Salt Rain (17 page)

She followed Petal to the van. Lightning showed flashes of metal folded and crumpled under the pale tree trunk.

Petal pulled on Julia’s arm, ‘Come and help me get my stuff.’

Julia shook her head. ‘Not now. Not in a storm. Not after a tree has fallen.’ She could hear how high and thin her voice was. ‘There are others it will have destabilised. They could fall too.’ She started walking back to the house, wishing she were already safely inside.

‘Nooo Julia. Come and help me!’ Petal was right behind her.

Julia climbed the stairs and went straight into the bathroom. ‘I’m running you a bath,’ she called to Petal. She had to strike the match three times before it took and as she held the tiny flame to the woodchips in the heater, she remembered Mae striking match after match in their cubby hole at the top shed, letting the flame go right down to her finger and thumb, the smell of burning flesh in the air.

The moment that his skin touched hers, it was as if she knew it already, like she was recalling it from some other time, the air moving by her skin as he carried her down the hallway, the sheets soft under her, his lips on her, in her. She tasted him and already knew the warm saltiness. At last she was inside the experience she had been outside of for so long. She could taste his tongue, like rain, like blood, inside her head. He was inside her.

She kept her eyes shut, to better feel every fold of the sheet he had spread over her and to hear the faint sounds of him moving through the house, turning a tap on, clinking a glass, speaking to his dog. There was still the trace of his hands on her body, where his fingers had pressed into her, where his hair had brushed her shoulder. She could taste his warm breath and smell him. She pulled the sheet over her shoulder against the rain spitting in through the open window. The breeze moved across her skin like cool water. The currents must have been so gentle, cradling the little Islander girl as she floated out to sea, the fish all around her, the tiny phosphorescent fish swimming in the tangle of her long hair as if it were seaweed, brushing against her with their silken scales. The sailor had cradled the little girl on his lap all the way back to the Navy ship, holding her tight against him, in case she was a dream.

She woke to Saul sitting on the bed beside her. He was dressed in his work clothes and had his raincoat in his hand. ‘Hey, Allie. I’ve got to go up to Dad’s. You’d better get home. There’s a huge bank of clouds coming down the valley. Take care crossing Little Banana Creek.’ He smiled and rested his hand on her hip for a moment and then he was gone before she was awake enough to find words. She curled back into his soft bed, waiting for the storm. It came in a rattling blast of wind, then she dressed and moved out into it, lifting her face to the stinging rain.

The boulders at the little creek were already underwater. There was no way across so she turned and pushed back through the dripping bush to the road.

Halfway home Julia’s car appeared in the distance. Allie stood and waited for her.

Julia leaned over to open the door. ‘Get in. I didn’t know where you were.’ She carefully turned the car around on the narrow road. ‘What are you wearing’?

‘Saul’s clothes. Mine are at his place.’

‘Really.’ Julia’s voice was dry. ‘You don’t know how crazy it is to go out in a storm like this. And Saul obviously didn’t bother to tell you. Petal’s van is smashed by a tree.’

‘Is she okay?’

‘Yeah. She’s at home, making dinner.’

Allie looked up at the silvery gums along the road. She couldn’t imagine them crashing down. They were still and serene in the grey light, as unchanging as the falling rain.

Julia slowly steered the car into the muddy water rushing over the causeway. It looked deep to Allie and she felt the water pulling at the car as Julia drove across, the engine churning, a deep wake behind them.

Petal’s clothes were strung around the house, bright lace hanging from the rope across the living room, satiny slips and skirts on the back of dining chairs. She called to Allie from the kitchen, ‘I rescued some stuff, even though Miss Julia, the logger’s granddaughter, forbade me.’

Allie and Petal ate scrambled eggs on their laps in the bedroom, a candle on the floor between them, while Julia was outside with a torch, throwing bricks onto the tin roof of the potting shed and wrestling plastic guards around the trees she had planted that day.

Allie put her plate down and curled onto the hard mattress, her body aching. Mae had said that the young American sailor wept as he made love to her. Allie could imagine crying while Saul moved over her, the heat of his breath on her cheek.

Petal lay back and put her legs up the wall. ‘You know, after the tree fell, it groaned, this…sound came from inside it. Julia says they feel pain, that all plants hurt when we kill them. It was like a huge body, a massive fucking corpse lying on top of my poor van.’ She slid her legs down the plaster and rolled over to face Allie. ‘You were at Saul’s all day, huh?’

‘No, I went up to the waterfall first.’ He might be back at his house by now, standing in his room, looking for the imprint of her body on the sheets. She reached under the bed for the wire face and lay back, tracing the lines of the mouth.

‘That’s one of Saul’s!’

‘Yeah.’ The wire was smooth under her finger.

‘She doesn’t like you seeing him, you know. She was steaming around the house before she went to get you. Why does it rile her up so bad?’

‘She’s jealous.’

Petal raised her eyebrows, ‘Jealous? Is this another one of your theories?’

Allie shrugged her shoulders. ‘Tell me how you felt after the first time you had sex, with your brother’s friend.’

Petal let out a long breath, ‘Ohhhh…’ She raised herself up onto one arm. ‘Bloody hell…is that what’s been going on? You and Saul?’

‘That’s not what I meant!’

‘So what did he say to get to you, the crafty devil?’

‘It’s not like that. You don’t understand.’ She rolled over, her back to Petal. She wished she were in his bed, not here with the windows rattling in their frames and branches worrying the roof. She wished that he had kissed her goodbye.

Petal came to kneel beside her bed and the candle threw her wavering shadow onto the wall. ‘Hey, don’t pout. It’s fine by me. Why should I have a problem with it? I wouldn’t tell anyone else about it, though, if I were you. You know what the valley’s like. They won’t think well of you or him for it. By the way, I found out a bit more for you. His wife’s name is Freya. Danish name. But they’re well and truly over. Just thought you’d like to know.’ She walked out, quietly pulling the door closed behind her.

Saul leaned against the cow’s warm flank. All afternoon he had a worming feeling in his guts whenever he remembered being with her. In the seconds before he came, he’d had a moment of clarity. He had seen her beneath him, and seen in her pale slender body every way she was not like Mae. Oh Christ what was he doing? Even as he tried to push himself off her, his body had surged forward and he clumsily pulled out, spilling into his hand, onto the sheets, onto her skin. He had wanted to get up, to lurch away from the bed, but there he was, leaning on one hand, suspended in shame and disbelief. Had he really pushed his cock into Mae’s baby? Oh God.

He turned the dairy lights on and shovelled cow pats out into the dark rain then hosed down the concrete floor. He focused on the sensation of his muscles sliding over his bones, the sensation of honest work, of doing the right thing. He pulled the hood of his raincoat over his head and jogged down to the house. On the verandah he could smell dinner. Iris had come up through the rain to tell him she was keeping a plate warm for him. He called in the door, ‘I’m off. I’m not hungry, thanks anyway. See you tomorrow!’ He ran down the stairs before they could urge him in.

Walking away from the golden light of the farmhouse into the darkening bush, he couldn’t help sinking into that part of him that wanted to remember the feel of Allie’s body. And Mae’s body. Their flesh, their softness, their hair. He leaned against a tree and masturbated into the darkness, feeling sick.

At his house there were car headlights shining across the lawn and a figure standing on the verandah. It couldn’t be Allie, she didn’t drive. He stood in the dark of the forest path, trying to see who it was. He didn’t want a visitor, but started crossing the clearing, his torch lighting the way.

Julia marched over the grass to him, shouting, ‘You bastard. You sleazy bastard. You and your compassion bullshit.’

He shut his eyes against her face that was red and contorted in the torchlight. There was a great thunderclap and flash of lightning. ‘Come inside.’ He grabbed her arm.

She wrenched her arm from him. ‘Don’t touch me. Don’t fucking touch me, Saul Philips.’

The thunder came again, loud and close. He walked past her and up the verandah steps.

‘What the hell were you thinking?’ She was right behind him. ‘You never got to do her mother, so you thought you’d get the daughter, eh? Righting old wrongs?’

They stood facing each other on the dark verandah, her chest heaving and her hair hanging in dripping cat-tails.

‘I wasn’t thinking, Julia. That was the problem.’ He stepped inside and flicked the light switch on and off. ‘Oh shit.’ He pulled down a kerosene lamp from the shelf and dried his hands on a towel before striking a match and lighting it.

She sat heavily into an armchair. ‘So you actually did it?’

The dog scurried in the door and flattened itself to the floor near Saul’s feet.

‘You know what, Julia? You don’t need to get involved. You’re right, it was a mistake and I’ll sort it out with her.’ He adjusted the wick on the lamp. ‘Actually it’s none of your bloody business, just as it’s none of your business whether I slept with your sister or not.’

She spoke quietly, ‘I want you to stay away from her, Saul. No-one took care of Mae and I’m sure as hell not going to let the same thing happen to her daughter.’ She tilted her head to one side. ‘You must have forgotten there’s such a thing as an age of consent in this country.’

‘Heavy guns, huh?’ He turned away from her and started towards his bedroom, ‘Fine, Julia. Let yourself out.’

She stood up as his phone rang.

It was his father. ‘Is your power out, Saul?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Was that Julia driving by like a maniac a little while ago?’

‘Yep. It was.’

‘She won’t be getting back across. The bridge’s well and truly under. The old weir up at Nilsson’s just breached. Just thought she’d like to know.’

‘Oh. Thanks, Dad. See ya.’ He turned to Julia where she stood by the door. ‘Why the hell did you come across if it was so high? It’s gone under again.’

She stared at him and shook her head.

They sat across from each other in the dark, the kero lamp glowing on the coffee table between them.

‘Were you going to do it again?’ she said. ‘If I hadn’t found out, would you have had another go?’

He took a deep breath. He was empty of words, empty of any desire to placate Julia. He shook his head. ‘No, I wasn’t. You make it sound so… I was planning to talk to her about it. I was going to take care of it, Julia. How was she when she told you? You make it sound like she’s upset.’

Julia picked at her fingers. ‘She didn’t tell me. She told Petal.’ She lay down on his couch, punching a cushion under her head and closing her eyes.

Saul leaned his head back and looked up at the shadowy mobiles hanging from the ceiling. He wanted to lie down on his bed and sleep but was frozen in the armchair. If only he had pushed Allie away and held her at arm’s length, arms strong and firm. He had thought of pulling back, but only for a second. His father was right, he was losing it.

In the moments when the rain eased, he could hear how loud the creek was. Nilsson’s stone weir had never broken before. It had been built years earlier to create a bigger waterhole. All the valley kids learned to swim in that waterhole, old Mr Nilsson standing at the end by the rough cement diving blocks, a stopwatch in his hand. Normally Saul loved hearing that the creek had gone under, he had always liked the idea of being cut off from the rest of the world. When he was about five, he and his parents had been stranded for a night between two crossings. He only had wisps of memory—his father writing their names on the fogged-up car windows and his mother tipping her head back to eat a sliver of bottled peach. His parents had laid their seats back and he curled on the back seat, cocooned in his mother’s soft cardigan, listening to the creek and his parents murmuring while he sucked the last of the sugar syrup from his fingers. They stayed there until just before dawn when the creek dropped enough for them to drive across.

He woke with a start. The rain had stopped and everything was quiet, just the sound of water dripping. Julia was curled on the sofa, her back to him. He picked up the lamp and walked quietly down the hall to his bedroom. He was unbuckling his belt when Julia’s voice came from behind him.

‘So this is where you did it?’ Her voice was quiet and when he turned to look at her where she stood in the doorway, he was surprised by the sadness on her face.

He just wanted to be alone, to stretch out and sleep. ‘Give it a rest, Julia.’

‘You think it’s a little thing? Just something to brush off?’

‘No.’ He sat down on the edge of his bed. ‘I don’t think it’s a little thing but you know… I don’t think it’s the end of the world.’

‘So what would the end of the world be?’

He looked up at her standing in his door, her clothes crumpled and long hair mussed. ‘I’m tired, Julia. I don’t understand.’

‘The end of the world, Saul?’ She slid down and sat on the floor. ‘I used to pray you knew as well and were planning to do something. Or I’d pray that I imagined it, for a while I even convinced myself I didn’t see anything.’

‘See what?’

She didn’t look at him as she spoke. ‘I just went down to get some milk for Mum. I only went down for a jug of milk. The dairy was empty, just all the cows there and the machine thumping away, and I could have helped myself, but there was all that hygiene stuff and I knew he’d belt me if I messed it up, so I went to look for him. And even before I saw… I thought something was wrong. There was that sound, a kind of rustling and a groan. I thought…you know…somehow I thought that one of the dogs had died…had got poisoned and was writhing in the hay, like that one we found that ate bait. There was that noise. So I went in to see… I saw her first, her eyes, her head shaking, jerking. Dad was…fucking her. And when he saw me he kept going…can you believe…he kept going and ordered me into the dairy. And I went in to where all the cows were eating their barley, the machines sucking away, and then he came in and got the milk for me and he must have known I wouldn’t say anything, he just measured the milk out. And I was listening for Mae, waiting to see her come in, as if it were all not true. I just walked back up to Mum at the house like an ordinary morning. I left her down there and I never said a word. It was like I just erased it from my mind. It’s not that I forgot it… I just didn’t remember,’ she searched his face, ‘…and the worst thing is that he knew I wouldn’t do anything.’