The Best Australian Stories (60 page)

‘This is really something,' he told Karen. ‘Schools weren't doing stuff like this when we were there.'

‘No.'

‘You do realise the paper won't print this story?'

Karen's eyes fought against their sockets. She'd just given an intimate account of a secondary school's complicity with madness. She asked again whether Paul believed her account of Prospect Secondary's attempts to redefine integration.

He did. Every word. No one could doubt that Karen was taking a principled stand. The thing was, his newspaper never published stories about teen suicide, or anything that might be seen to romanticise suicidal behaviours. There was no way his editor would run a critique of a school that had won out over suicide.

So, this was the brick wall. You'd never be permitted to critique the underlying socioeconomic sources of youth discontent. You were only allowed to fudge the truth by blaming dodgy song lyrics and claiming to be outraged by carelessly written movies.

‘Have you ever felt that having a full set of limbs made you inadequate?' Karen asked.

‘I don't like my nose, but I've never thought of having it amputated.'

‘We've got to stop this,' Karen insisted.

‘Suicide's a virus. You really should commend these people for doing everything they can.'

Paul had missed her point entirely, and just then Karen realised that he had always managed to miss her point. But she knew that he was also sad about the state of the world. He might have been thick and imperceptive, but she'd been that too.

The sub-editor then told a story that he'd never mentioned in their three years together.

‘My first girlfriend, Donna, committed suicide when she was eighteen. She'd drink till she was nearly paralytic, and slash up. I know that makes her sound mad, or wild, but Donna was quiet. Smart, with a good family … Pretty. Too pretty really. She had big breasts. I never saw that as a bad thing, but she hated the way men looked at her. Always saying she wished someone would hack them off. Donna hated them. She was nothing more than her breasts. Even if she'd had them reduced, or had a leg cut off, I reckon I still could have loved her … Most girls, most girls who think like her, they stop eating, or they do something to stop being women. But Donna threw herself under the Sandringham train … A school like Prospect … I reckon a school like Prospect might have saved Donna's life.'

‘It might have,' Karen said.

Escargot Postel

Chloe Walker

The first letter is a surprise. Ellie is reading through her mail over breakfast when a handwritten envelope interrupts the flow of bills and invoices. A blue
par avion
sticker and a French stamp make Ellie's heart skip a beat. It is from Luc.

It's been more than a month since she ate with Luc, but the thought of him is still delicious. Trust the only proper French chef on her books to have such a dishy younger brother. Trust the tasty one to have an early morning flight back to Europe the next day. Ellie had accepted his dinner invitation anyway, making the most of the few hours of drinking in his features and imagining what his hair would feel like between her fingers. After one of Henri's superlative dessert soufflés Ellie gave Luc her business card, took advantage of the European custom of cheek to cheek kisses, as close to his mouth as decorum would allow, and made the hour-long drive back to the farm much later than usual. She cursed the stars the whole way for teasing her yet again. And that was that, she had thought. But now there's a letter.

She slides a fingernail underneath the flap of the envelope and pulls out a cream-coloured note card. Its edges are like nibbled lettuce leaves.

‘Lovely Ellie,' it reads. ‘It was such a pleasure to share my last meal in Australia with you. Once again, my compliments on your excellent produce. What a shame we met just as I was about to depart – I would have liked the chance to visit your farm, and to show you what I can do with escargot in my own kitchen. Luc.'

Ellie screws up her nose. She doesn't eat snails; she just breeds them for restaurateurs like Henri. She is, however, quite partial to red wine, cheese and soufflés. Perhaps she could win a trip to Europe. She reads over the letter a few more times, soaking up the arcs and sweeps of Luc's pen. Then she puts it back in the envelope, tucks it behind the wooden chessboard on the side table, and pulls on her gumboots at the door.

On the way to the pens a Cibo Matto song lyric tumbles around inside Ellie's head: ‘He looked me up and down, as if I was a restaurant menu.' The ground is soft from last night's rain but overhead the sky is empty of clouds. Her charges are always happiest in this type of weather, moist but warm. She pulls open the gate to the enclosure and walks over to the first row of densely planted vegetables. Time to begin the day's work.

The snails are in good spirits today, happily sliding over silverbeet leaves and each other. Ellie gently picks one off a leaf and watches as it recoils back into its shell. Despite her job, Ellie is still fascinated by snails. As a kid she would keep them as pets, closing them into margarine containers in her bedroom and feeding them lettuce. Sometimes she would forget about them for weeks on end and their poor tiny bodies would shrivel back into their shells. The stench of decaying mucus and bacteria, when she finally remembered, to her smelt like guilt. An echo of that smell lingered in the tanks she used in the farm's first incarnation. Now her flock of thousands of single-footed farm animals roams in free-range enclosures, surrounded by foliage. Both the snails and her customers seem happier this way.

Ellie reaches over the black netting and pulls out yesterday's uneaten food, lest bacteria grow and her herd fall ill. She drops the food into a bucket for composting, slowly filling it with nibbled slices of cucumber covered with silvery trails. She leaves fresh cucumber and some oats, and eggshells for calcium. She finds new babies in the reproduction area and transfers some teenagers out of it for fattening up.

In the afternoon Ellie works in the greenhouses, cleaning old food from the purging bins and replacing it with fresh oats. The snails that are in for purging are fed a strict fibre diet to cleanse their gullets of dirt. At the end of the week, Ellie will end their slithery journeys through life with an enormous pot of boiling water, a task that still elicits a small pang of guilt. At least her snails are allowed a last meal, unlike their Italian cousins, who are piled into cages and left to starve for a week, or worse, covered live with sea salt and flour.

That evening, Ellie reads Luc's letter again and scribbles a reply. ‘I'm pleased that you enjoyed my snails. Thanks again for a lovely evening. If I ever visit France I would love to let you make me dinner. Perhaps I could bring dessert – a nice chocolate tart? Or maybe a good old Aussie pavlova? (Look it up. It's like a giant meringue.) Yours truly, Ellie.'

The second letter is even shorter than the first. Ellie reads it straight from the letterbox. She wants it fresh.

‘I hope after our pavlova that you will stay long enough for coffee. Because what I really want is to kiss you. Luc.'

Ellie returns to the house and plucks the first letter from behind the chessboard. The pieces have been halted mid-game, their positions etched into her memory. She met her English grandfather only once as a child, but they kept up a healthy exchange of mail and played many games of chess by correspondence. Some games took years to finish, and her grandfather only lost once. Then he passed away before he'd had the chance to make his next move.

Ellie carefully removes the chessboard lid and puts the two envelopes in the cavity that would ordinarily house the pieces. She knows this game. One move at a time. She goes to her desk and writes a reply.

Slowly, over weeks and months, the little pile of letters in the chessboard box gets bigger. Each one contains a kiss, a touch, a glance. ‘I am running my thumb along your eyebrow and down your cheek.' With each note they explore another inch of each other. ‘The skin of your neck tastes like honey.' Sometimes Luc's response is too quick, a mere eight or nine days, and Ellie leaves it on the side table for a while to catch her breath and slow things down. She invests in a pack of airmail envelopes and an expensive pen, trying to train her handwriting from beetle tracks into something more resemblant of Luc's calligraphy. She writes slowly, carefully, crafting the shape of her alphabet. Luc's hand slips from the small of her back to caress her buttocks. Ellie undoes the top button of his shirt.

One morning, by the letterbox, Luc slips off Ellie's dress. ‘Slowly, I slide the zip of your dress down your back,' his letter reads. ‘As I brush the fabric from your shoulders it falls to the floor.' Ellie's skin tingles from her neck and down her sides as she stands there, nearly naked, in her gumboots, old jeans and work shirt.

At the farm the snails are feeling sensual, lustfully sliding over each other's shells, touching mouths and rubbing wrinkly skin. Ellie goes through the routine, removing old food, replacing it with fresh stuff, all the while imagining her zip unzipping and her dress being removed by a French man.

That night she dashes off a reply. ‘One by one I unfasten the buttons of your shirt. My hands follow as it slips off your shoulders and down your back.' Overeager, Ellie checks the letterbox daily after sending her mail, half believing that lust and romance will somehow transcend the realities of the postal system. But nothing comes.

A week goes past, then two. At three the snails become restless, and Ellie agitated. Her agonising wait is punctuated by the ghastly task of preparing her produce for sale. She removes the greenhouse snails from their bins and takes them to the second kitchen, the one designed to meet food-safety standards. Surrounded by stainless steel, Ellie tips batch after batch of her babies into a giant saucepan, which she then brings to the boil, slowly, so as not to crack the shells. At first the snails make languid attempts at escape, crawling underwater up the sides of the pot, only to lose footing at the top and plop back into the soup. As the temperature rises their efforts become more frantic, until their protesting bodies give in and come free of their protective shells. Ellie drains the foamy water and boils the now-lifeless coils of meat a second time to remove any remaining slimy residue. Despite years of practice she still finds the process disturbing; this time, her mood is made darker as she remembers the shapes on her French date's plate.

Luc leaves Ellie standing in her underwear for five, six, seven weeks. Just when she resolves to pull her clothes and the last of her dignity back on and go home in a huff, another red, white and blue-edged envelope appears.

‘Your tongue is like an oyster, your breasts like bon bons waiting to be unwrapped,' he writes. As if nothing is wrong.

Ellie makes him wait. The snails keep their heads held high in indignation. Finally, she relents and writes her response. One sentence. A command; an effort to regain control.

‘Take off your pants.'

Addressed, stamped, posted. The next move had better be good.

Another few weeks go by. Business peaks and Ellie finds herself rushing to fill orders. In a morning crammed with errands she shoves the mail into her handbag on her way to the car. In town she hurriedly tries to catch up with the shopping and appointments and friends she has been neglecting. Her last stop is the supermarket. She grabs a basket and heads for the fresh food section. No time for the proper market today.

Stopping for breath, Ellie reaches into her handbag, groping for her shopping list. Instead her fingers trace the outline of a familiar blue sticker. She puts down the basket and slides her fingernail under the opening.

‘Dear Ellie, I can't help but run my hands over your delicious skin. Your breath is hot and heavy. I pull the lace away from your chest and feel the weight of your breasts in my hands.'

Ellie's hand moves up and cups the underside of her breast. She can feel the lace of her bra through the T-shirt fabric. ‘Your bra falls away from your body and I lean down to curl my tongue around your nipple.' Luc signs off and Ellie exhales. She looks up, realising that she is touching her breast in a supermarket. Embarrassed, she looks down, and the nectarines are blushing.

In the fruit and vegie aisle she can't stop squeezing. She squeezes the peaches, running her finger around the tiny bumps at their bases and feeling the microscopic hairs on their skin. She squeezes the eggplant. She squeezes an orange so hard that a drop of juice leaks from its navel. She squeezes the potatoes and dirt comes off on her hands. She squeezes a zucchini knowing that it will be as firm and hard as a ripe zucchini can ever be. She squeezes her thighs together.

It's Wednesday so everything is fresh. Some of the displays have been sprayed with water so they glisten. Ellie loads up her basket until the handle strains and bows and she wonders how she will carry it at all after she has visited the canned goods aisle.

At home she drops the shopping bags onto the kitchen table and takes out the letter. As she reads it again her mouth gets dry and she swallows. It makes a gulping sound inside her ears. Dropping the white pages to the table she takes a peach and lifts it to her face. Breathing in its scent she feels the tiny hairs against her lips. Slowly she brushes it over the skin of her cheek, down her throat and across her collarbone. Her hand snakes up the back of her top to unfasten her bra, but then she remembers the rules. She cuts up the peach with honey and yoghurt and eats it instead before putting on her gumboots.

Like chess players taking out their opponent's pieces, one move at a time Ellie and Luc undress each other and explore. The herd of hermaphrodites at the farm practises free love. New eggs are laid and hatched regularly. Responses are written as quickly as possible as Ellie and Luc touch and grope and taste. At the farm there is a population explosion of Lilliputian proportions, and Ellie is forced to plant out the last remaining row in the growing area to avoid overcrowding.