Chapter 5-1

I didn’t sleep well. The pie had left me with indigestion and the person in the room next to mine wouldn’t keep still. Then a hoon had taken to doing donuts at the crossroads. After he’d got bored, or run out of rubber on his tyres, every now and then a truck thundered through the town as though the speed-limit sign never existed. The vibration rattled the windows. I even heard a coach pull up at about four. To add to my woes, the bed base had a squeak. I imagined whoever was next door would have been able to hear me as well, so I lay still as a board, not wanting to give any indication of my presence. I’m not sure I slept at all. In the darkness of the night, I pictured my cindered home, recalling the acrid stench of smouldering timbers, the birds dropping from the sky, the blood curdling screams of others invisible in the thick smoke. Then there were the toys dropped in the middle of the road as children fled, toys all shrivelled and contorted. I had to make a considerable effort to replace those memories with dreams of where I was heading, of the better life I was about to enjoy amid pastures green, of sea breezes and open skies. At dawn’s first light I slipped out of bed, still fully clothed, and peered out the windows, taking in the tall trees on the fringes, their menace. The street was quiet. At the intersection, the hoon had left streaks of black in neat arcs. There was no sign of the vehicle. Whoever it was had obviously taken off to wherever they were heading, but I sensed that wouldn’t be far. Nothing in the town stirred. I stood there, watching the dark recede, eyeing the roadhouse, anticipating signs of movement. Before long, the mechanic baker, Con, came out and opened the garage door. Inside, I saw my car. The familiarity of it made me exhale with relief. I kept watch, hoping to see the driver’s side door open, the bonnet lift. Instead, Con came out, closed the garage door and tramped back inside the roadhouse. A light went on inside, and another. Then sunlight shafted through a gap in the tall trees at the eastern end of town and the damp tarmac of the highway glistened. The sudden burst of sharp light hurt my eyes. I winced and pulled back. The bedside clock’s digital display told me it was seven o’clock. There was a towel, steel blue and frayed at the edges, on the chair by the door. The woman—receptionist, bar tender, whoever she was—had pointed out the bathroom three doors down on the right. I’d have liked a change of clothes, but a shower would at least freshen my skin. All had quietened down in the adjoining room, so I took the towel on offer and my door key. Taking care to lock the door behind me as softly as I could, I tiptoed down the corridor. A strange apprehension invaded my mind concerning the occupant of that room I had to pass on my way to and from my own. I was exhausted and overwrought. I wasn’t thinking straight. The terror of the recent past pressed in on me. I didn’t like being forced to stay in yet more bush during a dry and hot autumn. Such were my rationalisations. The bathroom was large. A worn, porcelain bathtub of putrid green, deep and narrow, took up the end wall beneath the window. There was a basin and toilet to match. The tiles were pink, the floor a grey mottled linoleum. A barrel bolt locked me in. The set of taps that fed the shower apparatus didn’t seem to function. I turned them on, but nothing happened, not even a gurgle or a hiss. The bath taps worked, releasing a gush of water. I inspected the bath with eye and finger. Satisfied it was clean, I inserted the plug, secured on a long chain, and waited for the water to rise to about six inches. I tested the temperature, swirled my hand in the warmth and took the fresh-looking cake of soap from the basin. Peeling off my clothes I was conscious that two doors away a stranger slept, a stranger who had helped keep me awake all night. Naked, I checked I’d secured the barrel bolt. As I climbed in the bath and felt the water clean on my skin, ridding my body of its musky, sweaty smell, I wondered if that stranger were male or female. It was a relief to scrub away yesterday, but I didn’t stay in the bath for long. The soap was Lux and I came out smelling like my mother. I’d even used a little to clean my hair. Putting on my dirty clothes felt like sin. I heard a clatter of pans directly below and figured that room was the kitchen. My stomach gurgled. My mouth felt furry and I craved a toothbrush. But my teeth could wait. After all, my car with all my things packed in the boot and on the back seat was right across the road, and all I needed to do was eat the breakfast that came with the room and retrieve whatever I needed. Surely by then that mechanic would have figured out what was wrong with my car, and I could be on my way by mid-morning. I deposited my towel in my room, grabbed my handbag and left, walking softly down the corridor. Passing the door to the adjoining room I heard a low moan. Part of me froze, another wanting to run for the stairs. I was confronted by an image of that man I saw the day of the fire, emerging through the choking haze of smoke, his clothes alight, his skin red and weeping. That pleading look he had, the suffering. The way I had to run past him to save myself would haunt me to my own passing. I’d made it to the stairwell when behind me, my neighbour’s door opened. I couldn’t have been more than ten feet away. I grabbed the handrail and looked back. Out spilled the most wretched, haggard, sallow-faced human being I had ever encountered. He was thin, stooped, with hollow cheeks and eyes that bulged, a look of terror glued to his face like a fixture. Even at a distance I could see his skin was pock-marked from acne, with several unsightly boils breaking out around his mouth and on his neck. He managed an acknowledging smile as he staggered to the bathroom, and I returned a polite, ‘Good morning,’ thinking that the image of the man was more shocking than the burning man of Cockatoo. Certain I was checking out, collecting my car and leaving town, I headed down the stairs grateful I wouldn’t be seeing him again. The dining room was accessed through the door to the left of the stairs. To my right, the saloon, visible through its glass panelled door, sat in darkness. I pushed open the door. My breakfast place was laid on a small table by one of the windows. It was the only place laid in the room. I sat down with my back to the door. Outside, an old ute chugged down the highway, slowed, and swung into the road heading north. A small glass of orange juice had already been poured so I drank it down in several gulps. I waited. Two cars swished by heading in opposite directions. Then a station wagon pulled up outside the general store, situated on the south-eastern corner of the dog-legged crossroads. The only indication the store had opened for business was the interior light showing above the painted windows. Beyond the store, off in the near distance, I noticed the pitched roof of a small church. Between the store and the church were several small shops. A sedan pulling into the roadhouse caught my eye, and I saw Con appear from round the side of the building and lumber across to the bowsers. The woman who’d taken me to my room the night before appeared with a plate held in a tea towel. She set the plate down before me. Adequately arranged were two fried eggs, a long rasher of bacon, one grilled tomato, large, and two slices of thickly buttered toast. No sauce, thankfully. ‘Sleep good?’ ‘Very well, thank you,’ I lied. I didn’t want to cause offence. ‘Coffee or tea?’ ‘Coffee, please.’ I watched her head back to the kitchen, the purposeful sway of her hips, the way she bumped the door open on her way through. She had the confident, practical manner born of the country life. Couldn’t be easy, stuck out in a place like this, enclosed by towering trees in the middle of nowhere. She’d flipped the eggs, but the yolks were soft. I tucked in, determined to eat every scrap. The woman came back with my coffee as I was chewing on the last corner of toast. Considering how long she’d taken to make it, I hoped it might be brewed, but it wasn’t. ‘You’ll be off then.’ ‘Sure will.’ ‘I’ll fetch your bill.’ She hurried away. The coffee was hot, and I drank it slowly, allowing Con plenty of time to diagnose my car. The woman returned. I settled the bill with cash and handed her my key. It was just after eight thirty when I left the hotel. The roadhouse had been open getting on for two hours. Inside, the roadhouse was thick with the meaty, slightly piquant smell of those gourmet pies Con made. I struggled not to screw up my nose on my way to the counter. Joan Baez was moaning about poor Dixie again. I was surprised to find a young woman wiping down the cabinets. She was pretty and dark-haired, with striking green eyes and milky skin. She said, ‘May I help you?’ in one of those cultured English accents you don’t often hear in Australia and certainly not in a backwater like Cann River. I must have appeared as shocked as I felt, for she added, ‘I’m a backpacker.’ ‘Oh, I see.’ Something icy passed through me when she said it, a resonance, a ghost. I glimpsed, inwardly, the image of a girl who went missing in Brighton. A tiny little thing. Five, the papers had said. I was twenty at the time. I had no idea who she was when the story broke, but it turned out she was my cousin. The day I found out, we were seated in my parent’s living room in Kew. It had been a suffocating day, the air thick, the sun a mean ball glaring down on concrete and tarmac. By the time we were gathered in the living room, the sun was on its descent and a light ocean breeze blew in through the double-hung windows, worrying the lace curtains that provided a discreet screen for the inhabitants of Molesworth Street from the occasional passer-by. The house was set well back from the street, rendering unnecessary any sort of screen. Net curtains, the quintessential symbol of a bygone era along with doilies and tea cosies, a representation of a time when women with blue-tinged hair—like my mother—were expected to crochet for the edification of their home. I considered myself modern. I had no clear idea what that meant but what it didn’t mean was net curtains. I’d been listening to Fats Domino in my bedroom and as the breeze tickled my back, Blueberry Hill played in my mind. ‘She’s getting too headstrong,’ my father said, directing his comment to his wife. We had been having an argument about my life. I sat there wondering where the old Mr Forster had gone, the one who ran about with me clasped to his back or sat me down in the spare bedroom while he tinkered with his model railway. Fell away with his hair, leaving a bald and forthright pate? Or was it buried beneath his whisky paunch?