Roadside Sisters (13 page)

At the mention of her mother’s name, Meredith turned her face back to the wall of trees flashing by her window. ‘What’s Sigrid got to rebel about? It’s just damned stupid. She’s doing it to punish me, that’s all.’

‘But that’s what rebelling is,’ said Nina.

The home truths were coming too thick and fast for Meredith’s liking. She wanted the conversation to come to a dead stop. ‘Neither of you has daughters. You just don’t understand.’

Before Nina could open her mouth to protest, a road sign announcing they had arrived in Mallacoota came into view and Annie’s memory was kick-started: ‘I
do
remember! We all stayed in tents in Jaslyn’s boyfriend’s backyard. Ooh, he was gorgeous! A woodworker. Dirty nails. Smelled of linseed oil. We had quite a torrid secret affair during that festival.’

‘What!?’ Meredith and Nina were both appalled at the casual confession.

‘You were screwing Jaslyn’s boyfriend?’ Nina turned from the road to look Annie in the eye. ‘But we all had a pact about that, didn’t we? Wasn’t it strictly “hands off” each other’s men?’

‘Absolutely.’ Meredith backed Nina. ‘It was supposed to be a sisterhood that expressed women’s solidarity, and part of that was being honest with each other, not letting men come between us. We were supposed to be beyond the “male gaze”.’

Annie sputtered into her water bottle at the mention of the ‘male gaze’. She hadn’t heard that term in years and didn’t know what it was supposed to mean . . . then or now. Something to
do with being seen as a sex object, she supposed. Well that war, at least, was won. Didn’t women these days have the right to view men in exactly the same way?

‘Hey!’ She shrugged off their disapproval and wrapped her arms around her knees. ‘Like Meredith just said, it was a lifetime ago. Maybe it was an aberration. You don’t think we still believe in all that “women need men like fish need bicycles” stuff, do you?’ There was a long pause as everyone digested what Annie had just said.

‘No we don’t. But we bloody well should!’ roared Meredith.

‘Amen to that!’ Nina pounded the steering wheel with delight, and to a rousing nostalgic rendition of ‘Sisters Are Doin’ it for Themselves’, the mighty RoadMaster Royale rolled into town.

A $110 tank of petrol, a bucket of potato wedges, a packet of cigarettes and a bag of frozen bait later, and the RoadMaster was heading purposefully back out of town towards Genoa on the very same road.

They’d made a brief tour of Mallacoota and pointed out the landmarks they remembered. The town had been remarkably untouched by the past two decades. But they’d rejected the camping ground. Too crowded. Meredith wasn’t keen for a repeat of last night and, besides, Nina had in her mind a virtual postcard of the place where she wanted to spend the evening: an isolated, shady flat clearing in the bush with a picnic table, a water view, kookaburras, wallabies . . . and no rock music or mosquitoes. Nothing less would satisfy her.

She turned off the highway and skilfully negotiated the van down various potholed dirt fire-trails leading to the South Arm of the Top Lake. Meredith peered ahead anxiously for low-hanging branches which would surely tear off the roof. Every scrape of gum leaves on aluminium made her jaw ratchet and tighten. The huge, unwieldy vehicle rocked alarmingly from side to side. In the back, Annie cursed and dived like an Arsenal goalie as books, sunglasses, mobile phones, bottles of suntan cream—and anything else that wasn’t nailed down—slid off counters and crashed to the floor.

After a good twenty minutes of tortuous driving—during which Meredith and Annie both begged her to ‘Stop! Here’s fine!’—Nina turned the last corner and there it was: a deserted, picture-perfect spot on the lake’s shore. Nina jumped from her seat and her expert survey revealed a wooden camp table, fireplace and a tidy pile of chopped wood. Even a well-maintained drop dunny. It was just as she had imagined. She gave the girls the ‘thumbs-up’ of approval and they climbed from the van with relief. They were treated to a raucous welcome by a tribe of kookaburras.

‘Look, look! Wallabies!’ Annie pointed to a thicket of scrub where they were being regarded in turn by inquisitive large brown eyes. She stepped forward and three grey furry heads ducked for cover, thumping through the crackling undergrowth to a safe distance.

‘This is a wonderful spot. Gorgeous!’ called Meredith from the sliver of pebbly beach just beyond a fringe of she-oak. Before her a still expanse of water reflected the afternoon sky and the
hills of thick grey-blue bush off in the distance. There was not a sign of human habitation anywhere except, she smiled, for the giant, three-bed apartment-on-wheels that Nina was now reversing into a level parking place.

‘Right! I’m going fishing. Who’s coming?’ Annie clapped her hands purposefully and started to load her basket with supplies. Cold chardonnay and a copy of the English edition of
Harper’s Bazaar
went in first. She pulled on a pair of shorts and a singlet and slipped her feet into blue rubber thongs.

‘Go for it, Annie! I didn’t know you were a fisherwoman.’ Nina opened the outside locker of the van and rummaged for her father-in-law’s fishing rod.

‘My dad used to take me out on the Goulburn River when I was a kid,’ said Annie. ‘It wasn’t far from the farm at Tongala. You could still catch redfin, yellow-belly, all the native fish. But it’s mostly just European carp now. Bastards of things!’

She kicked at the grass and jammed her fists into her jeans pockets. She was overdue for a visit to the farm, but knew what that would mean—more nagging from her mother about why she hadn’t found a new husband, hadn’t had kids. Still, Annie would have to face another round of it soon. Brian hadn’t been well with his ‘nerves’, Jean had whispered down the phone the last time they spoke.

‘The Worst Drought in 100 Years’ was the headline in the
Kyabram Free Press
but it wasn’t just the parched soil Annie had seen on her last visit home. It was as if her parents’ youth and vitality were also evaporating before her eyes. They were in their mid-sixties, but seemed a decade older. Jean had refused
to accept the envelope of cash Annie tried to press upon her, but she had been relieved to see that the $200 a week she later transferred electronically into the farm account hadn’t been returned—although the simple reason for that might have been that Jean had no idea how to send it back.

Meredith slathered herself with sunblock, perched an improbable straw hat trimmed with cherries on her head, and traipsed off to join Annie by the water to chance her luck with the rod.

Nina turned the van’s power supply to ‘battery’ and then spent some time sweeping the floor, straightening beds and restowing all the items that had come loose on the drive down the bush trail. Now what? She turned her attention to the campsite, fossicked for kindling and built a fire in the fireplace ready to be lit. She arranged the camp chairs, threw a tablecloth over the rough wooden picnic table and . . . now bloody what?

Nina realised that she had no idea what to do with herself. She should be settling back in a chair with her book and a glass of wine, enjoying the afternoon sun in this idyllic spot, but instead she found herself itching for some menial task to perform. She’d be stacking gum leaves into neat piles next.

She could hear Brad’s voice: ‘Christ, woman! Sit down! Relax!’ But she was like a machine in perpetual motion—folding, wiping, washing, fetching, carrying. Fifteen years after the kids were born and she still rocked on her feet as if she was soothing a baby in her arms. It occurred to Nina that she’d hardly ever seen her own mother relax. She’d watched Wanda wait hand and foot on her father and brothers, and remembered vowing
that her life would be different. This thought was enough to stop her at last. She was sitting in her chair with her book in her lap, dozing, when excited squeals echoed across the lake.

‘A fish! Ohmigod, look, I’ve caught a fish!’ Meredith came belting through the bracken dragging a plastic bucket with a still-flapping fish in it—as if it was the last thing she could possibly have expected to haul from the lake on the end of a fishing rod baited with a raw prawn. ‘Annie says it’s a black bream! A beauty! We can cook it over the open fire for tonight’s dinner.’

‘But I was going to do that chicken. I’ve got three fillets ready to go under the grill,’ Nina whined. Meredith stopped and stared. Nina herself couldn’t quite believe she’d said it.

The awful, silent moment was interrupted by the sound of an engine bumping down the track and two heads turned, alert as wallabies. With a loud grinding of gears, a four-wheel drive towing a tinnie with an outboard motor hove into view.

Nina and Meredith exchanged a glance—the idiots from last night! That morning, while Annie was still passed out in the top bed, they had been relieved to see them pack up and drive off. ‘Hopefully, that’ll be the last we see of those two morons,’ Meredith had declared. Now, as she watched them stop the car, she groaned. There went the peaceful solitude of their perfect camp. She shoved her bucket of black bream behind the back wheel of the RoadMaster. Two door slams later and Annie’s drinking buddies were crunching over the gravel towards the van.

‘G’day! Great day for it,’ the tall one with the black goatee called.

‘Yep, sure is,’ replied Meredith.

‘Top rig! “King of the Road”! The only way to go. I’m Zoran. This is Matty.’

‘G’day. Pleased to meet you.’ Matty, the shorter, shaggy blond-haired one, scuffed at the dirt with his boots, nodded and offered his hand.

‘I’m Meredith.’ She stepped forward and pumped his palm vigorously. ‘And this is my partner, Nina.’

Partner? Nina looked at Meredith with barely disguised astonishment. What sort of ‘partner’? Fishing partners? Then she felt Meredith fumbling for her hand and noted her silly affectionate smile and raised eyebrows. Meredith couldn’t mean that Nina was to play the role of her lesbian lover, surely? Meredith squeezed her fingers. Bloody hell! That’s exactly what she meant.

After a secretive nudge from Meredith, Nina took her cue and greeted the boys in a low voice: ‘Howdy.’

The owner of the goatee sneaked a look at his mate. ‘You ladies here by yourselves?’

‘Are you blokes here by
your
selves?’ Meredith shot back. She’d always hated that question. The assumption being that, without a man present, women must be alone. She’d had a snappy comeback for it since the days of the wimmin’s group.

‘Yeah. S’pose we are,’ said Matty. He spied the fishing rods on the grass. ‘Anything biting?’

‘Nup,’ grunted Meredith. ‘Been at it since dawn and haven’t caught a thing.’ Nina nodded dumbly in agreement. She was in awe of Meredith’s improvised performance.

‘Yeah? That’s no good. We better push on for Eden then,’ he said. ‘Ah . . . before we go, we met this chick . . . er . . . woman in Lakes Entrance last night. Annie Bailey. You know her? She was travelling up the coast in one of these units.’

‘Hmm . . .’ Meredith rubbed her chin. ‘Well, we’ve got a bit of a convoy going. We’re expecting a couple more rigs like this to get here in the next hour. Six women on board, but there’s no Annie with us. Sorry, can’t help you, mate.’

‘OK. We might get going then. Have a good one . . .
ladies
.’ The tall one smirked through his hairy face furniture.

‘No worries,’ added Nina in a voice so ludicrously butch that Meredith pinched a roll of fat at her waist in rebuke.

The two men shuffled back to their 4WD, heads down, hands jammed in pockets. The engine roared into life and the tinnie trailer fishtailed in the gravel, throwing up a derisory cloud of dust. Meredith and Nina heard them explode with laughter once they figured they were out of hearing range.

‘I still can’t believe you did that.’ Nina leaned over and slapped her thighs with merriment for the millionth time. ‘You haven’t lost your old Epidurals hairy-leg roots, Meredith. Aaargh!’ She jumped to her feet. ‘The smoke’s in my eyes again!’

Meredith and Nina played another round of musical chairs to dodge the plumes from the open fire being buffeted this way and that by the cool breeze blowing in over the dark surface of the lake. Annie watched their futile manoeuvres in silence. As any bushie could tell you, you just squinted against the smoke.
It would soon change direction. And it kept the mozzies away. Not that any flying insect for a five-kilometre radius could have survived the noxious fumes from the repellent they’d doused themselves with.