His Brand of Beautiful (8 page)

The graffiti held lewd suggestions for her but no answers. She checked her eyes in the mirror. They were puffier than a panda’s and she slapped the sunglasses back on her nose.

Freezing water flowed from the tap making her wish she’d packed her gloves.

Perhaps Tate would consider
gloves
aeronautically appropriate attire because he sure as heck didn’t rate her shoes. She glared at them, orange and black spotted beacons at the end of a pair of nude footless tights.

The faux‐leopard flats had been bought on a whim about the time Bram began hinting she should wear more conventional clothes. “It wouldn’t kill you to tone it down, CC,” he’d said, in the I’m‐a‐serious‐political‐candidate‐now voice she’d fast grown to hate. “I need female voters to listen to my policies, not ask me where you bought your shoes.

Alexander’s wife swears by pant suits from Betty Lee. He said navy is TV‐friendly.”

Navy
! The nose in the mirror wrinkled.
Pant suits
!

She dried her hands on a paper towel, screwed it up and aimed for the bin.

Damn
.

Hitting the shot would have improved her mood.

****

The Jabiru rocked in the crosswind as Tate pushed the plane from the hangar.

He saw Christina emerge around the corner of the building, one hand clamping a cream‐coloured beanie to her head, the other batting at her grey‐striped dress to stop the skirt flying up. The scowl on her face deepened with every step. Twin tails of tortoiseshell scarf whipped behind her like Medusa’s snakes and every fourth pace she brushed her cheek against the shoulder‐strap of her handbag to keep her hair from tangling in her sunnies.

Tate hauled on the chains to close the hangar door and tried to hide his smile. The metal runners squealed.

“So you’re still game?” He indicated the Jabiru.

“I’m so
not
diving with Great White Sharks. If your idea of broadening my horizons involves swimming with
Jaws
, save yourself the fuel.”

“I’m not taking you swimming with sharks.” He opened the cockpit passenger door.

She took several deep breaths and when she pulled herself up, the knuckles gripping the support bar were bone white. He didn’t like the colour of her face.

“There’s air‐sick pills in the console.”

She dropped the cream beanie near her feet. “Lay off the loop the loops and I promise I won’t puke.”

He walked around to the pilot’s side and leapt up. Once in, he checked her harness, leaned over to help her fit the unfamiliar headset; smelled her shampoo and that rainforest scent that was pure Christina.

Could be a long flight
. He strapped himself in, re‐ran his pre‐flight checks. “Ready?”

Her fingers hooked into the seat. A silver ring, shaped a bit like an eye, glared at him from the middle knuckle of her right hand.

“Not a fan of flying?”

“I like a big Boeing just fine. I can pretend it’s a bus.”

Twin propellers concussed the air. He taxied the Jabiru to the take‐off point, waited for Parafield Tower’s okay, then opened the throttle. The engine roared. Then he had the Jabiru’s nose up, streaking into the teeth of the wind, feeling better about the world with every foot he climbed. He’d been caged up in the city too long.

The buffeting eased. He adjusted course north, north‐west and looked at Christina out the corner of his eye. She was staring out the window as if fascinated by the brick and tile boxes diminishing below, her eyes half‐closed, silky lashes so long, they almost brushed her cheek.

The Gulf of St Vincent, then the upper reaches of Spencer Gulf—tide out—vanished beneath the plane. They flew over a windfarm, white turbine arms cartwheeling like a three-pronged showground ride.

Once she asked: “Who told you my brother’s nickname was Muddy?”

“Google. I found it in an online meet‐the‐winemaker forum, way back when you first contacted me about taking on your account.”

She lapsed into silence.

Mile by mile, paddocks of winter wheat yielded to patches of purple‐brown saltbush and blocks of white that might have been big flocks of sheep, or small salt pans. Then even those tapered away. Wider and wider expanses of unbroken orange earth spread north, east, west and soon, south behind the plane, like a rust‐coloured blanket.

Lily Malone

“You can’t seriously be taking me to Alice Springs for lunch, Tate. So where the heck are we going? There’s nothing else out here.” It was the first words she’d spoken in more than an hour.

“Some people would say there’s nothing. I’m not one of them. The Australian outback is filled with more life than most places you’ll ever see.”

“Great. I’ve been kidnapped by Bear Grylls.” She crossed her arms over her chest. It was the first time he could remember them not being clawed into her seat. “I know why you’re still single. Kidnapping. Abduction...”

She fell silent again and after a while, he thought she’d fallen asleep.

Far ahead, he saw the first lazy smoke plumes rising from the desert floor. Coober Pedy’s opal mines. He checked his speed. The change in the engine’s vibration roused Christina.

“Where are we?”

“We’re stopping for fuel at Coober Pedy.”

“A fuel stop?”

“That’s right.”

“To go where?” The silver eye of her ring glinted.

He hesitated. He didn’t put it past her to jump ship at Coober Pedy airport if he told her the truth. “If I’m going to consult for you, I need to know you’re up for this wild brand you want. So I thought we’d go camping.”

“Camping.” She said it like he’d told her they were flying to the moon. “I thought you said you’d have me home tonight.”

“I didn’t mean your home. I meant mine. We’re visiting my family’s cattle station.”

The airport lay ahead, planes outside the terminal like a line of white crosses from the air.

Christina leaned forward in her seat, peering out over the Jabiru’s nose. “Is that thing a terminal or a toilet block?”

“Don’t let the locals hear you say that. They’re very proud of their new terminal,” he said.

“New terminal, my arse.” She re‐glued her hands to the seat. “That thing’s got crapper written all over it.”

She woke with a jolt beside him. “Sorry?”

“I said it’s twenty‐two degrees on the ground at Binara today.”

Christina sat straighter. Cauliflower clouds that had blanketed the sky most of the day had burned‐off after Coober Pedy and now the sun raked through the passenger window. Tate had watched it shine off her hair while she slept.

“Did I wake you?”

“Just resting my eyes. I didn’t sleep very well last night.” She stretched her neck to the side and stifled a yawn with the back of her hand.

It didn’t surprise him her neck was stiff. She’d been nanna‐napping for an hour.

“Where are we?”

He pointed out to the right. “That’s Binara. That’s where I grew up. We’re five minutes from landing.”

“I can’t believe we’ve flown five bloody hours to see your childhood roots.”

“You can slap me when we land.”

“Of all the—”

He held his finger to his lips, like his father used to do when the kids wanted to watch cartoons and Gilbert Newell wanted to watch the news.

Darker green dots morphed into trees marking the river, for once swollen with water and gleaming brown as it snaked south‐west.

“That’s the homestead?”

“Yeah, and that’s the driveway. They do a two hundred kilometre round trip to collect the mail once a week.”

Christina’s gaze slipped to the gravel track sliding west. There were other roads too stretching away like sandy veins. She lifted her sunglasses and rechecked the view, then replaced them on the bridge of her nose. “It’s all so green.”

“They’ve had record rains from Cyclone Yasi, remember? Lake Eyre’s flooded. That’s why you couldn’t move for tourists back at Coober Pedy airport. It’s a hub for charter flights over the lake.”

The runway was an orange slash running parallel to the straightest stretch of river and it rushed up to meet them. Touch‐down was no gentle kiss of wheels; the strip was as soft as he’d seen it and slippery. Christina dug her nails into the seat beside him and held on.

He taxied toward an open‐fronted iron shed housing a twin to the Jabiru, plus his father’s old Pajero. Shasta’s mustering helicopter sat on a concrete pad purpose‐built off to the side beneath the wind‐sock Jolie once dyed daffodil‐yellow, now fluttering tired and lemony on its pole. None of the family had ever thought to replace it.

Tate shoved his door open, stepped down and stretched. The twin blades rotated in slower circles and the cooling engine clicked. A bird piped a call as if asking its mates what the heck just flew out of the sky.

Stretching felt good. His neck cracked.

Christina mimicked him, fingers smoothing chestnut tangles from her hair. She leaned back into the cockpit to retrieve her beanie and pulled it over her head.

Tate let himself breathe.
Really
breathe.

This air was everything he loved. No scent of the popcorn that always blew from the cinemas on The Parade, no smell of bubblegum squashed on city streets or melted cheese Lily Malone

on microwave meals or car exhaust fumes. He filled his lungs with air filtered through eucalyptus leaves, washed by damp earth and river sand.

“Well, this isn’t so bad,” Christina said, breathing the same air beside him and looking like she relished it.

He was sure that wouldn’t last.

Gilbert Newell’s old Pajero started first go and five minutes later Tate veered right where the airstrip track turned into the homestead’s main entrance. He rattled over the cattle grid, past the stockyards where he halter‐broke his first horse and the stables where Jolie fell off the rafters and broke her arm. Twice. Trying to show she could keep up with her brothers.

Binara Homestead opened before them, stately as ever, greener than he remembered. He shook his head, oddly irritated by all the colour and unsure why. In his memory, Binara was always cracked orange‐brown. Green felt too civilised.

Three kelpies leapt off the verandah. Tate braked late and too hard and if there had been dust it would have swamped the car. The screen door smashed back into the rendered stone wall and his sister‐in‐law ran out of the house, Shasta behind her, agile despite his bulk.

Tate climbed out of the Pajero, swung Bree off her feet, set her down with a kiss on the cheek and pumped Shasta’s hand. Christina’s door shut and she threaded a path around the bonnet.

“Bree. Shasta. This is Christina Clay.”

“Paddy. Get down,” Bree growled, catching the youngest dog trying to stuff its nose under Christina’s dress. It was barely older than a pup and it slunk away with its tail between its legs.

“The dogs don’t see strangers much,” Bree apologised with a warm kiss for Christina’s cheek. She had to stoop to plant it. “It’s so good to meet you. I get
so
tired of talking about cattle all the time and
Lord
do they bang on about football out here. I
love
your shoes. Belfast, get t’hell
out of it
. All you dogs
sit down
.”

Shasta’s huge hand swallowed Christina’s.

Bree said: “Let me show you inside. You can freshen up if you’d like? Take a shower?

I’ve done that trip a hundred times, your head must be spinning.”

The screen door squeaked and the two women disappeared into the shadows of the hall.

Shasta let out a low whistle. “You’re
sure
you want separate bedrooms?”

“I’m sure.”

“Mate, you must be losing your touch.”

“Not much touch to lose.” Tate took in his brother’s feet, the thongs. “You knocked off for the day?”

“Sunday fella, give me a break. Twist your arm for a cold one?”

Shasta’s thongs flapped up the steps. All three dogs leapt after him, paws scratching cement verandah slabs. He shut the screen door on their red muzzles.

It was cooler inside, dark. The only light funnelled from the door leading out to the back verandah, open at the end of the central passage like the distant exit of an underground tunnel.

Tate sniffed. Bree had changed her furniture polish—tea‐tree oil instead of sandalwood. Everything else was the same. His mother’s antique German meatsafe—a wedding present from his grandparents forty‐five years earlier—guarded the front door, a pink‐glazed pottery bowl on its Baltic pine top. He threw the Pajero’s keys in the bowl, heard them skitter against its sides.

Shasta’s footsteps vibrated ahead of him and he watched his brother turn through the doorway into the kitchen. That screen door still squeaked too.

Tate lingered, enjoying the feel of floorboards that actually moved beneath his feet.

Floorboards
should
vibrate, he thought, pressing down with the sole of his boot, feeling the flex in his knees.

Generations of Newells stared from photos on white‐plastered walls, some black and white, some colour, depending on the era.

After Jolie’s accident he’d avoided the photos. Seeing her frozen in time on the wall hurt too much. The photos opened a raw hole in his chest every time he came home, but it hurt worse if he stayed away. At Binara it felt like Jolie forgave him.

His eyes sought the photograph that mattered most.

His mother had it blown up. Jolie as a pony‐tailed teenager; long‐limbed, gangly. He and Shasta used to call her Octo‐girl because of those long arms and legs, tease her until she’d chase them, ornery as an angry bee and almost as fast. If she caught you, her pinches stung.

When she got boobs they made up the name
Miss Pointer
. Sometimes she’d get so mad at their teasing her cheeks would puff‐up bright red and she’d chase them until she couldn’t scream, and then until she couldn’t speak, and if she still hadn’t cornered them to deal her own brand of justice, she’d run to their father, never Margaret. Gilbert Newell could stop their teasing just by setting his weathered hands to the buckle of a belt almost as gnarled, and saying: “Now you two boys, that’s enough.” He didn’t even need to raise his voice.

Jolie had always been Gilbert’s little girl.