Rural Dreams Read online

  Relapse is not what you want to tell your sons on the phone but that’s what I did this morning and they’ll both be here soon.

  If the truth be told I felt a bit down this morning. Craig’s wife is busy with the kids of course, I can’t expect her to drop everything and come around.

  But what do you know? I got this just now from the mailbox: This big card. From Melbourne.

  You can tell the person is not a natural scrap booker, but she’s given it a real red-hot go. There’s black material around the sides, a cloud cut out with rain pouring down and a big smiling Kerri-Anne Kennerly.

  It makes this bad hair day seem so much better.

  Melbournians may be cold on the outside, but you know what?

  There’s a little bit of Surfers in every one of them:

  ‘Please get better you old bird,’ the card says.

  ‘We love you so much,’

  From Alice.

  DESOLATE

  It’s one of those days that almost kills you; it’s that beautiful. Blue, blue sky and a sun so sharp it hurts to open your eyes wider than a slit. The sand is hot and rough, biting into your toes so you have to put your thongs back on till you reach the shallows and then the water is so cold you gasp. It’s always like this. The 90-mile beach is wild. Unlike the romantic coves and family friendly bays beloved to most Australians, this beach is unpredictable. It is no swimming beach with its notoriously treacherous rips, and the constant choppy waves mean that surfers never grace its shores.

  You’ve got 45 minutes till you have to pick up the kids from child-care and this walk is freedom before the hell of evening begins. You walk purposefully in long, confident strides.

  There’s not one cloud to blemish the boundless sky and beneath it, the Tasman sea surges, gathering strength before pounding the yellow shore in its relentless journey of the tide. This area is known for its desolation. The real estate agents and rich baby boomers haven’t cottoned to the gem that is this part of Victoria and for the moment – you’re glad of it. A year ago, you moved here from the inner city to a small farm on the outskirts of town. You and your husband agreed that St. Kilda was no place to bring up kids. Its barely disguised air of yuppiedom did little to hide the threat of violence that lurked beneath. Ageing backpackers eyed you up and down on your way to get milk. On weekends, carloads of males hurled abuse at the prostitutes, sometimes throwing eggs which occasionally ended up in your yard. A syringe disposal unit in the playground toilets did nothing to quell your fears about the druggies that wandered around ghostlike seeking new ways to end their misery. Mothers in the area told harrowing tales of paedophiles in Luna Park and homeless youths on ICE. Your car was stolen twice.

  You’re glad, so glad you moved. A few goats, the new llamas, a chook shed and your family. You’ve never felt so happy. And there’s the ocean of course. You walk up to your knees in the freezing water, look out to the horizon. On some days you can see the outline of an oilrig, but not today. A school of fish leaps out in front of you and you cry in delight before thinking that maybe they’re being chased by something bigger. By a dolphin!

  And then you think, or a shark.

  Great whites have been caught here; you’ve even found a shark’s tooth on the beach one day. You hop quick smart out of the shallows and back up the shore.

  Continue your walk.

  Far off into the distance a gull struggles against the wind, beating its winds in vain against the onslaught of the off-shore gale.

  Desolate.

  The word springs to your mind again.

  Isolated, uninhabited, uncivilized.

  Your stride falters a little and you curse before regaining your step. You know what’s happening.

  Shut up! You tell your mind. Shut up and let me enjoy this walk!

  But now it’s happened. From somewhere in the grey recesses of your brain, a latch on a window has just been released. It was almost inevitable. And through the tiny gap, a slither of fear creeps into your mind. Despite yourself, you look around, up to the sand dunes, covered in spiky grass and the mass of tea trees behind. It’s the same for as far as you can see, and it’s a long way to the road.

  You keep on walking, but now it’s more of a trudge and you look behind you a couple of times before stopping completely.

  The window in your mind opens slightly further, and a fresh gust of alarm rushes in. (Was that a fin out there, cutting through the shallows? Was that a face, there amongst the dunes?)

  Senses ringing, you turn around and begin the trek back home. What’s the use in continuing? The walk is ruined. Ruined! Why does this always happen? Why can’t you just relax and enjoy the moment? This beautiful scenery which holds no malice toward you at all? This paradise, this place you’ve always dreamt off? Angrily now you march along the beach toward the car park that now seems so very far away.

  All the thoughts you tried to hold at bay come flooding in.

  Three children stolen from a beach, a schoolgirl raped on her way home from school. Serial killers, muggers, perverts, and tortured backpackers. Even this place is not entirely free of crime! Three years ago a young girl had been randomly bashed and left to die on this very beach. The attacker was found and locked up, but it just goes to show.

  You think about all those ‘reclaim the night’ marches you went on, and the fat lot of good they did. You remember striding along with a multitude of other women singing Tracy Chapman songs and the distinct smell of sandalwood. How you laughed in the faces of those men that jeered at you! How a thousand women can be so brave and united against the bigots, the misogynists and the rednecks of Melbourne.

  But there’s not a thousand of you now.

  There’s just you.

  Just one.

  On this beautiful beach.

  This desolate, desolate beach.

  Now you’re striding and you give a snort when you remember being ten years old and the thing to be most scared of was quicksand.

  Russians too. Quicksand and Russians, that was what kids were scared of in the 70s. If you were a Catholic girl, include the fear of getting word from God that you were destined to be a nun. Now that was some scary shit.

  Hang on, was that something? Something in the…

  You slow down, because suddenly, you’ve seen a black dot in the distance.

  Someone is coming.

  The black smudge grows and clearly now, you see the figure of someone running toward you. It’s not a smooth run, the arms are all askew, the body alternatively bent and straightened like a puppet being put through its paces.

  You stop completely, unsure of what to do.

  A slight panic.

  Do you run to the dunes? Into the water? But it’s cold and dangerous; you’d be swept away in an instant. What to do? For a second you spot the silhouette of an oilrig on the horizon.

  And all too quickly, she’s here.

  Wild, wild hair and eyes glazed with terror.

  Her screams reach you before she does, and after a moment of hesitation, you spring into action- running toward her and grabbing her by the hand.

  ‘Help!’ She sobs, ‘He tried to attack me! Rape me! Help me!’

  Her cries are rambled, jumbled things, but she’s in your arms and for a brief moment you hold her, smoothing her hair and listening to the heavy, uneven breaths she takes.

  Your terror is at full volume now, you can barely speak, but it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realize that a second dot in the distance, the menacing stick figure headed this way is the one she’s fleeing from – and you pull her, the blithering mess that she is, up the beach and into the dunes.

  Somehow you get her to be quiet.

  You point to where the man is coming up the beach and make the signal to be silent. Her face is mashed into the sand, sobbing silently, and she’s grabbing bits of the spiky grass though it must hurt like hell.

  It’s like a dream this situation; the worst fucking nightmare you’ve ever had and you can’t believe a momen
t ago you were thinking about quicksand.

  Taking a chance, you raise your head ever so slightly above the grasses in order to see the man below.

  He’s there all right. Walking along the beach in careful strides, looking about him all the while. For a second you worry about footsteps, but then you remember that there are prints all over the beach, from the fishermen, the other walkers and the joggers. He knows roughly which direction you’re in though, and as you put your head down quickly, he speaks.

  ‘Come out! I know you’re out here somewhere! Come out!’

  The girl beside you has gone completely still, it’s hard to know whether or not she’s still breathing at all.

  ‘Come out!’ He implores, ‘I don’t want to hurt you! What happened? I was just being friendly.’

  Silence. And then his voice sounds again, a little further off this time, ‘look, I’m going now. I don’t need this, I’m going.’

  You peep your head up once more. He is leaving, his steps have quickened now and he fast becomes a black jumble of lines once more. All is quiet.

  ~~~

  You can barely believe what just happened.

  ‘He’s gone,’ you say to the still figure beside you. ‘It’s ok.’

  She sits up, and wipes at her face with the sleeve of her shirt. ‘Thank you,’ she says through tears. ‘I thought he was going to rape me.’

  ‘He’s gone,’ your breath is fast. ‘It’s going to be ok.’

  There’s a silence while you scratch your head and look up and down the beach once more. It is clear again, empty of everything but the lone gull skirting the shallows.

  ‘I got a good look at him,’ you say. ‘I don’t think he was from around here.’

  ‘No,’ she says softly, ‘he’s not from around here.’

  ‘But you are?’

  ‘I used to be.’ She sniffs.

  The wind shrieks through the dunes and you look out at the ocean. You know from an old surfer boyfriend that the smoothest parts are where the most dangerous rips lie underneath. That glassy stillness is a perfect camouflage for the turmoil and strength that lies beneath.

  ‘What happened?’ you ask.

  ‘I thought he was nice,’ her voice shakes. ‘I met him on the beach and we were having a nice talk, but then he started acting weird and asking if anyone knew I was there. He pulled me down – tried to…’

  ‘It’s ok,’ you say. ‘I’ll drive you to the police station. I wish I had my phone!’

  ‘There’s no reception here,’ she says.

  You let her catch her breath, you give her time.

  ‘He tried to rape me!’ She’s sobbing quietly, hands covering her face. ‘I’m so pleased I found you! I knew you were here somewhere; I saw you at the carpark. I’ve seen you in town too, at the supermarket and the petrol station. You live at the Honeysuckles right?’

  She’s rambling. You nod, patting her on the shoulder, noting her disheveled top, her bare feet.

  ‘There’s no telling what some people are capable of,’ she says in a sad voice, a red eye peeping out from between her fingers. ‘I guess something just snapped in him.’

  ‘Hey, don’t make excuses for him, it won’t matter to the police if he just snapped.’

  ‘I spose not, but he seemed like such a nice person. They always do I guess.’ She sobs behind her hands.

  ‘The bastard!’ you spit. ‘I hope they catch him and lock him up for good!’

  She rubs her eyes and looks out to the water, and up and down the beach. ‘They won’t lock him up,’ she says. ‘Criminals rarely get the maximum penalty nowadays. With parole, you can be out in as little as five years for aggravated assault.’

  Her eyes are uneven. One of them looks as though it is scouting for passers-by, and the other focuses entirely on you. She scratches her arm. She’s got big hands. Big shoulders and legs.

  Desolate. The word pops unbidden into your head.

  She continues, ‘You get less time if you do the right thing, keep your head down, don’t antagonise the screws.’

  ‘The screws?’ And now you’re thinking – on my walk I didn’t pass one person and not one person passed me.

  ‘Prison guards, wardens – you know.’ She places her hand on your arm.

  I don’t know, you think. I don’t want to know.

  ‘Of course, you get even less time if you’re a woman.’

  Something somewhere in your brain crashes and the sound is so loud it threatens to drown out the scream you know is coming. You are sinking and there’s no one to pull you out. And the sky, the wind, the dunes and the sea have never been more beautiful than at this moment right now.

  ‘I got three,’ she says.

  RUSTIK

  A café is opening up in town. Impossible not to feel a stab of hope for the new owners, raise a thin cheer for the brave. I saw them earlier, when I was driving back from the bank and I slowed right down. A young couple were there, cleaning the big windows out the front. There was something in the way they wiped those windows, putting their whole heart and soul into it; it just got me. I usually just slop some newspaper around the glass. But these two – they were really into it! The woman flicked some water on the man and he grinned at her, giving her a little push with his hips. It was like some tv show, there should have been a jingle to go with it, but even after what I’d just learnt about my finances, it did cheer me a little. I slowed down even more to read the sign. Rustik.

  I was plunged into gloom once more.

  Still, I hoped the Rustik would do better than the last new café; that one lasted just under five months. There were many times when I was the only one in it, drinking its terrible coffee and choking on stale banana bread. That one was named Country Style. The owners came up from Melbourne and built it from scratch, they had high hopes of the tourist industry picking up and real estate prices rising. It had wooden tables and chairs inside with checked cotton tablecloths, little glass jars with plants growing in them, the whole place white and spare. It was hard to drive past Country Style and see the owners looking out the window – willing people to come in, faces pale and elongated behind the glass. But this Rustik couple, maybe they were in with a chance!

  When I was growing up in this town there was a really great bakery. It didn’t call itself a café, but it served coffee all the same. An elderly German couple, Horst and Marlena owned it and the tourists went wild for their cakes and dark breads. I try not to think about them much and when I do it’s mainly because of the coffee. When I left to go overseas, Marlena gave me the address of her sister to go and stay with when I was in Berlin. I didn’t end up contacting her but now I wish I had.

  At the one T-intersection in town, a four-wheel drive towing a caravan was blocking the road. I drove up behind it and waited. The back of the caravan had a map on it, with markings to indicate where the people had holidayed. They must have been around Australia at least a dozen times, the map was overtaken with texta trails. There was a sticker with an Australian flag on the back window that read, ‘If You Don’t Love It, Leave!’

  It was hot in the car and I considered beeping the horn. It’s not good to be in a hot car. But the door of the four-wheel drive opened up and a bloke in his 60s jumped out from the driver’s side, one thong after the other and two skinny legs like mottled salamis. He left the engine running, pulled his shirt over his gut and into his shorts and walked over to me, legs apart like a penguin.

  ‘Hey love,’ he said, leaning into my window. ‘Which way’s it to the burnt parts?’

  ‘You’re in them.’ I said.

  ‘Really?’ His orange face registered surprise. ‘Wouldn’t know it.’

  ‘There’s been a bit of regrowth.’

  ‘Too right there has,’ he said. ‘We came all the way from Lilydale to see it.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘As you can see, nature’s taken its course.’

  ‘Not to worry,’ he said. ‘We’ve still got Kinglake to get to, might be more to see the
re.’

  ‘You can only hope,’ I answered.

  The man was an idiot. Look closer and you could see that the area had been burnt all over, burnt to smithereens. The new saplings, the blackened trunks, the limbs like ghost arms reaching toward the road. There were ferns, new bushes and shrubs I couldn’t identify but the tragedy of the ash played out everywhere like a Shakespearean play.

  The orange man waddled back to his four-wheel drive and hoisted himself back into the driver’s seat. If you don’t love it, leave. I thought.

  When I got home, Anders was sitting in the middle of the room eating an icy pole, watching a show about polar bears. There was one skinny infant bear teetering on a block of ice and Anders said it would most likely drown. I said that the people filming it could probably save it somehow, guide it toward land perhaps – but Anders said the people filming couldn’t save it because that would be meddling with nature. They had to let it take its course, he said. The whole crew would have signed some form on not interfering, there would have been certain conditions to the filming and so on.

  I had been with Anders for nearly a year and I was beginning to see that we probably weren’t meant to be together. His European manner now just seemed rude rather than refreshingly honest and I wanted him to rack off back to Denmark. I told him about Rustik.

  ‘I give them six months,’ he said. I thought about the window cleaning.

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure,’ I said. ‘They looked like stayers.’

  ‘No doubt there’ll be a menu with babyccinos and arancino balls going up soon,’ he said, his feet resting on a box with ‘Pots and Pans’ written on it. ‘They’ll have a Facebook page too,’ he continued. ‘Give it four weeks and they’ll be serving chips and potato cakes.’

  I grew quiet. Anders had been out of work for three months. ‘At least they’re doing something,’ I said. Anders kept watching the show.

  When I first met him in London, Anders was like this bright spark in the gloom. Someone invited him to a party at our share house in Cricklewood and among all the Australian men he stood out and not just for his shock of blonde hair. For a start he danced; this was something rare among the men I hung out with. He danced and in perfect time to the music, inviting us all to join in. He wore things my friends never would – pink shirts and yellow shoes. He wore tight jeans with silver sneakers and took longer than I did to get ready. On our first time out, just the two of us, we went to the Tate Modern art gallery and drank swanky cocktails. This impressed at a time when I was more accustomed to snakebite pints and kebabs at 3:00am. Anders was well travelled – Asia, Africa, the Middle East. He told me about his three months in an Indian commune where speaking was only allowed for an hour a day and how he’d smoked a lot of weed in Bhutan where he’d considered becoming Buddhist. He was four years younger than me and didn’t care a whit. Someone like Anders could have invoked ridicule among the men I knew, but he didn’t. He got along as easily with them as he did with women. It was as if he’d always been among us, we could hardly remember a time when he wasn’t there.