‘Ah. I did?’
‘Remember? At the park. And that you were probably panic.’
‘No, no. I was dread.’ She sipped her coffee and scowled. ‘I knew she was going to do it one day. We all did. She went through terrible periods when she would talk about it all the time. I put notes in the pockets of her coats, hoping she would find them and not go through with it. I love you. Hang in there, that kind of stuff. Corny things, I guess. Poems. This will pass. Didn’t work, though. Obviously. Our mother died of cancer when we were ten years old and she was the most beautiful woman we ever knew. Very stylish, kind, loving. We kept a ring of hers and shared it between us. We felt the ring had been invested with her love. With her spirit. Our dad told us that. Whoever was feeling bad could wear it, then put it back into the box when they felt better and then the other sister could wear it. We never spoke about it. We didn’t need to. It just evolved that way. It was our thing. It’s a twin thing. I put it in her coat pocket that morning. I thought it might help. That it would keep her here with me. That she would find it and be surprised and she would wear it and it would all be okay. You want to feel like you’ve done something, don’t you?’ She paused for a moment. ‘Love is someone you keep returning to, isn’t it? Someone that destroys and rebuilds your heart over and over again.’
This made me think, painfully, suddenly, of Jane. I should find her and see if she was all right. She would be really pissed off that I’d spent the night getting stoned without her. I’d have to apologise for it, not to mention for everything else I’d done or not done in the past few days or months. There would be tears and slaps, like always. Then I had a thought. I could give her the ring! Surely it would make her feel better, if only for a little while. It wasn’t much, but it was something, wasn’t it? The girl was right – you do want to feel like you’ve done something. The ring was snug in my fist where I sensed its reassuring warmth. Some things did have power, or could be invested with power – like talismans, like magic. I would tell her I’d bought it for her. A gift. As a kind of apology. It was some consolation, wasn’t it?
By this time the night was utterly vanquished; the sky was clear and blue, so full of promise. Yes. It was time. The strange girl was absolutely right: love is someone you keep returning to. That’s exactly what it was. And now I would return to my girlfriend. To Jane. I gulped the rest of my coffee and stood up to go. I was suddenly filled with vigour and wild purpose. Yes. There was work to do.
‘You got more of that stuff?’ the girl asked.
‘What?’
‘That drug. Was it really heroin? It was so nice. And I’ve got money.’ Clumsily, she produced a purse bursting with cash.
I dropped the ring back in my pocket. ‘Sure,’ I said.
Jane could wait another day.
The Deep End
Meredith has been at the house for only two days, recuperating (from the affair, the procedure, et cetera), when she sees the boys emerge from the overgrown garden at the back of the property like a pair of little savages. It’s almost dark, but her years as a high-school teacher have given her, if nothing else, an eye for the ages and personalities of boys and girls. These two are probably about fourteen or fifteen years old, both barefoot and wearing shorts. One of them is wearing a blue Rip Curl t-shirt but his friend is shirtless, quite lovely, with movements so quick and decisive. She watches them. They are so unlike girls, she thinks, with their brittle self-consciousness, their discussions and consultations, interminable instructions on the correct way of doing things. No. Her eye is drawn over and again to the shirtless one, whose hair is licorice-black with sweat, whose shoulderblades jut like fins from his back. And she knows. Knows even before she knows.
Her friends, the Coopers – probably the only friends she has left in the world – assured her their house in the tiny coastal village was relatively isolated and she would not be disturbed but, despite the potential for further scandal (wouldn’t the press have an absolute field day to see her now?), she is delighted at the unexpected appearance of the boys. After all, solitude has never been her forte. She steps back from the upstairs window before they notice her, and peeks from behind the orange curtain. Cowering, she thinks with a sudden rush of bitterness. Cowering in the shadows like a common criminal.
From her vantage point she watches the boys approach the swimming pool. The pool is empty of water, except for a brackish puddle at the deep end that has, by some miracle, resisted evaporation in the summer heat. A green plastic tarpaulin has blown in and formed a makeshift tent over this miniature swamp. At night she has heard the tarpaulin crackle in the breeze, like a creature shifting its great weight. Sitting in one of the plastic chairs beside the pool smoking cigarettes, as she has done each evening since her arrival, one cannot avoid the smell of hot plastic and rotting leaves, a sharp and unpleasant mingling of the artificial and organic. There are fine bones and hanks of fur on the pool’s pale-blue floor – the remains of mice or possums that have tumbled in, perhaps lured by the puddle of water, and been unable to escape. Meredith imagines them fumbling in vain for purchase on the curved sides (high-pitched squeaks, scrabble of little claws) before collapsing into exhaustion. This image of their last moments is strangely satisfying. Still, it would be a grim end – dying in a rectangular, blue desert, edges of the pool melding seamlessly into the sky.
Meredith smiles as the boys go about their blunt, boyish business. It’s so hard not to love them. The shirtless one scratches at his stomach. He kicks a shard of broken tile, swaggers around like a pirate with his little gleamy grin. They lurk about the edges of the pool for a while longer – squatting on their haunches, bickering in that sullen way, spitting, chucking rocks at things – before wandering back into the forest beyond, slashing at leaves with sticks as they go.
The cicadas’ urgent chorus starts up, reaches its pulsing crescendo and falters. Then silence, abrupt and complete. She stands at the window for several minutes longer, wondering if she has imagined the boys, conjured them somehow from the forest. Although almost night, it is still terribly hot. My God, she thinks, I need a cold shower.
Jason makes sure Oscar has gone into his place for dinner before he dashes into his own house a few doors along, grabs a shirt and doubles back along the old ranger’s track. His dad is having drinks with Mr McKenzie at the surf club and won’t be back for a while. His older brother Matt is probably still at the beach. There is half an hour or so before he has to be home.
He scuttles along in a half-crouch, leaping over fallen trees, occasionally stubbing his toes on rocks, hair sticky across his eyes. It’s dark by the time he finds his way back to the Cooper place. Once there, he hovers uncertainly among the vines at the edge of their property for several minutes, watching, his heart humming in his chest. Sweat prickles on his skin.
Although not acquainted with the Coopers, he’s roamed through their house twice over the winter just passed. As a lifelong resident of the seaside village, he feels proprietorial over the houses owned by snooty city folk who only stay for a few weeks over summer or the occasional weekend. The Coopers’ spare key was hidden in a fake foam brick in the wooden shed at the side of their place. Not the greatest hiding spot, but it’s definitely not the worst, either; the McGills hide their spare key behind a tile right beside their back door. Jason’s not entirely sure what he’s hoping to find on these little incursions, but the frisson of handling Mrs Cooper’s thin summer dresses hanging in her wardrobe or eating potato chips from the kitchen cupboard is reward enough. Once he stole a pair of sunglasses but was too afraid to wear them outside, and eventually threw them away. Another time, at the ramshackle Farnsworth place on Sunrise Avenue, he was thrilled and repulsed to find a jar of Vaseline in a bedroom drawer, and sat on the edge of the bed staring at the creamy goop (raising it to his nose, incredulous at its apparent lack of discernible scent) for what felt like hours.
The Coopers haven’t come down this sum
mer – something about Mrs Cooper’s mother being ill, according to Bert Loomis at the petrol station. Who, then, is the woman he has seen peering from the top-floor window before sliding away behind the curtain?
A light goes on at the side of the house, where the bathroom is. He waits, but there is nothing more. He can hear the subterranean boom of waves as their rounded shoulders pound the shoreline, and smells a barbecue underway nearby. The smell of sausages cooking makes his mouth water and he wonders if he shouldn’t go home. But after prevaricating for a minute or two he moves towards the house, skirting along the boundary, softly humming the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark as he goes.
Years ago, Meredith had a boyfriend who told her she was like a cartoon from the New Yorker – those ones that feature raccoons in a psychologist’s office reading the newspaper, or guests at an elegant party drinking cocktails and referring, in a witty but disparaging manner, to their publisher. This description was one she took immense pleasure in until one night, with a horrible start, she realised that the boyfriend in question (Bradley Jones, with his monobrow and callused hands, a fucking builder, who’d never even heard of the New Yorker until he met her) had intended it as an insult.
Bradley Jones – what a mistake he was. No way to get those eight months back, was there? The memory of him activates a little jolt of resentment deep within her, like a fire long thought extinguished flickering unexpectedly back to life. And this triggers a weird flurry of unconnected memories – like the time she fell asleep on her friend Farrah’s couch after drinking too many bourbons; the view from a lodge she stayed at years ago in Tasmania with another boyfriend – what was his name? – Will Canston; the bizarre flavour of salted licorice she tried during her year in France.
Meredith is wondering about the randomness of memory as she showers, soaping her arms, when she looks up and sees a spooky little face in the lower corner of the bathroom window. She gasps and moves to cover herself before recognising it as the shirtless boy from earlier that evening. The dropped bar of soap lodges in the plughole, and water, tepid and waxy, dams up over her toes. Her alarm subsides into a more pleasurable sensation, one made more piquant by the nimbus of fright still at its edges. She pushes wet hair from her face and peers through the steam at the boy, smiles. He’s certainly brave, this one. My God. Some of them, she thinks, you have to reel in ever so carefully, while others you can’t keep away. But by the time this thought has articulated itself, the face has vanished, like a smoke ring disintegrating at the precise moment of its formation.
The garage is sweltering and stinks of engine oil and his dad’s cigarettes. Jason switches on the yellow overhead light and picks his way through the old surfboards and boat parts. He pauses to turn over in his mind the image from last night, of the woman in the shower. Not that he could see much through the steamed-up window. Just the shape of her pink body, but that was enough. A row of shampoo bottles. And – it seems impossible – did she smile at him?
His trap is under the bench, which itself is scattered with tools and fishing equipment. It’s simple, but effective. An ancient wooden box, part of an old meat safe, and a wire mechanism with a hunk of strawberry attached to a hook that connects to a door fashioned from part of an old bookcase. If anything tugs on the strawberry, the door slams shut.
He sees immediately the door is closed and, as always, his heart jumps a little. He kneels down and peers through the wire side. There, in the corner, hunches a black rat. The creature stares at him, nose twitching, eyes darting from side to side. Its little pink fingers pluck at the floor of the box, like an old lady worrying at her knitting.
‘Hi, little fella,’ he whispers. ‘Have I got a surprise for you.’
Jason fetches a canvas sack, positions the opening around the door of the trap, slides the door open slightly and angles the box. No movement. He tilts the box further and jiggles it. Sure enough, he is rewarded with a scrabble of paws against wood as the rat slides into the sack. Holding it carefully, he ties off the top with cord. The rat struggles momentarily, then falls still.
Meredith is sitting in one of the plastic pool chairs when she becomes aware of the boy loitering at the edge of the property. Although it is almost dark, she hasn’t yet switched on the outside light and the evening air has taken on an aquatic quality, as if the ocean has stolen ashore. She has spent the day lounging around, reading, listening to the radio, and the skin on her face is tight with light and sun. She is wearing one of Madeleine Cooper’s sundresses and feels dishevelled, dangerous – but gloriously, fashionably so – like a woman from a Fellini movie. She pretends not to notice the boy for several minutes, then turns towards him and says, ‘Hi,’ as if his appearance were of no great note. The boy doesn’t say anything (teenage boys rarely do; it’s part of their appeal) but nor does he run off. A good sign. She slaps at a mosquito on her calf and lights a cigarette.
She waits a while before addressing him again. ‘Hey. Can I ask you something?’
The boy hesitates before coming nearer. He shuffles to the edge of the paved poolside area but seems reluctant to come any closer, as if the terracotta tiles marked a border. Like yesterday, he is barefoot.
‘I was thinking,’ she says, indicating the almost empty pool with a jab of her lit cigarette, ‘of cleaning this pool out. I thought I might fill it up with water, you know. Would you like to help me? It would be nice to swim in this heat, don’t you think? Together we could probably clean it out in a day or so. Scrub the sides down and fill her up again?’
The boy scowls, shakes his head. ‘I wouldn’t get into this pool.’
‘You don’t like to swim?’ she asks after a confused silence.
‘No. Yes. It’s not that.’
‘Then why?’
The kid looks undecided, then shakes his head again.
Meredith taps the ash from her cigarette, decides to change tack. ‘Do you live around here?’
‘Fairview Street.’
This address doesn’t mean a thing to her, but she nods anyway. She’s never been to Fraser Bay before and, having arrived at night in her hire car, she’s still uncertain of the geography of the place. ‘What’s your name?’ she asks.
‘Jason.’
‘Well, hi, Jason. I’m Meredith.’
The boy nods and mutters a greeting.
‘Can I ask you a big favour, Jason?’
‘Sure.’
‘Can you not tell anyone you saw me here?’ she says at last.
This grabs his attention. He scrutinises her. ‘You hiding out?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘You famous?’
She laughs without humour, and hesitates before answering. ‘Something like that. No. It’s just that – how can I put this? – people don’t always understand the friendship between a woman and a boy, if you know what I mean?’
‘Are we friends?’
‘We could be.’
‘Tell you what,’ he says after a thoughtful silence, ‘I won’t tell anyone I saw you here if you don’t tell anyone you saw me here.’
Perfect. She holds out her right hand. ‘Let’s shake on it.’
The boy (so shy, so determined to disguise his shyness) steps towards her and they shake hands. She notices he walks with a slight limp.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asks.
‘Splinter.’
‘Let me have a look.’
He turns to her and in the half-light his face has a lunar glint. She can smell him, sweaty and ripe.
‘It’s too dark to see now,’ he says.
She takes a lengthy drag on her cigarette. ‘Dusk is my absolute favourite time of the day. The light here reminds me of France.’
The boy looks impressed. ‘Have you been there? To France?’
‘I did an exchange year during high school. And I teach French now. Or I did.’
‘B
ut not anymore?’
She makes a dismissive gesture.
‘How old are you, then?’
‘Didn’t your mother tell you it was rude to ask a lady her age?’
He grins and hoists his right foot up until it rests on his opposite thigh. He picks at the grubby sole with one hand gripping the back of a chair for balance, folded at the waist like a pale question mark in the gloom.
But she is reluctant to abandon this line of questioning. ‘How old do you think I am?’
He lets go of his foot and considers her. ‘Twenty-five or so?’
‘Wow. Twenty-five. Absolutely right. I had a feeling you knew a little something about women.’ And she is gratified to see how pleased he is at this remark. It’s amazing how far a little flattery can take you. The balmy evening air, a lovely boy and the glass of wine combine to make her more reckless than usual. ‘And how old are you?’
‘How old do you reckon I am?’
‘Ah. Touché.’ She studies him. There is a scar on his left knee. Quite a long scar, from a shard of glass, perhaps, or a surfing accident. ‘I think you are . . . at least sixteen.’
He shrugs, lets go of his foot. Doesn’t correct her if she is wrong.
‘Did you get the splinter out?’
‘Nah. Can’t see properly in this light.’
‘Come on, then. Let’s go inside and I’ll look at it. There’s probably some tweezers somewhere.’
‘No, it’s all right. Besides, my feet are pretty dirty.’
By now she is standing. She holds out her hand to him. ‘That’s okay. We’re friends, remember? You can take a shower first. Then I’ll take a look at you.’
He takes a step back. ‘No. I’d better get home.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yep.’
‘Maybe tomorrow, then?’
‘I think the splinter will be gone by then.’
‘Oh. Of course. Well.’
The boy drifts away shyly and has almost been absorbed into the leafy darkness when he turns towards her, his face hovering in midair like a little spectral moon. ‘Whatever you do, don’t go into that pool, okay?’
A Lovely and Terrible Thing Page 16
