by Lily Malone
‘You don’t mean that,’ he said.
‘Yes she does,’ her mum said, listening quietly by Jaydah’s side.
CHAPTER
37
‘I ache all over,’ Brix moaned to the nurses, the doctor and anyone else who stood still long enough to listen while they marked his observation chart. He was allowed to moan. His back hurt like a bastard.
They’d showed him a mirror and he was ugly red and purple. It hurt to breathe, walk or move a muscle, even while they bandaged two broken ribs and kept telling him he would be okay and he was lucky.
‘You should go buy a Lotto ticket, Mr Honeychurch,’ one nurse said. ‘You fell twenty feet off Cutters Cliffs, knocked yourself out and someone was there to pull you out. You’re the luckiest man in Chalk Hill.’
He didn’t feel lucky. He felt clumsy, embarrassed, a bit stupid and damn pissed off. He’d buried his mum today from the result of an inoperable brain tumour. He might have had to bury his wife, unborn child and in-laws because of a cancer of the human kind.
What kind of man did that to his family?
What kind of man did that, period?
There was no point trying to get his brain around Keith Tully. Brix couldn’t come at it. Couldn’t fathom it.
Today could have turned out so much worse than a couple of broken ribs.
He was lying on the crisp white hospital sheet cursing all this luck when JT flung back the blue curtain around his bed. She paused at the sight of him, before she kept coming.
This is gonna hurt.
‘Oof, go steady there, hey,’ he said, as Jaydah wrapped him in a hug that rocked the trolley on its wheels, her hands fluttering everywhere: hair, face, chest.
‘Are you okay? They said you’re okay. I can’t believe you’re okay.’ Each okay was punctuated with a kiss.
‘I’m okay,’ he growled. ‘I’m an idiot for thinking a hunk of old rope would hold my weight. What if it broke before I got to you? I wouldn’t have been very lucky then.’
‘You saved my life, Brix,’ she said, brown eyes shining. ‘You saved Jaz too. I don’t know what Dad was planning, but I don’t think he ever intended for either of us to get back down off that cliff alive. You saved us. You saved us again. You were amazing.’
He harrumphed and looked away.
‘Brix, you were amazing. Thank you so much … for me, for my sister, for Mum.’ She palmed the side of his face and touched her belly. ‘For the little dude in here.’
That made him forget how much of an idiot he was, just for a minute. He put his hand on her tummy and squished near her belly with his thumb, marvelling as he always did at the thought of everything going on under that gorgeous skin.
‘Where’s your dad?’ he said eventually. ‘I guess they pulled him out too?’
‘No such luck for him. He’s dead. An expert police diver found him trapped by the same branch that got you, just deeper.’ She shook her head. ‘Don’t you dare say you’re sorry.’
‘I’m not sorry. I’m glad he’s gone.’
‘Good. I’m not either.’
‘Does Jaz know about your dad?’
‘Not really. Mum drove her back to Jake’s. Mum didn’t even wait for the divers to find him. He fell from higher up than you so he went deeper. I hope there was a time when he looked up and saw the light but couldn’t get there. I hope he knew he was stuck. I hope he panicked.’
Brix grabbed her hands inside his, stilling the fluttering fingers that continued to touch him, feel him, prod him as if to make sure he was there.
‘He’s gone and he can’t hurt us. None of us. Not ever again.’
‘Excuse me.’ A too-cheerful nurse who looked barely old enough to leave school burst into the room to do his observations. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘I’m fine. Will I have to stay in overnight?’
‘I don’t think so,’ she said.
‘I’ve never spent a night in hospital before,’ he said. ‘Jake has. Jake had his tonsils out. Abe did too. Abe had his appendix out.’
‘It sounds like you think you’re missing out,’ the nurse said.
‘He did whack his head,’ Jaydah pointed out.
* * *
‘So you gave Mum a helluva send off,’ Abe said, much later that same night. ‘You’d think the one time you could take centrestage in life would be at your own funeral … but no. Here’s Brix to perform a dashing cliff rescue—need rescuing himself—and end up in hospital.’
‘You gotta admit. It’s impressive,’ Jake said, tilting his beer.
‘Give it a rest, you two. I feel bad enough as it is.’
‘Are the drugs wearing off?’ Taylor said. At least she had some sympathy for him.
‘No more yet,’ Jaydah chipped in sweetly. ‘Sorry.’
They were, if not drunk, at least tipsy, except him, Jaydah and Jasmine who’d dusted off her playing cards and quietly played her left hand versus her right hand at Snap off to the side. Even Rosalie held a drink. All Brix had was a cup of peppermint tea.
They were all at the farmhouse, inside around the woodfire after the wake ended abruptly thanks to the drama at Cutters Creek.
‘Your mum would have been proud of you, you know,’ Dad said. ‘All of you. You all turned out alright. All of you getting on with your lives. New ones on the way.’ He glanced at Jaydah and smiled his slow smile.
‘Don’t get maudlin now, Dad,’ Jake said.
‘He can get maudlin if he likes,’ Ella answered. ‘You do when you’re drunk.’
‘I do not.’
Ella smiled sweetly at him.
His dad stood abruptly and turned his back to the fire, lifting his glass. ‘I propose a toast.’
‘A toast!’ they answered, and everyone stood and raised their glass. Everyone, that is, except Brix because they’d be finished the toast before he made it to his feet. That nurse sure had bandaged his ribs up tight. Plus, had he mentioned: no drink? Stone cold sober?
‘To Val. She was the best life partner a bloke could ever have, and I’ll always love her and miss her. I will always be so proud that she said “yes” to me the day I asked her to marry me. I never thought a city lady—a school teacher, no less—would settle down on a farm with a bloke like me.’
Stan’s eyes shone.
Everyone’s eyes shone.
‘She was always right, and I was never wrong. It made for some pretty hefty arguments, I can tell you. The beautiful thing about Valerie was—’ Here his dad’s voice broke for the first time. ‘The beautiful thing about Valerie was she had a heart big as the world, and somehow she always managed to find more space in it. Just when I’d think there couldn’t be room in her life to love another person, or plant another garden, or bake another coconut chocolate brownie, or to help a single other soul, she’d find more space in it … there was always more space with Val.’
That was it. He couldn’t go on.
Brix raised his cup of peppermint tea. ‘To Mum,’ he said.
‘To Valerie,’ his dad added. ‘I loved you with every bit I had. And I’ll miss you with all the bits left over. Every day, Val. Every day.’
In hushed tones around the fire, they answered: ‘To Mum.’ ‘To Valerie.’
Then each of them sipped at their drink.
CHAPTER
38
Her father’s house looked exactly as it had on Christmas Day, when she’d driven out of the gate vowing never to return. Low-slung under its iron roof, on a paddock flat as a dinner plate, cardboard sheet in the broken window and poor chained-up Hammer howling venom out the back.
She’d have to call the ranger to come get Hammer, a death sentence for the dog but he was a one-owner kind of animal, every bit as angry and unpredictable as her dad. Better the ranger put him down humanely than he starve to death on the chain.
Jaydah parked near the house and climbed out, looking around.
The rock bays at the front were almost empty, just a few loose river rocks left in a far corner. Had he done
any work himself after they’d left?
The wind stirred a willy-willy and dropped it to die to nothing.
Jaydah steeled herself, and walked up the steps.
The front door wasn’t locked. The house was dark and quiet.
It took her eyes a while to adjust. When they did she noticed the layer of dust everywhere, floors, skirting boards, television screen. She wandered towards the kitchen, trailing her fingertips against the wall before wiping her hand against the leg of her jeans.
Something moved low down in the corridor gloom and every hair rose on the back of her neck.
‘Ginger Puss! You scared me half to death!’ She knelt as the cat rubbed against her legs, ginger head bunting into her ankles, and she picked him up, holding him close. ‘Didn’t he feed you, Ginger Puss? You’re so skinny!’
He purred in her arms, a rumbling, soothing sound, and she walked with him into a kitchen which smelled of an old man’s cooking: oil, the throat-coating greasy scent of baked battered fish and crumbed chicken from a frozen box. Onions. Coffee.
There must have been eight coffee cups in the sink, and every teaspoon they owned all clustered inside one.
Jaydah thought about opening a window, and didn’t. ‘We won’t be here long,’ she said to the cat.
When the fireban lifted she’d come back, maybe with her mum if she wanted to come. Maybe with Brix. Maybe on her own.
Jaz had already declared she didn’t want to come to the old farm ever, and it wouldn’t be fair if they made her, and it wouldn’t be her choice, and she was never going back to the old farm or shovelling rocks ever, and when were they going home to the new farm because Tara the horse would be lonely.
Next time Jaydah came here she’d take everything that was her father’s: every red and grey checked shirt he owned, every pair of boots, every change of jeans, all his hated leather belts, and she’d bring them out armload after armload and burn the lot in one of the rock bays.
Burn every trace.
For now, all she wanted was any of their personal papers in the suitcase her mum said Keith kept on top of the wardrobe in their bedroom.
The cat purred, bunting at her jaw.
‘And you, Ginger Puss. We’ll take you to a better place too.’
* * *
Brix, Jake and Abe, with their father, scattered Val’s ashes a week after her funeral from the white-railed bridge across Chalk Hill Bridge Road.
It was late afternoon, with the sun gone from the western sky and the sunset making a yellow-gold glow on the shadowed treetops.
The lights strung along the verandah at Chalk ‘n’ Cheese café blinked and winked at them, as if Nanna Irma stood on the porch, waving.
‘Jesus,’ his dad said, taking a firmer grip on the box in his hands. ‘Get out the way, Abe. Another truck’s coming through.’
They all clambered off the narrow bridge—Brix still stiff with his healing ribs—while they waited for the vehicle to pass.
‘I remember the time you’d be lucky to see one car a day come across this bridge,’ Dad said. ‘We could play cricket out on this road and never see a soul. Or tennis. I drew a cartoon on the road one time and it stayed there a week. I reckon it was only the rain that washed it away.’
‘It’s the new road,’ Jake said. ‘No going back now.’
‘And they call it progress,’ Dad grumbled.
‘Come on, then,’ Abe said. ‘Here’s our chance.’
The four of them strode to the middle of the bridge.
‘Go on, Dad,’ Jake said, as their dad opened the box and hesitated.
‘I don’t want to let her go.’
‘It’s what she wanted,’ Brix said.
‘I know.’
‘And what she wanted, she got,’ Jake said.
‘I know that, too.’
Stan changed his grip on the box, tipping it.
‘Hold on,’ Abe said.
‘Bloody hell, Abel. You’ll give me a heart attack. What’s wrong now?’
‘Which way’s the wind blowing?’
They all checked.
‘There’s hardly any wind at all,’ Jake said.
‘We don’t want her to blow back in our faces.’
‘Jesus, Abe. It’s not like we’re standing on the bridge about to piss off it,’ Jake laughed, which meant they were all laughing as their dad gently tipped the box, and grey-black ashes skidded from it. The last earthly part of Val Honeychurch drifted to the surface of Cutters Creek, and lazed ever so gently away.
‘Rest in peace, Val.’
‘Love you, Mum.’
EPILOGUE
‘There!’ Jaydah said, making one final swish with the short-bristled broom. The verandah of the cottage at Whale Rock Wines gleamed newly slick as the timbers soaked up the decking oil.
She put her hands to her back and kneaded, then arched, stretching her spine.
‘Don’t you go having that baby before your husband gets home,’ her mum called across at her as she stepped down out of the caravan. ‘I might drive with my licence but I do not want to drive you to the hospital!’
‘I’m not having the baby.’
‘You are nesting.’
‘I’m not nesting. I’m home improving. There is a big difference.’
‘You’re nesting.’ Her mum nodded confidently. ‘It won’t be long now.’
‘You’ve been saying that for a month. Brix Junior is in no rush.’
‘This boy will come out and I will be calling him Brix Junior instead of his name!’
‘Well, till he comes out and I get to look at him, he’s Brix Junior. I don’t think I can give him a name till we see what he looks like.’
‘Shall I cook tonight for all of us, my Jaydah? Or would you and Brix like to eat by yourselves?’
‘I don’t feel like cooking, but are you sure you’re not too tired?’
Her mum had been cleaning all day. She’d got a job for a local cleaner and worked two days a week at one of the upmarket accommodation lodges near Dunsborough.
‘I’m not too tired and I’m happy to cook for my family. Brix and your sister will be home soon. She’s always starving after swim squad.’
‘She’s always starving, full stop!’
Her mum chose some Asian greens from the vegie patch and picked lemongrass from where it sprouted from an upturned wine barrel they’d planted out with herbs, and took it back into the caravan.
Jaydah rubbed her back again, then wrapped her arms across the enormous mound of her tummy. The baby had been kicking all day. Perhaps he practised his sinawalis.
She smiled.
Some way down the driveway, the sound of an approaching vehicle drifted on the air and soon Brix’s white Toyota churned the gravel in the drive, wheels sending up dust.
The baby kicked as the car slowed and then stopped, and Jaz burst from the passenger seat.
‘Jaydah, Erik taught us dolphin kicks today so we can all learn to do butterfly. I used fins like a mermaid’s fins and I strapped it on my feet and I can kick underwater like a dolphin. I got the whole way up the lane at the pool, didn’t I? Didn’t I, Brix?’
‘I reckon you did, Jaz,’ Brix said, grabbing Jaz’s swimming bag from the back of his ute.
‘I’m hungry,’ Jaz said, and she took two paces towards the caravan she shared with their mum.
This van wasn’t Stan and Val’s. They’d given that back so Stan could take it up north for some sunshine to get away from the Chalk Hill winter and Jaydah bought a new one with some of the proceeds from the sale of her father’s farm.
This van was larger, older, with its own inside toilet and a shower, and since they’d put it there it had settled into its surroundings. There were pot plants around it, a tumble of orange geraniums (Jaz chose the colour), and because Brix hadn’t had the whipper-snipper up here for a while, green weeds grew around the black tyres, tips licking at the van’s white underbelly.
The van sat on the far side of the carport and Brix had bu
ilt an annexe for it around the carport beams. Her mum and Jaz had their own outdoor setting under there, looking over the fruit trees and the vegie patch where Jaz grew carrots by the bag-load for the neighbour’s horses, which she continued to run across the paddock to visit most mornings when she didn’t have to work at the winery.
These days she worked on the bottling line, as well as making boxes.
‘Did you say thanks to Brix for picking you up from swimming lessons?’
‘Thank you, Brix, for picking me up from swimming.’
‘No problem, Jaz.’
The van door slammed behind her twin, leaving Jaydah with Brix, as the wind curled through his hair and threw her own about her face. The wind here in Margaret River was so much softer than in Chalk Hill, Jaydah thought, not for the first time as the air brushed her cheeks.
‘Hey there, JT,’ he said, sidling in behind her, taking a moment to run his hands over her tummy. ‘Is Brix Junior kicking today?’
‘Brix Junior sure is.’
She lifted her lips for his kiss, felt her hair tangle between his chin and hers and pulled it out of the way.
‘Thanks for picking Jaz up.’
‘No trouble. I had a chat to Erik while I was at the pool.’
‘How’s he going?’
‘He’s good,’ Brix said, nuzzling into her neck.
In the last year, Ella’s ex-husband had retired from coaching his elite swimming squad in Perth and now he acted as a consultant for regional towns trying to put a swimming pool program together, much the same as he and Ella had done over the last two years for the Chalk Hill pool.
They saw Erik in Margaret River every two months or so, and he’d been spending extra time with Jaz who, he said, showed enormous potential for distance swimming. Like, long distance. Really long distance.
They’d laughed at Peppermint Beach Grove last summer about Jaz swimming to Africa if someone didn’t stop her, and they weren’t far wrong!
‘Erik said he’s going across to Chalk Hill at the weekend to see Ella, Sam and Jake. Heidi is going with him. He said Taylor and Abe have booked their trip to Brugge and they’ve offered Erik and Heidi to stay at their place while they’re away, anytime they like.’
