Drift

by Penni Russon

  ‘I know,’ Undine said. ‘You wish she would come home.’

  ‘Every morning you get up out of her bed. I look like this –’ Jasper eyed her closely – ‘because I think one morning she will get up out of her bed. But then you will have gone away.’

  ‘Yep.’ Undine tried to keep her voice light, as if it didn’t really matter.

  ‘And you wouldn’t play with me anymore.’

  ‘Nope. But I’ll play with the other Jasper.’

  ‘What does he like to play?’

  ‘He likes trains,’ Undine offered.

  ‘I like trains!’

  ‘See,’ said Undine. ‘You’re not that different after all.’ And she looked at the ground and busied herself with the nest, so he wouldn’t see the tear on her cheek. Because Jasper, without knowing it, had just told her how to get home. It had happened in bed … It was the dreaming. Now she thought about it, she knew it was true. There had always been magic in this world, simmering in the back of her mind. In the dreaming. She was keeping herself here, making the choice every morning to stay. Her world was always calling her, calling her back. It seemed so simple.

  But it wasn’t. Because it meant she had to leave him, this place, this summer, forever.

  Eventually the heat drove Trout back into the relative cool relief of his house. Reina was waiting for him when he got home.

  ‘So,’ she said, before Trout could say a word about their fight or about being sorry, ‘I talked to my friend Liv today – remember Liv at the Silver Moon? And she said the artist due to exhibit in the café next week has pulled out and the one scheduled after him isn’t ready. So I told Liv that I knew a photographer and all we would have to do to get your work ready is frame it and it’s not till Monday and you could still go to med school but this way you could be a photographer as well and what do you think because I already told Liv yes.’

  Trout blinked. Reina was saying words faster than he could process them. ‘Exhibit?’

  ‘You know, hang your work up on a wall so other people can see it.’

  ‘I’m not ready.’

  ‘You’ve got heaps to choose from. You’d only need like ten, maybe fifteen photos, if they’re big ones. I can help you frame them. I used to help Mum all the time. And she always left it to the last minute, whereas we’ve got heaps of time. You’ve already got mounting board.’ She grinned unashamedly. ‘I checked.’

  ‘I can’t tomorrow, I’ve got … I’ve got that thing, out of town.’

  ‘That’s okay, we can do it tonight, finish it tomorrow night. I can do some tomorrow if we’re running behind. And then hang the work on Monday. Liv said she’d set aside a table and we could have a launch. We can ring round, I can invite some of Mum and Dad’s arty friends.’

  ‘Oh …’ Trout’s mind was whirling. ‘No. Just my friends. Just something small.’

  Reina clapped her hands together. ‘So yes?’

  ‘Yeah!’ Trout felt his enthusiasm for the idea rising. He pushed thoughts of Undine away. He wanted to plan ahead, not sit around thinking about the past. ‘Oh, Reina, this is just what I needed. Thank you.’

  ‘Let’s get started!’ Reina jumped up. ‘Where’s your folio? Well, I know where it is because I found it and it’s right here, but it seems polite to pretend I don’t know that. But oh look! Here it is. So anyway, I like this one. And that series of night shots you took, round the wharves and the city. And those close-ups of the kitchen things, they’d look great on the café wall … the chipped willow pattern cups, the tarnished spoons … Beautiful, broken things.’

  ‘Reina,’ Trout said gently. He reached out and touched her arm. It felt warm and soft under the calloused pads of his fingertips. Reina looked down at where his hand met her skin. ‘I mean it. Thank you.’

  Reina shrugged. ‘What are friends for? I never was good at maintaining my rage.’

  ‘Me either.’

  ‘Hooray for us then. Let’s get to work.’

  Stephen’s curry was thick and savoury, with chunks of lamb and potato, and a rich, oily tomato sauce. Undine ate it as if it were her last meal, relishing each bite. They dined outside on the back veranda at a long table that was actually a very old wooden door propped up on two slightly wobbly sawhorses, so you couldn’t get excited and bang the table while you ate or the plates were in danger of being wobbled right off. The summer evening was drawing to a close; the days were growing shorter as autumn approached. It was Undine’s favourite time of the year, with its long golden afternoons and tensile thread of delicious melancholy as the leaves on the trees in Hobart’s streets changed to red, yellow, brown, drifting to the ground.

  All of this – Stephen’s curry, the wobbly door, the promise of autumn – conspired to keep Undine here, in this world, tonight. She forgot the dream, forgot her fears, laid her plans aside. She laughed at Stephen’s jokes. She carried in the used dishes. She read Jasper four bedtime stories and helped Lou change the sheets on Lou and Stephen’s bed, burrowing her face into Stephen’s pillowcase as she carried it to the laundry, inhaling the scent of him. Tonight Undine made the hot chocolates, the way Stephen had taught her, whisking in the cocoa and frothing the milk. She, Lou and Stephen watched a Polish movie together and Undine joined in the discussion about mise en scène and the narrative gaze, the cinematographer’s use of close angles and the way red started off being a harsh, angry colour at the beginning and became a bright, joyous colour by the end.

  When the film was over, Stephen flicked the ‘off’ button on the remote. He yawned loudly. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘bed for me. I can’t stay up all night like you young ’uns.’

  ‘Mmm … me too,’ Lou said. ‘My eyes hurt from reading all those subtitles.’ She gave Undine a kiss on the cheek. ‘Goodnight, female offspring,’ she said.

  ‘Goodnight, Mum,’ Undine said. And she gave Lou a hug.

  ‘You talkin’ to me?’ Lou asked as she hugged Undine back. ‘Good lord. You said the M word!’ She pulled back and eyed Undine suspiciously. ‘What do you want? You don’t look like you’ve done anything naughty.’

  ‘Lou! I’m too old to be naughty.’

  Lou’s eyebrow arched teasingly. ‘Beg to differ. Pretty much just the right age for it.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ Undine said firmly.

  Undine and Stephen stood side by side in the bathroom brushing their teeth. Undine watched him in the mirror as his mouth foamed up. He spat and rinsed and so did she.

  ‘’Night, love,’ Stephen said.

  ‘Wait,’ Undine wanted to prolong the moment. ‘You’ve got toothpaste on your cheek.’ She reached out and rubbed it off, feeling his rough bristly skin under the pad of her thumb. ‘Goodnight,’ she said. Stephen kissed her forehead. When he’d left the bathroom, Undine leaned against the cool white tiles. She whispered, ‘Goodbye.’

  Phoenix said to Liv, in a quiet corner of the Silver Moon Café, ‘Did you ever have one of those books as a kid that told you how babies are made?’

  ‘Yeah! I used to read it all the time. It had all these crazy pictures of the parents taking a bath together. I don’t think my parents ever did that. Did you? Have a book, I mean –’ Liv laughed – ‘not have a bath with my parents.’

  Phoenix nodded. ‘My mum bought me one. I remember this one picture that showed you the boy growing up in stages, so he started off as this tiny curled-up baby thing with his giant, bulbous cerebellum.’ Phoenix held out his hands, indicating an enormous head, extending far beyond his own. ‘And then he grows up, through all the ages, fat little toddler dude, boy with a football, adolescent with long greasy hair and a boombox and then he’s a man in a business suit, with a haircut and a real job. It all seemed so … so linear, so simplistic. You know, graduating from one phase to another, as though time just moved relentlessly forward, acting on everybody in the same way.’

  ‘I always thought it was weird,’ said Liv, ‘that they stopped at old age, at some slightly stooped but pleasant grandparent figure. They should have ke
pt going, shown what happens next. You know, veins collapsing, hair falling out. And, like, the skin, you know how old people get kind of see-through? And then death, and then decomposing, right back down to the same tiny bits of matter that you start from.’

  ‘They wouldn’t, though, would they? But why do people want to sell this idea of linearity, that we just hop along in this straight line? Because the amazing thing is that we die. And not even always when we’re old. They don’t show the businessman getting hit by a bus. But it’s cool that life’s really so much bigger than that stupid straight line. It’s like this really incredible loop, it’s kind of … eternity. Like a circle. Or … you know, like a paperclip.’ Phoenix drew a paperclip in the air, starting at the outside and circling in.

  ‘Like circles inside circles,’ Liv said. ‘Like a chain of paperclips. When you think about babies being born and people dying and all the ways our lives overlap with other people’s lives. Not just your family, not just genealogy, but everyone. Even someone you just accidentally nudge on the street but never see again.’

  Phoenix stared at Liv for a moment, thinking about what she’d just said, and then asked, ‘If you could travel through time, go anywhere … backwards, forwards … where would you go?’

  Liv smiled. ‘Here of course. In my break. Talking to you.’

  Phoenix laughed. ‘Good answer,’ he said. ‘Me too.’

  Before Undine went into her own room, she went into Jasper’s. She looked down at his round golden face.

  ‘Goodbye, little brother,’ she said.

  His eyes opened dreamily.

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ she said softly, sorry for having woken him.

  But Jasper sat up. ‘You’re going away,’ he said.

  Undine nodded. ‘It’s time.’ She sat down on the bed next to him. ‘Do me a favour? Look after your sister. She might need you.’

  Jasper nodded seriously. ‘Okay.’

  Jasper lay back down and Undine tucked him in.

  ‘Go to sleep,’ Undine said gently.

  He closed his eyes and nuzzled into the pillow. ‘’kay,’ he said.

  ‘Good night, gorgeous boy.’

  As Undine left the room, she shut the door behind her.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  This was Undine’s dream:

  She was in a long corridor, cool lino beneath her bare feet. It smelled like a bandaid, like Dettol on a grazed knee. She realised she was in a hospital. She padded down the corridor past closed doors to the only open one. An old man sat by the window. He leaned forward, supporting his body weight on a sturdy cane. Or what was left of his body weight, Undine thought as she drew closer. He was so thin and light.

  ‘That’s why they keep me indoors now,’ he remarked. ‘If I went out there, the breeze would carry me away.’

  Undine stood at the man’s shoulder and gazed down with him. Down in a rubble and debris filled courtyard was a boy about her own age. Undine recognised him – it was the busker. The old man said, ‘He’s a trickster, he tricks the eye. He’s a shammer, a showman.’ Undine watched as the busker began to juggle, not objects but a blaze of colour, moving in a wheel above his head. The old man said, ‘But I like to watch him. He’s often here. He reminds me of you.’

  And Undine looked down and realised the old man was Prospero, but thin and ghastly, almost worn to nothing, just bones and skin, as if time and age had eaten the flesh of him.

  ‘Prospero!’ she said.

  He smiled up at her sadly. ‘I waited for you. But you’re too late. I’m already gone.’

  And then Prospero was gone, the chair was empty. The busker was gone too. The hospital seemed to yawn behind her cavernously, as though it was entirely empty suddenly. But when she turned around the bed behind her was occupied. It was the busker again, stretched out on the bed, eyes closed. He was elaborately wired to machines that droned or hummed or beeped according to their purpose.

  And then she wasn’t in the hospital anymore. She was drifting alone again, morning was near. She didn’t fight it. Air rushed past her. Space. She drifted through it and into it, deep, deep, into the warp and weft of it and it stroked her skin as if it were silk. It wrapped itself around her nose and throat, stifling her. But still she didn’t fight. She kept her eyes closed. And drifted.

  Phoenix lay in the hospital bed. He had a brief flutter of panic as he always did when he found himself suddenly returned to this place – it happened so fast sometimes, this slip from waking, ordinary life to this …

  But this time something was different. Even with his eyes closed he felt her presence by his bed. His breathing was shallow and quick, like he was a child playing hide and seek who didn’t want to be found, though part of him longed to reach out and touch her.

  He could feel her curiosity prickling through his skin. And then she was gone.

  He lay alone for a sickening moment. He could feel, rather than see, the height of the white ceiling over his bed, the heartbreaking loneliness of his solitary body. So it was a relief when it came, the broad sweep of reassuring darkness and he left the room, not via the same fibrous difficult tunnel through which Undine had journeyed, but by his own means: a kind of breathless flash, and he was gone.

  Now Undine was cold, violently cold. Behind her closed eyes was only darkness. She opened her eyes to alleviate the blackness but no comfort came. Light was dead. The whole world pressed in on her.

  She gasped, inhaling, but it was a mistake. She realised the pressure on her chest, the sudden deathly coldness, was not the atmosphere, it was water. She was under the sea and now she was breathing it in, breathing what felt like a whole ocean into her chest. Salt water filled her, bitterness flowed into her mouth and she choked.

  She struggled, fighting the urge to breathe again. She let out the air in her lungs in one long, controlled breath. She kicked herself upwards, hauling herself desperately through the murky brown-green brine, pushing past swathes of kelp. She tried not to panic, but she needed air and there was still no sign of the surface.

  She was almost ready to succumb to exhaustion, her lungs exploding from lack of air, when she saw above her the rippled surface. She kicked harder, propelling herself towards the sweet relief of thin blue sky. She broke through the surface so hard that it hurt, as if she were smashing through a mirror. She dragged in a harsh breath, and another, and another. She breathed.

  She stopped looking at the sky and looked around herself, turning in the sea, paddling in a circle, treading water. Her limbs ached. She looked for the beach, for land, but all she could see, stretching in all directions, a great, grey, glassy desert, was the sea.

  Trout woke to the shrill sound of his alarm, his eyes gritty with sleep. He thumped the clock to silence it and groaned.

  He stepped over the debris of last night’s industry. They had decided to go with the kitchen things, because the colours and textures of the blue and white cups, the tarnished silver spoons and bent forks, the shiny aluminium teapots and the pear-wood lemon squeezer would go well with the interior of the café.

  They had finished framing about eight of them the night before and they leaned against the walls in the lounge room. The photos looked different framed. More finished, more accomplished. Less his, and more as if they belonged out in the world.

  Trout drank coffee and crammed some cereal into himself. In this heat the last thing he wanted to do was pull leathers on, first the long pants and then the jacket, but he knew once he got moving the wind would keep him cool.

  He went round to the back of the house, released the brake and pushed the bike up to the street, not wanting to wake Reina by revving the engine right outside her bedroom window. Her curtains were open and he glanced in to see her sleeping, wrapped in a white sheet.

  He pushed the helmet down over his head and sat astride the bike. The engine fired and Trout eased off, starting gently at first in the quiet suburban streets, getting the feel for his bike again. He entered the traffic on the main road and his hear
t jump-started. He couldn’t wipe the manic grin off his face. Baby, he was born for this. He didn’t love city driving – he’d had a few close calls with parked cars, which frankly was just embarrassing. But he did love climbing the spine of the bridge and getting on to the highway and, early on a Sunday, once he got out past the airport, the road was all but deserted. Then he just flew, into the empty canvas of the blue summer morning.

  Trout thought he’d be the first to arrive but Grunt’s Fiat was already parked outside the yellow weatherboard cottage on Beach Road. As Trout got off the bike and pulled his helmet off, Grunt walked up to meet him.

  ‘Hey, man!’ Trout grinned, and they shook hands. ‘Good to see you. Wow, you look so different.’

  Grunt’s dreadlocks had been neatly cut off. His hair – warm honey brown now with the sea-and-sun-bleached blond cut out of it – was cropped short around his head, making his face look stronger and sterner, and somehow both older and younger, and more vulnerable, as if the dreads had somehow protected his face from scrutiny and now it was laid bare.

  ‘Nice ride!’ Grunt said, looking at Trout’s bike.

  ‘It’s all right.’ But Trout couldn’t wipe the smile off his face as he said it. He held up his rucksack. ‘I might go and change. It’s stinking hot.’

  ‘I can’t get over this crazy heat,’ Grunt said. ‘It’s cooler than this in the tropics.’

  ‘It’s been like this for weeks.’

  ‘Come inside, though it’s not much better.’

  ‘You have a key?’

  ‘Yeah, Prospero gave me one last year. He said to keep it.’ Grunt shook his head sorrowfully.

  ‘Death, eh?’ said Trout. He hadn’t really been personally affected by the passing of Prospero, he’d barely known him and wasn’t sure if he liked him or not. Prospero had once saved his life … but then again the old man had largely been to blame for Trout’s life being in peril in the first place. Still, he had to admit to himself that it was sad. Prospero had lost Undine and then died, without a proper goodbye. Whatever Prospero’s rights had been as a mostly absent father, Trout couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.