Starting from Scratch

by Penelope Janu

  Matts is dressed mostly in black—jeans, boots and a V-necked sweater over a white T-shirt. He paces in front of the white picket fence. As I lift my boots from the rack, he crosses the lawn, taking the steps to the porch two at a time.

  ‘Sapphire.’

  I smooth my hair, damp when I went to bed last night, and tidy errant strands behind my ears. ‘Sorry to keep you.’ I glance at the garden. ‘Can we talk outside?’

  He frowns. ‘Why not inside?’

  I’d planned to be sitting on a seat in the playground at least ten minutes before he was due to arrive, so Hugo didn’t get up and join us. I put my boots back on the rack before blowing on my hands and putting them into my pockets. ‘Here will be fine. This won’t take long.’

  He nods abruptly. ‘Go ahead.’

  We used to talk for hours about nothing. I could make him smile better than anybody else on the planet. Now I can’t read him very well at all.

  ‘The committee, Matts. What are you up to?’

  He frowns. ‘It has relevance to the wetlands.’

  When I cross my arms, my jacket slips from my shoulder and falls to the floor. Matts must notice, but neither of us bends to pick it up. His eyes aren’t simply grey, sometimes it seems there are warmer shades as well: golds and dark greens.

  ‘I can recommend other committees.’

  ‘I respect your committee members. I’m familiar with the town.’

  A flock of eastern rosellas chatter in the bottlebrush tree near the bus stop. ‘Because you barged into my life.’

  ‘I came here to warn you.’

  When a breeze rushes up the steps and blows into my face, I twist my hair into a knot at the back of my neck. I wish I’d had time to tie it up.

  You’re afraid to be beautiful.

  ‘My father will protect my mother if it suits his agenda. You have an agenda too.’

  ‘It’s different from Robert’s.’

  ‘You had dinner with him. You share information.’

  ‘It’s safer to know what he’s up to.’

  A truck drives past, rattling over the potholes and startling the birds. ‘Assuming he tells you what that is. I don’t trust him, I can’t.’

  ‘You don’t trust me either.’

  Whispers of dust dance in the sunbeams. ‘I don’t—’ I shake my head. ‘No.’

  He stalks past me and stands in front of the hooks, gripping them so firmly that his thumbnails turn white. When he faces me again, his eyes are cold.

  ‘After you came to Horseshoe, I sent emails. Did you get them?’

  ‘Yes, but …’ I look past him. ‘I didn’t open them.’

  ‘Before that, I sent letters to your grandmother’s house.’

  Gran, who always saw the best in what I did, couldn’t hide her disappointment when I refused to read Matts’s letters. ‘It’s written by hand,’ she once said, holding a postmarked envelope up to the light, ‘not typed on a computer.’ She traced around the stamp. ‘And it’s come all the way from the other side of the world. Are you sure you don’t want to read it?’

  ‘Please, Gran, just put it in the recycling bin.’

  My silk nightie is peeking out from the bottom of my shirt. I roll it up and hide it. ‘I didn’t read those letters either.’

  ‘I emailed when you were at university.’

  ‘I couldn’t—’ I shake my head. ‘I deleted them.’

  Matts stalks back to his spot near the desk. ‘And that’s why we are strangers.’

  I wrap my arms around my middle. ‘Strangers with history.’ My socks are blue and fluffy. I point my toe and trace a line in the dust. ‘I should have told you that I didn’t read the letters and emails. I should have told you not to send them any more.’

  He runs a finger along the narrow indentation at the top of the desk, and then watches closely as I pull down my cuffs and bunch the fabric in my hands. He bends and picks up my jacket, flicking it against his leg to brush away the dust before laying it on the desk.

  He takes hold of my hands, gently but firmly. ‘Is that an apology?’

  ‘Yes,’ I whisper.

  He places my hands between us, flat against his chest. His heartbeats are steady and strong.

  ‘I should have warned you about the committee,’ he says.

  ‘Is that an apology?’

  He dips his head. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m happy here.’ My voice wavers. ‘I’m settled.’ I pluck at his sweater. ‘I don’t know what’s happening any more.’

  ‘Sapphie?’

  When I lift my face, our gazes lock. ‘You don’t call me that.’

  He hesitates. ‘Did I mispronounce it?’

  To one side of his scar is a faint silver mark like a pinprick. Two stitches down, four stitches across.

  I lift a hand, but I’m not sure where to put it. My body is heated. My brain is mush.

  ‘You never mispronounce.’

  When he frowns, I rest my palm against his jaw. The bristles are rough, but his hair is silky and smooth. He swallows and I feel it from the ends of my fingers to the tips of my toes. His lips are slightly open and so are mine.

  He mutters, ‘Sapphie.’

  I mumble, ‘Matts.’

  One hand against his cheek, the other on his heart, I stand on my toes and our breaths mingle sweetly.

  How can it be that we have never kissed?

  I press my lips to his.

  For an instant, he freezes, but then he wraps his arms around me. Our lips connect tentatively, a careful exploration of texture and taste. When I softly exhale, he breathes me in. Our mouths slip, slide, part and rejoin. My lips beneath his. We don’t need anything else. Just … this.

  My legs tremble. My body burns. The universe wobbles and tilts.

  ‘Kissa.’ The word hangs between us.

  I touch his bottom lip with the tip of my tongue. It slips inside his mouth when he angles his head.

  He growls and pulls me closer. Our tongues stroke carefully. The ache in my breasts is warm and sweet. I open my fingers and feel the contours of his chest. I run my hands up his arms. I cup his face and press even closer, searching deeply for—

  A door slams shut. ‘Sapphie!’ Hugo shouts. ‘Where are you?’

  Matts lifts his head a fraction. ‘Who is it?’

  Footsteps in the living room. Another shout. I flatten my hands against Matts’s chest but lack the will to push. He kisses me again, circling the tip of my tongue with his. My breath catches in my throat.

  ‘Sapphie?’ He speaks against my lips. ‘Who?’

  I finally find my voice. ‘Hugo.’

  Matts stills. When I step back, he releases me, shoving his hands in his pockets as he walks to the steps. The sun is behind us and there aren’t any clouds, but he tips back his head as if searching the sky.

  When the door handle rattles, I dart to the far side of the porch, as far away from Matts as I can get. The air is cold on my mouth because my lips were warm and wet and …

  I wipe my face on the arm of my shirt as if that will erase what I’ve done. I reach for my boots, streaky with dust.

  ‘Sapphire?’ Matts asks quietly. ‘Why is he here?’

  The door opens wide and Hugo, clearly naked except for the towel draped loosely around his hips, stands on the threshold. He glances at Matts, ramrod stiff next to the steps, and then he turns to me, standing on one leg and struggling to pull on a boot.

  ‘You not only need a bigger bed,’ Hugo says, looking down as he brushes water from his chest, ‘but a new hot water system.’

  Hugo’s fringe drips onto his face and he brushes it away. He wipes his hand on the towel and holds it out to Matts. ‘I thought you’d gone back to Canberra, mate.’

  ‘My flight leaves at ten.’

  I pick up my jacket and push my arms into the sleeves. ‘You can’t go yet.’

  Matts’s eyes were warm and bright; now they’re arctic cold. ‘Why not?’

  ‘We haven’t finished—’

>   He smiles stiffly. ‘We have.’

  I swallow. ‘I’ll walk you to your car.’

  Hugo holds out his hand again. ‘Might see you at the pub in a few weeks’ time.’

  ‘You’ll be at the meeting?’ Matts asks.

  ‘No way, mate.’ Hugo winks at me and adjusts the towel. ‘I go to the pub for trivia and a beer.’

  I pull on my other boot. ‘I’ll be back soon.’

  We walk silently to Matts’s four-wheel drive, which is parked near the sign for the school. CONGRATULATIONS HORSESHOE HILL PS DEBATING TEAM! GOOD LUCK IN THE NEXT ROUND! One side of the collar of Matts’s shirt has come out of his sweater. Did I do that? How could I have? I had one hand on his cheek and the other on his chest and all we did was—

  He points the remote towards the car. Beep. Beep. His face is set.

  ‘How long have you known Hugo?’

  ‘Since high school.’

  ‘Will you tell him what happened?’

  ‘Why would I?’ I fasten three buttons on my jacket.

  He yanks opens the car’s back door and takes out a water bottle. ‘He sleeps in your bed.’

  ‘Oh!’ The rosellas are back in the bottlebrush tree, their red heads bobbing as they hang from the branches by their feet. ‘You thought—as if I would have—Hugo is a friend.’

  ‘He doesn’t share your bed?’

  ‘I slept on the couch. I don’t have sex with friends.’

  He frowns. ‘Never?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘You only have sex with strangers?’

  I take a jerky step back. ‘Why are we talking about this?’

  He looks towards the schoolhouse. ‘You kissed me.’

  My gaze slips to his mouth. Did I imagine it? The tilt in the universe? My throat is suddenly tight.

  ‘Things are complicated enough already without …’ I take a deep breath. ‘It was a mistake.’

  He opens the driver’s door and throws the bottle onto the passenger seat. ‘It meant nothing?’

  ‘How could it?’

  Turning his back, he shoves the key in the ignition before straightening and facing me again. ‘Does Hugo know our history?’

  My hair is hot on my neck. I lift it and twist it into a coil, but as soon as I let it go, it tumbles down again. ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I wave my hand between us. ‘What we had … none of that is relevant.’

  ‘Because you say we are strangers.’ He holds his sweater at his hips and pulls it up, bringing it over his head. Without thinking, I tug it out of his hands.

  ‘Don’t do it like that.’

  The sweater is warm because his body is warm. It smells of him and— What am I doing? Not daring to look up, I pull one sleeve the right way through and search for the other one.

  He yanks the sweater out of my hands and throws it into the car. His eyes narrow. ‘You are not my sister.’

  I lift my chin. ‘I never was.’

  Without another word, he climbs behind the wheel.

  The rosellas chirrup and squabble in the bottlebrush tree. Freddie, tooting a hello, drives past as I walk back to the schoolhouse. I vaguely lift a hand as I kick through the leaves on the path.

  It was autumn—I would have been fourteen or fifteen so Matts would have been seventeen—when I lay on the grass at Canberra’s arboretum and watched the play of light on the bronze and yellow leaves of a maple. He was sitting on the ground and leaning against a tree trunk, a computer on his lap and a dog-eared book, Romeo and Juliet, in his hand.

  There’d been frost in the morning. Now it was midday but the ground was still cold. He pulled off his sweater and threw it to me.

  ‘Put it under your head.’

  ‘Why do you take your sweaters off that way?’ I asked, righting the sleeves and folding the sweater in half before putting it on the grass. When I lay on my side and faced him, the wool was soft on my cheek. ‘You’re much less likely to get your head stuck if you take your arms out of the sleeves first. And it doesn’t turn the arms inside out.’

  ‘My way is more efficient,’ he said absently, scribbling in the margin of his book.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  He mumbled something and kept on writing.

  ‘Kotka?’ I rolled onto my back and stretched my arms above my head. ‘Do I talk too much?’

  He put his pencil in his book to mark the place. ‘Sapphire?’ When I turned towards him again, he smiled into my eyes. ‘Yes.’

  CHAPTER

  17

  My phone rings as I trudge up the schoolhouse steps the following Friday night. I drop my bag on the floor. ‘Hello, Gus. Is everything all right?’

  ‘Sure it is,’ he says. ‘Can you meet me at the pub for a drink? My shout.’

  ‘I had parent–teacher interviews tonight. I’ve only just got home.’ Tumbleweed winds around my legs and wails for dinner. ‘Is it important?’

  ‘It’s about our next committee meeting. Thought we’d better get a few things sorted out.’

  ‘The meeting’s three weeks away.’

  ‘I’ll be here till nine.’

  My hair is still damp from the shower when I pull back the heavy timber door of the pub. It’s the only place open after five, so serves as a bar, restaurant and café.

  Leon, behind the bar, lifts a hand. ‘How’re you doing, Sapphie?’

  ‘I’m well, thank you.’

  Gus gets up from his chair at a small table by the window and pulls out another chair, dusting it off in the same way he does at his cottage when I’m dressed for work and he’s worried about dog hair and crumbs.

  ‘Are you sure everything’s all right?’ I ask him.

  ‘Just wanted a chat, that’s all.’ His hand, when he holds it out, is callused, scarred and twice the size of mine. ‘What can I get you to drink? The usual?’

  ‘Thanks. My shout next time.’

  The crowd is mostly local—students from the high school who’ve just turned eighteen, the local policeman and his husband, and a few farmers who live a little further out.

  Gus returns with his beer and my lemon and soda.

  ‘How’s my buttonhole flower coming along?’ he asks as he sits down. ‘Not long till the wedding.’

  I show him a picture on my phone. ‘What do you think? River red gum flowers are delicate so they’re tricky to make, but April likes the colours because her gown is a similar shade of cream, and the leaf colour will pick up the greens in your tie. I’ll attach a gumnut from the river to the stem.’

  ‘I’ll be trussed up like a turkey at Christmas.’ He winks. ‘Maggie would approve.’

  Gus’s wife passed away well before I came to Horseshoe, but she’s still his reference point for scores of things—including formal wear.

  ‘April asked me to make one for her father as well, so you’ll have a turkey friend to gobble with.’

  He smiles and nods. ‘We’re on the same table, you and me.’

  ‘April has a lot of family to accommodate. Going to the church would have been lovely; I didn’t expect to be invited to the reception as well.’

  ‘What?’ He wipes froth from his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘With you being a friend, and making the flowers? Course she’d want you there.’

  We chat about what’s happening with Gus’s farm, and the weather forecast, but whenever anyone we know nods in our direction, Gus turns back to me straight away, as if to make it clear we don’t need company. After half an hour, I put my empty glass next to his.

  ‘I have an early start tomorrow, Gus, and you’re bound to have an even earlier one. Did you want to meet about anything in particular?’

  He links his hands on the table. ‘You’ll be up at the farmhouse in the morning?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’ll see you at trivia at six.’

  ‘I saw Freddie on the way in. He’ll pick you up at five-thirty and Luke will drop you home when we’re done.’

  ‘As us
ual, you’ve got me sorted out.’ He leans across the table, raising his brows. ‘What about you?’

  ‘What about me?’

  He turns his glass in his hand. ‘Mr Chambers and the rest of them, they reckon you’ll come around to having this Laaksonen bloke on the committee.’ When he frowns, his bushy brows almost meet in the middle. ‘I’m not so sure about that.’

  ‘He has everyone else’s support. And there are more reasons to have him on the committee than not. I see that clearly enough.’

  ‘I’ll back you if you didn’t think it’s the right way to go.’

  I attempt a smile. ‘Matts is well qualified and has a good public profile because of his Ramsar role. And, as you said at our meeting, what’s good for the wetlands is good for all of us here. I’m hoping the politicians will want to impress Matts so much, they’ll commit to additional funding and support.’

  He scratches an unkempt sideburn. ‘So why didn’t you want him to join us in the first place?’

  ‘I was surprised. But if everyone else wants him, I’ll make the best of it.’

  ‘He’s a city bloke, no mistake about it, but that shouldn’t worry you.’

  ‘Because I’m a city girl? How long till I qualify as country?’

  He puffs out his cheeks in thought. ‘You know what, Sapphie? I reckon you’re like those flowers you make—they never grew out of the dirt, but no one can tell the difference.’

  I laugh. ‘Using that analogy, I don’t think I’ll ever—’

  He holds up a hand. ‘Some folk end up where they should’ve started out in the first place.’ He nods firmly. ‘That’s you, Sapphie.’

  ‘Thank you, Gus.’ All of a sudden, I’m teary.

  He harrumphs. ‘Tell me what you think about Laaksonen.’

  I clear my throat. ‘He’s from the city, like you said.’

  ‘Which wouldn’t have stopped my Maggie welcoming him to town. Fiona Hargreaves puts the kettle on for magpies, and you’re the same these days. But this bloke, he rubbed you up the wrong way. Isn’t that right?’

  I sit back in my chair. ‘Was I that obvious?’