Swimming on Dry Land

by Helen Blackhurst

  Michael comes out of the office. On seeing me all dressed up, his face tightens with confusion. I feel ashamed. It’s wrong to do this when Georgie is… but for Moni’s sake, I carry on.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asks, staying where he is.

  ‘Nothing,’ Moni says, grinning at him as she hides the cake behind the settee and then bobs down to light the candles.

  We sing Happy Birthday. It feels like the saddest song in the world. But then he smiles at Moni and acts the clown, dancing around her like he always does on her birthday. Keeping my promise to Moni, I dust off the record player and flip through Eddie’s albums, choosing Elvis Presley, one of Michael’s favourites. He used to do a great Elvis impression.

  While he cuts the cake, I set the needle on the record. The first track is ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. Moni takes Michael’s hand and gets him dancing. She reaches out for my hand too, and all three of us dance in a sort of wavy line around the room, joining in with the song.

  When the next track begins, Moni stops dancing and asks: ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Where’s what?’ I am afraid she’s going to start raving on again about Georgie being locked away, but instead she peers around the back of the settee and underneath the table.

  ‘Dad’s present,’ she says.

  ‘By the record player.’

  ‘Not that one. The present from Uncle Eddie.’

  ‘You’ll have to ask him. Here you go.’ I hand her the book to give to Michael, which she thrusts at him impatiently.

  He makes the usual fuss and the pair of them sits together on the settee, flicking through the photographs. I continue to dance on my own, even though the music has stopped.

  The next day Eddie bursts into the caravan, jabbering something about the mine closing down. He hangs onto the doorframe as he speaks. ‘It’s not legal. We have to stop them. Where’s Michael? Let’s go.’ He’s hyperventilating from running in the heat and can barely see for the sweat clouding his eyes.

  ‘I have to stay with Moni.’

  ‘Come on, Monica, we need your help.’ He claps his hands at her.

  She is absorbed in a new book she has found, but eventually she looks up, nodding at her uncle as she slides her feet into her flip flops.

  I wrap a scarf around my head. ‘What’s the rush? I ask. ‘If they’re closing the mine, there’s not a lot we can do about it.’

  ‘Not enough miners they say. That’s bullshit.’ He shepherds Moni out as he continues. ‘They’ve been against me from the start. If John was still alive, he’d have sorted this out. I should have seen it coming.’

  I’ve no idea what he is talking about. His obsession with this town would be almost comical if it weren’t so grotesque. But I follow him across the tarmac anyway; we both do. He has developed a stoop from constantly tilting his head towards the ground. Michael has somehow grown taller and Eddie looks like a stunted old man.

  Moni drops back and yanks my arm. ‘When are we leaving?’ Michael’s been filling her head with the idea of moving to Adelaide. He thinks we should carry on looking for Georgie there, but we won’t find her in Adelaide. She didn’t disappear in Adelaide. He says it will be better for Moni. Seemingly the doctor, Susan, agrees, although I suspect the whole thing was her idea in the first place.

  ‘We’re not going anywhere just yet,’ I tell Moni.

  ‘Everyone else is leaving.’

  ‘Well….’

  ‘Georgie isn’t here.’

  ‘Shut up.’ I don’t mean to snap.

  Eddie leads us past the service station and on towards the bend in the road, continuing to jabber away to himself. His save-my-town speech would have infuriated me a few days ago, but I am past caring. He spins around to face us, gesturing at Moni until she speeds up to walk beside him.

  ‘Why did those men put up that fence?’ she asks.

  ‘To keep us safe.’

  I elaborate on Eddie’s weak explanation. ‘It’s your Uncle Eddie’s idea of a joke.’

  Moni narrows her eyes, looking utterly confused.

  We continue walking in a line. Just before we reach the bend, Eddie says: ‘They don’t feel safe. Nobody gets a good night’s sleep. I see my houses being driven off and I can’t stop them. There’ll be no one left.’

  ‘Stop it,’ I tell him.

  Seconds later, Moni shouts, pointing frantically at a small group of people who are watching one of the houses being craned onto a removal truck.

  ‘I thought they were your houses, Uncle Eddie?’ she says.

  ‘They are.’ Eddie breaks into a run.

  I search the faces, looking for Michael, but he’s not there. Maddie calls me over, waving a piece of paper in the air. When we reach her, she thrusts the paper towards me.

  ‘We’ve been given our marching orders,’ she says.

  I scan the notice, and look up to see Eddie barging his way through the spectators towards the crane.

  Maddie goes on to explain, ‘The bank is taking the rest of the houses within the week. Someone’s not been paying the bills.’ Her voice dissolves into the wash of noise.

  I watch Eddie on the other side of the road. His face pales as another of the houses gets winched up onto the back of an articulated lorry. He darts over to the lorry, shouting, and tries to pull the driver out. There is so much noise and dust. And suddenly Eddie is lying right in front of the lorry in the middle of the road. I feel myself drifting off, up and away, as Mr M emerges from the crowd and crouches down beside Eddie. I see all this from a height. Someone throws a stone; it catches the side of Eddie’s head. Mr M takes Eddie by his arms and drags him to the side of the road. That’s when I come crashing back down.

  The morning heat is thickening. I flick on the fan. My legs are aching and there’s a blister on my neck where I forgot the sun cream. My reflection in the dark-veined mirror on the back of the wardrobe door startles me. I am all bone. No one can tell you what it’s like to lose a child. Wherever you go, whatever you do, the sense of loss clings to you like a rotten corpse. But it’s not like that either. It’s not like anything.

  They are calling today the final search. Surely the final search is the one where we find her? You don’t stop looking because someone decided eighteen days was the deadline. There are no deadlines when people disappear. I mark the calendar nailed onto the back of the caravan door with another diagonal strike of blue ink. As I step back, the strikes seem to topple like a stack of dominoes.

  I lift the net curtains above the sink and tuck them over the plastic-coated wire. Michael is standing by the pumps talking to Jake, whose large mouth sags a little as he points out something on the map they are holding between them. The map sags too. They must be planning the search. I’ve agreed to stay with Moni. All the women – there aren’t many – are sitting this one out: packing up, getting ready to move apparently. What do they imagine will happen if we don’t find her? That the book will be closed? A line will be drawn under this whole unfortunate incident– which is how I’ve heard people talk about Georgie’s disappearance. I don’t blame them. I would have left at the first sign of trouble had Georgie been someone else’s child. But they can’t leave; we’re all jailed in by this ridiculous fence.

  Michael glances up from the map and sees me – at least I think he does – but then he looks back down, shielding the side of his face with one hand against the sun. Jake Brenton gets into his blue station wagon and drives off. And I watch the man I fell in love with sixteen years ago walk around the petrol pumps and disappear behind the front wall of the service station.

  We don’t sleep together. Michael hasn’t touched me since the day he saw the cine-camera, not that he touched me much before, not since his depression, but I always felt he cared. I always knew he loved me. Not now. I grab a dirty t-shirt and rub a clean spot in the window, which hasn’t been wiped in weeks. One day of dust is enough to block the view. Maybe Michael couldn’t see me for the dust?

  I should feed the birds. Three of them, galahs,
are waiting patiently on the telegraph wire. Michael has neglected them lately. I don’t agree with feeding wild birds, but once you start, you have to carry on.

  In an attempt to boil some water, I strike four matches before I manage to light the stove. All the cups are stained. I scour the coronation mug to get rid of the tide-marks; they won’t come out. While I’m waiting for the kettle to boil, I rewrap Georgie’s clothes: a Wombles t-shirt, her favourite skirt, and the spotted socks she likes. Clean clothes for when … I put the skirt on the cushion first, then the t-shirt, resting her socks on top. It doesn’t look right. I have to move the socks to one side – which socks did she have on that day? Then I put the socks back on top again. The kettle whistles, filling the caravan with steam. I switch off the fan, lift the kettle from the boil, and go out to find Moni.

  At the pumps, the red-necked woman is filling her battered ute with petrol. When I reach her, she starts telling me that her house will be taken tomorrow. She’s got family north of Adelaide. After she has slotted the nozzle back into the pump slot, she wipes her hands down her baggy cotton trousers, still talking. Her lilting voice follows me around the pumps as I head into the service station shop.

  There is no one behind the counter. Karlin left days ago. It seems Eddie is trusting people to put their money in the till while he goes out looking for Georgie. Why does he suddenly care? Shouldn’t it be about more than a birthright? Is that what this is all about? Or maybe he’s just fretting about his town? He’s like a child trying to catch the pieces of a toy airplane that has been shot down.

  I call through the hall to Moni. ‘Don’t forget your hat.’ When I open the sitting-room door, I find her crouched down beside the table, staring at Eddie’s model town. ‘Where’s Uncle Eddie?’ I ask. ‘Where’s Dad? Who’s looking after you?’ She looks at me wistfully, and slowly stands. I talk fast to hurry her up. ‘Maddie’s leaving tomorrow. We should say goodbye.’ Moni’s eyes are fringed with tears but there is nothing I can do.

  I tousle her hair before I take her hand. She kisses my arm as we go through to the hall. The wet patch where her lips have touched my arm makes my skin tingle. In my head I tell her that I love her. I can’t say it out loud. As we pass through the shop, Moni steals a Marathon bar from the sweet rack and stashes it in her shorts pocket. I pretend not to notice. I pretend not to notice that she has one arm stretched out beside her, her hand curved slightly as if she is guiding someone, as if she is holding Georgie’s hand.

  When we hit the road, we push our way through the heat.

  ‘Is Dad with them?’ Moni asks, pointing over to a line of men a good way off on the far side of the fence.

  ‘Your dad will never give up.’

  If you look beyond the men, you can see the hazy line of the horizon, marking some kind of ending. In the past few days I’ve pictured Georgie just beyond that line, an inch farther than I can see.

  As we walk towards the bend in the road, Moni scrapes at the edges of the bush with a stick, stopping every few yards to lift up a stone or poke at a tuft of scrub grass, no doubt probing for insects. She has settled down a bit. The medication seems to help. At least she’s stopped talking like Georgie, or to Georgie, but I can still feel the ghost of my little girl standing between us.

  I see Georgie everywhere: in a clump of grass, in the cloud shadows on the ground. I see her waving at me, smiling, puckering up her lips like she did whenever I presented her with green food, and then her face gets distorted in the light and she fades back into the endless bush. Why didn’t I give her longer baths? Why didn’t I sing to her every night instead of when I felt like it? For a second, I close my eyes and try to hear the sound of her laughing as I poured the water over her head. I can see her, but I can’t hear her. I hear the scraping of Moni’s stick on the ground, the call of an occasional bird, a faint distant rumble that could be voices or a car; I can even hear my own breathing, but not Georgie. And then I lose sight of her too. All I see is this corrugated road of red earth that runs right into the sky.

  The street is empty, except for Mr M, sitting underneath the whitetree. I’ve often wondered whether he has children, what it was like here before the mine, why he stayed. There are things I’d like to ask him, but not now, so I deliberately veer off towards the other side of the road, passing him at a distance. Then I stop and wait for Moni. She is way behind, rooting in between a cluster of rocks. She doesn’t seem to understand what’s going on. It’s as if this is all a game, as if she’s still playing hide and seek. Maybe it is a game. Maybe Eddie’s right. We spend our lives learning the rules, and every now and then the rules change, but the game is still the same game.

  ‘Hurry up!’ I shout to Moni. It’s too hot to be hanging around. She puts something in her pocket and then runs, stopping abruptly beside Mr M. After nodding at him, she starts foraging for small stones.

  ‘Moni!’

  She is so intent on collecting stones that she doesn’t hear me. (Michael is the same; they both go conveniently deaf when they’re concentrating.) Moni places the stones in a ring around Mr M. I can’t see his face, but his back slackens; I imagine he is smiling. When she has used the last of the stones, she waves at him and kangaroo-jumps towards me with a big grin on her face.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ I ask.

  ‘He told me to. Look!’ She points up at a wedge-tailed eagle circling above us. ‘Do you think it’s hungry?’

  They’re like vultures, hovering around, swooping down on dead animals and picking the bones clean. I grasp a handful of dried earth and pelt it at the bird, though of course it doesn’t actually hit it. Nevertheless, the bird glides off.

  ‘You could have hurt it,’ Moni says, her face turning scarlet. She gets her temper from me.

  ‘They’re vermin.’

  Why would Mr M ask her to do that?

  A few yards before the first house – there are seven left – Moni crosses the street to get as far away from me as possible. It can hardly be called a street any more. I imagined something grand, something impressive, the way Eddie wrote about his miraculous town. The saddest thing is that he believed every word. I don’t understand why he let himself build up so much debt. These people paid rent. Though one thing Eddie’s good at is spending money. Like Maddie said, he’s a big fish who built himself too small a pond. But I can’t imagine him without this town – this street. He doesn’t seem to understand that there will be no Akarula without the mine, no mine without miners, and no one is prepared to live in a place where people disappear.

  The men look like small question marks in the distance. There is nowhere we haven’t looked. Michael is doing this search for me, for us, for what we used to be. He doesn’t really believe… I wave Moni over to Maddie’s house, which stands between the store and the bar. She crosses the road to join me, scowling. While I wait for her on Maddie’s patch of garden – a square of lawn resembling burnt toast – I pick the dirt from my nails.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, when she is a few steps away.

  ‘It’s alright.’

  I know it’ll be at least a day before I’m properly forgiven.

  Moni marches past me and knocks on Maddie’s door. I don’t know how I would have survived this town without Maddie. At the same time, I can’t imagine knowing her anywhere else, meeting her in England, for example, or even in Adelaide. We’re so different. The only thing that unites us is this town. It’s the same with all the women.

  Maddie hollers out, ‘It’s open,’ poking her head around the kitchen door as we step inside. She gives me one of her bear hugs. Her breath is rancid from drink. ‘I’m up to my neck in boxes. We’re meeting in the bar. The women want to say goodbye.’ She bends down to whisper in Moni’s ear. ‘You fancy a Coke?’

  Moni softens under Maddie’s generous smile. ‘Yes please.’ She doesn’t even like Coke.

  ‘I’m not sure I…’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Maddie interrupts, pushing her wiry hair off her face as she looks at me. ‘It�
��ll take your mind off things. There’s nothing we can do now except wait. Queeny said the detectives flew in. I think they went out with Michael earlier on. Maybe they know something we don’t.’

  I get a sudden surge of hope; it fills me to the brim. Maddie’s right; they must know something we don’t.

  Dropping her gaze back to Moni, Maddie says, ‘How you keeping? Your dad told me you’ve been up to the hospital again.’

  Moni nods before rummaging through her rucksack, producing her notebook and the matchbox. ‘Do you want to see it?’

  ‘What you got in there this time?’

  ‘A beetle. Not sure what sort. My dad will know.’ She sticks the matchbox underneath Maddie’s nose and slides it open.

  ‘My God, that’s some smell.’

  ‘They do that when they’re scared. It’s a defence mechanism.’

  ‘Defence mechanism. Where do you learn phrases like that? You’re a walking dictionary.’

  ‘Dad told me.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ I say, trying to take the matchbox, but she’s too quick. ‘Put the poor creature outside.’

  ‘Dad hasn’t seen it yet.’

  It’s Michael’s fault, this fascination she has with insects. He encourages her.

  Maddie chivvies us on. ‘We can’t sit here like ducks.’

  When we get outside, a wall of heat knocks me sideways. Maddie grips my arm. ‘Hold up,’ she says, fixing her other arm around my waist. ‘You’re going to have to start eating and sleeping. I can’t keep scraping you off the ground.’

  I take a few deep breaths to steady myself. ‘Why do you think they’re back?’

  ‘Those detectives? It’s anyone’s guess. I wouldn’t pin too much on it. They would have told you if they’d found anything. You look like hell. Come on. I’ll get Vera to make you a sambo.’

  Arm in arm, we walk awkwardly towards the bar. Moni prances on ahead, batting flies away from her face with that scraggy notebook.

  Inside, my eyes take a while to adjust. Thin cracks of light seep through the half-shuttered windows, lending the room an underwater feel that makes me think of Georgie in the bath. Once I sit, the dizziness goes away. Five women are propped on tall stools at the far end of the counter. They wave, saying they’ll be over in a minute. Their voices bounce off the hollow walls. The red-necked woman is the loudest.