The Octopus and I

by Erin Hortle

  Jem really doesn’t have to know. He doesn’t need another item added to his list of all the ways she’s disappointed him. The breasts and octopuses are enough. The mutton-birds don’t need to hurt anyone.

  Lucy’s phone buzzes. It’s a text from Flo, although she suspects it’s actually from Harry. Lucy’s pretty sure Flo doesn’t know how to text. All it says is: Tonight?

  It was windier, earlier on. But now it’s late afternoon and, though it’s still choppy, the surface of the ocean isn’t coarse; rather, it’s smooth like glass. In the low light the stacked silhouettes of Bruny Island, which edge the oceanic horizon, are mauve and plum. Flo, Harry and Lucy are in the tinny—Gray’s old tinny, the tinny Flo rarely uses but hangs onto for the boys, whenever they’re down; the tinny Harry’s taken over since he got back. They’d driven to the other side of the peninsula to launch the boat and now are puttering out to a little island. Flo and Lucy are perched on the front bench seat and the metal is cold and unforgiving beneath their rumps as the boat bashes through the chop. Harry’s at the tiller, and on the floor, between them, is a mess of fishing paraphernalia.

  ‘No harm in setting the pot and net while we’re out there,’ he’d mumbled before they left. ‘Don’t have high hopes for the pot. I mean, it’s barely even a day shot but it’s still got bait from last night and, anyway, it gives us a bit of a cover story.’

  ‘Touch wood,’ Lucy had said. But the new jetty was metal and concrete and the nearest tree was ages away, so she didn’t.

  They slip and bang towards the island. Flo and Lucy brace themselves, relax, brace themselves, relax, brace themselves as swell and lingering fetch rise beneath the boat, then fall away. The wind plays in their hair. Flo’s is tied back but Lucy’s whips out like a flag behind her and Harry tastes a hint of lavender on the air. He catches himself searching the wind for it and realises that he’s actually trying to taste Lucy. Or at least, he hopes it’s Lucy he’s trying to taste, hopes that his mother hasn’t recently switched to a lavender-scented shampoo.

  The motor drones. The smell of two-stroke hangs above the long, aerated triangle of their wake.

  The boat sends arc after arc of rippling wavelets at the rocks as he guides it towards the shore of the island. Plumes of crayweed finger the surface of the water and link up to form a maze of glassy atolls.

  Perfect.

  Lucy and Flo sit in silence as Harry puts the motor into neutral, lifts the craypot and heaves it over the side of the boat, feeding the rope through his enormous fingers until it hits the bottom. He ties off the slack rope and tosses the buoy in. It bobs on the surface, his licence number written painstakingly neat in black texta, plain to see.

  He eases the boat back out from the weed forest and into deeper water, then motors slowly until he finds a patch of bottom that’s black with weed, but dotted with windows of clear water that tinge the white sand deep beneath a pale turquoise blue—magpie bottom—then lets the motor idle again as he turns to Lucy.

  ‘You ever set a net before?’

  ‘Nope. Jem’s not really a net man. He worries about the by-catch.’

  Is she having a go? Harry wonders uneasily. Does she know his father had been a commercial fisherman? Is it just Jem? Or is she worried about the by-catch too?

  ‘Net this size’s not gonna have much if you set it right,’ he mumbles defensively. ‘Won’t be in too long either.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, I’m sure it’s fine,’ she blusters. ‘It’s just what Jem says. I can help, if you show me what to do.’

  So he shows her how to feed the net over the side as he reverses the boat, leaving a dotted line of buoys behind them.

  ‘Jem, hey? What’s he up to this evening?’ Flo asks.

  ‘He’s on the west coast for the week. Diving.’

  ‘Does he dive over there much?’

  ‘Nah. Not heaps. A bit. Depends on the weather, you know.’ Lucy shrugs as she feeds the last of the net over the gunnel. ‘He loves it,’ she adds. ‘Surfs heaps.’

  ‘He got pretty fired up about that mako, hey?’

  ‘What mako?’ Lucy asks.

  ‘You know, that one that was caught the other day,’ Flo says. ‘They thought it was going to be the biggest one to ever get caught in Tassie waters, but it was just under the record. Col Fitzgerald dropped some flake off for us and said Jem had had a bit of a go at the jetty when they brought it in.’

  ‘Oh.’ Lucy frowns. ‘He didn’t say anything.’

  ‘The meat was pretty crappy,’ Flo says. ‘The big ones always are.’

  ‘But he was pissed at something Sunday evening,’ Lucy continues as if she wasn’t listening. ‘Was that when it was caught?’

  ‘Would’ve been Sunday, hey Harry?’

  ‘Yep.’ Harry smiles. ‘Would’ve been Sunday. ’Cos you were so hungover you let me cook without kicking up a stink and you couldn’t get through half the meal.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Flo says. ‘I couldn’t get through it because it was an old shark. The fibres were too big and tough to be worth eating.’

  ‘Keep telling yourself that,’ Harry murmurs with a grin. ‘Now, where to?’

  Flo waves her hand towards the northern end of the island. ‘Round a bit.’ He motors in that direction until she says, pointing, ‘Just up here.’

  He spots it: the rocky little beach.

  ‘There’s a sandy, deep channel, right up until that ledge, just there. A perfect park.’ Harry sees where his mother means, and pulls into it. He keeps the motor running while Lucy scrambles up onto the limpet-crusted rock shelf and holds the boat still so Flo can get out. He putters back out until the seafloor is rock-free, throws the anchor over the edge, tests to see it’s grabbed the sand, then kills the motor.

  ‘I’m gonna take my daks off, Lucy,’ he calls. ‘So, you know …’

  ‘Bit shy are ya Harry?’ she teases. But she turns away, looking up the shoreline from him.

  He takes his shoes and pants off, tucks them under his arm, climbs out of the boat, then wades in through the thigh-deep water, slipping and sliding a little when he reaches the slick rocks that frame the shore.

  ‘Would’ve been up to me armpits,’ his mother mutters while he towels his legs with his pants. ‘You didn’t even get your undies wet.’

  Lucy, still looking away, snorts.

  Harry feels a blush heat his cheeks. He tugs his pants on. ‘Jesus, Mum. Bit of privacy too much to ask for?’ he grumbles.

  Flo had watched as Harry handled the boat and anchor with sure, steady movements. Everything he does is so deliberate, she thinks. The way he set the pot, the way he showed Lucy how to set the net, instructing her in low, encouraging tones. Gentle, considerate. It makes her think what a wonderful father he’ll be if he ever gets his act together. Everything he does is measured and thought through; he never overshoots.

  They walk, rock-hopping along the shore. They’re heading towards the headland that’s matted here and bristly there, with warring native grasses. Harry and Lucy are trailing after her and she’s aware of their patience in the face of her slow pace: their patience at the way she pauses to find even footing, at the way she uses her hands to crab down awkward sections—sections which, when you’re young, you use your momentum to skip through. Confidence when rock-hopping is one of the first things you lose. She feels like she should warn them, tell them to make the most of it while they still can. But she’s a little out of breath and she suspects that they won’t care; you never do until it’s gone. And now she’s climbed herself into a bind—the gap between the rock she’s perched on and the next is beyond her so she has to turn back and wobble her way through the jagged rocks outcropping the larger ones that defeated her. Meanwhile, Harry and Lucy leap from large rock to large rock, easy as you like, pulling well ahead of her. She watches as Harry dips his head towards Lucy in that way tall people do when they’re listening to short people speak. Watches them both chuckle. Then Lucy says something else to Harry and they both turn to face her.
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  They’re waiting by a gap in the scrub, she realises, a makeshift path up onto the headland, and she feels the lost opportunity hard. She should’ve been showing them where it was.

  ‘Carn, Mum,’ Harry calls, and she hurries to catch up to them, nearly going A-over-T in the process. Again, she feels aware of the age difference, as if it’s a palpable space. It is a palpable space: it’s the air that she’s flapping her arms in as she tries to maintain her balance while she hurries towards them. And then Harry is giving her a shove up onto the headland. He clambers up himself and offers a hand to Lucy.

  Flo looks to the south, to the open ocean, an undulant silver-grey sheet which stretches to the horizon; looks west to Bruny Island, an elongated mirror of the peninsula, a sister jut of land that’s managed to break free of the mainland. She looks north-west, to Storm Bay and further to the tableau of Mount Wellington, the signal tower sticking up from it like a candle, a rocket, a periscope. She feels exposed. There’s no cover; their silhouettes will be visible to boats miles away, black against the silver and rose sky. Especially Harry. He’s so tall. Like a bloody signal tower himself.

  ‘So what now?’ Lucy asks, her cheeks flushed, eyes eager. Harry, too, is looking to Flo for leadership and Flo finds it bracing.

  This is more like it, she thinks to herself.

  ‘Well, now we scruff ’em.’ She waves her hand towards the rookery just further on, and starts marching towards it, getting a start on the kids.

  The sandy mouths of burrows, shadowy black, dotted here and there, give off the impression of a labyrinthine world below. And that smell: immediate, oceanic, animal; a meld of brine, seaweed and agriculture. It hangs heavy in the air. Damp, warm, breathing. Flo inhales deeply and it seems, for a moment, like she’s gobbling a living thing into her lungs, distilling it, puffing it back out.

  It’s like smoking, only the opposite, she thinks. Fresh. The stuff of life, not death.

  ‘Orright,’ she says, coming to a halt. ‘I’ll show youse.’

  She squats down on her haunches in front of one of the burrows, feels it in her hips like rust, so gets down on her knees instead, feeds a length of wire into the darkness and gives it a wiggle. There’s a muffled squawk. She looks up at Lucy and Harry, and explains: ‘If there’s no squawking, there’s probably no chick. And there might be snakes, ya know? Never used to be any on this island, but it’s been years, so better safe than sorry.’

  ‘Where would they have come from?’ Lucy asks.

  Flo shrugs. ‘Parks and Wildlife do all sorts of weird shit.’

  Flo withdraws the piece of wire, lies down on her stomach and reaches into the hole, right up to her shoulder. She gropes around, feeling the sand and shit against her fingers, then: soft and spiky—the soft, feathery flapping against her hand, the pecking and clawing, just like she remembers. But it doesn’t hurt. Its infantile beak is too weak; all it can do is mouth at her. She feels around for something to grab hold of, and manages to grip it right around the curve of its belly. The screeching clarifies as she pulls the fat little thing out, blinking in the grey light.

  She’d forgotten just how toddler-like they are. Like pups when they get to the curious stage. And she’d forgotten just how heartbreakingly delicate their fluffy down is. Like bulrushes or dandelions, about to release their seeds into the sky; one puff of wind and they’ll flutter away.

  The chick squirms and peers up at the cavernous sky. And a problem: how to get to her feet?

  This old woman’s body.

  She pins the chick to the ground with her hand as she clambers to her knees. Heavy on all fours, she feels like a farm animal. An image flickers in her mind, of being mounted from behind. Her breasts swinging free. His hands on her hips. She tries to blink it away. She’s uncomfortably aware that it’s her son standing behind her, and she hears Gray chuckle. Imagines Gray chuckling.

  The seedy old bugger.

  She eases one foot beneath her, then the other, then presses herself up, feeling her joints mutter and pressing the chick into the sand all the while, crushing it beneath her weight. It stops screeching and lets out a gurgling little sigh, sounding almost like a content human infant. Orange krill vomit leaks from its beak and an acidic, fishy aroma cuts the air.

  Finally on her feet, she realises that she’s pretty much killed it already, not that it matters. She gives it a flick, half for show, half for good measure. It’s not textbook, but the job’s done: its neck is broken and its head hangs loosely from its body.

  ‘Ooph,’ she wheezes. ‘I’m too old for this. You two’ll have to do the rest. You just grab a hold of them wherever you can, then pull ’em out and break their necks. Like I just did then’s real easy, otherwise, you can just pull or twist the head. Oh and watch the vomit. It’s real hard to get the smell outa your clothes.’

  Lucy peers at the little body in Flo’s hands. ‘It’s so fat,’ she says. She reaches out and strokes the chick. ‘And so, well, soft. And young. Does it make you feel bad?’

  ‘A bit, but you can’t look at these things like that,’ Flo says matter-of-factly. ‘It’s not what it’s about.’

  Lucy nods slowly. ‘Okay,’ she decides. ‘I’ll try.’

  She tests a burrow with the length of wire, and when she’s rewarded with a squawk, she lies down, flat on her tummy, in front of the mouth and reaches in.

  ‘Oh my god, this feels so counter-intuitive,’ she says, face glazed in concentration as she fossicks around in the burrow. ‘Argh! I touched it!’

  ‘What did you expect?’ Harry asks, smiling.

  She grins up at him sheepishly, then looks at Flo. ‘What do I do? Just grab it?’

  ‘Yep. Wherever you can get a hold.’

  ‘It’s pecking me!’

  ‘Course it is. Wouldn’t you? Just grab it!’

  Lucy bites her lower lip and furrows her brow, then yelps: ‘I’ve got it!’ Triumphantly, she pulls it out, squirming and squawking, by its webbed and rubbery little feet.

  ‘Flick it, flick it, flick it,’ Flo chants, hopping from one foot to the other.

  Lucy grins frenziedly from Flo to Harry and then, for some reason, raises the writhing bird above her head and flicks it down like she’s a starter at a school athletics carnival. A ribbon of vomit arcs from the bird’s beak and sloshes its way down the length of her body.

  Flo and Harry roar with laughter as Lucy shrieks, looking down at herself in horror.

  ‘Argh!’ She tries to brush it from her clothes, but really, all she’s doing is rubbing the orange gunk further into the fabric.

  ‘If I was you,’ Flo chuckles, ‘I’d give ’em a rinse out before we leave.’

  ‘Definitely,’ Harry agrees. ‘’Cos you’re not getting in my ute stinking like that.’

  Flo hoots with laughter and looks from Harry—whose lips are twitching, who seems so relaxed, who seems to be somehow truly home, here and now—to Lucy, dripping in bird vomit and looking so disgruntled and yet somehow exultant. Flo wishes she could bottle the expression on Lucy’s face. Bottle the whole moment, for that matter.

  ‘I’ll catch you up,’ Lucy says.

  She waits by the silver-slick little rockpool for Flo and Harry to move off before she starts stripping. She pulls her jumper off and her singlet comes with it, exposing her chest to the evening. She lets it; it’s not like she’s got anything to hide.

  As she leans forward, the little fish in the pool scatter for cover, diving beneath rocky overhangs and burying themselves in weed. She laughs, thinking they’re hiding from her octopuses, which are still only one third or so coloured in, but with their beaked maws and curling arms are evidently menacing enough, and feels an overwhelming sense of joy at her body. The contentedness shocks her for its completeness, and reminds her—in a way that makes her feel both hopeful and nostalgic—of how much she’s been missing it: that sense of just being in your body, and of your body just being in the world. Of being un-thought, unqualified, just as is.

  And a
s easy as that, she falls in love with her tattoo again. Not just the one octopus, but the complete mural. It’s not still, dead art. It’s on her living body, which, like Kat said, is always moving. It’s her, living vibrantly in the world. She doesn’t need the knitted knockers, still only half finished at Flo’s. They were never going to be right. But her octopuses, the mutton-birding, the living of her life: this is it. This is right. This is the thing that’s been missing, the thing she was trying to describe to Suzette.

  Breasts as tools, my arse, she thinks.

  Or maybe not.

  The knitted knockers proved to be a tool after all, a vehicle to get her somewhere: they transported her to here, to now. They were kicked under the table as they should be, once she, Flo and Harry decided to go mutton-birding, and in doing so they achieved their ends. And their ends? When she was lying on the ground, armpit deep in a burrow, she wasn’t thinking about the fact that she was lying flat on the ground. She wasn’t even thinking. She was utterly occupied by the moment, which she knows will never be repeated, because she does feel a bit guilty about killing them now—those poor, downy chicks, blinking in the dusky light. She won’t do it again. But in the moment, despite the fact that there had been a small part of her that had wondered if she’d baulk, she didn’t feel bad enough to not kill them.

  And that’s the thing, isn’t it? So much comes down to the specific emotional composition of moments: how much empathy do you feel right there and then? Enough to throw yourself in front of a car in an attempt to save a pregnant octopus? Apparently. Enough to refrain from breaking the neck of a baby bird? Apparently not. And then the emotional fallout is the emotional fallout; a whole other kettle of fish. But she’ll deal with that later—right now, she’ll love her body.

  Thank you, knitted knockers, for bringing about this moment, she thinks. She traces the lines of her scars and smiles up into the night sky. She feels like she could burst with joy, with poignancy, with everything whirring and cascading through her veins.