The Stranding (6 page)

He stripped off, tucked a towel around his middle and lathered up. Tensing his lower lip, he took the first careful swipe with the razor just as an unearthly shriek blasted through the bathroom window. The razor jagged his chin and blood trickled. What the hell was that?

Pushing open the window, he saw a peacock strutting along his back porch. Furious, he raced into the kitchen, pulled open a kitchen drawer, scooped up two handfuls of utensils and burst out the back door. The bird flounced across the yard, trailing its tail like a bridal skirt. He flung a handful of serving spoons and a can-opener at it, striking the fence as the bird swept up on top of the palings and looked back at him. As he ran towards the fence where the hedge was lowest, his towel caught under his foot and flipped off. Before he could reach down to grab it, a white-haired craggy face peered over the fence with a frown. It was his neighbour, Mrs Brocklehurst. The hermit.

Her eyebrows shot upwards as she took in his nakedness. For a long moment, he stood there stupidly, unable to speak. Then he whisked up his towel and raced inside.

Back in the bathroom, he finished shaving and cursed. That was just marvellous—getting caught out streaking naked across the backyard trying to kill his neighbour’s peacock. What would she think of him? Still cursing, he pulled on the camouflage pants and green army jumper he’d bought from Beryl. He’d have to come up with a plan, find a way to charm the old dear, get them off on a better footing. He could be living here for a while, and in a place like this Lex didn’t fancy an awkward relationship with his neighbour.

Just before he walked out the door, he checked himself once more in the mirror and shook his head. He’d have to drive up the coast soon and get some decent clothes. This army get-up wasn’t the best way to make a first impression. Then again, it was more respectable than his birthday suit.

It was late morning when Lex arrived at the markets. He lost himself immediately in the maze of stalls scattered across the oval. At first, he figured there was supposed to be some order to it all, but once he was among the clutter of trestles and tents it was hard to work out where he’d already been.

Most of it was junk. It amazed him that people could scrape a living selling this stuff. Greeks with heavy moustaches stood behind boxes of home-grown vegetables, puffing on their cigars and haggling with their hands. Other stallholders were trying to sell off all sorts of old gear: tools, secondhand mowers, spare parts, hub caps. Some vendors were hidden behind unruly pot plants and buckets of flowers, while other stalls held neatly lined up jams and chutneys and jars of skin-care products on white tablecloths. Among the clutter, there were tables of old books and magazines, second-hand kids’ toys and CDs.

Overwhelmed by bodies and jumble, Lex stopped at a poster stall and browsed through the pages of the flick-stand. Nearby, a tarot queen was sitting beneath a tattered purple sunshade, shuffling a worn pack of cards. Just beyond her, two farmers were leaning against a ute, deep in conversation. Passing silver-haired biddies moaned about their aches. Children of all sizes threaded through the crowd, jostling against legs, dragging on prams, whining.

Lex resumed his aimless wandering among the stalls. He bought fairy floss from a hotdog stand, but was disappointed. It wasn’t like the stuff he’d bought at the local show when he was a kid. That had been the real thing: pink spidery fly-away stuff, spun like magic onto a wooden stick. He munched through his bag of floss and watched Asian Charlie churning music out of a machine made from an impossible mash of welded pipes that jerked up and down. People were lining up to buy his CDs.

Further into the throng, Lex passed yet another stall of home-baked cakes and knitwear. On one of the trestles he noticed a plate of Anzac biscuits, just like his mother used to make, thin and crispy brown. He jiggled his pocket to find some change and looked up straight into the intense white face of Helen Beck. He must have stumbled onto the church stall.

Helen stared at him without speaking, stared right into him. It was like being X-rayed.

‘Hello,’ Lex said at last. ‘I met you the other day . . . at your husband’s butchery . . . remember?’

‘Yes,’ she said, with a faint shadow of a smile.

‘I thought I might buy some of the Anzac biscuits.’

‘They’re four dollars a bag, and the money goes to the church.’

‘Oh . . . good.’ What a pathetic response. Lex was annoyed with himself. This woman made him feel so ridiculously nervous.

‘Why don’t you come up and join our service tomorrow?’ Helen said, still holding the bag of biscuits. It seemed she was unwilling to hand them over until she had pressed her invitation on him.

‘I’m not much of a church person,’ Lex said.

‘That doesn’t have to matter. We’d make you very welcome.’

Lex shuffled his feet, trying to think of a good excuse.

‘The church is good at caring for people,’ Helen said. ‘You seem sad.’

Lex stepped back. His eyes were fixed on her pale hands, still clutching the biscuits. He remembered how cold they’d been when he first met her.

‘Helen.’

The imperious voice came from an adjacent table. Lex turned and saw an old woman with a hook nose glaring at them.

‘There are other people over here who need to be served,’ the old lady said.

Helen glanced at her, then back at Lex.

‘That’s Mrs Jensen,’ she said quietly. ‘She runs our stall.’

Lex handed her some money.

‘Helen!’ Mrs Jensen again.

‘Thanks,’ Lex said, taking the bag of biscuits.

‘But your change . . .’

‘Keep it.’

It was a good opportunity to escape. Helen’s eyes made him uncomfortable. He didn’t like the feel of them crawling beneath his skin.

She called after him, but he didn’t stop. He saw her come out from behind the stall, weaving through the crowd towards him. It’d be best if he just disappeared. Swiftly, he dodged across a few rows of stalls, then slid behind a vegetable stand and a few tents and stopped by a stall crammed with bright beach paintings—starfish, shells, beach sheds, boats, fish. They were racked up on stands and easels and offered protection from view of the market crowd. He’d be safe here for a while. Then he could slip back through the stalls and go home, where Helen Beck couldn’t hassle him about coming to church.

Trying to appear like a genuine browser, he looked more closely at the paintings. They were fun. He liked the loud colours, the boldness, the intense blues and yellows and reds. A few times he peered out of the stall to check for Helen Beck, then hid himself again in the small protected gallery created by the paintings. Behind the trestle, the stallholder was watching him closely. She was brown-eyed and brown-haired, with a purple tie-dyed scarf twisted over her head. Her face was round and dimpled, and there was a hint of a smile about her mouth.

‘I like your stuff,’ Lex said, buying time.

‘People seem to like it in their beach houses,’ she said. ‘But it’s bread and butter. Not what you’d call real art.’

‘I like it,’ Lex said. ‘The colours are great.’

The girl shrugged. ‘It keeps me off welfare.’

‘Is it that bad making a living around here?’

‘It’s not very lucrative being an artist.’

‘You could move to the city. You’d make a fortune in Sydney.’

The girl smiled. ‘Why would I want to move to the city when I can live here?’

She was observing him with interest. He could see it in her eyes—gently assessing without being intrusive. It was nice to talk to someone.

‘How often do you do these markets?’ he asked, wondering if he might see her again.

‘Every couple of weeks. Sometimes I take a stall at some other markets further south, on the off week, when there’s nothing doing in Merrigan.’

Lex glanced over her paintings again, not sure what to say next. He liked her brown eyes, the warmth about her. There was something appealing about her lack of ambition. He was accustomed to a world where everyone was striving to be something else, to make more money, to accumulate things. Her attitude was different. Simpler.

He flashed a look down the walkway of stalls. And there was Helen Beck. She had seen him and was headed his way. She probably wanted to issue him with another invitation to church. God forbid. Lex didn’t want to face it. He tried to squeeze between the girl’s table and an easel.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘Do you mind? I need to get through.’

‘What?’ She looked alarmed, trying to hold the table steady.

‘I need to get through,’ Lex said.

Glancing behind, he saw that Helen was almost upon them. He pressed past the trestle, catching his foot on the easel and bringing it down. Paintings tumbled everywhere. He should have stopped to help pick them up. But he lurched through the stall, past the girl’s orange Kombi parked at the back of the stand, and slipped into the next row.

Immediately he was angry at himself. What an overreaction! What was this paranoia he had about Helen Beck? Was he really so scared of her that he had to create a disaster trying to escape? Embarrassed, he wandered up the row of stalls and threaded his way back around to where he could see Helen and the girl talking. They had already picked up the paintings and placed them in a couple of piles on the table. Lex noticed that the two women were standing some distance apart. It was obvious they weren’t completely comfortable with each other. Being local didn’t necessarily mean they were friends. He watched them inspect a broken frame together. The girl shook her head and waved Helen’s outstretched hand away. Helen must have offered to fix it for her. That ought to be his job, given that he’d caused all the damage.

Lex waited until Helen had left then slunk back to the girl’s stall. He saw her start when he appeared again and she frowned at him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘You could have stopped to help.’

‘Yes. I’m really sorry.’

She was fiddling with the broken frame, trying to shove the corners back into position around the painting.

‘I could fix that for you,’ he offered.

‘No, it’s okay. I make the frames myself.’

‘I can pay for it. I don’t mind.’

‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll fix it up at home.’ She gave a small smile. ‘That was some desperate escape effort,’ she said. ‘Do you have a problem with Helen Beck?’

Lex shifted uncomfortably and said nothing.

‘She gives me the creeps too,’ the girl said.

‘I should introduce myself,’ he said. ‘My name’s Lex.’

The girl laid the pieces of broken frame aside and was about to introduce herself too when someone else came into the stall and started browsing, a middle-aged woman who asked Lex to move aside so she could see the paintings better.

‘I’d better go,’ Lex said. ‘Are you sure you won’t sell me the painting?’

‘I’ll fix it first. You can pick it up next time.’

‘Here’s fifty dollars.’ Lex put the note on the table.

‘That’s too much.’

‘Call it a damage payment. I’ve caused you enough trouble today.’

She smiled slightly and turned away as the woman asked to see the other paintings, the ones that had fallen off the easel.

Lex turned and walked away. It was the most alive he had felt in weeks.

Five

After the markets, Callista usually went up to Jordi’s for a quiet smoke. There was something therapeutic about going bush after the clutter of town and the market crowds. Jordi’s place was barely a step above camping, but his hut was dry and he had a warm swag, so it was vaguely liveable even in winter. In spring, he moved outdoors and, instead of cooking over the fire within the old stone chimney that sucked up all the heat in winter, he shifted to a campfire. He had a good camp oven their parents had given him, and a sturdy iron tripod, which he set over the fire to hang the billy on. There was nothing better than tea brewed in Jordi’s blackened billy. He had it down to a fine art, knowing exactly when to fling in the handful of tea and remove the billy from the coals.

Callista parked the Kombi just short of the camp and clambered out to the sweet smell of slowly burning wood. A thread of smoke lingered over the camp. Jordi was nowhere to be seen. His clapped-out rusty Landcruiser was just visible further up the hill where the track wound into the higher forest. He might be up there collecting wood. Callista sat down on a sawn log stump away from the drift of the smoke and watched the coals. A lyrebird clacked and chortled across the slope in the tree fern gully. It was higher and wetter here than Callista’s coastal gully, so Jordi had birds that she rarely heard. No wonder he liked it up here. It was all bush except for the patch where the hut stood.

Callista waited a while watching the smoke waft among the eucalypt trunks and up into the crowns, then she gave a loud whistle and flung a coo-ee upslope. There was a sharp whistle in reply. Jordi must be on his way down. Eventually she heard him sniff and spit, and he appeared from behind the hut, his usual raggy, tatty self.

‘Hey there.’

He sat down beside her on a log.

‘Where have you been?’ she asked.

He looked gaunt. She wondered if he’d been eating properly.

‘Looking for bower birds. Heard some calling up there this morning.’

When they were kids, the two of them used to search the bush for bowers, crawling on hands and knees through the scrub, following the distinctive calls of the birds until they stumbled across the tiny courtship stage of woven twigs decorated with anything blue the birds could find: bottle tops, drink straws, rosella feathers.

‘They’ll be fancying up their bower soon,’ Jordi was saying. He had already hooked the billy off the fire and tossed in the tea leaves. ‘I reckon they’ll probably use the old one from last year.’

He poured her a tea in a battered tin mug and they sat quiet for a while. That had been a lot of talk for them. Talk was for town. Up here, they usually just sat together, drinking tea and watching the fire.

Eventually Jordi stood up to fetch his guitar from the hut. Music was always better than talk. It was a comfortable way of just being together, not needing to say anything. He sat down again and picked out a few notes. Callista leaned forward towards the fire and listened, elbows on knees. She loved hearing him play. He came alive, lost his prickliness and that sour look, the disillusionment that alienated him.