Walking to the Moon Read Online Free PDF

Maud, stretches its fingers for her nose, pats around her eyes with its small fat hands. I am at the next table, still sitting, though lunch is cleared away. The sun is coming in through the window and I watch them for a while before returning to the magazine I am pretending to read.
    â€˜Give Jess a hold. She’ll like a hold.’
    I look up when I hear my name. Viv is at the next table now, arms extended for the blue-clad infant. She raises it to her shoulder, gives a firm, brisk jiggle, which does not seem to upset the child, who reaches immediately for her glasses. ‘Oh no you don’t.’
    â€˜Jessica,’ she calls. I have glanced down again at my magazine, and look up reluctantly, knowing what it coming.
    â€˜Here you are. This is Joshua.’ And she plonks him abruptly on the table in front of me, bum on top of New Idea .
    â€˜Hello Joshua.’ Joshua stares at me with an impartial, appraising expression. He does not reach for me. I hold my hands on either side of his solid, hot body. Viv has moved back to the other table, but I am sure she is looking to see how I go. The baby and I regard each other. I realise I am barely breathing, and then that I am a little afraid. I breathe deeper, bring my face a fraction closer to his. It is a sweet, rich smell, the smell of babies. Not unpleasant, despite the hint of partly digested milk. I move very slowly. I don’t want to frighten him. I bring my face a tiny bit closer. Don’t smile. Babies can sense fakes. The baby reaches out and pokes a finger gravely into the middle of my cheek. I release my hold with one hand, and carefully poke it back, touch my finger lightly on its cheek. The baby laughs. Just like that. And I smile quickly at him, glance up to see if anyone has seen.
    No one is looking. Viv is sitting with her back to me. Carol has pulled up her sleeve and is showing everyone something on her wrist. I look back to the baby, who is reaching now for the stud in my ear.
    â€˜No way baby,’ I say. ‘No way, Joshua.’
    Joshua lunges again for my ear and I take his wrist, bring it to my mouth and bite very softly into the white skin, make a low growling noise. Joshua laughs again.
    When I glance back at the table, Carol is looking my way. She raises her eyebrows in a have-you-had-enough way. I shrug and smile as if to say we’re fine. I wonder if Viv has told them.
    I walk most days now. Sometimes twice. The bark is peeling from the gums in tattered strips and as I pass I allow names to attach to certain trees: old man, the twins, upside down pregnant woman. Sometimes Hil comes with me and I have to hurry to match her purposeful stride. ‘Pretty buggerised up here, isn’t it? Look at those blackberries in there; and that’s holly coming up.’ Kicking with the toes of her boots to dislodge the feral seedlings. When Hil comes we are always striking out on to new paths, elbowing aside bracken, getting twigs in our hair. ‘What’s down here? Where does this one go?’ Or she wants to know about the history of the place, or the geological formation, or what is beyond.
    â€˜I reckon this must back on to the national park, Jess. Through there somewhere. You should get a map from Viv. You could probably get up into the mountains from here. Now that’d be a walk.’
    Mostly I go alone. From the back of the nursing home a dirt path leads first around the oval, with its wooden stands and scoreboard, and then to the base of my hill. The first part is the steepest, up through a potholed paddock and then a cluster of pines. Bloody weeds, Hil says, but it is cool beneath them and the carpeted needles take away the sound of your footsteps. By the time I get to the top of the rise, my breath is hot and loud and fills my chest. I pause for a moment, watching for rabbits, and then set off along the ridge. Up here the path is wider, and sometimes there are fresh tyre tracks in the clay soil, perhaps