The Break

by Deb Fitzpatrick

  Looking back, Rosie could see the bay cradled between the two arms of land; between Surge and Edge points, whose gnarly fingertips provided the meaty surf, the glossy water, the turquoise barrels.

  She could see the rough gravel carpark, full of half-buggered Kingswoods and utes, and the occasional work vehicle — a long lunch for some.

  And up on the hill was their house.

  Filling the kettle, Cray shivered. White lines of salt snaked along his skin. Sand coated his ankles like breadcrumbs, coming away with each step.

  Rosie shed her thongs at the door. ‘How’d you get back so fast?!’

  ‘Was bloody freezing!’ he said, heading into the bathroom. She heard the hot water system fire up.

  When you saw a sand trail, but weren’t on the beach, it would lead you to Cray. Small anthills of sand in the shower could be attributed to him also. It seemed to collect in his hair, in the cuffs of his jeans, in his pockets, in his shoes. It never ceased to amaze them both, just how much sand Cray was responsible for transporting round the world.

  A muffled call came from the bathroom: ‘Kettle’s on!’

  Rosie made a cuppa for each of them and stood in the bathroom while Cray finished his shower. She told him about the hotel thing.

  ‘The hotel or the tav?’

  ‘Hotel.’

  He opened the curtain slightly, so they could see each other. ‘Waitressing or behind the bar?’

  ‘Both.’

  He lathered his belly. ‘Do you want to do it?’

  She paused then. ‘Yeah … the bar work would be fun. It’s just the full-time thing. And the fact that it’s so soon. We’ve only been here a couple of weeks, Cray. I should be relaxing.’

  She noticed the faint new tan line at his ankles, where his wettie ended.

  ‘Well, we’ll have to get work sometime, and it’s not grape-picking season yet, so unless you want to work at the supermarket …’

  She grinned. ‘I wouldn’t mind doing that. Or I could always go on the dole …’

  ‘Or go to the local rag … what’s it called … the Southern Way?’

  She looked at him wryly. ‘Maybe I’ll see how it goes at the hotel.’

  13

  Cray tried to keep an open mind about what Marty was saying, when he rang to tell him about the new house. He thought he owed it to him, owed it to himself, to consider Marty’s point of view, even though there was nothing he could do about it now even if he’d wanted to; he and Rosie’d signed the lease, settled in, were beginning to get used to life down south.

  ‘Mate, you’re looking for something that you won’t ever find. Stop struggling, stop fighting it.’ Marty laughed, then spoke in inverted commas. ‘Go with the flow, Cray.’

  Maybe that was it, maybe if he just put his head down and got stuck into it, it would all make sense when he was sixty, when the grandkiddies were bouncing happily on his knee. Maybe.

  Cray was sitting on the verandah on an old deckchair, the phone cable nearly fully extended from its jack. He looked over the scrub towards the waterbed ocean. He shuffled forward as far as the phone lead would let him as a set gathered momentum out the back. ‘But what’s it all for, Marty? Couldn’t you think of better ways to spend your days than in the orifice?’

  ‘A guy’s gotta live somehow, Cray.’

  ‘Yeah, but live isn’t boats, swimming pools, years spent getting them.’

  ‘Isn’t it? I reckon that is living, mate. It sure isn’t eating beans for the next fifty years. Money gives you options. Jesus Christ, Cray, Rosie might be twenty-two but you’re not!’

  Cray laughed at his mate’s frustration. ‘But, Marty, when you’ve got that gear, you want more. Possessing stuff, accumulating it, becomes an end in itself.’

  ‘Look,’ Marty sighed, ‘I know what you’re saying, you freaking idealistic hippie, but I reckon you’ve gotta provide for your family. What about Rosie, what does she think?’

  Cray glanced behind him, to where Rosie was filling in her tax form. ‘She doesn’t want anything. She just wants to be happy, Marty.’

  ‘I’m happy, mate! Just because you’re screwed up doesn’t mean the rest of us are!’

  Screwed up.

  ‘Sorry, sorry Cray, I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘No, it’s okay.’ Cray’s mouth went dry. ‘That’s what friends are for. A bit of honesty.’

  ‘No, no, I really didn’t mean …’

  But Cray knew what Marty meant, and was glad — well, sort of — that he’d said what he thought.

  ‘Just come down sometime, you and Caro,’ Cray said, eyes swinging over the blue. He wanted to dive into the middle of that hugeness, plunge right in, swim down into that world. ‘Stay the weekend, Marty, there’s plenty of room. And bring your board.’ He began to laugh. ‘That’s if you can still remember how to paddle, you kook.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Marty said. ‘Might see you down there sometime.’

  Cray leaned back in the chair, looked out at Edge Point. He knew where he’d be in about five minutes.

  14

  Sam was on the phone to Jarrad when Mum and Dad walked in; when his bum began that tingling, that heating prickling. There’d been arguing and night-time whispering for nearly a week now and Sam had had enough. Even half an hour ago there had been raised voices in the kitchen and when he came out of his room he saw Mum marching Dad outside for what looked like one of her Talking-Tos. They were legendary, and you knew your game was up if you were getting one.

  It was great to have a normal conversation for a change, even if it was on the phone. Jarrad’s family seemed super normal compared to his.

  He looked away from their smudged faces, tried to continue his conversation with Jarrad — they were taking bets on whether Lumptor was going to fall to Valstran, or come up trumps, as Nanna Pip would say. Not proper betting, just stuff that would be a bummer to lose, like Jarrad’s basketball cards, which Sam didn’t even want — he hated basketball — but Jarrad would be spewing to have to give them away. He was trying to think of something he could safely bet but his folks walked in and distracted him, got him all confused.

  ‘How about your modem?’ Jarrad slipped in.

  Sam’s ear snapped back to the phone. ‘Oh, yeah, sure, Jar. My modem against your poxy basketball cards — sure. How about Mum’s potato peeler? That’d be more even.’

  Mum and Dad stopped at that, looked at Sam. He could see Mum trying to figure out what they were talking about, but she gave up and went back to what she was doing before. Which was giving Dad the death-ray glare: the official end of a Talking-To. The two of them headed towards their bedroom, and Sam heard his dad say something rude. Something about Mike.

  Sitting on the fluffy circular rug in his bedroom that night, Sam couldn’t understand why, when there was nothing wrong, he felt kind of sad. It happened to him every now and then. Now. He didn’t cry or anything, he just felt, well, quiet and sad, and noticed things like the wind on his face and the way the bad cat snoozed with its paw over the end of its tail. They weren’t even sad things to be thinking about, but they made him feel sad. Mum seemed to know when he was feeling funny like that, would give him extra slices of vegemite bread and cuddles that squeezed his ribs, and would ask him what he’d like for dinner.

  ‘Chicken casserole!’ he’d say, diverted for a moment.

  ‘Aaah, the old favourite, hey?’

  ‘Hearty chicken casserole.’ His dad would nod. ‘Good for country families and growing boys.’

  ‘Hearty chicken casserole,’ Sam would say, feeling sadder than ever.

  15

  Liza tilted her head towards Sam’s room. He was talking to himself again, or to his computer, though there wasn’t much difference in that, she reckoned. Poor little tacker, things were a bit stressful at the moment. Ferg was dwelling on Mike coming down and she and Ferg had had another big blow-up before dinner. Sam, she thought. A brother or sister would’ve been perfect. Someone to mess around with, someone to go explo
ring down the river with, to gang up with against her and Ferg. They were a kid’s rights, weren’t they? That whole kid world, with their secret languages and silly humour. Liza remembered it from her childhood — the laughing, mainly. The knowing looks and jokes at the dinner table, the general frivolity; it was all part of growing up, and provided enduring memories. She felt guilty about Sam’s singledom (she quietly blamed that on Ferg), but tried to reassure herself: there were plenty of only children in this world who made it through life fine, and Sam was one of them. He didn’t have any hangups about brothers and sisters, and what he did have was her and Ferg’s undivided attention. And Jarrad. They were good mates, and she was glad of it.

  She pulled clean clothes from an overflowing basket, and plopped them into piles on the table. Pip, Ferg, Sam, me. She’d wanted to try for another baby, years back, but Fergus had thought the time wasn’t right; he’d wanted to wait until things were more settled on the farm and until things were better between the two of them, though he never said as much. If she was going to be brutally honest about it, Liza reckoned maybe she had thought of it as a way of improving things between them; she certainly couldn’t forget the joy of having Sam. He was an angelic baby, they were almost hypnotised by him; felt truly blessed. She’d wanted to breastfeed him forever, she loved the connection, the sight of him clamped, half asleep, on her breast. Now he was growing up, he was more and more in his own world, and the unspoken ties they had both known — she knew they had both felt them, they had lived by them — were weakening as Sam did what he must, and what Liza knew she must encourage in him, what any happy child must do: pull away from them.

  But that was a long time ago, those discussions with Ferg. The thought of another child now was somehow wrong, a jigsaw piece from another box. Things had settled on the farm and they’d grown into their life with Sam and each other and the idea had disappeared, like so many things do, with the passing days and shifting skies; with passing weeks and events that come and go and months and words and years.

  16

  Liza was trying to fill the kitchen sink so she could do the washing-up, but the plug kept slipping away, opening a little crack that would slowly siphon out the water. She’d move it back into place, making sure it made a snug fit this time, and it would slip away again. Six or seven times this happened, and she watched in disbelief as the cumulus suds lowered, as the water shrank away, exposing the fingermarked sides of glasses and mugs.

  She stared at them. Tried the plug again. Twitched in her sleep like a slumbering animal.

  Sam clicked on his bedside lamp. He couldn’t stop thinking about the astronomy mags he’d bet on Valstran being crushed by Lumptor’s army. He went over to his desk, wanted desperately to start up his computer but didn’t want Mum or Dad to hear. He looked around the room. Shirts, jeans, boogie board, star maps, rug. Rug. He picked it up and carried it over to his desk, a whole bedroom ecology of sand and dust and cracked M&Ms falling from it in the move. Once the computer was well covered, he pressed the on button, and cringed. He could still hear it, the singing start-up, though it was muffled. Could they hear it? Were they still awake? He’d be in huge trouble: he had a science test tomorrow. Photosynthesis and chlorophyll. Yawn.

  All seemed quiet in the rest of the house. No furry carpet footsteps or waking groans, or whispered voices — that’s what he hated most, he couldn’t stand not being able to hear what they were actually saying when he heard that vigorous whispering, always had to creep down the hall and get as close as he could to their bedroom door and catch the louder bits. Curiosity kills the cat, as Nanna Pip would say.

  Ferg lay next to Liza, who was flinching her way through another world, and listened to Sam creeping around. He’d never be a burglar, that kid. He’ll be tired tomorrow, Ferg thought. Leave him be. If he’s tired, he’s tired. He’ll figure it out himself.

  Whoever had come in last hadn’t pulled the flyscreen door to properly. It shuddered with the gusts that found their way along the verandah, that found their way to the marri. The wind, seeking out instruments to play.

  17

  A bottle of bubbly was top of Rosie’s list of things to get in town that morning. She would be starting her new job the next day and thought that was something worth celebrating. Walking past the tavern, she saw the shirtless, dreadlocked, stylisedsunnies guys of every Margies summer, hanging around on the grass, around the wooden tables and benches, with kelpies and staffies tied up all over the place. They came down south over summer and stayed while things were good; three months, maybe six if they met a girl, or if they found a great dope plantation in the forest, or if the surf was really pumping. And the chicks, they adorned themselves with impossibly small shorts and triangle bikini tops, or flowing Indian fabrics, long skirts trailing lightly over the ground behind bare feet. Rosie envied their long hair, their lithe frames, their gentleness.

  They weren’t the same individuals, but they may as well have been the same people who lay in the same places, in the same sun, from summer through till May every year, when she and Cray and the nine-to-five crowd would come down to escape for a weekend.

  But winter wasn’t far off, now — the nights were already getting chilly, though the days were clear and blue. And when winter did arrive, Cray’d told her, when the rain came down in one long flowing sheet, unwinding endlessly, the few who stayed migrated inside to the smoky TAB warmth of the tavern, to swing around the pool tables, drinking middies and Jack-Daniel’s-and-Coke, wondering where their next buck was gunna come from.

  No, those summer hordes would be long gone when the clouds came across the Southern Ocean, sweeping the roofs of houses on the cape, a grey blanket pushing north along the land; once the town had settled back into the rest of the year — the real part of the year — when chimneys got cranking at three in the afternoon, and people ran from one shop to the next, and when the parallel parking on the highway, and the beer garden at the tav, were empty.

  ‘A job already, Rosie,’ Cray said, raising his glass to her. ‘No grass is ever gunna grow under your feet!’

  She laughed. ‘I leave that side of things to you.’

  ‘It is something I’m quite good at.’ He swatted a mozzie searching for a way through his leg hair.

  The sun was setting, and the champagne bottle added an elegant touch to the scene out on the verandah. The liquidy sun weighed on Rosie’s eyelids.

  ‘We’re going to have to have the folks down soon, you know, Cray. Yours and mine. Separately, of course.’

  ‘If only we could keep it for ourselves.’ He squinted into it, focused on the water. ‘It’s … perfect.’

  Rosie looked too. Silver glitter flowed over the surface, where the sun struck the sea.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be good to show it off to a few friends, a few doubters?’ she said. ‘Marty, maybe? Nat and Salt?’

  ‘I’m not sure we’ll see Marty and Caro anytime soon. But the folks,’ he groaned. ‘We’d have to tidy up. Throw away the beer cans. Plump up the cushions.’

  Rosie thought a moment. ‘There aren’t any. Cushions.’

  He looked behind him, into the lounge. ‘Whatever. You know what I mean.’

  She did. She felt it every minute. Keep everyone away. Ring everyone and ask them to come, to stay with them, to share this. Keep everyone away.

  She wanted both. And when it came to her parents, she needed both. Maybe, now, she could show them what she couldn’t say.

  18

  Swan Gold wasn’t on tap at the hotel, but it was the beer the old bloke behind the bar wanted. Swan Gold. Swan Gold. Rosie couldn’t see it anywhere. Dogbolter, Matilda Bay Bitter, Redback, Guinness: the taps glistened with beading icy drops.

  ‘In the fridge, love.’

  What?

  ‘In the fridge, behind ye.’ Phil nodded over her shoulder.

  She scanned the stock of cans and stubbies. Hahn Ice. Tooheys Red. Crown Lager. Becks. Bloody everything. Strongbow. Sweet, Dry or Draught. She heard the v
oice of the ad man, gruff, sexy. Ridiculous, she thought.

  Swan Gold. She took one out and twisted off the top, put it on the bar towel in front of him. He had some coins spread out next to his smokes. She looked at them, at Phil. Was she meant to help herself, or wait for him to pass her the money? He nodded at the coins. If she’d blinked she’d have missed it. Rosie brazenly reached over and took $2.30 from the pile. She had to do it confidently, didn’t want to look any stupider than she already did. She felt the others cringing a couple of metres behind her, but staying away all the same. When she wanted help she’d ask. Otherwise she’d fall into the habit of needing reassurance about every single thing she did. Is this right? How do I pour it again? This one? Is it $2.30 or $2.20, did you say?

  As it was, she was learning the tricks every minute.

  Phil sighed loudly. ‘Can I have a glass, love?’

  He had a twinkle in his eye, so she wasn’t in his bad books yet, she thought, taking a middy glass over. Rebecca was suddenly by her side.

  ‘No, he likes one of these,’ she said, putting a smaller, rounder glass next to his coins, next to his smokes. ‘A glass.’

  ‘Oh.’ Rosie nodded. The three of them stood there, nodding at the result: the right beer, the glass.

  19

  Cray felt great. It was midday. He stretched out on the couch. His body was coming out of hibernation, thawed by the water, made supple again by all the exercise. He felt more awake, and when he slept, he dreamed. Dreaming had left him while he was out on the mine, apart from the odd nightmare, and he was glad to have it back again. Yep, Greys Bay was suiting him just fine.

  He turned his thoughts to Rosie. Her first day at work. He wondered what it was like, if there were blokes on bar stools leering at her. He knew what those public bars were like, and in the middle of the afternoon there’d be a few blokes having their second, or third, beers of the day. Supping companionship.