Rural Dreams Read online

  His Uncle John comes out to the car to greet them. He’s a big man and a confident one for someone who still lives with his mother. John slaps his father on the back, kisses his mother and then turns to him, ‘hot aren’t you mate?’

  He scowls. Tries to look cool.

  ‘Rob’s wearing stovepipes,’ his father says solemnly.

  ‘Too right they’re stovepipes,’ his uncle says. ‘I could cook an egg on you.’

  God how he hates this place. His parents walk inside and he wanders around the back. His older cousins, the vaunted draft nominees and some of their friends are already there, kicking the footy around. They’re friendly enough in a kind of dismissive way, call him over, ask what he’s been up to, but he can tell they don’t really care. They’re like that with everyone.

  He hovers around the sidelines for a while before settling under a grey tree with a packet of chips. The shade offered to him is pitiful, but at least it’s something. He looks around. The low hills that surround the yellow paddocks look charred and the late afternoon sky is a bleached blue stretched thin with not a cloud in sight. It could drive a man mad to look at that scene every day. He thinks about what he learned in Year 8 history and the willingness of Australians from this area to sign up for war. Shit, he thinks, eyeing the parched trees and rusted woolshed – it is no surprise to him. If someone offered him a free trip to Egypt and Turkey, he’d be off in a flash no matter what the risk. He eats his chips. Lest We Forget my arse.

  A little girl runs up to him out of nowhere and bats a helium balloon toward him. She’s a fat thing with ridiculous hair and her name may or may not be Kayla. He catches the balloon and bats it back but a gust of wind picks it up and it blows away. It rises fast and high – way above the trees – and begins to travel across the paddocks.

  ‘Sorry,’ Rob shrugs, ‘you can get another one.’

  The girl looks into the sky at the small speck of yellow escaping. Without warning she begins to howl, her mouth a red square of misery.

  ‘You lost my balloon!’ she sobs, her fat finger pointing at him. ‘You lost my best balloon.’ She’s really crying. Her distress stupefies him. He doesn’t know what to do. What are little kids for? ‘Meanie!’ the girl shouts, her breath coming in quick hiccups. ‘It’s gone and I’ll never, ever get it back!’

  There’s nothing he can do, she’s really cracked it. He wonders at what point he should go and seek help. He considers going to find his mother, when, with relief, he sees a man walking over. The man he soon recognises as a distant cousin bends down toward the girl, saying something low and cajoling. She runs away toward the house, her sobs becoming song-like as she darts across the grass and dirt.

  The man straightens and looks at him. ‘Scaring the kids are you?’

  ‘I didn’t mean…’

  But the man is unconcerned. He leans his back against the gum tree and lights a smoke, the afternoon light casting a shadow across his face. ‘They’re all a bunch of spoilt brats in my opinion,’ the man says, inhaling and exhaling like an elegant dragon. There’s a slight accent in his voice. An unfamiliar drawl or lilt. Rob asks him where he is from.

  ‘New York. London. Here I suppose.’

  The man’s shadow reaches out toward him and Rob feels an odd desire to rest his head on it, to lie on the dried gum leaves and feel the black coolness of the man’s shape beneath his head. ‘I’m getting out of here as soon as I can,’ he tells the shadow. ‘I’ve had it.’

  The man gives a strange laugh. ‘Well good luck,’ he says. ‘It’s harder than you think. God knows I’ve tried often enough, but my best stuff, the stuff the critics all like, is when I write about here.’

  ‘The critics?’

  ‘Plays. I write plays for theatre. Some very good, mostly bad. Not really enough to make a living.’

  Rob remembers now, there’s a relation, a writer who got away. He searches for something to say. ‘You must hate it here, hate coming back – after everything you’ve seen? I mean, it must be so – so boring!’ he says more to the shadow than the man.

  That low laugh again; ‘Oh I don’t know. Sometimes maybe. But there’s something about this place that keeps drawing me back.’ The man reaches down and picks up a handful of soil, rubs it in his hand. ‘This dirt’, he says with a kind of wonder, ‘it’s all they want me to write about.’

  The two of them stare out from beneath their tree. A dog runs past and a plane flies overhead, its progress slow in the big open sky. The man finishes his cigarette. ‘Good luck with the city’ he says – stamping the butt on the ground with his pointy shoe. ‘No doubt I’ll see you back here for a funeral or something.’

  ‘Don’t count on it.’

  The man says something he doesn’t hear and throws Rob a small rock from the handful of dirt he’s been holding. He’s too slow to catch it and it lands somewhere in the dirt beside him and by the time he’s located it and picked it up, the man has gone. He fits the rock carefully into the back pocket of his stovepipes.

  Rob eats the rest of the chips and his mother walks over, her low heels making little dust puffs in the dirt. She tells him to go and see his grandmother before they go.

  In a few weeks he won’t have to do things like this. He’ll be smoking in some dimly lit bar, watching a girl band or discussing Kant with friends. He has vague hopes of picking up. Rob follows his mother into the house and thinks about the man he’s just met. It’s hard to place him here in this spot. He was like a different species and yet the way he leaned against the tree, the way he sort of moulded into it. The image stays in Rob’s head.

  Inside, there is no air. The blinds are drawn and there’s the smell of old skin and something else, more vinegary that he can’t put his finger on. His grandmother is sitting on a chair in the middle of the room, a large television screen blaring in front of her. His mother turns the TV off and the old lady’s head whips around toward them surprisingly fast, her throat coming a close second to the face, its long flap of skin the colour of chicken.

  ‘Rob’s going off to Uni this year!’ his mother says brightly. ‘He’s waiting on his ATAR score.’ His grandmother’s head falls down onto her chest. She may be sleeping.

  ‘And to think,’ his mother says sadly. ‘She used to make the best trifle this side of Hamilton.’ His Uncle John walks into the room and nods at his sister’s words.

  ‘This side of Hamilton,’ he agrees. ‘Won all the prizes.’

  His mother leans closer into the older woman’s face and shouts, ‘Rob remembers your trifle from when he was younger, don’t you Rob?’ His grandmother says something in a bubble of spit and they all bend in to listen. ‘I think she asked if you still like trifle,’ his mother says after a pause. ‘You should tell her you do.’

  ‘Why? She can’t hear a thing.’

  ‘Just do it,’ his mother hisses.

  What follows is a hideous few minutes of him yelling, ‘I still like trifle!’ into the old lady’s face. Her yellowed skin is encased in deep, flaky wrinkles and she legit smells of piss.

  ‘I still like trifle!’

  His mother urges him to keep going till he begins to feel something like panic.

  ‘I still like trifle!’

  A river of sweat runs down the back of his stovepipes. Finally, the old lady jolts in her chair.

  ‘No need to shout!’ she says through rancid breath. ‘I’m not in Sydney!’

  ‘Not in Sydney,’ Uncle John repeats chuckling. ‘Not in Sydney!’

  Overhead, the fan slowly spins.

  ~~~

  Later that evening, his mother and father laugh about it.

  ‘Not in Sydney!’ His mother says. ‘You can’t make that stuff up.’ She brings out a tray of cold beef sandwiches and a beer for his father who eats while watching the cricket, boots off and big feet resting on a stool.

  For some reason, the tray enrages him. He’s so cross he doesn’t bother to say thank you when she brings out one for him. She’s probably never even
heard of Geraldine Greer or any of those other historical ladies, he thinks, as he chomps gloomily on his beef and green relish sandwich. But it’s probably not all her fault. The only books in the house are by Ken Follett and even though Trinity was a pretty good read it wasn’t exactly life changing. Because that’s what he’s after, a life change. A break in the monotony, from beef sandwiches on trays and old ladies with skin like a half-cooked chook. He leaves the crust of his sandwich on his plate and contemplates it angrily.

  ‘I saw that writer today,’ he says to his father. ‘Your cousin.’

  ‘Eh? Who?’

  ‘Beryl’s son,’ his mother chimes in. ‘Peter. Did you talk to him Rob?’

  He nods.

  ‘Peter? A playwright!’ His father says. ‘That’s a good one. Remember that play we saw of his in the Chaff house, out the back of Denny’s?’

  ‘Oh yes!’ His mother recalls. ‘That was a nice evening.’

  ‘Critics write about him,’ Rob says. ‘He must be good.’

  ‘Critics!’ His father nearly chokes with laughter. ‘If you mean Denny’s mother writing in to the Gazette to mention that the play would have been better off as a musical to give it a bit of life then yes, he’s had plenty of critics.’

  ‘Beryl is so happy to have him back for a good while,’ his mother says.

  ‘He told me he lives in New York and London.’

  ‘And so he does; that is, when he’s not fruit picking in Shepparton or asking his mother for money. Playwright!’ His father looks almost cross. ‘Next he’ll call himself an Orchardist Consultant.’

  Rob finishes his crust, has a drink of water and takes his tray into the kitchen. He walks slowly to his room, passing a mirror in the corridor on the way. His face is a mottled red and his shirt clings to his body. It hurts him to notice that despite the sit-ups he does in his room most nights, there’s still a padding of fat in each breast and the kids at school are right, his legs do look like wheat silos. His uncle was correct too, the stovepipes are uncomfortably hot and they don’t suit him. They don’t suit him at all. In his room, he sits for a while on his bed. Then, with some difficulty he takes off his jeans, folds them and hangs them over a chair. The small rock given to him by the man falls out of one of the pockets and lands on the floor. He contemplates it for a second before kicking it under the bed. It hits the steel bedframe and ricochets right back, hitting him somewhere beneath his knee.

  When he lies down he hears the fly again, still buzzing around. It bangs against the window and hovers around the shades. He gives the wall a slap and it goes quiet. He stares for a long time into the dark till time seems to stretch and grow thin. Eventually he drifts off to sleep and his last thought before he does is not of the score he will receive the next day or the life he hopes to lead, but rather his last thought is of the sobbing child Kayla – her face a plate of unchecked anguish and despair.

  RESCUE

  Just before my nineteenth birthday, I’m rescued from a crocodile swamp by an English backpacker wearing a toga.

  Drunk and delirious with youth, I’ve stumbled off the bridge over the mangroves on the way to a party at the beach. It’s been endless days of hangovers and sunbaking and coconut oil and nights of drinking and dancing and sleeping in dorms. This party is to celebrate someone’s birthday or someone’s going away, we never know which. I’m wearing a sheet over my new pink bikini and I keep stumbling as I walk.

  It’s a long drop from the bridge and there’s hardly a ripple when I fall. The mud is cold sludge and the water is dark and alive with bugs. I’ve heard about the saltwater crocodiles, the old ones who wait and watch. The drowning and subduing, the death roll. We’ve read the signs telling us not to enter the water, I’ve been vigilant up till now. In the swamp, small things nip my skin and my toga rises to the surface. In the breath I take before I call for help, I imagine all the lurking things about, eyes watching, the baring of teeth. Something splashes to my left, a rush of water past my hip. Last year, a girl disappeared from around here, presumed to be eaten alive. I give a short scream.

  When he hauls me up with one arm, the English boy and I pash with abandon on the bridge till other drunk backpackers call out for us to move on. Earlier on, a Swede tried it on and I’d told him no thank you, I was off all that. When he sees me on the beach, wrapped around the English boy, the Swede says, ‘I thought you were off all that.’

  I say, ‘He rescued me from a crocodile swamp!’ and the Swede shrugs, holding his hands up, palms to the air. ‘Is that all it takes?’ he asks.

  My English boy is studying and he knows who Coleridge is. It’s all a bonus till we’re grappling at each other on the beach and he starts kissing too hard, coming on too strong. His teeth are smashing on mine and his hands are twisting up my toga and the sand is hurting my skin. My pink bikini is bravely holding it together, but it’s only a matter of time. It’s hard to tell my saviour that he needs to back off, especially when he knows about the albatross, but I do, and he does. He really does.

  And the stars are bright, and the fire is warm, and the future stretches out further than I can possibly see.

  I’ve left my big country town, my school friends and the boy who has liked me for a year. I don’t miss any of it. It’s grown as boring and irritating to me as Sunday mass. Everything grates. I’m ready for the world.

  I’m almost nineteen and I’ve probably had sex once, but my friends tell me not to count it and so I don’t. There’s a couple of us who have times that we don’t count. Your friends can make the suggestion not to count this or that, but mostly it’s up to you. We don’t judge. We don’t make you tell us why.

  During my old job as lifeguard at the pool, boys my own age pretended to drown in front of me all the time, their flailing arms making me laugh. When the men did it, some my father’s age, I’d look around uncertain, wondering if they were making it up. It’s my worst nightmare, having to dive in after them, to be with them under water. Every time he paid me, my old creep of a boss tried to guess my bra size while I stared straight ahead, looking toward the deep end, waiting for the cash.

  At my other job in the Coles deli, I worked with Richelle. Richelle dropped out of school in Year 10 and her boyfriend is a complete bogan. I wouldn’t like to be seen down the street with her, but in the deli shifts with Richelle were the best. I told her about my boss at the pool, tried to make her laugh. She didn’t smile. Instead, her face went hard. She led me into the cool room and took my hands. Fish-eyes stared. Richelle has been around.

  ‘This is what you’re going to say to him next time,’ she said, and she leaned in close. ‘You’re going to say this: Fuck off you fat old cunt and don’t ever come near me again.’ She made me repeat it, and I did, but with some effort because I’d never said the C word. I love Richelle in that moment. I love saying the C word. The next time a customer asked for some Long Blonde beef and a couple of firm breasts, we spat in his food and Richelle wrote, ‘Your husband is a paedophile’ on the inside of the wrapping and we laughed and laughed and laughed.

  When I’ve left the deli for good and on my last day at the pool, my boss looks at me all forlorn. ‘I can’t stop thinking about you,’ he says. ‘You’re ruining my life.’ His sad leather skin stretches tight across his face and I think how terrible it must be to be 40. He reaches out to me with a claw of a hand and I pull back, summon some of Richelle’s pluck.

  ‘You’re a fat Old Creep and everyone hates you,’ I say, walking backwards to the exit. The words aren’t the same as my friend’s, but they seem to have a similar effect.

  ‘When will I see you again?’ he asks, pathetic.

  The doors close like a movie just after I say, ‘Never’. It couldn’t be more perfect.

  I leave town the next day.

  Years later, I’m living in a foreign city and the English boy sends me a message out of the blue; ‘Been in any swamps lately?’

  For just a moment, I think of all the swamps I’ve fallen in, none murki
er than the one before I left my hometown.

  Then I open a bottle of wine, take off all my clothes and watch four episodes of The Crown. In the middle of the night I wake, wrapped up in a tangle of sheets. When the English boy writes, ‘Been in any swamps lately?’ I find that I’ve hardly remembered the fear at all.

  After thirty years, all I remember is the feeling of being lifted up, up, up, away from danger into starry light and the hot night air.

  SOLITARY

  I reckon I’ve got two choices. Kill the poor little thing or drop it and run. I’m standing in the bike shed, wall to one side and Raggers blocking the entrance.

  The situation doesn’t look good, but then again, not much has since we moved here.

  About four months ago we’d moved to the Mallee, from down south where it’s cool and green. None of us were happy about it. Still, dad was fond of saying, with five kids and one on the way you can’t afford to be choosy. You go where the work is. Dad, a conservation manager in a town like this! We may as well be lepers.

  Just our luck, we moved here the same time the mouse plague began. We hadn’t even put our bags down when they arrived, teeming past us into the house like extra family members keen to choose the best room. They came in biblical proportions, settled anywhere they could and began breeding. They were like some crappy relation at Christmas time who never knows when it’s time to leave.

  We found them everywhere, in the cupboards, in the bathroom, behind the fridge and in the couch. When droppings were found in our sheets, mum whacked us for eating biscuits in bed and set traps all about the room. She was still pregnant then and was not to be messed with. Even the cats got sick of the mice. Ours lay around the house, fat and lethargic like a retired millionaire. That cool smugness that comes from being at the top of the food chain, it’s scary. I don’t mind admitting, I hate cats.