Elegy Read online

  One morning, at recess, he gave her a little ornament that he’d swiped from the sideboard of the once-grand house, small enough that no one would notice its absence, lovely enough that she would appreciate his sentiment. She’d stared at it for a while, puzzlement furrowing her pale forehead, and when she looked up he took possession of what he believed was his and pressed his mouth to hers, pushing with his lips, smothering with eager breath. She didn’t press back the way he’d seen other girls do but she didn’t pull away either. Distantly, he heard laughs, snickers, knew the other children were pointing, knew the whole school had witnessed this union, and when he finally drew back, his smile was smug and triumphant. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Now you’re mine.’

  ‘I can never be yours,’ Caitlin told him gently and, placing the ornament carefully on the bench, she’d stood and walked away. There was more laughter then, and for the first time Todd had known humiliation.

  Later, when he found every gift he’d given her, every congealed sweet and every unread note – even the brown, dried rose – left in a small pile on his desk, he’d felt the first stirrings of rage, a hate so deep his heart faltered and fell into it, and his joy of her soured. But his covetousness grew to fill the void left by his heart, with every year, with every turn of her back at his approach, with her brothers’ increasing scorn for him. Because wasn’t he a Casey, and didn’t she owe him?

  iii

  The first thing Michael learned when he came to the farm had been the rules: don’t waste time, don’t waste money, don’t waste food and don’t waste water. Just the four, drummed into him by Jim right from the get-go as he’d drummed them into his own kids. All of them important and all necessary, but the one they were sticklers for was the last. With months – sometimes years – between good rains, the threat of drought was ever-present and, in summer, so was the threat of fire. Water was spared for real emergencies, never wasted on luxuries like bathing. Showers were limited to a few minutes – less when possible – and, to discourage everyone further, Jim switched off the water heater during the hot months.

  But even with such restrictions, Gabe always managed to drag out the time he spent in the single bathroom they all shared. Michael had no idea what he did in there – didn’t want to know either – and Gabe always came out looking pretty much the same as when he went in, but it annoyed Michael because it broke the first rule.

  It was growing dark by the time they left, Michael riding shotgun because he didn’t have his licence. He’d driven the old tractor when he was ten, the truck when he was twelve and he could handle a dirt bike better than most, but he wasn’t eighteen yet and some laws weren’t worth breaking. Others could be overlooked, though; a slab of beer rattled in the tray behind them.

  ‘Barb’s right, you know. Cait’s going to end up a frigid old maid,’ Gabe remarked, as they turned into the McIntyre place.

  Michael grunted. Probably, he thought, but it was her choice. If he hadn’t given up wondering about Cait, he’d certainly stopped worrying about her.

  They rolled off the drive and followed the line of cars into the paddock, the old ute bouncing over the rough ground. The small field was ploughed and fallow, perfect for a summer party, and cars ringed it like an arena, marking the boundaries. Thick diesel fumes rose from generators powering the coolers and lights and the stereo with its stack of speakers; the music was primal, echoing off the surrounding hills. Bodies mingled in the shadows, voices called, high and excited. When the McIntyre boys threw a party, everybody came. Except Cait.

  Against one fence, a couple of portaloos leaned crookedly; along another, a row of trestle tables sagged beneath the weight of food bound by tea towels and acres of cling film. With a fire ban in place, there’d be no barbecue, but the McIntyres always managed to provide. Stodge was already there, grazing the line, his fat hand snaking under the wrappings to pull out pieces of chicken and sandwiches. Everyone else had other things on their minds.

  Michael dropped the slab with the rest and eyed a group of girls who sauntered past in a cloud of giggles, oh-my-gods and sweet perfume. Gabe grabbed a beer and disappeared into the crowd.

  ‘Michael!’ Pete shouted, coming up to slap him on the shoulder before looking around hopefully. ‘Caitlin not with you?’ So predictable, but a good friend and neighbour; they shared a couple of k’s of fence line and a history of good times. Michael shook his head, and Pete quickly hid his disappointment.

  Others grouped around: Tom, another inch taller but just as skinny; Buzz, heavy-set and wearing his habitual khaki, Emma with him; Jay, his hair shiny with gel and standing to attention. Despite the holidays, it wasn’t always easy to catch up with friends. Pete he saw pretty regularly and only because he lived close by. Jim considered time off from school as time best spent working and he never ran short of things for the three of them to do – not even on Sundays. While the town kids complained of being bored, Michael longed to know how that felt.

  Pete craned his head. ‘Hey, Sophie,’ he called, ‘show us your smile!’

  Michael turned and grinned, laughing with the others. Everyone knew the story, but if he’d got past it, Sophie hadn’t. She marched away, pulling at the arm of a girl Michael didn’t recognise.

  ‘Don’t think she’s ever going to forgive you, mate,’ Pete said.

  ‘Yeah. Guess I made a lasting impression.’ That got a few more laughs. Michael nodded at the fast-disappearing backs of the two girls. ‘Who’s that with her?’

  ‘Hot, right? Jennifer Lawson. Moved up from Melbourne. Dad’s the new GP. Her mum and Sophie’s mum knew each other at uni or something.’ Pete rattled off the facts like a saleyard auctioneer. If gossiping was a genetic trait, he’d inherited it from his mother. ‘I’ve got a tab running on who’ll tip her first. Your brother’s odds-on favourite. You want in?’

  It was tempting, but Michael didn’t want to add to his friend’s pain. Gabe was a sure thing and Pete was set to lose a bundle. He should’ve known better. Then they both saw it: the girl turned to smile at Michael, a bit shy, before Sophie yanked her through a wall of bodies.

  Michael winked at Pete. ‘Put me down as a late entry.’

  Pete grinned. ‘You’re on!’

  Not strictly fair, but no one would’ve backed him against Gabe, anyway. Pete could put the odds as short or as long as he liked. Either way, they’d both clean up, because Michael knew by her smile that he’d win.

  How charming, would he think, to see her here!

  How heightened then, and perfect would appear

  The two divinest things in this world’s lot,

  A lovely woman in a rural spot!

  LEIGH HUNT, The Story of Rimini

  II

  If you took a girl away from everything she knew and loved – her school, her friends, her whole damned life – and carted her off to some dump in the middle of nowhere, then it was only fair to expect some trouble.

  ‘You can’t go!’ Jenny’s friends had cried when she’d told them. ‘How can you let them do this to you?’

  Them. Her parents. Mother: total bitch. Father: total coward. She and her mother had always locked horns. Her father would say it was because the two of them were so alike, but Jenny couldn’t see it. Her friends had mothers who were cool, who didn’t pester or nag or question every move, who let them go to parties without first calling the other parents to make sure it would be properly supervised, who let them hang with boys before asking for their life stories; mothers who friended their daughters on Facebook and posted happy family snaps. Jenny’s mother didn’t have a Facebook account, and even if she had, Jenny would never friend her. Ever.

  As for letting her parents decide her life – no, her fate – that had never been an option. Jenny had been given no say in the matter. Not that she hadn’t tried.

  ‘Your father needs a change,’ her mother had said. ‘Too much pressure at the hospital. Too much everything.’

  Jenny thought her father seemed just fine; he was maybe a bit q
uieter and not so ready with the jokes, but things weren’t so bad that they had to pay such a price. If he just stood up to her mother, she thought, everything would go back to normal.

  ‘So?’ she’d yelled. ‘He can get another job here. Why do we have to move?’

  ‘Stop it, Jenny!’

  But she hadn’t. It wasn’t fair, and all her mother’s talk about a fresh start and the joys of tree changing and Jenny being a self-obsessed teenager only made it worse. Jenny didn’t consider her behaviour unreasonable or her tantrums unjustified. Chris was happy enough, but then he was stupid and seven and didn’t know any better; he’d make friends and grow up with them. She’d already done that, and now she was being forced – forced! – to leave hers behind. Why couldn’t her parents understand that?

  ‘Where is this place, anyway?’ her friends had asked, and they Google-Mapped the tiny name of the town.

  ‘God, there’s not even a mall or a movie theatre,’ Bella had said. ‘Or any decent shops. What do they expect you to do there?’

  Nothing, Jenny thought. So by the time they left, speeding up the highway with the removals truck trailing distantly and Jenny mutinous and teary in the back of the car, she was prepared for the worst, which was a good thing because, as far as she was concerned, there was absolutely nothing to like about Kincasey.

  She hated its sleepy smallness. She hated the way everyone looked at her like she had two heads. She hated the endless heat and the constant haze of bushfire smoke; the dead meaty stench wafting up from the abattoir at the edge of town; the flies blowing in on the hot north winds, big as roaches and buzzing long into the night; the crappy country shops with their cheap, try-hard fashions; the slow pace; the long, long days. But, most of all, she hated her parents for making her move.

  She’d sulked when the phone company said it could take a week to connect the internet. She raged when it took two. ‘It’s the country, Jenny,’ her father had tried to soothe. ‘Nothing happens in a hurry.’

  She’d stormed when her parents wouldn’t let her take the train back to Melbourne to see her friends. Bella had urged her to return: she could stay at hers, Josh was having a party and Jenny so had to be there! Jenny’s mother hadn’t agreed.

  ‘Why not?’ Jenny had screamed.

  ‘Because I said so!’ her mother had screamed back.

  She’d whinged and complained, brooded and moped, yelled and cried. Again and again she surged and broke against her mother’s resolve, but none of it did any good. Then, exhausted and defeated, she gave up and dug in for a campaign of sullen, hateful misery.

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ her mother said one evening; she and Jenny’s father were in the living room, unpacking the last boxes of books. ‘Once school starts and she’s made some new friends.’

  ‘You can’t blame her,’ he replied quietly. ‘The way she sees it, we’ve ruined her life.’

  ‘No. You did that,’ her mum snapped, before dropping her voice to a harsh whisper, too low for Jenny to hear. It was all her mother did any more: snap and argue and point out everyone’s faults, pushing and pushing and pushing. She kept going on about how cute the town was, how nice the people were and what a great idea it had been to move here, but she seemed no happier than before. And neither was Jenny’s father, which kind of begged the question: why the hell were they even here?

  Nor did Jenny share her mother’s optimism about making new friends. From what she’d seen so far, the pickings were slim. Sophie was okay, but she wasn’t too thrilled about having to spend the last weeks of her holidays looking after the new girl, and she wasn’t shy about letting Jenny know it. Jenny could sympathise; she probably would’ve felt the same way. But they had enough in common, at least, to hang out, usually at the local pool. They’d lie on greying grass, smear themselves with sunscreen and pretend to ignore the boys who backflipped into the water, hooting at each other and showing off. Sophie and her friends would giggle, but Jenny wasn’t impressed; the boys in Kincasey weren’t all that different from the ones she’d known in Melbourne. There were just fewer to choose from.

  So she settled uneasily into a rhythm she didn’t recognise – mornings spent ignoring her family; long evenings alone in her room, basking in the glow of her laptop as she sought desperately to return to what she missed; nights spent crying into her pillow. And those scorching days wasted poolside, listening to not-so-idle gossip about people she didn’t know and couldn’t care less about, did nothing to shift her resentment.

  It was Kylie who first mentioned Michael and Sophie and the butterfly.

  ‘So he opens his hand and there’s this butterfly just kind of sitting there, and he’s holding it out to Sophie and leaning in to kiss her and then Caitlin – that’s his sister, she’s so weird – she comes up from behind, screaming, pushes him really hard and his head slams into poor Soph and knocks her teeth right out. I mean, there was blood everywhere. Like, everywhere!’ Kylie paused long enough to give a sly smile. ‘It happened ages ago, but she’s still getting over it. Aren’t you, Soph?’

  Jenny glanced at Sophie, whose mouth was tight, hiding the new teeth. But Jenny wasn’t interested in them. ‘So how’d he do it?’ she asked. ‘The butterfly, I mean.’

  Kylie shrugged. ‘It’s just what he does. Tricks and stuff. You know, like one of those magicians on TV? Always wears black. He’s kind of weird too. They both are. But Gabe, oh my God …’

  She went on, as they all did whenever Gabe’s name was dropped; Jenny had heard it before and barely listened. She was too busy imagining the butterfly – there one minute, gone the next, like Sophie’s teeth. And she shivered.

  But when she first saw Michael laughing with his friends at the party, he didn’t look weird. He was just different – from the boys she’d seen in town, from the ones she’d known in Melbourne. Different in ways that were hard to define. It wasn’t his height or the way he stood out from the group, part of it yet remote. His clothes were black, just as Kylie had described, and his hair too, straight and falling over his forehead, untidy and careless. Beneath, his eyes seemed both restless and calm, patient and demanding. He wasn’t tanned or exotic in that Mediterranean way or even ghoulishly Gothic. He was dark, like a shadow, filling space without really being there.

  She looked back to check he hadn’t vanished, that she hadn’t imagined him, and saw him watching her. And before Sophie could pull her away, before she lost sight of him completely, Jenny shot him a quick smile, knowing then that she’d do anything for a butterfly of her own.

  ii

  Michael found her later, by the tables of food; she was holding an empty plastic plate, undecided about whether or not to eat. She’d ditched Sophie, or maybe Sophie had ditched her, and she was alone. Better still, there was no sign of Gabe.

  ‘The chicken’s always good,’ he said.

  She turned quickly, more relieved than surprised, as though she’d been waiting for him. She held out her hand. ‘Hi, I’m Jenny.’

  He took it. It was small and smooth, like the rest of her. ‘Michael,’ he replied.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve heard,’ she said, smiling.

  Damn Sophie, he thought. ‘You having a good time?’

  Jenny shrugged. ‘I guess. It’s different.’ Then, laughing, she held up one of her feet. Her foot was dark with dirt, the pale strappy sandal ruined. ‘Definitely wore the wrong shoes.’

  ‘Well, you weren’t to know,’ said Michael.

  ‘Everyone seems nice.’

  She didn’t sound convinced. And she didn’t know about the tab Pete was running on her. Or why Michael had tracked her down. Yeah, they were the salt of the earth, he thought. So in the interests of fair play he offered a warning of his own. ‘Appearances can be deceiving.’

  Not hearing it, she peered up at him, her mouth curving softly. ‘So, um, is the story true? About Sophie, I mean.’ But that wasn’t what she meant at all.

  Michael touched his forehead. ‘Yep. Even have the scar to prove it.’

&nbs
p; And there it was, in her eyes and her sudden grin, in the puppy-tail quiver of her flesh: excitement. One eyebrow arched as her mind warred with her imagination. She didn’t want to be made the object of trickery – they never did – but the chance to have something conjured just for her was too amazing to pass up. He waited for imagination to win and for her to ask what she’d wanted from the beginning.

  ‘Could you make a butterfly for me?’

  He took a moment to study her; she seemed out of place, a thoroughbred in a field of carthorses. She wasn’t tall but the fineness of her limbs lengthened her somehow. Brown hair brushed her shoulders in waves, framing an oval face, and a small gold crucifix hung from her neck. Her dress was the colour of cornflowers, short but loosely shaped, like a shift or a long T-shirt. She squirmed some more, nervously this time.

  ‘No,’ he told her.

  ‘Oh.’ Disappointment, then embarrassment.

  ‘I can do better than that,’ he said, and pointed to the ground.

  Looking down, she gasped with delight. The dirty sandals were gone, and on her feet was a pair of boots in the softest leather, blue to match her dress.

  They moved away, slipping under the curtain of light that enclosed the party, and lounged on the bonnet of the ute and talked. Michael forgot about Pete, forgot why he was there, why she was with him. He was enjoying her company, and when she laughed it was as welcome as autumn rain.

  ‘Pretty impressive,’ she said, touching one of the boots, almost prodding it. Then, to be sure, she added, ‘They’re not real, though.’

  She glanced at him and there was that raised eyebrow again and that challenging note in her voice. Michael could see what she saw, as well as what she couldn’t: the blue boots hugging her ankles, the sandals still strapped around her feet.