Salt Rain (2 page)

Allie was surprised at how thick the honey was. She shut her eyes to the intense sweetness and the sensation of sucking on her finger. There, in the muggy car, with the spicy damp smell of the woman and the drumming rain, she felt certain that her mother was starting to make her way home.

Petal touched the back of Allie’s neck with a sticky finger. ‘Look how you’re sweating. Julia never swims in the waterholes, she says the water’s too murky. But if you want, I’ll take you down for a swim before you go. There’s a path from our side of the creek.’

Allie nodded, the sensation of Petal’s finger lingering on her skin.

A big white school bus pulled up and the kids ran out to climb on, slipping in the mud. An old man and child got off the bus and stepped slowly over the puddles. The man, in a long brown raincoat and felt hat, glanced at the car, and then stopped, pausing in the rain to look again, his eyes narrowing. He walked along the verandah of the shop, and turned to look back from the doorway.

‘He’s looking at you,’ said Petal. ‘You must know him, do you? Old Clarry.’ She screwed the lid back on the jar.

‘No. I’ve only been here once before. Who is he?’

‘One of the original valley folk, owns a property back that way.’ She motioned with her head up the valley. ‘He spends most of his time babysitting these days. He buggered his back.’ She bit into a small red apple. ‘So you’ve only been here once, huh?’

Julia got back in the car and passed Allie a paper bag to hold.

‘Old Clarry was just looking at your niece like he’d seen a ghost,’ said Petal.

‘Oh, really? Where you’d spring from, Petal?’ Julia smiled over her shoulder.

‘I was hoping you’d give me a lift. Thought I’d have to walk the rest of the way home in the bloody rain.’

‘No worries,’ said Julia as she started the car.

‘Where have you been? I dropped in to see you yesterday.’

‘Sydney.’ Julia pulled out around the bus.

‘Can anyone take the bus?’ Allie asked.

Julia frowned at Allie.

‘Yeah,’ said Petal. ‘I take it to town sometimes. You’ve got to put up with all the kids though. Julia, you went to Sydney? Really? Why?’

‘What time does it come by?’ said Allie.

‘Twice in the morning,’ said Petal. ‘At about seven and then at eight. One run for the primary school and one for the high school. Do you like catching buses?’

‘I need to get to town in a couple of days.’

Julia sighed. ‘You know you can’t, Allie. It’s just not…’

Allie clenched her teeth and looked out at the rain moving in curtains along the high valley walls. ‘You can’t stop me, you know. Mae will be bloody furious when she finds out.’

Petal leaned forward. ‘Who’s Mae? Your mum?’

‘Just drop it, Petal.’ Julia braked suddenly to cross a low cement bridge.

‘Okay, okay. Keep your pants on, love. Hey, did you know your car is leaking back here? There’s water coming in the door seal.’

‘Yeah. I know it.’

Petal wound down the window and threw her apple core out into the rushing brown water. ‘Oh well, it matches everything else at your place then. Look how high the creek is already.’

Allie turned in her seat to face Petal, her back to Julia. ‘Will it flood?’

‘Yes,’ said Julia. ‘It floods every year. But we won’t have a big one for a while yet, there’s not enough water in the soil. Maybe later, after Christmas.’

When Allie was younger, she and her mother used to lie in bed listening to the rain and imagining the great flood that would come. They planned to wait in their hilltop terrace house, watching the whole city go under, then they would launch their dinghy from the roof and paddle around the vast new sea.

‘Like the flood when I was born?’ she said.

Julia glanced over at Allie. ‘So you know about that?’

‘She tells me everything.’ She stared back at her aunt, ‘Everything about the valley.’

‘Oh, is that right?’ Julia smiled as she turned the car up a muddy rutted driveway. ‘Hey Petal, there’ll be heaps of eggs in the chook house. Go grab some if you want.’ She looked sideways at Allie. ‘Do you remember collecting eggs when you came up for Dad’s funeral? You really loved the chooks.’

‘Yeah. I remember.’ She was eight years old and she had sat up beside her aunt at the kitchen table, helping wrap each smooth brown egg in a piece of newspaper and packing it into a small cardboard box. She had carefully carried the box onto the train, thinking of the plump hens scratching at their straw. Halfway home, Mae had taken the box from her and dumped it into one of the rubbish bins and Allie had quietly cried for the golden yolks the chickens had made for her.

She hardly recognised the farmhouse for the trees and bushes growing up against the walls and over the rusted tin roof. Last time, the cows had grazed the pasture right up to a neat wire fence around the house.

Straggly hydrangea bushes wiped against her legs as she followed Julia up the cracked cement path, past the fence, rusting where it lay in the waist-high grass. Mae would laugh when Allie told her that purple fluffy-topped weeds were blooming in the cracks between the verandah boards.

‘They’ll be mad at me for leaving them for so long,’ said Julia, looking over to where Petal was opening the door of the chicken shed, the birds clucking indignantly. ‘I’ll take them some green stuff later.’ She banged the front door open with her hip.

Inside, there was the sour smell of mould and every flat surface was stacked with books and papers and glass jars of what looked like dust.

‘Seeds. They’re seeds,’ said Julia, as Allie bent to look at one of the jars. ‘I’m helping the forest reclaim its land.’ She waved her hand towards the paddock outside the window and walked through into the next room.

The place was even messier than last time. A vine curled in an open window by the front door, its fine green tendrils reaching for the curtain rod, and blue work shirts hung on a line sagging across the room. Last visit, Mae had stopped at the front door as if reluctant to step inside, then she had walked slowly through every room in the house, trailing her fingers over the walls and the heavy dark furniture, leaving shiny tracks in the dust and collecting spider webs on her fingertips.

‘You’re in here.’ Julia put one of Allie’s bags in Mae’s old room, with its two narrow single beds. She touched the toe of her boot to the puddle on the floor. ‘I’d better get you a bucket for that leak.’

From the window Allie watched Petal walking across the paddock under a red umbrella, past dozens of small trees growing up through green plastic tree guards. Petal closed the umbrella, then bent to climb through the wire fence and disappeared into the tall forest. Allie didn’t recall the forest being so dark or close to the house.

Julia sat down on one of the beds. ‘I’ll make some space for you in the wardrobe. There’s some old dresses of Mae’s in there you might like to wear. They should fit you.’

‘I’m not staying, Julia.’

‘Allie? I’m just trying to be realistic…’

Her voice was loud. ‘You know where she is? She’s in some hotel down south. She’s staying down there and getting herself together. She’s done it before.’

‘You never said she’d left you alone overnight.’

‘I never said she didn’t!’ She paused, ‘She’s only done it once or twice.’

Julia shook her head, and spoke quietly, ‘Listen to me. She’s not at some country pub. They found her dinghy. It’s just a matter of time…’

‘It’s not her dinghy! It’s my dinghy. And what gives you the right to make me stay up here? You’re not my mother.’

Julia looked down at her feet. ‘You know what the police said.’

‘No! That’s just what you want. I know you were always jealous that she got away from the valley and you never did. Because you were never brave enough to leave.’

‘What?’ Julia’s eyes widened. ‘Is that what she told you?’ She got up awkwardly and stood in the doorway, shaking her head. ‘Oh, that’s rich. That’s bloody rich, that is.’ She walked out, her boots heavy on the floorboards.

Allie sat down on the bed that she knew had been Mae’s when she was a girl. Everything was damp, the blanket under her and her school blouse sticking to her hot skin. She lay down and rolled over to face the wall. The house shook as Julia banged open the swollen wooden door onto the back verandah.

The first night that Mae ever stayed away, Allie had sat up in the dark kitchen, her senses tuned to the faintest noise or movement as she waited the night through. She never spoke to anyone about it, not her teacher when she took herself to school in the morning and not even to Mae when she found her mother sitting on the back step in the afternoon, smoking and reading a magazine, the oars laid out on the kitchen floor, ready for a row on the harbour.

The day they got the dinghy was Allie’s ninth birthday. Mae had woken her early and the sun was just starting to rise as they let themselves out of the house and walked down the empty streets. At the wharves, fishermen in gumboots hosed down boat decks and wheeled crates along the dock. Inside, they skated boxes of fish and ice over the floor, shouting across the room to each other, and there was the sharp smell of raw fish. It was embarrassing the way men noticed Mae, heads turning to watch her pass.

After a few minutes a tall man with a thin red face came over and stood beside her. ‘Mae,’ he said and started to roll a cigarette.

‘Hey George.’

‘I’ve got it down at the wharf for you. You still want it then?’

‘Uh huh,’ Mae nodded and reached for his pouch of tobacco. He smiled and handed her his just-rolled cigarette and leaned forward to light it for her.

‘So, this is your daughter?’

‘This is Allie. It’s her birthday.’ Mae’s warm hand rested on her shoulder.

He smiled at Allie. ‘You like fish?’

She liked crumbed fish fingers but not the whole fish with dead eyes that Mae sometimes brought home and baked in the oven.

‘Go and pick one, love. From that box over there.’ He pointed, ‘Go on. It’s okay.’

She walked over and stood before the box and then turned back to look at Mae. The man and her mother watched her, smiling. She looked down at the slimy skin and glistening eyes. Then he was behind her. ‘That one?’ he pointed.

She nodded.

He picked it up and wrapped it in paper and gave it to her. ‘Come on. Let’s go get your birthday present, Miss Allie.’

At the wharf, seagulls screamed, rising and falling with the wind, orange legs extended. The small tin dinghy floated down below, a puddle under its wooden bench seat.

‘You can leave her at my mooring if you want, Mae. You know where it is. You’d best take the oars with you, though. I might be able to find somewhere for you to leave them. But take them today.’ He stood with his legs wide and arms crossed.

Mae smiled up at him. ‘You’re a winner George. It’s perfect.’

‘Whatever you say, Mae. Whatever you say, darlin’.’ He rested his hand on her cheek for a moment.

They walked back through the streets, Mae holding the oars across her shoulders and Allie carrying the heavy fish. At home, Mae leaned the oars behind the door in the laundry.

‘Can we row out to one of the harbour islands for a picnic?’ Allie asked.

‘Sure, sweetheart. Of course.’ Mae washed her hands at the laundry tub.

‘Can we take Clare from school with us? I owe her a visit to my house.’

Mae turned off the tap. ‘Let’s make it our secret. Just you and me. You won’t say anything to Tom, will you? Let’s not share it with Clare or Tom or anyone.’

Allie didn’t see the fisherman again until he appeared at the front door the morning that Mae disappeared. He stood beside the policeman, the two of them silhouetted in the sunlight.

In the afternoon, she stood at the bedroom window and watched her aunt wheel a barrow of saplings down the long slope to the bottom paddock. Julia had trampled the weeds to make paths to the newly planted trees. All signs of the cows were gone, except for the old dairy building and a tractor, streaked brown with rust and abandoned in the house paddock.

Soon she would be sitting on the train again, watching the landscape change back to dry eucalyptus and sandstone, gliding alongside the Hawkesbury River where oyster frames break the glassy surface. Mae would be waiting for her in their little kitchen, wearing one of her sundresses, her hands around a steaming teacup.

Julia disappeared behind the high weeds and there was just the wind scattering rain across the tin roof and a distant cow lowing. Allie had heard quiet crying from Julia’s room earlier in the day and the memory of it turned her guts to ice in the heavy afternoon heat.

She found a pair of muddy gumboots on the verandah and hurried down the stairs and through the wet grass, the oversized boots slapping her calves with every step. She was surprised by the wave of relief she felt when she saw Julia bending to pick up a potted tree.

Her aunt looked up and stood with her hands on her hips as Allie hurried through the sticky weeds towards her.

‘What are you doing?’ Allie was breathless.

‘See this one I’m planting now?’ Julia pointed with her chin as she picked up the shovel again and pushed it into the ground with her boot. ‘In a hundred years its trunk will reach from here over to the wheelbarrow.’

Allie’s throat tightened at the sight of the red soil. Rusty red like dried blood, spilling onto the luminous grass.

‘This whole farm will be rainforest again. Even the house, I hope.’ Julia smiled as she tipped the sapling from its pot and slid it into the hole. ‘I’m letting the forest take its own back. Letting natural order re-establish itself.’

Allie turned to look at the sea of tree guards and tall weeds bending with the weight of the rain. ‘And what then?’

‘Huh?’

‘When the forest has taken it back, what then?’

Julia shrugged, smiling. ‘Then my job will be done. I won’t be needed anymore.’

‘But look at it!’ Allie waved her arm around. ‘It’s nothing like rainforest. It looked better before, when the cows were still here.’

Julia nodded slowly. ‘Yeah. Well, there are some in the valley who’d agree with you. Your great-uncle, for instance. And your great-grandmother.’ She flicked her long plait over her shoulder as she bent to scoop soil around the tree roots. ‘But it’s my farm to do what I want with. And I know the forest will reclaim it eventually anyway. I’m just helping it. See, here’s one that came up on its own.’ She tenderly moved the long grass from around a seedling. ‘A sandpaper fig. There must have been a huge one right here somewhere, until my father or grandfather cut it down.’ She turned and started digging another hole. ‘That seed was in the soil the whole time, just waiting for a safe time to grow.’