Authors: Lily Malone
“Fuck Crows. That’s such
shit,
”
Mark yelled at the television.
Owen had to get out. The red
haze of anger—the way it washed at the back of his neck like a tide—warned him
to walk away. Last time he’d felt that pressure to lash out at someone it had
ended with the Parker kid clutching his elbow, screaming on the floorboards of
a rented farm house.
He pushed off the doorframe,
breathing hard, welcoming the fresh air of the veranda as he pulled on his
boots.
****
“Mark didn’t mean anything by
it.”
“That’s the second time you’ve
said that, Owen,” Liv said, letting the Felcotronic slice through another spur.
“Tell your cousin to engage his brain before he opens his mouth.”
“Engage is too big a word for
him,” Owen said.
She didn’t smile.
He persisted. “You could
always go cut his thumb off. It’s not as if he can run. Kick his crutches out
from under him or something.”
“Please stop trying to jolly
me out of it. It won’t work.”
“I’m not sure why it’s such a
big deal,” he said. “So Mark is an idiot. Don’t let him get to you.”
Liv sighed.
Owen’s eyes probed. “It’s only
a word, Liv.”
Our son’s a faggot, Alison.
You know that.
She shivered, caught in the
memory of her father’s voice. “I know.”
“Do you want to talk about it?
I’m here you know. As a friend…”
Adjusting her grip on the
pruners, she waved his offer away.
Perhaps he sensed she needed
the space because he left her alone after that. “If you change your mind, I’ll
be in row twenty-six. I’m the one wearing the green vest.”
****
Liv straightened to stretch
the small of her back. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Owen working
in the row next to hers, at about four pm to her twelve o’clock. He’d got
faster as the day wore on and while technology gave her the advantage with the
electronic pruners, he had the brute strength and stamina.
“I don’t like the look of
that,” Owen called, pointing skyward. “I don’t mind rain, but it’s cold enough
to hail. There’s no point us getting soaked now. I was about ready to call it a
day.”
Liv swivelled, lifting her sunglasses to
better gauge the light. The afternoon had closed in while they’d been pruning
and the sky was bruised and angry. An icy raindrop stung her cheek.
Liv turned off the Felcotronic and tried to
shield it with her body.
“Where did you leave that raincoat?” Owen
asked, snatching the loppers out of his belt, preparing to run.
“Up there.” She pointed back up the hill to
her right. Another raindrop splashed her forehead and when she glanced back
over her shoulder to the south, distant rain fell in white sheets.
“I think we better split, Liv.
Run.
”
Owen turned.
She clutched the pruner tight to her chest
and lurched forward. By the time she reached the top of the vine row her lungs
burned and the Felco felt more like a brick. Owen waited at the top—in the same
row as her now—face screwed up against the rain.
“Let me take that.” He reached for the
pruner.
“I got it...keep running,” she gasped,
fighting the beginnings of a stitch in her side. “I stop now… won’t get
started...”
Her navy raincoat flapped on an end post
and as they neared it she heard the spatter of rain on plastic. Owen yanked the
coat from the post. He threw it over her head and shoulders like a cape, but
she couldn’t hold the Felco and keep the coat closed around her throat, so she
bunched the raincoat over the equipment instead, and ran. Over grass, over
gravel, heart bursting.
Please, God. Aren’t we there yet?
How could the cottage still be so far
away? Her beanie slipped down her forehead and she had no hand free to push it
up. She could hardly see and there was a rock band pounding drums in her chest.
“In there.” Owen took her by the arm,
veered her towards the shed and she shuffled that way.
“Keep going,” he urged, half-dragging her
now as water pooled and they splashed through puddles.
“Dying here,” she sputtered.
The clatter on the iron roof became a
roar—loud even above the rush of blood in her ears. Then it changed into a
needlepoint ping.
“Hell. That’s hail
.
Come on,” Owen
said and with one final effort, they burst into the calm of the shed.
Liv could hardly stand. All the layers of
clothes weighed her down and she was hot beneath them, stifling hot, despite
the frigid air.
It was Owen who peeled the carry-pack from
her back and prized the pruner from the clutch of her fingers. He dumped the
Felcotronic on a shelf, dumped the loppers, then tucked the raincoat around her
shoulders.
Liv finally managed to turn around. She was
hot beyond belief and yet when she touched her face, her cheeks were freezing.
Across the driveway, hail stones popped off the ground like bullet snow.
She hugged her arms across her chest. Maybe
if she held tight enough, she could stop the bone-wrenching shakes.
“Jesus, Liv, you’re freezing. I should get
you inside in front of the fire.” Owen had to shout to make himself heard.
“I’m f-f-fine.” In front of a fire was the
last place she wanted to be, yet, here she was, all rugged up against the
cold—Owen without a scrap of sensible clothing—and hers was the body shivering.
He took two steps towards her, laid his
hands on her shoulders, and gently hauled her back into his chest.
There was a part of her that wanted to
struggle, or perhaps,
thought
she should struggle, because Owen already
had a girl. Those beautiful arms weren’t Liv’s to enjoy. Yet all she wanted was
to lay her head back into the strength of his chest and stay there forever. It
wasn’t right.
Not right, yet
so
perfect.
Owen’s heartbeat hammered her shoulder
blade. Gradually, her shakes stopped and beneath the deafening crash of hail,
her other senses found space to wake.
Springy dark hair covered Owen’s forearms
and she laid her hands over his wrists. That same electricity she’d felt that
morning zapped her palm but this time she didn’t snatch her hand away. Closing
her eyes, she traced the line of tendons beneath his skin and in the darkness
it was as if she was blind and he was braille.
She smelled fuel, chicken pellets and
wheat. The mix was good. Owen smelled better. His scent was rain-washed leaves,
sweet earth and honest sweat.
Liv burrowed into the curve of his jaw. The
movement dislodged the beanie and it fell to the concrete floor at her feet.
Her hair fanned loose about her face.
Owen rubbed his cheek at her temple—his
skin rain-slick—and she felt rather than heard him suck a ragged breath as they
touched.
Abruptly, the hail lessened.
Liv opened her eyes to the shed—to shelves
and bags of stockfeed, tools and farm machinery. She saw the Ducati, silent and
gleaming. Also not hers. Not yet.
“Liv–” Owen began huskily.
“Owen, we can’t…
“Owen?” A voice shouted across the yard.
His body stiffened.
Hers did too.
“
Owen!
”
“In here, Mark,” Owen shouted.
“Phone call, mate. It’s your girlfriend.”
“Who?” Owen yelled, sounding confused.
“It’s Vanessa.”
Vanessa.
The name twisted sluggishly in Liv’s mind.
“Dickhead,” Owen muttered under his breath.
“I have to take this call. Come inside with me. Get warm. I’ll make you coffee
and then you can tell me what it is you think we can’t do.”
Liv ducked to pick up her hat and managed
what she hoped was a nod. “Let me put this stuff in the car.”
“Okay.” Owen turned and ran through the
puddles. He leapt up the steps, kicked off his boots and the screen door
slammed behind him.
So Owen’s mystery girl had a name.
Vanessa.
What would this
Vanessa
think if she
knew her boyfriend was about to kiss another girl?
Liv didn’t want to know.
She stepped to the shelf, picked up the
tools and clutched them to her chest, ignoring the damp patch that spread
there—a cold stain of pain.
Dumping the equipment in the boot, she
climbed into the Hyundai and put it in reverse. Already the hail stones on the
gravel were melting but there was enough ice under the tyres to make driving
treacherous. Navigating the entrance road took all her skill, but even then,
she kept stealing glances in her rearview mirror. All she saw was smoke being
hurled from the chimney by the wind and two Border Collie dogs watching her
car’s retreat.
By nine o’clock that night, Liv was
seriously considering cracking the new bottle of her mother’s cooking sherry
and getting drunk in the company of Graham Norton and an all-girl dance troupe
that looked like lip-syncing Oscars’ statuettes
.
Ping. Pong
.
Liv craned her neck to check the digital
clock on the microwave. The last time someone knocked on the door this late it
was a driver wanting to know if they owned the cat he’d just squashed.
Adjusting the volume on Graham Norton, she
kicked the granny rug from her knees. The porch light shone gold through the
front door’s frosted glass and through it, she could make out a dark
silhouette.
She clicked the lock, opened the door a
crack, and felt her heart bounce.
Owen.
Before the melting sensation in the pit of
her stomach made her sigh out his name, she remembered the resolve she’d made
driving home from the vineyard.
Keep your distance.
Liv blocked the gap in the door with her
body. Icy air seeped through the crack and helped calm the hot flare in her
cheeks. “What is it, Owen? It’s late.”
An enormous bunch of flowers thrust through
the door and she had to take a step back or cop a camellia in the nose. Owen’s
shoulders jostled in behind the bouquet. “I want you to come for a ride with
me. You ran off so fast this afternoon I didn’t get the chance to ask. I’ve wanted
to ask you all day.”
The Pantah was at the kerb, gleaming under
a streetlight. It was quiet now, static, but Liv knew the power that engine
concealed.
The Ducati was like Owen—it could be
dangerous in the wrong hands.
And mine are the wrong hands.
Silently, she amended:
the wrong hands
for Owen, not for the bike.
“Come on,” he said, using his most
disarming grin. He glanced around her shoulder to where the lights from the
television flickered against the hallway wall. “What else are you doing
tonight? Knitting?”
“I don’t feel like going on a motorbike
ride,” she lied.
“What are you afraid of?” Owen said,
switching his gaze back to her face, eyes suddenly serious. “I thought we were
getting on great this afternoon and then you ran away.”
“You were busy.” It sounded feeble, even to
her.
Busy with Vanessa.
“You’re safe with me, Liv. We won’t crash.”
“I’m not afraid.”
Not of crashing.
In that split second she calculated the
odds of telling Owen to leave—get him on the Duke without causing a scene that
would make the neighbours’ eyes pop. The look on his face told her those odds
weren’t good.
“Come inside before you wake the whole damn
street,” she said with an exasperated sigh, opening the door wider. “How the
heck did you find me anyway?”
“Aunt Margaret rang old Mrs Gepp. That
woman knows everyone who ever lived on Church Street, all their kids,
grandkids. I think she knows the name of every cat and dog too.”
Owen bent to remove his boots then
straightened and stepped across the threshold. Liv shut the door and followed
his shoulders down the hall. He was kitted out for the road, dressed all in
black, and he looked every bit as thrilling as the bad-boy biker boyfriend
every girl’s parents’ dreaded. And here
she
was, caught in her comfort
clothes: a grey tracksuit grown baggy in the bottom. Explorer socks.
“Where can I put these?” He waved the
flowers. Pink and white petals sprinkled the floor.
“It’s fine for me to mess up this house.
Not you,” she grumbled, scooting past him to the cabinet her mother kept for
glassware.
She saw him inspect the bird paintings, the
ornate polished cabinets, the stiff coffin of a couch. His eyes absorbed the
colour schemes of alabaster and ivory, lace-edged cushions, everything layered
white on white.