Black Painted Fingernails

by Steven Herrick

The first heavy raindrop blots the windscreen.

  ‘It’s raining, Sophie. How much further do you have to go?’

  ‘In the opposite direction to you. Near Robinvale.’ Sophie loosens her grip on the bag. ‘I could sleep in the car, if you’re stopping. The seat goes way back.’

  She pushes the lever and stretches out beside me, her eyes admiring the roof, and rubs her hand along the soft leather of the seat. ‘It’s as comfortable as some beds I’ve been in.’ She returns the seat to upright and drops the handbag back on the floor, beside her boots. ‘I’ll get an early start, with the truckies heading west.’

  ‘Sure, if you want.’ The silence presses. ‘Or I’ll get a room. With an extra bed,’ I add quickly, so she doesn’t think I’m plotting anything. Which I’m not. ‘Are we still talking truthfully?’

  ‘Yes, James. If you want.’

  ‘I can’t leave you on the side of the highway, not in this storm.’

  ‘I’ve been in worse places.’

  ‘Let – let me get a room. And tomorrow, I’ll drop you at the turn-off. There’s always a spare bed, Soph.’

  I didn’t mean to call her that. It slipped out.

  She says, ‘Thanks’ in a quiet voice and I know that like me, she’s thinking of the sound of ‘Soph,’ and what it means, me calling her that.

  Like catching a fish together on a blue-sky Sunday morning.

  Like eating a peach picked fresh from an orchard.

  Like sharing blackberries that stain like bruises.

  Beside the road, a foal gallops across a paddock. The mare trots alongside, herding it towards the safety of the trees. The foal flings its head back as if it wants to face the storm front on, confident it can outrun it, sure it can outrun anything. The mare canters under the trees and neighs. The foal wheels back and runs to its mother. They nudge each other and wait.

  A car horn blasts from behind. A ute pulls out and speeds past, the driver gesturing rudely. I was so involved with the horses, I hadn’t noticed myself slowing down. We watch the ute pull away, the man’s fist threatening us out the window.

  ‘I’ll buy you dinner, for the bed,’ Sophie says. ‘And I won’t tell the waitress we’re lovers, if you don’t tell her I’m your sister.’

  ‘You mean we’re extending the truth . . . what do we call it?’

  ‘The truth factory?’

  ‘Okay, we’re moving the truth factory from the car into the pub?’

  ‘It surrounds us, James, all the time, like a—’

  ‘Don’t tell me – like a spell!’

  ‘You’re learning.’

  The ute is waiting at the first traffic lights in two hundred kilometres. I keep my distance, careful not to smile in case the driver sees me in the rear mirror and gets out, wanting to make something of it. He has a shaved head and his rear window is plastered with stickers and an Australian flag. The light turns green and he wastes rubber, loudly.

  There’s a Welcome Motel on the opposite corner. Four Telstra vans are parked out front, the technicians sitting on fold-up chairs in a circle under the awning, a carton of beer between them.

  I drive past and turn into the main street. At the first roundabout there’s a statue of a soldier, head bowed, eyes staring down the gunbarrel-straight road out of town with the names of the fallen engraved below his feet. Wreaths of plastic flowers circle the statue. I angle-park near the biggest pub, which has a blackboard menu beside the entrance advertising Roast of the Day for ten dollars. We jump out and run through the rain to the footpath.

  Inside, there’s a smell of stale beer and worn carpet. My eyes blink, adjusting to the gloom. A wooden bar runs along one wall, opposite two pool tables surrounded by men in singlets, beers in hand. Spinning fans hang from the pressed-metal ceiling, threatening to take the tip off any pool cue held too high.

  The men watch as Sophie shakes the raindrops from her hair.

  Someone near the door mutters about the night looking promising and a few blokes laugh. Their hungry eyes roam from her to me. One bloke with a five-day growth and trucker’s cap stands in my way, chalking his pool cue. I bow my head and squeeze between him and the bar. He nudges me with his shoulder. The barmaid scowls at me for no reason other than that Sophie is beautiful.

  We walk to a booth in the far corner, which has plastic orange upholstery and a sign above reading No smoking inside. Someone has scrawled the word bastards in biro on the sign, except they spelt it barsteds.

  Sophie slides into the booth. I stub my toe and bend uncomfortably. My head strikes the lamp over the table and it swings wildly, shadow-boxing, as I flop heavily onto the seat. Sophie reaches for my forehead.

  ‘No!’ I react.

  My fingers feel for blood, find only a lump itching to grow. Reaching up to steady the lamp, I dare not look at the men laughing across the room.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  My hand covers the bruise and I blush hotly.

  Sophie dumps her bag on the table, beside the coasters and tomato sauce bottle. She leans towards me, her fingers reaching to caress.

  ‘I’m fine!’ My voice is louder than I intended and the barmaid looks up from the beer taps. I quickly turn to the wall, so no one can see my embarrassment.

  Sophie pulls away and sighs impatiently. She fumbles inside her handbag. The humiliation pushes all the air out of me and I sink back into the seat. Sophie places a small oval make-up mirror on the table between us.

  ‘You want me to look into that here,’ I say.

  Sophie’s voice is hushed, ‘I thought you’d want to check . . .’

  ‘I know what I look like.’ I steal a glance towards the pool table. ‘And so does everyone else.’

  ‘Who cares what they think?’ She looks to the ceiling. ‘You shouldn’t be so . . .’

  ‘I don’t need help to make myself look foolish,’ I say bitterly.

  Sophie slides the mirror off the table and into her handbag. She gets up, strapping the bag over her shoulder. ‘I need a drink.’

  The men watch her stroll to the bar, where she orders from the barmaid. Instead of returning to our booth, she leans on the counter, watching the pool game. Suddenly alert, the men start concentrating on every shot they make.

  I retreat to the toilets and check out the red mark on my forehead in the mirror above the sink. I turn on the tap and consider drowning myself in twenty centimetres of water but decide to apologise instead.

  Sophie is back in the booth, sitting opposite a man who’s taken my seat. He has a scruffy beard and a flannelette shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He doesn’t stand or offer his hand when I return.

  ‘The name’s Larry.’

  There are two drinks in front of Sophie, a beer and a whisky.

  ‘I was just inviting the lady here for a game of pool. My mates and me are placing bets.’

  ‘I don’t know if—’

  ‘Don’t be shy, mate. You can come over too. For a while.’

  Sophie reaches for my hand. ‘You can go, Larry,’ she says. ‘Now my boyfriend’s back.’

  ‘Last chance, lady. Pool and a few laughs?’

  Sophie ignores his offer and smiles up at me.

  Larry reaches for the whisky and downs it in one gulp. When he gets up, I step back to let him pass. He holds up the glass. ‘Weak as piss.’

  I’m careful to avoid the lamp when I sit back down. A muscle in my arm twitches involuntarily.

  Sophie slides the beer towards me. ‘I ordered two roasts, with vegies. Is beer okay? That creep just drank my Scotch.’

  She looks at our hands on the table, touching, her long fingers covering my knuckles.

  ‘I’m sorry about before, Sophie.’

  She grins. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll blame the yobbos.’

&n
bsp; The barmaid slides our meals across the table.

  I blink and focus on the roast, thick with gravy, on my plate. The vegies are watery, the meat stringy, the pile of chips threatens to spill onto the floor. I try a few: they’re thin and crisp and salty.

  Sophie chews slowly on a chip. ‘I worked in a pub like this, just after I left home. I hitched a few hundred kilometres east, walked into the first pub in town and asked for a job.’

  She adds extra salt to her chips.

  ‘The publican looked me up and down and said, “No worries, love. We’ll have men travelling miles to be pulled a beer by you.”’

  A fly buzzes over my plate.

  ‘I told him that’s all I’d be doing, pouring beers. I stayed for two months, saved what I could, had two proposals of marriage and five offers of a quickie out the back.’ She grimaces. ‘It was easy to resist. I bought a second-hand station wagon and kept moving east.

  A bloke with tattoos and a tray of beers walks past our table, singing tunelessly along with the jukebox. He trips on the scrunched-up carpet, but doesn’t spill a drop.

  ‘My first day in Sydney, I went straight to the beach and swam in the ocean.’ She finishes her chips and reaches across to take some of mine. ‘There was a howling southerly and the waves were all whitecaps. I didn’t care. It was the Pacific. I slept in the back of the car for a week until I found a share house in Newtown.’ She sprinkles salt on my chips as well and looks around the pub at the bartender collecting glasses and the unlit fireplace full of pine cones. ‘This is the first time I’ve been back this way.’

  A month after Cardigan left town, Sophie’s dad asked her to go out with him early on a Sunday morning, when the boys were still asleep. He placed a hessian bag between them on the car seat before slowly reversing out of the driveway.

  On the north side of town were orchards, rows of peach and pear trees, with signs on the fence every hundred metres warning that trespassers would be prosecuted. Sophie and her dad left the car near an irrigation drain, not bothering to lock up. A scare gun on a timer fired every few minutes to spook the birds.

  ‘Reckon we’ve got a recipe for peach pie at home, Soph?’

  Sophie grinned. ‘We made peach cobbler at school this week for the fete. Mrs Johnstone reckons her husband will buy the lot.’

  ‘That’s nice of him.’

  ‘Nah, he’s a greedy bastard.’

  ‘Soph, don’t swear.’

  ‘Okay, he’s a greedy peach cobbler-eater.’

  The gas gun fired, followed by a squawk of parrots. Sophie remembered the ingredients: butter, sugar, flour, baking powder . . . and peaches, lots of peaches.

  Sophie’s father jumped over the fence, put his boot on the top wire and held it down for her. She stepped lightly across, then whistled at the weight of fruit on the trees. Her father reached up and tested one for ripeness. He picked it and held it to his nose, then passed it to Sophie. She felt its soft warm fur and longed to take a big bite, imagining the juice dribbling down her chin.

  ‘Go on, Soph. There’s plenty more.’

  ‘But it’s stealing, Dad.’

  Her father winked and picked another one. ‘Bert Guthrie and me have an understanding.’

  They sat under a tree, savouring the aroma of ripe fruit, enjoying the warmth of the sun. When she finished the peach, Sophie licked her fingers and buried the stone in the ground, wondering if a tree would grow.

  ‘Dad, why did Mum leave?’

  Silence, then the gun repeated.

  ‘Why does anyone leave?’

  ‘She had us, Dad!’

  ‘She reckoned it wasn’t enough, Soph.’

  ‘How much did she want?’

  Her father’s voice was suddenly tired. ‘She said she was leaving the marriage, not the family.’

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘Soph, please.’

  ‘Don’t you ever get angry about it, Dad?’

  ‘Yeah, when I think about it.’ His mouth curled downward. ‘So I don’t.’

  ‘I want to find her and tell her I hate her. Shout it in her face.’ Sophie dug her heels into the soft ground and pushed the dirt away. ‘The only thing is . . . I’m forgetting what she looks like.’ She bit her lip. ‘All I remember clearly is her hair in braids and the sunspots on her arms.’

  ‘I remember her eyes . . . looking straight through me. As if I didn’t . . .’ Sophie’s father shrugged and stared at his hands, the thick knuckles, the fingernails chewed down to the skin, gripping the hessian bag. ‘I’ve gone over it a million times. I prefer to concentrate on what I have got.’ He reached for her hand. ‘If you find her one day . . .’

  ‘What, Dad?’

  ‘Tell her I hate her too.’

  Sophie wondered if she’d ever have the guts to go searching for her mum. Whether she could stand looking at her, after all these years, without slapping her. But what would be the point of that? There’d be no chance of a future with someone who could do that to her children.

  At least Cardigan was forced to leave her. She remembered Cardigan’s dad and wanted to cry.

  She thought instead of Cardigan and his soft lips and wondered how once you’ve felt something like that, you could ever stop wanting it. She wished Cardigan would come back and find her on the hill on Saturdays. She was sick of watching every boy in town chase after a football, wrapping their muscly arms around each other in that creepy embrace.

  Sophie looked at her father, with his sad eyes and those big hands holding the bag.

  It could all end tomorrow.

  And then what have you got?

  A devotion to gardening. A peach cobbler baked with extra sugar and a sprinkle of cinnamon. The thrill of stealing fruit.

  ‘You should find someone else, Dad.’

  He looked at his daughter with her long legs like a racehorse’s, her gangling thinness, her wild hair and her steady gaze. He noticed Sophie’s black nail polish. ‘Where did you get that from?’

  ‘Aunt Sasha sent it.’

  ‘That bloody bohemian. She dresses like a gypsy!’

  ‘Dad! She’s your sister.’

  ‘I guess you’re only young once, hey, Soph,’ he laughed.

  ‘Yeah, and you’re old forever, if you don’t do something.’

  The gun thundered. Sophie’s dad held out his hand and pulled her upright. ‘Come on, Soph. Old man Guthrie owes me a bagful.’

  We walk out of the pub after eating our weight in hot chips. The storm has washed the streets clean. My car is speckled with raindrops. Before I start the engine, I say, ‘I’ll check into the room, Sophie. You stay in the car until I get the key. And this time, can you just be my sister?’

  ‘The truth factory . . .’

  ‘. . . can be suspended for five minutes, please?’

  ‘It’s more fun my way.’

  ‘Only for you.’

  We drive west down Main Street to The Pines Motel, where a neon sign blinks on the roof and fairy lights decorate the lone cypress pine at the entrance. I pull up a few metres past the reception door, so they can’t see my car. Sophie feigns getting out. ‘It’s not my problem if they have dirty minds,’ she says.

  A loud bell rings as I open the reception door. The far wall is lined with butcher-shop calendars and clippings from the local paper. A teenage girl smiles from one photo, under the heading of Local girl wins sports award. The office smells of beeswax and disinfectant.

  A woman bustles out from behind a screen. She wears black-rimmed glasses and has a silver cross around her neck. She can barely control a frown when she sees me at the counter. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Hello, I’d like a room, please.’

  She stares past me to the carpark and opens the reception book, running
a finger down a list of vacant rooms.

  ‘How many people?’

  ‘One . . . I mean two.’ I stammer.

  ‘So, what’s it to be?’ Her voice is thin and tight. ‘A single or a double?’

  ‘I need . . . I’d like two beds, please.’

  She quickly glances outside again. ‘That’s eighty dollars, including breakfast.’ She checks the clock above the door. ‘And we’d prefer payment tonight – now.’

  She swipes my credit card and watches closely as I sign my name, flipping the card to check the signature. She puts the key on the desk and reaches below to a bar fridge for a small carton of milk, placing it next to the keys. ‘No animals allowed in the room.’

  ‘I’ll leave the crocodile in the car.’

  ‘The what?’

  I pick up the keys and milk before she has a chance to snatch them back.

  ‘No smoking or loud music, either,’ she adds.

  ‘In the room? Or anywhere?’

  Sophie would be proud.

  The woman touches the cross around her neck and walks behind the screen without saying another word.

  My footsteps crunch on the gravel path outside. I open the car door. ‘Hey, Sophie, I just met a . . .’

  The car is empty.

  My fingers grip the handle. I count to five, ten, twenty, waiting for her to appear, a sweeping dress from beyond the pine tree, the wind whistling appreciatively.

  No Sophie.

  A red traffic light, a vacancy sign, a mute garden gnome, my reflection in the car window.

  No Sophie.

  In the carpark are late-model sedans with interstate number plates, an old van with children’s bikes strapped to the rear, two dusty four-wheel drives and my conspicious BMW.

  No Sophie.

  It’s quiet enough to hear myself sigh. I let the car idle into the parking spot near the swimming pool and switch the engine off. The lights die, and I’m left alone with a lingering smell of soap and blackberries.

  It takes me three attempts to open the motel door with the bent key, my hand shaking. The bedside lamps spill a milky weak light and the fridge coughs and splutters.