Chapter 8

When the scar-faced man, Pete, came in, looking bizarre decked out all in black with his multi-coloured beanie, Joan Baez had just stopped nah nah nahing. I had my rag in my hand, a rag masquerading as a dish cloth. It was thick and grey and frayed. I would use the rag-cloth as pretence, creating the impression of busy-ness lest Pat walked in and caught me idle and set up some other task. My rag of avoidance. Pete hadn’t seemed to notice me cleaning in a corner. He went straight to the counter where Pat was stocking the pie warmer. I was surprised to see him again so soon. He seemed less tired than yesterday when he’d alighted the bus, and I presumed his friend Simon who’d arrived late yesterday as we were closing and taken him to the lighthouse, had driven him back to town. Curious, I inched closer and put the rag to work on some chair backs, on the seat pads too, and on the chrome frames. I overheard him place his order. Then Pat disappeared into the kitchen. I was about to approach Pete when through the window I saw that ill-humoured woman with the broken-down car struggle across the road laden with bags and a suitcase. I didn’t like her. She was frustrated, that was understandable, but she had an officious manner which I found off-putting. She had to be some sort of bureaucrat. Someone who’d sat for decades in a swivel chair. Her body appeared truncated, the result of the shapeless thickness of her torso. I hoped when I aged that never happened to me. Her thin-featured face was square too, as if to reinforce my point. Even her hair was straight and cut short. Still, as I watched her disappear into the hotel, I knew my opinion of her didn’t matter. She’d be gone in a week and I’d never see her again. She was insignificant, I decided. I knew I ought not pay such close attention to older women, especially older women I didn’t like, but I couldn’t seem to help it. I was always reminded of my mother and the whole point of getting away from Oxford was to be surrounded by anyone but. Yet I saw her in almost every older woman I encountered. Pat returned to take Pete’s money. ‘Won’t be long,’ she said. He remained where he was, with his back to me. A blue sedan approached the intersection from the south, did a U turn and pulled up in the street. A man got out and hurried into the general store. I was about to turn away when movement on the back seat caught my eye and a child’s face appeared, pressed against the window. Long hair, so I guessed it was a girl. I had no idea if she could see me, but I gave her a little wave. She didn’t wave back. Instead, her face disappeared, and I wondered at parents who left their children sitting in cars while they shopped. Anything could happen. They might overheat or open a door and wander into the path of an oncoming vehicle. Or worse. All alone like that, they could get abducted. It happened. I’d read about it in the newspapers. I wanted to run across the road and berate that man for being neglectful, but of course I couldn’t act on the impulse. I’d have appeared hysterical for one thing, and Pat would have yelled at me for walking off the job and docked my wages. I watched, and before too long he came out of the store laden with groceries and they were off, back down the road from whence they came, heading for the coast. Pete went and sat at the table by the door, the same table he’d occupied the day before. He had his back to me. Pat came out and set down before him a plate of pie and chips, with sauce of course, and before she headed off, she gave me one of her looks. I pushed in the chair I’d been wiping and made my way to the counter. Satisfied, she disappeared into the kitchen. I wiped down the already clean pie warmer. I served a trickle of customers snacks, coffees and milkshakes. I moved out the way when Con came in stinking of petrol. Things soon quietened, and I watched Pete finish eating his pie. It wasn’t a pleasant sight. He dunked his chips into the pie’s sloppy, tomato-sauce riddled interior, having decapitated the pie as he had the day before, eating out the middle, leaving the crust mostly untouched. I found his method distasteful and only when he set down his knife and fork and pushed the plate from him, did I go over. ‘There you are,’ he said, his facing lighting in a smile. I’ve been here all this time, I thought, puzzled as to how he hadn’t noticed me. ‘Can I get you anything else?’ ‘Thank you, but no. Did you tell me your name? I can’t recall.’ ‘Emily,’ I said, thinking it an odd question to ask of a waitress, but he didn’t say it in a cheesy chat up way. ‘Emily,’ he repeated reflectively. There was nothing leery about him. It was as though my name mattered to him, as though he was taking a genuine interest, as though he couldn’t think of another way to strike up a conversation. ‘How’s the lighthouse?’ ‘It was dark when I arrived and barely light when I left, so I can’t give you a definite answer.’ ‘I was surprised to see you in town again so soon.’ ‘I needed supplies. The keeper, my friend Simon I mean, decided to loan me his car.’ ‘Nice of him.’ ‘Convenient, more like. This way he doesn’t have to leave it in town while he’s away.’ He frowned. ‘Although, you are right. It is nice of him. I should try to be less cynical.’ I liked the way he considered his thoughts. I was reminded of the first time I thought of coming to Australia. I was in second year and we were reading Kangaroo. No one had cared for the novel. There was a lot of criticism of D. H. Lawrence and his casual indifference when Kangarooit came to getting his book published in first draft form. Many in the tutorial found it unreadable. I struggled through it, trying to argue that in publishing a first draft, Lawrence was making a comment on Australian culture, which was, in essence, transparently unpolished. That perception evaporated in the face of Pete after I absorbed the way he’d self-corrected. I decided then and there that the others in my tutorial group had been right in their summation of Lawrence. He was dismissive and cynical if not outright contemptuous of a land he knew nothing about. ‘It’s good you have a car,’ I said warmly, steering my mind back to the conversation. ‘If it means you can drive into town and partake of these fabulous pies.’ He laughed and winced all at once. I glanced at the hollowed-out pie on his plate, then directed my gaze back to his face. He adjusted his beanie. Something in me reached out to him. I wasn’t attracted to him in the romantic sense, but I found him endearing. It was his illness too, his recovery. I wanted to ask how he was feeling, but before I had a chance, he wanted to know if I was due a day off any time soon. I told him tomorrow and his face lit up. ‘Would you like to visit the lighthouse? We could explore it together.’ ‘I’d love to,’ I said without hesitation, reaching for his plate. ‘Meet me at the corner at nine.’ He indicated with a glance out the window. ‘See you then,’ I said, walking away. I knew I’d been chatting too long. Any moment Pat would be docking my pay. The man who owned the general store came in for his weak coffee and Kitchener bun, having left his ancient mother in charge for half an hour. It was his daily ritual. For Pat, Mr Bruce represented the sort of loyalty absent in the rest of the community. She went to a lot of trouble creating that Kitchener bun. Every few days she made a small batch of doughnut buns and cooked them in a small fryer and dunked them in a bowl of granulated sugar while they were still hot. Then she made the mock cream from butter, icing sugar and milk. She slit the buns, inserted a teaspoon of her own homemade jam and an enormous dollop of the cream and decorated the top with a dot of jam. As I served Mr Bruce, Pete left the café. I spent the rest of the morning with a spring in my step. My tawdry existence in that isolated town took on a rosy hue. I had scarcely left the roadhouse since my arrival in Cann River. The bush imprisoned me too, the highways heading north and east and west, my pathways out of that place, were all but closed off to me in my penniless state. I could have hitched but I was far too scared to do that. There was the refrigerated van that made a regular run up and down the coast, but I didn’t like the look of the driver. There were the travellers, the campers and caravaners; I could have secured a ride with one of them. I could have snuck out on the pretext of cleaning the toilets and pleaded my case. I could have chosen a woman. Someone homey. After all, I was a backpacker. I ought to have had more courage, but everyone knew backpackers were vulnerable in this strange land, and there was no one I could trust. I knew I had to get out of Cann River, fast. Cassie, who worked at the hotel, kept telling me I should be off exploring the sunburnt country before I flew home. I wondered sometimes why she didn’t leave too, but the place was ingrained in her. She had a market stall and she kept bees. She knew everything there was to know about the area, which was why I took her advice on every little thing. She came in to pay for petrol later that afternoon. Con came in with her and told me the amount. Once he’d gone back outside and I’d given Cassie her change, I told her about the lighthouse and Pete’s invitation. She looked at me strangely and said it was good that Pete was looking after the place because it would help to ward off vandals. ‘All the way out there?’ I said, incredulous. Even I knew the lighthouse was a long drive from the town. ‘You’d be surprised who lurks in the bush.’ As if to prove her point, a ute roared into town from the north and screeched to a halt at the intersection.