‘I’ve gotta get home,’ he told Jerome. ‘I really do.’ And then he glanced across at Rebecca, who was fast asleep, small body curled up, fists clenched, a slight sweat on the pink of her cheek.
If Jerome didn’t love her, he should leave. Or she should leave. One of them should go.
But of course he didn’t utter those words out loud. It was no business of his. And she was right — he was a man with no moral fibre, so who was he to pass judgement?
Standing at the door, he didn’t look back. He just wanted to be out of there, alone under the crisp coolness of the night air, regaining some sense of sanity in a solitary, and very lengthy, walk home.
The next day, as he drove the trailer through the first of the afternoon peak hour, the seediness of the previous evening still clinging to him, he was glad he’d agreed to go to the shack for Hilary.
He and Ester needed a break.
He’d told her he might stay a couple of nights, and she’d said he could do as he pleased, polite and distant.
She’d been awake when he finally made it home, sitting up in bed and reading, or pretending to read. She’d switched off the light as soon as he opened the door.
‘Sorry to wake you,’ he’d whispered.
She hadn’t replied.
And then, an hour later, when he was finally hovering on the edge of true sleep, her alarm went off.
‘I thought you were dead.’
He’d had no idea what she was talking about.
‘You said you’d be home early. I sent you texts. An embarrassing number of them. I thought someone had bashed you, or you’d been hit by a car, or fallen over dead drunk somewhere. I should have known.’
They’d had this argument before, but this time it was different. There was just one fierce outburst of anger, her face white and pinched as she’d got up and left, heading off to her consulting room without saying goodbye.
He’d called her at lunch time to say he was leaving for the shack, cowardly in his pretence that the argument was over, even trying to tell her about Jerome and Rebecca but wishing he hadn’t as soon as he began. And then he stopped, apologising for failing to look at his phone the previous evening.
‘I didn’t think you’d worry. You know me. That’s what I’m like.’
A sadness had settled into Lawrence’s life. It was dank and slow in its creep, damp and stale. He was morose at home, his boredom with work and the stillness of middle age seeping through both of their lives. ‘Change it,’ Ester used to say when their arguments were still capable of moving into an attempt to understand each other. And do what? They were no longer on the same track, and they both knew it. Hers was the high road, and his — without a doubt — the low.
Outside the car, the city made way for large blocks, huge brick houses with steel roller doors to mark out garage from living, flat dry lawns, and perhaps a sad pony or two. A few miles on, the houses thinned even further and there were turf farms, emerald under the late afternoon sun, great rows of sprinklers tick-tick-ticking over each flat stretch of impossible green. By the roadside, horses slowly chewed grass, ears twitching as a car passed, and then they would bend their long, graceful necks and resume grazing.
He should have brought Catherine and Lara with him. They loved the horses. They loved the river. He imagined pulling over, the gravel crunching beneath the tyres, the chill in the air as the three of them waited still, patient, for one of the mares to slowly lift her head again. They would stroke the warmth of her, her breath grassy and hot as she nuzzled close, the harrumph as she shook herself, one hoof stamping, and the girls wide-eyed in delight.
But the back seat was empty, and he was alone.
When he reached the town, he stopped to have a coffee. The mall was cold and deserted, only one café still open.
‘Double shot,’ he told the woman behind the counter.
She took a huge mug down from the shelf behind her, and he asked if she had a smaller cup, ‘you know, normal coffee size.’
Without a word she reached for another, and he watched with some dismay as the coffee came out of the machine, thin, grey, and disappointing, incapable of lifting the haze of tiredness that had settled upon him.
He was back on the road as soon as he could, following it down to the valley that hugged the river, bitumen slicing through the steep rolling slopes of olive-and-blue scrub, until finally he reached the flats as the sky purpled, great streaks of bruising, slashed with crimson and orange, lurid and beautiful.
When Ester had first taken him here, so many years ago, he had thought it was one of the most special places in the world, a secret valley, so close to the city and yet remote. He had never seen an orange farm before — ‘orchard,’ she’d laughed, ‘not farm,’ — or known that water so pure still existed. ‘You can drink it,’ she’d shown him, scooping up handfuls and gulping them down.
Smiling as he remembered, he drove slowly, aware that this was the time when kangaroos could leap out onto the road. They watched him as he drove past, lifting their heads, their soft eyes unblinking, before bounding away into the dusky dark of the bush.
Pulling over, Lawrence called her, the phone ringing and ringing until Lara picked it up.
‘Daddy,’ she shrieked across the room. ‘It’s Daddy.’
Catherine took the phone from her, wanting to tell him that Lara had been in trouble at daycare for hiding her lunch. The story was long and complex, broken by Lara’s protests at the untruths of her sister.
‘Is Mummy there?’ he asked again, his voice thin and hollow in the car, the chill of the night settling around him. He wanted to get to the house before it was too dark to see. ‘Can you get her for me?’
Lara called. And then Catherine.
And then Lara told him that Mummy was busy.
‘Doing what?’ he asked, frustrated.
But Catherine had seized the phone now. When was he coming home? Why hadn’t she seen him this morning?
In the background, he could hear Ester saying something.
‘In a day or so,’ he promised Catherine. ‘I’ll bring you some oranges.’
The last section of the road petered into a dirt track, the bend down to the shack sharp and sudden. He missed it, driving almost as far as Les’ farm before he realised.
Turning back, he slowed right down, stopping at every gap in the trees, until he finally saw what he thought was the gate. He searched for the padlock key, his hangover making him truly hopeless, and then, when he thought he had the right one, he stepped out into the now cold evening, the air tight against his skin, astringent in its briskness, the metal of the lock chill against his fingers, only to discover it was unlocked, the gate ready to swing open as soon as he lifted the latch off the pole.
Of course. April was there.
Lawrence looked down to where the lights were on in the house, glad there would be company, and he drove through, the bumper scraping over the grate, the darkness now surrounding him, all last remnants of the day swallowed by the night.
BACK IN THE CITY, Ester looked at the phone. She had listened to the girls talk to Lawrence, and had waved them away when they had held the phone up, telling her that Daddy wanted to speak to her.
It wasn’t because she was still angry about that previous evening. She had reached a point of distance that disturbed her. Seeing him asleep that morning, the rotten smell of alcohol and cigarettes clinging to his skin, his face waxen beneath the darkness of stubble, listening to the low rumble of his breathing, she had seen him as someone she no longer knew.
Their lives had changed. They had children, a house — they were older — and yet, somehow, he was still way back there, dragging his feet, kicking up dust as he trailed behind her, bored, sullen, and then running to catch up, apologising, only to do it all again.
She could have taken the phone and talked to him. He would have told
her about the drive, how beautiful it was as the night flooded the valley, still trying to pretend that the argument was behind them and the rift that kept widening didn’t exist. She would have heard his words, responding with so little warmth or interest that, in the end, he would have tried for a moment to be angry with her. Shifting the blame, like a dirty piece of laundry. Shoving it back and forth between them.
And so she didn’t.
At that point in their lives together, she hadn’t liked herself all that much, and no doubt Lawrence had felt the same way about himself.
FOR THE FIRST TIME since she had arrived, April slept well past dawn.
The light that cut between blanket and window was soft, pearly, and she lay there for a moment, lifting one corner so she could see the sky, smooth and pale, as delicate as cotton wool. Against it, the arc of a scribbly gum traced a sure swoop, graceful and lean, and high up in the branches she thought she saw the magpie. Watching her.
She let the blanket fall.
Next to her the bed was empty, the pillow still slightly dented, the smell of cigarettes and skin (warm, like animal hide) — there was always a distinct smell — and she turned her head not wanting to breathe it in.
She closed her eyes, too.
But she was still there.
He had arrived as night had fallen, the darkness smothering the last of the day, and because there were no clouds until much later, it had been cold. She had lit the fire, using the last of the wood, the tang of eucalyptus as the leaves shot up the chimney in sparks, the twigs catching soon after.
As a child, laying the fire had always been her job. Maurie would take her out into the dusk to gather the right kind of wood. ‘Dry, dead — nothing green or rotten.’ He would kick aside stumps, soft and crumbly, damp and mouldy, loading her arms up with twigs and leaves, while he brought in the heavier logs.
It was like building, she thought.
‘Rip the paper sheets in half,’ he would instruct. ‘Screw them up into a ball — not too tight, not too loose.’
And she would balance the twigs like a tepee — just the right amount of air — before throwing in the match and squealing in delight at the roar and rush, the shooting flames.
Next the larger logs, and there were lessons in how to put them on — where and when — as well as detailed instructions in how to revive the dying embers. Maurie loved to teach.
Last night, she had made a fire of which he would have been proud.
She had run a hot bath after her swim in the river, soaping herself, and washing her hair, letting out the water and refilling it, steam rising, until it had simply become too cold to stay in any longer. And so she had dried herself by that fire, putting on Maurie’s old pyjamas and singing — loudly, happily — without even being aware that this was what she was doing. Because it always took time here, but then, when you weren’t looking, the rhythm of the empty days seeped into your blood, and you found yourself living at a pace that was right, and the beauty was that you didn’t even know how this had happened.
Her voice was loud and clear, running along the edge of a new melody that had been teasing her all afternoon, still not quite strong enough for her to try and trap it, and she had let herself float around it, oblivious to the door opening behind her until she felt a sudden rush of cold air, and he said her name.
She jumped, shrieking loudly as she turned to face him, brandishing a burning stick without even realising she had seized it from the fireplace, only to find that it was Lawrence. Of course it was Lawrence. She had completely forgotten Hilary mentioning that he might be coming up.
As she lay in bed now, she could hear him, his boots on the verandah, and she kept herself perfectly still. He was bringing in wood. The heavy thud of the logs as he dropped them by the door, and then his footsteps again. She didn’t want to move, to get up and have to face it all. And so she kept her eyes closed tightly, the blankets pulled up over her head — foolish, foolish, foolish girl — while outside the magpie chirruped and warbled, the throaty pitch of its song cutting through the softness of the morning, broken only by the heavy thud of more logs and the clump of his step as he went to fetch another load.
Last night, he had stood by the doorway with his bag and a couple of bottles of wine, the night descending behind him. Handsome Lawrence, and she had dropped the burning stick into the fire as he had smiled ruefully. He was a little under the weather, he had told her — so much so there’d been a moment when he thought he’d never find the turn-off.
Cocking her head like the magpie, she’d assessed the damage he’d done to himself and told him he had a choice. ‘It’s either abstinence or the full coat of the dog. Just a hair will do you no good. Trust me, I know.’
If it had been a few days earlier, she would have welcomed his arrival. She’d craved distraction, but, strangely, at that moment she’d only wished him away. The peace she’d found was so fragile and so at odds with the jangling heaviness that cloaked him, a state she’d also been in on arrival.
He’d brought food with him too, and she’d been grateful for that, tending to the fire as he’d heated up soup and bread, his hand shaking slightly as he’d offered her a bowl.
Beautiful Lawrence, with his silvery eyes and coal-soot hair. She remembered how they’d all loved him, every woman and half the men. It was a pity he’d never had the talent. You would have made a fortune from him.
He’d told her about the launch and Jerome and Rebecca, and she’d laughed, snorting slightly as she put the soup bowl down. ‘She was mad. But you were always so drug-fucked when you were with her that you never saw it. She set fire to two houses she lived in.’
‘Why didn’t anyone tell me?’
April had shrugged. ‘I guess we just took whatever was dished up as normal. That’s what you do when you’re young.’
He’d shaken his head, stretching out his legs and staring up at the ceiling. ‘Why do some of us grow up more easily than others?’ And then he’d corrected himself. ‘Or more to the point, why does growing up have to involve letting all that go?’
‘Maybe it’s just that there are times that shine,’ she smiled. ‘They have a brightness that’s hard to let go of.’
She pointed to the bottle of wine, but he held up his hand. ‘I think I’d better take the abstinence approach.’
(And so they hadn’t even been drunk, the excuse she’d always had ready should the past have been unearthed.)
She poured herself a glass and then put the bottle away, telling him the river would cure him. ‘Tomorrow. At dawn. I’ll march you down there myself and throw you in. It’s brutal but beautiful.’
‘Do you remember the lakes?’
She did. She looked away for a moment.
They had been in England, the first brittle bite of winter in the air, diamond frost across the rolling green fields, crunching beneath the soles of her shoes as they made their way back to the pub after a night in a castle.
He’d been the disinherited son of a Lord.
‘Anthony?’ she asked Lawrence, who didn’t remember.
He’d taken them back there after her show, breaking in through a window, his plan a simple one — he wanted to trash every room before dawn. Because he hated his father. And his mother. And his sisters.
And as he threw the first vase to the floor, April had collapsed in giggles.
‘Aren’t you glad you didn’t fly home?’ she’d asked Lawrence. ‘When will you ever get another chance to trash a castle?’
They’d slipped out well before he’d finished the first floor, the lake silver in the dawn.
‘That was the coldest I have ever been,’ April said. ‘I remember feeling as though someone had seized my heart and my lungs in an ice grip.’ She’d touched her chest. ‘And ripped them out. I thought I would never breathe again.’
‘Would you do it now?’ he asked her.
>
‘Trash a castle? Swim in a freezing lake?’
‘Either or.’
She would. ‘Which is probably tragic.’
‘I don’t know if I would,’ he confessed. ‘Which is even more tragic.’ And then he smiled. ‘Actually, I would. My tragedy is that I try and pretend I wouldn’t, but if the opportunity arose (which is unlikely), I would be in there throwing everything to the ground, or leaping in that lake. And then I would try to lie about it the next day.’
She’d laughed at him then. ‘Go on.’
‘Point me in the direction of the local castle.’
She’d winked. ‘Can’t help with that. But I can provide you with a river at the end of winter.’
‘Brutal but beautiful, I believe.’
‘Precisely. Get your gear off. Run down there. And I guarantee you’ll get some of that shimmer back. Or at least shake off whatever it is you’re dragging around with you.’
Now as she lay in bed, sheets pulled over her head, she heard him come back inside the house, his footfall tentative. All those years ago, when they were young and at the lakes, he had only been with Ester for a few months; it had been easy to pretend that there’d been no real betrayal, just a drunken loss of direction, a quick career down the wrong path, the mistake never mentioned to anyone or talked about by either of them. It might never have happened.
And then, last night, he had taken them back there.
He had gone out onto the verandah, shedding his clothes in the night air, running across the grass, through the avenue of poplars and down the muddy track that led to the river, while she had sat in front of the fire, clutching her glass of wine, suddenly aware that she was standing at the edge of trouble.
‘April,’ he called her name softly.
‘April,’ his voice was a little louder as he put his head around the curtain that separated bedroom from living space, letting the morning light into the room.
She was a coward.
Shifting the sheet slightly, she looked out at him, not knowing what to expect now. Because last night, when he had returned from the river, there had been no shimmer, just a momentary bravado, and then a sadness that had shocked her. Wrapping him in the warmth of a blanket, she had watched as he cried.
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