‘Cool, well, I’ll just find myself a seat,’ he said. ‘Sorry to barge in.’ He shrugged, seemingly baffled by his own haplessness. He was nice. His eyes met Laura’s over her classmates’ heads. She skittered her gaze away, embarrassed to have been caught staring. But then he was beside her, pulling out a spare chair and slouching into it. He sat, crossing ankle over knee, expectantly waiting for the teacher to go on. It was as though he’d been there all along.
The teacher looked stunned. It took a moment for her to suggest they take a break. The room erupted: chairs scraping, books clattering, chatter. Only Laura and the young man remained in their seats.
‘Luc.’ The smile he offered with his outstretched hand was like something from the fashion magazines Vik bought. Laura thought of all the wood she’d chopped, the roos and rabbits and sheep she’d shot, the fire they’d fought and won. What was this boy, these bright white teeth, to her?
‘Laura,’ she said curtly, giving his soft reader’s hand a quick shake.
Luc seemed amused by her coolness. He rocked back in his chair, balancing dangerously on its back legs. ‘So, what’ve I missed?’
Laura smiled, despite herself. She gave Luc a sidelong glance. ‘Fucked if I know,’ she said.
One Saturday morning, Laura left the migraine of homework piled on her desk and strode through the humidity, uncaring of direction. A part of her found the city fascinating: the winding streets and tightly packed houses, curtains left brazenly open so that Laura could see right in to where breakfast dishes sat on sinks.
The suburb might have been beautiful once, to those who enjoyed the bustle of the deep inner city. Siamese lives and quaint old buildings – a number of the original Victorian mansions still stood. But over time, the character of the place had changed. Laura saw the decades in peeling paint. The history of the place, recorded in boarded-up windows, concrete cracks. At some point, migrants and workers had moved in, building modest homes on small blocks. Apartments went up in place of factories. Students swarmed, overrunning the old mansions with share houses, cheap wine and raucous parties. Broken glass glittered in tiny front yards. Tibetan prayer-flags fluttered on verandahs from chipped iron lace. Bins overflowed. Hung-over smokers lounged on front steps in dark glasses. Laura passed silently under cover of loud music spilling out of windows, dogs barking deep inside rooms. The assault of detail overwhelmed her. She didn’t know what to think.
When she heard the din of voices she almost turned away. But the mass of people was advancing, and she was absorbed before she knew what was happening. Two police officers on horseback tried to corral the crowd, keep it contained. The street was a sea of heat and colour. By turns festive and aggressive, the mob surged, parted, let her through, swallowed her. A chant rose up, hundreds of voices asserting their desires.
‘What do we want?’
‘No more logging!’
‘When do we want it?’
‘NOW!’
There were bongos and other instruments, other songs, other chants. Banners flapped above their heads. Someone spoke into a megaphone, a loudly distorted voice. The crowd moved off, a human river, with Laura carried by the current. Behind her was the raucous rainbow serpent, the width of the road, winding back for blocks.
One of the police horses became skittish and stumbled. The rider jerked the reins, transmitting his own anxiety. The horse reared up. Without thinking, Laura lunged to place a calming hand on the animal’s neck.
The crowd boiled and, in a blink, Laura was on her knees and the horse was a way down the street, dancing, jittery. She tried to get up but it was like being in strong surf. Buffeted, she hunkered down, waiting to be crushed.
‘You ’right? Laura, yeah?’ A hand brushed her shoulder. ‘From class?’
She looked into Luc’s face. Turmoil raged around them. Laura stared into blue eyes, lashes so thick they looked false. He grinned, flashing a dimple in one stubbled cheek. His stained T-shirt proclaimed Trees for the Future! She could smell his clothes, the reek of his body. The soles of his feet were black with city filth; threads dangled from denim shorts cut off at the knee. He offered a hand. Laura hesitated. Something thwacked her in the back. Caged by stampeding legs, she grasped Luc’s fingers. ‘My knee,’ she croaked.
She slid her arm around his waist, pressed her hand into the hollow above his hip, self-consciously.
‘Saw you go for that horse,’ he said. He looked down at her admiringly. ‘You’re mad!’
He steered her away from the crowd, along an alley. They collected themselves at a nearby cafe. Laura sensed that he was unlike the boys she knew from Kyree High, who screamed names from passing cars, bare arses at open windows.
Laura tasted cappuccino. She didn’t hate it. Luc spoke about this cause and that. He had helped to organise the rally, but Laura couldn’t quite believe that all those people marched just because Luc said something wasn’t right. He was an activist, he said. Laura smirked to herself, thinking, Know a thing or two about keeping busy myself.
‘There’s loads to do for the next protest,’ Luc said. ‘We could always use another set of hands!’
Laura watched the shape of his mouth, the incline of his shoulders against his broad neck. She imagined wrapping her arms around the tree trunk of his waist, and wondered if they’d reach.
When she asked Luc how he liked their course, his smile faltered. He told her that his parents were against it: they wanted him to do Medicine or Engineering or Law like the good sons of their friends. ‘Old-school wogs.’ Luc said. ‘My dad only got to Year Eight. Was stoked I finished school. They run a garden nursery, but they insist I have to do “better”.’ He clasped his ceramic mug, explaining that he didn’t want to do any of ‘that shit’. ‘Why can’t they let me do what I want?’
‘But do you want to run a farm?’ Laura asked, immediately wishing she hadn’t.
Luc’s face dropped. ‘My old man reckons agriculture’s for peasants – it’s what his folks did back home. He wants something else for me. Options. Reckons I’m throwing my life away.’ Luc snorted. ‘What would he know?’
‘I hear you,’ Laura said. What she could really hear was the inevitable disappointment in Bruce’s voice when he learned about her grades. But what had he expected? She wasn’t just going to up and change, become studious. He knew what she was like.
Laura couldn’t wake without thinking of Luc. The mere idea of him, like drunkenness. She began to look forward to TAFE for the lunchtimes. They sat alone in the fire-escape outside their classroom, watching the rain, smoking. Laura was shy, stupefied by proximity. It was all she could do to hold a simple conversation. Not just because of his looks. She saw the embarrassment they caused him, the little ripples he sent through rooms, though he wasn’t above working it: winking at canteen ladies, blagging cigarettes, chatting with acquaintances and making friends. Though Luc seemed genuinely interested in other people’s stories, a transaction was taking place. Laura sometimes wondered what it was that she paid for Luc’s attention. But it was too late; she had fallen for him.
Or maybe Luc had reeled her in. He could articulate the world’s wrongs in a few precise words. He made big issues seem not little, but clear. In another life he might have founded a cult. Laura watched him standing in his bedroom, steaming in the heat, glistening, his elegant prophesies so assured they seemed obvious. The semicircle of upturned faces nodded happily; there were lots of rousing cheers. Sipping drinks, Luc assured them that shit and fans would meet. They all took this seriously. Laura listened with a focus she had never found for school. He would question her later. She wanted to do well.
Laura voiced her opinions tentatively at first, and then with increasing forcefulness as her shyness faded. They sparred. She enjoyed each little stairwell debate. While she couldn’t compete with Luc’s insights, it surprised her to find that living in Kyree had taught her a thing or two, without her even noticing.
‘They don’t think of it like that,’ Laura said, vehemently
shaking her head. ‘The farmers. You met any?’ When had people in Kyree become They?
With an ache, she thought of Joseph. Through all their years of friendship, they had never spoken much – too busy making things, going places, exploring. Luc’s way of challenging her, forcing her to use words, defend, made the world seem expansive and fresh. He appeared keen to hear her stories about the farm. Laura surprised herself by telling them.
‘You fired a gun?’ Luc asked a few months after they met, passing his Big M across. The handouts from their last class had been hastily stuffed into the folders they sat on. Laura sipped the sickly milk. How different their childhoods had been.
‘’Course,’ she said. ‘Every day.’
A skein of expressions unfurled on Luc’s face. Surprise, admiration, and something Laura watched him struggle to control: disapproval. She had clocked the latest T-shirt: Meat Is Murder. They’d had enough conversations; she knew his thoughts. Watching Luc work to squash his judgement down, Laura was unsure whether to feel flattered or sad.
‘Talk to me when you run out of lentils,’ she snapped, recalling the bloody effort of all those family dinners skinned, gutted, cooked. How expectantly Bruce had waited for the evening meal, never questioning Laura’s capacity to provide it.
‘Woah.’ Luc held up his hands as though to ease her down. ‘I say anything?’
Laura ignored him. She rolled a grub of tobacco in her hand.
Then his face was inches from hers, her chin fixed between fingers. ‘Laura,’ he breathed.
Startled, she felt his mouth approach.
Each scar on her body, like the rings in the bark of a tree, recorded the years she had lived. Luc’s face was wet as he pressed cheek to stomach.
‘What happened to you?’ he kept asking. She found his scrutiny of her scars unbearably embarrassing, and giggled.
‘Tell me,’ Luc whispered.
Where to start? Like Scheherazade, she would need a thousand and one nights to tell him everything. There had been fire, falls, accidents with knives and secateurs and axe. That time she slipped and fell out of a tree, another time she failed to clear the barbed-wire fence. Each event, each scar, was insignificant on its own. Together they told so much about her childhood.
In the bed, her body felt organless. She was filled with something mercurial that hurt. She shrugged in response to Luc’s pleas for explanation. ‘Just clumsy, I guess.’
As Luc traced the line of one small scar, made on purpose with compass point, Laura suspected that no matter how hard she worked, how wholly she gave herself to him, there would be even more wounds. Invisible, dormant, they were already there.
Laura felt Kath’s glare. Thought of unread books, propping up shelves. Years of sandwiches – hundreds and hundreds of neat triangles – that she had prepared for Vik. The way Bruce slumped over dinner in a particularly bad year. Like ripping off a bandaid, Laura thought, and then erased the image of Kath’s letters from her mind.
Whose idea was it to drop out? Laura might have started it as they were exiting the pub, chairs stacked, tables wiped, lights turned up. Another assignment due in the morning that neither one had started.
‘Fucking TAFE,’ Laura said recklessly, lips rubbery with drink. ‘I don’t wanna go.’ She recalled Bruce’s face, the naked hope with which he had sent her off to Sydney.
Then she threaded her arm through the crook of Luc’s elbow. They staggered together up steaming streets. Laura barely noticed where she was walking. With Luc it didn’t matter where she was. She felt the blaze of his gaze, his radiant smile.
‘Let’s leave,’ he said. ‘Fuck it.’
Laura had skolled some UDLs on the way to the pub, to make her money last. Now they burned back up her throat. She suddenly felt sober. ‘What?’ she said. ‘And do what?’
Though she could tell that Luc enjoyed going to class – in fact he was in his element, leading raucous discussions on any topic the teacher named – and though he was clearly capable of completing the work, he never really seemed to get around to doing any of it. He had friends to see and meetings to plan and causes to fight for. Laura had browsed Luc’s diary, like a doctor’s appointment schedule, booked out for weeks in advance. But the real issue was that, like her, he wasn’t really all that interested in getting a Diploma of Agriculture. He disagreed with so much of what they had to teach; it surprised Laura he joined in at all.
‘But isn’t it true,’ Luc had argued the day before, ‘we do that and not only mess up the water table but compromise biodiversity as well?’
The teacher, well used to his interjections, sighed.
Laura saw the gap between the man Luc wanted to be and the man he actually was. It made her feel tender, protective, like the parameters of his true self and his failure to recognise them were a soft, vulnerable underbelly that only she could see. He could talk as much as he liked about getting his hands into soil, but the fact was he just wasn’t interested in doing it, no matter what he told his father. Laura recognised that there would always be another banner to paint, a phone call to take, before he could get started on working outside.
‘We gotta do something that matters,’ Luc emphasised as they walked home. ‘World’s going to shit and we’re meant to sit around … studying!’ He was really striding now; Laura scurried to keep up. His face was glowing, beatific in the humid, pre-dawn light.
‘Hang on …’ she said.
But Luc was off, outlining how they could both work at his parents’ nursery for a few months, save some money, start something up. Greenpeace had to start somewhere too once, didn’t they? Laura had heaps of good, practical skills, Luc said, while he had contacts. It was as though he had thought it through before, but how could he have?
Part of Laura wished she had never brought up the idea. She might have just gone on quietly failing at TAFE, never making waves. But another part of her, a part that had been tightly furled, was cautiously budding. Luc’s ideas for an environmentalist collective, a group of committed activists who would do things differently, find a new model for making change that actually worked was one thing. But Laura had seen the specialist nursery his family owned: all those lush exotic plants, the kinds of ferns and flowers, rare bulbs and seeds requiring controlled temperatures and plenty of water to flourish. She had stepped into the wet heat of the greenhouse and inhaled the fragrant steam. She remembered Kyree summers, the buckets of greywater poured onto straggly plants that hardly survived the season. Plants were something she could be good at, given the chance. She allowed herself to imagine the future Luc proposed.
‘Reckon your parents would hire me?’ she said.
He pressed a kiss into the crown of her head. ‘’Course,’ he said distractedly, rushing on to talk about all the change they could make ‘in the world’ – not just Australia – with the ‘right collective framework’. This was their chance to ‘take action’. Laura hesitated. Luc turned to face her then. He touched her cheek. ‘Are you going to let your old man make all the decisions?’
He might as well have hit her. Shocked, Laura searched for something to say. She hadn’t told Luc much about her situation. She hadn’t needed to.
Whatever happened, she knew that she would have to tell Bruce what she was up to. If anything, she didn’t want him paying her course fees when she was working and sitting around in bars. He might be proud of her new job, she told herself. Glad, even.
A few weeks after leaving the course, Laura stood in the D’Angelis Nursery office, sipping weak Earl Grey. She fingered the bags of seeds she would send to Vik, herbs for her college sill. Maybe Vik was happier. She had Michael, didn’t need Laura fretting, all that sentimental post. Goodness knew, she never wrote Laura back. Called rarely now, breezy, too busy to talk. But Laura couldn’t stop herself. Everything brought Vik to mind. It didn’t matter how long between visits: a lifetime of training, of being Vik’s guardian, made her ever-present. There was a place in Laura’s chest that ached all the time, just consideri
ng the possibility her sister was tired, without enough to eat. Separated by distance, Laura lived with Vik’s ghost.
Look after yourself, she wrote slowly, slipping the note into the parcel. Thinking but not writing, I love you.
Back in Kyree lay the things Luc wanted them to fight against. But she had been willing, an accomplice to the clearing and the farm. It was bad enough she wasn’t going to learn the skills Bruce needed her to learn, bad enough she wasn’t going back. Could she say that those things, her whole life up until now, were wrong?
Laura eyed the phone, touching the smooth grey plastic receiver. It was 2pm. Bruce would be coming in from the sun for a cup of tea. Laura could almost hear the rustle of the paper as he monitored the Trading Post, smell the sweat and manure and earth on his clothes, the chemical lemon-scent of the detergent she used to wash the kitchen floor. Her father would sit with elbows on tabletop. He would look up at her. He would be grateful and surprised by the hot drink she served, though the tea break was routine. He would say, ‘Thanks a tonne, love!’ He would take the chipped mug from her carefully, winking. He would settle back in his chair, flapping the paper to straighten errant pages. He would sigh.
Outside, customers milled between pots in the greenhouse. Laura longed to hear Bruce’s familiar voice. But if she dialled and he answered, what would she say?
When she finally got up the guts to tell Bruce, it happened fast. She didn’t beat around the bush. ‘Hey, Dad,’ she said, as soon as he picked up. ‘I’m sorry. I need to tell you something. I dropped out. The course: I’m not doing it anymore.’
‘Huh,’ Bruce said. There was a short pause, long enough for Laura’s composure to ruffle. She was about to launch into a rehearsed explanation when Bruce cut in. His voice was unexpectedly calm. ‘Well, no harm done, love.’
The longed-for words should have relieved some of the pressure on her chest, her guilt. Laura wanted more than anything to be absolved, but her father’s response, his kindness, just made her feel skittish, as though she had consumed too much coffee. While Bruce patiently listened, Laura babbled on, explaining how the course just wasn’t for her. Bruce made the right noises, reassuring, but there was an edge to his understanding; Laura felt it like a knife. Though he would support her, they both knew he’d done what he could to help her. He would not use the word ‘mistake’ to describe the choices she’d made, but he would not be responsible for them either.
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