The Stranding (32 page)
Lex was waiting for her in the car park. She saw the Volvo palely illuminated at the far end and the shadow of him leaning up against its bonnet. Without pausing she walked softly to the Kombi, opened the door and slung the shoes inside. Her heart was galloping. How would he be with her after all that wine and all those men?
She felt rather than heard him arrive beside her, swift across the car park, but she didn’t turn around. There was the sound of his breathing, deep and slightly ragged, and then the touch of his hand on her hair, infinitely gentle. She turned.
‘You looked stunning tonight.’ His voice was soft and low.
‘It was Alexander,’ she whispered. But he placed a finger across her lips to hush her.
‘Your work was magnificent,’ he said, his finger sliding down her cheek. ‘The world was taken by you.’
His hand crushed gently into her curls and he kissed her, lightly at first, and then urgently as they pressed against each other, their breathing suddenly quick, their bodies alive. They grappled against the car, feeling the contours of each other, the tightness in their bodies, the need.
‘They all wanted you,’ he whispered against her neck. ‘But none as much as me.’
They grasped each other with a wild desperation and made love, bent over the front seat of the Kombi, with the moon silver on Lex’s back and the faint stars sailing like jewels in the clear cold sky. It was passionate, but bittersweet. Callista felt like she was flying, and she didn’t know what she wanted it to mean—this embrace with Lex. With the spin of the exhibition whizzing within her, she was surprised to find she wasn’t sure whether she wanted it to be hello or goodbye.
Lex didn’t hear from Callista for about a month, maybe six weeks. It was a torrid time of hope, doubt, fear and worry. He had come home from the exhibition aflame with passion for her and keen for a fresh start. Seeing her paintings had kindled something in him. Something basic and incredibly clear. He was ready for her. Finally.
He rang a couple of times and left messages on her answering machine, but she didn’t ring back. Haunted, he visited Alexander’s gallery and meandered amongst her paintings, trying to absorb something of her. It was pitiful and he knew it. And Alexander was onto him. He could see it in his smug smile.
‘Any closer to a decision?’ he asked each time Lex visited.
‘Still working on it,’ Lex would say gruffly.
‘Better hurry and make a choice or you’ll miss out.’
At least two-thirds of the paintings had been sold. But they were still on the walls, waiting out their three-week time slot. When Lex dropped by in the last week of May, the walls of the gallery were clean. Everything had gone. Alexander walked back out to the car park with him.
‘You’d never know she’d been here, would you, now that the paintings have been taken down. But she’ll exhibit here again. If you want to buy anything you’ll have to wait till next time.’
Lex left another message on her machine and waited for her to call. Eventually his fluster subsided to melancholy, then irritation, then bitterness.
She rang finally on a Saturday evening, at the finish of a slow day thick with overcast skies and cool autumn winds. Lex stood by the window with the phone, looking out at the murky clouds and the iron grey waves riding in.
‘Sorry we haven’t caught up,’ she said. ‘It’s been so busy. Alexander had some work for me. I’ve been up to Sydney with him a couple of times. Interviews for commissions.’
‘He didn’t mention that when I was down at the gallery,’ Lex said, offhand, but his heart was thumping and he was swinging somewhere between hopeful and cross. ‘Has he been lining you up with some of those men from the opening?’
‘Yes. But it’s not what you think.’
‘Are you sure it’s your paintings they’re after?’
‘For God’s sake, Lex. Why this sudden concern for my soul? I think I’m big enough to take care of myself. Anyway, I have more good news to share with you . . . Alexander wants to enter one of my paintings in a portrait competition . . . It’s one I did of Henry Beck.’
‘I didn’t know you were painting him.’
‘There are a lot of things you don’t know . . . But enough about me. What have you been up to?’
‘The usual. Just the cows and me.’
‘I thought you liked the cows.’
‘Yes, I do—in a milky, manurey kind of way. And there’s not much else on offer in Merrigan, is there? Unless I want to sign on as a garbo.’ Lex couldn’t stop himself now. The words rolled out of him, fast and twisted. ‘No, I couldn’t do that. And it would just be a lateral career shift really. From cleaning away shit in the shed to hauling people’s shit to the tip. No, I’d miss the cows too much. And Ben. He’s such an entertaining bastard.’
He stopped. A silence thickened between them.
‘I was going to suggest a walk early tomorrow,’ Callista said. ‘There’s a beach I wanted to show you. But maybe you don’t feel up to it.’
‘When?’
‘Early would be best.’
‘Like how early?’
‘Around dawn.’
‘It’s not my best time of day.’
‘You’ll be right. Bring a coffee.’
‘It’ll take more than that to put a smile on my face.’
‘I’m sure the weather will cap it off for you then. They’re forecasting wild conditions.’
‘Great. I’ll pack some whisky and a hot water bottle.’
‘Just try to bring a warm heart. Forget the rest.’
Lex woke in the pre-dawn and flicked back the curtains. It was a steely grey morning and the sky was streaked with dark wind-whipped clouds. Lovely! Just the day for a walk. In the bathroom, he grimaced in the mirror and flipped a washer across his face to wake himself up.
Silence sat fatly in the kitchen—that hollow sensation of quiet that belongs to loneliness. He tried to ignore it and shuffled around making coffee and pocketing some snacks. Why was he getting up so early to go for a beach walk? He could walk on the beach any time.
The headlights of the Kombi flashed through the front window. Pity Callista was so punctual. He’d have nothing to gripe about, apart from the cold. He poured his coffee, tied his boots and pulled his fleece and Gore-Tex out of the cupboard. On the way out he turned off the lights.
Callista swung open the passenger door for him. ‘Hi.’
He folded himself into the seat, saying nothing, taking special care with his coffee.
‘Not talking yet, I see.’
Lex could feel her smile in the dark.
‘Old bear.’ She gave his arm a squeeze.
‘Be careful of my coffee.’
‘I hope it thaws you out.’ She tossed his gear onto the back seat.
As the Kombi roared onto the road, Lex saw a light on in Mrs B’s house. Shame they had woken her. He didn’t like to think of disturbing her restless sleep. She always looked so tired these days.
‘Don’t forget to watch out for roos,’ he grunted, as the Kombi skidded on the gravel up towards the forest.
‘You forget. I’ve driven this road more times than you.’
‘Spare me. I’m not up for a Wallace history lesson this morning.’
Callista laughed and Lex smiled quietly into his coffee. It was good to see her.
On the highway, they drove south in silence. The countryside was muted in the low light of dawn. Fog lay in scattered blankets in gullies and across the low-lying flats. Occasionally the shadowy hummocks of grazing cattle appeared in paddocks alongside the road. There was nobody else around.
‘Who bought the painting?’ Lex asked. ‘That sunset one with the moon over the water.’
She glanced sideways at him. ‘Actually, I don’t know who bought it. I didn’t ask.’
‘You know I liked it. You could have saved it for me.’
‘I wanted to let it go. I don’t need it anymore.’
‘But I liked it.’
‘It’s my past. And I needed to let it go.’
He lapsed into silence. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Here he was feeling anxious and unsure around her. He wanted to feel confident, positive, hopeful, but he had forgotten how to be at ease with her. The exhibition and all this time without seeing her had shaken him.
‘I’m glad things are going well for you,’ he said after a while.
She smiled across at him. ‘I can’t believe it’s so good. These commissions Alexander has lined up for me might just generate enough money to keep me going. That means I may not have to do the markets anymore. It’s the first positive break I’ve had in my life.’
‘Really? You’ve had to wait thirty-three years for a positive break?’
She glanced at him then stared back out at the road. When she spoke again her voice was slow and soft. ‘Actually, I did have one other break. But I miscarried.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly.
‘You don’t have to be. I can deal with it now.’ She was trying to be brave, but her cheeks were flushed and there was a tight edge to her voice. ‘It wasn’t as big as your loss,’ she said.
‘It was just as important.’ Lex reached out a hand hesitantly and placed it on her knee. Even in the dim early light, he thought he saw tears flash in her eyes.
‘Please don’t be nice,’ she said. ‘It makes me feel like I have to be strong.’
She drove slowly through a heavy fog patch. ‘I was pregnant when I painted that painting you liked. That’s why I didn’t want you to have it. I don’t want it in my life.’
She flushed nervously and glanced at him sideways, as if she had said something significant. Then she drifted into silence, driving on autopilot. Lex studied her profile carefully. What was she saying to him? That she couldn’t have both him and the painting in her life? Did that mean she was saying she wanted him? His hand was still on her knee. She hadn’t brushed it off.
The highway curved around a lake and through a stand of spotted gum. The fog was wet and the wind heaved in the tops of the trees. Lex could feel the Kombi being buffeted by the occasional blast. They must have driven thirty minutes south when they turned off onto a sealed road that wound through cleared farmland and down over a bridge spanning a stream. Then the road climbed a little, heading towards the coast through the green pastured landscape. On a rise, they turned onto a gravel road that soon crossed a cattle grid and deteriorated into a grassy track.
There were three gates to open. Lex did gate duty between coffee sips, leaving his cup inside the car and pushing the Kombi door out into the snatching winds. Patches of mist curled over him as he struggled with the third gate. The air was wet on his face and his fingers were stiff working with the cold hard wire. He was already damp and shivering when he clambered back into the van. But Callista smiled at him across the space between them, and that was enough for now. She clunked the Kombi back into gear and drove on.
The track eased around a hilltop, past cows resting beneath a tree, and then swung over a ridgeline to finish beside a tiny cemetery overlooking a wild ocean beach. Callista parked the Kombi across the hill just below the cluster of weather-worn headstones and they sat looking out while thick sheets of mist rolled in from the sea.
Lex shivered. ‘What is this place? A burial ground for madmen?’
‘I love it.’ Callista’s face was flushed bright. ‘Hardly anyone comes here. Sometimes, when you stand on this hill, there’s so much fog it’s like being in heaven.’
‘Or hell. It looks miserable out there.’
‘You can stay here if you like. I’m going for a walk.’
She tugged her woollen hat and raincoat from beneath Lex’s things on the back seat. He watched her wriggle into her coat behind the steering wheel and pull her beanie down on her head.
‘You coming or not?’ she asked.
He looked at the shifting mists for a moment. ‘I’m out of bed. I might as well come.’
Out of the Kombi he yanked his coat on, fighting with the winds. ‘Okay, let’s do it then,’ he said, snugging the hood onto his head and ramming his hands into his pockets.
Heads down, they hunched into the wind and skidded down a steep sandy path diving off the edge of the grass down into the dunes. Curtains of sea mist slid up over them and dampened their faces. Just before they broke out onto the beach there was a pocket of quiet in a hollow behind the last dune. Lex wiped the wet from his nose and lips with an old hanky he found screwed up in one of his pockets.
‘Wild, isn’t it?’ Callista’s cheeks were red and her eyes fizzing.
‘You’re mad,’ he said. ‘We’ll be sandblasted out there.’
‘Sometimes it’s blowing a gale up on the hill, and then you get down on the beach and it’s dead quiet.’
‘Yeah, right.’
He took her hand and they strained up over the last dune.
Out on the beach, the wind fetched them. It swirled and then slung into their faces, drawing tears. Lex glanced down the beach, trying to feel Callista’s passion for the place. But it was desolate and all he could muster was an empty reluctance. It was the most godforsaken beach he had ever seen. The sea battered at the sand like a great foaming beast and hunks of seaweed were strewn thickly all the way from the water’s edge to the high tide mark just below the dunes. Gusts of wind threw angry blasts of sand against their coats.