She gathers some runner beans and a warm limp lettuce, cradled between the leaves of which is a yellow caterpillar, thick as a baby’s finger. It rears up at her, displaying the black hairs on its concertina-sectioned underside. She flicks it off and watches it wriggle in the dirt. She lifts her foot to squash it. If she doesn’t it will turn into a butterfly and lay a million eggs. Most of the lettuce leaves are frilled around their edges with caterpillar-bite shapes. There isn’t a thought in its head, it won’t suffer – just simply cease to exist. It would hardly even count as a death. Just a patch of dampness on the ground, drying to nothing within half an hour.
She grits her teeth, looks away and does it. Better than using pesticide.
She wipes her sandal-sole in the dust and goes to fill the watering can from the overflow tank. Good to be busy, doing things, enjoying the green and the smell of growing. Studio! Something so self-important about that word. Why not just room? He’d better bloody well get painting, then. The earth darkens with the water, the thick tomato stalks slurp it up, the leaves seem to quiver and stiffen as she watches. She will start a compost heap. Today.
Yella comes round into the garden, nudges her leg with his nose.
‘Hello, boy.’ He cocks his head at the watering can. ‘Want a drink?’ She remembers that he’s deaf and bends to pat him.
‘He doesn’t want to drink it.’ Larry makes her jump.
‘Pour some on his back,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘Go on.’
She lifts the watering can and lets the spray run over the dog’s back. He arches it, closing his eyes and groaning with comical pleasure. Cassie ducks and laughs as he shakes, a glittering spray speckling her legs. The stupid creature rolls on to his back and wriggles in the dirt. And stands up, bright-eyed, spiky with mud.
‘Simple pleasures,’ Larry says.
‘Well, yes!’ Cassie rubs her sprinkled shins. ‘Larry?’
Larry squints at something on a tomato leaf. ‘These need a squirt.’ He indicates a drum of pesticide. ‘Yes?’
‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Why – I mean, I know it’s none of my business but why – when Mara’s so ill and everything, do you choose to live so far from – well – civilisation, without even a radio or anything –’
‘If we lived nearer civilisation, as you put it,’ Larry says, ‘it is likely that Mara would be incarcerated in an institution.’ He steps closer and smiles. ‘Believe me, strange as it may seem, it’s the best solution.’ His beard is jutted forward, his pale eyes looking down into her own.
‘I’m sure,’ she says, ‘it must be so hard. It’s very unselfish of you.’
‘Unselfish?’
‘To live here – to give up everything and all for Mara. Not everyone would. What about work?’
‘I work.’
‘What do you do?’
‘Oh,’ he shakes his head. ‘Plenty of time for all that. Now, must get on.’
She picks up her basket of vegetables. ‘I’m going to use organic methods,’ she says, ‘rather than you know, nasty chemicals.’
‘Nasty chemicals!’ He gazes at her a moment longer, shrugs. ‘Up to you entirely. Incidentally, now we’re alone, Graham –’
‘What?’
‘How shall I put it? He’s not quite what I was expecting.’
‘What did you expect?’
‘Someone more,’ he says, ‘someone more –’ but he breaks off, shrugs, gives her a wry smile. ‘But I’m sure we’ll all rub along. When we get used to each other. Now,’ he looks down at his watch, ‘I’ll be busy until lunch.’ He turns and leaves, Yella at his heels.
Cassie takes the salad and beans inside, washes and slices the tomatoes. Someone more what? Polite? Tall? Humble? Efficient? But she knows what he means. She wishes he was someone more? too. That’s why they’re here, isn’t it? She picks a tiny grub or two out of the flesh and sprinkles the juicy slices with pepper, salt, oil and torn basil leaves. She boils eggs, cuts up the remains of one loaf and locates another – naturally Graham forgot – in the white furry depths of the freezer. Later she’ll start a new batch of bread.
She has an uneasy feeling between her shoulder blades as if she’s being watched. But there’s no one. She opens the pantry and peers in at the tins. Something scuttling away from the light makes her recoil. An old brown smell in there: oilcloth, candle wax, plain ordinary dirtiness. The whole lot’ll need clearing out – some of the cans are ancient, rusting round the rims, the labels scarcely legible. It’ll be fun, in a way, getting it all in order. She finds a can of tuna, another of anchovies. Salade Niçoise? Though there are no olives that she can see.
She nips and peels the strings from the beans. He’s right. They’ll get used to each other. In time. It’ll all be fine. She carries knives, forks and plates out to the table on the veranda. A big table, the top of it made of a single slab of wood, but like wood magnified, all the grain wide and whorled around a complex knot. Dirty, too – old food, old God-knows-what, candle wax embedded with crumbs – so much to do. She smiles, remembering the look on Graham’s face when Larry told him not to swear.
She stands at the top of the steps and looks past the shed, past the wind-pump and down an incline to a stand of gums. Used to be a paddock, Larry told them, a paddock of five thousand acres, there were still relics of the fence here and there if they cared to look. Five thousand acres. Ten times bigger than a whole farm back home.
She can see Graham in the distance, sitting with his back against one of the trees, sketch pad on his knees. He’s wearing the unravelling straw hat he’s picked up. And she softens, glad about his talent. OK, have your studio then. If only he would start to paint again, to be serious about something. Their cottage is lined with his paintings, strange things, reflections, oily ripples. How can he be so talented and not want to paint? He says he’s stuck but – the way he can catch a movement in a single line. He doodles when he’s on the phone, one line he does, never lifting the pencil. With his long graceful fingers he’ll sketch a girl turning, the swing of her skirt, a bird taking off, a smile happening on a face. That last she’d noticed when he was talking to Jas once. A long and mumbled conversation during which she’d felt resentfully obliged to leave the room, though she’d been there first. And when, afterwards, she’d looked at the pad by the phone there was this smile, such a smile, amazing being only a line, actually infectious enough for her to catch it, despite herself.
Eight
Graham stops by the veranda steps. Cassie doesn’t see him at first, chin cupped between her hands, she gazes at what? The back of her neck gleams under her heavy ponytail. He lifts his own thick hair off his sweaty skin. She’s put the flowers in a vase and filled a glass jug with water, floating with lemon. The big tomato slices overlap on a plate, shiny with oil and green fragments of basil. Could be a composition, a painting there for him, not that still life is his thing.
‘Penny for them?’ he says.
She starts. ‘Don’t waste your money. How’d you get on?’
He grasps the sketch pad tighter under his arm. Nothing to show, just a few lines, a tree trunk, a horizon, the flick of a lizard’s tail. It’s too big to paint. He’d gone into his studio first but no good. So he’d wandered outside, sat under a tree, ready, the paper in front of him, the pencil raised – and nothing. The light had danced whorishly in front of him. What is the point of painting, it made him think, the point of making another painting? If you burnt every painting in the world, then – when the fire was out, and it was all a pile of ash – what then? What’s the point?
He kisses her. She tastes of tuna fish. ‘You were miles away,’ he says. ‘Where were you?’
‘Just waiting.’ She goes into the kitchen and comes back with a plate of bread. A fly settles on it as she puts it down and she flaps her hand at it.
‘What’s up?’
She looks serious. ‘Please, Gray, we need to talk
.’
‘We will talk.’ His heart sinks.
‘We’ve come all this way to talk.’
‘What about?’
‘Us, of course. What do you think? The footsie index?’
He takes a breath. ‘I’m here, aren’t I? That’s what you wanted –’
She pulls off a corner of bread, and nibbles, flecks of crumb on her lower lip. ‘Yes, you are, aren’t you?’ She smiles.
‘How’s the garden then?’
‘Great. Gray, please. Let’s just clear the air,’ she licks a crumb off her finger, ‘about us. Then we can forget it.’ She pauses, ‘You know that all I want is a proper monogamous relationship.’
He can’t prevent a groan.
‘Don’t. What?’
‘You know. That word. The M-word.’
She bites her lip. He can see the almost invisible peach fuzz on her cheek, lit up by the sun. ‘I don’t want to go on and on about it,’ she says, ‘if we can just have one proper conversation, get things straight.’
‘It’s not the actual being –’ he searches for a word that he can swallow, ‘true,’ he says, surprised by the simplicity. ‘It’s that word. It’s like – monotony.’
‘It’s not the actual being true?’ She gazes at him. ‘What’s the problem then?’
‘No problem,’ he says. At this moment that seems true, too. Her irises are crazed with tawny flecks in this light, more grey, less green.
She pushes her hair behind her ears. ‘So?’ she says.
‘So, I will, from now on, be true,’ he says, finding that he likes that word. That single simple syllable. Doesn’t sound as onerous as monogamy.
‘Not much chance of anything else here!’ she says. ‘Just so we can be clear, start off with a clean slate, will you tell me the last person you slept with?’
‘Will you?’
‘You know – it was Rod. And I didn’t really want to, it was only because of you. Only because you did. I never really wanted to. Though I have to admit –’ Her eyes go dreamy and he feels an unexpected kick of jealousy. She shakes her head. ‘Anyway, that was nearly a year ago. You –’
The door of the shed opens and Mara comes out, Larry behind her. Graham breathes out gratefully. How true is true exactly? Mara’s hair is a fat plait over one bare shoulder. Wrapped tightly round her breasts and tucked in to make a kind of sarong, is a thin brown sheet.
‘Are we ready?’ Larry asks.
‘Yes,’ Cassie says. ‘I’ll just fetch –’
‘A bottle of wine?’ Larry suggests.
‘Oh Larry, yes!’ Mara claps her hands.
‘As a welcome, a celebration of sorts.’
‘Yesss.’
‘That would be nice.’ Cassie goes into the kitchen to fetch the grub. Graham smiles at her retreating back. She never drinks at lunchtime. He likes it when she does though. And later, he flexes his fingers, bed. He takes his tobacco out of his pocket.
‘What’s for lunch?’ Mara walks with some difficulty, because of the sheet tangling round her feet, up the veranda steps.
‘Something with tuna fish, I think.’ He can still taste the kiss. He pulls out a Rizla and rolls up.
‘I like tuna fish,’ Mara says. She sits down on the nearest chair and looks into Graham’s eyes. Hers are caramel brown, darkly shadowed underneath. ‘What is tuna but a fish?’ she says. ‘You don’t say sardine fish or trout fish.’
Graham shrugs and speaks with the fag between his lips. ‘But you say dogfish.’
‘True,’ Mara says.
‘You have to.’ Cassie plonks the salad bowl on the table. ‘Otherwise it’s just a dog. Maybe you should smoke that after lunch?’
‘I, for one, would prefer it if you waited,’ Larry says. He pours red wine into the glasses Cassie meant for water.
‘Fair enough.’ Graham removes the cigarette from his mouth and puts it on the table beside his fork. He sniffs and sips his wine. Soft and peppery, the temperature of blood. ‘Excellent,’ he says. Even a small sip, even the smell of it goes right to his sun-baked brains.
‘You know about wine?’ Larry turns to him.
‘I’m no expert,’ he says, ‘but I do have some idea. My dad was into it in a big way.’
‘What do reckon to this – the grape?’
Cassie flicks Graham an amused look. He sniffs again and frowns, having no clue at all, despite Dad and his famous cellar. ‘Cabernet Sauvignon?’ he tries.
‘Shiraz.’
‘Oh yeah.’
‘Do help yourselves,’ Cassie says. ‘It’s hard in someone else’s kitchen till you get used –’
‘Don’t think of it as someone else’s,’ Larry says. ‘Think of it as yours.’ He raises his glass to her.
‘Cheers,’ she says.
‘Well, cheers. Welcome.’
‘Welcome,’ Mara says.
‘Thanks.’
‘Yeah. Cheers.’ Graham scratches his chin, not shaved for a couple of days and the stubble itches. He eyes the neat little tube of white by his plate, one ginger wisp of baccy trailing out.
Mara eats with hungry delicacy, dabbing her mouth on the corner of her sheet. Larry has a white linen napkin in a bone ring. He fetches it himself and with some flourish pulls it out and tucks it into his shirt. The rest of them do without. Graham’s mother always had a thing about napkins, linen. You had to roll them up after the meal, rolls of white. He eyes his fag again and looks away.
On the sheet under Mara’s thick brown arms scoops of sweat are spreading. The smell of her – impossible not to notice it. Repulsive or intoxicating, can’t make up his mind, but maybe the last is just the wine? Not like male sweat or sharp and salty like Cassie’s, which he’s getting used to lately. This is musky and cloying, even sweet – but that’s probably perfume.
‘You paint, Mara?’ he says.
‘I can paint,’ she says.
‘Mara is a splendid painter.’ Larry smiles at them all, his smile lingering on Cassie the longest.
‘Went to the Slade,’ Mara says.
‘Really?’ Graham says.
‘You sound surprised.’
‘Not at all,’ he says. Although he is. Hard to imagine Mara at the Slade – where he once spent a term. He’d started an MA but that’s when the rot set in. Hard to imagine Mara anywhere for that matter.
‘What are these?’ Cassie runs her thumbnail along one of the shallow, wavy indentations on the table’s surface.
‘Termite trails,’ Larry says. ‘You’ll see them everywhere. See –’ He indicates the door frame.
‘Termites.’ Cassie shudders. ‘Why does that sound so much worse than ants?’
‘A queen termite can be the size of a cucumber,’ Mara says. Graham blurts out a laugh but she looks quite serious. ‘Have you seen the termite mounds?’ she says. ‘They are amazing, aren’t they, Larry? That would give you something to paint.’
‘Where are they?’ Graham asks.
‘The nearest colony worth seeing is – oh – quite a distance.’ Larry drains the last of the wine into Mara’s glass and opens another. The cork rolls down the steps.
‘When’s Fred coming back?’ Mara asks, her voice colliding with Graham asking to see her work.
‘I don’t paint.’ Mara looks down and delicately forks together a sliver of tomato, a slice of bean, a flake of fish and puts it in her mouth.
‘I’ll explain later,’ Larry says.
‘No, you will not explain.’ A piece of bean pops out of her mouth. ‘Excuse me. I will explain. There is no need to explain. I paint and burn because I can’t paint – paint and burn, paint and burn.’
‘Calm down Mara,’ Larry puts a hand on her arm. ‘I had to stop her,’ he explains. ‘Fire risk.’
Graham swallows. ‘That’s weird,’ he says, putting down his fork. ‘This morning I was thinking that.’
Cassie looks up. ‘Thinking what?’
‘After lunch, a nice rest –’ Larry almost looks nervous.
‘Abo
rigines eat termites you know,’ Mara says, shaking his hand off. ‘But never the queen.’
‘You weren’t,’ Cassie says.
‘The queen is sacred.’
‘I was.’ Graham frowns. ‘Well, not exactly,’ he says, softening his voice. ‘Hard to explain.’
‘No need to explain here. There never is, is there, Larry? Let it be a rule.’
‘Mara,’ Larry leans towards her, ‘you’re getting overexcited.’ He turns to Cassie. ‘Shouldn’t have let her have the wine really. But special occasion –’
Mara laughs, her lips, despite the constant dabbing with the sheet, glistening with tuna oil.
‘Doesn’t mix with her medication. Do calm down, Mara.’
‘That is now a rule. I am calm.’ She holds up her glass: ‘I hereby declare it a rule. Rule number – I don’t know – that we never need to explain.’
‘Explain what?’ says Cassie.
‘Anything. No need to explain. It is illegal to explain. Or to ask someone to explain.’
Cassie stares at her for a moment. ‘Brilliant!’ she says, smiling at Graham. ‘Eh, Gray? What a brilliant idea!’
‘Yeah,’ he says. What a pity she doesn’t mean it. He catches Larry staring sharkishly at Cassie. Can’t blame him. Beside Mara – not that Mara’s ugly or even plain – Mara meets his eyes and he realises he’s been staring at the sweaty sheet and the squashed slopes of her breasts above it. Small dark scattering of moles like a constellation. He looks into her heavy-lidded eyes. That plait, it’s thick as a rope.
‘Would you paint me?’ Mara says.
‘Don’t do portraits as such.’
‘As such!’
‘Could you pass me the water, please?’ Cassie says. She nudges him under the table with her knee. He looks down. Her shorts have ridden up to reveal the very white skin there above the blurry edge of tan. Rightio then, he thinks, after lunch on that old bed.
As Far as You Can Go Page 6
