Secrets of the Sea

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  Before laying his jacket over the back of a leatherette chair, he slipped a hand into one of its pockets and transferred whatever he found there to his trousers. “Well, what do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “My place. Here, give me that.”

  She let him take her coat and sat down on the sofa and looked around. “Oh, nice,” she said. “Very nice.”

  “I bought it off a chemist who had to leave town in a hurry,” he said, coming to sit beside her. “I turned the garage into a gym. Maybe you’d like to see?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He edged nearer, stretching a practised arm along the backrest. “You know,” he said, “it’s wrong what they say about estate agents.”

  “What do they say?”

  “Oh, stupid things,” and looked sad and misunderstood. “That we’re the least trustworthy profession–after car salesman, mark you, and journalists and policemen.”

  “I never read those surveys.” She leaned forward a little to ease off her shoe.

  “Can I tell you something?” stroking her hair and inspecting a lock of it with fierce intent. “You smell like the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.”

  “Oh, bull,” she laughed and pulled up her jacket.

  “Whoa there! What are you doing?”

  “Getting ready for your paintbrush,” she said merrily. “Isn’t that what you want?” And unfastened her bra.

  He stared at her breasts, the shadow of the lace curtain falling on them in the pattern of a hot snowflake. She was buxom for someone her height. Even so, he was alarmed by her pace. “Hey,” licking his upper lip, “something to drink? When do you have to get back?”

  “I don’t know. When I’ve had a wonderful time maybe,” and dropped her bra on the carpet and sat back.

  He went on staring at her on the leatherette sofa, the bright afternoon light streaming through the front window onto her white arms and breasts, her face without make-up.

  “What about some music? I could put on some music. What do you like?”

  “Have you any choral hymns?”

  He watched for a sign that she was teasing him. But she seemed deadly serious. His mouth parted in a lamentable smile. “I was thinking Leonard Cohen. I’m not actually sure I have any church music.”

  His arm snaked back along the top of the sofa and he studied her hair again. “You don’t want a Campari or something? I’ve got a bottle somewhere.”

  “No, I just want you to shove your sash into my gash.”

  Merridy spoke the words in a clear, pleasant manner. She could have been trying them out for the first time. Or singing a familiar hymn.

  An undisguisable fear crept over his face. He spoke in a dry, dazed voice.

  “There’s something I’d like to understand about you.”

  But Merridy did not want anyone else’s understanding. Least of all Ray Grogan’s.

  She leaped up and walked fast, across the thick brown carpet, and slipped into the bedroom–the quick, discreet movement of a girl who might have been late for a lecture.

  He came in and she was waiting like fate on the bed, shoes already off, eyes looking up at him and her body poised, ready to take notes.

  She pointed down at her tights. “All you have to do is take these off and put your hand here.”

  When, the following morning, Ray did not appear at the usual hour at Tamlyn & Peppiatt, his boss grew worried. Ray was booked to show Mrs Prosser a shack on a three-acre block in Merthyr Drive.

  On telephoning his home, Mr Tamlyn discovered that Ray was indisposed.

  He asked Teresa: “Was Ray ill yesterday?”

  “Not that I saw,” she harrumphed.

  “He says he’s really under the weather. He says he has the flu.” Mr Tamlyn cursed and reached for his jacket. “That means I’ll have to go. What’s Mrs Prosser’s number?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  WELLINGTON POINT BOWLS CLUB

  Results for Saturday.

  Talbot Shield:

  Swansea 79 defeated Wellington Point 63

  M. Levings 20–B. Grogan 17.

  Next Saturday will be President’s Day/Appreciation Day combined. Old and new members will be made very welcome. Come and join the fun. B. Grogan (Pres. & Sec.).

  Shortly before 7 p.m. the following Saturday, Alex drove into Wellington Point to have dinner with Merridy at the Freycinet Court Hotel. It was the night of the Jazz Social and cars were parked bumper to bumper along the main street. He found a space behind Nevin’s garage and was locking up his ute when he saw a large woman coming up the alley towards him. Tildy in her war paint. Heading in the direction of the Town Hall.

  He remembered that determined, excited walk. Across her bedroom. Both were trying to appease a hunger and fill a stinging blankness. “Why don’t you put that down?” she had urged, indicating the novel in his hand. “Harry told me you went to Oxford. Well, I ought to warn you, I don’t read much, not unless it’s New Idea.” He remembered the powdery vanilla smell of the room, like the hay-fever tang of wattle. Quickly, he took in the bottles with their tops off, the stray tampons and hairpins and creams, the magazines that she traded with the shop-girls at Talbot’s. He had not had sisters and the exaggerated femininity unsettled him. Had he remained in Wellington Point at the age of eleven, he might have ended up in a thick-scented room like this, with a girl like this. She had dimmed the lights and turned on a tape-recorder and swayed her buttocks, mimicking the words so exactly that it might have been Nina Simone herself who gyrated towards him, her arms reaching out with a hopeful smile, until with a desperate little gasp, she said: “Fuck me, Alex.” He had dropped his book to the floor and torn down his pants as if peeling the price off himself so that she would not have to see his cheapness. And remembered how she stood up afterwards, sighed, and went to the bathroom, stretching her lolly-green skirt down over her tights.

  She was almost level when she noticed him. “Why…Alex,” and batted her eyes. “You look like you’re dressed for a funeral.”

  “Tildy…” He had changed clothes three times until he found the combination of shirt and trousers that seemed to him just right.

  “Are you coming to the Social?”

  “No.”

  “Hope it’s not your funeral,” she said brightly.

  “Listen, I want to apologise.”

  “What for, sweetie?”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You were crook. Now I’d love a chat, but I have to meet someone.”

  He watched her hurry up the street towards the Town Hall, growing small as she climbed the steps, and felt something pop when the door closed behind her. She had come out from under his skin, an ant-sized thorn that no longer hurt or inflamed.

  Ticking with anticipation, Alex waited in the empty restaurant. On the corner table where Debbie had placed him was a wine bottle with candle wax all spewed and a laminated menu from which pretty soon he could recite every dish.

  He had suggested the Freycinet Court Hotel because there was nowhere else to eat in Wellington Point. But now as he sat there, he realised that there was a sentimental reason, too. His parents’ honeymoon. When sorting out their belongings, Alex had come across a 1950s brochure stuck inside an album of wedding photographs. The hotel, ideally situated, in the consideration of the copywriter, boasted gardens and lawns, home cooking, hot and cold water. Plus electric light, wireless and sewerage arrangements, as well as access to a nine-hole golf links. The proprietor had even provided a quote: No holidaymaker at Wellington Point need fear suffering from ennui.

  The rest Alex had learned from Harry Ford, the retired Fleet Street journalist who was one of his parents’ few surviving friends. Towards the end of their honeymoon fortnight, according to Harry, Alex’s parents walked along Dolphin Sands and made love in the dunes. On the same day they explored Moulting Lagoon.

  Behind a small cemetery they came upon a track. There was a wooden
gate with a padlock. Basil Dove knocked the dottle from his pipe and climbed over.

  “At the end of the track was this farmhouse for sale. They decided there and then to buy it.”

  Quite why his father should have divulged these details to Harry–whose great regret was that ill-health had left him unable to advance in newspapers, and who had been in Wellington Point forty years expecting to die–Alex had no idea. Perhaps because he was the only other Englishman in town.

  Alex looked again around at the unoccupied tables. The place had altered from his last visit, shortly after his return from England four years ago. Then he had asked the waitress for a mango. He might have asked her for a pre-phylloxeric Lafite from her expression. Two more proprietors and now the hotel was owned by Tildy’s father, a blusterer with a grey handlebar moustache who–according to Harry–had been retired from the North Hobart Cricket Club because of his beer gut. Framley’s taste was reflected in the green chintz pelmets that stretched over the windows and the chaffinch noise that issued from a concealed alarm when Alex had first come into the dining room, causing Debbie to come scurrying from the kitchen.

  “Ah, yes, Mr Dove,” smirking. “The discreet table for two.” She led him to it. “You’re the first,” in tones that failed to conceal her curiosity about his guest, Alex Dove being considered quite a catch in her small circle.

  Outside, it was still light. Alex listened to the street noises. Fred Coggins, whom he vaguely remembered from school, locking up the Talbot emporium; the skimpy figure of Rose-Maree yelling out to Joe Hollows, a boy who had briefly helped him put up fences; Tom Pidd hooting the horn of his ute as he drove slowly past Abbygail the chemist, a keen golfer who did not disguise her ambition to be elected to the council so that Wellington Point could have a sports complex; the sound of an electric guitar being tuned.

  In a corner of the restaurant, the coffee-maker gargled.

  Perhaps she had forgotten. At 7.15 he borrowed two coins from Debbie and, not wishing to be overheard, went into the street to the public phone. The mouthpiece stank of vomit, lipstick and fried flat-head. He dialled Louisa Meredith House and was put through to the Bowman unit, but the line was engaged. He waited five minutes before trying again. A couple in evening clothes walked by, laughing at something. He heard the engaged tone and returned to the restaurant.

  Twenty minutes later, a voice was saying: “I’m sorry.” Two lips shyly kissed his cheek. “The phone rang as I was leaving.”

  “I didn’t mind waiting.”

  “Liar,” and pulled in her chair. “My mother always told me that people count up the faults of those who keep them waiting. Do you lie about other things, too?”

  He smiled, relieved to see her sitting there. “Only when I’m hungry,” he said.

  “That’s good.” She picked up a menu. “I suppose you’ve decided.”

  “I ought to warn you–the choice won’t be what you’re used to in Melbourne.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  It warmed him to watch the tanned arm with the unusually fair hairs as she fidgeted with the menu. Her blue dress had something animal about it. Under the thin cotton, her breasts swayed like censers, releasing the incense of her perfume.

  “You know what I’d love more than anything?” She looked up. “A plate of oysters.”

  She saw his expression and immediately reached to touch his hand. “Don’t worry,” she laughed, but in a kind way. “I’ve learned never to expect oysters in Great Oyster Bay.”

  “They’re recommending the wallaby.”

  She gave a quick look around. “I wouldn’t,” leaning forward. “It’s been in the deep freeze six months.”

  “It says here ‘freshly farmed’.”

  “Keith lies through his teeth and expects the girls to do the same. He tells customers that the ice cream is home-made when in fact it comes out of Peter’s tubs which have their labels peeled off. And you mustn’t believe that the scones are home-made and oven fresh. They’re frozen and microwaved. ‘Don’t let them hear the ping,’” in Framley’s voice.

  “You have a spy in the kitchen?”

  She studied the menu. “Now if I’m not having oysters, what shall I have?”

  But he wanted to know. “How come you’re so well informed?”

  “Keith Framley is my father’s cousin.”

  “Oh.” And realised that he would have known this had he lived in Wellington Point instead of eight miles outside. Or spoken to Tildy. Everyone was related to each other in Tasmania.

  “He let us stay in the hotel before we moved into the unit.” She was reading the menu. “I also work here in the evenings. Part of the rent.”

  “So it’s not exactly a treat,” he said thickly, “bringing you here.”

  “Of course it is!”

  They were interrupted by Debbie coming to take their orders.

  “Ready?” arching a brow when she saw who it was. “Sorry, Merridy, didn’t see you come in.”

  “I’ll have the chicken satay,” Merridy decided.

  Unseeing, Alex turned the menu over. “I might have the steak.”

  “And to drink?” asked Debbie with a starched expression.

  “Tea for me.”

  “You’re not drinking?” said Alex.

  “What’s tea if it’s not a drink?”

  “And for you, Mr Dove?” said Debbie, making him feel that he had to pay for her disappointment.

  “A glass of Coombend red.”

  When Debbie had left, Merridy put down the menu. She looked him in the eye. “Listen, I’m very happy to be here. And very sorry I’m late. It’s a rule of my parents. Never keep anyone waiting. Ever.”

  Her face responded shinily to the overhead light. He still could not bear to examine it too closely. Her coral mouth. Her blue dress that was devoted to the contour of her breast.

  Picking at the candle wax, he asked about her parents.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HOW MUCH MERRIDY TOLD him then became confused with how much he discovered afterwards.

  She was twenty years old, born in Ulverstone on Tasmania’s north-west coast. Her mother was a Sunday school teacher, the middle child of strict Methodist parents from Adelaide. The Proudlocks had come to where the most neglected souls on earth had called them and because of the wretchedness to be found in Tasmania. They knew that God was exacting. When informed of their daughter’s decision to marry Leonard Bowman, a mechanical engineer from Melbourne, Merridy’s grandmother gave a sorrowful headshake. “I have asked Him from the bottom of my heart to increase my suffering and He has obliged.”

  Merridy’s father had trained at night school when he was sixteen. He started in workshops, building bus bodies, and then was put in the drawing office. He designed cases for cameras to go down to 10,000 feet, and water tanks and lifts for mine shafts. But there came a hideous moment when none of this engaged him.

  As a student in Melbourne, and during the first eight years of his marriage, Leonard had a conviction amounting almost to a religion. He believed that the world was full of patterns and that even human behaviour could be determined by mathematical equations. The motion of the waves on a windy day was determined by an interplay of these equations. They might be immensely complex, but they could be resolved down to a neat truth–and if only the man or woman in the street learned to switch on a certain part of their brain they would not have to stumble along in the dark.

  Leonard was two months short of his fortieth birthday when–overnight–he lost his faith. Up to this point, he had lived according to the precept: “Science requires the simple: it won’t tolerate the unnecessary.” From this time on, the unnecessary gave meaning to his life.

  To conquer his grief, he began to write children’s stories. He penned and illustrated more than thirty of these over the next decade. But he was keeping a conversation alive that nobody wanted to hear. The editors who returned his manuscripts were unanimous in their admiration of his drawings and also in their judgme
nt that here was a poetry lover who had never progressed beyond doggerel, whose sure limit was Edward Lear. In the saddest period of Merridy’s upbringing, he read to her every night from A Book of Nonsense, to the eventual consternation of her mother, who one night burst into Merridy’s bedroom and screamed at the pair of them that she was fed up with runcible spoons and would live a contented life were she never to hear those detestable verses again.

  But not at the beginning. Not at the beginning.

  Leticia Proudlock was twenty-one, young, pretty and naïve when she tripped over Leonard on her way to the daffodil show at the Leven Theatre.

  The man who restored her to her feet had arrived in Tasmania that week to take up a job in Burnie. The liking was mutual. He admired her purity and her legs. She saw in him a man of science who might give her practical knowledge of a world that so far she had experienced through the rigid filter of the scriptures. She would adore Leonard principally for everything that her parents were not. Plus he was more sophisticated and ten years older. In Melbourne, he had had European friends. He read poetry and loved foreign cuisine, but was not averse to expressing himself in the vernacular of the workshops. Best of all, he was blessed with a rolling laugh that scattered his sense of the ridiculous into the deepest crevices, and specifically the Methodist Hall in Ulverstone where Leticia had passed a hefty proportion of her adolescence.

  Four days after their encounter, he arrived at her parents’ house bearing gifts of smoked oysters, blue cheese and brown bread that he had had shipped across Bass Strait on the Abel Tasman.

  On the formica table in the kitchen was a plastic colander. Leonard fitted it on his head.

  For the Jumblies came in a Sieve, they did–

  Landing at eve near the Zemmery Fidd

  Where the Oblong Oysters grow…

  At 91 Water Street, Leonard’s nonsense verse and gifts fell on rocky soil. “Get that vomit cheese out of the fridge!” ordered Leticia’s father as soon as Leonard had departed the house. Luke Proudlock was a teetotaller who never failed to refer to the Bible and whose only passion–apart from his God and his briar pipe–was bowls. He refused to eat plum pudding in case it contained brandy, and used words like “yonder” to describe a country that his forefathers had sailed from in 1832–“as free settlers”. He was accustomed to his wife’s stodgy cooking, her custard and coddled eggs. He shoved aside a plate of smoked oysters with the words: “It’s like eating snot.” Served up spaghetti a week later: “I’m not eating this foreign muck.”