11
‘Life is a cabaret, old chum. Come to the cabaret. Life is a cabaret, old chum. Come to the cabaret,’ sang Sal to no tune, so that Frank stopped blocking up the mouse holes behind the bed and watched her pushing canes into the ground for tomatoes to grow up. The vegetable patch looked good, nothing fruiting, but green tips were popping up and the soil was black and freshly turned of weeds. She was setting up an arrangement of chicken wire so that the new shoots would be safe. She moved about like a black beetle, feeling through the soil with her fingertips, scrabbling at loose stones and roots as she came across them. On days when she was over, he found himself busying around, doing little jobs he felt she might approve of: like sanding down a large tree stump for an outdoors table, clearing the guttering and setting a barrel at the edge of the house to catch rainwater for the garden.
At the mosquito-biting time of day she appeared in the doorway dragging the machete behind her like a big fish. ‘What do you use this for?’ she asked.
Controlling a bark, he took the knife off her and lobbed it into a stump by the side of the shack. ‘That’s to scare the chooks with. Remind them to keep laying eggs.’
She nodded gravely.
Once they were sitting down at the new table, Frank served up lunch. ‘Hope you like omelettes!’ he said as he slid the mess on to her plate. She did not reply.
It was strange to eat at a table. Normally, he’d wander around shovelling the food in and not taking much notice.
‘Do you know how to kill a chook?’ she asked, forking the food around her plate.
‘Whose chook do you want to kill?’
She shrugged. ‘Any chook. Just wondered if you knew how.’
‘Your mother never showed you how?’
‘She takes them mostly into the shed and I’m not supposed to watch.’
‘How come you want to know?’
She shrugged again.
‘Well, you can wring their necks, or you can chop their heads off.’
‘With an axe?’
‘With an axe.’
She looked through the open doorway at Kirk and Mary, scratching in the dust.
Frank felt tense. ‘What d’ya need to know that sort of thing for?’
‘Just like to know. What else do you know?’
‘I know how to fish.’
‘I already know that.’
‘Light a fire?’
‘I know that too.’
‘Well, okay. Tell me what you know, then.’
Sal sighed. ‘How to fish, how to make a fire, how to build a bivouac, how to hold a crocodile, how to change a tyre, how to get water in the desert, how to dress a crab, how to peel a prawn, how to peel a prickly pear, how to skin a pineapple.’ She took a deep breath. ‘How to get a stamp off a letter, how to make damper, how to spell SOS with flags, how to get a fish hook out of a lip, who Ned Kelly was and how to kill a chook.’ She sat back, her plate now empty, and arranged her knife and fork neatly in the centre.
Frank’s eyebrows were far up his forehead. He could feel them there. ‘Tell you what, kiddo, I’d ask for a bit of help with that last one.’
Sal looked again at Mary and Kirk.
‘I’ll show you how to gut a fish next time I knock a few on the head, eh?’
Sal studied his eyes. ‘Hokay,’ she said as she slid from her chair. At the door she turned back. ‘I like omelettes with capsicum in.’
‘That one didn’t have capsicum in it.’
‘No.’
She took off down the steps, hopped on her bike and hared off down the track to home, leaving a line of red dust in her wake.
‘Hokay,’ he said and to fill up the still space she’d left he wandered outside with a beer to talk at the chooks.
Sea mist ghosted through the yellowed evening, painting the blue gums and wetting his face. A sea eagle coasted just above him, eyeing where the water’s surface ripped up, white and hairy, probably a feeding school of bream. He cast to that spot and sensed the wobble of fish sucking his bait. He felt expectant and a little bit drunk, his feet wide apart, the tips of his fingers resting on the drag. He’d been fishing with Lucy on a few occasions – once, before he’d got bad, they’d taken a long weekend and camped next to a river, a little inland, and there were a few windless days when the place seemed to be there entirely for their benefit. They’d caught fish from the river when they were hungry. A jabiru stalked them as they sat by the bank, taking off and flying close enough for them to feel the wind move on their faces. There were no other people at the spot and it was easy to imagine, when the sun started to go down and deer and echidna and paddymelon melted out of the bush, that they shared some secret with the land, that they and they alone lived in a way that set the precedent for all future campers. The two most perfect people on the planet. They made love in the open on a quilt that he wrapped round her afterwards, keeping the fading rays of the sun from touching her shoulders. He stayed awake, feeling the trees and dirt and water and breathing in the gloaming air. Even the mosquitoes gave them room, barely wingeing, just a whisper by his ear that made him put his hand over hers in case the noise woke her.
When the sun was fully down he carried her to the tent and laid her on the mattress, where she opened her eyes. She’d smiled, and locked her arms round his neck and grabbed at the hair there. ‘Beautiful boy,’ she’d said and he’d kissed the sand from her belly.
By the time he saw what was going to happen it was too late. A regular tugging at his line that he had taken for the ambling of his bait over rocks became the urgent yank of a caught fish. The fish had swum up to the surface and the eagle was swooping for it, as he stood there, gormless, his mouth working around words his brain hadn’t instructed him to say yet. Just too late, he let out as much line as he could, hoping the fish would take it and swim back down, but the eagle was keen and it easily grabbed hold of the fish in both claws, not missing a beat with its huge black-tipped wings. The drag screamed and he watched in amazement as his line began to go, his rod bouncing like old buggery and he yelled at the bird, ‘Let go, you idiot!’ but the eagle only angled its head at him, giving him no more of a look of understanding than it would have a rival bird.
Frank floundered, holding the rod firmly in one hand, searching for a knife with the other, thinking in horror of how it would feel to reach the end of the drag, to have the bird pull and then plummet down into the water, tangled in line. With one hand he found the knife handle and held the blade to the line, and there was an elastic snap as the line was cut. The eagle kept on flying as if nothing had happened, the long string of line trailing from its claws, the fish still weaving in its grasp, shining silver where the sun caught it. The eagle flew out of sight round the bend that was the mouth of the river and Frank knelt down, his hands on his knees, breathing hard, a lump in his throat.
That night he lay awake, hearing the noise that echoed over the tops of the cane. Sometimes it sounded like a dog or a fox and other times it had the lightest touch of man or woman about it, like it was trying to shape a word it couldn’t finish. He couldn’t sleep for a memory of Lucy sitting at the end of their bed. He’d lain there watching her through half-slitted eyes, just lain there when he could have touched her or spoken to her, heard her voice directed at him. She’d brushed her hair without ever getting any of the tangle out of it, just pulling the teeth through, ripping, the noise of it like tearing cabbage leaves. She wore too many beads, so that they caught in everything: her clothes, her hair, the curtains. Her lips were raw like she’d been in the cold. She looked in the mirror and ran a finger round the side of her mouth. There. Better. She turned to look at him and he closed his eyes. ‘I know you’re watching.’
He said nothing. Let his eyes close fully.
‘I know you’re awake, Franko.’ There was a laugh in her voice, and he thought he might laugh too, but he stayed still, slack-faced, gummy-eyed. He felt their old soft mattress sink at the foot, felt her clambering towards him, up his body, saying softly, ‘Frank. Franko. Woohoo, is anybody in there?’
And her voice was soft and she was warm on top of him, and he felt the pulse of his penis under the covers, a separate heartbeat. And from nowhere he could place, anger. She had the backs of her fingers on his throat, she was stroking him, he could feel her smile next to his face and he shoved her, hard. ‘Will you just let me sleep?’ he bellowed and he saw that she nearly laughed, even as she had the wind knocked out of her. Her face a pale half-moon in the dim light, took the shock slowly as she understood he was not joking, and he turned his back to her.
The silence thickened, so that the room felt soupy. There was one sniff from the foot of the bed and nothing more. He kept his eyes closed, his heart beating strong in his chest, the anger remaining all the while the silence did. The sound of her gathering her things about her, the snuffle of old tissues, the heavy greatcoat with the grub holes in it shifted over her back, he heard it swamp her. She zipped something up and left the room. Out in the hall, he heard her find her keys; the scented silver jangle of her key chain. The front door opened. Closed. Her feet clacked down the street. He opened his eyes and the room was soaked in red light, the morning sun coming through the rag-rug curtains. He let the breath run out of him, the anger evaporated like it had gone out of the door with her, like he had simply given it to her.
He rolled over and reached for the phone, but her mobile rang on her side of the bed. The anger rose again in his throat. There would be no getting hold of her then, no chance of getting in there quick and making things better. What did she expect? That he would chase her out into the street naked? He threw his phone at the floor and again the anger went, and he just felt sore and sorry and lonely. That was the beginning of when he’d got bad, that was the first time.
In his camp bed, Frank plucked at the frayed edge of his blanket. There wasn’t much space, but there was space enough for another body next to him, a length of mattress that was cool and vacant, an open hand waiting to receive something. The teeth in his head ached and he sat up to pour himself a drink to get him to sleep while the night dripped slowly by. Jesus was in the cane again, and that didn’t help matters, cooing and growling at the heavy air. It didn’t seem right to drink beer, so he unearthed a bottle of brandy he’d bought to cook with and it smelt like Christmas. Something, Jesus or maybe a frogmouth, barked not too far away and Frank raised his cup to the window, ‘An’ you sleep tight too, sweetheart.’ After a pause he added, ‘Don’t let anything bite.’