by Erin Hortle
The open fire spits sparks at the people huddled by it, the floor is sticky, the June wind, gusting up fresh from Antarctica, hammers fat rain against the windows. The music is grungy as fuck in a way that might actually be shit in its tuneless-ness, but here, in this context, feels edgy in a good way. Lucy’s a bit pissed already and knows that she’s gone slightly cross-eyed. There are four consecutive happy hours at this place, during which cheap-as beer is served in plastic jugs, and the kitchen is still a half hour off opening. Even then, it will only open for forty-five minutes, Kat has warned her, and it will only serve chowder. This place is known for its chowder.
‘Are you fucking kidding me you’ve never had their chowder? It’s the best chowder in the world. Even if you don’t like chowder you’ll love it. I swear, they put fucking crack in it,’ Kat had exclaimed last time Lucy was up in town—their second to last session—when she had revealed she’d never been to this place. ‘Well that settles it. Next time you’re up, let’s get chowder and then blind drunk to celebrate your octopuses.’
It seems Lucy’s doing it the other way around, but that’s okay.
Lucy didn’t tell Jem that her last two trips to town—spaced over longer breaks, so that the final patches of skin, which were dense and knotted with scars, had a touch more time to fade down—had only been for Kat. She doesn’t know why. Even though he obviously thought Suzette’s knitted knockers plan was as ridiculous as she did, she just felt like he would have been disappointed if he knew that she had cancelled those last appointments—those last chances to ‘sort out her thinking’, as he’d once referred to the psych sessions. But today had been her last session with Kat, and she had told Jem that it was her last session with Suzette too.
‘Kat wants to take me out for a couple of drinks,’ she told him. ‘So I might rent a room so I don’t have to drive, if that’s okay with you.’
He’d frowned in a way that suggested he felt a little uneasy about it, but a couple of weeks before he’d done the same thing when he went to a mate’s bucks party, which was arguably way more likely to end in debauchery.
‘I love you,’ he’d said, in answer, and kissed her on the brow.
That afternoon, Kat had inked in the last few gaps, and then, while Lucy was still topless in the parlour—so they could both appreciate the glory that was her chest—she and Kat had shotted gin and thanked each other profusely.
‘I just can’t tell you how much more real this feels,’ Lucy had said, not for the first time. She’d told Kat about the scared fish the last time she was in town; about how she knew, now, that she wouldn’t want any other body but hers.
‘Well, I just want to say cheers for picking me to do this,’ Kat had said. ‘You’re a legend and it’s been my absolute fucking pleasure to go on this journey with you.’
It’s wintery outside—the air cuts, and bites, and makes things ache—so Lucy had rugged up, and then the two of them had dashed to the pub to meet Shani, who was also gloriously tattooed and, ‘Fucking honoured to meet a brave woman such as yourself.’ The three of them had then settled in for the night.
Lucy has just tottered back to their table with a fresh jug when she hears his voice.
‘Lucy?’
It’s Harry, standing there in a crispy clean blue flanny, jug of beer in each hand, grinning at her.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Kat and Shani exchange a look. She knows what that look says, but what she doesn’t know is if it’s that look or something else that propels her forward and makes her reach out to him for a hello-hug. Of course, Harry is holding the jugs so can’t quite hug her back; instead he does a weird body shimmy at her, which is made weirder by the fact that he’s so tall and the fact that she, unthinkingly, reaches her hands up and loops them around his neck and awkwardly pulls him down into her.
She draws back from him and looks up into his eyes. There’s something in his gaze—or in her gaze? gosh she’s drunker than she realised—that makes her feel uncomfortable. So, she waves at Kat and Shani.
‘This is Kat and Shani,’ she tells him. ‘Kat did my tattoo,’ she continues. ‘Kat and Shani, this is Harry.’
‘The Harry?’ Kat asks, arching an eyebrow.
Lucy is horrified by the insinuation in Kat’s tone. ‘I told her about the whole failed mutton-birding escapade,’ she explains to him, at the same time that Kat says, ‘Join us for a drink, Harry?’
Harry grins. It’s an awkward smile, as his often are, but beneath the awkwardness he seems genuinely pleased by the invitation—or at least, that’s how it appears to Lucy.
‘It was my round.’ He nods to his jugs. ‘Give us a second to drop these off to my mates and I’ll be back.’ He disappears towards the back of the pub.
‘Fucking hell, Kat,’ Lucy half laughs, half hisses. ‘Way to make that awkward.’
‘Fucking hell, Lucy.’ Kat laughs. ‘You never told me he looked like that.’
Shani nods. ‘Kat does like big blokes.’
This catches Lucy by surprise. ‘I always kind of assumed you were a lesbian,’ she tells Kat, waving her hand in Kat’s general direction—at her tattoos, sheer black blouse, vibe. Even as she’s doing it, she cringes inwardly at her lack of tact.
Gosh, she is drunk. Way to go and typecast someone.
Kat doesn’t seem bothered though. ‘Yeah, well,’ she says. ‘Don’t mind big women either.’
‘Good to know,’ Harry’s voice rumbles. He’s reappeared and is pulling up a stool next to Lucy.
She’s surprised by how smooth his re-entry into their conversation is. She’s always assumed he was kind of socially awkward, but maybe she’d just misunderstood his breed of quiet. And what was that he’d said, on the night they’d planned the mutton-birding, later on, when they were alone on the beach? There’d been a few girls, don’t get him wrong. Of course he’d have the smooth when he needs it. For some reason, this makes her feel awkward.
‘Like I said,’ she blurts, looking up at Harry. ‘I told Kat about the whole mutton-birding debacle, hence her whole, “the Harry?” thing.’ She’s blathering. Why is she reminding him of Kat’s tone?
‘Don’t worry, Luce,’ he says. ‘I’m not getting ahead of myself.’
Kat raises her eyebrows at Lucy.
Lucy raises hers back.
Kat smirks. ‘What ended up happening to those mutton-birds, anyway?’ she asks.
‘Cop confiscated them and fined Flo,’ Lucy replies.
‘Fucking pigs, hey?’ Kat says, shaking her head in disgust, always ready with the anti-establishment sentiment.
Lucy nods. ‘And Mitch is a bit of a pig, hey Harry?’
‘Blood oath,’ Harry agrees.
‘So after all that I didn’t even get to try mutton-bird,’ Lucy continues. ‘But after the smell, I don’t know if I could have stomached them anyway. I feel so awful about the fact that we took their lives needlessly, though, you know? In a funny way, I feel more awful about them getting confiscated than I do about us getting caught, if that makes sense. Like, we didn’t kill them for anything in the end. It’s just such a waste and so unnecessarily destructive. You know, those birds are family units—they pair up for life and come back to the same burrow every year and if they fail to conceive or their chick dies, they …’ she pauses and notices the way they’re all watching her speak. ‘I’m babbling, aren’t I?’ She laughs.
‘Yeah,’ Kat says. ‘You are. But don’t leave us hanging. What happens if they fail to conceive or their chicks die?’
‘Well, the likelihood of, you know, bird divorce increases dramatically. So that’s what we’ve done,’ she adds, looking at Harry. ‘And for no reason in the end.’
He frowns. She’s pleased he frowns.
‘Bird divorce?’ Kat says. ‘Yeah right. So it’s not just humans who can’t keep their shit together when the going gets tough?’ She turns to Shani. ‘Speaking of, did you hear about …’
‘Oh my god, what Seth did?’ Shani interrupts.
‘What a cunt, hey?’ Kat says. ‘How could he do that to Mia?’
‘I know!’
As the two of them gossip about Seth the cunt and poor Mia, Harry turns to Lucy. ‘How you going, Luce?’ he murmurs, his voice cutting below the music.
‘Bit pissed,’ she confesses. ‘Haven’t seen you for a while.’ The last several times she’d dropped into Flo’s he hadn’t been there. He wasn’t there when they’d done the quince paste, wasn’t there on that awkward evening when Lucy found the fine on the bench and begged Flo to let her pay it.
‘Please, Flo. Really. Let me,’ she’d said, too many times. But Flo had refused her money.
And then Lucy had had another idea as to how she might be able to make amends. ‘Well, let’s look back through your family tree, then,’ she’d urged. ‘So many people don’t know that they have Aboriginal heritage in Tassie. Maybe you do, and you could, I don’t know, get excused on cultural grounds.’
‘Let sleeping dogs lie,’ was all Flo said in reply.
‘Come on, what can it hurt?’ Lucy urged, half wondering if Flo was hesitant for the same reason that so many people are unaware of their mixed heritage: wilful ignorance or wilful denial, born out of racist colonial shame.
‘It’s not my history.’
‘It could be, though.’
‘You’re not understanding me,’ Flo had said. ‘Even if it was my blood, it’s not my history.’
Lucy still didn’t cotton on. Instead, she said: ‘If it’s your blood, and your family have been mutton-birding for generations, it’s only you saying it’s not your history.’
‘Yes,’ Flo explained, increasingly exasperated. ‘It is me that’s saying it: I’m saying I haven’t been mutton-birding as an Aboriginal. So yes, I’m saying it’s not my history.’
It was only later on, when she was in bed, unable to sleep, that Lucy realised what Flo had been saying to her—realised that Flo wasn’t being stubborn, but on the contrary, quite insightful. Realised how narrow-minded and potentially racist she herself was being.
Harry hadn’t been there the next day either, when Lucy came around to apologise, and Flo had waved her away like it didn’t matter, then changed tack, and told Lucy that actually she was deeply troubled by Lucy’s lack of delicacy, and the only way Lucy could ever make it up to her would be if Lucy helped her stack the pile of firewood Col had just dropped off.
‘Course, Flo.’ Lucy had grinned. ‘But where’s Harry? Isn’t this sort of thing the point of having someone like him around?’
‘You’d bloody think so, wouldn’t you?’ Flo had grumbled. ‘But just as I need him he ups and legs it to town to do a month or two of labouring. And don’t think I didn’t notice that it coincided with the close of the cray season, either.’
‘Yeah been doing some labouring so haven’t really been about lately,’ Harry tells Lucy, now. ‘What brings you up to town anyway?’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘Let me guess: the chowder?’
Lucy laughs. ‘Do you know I’ve never actually had it before? But it’s all Kat’s been banging on about lately, so, you know, had to make it happen.’
‘You’ve never had the chowder before? How is that even possible. It’s a Hobart institution.’
‘Yeah, well.’ Lucy shrugs. ‘So I keep hearing.’
Harry knocks his knee against hers. ‘You remember what I said that night? On the beach?’ He shakes his head. ‘I take it back. You are a mainlander.’
‘Oof,’ Lucy says in mock outrage. ‘Way to kick me where it hurts.’
Harry smiles down at her. ‘At least you’re rectifying it tonight,’ he offers. ‘Let me know when you’ve licked your bowl clean and I’ll come over and give you a proper Tassie welcome.’
A hard little laugh bursts from the back of Lucy’s throat, and a blush springs to Harry’s face, presumably as he realises how his words could be taken—and how she had evidently taken them, given her laugh.
‘I didn’t mean it like—’
‘I know,’ Lucy says, putting her hand on his forearm. But then she thinks better of it and reaches for her beer glass, not so much because she wants a sip but because she feels she needs to do something with her hand other than touch Harry.
Why does the dynamic between them feel so charged? Maybe it’s because he blushes in a lovely, rich way. There’s nothing ugly or blotchy or greasy about it. It’s more like, in blushing, something in him intensifies; it’s like there’s a new vibrancy to his face, which is brought forth by the blood thrumming against his skin. She shakes her gaze away; maybe it’s because she can’t stop staring.
‘We’re actually out celebrating the finish of my tattoo,’ she says, to distract herself as much as to make conversation. She nods towards Kat. ‘She did it for me.’
‘Yeah, you mentioned.’ He looks across at Kat, who’s watching them, obviously done with gossiping and ready to re-enter their conversation. ‘The octopuses, right?’ he asks.
‘Yep,’ Kat nods.
‘Nice,’ Harry says. ‘I saw bits and pieces of them a bit ago, when Lucy was tidying herself up after a bird vomited on her. Looked good.’
Lucy peers up at him. He’d noticed the tattoo that evening? He thought it looked good? She opens her mouth to ask for some kind of clarification, but she doesn’t know what to ask for, or how to phrase it. And anyway, there’s a part of her that doesn’t want clarification, doesn’t want to know if a bloke likes the look of it, doesn’t want a man’s perception—even if it is positive—to colour her self-perception in any way at all. A fish’s perception might be a liberating thing, but a man’s perception is too embroiled in politics to free anyone.
In the meantime, Kat says, ‘Cheers,’ and dips her glass at him. ‘One of the most special tattoos I’ve done.’
‘Aw, Kat,’ Lucy says. Tears glaze her eyes.
‘Yeah?’ Harry says.
‘Yeah,’ Kat says. ‘People always come in wanting tattoos that are sentimental to them, but Lucy’s is … I dunno. I guess it takes a whole different type of bravery and imagination to do what she decided to do—no breasts, the octopuses, all of it. I mean, who even thinks that shit up? And it looks fucking sick, if I do say so myself.’
‘Amen to that,’ Shani puts in. She’d been treated to a viewing in the ladies earlier.
‘And the octopuses—are they what you needed, Luce?’ Harry asks her quietly, looking down at her again. ‘I mean, after what you were saying that night about how you felt about your body after the cancer and all that, are these what you needed?’
Her tears become real. He’s somehow stumbled upon the perfect question. Why hasn’t Jem asked her that? She blinks furiously and clears her throat with a draught of beer. ‘They are,’ she says. ‘They’re perfect.’
Kat beams.
‘I’m so happy for you, Luce,’ Harry says, beaming as well. ‘But anyway,’ he adds, ‘I’m here for a mate’s thirtieth out back, so, you know.’ He stands, hesitates, then places one of those huge hands on her shoulder and gives it a squeeze. ‘I’m so happy for you,’ he murmurs again.
Once he’s gone, Kat lets out a sigh. ‘Man,’ she says to Lucy. ‘He just gets it, doesn’t he?’
It’s August. There’s a community meeting down at the school in Nubeena. No one’s sure who called it, but everyone knows it’s on and most people seem to be about because who’d risk leaving the harbour of Pirates Bay in this weather? Who’d bother going anywhere, except maybe elsewhere if you’re lucky enough to be able to take your holidays now—escape the weather. There’re even representatives from the council down, which has half the community up in a tizz, fretting that they’ll decide to do the rounds and unearth all the unapproved sheds and shanties that dot the peninsula. But really, as if anyone could be bothered with all that paperwork.
The king tide coupled with the storm last week made everyone wonder about the neck, which, up until then, had seemed steadfast. That’s what the meeting’s about.
It really had felt like
the ocean was reclaiming the shore. The swell, kicked up by the tight whorl of a low pressure system somewhere near Antarctica, shifted and heaved and looked like the rounded backs of giant grey elephants stomping across the horizon beneath the low-slung clouds. The height of the tide sat the waves so close to the shore it disappeared completely; the waves exploded on the jagged cliffs rather than the beds of rocks that sat staunch, deep below the king tideline, and on the dunes rather than the beach, which no longer existed. The dunes began to dissolve. The marram grass, which usually bound them, was ripped out in clumps and tufts, and the boobiallas were shredded to their roots and then dragged out to sea.
Most shocking, though, the biggest of the waves trickled down the other side of the dunes and then crept across to pool on the black bitumen road in one part of the neck. The pools, augmented by the incessant rain, began to flow towards the tide-bloated bay and then blend with it, and so became inlets of that other shore. The inlets kicked up in spray under the tyres of the cars that sped along the highway and would soon rust if they weren’t hosed off. And the inlets made everyone wonder about the future of the neck, which suddenly seemed so precarious, what with the state of the planet and all. Hence the meeting.
Lucy doesn’t pay much attention to what’s being said, although she gleans the gist of it: extreme circumstances but we need to be prepared, because global warming and projected sea level rise, so highway maintenance into the future. Someone—Lucy doesn’t notice who—mentions a bridge, but they’re howled down by what seems like everyone, for a reason Lucy doesn’t quite catch. Her mind is preoccupied with the fact that she’s sandwiched between Jem and Harry.
