Saturday morning

The drive to her house is a long one. First you have to clear the suburbs that slip by behind high timber fences backing onto the freeway. Then the boredom of 80 kilometres of dual highway, the view out of the windscreen much the same as the picture in the rear-view mirror.

Eventually you turn off onto the winding dappled road to her town and drive more slowly, in case of wombats or roos, the sunlight flickering between the trees like an old movie projector’s lamp. The air is eucalyptus flavoured.

It’s still early when you arrive. From the doorway of her house you can see the road, framed by trees; straight-trunked, spread-branched. The road is a narrow strip of bitumen. When two cars cars meet, each must dip two wheels into the roadside dust, keeping two on the glittering tarmac. When they've passed, the dust hangs in the hot air, yellow and misty.

Across the road, through a line of trees that march off to left and right in regular steps like the dead baby soldiers they represent, the ploughed furrows of a field lead away in perfect parallels, an exercise in perspective.

Now the house is behind you, but you know you must turn and go inside. It too is regular, square, the dark rectangle of the open doorway flanked by glossy rectangular windows. Each window has eight square panes in white-painted frames. She’s in there, asleep. When she wakes up she’ll be angry, just as she was last night on the phone.
You don't know if you care or not because you haven't decided yet whether you love her or not. She doesn't care if you love her. Or, at least, she won't allow love as a mitigating circumstance, or a reason for making a kinder judgement.
She wakes up. The dog, a black and white thing that's always moving, twisting, turning and looking for sheep, sits at the door to her room and barks at her. You turn and walk back to the dark doorway of the house. The hallway is pitch black after the squinting brightness of the sun.
What do you say to her? "Can I get you anything?", "good morning", "I'm leaving now", "that bloody goat is out again"?
Whatever it is, she's not going to reply.
But she gets up and walks to the kitchen, walks down the hallway naked, the light catching on the drooping folds of her waist and hips. A car rushes past. The driver and passenger don’t notice the house, let alone her bare back and fuzzy blonde hair, thinning now at the temples, brushing her shoulders.
A match flares. A ring of blue flame under the kettle. She's making tea. You may as well not be there. She isn't ready to deal with the problem you represent right now. The dog lies in the corner of the kitchen on the dirty olive linoleum, front paws crossed, muzzle on paws, but awake, alert, watching her. His back legs twitch and shift. He's ready.
You walk into the kitchen and reach for the bread. She slams the breadbin shut and you shake your fingers as if she’d managed to crush them.
She sits down with her back to you and slurps her tea. Someone has to say something.
“It’s a long drive home.”
She jerks her head, birdlike, and eyes you like a worm. “Leaving already?”
“If I do, that’s it, you know.”
To show you’re serious, you stand up and open the pantry door, reaching in to gather your coffee maker and muffin tins. When you turn back, she’s leaning against the bench, silhouetted in the morning light. A magpie juggles its golden notes in the cypress behind the house.
She sighs, exhaling all her anger, and sets the heavy clay mug down on the bench like it was a delicate wine glass.
“You drove all the way up here, let’s talk.” The sound of slurping tea resumes. She and the dog are watching you like you’re a snake, waiting for you to jump so they can pounce. She’s dressed now, or covered at least, in a red silk gown you bought her in Hong Kong. A golden dragon is clawing its way down her left shoulder.
“I’m just not ready,” you begin.
“Then you never will be.”
“I wouldn’t say that. But you know how work is for me right now.” In fact, right now you should be at the office, catching up.
“Oh, I know, Carl. Been there, done that. Would still be, if it wasn’t for this place. It’s simple. You just walk away.”
You remember a call you should have made yesterday afternoon and feel your shoulders tighten. You close your eyes for the count of a single second – one cat and dog – and open them again. In the paddock next door a patchwork dairy cow has her head buried in a tussock, a calf sucking at her udder.
“I thought you liked it here,” she says, her voice flat and even. “I thought you liked the town. I thought you liked me.”
The dressing gown gapes a little at the front. You can see her ribs, the rounded inner curves of her breasts.
“I know I liked you.” She’s still speaking quietly. Last weekend she said she loved you. The two of you spent the whole of Sunday in the iron-framed bed in the front room, warm together under red velvet covers, only getting up to stoke the fire and make more tea and coffee. You hadn’t spent a whole day in bed with a woman for twenty years. When you left, you stopped the car a few metres down the road, running back to kiss her as she stood on the porch with the dog at her feet.
“Sally, don’t. Just don’t. Why can’t we keep on like we are? We have fun, don’t we?”
“I don’t want fun. I want a life. I don’t want to spend five nights a week waiting for you to come back. I don’t want to watch you wear yourself out down there. I want us to be happy, properly. If you were here, we’d be happy.”
She’s probably right. In your pocket, the vibration of your phone starts up. The dog grumbles softly and her eyes narrow.
“I’m not a B & B, Carl. I’m a woman. This place is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I can’t move back.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“But I’m asking you to come to me. There’s no other way.”
You know she’s right. The sun has risen higher, and a patch of green light is moving across the table, filtered by the coloured glass fanlight above the kitchen window. There’s dust on the window ledge, and on the broken pieces of brass window hinge lying there. You’d been meaning to fix that. For how long? The phone rings again in your pocket.
“I’ve spent so much time building up the business, Sally.”
She’s not listening. Her foot is extended under the timber table, rubbing the dog’s belly, and she’s fingering the roses you brought her last weekend, now tired but still a lovely red.
An image of the city comes into your mind; a gap-toothed hazy grey projection on the horizon, the way it looks as you come over the top of the range heading south.
It’s a long drive home.