After a makeshift dinner, Emma pulls a bottle of whisky from her backpack with feigned stealth and a provocative smile. ‘Leftover duty-free,’ she says. ‘I brought it back from down south.’
I shake my head. ‘I’m no good at whisky.’
She strokes the stem of the bottle with a finger. ‘Let’s see if we can help you to become friends.’ She finds ice in the back of my freezer, cracks several cubes into a couple of tumblers and pours a generous shot into each, then passes me a tumbler. ‘Cheers. And hey, we’re having a party on Saturday night. Eight o’clock start. Will you come?’
‘I’m not good at parties either.’
‘You’ll be fine. Bring your own grog.’
We sit down together in the lounge room. The fire burbles quietly, the flames licking at the glass, the muffled crackle of burning wood. Jess is curled up in the corner on her rug. It’s dark outside, and here in our circle by the fire, all is cosy.
‘Drink up,’ Emma insists.
I take a reluctant sip and brace myself as the whisky burns down to my chest.
‘Good, isn’t it?’ Emma smiles. ‘Have some more.’ She jiggles the ice around her glass and takes a gulp, sighing with pleasure.
Mincingly, I sip a little more, preparing myself for the shocking burn.
‘Not like that,’ Emma says. ‘That’s pathetic.’ She crawls forward across the couch and takes the glass from me. ‘Tip your head back. I’m going to teach you how to take a proper mouthful.’
She pours a slug of liquor into my mouth then covers my lips with hers and kisses me, forcing me to swallow. I gasp as the whisky scalds its way down. It doesn’t take long to feel a creeping warmth oozing through my body. Emma pours more whisky into my mouth, kisses me again, teases me with her tongue and with her hands, then passes whisky from her own mouth into mine and forces me to swallow that too. She sits back laughing, and the room is warm, and my body is comfortable and growing looser by the minute.
‘You need this.’ She smiles at me persuasively. ‘You’re so tied up inside. Here.’ She sloshes more whisky into my glass. ‘I’ll just get more ice.’
I sip obediently while she fetches the ice tray and drops a handful of cubes into my glass. She tops up her own glass and then switches off the light as she sits down. Now the room is dark except for the dim glow from the lamp, and the rosy shimmer of the fire.
‘There, that’s better.’ Emma tugs off her fleece and stretches her legs out across the couch. ‘How are you feeling now? Do you like it?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Have more, then.’
I take another good sip and the spreading warmth is wonderfully soothing. A smile plays on my lips as smooth as liquid.
‘Hold your glass towards the fire and have a look,’ Emma suggests.
I do as she says and find myself entranced by the fiery swirling bronze liquid. It really is a fine drink—complex, structured and colourful.
‘It’s like your skin,’ I say.
‘What?’
‘It reminds me of your skin.’
Emma laughs. ‘You want to feel my skin?’
‘Always.’
She laughs again and comes across the couch to kiss me. Everything about her feels fluid and light. I run my hands over the curves of her face, tracing her cheekbones, her lips, her eyebrows, losing myself in the outline of her face, the texture of her skin, my whole being swelling to have her close, pressed against me like this, intimate. My hands move urgently over the contours of her body, discovering and rediscovering, memorising her.
She pulls back too soon and pours more whisky into my glass.
‘So, are we going out?’ I ask bluntly, my tongue blurring in my mouth.
She laughs. ‘Of course we’re not going out. We’re staying in.’
She’s deliberately misunderstanding me, teasing me. I drink more, trying to find a way to overcome my shyness. I want her to tell me what Nick is to her.
With each sip of whisky, the next mouthful becomes more appealing. The urge in my groin simmers and subsides, eases to a mellow warmth. Her hand on me is heaven. I’m a bottomless well. Feeling is flowing in me, rippling back and forth, swirling and tumbling. And then the room is gently tipping, the curtains swaying, the couch rocking.
‘You need to talk.’ Emma massages my head with her fingers. ‘You need to let it all out. Let it come.’
Her voice seems thick around the edges, her words less distinct. I wonder if she’s riding on the same wave as me. I toss back the contents of my glass and reach for hers, toss that back as well. Pleasure shivers through me as the whisky intensifies its hold. Emma is staring at me, her face still with concentration, her eyes great wells of studious empathy and understanding. She’s hearing what I’m saying without words. She’s feeling my grief, my emptiness, my loneliness.
I lean back on the couch and start to talk without looking at her. ‘Emma, there’s so much I need to tell you . . .’
The sentences are halting at first. It’s easier without eye contact so I fix my gaze on the fire. ‘I had such a hard time down south . . . The winter was terrible. So dark. And so isolating . . . It had just started when my wife left me . . . Her name’s Debbie, my wife . . . My ex-wife, I mean . . . But the ship was gone, so I couldn’t go back . . .’
I have a sensation of stumbling over rocks and logs, trying to find my feet. But I struggle on. Emma is right. I need this. It’s good for me. Slowly I gain momentum. I allow the flickering flames to soothe me, and I talk and talk, the words rolling out like a hidden river.
‘Antarctica was tough for me. I loved it but I hated it.’ It’s the first time I’ve acknowledged this. Nine years to permit myself an honest analysis. ‘I blamed Antarctica for losing Debbie. And I blamed myself for going. Our relationship was good before I left. We were solid. Antarctica was our plan to get ahead. To make some money . . . I had this feeling I shouldn’t go. But I didn’t listen. Going was a choice. A conscious decision. I knew we were at risk, but I overrode it. The promise of the south was too good.’
Memories wash through me with the whisky, gaining strength in recollection. I am immersed in my own world and I continue, talking about Antarctica, the devastation of my marriage breakup, followed by Sarah’s rejection of me, and then my father’s death. Then all my baggage about Dad comes tumbling out, surprising me. ‘I keep remembering all those times I watched him leave the house when I was a boy, and I wished he’d ask me to come. I should have just tagged along; I’m sure he’d have let me. But I was afraid of him. Mum was easy. So kind and full of love. I felt safe with her. But Dad and I weren’t quite connected. I regret missing my chance with him. I can’t forget that.
‘And now my mum is dying.’ The last of it is welling out now. ‘But this time I’m here to watch over her. I’d be with her now, but she won’t let me. She’s in a cabin on Bruny Island. All I can do is make sure I’m there when the time comes. It’s what I want to do. To see her through to the finish.’
As I talk, I feel the weight coming off me, rising like a heat haze. Emma listens in silence and I talk until I’m spent and there are almost no more words to say.
For a suspended moment, I watch the flames licking slowly in the wood heater, not looking at her. Finally, I know I can tell her what I feel. ‘I didn’t expect to meet you, Emma. And you’ve changed me. You’ve given me back part of myself I didn’t think I’d find again . . . You’re so bold. So alive and confident. And you’ve made me feel like living again. You’ve made me want to embrace life. To clutch it with both hands. The way you do. I love you.’
Then, I’m ready to ask her about Nick. Having emptied myself out for her, at last I’m able to mention his name. ‘Emma . . . is something happening with Nick? Or are you with me?’ I turn to look into her eyes, to see what they reveal. And what I see is a woman asleep on the couch. Her head is cushioned on her elbow and her mouth is slightly open, her body slack.
I have no idea how much of my confession she has hear
d, if anything, and for a moment it is almost amusing. I allow myself a wry smile at the bungled timing of all this—my life story poured out to deaf ears. Then it occurs to me she certainly hasn’t registered the question about Nick. And with that realisation my soul folds.
I pour another whisky and drink it quickly, both despising and enjoying the renewed burn of it as I swallow.
And then, a glimmer in my mind. The birth of release. Despite the sludge of my drunkenness, I am aware enough to understand that whether Emma remembers any of it or not, she has triggered my purging, which was, perhaps, all that I needed of her.
I should thank her for that.
26
The morning was wet and miserable, and even though she’d been in bed since eight the previous evening, Mary was tired. Nights were no longer a time of rest. She propped herself up with every pillow in the cabin, but she still couldn’t breathe. If she lay down it was easy to imagine what it’d be like to die from drowning.
She’d been awake since dawn, listening to the weather. Intermittent rain drummed on the roof and spattered the windows and the clouds were low and sombre. She would have stayed in bed, but she couldn’t sleep for the coughing. And because of Jack, wandering through her room all night. He’d been watching her. Reminding her.
Since the scout camp, time had somehow folded in on itself. Leon came each day, and now he sat with her for longer. Or at least it seemed he was there for longer. He was kinder too, and wore a look of endless patience. Sometimes they sat together for hours. And perhaps sometimes Leon came more than once a day. But there were blank patches in her memory now, as one day collapsed into the next so she was no longer sure whether she’d been to bed, or whether she had slept or eaten. Days were as indistinct as the tufts of grass waving on the dunes in the endless wind.
Earlier in the week, her two sons had come, Gary and Tom. Was it Wednesday or Thursday? It didn’t matter. At least she remembered that they visited. She had known things must be getting worse for the two of them to show up—in her lucid moments she was aware of her deterioration. But Jan hadn’t arrived, so the end was not yet nigh.
It saddened her that Gary was so large these days—he was so big he seemed to fill the cabin, everything soft where it should have been firm. She now had to look hard within her son’s heavy features to see the slip of a boy he once was—all arms and legs, with Jack’s smile. Of course, Gary had never had Jack’s aloof shyness. Tom was comfortable saying only what needed to be said, but Gary seemed compelled to fill all the spaces with words. While Tom set the kettle on to boil in the kitchen, and found cups and biscuits, Gary reclined in the armchair and spun an endless monologue about work, Judy, the B&B, and Jan’s opinions about Mary’s health. Instead of listening, Mary found herself staring vacantly out the window, tuning in to the wind and the short blasts of rain that flushed in and out over Gary’s one-way conversation.
Tom was in a strange mood, very different from his last visit. Mary vaguely remembered something he’d said about a girl and the possibility of going south, but she couldn’t quite recollect the details. Perhaps the girl had already knocked the buoyancy out of him. Tom wasn’t very resilient when it came to relationships. He wasn’t very good at relationships at all. Poor lad.
She sensed he was brooding on something while he waited for the kettle to boil, but she concluded that he was blunted by the overwhelming presence of Gary in the room. She used to wish her two sons could be closer; however, there were too many years between them. They had spent too little time together as boys, and their personalities were too different.
If she’d anticipated what Tom was building up to, she might have been more prepared. But she had no idea what was brewing in his mind, no idea that he could rattle her so suddenly and so unexpectedly. Numbed by Gary’s constant blather, when Tom’s question came, she felt as though she’d been hit with a brick.
‘Mum, what happened in that storm on the cape before I was born?’
Gary spluttered tea and coughed biscuit. And Mary was breathless, unable to speak.
‘Something about a broken leg,’ Tom said. ‘Gary mentioned it the other day. Something to do with Auntie Rose.’
Gary tried to stop him with a voice like iron. ‘I told you to ask Jan. Not Mum.’
But Tom was looking at her, hopeful, unaware that her breathing had stalled and that she was drowning in shock and in lungs full of fluid. Drowning in a past that wouldn’t leave her alone.
Then the boys were hopping around her, white-faced and anxious, rubbing her back, holding her medication, pressing a glass of water to her lips. She was weak, and Tom was so horrified that he didn’t push further. But Mary knew she must provide some sort of answer. When she could talk again, she gave the boys her edited version of the saga. Not the veins and muscles and flesh of it—that was the stuff she planned to die with. Instead, she gave them small pieces of the facts.
‘There was a massive storm on the cape and the pony got out,’ she said. ‘I was trying to get him back inside when I had a fall from a cliff, breaking my leg. Prior to the storm, your father and I had been having a difficult time in our marriage. I suppose the accident saved us, in a way. We’d been on the cape so long we had forgotten how to appreciate it. Over the years we’d started taking things for granted. Like the beautiful place we lived in. And each other. It’s not hard to do. Life gets busy and you forget to look after one another. Then the accident happened. Your Aunt Rose came to stay for a while to help out while I was in hospital. While we were apart, your father and I realised how far our relationship had slipped. When I came home, we worked hard to fix things between us. It took time, and not all couples could do what we did. But we had your father’s courage and my perseverance. And hope arrived, in the form of you, Tom. I fell pregnant. You were unplanned—I’ll admit it. But you were a wonderful and fitting motivation for our recovery.’
Mary continued with her story, watching the attentive looks on the faces of her sons. She described Rose’s selfishness. Her laziness. The way she did little to help Jack around the house while Mary was in hospital. How Rose was more of an impediment to Jack than an assistant. She gave them a coloured truth.
Coloured truth, she believed, was far less sinful than a direct lie.
They had received an early storm warning from Maatsuyker Island to the south-west of Cape Bruny. Radio communication between the three south-eastern lights—Bruny, Maatsuyker and Tasman Islands—was a regular part of the daily routine. But even before the warning, they’d known the storm was coming. Purple clouds had been massing to the south all morning and the mountains of mainland Tasmania were obscured by a darkness that only came with heavy rains. By early afternoon, the skies were dark as dusk and the wind was shrieking.
From the moment they’d received the message from Maatsuyker, Jack and the head keeper had been skating over the cape, checking that everything was tied down. The grounds were always meticulously tidy, but they were worried about damage if the storm lived up to its potential. While the men were busy, Mary worked with Jan and Gary, bringing toys and bikes inside off the verandah. The cow was pleased to be led into the shed but they were unable to catch the pony. He was excited and skittish in the wind, galloping wildly across the slope, charging through each attempt to secure him. As the wind escalated, Mary and the children retreated to the cottage.
Jack dived in for a restless lunch, tossing back sandwiches and tea. His eyes were fastened on the window and the racing clouds. Little was said. Spattering rain was blowing in and out. He left quickly, hurrying to finish his tasks. Within the cottage, Mary knew they were safe; it had been built to withstand immense storms. And the light, too, had been constructed to stand for eternity. Jack would be safe up there.
For a while, she sat in the lounge room with the children, trying to knit. Gary was on the floor working on a piece of wood he’d been carving for days and Jan was curled up on a chair, reading a book. Outside, the wind gusted and shuddered under the eaves, whistling aro
und the walls and pressing under the door. Eventually, Mary set her knitting aside and went to the kitchen where she could watch the tower. Jack was up there somewhere, observing the weather, like her.
She wished this thought might give her comfort, but the vibe between them had not been good lately. She couldn’t remember how long it was since they’d turned to each other in intimacy—Jack had locked that part of himself away. And they hadn’t talked about anything of consequence for months. At the dinner table, they kept up appearances for the benefit of the children, but beyond that it seemed there was little love left. And yet, there must be something in her that cared for his well-being. In threatening conditions like this, she still worried that he might be injured. He was her husband, and she felt loyalty towards him, even though their relationship was hollow.
She watched as the rain arrived in large fat drops, slung into long smudges on the windows. Her view of the hill became bleary, and the tower seemed bent and twisted. Time moved slowly as she watched the clouds sink and the raindrops thicken. Halfway down the paddock, the pony huddled against the wind, his tail pressed into the rain. She felt sorry for him, alone out there when he could have been in the protection of the shed. Perhaps he’d let her catch him now. She set the kettle on the warmer and pulled on her coat and hat, calling to Jan and Gary not to venture outside. On the porch, she paused to listen to the wind roaring across the cape and the sheds banging and clattering in the blast, the rain pounding on tin. Then she hurried to the paddock. It’d be best to get this job over quickly and retreat inside.
The pony hadn’t moved. He was standing by the fence, and as she approached, her coat flapping, his eyes widened and nostrils flared. She managed to tie a rope to his head collar and turn him uphill, but he strained against her, trying to keep his rump into the wind.
At first she handled him gently, but as the cold and the rain beat into her face and he wouldn’t budge, she grew rougher and more insistent, dragging at his head. Exasperated, she leaned against his shoulder and tried to push him backwards. He took a step back, then another and they slowly progressed up the hill and out through the gate. Then the real trouble began.
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