Anchor Point (23 page)

Vik had turned in the doorway, watching the three of them. Painfully locked out of their conversation, she wore a tight, polite little smile on her face. How unfair it was, Laura thought, that Vik had tried so hard to acquire Kath's language, taking evening classes, listening to tapes, marrying Michael; she even cooked German food. But for all her brains, she couldn't get the grammar, the vocab, to stick. Vik was so used to relying on her intellect; Laura understood that her sister's failure infuriated her. Horrible to want something badly but never get it. And here Laura was, carrying the knowledge around unwillingly, like a strand of DNA.

Michael brushed Vik's cheek tenderly as he followed Cait inside. ‘Don't worry,' he said quickly in German, coughed, and repeated in English. ‘Sweetheart, it's just a phase.'

Laura walked away towards the shed. The shovel went against its shadow on the wall. Though Bruce would never see its absence, he had trained her well.

They had fought a bureaucratic war to allow for Bruce's burial on his land: his wish. Vik had used her influence in the city to get the paperwork signed. Laura didn't ask any questions. Standing graveside on the hill, waves of dry grass like rippling straw, looking down on the house – a view so familiar it was pure comfort – Laura was surprised by a sense of wellbeing. It had been worth it; they were doing the right thing. It was the right place for him to be.

When it came her turn to speak, Laura steeled herself to face the scattered crowd. It was so inhumanly quiet then, as though the volume had gone down on the world. She became aware of her place on the hill, of the rustle of hot wind in the fabric of her dress, the pale blue sky: the colour of Bruce's eyes. The smell of hot dirt was pungent, chalky. She had changed the face of the place in those last years, but Bruce was still everywhere she looked. Laura folded her speech away and drew breath. She spoke about the loss of Cairnlea, of Bruce's lifelong drive to set things straight. She told them how much Bruce had taught her. What a good father he had been.

‘He wasn't always easy, and he worked bloody hard. But he built this place up for us. He gave us a good home. Can't ask for more than that.'

She spoke as well and purely as she could. It was only much later over wine – such bleak and dutiful drinking – when Vik slurred, ‘You never mentioned Mum!' that Laura saw Kath had no place in her speech. She was her father's daughter, and everything had been about the farm.

Laura watched the men lower Bruce's coffin into the earth. She had wanted to do it herself, with Vik, but was glad now. She didn't think she had the strength. Cait stepped up to the lectern and began to sing. Her voice was high and clear. Laura was reminded of something she had been told: in the act of singing, the delicate vocal cords that allow for such sweet sound destroy themselves.

There was a hand at the hot small of her back. It was Luc. She would know his touch anywhere. His arrival made ripples in the crowd, low murmurs. Laura glanced around, slit-eyed.

The coffin hit dirt, settled. Laura felt the thud of it in her chest. Luc bent down and kissed her cheek. The hair at his temples was greying. He wore a sombre suit, a tie. Laura saw her face in his shoes. The idiocy of the moment, that there was space in her grief-crammed brain to notice the quality of his pinstripe. To catch the gold in his tooth when he smiled. Weight had gathered beneath his chin, at his waist. His face was deeply lined. If anything, the changes brought by age had just made the fact of his beauty all the more astonishing.

‘I'm so sorry,' he whispered. ‘And you look great.'

Laura took his arm; she needed something to hold on to. He held a huge golf umbrella above their heads. The shade it cast, like cool water. He slipped his arm around her waist to hold her up. Her handkerchief was balled with salt. She caught a breath of Bruce, so tangible and real she almost doubled over. The way he smoothed his hair with the flat of his hand when he came indoors, after removing his hat. The detail was so insignificant but so precisely him, so precious. She would never witness it again. They rocked together in the umbrella's purple shade. Luc's lapel grew wet. Cait came to the end of her ballad.

Then Laura saw the man over the girl's shoulder. A few of the other mourners, old blokes from town, were shooting him dirty looks. But he grinned when he caught Laura's eye, and mouthed something that made him smile wider. She read his lips clearly:
Fuck-knuckle
.

Joe
, Laura realised with a jolt.

She gulped air. Beside her old friend, a wrinkled, grey-haired man tottered unsteadily; Laura recognised Donald's self-possession in that frame. But – how long had it been? She tried to think when exactly he had moved away to be closer to Joseph, but couldn't quite recall.

‘We're orphans, Lor,' Vik was saying. Doubled over, it seemed all she could manage.

Laura dragged her eyes from her friend. Before she had a chance to do anything, Michael was there to net Vik in his arms. Cait joined the embrace, seeming to forget her pre-teen need for carefully cultivated distance. Laura felt weightless and dry, a brittle leaf, watching the knot of family tied around her sister. She turned back to the crowd, cleared her throat. Two grey kangaroos bounded down the slope. Ridges of ribs and spines moved beneath dull pelts.

‘At least they're buried together.' Vik sobbed into Michael's neck. ‘At least they're in the same place!'

Laura heard a rushing sound. She saw the sky tilt.

Laura lay on top of the quilt in her darkened bedroom. She felt relieved for the dim solitude, for the damp cloth on her head, already bruising at the eye where, in fainting, she had struck the stone dirt. Bruce's wake had spilled over from the kitchen and verandah into the yard. It reached Laura as the lapping rise-and-fall of muted voices through the wall. She felt guilty for leaving Michael and Vik to the task of entertaining, but had nothing left to offer.

She wondered, too, if Joseph was still out there. So much time had passed. So many hard days. What could she say to him? Where would she start? In the dark through the party, she would miss finding out. Part of her was relieved.

There was a soft knock at the door. Luc opened it a crack, peered in. Sounds of the wake sharpened. He slid into the room. Sitting on the edge of Laura's bed, he put his hand in the saddle of her hip. They talked in hushed tones. Laura was aware of how easy it still was between them, and underneath that, how much it all still hurt. At every moment she could just about taste the other life she might have had.

‘It was a good funeral,' Luc said.

‘How are you, Luc?' she said. ‘Really?'

She sensed the answer. It was obvious from the infrequent phone conversations they had snatched in the past year, between his meetings and her emptying pans of piss. Luc was storming politics with all the passion and every ounce of the charisma he had once used to fuel their green protests. Young people loved him. He used their mediums, their words, to get them to care.

‘You know, busy,' he said cautiously.

Laura nodded, and briefly closed her eyes. Glad as she was for him, his success was difficult for her to manage, even more so under pressure of Bruce's death. She felt Luc shifting on the bed, the unexpected brush of lips on her forehead.

Luc's face was inches above her own. He was smiling, sadly. ‘Listen, I know this isn't a good time, honestly I do. But if I don't tell you myself, you'll hear about it eventually from someone else. And that would be worse.'

He was close enough for her to see the delicate lines feathering his mouth. She made a small sound, a moan.

‘I'm getting married,' he said. ‘Apparently it's not true, you know, about old dogs and new tricks.'

It was dark when Laura emerged from her room. She judged by the quiet that most guests were gone and staggered into the kitchen, disoriented, thick and slow. Propped on the old sideboard along with shop-bought flowers, so many sympathy cards. Laura hesitated, rubbing her eyes. Time was evaporative; she couldn't get a grip.

Luc was at the table drinking with Michael and Vik. All swayed like reeds in water. Three sets of purple teeth. Laura wasn't surprised that Luc was still there, only that his schedule allowed it. After so long together, he was family, she supposed. More than, for he had been chosen. Laura counted the empty cleanskins by the door.

Luc called out, raucous, glassy-eyed. ‘Hey, Lor!'

Vik raised a sloppy glass. Bloody wine splashed. Laura was disconcerted by her sister's drunkenness. It was odd to see Vik so smeared-looking, loosened by alcohol. Laura's eyes travelled across the table littered with corks and butts; her pouch of tobacco was strewn, half-smoked. She realised, then, that Bruce's death had slammed Vik like a wave. ‘We're orphans,' Vik had said. Laura felt the freshly aligned weight of her responsibility settle on her back.

‘Your old buddy just left,' Luc said. ‘Guess he gave up waiting!' He laughed nastily. It was a new laugh, one Laura hadn't heard. ‘Haw haw haw.' She noticed a dark stain on the lapel of the beautiful suit. It was ruined.

The thought of Luc and Joseph in the same room made Laura's stomach turn. She wanted to ask what had been said, and she didn't.

Her face must have betrayed her, for Vik leaned forward conspiratorially, attempting a kind smile that kept sliding, oil on water. ‘Joseph was
fine
, Lor,' she said. ‘Really. Luc behaved.' Her eyes failed to focus on Laura's face.

‘Was bloody polite, ask me!' Luc said. He chugged the dregs in his glass. ‘Believes in coal-seam gas. Reckons it's a goer, your man. The cretin.'

Michael rolled his eyes. Vik giggled. Luc didn't seem to care. How much he enjoyed the sound of his own voice. Laura longed to go to him as she might have done once, to lie safe in the cradle of his lap. Instead, she took a swig from the bottle. The wine was acidic. She almost retched.

There was a spare chair at the table: Bruce's. Laura scraped it out, gripping her wine by the neck. The wood of the seat was worn, discoloured by use, years and years of dinners. Laura thought of what the wear betrayed: Bruce threw nothing away. She lowered onto his shadow and took another swig.

There had been moments in Bruce's last week when Laura was certain he wouldn't last until Vik arrived. Then when Vik did come – white and jittery with fear and highway caffeine, she'd driven herself through the night – there had been long, dark seconds in which Laura wished fervently that he would die. They sat for days in his bedroom, fan whirring, shifting the hot air around, listening as Bruce's lungs struggled to inflate.

Laura saw how valiantly the body fights to go on, how vibrant life is, even in dying. Many times, one or other of them pitched forward, grasping Bruce's hand when the pause between one breath and the next seemed too inhumanly long for him to survive it. When the inhalation finally came, it was ragged. Laura thought of a hooked fish, drowning in air.

In the last hour, Bruce was conscious. His eyes rolled, anxiously. He fixed on Laura's face. She touched the bristly, concave cheek.

‘Where is she?' he whispered, pawing weakly at the sheet. ‘Mum?'

Laura took the softened hand, crooning comfort. If only she could pick him up as she might a baby, sway him away, provide some physical contact that would communicate to him all she had to say, that it was okay for him to leave them.

But even as the thought occurred, she could see how weak he was. Bruce had no room for anything now but the job of dying, which was his alone to complete. His skin looked both hardened and too loose. It hung from the bones of his face like old leather, worn out of shape.

Vik eased into the room with cups of tea. She gauged the shift in Bruce in an instant, abandoned the mugs on the dresser, threw herself down on the bed. She took up Bruce's hand. ‘What's happened?' she said. ‘Dad? You need something?'

‘He keeps asking for “Mum”,' Laura said helplessly. ‘I think he wants his mother?'

Immediately, she felt the animal spine in Vik bristle. ‘
His
mother?' she said. ‘Don't think so.' Her expression was withering, braided with scorn. That Laura could be so dense.

‘Who then?' Laura whispered, though she knew. With horror, she realised that there would never be a moment of reprieve from the fact of Kath's disappearance. Not even in Bruce's death.

That was her punishment.

As dawn was breaking over the wake, Laura found herself fighting Luc, away down by the chook shed, hysterical with exhaustion and grief. Her earlier composure was gone, eroded with drink. She didn't even know what she was saying, swigging freely from a bottle. Only raged, snotty and tearful, slapping his chest. ‘Married? Fucking married?'

He tried to hold her wrists and pull her to him, but she was stronger than he was and yanked free. Too strong for a woman, she thought later, regretting the moment of contact she had robbed herself of. In any case, his touch wasn't romantic. Even in her state she knew that. Laura saw again, sharply, the way the farm had looked after the fire, unrecognisably blackened. How much they had given of themselves to rebuild.

‘Fuck you, fuck you!' She didn't even sound like herself. She didn't care about the shame of laying herself bare for him. Staggering with Luc in his expensive, soiled suit, solid bulk of him close enough that she could smell soap, Laura felt dizzy, maddened by the brutal sum of what she had lost. What she had cost herself.

Luc snatched the bottle from her. ‘You left me,' he said, drinking deeply. ‘Remember?'

He was gone in the morning. Laura, pinched and efficient, set to work cleaning the house.