As Far as You Can Go

by Lesley Glaister

  Graham laughs. ‘Any chance of borrowing a few dollars?’

  Fred puts his hand in his pocket, scatters coins on the table. ‘Present for Luce?’

  ‘Luce?’

  Fred starts at himself, shakes his head. ‘Call ’em all Sheila, mate. Best way.’ He looks away, does a thumbs-up to the birdy woman.

  Graham finishes his coffee and goes to look at a rack of postcards while Fred rolls a fag, puts his feet up on a chair and takes his time over his coffee. He chooses a few cards for himself and Cassie. Sees a phone. Must phone Patsy. And why not Jas? What a sense of freedom. ‘Know the code for the UK?’ he asks the birdy woman. She rattles it off through small white teeth. Deep-fried. He grins as he puts a dollar in the slot and dials Jas’s number. Hears the ring. Incredible, thousands of miles away. Another hemisphere. Pictures her red phone on the floor by her bed. Pictures the watery reflections on the ceiling.

  ‘Yeah?’ Her voice bleary.

  ‘Hi Jas, it’s me, Graham!’

  ‘It’s the middle of the frigging –!’ There’s a pause. ‘Graham? Where are you?’

  ‘Keemarra Roadhouse, just thought I’d ring.’

  ‘Ta. It’s three in the frigging morning. Keemarra?’

  ‘Sorry. Get my postcards?’

  ‘No. Hey,’ sounds like she’s waking up, voice clearing, ‘nice to hear you. Sound’s like you’re just down the road.’

  ‘Weird, eh?’

  ‘How are you? Missed you. How’s it going?’

  ‘Pretty bloody strange,’ he says.

  ‘Cassie?’

  He starts to reply but is cut off. Stands looking at the phone. Hearing the trace of her voice in his ear. An old woman waiting behind him so he leaves it. Shouldn’t ring Patsy in the middle of the night, anyway. A lurch in his guts of wanting: to see Jas, everyone, the real world. It rises over him like a wave, all those streets and faces, friends, none of it in the same universe even as Mara. He finds he’s clenching his fists, heart hammering, almost like panic, an old man in a baseball cap staring at him, concerned. He forces a smile. Revolves the postcard rack. It is homesickness, that’s all it is and that is normal. And soon he’ll be back.

  He wanders out of the human babble and across to an aviary: budgies, finches, a couple of galahs sitting like a pair of jugs on a shelf. And in a pen beside the aviary, a depressed-looking kangaroo, glowering at him from under its long lashes. SHEILA, the sign says. DO NOT FEED. Call ’em all Sheila, mate. The coach driver is leaning against the side of the coach, smoking.

  A road train roars in and stops, sides shuddering. It towers, hot engine smell, three carriages behind it. A guy, green bandanna round his head, jumps down. He puts his hands up and stretches. Graham hears the clicks in his back.

  ‘G’day, mate,’ he says. He’s got a toothpick pinched in the corner of his mouth, spits words out of the other corner.

  ‘Hi,’ Graham says.

  Tom, eh?’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘Sixth sense, mate!’ He puts a finger to the side of his nose and taps. He goes off into the roadhouse. Graham walks round the huge vehicle. Sees his own warped face in the gleaming chrome of the fender. Amazing that one guy can control such a monster. The driver comes out a few minutes later, couple of cartons of juice and a sandwich.

  ‘Wanna look?’ he says.

  ‘Yeah.’

  He hoists himself up, opens the door and Graham goes up behind him. Like a living room in there. A hammock; blankets over the seats; a flowery cushion; a kettle; photos – a wife and kids; a shelf with a couple of books. Birds, wild flowers. He sees Graham looking.

  ‘See all sorts on me travels,’ he says. ‘Might as well know what they’re called. Where you from?’

  ‘Near Sheffield,’ Graham says.

  ‘Steel, eh?’

  ‘Used to be.’

  ‘Got a sister in Leeds.’

  ‘Yeah? Been?’

  ‘Next year, me and the missus and kiddies.’

  ‘Where you heading?’

  ‘Perth. Want a ride? Tell you the truth I could do with some company.’

  Graham swallows. Looks out of the window. No sign of Fred.

  ‘Make up your mind, mate. Got to get moving.’

  ‘OK, yeah. Thanks.’ Mouth dry, he settles in the passenger seat. Deep seat. The door slams. Engine roars to life. A deep rumble, the books slide on the shelf. Graham notices curtains – yellow flowers, pegged back. Made by his wife? Just the sort of ridiculous thing Cassie would do. They roll past the roadhouse as Fred comes out. Stands looking round, shading his eyes.

  ‘From Adelaide, me,’ the guy says. ‘Frank.’

  ‘Graham.’

  They roll over the gritty forecourt, about to join the highway. ‘I knew a bloke called –’

  ‘Stop,’ Graham says.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I can’t – got a mate back there –’

  Frank stops the truck, whinny of brakes. Turns. ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  Graham grimaces. ‘Sorry, I –’ He shrugs. ‘Thanks anyway.’

  Frank looks at him like he’s barking. ‘Suit yourself.’

  Graham opens the door and jumps down. The truck drives away, huge carriages, blast of hot exhaust mixed up with dust. Fred comes out of the toilets, wiping his hands on his shorts.

  ‘You ready?’

  They get back in the ute and drive in silence for a while. Another road train smashes past, sending up sheets of water, red as blood.

  Fred switches on the wipers. ‘You fucked Mara yet?’ he says.

  Graham nearly chokes on his own spit.

  Fred throws his head back, but mirthlessly, bangs his fist down on the steering wheel. ‘Don’t look so shocked, mate. Bloody poms!’

  ‘Have you?’

  Fred looks grim. He slams on some music. They plunge onwards. The steaming road shimmers and gleams ahead, and behind in the mirror. They come to the bridge and underneath a river flows where yesterday there was nothing but a feeble vein of mud; it’s like an artery has burst, pumping and pulsing the low branches of the trees. Should have been with Cassie when it started to rain.

  ‘Hope they’re OK,’ he says. ‘With the storm, I mean.’

  ‘No worries. Larry’ll see they’re OK.’

  ‘But Larry’s not there.’ There is a pause. Maybe a flicker passing across Fred’s face. ‘Larry’s not there,’ Graham repeats. No expression. ‘Is he?’

  ‘He might have gone back last night.’

  ‘But there was no way he’d be back. You said –’

  ‘No, well, probably not, mate, no worries. You’ve gone white as a flaming sheet.’

  Graham gives a puff of breath, an attempt at a laugh but there is something wrong. It grabs him round the ribs and squeezes.

  ‘Listen,’ Fred says. ‘I’m going to say this once and then I’m going to shut me gob. Get the hell out of there.’

  The road glimmers under the wheels.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Spare keys to Larry’s car on a shelf above the pantry door.’

  ‘What?’ Graham turns. A shiver in the icy air-con. ‘What are you saying?’

  But Fred doesn’t speak again. He changes the tape, turns the volume up and scowls out at the road.

  Twenty-seven

  Something is pulling her head down. Something pressing on her eyes. There is light but which way up and where? She struggles her eyes open, nothing there, just the weight of her own eyelids. And nothing to hold her head down except its own weight. And the light is coming through a crack in some brown curtains and her throat is so dry she can hardly bear to breathe. She sits up and the walls billow. She holds her head still and blinks and blinks to get the room to settle into a kind of focus.

  A dead fire, grey ash feathers. Larry. Oh yes, they came in here last night although she’d thought it was a dream. Has the quality and taste of a dream. There’s a blanket fallen on the floor, a glass of water. She reaches for it and takes a long swa
llow, feeling the dry passage of her throat open. She tries to gather the scattered pieces of her mind. Puts her hands to her face, rubbery and warm.

  Why not in bed? Can’t remember the end of last night. Maybe she passed out? Gets up, steadies herself on the arm of the sofa. The room in her dream was cosy with the fire, wasn’t it? But this is a shabby room, fireplace big and black, iron maybe, the throat of the chimney furred black, the logs all burnt away, a gentle mound of grey that seems to stir as she watches it. On the hearth a bit of rubbish, wrapper of something that missed the fire and hasn’t burnt. She leans over to retrieve it, rush of nausea up her throat. MediSwab. What? Her face goes hot.

  Must leave this room, go and wash. Get properly dressed. Decently dressed. Bare legs under the shirt, stained with wine and crumpled from her drunken sleep. But nothing under the shirt, surely she had something under the shirt, she can’t get it straight, she was so wet – with the rain, that’s right. Thunder. She goes to the window and pulls back one of the curtains. Through filthy glass sun glitters out there, like smashed glass. Graham will be back. And then what? MediSwab?

  She leaves the room, goes back through the kitchen. She picks up her blue dress, hanging on the back of a chair. No Larry, though there’s a smell of coffee. The washing-up has been done, a pair of surgical gloves balled up on the table. She feels ashamed, creeping about in the soiled shirt. Leak of wet on her thigh. Shutting the fly screen slowly behind her so as not to make a clatter, she goes out into the brilliance of the day. Into a fresh steam of evaporating rain. The chickens rush to greet her but she stumbles past them. They’ll have to bloody wait.

  ‘Ah, Graham. Welcome back. Cassie’s resting, I believe.’ Graham catches a look passing between Larry and Fred, sure, slick and smug, a confirmation. ‘One too many last night, I’m afraid,’ Larry adds.

  Graham presses his lips together, gets a mug of water, makes himself swallow it down before trusting his voice. Like swallowing stones.

  ‘Thought you were away for a couple of days.’

  ‘Which meant you could take advantage? Set off on a jaunt. I’m surprised at you. And you.’ He looks at Fred, who blinks and bats away a fly.

  ‘Yeah, well, no harm done. I’ll just have a bite to eat and off. All right, mate?’

  ‘Minor glitch with the generator, Fred,’ Larry says. ‘Would you come and look before you go –’

  Fred raises his eyebrows at Graham before he and Larry go out. The kitchen is the same but different. Seems different. Flies in a buzzing column over the table as ever. Wine bottles. Three. Dishes left to drain by the sink, two dishes, two wine glasses upside down. Three bottles?

  In the shearers’ shed, Cassie is curled on top of the bed, hair like a swirl of ice cream above her head, face flushed and damp. Fallen from her sleeping hand is a photograph. Graham puts the tray down quietly. Picks up the photo. A blonde who could almost be Cassie, here, in the bleaching sun. The blurred shape of a chicken in the foreground and the shadow of the photographer slanting towards her.

  Cassie wakes as he sits down, blinks at him as if she can’t believe he’s real. ‘Graham!’ She flings her arms round him, squeezing his ribs, speaking into his stomach. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Sorry,’ he says, stroking her hair. ‘We stopped off – a mate of Fred’s – then got held up – the rain.’

  She pulls away. ‘You promised you’d be back.’

  ‘Couldn’t help it.

  ‘Did you at least phone Patsy?’

  He swallows. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You are useless.’ Tears sparkle in her eyes. ‘Sod off.’

  ‘Believe me, Cassie –’

  ‘The one time!’ She flinches away from him and hugs her arms round her knees. ‘Believe you! It’s what you always do. You’re just useless. That time you went to get a paper –’ She puts her face against her knees.

  ‘That was years ago,’ he mutters. ‘Look, I’ve brought you some tea.’

  She sniffs.

  ‘I see Larry came back. When?’ he asks. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing happened.’ What he can see of her face is red, her voice is muffled against her own skin. ‘He came back not long after you’d gone – Oh God –’

  ‘What?

  She looks up, opens her mouth, then shakes her head.

  ‘What?’

  She tells him that there is a bathroom and that she went in it and had a bath. Her hair is clean, he notices, a shade lighter, almost white at the ends. A bathroom. He keeps himself from speaking, listens, noticing how she, mostly, avoids his eyes.

  ‘Where was Mara in all of this?’

  ‘That’s weird too, she woke up and she told me all sorts of things – she was really lucid.’

  A hand seems to reach into his gut and squeeze. He holds his breath, waiting.

  ‘She said Larry wasn’t a doctor – told me the story but – but – then Larry said part of her illness is fantasising.’

  ‘Yes?’ he says, maybe too eagerly, and she frowns at him.

  ‘But anyway, what she said was, his brother was a doctor and he died and Larry impersonated him – do you believe it?’ She tells him the stuff that Mara said, probably lies. Nothing about himself. He starts to breathe again.

  ‘Part of her illness is fantasising?’

  ‘A rich fantasy world, he said, and look –’ She scrabbles around on the sheet and picks up the photo. ‘Mara said, she said I looked like her. Do you think so?’

  He looks at it again.

  ‘A bit, don’t you think? Except the pigtails, and she’s maybe smaller.’

  Graham’s hands are wet. Doesn’t want to get sweat on the photograph. Acid wells in the back of his throat. Last night catching him up, along with a greasy taste of this morning’s pie. He thinks of Ziggy’s sculpture, could you even call it that? The telephone receiver, a long blonde plait. But blonde hair is common, every other girl and woman in Australia has fair hair, long hair, always cutting it, hairdressers, not hard to find a long blonde plait if you wanted one. If it was even real, it was probably false anyway, the more he thinks about it the more fake that hair looked, a nylon glisten.

  ‘And look,’ she flops over and reaches across for a cardigan. ‘Isn’t it nice? Think it may have been hers. Larry gave it to me. Fancy leaving without it.’

  ‘You and Larry –’ He notices a white shirt crumpled on the chair.

  ‘What?’ Now she does meet his eyes. Bold. Green-flecked grey. A tiny snaky vein marring the white.

  ‘Have a nice time last night?’

  She shakes her head, looks down at her tea. ‘OK. Bit boring. I made loads of Spag Bol thinking you’d be back, starving hungry. We’ll finish it later. I was really worried, Gray.’

  ‘He said you had one too many.’

  She shrugs. ‘Bet you had a drink.’

  ‘Well, yeah. But three bottles?’

  ‘He must have carried on after I went to bed.’

  He gazes at her until she looks down. His fists clench till the nails bite the skin of his palms. He forces a breath into his constricted lungs. ‘We have to leave,’ he says, keeping his voice even.

  She nods her head. ‘I feel a bit –’ He watches as she gets unsteadily off the bed and picks up a pair of knickers. As she puts them on he sees the long fuzzy smile between her legs. He looks at the shirt. ‘What’s with that? Is it his?’

  ‘I borrowed it.’ She shoves her feet, after a couple of misses, into her sandals.

  ‘Why?’ His heart thuds.

  ‘Oh later, Gray.’

  He speaks quietly though the words want to shout themselves. ‘Did Larry – did he try anything?’

  ‘You ask me that!’ She slams out of the door. He stares at it for a moment, gets up and kicks it. Bangs his forehead against it and stands there a moment, forehead resting against the wood. Heart hammering. Must keep cool. Must think. He must get them out of here and safely. He picks up the shirt and holds it to his face. Smells of Cassie. Smells of Larry’s po
xy cologne. He screws it up and flings it at the wall. His bag is on the floor. He picks it up and takes out Cassie’s mirror frame. The broken glass gone now. He looks into the empty black oval a minute then shoves it in her rucksack. He picks up the shirt, examines it. Wine-stained, crumpled. No. He can’t bear it. No. Hears a car start and drive away. Fred leaving. They have to go. Tonight.

  Cassie goes to the dunny, holds her breath. She can’t get her head straight. What happened with Larry? Can’t think. Don’t think. The flies, there must be millions down there, booming vibration, millions of maggots. Feels she could be sick and what a headache, hangover, how much did she drink? Worse than a hangover, kind of dullness, numbness of mind.

  She comes out, looks back at the door of the shed, would love to lie down but can’t face Graham. She washes her hands, lathers and lathers, coal-tar bubbles, and walks out, away from the house, over to the trees. There’s a rock there, good rock for sitting, under the trees, her head bangs with the rhythm of her feet.

  She sits for a while, eyes open but unfocused. Parrots shriek. A red feather stuck to a white streak of bird shit. A lizard motionless, as if glued to the rock. Tiny splayed grip of its fingers. She puts her hand under her dress and feels her warm wetness. Sticky tangle. Needs another bath. Not Larry, no. Don’t think about it. Must just – she frowns, trying to wind her messed-up mind back. Can’t remember. How it ended. Like a bad taste in her mouth from something she can’t remember eating. The swab: what was that about? Fragments coming back. Like the radio, if there even was a radio, and something else. The wine. A wet cold something – a chilly sofa underneath – They must leave. How can they?

  She closes her eyes, hangs her head back, so heavy, stretching her neck. Birds shriek from a long way off and then a touch. She jumps. It’s only Graham. He hands her a bottle of water. She swigs greedily, then feels sick.

  ‘What are you doing out here?’ he asks.

  ‘Why did you have to go off?’ Her mouth bends down to cry but suddenly she’s angry. Sparks of energy in her arms and legs. ‘What were you doing?’

  ‘I’ll tell you about it,’ he says, ‘but listen. Tonight we go. OK? I know where the spare car keys are. We get the hell out.’