Tim Winton - The Turning

Who is it? he hissed, bug-eyed with fury.

Who’s what? she asked breathlessly.

Darts night. For fuckin weeks.

It’s not what you think, Max, she said, conscious of the girls cowering nearby even if she couldn’t see them with her head jammed back as it was.

Darts night. No, it’s not what we thought at all, is it? he growled. Max’s breath was rank with beer and smoke and his eyeballs were mulled up red as blood. So who is he, then?

Rae’s arms throbbed where he gripped her. She thought of telling him the truth but it sounded so weak, so bloody awkward, and the bastard didn’t deserve the truth, wasn’t worth one honest piece of her.

Who the fuck is he? said Max, slamming her head against the metal so hard she saw sparks rise between them, sparks and winged spots that floated and fell. She smiled at that. Thank Christ it’s aluminium, she thought; be grateful there’s a bit of give in it.

He roared then. He grabbed her hair and jabbed her back harder, once, twice, and the pain brought a sudden rage upon her.

He’s bigger than you, Max, so be careful. You don’t even know him but he owns you. He’ll cut you to pieces, you fuckin coward. He’ll come lookin, he’ll suck the life out of you, he’s every fuckin thing you aren’t.

Max had both hands in her hair now. The girls were howling. She looked about for something to grab, to kill him with.

Tell me his name, you fuckin slut!

Raelene hit the van so hard it felt as though her eyeballs would spurt from their sockets. Her arms flailed above her as he slammed her back again and again. She felt the door edge, the hinge or something gouge her, couldn’t get her hands to his stubbly face. She was powerless but for the smile that stung her mouth, sharp as a split lip. She had a name for him, her secret man. He was just the shape of a man but he was all man to her and any moment, when she got her breath back and her tongue steady, she’d spit that name in his face to see him explode. He’d go ballistic, do a complete fucking Rumpelstiltskin into the slab floor and she didn’t care.

But the moment never came. Everything just stopped, like the power going off.

When she got back from the nursing post it was dark and the only sounds in the park were the spray of showers from the ablution block and the murmur of television from the sparse scattering of caravans. Raelene was glad she’d resisted old man Harrison’s efforts to drive her home or anywhere else she wanted to go. She supposed she was grateful that he turned up when he did, put the girls in his car, carried her himself, got her seen to, but she grew weary of him threatening to go to the cops. All she could think of was the times she’d seen him fondling her undies as they hung on the line.

If Harrison kicked Max out now, evicted him from the park, she was homeless, the girls too. It was bad enough that the nurse was the sister of Max’s boss. Raelene lied long and hard about the jagged gash and the great clumps of hair missing from the sides of her head. The older woman wasn’t buying it, told her she was a fool, that she should be in hospital, should get away, get out while she still could. When she talked like that Rae felt lower than shit; you could feel the contempt in the woman’s voice.

She sent Harrison back with the girls and let herself be stitched up in silence. When it was done she asked that the rest of her head be shaved while they were at it. The clippers were right there and her hair was such a mess already that she might as well start again from scratch. The older woman grumbled about being a nurse, not a hairdresser, but when Rae glanced at her she saw that the nurse was teary.

With her head so bruised, so tender, the buzzcut hurt more than the sutures, more than the bashing itself. Her hair fell in her lap, on the white lino floor, and she wept.

The short walk home did her good. The cold air stung but it cleared her thoughts. The sky was jammed with stars. By the time she got to the van she had her nerve back. She could face him. She could do absolutely anything.

She stepped into the annexe where the girls lay watching TV. Their beanbags were speckled with potato chips. The air was warm from the fan heater Harrison must have set up for them. She went on into the van and, as she expected, Max was gone. She sat on the bed, took up her little snowdome from the sidetable and shook it. A blizzard of doves. The girls appeared. They hung back in the doorway, afraid of her.

Mummy’s had a haircut, she said. Everything’s fine now.

She boiled them each an egg and cut fingers of toast to dip in the yolks, but neither would eat, so she filled the sink and bathed the girls and laid them in her bed and told them the story of Jonah and the Whale. As she curled between them, calming them, reciting the details of Jonah’s deliverance even when she knew they were asleep, she could smell the horsey stink of Max in the pillow and was not afraid.

When the story was finished Rae pulled the concertina door to and cleaned up quietly. She couldn’t face the shower block tonight. So she boiled the kettle and stripped to wash herself with a sink of hot water. The bruises were up on her arms already. She dragged on a tracksuit and looked at herself in what was left of the mirror. She looked like Joan of Arc, like a bloody nun. She refused to cry. She bared her chipped teeth. She looked fierce as hell.

She made herself a rum-and-Coke and sat out in the annexe to wait for Max. She watched TV with the sound off, was amazed at how fuckin pointless people were without their voices. Max’s ute was outside. He wouldn’t be far away.

By ten o’clock she’d had enough drinks and more than enough waiting. She pulled on a coat and boots and went across to the Cesspit. There were several rusty Land Cruisers and one-tonners parked around that nest of caravans. The vans themselves were set in a defensive formation like a bunch of circled wagons from a cowboy flick, and God alone knew what these scumbags were protecting themselves from. Their mothers, maybe, thought Rae, winding through junked bikes and pots and roobars and guyropes to the flap of the biggest annexe where the light of a TV flickered.

She lifted the flap and stepped into the vegetable fug of dope smoke. On mattresses and beanbags lay half a dozen deckies, none of them much older than twenty. Except Max. His head was back, his mouth open. Like the others, he was totally out to it. On the video screen two men had a woman on a shiny table, all three of them writhing pink under hard lights. Come on, bitch, said the one with a fistful of her red hair. The other slapped her arse muttering, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Somebody stirred on a beanbag, a boy holding a bong in his lap like it was a part of his own body, and he gazed at her openmouthed, squinting and blinking until Raelene stepped back through the flap into the pure night air.

Walking back she felt bruised and weary but fierce now and invulnerable. Like she’d climbed from some flaming wreckage an unlikely survivor. Spared.

As she undressed for bed she thought of calling Sherry. She wanted to tell her about this feeling, but it was late and she didn’t want to return to the details of the rest of the day; it could wait. She was tired.

Just then the phone rang. She snatched it up.

Sherry?

Bob James, Rae.

Oh. Hullo, Bob.

You orright?

Fine, she said.

You sure?

Yeah, Bob. I’m sure.

Max there?

No, she murmured. You boys fishing tomorrow?

Yeah, said Bob. But, um, you better tell Max we don’t need him.

A nurse isn’t sposed to blab, said Rae.

Just tell him he’s finished.

What about confidentiality?

Christ, girl, you got bigger things to worry about.

Why don’t you mind your own fuckin business?