Once Upon a Time There Was a Traveller

by Kate Pullinger

  After that it was like a drug and if there was no one around she’d go up and get the two passports out. Then one day the boy’s wasn’t there. She’d nearly thrown up as she pulled out all the old linen looking for it. She’d sat on the bed with her head on her arms knowing that now she could never leave.

  But as she put the stuff back, not caring how, she’d taken her own passport out of its case, put the empty cover back in the trunk and slipped it down the front of her jeans. It pressed on the top of her pubes and grew warm as she made the meal and did the washing up and put the child to bed. Later when the men had gone out and the old woman was in bed too, she’d wrapped it in tissues and put it in the box of panty liners with the packets of the pill that Marie sent her.

  Marie’s the eldest and Samantha’s the baby. She knows she was spoilt. She knows now they’d all been playing along when she said she was going to be a model (just catalogues not catwalk), cutting out the photos for her scrapbook and helping with her daily beauty regime. But she is pretty. Nikos used to say she was the most beautiful girl in the world.

  Recently she’d started to pray it would be Yiannis who picked her up from church not Nikos. He’s older and still not married. He was the only one who was kind to her. He did little things to help her that no one else knew about, explained things she didn’t understand, whereas Nikos went out all the time: eating at tavernas when she’d spent ages cooking; gambling on the football; coming home in the early hours.

  The landscape has stopped being like a postcard now. It’s scrubby and dry, and full of corrugated iron shacks and factories. They pass a field packed with row after row of dusty cars. She thinks of her father with his big cracked hands that smell of soap and oil; the creases that stay black no matter how hard he scrubs. And as she’s explaining it all to him, he strokes her hair and calls her princess. But Marie’s there too and Samantha tries saying, ‘It’s not an uncommon phenomenon, there’s an enormous cultural gulf.’ But the words don’t work. Her sister, who has had five failed IVFs, looks back at her with the eyes of the world.

  They’re so close to the flats that she can see the OshKosh B’gosh label on a pair of dungarees hanging out to dry. When a voice announces that the next station is Athens, Samantha shifts in her seat looking to see which side the platform is. A group of people appears and the man at the end walks just like Yiannis. With a shock she realises it is him, looking into the carriages, his head going from side to side like a goalkeeper. As he turns towards the other end of the train, she dives beneath the wide double seats and jams her whole body under, face down on the dirty lino. But one foot is sticking out into the aisle and there’s nothing she can do to move it. She’s wearing the big fluorescent trainers she bought in London that Yiannis always laughs at. She’s so tense that she wants to jump out and run to him but she’s stuck anyway. She’s thinking maybe he won’t look in First Class when she hears his voice from the end of the carriage, ‘I’m looking for an English girl – she’s tall with blonde hair…’

  She’s just about to crawl out when the old woman’s voice cuts through, clear now like a teacher’s, ‘Well, she’s certainly not in here. I’ve been quite alone since Corinth.’ Samantha can see the walking stick stretched out between the seats, blocking the aisle.

  There is a slow silence before she feels the engine through the floor on her bare stomach where her shirt has risen up and then a little shudder as the train pulls forwards towards Piraeus.

  Leaving Her – Diana Swennes Smith

  Mornings this clearing smells of damp mint and wild onion. I imagine it might have been the kitchen garden of some pioneer family that had put down roots for a while, or maybe it was the optimistic beginnings of a patch started by some transient miner following an off-shoot of the mighty Fraser River during gold-rush days long past and forgotten. Either way, the party moved on.

  I collect our scant toiletries from the old Malibu’s glove box and follow Mary down the faint path we’ve made to the creek. The dozen-odd campsites are overgrown with weeds and even the money collectors have crossed this place off their to-do lists. Three weeks and no one’s bothered us, but Mary still looks up and down the shallow water tumbling over rocks polished to egg smoothness and tries to cover both breasts as she wriggles out of her top. I like her when she’s not so cocky. Satisfied that we’re alone, she steps out of her shorts and pads barefoot across the flat shale, laughing with that rusty sound of the day’s first utterance. I shed last night’s work dress and join Mary at the creek’s edge, trying to figure out how to leave her.

  We kneel where the water’s fast and roiling, and scrub our teeth, kneecaps grinding on the rocky shelf. White foam drips from my mouth. We rinse and spit and lay our tooth-brushes on the flat to dry, then step into the glacial run-off. Mary’s hands fly up as she shrieks with the shocking thrill of cold. Birds startle from the trees at her voice.

  The creek swoops south in a great rush as if it knows a better place. We’d planned to be away by now, off to the next town, leap-frogging easy jobs all the way to California. That’s what we decided laying on our backs in the muddy fields of home – Hudson Bay, moose capital of Canada – watching the stars come out, killing a twenty-sixer of rye between us. Every fall when geese flew over I felt stupid for being too drunk and broke to get up and move with them, away from that misery town with its pellet factory and pig farms. Dumber than a goose: that’s low. Mary threw our empty rye bottles at them.

  We wade downstream to calmer water where all time slows and pools beyond the half-submerged branches of a fallen maple, me with my black dress crumpled to my chest, Mary with the soap bar before her in her hollowed palm like a supplicant making peace with her gods. She looks Egyptian with her hand that way: her face sun-coppered; chocolate hair cropped to her chin; that proud-humped nose. She was thirteen when she moved with her dad to our street in the north part of that too-far-north town, and we walked to school together the first day. Cheekbones like Cleopatra and she chose me: smaller, blonder, paler, weaker.

  The creek deepens and my belly draws away from its scald; my breath comes in jerks. But Mary, she dips the soap and rubs it over her raw-boned arms as if pain was a pleasure. I pinch my dress by its straps, unfurl it like a dark pennant and lay it down in the current. Water fills it like a blousy wind. Mary dips the soap in the water and rubs it over her bluing wrists.

  Currents in this creek pull so strong that when you let something slip there’s no recovering it. When we washed our clothes yesterday, my last pair of underwear got away like a slippery fish from my fingers’ dull hooks.

  ‘This guy at the bar last night, he knew I was going commando.’

  Mary throws back her head and laughs in disbelief, teeth strong and even as bowling pins. ‘Your wicked ways,’ she says. ‘They’ll get you in trouble.’ Brown eyes slick in the dimpled shade.

  I look at her quick, wondering if she knows the trouble I’m in. But she turns and bends close to the water, peering as if she can see the bottom, though our coming has churned up sediment and the water is cloudy.

  ‘Think there’s any gold in this creek?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know. Hard to say.’

  Her hair is plastered to her cheek like painted tiger stripes. She smooths it back and soaps her neck and shoulders with infinite care, scoops water to rinse. I reach for the soap; she grins and smacks the surface, sending a chill spray across my flinching torso. She knows I hate that. Now I’m the one studying the patterns in the water as I soap and rinse. Mary spreads her arms, closes her eyes and falls into a back float, lifting her flat feet. I place the soap on her navel and her lids flutter but she won’t open them. The creek holds her buoyant and aloft. I force my numb legs up-stream and climb on to the sun-baked shale to wait.

  Back pressed to the unyielding rock, my dress bunched beside me, I close my eyes and listen to the robins in the willows and the rumouring grasses twitch. After a while my muscles stop quivering. I feel super-charged – like I could juggle a gri
zzly. Like I should get up and do something. A beer would go down smooth. The sun has warmed the grass: the smell is dry now, oaty and domestic.

  There’s a splash on the rocks as she leaves the water. I feel her shadow move across my feet and up my legs, cool droplets on my stomach. I open my eyes, and she’s standing above me, her head in the sky. Water runs down the hollow between her ribs and over her prickled flesh. Her pubic hair drips like tree moss in rain.

  ‘You’re making me cold!’ I screw my eyes tight and when I open them again, she’s stepped off and gathered her clothes in her arms. I follow her up the path to the campsite cradling my wet dress.

  Pinch-browed, she checks around, afraid someone’s been snooping, worried about things that don’t matter. The tent has plastic bags sticking out everywhere to plug the leaks. We borrowed that rag from Mary’s dad. Tent of a thousand holes. Our sleeping bags are patched with duct tape. The battered camp stove is almost out of fuel. One burner works. Other than the old Malibu, which we would have heard backfiring if anyone started it, there’s only a dime-store Styrofoam cooler, Mary’s jumbo-sized ketchup, and half a loaf of Wonder bread. I’d say to anyone who wanted any of these things: Take it. No – thank YOU!

  What Mary doesn’t worry about is what we’d do if we ever hit California. The way she sees it in her crazy head, we’ll camp on sun-kissed beaches and trade in beer and rye for Chi-Chi’s and pina coladas. That’s the shiny goal. And I’m supposed to get a permanent job at some quaint seaside margarita stand while she guards our stuff.

  I hang my dress on the clothes twine, unpeg our towels and toss one to Mary. She rubs it over the hair on her head and see-saws it behind her back. Then she pulls on clean underwear and her red shorts, and I watch her disappear down the long path into a jungle of wild rhubarb and raspberry bushes that have grown out of all proportion in the fertile oasis of the outhouse. The raspberries are black and withered now. That first morning after our arrival I picked the last of the ripe ones for our breakfast cereal.

  Her cigarettes are on the stump where she left them. I light one and take a drag, drop the flaming match in an empty beer bottle on the stump. A stream of smoke curls out the neck. Then I remember and throw the cigarette in the cold fire pit, pour a little water on it from the dish-pan. Expectant women shouldn’t smoke. When I was twelve, I stole cigarettes from my mother, sneaking to the kitchen after she was asleep, pulling one or two from the open pack on the table, trying to hold them between my fingers and tap them on the ash-tray like she did.

  The best place to leave Mary would be Harrison Hot Springs, before we cross the border. Lots of tourists there. I’ll take her to a nice bar, buy her drinks. Not too many because she’s liable to throw punches. When she’s had a few, though, she makes friends easily – starts insane conversations with the crowd at the next table about the time she ate an entire jar of hot banana peppers on a dare, or how she can do a handspring and kick out a light bulb on a ceiling. I’ve seen her do that one. Hell, she’s amazing.

  She comes up from the creek now, shaking water from her hands, and sits at the picnic table to flick ants off the camp stove. That’s one thing she does to feel useful. Her long brown finger catapults them over the yellow grass towards a line of dusty poplars that screen the campsite from the road. They probably crawl back within two minutes.

  ‘Full-time job right there,’ I tell her. Her concentration intensifies.

  I watch for a bit, her legs pushing out of her shorts, levered at the knees, her tanned ankles folded primly under the bench. Birds sing of urgent business in the willows and shadows are bunched small and close to their solid forms. It must be about noon.

  ‘Any live ones left in the cooler?’ One beer won’t hurt, I don’t think.

  ‘Nothing but dead soldiers.’ Her toes poke at a Labatt bottle under the table. ‘We need more ice too. Eggs are going to rot.’ We tried keeping eggs in the creek but raccoons got them.

  ‘We should eat those eggs,’ says Mary. She lifts the lid off the cooler.

  ‘I can’t stomach eggs right now.’

  ‘Your appetite’s gone for shit.’ She puts the lid back on.

  Her thighs push out from her shorts even more as she stretches her legs under the table. Then she pulls them back and folds her ankles again, pushes her pink toe-nails into the dirt as she coils her finger. I shuffle into my flip-flops and over to the Malibu.

  I take the roll of money out of the glove box and glance up. She catches my look, asks the question that’s been stuck on her tongue all morning: ‘Tips any good last night?’ Her finger’s poised over the stove, gathering tension.

  ‘No better ’n usual.’

  She lets go and the ant arcs forwards, a black speck above the grass. I imagine flailing legs, a sickening rush of wind.

  I open the trunk, push clothes and shoes out of the way. ‘Twenty dollars for the California jar.’ I hold up the jar so she can see me stuff money in it.

  ‘Cheap town for a Friday night,’ says Mary.

  ‘No worse ’n last town.’ I shove the jar under the clothes.

  Mary’s concentrating on the ants. I flip back the carpet and tuck a twenty inside the other bills in the plastic baggie. Maybe one more week, if tips stay good. I fold the carpet in place and pat it down, spread out the clothes and slam the trunk, and walk over to Mary.

  ‘Here’s for groceries.’ I hand her two tens.

  She draws up stiff like she always does. ‘You know I’d take a turn if I was any —’

  ‘You don’t have to say —’

  ‘I’m just saying —’

  ‘I know.’

  Mary did have a job for about two days outside of Calgary, helping in the laundry at a private girls’ school. I remember on her first day I went to pick her up and was waiting by the window in the common room. Girls’ voices and laughter floated up from the yard below. I could see them with their books spread on the grass – sharing answers, I guess. It was around the time I started thinking about leaving Mary. Hudson Bay wasn’t the problem. It was her – it was us. Who we were together, aimless and lost. I was sitting there in that chair staring dumbly at a patch of chequered light falling through the wire mesh of the window across the tiled floor. Just then, with the laughter stirring such a longing in my chest and the impossibility of our situation making me feel heavy and worn down, Mary wandered idly through the square of light with a basket of clothes balanced on one hip. She was wearing leather sandals and sparks of dust danced in the wake of her shuffle. The bones of her feet moved like strings, a kind of music as she walked. I don’t know exactly why she got fired from that place. Some mix-up in Mary’s head about rules, what you could and couldn’t take from the pantry, and how much and how often.

  I find my watch under the driver’s seat where I keep it, but it’s still dead and I don’t know how to fix it. I could turn on the car ignition to check the time but that would drain the battery. Shadows are creeping out from under the trees and by my unskilled reckoning it’s one o’clock. I pick up the comb and make futile jabs at my hair.

  ‘You going to work?’ she asks.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Don’t forget the rye.’ She lifts a beer bottle from the table and examines the contents.

  ‘Mary, that’s from last night.’ This is why I have to leave her.

  She rubs the back of her head and regards me without concern. ‘You’re a mess,’ she says. ‘Come here.’

  Mary takes the comb from my hand and runs it through my hair, catching a tangle. I wince, but she teases out the knot with a gentleness that makes my eyes well. In one week I’ll tuck a bus ticket in her purse and walk out some side door while she waits for me to come back from the lady’s room. I crave a cigarette and remember my mother at the kitchen table smoking quietly, picking at the chipped Arborite with her nicotine-browned nail all through my growing-up years as she waited for my father to come home from the Naughty Spruce. His truck dug such a groove into the parking lot that the wheels turned of
their own accord after a while, instead of staying the straight course home. Finally he didn’t come home at all. He left that parking lot one night dead drunk and drove straight into a logging truck.

  ‘All done,’ says Mary, and pushes me away.

  As I’m skinning into my wet dress she edges over, biting her lip, hands deep in her pockets. ‘Hey, you know…?’ She pushes through the dirt with her toe, burrowing towards me. I nod and give her a tight smile.

  Afternoon shadows lay long across the gravel as I steer the Malibu towards Chilliwack. It must be later than I thought. I hardly know how long we’ve been on this broken journey. It was May when we started, a week after Mom’s funeral. Now it’s Indian summer. The leaves will be falling in Hudson Bay, the farmers will be cutting their muddy fields and spreading shit before winter. Geese will be flying over the town, honking past the pellet factory. At change of shift, men and women will glance up briefly to mark their passing, then down to the scratched metal of lunch kits and the dullness of their boots.