Hope Farm (15 page)

Then Miller came back, and he brought with him a woman. I watched her being taken from the car — Miller bending, one hand at her elbow, another at the small of her back. It was the exact opposite of how he handled Ishtar, grabbing, squeezing, lifting her bodily. This woman he treated as if she was very old, or somehow breakable. Slowly she emerged from the passenger seat, blinking, her small, white hand laid over his in a way that made me think of old-fashioned pictures of people at dances, in ballgowns and suits, wearing gloves. She was little and wispy, with dandelion-silk hair. Her clothes were dark, black and grey, her legs twig-like in close-cut slacks. She fumbled in the pocket of her coat and took out a pair of sunglasses, which she raised with trembling hands to her face.

‘Come in where it's warm,' said Miller, his voice smooth.

‘So,' said Val later, in the kitchen. ‘A wife.'

‘In name only.' Ishtar scooped a cup into the big rice jar and then poured the grains into a saucepan.

‘He's full of surprises, isn't he?'

‘I knew.'

A snort from Val.

‘He's never hidden anything from me.'

Val's eyebrows went up. ‘Don't tell me you're still holding out for your money.'

Ishtar didn't answer. She measured more rice, her face as strong and unyieldingly beautiful as always.

Miller's wife was called Dawn, and she mostly stayed in the mud-brick building. He spent a lot of time there with her, and took out her meals. She was, he said, recovering, although he didn't say from what. Sometimes he cooked for her himself, scooping eggs from boiling water. He tucked a tea towel into the front of his pants, and sang songs in what sounded like Italian or French, the rounded, trilling notes cramming the air, sliding off the steamed-up window.

His apparent devotion to Dawn — or at least his commitment to feeding her — didn't stop him from continuing to grab Ishtar whenever he got the chance, or from burying his face in her neck with smacking kisses.

‘Be patient,' I heard him whisper. ‘Wait for me.'

She let him touch her, her body pliable in his grasp. But her face was set, and her arms didn't go round him in return. When he asked her to wait, she looked away and sighed.

A woman came she had a little boy who was about four, a bit older than Silver, she slept in the hut I thought of as the mothers hut. A few women slept there they were older and had a bunch of kids between them and they always had things to say at the group meetings, everything was a heavy trip for them and they were always asking others to lighten there load. I kept away from them as much as possible. They gave me a bad feeling. Then the new woman came she wasnt as old as them but she had a thin face and lines at the sides of her mouth and between her eyebrows, everything about her was lean and hard. Her kid had some thing wrong with him he couldnt talk he screamed a lot and still wore nappies he was only satisfied when he was sitting with a bucket scooping up water in a cup and pouring it out again over and over. Someone told me he was obsessed with water and his mother had to watch him every moment because hed just go for the dam or one of the water troughs and she was terrified hed drown. At night round the fire she sat with him held against her with her arms so tight around him she seemed to have to almost crush him to make him sleep. She sat with him like that she didnt join in the talk. Her face frightened me I tried to sit away from her on the other side so I couldnt see through the smoke and flames. Then one morning I saw her with Randal they were standing by his van the kid was a little way off under a tree with his bucket and cup pouring water. Randal had his hands in his pockets and his head down and she was realy having a go at him, I could almost see the words pelt out of her. She pointed her finger at the kid then she put her hand over her eyes. Randal took money from his pocket he counted it and gave her some. She waited with her hand out and he gave her more. She took it and walked away. Randal got in the van and drove off. I think I knew already, the kid had those bright blue eyes like the ones Id imagined for our baby the same colour exactly. I didnt say any thing to Randal, I went to one of the mothers and she told me. I felt sick. The woman left the next day and took the kid with her but still I couldnt forget. I waited for Randal to say some thing but he didnt he acted completely the same like nothing had happened. I waited and a month went by and another month. Randal said again I should go off the pill. Then one day he asked why I was being so cold why I was bringing him down so much. I didnt answer. I thought if he doesnt know then some thing is realy wrong. His child his own flesh and blood and him doing nothing to help just handing over a bit of money like thats all he owed her. We went on a markets tour, him and me and Silver up the coast sleeping in the van. Every night he went out, some times he didnt come back until the next day. I always had to stay with the van because of Silver but then one time it was in a town with lots of hippies and there was a festival that went in to the night. Randal went off and left me with the stall and some thing changed in me. It got late and Silver fell asleep under the trestle table. I had to pack everything up by myself and put it in the van. I got the legs of the trestle in but I couldnt lift the top by myself, it was supposed to slide in under the mattress but it was too heavy for me and I had to leave it on the ground. I tucked Silver in and closed the doors then I went to the toilet. There were people everywhere there was a big stage set up and performances all hippie stuff, puppets and things people singing songs from Hair, the usual. I was so angry with Randal I felt like my anger carried me along like the crowd parted before it. I thought I saw him sitting with a group around a little fire but I didnt bother looking properly I didnt care what he was doing or who he was with. The festival had been set up in a big park there was a sports oval next to it. I found the toilets under the grandstand. Someone had drawn breasts and arms with hair under them onto the figure wearing a triangle dress on the toilet door then crossed out Ladys and put Women. The toilets were filthy one broken and overflowing, no paper in any. I washed my face in the sink and I looked at myself in the mirror. Youre so beautiful said the girl next to me. She leaned over, her shoulder bumped mine and I saw she was tripping, the pupils in her eyes huge. Youre so beautiful she said again. I looked in the mirror, I saw what the anger did to my face how my cheekbones stood out my lips looked swollen my eyes huge. I smoothed down my hair then I went out side and looked for people to sit with, a joint to share, for a man to notice me. It didnt take long. When I went to get Silver it was nearly morning, I could hear birds. Randal wasnt there. I took Silver wrapped in a blanket then I took the money it was only the takings from the last night, thats all that was there, Randal had the rest. I carried Silver over the grass all covered with rubbish and sleeping people to the tent of the new man.

Ishtar had put her things back with mine in the Joni Mitchell room. She came to bed late and got up early — sometimes I couldn't even tell that she'd been there at all.

One afternoon I returned from school to find the door to the room closed, the muted burr of Miller's voice behind it, and then the answering ripple of hers. I took this as my cue to drop my bag in the hallway and head straight to the creek, and was part-way across the mean little rectangle of dirt and weeds at the bottom of the back steps when Dawn stopped me.

She was standing in the dark entrance to the mud-brick building, almost invisible in her black clothes. She didn't speak, but raised one of her hands and it caught at the edge of my vision. I halted in surprise. For some reason I'd imagined her asleep, curled there in the musty burrow of Miller's room.

I glanced around, tapped my own chest. ‘
Me?
' I mouthed.

She moved forward, holding the doorframe, lowering herself from the threshold. The hand went up again, the fingers fluttering. Her voice was barely audible. ‘Do you mind?'

I went over and she took my arm. She wasn't much taller than me.

‘Do you mind?' she said again. ‘I'm not used to outside loos. I'm afraid of spiders.' There was something old-fashioned about her speech; it had the same clearly defined syllables as Miller's radio newsreader voice. ‘Will you check for me?'

‘Okay.' Together we walked to the crooked lean-to. Her arm through mine felt weightless. I swung the door open and went in and scanned the cobwebbed walls, checked under the timber seat.

‘No spiders.'

We swapped places and she closed the door behind her. I hovered, wondering if I was expected to hang around, and then the door opened again and she came, carefully, slowly, down the step and took my arm once more.

‘Come on,' she said, in that same insubstantial voice, and I found myself moving with her through the weeds and into the tunnel-like hallway.

A chock of discomfort formed in my throat and I glanced over my shoulder at the receding rectangle of light. What if Miller came in? But Dawn's feather-light arm, surprisingly insistent, guided me on.

In the room she settled on the bed, propped against pillows, and pulled a blanket over her knees, hands clasped regally. She closed her eyes. Her lashes were sparse and long, an ashy colour, white at the tips.

I stood by, feeling big and clumsy. With relief I saw that Miller's grotesque drawing was gone from the wall. Otherwise, apart from the absence of Ishtar's few belongings, the room was the same. Worse, in fact: now there were plates lying round, crusted with food, and cups and glasses in a similar state. There were chocolate bar wrappers, too — and my keen eye noted four pristine-looking Cherry Ripes lined up on top of a pile of books. A tall glass bong stood on the floor at the foot of the bed, its shaft stained misty brown. On the far side, past Dawn, was a square upholstered case like a sewing box, green with a pattern of flowers in metallic gold. It had a hinged lid that was open, showing a slippery-looking lining of deeper green and a confusion of medicine bottles and packets. Some appeared to have overflowed onto the floor, and on the side of the bed where I stood there was a bottle on its side with the lid off, a scatter of bright red pills like jewels in the half-light. One had been stepped on, crushed into a little pat of brilliant crumbles. Over Miller's rank billygoat smell there was now a layer of chemical, powdery sweetness.

Dawn's eyes opened and she reached out to a second case that lay beside the medicine one: a small suitcase with the same glittery, quilted exterior and moss-coloured lining. She took out what looked like a book, bound in cream leather, and settled it in her lap. The teeth of a zipper winked at the object's edge, and Dawn's white fingers caught the tiny, dangling tag and drew it round. The thing was an album of some kind, with plastic pockets that had photos slotted into them. She leafed slowly through the pages and then stopped. ‘Look,' she breathed.

It was a young woman, posed formally in a studio, a head and shoulders shot. The background was a simple screen, but there was something in the lighting and the quality of the image — as well as in the glossy lushness of the girl herself, her skin, hair, and clothes — that conveyed an impression of luxury, of expense. I had never seen a photo like this up close. How far away this portrait was from Ian's windswept gypsy-girl one of me, or from the ones taken at school with their perfunctory lighting, their messiness, their rows of bodies at mismatched angles.

I was so distracted by the aesthetic of the photo that it took me a few moments to realise that the girl in it was actually Dawn. She really was almost unrecognisable, the roundness of her cheeks shocking, her hair shiny and thicker, her eyelashes painted black and assembled into upward-sweeping spines. Over one of her collarbones a small clump of flowers was attached to her dress, the stamen of the central bloom dark and spiky like the lashes.

‘Is that …' I knew it might seem rude, but couldn't help myself. ‘Is that you?'

She made a jerky, nasal sound that I realised was a laugh. ‘It's hard to believe, isn't it?'

I bent closer, my fascination pushing aside any worry about Miller coming in. It was astonishing that this vision, so creamy, so vital, smiling boldly up from behind its plastic sleeve, could be the same person who was cradling the album in her sunken lap, fingering the corners of it with starved-looking hands, the shape of her skull ghoulishly visible under the dandelion hair.

‘And look. Our wedding.' Dawn angled the album to show the facing page, which was sideways, a landscape shot. A group of people stood on some stone steps in front of a pair of tall ornate wooden doors. That same shining younger Dawn was at the centre, wearing a triangular white dress that showed her stick legs, a band of flowers across the top of her head. Beside her was an almost-as-unrecognisable Miller, beardless, his exposed face ruddy and smooth, his hair cut very short, revealing unexpectedly small ears.

‘He wanted to wear a suit of a more interesting colour,' said Dawn. ‘He wanted pink. There was a beautiful pink suit in Georges, just beautiful, and a lovely shirt and tie to match, but I said, “Oh darling, with your colouring you'd be like a great big boiled lolly. Too much pink — too much!”' Her voice had risen into a lisping silliness and she gave a sobbing sort of giggle. ‘I was always telling him he was too much.'

In the photo Miller's eyebrows looked thinner, and his eyes more prominent. The beefiness was there though, the solid, compact body, and those oddly delicate hands — one through the crook of Dawn's arm, the other cupped at waist height as if part-way into one of his gestures. The suit he was wearing was plain and dark.

‘We can be a bit formidable, the three of us, Mum and Dad and me.' Dawn gave a feathery sigh. ‘But really, it wasn't about whether it suited him or not. Really we wouldn't let him because we were worried about what people might think.' Suddenly she looked directly at me, with grey eyes that seemed to strain slightly from their sockets, the whites yellowed and splotched with blood vessels. ‘Do you see the joke there? What people might think — what people might
say
.'

I gaped blankly, trying to come up with an appropriate response, but before I could think of anything she shifted on her pillows and brought her face closer to mine.

‘To think we were so concerned about a
suit
, when only two years later I — would go — completely —
mad
.'

Her whisper sliced the air; her breath smelled of pills and I tried not to recoil. This lurch into close, hissing confession was unnerving. And her manner — she was like some monstrous combination of an Enid Blyton character and Miss Havisham. My urge to leave had returned, the feeling of fear at being trapped in this cave at the far end of the passageway — but at the same time there was a sense of perverse enthrallment, like the desire to stare at an accident of some sort.

My own voice was soft: ‘What happened?'

She didn't say anything right away, and when she did speak again it wasn't clear if she was responding to my question or musing to herself. ‘Mum was so cross with Miller. She said he hadn't been taking care of me at all, letting me get in such a state. I was simply exhausted, she said. All I needed was a good rest. But of course that just wasn't true, and she knew it.' She lay back again and gave a low, slurred laugh. ‘How am I supposed to know what's real and what isn't when I'm surrounded by people who don't tell the truth, who pretend things never happened?' She was staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. ‘I missed half of my last year at school. They were always getting in different doctors, giving me pills. I can't remember what it was like now, not to be a bit woozy most of the time. Nobody knew what was wrong. I didn't either. I had been all right. As a child I was fine — fine.'

Somewhere outside, a chicken abruptly began to announce the laying of an egg with arduous cries. I jumped, but Dawn didn't seem to hear.

‘So of course it wasn't the first time, the breakdown. It was just that nobody ever knew about what had happened before, nobody except Mum and Dad. Not even Miller. That's why they settled for him you know. He wasn't from the right kind of family, but they were just glad someone would take me.'

I began to straighten up, to indicate that it was time to go.

But Dawn ignored me, her fingers moving in absent circles over the plastic pages.

‘His family weren't there at the wedding. He hasn't seen them since he left home at sixteen. He finished school early, you know, because he was so brilliant. So brilliant.' A wan smile lifted her cheekbones. ‘Oh, he could talk me right up into the sky, that man, till I was flying through the clouds. He wrote me poems. That was when we first met. I wasn't at the university, I couldn't go because I hadn't got my matriculation. Mum had found me a job, and I was doing quite well. I did get invited along to some of the university things though, by girls I'd been to school with. They invited me out of pity, I imagine, but who cares — I met him, didn't I?'

I could see her thin chest heaving, and had to drop my eyes from the sight of the smile stretching her face. Outside, the chicken had paused for a few moments but now resumed its laboured broadcast.

‘I'd better …' I stepped away from the bed, nodding towards the hallway. Dawn didn't look at me or respond. ‘Okay then,' I murmured. ‘Bye.'