’ I cried, grabbing his arm. ‘You’ll fall!’

  ‘Oh, you care. Sweet.’ And he sat on the rock next to me. He looked suddenly spooked. ‘If Mum saw me up here, she’d freak,’ he said, and he dropped another smaller stone and watched it clatter to the bottom.

  I breathed the cold air as it passed my face and tossed my hair across my eyes. Basil pulled his leather jacket closer around his body and swivelled himself around so he was looking out from the other side of the cairn. I pulled up the website of the Best Western on my phone and checked the tariffs and breathed out sharply. Too much. It was just too much.

  ‘Can you see that gully over there?’ Basil asked suddenly.

  When I turned I saw he was pointing out across the plain, away from the domestic decrepitude behind us. I looked, but saw nothing but cleared land as far as the eye could see. Some straight lines of trees along fence lines, a shorter line of meandering trees in the distance.

  ‘Um, no?’ I said.

  He looked hard at my face, assessing, and then gave a little nod. ‘No matter,’ he said.

  I looked down at my phone, wondering what to do with it next.

  ‘Reception?’ Basil said.

  ‘Tiny bit, in and out.’

  There were no easy words to make Nassim understand, no right words. I needed to explain properly – I owed him that. But I couldn’t do that here, now, not with Basil hanging over my shoulder. But I couldn’t keep failing to respond, either. I’d have to send a holding message, just until I figured out how to tell him that I couldn’t continue. To tell him properly. To make him feel okay about it. That was going to take effort, and thought. I typed.

  Sorry for radio silence, I’m in deep study. I paused a moment. Was this really what I was doing? Another lie? But I couldn’t see another way right then. I sent it.

  The phone pinged instantly. He must have been waiting. Talk now? he wrote.

  Um. Not really a good time, unforch. Coward. Coward, coward, coward. And bitch.

  Nassim’s response came in swiftly. Okay. Miss you though. You such a swot. I’ll try again later.:) xxx ♥♥♥

  Basil giggled with glee. ‘Poor guy,’ he said. He was reading over my shoulder.

  I locked my phone screen. ‘Don’t you have school or something?’

  Basil sat back quickly. ‘Hey, don’t be like that. Don’t be mad.’

  ‘This is private, mate.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Basil, backing off. ‘I didn’t know, okay? I was just
messing around.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Sorry, I’m just . . .’ But I didn’t know what I was just.

  ‘Hey,’ said Basil. ‘How lucky are we? It’s school holidays and we get to hang out.’

  ‘Yeah, I don’t really have time for that. And I’m probably going again soon.’

  Basil looked annoyed. ‘Sorry, Your Maj, I’ll be sure not to bother you again.’ He stood, as if to climb back down the cairn.

  ‘No, wait,’ I said. ‘I’m being rude. I’ve just – I’m just dealing with some stuff, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, aren’t we all?’

  ‘No, I mean, I’ve got some real stuff going on right now.’

  ‘Oh I see, real stuff, not like all that fake stuff the rest of us deal with all the time.’

  ‘No, I mean . . . Jesus, can you just lay off a bit?’

  ‘Sorry. Okay. I’m sorry. We’re totally going down the wrong path here. A bad trip. I’m backing up, okay, see?’ He held his hands up in mock surrender.

  ‘I can’t tell when you’re joking.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s my special gift. But I’m not joking now, not joking anymore, promise. Truce?’

  ‘Okay.’

  We shook on it.

  ‘So my mum said you wanted to study medicine?’ he said. ‘Like, she said you really want to study it. “Determined,” she said.’

  I pressed my fingers to my head with the change of subject. Because it wasn’t a change of subject at all, not really, not for me. ‘Yep,’ I said.

  ‘I think Mum wishes I was a bit more determined. You know, you’re really lucky you know what you want.’

  That surprised me. That was a new idea, that I was lucky, not just inadequate, or setting myself up to fail. ‘I guess I never really thought about it like that . . .’

  ‘I think Mum wanted to study medicine post-grad.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Yeah, she was so smart at school and in science at uni – but then, I don’t know, shit happened, I think. Me, among other things.’

  This was all too close. ‘Um. Well. That’s sad for her.’

  ‘Yeah, I dunno. Some issues with my dad too. But she loves nursing. I don’t think she regrets it at all really. I hope she doesn’t. She got me instead. So, you know, she’s got to be happy with that.’ Basil flipped his hair with a sudden flourish. ‘I’m going to be an actor I think. But I don’t know, it seems really hard to get into . . .’

  I nodded. But I’d stopped listening. ‘Well, Basil,’ I said, ‘it’s been nice chatting but I have to go and study.’ The panic was starting to worm its way out of me, against my best efforts. ‘I really have to go,’ I said again. But I didn’t move from my place near the top of the cairn. ‘I’m already falling so far behind by even coming here.’

  Basil didn’t move either. He put his head on the side, again like a dog, like he was listening for something outside of normal hearing. ‘So, I know it’s your own secret trouble-in-paradise tale,’ he said. ‘And don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re here and I get to meet you and everything, but I do think it was probably the dumbest place on the planet to go if you need to do some serious study to get into medicine. That house will be impossible to get anything done in. How loud does that old man play the television?’

  ‘I know!’ I suddenly laughed out loud at the memory of Hessel’s news channel the night before, and then I stopped laughing. ‘I don’t know what to do. I have to study. I’m wasting so much time.’

  ‘Yeah, and there’s not really anywhere else here. The shed’s all full of horse and the house is so tiny.’

  ‘Maybe the old house –’ I started, but Basil cut me off.

  ‘Bromley?’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t recommend Bromley.’

  ‘What’s “Bromley”?’

  ‘Oh, um, Bromley Cairn. The old house. That’s the name of the old family estate.’

  ‘Oh right. Why wouldn’t you recommend it?’

  ‘Hmm? What?’ Basil was looking distracted. It was feigned distraction, I was sure of it.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I study in Bromley?’

  ‘Oh, because . . . I just don’t think you should.’ Basil had gone weird, all clammed up and using airy sentences.

  ‘Tell me why.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s pretty creepy, don’t you think?’

  ‘That’s not a real reason.’

  ‘And some of the local delinquents used to drink and smoke pot in there, who knows what they’ve left behind. And there’s wild animals.’

  ‘Wild animals? What, an angry sheep or two?’

  ‘Just, I just reckon – Wait, have you been in there already?’

  ‘No, I –’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Do you think it’s haunted or something?’

  ‘No!’ Basil looked uncomfortable. ‘I mean, not really badly haunted. But yes. Okay? You got it out of me. Yes, it’s a little bit haunted.’

  ‘I don’t believe in ghosts.’

  ‘Okay, well I do and I’m telling you it’s actually quite a lot haunted. There’s some weird shit in there, believe me.’

  ‘My non-belief in the paranormal is not modified by the degree to which you might believe something is haunted.’

  ‘I just really don’t want you to go in there. Please tell me you won’t.’

  ‘I wasn’t even –’

  ‘Don’t work in Bromley, okay?’

  ‘Wow. A royal decree.’

  ‘Maybe don’t even go in there.’

  ‘Um, okay, sure Basil, boss of the universe.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Seriously?’

  Basil sighed loudly and shook his head. ‘I can’t stop you. But I just wouldn’t if I was you. Especially not upstairs.’

  ‘Noted,’ I said. And he seemed to finally let it go. We both stood and began our precarious descent. ‘So, are you one of these local delinquents?’ I asked him.

  ‘Me? No.’

  ‘Ha. You could’ve fooled me.’

  ‘Why, because I’m Aboriginal?’

  ‘No, because you’re fucking annoying.’

  We reached the bottom of the cairn and began walking back towards the little house. Bette’s face appeared in the kitchen window, watching us, and then it disappeared back into the dark world of indoors. When we reached the house Basil stopped at the back door.

  ‘This is where I leave you, ma’am.’ He bowed low with a flourish.

  ‘You won’t come in?’ I wasn’t sure why I asked that, it just seemed . . . something. Hospitable.

  ‘Yeah, nah. Actually, I’m not really welcome in Bette and Hessel’s castle.’ And before I could ask more he had walked off, stepping out across the gravel with his head held high and haughty like a lord to where Leonie was waiting for him in the car. I watched him go, and found myself smiling.

  As they drove away, I could see Basil’s arms waving about inside the car, gesticulating something to his mother who threw back her head and laughed as she drove. It was a little happy moment between a mother and her child that I found unexpectedly hard to see.

  The whole business of it. This whole business of mothers and children. It was such pot luck. I never want to be disappointing pot luck for someone else, never. Because that hurt. I knew how it hurt. I felt it with the weight of a stone falling in water. Maybe if we’d been different, my mum and me, maybe then . . .

  Mum, why now? Why did you so comprehensively let me down right now, right now, when I need you the most?

  I squeezed my eyes shut tight against the sight of the hatchback driving away up the road.

  And when I couldn’t hear the car anymore I opened them again. It was gone, as if it had never been there. The road stretched away to its vanishing point, empty, and while the wind carved patterns in the grass, I stepped down off the porch and walked straight across the gravel to the old house. To Bromley Cairn.

  15

  ‘Is it from Dad?’ I asked Mum, referring to the letter. I don’t know why I t
hought it might be. I had never known either of my parents to send letters before. They were a very digital couple. Mum, standing there while Nassim looked uncertainly between us, just stared at me: she stared straight at me. ‘Mum? Is everything alright, Mum?’

  And then she turned suddenly away from us and opened the fridge. She said nothing and she did nothing, just stood there with the fridge open.

  The silence was strange. She swayed on her feet. I turned to Nassim, who I could see was pretending not to have noticed that something was up. He must have realised her state. He was onto her now. Onto both of us.

  ‘So,’ said Nassim, very clearly scrambling about for a new subject of conversation. ‘It must be nice for you, Cathy, to have your own family a bit closer than Holland. Close enough to keep an eye on. Not to have to travel or to worry so much? Like Mr Krause.’

  Mum didn’t respond. This was mortifying. How could she have done this to me? Got herself so sideways drunk, so quickly, in front of Nassim? I had never done this before, brought a boy home, and she couldn’t even lay off for one moment – in fact, she seemed to have gone even harder.

  Nassim was still trying. I wished he’d stop. ‘And do you have siblings like Mr Krause, too? I imagine they are a great comfort when your parents are getting older and needing more care.’

  Any other parent at this point in time would be so impressed by him, they might even feel quite chuffed at his level of personal interest. I could even see Mum in a different moment, in a different state, just loving it, and loving him. But right here, right now, she just closed the fridge without getting anything out and turned back to us with a completely alien expression on her face.

  She reached clumsily for her glass. She was looking down and gasping strangely. Some of this was familiar. Some of it was new.

  ‘Mum, what is it? Are you alright?’ I moved towards her.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ Mum turned away from me and lifted her glass to her mouth. Her hands were shaking. Mine were too. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I stood still, hoping something might change. Maybe we could just say she was sick. Her breathing began to slow. Maybe this could be saved.