Starting from Scratch

by Penelope Janu

  When Matts bends his knees, Lisa’s hand goes back to her lap. But their shoulders touch as he considers the flower. He’s comfortable with women, but that’s not surprising. He had a lot of girlfriends when he was growing up, and I don’t imagine that anything would have changed. This morning when he touched my breasts he was—

  ‘Is there anything like the flower in Europe?’ Lisa asks him.

  ‘In Switzerland, there’s a blue flower called fairy’s bell, but they’re a different shape.’ Matts turns to me. ‘Do you know their colour, Sapphire?’

  ‘Fairy’s bell?’ Heat creeps up my neck. ‘It’s a much lighter blue.’

  Arctic. Sky. Cornflower. Periwinkle. Baby.

  When Hugo passes the flower back to me, I find paper in my bag and carefully wrap it up. Matts stands, and I stand too. A scatter of tiny stones tumbles down the slope and plops into the water.

  ‘Is it time to go?’ I look at the sun, still bright through the gaps in the trees. ‘It’ll take a while to get back to the car.’

  We take a different route on our return, walking along the river before scrambling up the rocky slope to the far end of the ridge. The cars are dots in the distance. Matts and Lisa are twenty metres ahead and climbing through a fence, and Hugo is close behind them. When a breeze whips up behind me, I spin around and face it. The river beneath me threads through the trees like a ribbon.

  Just as it does in Horseshoe.

  Has Prima recovered from her steeplechase? What if she’d bolted to the creek? It’s in the same catchment as this river and—

  The breeze stirs up dust. No matter which way the wind is blowing at the farmhouse, the weathervane on the roof will be pointing northeast. The rooster and weathervane haven’t rusted, but the mechanism is corroded and worn. I should climb a ladder, take the weathervane down and ask Mike Williams, Warrandale’s blacksmith, if it can be repaired.

  I’ll do it when the farmhouse is mine. When my father relinquishes the option.

  Matts and Lisa are walking side by side. They’ve barely stopped talking. Is this what he’s like now? Serious yet sociable?

  I can’t be jealous, can I?

  Yes, I can.

  ‘Sapphie!’ Hugo puts his fingers in his mouth and whistles. ‘Get your arse over here!’

  By the time we turn into Wilson’s modest main street, I’m tired and dusty and my throat is stiff from swallowing. The sun is still out but slowly sinking.

  Besides saying, ‘Should I pull over?’ a number of times, Matts has barely spoken.

  The hotel, built a hundred years ago after floods wiped out the town, is a handsome two-storey building of mellow red-brown bricks and white-painted render. A verandah with a green balustrade wraps around the first floor. When Matts turns into the lane that leads to the carpark, I unclick my belt. As soon as the car stops, I open the door and plant my feet on the asphalt. I lean forward with my hands on my knees and take deep breaths.

  The driver’s door slams. Matts crouches next to me. He lifts a hand as if to touch my shoulder, but then puts it back to his side. ‘Fuck,’ he says.

  ‘Yes.’

  He mutters another curse before standing and leaning against the car with his legs stretched out. I count slowly to fifty and then I straighten too. There are quite a few four-wheel drives here, a couple of open utes and a white late model sedan, dusty but clearly well maintained.

  Matts looks at his watch. ‘I’ll tell Chambers we’ll meet him at seven-fifteen.’

  I scrape hair off my face. ‘What is he doing here?’

  ‘He’s a member of parliament with an interest in my work. He’s on your committee and has access to funding.’

  ‘Did you call him this morning, like you called Hugo?’

  ‘You don’t have to join us.’

  ‘You don’t want to be alone with me, do you?’

  ‘Or drive with you.’

  ‘I’m …’ I take a breath. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Are you? When you said that seeing me again had made you worse?’

  ‘I wasn’t blaming you!’

  He reaches past me to the glove box, taking out the apple he gave me this morning and handing it to me. ‘I don’t want to lie.’ He slams the passenger door, walks to the back of the car and opens the boot.

  ‘I don’t make you lie.’

  He drops my bag at my feet. ‘If Lisa had asked if you’d been to South America, what would you have said?’

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You would have denied it. That would make me a liar too.’

  He walks away, not looking back as he lifts the remote over his shoulder and presses the button to lock the car.

  CHAPTER

  29

  I’m only in the shower long enough to wash the dust away, but by the time I wrap myself in a towel and return to my room, I have two missed calls and a message from my father.

  Sapphire. Please call.

  My phone is almost out of charge, so I plug it in before securing the end of the towel under my arm and pressing play on the TV remote. I sit on the end of the bumpy double bed and rub my hair with the hand towel.

  The national news is on. Robert, dressed in a blue pinstriped suit with his special pin on his lapel, his grey hair neatly cut and combed back from his forehead, stands in one of the courtyards at Parliament House. There’s a Japanese maple behind him, its branches aflame with burnt orange leaves. I recognise Robert’s advisors, the man and woman standing either side of him, from the arboretum. In front of the three are journalists and cameramen—twenty at least.

  My father brings the journalists up to date: Hernandez, as the head of his group of companies, has been accused of bribing government and non-government organisations. Hernandez’s defence is that gifts or gratuities, not inducements or bribes, were given to business associates as a means of thanking them for their assistance. In regards to the Swiss bank deposit box allocated to Robert Beresford-Brown, Hernandez believes that the money and precious stone it contained was merely a gift.

  ‘Under Australian law,’ one of the journalists says, ‘gifts must be declared, particularly valuable gifts like this one. Why wasn’t a declaration made? Why weren’t the contents handed over? Whether a gift or a bribe, the law has been broken.’

  ‘Until I was contacted by the Argentinian authorities,’ Robert says, ‘I had no idea this deposit box existed.’

  ‘So how do you explain it? And its contents?’

  ‘Firstly,’ Robert says, ‘there is no evidence that the Hernandez companies received an advantage from my then employer, the Department of Trade. Secondly, I categorically deny having knowledge of any transaction that might have taken place. Thirdly, I have cooperated fully with Argentinian and Australian authorities and will continue to do so.’

  A young female journalist pushes through the crowd. ‘The deposit box, Minister. Why did it,’ she draws quote marks in the air, ‘“have your name on it”?’

  One of Robert’s advisors touches his arm and he looks her way. He nods. ‘I had no knowledge of this box,’ he says to the journalist. ‘But my late ex-wife, Kate Beresford-Brown, was aware of it.’

  ‘Don’t.’ My hands clench the towel. ‘Please, don’t.’

  ‘Your ex-wife, Minister?’ the journalist says. There’s a murmur of interest from the other journalists. ‘Could you expand on that?’

  My father nods graciously. ‘I lived in Argentina with my first wife and our daughter for a number of years. It is possible that Kate passed information to Mr Hernandez or one of his associates. There is evidence that she accessed the deposit box described by Mr Hernandez.’

  ‘You take no responsibility for this?’

  ‘None.’ He frowns. ‘In the last few years of her life, Kate was deeply troubled.’

  ‘Can you clarify that, Minister?’

  ‘She had drug and other addictions. It was a very difficult time for my family.’

  ‘Bastard.’ I brush away tears.

 
; ‘Surely she shouldn’t have had access to confidential information?’

  ‘It hasn’t been proven that she did. In any case, the Department’s protocols are now quite different.’

  ‘But that doesn’t change—’

  ‘To preserve my daughter’s privacy, I am unable to go into further detail. Except to say that, within a few years of this incident, I was awarded sole care and custody of my only child.’

  ‘Her name is Sapphire?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Like the gemstone deposited in the box?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘That’s got to be more than a coincidence.’

  Robert purses his lips. ‘Sapphires were Kate’s favourite stones, but the rest is conjecture.’ He looks into a camera. ‘I have the support of my wife, Jacqueline, and my two delightful’—he smiles—‘if extraordinarily energetic, stepsons. My relationship with my daughter has never been stronger. As a family, we wish to put this unfortunate incident behind us.’

  I was aware of the photographers that followed us around Canberra’s arboretum, but I didn’t realise that one of them was filming. At the end of the bulletin, the newsreader crosses to a clip. The boys are on their broomsticks—Alex on the red gum branch and Atticus on the ironbark—‘flying’ along a leaf-strewn path fringed by towering oaks. I’m standing at the side of the path and holding out a tennis ball, the ‘quaffle’, and an acorn, the ‘snitch’. As the boys approach, I laugh. My face tips up to the sky; my hair falls down my back to my waist. Jacqueline and Robert stand to one side. They’re arm in arm and smiling at the boys, the bright spring leaves of the oak trees behind them.

  I turn off the TV, unplug my phone and put it in my lap; my hands are so shaky that I can barely dial.

  My father answers immediately. ‘Sapphire.’

  ‘How—’ My voice breaks. ‘How could you do that?’

  ‘You’ve seen the interview? I was forced to bring things out in the open to end the melee. I called to warn you.’

  ‘I don’t understand how …’ I wipe an arm across my eyes. ‘You loved her once, you must have done. You didn’t have to say those things. She was always kind. She wouldn’t deliberately hurt anyone.’

  ‘I took steps to protect Jacqueline and the boys.’

  ‘You did it to protect yourself! Your career!’

  ‘And why shouldn’t I?’ He lowers his voice. ‘I wanted the media off my back.’

  ‘So you blamed Mum.’

  ‘The evidence is overwhelming.’

  ‘Is it? You said it yourself—you don’t even know that she accessed your documents.’

  ‘I’ve said my piece, Sapphire. I won’t say more. In a few weeks, Parliament will close for the year. By the time it sits again, I hope this will be forgotten.’

  ‘Not by me!’ I walk to the window and pull aside the curtain. Once the sheer fabric would have been white; now it’s smoky grey. Fingermarks smudge the glass. ‘It’s not the first time you’ve used me.’

  ‘We should be united as a family.’

  ‘I could go to the media. I could tell them you lied about Mum.’

  ‘I didn’t lie, Sapphire. And you know as well as anyone that I could have said more. She sent her child, our child, to buy drugs on the street to feed her addiction. Is that what you’ll take to the media? Or will I be forced to inform it of that fact in order to defend myself?’

  ‘She was desperate.’ I force the words through. ‘You never understood, you never even tried.’

  ‘I’m a politician, Sapphire. I know what I’m doing. Don’t cross me on this.’

  Mr Chambers is a politician too. He’s standing on the footpath below me. Matts walks towards him and they shake hands.

  ‘Did Matts—he didn’t know about this, did he?’

  ‘I hope he gives me credit for keeping Inge out of it. Not that she deserves any less.’

  Matts looks up. Can he see me? I twist away from the window and lean against the wall. A faded print hangs near the door. A child rides a dark bay draught horse, a Clydesdale. The water in the river is high and the skies are leaden with steel grey clouds. The fields are bottle green, the earth is umber and the trees are graceful willows. It’s an English scene. I think it’s a Constable.

  ‘I want the farmhouse, Robert. I did what you wanted.’

  ‘Did you? What about this man who approached you?’

  ‘What about him? It all means nothing now anyway. You have to relinquish the option.’

  ‘It’s too late to do so.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Silence. Then, ‘I instructed my solicitor to exercise it a number of days ago.’

  My knees crumple as I slip slowly to the floor. ‘You’ve bought the farmhouse?’

  ‘Correct.’

  I put my forehead against my knees. ‘I could tell the journalists that you took out the option in order to blackmail me. You went back on your word.’

  ‘I could far more convincingly say that my daughter had her heart set on a property. As she had failed to take adequate steps to secure it, I did it for her.’

  ‘That’s a lie.’

  ‘It’s a demonstrable truth.’

  ‘I trusted you.’ My voice breaks. Tears stream down my face.

  ‘Sapphire. Listen to me. There’s bound to come a time—perhaps when I leave politics—that I have no use for twenty hectares of land and an uninhabitable house.’

  ‘You’d silence me until then?’

  ‘Your mother was deeply flawed. Your grandmother, while she did her best, was unable to adequately care for you. You’ve held onto this resentment for too many years.’

  Mum couldn’t go to Gran’s funeral because she’d just been admitted to rehab again, so the next time I visited from Horseshoe, she got a day pass and we caught a bus to the cemetery. It was better that way anyway, without my father and his colleagues milling around and looking at their phones. We were arranging roses in a vase on the grave when Mum smiled sadly. She pulled a thorn from the stem. ‘I couldn’t love you more,’ she said. ‘But Gloria loved you better.’

  ‘I loved her too.’

  ‘You’re a lot like her.’

  ‘The flowers?’ I said.

  ‘She was kind and loyal. You have those qualities.’

  I hold the phone away from my ear, swipe at my eyes and rub my face on the towel. ‘You want me to forget everything that happened?’

  ‘It’s time to move on.’

  ‘I did that. I went to Horseshoe and found the farmhouse.’

  ‘Once you see things more clearly, assuming you still want the farmhouse, we can negotiate.’

  The rooster on top of the weathervane. The azalea bushes and the red gum tree. The track that leads to the creek. The lemon trees in the orchard and the horses in the paddock. The room where I make my flowers and the timber sash windows that stick. The chilly winter draughts and the warm summer breezes.

  My chest is so tight that it hurts to breathe. I roll onto my knees before standing. I wipe my face again. My phone pings. A message from Matts.

  We’re in the bar.

  CHAPTER

  30

  If Gus were here with me now, he’d take off his hat. He’d twist it around in his work-roughened hands and tell me what Maggie would say. ‘Tomorrow is a brand new day. Let’s get this one over with.’

  I’ve lost the farmhouse but Horseshoe is still my home.

  I refasten my towel and walk to the bathroom, splashing my face and pulling my hair into a bun. Digging to the bottom of my bag, I find my short-sleeved yellow dress. It’s not too creased, so I slip it on. I shrug into a pale blue cardigan with yellow buttons, and wrap a yellow ribbon around my bun. I wasn’t expecting Mr Chambers to turn up, but he’s here and he’s powerful. As chair of the committee, I have to present our perspectives. Gus remembers when the river was so high that it lapped at the steps of the schoolhouse. Cassie’s wildlife needs access to clean water. Hugo’s frogs can’t reproduce unless water fo
rms puddles on the ground. And Matts? He cares about the wetlands—bogs and swamps and flooded plains.

  I slip into brown leather flats as I study the picture of the horse and the river. When my eyes begin to sting again, I squeeze them shut and bite my lip.

  Matts and Mr Chambers sit opposite each other at a table next to an unlit open fireplace. The mantle and surrounds are timber, stained rich mahogany red. There are pinecones in the cast iron grate, pale green and plump.

  ‘Sorry I’m late.’ I force a smile.

  Mr Chambers stands and takes my hand. He kisses my cheek. ‘Sapphie. You look very pretty. It’s nice to see you out here.’ He rubs his hands together. ‘What can I get you? I’m having a beer. Matts is drinking soda.’

  ‘Lemon squash with ice, please.’

  Matts stands too. He takes my hand but doesn’t shake it. He peers into my face. ‘What’s the matter?’

  Mum and Inge used to laugh and say, ‘He has a sixth sense with Sapphire.’

  ‘I can’t tell you now.’

  There are three middle-aged couples in the bar, talking and laughing. It’s bird-nesting season so maybe they’re here for that. Mr Chambers talks to the barman and smiles and nods at the tourists. He and Matts discuss climate and politics as they eat steak, salad and chips. I fork chicken around my plate and make notes.

  ‘Sapphie?’ Mr Chambers says. ‘You’re quiet tonight. What are your thoughts?’

  I take a sip of soft drink. ‘The rain we had last year broke the worst of the drought. Besides environmentalists and locals, people stopped worrying so much. We have to show them that the problems with the river and wetlands haven’t gone away.’

  By the time we’ve finished our meal, Matts and I have given Mr Chambers a lot of facts about the river and wetlands, and he’s dictated them into his phone. He’s also promised to actively support research initiatives and proposals in need of funding.

  ‘Sapphie,’ he says, as he drains his glass, ‘I’d like you to draft a statement to be released by the committee. You can give details of everything I’ve—’