His Brand of Beautiful (30 page)

“Who thinks the sideburns are real?” Lacy said quietly, leaning around Michael.

“Pretty sure the paunch is real,” Christina answered.

Michael said: “Give the guy a break.”

Elvis soldiered on. “Ladies and gentlemen. The rules of the Bush Bash are: there are no rules. There’s not a single man, woman or child on this trip including my fine self who cannot be swayed by bribery or corruption. We all accept cash, card
and wine
;” and his eyes settled on the Cracked Pots party and he gave them a set of hip thrusts that made the crowd cheer.

“I
love
Elvis,” Lacy said.

Christina gave the man on the stage a big thumbs’ up.

“That will cost you later,” Tate’s deep voice rumbled close to her ear and Christina had the strangest sense that all was now right with her world.

Tate tipped his chin toward the stage. “The King and I play tennis every second Monday. I told him there’d be a bottle of wine for him for every plug he gives Cracked Pots on this trip. He’s partial to Shiraz by the way.”

“So it gives me great pleasure to declare this year’s Bush Bash officially open.

Everybody, let’s rock. See you all at Wilpena Pound tonight and—” Elvis’s sideburns wobbled: “Thank you very much.”

“Elvis has
left
the building,” Michael said.

Lacy stared up at the stage, wide‐eyed. “Are you kidding? Elvis left the planet.”

****

Christina balanced Tate’s laptop on her thighs and giggled. She’d been doing that a lot in the last ten minutes. The race had finished day one of the Bush Bash in the Flinders Ranges and they’d all stopped to camp for the night. Mikey and Tate were now cooking dinner on one of the campground barbecues.

“Do I even want to know what you’re laughing at this time?” Mikey waved his barbecue tongs at her. Flames ignited from the steaks on the greased plate, lighting the grin on his face.

“I do!” Lacy enthused from the deckchair alongside Christina, her second glass of Cracked Pots Rosé on the way to empty in her hand, aviator’s hat spread over her knee like a skateboarder’s helmet.

Christina scrolled through Mark Jamieson’s wine blog and read the first few comments. “About three people say Muddy Pot looks like Elmer Fudd. Jammo reckons you have eyebrows like Brooke Shields. The crew at Jester’s Feather says they’re not wankers and their eyebrow vote goes to Groucho Marx. Shall I keep going?”

“Brooke Shields has great fucking eyebrows.” Michael flipped the steaks. He turned to Tate, who tossed sliced onions and potatoes on the hot plate alongside and said: “How come
she
gets a gun and you draw me with fuzzy eyebrows?”

“Luck of the draw, mate. I wasn’t trying to get in your pants.”

Christina shut Tate’s laptop, feeling her heart swell with pride. “It’s really happening.

Finally
. I can’t believe we’ve done it.”

“Way to go, us. I’ll drink to that,” Lacy toasted with the Rosé.

“You’ll drink to anything,” Christina said.

Somewhere nearby a woman started singing
American Pie
.

Lacy reached across to lay her hand on Christina’s baby bump and rubbed. “Poor baby. Your mummy’s such a grump when she can’t have a drink. Lucky your daddy’s cool.

When you’re old enough I’ll tell you all about my Hens’ Night when your daddy let me paint his—”

“Keep it up, Lace, and I swear you’re not Godmother.”

“I’m going to be Godmother?”

“Not at this rate.”

“Does that make me The Godfather?” Mikey called from the barbecue.

Christina laughed at her brother and pushed out of the deckchair. The air was ripe with the scent of radiator‐roasted insect and barbecued meat, the two not easily Lily Malone

discernible. In the orange glow from the fire and the white light of gas lanterns strung on the roof, Tate’s XR Falcon glowed bronze.

She smiled to herself.
Okay, GT Gold.
Tate and Mikey insisted on that name for the colour like it was some kind of password to the gates of auto heaven.

She put the laptop in its case and left it on the XR’s front seat.

Tate’s tent sat off to the side, different from the snug two‐man dome they’d camped in at Binara. This one was green canvas, square with a pitched roof and a shallow annex on sturdy steel poles and fly‐screened windows to let in air and light. Just looking at the tent warmed her thighs. Tonight Tate couldn’t tuck her into her own queen bed while he slept on the pull‐down sofa in his study. Tonight she could reach out and touch him.

Let’s see how his willpower stands up then.

She felt like skipping back to her chair, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw Elvis approaching the others so she kept her walk demure.

****

Tom Long crossed into the campsite just as Tate was about to cut into his steak.

‘Elvis’ had lost his wig during the day and his thatch of hair was grey without it, almost white, but his sideburns clung grimly. Tate put his plate on the patchy campsite grass and stood to greet him.

The two of them went way back. Tom’s carpet warehouse was the first creative account Tate managed when he’d started work with Jancis. When Jancis moved her agency interstate, Tom stayed with Outback Brands. He’d been one of Tate’s top clients ever since.

Tate introduced Tom to the three Clays.

“I’m collecting for the raffle. I’m hoping you might have some wine we can throw into the mix,” Tom said.

“We can do a box each night we’re out here,” Christina responded warmly. “We want to see everyone try a glass before the end of the Bash. Cracked Pots can sponsor the wine at the disco night too.”

“Must have brung a lot with you then,” Tom beamed at her. His eyes flicked to her finger, checking for a significant ring. Tate wanted to dig his elbow into Tom’s sequined white ribs and tell him:
back off, buddy, she’s with me.

“Enjoying the Shiraz, Tommy?” Tate asked.

“You betcha. Wine. Women. Song. Elvis always did have a problem curbing his appetite.”

“Yeah,” Tate said. “And look how the poor bugger finished up.”

The other four laughed. At the campsite next door, a woman giggled and a little further away a guitar struck up accompaniment to yet another verse of
American Pie.

Tate sat, picked up his paper plate and stabbed his steak. He tried not to watch Christina bounce her red boot to the music. Right now, the thought of spending four nights in a tent without touching her was too hard to contemplate. It was hard enough not to knock on her door night after night when she slept just down the hall. Tonight, she’d be right by his side. He could reach out and touch her.

But he wouldn’t, of course. That was one battle he had determined she wouldn’t win.

****

“I have to pee.” Christina tugged at the seatbelt to ease its pressure across her belly. There didn’t seem any point readjusting the belt this close to the end of the fourth day on the Bush Bash route.

“Can’t you hold it?” Tate asked, raising his voice above the XR’s rattles without once shifting his eyes from the dusty road. “We’ll be at Mungeranie in twenty minutes.”

“Spoken like a bloke. If I could hold it until we came to a proper loo trust me, I’d hold it.”

“Then you better look for a bush.”

Now she was sure he was laughing at her. There wasn’t a bush out here any higher than her knee. He eased his foot off the accelerator and she relaxed as best she could and stared out the window at the red dirt of the Birdsville Track.

Tate said it was good cattle‐grazing land out here. Stuffed if she knew what they ate.

Maybe cattle ate rock. Maybe they ate rubber. Blackened tyre ribbons were shredded all along the roadside, like giant strips of banana peel left too long in the sun. The roads had been like this for the past two days, since they’d left the Flinders Ranges on the morning of day two.

Tate edged the XR to the side of the road. Christina unclipped the seatbelt buckle and, once he’d stopped, jumped out.

He didn’t turn the engine off which was good because its growl covered the sound of the splash as she squatted behind the car. Out here, you could hear an ant walk. She shuffled her shoe clear of the yellow torrent hell‐bent on ruining her shoe and studied a new section of the XR stationwagon’s rear: Car 52 for the Australian Cattle Association.

She adjusted her dress and jacket, hitched the elastic waist of her leggings over the baby bump and tried not to step in the wet patch soaking into the road. Far ahead, two dust clouds spiralled lazily into the sky, the only sign of other vehicles far ahead. The number of times she’d had to get Tate to stop for a nature break, it was no wonder they were last in the convoy.

“Better?” He asked, as she climbed back into the car.

“Much.” She sucked in her stomach and buckled up. It was a struggle. “My books said I’d pop out at thirteen weeks. I haven’t popped. I’ve exploded.”

Tate grinned.

“It’s not funny,” she said.

“Of course it’s not.” He shoved the XR in gear.

Then his scent hit her. By now she’d grown so used to being with him: in their tent, in the car, that it was only when she’d had fresh air in her nostrils she noticed how good he smelled. Noticing didn’t help her. Three nights they’d slept in the tent. He’d come to bed later and later and on that first night, when she tried to kiss him on the lips, he pecked her forehead, wished her goodnight, rolled over and went to sleep.

Bastard
.

Christina stared out at the window, at the horizon that went forever. The car gathered speed and red and blue ribbons of earth and sky raced.

“I’m pretty sure Bram will be there tonight,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“I told you there’s a starlight dance on the itinerary for day four didn’t I?”

“Yeah. So?”

Lily Malone

She took a deep breath. “I am almost certain Bram will ask me to dance, so I just want you to be prepared. It’s no big deal.”

“You can dance with whoever you like.” He didn’t look at her.

It stung.

They drove like that for a while, silence loud between them. The afternoon sun beamed through the passenger window, lighting up red vinyl seats, shining on the dash, shining off his watch.

“Seriously, Christina? You think I’d take a swing at someone for dancing with you?”

She let herself picture that for a second, Tate’s fist like lightning, Bram’s head rocking back. That tree‐trunk of a security guard running from the depths of the night, arms like a vice.

Even the sun on her thighs couldn’t stop her shiver.

“Bram has this security goon who’s big as a house and he has that hair‐trigger thing happening. You know? Like he’d shoot first, ask questions later. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

Tate snorted. Only she wasn’t sure what the snort meant.

“You don’t care who I dance with anyway, so forget I even said it.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t care. I said dance with whoever you like.” He looked at her then and the heat in his eyes was like the touch of a warm hand.

A sign rose out of the solitary landscape. Mungeranie Pub. Thirty kilometres.

Christina ran her fingers through her hair, lifting the heavy lengths off her neck.

When she laid her hand down, he reached for it, his hand in the air between them. She met him halfway and they drove into Mungeranie like that, fingers interlaced across the seat.

The Cracked Pots crew wasn’t last to leave Mungeranie Pub that night, but not by much. As Tate held the door for Christina, the fresh air blowing into the bar felt good on her face.

“It’s colder than a witch’s tit out here,” Michael said, stamping his boots. Light streamed through the pub windows, turned his hair muddy brown. He caught Lacy around the shoulders, snuggled her into his ribs and stumbled a little when she tripped across his toe. Her hands went everywhere in and under his padded jacket.

“Knock it off, kids, you’ll get us arrested,” Christina said, stone‐cold sober after an evening on lemon‐lime bitters and ice.

Lacy’s giggle cut above the sound of
Bad To The Bone
pounding out from the campsite, the dance night in full swing. Two men staggered from the pub arm in arm, heads thrown back, singing into beer‐can microphones.

“I know a way to warm you up,” Lacy teased Michael.

“Forget it. I’m not dancing.”

“Who said anything about dancing?” she slapped his hip. “I’m talking about the hot springs. I’ve been hanging out to try them.”

“A dip in a hot spring sounds good right about now,” Mikey said.

“I should check whether Elvis and his dancers have enough wine,” Christina said.

“Hot springs, then dancing.” Tate shrugged his arms into the surfer jacket he’d taken off in the pub.

Lacy and Michael led the way, skirting the campsite with its music, chat and cars, its glow of barbecues and lanterns. The air was thick with the smell of smoke, fuel and burnt sausages.

They didn’t need a torch. The track to the springs was easy to follow and if the sound of running water acted as a beacon, so did the smell. Fifty metres further the trickle of water became a rushing torrent and taller trees blocked the stars.

“Don’t you two fall in,” Christina called, watching Lacy and Michael each trying to step on the other’s toe. She nearly went arse‐up herself over an old plastic school chair and would have fallen if Tate hadn’t steadied her arm.

The earth opened into a rectangle about the size of a backyard pool. Steam rose through the trees. It was beautiful, but creepy, and it was easy to imagine monsters lurking beneath three rubber tyres that floated on the surface. Christina stooped to put her hand in the water near to where the pipe pumped into the spring. It was bath‐tub hot and the smell flipped the fish and chips in her stomach.

“Last one in is a rotten egg,” Lacy said, stripping down to bra and knickers, slender body winter‐white.

Christina shuddered. “It
smells
like rotten eggs, Lace.”

“It’s the sulfur,” Tate said.

Lacy sat on a log sleeper that retained the edge of the pool, paddling her legs in the water. “There’s a message in the ladies’ loo back at the pub that says if you drink enough you don’t notice the smell.” She slipped off the edge, pushed against it and breast‐stroked to the other side.