The Pages by Murray Bail

Sophie would object.
    â€˜Silence runs in the family,’ was Lindsey’s explanation.
    â€˜Listen to her! You’re not like that at all! If anyone’s the shy, hiding-behind-the-bush type it’s my friend here – ’ giving Erica a little shove.
    â€˜Wesley wasn’t much of a talker either,’ said Lindsey.
    The chair waiting for Roger Antill was beginning to irritate Erica. It drew attention to him – a matter of filling in the space, anticipating his voice and manner.
    â€˜I don’t know why I’m so tired in the country.’
    By not turning up, he showed his indifference to them.
    Lindsey lit a cigarette. ‘I’ll make a cup of tea and we can sit in the lounge.’
    â€˜This missing brother,’ Sophie said to Erica. ‘Have we frightened the horses or what?’

13
    WHEN VENTURING into the interior, travellers are warned to take cans of drinking water and tinned food. Should the vehicle break down, wait for help. Do not leave the vehicle. In stony country, rocks can be used to form a message visible from the air: HELP or HERE! Every summer, horror stories come in of tourists from Scandinavia, Britain, Japan who became lost or bogged in sand, or suffered some sort of mechanical breakage, or ran out of fuel, and in the high temperatures they eventually died of thirst. A recent case was a couple from Korea, just married. Their bodies were found a long distance from each other. Some years ago a family of five from the Midlands perished one by one after becoming bogged in the Simpson Desert, South Australia. They’d arrived in the country less than two months previously. A young German in shorts, T-shirt and sunglasses rode off on a motorbike into the red sandhills, the heat and emptiness; waved goodbye, off into the sunset; he was never seen again. Talk about terra incognita !
    In the far north, avoid swimming in the lagoons – crocodiles. This country also has the most dangerous spiders and snakes in the world. Every year reports tell of snakes accidentally trodden on claiming another victim.
    Hot barren countries – alive with natural hazards – discourage the formation of long sentences, and encourage instead the laconic manner. The heat and the distances between objects seem to drain the will to add words to what is already there. What exactly can be added? ‘Seeds falling on barren ground’ – where do you think that well-polished saying came from?
    It is the green smaller countries in the northern parts of the world, cold, dark, complex places, local places, with settled populations, where thoughts and sentences (where the printing press was invented!) have the hidden urge to continue, to make an addition, a correction, to take an active part in the layering. And not only producing a fertile ground for philosophical thought; it was of course an hysterical landlocked country, of just that description, where psychoanalysis was born and spread.
    It would appear that a cold climate assists in the process. The cold sharp air and the path alongside the rushing river.

14
    UNACCUSTOMED TO silence, Erica had woken early. She brushed her hair, looked at herself and went down to the kitchen. Lindsey wasn’t there. Roger Antill was spreading butter and apricot jam on a slab of burnt white toast. Next to his plate, like a small warm animal that followed him everywhere, was his khaki hat.
    After smiling she said, ‘Is Lindsey not up yet?’
    â€˜She should be by now.’
    â€˜I’ve been feeling quite spoilt. Lindsey’s been serving me breakfast in bed.’
    â€˜That’d be right.’
    Before realising he was acknowledging his sister’s kindness, Erica said firmly, ‘I think she’s a kind woman.’
    To consider this, Roger Antill looked out the window. It allowed Erica to see again his straight combed hair and now, below his ear, the early morning razor snick.
    â€˜Kindness…’ he was