‘There.’ He gives a final flourish of green to suggest a pair of leaves and moves back. ‘Don’t touch it now, let it dry.’
‘Spray,’ Mara says.
‘What?’
‘There.’ She indicates an aerosol of fixative, SkinFix. A picture on the tin of an arm wreathed in snakes and roses. ‘Then it won’t rub off so quick.’
He sprays the skin and the smell of it in the thick still air makes the room swim. Christ. He puts his head down between his knees for a moment, blood singing in his ears. Mara’s hand touches the back of his neck. ‘You are sensitive.’ Her voice is a croon. ‘More than Cassie. She is a tough cookie.’
‘Just need air.’ He stumbles up, away from the touch of her hand and the stirring in his body – only a reflex – and to the door, opens it with a gasp of relief, lifts the curtain aside to let in light and air.
Mara stays where she is, down on the cushions, which the sun shows up as stained and worn. She twists her arm to see the daisy. Her body lit up as if in a spotlight, the deep shadows of her, the solid mass.
‘Nice,’ she says. ‘Thank you. Now –’
‘That’s all for today,’ Graham says. Two galahs hop amongst the hens. Squawking like hens too, the clowns. He inhales deeply and the day comes back into focus.
‘Oh but –’
‘Not so bad then?’ Larry startles him.
‘Look at my daisy. But I want –’
‘Don’t be greedy, Mara. Don’t push him too far all at once.’
Graham darts a look at Larry.
‘But more another time, eh? Tomorrow, Mara? Would that please you?’
‘Something more,’ she says.
‘All right with you, Graham? That wasn’t so bad, was it?’ Larry makes as if to pat his arm, but Graham side-steps.
‘Fine,’ he says, over his shoulder, walking off towards the shearers’ shed.
Box 25
Keemarra Roadhouse
Woolagong Station
30th November (ish)
Dear Patsy,
You must be getting fed up with my letters now, if you’re getting them, well you’ll get lots of them all at once, this one will go in the post with the last one. I suppose I’m writing instead of phoning. It’s driving me mad not being able to talk to you, not knowing how you are. You’ll never guess what: Graham is now alone in the shed with Mara, painting on her, I think! On her skin. Talk about mad! It’s OK, though pretty weird. And sort of ironic when you think about it …
We had that talk and guess what? Turns out that he was sleeping with Jas all along. Can you believe it? All that stuff about them being friends. Load of bollox. I never thought he’d actually lie. I asked him so many times. We even had Jas round to eat a few times – you met her at the goodbye party, remember? Dyed red hair, loud voice, smokes a lot. Flat chest. She was wearing something torn. So I’m not really talking to him. How can I ever trust him again? But there’s no one else to talk to. Fred’s not here. Well there’s Larry, I can talk to him a bit. He’s nice, kind, just a bit – a bit strange but then being stuck out here … I think I’ll go strange after too much longer. Are you picking up my strangeness? Sometimes I wonder if we’re actually going to stick it a year. Hope so. It’d be embarrassing coming straight back after that big send-off! Though I so miss you.
Oh no, thinking of coming home has made me want to cry. Please please please please PLEASE write, soon as you can. Kiss Katie, stroke Cat. Love, Cassie xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Nineteen
Not so bad going in again. He feels docile, like a sort of pet. The heat, the naked woman. You can get used to anything. And it will be over soon. This is only a scene played out between tiny people in the middle of nowhere. It will affect nothing. The birds will pass unstartled. He will do the painting and make Mara happy, the best he can do for now.
Last night in bed beside Cassie he’d thought about Jas. Kind of defiance maybe. Also he misses her. She understands him in a way that Cass really doesn’t. Why isn’t he with her then? As Cass would no doubt say. Jas probably would, if he asked. Be with him. But she’s not that exciting to him. That’s the stupid thing. She really is a friend, best mate. Or was. Why did he have to go and do that and then, worse, spill the beans? They say they want the truth and then what happens? He gets a fierce pang of longing for Jas, just to watch her scrubby fingers with their bitten nails rolling a fag, see her squint through the smoke at him and laugh her throaty laugh. And that’s all.
His head is buzzing from Larry’s industrial-strength brew. He sits down beside Mara on the cushions. The paints are laid out ready. Her face eager, expectant, like a little kid’s before a party. At least he’s pleasing someone round here.
He kneels beside the colours, the palate, sighs. ‘What can I do you for, then?’
‘Flowers and flowers and vines. Are you cross?’
The daisy has gone from her arm.
‘I washed it off. Wanted to be clean to start again.’
Graham wets his brush and wipes it across the green. Feels kind of detached. Here but not here in this hot mad shed with a hot mad naked woman. Sort of thing you dream. He paints green vines on her arms, twining round her shoulders. Paints roots on her feet, holding them still as she squirms against the tickle of the brush. Paints quickly, carelessly, what does it matter, it’s not for keeps. He traces the veins up her leg, thick greenish skeins, dark buds and flowers, a freedom in it, enjoying a joke of bees swarming, something to be said for the temporariness of this, it’ll wash off, he can be free. It reminds him that it can be free like this, painting. The way he used to paint on walls, his parents’ horror when he made his room into a forest, sunset bleeding through the trees. Soon had that papered over in Sandersons. But it was his room. No real child of theirs, etc., etc.
Tendrils of vine crawl up above her knees and he doesn’t know how to stop, where to stop, how to look at the insides of the thighs, the shadowy junction, the cleft visible through the hairs, the woman smell so heavy and strong, humming in the darkly scented air. He gets hard, who fucking wouldn’t, uncomfortable, needs to shift it but can’t with her so close and it is only a reflex, even Cassie would realise that, pulls his eyes away, turns to take a swig of juice. Sickly sweet. Keep your mind on something else.
Looks at the belly. How to illustrate that generous space? Takes purple on his brush and follows the curve, paints something, a sea creature curled on the convexity, frond-like fingers. Mara lies back as he paints, open to him, her skin soft, relaxed. But her stomach muscles clench as she sits abruptly up.
‘Cramp –’ she starts, blinking like someone waking up. She looks down, exclaiming at her legs. She looks more dressed than he’s ever seen her, as if she is wearing coloured stockings and sleeves, her naked breasts seem more than naked. He’s amazed at how much he’s done, no idea how long he’s been absorbed but absorbed is what he’s been, enjoying the freedom, the freeing-up of this painting, the flow of colour, and seeing that this is what he has to do and only this, loosen up and maybe it will all come back. And what an idea: not to paint Australia, not to try and catch this light but paint England again from memory, the different intensity of it, the green, rain and traffic lights, a sycamore leaf stuck on wet glass.
Mara looking down begins to moan. ‘Oh, you’ve painted me a baby,’ she says, her hand ruining the paint.
Graham squints. ‘Not a baby,’ he says, ‘it’s a kind of creature – a sea thing – curled up in its shell, look, look here’s the shell.’ But when he looks he sees a baby too.
Tears are running down Mara’s cheeks, the biggest tears he’s ever seen, like summer raindrops, and scattering on her breasts. One long tear snaking in between.
‘Hey, don’t cry,’ he says, awkwardly. Where to look? ‘What’s up? Shall I get Larry?’
‘No, not him.’
‘Cassie?’
Mara puts her hands round her knees, smudging and ruining the paint. She sobs and rocks. ‘No.’ She looks up, painty-fac
ed. ‘I had a baby once, did you know that?’
‘You had a baby?’ He stares at her hunched form, understanding now the texture of her stomach, the lines, silvery stretch marks which he has veined with emerald and sapphire.
‘The baby – a girl – she died,’ she says, through her tears, her mouth pulled down, ‘she was purple like that blue-purple and very slippery and she slipped away and died and I – that’s when I – it is when everything went to soup – to grey.’
Christ. Graham puts his arm around her. What can he say?
‘Larry was my doctor. Larry saved me.’
‘Yes.’ The feel of Mara against him makes him breathless, the stickiness of paint on heated skin, the heavy mass of her in his arms. His heart thumps. She weeps like a child and he holds her, the paint smearing on his shirt, poor woman, the smell of her grief, her tears, is overwhelming, the feel of her in his arms, he grows hard again, the softness of her breasts, impossible not to, doesn’t mean a thing but her face is so close and there is no clear difference between holding and kissing to comfort this poor woman in his arms and the rush of hardness, her hand tangled in his hair, the opening of her underneath him; suddenly she’s underneath him and his clothes are open too and he’s in her, smeared with paint the both of them, paint and tears and sweat and there is no difference between being in her and just being in her room, it’s hot and deep and an overwhelming plunge through rolls of soaking velvet and he comes so hard and suddenly that it hurts.
He lies there only a minute before it becomes clear what he has done. He’s drenched and dripping with her, reeking. He gets up so fast it makes him reel.
‘Don’t go away from me.’
He flinches from her reaching hand and zips his jeans. Christ. ‘Mara that never happened.’ His voice sounds thin. He is ashamed but very clear. ‘Mara, please – I’m so sorry. I have to go.’
Her wet face looks up at him and down his body. She throws her head back and laughs. A crazy laugh breaking out of nowhere. Well, she is crazy, he has fucked a crazy woman, that is a crazy thing to do, that is what happens when you get too close to crazy people. It leaks right out of them and into you. He looks down at the colours smeared on his skin, shirt, the front of his faded jeans.
‘Mara, I have to go right now.’
She says nothing. He can’t read her crazy face, the sweat and tears, the sort of grin. He closes the door quietly behind him and gasps in a lungful of the dry hot air. Without looking left or right he walks round to the shearers’ shed to strip and wash. He closes his mind to the possibility of the shape of Larry at the corner of his eye, keeps his head down, praying for Cassie not to be about, almost trips over a fucking stupid hen. Hard to stop himself from running.
Dear Mum and Dad,
I’m in the desert in Western Australia with my girlfriend Cassie. A kind of artist in residence, I guess. Long time hey? I’ve been thinking, stuck out here, about the past. Who was the old woman I used to stay with? Don’t even know her name. Was she some kind of relation? I’ve been thinking of contacti
Twenty
It’s ludicrous, that’s what it is. Lunchtime. Mara sitting at the table on the veranda, munching through her sardines on toast like a great beaming child, smudged all over with sticky colours. On her arms you can make out leaves and stuff but the rest of her is like some enormous bruise. And paint all over her thighs and belly and even down into the hairs.
‘Delicious,’ Larry says, reaching for another piece of toast. Maybe sarcastic – it’s hardly a gourmet feast, she’d thought of but rejected the idea of a sardine soufflé – but no, he smiles. The bad feeling between Graham and Larry seems to have vanished now that Mara’s OK. That is obviously the key: keep Mara sweet and everything else will be. All Larry wants is for Mara to be happy. Well, that’s easy enough, her tastes are simple. There’s nothing that Cassie’s provided so far that she hasn’t gobbled up. When she’s conscious.
It’s got muddled up inside her. Graham with Jas, Graham in the hot, hot shed with Mara. Stupid, stupid. Here everything is so far from what she imagined that it could almost make her laugh. Taking Graham away from Jas – her heart scrunches at that name – from temptation, well it turns out more than just temptation, into a ludicrous, sticky, sweaty proximity with Mara.
He’s looking pretty glum though. Guilt. Probably regretting that he told her now. Won’t even meet her eyes. ‘Gray, you’ve hardly eaten.’ She pushes the plate of fishy triangles towards him. Under the tanned surface of his skin he looks pale.
‘Not hungry,’ he says.
‘Should be hungry,’ Mara murmurs.
‘Look at that,’ Larry stands suddenly, jolting the table, and points to the horizon where the clouds are massing once again, ‘and feel that –’ He holds his hand up. There is a breeze. ‘Noreasterly,’ he says. ‘We may see rain.’
‘Thank Christ,’ Graham says to his plate.
‘And –’ Larry listens, stands up, strains his eyes. ‘Yes. I think maybe it’s Fred.’
‘Yeah?’ Cassie’s shoulders lift in anticipation. Fred. Thank God. Someone else. His little eyes and sweet bare toes. Someone straightforward. And the post! Surely he’ll have the post. The thought of all the news from home makes relief spread through her. And the shopping: fruit, milk, meat, fresh things. Her mouth waters at the thought. Though she can’t actually see what they’re all looking at. Maybe a distant puff of red rising from the ground which is shifting anyway in the growing wind.
‘Can’t see a thing,’ Graham says.
‘The practised eye,’ Larry says.
‘Maybe we should go in?’ Cassie starts gathering the plates. ‘Gray?’
Larry helps Mara stand, and they look out over the landscape, both shielding their eyes. ‘Where, Larry?’ Mara says. The wind is really blowing up fast and dust shimmers in the air as it moves through the light.
‘Think I’ll make some bread.’ Cassie’s mind moves on to tonight’s meal. Would pizza be all right? Just make more dough, there are tins of anchovies, if Fred’s brought cheese – and it would be another use for the tomatoes. Mara and Larry look so comical standing there, Mara’s big creased bottom, the smudges of paint almost like handprints on her skin, her wild puff of hair, and Larry beside her, dapper in his neat grey trousers and spotless grey shoes, his shirt gleaming, staying close but fastidiously not touching – wouldn’t want to spoil the shirt.
Graham catches her eye and half grins at her, raising his eyebrows. Sheepishly. Probably thinking he’s forgiven. But Jas. He picks up the jug and a couple of glasses. ‘Come on, Cass, let’s get these washed up,’ he says, darting her a green glance that makes her heart lurch. His hair is loose, must have stuck his head under the tap before lunch, and it has dried shiny and sleek. She loves him, she does, despite all and everything. She can’t help it. There’s a sensation like an old bed-spring pinging inside her ribs. That’s love.
Graham shuts his studio door. Thank Christ for a bit of privacy. His head’s going round and round – Mara, Jas, Mara, Jas, Mara, Jas. And he never asked for any of it. He sits at the table in the yellow glow that diffuses through the curtains, listening to the wind bullying the fabric of the building, lifting a section of roof so that it bangs and jounces sending a metallic shiver through him. Dust on his teeth and under his nails, red, everything fucking red. He rolls a fag and draws in the smoke. Mara. Christ. It’s like a bad dream, you just have to forget it. You just have to wipe it out of your mind. Mara is crazy. It wasn’t real in the usual sense. It was crazy.
Oh Christ. What has he done?
He closes his eyes and forces his mind to travel far away, to hilly fields, the way the lines criss-cross, shades of green graduated and punctuated suddenly with a blaze of yellow rape, the shadows of dry-stone walls, the shades of grey. The cigarette burns down forgotten in the jam-jar lid as the sketch grows under his hands, his heart beating, the watercolours lovely on the white paper, motionless white paper no blood beating beneath, no hairs, hardly a smell a
t all just dry, clean, virgin paper. His breath is shallow with concentration, the sweetness of the colours – the sky a wash, almost clear water, graduating to a deeper rim in the dip between the hills a deeper rim of almost blue. You can smell the rain when you paint the wet on dry paper, like rain on sun-warmed stone.
He’s tired but it is great. To concentrate. On something good. It removes him almost completely from himself though the crash of the corrugated roof brings him back to a realisation of how totally shagged out he is – ha ha – knackered – will lie down on the soft bed and close his eyes and have a kip. Shut it out, shut out the – everything.
But before he gets up there’s a tap on the door, a smart, ratchety scrim of fingernails and Larry opens it, juts his beard round.
‘Ah,’ he says, coming in, door closing behind him. He has, Graham’s pleased to see, creases of red dust on his white shirt and a smudge of purple paint. Graham looks back at his sketch, which he has a sudden impulse to shield with his arm like a child. He forces himself to sit stiffly, almost flinching against the feeling of Larry standing behind him.
‘Well, well,’ Larry says. ‘At last. Perhaps you’ve found your muse.’
‘Isn’t that for poetry?’ Graham twists his neck up to see the sharp glint of tooth just visible at the corner of Larry’s mouth where his lips don’t quite meet. He looks down at his drawing. Can see where the final line should go, diagonal.
Larry chuckles dryly. ‘As you will. You’ve found inspiration, then. And, I gather, a source of mutual satisfaction?’
Graham rolls a pencil between his fingers, reading as it goes round, 3B, 3B, 3B. He takes a deep breath. ‘Fred here yet?’
As Far as You Can Go Page 14
