Walking to the Moon (16 page)

He is standing, looking down at the pile of pegs outside the door of my tent, the green nylon rippling slightly in the breeze. We both look at the pegs and I kick a stray one with my toe, edging it towards the others. Good peg.

‘You travelling with anyone?' he says at last.

I don't answer. I divide him into two people. The one who, hearing I am alone, will soften, console. Protect. And the other, who will leave, and return at night when it is dark. It is not being raped that scares me. It is not even being killed. It is the fear before I die.

After a while he says, ‘You better move it back then, away from the road. Otherwise everyone coming down'll see you.'

‘It's only for the night,' I say, not looking up, in case he changes his mind. ‘I'll be up first thing.'

‘Still,' he says. ‘Better move it back, or you'll get me into trouble.'

I nod vigorously, thank him, make myself look at him.

It is empty when he goes. The air feels thin. As if there is too much space behind me, and nothing to lean into. For a moment I think I will finish dismantling the tent and go across to the main campsite from where I can make out voices, a burst of laughter, the smell of dinner. I feel the rush of the wanting, the need to belong— to the families, the ranger, I am not even sure. How the wanting blots out the empty space around me; how this is part of its function, the function of desire; and I close my eyes, as Anna has taught me, and feel how it is in my body. The wanting flares, a billowing ache in my chest—lonely—then subsides. After a moment I pull the tent further back into the bushes, gather the pegs and the lump of wood and start hammering them back in. It is nearing darkness when I finish. Inside the tent I undo my backpack, pull out my polar-fleece jumper and torch, lay out my blue foam mat.

A little way from the tent is a circle of rocks and some blackened wood. Someone has camped here already. Perhaps I saw the fireplace before I decided to stop here, noticed without noticing. Perhaps this is why I chose it. The sticks are dry, like the ground, and brittle. I have to go back inside the tent for the newspaper, which is tucked down the side of the pack. I take four sheets, tear them in half, crumple each half, not too tightly, and pile them in the rock circle. Then the sticks, smallest first, a tepee.

‘That won't work,' says Michael's voice. ‘It'll fall apart. Let me do it.'

And for a moment I let him, reach out to dismantle and start again. Stop myself. Stay still. What is the feeling, says Anna. It is failure. I take the longer, thicker sticks and continue the pattern, propping the ends against the rocks to make them secure. If it fails I will cook soup on the gas ring. From the main campsite I hear a child's voice raised in outrage. Mu-um! The matches are in my pocket, their green, waxy heads hard to strike but waterproof. I cup my hand against the breeze and put the flame to the edge of one of the paper balls, and the dark glow races up the newsprint like air into a lung, catching first the other balls, and then the tiniest of the wood splinters. Michael is right, nearly right. As the paper flares then subsides, the kindling collapses into the centre. I have to put my cheek against the soil, blow gently through my pursed lips—a soft, good wind—to breathe the life back into the fire, give it the force it needs to hold.

I
sleep fitfully, dreaming lists and unfinished conversations (a small bird) but always submerged, never quite breaking the surface. In the morning a dull light seeps through the nylon, and beyond the mosquito mesh I see the sky congested with low cloud and, at ground level, a magpie pacing the perimeter of last night's fire.

My clothes smell of wood smoke. I pull them back on over my T-shirt and knickers, squeeze toothpaste on my brush, unpack my hand-towel, unzip the door. Feel outside for my boots, then the water bottle. The main campsite seems closer than it did last night, beginning to wake. I walk around the back of the tents. Some kids are already up and tripping over guy ropes. Resigned threats from parents: if you can't be good/ be quiet/ grow up we'll have to go straight home. There is a tap beside the toilet block. I piss quickly (should have gone behind the tent, flies already circling the drop dunny) then clean my teeth and face, fill up the bottle. Back to the tent, which is still moist from dew. I pull out the pegs, drag my gear from inside, roll up my mat and sleeping bag, push them to the bottom of the pack so that if the ranger comes he will see that I am on my way, that I heeded him, but leave the tent up to dry while I boil water for tea.

Tina has raided the kitchen for me. Tiny hospitality packs of honey and marmalade, silver-wrapped butter pats, the loaf of sliced sourdough. I eat the bread untoasted, from my hand, on a tree stump, two slices with honey, then Viv's second apple, another cup of tea. It doesn't take long to pack the tent up. I strap it to the bottom of the pack, leave it leaning against the stump while I go back to rinse my cup, piss again (body still too careful, watchful, for shitting) and put my apple cores, yesterday's and this morning's, in the bin where they won't spread seeds through the bush and upset the natural equilibrium, or Hil. The pack feels familiar on my shoulders, weighted and not quite comfortable, my skin resisting the pressure. But my back is covered. I put my hat on, feeling complete. Closer to complete.

I move away from the campsite slowly and realise, as I start along the dirt road that leads to the track, that I am looking for the ranger's car. Too early, of course, he probably won't be back until evening. It occurs to me that he is the last person I have spoken to.

‘I have to go away for a week or so,' said Anna. ‘My mother had a fall. I'm afraid we'll have to cancel next week's appointments.'

I nodded. I looked at her shirt, which stretched across her chest so that I could see the shape of her breasts. I looked away.

‘How has your week been, Jess?'

‘Okay.' Silence. ‘I don't feel much like talking today.'

‘Is there something else you would like to do?'

‘Not really.'

‘Is there anything you want from me?' Silence. ‘Is there anything you would like me to do?'

‘I don't think so. No.'

It is getting hot, the early moisture thinned and rising. I adjust my hat, thinking that I should have got one with a broader brim. Now that he is gone, well and truly, not coming back, I allow myself to think about the ranger. I think first of—or at least the image that precedes the thinking is of—his arm, the crease on the inside of the elbow, and the pale hairs there. Brown and lightly dusted with yellow earth. He stood next to me for a moment before squatting down in front of the tent and the pile of pegs, pulling a partly hidden metallic wrapper from beneath the tent, Kit Kat, perhaps, crumpling it in his hand and then into his pocket, before rising, brushing his arm—or almost, I couldn't be sure—lightly against mine. It was an accident, clearly. He moved the arm, a deft consolidation, closer to his body, then stepped away not so quickly as to make it look intentional, reactive. A calm, practical movement—away nevertheless—but not to be acknowledged or remarked upon.

I feel the touch of the dusty hairs of his arm against mine, a tiny golden pulse that sweeps, now that he is gone and I can release it, into a sudden lurching in my abdomen, a rhythmic throbbing that spreads in rings from a point midway between navel and clitoris, belly and spine. Now that he is gone I allow myself to linger for a moment on how it might have been if he had come back in the night; that hot pulse and the opening of our mouths and those deep unexpected sounds in the dark. I am thirsty again. In a minute I will open the pack, undo the flask, drink. But for now I can only stand still. Caught in the urgency of my body's wanting. And the ache that spreads with it of not having, not being wanted.

‘See you then.' Now that he had stepped back, he looked briefly into my eyes. His were not large, but a strikingly dark brown, like Steff 's. He turned with efficient grace back to the car and drove away, raising his arm through the open window in a right-angled salute.

As I walk, my legs extending now into a steady even pace, fragments of last night's dreams flutter and bump against my face. Entrusted to my care is a small bird that cannot fly. I must hold it in my cupped hands while I cross a deep lake. As I wade, the water rising steadily around me, I raise my arms above me to protect the bird, but the floor of the lake disappears and then I am underwater. When I reach the other side and open my palms the bird has drowned.

Twice in the morning cars pass me, four wheel drives, presumably from the campground I have just left. The driver of the first raises a hand as he passes but barely slows, leaving the air behind him turbulent with yellow dust. The second slows, then stops ahead of me. A man and a woman, and two children who strain their necks to peer behind them as I approach. The woman leans out of the passenger side window and asks if I need a lift. They are going on to the next town. I say thanks, but I'm okay. When she repeats the offer, I say I'm meeting a friend further up the track. She looks unconvinced, but does not ask why or how such a meeting would take place.

‘Do you have plenty of water?' she asks. ‘Because we have some.'

I say yes, I'm fine. It is only as they draw away that I remember with a tightened stomach that one of my bottles is already half empty. It is not so much the water—I will have enough—it is that I did not allow myself to hear her offer before I rejected it, to make the choice. And the feeling that, alone, I am not in good company. The clouds are gone. It is only now that I start to think about bushfires.

‘Check the newspaper for fire bans,' the man in the camping shop said, ‘and call Parks and Wildlife before you leave and check that the trails are open. You should be okay; it's late in the season, but this sort of weather, things can change fast. Don't want to have to worry about hikers in the park if there's likely to be fires.'

That was three days ago, and I haven't checked since. But there were people last night, and other campfires. And that ranger. It is all right. Close your eyes. Take a breath. ‘You should have checked,' says Michael. Yes, I should have. Too late for that now. In bushfire seasons there are always stories in the papers about people in their cars getting caught unawares. The fire fighters say to stay in the car. It is the radiant heat that kills you before the flames get near. Stay in your car and wrap a woollen blanket around you. (What if you had a child? You would wrap the blanket around both of you, and wrap yourself around the child. So that whatever happened to you, your child would be protected.) The fire passes in two or three minutes. Stay low on the floor. The windows might burst but the petrol tank probably won't. The fuller the tank, the safer you are. Less vapour. Wait until the fire has passed, then stay by the car or head back for help in the direction from which the fire has come. (But what then, if it were alone, what would the child do then?) Every year someone cannot bear it. Someone jumps from their car and runs into the bush and burns. It occurs to me, that here, where I am, I am relieved of that choice. If the fire comes I will die. No use fighting.

The trees here are tall up against the road and half of the path is still in brindled shade. I walk through the streaks of light and dark, shrug my shoulders beneath the straps of the backpack, concentrate on distributing my weight evenly on both legs, feel my body release the tension.

Dear mummy
, writes Lily,
maybe the Nuthing is scared—

One day when Lily was small, I was standing at the kitchen sink. It was a Saturday. Michael was running or swimming or maybe working. I was staring through the glass, with its skin of salt, and a voice inside my head said: ‘Something is wrong.' It was quite clear, and it was not my voice; it sounded to me like a man's voice, but I did not turn or look around because I understood also that the voice was in my own head, and I was suddenly terribly, deeply frightened. I left the washing in the sink and walked into the living room, past the long, glass-topped table that I would not have chosen and the lithograph above it that I did not like. I went outside on to the landing, leaving the door unlocked, and made my way slowly down the stairwell into the lobby and on to the street. I barely noticed the cafe crowds or the crawling weekend traffic as I went across the road. I was so afraid. I felt that there was an enemy inside. I felt that this voice meant me harm.

On the beach it was windy and grey, and the air whipped up sand and salt spray and attached them to my clothes and my skin, my face. I thought: I am in the wrong place; I must get away from here. I must get away from him. I must escape before the bad thing happens. On my way back to the flat, I told the voice inside my head that it was all right, I would go; it might take a while, but I would go. And then I stopped thinking about it. I forgot.

I had become pregnant almost as soon as we were married. I vomited for two months and ate for seven. People asked if I was having twins. Michael called me Mama Buddha and prostrated himself before me on the kitchen floor. I was happy. At first. Once I had stopped feeling sick I felt strong and sexy and unassailable. I walked with my head high as if before a tailwind. We made love most days. Michael said, ‘With my body I thee worship.'