The Best of Fiona Kidman's Short Stories (14 page)

‘I expect he'll be back,' says Della. ‘He's got to work tonight. Now go on, why don't you go home and get some rest … the way Clarrie said.'

‘Can't I stay and wait till he gets back?'

‘No.'

Margie knows they won't let her stay, and so she says simply, ‘I'll be back tonight then.'

There is a strength in her too. It's easy to overlook that, but it is awesome when it shows. She marches past them, skirt billowing with the petticoats of twenty years ago, the big hoop earrings swaying slightly, as she draws herself up to her full five feet. Her lipstick is smeared across her face and the thick
mascara has slid along a crease beside her eye. But for the moment, her face is implacable. They fear for her.

‘Perhaps we should have kept her here,' says Della when she's gone, and she tells Reuben what's happened in the caf this morning.

He shakes his head. ‘She'll come back.'

The ute has pulled away from the caf, taking Aileen and Clarrie away. For a while they travel in silence. This then, is the highway towards the Desert Road and they are travelling south together. The sun has moved up into the high griddle of the sky. The day is collecting itself and they are moving with it. Clarrie sees that it is autumn after all, that the colour of the air has a silken shimmering appearance.

And over all, there is the mountain, turning its sharp head to the sky. The Falcon ute is purring. Clarrie remembers that he was young once, and
wonders
why he had forgotten. It was not so very long ago. The girl is arching her profile, head moving from side to side, lips parted so that again he sees that her teeth are fine and white. Her tongue flicks out filming her top lip with a shine you might call sensual. There is the old ache in the balls and he feels his prick harden. He wonders if he could have her and he remembers her fierce reply to his question in the Roadhouse Caf … ‘Only when I let them.' Would she let him? Come to that, what did she want of him at all? A lift further down the road? Or to tease him along for a bit of sport? She said she knew about cruelty. Or maybe just to roll him for some dough. Well he'd pay for it if that was what she wanted. It was so long since he'd had it that he'd pay. Not that he couldn't have had it. Thinking of Margie. He laughs inwardly at himself. He's never found it easy to get a woman, and now here he is with it laid on and what does he do? Nothing. A man can still afford to be choosy. His amusement must show for Aileen looks sideways at him and asks what he's thinking.

But he doesn't tell her. It occurs to him that she mightn't think it funny, and remembers that first look between Aileen and Margie. The fact is, too, that he would be lying to himself. It was something more than choosiness that had made him turn down Margie. For one thing there was fear. If he'd used her as a warm cave to snug up in, the people around might have damaged him. Nobody used Margie and got away with it. And for another thing, yes, he cared too, looked after her, if you liked to put it that way. That was his protection. He might hurt her simply by his presence, but there was not a thing they could hold at his door, and sending him away would hurt her too. So they were stuck with him.

They haven't gone far, not more than two or three miles down the road
and she says to stop. ‘Why?' he says, pulling over to the side of the road, even as he asks her. Her eyes are shining, she flares around the nostrils a little, flicking her tongue up to her silvery snotty nose. He is repelled yet fascinated.

‘Look,' she breathes.

He looks and can see nothing special. She is halfway out of the ute. The side of the road stretches away into a depression in the ground, and some way in, there are low manuka trees and rough cover. There's been a fence but it's fallen away. Only some strands of wire are slung low to the ground hanging from lurching posts covered in rust-coloured moss. Close by them there are clumps of thick coarse plants covered in purple flowers. It is these that have attracted her attention.

‘Where are you going?' he calls, wondering if she's dropping off on him.

‘To pick this,' she says with delight, indicating the heather.

‘Weeds,' he says.

‘I don't think so,' she calls, ignoring the disparaging tone of his voice. ‘It's a sort of wild heather I think.' She is breaking the flowers off with one hand and holding them close to her in a bundle with the other. ‘Come on — help me.'

‘Oh … all right,' he says, humouring her. He wonders if any of the truckies will pass them. Be his luck if any of them recognised him. They break the stalks together for a few minutes. The air is sweeter as they move away from the road, as if the shallow pocket of land has captured and held some of the early morning air and is holding it in reserve for them, even though the sky is almost cobalt blue above them now. As she bends to the flowers, a sparrow, one in a cloud disturbed, lands fleetingly on her bent shoulder. Her body goes instantly rigid with concentration at keeping still so it will not fly away. Her lips hardly seem to move, she is like a ventriloquist yet still she manages to speak to him. ‘You could kill it,' she says to Clarrie.

‘Then I would have to kill you,' he replies and she measures him out of the corner of her eye.

‘Oh yes.'

The bitch, he does not get her game and straightens so that the bird flies away. There is a glint of triumph in her eyes. She continues to pick.

‘It's nice here,' she remarks.

‘What are you going to do with all this stuff?' Their arms are full. ‘I don't know. Don't you have a place I can put it?'

‘What d'you mean, a place I can put it?'

‘Well wherever you live. I suppose you live somewhere.'

‘Supposing I don't want it?'

‘But I do.'

‘What'll the wife and kids say?'

‘You haven't got a wife and kids,' she says, matter-of-factly.

‘How d'you know?'

‘I don't know. It's not important how I know. You haven't, I'm right aren't I?'

He says nothing.

‘Look. Look Clarrie,' and she points away into the edge of the scrub. ‘Rosehips.' It's true too, they glow like a bright torch amongst the dingy scrub.

‘You don't want them things.'

‘Those things,' she corrects him absently as she descends upon the rosebush.

‘Here, who are you?' he says, uneasy, not for the first time this morning.

‘I don't know.' She flashes him a white enigmatic smile from out of the pointed tan face.

‘You're mad,' he says.

‘Yes, yes maybe I am.'

‘How d'you know I'm not married?' he persists doggedly.

‘Oh for God's sake, are you or aren't you?'

‘No.'

‘Then why go on about it? What's the big deal? We'll put the flowers in your room.'

We. He is assailed with a blush. His vision is so perfect, so clear, so … intricate. She must be able to see it inside his head. It is hard to tell what she sees,
she seems to see so much. So it follows that she has followed through one complete carnal manoeuvre with the same precise vision as he has. He waits to be rebuked. Nothing happens.

‘You'd come back to my room?' he manages, sure that he is croaking.

‘Help me get the spikes off this branch,' is all she says. ‘This rose bush must have been here forever.'

‘Would you?'

She sucks her teeth at the exertion. ‘They're tough … ah, there … but so beautiful. Oh Clarrie, just look at them. Strings of beads … Indian beads.' She hollers at the sky. ‘Whaa-oo, I'm an Indian.'

‘Bloody nuts,' he mutters.

‘Yeah, nuts, that's me.' She is childlike, holding the sprays of rosehips apart so that they do fall like beads, bright flowing orbs, the mellow autumn is beginning all right. They blur before his eyes, bright coral; it is so beautiful a day. He remembers that rosehips have something to do with babies, they are nourished by the juice, wonders if she knows, this girl-woman, a baby's tender mouth suckling, he is fraught with images, why doesn't she seem to understand?

‘Look, and bullrushes too,' she cries.

He sees that under the scrub there is squelchy oozing mud.

‘Watch out,' he says sharply. ‘That's swamp.'

‘It won't hurt me. What do you think it is? Quicksand? I don't disappear that easily. Not unless I want to of course,' she adds, as a kind of obligatory warning. Her toes squelch with mud, she bends and rolls up the ends of her jeans.

‘Ah come on, get out of that muck,' he says.

‘See the mud oozing up through my toes. Darkness, there's darkness down there.'

‘Come on,' he repeats, frightened.

‘We should be getting back to the road. I left the ute unlocked.'

‘Ah, there I've got one.' She crawls out of the bushes, triumphant. Although he hasn't got much of an eye for flowers he has to admit that her bouquet is assuming proportions of splendour. Here comes. Here she comes. Here I come. Oh beautiful Aileen. Oh Aileen small brown paws silver nose doggy crutch oh Aileen …

‘Let's sit a while,' she says.

‘Sit?'

‘Oh of course, you have to lock the ute. I'll wait.' And she squats in the rough grass.

‘Lock it,' she commands, and stretches out like a cat arching to the sun.

He's worried about the ute. It took him a long time to come by it. It's a good one, it only had forty thou on the clock when he bought it, he cleans it till it sparkles every week and sometimes gives it an extra brush around the chrome; he wouldn't exactly call the ute a religion but it is, yes, significant. He recalls how they walked everywhere when he was a child. And a walking target is a slow target, an easy target. He finds himself scrambling up the bank, frantic to check that all is well with his machine.

It is standing there, immaculate, shining as when he left the Roadhouse, the aerial standing proud, lovely oh lovely vehicle oh lovely woman let us ride together down the desert.

Will he find her when he goes back? Does he deserve to? He slips the key into the locks, makes it all as tight as a drum and much safer. And leans against his vehicle for a moment. Is he mad? This whole thing could be a strange madness. He could get into the ute now, this minute, and start driving away.

But of course he goes back to her, and she's just sitting there cross-legged on the straggly harsh grass, staring away into space.

‘What do you want to do now?' he asks, sitting down heavily beside her.

‘Nothing,' she replies, quite still. There is mud on the ends of her jeans, it is drying out nicely in the sun.

So he sits beside her quietly, not trying to touch her, though he wants to get through to her, to communicate with her. He is not sure whether or not he might have missed the opportunity. ‘They're nice flowers,' he says tentatively. She nods, non-committal. ‘Autumn tones,' he tries again. It's a term he has heard used in his mother's sitting room. Later of course, when a term of uneasy respectability set in to his home. He reflects on that, almost but not quite missing a flash of distaste across her face as if he has said something ill-bred. Imagination. It's very hot here in this gully, and there seems to be nothing she wants to do or say. But something has stirred in him.

‘How did you know?' he says sharply.

‘Know what?'

‘About me. You're too young to have known people like my family. There's hundreds of people with names like me who never went through what my folks did.'

‘Pure coincidence. I knew someone like you.'

‘You could have been wrong.'

‘I know,' she says lazily, and smiles under heavy lids at the scramble of colour lying on the ground beside her. ‘It was a guess I suppose. An educated guess though, wouldn't you say.'

‘Where did you meet — this person? Like me?'

She reacts badly and is not sure how to cover it. ‘Let's go,' she says abruptly, and jumps to her feet.

He is annoyed, he wants to sit on with her, and worse, he has failed to make contact. They drag themselves, glistening with sweat, up the bank and silently he unlocks the ute for her. She climbs in and pulls the door shut, and sits almost cowering in the corner. He is afraid when he sees
her like that, and does not know what he has done, afraid too that if he tries to comfort her he will do more damage. They drive off picking up speed quickly, he opens the window to let out some of the stored-up heat in the vehicle. There is nothing to say and he turns on the radio looking for music. In a minute the cab is full of rock and he glances at her and she returns the look, appreciative, his silence has won her back. They pass the great tunnelling system that the Italians have come to New Zealand to build.

‘I wonder what it is like down there in the dark,' she says.

‘I hear it's pretty tidy, not like coalmines or anything like that.'

‘But still, there can be slips and falls can't there?' she says.

‘Yes. It's not for me.'

She shivers and wraps her arms around herself, pulling an imaginary cloak
about her. They roll on through the heart of the North Island. The
countryside
has given way to mile after mile of dry tussockland, dotted with stunted weed-like pine trees. Sudden winds even in this bright day whip banks of dirt into dust whorling into the air. It is a barren land strung together with mile after mile of telegraph wires. They take the long hairpin bend and then start to climb. They are travelling in a true centre of the earth; away to their right, across an arid waste, rear the mountains, Ruapehu touching a blue sky with the smallest cap of snow like the hat that the Pope wears. Aileen has relaxed now, and she turns the radio off without asking but it is all right for Clarrie who has had enough of the noise too. So they travel on, mile after mile in utter silence, and her silence has become a peace to him. He has no idea where they are travelling to, but he expects that he will know when they arrive at the place they are going to, that it has been predetermined for them. He believes, simply, that they are going somewhere.