As Far as You Can Go

by Lesley Glaister

  It might be peculiar of him, keeping his precious bathroom secret, it might be selfish but, she sighs, staring at herself in the mirror, that’s his business and they are out of it anyway. She smoothes moisturiser into her face and decides, for once, to make an effort. If she dresses up to please him – maybe he will forgive her. Not that she’s anything to dress up in, but she changes out of her grubby shorts and puts on her clean blue dress. Brushes her hair, puts some eyeliner on, a bit of lip gloss.

  She tries to keep her mind off Graham but still, something keeps trying to force itself into her notice. Some hard feeling – you can see why they’re called hard feelings – of anger or disappointment, or both. But still, she doesn’t know. Maybe there’s a good explanation. Wait till he gets back and hear it. Give him a chance before she goes off at him. She leans in to the mirror to pluck her eyebrows. Too dim, she lights a candle. Still can’t see but plucks by guesswork, each sharp sting of extraction threatening to bring tears to her eye. The ends of her hair shrivel away from the candle flame, a sharp stink of singeing.

  She flumps down on the bed, pulls her hand through the burnt hair, ripping off the brittle ends. The stench has filled the room. She could easily cry but won’t. Lies down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, the old red lampshade, the fire sensor – the only modern thing in the room. The candle shadows waver, on the walls, the curtains. She is aware of the space beside her where Graham isn’t.

  So, just herself and Larry then. Will they drink wine? Better not, though she couldn’t half do with a drink. She squints at her watch. Time crawls by. Not light enough to read. If only there was a telly, or a phone. She looks at the photos of Patsy and Kate, Cat – and remembers the one Mara gave her. She gets up and finds it in the pocket of her discarded shorts. It’s bent now from the shape of her backside. She holds it close to the candle, stares at the fair-haired young woman with the uncertain smile.

  She starts at the sudden deafening onset of a noise, like wet chips lowered into fat amplified a million times. She goes to the window and pulls back the curtain to see rain sluicing down the glass. Of course! Rain on the tin roof. Wonderful! The refreshing scent of it creeps into her nostrils, cool and fragrant. But Graham should be here with her to share it.

  She waits a long time for it to stop or slacken off, but it doesn’t and in the end, holding a T-shirt over her head, she goes out in the downpour. The sky is dark-green, a strange light shining up from the ground that seems to be rising in pale strands around her. Tepid water washes over her feet, between her toes, flattening her dress to her body. The T-shirt is useless, she’s instantly drenched. Can just hear the hens scandalising in their coop but mainly the sound is of a giant streaming, a deluge of wetness, sky collapsing on to hard-baked earth.

  Larry laughs at her when she walks into the kitchen. And she looks down at herself and smiles too, red dust splashed up her legs, dress a clinging blue skin. Her hair runs rivulets into her eyes and down between her shoulder blades.

  ‘You’ll have to change out of that,’ he says. ‘Wait.’ He brings her a towel and the white shirt – the same one she used for painting the kitchen. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll leave you to it. That’s your wine.’ He pushes a glass towards her and goes out into the hall. The kitchen is loud with the rain on the roof, warm with the homey smell of meat sauce. She sloshes some wine from the open bottle into the Bolognese before she strips off her dress. Even her knickers are damp but she leaves them on, rubs dry her skin and pulls on the soft cotton shirt. Still a splash of white paint dried stiffly on the sleeve.

  She remembers herself up that ladder, so long ago it seems, though only a few weeks really. She wraps the towel turban-like around her head, takes a sip from the full glass, just the thing, a tough red wine, scrumptious, warming. She feels cheered as she fills a pan with water, two fat handfuls of spaghetti, a salad of basil and tomatoes runny with oil, gritty with salt and black pepper. Perfect comfort food. Ideal on a wet night in Cassie’s Outback Kitchen.

  Larry knocks on the door. ‘Decent?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He comes in, nods approvingly. ‘That’s better. Don’t want you getting chilled.’

  He sits down at the table and sips his wine. She feels his eyes follow her round the kitchen; the shirt is long enough, quite decent, but still, she does feel his eyes. Nothing wrong about it. Is it her fault that Graham isn’t here?

  ‘Do you think it’s the the rain that’s held them up?’ she asks.

  ‘Oh, probably,’ Larry says, as if the question bores him.

  ‘They definitely said they’d be back tonight. I made plenty.’ She stirs the wooden spoon in the pot.

  ‘Fred’s easily led astray.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She turns, slopping a streak of sauce down the side of the pan.

  ‘Nothing!’ He holds his hands up in mock surrender.

  ‘You mean you think Graham’s led him astray?’

  Larry examines his nails. ‘I don’t know. I wouldn’t blame him, would you? First time away from here in the fleshpots!’

  ‘What fleshpots?’

  He laughs. Files at one thumbnail with the other. ‘It has been known for rain to wash the road away between here and Keemarra.’

  ‘You think that’s it? Is it dangerous?’

  ‘Fred knows what he’s doing. Might hold them up for a day or two. Depends when it stops. They won’t be back tonight now.’

  ‘A day or two!’

  ‘If it doesn’t stop tonight.’ Larry holds out his hand as if testing the air. ‘But I think it will.’

  ‘Hope so.’

  ‘You miss him so much after just one day? Less than a day?’

  Cassie unwinds the turban from her head, hangs the towel on the rail beside the range and runs her fingers through her hair. ‘It’s not that. I’d be OK if I knew he was OK.’

  ‘And maybe you’re a little irritated?’

  She scrapes the wooden spoon across the bottom of the pan. Starting to stick. She fishes a strand of spaghetti from the pot, dangles it from a fork and tests it between her teeth.

  ‘This is ready.’

  ‘He is “OK”,’ Larry says. ‘Don’t you worry.’

  How do you know? But he’ll be safe. Of course he will, knowing him. Probably juggling oranges in some roadhouse by now. Or flirting with a barmaid in some pub. Having a whale of a time. He will never change.

  Larry pours wine into her glass while she dishes up mounds of spaghetti, and heaps them with sauce. She feels strange and woozy, but what the hell. Larry seems to have forgiven her for using his bathroom. The food smells delicious. The wine’s good. May as well enjoy herself, Graham certainly will be. There’s a kind of relief from the rain. Easier to move somehow, as if the air itself is lubricated.

  Cassie has two bowls of spaghetti and loses count of how often her glass is filled; another bottle is uncorked somewhere along the line. Larry apologises for earlier, that kind of tension, he tells her, often happens before a storm. Is this a storm? she wonders and as she wonders, hears the first crumbling of thunder. The light flickers. Larry goes to switch off the generator in case it gets struck. They light a wobble of candles and kerosene lamps. Cassie’s fingers feel fat and sweaty as sausages.

  When she’s finished eating, he leans towards her, takes her hand. His is no bigger than hers, the nails considerably neater. How does he keep them so neat and clean? Cooler than hers. Why are her palms so clammy?

  He clears his throat. ‘I realise I have been, perhaps, unnecessarily, cagey shall we say. About the bathroom and well, everything. I can see that you’re a naturally inquisitive person, indeed, that’s part of your charm.’

  Charm, the word is warm the way he says it, a kind of caress. She can imagine Graham snorting, but she snuggles into it. Charm. No one has ever said she has charm before. That appreciation, it makes her swell a little, her shoulders soften.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘I shouldn’t have snooped around. And I certainly shouldn�
�t –’

  But he puts his finger up to silence her. ‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll show you round, shall I? It’s been unpardonably rude of me not to have done so before.’ He shakes his head, looks so sad suddenly, the candlelight starry in his eyes. ‘We do get … odd … living here. You must think us so very odd!’

  ‘No,’ Cassie says, ‘not at all. It’s OK, really.’

  He gives her hand another squeeze. ‘You are kind. Look, the fire in the sitting room is lit, why not come through now?’

  She feels a little buzz of excitement. And she’s touched. ‘I’d love to. If you’re sure.’

  ‘To put your mind at rest.’ He chuckles. ‘No doubt Mara passed some alarming fantasy on to you? It’s fascinating really – the way she develops the most elaborate fantasies. If she wrote them down she’d make a fortune! But they do run away with her and she gets –’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Cassie says, ‘I think you do wonderfully.’ She hesitates, her head almost too fuzzy to think. ‘But honestly, she didn’t say anything much. Except how if not for you she’d be in a loony bin. That’s all she said.’

  Larry nods, gazes into her face till her cheeks flush hot.

  ‘Come on then, leave the washing-up tonight. Won’t hurt for once. Might even tackle it myself.’

  They carry a lamp each. A little procession; she follows him, and Yella follows her, claws ticking against the floorboards. Their shadows sway, huge in the lamplight on the walls of the dark hall. Larry unlocks the left-hand door and swings it open. ‘After you,’ he says.

  It’s just a big sitting room. A sofa, a fireplace with a flickering log fire, bookshelves. An ordinary room, big and despite the fire, cool. She doesn’t know what she expected. Above the sofa hangs a massive chandelier, no light coming from it, but some of the glass pieces catch the firelight and the candle-light, reflect them back, a cold splintered fire. She feels weird, sort of crawly and detached. She shivers.

  ‘Chilly?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘We can’t have that,’ he says. ‘Wait a moment.’ On the arm of the sofa, neatly folded, is a cardigan. He hands it to her. ‘Try this.’ It’s soft and white, maybe even cashmere. She pulls it on over the shirt. It smells faintly of what? She wrinkles her nose into it. Anais Anais?

  ‘Better?’

  ‘Thanks, it’s lovely.’ She fingers the mother-of-pearl buttons. ‘Mara’s?’ Although it would be too small for Mara, even if she were ever to wear such a thing.

  ‘Come and sit by the fire.’

  She hesitates. If she sits on the sofa he’ll sit beside her, the two of them in the darkish room by a fire, maybe too close, together, her bare legs, this dangerous fuzziness around her edges – though Larry is surely honourable enough he is drunker than her, he must be. He thinks she’s charming. It tickles her. That old-fashioned word.

  ‘She holds the sleeve of the cardigan against her face. So soft. The scent is Anais Anais. Maybe Lucy’s. ‘Why did Lucy and Ben leave?’

  Larry turns from the fire. The shadow of his beard juts sharply on the wall and darts away.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just wondered – you never mention – just seems funny.’

  He sits back down on the sofa, pats the seat beside him. ‘Come on. I won’t bite. I hardly mention your … predecessors because there’s no need. And I am – conscious of your feelings. Perhaps it would seem slightly rude – like a twice-married man constantly referring to his previous wife.’

  ‘But –’ She frowns. ‘It’s not at all like that.’

  ‘Why the sudden interest?

  ‘I’m not that interested. Just wondered.’

  ‘What has Mara been saying?’

  ‘Nothing. Honestly. She never – Just me, I’m – you know.’ She tries to touch her nose and her finger misses. She giggles. ‘Nosey.’ No more wine tonight, that’s for sure.

  ‘Come on.’ He pats the sofa again. She gives in and sits down. Either that or fall. The sofa is velvet, old and balding, feels dampish under the backs of her thighs. ‘Let’s have another bottle,’ Larry says.

  ‘Not me. Maybe some tea?’

  ‘You and your tea! We didn’t see eye to eye. That’s all. No mystery. Just a taste, Cassie – there’s something I particularly want you to try.’

  He goes off into the kitchen, the door clicking shut behind him. The fire snickers at something in the wood, the dog groans. Shadows jitter on the ceiling and floor. She could fall asleep, easy as anything. Bloody Graham, she might have known, let him out of her sight and – Through the wall she hears a funny sound. Hard to hear with the noise of the fire, the rain. Maybe it was the fire. Only it sounded like a crackle, static, like a radio.

  Larry comes back with two glasses, hands one to her.

  ‘Shouldn’t.’

  ‘No?’ Larry sits down beside her, presses the glass into her hand. ‘Just taste it anyway. I’m interested to know what you think.’

  ‘I thought I heard something like –’ But she gives up, the fire is crackling away on the gummy log, a burnt menthol scent. Cassie blinks hard, her eyes almost crossing, she has not had that much. She takes a tiny sip and is surprised. ‘Mmmm!’ She has another taste. ‘This is good!’ She wakes up a bit. ‘I really like it,’ she says. ‘Very, what’s the word, quaffable.’ She hears her own voice as if from a distance.

  ‘I’ll get a couple of cases.’

  ‘What for me! I don’t know a good wine from my elbow.’ Words slur, embarrassing. Shut up, Cassie, go to bed. But she can’t move.

  His voice travels smoothly down a tunnel. ‘As you say, refreshing – young, but sometimes that’s not a bad thing. You’re – developing – quite a palate.’

  She lays her head back against the sofa, the room going round, cool wet pooling on her lap. The glass is taken from her hand. And dimly, as if through a thick quilt, she hears and feels a growl and smack of thunder, a green smell, an electric taste in her mouth. Her eyes won’t open. Her legs are lifted, her head slips as she’s gently lowered down.

  Fred hardly opens his eyes to drive. The road is red mud, slithery, deep puddles scummy and steaming, the sky innocent blue, sun reflecting blades from the wet.

  ‘Stop at Keemarra for a coffee, mate?’ Fred says.

  ‘Won’t take us out of our way?’

  ‘Nah, not far. Need gas anyhow.’

  Graham’s head throbs and his eyes sting. Too much last night – drink, smoke, heat, talk. Ziggy, once he got going, surely could talk. ‘What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever seen?’ he’d asked Graham, last thing he remembers before passing out. Time had melted in that bus, syrup sticking down between everything, in their eyes and mouths, smoke and syrup.

  ‘Dunno,’ he’d said. ‘You?’

  It had seemed like hours before Ziggy replied. ‘The strangest thing I’ve ever seen,’ he said, ‘is a herd of cows. Couple of hundred k northeast. Came across them during a journey. Picture this: maybe twenty cows crowding round a water tank, right?’ Graham had nodded, eyes closed, thinking nothing very strange in that. ‘But all these cows, when I got close, I saw that they were dead. Dead on their feet and shrunk, mummified by the wind and the dry sand, skin peeling off, some of them only bones, some withered flesh. A herd of dead cows crowded round a dry water tank.’

  Could that be true? he wonders now. Seems both too strange and too ordinary to be invented.

  This morning, at first light, he’d got out of the bus, staggered across and launched himself into the water to wake himself up, swam a few strokes against the fast cold ripples. Mad how scared he was last night – not scared, just dope playing its old tricks with his brain – though even in the morning light he wouldn’t say he felt easy. Weird vibrations, that’s for sure.

  But anyway, coffee in a roadhouse, maybe something to eat, his stomach growls at the thought. Then back and what will Cassie say and how will she be? Answer: monumentally pissed off. But long as Mara hasn’t said, it’ll be OK. He can smoothe it. Mara wo
uldn’t say. Anyway, she’ll be flat out. Medicated. Doesn’t even seem true from here. The hot – no, won’t think, won’t go there again. He’s cheered by the civilised metalled surface of the road as they turn on to the main highway.

  Inside the roadhouse it is fantastically normal. A glass counter with pies and sandwiches; a smell of frying; illuminated signs with pictures of steak and chops and burgers. A cooler full of chocolate, Coke, juice, milk, cartons of iced chocolate and coffee. Sachets of sauce. Plastic pots of strawberry jam and honey. All the things to choose from, the ordinary things, practically bring tears to his eyes. But he has no cash and, like a kid, has to wait for Fred, outside filling up with gas. He goes out to the bog while he’s waiting, proper flush toilet, white washbasin – well, white underneath the scum anyway – hot water, liquid soap. He washes his face, new lines round his eyes? He wishes he could shave.

  Fred buys him pie and chips and iced coffee and stops to flirt with the woman who serves them while Graham carries his plate across to the window. The woman is young, tiny, bird-boned with black arse-length hair. Graham grins, chewing the greasy pastry, the scalding hot centre of the microwaved pie.

  A coach stops outside and old people in voluminous shorts and baseball caps spill out in twos and threes, gabbling. A moment later they come through the door and the place fills with strident voices chattering, laughing, squabbling about who’s going to pay. He shrinks into himself. Forgotten how to deal with crowds.

  Fred sits down, stuffs a wad of chips in his mouth.

  Graham grins, raises his eyebrows, nods in the woman’s direction.

  Fred snorts half a chip across the table. ‘Yeah. Wouldn’t touch her with a bloody bargepole, mate, not unless you want your balls torn off, deep-fried and served with barbie sauce.’