As Far as You Can Go (16 page)

She shrugs.

‘But she wanted
me
to paint her.’

‘Just to begin with.’

‘But – it felt, it seems, don’t you mind me touching, painting, your wife?’

‘Good gracious, what a small mind you must think I have!’

‘I don’t think Cassie’ll like it.’

‘I don’t think
she’s
that small-minded.’

‘It is a
bit
weird to me,’ Cassie says.

‘Seems
fucking
weird to me,’ Graham says.

‘Now, now.’ Larry allows a missed beat. ‘If you don’t want to help Mara, then don’t. No one forces anyone to do anything round here.’

Graham stirs another spoonful of sugar into his glass. Doesn’t matter how much he puts in, it is still too sour. He gets his tobacco out, hands shaking a bit. He feels a complete fumbling prat as both of them watch him roll a smoke. ‘So it would be OK,’ he says, facing Larry out, ‘if I refused?’

‘It would be all right with me,’ Larry says, ‘though your refusal would disappoint poor Mara and would, if you think about it, rather make your appointment as,’ he clears his throat, ‘a sort of
artist in residence
seem rather, shall we say, redundant.’

Graham puffs contemptuously. Cassie frowns at him, shakes her head. Larry stands up, puts his empty glass beside the sink. ‘It is entirely up to you. Now I, for one, have work to do.’ Abruptly, he leaves the room. Down the corridor they can hear him unlocking a door and pulling it shut behind him.

‘Graham
,’ Cassie says, crossly.

‘Fucking great prat,’ Graham says. ‘I’ve had it.’

‘You can’t give up already! That’s
pathetic.’
One strand of her hair is stiff and white. He looks down at her brown thighs under the hem of the white shirt. Feels a stirring in his groin, presses his fist against it.

‘Please,’ she says, ‘just go along with it. A bit longer. For me.
Please.’

He runs his fingers from his hairline down to the nape of his neck, smoothes his ponytail through his hand. ‘Christ,’ he says. He sips the lemonade and his mouth puckers again. ‘This is too
sour.’

‘Particularly sour lemons.’

‘What?’

She shakes her head. There is a long pause, as if she’s working herself up to speak. She takes his hand. ‘Gray,’ she runs her thumb up and down the bumps of his knucklebones, ‘you couldn’t … fancy Mara or anything, could you?’

He snorts. ‘We come all this way and you still –’

‘No, it’s OK.’ She smiles, gappy white teeth, white freckles, white quiff of hair. ‘Look, why don’t you help me paint this kitchen, then? We could get it done today. Oh look!’ she points to the ceiling where a creature is flapping, one wing stuck to the paint. ‘Poor stupid thing. Can you get it?’ The sleeve falls back, light gleams on the blonde hairs on her arm.

‘You know something?’ he says. ‘You look sensational.’

‘This?’ Cassie tugs the rolled-up sleeve of the shirt. ‘Egyptian cotton, Larry’s. I said anything
old
but this is beautiful, don’t you think?’ She gives a twirl, the cotton lifting away from her legs.

‘Beautiful,’ he says. He climbs up the ladder to try and free the dying bug.

Cassie sits at the veranda table. She feels almost cool; a tall glass of lemonade in front of her. She opens her notebook. Ought to jot down some ideas for her new module. Outback Gardening. Though, she thinks, that might seem rather irrelevant back home. Would anyone sign up? And anyway, there’s nothing much to say. She hasn’t done anything. She frowns and chews the end of her pencil. What
is
up with her?

Larry comes out. ‘Mind if I join you for a moment?’

‘Not at all.’ She’s glad to be distracted. Larry looks tired, drawn around the eyes. ‘Can I get you some lemonade? Cup of tea?’ she offers.

He shakes his head. ‘Kitchen looks splendid. Thank you. Above and beyond –’

‘No. I – we – enjoyed it.’

She’s pleased with it, with herself. Pleased with the clean white, with the wet inky smell of emulsion paint. It doesn’t cover everything, but it nearly does, if you don’t look too close.

He brushes the seat of a chair and sits down. ‘Hard at work?’

‘Well–’ She grimaces, shows him the empty notebook.

‘How’s the gardening? Enjoying yourself?’

‘Just keeping it going really, so far. I did ask Fred to bring me some seeds. Want to grow some scented things, alyssum and stuff. To attract bugs.’

‘Not enough bugs for you?’ He smiles.

‘Yeah! But
nectar-eating
insects – they’ll prey on the pests. I wonder how I could attract more lizards?’

He regards her for a moment. ‘I do admire you,’ he says.

‘Admire
me
!’

‘Your – industriousness.’

‘But I haven’t been! Usually I’m –’

‘No, no. I like the way you get on with it. You cook wonderfully, inventively. You take things – how can I put it? – seriously.’

‘ Well!’ She doesn’t know what to say. ‘I – I admire
you,’
she says at last. ‘Being here with Mara and being, so–’
Patient
she wants to say, patient with Graham. Though that might seem disloyal.

‘Being what?’ His eyes are warm, the lines around them crinkle gently.

‘Well, Graham
can
be a bit – a bit –
difficult
. About painting Mara –’

‘Hmmm.’ His chair creaks as he leans back. It’s late afternoon, the air humid. A crow lands on the veranda rail, hops heavily, launches itself off again on its shadowy wings. The light is deepening and in the distance there are clouds like bundles of dark cloth.

‘What were the last people like?’ Cassie asks.

He folds his arms. His gold watch catches the light and winks at her. ‘The last people?’

‘Was she called Lucy?’

The sides of his nose pinch in as he breathes. ‘They were very – nice. But they proved unsuitable. Not up to the job, shall we say. What do you know about them?’

‘Nothing much. Mara just mentioned Lucy in passing. That I looked like her, or something.’

He nods and purses his lips. Cassie bends over her notebook, scribbles something pretend in the margin. There’s a long pause.

‘Sure you don’t want some tea?’

He clears his throat. ‘I hesitate to interfere between two people so clearly in love.’

‘Me and Gray?’ She blushes hotly. ‘Are we?’

‘Well, only you can answer that.’

‘No I mean are we
clearly
?’

He chuckles. ‘Though – am I right in thinking that Graham being here with you is a penance for something? Don’t be alarmed, I have a little – gift, shall we say, for reading situations.’

‘No! Not a penance!’ She tries to laugh.

‘Test, then?’

‘No! Whatever gave you that idea?’

She stares at him, startled, but he looks back only with kindliness. ‘Forgive my clumsiness. Shall we drop the subject?’ He looks embarrassed.

‘No, it’s OK,’ she says.

‘You’re still homesick, aren’t you?’

‘A bit,’ she admits.

‘Do you think you might feel better if you had someone to talk to? Confide in?’

‘I miss my sister.’ She’s embarrassed by the threat of tears in her voice. She swallows.

‘Now, now.’ He reaches over and touches her hand. ‘Don’t cry.’

‘I’m not, it’s just –’ She blinks and looks away over the veranda rail, past Mara’s shed to the stand of gum trees in the distance until the danger has past. ‘You’re right, I do – I
so
miss having someone to talk to. Patsy and I, we always,
always
tell each other everything. It’s like a kind of pain,’ she puts her fist against her heart, ‘here. That
missing
. And there hasn’t even been a letter. She
must
have written.’

He sighs. ‘I’ll get Fred to double-check. Look, I am sorry you feel like that. And I know I could never be a substitute but I
am
a good listener.’

She looks at him. He seems really concerned. It would seem rude to refuse to talk to him. And, what the hell, she has to talk to
somebody
.

He waits, head tilted to one side.

‘Well,’ she says, after a moment, ‘- you’re partly right about me and Graham, some of the reason for coming here, as well as wanting a change and everything,
is
about our relationship. I want to, well, settle down. That sounds pathetic doesn’t it?’

‘Not in the least.’

‘Have a baby. Maybe even get married. Anyway, be a proper couple. You know?’

Larry nods.

‘You’re right, we are in love. Well
I’m
in love with
him
anyway, it’s hard to tell with him! But –’

‘He’s not the settling kind?’ Larry offers.

‘Well –’ She runs her fingers through her sticky, tangled hair.

‘What would you like to happen?’ Larry says. ‘In an ideal world?’

She gazes at him a moment. ‘I suppose I’d like him to be more – kind of stable, home-centred.
Faithful,’
she says, looking down at her hands. Dirt under the nails still, splatters of paint, despite a good scrubbing. They’re rough as pan scourers. She feels such a
mess
.

Larry makes a sympathetic sound in his throat. ‘I hesitate to offer this–’

‘What?’

‘No, you wouldn’t like the idea.’

‘What?
’ She half laughs, tantalised.

He folds his arms and puts his head back. She can hear a faint click in the vertebrae of his neck. His beard juts upwards so she can see the neat edge between his whiskers and his throat.

‘At least tell me!’

He looks at her. ‘Well, all right then. But listen, this is just a
very tentative suggestion. Just a way of helping you to get what you want. If you
don’t
want, then –’

‘What?
’ He’s enjoying the tease, she can see. His wiry eyebrows raised, his eyes bright but serious.

‘My work,’ he says, ‘is in pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceutical research, not so much the research itself as a collation of preexisting data, conclusions and so on, for a drug company. It’s one of the few types of work utilising my expertise that I can do in these circumstances.’ He pauses.

‘I
really
do admire that,’ she says, ‘that you’ve given up so much for Mara.’

‘It’s rather nice,’ he looks down at Mara’s shed, ‘to have the one you want all to yourself, is it not?’

She hesitates. ‘Well, only if they
want
to be.’

‘Of course
. Now, this work allows me to lay my hands on a number of drugs – psycho-pharmaceuticals. I am ever hopeful, you see, of a cure for Mara. But there is a drug –’ He holds his hand up to stall any possible interruption. ‘It’s a behaviour alterant.’

‘Behaviour
alterant? What does that mean?’

‘It has the very useful effect of making people
settle
, shall we say. People who have that wild streak, exciting yes but – they have within themselves a tendency – think of it as an internal saboteur which prevents them
buckling down.’

Cassie laughs. ‘He’d never take anything like that! Not for
that
effect, anyway! Say
buckle down
to Graham and he’d zoom off into orbit!’

‘Quite.’ He taps his fingernails on the table.

‘You’re not suggesting that we drug him!’

He leans forward, eager to explain. ‘It doesn’t work quite like a conventional drug. That is to say it has an educative rather than a purely palliative effect on the psyche. If he took it for a month of two you would see an immense improvement. A sort of rewiring if you like. He would still be
himself,
you
understand, just a bit less,
hot-headed
. More liable to settle down and be faithful. More able to concentrate on work. He would, you might say, grow up.’

‘No!’
She can hardly believe what she’s just heard. Drug him when he’s perfectly healthy?

‘That’s fine,’ Larry says.
‘Laudable
even.’ He gets up. ‘It’s what I expected you to say. But, it’s the future, you know.’ He presses his hands down on the table and leans towards her. The veins fatten to blue on the backs of his hands. His nails are like perfect shells. How
does
he stay so clean? ‘Before long, people will be mending all sorts of minor personality disorders with drugs, with no more thought than you’d give to taking aspirin, say, for a toothache.’

She frowns. ‘But – it doesn’t seem right to me, trying to make people into what they’re not.’

‘No?’

She is startled by his implication. ‘I’m
not
trying to make him something that he’s not!’

Larry smiles, laces his fingers together. ‘Come, come, Cassie, I suggested no such thing! Let’s forget all about it. It was only a suggestion.’ He pauses. ‘But perhaps it would be better not to mention this conversation to Graham?’ He gets up and leaves her. The sun is thick gold between the shadows of the veranda rails. She should cook something, plenty of eggs, another bloody quiche?
Behaviour alterant
. What an idea!

The crow appears again, cawing as it flaps past, noise like a flying baby. She goes into the kitchen, stands cupping a brown egg in her palm.
Was
it a reasonable idea? If there was something physically wrong with Graham, it would seem reasonable. But there’s nothing
wrong
with him. He’s just
him
. The conversation has made her feel a little sick. Is she overreacting? It is kind of Larry to want to help, though. He’s a kind man. And maybe it is the future? Maybe he’s right. If only she could talk to Patsy. She shakes her head, confused, losing her perspective.

Box 25
Keemarra Roadhouse
Woolagong Station
23rd?? November
(losing track!)

Dear Patsy
,

Still no letter. After over a
month
.
Hope everything’s all right, not like you not to write. Nothing from Mum either but that’s less of a surprise. Sure you got the address right? Full address on envelope. Check again
.

Working really hard, lots of cooking – well, I like that but it’s too hot really. Gardening. Compost – though someone threw meat in and I had to fish it out. Maggots
,
disgusting
.
I even painted the kitchen. G’s painting I think, don’t like to ask, and he helps out a bit but you know him
.