The Grass Castle (9 page)
‘Yeah, I suppose so.’
‘Isn’t it better when you’re working?’ she asks.
‘Yeah, I’ll look for something. Keeps me busy, I suppose.’
‘Maybe you should see someone,’ she suggests tentatively.
He frowns. ‘Like who?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe a psychologist. Talk things through.’
He tightens, and shakes his head. ‘Hell no. I’m not going to some shrink. None of that helped Mum anyway.’
‘How do you know?’ Abby asks. ‘We were too young to understand.’
Matt straightens and his face hardens. ‘I was sixteen when she died. I understood.’ Then his eyes soften and sadden, like butter melting, as if Abby has tugged on some deep inner string and unravelled him.
‘Will you talk to
me
then?’ she asks. ‘Not that I’d be much use, but at least I can be on the end of the phone. Would that be any help?’
He’s evasive, takes a long sip from his cup, places it down with slow deliberation, avoids answering; then, ‘Maybe.’
‘If you’re having unsettling feelings you should talk about it,’ Abby says.
‘Best I keep that stuff to myself.’ His face shutters, and the opening is gone.
‘If you don’t tell me, how can I help?’ she insists. ‘You’re all I’ve got apart from Dad—and he’s more than half owned by Brenda.’
Matt smiles briefly.
‘Tell me the signs,’ Abby says, ‘so I have some idea.’
He meets her eyes. ‘You wouldn’t be able to tell. I can hide it. You wouldn’t ever know.’
He drains his coffee and she senses the topic is closed. She should press him for some sort of commitment, some reassurance he’ll contact her if things get bad.
Then the bus pulls up in the street. She has to go. The turnaround is quick. If she’s not on board within two minutes, the bus will leave.
‘Call me,’ she says as she gathers her bags. ‘And I’ll call you. Don’t be a stranger.’
On the bus she can’t stop thinking about him so she rings him on her mobile.
‘Hey, it’s me,’ she says.
‘You again.’ He sounds amused. ‘Didn’t I just put you on a bus?’
‘Yes, but I’m worried about you. I want you to call me every day. It doesn’t have to take long. Just a quick
Hello I’m fine
.’
‘Nah,’ he says. ‘Too much trouble.’
‘I need to know you’re okay.’
‘I’m fine at the moment.’
‘But what about when you’re not?’
‘It doesn’t happen very often.’
‘I want to be there for you when it does.’
There’s a momentary silence on the other end of the phone.
‘Look,’ she presses, ‘how about I ring you? All you have to do is say you’re okay, then I’ll leave you alone.’
‘You don’t need to call. I don’t want you trying to be my mother,’ he says, grumpy.
‘We don’t have a mother, so I have to be,’ she points out.
‘I don’t need a mum,’ he grunts. ‘I can look after myself.’
But Abby knows this isn’t true. Everyone needs a mum. The sad thing is that those who’ve got one often don’t appreciate it.
A wattlebird is drinking from a Coke can in the car park. Daphne sees it as she comes out of the doctor’s surgery. The world has changed since she went inside. Half an hour, that’s all, and suddenly everything is different. Colours are fresher, more vibrant. There is beauty in the way the wind moves in the trees. Clouds seem miraculous, the sky so blue. She feels the texture of the air, smells food cooking somewhere over at the shops: takeaway fish and chips, hamburgers. And here, right in front of her, a wattlebird is sipping Coca Cola.
She watches the bird at its work: dipping its narrow beak into the can then lifting its head so the liquid trickles down its throat. That is how birds drink. They are not designed to sip out of Coke cans, and yet this bird is managing it. How ridiculous. But it is also marvellous. Daphne has never seen a bird do this before.
During the appointment, the doctor said many things, and now Daphne is full of words. Some are familiar, some are not. She went for a check-up and came out with all this jargon floating in her head. Does she really need to know?
The doctor had started by asking questions and ticking them off his list. Daphne answered dutifully, but she disliked the doctor’s cool impersonal manner, the way he stared right through her as if she wasn’t really there, querying symptoms without truly wanting to know. He is Pam’s doctor after all, and Daphne supposes she shouldn’t expect much of such a fresh-faced youngster.
Her favourite doctor retired a few years ago. That’s what happens when you are old: your compatriots age too. They give up their jobs because they have their own health issues. Good doctors retire to armchairs and become files in other doctors’ surgeries. Then you have to see someone else—someone young with attitude and arrogance. They think they know everything, and they have no patience. They are bored, and they talk through you, and they spend half the time glancing sidelong at their iPhone on the desk, wanting you out of there so they can check their messages. That is what this doctor of Pam’s is like.
Then Daphne must have given a wrong answer. The doctor’s drooping posture disappeared and suddenly an attentive young man sat up in his place. ‘What did you say?’
Daphne had shifted uncomfortably in the hard vinyl chair. She gave the answer again, and the doctor’s clean young brow twisted in thought. He checked her over again, peppered her with a barrage of other questions, then he started tapping words into his computer, his fingers flying over the keys. It seems all young things know how to touch-type these days.
Now, outside the surgery, Daphne looks down at the envelope the doctor has given her—a referral. On the front he has written an address and phone number in blue pen, the letters pressed deep and dark into the paper with a scrawly, heavy hand. Daphne wonders what she should do with it. Tell Pam and ring for an appointment? She looks back at the wattlebird as it continues to dip and sip from the Coke can. The world is going crazy, including the birds.
She thinks of her home in the valley, wishes she was there right now, back in the mountains where she lived for so many years. Pam is taking her there this afternoon. They are leaving soon, after this appointment which is now finished. It’s a good thing. It will give her time to consider.
She thinks of her husband, Doug. How the land shaped him. How he loved it. Part of his bones, he said. And it is true . . . or at least she assumes it to be. Who knows where he rests. He is up there somewhere, that much is certain, and definitely dead—there’s no question of that, even though he was never found.
She feels the weight of the envelope in her hand. Does she want to go through all these tests? Probes stuck onto her? Into her? The possibility of surgery? Absolutely not. She’d rather let things happen as they will. Her mind is good, and she’s still healthy—at least she was until today. But she’s eighty-six and she can’t live forever. If heaven exists, Doug will be waiting for her.
She thinks of her daughter Pam, a thoughtful girl—or rather not a girl, but an ageing woman now too: a grandmother. She thinks of her granddaughter, Sandy, whose three children make Daphne a great-grandmother. She never thought she would have all this, thought she’d be dead long before, like Doug. Perhaps she should have gone when he did. It might have been easier. Is she in the way? A burden? She’s certainly not much use to anyone anymore.
She examines the referral again. Maybe she should ignore it. Perhaps she should let things run their course, live fully and well until nature takes her.
She walks across the car park, past the wattlebird, which is still drinking. She crosses the road to the supermarket where Pam is picking up a few things for lunch out in the valley. On the footpath near the sliding doors she hovers. She’ll wait outside. Pam shouldn’t be long.
Just outside the supermarket there is a bin. Daphne looks at the envelope, looks at the bin. Then she walks over and drops the envelope in.
They drive out to the valley in Pam’s car, winding through the suburbs. There is no convincing short cut, and they must pass through many traffic lights: stop, start, stop, start. Pam complains about waiting due to the lack of synchronisation, but Daphne is sure synchronisation is an urban myth. Life is dictated by road sensors and luck. While Pam fusses and frets, Daphne is patient, accepting. This is something she has learned with age.
Beyond the housing estates at the southern edge of the city they drive past grey paddocks dotted with bored cattle and dirty brown sheep. This is the colour of the drought. Daphne is sure it was wetter when she lived out here. They had dry times of course, but she can’t recall anything like this. She doesn’t know whether she believes in global warming or not, but perhaps she is looking at it now.
The drive lulls her, the way the road curls through hills and over dips, threading away from the city. It’s spacious out here, rugged and harsh and spare, country that breeds tough people: people hard on the exterior, but with soft buttery hearts and a strong attachment to the land. None of them ever wanted to leave, but what say had they, in the end, when the government bought back the land? A signature on a piece of paper and your rights are removed. And what do you do when everyone is gone? You can’t stay on like a lone grasshopper in the snow. You have to transfer your lives elsewhere. But it’s not the same to live among concrete and street trees and air-conditioning. Yes, you soften with luxury, but it’s not what you want.
She always feels good when they drive through the gates and into the national park, car tyres juddering over the cattle grid. Once a month, Pam brings her on this pilgrimage. It’s a nice thing Pam does for her. Better than a café or an art gallery.
Pam drives as far as she can, wending slowly through the park. On one side of the road, the bush grows down to the verge, all glossy and fragrant, the sharp tang of eucalypts and mint bush. On the other side, the valley spreads. It is wide at the park entry, visible only in patches between the trees. As the valley progresses, it narrows, pulling its long arms in and tucking them beneath its waist. There were fewer trees when Daphne lived here. These days the bush is creeping back down-slope from the forest. It is taking over again, reclaiming the margins that were so hard fought for by her family.
Pam pulls up at the locked gate above the old homestead. It would be useful to have keys for the gate so they could drive down the long track to the building, but Pam is reluctant to ask at the parks office, and Daphne is still too miffed about losing her family property to beg for access to land that should rightfully be hers. They get out of the car and Pam retrieves the folding chair from the back seat. As they walk through the wooden chicane and slowly down the track, reclining kangaroos heft onto their feet and bounce away. Watching them, Daphne stumbles on the uneven ground, scattering piles of dried dung. Every time she comes here, it is the same. She can’t believe the number of kangaroos. There are always joeys in pouches, always young ones at foot, following their mothers.
When finally they are down by the old slab homestead, quite some distance from the car, Pam sets up the folding chair in the lee out of the wind, then she pats Daphne on the shoulder and walks back up the track. She likes to give Daphne her space, and Daphne appreciates it—she’s freer to let her thoughts wander when she’s on her own. While she has her fill of valley-time, Pam will sit in the car up at the road and read, maybe even take a nap.
Daphne settles in her chair and looks around. She is always disappointed at first. What she sees initially is the decay: the crumbling yards, the collapsing sheds, the fallen chimney further up the hill where the brick house once stood. And the weeds! The overgrazing, thanks to all those kangaroos! Who says farmers don’t take care of the land? When she lived here, the place looked better than this.
But soon she begins to look wider and deeper, and memory distorts her vision. She starts to see what she wants to see, rather than what is actually here. She sees the slab homestead as it used to be, with its kitchen block out the back, smoke threading from the chimney, the fire always lit. She sees the horses in the yards, the black cattle scattered across the valley like crumbs of burnt toast. She sees Doug riding his horse, the dogs following. She sees her father, further back in her memory, hustling a mob of cattle, her mother on the veranda hanging washing, the sheets flapping.
Her family were settlers here, but they weren’t the first white men. The first were cattlemen. They rode with a black man who showed them the way through the mountains en route to markets. The settlers—her father’s people—weren’t far behind. They built wattle-and-daub huts, then stronger and more permanent homesteads, sheds and yards. They brought long lines of cattle that grazed their way up the valley. Then families came, women and children. They subdued the land, cleared and ringbarked trees, making way for better pasture. They planted fruit trees, pine trees, vegetable gardens.
Daphne’s father grew up here. He married her mother, had two sons and a daughter, other babies that didn’t survive. He broke horses, ran cattle, chased brumbies. He lived and died on the property—the land made him, and he was the land. Then it was Daphne’s turn. She and Doug had a family, worked hard . . . But of course, life isn’t that simple. There are many stories, and every story contains birth, secrets, death or loss.