When there’s nowhere else to Run

by Murray Middleton

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Fudge. I got two different flavours. Jaffa and peppermint.’

  ■

  They followed a damp path that wound through a plantation of conifers and led to an observation tower in the middle of the Botanic Gardens. Les had to stop halfway up the spiral staircase to catch his breath. It was strange for Sylvia watching him hunched over, clutching the rail. He used to go for an evening run three times a week before he set out on this course of self-destruction. She knew it was her fault and that any normal person would have felt guilty; not that a normal person would have driven Les to it in the first place, but she couldn’t help thinking that he was hamming it up.

  At the summit there was a wonderful panoramic view of the township and the tree-lined expanse that spilt towards the Great Dividing Range. But they only got to spend a few minutes admiring it before a young German couple arrived and started taking photographs all around them.

  They made their way cautiously down the staircase and crossed an old railway bridge on the other side of the gardens. Sylvia was sick of being the one to break the silence, so she didn’t. They soon came across a small shopping strip that had a handcrafted furniture gallery, a wine bar, a nursery and an acupuncturist. Even though Sylvia knew it was all nonsense, she no longer felt put off by the idea of a stranger sticking needles all over her back. It was probably the least she deserved.

  ‘Should we go back to school?’ asked Les, smiling like a boy again and pointing at a sign to a secondary school.

  The school was a little further up the road, opposite a chain of modern townhouses. They inspected the grounds and stopped at the football oval, which was on a slope. Sylvia settled on the bottom tier of the portable aluminium seating beside the oval.

  ‘Dave said something funny recently,’ said Les, surveying the pastures in the distance that were tinged with maroon. ‘He said when they were getting evacuated a few summers ago, all the neighbours were running around, loading up their cars with photos and valuables. He said he decided he might as well just drive off. The house and everything in it would either burn or not burn.’

  Les laughed, but not completely. ‘That’s exactly how he said it, burn or not burn. As he was driving back to the city, the thing he kept thinking was, what’s the worst that can happen? As long as he got to keep his life, and got to keep on signing divorce papers, he didn’t feel too fussed about any of it.’

  Les walked over to Sylvia and looked her in the eye. ‘In my good moments now, that’s what I keep trying to remind myself. What’s the worst that can happen?’ he said, taking hold of her hand. ‘I know there are worse things than this.’

  ‘Of course there are,’ she said, feeling relieved that he was finally opening up.

  ‘And if we can just find a way through this, it might start to get a bit easier at some point.’

  ‘Is that what you want?’

  ‘Right now it is,’ said Les, letting go of her hand. ‘But if you’d asked me last night or any time in the last few weeks, you probably would’ve got a different answer.’

  He crouched down and ran his fingers through the brown grass. ‘I don’t know what stops I’d wear if I was playing on here,’ he said. ‘Probably screw-ins, just to be on the safe side.’

  ‘You wouldn’t get a game in your condition.’

  Les’s cheeks started going red, but he smiled. It was heartening to see him smile properly.

  ‘Why don’t you come back over here?’ she said.

  Les stood up and sat next to Sylvia. After a minute or two he leant in and kissed her. She didn’t feel like resisting any longer. She wrapped her hands around his thick, greying hair and pulled him on top of her. He frantically unfastened his belt buckle and started breathing deeply. It was nice to have finally roused some life within him. His cheeks were prickly and his breath was warm and yeasty. She wanted to tell him to soften his groans, but no one else could hear them. Les worked away, just like he had the previous evening on his Angus fillet. He knew what he wanted. It was frightening how much he still wanted it.

  ■

  ‘We have several private treatments available today,’ said the receptionist at the Hepburn Spa.

  She was a young woman, barely twenty. Sylvia wondered whether Les liked her frizzy blond hair, which was tied back in a ponytail. Not that Sylvia had any right to be jealous.

  ‘We’ll just take two normal tickets,’ said Les, looking at the receptionist a little longer than Sylvia thought was necessary.

  ‘Alright, sir. That will give you access to the communal relaxation pool and the spa.’

  ‘Sounds perfect.’ Les removed his wallet from his trouser pocket.

  ‘For an extra forty dollars you can have access to the Sanctuary.’

  ‘The Sanctuary,’ said Les, grinning pathetically. ‘Sounds like a bloody housing estate.’

  The receptionist laughed. She seemed to mean it. ‘It’s an adults-only section of the facility with an aroma steam room and a salt therapy pool.’

  ‘I think we’ll live without it,’ said Les, before leaning over the desk and whispering, ‘but thanks for trying.’

  He sounded ridiculous. Sylvia thought they were beyond playing games. If there really were so many possibilities for him, why was he wasting his time listening to Dirty Three and writing himself off every night? Why didn’t he just make a clean break and groan into the ears of stuck-up twenty-year-olds until his heart was content?

  After changing into her bathers, Sylvia decided that she wouldn’t wait for Les and went straight into the relaxation pool. The water was warmer than she’d expected. She waded towards a feature wall at the far end of the pool and settled against a blue-tiled pillar. Daylight streamed through the large rectangular windows. She stared at her distorted feet on the bottom of the pool. She’d been looking forward to visiting Hepburn Springs for years. Now that she’d arrived—now that her flesh was finally being ‘soothed’ by magnesium—it all felt a bit underwhelming.

  Lead a double life. That’s how the Tourism Victoria ads on TV had tried to sell Daylesford. Could they have possibly come up with a more moronic angle? What Sylvia really wanted was to see the young woman depicted on the ads in five or six months’ time, when she was immersed in all of the things that she’d tried to run away from in the first place.

  Sylvia felt like urinating in the pool. No one would notice. But it was the kind of senseless urge that had got her into trouble in the first place. She still had no idea why she’d acted on it. Sometimes a course of action presented itself and it felt like it made no difference whether she went along with it or whether she put a stop to it. The stupid thing was that if Les knew how insignificant the whole fling with her boss had been, from start to finish, he probably wouldn’t even care about it.

  Les entered the poolside area with a hired towel wrapped around his waist and headed straight for the spa. The hairs on his chest were pasted across his pectoral muscles, which were beginning to lose definition. Sylvia felt like she was watching a stranger. Funny, since those were almost the exact words that Les had levelled at her the night she finally built up the courage to tell him. ‘I feel like I’m talking to a total stranger,’ he’d said. Then he’d stormed out of the house and come back three days later with scotch on his breath.

  Sylvia joined Les in the spa. His eyes were half-closed and his mouth was wide open. She sat against an underwater jet that pulsed against her lower vertebrae, observing an elderly couple sitting on the opposite side of the spa. The skin on their faces looked pale, dry and stretched. No matter how hard she tried, it was impossible to picture herself at their age. She closed her eyes and listened to the popping of the bubbles. When she was on the cusp of dozing off, she felt Les’s hand cup her right breast. He manipulated it rigorously, as though he was a baker kneading a handful of dough, and gave her nipple a pinch. She opened her eyes. He still wasn’t even looking at her.

  She brushed his hand away and he didn’t try it again.

&
nbsp; ■

  Sylvia sat on the back porch, sipping tea and staring at the creamy-pink magnolias that surrounded the wooden decking. She could smell lavender from one of the neighbours’ gardens. It was a cold, overcast morning. Dew blanketed the grass in the backyard. Les was still asleep. They had planned on spending the morning in Ballarat, where one of the local galleries had an exhibition of political cartoons, but she was starting to doubt that it was going to happen. The original Eureka Flag was also on display at the gallery. Les had always loved reading about Lalor, Carboni and the Eureka Stockade.

  He’d stopped reading as well as running, which struck her as a huge shame. It was all about gloomy music now. On previous holidays they’d invented a system of sharing the same book, whereby Les—who was the faster reader—would start the book first, finish the opening chapter, rip out the clump of pages and give them to Sylvia. As he read on, he’d continue to rip out the chapters one at a time. To friends they often joked that a good book wasn’t just a page-turner, it was also a page-ripper.

  Sylvia didn’t want to think about the past anymore, so she turned on the central heating and had a long shower in the downstairs bathroom. The whole house was nice and toasty by the time she’d finished. She stood by the vent in the kitchen, wrapped in a red towel that she’d found in one of the built-in robes. Les had forgotten to pack their towels, even though it was the only thing she’d specifically asked him to remember. A glass was upturned on the floorboards. She picked it up and noticed that the rim was chipped. It was only now that she recollected being briefly awakened by loud rummaging in the kitchen during the night.

  Les emerged at the bottom of the stairs. He rubbed his stubble and groaned.

  ‘Would you like some lunch?’ she asked.

  Les shook his head and shivered. ‘Listen, my head’s throbbing,’ he said croakily. ‘I’m not going to make it to the exhibition.’ He glanced at the red towel and gave Sylvia a look that she found a little histrionic.

  ‘Why don’t we go to the lake instead?’ she said. ‘We could take a walk and browse at the book barn and drink some coffee.’

  ‘No, sorry, I just came down to see if there was any Panadol.’

  ‘Come on, the fresh air might do you good.’

  He glanced at the red towel again. ‘You can go by yourself if you want.’

  ‘I don’t want to go by myself.’

  His body was exuding a strong scent that was becoming far too familiar for her liking.

  ‘The idea is to do things together,’ said Sylvia.

  ‘You’ll have to forgive me. I don’t seem to know the protocol as well as you.’

  ‘There’s no protocol.’

  That was precisely the problem. She felt like an idiot for allowing herself to believe that a weekend in the country could make even the slightest difference.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Les.

  ‘I don’t want you to be sorry.’

  ‘Someone has to be.’

  He studied her exposed collarbones. ‘That suits you.’

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘The red towel, it suits your skin colour.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  They stared at each other. Sylvia visualised Dave saying ‘the dying doctor’ with malevolent glee all over his cheeks. She had to bite down on her cheeks to refrain from laughing.

  ■

  Once Les had retreated to the upstairs bedroom, Sylvia decided to go for a drive. It didn’t matter where. When she turned the key in the ignition, the car stereo burst to life. The volume was almost deafening. She instantly recognised the faux-waltz opening of the fourth track from Horse Stories. The clamorous rhythm of the snare steadily increased as she joined a courteous stream of traffic on the outskirts of town. She didn’t know half as much as Les about drums, but she felt certain that the snare was deliberately out of tune. She turned left without indicating at a roundabout on the main street and pressed her bare foot on the accelerator.

  She soon found herself hurtling along a bumpy road in the foothills of town. Each snare roll, each surge in feedback, each jarring excretion from the violin, compelled her to press her foot harder on the accelerator. It was more fun than staring at cartoons. She tried to induce her limbs to act of their own volition, determining the speed at which the Forester took each corner without allowing her mind to interfere with the outcome.

  The vehicle veered onto the wrong side of the road as it approached a sharp corner. Sylvia clutched the steering wheel and plunged her foot down, desperate to find the brake. The tyres screeched. Or was it the violin? It now sounded like a horse was being tortured to death. The vehicle swivelled. The road and the landscape blurred. Everything felt weightless. But before the end could come, the tyres regained traction. She pulled onto the tall grass at the side of the road and shakily cut the engine.

  She got out of the car and was surprised by how unsteady she felt on her feet when she tried to walk. The stench of burning rubber was sickening. She had to stop and lean against a sheltered partition to regain her breath. Once she’d finished gasping, she realised that the partition was actually an unattended roadside stall. Several tubs of honey were lined up on a wooden bench. She felt compelled to take one, even though she didn’t have her purse handy. There didn’t seem to be a camera anywhere. What did it matter even if someone did see her? Lead a double life, wasn’t that the slogan?

  ■

  A pamphlet had been left under the front door, advertising a three-day convention in Bendigo the following month. The convention was going to include a full costume Bible drama and an audio demonstration of a Bible account, whatever that meant. Sylvia toyed with the notion of setting the pamphlet alight, but instead opted to put it in the recycling bin.

  Les was sitting at the dining table in front of four empty clip-top bottles, eating fudge. He was clean-shaven. ‘What’s that?’ he asked calmly, eyeing the tub of honey in her hand.

  ‘I got it for Dave, to say thank you.’

  ‘Great idea,’ he said, biting into the fudge and chewing with his mouth open. ‘He always liked you.’

  Sylvia didn’t know what to say in response. The words sounded so finite.

  ‘Are you still keen for a walk?’ asked Les.

  ‘Of course.’

  They both put on padded Gore-Tex jackets and grabbed two empty bottles. The air had a country chill to it. They descended a steep hill and followed a gravel road that was lined with brush. Les found an opening along the fence line of a nearby property. A muddy path led towards two rotting pallets and a mineral spring in front of a dilapidated miner’s cottage.

  Les positioned one of the glass bottles underneath the spring, which had been repaired with electrical tape and cable ties. When the bottle was full, he handed it to Sylvia. He filled the remaining bottles and they started walking back up the hill towards the house. He was moving faster than usual and it was a strain to keep up.

  ‘What did it feel like?’ asked Les suddenly, keeping his eyes glued to the road. ‘I mean, during it, what did it actually feel like?’

  ‘Do you really want me to answer that?’

  ‘It’s fine, it doesn’t matter now.’ He exhaled sharply, producing a small white cloud. ‘I’ve obviously thought about it too, you know. There was a woman at the office a few years ago, she was only a temp, but there were times I thought the whole balance of my day was in her eyes.’

  He looked intently at Sylvia before wiping his brow and returning his gaze to the road. ‘Anyway, nothing ever happened. But I thought about it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The problem was, I couldn’t imagine actually going through with it without breaking down into tears. That’s what I don’t understand. How did you manage to do it without crying?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Sylvia. She’d never thought of it like that, but she would’ve preferred it if she’d been able to cry at some point.

  ‘It felt like nothing,’ she found herself saying. ‘I don’t know if that’s what you want to hear or
not, but it’s true. It all just felt like nothing.’

  ‘But there must have been something about him that you were attracted to.’

  ‘No, really, there wasn’t.’

  ‘Then why do it?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know,’ she said, suddenly feeling the full weight of the glass bottles. ‘It was just a stupid, senseless thing to do. Once we started, or once I started, there was no point stopping. If there was ever something I wanted out of it, rest assured, I certainly didn’t get it.’

  They walked a little further up the hill, past a rectangular pink house that looked like a life-size doll’s house. Next to the pink house was an enormous timber structure with a portable toilet out the front.

  ‘Do you remember that time outside the Louvre?’ she asked, trying to suck as much oxygen into her lungs as she could. ‘When we got stuck in the snow.’

  ‘Of course, I was freezing my balls off.’

  ‘We were in love then, weren’t we?’

  ‘Yes we were, or I was anyway.’

  ‘I was too,’ she said. ‘You know that.’

  They kept on walking. A low mist enveloped the cypresses near the summit of the Botanic Gardens. Sylvia’s arms felt so heavy that she thought they might drop off.

  ‘I’m not coming to the South Korean film,’ said Les.

  THE GREATEST SHOWBAG ON EARTH

  Josh starts nagging us to walk faster the second we get through the turnstiles. He doesn’t know what it means to work on your feet five days a week, just to blow half a day of wages on admission. He wants to go straight to the showbag pavilion, probably because he’s never had to deal with the throng of sweaty outer-suburban bodies himself. Like most unpleasant things in this world, that’s my job.

  ‘If we buy the showbags now,’ I explain, putting on the stern paternal voice that I hardly believe in anymore myself, ‘we’ll have to carry them around with us all day and the chocolate will melt in the sun.’

  ‘No it won’t,’ he fires back. ‘I’ll just eat it now.’

  ‘It’ll make you sick.’