by Miller, Alex
•
From inside the machinery shed, peering through a nail-hole in the corrugated iron, Alistair had watched his mother walking away from the homestead towards the hills. Her figure grew smaller and smaller until his eye had begun to water, and once or twice he lost sight of her in the tall silvery grass. At last she had entered the trees and was lost to his view entirely.
He went back to the silent empty house and stood in the passage listening. Then, as if he were a thief afraid of disturbing a sleeper, he crept into her room. He stood just inside the doorway, his left side reflected in her tilted mirror, not moving his head, but gazing stiffly at his reflection out of the corner of his eye. He was afraid. But he was not so afraid that he did not notice how skinny he was, his pyjama shorts hanging wide and loose like skirts over his bony knees. He was afraid of a great many things but at this moment he was most afraid of the silence of the house itself. He knew that Janet would never come back. Even if she visited for holidays, she would never again be here with him. It was over. He was alone.
All his life her voice had been with him. For ever! This was a dead silence. It was the sound of her absence, new and sharp and painful to him. He had lain in bed with the sheet held over his face, and had listened this morning, aching for her to come and speak to him, to ask him to forgive her for her strange cold attitude these past few weeks, to beg him to wish her well, to make him promise to come and see her in Rockhampton. Or something! He had heard every creak of the floorboards, the sound of movement and preparation in the house, the bumping of her suitcases, then the sickening footsteps as they all went down the back steps. There was the sound of the car driving away. She had not come. She had not come for anything.
These thoughts created a large dull area of discomfort in his mind while he contemplated his mother’s bedroom.
He did not know why he was doing this, but Alistair went over to Ida’s chest of drawers and began to search methodically through the contents of each drawer. He had no idea what he was looking for, nor what he might find. He turned up the corners of the neatly folded garments, and peered between the layers, not moving anything out of place, so that she would not know he had been here. But in the back of his mind Alistair believed that she would know, somehow, that he had searched through her things. The fact that he found nothing startling or peculiar or mysterious in the drawers did not disappoint him. Her smell was thick and heavy all around him. He felt a slight disgust, a revulsion at the intimacy of this contact with her which had in it nothing decent or reassuring, and which stemmed from an ill-will whose mysteries he was in no position to decipher.
He made certain that each drawer was properly closed, and then he turned his attention to her bed. He stood and looked at it for a few seconds his heart beating quickly, before he bent forward and carefully pulled back the covers, only a little at first, then further until at last he hauled the top sheet and blanket right off and stood gazing at the rumpled bottom sheet, his eyes wide and fixed. The sheet was stained. He knew what it was. He had expected it to be there, though he had not foreseen the consequences of his action. His thin lips were pinched together tightly, his cheeks sucked in hard against his gums. His rather unintelligent, frightened eyes were filled with an intense malicious excitement. Stiffly he bent forward and placed the pad of his index finger on the largest stain. He rubbed the material between his thumb and forefinger then raised his finger to his nose, passing it back and forth slowly from one nostril to the other, sniffing the faintly yeasty smell he had picked up. His penis was erect. He masturbated quickly into his cupped hand, the thin viscous fluid dripped between his fingers onto the wooden floor. He had the look of a frightened cat.
The surroundings in which he had performed this action horrified him. The image in his mind had been of his sister lying on her back with her legs wide open in Crofts’ hut miming the action of her father attempting to control a fresh horse—an intense and exact image of her soft pink vagina, warm and aroused, the lips slightly parted, displayed not for his own but for the stockman’s fascinated gaze. He felt panic taking hold of him. He made a sudden half-stifled sobbing noise and he ripped off his pyjama shorts and wiped the floor quickly with them, not really thinking what he was doing, before he left the room, forgetting to pull up the covers of the bed. Inside his head a strident voice was screaming at him over and over: it is all Crofts’ fault! He ran into his own room and dressed quickly, dragging on his jodhpurs and riding boots and talking rapidly to himself all the while, seeking reassurance in the sound of his own voice.
He urged his grunting pony up the rocky slope, whacking her again and again with a dry stick, and when she failed to respond, reached back and jabbed the sharp end of the stick into the tender skin of her flank. At each jab the pony grunted and heaved herself forward over the loose rocks, struggling to keep her feet and ducking her head with distress. When a large boulder threatened to roll backwards under her hoofs, she stood poised precariously for an instant, the steep ground falling away dangerously below, then regained her balance and lunged upward again. The rider seemed unaware, or at least uncaring, of the dangers, his rifle thumping him on the back in time with the lunges of his mount and his stick never still for a moment.
Alistair wasn’t sure what he was doing. He had no plan. Catching his pony and galloping off across the familiar paddocks in the heat of the day was almost a reflex action with him. He had done it before on many occasions, indeed he was inclined to do it whenever a crisis occurred, simply to avoid an unpleasant situation. It was just a matter of getting away from the house, and usually from a specific person. On this occasion he simply didn’t want to be alone there any more with the terrible new silence. And he especially wanted to avoid Crofts, should he decide to return early from his work for now Alistair felt vulnerable to the stockman.
He had not set out to catch up with or to follow his mother, and the fact that he pursued exactly the route she had taken earlier was not unusual. He followed, as she had, the easiest path offered by the open country until he came to the rising ground and the shelter of the timber. Only then did it cross his mind that his mother had passed this way earlier and was somewhere ahead of him. And it was more the lie of the land than any plan that caused him to follow his mother; once on the steep slope, it was unthinkable for him to stop or to attempt to traverse the hill.
It was not until he had climbed to the first natural terrace that he was faced with the choice of whether to turn left or right, that is up or down the creek, and to follow a lateral course along the line of the valley. To have continued climbing was out of the question: the way up was barred to horses and to stock by the massive splintered cliffs of the main escarpment. He scarcely hesitated before turning his pony’s head up the creek. It was his first conscious decision in this ride. He headed up the creek because he felt certain that it was the direction his mother would have taken. He had decided to follow her. He gave his pony its head and it walked along without any further guidance.
It was hot and the smell of the dry bush was all around him. It was a safe and familiar smell to him. Once upon a time, many years ago, when they had been trusting partners, when the hours of one fine autumn day alone with her seemed to last forever and to hold more joy than years; long ago, before the days when he and Janet had discovered the sensuality of each other’s bodies, he had sat with his mother upon a sunlit shelf of rock above a clear pool reflecting the sky.
And she had told him, in a voice that seemed like magic, the legend of Mt Mooloolong and its ever-circling, ever-watchful devil spirits—invisible presences which spiralled with the rising currents of the air from the forest below and patrolled the sheer flanks of the cold white pinnacle. And she had told him of how they drew the living to themselves, to death, their voices the charmed ecstatic voices of the dead who had once inhabited the place and now belonged to the white primaeval monolith, seduced by its great beauty and the desire to possess its secret. She told him how in the old times before his own an
cestors had come to the Highlands, Mooloolong had been forbidden to all people but the men of the spirit world, men who had been taught the secret of how to master desire, despite the seductive chorus of the circling ghosts; and she had told him of her decision to climb the mountain, how for almost a year she had lived in fear of her decision and had told no one but had gone time and again to stand and gaze at the mountain, returning home each time without approaching it.
He remembered how he had snuggled closer to her then, waiting for what she was about to tell him, holding her knee firmly against his cheek, scarcely daring to breathe. She told him of the day when she had gone out to climb the mountain on her own, knowing she would do it or never come back alive. And he had gone with her in her story, step by step, terrified that she would slip and fall, would die and be lost to him for ever. He imagined them falling together through the air, their bodies turning over and over slowly, falling through the air for ever above the forest, never reaching the ground and never losing each other.
He heard angry excited voices carrying up the hill to him from the creek far below and he stopped his pony with a sudden jerk on the rein and listened. A stone clattered away down the hill and he waited. He kicked the pony forward again and descended through the trees to a level promontory. Here he dismounted, and went forward cautiously on foot. Before he reached the edge he got down onto his stomach and crawled, dragging his rifle beside him. The voices of his mother and the stockman came to him clearly and he hauled himself forward the last few inches to peer over the edge of the bluff. Their voices abruptly ceased. He raised himself a little on his elbows. Far below him on the rock shelf above the pool which he remembered so well, in the dazzling sunlight of the day, the naked stockman and his mother were embracing. They stood still, clasped tightly in each other’s arms for a long time, then they began to move. They were too distant for him to see clearly what they were doing, so he brought his rifle to his shoulder and examined them with the aid of the telescopic sight. Crofts was undressing her and she was holding him, both her hands thrust down between their bodies. The fine cross-hairs of the sights followed their movements, inching across their bodies.
Alistair’s throat ached with a tension that made it difficult for him to swallow. The tears rolled freely down his cheeks. He watched them lie on the rock in the sun together and make love, his vision blurring through the tears. While he watched he began to realise that he was going to kill the stockman. The decision, he felt certain, was not his own. It frightened him. He felt it occur within him, move slowly into sharp focus from a hazy mixture of images. And it was as final as his mother’s decision to climb the mountain. It was not his responsibility. He just had to do it.
He sighed deeply and he drew back the bolt on the .22 and pushed a bullet into the chamber. He was an excellent shot. It was Janet who had taught him the finer points of the skill. He had no doubt he could hit his target from this distance. His loneliness now began to press down on him from all around. For the first time that day he thought about the warm and familiar smell of the bush, and he was glad of it. He blinked rapidly to clear his vision and adjusted the stock of the rifle firmly against his shoulder, unaware of the pain, his elbows resting on the sharp ground, his legs spread to steady himself for the shot. He talked to himself all the time, in a rapid scarcely audible voice: disjointed incantations, half-completed sentences, isolated words of special significance to him, repeated over and over, an accompaniment for himself in his loneliness.
His finger was steady on the trigger.
He had increased the pressure to the maximum and was holding it there. His tears had ceased to flow now that he was engrossed by the requirements of the job. He did not notice the inquisitive, venomous bulldog ant that was inspecting his forearm. He was waiting for the back of Crofts’ head to stop moving for a moment. He did not mind waiting. Janet had impressed on him long ago that patience is always essential to any fine shot. What his mother and Crofts were doing together now had ceased to concern him. He was ready. He just had to wait for the right moment and then, without any sudden movement, he would apply the final ounce of additional pressure to the trigger. The consequences were beyond him.
He waited, and was almost happy. As to murder—the horrifying outcome of what he intended to do—he had forgotten that he was contemplating any such thing. He was back in a familiar situation. He was out shooting. He was away in the hills for the day, with Janet sitting up there behind him among the rocks with the ponies and their lunches, waiting and watching, expecting a decent result from him. Her concern was always that neither of them should follow their father’s poor example of a series of half-finished tasks, the testimony to his failure. Her dread was almost obsessive that this example might undermine her own ability to do anything worthwhile. So she always set a high standard for them in everything they did together, to cut them off from what she bitterly described as the stupidity and failure of their parents.
He had never possessed her vision, but Alistair had followed his sister willingly, and together they had constructed a private world in which their own authority—in truth Janet’s—had replaced that of their parents. That was where Alistair was now, back there with his sister, and the target in the fine cross-hairs of his telescopic sights at this moment was there more because of Janet’s decisions than his own. He did not think about this but he felt it. Janet was the leader; he would do the job and she would see to the consequences.
He must have had a momentary lapse of concentration, for he suddenly became aware that the target was moving rapidly out of the view of his scope. He took his eye from the sight for a quick look and saw Crofts and his mother diving together from the ledge into the pool. He adjusted his elbows and put his eye back to the sight quickly. In making this rapid movement he pinned the bulldog ant by one of its long legs and at once it sank its red-hot pincers into the tender skin inside his elbow. The rifle discharged and Alistair saw through the scope the tiny splash as the hollow-nosed bullet fragmented against the surface of the water two hundred metres away. He dropped the rifle and clutched his elbow as the pain inflicted by the ant’s poison built quickly to a blinding peak.
•
Ida swam to the very bottom of the pool, curving her body away from his as they entered the water together. The cool relief on her skin was luxurious. When she reached the bottom she held onto a projecting bulb of scoured rock and looked back. He was swimming towards her, the sunlight dancing off his body. She let go of the rock and kicked out towards him and she saw, spiralling down between them from the surface in a tiny mist of bubbles, what looked like two bright flecks of silver. She reached out to grasp them and the wash of the water slipped them aside and they drifted on towards the bottom. Her outstretched hands met his and they held onto each other. She saw him mime, ‘I love you,’ and she smiled and embraced him.
eight
Ida struggled to maintain the appearance of normality in her family and to keep her two lives separate from each other, fearing that if they should meet, everything she desired would be destroyed. She had sworn the stockman to the greatest care in communicating with her. What they had established together she knew was too fragile yet to be risked in a head-on contest with the harder truths of her old life—truths, she understood, which were rooted in many generations; and which, though they might seem peripheral to a stranger, could not be easily ignored: there was much in herself to prove this. For it was not simply a matter of falling in love with the stockman and being loved by him in return; that was only the beginning. As the days went by, however, and it became impossible to find genuine opportunities to communicate with Crofts alone, the strain began to sap her optimism and she became increasingly nervy and worried.
All this time Alistair hovered around her, appearing unexpectedly at the edge of her vision, but refusing to speak to her, slipping away whenever she attempted to waylay him. Without the vigour of Janet to back him up he was like a ghost around the place. He did not look well and Ida fel
t there was something menacing in the way he managed to elude her. He had become a threat, she was certain of it. His behaviour was so strange and furtive that she suspected him of planning something unpleasant, something possibly quite evil. She now found it difficult to recall a time when she had not disliked him intensely. She was also more than a little afraid of him. She determined to get him off to school in Rockhampton as soon as possible and intended bringing the matter to a head with Ward immediately she saw the chance. She knew it would be a difficult and unpleasant business and she did not look forward to it. No opportunity arose for doing anything about it, however, and the reason for this was principally Ward’s peculiar behaviour.
It was as if the great flood she had hoped for all her life had at last swept over the narrow channel of her existence, gathering with it all the rubbish and debris from her past and promising—in that moment of high energy—to carry it all away for ever, to leave for her the clear prospect of a new future. Then the flood stopped in mid-flow. And was threatening to stagnate altogether. After her meeting with Crofts at the pool, Ida suffered five grotesque days and nights. An agony of disbelief and frustration mounted in her. The fierce electrical storms moved down from the ranges into the valley, sudden, violent, and bringing with them an overpowering humidity that seemed to conspire with Ward’s startling behaviour to wear her down, defeating her new hopes, in a manner that astonished her.
