Beth's Adventure

A heavy thump against the outside door, as if a bag of wheat had been dropped against it. We all looked at each other. To my knowledge no other human being within forty miles. The dogs were in the house and immediately set up a racket, went to the door pulling it open. A woman's body slumped against it, dress ripped, barefoot, feet bleeding ... Beth.

This, not another moment, another crisis... more. Her body in my arms, brought back everything I had been trying to stiffle. My carefully built up domestic idyll lay shattered ... small fragments of what might have been, scattered about the labyrinth of my brain.
She finally able to speak. Her husband down the track, the car had stopped, more, I knew, by the look she gave me.

Doug, Dan and myself set off in the land rover. Virginia, did not say one word.

We finally found Chin. He was sitting in the open car being eaten by flies and a variety of other airborne bugs, inconceivable he had attempted such a journey in such an old car. The radiator had given up and the motor seized. The inscrutable Chinaman did not look too good now, thought he would burst into tears when he saw us, never, ever, reckoned Chin Lee. Rich parents, never having to work a single day in his life. Always condescending. Knew he knew I was screwing Beth. Only once had he almost caught me, for what it was worth to him.

Her bedroom faced the street. We, so engrossed, almost too late, heard his old Morris, tappets bouncing, exhaust blowing, coming up the short drive. There had been a scramble. Beth pushing me out the back door, throwing my clothes. Stood in the garden slowly getting dressed, a brilliant night, one million stars, the moon filling half the sky.
Heard Beth start. "What did he mean by coming home disturbing her rest?" ... she really could shout ... "had he no consideration? Wasn't it enough that she slaved all day after his kids, without her sleep being interrupted at night?" Chin ran out slamming the street door behind him, driving off, the exhaust trumpeting down Burnside Road. The children woke up. I made my exit through half a dozen back gardens.

We towed Chin back. For some reason he appeared to think it all my fault. Beth dragging him down here. Her excuse, she too knew Sheila. She too having gone to St. Anne's. Everyone knew everyone on the closed circuit.

Arrived to a mixed reception. Sheila thinking it slightly strange Beth should turn up. Nevertheless she gave the indications of being pleased. But Mrs. Brownlow evidently twigged to the implications of Beth's dramatic entry, openly taking sides with Virginia. Doug and Dan not really sure what it was all about.

Beth and Chin moved into the Bungalow next door. I tried keeping a very low profile. Doubtlessly she had not come all this way to be thwarted by a very tight knit situation. She had iron nerve when it came to getting what she wanted.

She had once succeeded in getting me invited to her parents place at Nurioopta. The fact Chin came along was no impediment to her plans. The Homestead, a huge rambling place, double storey. Her parents and brothers falling over themselves, pleased at fresh faces. I, extremely dubious, about the whole thing. Throughout the day, Beth never put one small foot wrong. Went completely out her way to be everything a daughter, wife and mother, should be. I knew her better, a slight tightness about the corners of her mouth. Her sharp brain calculating how she was going to get me pushing, swearing, sweating on top of her, really did not think she would be able to do it, and told her so, laughing, which incensed her completely.
Her parents , very impressed having fixed their tractor ... looking at Chin as if he were simply another bag of wheat. I could do no wrong.

Beth hovered, cool in her cotton dress, gently scolding the children. Worrying Chin should change into a fresh shirt, the one he was wearing streaked with perspiration. Picked flowers for her mother. Perhaps my attraction to her…. just a big a bastard as myself. She knew all her sweetness, not in the slightest way fooling me. What she wanted was simply to be fucked. Right through the long hot day she was paying the price. There is always a price.

There must have been 5 bedrooms in the upper part of the house. The night was going to be interesting. Over the last coffee, the last cigarette, Beth coming alive. Everyone else half asleep. Chin, full of Scotch, snoring in a huge wing chair. his glasses slipped off the bridge of his nose, making him look even more ridiculous. Beth gave me a quick look, suggesting to everyone, time for bed. We all trooped up the stairs. Gave me the room at the end of the corridor. No door, only a curtain across, glimpsed the room she and her husband were sharing. The bed, a huge brass affair, with a tasseled bed cover. Momentarily, had a picture of Chin getting between the crisp sheets with her, jumping on her, brown backside in the air, falling off and asleep.

The house subsided into silence after what appeared to be a very long time, long enough for the mosquitoes to get tired of droning about trying to suck my blood, long enough for the stillness to magnify the slightest sound. My initial interest in what Beth may or may not do to reach me ebbed away, convinced that she would never make it from beneath Chin's outflung arm. Time hung interminably, hands of my watch glowed 3 a.m, in one hour the light would creep across this vast wilderness, the Sun, remorseless, edging itself out of the dry, yellow earth.

A faint rustling. momentarily thinking the wind had stirred itself. But it was Beth, an apparition in her long nightdress. Started to laugh at her sheer audacity, smothered this by locking her arms about my head, pushing her breasts into my face.
At the breakfast table she treated me with apparent indifference. Chin, busy shoving food into his mouth, appeared to have slept well. The two children fought, the mother hovered, hoping to find something to do with her hands. Beth's father, still impressed by almost instant cure of his tractor, took me to one side.
'Would I mind having a look at one or two other bits of machinery ... '

Virginia's reaction to the evidently quite unwanted guests ran true to form. She was disgusted, indignant, above all, icy ... a brick had been thrown through the thin glass of our relationship. She knew the Lee's had not come down here for the benefit of their health ... no sane person would. Even Virginia could see past the crotchets and quavers of her life. Maybe, faintly jealous, recognising, perhaps, other people had other drives, which they were incapable of stifling behind a clarinet or a football. Drives all consuming, relentless, remorseless, self destructive.

Beth, after about three days of low lying, managed to get me cornered in the milking shed, not really expected her at such a moment... in the half light of the dawn, I was absorbed in the intricacies of the milking machine. She had, however, picked exactly the right time, only the cows witness to our madness.

Breathless from running across the paddocks, she was insistent, determined, desperate. Had time to switch off the Delco's before she dragged me to the floor, knowing Mrs. Brownlow would doubtlessly notice the abrupt silence. But I was past all that. I was tired... suddenly ill, wanting only to escape, my only escape, into Beth. She into me. All the feelings I had struggled to push back so hard, flooding into my consciousness. Virginia, the children, the school, my profound sense of isolation, this continent would never release me, I would rot here in the heat, along with everything else.

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We whispered, heads pressed together, afraid our words would drift off into other ears, other people would break into our dream, their righteousness would wash over us, our heat turning to their coldness ... yet, something, almost indefinable remained. She looked, an intensity to burn itself into me. Suddenly limp, hair lank with perspiration... appeared on the very edge of collapse. Her drive finally blunted, looking about, as if for the first time, aware of where she was, the unfamiliar landscape, myself a stranger. She beat her fists against me letting out a scream splitting the morning into fragments.
"So. She's pregnant again ...!"
Managed to get my hand over her mouth. To me that scream had echoed and bounced to the very edge of the horizon. In reality, only loud enough for the cattle to stop munching and look round. Useless to try and reason with her, no reason for what had happened, nothing for it or against it. Beth became very quiet. Started up the machinery. Hardly thought I had heard the last of this.

During the afternoon, everyone decided we would go swimming. An old, what looked to me like a bomb crater, about twenty miles out. Usually full of water. No one had worked this out. Piled into the vehicles, bounced our way off. Noticed Beth, fully recovered, was paying a great deal of attention to Virginia, as if they were inseparable friends, at the same time, ignoring me completely.

Plenty of Roo's about ... tried a few shots but we were moving too fast. The best time for hunting them, at night. Hit them with the spotlight first , then a .303 in the head.


The hole, full of water, not very clear, murky. Always dubious about the place because had never been able to find the bottom. The sides, slimey from animal droppings, the only water between here and the Great Australian Bight. Plenty of what looked like small lobsters crawling about the water's edge. Doug and Dan set about catching these, cooking them over an open fire. Not too keen, all that "out back" sustenance never did a great deal for me. Once been offered "wichety grubs", huge, revolting slugs. Snakes too, skinned and roasted, no worse than jellied eels, maybe ... but Aldgate and 'Tubby Isaacs', on another planet … thoughts I had in my more desperate moments, when I really had to struggle to get a grip on what sanity I had left.

Swam about, Virginia giving me the usual 'look'. Beth too, playing it cool, as if she and Virginia had settled the long running sore between them, I to be the recipient of their joint displeasure.

The incident of Beth's strange arrival ignored.

Everyone sat talking, finally, Beth, looking sharply at me, very quietly making the point of her husband finishing his MD at the end of the next term. Did not really take in what she was saying, or the implication…. I had served my purpose.
Never did much in the way of plotting ahead, never much when it came to realising other people had other angles, calculating their own self interest to the minutest degree. Had not realised there are two types of people, those who are stepped on and those who do the stepping.

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