True Blue

by Sasha Wasley

  ‘Beth,’ Free groaned. ‘This isn’t fair! There are more nuances to this situation.’

  ‘I agree. It’s not clear-cut. So why blame Finn when all he did was the thing he promised to do? He promised to stop people who break the law – or appear to break the law. He kept his promise, even under pressure not to – from a woman he really cares about. That takes integrity.’

  ‘Well . . .’ Free stopped. There was truth in Beth’s words and she didn’t know how to get around it. ‘Well, yeah. Okay. But . . .’ She stopped again.

  Beth stood. ‘Wine?’

  Free gave up thinking. ‘Yes. Wine.’

  ‘Oh.’ Beth paused where her handbag sat on the table and fished in it for a moment. She found a little pink thumb drive and lined up to throw it to Free. ‘Willow asked me to give you this.’

  Free caught it. ‘What’s on it?’

  ‘Apparently Dad’s had Tom digitising all his VHS movies and Willow found one that belongs to you.’

  Free tried to imagine what movie she’d ever owned that might be on video cassette. ‘Not likely,’ she concluded.

  While Beth poured wine, Free went for her laptop. She set it up on the coffee table and flicked open the little device, plugging it in. It only contained one video file.

  ‘It’s called Day with Freya and it’s forty-six minutes long,’ Free called. ‘What on earth could it be?’

  Beth returned with two glasses of wine. She settled back on the couch and shrugged at Free. ‘No idea. Let’s watch it.’

  Free accepted a glass. She opened the file in her movie viewer and hit play.

  Robin Paterson frowned as she adjusted the position of the camera in the Paterson Downs lounge room, her dark hair tied back in a loose ponytail.

  ‘There,’ she said, brightening. ‘I think I’ve got that set up okay. And look, it’s already on. It’s on,’ she repeated a little louder, glancing at someone out of shot.

  ‘Can I dance?’ came a reply in the high-pitched voice of a child.

  ‘One second, I’ll just do an intro for you.’ Robin addressed the camera. ‘It occurred to me a few days ago that this is my last year having one of my babies home with me every day.’

  ‘I’m not a baby,’ the squeaky voice interrupted.

  ‘You’ll always be my baby,’ Robin answered. ‘Just like Beth and Willow are my babies.’

  Apparently placated, the child was silent.

  ‘Freya turns seven in February – just four months from now,’ Robin went on. ‘I’ve kept her home with me as long as I can but she’s ready to go to school on the bus with her sisters and start Year Two in the new year. Seeing as this is one of the last times it will be just me and Free at Paterson Downs together, I thought we’d make a video to show what a day at home with Free is like.’

  ‘Can I dance now?’

  ‘Hold on.’ Robin kicked a few toys strewn across the green floor rug out of the way. ‘Free wishes to begin the day, as she does so often, with a dance. Do you want music?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I’ve got the music in my head.’

  ‘Okay, go.’

  Robin moved back and six-year-old Free came into view. She was in a worn homemade fairy dress, blue and purple. She danced around the lounge room with high drama – something between ballet and avant-garde – her arms flapping as she stumbled and leapt. At one point, she came up close to the camera and stared right into the lens, her green eyes wide, unruly strings of golden hair falling over her shoulders.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Robin asked.

  ‘I’m showing the person watching me who I am.’

  ‘Maybe you’ll watch this yourself one day, when you’re much older.’

  ‘Maybe. Hello, old Free,’ she intoned to the camera. ‘I’m you.’ She did a deep, wobbly curtsey. ‘That’s the end of the dance,’ she told Robin.

  ‘What’s next? Should we make a cake for when the girls come home?’

  ‘Yes!’

  Robin had propped the camera on the kitchen table, aimed at the laminated bench. Free kneeled on a chair pushed up to the bench, still in the fairy dress, and very carefully broke an egg on the lip of a bowl of flour. The shell crumbled and half the yolk oozed down the outside. Free tried to catch it with her fingers, smearing it back up the glass and over the edge into the bowl.

  ‘Oops, I got shell in it,’ she said.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Robin. She came to the rescue, picking pieces of shell out of the mixture while Free poked into the bowl with a wooden spoon, attempting to stir around her mother’s hands.

  ‘All right, Miss Impatience, now you can stir.’ Robin stood back.

  ‘The egg is so orange,’ Free remarked. ‘Can we make the cake different colours?’

  ‘A marble cake?’ her mother asked.

  ‘Yep. Orange and red and yellow. Sunset cake.’

  ‘That sounds like a possibility.’ Robin picked another piece of eggshell out of the mixture.

  Her patience was commendable during the colour mixing. Six-year-old Free treated the bowls of cake mixture as her palette, blending the colours meticulously. She had a mini tantrum when the orange became too brown, and went to stand in the meals area, facing the wall, arms crossed. Robin tidied spilt flour while she waited for Free to calm down.

  ‘Freya, you can stand over there, love, or you can come back and take another shot. While you stand there, this mixture is going to stay the wrong colour. But if you come back and try to fix it, there’s a chance you can make it better.’

  Robin waited a few minutes, glancing at the camera every now and then, and at last her persistence paid off. Free came back and allowed her mother to help her rescue the offending mixture with a touch more yellow. Then the marbling commenced, Free armed with a bamboo skewer, dragging it through the mixture to create extravagant loops and swirls of colour.

  ‘It’s got to go in the oven now, Free,’ her mother said at last. ‘We’ve got schoolwork to do.’

  They were back in the lounge room, Free perched on the couch with a workbook open on her lap. She was intent on her letter practice, pencil in hand.

  ‘Does Beth do writing at school?’ Free asked.

  ‘Yes. She’s very good at writing now, so she does other kinds of work that use writing.’

  ‘Why doesn’t Beth want to play with me any more?’

  Robin paused. ‘Beth’s growing up. Sometimes people don’t play as much as they start to get older.’

  ‘I’m always going to play, even when I’m a hundred and fifty.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘Beth used to play hospitals with me and Willow.’

  ‘I know, love. But she’s got a lot of homework now she’s in high school. It doesn’t mean she loves you any less, you know.’

  ‘If she loves me, she should play with me.’ Free’s tone was decided. ‘She’s being mean.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that. Beth shows her love in other ways. People do that. Everyone’s different, and they care about different things, but that doesn’t mean they’re better or worse than us. A lot of the time we’re all feeling the same things inside.’

  Free didn’t answer, eyes on her page.

  ‘I can write now,’ she announced after a few more moments, glancing up at her mother.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Real words.’

  ‘What are you writing?’ A piece of fabric flicked out from the side of the shot. Robin was shaking out and folding clean washing as she supervised Free’s schoolwork.

  Free held up her workbook. There were no letters, but a rather beautiful curlicue of pencil on the dotted line where she ought to have been practising the letter h.

  ‘I can’t read it,’ said Robin.

  Free assumed a knowing look. ‘Only fairies can. And goblins.’

  ‘Can you read it?’ Robin asked.

  ‘Of course. I wrote it.’

  ‘Tell me what it says in human language,’ Robin urged her.

  Free studied it, her eyebrows
knitting. ‘I like sunset cake,’ she translated. ‘We should go and visit Dad in the ute.’ Free sneaked a glance up at her mother, who laughed.

  The ute bumped along the track, the camera shaking violently, pointed at the white–blue of the midday sky through the windscreen.

  ‘Is it too heavy?’ Robin asked.

  ‘No, I can hold it,’ said Free.

  The camera dropped, tumbling into her dress-covered lap, and Free retrieved it hastily. She checked the lens and proceeded to film the rest of the drive upside down. When the ute stopped, she passed the camcorder to her mother and scrambled out. Robin righted the camera, using it to follow Free as she ran in her dusty farm boots and fairy dress to the bore where her father was working.

  ‘Hello, you two,’ Barry called, pausing in his task of cranking a manual pump handle.

  ‘How’s it going, love?’ Robin called back as she climbed out of the ute.

  ‘Bloody thing.’ He kicked the bore pipe and glanced at the camera. ‘What’s this all about?’

  ‘I’m filming a day with Free.’

  He grinned. ‘A day in fairyland, eh?’ He gave the pump handle a few more cranks.

  ‘Can I do it?’ Free asked, bouncing up and down on the spot.

  ‘Of course, sweetheart. Have a go.’ Barry lifted her into position as though she weighed nothing.

  She put all her weight behind it but couldn’t get the pump handle to move more than an inch or two.

  ‘You gotta work on your muscles,’ Barry said, taking over.

  Free entertained herself by balancing along the edge of a concrete trough. Robin focused the camera on Free, zooming in on her boots as they wobbled along the ledge beneath Free’s skinny brown ankles.

  ‘Any idea why it keeps getting blocked?’ Robin asked Barry.

  ‘Iron bacteria,’ he grunted. ‘Like I thought. Clogging up the pipes and pump.’ He stood back, hands on hips, and regarded the bore. ‘This one’s always given me the shits. Pump’s too high.’

  ‘Language,’ Robin said mildly. ‘Might be time to rebuild this pump. Start over.’

  ‘You’ve gotta sort this shit out, Dad,’ Free piped up.

  Barry burst into laughter.

  ‘Such a good influence,’ Robin said. ‘Free, let’s move on. Want to go down to the river?’

  The boots leapt off the trough. ‘Yes!’

  ‘Here’s your morning tea,’ Robin said to Barry, holding out a paper bag.

  His eyes lit up. ‘You bewdy.’

  The camera was temporarily forgotten while Robin gave Barry a quick kiss goodbye, then Free flew at her father for a tight hug.

  ‘Bye, Dad!’

  The camera panned along the Herne River where it curled around on itself in the distance like a lazy letter e before straightening into the broad blue stream where they’d parked. Robin brought the shot around to Free, who was standing on a rock on the riverbank, hands on hips like her father, surveying the scene.

  ‘Free and I come down to the river at least once a week, if the track is passable,’ Robin said to the camera’s microphone. ‘It’s our tradition.’

  ‘Is the river ours, or the Westons’?’ Free called over her shoulder.

  ‘The river doesn’t belong to anybody,’ Robin said with complete certainty.

  ‘But is it on the Gundergin side or Patersons side?’ Free squinted at the fence on the other side of the water. ‘It must be ours, because the fence is over there.’

  ‘The river’s not ours or theirs. It runs between the properties.’

  Free jumped down and wandered towards the water’s edge. She crouched, reaching out to turn over a clay dish of sun-baked mud, and poked her finger into the squishy mud underneath. Then the whole hand went in, and the other. She scooped up a handful and used the top of the overturned dried piece as a work tray. Sticks and pebbles became her tools. Robin filmed in silence for a couple of minutes.

  ‘Maybe she’ll be an artist,’ she said softly.

  She approached. ‘What’s that you’ve made, Free?’

  ‘It’s a boab tree. See? Fat at the bottom and skinny at the top.’

  ‘Oh yes, I see it.’

  Free got to her feet, abandoning her sculpture, and examined her muddy hands. She cast her gaze around until she spotted a big, flat river stone, blue–grey in colour. A blank canvas. Free planted her hands back in the mud, loading them up, then ran over to the blue stone to create two perfect red-mud handprints. She looked up at her mother in delight. Robin laughed.

  ‘Beautiful.’

  ‘You do it too, Mum.’

  ‘I might be able to fit one of my hands in between your prints.’ Robin ducked down, the camera trembling, and slapped an open palm into the mud. She crossed to the stone and lay her hand carefully between the two little prints her daughter had made, already drying.

  ‘Did you get it on the camera?’ Free asked, staring at the handprints. ‘The rain might wash them off.’

  ‘Yep. Captured for posterity.’

  ‘For who?’

  ‘Forever, is what I mean.’

  Free found a stick and began to scratch a line in the mud on the water’s edge. She paused at stones and other debris, drawing circles around them before continuing her long line, connecting and encasing the river with every part of itself. She said something but the microphone didn’t quite catch it.

  ‘What was that, love?’ her mother called.

  ‘The river doesn’t belong to anybody,’ Free called back.

  Gentle bumping along a farm track. The ute was moving at a crawl because Robin was getting the camera into position while she drove, trying to show Free seated in the passenger seat, eyes closed in sleep. Dried mud streaked her cheek and hands, splotches on the fairy dress. The window was open, the breeze tickling her hair, afternoon sunlight illuminating her face.

  ‘I’m going to miss her so much,’ came Robin’s voice.

  The camera blinked its eye open on the stone and wood sign for Paterson Downs on Herne River Road. Free was up on the stone wall, hanging onto the D of ‘Downs’. She peered along the road.

  ‘I think I can see it,’ she called back. She held still and squinted into the distance for a long moment. ‘Yep!’ She raised her voice to a holler. ‘The bus is coming!’

  ‘The daily drive to meet the school bus,’ Robin said quietly from her position further back on the driveway.

  Free fidgeted and wriggled with impatience until finally the big orange bus pulled to a stop out the front. Two dark-headed children scrambled out. Beth ran straight across the road but Willow paused to call back to Tom, his blond head stuck out the bus window.

  ‘Meet you at the eastern gate in half an hour.’

  He gave her a thumbs up. Robin waved to the bus driver as he pulled away. Beth helped Free down from the stone wall and held her hand as they made their way back to Robin, Willow running to catch up.

  ‘I can write almost as good as you now,’ Free was boasting to Beth.

  ‘That’s amazing.’ Beth caught her mother’s eye and shot her a little smile.

  ‘And I made you a sunset cake for afternoon tea.’

  ‘Oh, yum!’

  ‘What are you doing, Mum?’ Willow asked as she arrived, staring into the camera.

  ‘Just capturing a few special moments.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call spending an hour and a half on the stinky school bus a special moment.’ Beth was full of healthy teen sarcasm.

  ‘That’s a wrap, Free,’ Robin called to her youngest daughter. ‘Do you want to take a bow?’

  Free broke loose of Beth’s hand and did a triple twirl, ending in a deep curtsey. She’d made herself dizzy, however, and she wobbled for a few moments before falling over. Her sisters laughed and Free joined in. She lay back on the gravel drive and gazed up at the blue sky, still giggling.

  ‘Yep,’ said Robin, laughter in her voice as well. ‘That’s Free.’

  The video ended, flicking back to the play movie icon on Free’s laptop
. Beth was clutching her hand tightly. When Free turned, she found her sister was a mess, tears pouring and shoulders shaking. Free herself wasn’t crying. Not yet.

  ‘That was amazing.’ Beth barely managed the words. ‘I didn’t even know that video existed.’

  ‘Every week,’ Free said wonderingly. A hard lump seemed to be forming in her chest – it felt like both sadness and gratitude. ‘At least once a week, Mum took me to the river. That’s why it means so much to me.’

  Beth squeezed her close. ‘I’m glad you had that special time with her.’

  The lump in Free’s chest was changing as the moments wore on, until it became warm and shone golden like a nugget of pure truth. She released a slow sigh.

  ‘I’ve always felt really hard done by. Like we had horrible luck to lose our mum so young, and I was especially unlucky because I had the shortest time with her. But we were lucky – incredibly lucky – to have her as long as we did. Weren’t we?’

  Beth sobbed again. ‘Free, you have the most amazing knack for speaking the truth.’

  Free stood outside for a few minutes after Beth drove away. Finn’s house was dim, as though he still wasn’t home. Beth’s words about integrity pinged around inside her head. Max gave his cracked meow and Free let him out to do whatever he needed to do, then went into the house. Tiredness hit. She got undressed and climbed into bed to lie still, thinking.

  No more delays. She wanted to talk to Finn now – urgently. She reached for her phone and sent him a message asking when she could see him.

  He didn’t reply. Maybe he wasn’t pulling a late shift, after all. Maybe he was avoiding her. Free sighed. She had to see him, even if he didn’t want to talk any more. She would sit out the front of his house tomorrow and wait until he appeared. It would be tough, but she would face it head-on.

  She rolled over in the darkness and gazed at Finn’s pillow dent. Even through the worries crowding her head, she was thinking more clearly than she ever had before. Free pressed her lips together, determined.

  She had shit to sort out.

  Free woke to the sound of banging at her front door. She seized her kimono and staggered out to yank open the door, blinking into the morning sunlight.