As Far as You Can Go (6 page)

‘Crap mattress,’ he says, enclosing her in his arms.

‘We should go and eat.’

‘Let’s just rest a minute.’

She feels fuzzy, light-headed, the horizontal position claiming her, reminding her body about all the sleep it has missed. They press themselves together. His familiar body feels so right and comforting. In and out in all the right places. His breath is sour but it is still his breath and she holds him tight, her face against his neck, looking over his shoulder at the outline of the window, fast disappearing in the dying light.

‘Listen,’ Graham murmurs, his breath tickling her ear.

She listens. ‘What?’

‘Nothing. That’s just it.
Fuck all
. Silence.’

She hears it. There
are
sounds – a creaking from the pump, the hum of the generator, but behind all that, silence is happening in a big way. Millions upon millions of square miles of bush and desert crowded out with silence.

‘It’s never silent,’ she says. ‘There’s always
something
. Listen.’

There is a dry scuttle from somewhere like the rush of a frightened heart. ‘It’s never silent,’ she says again, her voice
small. They lie together, hearts beating, breath mingling. It is too hot in the stale trapped air of the room to be so close but too silent not to be. The physical noise of a friendly being pressed up close is the only thing to drown out the silence. She shuts her eyes.

And wakes to him shaking her.

‘Hey sleepy, let’s go and eat.’

She hauls herself up, a thick furry taste in her mouth, bleary eyes, and allows him to lead her outside. It’s now properly dark. He shines a torch on the ground and they pick their way through the bushes. She feels as if she’s dreaming, the strange landscape hinting at itself through the dark, a high moon sailing. In the kitchen Larry has laid out hard-boiled eggs, bread, cheese and tomatoes with a couple of bottles of beer. The electric light is dim and there is a constant buzzing: flies, the generator perhaps, a sound that seems to Cassie as if it’s emanating from her own ears.

‘Well, cheers.’ Graham snaps the beer bottles open and hands one to her. The dull light emphasises the blue shadows under his eyes.

‘Cheers,’ Cassie says, ‘to us. To our – adventure.’ They chink their bottles and gulp cold beer.

The sun shines through the thin curtains, and Cassie lies for a few moments looking at the outlines of the unicorns. They are really here! Graham is still asleep, lashes dark against his cheeks, a little trail of drool escaping from his mouth. She climbs out of bed, careful not to jolt him awake. The walls are pale pink, an old pleated lampshade hangs from a bulbless socket. It is a lovely room, square, pleasing, though a little small and she’ll have to get rid of the cowskin rug – makes her feel queasy, stepping on it.

She looks at the photo of Patsy. Apart from missing her this is going to be
great
, she thinks. It’s so amazing to be somewhere so
other
. You don’t realise what a rut you’ve been in till you climb out of it. She can feel in her bones that this is going to be good.

Graham is looking at her. ‘Hi Gorgeous,’ he says.

‘Gorgeous yourself,’ she says. She leans over to kiss him and he tries to pull her down.

‘Come on, let’s go and get something to eat,’ she says, ‘I’m
starving.’

For breakfast they eat oranges and porridge with molasses. Strange breakfast to start a new life on but Larry has made porridge for Mara and extra in case they want some too, and they feel obliged to want it. And though porridge is just about
the last thing Cassie could possibly have imagined wanting, she eats greedily till she’s scraping the spoon round her bowl. It fills in between her ribs, makes her feel solid, earthed after all the flight and movement of the past few days.

She washes the dishes and Graham feeds the sloppy strips of dead porridge that float off the sides of the pan to Yella, making him stand up on his back legs like a circus dog. Larry sits at the table, flicking through some papers.

‘Oh, by the way, what do we do about post?’ Cassie asks him.

Larry looks up over his reading specs. ‘Writing home already?’

‘Well, we need to say we got here safely.’

‘Put your letters in that –’ he nods towards a cigar box on the side. ‘They’ll be taken to the roadhouse, though I warn you it won’t be often. We have a mailbox there.’

‘That’s where our post will come to?’

He nods.

‘How often?’

‘Tends to be a bit sporadic, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh. Well, long as it’s not too sporadic! I’d love to see the garden,’ she says, fishing the last spoon out of the water and drying her hands.

‘Of course. After you’ve met Mara.’ Larry folds his glasses into his breast pocket. ‘Ready?’

He takes them not further into the house but outside and down the veranda steps to a long low hut opposite. The hut has two blue painted doors – one into each half. ‘This houses the generator – at the other end,’ Larry jerks his beard towards the far door, ‘and Mara stays in here.’

Cassie looks at him. ‘She doesn’t live in the house?’

‘She prefers – well –’ Larry seems to struggle for a moment. ‘Well, you’ll see.’

Cassie looks at the door, the slivers of peeled blue paint
showing up a rusty undercoat. She’d barely noticed the shed last night. Certainly never dreamed that Mara might be inside. Beside the door is a window, the glass dusty like all the glass, like everything, and swathed with a thick curtain.

Larry opens the door into a dark room. They go in. Larry closes the door and the drape that covers the door falls with a muffled gasp.

Cassie grabs Graham’s hand, seized by a fierce urge to giggle. Once the door is closed she can see nothing for a moment, eyes full of sun-dazzles – and then the detail creeps back: red Turkish carpet on the walls and floor, cushions, piles of them, long and square and round, all shades of red from black to vermilion. The shadows are solid, beastlike, everywhere, lounging in corners, slumped against the walls. There’s a strong smell, female, a thick perfume, a woman’s private odour, familiar and shocking.

‘Could we –’ Cassie begins. Not funny now, she needs the door open, needs to breathe. Feels about to suffocate or faint.

‘Wait,’ Larry says. ‘Mara? They’re here.’

‘I can see that.’ The voice comes from a corner. Despite the stifling heat, Cassie’s arms riffle with gooseflesh.

‘Perhaps you’d like to greet them?’

The darkness stirs and a jumble of shadows jumps together. A woman becomes visible, struggling up. Short and wide, her eyes gleam in the sparse pinkish light.

‘How do you do?’ Her voice sounds creaky, as if not lately used.

Cassie takes a deep breath and pulls herself together. She lets go of Graham and shakes the moist, spongy hand held out to her. ‘Fine, thanks,’ she says. ‘And you?’

Mara yawns hugely. Cassie looks away from the gape of her throat. They stand in silence for a moment.

‘They’ve been very keen to meet you. Cassandra and Graham. I told you. Graham is a painter,’ Larry says.

Graham holds out his hand. ‘Hi.’

‘I used to be a painter,’ Mara says, taking his hand and frowning down at it before letting go.

‘They were beginning to think you didn’t exist,’ Larry says. ‘That you were a figment –’

‘I am no
figment,’
she says, her voice rising, panicky.

‘Of course you’re not.’ Larry pats her arm. ‘Now I’m going to show them round. And later we’ll have lunch together. Get properly acquainted. Eh? I’ll come and fetch you in time for lunch.’

‘I’ve not been well,’ Mara says, leaning towards Cassie. ‘I have these – turns, Fred was here, he helped me.’

‘And now Fred’s gone and we have Cassandra and Graham.’

‘Cassie,’ Cassie says.

‘Come.’ Larry lifts the curtain over the door. Mara turns away but as the door opens, a blade of sunshine flashes across the room, illuminating heavy black hair tied loosely back, a red velvet dressing gown, deep sadness sketched in round a fulllipped mouth.

‘See you later, Mara.’ Cassie picks up a prickle of the woman’s sadness.

Outside, she presses her hands over her eyes, the sun making her reel. Like coming out of a theatre into the brightness of a sunny afternoon. She pulls her sunglasses down from her hair but still it’s blindingly bright. Above them the pump creaks, a bird shrieks and far above, deep in the sky, a plane draws a chalky stripe across the blue.

‘Fucking –’ Graham starts but Larry puts a finger to his lips and leads them away from the door.

‘Yes?’ He smiles, a curl of eyebrow rising from behind his sunglasses.

‘Nothing.’

‘Good, and if you don’t mind, I’d really rather you didn’t swear.’ Larry turns and walks away. Are they meant to follow?
Cassie takes Graham’s arm. Words have failed him and she doesn’t blame them.

The dog comes stiffly down the veranda steps and walks with Larry, nose pressed against his knee. Devoted. Larry walks with his hands clasped behind his back, panama tilted forward, shirt blinding white. He clinks slightly as he walks, a bunch of keys clipped to his belt.

He turns and beckons. ‘Ready to see the garden?’

The garden is squashed between the far side of the house and the pump – a steamy rectangle, shadowed by nets to keep the sun from burning the tomatoes, lettuces, peppers, beans. Relieved, Cassie pinches and sniffs the catty reek of a tomato leaf. Small birds with spiky voices hop and cheep amongst the leaves. There are tomatoes begging to be picked, big rough ones, some fat enough to split their skins. She’s pleased to see a bushy basil plant growing alongside. If they stay, she’ll plant parsley too, chervil, fennel. Companion planting. She can’t wait to get at it.

‘I’m not much of a gardener, as you see,’ Larry says. ‘Fred has a go but now that you’re here –’

‘No, it’s
great,’
she says, ‘isn’t it, Gray? And there’s so much more we can do.’

‘Well, order any seeds you like. And use the vegetables of course. We find we are almost self-sufficient as far as salad is concerned.’

‘You water from the pump?’ Cassie asks. There’s a lovely refreshing sound, the rhythmic gush of water into a great galvanised tank. Larry shows them the overflow tank, shallow and open to the sky, the water glazed with dust, floating with dead and dying bugs.

‘This is a good well,’ Larry said. ‘Excellent, cold water, not saline. It’s never failed us yet. Without it Woolagong Station could not exist. Watering cans.’ He points to a couple of big ones along with bags of chemical fertilizer and pesticide (which will have to go), a jumble of forks and trowels and a fearsome-looking rake.

‘Splendid. And now,’ he says, ‘let us take a little walk. I’ll show you the glories we have to offer.’

They trudge off again, following Larry away from the house for five minutes or so. The crust on top of the dust is crisp under their feet, their sandalled toes etched red around the nails with dust. Here and there feeble patches of prickly grass push up through the dust, lifting flakes of the crust with it.

Eventually, Larry stops and bends down. ‘See?’ He cranes his neck round to look at them. He cups his palm open under a blossom, clear crisp white, many-petalled, on a fine green stem. Cassie crouches beside him, marvelling at the frail stalk emerging from the sun-baked dust.

‘Beautiful,’ Graham says.

‘And look.’ Larry stands and points to the downward slope before them. They blink and focus on a pale shimmer, like a mist, hovering above the ground.

‘Everlastings,’ he says. ‘Miraculous, aren’t they? It’s against the law to pick them, but here in this – nowhere – who would miss a few? Mara would love them. A centrepiece at lunch perhaps?’

Cassie wobbles upright and smiles. Sounds like a crossword clue. She tries to think of an answer but it’s much too hot to think.

Larry turns to face them, tilts his hat back, removes his sunglasses. He looks into the eyes of each of them for a level moment. ‘I do admire your discretion,’ he says.

‘You what?’ Graham says.

‘You must be curious about Mara but you have restrained yourself from asking. Mara – you must allow me to explain.’ Larry closes his hands as if in prayer, puts his fingers to his lips for a moment in contemplation before he speaks. ‘Mara has a
condition
which makes her incompatible, shall we say, with society. But she is a good woman, a fine woman.’

‘Um what is it?’ Cassie says. ‘I mean, is it a physical thing?’

The corner of Larry’s mouth twitches. ‘You think it is
possible to separate the body from the mind. How much you have to learn!’

Cassie bristles. ‘Of
course
not, not always. But there are things – what about tonsillitis? Or flu – are they mental?’

Larry laughs. ‘It is nothing like tonsillitis.’

‘I didn’t mean that I –’

He holds up his hand. ‘There is little point in me attempting to explain Mara’s – condition – in those terms. You are here now. You’ll have ample time to judge for yourself. She has phases –’

‘Like the moon?’ Graham says.

Larry smiles sadly. ‘Phases when she is – out of sorts, shall we say. When she has to take a medication that sedates her. And then she recovers – as now – I think she is recovering from a “phase”.’ He pauses. ‘Fortuitously. You will soon have a chance to make these observations for yourselves.’

He shades his eyes and looks into the distance. He looks so sad that Cassie’s crossness melts. Poor man. He does need help. How can one man on his own work and run this place and care for someone who needs – who seems to need – so much looking after? No wonder he is a bit strange. Anyone would be strange. It will be good to help.

‘Shall we meet for lunch on the veranda?’ Larry says. ‘I’ll leave you to your own devices. Something light for lunch, a salad perhaps? There is bread but you might like to bake some more? Everything is there. I’ll get a little work done and see you later.’ He does a sort of salute against his hat brim and walks briskly away, keys clinking, Yella trotting at his heels.

‘Well,’ Graham says, soon as he’s out of earshot. He pokes her in the ribs. ‘This is another fine mess you’ve got us into.’