He looked puzzled.
That was not quite fair of her, she thought. ‘Do you miss her now that you’re back here?’
‘It’s good with Dad, but it’s different up there, the city, lots of people. She talks about stuff that’s not the same.’
She waited for a moment, then said: ‘Is that why you came to visit me the other day, when I wasn’t home? To talk?’
Now she could see his colour change.
‘I thought you were home.’
‘No, Skel, you waited until I left, and then you came inside. What were you looking for?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. He couldn’t answer, not in words that made any sense. He knew it was something to do with the privacy of her room, the smell of it, her clothes, possessions, secret places that he wanted to enter. He wanted to find something.
‘I don’t want you to do that again … But I like seeing you. You can visit any time, so long as I’m here.’
He looked relieved.
‘My mum told me I’m not called Skel after a skeleton, like Dad said. That was Tinny making up a story, because he did have a skeleton hanging up in the bedroom area, and he talked to it, lots of times. He still does, even though it’s not there. She hated it and threw it away when she left. She said I’m really called Skelly, and it was a name she chose because it meant storyteller.’
‘That’s nice to know, Skel. I guess storytellers talk more than skeletons.’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you want to be called Skelly from now on?’
‘Maybe.’
The patches of light had disappeared and it was beginning to get dark among the trees. Skel stood up. ‘Where should I put this?’ he said, holding out the empty can.
‘I’ll take it.’
‘Thanks for the drink. I’d better go now.’
‘Yes. Nice to see you Skel … Skelly. You can visit again— you know that?’
He nodded and walked off. That evening he realised he’d spoken more words to Greta than to any other older person— except Tinny.
Greta went inside and began preparing her evening meal—fish and potatoes, and salad. Yet again. But it would be delicious.
‘That wasn’t so hard,’ she said aloud as she peeled the potatoes. Then, more quietly, ‘You don’t have to feel guilty; it’s not all your fault.’ She wondered what more she could have done, if anything. She sharpened the knife and neatly filleted the two fish lying on the benchtop.
Ten
The car windows were down and there was a light wind from the north-east. Her face was hot and her thighs were sticking to the seat. Maybe shorts were not such a good idea. Marvyn’s eyes were focused on the road, and for the last half-hour they had not spoken. She felt too drained for words.
‘Do you want to stop for a swim? There’s a waterhole not far off the road—it’s easy to get to.’
They were to meet up with a ranger on country and were ahead of time.
‘I’d love to, but I didn’t bring my swimmers.’
‘Well, nor did I. There’s probably no one else there.’
She nodded. ‘Give it a go.’
They drove about two kilometres along an unsealed road and then pulled into an empty carpark. For a moment they sat there, listening to the ticking of the engine. She had the beginnings of a headache. There was a sign posted on the narrow path: Waterhole.
‘Let’s do it,’ he said.
At the edge of the cliff, steps wound their way down to the pool far below. Some had been cut into the rock face, or the roots of trees. Other sections, she could see, were made of cement. Water trickled out of the face of the cliff. Marvyn pointed with his head. ‘When it really starts to rain, that’s a proper waterfall.’
He led the way and, as she followed him down, she was thinking about how she would swim, whether to stay in her underwear or take everything off. And Marvyn—what would he do? She would let him go first into the water.
At the bottom there was a flat rock. He stood there, staring into the pool. ‘You never know what might be in here. It goes down forever, you know.’
‘Oh. What could be in there?’
‘Waterholes … powerful places.’
There was a faint smile, then he peeled off his shirt and pants and plunged in. She watched him swim to the other side of the pool with easy strokes, then she took off her clothes and waded in, staying safe in her underwear, although she knew it would look very transparent when wet. She wanted to be past this point of embarrassment. She turned back and took off her bra and hobbled a little as she removed her underpants. She placed them on the rock ledge and waded back in. For a moment she wanted to cover herself, but then placed her hands by her side and kept walking. She shivered a little as the water came up her thighs, over her belly and covered her breasts. Her nipples hardened and she noticed Marvyn was not looking at her, but she did not know whether this was deliberate. She breaststroked into the middle of the pool, then duckdived into the depths. She could feel the difference in the temperature. When she broke the surface, Marvyn was alongside her.
‘You’re very beautiful.’
And then they were kissing each other in this ancient waterhole in the middle of nowhere. She could feel the hardness of him against her thigh. Moments later he held up his underpants and slung them towards the bank. They grasped each other tightly and her thighs eased and she felt him slip inside her. She could feel his heartbeat and felt sure he could feel hers.
‘You’re right,’ she whispered. ‘This is a special place.’
‘Only good things,’ he said. ‘There’s no evil spirits that can enter you.’
And again he smiled, and she wasn’t sure whether he was amused at her or himself—or simply happy to be there, together with her, held by the pool, the cliffs, the land going on, and on, into something she hoped one day to discover.
He gripped her fiercely, closed his eyes, and shuddered.
On the climb back up the cliff face she led the way, and every so often she paused and felt his body push against hers, and she would turn around and kiss him.
Eleven
He was walking down the hill of the main street when he saw her, in the distance, coming towards him. You couldn’t miss her, with her bleached hair and tanned skin and loping stride. His first instinct was to cross the road, to avoid the woman. The sight of her made it all come back, again. The wrenching emptiness inside him at the loss of his wife and son. And before that, the magic, seeing Maia for the first time after so many years—the way they clicked straightaway, knowing before words that they would be together. That sort of thing happened once in a lifetime—if you were lucky. The only consolation, if you could call it that, in all this misery was that he did not feel guilty about the accident. He was a careful driver, always on the lookout for someone who drove dangerously, or foolishly, and in this case the more he thought about it, the more he realised there was nothing he could have done. Nothing. When he came around the bend, the car was on the wrong side of the road, right in front of him and travelling fast. There was only the driver, and later he’d died in hospital. Clive knew nothing about him, not even his name.
He didn’t think about before the accident. Not if he could help it. And there, paused outside a shop window, was that woman on whom he’d taken revenge. He staggered a little and headed towards a bench outside a cafe.
Back then, it seemed the whole town had turned out for the funeral. He didn’t see Oliver, or the woman, but someone told him she was there. Two people killed in an accident. But it didn’t feel like an accident—not to him.
He’d watched for days, knew the pattern of her weeks, the times she would go fishing. He was a man walking in her footsteps, her footprints, clear in the sand. He was good at keeping out of sight, sometimes crouching in the low bushes at the side of the track. At first he’d just followed her, not knowing why. Now he did. Even those who kill without intent, who take a false step, are liable to punishment. That day he wasn’t too close behind
her; he walked quickly, upright. There were other marks on the track, a group of walkers going in the opposite direction. The sun was sinking fast, colouring the low clouds a spectacular orange, tinged with pink. Dramatic—that was the word. He had begun to sweat, his hands clammy. She’d ignored the crash scene, driven straight past. She was in a hurry. Steve had told him she couldn’t be bothered. He could still hear his friend’s words: ‘You know, if she’d stopped, they’d probably still be alive, your wife and son. How could anyone do that, any human being? Even a foreign woman? And that man, Oliver.’ On that still day Oliver had heard the sounds of the crash, the crumple of cars, and done nothing. Too late for him now. Some people.
He could still picture her, facing the ocean; he saw the backward swing of the rod, the little splash where the blob hit the water. A moment later, the arc of the rod and another splash. She must be using a lure, called a straw, which was really a tube of rubber pulled onto the shank of the hook. Herring loved a chase: even when their bellies were full, they would still follow and snap. They couldn’t help themselves. He understood that.
He’d moved forward and crouched behind another rock. She turned around and stepped towards him. His body was drumming—perhaps she’d heard him. Then she put her rod down and started to untangle the twists in the line near the blob. She had turned side on. When she’d finished, she turned once more to the ocean, preparing to cast. In three large steps he was behind her, grabbed her around her mouth with his left hand, and around her throat with his right. He started to press. He could feel the choking panic of her as she tried to swallow, the softness of her skin, the bones of her windpipe. His shocking excitement was beyond anything he had ever experienced. For a moment he thought he might faint. His legs were bare, pressing against her with all his strength. He could feel the hardness in him, forcing her. She was strong and twisted and kicked; he held on. His hands were big. He could still feel the resistance of skin, and bone, and muscle, the warmth and softness of her flesh. Then he felt the weight of her go, slip away, as she sank to the ground. There were gulls screeching, the little dog of hers barking and barking; he couldn’t recall when it started.
She’d passed out.
And then, out of nowhere, a voice. ‘Hey, what’s going on?’
It was that man, Oliver. He’d come down the coast looking for her. He was making no sense. ‘I’ve got a message for her from up north—too late, all too late. What is it? What’s happened?’ Between them, they lifted her up.
Oliver didn’t know who he was; that man never mixed much with anyone else, and anyway he was out of his wits after the fire. Clive didn’t hang around after she started to mumble something. He didn’t want her to die. Just revenge, to hurt her, but not too much. As soon as he’d done it, he knew it was wrong. Then he’d worried what God would think of him—what punishment he would receive. Now he knew. She wasn’t anywhere near the accident when it happened. She was up in the city, miles away. He could only guess at what sort of game Steve was playing, why he lied.
He stood up. He felt light-headed and his body began to tremble. He would walk the other way, but she was already right in front of him. He thought she glanced at him, her eyes dwelling for a moment on this man who was evil, who had attacked her for no reason. But no, she hadn’t seen him—not then and not now. He kept walking. He was an invisible man, but that did not make him happy. He could no longer see where he had been. He had even stopped putting signs on trees because he did not know whether Jesus saved anyone. He would leave that to Steve. Together they’d covered the district with their crudely painted pieces of corrugated iron reminding passers-by of the love of God.
That night he tossed and turned in the darkness. All afternoon the pain had stayed with him. He could imagine it as a physical entity, a gap you noticed in a wall or building or streetscape, the spot where there used to be a house, but now there wasn’t. So the absence was presence, more noticeable than what was left behind, like someone with a missing front tooth. Except this absence was not a curiosity.
He lay in bed, a tight ball, with a darkness that he did not think would ever leave him. After the accident, he’d gone up north and sought out Maia’s mother. He wanted to tell her himself, in case she hadn’t heard. He also wanted someone to talk to, someone who was close to her. Except her mother wasn’t really close. When her marriage to Maia’s father had broken up, she’d headed back to her community, leaving her daughter behind with her white father. Maia visited her mother two or three times a year. Her mother never came south to see her.
‘They got married when they were very young,’ Maia told him. ‘Dad had a government job up there. They met and fell in love. It happens. Now, I think he married her because he wanted to prove something—how different he was, open-minded, but also he was going to save the whole Aboriginal race. I don’t want to sound horrible about him, and I miss him very much. Most days, I still think about him.’
Her dad died of a heart attack when he was still quite young, late forties. She said that when she’d gone to see her mother, she couldn’t tell what she thought—whether her dead husband still meant anything to her.
He’d made the journey north in a haze, his mind and body affected by the heat and his terrible sense of loss. The road went on forever and his head ached. He kept squeezing his eyes and rubbing them; he couldn’t focus properly on the middle distance, and worried about a car or truck coming from the opposite direction. What if it veered into his path? Surely it couldn’t happen again, yet all the time you heard of accidents on long, straight stretches of road. He’d already seen crosses and plastic flowers against the few trees that bordered the road. You’d have to be unlucky. Or desperate. The road wobbled in front of him and he kept seeing pools of water that never came any closer.
When he’d arrived, he’d been shocked by the camp. They didn’t want him there, but finally told him where May was. ‘She’s crook,’ they said. He’d sat down in the dirt with her, under a tree that gave a little shade. She wouldn’t let him come inside the house, even when she understood who he was. Heat was rising in waves from the earth and he felt like his head was bouncing, rising and falling. His eyes still troubled him. May looked away, looked down, said yes and no to his questions, remained silent. He was in a different country, one he didn’t know anything about. He had wanted to talk about Maia, to bring her alive again with someone who loved her, was part of her. To say her name, and that of his son. May shook her head. She had tears in her eyes.
When he left he felt the grief that was there, for the daughter she’d lost a long time ago. For her daughter and her grandson, Harry. He did not understand her silence. On the long drive home, he thought that it had been wrong of him to expect that she would share her feelings with him. After all, who was he?
The early-morning muttering of birds had begun, although it was still dark. He put his face in his hands and pushed his fingers into his temples. He tried to blank out the thoughts of how he’d made everything so much worse that afternoon at the coast. He’d been too ready to listen to that shithead Steve. He was looking for someone to strike out at. The other driver was dead, Oliver was dead. God had disappeared, not that He’d ever been really present. The painted signs helped make Him real, but in the end it was only paint and tin and the risk of being caught bashing roofing nails into trees on public roads.
Twelve
Miles away, Greta brought her night thoughts into the light of day; by now they were little more than inchoate feelings, an odd mixture of pleasure and dissatisfaction. She sat outside in the thin morning sunlight with her cup of coffee and a week-old newspaper. She was thinking about men. How lovely some of them were. And how needy she felt at certain times, and then the need faded and she would be content for reasons she didn’t understand. Or perhaps it was the discontent that puzzled her. Maybe it was the cycle of the month—or a longer, more mysterious cycle. She wanted the warmth of skin, the weight of a body, the excitement of sex, feeling her whole self opening up as
if unzipped when she took the man into her, wholly, breathing with him until they both exploded. Then lying there, touching with such delicacy, tracing your fingers around lips and eyes and chest. Along the line of the testicles, where the two halves of the man joined together. Such intimacy: how could you ever again be strangers?
She thought of Marvyn and the press of his body on top of her, the red dirt on her back and legs. Of Skyler and the delicate touch of hand on hand; that, too, was a form of intimacy. Of other men, long ago, in what now seemed unlikely comings together. How would they be if they met again, perhaps in a supermarket? Friendly and polite, saying nothing about having shared the map of each other’s bodies—but that fact would lie beneath the words they spoke.
She stood up impatiently, the newspaper falling to the ground, and went inside for more coffee.
Later, she set off along the familiar path to the coast. She found a calmness and consolation in the rhythm of walking. Once her body had warmed up, she felt she could keep going for hours on end, and when she reached the coastal trail she continued for another three hours. By the time she returned, the sun had disappeared. A light drizzle began to drift in from the ocean. Although it wasn’t really cold, she would light the stove for the companionship of the flames, and warmth. At night loneliness crept up on her.
When the fire was alight there was a centre, a focus which distracted her from the crude appearance of the shed; it provided a soul, she thought, that you couldn’t see from the outside and that needed her to kindle it. In the evening she was again thinking about the differences between friendship and so-called relationships. She could picture her young self and her very first boyfriend, a handsome Scandinavian, Sven. And when she went to bed at night, she would think about him. They were walking along a beach on a mild summer day. He was talking about an architectural project he was working on, an assignment. It was an odd detail to remember, but she thought it was to do with the way they were walking together. An association in her mind between act and thought.
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