‘Arsehole.’
He lumbered forward, but Sara stepped swiftly forward, her body curved protectively towards her half-sister.
‘Ignore, her, Craig,’ Annie said loftily. ‘I won’t have you scrapping like some little guttersnipe.’
‘Don’t call me a guttersnipe!’ Teresa cried, as Annie picked up her bag and sailed out the door. After a glowering moment, Craig followed her, Brett at his heels, grinning.
Rigid with rage, Teresa sprang after them but Sara grabbed her arm and held her back, hissing, ‘Be quiet, Tess, for God’s sake!’
She then followed her aunt and cousins out into the hall alone.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said inadequately.
‘You’re too soft with that child, Sara! She needs to be disciplined properly. I know you aren’t that much older but she has no mother, and frankly, your father is useless that way. Someone needs to take responsibility for that child and teach her how to behave.’
‘Yes, I know. You’re right. I’m sorry.’
Annie gave a huff, pulled down her tracksuit top, tucked her bag more firmly under her arm and went heavily down the steps, her sons large and hostile on either side.
Sara shut the front door behind them with relief then leant her head against the wood, tears stinging her eyelids. She heard Teresa slam the living-room door and run up the stairs, her boot-heels on the bare boards as precise and emphatic as a military tattoo. Sara knew she should go after her, but she simply could not find the energy. Teresa’s rages baffled and frightened her. They always had. Ever since Teresa had first come to the farm with her mother, little more than a month after Bridget’s death.
Teresa had been six years old and a stormy, sulky, spiteful little girl. She had smashed up their toys, chopped all the hair off Sara’s favourite doll, stomped her foot through Joe’s kite, hidden the boys’ cricket bats, sneered at the farm, and thrown the most majestic, scarlet, screaming temper tantrums. It must have been a shock to her to discover she shared her father with four strange children, all of them bearing the gaping wound of their mother’s recent death.
In her place, Sara would have slunk about like a little fish keeping to the shadows of a rock pool. She would have tried to be invisible, hoping for kindness. Teresa snarled and struck out.
If Sara had not recognised her sister-stranger’s rage as a more vivid, vocal expression of her own voiceless terror, she may well have hated her half-sister as Joe did, or at least done her best to ignore her as the twins did. But she saw the unhappiness in Teresa’s scowl-squinted eyes and so for nine years had tried, miserably and inadequately, to placate and protect her. She was too wrung out and tired to do so now, however. For the first time ever Sara did not go running after her half-sister, but let her go in silence.
For the first thousand years that chess was played, the queen had no greater power than any other chess piece. In fact, it was weak and meaningless as a pawn, and could do little to protect its king. However, in 1580 an Italian suggested making the queen the most powerful piece on the board. The game of chess was revolutionised. It was faster, more exciting and more subtle. The direction of the game could change in a moment, challenging the players’ skill and ability as the original game had not. The Italians called this new version Scacchi alla rabiosa, meaning crazy chess. The French called it Echecs de la dame enragée, or chess of the maddened queen.
When Sara was almost six, Bridget decided they were leaving Sydney and moving down the south coast to the farm where she had lived as a child.
There was no warning. One day Sara was sitting alone in the playground, eating her lunch and watching the other children play, when her mother arrived unexpectedly, her red hair falling out of its bun, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen.
‘We have to go now,’ she said.
‘But Mum …’
‘No buts, Sara. When I say now, I mean now.’ Bridget dragged Sara to her feet and pulled her along by her wrist, holding so tightly it hurt. Sara pulled back against her hold and Bridget jerked her forward. ‘No dawdling, Sara! We have to get home.’
‘But my school bag …’
‘You don’t need it anymore. We’re leaving this place.’
Sara looked up at her anxiously. Her mother’s face was so white her freckles looked like cigarette burns, and her teeth clenched on her lip in a way Sara knew well and dreaded.
Joe was running around the playground with his friends, yelling and leaping over the low wooden benches. Bridget called him angrily and, when he did not come, lunged forward and caught his wrist so hard he almost tripped. ‘I said, we have to get home!’ Bridget was silent the whole way, pushing the twins in their double pram up the hill so quickly Sara and Joe had to keep breaking into a trot to keep up with her. They did not dare ask any questions, though they exchanged apprehensive glances.
As soon as Bridget opened the door into the apartment, the band around Sara’s chest tightened so she could hardly breathe. The flat looked like a cyclone had swept through it. Clothes had been dragged out of wardrobes and drawers and lay in higgledy-piggledy piles. Cardboard boxes sat on the floor, filled with shoes, toys, books, saucepans. Two suitcases were already standing by the front door, trailing the limp arms of sweaters.
A lamp lay on the floor, its shade askew. The broken pieces of a coffee cup were scattered along one wall. Trickling down the wallpaper above was a long brown stain. The big mirror above the couch was cracked from side to side, jagged lines like a child’s drawing of lightning streaking out from a small, imploded star near the centre. On the floor, surrounded by glints of glass, was Bridget and Augusto’s wedding photo, the frame bent, the glass smashed. Bridget looked sweet and chubby in a big white frou-frou of a dress, Augusto looked stoned.
Sara stared up at the cracked mirror, thinking seven years’ bad luck. Suddenly Bridget knelt beside her, pressing Sara’s stiff face into her velour jumper, murmuring, ‘It’s all right, sweetie, it’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right.’ Her chest began to heave. Her voice bucked about like a brumby. Sara struggled to get away, suffocating in the huge, soft, velvety breast. Suddenly Bridget let her go, sitting back on her heels, one hand pressed against her mouth. Her mascara was bleeding.
‘Get your things together,’ she said. ‘We’re leaving.’
‘Leaving?’ Joe demanded. ‘Where are we going?’
Bridget’s face softened as she looked at him. ‘Down the farm,’ she answered. ‘You know, where I grew up. We’re going home.’
‘This is home,’ Sara said, though the flat was almost unrecognisable in the wake of Cyclone Bridget.
‘This?’ Bridget said contemptuously, looking about the dingy little room. ‘This has never been home. Not really.’
Sara began to cry.
‘Oh, God, stop the water-spout,’ Bridget cried, as if goaded beyond endurance. ‘Go and get out of your school uniform, you won’t be needing that anymore. We’re leaving in fifteen minutes.’
‘What about Dad?’ Sara asked.
‘What about him?’
‘What about his stuff? Why aren’t you packing his clothes?’
‘Dad can pack his own things,’ Bridget replied in a hard, cold voice. ‘If he wants.’
‘Isn’t Dad coming with us?’
Bridget shook her head, not looking at Sara. ‘I don’t think so, I really don’t think so.’ There was a long moment of held breath. Even the twins stopped banging on the floor, looking up in surprise. Then Bridget swung round on them, shouting, ‘Didn’t you hear what I said? Go and get changed! Get your things packed! We’re leaving now.’
Sara went to her bedroom and took off her school uniform obediently, though she trembled with suppressed tears. She could find nothing to wear. Bridget had dragged out every drawer in the wardrobe and emptied them into suitcases. Wearing nothing but a singlet, undies and white socks, Sara dug through the suitcases but everything was a jumble. Sara thought about how carefully Bridget folded the washing as she t
ook it off the Hills Hoist in the tiny concrete yard they shared with everyone else in the apartment block. Bridget folded quickly, neatly. Always the sheets first, a swift shake, then corner to corner in four economical movements, the flat squares laid at the bottom of the basket. Then the towels, folded over and then folded again; then the pillowcases; then the twins’ nappies, a tottering white pile; then her father’s good black trousers, one side of the waistband brought to kiss the other side, then the legs folded in thirds, and laid neatly in the basket, even though Bridget would iron them later, inside out and with a damp tea towel on top to stop the wool from getting shiny; then the boys’ shorts, their T-shirts, Sara’s skimpy dresses; then all their underpants, their father’s small and printed with leopard-skin, Bridget’s large and pink, Sara’s printed with flowers or bears and edged with lace, Joe’s printed with trucks or trains; then lastly, the socks, all pegged out in their pairs, swiftly and expertly rolled inside-out. This disorder was so unlike Bridget it was as if she had been possessed by some unaccountable madness.
At last Sara found her grubby little lamb in the mess and cuddled him gratefully, sucking her thumb. Bridget found her sitting there in the mess and hauled her up, smacking her hard across her almost-bare bottom. ‘I said, get dressed,’ she hissed, low and mean. ‘Now! You’ve got five minutes to get ready. And think about what you pack because I swear we’re not coming back for anything you forget.’
Sobbing, her buttocks smarting, Sara dragged on an old T-shirt and a pair of blue flared jeans and, with her lamb huddled to her chest, began hurriedly to shove her favourite toys and books into the closest suitcase. As Bridget began to haul the boxes and suitcases down to the car, Sara leant on the window-sill, her lamb pressed to her cheek. She was waiting for her father.
Augusto returned while Bridget was shoving a few last-minute things in the back of the station wagon. The wailing twins were already strapped in, and Joe was running down the stairs with a packet of biscuits and a bottle of juice in the hope something to eat and drink would keep the little boys quiet. Sara was sitting on the front step, hugging her lamb and her father’s chessboard.
‘What the fuck?’ her father cried.
‘Exactly,’ Bridget answered, cold and grey as stone.
‘What? What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘The fuck I do. What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
‘What does it look like?’
‘But Bridgie …’
‘You told me it was over, you creep! I never want to see you again! Go on, go back to her, you’ve been there all week anyway, why worry about us?’
Joe started yelling, ‘Stop it! Stop it!’
‘You’re crazy, you bitch! You know that’s not true, why do you listen to gossip?’
‘Mary saw the two of you together, Gus.’
‘Bridgie, honey …’
‘Oh, I can’t believe you! Why can’t you be honest for once?’ Bridget tried to drag Sara into the car, but she clung to the railing, crying, and calling to her father. Bridget spanked her, and pulled her off the stairs. Sara dropped the chess-set, which spilt its kings and queens, its horses and castles, its little round-headed pawns, all over the pavement. She began to scream and scream. Standing bolt upright, resisting all Bridget’s attempts to drag her to the car, her scream rose higher and higher until a strange shrill echo spun round from the buildings all about. One of the neighbours called the police.
The next day they all went down the south coast. Augusto helped pack the station wagon, solicitously taking a heavy box out of Bridget’s arms. She was pale and glassy-eyed with triumph. The boot packed so high Augusto could not see in the rear-vision mirror, they drove through the blue, shiny city, out past the smudged sprawl of suburbs and down the long south road.
For a long while, the road cut through thick, grey bush, scarred with ancient fires, then wound down a steep drop with breathtaking views of the coast and high mountains of coal, caged by giant cranes. Between stretches of green country, they passed small coastal towns, each with its two churches and three pubs, and a long, pale crescent of sand. Sara leant her head against the window frame, gazing out at the precise geometry of land and sea and sky. She held her grubby lamb close.
It was hot. Her thighs stuck to the vinyl seats. She was thirsty. When the twins grew too quarrelsome, Augusto turned and yelled ‘shut up’, and strangely enough, they did. They stopped for ice-cream and lemonade, and Augusto stood by himself, staring out to the knife-edged horizon. Sara came up and slipped her hand into his, offering some obscure form of comfort, but he barely acknowledged her.
They came to the Tuross River and crossed a long, iron bridge, the criss-cross shadows of its slats falling across Sara’s face. She held her breath the whole way across, then made a wish. She had wound down the window to get some relief from the heat, and felt the yellow wind of the car’s passage drying out the pores of her skin, tugging tears from her eyes. An avenue of poplars, rustling and preening. A long stretch of grey, dry scrub, only the occasional white curve of trunk to break the monotony. Dead wallabies by the road, and once, an overturned wombat like a massive stuffed toy, too stiff to be real.
At Bodalla, they passed the Big Cheese. An old town, set in paddocks and bush, with a pretty church at either end. There was nothing on the radio but the cricket.
They passed a sign saying ‘Narooma’ and Bridget twisted round in her seat to tell the children that it used to be spelt ‘Noorooma’ but when they decided to establish a post office here, the new postmaster spelt it wrong. For a long time the two names had co-existed but mail was always going astray and in the end the original spelling was dropped. The townsfolk of Noorooma had had to get used to living in Narooma.
‘Typical,’ Augusto said. ‘Bloody bureaucracy.’
The car came over the crest of a hill, and the engine note eased. They came down a long, winding road through bush and the occasional outcrop of red-roofed suburbia and suddenly burst out of the tunnel of trees into an explosion of colour. All shades of blue. Azure, aquamarine, turquoise, lapis lazuli, ultramarine, indigo. Water on all sides, under a blue bowl of sky. Sand banks showing pale green under glittering water clear as glass. ‘This is the Wagonga Inlet,’ Bridget said. ‘It’s a dangerous spot, because of all the sandbars across the river-mouth. There’s been hundreds of shipwrecks here. You can still dive down and see some of them. They’re trying to get the government to build some breakwaters to make the entrance safer. Alex says it’d be the making of the place.’
As she talked, they crossed the bridge. Sara held her breath the whole way, though her lungs began to hurt by the end, then made a wish with her eyes shut. When she opened them, the station wagon was driving past an ugly holiday park full of caravans and cabins. Chinese takeaway. Pizza. Fishing tackle. Dive gear. A petrol station. Bottle shop. Then they saw a fairground by the river. A ferris wheel raised liquorice-coloured cars high above the trees. They heard the bang of dodgem cars, the shriek and squeal of a big dipper, smelt popcorn and hotdogs and fairy-floss. The boys cried out in delight and Augusto would have stopped, but Bridget said drily, ‘Not with the car piled with all our worldly belongings, surely?’
‘An hour or so won’t hurt,’ Augusto said.
‘Gus, we’ve been on the road six hours already. I’m tired. Let’s just get to the farm, OK? We’ve got plenty of time to see what Narooma’s got to offer in the way of fun.’
There was a short pause, then Augusto sneered, ‘Oh, yeah, Narooma, excitement capital of the world.’ The car drove on, and Joe and Sara exchanged glances, understanding there had been a shift in the power base.
They drove on through Narooma, Bridget pointing out all the landmarks of her youth. She was red with excitement. Sara had never seen so many motor-inns.
‘Look, Gus, there’s Lynch’s Hotel!’ Bridget turned to the children wedged in the back seat. ‘That’s where me and your dad met.’ She slipped her hand into Augusto’s elbow
and squeezed but he said nothing.
They passed a church with a high water tower behind it, slid in a series of gear changes down a hill, past Woolies, and out of town. Once again they were adrift in a blaze of twilight blue. The colour was like an opiate, drugging the eye, over-burdening the imagination. The road ran on through the water as if it were a mirage. Then they were safe in bush again, grey-green and subtle, rustling with wind in the scabby bark and the clusters of narrow, strong-scented leaves. Magpies carolled. When the car came out the other side, the view of the sea was enormous. On their right Mount Dromedary shouldered high out of the slumbering river and bush, shutting out the sun. Bridget told them Captain Cook had named it, seeing it from his ship and thinking it looked like a camel. They all laughed at that.
‘All the local Aboriginals hate it being called that,’ she said. ‘They have another name for it, can’t remember what.’
Sara rested her head on her arm and watched the way the big hump of the hill brought dusk on them early. She did not think it looked much like a camel.
There was still enough light to see as they turned off the main road, bouncing down a rough dirt track through the bush. Trees soared high all around, some skinny as a finger, others enormously thick, gnarled, bleeding sap. Vines hung green and mysterious, creating shadowy bowers in which the light shifted as if something crouched within, breathing hard. Bracken, red bottlebrush, some plant with tall brown spikes thrusting up flowering spears, something else with tiny white waxy flowers. Above, immense trees, columns of darkness against rays of bronze light. The car struggled through the ruts. Dust and gravel rattled against the undercarriage.
Then they came to the edge of the headland. The car began to swoop and glide as if they were riding a big dipper, everyone shrieking with excitement. Augusto gunned it, foot flat to the floor, the old station wagon bouncing and fish-tailing at the corners, pebbles spraying. Even Bridget laughed, though she clung to the strap.