WHILE WISHY AND I had been talking, the twins had organised the cream of the neighbourhood—among them a possum-eyed charmer in a crimson dress, a tall boy on a short horse and a hotwired kelpie—into a cricket team.
The younger of Wishy’s sons was pushing a roller up and down an ant-bed pitch, the other was organising fielding practice.
‘Where’s Simone?’ asked Wishy.
‘Where do you reckon?’ moaned Tiger Lily. ‘Simmie!’
Everybody’s eyes turned skyward, and the pallid face of the older daughter emerged from the tree-house.
‘Can’t a person ever get a bit of peace and quiet around this madhouse?’
‘Come on, Sim,’ said her father. ‘Can’t spend your life with your nose in a book.’
Spend her life with her nose in a book seemed to be exactly what Simone wanted to do, but she was eventually persuaded to join in the game. More or less. She took up a fielding position on the fence and lowered her book only when the ball was in her immediate vicinity. She was wearing a long blue dress that failed to conceal her spindly legs.
As guest of honour I was invited to bowl the first ball. Tiger Lily took strike, eyed me hungrily. I lobbed a gentle lollipop at her—she was, after all, not much more than a toddler—and she let fly with full-blooded slog that sent the ball rocketing past my ear.
‘Six!’ she yelled. A grin, a contemptuous, told-you-so gleam in her eyes.
The kelpie dashed off after the ball, dropped it, slobber-coated, in my hand then bounced around trying to snatch it back.
My father, the mystery spinner from Green Swamp, might not have given me much, but he had taught me how to bowl. I upped the ante with my next delivery, a googly that would have taken her off-stump if she hadn’t jumped down the pitch, met it on the up and lofted it into the coolibah.
‘Nother six!’
Again, the dog. Again, the slobber and bounce.
I opted for a change of pace, and sent down a quicker ball—which was dispatched with a rattling cover drive. The ball shot across the outfield, ran up the veranda steps and startled another dog, a yellow one dozing by the door.
‘How old did you say this kid was?’ I grumbled to Wishy as I walked back to bowl the next delivery.
‘Seven, last time I looked. Shit!’ The ball had come fizzing back down the pitch, clunked into his ankle, and ricocheted into the outer. ‘Maybe eight…’
‘What did you raise her on?’
‘Raised herself—Coco Pops, mainly.’ He ceased hopping, rested his hands on his knees. ‘Getting a bit old for this bloody game.’
I decided I was too; figured it’d be safer fielding to the little monster than bowling at her. Soon afterwards I found myself diving for a ball that bounced off the pony boy, cut back at me and crash-landed in a pile of boxes and rocks by the garage door. I took a moment to collect myself. As I climbed onto my knees, I glanced at the rocks, wondering why they looked familiar.
‘Albie’s rock collection,’ said Loreena, who was weeding the garden nearby.
‘Wishy brought em in?’
‘Been at him to move the wretched things—breeding place for snakes, if nothing else.’
‘Be happy to move em if you could tell me where to put em,’ said Wishy, coming up behind us. ‘No room in the house. Couldn’t just dump em in the corner like Albie did.’
As I retrieved the ball, I shifted one of the rocks aside, then paused, my attention caught by a dull green seam running through it.
‘Interesting,’ I commented, picking the specimen up for a closer look.
‘Oh?’ asked Wishy.
‘Native copper, I think. Dad’s got a few pieces.’
‘Worth anything?’
‘Don’t think so, but you oughta get somebody to look at the collection. Might be something useful in there.’
Wishy’s eyebrows curved. ‘Been hoarding this stuff all his life, Albie. Didn’t give a rat’s arse for what it was worth—just interested in the geology.’
‘Maybe, but you never know…Dad sells the odd thing to a dealer in Melbourne. Feller by the name of Dale Cockayne.’
‘Cocaine?—just what is it he deals in?’
‘Anything mineralogical. Don’t have a number, but if you googled him…’
‘Watch it!’
The ball was coming in at head height, hard and fast. I threw up a hand. Managed to deflect it back towards Wishy, who, with a reflex remarkable for a man of his age, rolled to his left and caught it a whisker from the ground.
Tiger Lily departed with a glare and a grudging admission that the catch wasn’t bad. The Time Bomb swaggered to the crease, and she was worse. Just as aggressive, but more cunning, bristling with sneaky little cuts and pull shots that had us scurrying about like hamsters, until her stumps were finally rattled by one of the boys.
Simone was gradually persuaded to take a more active part in the game, although she was nowhere near as athletic as her siblings. They all seemed to make subtle allowances: when she gathered up the ball, the intensity of the game ebbed a little, when she had the bat, the bowling slowed. There was even a gentle lob from one of the brothers that fell sweetly into her hands.
I thought, as I had at the funeral, what a finely tuned unit this family was—how intimately they knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses, how much accommodation they made for one another.
So when Simone swooped at a ball, then stumbled and lay on the ground for a moment, gasping, I wasn’t surprised that they decided it was time to up stumps. Simone disappeared inside the house. The neighbourhood kids dispersed, the twins beguiled me into a game of canasta that ended up in a rugby scrum. The boys fired up a barbie under the ghost gum while Wishy and Loreena prepared dinner at the kitchen bench.
I watched them together. Unsurprised to see how well they worked: one would hand the other a knife or piece of food without looking and let go, confident that the other was there. The space between them was familiar, intuitive territory.
The meal was good—heavy, old fashioned, heaps of spuds and onions, not a scrap of bok choy or rocket in sight—the company better. Simone had gone missing but various members of the family disappeared from time to time bearing plates of food, most of which seemed to come straight back.
When it was time to leave, I went inside to grab my hat. As I walked out over the veranda, I came across the older daughter resting on a couch—positioned, I noticed, in a manner that gave her a clear view of the family gathering.
I thought she was asleep, but as I slipped past, I saw that her eyes were open and focused on me.
‘See ya later, Simone.’
‘Bye.’
‘Feeling better now?’
‘Much better, thank you. You’ll have to excuse me. I’m feeling a little tired. All this heat…’
There was a lantern at her head, a mosquito coil at her feet and, in her hands, a book—which she self-consciously flipped over as I drew near. A natural reaction for these parts. Books tend to be regarded as enemy despatches, readers as fair game.
‘What are you reading?’
She hesitated, cautiously turned the book over.
‘Emily Dickinson,’ I read, surprised. A battered, moth-eaten paperback edition, one that had done a lot of miles.
‘Do you know her?’ Wary.
‘Because I would not stop for death…’
I broke off. They were the first words that had sprung into my head, but there was something about the scene—the girl’s pale, hollow cheeks, the intensity with which she clutched those cut-glass meditations on mortality—that sent a chill through me.
‘You read a lot of poetry?’ I asked.
‘Mainly this.’
‘Guess that’s enough; they don’t come any better. Where’d you get it?’
The ghost of a smile. ‘I found it—years ago—in a roadhouse in Longreach. In the toilet, actually. I felt guilty, taking it. I wondered if somebody hadn’t left it there to inspire travellers. You know, as they set off on the journey.’
I grinned. ‘Nah, you did the right thing. Longreach? They would have wiped their arses with it.’
She studied me. Didn’t quite manage to suppress a small bubble of laughter. ‘You seem to be an unusual person…’
‘Mostly unusual persons, aren’t we? When you get up close.’
‘Maybe. But…I was watching, the way you look around, like you’re hungry, taking everything in. Even a simple game of cricket.’
‘Nothing simple about cricket when your sisters are playing it.’
‘Of course there is—all that clash and batter. But not you.’
‘Thought you were looking at your book.’
She ignored that. ‘If I had to speculate, I’d say you were looking for something. I wonder what?’
I heard a throat clear behind me, turned around. Wishy was standing in the doorway, his face a rocky escarpment even Doc would have had trouble reading.
‘I’ll be on my way then.’ I was suddenly uncomfortable.
As I stepped off the veranda, I paused, turned back to the girl on the couch.
‘Hey Simmie…’
‘Emily?’
‘I started early, took my dog, and visited the sea.’
The gloominess of the first lines I’d thrown at her seemed an unfortunate note to leave on.
Her face became radiant. ‘You’d have to start awfully early to get to the sea from Bluebush, dog or no dog.’
‘Wait long enough, the sea’ll come to you. Your Uncle Albie knew that.’
‘Good bye, Emily Tempest.’
‘Be seeing you, Simone.’
Wishy walked me to my car; I almost had the feeling he was marching me to it.
‘She’s a nice girl, that.’
‘She is.’
‘You’ve got a lovely family.’
He nodded. ‘I’m blessed.’
And yet, I thought to myself as I drove away. There’s something there I can’t quite put my finger on.