Fabulous Lives

by Bindy Pritchard

  SEA WRACK

  It was the idea of Venice that had made her want to buy into the canal development in the first place. A romanticised vision of water lapping against centuries-old stone, and watching the last light of the day soften like treacle around the boats’ reflections. Of course, she had never been to Venice, nor smelled the perpetual stink said to rise from the trapped brown waters, especially in summertime. She had bought 19 Marine Terrace after only twenty searches on the Internet, one quick visit from Perth during her rostered day off and the slick spiel from the real estate agent, who told her there were three other buyers waiting with offers in the shadows.

  Don’t be sucked into a Dutch auction, warned her father, but she ignored him because she couldn’t get past the word Dutch and likened it to the same provincial way he spoke about Indian givers and how all Arabs are as mad as cut snakes.

  So for the past eighteen months she had lived with this flimsy, lightweight decision of hers, come to regret the unchanging view outside her window: the same two yachts permanently moored to adjacent pens, the undeveloped water frontages dotted with For Sale signs and scraggly ribbons of pigface. And stepping outside onto the decking—really her own private jetty with enough room for a French farmhouse table, a couple of deckchairs, and a pot of herbs—she also had to learn to live with the smell. A putrid, unrelenting stench, like a sucker punch to her nostrils. The first time she smelled it, she thought it was the briny water caught at low tide and brewed by the summer sun, or the gobs of fish bait that had congealed and hardened onto the wooden slats from where the young boys had been dipping fishing lines into the waters. But she eventually worked it out, stumbled across the source one hazy afternoon after a day of unpacking boxes and trying to reassemble IKEA bookshelves without the original manuals. She needed to get some fresh air, so headed out to finally explore the beach south of the marina, and as she neared the dunes and the vivid blue waters cast as an eye into the curve of the coast, the smell became unmistakably sulphurous. Like rotten eggs. And then as she cleared the top of the dunes she saw it, the wall of seaweed, which was so shocking, so unexpected it could have been a mound of corpses left to rot and dry out in the sand. Far along the coast she could see it, this spanning wall of weed, and in the shallows more of it lapping and eddying closer and closer to shore.

  ‘It’s a sight, isn’t it?’

  She hadn’t noticed the man taking photographs, a scarf fashioned as a mask over his nose and mouth.

  ‘It looks terrible.’

  ‘That’s the least of our problems,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Toxic fumes. Cancer clusters.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You’re not from around here, are you?’

  ‘No. I just arrived.’

  ‘Didn’t you hear about this?’

  ‘Not in the city.’

  ‘I’d go back.’

  ‘I can’t. I just bought a townhouse on the marina.’

  His eyes said it all. They widened, and with a slight flicker reflected back a version of herself as a fool.

  His name was Phillip Jordan. She was to find out later that he was responsible for the Port Action Group blog and the photos that were posted weekly of the seaweed mountain from different angles. Sometimes there were artistic close-ups of the fresh weed, fringed, translucent amber, with delicate popping balls, and other times huge jarring photos emblazoned with the words ‘Save Our Beach’.

  She tried to work it all out at the first meeting she attended, listening to the residents talk about how the canals were poorly designed and engineered so that the sea wrack had become trapped and unable to wash naturally back to sea and why they couldn’t sue the developer—the company had since gone broke. And not just an environmental disaster—the dugongs robbed of a natural food source—but there were the illnesses: the unexplained headaches and rashes, the sudden loss of weight, and the lethargy, where your body could barely move from the couch and your head felt like the greatest weight in the world. And as she listened to the voices, which ached with pent-up hysteria, she studied Phillip and the young girl of maybe ten or eleven sitting next to him, a blonde-thatched stick insect, covered in scales of eczema, a dried-out wisp of a girl. And the way he bent his head close to her ear, patiently explaining things, and his patterned scarf, a loose bib around his neck, and those faded, torn pair of Levi’s—all these things told her that he was the kind of husband who would have used the expression ‘We’re pregnant!’ when telling friends of their baby-to-be.

  He caught her staring, and gave a half-committed smile in her direction, maybe recognising her from the beach, though she wasn’t sure. She tried to focus on the speaker, a thin retiree with a broken-down voice, but she couldn’t get past the words she had seen on Phillip’s blog. Sea wrack. At first she was surprised that she didn’t know this term (and her being the wordsmith!), but now it bothered her because it wasn’t neutral sounding like seaweed, or sargassum (a soothing salve in the mouth), but biting and shrewish on her tongue. Sea wrack. Shipwreck. Homewrecker. Racked with guilt...

  Two more meetings went on like this until she realised that by living directly on the canals she was considered the enemy, and there was no way back from that.

  * * *

  The water shot a rippled light across the computer screen, forcing her to move further into the living room and away from the sun streaming through the glass doors. The brightness made it hard to concentrate, and she faltered on the next word. The deadline for the report was almost upon her but she had barely started. She could only imagine what Ann Marie would say about that. Six months ago they were in the sprawling departmental office, desks suggesting separation— this is my area of expertise, this is yours—and Ann Marie swivelling her chair across from the other side and saying, Greg must be bonkers to let you do this.

  Bonkers, or feeling sorry for the woman who was clearly unravelling before his eyes. Yes, definitely crazy—for he should have known that she would be unreliable, break the promise that she could do the same job working remotely, producing the same quality output and submitting her work on time. He must have known that her mental state was fragile at the best of times.

  She didn’t want to think about Greg, pushed those uneasy feelings aside and tried to focus on the work at hand. She typed: ‘Western Australian regional unemployment rates’, and then stopped. It was no use. She got up, put the kettle on and waited, staring out the window. In this harsh light she could see that the decking, bleached and grainy grey, needed resealing, and there were nails that were working their way out of the wood like foreign bodies being dispelled from the skin. Another item to add to the list of things to do—or not to do, as she suspected would be the case. Her father had been right all along about the house. The impracticality of the painted weatherboarding that would need to be redone in a few years’ time—this row of quaint, pastel-coloured terrace houses turning into a blistering, flaky eyesore under the full brunt of the sun. And her father more distressed for the work that he felt obliged to help her with, especially now that she was on her own and so was he.

  Suddenly her eyes alighted on a movement through the water—a rare thing here, apart from circling seagulls or a white flip of fish belly—and she could make out a yacht creeping past the heads into the marina. She went out through the doors and onto the deck, tracking its passage through the labyrinthine waterways, wondering if anyone else was witnessing this small miracle—doubtful with most of the buildings empty, the wealthy owners able to afford to walk away from their failed holiday investment. She wanted to share this with someone, test out her voice, as she hadn’t spoken in days, but there was no-one around. So she found herself waving to the lone yacht, taking on the role of a harbour master welcoming the sailor home to the shore. To her surprise, the yacht slowly made its way to her, and she could see there was a solitary figure on board waving back.

  ‘Is it okay to moor here?’ he shouted.

  She stared at the
man, still surprised at how the boat had made it this far.

  ‘Yes... It’s my pen. It came with the house.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He brought the boat closer and then threw a large rope to her. She stood there dumbly, watching whilst he jumped off the boat and secured the thick rope to the pylon.

  ‘Rob.’ He held out his hand and she gave it a quick squeeze. He was taller than she had expected and the extra height made her catch her breath.

  ‘I’m Katrina. I’m surprised you got through.’

  She could see the dark weed caught around the hull and trailing like bony fingers into the water.

  ‘Yeah—I didn’t realise until too late. Where’s the marina office?’

  ‘Oh, it’s unmanned. I mean, the whole place has shut down.’

  ‘There must be someone around.’

  ‘I don’t know much about these things.’

  And it was true, she didn’t know anything. Had no idea about the ins and outs of sailing, the difference between a skiff and a ketch, a bow and a stern. No interest whatsoever in boats and ocean faring, though she loved the fact that other people did, took the risks on her behalf whilst she sat sipping chardonnay on the shore.

  ‘I might take a look around—see if I can talk to someone who knows.’

  She nodded, wishing to be of more use, as she watched the lanky man walk away to where the jetty met up with the main boardwalk. She should have kept him there with questions. Asked about his American accent, why he was so far from home—though judging by his tanned limbs, flowing hair and beard flecked a salty grey she suspected that he had lost the concept of a home long ago. And the name of the yacht, Endymion? Now there was an entry point for conversation, an opportunity to discuss Keats and her love of poetry, and how her father had convinced her to switch from a Major in English Literature to Economics because there was no money in writing, and how instead she had fallen into writing policy for the State Government on the area of employment and the labour market, and now her heart wasn’t in it any more. Rob was gone before she could speak about any of that, and as she walked back inside to resume her work—the smell of rotten egg wafting from the dunes—she felt a slight throb in her temples.

  She didn’t have to wait long to have her questions answered. A few hours later Rob appeared at the glass doors, and after letting this stranger in, she soon discovered he was originally from the Napa Valley, had worked in a start-up company in San Francisco in the nineties making a tidy fortune and then, for want of a better word, a mid-life crisis took him on a decade-long sailing odyssey, where he got to sleep every night beneath the moon’s mellow glow. That was the source of the yacht’s name: Endymion, the ancient Greek myth about the beautiful sleeping man watched and adored by the moon goddess, Selene. Rob had never heard of Keats and a quizzical smile formed on his lips as she recited the opening stanza.

  She offered him a glass of local wine (almost as good as from the Napa!) and he wandered around her living room as if looking for clues: the stack of Gourmet Traveller magazines on the coffee table, the ornate 1920s mirror over the mantelpiece, the collection of photos of nieces and friends’ children. But it was the framed orange-and-gold threaded kimono that interested him the most.

  ‘Have you been to Japan?’

  ‘No, a friend was an exchange student. I love the fabric so much—it’s like a work of art.’

  ‘It’s a pity to frame it. You should wear it.’

  She didn’t know what to say to that. Found herself talking at super-speed about the need to preserve the heritage of the kimono as the garments were being hacked to pieces and the fabric sold off to make mobile phone and iPod covers for tourists. She wasn’t sure why she was rushing. Maybe it was this feeling that time was running out, and like a speed date, any minute now he would hear a better story from the next candidate. He watched her, still with that smile playing at his lips, and she couldn’t work out if he liked her or thought she was ridiculous. It was only when he suggested they take the next bottle of wine to his yacht that she thought maybe he was interested after all.

  The yacht seemed smaller once she was on it, and for a man who had wealth, rather dingy and worn. In the cabin area she had to double over to reach the table, and once she was sitting on the bench chair she could feel the uneven, ripped vinyl bite at her skin through her skirt. There was a bundle of dirty clothes rolled up in a corner, and the table was covered in crumbs and old coffee cup stains.

  ‘So tell me about yourself.’

  She winced a little at his words, but the wine softened any resistance, and she was surprised at how the words flowed and how much she was willing to reveal. She heard herself talking about her first marriage, to a fellow university student, the Guild President, who had hopes of a career in federal politics, but ended up working for the local branch of the maritime union instead. Those were the days when you could only access Victoria Quay with a security badge, and a steady flow of ships passed in and out to dock, some seasonal—the triple-banked row of Japanese tuna boats— and some seemingly permanent, such as the Cormo Express, a bankrupted livestock carrier with its rusted gangway teetering like a giant praying mantis’s leg, where the fat-bottomed girls in black denim, the ‘wharf rats’, would sneak up and down, trading their bodies for cigarettes.

  The marriage was never going to last. Too many late nights in the Fremantle pubs took its toll, and his boyish body thickened and turned slack. Fat lush, she had joked, but there was too much truth in what she said and they parted before the bitterness truly set in. What she didn’t say was that years later she had bumped into him at a mutual friend’s party, and there he was, looking toned and taut with a pretty new wife on his arm, and it occurred to her that she might have been the source of his unhappiness all along.

  ‘I married Gilligan and ended up with the Skipper,’ she said to Rob, and got the laugh she was aching for. ‘So what about you? Any wives I should know about?’

  ‘I don’t stay in one place long enough.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why you’re circumnavigating the world. Running away from any commitment.’

  A shadow passed over his face. ‘Why do women always say the same things?’

  ‘Maybe you always end up with the same kind of woman.’

  He couldn’t help but smile, and they continued to talk, slowly getting drunker. Later, she was to blame the alcohol for why she broke her usual rule of never sleeping with someone on the first date. If only they had gone back to her house there wouldn’t have been the incessant rocking of the waves to make her unsteady on her feet, causing her to stumble to her knees, nor the sickening smell of wrack to make her smother her face against his crotch; there wouldn’t have been the thrusting of a penis, skinny like a pencil, out of sync with the rhythm of her hips. She left him snoring on his back and crept back to her jetty guided by the light of the moon. She showered straightaway, allowing the water to sluice away the taint of his unwashed body and the stickiness smeared across her thighs. Semen, Seaman, See me—normally she would have enjoyed this wordplay, but there was nothing to joke about now. She had basically slept with a hobo.

  The next morning, she felt relief when she saw the yacht was no longer moored in front of her place. She could imagine the hull strangled by more weed as it exited the harbour, pulling a tangled brown mess in its wake. There was a pang of loss as she realised she had left her good pair of Milano glassware on board.

  She had this sudden urge to ring Greg, but she knew he would be having his morning coffee with his wife before he left for work, his voice becoming strained and furtive as he fobbed her off on his mobile in that usual, detached managerial tone of his while she begged and pleaded with him not to end their affair. She had never thought about his children before, but now she could picture them sitting at the breakfast table, too: little blonde-haired stick insects, sweet and sickly and desperate for attention.

  The headache, which had been there all along, was pounding fiercely at her skull, and a ru
ptured light like jagged starbursts rimmed her vision. Even though it was still very early, there was enough sunlight streaming through the glass to show up every speck of dust and dirt. She was shocked at how filthy this place had become and set about wiping down and then scrubbing every surface until her back and neck ached. She began to dust the framed kimono, then stopped to stare at the exquisite shimmering fabric, wondering how the embroidered silk would feel against her skin. It was tempting to remove the garment from its glass casing, but she knew the beauty would disappear all too quickly. The way it did when as a child she would run up to her father with a bucketful of shells, and see how disappointing and dull they became once removed from the sea.

  THREAD

  It was wrong of them to come, but here they were, being greeted by the minister with his trailing white sleeves and mouth strained like a button through the hole in his dark, woolly beard. Above them, a sign quilted in bargain-bin remnants welcomed all to the True Life Anglican Church.

  Katherine felt small and stooped in the bungalow-shaped building where the low white ceiling topped their heads like icing on a wedding cake. No, they shouldn’t even be here, she thought, but it was too late to consider leaving now, with the minister looking so biblical in his robes and beard, and welcoming them so warmly. A fisherman’s beard at that, she noted, and was at least heartened by this observation.

  ‘Welcome. You’ve not been here before?’

  ‘We usually go to the city service,’ answered Katherine, aware that her voice sounded loud and shrill, when she had hoped it to be tempered with a sort of gentle regret. A voice that implied, We’re sorry we can never be members of your church.