The Fancies, page 11
‘Oi, give us four more, while you’re there,’ someone shouted.
‘You can wait,’ Jase shouted back.
‘Oh, come on!’
Jase sidled up to Larry, who was busy with the Guinness tap.
‘I’m gonna make some food,’ Jase yelled into the publican’s ear.
His boss either didn’t hear him, or didn’t care, because the publican simply shrugged and went on pouring.
So Little Jase Turner left the bar and headed into the kitchen.
It was official: Col Morton’s day could not get better. Not that any kind of rational thought, such as the ability to make an objective assessment of one’s day, was currently running through Col’s mind. No, what was presently occupying Col’s mind was how Jessica Bram’s arm was sort of cutting off the circulation to his head and he didn’t even care. She basically had him in a headlock. It was the first time he’d had sex with a woman who had semi-strangled him during the process. Not that he was about to complain, because to be honest he wasn’t entirely sure he didn’t enjoy it immensely.
Col tipped to the left and almost overbalanced. He put one arm out to steady himself and knocked something, and it hit the floor with a metallic bong.
‘Ssh,’ Jess hissed, or at least Col thought she hissed—he couldn’t really hear anything, his ears were filled with a rushing sound.
The room was dark, only a little fading daylight came through a narrow window high on one wall. A dull bluish beam fell next to Col’s hand, reflecting off the steel benchtop. Briefly Col had wondered, when Jessica dropped her pants and hoicked herself up, if her arse would be cold on the steel. But then she’d opened her legs and put him in a headlock, so his concern for the temperature of Jessica’s arse had been very brief indeed.
Col had gotten married in his early thirties, much like any other bloke his age at the time who had been living with a woman for a while. It hadn’t worked out—she wanted kids, Col didn’t; she wanted to move away, somewhere bigger and more anonymous, Col didn’t—and Col had been largely single ever since. Sure, there was Tinder, but the pool of suitable women in Port Kingerton being as limited as it was, it usually meant a long drive. And most of the time Col couldn’t be bothered with a long drive, he really couldn’t. Not after a three am start and ten hours on a cray boat. And not when it was off season and he’d rather be tinkering with the old F Truck or helping out his farmer mates with the calving or lambing.
The point is, when Jessica started issuing what sounded like instructions in Col’s ear, he had to focus hard to hear them, because he had come to the understanding that although the past two days had been exciting, it was definitely not better than sex. How could he have even entertained the notion that anything could be better than this? He had just needed a reminder, that was all. And that’s what Jessica Bram had been kind enough to do, by shoving him through the doorway around the side of the pub, dropping her pants and hoisting herself onto the bench: remind him what sex was like.
‘Are you listening?’ Jessica said.
‘What?’
‘I said pull out.’
‘Oh. Now?’
‘Well, before you’re done.’
‘Righto.’
Jessica let go of Col’s neck. She put her hands behind herself on the bench and her eyes trailed to the ceiling. Her tights were hanging from her left ankle, swinging from side to side. ‘I still can’t believe Abigail Fancy came back yesterday, same day as the bone,’ she said.
Col stopped. He drew back and looked at Jessica. ‘What?’ he said.
‘Keep going,’ she said impatiently.
‘Okay,’ said Col, and he did.
‘It’s just … too coincidental. Don’t you think?’
‘Um,’ said Col.
‘I mean—’
‘Uh—’
‘That Abigail—’
‘Uh-huh—’
‘Abigail Fancy—’
‘Oh god—’
‘Abigail Fancy should come—’
‘Oh god, ohmygod—’
Col flailed, knocking something else to the floor with a crash, grabbing at the nearest cloth he could find.
‘Hey,’ Jessica said. ‘That’s my tights.’
All the kitchen lights came on.
When Little Jase Turner entered the kitchen and hit the lights, he was thinking about chicken schnitzels and not expecting to see Col Morton’s white buttocks and woolly thighs thrusting merrily against the stainless steel countertop where only yesterday Jase had helped Cook slice a bucket of tomatoes for the Greek salad. Nor was he expecting to see Jessica Bram’s face over Col’s shoulder, looking annoyed, complaining about jizz on her tights while a metal salad bowl spun to a stop on the floor.
‘What the actual?’ said Jase.
‘Hey,’ said Col, turning only his head to face Little Jase, ‘can you fuck off?’
A command from Col—his boss, his skipper—and Little Jase responded without thinking. Mumbling under his breath, he turned his back on the partially clad pair and shuffled towards the fridge. He would pretend the kitchen was empty; he would pretend they weren’t there. When necessary, a deckie is good at turning his back and getting on with his task while pretending he can’t see things.
‘Honestly,’ said Jessica, sliding off the bench and wriggling her tights back up. ‘There’s a tea towel right there.’
‘I couldn’t see it,’ said Col. ‘It was dark.’
‘Yet you could see my tights, like, behind you?’
Col shrugged and grinned, pulling up his jeans.
‘Jesus, Col, that’s a lot of jizz. My ankle is soaked.’
‘I aim to please.’
‘It’s not a compliment. Don’t you wank at all?’
Over by the fridge, Little Jase glowered and pulled his shoulders up to his ears. The crowd in the bar wasn’t getting any quieter, his head hurt and tomorrow he was supposed to help Jessica Bram’s husband replace the roofing iron on his carport and now he would have to do it with the image of Jessica’s naked thighs imprinted in his mind.
After a minute, although it felt to Little Jase like a very long time, the side door to the kitchen opened and closed. Silence fell behind him. Exhaling in relief, Little Jase dropped his shoulders and turned around.
To see Col standing right behind him.
‘Are you kidding?’ said Jase.
‘Nope,’ said Col, a supreme smugness writ all over his face. He was a man on the other side of a border, a man who had crossed a boundary, and now there was a gap between the two of them filled with trumpeting angels and also razor wire. It seemed to Little Jase as if Col stood taller, admiring the view.
‘I have to work with her husband tomorrow,’ said Jase. ‘What am I supposed to say?’
Col hitched his shoulders, nonchalant. ‘What do I care?’
‘Young Dick won’t like it.’
Now Col’s bravado slipped. Only a fraction, but they both noticed it. Col felt it like a pebble dropping in his belly and Little Jase saw it in the way Col abruptly shrank an inch. But Col rallied, because his balls were empty and he could think straight.
‘He’ll be all right,’ Col asserted. ‘Besides, he doesn’t have to know.’
Little Jase couldn’t help the laugh that came out. It echoed around the kitchen. ‘Of course he’ll know. This will be all over town by sunset.’ Little Jase pointed to the narrow strip of window. ‘And the sun’s pretty much already set.’
‘She’s harmless,’ Col said. ‘It was just a bit of fun. And you don’t have to worry about her husband—she told me that she and him have an “understanding”,’ Col made air quotes with his fingers, ‘a kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” situation. The dude drives a courier van across the border. I bet he’s got a few extras on the side, over there.’
‘Whatever, man,’ said Jase, holding up his hands. ‘Don’t care, don’t wanna know. But I don’t think Jess Bram’s harmless. And I reckon Young Dick’s gonna have words.’
Col’s high started to deflate. He suspected his deckie was right.
OLD DICK
Something fishy is going on. I can’t put my finger on it yet, but I will.
People have a certain way about them when they’re hiding something. Shifty faces, crabbed body language—you can see the secrets in people if you know how to properly look. These days though, no one looks properly at anyone else. Too busy making up their own version of events. Too busy staring at their phones to notice if their own bum crack was smoking, let alone if anyone was acting shifty.
Anyway, what I’m saying is, they’re acting queer. The whole lot of them: the young fella, the woman and that new one, the girl with the black eye. She makes a good cup of tea, though, that new one—strong and hot and just enough milk to scare it. No one makes tea like that anymore; seems to me people drink everything except tea, what with their pumpkin and dandelion lattes. Since when did dandelion become a drink? In my day dandelion was a weed you had to hit with a good squirt of Round-Up. Although they say now that weed killer gives you cancer and I can’t say I’m surprised. Nasty shit if you got it on your hands, up your nose or in your eyes. I know a few people that happened to but I’m not saying anything more about that.
Dad, we don’t need to talk about that right now.
I’m just saying, dandelion isn’t a drink.
It’s good for you, Grandpa. Cleans your liver.
Clean your own damn liver. Pass the brandy.
We’re all sitting at the table and we’ve been sitting a while. I know it’s been a while because earlier the sun was coming through the window and hitting me right in the eyes, so the woman closed the blinds, but now the sun is gone and it’s dark out. I can see the beam flicking from the lighthouse. Calling the boats home.
They’ve been talking about a lot of things, those three. I must admit some of what they’re talking about is going over my head but I’m getting the gist. The girl with the black eye stole a car and drove it like the clappers and the woman and the young fella don’t want her to do that again, ever. I’m with them—stealing’s a low blow. Unless, of course, the bloke whose stuff you nicked deserved it, and I’m not saying people don’t deserve to have their stuff nicked from time to time, especially if they’re a lousy prick, but a man’s got to have some integrity and respect other people’s property.
Or woman. Sorry, Luce.
Believe me, Grandpa, he is a lousy prick.
Oh, well, in that case—no harm, no foul, I say.
Cops say otherwise.
Clearly you’re getting the wrong copper. You haven’t greased the right palms. Boy, have I taught you nothing? What are you doing, not greasing the right palms? This isn’t how I raised you. A man’s in charge of his environment but you’re letting your environment be in charge of you. The only thing you can’t be in charge of is the sea. No man controls you—what are you thinking? If you’ve lost control of the men around you you’ve lost it completely. Do you need your head read or what?
And what fresh hell is in this cup? Hot cow shit? Pass the brandy.
Oh, Grandpa. I’ve missed you.
I’ve seen a woman laugh before—I’m a good bloke, I know how to keep the gentler sex happy—but I’ve never seen a woman laugh so hard she started crying.
Jesus. I think she’s gonna lay an egg.
ABIGAIL
That night, Abigail couldn’t sleep. She tried to get comfortable and failed. She tried not to think of her and failed—she was all Abigail could think about. Hours crawled, tipping into despair, pushing sleep even further away. Against the grief and guilt she tried to find her shield of anger but the tears she’d cried at the table earlier seemed to have eroded the anger somehow, even though she convinced herself they were only tears of laughter.
In her late twenties, around the time she had been living in the wine region south of the city, bartending at a pub, she’d dated a guy who, whenever he could not sleep, swore by making himself yawn. He claimed it would trick his brain into believing it was sleepy. She would wake to the sounds of jaw cracking, sighing, stifled howling as he attempted to make himself yawn and neither of them would be asleep. It wasn’t the thing that had sent them on their separate ways but it certainly contributed.
Lying awake, she thought about him—he was in web development, or coding, or something like that—and then she thought about some of the others, the sweeter ones like him, and they began to blob together, like adding dough to more dough, until she felt the weight of them, all those come and gone, perfectly nice men, and she started to feel panicked.
Twenty-three years ago, arriving in Adelaide after seven hours in Zac Murphy’s Corolla, she’d been blitzed with adrenaline and possibility. The city all slanted-light and glinting, the shunt of peak-hour traffic pulling her in. She’d felt brazen with anonymity—she could go anywhere, do anything, and not a single soul knew who she was. Now, in her childhood bedroom in the dark, she felt as if she were experiencing the reverse of that day. Exhausted and wrung out, her sense of self in tatters, on public display. She had tried it all, tried everything for escape, and none of it had worked.
Long after midnight, sleep came in short plunges from which she bolted out, disoriented and reeling. The quiet and the dark filled her head with impossible noise. It was as if she could sense the loom of something thunderous, a tidal wave of emotion drawing up behind her.
At some point before dawn she muttered, ‘Hell, no,’ and heaved herself out of bed.
In the kitchen she made coffee, but the unbearable quiet continued to scream. How quickly being the only body in a room had become unnerving, in spite of how, inside, the one thing they all longed for was solitude.
Clinging to her coffee cup, Abigail looked out the kitchen window and saw the stable lights on. Relief flooded through her.
The backyard was chilly in the pre-dawn dark. Listening to the distant roar of the sea, she didn’t notice the goose until it was on her. A white streak barrelled out of the dark, hitting her mid-thigh.
Scalding coffee slopped onto her fingers. Aware that it was barely gone five am she stifled her curses, throwing her now empty cup at the goose but missing by a lot. She tried to defend herself, grabbing at a wing, a beak, a slimy webbed foot, until her flight instincts kicked in and she ran the rest of the way to the stables, goose honking at her ankles.
Panting, she doubled over in the stable breezeway. After her soaking in the rain yesterday she had washed the red track pants and now they were splattered with rapidly cooling coffee.
‘Son of a bitch,’ she said.
‘He only attacks strangers.’
She straightened up to see the silhouette of Nate Ruskin standing in the breezeway. ‘Nell didn’t believe me,’ he said, coming into the light. ‘I had to go out there, offer myself like a sacrifice, so she could see it for herself.’
‘Can’t you just—’ She made two fists and jerked them apart.
The vet narrowed his eyes, as if considering it. ‘No. I’ve got to keep your mum on my side.’
‘I’ll vouch for you,’ she said. ‘I approve of a man who can get himself up early.’
He stepped closer, hands in his pockets. ‘Comes with the job. I’ve got two hundred heifers to AI today. Had to check Bo early.’
‘Bo?’
‘The mare.’
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘The fat hussy. So anyway, this goose? You dispatch it, I’ll sweet talk Nell. Have you ever eaten roasted goose?’
A faint smile played at the corner of his lips. ‘I don’t reckon you’ve got that much authority with your mum, from what I’ve heard.’
‘Has she been talking to you?’ Abigail threw her hands in the air. ‘She’s ignoring me but, sure, talk to the vet.’
They walked towards the mare’s stall, footsteps echoing out of time on the pavers. The pony stuck her head over the stable door and whinnied. Abigail stood back, out of reach of her teeth.
Nate let himself into the stall, running his hands over the mare’s neck. ‘Hey, lady,’ he said quietly. ‘How you doing today?’ The pony pressed her nose to the vet’s jacket, nudging insistently until he pulled a carrot from his pocket.
‘Flirt,’ Abigail said. ‘Do you bribe the cows before you feel them up, too?’
‘If I could fit two hundred carrots in my pocket, I would.’ He disappeared behind the pony.
‘You were only here yesterday,’ she said, then hesitated. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘No,’ he replied from behind the horse. ‘Just dropping off a foaling alarm for your mum. Long day. Not sure when I’ll be back.’
‘Right. Two hundred heifers.’
He came towards her again, bringing with him the scent of soap and coffee, although she considered that maybe the latter was coming from her pants. Up close she could make out a dimple in his chin.
The last time a man had laid his hands on her in desire had been close enough to a year ago, and she now felt this keenly, this long almost-year, as her eyes settled on that dimple. A smooth cleft in his chin; she imagined she could see the pores there, the hair follicles shaved at the skin. She imagined him only a short while earlier, leaning into the mirror with the razor, one hand gently pulling the skin taut, foam sliding down his jaw. She wondered if he would be shirtless when he shaved. He struck her as the type to keep his shirt clean before it got very dirty.
‘Damn,’ Nate said.
She blinked out of her daydream to see him frowning at his phone.
‘My second farmhand just cancelled on me. Shit. The first one pulled out last night and I thought I could manage with one, but with both of them out …’ He swore again.
‘How many other AI techs will be there?’
His eyes flicked to her.
‘You can do, what—thirty? Fifty?—yourself in a day. Not two hundred.’
Nate lowered his phone. ‘There’s four of us.’
‘Can’t one of them spare you a hand?’
‘Maybe.’ He tapped his phone against his thigh, looking at the mare. ‘I don’t want to cancel. It’s a big dairy. Lucrative. But maybe I should. Otherwise I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get back here again.’
