Small Mercies

by Richard Anderson

  He had spent some time lying there, unable to sleep, when Ruthie got out of bed. She walked towards the door, saying, ‘Paul, Paul,’ under her breath. Then she took her clothes off and stood naked, facing the door. ‘Paul.’

  Ruthie was not someone to walk around without her clothes on, even when she was a newlywed, so it was a shock for him to see her nude in the weak light. Her neck rose elegantly out of her smooth shoulders and then was hidden by her soft, dark hair. Her buttocks were still firm and her back lean. The sight was as exciting as it was awful. He felt like he was witness to her infidelity. She was naked for Paul.

  Dimple got up and directed her back to bed without waking her. If he was a crying man, he would have cried.

  In the morning, Ruthie pulled the sheet up around herself and said in a scratchy voice, ‘Didn’t I put my pyjamas on last night? I was sure I did.’

  ‘You had a dream. You got up and took them off. I put you back to bed.’

  ‘Oh.’ Ruthie now recalled the dream and the way it made her feel. It was a bad idea to let Dimple know. ‘I can’t remember anything.’

  ‘I think it’s probably the sort of dream you would remember — sexy, by the look of it — and I can tell you it didn’t include me.’

  Ruthie felt a flush go up the skin of her neck, so she turned away from him and got out of bed. ‘Didn’t include you? Like last night, because you couldn’t be bothered to be included. Sounds to me like you’re a bit jealous, Dimple. Like you think I was going to get it on with Paul.’

  ‘It certainly looked like that.’

  ‘Don’t be so crude. We were just having fun, dancing and drinking, like people do. Pity you couldn’t let go a little more.’

  Dimple said nothing. He’d never known an unfaithful wife, but he knew a cornered one, which meant there was no point making a case. It would end in incoherent shouting and no winners.

  Ruthie gathered her things to go to the shower block. Dimple had to stop himself thinking he should go with her to prevent a chance meeting with Paul. When she shut the door behind her, he sat on the edge of the bed and took three deep breaths. He didn’t know who Ruthie had turned into, but he knew if she was going to stay this way, he couldn’t live with it. He was heartsick in a way he hadn’t been for years. The trip home would be long and lonely, and there was nothing he could do about it. The thought of the farm and its memorised horizon, the dogs, and those blessed cows offered some comfort.

  Ruthie walked with her head down, trying to ignore the pounding and the dry eucalyptus leaves rustling underfoot. The previous night was not perfectly clear to her, but what she could bring back seemed mostly above board. She was pretty sure she hadn’t kissed Paul or anything, but she might have gripped him a little too tightly. It was possible he had got a wrong impression from her, but how wrong was it? Embarrassment wasn’t the only thing she felt. There was something delicious about it: being close to Paul and imagining what that could lead to, as well as giving Dimple a little pain. She had not realised she wanted to hurt Dimple, if only a bit. But apparently she did, and there was pleasure in it — no avoiding that.

  As she got into the shower, she laughed. Dimple would be all at sea. His dependable, loyal, no-nonsense wife had gone missing. In her place was a free spirit and a good-time girl. Right now, it felt like this was the real her. The new her. But it wasn’t. It was a weird her — a Ruthie who wanted to feel things and see things, as well as hurt her lifelong partner because he had what he wanted from life. He could walk down the paddock whistling badly, with those dogs around him, for another thousand years, and not think of a thing to complain about. He was where he wanted to be, with the person he wanted to be with. Without ever thinking about it or planning a thing, she had decided to put a spanner in his works. He could be in the right place, but he couldn’t have the right person — not without a significant effort, anyway.

  Before she left the block, she stuck her head out the doorway to see if anyone was around. If Paul turned up, she would have no idea how to behave. Especially as she was still holding the sensation that she had been naked and willing in front of him last night. But Paul wasn’t around. It was still early, so he and Janice were probably asleep. And then, as she walked briskly to the cabin, a forgotten part of the night came back to her. She had his phone number! She had asked him for it, with whispers and sign language, when Dimple wasn’t looking. Paul had scribbled it on a piece of paper; it was in last night’s clothes. That was the wrong thing to do — nobody could think otherwise. Paul must have been shocked, but since he gave her his number, right under her husband’s nose, he must have been hopeful, too. He would call her sometime, no doubt. Ruthie clutched her robe to her throat. Freedom was one thing, but betrayal was something else. Betrayal was underhanded and unfair. In the last two days, she had told Dimple everything, including the possibility that she would want the proceeds from her half of the farm when the drought was over. That was pretty brutal, but it was honest. Asking a man for his number was the action of a dishonest person. She scurried behind a large, smooth-skinned, lemon-scented gum, and threw up.

  As she dressed, she went through her clothes from the night before, searching for the scrap of paper. When she found it, she put it in the pocket of the pants she was wearing. She could not let go of it just yet. She was too hungover to ask herself why.

  Dimple packed the car, sat sullenly in the driver’s seat, and waited. He had not gone up to Paul or Janice to say goodbye, and he had no intention of doing so.

  They were making their way out of the lake area when Dimple’s phone rang. He stopped the car before they got to the main road, and answered the call.

  ‘Mr Travers, it’s Ken Lidcombe from Lidcombe and Swain, Stock and Station and Real Estate, in Burraga. Mr Oliver asked me to give you a call, in regard to the purchase of your farm.’

  ‘It’s not actually on the market at the moment.’ He didn’t look at Ruthie.

  ‘Yes, Mr Oliver said that. But he said you and he had had discussions about a possible purchase down the track?’

  ‘Only in a very preliminary way. Certain things need to happen before we even start to consider an offer.’

  ‘I understand that, and I can assure you that Mr Oliver is fine with it. However, we handle all Mr Oliver’s land purchases, and he often works on a long lead time. So I would like your permission to do some title searches and ask you to provide us with the details of your farm: plot numbers, a precise size, rates-assessment number, rainfall records, water points, crop and yield histories, pest and noxious-weed risk. That sort of thing.’

  ‘I won’t give you permission, and I’m not ready to provide you with the other information just yet. I’ll call you back, if that’s okay.’

  When the conversation was finished, he put the phone away and said, ‘Wally Oliver’s agent.’

  ‘I heard.’

  He swung the car out onto the road and did not talk until they stopped for coffee at a fast-food place. Ruthie ordered something salty and greasy to help her deal with the queasiness she was still feeling from the drink. Then they moved further up the road to do some grocery shopping, because they weren’t sure when they would next be in town. Ruthie really didn’t want to do any of it.

  Back on the road, Dimple said, ‘When we get home, you need to get onto this cancer stuff. See the doctor, book the surgery and the treatments, or whatever you need, as soon as possible.’

  ‘I plan to do just that.’

  ‘So we get you right again. And when you are well, we sit down and work out whether I ring Wally’s agent and tell him to do his best.’

  ‘You think the drought will be over by then?’ Making light of his proposal was worth a try.

  ‘I can’t wait for that. I’m not going through last night again. I’m not standing by in this relationship while you work out how to spread your wings.’

  Ruthie had her hand in her pocket, a
nd could feel the scrap of paper with Paul’s number scrunched up tightly. She had not expected this. She wanted to move at her own pace, not by Dimple’s demand.

  ‘I think you’re being a bit dramatic.’ Her intention was to cast doubt. Let him think he had read the situation wrongly and was now overreacting. Then appeal to his reasonable nature: things she had learnt at her mother’s knee.

  ‘I think you’re treating me like shit.’

  ‘It was just a bit of fun. I probably overdid it, and I’m sorry about that. But we’ve been under so much pressure for so long, it was great to let go a bit. You can see that, can’t you?’

  ‘I can see it. But I’m not prepared to share you with the world — not like that, anyway. If you want to sleep with other people, you should do it as a single woman.’

  She was going to say she didn’t want to sleep with anyone else, which was almost true. ‘Can we just calm down? I didn’t sleep with anyone, or even kiss anyone. I mean, you were with me the whole time. You’re being a bit ridiculous, don’t you think?’

  ‘You got his phone number. I was ten feet away. Did you think I didn’t notice?’

  Then the words wouldn’t come. How could she have thought that Dimple didn’t see what she had done? How ridiculous her secret sign-language must have looked. In her mind, Dimple had been on the other side of a very large covered-in area. But she was just drunk, and had been right in front of him. Paul must have been intoxicated, too, or otherwise he would not have allowed her to go on with it.

  The best thing to do was weep and apologise. Instead, she calmed herself and said, ‘It wasn’t a secret. I just swapped numbers with him. I thought maybe they could come and visit. He was such a fascinating man. We could do with a bit more intellectual stimulation in our lives.’ It was the least believable lie she could remember delivering.

  ‘Jeez, Ruthie.’

  Dimple stopped responding, because he knew he couldn’t win battles of words. An argument would only supply her with ammunition, because it would lead him into saying things that he didn’t mean to say, that he didn’t actually feel.

  They crossed a sloping rise into the valley that would eventually take them to their place. Dimple looked out over the flat farming country where there should have been green crops. The first surveyors had said there had never been trees on the wide stretches between the small sandy hills. ‘Wouldn’t grow trees because of the deep, cracking soil, they said. Couldn’t grow trees because of the wind,’ he said. ‘You can spend your whole life standing on bones and not even know it.’

  ‘What?’ Ruthie asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Dimple said. He wondered what else he persisted in hanging on to that was obviously untrue. That his wife loved him? That she had ever thought of him as anything other than a responsibility or an inescapable commitment?

  ‘I don’t care about the past anymore,’ Ruthie said in the same unrelated way. ‘I don’t think what has happened is important. What matters is what will happen and what we do about it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Now, suddenly, she was thinking about Finnie. If they sold the place, he would be the one who was disappointed. J enjoyed the farm and liked to help out, but Finnie was the farmer. He always had difficult questions for Dimple on the management decisions that had been made. When he was a boy, no matter what terrible job Dimple had lined up, Finnie wanted to be there. The fact that Finnie was working in finance had more to do with who he was than where he wanted to be. The country still wasn’t a great place for a young gay man. It was nowhere near as bad as it used to be, but Finnie would still be an outsider. There would still be sniggering jokes. She knew that her son would be able to handle it when he got a bit older and was more accepting of himself. It was just too early.

  So now she might take the farm away from him before he had a chance. But she was contradicting herself. Hadn’t she told Dimple they could buy another, better place with the money? And even if he only had half the money, he could buy somewhere pretty good. So she didn’t have to be Finnie’s keeper. Couldn’t be anymore. Although the desire in her to do so was strong. He was apart from them now: an adult. They’d done all they could. She was looking after herself now. She’d decided that.

  She switched the radio on, and a news report mentioned how a community of super-rich people had hired private firefighters and water bombers to protect them from a bushfire. They had survived intact. The local people who relied on the fire brigades and volunteer bushfire fighters had lost heavily. Ruthie turned the radio off.

  Even though it had only been two days, the country was drier than Dimple had allowed himself to remember. The ‘what ifs’ began to spike in his head. What if it didn’t rain for another two months, four months, six months, a year? Where would they be then? Cursing themselves for not having sold when they could? Their farm and their marriage both deserts?

  Ruthie was catching quick glimpses of him. She couldn’t tell if his face was showing pain or confusion. She almost reached out to him to say, Turn around. If we go back and cross that ramp, we’ll never come out the same. Someone can pick up the dogs for us. We’ve got money to live on. We can rent a quiet house at the beach and plan the rest of our lives. But she didn’t say anything. She sat in her seat, straight-backed, preparing herself to return.

  Eight

  It felt like they had been away for some time, but the garden and the house told them they hadn’t: the lawn had hardly grown; no plants had died; the house was not musty. Dimple could see the cows down near the hayshed, and they didn’t call out or come to the fence on the arrival of Dimple’s vehicle, which meant they were neither hungry nor thirsty.

  After he and Ruthie had taken their things inside, he went in the ute to check on the cows, the dogs, the chooks, the water, and the fences. He did not ask Ruthie if she would like to come with him, which he usually would have.

  When he let the dogs go, they ran around as if pleasure was their performance art. He threaded his way through the cows, making sure each of them could get up and that every calf looked fed. They were unperturbed by him. Hungry cattle were never unperturbed. He reminded himself to thank Barney and offer to look after his place again. In one sense, it had been a good getaway. In all the others, it hadn’t been.

  Ruthie checked her garden. The garden beds and the lawn and the young trees that demanded so much attention appeared to have hardly noticed she’d been gone. She accepted that when the summer temperatures came, which would be soon, they would suffer if she was away for even one day. But she also knew she’d been away and returned a different person. How was that possible? And when she’d said she didn’t care about history, did she mean it?

  It was too late to ring the doctor. She still had one more night to ignore the future, but given the mood Dimple was in, it was going to be a glum one. He seemed suddenly intrigued by the Aboriginal thing. It fascinated her, too, especially after the encounters with Wally and Paul, but she had let it go quickly. In fact, Paul’s stories hooked her because of him, not so much because of the material. It was an awful thing to admit, but somewhere over the past 48 hours she had lost the ability to care about the disadvantaged, the weak, and even the struggling farmers whose feelings she had thought she cared so much about.

  She got some mince out for dinner. There was time to make a quick spaghetti bolognaise and a green salad to go with it. Was she stepping straight back into her old routine? Probably, but she just had to. The practical things had to be dealt with. And there was pleasure in it, so that made it all right. She heated the oil, diced and browned the onions, and began to sing tuneful mondegreens. Already the sense that she didn’t want to leave was returning as if it had snuck in through the back door to remind her this was her place. This was the real place.

  When Dimple eventually returned, he confirmed that everything was okay on the farm. After he’d showered and cleaned up, they sat eating their meal, wa
tching the TV as though they cared about it. When they finished, Finnie rang, and then J, and Ruthie took pleasure in telling them facetiously about their little ‘holiday’: Wally Oliver; stopping off with their thermos; and the cabin by the lake. She did not tell them about Paul or the lump in her breast.

  Dimple asked what the boys had been up to, and then he and she stopped talking to each other. There had been plenty of times when they didn’t talk, usually after trivial arguments. They would carefully avoid each other, and only ask questions whose answers they couldn’t do without. The time after Finnie came out was a time without talking: after they’d discussed it so much, anything else was a rehash. But that was different. It was a failure of words, not a sign of unspeakable animosity.

  In the morning, as soon as the surgery was open, Ruthie rang her doctor. She was being matter-of-fact with herself, but the hand holding the phone shook. Her doctor, Karen Musgrove, did not seem to hold it against her that she had waited two days before calling. It put Ruthie at ease.

  ‘We need to remove the lump pronto. It will be day surgery. Once we’ve got it out, we can go from there. There’ll be a few weeks of treatment either way.’

  It sounded terrible, but not terrifying.

  ‘By the look of this, I think we’d better get you in tomorrow. Is that possible?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘I’ll get someone to ring you back with some times. It will mean you can’t eat tonight.’

  ‘Thanks, Karen.’ She said this remembering where the ‘prep’ formula was and how sick it had made her feel before the last surgery.

  ‘I’m organised for surgery tomorrow,’ she told Dimple at lunchtime.