Swimming on Dry Land

by Helen Blackhurst

  Enough’s enough. ‘Sleep well,’ I say, heading for the door. ‘Be a long day tomorrow.’

  Delaney nods in her trite, contradictory way. I open the door and see them both out through the sitting room. Monica is balanced on the edge of the settee, writing in her notebook. I’m surprised she’s still awake.

  Walsh peers over her shoulder. ‘Busy, eh?’

  ‘You haven’t found her, have you?’

  Unfazed by Monica’s directness, he says: ‘Not yet.’ He frowns slightly, picking at the flaking skin on his fingers.

  ‘She’s good at hiding, isn’t she? Better than me.’

  He pushes out a smile and follows us into the hall, closing the door behind him. In a low voice he asks: ‘What do you know about Mr M?’

  ‘As much as you. I told you everything last time, there isn’t much to know.’

  They leave. The slap of the door closing makes the air sting red for a second or two. In the dim of the shop nightlights I notice that the canned drinks need restocking. Another job for Karlin tomorrow. I don’t tell her what to do; she’s her own boss. Only sometimes I notice things.

  I stay out of the search. Someone has to keep an eye on Monica. By 9 am I’m in the office making calls to fencing contractors, trying to get the best deal. I fix an appointment with Barrier Lines. Then I go through some paperwork, spin another story to the bank, write to my lawyer friend. This way I get through the morning without stewing too much. In my experience, once you let yourself believe the worst, it might as well have happened.

  Caroline comes in around lunchtime to check on Monica.

  ‘Any luck?’ I ask. I lean back against the office door, holding a mug of tea.

  She props herself on the edge of the camp bed, smoothes the hair off Monica’s face, and starts talking in a whisper.

  ‘Do you need anything?’ I say. She pulls the sheet up to Monica’s chin and adjusts the cover. ‘Caroline?’

  After a minute or so she gets up and leaves without acknowledging me. That’s when I slam the mug hard against the wall. It smashes; shards of porcelain and lukewarm tea fly across the room. Monica hides her head under the sheet. After hammering out my full range of curses, I decide to follow Caroline, but change my mind as I reach the door.

  ‘Uncle Eddie?’ Monica emerges from the sheet and hoists herself up on her elbow. ‘Are you cross with me?’

  ‘Course not. Sorry, skunk. Didn’t mean to frighten you.’ I pick up the bigger pieces of mug and chuck them in the bin. Mug-throwing is not the kind of thing I would normally do. ‘Things don’t always work out the way you want them to.’

  ‘What do you think Georgie is doing?’ Monica knits her hands together and stares at me.

  I want to give her an answer, something that might make her smile, but the best I can come up with is: ‘I don’t know. I really don’t.’

  Monica nods. ‘She’s got us this time.’

  A week goes by. Let me take you through it. Last Tuesday, the day Caroline ignores me, I drink a bottle of wine and add three new buildings to my Akarula model. The next day, mid-morning, Caroline marches in. I’m in the office doing paperwork. She stands in front of my desk, arms folded, and says, ‘Seeing as you’re not bothering, can you at least watch Moni.’ Not bothering? What’s that supposed to mean? She doesn’t give me a chance to ask or explain, just rushes out as if she’s being chased. What difference will an hour make? Mid-morning is our time. Ordinarily Mike would still be asleep.

  Thursday, Caroline and Mike come in exhausted. I’ve made dinner, which neither of them eat. Mike plays around with his cutlery. When I turn on the light – we’ve been sitting in the dark – Mike says, ‘I don’t believe…’ and stops right there, looking down at his knife as if he’s never seen one before. Then he sinks into his half-sleep state. Caroline flaps around, fetching water for his bloody pills, but then he springs to life. ‘I’m going back out.’ He lets his knife fall to the floor.

  ‘There’s no point searching in the dark,’ I tell him as he does up the laces on his boots.

  Caroline tacks on behind him, turning to say, ‘He won’t sleep until he finds her.’

  So Mike is suddenly the hero; and the way Caroline’s been looking at me lately, I must be the Anti-Christ. If I worked like a dog, would that make me a better person? Is it a sin to live the easy life? No life is easy. Surely she knows that. There are people searching; detectives on the job. Why not let them get on with it? She’s furious with me for not beating myself into the ground like her and Mike. I know she is, but she doesn’t realise that I’m already ten feet under.

  Well that was Thursday. Then Friday I meet her in the shop, just as I’m leaving to go and check some details for the fencing contractor who is due to arrive any day. We hover either side of the crisp stand. Caroline asks where I’m going. When I tell her, she shakes her head in disbelief. I understand that she’s distraught, but why take it out on me? Can’t she see what I’m doing? Doesn’t she get the fact that I am trying to protect everyone?

  ‘What’s happened to you, Eddie?’

  Frankly I wasn’t going to get into one of her brain-wrecking conversations, so I left it at that.

  Saturday comes and goes. I don’t see Caroline at all; she basically avoids me. Sunday, she is out all day, searching with the rest of them. I check up on Monica every now and then, but I’ve got work to do. And she seems fine. She’s an independent sort of girl.

  Mike comes in around lunchtime with a small plastic figure in his hand, which is hard to see because it’s caked in dirt. He shows it to Monica, who just shrugs and goes back to her book. I ask him what he’s doing.

  ‘Thought it might have been Georgie’s. I found it behind one of the portacabins,’ he says, wiping it clean with his shirt flap. When he leaves, I throw the figure in the bin. Does he really think this will help?

  Mike spends most of Monday with the detectives, and I figure that if I’m going to make it up with Caroline, now is my chance. We’re in the kitchen. I rustle Monica onto her feet, and ask Caroline if she wants to come for a drive.

  ‘A drive?’ she says, acting all furious again before storming out and forgetting her sun hat.

  My niece and I drive round to the general store, which is more or less in the middle of the street. Monica shoots off down the side of the wall to fetch the watering can. Ellie Warton may have given up with the lawn, but the tubs are a blaze of colour: some sort of thick-leafed ivy, and a succulent with reddish leaves that Michael calls Devil’s Tail.

  ‘Post arrived?’ I ask as I go in. The store is like a cave, with metal shelves stacked up to the ceiling. Ellie is piling bags of sugar in a pyramid on the counter. She’s the kind of woman you can imagine baking bread in the middle of a typhoon.

  ‘Well?’ she says, with her customary sigh. She is the oldest of the Akarula women, fifty-something at a guess. Her husband, Scott, has been a miner, or at least involved in mining, for over thirty years.

  ‘I thought I heard the mail plane.’

  ‘About an hour ago. I expect this is what you’re looking for.’ There are a pile of letters and small packages on the counter, but then I see the box on the floor behind her. Ellie plucks at the dark hairs on her chin as she studies me.

  ‘They said it was a big one.’ I go round and try to lift it, but can’t shift the thing more than an inch.

  ‘Weight of a dead body,’ she says without smiling.

  I push the box outside.

  ‘Wait up.’ Ellie goes through to the back and comes out wheeling a trolley. Together we manage to lug the box onto the metal prongs. Can’t say I especially like this woman. Her eyes are too small; they make her look mean. Both of us watch Monica spray the flowers with that red tin watering can.

  ‘How’s Scott getting on?’ I wheel the box over to the truck with Ellie bent over holding on to the front.

  ‘Asthma’s at him.’ She runs her hand down the side of the box and then pins me with one of her small-eyed stares. ‘How old is she?
’

  ‘Four.’

  She nods and shifts round to Monica. ‘Aren’t you the best helper? Wait up till I see what I can find.’

  Monica is not stupid. Every time she waters Ellie’s tubs, she gets a free notebook.

  ‘What’s in the box?’ Monica asks as we drive back.

  ‘A surprise for your dad.’

  At the service station, I pull up outside the shed, and push the box in with Monica’s help. Mike’s birthday is not for another week.

  And now it’s Tuesday again. A handful of people have already turned up to complain about their bounced cheques. I explain that there has been a miscommunication and assure them that I will sort it out. I’m on a thin rope, though. Any day now the bank will send their house-thieves in to repossess the lot, unless I can convince them to stay. People are restless. My fence should be up in a week, which will lend some security to the place. It doesn’t help that Delaney and her sidekick are going round like a pair of scaremongers. They’ve already stayed too long. The last time it was only three days.

  It’s not that I don’t want to believe in this searching business. I don’t want to put a damper on their efforts, but between you and me, what are the chances? How many days is it now? Twelve, and no sign. She could turn up – I’m not saying she won’t – but you have to admit that it’s unlikely. All we can reasonably hope for is to find a few bones.

  It’s not clear who exactly calls the meeting on Wednesday night. I get word from Maddie, who has heard from Vera. Vera tells us it will be in the back room of the bar. We congregate around 8 pm. The pool table has been pushed to one side and the chairs are arranged in a horseshoe in the centre. There are notable absences: Delaney and Walsh, Mike, who has stayed to see to Monica, and Mr M. Caroline sits next to Maddie. I stand at the back, by the open door, prepared for a quick exit. The time for rousing speeches encouraging them all to stick together, to stay put, has come and gone. Maddie’s husband, Jake, speaks first, addressing everyone from the front.

  ‘We all know why we’re here.’ There are a few nods and murmurs of agreement, but most of us wait for him to carry on. ‘We’ve searched the entire area. Every man in this room was at the mine on the day Georgina disappeared.’ I consider pitching in at this point, but what’s the use. ‘Vera can account for most of the women. Someone somewhere knows where that girl is. It’s about time we got some answers.’

  There is a smattering of applause, but the general mood is cautious. Scott Warton, a butcher of a man with age against him, gets up.

  ‘I hear what you’re saying, Jake, but we can’t go taking the law into our own hands. I say let the police deal with him.’ He wheezes. Vera passes him a glass of water.

  Jake retorts, ‘They’ve had two years.’

  I can feel the temperature rising. I’ve heard all the sacred ground skin and bone stories, the sorcery hair-burning crap, but I wasn’t expecting this. I’m halfway through the door when Caroline’s voice stops me. She is standing in the centre of the room.

  ‘I am going to find my daughter. She is out there somewhere.’ There is a respectful silence as she walks through the crowd, right past me.

  I go after her. ‘I don’t know what the hell that was about,’ I say. She keeps walking. ‘What are they going to do? Taking the law into our own hands.’ I’m not expecting her to speak; that’s why I rattle on. I just want to be near her.

  She stops when we reach the last house before the bend, and turns to face me. ‘Do you realise that we were having sex when Georgie went missing? I was with you instead of looking after my daughter. I was with you. And now I’m being punished. I deserve to be punished.’ Her face splinters; she cries loudly as her body crumples over. I catch her with both hands before she hits the ground. All I can do is hold onto her. ‘I was with you,’ she keeps repeating as she cries. Maybe she’s right, maybe this is some kind of punishment. But hearing her voice, feeling her breath against my chest, makes everything seem alright.

  Day fourteen. I’m in the shop totting up the figures from the day before, waiting for the fencing contractor to arrive. He promised to come last Thursday. If this firm wasn’t the cheapest, I’d have gone elsewhere. I’m bound to lose one or two houses, I know that. Like last time. If people understood that leaving their houses will result in the bank taking them, maybe they’d stay? Nobody wants to see a town disappear.

  They are still looking – the women, Mike, Caroline. The men have gone back to work. Mike has figured out that if Georgie sips 12 ml of water per day, she could survive for up to three weeks, even more. It all depends on how full that bottle was in the first place. No one has bothered to point out that a four year old is unlikely to make such calculations, and what about food?

  A Barrier Lines truck pulls up outside. The rep sidles in, chewing gum. Not a good start, as far as I’m concerned.

  ‘Harry Redman from Barrier Lines.’ The young fella shakes my hand vigorously, a bright-eyed, sun-tanned type with ragged golden locks. No doubt dances a rare tune with the ladies. ‘I’ve got the fastest team in the business,’ he says.

  ‘I want the best team in the business.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He makes me feel like an old man with his jaunty attitude and his gum. I fetch the plans from the office and spread them out on the counter, circling the whole area, including the patch that used to be mined by Opal Exports.

  ‘You want the fence to go around the town?’ he asks, despite my having just illustrated as much. ‘Afraid of a roo invasion?’

  ‘Can you do it?’ I say dryly. His laugh irritates me; the shine off his oversized forehead irritates me. I can smell his sweat-drenched skin.

  He nods and writes down the price. ‘We’d like half upfront. Company policy.’

  Smarter than I thought. I write a cheque. That buys me three, four days. By then the fence will be up, according to his estimate. We can renegotiate later. This was Willie’s end of the business. He would put the thumbscrews on and get the price right down, tell them he’d found a better deal. I did try getting Willie back, offered to double his salary, but he was adamant. That place gave me the heebegeebees is what he said.

  The Barrier Lines rep turns out to be a curious soul. ‘What’s with this place, anyway?’ I rip out the cheque and hand it over. ‘They found that girl yet?’

  ‘You and your men best get started then.’

  He folds the cheque, pinching the crease between his fingers before tucking it into his shirt pocket. Smug git.

  I sit on the stool behind the counter, staring at the plans for the fence. You’ve always got to factor in some additional costs. With this fence, it’s the principle of the thing that matters, like having an alarm box outside a house; it acts as a deterrent, gives a feeling of security. That’s what counts.

  Mike creeps in so quietly I don’t notice him until he drops his bag down on the other side of the counter.

  ‘I’m taking Moni to the hospital for tests. The fevers are getting worse. We’ll be back first thing in the morning. Keep an eye on Caroline.’ I think of telling him he looks like a shipwreck, but what’s the point?

  ‘What do you think of this?’ I follow the pencil-lined fence with my fingertip.

  Mike stares at the map for a second. ‘Did you hear what I just said?’

  ‘She’s in safe hands,’ I tell him as the door swings shut.

  Caroline calls over after dark. I’m expecting her. In fact I’ve rustled up a culinary masterpiece.

  ‘Did Mike ring?’ she asks. No smile, nothing. She hovers in the doorway.

  I tell her to sit. ‘I made your favourite.’ I’ve also opened a bottle of claret, perfect with steak. Caroline appreciates good cuisine, and I’m a fairly decent cook: steaks, stir-fries, Sunday roasts, that sort of thing.

  She fiddles with her watch – the one I bought her for her last birthday, a genuine crocodile strap – and tells me she’s not hungry.

  ‘You will be.’

  I finish laying the table. There are no candles
to hand, so I light the kerosene lamp and switch off the main light. I move the dirty cups off the work surface and dump them in the sink. Since Monica stopped cleaning, the place has started smelling a bit. When I turn off the grill, Caroline is standing with her fist around the door knob.

  ‘Come on. Just sit.’ I pour the wine. I need her to stay, at least for a while. Truth is, I’m bloody lonely without her.

  The wine licks the sides of the glasses before it settles. I take a sip.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ she asks, so quietly I can barely hear. ‘Why aren’t you out there with us? Don’t you care?’

  ‘Of course I do.’ I’ve been trying to hold this town together, get a fence put up, reassure people. That’s my job. I can’t give up like the rest of them.

  ‘Eddie.’ She stares at me. ‘What’s going on?’

  I pull out a chair for her. She hesitates before stepping forward. Her hair is all over the place, she has no make-up on, and is still in the same pale blue dress she wore yesterday and the day before; this is a woman who prides herself on her appearance. And yet she looks more beautiful than ever. I stand behind her until she finally sits.

  ‘Eat this and then we’ll go. I’ll drive us out along the Wattle Creek road. We can use the spotlight.’

  I dish up the food and sit at the other side of the table. ‘She could turn up … anywhere.’

  Caroline pushes her plate to one side. ‘What else haven’t you told us?’

  I take another sip of wine. ‘If I’d have known … I didn’t think it mattered.’

  She jumps up, jerking the table, spilling wine. ‘Two people disappear and you don’t think it matters? My God, Eddie, you’re a heartless bastard. And there was me thinking you might actually feel something.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. I didn’t want to scare you, not before we’d found her. Listen to me.’ I try to reach her but she pulls away. ‘I love you.’

  When she turns back, her face has set into a pyramid of dark lines. ‘Twenty-three women spent today searching for Georgie, and yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. We’ve been searching for two weeks.’