Страница 36 из 55
‘It’s a bit difficult sitting down here,’ he said. ‘If you want to get rid of me, you’re the one who’ll have to go.’
‘Oh Lee, I don’t want to get rid of you. I don’t want to get rid of anyone. We all have to get on, living in this place the way we are, for God knows how long.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This place, Hell. It seems like Hell sometimes. Now for instance.’
I don’t know why I was talking the way I was. It was all happening too unexpectedly. It was a conversation I wasn’t ready for. I guess I like to be in control of things, and Lee had forced this on me at a time and a place that he’d chosen. I wished Corrie were there, so I could go and talk to her about it. Lee was so intense he scared me, but at the same time I felt something strong when he was around – I just didn’t know what it was. I was always very conscious when I was near him. My skin felt hotter, I’d be watching him out of the corner of my eye, directing my comments at him, noticing his reactions, listening more for his words than for anyone else’s. If he expressed an opinion I’d think about it more carefully, give it more weight than I would, say, Kevin’s or Chris’s. I used to think about him a lot in my sleeping bag at nights, and because I’d be thinking about him as I drifted into sleep I tended to dream about him. It got so that – this sounds stupid but it’s true – I associated him with my sleeping bag. When I looked at one I’d think of the other. That doesn’t necessarily mean I wanted him in my sleeping bag, but they had started to go together in my mind. I nearly smiled as I sat there, thinking about that, and wondering how he’d look if he could suddenly read my thoughts.
‘Do you still think about Steve a lot?’ he asked.
‘No, not Steve. Oh I mean I think about him in the same way I think about a lot of people, wondering if they’re all right and hoping they are, but I don’t think about him in the way you mean.’
‘Well if I haven’t offended you and you’re not with Steve any more, then where does that leave me?’ he asked, getting exasperated. ‘Do you just dislike me as a person?’
‘No,’ I said, horrified at that idea but getting a bit a
‘Look,’ I said, ‘sorry I can’t give you a list of my feelings about you, in point form and alphabetical order. But I just can’t. I’m all confused. That day in the haystack was no accident. It meant something. I’m still trying to figure out what.’
‘You say you don’t dislike me,’ he said slowly, like he was trying to figure it out. He was looking away from me and he was very nervous, but he was obviously leading up to an important question. ‘So that does mean you like me?’
‘Yes Lee, I like you very much. But right now you’re driving me crazy.’ It was fu
‘I’ve noticed you looking at Homer kind of ... special since we’ve been up here. Have you got a thing for him?’
‘It’d be my business if I did.’
‘Cos I don’t think he’s right for you.’
‘Oh Lee, you’re so a
Oh. ‘What the hell.’ I just made a joke.
I watched the chooks for a while, then cut across the clearing again to where the creek wandered back into thick bush and lost itself in a dark tu
The creek was narrower through here than it was in our clearing, about a metre and a half wide and as much as sixty centimetres deep. The bottom was all stones, but smooth and old ones, not too many with cutting edges, and anyway my feet were getting tough these days. There were quite a few dark still pools that looked very deep, so I avoided them. The creek just chattered on, minding its own business, not disturbed by my creeping progress. It had been flowing here for a long time.
I followed it for about a hundred metres, through many twists and turns. The begi
I splashed along the last few metres to the point where the banks began to open out, and sploshed out of the creek onto the mossy rock. Peering into the wild of the vegetation I struggled to distinguish between the shadows and the solid. The only certainty was the rosebush, its flowers catching enough sunlight through the brambles to glow like pieces of soft jewellery. But gradually I started to make sense of what I was seeing. Across there was a long horizontal of rotting black wood, here a pole serving as an upright, that dark space a doorway. I was looking at the overgrown shell of a hut.
I went forward slowly, on tiptoe. It was a quiet place and I had some sort of reverential feeling, like I did in my Stratton grandmother’s drawing room, with its heavy old furniture and curtains always closed. The two places couldn’t have been more different, the derelict bush hut and the solemn old sandstone house, but they both seemed a long way removed from living, from life. My grandmother wouldn’t have liked being compared to a murderer, but she and the man who lived here had both withdrawn from the world, had created islands for themselves. It was as though they’d gone beyond the grave, even while they were still on Earth.