As Far as You Can Go

by Lesley Glaister

  His heart slumps against his ribs. He rolls a fag, closes his eyes. Tired still. Feels like weeks since they left home but it isn’t yet a week. He listens to the birds, the creak of the pump. Amazing he can still do that ladder trick though. Nearly. He lights up, leans back, shut his eyes. If we’re seriously going to give it a go. Seriously. When he looks at her, touches her, when they make love, when he thinks of never seeing her again, it’s all clear. But words like serious –

  Last row he had with his parents; last words his father hurled at him. Grow up. They’d been to his degree show. Proud, though it wasn’t what they’d chosen for him. But still, he’d done well. A first, darling! They’d brought an art dealer friend with them. A lot of talk about pulling strings, all that shit. Pressure. Dinner afterwards in a restaurant, his mother with her hair sprayed into a stiff gold seashell. It was fine but then they had to start, the two of them. Some double act. Time to buckle down, old chap. Join the real world. We’ve given you every advantage. The pleasure of his success had leaked away. He’d thought they’d at least be pleased; that they’d see who he was; that he’d proved he was OK. But it was still the same. Not good enough. Translation: he wasn’t really theirs.

  They’d drunk champagne to toast him, then wine, then he had ordered more, even after they’d started putting their hands over their glasses. He’d listened as long as he could to them going off on this riff about his future, about being serious, about responsibility and then he’d stood up and told them to fuck off, knocked his chair down, grabbed the bottle from the table. ‘I say,’ the art dealer friend had said. ‘Fuck responsibility,’ he’d shouted again, loud as he could, revelling in the scene. It makes him cringe now. But what can he do? And then he’d walked off. The last thing Dad had said to him: Grow up.

  He’s hardly thought about them for years. Cassie can’t understand it. Why not trace your real parents then? she’d asked. But that would just be someone else with expectations he couldn’t live up to. So close to her twin, she can’t imagine not having family. But family –

  A sudden tickle on his thigh and he jumps up, yells, mug flying out of his hand off the veranda, tea arcing into the dirt. A spider, a huge hairy fucker, gone now, somewhere. He scrubs at his leg. Must have come out from under the cushion. Can’t see it now. He looks up into the eaves where it is dark and rustling. Feels as if a million tiny eyes are on him, all those spiders who could be gathered there in the deep shadow, taking the piss. He looks thirstily at the cartoonish splash in the dirt.

  The door of the shearers’ shed bangs and Cassie comes out, twisting her hair up as she walks towards him. She picks her way through the bushes, stands below the veranda looking up at him. ‘What’s up?’ she says.

  ‘Nothing. Spider.’

  ‘Spider?’ She looks down at the mug, the splatter of wet in the dirt. She picks the mug up, comes up the steps, her lips twitching.

  ‘It was fucking huge. Right on my leg.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘What colour?’

  ‘What difference –? I dunno. Spider-coloured.’

  ‘Oh.’ She shakes her head, squashing down a smile. She’s wearing the dress he likes, loose, light-blue. ‘Let’s have a look, then.’ She pulls the flat cushion off the swing-seat and there is a spider – smaller surely than the spider – crouching there, body suspended between its hairy legs, white eyes in a black head.

  ‘There,’ she says, trying to shoo it off the seat. It doesn’t scuttle away and hide like any decent British spider but sticks there, gloating. ‘Looks pretty harmless to me,’ she says. ‘I’ll ask Larry. Maybe he’s got a book we could look it up in.’

  Her braless breasts swing like bells against the thin cotton of her dress as she leans over. Larry appears. ‘Everything all right?’ he says. ‘Thought I heard a shout.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s all OK.’

  ‘He saw a spider.’ Cassie wrinkles her nose and smiles. Larry’s eyes – bloodshot – slide from her smile to her tits.

  ‘Right to be cautious,’ he says.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Oh, common or garden,’ Larry drags his eyes away from Cassie, ‘squash it if you want but don’t tell Mara. She thinks it brings bad luck. But you make your own luck here in my opinion. In future, before you sit down, do look under cushions and so on.’

  He goes down the steps, humming something. From above you can see the gleam of pink scalp through his hair.

  ‘Hey,’ Cassie puts her arms round Graham’s waist and kisses him, lips moist and slightly open so he can feel the edge of her teeth. He cups her buttocks and squeezes. ‘Bet you feel a prat,’ she says.

  ‘Did you see him looking at your tits?’

  She pulls away from him. ‘Yeah. Some men do that, you know, they can’t help themselves. They don’t even realise they’re doing it. It’s like – routine – like you might check the year of a car or something.’

  ‘Do I?’ Graham says.

  She tilts her head, eyes sparkling into his. ‘Well, yes, actually.’ She goes off, grinning over her shoulder. ‘See you in the kitchen.’

  Cassie sticks the kettle on and gathers together flour, yeast, a big bowl just like her bread bowl at home, bumpy brown outside, white inside. Outback Kitchen. Cassie’s Outback Kitchen. She sifts the flour, holding up the sieve to demonstrate to an imaginary TV camera. She grins thinking of Graham and the spider, she’ll write about it on her cards to Patsy and Mum – you should have seen his face!

  The yeast practically jumps out of the packet in this heat, the granules fizzing as they touch the sugared water. No problems with it proving in this climate. The smell of yeast must be somewhere near the smell of heaven; she breathes it in. Delicious, heady, bready, healthy smell. The smell of something coming back to life.

  She pours the yeasty froth into the flour, pulls a spoon round the bowl, plunges her hands in to gather the sticky strands into one mass, begins to knead. Imagining the camera focusing in. The dough is warm as flesh, growing buoyant as she squeezes and presses almost like … mmm – she sniggers – getting turned on by a lump of dough!

  The door opens and she starts a smile, expecting Graham, but it’s a stranger: male, short and barrel-chested in a dirty black vest.

  He stops, looks startled to see her, as if he’s seen a ghost or something, then collects himself. ‘Hey Yella.’ He scratches the dog behind his ears.

  ‘Hello?’ Cassie says.

  He blinks at her a moment, shakes his head, smiles. ‘Sorry, you look like someone. Took me aback, like. I’m Fred.’

  ‘Hi,’ Cassie says. ‘Larry mentioned you. I’m Cassie.’

  ‘G’day, Cassie. You here alone?’

  ‘With Graham, my boyfriend. He’ll be over in a mo.’

  Fred nods thoughtfully. ‘Larry about?’

  ‘Somewhere – maybe working. I’d make you a cup of tea but –’ She splays her fingers and the dough stretches between them like flabby webs.

  ‘No worries.’ He dumps the plastic bag on the table. ‘Meat,’ he says.

  ‘I’ll put it in the fridge in a minute. You live nearby?’

  He hacks out a laugh and she can see a gold tooth glinting. ‘You could say that.’ He sits on a stool and watches her. She kneads self-consciously. She can’t guess his age, skin brown and creased like an old man’s, though his shoulder-length hair is brown, dusty but not a thread of grey. His eyes gleam at her, squinting as if she’s in the sun.

  ‘So, how do you like it here?’

  ‘Australia? I love it.’

  ‘But here?’

  ‘Well –’

  ‘Takes a bit of getting used to, doesn’t it?’

  ‘We’ve only just got here.’

  He opens his mouth to speak but changes his mind. Cassie lifts the dough out, slashes the cushiony mass into three, covers them with a damp cloth. ‘Tea then.’ As she fills the kettle she hears Larry whistling something operatic. He comes into the kitchen, claps a hand
on Fred’s shoulder.

  ‘Good man,’ he says. ‘Heard the ute.’ He looks over at Cassie. ‘You’ve had the pleasure, I see.’

  ‘No, mate, but I’ve met her.’ Fred throws his head back and laughs, a sound like an outboard motor starting up. She’s been warned about Australian men – especially in the outback. Unreconstructed, is the word. He finishes laughing. ‘You didn’t say you had people coming.’ He looks at Larry and he gazes back, a shiny blank look. ‘Can I speak to you outside a minute, mate?’

  Larry holds out his hand: ‘Our neighbour. All in good time, Fred.’

  ‘Nice to meet you. How far away?’ Cassie asks.

  ‘Hundred k. East,’ Fred says.

  That’s miles!’

  ‘And after that, there’s no homestead in that direction for what?’ Larry says.

  Fred shrugs. ‘Thousand k or so I reckon. Edge of bloody nowhere here. End of the flaming world.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Cassie feels sure there must be closer things in other directions. The way this lot show off about distance. As if there’s something clever or macho about being miles from anywhere. She looks at Fred’s bare feet on the floor. Stubby feet with childishly neat toes. He must be mad to go barefooted with all the … things about. Her eyes get stuck for a minute, fascinated by the loveliness of the feet, leather-soled and somehow innocent.

  Graham comes in, blinking with surprise to be faced with so many people. ‘Graham, Fred, Fred, Graham,’ Larry says.

  ‘Hi.’ Graham holds out his hand.

  Without getting up Fred extends his and Cassie sees with a pang that he has no thumb on his right hand, sees Graham noticing and flinching in the instant before he grasps the hand.

  ‘Fred’s our next-door neighbour,’ Cassie says. ‘Only 100 kilometres away!’

  ‘Beer anyone?’ Larry says. He pulls a pack of beers out of the fridge.

  ‘Meat,’ Fred says, nudging the plastic bag, dark and wet inside. A smear of blood has leaked on to the table. ‘Roo. Roadkill – but fresh.’

  ‘Beer, Cassandra?’ says Larry. She shakes her head, eyeing the meat, hoping she isn’t going to be expected to deal with it.

  ‘I’ll light the barbie in a tick,’ Fred says.

  Obviously quite at home.

  Graham takes a beer. Fred grasps one to his chest with his thumbless hand, nicks the top off with the other. ‘How’s Mara doing?’ he asks.

  ‘As always.’ Larry pours his beer into a glass.

  ‘So, what’s your line of work?’ Fred swivels round to Graham, swigs from the beaded bottle, belches. ‘Sorry, love, better out than in.’ He winks at Cassie.

  ‘Graham paints,’ Cassie says.

  Graham wipes froth off his top lip. ‘Sometimes.’

  Cassie goes to put the kettle on. She wants tea even if no one else does.

  ‘Fred,’ she says, ‘do you have family? Children?’

  The air seems to condense. Larry winces and looks down.

  ‘No,’ Fred says. And there is a long and awkward silence in which the three men audibly swallow their beer and the water in the kettle fidgets towards a boil.

  ‘What do you do out here?’ Graham asks.

  ‘I mind me business,’ Fred says.

  Graham flushes, bends down to stroke the dog.

  ‘No offence, mate.’

  ‘None taken,’ Graham says, stiffly.

  ‘’Spect you’re wondering what happened to my thumb?’ Fred says, catching Cassie looking at him.

  ‘No!’ she says, ‘I hadn’t even –’

  ‘Remarkable lack of curiosity,’ Larry says.

  ‘No,’ her face goes hot, ‘of course I’m interested.’

  Fred laughs again, the startling sound. ‘Course you are, love. See.’ Fred holds out his two hands, the right one is almost rectangular without the wing of thumb. ‘When I was a nipper, ‘bout twelve, I was off with me dad in the bush, having a rare old time. And there was this snake, see – well, I didn’t see – not till it was too late. Brown Snake, deadly. Well, just come out of the water – having a swim – and this little brown bugger – before I knew it –’ He clutches the place where his thumb was. ‘There was me dad with his knife, grabbed hold of me and hacked it off.’

  Cassie squirms in her seat. ‘Cut off your thumb?’

  ‘It was either that or watch me cop it then and there. Once that bugger’s venom gets in your bloodstream you’re a goner, no two ways about it. Then he dug a hole and buried it.’

  ‘The thumb or the snake?’ Cassie grasps her own precious thumbs against her chest.

  Fred laughs. ‘Me thumb! Didn’t take a very big hole.’

  ‘I could never do that,’ Cassie says. ‘Could you, Gray?’

  ‘It was that or curtains,’ Fred says.

  ‘One never really knows what one would do if one was pushed to the very limits,’ Larry says. He smiles at Cassie. ‘Does one?’

  ‘Well, no.’ She looks down at her knees. If only she could think of something witty. ‘Excuse me a minute.’ She goes outside and down the veranda steps, a blast of laughter following, not you they’re laughing at, she tells herself. What is up with her?

  She stands irresolutely in front of Mara’s door. It’s not right, not healthy, Mara shut up in there, in all that stuffiness. Maybe she could offer her a cup of tea? She knocks but her knock sounds feeble and there’s no reply. The paint has peeled off in map shapes; she picks at a flake, sharp under her fingernail.

  She longs to talk to Patsy. If only there was phone or email. It had never occurred to her that there would be no phone. The distance makes her giddy suddenly, a rope unfurling from her diaphragm to her sister but it’s too far to reach, the connection gone. Not even in the same time zone, can’t imagine what she’ll be doing. She walks out into the humid, almost solid, afternoon heat. She walks away from the house until it is small behind her.

  First, noting the stand of trees on her right, she shuts her eyes and walks as if through a field of hanging sheets, her hands pushed out ahead to part the air. Under her feet the crust of dried dust reminds her for a second of snow, but that memory melts instantly, leaving the sensation of grit on her lips. Hard to make herself walk with her eyes closed, hands pushing forward, hard to trust that there’s really nothing to impede her. There is nothing.

  Small sharp shrubs dried to leather, nothing else for maybe half a mile until the bush thickens. There’s nothing and no one. She needs someone to talk to. Someone other than Graham. Mara in that shed, suffocating hot red room, the thought of it makes her gasp for air. She dares herself on, like she and Patsy used to, on the beach, or the playing field. A competition, who dares to keep their eyes shut longest. They’d walked, eyes shut, hands in front like sleepwalkers. One leading the other, step up, step down, stop!

  She remembers leading Patsy very near the edge of the canal, Patsy trusting her, just the smallest step out of line, the smallest stumble and she’d have fallen in. The temptation to make her walk right along the very edge, just to see if she might fall. Patsy’s blonde ponytail just like hers, the checked school dress, the runkly white socks under her sandal straps. But she didn’t fall. Or maybe she was cheating, looking through her lashes, just like Cassie did when it was her turn.

  A sharp jab on her shin makes her eyes fly open – a snake! But it’s just a thorny plant, a bright bead of blood on her leg. She smears it and licks the dark taste off her finger. And looks round, startled. She’s swivelled on her course. The trees are behind now instead of on her right. Yet she didn’t turn. She walked straight, she’s sure of it.

  Feels like someone’s watching, stupid, they’re all indoors. No one watching. What is up with her? But the feeling is there – a shadow at the corner of her eye? She whips round. No one. Of course. Idiot. Just the sun playing tricks, eyes playing tricks, imagination playing tricks. She goes back towards the house, forcing herself to walk at a normal pace and not to run.

  Woolagong Station

  (But send it to Box 25, Keemar
ra Roadhouse)

  23rd October

  Dear Patsy,

  How are you? Do you realise this is by far the longest we’ve ever been out of contact? Of course you do. It’s all pretty weird here. The man, Larry, and G haven’t really hit it off that well, but I think it’ll be OK. L is a bit weird but I like him, he’s amazing, giving up everything to live out here with Mara, his wife, who’s really not well. Mental rather than physical. Not sure yet quite what’s wrong but she wears a sheet and spends most of the time alone in a shed!

  Hope Katie likes the picture of a kangaroo. I really miss you, Patsy. I’m not used to not being able to tell you everything – and knowing everything about you. Hope Al’s not being a pain, tell him he’ll have me to answer to. (That’ll scare him!)

  It is beautiful here though, in a stark sort of way. We’re getting brown. And, G would say, browned off! Though he’s bagged a room (the best) for a studio so I hope he’ll start painting. He’s petrified of the spiders! Quite sweet really. I’ll bore you rigid with photos when I get home. Garden lovely and I’ve started a compost heap.

  Give Katie the biggest hug you can without squashing her. And stroke Cat for me, give him some extra Munchies. Thanks again for having him.

  Lots of love,

  Cassie

  xxxxx

  Eleven

  Graham lets his head hang back, stretching his throat. The sky is wrong. The constellations warped and much too fierce.

  ‘That’s the Southern Cross,’ Larry says. He leans close to Cassie on the log seat beside the barbecue. Graham watches her chin travel up, her eyes follow his finger through the meaty smoke and into space. ‘That group of three and –’

  ‘Tucker’s about done,’ Fred says. ‘Where’s the plates?’

  ‘Refill?’ Larry offers more wine around. Whatever they are likely to go short of here, Graham thinks, at least it won’t be booze.

  Mara sits beside him, the flesh of her thigh pressing against his, her smell again, maybe just the smell of an older woman, sort of ripe. She’s wearing the same old sheet, dark smudgy lipstick. Scarlet parrot-feather earrings tangle with her hair.