If you were old you were regretful, concealing it like a vice or wearing it like a scar. I think my old man secretly regrets coming here, Anna’s father said. Feels he acted too hastily, hadn’t thought enough about the isolation, something like that. It’s not as if he’s been able to forget what happened to my mother, after all. And if he’d stayed in the city he might have met someone else, who knows? It’s not something he’s ever talked about. It’s just a feeling I have about him, the far-off look he has sometimes. You know what I mean, love? Anna’s mother nodded. As for me, he went on, I think once you’ve made your bed you lie in it. I mean, I would like to have been a doctor—don’t laugh, I would—but the opportunities were never there, so what was the point in feeling sorry for myself because it didn’t happen? Look at Beulah, still eaten up with regret about that fellow her father wouldn’t let her marry. Anna listened. She went to Great Aunt Beulah. She leaned restlessly on the arm of the old woman’s chair, chattering, chattering: Our smallest lamb died. We’re going to Adelaide next week. Mum’s running me up a new dress. Auntie Beulah, did you ever see him again, the one you loved? In an instant, Beulah’s eyes spilled over, regret for the man she’d lost, regret for not having made a stand against her father. She murmured: If only I had my life over again. One day the children went out with Grandfather Ison. He juddered them along the sunken road in the Land Rover, occasionally shooting out his left arm to save them from hitting their heads, and as they climbed out of the deadliest bend and reached the high ground, where the stonewall fence marked the border between Isonville and Showalter Park, a sudden shadow drenched the Land Rover and a throttled-back aero engine deafened them. The children turned their heads and saw a silver fuselage side-slip over them, the braced undercarriage touching down in the dirt then coasting toward the windsock. Buyers, Grandfather Ison grunted, flying in from New South Wales to look at the rams. I regret, he told the children, the day my father split Isonville. Think what it could have been. Now all that’s left is the homestead and five thousand acres instead of twenty-five thousand. How your uncle Kitch is going to get on, I don’t know. He paused: Your mother was friendly with the Showalter boys, you know. No reflection on your father, of course, he added hastily. Long as she’s happy. Mum, were you engaged to the Showalter who died in the war or the other one? Heavens above, Anna, what gave you that idea? I married your father and I don’t regret it, not for a minute. Ah, Anna, back among us I see, Mr Wheelwright said, when Anna showed up a week late at the high school in the town. He gazed sourly at the desks and chalk dust and doltish minds: Let’s hope you don’t regret running back here from the city if it means being among this lot again. And so he marked her, set her apart. Think you’re better than us? they demanded. I came back here, she pointed out, but logic had nothing to do with the way they saw her. She regretted opening her mouth to Maxine about the Pill. It’s to control my periods, she shouted, but they were already labelling her and, in the end, she obliged them a little. When Lockie was killed, the words were there relentlessly in her head: He was the only one I loved and yet I said no to him. Too late, we hurt the ones we love, and we hurt ourselves. I shall never love again and I shall never forget, not until the day I die. The words grew melodic in her throat, rising and falling, until she began to sing them in a low, strained voice: For I have loved a boy but one, and he is lost to me/Forsaken love I will lament, lament what might have been. Now you’re being absurd, her mother said. Give it time, you’ll meet someone else, and Anna sang: Alas there’s none for me. It was a lament, she was inconsolable, and for six weeks of her life she floated in the inner dark. Chester Flood stroked her and said: I love your little belly. She watched his hand, thinking: He will give me back my luck. Then his head dipped and when he looked up he said: Salty fuck-taste, I love it. He wriggled his way back up to kiss her lips: Taste it? His eyes clouded: Remember old Wheelwright saying he’d make me regret the day I was born? Remember? Anna didn’t and was ashamed. Well, the bastard tried, all right, and he failed, Chester said. I survive, that’s what I do. These days Sam is apt to say, over and over: Of course now I regret not making more of an effort to stick it out with the old man. He has another regret: It’s tragic. There have been Showalters here from the year dot. They were good to me, giving me work. Now some flaming Saudi Arabian outfit looks like ripping the guts out of the place. Pity old Leonard Showalter wasn’t still alive—he wouldn’t have let it happen, that’s for sure. There are things worth hanging on to. There’s history here. That’s why this Committee’s a good thing, Anna—don’t knock it. The letter from the bank is burning a hole in the shallow cane basket on top of the refrigerator: We regret to advise you. Anna doesn’t think it’s regret. The letter has come from head office, not the local branch, not someone they know. Cruel, bloody cruel, Sam says. Then he cries, and Anna touches his neck to calm him, thinking: I can’t do more than this. I’ve done what I can and I hope he realises it. It’s up to him, now. In her solitary walks at the water’s edge an old regret will revisit her: I wish I’d known my grandmother, snatched away in the jaws of a shark. Such awful luck. Beautiful, young, gleeful, a risk-taker, someone I could have talked to. I never knew her, yet I miss her. Anna will go to the grave with a few regrets like this one. She will regret Michael, she will regret Lockie. They will not be cancerous regrets; they won’t take hold of her and creep through her bones over the years: If only I’d... If only I hadn’t... Regret, she’ll say, admonishing her granddaughter, is the cruellest emotion. It paralyses you. There is no point to it. The past is past. Life is a matter of tactics, not grand strategies. Anna will look back squarely on those she has loved and say: I cannot total it all, but I want you to understand this—what else could I have done? I was distracted, ignorant, too proud, too young, blameworthy, faintly absurd, given to anxious love and loving too well. Did you think that I had a key?