Swimming on Dry Land (14 page)

We don't sleep together. Michael hasn't touched me since the day he saw the cine-camera, not that he touched me much before, not since his depression, but I always felt he cared. I always knew he loved me. Not now. I grab a dirty t-shirt and rub a clean spot in the window, which hasn't been wiped in weeks. One day of dust is enough to block the view. Maybe Michael couldn't see me for the dust?

I should feed the birds. Three of them, galahs, are waiting patiently on the telegraph wire. Michael has neglected them lately. I don't agree with feeding wild birds, but once you start, you have to carry on.

In an attempt to boil some water, I strike four matches before I manage to light the stove. All the cups are stained. I scour the coronation mug to get rid of the tide-marks; they won't come out. While I'm waiting for the kettle to boil, I rewrap Georgie's clothes: a Wombles t-shirt, her favourite skirt, and the spotted socks she likes. Clean clothes for when … I put the skirt on the cushion first, then the t-shirt, resting her socks on top. It doesn't look right. I have to move the socks to one side – which socks did she have on that day? Then I put the socks back on top again. The kettle whistles, filling the caravan with steam. I switch off the fan, lift the kettle from the boil, and go out to find Moni.

At the pumps, the red-necked woman is filling her battered ute with petrol. When I reach her, she starts telling me that her house will be taken tomorrow. She's got family north of Adelaide. After she has slotted the nozzle back into the pump slot, she wipes her hands down her baggy cotton trousers, still talking. Her lilting voice follows me around the pumps as I head into the service station shop.

There is no one behind the counter. Karlin left days ago. It seems Eddie is trusting people to put their money in the till while he goes out looking for Georgie. Why does he suddenly care? Shouldn't it be about more than a birthright? Is that what this is all about? Or maybe he's just fretting about his town? He's like a child trying to catch the pieces of a toy airplane that has been shot down.

I call through the hall to Moni. ‘Don't forget your hat.' When I open the sitting-room door, I find her crouched down beside the table, staring at Eddie's model town. ‘Where's Uncle Eddie?' I ask. ‘Where's Dad? Who's looking after you?' She looks at me wistfully, and slowly stands. I talk fast to hurry her up. ‘Maddie's leaving tomorrow. We should say goodbye.' Moni's eyes are fringed with tears but there is nothing I can do.

I tousle her hair before I take her hand. She kisses my arm as we go through to the hall. The wet patch where her lips have touched my arm makes my skin tingle. In my head I tell her that I love her. I can't say it out loud. As we pass through the shop, Moni steals a Marathon bar from the sweet rack and stashes it in her shorts pocket. I pretend not to notice. I pretend not to notice that she has one arm stretched out beside her, her hand curved slightly as if she is guiding someone, as if she is holding Georgie's hand.

When we hit the road, we push our way through the heat.

‘Is Dad with them?' Moni asks, pointing over to a line of men a good way off on the far side of the fence.

‘Your dad will never give up.'

If you look beyond the men, you can see the hazy line of the horizon, marking some kind of ending. In the past few days I've pictured Georgie just beyond that line, an inch farther than I can see.

As we walk towards the bend in the road, Moni scrapes at the edges of the bush with a stick, stopping every few yards to lift up a stone or poke at a tuft of scrub grass, no doubt probing for insects. She has settled down a bit. The medication seems to help. At least she's stopped talking like Georgie, or to Georgie, but I can still feel the ghost of my little girl standing between us.

I see Georgie everywhere: in a clump of grass, in the cloud shadows on the ground. I see her waving at me, smiling, puckering up her lips like she did whenever I presented her with green food, and then her face gets distorted in the light and she fades back into the endless bush. Why didn't I give her longer baths? Why didn't I sing to her every night instead of when I felt like it? For a second, I close my eyes and try to hear the sound of her laughing as I poured the water over her head. I can see her, but I can't hear her. I hear the scraping of Moni's stick on the ground, the call of an occasional bird, a faint distant rumble that could be voices or a car; I can even hear my own breathing, but not Georgie. And then I lose sight of her too. All I see is this corrugated road of red earth that runs right into the sky.

The street is empty, except for Mr M, sitting underneath the white
tree. I've often wondered whether he has children, what it was like here before the mine, why he stayed. There are things I'd like to ask him, but not now, so I deliberately veer off towards the other side of the road, passing him at a distance. Then I stop and wait for Moni. She is way behind, rooting in between a cluster of rocks. She doesn't seem to understand what's going on. It's as if this is all a game, as if she's still playing hide and seek. Maybe it is a game. Maybe Eddie's right. We spend our lives learning the rules, and every now and then the rules change, but the game is still the same game.

‘Hurry up!' I shout to Moni. It's too hot to be hanging around. She puts something in her pocket and then runs, stopping abruptly beside Mr M. After nodding at him, she starts foraging for small stones.

‘Moni!'

She is so intent on collecting stones that she doesn't hear me. (Michael is the same; they both go conveniently deaf when they're concentrating.) Moni places the stones in a ring around Mr M. I can't see his face, but his back slackens; I imagine he is smiling. When she has used the last of the stones, she waves at him and kangaroo-jumps towards me with a big grin on her face.

‘What did you do that for?' I ask.

‘He told me to. Look!' She points up at a wedge-tailed eagle circling above us. ‘Do you think it's hungry?'

They're like vultures, hovering around, swooping down on dead animals and picking the bones clean. I grasp a handful of dried earth and pelt it at the bird, though of course it doesn't actually hit it. Nevertheless, the bird glides off.

‘You could have hurt it,' Moni says, her face turning scarlet. She gets her temper from me.

‘They're vermin.'

Why would Mr M ask her to do that?

A few yards before the first house – there are seven left – Moni crosses the street to get as far away from me as possible. It can hardly be called a street any more. I imagined something grand, something impressive, the way Eddie wrote about his miraculous town. The saddest thing is that he believed every word. I don't understand why he let himself build up so much debt. These people paid rent. Though one thing Eddie's good at is spending money. Like Maddie said, he's a big fish who built himself too small a pond. But I can't imagine him without this town – this street. He doesn't seem to understand that there will be no Akarula without the mine, no mine without miners, and no one is prepared to live in a place where people disappear.

The men look like small question marks in the distance. There is nowhere we haven't looked. Michael is doing this search for me, for us, for what we used to be. He doesn't really believe… I wave Moni over to Maddie's house, which stands between the store and the bar. She crosses the road to join me, scowling. While I wait for her on Maddie's patch of garden – a square of lawn resembling burnt toast – I pick the dirt from my nails.

‘Sorry,' I say, when she is a few steps away.

‘It's alright.'

I know it'll be at least a day before I'm properly forgiven.

Moni marches past me and knocks on Maddie's door. I don't know how I would have survived this town without Maddie. At the same time, I can't imagine knowing her anywhere else, meeting her in England, for example, or even in Adelaide. We're so different. The only thing that unites us is this town. It's the same with all the women.

Maddie hollers out, ‘It's open,' poking her head around the kitchen door as we step inside. She gives me one of her bear hugs. Her breath is rancid from drink. ‘I'm up to my neck in boxes. We're meeting in the bar. The women want to say goodbye.' She bends down to whisper in Moni's ear. ‘You fancy a Coke?'

Moni softens under Maddie's generous smile. ‘Yes please.' She doesn't even like Coke.

‘I'm not sure I…'

‘Nonsense,' Maddie interrupts, pushing her wiry hair off her face as she looks at me. ‘It'll take your mind off things. There's nothing we can do now except wait. Queeny said the detectives flew in. I think they went out with Michael earlier on. Maybe they know something we don't.'

I get a sudden surge of hope; it fills me to the brim. Maddie's right; they must know something we don't.

Dropping her gaze back to Moni, Maddie says, ‘How you keeping? Your dad told me you've been up to the hospital again.'

Moni nods before rummaging through her rucksack, producing her notebook and the matchbox. ‘Do you want to see it?'

‘What you got in there this time?'

‘A beetle. Not sure what sort. My dad will know.' She sticks the matchbox underneath Maddie's nose and slides it open.

‘My God, that's some smell.'

‘They do that when they're scared. It's a defence mechanism.'

‘Defence mechanism. Where do you learn phrases like that? You're a walking dictionary.'

‘Dad told me.'

‘That's enough,' I say, trying to take the matchbox, but she's too quick. ‘Put the poor creature outside.'

‘Dad hasn't seen it yet.'

It's Michael's fault, this fascination she has with insects. He encourages her.

Maddie chivvies us on. ‘We can't sit here like ducks.'

When we get outside, a wall of heat knocks me sideways. Maddie grips my arm. ‘Hold up,' she says, fixing her other arm around my waist. ‘You're going to have to start eating and sleeping. I can't keep scraping you off the ground.'

I take a few deep breaths to steady myself. ‘Why do you think they're back?'

‘Those detectives? It's anyone's guess. I wouldn't pin too much on it. They would have told you if they'd found anything. You look like hell. Come on. I'll get Vera to make you a sambo.'

Arm in arm, we walk awkwardly towards the bar. Moni prances on ahead, batting flies away from her face with that scraggy notebook.

Inside, my eyes take a while to adjust. Thin cracks of light seep through the half-shuttered windows, lending the room an underwater feel that makes me think of Georgie in the bath. Once I sit, the dizziness goes away. Five women are propped on tall stools at the far end of the counter. They wave, saying they'll be over in a minute. Their voices bounce off the hollow walls. The red-necked woman is the loudest.

Maddie orders drinks and sets a plate of sandwiches down in front of me. ‘Eat up,' she says before going back over to Vera. I watch her dig her hands into her shorts pockets to retrieve her loose change, which she throws on the counter, leaving the linings of her pockets hanging out. I got her to try on a dress of mine once. I'd worn it when I was pregnant with Georgie: hyacinth blue, short sleeves, high waistline. No idea why I brought it with me. When Maddie finally got it on, she flounced around for a while, lifting up the skirt, doing a fine lady impression, all the time knocking back the beer until she broke into song – some Australian number about cakes and buns which sounded vaguely sexual – and then she caught herself in the mirror and that was it; she was doubled over, roaring with laughter, her face wet with tears. She said:
Some Sheila might look awful sharp in this, but it ain't me.
I cut up the dress for dusters after that.

Moni tips the beetle out onto the table. ‘Go on,' she says, egging it along. The beetle doesn't move; probably scared to death. I have the urge to crush the damn thing under my thumb. She waits a while and then scoops it back into the matchbox.

‘You shouldn't keep it closed in like that. It's cruel,' I tell her. ‘Wash your hands before you eat.' She's too busy making notes in her book to reply. Her sketches are quite good, scientific-looking. Michael thinks she's going to be an entomologist.

Maddie sets her beer and my water on the table and slides over the Coke, which I can guarantee Moni will not touch.

‘Cheers,' Maddie says, though not in a celebratory way. She flings her head back, taking a deep gulp, wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her man's shirt. ‘Why aren't you eating?'

I pick up one of the meat-spread sandwiches to please her.

Maddie holds up her glass and studies the beer. ‘I can't really believe that we're leaving. Not that I'll miss the place.' She takes a few gulps.

I keep chewing but it's hard to swallow with the acid taste in my mouth.

‘What are you going to do?' Maddie asks.

When I finally manage to down the sandwich, my eyes well up and I blubber like a fool. Moni looks at me vacantly for a moment, then she carries on drawing.

Maddie offers me a paper napkin she has plucked from the metal holder.