Hope Farm (2 page)

The car yard had strings of triangular flags looped along the top of its high, metal fence. They flapped lazily, and the rows of clean, empty cars below had a forlorn look. A man wearing a suit and carrying a clipboard came out of the office and shook Miller's hand, and the two of them moved off between the cars. Ishtar stayed by the entrance with me. She reached to pull me close, but when I looked up, her gaze was on Miller. Her face was as composed as always, but I saw the softness at the corners of her mouth, the wet, wide eyes.

Miller strode among the cars. His voice came floating over in waves. He kicked tyres, opened doors, flung up bonnets. The salesman followed with quick, light steps — I could see the small nods he gave as he spoke, and the neat movements of his hands as he pointed at things with his pen. Eventually they stopped by a station wagon, brown and with dents in the doors. Miller threw out his arms and said something, and the two of them laughed, too loudly, as if acting. They spoke some more, the salesman writing things on his clipboard. Miller got in the car, sat in the driver's seat, and got out again. Then they shook hands and began to walk towards the office. Halfway there, Miller called to Ishtar and beckoned her over.

I trailed along and hung around outside the door of the little room. All I could hear was Miller's voice, running on endlessly, billowing into laughter. It wasn't the same voice he had used with Ishtar; this voice was faster, with a brisk, jokey edge to it.

‘Looks like we've got a deal, mate.' He said
mate
like it was a foreign word.

When I looked in the open doorway, I saw how it was Miller who leant to sign the papers on the desk. It was Miller who shook the salesman's hand again, and clapped him on the shoulder. But it was Ishtar who took an envelope of cash from her bag and counted out a pile of notes.

What did she see in him? I wasn't old enough to ask that question, to consider her motives. She was my mother, all I had ever known; maker of decisions, ruler of my life. What she chose — for herself, for me — was as inexplicable, as far outside the realm of my control as the weather. What I did notice though — because I was always watching, because wariness was second nature to me — was what changed in her when she was with him.

When the salesman ripped the rectangle of paper off the outside of the windscreen and handed Miller the keys, Miller opened the passenger door and turned and grabbed Ishtar, scooped her up like a child, and put her in the seat. A sound broke from her, an unlikely, breathless squeak. He settled her into position and, as if the salesman and I were not standing right there, reached in with both hands, took her face, and kissed her on the mouth. When his woolly head moved away I saw Ishtar's flushed skin, her parted lips, the glow in her eyes.

There was a lot of talk about love in the ashrams. Love was supposed to be deep inside us and in everything we did and thought — and everywhere else, too: in plants, animals, the earth, the air. Like carbon molecules, which I'd read in a book were the building blocks of our planet. We sang about love at satsang, chanted mantras over and over —
love is everything, love is all
. I didn't think of it as a personal thing, an intimate thing, between two people. Early on at school, when I first heard loving someone being used as a taunt, an accusation — ‘Oooh, you
love
him' — I was confused. I couldn't grasp it used this way — sharpened, pointed.

But being
in
love, that was different. That had power. When a girl was charged with this at school, I understood her agony, the heat of her denial —
I am not!
To be in love was to be in a state, to be possessed, taken over. There was something crude in it, something base.

This was what I saw for the first time in Ishtar. When she packed the bags, when she talked about the angora goats, when Miller put her in the car and kissed her and she gazed up at him. And when we returned to the ashram and they went upstairs, and again I saw him lift her, carry her into the room. From the bottom of the stairs, I saw her head fall back against his arm. I saw the smile she gave him, her face transformed, a stranger's face. Miller pushed the door open with his shoulder and carried her in, and the door slammed shut.

We didn't travel with him in the station wagon, down to the farm. He had some stops to make on the way, which included collecting some tools and things that would take up all the space in the car.

‘We'll meet him there,' Ishtar said, as we carried the bags down the stairs. ‘We're going to catch the train. It'll be fun. Exciting. Come on, he's waiting to drive us to the station.'

As we were loading the car, Sonia came out onto the path with the straw broom in her hand.

‘Oh,' she said, ‘you are off so soon? On your big adventure? Is this your ride to the airport?' She peered at Miller in the driver's seat. ‘A very hairy taxi service?' The sagging flesh below her chin wobbled with her laugh.

Ishtar didn't answer, just put another bag into the boot. Sonia came up to me where I stood on the footpath. She bent so her watery eyes behind their glasses were close to mine. I could smell her, the dried-flower smell of the tea she always drank. ‘Give my love to Europe,' she said. ‘My homeland. If you go to the Alps, breathe some extra of that clean air for me.'

I looked at Ishtar, who had finished with the bags.

‘Where is your first port of call?' said Sonia.

From nowhere, tears were forming. I bit my lip. Even though I had never touched her, not even the waxy-looking skin of one of her hands, now all I wanted was to bury my face in Sonia's orange robes. I stared hard, blurrily, at her feet, her thick beige socks and navy slippers.

‘Ishtar?' Sonia's voice was louder this time. ‘Where is your first port of call?'

Ishtar's boots trod towards us and came into view alongside Sonia's slippers. Her voice was cool, dismissive. ‘We've changed our plans. We're going somewhere else.'

‘Oh. Well, that is a surprise.'

The boots stepped away again, and Ishtar's legs disappeared into the passenger's side of the car.

I went to the door behind and opened it.

‘Well, I wish you all the best,' said Sonia. ‘All the best for your new adventure.'

The inside of the car smelled of lemon cleaning stuff. I bent my head and blinked so the tears fell quickly into my lap. We began to drive and I didn't look to see if Sonia was waving or had already gone back into the house.

It felt right that Miller did not travel with us. I couldn't imagine him sitting up for two days and nights in a train carriage, confined and not in charge. As the trip wore on and my tiredness increased, my impressions of him warped — in the muzzy chamber of my recent memory he expanded, bear-like, his voice unravelling into growls and grunts, his hands becoming paws as they reached for Ishtar. It was hard to picture this creature driving a car. Nodding in and out of sleep, my temple against the chill window glass, I began to imagine I could see him out there on the spool of shadowy dawn paddocks, carless and huge, jogging without fatigue, rising proudly to clear a fence — a giant travelling under his own power.

We changed trains twice, both times in the grey light of either evening or early morning; the second time, I felt the cold cut at me as I traipsed along behind Ishtar. I slept and woke and slept again. Beside me, she seemed always awake, upright and still. When it was dark outside, her reflection hung behind mine in the window, smudged and unknowable.

I saw him watching. Every Sunday he worked on his car out in his drive way and I rode my bike past and back letting my skirt slide up my legs. One time he was waiting he left the car with its bonnet up left his tools out on the concrete he stepped in to the footpath and blocked my way. Down behind the old fruit trees on the empty block I saw myself through his eyes. Sinking in to the long grass I put back my head and showed my throat like an animal but I could feel his want and Id never felt so strong so full of power, staring in to the wide open sky. It did hurt like girls at school said but that was only the first few times then it started to feel good. We didnt ever realy talk, I always had to hurry any way before my father finished the mowing or my mother got back from afternoon tea with the church ladys or Linda came out from studying in her room and noticed I was gone. Some times Id see him when Linda and me were on our way to school, getting in his car to go to work and hed give me a smile. He was a mechanic I think, any way he wore those overalls and his nails were always black but he smelled clean.

Hope Farm

WINTER

It was still not completely day when we arrived, and the cold was ferocious. Nobody was there to meet us at the station, although Ishtar did not appear to have expected anyone. We hitched a lift with a farmer and I fell straight into sleep again, wedged in the middle of the ute's bench seat, the wool of Ishtar's coat rough against my cheek. I woke when we scrunched to a halt.

‘There's Kooralang,' said the farmer. ‘Down that way.'

I sat up. The morning was opening into light. Through the spotted windscreen the sky sat high and cool; the road ran in a dark tongue between paddocks. Far away, right at the bottom, a white fence turned a corner, and edges of buildings showed like stragglers on the outskirts of a crowd.

‘Not much to it.' The farmer hung one hand at the crest of the steering wheel. ‘Not since the mine closed.' He leaned forward, squinting doubtfully, as if the town might have actually disappeared. ‘And that was twenty-odd years ago, now.' The ute shuddered like a restless animal. ‘But you want to be going this way.' He gave a shove at the gears and we bounced forward, swung round into a side road. It grew darker as the trees closed in. ‘Friends of yours, are they?' said the farmer to Ishtar. ‘These people?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Don't know much about the place meself.' He shifted on the seat, his voice rising like someone arguing a point. ‘I mean, I don't care what they do. Long as they're not hurting anybody.'

I closed my eyes, tried to let my head flop against Ishtar's arm, but it didn't work — I couldn't get back to sleep. I gave up, straightened myself again, and watched the trees flicker past.

‘Here it is.' The ute slowed.

The gate was open, the sign beside it crooked on its post.
Hope Farm
. The rainbow letters were faded, the timber grey.

The farmer looked over at Ishtar again. ‘I'll take you down. Save you lugging all that gear.'

‘Thanks.'

‘Get up early did you? For the train?' He eased the ute through the gateway.

‘We've come from Brisbane.'

‘Crikey. That must've taken a while.' Then he added, quietly, as if to himself, ‘That kid's exhausted.'

The trees thinned, trickled into cleared paddocks that sloped down then up to a clump of buildings, the hill banking behind them. The farmer held back for a moment, bending to peer across. Then off the ute went, rattling downwards. I turned and saw the short train of dust that tumbled roundly at our back, shepherding us in.

We stood on the porch, our baggage in a heap at the bottom of the steps. Down at one end, the boards were rotted through and straps of long grass stuck up out of the hole. From inside the house there came the sound of a baby crying. I stepped across to one of the windows. The little squares of glass were furred with dust, two of them cracked. I put my face close, but there was a curtain drawn on the other side.

‘Hello?' Ishtar tapped on the door.

A small girl came around the end of the porch. ‘Just open it,' she said. ‘No one'll hear you.' She had snot in a slug on her upper lip; without taking her eyes from me, she wiped it onto the sleeve of her jumper.

Ishtar knocked again.

‘My name's Jindi,' said the girl. ‘What's your name?'

I turned back to the window and ran my finger along its sill, making little pellets of grime. From inside, the crying continued.

‘That's Willow's baby,' said Jindi in an important voice. ‘He cries all the time. He's gunna drive Willow crazy.'

Then the door swung open. A woman stood there. She was tall and seemed to lean over us — even Ishtar in her boots with the heels — and her hair looked pressed onto her head, running flat from its centre part down either side of her long face. She had small, fast-blinking eyes.

‘Hello.' Ishtar did one of her quick smiles, pulled her coat tight, and folded her arms. ‘I'm Ishtar. I'm a friend of Miller's.'

The woman's head twitched. She crossed her arms as well, and under her jumper the shapes of her breasts drooped onto them. From behind her the crying went on, loud and rhythmic.

‘He's on his way,' said Ishtar. ‘He'll be a week or so.'

The woman craned further forward, blinked past us at the pile of bags. ‘Oh, well,' she said after a while, and stepped back. ‘You'd better come in then.'

We followed her into a dim corridor, then through a doorway immediately to our right, which was hung with a thick curtain. The room was dark and warm and smelled like incense and dirty clothes. There was a fireplace with a fire burning, and a low wooden table with cups and bowls and candles on it. A wrinkled rag rug. Two heavy armchairs with rips in the fabric. The baby was on a mattress against one wall, half tangled in a crochet blanket. It lay on its back and bellowed, lifting its feet into the air every now and again.

‘I'm Ishtar,' said Ishtar. ‘And this is Silver.'

‘Willow,' said the woman distractedly. She went over to the fire and stood looking into it as if we weren't even there. Then she gave an extra big twitch, said, ‘Oh all right,' and turned to the baby. She snatched it up, flopped into one of the armchairs, and lifted her jumper.

The crying stopped. No one spoke. There was just the gulping of the baby feeding, and its noisy, wet breaths. I went to the window and pushed the curtain aside a bit. Out on the porch, Jindi marched up and down, bending her knees and bobbing her head. She was singing quietly, a thin song that came and went. After a while she stopped, stuck a forefinger in each nostril and rotated them briskly. I let the curtain fall back again.

Eventually, the baby's swallows slowed, broken by long periods of heavy breathing and the occasional snort. Then they petered out completely and there was just the breathing. Willow rose, the baby limp and horizontal in her arms. She went to the mattress and slowly lowered the little body, pulled across the blanket, and moved away.

‘Well,' she said, in a low voice. ‘Come and see the place then.' She turned and without looking at either of us went to the curtained doorway and ducked through.

The narrow hall was dark as well, but cold. There were doors either side, open, and I looked in as we passed. More mattresses, an old dresser with a dim, flecked mirror; a tie-dyed length of fabric hung at a window, turning the air orange. Signs of freshly departed inhabitants: clothes piled on a chair; overflowing ashtrays; a glass of water on a windowsill.

‘It's a big old house,' said Willow. ‘Plenty of space.'

The last room was a kitchen, with lino worn through in places. There was a table and a mess of chairs, and rows of shelves with plates and bowls, and jars of lentils and beans. Dishes were piled on the bench beside the sink. A squat fridge groaned in a corner; beside it a doorless opening led to a smaller room where a bucket overflowed with nappies. I tried to breathe shallowly, through my mouth.

Willow crossed to the far door. She opened it and leaned part-way out, twitching towards a low building nearby. Chickens stepped and pecked along the dun-coloured walls. ‘Mud-brick,' said Willow. ‘Built it from scratch. Well Sunny did, and Ken. Mostly them.' She pushed the door closed again. ‘They started the place up. Good workers, they were. Got things done.'

I leaned over the back of a chair, hollow with tiredness.

She thrust her face at me, blinked. ‘Hungry?'

We sat down and she scooped out some dahl and rice from pots on the stove. I was so hungry I shovelled it down, trying to ignore the smell of the nappy bucket, and Jindi, who had come to stand beside me with her chin resting on the tabletop, her snot-clogged breathing loud and close.

‘There's more.' Willow twitched at the pots.

‘Thanks,' said Ishtar.

‘Do you go to school?' said Jindi, edging nearer.

I kept eating.

‘Sam and Jarrah went to school,' said Jindi, her breath on the back of my hand. ‘They used to live here, but they've gone now.'

‘So what happened?' said Ishtar. ‘To Sunny and Ken?'

Willow gave a hoot of a laugh. ‘Oh, there was some bust-up.' She gave her hair a shake, put her hands on her hips. ‘You know —' Her lips spread in a smile, her tongue showed pale. ‘Divisions.'

‘I don't go to school,' said Jindi with satisfaction. ‘I was going to, but then I got sick, so now Val says I can just wait till next year.'

I angled myself away from her, scraped up the last of the food.

She pressed on. ‘I'm five. How old are you?'

‘Thirteen.'

I thought this might put her off, but she only widened her eyes in a reverent way, and repeated, breathily: ‘Thirt-een. Thirt-een.'

‘Well —' began Ishtar, but Willow spoke over her.

‘So,' she said. ‘You'll be staying on then.'

I put down the spoon and stared at the yellowy grains of rice stuck to it. Under the table, I made the magic shape with my fingers.

‘Yeah,' said Ishtar, and I changed my hidden fingers into a fist.

There was the slam of a door at the other end of the house, and a moment later the baby started to cry again. Willow's hands fell away from her hips. She swayed, as if preparing for movement, but then just stood, stooped and blinking.

Jindi took her chin from the table and skipped out into the hallway. I squeezed my fist harder. A woman's voice called from one of the front rooms, and Willow came unstuck at last and followed Jindi.

Ishtar's hands came down on my shoulders. ‘Don't worry,' she said, ‘it won't take long to fix the place up.'

I tried not to feel how warm her hands were, but I couldn't help it. I was overwhelmed by a quick, hopeless wish to be a little kid — as small as Jindi — able to be lifted and carried somewhere, to a bed, to be wrapped in blankets and laid to sleep. I let my head droop, but then the hands were gone, the cold air sudden on my shoulders, and Ishtar was moving away, stacking the plates and going to the sink.