Blue Skies (7 page)

‘Oh, for sure.'

On the night of the sad domestic drama, he unexpectedly ground to a stop with a crash of gears and a scream of static from his transistor. He switched it off. Eerie night noises started up in the bush.

‘How about it then?'

‘What?'

‘How about it then?'

‘How about what then?'

‘How about that then? You know.' He gestured with his greasy head towards the long back seat of the bus, leering prettily. ‘No one ever comes along here, this time of night. Or I could pull off the road behind them trees, if you'd rather.'

I don't remember it clearly. A lot of free-range eggs didn't make it to the breakfast table that morning. I was covered with chicken feathers, egg yolk and news print when I got back to town. I tried to get some of it off in the taxi going home. I didn't attempt the news print. most of it was it was in places that didn't show.

I always took a taxi home from the rank opposite the GPO, it being too late for a bus. I left the cab at the top of the road and tiptoed down to collect Angelica. I could never tiptoe enough, though. The voice usually sprang out of the darkness just as my cautious toes left the top step and my anxious fingers curled round the fly-screen door. The bloody thing squeaked.

‘Did you have a good day, my dear?'

‘Yes, thank you. Did you? Was she good?'

‘Oh, of course she was good, the little darling. We had a lovely time. We went to the beach this afternoon. I do so love to show the pretty little thing off.'

‘Oh good. I'm glad everything was all right.'

‘James came round. Well, he was hungry and I expect the poor boy was a bit lonely. He had dinner here with me and we watched television together—I did enjoy that. He left a couple of hours ago. He must be wondering what's happened to you, my dear.'

‘He does it on purpose,' I confided to the baby as we trailed homewards. She slept peacefully on, as did her father until we reached home. He awoke the second the fly-screen door squeaked.

‘Like mother, like son,' I told the baby. She smiled sweetly in her sleep. I wheeled her into her room and left her in the pram rather than risk waking her by lifting her out into her bassinet. As soon as the motion of the pram stopped she whimpered. I flipped her over on to her tummy, kissed the furry back of her head and turned to do my tiptoeing act out of the room. Daddy stood smiling sleepily in the doorway. He looked fuzzy at the edges, dark brown with sleep.

‘I've got to oil that bloody fly-wire door,' he said. ‘Remind me. I'll try and do it tomorrow. Might as well go round and do Mum's at the same time. Have a go at that bloody pram too, while I'm at it.'

‘Good idea,' I said. ‘Why didn't you bring Angelica back with you from your mother's tonight?'

‘Well, I knew you'd be going there anyway. You weren't expecting me to collect her, were you? Although you know I would, don't you? I don't mind. Any time. You've only got to ask.'

He stepped aside so that I could pass by him out of Angelica's room. He was big and soft, with lots of shiny dark brown hair. His eyes and mouth filled his face; both were much too big for aesthetic balance.

He seemed fascinated by something on the floor. ‘Your feet are filthy,' he murmured.

I took a shower. And so to bed.

When James was back asleep I unravelled myself and got up. The chance to go forth babyless to the beach was too good to miss. Husband, wife and child asleep under one roof seemed one person too many: security goes in twos.

Approaching the rise in the road I saw that the sky behind it had a peculiar back-lit orange quality, like the setting for some show that was about to start. It was the dawn, and I reached the beach in time to see it. I tried to ignore it. Dawns are too theatrical for me, and this one looked particularly stage-managed, with every conceivable overdone effect. After the sun had squeezed its way out of the invisible slit between the sea and sky, the water flushed momentarily red, as if covered with a slick of afterbirth. Later, when it settled down, the light was violet-coloured, and the sea and sky glowed gently like the inside of an oyster shell when wet. The air was clean and fresh, like your mouth after toothpaste. A new start.

Someone had put up a swing. It stood there at the top of the scraggy-grassed slope to the beach, with its dark institutional-green tubular iron frame, bright new chains and plain wooden seat. It was a well-made and official-looking swing, clearly the work of the local authority. I stared at it. Small pains started in my head, one behind each ear: anger and guilt. ‘Take my eyes off you for one day,' I screamed at the beach, ‘and look what happens.' My voice shrilled high and horrible, running along in both directions and bouncing back off the end rocks in stereophonic fury. The sound met in the middle of my head, and the pain overwhelmed me. I had to sit down, and so I sat on the swing. Back it went, then forward, a seductive swing. My toes, reverting instinctively to childhood, kicked hard into the dust and met the ground at just the right place in the swing's backward arc to make it swing the more. The seat warmed against my skin. I pulled up my skirt and snuggled my bottom against the smooth grainy wood, wrapping my hand in the chains and hanging by the wrists in a rush of air. I closed my eyes; my head fell back. I recognised the signs. Swing rape. Desperate to get away I tore my wrists free and jumped. My knees were grazed, my legs cut by the coarse grass. My wrists were scraped and bruised from the chains. They hurt badly as circulation returned, and blood formed little bead bracelets round my ankles, where the grass had wrapped and cut. Sitting down in the dust, propped up against one iron leg of the swing, I watched as each little blood bead grew until it became too distended to contain itself. One by one the beads overflowed and trickled down, tiny red ribbons round a maypole. I picked up a sharp-edged stone, which looked useful—a tool: a long-dead Aboriginal hunter's weapon. I jabbed its sharp point into the swing's leg, but nothing happened. The paint was too thick, all its molecules bound tightly together, impervious and permanent. I turned my weapon on its side, and scraped down hard on the paint. A curl of colour came onto the stone. I scraped down hard again. A thin layer of the swing's paint skin clung onto my stone. Again and again I scraped down, my teeth grinding with effort. Layer on layer of paint came away. The paint on my stone was thicker than the paint on the swing. The steel bone lay exposed—just a small piece. I rubbed the exposed area with my finger. It glittered faintly. The sunlight was getting stronger. Tiny flecks of green paint clung on my sweaty fingers. I picked each green morsel off with the point of my tongue, and it tasted bitter and dangerous. Lead poisoning. I recalled sad old newspaper tales of dead infants still and cold in their playpens, mouths smeared with colour from lead-painted toys, and I tried to spit it out, but couldn't. Paint is persistent: it does its job and clings to surfaces to which it is applied. Why worry? I had just decided to have a go at another leg of the swing when a dog barked close by. A man and dog walked along the shore, and I straightened up from my kneeling position beside the swing. My legs were a streaky mess of blood, sweat and dust. Man and dog turned and came towards me up the beach. I shielded the wounded swing with my body. My fingers closed around the stone.

‘Are you all right, miss?' His first words of the day, they seemed, rumbling up from his sleep-stilled stomach. ‘Has there been an accident?' He blinked around the deserted, still misty, horizon, as if looking for a possible cause. Under my astonished gaze the mists rolled back, revealing an entire invasion fleet of warships, with guns pointed at the defenceless shore. Just as quickly they vanished. The scene played on. I suddenly felt very tired.

‘No, not really. I fell off the swing. Silly thing to do. I never could resist a swing.' I tried convincing him with a matching silly-girl smile. My face was too tired to make the effort. I glared at him instead. He glared back and walked on.

I put the stone in my pocket and walked down to the water. The sand was starting to warm; individual gritty crystals glinted slyly between my toes. I walked into the sea up to my knees, and the cold saltiness of it stung antiseptically in all the tiny weals and cuts. I scooped it up it against my face until I became calm and composed. Time to go home. Lines of glistening white shells edged the shoreline in a frothy lace cuff. I picked up a handful and put them in my pocket with the stone. The sand felt hotter under my sea-chilled feet as I walked up the beach; the day was beginning. The dog ran back towards me, a shaggy black cannon ball which swelled as it got closer and rushed past me and up the slope to the swing. Skidding to a stop, it lifted its leg and pissed all over my handiwork. At least the dog had noticed.

I walked home. It was slightly later than I supposed. The paperboy raced down the street on his bike, hurling newspapers at all the front doors. He was a good shot: rolled-up parcels ricocheted in all directions thumping onto the wood verandahs, landing in dust clouds in the parched front gardens. Seeing me approaching, he threw a paper at my head, the greatest fast bowler around.

‘Gooday Missus. Up early, aintcha?' For some reason he winked suggestively. Gripping his bucking bike between his brown bony knees, he prepared to throw my neighbour's newspaper onto her front lawn. Its mangy back seemed to quiver in anticipation of the assault. As it hit, a few blades of defeated grass lost their grip on the earth, flew upwards, fell back to earth and died, and a soft collective sigh of wounded grass filled my ears. I waited till the boy had gone. The street was still again. My neighbour's venetian blinds remained tight shut. Inside the house she slept on, dreaming perhaps of pampered croquet pitches, well-kept golfing greens and camomile lawns in a world without water restrictions. I took the shells from my pocket and threw them over the miniature ranch-style fence.

Angelica still slept through a great deal of the day. That day I would do the same, avoiding the horrors of three-in-the-afternoon and the flatness that sometimes came with Friday.

James was in the kitchen perched on a stool at what was described in the furniture catalogues as a breakfast bar. It had a white formica top with silver flecks in it.

James was not eating breakfast. He was propped on his stool in a dream, swaying and drooping slightly like a parched flower, his head hanging limp. His hair brushed the white and silver surface, and I saw that he was reading a book. He looked tired and pale—a little unglued.

‘The phone's been ringing. It's been ringing since Christ knows when. It woke me up. It was scarcely light first time.' He groaned and rubbed his eyes. They seemed to smear all over his face.

‘Who was it?' I asked. Breathless ladies in payphones were forever ringing him up. It made me cross, because I always wished it was for me.

‘How should I know? Each time I said hello, whoever it was rang off. I took the bloody receiver off in the end. Then I couldn't get back to sleep, so I gave it up.'