I saw her arms were bare, and the shape of her upper body more defined in a tight top. She leant back on her elbows. I was standing in the shade of the gums and knew she couldn’t see me.
As tired as I was, the sight of her lifted me. I cleared my throat and a couple of nearby sheep swung their heads up to look at me. They were a sorry-looking bunch, with hacked coats and red nicks around their faces and on their legs. I was hardly trying for show-quality fleece, but I could probably attempt a more even job. Still, better than wool-blind and overheated.
The shotgun was against the peeling bark of the tree beside me; I picked it up. Grey wool lay scattered in the grass. My shoulder ached and the muscles down either side of my neck were hot. The nylon bag I’d brought hung from a branch a few trees down; I made my way towards it.
I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, which made the walk towards the cabin disconnected and vacuous.
‘You’ve split the wood for tonight,’ I said, nodding at the neat stack.
Denny stopped swinging her legs to look behind her.
‘Pretty impressive, hey.’
‘If you’ve got dinner on the go I’ll be near redundant.’
‘Rohan didn’t say, so I thought I better not.’
I slid the gun and bag in beside her on the veranda, then squatted to wash my hands and face under the tap.
From down in the dirt I could still feel the effect of her bare arms and tight T-shirt. The skin on her arms was a dark honey colour, without freckles and with a glow that promised a deep summer tan. She stuck her head through the railing and watched me.
‘Hot today,’ she said.
‘Yeah.’
‘I did your bed.’
The tap water was from a spring at the top of the bluff; it was cold and with good pressure behind it. I stuck my head under the hard stream and thought of her in my bedroom, over my bed.
‘… you won’t know yourself,’ she was saying, as I turned off the tap. ‘I couldn’t help it – I had to tidy up.’
I flicked the water from my face and my fingers.
‘You don’t mind?’ she asked.
‘I haven’t seen it yet.’
Her chin was resting on the back of her hands and the sun in her eyes; she seemed to be re-assessing me. I wiped my face with the sleeve of my shirt.
‘What?’
‘You look like Rohan.’
‘No I don’t.’
‘Yes you do.’
I waved her comment away and reached up to pull myself onto the veranda. As I climbed over the rail she repositioned herself, expecting me to sit down beside her. I did.
‘I look like Mum,’ I said. ‘Rohan looks like Dad.’
‘You’ve got the same build – Rohan’s just older, filled out. Those photos of him in the canoe, up in the hall, I had to look to see which one of you it was. And that’d be him about your age. You’ve got his mouth.’
‘No way.’
‘Why does it bother you so much?’
‘We’re nothing alike. I’m blond, he’s dark. I’m young, he’s prehistoric. I’m normal, he’s abnormal.’
‘You shouldn’t be so defensive – it’s not such a bad thing to take after your father. He was a pretty good sort from the photos I’ve seen.’
‘Dad? You’ve got to be joking. He was a Neanderthal.’
‘I think under the bikie beard was a very handsome man.’
I snorted.
‘How’s your shoulder?’ she asked.
‘Not too bad, really.’
‘You’re just trying to weasel out of my back rub.’
The mention of my shoulder had me prodding at the muscles. It gave me the excuse to turn my face away.
When I looked back to her, she was peering up at the top of the bluff.
‘So what does Rohan do up there, in the bush?’ she asked. ‘I’d like to know what the hell he does all day, while we work.’
‘Well you know, you followed him.’
‘Not really.’
‘Well you did, didn’t you?’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Yeah.’
‘So you fair dinkum tracked him through the bush?’
‘I didn’t
track
him. I’m hardly an outback expert. I saw bones along the riverbed. They looked pretty recent and I waited in the scrub for someone to come. I guessed they were bits of carcasses used for bait. I didn’t imagine that sort of wilderness was stock country, and figured someone was bringing them in. It’s pretty rough through that whole range, really dense undergrowth.’
‘I know. Dad took me shooting up there a couple of times.’
‘So I sat and waited. Nearly died when Rohan came through the bush; he was so close. He uses different approaches, I worked out later. He’s very careful. I was up this rocky bank, squatting in amongst the ferns, with the binoculars on the river, and suddenly he’s right on top of me. I couldn’t believe I was alone in the wilderness, dirty, hungry,
starving
, watching this rough-neck bloke with a gun on his back dropping a severed sheep head in the water …’
She eyed me knowingly. ‘You can imagine; Rohan is fairly daunting out there, not exactly neighbourly. Seeing him, I knew I couldn’t approach. I figured I should just stand up and let this guy shoot me, put me out of my misery. It doesn’t take long to realise death by starvation is the worst barrel to be looking down. Then while I’m watching he pulls the sheep head back out, and there’s three crays on it,
three
. It’s like a revelation to me: so easy if you know how. He threw one cray back and I almost screamed with the waste of it. If he’d thrown it at me I would have eaten it raw.’
‘And you followed him back here?’ I said.
‘Not at first. I went back to the farmhouse. But then I worried I’d never see him again. I realised I’d have to follow him. And the next day I was more used to him. The grizzly look had softened to half-tame brown bear. And then I saw this place … and
smelt
it.’
‘Bit of a misconception, though? Here.’
‘Oh no. I’ve got no complaints. I was in a pretty bad place.’
‘So what does he do up there? What did you see him do?’
‘Oh …’ she shrugged. ‘He laid baits for crays and fished with line. He checked the rabbit traps and I suppose he hunts with the rifle.’
‘And he kicks back in the sun and has a rest.’
‘There’s not a lot of sun. You have to move to stay warm. I hate it up there. He loves it. You can tell.’
I looked at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You know … you just see it in him.’
‘See what?’
‘The way he moves, his connection with it all. He belongs.’
My voice grew hard. ‘So what made you think it would be okay to trust him? To risk your life and come down into the cabin?’
‘You’ve got to understand, I was desperate. I might have walked into a concentration camp if it meant a bowl of food. And like I said, your late-night playing helped.’
‘But still – Rohan; you must have worked out he wasn’t interested in visitors.’
‘Have you ever watched someone when they thought they were alone?’
‘No … not really. Not for any length of time.’
‘Well you can tell things; what they do, their respect for things around them.’
‘Tell what? That he’d let you stay?’
‘No. But after a while … I just knew he wouldn’t …’
‘Wouldn’t what?’
‘He wouldn’t …’
‘Hurt you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Rape you.’
‘Yeah.’
A noise had us both lifting our heads. Rohan stood within twenty feet. He had a hessian sack over his shoulder. He’d been there for a while.
‘So this is what you two do all day,’ he said.
Denny sprang to her feet. Rohan looked slowly over her.
‘I’m guessing dinner isn’t on the table.’
I stood up. ‘We’ve been busy all day, Rohan. Denny’s done the wood, changed my bed, cleaned up and everything.’
‘And everything?’
‘Well almost. Anyway I wanted to wait and see if you had any fish, I though we’d have fish tonight. Which reminds me – what about this morning? What’s with that? We always eat together except, that is, when you decide not to?’
‘That’s right.’ He started towards the door. ‘That’s exactly right.’
I picked up the gun and bag while Denny went down to the wood pile and stacked some wood against her chest.
We came together at the back door. I heard Rohan dump the bag in the sink and walk down to the bathroom.
‘
He’s back
,’ I softly sang.
She smiled, tight-lipped.
The wood looked to be getting heavy in her arms; I took the top pieces for her. When I looked up her gaze was soft and lingering on my face.
‘Sorry that I mentioned you’d changed my bed,’ I said. ‘You’ll probably have to do his now.’
Her face fell a little. ‘Oh … I already have.’
‘What?’
‘I did Rohan’s the other day.’
‘You’ve already changed his bed?’
‘I’ve been cleaning the whole house.’
I looked off towards the bluff.
‘Right.’
‘Shannon.’
‘I don’t know what I was thinking – his would be done first.’
‘I live with both of you.’
‘It’s just I thought … When did you talk about it? Did he ask you?’
‘Don’t do this,’ she murmured.
‘So you do talk to him in the mornings.’
She shuffled as though the wood was growing heavy in her arms. I was in her way, but didn’t let her pass; I wanted details, I wanted a transcript of every conversation they’d ever had. And as much as I wanted those things, I didn’t want the image of her over Rohan’s bed, tucking in his sheets, maybe kneeling on his mattress.
‘It’s unfair to make me take sides,’ she said.
‘I know,’ I said, then added, ‘I can’t help it.’
A look of concern passed over her features.
‘It’s just I don’t see …’ I said. ‘He makes it this way with his rules and the way we have to act around him. If he relaxed a bit. It hardly makes a difference if I play a bit of music or we get to have some time to occasionally try to forget.’
She didn’t reply, but her eyes were back on my face, telling me I was important, more important, that we had something. We stood close, and if I didn’t have both hands full I might have brushed the hair from her eyes. I like to think if she was able to she might have touched my face.
‘Denny,’ I slowly ventured.
‘Yes, this wood is getting heavy – so get a move on.’
3
I SAT TENSE
, preparing for some sort of extreme sexual thrall I would have to disguise.
The wind was welcome because it blustered around me and mixed my feelings.
She came up behind me.
‘It’s cold,’ she said. ‘It’s a shame we can’t do it inside. You won’t be able to relax.’
I jerked as she ran a flat hand along the side of my neck. She took no notice and brought her hand up to hold the other side of my neck. Her hands were cool against my skin. She straightened my head with her fingers and began to massage with her thumbs.
‘Do you like how I cleaned your room?’ she asked. ‘It’s the old study, isn’t it? But I couldn’t find a single novel.’
She spread her fingers and pushed her hands under the collar of my shirt.
‘All the books are manuals,’ she said, ‘science-related, and magazines. Did no-one in your family read fiction?’
As she spoke she reached around to the front of my shirt and unbuttoned it further; she pushed the material aside and concentrated on the one shoulder. She put some of her weight though her palms and it seemed to push right inside me.
I took an open mouth breath; it shuddered on the intake.
She leant in. ‘It’s okay.’
I reached up to push her hands away and at the same time lowered my chest to my knees. The wind was colder where her hands had been and printed an icy tattoo on my skin. She spread her hands over my shoulder blades. I tried to shrug her off, but she pressed with her palms, working quickly to cover wide areas of my back, as if to desensitise me.
I clenched my teeth and furiously held in my hot grief while she rubbed with hands so heavy with compassion I hated them.
‘Stop,’ I muttered.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘Sit up.’
As I did, she came around in front of me. I let her see my face, the tears in my eyes, the heavy pull in my mouth, and the inconsolable ache behind it all. Her hand came up and she touched my face, feeling over my skin, tracing a kind line that was unmistakably platonic.
‘I know how you feel,’ she said. ‘It’s like you’re so far inside yourself your skin is not a part of your body, and it’s not your body anyway, because this isn’t you. This life isn’t yours. I know, Shannon. I feel it too. You’re not alone.’
As full as I felt, hurting with backlog, with words I wanted to say, I knew I wouldn’t speak. The same went for my tears and the steamy pain in my throat – I wouldn’t let it out; I couldn’t.
She took my hands in hers, and lifted them and had me press my palm to the side of her face. Her skin was soft, and my fingers so roughened I couldn’t feel the true softness of it. I felt with my fingers along her jaw and she closed her eyes.
‘There’s no freedom,’ I said, ‘in anything.’
Her head dipped as I pushed my hand into her hair. She came closer, between my knees. I lowered my head to rest on the top of hers. Her head was near my chest and I was sure she could hear the thud of my heart.
My breathing began to deepen with her nearness, the slow heat of arousal travelled through my limbs, but also, I was able to feel the slight stiffening in her as she sensed the shift in my emotions.
I reached for her hand and squeezed it tighter than I should; she went to stand and I clamped it possessively to my leg.
‘I want to finish,’ she said.
I took some breaths while she came around behind me.
Her hands were more real to me this time and I felt able to cope better with the reminders they sent smarting through me. My chin eventually dropped to my chest and my breathing became relaxed. It felt good. Her hands slowed to lazy and unconscious and her body pressed into the back of the chair.
‘
We dance around the ring and suppose
,’ she said, ‘
but the secret sits in the middle and knows
. Do you know that poem?’
I shook my head.
‘Robert Frost. I can’t remember any more of it. I only ever remember good lines … bits and pieces …’ She thought a moment. ‘What about this one,’ she said.