The River Baptists

by Belinda Castles

  Danny watched the man in front of him, tall, hurting, but still carrying a wary meanness, ready to spring. All the times he’d backed away, all this hiding on the river from the day he’d be found, all led to this. From the dark behind him came the slosh of water around the boat as Rob and Alf climbed back in. Kane leapt at him as soon as he heard it, his sharp fist connecting with the side of Danny’s head. Danny’s instinct was to cover himself, as he had as a boy, roll himself up into a ball until it stopped, careful to do nothing that would provoke his dad further. That urge was still there, to play dead. But he raised his fist while Kane was swinging for another blow and punched him as accurately as he could in the swaying dark on the chin. Kane slapped him a couple of times and went for a headbutt, but didn’t hit him square on. Danny managed to jab him in the shoulder and then the cheek, and Kane staggered back, holding his side. Danny watched him for a second, waiting to see what sort of shape he was in. Maybe he was faking it with his cut, maybe he wasn’t.

  Danny stepped forward, put a hand on his shoulder to steady him, and Kane kicked him in the knee. Danny went down, the pain tearing through his leg. Kane grabbed the torch and hit him in the face with it. Fury exploded in Danny’s head and he barrelled Kane over from his knees, slamming his shoulder into his gut, and sprang to his feet, standing over him. He couldn’t see out of one of his eyes where the torch had hit him. ‘Are you getting up?’ he said through gritted teeth. Kane shook his head, coughing into the sand.

  He waited for a moment. Should he drag him up, make him continue? But the fight had drained out of Danny; he felt as limp suddenly as the figure before him on the ground. You could only fight someone worth fighting. He heard footsteps on the sand behind him. It was Rob, throwing something onto the sand a few metres away from Kane’s limp form: a thin red tube—a distress flare. He shrugged. ‘Promised Maggie.’

  Danny turned back to Kane, whose hand was over his face, his chest heaving. ‘If I see you again,’ he said, ‘you come near me, or Rose, I’ll kill you.’

  In Maggie’s house on the island, in her lamp-lit bedroom, Rose let her torn shirt fall open and held her sleeping baby to her skin. She kissed her and breathed in her smell. The little bald head against her cheek was smooth and hard but for the soft fontanelle, throbbing gently. She opened her tiny eyes and a bolt of electricity shot straight into Rose’s body. The baby’s gaze held her, frozen in position, filled with her presence. So this was how it was supposed to feel. There it was, a connection between them like a steel cable of many twisted strands. ‘Emily,’ she whispered. ‘That was my mum’s name, little girl.’

  She lay down on the bed, carefully arranging the baby next to her, trying not to squeeze her too hard. The door inched open, and Maggie came and sat by them on the edge of the bed. ‘I’m so sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused,’ Rose murmured. ‘I should have sorted this out myself.’

  ‘Shush, love.’ Maggie put a hand on her head, tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘Let your friends help you. You’ve done enough on your own.’

  Outside, there was a distant explosion, then a fizzing like a firework. Through the window they saw a plume of red smoke shoot out from behind the black hills and high into the sky, disintegrating after a moment, the smoke lingering for a second or two. Maggie nodded. ‘Good,’ she said quietly.

  Rose pressed her face into the baby’s hard, downy little head and closed her eyes. She breathed her in, her oaty baby smell, her whole body aching with gratitude and love.

  Epilogue

  Danny had been working on his place for three months. It was still just a wooden frame on the hillside, but now that it was at least that, you could see what it would become. It’d be a while yet; he had to fit in the building between fares, with the odd day off, but it was happening in front of his eyes now. He was hot from hammering though there was a light rain and the air held the chill of autumn, and he sat on the rafters of his future deck and watched the clouds shifting quietly along the valley, the surface of the creek below blurred with rain. He watched as above the rise of the plateau a figure steadily appeared. It was her, Rose, carrying the baby in its pouch. They were still a good fifteen metres off but he could see the baby had grown beyond recognition, her legs hanging down below Rose’s hips. Rose looked straight at him, shy but fearless as she approached. He’d waited, and waited—had known she was still on the river, Rob kept an eye on her—had accepted the waiting as calmly as he could.

  He’d been thinking of her. The day before, he’d seen the River Baptists for the first time, up at the shallow end of the creek as he was having a swim. He remembered that she’d seen them, when he’d found her stranded on the river. She’d said they looked happy, and they did now, too; delirious they seemed. They were a sight, in their ordinary clothes, soaked to the skin—grown people being cradled by a big man, coming up smiling. He’d watched them from the shade of a tree for a while, then paddled home in his dory, shaking his head.

  Now here she was, like they were a sign. It had been six weeks since he’d sent her the map, no signature, just a D on the little jetty in the creek. He’d resisted it for a while. Waited till he could wait no more. It seemed as he wrote her name on the envelope that he was staking everything on a hunch, a glimpse of a possible life.

  He walked down to meet them, held his arms out for the baby. ‘Give her to me,’ he said. ‘That’s a bugger of a climb.’ She unbuttoned the pouch beneath her coat and eased the baby out. His heart pounded as he took her, shielding her face from the rain with his hand. Rose said nothing, but she was smiling. He’d never seen her smile like that; she seemed to have shed something, the weight of her father perhaps, the stuff of the past. He smiled back. Her happiness was irresistible.

  The baby in his arms was fat, warm, soft-skinned, still sleeping. There were children in his life now: he was beginning to know his own child, he wanted to know this one. Rose was watching him, waiting. He’d missed her face. There was so much she didn’t know about him. But there was time now for everything, now she’d come, to lay himself out before her and let her decide. ‘Want to see what I’ve done?’ he said. She nodded, a tiny movement of her head, and he took her by the hand.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you Neal Drinnan, Caroline Lurie and Brad Shiach for reading and commenting on early drafts; Annette Barlow, Catherine Taylor and Ali Lavau for sensitive, patient and thorough editing; Catherine Milne for her work on this book and behind the scenes for The Australian/Vogel Award; Patrick Gallagher at Allen & Unwin, Alan Stevns at Vogel’s and Murray Waldren at The Australian for running the award; the Vogel judges; Varuna—The Writers’ House for a fellowship to work on an earlier novel that never saw the light of day; Gail Shiach and Hawkesbury River Child Care for taking care of my daughter so I could write. Thank you, too, to all at Allen & Unwin for their care and attention.

  A final thankyou to Brad for his endless love, support and pride.