Big Rough Stones by Margaret Merrilees

Author:Margaret Merrilees
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: book, FA, FIC018000
ISBN: 9781743055557
Publisher: Wakefield Press
Published: 2018-03-31T00:00:00+00:00

The Farm

Gerry drove her battered old ute with lazy nonchalance, one hand on the wheel, cigarette in the other. She looked a bit pale but otherwise unshaken by her night’s drinking.

‘Dot and Maria are coming later,’ she said in answer to Ro’s question. ‘They’ve got their own car. They went up before me to visit friends.’

Better and better. The two of them alone, all the way to wherever it was.

‘Thanks for coming. Thought you might give up on me.’

Ro grinned. ‘No way.’

She felt both fizzy and wise, prepared now for Gerry’s reticence. She had the patience of whoever-it-was in the Bible. She would draw Gerry out, get to know her. At once she leapt ahead to the perfect understanding that she was sure would exist between them. She would be Gerry’s prop and comforter, the one Gerry could confide in.

But for all that, she didn’t discover a lot. Gerry’s parents had died before she was in her teens. She and two brothers had been brought up by a grandmother, of whom she spoke with no affection.

‘She threw me out,’ she said shortly. ‘I was fifteen.’

‘Wow. What for?’

‘She caught me in the shed with the girl next door.’

‘Did you ever get off with a man?’

‘Nuh.’ Gerry looked sideways at Ro. ‘Is that a problem?’

‘No. Not at all.’

Ro was awed. She herself was a lesbian by conversion, whereas Gerry was that exalted breed, the pure lesbian, the heterosexual virgin. A woman who’d known what she wanted from the start, and had the courage to go for it, ignoring rules, oppressions, obstacles.

They stopped in Colac and had a hamburger. Ro was surprised to see that Gerry ate meat. And everything else available if it came to that, including bright red tomato sauce. Even Ro drew the line at the sauce. Ro led a double life when it came to food. At home and in public she was vegetarian, as the ethos of her world demanded. In secret, when the opportunity arose, she was red in tooth and claw, could never pass a sausage sizzle or a pie shop. She was dazzled and delighted to discover that Gerry was an unapologetic omnivore.

The road was narrower now and soon began to twist. Trees met overhead. Valleys, green with tree ferns, fell away beside the car. They turned off onto a dirt road that became little more than a track through a gap in the towering forest. Gerry stopped the ute in front of a battered wooden gate.

‘I’ll do it,’ said Ro, reaching for the door handle.

‘I’d better. It’s a bit temperamental.’ Gerry jumped out and Ro watched as she unlatched the gate and lifted it slightly so that it could swing. The gate posts stuck out at odd angles. Ro wound down her window and breathed in the late afternoon air, eucalypt, a touch of smoke and a dark coolness that would be mist in the hollows by nightfall.

‘I’ll have to go straight over to Steve’s and see what’s happening with Lark. Might have to borrow Steve’s float to bring her back.

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