Something For a Rainy Day Read online

  The Amanda Lohrey Selects Series

  Introduction

  In this series, we showcase twelve long stories written by women and selected by one of Australia’s foremost authors, Amanda Lohrey.

  What Amanda Lohrey said about Joanna Atherfold Finn’s Something For a Rainy Day:

  ‘The tone is beautiful in its sustained wistfulness, as are the descriptive passages, especially in relation to water.’ AMANDA LOHREY, recipient of The Patrick White Literary Award

  Something For a Rainy Day by Joanna Atherfold Finn:

  Audrey and Steven Trott live on the Oasis Estate - a new, gated community marketed as a private and exclusive coastal retreat selling the dream of the ideal lifestyle. Encased by bush and ocean, it promises a safe sanctuary resplendent in beauty, relaxation and exclusivity. Or does it? When her expectations of happiness and family evaporate, Audrey sets out determined to re-establish a crucial relationship. When the weather changes for the worse and our rainy day arrives, will we have it in us to prevail? Joanna Atherfold Finn’s reflective portrayal of character and her striking depiction of place resonates long after the final sentence has been read.

  Read an interview with Joanna Atherfold Finna at: www.shortaustralianstories.com.au

  Other stories in the series include:

  Ite, missa est (Go, You Are Sent Forth) by Felicity Volk

  Danny Boy by Marian Matta

  Jesus Sandal and Anchovette by Joanna Atherfold Finn

  The Road North From Toodleton by Belinda Rule

  Night Trip by Erin Gough

  Memory Bones by Amanda O’Callaghan

  The Fence by E.Ratnam Keese

  Beware of the God by Sue Booker

  Empty Rooms by Sue Goldstiver

  Shooting Star by Marjorie Lewis-Jones

  Hostile Takeover by Claire Corbett

  Contents

  Something For a Rainy Day

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Something For a Rainy Day

  On the first day of winter, a burnt-crimson leaf floated from the ornamental grapevine choking Audrey Trott’s pergola. It fell onto the tallow wood deck without a sound. On that day, Audrey walked calmly and politely, out of her life.

  She had woken at six and loaded her dryer with a tracksuit still gritty with sand. The laundry window was covered in a dull film of salt and dust. Tiny flecks of paint splintered from the border of the fly-screen; she noticed pockets of rust on its edges. It seemed to her that the house, built to prestige specifications just a few years ago, was falling apart at the seams. The skirting boards were bowing and lifting from the walls. Buds of plasterboard burst in musty blooms on the cornices.

  Outside, the wind moaned, and Audrey’s camellias thrashed their pink-rimmed heads against the house. She felt absurdly composed. At church the night before, she had sung with such fervour that her husband, Steven, squirmed in his pew and pinched her leg. She usually just mouthed the words. She was, apparently, tone deaf. When it came to the chorus she fanned her hands out like a cascading spring and sang of the joy, like a fountain, in her soul.

  Steven was already at work. She had packed him off with a thermos and a ham roll. A note was wedged between the bread and plastic wrap; a short note that managed to say more than enough. Audrey folded the clothes piled on the dryer. She could smell damp washing and what reminded her of kitty litter. Unusual, she thought, as the Trotts did not own a cat. Steven was very much against cats, even ones with bells around their necks. He had said that if the cat next door strayed onto their property, prowling for the Willy Wagtails that skittered across their Sir Walter buffalo, he would stun it with a slingshot. Audrey thought Steven shooting anything was unlikely. But she’d decided early on not to encourage the cat, even though on balmy days she imagined it lying on its back with its legs splayed while she stroked its lovely white belly in the sunshine.

  Audrey grabbed her suitcase and a potted plant. She walked next door and pressed the chime. Her neighbour looked down at her bag and raised his eyebrows. The cat flicked its tail across his calf and butted its nose against him.

  ‘I’m going home Bob,’ she said.

  He opened the screen door and gave her an awkward pat on the shoulder with his broad hand.

  For five years, Audrey and Steven Trott had lived in Oasis Estate, a private retreat on the coast where the only intruders were kookaburras swooping onto the communal barbeque plate. Safe and relaxed living by the sea. That’s what the brochure had said. There was only one way in. ‘A bit like heaven,’ Steven joked. Restricted to those with a security code. ‘A gated community,’ he called it (a tad pompously, Audrey thought). He seemed to get a special thrill entering his unique digital sequence on the keypad. He would lean out of the car and flick his fingers over the numbers. ‘Four-eight-four-nine and up she goes,’ he’d say as the boom gate tilted into the sky. He said it every single time. Audrey would repeat the words in her head as Steven raised his index finger from the wheel and nodded at passers-by. ‘G’day mate,’ he’d mouth through the window and she would smile with her thin lips clenched together.

  The road that meandered from the entrance was lined with Birds of Paradise; their purple and orange heads jutted from dark green foliage. Behind the landscaped gardens a series of glossy billboards featured smiling couples galloping bareback across sand dunes and blonde-haired toddlers frolicking in the waves. Your New Backyard was written in a looping scrawl on each sign. It was then just a short drive, until the road inclined to the high point of the estate then tipped steeply down into a labyrinth of brick and Colorbond housing.

  Steven Trott was a real estate agent. They had purchased a house and land package using the part of Audrey’s inheritance that he knew about. His most common line to potential buyers was, ‘Why would you need a sales pitch from an agent who actually lives here?’ Audrey had hated it at first sight. The houses were corralled in muted huddles of grey and taupe, and cordoned tightly within their borders. The intense blue of the sky looked out of place; Audrey wondered how it could hover above a scene so bleak and not be drained of its colour. ‘There was a choice of four facades to encourage,’ Steven had said, ‘a sense of harmony.’ He had, after much deliberation, settled on the Majestic with luxe inclusions, though he wasn’t entirely sure what that meant.

  In the lounge room of their apartment, on the day they’d signed off on the final stage of construction, he’d been unable to sit still. He kept leaping from the lounge to the window, peering out as though someone might hijack his carefully laid plans at the last moment.

  ‘We’re sea changers Audrey,’ he’d said. ‘No more little yobs fornicating on my doorstep. We’re going to be around people just like us.’

  Since they’d been married, the Trotts had rented a small unit near a train line on the outskirts of the city. It was just two stations from the hospital her dad had been in, until recently. The move three hours north had been Steven’s idea. In the foggy haze of grief that had plagued her since her last visit to the hospital, she’d agreed. She would have gone along with anything. She hadn’t even seen the house. Steven had wanted it to be a surprise.

  ‘Imagine when they get our Christmas card this year. We should get a special sticker done up: Steven and Audrey Trott, 7 Castaway Close, Oasis Estate. You can’t get much better than that.’

  She’d put her head to one side and squinted as though she was trying to focus on something that kept blurring. ‘I’ve always thought of castaway as being like something you discard. You know, cast aside.’

  Steven’s voice was strained and deliberate when
he responded, like he was explaining a complex notion to a child. ‘No. Not in this context,’ he’d said.

  She’d signed her name next to his. Trott. Growing up it was Maher. It was impossible to write Trott with any sort of flair. ‘As long as I can walk to the beach, that’s all that matters,’ she said, picturing herself reclining indolently on the sand and strolling down to the water’s edge. She could almost feel the cool shock of the ocean rising in increments up her body with each step.

  ‘It’s more than a beach Audrey,’ he’d said, folding the contract into his briefcase. ‘We’re on the bloody Tasman.’

  From the air (Steven had an aerial shot of the estate hanging in the office) it did look idyllic. In the photo, Oasis Estate was bordered by a small tract of green, a smooth curve of yellow and a torn edge of blue extending off the sheet: the bush, the beach, and the sea. What the photo didn’t show was the nearby mangroves that bred grey clouds of mosquitoes which would travel ravenously east. When they moved in, it was summer. On their first night, Audrey had laid out a platter of cheeses and dips with toasted croutons. They drank red wine from plastic cups. Audrey contemplated the straw-coloured strips of turf while Steven slapped at his legs and neck. She said she would plant an ornamental grape to stop the sun streaming into the kitchen. A mosquito hummed around her head. She pulled her hair around her ears and dragged her knees up under her t-shirt. They said nothing for a while. Audrey passed the plate.

  ‘Blue vein’s nice,’ she said.

  He hit his cheek and flicked a mosquito from the end of his bloodied fingertip.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said.

  They tossed the food back in the esky and ate at the breakfast bar surrounded by packing crates. The next morning at dawn, a lone lawnmower droned. Steven put his head under the pillow. Audrey started a shopping list, writing citronella candles and repellent in capital letters followed by an asterisk. Soon the mower was joined by whipper snippers and what sounded like industrial cleaners whirring in a grinding cacophony.

  ‘Leaf blowers,’ Steven said with authority, ‘winner of the mindless gadget award.’

  By midday the summer heat hung as heavy as phlegm.

  That first stifling week five years ago, Audrey had finished unpacking, pulled on her swimming costume, grabbed a book and headed down the street. As she passed her new neighbour, he waved his secateurs in the air. He was moulding the ficus trees on his front lawn into perfect green globes. She walked towards him. Perspiration beaded on his forehead in a pearly rash. He had dark stains under his armpits. He smelt like fertiliser.

  ‘Bob Johnson,’ he said, wiping the palm of his hand against his shirt and holding it out. ‘Welcome to paradise, land of the mortgagee.’

  She laughed and extended her hand. ‘Hello, I’m Audrey.’

  ‘Where you off to?’

  She looked down at her swimming costume and back at him. She thought perhaps it was obvious. ‘Oh, just thought I’d have a dip.’

  ‘They haven’t got the pool in yet, love. That’s the next stage along with the convenience shop. Long time coming. I’ve started a petition if you want to sign it.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not after a pool. I’m off to the beach.’

  He pushed his cap back on his forehead and laughed. The skin on his nose was peeling. ‘Let me know if you find it,’ he said.

  Audrey headed for the tree-rimmed perimeter of the estate. There was a gap in the scrub with four-wheel drive tracks. Trudging over the rutted surface, she followed the tyre marks until they petered out into dense trackless bushland. She swatted branches away with her book. The ground was hard and stubbled. She thought she could hear waves but she couldn’t be sure over the buzz of cicadas.

  Audrey walked until it was hard to catch her breath. Her scalp was itchy with sweat. She retraced her steps, wiping her neck with her towel until she saw the glint of the road. Heat was rising from it in ripples. She followed the snaking path back to her street. Bob was still in his yard, crouching on his lawn on all fours.

  ‘Cool bath and a cuppa always does the trick for me,’ he said. His tone had a sort of resignation to it. His fingers fossicked through the grass. He pulled clumps of it out and flung them into a wheelbarrow. ‘Bloody kikuyu. Spend my days pulling kikuyu out of the buffalo.’

  On the last day of autumn Audrey made porridge. She scooped it into a bowl and sprinkled it with wheat germ. She poured milk from a striped blue and white jug and felt a strange sort of joy, watching it mill in creamy swales. Porridge reminded her of her dad. It was his speciality, made with semolina and milk, stirred in a figure of eight and seasoned with sea salt. Audrey would stand next to him, on a step fashioned out of recycled timber, and test it with a tasting spoon while steam flooded the space between them.

  They didn’t ever sit at the kitchen table after her mother died. It was an unspoken agreement. Audrey had tiny, splintered memories of her, like shards of glass lodged into her skin. She’d been just five. She remembered the red scarf wrapped around her mother’s head, and the way she could never get warm, even though Audrey held her hand and rubbed it over and over again. She remembered worrying that her dad would die too. After the funeral, neither of them could sleep. He ended up moving into her room. He was there when she closed her eyes and when she opened them again. Each morning they’d sit on the lounge on the veranda and rest their breakfast bowls in their laps, scooping away at porridge islands trickled with maple syrup and drowned with warm milk. After breakfast they would trudge to the end of the street in their gumboots, with fishing rods and a bucket packed with frozen prawns.

  Six-year-old Audrey ran down the corrugated boat ramp, her legs in free-fall, and spilled onto the sand littered with flotsam.

  ‘Let’s go to the rock pools Dad.’

  ‘I’ll carry you Auds.’ He swept her up in his arms and wrapped her legs behind his back. ‘Just like we used to. I used to carry you in a harness on my tummy.’

  ‘Yay,’ said Audrey. ‘Let’s find the starfish.’

  She buried her face into the warm nest of his chest. The wool from his jumper tickled her cheek. His boots grinded over broken oyster shells; tested each rock, pushing lightly against it with his foot before jumping onto it. They reached the curve of the bay and the rocks smoothed into boulders. He swung Audrey down and planted her squarely in front of him, gently nudging her towards the rock pool, then rigged up his rod and cast it in a wide arc out to sea. Audrey pushed her arms behind her and crawled down the face of the boulder, like a crab, until she reached a shallow gutter loaded with periwinkles. Her hand skimmed through the water making whirlpools. Juvenile luderick darted into shadowy gaps. She poked her finger into the maroon tentacles of a sea anemone. She screamed.

  ‘Daddy, Daddy, quick, it’s dead.’

  He rested his fishing rod in a crevice. ‘Audrey, come away from there.’

  ‘It’s got no bottom.’

  ‘Audrey.’

  ‘It’s still swimming Daddy; it’s got no bottom and it’s still swimming.’

  He peered into the water behind her, holding her shoulders. ‘Oh Auds, it’s just a fish, it’s the frame of a fish.’

  ‘It’s all bones and a head and a tail, but no bottom, and it’s swimming.’ It was moving with the flow of the tide, its tail flicking and glinting in the sun, its eyes still clear. ‘Let’s touch it,’ Audrey squealed. ‘Let’s get its eye out.’

  ‘No honey,’ he said. ‘Leave it alone. It’s dead, just leave it alone.’

  Audrey carried the bowl of porridge to her bedroom. Steven was propped up in bed, leaning against a pillow that erupted in blue bursts through the gaps in the wrought-iron bed head. He had the real estate guide slung between his legs. On the second page there was a photo of him in a navy suit, with a cerise tie knotted precisely around his collar in the manner of private-school boys. His arms were slightly out from his sides, and his body was leaning
forward like he was about to leap right out of the page. The photo had been retouched. In it, his usually ruddy skin was a lovely caramel colour. Byron-bronzed, thought Audrey. His hairline, normally travelling from his forehead in two high peaks, was styled into a smooth brown wave that hung over one eye. The profile under his picture said, ‘Steven Trott, licensed consultant’, and under this a quote: ‘I truly value people’s needs. Let me help you build you’re new lifestyle.’ His eyes were immediately drawn to the error.

  ‘Morons,’ he said.

  She balanced the bowl in one hand and pulled the blinds open. He held a hand up to his eyes, squinting.

  ‘Audrey I’m not ready for light.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she said.

  ‘You’re lifestyle with an apostrophe. You are lifestyle. Two hundred for that ad.’

  He slapped the back of his hand over the page. ‘Oh fugod’s sake. Graham’s got the Wise listing.’

  ‘Not to worry,’ said Audrey.

  Steven sighed and moved his head from side to side. ‘Not to worry,’ he said, parroting her. ‘Yes it is to worry Audrey. I’ve been working on that family for months. I gave their bloody kid my mountain bike.’

  Audrey slid the blind back using the nylon baubled cord at the side of the window. She noticed it was dotted with tiny fly specks. She smudged them off with her fingertip and put the bowl on the bedside table.

  ‘Make me a coffee?’ he said to the back of her head.

  Audrey started back down towards the kitchen. She heard the creak of bedsprings and turned into the room she had decorated for the baby the Trotts had been unable to conceive. ‘A bit premature don’t you think,’ Steven said when she’d started transforming it. It had aqua walls with stencilled schools of whitebait swimming to the ceiling. Against the vertical blinds, strands of fishing line swayed with sparkling silver and gold starfish. Sheer blue silk draped in curling wave barrels from a steel rod mounted above the window.

  After years of trying, the doctor suggested running some tests. He said that the problem could be any number of things. When Audrey had mentioned this to Steven, he’d pushed his tongue against the inside of his lower lip. The vein in his temple had pumped rhythmically. That afternoon he’d dismantled the cot and moved in a spare bed. ‘I’m fine Audrey, don’t worry about helping me,’ he’d said, shoving the wooden slats through the sliding doors. They’d scraped along the powder coating leaving a jagged line in the paint. He’d dragged the cot in sections across the lawn to the garage. Audrey followed with her arms folded as he clambered over the retaining wall next to the garage and pushed up the door. He’d climbed onto the workbench and hoisted the timber base above his head, shoving it into a gap above the exposed beams where it wouldn’t get in the way. It teetered over the side of the beam and crashed onto the floor, splitting almost perfectly down the centre.