Charades by Janette Turner Hospital Page B

a barmaid, that’s different.
    â€œWell, his sheila just shades her eyes and stares after her bloke till he disappears, then she turns and looks at us. She’s leaning against the door frame, one foot on the verandah and one in the bar, and then she speaks. It’s one o’ them plummy voices, but low and sexy, like Marlene Dietrich, you know? And we all suck
in our stomachs and take our feet off the verandah rails and watch her.
    â€œ ‘I wonder,’ she says, ‘if it would be possible to have a glass of iced pomegranate juice?’ ”
    â€œAw c’mon, Dad,” Brian laughs. “Give us a break. Pomegranate juice.”
    â€œSwear to God,” Mick Donovan says. “Bloody oath. Well. It’s like we’re all in a dream. It’s like everyone’s moving in his sleep. Pomegranate juice? She might as well’ve asked us for possum milk. Or for that dingo blood that some blokes swear they’ve seen Jacky Dobson get into, in that cave behind the Springbrook Falls.
    â€œThe sun’s been swallowed up whole by this, and the moon is on her, on the sheila I mean, and not a man-jack of us breathes. Right then, I’ll admit it to ya, Brian, even the thought of Bea went clear out of my head, I couldn’t think of nothing at all, but I reckon I woulda killed, right then, to know what a pomegranate looks like and find it and milk it and bring it to that long-haired sheila. Turns out she means a grenadilla, but we don’t know that till later.
    â€œWe’re all watching and no one moves.
    â€œThen Jacky Dobson starts in murmuring and chanting and swaying. He’s got two fingers out like snake fangs, warding her off, and he’s saying: Watch out for her net, watch out for her net, or we’re goners.
    â€œMaybe it’s Jacky that throws her, or maybe just the staring, or maybe we’re just all dreaming and the dream turns bad. She puts her hands up in front of her as though she’s expecting to be hit, and her eyes get enormous, black as the pit. There’s two things I realise I want to do, about equal amounts: one is to have a mouth full of whatever-the-hell-is-pomegranate and to kiss it drip by drip down inside her; and the other is to hurt her, I dunno why. But that’s what I say: there’s some sheilas born begging for trouble, don’t ask me why.
    â€œI know one thing. It feels like I got a live coal fizzing between my legs, it feels like she’s pulling me at her on strings, I can’t help meself. I got me arms out in front of me, but buggered if I know what I’m going to do when I touch her.
    â€œI figure me hands are an inch from her body — enough to feel the electric shocks coming off it — when she starts shaking. Shaking bad, like an earthquake has her. And she backs away, backwards across the verandah and down the steps and along the path, stumbling backwards, and shaking, and never taking her eyes off all of us, off me in particular. Her eyes have grown bigger than her face, they’re like black caves, they’re holes to nowhere. Me, I’m paralysed, standing there like a bloody idiot with my arms stuck out like a scarecrow. Funny thing, she’s not noisy, not that sort of hysterical, she’s quiet as death, but it feels like sirens are dinging in me ears, and she sure smells crazy to us.
    â€œIt’s like tasting blood, it does something. We are sniffing at her fear, you can feel us getting madder and madder for having wanted her, a woman like that. Maybe we would’ve started to chase her, I dunno, if Bea hadn’t appeared right then, with the Pommy bloke.
    â€œBea goes crazy. Like a bloody Tasmanian devil she is, Jesus, I thought she’d have my balls in one bite. Bea is cursing her bloody head off, I’m telling ya, that woman can give a tongue-lashing that’d make a bullocky’s hair stand on end.
    â€œBut I’m watching the sheila and