As Far as You Can Go (21 page)

10th (ish) December

Dear Patsy
,

This might be my last letter. In fact you might not get this till after we’re back. (And I’ll certainly have talked to you on the phone.) It’s just all too weird. It all came to a head yesterday, when G punched Larry. Yes! Terrible. Blood everywhere. Terrible atmosphere. But the funny thing is, things feel a bit better between us, don’t know why. I think there’s a chance. I did fall in love with him warts and all, didn’t I? He wouldn’t be the most stable dad but I think he’d be fun, don’t you? I’ll just have to be the stable one. I found some letters he’d started in the back of his sketch pad, to his parents. That’s progress isn’t it? He calls me his girlfriend in them which must mean
something
.
They’re not finished letters, but – somehow they give me hope
…

I’ll be posting this myself, the luxury of a postbox! Graham’s gagging for a pub. Well, me too. Home soon!!!! Kiss Katie, stroke Cat, say hi to Al
.

Cassie xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Graham stands on the veranda looking at Mara’s door. The flaking blue. What he
wants
to do is paint. He was intrigued by what was coming yesterday: the wetness of England, lush green, slate grey, quartz glitter, smooth bulge of water before it breaks over rock, before it falls. But anyway, he shakes his head, what he
should
do is help Cassie with the washing. However, this is what he
must
do. To keep Larry sweet, as Cassie says. Just this once more.

He bangs on the door with his left hand. No answer. OK then. Larry said she was waiting but maybe she’s gone back to sleep. Fine. He knocks again, softly, and is about to slope off to his studio when he hears her voice:

‘Come in.’

He swallows and pushes, the door opens, sticking against the curtain behind it. He pushes through into the orange gloom, thick sickly-sweet smell. Mara crouching on the floor. What to say? He says nothing. He sits down on a cushion as far away from her as he can. She’s wearing the dressing gown, hair is over her face. They sit for a moment. Sweat seeps from his pores, trickles from his brow to his ear, his jaw, down his neck, his armpits, to his side. Feels like he’s melting.

He clears his throat. ‘Mara?’

She whispers something.

‘Sorry?’

She mumbles through her hair. Embarrassed maybe. Something about a baby?

‘I can’t hear.’

She lifts her face, hair swings back like curtains opening. ‘I thought you would give me a baby. Now he says you don’t like me.’

He opens his mouth and it fills with the hot stink of joss sticks. ‘A
baby
?’ He gives a shivery laugh.
‘Sorry.’
They sit a while longer. His belly, still smarting from the hot tea, prickles with sweat. Her face is glazed with it.

‘Do you want to go out and we can do some drawing?’

‘Don’t feel well.’

‘OK. Shall I leave you alone? His eyes go to the slit of light showing beside the door where the curtain is rucked aside.

‘No,’ she says.

He looks round hopelessly, cushions, rugs, curtains, everything soft and red. Strong scent of coconut from her hair or skin. Her big toes are warped by bunions. Can’t believe what happened yesterday but at the same time, some unwilling, blind part of him could do it again. It’s horrible, that animal reflex. His eyes are held by the smooth thighs gleaming in the gap of the dressing gown.

‘Do you want to
talk
?’ he says desperately. ‘Why do you stay in here?’

‘It’s my own,’ she says.

‘But where do you wash and everything?’

‘I don’t wash, I
oil.’
She holds out her hands as if to show him. In the dim light it’s hard to see.

‘I thought your skin was –’ he stops, can’t say greasy, ‘soft,’ he says.

She smiles. Her smile always a surprise in her heavy face, like an unexpected lamp switching on.

‘How long have you been here?’ he says.

She puts her head on one side, twists her fingers in her hair. ‘I don’t know.’

She laughs at his expression. ‘Really don’t know.’

‘What –’ he says, ‘what’s the matter with you?’

‘Hold me,’ she says.

‘I don’t think so.’ He looks at the light again. The thighs. The door. Sweat stings in his eye.

‘Only hold. What does it matter? After yesterday. I don’t bite.’

He sighs and edges towards her. Puts one arm round her shoulder, her hair a tangled bush. ‘Shall I brush your hair?’ he says.

‘Oh
yes.’
He finds a brush, snarled up with hairs, kneels behind her and drags it through.

‘I am sorry about yesterday,’ he says, pulling with the brush, lifting the thick, wiry hair, black threaded with grey. Strong reek of coconut. With each stroke she makes a throaty, satisfied sound. Like a wood pigeon. Some strands of hair, charged with static, rise up to meet the brush.

‘Fred does my hair like that,’ she says. ‘Fred is lovely.’

He swallows. ‘Mara,’ he says, ‘will you promise me something?’

‘Mmmm?’

‘Don’t tell Cassie about – about what we – about what happened.
Please.’

‘Of
course
I won’t.’ She moves her hand across her chest. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die. Anyway, why would I?’

Graham puts the brush down and smoothes the hair with his hands. Closes his eyes a minute, feels something inside him give with the relief. ‘Thank you.’

She chuckles sadly. ‘You’re welcome.’

‘I am sorry – I don’t know – I just got carried away.’

‘Mmmmm.’

He smoothes and smoothes, then separates the hair into three and starts to plait it.

‘You still think about having a baby?’ he says.

‘If I had a baby I think I would get better. Losing my baby made me ill. Having another would make me better, don’t you think?’

‘How would you look after a kid in here?’

‘I would come out of course!’

He shudders, imagining Mara and Larry bringing up a kid. Poor little non-existent bastard.

‘Why doesn’t
Larry
give you a baby?’ he says.

‘Doesn’t fancy me any more. Only fancies blonde girls like Lucy.’ She stops.

‘Lucy?’

‘No, no.’ She starts to cry. No. Not going that way again but he does hold her. Fingers on the red velvety stuff of her dressing gown, eyes averted from her thighs, nose full of the voluptuous smell of her. His mother must have tried to have a baby of her own before they adopted him. He tries to see her as a young woman, a sad young babyless woman. Without that stiffly lacquered hair. When they adopted him she was probably the age he is now. That thought threatens to engulf him. Holding this big sad woman, her sobs trembling her flesh, makes tears come into his own eyes, a lump to his throat. Christ, it could almost make
him
cry.

*

Cassie stuffs white things in the washing machine. Twin tub. Whites first. She’d only ever used an automatic before coming here. And only ever will when they get home. And this will be the last time she does the washing here. When they get back they can get their heads straight. Get their lives back. It
is
best they go. So they’ve given up, so what? She frightened herself this morning. What she nearly did.

Soon as Graham had gone to see Mara she’d taken the phial of pills to the dunny, unscrewed the lid, intending to tip them
into the shit pit. But something like a hand on her arm had stopped her and she’d gone back and hidden them in the bottom of her rucksack instead. What she nearly did, though! This
place
. What it does to your mind.

It’s quiet but for the water gurgling into the machine through its special hooked hose. Larry in his study. Graham with Mara. She frowns, turns off the water, pours in some washing powder, it’s only for today, white flecked with blue. Nice smell as it churns up a reddish scum. Fred outside washing dust off the car.
Tomorrow
. Her shoulders lift in anticipation but in her belly there’s a little squirt of fear.

When she’d come back into the kitchen earlier, Fred and Larry had been drinking coffee. ‘… expedite matters,’ Larry had been saying, but broke off as she came in. ‘Expedite! Speak flaming English, mate,’ Fred had said, winking at her.

She prods at the clothes with some wooden tongs. A wet white shirt arm, flecked with detergent, fat with air, rises. She squashes the air out, watches the tangle of writhing cloth and suds. Expedite what? Who cares. This is the last time she’ll do the washing here. The last morning in this kitchen. She looks round it. The white walls, stains already looming through. She does hate to be letting Larry down. And poor Mara. Should maybe cook something special tonight. Something nice for everyone. A private celebration and farewell dinner. Everyone’ll eat it but they won’t know it’s a celebration and a farewell, only she and Graham will. She rests against the juddering machine, mmm, pleasant vibration against her pubic bone –

Larry comes in and she steps back flushing. What
is
up with her? He puts a leather overnight bag on the table.

‘Mara’s not well at all,’ he says. ‘About due for another “episode” and I find I’ve run low on her medication. I’m going to have to drive to Kip’s, get him to fly me to Perth. Leave Fred in charge. So you see –’

‘But Graham’s out there!’

‘Is he? It’s all right. She’s well sedated. I’ll go and get him now. I’m afraid this means we’ll have to postpone your trip.’

‘Oh
no
but you
promised!’

He shrugs his shoulders, spreads out his palms in a helpless gesture. ‘I’m sorry. What can I do?’

She sits down too hard, painfully on the edge of the chair. Rubs her bum. She could cry.

‘Graham’ll go
mental
. Hey, couldn’t we come with you? I’d love to go to Perth.’

Larry shakes his head.

‘Fred can take care of Mara.’

‘Fred will be gone before I get back. As I say, I am sorry. When I return – next time Fred’s here – we’ll rearrange it. A trip to Perth then, if that’s what you really want. A whole week, nice hotel, the lot.’ She looks up at him, sore swollen nose, fleck of dried blood snagged on his moustache. ‘Now I really must go. Fred will care for Mara while I’m gone.’ He nods towards some pill bottles on the side. ‘He knows the ropes. I’ll go and,’ he pauses, ‘extract Graham for you, shall I?’

‘How long will you be?’ she asks miserably.

‘Two or three days.’

‘But what about Mara if Fred’s going?’

‘There’s enough medication to last. Fred’ll tell you what to do.’ He puts on his panama, picks up his bag. ‘Sorry, Cassie.’

And he goes out. Just like that.

She flops down, puts her head on her hands and lets tears come out of her eyes. She can hear Larry speaking, then Graham’s voice. She winces, expecting a shout as Graham decks him. She sits up and scrubs the tears away. Graham comes in. He’s red in the face from the heat but looks quite cheerful. ‘What’s up?’ he says.

‘Aren’t you mad?’

He holds his finger up. They hear Larry’s voice, the car door slam, the station wagon drive away. ‘Only be a few more days,’
Graham says, ‘then
Perth
. It’s
better
, we can get to the airport, and vroom, vroom, next flight home.’

‘I suppose that is better,’ she says. But she feels a great sag of disappointment inside her, like a deflating balloon. Now they’re definitely going she just wants to get on with it and
go
. She looks over to the machine. ‘You can help me peg that out in a mo.’

‘Don’t look so fed up.’ He kneads her shoulders. ‘God, you’re tense.’ He kisses the top of her head.

‘So how
was
Mara?’ she asks.

‘I’m dry,’ he says. ‘Any lemonade?’

‘Sweeter this time,’ she says. ‘I was worried about you in there.’ Graham pauses at the fridge door.

‘Why?’ he says, his back to her. His hair, she notices, has grown down past his shoulder blades.

‘Larry said she was about to have an episode. I wonder how he knows?’

Graham takes the jug of lemonade from the fridge. ‘She seemed –’ He pours some out. ‘She was OK, a bit drowsy I guess. Want some?’

She nods.

‘Here. I’m going to go and paint for a bit, what I was doing yesterday, it –’

She sips the lemonade. Maybe too sweet this time. ‘What about the washing?’ she says, but he is halfway to the door. ‘Oh, never mind. I’ve nothing else to do.’

‘Sure?’

She shakes her head at him. He grins, does a silly salute and goes out. The screen crashes shut. The floor is awash with red, the machine leaking into the dust that blew in last night. He’s right. Just a few days more. And then Perth. Airport. Home. Patsy, Mum, friends, the garden, little Katie, Cat. Christmas decorations will be up by now. Weird thought. She remembers them rattling in the wind last year, the red, yellow, green lights, tall tree in the city centre swaying. And there might be snow! The
thought of it is almost ridiculous. Something so pure and cold. Hasn’t been so much as a spot of
rain
since they’ve been here.

The machine stops churning and with the wooden tongs she hefts the clean wet clothes into the spin-dryer; turns it on; bloody thing leaps about the floor like something demented, as usual. Fred comes in behind her, doesn’t hear him, till he taps her shoulder and she jumps. ‘Hey!’

‘Want me to hold it?’ He leans on it till it finishes.

‘Damn near shook me teeth out,’ he says into the sudden silence.

‘Lemonade? Then I’ll hang it out. Put the next lot in.’

He picks up a carrier from the table. ‘Brought you a present,’ he says. He looks almost bashful.

She takes the bag. Inside, a wooden fruit bowl. An irregular lip of polished jarrah, like a glossy wave curved up, the knots in the dense wood gleaming. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she says and he blushes.
Fred
blushing!

‘Where’d you get it?’

‘I made it.’

‘You made it?’ She has to breathe hard to stop tears coming back into her eyes. He made it for her because she’d said there should be a fruit bowl. And now there is. She puts it in the centre of the table and fills it with oranges and lemons.