Trouble in Nirvana (3 page)

“Thank you.” Primrose snatched the knickers and bundled them with her T-shirt and drink bottles into the bag he handed her.

“Did you get lost again?” The infuriating smirk was back on his face.

“No.” The word held all the disdain she could muster. “Why?”

“I thought you’d have been inside by now.”

“I have been inside.”

“Car more comfortable, is it?”

“I was getting my things. Seeing as you’re here you can help me with my suitcase.”

“Okay.”

She could have sworn he laughed but he’d walked past her to the back of the car. Primrose opened the hatch. She stuffed the plastic bag under her arm, pulled her handbag and flute case over her shoulder, picked up the music bag and waited for him to grab the suitcase.

“You a musician?”

“Yes. Flute.”

He gave a snorting laugh he didn’t bother hiding. “That’ll come in handy. You’ll fit right in.”

“I’m a professional,” she snapped. The sheep peeked around the corner of the shed. Primrose eyed it warily and stepped so Tom was between her and it.

“Sammy got you, did he?”

No point denying it. “He’s mad.”

“He thinks he’s a dog.”

“I think he’d be better as dinner.” She scowled in the direction of the sheep.

Tom glanced at her. “That wouldn’t go down too well around here. They’re vegetarians.”

“I know.” She didn’t but she guessed. Danny and Nirupam always had been.

“I like a good steak myself. And roast lamb with my veggies.” He met her eye. No hint of laughter but was there a twinkle in those grey eyes? Was he pulling her leg? Primrose opened the screen door and he charged through, hefting the case with ease. “Which room is yours?”

“On the left. The door’s open, but you don’t need to take it in,” she called in a belated attempt to prevent him viewing her murals.

“Geez it stinks in here.” Too late. “Crikey!”

He dumped the bag and stood staring at the walls. Primrose edged around him and dropped her music bag and the dirty washing on the bare mattress. She avoided eye contact by carefully placing her flute with unnecessary care next to the music case.

“I reckon that’s Danny.” He walked across and studied the man next to the wardrobe. The one with the extra large head and the extra short hairy legs. “Yeah, definitely Danny. Whose room was this?”

“Anne’s.” Primrose stared in shock at the grotesque replication of her brother. Was it Danny? She hadn’t seen him in years.

“Aah.” He nodded as if she’d explained everything.

“What
about
Anne?”

He shrugged. “She liked to paint.” At least he didn’t call her an artist.

“Obviously.” Primrose gestured at the walls and waited for more information, but Tom, remaining silent, had moved on to stare at the next image.

“Did she do anything else here?”

He bent over to study something at knee level. The shorts tightened over neat muscular buttocks. Her breath caught. She looked away.

“She’d wander about with her easel and paint trees. I didn’t know she did this stuff as well. I always thought she was a bit odd. But most of them are odd who come here. Nuts.” He straightened and turned to face her. “How are you going to sleep with this mob looking at you all night?”

“It’ll be dark. They won’t be able to see me.” How indeed? Especially now one of them had been identified as her brother. What was he doing posing naked? What goes on here? She studied the distorted faces in alarm. No sign of Nirupam. “Do you know them? The other people?”

“At the moment I do but it’s hard to keep up, they come and go so much. I know Danny and Nirupam pretty well, they’re all right, just not very organised and too easy going with all the nutters who come through. Fern and Jason and their son have been here a few months. And there’s Kurt. He’s a bloody maniac.”

“Do you think I’m another nutter?” Kurt was a maniac? What sort of maniac? She wasn’t going to ask this man, though, with his sceptical cynicism.

Tom raised an eyebrow. His gaze started at her silver painted toenails and strappy, mid-heeled, red, dust covered sandals, passed over her bare legs and above knee hemline, reached the low neck and thin straps of her dress, her silver earrings, stopped at her expensive, newly styled layer cut burgundy hair with the copper highlights. “I think you’ve got no idea about life on the land—just like the rest of the city people who come out here—and you’ll last a week tops.”

The blatant, slow appraisal left a hot tingling trail of nerve endings. She iced her voice and kept her gaze away from his. “I intend to stay longer than a week.”

He said with infuriatingly casual scorn, “You might intend to. I’m saying you
won’t
last that long.”

“We’ll see. Thank you for bringing in my suitcase.”

He looked pointedly at the bag spilling dirty clothes onto the bare mattress. A tiny smile, quirky lopsided and dangerously appealing lurked on his lips.

“And for returning those.”

“No worries.” If he thought she was going to own up to using his shower he had another think coming. Primrose followed him outside and stood on the top step. “I’ll leave you to it,” he said.

“Hey you!”

Tom groaned. He turned hands on hips, to face the furious red bearded figure pounding toward them from the garden, weaving in and out between the trees like a runaway locomotive.

“Meet Kurt. The maniac.”

“What you doing here, Fairbrudder?” roared the man in a strong German accent. The Terminator in baggy shorts and a filthy T-shirt. “Haven’t I told you, clear off from this place? You’re not welcome here.”

Tom relaxed his arms but stood his ground while Primrose retreated to the shelter of the verandah ready to run inside and find Nirupam for protection. The hens clucked in concern and scattered from Kurt’s path. The straw hat flew from his head revealing wild blonde hair. Up close he resembled a Viking—a berserk Viking intent on murder.

“G’day Kurt,” said Tom when the maniac was close enough, red-faced and panting.

“You clear off, Fairbrudder.” The gasping words were punctuated by great wheezing, heaving breaths.

“You want to be careful, mate, running in this heat. Might have a heart attack.” Tom turned to Primrose with a slow, intimate smile which had her pulse matching Kurt’s. “Goodbye. Have fun.”

He strolled across to his vehicle, climbed in and started the engine. She gasped. Deserting her! How could he?

Kurt glowered, with grimy big sausage fingers clamped on equally dirty shorts-clad hips. “Clear off!” he yelled.

Primrose clutched the verandah railing too terrified to move in case his attention and rage shifted to her. When Tom’s ute had disappeared over the hill he turned. To her astonishment he smiled. A gap-toothed grin in a dust-streaked, sweat stained face.

“Danny’s little sister Rosie. Welcome to our commune.”

“Yes. Hello, Kurt. I hope I’m not intruding. Nirupam said...”

“Everybody’s welcome here.” An expansive sweep of an arm. A wave of foul body odour hit her like a sledge hammer. “Except that Fairbrudder barshted.” A quick return of the glower.

“Why isn’t he welcome?”

“He’s a cheat. Cheated Danny of land. He hates us, he’s jealous of our freedom and our lifestyle. Always complaining to the council.” He waved dismissively. “Crazy man. That’s why he lives over there. All alone.” He gave a bark of raucous laughter. “No-body wants to live with him. He makes bad vibes there. Hahaha.”

Danny was cheated by Tom Fairbrother? How? No sense asking Kurt. He seemed seriously unhinged.

“I wasn’t sure you were expecting me.” The closer he came the more convinced she was that he featured on her wall, facing the bed. The first thing she’d see when she woke every morning. Massive buttocks and meaty hams beneath a too thin and tall back topped by a red bearded face leering over its shoulder with a haystack of yellow hair and alarming purple eyes.

“Ja, sure ting. Danny said Rosie was coming.”

He came to the bottom step, grinning. Manic eyes. Tom was right. So was Anne. She’d nailed them exactly. Flies buzzed about them both. Another wave of hot, fetid male body odour made her eyes water and her lungs seize.

“Gosh it’s hot.” She summoned up a cheery, bright voice. “I should get myself unpacked.” She spun about and almost ran to the door, gulping clean, untainted air.

“You can help Nirupam in the kitchen. And care for the hens.” His voice lumbered after her. “She’s lazy lately. Shleeping all the time. Never works anymore.”

Primrose turned with an indignant frown. “She’s pregnant!”

He flung an arm in the air, scowling. “Pregnant is natural. No problem. Those native women, they have babies all the time. Easy. They don’t shleep. They just keep working and when it’s their time they squat down and out it pops. Natural, see?”

Primrose opened her mouth to object, saw the mulish expression and closed it again. He stared at her with unnerving intensity. No telling where an argument with this lunatic would finish. Humour him.

“What do I have to do with the chooks?” she blurted.

“Lock them in the shed at night. Let them out early in the morning. Collect the eggs. Check they have water. We have freelance eggs here. No chemical rubbish.”

Freelance eggs? She nearly laughed. “All right.” Sounded easy enough. Freelance hens wouldn’t need much care by definition. “I’ll unpack, then clean up in the kitchen.” She escaped indoors before the rising bubble of laughter burst out.

“Don’t use too much water,” he yelled as the screen door closed. “Can’t waste it like city people.”

“All right.”

Kurt must save water by not bathing.

Chapter Two

She tackled the pile of dirty dishes first. A search of the grimy cupboards under the sink revealed a scourer, an almost empty bottle of detergent and rubber gloves which proved to have a hole in the left index finger.

It took over an hour. Plenty of time in which to inspect Kurt’s furious accusation. Tom Fairbrother is a cheat—making his name a contradiction in terms. He’d cheated her own brother. How? Danny wasn’t a fool despite his vagueness and airy fairy attitude to life. He could be taken advantage of fairly easily, though. Too trusting. Too willing to see the best in people. Unwilling to argue and confront. Unlike his cynical sister. Even more cynical now, post Martin.

If Tom Fairbrother had cheated Danny she’d find out exactly how and why. Then she’d set about righting the wrong. This land belonged to both of them. If Fairbrother had cheated Danny he’d cheated her, too. She yanked the plug on the greasy, lukewarm water.

Two saucepans had to be left to soak with a scrupulous centimetre of soapy, dirty dishwater in each. Primrose dried the plates and cutlery and stacked them on the shelves. She went to her room for the bottle of spring water and unopened iced tea bought at the store on the way through town. Better they go in the elderly fridge which rumbled away in the corner of the kitchen.

While they chilled in the ice clogged freezer section she set to with a broom and cleared the ageing lino of a layer of tramped-in dirt and leaves. Then she wiped down the table and collapsed on one of the rickety chairs to catch her breath. Nearly five thirty and still oppressively hot.

Primrose dragged herself up and went to stand on the back step. Cicadas whirred and buzzed like a million tiny chainsaws. From here she could look away down the slope to the right to more sheds and a collection of fruit trees. Peaches? They were the main crop in this valley. She’d driven past several orchards on the way into Kullanurra. A flock of pink and grey galahs rose squawking into the sky, swirling and wheeling before heading for the distant hills.

Two water tanks nestled against the wall of the house. She wandered across the rough grass under the trees, one of which supported a car tyre swing, toward a washing line strung between two posts.

Someone had left various large pieces of sculpture lying about propped against tree trunks or standing in lopsided, drunken groups. Indiscernible white plaster shapes expressing something known only to the artist. Did Anne’s talent extend to sculpture or were these the fruits of another creative soul? The wind chimes danced with a constant, delicate tinkling. A couple of faded multi-coloured wind catchers flapped from the boughs overhead.

A footworn path led away through the trees angling downhill and to the left. Primrose breathed in deep lungfuls of the clear fresh air. Still hot, but the sun was lower now and would go behind the far hills soon, those rough peaks she’d driven over. So calm, so peaceful. Just what she needed. Clear her head of memories, forget a lying, devious man called Martin. Move to a higher plane. Leave him behind with his new, married girlfriend and her two year old child. What a mess he was in for—divorce, bitterness. Forget it. Not her problem. Served him right!

Was Tom a cheat? And what about those other accusations? He didn’t strike her as a man who would rouse himself to hate anything—scoff, yes, have a private chuckle at the nuts next door, but hate was a very strong word, an extreme emotion and he seemed too...what? Laid-back. Jealous? Attractive? Primrose compared the neat, clean, comfortable house and the well-maintained grounds with this place. Jealous of what? Maybe it wasn’t Tom who was the problem at all. Maybe he was right and Kurt really was a maniac. He’d certainly given a good impression of one. The question was—just how mad was he?

And had Danny gone the same way? Had they all gone feral out here?

****

Tom laughed all the way home from Nirvana. What a bunch of loonies. Kurt was always good entertainment, or would be if he wasn’t so violent-tempered, and was more willing to take agricultural advice from a proper farmer. He’d bet pretty little Primrose hadn’t come across anyone like him before.

He himself had never come cross anyone like her before. When he opened the screen door and saw her...The last time he’d been as stunned was when the horse tossed her head and caught him under the chin with a blow that brought stars to his eyes. Couldn’t think straight for a good ten minutes afterward. Same thing happened without the pain. But he couldn’t string many words together, too busy staring at such a vision appearing in his house.