by Carmody, Sam
You always harass people like this? Tess said through the flyscreen. I’m heading back to the city, he said.
She scanned the street. Well, don’t stand out there like you’re trying to sell me shit.
She opened the door. Gestured towards the couch with a thin arm.
You want tea?
I’m alright, thanks. Mum and Dad are waiting out front.
Well, I’m having a tea, she said, already in the small kitchen, partially hidden by red brick. You might as well have one too.
Okay, Paul said.
You’ve been busy being a hero. You and that German.
Paul attempted a laugh.
They say Arthur’s boat was a goner, Tess continued. She poked her head around the wall. Roo Dog would have drowned, she said, or bled out. Captain Jake and Arcadia to the rescue. Who would have thought? Tess shook her head. She disappeared back behind the kitchen wall.
Paul heard the purring of the kettle.
It’s good, she said, I suppose. That you rescued him and everything. I mean, I would have left him to rot. And I’m his sister. I don’t know why you bothered.
Paul looked out the window at the peppermint trees and eucalypts across the road. Thought it was strange to see them so still.
You always lived out here? he asked.
Grew up in Stark. Lived there my whole life. You want to know why he was out here? With a junkie.
No. Just . . .
This house was your brother’s idea. He thought getting out of town would be good for me.
Tess walked into the living area with a tea tray.
Elliot spent all his time worrying about me. All the glass I was using, Tess said. I was fine. She paused, looked down at her body. Well, not fine, maybe. Tess gave Paul a half-smile.
She put the tray on the coffee table, sat down opposite him.
So, she said. Your brother wasn’t a criminal if that’s what you were thinking. But it was him who was the worry. How dark he got on everything. Spent all his time on his own, on some beach or camping up near the cliffs, alone.
Tess looked towards the window.
I always thought that was funny about him, she said. He came to Stark to get away, then he was trying to get away from Stark all the time. There was always somewhere else.
Paul nodded.
It was almost like he wasn’t made for this place, like he was from another time. Prozac didn’t really help it.
Prozac, Paul repeated.
Didn’t think any of you knew. Don’t take it personally. He wasn’t the sharing type. Neither are you, I bet. Tess gave him a hard look, unflinching, like someone with the experience of giving bad news, or receiving it.
The cliffs, Paul said.
Didn’t top himself.
How do you know?
I just do.
So where is he then?
I’m sorry, Paul. I wish I could tell you. I miss him.
Yeah, he said. Paul closed his eyes, tried to order his thoughts. Heard the floorboards creak under the carpet, felt Tess standing there in front of him as if she was unsure whether or not to comfort him.
You jumped into the water? she said.
Paul looked up at her, the girl’s eyes flickering like they were struggling for focus.
Arthur’s boat, she said. That’s what I heard. Before you got taken down by the pot. I heard it was like hell’s own swimming pool and you went and jumped in.
Paul nodded. Not just me, he said. Michael, too.
Elliot told me you were like that, she said.
Paul watched her still face, her eyes gazing on him with meaning. But she didn’t say anything more. He looked out the window to the car.
Mum and Dad, Paul said. I better go.
She breathed in hard through her nose. Yep, she said.
Tess didn’t walk to the door with him. She stood in the corridor, looked into her kitchen.
On the winding highway from Stark to Geraldton Paul looked east and inland. Felt the land flex under the sunlight. Saw Elliot’s Pajero on every farm road. Imagined him standing inside the doorway of every homestead he could see across the paddocks, or walking at the base of every scrubby ridge. He knew the risk of thinking that way, the hope that whatever forces had sent his brother away might have abated. That danger had passed, and Elliot might return.
While his mother drove, Paul’s father probed for stories about the season and Paul obliged him. Told him about Circus; the missing eye that was a portal to hell. Told him about the kangaroo they had found floating eighteen miles out at sea. Explained Jungle’s genius behind Big Shit.
And all of it his father seemed to savour, as if any part of the conversation had some profound element to it. Paul saw the urgency in him, the sightseer’s energy to his father in the front seat. Glassy-eyed and alert, like a man returned to earth, returned to life.
But it was hard to not feel enraged by his father’s sorrow, his enlightenment. After so long, after all the wasted time. It was impossible not to think of the cost of the man’s distance when all Paul and his mother had left now was to look at the endless land and hope, hope that some vision of Elliot would materialise from the imagined into something real.
But Paul could see that at least, now, his father saw the world in that way, too. Understood the distance between people, the distance that had cultivated between them all, and wanted to close it.
After Dongara, when the highway hooked south-west towards the sea, Paul rested his head against the seatbelt. His parents spoke to each other in quiet voices, thinking he was asleep. He kept his eyes on the shimmering distance for much of the rest of the journey home.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This novel has had many supporters.
I would like to thank Curtin University’s School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts.
Thank you to Griffith Review for sponsoring my residency at Varuna Writer’s House in the Blue Mountains. Thank you also to the Eleanor Dark Foundation (the voice of Troy Little arrived – scarily late in the novel’s production – in Eleanor’s writing studio over one snowy week in August 2015).
To the peerless team at Allen & Unwin for their patience and guidance and, importantly, for their faith in me, especially Annette Barlow, Henrietta Ashton and Belinda Lee. Special thanks to editor Ali Lavau.
Heartfelt thanks to Julienne van Loon for her wisdom and friendship. I owe a great deal, also, to David Whish-Wilson.
As a writer, I have been fortunate to have the generous guidance of numerous mentors, with special mention of Deborah Hunn, Charlotte Wood, Liz Byrski and Georgia Richter. Thanks also to Josh Wilson and Brian Dibble.
Thank you to my writer friends and ‘plot doctors’, especially Brooke Davis, Jeremy Lachlan, Max Noakes and Bensen Thomas.
Thanks Mum, Jess, Betty, Holii and Nathan. And Dad and Liam, for leading me towards the sea, often against my will, and who I owe my love for it.
This book is for Sylvia who weathered its storms and got us through.
Stark is not a real town. Its inhabitants are fictional, as are the events of this novel.
