Dark Horse (11 page)

A
n owl hooted throughout the night. It sounded far off, on some unshrouded mountain peak in what seemed like another world. Frog croaks were intermittent, long periods of silence in between.

So few dawn birdcalls to mark the beginning of another day. Tansy stood dull-eyed and lethargic in the mist of her outside enclosure. The woodpile was getting low.

Heath drew pictures on Sarah’s back with his finger. They lay in bed on top of the covers. He traced images from his childhood. She guessed the scene: him bouncing on a trampoline, him in a pool and at a carnival, him playing cricket and Aussie Rules. He reached underneath her top and illustrated the scenes directly onto her skin.

‘Draw something on my back,’ he said when her responses grew half-hearted.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Tell me something.’

Sarah kept her body turned away from him. ‘I can’t think of anything.’

‘Yes you can.’

He sat up and began unwinding the plastic bandage from his knee.

‘My first serious relationship was with a friend of my father’s,’ Sarah said.

‘How old were you?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘He was?’

‘Forty-eight.’

‘Do all your stories require a strong drink afterwards?’

‘You keep asking,’ she said defensively. She turned further away. ‘Not everyone’s had a charmed life.’

‘Don’t get cranky.’

‘Go away.’

‘I can’t.’ He prompted, ‘He was forty-eight, you were seventeen, and . . .’ He sighed when she stayed silent. ‘Having a sick brother is not a charmed life. It’s constantly being the good son, never making a mistake, never making it harder on my mum and dad. It’s never showing you get sad, or angry, and never acting the slightest bit nutty. It’s everyone waiting for you to lose the plot no matter how well behaved you are. Unless you’re absolutely, one hundred per cent acting super sane and perfect then you’re causing too much extra strain on your family.’ She heard him swallow. ‘I love my family, I don’t want to cause them any extra stress, I don’t want to let them down, but sometimes . . . being the healthy one can feel like a straightjacket of its own.’

‘He was my father’s best friend,’ Sarah conceded. ‘Still is. He was separated from his wife and spent a lot of time at our place when I was younger. My father still doesn’t know. My mother found out just before it ended; probably the reason it did end. She walked in when we were together in the bathroom, she apologised and closed the door and walked away. I don’t know,’ Sarah said and shrugged, ‘all I got from her was the feeling she was angry with me about it, and she would be even angrier if I let it get out. It was only much later I realised how wrong the whole thing was, and how wrong her reaction was. I don’t blame her though; she didn’t know what to do.’

‘It’s come between you and your parents?’

‘Oh God, yeah. Well, Mum anyway. We don’t talk about it, we’ve never talked about it, but it’s there whenever I’m with her.’

‘Is he still around?’

‘He has Christmas lunch with them every year.’

Heath hadn’t lain back down. By the sound of it he’d rolled the cling film into a ball and was passing it back and forth between his hands. She imagined he was probably looking at her over his shoulder, looking at the way she wouldn’t look at him.

‘It would tear my parents’ relationship apart if Dad found out,’ Sarah said. ‘He’s really controlling. I’m close to him but . . . he throws his weight around a lot. Not physically, emotionally. He can be intimidating. If he found out we’d kept this secret from him all these years, I really don’t know what he’d do. That’s why Mum’s bitter – she blames me for what she has to hide.’

Without asking for permission this time, Heath put his hand on Sarah’s calf and rubbed her through the thin wool of her thermals. His fingers squeezed and massaged. Sarah closed her eyes.

How could she really know the root cause of her increased heartbeat at that moment? In the fog, in the dim light of the caravan, on the mountain, it was hard to tell. After the conversation they’d had, it was impossible to tell. Heat from his touch, the need for his touch to continue, the want for something more, coupled with the stupid urge to cry, it came from a confusing place. She drew in a pained breath. Heath
was
dangerous, because he made her feel this way, because he made her talk. His hand moved higher. The mattress sunk with his weight. For almost an hour he’d been touching her, desensitising her at the very same time as increasing her sensitivity. She opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling as he eased her onto her back.

‘Tell me what you want.’

He made it sound so simple. Sarah looked inside herself for an equally straightforward response. He stretched out beside her, was wise enough to avoid kneeling over her, coming down to her level, putting his face near hers and his hand on her stomach.

‘Do I come across as someone who can be used?’

‘You come across as strong and sexy.’

‘No I don’t.’

He moved his hand back and forth between her hipbones and pushed it up her torso to feel her ribcage, he ran his thumb between her breasts while pressing his lips to her shoulder, kissing her, eyes fixed on the side of her face. ‘You do.’ He grazed his knuckles beneath her breasts. The grey wool was a second skin. Her blood was zinging and her head was empty. He trailed his fingers over the swell of her breasts. Sarah bit her bottom lip. She arched beneath his hand. He hummed approvingly against her shoulder.

His fingers spread wide and covered bigger areas of her body, down the outside of her leg and the side of her body. His fingertips swept across her lower belly. Sarah turned her face away. She squeezed her eyes shut. The want was swift, intense and uncomfortable. Need was certainly there, whether it was need for him or need in general . . . so difficult to pin down.

‘That’s good,’ he told her. His voice had grown thick and low. She was rubbing against his hand. He had held it a fraction above her, between her legs, and she lifted her hips to meet it. By rubbing against him this way it gave the impression that there was no uncertainty. For Sarah though there was no easy answer as to whether any indecisiveness remained.

‘Sarah,’ he said and took hold of her chin and made her face him.

A different Heath, a truer one, a less controlled one. This eye contact was his final check to see if she was okay. Sarah didn’t know his name, he had her gun, he’d lied about it, their food was running low and his identity might never be clear . . . but . . . she felt better with him than she had with anyone else. He slid his hand inside her leggings. His touch was light, over the top of her underwear.

During the five or so minutes leading up to Sarah’s orgasm there was a king tide of unmistakable feeling. Her hand wrapped around his wrist as she guided his fingers. She turned her body to him. She clawed closer. He lifted her top, lowered his dark head and kissed her breasts. Sarah said his name because ‘Heath’ felt like a shout of rebellion against all the ‘
hims
’ in her life, ‘Heath’ was mutiny against the weather and the mountain, against Lauriston, against the world. She climaxed hard.

Out by the fire with the mist softening the light Sarah looked at the tattoo on his torso. He was sitting in a chair, facing the potbelly. Sarah crouched between his knees and made him lean back. She traced his tattoo with her fingers and then with her thumb. The artwork wasn’t original; it had the look of most young men’s tattoos, symbols borrowed from other cultures and designs lifted straight from a webpage or magazine. Her fingers wandered from the drawings and touched his chest. ‘You have an amazing body,’ she told him. There were a couple of different elements that invoked admiration – the fine-pore texture of his skin, the feel and look of the muscle and bone beneath it, the dark hair running in a line up to his navel, the pleasing shape of his shoulders, the way he wasn’t formulaic like his tattoos, but unique, graceful and masculine. Each part of him was in proportion and nothing was over-emphasised. But also he wasn’t perfect. His nipples were small and pale, there was dark regrowth and a slight rash on his chest from what was no doubt a vanity-inspired bout of waxing. His facial hair extended down his neck, leaving some patches of skin red and irritated.

After a period of regular breathing, Heath’s chest expanded with a much deeper breath and he made a small sound in his throat. She looked up at him. The dilated black of his eyes reminded her of where she was and what she was doing. He leaned forward and kissed her. Before that, in the van, he’d only kissed her breasts, shoulders and neck. There was the jolt and the tingle of electricity that came with the newness of a first kiss, and there was a tenderness that took her breath away. His hand curved around her nape and the tilt of his head became suggestive. It had to be a form of flattery, the urgency and the sense of passion he then put into the kiss. Going by his intensity you’d think they were somewhere else, two people in a nightclub, or kissing after a romantic dinner. She pulled away. She undid the button of his cargos and encouraged him to stand. He pushed his pants down to his ankles, slid his foot out of one pant leg and left the other to bunch around his foot. Sarah sat him back down and widened his knees so she could get between his legs again. His leg tattoo was a twist of dagger-like shapes forming the words
Bravo Hotel
. She paid as much attention to his un-inked thigh.

Sarah liked the reactions his body made as she raked her fingers down his legs. And she liked, too, the things he said, the way he seemed determined to make the moment special. The romance was sweet and reassuring. The sounds he made down in his chest were sexy. They got her breathing keenly too. They made her bolder. Sarah touched his erection through the cotton of his underwear. She felt dizzy with the fact she was rubbing him while crouched and dressed, the cold day over her shoulder and the mountain behind that. In her mind she compared him to her husband. Heath’s erection was not as large but better for it, harder, his penis seemed more in keeping with him and not an organ of its own. Also, Heath’s erection was twice as sensitive to touch. When it was skin on skin (her hand beneath the waistband of his jocks), he took over for a moment and showed her a less direct way of touching him, the method he preferred. Heath liked it slow and teasing. Time was one thing they did have. She inched down his underwear, ran a single finger down his length, she pressed her lips but didn’t lick, then licked but didn’t suck, and so on. With him weakened and at the same time visibly throbbing, it was no wonder she got a buzz.

She stayed dressed, boots on, thermals on, a shirt over the top. If he reached for her, she twisted away. ‘This is what we have to do, one of us always has to be dressed, or else we’ll slip up and have sex.’

‘I would give away all our food for one condom right now.’

‘No you wouldn’t. I wouldn’t let you.’

She straightened and kissed his neck, stood over him and eased his head back, tasted his skin and bit him gently. When she kissed his lips it was with a closed mouth, brushing her mouth against his, and then back down his body, feeling no pressure, no regulation moves to make, it wasn’t standard sex. Heath whimpered as though in pain. The most innocent of touches had him writhing in the chair.

‘Keep still.’

Tansy kept snickering her uncertainty of what they were doing, or her impatience that they get it over with already.

In terms of an hour melting by without a problem during that day and the next, those moments outdid all others, even sleep.

A
congress,’ Heath said. ‘You like that? A congress of salamanders. I think that’s my favourite. You can imagine them in little jackets and shuffling along on two legs with their tails behind them.’

He was showing off his knowledge of collective nouns. It was due to one of the newspaper quiz questions they’d answered – the collective noun for a group of alligators. Heath had known it. A congregation. And now he was listing others.

‘A rhumba of . . .’ he said.

‘I know this one, I’ve heard it.’

‘I could give you a clue.’ He made a slithering hand movement and then shook a pretend pair of maracas.

‘Rattlesnakes. A rhumba of rattlesnakes.’

‘A cast of . . .’

‘Fish?’

‘You’re in the right environment.’

‘A cast of . . . some kind of sea critter . . . crabs.’

He gave her double thumbs up.

‘More,’ Sarah said. ‘Not so many clues.’

Tumbling noises from somewhere lower on the mountain drew their attention. They were slouched in their chairs, sitting close to the fire, and in unison they straightened and strained to hear. The sound was that of falling, rolling boulders, far enough away not to be alarming, but disturbing all the same. Tansy’s ears were pricked and she was motionless, listening too. The tumbling slowly stopped. Sarah got to her feet.

In what seemed to be an automatic and protective action, Heath reached out and grabbed her arm. An odd look entered his eyes, embarrassed to be so jumpy perhaps. He let go and came to stand beside her.

The morning fog was a shifting veil, moving and swaying, but not lifting. Sarah shivered. ‘That didn’t sound too good.’

‘A landslide.’

‘Set off by rescuers trying to come up the track, do you think?’

‘I hope not, for them. It sounded like a fair amount of ground shifting.’

Tansy snorted and bobbed her head. She whinnied loudly, as though in defiance of the moment. Sarah leaned into Heath, pressed herself against him.

‘About now I’d be starting to get pretty worried if I were up here on my own.’

‘I want to tell you something,’ he responded quietly.

Those words and that tone did nothing to alleviate Sarah’s unease.

‘All yesterday and the day before I’ve been trying to work out how to tell you. It feels wrong to keep it from you because you’ve been hurt by cheating . . . I’ve cheated,’ he said.

‘You do think it’s rescuers coming don’t you?’

‘They have to come sooner or later, but I’m telling you because I need you to know that I care about what you think of me.’

‘What sort of cheating?’

‘Bad. Being with you has made me realise how bad.’ He stepped away, put his hands on his hips and stood front-on to her, ready to come clean, but with his face averted. There was bitterness in his voice, disappointment about himself as he spoke. ‘I feel sick about it. I don’t think I comprehended how much it could hurt everyone and how destructive it could be. It could tear apart my family. Like your secret with your mother could.’

‘Not just cheating on one of your labelled girlfriends then?’

‘I wish.’

‘Was it your brother’s wife?’ she guessed.

Heath nodded. Genuine sadness pulled down the corners of his mouth. He wouldn’t hold eye contact. ‘Seeing how much you’ve been hurt, it properly sunk in I think. I can’t believe I thought it was somehow . . .’ he shook his head, ‘. . . okay or something? I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I was angry with him. I didn’t want to be well behaved for once. But . . . Jesus . . . talk about the wrong way to go about it and taking it too far.’

‘How long ago was it?’

All he offered was a shamefaced twist of his lips.

‘Oh.’

‘But now, being here with you, this . . .’ he pointed to his chest and then hers, ‘it makes it over. And so wrong.’

Sarah folded her arms and tucked her hands in beneath them, out of the cold. ‘It’s not actually over until you’ve ended it.’

‘The flood ended it, this up here has ended it. It’s snapped me out of it. We’d got so reckless. We were sending pictures to one another’s phones. Leaving notes and things to surprise one another, deliberately pushing the boundaries. It seems crazy now. She was having days off at the gym, telling him she was with her girlfriends, and spending the whole day with me.’

‘It is a bit close to the bone telling me this.’

‘I know.’

‘To discover those sort of things, to find out about those kind of lies, you don’t know what it feels like. It’s devastating.’

‘I realise that now.’

‘No one else knows about it?’

‘No.’

‘Your brother’s not going to forgive you; you do know that don’t you?’

‘I can’t tell him. He won’t take it. That’s the problem. He’s not strong enough. It would tip him over the edge.’

‘I sometimes wish I’d never found out, not all the details anyway. You think you want to hear, but when you do, you’d do anything to scrub the images they cause away. Knowing is . . .’ she thought about it a moment, properly determining, ‘it is the worst thing.’

‘That’s why he can’t find out. It’s probably selfish telling you. I’m telling you so
I
feel better. I want to get it off my chest. But, Sarah, I need you to know how much I regret it. It’s not who I am. It’s not who I want to be . . . Do you believe me?’

‘It’s easy to regret something.’

‘Not easy to regret it as much as I do. Do you believe that?’

‘I think I do.’

He stepped closer and touched her arms, encouraging her to unfold them and accept his embrace. He gathered her against him.

‘When we’re down from here, I need you to look back and understand things, understand me, know who I am.’

‘You do think they’re coming. The clock is ticking, hey?’ She ran her hands over his shoulders. ‘It’s okay. I’m glad you told me.’

His hands moved to rest lower on her back. ‘Heading up here Christmas morning I can tell you one thing – I did not expect this: you.’

‘No, I can’t imagine you did.’

Sarah’s face had healed. The bruising had faded. Heath pushed her fringe back from her eyes and trailed a finger along her temple. In the process of hugging he’d edged her around. Her back was now to the fog. Heath’s mouth slid down her throat, hot breath and the softness of his tongue, the graze of his teeth.

As he kissed her neck she sensed that he looked over her shoulder into the fog – his kiss was mechanical for a moment, distracted as he checked around them, then his inventiveness was there again, his desire.

The day passed without rescue. Light faded. Dinner didn’t fill them. Supplies were down to two cans of beans, one packet of noodles and the emergency rations of stale Weetbix. Heath was lying on the bed, on his back, knees up, feet apart, hands linked behind his head, his body tense and rebelling against his relaxed position. Sarah was standing by the door, leaning against the cupboards.

‘Right,’ she said, ‘that’s it. We can’t wait any longer. Tomorrow I’m riding down to see if the river can be crossed. I’ll stick to the road. That way I won’t get lost.’

‘If it’s foggy, you’ll get lost.’

‘I know the mountain. If I have to go off the road, I’ll keep heading downhill until I hit Spinners Creek, then I’ll follow it along until I get to the bridge.’

‘You
knew
the mountain. In this fog you’re not going to recognise anything. You won’t know where on the creek you are. You won’t even get that far.’

‘The fog is never going to clear. Global warming has hit. It rained like that everywhere, everything is in chaos and no one is coming for us. I’m going down in the morning.’

‘No you’re not.’

‘I’m not? Are you going to stop me?’

Heath stared mutely up at the ceiling.

‘Don’t worry I’m not going to go anywhere near your car, Heath. I’m not going to
snoop
and find out anything you don’t want me to . . . Or is it that you don’t want me to leave because your knee is stuffed and you don’t know how you’re going to get down anymore?’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Tansy.’

‘I don’t want to ride your horse down the mountain!’ His voice was directed up at the ceiling. ‘I’m not plotting to steal your bloody horse – get it through your head.’

‘My bloody horse?’

‘I know how I’m getting down.’ He threw her a cutting sideways glance. ‘Don’t worry about me.’

‘Maybe I wouldn’t . . .’ her voice rose, ‘if you didn’t make those sorts of sly fucking comments.’

‘I’m not your biggest problem, Sarah, let me tell you that.’

‘How about you tell me then what my biggest problem is?’

‘
Fog
.’

‘Don’t hint at the bullshit you’re refusing to tell me, and then back away from it.’

‘I meant the fog.’

‘No you didn’t.’

‘Don’t start getting paranoid.’

‘
Don’t
start with that.’

It had been on the tip of Sarah’s tongue to demand her gun back, to accuse him of planting the phone battery under the table, but how could she now, after he’d said that?

She laughed harshly. ‘You’re pretty good at it, aren’t you? I suppose being a cheater you do have to know how to work every angle. You certainly do that.’

‘Thanks,’ he sneered.

‘Well ain’t this is a change.’

‘Not really. Even when we’re having sex it’s frustrating the shit out of me. Wait . . .’ he clicked his fingers, ‘. . . that’s right, we’re
not
having sex. No fucking wonder I’m losing it.’

She glared down at him.

For a while they maintained their anger. Then his body sunk lower in the bed.

‘Hey.’ He turned to her. ‘I panic too. I’m worried too. It’s getting to me as much as you. I don’t know what the hell is going on down there. We’re feeling the pressure, that’s all. The fog is going to lift, we just have to wait.’

‘We can’t anymore.’

‘Sarah, I don’t want to fight with you.’

‘It’s not like before; we’re running out of food. We’re running out of dry firewood. Your knee is no better. It’s worse. We have to do something. Don’t turn it around on me, not this time, because you know I’m right.’

He closed his eyes and sighed.

‘Another day and we’ll have no food.’

‘You’re right.’ He opened his eyes. ‘But will you give it one more day?’

‘No. I’m riding down tomorrow. I guess it’ll be interesting to see if you do try and stop me.’

In the complete and solid darkness, Sarah felt Heath sit bolt upright in bed.

‘What?’ she said.

‘Listen. The rain, it’s raining.’

‘You must have been asleep. It’s been like that for a while.’

‘It’s heavy.’

‘It’s weird that it’s heavy again.’

He laid back down. ‘It is.’

Sarah was on her back. Her legs were straight, her arms were folded over her chest, with her hands curled in and crossed between her breasts; she was like an Egyptian mummy. The blankets had been neat below her chin, but Heath’s movements had displaced them.

‘What are you doing?’

Heath’s voice alone wasn’t enough for her to tell how he was lying. Sarah reached across and felt under the blankets. He was lying on his back too. She patted his chest to confirm it. ‘I didn’t know which way you were facing.’ She drew her hand away.

‘No wonder it’s so dark.’

‘It’s going to flood Spinners Creek again.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘I should have gone down and tried to cross before now.’

‘We’ll go out in the morning and it’ll be water all around us. The sea will be lapping at Sid’s Gap.’

‘I can picture that way too easily.’

Heath’s bodyweight shifted into her. ‘You realise we’re like an old married couple, arguing one minute, in bed talking about the weather the next. We’re even starting to sound like one another.’

‘Hey?’

‘I keep hearing myself and the things I say and thinking it’s something you’d say.’

‘Like what?’

‘The Sid’s Gap thing.’

‘Hmm. I guess.’

‘You sound like me sometimes.’

‘Like when?’

‘Like then.’

‘Just then?’

‘And before.’

The conversation made Sarah giggle. He chuckled too. Perhaps it was the change in outside atmospheric pressure, but there was a lifting of oppressiveness. The nature of their stress had altered. Sarah moved.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Checking how you’re lying.’

‘Thought you did that already?’

‘This is a more thorough check.’

He unzipped his shorts and wriggled out of them. ‘Let me help you with that.’

‘So ready to lend a hand . . . What are
you
doing?’

He had begun unbuttoning her shirt. He pushed the shirt off her shoulders, hooked his fingers in the elastic waistband of her thermal leggings and eased them off too.

‘You’re breaking the rules.’

‘I’ve lost track of whose turn it is to stay dressed anyway.’ He took off his top and stretched to feel for the torch.

But the torchlight was too harsh, Sarah recoiled from it. He angled it away. The shadows it cast on the van walls were sinister, seamy back alley luminosity.

‘It’s not feeling right.’

‘I’ll go get the lamp.’ He left the bed. ‘Don’t get dressed.’

‘I am.’

‘Don’t you dare.’

It sounded like he tripped over and stumbled into one of the chairs outside.

‘Shit it’s hammering down,’ he called.

‘Check on Tansy,’ Sarah shouted.

‘Yep, she’s good. No fog!’

‘Pulling my leggings on . . .’ Sarah teased as Heath came back up the van step.

‘Sarah, don’t.’ His voice was serious, with a note of hurt.

He shut the van door. The sound of the rain became muffled. In a rare show of modesty he was holding the yet to be switched on lamp in front of his groin. He kept the flashlight pointed down at his feet.

‘Why did you close the door?’

‘Cosier.’

‘We shouldn’t be doing this. Rules are rules.’ But Sarah remained naked under the covers.

Heath switched off the torch and turned on the lamp. ‘Better?’

The light was softer, a faint green fluorescent glow – giving them both a Shrek-like hue – but, all things considered, it wasn’t too bad. As far as mood lighting on the mountain went it was as good as they were going to get.