Читать книгу The Dragon's Skin - Ross Gray - Страница 10

You wore your school uniform short in those days. And, out of the orbit of parent and teacher, you hitched it higher. Almost, but not quite, revealing the white scoops of your cottontails. Boys got herniated eyeballs trying to bend light when you sashayed by.

Her bra could carry cantaloupes when it wasn’t carrying her.

She was short but she had good legs. And the tops of them were very cheeky. She had an hourglass figure. Her school uniform, slightly flared in cut, flounced over her hips like a fluted lampshade. But few boys had the temerity to grope for the switch no matter how much they lusted for illumination. She chose the ones to turn her on.

She didn’t do well at school. Academically. It wasn’t lack of grey matter, it was the distractions. She put it down to hormones. She had the brains, she just lacked the common sense to use them. Or maybe she was seduced by power: the raw, visceral, sensual power that wears the mask of lust.

Lust. She remembered it squirming and wriggling in her knickers, insinuating its silken-furred body between her thighs, skittering on the pink pads of its tiny clawed feet across her belly, pricking her breasts with needle teeth. It filled her body with its lithe muscular heat and stared from her eyes with its predatory gaze. And it watched as, caught in the high beam of her bold breasts and her green regard, small boys withered and big men dithered. But, with few exceptions, none approached the light till she come-hithered. She felt this primal creature awaken at a very early age.

The exceptions: the cock-for-brains who imagined she was a cunt-for-brains. The ones that were too dumb to read the signs or too arrogant to heed them. Poor bastards, she felt sorry for them – at first. The ones she couldn’t deal with, Russell could.

Russell, the big brother who was so much older than her he was more of a protective uncle. Big, taciturn, lumbering Russell who’d inherited all the tall genes in the family. Russell, who’d beat the shit out of anyone who, by word or deed, showed less than the respect he deemed her due. Russell, on whom the tractor rolled. Russell, who through sheer will and physical labour might have saved the farm if the tractor had kept its equilibrium.

Russell was the firstborn. After him came stillborn and cot death and miscarriage and miscarriage and miscarriage and then nothing. But when hope had shrivelled and it was almost too late, she was born.

While her mother endured stoically the famine of her body, the land mocked her with blight just as barren. Drought, bushfire and flood, the unholy trinity – and of course, banks. The banks were the operative curse as she grew up. Her father had never possessed the green thumb of his forebears. His land had always been kind to him and forgiving. The brutal vehemence of its insurrection unnerved him. He withdrew from the scathing light of the fields and shrank into the shadows of the house. And he took a bottle with him. Russell fought on. Until the tractor rolled.

Her brother’s body had not been long in the earth when they raped her – some of the exceptions.

In those days – well, even in these days, out there – you didn’t report it. It would be assumed she asked for it. At the time she assumed as much herself. She didn’t tell anyone: pride, shame, denial, sheer bloody-mindedness. Instead she raised her chin and strutted around town more bumptious than ever. That was a mistake. It was a challenge, and they thought it was safe to come back for more.

So she found another Russell.

He was big, very big. He was strong. His strength was legend in the district. He was a good-looking boy. Although his eyes were a lovely, soft, azure, the glow of intellect was dim in them. But when their gaze fell on her they lit up and he all but drooled – had done since sixth grade. He was a gentle giant and generally harmless. But he had a short fuse and a short attention span. If he sensed he was being ridiculed only swiftness of foot could save you. If you had the stamina to stay out of his reach long enough he forgot why he was chasing you and was diverted from pursuit by the next thing that drew his eye.

She recruited him the way Delilah recruited Samson, but she didn’t trim his locks. The Philistines were her prey. He was her instrument. The strategy was hers and she executed it with the ruthless stealth of a guerrilla leader. Her Samson stalked each one of her rapists and beat them to a pulp. One had his spleen removed and another wore dentures the rest of his life. The last had an injury the name of which could not be spoken. He left the district as soon as he could walk.

No charges were made or laid, no accusations uttered. But, through some social osmosis, the town was steeped in latent knowledge. A conspiracy of silence gathered around the subject. ‘Samson’ was spirited away. The laughter of old friends became brittle, their conversation brief and their time short. Eyes never quite focused on her after that.

She was already thinking about leaving when she missed her period. Her decision was firming before she missed again. She had to leave. She couldn’t look into her parents’ bleached, bleak eyes and tell them.

She came to the city.

Of course she had a miscarriage. But by then her hubris had soured to self-loathing, and it was all sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. And there was no going back.

The exceptions. There were two more exceptions. Exceptions of a different order.

One was Ben Bovell. He didn’t wither or dither or drool. And he didn’t have a cock for brains. Ben Bovell, who put no value on himself, but saw great worth in her. Who had no belief in a future for himself, but saw a future for them both; who somehow knew they could save each other. She’d never tried to manipulate him – sexually. And, if today was any indication, she still didn’t know what made him tick.

And there was this one. What the fuck made him tick? Why would someone like him bother with Ben – or her? What did he want? He must want something. Everyone did.

His agenda was well hidden. Yet he appeared to have no hidden agenda. He was said to be dangerous. Some very hard men feared him. But it was the reputation they feared, and reputations were ninety-percent bullshit – in her experience. Still, somewhere in her gut she knew it wasn’t all hype. He was a wee bit dangerous. Like – what was that word in her old school history book – terra incognita. He wasn’t terra nullius.

Look at him. Look at her. Look at them both. How many times had they met in Brie’s short life? Fingers of both hands? A dozen? Yet there was no awkwardness between them, took up where they left off, took each other for granted. Comfortable. She called him ‘uncle’. Where had that come from? Grown men saw the Big Bad Wolf, little girls saw Grandma.

And look at them – him hunkered at her eye level – in deep and meaningful dialogue in a child’s tongue. Small conspiratorial smiles, bright baby blues and browns locked in some sort of esoteric communion. She stepped behind her daughter and put her hands on her shoulders.

‘What’d Ben want from you?’ she demanded.

His wise-child eyes glided up to her face. ‘Help.’

‘Great help,’ she sneered. Then sighed. ‘What kinda help?’

‘A private day-care centre in a nice middle-class suburb, Sharon?’ he asked mildly as he stood.

She placed her hands gently over her child’s ears.

‘Fuck off,’ she said. The words sounded a little strangled.

The benign expression didn’t waiver. His eyes drifted lazily down to Brie and he winked. She felt her daughter’s cheek and brow bunch subversively against her palm.

‘Fuck off,’ she said. ‘Please.’