Bridge of Triangles Read Online Free Page B

round the water tap and the lush growth of mint beneath the washing tub seemed to lend a solidness to the shack which was pure illusion. Paula’s laugh broke into the day. Her huge body shook and she laid her fat hands on the table and leaned forward laughing. The falls of dark flesh under her arms rolled about and tears wet her velvet face.
    â€œMum,” you got it wrong again. “You worry ’boutnothin’.” She laughed and soon the children were laughing too. A couple of the little kids crawled up near her legs.
    The Old Granny’s collection of kewpie dolls hanging on the wall looked pink and delicate, like they had always been there and always would be.
    Billy and Prince swaggered in and banged six tall bottles on the table.
    â€œYouse two been down the Empire. I knew you didn’t go down camp ha?” Had the whole world changed so little?
    Prince stood tall and grinning at his mother. His blue shirt was open. Fine dark hairs followed the line of muscles on his arm as he ran his fingers through his thick black waves.
    â€œYouse the laziest pair of mongrels in this world. Now Billy, git sumpin’ we can drink out of. I s’ppose them people’ll find someplace else to sleep. They can still come ’ere I reckon.”
    Billy went to the sagging cupboard with its cracked frosted windows and grabbed a handful of tin mugs. Way back then the fine bones in his brown fingers gripped the world and it seemed like he might hold on forever. But that was long before the cell where his madness and his anger made those same fingers grip and tie the knot which held him at an angle so that his man’s feet pointed delicate at the unseen concrete floor where his tears and vomit had splashed.
    A thick oil cloth hung over the table’s edge in fibrous little serrations and the beer bottles stood hard and brown on it. Chris saw that they should stand there just like that. Paula’s laughter seemed to wrap around the bottles. The boy saw Billy, his man shoulders moving at the cupboard, reaching up to the mugs. The Old Granny, waiting; the bottles standing; his mum rolling a cigarette; the dogs near the back door; Paula’s shapeless green dress sweat-stained under the arms. He touched it all with his eyes. Later, asSissy and her four kids, and Rose and her two set off home across the dirty whiteness of the river flats, the sky receded to where the darkening macrocarpas pierced it hard. Chris felt the need to run to where it was, where he could be it and know it and hold on to it. But as they came into the shade and swung round towards the bridge the bitter smell of pine needles mingled with the sharp sweet smell of river grasses. He was so close—so close but when he breathed his body only filled with longing. He couldn’t get any closer. High above, the great black branches radiated against the burning distant sky. He saw the twigs and slender fronds high above, sticking out like nails against the silent sky holding nothing but a distant orange shimmering.

Sissy knew that one day Rose would return to Sydney. And that she would follow. The big obstacle was the train fare but somehow she would get it. Why this need to escape? What was she leaving? Where was she going? Her flight to a future filled with lights and nights began even before her mother, the Old Granny was born. Sissy’s unbelonging to both herself and her people started way back before her birth when the town built its first pub, and named it The Empire, and shearers and cooks needed more than the comforts of the grog. Lurching back to quarters in the lonely night-time paddocks where sheep now bleated it was easy pickings with a bottle of sweet sherry or rum. And so another wagon was hooked up to a distant waiting train to Sydney. Through shame and troubled mind the Old Granny never told Sissy much of the place where she herself had been taken as a girl. That tall chimneyed home of fatty stews and confusion so