The Lost Summers of Driftwood

by Vanessa McCausland

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Wendy.

  They ate together at the big table on the veranda overlooking the river, slapping at their ankles as the mozzies came in. The sausages were burned and the salad from the garden was a little limp after the heat, but no one cared. They relived the fears of the past two days and drank too much wine as the night folded softly around them. The Texan admitted he’d been drunk on ‘that awful VB stuff’ the whole time because he was so scared.

  Then Asha said, ‘Well, we had sex for the first time in forever. I know, you do crazy things when you think you’re going to die.’

  The table went quiet and Phoebe felt her face grow hot. The sound of the mozzie zapper punctuated the silence. She could feel Jez’s eyes on her. Had she really taken Jez’s declaration to leave Asha to mean abstinence? How naïve. Why wouldn’t they have sex? They were married. It wasn’t impossible that the fire, the physical brutality of that day, had made Jez seek out the physical comfort of his wife’s body. An image arrived in her mind—the morning sun falling in slants across Nathaniel’s bare back. The easy way they would roll in towards each other. Sex could be a balm, a refuge, Phoebe knew. She missed that, and the loss was a deep ache inside her. It had been real. For a while, it had been enough.

  ‘I wish it had that effect on Wendy,’ said the Texan, scuttling the tension and making everyone laugh, except Phoebe.

  Wendy slapped him playfully. ‘You just admitted you were drunk the whole time the fires were going.’

  The evening cooled and Phoebe felt a nub of dread settle in her stomach. She hated how she watched every interaction between Jez and Asha. She felt like a spy, and yet she couldn’t leave. After dinner was cleaned up and they’d waved goodbye to Tommy, Jenna and Harry, they all walked down to the fire pit—a clearing near the dam with a large cast-iron bowl. Jez and Wendy lit kindling and Phoebe wandered away from the group to find sticks for toasting marshmallows.

  ‘You remember doing this as kids?’ Jez came up behind and handed her a choice stick. It was long, tapering to a thin point. It looked like a weapon.

  ‘Yeah. Wow, that’s a goodie.’ She fought to mask the hurt in her voice. The fire illuminated half of Jez’s face. He was beautiful in a way that Nathaniel had never been. It seemed awful to compare the two but there was something about physical beauty that was so raw, so subconscious. It drew you in, it hooked you, without you even realising.

  ‘Jez, it’s good that you and Asha seem . . .’

  He looked at the ground, his hands finding his pockets, his boots kicking the dust. ‘I just . . . I realised I was being a dickhead.’

  ‘No—’

  ‘It wasn’t fair on her, or you, to go on the way I did.’

  Phoebe felt herself slide, as though she had slipped down a steep precipice, gaining speed, picking up burrs and grazed by gravel on the way. She couldn’t speak.

  ‘I’m in love with you, Phoebe,’ said Jez. ‘I was then and I am now. I can’t be near you without feeling it.’ He shook his head, a small smile playing on his lips. ‘Just having you around makes me happy in a way I can’t even describe. But everything you said is true. I have a commitment to Asha. I can’t just abandon her when things get tough.’

  Phoebe swallowed hard and snapped off the top of the stick, pleasantly sharp against her palm. It was what needed to happen. He was right. But still, the hurt yawned inside her, dampening down the anger. ‘Should I stay away? I should stay away.’ She whispered the words.

  ‘No.’ He grabbed her hands and then quickly dropped them, as though suddenly aware they weren’t alone. ‘Please. And it’s not just me who’d miss you—everyone loves you.’

  She managed a smile. She wanted more than anything to stay a part of this odd little group, she just didn’t think she could watch Jez and Asha play happy families, especially after everything Jez had told her. ‘Are you sure?’

  He nodded. ‘It’s been good for you down here, hasn’t it?’

  Phoebe felt the warmth of the fire as it flared to life. The sound of laughter mixed with the pop of the damp wood burning. ‘I’m taking another week. I don’t know that I even care if I lose my job anymore, not after what we’ve just been through with the fires. It’s put everything in perspective a little bit.’

  ‘Don’t you have, like, some shit-hot job selling wine, or something?’

  She shrugged. ‘Yeah, you know what? I’ve never really admitted this to anyone.’ It was true, not even Nathaniel knew the true extent of how far the reality of her job veered from the illusion. ‘It’s actually not that amazing a job, it just sounds good. I just put up pretty pictures to make everyone think that life is perfect, when it’s not. Story of my life, faking it,’ she muttered and shook her head. She felt a small, satisfying rush admitting this.

  ‘Kind of the opposite to mine. Being an electrician sounds pretty lame-arse but I like it, you know?’

  ‘At least it’s actually helping people instead of selling them a false dream. That kind of sums up the difference between us, don’t you think?’

  He shot her a quizzical look. ‘Well, we’ll feed you if you do lose your job. Could be the best thing that ever happened to you. Maybe I could . . .’ He shook his head and cleared his throat. ‘Maybe Wendy could even help you plant your own vegie garden.’

  That’s the thing, she thought. If you plant that vegetable garden with me something will happen. You know it and I know it and yet you’re telling me to stay. But I’m here for my sister, she thought. I need to understand what happened to her and find some kind of peace before I can leave this place.

  CHAPTER 13

  Driftwood was in afternoon shadow as Phoebe knocked on the door and called out a ‘hello’. She kicked off her sandals, peeled off her hat and listened. Silence. She had stayed away for a while after her painful conversation with Jez but the pull to come back here was too strong. She opened the door and peeked in.

  Flick looked up from her laptop, which sat in the middle of the dining table surrounded by empty mugs. ‘Oh hi,’ she said. ‘Sorry I’m off with the fairies.’

  ‘You reckon it’s gin o’clock yet?’ Phoebe held out the lime offering from her front yard and smiled.

  ‘I don’t care if it isn’t, I need a break. It’s too hot to write.’ She stretched and fanned herself with her hands. ‘I’ve had too much coffee. I need a downer.’

  ‘Have you had a productive morning? Killed off any characters?’

  Flick laughed. ‘I’m never going to be a good thriller writer. I can never kill anyone.’

  ‘Occupational hazard. Maybe you need to try a different genre,’ Phoebe said, moving into the kitchen and beginning to slice the limes. The scent of the citrus filled the air.

  ‘What’s this? Gin and tonic time and no one called me.’ The Texan peeled off his straw hat and rubbed his hands together. ‘Come and look what our garden grew.’

  Phoebe and Flick examined his basket filled with fresh basil, mint, tomatoes, lettuce and zucchini.

  ‘No one would ever know you used to be a big-shot banker,’ said Phoebe. ‘You’ve got gardener’s hands now.’

  ‘It’s in my blood. My family ran a cattle ranch. I was so sure I wasn’t going to work on the land and now here I am, up to my elbows in dirt. By choice.’

  She smiled. ‘Sometimes life seems predestined or circular or something, doesn’t it?’

  He shook his head. ‘Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if Jenny hadn’t got sick.’

  Phoebe shot him a sympathetic look. He sometimes talked about his wife dying of cancer. It was clear Jenny had been the big love of his life and still influenced him a lot. It made Phoebe feel closer to him somehow. They all shared this sense of loss. Tommy and Jez had lost Pauline, their mother, the same slow, painful way. Even Asha, with her pregnancies that never came to be.

  ‘How’s your little vegie patch going, Phoebe? Jez said you were plotting one,’ the Texan asked, his positivity kicking back in, as it inevitably did.<
br />
  Phoebe cringed. ‘I’m not a natural gardener, I’m afraid. But I do have lots of limes.’

  The Texan nodded. ‘Very handy. Have you seen the price of those buggers at the supermarket? With the amount of gin we all drink, we’d be broke if it wasn’t for your abundant citrus tree.’

  Phoebe laughed. She measured the gin into tall glasses and topped it with tonic water, ice and lime wedges. She handed the drinks around and settled herself at the picture window with her own. The sun was low over the trees and the river was as still as a millpond in the hazy afternoon heat. The Texan began washing and cutting his produce and the smell of basil and garlic infused the air.

  Wendy gave Phoebe a wave as she came inside, then washed the dirt from her hands at the sink and poured herself a white wine.

  Asha came into the kitchen barefoot, wearing what looked like her nightie with her hair tied into a knot on top of her head. ‘Yes, I’ve been napping. I worked all morning in the studio but it’s just too hot in there this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh, a nap sounds good,’ said Wendy.

  ‘So what’s happening?’ Asha slid her hand along the kitchen bench.

  ‘I’m cooking, everyone else is doing nothing,’ the Texan said, taking a sip of his gin and giving the frying onions a stir.

  Phoebe and Wendy shared an amused glance.

  ‘Hmm, I see,’ Asha said absently.

  She seemed happier since the fires, her face more open. Phoebe hoped this might translate into her not being as prone to cutting remarks.

  ‘I need some feedback. Anyone got a sec?’ Asha asked, rearranging the bun on top of her head.

  ‘Feedback on what?’ Phoebe replied.

  ‘There’s this painting I’ve been working on. I never paint but a friend gave me a canvas and, I don’t know, I just need to know if it’s done, or if it’s complete crap, in which case I won’t take it to the market.’

  Phoebe hadn’t seen inside Asha’s studio yet. She was curious, but it felt like entering dangerous territory. Their relationship seemed less fraught since their talk during the fires but there was still a frisson there, something unspoken. She wondered if Asha really wanted her feedback, but before she could ask, Asha grabbed Phoebe’s gin and tonic.

  ‘Come on, alcohol is allowed.’

  The studio was little more than a shed with a tin roof, attached to the back of the house. Phoebe remembered it filled with clay pots and figures, the smell earthy and rich. It had once been Jez’s mum’s pottery studio. Now the last of the afternoon sun streamed through its grubby windows, illuminating the drying fabrics strung like washing from the roof. It smelled strongly of turpentine and chemicals.

  ‘They say if you want the truth, ask your greatest enemy, not your best friend,’ said Asha, handing Phoebe her drink.

  Phoebe felt the jab of Asha’s words hit her. ‘Thanks,’ she said sarcastically. Asha’s brutality came on so fast, like a swift uppercut to the jaw. Phoebe was constantly side-stepping, gauging her mood.

  ‘Well, you know what I mean. We’re never going to be besties, are we?’

  Phoebe made a non-committal noise, trying to shrug off her increasing discomfort.

  ‘There’d be no point asking Flick. She’d just tell me what I want to hear.’

  Asha ducked under some of the drying prints and Phoebe followed. She should be used to bluntness—she’d grown up with Camilla. The painting was a simple still life—a bowl of fruit, candles and a jar of flowers. The colours were luminous and it had the same ethereal quality as its creator.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ said Phoebe.

  ‘Really? You sound like you’re telling the truth.’

  ‘I am.’

  Asha picked up her paintbrush and dabbed at the canvas a little, chewing her lip. ‘I haven’t done this like, ever, but a friend is thinking of opening a gallery in the Bay and asked me to do some paintings, so I thought I’d give it a go.’

  ‘You call that giving it a go? It’s amazing.’

  ‘I’ve never liked painting,’ Asha said, flinging the paintbrush into a jar. ‘My mum was a painter. Everything was about Mum being a bloody painter. I swore I’d never do that to my children.’ She paused and Phoebe felt the weight of her words hang, heavy as the damp fabrics surrounding them.

  ‘Your mum, was she good?’

  ‘When she wasn’t smoking weed or hungover, yeah, she was great. She taught, and won a big prize once. She pretty much acted like she was rich and famous from that day on, even though we never had any money.’

  ‘The life of an artist always sounds a bit too romantic,’ said Phoebe.

  ‘Yeah, if your idea of romance is asking the neighbours for food because your mum has gone off with her new boyfriend and there’s nothing to eat in the house.’

  ‘She didn’t feed you?’

  ‘Oh, you know, when she remembered she had kids.’

  Suddenly Phoebe saw Asha’s longing for a child in full relief. She wanted someone to nurture as she had never been. And she understood why Driftwood was so precious to her—a place of plenty and safety.

  ‘What about your dad?’ Phoebe asked.

  ‘He was a bloody artist as well. He went off to find himself, of course.’ Asha picked up another brush and let out a long groan. ‘And Mum let him, because, you know, free love and all.’ She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear with the end of her brush, like she’d been doing it forever.

  ‘But he never came back. He went and remarried some Italian woman and lived on the Amalfi Coast. He used to send us pictures of them on the beach. Mum pretended to be all cool about it, but she’d go into a drug stupor for days after those letters and it was me who had to make sure me and my brother got to school and ate.’

  Phoebe was about to say how hard that would have been, when Asha continued. ‘So, you think it’s really okay? My painting? Honestly?’

  ‘It’s incredible, Asha, you’ve obviously got your mum’s talent.’ Phoebe could feel herself softening. ‘Where is your mum now?’

  ‘Living with a boyfriend—Len. Deadbeat,’ Asha said under her breath. ‘They’re not that far . . . maybe forty minutes from here. He’s been around for the longest of them all. I don’t visit them, it’s too depressing. My brother does. He’s a better person than me.’

  ‘You’re not a bad person.’ The force of Phoebe’s response surprised her. ‘I don’t really have a relationship with my mother either.’

  Asha looked up, surprise brightening her face. ‘What sort of number did your mum do on you?’

  The studio felt suddenly airless. But Phoebe wanted to share this congruence in their lives. ‘Think of the most stylish woman you can imagine. That’s my mother. She’s an interior stylist, very successful, but there’s nothing else. The way things look is everything to her. I don’t even think she knows who I am. If she saw me now the first thing she’d comment on would be my outfit, and it’d be a criticism.’

  Asha was silent and their eyes met for a second. A flash of something passed between them, but then Asha looked away, busying herself with putting lids on paints. ‘Sounds like our mums would get on,’ she said. ‘That must’ve been shit too, just with more food to eat.’

  Phoebe laughed. ‘Yeah, I guess I shouldn’t complain too much.’

  ‘Oh, hi Phoebe.’

  She swung around to see Jez standing inches away from her, his head ducked awkwardly under some of the fabrics. She felt her cheeks grow hot.

  ‘Hey, babe,’ Asha seemed nonplussed about them all being in such close proximity. ‘I was just showing Phoebe my painting. You like?’

  Jez took a moment to reply. He looked between Phoebe and Asha and scratched his head. ‘But you don’t paint.’

  Asha rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, get with the program.’

  Phoebe was stuck between the two of them. The air was thick with turpentine and she felt light-headed with the smell.

  ‘I’m with the program, babe. I just thought you hated painting ’cause of your mum,’ he s
aid, moving a piece of fabric out of the way carefully.

  ‘Jose is opening a gallery in the Bay.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ He moved closer to inspect the painting. ‘Yeah, it’s good, babe.’

  Phoebe couldn’t remember or imagine Jez ever calling her ‘babe’. They seemed to use it almost like an insult. She wished she could melt through the dusty, paint-splattered floor.

  ‘Good? Just good?’ prompted Asha.

  ‘Well, I can hardly see it.’

  ‘Here, let me move,’ Phoebe said, grateful for an excuse to get out.

  ‘Oh, dinner’s nearly ready,’ said Jez as their shoulders brushed.

  ‘Oh, okay.’ Phoebe was breathless by the time she reached the door.

  CHAPTER 14

  Homegrown citrus winked in the sun and golden apples lolled in wooden barrels, their leaves still attached. There were slabs of sticky honeycomb and rolls of snowy goat’s cheese under muslin. The churchyard was filled with meandering market-goers and the air was thick with the smell of barbecue and sweet incense. A sense of warmth ran through Phoebe and it wasn’t just from the sunshine on her bare skin. She had always loved farmers’ markets for the sense of community and the freshness of the produce. A fresh breeze shifted along the small hairs of her arms, making her shiver pleasantly. She knew what this feeling was. It was freedom.

  Phoebe had resigned. She’d had a decision to make when her extra week of leave was nearly up. She’d finally charged her phone and driven into the Bay. The café was a chain of the kind she usually would have avoided in Sydney. It sold coffee in various sugary incarnations and muffins sat bloated behind the sweating glass counter. There was nothing gluten-free or with activated nuts, but none of that seemed to matter to her anymore.

  Out of habit she ordered a short black and then reassessed. Why couldn’t she have dairy? That’s how she actually preferred her coffee. She changed her order to a latte, remembering how easily Jez had recalled her favoured drink. She found a corner booth and sat down, heart beating fast as she opened her email. Her job was the last thing tethering her to her old life. Could she really let that go? It had always been as though working for Joet et Halo somehow conferred the champagne brand’s wealth and effervescence onto her person. She thought of her boss, Kate, who famously drank one glass of champagne every night without fail to remind her of how special and rare life was. For a long time Phoebe had loved that idea and aspired to be like Kate, with her smooth hair and her pared-back, monochrome designer clothing.