Where We Begin

by Christie Nieman

  The thought was unsettling. It made me feel caught in a logic loop, like I could circle and circle and never come out. Quickly I swiped the skulls away; and then, already feeling annoyed at myself, I went searching for my favourite images of Nassim. And then there he was, Nassim: his mouth, his eyes, his body . . .

  I comforted myself with my hands and the thought of his body and his smell, and when I was finished I felt such a crushing weight of sadness and of my own stupid weakness that the only way to escape it was to ride the tail end of climax into sleep.

  And then I dreamed.

  I dreamed a small skull, coalescing around a bright point, a face, growing and growing until the tiny brain was squeezed so small that it flamed like a collapsing star and burned out and sat there, cold and black and heavy, a black stone in the palm of my hand, and with a sense of elation and tears of relief, I held the stone to my cheek and then drew my arm back and threw it from the top of the cairn out over the paddock in the direction of Basil’s pointing finger. ‘Do you see the gully there?’ he said, and I did, I saw it, finally, a strange submerged valley – lush, almost tropical, with trees poking out the top, a bright contrast to the surrounding brown earth of the flat paddock. My black stone flew through the air, so far, and then dropped into the rainbow valley. ‘Well that’s good then,’ said Basil. ‘No more lies to Nassim.’ And he turned around and waved at Nassim, who was climbing the cairn behind us, who was coming up the rocks to touch me, enfold me, hold me.

  20

  The sun was just up when I was woken by the ping of my phone on the floor by the bed. Reception. The text notification from the post office. And then, almost immediately, no reception.

  But that didn’t matter. The package had arrived at the post office in town.

  I sat up quickly. I was due to take Bette to her doctor’s appointment today – I could easily install her in a cafe somewhere while I went to the post office to pick it up. If she showed too much interest I could say it was study materials.

  The mouse traps in the bedroom were empty, thank goodness, but the two in the kitchen had captured a mouse each. One seemed to be a baby. I took a moment to put on the teal-coloured tracksuit and pull on my ugg boots and then, trying not to think about it, I dropped the bodies into the bin, covering them with an old newspaper before resetting the traps and then coating my hands with dishwashing liquid and scrubbing them vigorously under the kitchen tap.

  As I stepped outside, sparrows chirped in the English broom by the back door, and a high-up crow gave a drifting, morning groan. The cloud-streaked sky was a beautiful blue and pink and turquoise and gold. It was reliable, the sky; a wide and lovely place. But then I looked out across the plateau, trying to imagine it as it must have once been: a grasslands, full of wildflowers and sedges and wetland patches of dark green; a broad palette of subtle colours in a visual spectacle of abstract organic shapes.

  I almost wished Leonie hadn’t told me. That place, that other place, this other place here; it seemed much closer to the sort of place I thought I was running to – somewhere that was all curves and gentleness and productivity and wildness.

  Standing there, staring at the regimented squares of green and blonde and brown, I became very aware of the separation between my outside and my inside. It seemed bizarre suddenly, that no-one could see what was going on inside of me. The inside-of-me was a mysterious place that no-one knew except this new entity that was crawling out of non-existence but had not yet arrived into existence. And as if it knew I was thinking about it, it sent a wave of nausea to pressurise my blood; the blood surged at my temples and forced tears out of my eyes and saliva into my mouth. My stomach lurched but nothing came. I spat into the dirt between my feet and wiped my eyes. I was starting to get sick of this.

  Standing straight again, collecting my breath, carrying my things towards Bromley in the middle of these mono-colour block fields, I wished again that I didn’t know. If I didn’t know then perhaps I could have learned to appreciate the crossed lines of roads and fences. Perhaps I could have figured out a way to find them as beautiful as I found the sky.

  It was mid-morning outside the window of Bromley Cairn when the alarm on my phone blared and I closed my chemistry book. I had studied well, and now it was time to collect Bette and take her to the doctor and then collect my package. This was it. The official start of the next part of my life.

  I came in the back door and found Bette bustling about the kitchen, preparing Hessel’s coffee.

  ‘No time for that, Grandma,’ I said. ‘You’ve got a doctor’s appointment. And I’m driving you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come on, nurse’s instructions. We’ve got to go or we’ll be late.’

  ‘But Hessel’s got the good car.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s driven Polly over to Bendigo to the vet. She’s really not well. So I think maybe we shouldn’t go either, in case something happens.’

  I frowned. ‘But you need medical attention too, Grandma. And I have my instructions.’

  ‘But the car –’

  ‘That’s alright, we’ll take the old one. It still goes doesn’t it? I saw Grandpa start it the other day.’

  ‘He likes to turn the engine over. I don’t know if it still drives.’

  ‘Well, it’s our only option, so let’s go.’

  ‘But Hessel’s coffee –’

  ‘He’s not even here.’

  ‘He might come back.’

  I had to physically usher Bette away from the stove and out of the kitchen. ‘I’ll write him a note – you go and get your things.’

  Hi Grandpa Hessel,

  I’ve taken Grandma out for a spin in the beep beep Barina. You’ll have to get your own coffee this morning, but you’re a smart man, a thinker even, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.

  x Anna :)

  I was still chuckling about the note as I turned the key in the Barina and it rumbled into life. I grated the gears into reverse and slowly backed the car out of its resting place in the shed. It was covered in dust, both inside and out, so after I’d managed to get it into first and brought it up alongside the back door of the house, I grabbed an old towel and wiped down the steering wheel and the two front seats. I’d made it presentable just as Bette appeared, looking wary, at the passenger door.

  She climbed in, holding on to the cracked vinyl hand-strap of the car as she lowered herself into the seat.

  ‘You ready to go, Grandma? Clicked and clacked?’

  I didn’t have my L plates with me, and I didn’t even know whether Bette’s licence to supervise me was still valid, but it was practically the Wild West out here, L plates and adequate supervision were surely optional. I dropped the handbrake and eased forward, nosing the car along the drive and out onto the road, my head giddy with a sense of autonomy again, of being responsible for my own direction.

  ‘Did you read the note I wrote to Grandpa?’ I asked.

  ‘No. Should I have?’

  I chuckled again. ‘Good. You might have been tempted to change it.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ was all Bette said as she smoothed her skirt over her knees and watched the paddocks and fence posts and sheep filter past. She’d done something strange to her hair, I noticed – it looked all airy and thin and there was a hairspray smell in the air. She touched her fringe gently with her fingertips. ‘It’s nice to get out,’ she said. ‘I don’t get into town much anymore, now that I can’t drive myself. I used to enjoy driving.’

  ‘I love it,’ I said. ‘Well, let’s go somewhere for lunch afterwards, make an occasion of it.’

  ‘You’re quite a good driver,’ said Bette, as the car scrolled along the flat surface of the straight black road towards town.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, taking genuine pleasure in both the praise and the skill. Mum had actually been diligent in teaching me from the moment I got my learner plates last year. ‘Being able to drive is important,’ Mum had stressed. ‘A car is an independence mac
hine.’ And I had proved a diligent and attentive student. Those situations were when Mum and I worked the best, when we were both engaged in the same practical task. When our minds were following along similar tracks communication was easy, like when we were moving furniture, or driving a car, or cleaning out the tiny garden shed. In those moments, Mum and I were everything mothers and daughters should be.

  Suddenly Bette said, ‘It’s good you’re working in Bromley Cairn. You’ve been waiting a long time to see it. It’s been waiting a long time to see you.’

  I nodded. ‘That’s a nice way to put it –’

  ‘Your great-great-great-great grandfather built it all by himself – with labour, of course. And he cleared the land all around it by hand. He was the very first one in the area to run sheep.’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s right. Mum said that your family were sheep farmers,’ I said.

  ‘Did she? What else did she say?’ Bette asked, turning quickly towards me. I couldn’t decide if the tone in her voice was eagerness or wariness.

  ‘Um, oh nothing else, just that.’

  Bette looked at me a little sideways, and I decided that maybe this was a moment for absolute truth. ‘Actually, I’m really sorry, Grandma, but Mum has never actually said anything about you and Hessel and the three of you living here, about her growing up on the farm. I don’t know why. She’s just not really like that, I suppose. I hope that doesn’t upset you.’

  Bette leaned back into her seat, put her head against the headrest and closed her eyes. She didn’t stir for a very long time, and when I said again, ‘I’m sorry, Grandma,’ and she still didn’t respond, I assumed she had drifted off to sleep.

  So I was surprised when Bette cleared her throat and opened her eyes and kept on with our conversation as if it had never been diverted.

  ‘My grandfather was the last Bromley to live at Bromley Cairn. And then they just left her there, leased the paddocks out around her and left the house standing where it was. We had a house and shopfront in the main street in town, property brokering, more lucrative than sheep, you see. So she was abandoned, the beautiful old lady, left to go to wrack and ruin.’

  ‘Oh that’s terrible, Grandma.’

  ‘Yes. I really wanted us to be able to bring her back to life – for us, you know, for the Bromleys. And once we were married, Hessel wanted to come back out here too, to the country estate. He had an idea about the manor lifestyle. He thought we could revive her.’

  ‘How did you two meet?’ I said.

  ‘Your grandfather and I?’

  ‘Yes. I love a romance story.’

  Grandma Bette looked at me and sat up straighter. She smoothed her dress over her legs. ‘Well, I was quite old when I met Hessel. Everyone thought my chance had passed. But I didn’t really mind. I had good friends in the town. I liked working for my father. I did the accounts for the business, you see. I’ve always been naturally good with numbers –’

  ‘I’m good with numbers too!’ I said. ‘Mum’s hopeless.’

  ‘Oh yes, I know,’ said Bette. ‘She always was. So is Hessel.’

  ‘So you met Hessel where? At a dance?’

  ‘No. He walked right in the door at the property business and asked for a job!’ Bette reported this act as though it was the most outrageous thing a young Dutchman could have done in their small town. ‘He joined the business as a salesman,’ Bette said. ‘And he really could sell anything, it was quite amazing. People just loved him. He was very charming. I was thirty-two, he was twenty-three, and, well, we just started going around together.’

  ‘Was it a scandal?’ I asked. ‘With such an age difference?’

  Bette leaned back, obviously enjoying this version of her youth. She seemed proud even as she remembered. ‘We were the talk of the town,’ she said, smiling as though she had just delivered a punchline.

  ‘And then you moved together out here?’

  ‘Yes, we started out with the same dream there – together we would get Bromley up and running again. So we put the small house on the block – it was all we could afford at the time – and we started working on Bromley, but it only lasted for a little while because then I had Cathy and Hessel’s passions transitioned from motorbikes and Bromley Cairn to breeding racehorses and . . . well, as I said, Hessel never was good with numbers.’

  ‘Europa Pearl is beautiful though. I can see how horses would be hard to turn your back on once you’re hooked.’

  Bette seemed unmoved. ‘Yes. Well. We lost most of the land. And poor Bromley was left to rot.’ Bette sighed and looked out the window. ‘I would have dearly loved to have lived in her, just once. I have seen some early photographs of her and she looks so magnificent. So beautiful and alive and splendid. But sometimes dreams and life just don’t add up, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh well,’ I said, unsure how to improve Bette’s sudden plunge in mood. ‘Never say never.’

  ‘Well,’ said Bette, clasping her hands decidedly in her lap, folding the subject away with a final thought: ‘At least the Bromley paddock and house are still yours. Yours and mine and your mother’s. I’ve kept them safe for us. I’ve done that much at least.’

  I was unsure what to say. ‘Thank you, Grandma,’ I said. And then I remembered the photograph. ‘Hey Grandma,’ I fished around in my back pocket with one hand, the other hand still on the wheel, ‘who is that in this photo?’ Bette turned with interest and took the photo I held out to her. ‘Who is that boy?’ I said.

  Bette held the photo in a shaky hand, looking at it, peering, and then her face closed down.

  ‘Grandma?’

  Bette dropped her hand to her lap, still holding the photograph, and turned to face the window, her gaze hovering somewhere distant out there, away from me, away from the car, away from now.

  I drove on, my eyes sliding every now and then to the side to see Bette still sitting, still staring out of the window. Unresponsive. Somewhere else.

  But then, all of a sudden, she came out of it, turning her head to me, holding up the photo like something hot. ‘Where did you find this?’

  ‘In Bromley Cairn. In the room where I’ve been working. It was just on the mantelpiece.’

  ‘In Bromley Cairn?’ Bette fixed me with a hard stare. Nothing absent there now – her eyes were sharp as sharp. It made me scramble for words a little, trying to remember things, trying to represent the situation as accurately as I could.

  ‘Yes. It had probably been there all along, maybe it had. I found it last night. Maybe Hessel left it there when he hung my picture.’

  ‘Hessel hung a picture?’

  ‘My memento mori –’

  ‘He came and hung it? And you saw him?’

  ‘No, but it’s hung, so . . .’ I shrugged.

  Bette dropped the photo into her lap, facing up. I looked down into it. Her old shaking fingers hovered over it and then gently traced the curves of the boy’s chin. I waited, but Bette looked off out the window again as the car crept forward, climbing the hill, slipping into the forest and filling with the scent of eucalyptus blossom.

  ‘I haven’t seen a picture of him at this age for the longest time,’ Bette finally said.

  The power under the bonnet began to fade with the incline. I dropped down a gear and the car revved, trying to pull its weight against the gravitational mass of the whole earth, climbing, climbing, climbing. I dropped another gear to keep the car from stalling and other cars started to pass on the right from behind. We crept loudly up to the apex and then, over the peak and with gravity on our side, the car quietened down and slipped evenly along the bitumen between the trees.

  ‘It’s Danny,’ Bette said.

  ‘Danny?’

  ‘I don’t suppose Cathy would have ever told you about Danny.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t know anything about a Danny.’

  Bette nodded. ‘Cathy loved Danny more than anything, so that makes sense. The more she cares the further away she goes.’

  ‘And Danny is .
. .’

  ‘My boy,’ Bette said. ‘My beautiful baby boy. Cathy’s baby brother. He was a good kid. A really great kid.’

  Bette saying ‘was’ like that gave me a strange sensation, like the road was dropping away from underneath the car.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  Bette answered simply, almost as though she had rehearsed the words so as to not have to think about their terribleness. ‘He had an accident. Just after his fourteenth birthday. He died.’

  I had no words to say. I looked at the picture again, sitting there in Bette’s hands, on Bette’s lap. ‘I didn’t know he even existed,’ I said. ‘Mum never said anything.’

  ‘Yes. Well. We don’t talk about him either, so I guess that’s not surprising. It’s too upsetting for everybody.’

  Everything fell into place. I understood now. ‘Is that why Mum doesn’t come back? Is that why I’ve never met you?’

  ‘Your mother left soon after the accident. I think it was all too much for her. I haven’t seen her since.’

  Bette seemed more relaxed now, so I felt emboldened to ask her more. ‘I don’t want to upset you, Grandma, but I do want to ask: what was the accident? Do you mind talking about it?’

  Bette smiled wistfully. ‘It is hard to talk about. But you should know; I’m a bit sad Cathy never told you. He had a fall. From a cairn. He was mucking around and he fell and then a rock came down, and –’

  Bette motioned with her hand to her head, a gesture to indicate the rock had hit Danny’s head, the words clearly still too traumatic for her to say out loud, even after all these years. I felt my throat get tight and hollow. It was just so awful.

  ‘Anna, don’t talk to Hessel about this,’ Bette said.

  ‘But I think he left the picture for me,’ I said.

  Bette slowly nodded. ‘He’s not very good at talking. Doesn’t like it very much. This is his way of talking.’ Bette waved the picture. ‘Here,’ she said as she handed it back to me, ‘put it somewhere. Keep it safe. Don’t ask him about it. And perhaps don’t mention him hanging your picture either.’