He had made an appointment at the Royal Hobart, combining it with a visit to his bank manager, who for some time had been requesting a meeting, and also to J. R. Stephenson in Campbell Street to buy a new water pump and spear pipe. Plus a feed of oysters for Merridy: “I know–it’s insane that you can’t get oysters in Oyster Bay.”
On his return, Alex laughed at how easy the procedure had been. The soft-lit room, the pile of magazines, the glass jar–and the shutter that opened in the wall and the anonymous white gloves that took away the jar. In a fortnight or so Dr Macbeth would send the results.
And when the envelope came. “Same as yours.” A five-inch grin. “Sperm count normal. Motility, too. No reason at all.”
“What’s motility?”
“I think it’s how zippy they are.”
Next morning, he was up early for the store-sheep auction at Quoiba. On waking, she rolled over onto his cold side of the bed and hankered for the rocking applause of the springs. It was an enormous relief. To think they might leave it to nature, to the forces that regulated the lambs and the black swans and the wedge-tailed eagles and tiger-snakes. And also not a relief.
CHAPTER FOUR
WELLINGTON POINT PRIMARY SCHOOL is now taking enrolments for children who will be 4 years old on January 1. Enrolment packs are available from the school office.
Two years on and the itinerant workers he employed to shear his sheep had grown balder. The cars roared by with boats on trailers, the names on the sterns sillier and sillier. And still nothing for them to christen Piers or Piera.
The simplest act for some had become very complex. Merridy tried not to indicate to Alex that she was at the most fertile part of the month because she did not want to appear utilitarian, but she found herself seducing him mid-cycle. She shied from looking at his temple, and took her tongue to where she would not have to see his face.
Wild flames they were her lips and hands, but her heart was dark to him. It hovered and seemed not to land. Very occasionally Alex stared down at her neck and the chevron of black hair–and mourned that she did not return his love. Instead, it was her brother’s disappearance that ran through her veins like a thick red sauce, and everything always, in the end, came back to it. On these occasions, he was crushed by the idea when he wrapped her in his arms that he was holding nothing more than the locked Glory Box of someone who inwardly fell away to the core of the earth.
Most of the time, though, he believed that they were destined to be together. They transformed loss into trust, disbelief into gratitude. They loved one another.
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Christmas approached. They attended the Cranbrook Fair, a sunny day in a bowl of hills. She watched Alex and Flash in the sheepdog trials and afterwards paid two dollars for a long-bearded man on a turquoise hot rod to give a ride to her godson. “That’s from Santa,” she told Zac. Afterwards, she bought the boy an Abel Tasman pancake from the side of a van. And bumping into the Welsh sisters, in a tent selling lemon marmalade, accepted their invitation to a girls’ night out.
In her garden, cultivating life in terracotta pots, she brushed the back of her hands against the fine hairs of the growing leaves. When a little frog hopped out from underneath a saucer, she helped it off its back. One afternoon, a lamb in the field behind the windmill was stung by a tiger-snake and died within minutes. She watched the snake trickle off through the grass with the gleam of hot tar. Between the bite and the bleat, she thought, I take my pulse, and felt again the heavy vacancy inside her.
Next time she saw a baby copperhead undulating across the drive she took a stone and crashed it down. The snake writhed up bleeding, half its body pinned useless to the gravel in a silvery-red smear. She walked back to the house in erratic steps. Hostile and frightened and also jubilant.
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Then there were little things she looked forward to. The long afternoons gazing out to sea. Listening to the radio in the kitchen. The ritual of reading the Mercury, especially the crime column and its list of thefts that told her that something was happening in the world. (“Oh, Alex,” she would say, her voice rising to a tremolo, “just look at this. Someone’s stolen a wheelbarrow in Orford!” He would always chuckle.) The dinner with Rhiannon and Myfanwy, at which Rhiannon served mussels. (“Everything’s so phallic,” Myfanwy said, squeezing a shell. “It’s important to eat girlie food, too.”)
There were other dinners, too. With their neighbours, the Macdonalds, from Queensland, who had bought Bill Molson’s property and kept a motorboat in Coles Bay on which, twice a year, the two families sped over to Schouten to picnic on a sheltered beach of smooth pebbles. With a pale, shy potter and his wife who lived across the river in Swanwick. With the rather trying Harry Ford, the friend of Alex’s parents, in his bungalow opposite the school. Every so often, Keith Framley treated her and Alex to a large dinner at the RSL. Sometimes Tildy joined them–always when Ray could not.
How it evolved, neither party examined too closely, but it became an unspoken agreement whereby it never entered Tildy’s mind to invite the Doves to a meal that might involve Ray; nor did Merridy ever ask Ray to Moulting Lagoon Farm. She sometimes caught sight of him over the grey heads, like blown dandelions, on ANZAC day; or pushing a pram into the golf club; or in line at the chicken counter in Talbot’s. But they never spoke. They nodded hello, but they did not speak.
This did not stop Merridy from looking, though. Ray’s office was opposite Talbot’s and she would guiltily catch herself gazing after him if ever he came into the street, and know that she was lingering too long and try to convince herself that it was an accident. As the years went by he filled out, but even his little paunch suited him. The appeal of a big-boned man.
Once–to her considerable shame–Alex caught her standing red-faced outside the store. Her eyes on a figure down by the jetty who winched a new-looking boat onto a trailer. She had thought that Alex was putting the groceries away in the ute round the back, but he was watching her watching Ray.
“Ray-spotting again?”
She turned round horrified, but he was smiling. He winked at her. “Can’t keep your eye off him, can you?”
An uncertain look crept into his face when Alex registered her dismay. It perplexed him. He knew that it was innocent.
Ray accelerated up the ramp as they loaded the last of the shopping bags. Alex braced himself, but the real-estate agent was in no mood to stop. Alex’s first impression was of a gold chain around a thick tanned neck. That was before he saw Ray’s face. He had a black eye and a cut under his jaw criss-crossed with stitches.
“Did you see that?” after Ray sped off.
“I did.”
“I’m surprised someone hasn’t clubbed him to death before now.”
No one was able to tell Alex who had done it.
Ray Grogan apart, Merridy’s life at this period of her marriage was more social than later it became, and certainly more social than she had been accustomed to in Ulverstone or Melbourne. There was an element in town that would never accept her as a resident but part of the geriatric flash-tide who came to Wellington Point, took advantage of the facilities and left; but there was another group, much smaller, who invited her to things: to raise funds for the day care or to meet over a capuccino at the Bethel.
Her ability to get around improved enormously after Alex bought her a second-hand Toyota–until then she had had to rely on his ute. For a time, she helped out Agnes twice a week at the Op-Shop, even if she said no to joining her reading group. She assisted in the Summer Flow Show and in Meals on Wheels when Abbygail fell ill. And though neither she nor Alex went regularly to church, they did religiously attend the ANZAC service at the Uniting Church and afterwards stood on the footpath outside Talbot’s to watch the procession of old men in ribboned medal
s shuffling past like a squad of prisoners.
So the days levelled out. Summer yellowed into autumn and the noise of the wind through the tree on the lawn kept her awake. Sleepless, she conceived further plans for the house, for the garden, for her potager by the sea.
CHAPTER FIVE
RAY GROGAN is proud to announce that he is expanding his services from sales, rentals and property management to professional loans. “Let me help you become a stakeholder in your community!”
One Monday morning a truck arrived from Wellington Point and unloaded oyster shells onto the drive. Merridy had taken the idea from Mrs Macdonald. The shells were soon crunched into fragments, several barrows of which Merridy scattered on the graves of Alex’s parents under the Oyster Bay pine, where children played on them, trampling the brittle surface in delighted whoops.
And still the only children to chase each other through the bright painted corridors were the ones who came to visit. The junior class from the primary school–she had let the teacher know that pupils would always be welcome to ride the ponies. The two small Macdonald boys, Don and Mike. And Tildy’s children, of course.
“What do ducks eat?” said Zac, the elder, who had been discovered by Tildy at the age of eighteen months with a large spider sticking out of his mouth. The only effect of swallowing the huntsman, so far as Tildy could tell, had been to make Zac fart. Dr Musgrove had said: “Better not make a habit of it.”
“Grass, water-beetles,” Merridy suggested, although really she had no idea. She was Zac’s godmother, but she could never look at his mouth without seeing hairy legs protruding. “Ask Alex, why don’t you?”
Alex had an affinity with Zac. He would take the boy on his tractor or into the shearing shed. Zac’s greatest pleasure was to race through the stalls, and then stand and shriek at his gargoyle’s reflection in the central pillar, a thick beam of Oyster Bay pine that the backs of wriggling sheep had oiled to a dark shine. Leaving Tildy a few moments’ peace to push her pram on the lawn.
Once upon hearing Zac’s hysterical shrieks, Tildy told her with the tactlessness of an adoring mother: “When something’s really bad, you hear silence.”
“You’re so lucky, Tildy. They’re beautiful.”
Her tone made Tildy look up sharply. “Well, the more time you spend with them, the more time you want to spend with them. You just want to gobble them up.”
“Like peanuts!”
“Exactly!”
Inside the pram the new baby gurgled, woken by her brother’s screams. Tildy poked a hand under the hood and adjusted something. “Though where this one’s button chin comes from, I don’t know.” This one was called Montana. She continued to make her noise, like a sleepwalker on the verge of speaking, and then stopped. “It’s only in the last two days she’s begun sucking her thumb. It’s as if she’s discovered God.”
On another visit, Tildy noticed the sagging fence and said: “Oh, I forgot. Ray told me to tell you that one of his farmers has thirty rolls of chicken wire he doesn’t need.”
“Alex will be thrilled.” Or, would he? She no longer knew with Alex, she had stopped trying to gauge his thoughts from his expression. It pained her to notice how the two of them had settled into a kind of acceptance over the past months. Their words careful and deflective. Kind without being intimate. In the unchanged air of their marriage.
“Then I’ll let Ray know, shall I?”
“That would be kind.” Merridy looked at her cousin. “How is Ray?”
His photograph appeared every week in the Mercury’s property supplement. A beaming mouth and, below it, his telephone number and the words: Phone now to be spoiled. He had bought out Tamlyn & Peppiatt the year before and operated under his own name. He specialised in loans over $150,000, under the questionable motto: Ray’s solutions. Why not settle for more?
“Oh, you know Ray. Busy as a bee. He’s even thinking of standing for the council,” but Merridy saw in Tildy the beginning of a disenchantment.
“Come on. What’s the matter?” They had trusted each other when they lived in Ulverstone. She was able to tell Tildy not to be such a slut, and Tildy could tick her off for acting like a cock-teasing Vestal Virgin.
Tildy had never spoken ill of Ray, had always been protective of him. But once she started, the floodgates opened. She seemed to relish recounting the worst of their marriage. He was always on his boat when she needed him–“He says he bought it to escape the children’s screams, for God’s sake. And what am I supposed to do?” When he did come home, he was demanding and took her for granted. “Sometimes I have the feeling he’d like me to peel his grapes for him–and if I don’t, he’ll trade me in for a spanking new condo.”
“Oh, he wouldn’t do that,” Merridy said. “Not Ray.”
“Don’t be so sure. He just might. When he’s in one of his moods.” As he seemed to be in right now.
“What kind of mood?”
“It’s like he’s had a quarrel with himself and neither side has spoken for a while. He’s only truly happy when he’s out in the middle of the bay with a rod in his hand.”
“It will sort itself out.”
“Hah!” said Tildy bitterly. “And Alex?” she added in her new stirred-up mood. It had not escaped her notice. Something unhatched in Merridy’s eyes.
“He’s good,” said Merridy. She took off her wide-brimmed floppy sun hat and wiped her forehead. And looked down into the pram. “Hey, is there a fragrance?”
Zac rubbed his red eyes. “She’s done a poo.”
“It’s all right, I’ll go,” said Merridy, relieved to have an excuse. She put her sun hat back on and went to fetch a Huggie from the supply that she kept handy in the spare bedroom. At the back of the nappy cupboard was a basket of toys and puzzles from the Op-Shop and a second-hand travel cot in case anyone stayed over. Tildy often dropped her kids off to play. Merridy dug out a Huggie and a Winnie-the-Pooh as an afterthought, and came back outside.
Tildy was content to watch Merridy change Montana’s nappy. “Spoon it in one end, mop it up the other. Zac was two before he laid his first firm turds. Weren’t you, darling?”
Then Zac came up and grabbed the bear and started pinching his sister’s leg.
“If you don’t stop doing that,” said Tildy seriously, “I’m going to kill you. Slowly. No one will know it’s me.”
He pinched again.
“Stop it, Zac, you’re just tired.”
“I’m not tired,” he shouted, pressing his knuckles to his tired eyes. Looking in that moment like his father, save that he did not have a moustache or a bangle around his wrist, for by now it was an open secret, how Ray flashed with a new item of gold jewellery every time he sold a sizeable property.
“Well, I am,” snapped Tildy. She minded that Zac would not let her hug him. That he answered back. That he used sleep as a weapon in the jealous battle which he raged against his sister. And explained through clenched jaws: “If Ray gets up to give him milk, he won’t drink it. So I get up three times every night to give him milk. I’ve never been so knackered, Merridy. Frankly, it’s a stake through the foot.” Staring into the pram where the one with Merridy’s nappy on had resumed her screaming. “Two stakes, in point of fact.”
And suddenly Tildy felt all elephantine and red-faced from the sun, her naturally auburn hair too much in a mess to be tamed by her chemist’s comb. “I’m not a stressed person, I don’t easily wobble, you know that. But I’ll tell you this, Merridy Dove–and it’s something you’ll discover soon enough–children are crap.”
“You don’t mean that,” Merridy said.
“The crappiest version of yourself. The self you thought you’d left behind but keep on meeting.” Tildy stopped herself. “You know, I’d never go on like this with anyone else who didn’t have kids. But you’re different. You’re the only person with no children I could bore like this.”
“Oh, I don’t mind.” And she really didn’t. She took an interest in children because she still d
id expect that she was going to have them. She could afford to be generous with her ear.
In her motherly way, Merridy went to fetch some warm milk for Montana.
“It’s her birthday soon, isn’t it?” coming back.
“That’s right. The twenty-third.”
“I’ll get her something from Pumpkin Patch.”
“You can’t keep away from that shop!”
Merridy loved the store in Hobart with its simple fresh colours. She was always buying Tildy’s children new outfits. She said: “It even has a maternity section now.”
“Nothing I could squeeze into. I always get so huge.”
Moments later there was a sudden quiet, as if a mosquito was feeding.
Tildy broke it. “You know Rose-Maree’s pregnant?”
And Merridy felt her smile droop. Slacker than the fence and the brim of her shapeless sun hat. “But I thought she never wanted children.”
“I don’t think she felt comfortable talking to you about it. Oh, God, sorry,” noticing Merridy’s face. “What an insensitive cow I am.”
A girl who worked sometimes at the Op-Shop had told Merridy a few months back of her two abortions. At the time, Merridy did not judge her. Now she found herself hating her. It was one reason why she stopped working for Agnes. She began to nurse a resentment against Indians and Chinese, all those who seemed to multiply like rabbits or took it for granted.
She hated, as well, others’ discomfort over her affliction.
“What, you don’t have children–oh, I’m sorry,” and the person would get embarrassed and she would have to counsel them, as if she were missing an arm or a leg.
“I’m not childless,” she taught herself to say. “I’m child-free.”
But six months on she passed Rose-Maree’s pram unattended outside Talbot’s and had the strongest urge to snatch the baby.
Secrets of the Sea Page 17
