Hope Farm Read online

  The Lower East Side. Chelsea. I shaped the names silently in my own mouth, storing them up for later.

  A couple of times he let me go with him into Kooralang. I almost burst with pride, riding up there in the high cab of his truck, the privileged sole passenger, listening for the surprisingly low, rich notes of his voice as he sang along to the songs on the radio.

  ‘Now. I need to visit the hardware,’ he might say, as he pulled on the handbrake. ‘Would that be all right with you?’

  The thrill of being consulted! Giddy with importance, I would clamber down and swing shut the heavy door, wait for him to come around to the footpath.

  The town had a dingy collection of shops and businesses: a butcher’s, a chemist’s, the hardware place, a post office, a coffee shop with empty booths and buzzing flies. An old theatre, long closed and with boarded-up windows; a small building painted a faded mushroom colour with a sign that said Kooralang Coal Mine Historical Museum, the door of which was secured with a rusted chain and padlock. There was a church and a hall, whose abandoned appearances made their noticeboards advising of upcoming events difficult to believe in. Down the other end of the main street was a supermarket, and past it, on the far side of some paddocks, sprawled the powdered-milk factory where Ishtar worked, its black-streaked chimneys leaking smoke.

  Walking down the street with Dan, stretching out my stride to match his, I felt for the first time in my life immune to the way people looked at me. And people did look. The town existed in a kind of parallel time-warp to the one at Hope; it was 1985 but it could have been twenty years earlier.

  I had been jeered at for my clothes countless times in the past. I had been sent home from school with notes of concern or outrage from teachers — regarding my lack of proper footwear, the state of my fingernails, my hair. But in the main street of this small town with its meaty, red-faced farmers, its scrawny, wind-whipped farmers’ wives, and bands of flannel-shirted youths, the tide of antagonistic attention was the strongest I’d yet experienced. Here our difference glared as if we were spot-lit, and the judgement was absolute.

  When I was with Ishtar, or Miller and Ishtar, I slunk along, feeling the stares, hearing the whispers, wishing I was invisible. But with Dan it was different. Dan didn’t care what people thought, and neither did I, because I was with him.

  At the post office, he picked up shipments of records and copies of American Rolling Stone. I watched him, the flop of his hair as he bent his head, his long brown fingers on the square, shallow cardboard packages. Records. Mail order. America. All the vast potential of the world was in him. He brimmed with it. He was the exact opposite of everyone else at Hope, carping about nobody giving them a fair go, sighing and staring out at their imaginary crops and goats and freedom.

  A little vision glowed in my mind: Dan climbing the stairs into a jumbo jet. It was his body mounting the steps but somehow I was inside it, looking out through his eyes. Sitting down beside one of those little oval windows, feeling the engines roar. Taking off into the sky.

  One time there were some people visiting from India. They were staying with us for a while and giving talks at satsang and being taken round to all the other houses. There was a picnic in the park to celebrate there visit, it was funny because it was the same park where my mother had left me on the bench when Id first met Mira that day. Everybody sat round eating in the warm sun, someone played a guitar. It was just like it had been back then except now I was one of the group wearing my own silk clothes that fluttered in the breeze sitting on the bright patterned cloths eating the food that had smelled so strange and different. I wasnt looking in from the out side any more imagining what it might be like, I was there and suddenly I got a strange kind of sadness it was like homesickness but it wasnt about my old home or my parents or that life I had before. It was like I was homesick for a feeling, for the feeling Id got when I first saw Mira and the others the woman with the baby how theyd looked like freedom to me then. I hadnt realised I didnt feel that way any more. I smelled the top of Silvers head and kissed it because at least I had her. Back at the house in the kitchen Mira and I did the dishes. People didnt speak much, most things were done in silence but I wanted to know. Do you remember I said, That day in the park when I first — Yes, yes she said. She seemed annoyed. Well I said, There was a woman with a baby. Mira didnt answer she kept her head down scrubbing a pot. Do you remember her? Yes said Mira running the tap. From my room down the hallway I could hear Silver starting to cry. I waited but Mira didnt say any thing more. Well I said, What happened to her? Nothing said Mira, She was just one of a group of people who came along to our open meditations for a while. So she wasnt an actual member? Mira poured water from a pot and held it out to me. No she said. Lets get this done now before satsang. I took the pot and began to wipe it. Silver was still crying and I started to cry myself, I didnt know why. I dont think Mira noticed she didnt say any thing any way. In satsang I could hear my own voice in the chants but it didnt blend with the others like usual. During the meditation I watched the others secretly, the peace in there faces. We were supposed to forget our surroundings everything we could see hear feel, forget we even had bodies but how could I when I had to know what Silver was doing all the time be ready for if she woke up and cried and disturbed everyone else? All I could feel was my body my sore neck and shoulders how tired I was, the weight of the baby in my lap. I closed my eyes, the stiffness in my back felt like anger. None of them had babies they didnt have to worry about another person and get woken in the night they didnt have to feed another person from there own bodies. The teacher began the chant for the end of the meditation and I couldnt join in it was like my voice was gone. I wondered if the others could sense all my poisoned energy, I thought they probably could but there wasnt any thing I could do about it. Not long after that a new woman arrived and Mira put her in with me to share my room. But what if Silver cries in the night? I said, my voice too loud. Mira didnt answer just smoothed the cover on the bed. They werent actual beds they were mattresses on the floor. Mira smoothed the cover neatly and got up and went out. She didnt speak but I knew her answer, that I was thinking of myself too much and that wasnt what we were supposed to do.

  Miller was probably only gone two weeks, but it felt longer. The days passed with no real difference, apart from the fact that I spent more of my spare time hanging round Hope — and Dan — rather than down at the creek. There was a feeling of lightness, of respite, and I’m fairly sure it wasn’t just in me; the whole place seemed to breathe and shake out its limbs, and even the weather came good, sun steaming in the paddocks each morning, and the relentless wind dropping from time to time.

  People stayed longer in the front room after dinner, smoking and chatting, playing cards and listening to records, presumably enjoying their freedom from the tyranny of Miller’s grandstanding. Here, though, was where Dan and Ishtar came into one another’s company, and this made me uncomfortable. I knew Dan liked her. I saw him watching her in the firelight; I caught the way the smile leapt to his lips if she spoke to him, the readiness of his response. This was unbearable — this dog-like devotion, and the indifferent way in which she fed it, allowing her light to fall on him so casually, so randomly. It was the only time I didn’t like him. I wanted to stub out that eagerness, to crush it into nonexistence. It made me feel tired and old. Forget about her, I wanted to say. You won’t get what you want.

  There were a couple of big parties while Miller was away, lasting late into the night. I got up one Sunday morning to find the house sunk in sleep and Jindi alone outside, splashing nude in the outdoor bath, which had a mound of fresh ash under it.

  ‘Silver!’ she called through chattering teeth. ‘The bath’s on!’ Her lips were blue, her skin blotched and goose-bumped.

  I put my hand in; the water was only tepid. ‘You’d better get out,’ I said. ‘You’ll freeze.’

  ‘But it’s on —
the fire’s on.’ She climbed out though, shivering violently, and squirmed on the grass in a threadbare towel, yelping. After a while she quietened, and the plump soles of her feet showed pink with warm blood. At the sight of them and the beads of water drying on her legs, an unexpected fondness entered me and I lay down beside her. I closed my eyes to the morning sun and let her prattle away at me. There were tiny flowers in the grass, purple and white, their scent thin and elusive, but sweet.

  For a long time it was the only brightness my love for her, it was the thing I held warm to myself against everything else the tiredness the loneliness the sick feeling in my stomach that came whenever I had a moment to think and wonder if what Id done was right. It was hard to even remember that feeling from that long ago first day at the park when it all started. It was hope I told myself, it was freedom but the words were as empty as the way I felt now at satsang. I had Silver though. Every chance I got I kissed her I squeezed her I looked in to her eyes and made her smile. When we went to bed she wriggled and laughed against me put her hand under my cheek and her face right up close so I could smell her sweet breath and I let her even though it kept us both awake. I let her because it was like it charged me it filled me up and all the lonely sadness of the day would be gone for a while. But then that changed too, it was like some thing soaked in and I couldnt protect either of us from it like it wore me down and got through to her. More and more when she needed some thing I was just so slow and tired it was like the air went thick and I could hardly move. I felt myself just staring with my empty face not answering or looking at her. She could walk now and some times she would come to me and hold onto my leg and Id just move on not trying to push her or any thing but the movement of my leg would knock her and she would fall and I wouldnt stop or go back because I couldnt, it was hard enough just wading through the fog to the next chore. And then one night came when I was so tired and everything had gone wrong during the day, Id tried to give a man a pamphlet in the city and he called me a stupid fucking hippie and told me to get out of the way then there was a problem with the buses and we were late back to prepare dinner and then I dropped a full bowl of cooked rice all over the kitchen floor. Silver was sick, I hadnt known that was why she was so strange all day wanting to climb on me and sit in my lap which she never normally did, moaning when I tied her on my back to get the bus. Then after dinner she vomited on the hallway rug. I put her in bed and went back to clean the rug then I had to wash out her clothes and the rags Id used and everything because they all smelled of vomit. Finally when I went in to bed she was still awake she must have been feeling better because she laughed and reached out her arms but all I wanted was sleep. I looked in to her face and no warm feeling came. I lay down with my back to her. She cuddled up to me and touched my hair but I lay like a block of concrete, there was this heavy sadness and some where deep under everything I wanted to break the spell to turn over and face her, it felt like an important thing to do but I just couldnt. I didnt move or make a sound and after a while she left me alone. And after that it was like some thing had broken and I couldnt fix it, I seemed to feel more and more tired like the love had been buried under the tiredness and every night I turned my back on her I lay there but I could never fall asleep because of the sad feeling I just lay listening to her breathing until she fell asleep. Turn around I told myself, kiss her love her but it was like I was paralised. Then once she had fallen asleep the guilt came and it got stronger and stronger and at last I would roll over and look at her sleeping face and I would cry and whisper Sorry, but I couldnt touch her not even then, even though all I wanted was to pull her little body close and kiss her hair.

  I hit her once when she was about three. Three and a half, because it was winter it was after I moved to the second ashram right out on the edge of town. It was early morning and I was so tired, there had been a special teaching and dinner in a rented hall the night before, raising money for a school or some thing. By the time we got back and cleaned everything up it was very late and when she woke me it felt like Id only been asleep for a moment. She stood up on the mattress and the covers fell off and I felt the wetness in the cold air, she had wet the bed and it had gone on me too on my clothes that Id fallen asleep in. I had nothing to wear my other clothes were at the bottom of a pile of dirty stuff in the laundry. She was crying quietly, she never made much noise once she grew out of being a baby. Under her nose was all raw and snotty she had a cold and she was just standing there with her arms held out her pyjamas soaked the pants dragging down. Crying with a tiny high sound like a dog whining. I got up on my knees and grabbed her arm and tried to pull her pants off tugging hard with my teeth clenched so much my jaw hurt. The pants got tangled round her legs and she fell onto her side right in the middle of the wet patch and she just lay without moving her pants around her ankles her legs bent, and some thing in the way she didnt even try to help herself brought the anger whipping out of me and I hit her on the thigh as hard as I could over and over the slaps loud my hand stinging. Across the room one of the other women stirred and I stopped. Silver crawled away a bit and curled up with her arms over her head and I sat with my hand empty across my lap, my own blood roaring in my ears. I never hit her again I made myself that promise and I kept it. Some thing opened up that one time a black hole that had no bottom and I knew I had to never do it again. Later when Id cleaned everything up and got her dressed and found my own dirty clothes in the laundry and put them on we went in to the kitchen and I started the breakfast even though it was early and no one else was up yet. She sat at the table waiting, she was so small she had to kneel on a chair and she had never looked so beautiful, the shape of her face her eyes so clear everything about her so pure and lovely I had to look away. I had made her and I had kept her and now I was ruining her. I put some yoghurt in a bowl and mixed in two big spoonfuls of honey more than we were supposed to use then I gave it to her and told her to be quick before the house mother came. She took the bowl and started eating but her eyes were wary.

  Dan came back from work with a bike in the tray of his truck.

  ‘Found it on the side of the road,’ he said, lifting it down and propping it against the front porch.

  It was tall and old, with a wide seat of cracked leather that still had a little tool pouch hanging behind, attached with miniature metal buckles fuzzy with grime and corrosion. Its frame under the rust was a deep green. There was something old-fashioned and dignified in its shape that made me think of the retired racehorses that lived on the far side of the Munros’, which, despite their dull coats and jutting hipbones, occasionally broke from the shelter of a row of cypresses to go racketing in a stiff-legged mob across the swampy grass, pride in their still-beautiful high tails and arched necks.

  Dan crouched beside the bike, head bent, hair licking at the back of his neck. His brown hands moved over the metal, brushing away dust and leaves, testing the moving parts.

  ‘It’s pretty rusted up.’ He jiggled one of the pedals, which ground a couple of centimetres in each direction. ‘Chain needs cleaning. And oil. But the tyres haven’t perished. It’s a nice old bike.’ He looked up at me. ‘What do you reckon?’

  Late afternoons on the front porch, the bike upside down, the white walls of its tyres revealed through scrubbing — my job, wielding the bucket of hot soapy water, wringing out the rag with red fingers, a film of steam on my face — its smaller parts laid out on a grease-stained sheet, or soaking in a dish of soupy, browny-orange liquid. Dan kneeling, sleeves pushed back, cigarette between his lips, selecting a spanner from the flat container where they slotted tidily in order of size.

  The smells, of fresh smoke and oil and the moist air that came sliding up from the creek. Crows rasping in the bush beyond the paddocks, black already below the streaky sky. Voices from inside and lights coming on, but out on the porch a circle of hush as Dan used a stick to lift the chain, glossy, dripping, from the oil bath and lower it into the rag I held out wi
th both hands.

  I don’t recall being disrupted during those afternoons, although I’m sure we were — by Willow or Val, pausing on the steps to see how we were going; or, more likely, by Jindi, standing too close and talking too much. But those interruptions have not stayed in my memory. Only the unhurried calm in which Dan worked and I stood by, hoping for the gift of a task.

  When it was finished, he put the seat — bearing its cracks, but clean now and softened with neatsfoot oil — down as far as it could go, and I tried to climb on. It was a big bike; my feet dangled above the pedals and I had to lean right over to reach the handlebars. I wobbled and tipped onto the grit of the car-parking area.

  ‘Never mind.’ Dan took it and readjusted the seat. He got on and bumped part-way up the drive and back. ‘Not bad.’ He threw me a grin then hefted the bike up into the tray of his truck. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s see how it goes on the open road.’

  We drove in the same direction the school bus went, past the Munros’, and Dan stopped where the road went up in a long gradual slope before dropping into a steep hill. It was about six o’clock, the sun going down. The road shone. A battered ute popped over the peak of the hill and came drumming down past us, but then there was nothing, just the wind in the long grass.

  Dan straddled the bike with his feet still on the ground. ‘Come on.’ He tapped the crossbar.

  It took a couple of goes but then I was on, balancing, twisting to grip the middle of the handlebars. Dan shifted his position and I felt the power of our combined weight, the potential for it to swing too far, and my heart began to race.