by Steven Lang
‘Never mind the flak you got for it,’ Illchild was saying, ‘it warmed my heart to hear someone say something honest on television.’
‘A rare thing from politicians of any stripe,’ Barkham said.
‘I’m not a politician,’ Lamprey said.
‘Yet,’ Barkham said.
‘Indeed,’ Illchild agreed.
‘I do wonder who you’ve been talking to,’ Lamprey said. ‘But you, Nick, we’re leaving you out.’
‘I was actually thinking I ought to be going.’
‘So soon? I was going to get you to listen to the sound system, wasn’t I?’
‘I don’t want to break anything up but it’s been a long day. I’ve an early start in the morning.’
Nina emerging from the kitchen at this exact moment, pulling on a coat. Lamprey held up his hand to the men around him.
‘You all done, Nina? Shall we call you a cab?’
‘Thanks Mr Lamprey. I’d like that.’
‘I could give you a lift,’ Nick said. ‘I was just leaving. Where are you going?’
‘Nonsense, Nick,’ Lamprey said. ‘I’ll call Nina a cab. I was going to play you some music.’
‘I really must go,’ Nick said. ‘I’m sorry. Do you mind if we do it another time?’
Dark-haired, dark-eyed Nina beside him in the car, lit by the glow of the dash lights. The road following one of the ridges back towards town, sleeping houses on either side, hidden behind some of the yet-to-be-felled trees. His tiredness mysteriously evaporating.
She lived in one of the new townhouses down behind the shops, not far from the hospital. Ran her own catering business from there. ‘Gave up working for others years ago,’ she said. ‘It never works out. Do you want to come in?’
It felt like a long time since Greloed had gone her own way.
She offered him a nightcap, bourbon. Took out two glasses and placed them on the kitchen bench, added a splash of the brown liquid, viscous against the ice, clinked hers against his, looking at him over the rim as she took a mouthful, leant across to kiss him, her lips at once cold and sweet and fiery against his own.
Nothing to say. Her body neat and firm beneath his hands. Wanting to take it slow but responding to what seemed to be her need to have it happen right there, right then, clothes still half on, perhaps they were winding each other up, each responding to what they imagined the other wanted, to some play of what passion should be like, who knows, but within moments she was up on the bench, her legs wrapped around him, his hands somewhere up inside her clothes, and then he was in, just like that, she holding his face in both her hands while she kissed him, breaking the seal of their mouths to catch a breath.
‘Woah, boy,’ she said, as if talking to a horse or a dog, panting, her hands on his shoulders, laughing at the corniness of her own language, a deep, easeful laugh which made him laugh too, bringing with it a great wash of relief, a flood of emotion that carried with it all the flotsam of this last year so that he was, for a moment, all but unmanned, slipping out of her.
‘I didn’t say stop,’ she said, grabbing hold.
‘I’m not going to,’ he said. ‘But let’s get these clothes off.’
Undoing her shirt, her bra, cupping lovely small breasts in his hands.
‘We could try the bed,’ she said, leading him there, a woman who looked even better naked than dressed, this surprisingly feminine body joining with his, expressing a wonderful natural joy in the sheer physicality of it all, a woman whose name he barely knew, who he’d seen for the first time but a few hours before.
It was only when they were done, when she was in the shower that he could cast his eye over the ersatz pictures on the wall (a jetty running out into a quiet lake; a Buddha in the mist), the curious collection of stuffed toys on the dresser, the absence of books and the presence of, for fuck’s sake, a cat, who’d only then come in to see what the fuss was about. The thing with Greloed was that he hadn’t even really liked her when they got together. That’s to say he was attracted to her physically but not to who she was. It had happened because of the closeness of their work and the remoteness of their location, because of propinquity, she a Swedish nurse on secondment to Australia, he a doctor on the run from several different cages of his own devising, and it hadn’t been meant to mean anything, shouldn’t have meant anything, she wasn’t even his type, slightly plump and strangely adolescent when her clothes were off, with the small high breasts of a renaissance painting and shaved parts, as if her adult body hadn’t quite formed though she was almost thirty, practising what she liked to call emergency sex, because, she said, its intensity wasn’t just a response to the meeting of their bodies but also to the circumstances in which they found themselves. Putting sentences together with a foreigner’s exactness. Strange name. Difficult to get his tongue around, hardly the sort to inspire dreams and yet that’s what happens, skin rubs against skin enough times and even names as outlandish as hers take on resonance.
He thinks, in retrospect, that she was just trying him on. An unusual notion, but why it should be different for women than men he couldn’t say. A study in The Lancet suggested the contraceptive pill alters pheromones such that women give out false messages about who they are, to both men and themselves. He’d been out there, in the north-west, amongst the red soil and ghost gums, the tall bluffs and wide grasslands, thinking he was found, having meaningful interactions with this woman, the landscape, the people, but in fact he’d been as lost as ever, dropping into an infatuation with the wrong person, going out together in the Toyota to get away from the doof music of the settlements, parking for privacy at the end of long sandy tracks where old machines lay half-submerged on riverbanks like harbingers of another age. Crocodiles in the water. Bound to end in tears. His, as it happened. Trapped in another fantasy of his own making. And she, having tried him on, went her own way, taking her energetic little party-self off to some other poor fool on the other side of the world without a thought, without realising how much he had invested in the idea of her. Which was the thing, he no longer seemed to be able to just have sex. Perhaps it was something to do with age but these days this immersion in another seemed to quickly develop ties that bound. Too quickly. Now there he was, in another woman’s room, another woman with whom it was probably fair to say he shouldn’t be sharing deeply intimate moments, feeling strangely as if in doing what he’d done he’d betrayed the nurse, Eugenie, although clearly that was ridiculous, but evidence, if more was needed, that the process of weaving a fantasy about her had already gone too far.
Nina came out of the bathroom, naked, drying herself with a towel, stopped for a moment in the doorway for him to notice her, to see the water still caught in droplets on her skin, to see her breasts, her dark bush, holding the moment before coming to lay herself on her belly, her face next to his.
‘I was thinking I should go,’ he said, saying it because it was what he thought and because he felt certain she wouldn’t be troubled by it, but seeing in her eyes that he was wrong.
‘If you want to,’ she said, running the tip of her finger along his thigh. ‘But me, I thought we were just getting started.’
six
Eugenie
She drove over to see Lindl in the late morning, free for a moment from children, work and husband, following the curves of the Elmhurst Road in summer sunshine, the fields radiant after rain, farm dams full, fat cattle grazing. Taking the turn into the long tree-lined driveway for Roselea, the two strips of concrete for the wheels requiring concentration or perhaps just faith, pulling her into focus so that when she came back out into the sunshine at the bottom, pausing on the causeway where the dark water pooled against the concrete, it felt, as it often did, as if she had entered another world.
The house, an old Queenslander, was perched on the opposite slope, in an almost perfect position, granted a view down the valley to the sweep of the creek and its dark corridor of forest. Verandas on the north and west and a set of wide steps at the fr
ont where a friend might sit with the owners in the evening, drinking wine. Sheds on the left, shaded by a single large Moreton Bay, old bales down to the right, the usual detritus of a working farm scattered about, a water tank on its side, irrigation pipe rolled against a fence. Parking next to Marcus’s car. Not a sound except the chooks scratching in the dirt, a currawong calling from down by the creek.
She went up the steps, poked her head in the open door, calling into the dim high-ceilinged hall, always surprised by the sophistication of the interior, the polished wood floors, the antique tallboy, the stillness outside mirrored, but also enhanced, within.
Marcus appeared in shorts and an old t-shirt, grey-bearded, barefoot, smiling broadly, giving her a kiss on one cheek and then, awkwardly, the other. ‘Comme les français.’ The accent not so good. Apparently pleased to see her although you’d never really know; of British extraction, politeness before all else.
‘You’re here for lunch? Lindl’s about somewhere.’ Singing out her name, listening for a response. ‘She might still be down the paddock,’ he said, going out onto the veranda. ‘Yes, there she is, over near the gully. Are you all right to go down by yourself? Take the path to the left of the bales. Tell her not to be late.’
Lindl, seeing her coming across the paddock, stood from where she was doing something at the base of a small tree, took off her hat and wiped her forehead with her sleeve, waved. ‘Is it that time already?’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m daydreaming.’
A woman in her fifties with grey hair that she wore long because she could afford to, because she’d managed to retain her presence, carrying a bit of weight on her hips, nothing to complain about, just that it showed in the work clothes, khaki pants and shirt, broad straw hat, dressed as if on staff at the zoo, or maybe the national parks, trousers dirty around the knees, sleeves buttoned at the wrists against the sun.
‘I thought we might go for a walk before we eat,’ she said. ‘What d’you think?’
They met because of the dam. Eugenie had gone to a local forum organised by the State government to spruik the proposal, their token gesture towards community consultation. She’d been directed to sit at a table with five others, one of whom had been Lindl. It was only later she discovered her immediate connection to the proposed site. When the meeting was over they went for coffee. That most surprising and unexpected thing, a new friendship, blossoming; a little mutual admiration club between an older and a younger woman that neither wanted to analyse too closely lest it disappear. There being so much to admire in Lindl, someone utterly different from everyone she knew: an artist who had been wild in her youth, a reader of books, someone who wanted to talk about politics, music and film. Like an emissary from another time.
‘So, tell me, how are the girls, how’s David?’ Lindl asked.
‘He’s gone again.’
‘And?’
‘It wasn’t so good. Not that it ever is these days.’
The sun very bright out in the paddock in the middle of the day, wishing she’d brought a hat.
‘How come?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, he thinks he needs to be some sort of policeman. Always lecturing the girls: Homework before screens. Sit up at the table. Don’t speak to your mother like that. Not just the girls. As if things get slack when he’s not around. Everyone’s relieved when he goes. Which is awful.’
‘And you? Are you relieved?’
‘He’s so stuck in his ways.’ Regretting the criticism of her husband as soon as she’s made it, rushing to qualify. ‘He’s no happier than I am. Working in that awful place. He never rings when he’s away. It’s only me who calls him when I need to. If someone wants something.’
She’d been hoping to talk to Lindl about the curious way she’s felt this last week – at once released and groundless, subject to the whim of dangerous forces, strange currents – but they have gone too deep too soon. Out there in the paddock the light was too harsh for that level of engagement and, anyway, though her friend had asked the questions, she hardly seemed to be listening to the answers.
‘We’ll go down this way,’ Lindl said, leading Eugenie over to the fence and through a small gate, into a gully that ran up and away from the main creek. Orange tree guards dotting the slopes, some protecting plants already a metre high. Recently slashed grass lying cross-hatched between them, filling the declivity with its scent.
‘This is where we’ve been concentrating our energies,’ Lindl said, crossing over, water welling up between the sheaves of cut grass at each step. As she passed one of the taller trees she grasped a bunch of leaves, pulling on them, letting them run through her fingers in the way another might handle a much-loved dog, giving its fur an affectionate tug. ‘We’re trying to create a corridor to connect the forest along the creek with the trees on top of the hill.’
‘I didn’t know you were still planting,’ Eugenie said.
‘We never stop. Well, I guess we might, one day, but at the moment there’s so much more to do.’
‘What about the dam?’
‘What about it? If it goes ahead we lose it all. If it doesn’t then it’ll grow. I’m not about to stop because of those arseholes.’
A thick strand of Lindl’s hair escaping from beneath her hat. Those startlingly clear eyes, blue-grey, holding her for a moment, as if to make sure Eugenie understood. Although what, she wasn’t certain, dazed as much by the breadth of the undertaking as by the heat. Only the first section of the gully planted. Weeds inhabiting the space beyond: lantana and privet, a single camphor laurel halfway up. Mountains of work.
Lindl picked her way over to another gate, pausing to reach inside a tree guard to pull out a cobbler’s peg. Eugenie following, grateful when they passed into the cool of the forest proper, trees planted by Lindl and Marcus twenty years before, indistinguishable, now, from the real thing. A mown path leading down towards the creek.
‘I guess I’m just surprised,’ Eugenie said, ‘You know, I’ve not said anything about it. I figured it was your business … but you haven’t been much involved recently. In the campaign.’
There is a committee. The hundreds in the region who oppose the dam reduced to the eight or ten who feel strongly enough to do anything about it. Which is, she guessed, the lesson: there’s no, or little, competition for political work, at least until you get to the higher echelons.
‘I can’t do it anymore,’ Lindl said.
Eugenie waited but Lindl offered no further explanation. She’d been right at the centre of things in the beginning but now, whenever the meetings were at Roselea, Lindl spent the time pottering in the kitchen, making delicacies for the others, hovering around the fringes, her place at the table on the wide veranda empty.
The larger trees had formed a canopy over the stream, shading the water that was flowing freely after the rain, dark and clean, falling over black rock, running between ferns and clumps of long spiky grass. Just being in this place transformed her mood. Extraordinary that someone might create such a thing, or cause it to come into being. They sat near a small rapid, the sounds washing over them; the movement of water; the grumpy-old-man’s-call of a pair of wompoo pigeons in the treetops.
Lindl breaking their silence to point to the other side of the pool where a black plastic box had been attached to the trunk of a palm, incongruous now that Eugenie saw it. ‘One of Geoff’s monitoring boxes,’ she said. ‘He’s got three of them along here. Recording frog calls at night.’
Geoff was in his late seventies, a biologist, retired now to Winderran, as astute as ever, but with a weakness for over-elaborate dissertations on obscure topics during committee meetings. He didn’t trust the Water Board’s survey results and wanted to test them himself.
‘All very important I know,’ Lindl said, ‘But frogs have never really been my thing. I mean it all connects of course, but it’s the birds that interest me.’ She held up her hand. ‘You hear that noise? That’s spangled drongos. They were late coming this year. They migrate fro
m Papua New Guinea in the spring. All that way. Little birds. I thought maybe something had happened to them. You never know. Land clearing or fires, some fundamental shift in the climate. It’s all so fragile. I don’t think we know what we’re doing most of the time, you know? I just hope so much that we don’t fuck it up. I’m not sure I’d want to live in a world without spangled drongos.’
Eugenie unclear as to who the we was in this, taking it as people in general. Embarrassed because she didn’t even know what these birds looked like. Despite her ever more central role in the NoDam campaign the environment remained a somewhat abstract concept. The landscape and its inhabitants not really being her motivating force, which was, surely, more to do with her affection for Lindl than anything else, but connected also, she supposed, to the kind of person her grandparents had made of her, someone who, once engaged, had to see things through, who derived a certain satisfaction from the process itself, no matter the cause; the kind who can’t let go; who rewrites the submission a tenth time even though its recipient will only be a nameless bureaucrat; who reads all the literature on the economic and social costs of damming rivers; who makes the phone calls, hands out the leaflets.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Lindl said, as if there had been no break from the conversation they’d had out in the sun. ‘I’m so glad you’re fighting. I can’t tell you. But it’s just not possible for me. I’m so pleased, too, that you’re doing the talking now, that you’ve taken over the public stuff.’
‘I didn’t think Marcus was so happy about that,’ Eugenie said.
‘He wasn’t, but he’s better now. He’s not a public speaker. He’s not a politician.’
For all that he was a university lecturer Marcus was a hopeless communicator. Like Geoff, he tended towards long-winded commentary, losing everyone. Excruciating to watch with a microphone. No concept of the sound bite.
‘Neither am I.’
‘Yes but that’s one of your strengths. You’ve got vitality, you’re articulate. People like looking at you. And that’s crucial, almost as important as the message, even though it shouldn’t be. Marcus wasn’t cutting it. Even I could see that. I didn’t like him being out there anyway. Not that I like you being exposed either,’ she added. ‘But, I don’t know … you don’t seem like such a target.’
