The Break (14 page)

A gaggle of kids passed on their way to the river, science teacher heading them up, grimacing enviously to a mate in the beer garden. Catching one of the kids' hats as it flew off the small head, and witnessing an exaggerated tip of his mate's middy glass, he complained: ‘Look, that's just unnecessary. I'll be there in about an hour.'

Rosie thought about those schoolkids, wondered if they studied any environmental stuff in class in between growing mould and doing liquid nitrogen experiments. After last night, she couldn't get it out of her head how they had to have a new generation of ideas, how totally out-of-date and inappropriate
some of the ‘brains' in high-up positions were. How they seemed to have little care for a future beyond their own. She wondered if those kids even knew about what was happening at Nurrabup. Watching them as they passed, though, Rosie reminded herself that these kids were part of a community that prided itself on being exactly that — a community.

She checked her watch. Hopefully the kids would make that teacher thirsty as hell, and he'd be here by half three: Rosie wanted to talk to him.

Mister Stokes was a nice guy, Rosie thought, heading back to the bar with glasses tucked under her arm. He'd said to call him Bernie, but it was that teacher thing — she kept calling him Mister er Bernie. It turned out that he was one of the RAID committee members, and was planning to approach the school headmaster and the parents for permission to take the kids to one of the meetings. ‘So educational,' he enthused, ‘and totally grassroots. You couldn't invent a better case study. And they'd actually be interested too. For a change.'

Rosie felt glad, said she'd look out for them at meetings.

‘Yep,' Bernie said, ‘I just have to find the right approach with the principal, that's all. Even if just a few of the kids could come along.'

Rosie's manager walked past, then, meaningfully wiping a nearby table of broken chips and glass rings. Rosie grabbed Bernie's glass, though there was still a little left in it. ‘Sorry. Gotta get back to it. Good luck with the principal. Might see you guys at the next meeting.'

Gus's call came through a few days later and Cray thought he'd go to the pub and celebrate. There'd been a bit of a spike in demand in the board-shaping business, apparently, and Gus was happy to have him sooner rather than later. It would be on a part-time basis. There would still be plenty of time to surf. Cray wanted to see Rosie and tell her the news and he could have a beer or three at the same time. That morning, all morning, she'd sat out on the verandah with a book, but every time he'd looked over, she wasn't reading, she was looking ahead, at the ocean, at the panel vans and Kingies pulling up at the Edge Point carpark. She'd wandered in a couple of times, quietly made herself a cuppa and went back out again, hardly saying a word. Cray didn't think she was angry or upset — he'd certainly know about it if she was — but she seemed far away, and that worried him.

Later, he'd surfed out at the main break, and it wasn't huge, but a few nice sets came through, and being the middle of the afternoon midweek there were only a few people out, unlike the weekend head count. On the weekends you almost needed crowd control out there; testosterone from Perth dropped in on waves others might have waited ages for, ruining the scene for everyone before they piled into cars and headed back to Perth, declaring wicked surf.
Filth
.

Cray looked around. It was that lovely time between afternoon and evening when the light began to change, the temperature dropped, and the sky juggled the sun and the moon. People sat outside the hotel with cold middies. Through the doors he could see Rosie. She was talking to a couple of
old codgers behind the bar. He hoped, fleetingly, that they weren't chatting her up.

Cray's hair smelled of salt. Rosie leaned close to him as she put his beer down on the table, loved that smell. Ocean. Wind. She smiled at him, glad he'd come.

Coming to the pub, even for work, had snapped her out of an odd feeling she'd had all morning. Even though Cray'd been at home, even though he'd been near her, when she looked out at where she was, so far from everything, so far from their family and friends, and her favourite Italian deli in Freo with crates of tomatoes and zucchinis out the front; when she looked and saw all that water in front of her, and the depth of the bush behind her, she saw strangeness all around. Nothing familiar, or safe. Just all this wild land and somewhere among it, a tiny community, and somewhere in that, her.

‘C'mon, who wants another?' Liza did, and she wanted an excuse to talk to the woman behind the bar — the one she'd seen at the RAID meeting the other night, the bank couple. She looked lovely, and Liza admired the way she chatted to the regulars, had a laugh with them. Liza wondered what she — a newcomer — thought about the Nurrabup development.

‘You're meant to be keeping me on the straight and narrow, Lize, not plying me with beer!' Mike flooded sweat into his clothes, slid into his regular evening drowsiness, the effects of the methadone kicking in.

‘Oh, c'mon, it's just a belated welcome-to-Margaret-River drink.'

‘Go on, then, Lize.' Ferg did his best Yorkshire accent,
burping. ‘There's nowt on telly, so we may as well have anoother, then.'

Sam was trying desperately to convince his folks to let him have one, too — ‘Just a
shandy
, go on, Mum!' — but it fell on deaf ears, and he rolled his eyes at Mike, who gave him the nod to have a sip of his when Liza and Ferg weren't looking.

As Rosie was pouring the beers (‘and a lemon squash for the little bloke'), the woman on the other side of the bar said, kindly, ‘You're new in town, aren't you?'

Rosie looked up, surprised. ‘Yeah. How did you …? Well, I suppose it's not that hard to tell.'

‘No, actually, it's really hard to tell, they turn over staff at this place like snaggers at a sausage sizzle.' She laughed. ‘But I saw you at the bank a few weeks ago, and at the rec centre the other night.'

‘Oh yeah. New town, new accounts. And the Nurrabup development thing, well, I just can't believe that.' Rosie trod carefully. ‘I can't imagine how people who've lived here for years feel about it.'

Liza leaned comfortably on the bar. ‘There's such a mix of people here, you know — farmers and greenies and families and young people. Not everyone's worried about keeping development to a minimum — there's a lot of jobs to be had out of it.' She sipped from the first middy and said, ‘But I might be giving the wrong impression. Last night — there were a lot of us there. It was great.'

Rosie let the tap snap back into place. ‘That's encouraging, I suppose.'

‘How are you liking it down here?'

Rosie liked her directness. ‘Well, it's a whole new lifestyle for us, really. We came down to try to make a break — from the
city and everything. Like Perth's a big smoke or something.'

Liza nodded. ‘Margs is a popular place for that — for a change of lifestyle, I mean. Lots of room to be on your own, if you want that.'

‘But it's still a small town, isn't it, despite that. I mean, once you get into the scene, I imagine it'd be pretty hard to sort of … extract yourself.'

‘Absolutely. It's either one or the other, unfortunately. We keep to ourselves, generally. As much as we can.' Liza turned around to where the others were sitting.

At the next table were the town accountant, a couple of local councillors and the newspaper editor, downing pints of Guinness and eating peanuts and laughing over-heartily.

‘Have you met that lot yet?'

Rosie pressed the lemon post-mix button. ‘They're in here most evenings. Who are they?'

Liza's face clouded. ‘Sharks. Developing their way to the bank. Crooks wearing shire councillor outfits. The accountant's in with them, I reckon. Helping them diddle the figures. The newspaper guy's not too bad. He's the one with the beard. He's stuck up for a few good things over the years. Helped stop a few bulldozers. Be interesting to see what he thinks about Nurrabup. Shame he had to do the dirty on his missus with the seccy, though.'

Rosie laughed. ‘God, it's terrible, isn't it? Imagine knowing that everyone knows that about you.'

‘I know, and I shouldn't join in, especially after telling you we keep to ourselves. It's just so hard not to. It's such a small place.' She looked slightly ashamed.

‘I'm Rosie, anyway.'

‘Liza.'

Lining the middies on the counter, Rosie smiled and said, ‘Really nice to meet you. Enjoy your night.' She almost added,
Maybe I'll see you in here again
, but another customer came, and after that, the moment had passed.

On the way home, while Liza thought about Rosie, and Sam tried to see the saucepan in the sky as the car zoomed along the bumpy road, Ferg and Mike talked. It wasn't until the marri came into sight, with its reaching, dark branches, that they started shouting.

While Ferg parked, Liza snaked an arm behind her seat to give Sam a reassuring leg squeeze.

‘What you've got to understand is, I
never
particularly wanted to take over the farm. I had no choice — you'd already pissed off with your stoner mates.'

Liza decided that Sam probably shouldn't hear everything they had to say to each other, so she told him to go inside, find Pip. Ferg and Mike went silent as Sam shut the car door and slouched up the steps.

‘There's no need to be so fucking
personal
about it, Ferg, it's not like I fucking well set out to —'

‘Not
personal
? Mate, are you dreaming? What hole have you just crawled out of? This
is
personal! It's about our lives, and how ours, how our
life
, has been shaped by yours, Mike, by your shithouse choices.'

‘And don't you think I know that? Don't you think I
know
how I screwed everyone, how I've fucked up … I lost Jen, for god's sake. I missed out on spending time with Dad. I shafted the folks, and you all know, and I know you all know —'

‘Except Mum, of course, who thinks Jesus made you for a fucking sunbeam.'

Mike nodded with forced patience. ‘Yep. That's right. That's something else I can feel like a piece of shit for. And it's
all completely my fault. But look at you. You've got everything! Look at you, with Liza, and Sam.'

When finally he responded, Ferg sounded like he could have wept, or slugged him, or both. His words came slowly. ‘What about what Liza and I've missed, while we were having to be responsible, having to look after the farm when we just wanted to go travelling and piss off, piss you and Mum and Dad off. Jesus, Mike! We missed out on all
that
. Lize and I missed out on all that stuff you do when you're young, when you
can
. And now, yeah, we've got Sam, and he's … well, he's incredible, but I don't know what there'd be without him. We'll never know what else we could have been or done if we hadn't had to stay here, while Dad's heart was breaking.'

Liza picked at a loose thread she couldn't even see on her shirt. Ferg unwound his cramping fingers from the steering wheel.

Noise came from someone's throat. From their blood.

The old tree leaned over the house in the evening wind, flung nuts like hail across the tin roof.

Sam's bedroom light went on, and after a minute, the blue flicker of his computer screen.

Sam didn't want to go and find Pip. She'd be watching TV, boring stuff, love stories with people twirling parasols and skipping down paths and stuff to make you puke. Then again, Pip stashed chockies in her room, all different sorts.

Nope. Sam shut his bedroom door, felt the air suck out. No trespassers! No one was coming in, not Mum, not Dad, still smelling of eucalypts and beer, and not stupid Uncle Mike. He remembered now, how it had been when Mike was here that last time, how grumpy Dad had been (but he and Mike hadn't
shouted
at each other), how Mum had cooked and cooked until they were all chockers, second and third helpings every night, and how his bum had been in
season
, with its stupid tingling. It scared him, how his bum knew stuff before he did.

There was only one thing for it at times like this. He imagined the black shining screen coming alive with information, colours, things to click on, taking you further and further in. The World Wide Web. It was an amazing place. And he wasn't going to turn his light off at eight. They could get lost. Especially while they were sitting out there in the car arguing like people in movies did.

Sam was going to browse and surf to his heart's — and bum's — content, and he wasn't going to ask anyone's permission to do it.

Pip lay on her bed, remembering when the boys were kids, perhaps nine and ten, playing backyard cricket. The Crowe Ashes. The prize? A handful of wood ash from the pit fire outside, sometimes rubbed into the winner's hair. Fergus and Mike hadn't changed much at all since those days. They were still competitive, they still loved and hated each other in the same breath. Fergus would just stick it out at the wicket, knocking away Mike's efforts but not hitting anything too wildly; no showy sixes or broken windows. Eventually Mike would raise the stakes and start bowling aggressively, making his brother duck for cover and causing their father to yell out, ‘Steady on, mate!' And Mike'd reach the point where he couldn't stand it anymore, and he'd slam the ball down into the dust and storm off in a rage. Ferg'd drop his bat eventually, and slope into the house for a pear or an apple at the kitchen table. Mike wouldn't show his face again till dinnertime, and it would take him until the next day to make eye contact with anyone again.