Asylum – Part One (cont)

if you missed the beginning of this story go to Asylum – a novel in weekly parts

1.2

A red-gum log burned gently in the wood heater. Leah was watching Days of Our Lives, her week days cleaved by an unfathomable obsession with frothy melodrama. Yvette gazed out the window.  She had no tolerance for her mother’s habit. To her, the soaps were shallow, over-acted, lip-quivering drivel. She couldn’t bring herself to admit she had enough going on inside her to fill an entire series.

Outside, a fierce southerly buffeted the grevilleas and bottle brushes. Leah said she lost a shrub every year. Snaps off right at the base and rolls about like spinifex. Yvette watched the shrubs cower. She felt adrift, her own roots shallow, their grasp in the soil of a stable life tenuous. Her mother’s soap addiction reinforcing feelings of tremendous isolation. Leah was an impossible anchor. She had an astonishing capacity to get on with the practical day-to-day that alienated Yvette at every turn. She’d rather her mother thrashed and flailed like a shrub decapitated by that uncompromising wind. At least now and then. If only she would let down her reserve.

In an effort to relieve her listless mood, Yvette flicked through the local paper that her mother had brought back from her bi-weekly run into the village. When she came to the last pages she scanned the small ads. The Cobargo Hotel needed a cleaner. She felt a swirl of contempt, her life come to this. Yet it was the only listing. In deference to her mother, she waited for the adverts then dialled the number, hoping the job would be cash-in-hand.

A woman answered.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m Yvette Grimm. I’m calling about the cleaning job.’

‘Are you new in town?’

Straight way she knew she was too well-spoken to be a local, too well-spoken to be a cleaner too but she kept those thoughts to herself. ‘I’m Debbie Smith’s sister,’ she said, knowing as she spoke that the claim was an appeal for acceptance.

‘Ah.’ The woman warmed to her. Maybe there was some advantage in being known as Debbie’s sister. She started work the following Thursday.

 

It was a cool and sunny day. Heading for the hotel, Yvette walked down to the village, glancing up the road at the Catholic Church as she crossed the bridge over the creek. Debbie’s farm was a short walk further on. Since her return Debbie had been away visiting her sister-in-law. She’d returned yesterday. And she’d be at home now. Her boys at school. Alan in the paddocks with the cows. The sisterly thing would be to call in after the shift.

She pulled open the heavy wooden door of the hotel and went through to the bar, long and dark with too much tacky chrome. A sickly odour of yesterday’s beer perfumed the air. She nodded at the old man seated on a stool over by the cigarette machine, who gave her a languid smile. Otherwise, the bar was empty.

Before long, a middle-aged woman appeared. She was in her thirties, dressed as if ready for the beach in T-shirt, shorts and thongs, her blonde hair pinned back in a ponytail. ‘G’day,’ she said. ‘You must be Yvette. I’m Brenda.’ She grinned as she gave Yvette a single appraising sweep of her eye. ‘Come with me.’

She followed Brenda across the car park to the cleaner’s storeroom, located in the centre of a row of motel rooms. Brenda talked her through the cleaning procedures, detailed and exacting, and handed her a bunch of keys. ‘Cash all right?’

‘That’s fine.’ Thank god, but already she was sinking at the prospect of the work ahead. The view of the rolling hills and the mountains did nothing to loosen the tightening knot of resistance in her guts.

She wheeled the cleaning trolley from one stuffy, pastel-coloured room to another. She stripped and re-made beds, emptied bins, polished, mopped and vacuumed. She did it all with no enthusiasm whatsoever. She earned ten dollars per room, slave wages, and only by cleaning three rooms per hour did she feel the work remotely close to worthwhile. She hated it. Her back hated it. Her self-esteem sloshed with the grime at the bottom of the mop bucket.

She walked back to her mother’s house without glancing at the road to her sister’s farm.

 

1.3

 

Yvette spent the solstice weeks in a numb haze. She helped in the garden, her mowing lawns, pruning, weeding and harvesting all performed under Leah’s watchful eye, as if she were poised to kill or maim a darling member of the floral kingdom any moment. She soon decided her mother’s passion for gardening was fanatical and unbearably tedious – Who cared if this year’s blooms won first prize in the show?

One afternoon, she could endure the watcher no more and downed tools feigning exhaustion to sit in the warm sun with a sketch book and pencil. She idly traced the lines of a dead tree in the neighbour’s paddock, pathetic efforts, knowing what she was capable of. She missed the luxury of her studio space and ready access to materials at Goldsmiths and the Royal College of Art, luxuries she had taken for granted at the time.

Later, while her mother enjoyed her soaps, she lay on her single bed, isolated and apart. She felt tattered. A teddy bear come apart at the seams. All her stuffing gone. About now she’d have been plump about the belly, all flushed and expectant and busy knitting booties. She met the gaze of the forlorn girl in the print above her bed. Poor little girl. What tragedy wrecked her?

She knew she was wallowing in her gloom. Yet she had latched on to her loss with an unrelenting clasp. She had to let go, she would let go, she was poised to do just that, but not yet. Although even now her dogged sadness had begun to feel ridiculous.

When the living room went silent and she heard the fly screen bang shut she traipsed to the living room and slumped on the sofa. Moments later the fly screen banged again. Yvette didn’t move. Then she sensed her mother standing over her. ‘Cheer up.’

‘I’m all right,’ she said. Leah had no inkling of Yvette’s abortion and Yvette wasn’t about to confide.

‘You haven’t seen Debbie since you arrived.’

‘She knows where I am,’ Yvette said, sourly.

‘She’s waiting for an invitation.’

‘It’s hard. We don’t get on.’ In her mind she was understating the emotional distance that had grown between them. They were estranged, Yvette had decided, having grown attached to the fact that only twice in their ten years apart had she received news directly from her sister and not via their mother, a card announcing the birth of each of her boys. She emitted a heavy sigh but her mother was steadfast, waving a finger in the direction of the telephone. Forcing down her own resistance, Yvette swung her legs to the floor. Satisfied, her mother went outside.

With no expectation of anything beneficial arising from this coerced reunion, Yvette lifted the receiver and stabbed the numbers on the keypad. A female voice answered.

‘Hi. It’s Yvette,’ she said, flatly

‘Yvette! How are you?’

‘Good. And you?’

‘Great to hear your voice. Welcome back!’

‘Thanks.’

They chatted about the old times Yvette didn’t care to remember, of their childhood days in Perth, teenage years in London. After what seemed an eon of small talk, she succumbed to an impulse to be convivial and invited Debbie over for coffee.

The following afternoon she watched an old Holden ute buck and bounce down the long dirt track, pulling up beside the machinery shed. A figure of average build, dressed in baggy pants and a sky-blue T-shirt, walked in strides towards the house with the easy-going gait of the Australian country woman. Yvette knew the woman was Debbie but strained to recognise in her the Debbie she’d grown up with – a cute, freckle-faced, impish girl with a self-conscious smile. She looked to Yvette now like every other twenty-something woman in the area, totally lacking in style. Her hair was long and brown and shapelessly cut. The T-shirt hung limply from her bust, the pants, on closer inspection, were pilling and the fawn crocs she sported to complete her outfit looked like foot boats. Yet her smile was warm, her brown eyes seemed genuine and Yvette softened in her company.

They sat in the garden on the north side of the house, sheltering from the cold southerly wind. Leah waved from the veranda and offered to make tea. She returned five minutes later with two mugs and a plate of Monte Carlos.

‘Why don’t you join us?’ Yvette said, suddenly craving relief from the intimacy of just the two of them.

Leah mumbled something about needing to clean the house. Yvette knew it was an excuse. The house was immaculate.

Debbie took a few sips of her tea before continuing to blether on about her two boys with that familiar need to prove her worth chiming with every comment. She glowed over their achievements at school – A merit award for this, a merit award for that, how good Peter was in the junior soccer team, the terrific progress Simon was making with the violin and how marvellous it was that they were both in the school choir performing at next year’s folk festival held at the Showground. Choir? At a folk festival? Forgetting she once loved to sing, Yvette couldn’t imagine any pursuit more cringe-worthy. She couldn’t countenance being part of anything amateur and looked down from an absurdly high height at anyone, young or old, who did.

She stared absently at the distant hills doing her best to be polite while fending off jealousy over the doting interest Debbie took in her boys. Her sister hadn’t the conversational grace to ask about the last decade of her life. But then again, it was probably better Debbie didn’t know how far her sister had drifted from their mother’s upright morality. Campus adventures as she limped from one boyfriend to the next. Then in Malta, where she’d taken unconventionality to a precipice with her flirtations in the iniquitous underworld of drugs and crime. It had been easy to do. Too easy. Easy to keep the truth from them too. Her letters contained the veneer of her studies at Art School then her site-seeing escapades with her best friend Josie and their glorious life in the sun. And as for her mother and sister, neither visited her once in that whole ten years. Not once.

A pair of parrots, splendidly red and green, perched on the bird table, chortling to each other. Yvette raised a hand to slide her hair behind her ears and they flew away. She was wondering how to divert her sister’s attention from her offspring when Debbie set her mug at her feet and said, ‘I dreamt about you last night.’ Her tone had an intimate ring. ‘You were standing on my veranda in a long red dress, with a gorgeous young man beside you.’

‘What happened?’

Debbie blushed. She seemed awkward. ‘Nothing,’ she said, averting her gaze. ‘But I had a strong sense you were meant to be together.’

The wind gusted from the south, blowing a shaft of Yvette’s hair in her face. She smoothed a hand across her cheek, feeling in her belly an echo of the childhood thrill of teasing her sister. She sat on the edge of her seat and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘That’s weird.’ She widened her eyes. ‘Maybe it’s a premonition.’

‘Don’t.’

‘It’s a coincidence at least.’ Yvette relished in the game. Debbie had always been easily spooked. ‘A psychic read my palm before I left Malta. I was in a nightclub and an old woman with leathery skin and a mystical look in her eyes took hold of my hand. She said I would meet the father of my children before I was thirty.’ And as she spoke, the words took on a potency they had lacked before that moment. As if in the telling she was imbuing the prophecy with all the significance of the cosmos.

‘She was probably drunk,’ Debbie said.

‘She wasn’t. She was emphatic. She grabbed my arm and told me he was definitely not the man I was with.’

‘Carlos?’

‘Carlos.’

‘She got that part right.’

‘What would you know?’ Yvette said, sharply.

‘Sorry.’

Their mother’s tortoiseshell cat flopped down at their feet and arched her back.

‘Maybe I was meant to come to Australia to find him.’ Her voice had gone all misty.

‘Who?’

‘The father of my children.’

She knew it was ludicrous but the prediction had suddenly given her hope. Although she couldn’t imagine encountering an Australian man she’d find desirable. None of the Aussie men she’d met had charisma, mystique or originality. They looked generic, they sounded generic and they were all into sport.

 

1.4

 

She was sitting in the living room, teasing her cuticles to better show the half-moons. Leah was glued to The Young and the Restless. The phone rang. ‘You answer it,’ her mother said without moving her eyes from the screen.

Yvette picked up the receiver expecting to hear her sister’s voice. Debbie was the only person who dared call during the daily soap-opera marathon. Instead, Yvette heard a heavily-accented male voice asking to speak to her. It was Carlos. Passion bolted through her. She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor with her knees drawn to her chest. She wasn’t even sure she could speak. ‘Ciao,’ she managed.

‘Ciao, il mio amore.’

She was silent. He called her his love but she knew there was no substance to the words. He didn’t love her. He didn’t know how to love her. He didn’t have it in him to love anyone but himself. But she couldn’t stop her guts somersaulting.

‘Sono qui,’ he said, adding, slowly, in accented English, ‘The Gold Coast.’

He was here?

‘Yvette. Venga con me.’

Go with him? ‘No. Non posso.’ She had to resist.

‘Ho bisogno di te.’

He needed her? ‘Mi dispiace,’ she said.

‘Per favore.’

Why was he persisting?

‘Ti prego l’autobus,’ he said.

‘No. Non ho soldi Carlos.’

‘Yvette. Ti amo.’

‘Non ho soldi.’ She felt limp. Her excuse of poverty matched his assignation of love. Both vacuous.

She wanted to run to him, badly, wanted to spend her whole life by his side, live in his house, birth a gaggle of his babies, be immersed forevermore in the culture she loved. Instead, she hung up the phone wishing she’d never given him her mother’s number then slouched on the sofa with a hard lump in her throat, knowing it was going to be hard to exorcise that man from her heart.

 

1.5

 

Debbie called as the credits rolled on the last soap of the day and invited Yvette to a friend’s house for dinner. ‘You’ll like Tracy. She’s an artist. She’s your type.’

Yvette doubted it. She couldn’t imagine any of Debbie’s friends being her type. ‘Thanks for thinking of me. But…’

‘I’ll pick you up at five.’

‘What about Alan and the boys?’

‘Alan’s taking them on a scout camp.’

She didn’t feel like going, preferring the familiarity of her misery. Yet she couldn’t think of a way to decline so she agreed and hung up the phone.

‘Who was that?’ Leah said, switching off the television.

‘Debbie.’ She went on to explain the invitation.

‘It’ll do you good,’ Leah said.

She wasn’t convinced.

She didn’t bother to change out of the old jeans she wore as a teenager and the baggy red jumper which had become as symbolic to her as Lionus’ blanket. When she heard Debbie’s ute, she left her mother watching the news, catching a glimpse of the wreckage of a boat washed up on a beach by a wild sea, the voice-over announcing at least twenty-two asylum seekers dead in the capsize. She paused then went outside, barely absorbing what she’d seen. In Malta, boat arrivals from Somalia were a frequent occurrence, never to a warm reception; the Maltese government claiming with good foundation that the island was in the front line and if they didn’t impose a deterrent the floodgates would open. Yvette had been as indifferent then as she was now, too busy with the travails of her own life to care much about the lives of others.

Instead, as she opened the passenger door she wondered how her mother coped with her small and dreary life. How she would never, ever, end up living like that.

‘Hi sis. So pleased to have you back,’ Debbie said fondly. ‘Truly I am.’

‘Thanks.’ She forced a smile.

‘How are you finding it here? Bit of a change from your old life eh?’

‘It’s strange.’ She couldn’t help sounding distant.

Debbie threw the gearstick into reverse and hit the accelerator, the ute lunging backwards towards their mother’s rose bed. She braked, changed gear and hit the accelerator again, the ute charging through the paddock, juddering over the cattle grid and bumping over every rut and pothole in the track.

‘You’ll get used to it,’ Debbie said. Was she referring to her driving or Australia? Right now it was hard to decide which was the more precarious.

Debbie slowed as they neared the highway, making a right turn and cruising down the smooth tarmac to the village. ‘Maybe you’ll settle down.’

Yvette didn’t speak. They crawled through the village, Debbie accelerating hard up the hill on the other side. ‘Do you think you’ll stay here?’

‘I doubt it.’

This time Debbie made no comment.

Yvette stared out the window at the scenery: the majesty of the mountain to the north that presided over the landscape like a benevolent mother, now silhouetted against a darkening sky; the red gums and apple gums casting long shadows over undulating farmland; the granite outcrops and the cute weatherboard farm houses; and the mountains to the west slumbering beneath a wide band of soft apricot.

About five kilometres on, after a sharp bend to the left, Debbie told her to look out for a flitch-clad shack perched on a hill.

‘Nearly there,’ she said brightly.

‘So how do you know Tracy?’

‘She’s a voluntary scripture teacher at the primary school. She taught Buddhism to Peter and Simon.’

Debbie swung by the carcass of an old fridge and a rusty milk urn propped on its side on a trifurcated log and hurtled up a long and liberally cratered driveway.

Tracy greeted them at the door. She was a stocky and weather-beaten woman with wild black hair. Dressed in a baggy, striped jumper hanging loosely beneath paint-spattered dungarees, either the sort of artist who liked to throw paint around or inept at her craft. She led them into a poorly-lit room that smelled strongly of Nag Champa. Once Yvette’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, her senses were assailed. The room was filled with drab and grungy furniture. Two battered-looking sofas faced each other across a low-lying coffee table littered with magazines and ashtrays. Propped on an easel to the left was a large canvas streaked in black and grey acrylic, with a half-formed figure of a girl, open-mouthed and clutching her face in her hands. Tracy’s interpretation of an Edvard Munch. It was ghastly. To the right was the kitchen, partitioned from the rest of the room by a red-gum bench strewn with dirty cups and plates. In the centre of the room a fire glowed in a wood heater.

‘This is a charming house,’ Yvette said with contrived enthusiasm, scanning the clutter of books, papers and junk piled on shelves, tables and chairs.

‘It is,’ a man’s voice said. She peered into the room and made out the figure of a man coming through a far doorway. Tall, with dark hair, his lean torso defined in a tight T-shirt, eyes hidden behind a pair of black-framed sunglasses. Sensing she’d been set up, she was intrigued. She picked her way through Tracy’s clutter and held out her hand.

‘Hi. I’m Yvette.’

‘I know.’ He removed his sunglasses and looked at her intently, a smile lighting his face. She felt herself blushing.

‘Yvette, this is Terry,’ Tracy called from the kitchen. ‘Terry Ford,’ she added, as if his full name would mean something. It didn’t, but the man before Yvette suddenly did. He had a broad, rugged face, with thin lips and deep-set brown eyes. Behind him, she noticed chinks of twilight filtering through gaps in the flitches. Immediately, he became the subject of a Gainsborough, a nobleman of the seventeen hundreds bedecked in rustic finery, a crosscut saw held proudly to his chest like a hunting pistol.

‘Take a seat,’ Tracy said, pointing at the sofa. ‘Dinner won’t be long.’

‘I’ll give you a hand,’ said Debbie.

The sofa was little more than a fat man’s armchair. Yvette perched on the edge of one cushion with her knees pressed together. Terry lounged on the other with his arms straddling the backrest. His knee brushed against her thigh.

‘Tracy tells me you’ve just arrived in Australia.’

‘I was living in Malta.’

‘Named after the cross?’

They both laughed.

‘It would be the other way round.’

‘Er Malta? My geography is failing me.’

She could hardly believe his ignorance.

‘Malta is about a hundred kilometres off the coast of Sicily,’ she said, wondering at once if he even knew the whereabouts of that island. Perhaps the mention of Italy might have been more helpful. She was instantly wistful, recalling the ancient cities, the honey-coloured stone, the turquoise of the sea. She pictured Carlos’ house, the flat roof, the old stone walls and shuttered windows. And she yearned for Malta, the rugged landscape, the uninhibited freedom of her life there.

‘What were you doing there?’

What to say? Artist? Too vague. Mafia mole? – Too exotic.

‘Market trader. I sold my hand-made jewellery.’ Multi-coloured necklaces and earrings made from plaited thread. She thought of the pursuit, even at the time, as her hippy phase and no doubt her response conjured in Terry’s mind an image of a barefooted nymphette with braided hair found in abundance in Kuta. Still, the handicraft sold well. And he seemed satisfied.  ‘And you?’ she added, keen to steer the conversation away from her.

‘I’m an artist. A leather sculptor.’

‘Fascinating,’ she said with enthusiasm, privately regretting she’d chosen to portray herself in such a common-place if exotic fashion.

‘You have to see his work, Yvette,’ Tracy said, handing her a glass of red wine. ‘He’s a genius.’

A genius? Yvette stifled a smile. She couldn’t imagine anyone living in this sleepy backwater as anything other than a hick.

Tracy passed round hunks of bread and plates of bean stew. Then she raised her glass with a, ‘Cheers,’ and slugged her wine before sitting down with Debbie on the opposite sofa. The others reached for their glasses in reply.

Tracy and Debbie engaged in small talk as they nibbled through their food. Terry ate with gusto. Yvette forked from the edges of the mound on her plate, no longer hungry. Terry’s presence was making her oddly nervous. He had an allure about him yet she wasn’t sure she found him all that attractive. He wasn’t her type. Surely he couldn’t be the fulfilment of the palm-reader’s prophecy. Besides, she thought, glancing at her sister, you can’t force fate.

Leaving Tracy and Debbie to the dishes, she followed Terry outside. The air was still and crisp. She gazed at the stars in the sharp, moonless vault of sky, struck by the luminosity and the depth of black, the void.

Terry was rolling a cigarette. ‘Tracy tells me you came here on a holiday visa.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you’re planning to stay?’

‘I’m going to try.’

‘Good luck,’ he said, doubtfully.

‘Yeah, thanks.’

‘Lucky you came by plane.’

She frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

He took a drag on his cigarette and inhaled, deeply. ‘If you’d come by boat you’d be in detention on some mosquito-infested island, sweating it out for months if not years.’

An image of the capsized boat flashed into her mind. ‘I’m not a refugee,’ she said, coolly.

‘No. Of course not.’

They stood together in the silence, broken only by the forceful exhale of his smoke-infused breath. Then by a rustle coming from a pile of old timber stacked beside a shed. In the darkness she made out the shadowy figure of a cat slinking towards a copse of trees. She looked back at Terry whose face was tilted heavenwards. Aware of her gaze, he smiled, and with the heel of his shoe he stubbed out his cigarette on a patch of bare earth.

‘Would you like to see my studio?’ he said, casually.

‘Sounds great.’

‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’

He didn’t ask for her number.

 

1.6

 

One blustery morning in the following week, Yvette drove to the coast in her mother’s station wagon. She was due at Terry’s studio at eleven. It was a pleasant drive through a picturesque landscape, the mountain always to her left, wattle trees dotted here and there in full bloom, but she couldn’t admire it. Running through her mind in a replay loop was the knowledge that Debbie and her mother had colluded and Tracy had been in on the whole thing. The situation was a sham and she could scarcely believe she was going through with it.

When she reached Bermagui she was a welter of emotion. Once an isolated fishing village sheltering in a deep bay guarded by the mountain to the north, the town had become a desirable tourist and early-retirement destination, particularly for those wealthy enough to own a boat. Yvette drove across a long bridge, glimpsing a pelican crouched on a post at the edge of the choppy waters of the lagoon. She passed the yachts nestling in the marina, the sandwich boards stacked like dominoes near a polling station displaying the smiling faces of wanna-be and soon-to-be has-been Federal politicians vying for power with vacuous promises feeling pleased she couldn’t vote, and, as she neared Terry’s studio, squat on a low rise, a row of shops housed in plain concrete buildings with garish facades that mocked the mountain, the shimmering ocean and the creamy sands of the bay. Main Street, pandering to the battery of holidaymakers, whale watchers, nature lovers and sports fishermen, who occupied the town through the summer. Across the road, beneath the shade of palms and sturdy Norfolk Pines, play equipment, benches, picnic tables and a toilet block were scattered along a tongue of lawn separated from the beach by a narrow strip of dunes. Now the park was empty. No children scampering about, whizzing back and forth on swings or hanging upside-down on monkey bars, no dogs sniffing and straining on leads, no parents pushing strollers, slathering their young in sunscreen or spreading out blankets in the shade. Even the seagulls, starved of unwanted chips, had flown back out to sea.

Terry’s studio was in a café at the end of the parade of shops, situated between a motel and a hairdressing salon. The café was closed for the season. He’d told Yvette to pull up in the car park at the far end of the lawn. She stuffed her sketch-book into her bag and opened the drivers-side door. One foot on the tarmac and a squall buffeted the car, threatening to slam the door on her thigh. She leaned her shoulder against the door and battled it ajar as she stood. Wanting to regain her composure, she walked to the dunes and stared at the waves walloping the shore, grateful for the breadth of golden sand between her and that unbridled water.

Terry opened the café door before she knocked. He must have seen her arrive. He stood squarely in the doorway, blocking her entry. A heady mix of solvents and the rich smell of leather wafted outside. She was self-conscious and still filled with misgivings. A blast of wind pushed her forward and he took the opportunity to offer her a welcoming hug. ‘Hi,’ he said, and another part of her wanted to fall into his arms.

She followed him into a vestibule and through a set of glass doors. His studio took up about half the café’s eating area, a cavernous space with an industrial-grey floor, white-washed walls and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the ocean. Tables pushed against the walls were strewn end-to-end with leather in various shades of brown, from narrow strips to whole hides. Terry led her to his workbench, cluttered with scraps of leather and an array of hand tools.

‘I’ll just finish up,’ he said without apology.

She watched him cut a swatch of leather. He had an industrious manner about him, focused and serious. Even so, she wondered if his apparent busyness were not contrived.

‘How did you get into leather sculpting?’

‘I used to be a saddle maker before I attended the Canberra School of Art.’ He paused. ‘There I became inspired by the work of Rex Lingwood.’

‘Rex Lingwood?’

‘The master leather sculptor.’

Without looking up from his bench, he described at length the processes of working with leather, the wetting, moulding and stretching, gluing, carving and polishing. Then he wiped his hands on a rag and passed her an arty magazine folded open at a review of leather sculpting.

She scanned the article then wandered around the room. A stack of large squares of plywood leaned against a wall. A few half-finished pieces that didn’t draw her in. Then she noticed a finished piece leaning against the far wall. Mounted on a large rectangle of black-painted plywood was the three-dimensional form of a winged human torso. She was genuinely impressed. ‘Wow!’ she said, loudly.

Terry looked up. ‘It’s for a gallery in Sydney.’

‘It’s extraordinary.’

‘It’s Eros.’

‘The god of sexual desire.’

‘The god of passion.’

Terry’s artistic mastery unexpectedly stabbed at her own creativity. Cast in his light, she had little ambition. The jewellery she made in Malta didn’t qualify. And her incomplete sketches of the dead and limbless tree in the neighbour’s paddock weren’t even dabbling. She felt like a dilettante. She hadn’t done more than dangle a pencil nib in artistic waters since she’d arrived in Australia. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to. She’d lost her passion, her creativity shrivelled like a prune. She was a directionless fool. She wondered if in her, the light of Eros shone dimly. But that couldn’t be true. Her passion for Carlos was intense.

Terry grabbed his leather satchel and car keys. ‘Sorry about that. Now, I’m all yours.’

She was silent. She hadn’t a clue what to say to him.

‘Would you like to come back to my place?’

She hesitated. ‘I’ll have to let my mother know when I’ll be back.’

‘You are an adult, Yvette.’

‘She’ll worry.’

Terry and a male friend shared an A-frame cottage built on a steep slope on the outskirts of town. She walked up a wooden staircase to the front door. Terry followed close behind. The northern side of the house was elevated, with a veranda looking out at tall gum trees. Inside, an open-plan living area led on to the bedrooms.

 

1.7

 

On the days she wasn’t cleaning motel rooms she drove to Terry’s studio. After that first visit she left her sketch book behind. Without it she was idle and listless. She watched Terry work. She sat on the end of a table and swung her legs. She flicked through his arty magazines until boredom drove her outside to wander about in the park and on the beach, kicking sand and collecting shells. Sometimes she stood at the waterline in awe of the heaving plain of sapphire, the crash and the quick suck of the waves. When she felt brave she dipped her toes in the spume.

At lunchtime she went down the street to the bakery for two meat pies. Terry loved meat pies. She didn’t. She slipped into the supermarket for fruit.

She’d become curiously attached to her waif-like figure. She found her size empowering. Terry liked her thin too, but for an altogether different reason. He said her shape was perfect. He would cup his hands over her breasts murmuring in her ear that more than a handful was a waste. He would squeeze her buttocks, smooth his palms across her flat tummy and circle her wrist with his thumb and forefinger. When he whispered he loved her, she was sure he only meant her body.

Which explains why with Terry she didn’t enjoy sex. It couldn’t be because he smelled of meat pies. She wasn’t that fickle. And there could be no other reason for her lack of desire for him. He had a great physique. He was bright, witty and chatty. And his love was a salve for her wounded heart. But she didn’t connect with him. Her body was numb. Terry had no idea. She pretended to respond. She groaned over his caresses. She threw her head back and gasped to convince him that he satisfied her, every time.

And she lied when she told him that she loved him.

 

Terry owned a forty-acre bush block in the foothills of a nearby mountain. One warm spring day when the wind was still, he suggested Yvette might like to take a look. Ten minutes into the trip she’d lost confidence in Australian driving standards. Whoever had granted Terry a licence was either unimaginably lax or nuts. Terry spent more time looking at her than the road. He drove too fast. He held the steering wheel at six o’clock with his left hand, over-steering and veering first towards the hard shoulder and then, bumping over cat’s eyes, to the wrong side of the highway. Seeing her grip her seat he patted her thigh and said, ‘Trust me. I haven’t trashed a car yet.’

Yet?

Leaving the highway, he headed up a dirt road that wound through the gullies and spurs of the mountain. Terry jerked his way round potholes, skidded over corrugations and charged along on the wrong side of the road. When he lurched into a bend and fish tailed out the other side, she gasped.

Terry laughed. ‘You’re safe.’

She didn’t feel the slightest bit safe. She might be a risk taker but this was not the sort of risk she had in mind.

They pulled up in a small clearing beside a roofless mud-brick hut. Before she opened the passenger-side door she wiped the sweat from her palms. She felt like a marionette with its strings caught in a fan.

Terry took her hand and led her onto a rustic wooden deck. She poked her head through one of the window cavities. There were no interior walls. The floor was a crisscross of bearers and joists.

‘What do you think?’ he said, grinning.

She was dumbfounded. Mustering enthusiasm she said, ‘Awesome,’ privately hoping this wasn’t leading where she thought.

She withdrew her head and looked around. The place was spooky. The forest of gum trees overshadowed the house, their writhen branches bearing down like witch’s fingers.

‘I dreamt about you last night,’ Terry said. ‘You were standing right here in a long red dress like a fairy-tale princess. I stood beside you holding your hand.’

She felt a ripple of alarm mingled with disbelief. Debbie’s dream was almost identical. ‘How romantic,’ she said, masking her unease.

‘I’ll be your handsome prince.’ He lifted her face to his. ‘And marry you.’

She didn’t answer. They’d only known each other a few weeks.

‘You’re vulnerable,’ he went on. ‘You need someone to protect you.’

What gave him that idea? He hadn’t fallen in love with her. He was enamoured with a babe-in-the-woods fantasy. The knight on a steed set to rescue the distressed damsel. She’d be an extension of his ego. It was madness. But she felt herself yielding. He was a nice man, a good man, proud but sincere. He’d never hurt her in the way Carlos had. Could she force herself to love a man she had no feelings for?

 

Back at home Yvette sat with her arms folded tightly across her chest, hands gripping flesh. She stared out the window at the mountains in the distance, furious that her mother and sister had colluded to influence her life. They had no right to interfere. The root of her reasoning was the loss of her unborn child. She wanted desperately to replace the baby she aborted, was urged to abort, by Carlos. And she would never risk having Terry’s child. He’d told her he dumped his last girlfriend because her post-childbirth stomach was not to his liking. She’d had a caesarean. He said he couldn’t fancy a woman unless her stomach was pancake-flat. What sort of man thinks that? – Surely not the fulfilment of the palm-reader’s prophecy. She draped a protective arm across her tummy and resolved to bring the relationship, and the conniving, to an end.

 

1.8

 

Without Terry in her life she was restless again. She couldn’t countenance a whole summer cleaning motel rooms. One afternoon, she was sitting on the floor trying not to engage with Days of Our Lives when her phone rang. It was Thomas, her friend from London who’d moved to Perth in July to be with his boyfriend. She’d met Thomas at a Noah and the Whale concert in Notting Hill six years earlier. It was her final year of her Masters. After the support band had left the stage and they were waiting for the main act they struck up a conversation about David Hockney.  Thomas had that day browsed the artist’s works at the Tate. He seemed eccentric yet kind and they’d remained friends ever since.

After catching up on his new life down under, she was reticent and vague when he asked her where she was.

‘Australia? I thought you were in Bali.’

‘Long story. I finished with Carlos. I’m here on a holiday visa.’ She went on to explain her circumstances as succinctly as she could and excluding the abortion.

‘But you’re an Aussie. Dual citizenship or something.’

‘Afraid not.’

‘A holiday visa? You’ll have one hell of a job gaining residency.’

‘I know.’

‘You’ll have to find someone to marry.’

‘Not you as well. That’s what my mother is saying.’

‘She’s right. It’s common knowledge.’ He paused. ‘So where exactly are you, geographically speaking.’

‘New South Wales.’

‘Well, fancy that! We’re neighbours.’

‘Hardly,’ she said, wondering if he even knew where New South Wales was.

‘We could be.’ He told her he’d just purchased a one-bedroom unit in a suburb close to the city centre.

‘I’d love to visit. The farm is, well…’ she glanced at her mother to make sure she wasn’t listening. She wasn’t. ‘Intolerably dull.’

‘Why don’t you move here?’

‘To Perth?’

‘You can stay in my old flat until the lease runs out.’

After ten years apart, did she really want to sever her relationship with her mother again by putting the width of the continent between them? The only other comment the palm reader had made was that Yvette would do better far from her family. Yvette had dismissed the remark at the time but after recent events, she couldn’t agree more.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘When shall I come?’

‘As soon as you like.’

She waited for the credits to roll and Leah had disappeared outside before she switched on Leah’s computer and researched the cheapest route. She booked the bus to Melbourne and a one-way plane ticket to Perth. She left in four days. A quick check of her inbox – there was nothing but junk – then she went outside and wandered around the garden, finding her mother picking broad beans.

‘Mum.’

‘Yes?’ Her mother didn’t look up.

‘I’m moving to Perth.’

Leah shoed away a curious bee with a soft flick of her hand, then carried on picking beans. ‘Perth?’ she said. ‘Why Perth?’

Yvette explained as the colander filled with bean pods.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I can’t stay here, Mum.’

‘You’re not happy, that’s obvious.’

‘I’ll miss you.’

‘I’ll miss you.’

‘At least it’s not half way round the world this time.’

‘Just a whole continent.’

‘You can visit.’

‘Well, good luck.’

She trailed her mother inside and helped shell the beans, wondering if she could ever face coming back to this sleepy, isolated backwater where her family, for a reason that remained inexplicable, had chosen to play out their miniscule lives.

 

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