Catherine Jinks TheRoad (26 page)

he atmosphere in the car was as thick as pea soup. Verlie knew that Ross was getting anxious. After nearly forty years of marriage, she could read the signs. His posture had stiffened. He kept sniffing and clearing his throat. He hadn’t spoken for the last twenty minutes.

Neither had Verlie. She knew that if she voiced the question uppermost in her mind, he would either snap her head off or ask her testily to stop talking, just for a minute, because he was trying to work something out.

Cautiously she reached into her purse and produced a mint, which she unwrapped as quickly as possible.

‘I’ll have one of those, please,’ said Ross, extending his hand. Verlie surrendered her own mint and selected another. They both sucked thoughtfully for a while.

‘Did we ever come down this road when we were living in Broken Hill?’ Verlie inquired at last. ‘I don’t think we did, did we?’

‘No,’ Ross replied. ‘We were always travelling to Sydney. We always used the Barrier Highway.’

‘What’s this one called? I’ve forgotten.’

‘The Silver City Highway.’

‘Ah.’

Another long silence. Surreptitiously, Verlie studied the dis
tance marker that seemed to come barrelling towards them as they flew down the road. To her disappointment, she saw that this one, too, was illegible. It was appalling. Surely the RTA should be fixing the signs along this road? What on earth were their taxes being spent on?

If Ross noticed the way she craned her neck and adjusted her sunglasses, he said nothing. But when she looked down at her watch he could contain himself no longer.

‘All right!’ he said sharply. ‘I know! It’s been an hour and ten minutes, for your information!’

‘I didn’t say anything,’ Verlie protested, in injured tones.

‘You didn’t have to. I’m perfectly aware of what’s happening, you don’t need to point it out.’

Verlie refrained from making any reply. Maintaining an offended silence was far more dignified than quarrelling like a pre-schooler. But she couldn’t hold her tongue for long; she was too worried. The Ferguson family were preying on her mind.

‘Could there be a misprint on the map?’ she finally proposed, and Ross gave an exaggerated sigh.

‘I knew you were fretting. I knew it.’

‘Well, I’m worried about that family, aren’t you?’

‘We’ll phone as soon as we get there.’

‘But they said it would take two hours. It might be dark before anyone reaches them.’

‘It can’t possibly take two hours, it’s only three and a half hours from Broken Hill to Mildura.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Nobody had to
tell
me, I worked it out for myself.’

Verlie didn’t suggest that perhaps Ross had made a mistake in his calculations. She didn’t have to suggest it. She just had to allow the silence between them to lengthen until he got the message anyway.

With an exclamation of disgust, he tugged at the steering wheel and their car swerved, bumping off the bitumen into the dust. It wasn’t too dramatic a halt because the caravan demanded careful treatment. But it was enough to startle Verlie.