The Glass Mountain (13 page)

26

Six hundred kilometres north of Camleigh Gardens a four-wheel drive campervan pulling a trailer is maintaining a steady pace. Inside, the driver and his wife talk loudly, describing what they see in large terms.

Suddenly a phone rings. The man punches a button on his mobile. ‘Yeah? Gees, I'm supposed to be on holiday,' he grumbles as he pulls over. ‘Can't get away from it.' He speaks into the phone. ‘So, what is it you want? … Motor bike and side car? … Yeah, it sure would be hard to miss. Hang on.' The speaker turns to his wife. ‘Have we seen a kid and a little old girl on a motor bike with a side car travelling north?' The woman shakes her head. ‘Can't say we have … Yeah, we'll keep an eye out …'

They drive on.

‘The old girl's family is worried.'

‘Would you want to die in a nursing home, Brian? Be honest, you wouldn't, would you?'

‘The kid said they were going back the next day.'

‘I'll bet you anything you like they're not. That is, she's not. Don't know about him …'

27

It's a bright blustery morning, clear as a bubble with blue sky. From next door comes the clamour of industry followed by the burst and roar of a bike as it takes to the road.

‘Sounds like Kev's finished,' remarks Ossie.

It's 9.15 and he has.

‘Good as new.' The mechanic wipes off grease. ‘Heard ya were bit of a champ yesterday.'

Ossie grins. ‘Guess now I'm a posthumous Scorpion.'

‘Eh — yeah.'

The bike is as good as new. It sings as it swings through the town and onto the A3. Kev has suggested a shorter route that he says will get them there by eleven.

The further north they travel the warmer it gets. Ossie pulls up and takes off his jacket.

‘I can smell the sea!'

‘Aw Essie —'

‘Well, we're getting closer to the coast, that I do know.'

The vegetation is changing too. It's becoming lush and thicker. They ride on, solitary wayfarers on a winding ribbon of road that's dropping slowly to the sea. As they round a bend, a white handkerchief waves madly. Ossie switches off the motor and hears her murmur ‘Home'.

Below is a picture postcard. A sea of blue, a stretch of sand and mountains.

‘Real transcendental, Essie.'

‘It is, Ossie. It is.'

They chug along. They see large wooden houses perched high on stilts and flowers and foliage like he's never imagined. Palm trees with enormous fronds, exotic ferns, luxuriant vines, frangipani as gold as the sun, pink hibiscus …

Essie guides him. The road they're on snakes by a body of water on which pelicans glide and dive for fish.

‘Left here.' She points to a dirt track that ends in a tangle of growth by a further passage of water.

‘It's there,' cries Essie. ‘It's still there.' She stops.

Her childhood home on its stilts by the water is crumbling. ‘Whoever lives there doesn't love it,' she murmurs.

‘Perhaps they do, Essie, it's just that they have a problem with enumeration.'

She smiles. ‘I'm sure that's it.' She glances around. ‘But look, the seat's still there.'

She's starting to cough and she's breathing heavily, but she's out of the sidecar and hurrying towards the seat that stands at the water's edge facing the glass mountain. She flops down. ‘I used to sit here.' She stops and reaches for her hanky, ‘I'm so happy, Ossie.'

‘I'm happy yer happy.'

‘We must celebrate — buy fish and chips. There was a —' she suddenly chokes and starts to cough harder. Ossie runs and gets her bag.

‘Here,' she gasps, ‘fish and chips —' she pops a note in his hand and a pill in her mouth. ‘There's a marvellous shop by the pier — or used to be.'

They sit on the seat and eat fish and chips. The midday's gold, the sea is sapphire and the sun is warm against their skin.

Beyond the passage of water, mountains rise, the glass mountain with its luminous peak higher than the rest.

‘They're the cores of old volcanoes,' she explains.

‘An' the peak?'

‘Most likely igneous rock.'

‘What's that?'

‘It's lava that's been solidified on or below the surface of the earth. You'll see what I mean when we're up close …'

‘That's where we're going?' asks Ossie, knowing the answer already.

At one o'clock they take the bridge over the passage of water that leads to a narrow road climbing upwards. A little under an hour later they're standing on a ledge high above the sea beneath the peak of the glass mountain.

‘It's awesome,' breathes Ossie. He means the peak, he means the view. He means everything …

‘It is.'

In silence they stand and study the patchwork of the world below.

‘Keep going that way,' remarks Essie, ‘and you'll reach Chile.' She turns. ‘This way's Madagascar.'

‘It's awesome,' Ossie repeats. He stares up at the opalescent peak, the jagged frame, the haunting symmetry. He feels a touch on his arm. ‘What's up?'

‘I'm feeling a little light-headed,' she says.

They go back. They buy tea and buns and sit on the seat that she sat on when she was a little girl and watch the sun begin its journey into the sea. And she talks about her childhood, the rock-pools she played in, the picnics they took, the dogs and ducks and animals they had, the sandcastles and the running wild …

And as she talks he thinks of the legend of the glass mountain and of her young uncle who had nailed his medal to a tree.

He suddenly realises that she's stopped talking.

‘It seems perfidious to think ya weren't a fishing person, Essie.'

She doesn't reply.

‘An' though, like I said, heaven's very excellent, I reckon here's better. I reckon here's about the best place outside heaven there is.'

Still she is silent.

‘What's the matter?'

Slowly she turns towards him.

‘Whatcha looking at me like that for?'

She puts her cup on the seat and folds her hands.

‘Now,' she says, ‘you can go.'

28

‘Go where?'

‘Anywhere.'

‘Whatcha mean anywhere?'

‘Just anywhere. I don't need you any more.' She talks quickly, runs the words into bundles. ‘Here's money.' She scrabbles in her bag, ‘Take it and go.'

He just sits there.

‘Ya feeling old an' condensed 'cos yer home again,' he says.

‘Yes, I'm home. It's my home and I'm staying —'

‘'Course it's ya home. But that don't mean I've gotta leave ya, Essie.'

‘Don't you see —' she splutters into a hanky. ‘They're my memories and mine alone. They've got nothing to do with you.'

‘An' if I go, who'll be round to get ya little pills an' ya fish an' chips an' find somewhere very excellent for ya to adjudicate a little sleep?'

‘Stop it! Stop talking like that.'

‘Like what?'

‘All those silly words — I'm sick of it.'

‘Ya taught me them, Essie —'

‘Please, just go.'

‘Ya don't mean that.'

She coughs hard into her handkerchief again. ‘Can't you understand, I don't need you any more.'

‘I'm staying right here, Essie, whether ya need me or not.'

‘I have to be on my own.'

‘I'm not going anywhere —'

Her breathing is hard, her voice is tight as wire. ‘I've used you, can't you see that? Do you think I really want to be with you — with your dirty fingernails and greasy hair and your stink of cigarettes?'

There's a quick silence.

‘Where do ya want me to go then?'

‘I don't care where you go, or what you do.'

‘Are ya sick, Essie?'

‘You — you disgust me.'

‘What'd ya say?'

‘I said you disgust me.'

‘An' all that wayfaring talk 'bout being Ratty an' Mole like in
The Wind in the Willows?'

‘Was to get what I wanted.'

‘An' that going on 'bout rich an' wonderful words, an' a “Henry'll miss ya”, ya said —'

‘I planned this from the beginning —'

‘I don't believe ya.'

‘I've used you. That's all there is to it.'

Her talk is angry but she looks frightened. It's like she's in a play an' the script has been written for this character that she's playing an' he's in the cast too an' he can hear himself delivering his lines and they are:

‘There were these words, one word in particular, I used to say but don't no more 'cos ya taught me 'bout rich an' wonderful ones. An' it's true that lots mightn't have considered what I said to be very excellent but they weren't hurting words, not like the ones ya've just communicated to me.'

She doesn't reply, but stands and walks towards the water. She stops at the edge, hears silence, a long silence. Then a voice, cracked and raw:

‘It wasn't Judas what broke Jesus' heart, Essie, ya know that? It was Peter, 'cos Peter was His friend …'

There's another short silence then a quick blast of sound and the skidding of wheels.

29

The bike swerves left then right and plunges into a shallow gully. Ossie grips the handlebars as it shudders to a stop. He breathes long and deep till his heartbeat steadies.

Here is cruel country. A tropical garden that's strange and hostile where palms leer and menace and the trees are full of ears. A blackbird flits, dips, weaves through the noxious growth.

He flings down the bike. Fronds whip his flesh as he staggers forward. They draw blood, blood that runs along his arm and drips onto rotting fruit. He crawls deep beneath a shrivelled fern and lies still. He feels a sort of disengagement from everything, and, deep inside his skin and flowing through his veins, an unendurable emptiness.

Light filters palely upon his blood-stained hands and face.

He closes his eyes. Now he's once again on that strip of straggly grass and hearing her speak. Hearing those words.

Suddenly he opens his eyes. He sits up. He's remembered something. He's sitting cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom again listening to her talk. And now he's back in the present and he's remembered a word. A little word that's quite insignificant, that has no meaning on its own, but put it with others …

He rips the foliage apart and stumbles his way to where the bike lies on a blanket of fern.

He's going back …

30

‘I didn't bring a hat,' says Marjorie Butcher.

‘It's hardly a holiday, dear.'

She studies the menu. ‘What are you going to have, Jeffrey?'

They've stopped at a roadhouse for lunch. The bikies have bought pies and coke at the counter and are scoffing them down in the car park.

‘Uncivilised,' observes Mrs Butcher from over her menu. ‘Uncivilised and dirty.'

A girl in a pink plastic apron appears at the table.

‘A tomato sandwich, lightly toasted with brown bread and no salt. And a cup of white tea — and make sure it's hot.'

‘It all looks so good —'

‘Oh, do hurry up.'

Jeffrey Butcher orders sausages and chips and the girl vanishes.

‘They're smoking those foul cigarettes.' Marjorie Butcher's seat faces the window. ‘You'd better say something — I wish I'd brought a hat.'

‘I thought we were just going there and back?'

‘I'd like you to get an impression of the place, that's all. And to do that you've got to step into the sun — the sun, Jeffrey.' She waves her hand vaguely in the direction of leaden skies and drizzly rain. ‘Actually, I've been thinking. It'd be just the place to retire to and so good for your arthritis.'

‘I haven't got arthritis.'

‘You might have one day, bound to if you stay here much longer. And it's a happy place. You've got sailing, fishing, long walks along the sand, mountain climbing, golf …We always had great times up there, she and I.'

‘Not your father?'

‘He was busy making money.'

‘I hardly remember him.'

‘He preferred playing the stock market to playing golf.'

‘Money talks, dear.'

‘I wouldn't say his millions were great communicators — not while he was alive, that is.'

The lunch arrives.

‘Yes, she and I had fun.' Marjorie pauses, mid-bite, ‘You'd have to say that being with Mother was fun — when I was young.'

‘She's still good company.'

‘She could charm a bird off a branch. She certainly charmed my father.'

‘From what you say it was rather a strange marriage.'

‘He spoilt her rotten, gave her everything she wanted — and she wanted! He loved her — poor Daddy.'

‘Surely he did what he wanted as well?'

Marjorie sips hot tea. She sighs. ‘He was a good man. A bit boring perhaps, but a good man. He gave her his trust —' she pauses. ‘And her freedom.'

Jeffrey picks up his napkin and dabs at the corners of his mouth. ‘That's all in the past, Marjorie.'

‘We don't know how to talk now,' she replies.

‘She's dying —'

The woman slams down her cup. ‘Well I'm here, aren't

There's a brief silence. At the next table sits a man engrossed in a newspaper. Jeffrey squints sideways. ‘I'm glad you didn't report it,' he says.

Marjorie rummages in her bag. Fishes out a small mirror, a lipstick. ‘I'm not saying they weren't negligent,' she retorts, ‘but —' she stops.

‘Yes, dear. I know.

Again she glances through the window. ‘They're waving their filthy hands.' She gets up and brushes off crumbs. ‘Pay the bill, Jeffrey, and be quick. You talk, talk, talk. It'll be dark by the time we arrive at this rate.'

‘We'll be there by five.'

‘We've got to check in at the police station as well —'

‘We'll make it.'

‘The sun will still be out,' replies Marjorie, ‘and I haven't got a hat.'