The Break

by Deb Fitzpatrick

  No one was out there, despite the lines of swell coming in. Perfect conditions, she thought vaguely.

  That phone call had a persistence about it. It rang and rang and the noise filled the house, and as Rosie finally reached it, and spoke, and heard, the ringing grew all around, grew to a colossal stillness, and then came a distant chorus of sirens bawling.

  In town, someone ran to the row of three phone boxes outside the tourist bureau, while Commodore and LandCruiser and Kingswood engines shuddered into strange life. People stood in the middle of the street, as if awaiting an announcement, a car with a loudspeaker, something.

  Silence settled heavily as limestone dust rose and hung, suspended over the beach, over that sheltered bay.

  56

  At the end of the afternoon, when the sky had the colours of orchard fruit in it, and Pip had gone inside to watch The Price is Right, Liza pulled a handful of new raspberries from protesting brambles, and walked down to the river. To hear its clean splashy sounds, to get close to Sam’s spot (Sam hadn’t been dropped home from school yet, she noticed, probably devising science fiction plots with Jarrad), and to just enjoy her own company, her own hard day, for a few moments. Ferg would be back from the trees in an hour or so.

  At a narrow section in the river she slipped her way over rocks and branches to the thick natural forest of the other side, one of the few belts of original Margaret River forest remaining. The sun had already retracted from deep in there, and Liza felt the strength of the giants around her, as evening came down, a show about to begin.

  Liza went right in, to feel the last of it, the last of that place on that day in September. She pushed through ferns and the thorny tentacles of bush creepers into the greying heart of the place. In the west, treetops scuffled with the wind.

  If she’d been at the ocean, Liza would have seen it like the wind coming in from the horizon, turning the glassy water choppy and dark. Here, in the forest, she could hear the wind long before she could see it. It sheeted over the most distant trees, coming like a thundercloud on a blue day.

  The sound of a big wind gaining across the green, coming towards her. A fire, of wind.

  It came until she thought it couldn’t be any bigger, that sound. Leaves and branches started up around Liza like crazed conductors, gathering force until, eyes down in fear, she pressed herself against the nearest trunk, some kind of shelter against the tree-spears crashing down around her. Widow-makers, Jack used to call them, she remembered now wildly. Foresters found pinned like ants to the ground, axe a few metres away.

  It came heaving across the canopy, until Liza thought it couldn’t come anymore. That sound, that wind. That breath.

  Sudden energy invades the marri like a current. Its canopy swings and swipes, spraying leaves and conkers, hard nubs of its bloody sap, over the empty house. Then it stops, just like that.

  Not far away, in the forest beside the river, a woman stands frozen beside a tree, her heart full of fear.

  57

  Liza ran. Ran and ran. At the bottom of the loose-stoned driveway, she bent double and sucked air across her stick-dry throat.

  Behind her, across the river, the forest was still, as if nothing had happened just a few moments ago, as if a spiral of wind had never even tousled the leaves of the trees there, as if branches had not speared down around her amid a wind that gathered force like a cyclone.

  As if this were the eye.

  Liza peered through the bush at the highway, waiting for Jarrad’s mum’s car, or Ferg in the truck, or someone. Instead, she heard the guts of an urgent vehicle as it changed down for more speed up the long sloping hill past their place. It passed her like the movement of clouds in a storm sky.

  A siren smudged past. The doctor’s car. The volunteer SES truck, with all the guys in it.

  Liza shrank back, turned to the farmhouse.

  58

  Rosie ran down the long hill towards the Edge Point carpark in lunging strides, sandals nearly flying off. Her breath came up at her in primitive sounds with each thump of her feet on the road.

  Greeting her was the ocean’s lapping rhythm. She leaned hard against the Koppers logs, scanned Hut’s Beach below. Nothing. She looked for it, but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Just the limestone cliff walls and sand, and water. She headed down the steps, small birds swooping in front of her, saltbush reaching for her legs. Ten metres down, she saw a huddle of jumbled colours, people close together. And something in that view had changed — as if the sky itself could change — a whole part of the limestone cliff had collapsed on to the beach, given up, given itself up to the repeating water. A mass of cream rock lay heavy where the entrance to the local cave was.

  Was.

  Toy people were crawling on top of the pile, pulling the pieces away. Others were sitting further away, arms clutched about their knees.

  A woman came scrambling up the impossible path, calling out to God. She made it to the top, to Rosie standing with nothing, no way of helping.

  The measured wailing crept closer, it couldn’t be far away now. Together they turned and looked over at the town, to the winding road over the tiny bridge, and waited.

  59

  He still had sight of the sea, cool-burning in him. But it had gone blue-black like the turning sky at night, just as the stars come over that impossible horizon. And the stars were here, he saw their clear brightness, their endless possibilities and promises and connections. A whole sky of stars, there were so many, everyone could have a whole skyful to themselves and there would still be plenty left for others, because the sky never ended, it had no edges, it was wider than anything comprehensible, wider than Sam and Margaret River and Western Australia, wider than your imagination, wider than existence itself.

  Sam saw them, could almost reach out and touch them: the marri, the falcon and the fish, the river and the rockpools and sand dunes, the wind, and his family who moved among them all, took comfort from them, together, now, together in his perfect, dusty vision.

  60

  By the time Liza and Ferg got there, by the time Cray had driven past on the way home from work and seen the commotion, by the time the first news crew had arrived from the network in Colburn, most of what would happen had already happened.

  A local bloke took his bulldozer out there, scooping up the slumped cliff that the town knew so well. This was where they walked with their kids after school, boards and towels and bathers in tow. Where the young ones stood wobbly on foamies before they graduated to fibreglass on the rivermouth, before they could even imagine the churning water of Edge Point, Surge Point. Where families parked their bums between swims, cooled by the shadow of the cave.

  Which now buried some of them. Under a limey, dusty, suffocating mantle.

  Eventually, floodlights, silvery-white and dazzling, were attached to the wreckage, glaring on the moving hardhats and orange boilersuits of the rescue crew.

  Rosie and Cray were filling dozens of mugs and cups and bowls with tea in the carpark on a flimsy card table they’d set up, with a few other helpers. A woman spooned sugar into each mug. She put the sugarbowl down after a while, hands splayed on the tabletop, quietly gasping. Someone put an arm around her shoulder.

  The generators below hammered. At least a hundred people were gathered in the carpark now; more paced the road, tried to avoid the fleet of ambulances, tried to keep upright. There was calling out, people were comforted, others faded. Cray moved about with the hot drinks. Rosie picked up two mugs and walked towards Liza and her husband.

  She stood next to them until they noticed her. Liza was shuddering, but smiled quickly, bluely, when she saw Rosie. She took the mugs, passed one to Ferg, whispering to him. He didn’t make eye contact with either of them. His eyes had the looseness of no focus, but he kept them turned to the cliff site, to the activity.

  Rosie wanted to grab Liza’s arm and ask, Where’s Sam?, as if it mightn’t be a possibility. As if he might be at home, or at a friend’s pl
ace, or somewhere else. As it was, it was difficult to tell whether people were there for their own or for others; if their oldest friend’s husband had been found, dusty and misshapen, among the rocks, and ferried to a sirenless ambulance, or if they were waiting to see the face, the favourite jacket, the honey hair of someone who hadn’t come home yet.

  The tonelessness of Ferg’s face was Rosie’s answer.

  She turned her head back to the hill of houses and bush behind them, the mixture of fibro shacks and holiday homes, wooden cottages and oddly designed mansions, each empty, evening verandahs unattended, all with their lights on and front doors swinging open.

  ‘I didn’t sign the letter from the school,’ Liza said suddenly. ‘I found it in the kitchen this afternoon, so Sam can’t be here. We didn’t sign it — we didn’t give our permission. He isn’t here. He’ll be with Jarrad.’ She clicked her tongue, turned to Rosie. ‘Those two, you know.’

  Around them, people turned to and away.

  Rosie wanted to reach out to Liza and unfold her and bellow. She wanted it to be day and she wanted to see the ocean, see it, lay her eyes on it, rather than be subjected to this, its blackening, oblivious rhythm.

  61

  A stenographer’s notebook appeared next to Rosie’s elbow.

  ‘I didn’t know you were here too … it’s Rose, isn’t it?’

  She peered at the woman. ‘Rosie. Sorry, who are —’

  ‘Katrina King from Channel Six. When did you get here? We arrived half an hour ago, we had to charter a flight to Brenn Head.’

  ‘Oh, no, no, I’m …’ She looked at Liza and Ferg apologetically. ‘Let’s go over here, these people aren’t —’

  ‘You know them? Is someone they know down there?’

  Rosie steadied. She hoped that by lowering her voice Katrina would drop her own a few decibels. ‘Everyone knows everyone down there, actually. It’s not just their children, it’s their friends’ kids … it’s —’

  Katrina King flipped open her notebook.

  ‘No, no, I’m sorry, I’m just talking to you as …’

  Katrina looked up. ‘Aren’t you reporting this?’

  Rosie felt a cold sweat break out. People might think she and Katrina were colleagues. ‘No. No, I’m not reporting it. I live here now.’

  Rosie hadn’t even thought about the Southern Way until then.

  There were enough reporters here, she knew, enough reports being filed, enough being phoned through to the jaws of newsrooms. The world knew what was going on (it had already been given a name: The Greys Bay Cliff Collapse), and the local people certainly knew what they needed to know. That their loved ones were buried where they’d sat watching an inter-school surfing carnival ( just hours ago, sifting sand through their toes); that their oldest friends were grappling through the rubble on their behalf, trying desperately to find a warm limb somewhere, trying impossibly to keep a clear head as a mate’s son was found.

  Rosie looked at Katrina and said, ‘I know you’re here to report, but, look, take it easy on these people.’ She leaned in slightly to her, and Katrina met her confidence like a magnet. ‘They can hardly face each other right now, let alone outsiders.’

  Katrina nodded, though looked as if she still needed some convincing. Rosie saw with relief that most of the reporters were talking to local police and SES guys rather than to families direct.

  Katrina’s eyes scanned the clusters of people.

  Rosie moved away from her. She went back to the edge, leaned out again over the Koppers logs to see what headway had been made, what boulders pulled, but she knew from the silent work going on down there that no one else had been found.

  Lit up, the red and white television helicopter came around the headland. It blew the tops off waves as it cut a path across Surge Point towards the tiny emergency colours of the rescuers.

  There was a quietness down on the sand, as boulders were delicately shifted and special maps and local information studied under torches. A muffled voice had been heard, by two or three of them. The maps fluttered as volunteers crowded around the SES leader. A voice, someone said.

  Members of the crew began to look up, hair blowing. Water came up at them, slapping the sand and limestone harder and higher. A television crew roared above them, black eye of a camera aiming down. Above them, in the carpark, families watched the scene, pressing hands to their ears.

  A voice.

  Sand stung the rescuers’ skin. Loudness filled their ears and every crevice of limestone remaining. Hopelessly, they waved, pointed, directed, ordered, prayed, begged that chopper to turn away.

  Some of the onlookers openly seethed into the night, promising retribution. Others bloated with fear. Rosie tried to hide, collecting mugs, filling them, ferrying hot water from the general store in saucepans, buckets. A woman laid her hand on Rosie’s arm. Katrina walked through the glarily lit crowd. One of the dads spat at her feet.

  62

  In the middle of that dark night Cray and Rosie walked up the steep hill, shushed by the grey shapes of bushes, to their house.

  Every time Rosie started to say something about it, she’d think of something else that had to be said, something else to be worried about. Cray would look up, ready to listen, and she’d shake her head, unable to begin all that needed to be begun.

  Not many others were still waiting when Liza and Ferg were approached by the police officer, Ferg’s old mate from way back. Jesus, they’d gone to school together, Ferg had always given him shit about being the town copper, the Law Enforcer of Margaret River. It used to make Ferg chuckle, given the stuff they’d got up to as kids.

  Now, their kids were the same age. And Ferg thought he was going to crack like something dropped when he saw his mate, the town copper, coming over with that steeled face. As the head copper he’d been doing this all night, Ferg had seen him, going to people. He looked around. There was just him and Liza left. And, slumped against the fading duco of the Sunbird, Mike was just behind them.

  1

  Mike stirred the plunger of coffee. Ground beans swirled, sucked down into the vortex. The spoon made an unlikely cheery sound against the glass. In the lounge, there were pauses strung together without any talk, the fullest silences air could hold. Mike put the pot down on the low table in front of them. Bright colours, a comic of Sam’s, loudly caught his eye. He wondered, for a horrible moment, if he should move it, take it away. He looked at the counsellor, a middle-aged local woman who had driven from house to house to house since the collapse, had sat among terrible silences for days. How would hiding Sam’s stuff help? Mike averted his eyes, his mind, left the comic where Sam had chucked it.

  He pushed the flyscreen door out into the cool wind. Breathed. He wasn’t thinking about it anymore, he kept it that distance from him — there but not there. A bird trying to land, unable to find a safe spot. He had to check the trees, he thought. The Tassies.

  That bird hovered close when he found himself driving Ferg’s ute between the blue rows. The last time he was in these trees he’d almost lost it. It couldn’t get worse than this, he’d thought at the time; he’d finally made it to the sludge on the bottom.

  He’d thought that once or twice before, he remembered now. But things truly couldn’t be worse than this. Somehow, the kind of anger Mike had felt that night had drained away. All those years. He didn’t have the energy anymore.

  He changed gears, coasted through the rest of the rows. Didn’t miss a one. Up and down, down and up like snakes and ladders, in his brother’s ute. Pruning wayward branches, fixing fences, repairing the nets. His job for now.

  In town, people cried when they came across each other in the supermarket. Kids and adults flocked to the surf shop, to the local schools, to lay flowers at their closed doors, to talk to people they loved, who loved them, to say things they couldn’t — hadn’t — said before. Families stuck together, went out together, crunched along the beach together, huddled together. Kept each other within reach. People cr
ied at the oddest times, and everyone came to know there was nothing odd at all about this. People punished themselves for being able to carry on.

  The emergency crews dealt with their own traumas. The twenty-year-old who pulled his father’s body from the layers, and then climbed the path to tell his mum. The guy who reached his hand into a small hole in the rock pile and felt another grasp around it. He didn’t go back to being the same man. She never left his head, that schoolgirl, who rasped her way out of the darkest place she would ever find herself; her mother’s grey body a metre away. No one knew what to say to her father in the weeks following, just hugged the little girl till tears squeezed out of the corners of her miraculous eyes.

  In Margaret River, in Greys Bay, nine people — five adults and four kids — would never come home from that surf carnival, from that cave, from that beach.

  2

  Hotels and B&Bs filled up with reporters and cameramen. TV stations televised special bulletins showcasing the updates of roving reporters, SES leaders, geologists, the guy who drove the bulldozer. Those interviewed spoke in unfinished sentences. Town spokespeople entered the spotlight in an attempt to shield the families, but still there were glimpses of broken husbands, parents, and children who understood something dark and lasting.

  The site was cordoned off with orange flags. You couldn’t recognise that bit of coast anymore; the rocks had changed its shape forever.

  No one surfed out at Edge or Surge points.

  Families went back to the carpark and leaned into the wind. Climbed gingerly down the path, a friend either side. They washed their faces in Hut’s water, cupped it in their hands, hoping there might be something left to touch, to keep; something left.