Evie Wyld: All the Birds, Singing

The pallet to my right darkens, and through a punched-out knot in the grain of the wood, an eye appears, and I back away from it, my voice gone.

‘I know about you,’ says the eye. ‘You don’t fool me; I know about you and what you’ve done,’ it says and the voice is thick and sticky and there’s the smell of rotten eggs and lanolin together and whisky and unwashed places.

I’ve covered my tracks, it’s been seven months and I covered my tracks , but my heart is beating fast, and I have to put up my hand to the wall to steady myself. The spider reacts, turns in a small circle, settles again. The eye twitches, and I think of driving my thumbnail right into it, but I can’t bring myself to touch it, and there is nothing else sharp to poke with. The eye slides up and down, the iris a milky blue.

‘I know what you’re about,’ says the eye. It disappears and the shadow moves away. My heart drums. I look through the knot in the wood and see Clare staggering off in the direction of the shearing shed. He’s been away the week, and he has found something out.

I bolt from the shower without washing out the suds, round the side of the shed to my sleeping quarters. I pull on pants, shorts and a singlet and then I begin stuffing everything else into my backpack. If you were so sure he’d never find you , says my head, why are you so prepared to leave, why do all your belongings fit in a backpack? Everything is in there except my shears, which I left on the bench next to the wool table, to sharpen in the morning. And the carapace of a cicada that Greg gave me last month when he asked if I’d go to the Gold Coast with him once the job was done. I hold it in my palm and it vibrates with my pulse.

‘Just spend a month at the water. Fishing, swimming, drinking beer,’ he’d said. ‘Get the dust off us before the next job.’

I put the skin back down on the ledge and go to find Greg in the dinner hall.

Almost everyone has gathered for tea, and I scan the bench for Clare, but he’s not there. I sit down next to Greg, who is talking to Connor about boat engines, and I try to make it clear I want to talk to him by putting my hand on his shoulder. He squeezes my thigh under the table but doesn’t turn around, too involved with his conversation.

‘… corroded so far, it broke through and dropped down into the bilge,’ he says, and Connor is drinking from his can and he says,

‘Yep. That’s just the way she’ll go — people forget,’ his voice becomes high-pitched and incredulous, ‘as far as an engine is concerned — water’s your enemy.’

‘Yep,’ says Greg and I shift about next to him. I don’t want anyone else to know there’s a problem.

‘You right?’ asks Greg, distracted by my fidgeting.

‘I need to talk to you,’ I say quietly.

Greg looks at me a moment, takes a swig of his drink and snakes his arm around my back.

‘Can we go somewhere?’

‘Tea’s coming out.’

‘Yes but…’

‘Whisper it.’

I lean closer to him. People assume we are having some sort of moment I suppose, and no one could be less interested. A grey steak arrives in front of me and trays of boiled potatoes get passed down the line.

My mouth goes dry. ‘Have you seen Clare yet?’

‘His truck’s back, he’ll be around somewhere. Why — what’s he owe you?’

‘Nothing. I just— Look, can we go to the Gold Coast?’

He gives me a hopeless look, like he doesn’t know what on earth is the matter with the woman. ‘Yeah. I suggested it. What, are you having a stroke or something?’ He puts six large potatoes on his plate, passes the tray, which I pass on to Stuart on the other side of me.

‘I mean now. Can we just hop in the truck and go now?’

‘Why? What’s happened?’

‘Nothing’s happened. I just want to go now.’

Greg looks confused. ‘Well, so do I, but we’ve got to finish the job.’

‘Why?’

Greg is chewing on a lump of steak. ‘Why? Because these are me mates, I’m not leaving them a man down. Besides, we go early, we don’t get the bonus — it’s just a week we’ve got left. Not long.’ He swallows and reaches for one of the rolls that sit in the centre of the table. ‘Sid,’ he shouts, ‘is this bread still made with the arse flour?’ Sid doesn’t reply and Greg shrugs and mops his plate.

‘Can you just trust me that we need to leave now?’ I say.

He puts his bread down. ‘Why do we need to leave now? What is the difference? You rob a bank?’

I open my mouth to speak, but there is nothing I can tell him.

‘See,’ he says, picking up his fork again, ‘there’s no problem. Everything is simple. It’s just hot is all, we’ll be at the Coast in no time.’

Another tray starts to come down, with sausages on it. When I pass this to Stuart he looks at me strangely.

‘No snag for you?’ he says.

‘What?’

‘On Jenny Craig or something?’

I ignore him, but Greg notices too, and waves the sausages back. ‘Wait wait wait, if she’s not eating I’ll have hers,’ and he spears two extra.

‘Why do you get the extra?’ asks Stuart.

‘Because she’s my woman.’

‘What? That’s not right.’

‘Fair dinkum,’ Denis says from down the end. ‘She’s his woman, means the snags pass on to him.’

I wish I had taken the sausages.

I have until the end of tea to convince him.

Greg has eaten my steak, and two large bowls of tinned fruit cocktail with the shining red cherries and the pale cubes of melon are distributed along the table.

Someone barks, ‘What, no ice cream?’ and Sid tosses a couple of bricks of it, the kind you cut with a pallet knife and which are bright yellow like cheese, and Connor hacks off a two-inch slice and dumps a ladle of fruit salad on top.

‘Love it when the ice cream mixes with the syrup,’ he says loudly to anyone who wants to know, and then he picks out the red cherries one by one with his fingers, his pinkie held up high, and lines them up at the side of his dish, ‘but those little fuckers can get bent.’

Clare appears in the doorway with the night behind him. The strip lighting in the shed makes him look like he glows. He holds on to the door frame and scans the long table. I wait for his eyes to settle on me, and when they do I see a look of pleasure on his face that I recognise. I am trapped. Greg’s thigh pumps blood next to mine. Connor scrapes the bottom of his dish with his spoon and Steve, next to him, flicks one of the red cherries so it darts onto Stuart’s lap. Stuart gives Steve the finger without looking up from his bowl. Alan at the top of the table is reading the paper and is not interested. He drinks his beer. And in all of it, Clare looks at me and I know I’m done, I know the end has come. He enters the room and walks slowly past me. I try not to crane to follow him, I try not to anticipate his next move. He puts a hand on Greg’s shoulder and bends down to him, and I tense myself for the end. Greg looks up and Clare hands him a Violet Crumble and Greg’s face opens out into a smile.

‘Good man,’ says Greg. ‘Now I don’t have to get involved with this horse shit,’ he says, nodding at the fruit salad and pinching open the purple wrapper as he does it. Clare ambles on by, saying nothing, just giving me a sidelong glance. Greg breaks the end off his bar and hands it to me. While Greg is turned away from me, I crumble it to dust under the table.

I pick up my shears from the shed, and do not think about what will happen next. The shed smells good. Sweat and dung, lanolin and turps. I can’t imagine being away from it. A possum scratches on the tin roof. I walk slowly back to my quarters, stand for a moment in the dark where I can see the warm slice of light in the dinner shed, where I have a side view of Greg, who is laughing, who brings a beer to his lips, who drinks, who puts it down and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. I bite the tip of my tongue and I try to think of some last-minute plan that can stop this. Nothing comes and I turn away and follow my feet back to my quarters.