Beware of Dogs

by Elizabeth Flann

  Then, for something to do, I began to compose a map of the island on the second-last page of my diary, which was an empty clean white page, just begging for something to happen to it. Ever careful, I chose to work in pencil and tried to keep it roughly to scale. Even though I’d never seen an illustration of it, I discovered I had quite a clear idea of the island’s shape. I found a pencil with an eraser attached to its end and concentrated on getting an outline I was happy with, sketching, rubbing out, and starting again until I was satisfied I had the proportions as accurate as possible. Next I placed the important landmarks where I believed they should go; first my cave and its surroundings, then the jetty, followed by the sandblow and, lastly, the cabin with its surrounding accoutrements – tank, barbecue and dunny.

  I spent a lot of time working on the rocky areas. The landscape around the cave I knew well and could confidently draw in the rock formations, the rough steps down to the tiny beach and the little copses of coast banksia, boobialla and sheoak trees. Even the other side of the rocky peak I could reproduce quite faithfully, having walked up towards it on that first day, and swum round it much more recently in my not-so-crazy plan to convince Dave of my demise.

  The western-oriented beach with the boat-landing jetty I had also visited recently and most of it was clear in my mind, but for the snake-infested end of the island I could only rely on what could be seen from a distance, pencilling in a high granite tor at the far end and rocks, trees and low scrub as I vaguely remembered them. I also marked in the rough paths that I was sure had been made by human endeavour, and the rough hide in which I hid to watch the boat’s comings and goings. This was a very satisfying activity and took an even more satisfactory amount of time.

  Of course I didn’t know the island’s name, or even if it had a name. Perhaps it had taken Matt’s family’s name, but since I didn’t know what that was, it didn’t really help.

  I find it somehow easier to estimate time when the sun is going down and at about four o’clock I packed up my small possessions and made a fast march to the cabin. I knew no boat had come to this side of the island. I also knew that the other side was too shallow and rocky for landing. But I couldn’t completely rid myself of the fear, perhaps because this would normally have been a boat arrival day.

  I took a deep breath and ran down the path to the cabin. As expected, no-one there, so I set off in search of the evening’s meal. The crab harvest was pretty meagre this time. It took me a good half hour to catch three small scuttlers. Perhaps word had got around about a new predator on the block. I still had the grasshopper-in-a-bag, so decided to make do with that and collected several bags of greens to accompany this strange stew.

  I retrieved my cooking pot, filled it with water and lit the barbecue, but this time I cooked the vegetables first with the grasshopper, drained them and scooped them onto a plastic bag plate before adding the crabs separately in just a tiny amount of water. I don’t know what caused the hallucinations last night – it could have been the crab cooking water or eating the shell – so this time I was taking no chances. I decanted the crabs onto a separate plastic bag and left them to cool slightly while I washed the pot and dipping cup in the sea. I hid the pot in the scrub again and took my supper of boiled grasshopper and greens and braised crab down to the water’s edge, where I sat in the sand, delicately picking out the meat and throwing the refuse to be pulled away by the tiny waves.

  Then the usual routine: fill up water bottle, visit dunny, clean up area, cover tracks on the way back to the cave. This time, however, I made a short detour and tied every available specimen bag onto the coast banksia trees, ready for collection tomorrow. Finally, I remembered I needed some more sheoak cushioning and had a pleasant and fragrant time choosing the softest branchlets I could find. By the time I reached the cave and peeled off my jeans and boots it was almost dark.

  I have used many of the quiet waiting times today to write up my diary, so now all I need to do is ready myself for sleep and pray that no sharks or ghosts visit me tonight.

  * * *

  I try to clear my mind, but remnants of last night’s hallucinations swim around my brain.

  I can’t seem to prevent the flood of memories of my father. After barely thinking about him for all these years, now there seems to be no escape. His face, his voice is everywhere. ‘The Lord thy God is a jealous God.’ He loved the King James Bible, in all its pomp and resonance. His voice took on its own resonance when he read from it, and even the Malagasy boys enjoyed hearing him roar at them of fire and brimstone, births, rapes and beheadings. It always strikes me as odd that people who make such a fuss about chastity, purity and virtue spend so much of their time reading what is possibly the most prurient literature ever written.

  Vader believed all other reading was a waste of time. ‘You’ve spoiled her with those stom English books,’ he’d complain as Moe and I finished reading and discussing Emma or The Vicar of Wakefield. He was particularly scornful of Shakespeare, and in fact we found the sixteenth-century language too difficult, never managing to progress beyond Romeo and Juliet.

  He honestly believed that I was doomed to hellfire for my unbelief. I know that. Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps I’ve ended up in this nightmare for denying a jealous God, and he’s trying to tell me to repent, to save myself. This exile has certainly forced me into a state of unwonted self-examination. But it hasn’t made me believe in the existence of a hell or a heaven. Even as a small child I couldn’t reconcile it with what I knew of the geography of the earth and its place in the universe. Even now, in a state of extremity, I still can’t. If that dooms me to eternal hellfire, so be it.

  I finally fall asleep and dream a lovely dream, probably the first good dream I’ve had on the island. When I wake it is almost light and the sweet memory lingers as I rearrange my padding and change position to ease the stiffness in my legs and shoulders.

  I dreamed that Jonathan came to rescue me. Kathryn told him I was missing and he went storming into Dave’s workplace to find out where I was. Surprisingly for a dream there’s a kind of logic to it. Kathryn has met Jonathan and would know how to contact him. She doesn’t know Dave’s name or where he works, but Jonathan possibly does since we were neighbours for so long. But of course it’s not going to happen. It was my own desires manifesting themselves in dreams, though I feel oddly comforted. Certainly an improvement on the night before.

  I’m tempted to go back to sleep to see if I can keep the dream going, but instead I find myself going back over my relationship with Jonathan.

  We did have a lot of good times together, and not always related to rock-climbing. Although neither of us much liked run-of-the-mill cooking, we both loved trying out exotic recipes and often if we were home on a Saturday we’d spend the morning at the market buying all sorts of weird ingredients and then spend the night sipping wine and working together to produce the most extraordinary dishes possible. We’d play music and dance while we were chopping vegetables, then set a formal table and dine in style.

  We also both had a passion for visiting houses for sale that were open for inspection. This started in England when we were impecunious undergrads looking for things to do that didn’t eat into our meagre student allowances. It was a time when vendors were urged to make their offerings seem ‘special’ so there was often an added bonus of free coffee or muffins, or even both.

  We discovered that we were both frustrated interior decorators and would come back and plan miraculous makeovers, usually from chintzy pink-and-cream frowziness to state-of-the-art modernity. And when we were living in our bare-bones little flat in Melbourne we kept up going to house inspections, although by this time we had stepped it up a little. We would each come home and do a total renovation plan, often including a garden makeover as well. Then we’d compare our offerings and the one judged the winner would have dinner cooked for them.

  Oddly enough, while coming home to wax lyrical about floorboards, paint colours and raised vegetable gardens,
we never talked in terms of actually buying a house.

  Jonathan and Pauline bought a house. They got married too, as soon as our divorce came through. And thanks to my ‘desertion’ to Western Australia, this happened in the shortest possible time because we fulfilled all the criteria for an easy painless split: I had been living elsewhere for eighteen months; we owned no property; we had no children. Jonathan did visit me in Perth once early on, when I showed him the sights and we spent a seemingly happy day on Rottnest Island, but I never made the trip the other way. Why didn’t I? I must have been so caught up in my job – and it was very demanding. Or maybe I was less caught up in Jonathan the property lawyer than I had been when we were both students together.

  When we were in England we had discussed the topic of marriage in tones of scorn. It was outdated, restrictive, unnecessary in this secular age. So why had Jonathan been so keen for me to come to Australia? And why had he suddenly been so keen to get married? It can’t have been to please his mother. She didn’t like me much. But then, she also didn’t like to see her son ‘living in sin’.

  I do feel the absence of that special intimacy when I think of Jonathan’s long and gentle courtship, and the way he allowed my erotic education to proceed like a comic strip, where each unfolding takes you further on your journey of discovery. I realise that Kathryn is right about my fear of meeting ‘a new man’. Things seem to move so quickly now. You click online and have sex before you even know each other’s full name. Then you decide after one ‘date’ whether to see one another again or move on. I don’t think I could do that.

  I’m surprised to be thinking so much about Jonathan. Does he still think about me? Would he jump into action if Kathryn contacted him?

  Not if Pauline had anything to do with it.

  I shouldn’t resent Pauline. I left the field open for her and she took it. Even when Jonathan refused to go with me to the west, I still in my naivety expected him to be there when I returned. An eighteen-month contract seemed no time at all to me, and the thought that he might not wait hadn’t entered my head. I must have had an inkling at the back of my mind, though, because when I was invited to apply for a senior position back in Melbourne I jumped at it, but it was already too late. The only person who didn’t know about Jonathan and Pauline by then was me.

  It took him three weeks to pluck up the courage to tell me. I moved right back into what I thought was our home, began to pick up what I thought was my life, until one night after dinner when we were sitting on the deck watching the bats fly over, Jonathan suddenly said: ‘I’m moving out.’ I was still a bit slow on the uptake.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I thought he’d got a job somewhere where he had to stay until the work was finished.

  ‘For the moment I’ll stay at Mum’s place. We’ll need to find you a new place.’

  Just as it hadn’t occurred to me that Jonathan wouldn’t follow me interstate, it hadn’t occurred to him that I’d be upset. Once he realised that I was more than upset, I was devastated, it took him even longer to tell me about Pauline. Jonathan hates trouble.

  Would it have made a difference if I’d tried to win him back? I don’t think I saw it as an option. In my mind Pauline held all the cards. She’d been there for him, as I was not, while he settled into the dog-eat-dog legal world, and being a paralegal, was a lot more interested in the whole legal system than I was. She was also in a hurry to marry and have children. She was older than me, older than Jonathan too, and I guess, as Kathryn would say, she felt the clock ticking. The pressure she put on him was relentless, and I was so miserable I think I just gave up.

  You got what you deserve, Alix. A woman should stay by her husband, not parade around the country like a hoer. Thanks, Vader. Good to see you back again. Now all I need is a shark and my night will be perfect.

  I shut my eyes to banish the unwanted intrusion, but all that brings is a succession of long-suppressed memories. Deirdre, Jonathan’s mother, the first time we met, saying: ‘Well, I suppose we’ll have to try to get along, but I had hoped he would do a lot better than this.’

  Abel, pulling me along behind him as we scramble to hide in the shed. ‘You mustn’t provoke him, Alix. Why do you always provoke him?’

  Tante Leni when she didn’t know I was listening: ‘She’s not like her mother. Berthe was always such a lovely person.’

  And, finally, Dave: ‘Bitch’ll get what’s coming to her’.

  Although it’s not cold in the cave, I’m shivering, the memories stirring up all kinds of horrible emotions. Why did Jonathan’s mother dislike me so much? Does she approve of Pauline? I always thought she wanted him to find someone with a classier background like her own, but perhaps she just wanted someone more biddable than me. Not that Pauline struck me as particularly biddable, but I suspect she and Deirdre would have pretty similar ideas about wifely behaviour.

  Both of them would have wanted children. I wonder if Jonathan did? We never talked about it, which is strange when you think about it. I crossed the world because he begged me to come with him and we didn’t really discuss the future at all.

  I think now it was because he was a romantic, and in the romantic story the handsome prince rescues the damsel in distress, and makes her his princess. But damsels in distress don’t take jobs on the other side of the country.

  It’s funny how when I’m working I’m told I have ‘good people skills’. I don’t know anything about people. Look at the mess I’ve made not only of my life, but of the lives of people around me. What they mean is I make a good boss, which probably requires not-so-good people skills. You need to be fairly insensitive to get the most out of people without getting bogged down in their personal lives.

  All Jonathan ever knew about me was that I came from Madagascar, missed my mother and brother, and hated school. I didn’t know much about him either. When you meet on neutral ground those things don’t seem to matter. No wonder everything fell apart when I came to Australia. He was in his own milieu, and I was too alien to fit into it.

  Even with Kathryn, who would have been delighted to listen, I didn’t confide very much about my life. Except for the breakup. One thing Kathryn knows all about is breakups. They are her speciality in fact, so as soon as word got around that I was officially dumped she swept me off to her flat, where she poured us strong gin and tonics, and sat me down to watch Anna Karenina, followed by Casablanca, which, as she explained, is what girlfriends do. I didn’t weep, I still hadn’t regained the ability to cry, but it was remarkably cathartic all the same. I’d never had a girlfriend before, so it was something of a cultural shock for me. But I did feel better.

  Kathryn, where are you now? Can you hear me calling? I’m not on love island. I’m on the island of bad dreams. Please find me.

  I try to conjure her, but the face that comes to haunt me is Dave’s. What with him and my father, not to mention the shark, the cave is becoming quite crowded. No boy-next-door charm this time, his face is ugly with anger, taunting me. ‘Stupid Alix. Thought I was pleased to see her. Thought I was her friend.’

  How did it come to this? What was it about me that spurred him on to seek revenge and punishment? I remember always making an effort to be nice, particularly because he lived in the next flat, so bad blood would have been very uncomfortable. What a strange phrase, ‘bad blood’. Is that what’s wrong with Dave? And me? In Dutch it would be slecht bloed, not surprisingly an accusation my father never threw at me. He certainly didn’t blame himself for my wrongness. I wonder if anyone feels guilt about Dave’s wrongness. What on earth happened to a nice-looking, well-educated young country boy to make him turn out like that?

  Was it, as my father would have it, original sin? I still feel an ache when I think about my father. I didn’t feel sinful, and I don’t think I ever set out to upset him, but I managed it just the same. Am I naturally bad, or were his expectations unreasonable? After all, he turned on Abel in the same way once he knew he’d lost control of him. Was that it? Abel
tried to toe the line, but I never got the knack for that. I didn’t mean to provoke him. And neither did Moe. We just didn’t seem to be able to keep our heads down low enough.

  Well, I’m low enough now. If Dave could see my present discomfort he’d revel in it. So would Vader. So would Matt, for that matter, and probably the Duffy brothers as well.

  But none of them will see it unless they come searching. And unless they do that I’ll probably die here in my well-hidden cave and my bones will never be found. And if the men do come back I’ll very possibly end up dead anyway. These are not happy thoughts.

  I take refuge in sleep, but the dream of Jonathan is gone. Instead, my mother is here, she has collected my bones and is washing them and wrapping them in clean linen. Dank u, Moe. Dank u wel.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  And the nations were angry and Thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead that they should be judged and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants and prophets, and to the saints and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.

  King James Bible, Revelations 11:18

  FIELD DIARY – Friday 27 April

  * * *

  Thirst woke me again, with daylight piercing the cave as I took my jeans to the entrance to put them on, pulling the strap belt another notch tighter. Then I returned to the sitting position to put on my boots. Everything took so long, and I felt so weak, that it was almost more than I could manage to dress myself and gather my knife and water bottle for the short trip to the coast banksia trees to collect the nectar, and immediately feel the familiar wash of energy coursing through my body. After that I made a detour to the nearby copse of boobialla trees, but all that remained were three lone fruits, so wizened and dried out they were hardly worth harvesting.