Читать книгу Bangalore - Roger Crook - Страница 9

Catharsis.

Pat parked the Mercedes in the bough shed and remembered not to take the keys out of the ignition. Without looking at Angus she got out and followed him into the cool homestead. Alice was in the kitchen pouring water into a big teapot. “I heard the plane leave, so I put the kettle on. Have you seen Rachael and Ali? You all right, Angus?”

“I’m fine, Alice. No, we haven’t seen Rach. I would think they won’t be far away. It’s getting a bit hot out there for handling young horses.”

“You two go out onto the veranda if that’s where you want your tea. I’ve put some cake on the tray as well; nobody seemed to have much of a breakfast this morning except you and Roddy. Go on, I’ll bring the tray through. I see you’re learning fast, Pat, no shoes. What’s the point in wearing shoes I always say when God gave us two perfectly good feet?”

Instead of leading the way, Angus and Pat followed Alice out onto the veranda where she put the tray down on a small table between two cane armchairs. She smiled and reminded them lunch was cold mutton and salad and it was in the fridge. All they had to do was get it out. She was going for a lie-down.

Angus poured the tea, pushed a mug across the table to Pat, took a piece of cake and looked at her. “Sorry about that bit out at the airstrip, Pat…I, err…”

She returned his gaze; his eyes seemed darker than ever. “There’s no need for you to say anything Angus…we are all under a lot of pressure…in unchartered waters with a lot of shock and emotion…flying blind or something like that. I’m just glad I’m here, not just for you but for me as well. I’m away from the scrutiny of my colleagues who would all be well intentioned I’m sure – but there would be the inevitable questions. It would also be hard to concentrate on any real job at present and if they sent me home, then all I would have is my own company.”

“This may sound silly, Pat, but in spite of all we are going through, you seem to have changed. I don’t mean that to embarrass you, but you were very tight and nervous when we first met – now you’re different, somehow.”

“It must be the majesty of Bangalore, Angus,” she said smiling. “I’ve felt the same myself – I looked out on that landscape when we were seeing the plane off – it was almost as if I could see forever. No people. Listening to the sound of the plane slowly fade into nothing and then silence – just silence. Then a crow cawed somewhere as if to remind us we weren’t alone; then even he was quiet – in reverence to the moment perhaps – don’t know. I haven’t had much silence in my life; certainly not in recent years. There’s always been noise of some kind.”

“I would have thought a city girl like you might be frightened out here.”

“I’m not frightened, I’m more in awe than anything. Like everyone I’ve read and been told since I was a girl about the dangers of the outback. I’ve been out here a few times but always with a gang or an air crew of some kind so it’s always been a bit of an adventure and a couple of times a real chore.

“So to answer your question, yes, I do feel different. Look at me, barefoot, old tatty, frayed, borrowed shorts. A very old and comfortable tee-shirt and nothing else. I have never dressed like this since I was about thirteen on a school camp down at Point Peron where I was away from my mother and her strict rules.”

“Your mother was strict?”

“If I had to sum up in one word my mother’s views on clothes it would be ‘appropriate’. I think if she could have had her way she would have dressed me in a long black shapeless dress from the age of about thirteen.”

“Any more tea in that pot?” It was Rachael; they hadn’t heard her walking through the house. The flywire door banged behind her as she joined them on the veranda. Pat poured her a cup of tea and she sat on the arm of Angus’ chair and playfully, gently, ruffled his hair. “How ya goin’, Angus?”

“So this is what Sydney teaches, is it, lack of respect for your elders?”

“Absolutely – none of these petty bourgeois manners for us. From now on I’ve decided it’s going to be Angus.”

“And Dad, when you want something.”

“Of course! Can’t give everything away at once.”

“So your mother will now become Michelle? I’d like to see that.”

“Steady on! That’s going a bit far, no Mum will become Mother. I don’t think she would accept Michelle somehow. What do you call your parents, Pat?”

“Dad is Dad, sometimes Jim when we’re alone.”

“Your mother?”

“Mother. Your Majesty. Your Grace. Definitely not Elizabeth or Liz, as my dad used to call her when they were happy.”

“Divorced?”

“A few years ago now. Bitter, acrimonious. Made Dad very sad. Especially when he gave her everything really. She now lives with a rich surgeon so she has double everything. Mother forced the sale of the family home and bought a BMW with what was left. Dad had borrowed against the house to pay lawyers so he got virtually nothing. Shortly after, my mother and her new man bought a block down at Yallingup. They are building there now.”

“What is it about Yallingup, Dad? Have you been down there? That’s where Mum and Roddy are building their mansion.”

“Haven’t been there for years. Had a mate at school and his grandparents lived down there. Had a little farm and ran cows. We used to go down there at half-term. It was all gravel roads and beautiful beaches with nobody on them. Great surf. The old man used to let us drink beer and he knew the best places to go fishing. He had an old Land Rover and sometimes we’d stay out all night fishing and drinking beer and then cook fresh fish for breakfast on the beach. He was a wonderful old man.

“He’d been in the First World War. Like so many he’d seen some terrible slaughter. So when he got home he walked away from the family business in Perth. I think they were foundry men or something like that, very wealthy. He bought a block, milked cows and said goodbye to the world. When his son, my mate’s father, became of age he gave him all his shares in the family business. Last I heard my old school friend was floating a new mining company in Perth. I suppose he’s built his mansion where his grandad milked cows. It was only half a mile from the beach.”

Rachael looked at Pat. “How about you, Pat, been down there?”

“Ewen and I went down there one weekend and indulged ourselves at one of the resorts called Palm Bay. It was quite beautiful but I don’t think those places are for me. They have everything there, gym, tennis courts, and swimming pools by the beach, sumptuous restaurants, and a spa in the room overlooking the ocean. I just wondered why you would want to pay hundreds of dollars a night to go and sweat in a gym or swim in a pool when the ocean is a short walk away. The place was full of designer beachwear and sunglasses, white socks and nothing less than a BMW in the car park.”

Rachael now had her arm round Angus’ shoulder. “I know what you mean. I went to a medical conference up in Queensland. It was quite beautiful too but so extravagant. I should have known better really.”

Angus looked at her. “What do you mean you should have known better?”

“It was full of male doctors all on their own away from home off the leash. There were only three women at the conference. One was a professor and about sixty, jolly and fat. The other one was as gay as all hell and had her partner with her so that left me with all these randy doctors. Talk about harassment. They even pushed notes under my door!”

“What did you do?” Angus asked.

“Stuck it out to the end and then left before the conclusion and caught the plane home. Then I got a phone calls when I got back to Sydney from some Registrar that said he couldn’t forget me, asking me to meet him.”

“What did you do?”

“Told him to go and fuck himself and if he didn’t stop, I’d claim harassment.”

“Women of the modern era,” Angus said with a sigh. “What about you, Pat, that sort of thing happen in the RAAF?”

“You have to be very careful; there are always the predators. I think it’s worse in the Navy where they are confined in small spaces for long periods. At least with us, most of the time you get home at night. If you’re on the base then the quarters are secure.”

Angus got up. “I’m going to have a look at the Internet and see what’s happening to this cyclone. If you two want to check your emails or send any I’ll be about ten minutes, then it’s all yours.”

Rachael slipped into the chair that Angus had vacated and drained the last of the tea into their mugs. “How is Angus, Pat?”

Pat looked at her hands for a moment and then, looking at Rachael, said, “He got a little emotional out on the airstrip after your mother left.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, he just stood there looking at the horizon…then he…I’m not sure if I should tell you.”

“Please, Pat, I’m a bit worried about him…he’s a very silent man you know…keeps a lot inside.”

“Well, he started talking about Bangalore and how he had never really been very far away from it for many years. A couple of trips that he didn’t enjoy.”

“Did he tell you about Bali with Jane Baxter?” Rachael asked with a mischievous smile.

“Yes, he did. He said they had a row and he came home.”

“So he didn’t tell you about the masseuse?”

“No.”

“It’s a funny story. I’ll tell you one night when we are alone. I don’t think he got over it for years. I’m sorry, you were saying, he was talking out on the air strip.”

“Yes, he started talking about Ewen and trying to imagine what it was like to be in a combat zone like Afghanistan. He said he feels he hardly knows his son because Ewen was away at school. Then he went into the army and they have hardly seen each other for years. He gave me the feeling he was trying to connect with what was going on and he couldn’t. He used words like feeling helpless and hopeless. I think he’s frightened Ewen will die without him really knowing him.”

“Did he get emotional?”

“A little.”

“How did you feel?”

“A little hopeless myself. He’s such a big man and not just in stature. But he’s not equipped…no that’s not the right word…he’s led something of a sheltered life out here for so long…at least sheltered from where I have come from and I expect where you have come from. Now war and grief has caught up with him and I suspect it’s a very painful experience. I think he’s worried if Ewen dies, then he will have failed to have shown him, told him of the love he really feels.”

The whole time Pat had been speaking Rachael hadn’t moved and she hadn’t taken her eyes off Pat’s face. “Wow! You should have been a doctor, Pat. That’s very understanding.”

Pat gave a little shrug and a half-smile and reached for Angus’ tobacco pouch and papers he’d left on the table. As she looked down rolling her cigarette she went on. “I’ve only been here a few hours and I don’t really know Angus at all but he gives the impression that he loves this place so much – that this is what he’s connected to. He and your mother had a few words in the car about selling the sheep and buying cattle – I didn’t really understand what it was all about, but Angus gave the impression that he would change, that he will change, but he doesn’t know how to break the news to your grandfather. He thinks it will hurt him and he doesn’t want to do that. So he’d rather lose money than hurt his dad.”

She lit the cigarette and inhaled. Rachael said, “Oh wow. There is a lot going on I don’t know, isn’t there? That’s a statement not a question, Pat. I have never thought about change out here. You and I face up to change every day. Career changes. Moving house. Changing men, all that sort of crap. But Bangalore? Change? I’d never thought of that. I just think of Bangalore as the only thing that doesn’t change. That’s selfish really. Dad’s always here. Ali’s always here. Alice is always here. Nothing changes.

“I can come home after six or twelve months away and everything, even my room, is just the same as I left it. This place is just like my riding boots, I can just slip into them and I’m back. Then I leave knowing I can come back and do it all over again…anytime I like. Now that is selfish.”

Pat stubbed her cigarette out and stood up. “I’ll go and make another pot of tea.”

Rachael looked at her, smiling. “My God, Pat, look at you. No shoes and no bra is that becoming an officer and a lady?”

“Not really and what’s more, Rachael, I don’t care, so there!” Laughing, she tossed her head in mock disdain.

“Good. I’ve got just the dress for you this evening, bought it in India. It will suit you down to the ground if you’re game to wear it.”

“Try me. I told Angus that I feel a freedom out here that I’ve never felt before. I have never walked around barefoot since I was a child. I have never, ever, not worn a bra, goodness me!

By the time Ali got to the pool Rachael had already had a swim and was sitting at the barbecue table under the pergola. She refused his offer to have another swim and watched as he walked into the water and did a few duck dives and splashed around. Never a great stylist Ali swam powerfully but the perfectionist would say that he spent too much energy with little result. But then Rachael mused ‘he’s never been taught; it’s all pure raw talent and willpower’.

It was four-thirty in the afternoon and still hot and, if anything, the humidity was more oppressive. Rachael had swum in just her bikini bottoms and now she had pulled an old tee-shirt on to cover her body. From the way Ali had behaved that morning it was obvious he wanted to talk after she had asked him whether he was lonely, like her father.

As he walked out of the water again she noticed the limp. Like many men who work outdoors his head and forearms were a darker tan than the rest of his body, except for the tell-tale line around his forehead showing the line of his hat.

Like Rachael there was Indian blood in his family so his coffee-coloured skin that was shaded from the sun during the day was a natural colour not a suntan. She thought he hasn’t changed since they were teenagers – still slim to thin, big arms from all the manual work, the hair receding at the temples and a hint of grey, but he was still the same Ali.

He went to the cab of his Land Cruiser and came back with a small six-pack Esky, a towel and his tobacco tin. “Beer?”

“Love one.”

He unscrewed the tops off two stubbies and gave one to her. “Cheers, Princess. Here’s to Ew and a quick recovery.”

Still seated she looked into his blue eyes and he held her stare. Then he picked up his towel and vigorously dried his hair and forearms and sat down on the bench opposite. They faced each other across the table. Rachael’s forefinger traced a heart that had been carved into the wood many years ago and saw that the sun, wind and rain had almost worn it away.

Ali asked, “How old were we when we carved that?”

Without looking up she replied, “Sixteen—and I was crying because I was so happy.”

Before he could ask another question she went on. “It was the day that we became lovers for the first time.”

“Over there under that old tree on a li-lo that you had been floating around on, on a day much the same as today. You put a tartan rug over it.” As he was speaking he pointed to a spot under a tree not ten metres from where they sat.

“Ali...please…” There was pain and apprehension in her voice.

“You asked me today, Rach, if I was lonely and I told you that you knew the answer to the question. My answer is sometimes I am, but mostly I’m not. I sometimes wonder if I’ve spent too long out here. You know what they say about old bushies and not being happy unless they are alone. It’s not like that for me—I’m not lonely because…because there is always part of you around this place…especially around this pool. I can come down here and find a strange kind of peace.”

Rachael wanted to reach over and hold his hand but, before she could, he continued, “You and I grew up together, Rach, like brother and sister. Then when we started to move out of childhood into being adults we changed – we knew that we were in love and we knew that one day we would make love. When it happened – for me it was the most natural thing in the world. There was no shame. No regrets. I just got deeper in love, I suppose.”

“Then I went away.”

“Then you went away, and then you came back. Then you went away again and you came back again. When you were away you were still here for me. Over the years I've been living with you even though you’re not here. I don’t mean that in a sexual sense. I didn’t appreciate what it really is until the last few years. I think the blackfellas would call it the spirit. Old Walter the gardener knows what’s going on. He often ask me how you are and when I reply he just chuckles and walks off shaking his head.”

Rachael was crying. Big tears rolled down her cheeks. Her nose started to run down over her top lip. He gave her a handkerchief and she wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

“You’ve never really asked me why I keep on going away. Why is that, Ali?”

“That’s the way we’ve always been, Princess. You went off to boarding school at about twelve and left me behind. Then I went off to High School in Geraldton and you went back to Perth. Then we all came back to Bangalore for holidays. Then we went away again. Then when I left school and went to Ag College, down to Northam, you went to university. Even though you were only a few hours away I didn’t drive down to see you because that was the way we were. Then I came back here and you stayed away for longer and longer periods…that’s the way it is. Then you went to Sydney and you stayed away. Then Alice told me the other day you were going to India to work; didn’t know what to think then.”

He unscrewed the tops off another two stubbies and pushed one over the table to her. Rachael was crying again.

“Ali…why have we been so stupid?”

“Don’t know.”

“Why have we never talked like this before?”

“Don’t know. I have thought about it. As the years have passed it’s always seemed to me that you were holding something back. I put it down to your ambition to succeed. You’re a driven person; I didn’t want to interfere with that. I didn’t want to come between you and your work.”

“I think I’m some kind of weird masochist.”

“Masochist – why?”

“That day that we lay on the li-lo, what was I sixteen, and you just seventeen? And afterwards when you carved this heart in the table, that day is seared, branded into my brain, I can re-live it at any time I want.”

“Do you?”

“More often than I've always wanted to admit. On so many days you are the last person that I think of before going to sleep and the first person that I think of when I wake. On that first day and every time since, whenever we have been together, even today out riding, a peace, I don’t know, a glow maybe. Something happens to me…I know I am doing the most natural thing in the world and that is just being with you. Then…when we make love…we become one person…there is this fusion…that has always filled me with an ecstatic happiness…yet it frightens me with its power – it’s that power the two of us have – I can’t believe I have been so stupid to only just realise it. It’s the power we have when we are together that has made me run away; it’s been too big for me. I’ve always thought of running away as irrational, but I've been helpless in trying to fight it.

“Having seen the way that Dad was today and when you said you thought he was lonely…that hit me between the eyes…it knocked the breath out of me. I realised, in spite of everything I am doing…I’m lonely too…and the reason you are lonely is because I’m not here with you.”

Ali was quietly rolling a cigarette. When he’d finished he lit it with the Zippo lighter that Rachael had given to him one Christmas. He drew on it and offered it to Rachael. She took it, took a puff and handed it back. “I remember the first time we did this too – share a cigarette – it was that day when we finished mustering that last mob of stragglers – it might have been the same summer. Do you remember? It was as hot as hell and we’d been out in that breakaway country all day, big wethers that refused to move in the heat and we were into the last couple of days of shearing.”

“We had a couple of hundred by the time we’d finished and it was getting dark so we moved them down to that goat trap so that we wouldn’t lose them again. We lit a fire and drank tea and ate everything that was in our saddle packs.” Ali handed her the cigarette again.

“Then we lay on backs and gazed at the stars all night.”

Rachael blew smoke in his face across the table. “Not all night, Ali,” she said in a tone pretending to mock him because he’d forgotten something.

He looked her in the eyes and she felt herself being drawn towards him. “No, Princess, not all night. Then before dawn we moved them out and had the mob at the shearing shed by smoke-o. The cook gave us breakfast. Angus came out to see shearing finished at that shed and all he did was thank us for getting them in. If he knew we’d been out all night he didn’t say anything.”

“He’s always known about us, hasn’t he, Ali?”

“I’m sure he has, Rach. He never mentions it to me. He tells me when you’ve been on the phone. I tell him if you ring me. Alice asks me about you sometimes.”

“She knows too, of course.”

“There is nothing Alice doesn’t know; she never talks about it either. You and Ewen are her children really, but she keeps it all to herself. She’s a very private person is Alice.”

“When we got back to Bangalore, Mother was there on one of her rare visits. I think I had said that the only reason that she was there was so that she could count the wool bales. Someone must have told her or she had deduced somehow that we had been out all night and she went ballistic. Said she was going to take me back to Perth. I remember being very cool about it. I told her that she would have to put me in chains, but if I had to stay with her at least I would meet her boyfriends. She never mentioned it again. She left for Perth the next day.”

As they’d been reminiscing they’d found each other’s hands across the table. “Ali.”

He lifted his eyes from their hands and looked at her. “Ali…can I come back and can we get married? I’m thirty now and I want a child with you. I don’t want this place to end with just Dad and you – two lonely men. I want to be with you, and with Dad. I want to be in this place.”

“Of course you can, Princess.”

“Can we get married?”

“Of course. We’ve been man and wife since we were kids, we know that, maybe everyone else knows that. It’s just taken us a long time to get round to accepting it.”

“That’s been my fault.”

“I don’t want you to ever say that again. What has happened has happened. I could have followed you everywhere but I didn’t. I stayed here.”

“And I could have come back at any time and I didn’t, except when the thoughts of you consumed me – when I needed you.”

“That’s past now, Rach.”

“Ali.”

Again he looked at her. “Ali, there is something else that I want to tell you.” He waited. “There has never been another man in my life. You are the only man that I have ever made love to. There has never been anyone else. I have had boyfriends but if it ever got to where they were looking at going to bed, then I finished it. I always thought of you and I couldn’t – I don’t know – defile myself with another man.”

He just sat there looking at her. She began to feel a little nervous. Then he smiled at her. “We are a couple of bloody fools, you and me, Princess. Here we are thirty years of age. We’ve been lovers since we were sixteen and neither of us has had another lover in all that time. It’s unbelievable.”

“You too?”

“Never saw the need. If I saw a pretty girl or a good-looking woman, especially if they came on to me, then I’d just think of you and have another beer.”

“That’s almost monastic.”

“Not really. Old Walter taught me years ago how to sit quietly under a tree and how you can go to other places. The modern term is meditation I suppose. Walter and I used to camp out for days on end fencing and that sort of thing. He taught me a lot about his ways, blackfella ways. When he first told me that he knew what was going on with his family back in Meekatharra I didn’t believe him until one day he started packing up and saying that he had to go to town. I brought him back to Bangalore. He jumped into his old Ute and was gone. Your dad rang the sergeant in town and told him Walter was on his way and his family were a bad lot and asked him to keep an eye on Walter. The sergeant told him that less than an hour before Angus had rung, Walter’s brother had been in a fight and was badly injured and they’d sent for the Flying Doctor.”

“Are you saying that you knew what I was up to when I was away?”

He laughed and stood up. “Not at all, Princess, like I said half an hour ago, I could come to this place, or be anywhere else and think of this place for a few minutes and find peace; in a strange sort of way I could be with you. Let’s go and have a swim and then we have to decide how we are going to tell everyone.”

They swam, both content with an inner comfort and soothing awareness that their time together now stretched to the far horizon and beyond. Their mistakes of the past, if they had been mistakes, were gone.

They held hands as they walked out of the water. At the water’s edge Rachael stopped and turned and faced him. Her bare breasts touched his chest. She took his face in her hands and kissed him. “I love you, Ali Barber.”