Touching Earth Lightly (13 page)

Everyone else had left for school and university and work, but Chloe was still rushing around the house hunting her wallet, the departure time of her train burning in her head. At a knock on the front door, she gave in and swore. Then found the wallet on the telephone table. And Janey in crisis on the doorstep.

‘Cole …’

‘I’m in a rush. It’s full dress rehearsal today. I’ve got to go
now
, I’m running late—’

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Come too. We can talk on the train.’ She deadlocked the door and shut it, hoping the rush to the station would distract Janey. She didn’t like her hunched look, her rubbed eyes.

Sweating inside her coat, she led her up the hill and through the shops to the station. Whenever she glanced back Janey had that strained, whitened look. Chloe kept waiting
for a joke that never came. She felt she was dragging her along on a string. Waiting to cross the thundering intersection, Janey said, ‘It didn’t work—none of it worked!’ And looked at Chloe, tears welling, her face bare, pitiful and lost and small without the hair.

The lights changed. Chloe took Janey’s hand and dragged her across to the station, punched out two tickets from the machine, nearly carried Janey down the long, steep steps to the waiting train.

She found them a seat at the back of the half-f carriage, took Janey’s other hand. ‘Now, what? What’s going on?’ Her mind was still hurrying, running for the train.

‘Nathan—’ Janey got out; then her head went down and Chloe felt tears on her hands, felt Janey shudder all through.

‘He found you.’ Janey nodded. ‘Worse.’ Another nod. ‘Oh, bugger him.’

Janey said something.

‘What?’ Chloe feared to hear more.

‘I said, please—don’t—
swear
!’ Janey wrenched her hands free and fell against the seat, weeping uncontrollably.

Chloe’s face was hot and slippery. She took off her coat.
Stuff Nathan
. Stuff
him. I hate him. I could
kill
him
. She felt wilted and exhausted. She lifted heavy arms and laid them around her friend. She was getting anxious looks from other passengers. The train slowed towards the next station and several people got up—to move downstairs, Chloe thought sourly, not to get off the train. She shut them all out, glaring across the suburbs, Janey’s unfamiliar blonde skull in her shoulder.

‘He said—’ gulped Janey when the train moved off again, ‘he said—’d
always find me
.’

‘That’s just intimidation; it’s a standard tactic. It’s not true.’ Janey cried on, not believing her. Did she even believe it herself? ‘It’s not like he had far to look. Those guys who did over your room could’ve told him, hey.’ Janey curled up against her, and Chloe saw briefly, in the crotch of her black
jeans, a small circle of wetness; the tan stitching had darkened to red. ‘Did he hurt you?’

Janey nodded, worked herself to a pause. ‘He’s been working out. He’s really strong. And he was angry, and—and—and …
rough
.’

‘This isn’t your period, then, this blood?’

‘Don’t know,’ Janey hiccupped.

‘Where was Bette?’

‘Ouch—ouch—out shopping! Oh, Cole, I’ve got no one else except you, man! I’m so sorry!’ And she was gone again.

‘God,
you’ve
got nothing to be sorry about. And there
isn’t
just me—’ She wished it were true, knew it ought to be. ‘There are people who’d know exactly what to do for you, who deal with this every day.’

‘Oh, the
caring professions
,’ Janey spat. ‘They aren’t what I need! To go through all that
talking
again,
explaining
, watching their faces change—like, “This is disgusting but I’m too professional to show it.” I’ve seen them. I hate all that. I hate seeing that my whole life disgusts people, that it’s a big dirty
hole
I’m always having to be dragged out of. At least you
know
, and your mum, that I’m not—I’m not
all
—’ She put her head down on her knees again and shook with sobs.

Chloe held Janey’s unyielding shins, laid her hands on the knots of her fists.

‘I don’t know, maybe I
am
!’ Janey’s voice fluted high with despair. ‘I can’t see—’

Chloe held Janey’s head in her hands and pressed her own forehead against it.
This is what it feels like to pray. Please tell me what to do
.

‘And he said he would stay in my room—he shouted after me, “I’ll be waiting!” And I—and I—
left my photos
there! I was running—away!—didn’t have time!’

‘It’s okay, it’s okay. It wasn’t Eddie himself—just photographs.’

‘But—I can’t remember—was an
address
on—envelope! Oh God oh God—’ She collapsed on herself, then lifted her
head and groaned out, ‘I can’t even protect him from two hundred kilometres away!’

Chloe started to feel unreal, as if all this, the train interior, the tunnel noise and suburb-flash outside, were a dream inside the other reality of Janey’s fragile state, thrown by blows of terror and pain. She could feel the suck of this larger reality on her, through her hands, through her forehead, the energy being drawn off her as it had been during Eddie’s birth, to help Janey weather each new blow. She felt herself waver, and feared that there wasn’t enough of her.

‘I’m going to get you some help,’ she said as the train dived into the blackness under the city. ‘I could do it on my own if it weren’t
now
, if it weren’t
today
. I’ll find a phone, I’ll call the Rape Crisis Centre, I’ll put you in a taxi,’ Janey looked up imploringly. ‘I
have
to. This is a
crime
. You’re hurt, you’re in shock, and I’ve got this
thing
on—if it were any other day I could come with you, and you know I would.’

‘Please come with me? Just to drop me off? I thought the opera was at night.’

‘It is. Tomorrow night. Today we go through the whole thing, in costume. There are always stuff-ups to be fixed; there’s new stage machinery we haven’t worked with. Every-one’ll be—’ It seemed so frivolous. Chloe suddenly lost a handle on what was important and what wasn’t. ‘It’s not like they couldn’t whack a wig on someone and muddle through, but I’d never get to work there again—I mean, it says right there on my CV, I’m “always on time”, that’s why they hired me.’ She was talking to herself as much as to Janey. The opera was looking more like an enormous, decorated, irrelevant
cake
with each passing moment.

‘Go and see my mum, then,’ she suggested desperately. ‘Stay on the train and go back to the uni.’

Janey uncurled and sat normally on the seat. Chloe saw her pull herself together, blocking out thought after thought, forcing herself to return to the train-interior dream-world. ‘No, I couldn’t do that,’ she said in a leaden, almost drugged voice.

‘Of course you could. You’ve been there with me, you remember. You know where her office is. She wouldn’t mind a
bit
if you turned up.’

Janey sat on her hands and shook her head at the floor.

‘Can I put you in a taxi, then?’ Chloe murmured, an arm around Janey’s shoulders. She felt as if she’d asked,
Can I abandon you, then? Can I give up on you? Can I shrug you off like so much unpleasant garbage in my life?

‘If you want. If you think—’ Two tears dripped to Janey’s knees and she looked away. The train burst out onto the bright harbour-side.

Janey stood shaking against the telephone booth as Chloe made the call. As she explained down the line, Chloe reached out and held her hand tightly—apologising? holding her together? she didn’t know—and Janey leaned her temple against the smoked glass of the booth and closed her eyes.

Chloe hung up and wrote the address on an old cash register docket from her wallet. ‘They sound good. Sensible and kind and sympathetic.’ She pushed the docket into Janey’s hand, and a ten-dollar note. ‘That’s all I’ve got. If it costs more, she says they’ll pay it at the other end. There’ll be someone out on the footpath there, waiting for you, a woman called Janine.’

Janey pushed the papers into her pocket and stood as if she were standing all alone, not knowing what to do with herself, not even trying to decide. She looked vaguely out across the harbour.

‘Come on, I’ll get you a taxi.’ Chloe led her to the taxi rank, opened the car door for her. Janey stood nervelessly and stared in.

Chloe pulled the docket out of Janey’s pocket and gave it to the driver. ‘Can you take her to this address please? Someone will meet you with the fare.’

Janey returned her hug lifelessly, wouldn’t meet her eyes. ‘Take care, eh?’ said Chloe. ‘What’s more, let someone take care of you.’

Janey gave the slightest nod and slid into the taxi. She didn’t look out as she was driven away.

Chloe turned and ran, out along the quay and all along the endless walkway to the Opera House. Tourists had gathered in obstructive crowds, photographing each other, the city, the bridge and the Opera House in the morning sunshine. Chloe checked her watch every few metres and moaned to herself.

She ran straight down to Wardrobe. Magda looked at her own watch severely, then grinned. ‘It’s a good thing James’s car broke down on the freeway, isn’t it?’

Chloe’s shoulders sagged. ‘Isn’t it what.’

It was a horror rehearsal. Everything went wrong that could go wrong; every piece of equipment played up that could play up. One of the footmen stepped on the Ice Princess’s train and ripped the waist of her dress during her regal walk, and the glittering frog-shaped cage that was supposed to glide down and close like claws around her juddered and hesitated and finally stopped entirely. Such elaborate things had been done to Chloe’s head and hair that she wouldn’t have dared put a telephone handpiece in among it all, so she sat trapped for most of the day, worrying, wondering where and how Janey was, calming herself down and then feeling agitation bubble up again. The rehearsal didn’t help; she thought if James stopped the production
one more time
to nag at the principal singers or shout at the soldiers, she would throw her own tantrum, tear off the coronet and the hairpieces whose pins were boring holes in her skull and scream at him, ‘For God’s sake, just let the song
finish
!’ But of course she was being paid
not
to do exactly that. She must sit still and stare straight ahead into the empty theatre, and ignore the anger and frustration all around her.

Finally at about five-thirty she could shed costume and hairpieces and get to the phone. She was still in make-up, and she could see in the glass wall of the booth that in
combination with her ordinary clothes and messed-up hair it made her look unhinged.

‘Oh, we were hoping you’d call back,’ said the woman at the Crisis Centre. ‘Your friend never arrived. Janine went out to wait about ten minutes after you rang and waited about three-quarters of an hour. We’ve kept an eye out through the window for her, but she hasn’t turned up. She must have changed her mind.’

Chloe put down the phone with a surge of irritation. She hadn’t got through to Janey, after all; what she’d thought was resignation was in fact resistance, closing Chloe’s sensible actions out, closing out the Rape Centre’s helpful women. Oh,
God
.

She stuck the phone card in again and called home. ‘It’s me. Has Janey shown up there?’ she asked Pete.

‘Nope,’ he said blankly.

‘Oh, bum! But it’s been
hours
,’ she added, thinking aloud.

‘Why, what’s up?’

‘I saw her this morning. She was really upset. I lined her up to see some counsellors but she didn’t get there; I thought she might’ve come there and waited to talk to Mum—oh,
bum
!’

‘Well, don’t worry. If she turns up, we can look after her.’

‘Yeah, I’m just worried she won’t.’

‘She might be at her new place.’

But she wasn’t. ‘No, love, I just checked,’ said Bette. ‘There’s only a young chap in there, says he’s her brother.’

‘Nathan. He shouldn’t be there. Janey doesn’t want him there. That’s why she hasn’t come home—she’s frightened of him. This is why she’s gone missing, because he beat her up this morning.’ She must sound as weird as she looked, spouting this melodramatic stuff. She couldn’t quite believe it was real after a day away in James’s futuristic-historic opera world. ‘Bette, can you get him out of there?’