Authors: Tim Winton
Raelene never did convince Sherry to come along to darts night and in a way she was glad because it meant that she didn’t have to share her with the others. Rae didn’t give a bugger
about darts. Tuesdays were just a night out in a town where there was nothing else to do. Her teammates were rough old boilers in tracky dacks and stretchknit tops. They were good for a laugh once
a week but they weren’t really friends. They were proof that the further you let yourself go, the better you needed to be at darts. Rae was just making up the numbers. It was fun to imagine
Sherry there, even if it was better that she didn’t come.
When Sherry’s place was ready and the removal truck had come and gone, Raelene spent three days helping her move in properly. The house was a big, brick joint, the sort
that a middling kind of owner-skipper would build. Sherry and Dan had nice things – a glass table, white leather couches and a kingsize bed. While she and Sherry chatted and worked from room
to room, the girls played in bubblewrap. They chased Sherry’s cat and climbed in and out of boxes. They begged Sherry to tell them more of her stories, and she obliged them as she could. The
girls always wanted David and Goliath or Jonah and the Whale. Sherry held them spellbound.
When Raelene got home from the third day the caravan was a mess and so was Max. He’d kicked the mirror out and there was blood all over the floor. The whole time she was washing and
dressing his cut foot he pissed and moaned about coming back to an empty home and having to heat up his own lunch again and when Rae laughed at him for being so bloody stupid he clouted her in
front of the kids. When he was gone, limping off toward the Cesspit, she settled the girls down, cooked them spaghetti on toast and bathed them in the sink before bed.
She was asleep when Max came home. She woke with his finger in her. He stank of beer and bait and sweat and, tired as she was, she opened up to him out of sadness. She could have shrugged him
off but she couldn’t be bothered. At least he was gentle and with his hands on her breasts and his belly against hers there was no harm in it and even a shadow of original feeling, a faint
and momentary comfort that didn’t claim her attention long. She lapsed back towards sleep and in that softened, dreamy state she felt like a kid again, lying in the back of a station wagon on
a night drive home, the roar of the surf from the other side of the dune like the roadnoise in the wheel-arches, and the light flashing on Max’s head as he rocked in her so like the blink of
streetlights falling by. Raelene surrendered to the feeling. She floated warm and safe in something familiar, almost asleep again until she surfaced with a jolt and a cry and realized that she was
coming despite herself and the sensation was like the mild shocks you sometimes got from the badly earthed taps in the shower block, and when the spasms passed and Max continued to labour away on
his own behalf, there was such a wash of relief that she lay back immune, vaguely hearing but not taking in anything he said through his clenched teeth as sleep consumed her.
When she woke it was five o’clock and Max was gone. She stretched, luxuriating in the sudden spaciousness of the bed, and slept on until old man Harrison’s mower came by at ten.
Sherry came by at noon and said nothing about the pancake foundation on her face. Rae knew she looked like a bad job from the panel beater. You could see it in the girls’ faces. Sherry
just hugged her and helped her pick up around the van before Max’s boat got in.
In the afternoon, while Max ate his steak and eggs in weatherbeaten silence, still in his singlet and shorts and seaboots, Rae wondered about Sherry, what it was, apart from looks, that she had.
It was a bit of a mystery.
On darts night Raelene left an hour early to drop by Sherry’s on the way home. When Sherry came to the door she seemed alarmed. She held Rae by the shoulders and
inspected her face, and it was only when she satisfied herself that there was nothing wrong that she relaxed and asked her in. Dan got up from the couch and offered her coffee, went and made it
himself. For an hour or so Rae regaled them with tales of the darts girls. She stank of beer, she knew, and she smoked her Benson & Hedges and they gave her a saucer as an ashtray and were too
decent to wave the smoke away. She wondered if it was money that made them different. But plenty of fishermen made loads more than Dan; it couldn’t be that. She went home happy but
puzzled.
Raelene made a habit of dropping by on darts night. Dan and Sherry were usually still up, watching TV. Some nights she was weaving a bit when she arrived but they didn’t seem to mind.
There were times when she knew she was pestering them, when she really was a pain in the arse, and once or twice, when she was completely pissed, she felt herself trying to provoke them like a
bloody teenage daughter, but they remained unfailingly polite and courteous. Deep down Rae sensed that she wanted something from them. She just didn’t know what it was.
One Tuesday she came by late. It was after eleven and the lights were out. When Dan came to the door he was only in his boxers. He looked startled, embarrassed. He said her name so loudly that
Sherry appeared in the hall behind him with her lipstick awry and her hair all rumpled.
You’ve been at it! she yelled.
Would you like to come in, Rae? asked Dan.
Don’t think so, said Raelene. It wouldn’t be fair.
Sherry began to laugh. She tossed her gorgeous hair and stood there in her lace teddy a second before clapping a hand on Dan’s shoulder and drawing him back from the door, smiling all the
while at Rae and wiggling her fingers goodbye. For Raelene there was nothing for it but to pull the door to and walk back out into the quiet street laughing. But by the time she got home she felt
desolate. She wanted what they had, that special something, and when she looked down at the outline of Max snoring in her bed she bawled quietly and the effort to keep silent hurt worse than a
beating.
When Sherry didn’t come over for a couple of days Raelene felt frantic. The first real cold front of the season came through and rain drove in off the sea. The swell
spewed mounds of stinking kelp and seagrass onto the beach and all the boats stayed in, shaking and lurching at their moorings like chained dogs. Max was around the whole time, scratching his
beard, eating and farting and sulking, and the girls got on Rae’s wick, whingeing about going outside and needing the toilet, while all day every day the rain pissed down.
Why can’t we have a bloody house? she screamed over the TV and the wind and the squalling girls. With a toilet, for fucksake, so we don’t have to walk a hundred yards to have a shit!
I mean, how bloody hard is it?
Max didn’t even answer.
She trudged across puddles with the girls and bowed before the rain. While each of them sat in a cubicle swinging their legs she tried to light a little joint she’d been saving but the
bastard of a thing was too damp to catch so she ate it instead and five minutes later puked it back up.
Raelene couldn’t stop thinking about Sherry and Dan. She was hooked now. Maybe even in love with them. The weird thing was that she felt no envy, not the hot green bilious envy you’d
expect when you saw their stuff and their doll-like looks and what they had going between them. When she was with them they didn’t make her feel low, they didn’t rub her nose in the
mess she was. They lifted her up somehow. They were kind of straight and maybe they wouldn’t last long in White Point but she felt different with them.
There came a Tuesday when Raelene blew off darts night altogether and just went straight to Dan and Sherry’s. When they let her in, surprised to see her so early but not
at all reluctant to greet her, she saw that beside the empty plates and glasses on the dining table there were books open. Not just books – they were Bibles.
Raelene began to laugh. She heard herself, she sounded like a bloody madwoman and she wished she was drunk.
No darts tonight? asked Dan, putting the kettle on. His black hair was just too fuckin perfect.
Cancelled, she lied.
Feel like some gnocchi, Rae? asked Sherry. There’s plenty left.
No, said Raelene, unable to settle, to sit, to look them in the eye.
She knew things about them, what they did in bed, what labels they wore, the kind of towels they bought and the sort of fabric softener they used and even, having laid the paper in them herself,
how their bloody bathroom drawers were set out, but she suddenly realized that she didn’t know them at all. She blinked like an idiot and thought about it. All the stories Sherry told the
girls. Rae’d thought of them, if she’d noticed them at all, as old-timey tales, adventure stories. But it was church stuff.
So it’s this, she murmured.
This? said Sherry, sitting and crossing her lovely legs and raking her fingers through her hair.
This! said Rae. She slapped a hand down on one of the Bibles.
Oh. That! said Sherry with a laugh.
Raelene felt the ricepaper cling to her sweaty fingers. She had to shake the thing free and she left the pages badly crumpled. Shit, she mumbled. Sorry.
It’s fine, said Dan, shrugging.
I wondered what it was.
The Bible, said Sherry.
I know what the bloody thing is, she said, catching herself. I mean, I wondered what made you different, what it was you had. It’s religion, isn’t it?
Well, faith, yeah, said Dan with a nervous smile. That and plenty of Vitamin C.
Dan, said Sherry in the mildest scolding tone.
Raelene began to cry; she couldn’t help herself, she didn’t know why she was doing it. Sherry led her to the couch and held her. She smelt of garlic and tomato and Givenchy and Rae
felt her patting her hair and stroking her neck while she howled. She was aware of Dan still in the room, of Sherry’s body firm and cool against hers. It was like a trap, as though
they’d been expecting this, and now was the moment they’d fall on her and drag off her blouse and reef up her skirt and hold her down for each other, whispering weird shit at her like
on the movies and the sick thing was that she was ready for it. She wanted them both, wanted to
be
them. For a moment she didn’t care if they killed her, even, as long as it was over
quickly.
But nothing happened. Nothing more than Dan bringing her a cup of tea and Sherry reaching for a box of Kleenex. In the end, out of a kind of dismay, she stopped blubbering.
You look so tired, said Sherry.
Tired of my fuckin life, said Raelene, chewing her lips.
Well, what about Max? How about the girls?
I’m a shit mother, you know that.
You two wanna go for a walk? asked Dan.
There’s nowhere.
The beach? The dunes?
I’m bloody stuck. I’m fucked.
The moon’s out, said Dan.
I can take a hint, Dan. I’m goin, orright?
Don’t be silly, said Sherry.
But Rae was on her feet now and her blood was up. She shook Sherry off and waved her arms at whatever it was that Dan was saying and launched out into the yard and the street where there was no
one, only a salty wind.
Because it was still early, and she’d been bawling till her eyes felt lumpy and swollen as balls of sago, she could hardly waltz into the pub or just give up and slink home with Max still
awake. So she went to the beach anyway, walked out along the great white sandspit that bordered the lagoon. Dan was right, the moon was up. It washed everything ghostly-bright. The air had a real
winter sting to it. She was way under-dressed. Breaking waves flashed on the reef, flickered like her thoughts.
She
was
tired, yet it wasn’t ordinary fatigue. It was a deeper exhaustion. She was sick of herself, appalled at what she’d been thinking only minutes ago, ashamed of what she
was, a mother who didn’t much care. Maybe someone like her didn’t deserve better than Max. She didn’t love him at all. But she was too scared to leave him, and not just because
she was afraid of what he’d do to her or the girls if she did. No, she was really more frightened of being alone. The girls’d never be enough for her. She needed a bloke, she
hadn’t been without one since she was thirteen years old and now it was just unthinkable. The only way she’d leave Max was in the protection of another man. She needed a rescuer. She
couldn’t go alone. And in a town like this the available men were fat-gutted skippers whose wives had already left them or the adolescent deckies in the Cesspit across the van park. There was
nobody. And now she’d have to endure it without even the comfort of friends.
When she got home, shivering and heartsick, Max was out to it and the girls needed extra blankets. She sat between their bunks and felt the contours of their bodies under her hands. She felt so
low it almost hurt to breathe. She wondered if one day she’d ever work up the guts to top herself.
Late next morning Sherry dropped by but Rae saw her coming and retreated with the girls into the van. While the other woman knocked and called, Rae lay under the table with
her hands over the girls’ mouths. When Sherry was gone Rae went into a cleaning frenzy, scrubbing and scouring until her hands burned. The girls looked on bewildered. She roasted a chicken
for Max’s lunch and wore her sluttiest little dress, despite the weather.
The sun came out next day and Sherry found her making Play-Doh with the girls. She seemed uncomfortable, anxious, and several times tried to shift their stilted conversation away from the good
weather or the comings and goings of people in the park but Rae cut her off. For half an hour or so they just played with the kids and said nothing at all.
Raelene watched Sherry closely, saw the attention she lavished on the girls, how she always had her hands on them. She wondered if Sherry and Dan were able to have kids. Maybe they
couldn’t. Maybe that’s why she befriended her, to get hold of her girls. They weren’t your ordinary people, that’s for sure. Maybe they were from some kind of cult that
preyed on people like her. But then she caught herself. Jesus, she was sounding nuts now. Only yesterday she was crawling around in her own caravan, lying on the floor, hiding from her own best
friend.