A Distant Land

by Alison Booth

  ‘Well, I mustn’t keep you, love,’ Mrs Blunkett said. ‘It’ll be dark soon and I know your parents’ll be wanting to see you.’

  Zidra headed north again, this time on the winding coastal road leading to Ferndale. Fingers of shadows were creeping down the hills from the Great Dividing Range, and one by one stars began to appear. The fading sky blazed golden towards the west, until abruptly the sun sank behind the escarpment. Such a long day this has been, she thought, and I need time to absorb what’s happened.

  But now she was almost home. In the vanishing light she could see the state forest on her right giving way to the paddocks of Ferndale, which rolled, in undulating green billows, down to the ocean’s edge. Mrs Cadwallader had been true to her word, and her parents were waiting, with a torch and the dogs, at the open front gate. After turning the car off the road, she got out, leaving the engine running. While the dogs danced around her feet, she threw her arms around her mother, whose freshly washed hair smelt of lemon-scented shampoo, and then leant up to kiss Peter’s cheek, feeling the slight graze of his stubble that you would never notice otherwise. At the end of the long driveway, she could see the homestead sheltering in its semicircle of pine trees, with all its windows illuminated.

  Chapter 6

  Over the years Peter’s face had been pared down by a combination of weather and endurance. His smooth brown hair was streaked with white, more so than on Zidra’s last visit. At some point soon there’d be a tipping point and it pained her to think that then you’d have to describe him as silver-haired rather than brown.

  Her mother’s once fair hair had darkened with the passing years, until she’d been persuaded by the hairdresser in Burford to try blonde highlights. After that, so overwhelmed had Ma been by the compliments that she’d chosen to lock herself into a four-monthly cycle of torture by aluminium foils. Maybe she’d had her hair done specially for Zidra’s return yesterday, but Zidra didn’t want to think of that. There was no denying that she looked lovely tonight, however irritated Zidra was with her going on and on about Jim for far too long. Her usually pale skin glowed as she ran through the litany of Jim’s virtues. About how bright he was, how brave and intrepid too.

  By now Zidra had lost all appetite. She put down her knife and fork. Through the kitchen window she could see the whitening sky above the ruffled ocean. Tiny birds weaved through the low scrub defining the cliff edge. If she concentrated on them, rather than her mother’s appearance, perhaps she could block out the incessant talking that, together with the drive down the day before, was whipping up her emotions into a toxic brew. If she didn’t get out of this room soon, she’d hurl a plate, or bang her head on the table, and how shocked her parents would be at that.

  While Peter was looking at her with some concern, her mother was still prattling on, caught up in her soliloquy of Jim’s merits: virtues that in her daughter would be unwelcome; virtues that in her only child would cause distress. All at once Zidra lost control of her emotions and spat out – there was no other way to describe it – her anger. ‘You’re so bloody two-faced! I can’t believe you’re saying this, you of all people. One rule for girls, another for boys, that’s what you really mean. It’s okay for Jim to be in Phnom Penh but not me, that’s the implication. In spite of all the rhetoric about independence and having a career that you’ve been blathering on about for years.’

  Startled into silence, her mother stared at her.

  ‘Yes, just you reflect on that, dearest Mama.’

  Her mother flinched at the sarcasm in the endearment, and a part of Zidra was pleased with this reaction. She continued, ‘Think about it. When I got offered that traineeship in Saigon, what did you tell me? It was too dangerous, you said. But also that you were against war. As if my actions should be based on your opinions!’ She laughed, an angry sort of bray with no mirth in it. Although she recognised she was being childish, she couldn’t stop herself. ‘I understand your views about war. I know where you’re coming from. How could I be allowed to forget it?’

  Even as she spoke, she knew that this was completely unfair. Her parents never mentioned the World War that they’d somehow managed to survive, her mother enduring the horrors of a concentration camp and her adopted father, Peter, of a prisoner-of-war camp. She hadn’t learnt about that war from her parents; she’d learnt about it from studying history. She might almost have thought the war didn’t exist in her parents’ minds if she’d judged it only by their silence on this topic, rather than by her interpretation of what that silence meant.

  ‘We never understood why you wanted to go to Vietnam,’ her mother said at last. Though her voice was calm, she started running her hands through her hair, a sure sign of distress. ‘That’s one war Australia should never have got itself involved in. It was just blind toadying to the US.’

  ‘Toadying to the US? What nonsense, Ma.’ Although Zidra agreed with her mother and would put the same argument to anyone who would listen, she wasn’t about to admit this. ‘Prime Minister Menzies genuinely thought we were at risk and the bulk of the population supported him.’

  ‘If Menzies had waited a year or two, he might have seen that all the capitalist states of South East Asia could have formed a reverse domino effect. A counterbalance.’

  ‘It’s easy to be wise after the event,’ Zidra said crossly. ‘Anyway, I wasn’t proposing to fight in the Vietnam War, for heaven’s sake, only to report it. To seek out the truth and to record it, just as Jim’s doing in Cambodia. The simple fact of the matter is that you don’t want me to take risks, and never have.’

  ‘That’s not true at all,’ her mother said. Her face by now was looking quite flushed. ‘Anyway, Jim’s taking major risks partly because he’s an expert on Cambodia. And he’ll be returning home soon to write a book about it.’

  ‘Returning home? Who told you that?’ To disguise the skipping of her heart, Zidra took several sips of water.

  ‘Eileen Cadwallader. He’s been offered a job in the Human Rights Centre at Sydney University. Didn’t he tell you?’

  ‘No.’ Zidra put down the glass with a slightly unsteady hand.

  ‘That’s odd. What on earth did you talk about on the drive down?’

  Zidra didn’t reply but picked up her table napkin and began pleating it. Perhaps she hadn’t given Jim the chance to tell her his news. She’d talked a lot about her job and Sydney and old friends; but so too had he, until falling asleep for a couple of hours in the late afternoon. The truth was that he’d had every opportunity to inform her but hadn’t wanted to. That was the only explanation.

  Yet he was coming home at last. He was coming home for good.

  Looking up from her napkin, she caught her mother exchanging glances with Peter. She hated it when they did that; it made her feel so excluded. Anyway, what did this complicity signify? Puzzlement that Jim hadn’t told her? Hope that she and Jim would get together? Relief that they’d distracted her from banging on about Saigon or, more likely, her accusation about risk-taking?

  Jim’s omission now began to make her feel even more irritated with her mother than before. She had to fight her influence; she had to learn to make her own way. She was surely old enough to make choices without worrying about her parents. Coming back to Ferndale was all very well, for a few hours at any rate, but after that all those old conflicts came flooding back. Their expectations versus her own, the distance between them widening over the years. She stood and began to clear the table. Her mother rose too.

  ‘You relax, Mama,’ Zidra said. ‘I’ll do this.’ This wasn’t altruism, though; she just wanted to be alone at the sink. Sometimes scraping the dishes afforded a type of therapy, and it certainly gave her time to think.

  But her mother wrestled the plates from her. ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘This is your holiday and we’ve been looking forward so much to seeing you again. And we haven’t eaten dessert yet.’


  ‘I’m not hungry. I’ll walk the dogs.’

  ‘They don’t need walking. They’re working dogs, for heaven’s sake,’ her mother said.

  ‘Let’s all have a glass of wine,’ Peter said soothingly.

  Before he’d quite finished this sentence, Zidra was on the back verandah, deciding only at the very last instant not to slam the door behind her. She ran across the home paddock to the cliff edge. Spotless Spot, an ancient kelpie dog, followed her but only as far as the steps leading down to the little beach below. Though the surf here was too treacherous to swim in, she’d always found soothing the endless thudding of the breakers on the white sand. The ocean had got into her somehow, into her bones, so that she could never bear to be too far away from it. Whenever she needed to reflect, she sought it out.

  After taking off her shoes and socks, she sat cross-legged on the beach. I only assert myself through avoiding close relationships, she decided. If you choose the right person, you can get company when you want it and sex when you want it, without running the risk of being told what to do. Get close to someone and what happens? They tell you what to do like Ma, or they don’t tell you what you want to know, like Jim.

  But she was deluding herself. She’d chosen this way of living because of other things that had happened in her life and because of those flaws in her own character. If she were stronger – or loved her mother less – she could decide what to do herself without factoring in her mother’s opinions. Ma’s opposition was the real reason she’d refused the traineeship in Saigon.

  Anyway, who was she really annoyed with: her mother or Jim? Both, she decided. Jim simply hadn’t bothered to tell her his news, in spite of their friendship.

  She knew she should have been delighted he was coming home, instead of this simmering irritation with everyone. Certainly, now that she’d had time to absorb the news, she could admit to being pleased about his removal from danger. But didn’t that make her just like her mother, unwilling to see anyone she loved taking risks?

  She walked down to the water’s edge. The tide was advancing, breakers surging around the jagged pinnacles of rock before crashing down on the shore. She dipped one foot into the water and then withdrew it quickly; it was as cold as if it had come straight from the Antarctic. Soon it would be hard to see her way back to the homestead; the light was fast fading.

  After climbing the steps, she strolled across the home paddock to the back verandah. The band of cloud that had veiled the moon drifted northwards, and moonlight washed over the paddock. The pine trees, shifting in the breeze, cast dancing shadows on ground that looked almost white.

  At the tap under the rainwater tank, she splashed cold water over her face and was afraid of what she might have said at dinner. She’d given too much away, or perhaps it was too little, and she hated herself for hurting her mother.

  In the kitchen, her parents were illuminated like actors on a stage, awaiting the return of the prodigal daughter. An apple crumble, in a Pyrex baking dish on the table, was untouched. A glass of red wine had been placed on the tablemat in front of her chair, and the wine bottle in front of Peter was half-empty. Something unfamiliar in her mother’s stance, something timeless in her attitude, made her catch her breath. Ma might be a statue hewn from pale marble and remain forever in this pose.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Zidra said as she opened the back door.

  ‘No worries,’ said her mother, her Latvian accent as usual more noticeable when she was upset. She added, ‘Some American man called Hank rang when you were out.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, surprised. ‘Did he leave his number? I’ll phone him back.’

  ‘No. He said he’d try again in a day or two.’

  There were many reasons to admire her mother, Zidra thought. She never pried, would always wait to be told, and even now was averting her eyes. She said, ‘Hank’s a man I’m seeing a bit of. Nothing serious, just a friend.’

  ‘It’s good to have lots of friends. Not to put in one basket all the eggs.’

  Ma’s face was so relaxed that she couldn’t possibly mean anything by this remark, Zidra decided. It was just one of those aphorisms – appropriate or inappropriate – that her mother liked to introduce into any conversation.

  ‘I’d love some crumble,’ she said. ‘Thanks for waiting.’ She picked up the glass of wine and held it up. ‘Here’s to you both. It’s really great to be home.’ And it was. This place, and her parents, meant more to her than she could ever express.

  Chapter 7

  It had been a good idea to push the desk under one of the dormer windows in her attic bedroom, Zidra decided the following afternoon. Seated on the desktop with her legs stretched out in front of her and her back resting against the wall, she could read and keep an eye on the driveway into Ferndale at the same time. But only the far end, she thought, peering through the pine trees. Beyond where the drive met the Jingera Road, the folds of the hills rose to the distant mountain range. The sky was littered with clouds and the air felt humid and heavy.

  Jim would have to stop the car to open the first gate. If she looked every few minutes, she should easily be able to spot his arrival.

  Although her position on the desktop was comfortable, she was beginning to feel restless. After reading the same paragraph three times, she still couldn’t remember what it was about. It wasn’t that she was tired, for she’d slept for almost ten hours the night before.

  At that moment she saw the Cadwalladers’ cream Holden pull into the driveway. At once she closed her book and dashed down to the front door. If she could intercept Jim out of sight of her mother, she could interrogate him before her parents were even aware of his arrival.

  She reached the car when it was almost at the last gate into the home paddock. Jim could have been Hank before a haircut if she didn’t know better. It was a physical type that you were attracted to, not an individual, she thought. But then Jim opened the passenger door for her and began talking, and she knew she was wrong.

  ‘Don’t drive on yet,’ she said. After climbing in, she added, ‘There’s something I wanted to tell you.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, switching off the engine. ‘There’s something I want to tell you too.’

  ‘At last,’ she said. ‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me the day before yesterday? I had to hear it from Ma, who got it from your mother. You and I had the whole day together on Sunday, with endless possibilities to talk, so why didn’t you let me know then?’ She was shocked by the hostility she experienced.

  When she felt his arm around her shoulders, she angrily shook it off. Only later would it occur to her how hurtful this might have been.

  ‘I didn’t know, Zidra. Honestly I didn’t.’

  So ridiculous was his denial that she began to laugh. ‘How come your mother knew then?’

  ‘She didn’t know. No one knew until today.’

  ‘That’s nonsense. Of course I should be congratulating you. It’s terrific news and it’s going to be fantastic having you back in the country. But why on earth didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Are you talking about that human-rights job?’

  ‘Of course, what else?’

  ‘Zidra, that’s just an offer. I haven’t made up my mind yet if I’m going to take it. Mum’s decided I should and that’s why she’s blabbing about it to everyone, but she’s getting a bit ahead of herself.’

  Now that he’d provided a believable reason for not telling her, she began to feel even more annoyed with him for not accepting the job. She took a deep breath, astonished at how emotional she was being. Coming home to Ferndale was making her revert to childish ways.

  ‘There’s something else I want to talk to you about. Something that’s got nothing to do with all that.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I got a phone call after lunch today, from my boss in Saigon
.’ He frowned and tapped his fingers briefly on the steering wheel. ‘John Federico, one of our Phnom Penh correspondents, has gone home. His mother’s dying, apparently. The Phnom Penh office is really short-staffed, and so I’ve got to go back early.’

  ‘But you’ve just got home.’

  ‘I’m flying back on the first of October.’

  ‘That’s Friday. So you’ve only got two more days here?’

  ‘One more, tomorrow. And Mum wants me to take her into Burford. She wants to go shopping and I promised to buy her lunch afterwards. Then I’ll go up to Sydney on Thursday.’

  She looked out the side window, not wanting him to see her regret. The sun had gone behind a cloud and the pine trees looked forbidding. ‘I’ll drive you up to Sydney,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks, Zidra. I’d really like that, but Dad’s going to. Mum’s coming as well.’

  ‘I see.’ Of course his parents would want to drive him, after his time with them had been so curtailed. She would stay on here until Sunday morning and head back on her own.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Zidra.’

  ‘It’s all right. I was coming home this week anyway.’

  Sensing that Jim was feeling down – and to conceal her own intense disappointment – Zidra tried to keep the conversation light during dinner. It was her father who turned the discussion to Indochina once the dessert bowls had been cleared away.

  After Jim had explained what was going on, Zidra said, ‘How much of Cambodia is Communist now?’

  ‘Around three-quarters of the countryside, they reckon.’

  Zidra noticed that her mother was frowning. ‘And you want to go back to all of that,’ she said, ‘when you could be writing your book at Sydney University?’