Something For a Rainy Day
Page 3
Twenty-nine-year-old Audrey sat on the edge of the hospital bed. Lying against stiff white pillows her dad smiled at her, and then motioned towards the bedside table. On it sat an envelope.
‘It’s something for a rainy day Audrey.’
‘I don’t want anything.’
He turned onto his side, the plastic of the mattress protector crinkled against his skin. His breath came in short, sharp bursts. His skin was grey, the colour of a trapped fish.
‘That was a great fish you caught that time Audrey,’ he said.
‘Guess I couldn’t go wrong with a flathead. It wasn’t even moving before I hit it.’
‘Gave you a bit of a fight though.’
‘Yeah thanks Dad, it nearly killed me. I mean . . . God, I hate this.’
‘I’m okay with it Audrey. Really.’ He smiled and took a deep gasp. He felt cold. She rubbed his skin but it made him wince. She put both their hands under the cover. She thought of her mother’s hands. A tiny sliver of memory.
‘How long since you’ve been for a dive?’
‘I can’t get Steven into a wetsuit. He’s petrified of sharks. Of the water really. He doesn’t trust it. He thinks it’s too unpredictable.’
‘Have a look Audrey.’
‘You never give in do you Dad?’ She reached across and opened the envelope. In it was a photo of him in front of her childhood home, holding up his prize mulloway. She still had the bones out of its neck.
‘It’s yours Audrey. When you’re ready.’
‘We already ate it Dad.’
‘Funny. I mean the lot, everything in the photo. Well, not the lounge. I think it went. Come to think, it could be in the shed. It mightn’t be what you’re after. It needs a bit of work.’
‘I couldn’t Dad. It would feel too strange.’
‘Your mum and I will always be in that house Audrey. And if I’m not home I’m just down the road at the beach swimming out to that bloody bommie.’
Audrey turned towards the bushland at the end of the estate. The wind had picked up and storm clouds loomed in the distance. She pushed her hands out in front of her and peeled her way through the scrub. The ground was littered with leaves and twigs. Overhead the gums twisted in on each other. Audrey thought of Steven clutching Kylie’s face, holding her like he would never let her go. Branches grabbed at her, catching her clothes. Tiny embraces that she shrugged herself out of. She could hear the distant rumble of the ocean. The salty air burned the back of her throat. Bob had said there was about a kilometre of bush and then the sand dunes. He’d said no one in their right mind would bother.
Audrey pictured Steven tonight, sitting next to her on the orange plastic chairs at church. He loved it. He said it was his main source of business. ‘The louder they clap the more that’s wrong with them Audrey,’ he’d said last week. ‘They’re all on the rocks and divorce means at least one listing.’ Steven embraced the church just like he embraced real estate. He said that it all came down to good marketing: ‘Product Eternity or Product House, Price Negotiable, Place Morality, Promotion, Promotion, Promotion.’ It was the same little chant he did each Sunday. ‘That’s how they get you in Audrey, clapping and bickies and selling the dream.’
She reached the blinding white of the sand dunes and ran towards them. She felt like she could run forever like she did in her dreams, more powerful with every step; her legs so strong that life could never catch up with her.
Her heart was pounding. She stripped off her tracksuit top and plunged into the sand. It was in her eyes and her ears and her mouth, burying her, shutting down her senses. She scrambled up the slope digging her fists into the ground. She reached the crest of the dune and rolled down the other side, tumbling like a child. Her hair slapped against her face. She forced herself up again and climbed over the next one. She could hear the ocean heaving. She clawed towards the sound.
Then she saw it: Steven’s bloody Tasman.
Huge waves were crashing right on the shoreline, thumping into the sand, eroding it. There was no sign of life. No footsteps, no voices, just the wild, deep howling of a treacherous sea.
Audrey peeled off the rest of her clothes and ran down to the edge. Her skin was so cold it was burning. Blasts of sand whipped her legs. She stumbled into the icy water and fell onto her knees. The grey wash surged around her and dragged her in, tossing her onto her back. She gulped in a shock of saltwater and coughed it out again. Her hair spilled into her mouth and she giggled. How ridiculous she would look right now to Steven; Steven stroking Kylie’s smooth blonde hair while she was flung about like washing in a dryer. She would let the sea engulf her until she couldn’t breathe anymore; let it drown her in the moment.
She pushed under a wave and gasped in more water. Her head thudded with an instinct that forced her up to the surface. She looked back at the sand dunes shifting along grain by grain; travelling without anyone noticing. The next wave smacked her hard across the face. ‘Turn on your side Audrey,’ her dad said. The current grabbed her and dragged her out deeper. She thrashed against it feeling a giddy stab of panic. She was caught in a rip. The water curled around her arms and legs like rope and pulled her into it.
Audrey cried out but her voice was swept away by the wind. A wave pushed her back into the sea. She opened her eyes. There was nothing but a vast, lonely emptiness. The water rushed past in a white blur, like a desert storm. ‘Kick as hard as you can,’ she heard him say. She forced her face back out of the water. She could still see the shoreline. Another wave broke over her head. She thought of the lounge slumped on the veranda with her dad curled into it, gouging an urchin spine out of his toe while she squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed him on the back. Audrey kicked and breathed. She kicked until she felt her dad’s arms wrap around her. He pushed her forward with strong strokes. They swam together until the ocean stopped pulling, swam until she was safe and the waves could pummel her back towards the shore.
Around her, the land and the sea and the sky stretched out forever. She staggered out of the water gasping for air and fell onto the sand. She took deep breaths and pressed against it, forcing herself in deeper. Drops of water flicked across her skin. She rolled over and opened her mouth to taste them.
It had started to rain.
About the Author
Joanna Atherfold Finn
Joanna Atherfold Finn writes and teaches in Port Stephens. She has had short stories and articles published in anthologies and journals. She received the University Medal in English and is currently completing a creative writing PhD at the University of Newcastle.
Copyright Page
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Vesion 1.0
Something For a Rainy Day
ePub ISBN 978-0-9874479-8-2
Copyright © Joanna Atherfold Finn, 2013
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A Spineless Wonders book
Published by Spineless Wonders Publishing Pty Ltd
PO Box 220
STRAWBERRY HILLS NSW 2012
www.shortaustralianstories.com.au
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