The Undercurrent

by Paula Weston

  ‘I’m fine, Mum.’

  She stops before she reaches him. Even at this distance, Jules can feel Ryan’s energy settle. It could be the dogs or it could be his mum. She’s wearing faded jeans and a navy shirt with the sleeves rolled above her elbows. She takes off her sunglasses to look him over. ‘Ryan James—’

  ‘Seriously, Mum, I’m here for work. Army work.’

  She folds her arms, tests his words for truth. While Angie is all angles, Ryan’s mum is all curves. Her blonde hair is tied at the nape of her neck, long enough to sit over her collar. She looks to Tommy. ‘That true?’

  ‘He’s got protective duty on Julianne De Marchi, so he’s brought her home to show her the glamorous life of us farm boys.’

  Ryan’s mum finally acknowledges Jules and the recognition follows. She knows exactly who Julianne De Marchi is. ‘Hello Julianne,’ she says, her voice neutral. ‘Have you spoken to your father yet, Ryan?’

  ‘No.’ In the shed, the last song has finished and the next one hasn’t started. ‘But he’s obviously doing a bang-up job.’

  ‘Please don’t start. Can I enjoy having you home for a full minute before we get into that?’

  He lets out his breath. ‘Does that mean you’re happy to see me?’

  ‘Of course I am. I can’t believe you’re standing here in front of me.’ Her voice breaks on the last word and her face crumples. ‘Now look what you’ve done.’ She waves him to her. ‘Come here.’ They meet halfway. She barely reaches his shoulder and he has to lean down so she can get her arms around his neck. The dogs settle at their feet, tails wagging. Her hat falls off and Tommy scoops it up, brushes off the dirt.

  ‘I missed you,’ Ryan says to his mum. ‘Even the nagging.’

  She laughs into his shoulder.

  Jules should turn away—it’s a private family moment and she’s an intruder—but she can’t stop watching. They’re so easy with each other. A longing for contact, for connection, rises up so strong it jolts the current to life. She digs her hands into her pockets and concentrates on reeling it back from her hands. Her body’s never responded like that to loneliness before.

  ‘Come on,’ Ryan says to his mum. ‘I’ll tell you what’s going on while Tommy makes us coffee.’

  Jules follows Tommy inside, leaving Ryan with his mum and the dogs on the verandah. The kitchen’s almost the size of Jules’ entire house but once she gets over the high ceiling and long bench, she realises it’s not that different from her own: threadbare tea towels, mismatched cups drying in the sink rack, a toaster missing two out of three knobs and an old fridge rusting at the corners.

  She takes a stool and waits for Tommy to start up a conversation. It’s only after a minute of silence that she realises he’s trying to listen in on the murmuring voices outside. When the kettle grumbles to life and makes that impossible, he props his elbows opposite her on the bench and drums his fingers on the speckled surface.

  ‘How’s Ryno doing?’

  Jules glances at the back door.

  ‘I don’t mean today,’ Tommy says. ‘Is he doing okay in Brissie? Girls, mates? We talk on the phone but he never gives much away. You know what he’s like.’

  Strangely enough, she’s starting to think she might, at least as far as his capacity for deep and meaningful conversations goes.

  ‘He seems to get on well with his roommate.’

  ‘Waylon, yeah, he sounds like a solid guy.’ Tommy frowns. ‘And you two have never hooked up?’

  Jules feels the heat again. Not all of it in her face. ‘We only met a few days ago.’

  ‘I guess that means you’ll be sleeping in the house with us.’

  Jules blinks. Is that the choice: sleep in the shed with Ryan or here in the house with complete strangers? She hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  ‘You want to see the spare room?’ Tommy’s out of the kitchen before Jules can say no. She’d rather Ryan’s mum was giving her the tour, confirming that she’s welcome.

  ‘You coming?’ he calls from further in the house.

  Jules passes through a dining room—the table and corner desk are buried in haphazard stacks of paperwork—and finds Tommy halfway down a wide hallway. The walls are hung with watercolours of varying sizes, rural landscapes mostly, and the occasional rooster. The signature is the same on all of them.

  ‘Mum used to paint,’ Tommy says, offhand. ‘Right, here’s where you’ll be sleeping.’ He goes in and cracks the blinds. Jules stays in the doorway so she can take it all in: wall-to-wall footy posters, framed photos and jerseys, shelves of trophies and a fat bunch of medals hanging off the handle of a cricket bat. A double bed is pushed up against one wall, the only clue the room was once something other than a sporting shrine.

  Jules picks up a statue of a cricketer, sees Tommy’s name engraved on its base.

  ‘Are these all yours?’

  ‘I wish. They’re mostly Ryan’s. He left them in here when he moved out to the shed.’

  Jules recognises Ryan in one of the larger photos, leaping high over a pack of footy players, his fingertips first to the ball and his face open, expectant.

  ‘Didn’t he tell you?’ Tommy says. He’s holding a football now, handballing it to himself.

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘Ryno was set to be the number one draft pick in the AFL the year before last. Hands-down favourite. And then he blew out his knee at draft camp, and I mean blew it totally. No club wanted to touch him until he’d had the surgery and they could see how he pulled up. Problem was Mum and Dad didn’t have private health insurance—who does these days?—so they couldn’t afford the sort of op he needed. I think it gutted Dad more than Ryan. That was the start of it, really.’

  Jules has moved on to the next photo: two rows of straight-backed boys in black-and-yellow striped jerseys. She finds Ryan in the centre of the front row—guarded but smiling—with his hands clenched on his knees. A prominent ‘(c)’ sits next to his name. Captain.

  ‘His knee’s fine now.’

  He didn’t have any trouble scaling the elevator shaft or chasing her down the laneway last week.

  ‘It’d want to be,’ Tommy says. ‘Voss turned up two days after it happened and recruited Ryno right where you were standing in our kitchen. Offered to pay for his op and rehab in return for five years of army service and monthly pay.’ Tommy spins the footy in his hand. ‘Ryno knocked him back at first. He’d only planned to leave the farm to chase the footy dream. All he ever wanted was to play for the Crows, you know? He was awesome to watch, too. Smart. Quick and fearless, read the play beautifully. Never a smartarse on the field.’ Tommy’s smiling, remembering. ‘Then the bank knocked us back on a hardship loan because Dad wouldn’t plant a GMO crop—after he’d already said no to a discounted herd of Pax Fed’s extra-meat sheep. That was a fun night.’

  Jules has a flash of Angie clutching an empty glass and ranting at newsreaders, calling them lazy and puppets and promising to expose the lot of them when she got her life back. Jules has had a few fun nights of her own.

  ‘Dad didn’t want Ryno to leave, said the public hospital surgery on his knee would be enough to keep him mobile, but we all knew he’d never play footy again. He was an elite athlete. He never would’ve coped not being able to play in the local league, let alone at AFL level. Whatever the army’s done, it’s got him running again. He reckons his beep test is almost up where it was at draft camp. I know he’s not playing footy but he’s fit enough if he wanted to. That’s gotta help his headspace.’

  Jules sits on the edge of the bed and touches one of the medals. Ryan joined the army to support his family.

  ‘Do you know what he does for Major Voss?’ she asks Tommy.

  He shrugs. ‘Some secret squirrel shit.’

  She runs her fingers across a crocheted blanket draped on the end of the bed. It’s made up of blue, red and gold squares and must be football-related because nobody would put those colours together as decor.

  ‘I guess
you miss having him around.’

  Tommy flicks one of the medals. ‘Every day.’ He fidgets with the cords on the blinds, staring out the window. ‘But you know, it’s—ah, crap.’

  He drops the cords and hurries past Jules.

  ‘Dad’s up.’

  33

  Ryan is on his feet on the verandah.

  ‘You look like shit.’

  He’s not saying it to pick a fight: his dad looks terrible. Bloodshot eyes, three-day growth and the shuffle of a man with a sore head. He’s managed to get his hat and boots on, though, so he’s not totally useless. His dad props at the house gate, says nothing.

  ‘Bloody hell, I come home for the first time in a year and find you sleeping off a bender in the middle of the day while Tommy’s busting a gut trying to keep this place alive.’

  The bleary eyes harden. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Ryan’s aware of Tommy hovering at the back door, staying out of it. The dogs haven’t moved from under the table.

  ‘I know Tommy’s got the seeder hooked up, trying to get something in the ground in case it rains.’

  ‘It’s not going to rain. That’d involve something going right.’

  ‘What about bringing the ewes in and having something for Spud’s ram to do when he drops it off tomorrow?’

  ‘We’ve barely got a hundred head left.’

  ‘So? There’s no future for the flock at all if they’re not in lamb come spring.’

  ‘Well, fuck me, son. How have we coped without you and your decades of farming wisdom this past year?’

  ‘All right, you two, that’s enough.’ Ryan’s mum is up from the table and on the move.

  ‘No, Shell, I’m not having him strolling back here telling me how to run my farm.’

  She touches Ryan’s arm as she heads down the step—her way of telling him to shut up.

  ‘Ryan’s here for a few days so you’ll have plenty of time to growl at each other.’ She reaches the gate and makes a show of recoiling. ‘God, Jamie. Go have a shower and shave, and put those clothes straight in the wash. I’ll get the aspirin.’

  ‘I’ll do a few hours in the paddock first.’

  ‘No you won’t. Ryan’s brought a guest home and it’d be nice for you to look and smell a whole lot better when you meet her.’

  De Marchi.

  Ryan checks the back door and finds Tommy there alone. ‘Where’s Julianne?’

  Tommy leans into the house. ‘She was here a second ago.’

  Oh shit. Ryan pushes past his brother, hurries through the empty kitchen and into the hallway. The front door’s open. He breaks into a jog, aware Tommy is right behind him.

  ‘What’s up?’

  Ryan doesn’t answer. As soon as he’s on the front verandah he sees Julianne kneeling in the yard, gripping the bottlebrush farthest from the house.

  ‘De Marchi—’

  Crack.

  The trunk bursts into flames.

  Julianne scrambles backwards on her hands and feet to escape the heat. Her eyes snap to Ryan, panicked.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ Tommy says and bolts for the garden hose.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Julianne says, breathing hard. ‘I didn’t know where else to go.’

  Ryan’s beside her in the dirt, not game to touch her. He’s sweating already: the fire is scorching. ‘Finished?’

  She nods, fixated on the flames consuming the tree. Tommy’s hosing it, using precious water from the underground tank. The air is heavy with ozone and burning sap.

  ‘Tommy, go keep the olds distracted.’ Ryan takes the hose from his brother. ‘Don’t let them come out here.’

  ‘They’re going to smell it.’

  ‘Not if you get them in the kitchen. I need a minute.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We’ll explain later.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Yeah, Tommy. Go.’

  Tommy sprints back into the house, banging the front door shut behind him. Ryan wrenches off the tap. The fire’s taking too much water; he has to let it burn itself out. The flames are contained and there’s no wind to carry embers so hopefully they’ve done enough. The leaves of the bottlebrush are gone, its bare branches wet and blackened. A few lazy flames lick the higher limbs but they’ve got nowhere to go.

  ‘I didn’t know what else to do,’ Julianne says. ‘You were so worked up, I could feel it from inside the house.’

  ‘Is that normal?’

  ‘No.’ She drags a loose hair from her face. ‘Mum’s the only person who affects me like that.’

  What does that mean?

  He helps her up. ‘We should’ve stopped on the way here so you could offload,’ he says. ‘I was too busy planning that fight with Dad to think about it.’

  ‘I can’t stay here.’

  ‘It’ll be fine.’

  ‘Your brother saw how the tree caught fire.’

  ‘Tommy’s cool—’

  ‘He saw and you said you’d explain it. Nobody’s supposed to know, Ryan.’

  ‘Seriously, if I tell him to keep it to himself, he will.’

  Ryan starts at the sound of boots on the concrete verandah, approaching from the other side of the house.

  ‘Hang on, Mum,’ Tommy says loudly.

  Ryan’s drawing a blank on how to handle this. His mum rounds the corner and pulls up short. ‘Why is my bottlebrush a smoking ruin?’

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ Jules says, stepping forward. ‘It was an accident.’

  Ryan stares at the back of Julianne’s head. She’s going to confess but he has no idea to what.

  ‘I’m not good with conflict and I came out here to get away—’

  ‘Do you have any idea what happens if there’s a fire this time of year?’

  ‘It was our fault,’ Tommy says, jumping down from the verandah to stand with Ryan and Julianne. ‘We surprised her while she was playing with this.’ He pulls out a miniature black cigarette lighter. ‘Open flame, dry leaves,’ Tommy continues. ‘But it’s all sorted. I’ll hang on to this little baby and we’ll be fine. Right, Julianne?’

  She nods, slowly.

  Ryan’s mum does a lap around the bottlebrush, staying far enough away to avoid the ash-stained mud. ‘Did you leave any water in the tank?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tommy says. ‘We didn’t use any more than Ryan does in the shower.’

  Ryan shoves Tommy, attempting to play along. When did his brother learn to think this quick on his feet? His mum looks from Tommy to Ryan. She knows something’s up.

  ‘Julianne.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Walsh.’

  ‘We’ve got enough going on in this house without me worrying about you setting off a bushfire.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Ryan tells me it’s safe for you to be here. I want to trust his judgment but he doesn’t always think straight around pretty girls with long legs.’

  Ryan throws his mum a look that she ignores.

  ‘I’m not here to cause drama,’ Julianne says. ‘I totally understand if you don’t want me to stay.’

  Ryan’s mum clicks her tongue the way she does when she’s being misunderstood. ‘I didn’t say you couldn’t stay; I’m asking you not to set anything else on fire. Deal?’

  Julianne breathes out. ‘Okay.’

  His mum takes one last look at the smoking bottlebrush and shakes her head. ‘This should help things no end with your father.’

  34

  ‘What happened last night, Major?’

  ‘Your merc unit paid us a visit. If they had a kill order, it was a sub-par effort.’

  ‘Stop calling them that. They’re not mine.’ Peta Paxton’s irritation is hushed over the line.

  ‘Somebody’s paying their wages.’

  The Major is at a remote servo, talking on his phone away from the pumps and charging stations. French is filling up the van and Khan’s inside searching for something that might pass as coffee.

  ‘What
makes you so sure it’s the same men?’

  ‘Same weapons, same skills.’

  ‘How does that tie them to me?’

  The Major stretches his neck to one side, feels the pull of the tendon. The breeze coming off the plain chills the late afternoon sun. Everything around him is tired and faded: the sign on the highway, the peeling adverts above the pumps, the dry carcass of a roo being picked over by two crows.

  ‘Major—’

  ‘They had access to your building, they knew when the power was going out and they had a clear exit. It was an inside job, and now they’re shadowing the Agitators cross-country and warning off anyone who gets too close. They’re an assault team providing protective duty.’

  ‘And I know nothing about it.’ A calculated pause. ‘Have you learnt anything about Wednesday’s attack?’

  ‘Nothing I can tell you.’

  ‘I’m subsidising this operation—’

  ‘Xavier’s been linked to an imminent energy security threat, Paxton. Your needs come a distant second.’

  She huffs into the phone. ‘I can’t believe you put Angela De Marchi on one of those buses. Does she know Xavier?’

  ‘There’s no connection. Anything else?’

  A beat. ‘Where’s Julianne De Marchi?’

  A four-wheel drive towing a caravan slows on the highway and the crows scatter from the carcass. The Major waits for the vehicle to pass and Paxton reads it as stonewalling.

  ‘Major, she may not be safe.’

  ‘Last week she wasn’t safe from us.’

  ‘That was a precaution, this is different. She’s disappeared and someone is going to considerable lengths to find her. If it’s the mercenary unit, she’s in real danger.’

  ‘Why would mercs track an eighteen-year-old girl?’ But the Major knows the answer and he’s starting to suspect Peta Paxton does too. He watches French walk into the servo to pay, passing Khan on the way out with takeaway cups.

  ‘I can’t answer that, but whoever is looking for her hacked our surveillance footage after the attack and downloaded one of the last camera feeds before the power went.’

  At the van, Khan rests the cups on the dash and gestures for him to wind up the call. The Major can guess what’s coming, but waits for Paxton to say it.