Read Online Anchor Point by Alice Robinson - Free Book Online Page A

the delicate twine of road, straining to make it out again. All was quiet. Laura remembered then, clear as if her mother was with them, Kath singing a German lullaby. Vik a pink-faced baby, clamped at her breast. Steam of drying nappies hanging by the stove dampened Laura’s skin.
    This happened a lot, Laura having visions. A memory would slice through, so sudden and unexpected that spit would fill her mouth. While standing in the shed, Laura saw Kath hunched over her wheel, clearly framed in the studio window, obscured by dust, hem hiked and knotted above the knee. On the bus – Vik’s first day of school – Laura caught a flicker of rosewater, an eddy of scent, and she saw her mother’s mouth: the creases that formed when Kath smiled, quotation marks in her flesh, and the crooked eyeteeth crossed like fingers. She could almost smell her mother’s particular scent. Down in the gully, floating her bark boat and trying to sink Vik’s, Laura had caught sight of her reflection. Recoiling from the image of Kath’s face, she fell gasping on the bank. Her boat, carried into the stream, went under.
    The following day, a Sunday, Bruce hauled Laura up over the gutter and set her down on the roof.
    â€˜Take a break from fencing you reckon, love?’ he had said over breakfast, lip curled, an unfamiliar sneer. ‘While the precious invalid recovers?’
    The roof was corrugated, like desert sand shaped by wind. Laura looked out at the crisp view. Wisps of mist clung to the trees, draped over boughs. Dissecting the valley, the twist of dirt drive wound down towards the road.
    Laura noticed for the first time how the garden had sprouted in new ways. Kath’s lawn was long dead, but native grasses had crept in through the shabby palings that separated the bush from the yard; it was harder to tell now which was which. Laura sensed that it was only a matter of time before their house itself was engulfed.
    Bruce stared hard at the landscape, as though calculating a sum. Laura could tell he was looking at the place in the distance, felt rather than known, where he believed Kath had gone in and disappeared. He glanced down at Laura with an expression that was part surprise, part something she couldn’t name. His uncomprehending gaze was focused on the knot of hands between them, her small white fingers entangled with his, big-knuckled and brown. He smiled cautiously, and for a second some outer layer of his face, a mask that had long been deforming his features, cracked away. Laura caught a glimpse of her real father, before his smile faded and the haunted weariness fell back down around his eyes.
    Bruce eased himself into a squat. He had to reach out over the precipice of the verandah to remove the leaves from the gutters; an important job, he said, so that rain would run cleanly down the pipes into their tank. The spring-cool breeze brought up the sugared scent of growing things.
    â€˜Ah, bugger it,’ Bruce said, clicking his tongue with displeasure.
    â€˜What’s wrong?’
    â€˜Birds, love. In the eaves.’
    He brought his hands to his hips. Laura waited. Down on the ground, Blackie lay in a pool of pale sunlight, looking up.
    â€˜Bloody swallows. Can tell by the nest, ’cause it’s made of cl …’ He coughed. ‘Made of mud .’ He put the pad of his thumb to his mouth, wiping.
    They climbed down, moved the ladder, and climbed back up to get a better look. Laura went first. She came face to face with the clay-cup nest. Close enough to catch the sharp animal musk, to notice soft brown feathers worked into the design, to observe how the structure was made up of tiny beakfuls of clay. Bruce stood with his chin at her shoulder. She braced herself against his chest.
    â€˜Why is it a bugger, Dad? About the birds?’
    The chirps were louder now, and betrayed slight variations in pitch; there was more than one bird inside the nest.
    Laura thought, So