I was just turnin’ from the bar with me head in my first pint when I saw her. She was standing a way over by the door, kind of shrunk back into it with a shocked expression on her face. As soon as I noticed, I looked around quickly to see if anyone else had seen her, but she must have only that second have come in because nobody was lookin’ her way. It couldn’t last. It would be a strange day when a pretty woman nobody knew could just turn up alone in a pub and not draw any attention to herself. That’s without them noticing her hair cropped off any old how, like a boy whose ma had cut it for him in the dark, and this strange blue garment like short trousers but I mean really short, up around her arse. Not notice her? Jeez, it was lucky she wasn’t causing a riot. I’d stopped bein’ so surprised when she turned up from time to time, but she always somehow managed to shock me, if ye know what I mean. Not that I wasn’t glad. I could feel I was wearin’ a big grin, even though she hadn’t seen me yet, and I had to stop meself waving and callin’ out across the room. I pushed my way through the crowd, and there was Maggie comin’ right towards me with a big tray of empties and a smile on her face. Christ that was all I needed. “Joe, I didn’t see you come in!” she said, all delighted, and her face a bit pink. “Maggie!” I said, and I kissed her cheek because I was glad to see her too, just not right at that moment. “Are you not stayin’?” she asked. “Aye lass, course I am, for a while at least,” I said, gesturing at my full glass and winking at her so she’d not think I was trying to avoid her. “I just need to talk to someone and I’ll be straight back to ye.” I reached out with my free arm to encircle her waist but she had to duck out of me way because of the tray. “Will ye be careful Joe! Ye’ll have it all over the floor!” she said, but she seemed pleased. “Can you get away for a bit later on and come outside?” I whispered in her ear, tucking away a loose strand of her hair. Over her shoulder I could see Claire watchin’ us, and lookin’ like it amused her no end. Regret crossed Maggie’s face and she sighed. “Oh Joe, you know I can’t do that! I told ye, I was in such trouble before. I can’t let it happen again. I’m sorry!” “Well, not to mind, then,” I said, careful to sound like she’d snubbed me, and then it was her having to get on and not me getting off from her, and she walked away, back to her work and none the wiser. And then I was in front of Claire, trying to keep the grin off me face, and standing as close to her as I could so as to shield her from other people noticing. Aye, and maybe other reasons too. “Oh, Joe, I knew you’d be somewhere,” she said, and I could tell from her voice that she was relieved that I’d come to her rescue. Like always, I wanted to ask her how she got there, what she was doing just turning up so sudden, but I knew she couldn’t answer me that, it was pointless. “Let’s get you out of here,” I said quietly, taking her arm and checking over me shoulder and guiding her out of the door. Christ, that was lucky nobody saw her. She couldn’t have looked more conspicuous if she’d arrived naked and offered to play a jig for the regulars. I was used to her now, the clothes that looked like underwear, or something her little brother might have lent her, but she’d outdone herself on this occasion. Arms and legs bare, and brown from the sun like she’d worn nothin’ much in weeks; some kind of clingy material, tighter than a corset, but thin, showing her curves so you missed nothin’; the short trousers, if that’s what you’d call them although they’d never made even a passing acquaintance with as much as the middle of her thighs, and then no shoes, just pieces of leather to stand on and a strap over the toes, like pictures from the Illustrated Bible at school. Quick as anything, I led her round the back. Well, at least Maggie for one wouldn’t be comin’ out there. The shorts were tight around her backside, and casual-like I let me hand slide down her back to show her the way and have the pleasure of feeling the roundness of her as she walked. They were made of thick, heavy material like workmen’s trousers, but washed until they’d faded and gone soft. She told me once when I first met her that everyone dressed like her where she came from. Jesus. It’s a wonder if the men there ever get any work done. Maybe that’s why there’s all these oul’ trousers lying about to be cut down and worn by women. “You’re alright, not in any trouble?” I asked her, as soon as we were out of sight of anyone. I always had this feelin’ that I wanted to make sure everything was just right with Claire: the tight clothes and the willingness aside, I cared about what happened to her. All the same, there she was leaning against the wall, breathing a bit heavy through her mouth, even though we hadn’t been running, and I just had to look at her, drink her in. I could see the outline of her nipples under her vest, and I know when I spoke I was addressing her breasts. I couldn’t help it, but she didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she was sort of lolling back like she was glad I was looking and hoped I’d look some more. I felt me cock shift and grow heavy, and found meself debating if there was some way to take her right there against the wall of the pub. From the look of her, that was on her mind too. Truth be told, I’d been out the back with Maggie before now and we’d got away with it, but it had been later and darker when nobody was going to be putting out the empties. Now, the dusk had drained the colour from the sky and the buildings, and it was quiet enough, but it wasn’t nighttime. “I’m fine,” she said, then let out a little giggle. “Just glad to see you, gorgeous.” She reached out and took the beer out of me hand – to be honest, I’d forgotten I was still carrying it - and she drank some of it. Quite a lot in fact. Her face half disappeared into the big rim, and I tell ye, she could certainly down it. She stopped drinkin’ after a few moments and lowered the glass careless like, tipping it at an angle so it was in danger of spilling. Some had already dribbled down her chin. I could just make out the shiny zigzag stain of it. She giggled again and looked me up and down like she was thinkin’ about buyin’ me in a shop. The penny dropped. “Claire,” I said, taking the glass back while there was still some left. “Have you been at the grog?” “Might have,” she said, and she winked at me. “I was in this bar with a friend of mine and I was telling her about this really hot guy I’ve been seeing and how it had been months since we were together. I don’t know what happened after that. Then I was here. With you.” As she said this, she kept her eyes fixed on me, as well as she could anyways, and very deliberately brushed the back of her hand over my groin. You better believe, what with her all on show like that and me already thinkin’ about how easy it would be to slide me fingers up the front of her shorts and find the heat of her, that me cock didn’t need any more of a wake up than it already had. “I must have dropped off,” she added as an afterthought. “So, let me get this right,” I said, with difficulty, because I could feel me throat closin’ with wanting her, “You were in a bar and you drank so much you passed out?” I pressed a little closer so our bodies were touching, the warmth of her soaking into me like ink on a blotter, me leg just slightly between hers, so she’d know we were of the same mind, then I bent my head to her ear and lowered me voice. Jesus, her hair smelled so good, like flowers and something sweeter too. “You should be careful lass, some fella could take shameful advantage of that.” “Mmm,” she said into me shoulder, rocking her hips forward a bit more so the contact was firmer, and me hard on her thigh. “Maybe that’s what I was hoping might happen.” “What am I going to do with ye?” I asked. She didn’t answer this, but I think it’s what they call a rhetorical question anyway, so it didn’t matter. I balanced me beer glass on the ole barrel next to us and took her face in my hands. “Sure now you wouldn’t be thinkin’ that I would take advantage of a lady when she’s tipsy, would ye?” I enquired, up against her mouth this time, and then I kissed her. She’d been drinking alright. I could taste it on her but more I could feel it in the way she sort of dissolved onto me, so if I hadn’t been holding her face she might have slid down the wall to the floor. It didn’t seem fair to hang on to her like that though, almost like I had her by the neck, so I moved one hand down over her bosom and held that instead. I may have pulled her top down a bit doing it, but she didn’t seem to mind because her tongue was all over me mouth, imploring me to kiss her harder, and her nipple was like a warm little button under me palm, and she was making these little noises like I was already inside her, and her hand was down between me legs, groping blindly to find me cock. How she missed it I don’t know. She must have been more jarred than I thought. Claire wasn’t behind the door about these things when she was sober, now one kiss and it was like she’d never be getting enough. Not that I had a problem with that. My evening was looking up no end. All this time though, I was still tryin’ to think clearly. Not so much now about where to hide her, what with me not really in a position to stay in town long meself, but about where we could go and be sure of not being disturbed. With every passing second, and her hands everywhere, the place we needed to find had to be closer. I wasn’t sure any more if I could walk much further than the far side of the barrel. Claire was sliding down the wall now, freeing herself from my hands. At first I thought she was just slippin’ from me grasp, but she crouched on the floor, quite steady-like, considering, and her fingers were workin’ away at the buttons in front of me, and she was breathing a bit heavier with the concentration. There wasn’t much resistance. None from me and certainly not much from what was behind them buttons either. Oh Jesus. Her mouth, hotter than I could have imagined and deep and wet, closed around me and as I felt myself jerk with the fullness of it, her tongue began to work at me like the end of the world was coming. Which it could have done for all I cared at that moment. I steadied me hands on her hair, and then everything, the wall, the pub, jeez, the whole of Beechworth, just vanished in the rhythm of what she was doing. “Evenin’ Joe,” said a man’s voice nearby, and I jumped out of me skin. Below me, I felt Claire freeze. At least, her tongue stopped moving and she might have held her breath, but if it was meant to help me out, it wasn’t working any. “Oh, I beg your pardon,” he continued. “Catch you inside later? And if I don’t, you be sure and give me regards to your mother when you see her next.” I don’t rightly know where Claire came from, but surely we were both in another place altogether where I’m tilting at her mouth in an alleyway, and old O’Malley just begs me pardon for disturbing me. But Claire was crouched against the wall in the shadows, hidden from sight by the barrel and the almost-darkness, and he maybe thought I was just relievin’ meself. Which in a manner of speaking I suppose I was. “Aye,” I managed to say, but a man caught short anyways wouldn’t be full of conversation, and he passed on, none the wiser. It’s like that with the coppers. You see what you expect to see, and it’s surprising what can be going on right under yer nose. Claire pulled back then, and although the sudden colder air on me made me catch me breath, and I was aching for her to carry on, well, I say aching, but practically threatenin’ to make an end of it there and then, it was probably for the best. For one thing, I couldn’t afford to be off me guard like that, and for another being asked to give a message to me ma hadn’t improved matters any. With some difficulty and a hand from me, she rose to her feet. Her eyes were big with that dreamy wanton darkness of sex about them now, and her mouth was all slack and soft, and I had to stop meself from just leaning in and telling her precisely what I wanted to do to her to keep that look on her face. She had her fingers wrapped around me like I might be trying to run away. As if. “Who was that?” she asked, a bit too loudly. “Never you mind who it was,” I said, making myself deliberately aware of my breathing so I could get back some control of me legs and of the situation. “We can’t stay here,” I added, peeling her fingers away with more reluctance than you could think possible. “Someone else could come at any minute.” “Yes,” she said, giggling again, “That’s what I was thinking.” I arched meself away from her and fastened up me clothes, though I was still almost hurting from the unfinished business, and even me own fingers felt like heaven as I did it. Just to show there was still a promise, I did what I’d been wanting to do the moment I saw her in the bar and I slid my hand up her bare leg, under the hem and around her soft little arse and I kissed her again, tasting meself on her lips. Like that would help me walk away. “Come on ye old soak,” I told her. “Let’s find somewhere to go.” It wasn’t just me cock talking. Well, mainly that, but I had no idea how long she’d be staying, and it looked like being a while before she’d sober up enough to be much help. Back round the side of the building we went, me dragging her by her hand. The excuse for shoes that she wore didn’t help any – one fell off, and she had to fix it while I peered around the corner, along the porch making sure nobody else was around. When the coast was clear, I pulled her across the road, and the road had never seemed wider, the horses tethered outside the bar startled into whinnying by our sudden movement, and a hundred yards away somebody was walking along. I prayed they were too near-sighted to get a good look at us. Or rather at Claire. Christ, if I’m not watchin’ out for coppers, now I’m having to hide women as well. She wasn’t being stupid-drunk any more, like loud and laughing – she’s a good girl, Claire – but she was a bit unsteady, hangin’ on for dear life like she was, and I reckon she’d probably forgotten already why we were on the move. I’d some whiskey in me pocket and I thought to meself what a grand time we could have when I’d got her somewhere out of sight and out of earshot and maybe I could catch her up a wee bit. There was a paddock on the far side of the road, and I unlatched the gate and led her in. It was a fine, warm evening but it’d been bucketing down before yesterday and the bottom of the paddock was still muddy enough to bog a duck. We took one look at it and at each other and we knew I’d have to carry her across, sunk to me ankles no doubt. I thought it would be funny if I just slung her over me shoulder like an oul’ sack, one arm round her legs, but when I went to pick her up she sobered up right enough to see what I was doing, and I tell ye, she was havin’ none of it. She said something about everyone – like who? – seein’ her backside, and some more about her dignity, but I thought it was all a bit rich comin’ from someone dressed like that in the first place, let alone what Gerard O’Malley had near caught her doing in a public place not five minutes since. I was only teasin’ though, and she did laugh a bit as well, so I picked her up properly in me arms right enough and set off across the bog, and it was nice to be close to her like that with her arms around me neck and the warm, yielding flesh of her legs under me hands. At the far side of the paddock, gnarled against the sky like a group of old men in conversation, there were four or five big old trees, left for shade for the horses, when there were any to need it. The ground was firmer here, rising up a little on a fine carpet of moss, which might have looked nice enough, but it would be like laying me hand, never mind the weight of two of us, on a wet sponge. To tell the truth, it weren’t much of a place to take her, but there was an urgency about the both of us and it was about the most we had managed to take ourselves out of the bar and away from folk at all. The thing with Claire and me, we never knew what we’d get or when we’d get it. Well, hell, me whole life was panning out that way. A bed for the night, a decent dinner, the gallows. What I’m sayin’ is, time was sometimes short and we were never big on other kinds of courtin’. Talking when we got the chance, but there were things I could tell she held back on, and the more we talked the sadder she got, and God help me I didn’t need that. So even if she didn’t normally turn up pie-eyed and all over me like me coat, this is what we nearly always did first. We fucked. Aye, and that’s what she’d call it too, moaning in me ear and rubbin’ against me, doin’ things I only learned to dream about when I met her. She expected me to treat her nice, fair enough – in fact she had a whole book o’rules I didn’t seem to be much acquainted with - but holdin’ off wasn’t one of the things she cared about. We saved all that other stuff for later. So she leaned up against the rear of the tree, and lookin’ at me all the time, she wriggled and fumbled at her shorts and then they were where I wanted them, down around her knees and still falling, then I was both lookin’ at that fine sight and fightin’ to get me buttons undone at the same time, and the more I hurried, the clumsier I got, and she was laughin’ as she waited for me, and then. Oh Jesus. No more smiles. Me hands underneath and lifting, taking the weight of her and spreading, and the first feeling of hot on hot, sliding home, the cry out and her fist in my hair. Nearly as good as the end, and Christ, it was all I could do to hang on and not finish it that very moment. Me head was pressed hard into the tree and I made meself really feel it, thought about the bark and the lines it’d leave on me, and I thought about other things too a hundred miles from me cock, and I breathed deep and I made it. And Claire, who liked to take what me fingers and me mouth offered her and give I can’t say what in return, well, it was like this time she’d come home onto me straight off, pushing at it, almost sobbing, until I had the control to start working back at her. And every time I went deep it was these little “uh” sounds in me ear, coming from the very soul of her. And she’s tellin’ me how hard I am, as if that was news, and what she wanted doing. I don’t know what she’d been drinkin’, but whatever it was, sure I’d write a fine testimonial, though they wouldn’t be printing it in an advertisement. Then, just as I thought I couldn’t go on any more, arms tiring, fighting meself, gasping at the sweet smell of her neck, and feeling her hair all mingled with mine and stuck to my ear, just when it was nearly too much, she demanded more of me and faster, then her whole body was rigid, hanging on to me like she was keeping me from falling I don’t know where, and the words tumblin’ between her mouth and mine like you wouldn’t believe. And, so help me, that was it for me too, offering it up to her shudders and sighs like a sacrifice from everything I was. And then we were both laughing, I don’t know why, it was like we’d won something together, and maybe we had. Gradually, we stopped and breathed the cool evening air and it was only then I realised how much I’d been sweating, and that me knees were barely holding me up, never mind her, and I’d to put her down before we both went over. I passed her me handkerchief as I got the smokes out of me pocket, and because she had me well-trained by now, I remembered to offer her one, and to light it for her, then I leant against the tree and watched her. It always fascinated me. She smokes like a man, although come to think of it, I don’t know many women as I’ve ever seen smoke. Maybe the pipe, but not cigarettes. Perhaps what interests me is that a lot of women seem to feel obliged to pretend they do things under sufferance, and Claire is never like that. If she enjoys something, she enjoys it and the hell with what folk think. So she inhales and throws her head back, talking if she wants and savouring the whole thing, as a man might, but on the other hand she balances the cigarette, all delicate, between two fingers, with her wrist in the air, and to be sure, she’s too feminine to ever carry any smokes of her own I notice. So we leaned there, smoking together, calmer now, not talking, but not taking our eyes off each other either. After a while, she looked around her as if just noticing where we were, although it was dark now, and there wasn’t a lot to see, then she pulled a face as she picked a bit of tobacco off her tongue. Maybe something else too, though I didn’t say nothin’. “I’m going to go now Joe,” she said, in a low voice. “You just got here,” I objected, because no matter all the trouble it brought, I always wanted more time with her. “Yes, but I’ve not picked a good moment, have I?” she asked, smoothing me hair back and twisting her fingers through the ends, and waiting for me to deny it. “I reckon that was a pretty good moment or two there,” I hedged. “Yes, but where else can we go? Be honest now. Where were you going to sleep tonight?” I briefly conjured up a truthful enough picture of Maggie’s bed until the first rays of dawn, even though at that moment it was the pillows and the warmth and the blessed oblivion of sleeping indoors that me mind was dwelling on. Claire might not be like any other woman I knew, but even so I knew full well I’d not get away with tryin’ to explain that. So, “I hadn’t rightly decided yet,” I said, shrugging a bit, and she straightaway looked so concerned, almost tearful, that even though it might have been the drinker’s sentiment I was seeing on her face, I felt like a right bastard. “Oh, Joe,” she said, squeezing me fingers, her mouth all turned down. “There’ll be other times. Take me back to the pub and I’ll leave you to, er… fix something up.” It was like she’d read me mind, and didn’t that just feel like a sentence for me to face another night under them bloody stars? Back inside the bar, the band was playin’ now and people up and dancing, thank Christ, so not a soul even saw us come in. Claire reached up and kissed me cheek and as I bent me head for her to reach, I saw her feet, with the toes all neatly painted red, but powdered grey from the dust now and streaked with mud, and that did make me smile to meself. She might as well be barefoot and have done with it. “Bye,” she said, while I was still pondering on that, and then before I’d any answer, there was a draft of the door opening and she slipped away, quiet as she’d come. I pushed the door back and followed her out – she’d not have had time to leave the verandah before I was out there too – but of course she was nowhere to be seen. Even though I wasn’t surprised, I took me time lookin’ up and down the road, peering in the darkness, knowing she’d gone but as always not quite believing the evidence of me own eyes or the void where she'd been. The mare was pawing the ground and snorting like something in all that cool black stillness was bothering her. I went over to quiet her and she trembled at me touch, sweating like she’d just been ridden hard, ears flat to her head, eyes mad and staring. As I stood there holdin’ her, I looked back at the pub. The door opened for some people to leave and the music and all the chatter inside carried its invitation to me on the night air. I thought about things for a moment. Not just about Claire, but about Maggie, and aye, other people too, and about many occurrences in my life. I heard meself sigh, though I didn't mean to. Then I swung me leg into the saddle, pulled the mare round and set off back to the hills.

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