Hinterland

by Steven Lang

  ‘What involvement is that?’

  ‘What do you mean, what involvement? My involvement.’

  ‘Which is?’

  Dawning on her. ‘You don’t know?’

  Extraordinary that he could be so ignorant of her role; that it might be possible for someone she’d been having sex with not to know the dam had been the central thing in her life for the last year. But then they’d never spoken of it. Their conversations, such as they’d been, had centred around how they came to be where they were, not their daily lives. As if there’d been a ban on the discussion of normal things. He was, of course, a doctor. It’s not that they’re not smart, just focused on their work to the point of autism.

  Reason enough, if she needed one, to avoid him.

  ‘Get Joy to tell you,’ she said.

  ‘I will. But, listen, I can take a break for a while at midday. Come around to the surgery. I’ll tell you about it then.’

  ‘Tell me now.’

  ‘I’d like to see you face to face.’

  ‘I need to know what this girl told you,’ she said, claiming an authority he didn’t recognise.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But, equally, I need to see you. I haven’t heard from you since you texted to say you were coming round.’ Declining to repeat the content of the message, for which she was grateful. ‘All I’ve had is one cryptic text. Now, here you are again, because, apparently, you want something.’

  ‘This is not a game,’ she said.

  ‘No, probably not. But I can’t talk about it now anyway. I’ve a patient in just a second. Meet me at twelve. Pick me up outside the surgery in your car if it’s important not to be seen with me. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, because it was too difficult to say anything else, because so many permutations were slithering over and around each other in her tiny brain; the ramifications of seeing him, of not seeing him; the fact of the girl and what that might mean; whether or not his last comment should be construed as sarcasm or sensitivity. That, with just the sound of his voice, she was quivering, light-headed.

  No time to deal with the washing in the machine. Only a few moments to shower, change out of her cleaning clothes into a blouse and a pair of long pants, something modest, to run a comb through her ridiculous hair, a bit of eyeliner and a touch of lippy and then into the car. Leela standing by the door wagging her tail and panting, incredulous that, having been used for support, she was to be left behind when the fun stuff happened. Up the dirt and onto the tar, left onto the main road, not letting thought interfere with what she could not deny was a sense of optimism, I need to see you. Rushing to him, under the assumption that if she was going to go she may as well go now. As if all this stuff that had been sitting beneath the surface these last days, squashed down, was tumbling out every which way, no delicacy to suppression, as they say, let one bit go and out it all comes. Pulling up on the street near the hospital, not so far from where she’d been the evening she saw him at the window. Turning on the radio but getting the midday news, a catalogue of dismay. Turning it off again, pushing her fingers through her hair, looking around to check if anybody was about and catching a glimpse, instead, of Nick, coming down the little concrete path, a slim neat concise man who she’s made into something else in her mind.

  Strapping himself in, saying, ‘Where are we going, then?’

  Another of the things she hadn’t considered. She turned on the engine, headed back out of town. Not to her house, clearly. Somewhere else. Nick beside her in the car. Broaching the smaller things first.

  ‘Do you really not know about me and the dam?’

  ‘I asked Joy about it, as you suggested. On the way out. She told me a little. The briefest amount. You’re really up there in it, aren’t you?’

  Letting that ride. ‘So you’re not some sort of spy for that arsehole Lamprey?’

  ‘Gosh,’ he said. ‘What made you think that?’

  ‘I didn’t, not really. But he’s a friend of yours, isn’t he? He could have been using you without your even knowing.’

  ‘I have been to his house for dinner,’ he said. ‘That’s true. His wife is my patient. She’s very ill. Dying if the truth be told. Don’t say I said that. But I don’t know him at all well. I don’t get to socialise much. I don’t really pay a lot of attention to what’s going on. Perhaps that’s obvious. What makes him an arsehole?’

  Where to begin?

  Forget about Lamprey, she may as well go through with it now that she’d started.

  ‘But you are …’

  How might she put this? Fucking, sleeping with, having sex with?

  ‘You are in a relationship with someone else?’

  ‘No. I did have a loose arrangement with someone.’

  ‘Until when?’

  ‘The other night. When you said you were coming round. But didn’t.’

  ‘I did. I saw you at your kitchen window with a woman.’

  Turning off onto the Elmhurst Road as if the car had only one route programmed into it. Taking the track up to the top of the hill above the quarry as a way to avoid that eventuality. Unlikely anyone would be there on a weekday at lunchtime. The best she could do. Stopping next to the little pavilion with its bleak tin roof and scarred picnic table. Very pleased to turn off the car, shaking with the tension. Neither of them interested in the three-sixty-degree view. Nick looking at some aspect of the dashboard while he told her about Nina.

  ‘Did you have sex with her that night?’

  He laughed. ‘Do you have any right to ask that?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. But I just did.’

  ‘Well, in that spirit, I guess, yes, I did. If it makes any difference I didn’t intend to. I’d asked her around to say I couldn’t see her anymore because I was seeing someone else. Break-up sex, I think, is the technical term.’

  Saying it brazenly, as if it was, if not perfectly okay, at least reasonable, which, she guessed, on some level, it was. She was married. She’d never asked him what his status was any more than he’d asked her about the work she was doing with the dam. Or if she slept with David, which, for the record she didn’t, or not often. She couldn’t remember the last time. She knew Nina, vaguely. Not someone she’d ever have thought herself in competition with. Too much make-up; tight clothes.

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you. I’m more than sorry. I’m devastated.’

  She looked out the window at the view. Retreated, for a moment, to some quieter place where the noise of feeling that had been welling inside her since Joy had said his name could no longer be heard. Moreton Island out along the horizon, an attenuated stretch of low hills, bright sand dunes torn out of its forested banks, yellow, green, blue. The air sharply clear after the rain. Trying desperately to catch a breath, which is what her fucking father was always telling her to do. Just breathe. As if anyone had any choice.

  ‘I’m infatuated with you,’ he said. ‘I can’t think about anything else.’

  Doing her best to ignore that. ‘Tell me about this girl,’ she said.

  The story he told her about Ange coming in to the surgery giving her a measure of space to deal with her feelings. Or perhaps not, perhaps the story was part of the feelings, that it wasn’t just that if he touched her she would have been lost, been anyone’s, there, deliquescing in the car on the top of the world, but that the story made that okay, was part of them being together.

  ‘You could talk to her yourself,’ he said. ‘I could call her. I’m her doctor. I could say there’s someone who wants to talk to her.’

  ‘Could you? I mean right now, here?’

  ‘Yes. When I saw how important this was I put her number in my phone.’ Hesitating. ‘There’s something more.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well I’m not sure how safe this all is.’

  Telling her, then, what he’d somehow never managed to get around to mentioning. About driving up to Spring Creek camp to get Cooper and about the man he’d met there with the tattoos on his arms, th
e ex-soldier, who’d scared the shit out of him and was somehow tied up with this new threat; the explanation Cooper had given him about the nature of the training camp. The weight of the things Nick was saying – the hint of a larger world operating entirely independently of her and yet having influence in profound and fateful ways – enhancing the sense of being on the cusp of some important revelation, although, again, this could be no more than her hormones, activated by being with this man in the confined space of her car such that it was all but impossible not to touch him. Watching as he dug out his phone and started pressing buttons, swiping through screens, all the tedious technological wizardry that everyone takes for granted. Putting her hand on his on the phone before he could press the green one to dial, bringing his eyes away from the device and onto her, bringing him up against her, this brief tentative touch of his lips, a flutter of trepidation and desire, hers and his, breath mingling, pushing her fingers up into his hair and pulling him towards her, his mouth against hers, not letting him go now that she has him, his hands on her shoulders, inside her blouse, stopping kissing him so she can see what he’s doing, watching him undo the buttons so he doesn’t tear the cloth which is practical but really she couldn’t care less. What was it she said before about the lack of delicacy in suppression? This is what she’s been keeping down, or at least part of it, holding a lid on so effectively that she didn’t even know she was doing it, maybe David was right about her frigidity, not in a sexual sense but in the way that she seemed to have an ability, sometimes, to cut herself off from things so essential to her true nature, although not anymore, not now in the car, watching him fumble with the buttons, taking over from him, leaning forward to put her arms behind her back to unclip her bra so that there she is, exposed, and there he is, kissing her naked breasts in the narrow space between her and the steering wheel and she’s electric in the heat of the car, called by the deepest yearning, cursing herself for the stupidity of her modesty which means now she has to wrestle with jeans, to push them off so that she can climb across gear lever and handbrake, to get on top of him in the passenger seat, get him inside her in a car at midday at the lookout on top of the world, holding onto the handle above the door with one hand, the back of the driver’s seat with the other, her knee jammed into the armrest, not caring a rat’s if anyone comes, the only thing that matters now is him, in her, here, now, this must be what passion is like, this must be what they’ve been singing about all these years, that she’s never known but knows now, needs to know and be known by. Pushing her hips down to meet him as he rises to her, saying his name aloud as her climax starts, catching her by surprise, that it might happen in a place like this, at a time like this, but more, that what she’s feeling can, in fact, increase, that there are still more places to go. Opening her eyes and seeing him there below her, looking down at him looking up wide-eyed at her, and it being all right to be seen like that because he’s right there too, no doubt about it, right there with her, going at it stroke for stroke, lunge for lunge, everything concentrated in his and her eyes, his cock and her cunt, everything, the whole fucking world laid out beneath them as she comes in the passenger seat of a Subaru with a man she barely knows but with whom she breathes the very same fucking air.

  Across the road from the hospital the Council had constructed a little park with a small rotunda at its centre, the kind of thing more often found in the suburban parks of her childhood, left over from the time when brass bands played on Sunday afternoons. Doubtful that anyone had ever blown a note beneath its roof. This is where she has arranged to meet the girl, Ange, who’d said, on the phone, speaking in a broad accent, slow syllables, that she was still in town, ‘Waiting for the pills to take effect, hey.’

  Eugenie hadn’t connected her to the woman who’d been swimming naked with the gormless man in the creek below Roselea, didn’t even recognise her at first, coming towards her wearing a wrap-around top and a short denim skirt, her dreads tied back in a ponytail, giving emphasis to thick eyebrows and dark eyes. Dusty feet in sandals. Looking around as if to check nobody was in the bushes. Something a little cute about her, one of those small neat women who walk from the waist down, straight-backed, like a Scottish country dancer. A leather bag over her shoulder and a bottle in a brown paper bag in her hand, the paper pushed back from the top, like a wino, except it was cranberry juice, not port. A decade ago, so as to have something to do with her hands, she’d have lit a cigarette; instead she took a sip from the bottle.

  ‘You were down the creek, hey?’ Ange said. ‘With that other woman, you know, the one who plants the trees. I don’t mind talking to you.’ When she’d been speaking to her on the phone, an unknown quantity, Ange had been scared the doctor had told the police.

  Eugenie dressed again in her blouse, jeans and up-market sandals, her hair straightened as much as it ever could be, the man she’d just had sex with in her car now back over the road in his surgery with some patient or other while she was here as if nothing had happened. Except of course it had, she was redolent with it, it must be obvious to anyone who cared to look, which was maybe the case because Ange said, straight out, ‘So, you and the doctor, hey, you’re a thing?’

  Perhaps she could smell the sex on her.

  ‘No, of course not.’ Denying him already.

  ‘It’s okay. I don’t mind.’

  ‘You’re living out at the camp then?’ Eugenie said.

  ‘Was.’

  ‘I thought … when we met you by the river …’

  ‘Nah, couldn’t hack it out there. Too rigid, you know? The place’s run like an army camp, everybody has their jobs, like on a roster. You can’t scratch yourself without getting up someone’s nose. Can’t say what you think. Has to be on message. I’m, like, a free spirit, you know? You can’t tell me what to do. I’m staying with Will for a while. Not that it’s much better there.’

  ‘You want to sit?’ Eugenie said, gesturing to the steps. Not sure of how one did this sort of thing. Settling on the top step, looking out across the grass to the trees on the bottom side of the park, the roofs of the houses that lead down into the town beyond. Ange resting against the newel across the way.

  ‘Is Will the one who’s going to do something to the creek?’

  ‘Well … not him so much. I figure it’s one of Jaz’s things, but Will’s part of it.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you’d want to tell me this. Isn’t Will your boyfriend?’

  ‘Yeah, see, that’s the thing. I don’t know if you’d call him my boyfriend. I mean we’re, like, close. But I’m not sure it’s serious. I met him over at the camp and, you know, one thing led to another and now I’m over there at his house, which isn’t his, it’s actually Jaz’s and I’m not, like, so keen on him.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘You don’t know where you are with him. He’s ex-SAS or some shit and he’s got religion. Happy-clappy shit. Not a good mix, you know?’

  ‘I don’t, but okay.’

  ‘I don’t reckon he’s any good for Will.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, he’s a randy bugger, for a start.’

  ‘He made a pass at you?’

  ‘He’d have me if he could, never mind Will. Had his hand up my skirt in the kitchen. I mean, right up. While Will’s in the next room.’ Telling Eugenie this in defence of her morals or of Will, except her outrage rang false, as if she was boasting about it at the same time, letting the world know that men can’t resist her. Sitting there with her denim skirt riding up so there’s an awful lot of olive-skinned leg on display. Eugenie’s response confused by thoughts of Nina, which had to be so much crap after what just happened with Nick, it was just some deep ingrained feminine anxiety bubbling up, making any other woman a threat when she’s found a man of value. Although you’d have to say Nick’s history didn’t help.

  ‘Did you tell Will?’

  ‘Hey, I like Will too much for that. He loves this guy. Worships him. That’s why I think he’s bad
for him. Will’d do anything for him. He doesn’t see that sort of shit, he’s like innocent.’

  ‘And this is why you want to tell me about it?’

  ‘I guess. But it’s the frogs, too. They’re like endangered, aren’t they? I mean it’s not cool, is it? These guys don’t see that, it’s not on their radar. I don’t want anything to happen to Will, you know? I thought maybe if I told someone I could make it stop.’

  Fidgeting. Picking at her fingernails. A flibbertigibbet. Her nan’s word surfacing out of nowhere. Ange took another drink of juice, finished what was in the bottle. Dug around in her bag for some lip salve. Glanced up at Eugenie. ‘What’re you going to do?’ she said.

  ‘Call some people, I guess. Pick up my kids from school, meet with a few people. What about you?’

  ‘Can I come?’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Wherever it is you’re going? Just don’t want to go back there right now.’

  She left Ange in the rotunda and went up to the car, made some calls. Told those she could reach that something had come up and they needed to meet, asked them to tell the others, not meaning to be overly secretive but unwilling to discuss it on the phone. Feeling stupid about it but saying it just the same. Caught in the flow of the strange girl’s conspiracies.

  She drove into town and dropped Ange at the ice cream shop, telling her she’d be back in a little while, then raced to the school to catch Emily before she took the bus. She didn’t trust Ange but she was unable to think of a decent reason to refuse her. Better, in some ways, to know where she was.

  Not that she needed to have rushed for Emily’s sake. Even after driving through school-time traffic and circling for a park, she was still obliged to stand outside the school gates for ten minutes, watching the children come out. Not her favourite place. Never mind the history of her own education and all its attendant furies, it also meant she had to wait amongst the gaggle of mothers that concentrated itself into little rural/regional cliques, arms crossed firmly over ample bosoms, dressed in slacks and flats, defining who was in and who was out of their groups just as they’d always done, in the same way they had when they were in the schoolyard. Even within the glow of her tryst with Nick she still couldn’t curb her critique, remained stubbornly guilty of a failure to imagine any of these women possessed of the capacity to feel what she’d just felt; as if the choice to wear cheap clothes and eat crap food or adhere to Right-wing politics indicated someone’s aptitude for love.