I hold my pen tightly as I circle item six: Meeting closed.
My chair scrapes the floor as I stand and address the audience. ‘Thanks for coming out in the cold, and for your support of and interest in the work of the committee. Please thank our speakers, Hugo Hallstead and Matts Laaksonen.’
After the applause dies down, people stack chairs and carry them to the back of the hall. Others chat as they move towards the exit. I sort through papers and file them methodically into my bag.
I want to join your committee.
It was a request.
His words were perfectly clear but I ignored them.
Matts is leaning against the wall, looking at his phone, but straightens politely when he sees the elderly lady walk towards him. He smiles as he shakes the woman’s hand. She’s halfway down the aisle when she turns and waves over her shoulder.
Mr Chambers joins Matts and beckons to the rest of the committee. I pick up the bucket of dirty dishes before joining them. My bag is slung over my shoulder.
‘Thanks for your reports and contributions. I’d like to lock up now.’
Mr Chambers purses his lips. ‘Surely we’ll respond to Matts’s offer to join the committee first?’
I feel Matts’s eyes on the side of my face. ‘What’s the rush?’ I say.
‘Why delay a decision?’
‘Cassie reckons Matts doesn’t get to vote like the rest of us,’ Gus says, ‘if that’s what you’re worried about. He gets to see how we go about things, that’s all.’
‘He’d be involved as an ex officio member,’ Cassie says, ‘observing the committee’s day-to-day operations, contributing to our discussions and giving advice.’ She smiles at Matts. ‘Which we may or may not accept.’
‘The Horseshoe Committee is an outstanding example of what can be achieved through local representation,’ Mr Chambers says. ‘And we’d have an opportunity to contribute to the valuable work of the Ramsar Secretariat. It benefits us all.’
‘We’re only an advisory committee,’ Luke says, ‘but Matts’s involvement will encourage the authorities to listen to us. It will improve our profile, and might encourage the government to increase funding.’
‘No.’ My voice is too loud. My tone is too sharp. I clear my throat. ‘We should take our time, consider this properly.’
Hugo is staring again. I’m sure he’d kick me if he could do it without being noticed. It’s so quiet that I hear my own breathing.
Matts narrows his eyes. But there’s no need for him to speak, not when the other committee members are keen to do it for him.
Mr Chambers has the loudest voice. ‘I’ll take responsibility for the paperwork,’ he says. ‘I’ve worked on numerous committees with ex officio members—visiting academics and so on.’
When Hugo pulls at the bucket, I hold it closer. ‘Give, Sapph,’ he whispers. ‘What’s going on?’
‘You’re not even on the committee.’ I speak between my teeth.
‘You ask me to join it every bloody month.’
Cassie glances at me before holding up a hand. ‘Sapphie has made a valid point—there’s no need to rush our decision. We’ll have another committee meeting soon enough, and we can decide before then.’ She smiles at Matts. ‘I’m sure you understand.’
Gus blows on his hands and stamps his feet. ‘Let’s meet in the pub next time. Luke, Sapphie and me are already there for trivia on Saturday nights. Let’s get together afterwards.’
‘Excellent,’ Cassie says. ‘I’ll put it in the diary for four weeks on Saturday. Eight o’clock?’ She smiles at Matts again. ‘All going well, perhaps you can join us?’
‘Thanks.’
Mr Chambers frowns as he peers at his phone. ‘I have another commitment,’ he says.
‘That’s a shame, mate,’ Hugo says, shaking Mr Chambers’s hand before turning to me. ‘I’ll call it a night, Sapph. See you later.’
By the time I’ve herded out the stragglers, turned off the lights and locked the doors, there’s no sign of Matts or the other committee members. I’d like nothing better than to go home too. I could climb into bed, pull my doona over my head and pretend that tonight never happened, but Hugo is bound to ask questions.
Not that I can blame him. In a professional sense, there’s no reason to turn Matts down. In a personal sense? It’s bad enough having to deal with my father without adding Matts to the mix.
The pump for the shower is rumbling when I leave the bucket and my bag on the schoolhouse porch and walk the few hundred metres to town. A group of visitors, probably the grey nomads, walk out of the pub and stroll down the footpath in front of me, talking and laughing. When we meet up at the T-junction at the bottom of the hill, a man wearing a tartan cap touches its peak and nods.
‘We’re stretching our legs before we turn in,’ he says.
‘Me too.’ I press my hands more deeply into my pockets. ‘But I wish I’d worn my gloves.’
There are no cars in sight, but I run across the road to the park. The large oaks and elms in the formal part of the gardens, even bare of leaves, block out the streetlights, but the moon and stars shine brightly. The smaller trees in the shaded areas, rhododendron and camellias, are budding or flowering despite the dry weather. Clumps of bulbs push through the mulch near the cenotaph.
Beyond the gardens are native trees—wattles bursting with new yellow baubles and bottlebrush bushes with vibrant red flowers. When I reach the riverbank, I follow the path. River red gums, many of them decades old, march either side of the river.
The water flows slowly because the levels are low.
The river needs water. So do the wetlands.
Matts wants to join the committee. His profile and expertise would be an advantage. But…
I’ve left my past behind me.
I lean against a river red gum. The trunk is smooth and cream coloured, but the bark at my feet will be countless shades of brown. The flowers on the gums are coin-sized clusters of fluffy white spikes with lime and yellow centres. Gus used to bring his great-niece April to the river in the holidays, and they’d fish at this spot. She’s getting married at the end of October and has asked me to help with her flowers. I’m making Gus a gum blossom for his lapel, and will attach a matching flower to the front of April’s card. As I pluck a leaf from the tree, I hear rustling behind me. Four kangaroos bound through the undergrowth. When the leader stops, the others stop too. Only fifty metres away, they stand tall in silhouette, their heads and bodies upright, their tails flat to the ground.
‘Are you out for a late-night hop? Stay away from the roads.’
The roos are beautiful but unsettling. I turn and walk away from the river, carefully putting one foot in front of the other as I follow the path to the gardens and the neat rows of shrubs that circle the cenotaph. The main street glows in the distance, as does the pub. The road that leads to the schoolhouse is just out of sight. I skirt around the straw-mulch edges of the rose beds.
One door bangs and then another. A ute is parked across the road from the pub. It’s large and black, with six seats in the cabin, a covered tray, fog lights on the bull bar and searchlights on the roof racks. The engine roars to life. Beams from the headlamps stretch down the road and across it.
They swallow me up.
What about the kangaroos?
‘No!’
I was too young to have learnt how to drive when I came to Horseshoe. Ma and Pa offered to teach me after my seventeenth birthday, but they were busy with the store, and Pa drove a truck then anyway. When I wasn’t at school or at the farmhouse, or travelling to Canberra to see Mum and Gran, I was busy with the horses at Kincaid House.
Hugo and Jet had learnt to drive on their family’s farms. Getting a licence to drive on the roads was easy for them, as was driving long distances on difficult roads. They’d pick me up when I needed a lift and they never made me feel guilty about it.
When I left Horseshoe to go to university in Armidale, I was eighteen. Mum died the following year and it took another year before I worked up the courage to get behind the wheel. My driving instructor, a retired steelworker originally from Wollongong, was called Lucky. He was a small wiry man with a very big heart and the patience of a saint. He taught me how to drive competently.
Pa Hargreaves helped me find a small car in Dubbo but I only drove it occasionally. I hardly ever drove at night. I didn’t drive in high winds and dust storms, or misty early mornings. I rarely drove when it rained. And I avoided taking passengers unless they were like Gus who, besides humming occasionally, listened to the radio and rarely ever talked. I didn’t break the rules and I never got a ticket. Soon enough I was home again in Horseshoe. I kept the car but walked whenever I could.
Late last year, on a Saturday night after trivia, I drove Gus home like I usually did. His property is barely twenty minutes from the town. It was only ten o’clock.
Everybody knows you have to watch out for wildlife at night. Kangaroos and wallabies, possums and wombats run across fenced and unfenced roads. They get spooked when they see lights and then they stop dead.
I’d dropped Gus off and turned left to return to the loop road. I was ten minutes from Horseshoe and on the crest of the hill when my sight was obscured by a solid black form and—
I screamed. A thump. Broken glass.
A kangaroo on the bonnet of my car. Her head was thrown back and her body was twisted.
Lifeless eyes.
I’d thought about how desperate Mum must have been to leave her room at two in the morning to pick up pills from a dealer she didn’t know outside a nightclub the coroner said she’d never been to before. I hadn’t thought about the last few seconds of her life.
The driver who hit her was an American tourist. He’d left Sydney at two in the morning to attend an Anzac Day service at the War Memorial. The lights were green as he approached an intersection in Kingston. When he saw Mum bent double in the middle of the road, he put his foot on the brake, but it was too late.
Last year I was forced to face the facts.
The kangaroo died a violent death.
And so did my mother.
I had a few panic attacks after I hit the kangaroo, but I haven’t had any since I saw the psychologist. I coped reasonably well when Pa and I went to Dubbo in the van. I’ve even been thinking about contacting Lucky in the hope that more driving lessons might help me face my fears.
I don’t remember sitting down, but now I’m aware of everything. The roughness of the stones, the stringy dry grass, the coldness of the earth. As I get to my feet, I wipe my hands on my jeans. ‘Ow!’ I’ve grazed my palm again. Did I drop to the ground so quickly?
I make my way to the kerb and look right, left and right again—slowly and seriously like a five-year-old might. Walking up the footpath, taking one cautious step at a time, is like wading through treacle. My throat is scratchy and tight and hurts when I swallow.
‘Over there!’
The grey nomads I saw earlier are gathered on the footpath outside the pub. Matts, also on the footpath but further away, is walking quickly towards them. When the man in the tartan cap points to me, Matts breaks into a run and crosses the road diagonally. As soon as he reaches me, he grips my shoulders tightly and peers into my face.
‘What happened?’
‘You screamed.’
‘No, I—I’m okay.’
He runs his hands down my arms to my elbows. He grips them like he has to hold me up.
Is he holding me up? My heart is hammering. My legs are shaking.
The man in the cap catches up. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I …’ My teeth are chattering so violently that I’m scared I’ll bite my tongue.
‘Sapphire,’ Matts says, squeezing my arms even tighter. ‘What?’
I shake my head. ‘It was the ute. I wasn’t expecting the lights.’ I take a deep breath as I look from Matts to the other man. ‘I’m sorry.’
Matts’s hands slide down my arms to my wrists. He turns me so I’m facing him straight on. ‘Something happened.’
‘Forget it, please.’
His hands slip further, trapping my fingers and stinging my palm. When I wince he loosens his grip, but only for a moment. He cups my hands and lifts them, resting them between us. He’s wearing a T-shirt under his hoodie. His hands aren’t warm, but they’re warmer than mine.
‘You’re shaking,’ he says.
I lower my eyes. ‘I’m cold, that’s all.’
He’s on the high side of the footpath, even taller than usual. As if he reads my mind, he bends his knees so we’re the same height. He stares into my eyes. ‘Don’t lie to me, Sapphire.’
‘Think what you like.’
The older man puts his hand on my elbow. ‘You’ve had a shock, my dear, whatever the cause, and you’re as white as a sheet to prove it. Where do you live? Come to the pub while we see about getting you home. There’s a log fire in the lounge.’ He takes out his phone. ‘Can I call someone to meet you there? Do you have family close by?’
‘I—’ I shake my head again. ‘Thank you, but—’ When I pull my hands free of Matts’s, I bump against the man.
He threads his arm through mine. ‘Steady, now.’
‘I don’t live far away. I’m fine to walk home.’
The man tightens his hold and waves to his friends, indicating they go inside the pub. ‘Let’s walk together.’
Matts walks stiffly by my other side as the man, Gerry, chats about his itinerary and names towns from here to Darwin that he and his friends are planning to visit. By the time we reach the top of the hill, my legs almost feel like my own again.
‘Thank you very much, but I’ll be fine from here.’ I let go of his arm. ‘See the signs? That’s where I live.’
‘At the school?’
‘I teach there, but live next to it.’
‘Are you a local girl?’
‘I spent my last two years of school living here, and came back permanently after uni.’
‘It’s a welcoming town.’ He smiles. ‘We’re reluctant to move on tomorrow.’
‘Then you’ll have to come back again—in summer next time.’
As Gerry walks away, Matts moves closer. My heart rate increases again. When he took my hands on the footpath, I didn’t object. I take a jerky step backwards and cross my arms.
‘Thanks.’
‘What for?’
‘You thought I needed help.’
‘You did.’
‘I … maybe.’ I look over his shoulder. ‘Thanks.’
‘I told you already. Forget it.’
‘You were hiding in a tree a month ago. Do I forget that too?’
‘That was different.’ I uncross my arms and then cross them again. My hand stings. ‘We need to talk about the committee, Matts.’
He looks towards the schoolhouse. ‘Tonight?’
Hugo will be in front of the television by now. Without knowing our history, he’d take Matts’s side and laugh at my objections.
‘Tomorrow after school would be better.’
‘I’ll be in Armidale tomorrow and Saturday. I could see you early on Sunday.’
‘Eight?’
‘Seven.’
I push my hands deep into my pockets. My fingers are so cold that they hurt when I bend them. ‘Nothing will be open.’
‘I’ll come here.’ He walks three steps and then he turns. Even in the dimness, I make out his frown. ‘Sleep well, Sapphire.’
Sapphire Beresford-Brown. Sapphie Brown.
How long will he be here? A month? A few months?
How can I trust him?
How can I keep him out of my life?