Blindside Read online

  Two hours after that they were in bed in his cabin—he examining the spartan layout of the room while she half-dozed in the crook of his arm. They’d made love twice, very fast, very satisfyingly, and then, intoxicated and spent, she’d crashed out. Half an hour had passed since then, and she was vaguely coming to. Now he turned, looked at her still face and thought: is this really happening or what? He touched her mussed-up hair, kissed her lightly on the cheek. She moved towards him, murmuring, and he cradled her warm face in his hand and kissed her lips. Her mouth was paper-dry from all that J&B. He raised himself over her and ran the point of his tongue over her breasts and nipples, which were sticky and pungent with semen. Then, as delicately as possible—not wishing to intrude too much on her rest—he moved one of her legs aside and slid his erection partway in . . .

  In less than a minute he was all set, but then, somewhere from the deep—the voice rising as if from a dream—came a plaintive murmur: ‘Wait.’

  He slowed his rhythm, then stopped; she was moving her hands over his sinewy back muscles, then reaching into the clammy space between them and taking his fully charged cock firmly in hand and bringing it out. Now she was fully awake.

  ‘Lie on your back,’ she said.

  He didn’t need to be told twice. Wordlessly she sat astride him, opened wide, worked his cock back inside her and then leaned right over him, pinning his wrists down while she fucked him in her own sweet, slow fashion, twisting and squirming this way and that while brushing his face with her breasts. When it arrived her orgasm was a torrid, violent spasm, thrilling him too with its power as she pressed her supple body against his, finally releasing his wrists and kissing him violently on the mouth, even giving him a nip and drawing blood.

  Holding her tight he said, ‘Baby . . . I have to let go, now.’

  After a muted cry of protest she stopped squirming and slowly hauled herself up. Her cheeks and throat were blotched crimson from sexual excitement and rubbing against his five o’clock shadow, and there was a smear of blood on her lower lip. She seemed in no hurry at all. With a cruelly tantalising languor she lifted and then lowered herself several more times before drawing out and gripping his cock. Straightaway streams of bright, pearly sperm spilled over his black pelt of stomach hair. But some had gone inside her too.

  She was an unusual woman in this day and age. Halfway through the night she suddenly went down on him, tossing the blankets back and going about it in a blind, almost savage frenzy. This is one crazy chick, he thought, his blood racing, and then she surprised him totally by going all the way and bringing him right off into her mouth. Jesus, when was the last time that had happened? He couldn’t remember. One thing for sure— he wouldn’t forget this one-night stand in a hurry.

  He got up, switched on the bedside lamp. She was so dry-mouthed, she’d said, so he fetched a glass of water from the tiny bathroom. She watched him come towards her in the half-light. He walked around naked as if it were the most normal thing in the world—not showing off, not embarrassed, just . . . nonchalant. The impression he gave was that he had spent most of his life in an all-male environment with shared bathrooms, such as the army maybe. And his physique was, to her mind, perfect—no fat, no excess muscle, lean and rangy like a feral animal. He was sure feral in the clinches.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and handed her the glass. She took a deep, thirsty drink, then gasped: it was icy-cold. He put the glass on the bedside table. She ran a hand along his arm, feeling its smooth, clean-cut contours.

  ‘Better?’ he whispered.

  ‘Oh, much.’

  He reached under the sheet and cupped one of her breasts. It fitted perfectly into his hand. She’d noticed he had a discreet little tattoo high on his right arm, and now she saw what it was: crossed pistols. She was about to remark on it when he said, ‘You don’t seem too worried about safe sex.’

  She smiled. Her hand travelled down his chest and stomach, on which the hair was stiff with dry semen.‘I’ve been the dutiful little woman forever. Now I’m breaking out. Living dangerously.’ Soon she was playing with his cock, which— unusually—was soft.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re not in much danger from me,’ he said. ‘For what it’s worth, I’ve never done hard drugs, and I haven’t had any sex in . . . years.’

  She gave him the full benefit of her bright green eyes. ‘Years? Truly? What happened—did you take a vow of chastity and live in a cell?’

  By way of reply he gave a noncommittal little smile.

  She was still playing with his cock: apparently trying to get it up, but so far without a lot of success.

  ‘So, why are you cutting loose?’ he said. ‘I mean . . . why now? Why here?’ Why me?

  She collected her thoughts.‘My husband—soon to be my ex-husband—is a lawyer. No, I do him an injustice. He is a very famous and wealthy barrister, a top QC. We have the Toorak mansion, a very nice townhouse in East Melbourne, various blue-chip properties all over the country, the ski lodge, the cars, exclusive clubs . . . He is going to be a Supreme Court judge one day soon. He is also a philanderer, with the morals of a stray cat. No, that’s unfair to cats. All our married life he has fucked other women. Specifically, blonde nymphets are his weakness. I have known about this and, to my shame, accepted it because of the comfy lifestyle to which I have become accustomed. But . . . recently he went to Sydney, staying with his Sydney pal. It was supposedly a working visit. They hired some whores and spent three days fucking, snorting cocaine and swilling champagne. I found all this out because someone sent me an anonymous letter detailing his activities. Some colleague he’d put offside, no doubt. My husband has a loose and often vitriolic mouth when he’s among the fellows, you see. According to the note there was even some . . . homosexual activity in front of the girls. That part knocked me for a loop, even though I have noticed in the past how his sexual orientation becomes increasingly blurred when he’s loaded. I always dismissed these tendencies as a natural product of his precious education. How naïve I have been. So, anyway . . . I confronted him with this knowledge, and do you know what he said? “Bit late in the day to start bitching now, isn’t it? Do yourself a favour—stay out of my personal affairs.” Stay out of my personal affairs! Can you believe it? Oh, the outrage! Stay out of my personal affairs? This is supposed to be my fucking husband speaking. So I moved out that day. All I took were two suitcases of my clothes and some personal effects. And I’m not going back, ever. Fuck him. Fuck him and his filthy, disgusting little personal affairs.’

  She was trembling violently with rage. He lifted her and held her tight while she sobbed. They held on to each other, perfect strangers in a cold, primitive room in this remote zone as a gust of wind rattled some branches outside.

  In a while they made love once more, and then at around six she said, ‘Christ. I have to go, lover.’

  ‘Sure?’

  She touched his face with her fingertips and said,‘No, I’m not sure. But I’ll go anyway.’

  ‘I’ll take you,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said.‘Thanks.’ She appeared to have forgotten he’d driven her here from the hotel, about three kilometres away, along a rutted dirt track. She seemed to have no idea where she was.

  Outside it was cold, the coldest time of day—immediately pre-dawn. The sky was clear, the stars still bright. It didn’t necessarily mean a fine day was in the offing. Weather could change suddenly and dramatically in Buzzards Hut. He remembered once as a boy setting out for a walk in brilliant sunshine, no clouds anywhere, then finding himself caught in no-man’s land, drenched to the bone with icy rain and shivering under a tree. You always had to be prepared for anything here.

  Climbing into his Land Cruiser he fired up the engine and switched on the heater/demister. In seconds it was warm and snug in the cabin. When she was aboard he looked across. Like him she was battered, ravaged; her hair was in disarray and her clothes thrown on anyhow. The hooded green eyes looked ready to shut down. She stared ahead, focusi
ng, then glanced at him. She looked ready to pass the day alone in her ‘deluxe’ bed at the hotel, not tramping through the woods watching for native birds and admiring the view. Catching a whiff of sex from her skin he squeezed her hand, then reversed the vehicle and exited the property. Scattered about were large, unidentifiable pieces of rusted mining equipment, displayed like an art installation. Everything but everything in Buzzards Hut was connected to gold mining. And although the town relied totally on tourism, its mindset was still that of the Deep South— suspicious of strangers, even violently disposed towards them. You had to watch your step, and your words, in Buzzards Hut. A visitor was once shot dead in the bar at the pub, simply because he was an outsider. A local came in with a deer rifle and put a .308 round into his stomach. It was a strange mixture of a place—charming in its way, but dangerous. Vulnerable, even fragile, but a law unto itself: a true frontier town that had doggedly refused to move forward with the years.

  Outside the pub they sat still, motor idling, as if waiting for a signal. Now that she was here she didn’t seem at all inclined to shift. He put his arm around her shoulder, drew her closer and pressed their faces together.

  ‘I won’t be able to show myself in public for a week,’ she said. ‘Look at the rash you’ve given me.’ She had turned the rear-vision mirror around to inspect her throat, which was indeed chafed red raw. He felt a nice buzz watching her do that, giving him her profile.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘I, uh, lost the plot for a while back there.’

  ‘So did I,’ she said, and kissed him softly.‘I have to say you were perfectly brilliant in bed, despite your . . . alleged celibacy.’

  ‘Alleged? Believe me, I had no option,’ he said evenly.

  ‘Oh, I don’t doubt it,’ she said. The desperate intensity of his lovemaking was enough to convince her he’d been deprived for a long age.

  ‘Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did,’ he said. ‘Haven’t had as good a time since . . . I don’t know when. Ever, I’d say.’

  ‘Ever? That’s a big call.’

  ‘Ever,’ he repeated. ‘No alleged necessary.’

  They fell together again, silently embracing against the sounds of the motor and the heater fan. She whispered,‘Now that I’m here I don’t really want to . . . I don’t . . . feel like . . . going. Anywhere.’

  ‘Then don’t. Stay with me.’

  She snaked her hands inside his down-filled jacket, right around his body, and squeezed hard. ‘That’d be something, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah. One for the books.’

  They hugged a little longer before disentangling.

  ‘I don’t see it somehow,’ she said rather forlornly. A brief pocket of silence followed in which he, too, was trying to ‘see it’. In a while she sighed, opened the door and gradually slid away from him until she was standing on the road, stretching and looking at him.

  ‘Well,’ she said.

  ‘Well.’

  There didn’t seem to be anything left to say or do, so she shut the door. It didn’t close properly, so she opened it again and slammed it shut. He gave it a few moments, waiting for her to turn and go, to disappear from his life. But she was just standing there, watching him with conflicting emotions written on her lovely, tired features, so he bit the bullet, turned the vehicle around in a U-turn and headed back the way they’d come.

  3

  He returned to the cabin, had a long, hot shower, shaved, drank a cup of instant coffee, packed his gear into an overnight bag, conducted a final inspection, then vacated the premises. He had paid cash in advance for the cabin. As he drove through the entrance a pale light was rising on the eastern horizon, so that the densely wooded hills loomed up dramatically in stark relief. It was all state forest, safe from the logging trucks but not from deer hunters, many of them weekend cowboys from the city who had a habit of shooting first and identifying the target later.

  Turning right, away from town, he drove slowly along the rutted track towards the hills. Apart from the ruts and potholes there were sharp curves that had to be negotiated with care. It would not be hard, even with a four-wheel drive, to slew off the greasy surface and over the side. As he drove he kept his eyes peeled. Isolated, inaccessible-looking houses with smoking chimneys occasionally came into view. Every so often the track came into contact with the river, and it was at one of these points he was searching for a landmark—a big old willow that hung over the river, a rope with tyre attached suspended from a branch. It was a popular swimming hole for children; he had swung and jumped from that rope many a time in his green years. Round the next curve—and there it was. Part of the rope was still there, knotted around the branch like a broken noose, but the tyre was no more. This was the very edge of the town limits—ahead was nothing but wilderness and some serious climbing.

  He pulled up on the river side, where there was sufficient room to park off-road. There wasn’t much chance of traffic here, particularly at this early hour, but the odd intrepid explorer or cross-country motorbike rider could not be ruled out. Standing alongside the Toyota he listened to the singing river and watched the sun inching its way over the hills and into the empty sky. Only the morning star remained—a tremulous point of flame that would soon fade and disappear too. Woodsmoke from isolated houses floated in the cold air like incense as he scanned and listened—nothing other than cascading water and intermittent birdsong. He took a shovel from the back of the vehicle, crossed the track to the high side, climbed a slight embankment, stepped over a sagging barbed wire fence and, shouldering the shovel, started walking into the trees.

  It was further than he remembered—and harder to find. At the time he’d tried to fix the route in his mind by taking note of particular trees, but now every tree looked the same. However, he knew to walk in a straight line for fifteen minutes, at which point a holly bush growing out of a gum tree would tell him to turn left. It was all uphill, not steep but steep enough. Soon he was sweating and breathing hard, and even though he was reasonably fit the oxygen deficit was starting to take effect. The fifteen minutes passed, and looking up, wiping perspiration from his eyes, he saw the holly sprouting wildly from the trunk of its host. He paused for a breather, leaning on the shovel, then struck left.

  Another ten minutes, this time following the contour of the hillside. Sweat ran freely from his armpits and the shirt was clinging uncomfortably to his skin. Having a down jacket on didn’t help. Should’ve left it in the car. It was a lot easier on the legs, but the trees were so dense it was impenetrable in places, forcing him to change direction temporarily. It was also extremely dark and gloomy, making him feel slightly unnerved—as if some unseen malevolent presence was closing in on him. Then came a moment of near panic when he felt he had lost his way—he had no idea which direction he was heading in, and no sun showed through the heavy canopy to use as a guide. He turned a full circle, and it all looked exactly the same: trees, trees and more trees. Now he was spooked. Shit. Something flashed past his face, and from the corner of his eye he glimpsed a beating wing—an owl, maybe.

  What he needed to find was a massive stringybark with a red spike driven into its trunk at chest height. Problem was, every tree he looked at was a massive stringybark. But it was somewhere here, exactly ten minutes from the holly bush. Landscapes might change with time, but not distances. So where in the blue fuck . . . He found himself rushing like a madman from tree to tree, looking for a red spike that didn’t exist. Couldn’t have been removed—it had been slammed in good and deep with a sledgehammer. Then a devastating thought came to him: what if the tree had grown over the spike, completely concealing it? Was that possible in the time? Surely not . . . and yet—where was the fucking thing? Now he had to grasp his throat to stop himself from screaming.

  He decided to get his act together by sitting on the forest floor and smoking a cigarette. In this situation one had to remain calm and rational. Big stringybarks with red spikes embedded in them do not simply disappear. He releas
ed streams of smoke into the earth-smelling air while a range of thoughts drifted through his mind—mainly, the lawyer’s wife with whom he had spent the night. She had slipped his mind for the last half-hour or so. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d told her it was the time of his life. His lingering image of her was the final one: standing outside the pub looking at him with an uncertain expression on her face. She was full of rage, that one—and for good reason. He knew he had been a medium for her to get that violence out of her system. She had picked him up for that very purpose—to hit back at the scumbag husband. No problem with that. He would do it all again, anytime.

  He reached the end of the cigarette and crushed it into the earth. Looking up he noticed a horizontal ray of brilliant sunlight filtering through a gap in the trees. He followed the sunbeam, which highlighted the trunk of a giant stringybark in a blaze of coppery gold. It was a spectacular sight. Then he narrowed his eyes. The sunbeam was picking up something on the trunk, too—something red.

  The goddamn tree was there all the time—how did he miss it? He gripped the spike and smiled, shaking his head. Bastard was trying to make it tough for him, as if he hadn’t had it tough already. Every step of the way presented yet another fucking hurdle. Holding the shovel he walked around to the opposite side of the stringybark, pressed his back against it and measured out five regular paces. Then he stood still, looking at the damp, leafy ground beneath his feet. It had been a long and hazardous journey; now it was finally over. He removed the jacket, draped it carefully over a branch, spat into his hands—and started digging.

  The permanently wet earth was soft and yielding, but it still took twenty minutes for the tip of the shovel to strike metal. Then it was at least that again before he’d dug right around the chest enough to be able to move it a little. Still, there was a lot more work to do before he would be able to lift it out. It was necessary to excavate a large area around the chest—it had been buried deep, to reduce the risk of accidental discovery by hikers or hunters, or even animals. Muscles burned and his back was aching, but he felt no pain as more and more of the chest became visible. The clash of metal on metal rang through the woods as the small hill of earth alongside him became a sizeable one. The rusted chest was now halfway clear of the ground. He tried to work the shovel under it, but there was a way to go yet. He stopped for a spell, sitting on his haunches, staring at the reward he was about to reap. And about fucking time, too.