As Far as You Can Go (15 page)

He holds the orange against his chest and digs his fingernails into the top of the peeled orange, pulls it into two. He pulls one segment off and chews, popping a pip out from between his lips.

‘Um,’ Cassie hesitates, ‘I just wanted to ask you about the, you know, set-up here.’

Fred frowns, chewing another segment, deftly spitting out another pip.

‘I mean –’ she waves her hand about, ‘it’s a bit –’

‘Don’t worry about it, love.’ He puts a finger to his lips. She frowns. Did he? Or maybe he was wiping away some orange juice.

He gets up and goes to the window, looks out at Mara’s shed.

‘What were the others like?’

His back freezes. He speaks without turning. ‘Look, love,
you’re
here now. Just play along.’

‘What on
earth
do you mean?’

Fred shakes his head. The silence goes on far too long.

‘I like your painting,’ she says, to fill it. ‘It’s tragic that you don’t paint any more.’ She gets the feeling that she’s sinking into some sort of quagmire, but her voice keeps on coming. ‘Need some aspirin, I really shouldn’t drink so much, I’m going to clean today, and paint – no, not your sort of painting, paint the walls.’

Fred turns.

‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘I always gabble when I’m nervous, not that you make me nervous but –’

‘I’ll tell you what’s tragic,’ he says slowly. He sits down, rests his elbows on the table and presses his fingers against his temples. The place where his thumb should be is a soft, shiny depression. ‘I was married once,’ he says.

Cassie sits beside him, follows his eyes over to the painting.
Of course
.

‘We were driving north. Darwin. Lynnie’s rellies. A wedding. Never wanted to go. And I lost it. Stress, maybe I’d had a beer or two, one of the kids screaming blue bloody murder in the back. I lost it. Came off the flaming road, didn’t I?’ He squeezes his eyes shut as if against the memory. She puts her hand on his knee. Poor, poor man. The hairs crinkle under her palm. It doesn’t seem quite right, her hand on his bare knee. He picks it up and holds it. Her own feels lost in his great warm palm.

‘Lynnette and Sylvie killed right out,’ he said, ‘Bonnie, she lived a week, and me – got off without a fucking scratch.’ He squeezes her hand till the bones might break. They sit in silence. The kettle boils, but she doesn’t like to move. A space fans open in her ribs and aches for him.

She tries to swallow, her mouth gone dry. ‘How long ago?’

‘Twelve years.’

‘Twelve years.’

‘Said I’d never – never trust myself with another person.’ He
makes a kind of smile come on to his face, hauling himself back into the daylight of the kitchen. ‘And I never have. Which is why I live on me tod. Haven’t had the heart for painting since.’

Cassie takes a breath. She must say something, something is required but Larry comes into the kitchen then, rubbing his hands together. Fred lets go her hand.

‘Morning.’ Larry’s clean and sharp in a crisp white shirt, pleased with himself. There’s a tang of aftershave or cologne in the air. How does he keep himself so
clean
? And whatever he drinks he’s never hung over, not so it shows. The dog follows him in and lies under the table on the dirty floor. Cassie sees rice and dog hairs, a hair clip, all sorts. As if it hasn’t been swept for days. Which it surely has.

Larry nods at the fretting kettle. ‘Coffee on the go? True confessions, eh?’

Cassie gets up. ‘Shall I make one for Mara?’

‘She won’t wake this morning.’

‘She
might
. She might like a chat, I could take it over –’

‘She won’t.’ He switches his attention away. ‘You off this morning, Fred?’

‘Yeah,’ Fred says, ‘reckon so.’

‘How long will it take you?’ Cassie puts Fred’s coffee down beside him. She gathers up the orange peel and dumps it in the compost bucket. ‘I’m going to clear up today,’ she adds to Larry. ‘Sorry about the mess. I don’t know how –’

‘Not to worry.’

‘Couple of hours, maybe three,’ Fred says.

‘A long drive,’ Cassie says.

‘Long!’ Fred throws his head back and laughs, quite back to normal now. She wonders if maybe he’s a little mad. From his loss and from being, as he said, mainly on his tod. She wouldn’t blame him, ‘Couple of hours is nothing,’ he says. ‘Get the air-con on. Bit of music. Gives a bloke a chance to think.’

‘What’s it like, where you live?’

Fred’s eyes chip across at Larry and away. ‘Nice town.’

‘We could visit sometime, maybe,’ says Cassie, thinking of her list.

‘Dying to escape, eh?’ Larry says.

‘No, just there’s some things I need. And I like looking round shops.’

‘Flaming sheilas!’

‘No,’ Cassie says, annoyed. ‘I want to go in a bookshop. I want a book about organic gardening in Western Australia.’

Fred shakes his head, pulls a packet of papers from his shorts and rolls himself a fag in a curiously dextrous way that compensates for his missing thumb.

‘You can order anything you need,’ Larry says, ‘I told you. And it will be fetched. Anything you need.’

Yes but I want to go myself
.

‘We’ve got some cards –’

‘Put them in the box.’

‘Has there been any post yet? I’m
sure
my sister will have written.’

Fred closes his eyes and leans back in his chair. ‘Nah, not yet but I’ll check when I get to Keemarra.’

‘I found some paint,’ she says, swallowing her disappointment. ‘White. Mind if I spruce up the kitchen a bit?’

‘Far from it.’ Larry looks around and then at her, more, into her. ‘You really are a useful soul, aren’t you?’ he says.

Dear Jas
,

Can’t believe how far away this is. Amazing, like you said. A different light OK. How you doing? Getting bored, not enough pals, not enough doing. Life passing by. Could be on another planet. Miss you and everyone. Wish you woz here
.

Luv
,

Graham

Graham sucks his oily fingers, one by one. Tomatoes warm and oily. New bread. The four of them have eaten their way steadily though a loaf, dunking chunks into tomatoey oil, mopping it off their plates.

‘I will have a lesson today,’ Mara states, bringing down her water glass with a clack that breaks the spell of lunchtime dreaminess.

‘Yeah?’ Graham blinks at her.

There is a pause.

‘That was, was it not, part of your rubric?’ Larry says.

‘Yeah, that’s cool.’ He smiles at Mara. Her chin is shiny with oil. ‘When?’

Cassie looks at him quizzically.

‘Fantastic bread,’ he says.

‘Thanks.’ She picks a grain of salt off the table with her finger and licks it, smiling straight back into his eyes, dazzling.

‘What did it feel like, dancing with Mara?’ she’d asked and idiotically he said, ‘Well,
she
felt nice,’ out of awkwardness, obviously
not
the right thing to say. But what could he have said?

‘Her nakedness, it doesn’t
mean
anything,’ he’d tried, attempting to convince himself. ‘It’s just how she is. Think of her skin as animal skin.’ But with everyone else fully clothed it
is
disconcerting and impossible to get used to. Whatever he says or pretends, it gets to you, having a naked woman around the place, breasts, buttocks, hairy shadows however hard you try not to look. And he gets the – paranoid maybe – sense that Larry is enjoying his unease.

‘Gray!’ Cassie leans across the table, grinning at him, snapping her fingers.

‘So,’ Larry says. ‘I take it that’s all right?’

‘Of course.’ Graham smiles, suddenly relieved. To concentrate on someone else for a change. Might be just what he needs to break this spell of doldrums. ‘Just say the word.’

*

Graham raps at Mara’s door. Still can’t get over it – that she lives in a shed. The stories they’ll have to tell when they get back. He felt cheerful this morning, waking not to the knowledge that
he
should be painting but to the prospect of working with someone else. Perhaps it’ll even set him off again, who knows? And he’s intrigued to see what Mara can do. To get to know her.

The door opens. Mara takes his hand and draws him in, the sunshine smothered by the swish of the thick door-curtain.

‘Ready?’ he says into the nearly dark. ‘I’ve put some paints, paper and stuff on the veranda – unless you’d prefer to be somewhere else?’

‘Here.’ Mara sounds surprised. ‘I’ve got paint here.’

‘But we can’t paint in
here
. Mara, you need light.’ The air is thick with joss-stick smoke, candle wax, the smell of her skin.

‘It’s more private,’ Mara says. She takes his hand. He’s glad that she’s at least wearing her dressing gown.

‘Come on,’ he says. ‘You can’t paint in the dark.’

So hot in the room. It’s unbelievable.

‘No,’ she says. She lets go of his hand, goes behind him to the door, rustles the curtain. He thinks she’s about to open the door but she slides the bolt. ‘There. Locked.’

‘What’s that for?’ he says. ‘I could just unlock it.’ He slides his finger in the air.

She laughs. ‘Not to keep you in, silly, to keep them out.’

He looks round. His eyes are getting used to the gloom. Velvet everywhere, the red Turkish carpet on the walls. The cloth over the window is embossed with stripes and the sun swelters through it like the orange bars of an electric fire.

‘There’s no way we can work in here,’ he says, quelling a sort of claustrophobic panic that rises in his throat.

‘It
is
warm,’ she allows. ‘You could take your things off. Are you sweating? No, only pigs sweat. Or horses? Are you perspiring? Ladies only glow.’ She laughs and stretches open her arms – and the dressing gown. ‘I want you to paint me.’ With a flap of her arms, the dressing gown falls to the floor.

‘I don’t do portraits, look, Mara –’

‘No.’

‘Let’s talk about this outside.’

‘Look,’ she says,
‘look.’
She comes close to him. He has to force himself not to back away. She seems so much bigger in this enclosed space and all the light in the room is gathered on her skin. She lifts her breasts to him. ‘Look.’ He gets an urge to laugh, it’s so preposterous. She can’t kill him with her breasts.

‘Look,’
she insists. He has no choice but to look and sees then what she is showing him. On her breasts she’s painted something smudgy, green and white. ‘Lilies,’ she says. ‘It’s hard to paint on yourself. Can you do them right? And I can do you.’

‘What?’ A startled laugh catches in his throat. A bead of sweat trickles down his cheek. ‘Listen.’ He rakes in a deep breath. ‘I’m gonna – Seriously. I need out –’ The room swims, dots before his eyes.

She steps back. ‘Go then. Get out.’ Angry but he can’t help it, he has to breathe.

‘Sorry,’ he says and struggles his way into the curtain, shoots open the bolt and steps out into the swingeing heat. He leans
over, hands pressing his weight into his thighs until the faintness passes.
Jesus
. This place is lunatic.

*

Balanced on a stepladder in the kitchen, Cassie rolls white paint on to the ceiling. ‘You’re not the only one who can paint round here,’ she says, her voice strained with reaching up.

‘Hey, Cass,’ Graham says. She finishes the paint on the roller and it really is brilliant white beside what was there before. She’s wearing a white shirt he’s never seen, a man’s white shirt and, although she must be wearing something underneath, you can’t tell, the way her thighs disappear under the cotton.

‘What’s up?’ She frowns, half laughing. ‘You should see your face!’

‘I want to go,’ he says.

‘Where?’

‘I mean, go. Leave. Now.’

‘Don’t be
stupid.’

‘This place is nuts. I’ve had it.’

Larry comes into the kitchen, the screen snapping shut behind him. ‘You’ve upset Mara,’ he says. He looks furious.

‘Graham
. What have you done?’ Cassie says.

‘Christ, man, she’s barking. Wanted me to paint her.’

‘Yes?’

‘So?’ Cassie says. ‘What are you on about?’ She puts the roller in the paint tray and comes down the ladder. On her nose there’s a snowy freckle of paint overlapping her own freckles.

‘To
paint
her,’ Graham says.

‘So?’

‘Let’s have a drink.’ Larry says. ‘You seem shaken.’ He tries to put his hand on Graham’s sleeve but he flinches away. ‘Lemonade, Cassie?’

She gets a jug out of the fridge while Larry puts three glasses on the table. Cassie made the lemonade, her grandmother’s
recipe, she says. It’s cloudy and floating with bits of pip. Graham takes a sip and it puckers his mouth. ‘Sugar,’ he says, wincing. She must have got the recipe wrong. It almost hurts the way the saliva pumps inside his cheeks. He sucks them in and squints.

‘It’s not that bad!’ Cassie pushes him the sugar tin. ‘Now, what’s up with you?’ She stirs a spoonful into her own glass.

‘Possibly I should have explained a little more comprehensively,’ Larry says. He is so cool. You have to give him that. ‘You understand very well by now that Mara isn’t quite – which is why we live here.’

‘What’s
wrong
with painting her anyway?’ Cassie says.

‘Paint
on
her. Her
skin.’

‘On
her?’

‘I can’t see that that’s so terribly outrageous,’ Larry says. ‘What harm is there? Body decoration is an ancient form of art. Arguably
the
most ancient. Here, of all places, in this ancient land, is it not natural that an artist should develop such an interest? Wait.’

He goes through the door into the house to fetch a book, puts it on the table in front of Graham.

‘Took a look.’

He flips through the lavish coloured pages: paintings, piercings, tattooing from all the tribes of the world, close-ups of black skins smeared ochre and white, white skin intricately tattooed.

‘If I had anticipated such a hysterical reaction,’ Larry says, ‘I would, of course, have primed you first. Mara has, as you know, stopped painting, paper, canvas, I can’t prevent her wanting to destroy what she has painted and now she’s taken this sudden hankering for painting on skin and I really don’t see the harm. Perhaps it might lead her back to a more permanent form of art. Think of it as a kind of therapy if you wish. Art therapy. Cassie, your opinion?’