After the Darkness

by Brown, Honey

  ‘So, Rebecca, what are you doing over the Easter holidays? Anything exciting?’

  ‘I might come over and visit you – we could do something exciting together.’

  He smiles, crooked teeth on show, top lip curled. Here on the school bus she can more than match his leering smile, always able to go toe to toe with him in a public place where she knows he can’t really do much harm.

  ‘I know you’re toyin with me, Toyer. All talk.’

  Rebecca twists her lips and eyes him. Strange that it doesn’t seem to matter that, when broken down into separate pieces, his features are anything but perfect. Even when put together the picture isn’t great. An illusion really, his handsomeness, a trick of perspective: smoke and mirrors. Something only boys can pull off. Girls need at least one redeeming feature.

  Rebecca says, fed up, bored already with school holidays, thinking she’s perhaps bored of Zach Kincaid, ‘You’re so full of shit. I bet if I touched you, you’d run a mile.’

  ‘You reckon, do you?’

  She mimics his voice, widens her eyes, makes out he’s childish – ‘I reckon.’

  ‘I wouldn’t.’

  He’s looking at her, his gaze going from feature to feature, over her hair, down her neck. He’s avoiding her eyes though, because to look into her eyes would be to confirm too much. She glances around the bus. No-one behind them. Couple of landed gentry swots reading further down in front of them. The kid opposite has got that zombie gaze, eyes fixed ahead, fringe stuck to his damp forehead, not liable to wake from his trance even if they did start making out.

  Zach says, his voice lowered, words thick in his throat, ‘Let’s go up the back.’

  He goes without looking at her, bending for his bag and staying bent, stepping into the aisle and sliding onto the back seat in one fluid movement. He slouches in the shaded corner, averts his face. Rebecca follows, holding onto the steel backs of the seats, tossing her bag in beside his.

  She learns that up close he has a smell all of his own – not the family scent, a softer scent that clings to his skin, in his hair, strongest behind his ear where his hairline meets his neck. She finds out he’s unsure and nervous – his hands shake, he blushes, she can feel the pulse in his neck, his heart is pounding in his chest, and he squirms like a child when she unzips his jeans. He pales and swallows when she touches him. He whispers for her to stop, and she’s bemused – stop? She’s only touching him. But he clasps her hands, pushes them away, says Careful, like she’s handling volatile liquid. He seems to want to put an end to what was only getting started. When she won’t let her hands be brushed away he says, Jesus, Rebecca, and bites his bottom lip.

  It’s as though he can only bear the quickest glances down at what she’s doing. He breathes more heavily than she does.

  She says to him, ‘You’re not going to kiss me, are you? It’s all right for me to kiss you, but there’s no way you’re going to kiss Rebecca Toyer.’

  ‘Shit,’ he mumbles, ‘I don’t know …’

  She tries to kiss him but he tilts his head to avoid it.

  ‘Someone might see us,’ she teases, then asks, ‘Would you kiss me off the bus?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t you think that’s really pathetic? It’s very clichéd, you know – good and bad side of the tracks, the fact that you’ll go to school and tell everyone Toyer sat up and begged for it, had to throw the poor girl a bone. Don’t you think I know that’s what you’ll say? If I was a rich kid like you I wouldn’t be so hung up on what people thought.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘Stop what?’

  He doesn’t answer.

  For a while she looks at him, her hand still down the front of his jeans, the jolts from the dirt road coming up through the chassis, dust and sunlight mixing together in the air.

  ‘My mother told me about boys like you. She said boys like you sleep with the sluts and marry the virgins and then sleep with the sluts again. But then my mother also told me educated women are a waste of space. So I don’t think I should take too much notice of her advice – what do you think? I bet your mother has warned you about girls like me.’

  He’s not listening, his eyes are half shut and his hands are by his sides now. She touches him less self-consciously, curious, the first time she’s let her fingers feel their way over a boy’s erection. She knows he thinks she’s more experienced than she actually is, and in a way that makes her bolder.

  ‘You know what else my mother told me? She said no-one with money will ever want me. And you’ve got money, Kincaid. Aren’t you worried that being near me might whittle away your fat inheritance? Is this one hectare gone?’

  ‘Stop,’ he says, closing his hand around her wrist.

  ‘Wonder what sex would be?’ she whispers in his ear. ‘A whole 100 hectares?’

  He bends forward and shoulders her away. He swears under his breath, his neck and back tense, and a shudder of what seems like revulsion ripples through him. ‘Fuck.’

  Rebecca senses her mistake, thinks perhaps she’ll never get the kiss she wants from Zach Kincaid, never get to know what it’s like to have his hand rest on her knee, or to hold his hand, or to have his arm possessively around her shoulders, so close to at least getting the kiss.

  Years of setting up defensive strategies cause her to say, ‘Got a hanky? Or do you want to borrow mine?’

  ‘Piss off.’

  But as she goes to move he hooks his foot around hers under the seat. He gives her a sheepish grin over his shoulder.

  ‘I would kiss you on the bus, Rebecca.’

  ‘Out the front of school?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  HONEY BROWN, author of Red Queen, The Good Daughter and After the Darkness talks to Carol George of Penguin Books Australia

  What inspired you to write The Good Daughter?

  I was thinking back to when I was at school during the 1980s – a period not much written about – and how sexual harassment and bullying (sexual bullying), was sort of the ‘norm’. After quizzing my daughter, I realised that thankfully, it doesn’t seem to be the case today.

  Back in my day it was pretty normal. We didn’t talk about it much. And I know it seems extreme, but it didn’t upset us because it was so normal.

  Sexual bullying was accepted behaviour?

  Yes, I think so. Girls accepted it and boys thought it was the thing to do. Everyone else was doing it, so …

  Did it have much impact on you?

  No, I don’t think so. I wasn’t that exposed to it, but I saw it happening around me and embellished those experiences in The Good Daughter.

  Were any of your girlfriends given a hard time?

  Yes, they were.

  The Good Daughter is very evocative of small town life.

  Small towns are so interesting – the book’s setting is a bit of Tasmania along with all the small towns I’ve lived in. Tassie seems to have it in particular, all these really rich characters. Small towns have these great, really individual people who inspire you.

  Your book exposes the warm-hearted aspects of small town life along with the more, brutal ones.

  Yes and I love that good and bad, it’s in all my writing. And in my characters, the play of those two elements. Everyone has that in them. And it’s sort of what makes people interesting. And again, it’s what makes the town interesting. It’s not just a goody two-shoes town. It’s this mix and that’s always intriguing.

  Thinking about that, there are the corrupt police, the rich, bullying land owner … in fact most of the men in The Good Daughter are not very nice people.

  I know! I love men and as characters, I adore writing about them so I don’t know why my male characters are often quite hard. But I hope that a softness shines through towards the end.

  As one who grew up in small towns, have you observed a lot of hard men?

  I guess so. I’ve certainly been surrounded by hard men, really rural men. The real man’s man – I seem to have a lot of
them in the family. My husband’s like that.

  Much like your previous book, Red Queen, The Good Daughter has a very unnerving sense of menace about it.

  Yes, I don’t know why that is. Some people say in that first line of Red Queen they get a bit shivery. I don’t set out to do that, it just happens and I wonder if it’s because my writing is minimal. Maybe when you pare back like that it sets people on edge?

  It’s a talent to be able to write like that.

  I think it’s my style. I would really like to be able to write something light and funny but I can’t! It’s my natural way of writing and there’s no way around it.

  Have you ever been menaced?

  Umm, I guess everyone has a little bit in their lives. Perhaps by writing I talk about it. I choose to express myself through novels so I prefer not to talk about all the things that have happened to me.

  So my instinct that something’s happened to you at some point in your life is correct?

  I don’t know … I think lots of things happen to lots of people …

  It doesn’t take much to feel menaced though, does it?

  Especially for a woman. I think a lot of the time men don’t understand that. We go around locking doors and men say, ‘Why are you locking doors?’ I think we feel naturally vulnerable.

  Would you describe The Good Daughter as a thriller?

  No, as an edgy drama. A drama with some really dark elements. It’s just what comes out when I sit down and write. I don’t write to fit any genre.

  Do you read all sorts of books?

  I read right across the board. I try to expose myself to lots of different stuff. I can’t enjoy good trash any more though, like I used to. I used to read a lot of Mills & Boon as a teen. Then later, before I started writing, there was a whole lot of living and working and not much time for reading.

  It wasn’t until I decided to write that I went out and bought all the classics and studied and crammed over a period of 5–7 years. Read everything I could. Did my own training.

  What did you set out to achieve in writing The Good Daughter?

  I wanted to write a good story, something I was proud of and something people could enjoy. I don’t push an issue but as I write, issues crop up. It’s the characters that draw the plot to them. I always know how it’s going to end, but the middle is a bit of a mystery.

  Apart from sexual harassment, small town life and macho men, any other themes in The Good Daughter?

  I also like the idea that the past plays out in the present and the future. As my children grew up, I could hear myself sounding and saying things exactly like my parents. And doing the same things. It’s quite unsettling because these are maybe things you didn’t like in your parents. Even though you love your parents, you didn’t want to turn into them. I love the idea that the past creeps up on you and that you fight against it.

  I also like the way my story shows that isolation in a small town can happen at both ends of the scale. Rebecca’s really poor and she’s isolated because of that but Zac, on the other hand, is really well off and popular but that still pushes him to the fringe. I think that’s why they’re attracted to one another.

  You began writing when you won a short story contest?

  Yes I sent my first book, Red Queen, to an ABC contest for Unpublished Manuscript of the Year, that was around about 2008.

  What made you write Red Queen?

  I started writing a short story about a woman who broke into a rural property and as I really liked the premise, I scrapped the story and turned it into a novel.

  You’ve sold the movie rights to Red Queen?

  Yes, the director and producer have been looking at some of the country around my father’s property in Mansfield and they are thinking of filming it there. There’s even a cabin there they are looking at.

  What prompted you to write the short story?

  I don’t know, just did, I guess. The stories are in my head so I have to get them out.

  No event in your life gave you the space to write?

  I suppose it perhaps started when I was having the children and finished working. And I wonder if my accident sort of fast forwarded me to a place where women usually write, which is probably in their 40s and 50s when they’ve got time.

  We can multi-task but writing is something that if you really want to do well, you have to give everything to it. It’s so distracting to be a writer and a mum and so many other things that women have to be. In a way my accident has perhaps given me the space to concentrate.

  How many children?

  Two, eldest Madison is 13 and Tom is 11.

  I know the accident in which you were crushed by a cow left you paralysed, but I also know that you’ve said these days you and your family are so used to it, you hardly notice it.

  It’s true, it happened back in 2000 and we’ve all adapted to it, which is good, but there’s a tinge of sadness to that too. When it happened I really fought the idea of acceptance. I was stubborn about it. Felt in a way that that would be giving in. It just goes to show the human condition, whether we like it or not, we will adapt.

  But I am pleased that I cope better and that I do feel better about it and am content and happy again. Human nature has pushed me on.

  Is it right you have no movement in your legs but you do in your arms?

  Yes. I’ve got some feeling and movement in my legs but it is minimal. I can walk but I use callipers. I spend the majority of my time in a wheelchair because it is easier to get around.

  It must have been a big shock when you were first told?

  In a way I was never told – the doctors were lovely and always said there was a chance. But I felt it myself the moment it happened. That it was extreme and that you don’t come back from that. I just knew that straight away.

  Your back was broken, wasn’t it?

  Yes, but it wasn’t necessarily that. I just knew, ‘right – this is major.’ I knew everything would be different from then on.

  Was it very painful?

  Extremely, I don’t think about it a lot or talk about it – as a family we never talk about it. It feels strange to be talking about it but it doesn’t upset me, which is good.

  I think it’s the same as childbirth. I don’t remember the pain as such. What I remember is the shock of the pain and absolute disbelief that something could hurt that much and that you could still be conscious. The shock was like, awe-inspiring.

  Was your husband there?

  Yes, he was there with the vet because we were trying to herd this sick cow in and that was the cow that fell on me. Everyone there knew too that it was serious.

  It must have been a terrible experience for your husband too.

  He thought I was dying. He was just standing there waiting for it to happen. They sent a helicopter and it couldn’t land because of the terrain, so an ambulance had to be sent. I’m not fully aware of how much time passed but it must have been quite a while because in that time my husband had rung a friend and he had come. So there was a long period for my husband of just waiting.

  Has he recovered from that emotionally?

  We’ve talked about it from time to time but we don’t really talk about it a lot. I’ve got a feeling that’s normal for families who have these shocking accidents.

  How long have you been together now?

  Ten years.

  Where were you living when the accident happened?

  In Callignee in the Latrobe Valley.

  You’ve moved around lots, lived in many different places together, haven’t you?

  Yes, we travelled around Australia lots and I’m really pleased we did that when we were young.

  You were following the work?

  Yes (laughing), we were following the money. We were broke. That does give it a different slant. I think people think it sounds romantic, but when you’re really travelling to make a buck it’s a whole different thing.

  Yes it’s much tougher and worrying, isn’t it, not knowin
g if you’ll have the rent?

  Yes – and all that arguing. I think people imagine it’s this fun time floating around in the sun, but it’s actually fights and storming around (laughing) …

  Ever go overseas?

  John and I planned to, but I lost all my money in the Pyramid crash. Had the flights booked, we were going and then, bang.

  Your partner is an agricultural worker?

  By trade he’s a diesel mechanic and a fitter and turner. But he worked in a lot of the mines.

  How long have you been settled in the one place?

  Not long (laughing) – been in Warragul nearly 4 years.

  You breed those beautiful black-faced sheep?

  Yes, black-faced Suffolks, we have about 40 breeders. It’s a lifestyle property. My husband works in irrigation as an irrigation technician. Or at least I give it that name (laughing) because I really have no idea what he does.

  Size of your property?

  About 40 hectares … I get confused between acres and hectares.

  Me too, I’ve got the problem with feet and metres too …

  Same here. I’ve accidentally made some people dwarves in my books – thank goodness for my editor.

  A lovely place to live?

  Yes it’s so beautiful here, green rolling hills, that storybook look about it – really picturesque. Trouble is, it looks gorgeous but it takes so much maintaining.

  Where is Warragul?

  About an hour and a half out of Melbourne, just past Pakenham.

  Your name Honey sounds hippy-like, but it was inspired by a billboard near Bairnsdale where you come from originally, wasn’t it?