‘Most of us,’ Bobbie broke in, ‘only work out how we should have done things long after our chance has gone.
‘But you’re young. You have time. You must move. Nothing good comes to the afraid.
‘Come on,’ Bobbie said, motioning, ‘I still haven’t shown you.’ She moved us along then as if she could sweep us.
*
‘Nothing unites like money. Or divides,’ Bobbie said. ‘You two have something richer.’ She led us along the path in the direction of the Westgate Bridge. We saw a fisherman battle and then net a huge red snapper.
‘That’s a fish,’ Bobbie said to him as we passed.
‘I’m rapt,’ he gushed. And without prompting he added, ‘Any fish caught on a long line from the shore is worth a hundred caught from a boat.’
‘Wise,’ Bobbie said. ‘They should make you prime minister for a day.’
‘I’d rather go fishing,’ he said.
We stopped at a sign near a stretch of tea trees. Bobbie read it out loud. ‘Newport Oil Wharves. 1914. Timber sheet pilings. Sunk into the river bank.’
She looked at us.
And then she pulled a bolt with a big heavy nut from the pocket of her jacket. It wasn’t silver or polished but it had the hand-held sheen of the cherished.
‘Eden Hardacre. Jon Hardacre,’ Bobbie addressed us. ‘Meet Frederick Hardacre, or his representative. First day he worked on building this wharf he was so proud of the job he’d done that he nicked one of the bolts and kept it. Family legend, so your grandfather reckoned. See the bolts in the wharf there? This one here,’ and she lifted the bolt in her hand, ‘is one of their family. And we still have it. And that family of bolts is still holding the wharf up. Sun, storm, big sea and calm.’
She unscrewed the nut from the bolt and held each part out to us. Eden took the bolt; I took the nut. ‘History has your back.
‘You might feel unhinged,’ she continued, ‘a bit wobbly maybe. But look at that wharf. A hundred years on and it’s still rock solid. And your whole existence is bolted to it.’
As Bobbie spoke I reached into the centre of the nut she’d given me. It was warm from her hands. Bobbie spun then and looked back along the path. ‘Make yourself into a fish someone would love to catch,’ she said.
*
What happened next.
We walked back towards the car. We looked to our right, to the power station, at the gateway entrance set in the base of the tower. This entry looked small from where we were but it would have been high. ‘The doorway to power,’ Bobbie remarked. She said this and we looked and then swivelled our view to the left, over to where water rushed and hummed.
‘What’s that?’ Eden asked.
‘It’s where hot water meets the sea,’ Bobbie replied.
‘It’s hot?’ Eden asked.
‘Power needs water,’ she said. ‘It’s the outlet channel. They call it The Warmies.’
‘The Warmies,’ Eden repeated.
The outlet point itself was fenced but Eden grabbed my arm and limped straight past it, to where the channel was open. There were fishermen all along the bank. ‘The water here’s irresistible to fish,’ Bobbie said.
‘The water’s actually warm?’ Eden asked again.
‘It’s where fish come to bathe,’ Bobbie said.
We walked closer. Everything around looked grey and metallic save for the hot power water. This water wasn’t a dull green, it was vivid. The whole channel glowed. The water scribbled its way along, bubbles forming and churning back in on themselves, though the push of the current was clear.
‘It runs all the time?’ he asked.
‘Peak load only I’ll bet,’ Bobbie said. And when Eden looked confused she added, ‘Freezing mornings. Hot days. I’m guessing. I’ll take it on notice.’
‘It’s strong,’ I said.
Eden held my shirt so tight I thought he’d burst the buttons. The green glow of the current was cast on his face. He had that rapture look again as if he was already in the water, his arms like windmills, unstoppable.
‘It is,’ Eden started. He paused to wet his lips. ‘Beautiful,’ he said. He made this word sound so raw that it almost seemed embarrassing.
‘Don’t get ideas,’ Bobbie said.
But even before her words were out I felt Eden’s hand loosen and leave my arm. He pushed the bolt into my hand and then immediately stepped forward. He pulled his top off, flipped his shoes away and stumbled over the black rocks. His feet touched the water and then he was in and he was swimming. He headed straight out at first but he was quickly swished sideways by the electric-powered strength of the current. Off he then went down the channel.
‘Water’s like a magnet to that boy,’ Bobbie said almost as though she’d expected it, and as if the protests that had erupted from the fishermen were nothing.
I looked along the channel of green-blue water. It was straight and long. A distance off there was a pontoon or a pier. Eden powered towards it, the current drilling him away.
‘What about you?’ Bobbie asked.
‘Will he get hooked on the lines?’ I asked. As he swam he passed fisherman after fisherman.
‘What do you want to be in life?’ Bobbie asked me. ‘Respected, used or abused? They’re the usual choices.’
‘Are you watching Eden?’
‘I can’t hold the reins for you.’
‘Why aren’t you worried?’ I asked.
‘I’m going to give you rope and plenty of it,’ she said.
‘I don’t want to swim,’ I said.
She took me in. ‘Respected,’ she said.
And then we watched as Eden turned and stopped. His head bobbed in the middle of the channel. He ducked down then and hit a freestyle rhythm, up the channel and towards us now, or attempting it, powering his nine-year-old body into the current.
‘Now’s where it gets interesting,’ Bobbie said.
Eden swam hard and determined but he couldn’t make much headway. Soon his stroke slowed. The current was too strong. Still though he didn’t give up, he kept on swimming; it took effort just to keep facing forward but he never veered from true.
I grabbed his windcheater then and rushed down the bank of the channel. I hadn’t run far when Eden stopped. He was still a long way off. He looked straight up the channel, towards the outlet, the power station lined up directly. He wiped his face of water, his hair from his eyes, as if poised, as if unbeaten. He turned then and swam towards the side, the current sweeping him further down the channel. Bobbie hadn’t followed me. Finally Eden pulled himself out of the water. I reached him.
‘That hurt my back,’ he said.
‘Why do you keep doing that?’ I asked.
‘Thanks,’ he said taking the windcheater from me. His jeans were dripping wet. His body was like oil. His skin shivered, excited.
‘Amazing water,’ he said.
‘It’s dirty,’ I said. The bubble or froth or whatever it was had a brownness to it.
‘It’s fast,’ he said, ‘even this far from the station.’
As he spoke a number of fish leaped from the water, their launch and then their splash creating a spray.
‘Bobbie said the water’s a magnet to you,’ I said. Because I knew he’d like to hear it.
He turned towards where Bobbie would be. Water and froth sprayed about him. He glowed with water. He stepped so close to me that the purr of his breath landed warm upon my nose. He spoke so intensely then, and with such exaggerated clarity, that I thought his voice might break, like hot water on glass.
‘It’s like she’s in there with me,’ he said.
I looked over at the water, all this very warm water, and was about to think of Mum when I saw Bobbie, the wind blowing her coat, a series of fishing lines flashing in the sun behind her.
*
In the cocooning warmth of the car I watched as Eden licked the back of his hand, one hand and then the other. ‘I don’t believe what I just saw,’ Bobbie said, glancing in the rear-
view mirror.
‘It tastes yum,’ Eden said.
‘I wouldn’t encourage that,’ Bobbie said. ‘Not from that water. Not that I can talk. I add salt to salt and pepper squid.’
‘Can we buy Barbecue Shapes?’ I asked.
‘Timing.’ Bobbie nodded.
‘My back hurts,’ Eden said.
‘Quick cuppa at Newport and you’ve both got physios to get to.’
‘I’m having a shower,’ Eden said.
‘There’s no hot water.’
‘I’m going to train there now,’ he said.
‘I should be at the farm,’ Bobbie said tapping the steering wheel.
‘You can swim right in there with the steam,’ Eden said.
I stood in our bedroom off Jubilee Street as Eden showered and wished then that I’d swum with him. I felt hollow of a sudden, not like I was sinking but like I’d suddenly been left behind. Eden had found something already. He was going to train. And dream. He was a swimmer like Mum. I realised then that I had to find my own shiny, that if I didn’t I’d be left. I thought this even before I started with Carmelina.
*
As I waited for Eden to finish his shower I walked to the kitchen, to where Bobbie had put the kettle on. She had her back to me. ‘Can we get the internet turned back on?’ I asked.
‘It all costs money,’ Bobbie answered offhand.
I stood then and watched her. Still she didn’t turn. It hit me as I looked at her, worried suddenly that I was being left behind, that she was much older than our mum and dad, older even than Grandpa Jack had been. She wouldn’t be around forever.
I walked to her. She had a piece of paper in front of her. Her pen hovered above it. ‘Sorry. I have to get this right,’ she said.
I stood idle, uncomfortable, and then strode back to our bedroom and stood there with my eyes closed. I placed my ear against the wall, the one that connected to the bathroom and then on to our parents’ old bedroom. Our house felt so different now. I listened to the sound of water running in the bathroom, the humming noise he made, Eden. I walked back down the hallway with its old Axminster carpet turned from yellow to mustard by age and light and shadow. I walked even faster as I approached Mum and Dad’s room. But then I stopped. So many mornings when we’d run into Mum and Dad’s room and jumped onto their bed. That warmth. That irreplaceable warmth. I looked through the open doorway and saw that their wardrobe door was open. I saw that my dad’s running shoes were there, his good ones, not used now in weeks. I remembered him asking Mum if he should take them to Flowerdale and how she’d said the red dirt there would get all over them. I walked in without thinking and stepped straight into them. My feet swam in my dad’s favourite shoes. I thought I might ruin them and stepped straight back out.
When I made it back to the kitchen I found that I was shaking as if I was cold, as if it was me who had swum in the channel and become chilled from the wet. The kettle was just about to pop. I looked at it. It was full of boiling water. I wanted to sink my hands into its water and pour its heat all over me like the liquid everything of my mother’s arms, if only I could.
‘I feel strange,’ I said. As I spoke I looked down at the oven and saw the word ELECTROLUX printed in capital letters. I put my hand on this strange long word and traced it with my fingers as if what I craved was texture.
‘There’s a great big hole in all of us,’ Bobbie said. ‘We walk ourselves around it.’
‘I’m freezing,’ I said. The inside of the oven looked so big.
‘Remind me to stop at Dirty Dan’s. I need to stock this house with wine,’ she said.
‘I’m cold,’ I said again.
‘Shoes and jackets,’ she said. ‘You build your life around them.’
*
In the car on the way back to Flowerdale. I had the exercise book in my hands, the one with the calendar on the back.
‘You knew first,’ Eden said to me.
‘You were unconscious.’
‘But you found out first.’
‘Does it matter?’ Bobbie said.
‘He knew before me,’ was all he said.
‘I know it’s sensitive,’ she said. A car rushed past and she said, ‘And what speed do you call that?’
‘You don’t want to be the last to know,’ Eden said. ‘When your mum and dad die.’
‘I miss our old car,’ I said, though it was the last thing on my mind right then.
We crunched into the driveway of the Flowerdale farm. There was a package on the front doorstep. The first thing Bobbie did after turning the lights on inside was put the package on the kitchen table and head down to the cellar. She reappeared with a bottle of wine. ‘Paperwork can wait,’ she said. She grabbed a glass, rinsed it briefly under the tap. ‘Surely we don’t need the heater on?’ she said, picking up the package. ‘If I was a proper vigneron I’d be out spraying the vines. Rain’s coming and the cabernet’s still waiting for Godot.’ She sat on the couch and opened the bottle and poured a glass. Then she opened the package.
*
There were many items in the package but our eyes instantly fixed on one thing, or two types of the one thing. Bobbie revealed them from a wrapping of tissue. Our mum’s watch. And our dad’s watch. Both looked as though they’d been cleaned, even washed, though the brown band on my dad’s watch was clearly torn and both watches looked, even from our view a few steps away, second-hand.
Bobbie’s glass of wine was at a safe distance but she pushed it further away, and the bottle too, carefully. Neither Eden nor I made a sound but I think all of our hearts stopped and hung suspended before swinging back into the next beat and then, slowly, the one after, before our heartbeats again picked up pace.
They were just watches but I thought for once that none of us might be able to scramble any words together, not even Bobbie. But eventually she said, ‘That gave me a fright, almost.’ We stared at the watches as if they might disappear. Bobbie cradled them in her hands with the kind of monumental care you’d normally see reserved for a new-born chicken or bird or baby.
‘This is one more occasion,’ Bobbie said, her voice both soft like a whisper and tight like a wire, ‘when I miss Jack and wish he was here.’ She looked down at the two watches as she spoke. But then she looked up, though only briefly, as if she could hardly bear to look at us, or perhaps she could hardly bear to look away from those second-hand watches sitting cold in her palm. She looked down again and, just once, we felt it as we saw it: she shook a little.
*
And then we heard a car door shut in the driveway outside. And Bobbie rushed to the window and then to the front door. ‘Don’t let me call him Skasey,’ she said, opening up before Werner had a proper chance to work the doorbell. ‘If someone’s made an offer on the house,’ she said before he’d had a chance to speak, ‘tell them I’m having second thoughts.’
‘I’ve been watching for you,’ he said, ignoring her comment. ‘Don’t just say no. I want you to accept it.’ He had mitts on his hands and was holding a baking dish. ‘It’s goulash,’ he said. ‘It’s still hot. I made it myself.’ And as Bobbie stood there without saying anything he added, ‘It’s what people do. In the circumstances.’
‘Sorry,’ Bobbie said. Our mum’s watch, and our dad’s watch, were still in her hands though she had tightened her fingers around them. ‘I love a ghoulish goulash. But I can’t accept it. Unless you come in and have some with us.’
‘Looks like I’m just in time,’ he said, stepping in and nodding at the wine bottle and glass on the floor in front of the couch.
‘I hadn’t even thought of tea,’ she said.
Bobbie moved to the kitchen. She walked the best part of a circle before carefully placing the watches on top of the fridge. ‘If I’d known we were having visitors I’d have bought a bread stick.’
‘I could have brought one.’
‘Look in the freezer,’ she said.
‘Are you boys cold?’ he said, acknowledging us. And then seein
g Eden he said, ‘I’m Werner from up the hill.’ As he shook Eden’s hand, that strange smell of sawdust drifted past.
‘I’ll put the heater on,’ Bobbie said, not waiting for us to answer. ‘Go wash your hands and we’ll eat.’
As soon as we’d closed the bathroom door I motioned to Eden to be quiet. ‘Listen,’ I whispered. ‘She’ll say something.’
We both put an ear to the bathroom door. In that first minute or so though neither Bobbie nor Werner talked, or not that we could hear.
‘Wait,’ I said.
We heard the sound of the toaster and cutlery and plates. Of a glass sliding across a bench.
‘I’m going to wash my hands,’ Eden said without moving.
‘Wait a sec.’
‘Did I interrupt something?’ we heard Werner ask, finally.
And him speaking seemed to trigger something because suddenly Bobbie said, ‘I think I’ve hit my flounder point.’ Her words were spluttered, almost jumbled, like they’d tumbled from her mouth without her permission. ‘Sorry,’ she said again. ‘My brave face fell off and now I’ve lost it.’
And this was followed by the sound we were really waiting for I guess, though it was a sound we’d never heard before.
‘God, what’s the matter?’ Werner asked his voice suddenly hurried.
And then we heard the sound of an adult crying so loud it came as a sob, more than one, a series of jerks, like a balloon had been inflated to its limits and had then been allowed to deflate in one noisy, unnerving burst.
‘I’m going to wash my hands,’ Eden said, ricocheting away from the bathroom door as if the door itself had suddenly become electrified.
‘Me too,’ I said.
‘You’re the only one yet to break,’ Eden said seconds later, our hands touching as we fought for the soap, as we slathered our faces with it.
*
‘I sat in our house at Newport,’ Eden said at the tea table, right in front of Werner, ‘after I’d run away. And every time the walls made that creaking noise they make and every time a car came down the street and every time I saw headlights move across the wall or heard a car door or a voice or a siren – everything made me hope that it was not true and that Mum and Dad were coming home.
We Were Not Men Page 6
