Graceful Abaddon

Loveable Creatures (2)

Chapter Two: Mr Watson's Alter Ego

As the drive north continued, Abbey watched with mute concern ... 

1840 - ninety miles. Seventy miles. Fifty ... thirty  ... twenty miles. Corn-brown pastures spread beyond the pockmarked roads. Deep cornfields the tint of brittle rust: tussling, flailing stalks, skewed before the western wind. Occasionally a dusty ute or banged-up truck would rumble past, rolling south; a beefy, tattooed driver peering through the soiled windscreen, gaping at their car as if it were a unicorn.

Muttering disdain upon the dry and horrid landscape, Mr Watson gripped the wheel. The radio, turned low, gave out a haunted, muffled sound. Static discordancy. Sometimes through the fog there came a piercing moan of country music. A disembodied old man's voice, gravelly and worn. This only ever lasted for a moment - then his twang would drown again. Sink beneath the white-noise.

Save the occasional farmhouse, seen distantly through wooded hill, these lands seemed uninhabited. Some weather-roughened Herefords. A flash of darting kangaroo. What looked to be a sizzled bat, upended on an electric wire. Otherwise nothing.

Many call Australia blessed. Western civilisation's best kept secret. "Nineteen-fifties America" utopic. In many ways this probably is true. But Abbey found these barren plains, these wild hillocks left untrod, eerie and unsettling. Hoping to contain her nerves, she asked if she could play her iPod. Mr Watson grunted. Abbey felt like Christian music – Matt Redman or something. Some earnest joy to fill the void between her fears and her dad's silence. Her dad hated Christian music though. Abbey chose the Killers instead. But midway through the drawling nostalgia of Smile Like You Mean It, Mr Watson lowered the volume. Annoyed, Abbey looked at him. He kept his gaze fixed out the window, seemingly at a destination he would never reach.

Then: "So Mum broke up with Reuben".

"Riben," Abbey corrected him. She knew the mistake was intentional. It was just his obvious way of pretending he didn't obsessively watch his ex-wife's life on Facebook. Abbey and her mum knew he got off on his ex's relationships falling apart since the divorce. He enjoyed it.

"Mummy's thinking she might sell the apartment and go to Perth," said Abbey blandly. "Granddad said he'll take down the train room and put a bed in for her".

Her dad laughed. Just once, without humour.

"Bloody generous bloke. He wouldn't even let us sit on the same sofa before we were married".

"That's just Granddad though," Abbey said, intentionally missing the beat. "He's the most traditional guy ever. It's cute though, you now? That's just his thing." She smiled. "That's what you get for marrying into a Christian family".

"Sure is," said Mr Watson, coldly resentful. "And the best thing about marrying a Christian woman is fucking divorcing her. It makes you realise all the normal things you took for granted. Like getting better after a really shitty cold. You know the first thing I did after I signed those papers?"

Abbey could imagine. She preferred no confirmation.

"I get that you don't like talking about all this," her dad continued, moving the subject onward. "Don't feel pressured to tell me anything. Shit, you're already like your mum, Abs. But if Gavin's not the fuckin' pussy he acts like, you're gonna struggle keeping him around if the two of you aren't ... you know. Fucking".

Abbey cringed inwardly. Did he need to be so vulgar all the time? He had less tact than most boys she went to school with. If Gavin was Edward Rochester – (to her friends, "he so was") - her dad was more Bill Sikes. Vulgar. Mean. Insensitive to the point of being violent through the sheer affront of words.