Wintering

by Krissy Kneen

  She watched them grip the wheel. Everything about William was too big for the car. What was it? A Hyundai of some kind, made for someone small and slight. His legs were like tree trunks forking up around the wheel; the handbrake was a toothpick in his fist.

  He swung the car around and bumped across the pitted surface of the road. The cabins were all lined up along the beach, decorated in festive blue and yellow and orange. A few of them glowed warmly, lights blazing behind curtains. Most were dark.

  There was a scent of burning wood in the air. Grey, wheezing breath coming from the chimneys of the occupied shacks.

  ‘These would all be full in the summer?’

  He framed it as a question and she nodded. He probably knew this area better than she did.

  They pulled up alongside the pier and she opened her door, pushing it against the slap of the wind. Her hair was snatched back into a tangle—she would need a beanie and a thicker coat. She shrugged before he could say anything about it. ‘I can’t seem to organise myself,’ she explained.

  He reached into the back seat and emerged once more with a jacket. It hung down to her knees but it was lined in sheepskin and incredibly warm, and she was grateful.

  He had the rods jigged up, four of them. The two shorter ones looked new. He took them and Jessica followed him, two steps for every stride down the wind-ravaged wood of the pier.

  Three men were fishing, each holding their lines out under the spill of a light, pulling the lines backwards and forwards, bobbing them up and down, hoping to attract the squid. They walked past the first of the men and Jessica saw the patterns of dark ink sprayed out across the boards like bloodstains. As if there’d been a massacre here. She glanced into the man’s bucket but it was impossible to see anything but a pool of black. Squid ink. They were biting, then.

  Will stopped next to the pier light. Their shadows hung tight and squat beneath them.

  ‘Have you used those jigs that flash?’ he said.

  ‘No. Never.’

  ‘I seem to have more luck with them than anything.’

  He held the rod over the edge of the pier and let the jig drop. No flashy casting out into the dark, just a simple flick and the lure plummeted. She watched it flare to life as it hit the water, the pulse of it jack-knifing down through the darkness. Matthew would have made more of a show of it. Matthew would have lifted and cast wide, attracting everyone’s attention. He was like that: the happy clown. Performing for everyone, enjoying the attention, making everyone laugh at him; with him.

  Jessica let her own jig follow Will’s, a simple lift and drop. There wasn’t really any need to cast out wide. The wind whipped and ran chill fingers through her hair. She reached round and found a lined hood and settled that on her head. She tugged a little on the line, pulled it gently to the left first and then to the right.

  ‘The other day there was a bunch of them. All at once. Couldn’t get the lines back in the water quick enough. I suppose they could have moved off by now, but can’t hurt to get your other rod in, just in case.’

  Jessica lowered the second lure. She didn’t go in for these new gadgets but the flicker of light was pretty. It reminded her of her cave, the lights shining in the dark. She let it bob and play at the end of the jerking line.

  ‘Matthew said you do some fishing.’

  She shrugged. ‘Some.’

  ‘He made out like you were out there all the time.’

  ‘I drop a net in. Put some pots out.’

  ‘Up the Lune River?’

  ‘No. Sand bars. Haven’t worked out the way through up there.’

  ‘Miserable things, sand bars…Oop.’ He pulled on his line, reeled it in, a steady drag, and it was a squid, all right.

  The creature seemed tiny, hanging on the line near his head. She dodged an arc of ink as he snapped it up in his giant’s fist and it disappeared entirely. He turned to grin at her, a wide open face, childlike for a moment. Then, just as suddenly, the grin was gone and his eyes turned down and he was just a big hunch of a man, awkward, most of his head hidden under a knitted beanie and the tick of his collar. She tried to smile back but he was no longer looking in her direction.

  ‘I—’ A drag on the line stopped her. She reeled it in steadily, the bright flash of it. It swung over the rail of the pier and hung like a misshapen ghost, swaying; then a sucking gasp and she felt the force of the ink spit hard onto her cheek. She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of the jacket, his jacket.

  ‘Damn.’ She prodded at the stain with her fingertips.

  ‘Nah, don’t worry about that. Get it in the bucket.’

  Jessica dangled it over the bucket, shook the line. The creature squirted more ink, rattling the plastic. She shook it again, legs stuck fast to the sharp spikes of the jig, and she pulled sharply. A section of the leg snapped off, writhing on the plastic.

  ‘Better get it back in the water,’ Will told her. He was already pulling up another squid. Her second line was tipping slowly and dragging against the rail. ‘Here we go.’

  One after another they pulled the beautiful primordial hunters shuddering from the water and eased them towards the bucket.

  She pulled on a particularly heavy line and was surprised by a fat pop. Something bigger and rounder than the squid, all dark tentacles reaching up—as if to snap the line or perhaps scale it, climbing murderously towards her.

  ‘Gonna eat that?’

  She cleared the blade on her trousers and plunged it into the bulbous head of the octopus. ‘Sure.’

  ‘You’ll have to show me how. Last time I tried it was like eating a boot.’

  It wasn’t alive. It was just the memory of life itching through the nervous system. Still, she felt unsettled, watching the octopus climb up the edge of her little metal sink. She lifted the legs one at a time and dropped them back in. They curled around the dead squid.

  ‘I like this.’

  She blinked. He was standing, peering at the wall: a watercolour of a boat on the beach. She had forgotten about him for a moment, looking at the octopus. These little moments of relief from knowing that she was in the world and Matthew was absent.

  ‘It’s a postcard.’

  ‘Beautiful colours.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She uncurled the octopus leg and pulled the head free of the tube, that big silver eye staring up at her. The slippery layer of skin, so pale now, but in life an ever-changing show of colour and shape. Chromatophores, she remembered. Allowing them to hide in the weed, the sand, the shady bottom of the ocean.

  Jessica stared through the window. Something had waved for her attention. A flash of moonlight on the crest of a wave?

  ‘I was leaning towards cephalopods,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Oh. In undergrad. When I had to specialise. I was interested in squid, mainly.’

  ‘They are pretty great, aren’t they?’

  ‘I—’ Yes. Something had moved out there in the dark. The night was alive.

  ‘What?’

  She felt the hairs at the base of her neck lifting. Something out there. People called this feeling intuition. Her mother would call it a whisper from the Lord. Science would say it was several pieces of sensory information linking up—rubbing against memory, past experiences—pricking her body towards flight or fighting. Something out there near the edge of the water.

  ‘I—I don’t remember what I was going to say.’

  The octopus leg slapped her wrist, slippery, and she gasped. William was there in a second, towering over her, his head brushing the ceiling.

  ‘It’s like the undead. Look at it. All twitchy nerve endings.’

  He lifted the tentacle off her wrist and shook it off his fingers, grimacing. ‘Tough as a boot.’

  ‘Not the way I cook it.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Lemon juice,’ she said. ‘The enzymes start breaking down the meat before you cook it.’ She placed her finger to the side of her nose then against her lips.
He grinned. There was that childlike pleasure. This time she smiled back. It was nice to have someone in the house again, even just another body taking up some of the excess space.

  She set the cast-iron pan on the stovetop and lit the gas. Salt and pepper squid to start. Octopus salad, and there was some chocolate at the back of the fridge somewhere. It was almost like a dinner party. Of course, there was also wine. She couldn’t face the interminable nights without it.

  Will stood at the glass door, peering out at the waves that always seemed close enough to lick at the foundations.

  He slid the door open. The wind came in. He closed it.

  ‘Sorry.’

  A few of her papers gentled to the floor. She had tidied up a little but there was still a stack of her notes on the table.

  He bent and picked the pages up. ‘Matthew said you did a blog or something for like a science thing? Does it pay?’

  ‘Science writing? A little. Beer money.’ Matthew’s words.

  He nodded, smoothed out the top page. Notes for a feature on the impact of fish farming on the shark nursery area at Dover. She watched his eyes dart across the page. She could almost see them glaze over. This is why they never had guests to the cottage. Nobody wanted to know about the shark eggs or cephalopod chromatophores, particularly over dinner.

  She fried the squid rings quickly, poured them out into a bowl. He sat at their table and the scene looked like something in a child’s playhouse, his knees bent to one side as he hunched over the table to eat.

  She was suddenly ravenous. She took two rings at once, stuffing them in with her fingers. She hadn’t got the forks out. William ate with less ferocity, plucking the squid from the bowl almost daintily and chewing each ring for a long time.

  ‘Did you play pool with Matthew?’ She’d had no idea that she was about to ask this. He seemed as surprised by the question as she was. ‘I hear he played pool,’ she clarified.

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘After work.’

  He looked away, out to the ocean. ‘I wouldn’t know about that.’

  She picked up the empty bowl and put it in the sink.

  ‘The trick is to cook it for the shortest time.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The octopus.’

  He stretched his legs out low, slipping them under the table with difficulty.

  ‘Did…’

  He smiled at her, angled his head to one side, waiting for her to find the words.

  ‘Did you guys take stuff?’

  ‘What, like steal?’

  ‘No. I…Like, I don’t know, speed? Ecstasy? Drugs.’ She felt her cheeks growing hot. She was blushing. She held the back of her hand up to her face and felt the hot blood pooling there.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You and Matthew. Matthew.’

  ‘Do you think he took drugs?’

  She caught another glimpse. Turned to the window to stare out into the dark.

  William leaned forward to touch her shoulder. Then pulled his hand back sharply as if he was embarrassed to have touched her at all. ‘I don’t know anything about drugs,’ he said. ‘Why? Is there something…?’

  ‘No. No. I never thought he took drugs. Till the police…But I didn’t know he played pool. Why didn’t I know he played pool?’

  ‘Jessica—’

  She looked over. He seemed cowed, head lowered, searching the backs of his hands as they fidgeted on the table. She tipped the pan on its side, scooped the sliced octopus into the salad bowl.

  She knew what it was he was going to ask her. He wanted to ask her if she was okay. If she needed anything. If he could help. He was a nice man. She could see why Matthew liked him. A good, quiet, thoughtful person. She brought the salad bowl to the table. Warm octopus. She could smell the garlic steaming up from it.

  ‘I fish every morning,’ she said. ‘I file my stories in the afternoon. There’s food, shelter. The shack is cheap. My expenses are minimal. I go out for milk and bread, whatever, so I’m not housebound.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, and she imagined he was apologising for his presence at her table. He was no substitute for Matthew. He would know this.

  He took a bite of octopus and glanced up at her, wide-eyed. ‘Fuck, that’s good.’

  And then she grinned.

  The ocean had provided another bounty.

  Sometimes, before, she would haul the net out of the water, tricked into a false sense of hope by a tangle of weed or a young shark that she would have to pull free and throw back into the bay. The ocean was an unreliable provider and yet, since Matthew disappeared, she had pulled in a full net every morning. Crays in the pot, scrambling like cockroaches to get free. Her mother would say that the Lord was providing for her. A compassionate God, looking out for her in Matthew’s absence.

  Today five good-sized salmon slipped silvery onto the floor of the boat, a cod that would be good simmered with coconut milk and spices, three trumpeters. Her freezers would be close to full. She should stop fishing for a while, but the thought of it made her chest clench. That simple activity. Dawn and dusk, dragging the boat into the water, dropping the net. Moments of relief in her unbearable days.

  She liked the way the boat pulled against her, the wrestle with the tide. The icy water that spilled over the top of her gumboots, freezing her toes. The sheer physical struggle a respite from the dead weight of loss. She waited for the tide and hauled at the crest of an incoming wave. The boat rose. She wrestled it close enough to tie the rope, then winched it out of the water. She gathered her catch in the large tub by the acacia tree before turning the dinghy upside down to let it drain. As she struggled the bucket of fish onto her shoulder and turned towards the shack, she saw there was a car out the front. A green utility, patched here and there and sealed with an ugly grey filler that covered half the door and a significant portion of the bonnet.

  Jessica hefted the plastic container more solidly on her shoulder and felt a shift in the bucket, the death rattle of a fish tail slapping the plastic. She slid the door open and let the container thud heavily on the table.

  Someone knocked at the front door.

  The dinner plates were still there. Hers and William’s. An empty bowl that had been full of octopus salad, the cushions displaced on the lounge chair where he had sat.

  Before the disappearance there were never any visitors.

  Another knock.

  She stood in the corridor. The bright morning seeped in under the door, making the house seem darker. Her hands smelled of the ocean. When she reached for the doorhandle she noticed blood on her fingers. Jessica remembered the twitch of muscle as she slid the knife into the eye of a salmon, a slice to the belly. She had watched it bleed out into the boat.

  She opened the door.

  The woman was holding a casserole dish. White, dusted with blue flowers. She was wearing workboots, stained with mud and crusted with sand. Thick socks peeking out under the sad hang of a floral skirt, a thick knit jumper in pink and blue stripes, unravelling at one elbow. A scarf wrapped so many times around her neck that the bottom half of her face had disappeared entirely. She had wild white hair, thick clumps of it pulled carelessly up on top of her head, pinned there with an ugly metal clip. Her face was tired and folded in on itself, but the dark eyes set in deep above high cheekbones were sharp.

  ‘For your loss,’ she said, pushing the casserole towards Jessica. Her nails were cracked back, black with dirt. There was a sadness in this woman’s face, a slackness in the skin under her eyes that felt familiar.

  Jessica took the dish, warm as a child in her arms.

  ‘I would have come earlier but I live down near Cockle Creek. News doesn’t come as quick down there.’

  Jessica nodded once more. She knew she should invite the woman inside but she remembered the two plates still sitting opposite each other on the dining-room table. She hesitated.

  ‘Has anyone from Southport brought you food? Or from Dover?’

  Jessica shook her head
.

  The woman’s eyes narrowed, glistening like water. She seemed to roll an unspoken word around in her mouth and finally spat into the grass beside the landing.

  ‘One of Matthew’s friends took me squidding last night,’ Jessica said, ‘That was nice. I haven’t…really made any friends here yet.’ ‘Cunts,’ she said with unexpected violence. ‘When my man was taken not one single person made the effort. I won’t forget that and you shouldn’t either.’

  ‘I’m Jessica.’

  ‘I know it. We all know everybody’s business. Come down here for privacy and it’s like hanging your knickers out on the grapevine.

  ‘Will you come in for a coffee?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’

  ‘I didn’t tell you. Thought you might have been warned about me.’

  Jessica stood aside and let the woman shuffle inside. She didn’t remove her boots, and sand and mud shook off them onto the floor.

  ‘Sorry, we cooked some squid here last night. I haven’t tidied up. When you’re alone…’

  The old woman peered at photographs lining the walls of the hall, fish skeletons, tumbledown barns, a fence almost consumed by sand. No photos of Matthew or her. Jessica hated the idea of putting your own face on the wall for everyone to see.

  ‘Maude,’ the woman said. It took Jessica a moment to realise she was offering her name.

  ‘I have too many fish.’ Jessica reached for the plastic bucket and pulled out the largest salmon. ‘Will you take it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’ll wrap it for you.’

  Jessica left the fish sitting on a stack of old newspapers.

  ‘So…coffee?’

  ‘Tea if you’ve got it.’

  Jessica nodded and put the kettle on the stovetop. Tipped the old leaves from the teapot into the sink. She could see the mould growing through them, pressing the mulch together into a solid lump. She wondered when she had last used the pot and stopped herself from following the thread of memory that would run her back into that hard wall of grief. She searched in the basket on the counter for biscuits.