STORM COMING
When Sherry’s husband Dave was posted to Albury-Wodonga, she decided she wasn’t going with him. It has been less than a week since The Fight and she still hadn’t forgiven him. She suspected she never would.
The RAAF agreed to pay for her move to any place on the East Coast, provided she had family there. The only family member she knew of other than her parents was an aunt she had not seen since she was nine years old, who lived in Mallacoota, a tiny coastal town about six hundred kilometres south of Sydney. It sounded better than one of the grim outer suburbs of Sydney, so Sherry decided it was worth a try. She called her aunt and was happily surprised when her aunt said she couldn’t wait to see her, that a house on her street had just become available for rent, and that she could arrange the rental and be there to let the movers in. The entire move was arranged so easily and so pleasantly that Sherry decided it was meant to be.
She was watching the moving truck drive away with most of her belongings when Dave called her mobile and asked her to visit him on her way to her new home. The diversion would mean driving inland then back to the coast, adding an extra five hundred kilometres to her trip. So she refused.
“Then you won’t get your child support this month, will you? Cos the only way you’re getting it is to pick it up in person.”
What choice did she have? She had just got her Sole Parent Payment and it had to last a fortnight. She needed the child support for petrol to get to Mallacoota, and for food and other necessities in her new home. So she checked Google maps, told Dave she would be in Albury-Wodonga some time between five and six that afternoon, and made a note on her phone to arrange for the Child Support Agency to collect the money in future, so that Dave could never do something like this again.
When she disconnected the phone she was so angry that her hands were shaking, but the children needed lunch and she needed to get going if she wanted to get to Dave’s place before dark. And what was the point of separating from Dave, if she was going to let him wreck her life and her moods any way? Forcing a smile on her face she fed both children from the trip supplies and while they were eating gave her aunt a cheerful-sounding call to advise her of the last-minute change of plans. By the time she strapped three-year-old Isabella into her quilted car seat and eight-month-old Damien into his sheepskin-lined baby capsule the fake smile was having an effect. Within thirty minutes of Dave’s call she was on the road and feeling almost cheerful, trying to see the forced diversion in a positive light. Mt Kosciuszko lay between Albury-Wodonga and Mallacoota and she would always wanted to see Thredbo. Not that the middle of summer was a good time to visit a ski resort, but she didn’t think the life of a single mother involved a lot in the way of skiing holidays. This would probably be her only chance before the children were grown.
She arrived at Dave’s place at six-thirty, Google having failed to make allowance for rush hour in Albury-Wodonga. Dave, predictably, was annoyed at her for ‘keeping him waiting’. Then it turned out that he didn’t actually have all the child support money. He gave her a little over half and promised to ‘make it up later’. Sherry forced a smile and tried to make the best of it.
He hadn’t thought to provide dinner, was surprised that she thought he would. When she decided to make something for all of them she discovered there was nothing in the house to cook, and when she pointed this out he snapped that he wasn’t her meal ticket any more, remember? She stayed patient and fed herself and the children with sandwiches from her trip supplies. But when Dave complained that he was hungry and asked for a sandwich she lost her temper and told him she didn’t have his sandwich right now, but she would make it up later. He sulked in his room while she bathed the children, put them to bed, and made up tomorrow’s formula for Damien, only coming out when all the work was done.
They watched some television, but relations remained strained. Sherry was painfully polite to Dave but the ugly word he had used during The Fight hung between them like a bad smell. Her attention wandered and once again she was plagued with doubt. Had Dave always thought that way about her, but hidden it? When they had first met he said he loved her silver-gold hair and golden skin, so rare amongst Aboriginals. He had told her she was beautiful and she had believed him. Then. It had never occurred to her that he might, one day, throw that ugly, racist word in her face. How could she forget? And how could she forgive? It wasn’t just her that he had turned on. He had turned on their children, who shared her blood. How could she stay with a man who might, one day, scream that word at them? And how could she forgive herself if he did?
When the movie ended Dave seemed to want to talk, but Sherry pleaded tiredness after driving for hours. Dave dug out a pillow and blanket for her, said goodnight and went to his bedroom. Sherry lay on the couch, staring at the ceiling and questioning her decision to end the marriage. Sure, he was lazy and inconsiderate and he never helped with the children, not even when she found some temp work. He spent hours every afternoon after work drinking himself stupid at the mess. But then all RAAF husbands lived in a 1940’s time warp where wives were expected to cook, clean, raise the children alone, and be grateful for the privilege. Other women seemed to muddle through.
Which took her back to The Fight, and the Word, and before she knew it she was glaring at the inoffensive ceiling spoiling for a fight. When Dave, with his impeccable timing, came out of his bedroom sweet-talking her and trying to lie down beside her on the couch, it was all she could do not to scream at him and punch him in the face. She shoved him away instead, and he landed on the floor. After he called her a bitch and went back to his bedroom she lay on the couch, fuming, and it was ages before she managed to to fall asleep.
Sherry fed the children, formula for Damien and cereal from her trip supplies for herself and Isabella, cheerfully using up the last of Dave’s milk. Then she set about repacking the car, making several trips down the stairs to the communal car park and back again, loaded with bags every time. Dave trailed her every trip, doing his ‘reasonable voice’ as he patiently explained how she was making a mistake. But he didn't help with the bags or the pram, and he wouldn’t stay in the flat to watch the children so she could work in peace, and it never occurred to him that everything he didn’t do was making a better argument for leaving him than anything he could say to convince her to stay. He was that oblivious, and Sherry stifled a sigh. Some things never change.
“Don’t go,” he pleaded, when the car was finally packed and she had returned to his flat to collect the children. “I still love you.”
Sherry turned her face away, feeling sick. She had believed him once, and been proved a fool. “Love isn’t always enough. And some words can never be unsaid.”
He followed her down the stairs and to the car, still trying to ‘talk some sense into her’, but she had stopped listening. When she drove away it felt like an escape. She adjusted the rear mirror so she didn’t have to watch her husband, getting smaller and smaller but refusing to disappear. She left Albury-Wodonga behind her like a memory she didn’t want.
The highway was broad and smooth and she reached the base of Mt Kosciuszko earlier than she expected. But the narrow bitumen road that wound its way up this side of the mountain threaded backwards and forwards in a series of hairpin turns, taking the slope side-on as it rose. It was a slow, careful drive, crowded both sides by tall trees and measured out in the chimes of bell birds. Only once did Sherry see another car, a massive 4WD whose passengers gaped at her tiny red car in disbelief and turned their heads to watch her pass.
In the back seat Damien was asleep. Isabella was awake, singing an impromptu song about big trees and pretty birds, the bell birds chiming counterpoint. Happiness stole into Sherry’s heart, as unexpected as a thief in the night. She turne
d the rear view mirror so she could see her daughter’s face. “I love you, Isabella.”
“I love you mummy,” sang Isabella, turning it into part of her song.
She reached Thredbo about noon and found a playground, with a small lake dozing in a sun-filled hollow. She parked the car, strapped her children into the double pram, loaded the cooler of sandwiches and drinks onto the pram and took her children down to the picnic tables by the lake. She set Isabella on the bench and the cooler on the table, keeping Damien in the pram as an improvised high chair.
“Pretty clouds,” announced Isabella, leaning back so far on her bench she was in danger of falling. Sherry pressed her hand against Isabella's back to ease her forward.
“Hold onto the table love, or you might fall. Eat your food.” She took Isabella’s sandwich out of the cooler, unwrapped it and set it before her, then opened a jar of baby food and spooned some into Damien's mouth. Only then did she look up to see what had caught Isabella’s interest.
The sky was pale blue, with white clouds flicked across it in long mares' tails. Lower than the mares' tails were a few clouds, fat and fluffy as sheep, that scudded across the sky. One of them did look a little like a turtle, though it was moving too fast. Why were the clouds moving so fast, when there was no breeze down here? Sherry checked the trees surrounding the hollow. At one end of the park the tree tops whipped back and forth, and the sky behind them was crowded with thunderclouds, purple-black and swollen as a bruise.
Damn! Where had they come from? Turning back to Damien she discovered his chin covered in a glistening layer of food, and had to smile. “Who’s a big, scary, glazed-doughnut monster then? Is it you, Damien?” Damien crowed with laughter and she scraped most of the goo back into his mouth.
She checked Isabella's plate and saw the Vegemite sandwich was untouched. “Eat up, darling. It’s going to rain soon.”
Isabella picked up half of her crust-less sandwich and jammed it in her mouth. Sherry watched her chew, worried she might choke, then went back to feeding Damien. Her own lunch was still on the table, untouched.
“Clouds run fast,” Isabella announced. Sherry gave the dark clouds at the end of the park another look. Were they bigger, already? She’d never seen storm clouds build up so fast. Their lower edges were blurred, a sure sign of rain. She pulled out her phone and checked the Google route to Mallacoota again. Most of the roads were dirt, and there were at least two rivers she would need to cross. The last thing she needed was a summer storm in the mountains flooding those rivers and swamping the bridges.
She hurried the children through their meals, packing their things before they were properly finished and shoving her still-wrapped sandwich in her shoulder bag. The black clouds were still poised at one end of the park, but they were heaving and shifting. like an animal about to wake.
“Black clouds,” announced Isabella.
“They certainly are. Come here, sweetie.” She swung Isabella into the back seat of the pram and wiped Damien’s face clean. Pushing the pram up the slope was a lot harder than coming down and she was out of breath when she reached the top. A brisk breeze whipped her hair into her eyes, carrying the smell of rain. Sherry pulled her hair out of her eyes and moved fast, hauling her children out of the pram and strapping them into car seat and capsule. She folded up the pram and wrestled it onto the front passenger seat before buckling it in, for all the world as if it was a third child. When she went to close the door the wind whipped it out of her hands and slammed it closed, almost catching her fingers. When she walked round her car to open the driver’s door it resisted, held closed by the wind, and she had to lean back, using her weight to open it. Standing with her hand braced against the door to keep it open she paused to look down at the park. The lake was still and peaceful, undisturbed by the wind that pushed and pulled at her and rocked the car. She got in, careful to pull her legs in fast in case she lost hold of the door. It slammed closed and everything was quite and still.
When she turned the key, the car started first time. Only then did she realise she had been worried it wouldn’t. She checked the petrol gauge and sighed. Only a quarter of a tank – she needed to fill up before crossing the National Park and farmland between here and the coast. She drove east, scanning both sides of the road for a petrol station. On the outskirts of town she spotted a petrol pump outside a weathered garage and pulled into the gravel forecourt. When she got out of the car she discovered the pump was an antique, so old she couldn’t work out how to use it. She was trying to puzzle it out when an old man limped out of the garage, wiping his hands with a greasy rag.
“Fill 'er up?” He smiled and his eyes almost disappeared in a nest of wrinkles. Sherry glanced at the pricing on the petrol pump and faltered. Petrol prices were higher in rural areas, she knew that, but the price on the pump was insane.
She made a quick calculation in her head, working out how much she could afford. “Filled, or sixty dollars, whichever comes first.” Sixty dollars probably wouldn’t fill the tank, but it should get her to the coast with a little to spare. That left ninety dollars for basic groceries and anything else she needed for the rest of the fortnight. Doable. She was glad she hadn’t wasted money buying dinner last night, or lunch today, but had made do with what she had in the car. Even gladder that she had overdone things, as usual, when packing supplies for the trip.
She caught the sharp glance the old man gave her, saw his eyes dart to the children in the back seat, felt as if she could read his mind. Woman alone, with kids. Tension snapped through her. The old man looked up at the sky, half covered now by the dark grey clouds, and turned back to her.
“You best drive careful now,” he said, his face creased in concern. “There's a storm coming. You’re not goin’ far, are you?”
Sherry relaxed. Not a threat, just a nice man worried she might get caught in the storm. “To the coast,” she admitted. “By way of the Old Forest Road.”
He frowned. “You might be better off staying overnight.”
She might, but she couldn’t afford it. “I need to push on,” she told him. “My aunt is expecting us for dinner, and she’ll worry if we’re late.”
He nodded and they stood beside each other in awkward silence, the pump chugging out petrol. Eventually the old man pulled the petrol nozzle free and screwed the petrol cap back in place, his hands moving with a strength and sureness that belied his age. “You'll be going straight through then? You won't be stopping in the grasslands after dark?” He straightened and fixed her with an intense gaze.
Sherry’s paranoia swept back in. Bad films about strangers in country towns coming to a sticky end crowded her head but she pushed them away, telling herself to get a grip. He was just a nice old man, probably lonely and eager to chat. Some men were every bit as nice as they seemed.
“It's all right,” she reassured him. “I have plenty of food and water, and blankets for the children, and we should be on the coast before sunset.”
“Well that's all right then. It's a lonely road through the valley, turns to dirt, and it can get tricky in the dark. No place for a woman with little kiddies to be driving alone, ‘specially in a little car like this one. Lots of accidents. Make sure you’re through the grasslands and over the river before sundown, and you’ll be right. The roads are much better past the river, they’re paved. That’ll be fifty.”
Sherry stared at him for a moment before realising he was talking about the petrol. Hadn't she asked for sixty dollars worth, or full-up? But fifty dollars would still get her to Mallacoota, so she paid him. When she drove away she looked in the rear view mirror and saw he was watching her go. She waved to him over the roof of the car and he waved back, then the road turned and he was gone.
What an odd man. But nice. It was another five minutes before she glanced at the petrol gauge and realised her petrol tank was full, the needle jammed at one end of the gauge, past the F. She stared at it for a moment before returning her attention to the road. A very nice man. The
re was no way fifty dollars had been enough to fill her tank.
The road out of Thredbo was six wide lanes of smooth, new tarmac that would take her all the way to Canberra, had she been going there. But the turnoff leading to Old Forest Road was a thin strip of tarmac, breaking away either side in ragged edges of gravel. It swooped down from the road and levelled out before turning into an endless series of tight switchbacks, cut into the steep slope. Sherry slowed the car to a walking place, nervous about leaving the tarmac and sliding on the gravel to plummet over the rounded edge and down, down, down. Each straight stretch ended in a tight U-turn that had her frantically spinning the steering wheel to make the turn, then bringing the wheel back to the middle to drive along another short straight headed for another tight U-turn. For all her initial nervousness about the drop, the steadily repeated rhythm of straight drive and wheel-spinning U-turn was hypnotic. When the road eventually turned, not into a U-turn, but into a straight line leading through bushland, she snapped out of her trance. She blinked at the road and realised the endless drop was gone, and so was the mountain.
She pulled the car over to a stop, leaned out the window and looked back. Behind her the ground launched upwards, so suddenly that she had to crane her neck to see the mass of purple cloud teetering high atop the stone. It was hard to believe she had just driven down from there. She checked her watch – it had taken almost an hour.
Isabella had fallen asleep, her cheeks flushed and her head slumped against the padded headrest of her car seat. Damien was awake and batting his chubby fists at his bird on a string, tied to the handle of the capsule. Every time he connected the toy squeaked, and his face lit up in a grin. Sherry watched him, feeling a swell of affection. Bat, squeak, grin! She was still smiling when she put the car into gear and pulled back onto the road.
After the precipitous drop down the mountain the straight drive through scrub-covered flats felt almost surreal. The road was a ribbon of grey-black, trimmed either side with a narrow band of orange clay, and to either side stretched rank upon rank of sun-bleached gums. As she drove the gums grew separated to reveal open areas of dry grass and grey-green bush. Eventually the bushes and disappeared and she was driving through a sea of pale yellow grass, only an occasional tall gum to break the monotony. The pale grass rippled silver like waves when the breeze brushed across it and the sky rose above the distant hills, serene and blue and empty of clouds. Sherry checked for the tell-tale black streak of a bushfire but the horizon was unmarked. And the storm? She checked the side mirror and there it was, still crouched on top of the mountain.
Storm Coming Page 1
