The Grass Castle (19 page)

She loves being a mother too, but often she is lonely. Doug is out most days, gone till sundown with a water bottle and a packed lunch, a dog or two at his heels. Daphne’s days are centred round domestics: cooking, washing, cleaning, fetching wood, feeding the baby, keeping an eye on Gordon. In this hot weather, the bush on the steep sides of the valley is dense with cicadas and the air seems to pulse with sound. Daphne feels small and solitary, stranded at the homestead, a speck in the grand scale of the landscape. Four days a week, just after lunch, she turns on the wireless to listen to
Blue Hills
. It only runs for fifteen minutes, but it breaks up the day, and during that time she feels she is among friends. It is reassuring to know that the author of the series, Gwen Meredith, is sitting in a cottage a few valleys away, writing about the lives of mountain people just like her, characters that might be based on people she knows of. But when the program is over, loneliness descends once more. She watches the days march through, longs for Doug’s return, craves his adult company instead of the shrill demands of her small boy. She knows Doug will come home when the late orange light pinks the granite tors on the ridge and the cool fragrant aroma of alpine evening hangs over the valley.

As she hangs the washing, clinching it to the wire with wooden pegs, she hears Gordon singing down at the woodheap. He has been down there most of the morning, making a fort from chunks of wood. She sent him to fetch wood for the fire, but he’s been distracted by some game that has made itself up in his head. He’s so imaginative, brimming with wild stories of bushrangers and bank robberies—Doug has been filling him up with raw material at night, telling bed-time tales to put him to sleep.

It’s such a relief for Daphne that Doug helps in the evenings. Most men come home from a day out on the property and slump into a chair, eat and then sleep. But Doug is a sensitive and caring man, a kind lover, and as patient as the day is long. He’s wonderful with Gordon. After a quick wash in the trough at the end of the day, discarding his shirt by the door, Doug usually takes the small boy on his lap and lets him snuggle into the depths of his beard and hairy chest. There is laughter, chuckling, whispers and squeals. Weary from the demands of being a mother and housewife, Daphne likes to sit in the rocking chair to watch them, a wide smile stretching her cheeks. At night when the babies are asleep, she likes to lie in bed with her husband, her chin on his shoulder, his beard soft against her cheek. She spoons herself around his taut muscular frame, waits for his touch. He is gentleness combined with buried ferocity and passion—in his chest beats a keen love of the mountains, and of her.

She pegs the last shirt and pauses a moment to watch its tails flap in the breeze. It’s late morning and the wind is already rising. She should call Gordon in for some morning tea. Using her hand as a shield against the sun, she peers down towards the yards and the woodheap. Gordon is down there somewhere, hidden by the mounds of rough-chopped wood. She hears banging—he must be bashing something with a stick. Then there is silence. She calls out to him, fresh bread waiting, a cup of water on the table.

For a while she sees no movement down there and wonders if she will have to go and fetch him. Then Gordon emerges toting an armful of wood. Smiling, she watches him. But he’s slow and something isn’t right. She feels the smile fade from the corners of her mouth. Gordon is staggering and swaying. He can’t seem to set his feet straight. His pieces of wood topple from his arms, and he bends over. At first Daphne is unsure what he’s doing then she realises he is vomiting. She sees him take a few disoriented steps and then he wavers and slumps to the ground.

Heart in her mouth, she leaps from the veranda and runs to him. The white eye of the sun stares down at her. The air beats with the rhythmic thrum of cicadas.

She reaches him and rolls him over. He is pale and drooling, floppy and unaware. ‘Gordon.’ She hoicks him up. ‘What’s wrong? What happened?’ His head lolls.

She scoops him into her arms and hurries back to the homestead. Her mind is buzzing with the cicadas. She props him in a chair, waves air in his face, wipes his mouth. ‘Gordon,’ she is saying. ‘Gordon, what’s wrong? Speak to me.’

The alarm in her voice wakes the baby, she hears Pam snuffling and gurgling. It has been at least four hours since the last feed and soon Pam will start asking for it. Daphne tries to think, but her heart is heaving. Gordon needs help, but it’s a long way into town. Down at the woodheap he must have found a snake. It must have struck him. She doesn’t know what else it could be.

She pulls his arms and legs straight, runs her hands down them looking for a mark. Nothing. If he could speak he could tell her where the snake got him, but he’s flaccid and absent. If she doesn’t do something, he’s going to die.

The baby starts croaking, escalating quickly to a wail. Daphne looks around for the keys. She will have to put Gordon in the truck and drive him into town. She has to get him to the hospital.

Breathing fast, she gathers her little boy up again and runs to the shed. She has to put him on the ground while she opens the doors. He is so limp it terrifies her. She lays him on the back seat, pauses to watch his chest rise and fall, then she gallops back to get the baby.

In the crib, Pam is screw-faced and screaming, her tiny fists bunched with infantile rage. Daphne feels air scraping in her throat as she wrenches Pam out and races to the shed, the baby jerking in her arms.

She hurls herself in behind the wheel, wedges the baby on the seat and cranks the key in the ignition, pumps the accelerator. The engine roars noisily, echoing in the shed. Daphne grinds the truck into reverse and trundles it out of the shadows. The baby shrieks. Light slings in through the window as she swings the truck onto the track. The white eye of the sun is still watching her.

She feels her breaths coming in gasps, something pounding in her head, fear clenching in her throat. Pam’s screams are a knife in her chest. She sees the baby rock and lurch on the seat as they jolt through a dip. From the back seat there is nothing. She flings a backward glance to check on Gordon, sees his pale face and grey lips. His chest is moving with slow shallow breaths. He is still and slack.

She bounces the truck along the track, stabbing through the gears, revving the engine till it seems the pistons must pop through the bonnet. The old vehicle sways as she swings it onto the road, urging it through dappled shade, the engine growling.

Pam’s screams are at a peak: she is roaring now, her entire little body tight with the force of it. Daphne’s mind pings and suddenly she is strangely floaty, surreally absent, fenced off from it all. She can’t drive any faster. The truck won’t do it, no matter how her foot grinds the accelerator to the floor. She can’t stop to feed the baby, hasn’t time. She can’t look back again. All she can do is to keep driving. To drive through Pam’s racket; to drive beyond the road and into the sky where the fierce eye of the sun looks on.

It takes over an hour to drive to the hospital. By then the baby is still, asleep from exhaustion. Gordon is still too. He is motionless.

Daphne knows he is gone. He left her sometime along the way, his tiny slip of a soul wafting out through the window and dissipating into air. She can’t say exactly when it happened, but she felt him leaving her, the feather touch of something light and buoyant, the last whisper of his breath escaping.

At the hospital she trudges inside, hefting heavy feet that don’t belong to her anymore. She collapses, weeping, onto the chequered linoleum floor. A nurse points her finger to two men who exit through the doors. One of them comes back with something long and narrow wrapped in a sheet, Gordon’s feet bobbing just below the hem. The other brings in a dazed baby: Pam blinks at the light, just waking.

Sitting on the rock in the hidden cemetery, Daphne lets her tears run loose. She has cried an ocean for Gordon, and still there are more tears to cry. One lifetime is not enough to recover from such a loss.

Eventually she stands and stretches the kinks out of her reluctant legs and back. She walks to the edge of the clearing, to a wattle tree with silvery-grey leaves. Reaching, she snaps off a sprig, clutches it in her arthritic fingers and returns to one of the white gravestones, Gordon’s resting place. Tears run afresh as she bends to place the wattle on the stone.

Straightening, she looks around, the grief slowly settling back inside her. This is her family’s cemetery, but there’s still one grave that isn’t here. Her husband, Doug. She can’t visit him to say goodbye. There is nowhere she can go to release the burden of her sadness for him. His death was different—a sky burial of sorts.

She turns and walks away without looking back.

18

Cameron is reclining on his bed, arms folded behind his head, the lean length of him spread casually across his doona, when he proposes a trip to Melbourne. It’s late afternoon on a Sunday and they have just made love in a crazed rush, not even bothering to pull back the covers.

Abby has been feeling more confident since her discussion with Daphne; she feels so comfortable with the old lady, and the talk comes easily, just as it used to with her Gran. After a decade of swimming through life’s turbulent currents without guidance, she finds Daphne’s friendship reassuring. It’s good to have someone to talk to, someone she feels she can trust. She trusts Cameron too, of course, but there are some discussions she can’t have with him—like how to manage their relationship. She’s been hoping that maybe she can find a way to be with him. If she steps back in terms of how much time they spend together, perhaps she can steady herself.

But now, with this Melbourne trip of Cameron’s hanging in the air, her optimism crumbles. She tries to force a smile while fighting a drowning sensation.

‘I found some cheap flights for next weekend,’ he says. ‘It’ll be fun. We can go to dinner. Meet up with a few of my mates. Visit Mum and Dad’s.’

Abby feels chains wrapping around her wrists. ‘I thought you didn’t like your parents.’

‘I don’t much. But I’d like you to meet them. We can stay with them Friday night, get it over and done with, then the rest of the weekend is ours to have fun.’

‘You told me you don’t usually stay with them.’

‘No, but it might be easier this way. And you can get a proper feel for my childhood home.’

Abby is still unsure, but he’s so bright and hopeful, how can she say no?

She spends the week in nervous disarray, wondering what it all means, whether he’s trying to harness her with a rope of commitment. She can’t do it. But the tickets have been booked and paid for. How can she find a suitable excuse to wangle her way out of it now? She looks to her kangaroos out in the valley for enlightenment, but they don’t help at all. They are placidly unconcerned, watching her with brown-eyed indifference as she perches on a rock to study their behaviour. They barely even move from grazing.

Cameron’s parents live in a large white brick house in upper-middle-class Prahran—he points it out to her as they climb from the taxi. Privilege oozes from the street, from the dark shadows of the stately house, from the walls that surround it, and the arched metal gateway. Cameron swings the gate open and leads her through a well-watered garden. The house is partly concealed behind a large deciduous tree, and on the porch, colourful flowers spill over the rims of terracotta pots. The front door is heavy, with a polished brass knocker and shiny round handle. Cameron presses the bell.

After a few moments a tall grey-haired man opens the door and frowns out at them. He is an older replica of Cameron, obviously the father. ‘You’re here,’ he says, without a smile. ‘Come in. Your mother’s been waiting.’

Cameron glances at his watch. ‘I said five-thirty.’

‘Your mother thought you said five. But never mind. You’re here now.’ He beckons them in.

‘Dad, this is Abby.’ A twinge of impatience colours Cameron’s voice. He places a hand on her shoulder and squeezes it.

His father peers at Abby over his glasses, and this does nothing to relieve her sense of unease. ‘Lovely,’ he says. ‘Nice to meet you. This way please.’ Then to Cameron: ‘Your mother is in the lounge.’