Anchor Point (22 page)

Luc took a moment to swivel from the desk. Laura tried to suppress her irritation.

She said, ‘Can we talk?'

Though he smiled, Laura saw how hard Luc's hands gripped his knees. He crossed the room and sat beside her. Laura couldn't meet his eye.

‘I don't want us to say it,' he said, taking her hand.

‘We have to,' she said.

Luc shifted apart from her then. Her hand lay between them. He stared moodily out the window. Laura explained again that she couldn't leave Bruce. She wanted to stay on the farm and Luc wanted to live in Sydney.

Locations could be managed, he argued. They both sensed that there was more to it. They had spent hours together, millions, it seemed.

But Laura could never tell him the one thing about her life that he most needed to know.

‘What went wrong?' Luc said, pacing. ‘What happened?'

Laura said she didn't know. ‘It's me.' She was vehement. ‘I'm fucked.'

Luc rolled his eyes. ‘Don't give me that bullshit,' he said.

‘I'm sorry,' she said simply, and she was.

There wasn't even a fight. Now that they were at the end of things, what had annoyed her vanished. Overcome with tenderness, Laura took Luc's face in her hands. It was, bewilderingly, over. She started crying and didn't think that she could stop. She had lost so much: her mother, her childhood, now Luc. Coming back to the farm was like coming back to the start. She didn't know if she was sentencing herself to relive all that sorrow, or if she was redeeming herself.

Later, she would say, ‘We just grew apart.'

In the morning, Laura walked over to the clothesline, basket of wet washing on her hip. It was not quite noon, the sky paling towards silver as the sun climbed high. Laura pegged each item with maternal care. The washing smelled wet-fresh. To breathe it in made her feel, for a moment, that all was still right in the world. The line, the pegs, the heat, the scent: these were the components of a good, quiet domesticity, the worth of which could not be broadcast or conveyed, but was for her to enjoy alone in that small flicker of time between the moment she leaned down to take a bright white pillow slip from the basket and the moment she pegged it out.

The screen door slammed. Luc came out shirtless, clutching a mug. He would leave that afternoon. ‘Morning,' he said. ‘You're working hard.'

Then he was behind her. Laura started. A T-shirt flopped into the dirt. She swore, annoyed, and said, ‘What's wrong?'

Luc padded barefoot across to the big gum. He shook his head. His eyes were wide and glassy, as though he was in love. ‘Do you
know
what this is?' he said, then muttered to himself, ‘I can't believe it's taken me this long to notice.'

Laura tossed her head impatiently. ‘A tree?'

‘It's a
canoe
tree. Maybe that's not the right name. But, look.' He traced the big misshapen scar, darker than the rest.

Recalling Joseph's story from that first meeting long ago, Laura shivered. She had the unsettling thought that history was a scratched record. She didn't like being made to think of her friend. Why had they stopped speaking to each other? It was hard now to recall. Laura felt his absence then, the way the tree must have felt the missing piece of bark.

Luc was still talking, explaining in the same zealous way he had once touted veganism that the trees were rare. He said that Indigenous people peeled back the bark to fashion their canoes. She could have told him Joseph's version, explained what her friend had said. Luc would enjoy the confirmation. But she shrugged instead. She remembered the way Joseph had looked at her. Had Luc ever gazed at her like that?

‘Where on earth would anyone canoe 'round here?' Laura snapped.

Sweat dampened the waistband of her shorts. Luc's words were flies, buzzing. She felt an urgent need, like a burning bladder, to be alone.

‘Didn't you say something about a lake?' Luc said. ‘A dam?'

‘It's dry.'

Laura shied from Luc's smile. It drooped. He turned to her quizzically, hurt. Laura took perverse pleasure in the look on his face.

‘Well, it still means some tribe lived here,' he said quietly.

She had muddied his joy and she knew it. How easy it would be to reach out and take his hand. Her fingers interlaced. ‘But,' she said, frowning, ‘here?'

Luc stalked off to get his camera. Laura touched the place on the trunk where someone had once cut away the bark. It gave her goosebumps: a hand where her hand now was. What had become of the boat they built? The tree had only survived the fires because it was right up close to the house. What else had burned up?

It took the whole
day to dig Bruce's grave. Each shovel of dirt hurt. Laura sobbed through pouring sweat. The gravediggers hired by Vik stood uselessly in the narrow shadow of their machine. Vik could contract whoever she liked. It was her money. But after a few sharp words, Laura ignored the men. Shrugging, they dared not interfere. Laura didn't care what they thought of her. She knew in her heart that it was a job for family. It could not be done by strangers.

‘Long as we get paid,' the man in charge called out.

Laura spat dusty phlegm, digging the shovel in. ‘You'll get what's owing,' she said.

Flies landed on the corners of her mouth, her eyes. She worked down into the ground. Hard powder, there was no moisture in it. The earth grew cooler. Strata of soil showed time, passing. Laura found it incredibly sad, how thin history was: whole millennia tamped down into lines. And it made her angry, how hard it still was to dig through. Some layers were darker than others, almost black. Some were coloured ochre, or clay. One was ash.

At midday, Michael came up the hill from the house with sandwiches and sunscreen, a can of cold lemonade. Standing on the lip of the hole, he gave the idle diggers a two-fingered salute, which they ignored. His hair was cockatoo feather, completely white. Laura couldn't remember it losing colour, but she felt she had hardly seen Vik and Michael over the last few years, what with caring for the place, and for Bruce. Even when they came to visit she rarely paused for breath, so that when they left she felt they might as well not have come at all.

The last decade had been the most difficult period of her life, Laura judged. Worse even than the period after Kath disappeared in terms of heartbreak and work – and that was saying something. Though it rained off and on, drought receding for several years, the climate had long stopped being something she understood. Proper wet weather seemed a thing of the past. Both Bruce and the farm had suffered a creeping, steady decline – or so it seemed to Laura, who felt flayed by each new element that turned to dust and crumbled. She had tried everything she knew to stop the slide: she worked hard about the place, tended her father, as though she held the power to repair them both with sweat.

‘There's nothing more you can do, Lor,' Vik had said on the phone. ‘The weather – everyone's suffering. You've done what you can to replant and that, but there's a human limit.'

Laura could revegetate, could irrigate, could ship water in. But she could not make it rain. And she could not stop the march of time, Bruce's ageing or his disease, though she'd tried. With every bath and meal, she'd tried. And now her father was dead.

Laura stood at the bottom of his grave and looked up at the rectangle of splitting light. One day Michael had been a young man, the next not. Bruce had deteriorated a little each day, until he was gone.

She took the lemonade. Raw palms wept against the icy can. The heat was brutal. Michael pulled his ridiculous plastic visor low over his eyes, offering help. Laura said again that she was fine. She would dig the grave herself, end of story.

‘Forgot to say,' Michael said. ‘Luc phoned. He got your message. He's coming. Will be here in time for tomorrow.'

Laura leaned heavily on the shovel. Michael hesitated. He looked as if he had more to say, but couldn't find the words. They had all followed Luc's political career; it was hard not to. Constantly getting in trouble for saying the wrong thing – for saying what he believed, Luc protested – he was often on TV: talk shows, panels,
Q&A
. Though he had a ways to go, a few rungs left to climb, the same compelling zeal that had once captivated Laura ensured he got more air than most. The camera loved him. The public were divided. Laura found it hard to watch.

She tossed the crushed can up; Michael threw himself in its path as though diving for a catch. He brandished the can triumphantly, turning on the spot, accepting imaginary applause. Laura smiled weakly, seeing how happy it made him.

‘At least put some sunscreen on,' Michael said.

She groaned, but did what he asked. How kind he was. Vik was lucky.

‘Get rid of them, would you?' she said, jerking a chin at the men. ‘They need paying.'

Michael would have hell to pay from Vik, Laura guessed, when she heard what they had done, sending the gravediggers home. But there was a faint smile on Michael's face as he took his wallet out.
So
, Laura thought.
He takes some small pleasure from defying Vik too
.

The sunscreen smelled of Bondi beach in summer, all those years ago. She cursed herself. Now she would have to work with that scent in her nose. It was a smell of ice-cream and fighting and fish'n'chips, of sex and cask wine and dope. She dismissed Michael and dug the shovel in.

She ‘put her back into it', as Bruce would have said.

It was early evening by the time the grave was deep enough. Laura attempted to climb out. Loose dirt rained down. The hole was deeper than she was tall. She stood panting, hands on hips, appraising the walls. She would have to dig herself a ladder now. Her predicament was the sort of joke Bruce would love: a job done without planning, undone.

Laura sat down hard on the floor of the trench. How many times would she have to go through this? This sudden realisation? Her tears were dry; she cried in throat and body, shaking. She felt the loss of her father in her gut, a real, cold, clamping pain. This was despair, she thought, to have hope for the future sucked away. She cried for Bruce, who had stopped knowing who she was long ago. Had stopped knowing himself. The last year was the worst. No rain, just the endless cycle of physical care. She cried for her loneliness, for so long without Luc – or anyone.

‘Come with me,' Luc had said desperately, suddenly clutching at her, leaving for Sydney all those years ago. ‘You don't have to give away your life. We'll get nurses, come back on holidays, weekends. We'll manage this together.'

Her disdain caught her by surprise. Her life, her
whole life
, was contained in each patch of dirt, each stump. She had grown from the place. What was Luc thinking? She couldn't switch that off. Every square of grass was steeped in her own history, and in Bruce. But there was no breathing space within which Luc could form his own connection. She had the place. It had her.

‘Lor?'

Laura heaved herself up, hand at brow against the glare. A girl stood on the edge of the grave, a silhouette. Laura's lips ran with cracks. ‘Viko?' she croaked. ‘That you?'

The girl knelt. She leaned over the hole. Her face came into focus, cast in gloom.

‘It's me,' Cait said. ‘Can't get good reception here. I'm bored.' Cait possessed the perfect skin of a baby. It troubled Laura to see that her niece didn't wear a hat.
How much we take for granted
, she thought.
That things will never change
.

Cait stretched a hand down to Laura, who in turn reached up to touch the delicate finger-fronds. Blood pounded Laura's ears. She was queasy with heat.

Flicking her hair, Cait said, ‘You've been gone for ages.'

‘Vik know you're out here?'

Cait's face disappeared. Laura took up the shovel and cut into the wall, carving a ladder to the surface. She was nothing if not resourceful. At the top, she sat for a moment on the edge, feet dangling into the grave as though bathing them in water, catching her breath. She was sure she looked a right fright, face smeared with tears and dirt, showered in the day's thick sweat. She took Cait's soft, white hand when it was offered, allowed the girl to help her to her feet.

‘You're bleeding,' Cait said, worried.

Laura felt like a horse about to be made glue. She stared at her palms, the burst blisters. ‘Ah, I've had worse,' she said, shrugging. She picked up the shovel. Her weariness seemed timeless, set into her bones.

They started down the hill together. The dam was a mosaic of tessellated clay. Laura glanced at her niece, taking in the pretty heart-shaped face. She had Michael's eyes, his wild hair: Cait's too would turn white one day. And when Cait smiled, Kath was there – ‘clear as day', as Bruce would say – in the crooked eye tooth.

People are not lost
, Laura thought sadly.
But passed on
.

She was glad for the girl's touch, her energy. Without it, she might not have had the motivation to get back down the hill, particularly to a house full of people.

When the farm came into view, Laura took it at a glance, too tired to admire her own work: the fences she had removed to allow native animals to pass through, the huge vegetable garden, the orchard planted inside a cage to keep birds out, the solar panels. Some of the saplings were still alive; many had perished. But the paddocks and hills remained dotted with posts and guards, mapping Laura's best intentions, months spent with hands in dirt.

Across the road, the old Peterson farm was scarred and crossed with fresh-poured streets: a new estate, Peterson Meadows. Not all the quarter-acre blocks were sold; the estate was pocked with squares of razed and measured land. Yet even those blocks with complete houses were bare, buildings square in the centre of their lots, everything so new, so harshly without vegetation that it looked industrial. Beyond the estate, the Jolley farm had ‘sold for a song', as Bruce liked to say. No doubt that too would be developed, the whole place made suburban. It was hard to remember that cows had ever dotted green and rolling paddocks where squares of brick now stood. Even harder to conjure up the vast expanse of bush that had flourished before that.

‘It's so
hot
,' Cait complained, squinting. ‘Can't believe this town still doesn't have a pool.'

Laura snorted. ‘Pool? Alright for some.' Cait flinched, turning her face away. It hurt Laura to hear herself. She didn't mean to come off so gruff. ‘Used to swim in the dam when we were kids,' she tried again, softening, pretending not to notice Cait wrinkling her nose. She took some pleasure from shocking her niece, the way Cait was forced to re-evaluate things when she came to Kyree. ‘Anyway,' Laura went on, ‘when I was little, this whole place was lush and green. Wasn't so hot. Would you believe it?'

Cait didn't even look around. She just stared straight into Laura's face. Frowning, she shook her head. Laura wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. She saw that the land would always be this way for Cait, growing from drought dirt.

As they arrived at the garden gate, though there was no gate anymore, Vik burst through the flyscreen door. ‘Where the hell have you been?' she screeched. ‘Cait, I was worried sick. Anything could have happened!'

Her face was inflamed by the week's tears. She brandished one of Bruce's handkerchiefs, scrunched up in her hand. She kept blotting her nose and eyes, though both were now dry. Cait shrank back, but Vik grabbed at her. It chilled Laura, the echo of that other mother in her sister's looming rage. However much they were themselves, shaped by their own decisions, they were also, so innately, the products of Kath and Bruce.

Vik was still going on. Laura couldn't watch. Touching her daughter's skin, Vik seemed desperate to check that the girl was real. ‘Don't do that again, Cait. You understand? You never go anywhere without telling me. Especially here.'

‘Relax, Mum.' Cait rolled her eyes, but her cheeks were flushed. ‘God. I'm not a
baby
.'

Vik was trembling, rage mounting in the mottling of her neck.

‘Viko,' Laura said gently, touching her sister's back. ‘C'mon, she won't do it again – will you, Cait?'

Pursing her lips and frowning, Vik seemed old then. Laura shivered: how old did that make
her
? She had only been a kid, just ten, when Kath went missing – she corrected herself – when Kath
left
. Cait was the same age, though she seemed vastly more mature at times, with her knowledge of makeup and music and fashion, and sometimes so much younger, unencumbered by the responsibilities and chores Laura had shouldered.

There wasn't one day that Laura did not think about the letter, about what, in that instant, she had done. She was just a kid! How could she have known the way that one swift action would press down for years, through generations, to Cait? If there was anything Laura wished, it was for Cait to go unscathed. But Cait's mother had been a little girl who lost her own mother in the bush. It was Laura's fault, and Cait had suffered for it. She had grown up with Vik's unconscious fear, her desire for perfection and her cellular anger, the anxiety she experienced when alone.

‘I wasn't doing anything!' Cait muttered, arms crossed tightly. ‘God, Mum.'

I know where you get that attitude from
, Laura thought wryly.

‘Come inside,' Vik said wearily. She hesitated a moment, on the verge of saying something more.

Michael came onto the verandah, calling to Cait. ‘
Beenden wir das Spiel?
' he said. ‘Chess board's still out.'

Cait broke into a smile, bounded up the steps and took her father's arm, exclaiming that she would have his queen in a move or two. Laura felt the hair go up on her neck. It wasn't Michael's German – she had heard him use the language often enough – but that Cait was able to answer him so fluently, chatting away. Not for the first time, Laura wished she could turn off that part of her brain, what little understanding she had left. It hurt to comprehend those words. German speech, with its particular patterning, rendered the world in such a way as to make Laura feel she was being thrust back in time. The world in German was Kath's world. Laura wanted no part of it.

Regardless, she found herself calling to her niece in the language, clumsily conjugating, ‘When did you get so good?'

‘Mum makes me go to Saturday school,' Cait responded quickly, grimacing, flouncing past her mother into the house.