Anchor Point (12 page)

Her TAFE course was filled with rural kids hoping to run the family farm, or buy their own. A few retirees with lifestyle properties, whose ideas about rural life made the country kids titter. Hung between groups, Laura was left to make herself invisible. She had perfected the trick years ago. Some part of her had thought, hoped, that things might be different in Sydney. But she saw now that she had brought herself along. She longed to wake in her own room on the farm, her day neatly arranged by tasks that were predictable, known. In that place she was useful, handy, calm. She knew what needed doing and she could get the job done.

The course was meant to be practical – ‘It's not rocket science!' one retiree said – but assignments still needed writing, which meant there was reading to be done. Laura sat silent at the back of the class, dreaming with eyes open. Each day she wanted nothing more than for it to be over, so that she might go back to her room and crawl into the cave of her bed. As the semester wore on, she felt as though she was sinking into mud. The rest of the students seemed to glide over the bog of work, barely breaking a sweat.

When the first assignment was returned covered in red pen, Laura felt herself go under. Those five hundred words had cost a night's sleep, each one a pinprick, drawing blood. Why did she have to describe how to run a drought-lot for her sheep? Couldn't she just show how it might be done? Her desk chair clattered as she stood. Every head turned. Crushed, she stuffed her assignment into her bag. Out in the dingy corridor, she heard the teacher faintly call her name. Head down, she kept going, shame dripping like rain. Running down her face.

The next day a man about Laura's age turned up, bounding through the classroom door. From her vantage at the back of the room, Laura stared at the gleaming ball of his shoulder, the arc of his long neck. His baggy singlet needed washing, his feet were bare, but his blatant beauty – strong nose, square jaw, black cherubic curls – sent a charge through the class, which fell silent. Everyone stared.

‘Yo, sorry I'm late.' He addressed the teacher casually, as though he had missed minutes, rather than weeks. His hands were deep in cargo pockets. Laura watched beads of water rolling from his hair down his neck.

The teacher gaped. A crimson blush was bleeding up her throat. There was something in the slow smile the young man gave that showed he knew the effect he was having.

‘Cool, well, I'll just find myself a seat,' he said. ‘Sorry to barge in.' He shrugged, seemingly baffled by his own haplessness. He was
nice
. His eyes met Laura's over her classmates' heads. She skittered her gaze away, embarrassed to have been caught staring. But then he was beside her, pulling out a spare chair and slouching into it. He sat, crossing ankle over knee, expectantly waiting for the teacher to go on. It was as though he'd been there all along.

The teacher looked stunned. It took a moment for her to suggest they take a break. The room erupted: chairs scraping, books clattering, chatter. Only Laura and the young man remained in their seats.

‘Luc.' The smile he offered with his outstretched hand was like something from the fashion magazines Vik bought. Laura thought of all the wood she'd chopped, the roos and rabbits and sheep she'd shot, the fire they'd fought and won. What was this boy, these bright white teeth, to her?

‘Laura,' she said curtly, giving his soft reader's hand a quick shake.

Luc seemed amused by her coolness. He rocked back in his chair, balancing dangerously on its back legs. ‘So, what've I missed?'

Laura smiled, despite herself. She gave Luc a sidelong glance. ‘Fucked if I know,' she said.

One Saturday morning, Laura left the migraine of homework piled on her desk and strode through the humidity, uncaring of direction. A part of her found the city fascinating: the winding streets and tightly packed houses, curtains left brazenly open so that Laura could see right in to where breakfast dishes sat on sinks.

The suburb might have been beautiful once, to those who enjoyed the bustle of the deep inner city. Siamese lives and quaint old buildings – a number of the original Victorian mansions still stood. But over time, the character of the place had changed. Laura saw the decades in peeling paint. The history of the place, recorded in boarded-up windows, concrete cracks. At some point, migrants and workers had moved in, building modest homes on small blocks. Apartments went up in place of factories. Students swarmed, overrunning the old mansions with share houses, cheap wine and raucous parties. Broken glass glittered in tiny front yards. Tibetan prayer-flags fluttered on verandahs from chipped iron lace. Bins overflowed. Hung-over smokers lounged on front steps in dark glasses. Laura passed silently under cover of loud music spilling out of windows, dogs barking deep inside rooms. The assault of detail overwhelmed her. She didn't know what to think.

When she heard the din of voices she almost turned away. But the mass of people was advancing, and she was absorbed before she knew what was happening. Two police officers on horseback tried to corral the crowd, keep it contained. The street was a sea of heat and colour. By turns festive and aggressive, the mob surged, parted, let her through, swallowed her. A chant rose up, hundreds of voices asserting their desires.

‘What do we want?'

‘No more logging!'

‘When do we want it?'

‘NOW!'

There were bongos and other instruments, other songs, other chants. Banners flapped above their heads. Someone spoke into a megaphone, a loudly distorted voice. The crowd moved off, a human river, with Laura carried by the current. Behind her was the raucous rainbow serpent, the width of the road, winding back for blocks.

One of the police horses became skittish and stumbled. The rider jerked the reins, transmitting his own anxiety. The horse reared up. Without thinking, Laura lunged to place a calming hand on the animal's neck.

The crowd boiled and, in a blink, Laura was on her knees and the horse was a way down the street, dancing, jittery. She tried to get up but it was like being in strong surf. Buffeted, she hunkered down, waiting to be crushed.

‘You 'right? Laura, yeah?' A hand brushed her shoulder. ‘From class?'

She looked into Luc's face. Turmoil raged around them. Laura stared into blue eyes, lashes so thick they looked false. He grinned, flashing a dimple in one stubbled cheek. His stained T-shirt proclaimed
Trees for the Future
! She could smell his clothes, the reek of his body. The soles of his feet were black with city filth; threads dangled from denim shorts cut off at the knee. He offered a hand. Laura hesitated. Something thwacked her in the back. Caged by stampeding legs, she grasped Luc's fingers. ‘My knee,' she croaked.

She slid her arm around his waist, pressed her hand into the hollow above his hip, self-consciously.

‘Saw you go for that horse,' he said. He looked down at her admiringly. ‘You're mad!'

He steered her away from the crowd, along an alley. They collected themselves at a nearby cafe. Laura sensed that he was unlike the boys she knew from Kyree High, who screamed names from passing cars, bare arses at open windows.

Laura tasted cappuccino. She didn't hate it. Luc spoke about this cause and that. He had helped to organise the rally, but Laura couldn't quite believe that all those people marched just because Luc said something wasn't right. He was an activist, he said. Laura smirked to herself, thinking,
Know a thing or two about keeping busy myself
.

‘There's loads to do for the next protest,' Luc said. ‘We could always use another set of hands!'

Laura watched the shape of his mouth, the incline of his shoulders against his broad neck. She imagined wrapping her arms around the tree trunk of his waist, and wondered if they'd reach.

When she asked Luc how he liked their course, his smile faltered. He told her that his parents were against it: they wanted him to do Medicine or Engineering or Law like the good sons of their friends. ‘Old-school wogs.' Luc said. ‘My dad only got to Year Eight. Was stoked I finished school. They run a garden nursery, but they insist I have to do “better”.' He clasped his ceramic mug, explaining that he didn't want to do any of ‘that shit'. ‘Why can't they let me do what I want?'

‘But do you want to run a farm?' Laura asked, immediately wishing she hadn't.

Luc's face dropped. ‘My old man reckons agriculture's for peasants – it's what his folks did back home. He wants something else for me. Options. Reckons I'm throwing my life away.' Luc snorted. ‘What would he know?'

‘I hear you,' Laura said. What she could really hear was the inevitable disappointment in Bruce's voice when he learned about her grades. But what had he expected? She wasn't just going to up and change, become studious. He knew what she was like.

Laura couldn't wake without thinking of Luc. The mere idea of him, like drunkenness. She began to look forward to TAFE for the lunchtimes. They sat alone in the fire-escape outside their classroom, watching the rain, smoking. Laura was shy, stupefied by proximity. It was all she could do to hold a simple conversation. Not just because of his looks. She saw the embarrassment they caused him, the little ripples he sent through rooms, though he wasn't above working it: winking at canteen ladies, blagging cigarettes, chatting with acquaintances and making friends. Though Luc seemed genuinely interested in other people's stories, a transaction was taking place. Laura sometimes wondered what it was that she paid for Luc's attention. But it was too late; she had fallen for him.

Or maybe Luc had reeled her in. He could articulate the world's wrongs in a few precise words. He made big issues seem not little, but clear. In another life he might have founded a cult. Laura watched him standing in his bedroom, steaming in the heat, glistening, his elegant prophesies so assured they seemed obvious. The semicircle of upturned faces nodded happily; there were lots of rousing cheers. Sipping drinks, Luc assured them that shit and fans would meet. They all took this seriously. Laura listened with a focus she had never found for school. He would question her later. She wanted to do well.

Laura voiced her opinions tentatively at first, and then with increasing forcefulness as her shyness faded. They sparred. She enjoyed each little stairwell debate. While she couldn't compete with Luc's insights, it surprised her to find that living in Kyree had taught her a thing or two, without her even noticing.

‘They don't think of it like that,' Laura said, vehemently shaking her head. ‘The farmers. You met any?' When had people in Kyree become
They
?

With an ache, she thought of Joseph. Through all their years of friendship, they had never spoken much – too busy making things, going places, exploring. Luc's way of challenging her, forcing her to use words, defend, made the world seem expansive and fresh. He appeared keen to hear her stories about the farm. Laura surprised herself by telling them.

‘You fired a gun?' Luc asked a few months after they met, passing his Big M across. The handouts from their last class had been hastily stuffed into the folders they sat on. Laura sipped the sickly milk. How different their childhoods had been.

‘'Course,' she said. ‘Every day.'

A skein of expressions unfurled on Luc's face. Surprise, admiration, and something Laura watched him struggle to control: disapproval. She had clocked the latest T-shirt:
Meat Is Murder
. They'd had enough conversations; she knew his thoughts. Watching Luc work to squash his judgement down, Laura was unsure whether to feel flattered or sad.

‘Talk to me when you run out of lentils,' she snapped, recalling the bloody effort of all those family dinners skinned, gutted, cooked. How expectantly Bruce had waited for the evening meal, never questioning Laura's capacity to provide it.

‘Woah.' Luc held up his hands as though to ease her down. ‘I say anything?'

Laura ignored him. She rolled a grub of tobacco in her hand.

Then his face was inches from hers, her chin fixed between fingers. ‘Laura,' he breathed.

Startled, she felt his mouth approach.

Each scar on her body, like the rings in the bark of a tree, recorded the years she had lived. Luc's face was wet as he pressed cheek to stomach.

‘What happened to you?' he kept asking. She found his scrutiny of her scars unbearably embarrassing, and giggled.

‘Tell me,' Luc whispered.

Where to start? Like Scheherazade, she would need a thousand and one nights to tell him everything. There had been fire, falls, accidents with knives and secateurs and axe. That time she slipped and fell out of a tree, another time she failed to clear the barbed-wire fence. Each event, each scar, was insignificant on its own. Together they told so much about her childhood.

In the bed, her body felt organless. She was filled with something mercurial that hurt. She shrugged in response to Luc's pleas for explanation. ‘Just clumsy, I guess.'

As Luc traced the line of one small scar, made on purpose with compass point, Laura suspected that no matter how hard she worked, how wholly she gave herself to him, there would be even more wounds. Invisible, dormant, they were already there.

Laura felt Kath's glare. Thought of unread books, propping up shelves. Years of sandwiches – hundreds and hundreds of neat triangles – that she had prepared for Vik. The way Bruce slumped over dinner in a particularly bad year.
Like ripping off a bandaid
, Laura thought, and then erased the image of Kath's letters from her mind.