Young and living in a live air,
Young and walking in the sunshine,
Bending in blue dresses to touch something.
3
THE WEATHER INSIDE
By Tess Müller
Hail
One afternoon, about her fourth week home, Pip said she wanted to go back to St Catherine’s. Outside there was a dog wind, whining and yipping. You told your father. He rubbed a finger on his glasses and he said, ‘No need to go telling your mother.’
The sky that day was far. It was clear. The planks on the house were creaky. When you came back Pip asked, ‘What did they say?’ You pretended you’d forgotten something and went out again. You were starting to leave her alone.
It was sometimes easier in hospital, Pip said, because your mother’s sadness came and went. Plus there was Esther Goldfinch, she was sharing the ward. But when you pictured the hospital room you couldn’t remember any Esther.
Your mother was at the kitchen window. ‘Hey look!’ she said. You stood beside her and watched white stones fall from the sky. ‘How about that, Tessa Jane!’ She put her cool hand on you. She hardly ever called you Tessa and mostly saved her touch for Pip. She asked, ‘What is it, honey?’ But how could you tell her that Pip wanted to return? Your mother had been marking off the days till she came home. On the nights before the hospital she’d whizz about. She was always searching for what Pip might need, or cooking something to bring her hunger back. You would watch and feel so hungry yourself or maybe empty.
‘Come on,’ your mother said. ‘Let’s go!’ Outside, the lawn was turning slowly white. Leaves and twigs were tearing down with the hail. The world was becoming something new but you didn’t want to see it. ‘What, Tess? You’re scaring me,’ your mother said but she was smiling. So you asked her. ‘Rhesus positive, what does it mean?’ That’s your blood type, she told you. Then she asked if you felt bad because you had not been a match for Pip. You said nothing. You started thinking very hard about silence. She took your hands and pulled you close. ‘You’re mine,’ she said, ‘don’t forget.’
‘Esther,’ Pip had said and started up angry. ‘Don’t you remember her, in the bed by the window?’ But that bed was totally sheetless. It was really completely bare. What kind of surname was it anyway, Goldfinch?
Actually Pip wasn’t interested in the hail when you bought it in. She picked up a hailstone. It melted double quick. You took her hand. You said, ‘You’re hot, maybe you have a temperature.’ But Pip snatched her fingers back. ‘People forget it’s only water,’ she said and she shook the stones on to the floor, ‘just because it has another name.’
4
Stefan wanders over, pretending disinterest, but a wild swarm could be very useful. A wild swarm’s usually strong and disease resistant. Five apiarists and several hobbyists have already gathered in the Brookmeyer Forest by the time Stan arrives for the swarm removal with his truck, ladder, bee box and broom, his clippers and smoker. The beekeepers form a horseshoe, heads cricked back, gazing up at the natural hive.
Behind them the sluggish, algaed Olver River, lined with smoky green casuarinas. On the ground, the trees’ beaked conifers, fallen prematurely.
Stefan looks at the broken cedar, lightning struck, cleaved in two, its top branches reaching skyward. Ten metres up, on a thick limb, the bees on their hive form a huge, brassy pendulum. He remembers as light pours through the canopy, keeping bees, like the direction of sunbeams.
A wild swarm. It’s like striking gold now the bees are disappearing.
He puts a hand on the fallen tree; what was that Midrash his grandfather taught? When God created the first man he showed him all the trees in Eden and said, See my works, how beautiful and praiseworthy they are. Some consolations, he concedes, in memory.
You lot beekeeping with ladders now? It’s Nora, laughing and shaking her head, dragging on a cigarillo.
You think this is your swarm? she asks. Seriously, Stefan?
Put that out, he says.
Geez, those bees are boiling, I hope Stan’s feeling chilled.
It’s how Nora smokes the bees, shooting her cigar breath right into the hive – he’d seen her do it, brazen, suitless, just as Hodgins had taught her.
Forty thousand or so. Looks about right to me, Stefan says, trying to stay calm around her. But the cigarillo is making him queasy. This morning, in the bee field, he’d watched the sky and forest flickering like a badly tuned TV. Every sound amplified, each noise a clamour. These auras, which still fool him with their total lack of pain. He ought to appreciate the warning. And the Imigran numbing everything now but his nausea.
Those are wild bees and you know it, Nora says, dropping the butt, doing a boot-twist to extinguish it, a slow-mo dance move.
And that also, he points at her waistcoat. Take it off. Who wears suede to a swarm removal!
Anything else you want me to strip off ? she asks, moving close. So sweet, how you’re protecting me, she says, slinging an arm around his shoulder.
Stefan sniffs, nods at Stan who’s dragging the ladder towards the tree. He ought to help the man, but feels massively indolent. He’d rather lie on the forest floor and have a what-they-call-it, kip.
She takes a long stare, says, Headache?
He nods.
You’ve got that smeary look around the eyes. You tried the feverfew, the butterbur?
Stefan toes a hank of moss, swats a fly.
Don’t you remember? Nora says. Hodgins wrote it all out for you!
Ach! Stefan waves an arm. I would listen to that lunatic?
You didn’t used to think of him that way, Nora says. I remember a young man in total awe, I remember a surfer in search of a guru.
Stefan reddens, then both fall silent watching Stan meticulously adjust the ladder, moving it around the roots of the tree.
What did you decide then, Nora says, to do about the bones?
Up to the police, he says. They’ve taken them away.
Aren’t you worried? she says, then calls, Further to the left, Stan, no, left! Then up, that’s it!
Nein, says Stefan. Why should I?
Nora gives him a piercing look. I heard there was a van.
Stefan shrugs, stays quiet, trying not to stir things up, for his health’s sake, and to keep Nora and half the town from beaking around his land.
When did it happen, this accident as you like to call it?
Maybe a year ago, or two? says Stefan.
Strange, don’t you think, Nora asks.
No, I don’t think, he says.
You and I both know who used to drive a van, Nora says, leaning in. And you know their plantation was around those parts.
Stefan turns to check on Meg and Tess, metres back. Then he realises that Nora is dumbstruck, that beneath her swagger she’s stricken in some unfathomable way. She sees him clock her shaking hands, and plunges them into her pockets.
José Torres staggers over, wheezing. A belly fold on grey KingGee’s; a spartan combover through which his pate is shining. He lives right by here, a migratory beekeeper with a huge pollination operation. They’re definitely his bees, he says.
No way, says Nora.
José sucks a Nicorette from a blister pack, then offers the pack to Nora. You want?
How will you know if they’re your bees? Do you mark your queens, let’s take a look at her then. Nora folds her arms.
They continue arguing as Stan climbs higher, dragging his bad leg up the ladder, one hand on the smoker, which he’s stuffed with pine needles and dry twigs. Nice cool, dense white smoke. So calming, Stefan thinks, just to watch it curling out the spout.
How many colonies have you lost? Stefan asks.
José kicks the earth with a cowboy heel, downcast.
Let’s just say, Stefano – I’m getting very comfortable with death on an epic scale.
Stop using the Fumagilin for a start, Nora says to José. Plenty of natural tinctures you can try …
Stefan tun
es out. He stands beneath the cluster, barefaced, hot and pissed off, arms exposed and already host to five bees. He breathes steadily through his mouth to avert José’s cologne, the oily smells of hair and skin that become, mid-migraine, so magnified. Then turns to his girls again, safe enough in shorts and shirts. Meg taking photos of the cedar’s great unearthed roots.
Stan and some others have bee suits on, or have at least tucked in their trousers and unrolled their sleeves. Nora, from the commune, does not dress for bees. She doesn’t mind a sting, it’s insurance against arthritis. She’s started supplying a Brisbane practitioner with venom for apipuncture, selling pollen in cellophane bags for salads and smoothies. She’s started packaging her honey in corked glass test tubes. A Suite of Distinctive Single-Varietals. The tourists clamour for these at the market, though it’s nearly impossible to verify if your bees are feeding on biodynamic clover or the herbicided lantana two properties away.
Stan makes three deft swipes with the stick before the swarm drops into the box and then it’s locked, strapped and loaded on to his ute.
Late that afternoon, at the Wounded Ram, with its psychedelic, gummy carpet, tufted vinyl stools and massive new flatscreen, they continue drinking while figuring it out. The bees are in the car park. Stan will bee-sit till they decide who’s getting them. Halfway through Stefan’s fourth or fifth pint, just when he’s thinking about switching to spirits, in strolls Tom Tucker with a stack of Survival Reports.
Here is coming the Fourth Horseman, says José. He shoos Tucker with a flapping arm as he approaches.
Look man, José says, I come here to forget about doomsday …
Oh leave him, says Stefan. Half of what the kid writes is true. Does he do any harm?
Tucker surveys the group, taking in the empty glasses on the table, the red-rimmed eyes, the alcohol shimmer around them. He knows this chancy imminent feeling; at The Hive no one ever knew what was about to happen.
Nora drains her Erdinger.
Light, spicy, with some citrus hints, she says, holding the glass up. Perhaps a hint of peanut in the nose and mouth?
Then she jigs down to the bartender. The men’s eyes following her. Those legs. That skirt. She bends very deliberately over the bar.
José gets up silently and disappears into the back room.
Stefan can’t walk or piss straight, let alone reason with himself. Whisky, or vodka? He eyes the rack behind the bar. Nora’s shots glisten on the counter. Then remembers the Imigran. Probably not smart to mix things. He’s tipping over, ruled by chemicals now and no other order.
Tucker intercepts some newcomers, hands out five copies. Stefan feels for the kid – well, he’s a man now, but his naive, deluded manner makes him seem delayed. He’d been a plaintive sight in The Hive, a wispy boy with a crippling stammer and a palpable crush on Evangeline. It had shocked Stefan to discover that a commune kid could be so outcast. At The Hive the cult of alternativism had not been inclusive, it turned the place into a dysfunctional parish. The weekly gatherings had all the hallmarks of stricter faiths – the burning of incense and candles, the upturned, open faces, their man at the lectern telling them how it will be. And Jack Hodgins, naturopath and midwife, had the fugitive demeanour of a man with a clandestine life. It was peculiarly Australian, Stefan thought, how nearly everyone in the commune adopted this foreigner’s cosmology without question. But hadn’t he too been susceptible, to starting afresh in a wild environ? Hadn’t he, for a short time at least, looked to Hodgins, a man in every way opposite to his own father, and credited him for that alone?
You want one, Stefan? Tucker is flapping a newsletter at him.
Chus, Tom. Listen, will you stop giving them to my girls?
But she always asks for a copy, Tucker says, turning back to the table. Should I say no?
Who asks?
Tess, Tucker says, his eyes darting to the flatscreen.
How’s the girl anyway? Nora sways exaggeratedly over, keeping time to some suffering jukebox cowboy. Talking yet?
But Stefan’s fixed on Tom. How does she ask you exactly?
Sticks her hand out every Saturday at the market, Tucker says.
Stefan looks him over; the kid’s jumpy, as if over-caffeinated, very zealous. Eyelids twitchy, lips cracked. In The Hive Tucker’s mother had struggled alone with the boy; she’d left the older son, Peter, elsewhere with his father and asked to keep their whereabouts from Tom. Heidi had nothing after the fire. What The Hive collective hadn’t factored was the cost of re-entry to urban life – there’d been no assets to distribute, no insurance payouts. But when people started kvetching Hodgins claimed you were well resourced. You had your survival skills, he’d say, you could grow your own food, cannibalise a broken-down car on a roadside, make a solar oven from cardboard, foil and glue. But these were negligible abilities once you descended into town with your highwayman beard and your rennet-free cheeses to face the supermarket plenitude, the families divided and ruled by devices, the people gazing into monitor glow, backs turned to each other.
And now Heidi Tucker, with her early-onset dementia. Late one night Stefan had found her wandering the Mercutt Oval. He’d slowed his ute, crossed the sodden field. The puddles, floodlit, dark mirrors. The mud, dragging his heels. As he led Heidi back beneath the goalposts she’d asked wonderingly, Where are we now? as if those posts were a gateway to a new reality. He tried manoeuvring her into the truck, to drive her home. But she’d refused, called him Peter. When he’d finally got her home he’d warned Tom, best she forget Peter if she wants to avoid trouble. And Tom, blinking in the mothy porch light, mouth ajar, had said, Peter? Who do you mean?
Stefan had not replied, Peter of the hydroponic grow house and the dismantled drug lab on Lucerne Hill. Or told how he and Evangeline had once been the beneficiaries, via Nora, of Peter’s summer harvest. Just a bag of dope now and then, nothing entrepreneurial. This is what he has rehearsed in case the police should enquire.
Every family in this town, wormy with secrets. Stefan takes a final gulp of ale. Now Heidi’s deterioration, just when Tom had the better half of his life ahead. No functional relatives to help the kid out.
Why would Tess just go silent? Nora’s saying. Parents keep secrets, but kids … ?
She looks Stefan over, hands on hips.
Sooner or later someone will tell her, she says. Better if it’s you.
Tell who what? asks Tom.
You are the expert now, on childrearing? Stefan says to Nora. Funny!
Buy your own fucking whisky. Nora turns, blags a smoke from a passing trucker and tromps back to the bar.
Well, stuff me, says Stan coming in from out back. Someone’s nicked our bees!
In the car park Stan’s empty ute gleams under surging orange neon. The beekeepers stand confounded beneath the pub sign spruiking Murder Mystery Dinners.
Something for your little bulletin, Tom, Nora says. The effing bees have disappeared again!
And have you told them all, Stefan? she says, lurching towards him and poking his breastbone.
Stefan found human remains, she announces. A crash! And what if it’s Pete? Did any of you even think?
But the others are headed for their vehicles, keys jangling. Nora stands, in the sherbety neon, and begins openly weeping. Stefan dimly remembers now, that Pete had started up with Nora. It had marked the end of Nora’s friendship with Evangeline. Then the man had disappeared. When they’d realised this, one day at the market, Evangeline had wordlessly taken his hand and squeezed it. He’d nearly died of happiness. They’d bought croissants, and had a picnic, toasting the future with soy-chai. A Peterless future, or so they’d thought.
I know, Nora is calling out, he wasn’t a saint …
… We didn’t know him like you, right, Nora? Stefan says, turning back.
Bad for business, we understand, says José. Your supplier’s gone.
He was funnier than you lot, Nora says, and cleverer. You mightn’t have liked him but if it’s him t
hat’s dead in that field show some fucking respect.
The men look away, slightly chastened. Cleverer? Jeez, that had hurt. There’s a long, ticking car-park silence.
Who are you talking about? Tom asks, his eyes flashing at Stefan.
Fuck you all! Nora says and strides off.
And Stefan has a moment’s remorse. He hasn’t done right by that body on his land, regardless of who it is.
Come on, Stefan, Stan says, patting himself down for keys. I’ll drive you.
Halfway along Fox’s Lane, Stefan’s house comes into view. An umber glow through the draped front windows, the mist furling around the barn, the Charolais clustered under a hazel and the miniature village of the hives filling him with such verdammte relief. For a second he really believes in the promise of rural homeliness. Stan punches his shoulder as he stumbles from the car. Buck up, Herr Müller, he says, and winks, I hev güt feelink about zose bees.
So much for their socialistic upbringings, Stefan says later in the kitchen.
Anything going free in this town you can be forgetting love thy neighbours, he says.
You can’t really believe they were our bees? asks Evangeline.
She’s sitting very upright at the table. He rolls two bottles from a lower shelf and comes up banging his head on the pantry door. Ginger beer, Becherovka. He shoves the bottles back, offended. Ginger, cinnamon! What are we running, an apothecary?
Maybe you’ve had enough, she says.
My father used to hide his liquor, Stefan says. He’d rip the heart from a butter lettuce and stick a Schwarzbier inside, then shove it back in the cruncher, the crispy, whatever that vegetable home in the fridge. You want me to resort to that, Lina?
That’s why your mother moved you boys to Munich. Your father’s love of salad?
He gets on the floor and sticks his head below the bench, gropes an arm under. Some other bottles there. Pear fucking cider. But, hang on. He rolls something over the flagstones. A dusty bottle of local Merlot.
You’d think they’d struck gold the way they all raced over, he says. Make sure you get the queen, Stan, don’t leave her up there. I wouldn’t clip that branch, Stan, if I was you, you’ll spook them. Nag nag naggedy nag.
The World Without Us Page 10
