As Far as You Can Go (34 page)

‘I’ve put your belongings back in your room and I’ve prepared supper,’ Larry says. ‘I expect you’re hungry?’

‘We found some melon things and tried them –’ Cassie says.

‘Paddy melons!’ Larry shakes his head. ‘You must have been desperate.’

Cassie laughs suddenly, sounding harsh and mad. ‘God, we must seem like a pair of idiots!’

‘We-ll.’ Larry gazes at her and she smiles, almost
coy
, looking down. But when Larry turns his back she gives Graham a meaningful look. Christ knows what it means, but something.

They sit down at the kitchen table. There is wine but Cassie doesn’t touch it. Larry urges her several times during the meal. ‘It’s the one you particularly liked,’ he says, eyes flicking down her neck. She smiles but puts her hand over her glass. But Graham gulps it down. Two bottles on the table, one their side, one his. It’s light, cool, refreshing. ‘Just the thing, I thought,’ Larry says, ‘after a day in the sun. Quaffable was how you put it, didn’t you, Cassie?’

Graham’s grits his teeth. Larry is asking for it, asking for it, asking for it. His fist throbs in time with the blood beating in his head, thudding like footsteps over and over.

‘Water would be better, Gray,’ Cassie says but he doesn’t look at her. She nudges his knee under the table with her own and he shifts away.

The food is a slimy mess of potatoes, bacon, peas. Dull and filling. Eggs in there somewhere, a bit runny. Graham shovels it down mechanically. Sits back and watches the food disappearing down his own maw, the wine swilling after it. Bad idea to drink though, the realisation hits him. Cassie right as usual. Sticking to water which she fetches herself from the tap.

‘Eat up,’ Larry says, leaning towards her, ‘I know it’s not up to your standard.’

‘Bit sun-struck – not hungry after all,’ Cassie says. ‘Not that it’s not nice,’ she adds quickly. ‘Delicious. Just the thing.’

*

Cassie’s dream is of walking, her own two feet plodding and plodding, endlessly plodding over crumbling ground and then there’s a tearing noise, a jerk, the ground splits and she wakes to hear Graham vomiting.

It’s pitch dark. She fumbles for the torch and shines the puny beam on him. He’s kneeling on the floor by the door. She gets up, goes over, careful not to step in anything. She puts her hand on his shoulder, the skin cold and clammy. The stench of vomit
fills the air. He heaves again and half sobs. ‘Sorry, was trying to get out.’

‘Don’t be daft. Have you finished?’

‘Think so.’

‘Back into bed then.’

She pulls on her dress, pushes her feet into her sandals. The shrinking moon raggy tonight under a tat of cloud. Outside the kitchen door the goanna sits, like something carved in stone. Its eyes swivel at her and then it moves like a clockwork toy out of her way. She drinks some water then takes a cloth and bucket, detergent, fresh water for Graham. The bloody idiot. What does he expect, gulping wine as if there’s no such thing as tomorrow after a day in the sun? And his sick makes her feel sick too. She picks her way back to the stinking shed, lights a candle and tries not to breathe in as she crouches down to clear it up.

Graham mumbles sorry every now and then, but she can’t find it in herself to say, it’s OK. If you’re going to get pissed you could at least clear up after yourself, she thinks as she scrubs at the floor.

When she’s cleaned up as best she can, she goes out to wash the smell from her hands. The clouds are pearl and silver, beautiful she supposes though she can’t
feel
their beauty, feels nothing but nausea. Actually – her hand goes to her stomach – actually, she has been feeling a bit – No. It will just be sunstroke. But her nipples prickle and her mouth tastes as if she’s been sucking a penny. Patsy said she
knew
the moment she conceived. From these same symptoms. From the moment I conceived, she said. Didn’t need even to miss a period to know. Or it
could
just be sunstroke. Could be.

Every hour or so all through the night Graham vomits into the bucket by the bed and every time she hauls herself out of sleep, takes it out, tips it out into the dunny, washes her hands. Notices the gradual adjustment of the moon across the sky until
at last the sky lightens and the cockerel begins his ignorant racket. And Graham keeps vomiting. By the morning he can’t even sip water without bringing up a stream of bile.

‘I should get Larry,’ Cassie says, as he sinks back, clammy and grey.

‘No.’

‘I know but he
is
a doctor. Sort of.’

‘No.’

And she does put it off, until he’s so sick he doesn’t care any more. Until there’s no choice.

Larry doesn’t say much or seem surprised. ‘Sunstroke,’ he says. Goes over to the shearers’ shed and injects Graham with an anti-emetic and when that seems to have worked, gives Cassie some pills to help him rest and recover. He’s actually pretty decent about it considering the trouble they’ve caused. Actually very kind. She is so confused she gives up trying to think at all.

It’s mid-afternoon before she can even bring herself to consider food. The routine has been shot to bits. Such a blow of homesickness when she thinks about home.
Needs, aches
to talk to her sister. She sets herself the task of weeding, taking some comfort from the greenery, the cheeping birds, glad of something mindless and time-consuming to do. Larry keeps out of the way. It’s way after lunchtime when he comes out and reminds her, quite gently, that she
is
still the cook.

In the kitchen she breaks eggs into a bowl, her stomach rising to her throat as the thick yellow slime of the yolks streaks into the mucousy white. She tries to fork out the bloodspots, which are the dividing cells maybe dividing still as they are beaten and seasoned and poured into the pan, ceasing only when the temperature is hot enough to stop them. Four less chickens in the world. So what?

Just enough for her and Larry. They sit in the kitchen. She
doesn’t want to eat it herself, does no more than nibble a crispy edge. If she could
only
remember that night, if she could only
remember
.

‘How’s Mara?’ she says.

‘A little under the weather. She was upset by your – what shall we call it?’ Larry pauses. ‘Unexpected escapade. But she’ll be pleased to see you back.’

‘Sorry,’ Cassie says.

‘You surprised me, the two of you. Still, all right now. And that was
magnifique.’
He dabs his lips with his napkin.

‘Just an ordinary omelette.’ She puts down her fork. ‘Larry, listen, the other night –’

‘Which particular night?’

‘You know. When Graham and Fred –’

‘That
delightful evening.’

‘It sounds ridiculous, I know,’ she bleats out a sort of laugh, ‘but – I can’t remember quite what happened.’

‘No?’ He spreads his immaculate hands. The nails so shiny she wonders if it could be lacquer. Does he sit there, in the depths of his house, manicuring his nails?

‘Did you –’ The words fail in her mouth.

‘Did I –?’

‘Did
we
, I mean. Or did you take advantage of me sort of thing – when I was –’

‘Indisposed?’

His devilish eyebrows twitch. His smile is slow, the tooth at the corner just glinting between his lips.

‘Did you?’

He suddenly puts both hands on the table and pushes himself up. ‘Tell you what. You wait there, put the kettle on perhaps. I’ve something to show you. Something I, for one, am rather pleased with.’

He goes off, humming, beard jerking forward. Cassie scrapes her omelette into the bin and fills the kettle. A brown thing
scuttles across the floor. She watches, detached, as it disappears under the sink.

Larry returns with an envelope from which he takes some prints. ‘Ready?’ He spreads them out on the table.

Gravity forces her down on to a chair and she is hardly even surprised at what she sees. There she is, white shirt pulled up, head thrown back, posed on the sofa, eyes shut as if in pleasure or anticipation.

‘You bastard,’ she says quietly, her heart beating thickly in her throat.

‘And how could anyone possibly refuse such an invitation?’

‘I was out cold.’

‘Not
so
cold.’

‘You must have given me something,’ she says. ‘Did you? Like that,’ she swallows, ‘that date-rape drug.’

He makes a steeple of his hands and rests them on his lips, gazes at her for a minute. There she is on the table, images and images, everything showing. Everything. She tears her eyes away. ‘The MediSwab –’

‘In the interests of hygiene.’

‘Hygiene!’
She gets up, jerking the table. ‘I’m telling Graham.’ Not sure if she means it but she has to say something, can’t bear the sticky miasma of
collusion
that is gathering around the table. ‘Do you know,’ she says, her voice grating, ‘I actually thought you were OK. I thought you were
nice
. Graham said you were a sleaze-bag but I – you really took me in.’

‘Sleaze-bag,’
he repeats, with a trace of amusement. ‘Just consider for a minute, before you run off, how this is going to look.’

‘He’ll believe me.’

‘Despite the evidence? Are you sure?’ He gathers up the photos and returns them to their envelope. ‘Just consider for a moment. If you were to see a picture of him, say,
copulating
with another woman. What would you think?’

Copulating
. She shudders.

‘If the evidence was there before your eyes?’

Her mouth opens and closes.

‘Well, in any case,’ he says, ‘give it a bit of thought. Now. Must get on.’

‘To do what? File your nails?’ comes out of her mouth and then she wants to sink to the floor at the childishness, the petulance, the ridiculous
irrelevance
. But naturally it only makes him smile.

*

Graham hears the door open. The light makes a sugary halo round her head. She closes the door quickly, comes across to him. She smells of sweat, cattish, almost feral.

‘OK?’ he says. He hardly dares to look into her eyes. What does she know?

‘What about you?’

He props himself up on his elbow and the room doesn’t swing around him any more, like a jolted lampshade. That’s
something
. He looks at her profile, the peachy down on the slope of her cheek, it doesn’t tell him a thing.

‘He told me to give you some more pills but – listen, I don’t think we should eat or drink anything unless we get it ourselves.’

He watches her expression.

‘I just think –’

He lies back.

‘I mean I didn’t drink last night – it was probably only the sun that made you ill and all that wine but –’

‘You’re getting paranoid,’ he says.

‘OK then,’ she says. ‘Take them.’ She tips two pills out of the bottle and transfers them to his hand.

He holds them in his palm. Two snowy torpedoes. She smiles at last, her freckles scrunching. ‘Maybe I
am
getting paranoid but – look, I do want to leave. Soon as we can.’

‘Yeah.’ He waits. ‘Is – is everything else all right?’ He dares to look into her face. Something odd going on there. She’s not being straight with him, but would surely be far, far angrier if she knew about Mara. ‘Could you bring me something to eat? Just dry toast or something.’

‘Good,’ she kisses his forehead. ‘Maybe a cup of tea?’

She goes out. He waits a few moments and then swings himself round to a sitting position. It’s OK. From under his pillow slide four pills. The last two doses. The same thought. The same conclusion arrived at independently. Only he’d had a worse thought – a nightmarish thought – that Cassie was in on it. That
she
was drugging him.
Cassie?
Is he going off his head?

He opens the door and stands outside. The sun casts rosy streamers of light from low on the horizon, the shadows of the trees stretch a hundred times their height. Washing still hangs stiff and sun-baked on the line, casting its own complex shadow. Seems like weeks ago that Cassie did that. Larry’s shirts, a sheet, Cassie’s knickers. Mara’s shed door shut.

He goes up the veranda steps and puts his hand on the screen. And stops. They are in there talking, Cassie and Larry, he can see through the gap of the open door. Her profile, hair tied back, but wisps stand out whitely like strands of light. Can’t see Larry from this angle. But he can hear his voice.

‘Now, what shall we do with our evening?’

‘I’m tired. Think I’ll have an early night.’

‘That’s a little dull,’ Larry says. Graham sees a shadow flit. Slaps his arm, feeling the hot prickle of a bug bite.

‘Really, I’m tired, and Graham’s all alone.’

‘He will be asleep.’

‘How can you know?’

‘The pills, sleep is nature’s great healer, you must know that. The pills will speed his recovery by ensuring a deep and sound sleep.’

Quiet.

‘Let’s go through into the sitting room again, shall we,’ Larry says. ‘Relax a bit before dinner.’

‘You must be
joking!’

Graham barges into the kitchen. Larry looks up, surprised. ‘Well, well, I assumed you’d be asleep.’

‘Bet
you did. Thought you were meant to be bringing me some tea,’ he says to Cassie.

She gets up, flustered. ‘I was just –’ She gestures towards the kettle.

‘Perhaps you should start the meal?’ Larry says. He doesn’t take his eyes off Graham’s. ‘Maybe we should get Mara up?’

‘You’re not hungry
again
?’ Cassie says, looking at the unwashed plates still on the table.

‘I’ll help you,’ Graham says.

‘No, no,’ Larry says, ‘sit down.’

Cassie stands looking at the two of them, until Larry switches his attention to her. ‘Perhaps you could give us a minute?’ he says.

She looks terrified. ‘I need to er –’ She tails off, throws Graham a strange pleading look and goes out.

He sits down. Legs weak. ‘What’s going on?’ he says.

‘Tell you what,’ Larry says, ‘why not come through into the sitting room? Sit down comfortably. I’ve got something to show you. Could you stomach a beer?’

‘No.’

‘You’ll excuse me if I –’ As he passes, Graham gets a whiff of the sickly cologne. Saliva floods his mouth as if he’s about to spew again. Larry opens a beer, the neat knob of his Adam’s apple slides as he takes a swallow, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘Come on.’