Red Queen (12 page)

‘Clever boys,’ she said.

‘No,’ Rohan said, ‘this is all Dad.’

Denny looked upwards. ‘Thank you, Robin Scott.’

It was strange hearing her speak his name, and saying something I’d never uttered. I had the sudden belief that Dad would like Denny, like her very much; even if he knew what his two boys did with her at night. When I looked at Rohan his eyes were fixed on her face and his mouth twisted in an attempt to hide his pleasure.

Denny shook her head. ‘This is too much. There’s so much here. Years worth, more. You can’t let people know it’s here – you’ve got to keep this a secret. It’s amazing to see, but at the same time, straight away, what’s clear is the importance of protecting it. This can’t be shared. The wrong people would go through it in no time. This can’t be shared.’

‘Yes, Denny,’ Rohan said. ‘Thanks for that.’

She carried on, deep in thought, looking around as she spoke. ‘I had no idea there would be this much. You only get an idea of the importance of it once you see it. It changes everything – there’d be no need to risk going back until everything had settled. You’re right, both of you, to want to have kept this to yourselves – I absolutely agree. Too many and it’s nothing, but just a few …’ Her eyes lifted briefly to us.

‘What?’ Rohan said.

‘I can’t believe it, that’s all. And you do so well not to waste it.’

‘There are some things we’ll have to start using soon,’ he said.

‘But you have a long-term approach I really believe in. I don’t want to go back. Not for a long time. I’ve seen it. I know what it is – and it’s not safe. It won’t be safe for years. The set-up you’ve got here … Your mother and father were special people – to build this, to see what was coming – or not so much see, but to be the only ones to do anything about it. What I’m trying to say is that I really appreciate it – them. I’m trying to say thank you for letting me in.’

Rohan ignored her gratitude. ‘What do you mean,
too many
?’

‘If there was a big group these supplies would mean nothing more than good eating for six months and then back to being half-starved.’

‘Why would you say that though? Why would there be more than the three of us?’

She sighed in exasperation. ‘Stop being paranoid, and don’t look at me like that.’

‘There’ll be no-one else,’ he said. ‘There
is
no-one else, is there, Denny. Is there?’

‘No!’

He stared at her a moment, then flashed a boyish smile. ‘So what do you reckon – pretty good, hey?’

She looked around at the room again. ‘It’s fan-fucking-tastic.’

‘All right,’ Rohan said, ‘that’ll be enough of the swearing.’

We took a kitchen chair out on the veranda and I sat down on it. Denny took hold of the barrel of the shotgun and I stretched out my arm for her to take it off me; she propped it against the wall. ‘This is going to be liberating,’ she said, wrapping a towel around my shoulders and lifting my tangled ponytail. Rohan pulled himself up to sit on the railing in a way that struck me as too youthful for his age. The cuffs of his shirtsleeves were folded up to just below his elbow and he’d tucked his shirt into his pants. He’d always had a kind of rough-house vanity – final neat touches to an overall bruiser look. There could be moth holes in his jumper, or threadbare patches on the elbows, but he still rolled his sleeves and tucked in his shirt and ran a quick hand around his collar. I think women appreciated it. I couldn’t have believed him capable of going to any trouble for the opposite sex. I now knew better.

Denny tried to pull the elastic band from my hair, and then gave up and sawed the scissors through at the base of my ponytail. ‘Better,’ she said, tossing the length of hair out into the yard.

My hair was damp from the shower and knotted; she cut out anything she couldn’t move the comb through, pretty much cut out everything. She and Rohan spoke about other things, household things, as she tugged and ran her fingers through my hair, and I found myself lulled into a thoughtful silence by the rise and fall of their voices.

When she’d finished she came around to study the job she’d done. I tried to hold her gaze but she moved her eyes over my hair.

‘You look like a Holocaust survivor,’ Rohan said.

‘No you don’t. You look like a rock star, ready for rehab.’

‘Great. Thanks.’

She shook the towel out and Rohan and I swapped positions. The warm air ran cool across the back of my neck and the sun went straight for my scalp.

Rohan’s hair was relatively knot free; Denny was able to run her fingers through it and take some care in cutting it. I thought back to the way she’d touched my hair, and couldn’t recall the tenderness I was watching now. Her face was suddenly serious, maybe even sad.

‘Make it short,’ he said.

This time when she finished she knelt before Rohan and looked him in the eye, not appraising, or curious – as though she’d seen him from every possible angle and simply knew him. He looked younger. I tried to see what Denny saw, but it was impossible to separate the years of knowing him and his likeness to my father and look at him in an unbiased way. It was easy enough to acknowledge his physical appeal; he had a good body, and Denny liked it. I’d seen her trace the muscles in his back, span her hands across his chest, drag her fingers through the dark hair; I’d seen her lick a line from his navel to his chin; I’d seen her do more, but didn’t like to dwell on it.

He stared, steely-eyed, back at her now, and they spoke a silent language I could only guess at. It made me uncomfortable – they had something between them, unsettled; and my fear came from what it would settle to.

‘How’s it look?’ Rohan said, and she looked over his hair as if just remembering she’d cut it.

‘Criminal,’ she said.

Denny ate with her knees up under her chin and all her attention focused on the chicken wing she held above them, picking carefully, eating little bits. Rohan ate with both elbows on the table and looking down, licking greasy fingers, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. My style of eating was one of self-constraint; I was always fiercely hungry by dinner time. Even though we ate early, before sunset, my hunger had peaked to an animal need. I had to stop myself from bolting my food by pressing both hands down on the table either side of my plate while I forced myself to chew. Some sympathy always came my way at dinner time, because we all knew I was the hungriest, and at an age when nothing would fill me. My metabolism was a ravenous machine inside me, and since Denny had arrived it had shifted up a gear. I could easily eat everything on each plate and then move on to the fridge for main course, and often fantasised about doing just that. As hard as I tried I was always finished first, and left to watch Rohan and Denny in their glazed-over meditations. It was during this time that I felt most rebellious – I’d eye Rohan at the head of the table and see faults in him and his ideas, mostly the way he chose to keep us lean and never sated. His reasoning, I guessed, was to have us edgy, but I’d stare down at him and mutinously think how it might come back to bite him. I’d watch Denny with thoughts of controlling her, of being the one to initiate the sex, having her alone in my room and insecure. It was an immensely satisfying thought, because it also encompassed the controlling of Rohan. It took the understanding and spun it on its head.

But Denny would smile over at me, and Rohan would push away his plate, and we’d be three again, in it together. And as strongly as I’d felt resentment in that one moment, I’d embrace what we had in the next.

I put my hand on the small of Denny’s back and lightly pushed her pelvis into the cushion under her; she moaned and I felt the tightening through her, in her legs, in her shoulders, in her back, and inside her. She muttered that I not stop.

She was face down on the couch, I was entering her from behind, and I did want to stop – I wanted to roll her over and watch her, or at least pull her hips up for deeper penetration. But she wanted this, had suggested we do it this way without the slightest hint of smut in her voice. Denny didn’t talk dirty, she didn’t act dirty. There was no need to dress it up with talk or suggestive acts, it was perfect as it was – a way to feel good, a release.

My thoughts fragmented with the effort of control; I saw her lowered head and flexing back, her smooth bottom working under me, but with forced detachment. I longed to take in reality, to inhale the scene and sounds and sensations like a line of pure white powder. I’d even include Rohan’s dark watching form in the mix. But the high would be brief, because she was close to coming now and jerking with unconscious actions that spoke directly to me.

Rohan walked over to us and I averted my gaze. He was dressed, with his shirt unbuttoned and hanging open. He knelt at the other end of the couch and took Denny by the chin and made her look at him while she climaxed; she tried to pull away, or her chin involuntarily tucked in, but he spread his fingers wider, up over her mouth, and wouldn’t let her go. His inclusion also meant that I was not to come inside her; we’d never discussed this, as if we could, but I knew.

I gritted my teeth and contorted my face through her tense and fitful orgasm. As soon as her head sunk heavy in Rohan’s hand and her breathing expanded her ribcage I withdrew. They kissed and gave me privacy to do the last bit alone.

Recovering always had me feeling lost and appalled; I sunk back in the cushions and closed my eyes; it was a rapid decline from the euphoric acceptance of everything, the blissful moment of wanting nothing more, or less.

The couch moved with their shifting positions; I didn’t look, I could imagine though – Rohan would have gathered her in, closing her off from me, playing out his status in a way that was both pathetic and enviable.

The circumstance of change carried on only a few feet from me; I couldn’t look. Perhaps I was slow to adopt change, or perhaps I’d never come to terms with it. Perhaps, I thought, I was poor at adapting.

7

THE HAIRS ON
my neck rose and my eyes opened and I knew someone was in the room. I didn’t roll over to look. I didn’t panic. In that flatlining, just woken way, I stared at the patterns in the pine boards on the wall and thought of nothing and everything all at once. It came to me that it was Rohan, I don’t know how, maybe I smelt him, but I knew and relaxed.

‘I’ll get up in a minute,’ I said, closing my eyes again.

‘I’m going fishing, and to check the traps,’ he said.

‘Mmm, righto.’

I heard him change his stance, the rustle of his clothes. Outside noises and kitchen smells drifted in and I growled internally at my growing wakefulness.

‘Not while I’m away,’ he said.

I pulled an irritated face and half-turned, then returned to my warm spot once I realised what he was talking about. ‘Yeah right,’ I muttered.

He didn’t move. My eyes were hunting now, over the blankets, the bottom edge of the curtain, looking to jam the rushed shots of last night, the freshly developing images. I didn’t have a problem with his request – just his vocalising of it. He didn’t need to be standing there, bringing night into day; I knew rules, as if I didn’t know?

‘Okay,’ I said firmly.

Still he didn’t budge.

‘Not without me,’ he said.

‘
Okay
.’

‘If I find out you’ve been together, or even —’

‘Yes, yes, yes!’

I must have slept some more, because the smell from the kitchen filled me in an instant, not to be ignored. I sat up.

Denny kicked my door wider and came in carrying a tray. Her eyes were shining and her chin tucked low.

‘Open the curtain,’ she said.

I was bare-chested, with my work pants and socks on. I pulled back the curtain, then returned beneath the covers.

‘Bread,’ I said.

She sashayed and waved the tray back and forth. I craned to look. My hunger tumbled huge and hollow in me, almost madness in my head.

‘Show me,’ I said shortly.

‘Move the gun.’

I put it down near my feet, and then shifted over to give her room to sit. She perched on the edge of the bed. I sat up straight like a child and she put the tray down on my knees.