Scrublands(3)

‘Good. I’ll be right back.’

She turns and walks soundlessly back down the aisle. Martin watches her the whole way, admiring the curve of her neck floating above the bookshelves, his feet still anchored to the same spot as when he first saw her. She passes through the swing door at the back of the store and is gone, but her presence lingers: the cello-like timbre of her voice, the fluid confidence of her posture, her green eyes.

The door stops swinging. Martin looks down at the books in his hands. He sighs, derides himself as pathetic and takes a seat, looking not at the books but at the backs of his forty-year-old hands. His father had possessed tradesman’s hands. When Martin was a child they had always seemed so strong, so assured, so purposeful. He’d always hoped, assumed that one day his hands would be the same. But to Martin they still seem adolescent. White-collar hands, not working-class hands, somehow inauthentic. He takes a seat—a creaking armchair with tattered upholstery, tilting to one side—and starts leafing absent-mindedly through one of the books. This time she doesn’t startle him as she enters his field of vision. He looks up. Time has passed.

‘Here,’ she says, frowning ever so slightly. She places a large white mug on the table beside him. As she bends, he captures some coffee-tinted fragrance. Fool, he thinks.

‘Hope you don’t mind,’ she says, ‘but I made myself one too. We don’t get that many visitors.’

‘Of course,’ he hears himself saying. ‘Sit down.’

Some part of Martin wants to make small talk, make her laugh, charm her. He thinks he remembers how—his own good looks can’t have totally deserted him—but he glances again at his hands, and decides not to. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asks, surprising himself with the bluntness of his question.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What are you doing in Riversend?’

‘I live here.’

‘I know. But why?’

Her smile fades as she regards him more seriously. ‘Is there some reason I shouldn’t live here?’

‘This.’ Martin lifts his arms, gestures at the store around him. ‘Books, culture, literature. Your uni books over there, on the shelf below your mother’s. And you. This town is dying. You don’t belong here.’

She doesn’t smile, doesn’t frown. Instead, she just looks at him, considering him, letting the silence extend before responding. ‘You’re Martin Scarsden, aren’t you?’ Her eyes are locked on his.

He returns her gaze. ‘Yes. That’s me.’

‘I remember the reports,’ she says. ‘I’m glad you got out alive. It must have been terrible.’

‘Yes, it was,’ he says.

Minutes pass. Martin sips his coffee. It’s not bad; he’s had worse in Sydney. Again the curious longing for a cigarette. The silence is awkward, and then it’s not. More minutes pass. He’s glad he’s here, in the Oasis, sharing silences with this beautiful young woman.

She speaks first. ‘I came back eighteen months ago, when my mother was dying. To look after her. Now…well, if I leave, the bookshop, her bookshop, it closes down. It will happen soon enough, but I’m not there yet.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so direct.’

She takes up her coffee, wraps her hands around her mug: a gesture of comfort, of confiding and sharing, strangely appropriate despite the heat of the day. ‘So, Martin Scarsden, what are you doing in Riversend?’

‘A story. My editor sent me. Thought it would be good for me to get out and breathe some healthy country air. “Blow away the cobwebs,” he said.’

‘What? The drought?’

‘No. Not exactly.’

‘Good God. The shooting? Again? It was almost a year ago.’

‘Yeah. That’s the hook: “A year on, how is Riversend coping?” Like a profile piece, but of a town, not a person. We’ll print it on the anniversary.’

‘That was your idea?’

‘My editor’s.’

‘What a genius. And he sent you? To write about a town in trauma?’

‘Apparently.’

‘Christ.’

And they sit in silence once more. The young woman rests her chin in one hand, staring unseeing at a book on one of the tables, while Martin examines her, no longer exploring her beauty, but pondering her decision to remain in Riversend. He sees the fine lines around her eyes, suspects she’s older than he first thought. Mid-twenties, maybe. Young, at least in comparison to him. They sit like that for some minutes, a bookstore tableau, before she lifts her gaze and meets his eyes. A moment passes, a connection is made. When she speaks, her voice is almost a whisper.

‘Martin, there’s a better story, you know. Better than wallowing in the pain of a town in mourning.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Why he did it.’

‘I think we know that, don’t we?’

‘Child abuse? An easy allegation to level at a dead priest. I don’t believe it. Not every priest is a paedophile.’

Martin can’t hold the intensity of her gaze; he looks at his coffee, not knowing what to say.

The young woman persists. ‘D’Arcy Defoe. Is he a friend of yours?’

‘I wouldn’t go that far. But he’s an excellent journalist. The story won a Walkley. Deservedly so.’