Authors: Tim Winton
Sherry didn’t come by the next day, nor the days afterwards. Raelene felt herself sinking. Her recent efforts to please Max fell away. She bought a fifty-cent Bible at the junkshop next to
the bakery and spent the rest of the week reading in fits and bursts that made her head ache and caused her to grind her teeth in frustration. She found a couple of stories the girls liked but they
were buried under whole avalanches of stuff so boring, so impossible, you could scream. The whole business made her wild.
On Tuesday she gave darts the flick again and went over to Dan and Sherry’s. They seemed surprised and relieved to see her and they’d barely let her in the doorway
before she launched into them about religion, about how she didn’t believe a word of it and how sick of bloody hypocrites she was. She gave it to them about the Pope and George W. Bush and
the priests who abused children and it just didn’t help matters that they kept nodding and agreeing. She ran out of puff. Dan put the kettle on.
You never have any booze in this house, said Raelene, laughing to mask her awful embarrassment.
That’s . . . there’s a reason for that, said Sherry, smoothing down her skirt.
Because you’re churchy, right?
Actually, said Dan, it’s because I’m an alcoholic.
Oh. Jesus. Sorry.
Dan smiled, folded his arms.
White Point’s a kind of second chance for Dan, said Sherry. For us.
That’s why you don’t work, Sherry?
Sherry shrugged.
And that’s why the religious stuff?
Partly, said Dan. Booze leaves a pretty big hole.
A higher power? That kinda thing?
More or less.
We’re kind of finding our way, said Sherry.
Shit. Raelene began to laugh again.
What?
I thought . . . I thought you were gonna kidnap me. It’s so stupid.
Well, said Sherry, we had considered it.
Raelene fell into fits and Dan made the tea. They talked until midnight and Rae left restless, ashamed, full of yearning.
Raelene kept up the charade of heading off to darts night but she never actually went. In addition to spending every other morning with Sherry she put in a whole evening with
Dan and her on Tuesdays. It was something to look forward to because what they talked about – argued about, most of the time – made her mind race. They prattled on about whether people
were basically good or evil at heart. For a whole night they talked about souls and Dan confessed that he believed animals had them. Homosexuals were a troublesome topic. Raelene found herself
arguing against their being consigned to Hell, even though she didn’t much care for poofs, whereupon Sherry expressed doubts about Hell itself and Dan brought his Bible out and there they got
bogged down.
Raelene warmed to the idea of Jesus and the business of forgiveness. The word
sacrifice
gave her goosebumps, reminding her of gory midday movies from childhood. She could see for herself
what all this guff had done for Sherry and Dan; it was the thing that lit them up and she leaned toward it, even pined for it. If they’d been plain, homely people you’d have to dismiss
everything they believed as weakness, as consolation, but they were beautiful. When someone as sexy as Sherry talked about becoming whole you had to take notice. Yet for all her yearning Raelene
was not convinced of the details. She appreciated the sense of it – well, some of it – but she didn’t
feel
anything.
Even so there was a time on one of those walks home along the stormy beach when there was no moon out and you could sense the heavy cloud but not see it racing inland and you only had the pale,
vague strip of sand to navigate by. Rae found herself walking with her hands outstretched, overcome by the apprehension that she was about to stumble into something on the smooth, empty beach. She
became breathless, panicky, and just as she’d started muttering aloud, talking herself down from this queer spin she was getting herself into, a patch of stars opened up low in the sky ahead
of her and stopped her in her tracks. At first she thought of a shimmering bit of cloth, like a piece of the dress her mother once got from a bloke she almost married, but the image didn’t
last because she went on to thinking of candles and lamps and campfires and she felt woozy for a moment as if she was in the clouds herself and looking down through a gap to see the fires of a
thousand desert camps. There were lights impossible to count and around them, in her mind’s eye, people huddled, all of them searching like herself, afraid, wondering, looking into their
fires, with the sky a blank over them. She didn’t know why she thought of deserts and campfires except for the reading she’d been doing, all those name-strangled stories from the Old
Testament that left her cold. That night in bed, still rattled by the dizzy moment on the beach, while Max honked and farted beside her, she remembered a night from childhood. Other fires. A long,
flat estuary and the shadows of trees and the smell of prawns cooking. Crabs on the boil. The smell of mud. Mosquitoes. The whole beach strung with lamps and campfires, so many families out there
in the dark dragging nets through the water and laughing. And out of the darkness a man singing. A high, lovely voice. So slowly around it, like the tide rising, the sound of others joining in,
men’s voices, children, women, the whole night singing. But still at the core of it, that high sweet voice, her father’s, faceless forever in the dark.
The cray season wound down into the last lean days of May. It hadn’t been much of a season to begin with but now, with four weeks left and the water cold and the swell
up most days, Max came in shitty. He was on two-day pulls; he should have been mellow but Rae could see he’d be looking for work in the off-season and the prospect made him nasty. He snarled
at her, turned his nose up at her cooking and pissed his pay away at the pub. In the first week of June his brother quit football, just walked. It was a scandal. Max put a bloke through the window
of the pub. There was talk of him pressing charges. He pushed Rae’s face into the fridge door and her eye came up something awful.
While her shiner was still puffy Raelene drove Sherry to Perth with the girls for a day. The country was green again, the light soft and grey. The girls slept.
You know you should leave him, Rae, said Sherry. I have to say it. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t say it.
Raelene was shocked. She put a hand to her eye. She’d really bogged the make-up on but it hadn’t fooled anybody. Having Sherry say this – it was like a betrayal. She’d
never once judged Rae before.
I’m saying it as your friend, Rae. I mean it. We could get you somewhere today, someplace safe.
I’ve got no money.
I’ll give you money.
You’re
paying
me to leave him?
Rae.
What about love conquers all?
Nobody has to put up with—
And commitment? And forgiveness? All that stuff you talk, it’s just talk then?
No, Rae.
Raelene suddenly felt like shit. It was worse than being hit. But she refused to give in and howl. She looked out at the road. This was her day in town.
In the city they trolled through boutiques and sat in cafés and let the kids arse about on escalators in department stores. They were careful with each other, subdued, but Raelene enjoyed
herself. She came upon a shop that sold only religious stuff, books and crosses and statues of Mary. Sherry was amused by its gaudy window display but surprisingly reluctant to go inside.
A shop full of holy hardware, Rae. It’s not really me.
I don’t get you, said Rae. C’mon, it’ll be fun.
I’ll buy the girls an icecream, said Sherry.
Annoyed and bewildered, Raelene agreed to meet outside in ten minutes. She went in and checked out the books on prayer and the beads and the photos of the Pope in his bubble car. There was a
whole table of statues, mostly Mary and the baby Jesus, and some with Christ holding his heart half out of his chest. Lying flat were several crucifixes with a suffering body on them. Always the
crown of thorns, dabs of blood, a big, tanned, manly chest, a loincloth. Beside all these were snow-domes, the kind of thing you shook to make snow. They featured nativity scenes, mostly, but one
in particular caught her eye. It was Christ walking on water. She knew the story. Yet it wasn’t the setting that captivated her, nor was it the fact that the blizzard you created when you
shook the little dome was not snow but a descending cloud of tiny white doves. She was seized by the look of him, his hair flying in the wind, the robe pulled back from his chest. He was all
man.
She bought it and when she saw it Sherry gave a wry smile and just shook her head.
On the drive home they relaxed with one another again. Sherry talked about her old job as a legal secretary, told her how the drink had cost Dan the biggest job of his life, how humiliating it
was, what it was like to see a man reduced to an incontinent, screaming mess.
And you didn’t leave him, said Rae.
No, Sherry conceded. I never left him.
They drove in silence for a bit, the girls exhausted and dozing, the paddocks falling by, rolling green beneath a haze of rain.
The born-again business, asked Raelene. What’s it like?
Sherry sighed thoughtfully. Well, she said, it’s about getting into—
I don’t mean what it’s about, Rae interrupted. I mean, what it
feels
like.
Sherry glanced at her, confused.
The moment you suddenly got it, when it clicked, said Rae. You know, the change. When you turned, or whatever you call it.
Oh, murmured Sherry, that.
Yeah, said Raelene half laughing. That.
Well, it
was
a moment, actually.
Just curious how it felt.
Like a hot knife going into me, murmured Sherry sounding all foggy, a woman with her pillow voice on. Like . . . like I was butter and here was this knife opening me up. That’s the best
way I can describe it.
Raelene could only nod, saddened but somehow fortified in the knowledge, the confirmation this gave her, that she didn’t believe. She’d come near, she was sure. From desperation,
from outright need. Times when she and Sherry and Dan talked she felt tantalizingly close to some kind of breakthrough. True, she was often overwhelmed by emotion at their place, but that was, she
now realized, just friendship, mere love. And once, walking home, there were the stars, that heady moment. That was the closest she felt. For a few days she’d thought she was only an
arm’s length, a breath away from copping something. But there was no piercing moment, no sudden unmistakable
feeling
.
You’re happy, then? she asked. You and Dan?
Lucky, said Sherry. Grateful. Very happy.
Rae thought of them, doomed to drink orange juice and endless cups of tea with awful secrets and lost careers behind them, childless and peculiar, stuck in a shitty little joint like White Point
after what they’d done and where they’d been. Still happy. Unless they were fakers. But she doubted it. She’d watched them too long, too closely. She was, finally and
indisputably, jealous.
By the end of that week there was no heat left in the June sun. Raelene dug the warm clothes from the bottom of the closet, all the sexless shrouding gear she hated, the
girls’ nylon dressing gowns, their winceyette pyjamas, the whole lot stinking of mothballs bad enough to make your eyes water. The sea was up so often Max hardly went and when he did the
catch was never enough to cover fuel and bait; they were losing money. He was around all the time and with the rain thrashing the roof and walls day after day, the caravan felt like a 44-gallon
drum they were all crammed into.
The few days Max went surfing he came home sated, almost content, but the rest of the time he was just simmering. Rae was glad when he had ropework to do at his skipper’s shed, even
relieved when he drifted over to the Cesspit to get wasted all day with the single blokes.
After her trip to the city Raelene didn’t see as much of Sherry and Dan. She knew they were puzzled but she felt a distance between her and them, something she couldn’t bridge. Only
rarely did she drop by on a Tuesday night. More often she rugged up in her mothbally coat and walked the beach alone. She looked at stars when they were out but never felt any dizzy moments again.
She thought about her father once or twice, wondered where he was. He was just a hole in her life now, no more than a shape, something she wanted but couldn’t really remember. By her bed she
kept the little cheap-arse snowdome of Jesus walking on the water. She liked the dinky birds and his rock star hair and how his chest looked, bared by the billowing robe. He had real pecs and a
six-pack. Like a bodybuilder. He was ripped. After a few Bundy-and-Cokes she liked to think of him in his little dome and her in her little aluminium box, both of them trapped.
She was painting her toenails one afternoon, half watching the girls arrange their smelly cuttle collection on the old car seat they used as a sofa, when through the open flap
of the annexe Raelene saw Max striding purposefully across the grass. Her skin tingled with alarm. She’d thought he was at the pub.
She got up to meet him, went out into the dull day, but he seized her by the arms and bullocked her back into the annexe. She felt the van slam into her back and head and he pinned her
there.
Who is it? he hissed, bug-eyed with fury.
Who’s what? she asked breathlessly.
Darts night. For fuckin weeks.
It’s not what you think, Max, she said, conscious of the girls cowering nearby even if she couldn’t see them with her head jammed back as it was.
Darts night. No, it’s not what we thought at all, is it? he growled. Max’s breath was rank with beer and smoke and his eyeballs were mulled up red as blood. So who is he, then?
Rae’s arms throbbed where he gripped her. She thought of telling him the truth but it sounded so weak, so bloody awkward, and the bastard didn’t deserve the truth, wasn’t worth
one honest piece of her.
Who the fuck is he? said Max, slamming her head against the metal so hard she saw sparks rise between them, sparks and winged spots that floated and fell. She smiled at that. Thank Christ
it’s aluminium, she thought; be grateful there’s a bit of give in it.