Dancing on Knives

  By the end of the third hour, Sara had gone beyond pain to a strange sort of floating dreaminess. Her bored and restless brothers, her rigidly cheerful mother, the other bruised and bloodied patients in the casualty ward, the nurses in their neat shoes and their low, deferential voices that lifted and lightened once the doctors had bustled away – all of them seemed very far away. She closed her eyes, listened to the scrape of metal, the sigh and moan and whisper of those all around her. Phosphorescence danced against her closed lids, orange, red, purple, flame-blue. She thought she heard wings flapping about her head. Her throat was parched, her eyes flinched from the too-bright light, she feared she was in a desert, vultures wheeling above her.

  Voices came closer. Someone took her wrist in cool fingers. It helped. Then her foot was moved. Sara screamed. She fell, spiralling downwards into a great, shadowy gorge of rushing noises and icy winds. She did not mark the line between consciousness and unconsciousness. All she knew, once she woke to find herself in a narrow hospital bed with a green cotton tent erected over her feet, was that a very long time had passed.

  They gave her some ice to suck and told her that she could go home once the doctor had seen her. Sara spent the next few hours listening to the tread of feet up and down the corridor. Her father did not come.

  He did not come for another two days. Augusto had gone off earlier in the week, saying he needed some space, and had not returned. At first, Sara thought Bridget was deliberately keeping the news of her broken ankle from him. Then she thought Augusto must have had an accident, and Bridget had not told her. Nothing could console her – not even her father’s hand-carved chess pieces. She had always liked to play with them, galloping the horses around the lush meadows of her bed, making them jump the wrinkles of her sheets, and the gushing rivers of her hair. Now she lay silently, clutching one in her small hand and wanting her father.

  At last Bridget rang Augusto’s dealer Alan, swallowing her humiliation. Augusto came home that evening. Sara listened with delight to the sound of her parents arguing.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘What do you care?’

  ‘Who was she, who have you been with?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Bridg, I’ve been painting. It’s too noisy here, I’ve been at the studio.’

  ‘Yeah, for sure. And why can’t you at least leave me a number, I’ve been at my wits’ end …’

  ‘I need quiet to paint, I don’t want distractions.’

  ‘No, I bet.’

  ‘I don’t have time for this, you’re always so bloody jealous, how am I meant to paint in this sort of atmosphere?’

  ‘Poor little Sara’s been weeping her eyes out for you, afraid something had happened to you …’ Bridget’s voice was harsh with an unnatural sarcasm. ‘Couldn’t believe her beloved daddy doesn’t care enough to even ring and see how she is.’

  Sara sank back into her pillows, covering her ears with feathers. The door opened. Sara unsealed her eyelids cautiously. Augusto stood at the end of her bed, smiling at her. ‘Hello, princess, hurt yourself, you silly girl?’

  At last Sara could tell him about the hospital, and how she had been afraid he had been hurt too.

  ‘Oh, no, princess, I’ve just been a little busy,’ he said, sitting down gently on the side of her bed and lifting the coverlet to examine her enormous white boot, covered all over with her brothers’ scribblings. ‘God, we’ll have to do better than that! How about I paint an Augusto Sanchez original on it for you? Though you’d never be able to cut it off, you’d be cutting up a potential fortune!’ Then, seeing the little wooden horse-head clutched in her hand, he smiled and said, ‘How about I teach you to play chess instead?’

  ‘What’s chess? Is it a new game?’

  ‘One which is thousands of years old,’ he told her. ‘Kings and queens used to play chess with real horses and men as the pieces. It’s as old as Christianity and a lot more interesting.’

  ‘How do you play it?’ she asked suspiciously.

  ‘It’s like a battle,’ Augusto said, lining up the pieces on her blanket. ‘I try and capture your king and you try and capture mine.’

  ‘That sounds easy,’ Sara said, attacking the king in his hand with the knight in hers.

  ‘Not that easy,’ Augusto said. ‘But I’ll teach you. I’d like to have someone to play chess with – your mother hasn’t the soul for it.’

  He read her the history of chess like a bedtime story and it grew to be part of their private language. They did not call the rook a rook, or even a castle. It was always called the elephant, which Sara thought much more interesting and romantic. Rukh meant war-chariot, after all, Augusto said, and in ancient India, where chess originated, elephants were the chariots of emperors.

  ‘Then your motorcycle should be an elephant too,’ Sara said, knowing her father shared his name with emperors. That was why she was called Sara, he had often told her, for it meant ‘princess’ and was she not the daughter of an emperor? Augusto had been delighted at her idea, and from that time on his motorcycle had always been called the Elephant, though no-one else knew why.

  The king was called a maharajah and the queen a maharani, and the bishop was always known as a fool. Sara knew this was because in medieval France the piece now called a bishop was then known as the court jester. She also knew they called the bishop a fool because it upset Bridget.

  Sara grew to be fascinated by the subtle, intricate moves of the game. At first they did not play to win, but only experimented with the different moves and their consequences. Augusto would make Sara look at the game from every angle, trying to guess his next move, or identifying the many different pathways she could choose to take. Augusto said chess was a great tool for life.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘the pattern on the board seems as clear to your eyes as the shape of constellations in the sky. You know what the consequence of each move is, and all you need to do is sit back and watch the poor fool stumble into your trap. Fool’s Mate. That’s what they call the shortest possible game, you know. All it takes is three moves and you have them in checkmate.’ He laughed. ‘Yes, if you play it right, life is just like chess.’

  Sara and Teresa crouched together on the verandah step, their breath short in their throats. Rain twisted and spun across the paddocks, rattling against the tin roof of the house, spitting in their faces. They heard the muted drone of a car’s engine and looked up. They saw the gleam of metal moving swiftly through the double line of poplar trees on the far hill, then saw a grey Volvo coming down the sweep of road into the valley. Both tensed, nails cutting into each other’s palms.

  ‘Bloody Hallorans,’ Teresa whispered.

  The car disappeared behind the slope of the hill. They heard its engine coming closer and closer, then it was nudging through the overgrown shrubbery and drawing up beside the Dodge.

  Sara’s cousin Craig was driving, with his mother, Annie, in the front seat and his brother, Brett, in the back. Annie climbed out, a dish covered with aluminium foil in her hands.

  ‘Oh, Sara, I’m so very sorry. We can hardly believe the news. What did the doctor say? Will he be all right? You look exhausted. Did you get any sleep? Come and have a cup of tea and tell us all about it.’

  Sara looked up at her aunt in quiet despair. She had not seen Annie for years, and although her uncles had visited her father the day before, it had not been a pleasant call. She wished they had not come.

  ‘We could not believe it when Dom and Dylan turned up at five in the morning! Wanting to use the phone! You must’ve been out of your mind with worry. I’ve brought you over a meatloaf we were going to have tonight. I know you won’t feel like cooking!’

  Still talking, Annie Halloran took Sara firmly by the elbow and led her through the front door. A familiar smell of dust, damp and turpentine closed over Sara’s head. The hall was an echoing space, with only darker patches against the faded walls to show where furniture had once stood. Only a chaise-lounge remained, covered w
ith mauve velvet fading to grey. A staircase rose from the far end of the hall, branching halfway up, with a little landing where a table once stood. A gilt mirror still hung there, dark with dust, and tilted a little forward so Sara saw their indistinct floating shapes.

  Annie looked about her avidly. She had not been to Towradgi since Bridget’s death and she was eager indeed to note every sign of poverty and neglect. Sara could almost hear her silent monologue. You should’ve seen the place! Filthy, and not a stick of furniture …

  Sara did not want her uncle’s wife to see how old and shabby everything was. The Sanchez family was in debt to the Hallorans. Deeply in debt. Alex Halloran had bought out the mortgage over the farm from the bank earlier that year and he had been a noxious presence ever since, exclaiming at her father’s extravagances, sneering over the accounts that Joe laboured over for so long, advising care and caution and economy until they had all wanted to go out and splurge on roast duck and lobster and champagne and raspberries. Only the threat that Alex would foreclose on the farm kept them from outright rebellion – or at least, kept the children from rebelling. Augusto had always disliked his brother-in-law and he took pleasure in blowing his expensive cigar smoke into Alex’s face.

  Sara had come unconsciously to a stop in the middle of the front hall. I wish I could get away from here, she was thinking. An image of her favourite rock rose before her, its feet deep in the swirling sea. She swayed away from the living-room door. Annie looked at her inquiringly. She was a heavy woman with a thin smudge of lipstick instead of a mouth. She had a scarf tied over her violet-hued hair and pink powder clung to the soft lines of her face.

  ‘Are you all right, pet? You look a bit pale. Brett, run and put the kettle on, would you? And put this in the fridge.’

  He obeyed reluctantly and Sara was swept on into the living room on the waves of her aunt’s voice. Craig followed behind, twisting his baseball cap about in his large, pale hands. Like the twins, both Craig and Brett were tall and broad, with a thatch of red hair and freckles. Craig was particularly broad and red, with eyebrows bleached the colour and texture of straw by the sun.

  He settled himself into the couch, which squeaked embarrassingly under his weight. Annie stared with avid disapproval at Augusto’s paintings hung all over the walls before sitting herself down rather gingerly in one of the armchairs. Brett came hurrying back along the corridor with a loaded tray and sat down beside his brother eagerly, sniggering a little and elbowing Craig as he too stared up at the paintings, which were hung haphazardly on the walls in a vain attempt to cover the worst of the damp stains.

  There were a number of dramatic landscapes of Towradgi Headland with its distinctive profile like a heavy-browed, brooding man. There was a painting of Consuelo as a young woman with a rose in her mouth that dripped blood, and another of a sinister Easter parade where all the revellers wore masks and carried guns or knives half-hidden in their clothes. There was a painting of Bridget weeping, three of Augusto’s second wife, Gayla, lying spread-eagled amidst rumpled pillows, and four of Augusto, one swimming in the sea, one playing the guitar in darkness, one slicing up octopus tentacles, and one of himself painting himself.

  The largest of the paintings, entitled Circus Rider, took up nearly an entire wall. The rider, seen from below, held both hands out, fingers splayed. Her spangled skirt stood up stiffly, showing her firm thighs, orange and pink, and the shadowy magenta curve of her buttock. The horse’s hind hooves, the girl’s calves and feet, were huge, the horse’s head thin and long. The crowd was a blur of mauve, the rider’s half-glimpsed face toned with green. From Annie’s position on the couch, she looked directly up the circus rider’s skirt. An expression of scandalised bewilderment crossed her face, and Brett giggled again.

  To have so many Hallorans in the living room at once unnerved Sara. She sat in the other armchair and wondered what to say. Teresa perched on the arm, scowling. She hated the Hallorans.

  Brett poured Sara a cup of tea. Everyone leant forward. ‘So what happened?’

  She told them how the helicopter had lifted Augusto’s injured body up from the broken tree which had saved him, halfway down the cliff. As she spoke, she saw again the stretcher swinging in the wind.

  ‘Good heavens, a rescue helicopter! It must be bad! Where did they take him?’

  Sara brought the cup to her mouth and sipped. It was a few moments before she could speak again.

  ‘Moruya, they said. He’s fractured his neck and they didn’t want to move him too much.’

  ‘Well, at least he’s close,’ Annie said doubtfully.

  ‘But how did he fall?’ Craig demanded. ‘He knows Towradgi Headland pretty bloody well. You wouldn’t think he’d just fall over.’

  Brett’s eyes were round with speculation. ‘Maybe he just slipped … stepped back on a rock, prob’ly.’

  ‘It was raining …’ Annie said.

  ‘Who’s ever heard of anyone painting in the rain?’ Brett said.

  ‘It is Gus we’re talking about.’

  ‘That’s enough, Craig.’

  ‘Well, it was pissing down,’ Craig said. ‘It seems peculiar even for Gus to go out painting in that storm.’

  ‘It wasn’t raining when he went out,’ Sara said stiffly, not looking at them.

  ‘Had he been drinking?’ Annie asked. ‘Or smoking … pot?’ She pronounced the word with pleasurable outrage. Sara did not answer. ‘I’ve always thought that headland was a dangerous place …’ her aunt went on rather hurriedly. ‘Why, it gets so windy up there and it’s a long way down …’

  Falling.

  Sara clenched her fingers around her cup, and tried not to think about how her father fell. Surely he would not have just slipped and fallen, her father who always knew exactly where to put his feet and his hands. But what else could have happened? How did he fall?

  ‘I’m sure your dad just got involved in his painting – I hear they do,’ Annie said brightly, trying to comfort. ‘He probably forgot where he was.’

  ‘If he ever really knew,’ Craig whispered to Brett, who giggled.

  Augusto had always been an enigma to his in-laws. He had the face of a Spanish aristocrat, with hollowed cheeks, a thin, arrogant nose that flared at the nostrils like an unbroken horse, and a mouth both sensuous and cruel. He tied his lank, black hair back from his forehead with a length of knotted leather, and wore an opal stud in his left ear. Women found his face fascinating, and wanted to trace the sharp line of his cheekbones with their thumbs. Men thought him effeminate.

  Augusto was not like anyone the Hallorans knew. He refused to talk about the weather, or the footy, or whether the catch would be any good that season. He liked to argue about God and Art and Death. If someone bored him, as most people did, he would give a faint sneer and walk away halfway through their greeting. The Hallorans bored him immensely.

  In the sweltering summers, Augusto seldom wore more than a faded sarong and, sometimes, an old shirt encrusted with paint. If, for some reason, he decided to go into town, he would cram a decrepit straw hat over his ponytail and slip his long, bony feet into a pair of plaited leather sandals. Usually, though, he was barefoot, a silver ring on his little toe.

  Unless he was going drinking, of course. Then he would dress carefully in his black Armani trousers, shiny along the seams after twenty-five years but still impeccably cut, and a black silk shirt. He would smooth back his hair with scented pomade, carefully shave his long jaw, and fasten a string of dark wooden beads about his neck. He knew none of the pubs or clubs in town would let him in wearing sandals, even if made of leather, and so he would wear a pair of soft, black, handmade slip-ons that were almost as old as the trousers. He rarely came home those nights.

  Everything about Augusto Sanchez offended his in-laws. They condemned him for spending his days lying around drinking wine and smoking long, thin, dark cigars with an occasional languid daub of paint on canvas, instead of holding down a job like an honest man. It was not as if his pai
ntings were any good, the Hallorans thought. They might win prizes occasionally and get shown at galleries but any monkey with a paintbrush could do that these days. And, frankly, my dears, Sara had once heard her aunt Annie say, how many times can a man paint a naked woman? With purple nipples?

  No-one could comprehend why Bridget Halloran – a good-natured girl from a good family – had ever married him.

  ‘Anyway, I’m sure your dad’ll be just fine, girls. It’s a very good hospital and your father’s strong, for all that he’s so skinny. Don’t you worry now.’

  Sara and Teresa said nothing. Annie drank down the last of her tea a little too eagerly then planted her heavy feet on the floor and rose to leave. Craig and Brett rose too. Sara stood up, knowing she should say something but unable to think of a single word.

  Annie pursed up her small pink mouth, with its faint down above the upper lip. ‘Ring me if you need to, dearie, you know we’re always here for you.’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Teresa muttered, curling her lip. ‘What a load.’

  ‘What did you say?’ Annie shrilled. Heavy colour rose in her cheeks.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You think I’m deaf? I heard what you said.’

  ‘Then why did you ask?’

  ‘Have some respect for your elders, young lady!’

  Teresa rolled her eyes.

  ‘I’ve got to wonder about you. You’ve absolutely no idea how to behave. Fancy sneaking out and going on the sauce! You’re too young to be drinking! And driving back on that road under the influence – you could have been killed, or worse, killed somebody else!’

  Teresa stood up abruptly. ‘Lay off me, you old cow! You’re no relation of mine, you can’t tell me what to do.’

  ‘Don’t talk to my mum like that!’ Craig loomed over her, low-browed and heavy-shouldered as a bull. Though she was as white as he was red, and thin as he was thick, Teresa did not recoil, but stared back at him defiantly, her hands bunched into fists.