Roadside Sisters (14 page)

‘Actually, I thought the blond one was a real cutie.’ Nina poked at the embers with a stick. A flurry of glistening red sparks swirled into the air and dissipated into the black void.

‘Hey, are you cheating on me, girlfriend?’ Meredith accused. And then they were laughing again. Meredith herself couldn’t quite believe how she’d play-acted with Nina that afternoon. But then, selling homewares to women who already owned enough of everything required some level of improvisation and showmanship. She often felt that her domain behind the cash register at Flair was a performance space of sorts. She was astonished at how easily she’d pulled off the afternoon’s charade with Nina and the rush of adrenalin she’d experienced. Her hands had shaken for a good hour afterwards.

Annie tightened her grip on her glass and stared into the flames. ‘So what did this Matty . . . you know, the blond one . . . say again?’

‘We’ve told you—over and over! He was looking for you.
Why
he was looking for you is what you haven’t adequately explained yet,’ said Meredith.

‘Exactly!’ echoed Nina. ‘Maybe he had a glass slipper in the glovebox of the LandCruiser.’

‘A pair of lacy size-10 knickers more likely,’ Meredith chortled.

‘Hah bloody hah,’ muttered Annie.

‘But honestly, Annie,’ said Nina, ‘what did you say they were? A couple of union blokes? If you keep wasting your time on—well, you’re the one who said they were yobbos—how can you expect to find a decent man?’

Once again Nina had barged through the barrier into well-signposted personal space, but this time Meredith had to agree: ‘Those two scruffy individuals were hardly what you’d call husband material. They were rejects, both of them. Undersize. Throw ’em back in the lake!’

Annie said nothing. She thought that perhaps Meredith and Nina had a point. There had been too many men lately. Too many anonymous fumbles in the dark after too many cocktails. And yet that kiss . . . she couldn’t stop thinking about it. And Matty was trying to find her. What could that mean?

She couldn’t remember if she’d made any promises. She had to stop drinking so much. And she would, right after she finished what was left in the bottle of merlot in her hand.

‘Well, I’d better clear away these dishes.’ Nina stood and snatched up her tea towel. It was almost like a security blanket with her.

‘No. Sit down, relax!’ Meredith pulled at her baggy shorts. ‘Have another glass of wine and just enjoy the fire. Leave the damned dishes,’ she ordered.

Nina did as she was told, took her glass and slumped back into her camp chair. She smoothed the tea towel over her thighs to dry it by the warmth of the fire. ‘That bream was nice, wasn’t it?’ she finally sighed, fishing for compliments.

Meredith took the bait: ‘Sublime, and I’ll bet it’s the first time anyone has cooked pan-fried bream with a white wine and tarragon sauce over this fire.’

Annie drained her glass, relieved that her love life was off the agenda. ‘It was great. Truly,’ she added. ‘I’d like to see old Nigella whip that lot up in the middle of the bush. As my dad would say: “Top tucker!”’

Nina shuffled her feet closer to the glowing logs and purred with pleasure at the compliments. They almost compensated for the incinerated wooden handle on her good Le Creuset frying pan.

‘I think there’s another baked potato in there somewhere, if anyone wants one.’ Nina scraped at the ashes with a stick. There were no takers. ‘Well how about some lemon sorbet and vanilla wafers?’ She didn’t wait for an answer and was up on her feet again, heading for the van.

Annie kicked back in her camp chair and inhaled the comforting smell of seared eucalyptus leaves. ‘I’m starting to see the sense in this whole mobile home thing,’ she sighed. ‘When Cameron . . .’ she hesitated at the mention of his name, ‘. . . and I were first married we used to go camping in the Grampians in this crappy little leaky tent and live for days on muesli bars and chicken noodle Cup-A-Soup.’

Meredith was just about to ask after the infamous ex when there was a bloodcurdling cry from inside the van: ‘OH NO! SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!’

Meredith and Annie scrambled to their feet, hurtled across the grass and piled up the stairs to find Nina standing in front of the fridge, her cheeks flushed, on the verge of tears. ‘I forgot
to turn the damned thing to gas and now everything in the freezer is thawed out! The lemon sorbet, the ice cream, a homemade passionfruit cheesecake, chicken satays, my bolognaise sauce, duck and orange sausages . . .’ Nina was bent over, poking at soggy lumps of Gladwrap in the freezer compartment. She dumped a pile of plastic containers in the sink. ‘Look at it! It’s all ruined!’

‘Christ, Nina!’ exclaimed Annie. ‘You scared the fuck out of me. I thought you’d been bitten by a snake or something.’

‘Forget it. It’s only food,’ Meredith admonished.

Nina was aghast. ‘
Only food?
What are we going to eat for the next ten days?’

Meredith grabbed Nina by the upper arms and shook her. ‘For God’s sake, we’re only an hour away from a Woolworths!’

Nina pouted and refused to be consoled. ‘Well, we’re just going to have to eat everything in the next twenty-four hours then . . . and that includes the chicken fillets I had for tonight.’

‘Yes, of course we will.’ Annie started back down the stairs. ‘In fact, why don’t we just stay up all night and eat the whole lot? Give me the chicken and I’ll whack it on the fire now.’ With that pronouncement, she left and slammed the door after her.

Meredith prised two plastic containers from Nina’s grip. ‘Look,’ she soothed, ‘just calm down. I’ll pack this back in the fridge and we’ll have another look at it in the morning. You put the fridge on the gas, or whatever it is you have to do, and let’s have the cheesecake and sorbet now.’

By the flickering light of the fire, Meredith set bowls on the damp grass and scraped portions of gooey dessert into each
one. In the shadowy darkness she couldn’t see the quality of the china or the embossed leaves and berries, and it occurred to her that she didn’t much care. She stared into the embers for a moment, then lifted her face to feel the caressing breeze from the lake.

‘What the hell is wrong with that woman?’ Annie huffed as she dragged another branch from the pile to set a blaze going again.

‘It’s just what she does,’ said Meredith. ‘She cooks. She provides food for her family. It’s pretty primal when you think about it.’ Standing barefoot under a vast and starry sky, in crumpled clothes with the smoke of a burning gum tree branch in her eyes, Meredith felt pretty primal herself. ‘I can see why people enjoy roughing it like this.’

Annie almost choked on her wine. There was a $250,000 vehicle parked a bare four metres away stuffed with one thousand and one items. Meredith might have caught and cleaned a fish this afternoon, but without the $300 rod, the good Swiss cook’s knife and Baccarat non-slip chopping board, she would have been up shit creek.

‘I’ve got the gas on.’ Nina appeared out of the darkness, a hand towel flung over one shoulder. ‘So we’ll have hot water for the dishes, and a shower if we want. I worked it out for myself, thank goodness, so I didn’t have to ring Brad because we’re way out of mobile range.’

‘I thought we were leaving the phones off?’ Annie challenged.

‘We are,’ fibbed Nina. ‘I’m just saying, that’s all. I mean, in the case of an emergency or something . . .’

‘How would you have got on in the old days, do you reckon?’ Annie kicked at a flaming log. She’d unearthed a pair of scuffed Blundstone boots from her wardrobe and brought them along. Their familiar, warm contours made her feel solid and earthed, like she’d slipped on her old self and was a straight-talking country girl again. ‘Can you ever imagine yourself as the drover’s wife in the old stringy-bark hut?’

‘What?’ asked Nina, who always seemed to find herself three beats behind any of Annie’s musings.

‘Like in the Henry Lawson story. How would you have coped with a shack full of kids and the drover gone for six months at a time taking sheep up the old Barcoo River?’

‘I would have been fine,’ Nina stoutly replied. She gathered her bowl from the grass and found her chair by the fire. ‘After all, Brad’s gone for most of the year with the football. I’ve done all the things that need doing around the house—I did the guttering and I built the carport. That’s why—sorry I went a bit overboard—I’m so pissed off I forgot the gas.’

‘So you’re saying women need men like . . . ?’ Meredith paused for a little crowd participation.

‘Like this cheesecake needs ice cream,’ Nina mumbled through a mouth full of passionfruit and melted lemon sorbet.

After the bowls and cutlery had been cleared, washed and stowed by Nina, she took another look inside the fridge. Maybe the damage wasn’t as bad as she’d first thought. The spag bol and satays could be refrozen without too much danger
to human life; they could eat some of it for breakfast . . . Her inventory was interrupted by Meredith tapping on the flywire and beckoning her to come. They tiptoed back to their chairs in the dark.

Annie pointed to a pair of yellow eyes at the edge of the firelight: ‘It’s a possum. A little brushy by the look of him.’ It was out to scavenge the remains of dinner. Annie found some leftover garlic bread in the ashes, unwrapped the foil and threw the delicacy by her feet. The three women watched, entranced, as one possum, then another, edged closer from the shadows and nibbled daintily at the morsels in their paws and then reached for more.

‘They usually eat native fruits, flowers and leaves. I’d say that one’s got a baby. Yep, there it is,’ Annie whispered as a tiny head popped from a furry pouch to a lullaby of maternal coos.

‘You know so much about the bush—you seem so at home here,’ Nina observed. ‘You ever thought of getting yourself a nice country bloke?’

Meredith winced—another clunker from Nina. Didn’t she ever think before she opened her mouth?

‘I did get myself a “nice country bloke”, don’t you remember?’ said Annie. ‘Cameron was from Quambatook, up our way.’

‘Sorry. I forgot.’

‘Quambatook!’ Meredith leaned closer to the flames. ‘What a fabulous name. Perfect for a paint colour.
I’ve done out the sunroom in a gorgeous quambatook
.’ She was on a comic roll now, enjoying herself hugely.

She didn’t get a smile from Annie, however. ‘Can’t imagine anyone wanting to paint their sunroom the colour of a muddy puddle at the bottom of an empty dam.’

Annie’s morose statement silenced any further attempts at comedy from Meredith.

‘Cameron and Patrick—that’s his new “life partner”—have gone back, would you believe? They’ve taken over his family farm and are doing some biodynamic organic thingo.’

‘It’s pretty brave, him going back there,’ said Nina. ‘But it must be hard for you. Everyone knowing and everything.’

Once again, Meredith couldn’t believe that Nina could be so matter of fact, but when she saw Annie wasn’t protesting, she joined the interrogation. ‘Do the natives know they’ve got a couple of gay greenies at the bottom of the paddock?’

‘It’s bloody awful,’ Annie replied. ‘Every time I go home to Tongala, I see someone who was at my wedding. I meet my cousins, and I think they probably want their cake forks back. I know Mum and Dad think I’ve made a mess of everything. They always wanted me to marry Lance from the property next door.’ Annie had to smile to herself. She hadn’t thought of creepy Lance, who liked to sleep with a poddy calf on the end of his bed, for many a moon.

‘But you’re doing brilliantly with the real estate,’ said Meredith. ‘Didn’t you say you’ll be able to branch out by yourself next year?’

‘
By myself
—that’s the thing, isn’t it?’ Annie tossed the last chunk of bread to the possums snuffling through the grass under the picnic table.

‘You couldn’t imagine yourself ever going back to the farm?’ Nina pressed on.

‘Hah! Sitting on the veranda looking out at a dust bowl and starving cattle? Not bloody likely.’

‘But what about if you met some other country bloke? A straight one,’ Nina hastily added. ‘What if he came to live in Melbourne?’

‘Never. You don’t know country boys like I do. You should see my dad when he comes to town. He panics when he can’t see the horizon. There’s something about the flat country that affects their brains. I’ve seen Dad standing at the bottom of a hill having no idea what to do with it, except drive round it. It’s like it doesn’t quite make sense. Like the earth is playing some weird trick on him. My grandad went on a trip to the high country once and he said: “I had to get back home because my eyes kept running into mountains.” You put a man like that in the city, they can’t see far enough into the distance and it kills ’em in the end. Too many corners in the city.’

‘Maybe you could take a city boy to the country then,’ Nina persisted.

‘Nah. It would be like putting a ferret in a round cage.’

‘A ferret in a round cage?’ The analogy was completely lost on Meredith.

‘No corners to hide in, so they run around and around until they drop dead. City blokes don’t do well in the country either.’ Meredith found herself stopped in her tracks by Annie’s argument.

‘But what does that say about you?’ Nina continued. ‘You’re from the flat country too.’