The Dark Part of Me (12 page)

‘Darling!’ Hollie was calling back to me. As usual, she was ahead, slipping like a ghost between the silver gums. ‘After the picnic we’ll do Act Two, OK? Me as Titania,
you Oberon.’

‘Fine.’ I was always the man but I didn’t care. Fighting waves of hangover nausea, I kept plodding up the track. I wanted to ask Hollie about Danny being outside Scott’s
last night but I needed to wait for the right moment.

The further we climbed, the louder the cicadas and the fiercer the sun. The scrawny eucalyptus offered little shade and I could feel the top of my scalp burning. In the cooler months, the track
was a busy thoroughfare for bushwalkers but in the height of summer it was deserted. Every so often, there were bush fire warning signs, nailed into tree trunks. The week before there’d been
some emergency services guy on the news predicting bad fires by New Year if the drought persisted. The track was reaching its steepest bit and I kept skidding backwards on the loose gravel. I leant
against a paperbark for a quick breather and looked out.

The dusty soup-bowl of BrisVegas lay beneath me: a faraway sprinkle of skyscrapers encircled by endless suburban plains; the river basking dull and brown like a giant snake in the sun. On all
sides the mountains, once green, were hazy purple and parched. I closed my eyes and could hear the hum of traffic on the Western freeway and a distant chainsaw, but around me it was quiet and
still. Up in the bush, far above the ant-like scurry of burban lives lived in brick boxes, cars, gyms, shopping centres and multiplexes, I could imagine I was different, set apart, a cut above the
rest. I turned and kept going, pushing off my knees for extra momentum, until I reached the clearing. My heart was racing like crazy, my face itchy with sweat, but my hangover wasn’t as bad.
I sat down on a burnt-out stump. Despite the heat and the bugs and the effort of climbing, I always felt better up there; freer, lighter, more alive.

‘Is something the matter?’ Hollie knelt beside me and stroked my brow. Her fingers were powdery-soft and cool. She was wearing a new perfume which was too musky, too grown-up for
her, and it made me feel sick. Her eyes flitted over my face as if trying to read something in me. I could tell she wanted to ask me about Scott, to hear that things had gone badly at the party;
for some tale of betrayal or bitter disappointment that would prove she’d been right about him all along. She’d been joyous when he dumped me. That first night, after the phone call,
I’d climbed out my window and ran barefoot in my pyjamas to her house. I threw stones at her window and she came outside in her long cotton nightie and hugged me and told me that everything
would be alright because we had each other. She said she loved me and we pashed like pretend lovers and she made me swear on Lady Shalott’s watery grave never to speak of Scott again.

‘Did you have a late night?’ It was her coy way of asking if I’d slept with him.

‘Yeah, kind of,’ I said.

Hollie got up and wandered off but not before I caught a frown of annoyance cross her brow. ‘Did you sleep with him?’ she shot, petulantly, from across the clearing.

I turned to face her and lied, ‘Yes.’

‘How could you?’ Her pretty mouth twisted in disgust.

Indignation burned in my chest. ‘Just because you don’t have anyone!’

She stared at me, eyes blazing. Her lips twitched as if she was about to say something but instead she snatched up the basket and tore off through the bush until I caught up with her. I grabbed
her by the back of her skirt and spun her around. She looked at me coldly, but I slipped my hand around her waist and waltzed her about in a circle. Her body was stiff, unyielding in my arms, but
as we danced, lacing between the trees, kicking up clouds of dust with our feet, her face softened into a smile. I set her down on the ground like a doll.

‘Do it again,’ she panted. I picked her up and twirled her around, and she threw her head back and laughed like a little girl, her eyes shining out from beneath the wide brim of her
hat, her cherry lip-gloss sparkling in the sun. She took me by the hand and led me towards the cave, the scorched leaves crunching beneath our feet. Our footsteps fell into sync; her kid-leather
boots; my stinky sneakers, sweaty-slimy between the toes. There was a rustle of a goanna or a snake in the lantana which grew in tangled clumps along the way. Hollie let go of my hand and charged
ahead, all forgiven, as I followed behind her to the cave.

Danny, Hollie and I discovered the cave by accident one September holidays not long after Mrs Bailey died. We were up in the bush, playing explorers, pretending to be lost and slowly dying of
starvation. We had stopped to rest in a small clearing, which was partly shaded by a granite outcrop. The base of the rock face was overhung by ferns growing out of the cracks, and carpeted in soft
moss. Exhausted, we leaned back in the dappled light against the cool green fronds, only to fall backwards, all three of us, into the cave. You’d never have known it was there. We scampered
inside where we found yellow, orange and white hands stencilled into the rock and, on our third or fourth trip, a babysized human skull. Imagine our delight! This was all we needed to believe that
real aborigines had once lived there. We placed the skull on top of an egg-shaped rock, which rose up from the centre of the cave, and there it stayed for years, our sacred talisman. We swore on
Mrs Bailey’s grave never to tell anyone else about the cave and it became our secret place.

Hollie was waiting for me at the entrance, the lace border of her skirt covered in orange dust, her straw hat drooping like a giant sunflower. Over the years, we’d knocked away the hole so
that, as we got older, it was always big enough to squeeze through. We crawled in, one after the other. Inside, it was cool, shaded from the sun by the overhanging vines, and still just high enough
to stand up in. We’d decorated the interior with satin cushions along the walls and a red velvet curtain which hung from a steel rod wedged between the rocks. In the afternoon, only a small
amount of light penetrated the cave, giving the impression of night when outside the day blazed with heat.

Hollie raced around, lighting the ring of candles. ‘I can’t wait for you to see Danny,’ she said, excitedly.

I grabbed the pink champagne out of the basket, popped the cork and took a slug.

‘No, wait.’ Hollie dashed over to the basket for the flutes. I filled them up, but too quickly, so that the bubbles ran over her wrists. She laughed as I licked the champagne off her
skin. Hollie spread a gingham rug over the dirt floor and unpacked the gourmet delights, while I leaned back with a cushion against the egg-shaped rock in the middle of the cave, sculling and
watching her dainty movements.

‘Actually, I saw Danny last night outside Scott’s,’ I said casually, pouring myself another glass of champagne – it seemed to cure my hangover.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Hollie scoffed. ‘He was with me all night.’

‘No, it was him. Scott and him spoke. There was this weird vibe between them. It was like Danny was dropping by to let him know he was out.’

‘You must have been drunk, imagining things.’

‘Look, Hollie, I’m telling you it was Danny,’ I said, exasperated. ‘Ask him yourself.’

‘Impossible. Danny and Scott stopped being friends a long time ago. It’s a mystery to me why you keep throwing yourself at him. He’s hardly what we dreamed of for each
other.’ She was so bloody irritating. The number of times I’d tried to make her understand that real life wasn’t all pink champagne and floppy-haired gentlemen.

‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ I said. ‘Aren’t you curious?’

‘About what?’ Hollie looked up, flushed.

‘You know, about guys and sex and stuff.’

Hollie glanced at me, a swift, icy flash. She lowered the silver spoon from her mouth and leant across the rug for her Complete Works. She opened it at a book-marked page and started
reading.

‘Don’t you want to know what it’s like?’ I persisted. ‘You know, all that romantic stuff’s just bullshit. Waiting around forever until your tits get saggy and
your teeth fall out. Who’s going to want to do you then, hey?’ My voice echoed around the cave, our shadows shuddering in the candlelight as if under my command. Perhaps I was harsh but
sooner or later she had to quit living in her fantasy world. I goaded her with a line from
Midsummer:
‘
To live a barren sister all your life, / Chanting faint hymns to the cold
fruitless Moon.
’

But Hollie ignored me and continued reading. It was infuriating. I leapt up, snatched the
Works
off her and flung it away. The book sailed across the cave and slammed with a thud
against the back wall, dislodging a miniature avalanche of dust and rock and landing in a puddle of muddy water. Hollie sat mute, her face draining whiter and whiter. She bowed her head and
smoothed her skirts over her lap.

‘Be gone. Thy heart is tarnished, black as stone, ill-deserved of thy Queen’s purity.’ She sniffed and turned her back on me, fishing her Shakespeare out of the puddle. I
watched as she wiped the spine off on her dress, leaving muddy streaks down the front of her white skirt. I felt my heart opening up, flip, flap, with feelings of love, and I wanted to bundle her
up and keep her safe and tell her I was sorry for being such a bitch.

‘Come here,’ I said, gently. ‘Please.’

Setting her Shakespeare down on the rug, she came over and laid her head on my lap. I ran nice spider fingers down the inside of her arm.

‘Kiss me, Oberon,’ she murmured. ‘Kiss me like we’re lovers.’

It was our cue. Hollie sat up and I clasped her face between my hands. I leant in, my breasts pressed against the stiff bodice of her dress. I felt her heart beating fast as a newborn
kitten’s as we pashed, open-mouthed like lovers, like we’d done a thousand times before, except this time Hollie was more impassioned, more urgent, and when I pulled back, she
whispered, ‘I’m not as innocent as you think.’

Leaning in, she kissed me again.

‘Jeez, what a sight for a bloke just released from captivity.’ A dark figure was silhouetted against the bright entrance to the cave.

‘Danny!’ Hollie sprang back from me, wiping at her lips, and rushed to embrace him. ‘Where’ve you been?’

‘Hunting,’ he said, straight-faced.

Hollie and I laughed as he entered the ring of candlelight. His face was sickly pale with big, black circles under his eyes like he hadn’t slept in days, and he was wearing his thick army
trench even though it was nearly forty degrees outside. When he turned around, I caught a glimpse of his body, naked underneath. Hollie saw it, too.

‘Where are your clothes?’ she demanded.

‘Huh?’ Danny acted dumb.

‘The new clothes I bought you.’

He opened his coat and looked down. I took a quick peek, comparing his to Scott’s, which, as I remembered it, was a fair bit bigger.

‘Oops,’ he said. ‘Must’ve forgot to put them on.’ He laughed, whipping off his coat and raising his long, gangly arms up to the ceiling. Naked, he capered about,
shrieking and scratching at his armpits like a monkey. He’d always been a bit zany but he’d never acted as weird as this before.

‘Danny, please,’ said Hollie, grabbing hold of his arms and pulling him down next to her. ‘Rosie doesn’t want to see your parts.’ She threw his coat over him, but
he tossed it off again.

‘It’s better naked,’ he said, grinning. ‘Clothes block the flow.’

‘The flow of what?’ I asked, genuinely curious. He looked at me for the first time and I wondered if he even remembered picking me up off the road the night before.

‘I’ve been communing with the spirits.’ He nodded, emphatically.

‘Stop it, Danny,’ Hollie chided. ‘You’re talking nonsense.’

I turned to Danny. ‘What spirits?’

He grabbed my fingers and squeezed them so tight I thought he’d crush my bones. ‘The spirits of the cave.’ He glanced at Hollie and lowered his voice to a whisper, drawing me
into his confidence. ‘You see, inside, there was this aboriginal guy called Micky. We were in the same cell and late at night, when we couldn’t sleep, he’d tell me about his
people and how they used to live, here, on Mount Coot-tha before they all got killed off. Some died of smallpox and other “white-fella” diseases, but the rest got murdered by white
farmers who left out gifts of poisoned sheep and flour laced with strychnine, or by the Native Mounted Police who were given open slather to shoot any aborigine they fancied. He told me how his
people had lived on this mountain and how their spirits still lived here. So, I told him about the cave. He wanted to know where it was and how we had found it and if anyone else knew about
it.’ Hollie jumped up. ‘But we swore on Mother’s grave!’

‘I told him it was a secret and he promised not to tell.’ Danny lay down, his head on one of the cushions. He looked exhausted.

‘Have you taken your pills?’ asked Hollie, her voice gentler than before. I wondered what he was taking drugs for.

‘Yes,’ Danny murmured. ‘I’m a good boy, aren’t I, Hollie?’

‘Yes,’ Hollie soothed. ‘You’re a very good boy.’

I nudged his leg with my foot. ‘What about these spirits, hey, Danny,’ I said. ‘Can you see them?’

He rolled onto his side, fixing me with his black liquid eyes. ‘No, but I can hear them.’ He cupped one hand against his ear. ‘Listen.’

I did the same but all I could hear was water plinking at the back of the cave. His eyes were wide and bright, his body rigid.

‘They’re coming out of the rocks,’ he whispered. ‘Up through the earth. The young spirits are quick. But the older, wiser ones, they take longer. They have a long way to
come.’ Still naked, he lay down flat on the ground, his eyes closed, his legs and arms splayed like a starfish. He was all skin and jutting bones. His lips started moving rapidly but no sound
came out.

Hollie got up and came over. ‘Come on, Danny. We’re going home.’ She stuffed his arms into the coat-sleeves and did up the buttons. Together, we coaxed Danny to his feet. His
body was floppy. Despite his skinniness, he leaned heavily on our shoulders as we dragged him down the hill, the red roof of Hollie’s house glinting in the distance below.