AGAIN, ERICA was woken early. Imagine her dismay when she arrived in the kitchen to find the two places still set, and on the stove the peas and potatoes cold in their saucepans. Either Roger Antill and Sophie had stumbled in so late they didn’t feel like eating, or they hadn’t yet come back (from where?). Quickly she made some toast. She had trouble swallowing. It was behaviour typical of Sophie. Where two people are thrown together in travel, small annoyances grow into unbearable personality disorders.
In the shed all was quiet, in shadow. Erica took a deep breath. She picked up the ruined pages and placed them to one side on the floor. She arranged the desk. Papers everywhere. Sitting in the philosopher’s chair she assumed a look of concentrated determination as she reached for a pile and began reading. Some pages consisted of nothing but a single sentence. When any of these statements stopped her in her tracks Erica marked them. Other pages were filled with Wesley’s hectic blue handwriting. Here and there sentences and entire paragraphs were crossed out. ‘Pig-headed’ was a word she saw, but couldn’t find again. After several hours a thread, or a suggestion of a thread, a story-journey, emerged. Then it petered out; it appeared to stop altogether. Later it would start up again.
What had gone on in this man’s life? He seemed to be tearing his hair out. More than most he suffered from the common intrusions of everyday life.
He also revealed an anxiety towards time.
Taking a breather, Erica went to the window and surveyed the bare ground. She tried to picture it before the single-minded philosopher cut the trees down, a grove of slender gums, strips of bark on the ground, the usual Australian mess. What extremes people take to gain clarity.
Erica went back to reading.
At ten o’clock, Sophie clattered in. Immediately the corrugated shed echoed another woman’s restlessness.
Without turning Erica said, ‘Try not to spill anything on these pages, please.’
‘I’m going back to Sydney. I’d like to leave this morning, if possible.’
Erica glanced up. Without noticing, Sophie had her feet on some of the pages.
‘It doesn’t look as if you’ve had much sleep.’
‘I’ve made a decision.’
Noticing Erica’s frown, she hurried on. ‘I’ve just been talking to him. I’ve gone through the issues.’ As Sophie began pacing, Erica wondered who she could be talking about. ‘The wife is an irrelevance. She does him no good. My idea is that he becomes one of my clients. I consider that a brainwave. I would see him regularly. Which is why I want to leave immediately, but of course there’s no train.’
Erica couldn’t help her. ‘Look at all this. There’s three or four days solid reading, at least.’
‘What I was thinking was, there’s your car. If it’s not being used.’
Erica looked at her. Loosely draped around her throat was the scarf from last night. Erica glanced at the pages waiting to be appraised. She could feel the task becoming interesting. It was like panning for gold. Framed by the window was a small part of the sky. Everything was closer to silence here. The sunset last night! And tonight Erica looked forward to a repeat, the sky down the end screaming out heat and immensity, the great cycle of day turning into night, cockatoo-grey feathery, and pink-tinted, until gradually, then suddenly, closing down. She wondered whether Lindsey might be a drinker. And what was Roger – Mr Roger Antill, if you please – going to say about Sophie leaving?
‘Do be careful,’ she handed Sophie the keys. ‘That’s seven hours on that road by yourself. Are you sure you should be doing this?’
At the door Sophie paused, ‘You didn’t ask about last night. He spent practically the whole evening wanting to know about you. How had you become an “expert”? I told him the most lurid things I could think of, and more.’
Below the steps Erica stood alongside Lindsey, and like a pair of Adelaide aunts they waved as Sophie drove away.
‘I didn’t really get to know her,’ Lindsey said.
‘Does Roger know she’s gone?’
‘Most of the time I don’t know what my brother’s up to.’
Without Sophie already the house felt settled. Lindsey made tea and took it out onto the veranda.
‘Now that Sophie’s not here I feel I can have some cake. She must do exercises, and things like that. She looks good in her clothes.’
‘Sophie is a formidable shopper.’ Not wanting to sound as if she was sticking sharp knives into her friend, Erica added thoughtfully, ‘Her father always encourages Sophie, though Sophie doesn’t always think so.’
‘I can just see her being good at her work.’
Lindsey went on, ‘When I think of Wesley, I realise he had mini-breakdowns of some kind. I meant to ask Sophie for her expert’s opinion. He’d be going along all right, cheery enough, then he’d spend a week locked in his room. Until I got used to it, I’d knock on his door. There’d be no answer. I’d leave his dinner on a tray outside. After a few days he’d appear, and it was as if nothing happened.’
It was time for Erica to return to the shed, to submerge herself in the pages. But it was comfortable on the veranda, in the cane chairs with cushions, looking out past the sheds to the brown-purple horizon, tall spreading gum on the left. Lindsey was easy company. The way she allowed, and even encouraged gaps, imitated the landscape.
‘Both my brothers I would put in the unusual category,’ she now said. ‘But then I suppose I’m biased. Wesley was single-minded. You’ve no doubt noticed. He had our father’s jaw. Because of his work, Wesley had very orderly, methodical habits. It almost made him an unpleasant brother. Every other day he had to have boiled eggs.’ Lindsey turned to Erica. ‘Do you know he asked for his rain gauge to be buried with him? Can you believe it? Of course Roger carried out his wishes.’
Wesley used to go down with the proverbial splitting headache. No amount of darkened room and Aspro would ease it. They were after-shocks, not necessarily to do with the way he applied his mind to the most impossible of subjects – but then unremitting hard thinking each and every day of the week, from the moment he woke up, was bound to have an effect, upsetting the brain cells even. Often Lindsey came upon him with his hand covering his eyes. He was one of those hungry dogs with a bone, he said to his sister. ‘There’s nothing I can do about it, nothing at all.’
Apparently Roger had his oddities too. Nothing serious – but she didn’t want to go into them.
Amongst Erica’s strengths was an ability to concentrate. All Erica had to do was rest her elbows on a desk, and squash her face in her hands, and look down at a page. For hours at a time Erica could work in that position. Concentrating, she hardened. It was something she was aware of.
Now having skipped lunch she stopped reading to lean back in the chair. Sophie was driving back to Sydney in the small car, music station playing loudly. Couldn’t she see that the long solitary drive, a mad dash back, was not going to lead to anything? It was as if she was rushing into a future with sun in her eyes.
Erica stood up and stretched.
She went outside.
Instead of this time walking from the homestead on the right side she took the left side, and walked down and further across and further along until there were no more gates. It became progressively rougher, mallees and scraggy gums, just an occasional animal track. The land also fell away behind her. If she turned and had seen the lack of signs she might have paused. It was while walking that Erica decided to build, definitely, on her strengths, which seemed to be clearness in thought, a dispassionate logic before a given situation, an expressionless firmness, even a bit of coolness – or, all those strengths, while somehow avoiding the coolness. It would help in the appraisal of Wesley Antill’s papers, and when the task was finished (concluded) strengthen her own philosophical work, her own papers, as well as keep on even keel the personal aspects of her life. It was while thinking along these lines, and glancing at birds and stopping to look at ants, that somehow Erica lost her sunglasses. One moment she was wearing them, next she had nothing.
As she searched she cursed and wished she had someone alongside to help. She moved around in circles, searching low branches, under bushes, on bare ground. For this to have happened she must have been wandering in a dream. She even began to doubt she had been wearing them at all.
When she turned to go back she didn’t recognise anything. She kept walking in the direction she imagined the homestead to be. She also wanted more open ground – away from the dry bushes. Another reason for walking was to avoid getting cold. It was past four o’clock. All Erica had on was a short-sleeve cotton shirt, stopping short at the hips. Keep on walking just a little longer until she met a fence; a fence – any post with wire – would lead to the house.
Less than ten paces away Erica saw the beer-coloured fur move. It was behind some grass. The fox remained side on, then walked away, stopping and looking back at Erica, who had frozen, before it disappeared.
The ground now levelled out, but still no fences.
In the space of a few days so many things had happened. Now this. It was not yet panic stations, but she had to be careful. She sat on a very large rock – ‘to gather her thoughts’, a phrase she had always liked. She was lost, but not really lost. It would soon be dark. What if it started snowing? Be like the fox – fit in, be unafraid. And her small face assumed the expression of looking ahead, determined, clear, set.
Still she remained in the one spot.
At first the sound coming from somewhere was so unexpected Erica barely noticed. Only as it came closer and an unhurried bumping and rattling took over, which became altogether louder and intrusive, did Erica stand up.
Any relief she felt seeing the familiar truck made her annoyed at herself.
‘Are you coming with me, or do you want to freeze to death?’
Once seated Roger Antill looked at her. He took off his coat.
‘Thank you,’ Erica said. Heavy, and far too large, it smelt of sheep, soil and wheat dust.
‘It suits you.’
Driving one-handed he went in the opposite direction to where she had been heading.
‘If it’s Sydney you were looking for, it’s that-a-way.’
‘I’m not in the business of following Sophie.’
‘Sophie. What’s she been up to?’
Erica explained why Sophie had rushed back to Sydney – for no good reason, in her humble opinion. We are talking here about a married man who has a wife. Sophie had never given a full description of him.
Roger didn’t have a lot to say about this, and as Erica, feeling comfortable in the cabin in his warm coat, went on critical of Sophie and her impulses, he said, ‘Is she keen on him, or not?’ It was sometimes difficult, Erica explained, to tell the difference between Sophie’s restlessness and her sudden interest in another person, a man especially. Roger nodded.
So they drove and Erica waited as he stopped and checked a few things, such as stray ewes and the floats in the water troughs. Everything threw a long shadow; then it was dark.
‘Anyway,’ he said accelerating up to the lighted house, ‘it looks as if you’re marooned here, on this place.’
‘Marooned?’ That was funny. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been marooned before in my life.’
And to Lindsey in the welcome of the kitchen he reported, ‘I’ve saved her from the crows and the ants. She would have been picked clean inside a week.’
Lindsey saw Erica in her brother’s coat. ‘I, of course, assumed you were working in the shed.’
‘Just a walk,’ Erica shrugged, ‘that took longer than expected.’
‘Down past the long paddock,’ Roger said in a low voice.
‘See if there’s a special bottle left in our father’s cellar.’
After a two-course meal and one glass too many, and if the hands were past ten, Erica normally would be feeling drowsy. She would be thinking about the next day. But circumstances were not normal. She had survived an adventure, just. She had been saved by him. Here he was seated next to her. A very strange sensation, one she had not experienced before. She was grateful to him for coming by chance upon her, and then to treat it all lightly. Otherwise, she would still be out there, by herself, freezing to death. No wonder she felt light-headed, more talkative than usual. And it was why she followed him out onto the veranda on his suggestion, instead of hesitating or saying no thank you very much, her usual automatic response. Be unafraid. Why not? Besides, he leapt to his feet to find a coat, this time a heavy greatcoat – the sort that used to feature in Army Disposal stores – and smelling of sheep, but also metal, engine oil, poultry – not unpleasant, not at all – which he draped ceremonially over her. She could recline in the deckchair, a philosopher at rest, except for one leg hanging over. ‘It’s too cold out here,’ Lindsey said. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ Through the kitchen window Erica glimpsed her taking a swig straight from the bottle (and didn’t feel surprised or saddened).
To her left he cleared his throat.
‘Philosophy is your expertise. So what have you figured out for yourself ?’
‘I am still working on it. Working through it.’ This may have sounded precious, so she added, ‘I don’t like the word “philosophy” anymore. It sounds a bit off-putting, doesn’t it?’
Whatever she said out there on the veranda was sounding dry, theoretical, tentative, small, and her ‘philosophy’ was all of those things, of little use for the complexities of living.
While listening, Roger Antill hadn’t moved.
Erica felt a pleasant warmth through her hands, face and legs.
‘As far as I can see, your brother was constructing a theory of the emotions.’
‘What’s that, based on personal experience?’
‘I suppose, in part. Whoops! Sorry.’ Her left foot touched his. What an idiot: he’d think she was – .
‘All I know,’ Roger from the left, ‘is when our brother returned here, and he stood outside looking at the view, I said to Lindsey, “He’s gone all white in the hair-department, and he’s not much older than me.”’
‘This can happen,’ Erica nodded from her chair. The difficulty was knowing how to live in reaction to others.
‘I don’t know why our brother became like he did. Sophie might be able to throw light on that one.’
‘She must be in Sydney by now.’
She wondered if Roger was at all like his brother; did they even look similar? Was Wesley a helpful man?
Erica touched his arm. ‘I hope today you hadn’t gone out specially looking for me. If you hadn’t found me, I’d be in a sorry state by now.’
‘I’d be driving around all night sounding the horn, letting off firecrackers. I’d be organising search parties, hundreds of men beating the bushes with sticks. Helicopters using searchlights. We would have found you. You might have ended up a bit worse for wear, that’s all.’
It was the general immensity she was no longer afraid of. ‘Over-arching’, a word she had used in her philosophical work before.
When he asked how long it would take to finish the appraisal, Erica looked straight ahead and answered, ‘Many months, at least. Possibly more.’
In the dark alongside came an exaggerated groan.
She gave him a push. ‘You should be pleased to have a guest, and one who doesn’t give the slightest bit of trouble.’
‘I could do with a philosophy for myself. Nothing fancy.’ He stood up. ‘You must be getting cold.’ Taking her hand he raised her from the deckchair. Taller than her, he let his hand settle on her hip. It didn’t go away. But it seemed he was thinking of something else. She couldn’t see his face.
Erica reached up. ‘Thank you for today.’
She didn’t know whether it was relief, gratitude or carelessness. One of philosophy’s functions has always been to shine light into the dimly lit, the imprecise, the hopeful.
As Roger walked to the door he kept his arm around her waist. In the kitchen she took off and handed him the greatcoat and stood there the way she would remove for him a gown of some sort, a bathrobe.